1. Islam's Silent Moderates

Comment #95597 by salanor on December 8, 2007 at 5:01 pm

There is something illogical about all of this. Why talk about Islam at all; why talk about moderates? The worst excesses of religion come out in contexts where atrocities of all kinds are tolerated. It is in countries with already sad human rights records that stupid statements from the Vatican find most purchase. It is not the version of religion – it is the state of the society. Despotic Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where influences of liberal democracy threaten the established power structures, are happy to host extremist religious ideologues because it reinforces their anti-western rhetoric and keeps them in power.

Aayan is just plain wrong. Women in Saudi Arabia aren't raped and beaten because of Islam – they are beaten because the government of the country cares less about human rights than power and wealth. And the US is uncritical of Saudi Arabia because of its powerbase there. Why on earth would we be appealing to moderates to save the situation when a) they probably don't have the powerbase to do anything and b) the very definition of "moderate" is politically insipid (which actually makes a lot of liberal democracies stable) and c) there is nothing in their religion which prompts them to be critical – that's exactly the whole point of religion – if they were critical they would not be religious.

Instead, why are we no agitating for severe political and economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia and the removal of an anti-democratic government? Why are we not voting for a President on the premise that they commit to sanctions against anti-democratic regimes. This is actually the road to removing the sort of atrocities Aayan describes; not bleating in the general direction of a bunch of sheep!

When we've all finished being so self-righteous about Islam, let's look at how ethical our investments are and how they prop up regimes that torture girls. Frankly, I'm tired of all the thinly veiled racism that comes with these discussions. Forget talking about religion and start talking about how to attain freedom from poverty for everyone.

2. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #82010 by salanor on October 25, 2007 at 2:25 pm

I don't want to take anything away from this site, nor duplicate existing sites, but I think the debate points need to be structured. I have begun a wiki at :

http://ungod.wikispaces.com/

because you can't add arguments to wikipedia because it violates their policy.

Feel free to comment, suggest and contribute. I will be "harvesting" arguments from hither and yon, and re-writing them for the layman and to avoid copyright.

The site will also link to reputable sources.

Salanor

3. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80642 by salanor on October 22, 2007 at 1:21 pm

The real evil of religion, as it has been for millennia, and still is, is that it is a kind of thinking that blurs the real issues and rewrites history at will, as American right wing evangelisers such as D'Souza illustrate. Dawkin's mind virus is as close as we can go to explaining this. Human minds are susceptible to been told giant lies and believing them. D'Souza's ideas are as compelling for modern Americans as Hitler's were for German people - feeding off common sentiment and translating it into an ideology.

If D'Souza had actually spoken to a member of the Hitler youth, as I have, he would realise that Hitler was perceived as a good Catholic, not because he acted overtly in a religious way, but because the symbolism he employed in his propaganda was so closely aligned with the values of the church. This is, after all, the mark of the master propagandist. Make the people believe what you want them to believe by manipulating something already festering within them. This is exactly the point taken by modern atheist. Religion sets the mind, as it always has, to make it fertile ground for irrationality and for people to behave in ways that are counter to human instinct.

Does D'Souza think that somehow the German people were atheist, that they would accept being part of an "atheist" empire? The notion is so ludicrous that one wonders where D'Souza is actually getting his history. Certainly, one Christian in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, attempted to assassinate Hitler, but this was because his theology already rejected most of the mainstream dogma - there is good reason to suspect he was, in fact, a humanist. Did those who fought the Nazis do so in the name of religion? Mostly, it was in the name of national pride and fear of enslavement.

Most of D'Souza's interpretations of history are simply convenient to his ideology. Somehow, you would only have the abolitionist movement if you had a bunch of Christian's thinking democratic thoughts. What bollocks. The fact is, in every nation that he mentions having slavery (he is right - slavery was an institution that was generally accepted everywhere; but so what?) religious leadership was complicit. Europe was happy to have slavery as a means to wealth for centuries - the abandonment in Europe coincided with liberal thinking on many levels, Britain only officially rejected slavery because it was politically convenient and the abolitionists of northern USA only found a voice when an alternative means of generating wealth quickly (industrialisation) was discovered.

To somehow construe that American secularism - separation of church and state - was because of a Christian struggle is just imagination gone wild. The "founding fathers" were escaping religious oppression from mainstream religion and society of Europe. When notions of separation of church and state became popular, they saw it as a good way of preventing state institutionalised religion thus protecting their often quirky versions of religion. This is true of secular states that genuinely protect religious freedom as a basic human right - they allow all sorts of oppressive schismatic loony religions survive - witness the Exclusive Brethren in England, Australia and the USA.

I disagree with RD, CH and SH that there is a logical causal link between religion and evil. Establishing such a link promotes exactly the hysterical notions that D'Souza spouts about the role of atheism in oppressive regimes. Stalin somehow acts in the name of atheism, as if the central pillar of his ideology was "not believing in God". Racism, raw desire for power and greed have been (well-documented) premises for most conflict.

What religion does is oil the machinery. It is much easier for German people in the 1920s to accept a saviour in Adolf Hitler if they already have a mentality of saviour-ism cultivated for centuries in their culture; it is much easier for Germans to believe the lie that the Jews killed Christ if they've heard it from the pulpit for centuries. In a similar way, it is much easier to hold together a culturally disparate set of refugees in Israel if they can all claim a common religion and a common enemy in an opposing religion. Why didn't all Jews join their brethren around the world the world as refugees fleeing to countries which protected religious freedom? This would have made the most sense. Continue their religion and cultural practices in relative safety. But some loony says that some bit of ground is sacred and everybody abandons reason.

It is D'Souza's appropriation of science as some sort of offshoot of Christianity that is most galling. Most great scientists have faced the steepest opposition from religion at every level. Most have struggled to overcome the ignorance that the church was happy to see continued. The dark ages were not dark because of Christianity. They were dark because of the lack of science. Hocus pocus was the explanation for everything and the church was happy with that. Childhood is a "dark age" because children are ignorant and do not act scientifically. Our protection of them makes us act like dictators because we realise that they are yet to get science, to get reason. Religion today teaches children to remain children forever and not take on reason.

How does D'Souza account for the plague? If religion at the time was searching for rational answers, it would have started recognising patterns of infection. Religion was happy to talk about sin and human sinfulness when people's minds were beginning to realise that very base, reasonable actions, such as not associating with the sick, could actually save you. The hocus pocus people sold the ignorant false cures, the church sold the people false hope, science provided answers. Forget the history of thought; forget the stupid name dropping of famous thinkers. The real imperatives to science were fundamental needs of people to survive and prosper; religion only ever got in the way and it still does. People can still be befuddled into thinking that the reason the universe has laws it because of a creator and his purpose; people can still be befuddled into thinking that the reason why we perceive order or desire to find order in the universe is something beyond human thinking; that somehow Maths needs God in order to be rational; "How do electrons know how to follow rules?" This is exactly the hocus pocus that religion has been selling for millennia, completely anti-science. The proposition is that the universe needs a force like God in order to hold together - one, by definition, unable to be explained by science.

It is exactly the suspension of reason (it's not good enough to explain things) that places people in a vulnerable position to accept any kind of nonsense. Perfectly respectable religious people in southern USA, who loved their children and respected each other, found that they could not perceive another human as human because the Bible said so. Now, it doesn't actually matter if the Bible does say that - if your mind is set by the religious proposition that their is a God-ordained order in the universe in which certain people have certain status - don't bring me ANY evidence, biblical or otherwise, because my mind is not open to reason.

D'Souza's ilk are sounding increasingly shrill and hysterical as they grip desperately to the last vestiges of an ideology that is dying because it is exposed on so many sides to the harsh light of day. They are even more desperate to re-write history; even more desperate to try to somehow embed science in religion. With mainstream religion losing congregations and thus their ability to maintain any of the charitable institutions they have had and the churn of evangelical super-churches leaving a steady stream of damaged humans in its wake, it is only a matter of time before the loony Christian suicide bombers (not needed at the moment when you have the US army being commanded by God) will emerge as the last gasp of ignorance.

Salanor

4. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #75824 by salanor on October 3, 2007 at 7:11 pm

Sir: It is not often that a professor admits to poor scholarship, but that is what Richard Dawkins has done (letter, 17 September). Had I received an essay from a first-year undergraduate in which he admitted not having studied The Narnia Chronicles, nor having seen the movie, nor participated in the forums endlessly rabbiting on about the characters, nor seen the spoofs of the books, nor bought a T-shirt saying "Aslan rules" nor engaged in long, meaningless discussions of whether Aslan was God or not, but still felt it right to reject the notion of a faculty dedicated to Narniaism, I would have insisted on it being rewritten. What is even more remarkable is that Dawkins seems unaware that the rational account of fiction, which forms the main plank of his arguments against silly faculties, is thoroughly discredited.

To argue for the position he advocates requires a working knowledge of the philosophy of fact and fiction, biology (to recognise Aslan as not a lion at all), physics (to know Aslan can't create a world), geography (to recognise Narnia is a real place) and so on and so on. While scientists of a previous generation have read the Narnia series with bemusement and have shown the application required to know what is fantasy, Dawkins has so far shown himself unable or unwilling to do so.

Not The Revd Dr David Heywood
Lecturer in Pastoral Theology, Ripon College, Cuddesdon Oxfordshire

5. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75820 by salanor on October 3, 2007 at 6:50 pm

Reply to 67. Comment #75418 by Teratornis on October 2, 2007 at 3:06 pm and 72. Comment #75431 by Teratornis on October 2, 2007 at 4:04 pm

A caveat before you pre-judge me to be some closet Christian. I am an avid fan of RD, CH and SH. I am in agreement with an awful lot of what they say and I hold them as some of the world's leading thinkers.

Before addressing your (rather long) points, let me return to the RD letter. The statement that non-belief in something can cause people to behave in a particular way is probably stating the obvious but RD probably needs to state it for the those silly people who like to say that non-belief causes Hitler's holocaust, etc, etc. My points had nothing to say on this.

The contrary proposition, however, namely that "religion or belief in God leads one to perform evil actions" is problematic, mostly because it is difficult to prove and relies on common agreement on the definitions of both "religion" and "evil". "Evil" normally has connotations of human suffering.

It is simply not good enough to "cherry pick" events from history (including right up to now) to prove the proposition - you just select the events where the protagonists were overtly religious and use that to prove it. This is the manner of the loony creationists.

There are far more substantial links between racism (that is - belief in the fiction of "race" as a premise for treating people differently) and atrocities both modern and ancient. This is a matter for the history books. There is also far more substantial links between economic status and suffering; once again, read history and you will know this. There is an even more substantial link between wide scale suffering and natural disasters, which falls outside the definition of "evil" but rather begs the question of whether the link between religion and evil is really, in relative terms, unimportant enough only to be worthy of a large yawn.

Before you savage me for such a statement. Consider the tsunami of Aceh and the Indian ocean. Nearly half a million dead or injured, countless more affected. Human suffering on a scale we find difficult to comprehend. On that evening, most religious folk would have either been overeating (if they were Christian) or going about their lives. Stupid fundamentalist American Christians said that God was punishing these people. Local Muslim authorities led an aid effort; humans from all around the globe responded with hundreds of millions of dollars and substantial medical and practical aid.

The point is, in the face of human suffering, we can afford to ignore the loonies, as effectively they have little or no bearing on it. Even if you feel like being frightened by 9/11 and 7/7 and bowing to the terrorism and conspiring with the errant nonsense of government reactions because you find a rather tenuous link between these two, out of thousands of terrorists events, you cannot count this as anything in comparison to the human capacity to respond non-evilly to natural events or to human suffering due to natural events. Christian doctors in missionary hospitals in Africa are not doing good in God's name, because God doesn't exist, they are actually acting as normal human beings would, DESPITE their religion (which tells them to do all sorts of stupid things)

Now, I don't need long, rambling explanations of how propoganda works, how religion supports loony ideologies, nor rather one-dimensional analysis of historical and recent events or modern societies to convince me that, in the greater scheme of things, religion is not more than a wart on your bum. Human activity, quite unknowlingly and without reference to religion, is quite likely to obliterate the human population by, to coin a phrase, "shitting in its own nest" (ie. global warming)

Returning to some specific points:

Slip of the keyboard: "Japanese comfort women" were not Japanese at all - a rather clumsy attempt to say "comfort women of the Japanese", as a means of putting them together without listing nationalities. Still, the point was not really lost, despite pedanticisms, namely - that people do not "forgive and forget" but choose other paths for redress. Suicide bombing is at the extreme end of the spectrum, university sit-ins at the other.

However, beyond this point is the rather large question of what was responosible for their suffering in the first instance - hence my points above. (I expect you will argue with them, but you would be better off just reading history)

I can't really see the point of your rather simplistic proposition that hatred is derived from propoganda machines of the religious except to say that it is nonsense. Hatred is prevalent in most societies - it probably stems from many sources, amongst them rational and irrational and the organisation of hate into actions is probably highly culturally dependent (witness gang warfare in major cities) and may or may not require a propoganda machinery. Religion may be harnessed as much to an anti-hatred movement (witness civil rights movement USA, ML King) as it can be to hatred movements (KKK).

Your problem seems to be a fairly superficial view of history based on consideration only of fairly high profile recent events, ignoring just about every other element of human suffering of the present and ignoring every element of human suffering of the past.

You don't really seem to have got the point about Saudi society, so I'll make it simple. Big money, supported by non-democratic institutions, have vested interest in not allowing democracy because of the possibility of liberalisation of the economy. Hence, anti-American propoganda, in conjunction with divisive religious dogma, is extremely useful in keeping the population distracted. On the other hand, the average Saudi needs little convinving of American duplicity, of the stupidity of establishing a refugee camp in Palestine (called Israel) or the abuse of a sovereign power by having American bases on its soil (yes, go ahead and tell me how they were invited there etc. This still doesn't make the people welcome them - foreign forces on our soil - plenty of populations resent their presence in plenty of countries) Thus, economics plays a dominant role in the formation of Bin Laden style minds and religion is a convenient mechanism, mostly for propoganda. Thus, aeroplanes and building collisions are more to do with the cut and thrust of political and economic realities of the world than religion, despite unsupported claims in media outlets that lead us to swallow the American evangelical propoganda which paints Islam as the anti-Christ.

You said "I disagree. No movement in interest rates has, by itself, demonstrated such power to change the political priorities of the United States as terrorism has."

This is breathtaking ignorance. I can only deduce that your history teacher should be sacked. The Great Depression, the direct result of the 1929 stock market crash, ushered in a period of history that changed the world irreversibly. There is reason to believe it has had a direct impact on global warming, as the ethics of exploitation at any cost were derived from this era. Terrorism, which you seem to think is some sort of modern phenomena, is a blip on the screen in comparison. Once again, I can only suggest the history books to redress your lack of understanding.

Your other "blusterings" are likewise.

"For example, now the U.S. is fighting a protracted war in Iraq, arguably as a result of what 9/11 did to the mind of George W. Bush and pretty much the whole ruling class in the United States." Really. You're convinced Bush has a mind? If that is your simplistic analysis of the Iraq war, you have it. Join a Christian group and live with your delusion.

"Similarly, 9/11 essentially led to the modern vocal atheist "movement."" Huh? This is brilliant. And there I was thinking it was the threat to a secular America that was driving it! Please inform the respective American atheist organisations, none of whom existed prior to 9/11.

"Religion in both the developed and "developing" nations bears much responsibility for the continued oppression of women and the denial of their reproductive rights which has been demonstrated (to my satisfaction, at least) to be responsible for the unsustainably high birthrates in the "developing" nations, which in turn lead directly to untold human suffering that is readily preventable by cheap contraceptives."

Oh dear. Let's try this on, shall we. Most Catholic women in developed countries pretty much do whatever they like in regard to the stupid statement issued from the Vatican. Most Catholic women in developing countries pretty much feel dominated and thus are frightened to reject it. Most Catholic women in countries in mediaeval Europe pretty much felt dominated and thus were frightened to reject it. What characterises many developing countries, such as Afghanistan and Ethiopia, is feudal governments that enslave women. Religion is not the key element - poverty, education and power all play a greater role, aided and abetted by religion. Religion is, as I have already stated, the fog to protect the powerful from scrutiny.

Ignoring most of your rather long points, which basically make the same point, let me get to a point of agreement - your "almost" quote of RD.

"Religion is not merely a by-product of culture; it is a meme complex which can transcend culture, to grow and evolve and sustain itself apart from culture. Indeed, the "great religions" have all shown themselves perfectly capable of invading alien cultures. Today there are Muslims all over the world who bow to Mecca five times each day, and most of them do not have many ancestors who lived there. Imagine trying to get a billion people from around the world to bow to, say, London or Washington D.C. five times each day, and you will see how the power of religion utterly transcends tribalism."

However, you can substitute social networking for religion in this statement and still make sense.

"Social networking is not merely a by-product of culture; it is a meme complex which can transcend culture, to grow and evolve and sustain itself apart from culture. Indeed, social nettworks have all shown themselves perfectly capable of invading alien cultures. Today there are social networkers all over the world who email and blog five times each day, and most of them do not have many ancestors who did so. Imagine trying to get a billion people from around the world to say, chant a anti-war slogan, and you will see how the power of social networking utterly transcends tribalism."

Many ideas cross tribal boundaries. Lucky for us! Concepts and organised systems of reason, science, maths, etc etc (the list way outweighs religion) all transcend tribalism. In the modern world, the move in the moral zeitgeist has, thankfully, made tribalism seem rather stupid and old-fashioned. The rise in inter-tribal dialogue via forums, such as this one, and media exhanges, such as youTube, is defeating tribalism and making significant challenges to religion.

If we are really, as atheists, to make a "dent" in human suffering (and maybe you don't want to), we must become humanists and value humans and act against human suffering caused by many things - not "charge at windmills" like religion.

6. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75407 by salanor on October 2, 2007 at 2:43 pm

In reply to 53. Comment #75393 by Teratornis on October 2, 2007 at 1:59 pm

"OK, so using the examples you gave above, why aren't the historically oppressed peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, or the descendants of former slaves inhabiting the United States, conducting organized terror attacks against their historical oppressors (or people who resemble them, given that the actual oppressors are all dead now)?"

Never heard of John Brown? How people react to oppression is varied. The ANC took military action. People without resources tend to react by non-military means (almost by definition).

"It would be hard to find anyone in the world who could not claim some historical grievance. However, in the absence of specific ideologies to indoctrinate each new generation to imagine historical wrongs are somehow relevant, most people would probably grow up feeling insufficiently concerned to volunteer as suicide warriors."

The specific ideologies is the key element. Generations of Brits were indoctrinated into believing Irish terrorism was evil. It was more likely the natural reaction to colonialism. The indoctrination was not religious.

"Religion is not merely the excuse but one of the several available necessary catalysts for organized evil."

And one, among many, catalysts.

"Greed is another; but Saudi Arabian zealots who crash airplanes into buildings can hardly be motivated by greed in any sense of the word understandable to materialists."

Oh, how naive. You think that the despots of Saudi Arabia have nothing to lose by the democratisation of Arab countries? Is it just a tiny co-incidence that Bin Laden is from a wealthy Saudi family? Religion is just a cover, so that moderate Muslims of the world will be sympathetic.

"Of course lots of young men are perfectly capable of spontaneous, largely disorganized evil, and that's why the prison business is always brisk.

As to why the focus on terror attacks today, well of course terrorism has claimed fewer lives (so far) than some single nights of Allied bombing over Germany or Japan during WWII, but a check of the newspaper suggests WWII is history now, whereas terrorism is currently a problem. So of course we're going to focus on the current problem, and let historians write up the past.

And speaking of Germany and Japan, we bombed the snot out of them in WWII, so why aren't they conducting terror operations against the Allies today?"

Did you miss the war? They didn't actually sit down and wait for the bombing.

The majority of modern wars and colonial campaigns and invasions have been fought with little or no reference to religion.

Ironically, it was straight up and down human compassion that moved the moral Zeitgeist after Dresden. The policy of the British government that human loss was irrelevant so long as a military goal was achieved was radically altered after Dresden. You don't have to be religious to commit atrocities and you don't have to be religious to believe they are evil.

"Why aren't Japanese-Americans seeking revenge for having been put into camps? What has the United States ever done to the Muslim world which compares to the atomic raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the conventional incendiary raids on Tokyo and 60+ other cities?

If anyone has cause to hate the United States today, it would be Japan and Germany. But the new generations of Japanese and Germans have largely gotten over it, because there is no dominant religion or absolutist political philosophy to inculcate the hatred, to keep re-opening the wounds and pouring in the salt."

Its time to start reading history, especially the last 10 years. You think Japanese "comfort women" have forgotten? You think Hiroshima isn't well up in the Japanese psyche? American bases in Germany were some of the most fortified zones in the world because of the real possibility of attack from within Germany.

"Humans actually have an almost astounding capacity to forgive. To prove this, just be an American tourist in Germany or Japan, and notice how hardly anyone tries to kill you, even though you will undoubtedly encounter many people who lost relatives to American bombs. For an even more remarkable example, visit Vietnam, where many victims of American carpet-bombing are still alive, and yet from what I have read, the Vietnamese have largely put that all behind them. To incite and sustain large-scale organized hatred requires a specific ideology dedicated to that end."
I'm not sure what this proves. Ideologies are complex mixtures of lies (religion amongst them) and truth. Tribalism is more likely to have caused the atrocity; religion has fed tribalism and human compassion has broken down the tribalism.

7. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75398 by salanor on October 2, 2007 at 2:06 pm

43. Comment #75378 by Liveliest Crib on October 2, 2007 at 12:49 pm
"On the other hand, remove the religious belief from the equation, and the politics, nationalism or poverty become far less potent variables." The problem is, you can't remove religion from the other variables. Ideology is as complicated as human society; economics may drive people, nationalism and religion may "justify" action taken for on purely economic grounds. Movements in interest rates make a bigger impact on people's lives than terrorism - religiously driven or otherwise. People die daily from preventable diseases (evil) as a result of unfair trade barriers that stop their country from earning an income so they can build hospitals. The root of all evil is not religion; religion has an opiate value; it is a way of ignoring the real world and justifying the unjustifiable; the root of all evil is tribalism.

8. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75384 by salanor on October 2, 2007 at 1:27 pm

I have the utmost regard for Dawkins work, I'm a humanist, an atheist and a rationalist, but I am gobsmacked, to coin an Americanism, by this article. Did the Beligians in the Congo act because of religion? Barefaced greed, I'd say. Have we forgotten Africa, where the dollar drives all morality and immorality? Sure, religion is a convenient "justification" for people (in their minds). You can "justify" slavery with religion, as pre-Civil War south of USA did, but the slavery comes about because of human greed. By focusing on 7/7 and 9/11, fairly insignificant events in terms of the horrors of the world, Dawkins ignores most of the history of the last 500 years. Smallpox needed no religion to kill millions of native Americans; the Spanish weren't there looking for the Virgin Mary. Inhumanity comes from competition amongst humans for resources; religion is simply the mist that obscures the horror. Attributing the behaviour of the Taliban to religion, ignoring the landscape, the history and the poverty, is just plain ignorant. Britain should be embarrassed by its own history of being rather late in prosecuting rape in marriage. There are skeletons in the cupboard of many countries; being Muslim or religious has little to do with it except to give people convenient excuses.
"The British and American soldiers, having washed, shaved themselves and had a good meal in preparation for their sortie into another Iraqi town, believed they were performing the highest patriotic duty. By the affirmation of their country they were as good as it is possible to be. They were not poor, downtrodden, oppressed or psychotic; they were well educated, sane and well balanced, and, as they thought, supremely right." The 9/11 terrorist may just as easily thought of themselves as warriors for their people; religion just eased the bitter pill with an ample does of delusion.
Frankly, I would have expected better of Dawkins!

9. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #14966 by salanor on December 27, 2006 at 2:10 pm

Jason
This, alas, is correct, One of the weaknesses of Dawkins' book is that he frequently writes as if the really important distinction in forging a civil, livable society is theism vs. atheism. It isn't. The important distinctions are secular society vs. government involvement in religion, and rational thought and evidence vs. irrational faith and revelation.

Why is it surprising that a biologist should not get too deep into social science, especially as the main point of his book is to demonstrate that God is fiction, not that atheists are good? This is not a "weakness" but a matter of focus.

It is the responsibility of atheist social scientists to pick up the thesis in "The God Delusion" and show how every variety of politician, dictatorial or otherwise, appropriates a "school of thought" for their benefit. This would support RD's alarm at the appropriation of morality by fundamentalist Christians in US (who have an inordinate influence on global affairs) and show that the alarm is actually warranted.

Atheists aren't "more good" than theists; they just don't believe a nonsensical explanation for their "goodness" or "badness".