Any hope of a lawsuit against religion?

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Atheism's body count was formed in one hundred years.

The only way "atheism" could be blamed for any of that is if religion would have prevented that. How, pray tell, would it have?

[Crockerland]

Meanwhile in the real world, the correlation is clear.

(Image)

Well, first off, what a horrible index - Some countries are just missing outright from the map (Cyprus), some countries are colored differently on the map than their actual rating is supposed to show them (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are all "Low" according to the list, "Medium" according to the map), dependent territories are inconsistently counted as separate countries (French Guyana), some constituent countries inherit the ranking of their parent country (Faroe Islands) while others don't (Greenland), these people can't even identify the countries on a map properly but I'm supposed to take them as an authoritative source on their affairs.

And how is the US supposed to be in the same category as Brazil? Much less have a state of peace worse than South Korea, a country that is faced with constant threat of nuclear annihilation?

Is it supposed to be because of foreign wars? Because when the Central African Republic's democratically elected president, Francois Bozize, was ousted in a coup by Islamic terrorists, the French government came in and attacked both the terrorists and the people trying to reinstate the legitimate president so that they could install a dictator who would let them capitalize off of Central Africa's bountiful resources, and they put out an international arrest warrant for the actual elected president of the country, and I would consider that to be a pretty non-peaceful event. So why is France green and the US yellow?

Doesn't seem to make much sense!




Well, let's just assume for the sake of argument that the map is actually flawless, and let's take a look at this alleged correlation country by country, starting with the "very low [state of peace] category":
-Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria(?), Somalia, the Sudan, Syria, and Iraq are all religious countries with religious issues, one very specific religion.
-South Sudan not Islamic, however, the Sudan (which is Islamic) is funding a proxy war against South Sudan, hence the lack of peace.
-The Congo, Russia, and Central African Republican, despite not being Islamic, are significantly affected by Islamic terrorism (Al-Qaeda affiliate Allied Democratic Forces in the Congo, Seleka in Central African Republic, Chechnyan Islamic terrorists in Russia). So, we're back to one very specific religion.
-North Korea's problems are related to the Juche dictatorship, which could be construed as a religious issue.

Similarly, let's look at countries in the second-worst category, those with a "Low" state of peace, depicted in orange:
-The North African countries (Egypt, Libya, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau), along with Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Yemen are all Islamic countries, so again, all the religious issues here are attributable to one very specific religion.
-China is not religious at all, so probably not a religious issue.
-Zimbabwe and South Africa are involved in race wars between Whites who are mostly Christian, and Blacks who are mostly Christian, so, again not a religious issue.
-Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico (some of these are colored the wrong color on the map, they should all be orange according to the infographic's country list) are having issues with drug-fueled gang violence, which is not at all religion-related.
-Venezuela has the gang violence AND an uprising against the socialist dictator of the country, neither of which has anything to do with religion.
-Israel, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and India are not Islamic countries themselves, but all of them are facing ongoing terrorist campaigns not only organized by Islamic terrorist groups, but backed and funded by foreign Islamic states. There's that one specific religion again.
-Cameroon is plagued by a cultural, regional, and linguistic conflict between the English-speaking and French-speaking regions of the country, once more, not a religious issue.
-Ukraine is being invaded by a foreign country, their disputes are primarily related to Putin wanting more power and ethnic Russians wanting their own nations, however, Catholic vs Orthodox Christian disputes are also involved here, so you might be able to count religion as a contributing factor, but it is certainly not the primary cause.
-Eritrea and Ethiopia are effectively at war with eachother, primarily due to ethnic separatism, once again - They are both Orthodox Christian states, so I don't think this is a religious issue. It might be worth mentioning that Eritrea has been the victim of attacks from Islamic countries, such as Yemen and Djibouti.

This leaves only the following countries: Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, and Guinea, and I don't know much of anything about these countries or why they were classified the way they were in the state of peace index to be able to comment one way or the other. Even if all of these countries are primarily unpeaceful due to religious conflicts, there's only four of them, not enough to make any real difference in the results.



It seems that the only time your correlation is consistent with causation is if you make "religion" an interchangeable term with "Islam," and that's with me very generously assuming, for every Islamic country, that you are correct to blame religion, even though several of those Islamic countries have issues (such as the ethnic issue in Turkey between the Turks and Kurds, who are both mostly Sunni Muslim) that are most likely not at all related to their religion.

Don't get me wrong, to me the most beautiful image is abortion patients, LGBTQ activists, stem cell patients, HIV patients, and everyone else who's been screwed over by religion dancing in unison on its ashes. But in the name of pragmatism, would a lawsuit seeking compensation for this be a good way to reimburse those screwed over?

Abortion is used to facilitate a systematic genocide of Intersex people, who are LGBTI. If they could screen for the precursors of homosexuality in the womb, would you support a law making it legal for women to kill their children for being gay? Yeah, starting to see how it doesn't really hold up to try and support both at the same time?


And no, trying to sue religion would be a fantastically stupid idea, and thus not a "good way to reimburse those screwed over."

[Aravea]

Atheism's body count was formed in one hundred years.

The only way "atheism" could be blamed for any of that is if religion would have prevented that. How, pray tell, would it have?

Eh not really. It's less atheism and more totalitarian regimes that are responsible for that body count. That's not to say atheist organizations/governments didn't engage in persecution of religious groups(They did to a large degree and still do into the present day.) or suppression of religious activity. Anti clericalism was and still is quite common in states such as the Soviet Union, revolutionary france, the various communist states of eastern europe in the cold war, Communist China, North Korea, etc given that they view religion as: either undermining state power or potentially acting as an incubator for resistance/subversive movements. Anyways....I think the issue isn't so much one of religion preventing that body count, but rather that the op has an odd fixation on blaming religion for most of the problems in the world today. Yes, religion has done a lot to hold back or generate violence, but at the same time religious institutions have also done a great deal to further the cause of civil liberties, ending poverty/disease, and furthering education. It's less it's wholly evil and more it is a mixed bag, like pretty much every facet of human society.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Then there's diseases that aren't known to be transmitted sexually, like Parkinson's or diabetes or cancer. Embryonic stem cell research could've cured them if not for religion holding it back.

You talk about religion's body count and then use the creation and destruction of human beings to harvest their cells like meat from a cow to say that religion is evil?

Embryonic stem cell research is a joke and a dead end, solely because it requires the creation and destruction of humans, like cattle at a processing center. In America, every great stem cell achievement since George Bush's work to ban it has come from adult stem cells and from stem cells gathered by the umbilical cord.

An entire stem cell facility stands in America's midwest as testament to just how much we can learn from ethical stem cell harvesting. In fact, it is exclusively dedicated to stem cell research and, if I am not mistaken, it is the largest of any stem cell laboratory in the country.

Look, if you're going to look for ways to earn free likes on Reddit's ATHEISM forum, at least be honest about it.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Don't get me wrong, to me the most beautiful image is abortion patients, LGBTQ activists, stem cell patients, HIV patients, and everyone else who's been screwed over by religion dancing in unison on its ashes.

The "patients" in abortion are the fetuses. They die. Religion is stomping on baby killing and religion is winning. A supermajority of Americans now oppose third-trimester abortion for any reason except the mother's life in danger.

Abortion is used to facilitate a systematic genocide of Intersex people, who are LGBT.

Intersex birth defects are extreme, but mostly external, malformations that can be easily corrected by infant surgery, and perhaps even in-utero surgery. The fact that people would kill their child for having malformed half-genitals when it could easily be fixed is stunning. That is yet another testimony to the horrors of abortion.

[Bromagia]

What an absolutely stupid idea. Not even interesting, shockingly stupid like an IM scenario. No, this is just stupid.

[Nakena]

Atheism's body count was formed in one hundred years.

> Well technology was more advanced.

Oh wait.

*Laughs in Great Khanate*

[Hanafuridake]

You're going to have to sue a ton of different Buddhist schools because the only thing Buddhists hate more than Islam is each other.

[Europa Undivided]

No.

Only if I can sue the remaining Captive Nations, plus Russia, for the damage caused by Marxism and Atheism.

Also Germany for (more) reparations from Atheism (or at least opposition to religion as it stood at the time), as envisioned by Nazi Germany. (Hitler explicitly desired to destroy the Church and gas Christians; this was his "Kurchenkampf" and was the next phase of the Holocaust after the "undesirables" were destroyed. While some in the SS were pagans, Hitler was not.)

Atheism's body count was formed in one hundred years. Organized religion's count, in ten thousand.
The Great Leap Forward alone cost sixty million men their lives. While religion, over ten thousand years, can be attributed (directly or indirectly) to more deaths, violence in the name of organized religion has never killed as rapidly as Atheism.

Organized religion has a higher body count because it's been here since the dawn of man. That's it. It was under Atheist states that mass killing became a perfect science. Islam can't hold a candle to Red China, the USSR, the eugenicists, the baby killers, and the whole nine yards.

Sue yourself before you attack the reason why people think violence against the innocent, the dignity of all human life, and the very nature of having rights simply because you are human, with no qualifiers, exist.

Who should be held more for bloodshed? The myriad of organized religions since the Bronze Age, negating all the good and charity they have also done, and why society views morality the way it does?

Or the mere one hundred years of officially, vocally Atheist states that have butchered, and continue to butcher, one-fifth of the world's population?

Also, your shifty map shows Russia as one of the most violent on earth. Its "most religious" status is lower than the USA.

The map isn't that accurate as well. Most of the violence in Russia is down in Chechnya.

You're going to have to sue a ton of different Buddhist schools because the only thing Buddhists hate more than Islam is each other.

I wonder how much money Lima is gonna wipe out trying to sue everyone.

[Ayytaly]

Atheism's body count was formed in one hundred years.

The only way "atheism" could be blamed for any of that is if religion would have prevented that. How, pray tell, would it have?

Murder is a sin for most religious folks. Then again, martyrdom is common in Christian theory. However, most religious people under anticlerical regimes were unarmed, unlike the League of Militant Atheists, who just started blasting on women and children for praying to Bog.

[Purgatio]

Vatican City in any national court would be barred under State immunity

What about those who ship Catholic churchgoers' money from other countries to Vatican City? Would lawsuits against them be actionable?

Individual Catholic organisations, associations, and charities are legal persons, and can be sued....but I'm still not clear what on Earth the basis for liability would be exactly. Sending your parishioners' voluntarily-donated money over to Vatican City is not tortious or actionable conduct, unless you can articulate grounds for liability in that case?

[Cekoviu]

Also, your shifty map shows Russia as one of the most violent on earth. Its "most religious" status is lower than the USA.

Imagine being this confident while being this ignorant about how statistics work. This deserves to be on FSTDT.

[Cameroi]

"religion", just in case no one has as yet pointed this out, and i would imagine and hope someone has, is not a specific entity.
the roman catholic church, if that's who the op was targeting is. any specific religious organization might be.
but there is no central unifying organization called "religion".
therefor, no, not in any court that i am aware of.
but yes, you can bring suit against specific religious organizations.
THAT can be done. is done. has been done many times, against many diffirent specific religious organizations.
and for quite a wide range of completely legitimate concerns.
it doesn't take a law degree to observe this. basic literacy ought to be sufficient.

[Geneviev]

There are a lot of religions, and most of them are good for humanity. I may have personal experience with the exception, but it is still only an exception. You can't blame all religions for a few extremists of a few denominations of a few religions.

[Stellar Colonies]

This reminds me of a short story by an author named Ben Bova that involves someone named Sam Gunn suing the Pope.

[The Alma Mater]

The only way "atheism" could be blamed for any of that is if religion would have prevented that. How, pray tell, would it have?

Murder is a sin for most religious folks.

And yet killing others is often their divine duty.
The reason ofc, is that murder means "unlawful killing" - or in the context of religion "it is not allowed to kill people against your deities will".
And deities tend to desire to see loads of blood.

[Europa Undivided]

Murder is a sin for most religious folks.

And yet killing others is often their divine duty.
The reason ofc, is that murder means "unlawful killing" - or in the context of religion "it is not allowed to kill people against your deities will".
And deities tend to desire to see loads of blood.

Jihadists are like 1% of all Muslims in the planet. I would not call that “often”.

[The Alma Mater]

And yet killing others is often their divine duty.
The reason ofc, is that murder means "unlawful killing" - or in the context of religion "it is not allowed to kill people against your deities will".
And deities tend to desire to see loads of blood.

Jihadists are like 1% of all Muslims in the planet. I would not call that “often”.

It might suprise you to learn that
A. Throughout history there have been many religions on this planet, not just Islam or varieties of Abrahams god
B.That people do not do their duty despite their god telling them otherwise is.. quite human

However, my actual point was that "religions forbid murder" does not mean they oppose killing other humans.

As to the actual topic - you can nowadays (would not have recommended to do that 200 years ago) certainly sue religious organisations or individuals. And many have done that with success for a variety of reasons - from embezzlement to abuse.
Religions however do tend to get special passes - hatespeech laws tend to contain exemptions for instance, as do animal welfare laws.
Example:in the Netherlands unsedated slaughter is illegal, except for jews and muslims.

Some have even tried more frivolous lawsuits, like e.g. suing the christian god for genocide - but such cases are ofc. pointless aside from some airtime. For one, the defendant will not show up.

[Europa Undivided]

Jihadists are like 1% of all Muslims in the planet. I would not call that “often”.

It might suprise you to learn that
A. Throughout history there have been many religions on this planet, not just Islam or varieties of Abrahams god
B.That people do not do their duty despite their god telling them otherwise is.. quite human

However, my actual point was that "religions forbid murder" does not mean they oppose killing other humans.

As to the actual topic - you can nowadays (would not have recommended to do that 200 years ago) certainly sue religious organisations or individuals. And many have done that with success for a variety of reasons - from embezzlement to abuse.
Religions however do tend to get special passes - hatespeech laws tend to contain exemptions for instance, as do animal welfare laws.
Example:in the Netherlands unsedated slaughter is illegal, except for jews and muslims.

Some have even tried more frivolous lawsuits, like e.g. suing the christian god for genocide - but such cases are ofc. pointless aside from some airtime. For one, the defendant will not show up.

You must have never heard of the Ten Commandments.

Also, the invasion of Canaan wasn’t genocide. You can’t intermarry with someone you just purged.

[Risottia]

The "patients" in abortion are the fetuses.

No. Patients need to be persons. Non-persons cannot be patients.

[American Pere Housh]

In the United States, no chance at all. Any where else I have no clue.

[Orator]

Tell me more about how religion “screws over” negligent individuals by cutting out and killing a defenseless human infant (that THEY brought into the world) and then using the refuse for research. Or how it defies the brainshwashing of impressionable children into being homosexual.

ALSO, will it be an equal policy that applies to all religions or is it more of your typical war on Christianity “because my parents made me go to church” type insanity? Because it wouldn’t follow the modern fascist trend to “pick on the poor Muslims”.

[Panslav]

You talk about religion's body count and then use the creation and destruction of human beings to harvest their cells like meat from a cow to say that religion is evil

Um... What? Creation and destruction of humans? I suppose you mean growing fetuses in a lab.

1. It's possible to take stem cells from non-fetuses, though they aren't as useful.

2. They aren't really people yet. At least, I wouldn't consider a 5-day old blob of cells with human DNA, a human.

[Albrenia]

You can't sue religion in general, that would be stupid. It is a collection of concepts which vary wildly in their makeup and effects.

Also, I haven't read most of this thread but a quick look at the posts above shows some pretty silly logic going on. No, you can't blame 'Atheism' for Stalin or the like's deeds, they did that in pursuit for personal power and glory. Very few people have died for the glory of Atheism, but many have died for having a religion that didn't agree with the national one (which can sometimes be Atheism).

To be fair, a large chunk of the lives lost blamed on the various religions also were most likely in the name of personal power and not whatever religion they claimed to be serving. Although a fairly large amount of the deaths blamed on religion are, indeed, directly because of it.

Edit to add: Can we stop with the moronic 'religion saves kids from being brainwashed into homosexuality!!11!111!!11' and 'abortion is because of atheism!' stuff, please? Both of those were widespread long before we godless fiends could admit our lack of faith without being murdered for it.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Yes i would like to sue Mr John A. Religion please.