Faith is an evil thing

[Chernosoth]

Religious belief seems to be a universal human need. Atheists tend to fill their need with belief in progress, socialism, capitalism, etc. Many isms can work for belief jism. The many screeds posted here shout that need in capital letters. The progress belief looks ready to start breaking later this year, and then they will need new religions and cults. Anyone planning to start a cult for profit and other types of exploitation could mine this site for data in how to pander to desperate suckers.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Obviously you have not bothered to read the Qu'ran
My name is not 'honey' and your lawn needs mowing

I have read the Koran in three English translations. I appreciate the fact that Muslims worship the same God as do the Jews and the Christians, although they perceive of Him differently.

I do not like the fact that the Koran commands the use of violence in order to spread Islam. On occasion Christians have used violence to spread Christianity, but nothing in the New Testament says that that is acceptable.

 

[JohnEngelman]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Faith
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Morality

There are many Christian charities that help the poor. I used to volunteer work for one. I continue to contribute money to it.

I have never heard of an atheist charity that helped poor people. Have you, Wilson23?

 

[OpenMindedMom_MCHL]

I have read the Koran in three English translations. I appreciate the fact that Muslims worship the same God as do the Jews and the Christians, although they perceive of Him differently.

I do not like the fact that the Koran commands the use of violence in order to spread Islam. On occasion Christians have used violence to spread Christianity, but nothing in the New Testament says that that is acceptable.

I respect your beliefs and your opinions. All of us are the same yet very different.
Choice is given to us all

 

[Pavlovsdog6862]

Religious belief seems to be a universal human need. Atheists tend to fill their need with belief in progress, socialism, capitalism, etc. Many isms can work for belief jism. The many screeds posted here shout that need in capital letters. The progress belief looks ready to start breaking later this year, and then they will need new religions and cults. Anyone planning to start a cult for profit and other types of exploitation could mine this site for data in how to pander to desperate suckers.

LOL

 

[Rightguide]

I never have. Too pseudoscientific -- all deterministic theories of history are fundamentally flawed.

But Communism has had definite similarities to a religious faith, especially in the mid-20th Century: The Historical Dialectic was God, Marx was Moses, the Revolution was the Apocalypse, Lenin was Christ, the Party was the Church, Stalin was the Pope, the secret police were the Inquisition, and Trotsky was Martin Luther.

Nice metaphor, but let’s not forget reality. Marxism isn’t a faith; it’s a political-economic ideology that enslaved and murdered millions, including over 100 million Christians in Eastern Europe and the USSR alone. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors weren’t spiritual icons, they were ruthless power-brokers enforcing an economic theory, often with mass imprisonment, forced labor, and execution. Reducing this history to “Christ, Pope, and Inquisition analogies” is poetic, but it’s also morally and factually misleading.

 

[Wilson23]

Nice metaphor, but let’s not forget reality. Marxism isn’t a faith; it’s a political-economic ideology that enslaved and murdered millions, including over 100 million Christians in Eastern Europe and the USSR alone. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors weren’t spiritual icons, they were ruthless power-brokers enforcing an economic theory, often with mass imprisonment, forced labor, and execution. Reducing this history to “Christ, Pope, and Inquisition analogies” is poetic, but it’s also morally and factually misleading.

It is similar to a religion in being an all-encompassing belief system to which many people were willing to devote their lives with zeal. And both Christianity and Islam included new forms of social organization when they started, with congregational communism.