Stalin and Mao found no ideas in atheism -- lack of belief in a god or gods -- that led them to kill anyone. This simply because there are no such ideas. Atheism has no dogma, no canon, no nothing. The state of atheism consists of a lack of belief in a god or gods, and nothing else. Consequently, ideas like "kill some number of people" by definition come from another source. And in particular:

Stalin and Mao were psychopaths (crackpots, frankly), and that is where you want to look to find out what drove them to kill. Whatever you find, it is an absolute certainty it won't be atheism.

However, the crusades were, in fact, driven to a significant extent specifically by theist reasoning, canon and dogma. As were the murders and tortures perpetrated during the inquisitions, the witch-hunts and subsequent burnings, blood libel, and pogroms, many events such as the 9/11 incidents, various wars, as well as the lesser but still despicable centuries of subjugation of women, repression of sexuality, interference with relationships and legislation, social ostracism, and so on.

I will also say that theist thought has also been the prime motivator for a massive amount of great art in many forms -- sculpture, paintings, architecture, music and a whole host of various other artifacts, and when charity and compassion are foremost and the compulsion to impose belief is absent or at least minimal, theism is at its absolute best at doing little to no harm while doing extensive good. This does not, in any way, say that we should forget, or forgive, or ignore, the many evils done in the past, being done now, and those impending, in the cause of theism.

So you want to be very careful before you go waving Stalin and Mao around as examples of atheism causing problems, or, as a counter to the historical fact of the murders committed directly for the (various) causes of religion . Atheism providing a rationale to harm others is not the reality. It's never been the reality. Claiming it is the reality is either disingenuous or ignorant.

I'm completely harmless. I'm a married middle class worker who pays his taxes and has no interest in harming anyone.

Same could be said of most of the Japanese-Americans whom the federal government put in concentration camps during WWII.

Innocence and harmlessness are no protection when governments go bad.

those retailers pay very low transactions fees (less than 0.2%).

Not true. Apply Pay is linked to the buyer's credit card, so merchants still have to pay swipe fees to the bastards at Visa, MasterCard, et. al.

Why would I use it?

Because merchants are probably going to start charging you a fee to use your credit card. They may hide it by jacking up prices then offer a "CurrentC discount" or something (sort of like the so-called "cash discount" at the gas station), since it's still tricky to charge a CC fee, but merchants are getting reamed and are trying hard to find a way to stop it. Where do you think that cash back on your Visa card comes from?

It's a prison where horrible things had to happen to prevent ever more horrible things from happening.

It's a prison where people did horrible things and tried to excuse them by saying they had to, in order to prevent ever more horrible things from happening, but in reality prompted yet more horrible things. See political martyr, and please stop believing that you put out a fire by pouring more fuel on it, or stop horrors by committing more horrors.

I didn't want to work at all. But that eating thing, and that shelter thing, and that health thing... ...soooo inconvenient.

> There is evidence that the human mind can communicate with matter at the quantum level.

Cite?

we do know that the big bang created a whole lot of hot, dense plasma with incredible amounts of energy

No. We don't know that. It is the theory with the most adherents today; but inasmuch as it depends upon physics that we have no inkling of, we're quite short of "knowing" that this is what happened. Right now, it might as well have a formal basis of "it started with magic."

We're extrapolating backwards; and like a thrown baseball where the pitcher was unseen, we run the danger of assuming the ball came out of the ground and trying to make up an explanation to fit that idea -- because we can't see the pitcher. If true, that would take new physics understandings/discoveries. The big bang has the same requirements. That should be more than enough reason to not apply really high confidence to the big bang idea -- yet. Still, based on hand-waving though it is, it's the best there is at this point in time because like the thrown baseball, we can make the picture work all the way down to the ground, It all makes sense until... it suddenly doesn't. The odds are decent that it is correct, and we just have to figure a few more things out (or a lot of them), but since we have not gotten there yet... some reserve is called for.

That's because it is the crackpots who pose the most danger to the rest of society.

All evidence must be BELIEVED

No. Belief is an act of faith; an assumption/assertion of truth without requirement of evidence.

One can (and should) consider at all evidence and conjectures arising from that evidence with a measure of confidence, one that is derived directly from the ability of that evidence to exhibit consensually experiential, repeatable characteristics measurable and observable in our objective reality, where those characteristics appear to confirm or falsify the conjecture(s) at hand. That confidence might be high or low, but it is not based upon faith; it is not belief; and in the final analysis, it should not be absolute.

Has there been a successful experiment that shows an amoeba evolving into a sentient being?

We can start right now. I assume you have several billions of years available for observation, data recording and so on, yes?

Oh, wait. The fossil record has already done much of this for us. Intermediate forms of life abound; also, the process of evolution has been repeatedly verified such that the process itself is validated without question. Evolution, (capital E) the idea that evolution is what changed us, as you sort of said, from single cell organisms to where we are today, is the very best hypothesis we have, because it inspires many testable things (including the process itself) and thus far, none of those tests have been failed. Some of them are inconclusive at this point, but it may take quite a while to gather the data required to falsify or confirm the predictions.

Creationism, on the other hand, has passed no tests, suggests no testable issues, and is 100% at odds with a great deal more than just "did we Evolve"; the idea that the earth, the animals on it, including humans, are a few thousand years old, is flat out 90 degrees from objective reality.

Science does in fact have a testable theory. And they are testing it constantly. And it's doing fine in that regard.

So, short version: One side does have a testable theory. Science.

LessWrong AI worship(the idea of "friendly AI" was created by that site)

O RLY?

I am not in the least afraid to criticize or argue with/against a Muslim or any other theist. The issue at hand isn't fear; the issue is need.

The reality is, Muslims are not all in my face, trying to change the laws that affect me or the public schools my offspring go to. Nor are Hindus, Saucer cultists, Scientologists, etc. Or if they are, it's at such a low level of effectiveness that I just don't care.

But Christians are in my face. They're screwing up laws that directly affect me, they have already screwed up such laws, they are trying rather hard to screw up our schools (further) and because they are actively screwing things up, I am anti-pretty-much-the-whole-shooting-match. This creates a rather exclusive, but entirely deserved, focus on Christianity.

The day they go back into their homes and churches and the public square to act out no further than to speak their minds, while they stop trying to use the law to tell me I must do this or that, is the day I will no longer be concerned with them. That day does not appear to be coming soon.

Religious Study != Inculcation of Religion

It is entirely one thing to have the university provide the education of "our current understanding is that c religion believes y and the history of c is is known to this extent"; next week, "our current understanding is that d religion believes z and the history of d is known to this extent" and so on. That's just education and it is well within the norms for *education*.

It is entirely another to say "the earth is 6000 years old and you should believe that because Religious Dogma." That is a religious performance on university grounds, and its only intent is to spread delusion.

It's not "philosophy"

It's delusion