The unbearable lightness of atheism

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This is how statism and communism are subsets of Atheism.

You can't possible believe that.

Really?. Mussolini was a Catholic and Hitler was a baptised Christian. Stalin trained for the Russian Orthodox priesthood when he was a young man. He probably knew the Bible better than you. As to Statism, Alexander Hamilton was the Statist from Hell and was a Christian (as most of the Founders were).

Charles the First of England was an absolute Monarch (you cannot get more Statist than that) and a staunch Roman Catholic. The Medicis and Borgias who ran their domains with an iron hand were all "good" Catholics.

ruveyn

I said subsets of Athiesm, not that all Atheists are communists or statists. Just that the mentality is there.



Christianity as a faith condemns violence, and just because someone was born into a religious group from their parents, doesn't mean they stay there.

Also how was Alexander Hamilton a statist from hell?

He accompanied President Washington to Pennsylvania with 13,000 Federale Thugs in 1794 to extract the whiskey tax from the good farmers of Pennsylvania. Look up Whiskey Rebellion. Hamilton favored a strong central government, unlike Jefferson who preferred that power reside in the States.

If Washington and Hamilton had their brains blown out during the whiskey rebellion the country would have been much better off.

The country has gone along the lines that Hamilton favored, rather than along Jeffersonian lines.

ruveyn

You may like to look up what the word subset means.

You have no idea of the stuff he believes.


La la la la la *not listening-*

Vexcalibur I know what a subset means and I'm aware of what it means, I'm also aware it is a math term. Looks more like you don't know what subset means which is essentially a set with in a set.

Would you understand the concept of communism and statism being branches of atheism?

thats the thing, they are not.

while atheism is the official religious stance of many comunist and statist countries it is not why they are comunist nor statist.

the official religious stance of denmark is protestantic yet i can easily be an atheist, just like the people, even if "on paper" is atheist, in actually could be wosrhipping their leader, some only by mouth.

Atheists are Commies!!



















Smurfs are also Commies!

And we all know that math is scary for your kind! As you are a man, you are only good at building stuff and working out !



A set within a set is the definition you use when explaining 6 years olds.

When you say X is a subset of Y, it is equivalent to saying that all elements of Y are in X. Since there are communist and statists that were definitely not atheists. Then the fact you are misusing the word subset can be seen from a large distance, during the night.

And the nitpick about the word subset is just the beginning. To claim that statism and communism even intersect with atheism is far-fetched.

.

Atheism can be divided up into different branches like many other religions. Among the branches are Communism and Statism.

Translation:
'I know you better than you know yourself, so start living down to my straw-man image of you so that I can knock you down.'

No dude, I hadn't touched anything. I'm not a frequent internet user anymore (I got lucky work wise, hence my sparse posts on WP), so I figured the blogger had thought light blue on dark blue was a good idea. Being colour blind, I had to highlight the whole thing to read it. And, having done that, I figured if he wasn't fussed enough to make it at least readable in its purest form, then it was probably not that important to anyone. In the words of Brendon Burns, "I don't give that much of a **** about what I think" So you'd have to try pretty hard to convince it was worth considering.

Atheism is not a religion any more than baldness is a hair color. Communism and State-ism are political ideologies that occasionally attack religious institutions as a matter of opportunity or to secure power through hearts and minds that would otherwise be devoted to said institution

Good question, particularly so since that town in Michigan hadn't even been founded by Hamilton's time.

Anyway, as to the article, the author would do better to engage with more atheists. He might discover that, like theists, atheists come in many flavors. Some are more thoughtful than others, some kinder than others, some more combative than others. Some have a problem with religion(s). Others are simply atheist because it makes no sense to them to pretend to believe something they do not.

Okay, I never claimed that religion was the only or best way to promote public health. I’m just pointing out that certain things that might seem irrational at first glance, could actually serve a purpose. I would never claim that religion is a perfect social adaptation—I just get tired of reading post by evangelical atheists who claim it has no social value at all…



Actually, many historical polytheistic societies did make a virtue of pluralism, but they didn’t necessarily sacrifice shared beliefs or rituals. The Persian and Roman Empires were both very tolerant of diverse religious belief AS LONG AS their subjects agreed to worship the “state gods” too.
Roman tolerance served them well in building an empire, and clearly in relation to the Romans, Jewish stubbornness and intolerance invited their first holocaust… However, 2000 years later, there are no Romans, but there is a Jewish state!
Do you really think there would be any modern Jews if they didn’t worship a jealous god?



Look, evolution is messy whether it’s biological or social.

Could religion start as something else and be readapted as a social/political tool (with much needless garbage in tow)?

Absolutely!

Regardless, I still maintain that religion would not be so widespread or persistent if it did not contribute substantially to the success of societies/cultures.






Sure, that could be, and if it is, I’ll be happy to eat my hat.

But remember, just as in biological evolution, in social evolution there can be dead ends.

Species go extinct when they take an evolutionary wrong turn, and societies do too.




Actually, the suppression of racism is a success story for secular social control. Society certainly hasn’t stopped racism, but within a single generation, it has managed to make the informal sanctions against racism so hash and sure that it has driven racism underground. It is not perfect, but it is a good start.

I’m sure society can change the definition of the “different other” when it has sufficient reason to do so.

I’m not sure society can ever eliminate hostility toward those defined as the “different other.” Wolf packs need their omegas as well as their alphas, and human packs do too!


This actually illustrates my point about social solidarity. When a society can agree a thing is wrong, it can do a lot to stop it…


The dysfunction comes when people can’t agree. The weakness of pluralism is that when taken to an extreme, people generally won’t agree on much…

A certain amount of homogeneity is essential for maintaining social functionality and the illusion of freedom…

To quote Edmund Burke again:


For a free society to function, it has to agree on what is wise and what is virtuous.

….it doesn’t have to be right, it just needs to agree and act upon that agreement.