Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dale Headley on May 28, 2012 at 2:14pm

You can’t ban religion without banning thinking; and I would never want do that.  Banning thinking is what religion is all about.  The solution is not to join them (in stifling free thought), but for free thinkers to continue to embrace science and reason and hope more and more people follow our example.  If we had stubbornly clung as a species to an appellation to a mythical, invisible, indescribable entity, we would not have learned to cure disease; we would still be praying and dying in our 30's.  

If you look at the history of thought after we began to emerge from the dark ages of medieval superstition, the long term trajectory has been AWAY from religion and towards rationality.  It may not look that way right now, especially in the Calvinist enclaves of America, but reason has been been slowly but steadily gaining ground over the past 400 years. 

With each step forward that science takes, ignorance and magical thinking take one more step back.  Religion will probably never completely disappear; but I think that it will eventually become a fringe phenomenon.

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Permalink Reply by Ed on May 28, 2012 at 3:45pm

Constitutionally it is a violation. But if it were banned w/o also removing the concept of religion from the minds of everyone it would still fail to accomplish anything ultimately. Remember how well the Prohibition era worked in the first part of the 20th century.

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Permalink Reply by Mac on May 28, 2012 at 4:17pm

Again Thank you to all who replied... I refer you back to my original comment made three years ago when this question was originally posted (no idea how it flared up again?)

 

..... it is very interesting that this disbelieving hoarde should all stand up for the right to religion. But as many have pointed out - It is not peoples belief that we are really addressing but the right to choice.

I worded the question poorly as it implied that I had some internal struggle with this question. I do not...I concur with all posts here.

Thanks to all for your insight. What is refreshing to see is that there is a commitment to reason and human rights among us and not some mob mentally aimed at destroying faith. This post is a great refutation to one of the classic theist responses as to the "purpose" of atheism, in that we are trying to destroy faith. We just do not want it to influence any aspect of decisions made on our behalf and to prevent belief that impinges on our human rights.

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Permalink Reply by mwifjsyi on May 28, 2012 at 6:04pm

The power it would take to ban religion would be a scary amount. So no, I don't want to "ban" religion. A lot of times I wish it would disappear though. 

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on May 28, 2012 at 10:43pm

No

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