Seems like the Guides leadership is out of touch. The new Superman film has been marketed via churches in the USA on account of its Christian-like message. Churches were given film clips, ideas for sernons, etc and it's been a huge box office success.

You do know that we don't live in the USA, don't you?

GCHQ, membership of the EU, war in the middle East. We do all these things for the USA. These are huge things. That shows that to all intents and purposes we are part of the USA.

Have you been sniffing marker pens?

I'm sure this 8/10 IMDB rated, $200m budget film would have tanked at the box office if it wasn't for the marketing to the church.

Kraft, Heinz, Hilton, Walmart, etc

It's not noon yet: why aren't you in church?

This puts much in perspective:

If we are going to play silly games, so does this:

Is there another one for "Diseases eradicated or decimated by trees" ?

Got a list of people killed on religious grounds?

Well the biggest mass murderers in history didn't kill for religious reasons: Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot - 3 did it in the name of communism (why killing your people is good for the community I am not sure) and the other was a national socialist. So, I would suggest that warped political philosophy is rather evil. It suppresses religion in order to impose its evil. Bit like the modern Labour Party.

Christian-like message is right.
i.e. A superhuman mythical being from out there somewhere.

Hitler was religion and used religious hatred as a weapon (playing the old 'Christ-killers' bit about the Jews). The Nazis were supported, at differing times, by assorted Christian churches – and also by the World Zionist Council.

Conveniently, you 'forget' the likes of Franco and Salazar, who had backing from the church, together with an entire raft of Latin American fascist dictatorships.

As for the "modern Labour Party" suppressing religion – your trolling is miles off the mark tonight.

Not pay enough attention in church this morning?

I was talking about the mass, mass murderers. Mao and Stalin were streets ahead of Hitler.

The chattering classes in the modern Labour Party seem to me enthusiasts when it comes to promoting secularism.

Promoting a secular state does not equal suppression of religion beyond its interference in state matters.

It's the easiest thing in the world to jump in with the crowd and hurl rhetoric at religion from the peanut gallery.

During the Catholic Church's approx 2,000 year history it has committed many crimes and I have no interest in condoning them. That said, it is entirely incorrect to suggest it hasn't, on many occasions, served a positive social influence.

For instance, I find it laughable that you use scientific successes in medicine (omitting the fact that many of the greatest advances in science were funded by and for the military) as a club with which to beat religion (the Gatling Gun was created by who again?) whilst, I guess, forgetting the more than trivial point that if it weren't for the efforts of religion in protecting priceless scientific texts (going back to the Romans and Greeks) from being burned by the barbarians we might well be living in mud huts today.

Atheist zealots are all the same. It's less about what they say than what they [idon't[/i say.

For instance, mintball confidently stakes her claim about the links between politics and violence in the 20th century (although she's having little success in proving WWII was influenced to any great extent by religion - aside from Hitler's pathological hatred of Jews). Her last sentence mentions "an entire raft of Latin American fascist dictatorships". But she is curiously silent on the role South American churches of all descriptions played in opposing brutal US-backed terrorist forces such as Reagan's Contras. Is it because she hasn't heard of the likes of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_RomeroOscar Romero[/url and/or Liberation Theology, or is she simply unable to give credit where credit is due?

You are, of course, absolutely correct.

Also, no-one in this discussion in this forum has suggested that people should be prevented from following whatever religion they choose.

I would argue that secularism (as opposed to any one religion being "The" religion of a country) offers the greatest freedom to choose one's own religious or non-religious path.

So far, no one in this thread has produced the slightest shred of evidence that the decline of Christian belief and/or Church attendance has led to worse behaviour or declining morals overall. All we have heard is echoingly empty rhetoric stating it to be so.
But we should't be surprised at that, religious belief is not evidence-based.

"All the same" eh?
Where no evidence has been found it is far more sensible to admit it than to insist that a wishful guess is not disprovable.

I didn't say that "WWII was influenced to any great extent by religion".

Try to read properly next time.

I am well aware of liberation theology. I am also well aware – and have pointed out more than once – that the Catholic hierarchy rejected it and, indeed, did sweet FA to challenge (or help priests on the ground) challenge Latin American fascism – unlike communist eastern Europe.

Indeed, there are questions about the new pope and whether he even shopped two priests with liberation theological stances to the dictatorship.

Which is why you yourself mentioned Hitler ...

For goodness sake – try to read what you yourself post.



1) the nature of secularism has been pointed out to you;

2) the Labour Party, under Blair in particular, had a number of senior MPs (ie involved in the making of policy that played making it up on the hoof in accordance with their religious beliefs), and created and promoted national-level committees etc to 'integrate' faith groups into much greater involvement in social policy and provision. For instance, in 2003, Blair asked Fiona Mactaggart to chair a new 'Steering Group Reviewing the Way Government Interfaces with Faith Communities'. Given that the Labour governments also paved the way for academies and other schools with greater freedom to be religious or promote a religious ethos, it could hardly be described as having been an ardent promotor of secularism. And it also introduced contentious laws on religious discrimination – more than one person suggested these were, in some ways, an extension of the blasphemy laws to cover all Christian groups (and not just the CofE) and all other religious groups.

Irrelevant.
The question to be asking is "Of those who had a religion, did that belief make them treat people better?"


You can name as many religious or non-religious mass-killers as you like, the fact still remains that belief in a religion did not stop those religious from being mass killers.
Or are you saying that Hitler limited his killing to a reasonable few million because of his religion?

Just because Stalin killed more, does not make Hitler a better person than Stalin, both were horrors.


Yes ... and that warped philosophy is not limited to the irreligious.
Stick to the point.


It suppresses whatever it perceives as an impediment ... which may or may not include religion.
If you are failing to see that religion can be, and often is, a furtherence of power, you are seeing only half the argument.


Now you're just being silly.

Whoah there.
Science is a process of finding out facts, it is not a philosophy of how to live.
Science has provided amazing amounts of knowledge, whereas religion (although occasionally allowing science to continue) has produced none.

Religion tells us about gods and morals ... and fails in that purpose.

Conscience, although far too infrequently invoked, is a better guide of what to do with our knowledge, whereas religion far too often denies the existence of that knowledge (e.g. Creationism vs Evolution).

Well, that's certainly your perspective.

I hear this kind of argument all the time. "Science" is fundamentally neutral and "it can be used for good or evil". But this fails to address the context in which science HAS been employed since its very inception - a fundamental component of which is warfare. The business of killing.

[i"Science is the process of finding out facts[/i". But WHAT facts did scientists employed by the cigarette industry, or the RAND Corporation, or Union Carbide, or the anti-global warming lobby, or Monsanto (especially during the production of Agent Orange, Dioxin etc.), or the coal industry, or any other corporation currently fighting NOT to pay damages for the atrocious environmental and human damage science has caused uncover?



It wasn't religion which dropped the atom bomb. It wasn't religion which unleashed Sarin, Mustard or VX gas. It wasn't religion which worked tirelessly to perfect machines which kill more effeciently with each new version.

No one ever kills in the name of science. That some organisations (including religious ones, by the way) have abused scientific advances for nefarious purposes doesn't alter that fact.

Religion is, and always has been, used as justification for war and mass murder. Science is not.