Guest Windstorm Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 It is my solid belief that every religion should be done away with in the future for the good of society, as well as the illogical individuals who practices it. Period. However, if you had to choose between the following three options concerning religion, what would be your choice? a.) All religions in general should be outlawed and abandoned. b.) Only harmful religions should be outlawed and abandoned. c.) No religion should be outlawed as long as it's non-imposing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RankStranger Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 Personally, I think people have a god-given (so to speak) right to be stupid. It would be a counterproductive waste of time to try and do anything about it through force of government. You'd do vastly more harm than good. You'd have a hard enough time defining "religion". It'd be even more difficult deciding which ones are "harmful". How would you even establish criteria for that? I even have my doubts about outlawing "imposing" religion. I guess I'd need you to elaborate on that a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted March 28, 2009 Super Moderator Share Posted March 28, 2009 I, too, would like to see how we would do without any religions. Problem is, if you persecute a religion by outlawing it, the religion just gets stronger. There will always be religion, but maybe people can still be a little smarter and better educated. That would help immensely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraphicsGuy Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 Government should have no hold over any religion nor should religion have any hold on a government. Absolute separation of church and state. I do not agree that it should be outlawed. I don't like religion, I do not agree with it, but the second anyone says that it is illegal to have that religion, then we have a problem. It's the first step towards invading people's personal freedoms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Isn't religion outlawed already in China? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
☆ TexasFreethinker ☆ Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I'm fairly happy with the way things are today in the US. Religious beliefs aren't outlawed. Actions related to religious belief can be outlawed (for example, if you think your god is telling you to kill your neighbor, or to incite others to kill your neighbor, acting on those beliefs is - and should be - illegal.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Isn't religion outlawed already in China? I don't think so. There is religion, but is tightly controlled. In the case of Buddhists - they are not allowed to even have a picture of H.H. The Dalai Lama, but China has rebuilt or allowed rebuilding of monasteries. I think the Catholic Church has also been interfered with. I don't think it is either possible or desirable to outlaw religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Windstorm Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Okay, maybe outlawing religion is bit overboard although I have been to a few sites where militant Atheists discussed something to this effect. A better way to put it is that hopefully in the future we will have just as many logical thinkers as there are religious individuals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RankStranger Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I think that the notion that atheists would like to outlaw religion here in Amerika is mostly a Christian Persecution Fantasy. No doubt there are a few um... zealous atheists out there who might like the idea. But most of us just want to keep religion out of government. I personally think it would be a very bad idea to deny people their religious practices- as stupid as I might think they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I think that the notion that atheists would like to outlaw religion here in Amerika is mostly a Christian Persecution Fantasy. Agreed. People should have the right to whatever they want to think, they just don't have the right to force it upon others. Besides, outlawing religion would only make it stronger because the religious LOVE their sense of persecution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skeptic Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Government should have no hold over any religion nor should religion have any hold on a government. Absolute separation of church and state. I do not agree that it should be outlawed. I don't like religion, I do not agree with it, but the second anyone says that it is illegal to have that religion, then we have a problem. It's the first step towards invading people's personal freedoms. As much as I hate and disagree with a lot of religious ideals, I have to say that I agree with this. People should have a right to choose to ignore reason and believe what they want as long as it's not seriously harming themselves or others. The only thing that I would seek to outlaw is forcing religion on others, such as the indoctrination of children. That is definitely harmful. Even that, though, would be extremely difficult and would be met with a lot of hostility. I don't know if we can do anything productive to combat religion besides try to maintain the wall between church and state and just don't make the same mistakes with our kids as our parents made with us. If more people breed kids who are encouraged to think for themselves, then the kids of those kids are more likely to grow up with the same ideals, and so on and so on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 People have the right to practice whatever religion they want as long as they're not using their religion to persecute others, like what TexasFreethinker mentioned. To ban religion would make the government just as bad and hypocritical as the fundies who want to ban anything secular and would turn the government into a quasi-religion itself. To force a "rational" view like that on people is irrational itself and defeats the point of being rational. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpheliaGinger Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 C. My general rule is, I won't try to convince someone their religion is bullshit as long as they don't try to convince me it's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ Fuego ♦ Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I think Sam Harris in "The End of Faith" has some good points about religion and faith being treated with kid gloves by our culture, to the point where any bullshit can be called a religion and given this aura of being good and something that should not be questioned. I'd like to see atheism or at least rampant skepticism replace our culture's religious blind spot. This, much more so than any laws, will help unplug the religious mindset that plagues America. The trouble is that we have a long history of viewing religion culturally as a good influence and a generally positive thing. The priest-pedophile outbreaks helped to tarnish that image considerably, but protestants are a lot harder to tarnish in the media. Even when pastor after pastor is guilty of adultery, arson, embezzlement, rape, pedophilia, and a whole host of unethical if not illegal character traits, the church continues to put on a happy face and the public at large doesn't bat an eye at it. Bill O'Reilly calls this friction between the religious and the non-religious a "culture war". In some ways that is correct, because we have a culture that tolerates an awful lot of religious influence due to it being a big part of American culture since before our foundation. But I think it is a necessary "war" and one that we should make public as often as possible, and in ways that make people think and question. The mask of goodness that the Bible god has worn needs to be removed publicly by showing from the Bible just what he is like (bloodthirsty, megalomaniacal, genocidal, psychopathic). The fake promises of Jesus need to be brought to the forefront, and exposed as lies rather than being seen as spiritual promises that can be had today if we only fast and pray long enough. We should also not allow these promises to be reinterpreted as spiritual words when he says things like "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you." (Luke 17) Of course, Christians don't like to quote that one, they like the one from Matthew 21 "you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done" because then they can say Oh, he meant a spiritual mountain, or a great difficulty that you are facing, not a literal mountain. Hmm, so in Luke 17 did me mean a "spiritual mulberry tree" that you are facing? Doesn't quite work does it? Have any believers ever made a tree be uprooted and thrown into the sea, ever, in all of Christian history? Can you truly say that no one has ever had even a mustard seed sized amount of faith? Or was this promise simply untrue? And why was it embellished in Matthew to be a mountain? Has anyone ever done this to a mountain? So rather than trying to have government interfere either for or against religion, we need to take steps to affect our culture by confronting the lies of Christianity publicly, promoting the healthiness and joy of non-belief and critical thinking (because atheists often come across as dour and humorless people), and openly attacking the character of the Bible god as one that supports murdering those that don't submit to him (including genocide and the slaughter of children). For example, tell the story of Noah's ark or the Exodus to kids but in such a way that they see God as the bad guy for killing children who hadn't done anything wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 One of the main reasons I hate religion is they encourage fascism. It's fascist to ban religion. See the hypocrisy here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 he only thing that I would seek to outlaw is forcing religion on others, such as the indoctrination of children. That is definitely harmful. Even that, though, would be extremely difficult and would be met with a lot of hostility. You open up a gigantic can of worms if you let the government in to interpret/decide what we can and cannot teach our own kids. The cure is much worse than the disease IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skeptic Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 he only thing that I would seek to outlaw is forcing religion on others, such as the indoctrination of children. That is definitely harmful. Even that, though, would be extremely difficult and would be met with a lot of hostility. You open up a gigantic can of worms if you let the government in to interpret/decide what we can and cannot teach our own kids. The cure is much worse than the disease IMO. Yeah, I know. I was thinking about it yesterday after I wrote that. It would be hypocritical to say, "Well, I can teach my child this but you can't teach yours what you believe." It's the same reason why I'm not going to be teaching my son to be an atheist from the time he's little. It would be pretty much the exact same thing my parents did to me. I'm kind of torn over it because it really is harmful, especially when younger toddlers are indoctrinated, but the only way to really stop it is just to get knowledge out there, like Fuego said, teach critical thinking skills, and keep religion out of the public schools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkindeepwater Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Those people who say "you atheists are crazy! Without Jesus I would be shooting/killing/raping?" Yeah, they should still have religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahjong Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I don't want anyone to outlaw my Atheism, so I won't outlaw their religion. The great thing about the Constitution is that EVENTUALLY it figures out a way for all people in this country to have freedom. Takes a while, but we'll get there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest QuidEstCaritas? Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 It is my solid belief that every religion should be done away with in the future for the good of society, as well as the illogical individuals who practices it. Period. However, if you had to choose between the following three options concerning religion, what would be your choice? a.) All religions in general should be outlawed and abandoned. b.) Only harmful religions should be outlawed and abandoned. c.) No religion should be outlawed as long as it's non-imposing. I will say this is a very complex issue, and I will also say that I truly believe you cannot fight ideas with bullets. While your answers might make for a good Hollywood pie-in-the-sky movie that Christians could watch to revel in their sense of persecution, they would accomplish the opposite of their implied intentions if actually implemented in the real world. Education is the realm from which religion will (hopefully) eventually be dismantled worldwide. When kids are taught to think for themselves and not feel guilty for it, then they usually carry that trait into adulthood. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryfka Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 I don't know what a world without a religion would be like, but I'm pretty sure we'd mentally advance far beyond where we are today. It's already been proven that you don't need religion to have morals. I think we'd be just fine. And hey, think of all the countries that, if religion just suddenly disappeared from them, might finally look at each other and think, "Why the hell have we been fighting?" "Shit, I don't know. Maybe we should stop flinging bombs at each other and smothering human rights." The trouble would be the transition. Like you said, "outlaw." Yeah, doesn't work for illegal drugs either... Think of it kinda like... death. Living? Not so bad. Being dead? Not so bad either. The transition between living and being dead? Slightly less than pleasant, in many cases, as would be the transition between a world with religion and a world without. And you'd never stomp it out completely. There's no instant button to deconvert everyone at once and until some mad scientist comes up with one, I think we're better off just letting them be as long as they don't bother us. We're no better than Hitler if we're persecuting people for believing something we don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Windstorm Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I will say this is a very complex issue, and I will also say that I truly believe you cannot fight ideas with bullets. While your answers might make for a good Hollywood pie-in-the-sky movie that Christians could watch to revel in their sense of persecution, they would accomplish the opposite of their implied intentions if actually implemented in the real world. Education is the realm from which religion will (hopefully) eventually be dismantled worldwide. When kids are taught to think for themselves and not feel guilty for it, then they usually carry that trait into adulthood. I wasn't saying that this would be accomplished through by bullets, that would be radical and make us no better than the Muslims terrorists who are bombing each other. Yeah, everyone should have the right to practice their religion, BUT as long as it does not present a threat to society in where people take extreme measures to harm those who do not conform to their beliefs. In this case, the government would have no choice but to take action against such a religious group (but thankfully in America we don't have such problems). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vixentrox Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 People want to belive in magic sky people, that's thier right. I don't approve of thought police and government control of beliefs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vomit Comet Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... ...well, we could take away their tax free status and other privileges. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skeptic Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... ...well, we could take away their tax free status and other privileges. Yes. I totally agree with this. Of course, then they'll just accuse us of "persecuting" them, but that's just too bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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