After having read a rather good blog entry on agnosticism and atheism last week, I was all fired up about religious matters.
So I found myself in a comment thread about religion in an article of The Local (where, I have, incidentally, just published another article).
Anyway, the person I was arguing with began, as these people do, to discuss oppressive communist states and point out that they were and are all “atheist” states. Meaning, I can only assume, that atheists are all mass-murderers (pretty rich coming from the people behind the crusades, I thought).
Let’s look at this more closely. Now, if you planned to install a totalitarian communist regime in a country, what kind of population would you want?
Would you prefer an educated, sceptical population who base their decisions on evidence and reason and can not be convinced of things that are not demonstrably true?
Or would you prefer a population who are used to subjugating themselves to a higher power, who do not ask for evidence and quite happily believe anything you tell them as long as some unelected authority figure told them to believe it?
I won’t insult your intelligence by answering that question directly.
Basically, religion primes people to accept any and all shadowy omnipotent leaders. Atheism, by and large, doesn’t, since atheists are (by definition) better at reasoning.
So if you want to install a totalitarian regime you had better hope that the population is as religious and uneducated as possible. Like, oh let’s see, half the countries in Africa?
And for the record, communist states don’t stamp out religion because they don’t like it. They stamp it out so that their own power can be more absolute. And what is communism, if not a religion? Isn’t it also a set of ideas and doctrines, complete with holy books, which must be followed without thinking? What are Chairman Mao and Kim Jong-il, if not little arrogant gods?
Communists are sure as hell not sceptics, and can only be called “atheists” in the most superficial of ways.
So you want “freedom”? Then you can start by freeing people from all forms of oppression, both governmental and religious, and empower them to make their own decisions. And then we can all live happily ever after.
Until we die, and turn to godless compost and bright little flowers grow from our mulch.
Anyway, have a nice weekend. Free of both communists and sky fairies.
/ paddy
Paddy K 
Word. And also, tru dat.
Word back atcha.
Apart from the obvious mistake they make when they fail to recognise that communism is simply replacing one oppressive ideology (religion) with another (communism), there is also the correlation/causation fallacy. It is quite possible (but not actually true, in the case of for instance Hitler) that the leaders of the most murderous states in history were all atheists, but they were also all men. Should we therefore assume the possession of a Y-chromosome leads you to become an oppressive mass-murderer?
Indeed. Although babies ARE quite tasty.
Från: Paddy K [no-reply@wordpress.com]
Datum: 2010-feb-26 01:12
Till: rolf
Ärende: [New comment] Michael Jackson RIP
x said on Michael Jackson RIP
June 26, 2009 at 12:18 am
HE IS SEXY
— *new* comment *June 26, 2009* !!!
Paddy, there *is* something wrong with youre olde blogge. Perhaps God is hacking you?
cheers/Rolf
Sorry Rolf, I only work here…
Rolf, the comment IS new – the mail lists the time of the POST rather than the comment. The comment has the same timestamp as your mail.
Amen to that. ;o)
And hallejula (however that is spelled).
The whole argument about communist states being atheist rests on the fallacy of believing that they are oppressive, mass-murdering states *because* they are atheist. This, of course, is patently false. They are oppressive, mass-murdering states because their leaders want to stay in power, no matter what.
Which, by the way, reminds one of other hierarchial power structures with infallible leaders.
The Catholic church with its pope springs to mind.
All the best,
Bellis
P.S.
Communist states deny the existence of God simply because their Bible, called Das Kapital and written by their prophet Karl Marx, claims there is no God. It does, however, claim quite an astounding amount of other forms of sheer nonsense, to the point where it is actually – here and there – downright amusing. Bertrand Russell, in one of his essays on communism (I forget the title), found so many ludicrous claims in its doctrines that the essay progressively reads more and more like a sketch by Monthy Python. Bertrand Russell simply couldn’t help but laughing out loud.
D.S.
Let me know if you find that essay by Russell, sounds interesting.
Hej Paddy,
Stumbled upon your blog and i couldnt help myself from asking you some questions..
What is religion?
What purposes has religion played in the past?
Are these purposes something “very human” or are they merely fabricated?
If they are human, what aspect of our atheist society fulfill the void after we abandoned religion?
If there are things that fill the void, like empirical science claiming authority of the truth, psychology claiming how we should live our lives etc. wouldnt you agree that these disciplines are fairly young and haven’t matured yet?
Would you accept that religion has previously played some of these roles to the best of human knowledge?
Would you accept the rational reasons of using handed down insights to life with for-life-dedicated people examining these insights and coming up with new ones over centuries, building up a big snowball of wisdom?
Take care mate :)
What aspect of “our atheist society” fills the void? What about curiousity, love, trust, nature, laughing, children? Why do you need fairy tales about living forever to make you want to be a good person?
Wisdom is always great, but people examining how we should live with the premade assusmption of there being a god or afterlife will not give us terribly useful insights, will they?
You want wisdom, try looking around you, see how the world works, consider what people tell you, and read what science says about things. Wisdom is not to be found in a badly-edited collection of ancient stories but in living in reality.
“What is religion”? Perhaps primative man wondering what the sun is, why did that tiger eat my Mum, why is thunder scary, what happens when i die. i think we should have out grown this by now!
“What purpose has religion played in the past?” See above
Are these purposes something “very human” or are they merely fabricated? See above. Human and fabricated.
If they are human, what aspect of our atheist society fulfill the void after we abandoned religion?
You are assuming a void just as people assume a creator. God doesnt exist so what void can exist upon Gods removal?
I think religion is bigger than those basic questions.
Though, religion often bases its authority on them, “we have the divine right” etc.
Religion is more than the belief in a God, it is a way of life.
It is a way of dealing with the biggest events in your life, such as birth, marriage, grief and death. For a while, Swedish atheists have questioned the rational of marriage, and that it doesn’t apply anymore in our “modern society”. But recently, scientists who study “happiness” came to the conclusion that marriage makes have happier and longer lives. So it wasn’t so irrational then? You might argue that “the ubiquitious remains of religion” will cause the non-married to have less fullfilling lives, and that’s the explanation. Will that then mean that the “atheist” non-marriage view on life is not applicable to our present “lingering remains of religion” society? Or is marriage generally beneficial for happiness and longevity? (Maybe happiness isn’t what we’re after? Then what are we after? Really. It’s not a rhetorical question!)
Lets look at this again. Religion says what is good, and how that should be accomplished. It bases it’s authority on the notion that God made a prophet, or was a prophet, who passed this wisdom on. Will removing this authority make the “wisdom” less wise? Can it still be used?
Science is in the progress of explaining what is good for you, and what is good for us as a whole (in our current social context). It is trying to explain where we come from and where we are going. Darwin wrote his book 150 years ago, and science as we know it has existed since Galileo told us how to extract truth from experiments 350 years ago.
There are undoubtedly still a lot of things science hasn’t answered yet. Issues that we until then have to cope with in our daily lives. Psychology has only been around for 100 years, and the study of how to have a happy and fulfilling life hasn’t been around even that long.
Also, how do we propagate what science tells us? Lets assume that science discovers that smoking is bad for you, that it will actually kill you.
Science has no reason in itself for changing the world, removing cigarettes.
But what if some scientist wanted to stop people from smoking? He had to tell people that “by the power of my scientific authority and knowledge, you should all stop smoking”.
What i mean by this is that in the end, it’s a matter of authority, who you trust to guide you in your life. Previously this authorative person was someone from the church, who had debated how we should live our lives from the basis of a book, which the successful society was built on. Now it’s a number of authorities, or claiming to be authorities… being knowledgeable in one area, like “smoking kills” but not in the area of “leading people in the right direction”…
Lets see what this stirs up! =)
There is a difference in authority. With scientists you can go check it out and test it, and you can say that they were wrong, and work out what is right instead, without being evil. Look for instance at “Climategate”. We can find out that some temperature measurements were done where ventilation from an office came out, which gave much too high temperatures, and then we can go about checking out the real temperature. With smoking, we can check out how the research was done, and if we find that it was sponsored by a company that demanded the result show smoking is good for you, then we are under no obligation to agree with that research.
With religion it often boils down to “You must believe it. You must not go find out, because if you do you are evil”. That’s not authority, that’s an order.
cheers/Rolf
Jonas, from what I can tell, you seem to be saying that because science hasn’t given us all the answers yet, we should fill the holes that science has left with religion. Or at least understand why other people do so.
Fair enough – that’s a good explanation to why people still keep religion in their lives. But it’s clearly not NECESSARY to do so, since there are millions and millions of us who do just fine WITHOUT religion, DESPITE all those holes science has left. So basically, looking at the data, you don’t really have an argument.
Paddy, I think Jonas means a psychological and emotional void. And he might have a point, there. Martin Gardner, in his The Why’s of a Philosophical Scrivener, had an interesting take on this. Now, Martin Gardner was, as you know, a doctor of chemistry and the foremost debunker of pseudoscience during the twentieth century, but he was also deeply religious. He happily confessed, though, that there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe in God. On the contrary, there is every rational reason not to. But he also confessed to a possibly inherent psychological and emotional need to believe in an all-caring father, giving him the same sense of security as his parents did when he was a toddler.
In other words, Martin Gardner was honest about it all. (And he was, of course, not a religious person of the messianic, Bible-thumping variety. In fact, he didn’t even believe in the Bible, which he found abhorrent. He believed in God in a personal way, or whatever they call it.)
Now, personally I think that a grown-up person should be mature enough to be able to look reality in the eye or even stare down Bertrand Russell’s great abyss (see the essay “A Free Man’s Worship”), but a certain percentage of us seem to have this (in my eyes quite cowardly, to be frank) psychological and emotional need of the caring, all-compassionate father throughout their lives.
Thus, as far as I understand, the rise of various new age-cults in the face of the progressively weaker position of Christianity in a somewhat secular country like Sweden.
By the way, I’ll find the title of the Russell-essay on communism for you next time I’m in Stockholm. I have all my Russell-books there, not here in Athens.
All the best,
Bellis
“Thus, as far as I understand, the rise of various new age-cults in the face of the progressively weaker position of Christianity in a somewhat secular country like Sweden.”
I really don’t see any evidence of more new-age cults in secular countries. I think it is the opposite – belief in religion tends to encourage a belief in other things. Or do you know more about this?
And I would also like to believe in a sky daddy. It would be lovely. But I would be lying to myself and that would be worse.
About new age-cults. Look at the situation a hundred years back, when Christianity was still reasonably strong in most countries, including Sweden, and compare it to today. Especially during the last fifty years or so, there’s been an influx of things like Scientology, crystal healing, numerous mantra-yoga-sects like Maharishi and Bhagwan, and so forth, and so on. Now, I’m not saying that these sects are in any way predominant in present day society – that’s why they are called sects. But they are there, to a larger extent than ever before. Which, mind you, is still not a very large extent, but anyway.
Personally I would not like to believe in a sky daddy. I find the mere thought quite ghastly. Some all-knowing entity seeing straight into your innermost thoughts and meddling in everything you do? God, save me! :-)
By the way, Paddy, have you been to the new age-bookstore in Drottninggatan? The name of the store eludes me (have you noticed how bad I am with titles and names as such?!), but if you set out from Odenplan it is situated on the right hand side of the upper part of Drottninggatan. Everybody in the vicinity will know where it is. It strikes me that a visit to that bookstore might be good for a blog post or two. Maybe, anyway. The amount of sheer and often quite funny stupidity to be found in there is quite awesome.
All the best,
Bellis
I once saw a reference to an investigation into some very devout Christians. Psychologists “deep-interviewed” them. It turned out that they were so devout believers because deep inside they believed that Satan was stronger than God, and they coped by loudly professing a strong belief in God. In fact they were very afraid people.
That might explain part of it. People seek an all mighty father because they are afraid, and they obey religion because they are afraid of being punished by the overlord if they don’t obey. That type of thinking is quite common even in non-religious contexts.
In the fear context we also have those who abuse the name of our Lord and seek out old people and frighten them into giving away their money to the church or sect or what not, threatening that otherwise this old and weak, possibly senile person will burn for ever in Hell, and be EVIL… Quite a nice racket, isn’t it?
We also have those who seek out old ill people and threaten them to stop taking their medication, because taking medication is evil and you will end up in Hell for it. So we end up with helpless, frustrated doctors, and mortally ill oldsters. That happens in Sweden, too.
We might argue the morality of demanding this of honest believers in one’s on church or sect, but going out and threatening non-believers to this when they are in enough trouble as it is is lower than the hawkers in the temple.
These racketeers are the hawkers in the temple. I’m not a believer myself, but I do feel tempted to agree with Jesus and roar “Throw the hawkers out of the temple!”.
cheers/Rolf
I once had a mail dialog with a man who described himself as a devout Christian and who hated gays. When pushed he admitted that he wanted to stop hemosexual acts NOT because the gay person’s soul was in danger, but because HIS soul was in danger. Looking at the Sodom and Gomorra story, a “just” man who allows “evil” things to happen will also be punished for his inactivity. Which explains why these people ore incapable of keeping their nose out of other people’s private lives.
This thing with Christians and gays (and other minority groups too) really gets me. My God (!), people who can’t leave others’ sexuality alone must be really fucking sick. I don’t care what the sun-stricken desert prophets said in the Bible, it is nobody’s fucking business (quite literally) what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms.
But you know what? I am actually quite flabbergasted at the gay community’s untiring struggle to be allowed to marry in the church that hates them! Why on Earth don’t they found their own church instead? That’s what I would do if I was gay and Christian. Come on, considering the above mentioned sects, how hard can it be to found a new church?
All the best,
Bellis
“I don’t care what the sun-stricken desert prophets said in the Bible, it is nobody’s fucking business (quite literally) what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms.”
This is true enough – but if you sincerely believed that your fellow man would BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY for committing these sins, would you not be morally OBLIGATED to try to STOP them from doing this?
As much as I find those who would forbid consensual loving acts between adults sick in the head, at least there is method to their madness. Those who believe I will burn in hell for all eternity for being the way I am (atheist, blasphemer, hetero-flexible, happily fornicating unmarried woman – I got plenty of sins, pick one) and who do fuck-all about it – THOSE are the ones I’M worried about.
“This is true enough – but if you sincerely believed that your fellow man would BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY for committing these sins, would you not be morally OBLIGATED to try to STOP them from doing this?”
Interesting question. I suppose I would. If I didn’t also hold the contradictory belief in an all benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent sky daddy who is supposed to be all forgiving to boot. And that is the crux of the matter, because they do believe in him as well.
The point ought to be a really sticky one for most theists, for they are actually trying to take over the responsibility for us fallen from the god they claim to be almighty. Shouldn’t he, with his supposedly compassionate and forgiving outlook, simply save us? How hard could it be, considering he is omnipotent and can thus do anything at all, including such feats as creating round squares and even universes and other such pretty amazing stuff?
So no, if I was a true believer I would gladly let God take care of business.
Those that you are worried about, who do nothing, can hardly be any worse than the theists who actually do something about us sinners, now can they? The most effective of the latter used to be called Sanctum Officium. Better known as The Inquisition.
And in case some of you happened to miss it, Sanctum Officium was re-installed in the Catholic church in the 1920’s. Their methods might be a bit milder these days, but who is to say, considering all the Irish Catholic bishops whose pastime for the last decades has been raping underage boys? I mean, if that is their pastime, what do they do when they happen upon a sinner?
(Yeah, yeah, I know, that is an unfair dig in a sense, but these people strike me as quite evil or at least mentally ill.)
All the best,
Bellis
We who are not already true believers, how should we go about deciding whether a person acts upon orders from God or not? What is the difference between those religious who go killing heathens upon the order of God, and the guy in Stockholm who got an order from God to kill the evil ones, and took a sword and started cutting down people? The first guys are right, because they received a command from their God, the second guy is mentally diseased? How do I know it’s not the other way around? How do I know whether God sent the tsunami in Thailand to kill the sinners or not, when I’m not already a believer? (And please note that Christians in the US *did* state that that tsunami was Gods punishment for our sins…)
cheers/Rolf
Rolf, are you serious? What atheist would regard any command from God to kill as valid? I’d be hard put to produce a single atheist who makes the distinction you do about those killing heathens and the sword-wielder in Stockholm. Neither would it, actually, be that easy producing any large number of theists who’d make the distinction.
All the best,
Bellis
Shucks. What “…be that easy producing…”? To produce, of course. This has been a correction by The Bellis Language Center for Corrections of Bellis’ Stupid Typing Too Fast-mistakes. Because they irritate him.
All the best,
Bellis
Like Bellis I’m slightly baffled… obviously from my perspective god didn’t talk to ANY of these people, they’re ALL mentally ill.
Also I wasn’t talking about orders from god, I was talking about believing in hell and then being compelled by normal human compassion to try to save people from it.
Well I’m rubbish at keeping up with comments ain’t I? This is due to me having to actually work in work these days. Sorry about that. Blame my boss.
But, yes, a nice comments exchange there. Keep up the good work.
And Bellis: are you the same person from a certain mailing list that I am a member of but almost never read? You know the one, it used to start with S and now it starts with K, thanks to a certain troubled person.
“And Bellis: are you the same person from a certain mailing list that I am a member of but almost never read? You know the one, it used to start with S and now it starts with K, thanks to a certain troubled person.”
Paddy, I’m gonna’ take this with you once.
Yes, I am that same person. As anyone googling my name can see on the Internet, I have been hounded by this certain troubled person you refer to for the better part of my life. He flat out accuses me of being a dishonest, hardened criminal. The reason being, *believe it or not*, that when I was, in 1987 for chrissake, one of the candidates for a trip to a British science fiction-convention funded by a a non profit-organization called SEFF (since we were all so very young then and thus lacking money), a friend of mine, John-Henri Holmberg, collected some votes for me via phone. Instead, that is, of presenting the voters with the actual form to fill in themselves. And I accepted those votes – and by the way, so did the organization in question. And this is, as you might see if you google my name, all there is to it. How on Earth this can make me into a hardened criminal is still totally beyond anyone but this certain troubled person, but let me tell you one thing – it sometimes gets to your nerves having a fucking stalker going at you, time and time and time and time and time and time again. This certain troubled person has been going at it ever since. For 23 years, now – 23 fucking years.
I’ve had some experience, both personally and through stories relayed by friends, of stalkers. It is, let me tell you, not a pretty experience. What one has to do is to remain calm and try and never ever have any contact with the stalker. Never reply, never try to “talk things over”, never try to “explain what it’s really at”.
It won’t work.
(With that said, I did reply a few times early on. You might find my replies as well on the net. I don’t know. A few of the mailing lists nowadays have archives for members only.)
These people see reality through a completely different set of eyeglasses than ours. There is no use trying to reason with them. None at all. To the best of your ability, ignore them. On the Internet, and in real life.
All the best,
Bellis
I have also had a few online run-ins with this person and, after a few flaming exchanges, where things became very surreal, decided to never think about him again. So while I’m not “taking sides” here, since I don’t know the whole story (and never can, obviously), I totally see where you are coming from.
So welcome to a part of the internet where people use paragraph breaks.
“So welcome to a part of the internet where people use paragraph breaks.”
Laughing out loud!
Drive a hard,
Bellis
Yeah, you know what I’m talking about…
Here’s something I just stole from Rolf. For those of you reading Swedish, look at this prime example of mumbo jumbo religious belief:
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/buteljerade-andar-fran-nya-zeeland-till-salu-1.1056194
For those of you not reading Swedish, there is this guy in New Zealand auctioning two bottled genies, one weak and one strong. Highest bid so far, nearly 5000:- Swedish crowns. About 500 euros.
But hey, it’s not too late – get your own bottled genies! Two for the price of one! Look, that’ll make six wishes instead of just three!
Not to be missed!
All the best,
Bellis
All the best,
Bellis
I really think that we atheists should buy these bottles and give them a decent burial, just to show up the idiot who is selling them.
[…] K has been Arguing with Theists, against better knowledge. He makes no mention of who won, but the opposition brought up communism, […]
Great post! I couldn’t agree more. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this argument from theists. I’ve done some decent reading on the subject and I’ve yet to find any link showing that atheism was the cause of what happened in those Communist countries. Theists seem to just assume that because they were atheists – without any proof whatsoever – that must be the reason.
Thanks! Conclusion – theists are generally pretty dumb and poor at reasoning. As if we didn’t know that already…
Oh dear what a mixed up bunch. You all seem desperate to disprove that there is a god but can’t quite get there. The use of the word Communism totally pre-supposes that so called Communist states actually practice communism (look it up, they don’t) and the total belief in science is almost Christian in its short sightedness. Get over it! There is no God. You do not have to prove it. Move on to something more productive than trying to show the religious up as intellectual midgets. They are not they are just misguided and there’s nothing you can do about it. Move on, move on,