Heart-ache: Religion is hardwired in the brain, scientists theorize

Atheism has killed more people than any religious wars combined. Communism, Nazism, and Facism have killed over 50 million people just this last century.

Andy in Agoura Hills on February 4, 2009 at 6:27 PM

Same stupid post, different poster. Nazism was not atheistic, nor was Fascism as practiced in Italy or Japan or as agitated for in the US and the UK. These are simple historical facts that some folks around here seem hardwired to ignore.

Marxism was atheistic, and explicitly so–this is also a simple historical fact. But by blaming atheism as such for the horrors Marxism created, you prove yourself to be astoundingly ignorant of the rules of logic.

Consider, if you will, the following syllogism:
The persons who killed Jesus were Jews; therefore all Jews are Christ-killers.
Even if one overlooks the gross historical inaccuracy in the first proposition, this statement is still outrageously invalid. There is no logical chain here, no middle term linking the two. Indeed, the only middle term that could be introduced to make the conclusion follow is the only Jews ever to exist were the ones who killed Jesus, which is of course not true at all.

Further, and also to the same point, the persons who killed Jesus killed him not because they were Jews (excuse once again, if you would, the inaccuracy); they killed him because they were an angry mob, and their Jewish-ness did not affect the outcome in any causal manner whatsoever.

As you can see through this extraordinarily apt analogue, your argument (if one can call it that) ignores both logic and causality.

One thing that Christians have an exceedingly difficult time understanding (in part for lack of trying, and in part because understanding as much would shatter their worldview) is that atheism is not a religion. Atheism is the lack of any theistic religion, but it implies absolutely nothing else, and therefore provides no unifying impetus to the many atheists. We share no beliefs in common; we share only one single dis-belief. I have no more in common with Josef Stalin on account of our both being atheists than you have in common with Osama bin Laden or the Dalai Lama on account of your being non-Shintoists.

Marx preached, and Stalin and Mao practiced, revolution and dictatorship through brute force, and a pursuit of their allegedly-noble ends through any and all means necessary. It was that, and not the atheism of Marxism, that was responsible for all the carnage its acolytes heaped upon the world. I’d like to see how you would fare in a totalitarian millenialist Christian theocracy where the supreme despot has no qualms against bringing about the reign of the kingdom of heaven on earth by “breaking a few eggs.” In fact, it’s been tried before, and it wasn’t pretty. What few vestiges of respectability your argument has left are completely torn asunder the moment a single atheist who ruled benevolently is discovered.

hicsuget on February 4, 2009 at 8:24 PM

An interesting book by Vox Dei argues that:

The relevant point isn’t that religious people don’t ever kill – all are fallen – but that religious people are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less likely than atheists to kill when they are in positions that enable them to do so.

linky to his forum discussing it.

aikidoka on February 4, 2009 at 10:46 PM

As I hinted at in the post you are replying to, it is not possible to draw conclusions regarding the ethical character of a typical atheist. Most people think that morality comes from religion, but ethics is a concept of philosophy that has been folded into religion. and there exist many secular philosophies with systems of ethics.

A religious person gets a particular ethical system handed to them when they pick a religion; an atheist is able to shop around for an ethical system independent of his choice of religious (dis)belief. This does not preclude an atheist from arriving at a similar (or identical) ethics to those of some religion–in fact, if one argues that the teachings of Christianity are self-evidently revealed in nature, one must cede the point that most atheists will end up believing in Christian ethics without believing in the rest of it.

But this ability to choose different from a wide range of ethical systems means that no two atheists selected at random are likely to have similar ethical systems, and that nothing can be said of the moral code of atheists at large. One can make pronouncements about the moral behavior of Christians, or of Buddhists, or of Branch Davidians, because their morality comes with their religion. But one could not lump all three together into the same group and hope to draw intelligent conclusions about the lot, because there is no uniformity among them. So it is with atheists–you have to stereotype us by the groups we do belong to, not by the one we don’t.

One conclusion that perhaps is warranted in this case, the conclusion driving the passage you quoted, is that atheists as a group are less likely to have been catechised into any particular morality. A Christian has the passage “thou shalt not kill” drummed into his head to the point where, if he is put in a position to kill, it is possible that the verse might serve as a deterrent to some degree. An atheist would not have the same background, or at least would not accept the divine authority of the verse.

[Apparently my post was too long to go through. Stay tuned for its exciting conclusion in Part II!]

hicsuget on February 5, 2009 at 12:04 AM

[here follows Part II of my response to aikidoka]
But is this an effective deterrent? The source you quoted says it is a “statistical reality” that believers are orders of magnitude less likely to kill, but I must confess to having never heard of such a study. (Even if there were such a study, it is unlikely it would hold up to a careful examination of its methodology.) But I don’t even see the anecdotal evidence for it being true.

Is a religious person less likely to murder their spouse in a fit of rage when they catch them cheating? Or less likely to squeeze the trigger in a crime gone bad? Or to be less likely to respond homicidally in any other situation that typically leads to murder? To argue that point, you would have to define “religious people” as narrowly as possible, to an extent at which you would be guilty of the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

Even accepting your argument on its face–namely, that rigid indoctrination of simplified moral precepts yields results later in life (train up a child in the way he should go…) –then it will also cut against you. A religious belief powerful enough to overcome a passionate urge to kill is also powerful enough to overcome a compassionate urge to let live when murder in the name of God is urged.

hicsuget on February 5, 2009 at 12:08 AM

MadisonConservative on February 5, 2009 at 12:09 AM

Funny… I always thought your moniker was a reference to the political beliefs of James Madison. Now I know.

hicsuget on February 5, 2009 at 12:25 AM