History's Greatest Holocaust Via Atheistic Ideology

Yeah, of course. Well, yeah. But the thing is, us atheists aren't sitting around bringing up religious brutality all the time - except as a counterexample when a Christian makes a claim like "Christians are all-around better people."It's not us doing the lumping, you see. Plenty of Christians are happy to paint Christianity as an all-inclusive party that makes everybody happy; we're just pointing complaints from the neighboors. Nobody thinks Christians are universally bad people. But it's not accurate to claim that they're universally good people, either. They're no better or worse, on average, than anybody else.

Paulk,Thanks for the tip. I was just at the Duke site, and saw no mention of it. Nor was there any mention of it in the Newsweek Nov 10 article.But, truth marches on. I should note, though, that the studies I saw earlier (back in the seventies, on plants) got me doing my own. One of my most impressive results had to do with a graduate student and their thesis. God told me that, if I prayed the way He told me to, He would enable this student to write a complete thesis in about a week. The data were at hand, but were unanalysed. The result was "miraculous" to me, who had been training doctoral students for nearly a decade at this point. They agreed to try, the committee agreed to examine, and the thesis, 120 pages, 34 tables of analyzed data, complete lit review, was regarded by the committee as one of the best the department had seen.The theological comments in the article you led me too are wrong, but do reflect the point that there is a right way and a wrong way to pray, and that it is possible to "pray amiss" and get no answer. In the end, perhaps all science can do is get people to do personal research, that will convince them. God is on record of actually going out of His way to "hide a matter." and keep the truth away (e.g. parables) from the public.Anyway, thanks.Stephen

Stevo,Your stories don't match.Post 122 this thread:

• a graduate student (nothing special noted)
• need for specific kind of prayer
• week mentioned by god
• 120 pages
• 34 tables
  

Post 76 Heaven's Prerequisites According To Mike thread:

• wife was grad student
• no specific prayer mentioned
• "...examine thesis in 10 days....will have completed in 8 days"
• 140 pages
• 30+ graphs and figures
  

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Asgara
"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato[This message has been edited by Asgara, 01-24-2004]

Yes, Duke has very little to say about the outcome of MANTRA II - the only thing I could find was a link to the BBC news story. I won't speculate on why that should be the case.

Buzz Statement1) Oh really? Nice try at dodging for the millionth time. For the record "giving permission" equates with "justification", or did that miss you?? A person, even YOU, justifies their actions/opinions by using the Bible as support and therefore gives the individual an unwarranted feeling that their actions/decisions are somehow morally correct i.e reason/justification/permission. Now whether or not you WANT to recognize that person, or whether or not other Christians recognize you as a legitimate Christian is your own personal issue.2) "You people"? I, if I have, only stated that more genocide and atrocities have been committed in THE NAME OF GOD, and the Bible has been used directly to "support/justify/permiss" those actions.Buzz QuestionBuzz's own answerBuzz's Question1) Islam? This is not an atheistic regime
2) Most of the other regimes you have mentioned you base your "atheistic regime" on your opinion of whether or not that person was a Christian......soooo, who cares? Your opinion=your opinion NOT FACT. EXCEPT you ignore what is currently going on between Israel and Palestine which is a conflict whereby the OT/Torah (I know they are not strictly equivalent)is being directly used as support.
3) You have also refused to define "godless"
4) You do not take into account technology
5) You have yet to tell me where in Europe you are referring to in the 1800's

Asgara,Good for you. The second description was intended to be brief, and a slight understatement. I actually don't recall exactly how many pages, but, counting tables and figures and references, my best recall is over 150. (120, plus over 30 tables and figures, plus 5 or more on references. The writing needed about a week, eight days, since the defense was on the tenth day, and they wanted two days for review. As I recall, it also took one day to make the decision to go for it. The graduate student was my wife, not my student officially, and not always so interested in my council. But I was authorized to pray for her. The "I was reminded..." part of the first telling was God telling me how I was to pray, with a hint of grace in the "do the best you can."I agree. I should have kept a copy of the thesis as a momento of the event, so that the details could be kept fresh. But, my wife's name at the time was Armeda Fretwell, now Armeda Ferrini, recent or still chair of some sort of Family and Child development at Chico State in Calif. The thesis was written at Salt Lake City, Univ. of Utah. Ms Ferrini may or may not be willing or able to confirm the story, due to the usual stuff that happens in divorce and dealing with spiritual reality. Rebecca Ferrini, our daughter, about 12 at the time, may, ah, remember more clearly. In any case, with adequate digging, the dates and times are on record, I believe.You are quite right that this story ought to be as well documented as possible. It certainly made an impression on me. It might be useful to others.Stephen

Thank you for this information Stephen. With it, I was able to contact your ex wife and question her on this story. I won't post her answer without asking her, but I"m sure you can guess what her answer was.

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Asgara
"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

Chiroptera, you are one of the nicest atheists I have ever met! This statement that you made, was a great lil breath of fresh air as I was making my way through this post. Here is my 2 cents on topic:
Jews and Christians are often at odds with nations such as Germany in the twenties. Germany need a national identity and a common sense of purpose. For a Jew, his identity and network is within his people...not through the German population at large. Thus...the Jews succeeded better than the other Germans and were blaimed for cheating everyone else out of a chance. It was not their fault that they worked together while the rest of Germany attempted to forge a national identity. Today, the fundie christians try and stick together, yet they are not really even sure of which side to take.
I wager that most Christians are only part time believers. I confess that I am. What is my point? hmmmmmm comments?

Asgara,Puts an interesting choice before you, and others, doesn't it?And so it always must be: freedom to choose, responsibility for the choice. Life is good.Stephen

Actually Steve, it only verified what I already thought

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Asgara
"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

quote:

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Actually Steve, it only verified what I already thought

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According to Steve's version of Bayes theorem that has just made your theory more probable. I can only assume it has made most of ours more probable as well.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

1. "Nice" was ideologically relevant in the mindset of such athiests as made up the brutal communist regimes. Being "nice" to individuals was relevant to what was considered to be "nice" for the community by those in power who hated Christians. The same goes with the human bombers in Palestine and Iraq today, those devout desciples of Mohammed. The same also goes, admittedly, for us Christobiblical fundies who feel it our obligation to the world to preach the kingdom/gospel of Jesus, often offending many who do not like our exclusive message in order that some may escape the judgement we believe is coming from the creator, Jehovah. We feel it would be selfish and not nice to allow others to go into judgement, never having an opportunity to hear what we consider to be good news/gospel.

You have yet to show where any text in the entire Bible gives permission, justification or whatever to Christians to persecute, harm or kill anyone. Rather you're spinning what I said. Be specific by posting my specific statement and responding to those specifics, please, or move on. I've not got time for baseless dialog. Again, we're not generalizing here, but talking specific holocausts. Get specific or move on. I've not got time for baseless dialog. Notice my words, advocates and produced. I've stated that though athiesim has not necessarily advocated violence, what has been produced by these ruthless athiestic minded regimes has been bloody. I also give reasons through the thread as to why I believe for the cause and effect, one of which is that there is no accountability to a higher power in the afterlife. Where did I state or imply it was?? [qs] How so? Please cut and paste specifics. Quit being lazy. Look it up. Say what?? Communist regimes I've referenced to the 1800s???

Back on Topic, as to whether "atheistic" ideology can be proven specifically in Russia and China to have caused more genocide than non atheistic ideology elsewhere.
1) The point was brought up that these governments deified their leaders and that this in and of itself caused christianity and any other belief system to be forced out of these countries by default.
I agree, yet I will point out that where the "Christian" Monarchs ruled, they set themselves up as Gods spokesmen and thus deified themselves also. In my opinion, Christianity is very real and powerful, but Jesus was quite correct in saying that His Kingdom was not of this world. ALL Governments including our own have killed lots of people. It does not matter whether they were Christian or not.
2) A true country of real Christians would probably function similar to socialism with a conscience. They would never defend themselves, they would give their wealth freely to those in need, and they would first pray and then appoint leaders who themselves had no ambition beyond serventhood. Perhaps an impossible concept with current reality.

1) You have yet to provide proof of what you said in your original post despite valid points that I and others have pointed out:a-Atheism does not have an inherent ideology..you did not explain..big surprise.b-IF, you want to use "communist/atheist regimes" you cannot and have not explained to me or anyone else why it is that after the fall of communism areas like Bosnia/Herzogovenia fell prey to their religious differences. I challenged you to explain how this supported your statements. You didn't..big surprise!c-Apparently you are not aware that the Roman Catholic Church did not speak out against Hitler even after being informed of what was happening to the Jews. One of the reasons suggested is that the Jews are not Christians. The most obvious reasons, however, are probably self-preservation and they were trying "fix" their terrible mistake in Russia. So, either you have to claim "oh my, but they weren't "true" Christians", or you have to concede that Christians must accept just as much blame for that holocaust of the Jews as the Nazis.....however, I bet you will have some way of rationalizing it.d-You have not defined "godless". This is a valid point as well since you decided to ignore the fact that someone has pointed out to you before....worship of man in place of god carries the same implication. That's why you must define "godless". Is this anyone who does not recognize "Jesus"?e-You evading the fact that in the OT the Hebrews were allowed to kill many people because it was "their land" (I guess we aren't calling this persecution because.....?), or any other time that people were killed because they refused to recognize the "true" God, or because they were on the "wrong land" completely undermines your biblical knowledge (and mine sucks).BTW, thanks for imlying that I'm lazy. It shows you for what you are.
Either rebutt the points above, define your terms, or be quiet.