GeoTheo

Seems like Atheists want to have their cake and eat it too. If they want to brag about how fewer atheists are in prison, as if somehow that reflects well on them, then atheism is an ideology. If atheism is associated with somthing bad then atheism is not an ideology. It signifies nothing just lack of belief. Doesn't wash. I guess I shouldn't call names but "phony" seems to describe it.

GeoTheo

Starboy,
You've said yourself that a Good Christian cannot be a good citizen. The only reason you are not a dangerous person is because you have no power. If you were in power and had that sentiment I have no doubt you would kidnap my kids and send them off to "re-education camp". You have said countless times how evil and destructive you think Christianity is. I am of the opinion that totalitarian dictators are no more evil than the average person on the street. They just have more power.

Starboy

GeoTheo, if atheists do something good it is still not an ideology. It just so happened that Communists in Russia and China claimed that in order to be a good Communist you also had to be an atheist. As for there being fewer atheists in prison, I have seen those statements bandied around as well. I have no idea if it is so but I do not intend to find out first hand if I can help it. From what I can see being religious has no more effect on a person's life than random chance. They are just as likely to die, suffer, and have problems and so forth as those that are not religious. This one fact alone should be enough to convince someone that the active ingredient in religion is no better than nothing at all.

Starboy

GeoTheo

I think the idea of "God given rights" is what protects us as a Nation. Even atheists enjoy them here. I think that is the big difference between the US and China and the former USSR.
People can go on and on about individual rights, but if they are not written into a Constitution like ours, democracy won't protect them. Pure democracy does not protect the rights of an individual. If people don't have inalienable rights there is no justification for not subordinating individuals to the power of the state.
I guess you can have Ayn Rand type atheists, but In my estimation the liberal democrat atheists out number them. It should be no surprise to anyone that when they lack a candidate Communists support the democrat.

Starboy

Hmmmmm, what would the world be like if Starboy had such power?........

Well the first thing I would do is hold Christians leaders and institutions to the same standards that any other public or private institution in this country is held to. This would include:

1) "truth" in advertising - they would not be able to make their claims unless they could back them up the same as a pharmaceutical, insurance, food or any other company or organization.

2) Fraud and embezzlement - all those pastors, reverends, fathers and so forth that get a polite slap on the hand when they are caught stealing from their organizations, molesting their adherents, or tormenting or manipulating their followers would like any other organization be thrown in jail.

3) I would uphold the constitution. That would mean that all religious or anti-religious sentiments would be expunged from government. Laws would be based on constitutional as opposed to biblical precedents. All priests that got their orders directly or indirectly from the Vatican would be required to register with the government as foreign agents.

This is probably just the start but I don't think that any of this would bother any Christian that was a patriotic American with a sense of justice. So it would probably bother most of them.

Starboy

GeoTheo

O.K. you would attack freedom of speech. check.
There already are laws in place against these things. Perhaps you would wage a campaign against religion under the guise of getting rid of these abuses? So you are saying you would sacapegoat a religious segment of the population and persecute them with the power of the state. Sounds famaliar. check.
OK. You would deny citezenship to certian members of the population based on their religion. Check.

Right. everybody that doesn't hold to your strange ideas of how to run the country is not a patriot. Sounds familiar also.
Yep. If you had power you would be one scary individual, just like Stalin or Mao. Thanks for proving my point.

Godless Dave

Oh, no, they were atheists. They were also Communists. The latter contributed to their murderous rampages, not the former.

I don't need a god to give me my rights. My forebears did me the tremendous favor of putting their lives on the line to assert them for me. I will do the same if required. God had nothing to do with it. If he had, why didn't all the Christian countries in Europe allow their people those rights until after the United States did?

Absolutely. But the USSR and China also had written constitutions guaranteeing those rights. What they lacked was an independent judiciary, so the government was not accountable to the constitution. And what does a written constitution have to do with God?

No argument here.

Starboy

Boy Geo, you are desperate to defend your faith. I would not restrict freedom of speech; I would uphold the law and stop giving religion a free ride. In this country people do not have the right to say anything they want to. Never did. But you uhhhh patriotic Christians wouldn’t know about that. As for the foreign agent, again you are desperately trying to defend the indefensible. US citizen that represent foreign governments are required to register. The Vatican is the only foreign government that is not required to do so. Strike two for the patriotic Christian. Ahhh and the last point, upholding the constitution, yes I can see that to a Christian that is an unpatriotic idea. GeoTheo, you make my point when I say that a Christian can’t be a patriotic American.

Starboy

lpetrich

I think that the example of Communism shows that it is possible to be a complete atheist and be a horrible butcher.

It also shows that being an atheist does not keep one from believing in a quasi-religious belief system and doing quasi-religious things, and more generally, being irrational.

Marxism claims that there is a law of historical development that will ultimately result in the production of True Communism, a perfect society where the State has withered away and where everybody will be unselfishly helpful to everybody else. But that perfect society will only be reserved for the working class; the capitalist class will be dethroned, deprived of its property, and otherwise punished.

Marxism also involves some Hegelian dialectical gibberish which I find to be absolute bullshit.

Communism in practice involves the belief that in order to get to the blessed state of True Communism, society must be ruled by by a "class-conscious" subset of the working class -- a subset that is to rule with an iron fist, including a willingness to slaughter millions of those it considers troublemakers. "The undesirable classes do not liquidate themselves", said Stalin when Lady Astor asked when he was going to stop killing people.

lpetrich

Even if one practices some religion, one need not fight wars on account of it. Followers of non-Abrahamic religions have seldom fought wars for the sake of whatever they consider to be the One True Religion, even if they have been more than willing to fight wars for other reasons.

The main exceptions I can think of are Akhanaton and possibly Zoroastrianism, though both have involved the worship of One True God.

But it's the Abrahamic religions that have been big on fighting wars for the sake of the One True Religion. Judaism has had a relatively clean record mainly because of lack of opportunity. Xianity and Islam, however, have been much more bloody, with their abundant factional fighting and Crusades and Jihads.