RE: How to pressure atheism on society
December 1, 2012 at 11:15 am
(This post was last modified: December 1, 2012 at 11:46 am by Creed of Heresy.)
I think Vinny was all-capping his post to show how ludicrous the idea is and to mock people who genuinely think that way, not genuinely putting it forth as genuine conviction. "All-cap-ridicule." I do it myself every so often...but then I end up having to explain it...cuz apparently when I spend my entire time typing like this and then I start going like: MAN I FINALLY SAW THE LIGHT, I TRULY UNDERSTAND IT ALL NOW, JESUS WAS REAL, THE SON OF GOD, AND GOD DOESN'T NEED PROOF BECAUSE GOD IS GOD! HAIL TO THEE O LORD, I SUBMIT MYSELF TO YAHWEH people are like "What?! CoH has converted?! What the fuck!" cuz they can't notice the parody of people who use all-caps [who generally are some of the biggest idiots on the internet].
There, my little explanation.
Or maybe YOU could, and should, since if you knew anything about any of them you'd notice they all had something rather interesting in common; they were all dictators. Imagine that, power-crazed dictators with personalities of force and egos the size of the moon, offing anyone who belongs to a sect that worships someone other than them?? Perish the thought.
Well, except for Mao Zedong who was just plain outright ruthless and a mass-murdering ultranationalist who basically took to the cause of communism with far, far too much zeal. He didn't even kill religious folks; he just killed people who were well-off. Something we might end up seeing here in the states soon if shit keeps going the way it has been going the last couple decades...
Also Hitler was catholic.
Which leaves you with just Pol Pot and Stalin. And Stalin, as I've pointed out, was a man who all but demanded people worship him. Marx is often misquoted for his famous "religion is the opium of the people" remark, taken to meaning that he felt that religion should be eliminated. It WAS Marx's goal, but not through forceful subjugation. To fully quote Marx:
Italicized: He basically was saying that religion is the reaction of people who are discontent and can find no physical way to vent that discontentment and so invent a way for themselves to ease the discontentment.
Bolded: It is a painkiller for the emotional pain humanity suffers from.
Underlined: He is basically stating that in order to remove religion, you need to remove the cause; you need to remove the pain and the inequality of the world.
Lenin, and then later Stalin, basically paraphrased and picked-and-chose what they wanted to hear from Marx. Basically Marx said "ease their burdens and there will be no need for them to believe," and Lenin and Stalin said "we're going to make you stop believing regardless, and in the place of religion, you shall worship the Soviet Union and the Communist Party." They replaced theistic religion with state religion; their god was the USSR, their preachers were the commissariat, and their messiah was the Premier.
You can claim Stalin was an atheist all you'd like. Truth of the matter is, the man was head of a religion that truly could have ended the world in a sea of fire...NUCLEAR fire. One might say the most powerful religion of all time.
And as for Pol Pot, once again, you stretch the definition of "forcing atheism," since his actual stated goal was simply to just outright block any kind of intellectual thoughts outside of servitude to the Khmer Rouge. He banned religions, yes...and schools, and books, and learning, and intellectualism from any source. Any idea that was NOT in line with the communist ideology of the Khmer Rouge [and these guys were the absolute hardest stretch of all to fit into the realm of communism; in name only, in practice not at all] wherein you basically shut the hell up and do what you're told by the party leaders, it was banned.
So yeah. Go back to reading about wolf spirits and dreamcatchers or whatever the fuck it is you do and leave the intellectual points to the grown-ups.
There, my little explanation.
(December 1, 2012 at 6:31 am)Alumacin Wrote: Well you could read up on how Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao did it.
Or maybe YOU could, and should, since if you knew anything about any of them you'd notice they all had something rather interesting in common; they were all dictators. Imagine that, power-crazed dictators with personalities of force and egos the size of the moon, offing anyone who belongs to a sect that worships someone other than them?? Perish the thought.
Well, except for Mao Zedong who was just plain outright ruthless and a mass-murdering ultranationalist who basically took to the cause of communism with far, far too much zeal. He didn't even kill religious folks; he just killed people who were well-off. Something we might end up seeing here in the states soon if shit keeps going the way it has been going the last couple decades...
Also Hitler was catholic.
Which leaves you with just Pol Pot and Stalin. And Stalin, as I've pointed out, was a man who all but demanded people worship him. Marx is often misquoted for his famous "religion is the opium of the people" remark, taken to meaning that he felt that religion should be eliminated. It WAS Marx's goal, but not through forceful subjugation. To fully quote Marx:
Quote:Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
Italicized: He basically was saying that religion is the reaction of people who are discontent and can find no physical way to vent that discontentment and so invent a way for themselves to ease the discontentment.
Bolded: It is a painkiller for the emotional pain humanity suffers from.
Underlined: He is basically stating that in order to remove religion, you need to remove the cause; you need to remove the pain and the inequality of the world.
Lenin, and then later Stalin, basically paraphrased and picked-and-chose what they wanted to hear from Marx. Basically Marx said "ease their burdens and there will be no need for them to believe," and Lenin and Stalin said "we're going to make you stop believing regardless, and in the place of religion, you shall worship the Soviet Union and the Communist Party." They replaced theistic religion with state religion; their god was the USSR, their preachers were the commissariat, and their messiah was the Premier.
You can claim Stalin was an atheist all you'd like. Truth of the matter is, the man was head of a religion that truly could have ended the world in a sea of fire...NUCLEAR fire. One might say the most powerful religion of all time.
And as for Pol Pot, once again, you stretch the definition of "forcing atheism," since his actual stated goal was simply to just outright block any kind of intellectual thoughts outside of servitude to the Khmer Rouge. He banned religions, yes...and schools, and books, and learning, and intellectualism from any source. Any idea that was NOT in line with the communist ideology of the Khmer Rouge [and these guys were the absolute hardest stretch of all to fit into the realm of communism; in name only, in practice not at all] wherein you basically shut the hell up and do what you're told by the party leaders, it was banned.
So yeah. Go back to reading about wolf spirits and dreamcatchers or whatever the fuck it is you do and leave the intellectual points to the grown-ups.
