Pole: Show how any type of example of how atheist's have turned into suicidal terrorists?
First, show me a country where atheists constitute the majority. This country has to be opressed by another country for several years, the poor atheists are killed off in thousands locked in refugee camps and their homes are destroyed.
The longer a country has been in trouble, the more religious or nationalist its people get. But this doesn't mean that religion is the source of the trouble. It may be used to fuel and sanctify the hatred, but its not the reason by itself.
If Jews had created their state on a Pacific Islands, the Palestinians would never send suicide bombers there for purely religious reasons. In this respect, what you've described as modern religious conflicts are very different from the medieval Crusades.
Here's an example:
Religion is used and sometimes even made-up or adjusted to achieve political aims. The kamikaze pilots are one example of such an ad hoc ideology. Initially they just swore a llegiance to Emperor and country - something that many atheists would do. With time they were cynically indoctrinated to believe that the divine wind of Kamikaze "would bring them deliverance at the darkest hour, just as it had in the 13th Century". The Emperor became a god worth dying for. By this point the Japanese military had a fundementalist fanatic religion at their disposal, although before the war the Japanese soldiers hadn't been religious in any fundamentalist sense. The decision to use this ideology was a purely cynical one:
" By 1945 it was apparent that Japan was losing the War in the Pacific. As a last ditch effort to turn around their flagging fortunes, the Japanese revived the name Kamikaze and applied it to the suicide missions of their air force. Japanese Vice Admiral Takashiro Ohnishi had noted that the most effective way to inflict damage to warships of the allies was to crash planes into them. He pointed out that one accidental crash could do more damage than ten planes firing machine guns. It was decided that pilots would henceforth purposely crash their planes, which were to be loaded with half a ton of explosives, into enemy warships. "
But you could never say that these Japanese pilots became suicide bombers and that Japan joined the WWII for religious reasons!!!
The original reasons were political and military ones.
With time the Japanese became much disappointed with this idea.
"With the passing of time, however, some of those who survived the Kamikaze raids have become criticial of the policy. Saburo Sakai, a former Imperial Navy Ace, says: Kamikaze is a surprise attack, according to our ancient war tactics. Surprise attacks will be successful the first time, maybe two or three times. But what fool would continue the same attacks for ten months? Emperor Hirohito must have realised it. He should have said Stop."
Now, was Hirohito a religious fanatic? No, as a God he was just as cynical as Stalin. Sadly enough many Kamikaze pilots did complete their missions. Did Hirohito had his country join the war for religious reasons?
If we want to stay on topic the real question is this:
If Chechnya was 100% atheist, would there be no terrorism in the south of the Russian Federation today? We don't know for sure if there would be suicide bombers, because we haven't had a 100% atheist country under lengthy oppression in history, but I'm quite sure some extreme ideology would be invented, either a religious or political one. Suicide bombers weren't my point anyway. As for other forms of terrorism there have been examples of purely political terrorism, eg. the Basque ETA.
I consider myself atheist/agnostic. BUt I'm not sure how easy it would be to indoctrinate me if I was in the kind situation that a lot of Chechnyans have been experiencing for years. Perhaps that's because I'm Polish and Poland has suffered occupation from 3 different powers over the last 350 years.
And by the way, some people say the biggest act of terrorism in the known history is Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and not the Kamikaze pilots.
Anyway, in both cases religion was not the real reason.
Pole
