I don’t. I suspect that “socialized” would be a bit more neutral, but would come with its own baggage of various sorts.
“Brainwashed” is clearly laden with all sorts of negative weight, but was used in the context of the extreme end of the scale.
Indoctrinated, when used of raising children into a society, is sufficiently neutral that we should probably not sidetrack the thread with claims that the language of the discussion is biased.
You mean in my fantasy? You wouldn’t be meeting in any homes, or anywhere else. You’d be thinking devotedly about Jesus in each of your minds, believing fervently in your God, and then after about fifteen minutes or so, you’d start to get bored and do something useful with your lives.
Quite true. I had forgotten that.
Japan is something like 70% atheist (or at least agnostic.) They just don’t care.
So you’d just burn our churches, steal our money, disregard our labor, and deny us the freedom to assemble. Great. In your fantasy, are there also children spying on their parents and shortages of toilet paper?
:dubious:
Liberal, that’s like responding to someone who said, “I think it would be nice if Muslim women didn’t have to hide their bodies.” with, “You want Muslim women to raped and killed!?”
Not really, because I believe Liberal is drawing a legitimate parallel with historical examples of societies in which public worship has been forbidden and the premises for such destroyed.
I wouldn’t want to deny pseudotriton his cosy fantasy, but in the real world, believers haven’t just gone “Oh well, so much for that then, we’ll just give up on the whole idea” simply because the law has put obstacles in their way. They’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to practise their religion (while, on the whole, doing something useful with their lives at the same time).
I’ll be darned if I can find the word forbid in there. I see “ideal” and “fantasy.”
My fantasy of an ideal world would be that people would be peaceful and love each other. Yeah, in the real world in history, absolute peace could probably only be created through extreme dictatorian measures (and entirely lacking the love angle), but that still doesn’t mean that the fantasy is a poor one, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m anxiously desiring an absulate dictatorship where peaceableness is required on pain of death.
If you think the fantasy is a poor one then I can see arguing against that. And if you think that the methods proposed to approach the person’s ideal would have bad effects then by all means attack the methods proposed. But I’m not seeing what’s accomplished by bringing out some third, wacko extreme measure that no ones mentioned nor advocated and talking about how awful a measure it is.
Yeah, wacko extreme measures have existed in the world, and they did suck. Communism sucked, but that doesn’t mean that minimum wage can only be argued in terms of Stalinist measures. And it doesn’t mean that there’s anything bad about someone saying that they wish that people didn’t have to want for the basic necessities of life regardless of who they are.
That’s nice, but his fantasy of an ideal world is that our places of worship be “burnt to bits and the ashes distributed to the winds”. Forgive me for wondering how far he might wish to take that madness.
And? I threw all my paperwork that had accumulated through the school year into the trash can at the end of it. I could have burned it all, and that probably would have been even more fun. Is this a bad thing?
There’s a very wide gap between trashing something you’re done with and between going over to someone else, knocking them out, and trashing their stuff. While PRR might be being a bit of an ass in the divine mission of spreading atheism, that I can tell he’s not said anything that basic reading comprehension shows as being particularly newsworthy.
At this point, I’m not sure you read the link at all. There was no nicety expressed such as waiting until we’re done with our churches. He thinks we expend too much human energy maintaining them, and would like to burn them down or, failing that, just take them from us and give them over to street bums. (No details on how he would administer such a program.) Since you have found yourself in the unfortunate position of defending this idiocy, maybe you should pause and reevaluate.
Hey, up to you whether to believe a disinterested third party or not. But like I said, that I can tell, you’re assuming a irrational explanation for what seems a pretty rational statement. He could either be saying that he hopes mankind casts off religion and tosses it to the wind, or that he’s saying that a militant atheist sect will hopefully lock up religious people and burn all the building, effigies, and relics to the ground.
His prose might have been more grandiose than really necessary, but so what? I can talk about “the flames of passion” and I wouldn’t expect anyone reasonable to assume I meant I liked to torch the women I’m interested in.
I’m a card carrying athiest. But that’s with a little a. I take no pride or anything else other than make the observation that at past tramatic events over the decades I have not turned to god or anything else. That includes the 20 minutes waiting for my youngest twin to be resuccitated at birth and I would have given anything, any possession and even traded my life for her to be magically “fine” during that time. I didn’t pray to god. She and her big black hand simply were not part of the equation.
PRR, you might want to take a look in the mirror as your boyscout enthusiasm for **ATHEISM ** makes you sound as intrusive, judgemental and nasty as any fundamentalist nutjob I’ve ever run into. And I was *raised * by missionaries and lived in rural towns in America so I’ve actually got more than a passing aquaintence with fundies.
What you want was achieved in the China of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. And just about everybody would observe as a self evident truth that State sponsored facist atheism is not a good thing. You would always pull up the USSR for further proof if needed.
Where’s the harm in live and let live? You don’t believe in god, well that’s just swell. Please don’t ram that fundamentalist belief in nothing down other peoples throats. Thanks
Well, quite, but I think there’s a bit more history of burning churches in the literal sense than there is of burning women to further romantic ends, and a bit less history of metaphorically putting places of worship to the flame and the axe.
Not really. Christians in the 200’s or so were probably looking forward to the day when all of Europe worshipped God, and the temples of Zeus and Hera would be left behind, discarded, and bulldozed into parking lots. I don’t see anything particularly extreme with their hoping for this outcome. Now if they were saying that they hoped to kill all the Zeus-followers, then that’s a bit worrying. But if they just hope for the rest of society to “come around” to the true belief, meh. A visual of the Temple of Zeus, in rubble, with shrubs growing out of it, and a fancy new Christian Church standing beside it seems pretty par for course.
Getting rid of religion has been a central pillar of communism. This way the state can impose itself as the supreme being and as such is able to define truth as it sees fit and be the ultimate authority.
We are lucky to have such rights as to allow religious freedom, and a nation which freely admits it is not a ultimate authority but ‘one nation under God’ - setting God as the true and only ultimate authority. As such it is more difficult, but in no way impossible, for the rights expressed in the OP to be taken away by such a government.
Heck, he’s just imagining there’s no heaven.
Nothing to kill or die for.
And no religion, too.
[sub]…join us…[/sub]
What about before 1954, when “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance?
“In God We Trust” was only added to currency starting in the 1860s.
Sure there’s a reference to a “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence, but nothing comparable in the Constitution. Would it be fair to say that the nation’s ultimate authority is the republic itself, with lip-service references to God thrown in later?
Well, not strictly “nothing”. There’s the date that appears on the document, and which was scribbled at the same time by the same people.
Well, I stand slightly corrected but find it interesting to note that the text is “Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.” The first reference is the commonly used dating system while the second is from 1776. In any event, I see the “of our Lord” reference likely thrown in for clarity rather than fealty. Kanicbird’s assessment the God was designated “as the true and only ultimate authority” remains grossly incorrect and contradicted by other parts of the text. Not even counting the First Amendment (added later), the constitution’s preamble states “We the people of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution.” This isn’t some holy document written following a divine revelation; it’s being written by men for the benefit of men and God has nothing to do with it.
Kanicbird’s “luck” is being born in a country where his parents taught him to believe as the majority does and the only hassle, as far as he’s concerned, is that those beliefs are not esteemed enough for all laws to be written as he’d like. The fact that this doesn’t happen (though there have been many attempts with varying degrees of success) is every other American’s luck, allowing them all to live in a nation that is everyone’s compromise but no-one’s paradise.