Do You Think All Religions Should Be Outlawed?

[SilentLoner]

Outlawing doesn't work. Look at what happened with Falun Gong in China after the gov started oppressing the group.

 

I felt sympathy for them at first, but they creeped me out big time once I looked at their materials. If I didn't know better I'd say that they were enjoying being persecuted (hm, what does that remind me of?)

[BlueGiant]

Fuck no and you're a moron for even suggesting it. Period. All we need are more governments with more power. Sure that works sooooo well.

 

What you propose is no different than a state religion. If you're so backwards you can't separate the two, you're no better than any other theocrat.

 

Also, some of us do have a use for our own variants of religion. You could actually read the forum here to get an idea about that, as it's pretty clear that you haven't given what you just opened with here, either that or you're too much of a mental midget to actually comprehend what others say.

 

By the way, when offered almond-flavored Kool-Aid, don't drink it.

[Roan7995]

If outlawing worked, I'd be all for it. You don't have to control what people think -- just do what was done in the protestant reformation. Assimilate their churches for use in other purposes. In fact, that's pretty much what Christianity did to the pagans. You just need to replace all the religions' functions with other things. This is already happening, it's just way too slow for our tastes. Often times it is the Christians themselves who are the biggest implements of their own undoing -- they embrace secular ideas and neglect their origins. This is kinda how the Enlightenment worked, and why Christians seem so enlightened when compared to Muslims. Now western Christian societies are products of John Locke more than Jesus Christ.

 

Outlawing religion the way you oulaw drugs ... that's probably too simple a method. It's like sticking a plug in your throat to stop yourself from vomiting, when the problem is deep down inside your stomach. Religion has to be dismantled from within with superior ideologies. Christians will abandon any part of their faith when they find something else that suits them better. It keeps happening. Not a single man practices the Christianity of a century ago. The Christianity of antiquity is an extinct dinosaur. This process should continue until the religion is like a vestigial digit that wiggles stupidly in a perfectly useless place.

 

BlueGiant, it sounds like you need a chill pill.

[Kuroikaze]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

 

...well, we could take away their tax free status and other privileges.

 

Actually I don't recommend this. The law exists as part of the larger separation of church and state issue. What I would suggest is that the non-profit laws be better enforced. That is, that if a group has non-profit status it is not allowed to endorse political candidates, church's break this rule all the time, if they want to play in the political arena then they should pay taxes.

[Vomit Comet]

Outlawing religion the way you oulaw drugs ... that's probably too simple a method. It's like sticking a plug in your throat to stop yourself from vomiting, when the problem is deep down inside your stomach. Religion has to be dismantled from within with superior ideologies. Christians will abandon any part of their faith when they find something else that suits them better. It keeps happening. Not a single man practices the Christianity of a century ago. The Christianity of antiquity is an extinct dinosaur. This process should continue until the religion is like a vestigial digit that wiggles stupidly in a perfectly useless place.

 

I'm not so sure about that. The liberal/mainline denominations may have become ineffectually benign since the mid 20th century, but today's American fundamentalists have much more in common with Cotton Mather than you seem to think. So what if it doesn't resemble 1st century Christianity? It's still an ideological and political force to be reckoned with in its own right, and the vigor and potency of its exclusivist, misanthropic dogmas ought not to be underestimated.

 

The American church is not being slowly but surely being neutralized. What we are seeing is polarization. The moderate middle is fading away, and the crazies are digging in to do battle with us. Rick Warren is merely a public sugarcoating on the same old repressive anti-human shit.

[PandaPirate]

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 can see your point of view to some extent, however, religion does have an evolutionary purpose. For example, you could read a book called Relgion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought to gain a wider perspective.

[hereticzero]

I agree that people have the right to be stupid, we have the right to make our own choices in life even the bad ones. A few years ago I would have agreed to rid the world of religion, if that were the only problem affecting our world. Even without religion, there are those who would put a collar around our necks. I do think the amount of power a religion has in society needs to be controlled. A religion with so much power it can control an election, should have its wings clipped.

[Vomit Comet]

Some people have argued that rape and murder had evolutionary purposes. So what?

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

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).

 

This says several things to me, and none of those things indicate that you are even in touch with reality on a psychological level. Either you aren't in touch or you just don't know what I am about to describe. Either way, you aren't in touch with the accurate and precisely estimated reality of what would happen should religion be outlawed- this reality being based on the real world we live in today.

 

When Religion is outlawed and someone practices it in private, they will get arrested for this if they are caught (like gays or others who were caught back in the day having sex in their apartments). If they attempt to resist arrest or escape arrest they will be coerced into arrest. This act of coercion will include anything from the use of non-lethal force to lethal force. As more people inevitably die there will be a sense of true persecution and while some sectors will be subservient, other sectors will resist violently. Also, if people are suspicious that residents in their area are engaging in religious activities, they might be inclined to report such individuals if the government offered bounties for said reporting. Then the individuals in question would be monitored until physical proof for non-compliance with government laws was obtained and then said individuals would be forced to be arrested and prosecuted. And this would be the best case scenario.. Of course, this is only what would happen in private scenarios where people would gather at someone's house for prayers after a funeral or something. What would happen in public would be another matter.

 

 

Think DEA raids, and instead of Meth it's Holy Bibles. Now you have what would happen if Religion was outlawed (what would happen in our country anyway).

 

There is no way I could support such a thing and there is no way I could ever truly respect any individual that would support outlawing Religion from the top down on a government level.

[sharkindeepwater]

...what he said.

 

Adding to that, where are you going to draw the line between religion and spirituality? Leaving aside the whole mess of interfering with what people believe, what about a person who ascribes to no particular faith, but reads tarot? Someone who lights candles or leaves food out for ghosts? Are you really going to arrest a group of Vodoun practitioners for sacrificing a chicken (in a humane way that's no different than anyone else's slaughtering it) before cooking and eating it?

 

What about children who talk to/pray to trees/the moon? Is the legal system going to have to take them away from their parents?

 

And how are you going to outlaw nonviolent practices like Bhuddhism? All you'd get would be a jailful of peaceful inhabitants meditating daily and not being able to do anything productive for society.

 

The whole idea wobbles between "dystopian" and "silly."

[oddbird1963]

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.

 

If limited to the three choices provided, I would choose c (if by non-imposing you mean unharmful and non-coercive). To go from believer to non-believer should lend a measure of epistemological humility to everyone so that the idea of outlawing religious beliefs is untenable.

 

However, I do think there needs to be a clear, but ever-adapting set of meta-rules that act as a referee between and among relgions and society as a whole. Freedom of religion, yes. Freedom to deny medical attention to minors - no. Freedom to raise children as wisely as you can - - yes. Freedom to beat them until there are whelps upon their skin - no. Freedom to voice dissent in the name of your religion - yes. Freedom to kill people and promote violence for your causes - no.

 

I'm not certain how far to take such a body of rules, but I think it is necessary to have a set to allow for a truly peaceful and diverse society. I'm not sure where I stand about the proselytizing of children. There are compelling arguments against it on this website and in other places.

 

Religious freedom is a right, but so is it the right of children and other victims of religion to be protected from harm.

 

A better measure to consider might be revoking the tax-free status of religion-based organizations.

[Evolution_beyond]

No.

 

Religions at their worst are false and dangerous.

 

But at their best they are simply symbols and metaphors that express human sense of wonder at the cosmos and life itself, and mythical tales that can help people navigate their way through life.

 

In that better sense, religions are no different to art, music and literature and should not be banned because (like art, literature and music) they can enrich human experience.

 

But the worst types of religion (the ones that tend to get taken literally and used to control other people), of which Christianity and Islam are particularly good examples, I would like to see those types of religions seriously compromised and given far less power. I think they can be very dangerous.

[PandaPirate]

Some people have argued that rape and murder had evolutionary purposes. So what?

 

Rape and murder are considered by most of humanity to be illigal and immoral. Justifying it with evolutionary purpose is pathetic. However, as a student of cultural anthropology I think the question of why all of humanity since the dawn of our existence has had religious culture to some extent or another is a valid question and worth examining.

 

Rape and murder, in my opinion, could possibly be a result of our common ascestry with an animal prone to such acts. We share 98% of our DNA with chimps, who can be extremely violent and where rape and murder are common.

 

In addition, in “The God Delusion,” published last year and still on best-seller lists, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. “Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful,” Dawkins wrote. New York Times

 

I also agree with Evolution_Beyond in that the religions that are used to control people and are taken literally should be compromised. I think that is happening now to some extent.

[Vomit Comet]

Rape and murder are considered by most of humanity to be illigal and immoral. Justifying it with evolutionary purpose is pathetic. However, as a student of cultural anthropology I think the question of why all of humanity since the dawn of our existence has had religious culture to some extent or another is a valid question and worth examining.

 

Rape and murder, in my opinion, could possibly be a result of our common ascestry with an animal prone to such acts. We share 98% of our DNA with chimps, who can be extremely violent and where rape and murder are common.

 

In addition, in “The God Delusion,” published last year and still on best-seller lists, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. “Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful,” Dawkins wrote. New York Times

 

I also agree with Evolution_Beyond in that the religions that are used to control people and are taken literally should be compromised. I think that is happening now to some extent.

 

I will concede that religion is a symbolic system that requires language, abstract thought, etc., to construct. Whereas ducks, chimps, giraffes, etc., can rape and murder each other without giving it much thought.

 

Also, among certain tribes of the ancient Celts, raping a woman was often a way to force her hand into marriage. This was true in Mexico as late as the early 20th century because of the fucked up Catholic thing. Many Mexican families have such a story in their past, including my own family. I've also heard stories coming out of deepest darkest Appalachia where a young man would rape a young woman in some miserable fundie town and they would be forced to marry because of strict biblical OT interpretation. We're talking, like, before World War II here, or earlier. I know a guy whose mother was the child of such a union.

 

Also, if we're talking primitive bands of humans or pre-humans, rape/murder might be encouraged if the band in question were warlike assholes who went around brutalizing other competing bands of (pre)humans.

[EmmaRose]

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.

 

I don't like the idea that you own your child and as such get to indoctrinate and do with it whatever you like (though we do have some rules regarding that). That's how things work, I know. I don't view all religion as child abuse, but I wish there was a way to make sure that every kid got a balanced view of religions. (Pretty impossible, though)

 

I think all religions are a form of power and control. Should they be outlawed? I don't know.

[Guest Windstorm]

This says several things to me, and none of those things indicate that you are even in touch with reality on a psychological level. Either you aren't in touch or you just don't know what I am about to describe. Either way, you aren't in touch with the accurate and precisely estimated reality of what would happen should religion be outlawed- this reality being based on the real world we live in today.

 

 

Evidently you forgot that I mentioned that violence would not accomplish anything in one of my earlier posts. You are correct in the fact that it would only cause more harm than good. However, I've had a lot of bad personal experiences with religion/religious people in the past which has left me with scarred, something I am still trying to overcome. Maybe it is for this reason that I oppose organized religion and stand by my opinion that the world would be better off without it.

[Vigile]

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.

 

I don't like the idea that you own your child and as such get to indoctrinate and do with it whatever you like (though we do have some rules regarding that). That's how things work, I know. I don't view all religion as child abuse, but I wish there was a way to make sure that every kid got a balanced view of religions. (Pretty impossible, though)

 

I think all religions are a form of power and control. Should they be outlawed? I don't know.

 

I mentioned this before a couple of years ago when this subject came up. My parents indoctrinated me and took me to church to seal the deal. I consider the hell doctrine a form of child abuse.

 

That said, my parents did what they did out of love and concern, misguided as it was. Despite this, my childhood and my family life was completely healthy and my parents are outstanding people who genuinely love me and my brother. I wish I hadn't been raised a xian, but my parents were raised that way and didn't have the tools, education or understanding to do anything but raise me that way as well. Even so, I wouldn't choose any other parents if I could, and the only thing I would change about my childhood would be church. I give them an A- in their job of raising me. The minus is for the xian indoctrination. The A is for everything else.

 

Which brings me to my point. Had the authorities been given the power to intervene, in mine and my brother's case it would have been a stark tragedy. I survived my xian upbringing. If the state had stepped in and decided my parent's views made them unworthy parents it would have made them defensive at least and at worst I would have been removed from a very healthy home and had my life disrupted in a horrific manner.

 

The state is not the answer to this problem. I'll say what I always say, the answer is teaching critical thinking skills at an early age in the schools. The state is a much bigger bogey man than religion in almost every instance.

[Exclavius]

To take away a person's right to practice a "religion" or take away any other right from them, is to usurp their free will.

 

I will agree with your preamble with only a slight modification

that it is my solid belief that "people should choose to" do away with all religions for the good....

 

But it is not mine, nor your right to do that.

It is your right, and mine... nay our responsibility to offer them education to make them see our side of the argument, simply because in doing so, it INCREASES the free will which that person possesses.

 

I will choose your third © option.

No religion should be outlawed so long as it is non-imposing.

but, tell me, what religion out there, does NOT impose upon their children to continue in the religious traditions of their parents?

 

That would be the ONLY outlawing i would agree with, removing the right of anyone to impose.... which is a form of usurping their "free will"

[Guest lolwutGod?]

I don't think any idea should ever be outlawed, but we should stop giving religious institutions tax breaks. A religion is just the same as any other idea.

[Amethyst]

No, because then they'll just go underground and there will be no keeping tabs on the fundies at all, and then terrorist groups will start up.

 

I'd rather see religions out in the open.

[TheMathGuy]

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 would choose ( c ). Whether or not something is harmful is a subjective judgement, and in any case to restrict a person's right to harm himself is a violation of human freedom. The only thing we should outlaw is the passing of a law based upon religion. Our legal system must remain free of religion, with church and state firmly separated. But we cannot justifiably outlaw any religion, since what a person does privately is his own business. While I'd love to see a world without religion, the ends do not justify the means (not that it would work, anyway--attempting to outlaw religion would only send it underground and make it even more extreme/fundamentalist). At least with it out in the open we can present counterarguments to religious apologists and use reason to oppose it. When it goes underground we will no longer have that freedom.

 

And there is evidence that religion is slowly losing popularity and dying out. I think the United States Constitution has the right idea in mind. We just have to give it time. And even if religion doesn't disappear entirely, I envision a world where it is no longer such a big deal as it is today, and perhaps even a "fringe movement" with only a very few followers.

[Taphophilia]

If religion were outlawed only outlaws would be religious. Do you really want to make fundie's wet dreams come true?

[Vomit Comet]

And there is evidence that religion is slowly losing popularity and dying out. I think the United States Constitution has the right idea in mind. We just have to give it time. And even if religion doesn't disappear entirely, I envision a world where it is no longer such a big deal as it is today, and perhaps even a "fringe movement" with only a very few followers.

 

Not so much. The moderates/liberals are disappearing fast. The fundies are holding fast, and there might actually be more of them than we realize.

 

America is not becoming secularized so much as it is becoming polarized.

[Dagan]

Not so much. The moderates/liberals are disappearing fast. The fundies are holding fast, and there might actually be more of them than we realize.

 

America is not becoming secularized so much as it is becoming polarized.

 

You think so? History post-Reformation shows religious dedication waxing and waning, with society in England and later in North America being generally secular although officially religious) with occasional spikes of religious revival.

 

America itself was founded in part thanks to a religious revival -- the first settlers were an overly-religious sect of Protestants fleeing persecution in England. Of course, there' more to it than that but the Puritans weren't some nice families in funny hats, they were pretty much a hard-core cult that irritated the other less-fanatical "Christians" in England.

 

My point is that I figure we're starting a decline from the peak of pseudo-religious madness which grew under Bush Jr. People are just about tired of religious phonies telling them how to vote, and maybe a rational, level-headed tone set by the presidency will have an overall calming effect.

[Vigile]

And there is evidence that religion is slowly losing popularity and dying out. I think the United States Constitution has the right idea in mind. We just have to give it time. And even if religion doesn't disappear entirely, I envision a world where it is no longer such a big deal as it is today, and perhaps even a "fringe movement" with only a very few followers.

 

Not so much. The moderates/liberals are disappearing fast. The fundies are holding fast, and there might actually be more of them than we realize.

 

America is not becoming secularized so much as it is becoming polarized.

 

Reminds me of Asimov's Foundation series. This type of societal malfunctioning was seen as evidence for a decaying empire.