Dawkins Choice: Abuse and Religion

With the exception of religion, which is logical shortcut to evil deeds?

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So the fact that athiests have in power become separatists, violent murderers and genocidal freaks should be ignored?

 

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It has certainly been. If you think the eternal afterlife of yourself and your loved ones' souls are threatened by different, and thus evil, points of view, what wouldn't you do to prevent it? The Bible is full of imperitives to stone violators of religious law.

 

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Why are athiests then not immune to particularly violent genocidal ideologies like communism, in fact have been indulging in it destroying religion wherever they can, for the past century.

 

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It's just another thread for you to rant and lie, which you've overwhelmingly and predictably accomplished. Of course, I'm not allowed to call a spade a spade as it serves only to make me look the bad guy.

 

Did you vote?

 

Those people were not simply atheists, they were revolutionaries first, and atheism was just an incidental facet of their ideology. Their atheism was faith-based. Did it last? No, it burnt itself out, probably because they found communism disillusioning. Modern atheism arrives at it's conclusions not out of ideology, but out of reason. It stands to reason if we object to religion for it's violence, we wouldn't use violence ourselves.

 

So lets see the score so far

1. Children should be taken away from parents rather than allow the parents to teach religion aka suppress all religious "indoctrination" and "re-educate" in athiest doctrine [godless publication-check]

2. Close all faith schools aka shut down any religious institution [destroy religious institutions-check]

3. Religious people suck dummies aka religious people are stupid and inferior to the aryan atheists[step 2? of eight steps to genocide -check]

Yup, covered all bases. Is this communism? Nope don't think so.

Now all we need is to work up enough disgruntled athiests and we can have a revolution on our hands. We got enough athiests to lead the charge against the delusional nutjobs.

 

If that's what you believe, fine. I don't.

 

So not a single theist in here seems to have recognized Dawkins's argument, which was comparing two religious practices - one which we forbid, regardless of its sincere basis in religion (knocking children's teeth out), and the other we allow, on the sole rationale (despite our understanding of its abusive nature) of its being based in a sincere religion.

You all seem to be, along with the poll, taking this as comparing religion, in general, to secular child abuse, in general. And the rest of these tirades similarly.

This is why we sceptical folks sometimes get the impression that theistic belief makes people stupider in certain respects. It's hard to believe the lot of the theists on this thread would be making these kinds of arguments about anything else.

Look at this:

Even given the premises about "communism", how would an ascription of increased vulnerability to any evil from theism necessarily imply immunity to that evil from atheism ?

It's not just that it's wrong, factually - it's nonsense as an argument, invalid as an approach to discussion of its asserted issue.

 

It makes as much sense as an alternative Christmas message by an atheist evangelist.

http://www.josephsprint.co.uk/richard-dawkins-campaign/

 

Thats not the choice you're asked to make. The choice is that if parents bringing up children in their beliefs is abuse, should those children be taken away from those parents? Considering that is the standard state response to abuse?

 

Depends on the society, dosen't it? Didn't parents throughout history dare not speak or teach anything other than their state sponsored dogma for fear of imprisonment, torture or death?

 

Is that what we're aiming for? A repetition of the experiments of the Soviet Union and China, knowing what they led to?

 

Nooo... Trying to avoid such things (including most of xian and muslim history) by trying, however unsuccessfully, to teach our children to use critical thinking skills and not be taught to "just believe me".

Do you question your faith, sam?

 

So why do atheists get to decide? Why not the majority theists decide the atheists are a pain in the butt and take away their children instead?

 

Because we've tried that and it sucked?

 

Probably we should try harder?

 

No. I think it would just suck harder.

Clearly the best approach is to be an impartial arbiter of these things. And the best candidate for that would be a humanistic atheist. Logic tempered with compassion, Reason tempered with love.

Nice, huh?

 

Like Dawkins "should not allow parents to bring up their children in their beliefs"?

No, I don't think so. If someone is going to dictate to me what I should think and how I should bring up my kids, I am going to consider that as permission to do likewise.