Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:28 am  

Dally wrote:

I was talking about the mass, mass murderers. Mao and Stalin were streets ahead of Hitler...

Which is why you yourself mentioned Hitler ...

For goodness sake – try to read what you yourself post.

Dally wrote:

The chattering classes in the modern Labour Party seem to me enthusiasts when it comes to promoting secularism.

1) the nature of secularism has been pointed out to you;

2) the Labour Party, under Blair in particular, had a number of senior MPs (ie involved in the making of policy that played making it up on the hoof in accordance with their religious beliefs), and created and promoted national-level committees etc to 'integrate' faith groups into much greater involvement in social policy and provision. For instance, in 2003, Blair asked Fiona Mactaggart to chair a new 'Steering Group Reviewing the Way Government Interfaces with Faith Communities'. Given that the Labour governments also paved the way for academies and other schools with greater freedom to be religious or promote a religious ethos, it could hardly be described as having been an ardent promotor of secularism. And it also introduced contentious laws on religious discrimination – more than one person suggested these were, in some ways, an extension of the blasphemy laws to cover all Christian groups (and not just the CofE) and all other religious groups.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:45 am  

Dally wrote:

Well the biggest mass murderers in history didn't kill for religious reasons...

Irrelevant.
The question to be asking is "Of those who had a religion, did that belief make them treat people better?"

Dally wrote:

Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot - 3 did it in the name of communism (why killing your people is good for the community I am not sure) and the other was a national socialist...

You can name as many religious or non-religious mass-killers as you like, the fact still remains that belief in a religion did not stop those religious from being mass killers.
Or are you saying that Hitler limited his killing to a reasonable few million because of his religion?

Just because Stalin killed more, does not make Hitler a better person than Stalin, both were horrors.

Dally wrote:

...So, I would suggest that warped political philosophy is rather evil...

Yes ... and that warped philosophy is not limited to the irreligious.
Stick to the point.

Dally wrote:

... It suppresses religion in order to impose its evil...

It suppresses whatever it perceives as an impediment ... which may or may not include religion.
If you are failing to see that religion can be, and often is, a furtherence of power, you are seeing only half the argument.

Dally wrote:

... Bit like the modern Labour Party.

Now you're just being silly.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:57 am  

Mugwump wrote:

...For instance, I find it laughable that you use scientific successes in medicine (omitting the fact that many of the greatest advances in science were funded by and for the military) as a club with which to beat religion (the Gatling Gun was created by who again?) ...

Whoah there.
Science is a process of finding out facts, it is not a philosophy of how to live.
Science has provided amazing amounts of knowledge, whereas religion (although occasionally allowing science to continue) has produced none.

Religion tells us about gods and morals ... and fails in that purpose.

Conscience, although far too infrequently invoked, is a better guide of what to do with our knowledge, whereas religion far too often denies the existence of that knowledge (e.g. Creationism vs Evolution).

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 11:46 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

Whoah there.
Science is a process of finding out facts, it is not a philosophy of how to live.
Science has provided amazing amounts of knowledge, whereas religion (although occasionally allowing science to continue) has produced none.

Well, that's certainly your perspective.

I hear this kind of argument all the time. "Science" is fundamentally neutral and "it can be used for good or evil". But this fails to address the context in which science HAS been employed since its very inception - a fundamental component of which is warfare. The business of killing.

"Science is the process of finding out facts". But WHAT facts did scientists employed by the cigarette industry, or the RAND Corporation, or Union Carbide, or the anti-global warming lobby, or Monsanto (especially during the production of Agent Orange, Dioxin etc.), or the coal industry, or any other corporation currently fighting NOT to pay damages for the atrocious environmental and human damage science has caused uncover?

Religion tells us about gods and morals ... and fails in that purpose.

It wasn't religion which dropped the atom bomb. It wasn't religion which unleashed Sarin, Mustard or VX gas. It wasn't religion which worked tirelessly to perfect machines which kill more effeciently with each new version.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:17 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

It wasn't religion which dropped the atom bomb. It wasn't religion which unleashed Sarin, Mustard or VX gas. It wasn't religion which worked tirelessly to perfect machines which kill more effeciently with each new version.

No one ever kills in the name of science. That some organisations (including religious ones, by the way) have abused scientific advances for nefarious purposes doesn't alter that fact.

Religion is, and always has been, used as justification for war and mass murder. Science is not.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:57 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

Well, that's certainly your perspective.

I hear this kind of argument all the time. "Science" is fundamentally neutral and "it can be used for good or evil". But this fails to address the context in which science HAS been employed since its very inception - a fundamental component of which is warfare. The business of killing.

"Science is the process of finding out facts". But WHAT facts did scientists employed by the cigarette industry, or the RAND Corporation, or Union Carbide, or the anti-global warming lobby, or Monsanto (especially during the production of Agent Orange, Dioxin etc.), or the coal industry, or any other corporation currently fighting NOT to pay damages for the atrocious environmental and human damage science has caused uncover?

You are conflating science with scientists.
Science produces knowledge, it does not produce morality.
Morality can only come from people.
If you want to blame science, you need to also blame knowledge ... but that is irrational, knowledge is neither good nor bad and it remains neither good nor bad even after it has been used for good or evil.

Suppose that I know that firing a cannon into a crowd will hurt people.
If I also work out that firing four cannons at varying angles will hurt five times as many and then I go ahead and do that ... is mathematics to blame for the injuries?
No, I am to blame.

Mugwump wrote:

It wasn't religion which dropped the atom bomb. It wasn't religion which unleashed Sarin, Mustard or VX gas. It wasn't religion which worked tirelessly to perfect machines which kill more effciently with each new version.

And it wasn't science either, it was human beings.
Religion and/or faith (within those people or within others) failed to exercise the consciences of those human beings who perpetrated the act.

The point of this thread has become about whether the decline of religious observance and belief has corresponded with a decline in morality.
The facts suggest not.
Blair and Bush are a couple of good recent examples of the religious failing to engage their consciences.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:59 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Blair and Bush are a couple of good recent examples of the religious failing to engage their consciences.

IIRC both of them actually justified their decisions on religious grounds, they both said that they had prayed for guidance before recommending military action, presumably they were both told to go ahead with impunity and both now believe that a seat at the right hand of their god awaits them.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:10 pm  

''I think if you have faith about these things, then you realise that that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well.''

Anthony Blair (2006) explaining his thought process in justifying the attack on Iraq.

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:41 pm  

Rock God X wrote:

No one ever kills in the name of science.

Really? Are you not aware of any number of horrific (and quite terminal) experiments conducted on human beings which have been rationalised in scientific terms?

Re: The Guides : Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:31 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

You are conflating science with scientists.

Aren't these the rules of the game? After all, I responded to a factually incorrect and silly dig which conflated the concept of religion with the reality of human health by introducing my own silly dig which conflated the concept of science with the results of scientific study.

Science produces knowledge, it does not produce morality.
Morality can only come from people.
If you want to blame science, you need to also blame knowledge ... but that is irrational, knowledge is neither good nor bad and it remains neither good nor bad even after it has been used for good or evil.

The concept of "science" produces precisely nothing without scientists. They are fundamentally inseparable. Which is why it is simply ridiculous to suggest I shouldn't highlight the innumerable victims of scientific study. I'm not suggesting that it is scientific study alone which led to their deaths - but the fact remains that lacking the science of atomic fission there are no deaths by atomic fission.

Suppose that I know that firing a cannon into a crowd will hurt people.
If I also work out that firing four cannons at varying angles will hurt five times as many and then I go ahead and do that ... is mathematics to blame for the injuries?
No, I am to blame.

This may come as a surprise to you but when the judge sends you to prison he doesn't give your concept of mathematics - which exists in YOUR HEAD - freedom to return home. As I said - inseparable.