Now you are confusing God with you.
Isn't that what we humans always do?
That is how gods came into being in the first place.
Last edited:
General / Off-Topic Atheist Goverments - The sword of reason
- Thread starter Ironwolf
- Start date
- Status
Isn't that what we humans always do?
That is how gods came into being in the first place.
North Korea has the religion of Juche and it's god-leaders. Not the same thing as a rational atheism.
I'm not sure why there is so much determination that an atheist government would have to be authoritarian or 'communist'. We have many examples today of social democracies that are capitalist with strong social systems to make sure everyone gets an education, everyone gets a trade, and business, government, and unions work together so everybody shares in the productive work of the society.
The ONLY requirements for there to be an atheist society is good education and for religion to not be taught to children.
Last edited:
The atheist government as such is not the problem. It's attitude might be.
The social democracies you speak of allow people to be religious. They are secularist in nature, but do not dictate atheism, or strive to be free of religion.
The OP would like a pure atheist/antitheist society, free of theism, to be part of the Elite universe.
I think that would be problematic to realize in reality, because I think it is unrealistic to expect all people in a large planet-wide society to subscribe to atheism.
Humans are too diverse.
I think it is inevitable that there will eventually be people in such a society that believe in gods, or have other superstitions. Magical thinking is widespread among humans..
What I said is that if you want to keep an entire society atheist you will need oppression, violence and the threat of violence to make people at least pretend to be atheist. If you do not do so diversity will grow naturally. That is in our nature.
You can not have a free atheist society and expect it to stay 100% atheist forever.
There are always outside influences. People will emigrate and immigrate.
Non-atheist views will seep in, if the society is open and free.
You can only prevent this if you enforce isolationism and shackle freedom with violence or the threat of it and if you suppress other views, other philosophies.
You will need some kind of thought policing. It will become worse and worse.
We can only have a free society if we accept diversity.
It would be a great day when human society as a whole would outgrow magical thinking and superstition.
I don't think it will ever happen.
Last edited:
The discussion wasn't about atheist/secular governments though.
The discussion was about a government that actively worked to prevent any of the citizens from becoming religious. By suppressing or keeping out missionaries, religious literature, or any other thing that could lead to any of the citizens becoming religious.
Which fits with the "Dictator" government type in Elite.
I disagree. Religion dies a natural death when people are educated. You seem to assume an atheist society would feel threatened by religion and need to forcibly keep it out. Any truly atheist society would welcome with some bemusement efforts to share stories of fantastic creatures and magic. It would then share in return its own stories of fantasy and magic.
It is religion that has been known to murder and torture opposing ideas out of the society. In many places in the US and the middle east, it is practically inviting personal harm to publicly say one is an atheist (there are laws against it in some countries). Christians would deny opportunity or ostracize someone who doesn't believe in a magic fairy man because that is worse than believing in a different version of the fairy (Islam's Allah vs Christianity God/Jesus/Yahweh).
Reality does not back up your claim about how one would keep 'religion' out of a society. The simplest way would be to never teach religion to children. As adults we would have no problem finding the stories ridiculous.
Religion can easily be taught in mythology class.
Last edited:
One would hope so, but I doubt it. I always believed that myself when I was younger, but no more.
I work at a christian school filled with smart educated people.
Many, if not most of them are religious.
It horrifies me, but there it is: Educated, intelligent people believing in an invisible magical being, thinking that having the son of a god tortured and murdered on a cross will wash your sins away with blood. It is an incomprehensible and preposterous belief, but still educated people adhere to it.
In the context of this thread:
If you allow non-atheist views inside your society then you will become a diverse society that is at best secular, but not atheist and certainly not militant atheist.
Or would you then also allow freely the teaching of religious views, allow theists in your government and other key positions etc.?
Or do you discriminate against them and suppress these views? You will need a dictatorship to do so.
OP proposed a pure atheist/militant atheist/anti-theist society inside the Elite universe. This can not be done the way you suggest.
You will need oppression to keep things under control.
I do not disagree. Theism is a terrible thing in my view (although theists very often are great people!).
The gods of the religions of the book are terrible, monstrous, inhumane things.
I keep a close eye on what is going on in the US. It very often makes me shudder with disgust, but there are also wonderful signs of hope.
If it were possible I would welcome a society that is free of superstition, but I do not think it is possible.
How would you enforce such a thing?
Would you take children away from their parents?
In a dictatorship this would be possible.
In a free society you can not control peoples thoughts and beliefs.
You will need to accept the diversity and create a system in which all voices can be freely heard: A secular society.
Last edited:
It's simple. Nobody in an atheist society would see religion as anything but fairy tales and mythology. Just as no christian would seriously believe in a dark underworld ruled by a god separate from the world above, or that there was a god who ruled the ocean, that there were spirits called 'Fates', that half-human/fish hybrids sang songs that lured mariners to their deaths.....But they happily believe in talking snakes and virgin births.
An atheist sees them all as the same thing - humans struggling to understand the unknown and provide a sense of order. Proselytizing the truth of Zeus or Odin would have as much effect in an atheist society as proselytizing the truth of the christian creator god who created sin and then blamed his creation for sinning and drowned most of them, or who ordered the wholesale slaughter of tribes, etc etc.....
Like I said, they would be welcome to try to spread their 'faith' but would otherwise likely be seen as mentally ill and thus not likely to get into any position of authority.
As far as that goes, when most religions talk about creators and orders from their gods they often refer to spirits, voices, or imagery that is nonsense to sane people but makes every bit of sense to someone who is suffering from schizophrenia. Mental illness has existed for thousands of years. No atheist society would feel threatened by religion, but would likely medicate someone who heard voices that ordered them to kill people.
Your comment about a secular society is interesting because the lack of any religion would make it something more than secular. Religion simply wouldn't be an issue or talking point. Nobody would be able to say that an unproven text was the basis of their argument without being laughed at or ridiculed.
An atheist sees them all as the same thing - humans struggling to understand the unknown and provide a sense of order. Proselytizing the truth of Zeus or Odin would have as much effect in an atheist society as proselytizing the truth of the christian creator god who created sin and then blamed his creation for sinning and drowned most of them, or who ordered the wholesale slaughter of tribes, etc etc.....
Like I said, they would be welcome to try to spread their 'faith' but would otherwise likely be seen as mentally ill and thus not likely to get into any position of authority.
As far as that goes, when most religions talk about creators and orders from their gods they often refer to spirits, voices, or imagery that is nonsense to sane people but makes every bit of sense to someone who is suffering from schizophrenia. Mental illness has existed for thousands of years. No atheist society would feel threatened by religion, but would likely medicate someone who heard voices that ordered them to kill people.
Your comment about a secular society is interesting because the lack of any religion would make it something more than secular. Religion simply wouldn't be an issue or talking point. Nobody would be able to say that an unproven text was the basis of their argument without being laughed at or ridiculed.
Last edited:
There is no greater arrogance than proclaiming you, a human simpleton, knows more than anything else--enough to say you know with a shadow of a doubt all the answers. But such is the fate of the self-enlightened fool. We are man. In the thirteen billion or so years this Universe has existed, our walk on this Earth is not even a hair of time. Yet still, there are those who insist they have definite answers--answers that say Man is almighty.
Sheer arrogance.
And at the same time... a proclamation of their own faith. Yes, faith. Those who insist there is no God clutch to a faith of their own--something they themselves cannot prove. Yet they unyieldingly believe it because it must be. It is too inconvenient to believe in an higher power. For if there were one... that would require sacrifice and commitment to the will and direction of someone other than themself. So they have their own faith. They faithfully believe that despite the lack of evidence or methods to prove their belief there is none other than Man, nature and the present.
The Church of Atheism. It should be in mythology class, too.
You nailed it there, brother!
I see you are under the spell of the brainwashing. Sorry about your luck. It is the height of arrogance that this vast universe and everything in it was put here just for little humans.
No theist has ever convincingly proved that any god exists. If there were a hint or even a suggestion of something, science would be all over it. But there isn't, and there is no need for a god. The energy density of the universe is fantastically close to zero. All the negative energy and positive energy adds up to nothing. The universe does not even violate the conservation of the law of energy.
It's pretty common for theists to try to set up a lack of believe in a god as something in opposition to religion. There is simply no rational or sane reason to believe in any god. Have you even read the stories? They are very poorly edited fiction, nothing more.
@mr-blastman... Well stated, rep to you sir. And reinforced with half baked stuff pulled out of the air, peddled as absolute truth but with little or no substance. Rather than a reasoned and rigorous examination of the facts for truth. Its pretty obvious where i stand in this debate so i wont attempt to offend or patronise...
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
This is a difficult enough subject to discuss without personally directed posts..... so please stop that and address points made, not whoever makes them.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't need to prove anything to believe in what I choose. It is a personal choice between me, myself and I. But I at least call it what it is and do not live in denial over it. Atheism /is/ a church and they /do/ proclaim a faith. Science is as likely to prove one or the other. It is a coin toss. And until it does, they are both as much a faith as the other.
The problem is you can not create such an atheist utopia without thought control and oppression.
Humans are simply too diverse. They will never all dance to an atheist tune.
You think of an ideal and take it for granted as if it already is reality. It is not!
I think it can not be realized in reality. Not without oppression, violence and the threat of violence.
You seem to think that everybody will think as you do, if he gets a certain kind of proscribed education.
This already bares the signs of dictatorship.
You already shackle freedom that way as education is a very diverse thing in itself.
Peoples minds are not controllable carbon copies.
They are wildly diverse organic things.
They can not be controlled like that.
Minds wander, minds seek, they find their own truths.. what works for them.
You can not control that.
You can try with oppression and violence.
I can hear myself in your words. I tended to think like that.
Theism seems like madness to me too, but it obviously is more complicated than that.
I know a lot of very nice, smart, functioning and successful theists.
I think excluding them from positions of authority based on their religious beliefs is a dangerous path.
There are many moderate theists who would be excellent rulers, and they would be good for us atheists too.
Declaring people like that mentally ill is what communists dictatorships did in practice.
My brain is split in two on this, because when confronted with christian beliefs for example I very often think "These people are totally bonkers", but at the same time I know it is much more complicated than that.
Last edited:
I don't care if people believe in anything. It sort of irks me that there is this idea that an atheist society would need to be militant or authoritarian - the assumption is that religion is a natural growth in any society regardless of the level of education or whether or not it follows an objective system of morality.
The opposite is true. ALL religious societies have worked very hard to murder dissenting voices and it took several centuries for the light of reason to finally shine through. The enemy of religion is knowledge and they know that.
An atheist society would find it humorous that someone from another star system would try to proselytize. Unless it was something ground-breakingly new (such as Mormonism was in the 19th Century) any atheist society would have already discussed the various mythologies as something that represented a natural growth of humanity from infancy as it struggled to understand the world. Something demonstrably false like Mormonism, which doesn't even have the luxury of known place names or archaeological evidence that proved at least that complex societies existed in the time frames mentioned, would be seen as an oddity not worth the time of day.
@UnKle That's an artifact of our societies being so thoroughly possessed by religion for centuries. The language has evolved to include the concept of a creator.
The opposite is true. ALL religious societies have worked very hard to murder dissenting voices and it took several centuries for the light of reason to finally shine through. The enemy of religion is knowledge and they know that.
An atheist society would find it humorous that someone from another star system would try to proselytize. Unless it was something ground-breakingly new (such as Mormonism was in the 19th Century) any atheist society would have already discussed the various mythologies as something that represented a natural growth of humanity from infancy as it struggled to understand the world. Something demonstrably false like Mormonism, which doesn't even have the luxury of known place names or archaeological evidence that proved at least that complex societies existed in the time frames mentioned, would be seen as an oddity not worth the time of day.
@UnKle That's an artifact of our societies being so thoroughly possessed by religion for centuries. The language has evolved to include the concept of a creator.
Last edited:
And what of immigrants ? Is the planet closed to immigrants and refugees from other planets ? Must immigrants give up any religion they may have had ?
And what of temporarily resident foreigners ? E.g. spacemen who are awaiting a ship to sign on to ?
That would be the case in the atheist faction that was established. But once that faction gained control over a system, how would you impose that thought-process over the general population whilst maintaining democracy and freedom of speech?
What about the cases when a theist proves with his past work that he is a fully capable economist/scientist/engineer? There were studies done comparing atheists and theists and determined using MRI scans that when people talk about god, they use a completely different part of their brain as opposed to when they are solving logic puzzles or doing other intellectual work. They also and found no more than 6 IQ points of difference when taking the tests. That is why many believers are fully capable of using intellect to the highest degree. How would you justify keeping them out of government when all the evidence suggests that their religion is not tied to lack of intellect and mental illness and when they fully agree to follow the rules of secularism? Most atheists that I know, never vote for someone on the basis of their believes but on the basis of their past work. The vast majority of them that I know including myself don't even consider candidate's believes as any kind of deciding factor.
Last edited:
I think you confuse several things.
Atheism is a lack of faith. Not faith.
For a lack of faith one does not need proof. One simply does not believe because one does not have reasons to believe.
What is there to prove? How would you prove that something that at least does not seem to exist, does not exist?
There is nothing to find, because it does not exist. You cannot point at an empty chair and use that as proof.
Instead it would be great if the believer would point at a filled chair and tell us "There he is!".
It will never happen. The gods are forever hiding themselves behind the inscrutable, cryptic words of the faithful.
No it is not inconvenient. There simply is no reason I know off to believe in magical invisible beings like gods.
If you know of such reasons, please tell me.
There is no such church. If there was I would avoid it, because it would become ideology then. And ideology is toxic in any form.
My own atheism is simply a lack of belief in invisible godlike beings with magical powers.
The theist standpoint simply does not seem valid to me.
Last edited:
A quote from The Thin Red Line:
Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?
Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?
- Status