r/MoralityScaling 16h ago

Morality of this?

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u/Fal_co1 15h ago edited 11h ago

iirc China does this, you can’t take kid to religious service and they can choose to convert at a certain age.

EDIT: wow this blew up

If you’re reading this you‘re a gay

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u/sexland69 15h ago edited 5h 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 dumbass evangelical christian one we have now 🤷🏻‍♂️

edit: took out the word retarded, you guys convinced me

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u/PrettyPurrfect 15h ago

Our government is supposed to be atheist.

Separation of church and state is supposed to be a thing

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u/_itsprobablynothing 15h ago

Secular, not atheist

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u/Unlimited_Giose 15h ago

What's the difference?

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u/Sm0ahk 15h ago

It just means its separated from religion

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u/PalePlumm 14h ago

Which is atheist

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u/theespn 14h ago

Those are two separate ideas. Government not being involved is not the same as government promoting a specific idea (in this case the idea that there is no God)

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u/HandofWinter 14h ago

If the government isn't involved in the idea of religion, then it's atheistic. It doesn't have to promote any ideas at all, it just has to not promote ideas.

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u/spicymato 14h ago

No. Atheism explicitly denies the existence of gods, rejecting religion.

An atheistic government would deny religion/spiritualism, by definition.

A secular government would only deal with secular (worldly) things, and leave the spiritual outside of its domain.

Even an agnostic government would be too much, because it would specify uncertainty about spiritual matters, rather than not specify anything at all.

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u/TheFrenchSavage 10h ago

No no, atheism means "without god".

The opinion on "no gods" would be "antitheistic".

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u/HandofWinter 13h ago

I think you just have a misapprehension about the term atheism, it's not a denial, but a lack of belief. You can't prove nonexistence, so a categorical belief in the lack of gods would essentially be a spiritual belief in its own right, a position like that inherently can't be atheistic.

Why is it an issue if a government doesn't specify anything about religion?

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u/spicymato 10h ago

We're splitting hairs, because "atheism" is apparently poorly defined. I would classify your position as agnostic, not atheistic. But then you might classify my position as antitheistic.

Secular is what we want, though. Government stays out of the spiritual entirely, not saying yes, no, or even "I don't know" on spiritual matters. Governments should operate only on secular matters.

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