Top 3 Mass Murderers Were Atheists

Hitler was absolutely not an atheist. He never renounced his religious upbringing or his baptism, and during his political campaigning, he mainly targeted speaking to the public through churches and claiming to be christian.

Or if you want to say that he was an atheist, then he pretended to be a Christian to get the religious majority to side with him, though thats really not something that an atheist would do.

Also atheism has no core beliefs or teachings. Any action of an atheist bears no correlation to their lack of belief. On the other hand, reading a holy text and using it to justify any kind of crime, or a criminal stating that he / she was carrying out God's orders has a motive based on religious belief.

"

Pavshaus wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

given that atheists are generally much smarter than religious people it follows that they will usually be better at what they do, including mass murder.

Or is it because they were not religious people that they had a higher propensity to lack the degree of social conscience which may have prevented the actions which resulted in mass murder? It's pure conjecture either way.

Because religious people in the middle east have enough social conscious to prevent all the religious crimes that are going on in that part of the world today?

"

Poutsos wrote:

Social conscience has nothing to do with religion,unless you view religion as a moral code,but then you are selfish.

Viewing religion as a moral code isnt selfish, its just delusional and ignorant. Lets look into all the religious laws on allowing slavery including beating your slave up as long as they dont die within a day or two, killing non believers and disobedient children, forcing rape victims to marry their rapist, women are only worth half of a man etc, of which such moral guidance can be found in all of the Torah, Bible and Quran.

"

Pavshaus wrote:

Spoiler

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

given that atheists are generally much smarter than religious people it follows that they will usually be better at what they do, including mass murder.

Pretty much.

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." - Socrates

"Pure" evil is pure ignorance. It is impotent and unable to do anything on its own. However, it does not exist in its pure form; no one is ignorant of everything.

"Pure" good is pure knowledge. It has tremendous power to change the world. However, it does not exist in its pure form; no one knows everything.

In order for evil actions to be spread on a large scale, one needs both ignorance and knowledge. The ignorance allows the acts to be evil; the knowledge allows those acts to have power instead of remaining impotent.

Thus:
potential for evil = knowledge x ignorance

Due to the total impotence of pure ignorance, perhaps it's more accurate to modify Socrates to clarify that ignorance, when improperly identified as knowledge, is the only evil.

And on that note: I don't know whether God exists or not, but so far I've seen nothing convincing which would indicate that he does, and thus I don't believe. Unlike so many, I'm not willing to give my ignorance the credit of belief.

This is just a lot of employing the use of false premise to arrive at a questionable conclusion. But you can get a lot of fish to bite on this kind of bait :)

If so, I've bit on my own hook. Perhaps you should be more specific about which of my premises you believe are false; keep in mind it would be naive to assume I hold the words of Socrates as axiom.

"

bhavv wrote:

"

Poutsos wrote:

Social conscience has nothing to do with religion,unless you view religion as a moral code,but then you are selfish.

Viewing religion as a moral code isnt selfish, its just delusional and ignorant. Lets look into all the religious laws on allowing slavery including beating your slave up as long as they dont die within a day or two, killing non believers and disobedient children, forcing rape victims to marry their rapist, women are only worth half of a man etc, of which such moral guidance can be found in all of the Torah, Bible and Quran.

I meant it was selfish in the way,of you following this moral code for personal gain(afterlife).While,what you say is true,it is not always religion's problem,but how ppl interpret and apply "holy" writings.Eg. there are many peacefull,intellectual muslims.They just go through their own "dark ages" in a way.

Like it or not, belief has little to do with war.

"

Poutsos wrote:

"

Pavshaus wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

given that atheists are generally much smarter than religious people it follows that they will usually be better at what they do, including mass murder.

Or is it because they were not religious people that they had a higher propensity to lack the degree of social conscience which may have prevented the actions which resulted in mass murder? It's pure conjecture either way.

Social conscience has nothing to do with religion,unless you view religion as a moral code,but then you are selfish.

True but that is not my point.. my conjecture and question went to the nature of there likely being a numerical relationship between the two.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Pretty much.

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." - Socrates

"Pure" evil is pure ignorance. It is impotent and unable to do anything on its own. However, it does not exist in its pure form; no one is ignorant of everything.

"Pure" good is pure knowledge. It has tremendous power to change the world. However, it does not exist in its pure form; no one knows everything.

In order for evil actions to be spread on a large scale, one needs both ignorance and knowledge. The ignorance allows the acts to be evil; the knowledge allows those acts to have power instead of remaining impotent.

Thus:
potential for evil = knowledge x ignorance

Due to the total impotence of pure ignorance, perhaps it's more accurate to modify Socrates to clarify that ignorance, when improperly identified as knowledge, is the only evil.

And on that note: I don't know whether God exists or not, but so far I've seen nothing convincing which would indicate that he does, and thus I don't believe. Unlike so many, I'm not willing to give my ignorance the credit of belief.

If so, I've bit on my own hook. Perhaps you should be more specific about which of my premises you believe are false; keep in mind it would be naive to assume I hold the words of Socrates as axiom.

Actually the first problem with the argument is right at the root. The statement "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." is a false premise. The next two conclusions about pure evil and pure goodness are of course errant in that they are based on the false premise in statement 1.

Statement 3 "In order for evil actions to be spread on a large scale, one needs both ignorance and knowledge. The ignorance allows the acts to be evil; the knowledge allows those acts to have power instead of remaining impotent." is both an employment of a false premise in that it assumes a fact that has not been proven "that to do an evil act one must be evil" and is otherwise riddled with errant conclusions based on the initial false premise.

The rest of course if just flawed because the entire conclusion reached is based on the errant conclusions and false premises which precede it.

Also there is a fallacy in the argument which I will summarize as follows:

evil=ignorance
pure evil=pure ignorance

therefore: to perform an evil act one must be ignorant

The reality is that you cannot conclude that evil acts require ignorance just because evil itself is ignorant.


These were very typical tactic for Socrates when he wanted to argue a point... if I can get you to admit a point which I cannot prove, then I can lead you down a path of errant conclusions to persuade you that I am correct.

It's a powerful debate tool but does little to get at the truth... if there is such a thing :)

for the sake of intelectualism stop dignifying this imbecilic idea with a reply.

Ah... This thread. :)

If your in to god, be with him.

If your not, don't be with him.

Stop preach on how the "other" side have done things worse then the other. Guess what? We are all humans. Just imagine yourself with a cross in your hand and the sword in the other.. they probably had the biggest adrenaline kick ever. Fighting for something you don't understand and bigger then yourself. I would toss my smart atheist ass over a bridge to get that kind of feeling once in my lifetime.

But you are ofcurse entitled to your opinion.. but if history can tell us something, fighting over religions/gods usually only ends with blood and tears. And in this context..

oh... history :)