GOP Insider: How Religion Destroyed My Party

[Thai]

I am not Catholic nor any religion for that matter. I was not raised up as one either.

BUT, where Obama is taking this country is wrong. So, i don't really care one way or another...just that Obama must go. Why anyone blind enough to still see the light from Obama is beyond me!

Think of it this way...at least for me, voting for Romney (a semi-liberal guy in his own right) is the lesser of two evils. That's the bottom line for me. Obama must go. Otherwise, we are royally screwed. What has Obama promised that has come true? Nobel Prize anyone? What good CHANGE have we seen since 2008?

Obama’s strategy is simple: He promises everything to everybody and then points the finger elsewhere when people are inevitably disappointed. A good summary on his recent actions by the President: (Is this the upstanding President that you guys voted for?? Honestly!)

"It’s important to remember that Barack Obama rode into Washington four years ago on a magic carpet made up of hopes and dreams and promises to make the national conversation less partisan and more civil.

It’s tempting to believe that Mr. Obama has thrown his principles out the window in order to win. But it’s becoming more and more clear that he never had the principles he sold us on. It’s becoming more and more clear that Barack Obama is just one more crummy Chicago politician who will do whatever he has to in order to win. Somebody needs to tell the president that the White House isn’t City Hall.

Mr. Obama’s tactics, of course, may work. But if he wins re-election, he will be the president of a nation more divided than when he walked into the Oval Office four years ago. With his class warfare strategy, he has managed to turn Americans against each other. With his ally’s dirty campaign ad, he has managed to make us more cynical than we were before he promised to make things better."

Some liked this post of mine and reminded me of it...3 yrs later, boy, my view has not changed one bit.

Whoever wins next election will be better than the crap that has been in office this past 8 years! Nobel Peace Prize my ass! Forever will that Nobel Peace Prize be stained by Obama.

 

[ndcent]

If we are really going to be honest with ourselves, I'm pretty sure EVERY major organized religion are directly responsible for some of the most unspeakable, horrible atrocities throughout history.

Atheists don't get a break either- somewhere around 120 million people have been murdered by militant atheists in the last century.

Buddhism is almost certainly the least violent sect throughout known history, but even they have recorded over sixteen hundred years of violent acts with some sort of Buddhist justification throughout Southeast Asia.


So what lesson can we learn from all of this? I wish I had the answer. Human nature has an incredibly black stain that is nearly impossible to move, regardless of whatever enlightenment we seek.

120 million people have been killed by militant atheists in the last 100 years?

Can you give me a link or something? I've not heard this before and couldn't find anything on a quick google search. Thanks!

 

[KidVermicious]

Mussolini for one. Robespierre and his crew for another. Also any proper Marxist communist leader, which gets you Stalin and Mao and fifty lesser tyrants.

 

[1engineer]

If we are really going to be honest with ourselves, I'm pretty sure EVERY major organized religion are directly responsible for some of the most unspeakable, horrible atrocities throughout history.

Atheists don't get a break either- somewhere around 120 million people have been murdered by militant atheists in the last century.

Buddhism is almost certainly the least violent sect throughout known history, but even they have recorded over sixteen hundred years of violent acts with some sort of Buddhist justification throughout Southeast Asia.


So what lesson can we learn from all of this? I wish I had the answer. Human nature has an incredibly black stain that is nearly impossible to move, regardless of whatever enlightenment we seek.

You (or me or anyone) really has to take statistics like this with a tiny grain of salt. Why? Because of different times and different societal standards. People 100 years ago had much different views and what was normal for their time is not normal for ours such as child labor, women voting, etc. 200 years ago was even stranger to us who live in today's world. 1000 years ago was even stranger still right? It just depends on WHEN you lived that would determine what is violent. It is not just religious sects that have committed violence in the past it is humans in the name of religion, or love, or something off the wall.

 

[wadle5]

You (or me or anyone) really has to take statistics like this with a tiny grain of salt. Why? Because of different times and different societal standards. People 100 years ago had much different views and what was normal for their time is not normal for ours such as child labor, women voting, etc. 200 years ago was even stranger to us who live in today's world. 1000 years ago was even stranger still right? It just depends on WHEN you lived that would determine what is violent. It is not just religious sects that have committed violence in the past it is humans in the name of religion, or love, or something off the wall.

Was thinking the same thing. Originally I believe Religion to be for good, but naturally as philosophy proves. Human nature can always turn something that was good into something bad, and it is usually for self-serving/self-righteous reasons. Similar to the quote "with great power, comes great responsibility". But all it takes is every other decade, every other century, some individual convinces others to go against what has been proven in the past or reason or logic.

 

[MtnT4R]

120 million people have been killed by militant atheists in the last 100 years?

Can you give me a link or something? I've not heard this before and couldn't find anything on a quick google search. Thanks!

120 million people have been killed by militant atheists in the last 100 years?

Can you give me a link or something? I've not heard this before and couldn't find anything on a quick google search. Thanks!

'The Black Book of Communism' was published in 1997 and is probably the most comprehensive literature on the subject. Here's the Amazon book link:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Book-Communism-Repression/dp/0674076087

Of course, if you look at the reviews, there are reports of factual errors and arguments that it is a shameless propaganda piece, but the point I'm trying to make here is the estimated number of deaths is around 100 million. You can always google the names of the most infamous communist(atheist) leaders over the last century and get the numbers yourself:

To name a few:
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94)
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987)
Suharto (Communists 1967-66)
Ante Pavelic (Croatia 1941-45)
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam 1953-56)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)
Adolf Hitler (Germany 1939-1945) This one is debatable- there is a lot of controversy whether their particular brand of national socialism was altogether atheist.

I'm not trying to say atheism is more dangerous than organized religion, just that pretty much nobody has any moral high ground to speak of, religious or not.

 

[MtnT4R]

You (or me or anyone) really has to take statistics like this with a tiny grain of salt. Why? Because of different times and different societal standards. People 100 years ago had much different views and what was normal for their time is not normal for ours such as child labor, women voting, etc. 200 years ago was even stranger to us who live in today's world. 1000 years ago was even stranger still right? It just depends on WHEN you lived that would determine what is violent. It is not just religious sects that have committed violence in the past it is humans in the name of religion, or love, or something off the wall.

I understand what you're saying, life was cheap(still is, in most parts of the world), but its interesting to me that one individual killing another in a community has always been universally reprehensible(its never been ok to kill your neighbor just because you felt like it, no matter what society you live in), but if you back up the killing with a religious, political, or cultural 'reason,' it can easily become justified. And when the numbers start to pile up, people stop caring, probably because its outside of our ability to truly comprehend the sheer scale of suffering. Stalin said it pretty well; "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

 

[KidVermicious]

'The Black Book of Communism' was published in 1997 and is probably the most comprehensive literature on the subject. Here's the Amazon book link:
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression: Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Nicolas Werth, Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, Jonathan Murphy: 9780674076082: Amazon.com: Books

Of course, if you look at the reviews, there are reports of factual errors and arguments that it is a shameless propaganda piece, but the point I'm trying to make here is the estimated number of deaths is around 100 million. You can always google the names of the most infamous communist(atheist) leaders over the last century and get the numbers yourself:

To name a few:
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94)
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987)
Suharto (Communists 1967-66)
Ante Pavelic (Croatia 1941-45)
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam 1953-56)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)
Adolf Hitler (Germany 1939-1945) This one is debatable- there is a lot of controversy whether their particular brand of national socialism was altogether atheist.

I'm not trying to say atheism is more dangerous than organized religion, just that pretty much nobody has any moral high ground to speak of, religious or not.

I'm not sure it's fair to portray Hitler as a militant atheist. It's true he didn't have much love for Christianity as he knew it, but he still used it to achieve his political ends. And his fascination with the pagan and occult doesn't jive with our understanding of atheism either.

In any case, to say that religion causes evil acts or to counter that atheism does too is to miss the point. It's not religion or the lack thereof, it's ideology. Whether it's a crusade or a jihad or a Great Leap Forward or a "war on terrorism", power hungry people will always find a way to make stupid people do their bidding. Religion just happens to be very useful in that regard, but take religion out of the picture and other ideologies will take it's place.

 

[Bigshankhank]

120 million people have been killed by militant atheists in the last 100 years?

Can you give me a link or something? I've not heard this before and couldn't find anything on a quick google search. Thanks!

Militant atheists run the media (and Hollywood) so good luck finding anything in the news about it. :drum:

 

[ndcent]

Militant atheists run the media (and Hollywood) so good luck finding anything in the news about it. :drum:

I bet you've got a great YouTube video that backs this up though!

 

[RedMagik]

Regardless of your religious beliefs or lack there of...I've always found this interesting considering it was from the 60s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Az0okaHig

What is spoke in that clip is spot on really, just morality going down the shitter. I feel like we are truly headed for making Idiocracy a documentary instead of a movie.

Love me some brawndo.... :bigok:

 

[LandCruiser]

It's hard to keep accurate tabs, but progressive, socialist, community organizer, atheist Tovarisch Stalin killed some odd 40 million people.

Remove religion and they just replace it with a cult of personality and make a man like Hitler or Kim Jong Un into a god.