State atheism

[Gabriel Syme]

I wanted to know if you would be in favor towards a state atheism. Not a state atheism as did the Soviets (physical elimination of people), but a state atheism where there is the physical elimination of most places of worship, the conversion of these places in places and really useful, especially the confiscation of property and money of all religious movements in the world.

Do you think that if one uses the heritage of the Catholic Church for only a year, we would be able to send into space rover like, Curiosity once every 2 weeks.

What do you think?

Its a terrible idea all round, my man!

My main problems with it:

1) You would unfairly besmirch most atheists reputation

By advocating the state adopt a single stance above all others, and then pursuing a policy of oppressing human rights and state theft, you would portray atheism as intolerant, immoral and hypocritical (the latter because presumably you would be against a theocracy, but are pro the same conditions for atheism).

I think atheists are likely to be overwhelmingly decent people, so most probably the majority of them would oppose such policies. (although I have noticed some of them are easily swayed lol).

2) You would end up killing lots of people

Although you say you don't want to kill people, you would inevitably just create the next mass-murdering USSR / North Korea / whatever. This is because you would naturally encounter resistance to your plans, hell, someone might even fire a gun.

Ultimately, the only possible outcomes for this situation would be to either back down or murder those who opposed you.

3) You would create a major humanitarian disaster

By depriving religious organisations from functioning, you would in a stroke remove the education, healthcare and aid which 100s of millions of people depend on from religious groups.

For example, the Catholic Church alone provides 26% of the world total healthcare provision, is the largest non-governmental educational body in the world and spends approx. $2 billion on aid and development per year.

4) You would concentrate most wealth, and human heritage (buildings and art) in the hands of a small wealthy elite

As happened in the protestant reformation and French revolution, when this "steal the Churchs stuff and sell it" ploy was tried before. What happens is that a few very wealthy/powerful people hoover all the stuff up and most people get nothing.

---

Banning religion would be taken away their freedom of expression.

Banning religion would be in direct contravention of the charter of universal human rights.