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NBA sixth man of the year
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by raiderfan19
I'm religious but the reason the crusades didn't cause more deaths is because there were less people
additionally they didn't have the means to kill that many people. when you have the luftwaffe, armored tanks and radio communication it increases your killing power exponentially.
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Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by miller-time
correlation does not equal causation. there are other factors besides rejecting religion that caused these travesties. most of them come under some type of state fanaticism (which is akin to religious fervent belief) and/or socioeconomic or political disparity.
Yes agreed. But what I'm saying is being religious seems to lead to a certain cut-off point in terms of mass moral depravity, whereas having no religion seems to have no cut off point in terms of morally disgusting acts that humans will commit.
My rhetoric is abit off at the moment as I have 24 hours no sleep from studying and doing coursework, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make.
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Extra Cheese
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
The "most evil" regime of the last century, Nazi Germany, was very religious and largely endorsed by the religious establishment that existed in Germany and Europe at the time. The holocaust was actually only and exclusively made possible because of biases established due to religion.
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Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by LJJ
The "most evil" regime of the last century, Nazi Germany, was very religious and largely endorsed by the religious establishment that existed in Germany and Europe at the time. The holocaust was actually only and exclusively made possible because of biases established due to religion.
even as a Jew I have to consider Stalin's russia to be more "evil" than Nazi germany. Much higher death count. And Nazism's religious emphasis can be argued.
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NBA sixth man of the year
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by Nick Young
Yes agreed. But what I'm saying is being religious seems to lead to a certain cut-off point in terms of mass moral depravity, whereas having no religion seems to have no cut off point in terms of morally disgusting acts that humans will commit.
My rhetoric is abit off at the moment as I have 24 hours no sleep from studying and doing coursework, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make.
i understand what you are saying but i still disagree. the americans dropped the bomb on civilian targets, the british bombed german cities with horrific losses to civilian life to "lower moral" those are two examples of mass atrocities committed by "religiously backed" governments. obviously those two countries didn't initate the war, and i don't want to get into a conversation about the morality of dropping the bomb, my point is that mass deaths of civilians were options played out by the other side.
additionally, if you gave osama the bomb in 2001 do you think he would have used that instead? the delivery of mass death is only limited to the technology the person or group has at the time. give any pre-20th century religious war instigators the kinds of weapons we have now and see how many more people they kill.
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Extra Cheese
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by Nick Young
even as a Jew I have to consider Stalin's russia to be more "evil" than Nazi germany. Much higher death count. And Nazism's religious emphasis can be argued.
It can absolutely not be argued that Nazism rejected religion. Absolutely not. Revisionist history.
That leaves communism exclusively then. And pretty much only Stalin's Russia and a few marginal countries. (Because the horrors committed in Mao's China are actually quite overstated and subject to much negative propaganda here in the west)
Some trend you got there! Yeah, the Stalinistic communism is bad, you are really dropping intellectual gemstones here! Let's conveniently forget that Russia is at least 85% religious and at the time probably an even higher percentage. Let's forget almost all of the government officials of communist Russia were raised on Christian ideals and values. And above all let's forget that 99.99% of Russia's population under the Trarist Theocratic rule basically lived in horrible slavery for centuries. Very convenient indeed.
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7-time NBA All-Star
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
The Catholic Franks under Charlemagne butchered their fare share of Saxons and other infidels under the guise of doing it for The Laws.
All mass murder in the ancient world could be argued to be theocratic genocide because of how intertwined religion was in every day life, warfare, and government.
The modern genocides you list were made possible by technological advances.
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Titles are overrated
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by Nick Young
yep, his name is Joseph Stalin.
Stalin is supposed to be around 20 million. Japan killed more chinese alone than that.
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NBA Legend
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
I think the change in technology has a lot to do with the death count. Crusaders couldn't just call in an airstrike and level a city or unload a machine gun and kill 100 people.
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Master
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by Nick Young
The French Revolution
Pol Pot's reign in cambodia
Lenin and the Red Terror
Stalin's regime
Nazi Germany
Cuba and Che Guevera's mass murder of 1000s by firing squad.
Vietnam
Mao Zedong
Kim Jong Il
In Mein Kampf and later in a speech at the Reichstag he said, "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Oh, but he was just using that for rhetorical purposes, he didn
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Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by LJJ
The "most evil" regime of the last century, Nazi Germany, was very religious and largely endorsed by the religious establishment that existed in Germany and Europe at the time. The holocaust was actually only and exclusively made possible because of biases established due to religion.
many in nazi high command including hitler was not religious, certainly in the christian sense, and were interested in promoting even pre christian pagan german culture
they endorsed or tolerated the christian institutions because of how instilled they were and because it provided easy course to anti-semitism. I don't think anyone believe nazi germany to be some religious fanatical state
Last edited by heyhey; 03-04-2012 at 12:50 AM.
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The Iron Price
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by Nick Young
Yes agreed. But what I'm saying is being religious seems to lead to a certain cut-off point in terms of mass moral depravity, whereas having no religion seems to have no cut off point in terms of morally disgusting acts that humans will commit.
My rhetoric is abit off at the moment as I have 24 hours no sleep from studying and doing coursework, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make.
No, not really. People have done some awfully ****ed up things in the name of religion.
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Extra Cheese
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by heyhey
many in nazi high command including hitler was not religious, certainly in the christian sense, and were interested in re-establishing german paganism.
they endorsed or tolerated the christian institutions because of how instilled they were and because it provided easy course to anti-semitism. I don't think anyone believe nazi germany to be some religious fanatical state
Revisionist. Nowadays Christian apologetics love nothing more then to point out a handful of disputable and entirely inconsistent "proofs" that show that the Nazis weren't part of their club, but that certainly wasn't the case at the time.
There was a only a very small percentage of the German population that wasn't Christian during Nazi rule. It's insane to try and state that "many in Nazi high command weren't Christian". Completely false. And Nazi practices were either wholesomely endorsed, or silently endorsed by nearly all Christian institutions that had any contact with it including the papacy.
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Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by LJJ
Revisionist. Nowadays Christian apologetics love nothing more then to point out a handful of disputable and entirely inconsistent "proofs" that show that the Nazis weren't part of their club, but that certainly wasn't the case at the time.
There was a only a very small percentage of the German population that wasn't Christian during Nazi rule. It's insane to try and state that "many in Nazi high command weren't Christian". Completely false. And Nazi practices were either wholesomely endorsed, or silently endorsed by nearly all Christian institutions that had any contact with it including the papacy.
Nazi germany was a totalitarian state, meaning the state tried to control all aspect of private life including religion. I'm saying that despite its anti semitism nazi germany wasn't a theocratic state unlike say Iran.
Hitler and co weren't interested in the spreading and establishment of some christian kingdom, they wanted a german state and subvert christianity to fit their program. In a totalitarian regime, the ultimate and only loyalty is to the state - religion is secondary and must be in line with the regime.
Sure many christians were complicit in the holocaust but I wouldn't call nazi germany religiously motivated. In fact nazi anti-semitism was seldomly justified using religious means as opposed to social darwinism, pseudoeugenics.
I think there's a difference between bad things done by christians and bad things done in name of christianity.
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Extra Cheese
Re: The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder
Originally Posted by heyhey
Nazi germany was a totalitarian state, meaning the state tried to control all aspect of private life including religion. I'm saying that despite its anti semitism nazi germany wasn't a theocratic state unlike say Iran.
Hitler and co weren't interested in the spreading and establishment of some christian kingdom, they wanted a german state and subvert christianity to fit their program. In a totalitarian regime, the ultimate and only loyalty is to the state - religion is secondary and must be in line with the regime.
Sure many christians were complicit in the holocaust but I wouldn't call nazi germany religiously motivated. In fact nazi anti-semitism was seldomly justified using religious means as opposed to social darwinism, pseudoeugenics.
I think there's a difference between bad things done by christians and bad things done in name of christianity.
The OP tries to show a correlation between "the rejection of god and religion" and "depraved acts of mass murder", using Nazi Germany as an example.
There was nothing non-religious or rejecting of god in Nazism, in fact Nazi's embraced religion and vice versa.
Never did I post that Nazi's did their thing because they were Christians (although you could certainly make a convincing case it was an important prerequisite). Read the premise of the thread boyo.
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