You’re simplifying what religion is. Religion is not belief in god, it is a system built around a belief in God. A man is not led to kill by his theism, but the moral system he builds around that. There is nothing rational about killing just because you believe in God, just like there is nothing rational about killing because you disbelieve. It is the moral system you build around that belief or disbelief that you base your actions on.
I wanted to talk more specifically about this rational justified killing thing. I understand your perspective rainshine87. It seems people could find any rational reason to kill someone else. However, the sentence, “To kill someone in the name of disbelief†literally does not make sense. You can justify killing based on any rational belief. But you cannot kill based on not believing something. Perhaps this kid in Finland created a rational belief that certain people needed to die for some reason, so he killed them. We can image an outspoken atheist killing a group of people deemed religious because he believes them to be damaging or a threat to him. However, he is not killing them due to disbelief in God, he is killing them based on the belief that they are causing damage or are a threat to him. Do you see?
Wow! You couldn’t have made the distinction clearer between ‘belief in God’ and ‘belief in belief in God’. Nice.
Yes! Exactly. We completely agree.
We’re on the path to moral relativism by the way. Either God is the absolute and set up the rules… or people set up the rules individually / relatively every day.
Not believing that a man is present is the same as believing that he is absent!
Either way, we still believe there is a man somewhere right?
The concept of something and nothing is difficult.
I agree with what you just said and can see you struggling with atheism getting ‘the escape’ because it is a disbelief, not a belief. I understand where you’re coming from. You should come to my church I’m starting up. 
This is great! Nothing like a good old Sunday debate about justifications for killing people. 
You’ve compared killing in the name of religion to killing in the name of ideology. I agree a fit comparison.
But Banes point is that no one kills in the name of Atheism. This is not to say that Athiests don’t kill, but only to point out that there is no “militant branch” of Athiesm that advocates force to inflict itself on those who believe.
There are some ideologies which have absolutely no use for religion, but with none of them is this the driving force which they use to justify their tyranny. Whereas some religious fanatics will kill you over a small disagreement with their interpretation of scripture.
Dave
Dave’s got it!
Not believing that god exists is the same as believing that he does not exist.
I don’t believe that you are old enough to watch this film
I believe that you are not old enough to watch this film.
I don’t believe that the yeti is real.
I believe that the yeti is fictitious.
Every disbelief, if I’m not mistaken, is also a belief.
I agree. But equally no one kills in the name of theism. They kill in the name of an ideology which is built around their theism. Hitler didn’t kill in the name of atheism, but he killed in the name of an ideology which was built around his atheism.
For example, if a Muslim says, “I am killing in the name of God,” a Hindu might be totally bemused and disagree with him. You can’t kill in the name of theism, only your particular religion.
He, heh, yeah, semantically… 
“You’re not old enough to watch this film.”
“The Yeti does not exist.”
You are taking advantage of the limitations of language to make a point.
Yes indeed, I “believe” that God doesn’t exist and I can’t prove it. I concede that intellectual point. On the other hand, you who DO believe, have even less evidence for your belief than I have for mine.
But either way, what does this have to do with the thread?
Dave
Disbelief in something is not belief in that same thing.
We are getting mixed up in our semantics and having trouble with negatives here.
-I do not believe in the Christian God.
-I believe that there is no such thing as a Christian God.
Yes, these are essentially saying the same thing.
Belief in a negative or not believing in a positive are the same thing.
So even if you now come back and say, “See, atheism IS a belief!” I will have to still respond that it is belief in a negative, a non-existence of something. As opposed to theism which is a belief in something.
Hitler probably wasn’t an atheist anyway and one could probably make a better argument that his ideology was built around Christianity.
Right. Hitler can’t kill in the name of atheism nor direct belief in God, but he can kill based on ideologies that he constructs from religion.
It is VERY important to note that we are nearing the point where we are throwing out doctrine. We cannot say that each religion is true as long as God exists. Sorry, there is only one reality. Each religion says that it alone is true.
The bottom line after much of this debate is that religion justifies atrocities, whereas atheism cannot provide justification for… anything. It is simply disbelief.
I’m seeing something very disguised here that must be brought the forefront. We cannot talk about belief in God, without religion. There is no belief in God without religion. It is rather silly to propose. It is in effect what the Deists were attempting during Darwin’s time (and earlier), many of which essentially were atheists. Many of them ‘believed in belief in God’, but did not ‘believe in God’ literally. What is the point to believe in God without religion? As far as I’m concerned simple belief in God, whatever the hell it may be, is not good enough to put you in good standing for the afterlife with regards to the world’s major religions. God without religion is a VERY weak stance to take. All you can say is, “All religions are wrong except in that they believe God exists.” That’s a position I wouldn’t want to attempt to defend! 
To paraphrase - “People kill in the name of religion.” and “Religion justifies atrocities.”
“The bottom line after much of this debate is that religion justifies atrocities, whereas atheism cannot provide justification for… anything. It is simply disbelief.”
Yes, but as we’ve concluded, this is a misleading thing to say, for you compare religion and atheism as if they are opposites. They are clearly not.
You clearly define religion as an ideology that believes that it alone is correct. If this is so, then we could also bring in any other ideology where the subscriber believes that. I’d say that you are wrong to demonize religion and should instead demonize people who think that they are infallible.
All you’re saying is, “belief that you are right justifies you to act on what you believe.” This is true in any case, whether you’re a theist or not.
Lest we forget the likes of the bahai religion, which believes all other religions to be different ways of portraying the same truth, and so doesn’t consider itself alone to be correct.
Sure, but then so does any ideology. We best get rid of every one of them.
I think we’re getting our wires crossed here. How does ‘religion’ differ from ‘ideology’? If you consider religion as that which believes it alone is correct, then God can clearly exist without religion. For I don’t believe I am infallible, yet I’m a theist. If you believe that religion is “all theistic ideology,” then you can’t say that ‘religion’ justifies atrocities, unless you’re willing to say that every single ideology justifies atrocities.
There can be any kind of rationality for killing people. I’m simply stating that religion provides one such rationality.
But I think it is a very big deal and a mistake if you are saying that religion has nothing to do with belief in God. What good does it do to say that God exists if you do not believe in any religious ideology?
You claim to be a theist. (Likely you might identify yourself as a Christian). But if you deny everything of whatever religion you may be and state you simply believe in God, not anything religious… what does that mean? I would argue that the idea of God is religious from the very conception.
Oh, and Bahai is absolutely retarded and untenable. I was thinking about it before you mentioned it because I could see where this was heading.
An extract from a letter from a friend to their Bahai friend:
“Baha’is are encouraged to go after science and knowledge. When they do that, they can no more accept the theories of Abdul Baha when they go against science and reason. So ironically the religion of Baha’u’llah that encourages learning, carries the seed of its own destruction.”
If we can go back to the original debate,
We were debating whether activist atheists are doing more harm than good.
If one is an atheist, I believe that the more active, the better. The only thing more activist atheists will do is cause people to loose faith in religion. I really don’t see how evangelical atheists would actually cause more people to join religions. That seems silly.
If one is not an atheist, then they really don’t care about the cause in the first place. But their opposition to evangelical atheists is a very clear indication of the threat that reason is to faith or religion.