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Sunday of the New Martyrs: Soviet Persecution of Theists


Ser Scot A Ellison

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

1. You're wrong to dismiss the idea that there was organized opression of atheists just because there wasn't a lot of atheists in general.

2. There is legitimacy in calling SOME people's religious beliefs madness and/or child abuse. But to make a blanket statement about it would be wrong.

3. Grammatical errors aside :P, I think you're wrong to fear that happening here in America. You've cited a few examples of "atheists" oppressing religious groups in the past, but they were from vastly different cultures.

1) I agree I was wrong.

2) Thank you for the qualification.

3) I sincerely hope you're right.

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8 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

3) I sincerely hope you're right.

I think you should fear violence from other faiths before violence from atheists. Demographics alone make it hard to foresee the latter ever really happening.

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6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My point initially was that there we no organized opression of atheism because atheism was such a small minotity.  But, in fairness, had it been a sizable movement I'd be shocked if there wouldn't have been an organized push against it.

Again, I don't want to see anyone oppressed, regardless of what they profess to believe or not believe.  This thread came about because I see people calling religious belief madness and child abuse.  That combined with the annual "Sunday of the New Martyr's" made me wonder how far people would be willing to go to combat what they see as madness and child abuse.

I'm not saying it is likely to happen again but being a believer.  Being a member of a faith that did go though that type of oppression it mads me wonder.

 

ok.   I personally consider blind faith as a form of madness.   - Blind faith is when you believe something so strongly despite physical evidence to the contry.  - eg young eathers, intelligent design.  Its also when there is no evidence for something and not being able to acknowledge the possibility of that something not existing.     I would combat this with education, and some ridicule if i'm honest.

I have no problem with faith,    choosing to believe despite there being no evidence and understanding you could be wrong in your beliefs is what faith is.

 

Raising a child in a religious house is not child abuse on its own.   Raising a child in a hostile environment is child abuse.  Religion can (not always) create a hostile environment if the child does not conform to the demands or beliefs demanded.   I believe a caring religious house would put the physical and mental needs of a child before the demands of the parents beliefs.    I don't know what I would do to combat this though, since its a much more nusansed problem.  - People are entitled to their beliefs.

 

Raising children in a way that limits their education and influences so to create blind faith is not child abuse per say (as long as the beliefs fit with the child)  but its certainly very far from ok.   again minimum mandated education standards should be employed and exam's checks in home schooled children be made.

 

 

Scott my bible knowledge is very limited so please forgive me if I get a few things wrong here

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, because God was jealous and thought Abraham loved his son more than he loved God.   Ok yes God stopped Abraham from going through with it cos it was just a test, and Abe passed showing obedience.   This bible story has been told to me many times by people trying to tell me what a wonderful being God is, How much he loves us and we should all try to follow Abe's example and be obedient.

Personally I would consider what Abe did as Child Abuse at the very minimum.   Attempted Murder possibly reduced to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility  - After all he did hear voices telling him to do it.    Yes this is an extreme example I am aware.  But I do kind of wonder what a modern day Christian would do if faced with Abe's choice.   - Questioning your sanity is a get out here - In Abe's position you are 100% without doubt God exists and tells you do it.    

I actually thing you Scott would tell God to F off, knowing full well God could strike him down at any moment and burn him in hell for eternity for disobedience.  You would still believe in God (the 100% without doubt thing from before)  but I guess you would question weather God deserves your love and worship.

 

But then I am projecting my Non-believing views, I don't believe in Hell or Heaven so my choice is easy.   I like to think that if that story is true Abe failed the test God set him.

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Pebble,

One of my favorite pieces of speculative fiction is "The Scholar's Tale: The River Lethe's Taste is Bitter".  In it there is a scholarly exploration of the story of Abraham's potential sacrifice of Issac.  That story has always given me trouble and you're right, I couldn't do it.

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8 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Pebble,

You and Karaddin may be right there may have been many atheists in the past who were silent out of fear.  That said you can just as easily be wrong.  People may have believed because everyone around them did and the idea of atheism may simply not have occured to them.  

Our current age always colors our view of the past.  My point is not that you are wrong, but that it is nearly impossible to know if you are right.  

Actually my point wasn't just that those who consciously didn't believe stayed silent out of fear, although that is most certainly part of it, but also that the pervasive culture of indoctrination into the faith and intolerance of contrary belief systems meant that for many more who would be atheists now never had a meaningful choice in the matter and forced themselves into the mould of a believer.  Which then feeds back into increasing the pressure on everyone else.  It constitutes religion doing a much better job of oppressing contrary viewpoints than atheism has ever managed, even if the atrocities that have been committed (such as the USSR stuff that started the thread) against religion can be quantified in a better way due to being recent.  I don't see any value in trying to add up the various harms that have been done in the name of religion, I'm talking about the ultimate effect on peoples beliefs and that if you want to scare monger about the atheists coming for your belief, you should acknowledge that theists have a much longer tradition of this than those few examples.  It was how effective religion was at stamping out opposing belief that actually reduced the need for atrocities within its borders.

I'm much more concerned about the theists right now who are trying to strip away/deny rights and set laws applying to all of society based on their beliefs than I am a hypothetical push back by atheists in the future which would be opposed by most of us atheists anyway.  In the cases where I consider the way a Christian is indoctrinating their child to be child abuse, that's still a crime that needs to be investigated and prosecuted under the criminal justice system, not a pogrom against all Christians.

The Trenton thing was just a phone typo, it was supposed to be something to the effect of "that belief is having right now", it's kinda amazing that you managed to come up with something that almost made sense out of it though haha

Kalbear - I oppose the natural terminology because it doesn't fit my own experience.  I tried really hard to believe as a kid and it just wasn't in me.  At the same time I accept that it is in many people, including both my parents, so to me both seem natural states for a human.

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Kalbear - I oppose the natural terminology because it doesn't fit my own experience.  I tried really hard to believe as a kid and it just wasn't in me.  At the same time I accept that it is in many people, including both my parents, so to me both seem natural states for a human.

Natural doesn't mean universal. Deviations don't disprove it. 

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25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Natural doesn't mean universal. Deviations don't disprove it. 

To state one thing is natural normally implies the other is not, if my state feels natural to me the implication that it's unnatural feels inaccurate.

Also I've got no idea what the point of calling belief natural is, if this implication isn't intended.

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To state one thing is natural normally implies the other is not, if my state feels natural to me the implication that it's unnatural feels inaccurate.

Also I've got no idea what the point of calling belief natural is, if this implication isn't intended.

 

Natural as meaning having a natural source, instead of it being artificial or otherwise induced via technological or cultural means. I'm not ruling out that the notion of certain people being atheists isn't a natural origin as well. Both heterosexuality and homosexuality have natural origins, for instance. I think the mistake you're making is that you're assuming that if one state is natural, the other states are not. 

That said it's my belief that atheism is a product of artifice, and that it takes a lot of mental energy for most people to fight the notion that there isn't something supernatural or beyond. That doesn't mean they can't do it - and it doesn't mean that some people don't fit this - but the common case is that humans want to believe in some form of religion. 

So for instance - humans being embarrassed about breast feeding isn't a natural state. It's entirely driven by cultural values and is taught. Propensity for religion in humans is a natural state - humans are inclined to ascribe meaning to random events, anthropomorphize things, believe that things are the way they are for their personal enjoyment, and desire answers beyond themselves. It doesn't mean all humans do it - but it's a pretty common thing for humans to do, common enough that we can do brain scans of people and figure out fairly accurately how religious they are or they'll tend to be. 

It's also possible that one of the reasons that humans are like this is because of essentially selective breeding. Most religions that work end up being pretty successfully intolerant of other belief systems. If you assume propensity for religious belief is a set of inherited traits, you can see that those with those traits might be more successful in society - more food, better societal investment, more reproductive success - and thus would pass that down the line or be more likely to do so. 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

 

It's a fair but flawed comparison, I'd say. Especially given that we have countless examples of homosexual behavior in animals and in humans, whereas we have zero examples of any human cultures practicing atheism as their primary ethos. It isn't about there being more or not. This isn't an argument by statistics. Surely throughout all history and cultural anthropology we would have one example of a society that believed entirely in natural reasons and not supernatural ones?

But we don't.

It's certainly possible that that is just a crazy coincidence. Or religion is a very virulent meme - though that makes you wonder why religion is so virulent and so able to take hold with people then. Or you might wonder why epileptics often are absolutely convinced that they experienced God when having seizures. Or why hallucinations in humans produce visions of gods.

It is possible that it is pseudoscience too. But given that the anthropological, historical, psychological and now neuroscience results we have back up the notion that humans essentially are programmed to believe in something, it's unlikely.

And why does it matter to you? Why is naturalism a bad thing? That doesn't mean that you should do it, and plenty of things that are natural are abhorrent to us now. As an atheist it seems like this should be a value neutral proposition to you. It certainly is to me.

Ok so there's a few problems here. Firstly to say that something is naturally more prevalent for various reasons is not to say that it is 'more natural'. I don't know how you'd justify atheism as being unnatural or less natural without simply invoking the fact that it's less prevalent in which case Karradin's example is a perfectly sufficient refutation. But more importantly you're equivocating. You said 'theism is more natural than atheism', theism meaning belief in gods and atheism meaning no belief in gods. And now you're invoking 'practicing atheism as their primary ethos' etc. That is not atheism, for a culture to be considered atheistic they do not need to 'practice atheism as their primary ethos' (whatever the fuck you think that entails) or believe entirely in natural reasons for everything. There are numerous cultures that did not/do not believe in or worship gods who may believe in spirits and other forms of superstition but are not theistic, You started off by claiming that theism is more natural than atheism and have tried to justify that by arguing that superstition in general is more prevalent throughout human history than total reliance on reason and evidence. 

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3 minutes ago, Gears of the Beast said:

Ok so there's a few problems here. Firstly to say that something is naturally more prevalent for various reasons is not to say that it is 'more natural'. I don't know how you'd justify atheism as being unnatural or less natural without simply invoking the fact that it's less prevalent in which case Karradin's example is a perfectly sufficient refutation. But more importantly you're equivocating. You said 'theism is more natural than atheism', theism meaning belief in gods and atheism meaning no belief in gods. And now you're invoking 'practicing atheism as their primary ethos' etc. That is not atheism, for a culture to be considered atheistic they do not need to 'practice atheism as their primary ethos' (whatever the fuck you think that entails) or believe entirely in natural reasons for everything. There are numerous cultures that did not/do not believe in or worship gods who may believe in spirits and other forms of superstition but are not theistic, You started off by claiming that theism is more natural than atheism and have tried to justify that by arguing that superstition in general is more prevalent throughout human history than total reliance on reason and evidence. 

Okay, fair enough.

The spirits/theist thing seems like a null point to me, personally. If you are really quibbling that those who believe in spirits can be counted as atheists, I guess you're technically accurate? But it doesn't seem like a particularly good refutation. If you don't want to call them gods, that's cool, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be. But yeah, I used the shorthand of theism to mean 'belief in any number of superstitions that are not directly verifiable' vs. atheism meaning 'belief in nothing that is not verifiable'. Apologies; it was a reply on my phone. 

Atheism (as I described above) isn't just 'less present' though - it's almost entirely and completely absent from societies until we get to the modern scientific age - and even then it's not a common ethos. Again, there exists not a single society on the planet that we have ever encountered or have record of which does not have belief in things that cannot be verified. Whether they are spirits, animism, gods, god - every culture we have ever seen has something. And not only is it something, it's a fairly deep, well-established set of somethings with rules and order and stories. These are even so common that they have common mythic story elements that are pancultural. 

When that happens we think that this is due to genetic components about humans. This is likely not taught behavior. Now, we could be wrong about this - it's possible that everywhere on earth that we've ever seen someone came up with this on the fly, taught it, and it was just compelling enough to stick around the way that a doublemint jingle doesn't go away (though songs sticking in our head is also a genetic, natural thing). But that's not the likely scenario, and experiments on brain studies, twin studies and some other various studies seem to indicate otherwise as well. 

Now, Karradin's experiences say that she feels like atheism is the right thing, and thus you contend that that's natural. But that's not a good argument either. Just because something feels right to you doesn't make it something that you're predisposed to because of genetics. A good example of this is food tastes, which are almost entirely taught to us - and taught prenatally, but are taught. There's no way to tell simply by an interview whether atheism is something that she is genetically predisposed to or not. I'm totally willing to believe that it is something genetic - one could argue that if you have a trait that gives stronger religious view, you can also have a lack of that trait that is recessive or turned off epigenetically, and that would make sense too. The evidence we have, however, is that if that trait (or lack of trait) exists, it's pretty uncommon. 

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I never said anything about genetics, cultural influences on plastic brain development are just as much a natural part of humans as we exist now as genetics is.  And when we are talking about psychological things (which we are) then cultural influence on the brain is very much a part of the conversation.

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Kalbear- 

The spirits/theist thing seems like a null point to me, personally. If you are really quibbling that those who believe in spirits can be counted as atheists, I guess you're technically accurate? But it doesn't seem like a particularly good refutation. If you don't want to call them gods, that's cool, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be. But yeah, I used the shorthand of theism to mean 'belief in any number of superstitions that are not directly verifiable' vs. atheism meaning 'belief in nothing that is not verifiable'. Apologies; it was a reply on my phone.

I'm inclined to agree with you on this point. Belief in spirits, devils, Satans, ghosts, angels, supernatural, etc. seems absolutely inconsistent with atheism. I dont see any difference in belief in Holy Spirits (or Satanic spirits for that matter) than gods, it's the same thing, to me it all belongs under the theism umbrella.

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On 3.2.2016 at 5:11 PM, Pebbles said:

I don't know enough about this time period to discuss it with any more than I think / guess.

But I doubt all Neanderthal's where what I'd call 100% nomadic.  I believe (again I don't really know) that they had some caves or shelters that they would regularly use particularly over winter when they would rely on stored food.  thus they would spend a long period of time in one place.   but this is really derailing your thread, particularly when you've agreed that burring the dead does not have to indicate religious belief.

 

This.

And once you were more fixed to a certain location deposing of the corpses would also seem to have become some sort of hygenic necessity. Decomposing bodies do not tend to smell particularly well. Now there are different ways to deal with bodies.

I somewhat like the concept of sky burials. I watched a tv documentation on Iran a while ago. They have a Zoroastrian minority there, who used to do sky burials in special towers. They started to bury their dead for several reasons. One of them was, the towns grew and thus the proximity to the towns became too narrow.

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