Saturday 5 July 2008

athiesm vs theism

I came accross this great article here.

It shows how 2,229,074,100 people died because of religion however 45,000,000 died because of atheism. Now i know that xians dont like statistics however its all there.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Mike, that was kinda cool to read. As a favor to you and your fellow atheists, i'm not going to take the time to look more closely at the numbers, nor dispute them... although, spacefoetus or lilpixie or Nick or someone else, might have already looked at, and written a response to such claims (or they might have knowledge of someone else that's done the work).


I, however, want to address something that has been presented to you earlier, which you haven't given a decent response. I'll word it pertinent to today's post.

2,229,074,100
+ 45,000,000
--------------
2,274,074,100 (that's 'billion' with a 'B'.

What is the population of the world today... over a Trillion, right?
And, of all the people that have ever lived? .... More than you and i could probably shake a stick at, would you agree?

They say that "death and taxes" are the only certain things. Well, i'm not sure that taxes are true for ALL people, but i would venture to guess that life has a "near" 100% mortality rate.

Atheism did not kill anyone that was not going to die.
Religion did not kill anyone that was not going to die.

According to your atheism, please explain to me why "nature red in tooth and claw" is ok among the animals, but when men do it, it's bad.
Again, within your atheistic worldview, give an objective definition of "bad".


On the other hand, according to Christianity, i can agree that those deaths are bad. I can even give a Biblical reasons for why it's bad and why death occurs (the wages of Sin is death).


So, in other words Mike, unless you can show why it's bad and not just a function of nature, your little rant is a nonsensical blathering.

Until next time, God Bless you.

johnny

Anonymous said...

Right, I think I'll look into this more.

Firslty, I glanced round the article and it seems very unfair. It claims that Hitler was a Christian and also seems to think that the Inquisition killed 100 million people- even though the population of Spain was 3000.

Plus, when the time comes for me to study this, bear in mind I'm not defending religion but Christianity- and I'll then present Christianity vs. atheism and we'll see who "wins".

See ya soon!

Anonymous said...

Actually Space, it does not say the inquisition was 100 million.. that was the one above... the one where the explorers killed indians with small pox.

For the Inq., it says probably less than 1,000.


But yes, i agree that it should be Christian v. atheist... why should we get credit for Muslims and Shoguns? lol

together in Christ,
johnny

Anonymous said...

Hmm, I wouldn'y trust this source.

I really only researched the "christian atrocities"- The Crusades caused 9 million deaths, but this was shared between Christians, Muslims and Jews.

hitler WASN'T a Christian, no matter how much fundy atheists want him to be.

the Inquisition cost about 3,000 lives.

He mentiones "biological warfare" between the Indains and Christians- firstly, this is VERy contravesial, and the source he uses even admits that eh could be wrong. Nevertheless to blame the extermination of the Indains on Christianity is ridiculous. 100 million deaths? Maybe, but I doubt it. 100 Million deaths because of Christianty? No way.

And he counts the War on Iraq as a Christian atrocity. Oh, so separation of church and state is the best policy...untill we want to blame a war on religion.

He also leaves out atheistic countries like Korea, Laos, China ect. dishonesty much?

I would like to point out that there have been more Christian theocricies than atheist ones. The guy calculates 90, million for atheism based on two atheist govs..

Christianity gets 130 million based on over 4 Christian govs.

If there was a equal comparison, ie 4 atheistic govs and 4 christian govs, then I wonder what the results would be?

Anway, just because something causes death doesn't make it untrue. As yer man abover me pointed out, if atheism is true then causing death isn't really "bad" at all.

Anonymous said...

And yeah, the inquisition thing was my bad.

Anonymous said...

I've heard of fudging statistics before, however this takes it to an all knew level...

Anonymous said...

Good morning Mike,

I recalled a "poem" that fits well with your topic. I heard it from Ravi Zacharias in his talk entitled 'Why I'm Not an Atheist'.
It is from Steve Turner called 'The Creed for the Modern Thinker' (i'm only going to share the ending, empahasis mine.)


'If chance be the father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear, "State of Emergency!!; Sniper Kills Ten; Troops on Rampage; Youths Go Looting; Bomb Blasts School", it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.'.


All of the atrocities that were listed by teapotatheist, are only atrocities if there actually is an objective moral standard.

So please tell me Mike, since you don't believe in an Absolute Moral Law Giver, where does the Absolute Moral Law come from, that you seem to be using when you agree with teapotatheist on the judgement of these exterminations?


God Bless,
johnny

Tom Jagels said...

"What is the population of the world today... over a Trillion, right?"

wut?

Anonymous said...

that's all?? 6.7 Billion?

I thought it was way higher than that.


johnny

Anonymous said...

I am glad to see that they didnt bring out the usual numbers of the Spainish inquisition and witch hunts as killing millions.

However there are a few problems. He says in the title "Secondly, I am not going to split hairs over

"things done in the name of atheism" and "things done in the name of theism" versus "things done by atheists or theists." I am going with theists versus atheists, because as soon as we parse up the theists ('but which theists were SINCERE' or 'but MY theism is more peaceful than THEIRS'), we will have to parse up the atheists ('but Pol Pot was a totalitarian scumbag, which most atheists aren't'), and then things will just get confusing"

The problem with this methodology is that it becomes possible for a religion to take the blame for something done for irreligious reasons. For example the mass murder of the Native AMericans was about gold and land and colonies for the various Europian crowns. Christian missionaries to the Native AMericans were generally peaceful, and most certainly were NOT responsible for the smallpox infected blankets.

The Rawandian genocide he even admits was not religious in nature. And George Bush's decision to invade Iraq was about his irrational fear that Saddam had(or soon would have had) weapons of mass destruction, it was a bad decision(caused, perhaps by bad intelligence) but not a religious atrocity. Although to be fair much of the violence in Iraq has been caused by Muslim extremists, however its incredibly difficult to diferentiate between the people who attack us because they follow a fundimlist version of Islam and those who do so because they dont like us occupying their country.

Furthermore if you keep to strictly "things done by theists" vs. "things done by athiests" its immidently obvious that theists are going to 'win' given the fact only 16% is currently athiest(using his statistics) And that number was consideribly lower for most recorded history. I think its a safe guestmation that about 5% of the population thats ever lived has been athiest. Interestingly he figures about 5% of the deaths he listed were caused by athiests. Perhaps the problem isnt athiesm or theism, but people.