Religious America or Secular Europe?--Which has given birth to the most deadly ideologies?

As history has shown, in a secular society that situation has given rise to the most destructive forces in history.

Your problem is that you are lumping anything that isn't Christianity into a single bucket called secular. That's just to big a bucket.

But here is some food for thought:

Hitler wrote the following in Mein Kampf:

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."

And here is another:

-Adolf Hitler speech - Berlin 24 Oct. 1933

"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out".

So maybe Nazism wasn't quite so secular as you might think.

You are both showing a VERY shallow understanding of Hitler to consider him a Christian. Read a little deeper into his writings, and don’t just cherry pick what fits your preconceived notions.

And qam1, did you not read my post concerning how the Holocaust came about? I specifically stated that it wasn’t primarily made possible by Hitler.

Intercept - the specific horrors mentioned all rose out of secular societies. If you can’t accept that fact, I’ll not chase an irrational argument.

Well you have a point about Hitler and the Nazis. It was a bit of a cheap shot and it is certainly not a settled issue either way. But I needed to make a point.

That point is that the very fact that Hitler at least paid lip service to supporting religious beliefs supports my view that it wasn't their secularism that defined the Nazi's philosophy. They were socialists who were hungry for the power to rule all of Europe and the issue of whether or not they were Christians or not just isn't very important in their grand scheme of things.

So once again, Nazism and Communism are not the opposite of religion. Neither really had anything to do with religion except to see it as a competitor for peoples allegiance.

And I do mean to include Communism.

Marx's view of religion (recall his "opium of the people" comment) was that people flock to religious institutions when the Capitalist system forced them into poverty. He believed that his system, by providing for the common man, would relieve the people of the need for religion. I'm sure you will agree that this was naive beyond belief. Certainly his system didn't work and even I don't believe that he had identified the source of religious beliefs in the human species.

But in any case, it was Marx, Lenin and Stalin's belief in the common ownership of property and the value of state planning and not their religious beliefs that defined their conduct and cost millions of people their lives. Once again, defining this as "secular" is just overlooking the real facts of history.

Secular isn’t the opposite of religion either.

Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were both secular societies. This isn’t exactly a complex issue. In fact, I haven’t seen anything that you’ve posted that comes close to refuting that simple point.

And the original article pointed out quite accurately that the greatest horrors the world has ever seen stemmed from secular nations. This fact hasn’t been challenged either.

You would be better off arguing that the next great horror will likely stem from a religious nation in the form of Islamic terror, that would be a MUCH better counter argument than trying to say Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were not secular nations.

Is Basketball religious or secular?

Your problem is that you have only two baskets to place things in. There is a religious basket and a secular basket. If wars aren't religious then they must be secular. My point is SO WHAT. All secular means is that it is not based on religion. It tells you nothing else.

Your argument reminds me of an old saying: "The world is divided into two kinds of people; those that divide the world into two kinds of people and those that don't".

The answer to the question I posed about basketball is simply that it doesn't matter. If the Pope plays basketball then I guess that makes it a religious matter. If the Lakers play basketball then I guess it is secular. But who cares.

Here is a quiz: Name a non-muslim country that is not secular. In particular, give me a recent historical example of a non-secular Christian nation. I think you will struggle with that.

The point is that the only wars we have had in recent history were secular. The world is basically ruled by secular nations. Should we go back to having the priests rule just so that we can have religious wars instead of secular wars? I don't think so.

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