and it doesn't matter which god they blame, or if they blame any gods at all.

The left isn't biased against religion as a whole, just suspicious of anyone who spouts a lot of it because that person sounds like a fundy.

Friday's events kinds of puts this in perspective.

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

Lost boys seeking glory.

The Oklahoma City bombing was nothing to do with religion.

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

Although Breitbart will inform you that he was an atheist.

Since you won't post your source, here it is.

Breitbart? Series?

But to assume that a website I have never visited is my source is a little much.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mcveigh%20%22science%20is%20my%20religion%22

and your Breitbart link isn't even the first result.

Timothy McVeigh + The Turner Diaries + Christian Identity Movement. Because, until you actually read about what his motivation and goals actually were, you are seriously just too profoundly ignorant of the facts to discuss the issue.

The sorts of "faith" that justify murder are readily available in any flavor. The fundamentalist religious flavors happen to be the most popular.

Much like today, many simply faked belief to pacify the devout superstionists. Deism was code for atheism.

Others are that it is a means of control, usually against women.

It tells the oppressed to be complacent and follow the rules of their oppressors and in the next life they'll be rewarded, instead of standing up for themselves today.

It goes against critical thought and science, and instead uses stories and magic as reasoning for why things are.

It rewards blind faith and willful ignorance.

Men who claim to be the messiah (or new leader), uses the position to rape young girls (see Warren Jeffs, David Koresh, and Joseph Smith)

I'm sure this will be purged, but I don't care.

The more evil the religion more I'm not afraid to confront. Many here are though because that's not nice.

Even if it offends some peoples little sensitivities.

I know or care little about him beyond his writings and public speeches, which I have found to be universally admirable and worth considerable reflection upon.

Daniel Dennett has also been strongly recommended to me by another DU atheist as going into the phenomonological aspects of religious belief and I intend to investigate his work.

Thanks!

He's not always right, but the above is certainly true.

"Douchebag" is an equal opportunity occupation, people of all faiths and non-faiths welcome.

And sometimes one has to be a douche canoe to get the point across.

Meta studies do not show a positive correlation between religion and positive societal outcome.

But, as Paris or Uganda show, religion itself can be the origin of violence.

Bottom line: religion's balance sheet is in the red.

Badly.

tend to be rationalist thinkers, at least in my life experience. People who lean towards rationalism, logic and science tend to be skeptical, particularly of "received wisdom" that is offered as truth absent extrinsic evidence. "Because" in all it's forms is not an answer we skeptics accept. I need some offer of proof that doesn't come "belief." And we tend to be able to accept 'I don't know" as an answer.

Of all the ways you can divide people into two groups, I find the distinction between "believers" (people who are inclined to believe things in order to keep doubt at bay) and "skeptics" (people who want a rational answer when they ask 'why?') to be one of the most useful.

And anyone who sayss ome version "because it's what an Invisible Man In The Sky demands" has immediately ended any further conversation with me.

"i'd rather know than believe." Carl Sagan

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” - Jphn Kenneth Galbraith

I will second this:

And anyone who says one version "because it's what an Invisible Man In The Sky demands" has immediately ended any further conversation with me.

"i'd rather know than believe." Carl Sagan

Religion is the bane of civilization and the sooner we put it behind us the better.

Weinberg is a Nobel Laureate in physics - 1979.

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

tend to be some of the most privileged-acting people that I know.

If it helps you personally, fine.

Don't assume that what you believe will help me. Let me do my own search in that regard.

Many believe they have found absolute truth. When the universe doesn't reward that knowledge, the believer doubles down, thinking they haven't practiced the belief hard enough.

And this is the starting point of fanaticism.

I would point out that the Communist belief system in the 20th century murdered vastly more people than all the religions in history. Hitler did pretty good, too, with a nationalist and psuedo-racial belief system.

than Leninist and/or Maoist Communism, neither of which would have been understood by Marx as they both turned orthodox Marxism on its head, sociologically speaking.

Just the last thousand years include numerous Crusades, countless executions of dissenters, "heretics" and "witches", numberless pogroms against Jews, innumerable religious wars during and after the Reformation, the massacre of Native Americans in both North and South America in the name of gawd (and gold, too), the justification of the enslavement of Afticans by white Europeans and - primarily - Americans, the systematicoppression of women. All in the name of gawd and done with "his" blessing.

And I am just getting started.

It's always telling when people have to go back hundreds of years when they come up with examples.

I just wish that we had to look hundreds of years in the past to come up with examples of atrocities perpetrated by extremists of every religious stripe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism#United_States

United States[edit]

See also: Anti-abortion violence in the United States and Terrorism in the United States

Contemporary American Christian terrorism can be motivated by a violent desire to implement a Reconstructionist or Dominionist ideology.[95] Dominion Theology insists that Christians are called by God to (re)build society on Christian values to subjugate the earth and establish dominion over all things, as a pre-requisite for the second coming of Christ.[96] Political violence motivated by dominion theology is a violent extension of the desire to impose a select version of Christianity on other Christians, as well as on non-Christians.

After 1981, members of groups such as the Army of God began attacking abortion clinics and doctors across the United States.[97][98][99] A number of terrorist attacks were attributed by Bruce Hoffman to individuals and groups with ties to the Christian Identity and Christian Patriot movements, including the Lambs of Christ.[100] A group called Concerned Christians was deported from Israel on suspicion of planning to attack holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of 1999; they believed that their deaths would "lead them to heaven".[101][102]

Eric Robert Rudolph carried out the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, as well as subsequent attacks on an abortion clinic and a lesbian nightclub. Michael Barkun, a professor at Syracuse University, considers Rudolph to likely fit the definition of a Christian terrorist. James A. Aho, a professor at Idaho State University, argues that religious considerations inspired Rudolph only in part.[103]

Terrorism scholar Aref M. Al-Khattar has listed The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), Defensive Action, the Montana Freemen, and some "Christian militia" as groups that "can be placed under the category of far-right-wing terrorism" that "has a religious (Christian) component".[104]

In 1996 three men—Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merelle—were charged with two bank robberies and bombings at the banks, a Spokane newspaper, and a Planned Parenthood office in Washington State. The men were anti-Semitic Christian Identity theorists who believed that God wanted them to carry out violent attacks and that such attacks will hasten the ascendancy of the Aryan race.[105]

In 2011, analyst Daryl Johnson of the United States Department of Homeland Security said that the Hutaree Christian militia movement possessed more weapons than the combined weapons holdings of all Islamic terror defendants charged in the US since the September 11 attacks.[106]

In 2015, Robert Doggart, a former right-wing Congressional candidate, was arrested by the FBI while planning a terror attack on New York Muslims. The FBI says Doggart was planning to firebomb and burn down a mosque, school, and other buildings, and to use an M-4 assault rifle, a handgun, Molotov cocktails, a pistol, and a machete to kill anyone who resisted him. He faces five years in prison and was released on $30,000 bail after pleading guilty to a single count of interstate communication of threats. As noted by the criminal complaint, Doggart spoke of his willingness to sacrifice his life to prove his "commitment to our God". He also exhorted his followers to be "cruel" to Muslims, to burn down their mosque, kill them, and even to cut them to shreds with a machete. Doggart's defense attorneys said that their client is an ordained minister in the Christian National Church, has numerous degrees and certificates, and is a veteran. According to court documents, Doggart is a member of several "private militia groups".[107][108][109][110][111][112]

I think that explains why many feel the need to invoke the Crusades.

it has happened and will continue to happen...

and most of the things you name have nothing to do with religion. Most Native Americans were killed by disease, and were not displaced due to religion, but greed. As was slavery.

I am wrong, too.

Most of the death tolls are about nationalism, or extension of empire.

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

Here are all the Communist murders.

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

talk about the more important things and raise ideas, like, Florida will be underwater soon-

And denouncing all religion isn't rational

that is fine, in their own abode or church. Leave the rest of society out of ones murderous bullshit

Religion isn't the source of the murder. Craziness is.l

Can we agree that fundies of any stripe are a plague on humanity? or= no?

The conflicts between Muslims and Christians go back 1300 years.

I only hope that the 21st century is less lethal than the mass death tolls of the 20th century.

and true believers of any stripe threaten us all.

I would posit, however, that as belief systems go, when practiced properly science is supposed to be inherently assumption-challenging, with evidence based inquiry and critical thought as built in core components.

But, yes, when people think they have found the one big truth (usually accompanied by some version of the "original sin" and "fall from grace" script, and inevitably including the one great source of evil in the universe which must be 'smashed') then problems almost inevitably arise when their reality-tunnel comes into contact with other ones.

It'll apply to any ideology or philosophy.

We fight wars because of greed and belief in American exceptionalism.

Wars are fought for various selfish reasons, often not really having much to do with religion.

retain members and the much heraled steady cash flow, heck of a money maker, that religious sector....

most people that believe in a divine unseen father of mankind and his kindness and or forgiveness must know after reading these bibles that the one they pray to is anything but kind, he is vindictive, self important, demanding and oblivious when he chooses to be of crimes against humanity etc, etc....

for many many humans, they can easily ignore these inconsistencies simply because having this belief lessens thier own personal fears...

As long as those fear based beliefs are not responsible for others getting hurt I don't see the worry,

it's when those beliefs begins to transmit pain and suffering towards our fellow living beings and becomes conditional of you yourself getting supposedly getting and remaining saved that it becomes all of our problem which happens more often than not ......

Blows me away how so many believe that Islam holds the record for bad behaviors,

time to stop the old arguments, look at a fucking supernova, and learn math and science-

Those many interruptions, agree.....

That absolutist, us vs. them mentality is just plain destructive. Whether it's because they think their religion is right/better, their nationality, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference is BETTER, it's all BULLSHIT and divisive.

Any faith.