Religious symbols where they belong, in churches, temples and religious institutions, in public places, administrations, public libraries, schools and universities have absolutely nothing to do with, there they can result in offense or discrimination for people of another or no faith. Sad politicians making an oath on the Bible (in Spain they do it on the constitution, without additions like “with the help of God”). Religion is a true social backwardness, the proof is theocracies, there are none in the world where basic human rights are respected and where social progress is possible.
And how is banning “revealing” clothing any better than banning other other types of clothing that certain people might find offensive (e.g. headscarfs)? You won’t get hurt by seeing some nipples either.
Sure let’s just ban religion. Ask the millions of people that died under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other leaders that banned religion. Or all of the people that died during the French Revolution. Yes I know that the Church had the Inquisition and the Crusades, during which millions died. The Bible is already considered “hate speech” in many countries. How long before being Christian, Muslim or whatever means you can’t hold a job or buy a house?
Revelation 13:16-17 The Mark of the Beast
16And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Conclusion In the light of the foregoing considerations, I propose that the Court answer as follows the questions referred for a preliminary ruling by the tribunal du travail de Liège (Labour Court, Liège, Belgium):
(1) Article 2(2)(a) of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation must be interpreted to mean that a provision of a public body’s terms of employment which prohibits employees from wearing any visible sign of political, philosophical or religious belief in the workplace, with the aim of putting in place an entirely neutral administrative environment, does not constitute, with regard to employees who intend to exercise their freedom of religion and conscience through the visible wearing of a sign or an item of clothing with religious connotations, direct discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, for the purposes of that directive, provided that that provision is applied
(2) Article 2(2)(b) of Directive 2000/78 must be interpreted to mean that a difference of treatment indirectly based on religion or belief arising from a provision of a public body’s terms of employment which prohibits employees from wearing any visible sign of political, philosophical or religious belief in the workplace may be justified by that body’s desire to put in place an entirely neutral administrative environment, provided, first, that that desire responds to a genuine need on the part of that body, which it is for that body to demonstrate; second, that that difference of treatment is appropriate for the purpose of ensuring that that desire is properly realised; and, third, that that prohibition is limited to what is strictly necessary.
In Spain religious symbols in public workplaces, official places and buildings are banned since years. You will see them only in religios buildings and churches, maybe in some old monuments.
Just hope the 60s and 70s don’t come back, I guess? Or not care?
Edit: Okay, I really need to stop posting things right after waking up. I’m sorry; I hadn’t read the article. Hadn’t realized it focused on those. I suppose my answer still kinda works, though. Partially sarcastically, maybe. Bring back 60s/70s fashions to troll the clothes-banners and expect them to chill? I’m having a really hard time caring about other people’s clothes at the moment and don’t see why people think they have a right to dress others.
I mean, it’s more about code of vestment. Let’s say the code of certain workplace say that you have to have your face fully visible, you can’t wear anything that obstructs your face, if religious symbols were allowed you can justify yourself with “religious obligation”, the “atheist headscarf” was banned from the start
France recently banned the Abaya from schools which is just a long dress.
If only short dresses are allowed in schools because “we need to ban religion” then following this exact logic they could just ban all dresses next.
Following that just make all girls go to school in bikinis because “religious people wear clothes”.
In Africa there’s tribes with women who aren’t even wearing anything on their chest because that’s where those women believe the line should be. From a secular point of view would you also accept it if teenage girls started going to school without clothes?
It is dishonest to claim the Abaya is “just a long dress” or the headscarf is just an accessory. Maybe it can be worn someday in the future like that. But right now it is a religious symbol and people wear it because of specific cultural and religious beliefs. It’s that what the law is targeting.
And maybe also in the future people can go naked wherever they like. But right now, we are not there yet but we already understand that it is not right to indoctrinate people into believing women have to go to great lengths to hide their bodies and if they don’t do that they are less “chaste”.
There is no slippery slope. We are talking about clothes and your completely arbitrary interpretation of what is right and wrong. For which you do not seem to hold any logical moral consistency other than RELIGION BADDDDD
Get a picture and ask enough people to get a statistically significant result. The meaning of a symbols is defined by what people think it means and of course that can change with place and time. Hence in Europe the headscarf would be religious now but not back then.
Technically forbidden by law. However, say, a crucifix on a necklace, hidden under clothes, is in kind of a gray area. Also some exceptions apply to Alsace I think
In Italy I was a member of UAAR (The Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics) and we supported the legal costs of people battling against crucifixes in the workplace, compulsory prayers and even acoustic pollution caused by the church bells. This was in the late '90s to early '00s.
I really, really wish religious people would finally switch to clocks and phone notifications for their niche events like everyone else. Many people also have an odd romantic notion of this noise pollution. Sort of like the idiots who think loud motorbikes or sports cars make them look cool.
I think it has more value than lets say cars and trucks, loud parties and fireworks.
Church, and mosque, not as religious symbols but as a community centers reminds lonely isolated people that they can go now and they will find people there to chat a little bit with.
Phones for older generation doesn’t work and annoying as well.
Church, and mosque, not as religious symbols but as a community centers reminds lonely isolated people that they can go now and they will find people there to chat a little bit with.
Unless they’re gay, or trans, or polyamorous, or …
Even if they aren’t, there is very little gossip that gets as vicious as church gossip behind other community member’s back. Always “fun” to watch when visiting my grandparents in their small rural town.
Depends on church, I recently visited the babtism of a Lesbian couples’ child featuring readings by a trans lay-minister. This was CoE, rather than any ‘rainbow church’.
It’s true that almost every mainline Church denies the right of gays and poly’s to marry as they would wish. Beyond that single sacrement however there’s no need for exclusion. Many congregations are still full of assholes, absolutely, but you’d be surprised how often the views of the Church body diverge from talking heads like Calvin Robinson.
Trans-rights are an odd-space. There isn’t actually anything in the bible explicitly denying trans ontology (at least for binary trans people), so again it’s a matter of specific bigotry rather than institutional bigotry.
I know this is kinda off base, but the Temple of Satan has churches, and they’re absolutely pro gay and pro trans. They’re the anti mainstream religion, basically.
I guess it’s cus everyone has a different standard of what pollution is for them. For me, the sound of windchimes calm me, I find industrial air vents relaxing, and church bells oddly peaceful, but can’t stand someone even driving near me, dogs barking, babies crying, or fluorecent lights flickering. But you know, people need to drive, dogs and babies need to talk, and the world goes on.
I wouldn’t say it gives them hope, I would say it preys on poor and otherwise desperate people and makes their lives worse, often for the benefit of the ones higher up in the religious organizations but even where those truly believe too it often leads poor people to bad decision making.
If that was the case we wouldn’t have christians running around nowadays. Mainly cultures and empires throughout history have tried to ban some form of religious symbology, but it doesn’t ever work, and typically just makes the conflict worse.
Well, Christianity is in a swift decline outside of places where they do have enough power left to enforce social conformity. By my estimate in another 50 years Christianity will be a small niche in many countries along with the other major religions in the global North (is that a thing, basically western doesn’t work because of South America).
Which is his point. Christianity is on the decline because society has let those people assimilate on their own. They did not ban Christianity.
Once you start banning or suppressing an ideology, the people will actually strengthen their beliefs because they have no way to assimilate with their beliefs into a society anymore.
But they don’t do that. They don’t leave religion with their beliefs. If anything the vast majority still in the religion on paper doesn’t even have those beliefs any more.
it’s not a ban or persecution though, if anything it’s a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
If you define schools and other essential public facilities as “government buildings” you are not separating the state from the church, you are separating the civilians from the church.
Can you have sex in front of class in schools? Not legally? Huh, that’s oppressive. People should be allowed to have threesomes during parliament.
The argument is silly when you apply it to other things, but religion, oh that’s different. As if wearing religion-mandated clothing somehow deserves more protection than e.g. the ability for people to be nude.
schools are government buildings as long as they are funded and/or owned by the government… I mean you are religious so maybe I don’t have to ask, but do you live in some kind of delusion land where that’s not the definition?
You are ignoring his point… The whole point of separating Church and state is to both protect the government from the influence of the church, but also to prevent the government from controlling your freedom of expression.
People are allowed to express their religious beliefs so long as it does not inhibit others from expressing their own beliefs.
You don’t have to be religious to understand the consequences of giving the government the ability to police self expression. If we made rulings that handed power over expression to the government, you honestly think conservatives wouldn’t utilize that when they eventually came to power?
you last argument idls that of a slippery slope which is almost exclusively a fallacy.
as for your first, keyword is, inhibit, do you categorize feeling uncomfortable as inhibiting someone’s rights for example?
let’s say I am a lone satanist, working at a government building, I am fetting judgy looks all day by Christian coworkers wearing crosses and it drives me away from the job, isn’t thst inhibiting me?
let’s say I am a public facing worker, couldn’t me displaying my satanist symbols be inhibiting the public looking for whatever government service?
isn’t it easier and better for everybody involved to leave that shit at home and keep the workplace free from all that?
you last argument idls that of a slippery slope which is almost exclusively a fallacy.
Ahh yes, legal precedent. Famously always fallacious… Also, the slippery slope fallacy requires a series of actions leading to a negative consequence. This is just a direct consequence of a single action.
You are attempting to establish a law that is preventing people from expressing their legally protected beliefs. You don’t think setting that precedent isn’t going to have consequences?
you categorize feeling uncomfortable as inhibiting someone’s rights for example? let’s say I am a lone satanist, working at a government building, I am fetting judgy looks all day by Christian coworkers wearing crosses and it drives me away from the job, isn’t thst inhibiting me?
Lol, where in the legal system does it claim that you have the right to be comfortable at all times?
let’s say I am a public facing worker, couldn’t me displaying my satanist symbols be inhibiting the public looking for whatever government service?
You have every right to display satanic symbology. How does this prevent members of the public from looking for a government service. Plus, logically if you are the government worker, they already have found the government service…
Let’s change the scenario slightly. Let’s suppose you are a person of color working for the government, and a member of the public is wanting service, but is racist. Is hiring a person of color inhibiting his rights? Of course not.
anything it’s a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
You do realize that banning a religion is the state inserting itself into religion, right?
The separation of church and state goes both ways. The church is not to influence the state and the state is not to influence the church. You are allowed to practice religious expression in a state building, but the state cannot demand that you do so, or regulate which religion you express.
You do know when the constitution mentions the church, they aren’t being literal… The “church” is the institution of religious beliefs, which is made up of people. You are policing people’s rights to freely express their beliefs.
Are you harmed by someone wearing a cross when they work?
That sounds like more of a personal problem than an actual depiction of a problem in reality.
I’m an atheist/agnostic, someone believing in some fake metaphysical being doesn’t affect me at all. What does affect me is when those people try to force their beliefs on me, and you seem to be hellbent on paving the way for them to do so.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
“No one is suggesting the persecution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If a man wants to adore another man, they can do it at home, but those homosexuals dont get to dictate how others should act.”
You see how problematic this can get with just a few words swapped? It’s almost like it’s difficult to police other people’s beliefs, and once you do it kinda leaves the door open for others people with other beliefs to do the same…
Being homosexual is not a belief, we exist, and so we deserve rights
Right, but laws aren’t based on reality. They are based on what people believe is reality.
I whole heartedly agree that homosexuality isn’t a belief, and that they deserve rights… But there are plenty of people who don’t, and those people have the ability to pass laws.
If progressive people started policing metaphysical ideas like religion, conservatives are going to start policing things based on their metaphysical understanding of their shared reality.
Just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean you can’t legislate it to be legally true. America has a long history of basing laws on nothing but hate and fear mongering.
And how would we realistically go about doing that?
The problem is that there is no way to realistically separate religious perspectives from religious people. Their beliefs are inseparable from what they believe to be the foundation of our shared reality.
Legality and reality are not the same thing, the reality that the government enforces isn’t decided by scientists or our greatest thinkers. It is argued by lawyers, decided by judges, and enforced by the police.
I would love for our legal and political bodies to be regulated by sane and logical people, but that’s never been the case. If we start putting limitations on things that these people believe to be inherently true, they will retaliate by attacking people they already have a prejudice against.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we’ve had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
By forcing Islamic women to wear bikinis and mini-skirts?
If you are against females wearing clothes because you must to see their naked bodies who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? You are claiming to be in favor of female rights by RESTRICTING female rights to wear their desired clothes? And then claiming all women who don’t adhere to your ideology are forced to wear those clothes?
Do all western women also wear clothes because society forces them to do so? Should we just ban all clothes to show how much we care about female rights?
Many people see the France as an oppressive society that degrades women and treats them as second class citizens when they force women to remove their headscarves and dresses.
Makes sense. If you really want to fight religion with regulation, ban mosques and churches, ban public religious speeches. It still won’t work, but at least it’s consequent with your logic.
But banning hijabs and stuff is probably not going to help anyone.
While I agree that this law is dumb, I don’t think these clothes are the ‘desired clothes’ that most women would choose on their own with no outside coercion. Many Islamic women wear these kind of clothes because of the intense pressure put on them to do so from their friends, family, and peers. If they dress differently, they are shunned and shamed.
I will concede that some woman out there would maybe choose to wear that on their own with unlimited choices, but the rest of the world and history has shown that women don’t tend to want fully cover themselves from head to toe when given other options, unless it’s cold out.
This law will do nothing to help that problem at all, though, and it will probably only act to make that pressure stronger as a pushback. It’s not just Islam that does this, either. Many other religious institutions put this pressure on their women.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we’ve had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
This is a highly reductive and a backwards way to view the cause and effect of history.
Who is “we”, what era are you talking about, what archaic customs are you talking about? You are speaking about vague generalities and then making claims based on them.
Human progress does not advance because individual governments ban certain types of behavior. It’s a byproduct of changes in economics, and government systems. The attitudes and behavior of the church towards its populations was more influenced by technological changes and environment than any sort of government asserting its control.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
No one is claiming that religion isnt problematic, were just saying that banning iconography or ideologies isn’t going to be effective at doing anything but stiring up sectarian violence.
Right, but that’s more from people recognizing the internal contradictions within the religion. Not because we don’t have as much iconography around as op suggested.
Honestly, I think it is mostly that the majority of people don’t care (and never did) and the people who do care lost the ability to push everyone who doesn’t care into it with social pressure.
I think you are right, it mostly has to do with education and access to knowledge. Just about every human today has access to all of the world’s knowledge through the internet. It makes it pretty difficult to avoid seeing those contradictions, even if you actively try to.
It will reduce prejudice in one form: looks and clothing. The sooner we come together as a species, the greater we progress and bring fundamental changes in everything we care as a species.
“unify as a species” aka “only unify under my belief, Athiesm”. That’s what Islamists thought and so did the crusaders. How is your belief any more important?
Create an experiment where you have a different prediction whether god exists or does not exist, then do the experiment to see whether god exists. If you can’t create a situation where the existence of god has a different outcome than the nonexistence, then you have no evidence at all.
If God is real, then something must exist in our finite universe which is infinite, as infinite can only exist in the mind of an infinite God. So if we can prove that there are numbers which aren’t rational numbers and go on forever, then infinite somehow exists in our finite universe, and thus they must exist in the mind of God.
We could also examine historical claims and documents about Jesus and see if they are genuine. See if they have any inconsistencies with that time period (eg, contradict history) or correlate too perfectly or flat-out contradict each other. If they don’t then they are likely genuine. We could try and see if there is any other explanation other than Jesus rising from the dead.
If the universe was created by God, then it must have laws that are consistent and rational, so we can examine science and see if elements of this universe follow consistent patterns and have structure to them, showing that there was some form of design.
Stating that there’s no evidence for god is not any kind of belief. Now stating that there’s one even though the lack of evidence, that requires belief
Christians don’t state there’s no evidence for God, no idea where you pulled that one from. You’d have to believe that all of that evidence is invalid, and believing that religion in turn should be destroyed because you so whole-heartedly disagree with the evidence does require belief.
The “evidence” is a story in writings aged thousands of years… it is not something we can observe or have physical or visual proof of, all we have is words that go against all scientific evidence, so it’s not “evidence”. You have to actually believe in magic to believe in that kind of stuff, it holds as much salt as any other pseudoscientific garbage.
It’s laughable to say that you must respect the beliefs of people into astrology or flat earth or electric universe or anything of the sorts, and it’s just as laughable to say you have to respect the beliefs of people who believe in supranatural/divine beings. Because false beliefs actually cause harm, and religion especially has caused far more harm than any other pseudoscience (and the amount of good it may have done is extraordinarily outweighed), it is currently causing a lot of harm, and it will likely continue to cause great harm in the future.
I personally value the lives of hundreds of millions to billions of people more than appeasing some long outdated beliefs (and especially the people who exploit those beliefs for personal gain), but that’s just me. I’m agnostic, I don’t choose a belief, there might be some divine being or afterlife but I see that it’s completely insane to propogate any of said beliefs, it causes suffering and has set us back potentially hundreds of years progress-wise.
Honestly all of humanity would probably have much less suffering if it weren’t for organized religion and its consequences, including but not limited to either directly causing or being the biggest contributor to the far-right and fascism & corporatism, and a large amount of general imperialism/authoritarianism (divine right anybody?). Guys banging other guys was the norm in most of the world until Abrahamic religions came along and brainwashed the entirety of the west lol, then it became a heinous crime and caused a over a thousand years of suffering and oppression for gays, people of “heretic” religious beliefs, anyone that opposed the authorities of an organized religion, those who faced the wrath of most imperialism/conquest – which was generally propogated by religion (and would have been a lot less strong without religion scaring people with eternal damnation) in Europe and the Americas and even in Asia, and often in Africa, etc. etc. And now modern religion is once again making society try to regress.
On paper religion alone isn’t bad, but people can’t handle religion, up to this point humans just try to find things to hate each other for and religion is BY FAR the most successful & easy tool to use for that, nothing else comes even close, sure if religion was gone other things may go up in usage as reasons to arbitrarily hate others, but it won’t have even near the power of religion, nothing’s more effective than threatening people with fiery hell for them or their loved ones, or offering them eternal glory in the afterlife, or whatever, because that’s forever and Earth life is temporary!
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
You refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research. Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
You say religion is the biggest factor relating to the far right fascism and corporatism. But that doesn’t make sense. Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said and is grounded in a belief in no god and only saying things to be popular, using cheapest labour, exploitation, etc. I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof. In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians and was known for basically being the start of the “fair-trade” idea with treating employees well. (Unfortunately it’s just another product of capitalism nowadays as it has abandoned it’s roots.)
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
As for fascism, what?
Let’s list off the biggest propagators of Fascism:
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
Other states that caused mass murders?
Soviet Russia - Athiest. Maoist China - Athiest.
If anything, it’s quite the opposite.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed. What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
I could literally make the same argument for Athiesm causing harm. Does that mean that I should respond to you by saying “we should destroy Athiesm?”. Or should we realise that both of our religious-based beliefs should be tolerated.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century,
Several conflicting documents that give completely different accounts of the same things, in the same exact book used by the people following this religion.
all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later.
That is something similar to what a LOT of random dudes did at that time period, Jesus was no different than the others, he was just “lucky” that he blew up.
They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account.
Yeah that is just verifiably incorrect. You can probably just jump to a random part of the Bible and find contradictions, but the easiest one is the differing accounts of Jesus’ ressurection – there is no consistent story, the details are wildly different from each perspective in a way that makes them disagree with each other heavily. It’s a testament to how warped rumors like that can get over a short period of time, especially ehen there’s no reality to base it off of.
And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church.
You can say the exact same shit about any religion, say Islam. Christianity isn’t special, this is typical religion and pseudoscience stuff. I can say the same about ancient world mythology.
It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Yes, we count years like this because a cult took over the center of the civilized world, we also count the months July and August because a guy was the ruler of an empire that fell over a century ago lol. That doesn’t exactly make all the mythologisms about ancient emperors any more true either.
“Because it was/is popular” is not an argument with any substance and it does not help your claims.
But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
That’s not exactly a good excuse for bad evidence that goes against science, literal verifiable facts of nature. Any nutjob can just point to stupid things like that as evidence and it’d hold the same amount of value.
Y>ou refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Except he never did it. It was a big deal to peasants when random people claimed he did it many decades after the fact, sure, but that goes for any infectious lie.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research.
Sure, but this would have happened in a similar time period regardless – look at e.g. China, which actually became more developed and wealthy than the west some time after Christianity successfully took over the Roman Empire. China only started lagging behind during the increasingly secularizing renaissance, when their own religious philosophy consumed their state and caused them to devolve, and they closed themselves off to the world. Europe could have been much farther ahead if religion didn’t slow them down immensely.
Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
“Athiests” are a lot less of a similar, generalizable grouping than “Christians”, since Athiesm is the default and there isn’t anything that can exactly tie together athiests culturally or even belief wise, “atheism” is about as effective of a religious grouping as “theism”. But regardless of religion people can have stupid scientific beliefs.
Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said
That doesn’t stop people – as I said, religion itself isn’t inherently bad, but it really just serves as a tool for people to use to do bad stuff.
and is grounded in a belief in no god
A majority of nations that were/are extremely Christian and extremely capitalist disagree with you my friend. Capitalism and corporatism were built on Christianity, then exported to infect the rest of the world.
I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof.
Again, capitalism was built by religious people, in a religious culture, and thrived because of the regressive beliefs propogated by organized religion. The entire justification for monarchies and conservatism for a large portion of the world was religion, religious justification of hierarchies that put wealthy royals at the top and the majority of the population at the bottom is why anti-peasantry was the norm for so long, it’s why we’ve continued this dynamic of a large poor population that generates all the value against a small rich population, religion has dictated European politics for a millennium and a half, the religious people who controlled the god damn continent would have put an end to this LONG beforehand if it were an actual morally positive thing.
In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians
EVERYBODY is a Christian in such cultures, they have to be because Christians label otherwise as a bad trait. In these cultures, being religious is synonymous with being moral, even though it’s not true at all. I’m pretty sure the UK has never had a publicly athiest monarch, and no publicly athiest prime ministers until the 20th century, and the US has had no athiest presidents ever.
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
See above.
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
As I said, people use religion as a tool to control. This literally corroborates what I said. It doesn’t matter what they actually believe, it matters what they spew out to everyone else – religion is fine if you shut up about it. But the entire concept of widespread religion is being like an infectious disease, it’s supposed to spread as much as possible and get as much of a hold in society as possible, and those people are brainwashed by the organized religion to believe stupid but extremely harmful shit. It is practically impossible to have a religion like that and it not only be used as a tool for evil.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Roman Catholicism was the state religion of Fascist Italy. The church generally leaned towards tolerating or supporting Italian fascism. Italy is still noticeably fucked up politically today because of this, they are the closest modern example to a religious state in the west due to how much Catholicism has its roots sinked into it, and it causes the country to legally be ass-backwards in many ways.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
It’s both, it is using religion to consolidate, justify, and project power.
Other states that caused mass murders? Soviet Russia - Athiest. Maoist China - Athiest.
Of course, as I said though – athiesm isn’t an entity, it isn’t an organized thing like Christianity or whatever. You cannot morally implicate athiesm/agnosticism like you can implicate organized beliefs, it’s just illogical. You might be able to make an argument that you can implicate anti-thiesm, though, connecting oppressing religion with authoritarianism. But even that’s a stretch, the anti-theism wasn’t a massive justification or drive/focus, it was just a side-effect of trying to oppress people to be “non-problematic” to the state. Meanwhile religion is usually the primary justification for authoritarianism/monarchy, from divine right.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
Remind me which camp is significantly more popular with devout Christians, Muslims, etc.? The left-leaning/demsoc/socialist camps, or the “I want to decintigrate gay/trans rights, workers rights, and want more conservative corporatism” camp? Sure, a fraction of serious Christians might support human rights, but a majority lean towards or strongly enable the people who want to strip you or your neighbours of their freedom.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed.
Flat Earth is perfectly reasonable to many. Scientology is too. So is the belief that modern medicine is bad and essential oils will cure all your ailments!
What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
As I said, it didn’t happen – you’ve been gooled into a lie. There is no viable scientific evidence. Simple as, it goes against science and cannot be proven. Anti-scientific beliefs are only acceptable when you can eventually back them up with observation/precise consistent predictions, which in that case would make it science. The only “predictions” Christians have is “life sucks now, all these natural disasters which are totally not triggered by our destruction of the environment are happening, also the gays have rights, this must be the prophecy coming true!”
I could literally make the same argument for Athiesm causing harm. Does that mean that I should respond to you by saying “we should destroy Athiesm?”.
As I said, athiesm isn’t an organized belief. People are born athiest (seeing as how your usage of “athiest” also encompasses agnostics). You only get brainwashed later. It’s just illogical to group them like you can group a certain religion or sect.
Or should we realise that both of our religious-based beliefs should be tolerated.
I tolerate religious beliefs that don’t believe in the concept of eternal punishment, or don’t promote the idea that some groups are in any way “lower” (including “more sinful” or “less holy”) than others. Most kinds of Judaism, for example, they’re fine, they don’t have eternal damnation, the entire idea is to be good in your Earthly life. But even that kind of religion eventually branches off into e.g. maniacs that believe the same type of garbage that Christians do, or a theocratic Israeli government subjugating others…
A religion based on a benevolent God kind of falls apart when you consider it chooses to let the majority of people suffer, or it chooses to let the majority of people burn in Hell because they were born into and lived their life in an environment without that religion, or chooses to let people burn in Hell at all. And you save yourself by… believing in one specific random thing that happened before your entire traceable family tree even existed that is just one of many and could easily be the “wrong” one? In the case of Christianity the only thing you can bring in is the “Satan” argument or the “but he gave us free will and then Adam and Eve ate the apple so he makes us all suffer now!”. That is just absurd, and it inherently promotes the idea of punishment as a core of the religion – the religion is based around punishment.
Otherwise – I’ll tolerate religion about as much as I tolerate an Anti-Vaxxer’s beliefs or a Scientologist’s beliefs or a Flat Earther’s beliefs or the beliefs of someone who follows Greek Mythology. Just infectious, harmful brainwashing that shouldn’t be promoted or enabled by the jurisdiction as it is now.
Please enlighten me on these apparent contradictions in the resurrection narratives, I’m intrigued.
As for the Bible, it’s not a scientific textbook and doesn’t contradict science at all, unless you read Genesis 1 and the whole earth flood as literal, for some reason (which people only really started doing in the 1930s).
If religion isn’t inherently bad, then why destroy it?
Christian evidence for God amounts to “because someone said so” + a vague sense that some force is working in their life. That’s just animism with extra steps.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
Not an HP reader but I’m pretty sure people meet up regularly all over the world dressed up to celebrate stuff from the books. If that’s not the beginning of a cult I don’t know what it is, if not kept in line give it 2000 years to snowball and by year 4023 it will be full of delusional people swearing their imaginary friend is the one and only god, same as Jesus’s, Mohamed and Santa
Of course it is, and it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
I’m a theist but i’m probably an atheist with your definition of the Creator/Light/Highness/‘absolute Existence’/…, which is probably some long-bearded man with superpowers that you can touch like in Marvel movies, or something like that, yes ?
it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Untold suffering ? Do you realize how easily everything could be worse ? How lucky you are to live in this place and time ?
How much closer to perfection is enough ? What are the main criticisms you have in mind so that i could explain why they’re usually necessary for a greater good, and usually the responsability of humans and not the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature ?
Aren’t the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature determined by your god? Are we lucky your god only made the world pretty bad and not completely bad? What an inane argument, why didn’t he make it better to begin with?
How much better would be enough ? You’ll always have something less good than the Maximum/Perfection, until you have an homogeneous Goodness.
Fortunately we’re allowed to improve, that’s all i could ask for, unfortunately the trip/improvement/growth is necessarily finite, you’re asking to start at the end.
Given the choice between people suffering needlessly or people living without suffering yeah I would pick option two. I don’t understand how anyone could pick option one.
But if you were born in option 2, and lived all your life in Paradise, wouldn’t you want to experiment something else than this homogeneous unity, if only to know yourself, to distinguish yourself from your equals ?
If you don’t follow the thought, that’s because you’re asking for the disappearance of all evils, a perfect world will have nobody better than someone else, we’ll all reach the maximum conceivable potential, every single being would be as absolutely perfect as the laws of the universe allows a being to be.
That’s not what you want, you don’t want the absolute end/perfection but something in between, we’ll get there, and it could realistically be argued that this halfway towards perfection is long behind us, that’s the goal but i’m glad we still have stuff to do instead of an aimless/useless existence in a perfect world.
Furthermore suffering is rarely pointless, please pick an example it’d be less theoretical, here’s an old comment if you’d like to see a few of them in the first paragraphs.
If carnivores didn’t killed vegetarians then they would destroy everything, and if trees didn’t die they wouldn’t let enough place for new generations, but eating/killing stays a bad thing, which is why it should be avoided whenever possible(, e.g., not to die ourselves). We don’t live in the best possible world, but the trip may be more enjoyable than having reached the ultimate destination millenias ago.
(It’s out of topic but the universe is so big and it’s so easy to spy on planets by building trillions of automated probes that it’s weird we’re still feeling/being free from external/alien influences, w/e 🤷♂️)
as Ricky Gervais put it the difference between a Christian or Muslim and an Atheist is to believe in exactly one less god than them, there are over 2000 gods believed in by various people, Christians don’t believe in any of them, Atheists don’t believe in any of them +1
You clearly misunderstand what it is to be an atheist. The whole point is to question it. As new evidence (yes, it’s based on evidence) surfaces, we change our “beliefs” accordingly.
Atheism is not belief in the big bang, atheism is belief in whatever scientific theory is currently best supported by evidence.
Atheism means that you say you are 100% certain there is no god. A-Theism. It’s the word.
The problem is that there is still no clear evidence for the origins for time and the universe. You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
You say that, but you’re alive. So I’m assuming that you do somewhat appreciate being alive since you haven’t unalived yourself. You might even think it’s pretty neat.
That God is the reason for my/your/our/Our existence, seems clear enough, you can refer to Aristotle or pretty much any other theologian on this topic.
See, believing in God was never irrational after all, you were just brainwashed by modernity(, on this topic as well).
Also, God is the Greatest being, by definition(, see St.Anselm ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ), so S…He is also my/(y)our/Our/the Guide/Example/Light(house)/…
They didn’t say everything is superfluous, they said God is. You’re conflating “God” with “everything”, but understand that is far from a universal understanding of how the universe works. If you’re not sure how the other person feels about this you need to ask instead of assuming they share the same definitions you do.
Your two neurons seem to not grasp the idea that if a god exists, something must’ve made it so, which means we’re back to the same problem as if no god existing. If such a god exists, they’re no more important than random quantum fluctuations, and infinitely more sadistic.
Well if you insist on pedantry, “atheism” doesn’t mean a belief that gods don’t exist, it’s a lack of belief in gods. Think “asexual”: it’s not an aversion to sex, just a lack of sex drive. You are describing antitheism, and many self-described atheists are actually antitheists.
You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
Incorrect, you are the one with the spectacular claim and the burden of proof lies on you. Prove that gods exist.
A person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
This entire comment chain is focused on banning religion and being 100% certain that god doesn’t exist.
If you want to ban religion and claim god doesn’t exist then the burden of evidence to disprove god lies with you. But you can start by creating something from nothing or reversing time.
Everybody (except some religious people) are agnostic about most things. That’s why phenomema like gravity or electromagnetism are explained by “theories”. God isn’t even a theory in that sense.
It’s scientifically close to impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Even green elephants.
As for time and space… I don’t see the slightest evidence of “god did it”. For me, the chance of finding a green Elephant seems way higher. Because it seems at least possible.
Green elephants are not a requirement for our existence.
The beginning of space and time are.
For that something outside of space-time must exist that created space-time.
Unless you are denying that we exist I am asking you to present another possible way that our universe has been created. Because according to thermodynamics energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet our universe does seem to contain energy so where did the energy come from? If you say energy can come out of nothing you’re disagreeing with everything we know about physics.
That’s the entire point of God. An eternal and all powerful creator that is not bound by space nor time. Without beginning and without end.
Unless we find a scientific explanation for problems such as 'an infinite past can never reach the present", or energy coming out of nothing, straight up denying the possibility of the existence of God seems like premature celebration.
Unless we find a scientific explanation for problems such as 'an infinite past can never reach the present", or energy coming out of nothing, straight up denying the possibility of the existence of God seems like premature celebration.
Why do you need a scientific explanation for that, but you don’t need a scientific explanation for “an eternal and all powerful creator that is not bound by space or time”? Sounds like you’re just replacing what you believe to be an* unprovable claim with your own unprovable claim, which just seems like a huge cop out.
Btw, there are tons of hypotheses on how the universe started “from nothing”, including
It didn’t, our big bang was the result of a previous universe collapsing
the universe was all dark matter, then some yet-to-be discovered reaction started converting the dark matter to “normal” matter
Reactions between matter and anti-matter created the energy needed for the big bang
The point though, is that your base premise is just wrong. Science doesn’t say that the universe started “from nothing”, it says “we don’t know exactly how the universe started, but we’re trying to figure it out”.
This does not explain time starting at a point where time didn’t exist. It just defers the problem. If we came from a different universe then where did that universe come from? And the one before that? If we go on infinitely we can still never reach the present.
If there was dark matter, or energy, or gas, wherever did that come from and what was before it? From nothing to something? If that dark matter existed infinitely before, how can we even reach the present?
God being almighty and eternal is a solution that solves this dilemma of an eternal past, because God can create time.
This does not explain time starting at a point where time didn’t exist.
It doesn’t try to. Science is still trying to figure it out, which is the whole point.
It just defers the problem.
You say “defer”, I say “still trying to figure it out”.
If we came from a different universe then where did that universe come from? And the one before that? If we go on infinitely we can still never reach the present.
We don’t know yet, but science is trying to figure it out.
If there was dark matter, or energy, or gas, wherever did that come from and what was before it? From nothing to something? If that dark matter existed infinitely before, how can we even reach the present?
We don’t know yet, but science is trying to figure it out.
God being almighty and eternal is a solution that solves this dilemma of an eternal past, because God can create time.
A solution, but is it the solution? Until demonstrable evidence is presented, it’s just a hypothesis like all the others. The difference is the other hypotheses give us something to test. Yours would have us just throw up our hands and say “idk, must be God I guess”, which doesn’t really fly in the world of science.
Edit: And you still haven’t answered the question: Why do you need a scientific explanation for the beginning of the universe, the beginning of time, etc., but you don’t need one for the existence of “an eternal and all powerful creator that is not bound by space or time”? Why hold up scientific rigour in one case, but accept with blind faith in another?
I dare you to present your idea of God, as the creator of the big bang and absent since then, to any member of a current religious group. You are moving goalposts pretty far and if you really want to argue about such an absent universe-starter god, then what’s really the point?
Disagreeing with our current understanding of physics is certainly a take.
i’m not disagreeing, i’m reiterating that scientific knowledge changes according to evidence. unlike other belief systems, like religion. i’m agnostic, i believe that we can’t know for sure god exists with our current knowledge of reality, but i also believe if god existed he would talk to everyone the same, and he hasn’t spoken to me yet, so organized religion is bullshit, in my humble opinion.
Scientific knowledge does indeed change according to evidence. The existence of the universe ironically breaks our entire scientific understanding of it.
As for your second point, there are books which claim to contain the word of God which you can read. Why would God personally need to converse with every human born each 0.2 seconds? 8 billion people at the same time on the God hotline? Do the laws of a country also not apply unless the president personally tells everyone about them?
From one of the books:
Those who do not know say, ‘If only God would speak to us, or a sign would come to us.’ Thus said those who were before them. Their hearts are alike. We have made the signs clear for people who are certain.
breaks our CURRENT scientific understanding of it.
dam another ftfy.
also, books don’t make something more believable. after all they were written by men that claim to hear a voice i believe (have faith in organized religious slang) either speaks to everyone or no one.
until gods talks to everyone he doesn’t exist in my mind. so giving any kind of importance to the concept of god or what comes of it is not really in my personal belief system. hope you respect at least that about me. that my belief is as valid as yours, the same way i accept your beliefs as valid mine in this god subject. after all according to your beliefs my beliefs are the creation of god therefore divine.
about the rest, the scientific method is time proofed, as you can see by the lovely tech you are using, created using it. also time-space is a human invention, once you understand that you’ll understand why there will be a time where that concept will lose importance just like the concept of god and all its ramifications.
Of course I respect your choice not to adhere to a religion. I was just trying to give you some insight into the theological perspectives.
If science manages to change all these laws of physics that have remained virtually unchanged since the 1900s and prove how the universe was created without god I’m sure many theists will leave their religion.
Until that moment, having an explanation of how the universe came to be by means of theism remains a preferable option for many.
Except wars were waged for political reasons, not religious ones(, some civil wars excepted).
And good actions were quite often done for religious reasons, which is why rejecting religions was(is) seen as rejecting the call for virtue, and to God.
You can have technologies or not, be in a communist/royalist/democrat/‘(“anarcho”-)capitalist’/republican/… state or not, it’s not enough to live in paradise, you’ll still find assholes, an environment including religions will( also) be made to improve ourselves. Not saying it didn’t failed there as well, since people in the past weren’t always “christians”, it only means it isn’t enough by itself for 100% of the population, not that it isn’t the way forward.
Downvote me all you want, i.d.c., but argue before doing so if you ever have time to learn by a mutual debate.
here is my argument, most of my friends are some flavor of christian, and christening’s are happening to their kids, if I suggested to them that their kids should be brought up rhe islam way, taught about it from the start etc, they would think I am trying to brainwash their kids, but ofc doing the same with Christianity is not brainwashing, it’s normal. as someone who was completely isolated from religious brainwashing I don’t think someone like you who I assume wasn’t can ever comprehend how fucked up religion looks from the outside, no different from any other cult.
Funny because i don’t think you understand my point of view either, especially if you’re equating all christians with literalists, if you read the Bible you’ll be forced to interpret it allegorically, which is why being raised in a nonreligious environment doesn’t prevent from having misconceptions either.
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