Oh is that a warning?

You can list anybody you want and so can I.

All we both do is prove that the bible is right: People regardless of their ideology are corrupt and fallible. So guess what that leads to....an awareness of character...you have to be acutely aware of exactly who is who, where they come from and if what they are saying is the truth or not and the implications of that truth.

Because that's how you decide who to entrust the keys of power to although that's somewhat deceiving because people really even don't do that. God really makes all those decisions through his divine providence. All we've really got is prayer and reliance on the mercy of God that our leaders do what's right and don't do too much damage from their own egotism and idiocy.

Umm yes it is a warning that all you're going to accomplish is derail the discussion and make it lopsided. You have one example of atheists persecuting Christians. There are tons of examples of one religion persecuting another. Not to mention that even your example wouldn't happen if religion didn't exist.

Lets go to the root then. Its not one religion persecuting another one. That's just the outer shell. If you break the shell open you'll see its the corrupt minds and hearts of the people doing the persecuting. Its people persecuting other people. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jainist, Buddhist is just a label they carry around pasted on them like a name. People sufferer from narcissism and dogmatism with or without any group of ideas they follow. Because many people are selfish and in love with themselves and dogmatism is often the result of a shortcut. Its much easier to rely on the head of a group you belong to to learn something than to discover and learn things and actually incorporate them as a part of your being for yourself.

Every person alive today is guilty of following a teacher and that's why the bible says teaching is a very, very, very responsible work ...(meaning responsible to God in faith matters, but even in science, math, engineering, business, etc. what everyone teaches is responsible to God because we will all be judged). How many students of chemistry bothered to study chemistry all by themselves like a Bacon or a Newton: almost no one today except a few kids with those little toy chemistry sets and a few chemists in labs. They rely on their teachers in part because you have to. Learning is a process. We might surpass our teachers someday but we don't at the beginning. We all have a starting point.

Atheists are no exception from the flaws of the human race. On the contrary they daily congratulate each other on how much smarter they are than theists and all other human beings in general. A little narcissistic don't you think? Then again I've pretty much concluded that forums in general and poker in particular attract narcissist and other deviant antisocial or predatory types.

So to conclude people are corrupt and fallible and atheists are one of the few groups I'm aware of that exalt themselves over the rest of the mankind by constantly insisting on their intellectual superiority. I haven't personally experienced atheists to be a particulary compassionate group or to even have particularly developed EQs. There are 3 or 4 individual exceptions I've noted in SMP/RGT but as a group I suspect atheists might earn a fail grade in the EQ department. Oh sure, they are smart enough to turn the EQ on when its of personal benefit to them but I doubt many of them can sustain it. I've even read one SMP atheist post confirming that that is his approach to the world. He never posts in RGT. He appears to have a whale of a superiority complex though. At least thats the way he appears in a forum which is a somewhat limiting format to understand what makes another person tick because people are a whole lot more multidimensional in person than on here.

I'm not saying that atheists are inherently better people than theists; that's not what the thread is about. It is about whether the world would be better or worse if religion did not exist. I say yes, but it's mostly just because people would have 1 fewer reason to kill each other. You can spin it all you want, but the fact that people of all religious/non-religious backgrounds have and do commit atrocities against each other does not excuse the fact that religion has been and still is one of the biggest excuses people use to do so.

Religion is just an outer shell or spiritual manifestation. People do have a spiritual component. Spirituality appears very similar to a human drive and you don't direct or dominate other humans drives or force them into extinction. They will submerge. I don't think human beings benefit from a forced submersion of basic identity traits and we don't know how they will re-emerge later if you apply pressure to them. There are all kinds of deviant personality types in this world. A lot of their problems relate to interruptions, irrational fears or forced submission of personality traits. You can stunt your mental and psychological growth just like your physical growth and we understand this a lot less than we understand it in the physical world. Think of a bonsai tree. We know we can reconfigure a tree but do we want to apply that to people?

You cannot repress the human spirit or any other basic human characteristic. You can only educate it to help it achieve its best form.

Sigh, did you have anything to say about the actual topic of the thread?

Religion has been at the root of almost every conflict and in my mind is the biggest serial killer in the history of mankind.

If there is a God then he should be horrified how man has defiled man in his name.

I already said it in my very first post.

I think I'm done though. This is exactly where atheists diverge from theists. Theists tend to look at the nature of man as the root cause while atheists never look beyond the label. If you look beyond the label then you have to acknowledge people aren't perfect and that supports the theist. Both atheist and theist governments have failed. But the atheist says "Oh no it was the communists." While theists say it was the nature of man. Which seems more reasonable. Lenin and Marx intended utopia. Didn't the nature of man undermine utopia though?

Don't you ever find it ironic that where the atheist governments are successful that the countries were previously built on Christian efforts and that the economic benefits got taken over by the atheists in those countries? I mean Sweden was Christian at one time wasn't it?

I have seen you and other theist blame Atheism for deaths in the Russia, Germany and China many times. Good to see you changed your stance and blame those deaths on the nature of man now.

Are you seriously suggesting that man being imperfect is a theist position exclusively? No one is saying that religion is the only reason someone like Urban II was a homicidal maniac. Without religion, though, he certainly could not have sent every able-bodied man from Europe to slaughter Muslims.

As for your last paragraph, no I do not find it ironic. This is mostly because you just raped the concepts of correlation and causation.

Edit: and it was the ideas of Lenin and Stalin that led "Utopia" to fail. Marxism doesn't work and Utopia doesn't exist, and no one is saying that an atheist government will lead to Utopia. If all governments were atheist, it would certainly lead to less war/more diplomacy/trade/stability everywhere simply by virtue of the fact that one of the main reasons for war/hatred/local insurgencies would cease to be a factor.

I've always said it was the nature of man. Its just that religion can be manipulated or deliberately misinterpreted in the wrong hands while atheism has less manipulation but no brakes at all.

People forget that religion can provide a brake when the nature of man turns evil. Luther braked the Catholic Church.

Bonhoeffer tried to put the brake on Hitler.

Without brakes its like Doestoevsky said "Without God all things are permitted."

People also don't even realize today that churches at one time were places of sanctuary for rebels or dissidents. When you remove a church's power to provide sanctuary you just made society more vulnerable to totalitarianism. All dissidents aren't right in all beliefs any more than any person is correct about everything. But they do have a salutory or check and balance effect on how a government wields power sort of a balancing influence.

Over reliance on perfect understanding of correlation/causation is precisely where people that pride themselves on their intellect make their mistake. They never study history.

If they did they would notice that corellation and causation is interrupted all over the place by practical realities: like geography, methods of supply and demand, resources, pools of talent, ethnic identity, national values etc. etc. Multiple causes with a multiple of results all dependent on timing and various factors and how those factors coalesce.

Guess that would happen among a lot of poker head stat types. Unfortunately the world is a lot more complicated and variable than a poker game.

The European secularist Atheist countries of today's world don't seem to need your break theory.

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen." - Martin Luther

God chose a strange brake, Martin Luther was an Antisemitic bigot and the inspiration for a lot of hate...

humans that do God's work are not going to be perfect like God. do you think you are without faults? even though you have your faults you still consider yourself a good person.

where did anyone say this? where did OP say this?

Martin Luthe inspired a lot of hate, persecution and misery with his words and I don't think he can be considered a good person because of them. God should of picked a better ambassador to take down the Catholic Church is all.

to the people who say the good outweighs the bad,what about religions other than yours do u feel the same way? does it depend on the religion do u beleive some religions do outweigh the bad while some dont?trying not to make this look like a ritorical question im genuinely interested in ur thoughts.