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Evil Atheist Death Count

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Epicurus:
Evil Atheist Death Count..

I'm tired of hearing this arguement on the plethera of audio stimuli, and what I'm almost as tired of is the arguements against it.  A while ago I had these thoughts and I'd like to throw them out there.  I have no idea if this has been brought up by anyone so I'd love to get a like if it has.

Lets say for sake of arguement that:

* *Deaths that are tributed to atheist were actually done by atheists
* *Atheists have killed more or an equal amount to religious people
From and perhaps some other ideas this religious people (and I use that term for a reason) come to this,
"Atheism has killed just as many or more people as religion has so it is no better or worse."

The usual response to this goes something like this,
"While atheist have killed people in the past, it wasn't atheism that influenced them to do that because it is merely the lack of a belief in a god(s)."  Which I agree with.  However, after this it almost never gets anywhere and when it does it too often turns into a childish "nu-uh - uh-uh" arguements.  I think we can do better.

I don't know why but it came to me that religion and atheism aren't antonyms, even thought they are usually set up against each other in debates.  I know this is an obvious fact and I have no idea why this seemed like such a deep realization at the time.  It's just as obvious to see that the actual antonym to athiesm is theism.   

Sense atheism can't cause death without additional philosophies added to it, it make just as much sense to say that theism can't either.  This, along with the fact that they are the true opposite postions, should be mentioned first as the response.  A better response might go something like this..

"actually you're falsely opposing religion with atheism.  Religions are a network of complex sets of beliefs while atheism is a position on the existence of supernatural beings.  They are two very different things.  A better idea to compare to atheism would be theism.  Sense both atheism and theism only consider one question neither of them can cause someone to kill another person without adding other philosophies to them."      

Hopefully sense you admit that their underpinnig belief hold an equally nuetral moral position as your lack of belief they will see this point.  I fear however that they will have trouble swallowing the idea sense it leads to a conclusion that destroys the very point of the conversation they started.  Another interesting avenue could be to ask the theist if they thought that theism is responsible for any deaths. 

If this point is excepted you then sit at a rather nice spot.  Being able to seperate atheism and theism from their companion philisophical views allows you to seperate the real cause of the deaths from yourself.  For instance, atheism has been tied to ideas like communism in the past, but I'm not a communist.  And theres no reason that atheism has to lead to communism.

I then began thinking about what is the closest this I have to religion to compare with it.  The best thing I could find was secular humanism.  While not a perfect match it does serve some of the same functions as most tradiational religions and is derived from atheism in a similar way that religion is from theism.  From this I though of a nice challange to all the relgious people out there.

"If you can come to me with a person that killed someone because of their secular humanism I will acknowledge the possible danger of my philosophy and will do my best to insure that it never happens again."
 
Finally, if both atheist and theist can have the compacity to kill what is the real problem that cuases this.  The best thing that I have heard is dogma.  Dangerous religions and philosophies like communism seem to rely on dogma strongly for their proper propagation, while more mild religions and philosophies downplay dogma or try to get rid of it all together.  However, I guess that is another topic.  Just wanted to get some feed back and see if everthing made sense.

Proto:
There are studies which show that violence and cruelty can be linked strongly to moral idealism (at group level) and high self-esteem at individual level.

The reality is that any form of moral idealism that divides into a them and us situation can ultimately lead to violence and cruelty. Certain religious dogmas have been guilty of this, as have certain other forms of moral idealism - including basic tribalism, racism, political ideologies etc.

Anything that is "anti" something else really, including being anti-religious, can cause a death count.

The battle between "them" and "us" is the mind's worst disease.

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