Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on March 2, 2010 at 11:20pm

Fuck you and your intolerance. I guess no one takes you seriously unless you sound angry so there you go. It's nothing personal, just making a point.

Ok, religion and everyone who believes in metaphysical beings needs to be stopped. Let's hear the real proposals. Here are some options off the top of my head.

1. Criminalize religion and jail anyone caught discussing religion or distributing religious materials to a minor.

2. Institutionalize, jail (terrorist maybe?), or kill anyone who fails to renounce belief in metaphysical entities.

3. Destroy all religious art, church buildings, written works, the internet, and nuke any countries who fail to depose their theocratic leadership and join the atheistic world government.

That might be a good start. I can guarantee you, though, that it wouldn't be sufficient. Vigilance would be required to stamp out the majority that believe that there is more to life than we can perceive. Since I'm an atheist I recognize that there is no intrinsic value to human life so the fact that more than half of the worlds population would have to die violently in order to rid the world of this mental disorder is regrettable but it would be in the best interest of the species. A peaceful solution could take centuries and may never fully succeed and that is unacceptable.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on June 22, 2010 at 5:40pm

I am reading Christopher Hitchens' god is not Great and chapter 17 covers the "secular" governments of the 19th and 20th centuries, which seems particularly relevant here. He describes how most of the fascist or communist regimes tried, not so much to eliminate religion, as to replace it with an equally totalitarian authority. He notes an exception though.

In a very few cases, such as Albania, Communism tried to extirpate religion completely and to proclaim an entirely atheist state. This only led to even more extreme cults of mediocre human beings, such as the dictator Enver Hoxha, and to secret baptisms and ceremonies that proved the utter alienation of the common people from the regime. There is nothing in modern secular argument that even hints at any ban on religious observance. Sigmund Freud was quite correct to describe the religious impulse, in The Future of an Illusion, as essentially ineradicable until or unless the human species can conquer its fear of death and its tendency to wish-thinking. Neither contingency seems very probable. All that the totalitarians have demonstrated is that the religious impulse - the need to worship - can take even more monstrous forms if it is repressed. This might not necessarily be a compliment to our worshipping tendency.

This is what I warned against above when I argued that a country that criminalized religion is not desirable. While I do not deny that religion is harmful I do not believe that it is likely that the human species can get along without it any time soon and that trying to forcefully eliminate it would cause more immediate harm than good. Even if you could succeed in ridding the world of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism there is no reason to believe that another equally totalitarian religion would not replace them.

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Permalink Reply by Eagle Ashcroft on March 3, 2010 at 3:49pm

When I went to school no one was allowed to mention religion in any form unless they were a Catholic school. If you so mentioned the word god you were expelled from school and if any teacher brought it up they were fired. So I am very surprised to learn that they are teaching religion in school now as that is what Iran does and it is a theocracy and a theocracy is a religious dictatorship like many Middle Eastern countries are.

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Permalink Reply by TNT666 on March 3, 2010 at 8:57pm

And what school did YOU go to?

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Permalink Reply by Johnsky on March 1, 2010 at 10:08pm

I'm down with the artificial island idea.

Someone figure out how transmutation of matter works efficiently enough that we can turn garbage into anything we want, and I think we'd be pretty set. Build the artificial landmass to be absolutely solid, the homes and structures fused into it and permanent.

Given that we'd have a near infinite amount of resources, I'd say the monetary system would be pretty moot. Man, would that ever piss off the world economy.


... wait, what does transmutation have to do with Atheism?
Nevermind... got lost in the fantasy.

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Permalink Reply by TNT666 on March 1, 2010 at 11:27pm

There is at least one artificial island I know of:

This dude of the coast of Mexico created an island for himself with 2l bottles of soda. Each of them filled with air and held together with great nets. He's collected earth, has built a home and a garden, and has a few animals. His new island is still 'growing'.

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Permalink Reply by TNT666 on March 1, 2010 at 10:52pm

Wasn't ECOTOPIA atheist? A wonderful simple novel by Ernest Callenbach which was required reading in 83 when I first went to college.

To this day, it ranks in my 5 most influential books.

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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on March 3, 2010 at 3:24pm

Ecotopia was a great book, it's high on my influential books list. I particularly liked the way the human penchants for violence was dealt with.

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Permalink Reply by TNT666 on March 3, 2010 at 8:53pm

I'll have to reread it someday. Did you guess why it was required reading in Quebec... separation :) Even in a strongly non-believing society, political bias still exists.

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Permalink Reply by visual@rchitect on March 3, 2010 at 12:48am

Wow.... i didn't really expect this topic to get much of a response!! haha.... I think this is the only site where i can read all the threads and not really find a single statement that i disagree with.... i think everyone here is at some plane, on a similar page (intellectually). Kudos to all of us. YAY!
I agree that a "secular" (@mayokitty) country sounds better. But look at countries that are supposed to be tolerant to multiculturalism. India for example is as multicultural as it gets (though lopsided) - but we have no shortage of religious fundamentalists beating up women in bars and limiting freedom of speech. Imagine what kind of a country India would be if we were more tolerant. India could have still been home to Salman Rushdie and M.F. Hussein; instead of turning them away.
"Secularism" is a joke, a parody of multiculturalism.

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Permalink Reply by EvilGod on March 3, 2010 at 6:57am

and how fast would it be bombed into non-existence?

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Permalink Reply by Garrick McElroy on March 3, 2010 at 9:24am

We'd be the most technologically advanced civilization in the world, and we would have flying cars within the week. Once we established our first colony on another planet, we'd simply move there, away from the idiots of this world. It would be beautiful. *Sniffs* So beautiful...

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