Saturday, June 09, 2007

Bang and Blame

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Ever since someone had another idea, people have been debating the merits and disadvantages of their various views on things. It seldom gets more heated than when the subject turns to the political realm, and within that the bloody twentieth century also stands out. That century is still fairly raw, especially in Europe where some of the European Union's newer members have tried (and failed) to have denial of Stalin's terrorism criminalised alongside Holocaust Denial, and where there has been rioting in Estonia after the removal of a statue erected to commemorate the Red Army. All this makes good fodder for Internet debate.

In late May, a Youtube video on the victims of Communism was posted on the blog of David Farrar, who was then linked to by Peter Cresswell on his blog. This is a common enough event, but the comments sections of both blogs are what I want to focus on. Regular Kiwiblog commenter "Sonic" jibed in response about the victims of Capitalism and how their number would be beyond counting, and at "NotPC", a chap called "ScrubOne" thought that the Youtube horrors were "atheism at work". Today, we're going to look at the four views mentioned, Atheism and Capitalism, Religion and Socialism, and show how Religion and Socialism can justifiably be blamed for causing a great deal of suffering but Atheism and Capitalism cannot.

We'll start with the easy ones. Religion comes first since it is the easiest thing in the world to prove that religious people have committed atrocities, and more importantly that their behaviour was caused and justified by their religious beliefs.

It may seem obvious, but worth pointing out anyway, that people act according to their beliefs. And this is especially true for the religious since religions often come with a book of rules that their followers have to abide by. Given this, it doesn't take much detective work to find out why a religious person does something since they usually advertise it. "Terror in the Mind of God" by Mark Juergensmeyer is an excellent resource for this, with examples contemporary of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and so on murdering and finding justification for it in their religion. And of course there are historical examples that everyone can think of like the Crusades, the Inquisition, the spread of Islam and so forth.

To cut some objections off at the pass, a religious person might claim that the passages used to justify murders are being used "out of context", or that the perpetrators were not "real" adherents of the faith. This is usually done by either citing alternate passages in the religion's scriptures that condemn the terrorist's action. These two objections are easily handled. Firstly, just because person "A" can find scripture that negates the scripture that person "B" does not mean that that person "B" is wrong, it just means that the religion contradicts itself. If you are against murder you look to the Decalogue, but a few pages away the Chosen People are happily murdering, raping, and enslaving the Amalakites for example. You would be pretty hard pressed to find something that was not approved of at least once in a scripture, except perhaps atheism. And so any appeals to "context" ring hollow, and in the end depend on whatever you are trying to justify. Just find a conclusion and the scriptural justification will come. Also, arguments about who is a "real" adherent suffer when you look at the overwhelming number of sincere believers who must have been wrong. All the people involved in the machinery of the Inquisition, or the Crusades, or in Al Qaeda, or the homicide bombings in Iraq and Israel, missed something. Probability suggests otherwise.

We remain within the genus of religion, although the species is secular, when we turn to Socialism. Not without good reason has Socialism been labelled a secular religion. Charles Sutherland, as one example, included communism (and for all practical intents and purposes Communism and Socialism can be interchanged) with Christianity, Judaism, Islam in his excellent critique of religions "Disciples of Destruction : The Religious Origins of War and Terrorism".

Whilst not an ethical system to the same degree of the supernatural religions mentioned above, Socialism is still a governor of human behaviour by virtue of its being a political and economic ideology, and people's politics, economics, and ethics are linked. When you put together the ingredients of Socialist scripture - the metanarrative of how humanity should be organised and how it will get to that stage - and of human beings themselves, and more importantly how they survive and flourish in reality, you will find that they do not mix well. No matter who the individual Socialists are who are trying to implement the ideas, the ideas themselves dictate certain outcomes, most notably suffering and death, to happen regardless of whether that is what individual Socialists or their writings intend. We shall explore the freedoms required by people to survive when we examine Capitalism, but suffice it to say for the present that the equality demanded by Socialists runs contrary to those freedoms.

David Horowitz puts it succinctly when he says that “the rights historically claimed in the paradigm of the Left are self-contradictory and self-defeating.”, and further that “The regime of social justice, of which the Left dreams, is a regime that by its very nature must crush individual freedom. It is not a question of choosing the right (while avoiding the wrong) political means in order to achieve the desired ends. The means are contained in the ends. The leftist revolution must crush freedom in order to achieve the ‘social justice’ that it seeks. It is unable, therefore, to achieve even that end. This is the totalitarian circle that cannot be squared. Socialism is not bread without freedom; it is neither freedom nor bread.”

The means are contained in the ends. The violence that occurs under Socialism is not only dictated by Socialism itself, but is ongoing. It isn't an aberration that will go away once Socialism is achieved and it wouldn't have not happened if different people were in charge. Sadly that lesson not been learned by the many who go around wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts and the like, if more than a hundred million deaths worldwide won't drive the point home then it becomes quite unnerving to think of what would need to be done to prove it.

In explaining just how Socialism is not just wrong, but horrendously wrong with murderous consequences, we turn to Capitalism.

We have seen that the Socialism by its very nature leads to a large helping of terror, but, in comparison, what is the nature of Capitalism? If you look in your average dictionary, and on the Internet http://dictionary.com serves our purpose, you will find a definition along the lines of:

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Which is all very well, but incomplete. In order to have this sort of economic structure there need to be a range of political conditions, and so to complete the definition we would need to add something like this definition of Capitalism from, appropriately, http://www.capitalism.org.

Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. The term capitalism is used here in the broader philosophical political sense, and not in the narrower economic sense, i.e. a free-market.

The strict economic conditions present in our first definition require the political principle of individual rights proposed in the second. This sentiment is expressed by John Locke when we writes “Every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.”

Buried within Capitalism, then, is the secret of its success. When judging political and economic systems a criteria just as important as what the system thinks people that follow the system should do, is how the system treats people that don’t follow the system. Or in other words, what happens to those who disagree?

We have seen that under Socialism, and Religion, that those who disagree must die. You can’t just disagree with God and carry on you merry way because since you are going against God you are immoral, and since your life does not belong to you true believers are well within their rights to either do what is necessary to set you straight or remove you from society altogether so you don’t contaminate others, and the same is true with the secular religion of Socialism. You can’t just be left free to contaminate others with ideas of liberty as a class enemy, you have to be eliminated.

Tolerance of those who disagree, then, is Capitalism’s greatest asset and Socialism and Religion’s greatest flaw. With Capitalism you are most welcome not to have money or property if you regard it as exploitative and evil, and you will be left alone, you can even set yourselves up with other believers in a commune run according to your beliefs and will be left alone. The only provisos being those that govern any civilised society in that you will not be allowed to steal or initiate force to get your way. Socialism killed around 100,000,000 people during the previous century and still does in hellholes like North Korea, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.

Finally, we turn to Atheism. As easy as it was establishing that Religion causes atrocities as a governor of people’s ethics and therefore actions, it is just as easy to defend atheism from that charge. Whatever your definition of Atheism (and we can include agnosticism), whether it be lacking a belief in god, believing that god does not exist, or thinking that the question can never be resolved, one thing is clear – Atheism provides absolutely no ethical pointers. There are people around who claim things like “Since I do not believe in god I realise that this is the only life we have and I must live it to the full and treat others well.”, but they are talking nonsense. The quote attributed to Dostoyevsky that "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." with its implicit ethical nihilism is just as valid a conclusion from simply not believing in god.

This means that when Atheists commit atrocities they are doing so with other justifications, and interestingly enough when we look at the most murderous atheists – Stalin, Mao, and so forth – we find that they were Socialists and so it was within Socialism that they found justification for their horrendous acts of mass-murder and terror.

Before we conclude we should tidy up one objection that could be raised with regard to Atheism. One might claim that although atheism itself does not cause people to turn bad, it leaves them with a moral vacuum, vulnerable to all sorts of dangerous beliefs to come and take root. These can be quickly dealt with. Firstly, by looking through the historical record, it is clear that having a religious morality is little defence against being a thoroughly unsavoury person. Also, the classic philosophical objections raise their heads as to just how religious morality is justified. Is following a religious commandment “good” because “god” has willed it, or are there external criteria by which religious morality can be judged. If the former then all sorts of horrific acts can be justified – just look at the Old Testament. If the latter, and there are external criteria to judge whether religious morals are good or not, then why not just ditch the untrue religious part and keep the perfectly good reality based moral justifications – as many secular reality-based ethical systems like Ayn Rand’s capitalistic Objectivism does, for example.

And there we have it. The supernatural and socialistic religions have within their very beings the justifications for unbelievable acts of terror both past, present, and regrettably future. On the other hand Atheism and Capitalism have no such problems, and when grounded by a coherent ethical justification they provide for humanity to flourish peacefully through consensual interaction.

Righto, here's Elton John



23 comments:

Frank Stupid said...

Your entire premise is somewhat undermined- because that's not Elton John.

It's William Shatner.

Matthew R. X. Dentith said...

Hmm. Strawman Argument. And a popular one at that. I'm very disappointed in you, Mr. Olthwaite. We may have to take away your merit badge for 'Reason and Argument.'

One: You grossly mischaracterise the notion of interpretation in Scripture and you conflate the beliefs of individuals to that of groups (which, I admit, is a fairly common mistake made by most people). Yes, Scripture (and I'm going to assume we're talking Judeo-Christian here as I, for one, can't say I know enough of the Koran to made bold claims about its integrity or lack thereof) can look messy, but organised religions (such as Roman Catholicism) spend long periods of time producing commentaries to explain such things. Scripture is roughly analoguous to History in that the history texts we have are also messy and contradictory, but historians, like theologians, seek to sort that out. Now, admittedly, modern conceptions of history texts don't include moral stories (this isn't so true of the Ancients, however), but religions also don't base their moral compass solely on Scripture. Here I can talk about Islam because Sharia Law is a codex of moral claims above and beyond the Koran, as is the development of Augustinian-cum-Aquinean ethics in Christianity. Certainly, exmaples from Scripture are used but, unlike the USA politically, these religions are actually able to modify their tenets in respect to a changing world (admittedly they don't act efficiently or speedily, but that is another matter).

Two: If you replace the term 'Socialism' with 'Capitalism' in the following paragraph you still get an apt description:

'Whilst not an ethical system to the same degree of the supernatural religions mentioned above, Socialism is still a governor of human behaviour by virtue of its being a political and economic ideology, and people's politics, economics, and ethics are linked. When you put together the ingredients of Socialist scripture - the metanarrative of how humanity should be organised and how it will get to that stage - and of human beings themselves, and more importantly how they survive and flourish in reality, you will find that they do not mix well. No matter who the individual Socialists are who are trying to implement the ideas, the ideas themselves dictate certain outcomes, most notably suffering and death, to happen regardless of whether that is what individual Socialists or their writings intend. '

Three: You assert 'individual freedom' as if it were a natural right. Leaving aside the fact that Rights-based philosophies are subject to a lot of sustained criticism and that Social Contract Theory seems to do a better job of explaining the Rights intuition, you don't actually do anything to defend the claim that we should value 'individual freedom.' I, for one, care not one wit about individual freedoms. I'm concerned about the group, because the group is the functional unit of human survival. Individuals are replaceable; groups are not.

Four: Dictionaries are descriptive definitions, not normative ones. It's not just cheating to use a dictionary definition in a debate like this it is also usually considered to be a sing of inadequate argumentation.

Five: 'Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. The term capitalism is used here in the broader philosophical political sense, and not in the narrower economic sense, i.e. a free-market.' What is this broader philosophical sense?

Six: 'We have seen that under Socialism, and Religion, that those who disagree must die.' Really? Pity that history doesn't back that claim up. Indeed, you can show religious co-habitation for long periods of Western history. I think you have fallen into the usual trap of associating the wars of two different religious cultures as being religious wars. A large number of the Crusades were, osteniably, about reclaiming the Holy Lands. Or so it was marketted. A great deal of these Crusades were, by and large, politically motivated, such as getting rid of a troublesome set of sparring nobles to a place faraway. Sometimes what looks like a religious conflict is sometimes someone using religion as a cover to be nasty to someone. And sometimes it is a religious conflict. Still, you can't make such a sweeping statement and expect to get away with it.

Don't get me wrong; religions have done some terrible things. Not even the Roman Catholic Church disagrees there. But, then again, so has Capitalism. It's a trite example, I know, but look at the actions of large corporates in Africa. Look at the changes in the environment. Strawman Arguments, like the one you posted do nothing for the cause whatsoever. In fact, for those of us who are already suspicious about Capitalism it really just digs your own grave.

If I get time over the next week I will have to dissect this one some more.

Preston said...

I second what horansome says. Unfortunately a large problem in everything you said is an extreme oversimplification.
First of all, both socialism and capitalism have been the underlying philosophy to millions of deaths, albeit in different ways. Take a look at banana republics, for example--or how about the economic destruction going on around the world in countries with no labor laws?
Even so, 'adding up the deaths' and comparing them to each other would hardly prove anything, since its hard to say what socialist and capitalist leaders will do in the future.
Contrary to popular belief, socialism and democracy are not incompatible. Socialism is an economic theory. Democracy is a political theory. Sweden is probably the best example of a socialist democracy, but a big chunk of Europe is moderately socialist and democratic.
What you also seem to not realize is that complete laissez-faire capitalism has failed--(see the Great Depression)--almost any economic expert will tell you the government must intervene with the economy at some points, though the degree to which is debatable.

The United States is a very weak socialist state. We have public utilities, public fire departments, social security, welfare, city parks, etc. etc.

As you can see, attributing such strict black and white barriers to ambiguous ideas such as capitalism and socialism is probably a mistake. Volumes and volumes could be written on the subject, but my point is its not clear that one system is better than another, based on the 3 examples of failed socialist states in history.

http://pjw-truth.blogspot.com

John Tertullian said...

The argument is fallacious. It rises no higher than an inept tautology. Like all tautologies, the proposition is true, but meaningless. Atheism is defined as a "no-belief" frame--therefore, by definition it cannot be responsible for either good or evil actions, since actions are animated by beliefs of some sort. In other words, the red barn is red.

The real issue here is whether there is a causal connection between atheistic belief and the tyrannical totalitarianism of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Mao--all of whom were atheists.

There is a causal connection grounded in the inevitability of an appeal to ultimacy. Since there is no God, ultimate issues, which all must face, particularly those aspiring to political power,issues such as how to define life, what is a human being, liberty, happiness, sin, crime and punishment, justice, etc will be determined or decided by power--either personified in a Dear Leader, or in an impersonal State.

Within the christian frame, the all creating, all governing, infinitely righteous and holy Triune God raises up rulers and casts them down. All rulers are called to kiss the feet of His Son, lest He smash them like an clay vessel. Therefore, the power of governments is proscribed, limited, and ministerial only.

Atheistic government acknowledges no such limitations to its power and authority. Therefore, its authority always tends to absolutistic tyranny since it answers to no higher authority than itself.

Anonymous said...

"The real issue here is whether there is a causal connection between atheistic belief and the tyrannical totalitarianism of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Mao--all of whom were atheists."

Hitler was not an Atheist....he was a life long Catholic and was never excommunicated.

"What you also seem to not realize is that complete laissez-faire capitalism has failed--(see the Great Depression)--almost any economic expert will tell you the government must intervene with the economy at some points, though the degree to which is debatable."

The Great depression was caused by interventionist government...not Capitalism.The Government basically put a penny in the fuse box causing the inevitable chaos that ensured.

There is nothing in the nature of true free market Capitalism taht leads to depressions which are always the result of State manipulation of the economy.

Your critics are slack with the facts Eric...good post.

Rich said...

Robespierre wasn't an atheist either - he was a Deist and had a decree passed establishing a Supreme Being. Who of course, was French.

I think all you are proving, Eric, is that if a government tries to impose a system against peoples wishes they will end up killing lots of people to achieve their goal. Pinochet's Chile is a state which engaged in atrocities and murder primarily to impose unfettered capitalism on a reluctant population.

Many states have adopted socialist leaning policies whilst remaining liberal democracies. Sweden, Britain under Attlee and India sprint to mind. And wasn't Muldoonism just "Socialism run by Tories"?

Anonymous said...

" Pinochet's Chile is a state which engaged in atrocities and murder primarily to impose unfettered capitalism on a reluctant population."

Bullshit!!! Chile was headed down the path of big Government intervention until Milton Friedman,invited by some of his Chilean students to offer his advice,talked to Pinochet for about an hour,one time, and talked him into freeing up the economy and liberalising Chile.

It seems to have worked as Chile became the most prosperous of South American countries while major bloodshed was averted.Pinochet was a murderer true...but nothing compared to the lefty monsters of the times.The free market guru Friedman saved many live.

Josh said...

Eric: First of all, I've already expressed my dislike of the term "secular religion", so we won't go into that...

While I agree with most of your conclusions, I don't think your arguments support them in some cases -- you say things like "We have seen that the Socialism by its very nature leads to a large helping of terror" and "We have seen that under Socialism, and Religion, that those who disagree must die" when I don't think we have seen either of those things in your arguments (although we have certainly seen examples of them in the real world). You sound a bit like someone who thinks he's preaching to the converted (if you'll excuse the religious metaphor).

I'm also never quite sure what people mean when they talk about "Socialism" these days -- is the current Labour government "socialist" in the same way that Stalin was? Most Labour folk I know refer to themselves as "socialist democrats" (or "democratic socialists" -- there's a bit of confusion there), which leads me to Preston's comment, which I agree with. In the same way that you say "athiesm didn't cause Stalin & Mao to do bad things; socialism did", I would argue that the root cause of those atrocities is not socialism, but the lack of democracy.

I disagree with everything John says, except the bit about governments needing to answer to a higher authority. What he forgets is that in a democracy there is a higher authority than the government: the people, to whom they are accountable and who have the power to vote them out.

As for Chile, I'll admit I know bugger all about it, but James' parable of the evil socialist-leaning Pinochet being converted by St. Friedman is the most Biblical passage in this thread, if we're talking secular religions...

unaha-closp said...

believing that god does not exist

This is an ethical pointer of some magnitude, similar to that found in revealed religion. There is no God, therefore any who hold contrary beliefs are unethical and must be corrected.

When Falun Gong or Tibetan Buddhists are killed it is under the guidance of an athiest ideal. They are not killed because of economic crimes, that might be inconsistant with China's "Socialism". Rather due to them holding religious aspirations contrary to state dogma. It is action on the belief that religion is divisive & evil, that justifies the state suppression of religion.

Agnosticism is a less dogmatic form of disbelief, that allows the possibility of being wrong or does not rate religion as important enough to warrant enforcement.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Josh said...

We can follow a link, thanks James -- no need to clutter up an already long comments thread with a block quote from a URL you already provided.

The link that James was calling to our attention is:

http://nobeliefs.com/facts.htm#anchor199422 - Myths about communism & atheism

Worth a look, just not worth reproducing verbatim here.

Anonymous said...

"Atheism provides absolutely no ethical pointers. .... This means that when Atheists commit atrocities they are doing so with other justifications..."

A nice way of absolving of atheism from responsibility for all the acts of atheists - both good AND bad. But what then does it mean to be an atheist if it has no functional purpose?

Surely not...

Josh said...

But what then does it mean to be an atheist if it has no functional purpose?

Bugger all - that's the entire point. Religious people's lives are centered around God, so they assume that "not believing in God" occupies the same space in an atheist's life as God does in theirs, but that's not the way it works.

As an atheist (more or less), my lack of belief in God has as much impact on my actions as my lack of belief in pixies or unicorns or mermaids or purple, five-nippled walruses that I just made up now. As a consequentialist, my ethics are informed by physical realities of cause and effect, and as a human being my behaviour is also guided by abstract things like desires, emotions and empathy. I don't need to elevate or worship these things to have them affect my options and actions.

The fact that people are atheists would be utterly trivial were it not for the fact other people are religious.

Anonymous said...

"The fact that people are atheists would be utterly trivial were it not for the fact other people are religious."

This is true if god exists and/or it doesn't matter if you believe in him or not. If he does exist and it does matter then it's not so trivial, which is what most Christians believe.

I understand the problem you have with the word "socialism" to Josh, it use to refer to socialist doctrine, marxism etc but seems to have expanded to be anything other than L.F.C. or complete anarchy.

Eric, I think you misunderstand why people on the left are still here, firmly on the left where we won't be swayed by the likes of Rand and Mises and yourself. Socialism is not always imposed on people by governments, socialism, in one form or another is a natural byproduct of any society. Social connections are formed strengthened over time, because, y'know, that's what people do. Strength in numbers. When one group gets too much influence, whammo, fascism, and all the laws in the world won't stop it.

There is no magic bullet to creating a perfect society. Being in the middle, not allowing any one group of people to have too much influence, using the democratic process to split up the power base, keeping people involved and educated is the way to go.

I'd also like to point out that while NZ is pretty neutral, we are still leaning on the right side of the fence economically.

Anonymous said...

Something that seems to have gone unmentioned in Eric Olthwaite's post is that his opinions have been formed inside a society ruled by capitalist propaganda, it is as easy to absorb the myth of the celebrity rich and the self-made man, as it is to absorb the relentless demonization of North Korea or Cuba, what is rarely mentioned is how much the capitalist system has gone into creating the problems in those countries. If Cuba hadn't suffered from a USA imposed trade embargo for close to a half a century they would have been more likely to create a successful state, as it is they still managed free health care, high literacy, low unemployment etc, in the most trying of conditions. Maybe Mr Olthwaite should also ask himself why countries move in the direction of socialism? It isn't through some religious inspiration, it is through decades of exploition and poverty imposed on the people from above. Russia suffered from centuries of feudalism, Venuzuela from capitalist exploitation that was sucking all the wealth out of their country giving a small proportion to an elete few and leaving the poor dying on the streets. Iraq? East Timor? Iran? Chile? Vietnam? Haiti? PNG? Nicaragua? Nigeria? the list of capitalist crimes is actually longer than socialist ones, whether the socialist ones are inevitable because of the system is as arguable as whether the atrocities caused by capitalism are inherent in the system. I would argue that exploitation and violence are far more inherent in the capitalist ideology than the socialist.

Ted Johnson.

unaha-closp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
unaha-closp said...

"This means that when Atheists commit atrocities they are doing so with other justifications, and interestingly enough when we look at the most murderous atheists – Stalin, Mao, and so forth – we find that they were Socialists and so it was within Socialism that they found justification for their horrendous acts of mass-murder and terror."

Even if we take this as being correct. And that the previous banning of religion resulting in killing of priests, followers, etc. was a purely socialist action and not in any way derived from prosciptive atheism.

Is it to be assumed that a capitalist system that banned belief in God(s) would be inherently better than our current world?

bruddah said...

1. There is a God
2. He is Good
3. You aren't Him

Anonymous said...

Could someone on the God squad side please explain just what actions are inescapabley logical to follow from holding the position of a "lack of belief in God?

Is it "immorality"....by what standard and determined by whom? Is it mass murder,destruction,debauchery..? Says who and but what cause and effect examples?

Paul said...

"...the relentless demonization of North Korea or Cuba..." Is it any wonder that some of us prefer to call ourselves Social Democrats or Democratic Socialists rather than be tainted by association with this sort of idiocy?

Bad things happen to people when there is a shortage of democracy. This can be observed in Mediaeval Europe, 20th Century tyrannies, South America at almost any time and in North Korea and Cuba.

I have nothing but contempt for those who prattle on about the workers or the people while supporting dictatorships which deny their people the basic right to choose their government.

Anonymous said...

"Could someone on the God squad side please explain just what actions are inescapabley logical to follow from holding the position of a "lack of belief in God?"

There is no action which inescapably follows unbelief. But neither are there actions which are the inevitable consequences of belief. Religious belief and reasoned morality are not mutually exclusive, despite all manner of straw men which try to equate them. For instance, Christians displayed all manner of behaviour in response to WW2, from consciencous objection through to enthusiastic participation, and could generally find justification for whatever action they chose within their creed. Are atheists really any different?

Anonymous said...

There is no action which inescapably follows unbelief. But neither are there actions which are the inevitable consequences of belief. Religious belief and reasoned morality are not mutually exclusive, despite all manner of straw men which try to equate them. For instance, Christians displayed all manner of behaviour in response to WW2, from consciencous objection through to enthusiastic participation, and could generally find justification for whatever action they chose within their creed. Are atheists really any different?"

No.But Theists do have positive factors they can use as a basis for action.No, not all do but the Atheist has none whatsoever.What ever the atheist does is based on other factors and values outside of "lacking a belief in God".

It goes without saying that basically all of the atrocities committed by Christians,Muslims etc are most definitely based on and inspired by their religious beliefs.





























they canm use

Anonymous said...

"It goes without saying that basically all of the atrocities committed by Christians,Muslims etc are most definitely based on and inspired by their religious beliefs."

The reason that generally goes without saying is that no rational person would say it - given that there's no, like, rational proposition to support it.