Quote from: Moloch on March 29, 2016, 02:49:17 PM

Quote from: pawel7777 on March 29, 2016, 01:27:17 PM

What you're trying to do is to draw equal mark between the Christianity as whole (with its ~2000 years history) and relatively short period of history when Catholic church was doing some ugly things (ignoring all the good ones).

Should I do the same and equate entire atheism with Bolshevik/communistic regimes (with atheism as mandatory doctrine) which are responsible for greatest number of deaths (adjusted for equal periods) than any other group in the history of mankind?

Do you really want to compare the 2000 year history of christianity murdering half the world with the 1,000,000 year history of atheists making advances in science, medicine, philosophy, morality, etc, etc, etc?!? Religion simply cannot compare to the contributions of science and medicine... which are not religion... science and medicine are definitely anti-religious... atheist stuff... you wouldn't understand...

Quote from: pawel7777 on March 29, 2016, 01:27:17 PM

Morality and knowledge of what is right and wrong is not something you're born with. Can you not see the differences between Christian countries and i.e. Muslim countries? Which of the latter would allow you to abandon islam and openly promote atheism? Which of the existing religions is the closest to the western standards?

I'm sorry you don't understand history... or much of anything...

The Dark ages had a single cause... Christianity... Christians attacked anything that was non-christian for 300 years! Don't pretend it didn't happen!

Quote from: pawel7777 on March 29, 2016, 01:27:17 PM

Feel free to name few 'atheist' values, meaning currently accepted ones that were common among all the parts of the world. Don't kill/steal are not one of them. Pro-tip: you can't.

Atheists invented morals and values... don't be silly...

You already admitted that christians did not invent "christian values"... it's only a small step to realizing that they came from either another religion, or non-religion (all religions came from non-religion, so obviously, atheists invented morals)

You are correct in that atheists don't have a written moral code, like the 10 commandments, but you are incorrect that we don't have values... Atheists are the only ones who took the time to think about morals on their own... we decided right from wrong based on the impact on society, not from some dusty old book...

Atheists believe in facts and evidence over feelings... just because a story "feels good", does not make it true... you need facts and evidence... that is what atheists believe in... reality... facts... evidence... not unsupported fairy tales

If some "God" told me to murder my child... I'd tell that asshole to FUCK OFF!... What would you do? Murder your son?

OK, guess it's time to pitch in:

Quote from: Moloch

Do you really want to compare the 2000 year history of christianity murdering half the world...

Source? I do agree that Catholic church has done quite a few horrible things during the Middle Ages, however your claim seems rather bold with no evidence to back it up.

Quote from: Moloch

...with the 1,000,000 year history of atheists making advances in science, medicine, philosophy, morality, etc, etc, etc?!?

You do understand that quite a few scientists were or are Christians - Blaise Pascal (Pascal's law (physics), Pascal's theorem (math)) and Isaac Newton (Physicist, discoverer of gravity) to name a few. Also, some of these scientists (namely Theodosius Dobzhansky) criticized creationsim and argued that science and faith does not conflict (which is a stance I can firmly stand behind).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_and_technology

Quote from: Moloch

I'm sorry you don't understand history... or much of anything...

The Dark ages had a single cause... Christianity... Christians attacked anything that was non-christian for 300 years! Don't pretend it didn't happen!

I'd have to disagree. Although the Catholic church did a lot of heinous things during the Dark Ages, which did harm the spread of knowledge, I think the much bigger reason was the fall of the Roman Empire:

Quote

It emphasizes the demographic, cultural and economic deterioration that supposedly occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_%28historiography%29

The main issue in terms of knowledge is the fact that after the fall of the Roman empire, quite a lot of research and literature was lost, setting back science rather far back. The first answer by Humphrey Clarke, MA in Modern History - University of St Andrews in this: https://www.quora.com/Did-Christianity-cause-the-Dark-Ages gives quite an interesting analysis. I suggest reading through as it goes through several possible arguments such as the Catholic church not accepting science.

The conclusion is rather relevant to the discussion as well:

Quote

To conclude then, the two Christianity guilt theories suffer from a lack of evidence. They persist purely due to their illustrious pedigree and the fact that people insist on making the past fit into a modern framework.

Quote from: Moloch

Atheists invented morals and values... don't be silly...

You already admitted that christians did not invent "christian values"... it's only a small step to realizing that they came from either another religion, or non-religion (all religions came from non-religion, so obviously, atheists invented morals)

I'd say that your logical deduction isn't as logical as you'd think. Religion might've been created by humans in the primitive times to act as a placeholder for science, but as times progressed, these religions morphed and changed to analyze something either non-material such as morality or above the materialistic universal order (that being governed by natural laws such as gravity, the existence of light and various parameters that it follows when interacting with materials, the fact that materials are comprised of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, which are made up of..., etc.), which science tries to figure out. If you were to ignore the developments that took throughout history (developments that science has gone through too as various scientific theories previously made were debunked and replaced by new, more accurate ones) and attribute all that to a specific demographic, I'd say that it isn't exactly accurate representation of history.

In fact, I'd say the the current definition of religion would be the search for who created the system we are living in. I think the best way to describe it would be comparing it to computer software: imagine an extremely complex computer simulation, with it's rules and parameters, running constantly with the objects (with a crap ton of variables, methods and other OOP features implemented) inside acting independently (but predictably due the fact that author of the program knows what code he wrote and how it performs) based on their variables and the surrounding objects. The self-aware objects inside decide analyze the system and due to being withing that system and unable to detect anything outside it, deducted that since they can't detect anything within the system that there is no creator outside it. Seems familiar?

Quote from: Moloch

You are correct in that atheists don't have a written moral code, like the 10 commandments, but you are incorrect that we don't have values... Atheists are the only ones who took the time to think about morals on their own... we decided right from wrong based on the impact on society, not from some dusty old book...

I do agree that Atheists do have morals, however those morals were impacted, be it by indirect historical influence or (doesn't seem like in this case) directly by providing a base, by the "dusty old book" you are talking about.

Quote from: Moloch

Atheists believe in facts and evidence over feelings... just because a story "feels good", does not make it true... you need facts and evidence... that is what atheists believe in... reality... facts... evidence... not unsupported fairy tales

In science, this is quite important but if you were to only base everything on fact outside science, philosophy, art and possibly certain scientific advances which first were devised as hypotheses (unproven speculations only later to be debunked for the time being or confirmed) would probably not exist.

Quote from: Moloch

If some "God" told me to murder my child... I'd tell that asshole to FUCK OFF!... What would you do? Murder your son?

There's a few theological speculations on why, one of them being that it is a symbol of the sacrifice of Christ: https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/why-did-god-tell-abraham-kill-his-son-isaac. If I were asked that, I'd probably refuse, since in this day and age, anything can be staged by someone with enough cash.