Richard dawkins

Castiel said:
I'll come back to some of your other points later. It is difficult to post coherently on an iPhone.
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What's that saying about bad workmen and tools? :p Although you're right, I wouldn't post much more than a couple of lines from a phone.

naffa said:
Nazism is not a good example of this. Although Soviet Russia, or Maoist China could not be described as irreligious states, they would be better examples.

Adolf Hitler was a Roman Catholic, and although he showed a distaste for religion, he never repudiated it. The Catholic Church celebrated his birthday; prayed for him, under orders from the Vatican, every year until he died. According to the Catholic historian Paul Johnson, no less than 50% of the SS were confessing Catholics. Call that what you want, but you sure as hell can't call it secular.
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I don't think that whether it was nominally or actually a secular state was the point though, irrespective of whether the leaders were religious or not they were not committing genocide or waging war for reasons of religion. The point if I'm not misinterpreting Burnsy is simply that religion can be a convenient excuse to rally people to your cause, whatever it may be - if they didn't have religion to use then another issue would be used in its place. The common link of course being that it's people turning an ideal or issue to an evil end rather than the ideal/belief/issue itself being the problem.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
"Proving" God exists or not won't change this. People will kill people if they want to and find all manner of excuses to justify it. Nazism is a good example of this.
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You're right, people will find a way to kill each other if they want, but religion is just one more reason to give them an excuse or a justifiable reason. Religion can act as an identifier when 2 groups of religious people are at conflict with each other. Take away a persons religious identity and there's one less thing to hate about that enemy.
 
NormanPorkinson said:
You're right, people will find a way to kill each other if they want, but religion is just one more reason to give them an excuse or a justifiable reason. Religion can act as an identifier when 2 groups of religious people are at conflict with each other. Take away a persons religious identity and there's one less thing to hate about that enemy.
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How would you propose to take away a persons religious identity? And might that not be creating a worse situation than simply allowing them to believe? It'd also be against the ECHR but we'll skirt that issue for the moment.
 
NormanPorkinson said:
You're right, people will find a way to kill each other if they want, but religion is just one more reason to give them an excuse or a justifiable reason. Religion can act as an identifier when 2 groups of religious people are at conflict with each other. Take away a persons religious identity and there's one less thing to hate about that enemy.
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Yeah - religion is a rationalisation for violence, persecution and exclusion. Having said that - humans will always find something...
 
semi-pro waster said:
How would you propose to take away a persons religious identity? And might that not be creating a worse situation than simply allowing them to believe? It'd also be against the ECHR but we'll skirt that issue for the moment.
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It's not their believing that is the problem - it's the subsequent attempt to force that belief on everyone else...
 
semi-pro waster said:
I don't think that whether it was nominally or actually a secular state was the point though, irrespective of whether the leaders were religious or not they were not committing genocide or waging war for reasons of religion. The point if I'm not misinterpreting Burnsy is simply that religion can be a convenient excuse to rally people to your cause, whatever it may be - if they didn't have religion to use then another issue would be used in its place. The common link of course being that it's people turning an ideal or issue to an evil end rather than the ideal/belief/issue itself being the problem.
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Ok, the first part is a fair point. Although I would not describe Nazi Germany as a secular state, I would agree that their aggressions (to put it lightly) were not committed on religious grounds. This could not contrast the motivations of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban any more strongly.

I would disagree with your second point though, I believe that there are evils that exist in the world that religion not only has a monopoly on, and has a wish to see extended, but it the source of. And if not a source, certainly a catalyst. Islamic fascism would be the most modern and dangerous incarnation of this, but that's not to say that other religions, and other parts of the world are not guilty of something similar.
 
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semi-pro waster said:
How would you propose to take away a persons religious identity? And might that not be creating a worse situation than simply allowing them to believe? It'd also be against the ECHR but we'll skirt that issue for the moment.
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I don't propose to do anything. I'm just making the point that religious belief can convince people that doing bad things is justifiable if it's in the name of their religion. The promise of heaven and virgins taught by some religions seems quite tempting for those who are brainwashed by indoctrination. If people can accept that that outcome is actually unlikely, then flying planes into buildings or planting bombs on buses seems a lot less tempting.
 
naffa said:
Ok, the first part is a fair point. Although I would not describe Nazi Germany as a secular state, I would agree that their aggressions (to put it lightly) were not committed on religious grounds.
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That there was my whole point. People will find any number of reasons to justify war, what ever is more convenient at the time. Removing religion won't stop this, we'd just war on purely ideological, economic or political reasons.

The people who start holy wars aren't getting it from the religious establishment as a general rule, they get it from radicalised offshoots who want to cause trouble and use religion as a method to gather support from their radicalised views.

In summary, if people want to kill people, the absence of religion doesn't help.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
That there was my whole point. People will find any number of reasons to justify war, what ever is more convenient at the time. Removing religion won't stop this, we'd just war on purely ideological, economic or political reasons.

The people who start holy wars aren't getting it from the religious establishment as a general rule, they get it from radicalised offshoots who want to cause trouble and use religion as a method to gather support from their radicalised views.

In summary, if people want to kill people, the absence of religion doesn't help.
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As a purely hypothetical exercise - it would be interesting to know if removing religion from the equation would make a difference.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
That there was my whole point. People will find any number of reasons to justify war, what ever is more convenient at the time. Removing religion won't stop this, we'd just war on purely ideological, economic or political reasons.

The people who start holy wars aren't getting it from the religious establishment as a general rule, they get it from radicalised offshoots who want to cause trouble and use religion as a method to gather support from their radicalised views.

In summary, if people want to kill people, the absence of religion doesn't help.
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I disagree. From the mid-eighteen century until the early nineteenth-century, member states of the Ottoman Empire, off the coast of Tripoli, American and European ships were stopped, their people carried off into slavery (it's estimated that around one and a half million people were taken between 1750 and 1815). Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to see Tripoli's envoy in London and asked why the Barbary nations were doing this to them. The United States (young as they were) had never had a quarrel with the Muslim world of any kind, they were not part of the crusades, they were not part of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman was asked why they plunder American ships and enslave the American people, to which the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

Again, just a one of countless examples I could have cited, but I think this could be the most obvious one.
 
naffa said:
I disagree. From the mid-eighteen century until the early nineteenth-century, member states of the Ottoman Empire, off the coast of Tripoli, American and European ships were stopped, their people carried off into slavery (it's estimated that around one and a half million people were taken between 1750 and 1815). Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to see Tripoli's envoy in London and asked why the Barbary nations were doing this to them. The United States (young as they were) had never had a quarrel with the Muslim world of any kind, they were not part of the crusades, they were not part of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman was asked why they plunder American ships and enslave the American people, to which the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

Again, just a one of countless examples I could have cited, but I think this could be the most obvious one.
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All that tells me is that a greedy ottoman emperor wanted to pillage ships and used religion as an excuse. He'd have found another excuse if religion wasn't convenient.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
All that tells me is that a greedy ottoman emperor wanted to pillage ships and used religion as an excuse. He'd have found another excuse if religion wasn't convenient.
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How about the Taliban stoning a couple to death for being in love? Or executing a group of teachers for educating women? How about the disgusting practice of infibulation, and female circumcision, common in so many Islamic nations, and only Islamic nations? I do not believe these beliefs and practices could have been spawned by anything but religion, and justification for their practice by anything other than the divine.
 
naffa said:
How about the Taliban stoning a couple to death for being in love? Or executing a group of teachers for educating women? How about the disgusting practice of infibulation, and female circumcision, common in so many Islamic nations, and only Islamic nations? I do not believe these beliefs and practices could have been spawned by anything but religion, and justification for their practice by anything other than the divine.
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Culture, not religion.
 
It's interesting that not only is there not any proof of creation & that god exists there's not even any evidence unless your only justification to believe is the written word in various books written very many centuries ago.
The evidence for evolution is stacked high whereas there is non for creation & the myths & folklore in the bible for example remains exactly that -myth
 
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