Agreed.

I don't see that happening...could you give me an example?
Nearly 100% to me is maybe 98%. I don't see that. As for your 'communists', Stalin may have been anti-religious for most of his time, but he certainly believed in the State as God.

I need examples of this. I don't think that's true; in fact, I've seen quite a few stories regarding supposedly holy men doing immoral, unethical, antisocial and even criminal things. Was that a rejection of God? And reject God in what sense? Absolute disbelief? Or rejecting certain scripture of certain religion?

Indeed. Like here.

It's interesting that you bring that up, considering my Carlin post in the other thread.

Lol. Like Santorum? Hypothetically, how would the Constitution stop him in any way? Bush didn't and Obama doesn't have any problem sidestepping it, on arguably more pertinent issues than religion.

You've made a point of calling atheists arrogant, and never posted so much as a harsh word about religion, so it wasn't totally clear.

Religion being beneficial to humanity is just that: historical. And it IS opinion, because we can't go back, remove religion, and try again to see what the difference is. Communist countries don't count. Forcibly suppressing religion as a means of control isn't the same as everyone just not making stories to alleviate their fear of the unknown.

Humanity started out as a scared, superstitious bunch. You can't point to examples of lack of religion working because we have always been too superstitious for it to be any other way. And yes, that is my opinion.

Perhaps that's because I don't share the same antipathy towards religion and the religious that many atheists here (and elsewhere for that matter) display.



Uh... we don't have to go back and remove religion, past civilizations already did that for us. Been a while since you hit those history books, eh?



Actually, communist countries kind of make the point as it was a loss of faith from the top down that ultimately doomed previous civilizations. It just took longer to happen. Communist countries, starting with an atheist leadership only accelerated the fall.



As this pre-dates recorded history, it can only be conjecture. But certainly this appears to have been the case based on those things we've learned from various artifacts and cave paintings.



And you are certainly welcome to your own opinion.

But atheism is not a contemporary phenomenon. We know there were atheists as far back as ancient Greece, primarily from their own writings.

In Plato's Republic he envisioned an "ideal city" which worshipped not a god or gods, but learning and reason. And no matter how worked it, he could not make this "ideal city" work.

And Plato was hardly alone. There were many who preceeded and followed him... Anaximander, Anaxgoras, Epicurus, Hippo, Euripides, Theodorus (sort of the George Carlin of his time) and and many others who eschewed religion and superstition.

Of course, then as now, the vast bulk of humanity remained tethered to a belief in religion and superstition and it was only when that belief lost its power to "put the fear of god" into the people the civilization ultimately died.

Look today at secular Europe. Even in those countries with official state religions, religion is all but dead. People are seeking their own satisfaction and pleasure, they've all but stopped having children and their fertility rates (reproduction is a religious imperative) have fallen below the level necessary to sustain a native population. Immigrant populations (legal and illegal) are reproducing at much higher rates and are not integrating with local populations and it is now only a matter time before Europe as we've known it for centuries disappears. Europe has already lost its "faith" (as it were) and now they're on the inevitable slide to oblivion.

And if you are really familiar with history, then this story should sound errily familiar - it reads very much like the fall of the Roman Empire.

Just sayin...

Yes, it was quite obvious you don't have antipathy towards religion anywhere near your antipathy towards atheism.

No, I'm saying if we could go back and remove religion from the start. Like it had never existed. That's not the same as forcibly removing it as a method of control, or even trying to remove it from a small utopian society within the larger society as a whole, like Plato or the hippies.

As for the rest of it, well, you're welcome to your opinion.

How do they make which point? And "make the point," as in what?







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I suppose it is so, at least for agnostic theists. And perhaps this the case for gnostic theists, though that is less certain in my mind.

But whatever we call it, it is the reward/punishment aspect of mankind's religion/quest for meaning, that sense that there is something greater than our temporal selves, that holds the manifestations of mankind's baser instincts in check (just enough) for the vast bulk of humanity.

Actually, I don't have any antipathy towards aetheism or atheists in general, it is only those gnostic atheists who make it a point to attack and belittle religion (which must mean they are either ignorant or dismissive of the lessons of history) for whom I have antipathy.



What you propose is impossible, even naive. History is what it is. Civilizations start out as pious and struggling for survival, and as they grow and become successful and as want turns to fulfillment of the basics and fulfillment of the basics of survival turns to a desire for something more, civilizations drift ever farther from those principles which keep a civilization alive.

It is a cycle that students of history see repeated over and over again. It is a cycle we see being repeated by Europe today and even see in America, though to a slightly lessor degree - but only slightly.



Thank you, though my opinion had nothing to do with my post. That was just history talking.

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You couldn't tell that from your posts to date.


It's called a thought experiment. You know, that fella Einstein kinda made them famous? I said at the outset that there was no way to actually do it.

Your interpretation of history and current events is your opinion.