Organized state religion in Russia was one of the main props of the Tsar and the whole social order. Because of the government/church entanglement, getting rid of the government meant they had to get rid of the church too.

Same in China with Confucianism and Taoism, where they slid Mao in the top spot with a bit of rewriting to change family-oriented to party-oriented.

I just want to say the following to Anon, but here in the comment thread so that everyone sees, because I think it is generally relevant.

The full motivation for my posting on this topic is much closer to what concerned Anon to begin with, and I have not blogged about it, but intend to: Grandma Sadie and the others. Sadie, a wonderful person whom I love dearly, who is nearly a century old but looks, seriously, not one day over 70, is a Catholic who is in only mild denial that some of her relatives (including certain inlaws) are atheists. She forgives them and prays for them but is not deeply disturbed and does not bother them about it, and her attitude is the same as many people in my life who happen to be Catholic specifically or Christian or Jewish more broadly. And that’s fine, it’s working.

Then, the Pope comes along and tell his followers that my people carried out the Holocaust, when really, it was much more his people, three times over! (As a Catholic/Christian, as a German, as as an actual citizen of the Third Reich as opposed to someone who lived and died earlier or later in time or elsewhere in space). We don’t link the Pope the the holocaust becasue he was a (mandatory) HJ member, but he is wrong to say, rather than “My people are ashamed and changed” that “Those people did it, yeah, it was them!”

Anon’s reaction to my reaction was in part becasue of Anon’s relationship to other of various belief systems. But my strong reaction is also in the context of people in my life of various belief systems. So two people with different, valid (though I think mine is more valid, of course) reactions to the same event affecting us in very similar contexts…

I can also be more clear about the analogy. The analogy was meant to re-frame Mousguy’s comment as utterly inappropriate, as a way of distracting from the discussion at hand by bringing in a vaguely parallel case and making it into a big scary thing in order to utterly derail the conversation. A similar analogy might be: You call 911 to tell them you got mugged and your wallet was taken, and the dispatcher tells you that there are sevral convenient store hold ups every month, so what are you talking about? and hangs up. The whole thing is a distraction, and even the discussion of the distraction is a distraction.

Regarding tone, that is a long term conversation that has been going on for some time. Personally, I think that the Pope accusing atheists of the holocaust requires all sorts of reactions, and loud indignation MUST be among them. When people … interested parties, students, etc. a few years form now, look up the Holocaust or other related topics on the Internet, they are going to find the Pope saying that it was conducted by Atheists. I feel very strongly that the Pope’s statement should on it’s own be on the 30th page of Google search results, except where it is embedded in conversations like this one, which clearly state that he is a liar.

Anon: Thanks for the note, I hope you keep commenting on this blog. I didn’t retain for the blog any of your note because I did not want to decide what you wanted seen vs. not, so you may wish to add a comment.

GTL

At the same time, I have no problem with you complaining about my tone. You are tone trolling, but the fact is that I am being quite intentionally confrontational here, for a reason, I’m comfortable with it, it is good that I’m doing it (in my opinoni) and I fully recognize that not everyone is going to like it. You’ll get over it a lot more easily than those who died or lost loved ones in the Holocaust that the current pope is using for his own personal reasons.

But, you not liking my tone has little to do with me setting my tone. And, I’m still waiting for that apology.

“As an Atheist, I can’t really find a way to be dishonest like that. As a Christian, perhaps you don’t find it so difficult. Just sayin'” isn’t a statement of fact, it’s an insinuation that Christians in general are hunky-dory with lying, and yes, I genuinely think that insinuation is too confrontational for me to be comfortable. If making other atheists uncomfortable was Greg’s aim, yes, he succeeded there, but I hope it’s not tone-trolling for me to stand up and say that that’s not the way I see things. I’m not a regular commenter, so I can see how my sudden appearance and lack of a full name (I know full disclosure would give me more credibility, sorry, I’m a little shy) makes me look like I’m just out to stir up controversy. If it helps, I do promise that I’m sincere.

I don’t want to parse the distinction between analogies and comparisons, but as long as we’re agreed that “Such a comparison would be absurd,” you’re making sense to me.

And I think we can all agree that your garden variety modern Christian shouldn’t have to shoulder the weight of responsibility for centuries of European anti-semitism and its horrific apex in Germany. Right? I don’t think my evangelical Mom’s responsible for Hitler. Let’s just concentrate on gently getting her to see the beautiful explanatory power of the theory of evolution.

Greg’s comments (“the folks in the Gulags were asking for it!”) sound like a brand-new boatload of batshit insane.

Anon, you need to be more careful. You just stated that I explicitly made the comment, and you even put it in quotes, that the folks in the gulags were asking for it. I never said that, never said anything like that, never implied anything like that, never thought any thing like that.

You are now banned from commenting on this blog until I get a nice, clear, uncompromising and unequivocal apology from you. You don’t NEED to apologize, but you will if you want to comment further on this blog. There will be no discussion or arguments here. You’re gone, and if you have a shred of moral sense you’ll retract your statement and apologize.

Furthermore, if you do comment on this blog again, it won’t be as anonymous. You’ve ruined that privilege for yourself.

Comfort was not even close to my objective. I was very much looking for discomfort. So far so good.

But I just read the comments, and… dude. Did you just compare the victims of Stalin and Mao to prostitutes? In the course of accusing someone else of having no perspective?

No, dude, I did not. The usefulness of an analogy is almost always because it takes a particular form totally out of its context in order to examine it better. My statement was analogy, not a comparison. Such a comparison would be absurd. Dude.

I think the point you are missing here is that the comparison is totally off kilter. And that is my point. Mousedude looked like he was waving the monkey as a means of distraction.