If that was the case we wouldn't have christians running around nowadays. Mainly cultures and empires throughout history have tried to ban some form of religious symbology, but it doesn't ever work, and typically just makes the conflict worse.
Well, Christianity is in a swift decline outside of places where they do have enough power left to enforce social conformity. By my estimate in another 50 years Christianity will be a small niche in many countries along with the other major religions in the global North (is that a thing, basically western doesn't work because of South America).
Which is his point. Christianity is on the decline because society has let those people assimilate on their own. They did not ban Christianity.
Once you start banning or suppressing an ideology, the people will actually strengthen their beliefs because they have no way to assimilate with their beliefs into a society anymore.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we've had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
By forcing Islamic women to wear bikinis and mini-skirts?
If you are against females wearing clothes because you must to see their naked bodies who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? You are claiming to be in favor of female rights by RESTRICTING female rights to wear their desired clothes? And then claiming all women who don't adhere to your ideology are forced to wear those clothes?
Do all western women also wear clothes because society forces them to do so? Should we just ban all clothes to show how much we care about female rights?
Many people see the France as an oppressive society that degrades women and treats them as second class citizens when they force women to remove their headscarves and dresses.
Makes sense. If you really want to fight religion with regulation, ban mosques and churches, ban public religious speeches. It still won't work, but at least it's consequent with your logic.
But banning hijabs and stuff is probably not going to help anyone.
While I agree that this law is dumb, I don't think these clothes are the 'desired clothes' that most women would choose on their own with no outside coercion. Many Islamic women wear these kind of clothes because of the intense pressure put on them to do so from their friends, family, and peers. If they dress differently, they are shunned and shamed.
I will concede that some woman out there would maybe choose to wear that on their own with unlimited choices, but the rest of the world and history has shown that women don't tend to want fully cover themselves from head to toe when given other options, unless it's cold out.
This law will do nothing to help that problem at all, though, and it will probably only act to make that pressure stronger as a pushback. It's not just Islam that does this, either. Many other religious institutions put this pressure on their women.
You should study up on religion and Christianity, we banned plenty of their bullshit practices. The reason Christianity is mostly mild and meek now is because we've had to push it back into a corner. It had to get rid of most of its archaic customs to survive.
This is a highly reductive and a backwards way to view the cause and effect of history.
Who is "we", what era are you talking about, what archaic customs are you talking about? You are speaking about vague generalities and then making claims based on them.
Human progress does not advance because individual governments ban certain types of behavior. It's a byproduct of changes in economics, and government systems. The attitudes and behavior of the church towards its populations was more influenced by technological changes and environment than any sort of government asserting its control.
Islam needs to be beaten just the same way. Making women second class citizens and forcing them to wear beekeeper suits while the man gets to run around in shorts and flip flops is demeaning and unacceptable.
No one is claiming that religion isnt problematic, were just saying that banning iconography or ideologies isn't going to be effective at doing anything but stiring up sectarian violence.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
No one is suggesting the perscution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If people want to adore whatever mythical creature, they can do it a home, but that mythical creature dont get to dictate how others should act.
"No one is suggesting the persecution of anything. And the ban is just for public places. If a man wants to adore another man, they can do it at home, but those homosexuals dont get to dictate how others should act."
You see how problematic this can get with just a few words swapped? It's almost like it's difficult to police other people's beliefs, and once you do it kinda leaves the door open for others people with other beliefs to do the same...
Being homosexual is not a belief, we exist, and so we deserve rights
Right, but laws aren't based on reality. They are based on what people believe is reality.
I whole heartedly agree that homosexuality isn't a belief, and that they deserve rights....... But there are plenty of people who don't, and those people have the ability to pass laws.
If progressive people started policing metaphysical ideas like religion, conservatives are going to start policing things based on their metaphysical understanding of their shared reality.
Just because something isn't real doesn't mean you can't legislate it to be legally true. America has a long history of basing laws on nothing but hate and fear mongering.
But they don't do that. They don't leave religion with their beliefs. If anything the vast majority still in the religion on paper doesn't even have those beliefs any more.
it's not a ban or persecution though, if anything it's a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
anything it's a protection for everyone and mainly the separation of state and church, you are allowed to do your religion but not in the government buildings
You do realize that banning a religion is the state inserting itself into religion, right?
The separation of church and state goes both ways. The church is not to influence the state and the state is not to influence the church. You are allowed to practice religious expression in a state building, but the state cannot demand that you do so, or regulate which religion you express.
If you define schools and other essential public facilities as "government buildings" you are not separating the state from the church, you are separating the civilians from the church.
Can you have sex in front of class in schools? Not legally? Huh, that's oppressive. People should be allowed to have threesomes during parliament.
The argument is silly when you apply it to other things, but religion, oh that's different. As if wearing religion-mandated clothing somehow deserves more protection than e.g. the ability for people to be nude.
schools are government buildings as long as they are funded and/or owned by the government... I mean you are religious so maybe I don't have to ask, but do you live in some kind of delusion land where that's not the definition?
You are ignoring his point..... The whole point of separating Church and state is to both protect the government from the influence of the church, but also to prevent the government from controlling your freedom of expression.
People are allowed to express their religious beliefs so long as it does not inhibit others from expressing their own beliefs.
You don't have to be religious to understand the consequences of giving the government the ability to police self expression. If we made rulings that handed power over expression to the government, you honestly think conservatives wouldn't utilize that when they eventually came to power?
you last argument idls that of a slippery slope which is almost exclusively a fallacy.
as for your first, keyword is, inhibit, do you categorize feeling uncomfortable as inhibiting someone's rights for example?
let's say I am a lone satanist, working at a government building, I am fetting judgy looks all day by Christian coworkers wearing crosses and it drives me away from the job, isn't thst inhibiting me?
let's say I am a public facing worker, couldn't me displaying my satanist symbols be inhibiting the public looking for whatever government service?
isn't it easier and better for everybody involved to leave that shit at home and keep the workplace free from all that?
Right, but that's more from people recognizing the internal contradictions within the religion. Not because we don't have as much iconography around as op suggested.
Honestly, I think it is mostly that the majority of people don't care (and never did) and the people who do care lost the ability to push everyone who doesn't care into it with social pressure.
I think you are right, it mostly has to do with education and access to knowledge. Just about every human today has access to all of the world's knowledge through the internet. It makes it pretty difficult to avoid seeing those contradictions, even if you actively try to.
It will reduce prejudice in one form: looks and clothing. The sooner we come together as a species, the greater we progress and bring fundamental changes in everything we care as a species.
"unify as a species" aka "only unify under my belief, Athiesm". That's what Islamists thought and so did the crusaders. How is your belief any more important?
Create an experiment where you have a different prediction whether god exists or does not exist, then do the experiment to see whether god exists. If you can't create a situation where the existence of god has a different outcome than the nonexistence, then you have no evidence at all.
as Ricky Gervais put it the difference between a Christian or Muslim and an Atheist is to believe in exactly one less god than them, there are over 2000 gods believed in by various people, Christians don't believe in any of them, Atheists don't believe in any of them +1
You clearly misunderstand what it is to be an atheist. The whole point is to question it. As new evidence (yes, it's based on evidence) surfaces, we change our "beliefs" accordingly.
Atheism is not belief in the big bang, atheism is belief in whatever scientific theory is currently best supported by evidence.
Atheism means that you say you are 100% certain there is no god. A-Theism. It's the word.
The problem is that there is still no clear evidence for the origins for time and the universe. You cannot start claiming god doesn't exist without having clear evidence for it
You say that, but you're alive. So I'm assuming that you do somewhat appreciate being alive since you haven't unalived yourself. You might even think it's pretty neat.
That God is the reason for my/your/our/Our existence, seems clear enough, you can refer to Aristotle or pretty much any other theologian on this topic.
See, believing in God was never irrational after all, you were just brainwashed by modernity(, on this topic as well).
Also, God is the Greatest being, by definition(, see St.Anselm ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ), so S..He is also my/(y)our/Our/the Guide/Example/Light(house)/..
They didn't say everything is superfluous, they said God is. You're conflating "God" with "everything", but understand that is far from a universal understanding of how the universe works. If you're not sure how the other person feels about this you need to ask instead of assuming they share the same definitions you do.
Well if you insist on pedantry, "atheism" doesn't mean a belief that gods don't exist, it's a lack of belief in gods. Think "asexual": it's not an aversion to sex, just a lack of sex drive. You are describing antitheism, and many self-described atheists are actually antitheists.
You cannot start claiming god doesn’t exist without having clear evidence for it
Incorrect, you are the one with the spectacular claim and the burden of proof lies on you. Prove that gods exist.
A person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
This entire comment chain is focused on banning religion and being 100% certain that god doesn't exist.
If you want to ban religion and claim god doesn't exist then the burden of evidence to disprove god lies with you. But you can start by creating something from nothing or reversing time.
Everybody (except some religious people) are agnostic about most things. That's why phenomema like gravity or electromagnetism are explained by "theories". God isn't even a theory in that sense.
It's scientifically close to impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Even green elephants.
As for time and space... I don't see the slightest evidence of "god did it". For me, the chance of finding a green Elephant seems way higher. Because it seems at least possible.
Green elephants are not a requirement for our existence.
The beginning of space and time are.
For that something outside of space-time must exist that created space-time.
Unless you are denying that we exist I am asking you to present another possible way that our universe has been created. Because according to thermodynamics energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet our universe does seem to contain energy so where did the energy come from? If you say energy can come out of nothing you're disagreeing with everything we know about physics.
Disagreeing with our current understanding of physics is certainly a take.
i'm not disagreeing, i'm reiterating that scientific knowledge changes according to evidence. unlike other belief systems, like religion. i'm agnostic, i believe that we can't know for sure god exists with our current knowledge of reality, but i also believe if god existed he would talk to everyone the same, and he hasn't spoken to me yet, so organized religion is bullshit, in my humble opinion.
That's the entire point of God. An eternal and all powerful creator that is not bound by space nor time. Without beginning and without end.
Unless we find a scientific explanation for problems such as 'an infinite past can never reach the present", or energy coming out of nothing, straight up denying the possibility of the existence of God seems like premature celebration.
I dare you to present your idea of God, as the creator of the big bang and absent since then, to any member of a current religious group. You are moving goalposts pretty far and if you really want to argue about such an absent universe-starter god, then what's really the point?
Unless we find a scientific explanation for problems such as 'an infinite past can never reach the present", or energy coming out of nothing, straight up denying the possibility of the existence of God seems like premature celebration.
Why do you need a scientific explanation for that, but you don't need a scientific explanation for "an eternal and all powerful creator that is not bound by space or time"? Sounds like you're just replacing what you believe to be an* unprovable claim with your own unprovable claim, which just seems like a huge cop out.
Btw, there are tons of hypotheses on how the universe started "from nothing", including
It didn't, our big bang was the result of a previous universe collapsing
the universe was all dark matter, then some yet-to-be discovered reaction started converting the dark matter to "normal" matter
Reactions between matter and anti-matter created the energy needed for the big bang
The point though, is that your base premise is just wrong. Science doesn't say that the universe started "from nothing", it says "we don't know exactly how the universe started, but we're trying to figure it out".
Except wars were waged for political reasons, not religious ones(, some civil wars excepted).
And good actions were quite often done for religious reasons, which is why rejecting religions was(is) seen as rejecting the call for virtue, and to God.
You can have technologies or not, be in a communist/royalist/democrat/'("anarcho"-)capitalist'/republican/.. state or not, it's not enough to live in paradise, you'll still find assholes, an environment including religions will( also) be made to improve ourselves. Not saying it didn't failed there as well, since people in the past weren't always "christians", it only means it isn't enough by itself for 100% of the population, not that it isn't the way forward.
Downvote me all you want, i.d.c., but argue before doing so if you ever have time to learn by a mutual debate.
here is my argument, most of my friends are some flavor of christian, and christening's are happening to their kids, if I suggested to them that their kids should be brought up rhe islam way, taught about it from the start etc, they would think I am trying to brainwash their kids, but ofc doing the same with Christianity is not brainwashing, it's normal. as someone who was completely isolated from religious brainwashing I don't think someone like you who I assume wasn't can ever comprehend how fucked up religion looks from the outside, no different from any other cult.
Funny because i don't think you understand my point of view either, especially if you're equating all christians with literalists, if you read the Bible you'll be forced to interpret it allegorically, which is why being raised in a nonreligious environment doesn't prevent from having misconceptions either.