1. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #14746 by jdaigle on December 24, 2006 at 9:59 pm

I am also sick and tired of the "stalin card". Stalin was a magical thinker who had people killed for disagreeing with him, even about science. He also had fewer people straight up murdered than the christian Hitler (most of the millions counted as deaths on stalins head in communist russia starved as a result of his wholesale rejection of agricultural reality), and he invited the church back to Russia when it suited him.

Further, if atheism has to cop to every peasant who starved or died of disease or in prison in Russia and China, lets give Christianity every Native American who died of disease or starvation or in prison, and every European peasant who died as a result of bad economic planning or war or in prison. And lets be fair, and use population adjusted numbers.

The 30 years war alone killed 30% of the European population, the Great Famine between 10-25%. This happened in a christian culture and was worsened through poor management, so christianity gets the blame.

Disease alone killed perhaps 80% of the Native Americans, disease brought by Christians, so again, blame christianity. Stalin and Mao never even approached killing 80% of the populations of their countries!

Christianity in America has killed entire cultures, entire languages, whole ethnicities... at his worst, Stalin never came close to those kinds of excesses. When christians came upon Native American's with whom they had started a war, they killed entire villages, slaughtered entire tribes to the last human. They starved them out of hiding, rounded every last one of them up and put them in camps to be force fed christianity. They took their children away to be raised in christian schools... not to be raised as equals, as was done with kidnapped children under Mao or Stalin, but as a servant race. Many tribes remain trapped in poverty and segregation to this day. Even Stalin only hung on for so long... but the christian institutionalized brutalization of Americas native peoples seems set to go on forever.

I haven't even started on African slavery... more actual dead bodies than Stalin or Mao, according to some sources, and justified by the leading religious thinkers of the time.

2. It is possible to respect the believers but not the belief

Comment #14551 by jdaigle on December 23, 2006 at 6:53 am

"It seems to me self-evident that we would not have the European civilisation we have today without the heritage of Christianity"

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I recommend Victor Hanson's book, "Carnage and Culture" to answer this point. Hanson makes a powerful implicit case that western culture is not so much christian as greek, by way of the Romans. This is such an obvious point that I don't see why it has to be continuously made. Republican form of government? Inherited from the Romans. Organization of our militaries? Inherited from the Romans, who got it from the greeks. History of free scientific enquiry? Ditto. The greek Atomists are our philosophical parents, not Jesus. He's a recent invader to an existing tradition.

3. Christmas Present to Defenders of Darwinism

Comment #13452 by jdaigle on December 17, 2006 at 7:44 pm

This is indeed a great present from Dr. Dembski. I had forgotten just how well written the Kitzmiller decision was, and how damning to Dembski's cause. Where Dembski went wrong, I think, was in quoting the actual decision.

Honestly, if I had wanted to pick salient quotes showing how wrong the intelligent design crew was, I think I would pick the same ones! How out of touch with reality do you have to be to think that this presentation is damning of Judge Jones or of the Kitzmiller decision?

4. A man who believes in Darwin as fervently as he hates God

Comment #11864 by jdaigle on December 7, 2006 at 9:18 pm

All of us, Richard included, need to stop rolling over and taking it when people do the "Hitler, Stalin, Mao" bit. The proper response to that, I think, is this:

First of all, if you want to blame atheism for deaths under those regimes, you must blame religion for all deaths in prisons, from famine, or disease or war under all relgious regimes. So basically, it is Hitler, Stalin and Mao versus everyone who died as a result of famine, disease, or war on every continent for the entirety of recorded history up till at least 1850 or so. Obviously, the long term scourge is religion.

Second, of that trinity of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, only one actually ordered people to hunt down specific ethnic enemies, put them in camps, and kill them. That one was Hitler, an outspoken champion of religion in public life.

The Hitler/Stalin/Mao card is demonstrable bullshit.