Some rather hyper-literal Christians (not just Jehovah’s Witness heretics) have argued that Christians, as citizens of Heaven, should not vote or participate at all in politics. They also advocate Christians should not speak out against sinful government officials! http://www.mwtb.org/html/310480.html
Their motives might be irrational (naturally), but the less Christianity gets injected into government the better. Not that I think it’ll last past the realization that without influencing the government they can’t force their religion on others.
Umm personal missionary work unless you’re saying once the atheists get in power you’ll ban religion. And everyone should vote-its healthy for a democratic republic. I’d say atheists, Communists, Stalinists, Nazis all should vote if they asked me-regardless if his political hero is Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot. You on the other hand if you had the power would influence others to not vote so you can get your favoured policies enacted. As far as I can see it you do not believe in a democratic republic but a sort of technocracy where the elite (naturally atheists and likeminded people) decide government policy.
That’s not a new philosophy, in fact that was the early philosophy of the early Christians. It was also, most famously, the position of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. The American government and Constitution allow slavery, he argued, which is a fundamentally evil and anti-Christian institution. Therefore, the US Constitution is an evil document, and the United States is an evil country. Therefore, any political participation in the United States is complicity in an evil system, and can’t be morally justified.
But he did participate in fighting slavery through public action.
Which doesn’t work very well when you can’t pull out the convert-or-die trump card. Christianity spread by the sword, not because it is very appealing.
No, lunatics shouldn’t vote. Nor should people who oppose the concept of democracy. Ever heard the term “One Man, One Vote, One Time”? That’s when religious or political true believers vote democracy away; which by definition isn’t healthy for democracy.
Which isn’t the situation in the US.
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So are all religious people lunatics?
True, the killing is mostly done here. The native population exterminated, slaves imported and their cultures destroyed so they could be replaced with Christianity. But they’ll still be unhappy when Muslims and Hindus and such won’t convert, gays keep on being gay, and women don’t act like slaves, and they realize it’s illegal to just murder them.
Yes. Religion is a form of madness. It doesn’t get called that because the lunatics are in charge, but that makes it no less insane.
What about religious people who happen to agree with your political views?
Religious people who are in favour of separation of church and state and revocation of tax-free status for churches, and maybe an ban on religious rhetoric by political players during elections?
Cool. I’m sure both of them are going to vote with me. We’re a bloc.
I think most religious liberals and fundamentalists even (including myself) would approve of the former but you’re getting a bit too extreme there-I mean taxes for churches?
You asked about religious people who agree with my political views. I’m just pointing out that there may not be many of them - and I’m not even Der Trihs.
Yeah, I’m with Attack, here. Taxing churches is long overdue, I feel.
Dangerously irrational people who - at the moment - happen to agree with things I want. But that is highly unlikely to last, especially since my goals are fundamentally hostile to religion. If possible I would like to see religion destroyed, reduced to a historical curiosity. Ideally I’d see humanity genetically engineered to the point where the mental defects that religion requires no longer exist.
So you’re at best an eugenicist.
Qin Shi, you may not have noticed, but it is pointless to discuss religion with Der Trihs. His posts on the subject consist entirely of absolutist statements (like fundamentalists use), or cherry-picked examples that show religion is bad, converting anything that is possibly good into the worst.
While atheism is not a religion as a general rule, the version espoused by Der Trihs is pretty close. You have as much a chance of changing his mind as he does of changing yours.
As for the OP:
I’ve actually been taught that refusing to participate in government is actually violating Scripture. We have to pay taxes–“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s”–and we are told to respect those in authority over us. Seeing as, in a democracy, we are ultimately the ones in authority, we have to participate, as God put us in that authority position.
Plus, those who believe that our government has gotten overly secular tend to blame that on Christians staying out of politics for a while.
A proponent of genetic engineering*, which isn’t the same thing. There’s no need to sterilize or kill people, for one. Nor is my ideal of raising up all of humanity to the same high level very similar to the superman lording it over the subman obsessions of the eugenicists. On the contrary; those old time eugenicists would generally have been horrified by genetic engineering, with its typical goal of fixing people rather than condemning them.
*Of improving or transcending humanity in general, genetic engineering is just one possible method.
I’d say that eugenics isn’t inherently wrong. We’ve already modified out species so diabetic genes are propagating more. Why would weighting our genes towards valuable ends be bad?
I would probably agree that the mental weakness that the deeply religious have, the inability to think when it challenges their favored delusion is probably something that humanity would do better removing.
But you don’t need to fight that on a genetic level. A proper society with good education smashes the dominance of the religious easily enough.
And how are you supposed to find out what the “religion” part of the brain is? What if there isn’t such a thing? What if genetically engineering religion out of a man’s mind destroys his imagination so that he’s a wooden, literal type?
You seem to be right. He’s view of religion seems to be that every religious person is a closet Torqumada or Wahhabist.