They did find out that the church could be useful to them. 70% of Russians are still members of the dominant religious sect, do you think those were all recent atheist converts from when the USSR collapsed? That seems hard to believe.
Should Freedom of Religion include Freedom from Religion?
- Thread starter Goldtop
- Start date
Goldtop
Registered Senior Member
The beliefs of those in the USSR never changed, each person held to their prospective beliefs despite the Soviet plans to rid it of religions. Even the folks who carried out the plans held firm to their beliefs, they literally had no choice under that regime. This did not stop anyone from practicing their religions in the privacy of their homes.
That's like claiming lack of smartphones cause war, because almost all wars were fought by people without smartphones.
That's not a given. It's bullshit.
On the contrary, implementing atheist doctrine on a political level has a chronicled history of resulting in an outstsnding number of people dying.
You could argue that dictatorships tend to result in many people dying because such regimes involve "redesigning the wheel" of society, usually with poor forethought. In that regard, the added turmoil of atheist regimes seems to be that it empowers a higher level of industrious ruthlessness and lack of forethought, which accounts for their champion performance from what is a relatively smaller body of examples to reference.
On the contrary, there's no such thing as "implementing atheist doctrine on a political level" - because there's no such thing as atheist doctrine. Lack of doctrine is not doctrine.
And you can say the exact same thing about political institutions arising from religious thought.
History disagrees.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1928–1941)
This campaign, like the campaigns of other periods that formed the basis of the USSR's efforts to eliminate religion and replace it with atheism supported with a materialistworld view,[6] was accompanied with official claims that there was no religious persecution in the USSR, and that believers who were being targeted were for other reasons. Believers were in fact being widely targeted and persecuted for their belief or promotion of religion, as part of the state's campaign to disseminate atheism, but officially the state claimed that no such persecution existed and that the people being targeted - when they admitted that people were being targeted - were only being attacked for resistance to the state or breaking the law.[7] This guise served Soviet propaganda abroad, where it tried to promote a better image of itself especially in light of the great criticism against it from foreign religious influences.
The disbelief causes a schism, and all schisms have the capacity to take expression in a political language.
This notion that atheism is some sort of world view impervious to politicsl language is simply naivety
And when you want to implement that on a societal level, there are range of political tools one can utilize, from the ideological to the nefarious.
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You are under the illusion that dictatorships cannot operate with an atheist mouthpiece. It is the "no true scotsman" argument.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
If you want to discuss history, sooner or later you have to reference historical information. Otherwise one can just make stuff up, and say Stalin, during the height of his political career, used to attend confession.
("Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I have shot at least 85 000 priests and destroyed more than 98% of the nations churches over a period of 12 years" .. this notion of yours of people just happily doing things in the privacy of their own homes while under the soviet or Khmer Rouge rulership shows that you simply don't understand the subject)
That's not atheist doctrine. Most atheists have never even heard about it, and few outside Russia followed it even at the time. That is even true of the totalitarian socialist political movements subscribing to similar hostility toward established religions; the followers of Mao Tse Tung, say, followed a different doctrine.
The negation of your claim - all Scotsmen wear kilts and play bagpipes - is not the imaginary claim that no one is a Scotsman. It is the reasonable observation that many Scotsmen wear pants, and the plausible guess that some do not play with their bagpipe.
Furthermore, it is you who have been making the claim on this forum (http://www.sciforums.com/threads/sc...might-not-exist-and-that’s-not-a-joke.160736/) that everyone who believes in metaphysical entities and higher powers and so forth is theistic. On those grounds, Maoism and Stalinism and so forth are theistic religions, marketing themselves as atheistic to abet their repression of rival theistic religions.
Then how would you describe the communist views of religion and the subsequent translation of a specific creed finding themselves before bullets, gulags and re-education camps?
Plenty of historical data you can dig up on religion and politics that other religious communities are oblivious or independent of, also.
My worldview is that atheism is subject to all kinds of additions, just like any other ideology. I work to promote an atheist worldview that includes ethical humanist values, which I believe is the path to the future. Rejecting religion doesn't mean rejecting morality. One is then required to compose a new moral code, based on an empirical and admittedly subjective analysis of what would produce maximum well-being for the most people. The idea that religion is a somehow objective guide to morality is flawed.
I didn't mean "political language" in a derogatory sense. Political language is a neutral vessel that subsequently becomes poisonous or nourishing or anything in between according to how we fill it.
Of course one can argue about the prospective vitality of such vessels, but when one demands that atheism is beyond such criticism, because garnishing the pot with it automatically brings forth everything flavorsome, its just a tactic reminiscent of the religious fanaticism of yesteryear.
Goldtop
Registered Senior Member
... to the educational, to the understanding of the logical and the rational, to the reasonable and the reality.
Obviously, I never said or even implied any such thing.
And, I don't think you understand that fallacy.
Of course. That's why intelligent people don't talk about the doctrine of theism, or the doctrine of religionism (you keep substituting theism and religion for each other, even after repeated reminders). There isn't one.
For starters, as communist views of religion. That of course needs a lot more thought to be useful - the Christian communist societies of US history have somewhat different views of religion than the Stalinist doctrines present - but it's enough for this thread's tangential references.
If you were more specific, we could get into Stalinist views of institutionalized Russian Orthodox Christianity, Maoist views of institutionalized Tibetan Buddhism, and so forth. But on another thread.
aka, ideological.
If you are trying to downplay the role of atheism to the role of nonexistence in surveying the glory of communism, it is a proper use that argument.
"No atheist has ever killed anyone in the name of atheism (unlike the religious and their associated ideas"
"What about Stalin?"
"Well, he wasn't a real atheist"
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Then take it back to meme and the memester who attempted to introduce this as a valid grounds for discussion.
Goldtop
Registered Senior Member
Stalin was a dictator, he murdered millions and did not care if they had faith in Catholicism or not. The atrocities he committed were widespread across not just religious, but political, social and economical landscapes. It is delusional to think atheism or religion had anything to do with Stalin's methods.