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Originally Posted by Preacherman  Just a thing to think about before we go taking down religion. More people have died because of genocidal humanist regimes in the 2oth century than in all the religious wars in history. I'd keep it around even if i didn't believe, just for your sakes.
The bloodiest religious war was the 30 years war...Estimates say it could have been between 6-14 million. The Crusades may have totalled up to 9 million. 1. Robertson, History of Christianity: p168
Most other wars have not even approached 1 million
genocide by Germans in addition to the 6 million Jews there were between 15-30 million total killed by genocide (not counting the loss of life by war) RJ Rummel estimates the Russians killed over 61 million in their genocide and the Chinese Communists over 35 million by genocide. WW2 itself the bloodiest of all the wars was not quite 30 million. |
I would argue that genocide due to religious persecution is still happening and although the individual numbers involved are not the huge numbers you mention above they are probably adding up to these numbers if not more over time, after all a few thousands here, a thousands there, won't grab the headlines like those you mention. I know you know that people are still dying because of their religious beliefs, right?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...28/ai_76915684
Not to mention the Israel/Palistan debacle. You could even argue that the current mess in Iraq could be consider religious in nature, although I think it's more about money and control than anything else, most of these things are, religion is used to sway the masses, Only the preachers and the people in power know what is really going on(what is your motivation here anyway?
). We are an animal that prefers to live in tribes.
If you are arguing that we need religion to control the masses then I would argue that it will only work if there is one religion and we know that that is not going to happen unless 'your creator' makes it happen, which seems he unwilling to do.
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Originally Posted by Preacherman Here is a quote by J. Bradford DeLong
University of California at Berkeley
But the greater power of governments to organize and carry out purges, the sharpening of ethnic conflicts, and the rising power of violent nationalism were, even together, not enough to trigger the genocides of this century. That required two political movements: Communism and Fascism. And both Communism and Fascism were movements that had economic ideology at their core. |
In the present day it is harder for the major powers to get away with this type of thing as technology has shrunk the planet, look at what China is facing in Tibet(and rightly so I believe), although I am not saying that these major acts of genocide will never happen again, just that the price will be a lot higher.
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Originally Posted by Preacherman I say you all re-consider the ideology of atheism, and the idea that all things humans, animals, plants, rocks are equal. |
This is OGs idea, although I find the idea that the creator is present in everything to be highly attractive, his hard evidence for such an idea is also lacking. Lots of individuals look like rocks to me
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Originally Posted by Preacherman Also re-consider agnosticism. Your tagline says only the truth matters. If that is the case don't just say, "it matters, but I just have no idea what it is." Get busy, figure it out, search for the truth because it matters. |
The truth of the matter is that you have no evidence other than a 2000 year old book written by men that may or may not be properly translated. I have looked at your evidence and it does not make sense, as far as fences go I don't even see one in sight.