What is wrong with religious belief?

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Questionable, in that their "Great Leader" and current President is a man who has been dead for twenty years, and Kim Jong Il is believed to have created the world and had weather control abilities. Are the ruling Kim Dynasty gods within the Juche Idea? If they aren't, they're awfully close.



...No...

They were killed in the name of a competing quasi-religious worldview, Juche socialism (which, not ironically, was explicitly labeled a religion on the very website you linked to). Totalitarian ideologies like fascism and state socialism are little different from religious dogma, and necessarily require that competing ideas and beliefs be stamped out.

Still looking for someone having been killed for the atheist cause.

This is another example of someone who does not understand or agree with the opinions of others so refers to those opinions as "hate." Why do you not think it possible to disagree with someone or something without that disagreement being "hate?" This is only a reflection of how you view the world and has nothing to do with the opinion of the ones you refer to as "haters."

Nazi-germany killed the disabled people in the name of Social-Darwinism.
Although not explicitly atheist, it was their view on Evolution that caused them to kill off the weak people, in order to
"cultivate society".

In other words, you have nothing but vague straws and unrelated facts to grasp at.

Meanwhile, atheism still has zero deaths to its name, while religion and pseudo-religious totalitarian political ideology have killed millions in the previous century alone. Teleological worldviews will drive you do do terrible things when you believe that your goals are the will of God or historical inevitability.

A overwhelmingly majority Christians nation at the time. I guess that didn't count for much in the end. I wonder where they found that deep well of anti-jewish sentiment? Oh yeah, Martin Luther.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with religion and/or religious/spiritual belief.

There is, however, something wrong with forcing your religion on others or using it as a justification for mistreating your fellow human beings. But the same goes for political dogma, philisophical differences, and every other belief/belief system out there, not just religion.

The problem is, I think, not that there's something wrong with the Bible, or what it says. The problem is that unlike fantasy bedtime stories, there are people who believe that the bible is actually true, and that its text contains literal instructions as to how one must conduct themselves and generally live their lives. In other words, unlike every other fantasy story ever told, there are people who fail to recognize that the bible is, indeed, a fantasy story, and ascribe to it a level of authenticity which is unwarranted. When someone believes what is said in the bible instead of what they can see with their own two eyes, something is wrong.



There's nothing wrong with reading the bible and using it to gain whatever insights it may offer. If someone can read the bible, take something it says and use it to better themselves, I think that's great. The problem is, as I alluded to above, when people go beyond that and think that what's said in the bible is the literal, absolute truth that they must live by.

I think what this shows is that malevolent people use religion as a convenient weapon to control people. This is of course a big hang up of atheists, myself included. The problem is that religion is given special status that it doesn't necessarily deserve.

However, I think it's splitting hairs to say that North Korea is not persecuting Christians in the name of Atheism. Christians are certainly persecuted in North Korea, an atheist state, as another pointed out. We could quibble about this and say that atheism is free of blame but I think it's a little disingenuous, since most religious people don't actually kill others unless they are bad to begin with.

I don't think the problem is religion itself, because eventho there has been (and still are) crimes committed in the name of religion, there has also been many good deeds done in the name of religion. The problem is truly the malevolent people themselves, and their followers, who use religion, and/or anything else, to control people. Just look at people like Charles Manson, it was a small group, but still he controlled them and pushed them to commit murder.