"What I'm "pinning" it on is that atheism simply makes it easier -- or "just as easy", if you like "
Incorrect again. How can a LACK of belief make anything
easier or more difficult? Atheism, ALONE, gives man no
reason to kill, unlike religion. It is also not mutually
exclusive with a moral/ethical code.
How? Quite easily (and obviously, I would have thought.)
If a person lacks the belief, for example, that lying is inherently bad, that lying is wrong, that one simply must not lie, wouldn't you agree that it becomes quite straightforward for that person to go ahead and lie?
Again, I didn't say athiesm gives people a reason to kill; only that it makes wanton killing a lot easier.
Now, I know you can say that a lot of religious people have wantonly killed also (no shit!) and that they, in fact, had a direct religious reason for their killing. I won't deny that, historically (more so) and today, religious differences lead to much bloodshed, however that's more the fault of either the religions in question or the religious leadership sanctioning the killing. My point is more to do with a more basic, nondoctrinal theism, which isn't, of course, what is practised by the majority of theists, but the point does still stand that out of the two -- atheism and theism -- an atheist would, on average, find it easier to kill. Again, not to kill for atheistic reasons, only that atheism makes it easier to justify the killing (when compared to the brand of theism I am representing).
"-- to justify killing, because for the atheist there isn't any real sense of morality, it's only a piddly little emotion that he can, in time anyway, easily overcome. "
Yet another completely false premise.
You have NO IDEA what sense of morality an atheist has.
Atheism does NOT address or exclude morality. Period.
What is morality to an atheist then?
Isn't it entirely subjective? Isn't it the case that the only reason something is "wrong" or "bad" is because the atheist himself "feels" that it is? In other words, precisely what I said; a trifling emotional state. As any good trader knows, there is nothing inherently special about emotional states, that there's nothing that can't be changed or managed (a big key in trading).
If something is only bad because "ooh, yuck. I don't like that", then it's a lot easier to overcome than if (you believe) something is really bad, inherently, intrinsically bad.
I understand it's possible for an atheist to hold that morality is objective, that there is some intrinsic standard of good and bad in the universe, but, from my experience, the vast majority of atheists do not.
In fact, given that there really isn't any open and shut evidence to suggest that morality is objective, accepting that it is becomes, like belief in God, an article of faith. Therefore I consider not only highly improbable for an atheist to subscribe to any notion of an objective morality, but logically impossible; given that he rejects belief in God on faith he must also reject belief in objective morality on faith.
"And to the extent that communism/marxism demands atheism (and it surely does) then atheism did play a role in what happened in happened in those communist states; unless you want to shoot for the absurd position that values and beliefs play no part in deciding behavior. Now that would be really hilarious."
You have failed to make any connection between a LACK
of belief and the russians terrible behavior.
You also choose to IGNORE the obvious, that their tyrannical
communistic ideals were the driving force of these events,
and instead attempt to make the leap to atheism.
Not THAT is truly hilarious.
Well, I covered how lack of belief can influence/determine certain actions in the first part of this post.
So, with respect to communist slaughters, I'll illustrate how it works.
First of all, I think your knowledge of communism/marxism is a little lacking, my friend. History has shown that marxist/communist leaders have often -- but not always -- been tyrannical; but there is nothing in the "communistic ideals" you speak of that demands tyranny. In fact, communism was supposed to be an answer to tyranny. So I wouldn't be as quick as you to ascribe death and slaughter to communism because they are requisite of a communist state, because they are certainly not.
Now, imagine, if you will, that communism didn't demand atheism. That the communist leaders were vehemently committed to their goals of setting up a communist state, but they were also devout Christians (for example). Nothing else in the political or economic climate is different. That's the setup.
Therefore, to achieve their goals, they still would have been required -- given the resistance to them (that actually occurred) -- to kill all those people that the real (atheist) communists did kill. Only now, there's an extra cog in the works that makes following through with that action a bit tougher -- Christian beliefs regarding the sanctity of life. Obviously it is much easier to kill if you don't believe there's anything really wrong with killing, that you're not breaking any cosmic laws. In fact, I would suggest that the replacement of devotion to God -- a God who, in theory anyway, does not permit wanton killing -- with devotion to The State -- a State which demands all necessary measures --made it even more easy to ruthlessly slaughter millions.
Whereas the church and the pope himself have explicitly
put people to death for heresy in the name of god,
im not aware of a single case where a communist put anyone
to death for NOT BEING A GOOD LITTLE ATHEIST.
Yes, the church hasn't been perfect. No doubt about it. Grave, grave injustices. Remember though, you're talking historically. How many incidents of the Christian church killing someone for heresy do you know of in the 20th century? As people have matured and become and enlightened so has the church (the Christian church anyway); afterall, it too is composed of people.
I know you can find many other examples, right to the present day, of religious communities demanding death for "heresy", but that's more a mark against those particular religions, rather than a mark against religion as a whole (although it shares some of the blame), but I don't think it has anything to do with the sort of deism I'm talking about.
Using your very same logic, I could just as easily assert
that Hitlers slaughter of the Jews was because of his
christian (catholic) beliefs. That THIS was the reason,
and not the more OBVIOUS reason, that he was a raving lunatic.
If you claim that atheism is responsible for the deaths
of communistic people, then you must also accept that Hitlers murder
of millions was due to his christian beliefs. Absurd.
No, it's not all that absurd. I'll be the first to admit that religions have, historically especially, been extremely divisive and that those divisions have led to acts of unspeakable cruelty.
With the Nazis example, Christian beliefs obviously played a role. However, just as the communists didn't kill because of their atheism, rather their atheism helped to kill, the Nazis didn't kill because of their Christian beliefs, rather, their Christian beliefs helped them to kill. Only, the difference is that the role played by the Nazis' Christian beliefs only extends to creating a perceived difference -- an immence difference -- between themselves and their Jewish victims; the Jews being of a different religion. Of course, the whole thing needs to be taken into context. At the time much "scientific research" was done into "proving" that the Jews "weren't really human", which also obviously made it a lot easier to kill them. Really, the whole thing is quite complicated and your gross generalizations are deleting far too much important information; we must keep it simple as possible, yes; but not simpler.
