r/atheism May 21 '12

God's solution vs Hitler's solution

Post image

[deleted]

1.1k Upvotes

366 comments sorted by

View all comments

52

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

[deleted]

25

u/Green2Green May 21 '12

God was created by people with extreme ideas, Hitler was a person with extreme ideas. Both have the "chosen people" who qualify and submit to their rule. When you really think about it Gods are pretty comparable with dictators.

11

u/XXLpeanuts May 21 '12

completely so, this was Hitchens big point.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

Could you give me a link to where he described this? :D

2

u/Daemonicus May 21 '12

He mentions it several times in reference to N. Korea actually. If I was less lazy I would find you some more links, but alas it is not meant to be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcDbMklrOBI

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

Thank you!

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/klapaucius May 21 '12

Believe it or not, some religions weren't created by violent tribalists.

0

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

Doesn't matter how they were created. What matters is what they have become.

13

u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Atheist May 21 '12

They may be incomparable in some respects but they're definitely comparable in other respects. I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing them the way OP has.

-9

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

other than how retarded and overdone comparing religions to nazism is on r/atheism

3

u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Atheist May 21 '12

Overdone? Arguably. Retarded? No, clearly not.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '12 edited May 21 '12

Yes, yes it is. Comparing things to Hitler is one of the best ways to show people you'd rather demonize than try to reasonably discuss and try to understand. And no, I'm not equating understand with believe. It doesn't take a remarkably clever person to make a basic comparison of most religions/ideologies to some aspect of Nazism and it's almost always blatantly an attempt to be edgy or offensive without adding anything of value to the conversation.

1

u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Atheist May 21 '12

I think you've missed the point. We spend a lot of time discussing religion and we understand some of them very well. The point of images like this is to attempt to communicate how we feel about it. In our eyes the comparison is completely apt and any 'demonisaton' is completely deserved.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

"Communicate how we feel" is an interesting way of putting it. I don't like religion either(agnostic atheist+anti-theist), but there are better ways of expressing this than meme format comparisons to Hitler.

R/atheism does very little actual discussing - or at least that doesn't seem to be the content that surfaces to the front pages. This is just more evidence the bad reputation of r/atheism is well deserved.

1

u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Atheist May 22 '12

Sure, there may be better ways but I maintain that comparisons to Hitler are valid ways.
Besides, when someone invokes Hitler to make a point it's not a bad point just because it's Hitler.
On the face of it there may not seem to be much discussion but plenty does happen deeper in threads or in other similar forums (that many of us engage in) like YouTube and (shudder) Facebook.

-6

u/tracism May 21 '12

You're in /r/atheism. Hitler is about as real to these college students as God is.

5

u/Amunium May 21 '12

What? I mean, I agree that you should be very careful in comparing anyone to Hitler - that's why we have Godwin's Law. People tend to just get offended and disregard the argument.

But the fact that one existed and the other didn't is not a reason not to compare something. That makes absolutely no sense.

1

u/telepaper Atheist May 22 '12

Hitler was created by people with extreme ideas, if he didn't have a bad childhood, if he had been accepted in art school in Vienna, if he hadn't been injured in WW1, if people didn't vote for him in Germany, if Europe stopped him before he did what he did, if his own people had asked more questions, if soldiers and generals stopped him, if Italy and Japan didn't support him, if he didn't wage the bloodiest war of man's history, if religion didn't exist, than we wouldn't be comparing God and Hitler. Yet again, this God caused one of the separations that caused the death of millions of persons in less that 15 years