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"Religion enables violence" is not the same as "All violence is caused by religion."

Yes, and I'm saying that religion had very little to do with Hitler's inherently race-based ideology. Hell, the Nazis defined Jews via their ancestry, not their religious observance. What did religion have to do with the Generalplan Ost or the Aryan race?

Ah okay so just up to that point lmao

Were they the ones for abolition? I always associate them more with the revolution than the civil war but I could be mixing them up with the whigs

I would argue that even though they identified a bit with Christianity, they weren’t religious. The nazis used lots of christian symbolisms and rhetorics due to cultural heritage as a way of garnering support.

But, stating that nazis were religious as in they adopted clear doctrines and rituals is fallacious, their philosophical beliefs were more akin to pantheism than anything else.

The Nazi Party publicly and loudly identified with religion

Okay and? Did you want them to be outspoken atheists in 1920s Germany?

Most historians argue he was prepared to delay conflicts for political reasons and that his intentions were to eventually eliminate Christianity in Germany, or at least reform it to suit a Nazi outlook.

and persecuted and purged the Jews who had been treated awfully by Christians in Europe for centuries.

Okay and? Antisemitism was already a thing independent of the Christianity that created it. The Nazis also went after leftists, (forgot to complete that sentence so edit:) Romas, Catholics and Slavs, among others.

"The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of their religious rites. Both (Judaism and Christianity) have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end they will be destroyed." So privately Hitler was religious, and publicly the Nazis were religious,

Yeah why do you want them to be atheists? Nearly everyone was religious back then, so obviously they were going to be religious too. And in the first place, Hitler repeatedly challenged orthodox religious beliefs in his time, so if anything to him Christianity was a pain in the ass that he needed to deal with and not a part of his ideology. He also persecuted non-Nazi Christians almost as soon as they took power.

and one of the most sickening, widespread, and prominent atrocities they committed was the persecution and genocide of a religious minority.

See above.

And of course, instead of solving underlying issues, we should just blame and ban surface level problems so that nothing ever changes.

Religion is just a tool, not a cause. The cause of all the problems you quote are ego and power-mongering. Those things twist anything they touch, not just religion.

The solution is not more vapid reactionism.

This makes them unfortunately well suited for fascist takeover.

-You. This whole conversation is also about fascism. The proposition that religion is fertile ground for fascism is simply not supported historically.

Yes, it can be a positive tool. But it's a tool that has a well documented history of repression and violence.

Yes, but not under fascism. That's what I'm trying to say here. Screw the Crusades, post-Reformation wars, the modern Iranian regime and the Taliban, but that shit has nothing to do with fascism. Religion and fascism (which is a form of state religion) are actively competing ideas.

I hear your opinion but it’s not accurate and can lead to dangerous roads.

You must try to understand that the majority of the world has been exposed to incommensurable pain and suffering. From an anthropological perspective, it is rational and logical for the brain to protect itself by creating beliefs. Through social and cultural processes, these beliefs become embedded in societies.

Claiming that this is a subhuman trait is disingenuous because it is in human nature to seek explanations for what we observe in our environment. We are wired that way.

These actions should only be evaluated through the lens of this principle: "The freedom of one ends where the freedom of another begins."

There are religious people who are kinder than atheists, and atheists who are more evil than religious people. Today, religion may be used as a political tool for authoritarian regimes, but tomorrow it could be something else.

Eradicating religion would not solve anything.

Atheists, is this guy just an idiot or do y'all actually believe this?