I wouldn't ban religion. Chopping off it's head would just cause more to sprout in its place, as evidenced with the butthurt socks we get around here after a good banning.

Banning alcohol didn't work.

Quote:Technologically speaking we have been at a place where the needs of every man, woman and child could be met. The traditional monetary system is holding us back with the domination of fractional reserve banking, a debt based economy, big business, the military industrial complex, big pharmacy and dependence upon oil etc. I would deal all of these abuses a fatal blow by removing money. Everything would be free and no one would have to slave at a job they didn't want. All of your needs and desires could be met, drug use would be legalized, your energy source would be independent, democracy, religion, politics, and big business would be a thing of the past.

I would have to disagree with your premise here. Without money your technology base  and society would evaporate faster than you can imagine and your Utopia would devolve into the stone age in short order. Money has developed in all known societies for the simple reason in that it fulfills a basic function:- 
Money is a commodity of infinite exchange with no intrinsic value. It is a function of trade and has no meaning outside of that context. 
Without trade there is no agricultural surplus and thus no civilisation. Far from your vision of some sort of drug den of layabouts I see a looming famine.

(April 30, 2015 at 11:50 pm)Jenny A Wrote:

(April 30, 2015 at 10:04 pm)Polaris Wrote: I view that as a very extreme and erroneous view of the 1st Amendment and it violates the 1st Amendment.

But I don't and more importantly the Supreme Court doesn't.

Besides, the question is what I would do as dictator.  The First Amendment is irrelevant to that question.

The Supreme Court upheld Papers Please (if you don't recall, it basically means racial profiling is legal).....they're a farce.

No thought police so no banning of religion. No banning of churches either but they pay taxes unless they are a legitimate charity. If they collect donations, their finances would be public record.

Maybe a law regarding minors in church. Might not be practical though.

(May 5, 2015 at 9:17 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: No thought police so no banning of religion. No banning of churches either but they pay taxes unless they are a legitimate charity. If they collect donations, their finances would be public record.

Maybe a law regarding minors in church. Might not be practical though.

From what I have heard, there is less abuse at Churches than the average. The real issue is about A. the thought that it should never happen (it's an extreme sense of betrayal) and B. because it is never addressed let alone prosecuted.

(April 29, 2015 at 12:13 pm)Salacious B. Crumb Wrote: If you were in charge of establishing a new plot of land that hadn't been colonized yet, based on what you've seen throughout the history of this planet, would you make organized religion illegal?

I wouldn't make it illegal, but I would give religion no special considerations or legal protections, and it would be fully accountable to all laws.

Religious organizations fulfill important needs in our society. There aren't many secular charities willing to feed and shelter the homeless or visit the dying who do not have kin to bury them. Pastoral care can't be provided adequately in a secular setting; one downside of atheism being that most atheists will have to rely on family or personal friends to do the existential duties, especially at the end of life, yet often people must die alone, having outlived their significant others or never having had friends to begin with. Nor should we dismiss the possibility of our needing such care: It's easy while young to think we'll have a trouble-free passage but it almost never goes that way in reality, given the awesome and frightening nature of mortality. I would hold that humans are spiritual beings even if it turns out that there is no god in the universe.

But I think the role of religion in making rules for everyone else to live by needs to end. Religions have no monopoly on moral knowledge. I also dislike the concentration of financial power in opaque religious bureaucracies which seem immune to the kind of accountability we demand of other corporations. Building huge temples and paying your spiritual leaders $1 million a year isn't charity, but the IRS still gives it an unquestioned bye.

In the USA we have systems of disguised religious lawmaking: Seated in the nominally secular statehouses are the indoctrinated politicians, the Sam Brownbacks of a Kansas where the wheat stalks bend to Joseph just like in the Book of Exodus. I don't know how we can get rid of these entanglements, but I don't like them.

If I ruled my own country I'd realize that dictatorship doesn't work and set up a representative democracy with a secular constitution the guaranteed a large amount of freedom for the citizens and then abdicate and move to my mansion filled with sexy brunettes who wear glasses and dress in plaid skirts.

(May 8, 2015 at 2:04 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: If I ruled my own country I'd realize that dictatorship doesn't work and set up a representative democracy with a secular constitution the guaranteed a large amount of freedom for the citizens and then abdicate and move to my mansion filled with sexy brunettes who wear glasses and dress in plaid skirts.

I could work with that.