Several times over the past year, I have talked in this blog about atheists having a disturbing tendency to commit genocide. I have, of course, been pooh-poohed by the rationalists and anti-traditionalists who believe that religion is one of the key roots of mankind's evils.
I now have a bit of proof. Please read this article before we go on:
PZ Meyers talks about FFRF and Christopher Hitchens' speech.
Meyers is an outspoken atheist and he's even shocked. If Myers' analysis is correct, Hitchens has demonstrated once again that if man is unfettered by the morals taught by repeated missteps over the last four thousand years, killing millions of people in the name of "good" is suitable as an option.
I am particularly interested in what those who have expressed admiration of Hitchens in the past think of this demonstration of his true colors.
UPDATE: A number of the commenters on Meyer's blog, Pharyngula, have attributed Hitchens' outrageous statements either to a) too little alcohol in his system or b) too much alcohol in his system. Speaking as an extremely experienced but non-practicing alcoholic--being a drunk, in and of itself, usually leads the drinker to do things like bed really unappealing people and feed the cats cornflakes. Even in my darkest blackout days, I doubt very much if I called for the elimination of a large percentage of a billion people due to their belief system. Sorry, folks, not an excuse.
The first half of Hitchens' speech is already up on YouTube. When the complete speech, including the question-and-answer session afterwards, is up, I'll link to it.
Tom h/t to Vox
I now have a bit of proof. Please read this article before we go on:
PZ Meyers talks about FFRF and Christopher Hitchens' speech.
Meyers is an outspoken atheist and he's even shocked. If Myers' analysis is correct, Hitchens has demonstrated once again that if man is unfettered by the morals taught by repeated missteps over the last four thousand years, killing millions of people in the name of "good" is suitable as an option.
I am particularly interested in what those who have expressed admiration of Hitchens in the past think of this demonstration of his true colors.
UPDATE: A number of the commenters on Meyer's blog, Pharyngula, have attributed Hitchens' outrageous statements either to a) too little alcohol in his system or b) too much alcohol in his system. Speaking as an extremely experienced but non-practicing alcoholic--being a drunk, in and of itself, usually leads the drinker to do things like bed really unappealing people and feed the cats cornflakes. Even in my darkest blackout days, I doubt very much if I called for the elimination of a large percentage of a billion people due to their belief system. Sorry, folks, not an excuse.
The first half of Hitchens' speech is already up on YouTube. When the complete speech, including the question-and-answer session afterwards, is up, I'll link to it.
Tom h/t to Vox
That proves bully Tom. Ann Coulter said the exact same damn thing a few years back with the go in kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity comment.
In fact I dug up the article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml
" We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Point and set. Not to mention that the vast majority of the audience in the conference was apparently horrified and obviously disagreed.
Ann said to kill their leaders, Hanno. If what Myers said is true, Hitchens said that "the way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties." I think that that's a bit of a quantitative difference.
In any case, according to what I've heard in here over and over again, you, Hanno, would expect that kind of behavior from Coulter, since she is religious. Over and over again, your side of the argument tells me how superior the rational atheistic viewpoint is.
If being an atheist is supposed to make one better and more rational, why would he be advocating genocide?
Of course a large number of the people at the conference were shocked (although there were a number who applauded each time he said to bomb Iran)--no reasonable person wants to kill millions of people.
My point is that Hitchens is held up as one of the leaders of the atheist movement. What the rank and file at the conference do is much less important in my opinion. He was asked there as a speaker, he has a bestseller on the market, he is a model.
I'd sure as hell hate for him to move from being a leader in the movement to gaining enough power to put his plans into action. Who knows what he would be capable of doing to believers that he considered a danger in the US?
Tom
"We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians"
That doesn't sound much like someone who just wants to kill leaders. It's implying that we should punish Muslims as a group for the transgressions of the few. For every wingnut atheist you find I can find you two Ann Coulters or Pat Robertsons who have said something equally inflamatory, the difference is that Hitchens was booed by a majority, I don't think the the CBN folks jeer at Robertson when he suggests we assassinate foreign dignitaries.
Actually Tom, I thought you'd know better. I don't think religion is per se bad, it's subject to the same pressures as any ideology, it's a mixed bag. Quite to the contrary, I find it rather instrumental and useful in many ways. There are numerous things I disagree with, primarily the intolerant strains and the fatalism I see in many religious people, but I don't hate religion by any measure. "True believers" as you would call them scare the hell out of me because there's no room for argument when your worldview is the only correct one, but by and large I couldn't care less if someone is religious and it can be a rather good thing.
Assuming the linked account is true (and I have no reason to think otherwise), I can imagine three possible explanations (not entirely mutually exclusive):
(1) Hitchens has given the matter real thought, and "we should kill them all" is his carefully considered position: he's insane.
(2) Hitchens hasn't bothered to actually think it through, but believes based on his superficial emotional reaction to the proposition that it's a good idea: he's an idiot.
(3) Hitchens was deliberately putting forward a ridiculous position that he doesn't believe to make some kind of point which didn't come through. His judgment about the effectiveness of his rhetoric was seriously flawed. It might have been impaired by alcohol or some other temporary disturbance, or he could be insane or just a great deal less smart than he thinks. (Just because you feed the cat cornflakes when you're drunk doesn't mean that there aren't a whole lot of people who will think and say that killing everyone they don't like is a great idea when they get drunk.)
(3a) Heck, maybe his whole point was to say something so controversial that he'd get some more media exposure and sell more books.
However, none of these explanations for Hitchens' behavior reflect on the idea that religion is bad except in an ad hominem sense. There is no idea so pure that you can't find someone who fully believes it and is nonetheless wholly disagreeable. In fact, if there were a way to get the whole country to report what they really think, I'm sure you would find many millions of people who think we should start killing all the Moslems, and they would be more religious on the average than the people who thought it was a really bad idea.
Hanno, this post was not necessarily directed at you. I don't recall you ever using Hitchens as an example. Have you even read God Is Not Good?
Your fight seems to be more with tradition in general than it is with religion from what I've seen.
Phil, this post was not about holding the religious as perfect. I have made the claim here in that past that the atheistic and the states that they create are more prone to commit acts of genocide than the religious. (I find no such tendency among agnostics, to tell the truth, so it's not simple religiosity that prevents the murders--it has to be more complicated than that.)
Hitchens is a clearly demonstrative example of what I am talking about.
So, any friends of Chris out there? Tell me why he's a great man and a fine example of what we need to be heading towards, please.
Tom
Hanno and Phil are covering this territory pretty well, and have collectively made the most important points that are to be made on this subject.
But one thing I'd add is that for all Hitchens' craziness and wrongness, he, as a result of his atheism, is required to subject his arguments (all of them) to the scrutiny of reasoned analysis. At no point, no matter how long the argument goes on, can he justify his positions by saying, "Because my god told me so," or "Because an ancient text says so" or any such thing.
Unfortunately, because Hitchens is a stubborn and self-important blowhard, this doesn't make it particularly likely that it will be any easier to persuade him that he's wrong than to persuade average religious adherents that they are wrong. It does, however, make it a lot easier to convince others that his arguments are not that persuasive, since nobody feels obligated to adhere to his belief system merely because he is the spokesman of a given faith and followers of that faith will be reluctant to break ranks.
"In any case, according to what I've heard in here over and over again, you, Hanno, would expect that kind of behavior from Coulter, since she is religious. Over and over again, your side of the argument tells me how superior the rational atheistic viewpoint is."
My comments were in reference to this one.
Brian:
"...is required to subject his arguments (all of them) to the scrutiny of reasoned analysis. At no point, no matter how long the argument goes on, can he justify his positions by saying, "Because my god told me so," or "Because an ancient text says so" or any such thing."
According to Myers, Hitchens countered those speaking out against him not by justifying his position rationally nor by analyzing his point with reason.
Myers on Hitchens: "The questions were all angry or disputative, and were all dismissed with comments about the audience's intelligence. The answers were always, 'War, war, war,' and that we weren't good atheists if we didn't agree with murder as the answer."
I, personally, would give more respect to someone who said "God told me so" or especially to "because an ancient text says so" (I'd think you would, too, since they could be talking about Plato rather than Leviticus) as long as they didn't call me stupid for arguing with them.
Tom
Maybe, but all that illustrates is Hitchens' personality flaws. My point is that Hitchens' personality flaws, as well as his flaws in reason, are more easily brought to the light of day when religious bias is eliminated from the equation. It's easier for a room full of atheists to boo Hitchens than it is for a room full of devout Catholics to boo the Pope.
That may be true. In the last century, however, there have been more atheists with "personality flaws" that have attained the power needed to kill millions than Popes.
The booing doesn't seem to have deterred them much at all.
Tom
Many of the atrocities of the 20th century were committed by atheist regimes, but *ALL* of the atrocities before the 20th century were commited by theist regimes, since to the best of my knowledge there were no meaningful regimes before the 20th century which did not use religion to a greater or lesser extent to support and legitimize their power. (My woeful ignorance of history may lead to a few counterexamples, but certainly the vast majority of history's kings claimed a divine mandate and/or had the support of the local religion.)
What makes a regime dangerous is not its religious faith but its ability to control what its people think (by outlawing dissent, preventing access to unapproved information, and promulgating unquestionable truths). The kind of ideology that teaches its adherents that they don't need to think because the answers are all in the holy book shores up such regimes, regardless of whether said holy book is the Bible, the Koran, or Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.
Tom has argued before that humans make their decisions emotionally and then use reason to justify them. Like our natural tendency to want all the candy for ourselves or to hate our mates' other lovers, this is a real tendency but not a good one. Because it's real, it's important that people start with a solid moral foundation so that their emotional reaction is most likely a desirable one, and religion is good when it provides that moral foundation. Religion becomes evil when, by discouraging rational thought, it encourages us to surrender to the initial impulse rather than using real thought to examine that impulse and actually decide if it is right. Thinking is hard work, and convincing ourselves that our gut feelings are wrong is even harder. Enlightenment is getting better at those things.
"The booing doesn't seem to have deterred them much at all."
That's because what little booing there was was answered with bullets. None of those despots would have remained in power if they'd been constrained by free and open debate. The (theoretical possibility of) booing bothered them a great deal, but since they had the bullets it didn't force them to change their policies.
Phil, no.
In well over 85% of the wars and atrocities prior to the 20th Century, religion had no relevant part of the conflict. The "common belief" of what you are implying is just a myth that's been extant since governments have been headed for the secular.
As a matter of fact, since the per capita death toll in conflicts prior to the 20th century is so much lower than during the 20th, one of the things that I have posited in the past is that the religious nature of the governments in earlier times may have actually significantly reduced the death toll.
I've no interest in going back and digging up all the figures for you. You should be able to find them in the Urbanagora archives.
Phil, you don't think that Hitchens would be willing to use bullets to dispose of religious people in American who were booing or opposing him or that he felt were endangering the future of reason? He sure as hell seems willing to use bombs and bullets when the oppositions' names are something like Abdul....
Tom
I think what we have proven here, conclusively, is that man's capacity for sheer stupidity is bound by nothing. Neither logic, nor religion, nor any pithy slogan, can ever truly arrest the ignorant from doing what they do best.
May God, Gods, or the Science bless all of us.
Tom,
I think you're conflating what should be two separate arguments. One is about whether it's good or bad to be religious. The other is about whether government should enforce a particular religious belief or let people worship as they choose.
People should of course be allowed by the government to worship as they choose. I merely believe that those choices should be dictated by rational thought, and that rational thought will lead one to be an atheist. But any time any government enforces any religious viewpoint (or, indeed, is autocratic in general), there is likely to be a large death toll.
It is far from clear, however, that a country in which people are allowed to worship as they choose AND in which most of the people choose to be atheists would result in a large death toll, or would result in better or worse public policy on the part of the government. The best indications we have on this question come from largely non-religious populations in countries like Sweden, Norway, and Japan. Such countries seem to do pretty well for themselves, and at the very least they aren't committing acts of genocide.
In other words, what exactly is your point aside from the fairly obvious assertion that governments should respect the free exercise of religion?
Tom, you're comparing apples with oranges.
"In well over 85% of the wars and atrocities prior to the 20th Century, religion had no relevant part of the conflict"
By the same token, most of the atrocities you claim were committed by atheistic governments in the 20th century had nothing to do with religion or lack thereof. It was almost entirely political. All conflicts are political, even religious ones. It's about who gets that strip of land, or who gets to have access to this market, whatever. It's never directly about religion, nor is it directly about a lack thereof. You're conflating and setting up a straw man. Of course it looks bad. If you were intellectually honest in your assessment it wouldn't look the way it does (I don't care to speculate on how it would look, but merely that it wouldn't be the story you're painting).
If you honestly asked "how many 20th century conflicts were perpetrated by atheistic governments for anti-religious purposes" or something like that you'd have a better analogy to your b.s. copout that 85% of conflicts prior to the 20th century had nothing to do with religion.
To answer Brian:
I believe that the government should have no more control over religion than any other part of an individual's life. That should be obvious from my writings.
The point that I have been trying to make this afternoon is that those militant atheists that are looked upon as the leaders of the Brights movement are not satisfied with merely allowing freedom of religion.
No, instead they advocate freedom from relgion and, in at least in the case of Hitchens, this freedom would be granted at the point of a gun and imposed on the unwilling.
I have hopefully also pointed out that atheists' schemes in the past century have resulted in millions upon millions of deaths, and could again in the near future if the proponents are not stopped.
Hanno, didn't Phil just imply that religion had something to do with all of the killings and wars prior to the 20th century? I was answering that.
I don't believe that the 20th century wars were over anti-religion any more than the prior wars were over religion. My entire thesis over the last year is that, regardless of the cause of the war, atheistic states have had more of a tendency to commit genocide than non-atheistic.
I believe that religious faith has a tendency to put the brakes on men who would otherwise be free to enjoy their appetites for destruction. What's so hard to understand about that?
The numbers bear me out without any question. If you were being intellectually honest, you'd stop arguing semantics and try to answer the question, "Why do atheists kill so many people?"
This is especially important for Brian and those like him who want to form a society based upon reason. If logic and reason have proven incapable in the past of preventing mass murder, what would be needed in a new society to enable people to live together in peace? Why did the atheistic French Revolution, which epitomized the reason of the Enlightenment, fail so miserably while the deistic American Revolution provide hope to so many for so long?
Tom
"atheists having a disturbing tendency to commit genocide...I now have a bit of proof...[Audience description of Hitchens' speech]"
I'm new to this blog, but geez, this seems completely unjustified. Are you just rationalizing for you accepted belief system because it looks like you're rationalizing instead of actually reasoning anything with logic.
One idiot, Hitchens, does not turn a whole crowd of people into the same, nor does speaking something make it an act committed. And of course, you seem to completely disregard the audience member who's blog post describes how pathetic the speech was based on a basic moral foundations (not taught by a book people call holy). You're taking second hand knowledge of an event, which itself noted the problems with the speech, and turning it into "proof"? Weak.
Why do you choose to characterize all atheists by Hitchens' character and not the audience and blog poster who objected or walked out on the talk? Yeah, there are always outlying, what's up with the KKK? I don't characterize all of religion by the acts of idiots, and hence claim proof of religion committing genocide based on beliefs of an outlying group.
Matt, first of all, welcome to the blog. We're always glad to have new readers.
If it had been someone like Brian up there on the podium saying foolish things it would be no problem.
The reason that this is important is because Hitchens is considered one of the top four leaders in the Brights movement. The folks who attended the conference are nobodies, like you and me. What they do or say is much, much less important to the future of the world than what happened on the podium.
Let me give you an analogy. In the atheist movement, Hitchens has approximately the same rank as Barack Obama has in the current Democratic Party--He has a best-selling book on the NY Times list, he is widely quoted as representative of the atheist philosophy and is sought-after by talk-shows and interviewers world-wide.
This is not Joe Schmuck saying these things, but one of their chief philosophers. I'm listening to what he says because he's not just some idiot, he's important!
Since he is widely read and seemingly well-respected by many, why should I not consider him representative of atheistic thought? It seems to be in line with his status.
Tom
"Why did the atheistic French Revolution, which epitomized the reason of the Enlightenment, fail so miserably while the deistic American Revolution provide hope to so many for so long?"
Could you generalize any more? The violence of the French revolution has one main driver, oppression. It doesn't matter which side you where on. Not only was there a monarch starts costs war with other countries before the revolution, but the Roman Catholic church was placing harsh taxes on poorest of in the country. No wonder people thought a country free of religion would be a better option, they were being oppressed by powerful religious figures.
The French revolution was a result the their political and social environment, not any amoral stance by atheists of their time, so is it really all that surprising that those who gained power used the tools of oppression against those who had oppressed them previous. Who did they learn that from?
And how can you honestly classify the American revolution as a deistic revolution? The founders were heavily influenced by the philosophers of the enlightenment period, and the dispute was not religiously driven. It was a push to separate from a monarch, and gain freedom for ideas such as freedom for religion (thanks much to those enlightenment philosophers you speak so poorly of in the French revolution).
Your arguments would be greatly improved by less generalization, but I still have a feeling that you're just rationalizing and not taking part in an honest debate for real reasoning. You draw more lines of separation by you stance, and provide more conflict in doing so, then you seem to be ascribing to any christian values.
Yet you never take issue with Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or Ann Coulter all arguably figureheads of the right. The reason I don't answer your question is because I question the assumptions and conclusions necessary to even get to the question. That's not intellectually dishonest, it's calling bullshit. As Phil noted, pretty much every death prior to the 20th century could be attributed to theists, so could a good number of the deaths in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The very question "Why do atheists kill so many people?" is what I object to. Relative to what? Is it really a function of Atheism or totalitiarianism? Can we control for factors like different technology levels? Do we even have reliable statistics on the number of deaths prior to World War I? You'd have to show me a multiple-linear regression analysis at least strongly suggesting the underlying assumptions before I could even think to answer the question.
Tom, answer what I said today, not what I was saying a month ago when we were arguing this in person. You have made me refine my argument.
If a government uses religion, either by gaining the public support of the religious leaders or by directly appealing to religious principles, to come to power and make itself appear legitimate to the people, and that government goes to war with the country next door to take over that spiffy gold mine just over the border, it's not a religious war, but it is still a war caused by a religion-dependent government. When a war was unpopular, religious backing made it easier for the king to prosecute it anyway, and when a war was popular, religion was usually part of the sales pitch even though it was not a "religious" war.
The atrocities of the 20th century atheist regimes actually aren't that different; their mass appeal to their populations came from appealing to the same instinct that makes people check their brains at the church door. There is real truth in the terminology that names a charismatic dictator's appeal as a cult of personality.
"He has a best-selling book on the NY Times list, he is widely quoted as representative of the atheist philosophy and is sought-after by talk-shows and interviewers world-wide."
I appreciate your criticism of Hitchens' beliefs and anyone who prescribes to them, but does he have best-selling books and get booked on shows because he's a representative of the atheist community or because he's a spark of conflict that helps drive ratings? Just as the Jews were characterized incorrectly by Hitler's followers, we all need to be careful how we generalize and associate people's beliefs. A figure in the spotlight has more power, but I don't believe the atheist community is as connected as a religious community is. One person can not and will not (I'm biased on this I admit) steer the broader community is a similar manner, and since atheist (last I read somewhere) were only 8% of the population, and incapable of being elected to an all religious government infrastructure, I don't see how atheists are going to gain the power to commit war and genocide even if that's what they all really wanted.
Well, considering that I'm not a Christian (or even a Jew), it would be surprising if I ascribed to any Christian values. I see religion as an innately useful tool that we are extremely fortunate to have in our possession. It is for God to decide what is correct in the interpretation of the religions of mankind.
Moving from theology to history:
There are times when generalizations are useful. It is inarguable that the French Revolution had within it an attempt to completely remove any theism--hell, they even changed the names of days of the week to eliminate the references to gods. The Declaration of Independence contains within it definite proof of deism in that it stated within it that inalienable rights derived from a Creator.
Certainly nothing that occurs exists within a vacuum, but arguing that the French Revolution didn't involve atheism is like saying that the Russian Revolution didn't involve Marxism.
Usually people accuse me of not engaging in honest debate when they're losing. I hope that's not the case already.
Tom
Hanno, back off a bit. I've done the research for myself, if you really feel as strongly about this, you should be able to do the same. The truth is out there if you have the courage to find it.
Stretch a bit, dude. Assume for a moment that my thesis is correct. If pure reason leads to mass murder, how do survive the 21st century? If being human requires both the rational and the visionary parts of the brain, how can the two be integrated successfully? If it is true that atheists commit genocide more often, why? Answer them as hypotheticals if necessary, if you can move away from your emotional response long enough.
Phil, you completely misunderstand the history of Europe. This is demonstrated best by your own words: "If a government uses religion, either by gaining the public support of the religious leaders or by directly appealing to religious principles, to come to power and make itself appear legitimate to the people, and that government goes to war with the country next door to take over that spiffy gold mine just over the border, it's not a religious war, but it is still a war caused by a religion-dependent government. When a war was unpopular, religious backing made it easier for the king to prosecute it anyway, and when a war was popular, religion was usually part of the sales pitch even though it was not a "religious" war."
The thing is, Phil, you are 180 degrees away from the truth. You are implying that religion was a useful tool of the temporal rulers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The temporal rulers ruled at the sufferance of the religious authorities. In almost no cases were the religious and temporal authorities the same. (There are two cases in which they were--England during the reign of Henry VIII and the Papal States.)
If the temporal ruler got out of line, the Church was more than capable of replacing them. In many cases it was overt, in others (a certain 17th Century Cardinal comes to mind) covert.
The overall tendency from the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the 19th Century was for the Catholic Church to prevent wars more often than start them.
Let me give you a big example. The two greatest naval powers at the end of the 15th Century were the Portuguese and the Spanish. They were both beginning to have extensive overseas empires that showed promise of making them rich.
In some cases, they desperately wanted the same areas and began arming their ships to fight over them. The war would have been extremely bloody, lasted for years and left both nations exhausted.
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world along a line running completely around the world, north to south. The original line ran just west of the Azores, but later it was moved far enough west to include Brazil.
The Church prevented a major war from occurring and kept two independent kingdoms from killing countless numbers of their citizens.
This is just one example. In many ways, it was a lot like the checks and balances built into the US constitution. The Church and temporal authorities served to counter each other if either one began to collect too much power. And as you should all know by now--the less power the government has, the better off the people under it will be.
Enough for tonight. I'm going to have a nice supper with the Wives, watch the recording of Heroes and play Mask of the Betrayer until bedtime. We can take this up again in the morning.
Tom
I would hardly call asking for proof an emotional response. You're the one making the wild assertion, it's incumbent on you to prove it. I'm just poking holes.
Hanno, I gave you numbers early this year. You simply rejected them out of hand, while providing no proof as to why you were doing so. Rather than accept my word that I had taken the time to carefully count the numbers, you dismissed it.
Why should I go to all the trouble to do it again? I have to do all the work, you say, "nope, can't be right."
"You'd have to show me a multiple-linear regression analysis at least strongly suggesting the underlying assumptions before I could even think to answer the question."
Screw you. I've presented you with data once already for my side of the argument and you dismissed it out of hand. Your turn. You provide the proof that atheistic regimes are not responsible for genocide in the 20th Century. Provide some multiple-linear regressions while you're at it.
You know, when Prescott or Billy Joe provides us with information about economics, nobody really questions their figures. I've spend 1 1/2 times as long as they've been alive studying history and you refuse to take my information at face value because it doesn't agree with your pre-determined notions.
You have no rational reason not to believe me, Hanno. That's why I consider your general argument as emotion.
Tom
OK.
Again, I want to reemphasize how bad I find this whole argument. Essentially, both sides are equating, to a degree, that some ideology, be it religious or atheistic in nature, makes people more prone to evil. Not so much. People can do bad on their own just fine, in my humble opinion, and generally just find whatever is handy to justify their own purposes and desires.
That being said, Tom your “mental experiment is just silly.” Let me rephrase, at least as it appears to the unbiased observer (that would be me): “Just assume I am right and concede the central point. Now, if you assume I am right, aren’t I right?” That’s just silly.
And as for your “mental experiment,” let me try and “stretch” myself. First of all, you set it up wrong. If people were purely rational, absent any visionary tendency, as you suggest, there would be no genocide; they would be computers, only doing that which is rationally efficient. Perfect economists. And there would be no genocide, because these perfectly rational beings would kill themselves once they determined that they were inefficient and superfluous to the system. Logic would dictate, and without passion and vision, these human computers would have no attachment to life that would make them think twice about giving up their lives.
I think what you are trying to suggest is that these atheists actually do have a visionary component, it is just not bound by any socially acceptable parameters which would permit their drives to be fulfilled. It is not socially acceptable, because in their drive to achieve their goals, they have to resort to violence, without any pangs of regret. Essentially atheists, in your estimation, are sociopaths. And sociopathy is a mental condition
Which begs the question of what happens if atheism is a function of mental cognizance? If individuals, for some reason another, are incapable of faith, that would mean that these individuals are a threat to the community. Communities will protect themselves and eliminate the threat, through imprisonment or execution. Either would require collective action, on the part of some government, limiting the rights of those atheistic individuals. How would you reconcile your distrust of atheism with your dislike of government?
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If one of us is coming to the table with baggage it ain't me buddy. I'm not the one who makes broad claims about how atheists are evil or how government is evil. I try not to make broad claims about anything. I simply say "prove it." I have no idea what data you're talking about probably because it's been that long since you posted it and I may not have even read it. I'm not the one getting pissed off and telling you to go fuck yourself, I'm sorry "screw you" as you would put it. I'm asking questions about the assumptions of the model.
Actually having gone back and checked I do know what you're talking about and I had the exact same objections then as I do now. The multiple linear regression analysis is the only way to isolate a variable to prove that it is a causative mechanism. That's why I said you'd have to show me that. Anything short is just idle conjecture. So again, I stand by my point that you've proven nothing. Yelling something at the top of your lungs for years doesn't make it any more true. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to find someone to help you out and control for variables like differential technology levels, population levels, and governmental structure. It's much more effective than doing the equivalent of yelling at me for asking that you do more than make assertions.
Other than that I think Prescott covered the rest.
My apologizes for assuming you were a christian tet.
"...but arguing that the French Revolution didn't involve atheism is like saying that the Russian Revolution didn't involve Marxism."
I wasn't arguing that the French revolution didn't have anything to do with atheism, but classifying the French revolution solely as a act of atheism ignores the greater environment. That being that powerful theists were oppressing the French people, and while the violence and oppression that came as a result isn't justified by the original trangression, the revolution started with the theists being the oppressors. Therefore, I don't believe you can use this as an example of atheists being inherently corrupt and theists being divine and moral.
If anything it supports a position that humans are humans regardless of their stated belief system. To prove one side is more conditioned for violence of the extreme nature requires significant evidence, and not simple generalizations.
"Usually people accuse me of not engaging in honest debate when they're losing. I hope that's not the case already."
Calling the French revolution a failure of atheism and the American revolution a victory of theism (to paraphrase) is not an honest form of debate. It's an obvious ploy at playing generalizations that don't actually exist in either of those cases. And when someone accuses another form of thought as inherently corrupt in that it's more likely to commit something as horrible as genocide, I personally expect a higher level of debate and proof (granted I'm jumping into your debate from the fog of the internet with my own standards in hand).
If you really want to "prove" this line of reasoning, you'll have to provide some substantial evidence, and highlighting a couple events isn't enough. Over what time period did those happen? Were the any during that time that are contrary to those events noted? How can you extract the political, social, and economic influences from the religious? How do you determine an event as being atheist or theist driven? This is no small task certainly, and I'm not sure one that's do able. But, you're stirring quite the pot by calling a specific form of thought as being inherently corrupt.
"If you really want to "prove" this line of reasoning, you'll have to provide some substantial evidence, and highlighting a couple events isn't enough. Over what time period did those happen? Were the any during that time that are contrary to those events noted? How can you extract the political, social, and economic influences from the religious? How do you determine an event as being atheist or theist driven? This is no small task certainly, and I'm not sure one that's do able. But, you're stirring quite the pot by calling a specific form of thought as being inherently corrupt."
I repeat, multiple linear regression model to isolate variables and their effects.
Prescott, yes!!!
You've got it, you understand. This is exactly the point that I am trying to make.
"I think what you are trying to suggest is that these atheists actually do have a visionary component, it is just not bound by any socially acceptable parameters which would permit their drives to be fulfilled. It is not socially acceptable, because in their drive to achieve their goals, they have to resort to violence, without any pangs of regret. Essentially atheists, in your estimation, are sociopaths. And sociopathy is a mental condition."
Prescott, if you were a buxom blonde, I'd kiss you. It is as if you have reached into my brain and pulled out exactly my world-view. I take back every negative thing that I've ever thought about you. You are nothing short of a genius.
Ok, now that my breathing rate has been reduced to something close to normal.....
I am going to have to give this some thought. How can a society protect itself from typically very intelligent sociopaths without resorting to coercion and violence on its part?
I'll try to provide some answers tomorrow. Let me sleep on it. Trust me, it won't involve genocide.
Tom
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So you'd make out with him because he has the amazing ability to summarize what you've been saying for a year? Really? Doesn't take much... ;-)
What can I say? I'm a slut.
I gave your question some thought overnight, Prescott. Here's what I came up with:
Agnostics are no danger to society whatsoever. No one has ever burned a question mark on anyone's lawn, nor have storm troopers knocked on peoples' doors to determine if there were folks inside who were sure of their beliefs.
Free-range atheists are certainly annoying, since they seem to take distinct pleasure at telling the majority of people in an area that they're stupid and deluded. However, the most that a disorganized single atheist can do is try to force a town to take Baby Jesus out of the town square at Christmas time.
The real danger seems to be when a group of atheists become rulers of a state and then attempt to eliminate those who do not think as they do.
One way to prevent this would be to have some kind of religious test for public office. The Founders rejected this centuries ago, I do too.
The best way, I think, is simply to deny sociopaths the tools to do their evil work. If government has vastly limited powers over the citizenry, a given person in office will not be able to do damage. The citizenry should also be able to have enough armaments to safeguard themselves from the occasional serial-killer type sociopath as well as serve as a deterrent to despots.
As a matter of fact, I'll go out on a limb here. I believe that the police in a given area should be allowed no better armor or weaponry than the average resident. This should assure that they will rely on the consent of the neighborhood to patrol.
First 20% of Hitchens' speech
All of the speech and question and answer session are now up at YouTube, so you can judge for yourselves. The link above is to the first part, you can find the others easily nearby.
Matt, this is a debate in here that's been going on for close to a year now. By far, it is not the most interesting thing on the blog, so if you're going to be a regular, I suggest that you take a Saturday afternoon and go back to the beginning and sort through all our commentary on a bunch of subjects. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's ethereal, but it's never, never dull.
One more comment on generalizations before I finish with this topic:
If I'm talking chemistry, I can say that copper is a metal. This is a generalization, of course, but it is an extremely useful one, since it gives an educated observer the clues that they need to make predictions about the properties of copper. A person could come up to the chemist and say, "but this is a generalization, the situation with copper is much more complicated than this. The electrons in its bands are very prone to movement, so it is extremely conductive, it's malleable, it forms an oxide upon exposure to air."
All of these things would be true. However, if the chemist was talking specifically about the properties of the material that were salient to the discussion at hand, all of the other information is simply not important enough to worry about. It does not matter to a mint which orbitals the copper atom possesses when it is stamped into a coin.
There is a near-infinite amount of information available on the 'Net at the moment. What is important is not regurgitating it upon demand. What is important, truly, is understanding what parts of that infinitude are necessary to approach the subject at hand.
In other words, while I enjoy attempting to change your, and everyone else's, mind on this subject, I have confidence that once you have absorbed enough information, you'll match my conclusions. I've been watching people do that for decades, now.
Tom
Ah, for those readers from the Left part of the spectrum, here's Justin Raimondo's column on all of this over at antiwar.com:
Christopher Hitchens and Genocide
Tom
And, for those readers from the Right portion of the spectrum, here's a column by Richard Lawrence Poe:
What Does Hitchens Really Want?
Tom
Tom,
Do you think it's possible you're latching onto Hitchens b/c he helps your argument the most? He's probably the most enigmatic and controversial of the various writers who have written about atheism recently, and certainly the easiest to attack. I'd recommend you read one of Sam Harris's books, or poke around his website (samharris.org).
Let's face it, Brian, there's nothing on earth like a bad example. I could rip apart Dawkins or Harris, it just wouldn't be quite as dramatic. Considering that Dawkins has likened religious training to child abuse, there's plenty of fertile ground there. If what I'm trying to do is warn the people sitting on the fence of the clear and present danger of atheist thinkers--I'm going to use the more demonstrative of the big four.
Harris is a bit harder, since he's not quite as overtly vicious. Fortunately for my stake in all of this, his understanding of both science and logic is nearly completely lacking.
I actually have some measure of respect for one of that group--Daniel Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell. What I like about Dennett is that he's a real live philosopher who understands what he's talking about when he's speaking of reason.
I don't even understand a number of Dennett's arguments fully. Even so, I cannot picture Dennett acting in the same kind of uncivilized manner that Hitchens and Dawkins have made famous.
I remember being a radical and shuddering every time someone mentioned the Weathermen blowing up a building. They embarrassed the rest of us, three of the "Big Four" are doing that to you. If the atheists really want Americans to question their most deeply-held beliefs, they need to find their own version of CS Lewis, rather than employing an endless supply of Billy Sundays.
My guess is that since there is such a high degree of sociopathy involved, a gentle, kind atheist is a rara avis.
Tom
A couple of things.
1)You're a man of science Tom. Tom the scientist should be shouting at Tom the moral philosopher right now. You're claiming to have proven something without ever even positing a testable hypothesis and laid out the parameters of the test. No basis, no controls for variables, not even a glimmer of a suggestion of such things. You never even attempted to utilize the scientific method. You put out a few select statistics that are of questionable reliability and without controlling for a single variable, shouted from the rooftops that your cherry-picked numbers proved your preconceived notion correct. Wow big surprise.
2) Assuming (and believe me this is a stretch) you are correct and atheists are somehow slightly more likely to be nihilistic and advocate genocide, can you really be sure that atheism is the malaise and not the symptom? Follow me for a second here. Atheists tend to be better educated than the population at large as religious worship/attendance is inversely correlated with education. Education is a rough proxy for IQ or intelligence, it's not perfect, but those who can make it to advanced degrees and get into the schools, etc are probably going to be smarter than the general population. It has been widely noted that people with higher IQs have higher instances of personality dissociative disorders like Aspergers syndrome which affects empathy. The point here being, how can you be sure it's the atheism that causes this phenomenon and not the person's intelligence? Basically isn't it entirely possible that the nihilism you posit exists is a result of above average IQ and has absolutely nothing (or perhaps very little) to do with Atheism? Could both atheism and nihilism not be symptomatic of intelligence?
If that were true, we would find greater nihilism or as you call them "genocidal tendencies" among the hyper intelligent than the population at large (something that is plausible) with affinities moving along a downward slope as IQ decreases. What then? Do we monitor the hyper intelligent? Those you believe should be the only ones with the right to vote?
You're treading on dangerous ground Tom. Even assuming you could prove your hypothesis, and that's all it really is now--actually it's not even that because you haven't really laid out a scientific method of analysis--you're opening up a can of worms. If I were to say that we should closely scrutinize minorities because statistically they are convicted of violent offenses more often than whites would I really be addressing the problem or a symptom?
Given how you've ignored the vast majority of the relatively reasonable questions about the model I'll stop here because I'll get more of the same if I bother writing any more.
Point 1. In my opinion I have, in the past, provided you with enough data to come to a reasonable conclusion. It is within your rights to demand more, but since I'm the one doing all the work, I can most certainly refuse to provide you with more.
History and sociology are not sciences, they're philosophy. You cannot apply the scientific method to either because you cannot do experiments with a control group to test a hypothesis--the systems are too complex. A lot of sociologists' studies use statistics, and you know what? Real scientists like physicists and chemists laugh at them behind their backs. Unless you're talking about a homogeneous or completely representative sample, you cannot use statistics to do science.
You're asking me to slice air with a knife and then bitching when I can't. The best you can do in either social discipline is provide examples and numbers and then philosophize about them.
Point 2. I think that you may be onto something here, Hanno, truly. I think that a while back I posted a link to an article on PZ Myers' blog talking about the high correlation between low-grade autism/Asperger's Syndrome, high logical/mathematical IQ, and atheism.
It is entirely possible that atheism is a symptom of one kind or mental disorder or another. You've made a great point. In other words, it could be that being a visionary sociopath causes you to become an atheist.
However, this doesn't lead me into dangerous territory because I am not in the least interested in a governmental solution to brilliant sociopaths running around.
My way of dealing with the problem--keeping government weak enough that no one sociopath or group can gain enough power to destroy lives works just as well regardless of the underlying reason for the behavior.
[You may have actually changed my mind about restricting the franchise to those above a certain intelligence, as a matter of fact. I could be very wrong on that point--deserves more pondering. Keep in mind that the current IQ tests only measure three of the seven types of intelligence. It may be possible to work around this problem.]
Tom
Tom: "You may have actually changed my mind..."
*universe blinks out of existence*
Brian, my wives and colleagues can tell you with no hesitation that when one provides me with sufficient evidence that my paradigm is incorrect, I fix it instantly.
It used to happen quite often. As I get more experienced and more knowledgable, it happens less and less. What kind of scientist would I be if I held on to disproved beliefs?
There's not a damn thing wrong with being wrong. I've never understood why so many find it so distasteful.
Tom