Hey look at China

[dyresand]

Please not i am for freedom of religion but.. in this case i am proud of what China is doing by pretty much removing 
the christian church. Again i am for freedom of religion but they know how much problems christianity can cause.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/....html?_r=0

[Regina]

Defacing churches is not "freedom of religion", but it's not going to stop Christians from being Christian either. The only outcome will be pissed off Christians.

If they want to mitigate the spread and influence of Christianity in China, they'd do better to make public proselytisation illegal and ban faith schools, and I would applaud and support that move in any country. Destroying peoples' places of worship (even if it's just removing the symbolism from the buildings) is taking things too far. That's violence.

[account_inactive]

I have to agree with what Yeaux is saying. Destroying places of worship is taking things way, way too far. Banning faith schools would be a much better alternative.

China's just a totalitarian shithole.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Defacing churches is not "freedom of religion", but it's not going to stop Christians from being Christian either. The only outcome will be pissed off Christians.

If they want to mitigate the spread and influence of Christianity in China, they'd do better to make public proselytisation illegal and ban faith schools, and I would applaud and support that move in any country. Destroying peoples' places of worship (even if it's just removing the symbolism from the buildings) is taking things too far. That's violence.

But if the deity was real it should set up some type of force field around its stuff and its believers.  

Anyway, destroying other people's religious artifacts is the First Commandment.

[paulpablo]

Please not i am for freedom of religion but.. in this case i am proud of what China is doing by pretty much removing 
the christian church. Again i am for freedom of religion but they know how much problems christianity can cause.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/....html?_r=0

Isn't being for freedom of religion and being for the removal of the christian church doublethink?
I've started reading 1984 and there's a thought process called doublethink, it involves outwardly believing in a moral code while inwardly believing something totally contradictory to it.

That being said I think freedom of religion is pretty much bullshit since it creates what could be described as a paradox if people are free to practise a religion that prohibits leaving that religion (apostasy) and therefore prevents freedom of religion.

Additionally I don't think the Chinese government is removing the Christian church, they're removing some crosses and putting restrictions on churches because they see them as competing against state power. It's basically like one mafia family clamping down on another mafia family.

[Minimalist]

Cutting the engine of death off the building is hardly destroying churches. 

Similarly, they should cut down the minarets of mosques so that the clerics don't disturb the peace with their "calls to prayer" five fucking times a day.

[drfuzzy]

Yes, banning a religion just creates people willing to die for their (under attack) imaginary friend, who is silent and impotent.  Better education would be much more effective.

[Anomalocaris]

Truly better education in the sense of producing well adjusted thinking individuals out of majority of the population is actually quite hard and costly to attain, and a process of many decades to centuries of co-evolution with the views, traditions and embedded prejudices of the societies including many trials and errors and continuous improvements are likely needed before it can be achieved. In China many anti-rational forces wrap themselves in the colors of patriotism by claiming to defend an ineffably superior Chinese subjective tradition over alien meterialistic influences from abroad. They gain wide circulation when the government itself tries to release social and economic stresses by pretending to champion "chineseness".

In any case, the communist government in China may not really have that much incentive at the bottom line to provide the sort of education that would really promote full spectrum rational thinking lest such thinking challenge the legitimacy of the communist government itself.

So for them it is better and cheaper to so construct the system such that people are still kept from wanting to think for themselves on many important front, but indoctrinated to let the communist government, rather than Jesus, thinking for them.

Letting the communists think for them is a truly aweful fate, but still infinitely better than letting Jesus think for them.

[Minimalist]

It's not like the Chinese don't have a history of doing it.

Indeed, this mission would be destroyed in the mid–ninth century when the Taoist emperor Wuzong condemned and expelled foreign religions and closed monasteries. As the imperial edict commanded,

As for the Tai-Ch’in (Syrian Christian) and Muh-hu (Zoroastrian) forms of worship, since Buddhism has already been cast out, these heresies alone must not be allowed to survive. People belonging to these also are to be compelled to return to the world, belong again to their own districts, and become taxpayers. As for foreigners, let them be returned to their own countries, there to suffer restraint.
 

The ease with which Nestorians were expelled suggests the limitations of their mission, and particularly their failure to spread beyond a particular ethnic group.

Wuzong ruled in the mid 9th century.

[abaris]

Wuzong ruled in the mid 9th century.

A political move then, a political move now. The Japanese acted in a similar way at the turn of the 16th century. It didn't do them much good, since they simultaneously have chosen splendid isolation. Until the West showed up at their doorstep and made it's demands by having superior weapons.

The China of today combines the worst of both world. An oppressive system and unchained capitalism. Western corporations wet their pants when looking at China, since they already arrived where they want to go. The individual being just a piece of cheap meat to be totally exploited.

I'm sorry, I can't cheer the fact that they crack down on any religious group. It's just tightening the screw of total control.