Man gets scentenced to 70 days in prison for burning a Koran

So you are saying that atheism is slightly better? Big whoop. It is just believing in one less God.

For 100 women a year it does. You're just not seeing the connection.

Of course this society still treats many women as property, it is only more subtle about it. There is still a glass ceiling. Women still get paid less for the same job. They still take the husband's name. They are still sexualised from an early age. They still are the more frequent victim of domestic abuse and they still get inadequate legal protection from that.

No, we sent those to Afghanistan in the 80's. But the reason Muslims in those countries go ape-**** at the burning of a Koran in the West is not because they are Muslim, but because they are illiterate backward people living in a poor country that we have been bombing because we decided that's for their own good (of course, the real motive is that it is for our good). They are the Muslim equivalent of the Daily Mail and Sun reader, if you will. Moreover, they are Daily Mail readers with no policing. The only reason that they killed UN workers and our Daily Mail readers over here don't kill, say, Eastern European immigrants (much; in Germany asylum hostels have been firebombed) is because we actually have an effective law enforcement system. But if that packed up tomorrow you'd be surprised at how quickly atheists will kill, and how many tribal/trivial reasons they find for it.

I disagree. Your logic is sound, but in reality it us not that simple. The Amish use the same book and systemic beliefs to preach absolute non-violence. Some atheists have no moral centre at all, because they have no personal one and no systemic one. People are not equations. You cannot simply subtract a variable X and end up with Human-X.

No, that is your way. It is not every atheist's way (and no cheating by suddenly adding the variable "science").

Not belief, scientific opinion. People are psychologically more complex than you make out. You do not turn a homicidal fundamentalist into a tolerant pacifist just by subtracting religion from the equation. There are reasons why he integrated that belief system in a particular homicidal fundamentalist way in the first place, just as another integrates the very same belief system to become a self-effacing charitable supporter of the poor and destitute. These reasons exist in atheists and even scientists in equal measure. My argument is that religion makes NO difference --neither in a good way or a bad way. People were people before it came along. It is simply an epiphenomenon of human nature.

 

Nothing much subtle about next weeks *vomit* wedding. Now your daughter too may grow up and be lucky enough to become a Royal's wife. The ambition is heart warming...

 

Well, the fun fact is that you wont normally see agnostics claiming "religion is evil". Only millitant atheists claim this. As confirming wheather god exists or not scientifically is probably impossible, atheism is essentially a faith. Believing something does not exists is still a belief. "Religion is evil" is a doctorline which attempts to justify this faith. And what about the killings in communist era? Surely commies aint religious.

 

I see what you're saying but I think you're missing my point. An animal rights terrorist or environmental terrorist can hold religious, or not hold religion. The former have yet one more belief set which not only justifies but (generally) directly encourages them to murder people. The latter do not have this.

I think atheism is massively better tbh, but in this particular issue yeah, it's slightly better.

I'd like evidence/sources for the comment on unequal pay for the same job, and also the inadequate protection thing too please. Anecdotal is OK for the latter, I trust you. You see, I think that most of the above quote is not true, simple as that.

But it's not just that. The Doctor and the PhD physicist who hilariously tried to bring religious intolerance to Glasgow airport a few years back, those were highly educated men with varied backgrounds. The thing they had in common was religion, and it was their religion that motivated them to try and murder people. If both of them had been irreligious, I sincerely doubt they would have done anything other than keep going with their middle class lives.

You can use most of the books to preach non-violence, or you can use them to justify rape, murder, slavery, the list goes on. I know people aren't equations, I'm just saying that having this religion-meme kicking about which gives us yet one more reason to do lots of horrible things doesn't seem to be working out for the species too well. I suppose to distill this into your terms, I'm not saying that Atheists have a better systemic morality, I'm saying they have no systemic moral programming whatsoever, but that that is preferable to using any of the major religions for systemic morality.

More later, i gots to go learn about atoms now.

 

On equal pay: http://www.managers.org.uk/news/equal-pay-women-still-57-years-away

On lack of societal and legal protection from abusive ex-partners: http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-articles.asp?section=00010001002200400001&itemid=1402

Come on, son! You know full well that those two men had mental health issues. If religious ideas had not galvanised them into terrorist action, then sooner or later they would have done something else equally nutty.

Yet the very same religion-meme kicking about can also give people one more reason to do lots of good things. That's how it seems to work for the Mennonites, for instance. Seems to me that this religion-meme does not direct people one way or another. Seems to me that people interpret the religion-meme according to their a priori disposition, attitudes, motivations and beliefs.

Religion does not shape people's beliefs and attitudes; people shape their (interpretation of) religion according to their personal beliefs and attitudes. Gotta love that cognitive central coherence.

 

It's hard to be 100% the way that article is written, but it seems to me that it says that a male manager in general earns more than a female manager. That is not inequality, unless they are doing the exact same role and had set salaries as opposed to asking for a certain amount. Paying a man and a women in the exact same role, in the exact same company, different amounts of money is, as you no doubt know, illegal. To suggest that a women who manages a boots store in skegness and a man who manages HSBC headquarters in London getting payed different amounts is unequal is nonsense, but it's nonsense that is very often perpetuated.

To an extent I agree, social protection isn't perfect, although that's basically down to a legal system which takes too long to deal with the problem. Having a legal system which is underfunded is hardly the same as having a culture that endorses the rape of women by their husbands, stones women who don't wear the hijab, and hangs women who're raped by a man who isn't their husband for adultary, while letting off the man with little more than a slap on the wrist.

You're right about the mental issues, they believed in an invisible man in the sky who would be happy if they blew up an airport. I don't agree with your conclusion that sooner or later they would have done something though. You can't ignore the influence of religion upon people forever.

True, the books tend to encourage good and bad. But a bunch of liberal religious folk holding a bakesale or running a soup kitchen doesn't really cancel out thousands of years of violence.

It directs people both ways, atheism doesn't direct people at all. I'd rather have less murder and fewer bakesales than more murder but cakes every tuesday. The bad direction just outweighs the good.

Have you met a religious convert? When I came to uni my roommate for the first few months was just getting into orthodox christianity, it's most certainly changed his beliefs and attitudes. When he arrived to university he was a fairly standard 18 year old university student, within a year he wouldn't ask my girlfriend to pick up anything which might injure her hands (hot dishes etc.) because they were my property and he didn't want to damage something that belonged to me. Seems to me that religion has a pretty big impact upon people's beliefs and attitudes.

 

At the risk of injecting myself into an otherwise excellent debate, an interesting thing I've observed is just how many astronauts are Christian, many of them very devout. Almost all of them have advanced degrees in physics, medicine, chemistry, or some other hard science, yet none of them have any difficulty reconciling their faith against their scientific backgrounds. In fact, as Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, William Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman each took turns reading from the first 10 verses of Genesis. On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin took communion on the moon. Science is not antithetical to faith; they are complimentary.

Make of that what you will, but I see the relationship between violence and religion as correlation, not causation. If the argument is that atheism offers one less reason to kill, is the flip side that religion offers one more reason to do good?

 

@spec: I would argue that your roommate already had that predisposition and that religion just galvanised it and gave it form. He would just have found another cultural niche that resonated with his personal beliefs.

You argue that religion influences people; I argue that religion is a product of people's pre-existing beliefs that end up being formalised into socio-cultural groupthink for like-minded people. God did not create man in his image; man created God in his.

As such I think that religion actualises nothing that was not already present in people. It may facilitate it, and even trigger it, but if it was not religion then it would have been something else. Atheists are the same old flawed human beings as religious believers. But they just do their evil for reasons that you understand better (even if you do not necessarily approve of them), while the motivations of the religious seem to you pretty alien. So you say: "Those crazy religious people. See what religion makes them do". Meanwhile, people from other cultures may say: "Those crazy Westerners. See what materialism makes them do". Same ****, different deity.

 

I've disagreed with a few things you've said in this thread, but that is an excellent quote. Well said

 

It doesn't help when very little is said to discredit who act using their religion as a banner. When the Catholic institution fails to acknowledge and actively falicitates the molestation on young boys performed by many of its priests it sends out a very bad message about (and to) Catholics despite the misdemeanours being performed by a very small group of people. Religious leaders and people who feel the extremists are acting against their religion need to speak out against them. It's a bit of a pity in life that often the most sensible people are the least vocal.