notyet is offline notyet Post #1  January 26,2012, 2:27pm
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there has been a lot of chatter lately in other threads on this board about how tolerant atheists are when compared to violent theist. i'd prefer to let those other threads stay on their purported topics as posted by the repective OPs.

therefore, my question is- just how tolerant are atheists? here is a little article to help fuel this discussion...

Stalin followed the position adopted by Lenin that religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society. To this end, his government promoted atheism through special atheistic education in schools, massive amounts of anti-religious propaganda, the antireligious work of public institutions (especially the Society of the Godless), discriminatory laws, and also a terror campaign against religious believers. By the late 1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion.[87]

Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.[88] During World War II, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, and thousands of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Russian Orthodox Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church (including the Eastern Catholic Churches), Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.

Stalin had a different policy outside of the Soviet Union, he supported the Communist Uyghur Muslim separatists under Ehmetjan Qasim in the Ili Rebellion against the Anti Communist Republic of China regime. He supplied weapons to the Uyghur Ili army and Red Army support against Chinese forces, and helped them establish the Second East Turkestan Republic of which Islam was the official state religion.

i wonder just what the above "persecution" entailed...

?:-/
Last edited by notyet; January 26,2012 at 2:30pm.
 
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notamaninpower is offline notamaninpower Post #2  January 26,2012, 3:06pm
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...and yet whatever they did (and it was DEAD WRONG indeed, I am NOT "justifying" it), their actions were a mere pittance as compared to what was done to all of the various non-believers and believers of other faiths, in the name of your savior, in the time since his birth.
 
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Ephemera is offline Ephemera Post #3  January 26,2012, 3:10pm
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Not to mention that practically all of the holidays and practices of christianity are stolen from pagan peoples and other beliefs. A religion based on stolen ideas instead of ideas organic to itself is truely less than authentic or honest.

And I am only tolerant if you are silent about your stuff and don't try to influence anyone else's. Your religion needs to start earning the right to tolerance.
Last edited by Ephemera; January 26,2012 at 3:12pm.
 
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lindseyk is offline lindseyk Post #4  January 26,2012, 3:17pm

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notamaninpower wrote :
...and yet whatever they did (and it was DEAD WRONG indeed, I am NOT "justifying" it), their actions were a mere pittance as compared to what was done to all of the various non-believers and believers of other faiths, in the name of your savior, in the time since his birth.
I don't think the OP was attempting to deny that some absolutely horrific things have been done in the name of Christianity. The Bible has been used to justify a lot that is absolutely unjustifiable. It's not right, but not every Christian does that or believes it's okay, contrary to popular opinion.
 
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lindseyk is offline lindseyk Post #5  January 26,2012, 3:26pm

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Ephemera wrote :
And I am only tolerant if you are silent about your stuff and don't try to influence anyone else's. Your religion needs to start earning the right to tolerance.
How is that tolerance? You're only tolerant of a person's faith if they never talk about it? That's not tolerance. It's something, but tolerance is not it.

Tolerance is not demanding that people with views you don't personally like be silent. Tolerance is allowing people to express their views even though you find them offensive.
 
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Reverse_Dragon is offline Reverse_Dragon Post #6  January 26,2012, 3:29pm
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Rather than say "but religion is bad too!", let me try to answer the OP's actual point.

It is a common theme for believers to point to Stalin and Lenin as an example of the horrors of atheism. There are various arguments that easily refute this, and I will only cover a few.

Firstly, the 'religion is the opiate of the masses' quote is from Marx, and it is a misquote. As usual, the sentence fragment is taken out of context for the purposes of supporting an argument, without regard to the authors original intent. The actual quote is as follows.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
- Karl Marx Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
 
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Ephemera is offline Ephemera Post #7  January 26,2012, 3:33pm
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Simply saying that one is a christian or a Muslim or a anyother faith or belief system you can think of is not what I have a problem tolerating. I have trouble with the infiltration of any belief system in my life, in my countries political system, in the legal system, in the school system, in the tax structure, etc... In private you can believe any old thing you like. Just keep it out of the lives of others that do not wish to have it forced upon them. Then you will have earned the right to tolerance.
 
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Reverse_Dragon is offline Reverse_Dragon Post #8  January 26,2012, 3:35pm
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First post got cut off for some reason. Continued below.

Secondly
The actions of Lenin and Stalin, while abhorent, are not representative of the attitudes or beliefs of the atheist community. They were informed by these men's political and social view far, far more than their religious beliefs, or lack thereof.

Thirdly
If you don't want people to scream about the awful things none in the name of the various religions, then I'd advise against pointing to Stalinist russia as an example of why atheism is immoral/dangerous/evil/whatever. If you start an ad homonym attack contest of this type, you are going to lose.
 
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AudioDad is offline AudioDad Post #9  January 26,2012, 4:02pm
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A crucial historical distinction in discussions like this often goes missing. People like Stalin, Lenin and Pol Pot were indeed guilty of mass murder and were certainly examples of the absolute worst behaviors that humans can engage in. However, the distinction that is usually missed is that these men didn't commit these atrocities in the name of Atheism. Rather, they were carried out as part of their political agendas - i.e., constructing the ideal communist society. It should also be noted that Lenin and Stalin didn't just persecute the religious, but homosexuals, gypsies, various ethnic groups and even various groups of men and women deemed as intellectually "dangerous" to the Communist ideals.

In contrast, the various Crusades and Inquisitions were undertaken specifically in the name of a particular religious faith - generally Catholic,though there were various sects within the Church that participated in the Inquisitorial activities. Religiously inspired violence and bloodshed has persisted into the modern day with more notable examples of Darfur, the Sudanese civil war of the mid-80's, the Protestant/Catholic conflicts in Northern Ireland in the 70's - though this conflict had a major political component as well.
 
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notyet is offline notyet Post #10  January 26,2012, 4:51pm
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i don't want to take that other thread (Who Is God?)any further off-topic than it already is. so, let me answer this here...

notyet wrote :
you're talking about Stalin, Lenin and the like, right? godless atheist that leave believers alone to live in peace...

?:-/
Reverse_Dragon wrote :
I wanted to leave this one alone... but I am unable to.

I notice you say 'Stalin, Lenin, and the like.'
Can you actually name any other atheist historical figures? I can.

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Espinoza, Hume, Kant, Bret Easton Ellis, Rodney Dangerfield, Noam Chomsky, Sigmund Frued, Carl Sagan, Ernest Hemingway, Frida Khalo, Bruce Lee, John Lennon, George Orwell, Margeret Sanger, Ted Turner, Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubric, Gene Wilder, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Warren Buffet, Katherin Hepburn, Thomas Edison, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Edger Allen Poe, Marie Curie, Andrew Carnegie, Helen Keler, Susan B. Anthony... not to mention many, many more.

I'm so terribly sorry that all of these people failed to leave theists in peace.
here are a couple of other atheists you forgot to include in your list.

Mao Zedong.

Jiang Zemin.

let me know if you'd like any other names to add to the list of "peaceful, non-violent, freedom-loving atheists."
Last edited by notyet; January 26,2012 at 6:36pm.
 
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