Why Care what Others Believe?

How should we relate to other religions? There are only five options and each one of them excludes the rest.

First, indifference which rejects all religious dogmas and does not worry about if they are true or not.

Second, the ostrich approach. This holds that there is one right religion and the others are false or less right. There is only one true Church.

Third, the pluralist approach. Every religion is good and none is better than another and you can choose whatever one you want and it will do. All religions are true or bring enlightenment.

Fourth, all religions are saying the same thing in the last analysis and there is truth in every religion.

Fifth, the scientific approach is that we say we do not know anything more than what can be demonstrated by scientific reasoning so we cannot have faith in religion for it is beyond science. This approach has it that one religious faith is just as credulous as the next.

Ultimately nobody converts you - you convert yourself.  All people must go out and help people convert themselves to the truth for what they believe about the important things.  Since they mean well, we have to respect that and listen to them. Nobody says things just for the sake of saying them. They say things to make changes in the world – to put the world the way they want it to be. That is why error should be corrected. That is why if we know religion is wrong we should say so and be distributing tracts to curb its malevolent influence.

We are called Humanists because we see that Atheism or secularism is love and so it is our duty to be militant Atheists who go out and help all who will listen see the beauty of the truth. However, the chief aim of the Humanist is not to fight religion but to stand up for reason and to promote it. The reason it is the aim is that it will have more success and win us more respect. That is why we will concentrate on winning over those who already have turned against religion and then on the clergy. Having said that, destroying religion is an aim too. What the Humanist must do primarily then is defend himself or herself from misunderstanding for we believe that ignorance concerning our position is a danger to us and we have a right to do something about it and must. That is what we are doing when we try to get all who we meet interested in the good news of Atheism. Where we are silent we are asking for Humanism and atheism to be misconceived.

The believers in God say that God is truth itself and so error is antithetical to him just because he is non-error. By their belief then, they give up any right not to hear the other side. They give up any right not to be exposed to the truth or to turn away those who contradict their faith. If they really love God they will hear what the truth says even if it means being open to the possibility of finding out that there is no God. If they do not love God then they do not love others for the love of God and people are alleged to go together. They give up any right to complain if they are offended by what others present as evidence for they are asking for it.

Truth never harmed anyone though many harm and upset themselves because of it.  That is not truth's fault.  Truth by its nature has to beget hostility from those who despise it. It is people’s reaction to the truth not the truth that does harm and that is their own concern.  It is a fault in them and they have no business of accusing anybody who contradicts their religious beliefs of upsetting them. What another person says will upset you only if you are biased and don’t want to see it or don’t want to change your mind. To be biased is to be bigoted and in the grip of an irrational fear. By being like that you are the one who is being offensive and that is awful for fear is the root of all evil and hatred. For example, a Spiritualist will not want to hear there is no life after death.  The truth is the Spiritualist should want to know if there is none for it is a mark of maturity and goodness and benevolence to risk your belief and be ready to find a way to cope if it is wrong. You must not be biased because that means you are claiming that your belief is probably right and you are doing so because you want to believe it and not because of the evidence.  This makes you a liar and a kind of persecutor to the person who sees you are wrong or who wants you to know you are wrong. There is no need to be biased so be fair to the person who disagrees with you.  Don’t be offended for that is the sure sign that you are biased. Don’t set yourself up against the human rights of the person by being biased.

Those who ask you to respect their beliefs or who accuse you of not respecting their beliefs just because you point out some flaw in the beliefs are just trying to silence you and silence the truth.  It is not disrespecting to examine a belief.  Beliefs happen to people.  If you see a man stealing a bike you didn't choose to see this and belief he stole the bike.  You cannot believe what you want for belief is caused by evidence.  Those who want to silence you and claim it is because they want their beliefs respected are really saying truth shouldn't be respected or that beliefs matter more than truth! 

To respect people and to respect beliefs is not the same thing.  People don't make their beliefs, the beliefs just happen to them.  So though you can't hate the sin and love the sinner you can love the mistaken believer and hate his mistaken belief.

When you refuse to let a murderer go out to slay prostitutes you are not respecting his belief.  People need respect but beliefs do not.  Wrong beliefs give up any right to be respected and that is simply by virtue of their being wrong.

The well-balanced person never fears truth of any kind and knows that if they are accused of being in the wrong that the other person means well and may be right and so should be listened to for that reason. If we don’t promote truth people will never learn and grow up. But they have to be carried along the right road gently and we must remember that some truths are more important than others and the important ones come first. We must labour for the sake of the important truths for to be against important truth is to insult the whole human race for if important truth is bad so is the important truth that we exist. The sensible person likes to hear an objection to what they think or believe for it gives them a chance to grow in wisdom. If the objection is unfair they will see that and their belief will get stronger. If the objection is fair they should be glad to have been told. The Humanist sees an objection as a challenge and as a gift. Even when it is given in a bad spirit it should be appreciated because it is still something that is meant to try and improve the world. Never insult anybody by taking offence.

If you don’t want to offend anybody by your words then don’t speak at all. Then you will be offending people even more for they hate being ignored! Everything you say can offend if not now then later. So don’t be afraid to be outspoken. Don’t feel bad about it for being outspoken is a way of meaning well. People will admire you for doing that and will wish they could be like that.

Too many people these days moralise about tolerance and have no idea what it really is. There are three alternative understandings of tolerance.

One is to make all beliefs, however outrageous, equally valuable and forbidding drawing others to your own belief. One is really indifferentism not tolerance.  It doesn't care what people believe or think.  Indifference is often today confused with tolerance.  Yet indifferentism itself is intolerant of anybody that disagrees with it. 

Two is to say that all beliefs are valuable as long as they are sincere and as long as the believers are open to changing their minds and that harmful beliefs should not be tolerated.  This view refuses to tolerate people who know they have the truth.  It urges them to have their own opinions and not to worry at all about being right. It isn't real tolerance.

Three is to say that all wrong beliefs are bad but we must put up with them up to a point.  Three understands tolerance correctly.  So tolerance implies putting up with bad things.  Tolerance does encourage harmless and healthy differences but only in the search for truth.  It is respecting what ought to be respected.

When somebody insults Atheists or Atheism we should not allow ourselves to be offended. What we should do is with a friendly smile correct their errors if they want to listen. If we are offended we are deterring people from telling us what they really think and openness is of absolute importance. We hope we can get the same courtesy from them that we give to them. They must have the humility to realise that they force their beliefs on children which is very offensive or should be so when they find our very existence offensive they should look at themselves. It is an insult to the offender to take offence. It is giving him the power and temptation to offend you.

It is not hypocrisy for us to advise others as to what they should do though we don’t practice what we preach for we are not giving orders but only stating facts as long as we admit that we are not perfect and stress that we are only asking that they do themselves justice more than we have. In advising others to do right though we do wrong we are only asking them to become better than us so let nobody be offended. We can’t tell others it is right or pretend anything is right just because we do it and when it is really wrong.

You can’t believe that whatever a person believes is true. What if that person changes belief? Many these days tell us to believe that trying to convert others is wrong. But they try to convert others to their belief that spreading the good news is bad! If you can’t tell a person their belief is wrong then you can you tell them anything they ought to do? The same don’t tolerate doctors who believe that medicine is no use and that only holy water works.

Many expect everybody not to say a word against any harmful beliefs and against wrong religion. They would not be so “understanding” if they were on the receiving end of these abominations. Do they want nobody to criticise and try to convert the person the person who believes that God tells them to cut their throats? Do they want people to waste their lives in the service of gods who don’t exist? They are the worst kind of carping bigots for they condemn opposition to evil to promote worse evil.

They would not tolerate persons who believe that nobody exists but themselves and that they can do whatever they please with others for others are just an illusion like the people they see in their dreams.  There are people who advocate non-criticism of religion on the grounds that religion has a right to be treated as totally sacrosanct.  These people would force children in school to believe that what they are told by religion is true.  So organisations come before people.  This is sick.  Yet even their attitude implies that truth should be intolerant in some ways though not in any overly cruel way.

If it does not matter what religion one belongs to you are being a bigoted fraud if you call your Church the true Church.

Cults that hold that it does not matter what religion you belong to may only think about how they are going to make more money.

If a religion thinks it is right then it has a duty to try and lead outsiders to its “truth”. To have the true religion is to have the best thing this side of Heaven. Error harms and wastes much time. Being opposed to Atheistic or religious evangelism is not love. It isn’t love for the Protestant who knows that a Catholic friend is making a mistake by entering the priesthood to say nothing. The friend needs to know. That friend could do lots of wonderful things without the needless burden of being a priest.  Promoting superstition is always bad.

To refuse to try and enlighten those in error is approving of their error for it is encouraging it. The erring should be grateful if they are told the facts for they can go to their clergy if they are worried about being led astray. If you really believe in the rightness of silence that unlawfully and willingly causes delusion then you are believing that there is no good and evil. The erring should not degrade you by getting you to promote error by saying nothing.  You have a right to say.  What they are doing is saying their rights are more important than yours.

To invite people to adore the wrong god to worship with you is to approve of their worship. You cannot encourage it without approving of it and so it isn’t caring if truth exists or not. It is apostatising from your own God and if you are Christian you are one no longer. Pope John Paul II has held prayer services with pagans.

Nothing is sillier than people saying that one religion is as good as another. When Christians say it despite Christ’s stating that he was the truth (John 14:6) ask them do they think that their hypocrisy is as good as every religion? The religions of the world are not the same. They don’t agree on right and wrong so it is inevitable that one should be better than the rest.

There are some religious organisations that have one creed which is simply, “Believe and teach what you like if it harms none”. The Universal Life Church founded by Kirby J Hensley is the most famous of such cults. There is no such thing as a harmless wrong belief. If I mistakenly believe in a deity I will waste time over him that could have been better spent. If I help X for a fictitious god, say, Zeus, then I am only doing it for Zeus. I should be doing it for X. I have done good but that good was only a side effect. It is a vice to tell people to believe whatever they want for they should be told to search for and believe in what is true or ought to be believed. This cult advocates the abomination of blind faith.

Humanists hate the view that we should not spread our beliefs and know that Humanism is the truth. Error has no rights - do we have the right to believe that two plus two is five? – and truth has the right to overcome it. If people have the right to err then do you have the right to lock your mother up for an hour every day because you believe it is good for her and she is not keen on the idea but puts up with it? If people have the right to err then people have the right to err as they wish. There is no middle ground. To say you have the right to err privately and not to carry out your error makes no sense. That would mean you can err thinking God exists but have no right to go to Church!

When we claim to have the truth we also claim we have the right to be critically examined to see if we do have the truth. We are telling others they have the right to tell us if we are wrong. Fact. Therefore anybody that won’t listen to criticism of his or her worldview is doing wrong. If we have the right not to listen then newspapers and the news cannot have the right to say things we find offensive either. We all want people to tell us what we want to hear. We are offended when they do not. But there is no denying they are right to do that.

Nobody encourages scepticism or Pyrrhonism which is the belief that we can know or believe nothing. The sceptic or Pyrrhonist can be happy and live a normal life and act say as if poison can kill in case it will but he or she denies knowing that it will kill.  We oppose scepticism.  We do not oppose scepticism just because we want people to be safe and happy but because we acknowledge that all have to investigate the truth about the central things in life. We want the sceptic to believe we exist for we find it insulting when he or she says they do not believe one way or the other. This implies that all should investigate main truths of life and that religion is a disgrace for it does not encourage this. It implies that all should propagate the truth as they see it and be open to correction.

We must hate religion but this is not hating the people in it. You can loathe a person’s badness or error and not hate that person. They are not the knowingly evil cause of their evil.  Error is a mistake to be corrected not a crime to be hated.  We must hate nobody.

If you have any respect for yourself you must hate all that is wrong and incorrect.  Error and evil oppose your freedom.  If they hurt somebody else not you then it is only luck that you were not hurt.  It is degrading to let error and evil thrive by doing nothing for that is moving a step or stride closer to the possible loss of your liberty and happiness which is incompatible with self-respect. The wicked and the misled have to practice what they believe or think they believe and that is dangerous. You don’t let anyone who believes that holy water and not medicine eradicates disease become a doctor so don’t let people walk over you when you know you are right and they are wrong.

Truth has lots of enemies and to keep people away from the truths they should know is to spread bad example and threaten what is a friend and support to us all and is therefore to degrade ourselves. What others believe is our business but if they will not listen we must find people who will. Every step or non-step that takes you or others deeper into error undermines the power of the truth and makes you an ambassador for evil. We are not saying you should be right all the time but that you should try to be.

People often do not realise that to promote error either actively or by doing nothing to prevent it is to promote slander. When you make a mistake and believe it is not a mistake you are accusing the person who rightly contradicts you of being mad, stupid, lazy or a liar. To let error thrive is to have those who know its wrong be accused of being stupid, too lazy to learn the truth, wrong, mad or at least two of these. Beliefs claim to be right so if they are not right they are asking for this. You have to be one of these if you are wrong. The Atheist cannot just sit by and let religion and other irrationalities smear her or him. All who condemn us are asking for us to give them the facts whether they love them or hate them. Give them what they ask.

Believers have to say that atheism or agnosticism is faith for they can hardly say it is anything else. They accuse us of faith because they want to hold that we are wrong or not totally convincing for it is possible for faith to be misplaced which they believe our so-called faith to be. They need to be fully acquainted with our side before they charge us with having faith. If they accuse us of having faith then it is their duty to hear our side. We should not be afraid to tell them that either. They know fine well that we might have more than faith. We might have the might of reason on our side. We might have principles that refute God and their claims that are as certain as any mathematical theorem. And that is the claim we make. If you are going to listen to reason at all you will believe what we teach when you understand it. We will not have people manipulated to ignore us by allowing ourselves to be falsely accused.

There are random forces that kill and harm. They strike when accidents happen. Given the power to redirect these forces people would make them strike people who were in error or who were considered immoral on the basis that it is better for the wisest and best people to survive. This shows us the utmost importance of being right for being right and living in accordance with it is necessary for our human dignity to be fully respected rather than get two-faced respect. You cannot divorce concern for truth from right and wrong.

To state that somebody should do something and to state it without careful thought and logical evaluation and to state it while believing in free will is to declare that that person should suffer if he or she does not do it. You do have a right to your opinion but that does not mean you can say whatever you like. Therefore to suppose there is a God on slender evidence and then to say people should go to Church every Sunday – everybody’s different and some people can get loads of spiritual benefits with going to Church say once a month – is to vent hate towards the targets of criticism. It also threatens their confidence in themselves and increases the propensity towards doing evil and being cruel. To believe in a God who can punish means that if a person does what you consider to be wrong your condemnation of them is calling on God to attack them. It is more likely they will be punished if there is a God than if there isn’t so we see how thoroughly nasty belief in God is.

We know that truth comes first so in anything important we must all believe the same things. Beliefs affect how we live and feel so we must make sure they are right for we can’t have people suffering and enduring the problems caused by disagreement and error for nothing. To let error thrive is to have those who know its wrong be accused of being stupid, too lazy to learn the truth, wrong or mad. Beliefs claim to be right so if they are not right they are asking for this. Your mind is meant to be rational even if some minds cannot be rational for all things are not as they should be. That is what you have a brain for. To degrade your mind by irrationality is to degrade your whole being and to degrade others by offering your degraded thoughts and works to them. If it is wrong to guide others to rationality then everything is wrong. If you have any respect for yourself you must hate all that is wrong and incorrect. It is degrading to let error and evil thrive by doing nothing for that is moving a step or stride closer to the loss of your liberty and happiness which is incompatible with self-respect. The wicked and the misled have to practice what they believe or think they believe and that is dangerous. It is nonsense to say that whatever people believe is right for how can it be right when they all believe one another to be wrong?

Error has to be exposed for it always wastes time and energy. It often does worse than that. To leave error alone means that it’s problems and the pain of dealing with it are being relayed to somebody else and that is totally unfair. People will not be fooled forever.

Some say, “Truth is an absolute value even more than a person is for there would be no persons if there were no truth for there would be no existence. You cannot regard persons as important if truth is not important. It is as simple as that!” But this would only be true of truth relating to our origin and destiny and how we should live. The other truths are not as important. We may be made of earth but that does not mean that earth is of absolute value but only that the earth that composes us and makes us what we are is.

The argument then proves that the important truths of philosophy are absolutely valuable.  Therefore, it is always wrong to fail to try to lead a person towards the truths of Atheism, determinism and how to live and what to hope for.  That is how it can be wrong to tell a wife the truth about her cheating husband depending on the circumstances. Inferior truth, that is truth that is inferior in importance to truths concerning the ultimate questions, does not know anything or suffer.  Persons know things and suffer so persons come before truth when the truth will hurt. Truth never hurts feelings when it is expressed properly.

When you can’t tell the truth you can lead the person to find the truth by themselves. It is universally and always wrong to hide any of the principles in this book or to make no effort to give people the chance to see their truth. Philosophy matters more than any truth for it gives the rule for life and knowledge and wisdom. This teaching does not forbid all lies but only lies pertaining to the truth of existence and right conduct.

Nobody has the right to ask you to help them to teach what is against your conscience or to form opinions without looking at all the facts with an unprejudiced mind. Opinions are based on evidence. To have an opinion is to tell yourself and others that you are dedicated to evidence. If you are then you will listen to what the contrary evidence says and not be offended no matter what comes up. Being offended is being anti-evidence. You will not insult other people by turning your nose up at the evidence.

The Church claims the right to disapprove of our actions and beliefs. Disapproval entails discouraging actions you think are wrong. For example, if a community frowns on atheism, the atheist will feel forced to hide her unbelief.  She may hide it to fit in for the desire to belong in the community is overpowering and we are all conditioned to have this desire. There is no doubt then that no matter what kind of world view you have you will be trying in some way to force it on others. You will want it enforced. And even more so if you regard evil as an offence against an all-good God for that makes it more serious. Therefore atheism and agnosticism are necessary if you want to enhance tolerance and acceptance in the world.  Atheism and agnosticism will not be perfect but they are the best that is on offer.

Religion is opposed to freedom of thought and even liberal religion has a lot to answer for though conservative religion has far more to answer for. For example, both forbid you to believe in revenge and will call for your punishment if you do.  Both do this more because God supposedly forbids revenge than for real concern about revenge being wrong.  Once you believe in a revelation from God you say that our thinking should be abandoned if God's revelation conflicts with it.  And liberals believe in revelation as much as conservatives do - they just have a more humanistic interpretation.  They care about man and woman more than they should so they are not being consistent with their belief in God for belief in God demands that God should be obeyed even if heeding him can wreck the world.

Any freedom you get then is given to you begrudgingly because there is always somebody to disapprove of what you are doing and they are given the freedom to do that. Religion is chaos for there is so much disagreement between members of the same religion and between different religions. If people dropped belief in miracles and revelations from Heaven and in the supernatural and therefore God there would be more unity and agreement and less insecurity induced in people for there would be a better sense of being accepted by others and society. How could you like God anyway when he opposes freedom of thought? He did not give you free will then as a gift but as a curse but he really wants you to have no freedom but to be pressured to do what he wants.

The Bible and religion are all about the word should. This is a bad thing. The word should in whatever language it is in means the same thing: you are bad if you don’t do what I think you must do. It is an insult and programs people to feel guilt. If you have to give advice don’t give it in that manner. Give advice in such a way that it is intended to help the person think for themselves. Don’t impose by thinking they should do this or that or by telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. You are not better than them. The very concept of God itself is an insult for God presents himself as something you should become like – thus God is a domineering and malevolent concept.

No religion is right for everybody. Mormonism will appeal to some who would not like to be Roman Catholic. Many Muslims would not like to become Wiccans or witches. Everybody has different tastes. Thus we make no apology when any religion manipulates parents into making their children members of their own cult for letting our blood boil. What kind of compassion is religion showing in this? What kind of compassion did Jesus show if he claimed to be the way and the truth and the life as the evil Bible says for not everybody could like him and find meaning in him. The arrogance is incredible. The bigotry is plain. Will Humanism not suit everybody either? It can suit everyone for everybody is interested in secular life and Humanism is therapy not a cult and its truths are liberating to all who put them into practice. Self-esteem is what the religious searcher is after and we can give an easy way to it instead of them looking for a religion that makes them feel better about themselves.

Oppose all evil customs for someone has got to do it and if we don’t people will suffer. If religion lies or is inconsistent in its doctrine we have a right to point it out. Lies and inconsistencies are as bad as each other and they are offence against us.

When people condemn you for doing right ignore them for they are only being malicious and they know they don’t know it all. They know their slanders are lies or guesses.

Your degree of anger is only justified in so far as you are sure you are right to be angry. If you are not very sure of your moral principles being right then you should not be getting very angry. Religionists often claim the right to be angry and yet they do not try to the utmost to be right. They cannot prove their morals are sensible. That is pure selfishness.

We have to promote our consequentialist doctrine for our own sakes and so we must never miss the chance to diminish the faith of the absolutist or the consequentialist who has doctrines that undermine her or his consequentialism. If consequences matter then teaching consequentialism matters more than helping others for it directs them to help themselves.

To offend against the truths that there is no God and no free will and that we should hate no one but be kind to all is very serious indeed.  That is because these are the most important truths.  They are the most important for they pertain to the most important acts of right behaviour and to offend them is to say that you are worth nothing and that nobody else is either. To be good and to defend ourselves against those who err we must combat error. We cannot be expected to sit back and not inform those who are led astray by religion for error has to be divisive.  If we don’t use truth as the basis of unity, we will have less hope of being one family on earth. Religion as a form of error and promotion of error and refusing to be open-minded, is behind many wars and even if our opposition to its spread saves only one life it is worth it and so truth must prevail. Proselytism is a duty for this reason but we must arrange that people will proselytise themselves and not us them. Yes we must share the Atheist Gospel with everyone but in such a way that they simply absorb the light from us and convert themselves. We do not believe in making converts though we do believe that we must try and bring others to the light. What we want us for all people to have the chance to make converts of themselves. Religion is not entitled to any respect even if it leads to one death that would not be without it but respect it we must. We are dealing with victims of nature.

It is not enough to be an Atheist. The Atheist who has a lot to learn about the important things and the reasons for being true to them could be every bit as dangerous as the religious fanatic. The Atheist who follows the Humanist system properly should turn out to be a special human being.

The advice of some that when a religion teaches evil such as that putting adulterers to death is right you should not attack this teaching. What you should do about it is simply just say that putting adulterers is wrong without any condemnation and without any reference to the religion. This teaching is pure evil. First of all, it indicates that though people and even religions are influenced most by the attitudes of society and the fear of its condemnation this should not be used to stop religion inciting violence against adulterers. With that softy softy attitude religion won’t take any criticism seriously. Secondly, it implies that being nice to religion is more important than fighting to save lives and to keep them safe. Religion is composed of people but at the end of the day it is a system not people. The victims who have been brainwashed by religion and polluted by it need our help but religion as a system should be condemned. Thirdly, religious leaders are very manipulative. Even religions like the Roman Catholic Church are proof of that. The Church blissfully ignores the scholarship that identifies problems and contradictions in the Bible and the archaeological and logical refutation of the Bible and despite decrying fundamentalism is undoubtedly fundamentalist itself.

Go, teach all nations. Baptise them in the name of knowledge and reason, in these two keys to the glorification of humankind so that they will rise from the cesspools of insanity to newness of life.

Problem	Religion	Atheism
Fundamentalism, that is putting belief before people	Has beliefs and in danger of leading to fundamentalism.  Jesus sanctioned fundamentalism when he said that we must love God in first place	Has no religious beliefs.  Atheism is not the denial that God exists though many atheists do deny he exists.  Atheism is rather the absence of belief in god or gods.  Christians are atheists after all as far as Zeus is concerned.  They don't believe in the gods of paganism.  There is no possibility of fundamentalism in relation to atheists. Atheism is purely a negative stance in the sense that it is the absence of belief.  The bloody regimes of Communism were not based on the absence of belief but on their own kind of faith.  Atheism cannot be blamed for what the Communists did.
Dogmatism, dogmatism is the attitude that "We are right and we are not going to change no matter what the evidence says".	Based on dogma.	Atheists all have different ideas and approaches to life.  They make suggestions but do not enforce these suggestions as dogma.  The atheist who is dogmatic is really approaching religion in his attitude.  The proper atheist doesn't do that.  Atheists do not see beliefs as truth.  Beliefs should be taught as beliefs and not as truth.  Religion seeks control of schools to teach beliefs as truth.  Jesus sanctioned this bigotry when he said that he was the Truth.
Disrespect towards religious belief	The Bible insults and mocks the Gods and beliefs of other faiths.  To insult a belief is to insult the God of truth that gave the belief and must be punished under blasphemy law.  Religion should not be criticised.	Satire and mockery of religion may be necessary to stop it doing harm in the world.  These tools make great impact.  Religious beliefs are only human creations and everything human should be examined and we should have the right to say why we disagree with it.  Religion itself has to contradict other religion and criticise it to exist.  For example, Islam teaches that the Christian notion of God having a Son called Jesus who is also God is extreme blasphemy.  The Bible and Church says of the heretic, "Let him be anathema".
Intolerance of religion	Each religion tends to intolerance of other religions but forbids intolerance of itself.	Atheism looks for sincerity and helps people to achieve it.  The wise atheist does not believe that any God is going to help people believe in the truth and that that entitles them to be dogmatic and intolerant.  Tolerance means you allow people to do what you disapprove of and criticise.  It does not mean you must not criticise what they do.  In fact if you didn't express your disapproval it wouldn't be tolerance.  Religion tries to stop people criticising it.  No liar or fraud likes to be looked at by the sceptic. Tolerance is a paradox.  We tolerate in others what we find intolerable. Any regime, even one that claims to be godless, can be totalitarian.  But if a regime tells people that they are stupid so they need grace from God to see the truth and the truth is that the regime is right then that regime is totalitarian in the fullest sense of the word.  Atheist systems even if they are totalitarian cannot put people down or deceive them to that extent.  Human systems are only human and not so sacred that they cannot be critically examined.  Religious faith and faith in God makes for worse totalitarianism than unbelief ever could.
Religious genocide	The Bible God commands the destruction of God's people who start to follow other gods.  The New Testament describes Hell as the second death or death and Jesus vowed to send people to there for disagreeing with him and disobeying him.	Atheists should not be so insecure that they would need to resort to mass murder to see the end of religion. Religion lies that Hitler was an atheist.  Christianity tries to avoid the blame for the Holocaust of the Jews.  But the truth is Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "In defending myself against the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work".  In Vienna in 1938, Hitler declared after the Anschluss, "I believe that it was God's will that from here a boy was sent into the Reich and that he grew up to become leader of the nation".   People go to war not for material benefits for themselves or any benefits but to satisfy their sense of loyalty to the leader of the country.  Religion is a personality cult.  Christianity is based on Jesus and Islam on Mohammed and so on.  Atheists don't carry on like that so atheism should lead to less war than religion. The Church says that Joseph Stalin the monster was an atheist and blames the blood on his hands on atheism.  He ran a Communist atheistic regime.  But read the 1936 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  It was the law of Stalin's USSR.  It guaranteed freedom of speech, of assembly, of meetings and street processions.  It guaranteed the rights of the citizen.  It specified that arbitrary arrest was forbidden and that his or her home or correspondence was his business and should not be invaded by the state.  Atheism taught this.  Stalin and the secret police violated it at every turn.  Therefore what they did was the violation of atheism.  Atheism cannot be blamed. The normal person will feel tremendous compassion for the individual.  And more so when that individual is the victim of random evil such as disease or poverty.  These things can happen to anybody.  The compassion will be made stronger if the person believes the individual will lose everything at death.  Such feelings should urge the atheist to work for a better world.  Religion stunts them by making out that God has a use for evil and disease.  Jesus told the poor to make their poverty worse by giving away their cloak to anybody that steals their coat.  Religious believers don't show much of an inclination to go and help the poor for they feel that God will make it up to the poor in an afterlife.  The atheist who denies the reality of the supernatural miracle of free will will be able to look upon the most vile of actions without hating the perpetrator.  This is the fullest form of atheism for it says people are programmed and not free.  All other forms of atheism fall short. Pure atheism should not lead to trouble but to peace.  It rejects all doctrines that can be used as an excuse for persecuting people while religion reveres such doctrines.

20/06/2008

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