WooHoo! More idiots running the gub'ment.

I really, really despise your insipid mindless middle nonsense.There have been two major anti-religion despotic regimes - Communist Russia and China. It is very true that both of these regimes have committed vast atrocities and crimes against humanity, including mass purges of their own citizenry.However, the purges were not on the order of "kill all the religious people." It was not a purge of the faithful. Instead, it was a political purge. Anyone who was not loyal to the Party was a target - this included religious leaders and pious citizens who would not acknowledge teh Party as their highest loyalty, true. But it also included anyone else who did so for any other reason as well.Stalin wasn't out to kill Christians like some Roman emperor throwing them to the lions. He was killing off anyone loyal to the opposition, in any form that might take. It's not even clear that Stalin himself was an Atheist, as he had some strong ties to Orthodoxy.To identify this as some sort of purge to create a religion-free society is grossly dishonest, as it paints atheism as the cause when any honest glance at history shows that atheism itslef was a means to an end in this case, while actual religious purges are themselves the sought after end.And to suggest that anti-religion mass murders have been worse than religiously-motivated purges is blatantly stupid.The Holocaust was religiously motivated, and there is frankly no way to argue otherwise if you read even just a few excerpts from Mein Kampf (a stomach turning exercise, but then, nobody ever claimed history was pretty).The Inquisition was quite obviously religiously motivated. There is no possible way to contest this.The Salem Witch Trials were the same.The Crusades were religiously motivated. September 11th was both religiously and politically motivated. American slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans were religiously justified, if not realistically religiously motivated.It's true that there are "whackos" of every political and religious (and irreligious) persuasion. Sociopathic behavior is rooted in the individual, and the rest is just the trappings.But some philosophies do lend themselves to work as motivations or jsutifications of abhorrent behavior more than others. Atheism isn't even a philosophy in and of itself - it's simply an absence of any belief in deities. It's rather difficult to jump from "there are no gods" to "we should kill all the Jews."Christianity, however, has been used to justify all manner of atrocities - including killing Jews, who after all killed Jesus remember, or taking blacks as slaves, because after all they were the seed of Ham, or destroying Native American cultures, since they're just filthy heathens anyway, or shunning the use of condoms in the middle of the African AIDS epidemic...I don't think I need to go into detail about Islam, given many of that religion's worst atrocities have been committed recently enough for us to remember the headlines.Perhaps I should touch on the barbarism required by the native Aztec religion? Or should I mention the suffering caused by traditional Hindu beliefs? Indeed. You've already perpetuated more than enough on your own.

Yes, Buz, grossly dishonest, although even Hyro's typical mindless middle habits pale in comparison to the complete red herring you're posting now.I never said China was a "good place."I simply said that it;s grossly dishonest for Hyro to say that:

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As for how many atrocities have been committed under the pretense of some religion, it pales in comparison to the numbers murdered by despots seeking a religion-free utopian society in the last 100 years alone.

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Hyro was being extremely inaccurate, both in saying that the atrocities committed by "atheist regimes" outnumber those committed in the name of religion, and by gross distortion in saying that the atrocities that were committed by those regimes were done to favor atheism or out of some atheistic mandate.Your words, Buz, of course have nothing whatsoever to do with any of that.Saying "Oh yeah?! China is guilty of human rights abuses, including the repression of the freedom of religion!" doesn't in any way change the facts I stated above. it does nothing to further Hyro's accuracies.In short Buz, you posted a red herring.And then: BULLSHIT, you dihonest lying waste of bandwidth.The law does not ban religious exercise in schools - it only bans school-led and publicly-funded religious exercise. that means kids CAN pray in school, but the teachers can't lead them in prayer. The two are very different. Your child can pray to Yahweh in school personally without fear of a teacher leading your child in a prayer to Allah or Visnu or Quetzalcoatl or being told that Yahweh does not exist.Public schools do not in any way say that God(s) does not exist. Public schools are required to simply say nothing about religion, so that (what a concept) parents and the children themselves can decide what religious beliefs they should or should not have, rather than those beliefs being dictated or even suggested by the state.We've told you this so many times, Buz, that I'm straight-up calling you a liar. You are bearing false witness. You are making a false statement that you know to be false.

It's "mindless middle" nonsense, actually.The Mindless Middle refers to the strong tendency to seek the "middle ground" in any given dispute and attribute to it a higher likelihood of accuracy than "either side," and label this conclusion as "objectivity." You'll note that at no point is such an assessment actually based on an analysis of facts, but is rather determined by making a compromise of sorts from all sides of any dispute.You do this...a lot. You're not alone. It's unfortunately common in hotly contested issues (you're unlikely to see the Mindless middle at work when it comes to whether the Earth is flat or an ovoid sphere, for instance, but it pops up as "teach the controversy" and similar arguments commonly in the EvC debate).In this case, you've made a statement to paint atheism in the same historically negative light as religion in terms of crimes agaisnt humanity - a sort of massive scale to quoque fallacy.Objectivity does not mean maintaining absolute neutrality towards each side and seeking the "truth" from all sides. It does not mean trying to find any "middle ground."Objectivity means impassionately following the facts, regardless of where they lead, unswerved by any emotional bias - including the emotional sense of "fairness" that instinctually urges us to seek compromise. In some cases, one side is simply wrong.The Marxist philosophy in question (that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that religious persuits detract from work that benefits the state) is, in fact, identical to Stalin's political motivation: he wanted the competition out. Remember, for all intents and purposes, Stalin was the state.The relevant fact here is that this purge cannot be attributed to atheism. It was a political purge, spawned of political ideology. How do we know this? There is no atheistic ideology or philosophy whatsoever. It's ratehr difficult to say that the teachigns of atheism led to a purge of the faithful when atheism has, in fact, no teachings at all. Then the Holocaust trumps all, since Stalin's purges are irrelevant (being politically driven, not atheistically). Undisputed. Crazies will be crazies, they just use whatever is avialable to justify theur craziness.However, it is true that some religions (curiously, not all of them) do lend themselves to justification of sociopathic behavior than others. Certain facets of modern Christian fundamentalism, for example, very easily lend themselves to the killing of abortion doctors, while various other belief systems are less suited to be used as justification for such an act. In some cases, the zealous teachings of a religion can actually create a sociopath (see modern suicide bombers).Atheism itself has no teachings, and so it's not possible to honestly state that it can somehow be used in a similar way to validate the delusions of a sociopathic whackjob. There's no central philosophy. Remember how many fundamentalists believe that, without a belief in God, people would run amok raping and pillaging and killing? Remember how they're wrong? That's because simply not believing in deities carries no motivation for any specific action (the closest would simply be a disinclination to participate in worship services or pray, for obvious reasons). Have you ever read Mein Kampf? Hitler wrote it before his political rise to power, and it gives a (rather uncomfortable) startling look into his motivations for the Holocaust.Here are some quotes:

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"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

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"The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality."

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"Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image."

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"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."

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"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe."

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"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."

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There's plenty more, but I think that's more than enough.Hitler's motivations for the Holocaust were religiously motivated - and were hardly new. He drew very heavily from none other than Martin Luther - the ferociously antisemitic father of all Protestantism (which makes it all the more ironic that Hitler so favored Catholicism). His vision of racial and moral purity were driven by an interpretation of Christian dogma that today almost any Christian would find abhorrent and twisted, but which was immensely popular at the time (and still exists, though thankfully in greatly diminished form).Homosexuals, the handicapped, gypsies, Jews, blacks, and anyone else of insufficient Aryan purity (including adherence to the Nazi version of Christian morality) was included in the Holocaust, and this was religiously motivated. Hitler considered Christianity to be the "true Aryan religion," and drew his vision of racial purity from Biblical teachings (in much the same way Buz does today when he says that the races were created separately and should thus remain; thankfully, Buz and those like him don;t often cross over into the "kill the other races" arena in the modern age). Perhaps, if we're talking about rapid mass murder. I simply included it as yet another case of obviously religiously motivated crimes against humanity. It's not defensiveness - it's annoyance at your Mindless Middle conclusions. "You do it too" is only valid if, in fact, you can show actual facts that show that atheism inspired mass atrocities on the scale of those inspired by religion. You never did so - you simply made the unsupported statement that atheistic atrocities have dwarfed religious atrocities in teh mdoern age, a statement which is outright false when actual facts are brought into play. You'll find no arguemnt from me there. There is nothing inherently wrong with being religious, except that it suggests a lack of objectivity. However, I would never suggest that anyone believe anything other than what their conscience dictates. I may find certain beleifs to be reprehensible or silly or even stupid or monstrous, but I respect the right of every person to reach their own conclusions on what to believe based on what facts are available to them. Religion is in no way antagonistic towards despotism - see Saudi Arabia, Iran, recently the Taliban, etc.Stalin and Mao took Marx's suggestion that religion can work to the detriment of the state by either distraction or outright opposition. Other tyrannical states habe used religion to serve their purposes. The greatest example may in fact be North Korea, where Kim Jung Il is worshipped as a living God.Which unfortunately does not guarantee your objectivity. Name a single atheistic teaching that can be used to jsutify anything. Just one. Any teaching. At all. And as I've said, I do not dispute that China is not exactly a role model for human rights. I simply dispute the attribution of those abuses to atheism, because atheism itself has absolutely no teachings or philosophy on which to base any action, good or bad. China's abuses are committed for purely political reasons. Religion is persecuted for political reasons. It has nothign to do with atheism, and everything to do with unchallenged state control of the population.You could jsut as easily attribute China's atrocities to internet censorship, since it has the same role in Chinese rule as atheism. A means to an end is not the same as a motivation; enforced atheism is simply a means toward the end of eliminating competition for the hearts and minds of the population, and is motivated by a political doctrine of complete state control. Correction: because they are competition in the eyes of the PRC. Here is where you truly demonstrate teh Mindless Middle: you are not being objective at all. Pointing in "one direction" does not in any way mean that someone is not being objective.In a discussion on the shape of the Earth, an objective analysis of facts will lead to all "fingers" pointing in the direction of a rough ovoid sphere, and none pointing towards a flat circle.You aren't being objective, Hyro. You rarely are. Instead, you're seeking a compromise between "both sides." You believe that "both sides"have some "truth" to them, and so you conclude that reality is somewhere "in the middle." Your accusation that atheism is "just as bad" as religion when ti comes to atrocities is based solely on trying to find some middle ground that appeals to your inner sense of fairness...but is not in any way based on an objective analysis of fact.PS - I can't claim credit for the term Mindless Middle. I first heard it from Mike Wong, of CreationTheory.org.

As an Atheist, I'd love to hear what these "atheistic values" are.Can you name them? Perhaps even one?

This is completely and 100% false. As is often the case with you and this topic, Buz."Secular humanism" is not taught at all in public schools."Atheism" is not taught at all in schools.What is taught is science. Current scientific theories date the Earth at a few billion years old, and explain the diversity of life we observe today through the Theory of Evolution. This is not secular humanism. It is methodological naturalism...in other words, science. It is not a religion; it is a means of investigating the world around us in verifiable, testable ways through the use of our physical senses, with am emphasis on discarding anything shown by evidence to be inaccurate in favor of ever more accurate models.Creationists and Christians are not restricted in tehir rights. At all. Children of any religion are welcome to pray in schools - they simply will not be led in prayer by the faculty on the public dime, because we all (including you, Buz) need to respect the rights of the parents and children who do not have the same religious views; the state cannot be used to endorese, even with the basic suggestion that there is or is not a deity, any religious belief so that all faiths are protected from the tyranny of the state.At no point is Christianity challenged in public schools. Nobody tells kids that Jesus didn;t exist, or that mankind wasn;t made by God. Likewise, teachers are not permitted to say that those things are the case, to respect the rights of the Muslims and Hindus and Jews and atheists and Native Americans and Buddhists and everyone else.The one place where some religious dogma comes into conflict is in science class. Religion is not science. There is no scientific controversy on these subjects. At all. And while religion is not taught because it would be inappropriate and illegal, nonreligion is not supported either. Again, at no point does the teacher say "...and all of this happened without God."Children are simply taught what current scientific theories state. The only alternative is to compeltely scrap science class (as including state-sponsored religious education is bared by the very same Constitutional amendment that ensures that the kinds are allowed to individually pray). This, of course, would be a gross disservice to the kids and to the nation's future, and so it's not really an option at all.Note that not all religions have a problem with modern scientific models dealing with human origins and the age of the Earth. MNost Christians don't even have a problem with it,noting as a specific example that the Catholic Church endorses the Theory of Evolution as being scientifically accurate and having no conflict with Genesis. A very small minority believes that the scinetific models for the age of teh Earth and diversity of life are inaccurate...and their beliefs on the matter are not scientific in nature, but rather are based solely on faith and religion.Buz, school ignores religion. The appropriate response to any religious question in a public school is "go home and ask your parents, or ask your religious leader. Religion is a topic best left to you and your families, not to schools, because not all of us are going to beleive the same things." This treats all religions, as well as atheism and agnosticism, failtly and equitably. The way religion is treated in schools today protects the freedom of religion and the ability of parents and their children tobelieve or notbelieve according to the dictates of their own conscience without interference from teh state.Only a twisted mind can pretend otherwise if you even take a cursory glance at the facts.Buz, next time you claim that the rights of CHristians and fundamentalists are being violated by the curriculum of public schools, I demand that you post in detail the violation, including what aspect of the curriculum is in legal error, what legal basis you are using to make such an assessment, and what course of action would legally remedy the situation.If you cannot do those things, then you are making a statement you know you cannot support, and are in effect lying.

Well, you were the one who claimes atheism had any values. It was reasonable to conclude that you knew what values you thought atheism carries. I presume that you don't believe in Santa Claus. Does "Aclausism" have values that entice you?Atheism is simply a lack of belief in deities. Nothing mroe or less. There is no philosophy or set of life guidelines, no traditions or dogma.It jsut means I'm not convinced that deities exist. There are no values, benefits, or anythign else. I don't "cling" to atheism to shirk some sort of "responsibility" to a deity - how could I, if I don't think that the deity even exists?I'm answerable to plenty of "powers," however you want to interpret that. I have plenty of restrictions on my behavior - you'll note that I'm not, in fact, a raving homicidal maniac.In fact, the only difference between me and any Christian you are likely to name is that I don't go to church on Sundays. I don't steal, I don't kill, I try not to lie, I don't cheat on my partners, and I don't kick kittens for fun.I'm a member of society, you see. Society has placed restrictions on my behavior (some enforced, some optional) that carry consequences that range from losing social acceptance and being ostracized to actual imprisonment or even execution.And from my perspective, execution is a rather eternal consequence.Atheism is not hedonism, after all Buz. Atheism is separate from any and all ethical philosophies.

In some cases, yes, but not always. Some of them (and I count you in this subset) actually believe that they are being objective, when they are doing nothing of the sort.Objectivity requires adherence to facts and logic and nothign else. Not opinions, not compromise. When we see the shape of the Earth from space, we know that obviously the "truth" is not somewhere in the "middle" of the flat-Earth and round-Earth debate.As an aside, the Midless Middle in politics brings us political drift - when everyone agrees that the correct course of action is "somewhere in the middle," all one side needs to do to swing things their way is to become even more extreme, moving the "center" farther in their direction. Irrelevant. I;m not claiming that you're biased. I;m claiming that you're not objective. In this thread you;ve made unsupported statements suggesting that "neither side is right." You took a "middle" position, without actually analyzing any facts at all - and it bit you in the ass, because your statements were factually wrong.Irrelevant. These have nothing whatsoever to do with what I;m saying you do. "Fairness" is not objective. Fairness is the very definition of the Mindless Middle.Sometimes it's acceptable to withold "taking sides," particularly when there is insufficient information to make such a judgment with a reasonable degree of certainty that the conclusion will be accurate.But "being fair" has absolutely nothing to do with being objective. See the definition I posted earlier. Your reasons are irrelevant. Your argument is mindless, because it contains to analysis of fact. It's an unsupported statement. Liar. See the following quotes from the message I initially responded to: You were directly responding to a comment regarding atheism, and you specifically referred to "despots seeking a religion-free utopia." What else ycould that have meant, Hyro? Do you think I'm an idiot, or just too lazy to look back at what you actually said? Your furious backpedalling won't make your comments any more objective. This has nothign to do with the comments you made earlier. It's a red herring. You claimed, and I quote, You claimed that the number of people killed "under the pretense of religion" is outnumbered by recent mass-murders motivated by a vision of a "religion-free utopia."That specific statement was false. It was also a Mindless Middle arguemnt, because it sought to paint "both sides" as guilty, yet provided no facts at all to support any such assertion.Atheism contains no ideology! It's simply a lack of belief (for some, an active dis-belief) in deities. THAT IS ALL. I;m used to repeating this to people like Buz or ICANT, but you should know better, Hyro. There is absolutely no coherent ideology surrounding atheism. There's no Great Book of Atheism, no dogma, no clergy, no central philosophy. Atheists don't believe in god(s) for all manner of different reasons, ranging from logical exclusion of the unevidenced, opposition to the idea of a "higher power," a belief in "spritis" but not deities, and a thousand and one others.Once again, you're just being absurd. And another factually wrong Mindless Middle statement. You're on a roll, Hyro. You've once again claimed that "both sides do this and are equally wrong," without actually qualifying such a statement with facts or evidence or even a logical analysis of the tactics of each.You can't even defend yourself against a claim of a Mindless Middle argument without making another such argument. Pathetic. Who is "they," Hyro? I've never seen a "church of disbelief." Have you" Where? I;ve never met an atheist on the street handing our Jack Chick-esque pamphlets seeking to subvert the faithful.Are you allergic to evidence, objectivity, or just logic? What? THis stament is meaningless. You mean that a subset of atheists persue atheism with a ferver equivalent to those who zealously worship their god(s)? What does theis have to do with the argument at hand?It seems you've reached the point of just ranting and spouting red herrings.You still haven't shown how your statement: was not an unsupported attempt to cast both "sides" of an arguemtn in an equal light. You;ve still failed to show any form of analysis or present and facts to support the statement that anti-religious regimes have been just as bad or worse than religious ones, and that those regimes were motivated by atheism in the same way that the religious ones were motivated by their specific faiths.All you;ve done is add more Mindless Middle arguments. Good job, Hyro. You;re making this easy for me. And if that had been all that you said, we wouldn;t be having this conversation. Nobody claimed that all of anyone was crazy and fanatical. Apparently you're well-versed in teh creation of Straw Men as well as Mindless Middle arguments. Good for you!But I'm curious - precisely and specifically which central tenet of atheism is ever "twisted and contorted" for some negative purpose? I find it difficult to believe that a position defined only by a lack of any belief in deities can possibly be "twisted" to any end at all. Common sense is not rational or logical.Most of all, common sense is not objective.Your "common sense" is worse than useless here. YOU HAVE NOT PRESENTED A SINGLE FACT TO SUPPORT YOUR COMMENTS IN THIS ENTIRE DISCUSSION! Do not try now to claim that your positions have anything to do with evidence! You haven't the faintest clue whay objectivity is, Hyro, as you've amply demonstrated here.TO be objective, you would've needed to present a fact to support your arguments.You haven't presented even one. That's rather telling.

Only if you consider that the scientific method requires all scientists to be "mindless mechanical robots."Besides, this is an appeal to consequence fallacy - whether objectivity results in bland automatons or not is irrelevant to whether or not objectivity does or does not require a strict adherence to facts and logic to the exclusion of all personal opinions, preferences, emotions, and other forms of human bias.

Precisely. While a scientific theory must remain objective and contain as little human bias as possible, the scientists are not turned into machines.In other words, objectivity does not turn one into a "mindless mechanical robot" as you said.I don't need to be objective when I decide whether I enjoyed a movie or not. But if I'm going to make a claim about reality, I do need to be as objective as possible in order to prevent my personal bias from affecting my accuracy. And yet the peer review process exists specifically to weed out those conclusions that are driven to inaccuracy by the personal bias of those submitting a paper.You seem to believe that I actually said that scientists are required to think like robots. This is not the case. I said that scientists are required to be objective. You were the one who claimed that maintaining objectivity turned one into an automaton.There is no requirement for scientists to be emotionless machines without opinions. However, when a scientists (or indeed anyone) makes a specific claim, human bias in the form of preconceived opinions and emotions detract from accuracy. Whether you or I like the rate of U235 decay is irrelevant. Whether ICANT believes in a global Flood 6-10,000 years ago is irrelevant.All that matters when making a specific claim are the facts and the logical reasoning that draws a conclusion from them.

I think you simply have an inaccurate sense of what being objective entails. I wouldn't necessarily stretch that so far as to say you're delusional. You miss the point. That comment was a barely-on-topic aside mentioning teh effect the Mindless Middle has on modern politics. When the populace believes that the correct stance is a compromise between two sides, one side has merely to adopt an extreme version of their position to move the "middle" in their direction. It;s something like haggling - you start by asking for a significantly lower price than you know you'll get so that the seller has room to make a counteroffer while still giving a lower price than if you had offered a fair price immediately.This isn't something you're doing. It's simply me mentioning another application of the same phenomenon you've demonstrated. In this particular thread, you said that more people have been killed in recent times by atheistic regimes than by religiously motivated ones. That claim is factually wrong. As I showed in message 99 of this thread, Hitler's Holocaust was in fact religiously motivated, while the purges of Russia were not motivated by atheism - rather, atheism was, like the purge itself, just a means to an end motivated by the political desire to eliminate political competition.In other words, of the two most horriffic mass-murders of modern history, one was actually religious in nature while the other was done in the name of politics, not atheism, meaning your statements were factually incorrect, unless you can point to a mass murder motivated by atheism that carried a higher death toll. Not quite. If I claimed you were biased, I would be suggesting that you leaned one way or another on a topic in a way that was not justified by evidence. When I say you're not being objective, I'm saying that you're not basing your statements on facts, but are instead throwing out unsupported assertions based on "common knowledge' (itself a cesspool of misinformation - "common knowledge" results in laughable absurdities like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the X-Men shaping public perceptions on mutation and genetics).I believe you when you say you have no preference or personal stake. I also note that you didn't qualify your claims with evidence, meaning you cannot be objective. Let me quote the definition of "objective" that I used for my "On Objectivity and the Mindless Middle" thread:

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Objective
5. Not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased

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The definition of "fairness" I'm using as it applies to the context of this thread is the practice of giving "both sides" equal consideration, regardless of the evidencial support. In other words, "you're just as bad," or "both sides are partially right," when such statements are not supported with an analysis of relevent facts. It did happen. I did quote it. I'll do so again: Later you did indeed retract the assertion that all "anti-religious" people must be atheists. However, you quite plainly above were referring to atheists, as you were responding to a comment regarding atheists. NO IT IS NOT. Go back to Message 99. Re-read what I said. I supported the arguemnts that:1) the Holocaust was religiously motivated as shown in Hitler's own writings from Mein Kampf, many of which I directly quoted, and which follow directly from the writings of Martin luther, the father of Protestantism.2) the purges of Stalinist Russia were not motivated by atheism, but by politics. Enforced atheism was a means to an end, not in any way a motivation; it is dishonest to claim that the purges were done "in the name of atheism" or "in the name of anti-religion." Quite the contrary - I rely on the actual writings of Hitler to determine Hitler's motivations, while you rely on an Appeal to Popularity in claiming that it is "common knowledge" that the Holocaust was an atheistic or anti-religious persuit."Common knowledge" is very often wrong. That's why you do need to support your assertions rather than just stating them. (insert exasperated sigh here)What tenet of atheism can be used for any form of motivation whatsoever? Name just one. Any philosophical or ideological position of atheism that can be used as motivation for anything at all. Communism does not hold atheism as some sort of ideal. Atheism is not a motivation for communism. Rather, communism idealizes the State. Communism isn;t motivated to stamp out religion because no god(s) exist; communism is simply motivated to stamp out any competition for the authority of the State.Do you honestly not understand the difference? It's motivation vs. means. The means are not the motivation. Atheism in communism is a means to an end, not a motivation in and of itself. No. They aren't. Atheism is a default psoition, without any thought required. Logic and reason is only required to revert back to atheism. A newborn baby is an atheist, having no belief in deities, without any knowledge of philosophy or science, or even what any of those concepts mean. Atheism, in effect, is the vacuum.Atheism is one thing and one thing only: a lack of belief in deities. Nothing else. One can be a compeltely irrational and inscientific atheist. One can believe in the supernatural and still be an atheist. Regardless of your attempts to complicate the issue, atheism is and remains a simple lack of belief in deities, and nothing more. It makes no suggestions on human behavior. It carries no guidance for morality. It does not dictate a methodology for maintaining accuracy in modeling reality. It doesn't have any associated traditions. It doesn;t say anything about the value of human life. It does not form a political standpoint. It is and only is a lack of belief in deities, nothing more or less. Yes. Because I;ve challenged your assertions with evidence, but you have not responded in kind. You simply ignored my evidence and argument, and responded with emotion-filled meaningless blather and additional factual inaccuracies. The only straw man here is the one you've created. I;ve never claimed it was okay for atheists to kill theists. I;ve never even implied as much. I simply disputed your unsupported claim that atheism-motivated murders outnumbered theistically-motivated murders, and then used facts tto support my refutation of your claim.The Mindless Middle is not a straw man. The Mindless Middle is a form (in this case) of a tu quoque fallacy - you are claiming that atheists shouldn't criticize theists for theistically-motivated atrocities because atheists have committed worse atrocities upon theists. It's simply icing on the cake that your assertion also happened to be factually wrong.Well, that's rather amusing. The groups are irrelevant, but the first church or atheism is worth a good laugh. Irrelevant. This discussion surrounds the modern mass-murders on a state level, such as the Stalinist purges of Russia or the Holocaust, and their motivation being anti-religious in nature.As I've already shown, neither was motivated by an "anti-religious" sentiment; quite the contrary in the case of teh Holocaust. Way to only quote half of a statement. Also irrelevant. The part we've been debating is this: Are you enjoying your red herring? This isn't about hooah. Really? Not believing in god(s) turns into a hatred for those who do? I thought it was the way theists treat atheists that did that. Silly me, thinkign that a simple lack of belief in god(s) didn;t carry any motivation for anything at all.Let me guess: my lack of belief in Santa Claus is actually the motivation for my valuation of human life? The Nazi's hated the Jews for very specific reasons, Hyro. Again, check out Message 99 where I specifically quoted Hitler's reasons for anti-semitism. They were religiously motivated, and were derivatives of Martin Lutehr's own writings. They weren't Christian or Aryan, in a nutshell. Niceties are irrelevant. Only argument and evidence are relevant. You've had plenty of the former and none of the latter.

Except that to properly make the analogy apply to deities, you wouldn;t be able to let the blind men even feel the elephant. You'd have to just ask, "what is an elephant," when they have no objective data upon which to base a description whatsoever.

This "perception" is subjective, and therefore irrelevant. When someone comes forward with reproducible, verifiable evidence of the type we can detect through observation with the five senses (ie, touching an elephant), then we can talk. Until then, it's all subjective. Subjective "Evidence" can be personally convincing, but it's never able to be reproduced such that it can be verified by an independant observer.Let's try an exercise, Meldinoor:Describe for me a garn. Please be as descriptive as possible. Of course it's impossible to prove that the "elephant" doesn't exist; it's simply also impossible for anyone to tell that the elephant does exist, or what its properties are without being able to make any observations at all.That garn I mentioned above could be real. But your description of it (whatever that may be) is not derived from objective observation. You could be accurate - but there's no way at all to tell, because we can't duplicate any "subjective evidence" you may be using. Your description, regardless of what it is, including whether the garn actually exists or not, is demonstrably no more accurate than a blind guess.So too with deities. Without reproducible objective observations that we can all verify, any description of a deity (any description at all) has no more verifiable accuracy than a random guess. The described deity could exist. It could not. The description could be 100% accurate, or 90%, or 10%, or 0.002%, or compeltely wrong. Quite literally, your guess is as good as mine.In the absence of reproducible, objective evidence, there is no possible confidence in the accuracy of any description or statement.

Considering that Buz is the only one suggesting that any values actually exist, this is not unexpected. That was Adequate's reason for being an atheist, which is a compeltely different concept from a value.Perhaps, as ever, this is a load of bullshit on your part. As has been discussed many, many times, while some regimes have indeed persecuted all religious persuits, atheism was as ever a means to a political end, not a motivation for the political philosophy in question.To be more specific, atheism does not support either communism nor capitolism. It doesn't lend itself more to the barter system or paper money. A lack of belief in deities carries exactly the same support for a fascist government, a communist dictatorship, a monarchy, a democracy, a constitutionally limited representative republic, conservativism, liberalism, moderation, radicalism, reactionaryism (is that a word? whatever, you get the point), and every other political philosophy with the single obvious exception of a theocracy.There are no values conveyed by atheism itself. It's just a lack of belief in any deities, that's all. There are many philosophies that include atheism, which is a different matter altogether. Buddhism is an atheistic belief system that has existed for thousands of years. The Stalinist version of Communism certainly included atheism, but wasn't motivated by a lack of belief in deities. I am an ethical pragmatist (the relative "good" or "bad" of an act depend on their objective results, not the dictates of an authority, etc), which often includes atheism, but doesn't always, and is also compatible with theism.Note, by the way, that some belief systems that do not believe in deities do believe in such concepts as karma or reincarnation - those particular atheists do hold themselves accountable to a "higher power," it's just not a deity.The truth is, Buz, the values held by atheists differ wildly. There is no central philosophy that ties us all together like there is with a given religious sect. We have no 10 Commandments. We don't even have 10 Suggestions. There's no dogma, no teachings, no unifying philosophy of life or moral guidance or holidays or ceremonies. The only thing we have in common is that we don't believe in god(s). Hell, we can't even all agree on that - some of us simply lack belief, some of us actively disbelieve, some still believe in the supernatural, others do not...I could go on. The point, however, is that there are no values held by atheism. At all. None. Not one.When you suggest that there are, you are very simply mistaken.

"Its not natural" is just another way of saying "it makes me feel icky, personally."After all, one can hardly reject the unnatural whilst using a computer and the internet.

There is a strong tendency to associate "totalitarianism" with "communism," even though the two don't necessarily need to overlap in all cases.Granted, all of the communist regimes that have existed so far have been totalitarian. But that;s not the way it has to be. And obviously not all totalitarian states are communist.