The law in general was done away with as far as a system of rules goes, but I don’t know of anywhere this specific commandment would have been changed. In Acts (chapter 4 or 5 I think) Ananais and Sapphiras (exuse my spelling) are both killed for lying to God. Of course they are actually killed by God so that example isn’t really helpful. I don’t know of anywhere else the issue of the church killing others comes up in the New Testament though.
I haven’t had a laugh like that in a while.
How about we just look at the numbers:
http://teapotatheism.blogspot.com/2008/06/anonymous-wanted-body-count-total-so-he.html
Yes, MUCH better than those secular states.
My, what an impartial “study” there.
Check the references friend - numbers don’t lie and if you read the whole thing it is being VERY low balled on the side of the theists.
The sad part is that even with the concessions it isn’t even close.
To begin with this doesn’t even pertain to our discussion, since we’re discussing the differences between the secular state and the religious state, not the differences between theists and atheists. But as for the numbers.
Let’s see.
Nonsense, estimates are as high as 90 million for Mao, so there’s lie number one.
His second point of intellectual dishonesty is this. He purposefully exclused the time element.
The atheists have killed (including a more correct estimate of Mao: 55 million, plus 10 million for Stalin, to make things more accurate) 641711 people per annum. (I realise this isn’t very exact, but neither is the blog I am replying to).
Theists on the other hand have killed (with some adjustments, e.g. taking away the numbers from the war in Iraq, taking the numbers of Hitler who actually had disagreements with the church, especially since Hitler didn’t launch WWII, so I’ll cut that down and give you five million to be fair. Take out Genghis Khan too since he even said his wars were for power, not religion, so thats 40 million less) 639188 per annum.
You lose.
Not to mention the whole thing was very dubiously done, with almost all religious incidents counted but not all non religious ones. Waco being an example, that has nothing to do with religion. But what do you expect from a follower of Christopher Hitchens and somebody who runs a blog called The Teapot Atheist. How very impartial (by the way I’m not even mentioning his sources, or lack thereof).
Or to put it another way. if I divide the theist “murders” by the number of years and then divide it by the percentage of people that are religious to take account of the difference in numbers, I reach roughly 700 thousand.
Doing the same for the atheists, I reach roughly 1.6 million.
And that’s without challenging any of his dubious numbers such as Mao or Stalin.
Once again, you lose.
It looks as if revealed religion is always involved when there’s mass murder going on. The poster doesn’t look as if created by pacifist Quakers eh ?
In case it’s not clear, this is American war propaganda. Now, the American state is supposedly ‘democratic’ and secular, but oddly enough, revealed religion provides justification for the state’s crimes. Those bad atheist nazis…firebomb them all…
So the state attempts to use that which people favour to manipulate them. Anything new?
You got some references big dog?
Again, even if you add your 90 million number it still isn’t close. All of his sources are reliable - unless you want to debate the wikipedia as reliable thing (however you can use what each wiki references and make the same numbers.)
Edit:
Time element - really? So based on your time principal if it happened more recently and more quickly it is worse? I can see you haven’t taken any advanced statistics so I will skip the references to problems with ordinary least squares regression models (quick, look it up and make a heteroskedastic reference!). Nor do you define a time period - I don’t know where you get your statistical ideas from.
Also you must realize that the author left out the disputed, impossible to calculate and The Negligible (like Waco - which you cite).
You don’t have to be impartial to do math correctly. You need to also read the whole thing so you dont cite things incorrectly. Sure, Hitler and his catholic buddies had nothing to do with WWII.
I wouldn’t happen to be making blog posts about it now, would I?
Oh yes, his sources as very reliable. For example, quoting Trotskyite war mongers who the (pseudo) intellectual bodyguard of the Neocons, who will make up any nonsense about religion if it gives him a new war. A great friend of liberty you have there.
Actually I did what you suggested, I went to Wikipedia and I looked at the sources there for the very first number. In fact, the number given there appears to be dubious since the original source states the he believes that the massive number of deaths could, and he believes would, be accounted for by the weakening of the state. And hence, their inability to count the number of citizens. Moreover, he claims most people lived on subsistance so it wouldn’t take much disruption to cause them to die anyway, so religion cannot be accountable for all those deaths.
Stop lying.
And yes, if you adjust the numbers you’ll see atheism loses no matter what, sorry.
Edit to my last one posted here:
You made a claim, back it up big man. Find those REAL numbers for us.
Simply dismissing all historians as part of some conspiracy is, as you claim the author to be, “intillectually dishonest.”
Leave it up to the athiest troll brigade to derail a thread.
Juan, what does that have to do with ‘libertarian’ countries? Because if we are going to compare official athiest states vs Catholic states, as Giles shows, y’all lose every time. Personally, I would rather live in Austria-Hungary than ‘officially athiest’ Albania.
Riiiight, the ‘Catholic’ Hitler who imprisoned dissadent priests. Godwin’s Law this early ?
Oh I get it, you’re being condescending.
And yet he felt the need to mention it anyway, that’s how generous he is.
Great Britain and France started WWII, you should know that if you know anything about history. Much less the libertarian perspective on WWII. And by the way, Hitler broke away from Catholic church, although before that he did make promises that he would not - he just broke them.
Now, now, you might want to respond to things that I actually said. It helps.
My econometrics and statistics textbooks and teachers, usually. As I said, I’m not going to bother doing things properly in response to a poorly done, unscientific blog post such as that.
What claim have I made? That the original blog post is dishonest. Since he claims to be using the larger estimates in regards to atheism, and then uses an estimate for Mao that happens to be under half of the highest.
Once again, it helps to respond that what I’m saying. Not what you’re imagining that I’m saying. As for your quip about regression models, last time I checked regression models cannot establish causality, or at least my textbook seems to think so. Which is where the point lies really isn’t it? He can claims that religion causes these deaths. When, really, any libertarian would quickly realise that these deaths had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with power. I’ll happily say the same for the atheist states by the way.
Any libertarian, that is, who isn’t going on an ad hoc rant. Take your ramblings elsewhere.
Exactly.
Of course, in order to counter this Andrew posts “facts”, this being on an Austrian Economics forum, funnily enough. Better yet one owned by a Catholic.
Sicsemper, your question is interesting…Maybe I need to refresh your memory ? You classified Lichtenstein as ‘libertarian’ and pointed out that it’s a catholic monarchy.
It seems as if you brought revealed religion into the picture ? And now you complain about the turn the thread has taken ? Tsk tsk.
Man you are good at sidestepping issues:
So recant your accusation that the numbers were used falsely, seeing as they weren’t used at all, instead of making a snide remark and dodging the issue.
I would agree that Britain goaded the war but to say that they started it is quite a long stretch. I think Pat Buchanan’s - Churchill Hitler and the unnecessary war does well to describe the facts of the War - and Hitler was the prime mover. How you can take Hitler’s influence out of WWII is frankly astonishing.
You claimed 90 million - let’s see some backing. Just saying it is dishonest doesn’t mean anything without some references.
None are saying that these death tolls are alone the result of religion but simply that religious states kill measures more than secular ones.
Your conservative BS wrapped in a bible as some moral authority has nothing to do with Anarchism and your statements that religious nations are more peaceful and tolerant than secular ones is ridiculous on its face and has no historical basis.
You wont address the issues head on and you continually try to dodge the issue as though it is a debate tactic - you cannot or will not dispute my reference on any solid grounds.
No, if you go back and read my post I simply answered the OP’s original question: that IMO, Liechtenstein was ‘most libertarian’ of all current states. It being Catholic is irellevant. If it instead was a Protestant monarchy and still had the same laws, I would still call it the ‘most libertarian’. Or if it had no monarchy.
That isn’t a casus bello for hijacking a thread.
The monstrous killings of the the 20th century were all done by officially ‘secular’ or even ‘athiest’ states. Or does the fact that most Americans remain Christian enough for you to classify it as ‘religious’?