Nonsense.
It took the thorough cleansing by the Secular Reformation and the Age of Reason, for religion to be civilised. Before that, men and women were being burnt at the stake, stretched, whipped and decapitated over nonsensical religious dogma.
Religion is prior to civilization. That is, civilization is the by-product of religion, not its cause.
To want religion to be "civilized" is to demand that religion cease to be religious.
Religion is not a promoter of any particular governmental form at all. It promotes a system of moral law. Governments do very well to espouse this moral law as the foundation of their system of justice. And when they don't we see the effects well enough.
History tells the tale. Go look. Go where sovereign nations repudiated God's law, and took up a law formulated by human genius instead.
It is the fate of such regimes to bleed and die. Again, check history in this regard.
In short, please do your homework, OldSpice!
Which may be difficult for you, in the case that your atheism makes you blind to aspects of reality that are vitally alive to other human persons. Like me.
And the atheistic regimes of the 20th century were better than that?
Ones like the USSR under Lenin and Stalin?
China under Mao?
Cambodia under Pol Pot?
Name me one atheistic government which has the benevolence which has been demonstrated by the USA and much of Europe.
Betty boop is right. Atheists are, at the moment, living on the coattails of a society what was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.
You can point to groups that have perpetrated evil in the name of religion. People will use anything to justify their actions. But when you get to the basics of what Christianity is about, there is no justification for that evil.
It's interesting that so many atheists point to evil done in the name of religion in their efforts to tear down Christianity, but never point to people who do good in the name of their religion.
Look at Mother Theresa. The Amish reaction when that gunman gunned down those school girls in PA.
Why not use those as examples of what Christianity can lead to, especially since they clearly follow the teachings of Christ?
snip: Before that, men and women were being burnt at the stake, stretched, whipped and decapitated over nonsensical religious dogma.
Spirited: Little if anything do you actually know about the so-called ‘Age of Reason.” Just prior to the cannibalistic French Terror it was nothing less than conceited men worshipping their own minds. Yet the mind-worshippers stood in mute horror as the likes of the Marquis de Sade declared ‘passion’ as the new god of Reason. And why not? If Thomas Paine’s ‘mind’ was his own church, meaning that whatever frothy pabulum it bespoke was ‘reason,’ then the disordered passions of the Romantics was reason as well. And pray tell, who was to tell them no?
It was completely unrestrained demonic-passions that led to the-—to use your words—’burning at the stake’ of millions upon millions of ‘bourgeoise’ witches.
And over what? Over “nonsensical devilish gnostic irreligious dogma.”
Furthermore, it has not escaped notice that you, in avidly defending your atheistic dogma, are in actual fact engaging in apologetics for evil. For rather than righteous anger on behalf of the children and ranchers to whom evil is being done, you choose instead to assume the 3 monkey squat (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) in order to defend the indefensible.
Man really is a Jekyll and Hyde. And by your ‘choice,’ you prove it.
The victims of religious persecution (often simply political murder given a veneer of religion: see, e.g., Henry VIII) pale in comparison to the victims of 20th century atheist regimes.