retarded comparison is retarded

none of those people so far as I know killed BECAUSE of there atheism or other peoples religions, whereas things like holy wars and the crusades WERE implicitly about religion and people not liking each others religions, but hey if you are a blind theist you wont want to accept this.

I believe in Jesus, and so do other abrahamic religions. However, you dont have to be a christian in order to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Ok so stop with all ''religious wars'' bullshit, atheists killed millions of people too and that argument can be useed on religious wars as well.

Your making no sense. I said why not bring up a list of immoral people who profess to a religious belief (not terribly difficult) and you say they present examples of very upstanding and relatively altruistic believers?

Oh yes Mother Teresa, she was indeed a great lady but she was just as concerned about spreading Catholism and some of it's dated values as she was about caring for the needy. Heck she even saw spiritual goodness in being poor and sick and though she recieved millions in donations, the standards of healthcare could be suspect.

No, not really, go get a history book and start reading, because the religion was the last thing crusades were about.It was about power, money and leadership. And the people i mentioned were atheists who killed in the name of communisam which promotes and helps spreading atheisam.The fact is, atheists killed millions of people. But if you're blind arrogant atheist you wont want to accep this.But that doesnt really matter.Those people also killed for power money and leadership.

That is true. But didn't many Jesus' teachings reffer specifically to God and religion and salvation? Plus, regardless of you folow principles similar to Jesus's teachings, that does not make you a Christian.

I have to agree with you on the community-based hypothesis on being the main explanation behind why the religious are often more charitable than non-theists. Not unlike how fire victims in small communities are often widely supported by the peers compared to those in larger communities (going of pure anecdotal evidence and personal observation, though I doubt anyone would contest) or how schools are more charitable than your random group of equivilent-sized individuals.

However, as you'd mentioned, I'm not sure this correlation can tell us anything useful about the individual - to which we're speaking of, of course. Like you, I'd be interested in seeing a study with a sample of religious individuals who are not members of any religious-based community. To my knowledge, no such study exists. Therefore I don't think any of these statistics are pertinent to the discussion at hand. We're not comparing Atheist communites (Do they even exist?) to religion based ones.

Secondly, I'm unsure that we could even derive moral character from something like charitable donations/time. There are so many variables here to be considered, I'd think it'd be near impossible to make any telling conclusions. In terms of time, atheists, statically speaking, make more money on average. Do they spend more time working? I have no idea. It's just simply one vaviable to be considered. In terms of money, atheists tend to be more liberal which would imply a wider belief in progressive taxing, expecting government to approiately spend the money where necessary (charity). Whether or not we agree with this method and claim that it is simply placing the responsibility on someone else is besides the point - they may believe that they are constructively contributing charitably (assonance ftw!), hence upholding their moral character.

Anyhow, I feel as if all of what I wrote as a whole is sort of side-stepping what I'm trying to say. We need to be speaking of the individual, not of a group - there needs to be a control variable here. Comparing loosely related individuals to communities is frankly dishonest. Not to say that you were, you wholely acknowledged the fact that a more fair study needed to be done... I just worry that's what it'd turn into. It's not really a reply to you, Kasz, so much as I'm just saying in general.

Yes but atheism isn't a belief like religion. It's more a non belief. And like it's been pointed out those killed by Stalin etc wern't killed because of a religious belief and it had nothing to due with them being an atheist. If you want to play that game than I could list every single dictator, King, Queen, President etc throughout history who professed to a religious belief and put the number of deaths they were responsible for next to their name. It would be a VERY long list. Furthermore don't forget the relationship between the Catholic Church and Hitler and Mussolini. Hitlers religious belief is still up for debate.

Epic Fail, I know enough about history to know thats shit, just because the powers that be dont let people associate anything bad with religion, doesnt mean that the enlightened among us cant see the truth

you clearly know FUCK ALL about communism aswel, true communism is both INTERNATIONAL and PEACEFUL, hardly surprising that yanks cant comprehend that though...

also, communism is secular not atheistic, there is a difference, again, this is no doubt beyond your understanding

the fact they were atheists had little or nothing to do with why they killed...whereas the churches that slaughtered millions, used there religion as a reason and a cause of that violence...

Religion or, for that matter, ideology is always accompany politics, and for a good reason.

Few historical examples. In Islamic Caliphate during expansion of Islam and prior to the Crusades arabs were tolerant towards Christians and Judaists, AFAIK there were no official ban to practise any of these religions. Understandably non-Islamic people were incapacitated from certain rights. Another example. Predecessors of modern Malaysia and Indonesia became Islamic due to bargain of local political elite with Muslim trade unions that offer significant financial benefits to 'brothers in faith'. Mostly it was peacful expansion of religion thanks to very good motivation for joining 'the ummah', though there were many excesses under Turks regiment (and that's probably one of the reasons why it was stopped). Cultural assimilation as important as economical and political aims in long term. That's why we see a lot of colour revolutions that are followed by 'democratization' of life as well as openness and financial integration of an economy (if revolution scenario didn't work, forcible 'democritization' mechanism is used instead if possible).