I don’t see where I disputed anybody’s definition of secularism. Say what you please, Marxist-Leninist ideology is explicitly atheistic and atheism is a central tenet of the movement’s doctrines. Communism is not a religion. To insist that it is is either profoundly ignorant, or profoundly dishonest. Either way, it is a waste of time trying to reason with such a person.
And anybody who actually thinks he’s made some kind of point by invoking the invisible pink unicorn is a major league asshole.
Feel free to substitute Moravians and the Amish for Hindus if you feel you must. Only one counterexample is needed anyhow.
Well, if invoking the witch hunts and the Inquisition is supposed to be enough to invalidate Christianity, then invoking the Gulags should be enough to invalidate atheism, secularism and socialism.
Another sidenote: Islam does not equal theism.
No, that’s different you idgit, because Inquisition starts with an “I” and Gulag starts with a “G”. 
I strongly disagree. The ideology of Russian Communism was not atheism, it was Marxism-Leninism. God was not done away with, He was simply replaced. Communist ideology simply became the new god. The very reason that atheism became the state religion was so that people were given one less thing to believe in. A distraction was removed. Lenin simply didn’t want any competition.
To compare that to free world atheism is just sad.
Are you serious? Come on, India has a history bloody enough to match any Mongol’s or Teuton’s. Just because there aren’t comparable big events in recorded history (or at least the one in your textbook – Didn’t Ashok make the rivers run red with blood at Kalinga?), you’re saying that that’s evidence that Hinduism is a whole is pacifist? That’s simply an unserious reading of human history.
This is an incredibly simplistic and superficial reading of the text.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s a literal reading of the text. And you might dispute the specific terms I use, but you must agree that the philosophy it propounds is not anything that can be even remotely characterized as pacifism.
Since we seem to be having the eternal ideology/religion argument for what must be the millionth time, I have created what I hope will be a helpful diagram.
(Note for users: Area of a depicted set M is not intended to represent ||M||. Author accepts no responsibility for any revolutions, involutions or open cans of whup-ass caused by inappropriate use of the diagram. All rights reserved.)
Now have I claimed that it does. Interesting how you seize on my sidenote, make a comment that has little to do with anything, and ignore everything else.
No, strike that. It’s not interesting, it’s expected.
Athiesm is not a central tenet of Marxist-leninist ideology. The central role of the state and the party as the vanguard of the working class. Those are tenets.
Communism has always been hostile to religion because, like any totalitarian ideology, it can only allow the state as the single focal point of loyalty and source of legitimacy.
It was equally hostile to forms of the novel and classical music it deemed bourgeois.
does that make atheism anti-novel?
Disagree all you want, but you’re wrong. Atheism is an explicit tenet of Marxist-Leninist ideology. To insist that it isn’t is either tremendously dishonest or tremendously ignorant, or both.
If the Inquisition and the Holocaust and the Rwanda massacres don’t invalidate Christianity …
If the gulags and the killing fields don’t invalidate atheism …
If the probable genocide of the Neanderthals by homo sapiens doesn’t invalidate the whole human race …
What exactly is the point of these weekly “Here’s your religion of peace!” diatribes unless the point is to say “EVERY LAST MUSLIM MAN WOMAN AND CHILD IN THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD IS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LATEST OUTRAGE”?
Some people suck and we should be trying to stop the suckage. What does it matter what logo they choose to wear on their T-shirts?
Some cites, perhaps? From either side? Accompanied by an explanation of why the issue is relevant?
EDIT: Imagine this post one post higher for maximum clarity. Thanks.
My point is that it’s silly to think you can judge an entire religion of a billion people by assuming the actions of a handful of individuals, in one particularly benighted country, say anything useful about that religion.
Every religion – yes, even Judaism, which you have inexplicably exempted – can be made to look bad by taking the actions of the most extreme individuals in it, and thinking of them as representative.
Produce your cites first.
Not all men are Socrates.
Please read before replying. Thanks.
Oh, come now. Just because an ideology is founded on a book that states, inter alia, that “Religion is the opium of the masses”, doesn’t mean it’s trying to eradicate all religion.
Erm…
:smack:
Never mind.
Did Stalin and gang slaughter millions in the name of atheism? Or did they push atheism for the same reasons that they slaughtered millions? Namely, was the push for atheism just one more method to control a populace? By cutting out the institutions of religion they were effectively cutting out a large segment of the scholars who had influence over the citizens. Priests and preachers who could have organized a quiet revolution against a Communist government.
In a similar way, the Inquisition was in large part a political move by the Church to control the secular governments, in a sort of reversal of the Gulag. Whereby the scholars with influence kept the princes and governments in check through violence.
It is not the actions of individuals. It is the sharia law based legal system. The Islamic religious based legal system. If it’s sharia it is islamic and blaming the religion is perfectly righteous.
Do you think it some sort of coincidence that the legal systems that legitimise barbaric punishments and the second-class status of women are self-identified islamic?
You might as well say the Crusades were just the result of a bunch of over-excited, peripatetic land-owners.
I have absolutely no problem pinning the Crusades and witch-burning on Christianity and can’t see what the problem is blaming sharia law on islam. Religions are what the religious do in its name. The specifics of the mumbo-jumbo does not matter.
