(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 think I would allow organized religion as long as it had no bigotry and evil in its doctrines, (sorry, no islam, christianity, etc etc) and didn't encourage unethical behavior. Please don't ask anyone to define unethical behavior for you. My true feelings tell me to ban it, because it does more harm than good in a society, but at the same time, I'd want people to have the liberty to do so, if they must. I'm about 50 50 on it. What would you guys do?
Oh yeah, and tax them. 40% seem fair?It leaves 60% for god. I hear he's been saving up for his new heavenly mansion by the beach.
It's a difficult question really because besides religion there's so many other bullshit things within societies that I don't see why they shouldn't be banned yet they aren't banned because people use them as sort of a crutch, comfort blanket or mascot that we're just used to having around.
Think about gambling, alcohol, feng shui, new age medicine, psychic mediums, fortune tellers, ghost hunters, and all the rest.
I don't know what the end result in banning religion would be, or the end result in banning any of the other things I previously mentioned. It's been shown that in some societies when you ban alcohol and other drugs, criminal gangs take control of the sales and things turn nasty.
If the plot of land was small and easily manageable with a good way of being economically independent and had no tribes already populating the area that were religious then yeh I'd ban religion and legalize prostitution and some drugs like marijuana and possibly others and have strict immigration laws.
It the land was large, difficult to manage, relied on tourism, trade, immigrant workers from a religious background then I don't think it would be a good idea to ban religion.
If the plot of land was already occupied by religious tribes then I wouldn't want to be responsible for causing a war that might ensue by banning their religion. I think history shows that if you take away peoples alcohol or religion when they have been using alcohol or religion as a crutch for centuries the result is usually pretty bad.
The bottom line whatever the situation was would have to be that any religion in the land would have to abide by the laws imposed on the land, no tax exempt property, no wife beating (unless in self defense), exorcisms, witch burnings, homosexual hangings, killing apostates, female circumcision and so on.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.
