Cruelty

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I say they were motivated by their atheism to kill all those monks.

And you can keep saying it. It won't make you right.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
You could claim that you were also a submarine commander however that fact of the matter is that they specifically targeted religious organisations. If this was not because of there atheism then you will need to explain why they did so because it goes quite beyond mere secularism. I say they did so because they wished to establish an atheist state, are you denying that?

They specifically targeted religious institutions as well as countless other institutions, as has been pointed out to you.

The actual goal of the Khmer Rouge was to create an agrarian society, therefore I say farming was the motivation for the killings.

On a side note, do you accept the Khmer Rouge committed genocide? You seem to have fallen silent on the other thread.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
They specifically targeted religious institutions as well as countless other institutions, as has been pointed out to you.

The actual goal of the Khmer Rouge was to create an agrarian society, therefore I say farming was the motivation for the killings.

On a side note, do you accept the Khmer Rouge committed genocide? You seem to have fallen silent on the other thread.

their goal was to establish an atheist state, are you denying it? I try to answer things when i can but believe it or not i do have a kind of life out with RHP.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
their goal was to establish an atheist state, are you denying it? I try to answer things when i can but believe it or not i do have a kind of life out with RHP.

The goal was a totalitarian agrarian society, removing religious institutions helped facilitate that process.

Again, did the Khmer Rouge commit genocide in your view?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I say they were motivated by their atheism to kill all those monks.

That's a positive claim requiring positive evidence. You have not presented any.

It's also a pretty nonsensical claim, as there is nothing in atheism to justify killing anyone.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
their goal was to establish an atheist state, are you denying it? I try to answer things when i can but believe it or not i do have a kind of life out with RHP.

But your claim wasn't that they were trying to create an atheist state.

It was that they were MOTIVATED by their atheism to do so.

I [along with several others] have already given you plausible motivations for them to
want to get rid of other religions {they create a potential rival for loyalty a totalitarian
state cannot abide} that have nothing to do with atheism.

You have given no plausible motive that atheism might give a state for killing non-atheists
and you have provided no evidence to back any such motivation up to demonstrate that it
was their actual motivation. [or even a possible one].

This goes back to the French Revolution. Of the three estates the Church and the Nobility owned most of the land in the country. It was natural for them to oppose the revolution. So part of the objective of the revolutionaries was to break the power of the Church. To do so they attempted to dechristianise society, so they changed the calendar and introduced a ten day week (which was a mistake because one only had one day off at the weekend). The more radical elements wanted to make France completely atheist, with the intention of breaking the Churches power over the minds of the people for ever.

In combination with this, out of fear of counter-revolution and foreign invasion, they created the Committee for Public Safety and launched the Reign of Terror. Every revolution since has, at least in part, modeled itself on the French Revolution. Having seen the events of Bloody Week which ended the Paris Commune seventy odd years later the Bolsheviks were convinced that unless they initiated a Red Terror in imitation of the events in the French Revolution they would fall into the same fate. The French Revolution was fought, in part, to make France democratic, in the Russian Revolution any hopes for democracy foundered within months of the October uprising as the civil war got under way. Subsequent successful revolutions were not remotely democratic, having Russia and China as their models.

So, on the one hand we have the notion that religion has a hold on peoples' minds which threatens the new government and on the other a tradition of Terror to prevent opposition and counter-revolution. The Khmer Rouge, who had no intention of allowing democracy, desired a return to year zero, to utterly crush any opposition, and to create a state in which it was impossible to even think an thought not officially sanctioned. So they attempted to annihilate the extant religion using terror.

Had someone invented a revolutionary religion with a God of Equality (or some such) then the Khmer Rouge may well all have been Equalists (supposing the religion was called that) and would have behaved in entirely the same way. It was not their atheism that drove them to this, but their automatic identification of the monks as a force of counter-revolution that did it.

Originally posted by 667joe
Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case. Bertrand Russell

This is certainly true when Christians deny gay rights or when they condemn non believers to hell.

Burn him at the stake!!

Originally posted by googlefudge
But your claim wasn't that they were trying to create an atheist state.

It was that they were MOTIVATED by their atheism to do so.

I [along with several others] have already given you plausible motivations for them to
want to get rid of other religions {they create a potential rival for loyalty a totalitarian
state cannot abide} that have nothi ...[text shortened]... ch motivation up to demonstrate that it
was their actual motivation. [or even a possible one].

Gee do i really need to put the constituent parts together for you so you can form a whole. My claim is that the creation of an atheistic state that was their motivation and that was the reason they killed 30,000 Buddhist monks. How hard can it be?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Gee do i really need to put the constituent parts together for you so you can form a whole. My claim is that the creation of an atheistic state that was their motivation and that was the reason they killed 30,000 Buddhist monks. How hard can it be?

Harder than you apparently realize.
Now do you have any evidence for your new claim?

If certain sects of Christianity are to be believed, Hitler would be in heaven, and all the Jews he murdered would be in hell. (Hitler was Baptized, and the Jews were not!).

Originally posted by 667joe
Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case. Bertrand Russell

This is certainly true when Christians deny gay rights or when they condemn non believers to hell.

It doesn't matter what men think or do, if God is real, it only matters what God does.
Men can be cruel or kind, that would be meaningless towards the acceptance or rejection of
other men by God.

Originally posted by 667joe
If certain sects of Christianity are to be believed, Hitler would be in heaven, and all the Jews he murdered would be in hell. (Hitler was Baptized, and the Jews were not!).

And satan is a deceiver and liar. He masquerades as an angel of light. 😏

Another non answer!

Originally posted by 667joe
Another non answer!

What was the question?