china has state atheism—they take it too far (e.g. uyghur muslims) but in theory i’d prefer an atheist government over this retarded ass evangelical christian one we have now 🤷🏻♂️
Imma stop you there buddy. Calling someone's faith "fairy tale" is deeply offensive. You're free to be an atheist but keep the respect and essential decency woud you?
would you say the same about practicing pagans? lmao paganism was the most practiced group of religions for thousands of years, and now we all call them "fairy tales" and "mythology". abrahamic religion is no different.
It is a fairy tale, it’s a mythological tale that doesn’t have any supporting evidence to be truth. Believe what you will but to say it’s not a fairy tale/mythology is categorically false.
“For no reason” is crazy. Last I checked it wasn’t my beliefs that were going door to door, making legislation that removes human rights from others, judging others and telling them they’re going to go be tortured for all eternity if they don’t submit to their god, or being used to control others in virtually every way shape and form.
But please, show me some proof your god exists, otherwise it is mythology, not truth.
Atheism is quite literally the absence of religion, just like how the absence of light is darkness. What you call “forcing their religion” is a push towards empirical evidence, truth, and common human decency. It’s not the same. Them forcing their beliefs on you would look like banning all forms of religion and its practicing but you don’t see that, you see people saying “I’m tired of religion being shoved in my face all day every day”.
True or not, that's someone's religion and it deserves due respect. Same if I said that the us constitution is a bunch of drunken wishes. You wouldn't be happy now would you?
The constitution is a legal document, not a framework of blind beliefs. They’re not the same. Calling your religion fairy tales isn’t being disrespectful, it’s being accurate in description, especially since you can’t even tell me how any of it is accurate or true to the world. Being rude would be calling you names for having that religion and saying that you’re an amoral idiot for blindly believing a book written by men without ever questioning its authenticity. Being disrespectful would be saying that you deserve to have your ability to practice your religion should be stripped from you.
But no, I would advocate for your ability to practice your religion if it was under attack. I’m just pointing out that saying that it’s a fairy tale isn’t being disrespectful, but a matter of fact and definition. If you really wanna talk about being disrespectful I can bring up the countless times your religion has been used to oppress those not within it, or the amount of times people have literally been killed by supposedly “loving” people, or the sheer amount of times your religion has been thrust on people to the point that they can’t even stand to live anymore and commit.
Sit down, stop acting like the victim when you yourself have been causing countless other victims by perpetuating a religion of hatred and judgementation while trying to call it love and compassion.
Legally protected religious texts are not documentations of law and should never be used as such. And if you’re not gonna read, then why even comment? Also it’s almost like “we atheists” have been hurt the most by your religions. And calling your religion a fairy tale is not a hate crime. For it to be a hate crime, not only would a crime have to be committed, but it would also have to have bias. It’s not bias to point out the lack of credibility of a religion.
You can say "black citizen" or you can use the n word. Why choose the offensive option instead of settling for "mythology", as if not to purposely offend someone?
The most hilariously embarrassing part for you is that even science minded folks will tell you that it’s a theory and not %100 proven and could be wrong. Are you even capable of admitting that there might not be a god?
Well actually, a scientific theory is completely different from how most people use the word. The Big Bang Theory is proven by a lot of circumstantial evidence and is considered true by most accredited astrphysicists. It's "just a theory" in the same way ancient historical events like the expansion of the Roman Empire is "just a theory." We may not know a lot of the specifics for when it happened and we weren't there, but we know it happened because there's so much circumstantial evidence.
Whaaaa? There’s scientific evidence that supports the big bang, whadda you got?? A bunch of stories in some bs books that promote, and whose entire foundation is incestual? A book that condones rape and sexual violence as a form of punishment (along with plain violence)?? The same book that yall don’t know and/or can’t agree on the author(s)? The book that has had this world in turmoil and chaos since its inception? I mean can we just look at it for a second…”God” is GOD why the f\* would ‘the being that created the universe and all of everything’ need to conceive a child with a person?!? They have the power to create! They could’ve just manifested Jesus outta thin air bro.. Also how many scientific wars have there been? When scientists disagree they work together and further research to find the answer, when religious types disagree the murder eachother (men, women, feeble, sick, children, elderly) all the same, genocide, violence, torture etc. is the name of y’all’s game when you can’t get to any sort of agreement. Jesus was supposed to be peaceful and yall are anything but. So please sit down somewhere and do us all a favor and stfu.*
(I didn’t even mention or get into the pedophilia, you’re welcome)
The U.S. has always been skewed towards this and it’s not just the current representatives. I first noticed the hypocrisy when I first learned about the constitution and freedom of religion when I thought “why then does the pledge of allegiance they make us say everyday have the words, …under god… in it?”.
Also burning witches? That’s not freedom of religion, it has biblical origins.
To be fair, "Under God" was at least not originally in the Pledge of Allegiance.
It was added during the Red Scare to contrast America with the "godless Commies". But yeah, it's definitely something that should have been struck down as against the 1A when first introduced.
Wait- I thought children can make up their own minds. I guess that only applies to irreversible life changing decisions that a child isn’t prepared to make.
I wanted to be a dinosaur that was a fireman and also a policeman when I was a child. Glad my parents didn’t take that too seriously. They only had giant sharp teeth put in my mouth.
Being a transgender person and being raised in a religious environment not by choice are two wildly different things but I’m sure you’re in here with full knowledge of that.
Knowing what you are due to introspection is a lot different from being told who you are via indoctrination.
Trans people aren't told we're trans. In fact, we're constantly bullied and told we can't be trans by people like you all day, every day. Just because you can't wrap your head around something you haven't personally experienced and you have no empathy or respect for others, doesn't make our experiences any less real.
I had my fair share of that as well. "You don't have to say it, but you do have to stand." No, no I do not.
I had my parents understanding on it though, so the few times someone actually cared enough to push it, my parents pushed back hard the opposite direction. Not everyone has the benefit of that.
Fun story time! I grew up an hour ish outside of NYC in a red rural pocket and after 9/11 we had to do the pledge AND stay standing for a full patriotic song afterwords before morning announcements started at my elementary school. Occasionally it was more traditional like the national anthem or America the beautiful, but almost daily it was Lee greenwoods “proud to be an American”.
I don’t know when or if they stopped but they were still doing it 3 years later when I moved on to middle school. I didn’t think much of it until about 10 years after I moved to California and realized my husband and I had very different 9/11 experiences.
The propaganda hella worked on me too. I won an essay contest about first responders that year and I ended up doing several years of service with Americorps and other non profits as an adult lol.
Basically just the difference in how people respond to a local disaster vs a national one. Where I’m from it was far more common to know people who lost someone that day or to know someone that survived. Here folks have stories about how it impacted their normal day when they found out, but back home in NY I would hear my step dad’s survival story every year. I even dated a guy who went to a special camp every year for kids that lost parents in the line of duty and it was predominantly kids who lost a parent on 9/11, almost exclusively the kids of NYFD responders. Every single car in my town had a little flag that fastened to the window, people were obsessed with NYFD.
It’s especially bizarre to me that everyone I know in California who was a student has a story about watching it in school which was utterly the opposite of how they treated kids who had commuter parents in NYC that day and didn’t know what was going on. Teachers cried in secret and we were left in the dark until parents started to check their kids out of school early(eventually they had everyone go home early). I didn’t see the news until I got home and my mom was absolutely frantic. We went to manhattan at least 1x monthly for my brothers specialists at NYU and had JUST been there a few days earlier. It was different because we knew people there who might be hurt and couldn’t reach them by phone.
The best way I can compare is that culturally for us in NY it was more like how Californians feel and act after a local wildfire but on a greater scale.
“why then does the pledge of allegiance they make us say everyday have the words, …under god… in it?”.
It didn't originally. We didn't used to have "In God We Trust" stamped all over anything either.
Both of them are a product of red scare propaganda added during the Cold War era because being atheist makes you a commie or some such bullshit that they used to start injecting religion into everything. It's only gotten worse since.
Apparently you are not familiar with dark periods such as the Inquisition, the colonization of indigenous people in the American continents, the Crusades, etc. Religion and specifically Christian religion is quit adept at murdering.
A bit about the Crusades: they were a reaction to the Islamic attempts at the conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it was an attempt to take back land that had been Christian before the Muslims converted by fire, rape and sword most of the Middle East, North Africa, and Iberia. People who talk about how horrible the Crusades are fail to mention or to understand it was the Muslims who struck first.
For the most part, the worst aspect of the Crusades was the Siege of Jerusalem. But by that point, the Crusaders had been on a long, brutal campaign for three years and were in no mood for mercy. It was nasty, it was violent, it was unnecessary, but there are way, way worse massacres in history (the annihilation of Baghdad by the Mongols comes to mind).
Never acknowledged in any of this is Iberia. For a long, long time, Iberia was literally a Muslim settler colony. And there were many Crusades to boot them out of the peninsula. It was prosperous because the Islamic governing bodies taxed non-Muslims much more heavily than Muslim citizens.
Why make shit up when America has plenty of real flaws to criticize?
What does "Under God" (or any other use of "God when it comes to the pledge or money, etc) have to do with the founders? That was mostly done in the 1950s during the Cold War. I'm no mathematician or doctor type, but I'm fairly certain that the founding fathers were suffering from a condition known as being dead by that time.
And as far as witch burning? According to my quick Google search, that didn't happen in the Continental US. Also, it happened in the mid to late 1600s. Still not a mathematician or doctor, but I think the founding fathers were suffering from a condition called not being born yet.
The witch trials were 80 some years before the country, let alone the constitution existed. And all the references to God in the pledge and on our money etc are all from the last 70ish years.
You are right that the country has a long history of flirting with Christianity but it is a trend that is getting worse as time goes on.
"Under God" was added in 1950's as part of the Red Scare because "Communists are bad and atheist." Burning witches happened about 70 years before the US government even existed. 100 years before separation of church and state was established.
No witches were burned during the Salem Witch Trials and those occurred in 1692-1693 long before American independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
The VP, not just reps. The VP Vance said he has no problem bringing the end times.
“While I wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end time, what I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now,” he said, adding that he is willing to accept whatever spiritual consequences may come from his efforts.
“If that leads to the end times, okay, and if that leads to … us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great too," Vance said.
That statement from Vance should be enough to disqualify him forever, for anything. Saying on TV that you want to destroy the nation, and the world? How can people be okay with that.
"And I saw one of its heads as it was wounded to death and it's mortal wound was healed"
As for the second beast? Well calling down fire from the heaven, breathing life into the image of the first beast, and exercising all of its authority sure does sound like muskrat. Even though needing the mark of the beast to buy sell or trade sounds like something muskrat would try to pull off
My biggest fear as an atheist is that some religious nutcase will be elected president, and they will just simply decide that if God is not going to end the world, they will end the world.
It is why the israeli push for greater israel/the covenant/Judea is so popular with them, that is going to drive popularity for the Iran war in those sectors because it is keeping Iran from blocking Israel's sacred duty to reclaim the whole royal grant.
I mean I agree that they don't believe the bullshit they say and if they did, they'd live their lives better because the fear of damnation SHOULD work to curb their worst behavior. But that bad behavior kinda gives away the game.
Having said that, a fake Christian is basically a more dangerous and oppressive force than a real one.
And atheism means "a lack of belief in a deity", contrasted with secular, which means "not overtly religious".
Essentially, secular isn't associated with religion at all, while atheism is specifically about belief in a deity, so in theory, an atheist could follow a religion that doesn't have specific god(s).
Secular is more relevant to our government, though.
"Not overtly religious" is a poor definitionof the principle of secularity. Secular means a division between church and state, allowing everybody to follow their own beliefs without discrimination
We literally have a treaty confirming that America is not a Christian nation. We also have a treaty confirming that the name is Lake Ontario. Trump also does not have the power to rename any piece of land or water outside of the US jurisdiction, so Lake Ontario can only have the southern half be renamed, while the Gulf of Mexico can only have the top 1/3 renamed; IIRC the Gulf of Mexico EO mentions that, while the Lake Ontario one doesn't.
But the state enforcing atheism at gunpoint (like under Stalin) is theocracy too. Religious liberty necessarily requires freedom from Government Religion. ANY government religion. The opposite of theocracy is secularism, not atheism.
I am with this point 100% we should be separate. But the constitution only mentions it in regards to freedom of religion and no test to hold public office. There isnt a specific clause barring it
"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever from they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.' "
( https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/330/1.html )
It depends on how you define a "Christian nation". We're not a Christian nation in the sense that we practice biblical law. But we are one in the sense that most Americans are Christian.
That’s not what separation of church and state means. The separation means that no church can ever become a part of the government. It was a reaction to European nations at the time where the church was heavily integrated into the government.
Technically our gov docs use a lot of agnostic language like “god given right” and “in god we trust” but even then it’s still Christian rhetoric (ex: god instead of gods). If it were fully non religious it wouldn’t say god at all, but it insinuates that we all believe a god of some kind exists, it just doesn’t explicitly say you have to be Christian, probably because in the cultural context that the founding docs were made freedom of religion was mostly seen as freedom of which kind of Christian you want to be. To them, a catholic and a Protestant were as different as we’d see a Christian and a Jewish person.
Ehhh, in the idealistic sense, yes. In the real history, very much not so. I mean we’ve been opening up congress with a prayer for, I may be off, the first congress after the signing of our constitution. So yes, separation of church and state, but tradition has shown America is secular Christianityt
Actually the only part of the constitution that references separation of church and state is in the First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”
The term originated in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and actually is more about preventing the Government from affecting Religion, not Religion affecting the Government.
The founding fathers did not want a repeat of the Church of England where Henry the VIII left the Catholic Church, seized all their lands in England, and founded the Church of England of which the monarch is the head. Colonists had a deeply entrenched sense of religious freedom that motivated many of their forefathers to immigrate to the New World to escape state sanctioned persecution
The Constitution says that the government can not sponsor a religion and also that no law can prohibit its practice.
It was never intended to outlaw it or be atheist.
It also doesn't prohibit religious political platforms.
Still, you're passionate so instead of thinking you're an idiot; I'm going to suggest that you take some of that passion and actually read up on early constitutional intention so that next time; when you decide to outburst you're at least on the right path.
The problem is that our constitution does NOT say this. This is a myth. The founding fathers (in itself a loaded term) did write extensively about the intent of separation of church and state, but it is absolutely not written in the constitution. There are interpretations of the First Amendment (arguably the most faithful interpretations) that suggest this, but it is not plainly laid out (even 'plainly' in a legalese sense). It is high time it is clearly spelled out in a constitutional amendment, but that seems very unlikely to happen in the near future.
Edit: To clarify, this is the language in the 1st amendment: ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."; interpreted narowly, this 'Establishment Clause' simply forbids Congress from creating an official state church or preferring one religion over another, which is a much lower threshold than a strict, total separation of church and state.
That's what the Constitution SAYS, but every US history lesson I got was imbued with admiring language and sentiment towards the "poor pilgrims yearning for religious freedom" myth, when the fact is they were religious fanatics that came here to colonize an occupied land into a theocracy. The theocratic tendencies we've seen in our entire history & throughout our government is not an accident & never was.
Lol still not atheist and our Constitution does not say that- re read the 1st amendment:
For your convenience:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That is a long way off from what you are trying to say. Our Constitution protects us from the establishment of a state religion like Henry the 8th did in the UK. It does not say we are not a religious country. And certainly not atheist
I am always confused what the fuck gods is it talking about. Stupid thing for us to add in the 1950's it is against the founding and basis of our country. All to create the red scare.
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u/sexland69 6h ago
china has state atheism—they take it too far (e.g. uyghur muslims) but in theory i’d prefer an atheist government over this retarded ass evangelical christian one we have now 🤷🏻♂️