Society of the Godless

[Ironclad]

I am having a debate with an Xtian about the pros n cons of faith when we hit the Stalin / Pol Pot moment. All was fine and dandy until he pulled the SotG card out.
I'm kinda stuck, how to answer this one? I'm edging toward the Societies drive to further socialist ideology but it feels weak.

Anyone dealt with this group?

[Atheist-Lite]

I am having a debate with an Xtian about the pros n cons of faith when we hit the Stalin / Pol Pot moment. All was fine and dandy until he pulled the SotG card out.
I'm kinda stuck, how to answer this one? I'm edging toward the Societies drive to further socialist ideology but it feels weak.

Anyone dealt with this group?

Just tell him mass murderers make the same mistakes as ordinary murderers in that they get caught. Atheists have only recently become openly politically active. Christians have been at the mass-murdering business much longer and Blair is a free man because he used his faith card.

[Ironclad]

Perhaps I should add, the guy is trying to show that atheists are very well capable of killing in the name of atheism. Which I have debunked thus far.
This Society of the Godless is a problem.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Stalin didn't kill people to promote godlessness. He did that to further his political agenda, not atheism. The Russian Orthodox church was never outlawed in the USSR.

Pol Pot outlawed religion. He also outlawed eyeglasses. The man was a loon.

And in neither case did they call on people to believe in Darwin or die.

[klr]

Stalin didn't kill people to promote godlessness. He did that to further his political agenda, not atheism. The Russian Orthodox church was never outlawed in the USSR.

Pol Pot outlawed religion. He also outlawed eyeglasses. The man was a loon.

And in neither case did they call on people to believe in Darwin or die.

And let's not forget that the moment the Germans invaded in 1941, Stalin did an about-turn and enlisted the help of the Orthodox Church in "The Great Patriotic War".

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Stalin didn't kill people to promote godlessness. He did that to further his political agenda, not atheism. The Russian Orthodox church was never outlawed in the USSR.

Pol Pot outlawed religion. He also outlawed eyeglasses. The man was a loon.

And in neither case did they call on people to believe in Darwin or die.

And let's not forget that the moment the Germans invaded in 1941, Stalin did an about-turn and enlisted the help of the Orthodox Church in "The Great Patriotic War".

He also repeatedly invoked "Da Rodina" (Mother Russia), a term that had been officially banned before the war. He was a whore who would use anything handy to save his ass.

[klr]

Stalin didn't kill people to promote godlessness. He did that to further his political agenda, not atheism. The Russian Orthodox church was never outlawed in the USSR.

Pol Pot outlawed religion. He also outlawed eyeglasses. The man was a loon.

And in neither case did they call on people to believe in Darwin or die.

And let's not forget that the moment the Germans invaded in 1941, Stalin did an about-turn and enlisted the help of the Orthodox Church in "The Great Patriotic War".

He also repeatedly invoked "Da Rodina" (Mother Russia), a term that had been officially banned before the war. He was a whore who would use anything handy to save his ass.

In the early 1900's, he was anti-anything related to Russian imperialism, including the conflict with Japan. But by 1945 ...

The more I read about the man, the less I think pure ideology had to do with his actions, especially in the later years when he was effectively an absolute dictator. He was just a ruthless and paranoid psychopath, albeit a very intelligent one.

[Feck]

The thing about insane dictators is they are hungry for power and security organised religion has both it's not surprising that churches have either sided with dictators or been crushed by them . A better question is why if religion is such a force for good have so many insane dictators been supported by churches ?

[Ironclad]

Great replies! Thanks a bunch Ratz

[klr]

The thing about insane dictators is they are hungry for power and security organised religion has both it's not surprising that churches have either sided with dictators or been crushed by them . A better question is why if religion is such a force for good have so many insane dictators been supported by churches ?

Stalin also - by his own admission - learned a lot about how to manipulate and control people from his time in the seminary.

As to why so many dictators have been supported by churches: As long as the religious ideology is not completely at odds with the political thinking, then the church is a useful tool for "managing" the populace on a number of levels. Also, organised religion (e.g. the Catholic Church) has a long history of being anti-democratic in its outlook.

[Tero]

Point out societies behave much the same, god or not. God is mainstreamed into existing culture and ideology.

Very few people are Jesus-like.

[klr]

Point out societies behave much the same, god or not. God is mainstreamed into existing culture and ideology.

Very few people are Jesus-like.

... and formal religious organisations have historically behaved just like any other groups throughout history, being concerned principally with their own survival both at the individual and the group level.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Point out societies behave much the same, god or not. God is mainstreamed into existing culture and ideology.

Meaning, of course, that religion doesn't do anything for society that society couldn't do without religion.

[Trolldor]

Except, of course, for 'good people' doing 'evil things'.

[nellikin]

In Gog is not Great, Hitchens points out nicely that totalitarian regimes aren't godless. They merely replace a god-in-the-sky with a god-on-earth (i.e. the dictator). So the religion is replaced not with an atheism but a person-cult. All the key elements of religion are still maintained in totalitarinism (dogmatic devotion to an idol, control of the populus thought paths, ethics derived from authority - not from reasoning...)