The atheist’s comments continue an irresponsible pattern of demonizing one religion while celebrating the one he grew up with
How many millions of deaths has the “fundamentally decent” religion been responsible for so far?
A little preliminary research; The Crusades: 1-9 million French Wars of Religion: 2-4 million The Thirty Years War: 3-12 million War of the Three Kingdoms: 315-868 thousand The Eighty Years War: 600-700 thousand German Peasants’ War: 100-200 thousand
Which totals out at: 16.24 million people taking the average of the high and low estimates, WWI would be 18.5 million by the same metric for reference.
Things I can’t find numbers for in a quick search: The Reconquest of Spain The various Inquisitions Excess mortality rate from anti-birth control advocacy (ie excess spread of STDs).
Things I’ve thought of but don’t have time to go looking for: Violence in the Bible that actually happened Roman persecution of non-Christians Violence perpetrated by Christians between the fall of Rome and the Crusades Deaths from intentional medical neglect favoring proselytizing over medical care (Teresa comes to mind) Whatever proportion of the Native American Genocide and Holocaust should be attributed to Christianity
The USA killed millions of secular revutionaries in the name of anti communism and Christianity, which is a large part of the reason why there are so many right wing extremist Muslims in the first place so you can add those millions and the ones caused by the Muslims to Christianity too
It’s the same shit though, just with emphasis on different parts. What a twat.
Sure, there are people that are largely normal yet still hold a Christian or Muslim faith, but then there are sects and cults of both that are oppressive and abusive.
Neither is “fundamentally decent”.
I agree
Dawkins calls out women’s and LGBTQ+ rights being a fundamental issue for all Islam
It’s a fundamental issue for a whole lot of the “fundamentally decent” religion too.
See multiple Christian countries in Africa.
Don’t pretend that Islam has a monopoly on bigotry and hate when it comes to religions.
All abrahamic religions are equally terrible on those issues. If you look at the fundamentalists they all believe the same. And there’s moderate wings of those religions that are better on those issues. The specific religion has little bearing on this. You can’t even claim there’s a relation to religion at all, even in the atheist USSR they went back and forth on those issues for political expediency reasons.
The context of the discussion was contemporary UK and in that respect Islam does have a worse problem even though, as part of the secular UK, almost all Muslims do not attempt to enforce their beliefs on the rest of society
If you look at the death toll in the present then no, they are not equal.
The death tolls are more tied to whichever empire happened to have a certain religion as its dominant religion as opposed to characteristics of the religion itself.
And then there’s the tricky bit of attribution. Were the crusades strictly driven by religion, or was it about control over trade routes? Is the British Empire a Christian Empire or was it more of a capitalist enterprise even if the head of state is also the head of the church? Was Mohammed driven by religious fervor when he started his conquests or was it imperialism? Was the genocide of the Rohingya done because of Buddhist teachings or because of a military junta trying to hold on to power? Do we start tallying the deaths by the Roman Empire under Christianity from 313 AD, or 323 AD? Can we just attribute what Israel is doing in Gaza to Judaism? Etc.
Honestly I wouldn’t even know which religion would be the most murderous if you looked at all of human history.
This guy has well and truly lost the plot. Sad to see, really.
He is right.
Atheists are murdered for being atheists in 12 countries.
All 12 are muslim.
That’s going to change pretty soon, if Donnyboy wins again. Saying that Muslims somehow have a monopoly on religious extremism is just ludicrous. Many Muslim countries, unfortunately are ruled by oppressive regimes that use religion as a tool of oppression. Incidentally (or not) a lot of those regimes are also the result of the US overthrowing democratic governments.
You cant be real.
Read this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
12 Muslim states officially murder atheists. Zero Christian States. Or any other.
Dawkins is right and you are delusional.
That doesn’t address any of the points I made.
Oh well, a well-known figure in our community is an oddball. Really does not matter as he doesn’t have any authority to dictate the beliefs of atheists as would a Pastor or the Pope. One of the many perks of not having a hierarchy baked into your belief system. Nothing Dawkins says affects my beliefs beyond the simple matter of my opinion of the man.
His statements of Christianity being “fundamentally decent” has no effect on me considering it “fundamentally no better than Smallpox”, a view I hold toward religion in general.
In the same way that “regular Christians” and “regular Muslims” need to denounce their idiots and evil doers, athiests need to do the same. It doesn’t matter if the individual holds no real power. If a public figure associated with your movement does wrong, failure to denounce it leads others to associate the ideas with the entire movement.
There’s a reason people associate Mormonism with polygamy, Catholics with pedophilia, and Muslims and evangelicals with their own flavors of religious fascism.
Fair enough.
I’m distinctly and expressly opposed to the downplaying of the exceptional harm done by religious faith and Christianity especially. It isn’t “fundamentally decent”, if anything it’s fundamentally abhorrent and antithetical to human well-being. As stated in my original comment it is no better than Smallpox, and to expand on it I believe that it should face the same fate as Smallpox.
im not sure why dawkins said this, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the atheism advocacy work he’s done
I’m sorry, my reading comprehension is lacking today. What exactly is the author upset about?
Dawkins favouring Christianity over Islam? Islam not being given more rights in non-islamic countries? That all religions should be hated equally? Cultural nationalism? US batshit crazy fundamentalists? All of the above?
In particular, I find it a little silly that someone asking for their identity to be respected doesn’t like it when someone else would prefer their own cultural identity over others. More so when their argument against this is that only a few extremists in power killing people are at fault, while the rest are peacefully living their lives.
I get why the author would be upset with Dawkins, I understand it. But their exposition is seriously flawed.
I think he’s getting at how Christianity fundamentally teaches turn the other cheek and Islam teaches eye for an eye. Also there’s a lot of stuff about killing infidels which is selectively at odds with the living peacefully. Don’t really know though, happy to be enlightened
Christianity fundamentally teaches people: worship Jesus or else face an eternity of torture. Something Dawkins should be aware of when he calls it decent.
12 countries kill atheists today. All 12 Muslim.
What’s your point? That Christians are good because there aren’t any Christian countries in 2024 where atheist specifically aren’t given capital punishment?
All the murder and oppression in their god’s name as long as it doesn’t involve atheists is all that it takes to be “fundamentally decent?”
I thought hell as we know it with the fire pits and burning flesh was inserted in the Middle Ages to scare people, not by Jesus. I don’t think he mentioned it in that sense at all. Please someone tell me if this is wrong
There’s plenty of killing infidels on either side. Maybe Christianity already having passed several reformations might make it fundamentally more stable than Islam, but it depends on what the interpretation of fundamental is. Alternatively, the evolution of society when dominated by Christian beliefs over Islamic might seem more favourable to him. Perhaps not being stoned in the streets for promoting atheism might also be a deciding factor. Or maybe he likes churches, architecturally speaking.
There are multiple aspects that can be considered and i don’t know the guy well enough to say exactly what he means.
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Both sides are bad with their killing infidels. Christianity might not be as directly violent about it, but it has had its moments in recent history. Alan Turing is a famous enough example of the means and methods used in this direction. Less famous are native and minority sterilizations en masse backed by religious “charities”, the specifics of which i can’t recall at the moment.
Though eugenics isn’t behaviour specific to religion, it seems to require cult like beliefs in order to enact in large amounts. Nazi Germany, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao and maybe even now with the Uyghur, removing deviants isn’t something Christianity alone can claim ignorance of.
He’s right. Islam today is a much bigger threat to humanity than Christianity
both are
I’m thinking dawkins is talking about the words in the books, not the actions of it’s peoples
I think Dawkins biggest problem is he doesnt know how to converse with people in the modern age.
Hes getting too old, we need to find him his relay partner to pass the baton to a new generation
He lied to me, just to read his books
I blame the stroke, tbh.
I heard he touched a poop for $20.
He has always been cringy
He did come across like that, yes. I guess in part because he’s prominently know for being an atheist, which is not much of an accomolishment in and of itself
For advocating atheism at a level of discourse not seen often. And for being an author of some very good books on the subject.
Hes done more for the cause of atheism in our time than most people will ever be as accomplished for anything. Him being an atheist is a fact that is well known about him, it iself is not what has given him prominence in our time
Oh and he coined the term meme.
And then theres all that stuff about evolution he was able to educate everyone on.
The evolution bit was Darwin, easy to confuse the names :p (I hope you were joking)
No i meant what i said. Im not sure you understand or you are joking and i honestly i think and i cannot tell which one so heres something for you to consider because i accept it the facts in question
The following list of publications by Richard Dawkins is a chronological list of papers, articles, essays and books published by British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
(Quote from Wikipedia. Most of my knowledge comes from what i remember on wikipedia but i dont have a lot of it memorized. For what its worth)
I wasn’t joking, I honestly didn’t know him as an evolutionary biologist because all public appearances I took a glance at were focused on his talking about atheism in a way that more often than not was hard to watch. So I would feel his unique selling point towards the (non-scientific) public were his debates regarding (a)theism.
And looking at the statement that this post is about, I feel that I was right to always see him as not really worth spending too much time on. :/
