Quote of the Day

_{Barry Arrington

April 19, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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Some [men] kill because their faiths explicitly command them to do so, some kill though their faiths explicitly forbid them to do so, and some kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them. Polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill – indeed, this last class is especially prolifically homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century is to be consulted. Men kill for their gods, or for their God, or because there is no God and the destiny of humanity must be shaped by gigantic exertions of human will . . .

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities . . . Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy or ambition.

Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 12-13

Can anyone possibly doubt that these claims are true. They are practically self-evident. Thus, the currency of the “religion is the cause of all violence” dogma currently fashionable among the new atheists is all but inexplicable on rational grounds.

Comments

What does this post have to do with intelligent design? Surely it just feeds into the argument that IDists are religiously - not scientifically - motivated.
Actually it just points to the fact that people like Richard Dawkins are religiously, not scientifically, motivated. This post has nothing to do with ID, but is a very interesting topic of conversation for most regular readers (from both sides of the debate), as shown by the passionate response.uoflcard_{April 20, 2009
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Those calling "outrage!" that atheists are more likely to kill are missing the point. I also think the statistics of who killed more, atheists or theists, is superfluous to the actual information. Richard Dawkins and other famous atheists try to spread naturalism, not to spread truth or knowledge, but because they hate religion and feel the world would be better without it. Go on Dawkin's website and you see/read things like a picture of the WTC towers, standing gloriously, with the words "IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT RELIGION". Today is the 10th aniversary of the school shooting at Columbine. The two kids, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were not professed Christians, Jews (although one of them came from a Jewish family), Muslims. They just hated everyone. I don't know if they were atheists, although Harris seemed to believe he would go on to some other form of his life. But Harris' 30-40 page journal frequently talks about natural selection, and the shirt he wore the day of the killings read "Natural Selection". If he had more knowledge about bomb building, the bombs he built would have killed hundreds. It would have been the 2nd worst attack in the continental United States ever, and would not have been religiously motivated. btw, I'm not saying "Darwinism" or "naturalism" is to blame. While I didn't see the need for the the slant towards atheist murder in the original post, the general point stands perfectly clear, that people kill for many, many reasons, not just for religious motivations. Any honest, rational person can see this, and this basically defeats the entire motivation of the advancement of atheism of people like Dawkins. A world without religion would be filled with just as much murder as it is now.uoflcard_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO and mauka, do not actually defend the atheists, but takes the hyperbole in my last sentence literally. Sorry guys; didn’t mean to throw you off. But see the angryoldfatman at [13] for examples (which could be multiplied endlessly) of the sort of thing my admittedly hyperbolic statement was aimed at.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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PaulT asks what this point has to do with science. Nothing in particular. Is that all you’ve got Paul?Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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The point of the post is obvious enough. Killers are motivated by a wide variety of causes, and thus the notion that religious belief must be singled out as the primary cause of violence is not only historically inaccurate, it is also logically absurd. All of the comments from the atheists (or at least those defending the new atheist position) validate the thesis of the post in spades – the new atheist position cannot be defended on rational grounds, which I will demonstrate in the next few comments. Let’s start with Nathaniel. Nathaniel asks if I seriously contend that atheists are responsible for more killings than theists. Strawman. Hart never said that. He merely pointed to the evidence of the 20th century to demonstrate that atheists such as Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot were “prolifically homicidal.” If tens of millions of dead bodies at the hands of these monsters is not evidence that Hart is correct, then you are hopeless and there is no sense in arguing with you further. “Who killed more” is not a question Hart asks. His point is that “both kill.” Then Nathaniel asks, “How do you see that atheists doing whatever they want (unlike the real world, where atheists are just as responsible and caring as anyone else) is “self-evident?” Another strawman. Hart never said that all atheists do whatever they want. He said that “SOME kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them.” Yes, this is self-evident, and I need point no futher than Mao, Stalin or Pol Pot, again, to prove the point. Finally, Nathaniel asks, “How have I, as an atheist, managed not to kill or hurt anyone in my life if violence comes so easy to me? Can you explain that?” Yet another strawman. Again, Hart never said that all atheists are killers, just that some of them are because they do not believe themselves to be constrained by morality. Nathaniel, it seems that the best you can do is to try to distract people away from the argument by setting up and knocking down one strawman after another. Thank you for proving my point.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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The quote from David Hart makes a lot of sense. The part which seems to have raised hackles in certain quarters is this sentence:
It [Religion] also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful.
Some readers took this to mean that Hart was saying that atheists had no reason not to kill. If he really meant that, then he was obviously wrong. Now, I haven't read Hart's book, but I very much doubt that this was what he meant. What Hart seems to be saying is that there are certain difficult situations in everyday life where killing someone might seem to make excellent sense from a non-religious perspective, on rational grounds, but where a religious person (and here I include Buddhists) would have to say, "No! That's wrong." Here are some cases that Hart may have had in mind: (1) Refusing to kill a severely disabled newborn or unborn baby whose "quality of life" is deemed to be low; (2) Refusing to kill an elderly Alzheimer's patient who is no longer aware of his/her surroundings, and whose family is unable to foot the medical bill for his/her upkeep; (3) Showing mercy to a hardened, unrepentant young criminal who has killed innocent people on multiple occasions, by commuting his sentence from death to life imprisonment, in the hope that he will eventually come to his senses, repent of his sins, and spend the rest of his life behind bars witnessing to other prisoners and helping them to put their lives back together. I'm not saying that a secular humanist would do none of these things, but I am saying that I would expect such behavior only of a religious person. What about a Buddhist? Many Buddhists are not theists, but I certainly wouldn't call them irreligious. Buddhists believe in an inherently moral universe where "What goes around, comes around," and where evildoers are stuck on the roundabout of birth and rebirth, until they learn to conquer their self-centered desires. On the subject of religious atrocities, here are two articles I'd recommend to readers. The first article, written by a non-believer, is the humorous but very thoughtful article, "Which Has Killed More People - Christianity Or Gun Control?" by Matthew White (a researcher who has spent a lot of time investigating atrocities) at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/gunsorxp.htm . White is not a scholar, but he is an impartial investigator, and he puts forward some very sensible criteria in his article for determining the degree to which a religion should be held responsible for a war or atrocity. Readers might like to check out what he says on Hitler and Stalin. (By the way, I just came across an interesting online extract here from William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959), which makes a good case for the proposition that Hitler's philosophy, including his view that the supreme leader is above the morals of ordinary men, owed much to the philosopher Nietzsche. "That in the end Hitler considered himself the superman of Nietzsche's prophecy cannot be doubted," writes Shirer. To be fair, the author points out that Hitler's anti-Semitism cannot be attributed to Nietzsche, who "was never an anti-Semite.") The second article I'd recommend is "Does Christianity Cause War?" by Nick Megoran at http://rfiaonline.org/extras/articles/319-does-christianity-cause-war . Dr. Nick Megoran is a political geographer and a lecturer in human geography at Newcastle University. Dr. Megoran's candor is evident in the following quote from his article:
As a scholar largely preoccupied with the study of war and conflict, I regard the implication of religion in violence as the greatest intellectual challenge to the claim that God exists.
I invite readers to peruse his article and draw their own conclusions. Some readers have asked for documentary evidence that atheists claim religion is the cause of all or even most wars. How about this article, "Religion - The Cause Of All Wars" by Dr. Charles Sabillon at http://www.buzzle.com/articles/religion-cause-of-all-wars.html ? Finally, readers who are looking for an academic study providing a rigorous attempt to quantify the number of deaths from the major wars in history and the degree to which organized religion is responsible might do well to check out a report entitled "God and War: An Audit and An Exploration," compiled by Dr. Greg Austen, Todd Ktranock and Thom Oommen, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/04/war_audit_pdf/pdf/war_audit.pdf in response to a request by the BBC to investigate how many wars had been caused by religion. While I would disagree with some points made by the study's authors, their research certainly represents a valuable addition to the debate on the role of religion in war. The authors conclude:
[T]his study has concluded that very few if any wars in the past 100 years have been purely religious wars. Looking at the casualty figures for the past ten years, despite genocidal atrocities in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, there is clearly a transformation away from the levels of mass death reached during the great wars and revolutions of the early twentieth century. Despite the negativity around the role of religion in violent conflict, this study has demonstrated that the picture is much more complicated.
Matthew White's article "Blame and Responsibility" at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-faq.htm#Blame is also worth reading for its discussion of the role of religion. He also gives some deatiled statistics on various estimates of massacre tolls throughout history at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#20worst , http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm and http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatv.htm .vjtorley_{April 20, 2009
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angryoldfatman, Not only do your quotes fail to support your thesis, but one of them isn't even from an atheist. Charles Kimball is an ordained Baptist minister. Good job.mauka_{April 20, 2009
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Nathaniel: Here's another database of evidenceBorne_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO wrote:
I don’t think any of the so-called “new atheists” would agree that “religion is the cause of all violence”. They might say that religion causes a lot of violence, but it would be ludicrous to say that it causes ALL violence. If it really is “dogma”, surely you can provide some quotes from prominent atheists to support your position?
I think there is a logical path from religion to doing terrible things.... There's a logical path that says, if you really, really, really believe that your God, Allah, whoever it is, wants you to do something--and you'll go to heaven, you'll go to Paradise if you do it--then it's possible for an entirely logical, rational person to do hideous things. - Richard Dawkins It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history. - Charles Kimball However, religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance-born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God-is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss. - Sam Harris BGOG wrote:
Seems to me that all atheists nowadays are classed as ‘new atheists’ as it makes us all seem like shallow dimwits who all just read the God Delusion one day and decided to follow the herd.
Go to any site that allows comments on religion (Youtube is a good one) and read. You'll find pretty much what you've described. If the prominent atheists like Dawkins, Harris, et al, don't believe religion causes all violence, they're doing a poor job of informing their sycophants of it.angryoldfatman_{April 20, 2009
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Are you kidding me? Do you seriously think that atheists are responsible for more killings than the religious? Do you have ANY data to back that up with? Here you go. Don't even have to mention Hitler who I would not call an atheist but rather a Jew and Christian hating pagan.tribune7_{April 20, 2009
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Atheist Atrocities Frightening Stats About Atheists http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP1KpNEeRYUbornagain77_{April 20, 2009
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lol, "It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful" I must disagree with this bit, Buddhism is all about compassion towards others, because all others are practically yourself. As religion can defined to exclude Buddhism, then one must think that anyone that has religion as their "sole compelling" reason hasn't really ventured into the wide world.Nnoel_{April 20, 2009
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It's great to see the recent surge in posts about religion, a refreshing alternative to science, which can get boring at times. But moderators should be alert to any insults to worshipers in The Church of Atheism.Adel DiBagno_{April 20, 2009
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You said it BGOG. The "new atheists" are the herd you refer to.tragic mishap_{April 20, 2009
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What is a 'new atheist' anyway? Does anyone actually know any? Most of my close friends are atheist, and have been for twenty/thirty years. Are they new or old atheists? Is there a cut-off point? Seems to me that all atheists nowadays are classed as 'new atheists' as it makes us all seem like shallow dimwits who all just read the God Delusion one day and decided to follow the herd.BGOG_{April 20, 2009
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Well, that's the ID way of making a point. Call Hitler an atheist and ignore the fact that nearly all of the 21st century killing is being done because of religion. Meanwhile, all of the human to human killing in the entire history of the human race falls far short of the death and destruction caused by the Black Plague, Influenza, Malaria and other epidemics. And, as Michael Behe says in "The Edge of Evolution", "Malaria was intentionally designed." I assume that goes for the Plague, Influenze and other disease causing organisms. No human made them, ID claims that Darwinian evolution couldn't make them, that only leaves one source - and you worship Him.djmullen_{April 20, 2009
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Barry Arrington:
Thus, the currency of the “religion is the cause of all violence” dogma currently fashionable among the new atheists is all but inexplicable on rational grounds.
Who among the "new atheists" has claimed that religion is the cause of all violence? Names and direct quotes, please.mauka_{April 20, 2009
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I agreed with most of that quote up until you strawmanned the new atheists. I don't think any of the so-called "new atheists" would agree that "religion is the cause of all violence". They might say that religion causes a lot of violence, but it would be ludicrous to say that it causes ALL violence. If it really is "dogma", surely you can provide some quotes from prominent atheists to support your position?DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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What does this post have to do with intelligent design? Surely it just feeds into the argument that IDists are religiously - not scientifically - motivated.PaulT_{April 20, 2009
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How about "you have terrible aim"? More seriously, I think you're missing the point of the post. Or maybe you want to change the subject lest yet another New Atheist talking point gets exposed as a bunch of garbage. The motivations to cause harm or kill are tremendous in number and damn diverse. As Barry says, what was posted was practically self-evident. Turning that into an accusation that you, personally, have killed someone is some impressive mental gymnastics. (As for data to back that up, The Irrational Atheist goes a long way in providing data, among other books.)nullasalus_{April 19, 2009
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Are you kidding me? Do you seriously think that atheists are responsible for more killings than the religious? Do you have ANY data to back that up with? Or would you have to go with the usual lie - Hitler was an atheist? Also, you KNOW that "[...] some kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them" is completely and obviously wrong. How do you see that atheists doing whatever they want (unlike the real world, where atheists are just as responsible and caring as anyone else) is "self-evident"? How have I, as an atheist, managed not to kill or hurt anyone in my life if violence comes so easy to me? Can you explain that?Nathaniel_{April 19, 2009
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