Topic: Why Government Likes Atheism (Read 1554 times)

I like how you revised the definition of Atheism so that it appeared to support your argument. Should I just call you Webster from now on since you are writing the dictionary for us? BTW that is another ad hominem attack (an actual fallacy).

You have not produced empirical evidence to demonstrate God does not exist, therefore your conclusions are based upon faith in the unknown, just like any other religion.



Speaking of lies, you have previously claimed "Athesim is still based on evidences". Please produce it. Additionally when you assume, you make an ass out of u. Now we are measuring the power of religion by the number of them rather than their influence over the population? If I invent 10,000 religions tonight do they count?

I am not "looking only at communist/dictatorships of which the power is entitled to a very limited few".

You made a claim that

"Atheism is not. Controlling the population" and  

"you cannot say,"Any time a government has tried to remove that foundation, it has demonstrated to have catastrophic consequences. ", because you're giving a effect without a cause. There hasn't been any sufficient amount of governments, if any besides the current communist ones, in history that have done such a thing. Please stop creating logical fallacies."

You admit that some of the current communist countries fit this description, yet at the same time deny that such a state ever existed. Then when I produce an example of such a state you claim I am focusing only on those states, produce red herring arguments about polytheism (another actual fallacy), and take the liberty to redefine dictionary definitions to fit your arguments. I am not giving effect without cause. I explained the cause. The government seeks to displace the role of religion UNDER THE GUISE of secular rule. It has all of the same hallmarks and exploitable weaknesses of religion, it is just in different wrapping paper. This adds even ANOTHER layer of deception and confusion, in addition to stripping the law of the benefits described above.

"Stalin's government had all the trappings of religion, including Orwell's totalitarian theocracy, and thus it's merely a play on words to say that it was not religious."

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4076



I am not selectively choosing anything. You admit that some of the current communist countries fit this description, yet at the same time deny that such a state ever existed. Then when I produce an example of such a state you claim I am focusing only on those states. Then you proceed to just summarily exclude the communist states because some how they don't count. Who is cherry picking here me or you? I don't think you are sure any more. BTW, that was, yet again, another ad hominem attack (an actual fallacy).

Because atheists don't know for a fact that "nothing" exists, atheism is simply a belief that "nothing" exists. The closest that anybody can come to not believing is to be dead. And then it is the dead person that does not exist.

This is why faith is important for life. In addition, it is the reason that any living atheist is a liar, lying to himself so convincingly that he can't even start to see that he only believes whatever he believes, at least until his beliefs don't pan out the way he believed.

There is one way that an atheist can be truthful about his atheism, and it is sort of abstract. Once the atheist is dead, others can say, "Now he finally doesn't believe anything, even the stuff he touted about atheism while he was alive. So, perhaps he is finally an atheist."

First:

a·the·ism
ˈāTHēˌizəm/Submit
noun
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Atheism is lack-of belief i.e Nothing. Therefore, Atheism cannot be counted as a belief in something, if there's nothing to believe in. The amount of stupidity you display is astounding.


Second:


You claimed, "only that the monotheistic religious structure seems to have the most influence and control over the general population currently. ", so it would do you well to not lie. Your previous posts spoke generally about religion, not type of, therefore I had to only assume you meant religion generally, of which there have been far more Polytheistic religions throughout history.

Third:

"What is a "sufficient amount of governments"? You yourself note this reality exists and are simply adding a qualifier so you do not have to concede the point. I think this article says it best:"

So wait, you're looking only at communist/dictatorships of which the power is entitled to a very limited few, adding on the premise that they neglected religion, and then coming to the conclusion that not including God in the law would result in "catastrophe". Are you joking? The problem wasn't the exclusion of "god", it was the communism/dictatorships themselves. Please, if this is the bullshit you're going to write to me, just stop.



" I don't think you could ever successfully argue that communism in Russia and China among other places, or Nazi Germany were not supporters of Atheism, or that a genocidal Atheist regime has never existed. "

Notice how I was coming from a Historical standpoint. You're selectively choosing communist/dictatorships and claiming that them removing god from law is what led to their "catastrophic" demise. Guess what, it has nothing to do with god, it was the governments themselves.


You need to get your high school teacher to read over your words before posting here again. Seriously.

Lol. I had noticed that as well. I seem to be a topic killer.

One bad thing about responding to stupid people too well is, then they don't have any answers, and an important topic dies. TECSHARE, don't be so accurate in your responses. The stupid people give up when you do that. I found this topic 2/3s of the way down page 1. By tomorrow, it would have been gone!

 

I never said most religions were monotheistic, only that the monotheistic religious structure seems to have the most influence and control over the general population currently. My very argument is law has always been based on God, I am not sure why you claim I am arguing the opposite. I think you have forgotten what you were arguing about and just arguing for the sake of it. Again, I used Christianity as an EXAMPLE, I never claimed it was "the only religion on Earth." Those are your words not mine. Religion HAS been used to justify every atrocious act imaginable, I never denied it was abused, just like every other belief system in existence can be abused to do the same. Anything based on beliefs and not empirical data is vulnerable to manipulation. This includes Atheism.



What is a "sufficient amount of governments"? You yourself note this reality exists and are simply adding a qualifier so you do not have to concede the point. I think this article says it best:

"So who has been the worst throughout history: atheist regimes or religious regimes? Obviously the big numbers come from the 20th century superpowers (China, Russia, Germany) so the answer depends on how you classify those. And this is where the meat of these debates is usually found, splitting hairs on which regime is atheist, which is merely secular, which is non-Christian and thus fair game to be called atheist. Hitchens points out that Stalin's government had all the trappings of religion, including Orwell's totalitarian theocracy, and thus it's merely a play on words to say that it was not religious. Pol Pot was raised a Buddhist monk who grew up to execute Buddhist monks, along with anyone else he could lay his hands on. Whole books have been written on the occult underpinnings of Nazi Germany, the symbology of the Norse gods, to say nothing of the claims that Hitler was a Christian, Hitler was a Jew, and his own writings expressing the kinship he felt with the Muslims."

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4076

So we have Communist China, Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, and they were all very clearly anti religion, because they themselves sought to occupy that role only under the guise of a secular government. There are a lot more, but they are debatable endlessly from either standpoint like the article says.

Trying to remove God from law is equivalent to trying to remove God from society, because law and society are not independent. Any type of extremism Atheist or Theist will result in catastrophe. You use the word "fallacy" a lot, but I don't think you really understand what it means.  I do, however, and you are clearly engaging in ad hominem personal attacks (which is an actual fallacy if you didn't guess).

Here is a handy reference for educational purposes: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem


Atheism is NOT the absence of belief. That is not what the dictionary definition said:

"a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheist

Positive beliefs, and negative beliefs are still beliefs. If I say I believe the moon is made of cheese, and you say you believe the moon is not made of cheese, we are both operating solely by beliefs. Fortunately we can prove that the moon is not made of cheese by using empirical data. Can you prove there is no God using empirical data? No? Then you are operating under a belief. I never claimed God existed. I do however claim that I have no evidence one way or the other, and neither do you. You claim Atheism is backed by evidence, fine, produce the evidence and stop talking about it. Until then you are simply making claims you can not back up, and are therefore operating under faith of your own belief system.


Your argument about polytheism is a red herring (another actual fallacy) which I already replied to above. In response to the bold part above, this is a pretty bold faced lie. I don't think you could ever successfully argue that communism in Russia and China among other places, or Nazi Germany were not supporters of Atheism, or that a genocidal Atheist regime has never existed.

“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”  -George Orwell

Totalitarian states do not like religion, because it is competition for the faith of the masses, and therefore must be exterminated in order to strengthen the hold of the totalitarian state. They simply operate under the GUISE of secular government just as religious extremists operate under the guise of religion. In both instances they are both belief systems being sold to you. I never argued the existence of God, only that law is based on God, and that this structure has real world demonstrable benefits as described above regardless of your own personal beliefs.

Once again, you claim you have empirical data to support the Atheist premise that there is no God. Please produce it.

Most religions throughout the world in history have been Polytheistic, therefore saying "law has not been based on God for thousands of years" is a very limited perspective, Christianity is not the only religion on Earth. Religion has been used to justify every atrocious act imaginable, again, go read a history textbook.

You cannot say,"Any time a government has tried to remove that foundation, it has demonstrated to have catastrophic consequences. ", because you're giving a effect without a cause. There hasn't been any sufficient amount of governments, if any besides the current communist ones, in history that have done such a thing. Please stop creating logical fallacies.

Again, this is basic stuff. Atheism is absence of belief or disbelief, Religion is a set of beliefs. Therefore, Atheists have to prove nothing for they do not believe in God, therefore proving a non-existential entity is illogical. It's the Theists that have to prove that god exists(Which we know is impossible scientifically). So for the millionth time, Atheism is backed by evidence, Religion purely by faith.

You're almost as dumb as BADecker, a little more interesting, but in the same league.

Here's a jewel post of yours:

"Government has sought to fill this role since governments existed", from the pharaohs to the monarchs to the emperors, they have used claimed to be chosen or even reincarnations of God(s). All of them were Theists, none Atheist. So you're entirely wrong.

"I have, in the past on this forum described how and why God is inseparably linked with law, back to its very beginnings until the modern day", you really need to go read a history textbook TECSHARE. As I've said, there has been far more Polytheistic religions than Monotheistic ones, and in many of those Polytheistic religions ranging from the ones in Egypt, to China, to Japan, the religious leaders have set themselves up above the ordinary people, with some even claiming to be gods themselves. None of them were Atheist or accepted Athesim.

You are wrong....on everything.

P.S. I'm not Atheist, but I sure as hell understand why a lot of people are, especially when there are such dumb Theists like yourself and BADecker hanging around.

Yep, you are right... I spent 4 years building up this account just so I could argue with you twice as much. You got me. You have a lot of gall lecturing me on history when you don't even bother to check the relevance of your own comments. My comment was a direct response to Mayflor2's premise that religion is required for social control and creating fear. That is some nice out of context cherry picking you are doing there.

As far as your assertions that I don't know history, maybe you should check the validity of your own premises before replying.
Yes Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion... after persecuting the Christians for a few generations. Yes, they had gods and goddesses before then, but that became less and less important as the empire became large and bloated. When people talk about religion as a tool of social control, I have yet to hear anyone reference ancient polytheism. Additionally by its very nature polytheism is inclusive because it panders to many different belief systems. It was nothing compared to the monolithic control modern organized religions exert over people today. You seem to be confusing my resistance to erasing all references of God in law with support of organized religion in general. In reality I support the concept, not the centralized institutions.

Again you claim Atheism is not based on faith, but you have yet to provide me with the empirical scientific data that demonstrates there is no God. Your premise fails under your own rubric. I have more respect for Agnostics, at least they have the sense to say they don't know for sure. Atheists pretend like there are a series of a peer reviewed studies proving the absence of any deity. Since you brought up the dictionary lets define the words Atheist and Agnostic.


"a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. "
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agnostic


"a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheist

Unless you can provide empirical scientific data demonstrating there is no God, then your conclusions are based on FAITH, not fact. Therefore your belief system is essentially indistinguishable from any other religious beliefs by your own standards.

Like it or not law has been based on God for thousands of years, and continues to be based on God today. Why wouldn't a government want to completely control the basis of all law to its liking? After all, government is just made up of people, people with their own agendas and goals. If there is no concept of an astral mommy or daddy figure to put limits on people, they find ways to justify anything, and no one resists because there is no longer any authority perceived to be above the government. I liken it to how people act differently when they know they are on camera. They feel like someone is observing them even if it might not be true, therefore they exert more control over their destructive impulses. You can make arguments about morals until you are blue in the face, but morals are largely subjective and are not officially codified in any way. The legal system however is a code ultimately based on God. Any time a government has tried to remove that foundation, it has demonstrated to have catastrophic consequences.

There is nothing at all wrong with you for being smart. Smart is the thing that people should be. It is when you use your thinking ability to hide things from yourself so that you can emphasize other things of lesser importance, that your smartness starts to fade. For example...

Set all of the highly complex scientific findings and theories aside for a moment. Set them aside because they are complex enough that they tend to mix clear, commonsense thinking up a bit. Then look at a couple of commonsense, standard things.

Look at the universe around you. In all things you see entropy. You see things wearing out, breaking down, eroding, etc.  Even the things that are new and fresh and full of energy, take their freshness and newness off some other things that are breaking down and wearing out. Entropy is one of the common happenings that science has understood for ages. It's everywhere.

Nobody has found a reason for the existence of all things in the face of entropy. Even if there had been a Big Bang (which is only really a guesswork theory), by the way that things work regarding the overwhelming entropy, something else would have had to have been breaking down for the Big Bang to have newly happened when it did.

We simply have nothing but patchwork, guesswork thinking regarding where things came from, scientifically speaking, that is.

Yet most of the universe is so complex that that there is absolutely no way it could exist in the face of the abundant entropy.

The universe is so complex that after hundreds of years of scientific study, we still can't extend the life of people to 120 years. Such complexity can't happen in the face of all-encompassing entropy that we see around us. Yet the complexity is here. And all this has to do with the simple complexity of matter and energy. Then there are the far more complex things of the thinking mind.

Because of the all pervading entropy that exists right along side the ultra-complexity, it is utterly impossible in our thinking for any of the things of the universe to have an existence, except that they do exist. We don't have more than a tiny clue as to how, and we are not even sure of the clue that we DO have, or there wouldn't be people arguing about it.

Whatever produced this complex universe in the face of all the entropy, matches the dictionary definition of the word "God." Take a look, again, at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10718395. This post is just the start of things that are evidences for the existence of God.

Even if science comes to find the answer scientifically, the answer will be so great that it will NOT be understandable, and therefore will be God.

Rome adopted Christianity as the official religion. Prior to that they believed in gods/goddesses akin to Ancient Greece. Do you not know ancient history or are you attempting to lie here?

The difference between Athesim and Thesim is that Athesim is still based on evidences. Theism is entirely and utterly faith based. Also, I'm not atheist, but I'm starting to believe you're a sockpuppet account of BADecker. Atheism, for the millionth time, is not a religion by definition. Open up your nearest dictionary and Please read it.

I'm sorry but your points are just wrong, and I don't have to time to get into them in detail as of right now. Go to your nearest college and study, please and thank you.

They are not failing, they are stronger than ever as far as west is concerned. The thing is, that authority of God can and should be recognized by state as kind of competition, we are living in age where wordly authorities (outside of third world) no longer claim, that their rights were given to them by God. So the words "people" and "common good" were resurrected.

The state represent both people and common good, social buraeu is the church, the state is your God. That is the western dogma of today.

At times this is completely true. But at other times it is not. Governments, when they are small, are usually there to protect or organize the people who formed them. They aren't there to plunder the people until they get much larger.

Regarding religion, most of the time the leaders of the individual parishes or temples are there to help the people of their congregation. Sure, there are some crooks among them. But there are many sincere church leaders as well.

Everything you said about religion here can be used also for any world government
So, what is difference?
It seems nothing.
Any organization, either church, state, company etc. want to control its people, based on own doctrine, company policy, religion doctrine, nationalism etc.
It's just question if people accept it or not.
If not, we see revolution in many undemocratic countries or other party wins in elections in democratic world.
In the case of religion, people simple left church.
In the case of company or corporation, people always have choice to choose some other company.
So, to answer your question, government first like itself, like power and like to control people.
Religion also, so because of this it's natural that they can't like each other.

And your point is? They are still both belief systems capable of being used to manipulate masses of people. Additionally atheism is equally based on faith as theism. You don't think so? Then if it is not based on faith, prove to me God doesn't exist. I would like to see your scientific evidence for the nonexistence of God. So yeah, your belief system is not any better sorry.

Additionally your last statement has no logical explanation or reasoning behind it, you just make a declarative statement as if it is fact without any supporting evidence. You claim "it can be seen", but how? If you can't even be bothered to describe it, why should I believe you have any evidence to support your argument? This is just lazy man's arguing, you aren't even trying. I never denied religion can be used to control people. I did however say atheism can also be used to control people too, just like any other belief system. Sorry buddy but your belief system is nothing more than the religion of Godlessness.




Now you are just arguing the semantics of how God is defined. Buddhists do believe in God, as you said, just not in the sense that most monotheistic religions do. The importance is the recognition of something ABOVE ones self and above the state that can not be interfered with. Additionally I never said there can be no law without God, only that all law is BASED ON God. Your argument about Buddhists is irrelevant. BTW love the anti-American cherry on top. Just because I used the US as an example means I think "the US is the only nation in the world" and I "don't have access to a globe or a plane ticket". That is a cute little red herring you have there. Hating on the US is the cool thing lately I guess, gotta pander to those easily confused masses.



You are right. Historical figures such as Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin totally did not try to stomp out religion and try make the government the only authority figure. They Romans didn't burn Christians either

Religion is not required for social control or to create fear. Open a history book before you open your mouth.

Well ISIS is made by intelligence agencies (basically the leaders of ISIS) then they recruit extremists don't know anything about their religion (most of them converted recently to the religion and not arabs)
I'am a Muslim and I know what they are doing have nothing to do with Islam . It's really that simple

Maybe government in 2015 does.   That has not been the case throughout history.    Religion has notoriously been used for social control and social order.    Especially during roman times, but even more recently used in the rise and falls of Islamic governments throughout the middle east.   Fear motivates.

Go find your nearest American history textbook and open it up. Do Buddhists treat each other without rights, yet they don't have a "god" in the same sense as the Abrahamic religions? No, they're one of the most peaceful religions to date.

The assumptions you make are so stupid and illogical, it puts you in the same league as BADecker.

Hint: The United States is not the only nation in the world, in case you don't have access to a globe or an airplane ticket.

Except that religions are belief systems based on faith, not evidence. Even if they claim to have evidence it's all subjective A Priori. Atheism is not. Controlling the population via Religion is much easier by governments and actions can be seen as directed by god, than otherwise as has been demonstrated by 90% of governments from the Egyptian Pharaohs to the Chinese Emperors.

Any belief system can be manipulated to control the populace, even atheism. That by no means negates the value of all belief systems just because they can be exploited.

You're joking right? It's the exact opposite. Tell that to ISIS and other radical religious states (They love religion as it's an excuse for immoral behavior, ever heard the saying that Religion turns good men bad...).