She apparently hasn’t been on since she posted the OP.
Clearly false, or there would be no atheists.
Yeah, can we drop the “T” word yet?
From her OP, it seems that religion and military are the only options she considers.
I have no real experience of military enlistment. If you’d like to serve your country, military can offer many many options, including careers, but religion can’t offer anything close. Yet, why are religion and military so linked? Is it due to the fact that both require taking orders from people you may never see or hear and never questioning them?
Thinking of them separately, military service and training gives you serious discipline.
Waaaaaaay different and much more beneficial than any religion.
Religion? You know where I’ve recently classified religion? A fetish. Plain and simple.
It makes us FEEL good, like swinging, polygamy, feet, S&M, cutting, what have you, 'cept there’s plenty more brothels (churches) where you can talk about your personal experience with god. In LA, there’s PLENTY of fetish churches (brothels, dom houses) where you can share your personal experience with whips, chains, stockades, etc.
Hmmmm… and I’ve got nothing planned this weekend… 
I don’t think he/she/it is; I think they are a drive by forum spammer or a spambot. I ran the opening phrase “Question for those who believe all religion should be abolished” through Google and the exact same OP has been posted in a variety of forums. Complete with a signature advertising “www.visa-india.co.uk”, which they didn’t know to ( or weren’t programmed to ) activate in this forum.
WTF… we’ve been SPAMMED???
Good Google, there, DT. I looked too and the OP is verbatim on all the other sites.
Well, let 'em collect the data from us here on SMDB. I’m gonna cut and paste my responses for them!
Agree. It has nothing to do with the religion or “great leader” or some other person/system of beliefs.
There are some people who either will not, or can not, think for themselves. It isn’t the religion, it isn’t the military, it’s just them. I’d even say that this sort of person is NOT what you’d want in the military. As you go up the ranks, eventually you have to make decisions. You have to think. Some of those choices could have a serious serious impact on whether other people will survive or not. You had better be able to think for yourself. Someone who will not think, will do whatever they are told even if it is dead wrong (“I was just following orders”). Do we really want that? People have done horrible things, simply because it was easier for them than making a decision, simpler than thinking.
That’s what military academies, ie:, West point, are for. The rank and file are, for the most part, simply fodder used to achieve victories by throwing more bodies at the enemy than they can throw at us.
That sure sounds like the ideal foot soldier for the military and organized religion to me.
And to answer the OP, even though I’m now pretty much convinced it/s/he is a bot, I, for one, don’t want to abolish religion. I’ve had discussions with too many religious people to count who freely admit that religion is the only thing that holds them back from doing all manner of ridiculously distructive things. Their rationale is their fear of retribution by their god keeps them on the straight and narrow, without which they’d happily be anarchist and murderous thugs. No, I’m not kidding. So let them have their religion. It’s obvious they need it, as scary as that is.
On the other hand, as someone said above, I do hope the practice of belief and adherence to theistic religious dogma will eventually collapse of its own weight. The illogic seems unsustainable for very long, in my view, hence the constant splintering over time as humanity tries to find a level that doesn’t actually exist.
It’s not a natural consequence of human consciousness or we’d all be religious.
I don’t know any atheists who want to “abolish” religion.
Religion has become a net loss again. Now we are back to disguised religious wars.
Religion should not be outlawed. It should be taxed. The idea of separation of church and state has crumbled. The Prez can not even give a commencement speech without religious people using it for a platform. Let them pay their share.
Oh never mind.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hj_WduJSd-7xIcenAGMSPeoCsImQ This is about fundamentalism in the military. There seems to be a lot of it in the upper ranks of the military and they are putting pressure on soldiers to follow the religious line. War and god, a dangerous combination.
Semper fi and amen.
After studying the bible and religion for so long, I firmly believe that War and God are the most likely combination. (!)
As likely as adding meatballs to spaghetti.
Well, who else is gonna vanquish the enemies of Christ?
Any government which tried to abolish religion would be one where the government WAS a religion. People who can’t think for themselves are going to believe the stupidity they hear from others, perhaps slightly less impaired than themselves. Then, since they are incapable of thinking for themselves, they will refuse to consider anything which contradicts these beliefs. This is the essence of religion. The only way to stop this would be to regulate all ideas, thus, preventing anyone, stupid or not, from thinking for themselves. There is only one alternative to a society which tolerates religion, and that is one which is enslaved by it.
It kinda reminds me of so-called ‘anarchists’ who want to abolish the state…
No, it’s the essence of fanaticism. While it may be common in religions it is in no way the essence of religion, nor is it exclusive to religion, nor is it universal within religion.
IOW it is possible to have a non-fanatical religion.
And it is possible to have a fanatical non-religion.
And it is possible to a non-fanatical, non-religion.
IOW your aseertion is contradicted at all levels by historical reality. There have been numerous instances where governments have banned religion without themselves being religions. The only way you can deny tht fact is by using your own personal defintion of that neatly defines a religion as any state that bans a religion. IOW your whole thesis is perfectly cricular.
And lest you htink that we are only talking totalitarian states here, several “hippy” communes in the 60s and 70s banned religions while remaining astoundingly open in every other respect.
IOW religion was banned by a government of a people that could think for themselves at the request of that people.