More religious violence: India

[August]

Originally Posted by Rilder

Name one war started by atheists?

WW2. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini all atheists...

Originally Posted by August

WW2. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini all atheists...

I thought hitler was that whole "Germany is God's true empire" or something.

[Konovalov]

My point of this thread was to voice my despair at the occassional stupidity of all humanity as evidenced in my comment below.

Originally Posted by Konovalov

We really can be cruel to each other over the most stupid of things.

I didn't post here to apportion blame to any one religion, non-religion, or race. Please lets not turn this into a "which religion/non-religion has killed more people" kind of thing. Pretty please?

Originally Posted by Konovalov

My point of this thread was to voice my despair at the occassional stupidity of all humanity as evidenced in my comment below.

I didn't post here to apportion blame to any one religion, non-religion, or race. Please lets not turn this into a "which religion/non-religion has killed more people" kind of thing. Pretty please?

Point is: Humanity Sucks we need an alien race to enslave us for awhile. :p

[Hitman]

Name one war started by atheists?

All wars have been started and continued for reasons that have little to do with religion. Power, money, whatever you want. Religion just served as an excuse, and if the religion was already violent and aggressive, the better for the promotors of the war.

[Skybird]

Nothing better than having piety on your side when ripping human bodies into pieces.

"Gott will es!"

"Für Gott und Vaterland!"

"Gott mit uns!"

Is there one language in which these phrases have not been yelled from generals, kings, politicians, soldiers' throats?

At least atheists are more honest than the rest of the bunch. They do not claim a deity is accusing and forgiving them the committing of the bloodbath they are about to unleash eventually.

Remember the good ol' days when we were bringing Roman civilization to stinking gauls! :p

[Frame57]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Nothing better than having piety on your side when ripping human bodies into pieces.

"Gott will es!"

"Für Gott und Vaterland!"

"Gott mit uns!"

Is there one language in which these phrases have not been yelled from generals, kings, politicians, soldiers' throats?

At least atheists are more honest than the rest of the bunch. They do not claim a deity is accusing and forgiving them the committing of the bloodbath they are about to unleash eventually.

Klingon

[Castout]

Originally Posted by Hitman

All wars have been started and continued for reasons that have little to do with religion. Power, money, whatever you want. Religion just served as an excuse, and if the religion was already violent and aggressive, the better for the promotors of the war.

Well said. Religion has been abused again and again and again and again and again and again and again all to the end of time.

What happens in India is very saddening indeed. I wonder why the politician and the police are not doing anything to protect the victims and the minority. And why the hell the whole world has turned their back on Ossetia.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by Castout

What happens in India is very saddening indeed. I wonder why the politician and the police are not doing anything to protect the victims and the minority. And why the hell the whole world has turned their back on Ossetia.

Probably because no one has figured out a way to make money off of either.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Rather than seeing this thread become a general flame against religion, I would like some perspective on the nature of India's religious culture and how it affects Christians and the overall state of the nation in general, if someone would be so kind

Plz?

[Skybird]

that is a very complex matter since Hinduism is the oldest of the main world religions, and is "blessed" with an almost insane ammount of scriptures and written tradition. for a general overview I would very conservatively recommend to try wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism

Buddhism by some is compared to Hinduism like jesus is compared to the Judaic tradition: both men served as some kind of reformers of the established conservative thinking, and by that were turned by history into founders of parallel traditions that separated from the original lineage. Both men lived at roughly the same time, both men have parallels in thinking, and both men made the orthodox order their enemies. There are religion-scientist claiming that before the timeframe of the four gospels begin (before his 30th birthday), Jesus maybe travelled to India and was influenced by buddhist thinking, which would not surprise me since the parallels between buddha and Jesus (not the church!) are surprisingly unhidden, just that they expressed themselves in different cultural symbols and languages, of course. But that can only be seen if one does not obey the claim that the church dogma represents Jesus' cause.

The most prominent difference is that where Judaism and Christian Church tradition are monotheistic (as Islam, which is the youngest of all these traditions), Hinduism (the oldest) is multitheistic and Buddhism is nontheistic.

For a brief comparison between Hinduism and Indian Buddhism, again simply try wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Hinduism

But there are partial parallels between Hinduism and many other Asian traditions as well. Also, Buddhism has many different faces, some are more dogmatic and compare to the superstitious "I give buddha so buddha gives me" exchange trade mentality you often see in the popular beliefs of rural populations whose interest lies in having close ties to their deities so that they do gbet the weather effects they need to have a nice harvest, others are more abstract, or pragmatic, and do not depend on belief in the classical religious sense (Ch'an maybe being the most obvious example). See the "see also" paragraph in the first Wikipedia article. Taoism and Confucianism need to be named here for comparison to Hinduism, since both have developed influence far beyond China. the old Hinduistic tradition of the Vedic scriptures you find practically all over Asia, even if hidden in different terms and names. their cultural influence over the course of history is hard to be overestimated.

Hinduism is the most dominant religion in India, I think around 90%, with Buddhism today just being an almost non-influential subgroup (ranking amongst the remaining 10%, which also are Christians, and muslims). the classcial Indian culture was almost wiped out during the Islamic invasion and conquest from the 10th to 12th century. the modern animosities between Islam and Hinduism, that finally led to the split of Pakistan and the ongoing conflict between Pakistan and India, have their roots in that agression. India'S history goes back almost 9 millenia, and the history of Hinduism goes back at least 5 millenia. Compared to that, Buddha and Christ (2 millenia) are rebellious youngsters almost, and Muhammad (1.5 millenia) a baby.

[Morts]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Yep, the truth hurts.

-S

wow...you'd think a grown man (:rotfl would have something else to do all day than preach on how atheist's and democrats are the root of all evil

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by August

WW2. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini all atheists...

Where did you hear that drivel? Hitler was a Roman-Catholic and Stalin was a Deist. Mussolini was an Atheist, though (or so he said; he was very anti-Catholic, that's for sure; he might have been trying to oppose the Vatican's power in this way; who knows).

Here's a few snaps of Hitler's beliefs:

http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Ca...lersfaith.html

Stalin wrote himself that he rejected the idea of a Christian god or Jesus' existance. He did, however, believe there might be a god. He called himself a Deist, but I'd be edging more towards Agnostic for him.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Your religion by the way leads to greater violence - wars. Germany WWII. The religion of land grab. Atheists usually degrade into religions of self satisfaction. A much more dangerous religion than any in the world.

I'll take Christianity any day! Much much safer.

-S

See my post above.

Hitler was not an Atheist. That's a myth that the Christians started, just like the idea that he was an Evolutionist. They're just trying to disown him and everything he did.

And Christianity is one of the worst religions out there. I mean: NINE CRUSADES? THREE INQUISITIONS? Add these twelve things together, and over a million people died. That's not including all the attacks done on Protestants by the French, Germans, or Italians, either, let alone the large number of witchcraft trials held the world over.

Look at this case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier

What a ludicrous religion Christianity is!

Here's something funny and true at the same time: