Governments Using Atheism by Force

[Lawrence]

If you read the full essay, I think you will find, (others have), that the issue of god can only be the unique, individual and personal belief of those who answer the question "Is there life after earth?" The tyranny, which leaders of organized religion have exercised over the years, is an abomination of the teaching of the founders (alleged) they proclaim. The dogma men have created about their god is what the leaders say must be worshiped. This is what ordinary folks are rebelling against but without any force other than "this can't be right." Organized religion has money, history, position and the authority of god they have arrogated unto themselves by the dogma they wrote. I believe my essay has shown organized religion's nakedness and removes it as a viable force in public discourse without having to offer a reason for existence.

Living in reality does not mean you have to justify a belief in a god or no god or any answer to this issue. Give me a read and let me know what you think. Love, (chapter 4) Lawrence

[Penelope]

Grim said to DWil

How do you feel about the Chinese example? Where religion has not traditionally played a major role in the society and now it never legally can. Is this logic acceptable? That religion is wrong and should never be allowed to exist ever again.

This question has really cheered me up Grim.....because....I have read so many of Amy Tan's novels. Which are stories about her Grandmother and how her family arrived in America....after China being invaded by the Japanese....then the Communists.

The Chinese people, under Mao, were not meant to have any religion....but one of her books (my favourite) is called 'The Kitchen God's Wife'....... Amy Tan has the gift of writing about tragic and heart-rending circumstances.....without a trace of sentiment.

[DWill]

Grim: "How do you feel about the Chinese example? Where religion has not traditionally played a major role in the society and now it never legally can. Is this logic acceptable? That religion is wrong and should never be allowed to exist even though it has not been particularly influential in the past."
Religion, though not the old Confucianism, plays a role in China today. There are Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. Have you found information on widespread continuing persecution and legal barriers? I know the Falung Gong (not spelled correctly) sect has been persecuted, though I'm not sure exactly why they are perceived as dangerous. At any rate, my point, in case I wasn't clear, was that I think whatever oppression of religion that has occurred in Marxist/communist states (of which China is not any longer a classical example), occurs as a result of the dominant polticial ideology that has been adopted. That ideology is primary, with the attempt to eradicate religion being secondary. I don't see such states using atheism as a tool, since marxism/communism or whatever the ideology (Naziism) is the tool.

[Grim]

Thanks for the correction, I did not do any research. I was just interested in how people would respond to the fact that a supposedly liberalizing China is restricting religion, especially with Booktalk's strong atheist ties.

There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to the removal of personal freedoms even if these freedoms could be argued as irrational. I agree. China's restriction of religious freedom is equally as unethical as its environmental and workers rights problems and ongoing freedom for the people in general issues. I also think that it speaks volumes against the assumption that a non-religious world would, with some varied yet defensibly greater likelihood, be a peaceful one as totalitarian states are the only ones seemingly capable of realizing this "utopian" order. Quotation showing marked sarcasm.

I suppose like most everything else there is an important balancing of volatile forces. If religion is restricted it eliminates important individual freedoms. When religion is too persuasive it becomes no less indoctrinating and socially influential than a repressive state.

I have no problem with religion, I have a big problem with door-to-door salvation and political evangelicalism. How can an ethical social balance ever be created? Certainly not through force as we see by example.

[Interbane]

The US could go further toward ridding itself of religion. Tax churches, remove the word "God" from anything related to the government(including money), and continue to ensure creationism doesn't encroach on evolution in the classrooms.

[Grim]

Interbane, that sounds logical; however, how can you explain the Republican alliance with the evangelical right? It's another great American irony that the dollar and the president obviously bias themselves towards the theism of a biblical god and yet in practice they are tied to more mundane causes such as a "freedom" war and economic bubble. The atheist social structure you advocate, and one that I support, extrapolates to a system where someone like George Bush would have had to be told that he was not allowed to say some of the things that he did, in a sense that his religious beliefs shared with the public, "Jesus is my favorite author," made him unelectable to the high office. Makes sense now in retrospect but can you imagine trying to have said similar to Jimmy Carter? Of course some obvious things should not need repeating, apparently the Constitutionally theorized separation of church and state is not one of them.

What indicators are there in any society when any particular religious belief begins distorting the beneficial aims of the state, and when these conditions are evident how should the state respond in its own failing to ethically control the role of religion?

[Robert Tulip]

Nice thread guys.

I was glad to see Grim posted the link on persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union. I hope Dwill will read it as it shows that his opinion that atheism was a secondary factor in communist Russia is incorrect. Banning of worship leads to people worshiping false idols, such as Stalin, with terrible consequences.

My opinion is that we need to go back to the etymological definition of religion as 'rebinding', bringing together the strands of reality which enable a unified and coherent worldview. By this definition, any attempt at a unified worldview, including atheism, is ipso facto religious.

The great thing about Christianity as a source of 'rebinding' emerges from the central teaching of love. The concept of blessedness in the Sermon on the Mount helps to explain this idea. Jesus implies there that if our world valued the groups he identifies as blessed we would be on the path to a unified vision. These people – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who seek righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness – are now generally at the margins of society. Jesus says these people should be central, hence his parable that the stone the builder refused will be the cornerstone.

In China, stability is valued over truth. This approach is not sustainable except by gradual descent to tyranny. A big part of the attraction of Christianity to Chinese people is in the story of Jesus as a little man who stood up to the empire, and how the empire could not destroy him despite its efforts. The symbol of cross and resurrection, with its strong message of freedom, is a powerful source of hope.

A similar story applies in the Holy Land, where Palestinians live under Israeli rule. In my view, Islam and Judaism lack the resources available within Christianity for dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation. The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount offer a path of healing, enabling dialogue between fractured communities, towards a rebinding within a shared understanding of truth.

RT

[Penelope]

Robert, so, you are promoting Christianity in preference to Judaism or Islam as a means to reconciliation?

Look at the title of this thread......

To demand that people do not believe in god, or the soul, or any kind of awareness of lifes 'holiness' is like demanding that they no longer believe in (say) photosynthesis. Once, people who cared about how photosynthesis worked, believed the 'fairies' did it. Suppose the government had said, 'there are no fairies - so stop gardening'.

Well, fair enough.......the people don't seem be have been fighting and killing one another....about whose fairy was the best.......

Never-the-less, this is how absurd I would feel it, if religion were banned. Futile, because without spirituality, life is futile. 'Tis to me anyway.

If only they'd cease to argue about whose 'fairy' is the best......


Which, Robert, wonderful and erudite man that you are, is what you seem to be doing when promoting Christianity against Islam and Judaism.

[DWill]

I was glad to see Grim posted the link on persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union. I hope Dwill will read it as it shows that his opinion that atheism was a secondary factor in communist Russia is incorrect. Banning of worship leads to people worshiping false idols, such as Stalin, with terrible consequences.

Robert, ironically the thought that atheism is secondary (I mean as not a causal factor) came to me through Niebuhr in "The Irony of American History." There he is very clear that the outrage was the Soviet Union's setting up a new religion based on giving power to the proletariat. He declares that it is not the S.U.'s "atheism" (even using the quotation marks) that we should look to to explain its monstrous nature. It is its concentration of absolute power in the hands of a few, so ironic given the ideals it started with. (I am trying, unsuccessfully so far, to find the quotation from the book.)

My opinion is that we need to go back to the etymological definition of religion as 'rebinding', bringing together the strands of reality which enable a unified and coherent worldview. By this definition, any attempt at a unified worldview, including atheism, is ipso facto religious.

Just to touch upon the assumption: did we ever have a unified and coherent worldview? If we did, was it necessarily a good thing? It sounds good, has a comforting ring, but let's examine it. On atheism being such a worldview, I don't see how not believing that the world didn't have a creator and doesn't have a superintending God adds up to a religion as you define it.

The great thing about Christianity as a source of 'rebinding' emerges from the central teaching of love. The concept of blessedness in the Sermon on the Mount helps to explain this idea. Jesus implies there that if our world valued the groups he identifies as blessed we would be on the path to a unified vision. These people – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who seek righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness – are now generally at the margins of society. Jesus says these people should be central, hence his parable that the stone the builder refused will be the cornerstone.

But couldn't anyone adopt this as a moral and ethical vision without belief in mystical Christianity? And like Penelope, I don't see how other religions must be cancelled out because some believe the Sermon on the Mount to be the "greatest" source of rebinding. This is a passage from the Christian Bible, but it holds no magical sway over the actions of Christians, as we can see through the centuries.[/i]

[Robert Tulip]

Robert, so, you are promoting Christianity in preference to Judaism or Islam as a means to reconciliation?

Look at the title of this thread......

To demand that people do not believe in god, or the soul, or any kind of awareness of lifes 'holiness' is like demanding that they no longer believe in (say) photosynthesis. Once, people who cared about how photosynthesis worked, believed the 'fairies' did it. Suppose the government had said, 'there are no fairies - so stop gardening'.

Well, fair enough.......the people don't seem be have been fighting and killing one another....about whose fairy was the best.......

Never-the-less, this is how absurd I would feel it, if religion were banned. Futile, because without spirituality, life is futile. 'Tis to me anyway.

If only they'd cease to argue about whose 'fairy' is the best......


Which, Robert, wonderful and erudite man that you are, is what you seem to be doing when promoting Christianity against Islam and Judaism.

Penelope, you are badly misinterpreting my comment. I said "The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount offer a path of healing, enabling dialogue between fractured communities, towards a rebinding within a shared understanding of truth." This is simply about using a set of ethical values as a basis for dialogue. It is not about conventional missionary attempts to convert the heathen, nor about outmoded dogmas about going to heaven. Rather, I am suggesting the concept of blessedness as advocated by Jesus as the goal of his ethical values is a helpful tool for cross-cultural understanding, based on evidence rather than force. I stand by my view that Christianity has a stronger focus on reconciliation, inherent in the New Testament sources, than does either the Koran or the Torah. You may recall Winston Churchill's comment that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Arguing, in your rather patronising term, about 'whose fairy is best' would probably have been a more productive task than the recent Gaza invasion. Dialogue promotes respect, learning and understanding, and is the basis of lasting peace and security.