Summations Only

You're the one who provided the equivalencies... Because its man doing it not god doing it Because we're talking about the motivation for the act, not the end result of the act.Where religious morivation is man being motivated by his belief in god, you cannot have a religiously motivated god.

I guess I'll just have to take your word for that...But I don't doubt that religious motivation can increase death tolls. I don't think that question can be answered.

Just as Stalin couldn't have been motivated by Stalinism, and Hitler didn't believe in the Fuehrerprinzip. Why, the very idea is a contradiction in terms!

Most of the feral religious say they kill because God told them to kill.Even the more benign act of penning the Bible is supposedly a mere act of dictation.Whether I take out Jimmy Hoffa personally or tell an underling to do it, I'm still likely to be convicted, and certainly culpable.But it is charming to think of God using classic cell structures or cut-outs to keep blood off His hands.

So, in my example, the will of god is little Jimmy being dead. In your opinion, is little Jimmy more or less dead because god killed him directly?There are several people under my direct supervision at work. I delegate tasks. I also perform some of the tasks myself. If I decide to do a task myself, or delegate the task to one on my minions, the task is still done. Me doing my will has the same end result as delegating the task. Me being of higher rank does not change the outcome. Are you suggesting the the only definition of religious motivation is man being motivated by his belief in god?What about all of the other definitions that have been supplied?God is a religious figure. God deciding to do something is god excersising his will. Gods will. God doing the will of god is a religiously motivated act, the same as when man does gods will.You cant let god off the for all of the killing his killing.What do you think Gods motivation was? Pure homocidal, psychopathic rage? Boredom?

The sticking point concerning the Bible passages seems to be a difference of opinion on what constitutes religious motivation. So far you aren't being consistent.

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So, in my example, the will of god is little Jimmy being dead. In your opinion, is little Jimmy more or less dead because god killed him directly?

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There are several people under my direct supervision at work. I delegate tasks. I also perform some of the tasks myself. If I decide to do a task myself, or delegate the task to one on my minions, the task is still done. Me doing my will has the same end result as delegating the task. Me being of higher rank does not change the outcome.

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But that doesn't tell us why the task was being done. In Message 122, you stipulated that we are looking at the motivation for the killings, not just who did the killings. So in your scenario we would look at why you wanted the task done. What was the motive? A motive is something (as a need or desire) that causes a person to act. Your motive for wanting the task done may be different than your minions' motive for carrying out the task you gave them. The outcome is the same, but the motives may not be.

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Are you suggesting the the only definition of religious motivation is man being motivated by his belief in god?

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You're not comparing apples to apples either. Actually by the definition above, if an atheists kills someone because they are a religious person, that counts as religious violence. Oddly enough if a religious person kills someone because they have no religion, I think it still counts as religious violence.It is the reason or motivation for the killing, not the outcome.

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You cant let god off the for all of the killing his killing.

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No one's letting God off the hook. You specified the conditions of the debate, but you aren't sticking with your own specifications. If the debate was about the violent nature of the Hebrew God, then the verses you provided would probably be evidence, but that isn't what you specified.

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What do you think Gods motivation was? Pure homocidal, psychopathic rage? Boredom?

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Why not? That's why we have to look at the reasons within the context of the story. Your Message 248 shows that you probably haven't read most of the stories you quoted. You are also adding religious reasons that have been added by apologetics. What religious precepts, texts or doctrines was God following in the flood story? None. God simply didn't like the way humans were behaving.If you're just looking at outcome; then if an Atheist gives the order the deaths would fall under that column and if a religious person gives the order, then the deaths fall under that column. The motivation is of no consequence.IMO, this still really leaves God's killings out of the running because he isn't religious. He doesn't have a belief system he follows.

If God kills a bunch of people for having the temerity to not not believe in him or follow his doctrines surely this qualifies. No?

That's irrelevant... Holy shit, I just realized that there was more to Message 248 that was intended for me. That's a problem with a big post to mulitple people like that. I've still been waiting for your definition of "religiously motivated"... I just found it: I don't agree with this definition for the context of this thread, where we are comparing death tolls that can be blamed on religion, or blamed on an atheist regime.We're gonna hafta agree on terms before we can get anywhere.So, what is the goal? Figure out how much death was caused by religion and compare that to the death caused by atheist regimes and then use that to determine which one has the moral high ground.If you're going to count the deaths caused by god himself, how does that give the religion the lower moral ground? If we had a bunch of Satanists who did everything possible to be the best people on earth, I don't think you could say that they had the moral low ground because the Bible says that Satan was a bad guy. Even if the followers of the religion accepted that as a fact, how would the action attributed to their god count towards their own morality? You're not staying consistent...If the motivation of the act is to kill lots of people for not following the instructions of a god, then, yes, the poeple who did all that killing would be religiously motivated, and take a lower moral ground.But if we're talking about things like the global flood... How does the Flood myth take away any moral high ground from Christianity? Some people believe that their god killed everything. How is that a religiously motivated immorality? How can that fact be compared to the actions of a regime to say that believing that make them morally inferior to the regime? Because we're talking about the motivation for the act, not the result of the act. You could say that your minions were motived by management to complete the tasks. I would say that you, as the manager, shouldn't be counted in the tolls of those "motivated by managment", because that would just be self-motivation. You argueing that the same tasks got done regardless doesn't address what was the motivation. Well that was an If-Then statement, so no. But also no because, rather than saying its the only definition, I'm saying its the most appropriate definition for the purpose of this debate.It doesn't make sense to count the tasks completed by the manager, himself, when tallying up how much work got done by the people he manages as "motivated by management". If the manager down the hall did all the work himself, would you agree that his is better at managing people than you are? Its not about the swearing, its about typing in second person with comments directed towards the person who typed up the post. And rage doesn't take removing your feet from your desk. The reason its respected, is because its part of the rules here, and in debate in general:

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10.The sincerely held beliefs of other members deserve your respect. Please keep discussion civil. Argue the position, not the person.

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Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.
-- Encyclopedia Britannica, on debate source

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Honestly, I think it can go either way, depending on what attributes you want to assign to god.A more anthropomorphic god, who has desires, and ponders what he's going to do, and then desides to follow his own will, could be called religious in the sense that he's 'following god's will" (even tho its his own will that he's following ((which I would still kinda think ruins the definition for the purpose of this thread))).But a more overarching god, who's will just be's done, shouldn't really count as having some religious motivation.

Assuming God (any God) killed virtually every living thing on earth, then He is a genocidal tyrant and by definition, takes the lowest moral position we know of.Similarly anyone who continues to support such a murderer, knowing His actions, must be on the lower moral rung also.So atheists win on a technical knockout. Can we talk about something less bonkers now?

Are you seriously suggesting that omnipotence excludes moral accountability? That if a being's desires simply happen that said being is not responsible for the consequences of its every whim being enacted in reality?

Against a very small subset of Christianity... Most people know The Flud was a myth. How does that myth being in the Bible lower the morality of Christianity, in general? We can talk about whatever we want.

No, I'm saying that it means that there really wasn't a motivation for the act that a religion could be ascribed to.

Do most people know the Plagues of Egypt, particularly the slaying of the firstborn, was also a myth? Do they hold their God to be righteous after he sent the Angel of Death to kill every first-born, from cattle to human children, in Egypt?

I don't know.