this is one of the reasons why religion is dangerous

[_Zoidberg]

Coggs, you failed to do what I asked you to do and give me a clear-cut number of people who died as a result of Stalin's intention. Or explain how these numbers were obtained. Are you seriously suggesting that Solzhenitsyn thought 60 million people were executed? Giving a bunch of names won't do it, sorry. I want to know how these deaths were documented.

I knew that the clarification in my previous post would be in vain.

Your double standard is so obvious it's getting ridiculous. Bush invaded Iraq, and yet he can't be blamed for a single death? By the same logic you could completely exonerate Stalin. I'm sure he thought that his political opponents deserved their ill fate.

[_MishMagnet]

Find me a Christian dictator that murdered millions.

Oh, I know! How about God??

[_Yong Xi]

Find me a Christian dictator that murdered millions.

Oh, I know! How about God??

Perhaps, but is it technically correct? God doesn't worship Jesus so He couldn't be a Christian in the strictest sense. OTOH, He probably believes in the Virgin Birth because supposedly God was there during conception (or so LDS postulate).

I get your point, however.

[_Coggins7]

Coggs, you failed to do what I asked you to do and give me a clear-cut number of people who died as a result of Stalin's intention. Or explain how these numbers were obtained. Are you seriously suggesting that Solzhenitsyn thought 60 million people were executed? Giving a bunch of names won't do it, sorry. I want to know how these deaths were documented.

I knew that the clarification in my previous post would be in vain.

Your double standard is so obvious it's getting ridiculous. Bush invaded Iraq, and yet he can't be blamed for a single death? By the same logic you could completely exonerate Stalin. I'm sure he thought that his political opponents deserved their ill fate.

Sorry, but I haven't read all of the sources which Dr. Rummel uses. When I have 10 years free, I plan to do that.

Who gives a tinker's damn what his intention was? Good Heaven's, leftists have been using the "but what were the intentions" argument to sugar coat every human catastrophe they have ever created for so long its apparently become little more than a trope. What were his intentions? If I order that no middle class farmers are to receive food, and that anyone caught feeding them is to be executed or sent to Gulag, and in the end, 20 million people die of starvation or related complications, what do "intentions" matter? If Stalin only intended to kill 10 million, or 7 million, and another 10 or so million got caught in the meat grinder, how does Stalin escape indictment? If I throw a fragmentation grenade into a room intending to kill 3 or 4 Catholics, but end up killing another 5 or 6 who were in the room, am I to be blamed only for the deaths of the ones I intended to kill?

As to Bush, Bush invaded Iraq, a country we had been at war with continuously for the previous decade, because it was a central hub in the general war on Islamism (it being a terrorist training camp haven, as well as having significant WMD programs in the past that were thought to still be operational), a war started by enemy combatants against us and in which innocent civilians were its primary targets. Stalin killed his own civilian population in vast numbers-he was at war with his own people, as was Lenin and the Soviet dictators who came after Stalin. This is not war in the sense of the war in which America is now engaged, or was engaged in WWII. This is an inherent feature of Socialism, and is what will always happne when one attempts to level an entire society to a single economic and social mean.

[_beastie]

Well, Heavenly Father and Mother must be really sorry parents. A third of their children rebelled against them with full knowledge of what they were doing. Of the two thirds that managed to squeak through to this planet, apparently most are so naturally horrendous that without the Big Stick of religion they resort to mass murder, given enough power.

[_Coggins7]

Some very interesting comments from Adolf Hitler, that wascally fascist and anti-communist:

There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia.... I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will

1

The historical fun doesn't stop there:

I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun.... I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.5

2


1. Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels (New York, Stein and Day, 1982), p. 236.

2. Ibid., p. 197.


Ayn Rand said it well:

It is a tragic irony of our time that the two worst, bloodiest tribes in history, the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Soviet Russia, both of whom are motivated by brute powerlust and a crudely materialistic greed for the unearned, show respect for the power of philosophy (they call it "ideology") and spend billions of their looted wealth on propaganda and indoctrination, realizing that man's mind is their most dangerous enemy and it is man's mind that they have to destroy — while the United States and the other countries of the West, who claim to believe in the superiority of the human spirit over matter, neglect philosophy, despise ideas, starve the best minds of the young, offer nothing but the stalest slogans of a materialistic altruism in the form of global giveaways, and wonder why they are losing the world to the thugs.

Ahem...

[_Bryan Inks]

Well gee. Let's examine all the atrocities that dictators that were atheists, such as Stalin, perpetrated on the world. I suspect that the millions he killed were a few more then the JWs that die because of their religious belief. Sorry man, but adhernets to atheism has posed more threat and perpetrated more death on man kind then religion has, by far.

And then let's compare to the millions that were killed in the Christian Crusades or the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Hunts.

One the one hand, you have Atheists who killed because their of their political views.

On the other hand, you have Christians who killed because an invisible phallus in the clouds told them to.

I'll side with Stalin, thank you very much.

[_dartagnan]

One the one hand, you have Atheists who killed because their of their political views.

On the other hand, you have Christians who killed because an invisible phallus in the clouds told them to.

I'll side with Stalin, thank you very much.

But this is false. The Crusades and most of the "Christian" examples you could pull up were just as much political as those by atheists and had nothing to do with people suddenly receiving visions from God to go kill. This is such a blatant misrepresentation of history. As I said before, religion was often used as a tool by political leaders, but nobody in the Crusades fought because they said God told them to. The Pope asked people to volunteer themselves to fight for their brothers who were suffering. A minority took matters into their own hands, but not with the consent of the church. All in all, the Crusades were very much a defensive maneuver to save Christianity from destruction. Two thrids of its territories had been wiped out by Islam before the Church decided to do something in response. Hence, the Crusades.

[_Zoidberg]

Ayn Rand said it well:

It is a tragic irony of our time that the two worst, bloodiest tribes in history, the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Soviet Russia, both of whom are motivated by brute powerlust and a crudely materialistic greed for the unearned, show respect for the power of philosophy (they call it "ideology") and spend billions of their looted wealth on propaganda and indoctrination, realizing that man's mind is their most dangerous enemy and it is man's mind that they have to destroy — while the United States and the other countries of the West, who claim to believe in the superiority of the human spirit over matter, neglect philosophy, despise ideas, starve the best minds of the young, offer nothing but the stalest slogans of a materialistic altruism in the form of global giveaways, and wonder why they are losing the world to the thugs.

Ahem...

The tragic irony is that you don't even know who you are quoting. Ayn Rand said it well:

"Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason."

"every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny."

Wait, it gets better: Leonard Peikoff, whose work you also quoted, although he shares your anti-communistic views and doesn't know the difference between communism and socialism either, said:

"You are probably wondering here: "What about Communism? Isn't it a logical, scientific, atheistic philosophy, and yet doesn't it lead straight to totalitarianism?" The short answer to this is: Communism is not an expression of logic or science, but the exact opposite. Despite all its anti-religious posturings, Communism is nothing but a modern derivative of religion: it agrees with the essence of religion on every key issue, then merely gives that essence a new outward veneer or cover-up.
"

And here we have the ominous parallels. Notice how the things they object to in both religion and totalitarianism is the suppression of logic, reason, and individuality. It's pretty sad when your own sources turn against you, isn't it, Coggs? On a side note, although Peikoff hates liberals just like you, he hates conservatives even more and recommends voting only for Democrats and staying as far away as possible from Republicans who you seem to have a soft spot for. Why? Because Republicans tend to be religious.

Case closed. Now would be a good time to retreat with your tail between your legs and stop derailing the thread with your political rants. Bye-bye.

[_Bryan Inks]

Cause and effect. Look at Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and on and on. Had they had moral religious groundings would they have become what they became? I do not know for sure. However, the system Stalin supported was systematically atheistic. Are you arguing that this had nothing at all to do with his ease and comfort in slaughtering his fellow men and women?

I guess it depends on how seriously they took the Old Testament. If they took it as literally as the JWs take the "no blood" thing, we might have had a Stalin who had people killed for flicking on a light switch on the Sabbath, for talking back to their parents, for having premarital sex or committing adultery, or we might have had a Stalin go and take over cities and slaughter every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and chicken, because their land had been "promised" to him by a voice in his head. He might have instituted slavery, and allowed slaveholders to have sex at will with their slave girls. He might have had all homosexuals killed. I guess a heck of a lot might have been possible had Stalin been predisposed to take the Old Testament as a literal and desirable pattern by which to base his tyrannical regime.

Wow what a rabbit trail. Can you demonstrate mass killings similar to Stalin by any religious group that adheres to these ideas? The fact is, there have been despots that were not restrained by religious beliefs that killed millions. Can you demonstrate a similar religious person that did such things? One comparable to Staling will do. Not even Islamic terrorists come close. Though I will grant that given the chance they might.

Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, the leadership in Darfur, several Catholic Popes, Martin Bormann, Radislav Krstić, Slobodan Milošević, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, Athanase Seromba, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, Hassan Ngeze, Ali Hassan al-Majid, Augusto Pinochet. . . the list goes on.

When you look at the list of people convicted of Genocide, nearly every single one of them was religious. In fact, I can only find two that have no mention of a religion or religious upbrining.

So, in the 20th-21st century, as it was in the Dark Ages, the religious are the nut-jobs that are killing most people.