StG wrote: Evil exists. Spend some time with someone who finds absolute joy in cutting off your various appendages and hearing you scream. There's people out there who will do the most horrendous things to you; things you couldn't comprehend, and find sexual gratification in your absolute suffering to your soul.

Dear StG,

I agree with you. You have described something evil. I described evil as what one doesn't like, and I certainly don't like what you described. I wouldn't like it at all.

Yes it is well know, I believe there are no Gods.
And yes that reildgions have done great evil.
That we would be better without them.
Even that we one day will be both better and without them.
But evil?
Some of the best in humanity came via reildgions, every one of them.
Yes every one of them.
It could be said of politics or any man made group that both evil and good is a by product.
But it is us, mankind, that gave birth to the good and the bad, runner, in that other thread, about England, you fell for a bait, you got stuck in fly paper and made remarks your God if he existed would say are evil.
You sometimes do not even have the questions or the answers right.

That was not the argument I was making, david f.

>>The religious element in the conquest of Ireland did not begin with Cromwell.<<

Many wars and conquests had a "religious element". This was no exception.

I was questioning the label.

I know that it was fashionable for scholars in the nineties and early noughties to re-define Cromwell's actions as genocide. But they had a twentieth-century agenda that influenced their views on seventeenth-century military aggression.

If "genocide" was Cromwell's objective, you need to explain his sparing Kilkenny from the sword. It was after all, full of the people he was supposedly eliminating.

It is far too easy to blame "religion" for everything under the sun. And there is no question, it has been a baleful influence on human relations for many centuries.

But accusations such as "religion-supported genocide" need to be accurate and specific. Otherwise you are simply mud-slinging.

david f,
>> Evil is what one doesn't like.<<
What a strange definition! My dictionary calls evil “profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, esp. when regarded as a supernatural force”. Since you obviously do not consider “supernatural forces”, we are left with “profound immorality” to which I really do not think one should apply “de gustibus non est disputantum” as one does to aesthetic attributes, the “what one does or doesn’t like”.

I know that some people like to reduce moral criteria to aesthetic ones (goodness to beauty, which together with truth are the three classical Platonic ideals), and I was just wondering whether you were in fact saying you were one of them.

I think most people - including atheists - would keep moral norms separate from aesthetic ones, even when explaining the sense for these Platonic ideals as a result of evolution.

>>If causing human suffering makes one evil God is evil<<
Evil implies (human) suffering (again leaving out the “supernatural” meaning of evil as “going against God‘ will“), but the converse is not necessarily true. For instance, before anaesthetics, doctors, e.g. surgeons, caused their patients suffer but were not evil; the court punishing the criminal often makes him/her suffer but we do not necessarily call that evil, etc.

Nevertheless. I agree that the Tanakh (OT) often presents God as cruel (I would prefer that to “evil”) often unnecessarily, at least in our 21st century eyes. I would not speculate on whether the image of “God the loving father” or that of “God the severe (cruel?) judge and avenger” contributed more to bringing the West - Jews and Christians - to the (post-Enlightenment) stage where we are now.

Dear Pericles,

Kiernan does not mention Oliver Cromwell.

Kiernan contrasts measures taken against Irish with those taken against Scots who also opposed English rule. Brutality was lesser in extent in largely Protestant Scotland than in largely Catholic Ireland. The English actions in Ireland were of sufficient scale and nature to be called genocide,

The English tried to impose a Protestant church on the Irish. That fueled Irish resistance.

From Kiernan:

'As Irish resistance spread, English repression grew more barbaric and genocidal. During the five Irish uprisings from 1568 to 1576, English troop strength rose to 2,500 soldiers. Colonel Humphrey Gilbert, military commander of Ulster, was transferred to Munster in 1569 to suppress the Fitzmaurice revolt under martial law. Sidney assigned Gilbert 900 cavalry, 400 infantry, and a force of Irish foot soldiers. Gilbert reported back: "I slew all those from time to time that did belong to, feed, accompany, or maintain any outlaws or traitors; and after my first summoning of any castle or fort, if they would not presently yield it, I would not afterwards take it of their gift, but won it perforce, how many lives so ever it cost, putting man, woman and child of them to the sword." Thomas Churchyard, who went to Munster with Gilbert, wrote that civilian noncombatants should be killed in order to starve the rebels of food, "so that the killying of theim by the sworde was the waie to kill the menne of warre by famine." To terrorize the "savage heathen," Gilbert ordered that"[t]he heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the date, should be cutte off from their bodies and brought to the place where he incamped at night, and should there bee laide on the ground by eche side of the waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes." Surrendering Irish visitors then saw "the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinffoike, and freendes, lye on the grounde before their faces."'

This article is nothing but religion versus atheism agitation. People, who often percive themselves as intellectual-elites because of their non-believe in religion, feel compelled to draw attention to this by continually ridiculing religion.

Yes, there are many things that both religion, theological texts and the institution of religion can be criticised for - but the way to go about this analyse of religion cannot be a bland, 'take a look at this' biolerplate.

This does the opposite of the intention; instead of proving intelligence, this sort of anti-religion rhetoric only proves the lack of intelligence in the writer.