War Crimes of Atheism

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I imagine the OP is intended to readdress the balance and to highlight that war crimes still occur in an environment without religion. On this point I fully accept that terrible things have happened in history where religion was not a motivator, such as greed or lust for power.

It is not atheism or theism for that matter that with singularity precipitates war crim ...[text shortened]... direction, though balances out perhaps after the focus on Biblical war crimes in the other thread).

It doesn't matter how many times you write a reasoned and correct summary such as this, people will still bang on about how bad certain types of people are compared with other certain types of people. It's ridiculous, really.

@sonship said

"If there is a root of evil that became a terrifying force that almost brought the world to destruction in the first half of the twentieth century, it is the anti-religious ideologies of Germany and Russia, North Vietnam, and North Korea. It takes almost willful blindness to invert this historical fact, and to suppose that the religions that were persecuted and crushed by those brutal forces are the real sources of evil in the world."

- Keith Ward

The root evil is thinking one has a monopoly on absolute truth. Whenever a group of people think they have a monopoly on absolute truth, it is not long before they think they have an absolute duty and a right to impose it on others.

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Oh the irony.

@moonbus said
The root evil is thinking one has a monopoly on absolute truth. Whenever a group of people think they have a monopoly on absolute truth, it is not long before they think they have an absolute duty and a right to impose it on others.

I don't fully agree because I have a belief that there is an absolute truth but I will say that I do believe that there is a lot of truth to what you say.

Most problems in our age are created by people who want to impose their own specific world view, from their own culture and ideology, onto those of different cultures and identities who should follow a path that is local and self determined.

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Stalin would kill any who was a believing Christian eventually as it was the fact that any believed that was a threat to him.

I'd also imagine the former seminarian had a personal grudge and was influenced by demons.

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So not only does Duchess apologize for Chinese Communists, she does so as well for Soviet Communists, but at least to a lesser degree. Ethnonationalism isn't erased easily, after all.

Are you or have you ever been a Communist, Duchess?

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I think you lack any sense of self-criticism.

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Well, we clearly disagree about this.

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I accept fully that, in your view, I lack self-criticism.