Sunday of the New Martyrs: Soviet Persecution of Theists

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Okay, today is the "Sunday of the New Martyr's" in my Church commerating those people killed for holding religious faith by the Soviet Union.  Now the number of people killed is not insignificant:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

This Wiki quotes articles claiming between 12-20 million dead over the lifetime of the USSR.  The worst part is that it worked.  There were 50,000 churches in Russia before the revolution.  By 1940 it was down to 500.  The persecution was effective.  

It makes me wonder, with aggressive athiesm, will its advocates be tempted by the very effectiveness of the Soviet suppression of religion?  What happens if mockery is insufficent to end religion?  Where does it go from there?

[drawkcabi]

I think it depends on the society and ruling class. The more dictatorial and authoritarian the society the more paranoid it will become and need to find bogeymen anywhere it feels a threat,

The more free and open a society the less a problem it would be. So atheism gaining popularity isn't the problem as I see it, it's the type of society it's found in.

[Disturber of Peace]

Well, Scot, first of all, a lot of us are hoping plan A will work and we are trying hard for it to be successful.

Plan B is transfering your conciousness into a server where your particular denomination's afterlife is true. But we also get your own ideas and you are with people whose both denomination and idea of an afterlife is very similar.

I am not one of the graphic designers so do not ask me a lot about that but i am working on this cool quest chain in which you help your living family do day to day things.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Drawkabi,

An excellent point.  I do seem to recall some of the more aggresive atheists claiming taking kids to church is tantamount to child abuse.  That could lead to some uncomfortable places.

DoP,

Your server better allow for excess beer and ice cream consumption without any negative health affects or weight gain or you can count me out.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think there are certainly people among the athiest demographic who so strongly believe that any God-based religion is a danger to human civilisation. And some of the rhetoric coming from the celebrity atheists (Richard Dawkins for example) feeds into that sort of view (religion is antagonistic to science).

If you are highly convinced of the supreme rightness of your world view and the significant social danger of a different world view, then unless you are morally committed to a principle of non-violence then a violent solution is always a prospect.

I imagine that if there are a series of presidents elected in the USA who seek to, and succeed to a some extent, Christianise the country's laws (or clear the way for states to Christianise their laws) then violent opposition to this from strict secularists (which may not be limited to atheists), isn't out of the question.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TAT,

Why would the violence be against theists generally rather than fundamentalists advocating theocracy?

[Gears of the Beast]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It makes me wonder, with aggressive athiesm, will its advocates be tempted by the very effectiveness of the Soviet suppression of religion?  What happens if mockery is insufficent to end religion?  Where does it go from there?

 

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

An excellent point.  I do seem to recall some of the more aggresive atheists claiming taking kids to church is tantamount to child abuse.  That could lead to some uncomfortable places.

You wonder whether "aggressive atheists" like people who think indoctrination is child abuse will be tempted by the Soviet Union murdering a bunch of religious people. The fuck planet are you living on? The bizarre Christian fetish for persecution continues unabated. 

[Altherion]

Do you mean in the US? We have both the First Amendment and, perhaps more importantly, the Second Amendment. Religious people are significantly more likely to be armed. In fact, it's much more likely (though still not very) that some fraction of Evangelical Christians decides that the Supreme Court has trampled their First Amendment rights and starts to fight back with force than atheists burning down churches or anything of the sort.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

GotB,

Because Governments with atheistic aspects have never used force to attempt to eradicate religion (quite successfully in the case of the Soviet Union. 50,000 churches down to 500 seems like their heavy hand was working and hey, they were mostly Christians, so is it playing on a "persecution complex"'to mention)?

[NicholasB]

I think aggressive atheism is an ideology that doesn't have any real chance to prevail in the long term. Especially in Western Europe, where large scale dissension between the Muslims and the rest of the population is quite likely to come (we like it or not, it might not even be caused by Muslims, but I think some kind of anti-Arabian racism is very likely to appear due to all the problems brought by mass immigration). Atheism as it is will not be very popular, leave alone it's radical version. Someone might even blame atheists for provoking that disaster.

As it goes with the Soviet Union, it's crimes against religion were very typical for that country, and every other totalitarian state - the desire to control absolutely everything, and heinous ideology (in this case communism) being the only religion allowed.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

22 minutes ago, Gears of the Beast said:

 

You wonder whether "aggressive atheists" like people who think indoctrination is child abuse will be tempted by the Soviet Union murdering a bunch of religious people. The fuck planet are you living on? The bizarre Christian fetish for persecution continues unabated. 

Do you think me taking my children to chuch is Child Abuse?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

14 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think there are certainly people among the athiest demographic who so strongly believe that any God-based religion is a danger to human civilisation. And some of the rhetoric coming from the celebrity atheists (Richard Dawkins for example) feeds into that sort of view (religion is antagonistic to science).

If you are highly convinced of the supreme rightness of your world view and the significant social danger of a different world view, then unless you are morally committed to a principle of non-violence then a violent solution is always a prospect.

I imagine that if there are a series of presidents elected in the USA who seek to, and succeed to a some extent, Christianise the country's laws (or clear the way for states to Christianise their laws) then violent opposition to this from strict secularists (which may not be limited to atheists), isn't out of the question.

I really do not want to get drawn into another religious discussion, because it's usually I say something rude/insensitive people get mad, I feel the urge to hit back, and life's too short. And this is an atheist speaking. So cast your stones later. So much for the disclaimer upfront.

Faith is qua definition the opposite of science. Faith means you believe in something without proof. Scientific theories encourage doubts/falsification attempts. 

To be perfectly clear, I don't really care what you do in your private life, as long as you don't drag some deity or religious stuff into public/political discourse or anywhere else, where it does not belong, and you don't inflict any harm on somebody else on behalf of your religion. Democratic laws > religious laws. 

[sologdin]

scot, i think it's important to split out proper religious persecution from political oppression of slavophile & pocvennicestvo adherents, which are theocratic & monarchist ideologies (i.e., assholes who caused in part WWI and prior thereto had been involved in forced servitude).  this is not to suggest that the latter is a more or less legitimate target of unlawful state action than the other, but rather to dispute the notion, or at least the degree, that there was a religious genocide in the soviet union, wherein there would have been a specific intent to eradicate the group in whole or in part, as such.  

the cited article mentions 12-20M 'martyrs' grossly, but then cites specific figures that come no where near the grandiose allegation.  there is no doubt that the stalinists killed millions of human persons unlawfully, though this kind of causal attribution error is common to the anti-communist genre--mega death tolls grossly alleged but supported by kilo deaths evidence on the specific point.  maybe the 12-20M figure is warranted if it sweeps up other extrajudicial killings, or judicial executions on unlawful grounds otherwise of persons who happened to be religious, another error of the genre.  a third type of error of this genre is the conflation of deaths with non-deaths, such as the recitation of persecution on the basis of religious in the citation regarding the 1950s, which demonstrates quite a bit of lawless interference with religious institutions, which institutions and their congregations apparently survived stalin's mass murders.  the cited article is not inspiring much confidence, however, as its recitation of what occurred at solovki, and to whom, is grossly inconsistent with other literature. am suggesting therefore revise & resubmit.

[Gears of the Beast]

36 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Because Governments with atheistic aspects have never used force to attempt to eradicate religion (quite successfully in the case of the Soviet Union. 50,000 churches down to 500 seems like their heavy hand was working and hey, they were mostly Christians, so is it playing on a "persecution complex"'to mention)?

So I deride the idea of "aggressive atheists" becoming tempted by the success of the Soviet Union in murdering a bunch of religious people and your response is 'but the Soviet Union murdered a bunch of religious people'. Sometimes I wonder whether you actually read what you're responding to. 

31 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Do you think me taking my children to chuch is Child Abuse?

You don't remember when we had this exact discussion? Or do you pull the "but what about me and my kids" thing so often it's hard to remember? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

GotB,

I think, don't remember for sure, you said taking kids to church isn't child abuse so long as when they are old enough to stay home by themselves they may if they want to?  If I'm correct how old would that be and is that still a parent's call?

[The Anti-Targ]

25 minutes ago, Notone said:

I really do not want to get drawn into another religious discussion, because it's usually I say something rude/insensitive people get mad, I feel the urge to hit back, and life's too short. And this is an atheist speaking. So cast your stones later. So much for the disclaimer upfront.

Faith is qua definition the opposite of science. Faith means you believe in something without proof. Scientific theories encourage doubts/falsification attempts. 

To be perfectly clear, I don't really care what you do in your private life, as long as you don't drag some deity or religious stuff into public/political discourse or anywhere else, where it does not belong, and you don't inflict any harm on somebody else on behalf of your religion. Democratic laws > religious laws. 

religion =/= faith. Religion is a form of social doctrine (mostly that includes belief in God) which either supports the notion that science is an important part of social evolution (and of course that social evolution exists) or it it does not. Some religious groups are anti-science, but other religious groups promote science as fundamentally important to civilisation. Hence religion is not inherently antagonistic to science. After all, if God exists then all science is merely revealing knowledge that God already possessed. Hence in a theistic reality science is a door to the knowledge of God. Ergo if God exists then only those religions that promote science can possibly be true religions originating from God. And if God does not exist then religions that promote science are in the least not antagonistic to science.

Belief in God may not conform to the scientific method, but that does not mean people who believe in God are antagonistic to science.

I've seen people quote a statistic that says 40% of Americans don't believe in evolution. But 40% of Americans is less than half of the number of Americans who are religious. So, more than half of all religious people in the USA believe in evolution. To me that suggests most religious people are actually generally in favour of science. So that indicates people who say religion is antagonistic to science have an ideological axe to grind and they are not basing their statement on, well, science.

Lots of good science has been done, even up to the present day, by religious people.

[Gears of the Beast]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

GotB,

I think, don't remember for sure, you said taking kids to church isn't child abuse so long as when they are old enough to stay home by themselves they may if they want to?  If I'm correct how old would that be and is that still a parent's call?

I don't want to get into this. I probably softened my position out of polite deference because you inserted your personal circumstance into the discussion 'what if I can't leave my kids at home' etc and it just gets messy. While avoiding that, just to be clear the mere act of taking a child isn't the issue. For example, I was raised in a secular home and had to go church from year 3 because I went to a Catholic school. The poisonous bullshit and inane ramblings I was exposed to had no negative effect on me because I wasn't indoctrinated. Taking a kid to a church isn't child abuse, indoctrination is the issue. Like TP said in another thread, kids don't believe in a flat Earth unless they are "intellectually mugged". Similarly, kids don't believe in virgin births and the Devil unless they are intellectually mugged. 

[sologdin]

intellectually mugged. 

yes, hard to fault a state that seeks to dissuade intellectual mugging by counter-propaganda, removal of tax abatements and state subsidies, expropriation of wrongfully acquired luxuries, &c.  if they're shooting priests, as uncle joe was wont to do, that's gross.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TAT,

Yeah, I'm really antagonistic toward science.  You can tell by all the threads I start talking about science.

GotB,

So, teaching my children about my faith is abuse in your view?  So, should the State have the power to take my, or anyone's, children for teaching them about our faith's?

Sologdin,

If as Chief Justice Marshall said in Mcclloch v. Maryland, "The power to tax is the power to destroy" and if Congress is barred from making a law "regarding the establishment [noun] of religion" wouldn't giving the State the power to tax religous institutions violate the seperation of church and state?

[sologdin]

scot, likely.