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Any religious person can be "radicalized", and when that happens, it can not be good.
But, what about atheists? Can they be "radicalized"? If yes, How?
Ask the families of the muslims that were killed recently. Look at how some of the secular atheistic regimes have historically persecuted and killed religious people. North Korea comes to mind.
Are you referring to the Red Brigade, the group that kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro? Their motivation was political: they wanted to destabilize Italy and force it to leave NATO. They terrorized and destroyed for political and social, not religious, reasons.
Likewise, there is no shortage of people that think Christianity is some kind of violent religion. Truth be told, though...there is nothing about Christianity that leads one to kill. I honestly cannot think of one tenet of Christianity that tells anyone to murder another human being. We are called to love, not hate. But there are violent people that will use Christianity to carry out violence.
An atheist can be radicalized, but the radicalization needs a belief or ideology upon which to base itself - say, communism or white supremacy or utilitarianism or supply-side economics, or what-not. Thus the atheism of a radical individual is as incidental to the object of their radicalism as their hair color or language or favorite Rolling Stones song.
One cannot be a radical atheist any more than one can be an avid and passionate non-collector of stamps - the absence of a belief, like the absence of a hobby, provides nothing which can be taken to an extreme.
Absences are just that - nothing, null, void, an empty set.
This, of course, upsets those determined to draw the equivalency between religious belief and the lack thereof that simply does not exist.
Any religious person can be "radicalized", and when that happens, it can not be good.
But, what about atheists? Can they be "radicalized"? If yes, How?
Well, radicalized is a pretty vague term. If you mean form violent groups, then yes. Literally anyone can do that. Muslims are doing it, Buddhists are doing it (which surprises most people), Christians are doing it (and have arguably done it the most in the past thousand years); and arguably, atheists have done it. They don't usually self describe as atheist and it's not really the main reason behind what they do, but the Bolsheviks were a group of radical atheists (technically).
The issue when you compare it to religious groups is that religion usually has a doctrine, while atheism does not. Now again, by extension, you could claim that the Communist Manifesto is an atheist's doctrine, but certainly not all atheists are communists.
Generally, atheists don't kill because of their atheism. It has happened, but to my knowledge, there's never been a group that has done any real damage. That's not to say they could, but they haven't yet. Hopefully never will. And if the religions of the world want to avoid that, it's best they start being more open minded and inclusive and not fighting for strict social conservatism. Doing that angers atheists and if you do it too much to the point of oppression, they may group and fight back. They being some atheist; since atheists are very much ideologically diverse, it's safe to assume that not all, in fact, probably not most, atheists would be on board for such a group.
Absolutely! Even as a secularist, I know many other agnostic-atheists who have such vehement hatred of all thing religious, they assume that anyone who is religious is irrational, judgmental, etc. Whether we can admit it or not, we all make some assumptions about others, but some atheists are ridiculously and unfairly prejudiced against everyone who is religious.
Someone's religious beliefs or lack thereof are just one component of their personality. It isn't necessarily indicative of their overall personality and character.
Likewise, there is no shortage of people that think Christianity is some kind of violent religion. Truth be told, though...there is nothing about Christianity that leads one to kill. I honestly cannot think of one tenet of Christianity that tells anyone to murder another human being. We are called to love, not hate. But there are violent people that will use Christianity to carry out violence.
I think the problem, Vizio, is that Christianity, or any religion for that matter, is what the person who believes in it makes of it and establishes it as in their own mind. In YOUR version of Christianity, it's simply non-violent. That's fine. I'm actually happy to hear that. But, the problem with religion has been and always will be its ambiguity and extreme openness to interpretation. That means that what you think is Christianity is different from what another person thinks is Christianity or Christian-based or Christian-principled or... whatever. That's part of the reason why there are so many different sects, divisions, and branches of Christianity in today's world. If it weren't so ambiguous, there'd be a lot more consensus - and far fewer arguments in the Christianity forum.
Violent, despicable people have most assuredly used Christianity as a tool to inflict grave horrors on people. Was it a tenet of Christianity that they did that? Not to you. But, to them and whatever logic they used, it helped them "get there." I'm not saying all these people read a verse from the Bible and thought "This guy needs to die." But, a person looking for a reason to kill someone... A person who is violent to start with... If there ever was a character in a book to identify violent tendencies with it surely could be the Old Testament god.
There are plenty of things in the Old Testament that could lead one down the primrose path of violence in the name of the Christian god. But, the fact of the matter is that unstable people can cling to a lot of things to justify their actions. Wasn't it John Hinkley who was obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye? I've read it. I thought it was a big piece of crap and I hated it. But, to Hinkley, something in there "spoke" to him and connected with him. Why those things cling to some and not to others, I have no idea but religion, Christianity included, is every bit as capable of convincing people to do things as any other religion.
Then there are also the uneducated who can be taken advantage of by people who are evil and use religion against the ignorant to make them do dumb, horrible things. I watched a video online a year or two ago with some Afghani guy who was about to drive a truck bomb into some government building in Afghanistan. The guy looked mentally retarded. If he wasn't mentally retarded, he was darn close, like the Forrest Gump of Afghanistan maybe... But, all these people were crowded around him, egging him on, and while I don't speak Farsi, Peshtu or whatever they were speaking, you knew the guy was clearly having his beliefs (however primitive minded they may have been) turned against him to do something awful.
I actually didn't know what was sadder, to be honest with you. Watching the guy get steered so blindly into his willing and imminent death or the truck bomb blowing up at the government building. But, the point most atheists make is that if there were no religion, it would have been a lot harder to egg him on. Sure, maybe they could have held his family hostage and forced him to do something like that but that is a heckuva lot harder than finding the village idiot and coercing him with religion into becoming Afghanistan's Trucker of the Year.
Are you referring to the Red Brigade, the group that kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro? Their motivation was political: they wanted to destabilize Italy and force it to leave NATO. They terrorized and destroyed for political and social, not religious, reasons.
I'll check...
It could be. These 'red brigades' were communist and I imagine that would make them atheists as part of the whole Marxist dogma, but the point is obvious; atheism is the last motivation they had. That is why I say that Stalin, Pol pot and the other Marxist states trotted out to bash atheism with are no argument at all. They were states based on irrational political dogma and that is what made them as bad as they were. Atheism per se was not to blame, no more than Christianity was to blame for Hitler. Yes, he believed in God and a 'pearly gates' god with Jesus and the cross and the whole bit. But I do not blame Christianity for Hitler (even though his anti -Judaism traces back via Luther to Matthew 27.25), any more than atheism is to blame for Stalin and Pol Pot.
As The Dusty pointed out, it requires something else. Some political beef, to become radicalized. Indeed, that seems the case with Islam, too. As uncompromising and short on tolerance for differing beliefs as it is, it needs a political cause to turn it into suicide bombers.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-16-2015 at 05:44 AM..
Radicalize (verb): cause (someone) to become an advocate of radical political or social reform.
The above dictionary definition says nothing about the motivation for radicalization and it leaves the definition of the adjective "radical" as the relative sort of thing that it actually is. However in the context of the present situation in the world the OP probably has in mind here, the particular radical political and social ideology of terrorists, which is generally religious and most commonly these days Muslim. Or perhaps what Shirina usually refers to as "religious fascism", at the least.
So if we are talking about fundamentalist religious ideology imposed by force, then it would be very difficult to "radicalize" an atheist because atheists tend to be rationalists / empiricists and would in the main not be very favorably disposed toward theistic fundamentalist ideology. If we are talking about fascist notions of forcing ideology on others, that would be less difficult, but still unlikely I would think.
An atheist might get the notion that forcibly annihilating all religions would be beneficial at least in the long run. But again, as a likely rationalist, our hypothetical atheist as radicalization target would surely realize that theism isn't an expression or an organization but an idea. You can partially repress ideas but you can't root them out by force. Indeed, impose "approved" ideas on people and the ideas you're trying to eradicate just grow stronger. Kind of like demanding that they think of anything other than a pink elephant.
Finally atheists more than most people realize the harms that come from imposing your ideology on others, so they would not want to be guilty of that themselves.
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