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Ah, thanks for adding to the discussion to let everyone know you're passive aggressive and read too much Ayn Rand.

You could just help people instead of judging them. I hope I'm never next to you in a crisis.

Little helpful life tip for you: Help everyone in need and let God (or the random heartless chaos of the godless universe) sort out the rest.

Well you're a bigot. (and I'm an atheist as well).

They believe Jesus Christ is the son of God. What else defines Christianity? Best be careful what rules you lay out because you're going to quickly find only a few sects follow those rules. But I'm willing to bet that whatever rules you define are the ones you were exposed to as a child.

May I also point out that at least the Mormons have a reason to be good that's better than the other sects. See in most of the other Christian sects if you are good and go to heaven what's your reward? You get to serve god, that's right you get to be gods butler/waitress. Your highest reward is to be the help.

Sure the Mormons think that your reward for the test of earthly life is to graduate to full godhead, they also think that everyone is a direct descendent of god and that this earthly life is a test to validate your spirit for compassion and love so that you are worthy to receive that graduation in power.

As an atheist I can say it all a bunch of horseshit, I was raised Mormon, I know all about the bullshitness of Mormon beliefs that were concocted over time to get Joseph Smith money, power and pussy. But I also know all about the bullshitness of all the other sects as well and that they exist for many of the same motives. But I really don't know what you can define Christianity as if you are claiming that people that believe Jesus is the resurrected son of god aren't Christian. Because that's pretty much the definition of it and any other concocted definition is nothing more than a bunch of rules that say those other guys are full of shit but these guys over here, they believe the right things (that are also unbelievable). It's bigotry, pure and simple. Make up a bunch of rules that say one way is right and all the others are godless heathens.

Most "religious people" aren't really religious. I find that comforting and reassuring. Even people that claim to be devout just really aren't...

Turns out Americans go the church about as much as the "godless" Europeans - except Europeans don't lie about it nearly as much.

All those "godless socialist hell holes" are way ahead of us in science and technology.

We are just too divided within ourselves to realise this.

If I kill you because you are a godless infidel spreading lies and deceit, undermining the work of the holy one and leading good people astray, I am a saint -- in any religion.

Errr...what?
I'm sorry, but you are completely and totally wrong.
I know for a fact that Christianity condemns murder under any circumstances, Republicans notwithstanding. Don't try to pull some Old Testament scripture where it says to kill everybody in a city as a claim that Christianity somehow supports this. Christianity didn't even exist when all that Old Testament stuff happened.
Find somewhere, anywhere, where Christ told anyone to kill someone. Christian, after all, does mean "Follower of Christ," not "Follower of all the Old Testament bullshit that got us to the point of *needing* the Christ in the first place."

I'm pretty sure Hinduism, which believes in reincarnation, finds murder under any circumstances just as heinous. Their belief is that a murderer would be reincarnated at a lower level. Maybe they'll come back as a worm, or something.

I'm sure there are others, as I'm certainly not an expert on all religions.

To disagree with someone is to hold a viewpoint in opposition to theirs. The goal of any discussion between two sides in disagreement is not 'to win' but to understand the other side. You might not ever change your opponent's point of view or convince them of the 'wrong-ness' of it, but you should come to understand their point of view and why they see it as right and good.

Remember, murder is a sin in all religions, it's how you spin it that makes it acceptable. If I kill you in cold blood I go to hell. If I kill you because you are a godless infidel spreading lies and deceit, undermining the work of the holy one and leading good people astray, I am a saint -- in any religion.

Religiously affiliated charities clearly trumpet those affiliations in all of their advertising

Most religious charities don't advertise.

The ACLU, at the very least, have been attacked for their godlessness by numerous Christian groups over the years.

Numerous Christian churches are full of fools. The ACLU is faith-agnostic and will defend anyone whose rights are being trampled. IMO the ACLU is an excellent organization.

The Communist Manifesto 1848â is a heartless godless book and is filled with every human depravity there is. Read it.

No it isn't: just offhand, it doesn't contain any support for bestiality.

In any case, if you read what Marx wrote (rather than what Stalin read, which isn't exactly the same thing, even if Stalin's misunderstanding was deliberate), he said that religion was a symptom of inequality and suffering, because religion helped numb the pain ("the opiate of the masses", remember that opiates were the best anaesthetics you could get). OTOH, those in happier situations tended to have less time for religion (hence why so many young adults abandon their parent's faith when their at the time when their lives look most optimistic).

To make matters worse plenty of religious leaders get into bed with the political leaders who are causing their congregations to suffer, encouraging their congregations to support the very people who are creating the suffering they are going to church to escape. That has been shown countless times to be a great way to be first against the wall, but until then, it means more support and more prestige.

How would you define an atheist charity? Religiously affiliated charities clearly trumpet those affiliations in all of their advertising, so it's hard to mistake those. However, if you're drawing a line between a secular charity (which have a lack of affiliation with any religious group or institution) and an atheist charity, please define that line.

The ACLU, at the very least, have been attacked for their godlessness by numerous Christian groups over the years.

That's a very ignorant point of view... No book in History is more responsible for hundreds of Millions of deaths all in the name of sociologist⦠Karl Marx book âoeThe Communist Manifesto 1848â is a heartless godless book and is filled with every human depravity there is. Read it. Set the conditions and man will commit to breaking every law that God has passed down to man. Tell man he is not a sinner and there is no God, the moral judge and or teach him religion and he has to work for his salvation and you will have the ultimate weapon. We see the effects today do we not?

In my mind, Russia's athiesm was an instrument used to promote communism. Religion was explicitly seen as an impediment to proper communism, so it was opposed not because it was thought to be false, but because it was thought to be a tool of oppression used by the elite against the common man. In that case, it was not a root cause. I'm not even sure it was used as an excuse, it seems atheism was enforced because it was supposed to benefit communism.

If that's the case, then that's not at all the same situation as using religion as a cover for other issues. If religion adds legitimacy to illegitimate conflicts, is that not bad? Is that not a harmful effect of religion? A key difference here is that I find it hard to believe that you could ever rally thousands of atheists to riot under the pretense that the god they don't believe in has been insulted (or not sufficiently insulted). Atheism can be used a policy to harm theists, but I can't say I've run into anyone who could be motivated to do anything more than prattle on about how smart they are by their atheism.

Additionally, as others have pointed out previously, both communism and libertarianism (and probably many other -isms) are pretty much godless religions. They have sets of beliefs that their adherents must believe, and they even have their own "holy" books. They may belong to a superset that includes them and religion that is occasionally the problem.

Review history. The "us" you speak of was the German State, not a particular religious affiliation.

Religious identity was one of the levers the German State used, much as did, e.g., the Iraqi State in the period between the 1991 war and the one in 2003. (Or, to a much lesser extent, the US State, particularly beginning with the Cold War, where "faith" v. "godlessness" was used as a lever to build an oppositional identity to the Soviet bloc, motivating, among other things, the official insertion of "Under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance.)

His arguments against Jews were not religious, they were based on genetic racial pseudoscience.

They were both, though its true that the propaganda portrayed the religious evil as symptomatic of effects explained by the genetic racial pseudoscience, such that the latter was more fundamental than the former.

Publishing peer reviewed science is almost the exact same thing as child molestation. How can anyone not see that?

When the science is about paleoclimate, then absolutely. Those guys are part of a marxist conspiracy. Green is the new red. They'll lie and do anything to impose big government on hard-working freedom fighters.

That's really how the tea party thinks of this issue. It is irresponsible. And when climate change really does start hitting the bottom line, they'll probably blame liberal godlessness, and quietly forget this disingenuous assault on science.

There's only been one Nazi party (it was a specific German political party of which Nazi was an abbreviation) - and it wasn't atheistic.

Your hypothesis on the horrors of what would befall a godless society would have more weight if basic facts were correct showing you cared about whether or not such a thing was likely rather than just wanting to arrive at your preformed opinion.

Dear Mr. Dawkins,

It seems to me that your epistemology of reason and empiricism is very good at teaching us how to understand objective reality but not how to value anything. Whenever a person makes a value claim, i.e. that something is good or bad, that person is essentially engaging in something akin to religion. I am unaware of any empirical tests for good and bad. Eric Hoffer reminded us that, though ours is a godless world, it is anything but irreligious; everywhere the True Believer is on the march... shaping the world in his own image. I believe your own efforts to shape an ideal society devoid of so-called "religion" are based in value judgments. Tell me, how are you different from those whom you criticize?

Until we had to fight the godless commies. Then "under god" was added to the pledge of allegiance (the flow is better without it, even now), and "in god we trust" was put on our money. Still not in the constitution, though.

A properly worded Google search once netted me a document from Madison to (I think) the Turks, indicating that ours was a government that had no quarrel with, and was generally accepting of "the muselmen" which I understand was a term we would now understand as Muslims.

You might be a computer if you only can only process information that is properly formatted and improperly formatted information gives you a segfault.

You might be a piece of lowlife shit if you think that it is acceptable for the language
to be ruined by the lazy stupid people who don't care to write and speak properly.

In fact, maybe you are a slant eyed godless dog-eating cocksucker, and maybe you
need to get anal cancer soon and die.

You are, once again, attributing goodness with the club you're associated. Good behavior is more of a function of society and has nothing specifically to do with religion or a particular religion. Take Japanese society as a prime example. They are EXTREMELY not religious.... superstitious perhaps and more along the lines of "this is traditional and also, it doesn't hurt [fire insurance] to do this" but no one believes in in their hearts. Japan is famous for its low crime rate while at the same time not particularly religious and certainly "godless" by most standards.

You want to attribute things to your god-club, and I would suggest that god isn't even part of the equation.

Also, ample evidence to the contrary exists where loads of church-goers are also found in prisons across the world... god's grace had little effect on these, but then that just opens up a whole lot of rebuttle about being truly faithful followers and blah blah blah. The point here is that the existence of religion in any given individual's life is not a deciding factor. Arguably, it's not even a contributing factor.

But for "good christians" it's convenient to think "I'm good. I'm Christian. Therefore Christians are good." And that falacy of logic, among lots of others, contributes to the mental weakness [vulnerability if you will] of religious people.

The only reason the Church would stand up against nazism was because it was a threat to their control over the populace anyway

That's about a thousand years late, dude. There is no one Christian church since Luther broke away. The church has no control over its members, they are free to break from the church whenever they want.

no more church schools to indoctrinate the young, no more church run addiction clinics etc. and they would all be replaced by secular state funded institutions

Your are either deluding yourself or trying to delude others. A secular state run organization is not going to go against the state -- the state runs it. Now tell me, where are all the secular private schools and secular drug abuse facilities?

This is all they were doing against Nazism - fighting it not because of an inherent disagreement with Nazism, but simply to protect their own ability to manipulate and control people for their own ends.

If that were true they wouldn't have fought Nazism, but would have joined the Nazis and simply stated that Hitler was doing God's work against the Godless communist USSR and China.

Of course, my argumants are pointless since you're a fanatical antitheist. Might as well try to convince a Republican that rich people don't pay enough tax, or convincing a Democrat that Social Security is a bad idea.

Which is why combining church and government is such an incredibly scary thing, yet there are so many naive idiots on the authoritarian side of politics that want to do exactly that.
A fascist state run by televangalists would be just as nasty as a communist state where the church is outlawed.
Tell those Godless "Christians" that go to Church for just the political power to look at their Bible for the bit about Caesar.

A fascist state doesn't need to be run by televangelists to be just as nasty as a community state, or any other totalitarian state. There is also a fast difference between having laws that also have a founding in religious teachings (thou shalt not kill) and having a church run state. Religion influences morality and laws reflect that morality. That is different than a church run state where the laws do not necessarily reflect the morality of the people but the moral precepts of the religion.

It doesn't take religion to corrupt government. Man can do that quite well. It just takes the accumulation of power in the hands of the few instead of the many.

Spock said it best - "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one." Of course, that was almost a direct quote, according to Leonard Nimoy from his Jewish teachings as a child.

Religion has the power to influence. However, it is individual people who use that power for their own ends that is the problem. Because of that, should we get rid of religion? I hope not. We wouldn't have things like the Peace Corps, the International Red Cross, the YMCA, most hospitals and universities, etc. if it weren't for religion. Religion is not the problem. Those who use it to push their own agenda, that is the problem.