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Comment by sali0 | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a very hard headed atheist until I read the book "The Secrets of our Success" by Joseph Heinlein. That book speaks of how culture evolved along with genetics, and it made me realize how important tradition and religion really are to society. I am still atheist, but now very much encourage religious people to stay with their faith and continue their worship. There are definitely downsides to religion, but ultimately they encourage strong communal and familial values, which I think are very lacking in my generation.

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Would you encourage radical muslims to stay with their faith and continue their worship? What about even more marginal religions? If not they which exactly religions are you going to encourage? What's the "good list"?

Not all religions are same and abrahmic religions are regressive religions.

Christianity has largely reformed.

Judaism is too exclusionary to affect the whole world.

Unfortunately islam is still being practiced like it was 1000 years ago.

That can be done without some mythical life after death and almighty chode in the sky.

It's unfortunate that religion has those elements. I hold many Christian values, but I refuse to accept the afterlife, God, saints, apostles and other shit made up by the Church for their own material benefit.

Same boat.

> There are definitely downsides to religion...

Pretty minor ones. The basic concepts are well battle tested good ideas. Saying religion is bad is like saying democratic politics is bad - no, it is great because even when horrible people are in charge the fundamental positive influence of the institution persists.

> Pretty minor ones.

Well, except for all the violence committed in the name of various religions over the millennia.

Maybe it balances out, but I wouldn’t say it’s minor.

Look at staunch atheists such as Stalin and you'll find that it has been not only balanced out but far in favour of many religions.

That was in the name of communism though, not in the name of atheism. They viewed religion as just another corporation used to oppress workers.

If the argument is that communism is just as bad as religions then sure I'll buy it.

Ok, fine but then I ask you to do the same for for example Christianity:

Do see the difference between Catholicism as abused by various Spanish and English kings and Christianity.

Do see the difference between abusive cults that do things that the rest of us disapprove of and the rest of us.

Otherwise be prepared to defend Stalin, because he was an atheist just as much as the mad guys during the dark ages were Christians.

That's a straw man and missing the point. Sure, not all harms committed by the religious are because of their religion. But the assertion was that there has been much greater harm done by the religious _because of their religion_ than harm done by athiets _because of their atheism_. History clearly supports that. It even stands up taking into account the different population sizes.

Not intended to be a straw man (and I even think whataboutism would be closer if you were going to try to dismiss it).

> But the assertion was that there has been much greater harm done by the religious _because of their religion_ than harm done by athiets _because of their atheism_.

How about:

"Much greater harm has been done by atheists in their fight against religions than by religious in their fight against atheists" ?

Or even: "Much greater harm has been done by atheists than by religious" ?

I'm purposedly keeping why out of the equation here. It might for the sake of the argument be because we Christians are dumber and not as able to commit atrocities, but the numbers are quite clear: atheists have killed more people than all religions together during the last 1000 years.

And, to be clear: It is not my point to prove that Christianity is right or Christians are better people. There are many atheists I respect a whole lot. And a lot of people claiming to be Christian that I don't respect as much.

My point is no one can collect all the bad stuff done by one side and all the great done by another and compare.

If you want be to be responsible for madmen "on my side" 500 years ago you should very much take responsibility for madmen "on your side" 50 years ago.

> "If the argument is that communism is just as bad as religions then sure I'll buy it."

To play the devil's advocate, I'll point out that religion has also inspired acts of charity, large and small, for millennia, a not insignificant number of the greatest works of art and philosophy in history, and provided a sense of community and fellowship for humanity. For all of the atrocities committed in its name, suggesting that nothing good came of religion is inarguably false. We'll see where communism/socialism and atheism stands in a few centuries but, to date, it's hard to say their track record is as good as religion if we're being intellectually honest.

That is quite a vast time frame. Violence used to much more common in general than it is today. Is there any evidence that religion increased violence above average for a specific time period?

Also, it is often difficult to define what was committed in the name of a religion as there are often multiple sources of conflict. Anything that defines a person in any way can easily be abused by propaganda that seeks to split people into "us" vs "them".

> Pretty minor ones.

I don't know how you could say that, considering the many horrible things taught because of or done in the name of religion over the millennia. Like, to use a recent issue, the biggest thing stopping gay marriage in the US at least was people's religiously driven belief that homosexuality is morally wrong.

I know many will say, "well it's only nominally driven by religion, people would've done [bad thing] regardless". But that's a clear double standard, if you don't also say that people would've done good things regardless.

I'm guessing the truth is both: sometimes people really would've done bad or good things anyway, the religion is just a cover. And other times, they really were driven particularly by religion.

Those things would have been done in the name of something else too. Religions here is just a pretext.

Killing the american natives, the tutsi, the jews or the cambodgian intellectuals intellectuals were among the worst things humanity have ever done, and the religion of the perpetrators had nothing to do with it.

Terrible humans will use any rationalization to do terrible things.

Most muslim women in my country don't wear a hijab. However, men beating their wifes are from all kind of religious and non religious backgounds.

I now believe that religion is a reflect of the state of your society, not the other way around. People are racist, homophobic, intolerant, entitled, misogynist, and then, they sometimes use religion to justify that.

> Those things would have been done in the name of something else too. Religions here is just a pretext.

...and there it is. I literally addressed this in my comment already.

> Terrible humans will use any rationalization to do terrible things.

Sure, but you can say the same thing the other way: fantastic humans will use any rationalization to do good. Good people aren't going to suddenly turn into monsters if they don't believe in an All-Powerful Judge in the sky.

Communists (atheists) done a lot more harm than any religion, and they hate gay marriage too. Anything powerful can be used to do a good thing and a bad thing. Any institution can be used to do an evil thing, neglect, or be corrupt, e.g. police (police can be abused to protect corrupt regimes), courts or event justice as whole (slaves were legal in many countries), church, etc.

Communists is not equal to atheists , in fact most of the atheists I know are not communists. Blaming to atheists the crimes committed in name of communism is like saying that as Hitler admired christianism all his crimes should be blamed on christians . And right the ones trying to impose their beliefs, and deny rights to others, in Europe and USA are the followers of some of the Abrahamic religions.

Atheists are not communists, but communists are atheists: they're believing that God does not exist, so they can take his role.

That line of thinking is dangerous, you can assume that televangelists are scammers because they are christians or that priests that abuse children are abusers because they are christians. and not, they are because they are bad people. Stalin/Mao/etc .. were bad people and that's the reason they did what they did not because they were atheists or communists, when a priest abuses a child does it's because he's a bad person not because he's a christian.

> Communists (atheists)

Those aren't the same thing, even if the demographics somewhat overlap.

In any case, I'm no fan of authoritarian socialism either, because yes, they did some really horrible shit in the name of their ideology.

But most atheists aren't communists/authoritarian socialists.

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