Joshua822 wrote:What??
Ben Stein claims that Hitler got the idea to exterminate the Jews from the theory of Evolution. This is clearly bollocks. Hitler was brought up as a Catholic, so his irrational hatred of Jews was actually founded on religious beliefs (Jews have been labelled by Christians as the killers of christ, for those of you who didn't know that).
Actually, that's not the reason Hitler wanted to exterminate the jews. The actual reason was that he was an atheist and wanted a world without religion. So, he started by exterminating the Jews. Why ? Because in the bible, the Jews are said to be the people of god. So he started with the root, the Jews. After that, he would begin exterminating Christians and others...
This makes no sense at all. Hitler was not an atheist, at least not before 1942-43. As spiraldoor (or whoever he quoted) said, Hitler got a standard dose of anti-semitism from his Catholic upbringing, and this was reinforced by the social situation in Germany in the early 20th century. "Starting with the root" of religion is also completely illogical. If he wanted to exterminate all the religions (not even remotely possible, btw), he would have started with the Christians and the Muslims, who are pretty much the only ones who tries actively to spread their religion. That's a crazy though, and Hitler, although evil, was not crazy, at least not in his early years.
Now, in this thread i've been reading a lot lately about Religion being bad. But, actually, are God and Religion depent on each other. What is Religion for you ? I think that you can believe in God and Evolution too. You don't need the bible, the torah, or the quran to believe in God. And Religion has caused bad things more then good things. For example, in the middle century's kings justified wars "in the name of God and the crusades. Both horrible things. And that's just two things from a whole book of ridicilous mistakes of the church.
You're right. Religions are bad, that's a point I've been trying to make all along. You are also right that belief in God isn't a bad thing in itself. But belief in God is a premise for the existance of religions, and as we have already stated, religion is generally not a good thing. The 9/11 attacks on WTC started with belief:
Belief in god --> personal religion --> organized religion --> fanatic believers --> 9/11
Did God said that the crusades where right ? Did God said that wars where "cool" ? Not in any case i've heard.
As a matter of fact, god speaks directly to his chosen people a lot in the Old Testament. He says pleasant things such as:
Yahweh wrote:And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. And the LORD said unto Moses, 'Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.
Basically: Kill all unbelievers, decapitate them and put their heads on sticks.
And my opinion, i've learned much in this thread, and i have certainly other opinions on some fronts then before this thread. I still believe in an omnipotent. Whether it's God or not. There is something above natural, i'm sure of that...
Very well. But if you're going to argue in favour of god, or against Atheism, then at least come up with some valid arguments.