Which belief has caused more evil in the world?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Poll question: Which belief has caused more evil in the world?

[freetobegay]

1. Other

Being able to post polls!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

11. Which belief has caused more evil in the world?

The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to a badly ignored energy grid. Still, the billions pour overseas and everywhere that is not the grid. Time to take action on your own... www.homepower.com

[Eye and Monkey]

31. The belief that "Might Makes Right".

[JanMichael]

2. This Atheist doesn't think this is appropriate.

Sorry, it's baiting.

[RC]

17. Yeah, but it is true.

Atheist usually live more Christian lives than most "good" Christians.

[MrSlayer]

3. How many wars were launched in the name of atheism?

This isn't flame it's simple fact. Money isn't the root of all evil, religion is.

[JanMichael]

5. It doesn't matter really. Fact is we need our Liberal Religious comrades.

Especially right now, let's leave the theological arguments in the coffee house.

[freetobegay]

7. Well

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/masons/communist.html

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

27. All of them...

Whether those who started the wars knew it or not.

[pnb]

36. Religion itself isn't the problem though

Religion is merely the tool used by the power hungry for more power and indeed often money. If it weren't religion, I think there would have just been other excuses for many wars that have occured.

[Astarho]

4. I think the "I'm right and you're wrong"

belief has caused more harm than either of those two (although it has been known to overlap with both).

Especially when it combines with "Your wrong beliefs must be purged."

[hlthe2b]

6. I would argue more evil done "in the name of religion" NOT based on

Religious beliefs. There is a difference and I think most (including agnostics and atheists) acknowledge this.


Sadly though, there are some who wish to paint in broad brushstrokes, as if all who profess a belief in God are cut from one mold. After all, who is to say that those who committed evil or launched crusades in the name of religion, were not truly atheists, using religion as their tool to manipulate?

And to someone earlier who pointed out how divisive this kind of thread is becoming, I heartily agree.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. Probably binary thinking when we get right down to it...

Or as Molly Ivins would say.."There are two kinds of people in the world..those that think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't."

[Bombtrack]

9. Just a note:You don't have to be an atheist to be against religion

or just not believing in religion. Organized religion perturbes the hell out of me but I believe in god and therfor am not an atheist or even an agnostic

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. Which belief has caused more evil in the world?

It's not a gang.... it's a club.

http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=10099

>>From 1975 - 1980, I was a member of the Religious Right. I had joined as a Catholic Traditionalist, determined to rescue the Vatican from the clutches of Satan. It didn't take me long to realize the radical element of the Religious Right wanted to gain political power of our government and turn our democratic way of life into a "Pax Americana" or a "Holy American Empire."<<

[Bombtrack]

13. I voted for religion

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Superiority

the thought that one's own beliefs were superior in every way to another's, and that that belief is the only one allowed. One often sees this in religious beliefs, but political beliefs have also, from time to time, fit the criterium.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. Belief

>>the thought that one's own beliefs were superior in every way to another's, and that that belief is the only one allowed. One often sees this in religious beliefs, but political beliefs have also, from time to time, fit the criterium.<<

Imagine if the animal kingdom had religion... you would be hard pressed to find any safe areas to go camping... I am sure they would have a real problem with us... "unprovoked".

[Nobody]

14. The belief that some people are better than others

Whether it's because some people can trace their family tree back to the Norman Conquest of England or perhaps because their grandparents started a business that made millions, or maybe because some people's skin is a lighter shade of tan, people thinking that they're better than others has been the cause of a lot of misery.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

25. "The belief that some people are better than others"

>>Whether it's because some people can trace their family tree back to the Norman Conquest of England or perhaps because their grandparents started a business that made millions, or maybe because some people's skin is a lighter shade of tan, people thinking that they're better than others has been the cause of a lot of misery.<<


And not a single issue mentioned would impress the man they profess to follow... emulate... worship.



No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
--A.J.P. Taylor

[madrchsod]

16. fear

number one evil in the world

[OnionPatch]

18. Have to agree

with those of you who say it's not so much religion as the insistence that your religion is the only right one. It's hard to believe that after all these centuries we've not become enlightened about this.

BTW, I'm not an atheist and I believe Jesus was the first true liberal! Too bad his message has become so warped as to be a force against all the things he wanted to teach.

[Tamiati]

37. Who warped it?

Yes, it is too bad that his message as an elightened one became so warped in the dogma of catholism. There I said it, what other bible has been used for centuries to control the masses? We the meek, shall inherit the earth or will we? Is that just another part of their master plan?

Any Masons posting out there? I'd like to hear from any member of that secret society. Active or not. Chances are I won't though, as they are all consumed with having all & being all in the name of "God".

"The spirit of God is within, not of brick, straw & buildings"

[RoyGBiv]

19. False Dichotomy

Atheism is, by definition, not organized and so could hardly spur any kind of movement that would lead to a specific evil action or event. However, it could certainly be shown than atheism was a component of certain evils, although likely not a primary force in those evils.

Further, many associations of those pushing a philosophy or world view could be termed a religion. In that sense, the problem is not religion as we commonly view it, i.e. a view of the nature of the universe, the existence of God or gods, etc., but of presenting one world view as the correct one and all others as false and in need of destruction.

IMO, the thirst for power is the source of evil, and people use various tools in seeking that power. Religion is one of those tools, but it is not necessarily the source of the quest.

I would say that no religion has "caused" evil. I would say that people have used religion in evil enterprises, but I do not think it is necessary or wise to broadly condemn "religion" as a whole.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

20. I didn't present a dichotomy

I listed two beliefs, religon and atheism, and asked which of those two beliefs caused more evil in the world.


http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=dichotomy

[RoyGBiv]

21. Well, okay...

But when I'm presented with two choices like this, that's how I usually take it.

[Djinn]

22. I'm an avowed atheist

but I'm not deluded enough to think that had organised religion never existed we'd be living in some kind of pacifist utopia.

We'd have found something else to blow each other up for - it's HUMAN nature not religion that keeps us at each others throats

[dubyaD40web]

23. nobody ever started a war by saying "No god is on our side"

Like Djinn, I agree that we'd have found other reasons.
However, I feel that religion makes for such an easy excuse ("they're just heathens with no souls anyway, like animals" or "they don't believe in our god, so they must be evil and out to destroy our society and civilization").

It makes it easier to talk people into killing other people when you can use irrational beliefs to convince them of irrational things. Short of self-defense, you will never be able to use logic and reason to talk a nation into going to war.

Same goes for most other evil, but it's hard to dispute that war is the ultimate evil.

[The Magistrate]

24. Though It Is My Custome To Belabor Believers On Occassion

A variety of Communist outrages could, if one were so inclined, be imputed to atheism, as that was the official doctrine of the movement....

[sangh0]

26. 30 million starved in Mao's Great Famine

.

[Djinn]

28. I NEVER agree with sangh0

ever ever ever BUT the point that Mao (and Stalin amaongst others) slaughtered millions does illustrate that power and the desire to attain or keep it has more to do with most war/violence than religion.

Even in those conflicts in which the cause is ostensibly religion it's really power - take the Ireland/Northern Ireland conflict - while on a simplictic level it was sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants, it had it's seeds in the fact that the Protestants had all the political/social and economic power, anayone that thinks all the IRA (and now the offshoots) and the Orangemen were devout religious followers is being blinded to the real issues.

[sangh0]

35. Thanks for the endorsement!

:yourock:

[Feanorcurufinwe]

29. Atheism is not communism, communism is not atheism.

A variety of Communist outrages could, if one were so inclined, be imputed to atheism

And a variety of Nazi outrages could, if one were so inclined, be imputed to Chritianity, but that imputation would be equally false.

[The Magistrate]

34. Honestly, Sir

While there is no reason to ascribe Communismn to all atheists, there is abundant cause to ascribe atheism to all Communists. It was official doctrine of the Bolsheviks, and a great many actively anti-religious measures were enforced by that Party, particularly in its early days. It is true that, under the impetus of Hitler's invasion, Stalin rather revived the cult of Russian Orthodoxy, as a military measure for building moral, since these measures previously undertaken had not been too popular among the people, and also that a greater degree of tolerance was practiced in this question by his heirs.

The Nazi question is an interesting one, for it is true that a great proportion of the Hitlerite atrocities were carried out by Christians, and Hitler had been raised a Catholic. An excellent case could be made that in setting out to exterminate European Jewry, Hitler did, at bottom, nothing more than put on a modern industrial footing an old dream of Medieval Europe, rather as Mr. Bell did for speaking by magic over great distances, and the Messers. Wright did for the old dream of flight.

However, it would not be correct to ascribe the motivation of Hitler and his followers to Christianity, for in fact, their beliefs and motivations were such that it would not be wholly unfair to describe Nazism as "the dirty little secret of The New Age." These people were crankish mystics and occultists, possessed of a delusional view of cosmic history and a racism that was, at bottom, a thoroughly debased and undigested version of Gnosticism, were determined to reinstitute the worship of old Norse (read, in their minds, Aryan) divinities, and were given to a variety of food faddisms and other quack nostrums.

It is my view that religion has been an incredibly lethal force in human affairs throughout history, almost certainly doing more harm in its organized forms than has atheism, but it must be said in fairness that religion has had a considerable head start in any such head to head competition. It is very difficult to identify atheism in its presently accepted form much before the beginning of the eighteenth century: its usage prior to that generally indicates not a disbelief in any deity, but a disbelief in some particular deity or group of deities that most everyone in the disbeliever's vicinity were convinced beyond question was extant and supreme.

[AgadorSparticus]

30. oops. nevermind.

[jpgray]

32. Beliefs don't cause evil, people do

The Israelis and Palestinians would still kill each other if they were not Jews and Muslims, respectively. The religious divide can heighten and increase the power of the evil we do, but it can't fairly be called a cause of it. The tenets of most religions would preclude most of the violence done in their name.

It is my opinion that if religion were not there to legitimize the acts of those who seek power, something else would be there to fill the vacuum.

[SOteric]

33. Greed and lust for power, land and assets.