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5/14/2015 11:53:07 PM
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I for one never made that argument. The concept of morality itself is too ambiguous of a term to define objectively for statistical purposes. I too think that religion or lack of is merely what you make it. This is evidenced by the fact that there are good and bad people in every ideology and worldview, along with everything in between. That said however, your argument itself is a bit fallacious. For one, the assumption that incarceration rates are a good standard for judging morality by--which, in itself, is too ambiguous for statistical purposes--given that many people are framed, wrongly convicted, and/or guilty only of--for lack of a better term--"stupid" laws like the War on Drugs. That's not to mention the backgrounds of each of these individuals which may or may not mitigate their guilt to varying degrees, and the fact that many people who have committed the same crimes have not necessarily been incarcerated, given the unjustness of the system where money acts as a license to break the law. Just some things to think about. And then there is the fact that your statistics do not account for the amount of prisoners who converted *after* committing their crime, and therefore weren't under the guidance of their newfound religion at the time they were criminals. And then there is the fact that this only accounts for the United States and at a particular time. It does not account for the global population of religious and irreligious across the ages. In fact, I'd wager from a historical perspective that atheists have murdered more people than any individual religion ever has. The Marxist massacres perpetrated by atheistic despots and regimes of the 20th century have a higher body count than anything that was ever possible for religions prior to the advent of the industrial revolution. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong along have a combined bodycount ranging around 100 million. And that's not taking into account the atrocities that their regimes continued to carry out even after their deaths, as well as the atrocities of Cambodia, the Viet Cong, Fidel Castro & Che Guavara, and other secular regimes. To be blunt, it wasn't a religious group that put my Orthodox people in the gulags. It was your kind. Now, that's not to say that atheism produces bad people or that you need religion to be good, but just to point out how unreliable your statistical method was in light of history, as well as the whole notion of statistically examining something as ambiguous with so many factors like morality which can't possibly be examined objectively in a statistical context.
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  • The one thing to add is that some prisoners probably fake belief in God to convince people they are a changed person, which would skew the statistics.

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  • Those dictators' actions had nothing to do with atheism. They were not exterminations in the name of riding theist or spreading atheism. Those were political and military actions that had nothing to do with their beliefs/view on religion. There is a big difference between killing in the name of God to rid the world of infidels. Versus Commiting genocide to maintain power or control people. The second has nothing to do with atheism.

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  • If those dictators' actions had nothing to do with their atheism, then how can you with such certainty claim that the crimes committed by those incarcerated inmates had something to do with their religion? In fact, that was the point I was originally making--that any attempt to statistically analyze something as ambiguous as morality is futile by its very nature. It is not enough to classify something or someone by their worldview alone, since in most cases it cannot definitively be proven that such worldview--religious or irreligious--was directly responsible for their actions. In other words, I cannot prove that the atrocities committed by atheistic regimes throughout history were the direct result of their atheism anymore than you can prove that the crimes committed by the incarcerated were the result of their religion. If religion can be blamed for the actions of its adherents despite a lack of proof that their religion made them do it, then irreligion can also be blamed for the actions of the irreligious since it follow that if religion is responsible for behavior, then lack of religion is responsible for the lack of behavior ("you can't be good without God"). Both views are pretty stupid, unsubstantiated by logic, and generalized assumptions. But such is the product of trying to statistically analyze something as ambiguous as morality. And that's the point I was making all along: that any attempt is stupid and unscientific. Furthermore, I would recommend that you study Marxism more in depth. There is more to it than just "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." An atheistic worldview, particularly anti-theism due to religion's associated with the old, are each vital components of the ideology that motivated these despots--particularly among the Leninist school of Marxist thought. It had everything to do with their views on religion and hatred of it. I would also point out that you are shifting grounds and I am aware of it. First it was about whether or not you need religion to be good, which you based off of incarceration rates, and now it is about the religious murder of infidels. Most of the incarcerated are not in prison for trying to kill infidels out of some misplaced religious zeal. So really you are a bit all over the place. But again, so is this whole topic since we are trying to objectify and statistically analyze something that is way too ambiguous and complex to be examined in such a way to begin with.

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  • Edited by DemonWarfare: 5/15/2015 2:27:08 AM
    [quote]If those dictators' actions had nothing to do with their atheism, then how can you with such certainty claim that the crimes committed by those incarcerated inmates had something to do with their religion?[/quote]This is from my OP .... "My main point with this, it doesn't matter what your belief system is because belief systems don't necessarily correlate with morals."

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  • And that's what I too was saying. Except I was making an example by the inverse. I think we just misunderstood each other.

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  • Probably, i admire your input on things though. Very well thought out and an interesting perspective even if we disagree in some areas

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