Atheists Agonistes

[Elok]

Way to oversimplify, Impaler. I didn't say that beliefs have nothing to do with behavior, only that in the case of really nasty and inhuman behavior, e.g. burning at the stake or torture, which have unfortunately been committed by people of all ideological stripes (perhaps not Buddhism, idunno)--those have nothing to do with the nature of the individual ideology. It's more having an ideology at all that induces such behavior under certain circumstances, and humans can't live without believing anything at all afaict. Even nihilism is a sort of belief.

[Dr Strangelove]

You know, we could re-iterate the dismal record of atheist governments. You know who I mean - Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Kim Il-Jong, etc., etc. Someone will retort that Communism was a religion. My reply will be, no, but each had its own example of extreme hero worship. No one but no one ever stated that any of "the great leaders" created the universe, so Communism was not a religion in the western sense.
Someone else might hold up the EU as a shining example of non-religious government, to which I will reply - wait a go Dutch Christian Socialists!

Remember that groups of people commit violence on behalf of nationality, ethnicity, political philosophy, economic interests, criminal pursuits, and even sports. Are we going to ban those too. Wheeeeeee! I forsee a massive civil war to overthrow the suffocating control of Big Brother.

Why is it that all atheists ultimately become totalitarians?

[Arrian]

Why is it that all atheists ultimately become totalitarians?

Ooh, good one. The power of the unicorn compels me to respond.

I don't think the atheist regimes that have gone that way were totalitarian b/c of their atheism, but rather because of their communism. There have been totalitarian theocracies throughout history.

Another possibility is that atheism has (AFAIK) never been the position of the majority of the population in any nation. Not even close. So, if your regime is explicity atheist (as opposed to secular), it will be in conflict with the majority religious belief. The only way to "win" that conflict is repression and "re-education."

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

You guys (Proteus et al) know that there has been groups of Christians/religious who have attacked evolution for all of evolution's existence?

JM

[Arrian]

Um, yeah, of course. It conflicted with their religious beliefs. Many (most, at this point) religious folks managed to accept evolution and also keep their faith. But others could not.

-Arrian

[Proteus_MST]

Yep.
Although the groups always existed it was only in maybe the last 10-15 years that they became a problem.
Before this time (at least AFAIK) they normally either kept rather quiet (and mostly talked about Creation only among themselves) or they were rather unsuccessful in their attempts to force their belief onto others (i.e. by forcing schools to bring Creation/ID into the scientific education [or forcing them not to teach evolution]).

But during the last 10-15 years it seems to me that more and more of these fundamentalists come out of their hiding places and are also successful in trying to convince others (who mostly don´t have the intellectual background to really understand most parts of the TOE) that Creationism/ID is right and Evolution is wrong (as well as they are successful in certain states to convince the school boards that ID should be taught alongside Evolution)

[Arrian]

Que? The battle in the beginning was worse than now. Then evolution seemed to have won, and now the creationists (oh, sorry, "intelligent design") have made a small comeback.

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Yep.
Although the groups always existed it was only in maybe the last 10-15 years that they became a problem.
Before this time (at least AFAIK) they normally either kept rather quiet (and mostly talked about Creation only among themselves) or they were rather unsuccessful in their attempts to force their belief onto others (i.e. by forcing schools to bring Creation/ID into the scientific education [or forcing them not to teach evolution]).

But during the last 10-15 years it seems to me that more and more of these fundamentalists come out of their hiding places and are also successful in trying to convince others (who mostly don´t have the intellectual background to really understand most parts of the TOE) that Creationism/ID is right and Evolution is wrong (as well as they are successful in certain states to convince the school boards that ID should be taught alongside Evolution)

You don't know much about conservative areas, do you?

This issue is that the areas that use to just have a whitewashing of evolution are now being taught the real deal. And are rebeling against that.

JM

[Jon Miller]

If you recall, one of the stories put here on that debate was about a teacher getting in trouble for teaching evolution. So you say that "now she is getting in trouble, she didn't use to before".

The truth is that she didn't teach evolution before. She just decided to now (at the end of her career) because of the changing climate.

When you didn't hear anything, it wasn't because evolution was being taught as fact in these places.

JM

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


You don't know much about conservative areas, do you?

This issue is that the areas that use to just have a whitewashing of evolution are now being taught the real deal. And are rebeling against that.

JM

Not really.
In germany the opponents of evolution never have been very successful/active, therefore I have no first hand experience about this.

I could/can only conclude such things by the articles I read about the situation in america.
And this left the impression that there was some kind of peaceful coexistence of creationism and evolution during the 70s/80s with scientific curricula being the realm for evolutionists and the theological courses the realm of the creationists and that only during the 90s the creationists began to get more aggressive.

Sounds like the impression was false.

[Arrian]

The creationists here just laid low for a while. They've come out of the woodwork recently, but they've always been there.

-Arrian