If that was the case we wouldn’t have christians running around nowadays. Mainly cultures and empires throughout history have tried to ban some form of religious symbology, but it doesn’t ever work, and typically just makes the conflict worse.
Well, Christianity is in a swift decline outside of places where they do have enough power left to enforce social conformity. By my estimate in another 50 years Christianity will be a small niche in many countries along with the other major religions in the global North (is that a thing, basically western doesn’t work because of South America).
Right, but that’s more from people recognizing the internal contradictions within the religion. Not because we don’t have as much iconography around as op suggested.
Honestly, I think it is mostly that the majority of people don’t care (and never did) and the people who do care lost the ability to push everyone who doesn’t care into it with social pressure.
I think you are right, it mostly has to do with education and access to knowledge. Just about every human today has access to all of the world’s knowledge through the internet. It makes it pretty difficult to avoid seeing those contradictions, even if you actively try to.
Which is his point. Christianity is on the decline because society has let those people assimilate on their own. They did not ban Christianity.
Once you start banning or suppressing an ideology, the people will actually strengthen their beliefs because they have no way to assimilate with their beliefs into a society anymore.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we’ve had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we’ve had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
This is a highly reductive and a backwards way to view the cause and effect of history.
Who is “we”, what era are you talking about, what archaic customs are you talking about? You are speaking about vague generalities and then making claims based on them.
Human progress does not advance because individual governments ban certain types of behavior. It’s a byproduct of changes in economics, and government systems. The attitudes and behavior of the church towards its populations was more influenced by technological changes and environment than any sort of government asserting its control.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
No one is claiming that religion isnt problematic, were just saying that banning iconography or ideologies isn’t going to be effective at doing anything but stiring up sectarian violence.
By forcing Islamic women to wear bikinis and mini-skirts?
If you are against females wearing clothes because you must to see their naked bodies who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? You are claiming to be in favor of female rights by RESTRICTING female rights to wear their desired clothes? And then claiming all women who don’t adhere to your ideology are forced to wear those clothes?
Do all western women also wear clothes because society forces them to do so? Should we just ban all clothes to show how much we care about female rights?
Many people see the France as an oppressive society that degrades women and treats them as second class citizens when they force women to remove their headscarves and dresses.
Makes sense. If you really want to fight religion with regulation, ban mosques and churches, ban public religious speeches. It still won’t work, but at least it’s consequent with your logic.
But banning hijabs and stuff is probably not going to help anyone.
But they don’t do that. They don’t leave religion with their beliefs. If anything the vast majority still in the religion on paper doesn’t even have those beliefs any more.
it’s not a ban or persecution though, if anything it’s a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
If you define schools and other essential public facilities as “government buildings” you are not separating the state from the church, you are separating the civilians from the church.
schools are government buildings as long as they are funded and/or owned by the government… I mean you are religious so maybe I don’t have to ask, but do you live in some kind of delusion land where that’s not the definition?
Can you have sex in front of class in schools? Not legally? Huh, that’s oppressive. People should be allowed to have threesomes during parliament.
The argument is silly when you apply it to other things, but religion, oh that’s different. As if wearing religion-mandated clothing somehow deserves more protection than e.g. the ability for people to be nude.
anything it’s a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
You do realize that banning a religion is the state inserting itself into religion, right?
The separation of church and state goes both ways. The church is not to influence the state and the state is not to influence the church. You are allowed to practice religious expression in a state building, but the state cannot demand that you do so, or regulate which religion you express.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
“No one is suggesting the persecution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If a man wants to adore another man, they can do it at home, but those homosexuals dont get to dictate how others should act.”
You see how problematic this can get with just a few words swapped? It’s almost like it’s difficult to police other people’s beliefs, and once you do it kinda leaves the door open for others people with other beliefs to do the same…
It will reduce prejudice in one form: looks and clothing. The sooner we come together as a species, the greater we progress and bring fundamental changes in everything we care as a species.
Except wars were waged for political reasons, not religious ones(, some civil wars excepted).
And good actions were quite often done for religious reasons, which is why rejecting religions was(is) seen as rejecting the call for virtue, and to God.
You can have technologies or not, be in a communist/royalist/democrat/‘(“anarcho”-)capitalist’/republican/… state or not, it’s not enough to live in paradise, you’ll still find assholes, an environment including religions will( also) be made to improve ourselves. Not saying it didn’t failed there as well, since people in the past weren’t always “christians”, it only means it isn’t enough by itself for 100% of the population, not that it isn’t the way forward.
Downvote me all you want, i.d.c., but argue before doing so if you ever have time to learn by a mutual debate.
here is my argument, most of my friends are some flavor of christian, and christening’s are happening to their kids, if I suggested to them that their kids should be brought up rhe islam way, taught about it from the start etc, they would think I am trying to brainwash their kids, but ofc doing the same with Christianity is not brainwashing, it’s normal. as someone who was completely isolated from religious brainwashing I don’t think someone like you who I assume wasn’t can ever comprehend how fucked up religion looks from the outside, no different from any other cult.
Funny because i don’t think you understand my point of view either, especially if you’re equating all christians with literalists, if you read the Bible you’ll be forced to interpret it allegorically, which is why being raised in a nonreligious environment doesn’t prevent from having misconceptions either.
“unify as a species” aka “only unify under my belief, Athiesm”. That’s what Islamists thought and so did the crusaders. How is your belief any more important?
You clearly misunderstand what it is to be an atheist. The whole point is to question it. As new evidence (yes, it’s based on evidence) surfaces, we change our “beliefs” accordingly.
Atheism is not belief in the big bang, atheism is belief in whatever scientific theory is currently best supported by evidence.
Atheism means that you say you are 100% certain there is no god. A-Theism. It’s the word.
The problem is that there is still no clear evidence for the origins for time and the universe. You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
Well if you insist on pedantry, “atheism” doesn’t mean a belief that gods don’t exist, it’s a lack of belief in gods. Think “asexual”: it’s not an aversion to sex, just a lack of sex drive. You are describing antitheism, and many self-described atheists are actually antitheists.
You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
Incorrect, you are the one with the spectacular claim and the burden of proof lies on you. Prove that gods exist.
A person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
This entire comment chain is focused on banning religion and being 100% certain that god doesn’t exist.
If you want to ban religion and claim god doesn’t exist then the burden of evidence to disprove god lies with you. But you can start by creating something from nothing or reversing time.
Everybody (except some religious people) are agnostic about most things. That’s why phenomema like gravity or electromagnetism are explained by “theories”. God isn’t even a theory in that sense.
You say that, but you’re alive. So I’m assuming that you do somewhat appreciate being alive since you haven’t unalived yourself. You might even think it’s pretty neat.
It’s scientifically close to impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Even green elephants.
As for time and space… I don’t see the slightest evidence of “god did it”. For me, the chance of finding a green Elephant seems way higher. Because it seems at least possible.
Green elephants are not a requirement for our existence.
The beginning of space and time are.
For that something outside of space-time must exist that created space-time.
Unless you are denying that we exist I am asking you to present another possible way that our universe has been created. Because according to thermodynamics energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet our universe does seem to contain energy so where did the energy come from? If you say energy can come out of nothing you’re disagreeing with everything we know about physics.
Stating that there’s no evidence for god is not any kind of belief. Now stating that there’s one even though the lack of evidence, that requires belief
Christians don’t state there’s no evidence for God, no idea where you pulled that one from. You’d have to believe that all of that evidence is invalid, and believing that religion in turn should be destroyed because you so whole-heartedly disagree with the evidence does require belief.
Christian evidence for God amounts to “because someone said so” + a vague sense that some force is working in their life. That’s just animism with extra steps.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
The “evidence” is a story in writings aged thousands of years… it is not something we can observe or have physical or visual proof of, all we have is words that go against all scientific evidence, so it’s not “evidence”. You have to actually believe in magic to believe in that kind of stuff, it holds as much salt as any other pseudoscientific garbage.
It’s laughable to say that you must respect the beliefs of people into astrology or flat earth or electric universe or anything of the sorts, and it’s just as laughable to say you have to respect the beliefs of people who believe in supranatural/divine beings. Because false beliefs actually cause harm, and religion especially has caused far more harm than any other pseudoscience (and the amount of good it may have done is extraordinarily outweighed), it is currently causing a lot of harm, and it will likely continue to cause great harm in the future.
I personally value the lives of hundreds of millions to billions of people more than appeasing some long outdated beliefs (and especially the people who exploit those beliefs for personal gain), but that’s just me. I’m agnostic, I don’t choose a belief, there might be some divine being or afterlife but I see that it’s completely insane to propogate any of said beliefs, it causes suffering and has set us back potentially hundreds of years progress-wise.
Honestly all of humanity would probably have much less suffering if it weren’t for organized religion and its consequences, including but not limited to either directly causing or being the biggest contributor to the far-right and fascism & corporatism, and a large amount of general imperialism/authoritarianism (divine right anybody?). Guys banging other guys was the norm in most of the world until Abrahamic religions came along and brainwashed the entirety of the west lol, then it became a heinous crime and caused a over a thousand years of suffering and oppression for gays, people of “heretic” religious beliefs, anyone that opposed the authorities of an organized religion, those who faced the wrath of most imperialism/conquest – which was generally propogated by religion (and would have been a lot less strong without religion scaring people with eternal damnation) in Europe and the Americas and even in Asia, and often in Africa, etc. etc. And now modern religion is once again making society try to regress.
On paper religion alone isn’t bad, but people can’t handle religion, up to this point humans just try to find things to hate each other for and religion is BY FAR the most successful & easy tool to use for that, nothing else comes even close, sure if religion was gone other things may go up in usage as reasons to arbitrarily hate others, but it won’t have even near the power of religion, nothing’s more effective than threatening people with fiery hell for them or their loved ones, or offering them eternal glory in the afterlife, or whatever, because that’s forever and Earth life is temporary!
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
You refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research. Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
You say religion is the biggest factor relating to the far right fascism and corporatism. But that doesn’t make sense. Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said and is grounded in a belief in no god and only saying things to be popular, using cheapest labour, exploitation, etc. I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof. In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians and was known for basically being the start of the “fair-trade” idea with treating employees well. (Unfortunately it’s just another product of capitalism nowadays as it has abandoned it’s roots.)
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
As for fascism, what?
Let’s list off the biggest propagators of Fascism:
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
Other states that caused mass murders?
Soviet Russia - Athiest.
Maoist China - Athiest.
If anything, it’s quite the opposite.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed. What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
I could literally make the same argument for Athiesm causing harm. Does that mean that I should respond to you by saying “we should destroy Athiesm?”. Or should we realise that both of our religious-based beliefs should be tolerated.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century,
Several conflicting documents that give completely different accounts of the same things, in the same exact book used by the people following this religion.
all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later.
That is something similar to what a LOT of random dudes did at that time period, Jesus was no different than the others, he was just “lucky” that he blew up.
They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account.
Yeah that is just verifiably incorrect. You can probably just jump to a random part of the Bible and find contradictions, but the easiest one is the differing accounts of Jesus’ ressurection – there is no consistent story, the details are wildly different from each perspective in a way that makes them disagree with each other heavily. It’s a testament to how warped rumors like that can get over a short period of time, especially ehen there’s no reality to base it off of.
And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church.
You can say the exact same shit about any religion, say Islam. Christianity isn’t special, this is typical religion and pseudoscience stuff. I can say the same about ancient world mythology.
It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Yes, we count years like this because a cult took over the center of the civilized world, we also count the months July and August because a guy was the ruler of an empire that fell over a century ago lol. That doesn’t exactly make all the mythologisms about ancient emperors any more true either.
“Because it was/is popular” is not an argument with any substance and it does not help your claims.
But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
That’s not exactly a good excuse for bad evidence that goes against science, literal verifiable facts of nature. Any nutjob can just point to stupid things like that as evidence and it’d hold the same amount of value.
Y>ou refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Except he never did it. It was a big deal to peasants when random people claimed he did it many decades after the fact, sure, but that goes for any infectious lie.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research.
Sure, but this would have happened in a similar time period regardless – look at e.g. China, which actually became more developed and wealthy than the west some time after Christianity successfully took over the Roman Empire. China only started lagging behind during the increasingly secularizing renaissance, when their own religious philosophy consumed their state and caused them to devolve, and they closed themselves off to the world. Europe could have been much farther ahead if religion didn’t slow them down immensely.
Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
“Athiests” are a lot less of a similar, generalizable grouping than “Christians”, since Athiesm is the default and there isn’t anything that can exactly tie together athiests culturally or even belief wise, “atheism” is about as effective of a religious grouping as “theism”. But regardless of religion people can have stupid scientific beliefs.
Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said
That doesn’t stop people – as I said, religion itself isn’t inherently bad, but it really just serves as a tool for people to use to do bad stuff.
and is grounded in a belief in no god
A majority of nations that were/are extremely Christian and extremely capitalist disagree with you my friend. Capitalism and corporatism were built on Christianity, then exported to infect the rest of the world.
I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof.
Again, capitalism was built by religious people, in a religious culture, and thrived because of the regressive beliefs propogated by organized religion. The entire justification for monarchies and conservatism for a large portion of the world was religion, religious justification of hierarchies that put wealthy royals at the top and the majority of the population at the bottom is why anti-peasantry was the norm for so long, it’s why we’ve continued this dynamic of a large poor population that generates all the value against a small rich population, religion has dictated European politics for a millennium and a half, the religious people who controlled the god damn continent would have put an end to this LONG beforehand if it were an actual morally positive thing.
In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians
EVERYBODY is a Christian in such cultures, they have to be because Christians label otherwise as a bad trait. In these cultures, being religious is synonymous with being moral, even though it’s not true at all. I’m pretty sure the UK has never had a publicly athiest monarch, and no publicly athiest prime ministers until the 20th century, and the US has had no athiest presidents ever.
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
See above.
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
As I said, people use religion as a tool to control. This literally corroborates what I said. It doesn’t matter what they actually believe, it matters what they spew out to everyone else – religion is fine if you shut up about it. But the entire concept of widespread religion is being like an infectious disease, it’s supposed to spread as much as possible and get as much of a hold in society as possible, and those people are brainwashed by the organized religion to believe stupid but extremely harmful shit. It is practically impossible to have a religion like that and it not only be used as a tool for evil.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Roman Catholicism was the state religion of Fascist Italy. The church generally leaned towards tolerating or supporting Italian fascism. Italy is still noticeably fucked up politically today because of this, they are the closest modern example to a religious state in the west due to how much Catholicism has its roots sinked into it, and it causes the country to legally be ass-backwards in many ways.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
It’s both, it is using religion to consolidate, justify, and project power.
Other states that caused mass murders? Soviet Russia - Athiest. Maoist China - Athiest.
Of course, as I said though – athiesm isn’t an entity, it isn’t an organized thing like Christianity or whatever. You cannot morally implicate athiesm/agnosticism like you can implicate organized beliefs, it’s just illogical. You might be able to make an argument that you can implicate anti-thiesm, though, connecting oppressing religion with authoritarianism. But even that’s a stretch, the anti-theism wasn’t a massive justification or drive/focus, it was just a side-effect of trying to oppress people to be “non-problematic” to the state. Meanwhile religion is usually the primary justification for authoritarianism/monarchy, from divine right.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
Remind me which camp is significantly more popular with devout Christians, Muslims, etc.? The left-leaning/demsoc/socialist camps, or the “I want to decintigrate gay/trans rights, workers rights, and want more conservative corporatism” camp? Sure, a fraction of serious Christians might support human rights, but a majority lean towards or strongly enable the people who want to strip you or your neighbours of their freedom.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed.
Flat Earth is perfectly reasonable to many. Scientology is too. So is the belief that modern medicine is bad and essential oils will cure all your ailments!
What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
As I said, it didn’t happen – you’ve been gooled into a lie. There is no viable scientific evidence. Simple as, it goes against science and cannot be proven. Anti-scientific beliefs are only acceptable when you can eventually back them up with observation/precise consistent predictions, which in that case would make it science. The only “predictions” Christians have is “life sucks now, all these natural disasters which are totally not triggered by our destruction of the environment are happening, also the gays have rights, this must be the prophecy coming true!”
Of course it is, and it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
I’m a theist but i’m probably an atheist with your definition of the Creator/Light/Highness/‘absolute Existence’/…, which is probably some long-bearded man with superpowers that you can touch like in Marvel movies, or something like that, yes ?
it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Create an experiment where you have a different prediction whether god exists or does not exist, then do the experiment to see whether god exists. If you can’t create a situation where the existence of god has a different outcome than the nonexistence, then you have no evidence at all.
as Ricky Gervais put it the difference between a Christian or Muslim and an Atheist is to believe in exactly one less god than them, there are over 2000 gods believed in by various people, Christians don’t believe in any of them, Atheists don’t believe in any of them +1
Good, fuck religion. The earlier we get rid of that shit, the earlier we can unify as a species.
That will never happen. If religion is erased from the equation, ideology or culture will take it’s place and cause friction
Religion is ideology and culture that has caused friction for many years now. Thats the whole point of removing it.
Please explain how banning religious symbols is getting rid of religion.
It’s not, but it’s a step towards that. By removing the religious symbols you make people think about it less, even just subconsciously.
If that was the case we wouldn’t have christians running around nowadays. Mainly cultures and empires throughout history have tried to ban some form of religious symbology, but it doesn’t ever work, and typically just makes the conflict worse.
Well, Christianity is in a swift decline outside of places where they do have enough power left to enforce social conformity. By my estimate in another 50 years Christianity will be a small niche in many countries along with the other major religions in the global North (is that a thing, basically western doesn’t work because of South America).
Right, but that’s more from people recognizing the internal contradictions within the religion. Not because we don’t have as much iconography around as op suggested.
Honestly, I think it is mostly that the majority of people don’t care (and never did) and the people who do care lost the ability to push everyone who doesn’t care into it with social pressure.
I think you are right, it mostly has to do with education and access to knowledge. Just about every human today has access to all of the world’s knowledge through the internet. It makes it pretty difficult to avoid seeing those contradictions, even if you actively try to.
Which is his point. Christianity is on the decline because society has let those people assimilate on their own. They did not ban Christianity.
Once you start banning or suppressing an ideology, the people will actually strengthen their beliefs because they have no way to assimilate with their beliefs into a society anymore.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we’ve had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
This is a highly reductive and a backwards way to view the cause and effect of history.
Who is “we”, what era are you talking about, what archaic customs are you talking about? You are speaking about vague generalities and then making claims based on them.
Human progress does not advance because individual governments ban certain types of behavior. It’s a byproduct of changes in economics, and government systems. The attitudes and behavior of the church towards its populations was more influenced by technological changes and environment than any sort of government asserting its control.
No one is claiming that religion isnt problematic, were just saying that banning iconography or ideologies isn’t going to be effective at doing anything but stiring up sectarian violence.
By forcing Islamic women to wear bikinis and mini-skirts?
If you are against females wearing clothes because you must to see their naked bodies who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? You are claiming to be in favor of female rights by RESTRICTING female rights to wear their desired clothes? And then claiming all women who don’t adhere to your ideology are forced to wear those clothes?
Do all western women also wear clothes because society forces them to do so? Should we just ban all clothes to show how much we care about female rights?
Many people see the France as an oppressive society that degrades women and treats them as second class citizens when they force women to remove their headscarves and dresses.
Makes sense. If you really want to fight religion with regulation, ban mosques and churches, ban public religious speeches. It still won’t work, but at least it’s consequent with your logic.
But banning hijabs and stuff is probably not going to help anyone.
But they don’t do that. They don’t leave religion with their beliefs. If anything the vast majority still in the religion on paper doesn’t even have those beliefs any more.
it’s not a ban or persecution though, if anything it’s a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
If you define schools and other essential public facilities as “government buildings” you are not separating the state from the church, you are separating the civilians from the church.
schools are government buildings as long as they are funded and/or owned by the government… I mean you are religious so maybe I don’t have to ask, but do you live in some kind of delusion land where that’s not the definition?
Can you have sex in front of class in schools? Not legally? Huh, that’s oppressive. People should be allowed to have threesomes during parliament.
The argument is silly when you apply it to other things, but religion, oh that’s different. As if wearing religion-mandated clothing somehow deserves more protection than e.g. the ability for people to be nude.
You do realize that banning a religion is the state inserting itself into religion, right?
The separation of church and state goes both ways. The church is not to influence the state and the state is not to influence the church. You are allowed to practice religious expression in a state building, but the state cannot demand that you do so, or regulate which religion you express.
religion isn’t banned, overt expression of it is, those are two different things.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
“No one is suggesting the persecution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If a man wants to adore another man, they can do it at home, but those homosexuals dont get to dictate how others should act.”
You see how problematic this can get with just a few words swapped? It’s almost like it’s difficult to police other people’s beliefs, and once you do it kinda leaves the door open for others people with other beliefs to do the same…
Being homosexual is not a belief, we exist, and so we deserve rights.
Religion is a belief, the things that religion teaches are based on stories that one can decide to belive or not.
It will reduce prejudice in one form: looks and clothing. The sooner we come together as a species, the greater we progress and bring fundamental changes in everything we care as a species.
Except wars were waged for political reasons, not religious ones(, some civil wars excepted).
And good actions were quite often done for religious reasons, which is why rejecting religions was(is) seen as rejecting the call for virtue, and to God.
You can have technologies or not, be in a communist/royalist/democrat/‘(“anarcho”-)capitalist’/republican/… state or not, it’s not enough to live in paradise, you’ll still find assholes, an environment including religions will( also) be made to improve ourselves. Not saying it didn’t failed there as well, since people in the past weren’t always “christians”, it only means it isn’t enough by itself for 100% of the population, not that it isn’t the way forward.
Downvote me all you want, i.d.c., but argue before doing so if you ever have time to learn by a mutual debate.
here is my argument, most of my friends are some flavor of christian, and christening’s are happening to their kids, if I suggested to them that their kids should be brought up rhe islam way, taught about it from the start etc, they would think I am trying to brainwash their kids, but ofc doing the same with Christianity is not brainwashing, it’s normal. as someone who was completely isolated from religious brainwashing I don’t think someone like you who I assume wasn’t can ever comprehend how fucked up religion looks from the outside, no different from any other cult.
Funny because i don’t think you understand my point of view either, especially if you’re equating all christians with literalists, if you read the Bible you’ll be forced to interpret it allegorically, which is why being raised in a nonreligious environment doesn’t prevent from having misconceptions either.
But sincere thanks for your polite answer though.
“unify as a species” aka “only unify under my belief, Athiesm”. That’s what Islamists thought and so did the crusaders. How is your belief any more important?
It’s not a belief at all
No that’s agnosticism
Ah yes the universe came from nothing and time started by itself. Don’t question it people or this man sends you to jail.
You clearly misunderstand what it is to be an atheist. The whole point is to question it. As new evidence (yes, it’s based on evidence) surfaces, we change our “beliefs” accordingly.
Atheism is not belief in the big bang, atheism is belief in whatever scientific theory is currently best supported by evidence.
Atheism means that you say you are 100% certain there is no god. A-Theism. It’s the word.
The problem is that there is still no clear evidence for the origins for time and the universe. You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
Well if you insist on pedantry, “atheism” doesn’t mean a belief that gods don’t exist, it’s a lack of belief in gods. Think “asexual”: it’s not an aversion to sex, just a lack of sex drive. You are describing antitheism, and many self-described atheists are actually antitheists.
Incorrect, you are the one with the spectacular claim and the burden of proof lies on you. Prove that gods exist.
Agnoticism is the word you are looking for. or “being agnostic”.
agnostic
This entire comment chain is focused on banning religion and being 100% certain that god doesn’t exist.
If you want to ban religion and claim god doesn’t exist then the burden of evidence to disprove god lies with you. But you can start by creating something from nothing or reversing time.
Everybody (except some religious people) are agnostic about most things. That’s why phenomema like gravity or electromagnetism are explained by “theories”. God isn’t even a theory in that sense.
If a god exists, they’re completely superfluous, unnecessary and not worthy of praise.
You say that, but you’re alive. So I’m assuming that you do somewhat appreciate being alive since you haven’t unalived yourself. You might even think it’s pretty neat.
It’s scientifically close to impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Even green elephants.
As for time and space… I don’t see the slightest evidence of “god did it”. For me, the chance of finding a green Elephant seems way higher. Because it seems at least possible.
Green elephants are not a requirement for our existence.
The beginning of space and time are.
For that something outside of space-time must exist that created space-time.
Unless you are denying that we exist I am asking you to present another possible way that our universe has been created. Because according to thermodynamics energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet our universe does seem to contain energy so where did the energy come from? If you say energy can come out of nothing you’re disagreeing with everything we know about physics.
ftfy
I already disagree with the term “created” here.
In your world, what brought the “something” outside of space time into existence?
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You believe that there is no god or gods, and that people shouldn’t believe in them either. That is a belief.
Stating that there’s no evidence for god is not any kind of belief. Now stating that there’s one even though the lack of evidence, that requires belief
Christians don’t state there’s no evidence for God, no idea where you pulled that one from. You’d have to believe that all of that evidence is invalid, and believing that religion in turn should be destroyed because you so whole-heartedly disagree with the evidence does require belief.
Christian evidence for God amounts to “because someone said so” + a vague sense that some force is working in their life. That’s just animism with extra steps.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
Isn’t that the kind of argument someone would make in year 4023 to justify the existence of Harry potter though?
The “evidence” is a story in writings aged thousands of years… it is not something we can observe or have physical or visual proof of, all we have is words that go against all scientific evidence, so it’s not “evidence”. You have to actually believe in magic to believe in that kind of stuff, it holds as much salt as any other pseudoscientific garbage.
It’s laughable to say that you must respect the beliefs of people into astrology or flat earth or electric universe or anything of the sorts, and it’s just as laughable to say you have to respect the beliefs of people who believe in supranatural/divine beings. Because false beliefs actually cause harm, and religion especially has caused far more harm than any other pseudoscience (and the amount of good it may have done is extraordinarily outweighed), it is currently causing a lot of harm, and it will likely continue to cause great harm in the future.
I personally value the lives of hundreds of millions to billions of people more than appeasing some long outdated beliefs (and especially the people who exploit those beliefs for personal gain), but that’s just me. I’m agnostic, I don’t choose a belief, there might be some divine being or afterlife but I see that it’s completely insane to propogate any of said beliefs, it causes suffering and has set us back potentially hundreds of years progress-wise.
Honestly all of humanity would probably have much less suffering if it weren’t for organized religion and its consequences, including but not limited to either directly causing or being the biggest contributor to the far-right and fascism & corporatism, and a large amount of general imperialism/authoritarianism (divine right anybody?). Guys banging other guys was the norm in most of the world until Abrahamic religions came along and brainwashed the entirety of the west lol, then it became a heinous crime and caused a over a thousand years of suffering and oppression for gays, people of “heretic” religious beliefs, anyone that opposed the authorities of an organized religion, those who faced the wrath of most imperialism/conquest – which was generally propogated by religion (and would have been a lot less strong without religion scaring people with eternal damnation) in Europe and the Americas and even in Asia, and often in Africa, etc. etc. And now modern religion is once again making society try to regress.
On paper religion alone isn’t bad, but people can’t handle religion, up to this point humans just try to find things to hate each other for and religion is BY FAR the most successful & easy tool to use for that, nothing else comes even close, sure if religion was gone other things may go up in usage as reasons to arbitrarily hate others, but it won’t have even near the power of religion, nothing’s more effective than threatening people with fiery hell for them or their loved ones, or offering them eternal glory in the afterlife, or whatever, because that’s forever and Earth life is temporary!
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
You refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research. Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
You say religion is the biggest factor relating to the far right fascism and corporatism. But that doesn’t make sense. Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said and is grounded in a belief in no god and only saying things to be popular, using cheapest labour, exploitation, etc. I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof. In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians and was known for basically being the start of the “fair-trade” idea with treating employees well. (Unfortunately it’s just another product of capitalism nowadays as it has abandoned it’s roots.)
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
As for fascism, what?
Let’s list off the biggest propagators of Fascism:
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
Other states that caused mass murders?
Soviet Russia - Athiest. Maoist China - Athiest.
If anything, it’s quite the opposite.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed. What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
I could literally make the same argument for Athiesm causing harm. Does that mean that I should respond to you by saying “we should destroy Athiesm?”. Or should we realise that both of our religious-based beliefs should be tolerated.
Several conflicting documents that give completely different accounts of the same things, in the same exact book used by the people following this religion.
That is something similar to what a LOT of random dudes did at that time period, Jesus was no different than the others, he was just “lucky” that he blew up.
Yeah that is just verifiably incorrect. You can probably just jump to a random part of the Bible and find contradictions, but the easiest one is the differing accounts of Jesus’ ressurection – there is no consistent story, the details are wildly different from each perspective in a way that makes them disagree with each other heavily. It’s a testament to how warped rumors like that can get over a short period of time, especially ehen there’s no reality to base it off of.
You can say the exact same shit about any religion, say Islam. Christianity isn’t special, this is typical religion and pseudoscience stuff. I can say the same about ancient world mythology.
Yes, we count years like this because a cult took over the center of the civilized world, we also count the months July and August because a guy was the ruler of an empire that fell over a century ago lol. That doesn’t exactly make all the mythologisms about ancient emperors any more true either.
“Because it was/is popular” is not an argument with any substance and it does not help your claims.
That’s not exactly a good excuse for bad evidence that goes against science, literal verifiable facts of nature. Any nutjob can just point to stupid things like that as evidence and it’d hold the same amount of value.
Y>ou refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Except he never did it. It was a big deal to peasants when random people claimed he did it many decades after the fact, sure, but that goes for any infectious lie.
Sure, but this would have happened in a similar time period regardless – look at e.g. China, which actually became more developed and wealthy than the west some time after Christianity successfully took over the Roman Empire. China only started lagging behind during the increasingly secularizing renaissance, when their own religious philosophy consumed their state and caused them to devolve, and they closed themselves off to the world. Europe could have been much farther ahead if religion didn’t slow them down immensely.
“Athiests” are a lot less of a similar, generalizable grouping than “Christians”, since Athiesm is the default and there isn’t anything that can exactly tie together athiests culturally or even belief wise, “atheism” is about as effective of a religious grouping as “theism”. But regardless of religion people can have stupid scientific beliefs.
That doesn’t stop people – as I said, religion itself isn’t inherently bad, but it really just serves as a tool for people to use to do bad stuff.
A majority of nations that were/are extremely Christian and extremely capitalist disagree with you my friend. Capitalism and corporatism were built on Christianity, then exported to infect the rest of the world.
Again, capitalism was built by religious people, in a religious culture, and thrived because of the regressive beliefs propogated by organized religion. The entire justification for monarchies and conservatism for a large portion of the world was religion, religious justification of hierarchies that put wealthy royals at the top and the majority of the population at the bottom is why anti-peasantry was the norm for so long, it’s why we’ve continued this dynamic of a large poor population that generates all the value against a small rich population, religion has dictated European politics for a millennium and a half, the religious people who controlled the god damn continent would have put an end to this LONG beforehand if it were an actual morally positive thing.
EVERYBODY is a Christian in such cultures, they have to be because Christians label otherwise as a bad trait. In these cultures, being religious is synonymous with being moral, even though it’s not true at all. I’m pretty sure the UK has never had a publicly athiest monarch, and no publicly athiest prime ministers until the 20th century, and the US has had no athiest presidents ever.
See above.
As I said, people use religion as a tool to control. This literally corroborates what I said. It doesn’t matter what they actually believe, it matters what they spew out to everyone else – religion is fine if you shut up about it. But the entire concept of widespread religion is being like an infectious disease, it’s supposed to spread as much as possible and get as much of a hold in society as possible, and those people are brainwashed by the organized religion to believe stupid but extremely harmful shit. It is practically impossible to have a religion like that and it not only be used as a tool for evil.
Roman Catholicism was the state religion of Fascist Italy. The church generally leaned towards tolerating or supporting Italian fascism. Italy is still noticeably fucked up politically today because of this, they are the closest modern example to a religious state in the west due to how much Catholicism has its roots sinked into it, and it causes the country to legally be ass-backwards in many ways.
It’s both, it is using religion to consolidate, justify, and project power.
Of course, as I said though – athiesm isn’t an entity, it isn’t an organized thing like Christianity or whatever. You cannot morally implicate athiesm/agnosticism like you can implicate organized beliefs, it’s just illogical. You might be able to make an argument that you can implicate anti-thiesm, though, connecting oppressing religion with authoritarianism. But even that’s a stretch, the anti-theism wasn’t a massive justification or drive/focus, it was just a side-effect of trying to oppress people to be “non-problematic” to the state. Meanwhile religion is usually the primary justification for authoritarianism/monarchy, from divine right.
Remind me which camp is significantly more popular with devout Christians, Muslims, etc.? The left-leaning/demsoc/socialist camps, or the “I want to decintigrate gay/trans rights, workers rights, and want more conservative corporatism” camp? Sure, a fraction of serious Christians might support human rights, but a majority lean towards or strongly enable the people who want to strip you or your neighbours of their freedom.
Flat Earth is perfectly reasonable to many. Scientology is too. So is the belief that modern medicine is bad and essential oils will cure all your ailments!
As I said, it didn’t happen – you’ve been gooled into a lie. There is no viable scientific evidence. Simple as, it goes against science and cannot be proven. Anti-scientific beliefs are only acceptable when you can eventually back them up with observation/precise consistent predictions, which in that case would make it science. The only “predictions” Christians have is “life sucks now, all these natural disasters which are totally not triggered by our destruction of the environment are happening, also the gays have rights, this must be the prophecy coming true!”
test
Of course it is, and it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
I’m a theist but i’m probably an atheist with your definition of the Creator/Light/Highness/‘absolute Existence’/…, which is probably some long-bearded man with superpowers that you can touch like in Marvel movies, or something like that, yes ?
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Thanks for your answer though.
Ah yes, a perfect world would be boring so let’s add untold suffering to spice it up. Really sells me on this supposedly “good” god.
I don’t believe there is are gods, or unicorns, or green elephants. “Don’t believe” = “no belief”.
And personally I couldn’t care less what other people believe, as long as they keep it to themselves and don’t bother anybody.
I don’t believe that a God doesn’t exist, so therefore no belief either. Who says you get to be the default?
Occam’s Razor.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
What sort of evidence would you want?
Create an experiment where you have a different prediction whether god exists or does not exist, then do the experiment to see whether god exists. If you can’t create a situation where the existence of god has a different outcome than the nonexistence, then you have no evidence at all.
as Ricky Gervais put it the difference between a Christian or Muslim and an Atheist is to believe in exactly one less god than them, there are over 2000 gods believed in by various people, Christians don’t believe in any of them, Atheists don’t believe in any of them +1
They were angry at Jesus because he spoke the truth