Nola, I'm going to be a little nasty here, because you're being unconsciously very condescending.

Just because you need an invisible friend in the sky to tell you not to stab random people on the street, or fuck your mother in law in the ass while pouring sugar in her gas tank, doesn't mean I do. Or anybody does.

Morality is independent of any particular religion. As Dawkins put it rather nicely(paraphrased from somebody else, who I fail to recall) In any system, you have good people doing good things, and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things with a clean conscious takes religion.

And Hitler may not have been a Christian in practice (although he was technically Catholic), but he definitely believed in a God. His speeches and transcripts make reference to Providence repeatedly, and had this little gem in Mein Kampf "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."

I can agree that he wasn't a Christian, but there has been enough history of Christian inspired anti-Semitic behavior in Europe that at the very least, without wanting to cast any more blame, a link between them.

@ Stratagos, I understand your point but do you really think that during WW2 (which is really when people first found out that Hitler was a killing jews and committing atrocities) it was possible or smart for the RCC to openly disagree with what the Nazi's were doing. That is in my opinion a weak analogy and to me reading it kills your point. However I think that you could find many more analogies, demonstrating your point in a more effective way.

And to everyone else, lets remember the RCC is a very large group. Many of their highest people and most of their lowest priests along with their followers are good people and would understand and agree with many of the points stated before me. As to their policies it is a thing that everyone personally must make up his or her own mind. But we should remember not to group them to easily.

So everyone knows, im christan but not RC.

Interestingly enough, many Lutheran ministers *did* condemn Hitler and the Nazis. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very prominent member of the German Resistance and paid for it with his life after the failure of operation Valkyrie. Despite the Tom Cruise films presentation, Bonhoeffer was a key figure in the planning and execution of the operation. So, while the RCC may hide between the "we didn't know/it was too risky" excuses, there were men of the cloth who were also men of conscience and acted accordingly.

Eh, the pope's kind of a dong. Dong's saying stupid shit never surprises me.

Good point stratagos, I hadn't thought of that.

I have to say I think it's a bit much coming to a country and then criticizing the people there.. but we'll have to wait and see whether the people he's mainly speaking to are won over by that sort of thing

I do also realize that people can often get a little hysterical over papal speeches, so this might be overblown (I'll be damned if I'm reading his speech to find out)

I don't care what the pope says. Really, but it does bother me to hear this stupid "Nazism and Stalinism are what happens when you stop believing in God!" bullshit. I hear it again, and again, and again. Regardless of what Hitler, or Stalin might have believed, we can't say "Oh, I'll pretend to believe in God so that I don't turn into the next Hitler!" It's a logical fallacy to refuse to accept something, just because you don't like the implications of it. If you have no reason to believe in god, you can't say you do, just because you think atheists are bad people. If I believe meterology, that means that hurricanes can happen. Hurricanes are terribly destructive. Therefore I don't believe in meterology?
Also everything he's worried about is complete nonsense. But other people have covered that topic already so I won't go into it.

@ diplomat61 +1

@ The Pope -1

What a horrible speech. The Pope can, indeed, fuck off.

Two of the most compassionate and inspiring people that I have ever had the honour to know were Catholic. I have no doubt that there are many others in the church who do similar good work. I really want to separate the belief and good work of many catholics from the appalling behaviour of the organisation itself and the woeful leadership of Ratzarse and The Bloke Before Me II.

@PLD: "But we should remember not to group them to easily. "

I am trying very hard not to group them too easily. It would be nice if they returned the favour.

@Abgemacht
According to Wikipedia (take a pinch of salt) the Pope was compulsiroly enrolled in the Hitler Youth, as were all boys his age, but refused to attend any of the meetings. Whatever the reality I think it would be harsh to label a 14 year old a Nazi.

As chief enforcer for JP2 he has done far worse since then.

@Nola
Are you suggesting that someone who does not believe in God is free to steal, rape & murder? Does it matter how I, or anyone, came to believe that these things are wrong? Surely they can be self standing. I can believe in them without having to also believe in God.

In any case, it must be possible for there to be a difference in beliefs that are derived (apologies, this is probably not the correct word) from God (assuming he exists) and the preachings/behaviour of the Pope and his cohorts. Oops, I forgot the doctrine of Papal Infallibility (you know the rule that says Popes are never wrong, the rule which is promulgated by Popes and their cohorts).

@diplomat61: FYI, papal fallibility only applies in very specific circumstances, among which the Pope must be speaking about matters of faith or doctrine. (That's according to the rule which is so aggressively promulgated to which you have alluded!) So it's actually impossible for the Pope to say something and expect to be considered "infallible" by non-Catholics, because the only times where even the Pope is allegedly infallible are when talking about faith or doctrine, which would apply more to adherents than to non-adherents.

I'll admit that there are a few among us Catholics who forget this, and those people have other ways of bringing shame on all Catholics, but as long as we have the record straight on papal infallibility I'm hoping you and other atheists might stop beating that long-dead horse. The Pope is not right in everything, very few Catholics worth their salt actually believe that. We just believe that in matters of faith and doctrine, the Holy Spirit (...let's just call that God to simplify the discussion a bit) inspires the Pope to say the right things.

Of course, most Catholics hope that as leader of the Church, and certainly its single most well-known figure, he'll be right on a lot of things (especially when teaching about the faith) and at least a little wise! But not all Catholics ignorantly believe that he is *automatically* wise or infallible or what have you.

Which is good because of his atrocious stances on many many issues.

DaveH, great arguement.
If I may add on a little bit: it is very probable that Hitler, Stalin and Mao got rid of religion, publicly at least, not because they were atheist but so a new state sanctioned religion could be used, with themselves as gods. I don't know too much about the cult of personality surrounding Hitler, but Stalin and Mao created ones for themselves. It is a bit like what Robespierre did with the new calender (Thermidor and whatnot). They replaced an basic part of the peoples' lives with themselves, therefore to give themselves more power. I will go out on a limb here and say that Stalin was calculating about this, Mao, as always, was just being arrogant.

Back to Robespierre, the dechristianisation was an obvious attempt to place the revolution and himself as gods in the peoples' minds. He himself actually said that Atheism is an aristocratic vice (or something like that).

Back to Germany, do remember that the RCC, or many high ranking cardinals, at the very least did support Mussolini.

@Mafialligator: True enough, but I'm not seeing any sort of willingness to dialogue with the Pope or Catholics from you. You're only fanning the flames by dismissing the guy and the religion so easily... Can't you see how attitudes like yours are making some religious feel marginalized and afraid, as the Pope says? And people who feel their beliefs are being attacked can sometimes do bad things as a defense against a perceived threat.

Why do you think the Papacy was formed in the first place? Sure, there might have been some greed and corruption among the higher-ups, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that, AT THE TIME, the Papacy was necessary in order to allow the Church to have a one-man representative to duke it out with kings who might otherwise have gobbled up the Church.

Is the Papacy necessary now? I don't know. Personally, I have my doubts (and I'm Catholic!). But it's not ENTIRELY evil.

As for stances on issues, the Catholic Church is well-known for being a little on the slow side with regard to progressive issues. But if you really believe that it's that "atrocious"-- especially given that some of the issues quoted by others are human rights issues, and therefore people's lives and dignities are at stake-- don't you think it's better to try to engage in dialogue and try to encourage a reform, in order to "save" those who are being affected, rather than just stand on the outside and point fingers and act all high and mighty?

@the atheists: You all have your grievances against the Catholic Church and against the Pope... now how about you put your money where your mouth is and actually work to try to bring about change? We have some extremism on both sides in this debate, with people becoming more obstinate in their stances over time and just making matters worse. I challenge you to do something different: Look for reasonable people like me and try to understand each other, then see if you can find common ground. If enough of this happens, then some of the more extreme people will moderate themselves; if that then includes the upper crusts of the Catholic hierarchy, then you will probably get what you want.

Fact is, the Church isn't likely to go away. It's been around a while, and it will probably stay around a while in one form or another. May I suggest being intelligent about the situation and try to change things, instead of just getting all high and mighty intellectual on us and sneering from afar while keeping your hands pristine?

Oh, and I also thought DaveH's arguments was good. I don't have anything against atheism per sé, except for that brand of atheism which is really just anti-Christianity. That's where you have content that's formed by noticing the Christian-like culture (as others have alluded to) and then reacting against it, poisoning it (and yourself, just a little) and deciding to make it your personal mission to sneer at Christians and Catholics, some (admittedly not all) of whom are merely trying to search for a transcendental truth of some kind rather than trying to infringe on women's and gay rights and all that. But I definitely love the discussion here so far, outside of the unnecessarily dismissive attitudes that sometimes come about.

Sorry, I don't want to just contribute text that might seem like pure invective (although that is definitely not my intent!).

@ Katsarephat - I think in a lot of ways, compromise isn't possible. How do you compromise on the issue of condom use in areas of the world badly affected by HIV/AIDS. Either you encourage condom use, or you don't and the church has made it clear they're not willing to do anything to promote condom use. I see an impasse. And it's not one on the part of people not involved in the church. I'm not saying you don't have a point, but people who have perfectly rational stances don't like compromising them to something that makes less sense, just to keep the church happy.

Christianity is not irrational

^^ No more than any other position is irrational anyway.

(If you take that to mean that I'm implying any position is irrational and by extension all humans are irrational.... then you are right).

What, believing in an intangible mystical father figure that has a bigger body count than Himmler, whose worshipers routinely perform vampiric and cannibalistic rituals with symbols of their dead but risen deity (Zombie Jesus).

No, that sounds perfectly rational. At least as rational as any other superstition that I've heard about.

@ largeham: I definitely agree about the cults of personality. And Hitler is absolutely no exception to your examples. His status as a leader only grew and grew as time went on. By the end it got pretty silly. (And it's also interesting to note that the Nazi leadership seemed to have a borderline obsession with the actual occult. At least if The History Channel is telling the truth).

@ katsarephat: "Doing something" about it is actually something of a tricky proposition. What a lot of the "new atheism" is about -the stance encouraged by people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennet, etc- is an attempt to at the very least take a more assertive stance in the debate. A lot of religious discussions get short-circuited by the inability to criticize a theist's beliefs because it's too personal and offensive to do so. Breaking that taboo and critiquing faith-based positions in a rational way (as one would critique anything else) is already a big step for a lot of people. And to "do more" than just challenge the ideas of others starts to raise questions as to "how." At least in the US, where I live, religious belief is legally protected.
I also think Mafialligator is right in saying that a lot of positions on either side of the divide are essentially incompatible. And it's difficult to walk the fine line between rational criticism and screeching invective.
I guess basically what I'm saying is the best we can probably hope for is to keep the volume down while we fight. (Though I'm still holding out hope that I win!)

@Katsarephat
Thanks for the explanation about Papal Infallibility. I would think that matters of faith and doctrine are pretty much central to his job so being unable to make a mistake on those would be pretty useful.

I do accept that the western culture in which I live is heavily influenced by Christian values however respect for the life & property of others occurs in other main religions too. My assumption is that religions codify the basics of social interaction.

Not to highjack the discussion, I'm a Christian myself, and in the line of the book of Tim Keller ("The Reason for God") I started thinking of the universal moral laws. Keller states that as these laws exist - he compares it to the problem with cultural relativity: when we state that all cultures are the same we cannot impose our morals on another culture, though they may do things we abhorr - atheism has a problem: there is no ground for universal moral laws except in an objective outside standard. While saying you are good guys and in that, mostly building on cultural context of what is 'good', how can you *know* what is good?

To be fair, this is not an attack as I do not 100% agree with Keller when he says that therefore (there is no moral ground outside God) God exists. I do believe it but I don't follow the argument.

After I read things like this from the pope, I take solace in the fact that less people are becoming officials in the catholic church and those catholics I know don't really listen to much of what the pope says.

diplomat61 - I did not say that all atheists are "free" to be murderers, rapists, etc. However, as Ursa pointed out a post or two before this one, the fundamental problem with atheism is that there is not a particularly firm ground for preferring one moral system (for instance, the rough approximation of the one we have in the West), over another. This means that while you can argue with someone about what to do and what you would like to be wrong/right, with no external reference, it is hard to justify why someone is right or wrong. For instance, I think most people agree that some of what Stalin did in Russia was brutal and wrong, but from a different perspective, he stayed in power until his natural death (though there is some dispute about that) and he made sure there was no revolt, so from his perspective and those of his close associates, he was pretty effective in keeping things the way he wanted them, so, without an external reference of right and wrong, how can you really say that what he did was wrong (i.e. how could you justify to him personally that he was wrong)? With no absolute (i.e. external) basis for morality, pretty much anything can be justified, by the right person or group of people, to be acceptable.

Atheists are no more or less moral and anyone else. Like everyone else they learn their morals from their parents, teachers and other influences as they grow up. was brought up in a western christian country by more or less religious parents. I'm and atheist, but I'll pass on those same morals t my children, and leave them to make up their own mind abut god (I will of course help them to explore both sides of the argument). But whatever their religious beliefs or mine, I'll still teach them that X is right and Y is wrong.