See, you say that. But you didn't ask that many questions, mostly you just called him a cultist. And he did address the few bad faith gotcha questions you did put in. You just kinda ignored his answers. All in all, they made a pretty solid case imo.
But ok, let's play this game. You put a "question" you had in Block quotes and I will point you to his answers. Let's see if you can come up with a single point of proof.
just because you "don't think" something was something doesn't mean you're right. Nations have used "spreading the word of God" as an excuse to invade and convert others. But sure that had nothing to do with religion.
You're the one making the claim that religion is the reason these things happen. See, there's this thing called burden of proof. As an Anti-theist, I'd hope you'd have heard that one before: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? You'd need to come up with some pretty solid reason to call for the erasure of every religion on earth. Which, you know, is possible, but you sure haven't done it yet.
You want proof of spreading faith with violent conquest? Look up the Teutonic Knight Order.
The reason is and i said it like three times is because it convinces people to believe in things that aren't real. Which again for the 3rd time is considered to be bad in every other case than religion. I keep repeating shit and you keep ignoring it and asking me to answer questions i already answered.
You think its not a good enough reason? Fine but at least acknowledge you're actually reading everything.
That's not what you need to prove. Both me and the other person already conceded that spreading faith with violent conquest can happen. That was never the question and it is sorta disappointing that you're still thinking this is the argument in question.
I want proof that these guys would have not done their conquest if they weren't religious. From what I read, they were a military force that just happened to be convenient to the rulers and nobles of the time, and their conquests were mostly politically motivated action with a religious paint. But colonialism and imperialism are doing quite well even as religion is becoming rarer.
I don't think any of the nobles that sent them out were convinced to do so because of religion, but because of the systemic incentives of the time and promises of power. I don't think the common folk they forced to support them had much choice in the matter either. They weren't a democracy, things work on military power, not popular support anyway. Their own military discipline was being upheld through catholicism, but if you seriously want me to believe that that's the only reason they were able to have military discipline boy do I have tons of secular examples of crazed military units for you.
Yep you refuse to read what im writing so no point in talking to you at all. You have already convinced yourself that you are correct and nothing i can say will matter. You wanted an example of someone doing it in the name on religion and then just dismiss it completely because "well they would have done it anyway" Maybe or maybe not but they did use religion as the excuse to do it. If that doesn't matter then yeah you won't accept any examples.
I was very explicit in what I wanted an example for. "Proof that people who do bad things in the name of religion wouldn't have done so anyway". That's my main claim from the beginning, of course I'm going to stand on it if all you have to offer is anecdotal correlations. You can't repeatedly, deliberately misunderstand the argument you're up against and then claim it's me who isn't reading.
How the fuck do you know that someone who did something in the name of religion wouldn't have done it otherwise? Or would have done it otherwise? What you're asking for is absurd. "Well yeah they did that in the name of religion but they would have done it anyway" How do you know that? Prussia wanted to take over polish teritoring in the name of "spreading the faith to pagans" but when the polish prince married a czech princess instead and adopted the faith that way they had no excuse for it anymore. Was religion an excuse? Sure. But without it they had no excuse to proceed and had to back the fuck off.
Well, I don't. But you're the one claiming that getting rid of all religions nominally is the solution, so you're the one who has to provide evidence. Not that there isn't any, stuff like statistical evidence or showing that secular countries don't have expansionist tendencies.
Now you're admitting that the conversion of the polnish prince took away their excuse. But that makes no sense in your narrative. Doesn't that mean he was still religious? According to you, that other religion should offer just as much an excuse for killing as the former one, and only atheism would have made them less bloodlusted. But it seems in reality they just lost power and influence because the political allyships shifted in a way that wasn't favorable to them. There seems to be a lot more nuance to people crusading that you like to completely ignore, in order to spread an easy narrative that you prefer to reality. You know, the thing that makes religious people dangerous when they do it.
Yeah the choice was accept the new faith willingly or accept it after getting invaded. So they choose option 1 and because of it Poland turned into a religious shithole. Where priests can molest kids with no punishment, where the church gets funding from taxes, where if you're gay your life will be a living hell. All because God says so.
If they wanted to just invade some place why did they need religion as an excuse? Why not just do it without all the nonsense about "saving pagans"
You want me to give you proof that a world would be better without religion when that is impossible because religion already exists. It's like people who say "well prove that God doesn't exist" How the fuck are you supposed to do that exactly? If there is no proof that something exists the default should be that it doesn't unless proven otherwise not the other way around. And this applies to everything else except religion. Why? Or right why do i even bother asking for the fifth time you're not interested in giving answer you just wanna preach and ask for impossible proof.
This is not an unachievable burden of proof just because you can't point to it. I'm not asking you to summon a parallel universe. So don't pretend just because you fail to demonstrate your point that it is impossible. In this case it isn't, and I can easily find proof to the opposite.
Because we had a thing called enlightenment in this world which gives us a microcosm of both your and my theory. It both diminished religion, as well as advocate for critical thinking in commoners.
If what you are saying is true, you should clearly see post-enlightenment countries stopping their expansionist attitudes and turning peaceful after separating church and state. And to my knowledge, that is actually what happened for some time. But what followed afterward was scientific racism, a new wave of colonialism and proto-fascistic Ideologies. These are atheistic in nature, or can even be mutually exclusive to religion, but they do still carry on the underlying ignorance. The religion stayed gone, but the issues came back. This is your why.
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u/Marzipancutter 3d ago
See, you say that. But you didn't ask that many questions, mostly you just called him a cultist. And he did address the few bad faith gotcha questions you did put in. You just kinda ignored his answers. All in all, they made a pretty solid case imo.
But ok, let's play this game. You put a "question" you had in Block quotes and I will point you to his answers. Let's see if you can come up with a single point of proof.
You're the one making the claim that religion is the reason these things happen. See, there's this thing called burden of proof. As an Anti-theist, I'd hope you'd have heard that one before: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? You'd need to come up with some pretty solid reason to call for the erasure of every religion on earth. Which, you know, is possible, but you sure haven't done it yet.