A perenial refrain from the religious camp is the belief in God is essential for a balanced, well-adjusted society. That belief in god gives purpose and meaning in life and that conversely a lack of belief results in a life devoid of meaning and purpose.  That a life lacking in belief in God spells doom and ruination of societal morals.

Humans, as a species  have only been around for about 200000 years, compared to some other animals, say the crocodile that have lived on the planet for millions of years.  For most of the 200000 years, humans have been dogged by many forms of irrationalisms. Only in the last about 400 years can we truly say that we are emerging from the darkness of irrationalism, thanks mainly to scientific rationalism.  We are getting a better and better understanding of our place in the grand scheme of reality.

In the darkness of irrationalism, humans perpetrated all manner of hideous crimes and violence on their fellow humans and other animals. From cannibalism, human sacrifices, infanticides,  genocides, ethnic cleansing, enslavements, etc, etc. Almost all human cultures worldwide have practices all or some combinations of these.  Even with the enlightenment of rationalism, there are sadly some parts of the world today were some of these are still practices. Humans still have a long way to go.

Unfortunately there are still many impediments to the widespread eradication of irrationalism today.  The most insiduous of this is dressed up in sheep's clothing nowadays.  However, not long ago, it was not ashamed to bare its unclothedness out in the public for all to see.  If you guessed it was religion,  then you guessed correctly.

Yes, the religions were unabashed about perpetrated some of the most hineous and reprehensible crimes in history.  A look at the Bible will reveal a litany of deed and misdeed by God or in the name of God.  The religious counter that a society without God could be equally prone to violence and inhumanity at best or at worst completely degenerate.  They point their finger at some of the 19th & 20th century regimes such as Communist Russia under Stalin,  Hitler, Pol Pot,  the Regime in North Korea.  Granted, these were (and are) particularly inhumane political regimes that were responsible for millions of deaths.  They contend that these were atheistic regimes and that philosophical atheism should be culpable for these crimes, if the religious are to be responsible for the crimes of religion.

Be that as it may, by what standards are these two systems (religion and atheism) compared.  In this post, I want to propose a framework for comparing the two systems.  This framework will include the following:

First, I want to float these questions and leave them hanging while I set out the elements of the framework.

How valuable is a human life?  To whom is such a life valuable?  Is the loss of one life less regretable than the loss of 10 lives,  100 lives, 1 million lives? From a religious perspective, would God be less tolerant of someone who takes away one life than a mass murderer?

Now, the elements of the framework I want to set out are:

1)  Categories of killings and crime
2)  The motivations and rationale behind the killings and crimes
3)  The body counts
4)  Redress and Justice

1)  Categories of killings and crime

Under this heading, I want to categorise the crimes of both parties, the religious and atheistic side.   I can think of the following categories:

A)  Killing and crimes performed by direct by God, willy nilly, on his whimp
B)  Killings ordered by God but carried out by people working for God.
C)  Killings ordered and carried out by man in the name of God.
D)  Killings not ordered by God, but organised and carried out by man.
E)  Killings and suffering caused by negligence and omission

Now, religious killings and crimes display all four categories identified above.  The bible, for instance, describes God killing the entire population of the earth bar a single family, commanding Moses to exterminate several tribes, Moses acting on his own volition to kill in the name of God and other ad hoc killings. 

I submit that the killings and crimes of the atheistic would come under D.  Under this you would find the killings of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc, etc.

2) The motivations and rationale behind the killings and crimes

Under this heading, I want to examine the reason and driving thinking behing these killing.  Where these killings the result of erroneous thinking or were there the products of good sound reflections.

Under Category A above, the is no culpability on human's part, as the killings are all executed by God himself.  All the thinking would have been carried out in God's mind and he alone would be held responsible for these killings and crimes.

Under category B,  a votary of religion who thinks that they have been instructed by their God to undertake certain acts would feel some obligation to obey his God.  In this case, the motivation is to serve God and to be seen to be obedient to their God.  So the motivation is service to God.

For C, there is also a desire to please God and glorify his name by following doing things that it is hoped will please God. The killing of Servetus is a case in point.

Under D, such killings are usually carried out for a variety of reason - political, sheer malice, business driven, egotism, etc.  The main motivation is sheer human wickedness.  The crimes of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot fall were motivated by all or some of these factors.

Under E, I would class the insiduous effects of religious opposition research that could alleviate human life and save many lives.  The opposition to the use of condoms, stem-cell research, other medical intervention, etc, etc. In modern times, this is probably the most pernicious.


3)  The body counts

This brings me back to the questions I left floating earlier - questions about the value of human life.

I would like to deal with that by posing the following conundrum:

Supposing there exists in a certain community a serial killer who carries on killing all his imfamous career without being apprehended. Supposing also that some of his victims are never found and some are never even thought missing or dead. His crime spree runs on for decades and he appears ordinarily as a good and law-abiding citizen.

From a religious perspective, does it matter that he never got caught? Does it matter how many people he killed - one, two, twenty, 100 or people? At what point would God say - "That is it. This guys is well out of order"?

Basically, I want to argue that body count arguments are not very sound arguments unless both sides are prepared to state categorically a threshold beyond which any killings would be classed as particularly reprehensible. 

So under this framework, unless I see a better argument,  the body count element is essentially immaterial.


4)  Redress and Justice

Still thinking about this one .




So what do you guys think?

Anyone had any thoughts about this framework?

You might want to add this one to your armoury.

http://www.evilbible.com/