Is Body Count An Indicator?

Author: Mandrakel

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Mandrakel
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Let's look at three similar scenarios: Jim Jones and his cult, David Koresh and his cult and Jesus Christ and his cult.
Upon his death, Jones was responsible for the death of nearly 1000 people, Koresh took around 70 with him and Christ was responsible for the death of thousands of persecuted Christians by the time he grasped a couple of 6 inch nails; not to mention the millions of people who suffered and died in his name afterwards.

Each of these three charismatic charlatans claimed to be the son of God and preached pretty much the same things to their naive, gullible followers. So, how should we judge these self-proclaimed leaders of society?

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@Mandrakel
How do we judge the gullible?


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@zedvictor4
How do we judge the gullible?
How we should judge the gullible is that they are pathetic in the true sense of the word. We can help them with counselling or maybe medication but as with other psychological conditions, the subject must be willing. What we can do more effectively is to clamp down on those who take advantage of the weak, gullible, naive and impressionable.
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@Mandrakel
How do clamp down and how do you know they don't believe what they're preaching?
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@RationalMadman
How do clamp down
One suggestion I have already made is to restrict religion being taught to minors, we already do this with the sale of tobacco and alcohol.

and how do you know they don't believe what they're preaching?
Because I didn't come down in the last shower. Preachers are really atheists who have a penchant for control and power and use religion to achieve their own ends. They know very well that what they preach is utter crap. In this day and age of free access to quality information there is no excuse for a religious preacher to claim that he doesn't know any better.
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@Mandrakel
I see, so suppress and censor, like they do with evolution and other religions in Sharia nations? :)

As for your 'theory' it makes no sense. Your theory is axiomatic as the pastors, priests, rabbis, imams so on and so forth that believe in their religion are what you'll then say are the victims of other preachers.

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@Mandrakel
*cough cough* 

Collectively, communist states killed as many as 100 million people, more than all other repressive regimes combined during the same time period. By far the biggest toll arose from communist efforts to collectivize agriculture and eliminate independent property-owning peasants. In China alone, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward led to a man-made famine in which as many as 45 million people perished – the single biggest episode of mass murder in all of world history. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin’s collectivization – which served as a model for similar efforts in China and elsewhere – took some 6 to 10 million lives. Mass famines occurred in many other communist regimes, ranging from North Korea to Ethiopia. In each of these cases, communist rulers were well aware that their policies were causing mass death, and in each they persisted nonetheless, often because they considered the extermination of “Kulak” peasants a feature rather than a bug.

And while it is often said that Hitler was a Christian, the Nuremberg documents clearly reveal the heart of this ruthless man who believed in social Darwinism and had devised plans to completely eliminate Christianity after the Third Reich was firmly established. He wanted to use religion to subvert it for his own political purposes, but he had rejected his Catholic heritage long before. What should be of concern to every atheist is that Hitler thought he could best succeed if he eliminated the Church’s influence on politics. He promised not to persecute Catholics if the Catholic Church agreed to stay out of politics. However, many Protestants could not accept Hitler’s claim to be a German Messiah or submit to an absolute allegiance to the German State, and many Protestants and Catholics were put into Concentration Camps along with the Jews for their resistance to the Führer.
Hitler’s view of the Master Race was highly influenced by both Nietzschean Philosophy and modern, Darwinian evolutionary view of science

Views on religion
Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anticlerical father; after leaving home Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments.[379][380][381] Speer states that Hitler railed against the church to his political associates and though he never officially left it, he had no attachment to it.[382] He adds that Hitler felt that in the absence of organised religion, people would turn to mysticism, which he considered regressive.[382] According to Speer, Hitler believed that Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness".[383]
Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches.[384] According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of "survival of the fittest".[385] He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology.[386]

Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society,[387] and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes".[384] In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus" who fought against the Jews.[388] Any pro-Christian public rhetoric contradicted his private statements, which described Christianity as "absurdity"[389] and nonsense founded on lies.[390]
According to a US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, "The Nazi Master Plan", Hitler planned to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich.[391][392] His eventual goal was the total elimination of Christianity.[393] This goal informed Hitler's movement early on, but he saw it as inexpedient to publicly express this extreme position.[394] According to Bullock, Hitler wanted to wait until after the war before executing this plan.[395]
Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns.[396][397]
Don't start petty games you can't win. 
Mandrakel
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@RationalMadman
I see, so suppress and censor, like they do with evolution and other religions in Sharia nations? :)
Come on, there's no need to take what I said to extremes and make a total lie of it. I said "restriction". Geezis bleeding Kerrist. Give some idiots an inch and they'll take a thousand miles.

As for your 'theory' it makes no sense.
My so-called "theory" may not make much sense to you but that is not surprising given your interpretation in the previous last example.
Poor try....you need to make a better attempt to get on the right page.
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@MisterChris
Don't start petty games you can't win. 
I'm not here to play games, least of all petty games. Nor do I set out to win anything.
Communism is no different to religion and is for all intents and purposes a religion.

Lest we forget that the Catholic Church was a supporter and financial sponsor of the Nazi Party. 


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@Mandrakel
Restrictions as in banning children and adolescents getting access to material that depicts religious outlooks and philosophical concepts that do not adhere to how you perceive reality.
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@Mandrakel
My poor attempt is what literally everyone realised when reading your thread.

Are you Willows or Disgusted?

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@RationalMadman
depicts religious outlooks and philosophical concepts
That is gilding the lily to put it mildly.
Your so-called religious outlooks and philosophical concepts happen to include the promotion of doom and gloom and profound fear of being sent into an eternal life of damnation in hell.
And you think it is acceptable to expose kids to that sort of morbid nonsense?
And whilst you're at it, you may want to cut the trolling remarks.

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@Mandrakel
What trolling remarks?
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@Mandrakel
Communism is no different to religion and is for all intents and purposes a religion.

Ah, the argument athiests all turn to. When athiests do wrong, just call them religious, and that somehow alters reality. Sorry, but communism is not a religion, it is antithetical to religion. The religion ALWAYS appeals to the supernatural by DEFINITION. Communism rejects the supernatural, and substitutes it with government authority and collectivist ideals. It is an ideology, not a religion. A radical one. Non-religious folk are just as capable of violent fervor as religious folk are. And I would argue that some religions are more uniquely opposed to violence than others, just as some ideologies are. Your argument crumbles. 
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I see people never grow tired of the Atheist/Theist Historical Blamethrowing game. 

"No ur ideology killed more people."
"No UR ideology killed more people."

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@MisterChris
When athiests do wrong, just call them religious
However, I am talking specifically here about communism and even more in particular, Stalinism which was a Totalitarian regime which is dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state. Similarly, religion requires complete subservience to God. Even though there is no supernatural component, for all intents and purposes Stalinism was an ideology. By definition religion is a radical ideology.
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@Castin
I see people never grow tired of the Atheist/Theist Historical Blamethrowing game. 

"No ur ideology killed more people."
"No UR ideology killed more people."
However one should not ignore the facts and the facts do show a disproportionately higher rate of death and suffering due to religious conflict, i.e. religious zealots at each others thrats trying to prove who has the best imaginary friend. 
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@Mandrakel
Christ was responsible for the death of thousands
As you said, Jones and Koresh were personally responsible, by coercion, for the deaths associated with each's cult. Jesus did not cause the deaths of thousands, nor even potential millions since, by his direct coercion, as did your other two. Those millions of deaths were at the hands of other people, having a specific agenda of death in order to eradicate Christians. They failed, by the way.. Jones and Koresh accomplished their own eradication of their respective groups. Not so, Jesus Christ. You're comparing apples and oranges. Stop it.
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@fauxlaw
ones and Koresh accomplished their own eradication of their respective groups. Not so, Jesus Christ.  comparing apples and oranges.
I was careful enough to use the appropriate terminology; Christ was responsible for the death of thousands.
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@Mandrakel
By "responsible," you imply personal responsibility, not even a general responsibility as the leader of group of disciples who followed him. What, specifically, did Jesus Christ do by responsible statement or act, to directly cause the deaths of millions? That they believed him? It was their choice to believe and follow him; Jesus did not coerce them in any way, nor did he raise the scourge, the arrow, the sword, the cross, that condemned them to death by the actions of others whose aim was eradication of both the idea of Christ, and his followers.
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@fauxlaw
Jesus did not coerce them in any way
I think that any charismatic charlatan who talks gullible, naive people into thinking in a particular way or doing things, is in effect coercing them.
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The crusades killed millions. That is all I’ve gotta say.
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@Mandrakel
your definition of religion is completely wrong and you continue to be in denial. If the non-religious (those who reject the supernatural) develop a religion-like adherence to a radical political ideology, that is not the fault of religion, but of the non-religious who developed and followed it. You claim that the distinction between believing in the supernatural makes no difference, but you ignore that this is literally the distinguishing factor between religion and non-religion. You can try and equate the two all you want, but you simply dig your grave further. 

But let's say I buy that communism is a religion. If athiests gravitate towards religious-like behavior, and end up killing hundreds of millions, the entire debate is non-unique. Neither side, theist nor secular, can claim to be rid of religious fervor.
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@Mandrakel
I see people never grow tired of the Atheist/Theist Historical Blamethrowing game. 

"No ur ideology killed more people."
"No UR ideology killed more people."
However one should not ignore the facts and the facts do show a disproportionately higher rate of death and suffering due to religious conflict, i.e. religious zealots at each others thrats trying to prove who has the best imaginary friend. 
I would say the dangerous component is dogma, not religion, and dogma can come in both religious and non-religious varieties. Stalinism, Maoism, Nazism -- all examples of non-religious dogma.

Dogma has its roots in human nature. Arrogant conviction in the supremacy of our own beliefs, inability to coexist with alternate worldviews, the need for control, tribalism, the thirst to destroy the enemy groupthink. These are human tendencies we should take collective responsibility for as a species, rather than blaming them on theism or atheism so we can dismiss them from "our team's" conscience.
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Aaaand he's banned until 2048.
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@Mandrakel
I think
La di da. You may think, but you have no clue what coercion is and is not. It isn't what you think it is. Free agency remains the superior force by personal choice, person to person, and that, my friend, is the nature of things. 
Of course, if you think otherwise, that thinking exhibits a weakness. So be it.
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@Intelligence_06
The crusades, yes. But that was not Jesus. It was men carrying images of his cross, and not his cross, and not him. Please understand the distinction.
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@fauxlaw
By that logic, all good Christians are not Jesus either, they're just humans doing things with their own agenda and carrying his cross. So because they're not Jesus they are not Christians?
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@Intelligence_06
And don't forget that 100 million Indigenous people in the Americas were killed during the European Colonization for the propagation of American capitalism, as well as millions of African people that were enslaved as property to be profited off of by capitalists in the West.
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>>> RationalMadman

No, you were right the first time. They are not Jesus. Jesus is Jesus, alone.