So Boerd said Like hell. If you think Hitler did what he did for religion and not for his moronic racial ideology, you're out of your mind. Gonna need a source for that number.

#1: Hitler was a Catholic and makes repeated references to God in Mein Kampf.

#2: The Nazi Party made a Nazi Church that worshiped a white-power version of God after the Catholics pulled out of supporting them...

#3: ...Which, by the way, was not before Hitler was being abusive and dehumanizing towards various minorities such as Jews, atheists, LGBT, and communists. Oh no. In fact, the pope loved how he brought Germany back to its feet and into a god loving state, and really didn't stop with the love until he started mass murdering people and invading other sovereign states. It took it going that far before the Catholic church went "hmm, maybe this guy isn't such a swell person..."

#4: Nazi soldiers were covered in Christian iconography, including most prominently various depictions of the cross. This in turn came from their Teutonic Knight heritage: Which was also characterized by being a group of bloodthirsty megalomaniacs hellbent on purity through the mass murder of millions of people. Funny that.

All of this information is easily found public information which you can read in any library or, hell, fuckit, I'm sure it's even on Wikipedia. It's very basic history. I shouldn't need to teach you that, should I?

So Boerd said You assume that in the absence of religion these wars would have never happened.

Oh fuck no. We're a bloodthirsty race of idiots who kill each other over lines in the sand. World War I was started over revenge for the assassination of one guy, and World War II, while religion had a hand in it, it was not the main actor which set the stage for the conflict. It was merely a tool used in Hitler's arsenal, which was vast.

So Boerd said Remember, church and state were the same. How much was done in the name of the church by the state, and how often was what the state wanted what the religion subsequently endorsed? Like the Franco-Ottoman alliance or Carolingian attempts to make an alliance with the Abbasids. The secular government dictated to religion, RARELY vice versa, and when that did happen, it was the pope maintaining his secular power.

Often the religion endorsed the act before the state committed. See: Just about every religious purge in history. Ever.

Seriously pick up a history book. And as I said before, by no stretch of the imagination do I think religion is the cause of all evil, it just doesn't belong in government, because as you just said now, government will use it as a scapegoat if it's available.

So Boerd said
There isn't more than Christmas trees and prayers in what I am proposing. Not sure what you are arguing against

I don't want my politicians praying for things to get better. I want them to go out and do their fucking jobs and make it better. That's what we pay them tax dollars for. That's what we vote them into power for, not to pray for things to get better, but to make things better. Even if you're religious you should be offended by this, after all, what was that one line?... How does it go, again? "God helps those who help themselves."

ActRaiserTheReturned said
Hellenism is bad kay? As is ancient Greco-Roman Culture. It's not a miracle that civilization's foundations for later orders came from the Greeks and Romans, it's a miracle that they weren't all somehow mentally retarded by the time they died with some of their cultural attitudes and norms. Seriously. One of the most brilliant cultures in all of history, didn't have a word for the English equilavent of "humble". These are the two cultures that revolutionized hygiene, philosophy, medicine and music, law and order, etcetera. This is also the same culture that worshiped statues with fertility goddesses who had rows and rows of marble tits. (Not that different from other cultures, but bare with me), had established usury, (look it up), drunken orgies, littered their streets with abandoned children, where creeping horrors from the anus of Humanity could pick up and do God knows what with them. Spartans legalized the murder of Helots. You had to murder a Human being in order to become a Spartan warrior. Yes you were punished harshly if you were caught, but if you got away with it, you were golden. Despite revisionist nonsense to the contrary, Spartans liked to molest younger men. The idea was to groom other soldiers as "lovers" so they would fight for each other on the field of battle that much harder. -_-Celts and maybe even Germans had a good point in hating Roman culture, despite early interactions with the Romans. There was plenty to admire and respect about Romans, like the rule of law, and to an extent, something of a half-assed peace. Hygiene, medicine, etcetera, things I already mentioned. Even then, if you were a vaunted Roman soldier, if you so much as got out of line but charging in battle before you were given the order, they cut your junk off. (Maybe testicles to, I don't remember). Oh, did I mention they experiment with surgery on prisoners? Of course Western Europeans also had bad, maybe even to an extent, worse ethics than Romans. Now you are probably going to ask, "What does this have to do with writing?" Well, my point is that while I get your point in that the Western European Pagans could have adapted writing from their Eastern "neighbors", there wold have been a religious emphasis on resisting change. Keeping traditions mostly or totally oral was a religious matter, not a matter of pragmatism. It's kind of like some people in the days of the old Arabic Empires and Middle Eastern powers looking down on coffee houses. They would see something morally wrong with such a thing, as absurd as it sounds to us. It could take at least a hundred, two hundred or more years before the West would adopt the Eastern cultures enough to replicate the same thing that had happened in real world history.

And if we followed what the Bible says we should do... We would...
--Kill people who touch a certain mountain
--Kill people who take accursed things?... What the !@#$ even counts as one?
--Kill people who curse or blaspheme, so I guess I should die right now.
--Kill people for committing adultery. Hilariously this also includes rape victims who don't scream loudly enough.
--Kill animals that kill people.
--Kill women that are not virgins on their wedding night.
--Kill people who worship other Gods.
--Kill children who disobey their parents.
--Kill... Witches and wizards... Oh my god...
--Kill people who give their children to Molech.
--Kill people who break the sabbath (aka: work on Sunday. I guess I should die twice-over then, at least.)
--Kill people who curse the King.

If we followed the "advanced" moral teachings of the bible on when to stone people alone (not just when to kill, but when to kill them painfully) our species would be fucking extinct. The only reason we aren't is because we repeatedly and openly and flagrantly disregard these ridiculous laws.

... So what's the point of calling this book moral or even remotely intelligent, when we have to repeatedly break its most basic laws, over, and over, and over... Just to survive as a species? Not even to be moral, not even to be sane, just to survive.

I'd rather live in a Hellenic society. At least I can have orgies and win property by fighting in wars, they take care of their soldiers you see. If I lived in a Biblical society? I would be several times dead over, probably as a child, before I could even figure out that women are pretty yet.

So Boerd said
^this. The oral traditions of the Norse, the last germanic pagans. They did not write down their religious beliefs until they were allegedly christianized and couldn't rely on memorization and oral tradition any more. They were happy to never write the prose and poetic Eddas until they had to.

So what? They decided to write down their stories when they could no longer remember them. Like... Everyone else on the planet! Gee, shocker!

Worst case scenario? The Greeks and Romans would have kept steamrolling along and advancing as cultures without the Germanic peoples. How terrible? And if they failed, there was also the Chinese.

Who knows. Maybe the Conquistadors wouldn't have had their opportunity to blatantly rape entire civilizations in the pursuit of gold and God...

So Boerd said
At any rate, this discussion is moot. Nobody is talking about giving religion the force of government. I just want Christmas trees in public parks and memorial crosses to be ok in cemeteries and voluntary public prayer and menorahs during hannukah and whatever else people want that is reasobable

Nobody is banning Christmas trees in public parks so far as I'm aware. If they are, that's dumb, and that's coming from an atheist. Go ahead and set up your Christmas tree and go invite others to set up their religious decorations. Christmas or happy holidays or whatever the fuck you wanna call that ancient pagan holiday should probably just be celebrated by everyone anyway. Stimulate the economy and share warm fuzzy feelings and all that good business and emotional nonsense I don't tend to understand.

Nobody is banning crosses for tomb stones.

Nobody is banning public prayers.

And nobody here, so far as I'm aware, has anything against those things.

ActRaiserTheReturned said --Obama is apparently a giant scissorhands lizard monster thing--

This whole thing is an insane mess that Gwazi covered adequately, save one thing.

For an anti-Semite, Obama sure doesn't seem bothered to be sending millions of dollars of military hardware to Israel so they can bomb the shit out of Palestinian civilians some more. How... Anti-Jewish... Of him?...

mdk said
so that part when I said 'the only people who WANT to talk about this have an axe to grind?'^^That's what I meant.

Oh, you mean the only one in this thread remaining fairly civilized?

So Boerd said
Ask and ye shall recieve evidence.

... Uh... I think he was asking... It's just as per the usual, you don't... Ever give any...

So Boerd said
Anyway, I disagree with Act strongly, don't lose my points in his energy.Nobody has been able to prove ipso facto why a generic religious moral system is so inferior to a secular one that it should be ignored when a religious person goes to vote.

Okay, well, I don't know about you, but I generally regard people's points as individuals. I don't consider you less of an arguer if someone else makes a totally insanely dumb argument.

And wha?... When did this go from religion in government to religious shit on government property?...

@ActRaiser: Your second response is a massive wall of incomprehensible nonsense. I can't even decipher it to make a counter-argument. I don't even know what you're arguing except having a whole ton of venom towards people who dislike Christianity I guess, I think?... What does this have to do with religion and governments going hand in hand? I thought we agreed earlier it was best that they don't, that they operate well enough on their own, that even Jesus said to give to God what is his and to give to Caesar what is his and so on, and so forth. Please calm down, and try again, with less hate mongering, and someone might take you seriously.

Vortex said
I don't think anyone is saying that the religious moral system is inferior, in fact most people follow a religious moral system e.g Don't steal, don't kill etc etc

I wouldn't call those things exclusively religious but a lot of people do quote commandments in the Bible, or at least claim to, so, yeah, sure.

Vortex said
Tangible harm? No. But minority's may find it offensive that they only permit Christian monuments to be on Public areas, after all it is a public area not a Christian only area

This more than anything So Boerd. If a Christian monument is put up, why not put up other monuments too? With that Christmas tree, put up some Buddhist thing and a Hindu thing and a Shinto thing and a Native American thing and a... I dunno... A spaghetti strainer for atheists and so on. Government shouldn't be setting these things up. People should. Individual people, not with tax dollars, with their own money, and they should share in it together, put aside rivalries during such a joyous time and engage in good old fashioned multiculturalism.

...But it's always more complex than that.

So Boerd said
Google the "Story of Stuff". It is not educational.

Sure, at some point I will. Sounds like the kind of trash I enjoy tearing apart.

So Boerd said You are conflating religious influence on the state with the state's influence on religion. Once Caesaropapism ended, religions could go back to their proper role. Religion was still influencing government in the 1700s and the 1800s for the better (Colonialism was a matter of material concerns, and would have happened, atheist or not [for proof, see USSR],) as government had taken a passive role in religion.

Yes. Government took passive role. Passive. Stayed out. Didn't care, didn't touch it, had nothing to do with it, fantastic stuff right here.

So Boerd said Compare the experience of the French Revolution vs the American Revolution. The atheist one was much bloodier. Freedom of religion does not protect the government from religion.

... Whaaat... The French Revolution was hardly atheist... Try again...

Also, a lot of the founding fathers... Were never really open about their religion. They tended to keep it private. There was only a few instances where it really came up as a headliner for who they were, like Jefferson rewriting the bible to eliminate all the supernatural stuff and leave just the goodie bits behind (Jefferson's Bible) and stuff like that. Some were overtly religious, some were not. Their religion did not interfere with their goal of producing a state that would be welcoming to all, to create the baseline of freedom and so on.

There was a lot of mistakes along the way. Treatment of the Native Americans, and slavery, and the civil war, and so on, but I still think it's a good idea. I still think the States holds in its hands the birth of the modern democracy and the modern sense of who we are.

Religiously this was reflected as well, with the Great Awakening. Another intriguing and altogether fairly harmless religious event.

So Boerd said And I return again to Communism if we're going to keep up this consequences argument. Show me one communist (as in, professing communism, I'm not interested in No True Marxist fallaces) government, exactly ONE, which did not quickly devolve into mass murder and wide scale universal repression.

None. Because communism doesn't work.

...Although, come to think of it... Cuba is actually doing just fine. They still have a dictatorship, but they're slowly recovering from their impoverished state, and their relations with most of the world and pretty friendly now.

In fact, the reason a lot of communism attempts ended up failing was because the United States... !@#$ing armed people to rebel and fight and murder the people in charge... From South American resistance fighters who later formed the backbone of the modern cartels to Iraqi resistance fighters who became Al-Qaeda...

... In fact... One could say that the history of communism's failings in many countries that attempted it, later became the stepping stones from which America is now haunted and assaulted by the ghosts of their sinful past in denying several sovereign states the right to choose their own destiny. The US created its own drug war. The US created its own war on terror... It makes you wonder sometimes what else the government did that it won't talk about now.

Oh, and for anyone still wanting to claim that America usually had moral superiority in war... Agent Orange says otherwise.

So Boerd said Communism is worse, yet I don't hear you decrying it or wanting to have a separation of Communism-State.

...Because it makes no sense? Communism is a political-economic doctrine... Oh who am I kidding, you aren't listening.

So Boerd said Now, I'm going to make a controversial statement, and the only reason I give fair warning is that I want the rest of my points answered. So just because I am going to make a point many will disagree with, doesn't mean I want the rest to get ignored, since evidently that's the trend. Religion is a part of the human spirit. It's biological. If you quash religion in its benign forms, which let's face it, most religions are very benign, it will spring up somewhere else. It will spring up in the Church of Science (different from real science, these are the "Toxins-Juice Cleanse-Gluten Free-MSG causes cancer-Vaccines cause autism" idiots), where the Bible is replaced by "studies" they read in tabloids. Or it will spring up as mentioned earlier in the form of Communism or a similar system, itself every bit a religion. Mother-Earth environmentalism is a possibility to. You simply cannot crush the human belief in something he cannot prove.

... You mean faith, or spirituality, I think. Not religion. We all have a certain element of faith and spirituality in our lives. Faith in our friends, faith in the future, faith in the system or in another system, or in change, in love, in hope, in dreams... Spirituality being a piece of who are, how we interpret our place in the universe, why we are here, who are we... And yes, these are very important questions, that can be answered with or without religion.

So Boerd said Take Mr. Atheist himself, Richard Dawkins.Another controversial point coming, don't ignore the rest.

Not ignoring. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, relax. I've responded every time, even if it's been snarky.

So Boerd said He believes there is no God, and has no evidence of that. Obviously, that does not prove there is God, but it does show he is being irrational. The only strictly rational position is, "I don't know.", and anything beyond that is faith. Could there be an invisible incorporeal unicorn sitting in front of your screen right know? There could be. I don't know, and neither do you.

Alright, now I ask that you hear me out, as a response. No, it's not damning all religions, it's attempting to explain as an atheist why I don't agree with that view, that it requires faith to reject something that inherently requires faith. Just trust me.

Well, you could go with that, but the reason I'm an atheist, is because I reject the concept of a deity. In the same way I reject other supernatural concepts like the tooth fairy or santa clause or elves or alien abductions or ghosts or so on... I ground myself in the rational, in what I can see, touch, feel, taste, and understand. The world is constantly growing around me based on what I become aware of, in my mindset, my spirituality, my view: Things do not exist until they can be proven to exist. The amount of evidence necessary is proportionate to the claim, which is rational. For instance, if you tell me about your friend Susie and her love of skateboards, that doesn't really require any evidence at all. It still requires faith that you are telling me the truth that Susie exists, but I don't need hard, physical evidence of it, I can take your word for it.

However, if you were to claim that Susie could... Bend a spoon with her mind, or teleport to alternate planes of reality, or create entire universes and spawn an entire race of sentient beings to fuck around with, I'd ask for evidence. Because this goes against everything we understand about the world so far. If you could provide some, and it passed the scientific method, I would become inclined to believe it and it would become part of my physical reality, my view of the world.

I don't need faith to believe there is no God. I don't need faith to reject a claim: I need merely be sufficiently skeptical so as to make it no longer real to me. This does not invalidate the beliefs of others, as I'm sure you fervently believe God is real and that he loves you and that there is a Heaven and a Hell and that you're trying to save people like me from it, and I'm honoured, but I don't need it, and I don't need faith to say no to it.

I just ask that when government makes laws and acts with taxpayer dollars, it makes them on the rational, not the spiritual. Let some church go set up a Christmas tree, or let a group of religions petition to open up a bunch of religious iconography and have some big sharing cultural ritual of love and forgiveness and all that stuff in some local town somewhere. Spirituality, and by extension, religion, do have a place in people's lives, an important place, it helps guide your ship on the vast unknown oceans of what we do not know... But I don't need religion, for my spirituality, nor do I need faith to be disinclined to believe in it, or to see good stories in the Bible, or bad ones.

EDIT

tl;dr: I don't believe religion is the cause of all evil, and I don't want it banned, or repressed. I just don't want the government to have anything to do with it, for or against. Tends to go best that way.

The late colonial period, especially after most of Europe made laws which prevented slavery to European countries overseas colonies started to drag more and more money from their pockets.

The American Revolution had a much less body count only because at that time no country, not even Britain, cloud supply enormous armies across oceans with adequate reliability so they cloud only muster limited forces and keep them in fighting condition. Also the French Revolution had many different fractions involved and usually fighting amongst themselves and the country was pretty much in the state of anarchy, while in the American Revolution we had those which wished free America against the British Crown. It should also be noted that at the time of the French Revolution France was the most populous European country while in all British North American colonies little over 2 million people lived at the time of the Revolutionary War.

If we actually take a good look no true "Communist" country existed on Earth in the way that Marx said a Communist country should look like - most were quick to dissolve into dictatorships or worse totalitarian regimes. But as for the mass murder - SFR Yugoslavia never had such thing (there was a brief period of increased imprisonments of political opponents but SFRY used death penalty in rare cases) - if it were not for the wish that Serbians that they had to have a supremacy over the rest of the republics in the Federation it might have continued to exist. Not that SFRY was perfect but considering Stalin's SSSR and the stuff in some other countries it was one of the best made "Communist" countries in history.

Religion formed from the natural need of the human mind for answers. Since at the time when most religions were created it was the human mind which used supernatural beings as being responsible as a replacement for an explanation for why for example thunders strike the Earth. So one cloud say that the habit of having a religion comes from those times when science cloud not provide answers to why some things happen. Again nobody is attacking religion did I not state what kind of Religious Organizations am I referring in my post?

I agree on that last point - but I am free to believe, as are you not to, that one day science, and I mean real science which only says something is confirmed when it can be repeated again and again in the same conditions, will give us all the answers that we seek including if incorporeal unicorns exist or not.

Bravo said your post was a massive wall of text so I'm ignoring it

Speaking of which.

I started writing this just after SoBoerd posted... I see a lot of good points afterwards, but frankly, this took long enough!

---

The Nexerus said
It's a documentary that's relatively infamous for its left-wing bias and general anti-American brand of negativity. It gives a lot of just plain old misleading and/or false information, too.

Wait... We're talking about the same 'Story of Stuff' right? That mostly animated, less than 20min short that draws a line from where products begin, where they're consumed, and where they're disposed of? Now yeah, the thing criticized our excessive consumption, and it also underscored our using other countries to obtain resources in ways illegal here, but I don't see how either are anti-American or, frankly, left wing. Unless you're in the Green Party or some other political group that actually values the Earth, it's pretty much Anti-Earth-Fucking. In terms of misleading information, we have companies like Nestle and Coca Cola that are notorious for securing land or prime water spots from third world communities for their products, often in a shady place in terms of legality. But again, how is this Anti-American? I see how it is could be seen as Anti-Capitalist, though I'd propose the video is less about stomping out consumerism and more about making such sustainable and creating products that don't give us cancer.

Usually I'd just walk by a statement like this, but seriously, this video gives a lot of broad information clearly present in America. Many of our products do cause illness with sustained use, many of our production processes do create poisons in our communities (the inner city knows this well), we do import tons of natural resources we lack, and we do export those production processes deemed illegal here so they can be done elsewhere.

Why does it matter if the minority is offended? The entire basis of democracy is majority rule. The rights of a citizen do not end where the feelings of another citizen begin.

I think there's a difference between 'offended' on a flighty emotional level and 'offended' as an emotional trauma. For example, if a minority is constantly sidelined when it comes to the decisions of their nation, despite their votes, and are subsequently devalued since their population is so small, this issue would probably a bit more significant than someone seeing a nativity scene and being taken aback. There are issues that effect some people more than others based on minority status. Historically, America has created laws with the intent to increase restrictions on certain minorities, be they women, Asian, African, Arab, and so on. During the Red Scare those that did not fit the American status-quo were placed under heavy suspicion and perhaps escalated to national threats. Such paranoia driven judgements returned post-911 and have fluctuated throughout the states. My point is that, although Democracy is a majority rule, America is neither wholly a Democracy nor has it welcomed other populations equally. Human beings have been categorized, over-and-undervalued simply based on race and creed for so long that to just say 'you all can vote, screw minority-based anything' is a considerably short-sighted. All people in America are not treated equally when it comes to criminalization, incarceration, or even how we cast our votes. It's a constant struggle to maintain accessibility to voting for communities not as privileged as those of us with time to type away on forums like this.

Never forget that. You and I are the privileged. While we can pretend equality exists and our votes should be enough, we know how much money talks and how little ethics or equality are even thought of when it comes real governmental decisions.

So Boerd said
You are conflating religious influence on the state with the state's influence on religion. Once Caesaropapism ended, religions could go back to their proper role. Religion was still influencing government in the 1700s and the 1800s for the better (Colonialism was a matter of material concerns, and would have happened, atheist or not [for proof, see USSR],) as government had taken a passive role in religion. Compare the experience of the French Revolution vs the American Revolution. The atheist one was much bloodier. Freedom of religion does not protect the government from religion.

See there's the hard part. Religion is a big thing you're using, and others are using too, like it equally explains everything. The examples you used were largely in countries that were some Christian denomination at the time, afterwards, or shortly beforehand. That's worth noting since Christianity pulls in ways that make many claim 'rightful ownership' or the moral high ground, this lofty rightness that ascends them above all others. When religion fuels this part of us, it's absolutely dangerous at the level of the state. When religion blinds us and causes us to boast and to devalue others in the name of our faith, then religion is neither serving its original purpose nor an insignificant player in the problem. Religion is this mix of cultural narrative, ritual, and belief that even when abandoned can leave traces of itself behind. The American Atheist probably knows Noah's Ark, David and Goliath, and that the Ichthys. We don't just remove that information. Subconsciously, it plays us too. So just throwing that out there.

That all said, I agree this sort of conflict probably would happen whether Christian or not. You don't need your deity to tell you that oppression sucks. How you respond, however, could be effected by your religious views. Again though, religion is so fluid and interpretative, that the loudest voice often becomes the leader. If someone like Ghandi or MLK Jr stepped up during the American or French Revolution, perhaps the reactions of the general public would have differed. Perhaps the increase bloodshed in the French Revolution had more to do with the richest commanding enough power to crack any sustained protest of the poor (as desperation grows, the weaker among the poor would have to submit to survive, quick bloodshed doesn't let this happen AND makes a quick point). Speaking of bloodshed though, just to be clear, the American Revolution was also about ownership and rights of the land, a pretty significant contributor to how things went with the Native American tribes... so... speaking of levels of bloodshed here.

Religion is a part of the human spirit. It's biological. If you quash religion in its benign forms, which let's face it, most religions are very benign, it will spring up somewhere else. It will spring up in the Church of Science (different from real science, these are the "Toxins-Juice Cleanse-Gluten Free-MSG causes cancer-Vaccines cause autism" idiots), where the Bible is replaced by "studies" they read in tabloids. Or it will spring up as mentioned earlier in the form of Communism or a similar system, itself every bit a religion. Mother-Earth environmentalism is a possibility to. You simply cannot crush the human belief in something he cannot prove. Take Mr. Atheist himself, Richard Dawkins.Another controversial point coming, don't ignore the rest.He believes there is no God, and has no evidence of that. Obviously, that does not prove there is God, but it does show he is being irrational. The only strictly rational position is, "I don't know.", and anything beyond that is faith. Could there be an invisible incorporeal unicorn sitting in front of your screen right know? There could be. I don't know, and neither do you.

How is this controversial? I know a lot of you know about Freud. Between him and Jung, we have Archetypal/Analytical Psychology, both beautiful observations honed over the decades since to investigate just how people think. I found myself particularly attached to Jung and his dealings with Archetypes. In the work of Jungian psychologists, our thinking dances between two general categories: the Analytical & the Symbolic. This is pretty similar to your idea, Boerd, is one I studied back in undergrad. The Literal is exactly what it sounds like. You look outside and see a house, a tree, and a lasso tied to a branch of the tree swaying in the wind. Simple enough. The Symbolic creates associations beyond the analytical, I view this, and based on your experiences, could bring those feelings of home and comfort to the house, while tying a fear and deep concern about what looks like a slipknot hung from a tree.

Jung and his successors studied a number of faith-communities and those who did not subscribe with this in mind. They found that religious texts were not necessarily alternate origins and strange occurrences. A religion's text could be the product of symbolic thinking focusing on the principles and emotions over the analytical detail. In other words, value could be found in material solely based off the symbolic. People found satisfaction there. Further, though, they found that non-theists also used Symbolic thinking, but in different ways. That experience of wholeness some Christians use when 'feeling God enter them' () was also documented in non-theists and those of other faiths. It came up when people found a sense of place, identity, and in general an understanding of self. If memory serves me, the Jungians suggested that our sense of God reflected our unconscious, which thinks and is active, but we are not aware of and can never be -- that the only way we could connect with that part of yourselves was to better our understanding of how our symbolic thinking worked. A bit like translating the associations you've built for yourself. In other words, there is a longing every human shares that rewards them should they explore it. There is great value in balancing symbolic and analytical thinking (and great detriment to relying on only one). And finally, we should all respect however others choose to understand their associations in their path to finding wholeness.

TLDR: Check out Jung. Archetypal Psych has a lot of good info that suggests what we long for in religion is a part of the human condition as we seek solace in the relationship between conscious and unconscious selves. That religion is just one way to find satisfaction, but there are others too.

Jung aside though, the problem isn't really with religion. The problem lies more in when people take religion beyond the scope of growing themselves or finding satisfaction in life and use it as a means to for power and order. That sense of dominance and the greatest right is what's dangerous when corrupted, not religion as the healing journey.

The Nexerus said
Speaking of which.

What?... No. His wall is incomprehensible. I have no idea what he's going on about aside from a hell of a lot of hate mongering. o_o That's why I'm not touching it, this is a hot topic as is, I don't think I need to fan the flames into a forest fire, you know?

I'm now imagining So Bored being the kind of debater that does not listen to anyone, and loves the sound of his own voice, and keeps leaking idiocy like a douchebag faucet.

ShonHarris said
Wait... We're talking about the same 'Story of Stuff' right? That mostly animated, less than 20min short that draws a line from where products begin, where they're consumed, and where they're disposed of? Now yeah, the thing criticized our excessive consumption, and it also underscored our using other countries to obtain resources in ways illegal here, but I don't see how either are anti-American or, frankly, left wing. Unless you're in the Green Party or some other political group that actually values the Earth, it's pretty much Anti-Earth-Fucking. In terms of misleading information, we have companies like Nestle and Coca Cola that are notorious for securing land or prime water spots from third world communities for their products, often in a shady place in terms of legality. But again, how is this Anti-American? I see how it is could be seen as Anti-Capitalist, though I'd propose the video is less about stomping out consumerism and more about making such sustainable and creating products that don't give us cancer. Usually I'd just walk by a statement like this, but seriously, this video gives a lot of broad information clearly present in America. Many of our products do cause illness with sustained use, many of our production processes do create poisons in our communities (the inner city knows this well), we do import tons of natural resources we lack, and we do export those production processes deemed illegal here so they can be done elsewhere. I think there's a difference between 'offended' on a flighty emotional level and 'offended' as an emotional trauma. For example, if a minority is constantly sidelined when it comes to the decisions of their nation, despite their votes, and are subsequently devalued since their population is so small, this issue would probably a bit more significant than someone seeing a nativity scene and being taken aback. There are issues that effect some people more than others based on minority status. Historically, America has created laws with the intent to increase restrictions on certain minorities, be they women, Asian, African, Arab, and so on. During the Red Scare those that did not fit the American status-quo were placed under heavy suspicion and perhaps escalated to national threats. Such paranoia driven judgements returned post-911 and have fluctuated throughout the states. My point is that, although Democracy is a majority rule, America is neither wholly a Democracy nor has it welcomed other populations equally. Human beings have been categorized, over-and-undervalued simply based on race and creed for so long that to just say 'you all can vote, screw minority-based anything' is a considerably short-sighted. All people in America are not treated equally when it comes to criminalization, incarceration, or even how we cast our votes. It's a constant struggle to maintain accessibility to voting for communities not as privileged as those of us with time to type away on forums like this.

Never forget that. You and I are the privileged. While we can pretend equality exists and our votes should be enough, we know how much money talks and how little ethics or equality are even thought of when it comes real governmental decisions.

It's anti-American in that it uses a volley of false information with the specific design of portraying the United States and Americans in a negative light.

There is no such thing as "emotional trauma" in the area of political representation, and how certain demographics were treated in the past should not in any way influence how they are treated in the present. If you want to create a 'perfect society' where minorities have more power than they representatively should and people who were formerly discriminated actively turn the formerly homogeneous majority into second class citizens, good for you. But don't tell me that godforsaken hell-hole you're trying to install would be a society of equals.

Neither of us are 'privileged', at least in the sense that you're using the word.

Darog the Badger God said
I'm now imagining So Bored being the kind of debater that does not listen to anyone, and loves the sound of his own voice, and keeps leaking idiocy like a douchebag faucet.

Keep the personal attacks out of here, kay Daroq? We're talking about heavy stuff that is likely to get some people hot under the collar. We don't need blatant personal attacks threatening to close this thread as we tear our ideas apart.

The Nexerus said
It's anti-American in that it uses a volley of false information with the specific design of portraying the United States and Americans in a negative light.There is no such thing as "emotional trauma" in the area of political representation, and how certain demographics were treated in the past should not in any way influence how they are treated in the present. If you want to create a 'perfect society' where minorities have more power than they representatively should and people who were formerly discriminated actively turn the formerly homogeneous majority into second class citizens, good for you. But don't tell me that godforsaken hell-hole you're trying to install would be a society of equals.Neither of us are 'privileged', at least in the sense that you're using the word.

Criticism of how American industry handles some things is now Anti-American?... Uh... That's... Good to know... I guess...

ShonHarris said
Keep the personal attacks out of here, kay Daroq? We're talking about heavy stuff that is likely to get some people hot under the collar. We don't need blatant personal attacks threatening to close this thread as we tear our ideas apart.

....Yeah, I could have worded it better -_-, didn't mean it to sound as direct as it does,

The recent text walls are too much for me to hit on my phone, just letting you all know I read them. With a few divergent points, I think we have done the impossible on the internet and reached a consensus on the policy side of things.

Nobody wants religion to get taxpayer money or force of government, nobody wants any parts of religion mandatory, and nobody has any problem with people using their religiously derived values system in voting. Got that right so far?

The only reason I want the decor voted on and built with private money as opposed to letting anyone set up what they want is that, sorry to say, the Kim Jong Un personality cult beer can tower has no place at a Christmas celebration. Were it not for ridiculous and confrontational stuff like that (That was hypothetical, but it has happened that people put up obnoxious things) I would have no problem.

Brovo said
Hitler was a Catholic and makes repeated references to God in Mein Kampf. The Nazi Party made a Nazi Church that worshiped a white-power version of God after the Catholics pulled out of supporting them... ...Which, by the way, was not before Hitler was being abusive and dehumanizing towards various minorities such as Jews, atheists, LGBT, and communists. Oh no. In fact, the pope loved how he brought Germany back to its feet and into a god loving state, and really didn't stop with the love until he started mass murdering people and invading other sovereign states. It took it going that far before the Catholic church went "hmm, maybe this guy such a swell person..." Nazi soldiers were covered in Christian iconography, including most prominently various depictions of the cross. This in turn came from their Teutonic Knight heritage: Which was characterized by being a group of bloodthirsty megalomaniacs hellbent on purity through the mass murder of millions of people. Funny that.All of this information is easily found public information which you can read in any library or, hell, fuckit, I'm sure it's even on Wikipedia. It's very basic history. I shouldn't need to teach you that, should I?

The Catholic regions of Germany were the regions most prominently opposed to the Nazi Party, and subsequently least likely to vote for it. Catholicism had always been the enemy of hard-line German nationalists, going back to Bismarck's Kulturkampf. The Catholic Church's degrees of opposition to Hitler, from the beginning, far outweighed any and all degrees of cooperation, or even acceptance, at any point in his regime. You're forgetting how popular Hitler (or at least some of his views) were in Germany—the vast majority of citizens of the Weimar Republic were opposed to things like the Treaty of Versailles.

If Hitler was Christian, he was a self-hating Christian.

Brovo said
Criticism of how American industry handles some things is now Anti-American?... Uh... That's... Good to know... I guess...

Criticism of American industry that uses false information to make misleading statements is anti-American. Lying, outright, to make negative claims against the United States, is anti-American. I don't know how you could possibly disagree with that. If it was legitimate criticism then I'd only say it was anti-American for its tone, but if it's using and citing statistical information that's simply incorrect, it can't possibly be constructive.

So Boerd said
The recent text walls are too much for me to hit on my phone, just letting you all know I read them. With a few divergent points, I think we have done the impossible on the internet and reached a consensus on the policy side of things. Nobody wants religion to get taxpayer money or force of government, nobody wants any parts of religion mandatory, and nobody has any problem with people using their religiously derived values system in voting. Got that right so far?The only reason I want the decor voted on and built with private money as opposed to letting anyone set up what they want is that, sorry to say, the Kim Jong Un personality cult beer can tower has no place at a Christmas celebration. Were it not for ridiculous and confrontational stuff like that (That was hypothetical, but it has happened that people put up obnoxious things) I would have no problem.

Agreed.

The Nexerus said
The Catholic regions of Germany were the regions most prominently opposed to the Nazi Party, and subsequently least likely to vote for it. Catholicism had always been the enemy of hard-line German nationalists, going back to Bismarck's Kulturkampf. The Catholic Church's degrees of opposition to Hitler, from the beginning, far outweighed any and all degrees of cooperation, or even acceptance, at any point in his regime. You're forgetting how popular Hitler (or at least some of his views) were in Germany—the vast majority of citizens of the Weimar Republic were opposed to things like the Treaty of Versailles.If Hitler was Christian, he was a self-hating Christian.

Hitler was, and used it as a tool for control. You are right about the Catholics often voting against him, but a big part of it was that they, too, were a targeted minority. Didn't stop the Vatican from trying to leave the others to die by signing a deal with the devil, though, being the Nazi Party was about as trustworthy as a person actively trying to backstab you can be...

Still. Yes, I suppose I did make it sound like the religious universally loved him. No, they didn't, most certainly not.

The Nexerus said
Criticism of American industry that uses false information to make misleading statements is Anti-American. Lying, outright, to make negative claims against the United States, is Anti-American. I don't know how you could possibly disagree with that. If it was legitimate criticism then I'd only say it was anti-American for its tone, but if it's using and citing statistical information that's simply incorrect, it can't possibly be constructive.

I have no strong position on it as I have yet to see it personally. I wouldn't call it Anti-American if it holds negative views of America. I'd called it Anti-American if it actively seeks to repress and exterminate American culture, ethics, ideology, politics, people, and so on, which, again, I haven't seen it, so I have no idea if it does.

If it's not constructive though, it's a pile of shit either way. I can agree on that.

Brovo said
Agreed.Hitler was, and used it as a tool for control. You are right about the Catholics often voting against him, but a big part of it was that they, too, were a targeted minority. , though, being the Nazi Party was about as trustworthy as a person can be... Still. Yes, I suppose I did make it sound like the religious universally loved him. No, they didn't, most certainly not.

The Reichskonkordat was about the self-preservation of the Church. Catholic Churches in Germany were defenceless against molestation once the Nazis took power, and the Vatican was quite literally surrounded by fascists.

I maintain that Hitler was not Christian, in spite of the irrelevance of his religious affiliation to his actions. When he used Christian symbols (which even itself wouldn't say anything definitively) he used them alongside pagan ones, and he both publicly and privately opposed the existence of the Church and their teachings as blights against the natural order.

Brovo said I wouldn't call it Anti-American if it holds negative views of America.

...

ActRaiserTheReturned said To say the least cannibalism is a medical nightmare.

That's true. But in the end that's a risk up to the individual to be taking. It's not like vaccines where following an unsafe practice puts others in danger.
I'd compare it more to like eating that cupcake you know will just wreck your body. Is it bad? Yes. But if you still want to then go for it.

Note: This is obviously assuming this is cultural and not simply hunting and killing people. And even then the one who is deceased should of been ok with their body being eaten beforehand.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Also, any argument I've heard claiming that the Bible condones rape (Such as the Hebrews taking women from the enemy) are out of context arguments and completely missing the point of what the text is obviously saying. Even the wiping out of cities to the last infant, old man, woman, etcetera, deals with supernatural issues the Jews obviously no longer face. I don't see giants, or angels impregnating women in the news. In addition to this fact, please keep in mind that these acts of violence were done as a one time occurrence, and there is no need for believers in Christianity to ever replicate them. -_-

Not really... :/
And I'm pretty sure you were one of the people present the last time this topic came up and I went Bible quote crazy to prove it did support rape.

*Quick back checking*

You were, it was 2 months ago though: http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/14035/posts/ooc?page=4#post-330624

Though it's a mountain of a post so if you prefer I'll just list the related quotes below.

Deuteronomy 22:23-24
Zechariah 14:1-2
Deuteronomy 21:10-14
Judges 5:30 - This may not be rape, but it definitely supports kidnapping women and owning them as property. And if that property were ever to be something such as a sex slave, then it's rape.
Numbers 31:7-18
Deuteronomy 20:10-14
Judges 21:10-24
Judges 19:1-30

That's basically 8 cases either outright against saying it does support rape very damn close and if not rape is suggesting something just as bad or simply some loophole.
This also confirms it's not a one time occurrence if I can get this many quotes of it from Bible.

And the whole "Taking it out of context" thing doesn't really work... If we were to go that I could take something like Hitler's Mein Kampf and say something along the lines of "All those things of Hitler hating Jewish people are just out of context for what's meant to be being kind to one another, and how some supernatural event killed 6 million Jewish people with gas".

But we can agree on one thing here, that there's no need for Christians to ever be replicating these barbaric acts.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Also, another issue with the wiping out of civilizations by the Old Testament believers comes from the fact that there were curses carried by the neighboring civilizations

Ok stop right there... Curses?
You should probably stop and try to show how curses actually exist.
Cause right now this is 100% fantasy I'm reading here...

Note: Curses work great on weapons when fighting ghosts :P

ActRaiserTheReturned said Bear in mind that these people, were so evil that they would sacrifice their own children

And so did Christianity.

There was the case with Abraham being tested with his son Isaac. He may of been stopped, but Christian followers were just as willing to kill their children for God as those evil people you reference.

Plus there's all the passages of stuff such as stoning your child for misbehaving, which is debatibly worse than child sacrifice. At least with sacrifice it's for your god, with the stonings it's simply because you as a parent would kill your kid for saying no to something. I mean seriously, that's some worst parent's of history awards right there... How the hell did these people ever survive to pass on their genes?

ActRaiserTheReturned said but the fact of the matter is that the circumstances in the Bible are far different than God just being a maniacal Dictator enforcing his will on poor, innocent Humanity and delighting in the slaughter of their children, which they probably didn't care about anyway, at least for the most part. Also, like I said, the things that happened back then are un-repeated and according to the will of God, unrepeatable.

Except as the Bible clearly shows this stuff does repeat... a lot.

And so far we've seen nothing but God saying it's ok for Christians to kill their children and to kidnap and rape people.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Now on to the issue of double standards held by prominent Anti-Christian thinkers.

Well this should be fun :P

ActRaiserTheReturned said I had always thought philosophy was the proper love and acquirement of the studious acknowledgement of not only how the mind works, if such knowledge is available for studying, but also in applying one's mental faculties towards various beneficial mindsets. Not just loving and practicing a particular school of thought, mind you, but trying apply various sensible ways of living, working, contemplating, and interacting with other people in ways that would kind of "Roll the snowball down the hill" as it were. Like, leads to like, in other words, discovering ways of learning that expand on previous knowledge. I'm not sure how to make my understanding of Philosophical study concise and to the point, but what I"m saying is, those people, while perhaps having noble intentions of teaching others what to think, or maybe how to think, they strip the conscience, and even consciousness of others away by most definitely instructing them in horrid or incompetent manners.

Well to start with they're not Philosophers, they're scientists and spokespeople. There's a difference, Philosophy openly encourage's thought in any manner. The kind where they don't really care if you're relgious, atheist, Cthulhu etc. As long as you'r constantly thinking and asking questions, and often these can be questions that are almost unprovable or insanely abstract such as "How do I know you don't see the grass as red?" or "This is all a dream/fantasy".

Scientists are more specific, they focused on observable, provable facts. Like honestly, would you want people who were say... researching your vaccine, treatment, medicene etc to be a Philosopher who goes "I theorize this is all a make believe world. So if we sprinkle this dust and just think really hard, he'll get better"? You wouldn't, you want hard facts running the show and that's what the scientists are for. They still encourage asking questions, to quote Richard Dawkins "Science is very humble in that we admit we do not know everything" and it always has more to learn. But it is not going to treat your ideas with seriousness unlike Philosophy unless if you have some hard proof and evidence to back it up with. So if you go up to a scientist and say "I have a theory God/Christianity is true" and then as proof you pull up the Bible... and to prove that you quote the Bible... You're going to get laughed/ridiculed rather hard.

Note when I was in High School Philosophy was my favourite class. I loved the open-ended thinking, the theories, always being to ask why and how. It is an amazing field to dive into if what you're looking for is both mental and spiritual growth and improvement. But it is definitely not what you go to when trying to prove things as fact.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Dawkins at one time suggested that religious people should be ridiculed. He did not even confine his arrogant, blithering, vocal arachnoid skittering of a voice through the minds of us mortals to the subject of Evolution, which is what he always goes on about, he was attacking religion specifically, and more importantly any individual of religious phenomenon. Particularily (spelling)? adherents of the Catholic faith, for believing in their miracle of tran-substantiation. In other words, he said, in almost these exact words, that if you hear someone say they believe that their communal wafer/wine is literally the body and blood of Jesus Christ, you should mock them, ridicule them, in public.

I've seen a good amount of his talks and lectures, I know fully well he's like this and says stuff like this on a constant basis.

This was mainly answered though in the last post already. But to repeat quickly, Richard Dawkins is a scientist. He uses proof and evidence as ways to treat things as fact and educate the world. If he see's people going around pushing something that not only lacks the evidence to support it, but outright dismisses most of Science's progress as false, he's going to have issues. And note that he did use to be a Christian so he's not saying it from a foreign/un-understanding view point. He's lived it, and he get's what it's like to be a Christian. He simply doesn't give much room/patience for people trying to dismiss science and replace with something unproven. The fact he refer's to Religion as a virus is probably because of how Religion has that way of getting into peoples heads and making them drones. Quoting the book, protesting the non-believers, listening to their pastor, ignoring science, little to no exploration and thought on their own initiative.

It is honestly about the same kind of loyalty/fear you see in cases like North Korea or the Nazi's. Belief that whoever/whatever is above you and better than you. You must worship him, you are nothing compared to them, they are always right etc.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Yes. But the other side of the debate has some plenty of experience which mirrors theirs, just in reverse. The only difference is that people are being taught contradictory information in schools five days a week instead of two days a week.

What in Science is it you think is contradictory? o.O
Note: Contradicting with your religion doesn't count. Religion is not science and it's not a fault of science that it doesn't fit with Religion until Religion was scientifically prove itself to be correct (and note you've got compete with tens of thousands of other religions first also).

ActRaiserTheReturned said The only fault that seems to lie on the Christian side of the matter IMHO is that we are not teaching our children "enough", and not just in quantitative education, but quality based education of the Church would make our children smarter, more contemplative, more experienced in the important things in life, and more mature of a person, not a block head hick, red neck that people stereotype the people of the Church as.

Oh dear Fthagan please no.

Religion barely teaches anything outside of "This book is true, believe this book and do not listen to anything that says otherwise".
What exactly is it you see in Religion that makes you feel it can educate people just as well as science can?

ActRaiserTheReturned said Before you say, "Well Science is being taught in logical and empirical manner in order to educate the child how to think effectively", no truer half truth was ever spoken. The truth is, that the world, and cosmological phenomenon is for people to acknowledge, to look at, study, and interact with in ways that help them learn. There's nothing wrong with that. The only problem is that there is nothing that conclusively or in my mind even reasonably disproves what a 'proper' tenant of Christianity is.

That's because Christianity has the burden of evidence here. Science has a long history of proving itself, Christianity is the one coming up and claiming they're right and bring no proof to the table. They need to prove their right before being treated as so, not being treated as right until proven false. In a sense just look at science as "False until proven otherwise". Otherwise we'd have people saying shit like "I think there's a dwarf riding a carriage around the earth with suns as wheels while shooting lightning out of his nipples" and be unable to argue it until only recently when we could look at the sun in space and confirm there's no dwarf there.

ActRaiserTheReturned said The thing is that religion is something that is broad. It's like saying oh, I'm not sure of the right example that "Philosophy makes people dull, uninteresting and lazy" I'm sure that maybe a philosophy that does such a thing exists, there is still a philosophy out there called Hedonism that exalts pleasure as the highest good, and another philosophy that exalts duty and the shunning of emotions, kind of like Star Trek Vulcans do. :D. So me saying "Philosophy holds science, medicine, etcetera" back, is essentially the same thing as claiming religion does those things. A truer half-truth was never spoken. :| It doesn't matter if it makes sense. It matters if it is ethically and honorably sound. For someone to say that religion holds people back by doing those things would be prejudiced and unacceptable if these concepts were anthropomorphisized.(Spelling?) ;)

Except when it goes as far as to say certain things in Science are false, and actually pulls shit like trying to get equal time on the show cosmos it is infringing on science. Because it is outright barging in and saying "You're wrong! I'm right! Out of the way science dorks! It's time to praise JESUS!!!".

ActRaiserTheReturned said I can get the source(s) for this.

Can I see it then? :P

ActRaiserTheReturned said Well for one thing Christianity's proper tenants (proper tenants is the key phrase) is only followed by acknowledging the sanctity of life. Also, lying and deceiving people is not in the proper tenants of Christianity.

And how exactly are you determining with tenits and such in the Bible are meant to be taken literally, and which are figurative in this sense?
Cause all the quotes on rape, murder etc were dismissed as misinterpretations, how do I know these acts of good simply aren't those misinterpretations.

ActRaiserTheReturned said Certain people among the Chinese call him Monkey Man. To my knowledge it's a cultural reference towards him sabotaging the country. I agree with them that he is doing this. However, Hoover could have been claimed to have been sabotaging the nation decades ago. It doesn't mean he was trying to bring down the Republic like Senator Palpatine. Although, I don't think Barrack Obama is as moral as Darth Sidious IMHO. (/oh snap!!!).

And what exactly is it that Obama did that makes you hate him so much?

Magic Magnum said
.And what exactly is it that Obama did that makes you hate him so much?

Massive wall of text. . . uh, this is going to be a thread that's going to require a Doctorate to spend much more significant time on. lol.
Just kidding, but I"m going to bow out soon(ish). I have some work IRL to do.

For now, I'll say, all those Bible verses you came up with are in the OT. Not one of them are based on Christianity. Technically you would say that while those acts could be repeatable, some of them clearly aren't even by OT standards, and the ones that are at least repeatable like the Levitical Laws still aren't Christian, and definitely not repeatable.

What in Science is it you think is contradictory? o.O

I don't think Science is contradictory. However, certain long standing hypothesis were once held as theories until more information had been collected and proven past hypothesis such as theories as false. ((For that matter, even if Creationism is wrong, it doesn't mean Evolution is correct, since more data can be collected, enough to conceivably come to the conclusion that there's some other answer)).

And what exactly is it that Obama did that makes you hate him so much?

Well I certainly don't like him, but I don't hate him.

Ok there is ALOT I could say about communism/anti America/anti consumer/ the third world/ hitler/ and Christianity in particular but I'm affaird I'm going to have to direct the subject back to State-Church separation (in every country and no matter their religion not just Christian America). If you all want to get upset about Left Bias and Communism then head over to the "Political Ideology" thread.

All I've really got to say, is that whatever widely influences the masses of the population, the corrupt will find a way to use it to gain more power. Whether it's a catholic pope, a cult leader, an anti-religious communist dictator, or anything else, it's not about what they use to gain more power. A corrupt person, with the initiative to take power for themselves will use whatever means necessary. It's not a "Government and religion don't mix", it's more of a "government can be a real bitch". My personal philosophy, and what I have observed, is that the best leaders are the best followers.

Governing bodies of any type and size will use what is popular appeal to the masses to influence them towards their own policies. Doesn't matter what it is.