Watch National Geographic

[visaveteran 0]

Again, without a citation, it carries no weight. A citation would be much appreciated.

http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume8/TM008115.html

[visaveteran 0]

So you're using an article written in 1964 for a Christian magazine, to make the point that Communist atheism's goal is to destroy Christianity?

From the website you sourced the article from:

And this quote from the article:

is just plain red scare propaganda--apropos for anti-Communist propaganda from 1964, but hardly scholarly. There is no such stated goal of world domination either in Marxism or Soviet Communism. The author is using his own personal opinion as a cornerstone of his thesis. The rest of his article just seems to be a rant about how Communism rejects God and must therefore be evil with a smattering of quotes from 1950's era US government publications.

vv, there's nothing scholarly or credible about this article. It's just a 46 year-old op-ed.

Also, I thought it was strange that all of his sources came from the US Government printing office, so I looked them up. Here are the dates his sources were published:

The Communist Conspiracy, 1956

Facts on Communism, 1959

Soviet World Outlook, 1959

Well, you quote the Communist Manifesto. How old is that? What time frame do you prefer? You go way back but I can't. Set the boundaries and I'll follow.

[Brad and Vika 129]

[Ban Hammer 14,595]

We need a RUB sex thread.

i wonder if you meant for it to sound that way.

[SMR 368]

I don't follow. I'm using TCM because it's central to the argument. It was or is the cornerstone of government and society in no less than 5 countries. If you're going to talk about Soviet policy, you have to start there.

Go back as far as you want. If you can find something in Plato's Republic (written about 2,400 years ago) that supports the position that wars and/or persecution have been carried out in the name of atheism, for example, I'm all ears. The op-ed you cited was written for a Christian magazine 46 years ago to warn Christians that Communists want to eradicate Christianity and take over the world. You have to admit that it's pretty biased, and factually incorrect. It would be like me quoting Michael Moore back in the gun thread. Michael Moore, like this Gene Frost fellow, uses facts selectively to support the argument he wants to make, rather than formulating an argument based on facts. You just can't have a meaningful conversation with sources like that.

Mox, you make some good points but I see a problem with how you break things into religion vs. Atheism. When you talk about religion, I think you need to make a distinction between people who are using religion as a method to control people or make them go to war, and people who are devout followers of a religion. When a person knowingly invents a holy cause in order to compel a people to war or when a person proclaims themselves a God (like the Japanese Emperor), that could be construed as atheism. The Emperor is surely aware of his mortal status and only a conviction that God does not exist could cause one to abuse him with such impunity. That is, I would contend that those that abuse religion to control people to their own ends are practicing a sort of atheism. But I suppose that is a philosophical question.

But even more to the point, in both Russia and China under communism, many people were abused, executed, persecuted, and lost property because of their religious convictions. Read about the Orthodox Church under communism, Староверцы, or the Falung Gong. Religious people have been persecuted for their faith by people that are openly atheistic. That is, crimes have very much been committed in the name of atheism.

I understand what you are saying about how religion is used to make good people do bad things, but I think you need to realize that atheism is also a belief system that is abused to this end.

Edited April 12, 2010 by SMR

[visaveteran 0]

I don't follow. I'm using TCM because it's central to the argument. It was or is the cornerstone of government and society in no less than 5 countries. If you're going to talk about Soviet policy, you have to start there.

Go back as far as you want. If you can find something in Plato's Republic (written about 2,400 years ago) that supports the position that wars and/or persecution have been carried out in the name of atheism, for example, I'm all ears. The op-ed you cited was written for a Christian magazine 46 years ago to warn Christians that Communists want to eradicate Christianity and take over the world. You have to admit that it's pretty biased, and factually incorrect. It would be like me quoting Michael Moore back in the gun thread. Michael Moore, like this Gene Frost fellow, uses facts selectively to support the argument he wants to make, rather than formulating an argument based on facts. You just can't have a meaningful conversation with sources like that.

Your original comment was "people do evil things due to religion." I pointed out the communists (AKA atheists) did evil things (among them crushing religion). So, how did religion make the USSR do evil things?

I'm not versed enough to argue this subject in a way that it deserves...so I'm letting it go. And I don't think there's a lot of interest in this topic anyway. No one else has joined the discussion.

[visaveteran 0]

And I don't think there's a lot of interest in this topic anyway. No one else has joined the discussion.

Correction: I see SMR posted a comment.

[visaveteran 0]

Actually I never argued that religion made the Soviet Union "do evil things." I argued that religion was the cause of most war and persecution in the world, and you said atheism was a driving force behind the Soviet persecution of religious organizations. I argued that this wasn't true. I agree that religion didn't drive Stalin, but neither did atheism.

You've moderated your position somewhat. You were more sweeping in your original comment that "people do evil things due to religion. Now you back away and say "most." So people can do evil things and religion has nothing to do with it. Yes, my original point.

Edited April 12, 2010 by visaveteran

[clueless_in_usa 8]

We need a RUB sex thread.

Maybe if we talked about RUBbing sex more people would join.

Does anybody remember the slogan "make love not war?"

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

It's gotten to the point where I won't even watch History Channel. It's become a parody of the word "history." It should just be called "Let's see what kind of ####### we can peddle as legitimate history" Channel.

when I movewd to Ukraine, I disconnected my cable TV. Never missed it. when I came back, I have since forgotten to have it re-connected. Haven't missed it. When I was in the hospital in December they had TV there and I watched it for a little while, which remineded me WHY I haven't reconnected it. And this is in a house with a wife and teenager. Simply don't need it. Don't need landline telephones either.

You can watch anything worthwhile on a DVD or the internet.

IMO the ONLY TV shows worth watching are "Mythbusters", "Dirty Jobs" and the osscasional episode of "Modern Marvels". You can buy the DVDs of multiple seasons for less than a couple months of Cable TV trash

I say "remodel the kitchen, go fishing, go shooting, go skiing, go boating, go to your sons lacross game or clean the garage...basically do ANYTHING but sit on your @ss and watch that BS on TV.

[visaveteran 0]

BTW I do want to thank you for maintaining a civil tone throughout this discussion.

You're welcome...and same back at you.

Edited April 13, 2010 by visaveteran

[LvivLovers 39]

The war stuff is fine, and in fact there really is some good stuff on HC. It's the ####### like "The Real Face of Jesus" (which is based on the Shroud of Turin, a known fake "artifact," not to mention that there's not even any evidence that Jesus actually existed) or Ancient Astronauts and ####### like that, that really puts me off. They try to pass stuff off like this as science, when in fact it's mostly just crazy people who can manage to sound scientific.

Just FYI, many these days who were sure that the shroud was a fake have been changing their mind...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5137163/Turin-Shroud-could-be-genuine-as-carbon-dating-was-flawed.html

I'm not saying I believe it is real or not...but there is enough evidence to cast serious doubt that the original samples that which carbon dated were actually a mix of old materials and new materials which would have produced an age somewhere in between when carbon dated.

I actually like some of these shows...religious history, ufos, 2012, etc. I guess one man's "junk" is another man's treasure. Maybe some belong on another channel, but I see nothing wrong with having religious history. It is a little unfortunate that just about every channel seems to start out on one ideal and then caves to whatever is cheap to produce and earns the most money. When was the last time MTV actually played videos regularly?

[SMR 368]

I'll direct you to my previous posts (here and here), where I show that these crimes were NOT committed in the name of atheism. They were committed in the name of Marxist philosophy. Saying that the persecution of religion in the Soviet Union was committed in the name of atheism is like saying that the US homestead act in the 19th century was committed in the name of atheism. Stalin didn't want people thinking about atheism any more than he wanted them thinking about Christianity. He wanted them thinking about the state.

Your analogy is off so I'm not going to go there. People in the USSR and communist China were abused, persecuted, and often executed on the sole basis that they believed in God and the persecution was done by those who professed a belief in the absence of God and that a belief in God was detrimental to society. The fact that they were also communists simply qualifies what kinds of atheists they were (communists are a subset of atheists). Their belief in the absence of God is the critical foundation of the reasoning for their actions. People were killed because they believed in God and their killers didn't.

Mox, perhaps you feel that your particular breed of atheism would not ever cause you to persecute others. But I can assure you that there are many religious people who feel the same about their religion. You are essentially arguing that religion is bad because someone, somewhere, sometime killed or persecuted someone in the name of religion. Yet when someone, somewhere, sometime killed or persecuted someone in the name of atheism, you cling to the other characteristics of those atheists to differentiate and essentially object to the assumption that all atheists can be grouped together (a valid objection). Yet somehow you don't see the fallacy in claiming that all religion is bad on the basis that certain religions have been the basis for persecution at certain times.

I'm not arguing that all atheists are persecuting non-atheists or that atheism is a source of evil in the world. I'm simply pointing out that your claim that religion is a source of evil and that atheism is some sort of refuge from that is flawed and overly-simplistic. Also, when evaluating religion, you need to consider the good that it brings into the world. I would conjecture that atheism cannot compete with religion on this basis.

Most of what you say about the emperor, etc. seems to me to be a difference in the way that we see things and we'll probably have to agree to disagree. As I said in my previous post, whether or not someone who uses religion to control people is really an atheist is a philosophical question.

[baron555 934]

People were killed because they believed in God and their killers didn't.

And Cortez did the opposite in Central America.

[LvivLovers 39]

But even if the shroud does date to the time of Christ, there's no evidence to show that the man on the shroud actually is Christ.

I'd be prone to believe that it belong to Christ if it was shown to date to that exact period. It seems likely to me that if someone is going to go through the trouble of carrying the thing along for 2 millenia that it's the real deal. It would be one thing to go and create a forgery after the fact, but if it's really from that time period, someone would likely have had to decide at THAT time to perpetrate the fraud. If that were the case, I'd think it's even more likely that it belonged to someone they really thought was Christ. Now whether or not one wanted to believe that person was anything other than a regular man would be another debate. That's why the scientist who later believed the carbon dating was flawed referred to him as the historical Christ...he's not saying he believed Christ was anything other than a man...but that he thought it was possible the shroud came from the man people believed was Christ.

He looks a lot like a medieval depiction of Christ, but then so does Jeff Bridges.

lol The Dude!

Right now, science can't explain the shroud 100%, so religious nuts have jumped on the "science can't explain it so it must be a miracle!" bandwagon. Of course, once upon a time science couldn't explain disease either, but eventually "evil humours" was replaced with "microscopic organisms." Eventually they'll figure it out. But even when they do, that shouldn't take away from what a fantastic work of art it is. It shows that even 800-2,000 years ago, humans were damn clever.

Yeah...I think that's sort of silly. I personally am a Christian, but I don't hold to believing in things just because. I still look for scientific explanations to things. I believe in Creationism AND Evolution...I never understood why some people think just because they believe in Creation they have to believe that the Earth was created in a short period of time or is only a few tens of thousands of years old. That just doesn't make sense.

If the shows weren't so misleading, I'd agree. Religious history is interesting to me too, but when they talk about Adam and Eve or Noah or Moses as if they had really existed, they should at the very least make a disclaimer that everything they're presenting is for entertainment value only, much like they do on those shows that delve into "what if the Nazis had won" or "what if the South won the Civil war?" Otherwise people might actually start believing that #######.

Well...naturally coming from my point of view I think they did exist, so I wouldn't agree it's #######. I don't think there's good proof that they DID exist or DIDN'T exist. I mean, I think if you are logical you must realize that humans came from other humans and eventually this process could be traced back to the first humans...now where those were evolved from apes/monkeys I guess is another question. Some people believe everything in the Bible is completely true...I have no idea if that's really the case or not. I believe a lot of things, but maybe some things were the writer's interpretations/explanations of things as they saw them. Fact is, humans are flawed, so I wouldn't be surprised if some things were recounted from person to person and written down completely different than how they started out. Maybe some things were made up to explain things, maybe some things were real events. Some things are certainly hard to fathom or seem extremely unlikely. I know enough to know that none of us could know so I don't let it trouble me further than that. I am always interested to hear facts about such things to try to make up my mind whether or not such things are rooted in fact or not. A disclaimer might not be a bad idea (after all we are a society that has to warn people that hot coffee is hot so as not to get sued or as I saw on a door to a doctor's office just yesterday "Pull handle to open door")...I wouldn't say that it's purely for entertainment value though as that would reflect an athiest viewpoint and not a believer's view point.

Ha! I know right? Actually I think there's a companion channel to MTV now that you have to watch if you want videos. But I sure miss the 80's when you could actually be entertained by MTV. Now it's just insufferable tripe.

Yeah. They do have another channel with videos but I've never watched it to be honest...I think it's always been in some other cable package or something that I don't have. I still find the concept silly though. If you're going to change your content from your original concept, you should be forced to change the name of your channel. Maybe MTV would become RTV (R being reality)? Dunno. Funny VH1 quickly followed MTVs lead too.

Anyway, to each their own! At least we have the choice to watch what we want and believe what we want! =)