Randman's call for nonSecular education...

Stalin slaughtered much more than 12 million Soviets. That's absurdly low.But if you want to believe a lie, that's your choice. The fact of the matter is the Inquisition probably doesn't even compare to the Armenian genocide or Rwanda.For example, the death toll range of estimates for the Spanish Inquisition are: Spanish Inquisition - WikipediaIt appears more somewhere between several thousand and a 100 thousand, something like that.More than 2 million people were killed in the Rwandan massacres alone. Stalin killed somewhere between 60-110 million people. Mao killed more if you count the numbers that starved due to his insanity.The Inquisition doesn't even match Ghengis Khan, the Vikings, the Huns, etc,...This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 02:56 AM

Yep, which is why their current population is not higher, but those numbers include more than just in Russia.This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 12:05 PM

No, unless you count POWs, but it does include the Russians that Stalin executed for being captured.Truthfully, the more I think about it. I have heard estimates as low as 20 million, and looking at the web, some claim 17 million, and 50 million was a number once bandied about. Dissidents in Russia who lived in the gulag said Western estimates were low, that it was 120 million.So listing the range from 60-110 is not the most accurate. I'd say more like 20-80 million is a better estimate.But even if it is as low as 17 million, it still exceeds the Crusades and things like that by a long shot. Additionally, Mao's Red Guards alone probably killed 30 million in the cultural revolution, and if you count the tens of millions that starved because of Mao prior to that, and then add in Pol Pot and other communists, you can see communism is indeed the worst and more genocidal force on the planet.Ethnic warfare such as in Rwanda comes in 2nd.This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 01:06 PM

This is an idiotic statement. Not all Christians are Catholics, and not all Catholics are Christians (although most probably are. The two are not the same.What's good for the goose is good for the gander. You guys say Christianity was a force for slaughter: then certainly atheism has been a force for slaughter even more so. If you don't like being lumped in with Stalin, then stop lumping Christians in with the Pope.As far as atheism, the communists did persecute and do persecute religious people, calling religious beleif a psychological disease. So I am not sure what you are getting at. If they had been religious communists or had no beef with religion, they would have acted differently. Their religion though was atheism, and still is in some areas of the world.This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 01:53 PM

Wrong. They were atheists. Atheism was a specific and much touted tenet of Soviet communism.

No, my sources include reading Russian propaganda directly from them, as I used to speak Russian a long time ago, studying it 4 years in high school and some at the college level. I also went to Russia during the Soviet era, and my first Russian teacher was a high level CIA covert agent (although we did not know it at the time) who was the assistant naval attache when Stalin died. He retired from the CIA and was outed and subsequently blackballed by the KGB from entering the Soviet Union ever again while he was teaching my class.I have also read communist statements of what they believe and Russian dissidents' view on things.So crash, perhaps you are the one that doesn't really know how the Soviets felt about atheism. It is true in a loose term that they at times deified the state, but they would never claim that. They claimed atheism was their official belief, and it is what they beleived, and that religious belief was a psychological aberration, unscientific, and something the new generation of Soviets should be strongly encouraged to abandon.For them, atheism was a central tenet of their belief system. They considered themselves rational, scientific secularists.One thing you need to realize about the Soviets is that for them, it was not just about what they thought was a better economic system. They thought they could and would produce a better person, a better version of humanity, and atheism was central to their whole program as they believed by eliminating religious belief that people would be freed to be better people and would become better people. Communism for them was a moral effort to remake mankind.I guess you could call it religious and it was, as secularism generally is, but it was still atheism.

Mike, the Soviets killed people in the name of atheism, and they tortured religious people and would stop if the religious people would accept atheism. They believed religious belief was a cancer on humanity and sought to create an atheist state, and explicitly stated this repeatedly ad nauseum in fact.This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 06:17 PM

Here is more info for you, which you could get yourself by googling. http://www.findarticles.com/.../mi_m0SOR/is_1_65/ai_n6141811 Soviet Union - Wikipedia Bartleby.com: The Soviet Union was an official atheist state, and atheism was central to the belief system of Soviet communists, just as abolishing private ownership of business was. They were not more dedicated to the one or the other.

What they meant is that there is no God. They considered the concept of a Creator or Divine being to be an unhealthy psycholigical aberration that needed to be stamped out, by force if necessary.Their position was that God does not exist. They were officially atheist.Do you deny this?This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 06:27 PM

So the fact they called themselves atheists, and said all religion was unscientific and unhealthy means nothing, eh crash?What a joke!Tell me something. How many Soviet communists employed by the government there have you ever talked with about this subject?This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 06:33 PM

Also, you proved nothing and showed no evidence that the Soviets were not atheist as they claimed to be.Do you think the Soviets believed the Soviet state created the world or was God in the sense of being the Creator?

Yes, I have while in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets believed religion was unscientific, irrational, and unhealthy. They were atheists. Show one piece of evidence that were not atheists.You are spouting nonsense.

Crash, they were atheists. Their stance that the State should be "deified" as you put it does not change that in the slightest because they weren't trying to tell people that the State was a god. That's total BS on your part. They were saying that there is no God, and that the devotion to God should be replaced by devotion to the party or the atheist state.Why do you think one of Lenin's first acts was to declare the state officially an atheist state? He wasn't trying to tell people that the state was a god.I proved this with links, with personal testimony, and common sense. The Soviets thought they were building a more rational, scientic society.This message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 06:45 PM

Wrong. Often the primary motive was atheism. They attacked and persecuted religious people for the purpose of oppressing religion and promoting atheism. That's a fact which you can discount until you are blue in the face, but regardless, their atheism was central to their politics and to their repression.

If you are claiming mere fervent devotion is a religion all of it's own, I agree with you, and tend to think evolutionism is a false religion.But that doesn't mean they were not atheist. It just means that atheism, holding to the belief there is no Creator God, can be a form of religion all on it's own. In fact, atheism is religious in nature if you ask me. First off, none of those states are atheist states. Prove they are atheist states if you want to try. Sweden - Wikipedia Church of Sweden - WikipediaThis message has been edited by randman, 11-15-2005 07:04 PM