doogie,
i can't believe you would speak that way of dawkins! he he j/k
big dog,
dawkins could become a deist/theist tomorrow, like Antony Flew did, and it wouldn't make difference to me at all.
the world would not be fixed if everyone were atheists. i think it would be somewhat safer (how many atheists do you know who are also suicide bombers?), but not fixed. and as far as communists like china and n. korea and cuba are concerned, if they nuked us tomorrow, would it be because they're atheists? or for other reasons?
the plain fact of the matter is that we are just apes guessing as we go along. as long as we have ape brains, we will be thoughtless and violent to degrees. but some apes don't think that their ape daddy in the sky is going to come and make the world better, but that they are stuck with their own ape problems. some apes do not think that they are going to ape heaven after they die, or walk around as ape ghosts, therefore they only have one chance to make the world better for all apes before they die. some apes don't think they are special and better than other animals. some apes just admit that they're apes, while others refuse to. admitting that one is just a lonely ape, is the start to understanding and avoiding our violent nature.
sure communism is immoral. but not because they don't believe in god. sure they kill and devalue human life, but not because they're atheists. communism is not the church of atheism, so what the hell do i care if they are atheist and retarded?
christians and muslims are pretty much in the same boat, as far as i am concerned. they're both abrahamic , and both capable of the same violence. one is being violent in the new millenia , and the other was violent in the last millenia . both were violent in the name of the same god. abraham's god.
i would like to see china attack us, or commit atrocities, or genocide under a banner of non-belief. it's absurd.
i leave you with another dawkins quote:
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)
classicist,
The only difference is you quote Dawkins with a sense of smugness
well, this would be the thread for it. besides, he's right, and you're wrong. but don't worry, there is no atheist hell for catholics.
TS