Can you provide evidence for this claim most human societies that have been recorded have been religious, or superstitious, had gods of some sort. — Andrew4Handel

No problem! https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/meerkats2.htmhttps://defenders.org/blog/2014/07/wolves-are-even-more-socially-complex-we-thoughthttps://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/elephants/african_elephants/https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/primate-sociality-and-social-systems-58068905/

Some Christians fought against slavery 1600 years after the mainstream churches endorsed it. — Vera Mont

I didn't claim otherwise I was just pointing out the some opposed it including the most prominent abolitionists whereas David Hume philosopher and famer religious skeptic supported it.

"David Hume advised his patron, Lord Hertford to buy a slave plantation, facilitated the deal and lent £400 to one of the principal investors. And when criticised for racism in 1770, he was unmoved, writes Dr Felix Waldmann"

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/david-hume-was-brilliant-philosopher-also-racist-involved-slavery-dr-felix-waldmann-2915908

I am attacking the false dichotomy about the conduct of the religious and non religious and whether a society without religion would be more fact based, rational and humane.

I am attacking the false dichotomy about the conduct of the religious and non religious and whether a society without religion would be more fact based, rational and humane. — Andrew4Handel

Let's try it for 2000 years and find out!

Are you referring to cooperation among animals?

No one is denying that as far as I am aware we are talking about human societies and the history of humanity. We are living and communicating on a different plain to animals because we have language and ideas etc.
There is brutality among animals but also nothing to scale of what some would describe as human depravity.
We are the species most in need of a sound moral compass.

Are you referring to cooperation among animals? — Andrew4Handel

I am referring to social organizations, with families, norms, codes of behaviour and enforcement of rules.
As to physical laws, they've been around even longer. Every lemur understands gravity; every eagle has terrific depth perception; every cuttlefish knows the colour spectrum.

(I don't think you've had time to read all those articles.)

Let's try it for 2000 years and find out! — Vera Mont

They have tried it under communist regimes and in revolutionary France it could be argued to have had a worse effect than religion with a higher death toll. As I mentioned in the evolution thread the Nazis embraced the survival of the fittest which was invoked in their Aktion T4 programme ("Alles leben is kampf" )

AKT4 was where gas chambers were first used to murder hundreds of thousands of disabled people and later adopted to make the killing of millions of Jews and others easier.

We don't know where society is going. Or Whether we'll be here in a hundred years but currently it works on the based as a multi-faith and no faith democracy where lots of diverse groups have an input. I am not sure which aspects of societal "progress" atheists can lay claim to. But they seem to want to blame religion for everything bad and assume all progress is some how linked to atheism or secularism-rationalism.

I don't believe that atheists have ever started a society from scratch without the influence of prior human religions, dogmas and supernatural beliefs etc. — Andrew4Handel

All believers are atheists insofar as there are many gods, etc which they don't believe in except their own. (We disbelievers are just more consistent atheists then you believers.) Also, large complex societies based on "religious faith" alone have never been viable or lasted long. In fact, people can live a long while on bread alone but not on "faith" alone – thus, their relative values for life. Lastly, we are a superstitious species, and all that means is, like dogs, we can't help barking at shadows (à la Plato's Cave), it's how our brains are wired – so your statement, Andrew, amounts to saying 'adults have never built societies who were also once children'. :roll: To the degree cultures and societies are secular is the degree to which they have outgrown, or put away, childish things like gods, religious dogmas & superstitions (e.g. conspiracy theories, institutionalized discriminations, patriarchy, celebrity-worship, pseudo-scientism, etc). As a species, in the main, we're still only adolescents.

(I don't think you've had time to read all those articles.) — Vera Mont

Do I have to read the articles? I am well aware of pro-social animal behaviours but we are talking about humans and their well documented history. Humans aren't lemurs or wolf packs.

Maybe you are invoking a naturalistic fallacy where you believe that we should return to a state a of nature where things will be Good and natural or that things found in nature are good?

I don' think aping other animals resolves the issue. Evolution is supposed to have taken away the notion of teleology and purpose and an animals behaviour is just supposed to encourage gene replication and genes have no idea what we are doing.

That's an appeal to nature, not the naturalistic fallacy.

They have tried it under communist regimes and in revolutionary France — Andrew4Handel

No they didn't. The entire french dechristianization program only lasted about 2 years.

Most scholars would argue that the goal of the revolutionary government between 1793 and 1794 ranged from the public reclamation of the massive amount of land, power, and money held by the Church in France to the termination of religious practice and the extermination of religion itself.

It didn't work, of course. The church got all the wealth and power back as soon as the monarchy came back. In fact, they're not doing so badly now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_religious_organizations

As for the so-called communist regimes, they failed spectacularly in Russia and the Balkans and has made barely any effort in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China

A generation is nowhere near long enough for the priests to lose their stranglehold on the population.

Do I have to read the articles? I am well aware of pro-social animal behaviours but we are talking about humans and their well documented history. Humans aren't lemurs or wolf packs. — Andrew4Handel

Oh, so you're an evolution denier as well? ....Sad....

I don' think aping other animals resolves the issue. — Andrew4Handel

Aping our own heritage? How? Social behaviour is social behaviour, in all species. It has been the norm among sentient creatures for a very long time before imaginative human hairless apes invented supernatural entities.

It was a combination.

Aping our own heritage? — Vera Mont

You seem to be doing the same thing as 180Proof and selecting natural behaviours you have a preference for. But you are not being explicit enough.

However if humans are apart of nature or our behaviour is natural and if we are genetic all of our behaviour. Religion is a result of evolution and genocide.

It amounts to you saying you have a preference for certain things that happen and want more things like that to happen.

A Good time for this Dawkins Quote again:

Are you advocating a return to nature? Taking inspiration from nature or transcending nature?

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”"

You seem to be doing the same thing as 180Proof and selecting natural behaviours you have a preference for. But you are not being explicit enough. — Andrew4Handel

I picked social species at random to illustrate that family, social norms and standards of acceptable conduct predate the advent of religion. It's nothing to do with my preference; it was a simple response to your claim that religion was required to 'justify' social norms. I say it wasn't: we already had them.
What species would you prefer as a comparison?

However if humans are apart of nature or our behaviour is natural and if we are genetic all of our behaviour. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, our behaviour is natural. Yes, our depravities have natural origins. Far from perpetuating natural behaviours that worked for millions of years for other animals, and about one million years for our own species, the big brain, its imagination and its lust for patterns resulted in the invention of some elaborations of social behaviour that eventually leads to our destruction. Religion is only one of those inventions.

Religion is a result of evolution and genocide

I don't follow the genocide part.

Are you advocating a return to nature? Taking inspiration from nature or transcending nature? — Andrew4Handel

NOTA/NA/WTF are you even talking about?

I think Atheism would be praiseworthy if it was simple lack of belief. It would amount to awaiting evidence to alter ones beliefs.

But instead we Have Books like "The God Delusion" and The Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution — Andrew4Handel

I think Religiosity and believing in a deity would be praiseworthy if it was simple presence of belief. It would amount to not needing to await evidence to establish one's beliefs.

Instead, we have religious wars, persecution, discrimination, intimidation, Autodafe and inquisition in the diligent pursuing of religious beliefs. Genocide and slavery.

You see, Andrew4Handel, the knife cuts both ways. The atheists at least stop at screaming and spluttering anti-religious sentiments. The religious go way beyond that, not just one step, but a thousand steps beyond that, to defend their faith.

I call your argument biassed and not significant, once you put the atheists' actions to the Christians' and other religious'.

Religion is a result of evolution and genocide

I don't follow the genocide part. — Vera Mont

You must be totally blind then to history.

- Autodafe
- The Turkish genocide of the Kurds
- Hitler's role of murdering 6 million Jews
- Biblical references
- the Violent Christianization of most of Europe
etc.

By killing people of other religions, they either convert, or else die.

Christianity's spread in Europe in the middle ages must have decimated the continent, with the result of eradicating hundreds, if not thousands, of tribal religious.

This is what they meant to say when they said "Religion (and its spread) is a result of evolution and genocide."

My favourite call on Christianity was uttered by a God.

The Dalai Lama said, "Christianity is a beautiful religion. Too bad nobody practices it."

There you have it. By God himself.

Faith isn't restricted to a belief in gods. For example, I've noticed that a great many Americans have faith in their Constitution and the democratic process. — Vera Mont

You are employing the fallacy of "equivocation".

Faith in government, democratic process, money, is a trust. They obviously exist, and there is no one who can deny they exist. In that sense they are NOT a belief.

Faith in god is a belief.

The example you brought up is an exercise in not having a sense to pick up nuances in the meaning of words.

This phenomenon is a rampant error on this forum. You are not alone in making this mistake, repeatedly; you are in the majority.

@Andrew4Handel

I don't believe that atheists have ever started a society from scratch without the influence of prior human religions, dogmas and supernatural beliefs etc.
— Andrew4Handel
All believers are atheists insofar as there are many gods, etc which they don't believe in except their own. (We disbelievers are just more consistent atheists then you believers.) Also, large complex societies based on "religious faith" alone have never been viable or lasted long. In fact, people can live a long while on bread alone but not on "faith" alone – thus, their relative values for life. Lastly, we are a superstitious species, and all that means is, like dogs, we can't help barking at shadows (à la Plato's Cave), it's how our brains are wired – so your statement, Andrew, amounts to saying 'adults never built societies who also were once children'. :roll: To the degree cultures and societies are secular is the degree to which they have outgrown, or put away, childish things like gods, religious dogmas & superstitions (e.g. conspiracy theories, institutionalized discriminations, patriarchy, celebrity-worship, pseudo-scientism, etc). — 180 Proof

May be it's a bit of both. To start we need god (theism), but to maintain we don't need god (atheism). The ladder that must be used (to climb) and then thrown (once you reach the top) [re Wittgenstein]. By the way, I'm willing to bet my whole life's savings ($2.65 :cool: ) that we'll need god again at the end. El Rachum!

You see, Andrew4Handel, the knife cuts both ways. The atheists at least stop at screaming and spluttering anti-religious sentiments. — god must be atheist

I am not advocating religion. I tend to advocate agnosticism. I assume you are ruling out communist atrocities as being unrelated to atheism?

Doing an atrocity not in the name of gods could be defined as an atheist atrocity (tongue in cheek).

There are atrocities like the two world wars that weren't religious. They aren't the fault atheism either but they don't support the idea that secularism will lead to better things.

"Soviet Union

State atheism (gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm]) was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology.[49] This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history.[50] The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

I'd put it this way: we begin as children and need to outgrow 'naivete, ignorance and undisciplined emotional insecurities' in order to become adults striving to maturely master ourselves in order to thrive not just survive. 'Return to childhood' is often a symptom of dementia, Smith (e.g. fundie revivals). :yawn:

I'd put it this way: we begin as children and need to outgrow 'naivete, ignorance and undisciplined emotional insecurities' in order to become adults striving to maturely master ourselves in order to thrive not just survive. 'Return to childhood' is symptom of dementia, Smith (e.g. fundie revivals). :yawn: — 180 Proof

You haven't heard of the uncarved block (re Daoism) then! :cool:

The reason why a child believes in god (gullibility) is different from the reason why an octagenerian believes in god (uncertainty). So, not exactly a return to childhood - an overlap of symptoms that has in this case led to a misdiagnosis. :smile:

State atheism (gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm]) was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology.[49] This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history.[50] The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism" — Andrew4Handel

I was part of this in Hungary, between roughly 1960 and 1972, when I was 6 to 18 years of age.

There were no public executions of priests, and there were no jailing anyone because they were religious.

That is true, however, that in schools, factories and offices, we had to support atheism as the state ideology. People still remained religious; about 1/3 of the total population.

It was not a "follow atheism or die" process.

In Hungary no places of worship were destroyed by the state. Instead, they were restored from the damages incurred during wwii, and they became national monuments, a type of tourist attraction.

Unfortunately Westerners got a heavily edited and falsified view of the communist states and life there within. Much like the Hungarian state television and radio at the time depicted a dire view of the west: a dog-eat-dog world, where man is another man's wolfe, no humanity, no humanitarianism.

The difference was that Hungarians did not believe the state propaganda about life in the West, and the people in the West believed everything, lies and truths, spread by their media about life in communism.

You are employing the fallacy of "equivocation". — god must be atheist

I disagree. " the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication." It is quite true that people "believe in" things like the constitution and the law and 'the invisible hand of the market', and expect those institutions to be just and right and benevolent and invincible - in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Those things are unreal - they "exist" in the same way gods do: they are concepts in the name of which people behave in certain prescribed ways.

I don't follow the genocide part. — Vera Mont
You must be totally blind then to history. — god must be atheist

Must I? The sentence you quoted was a response to:

Religion is a result of evolution and genocide. — Andrew4Handel

I don't think those events are part of evolution; nor do they predate the invention of religion - and in no way did they cause religion.

That is true, however, that in schools, factories and offices, we had to support atheism as the state ideology. People still remained religious; about 1/3 of the total population. — god must be atheist

And, boy, did the bishops make a huge comeback once the Russians were gone! Even some little claimant to the ancient throne tried to come back. And lots of American missionaries. Much the same happened in Russia, the Ukraine, and Islam never went very far underground in the annexed eastern territories of the USSR.

I don't follow the genocide part. — Vera Mont
You must be totally blind then to history.
— god must be atheist

Must I? The sentence you quoted was a response to:
Religion is a result of evolution and genocide.
— Andrew4Handel
I don't think those events are part of evolution; nor do they predate the invention of religion - and in no way did they cause religion. — Vera Mont

You said -- please check the above quote and the originals -- that you did not understand the genocide part. That's what you stated you did not understand. So I explained the GENOCIDE part, eh? why bring in more things you don't understand and can't figure out on your own, and blame my answer for your inability of working out thoughts, as if I were a custodian of your thinking processes. And please note I inserted into the question I answered a phrase "and its spread". That is a key element in there.

I understand that you disagree with me about many, many things. That's half the fun of it. But I am getting more and more tired of arguing with you. Let's put it this way: I state my criticism of your claims, you deny the validity of my criticism, but I shan't go further into the argument, because if you did not understand my critical views the first time, you never will; not in the least because you are so doggone emotionally attached to your opinions.

In other words:
1. You say something.
2. I argue that that something is wrong.
3. You say that that something is not wrong.
and that's where the buck stops.

I won't go into "4. proving to you just once more that you are wrong", because that is the most frustrating experience on this site: going over something over and over again with somebody obstinate enough to insist that their first and wrong opinion is right.

because if you did not understand my critical views the first time, you never will; — god must be atheist

I understood them.

I understood them. — Vera Mont

I am no judge to know what you understand and what you don't. I am just going by your replies.

I am no judge to know what you understand and what you don't. — god must be atheist

Agreed.

There seems to be a clear distinction between types of lack of belief — Andrew4Handel

If there are different types of lack of belief it means that there are also different types of belief. However, they all refer to an opinion, conviction, confidence or trust that something exists or is true.

The difference between the 4 cases of lack of belief that you presented lies in the amount of evidence and/or agreement on each of them, as well as the extent to which this is shared by people. Let's take the subject of God, for instance. If you say "I don't believe in God" in front of a religious group, the people will consider it as ignorance and maybe as an insult (if they are religious fanatics). But if you say the same thing in front of an atheist group, they will find it just natural. So, if we suppose that there are as many theists as atheists in your community, your statement in general would not indicate either ignorance or irrationality.

Similarly about the Holocaust. However, the difference here is that that there is evidence about it --historical accounts, testimonies, stories, photos, etc.-- which is accepted by the majority of people, i.e. the majority of people agree about its historical truth. In this case, a statement like "I don't believe that Holocaust ever happened" will sound foolish. Yet, there are many people from what I know that share this belief!

As for "I don't believe the moon exists", if you start going around with such a statement, most probably you will end up in a madhouse! :smile:

See, it's the amount of agreement or lack of it that exists among people that makes a belief sustainable or not.

the only real lack of belief is total ignorance — Andrew4Handel

Based on what I described above, "ignorance" is only one of the characteristics or reasons of "lack of belief" and then it is itself disputable. But evidently, if I say "I don't believe that God exists", certainly does not show ignorance, since 1) the word "God" means different things to different people and 2) in its most known descriptions there is no evidence about its existence. This is called lack of evidence, not ignorance.

***

Final note: Agreement means reality. Not literally, but in the sense that if you disagree with me about something it means that your reality about it differs from mine. So, saying "I don't believe in God" reflects my reality about (the subject of) God.

I was part of this in Hungary, between roughly 1960 and 1972, when I was 6 to 18 years of age.

There were no public executions of priests, and there were no jailing anyone because they were religious — god must be atheist

But there was in other countries I don't know about Hungary but the rest is well documented. There is footage of churches being destroyed and priests being executed. But your background certainly sounds very interesting.

"According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million.[8][9] At least 106,300 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

In relation to this thread topic atheism has gone beyond being a simple lack of belief or simple disbelief and enforced.

It was not a "follow atheism or die" process. — god must be atheist

See my above info.

The overall point is that there is a lot of evidence of atheism going beyond the no burden of proof simple lack of belief and My overall point was that not only has atheism being tried as a belief (state atheism) it is has failed and caused lots of harm which does not make atheism the less harmful stance of religious versus atheists.

But I have not heard of agnostic atrocities so until I do i would hold that agnosticism is the way forward.