Atheists as a majority

Sycophant · Jan 17, 2007

Lisa0315 said:
Don't you love cross-posting! I gave you some time to catch up.

Thanks.

No offense to atheists present, but the basic fear of atheists likely stems from the falsely presumed association with communism and immorality. I have seen Christians post HERE that the only reason an atheist wouldn't believe was because he wanted to remain in sin.

Generally I don't think I sin anymore than most Christians (unless we include issues such as pre-marital sex and stuff, which many Christians seems to disagree on anyway). Certainly the big sins I think are common to most people regardless of religion... So that's not my motivator anyway

Put that together with the persecution of the past, and the Scriptural persecution of the future...well, 2+2 apparantly equals 5.

If not 6.

Now, honestly, I believe Scripture is correct and Christians will be persecuted again sometime in the not too distant future. Will atheists be more likely to persecute us than those of other faiths?

The problem I have with the idea of biblically destined persecution is that it causes a lot of people to look for it. And as a result I think many Christians tend to 'cry wolf' on the issue a lot.

Maybe there will be real persecution of Christians, although looking at it objectively I don't think it's likely. Perhaps there may be other interpretations of what that may mean in a realistic sense.

But if there is persecution in a biblical way, I don't think it would take the form that many people seem to claim it is (war on Christmas, no ten commandments everywhere).

I secretly think that it will be those of other faiths. An atheist is generally intellectualy honest and has likely studied Scripture more than other faiths.

Well religions have historically been the cause of many wars, so that's not entirely out of the question I guess. However in a more modern world where statewide religion is less common, this is unlikely. A war by any other religion against Christians would become a war against whole countries, regardless of faith, because religion is not easy to identify externally.

If Christians suddenly disappear, I think atheists will grab their Bibles, (and I bet every one of you has one!) and begin reading.

I have a couple of bibles, a qur'an, a concordance of the bible, some krishna books, and a few other assorted things. I don't read any of them often.

You will suddenly realize that the proof you have sought your whole life is happening right before your eyes. You will fall to your knees, and it will be FORMER atheists who are persecuted and will lay down their lives for Christ. It is you who will wear the crowns of martyrdom. Wouldn't that be a hoot! I sure hope it happens like that because I won't have ANYONE to argue with in Heaven if it doesn't!

Well if there is a heaven, I'll be up for a spirited debate (although I imagine the conversation in hell might be a bit more exciting and, forgive the pun, heated).

I can't possibly imagine what my reaction might be if the rapture were to happen, as it's pretty hard to evaluate... But I promise I'll keep an open mind should that occur.

Disclaimer: Do not count on this. None of us can agree whether the rapture will occur pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib. Plus, if you are living during the tribulation, it is far more likely that you will die during the cataclysmic events than survive to reason all of this out. You are far better to believe by faith now than to come to faith by trial by fire.

Or even if the rapture will occur - I believe is something that only certain churches embrace.

But I'm happy to wait and see - I'm quite happy with my life as it stands, so if it's cool, no hurry on the end times.

SallyNow · Jan 17, 2007

That sort of thing disgusts me.

First, it attempts to pass off lies and slander as truth.

Second, it sets up a false persecution complex. There are Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindi that are being persecuted, violently, in nations in this world...

No, I do not think the world would be like that if "the atheists" ran the world. But then again, I doubt we'll have the world run by any one religion... or lack thereof...

I don't know any atheists who are evil or horrible people. They are quite nice, actually. Same with the agnostics I know, the pantheists, the theists.

Every segment of population has its extremists... and that includes atheists... but generally, they are the tiny minority, the sub-sub-sub culture within, the few bad apples in an orchard...

RealDeal · Jan 17, 2007

Voegelin said:
I imagine you don't like it. But that is the history of the 20th century. Atheist regimes dominated a large part of the world and we know what they did. Atheists all the time throw up the Crusades, the Inquistion or other events of centuries ago (always in a very distorted way--never explaining the reasons) but we are not suppose to mention what atheists did in the Soviet Union and China when many of us have relatives who were imprisoned or murdered by those regimes? We're not supposed to mention that history when many of the killers are still alive?

The largest atheist organization in history was the League of Militant Atheists headed by Joe Stalin's flunky E. Yaroslavsky. Read what his 2 million plus atheists did to believers. Its not pretty. He set the stage for the Holodomor (which was carried out by another atheist).

No, I'm not saying being a non-believer means one must be as Yaroslavsky or Mao. That would be absurd. But it is legitimate to point out what the recent history of atheistic regimes has been. It is legitmate to note that westerners who supported brutal regimes in Russia and China included many atheists. ACLU director Corliss Lamont, a humanist, supported Stalin during the Show Trials and after Stalin was exposed as a homicidal maniac. There must have been some but I can't think of one notable atheist who stood up and denounced in no uncertain terms what atheists were doing in the USSR. People such as George Bernard Shaw went to the USSR when the repression and mass murders were occurring and praised that regime. The publisher of the New Republic, Michael Whitney Straight, was an agent of Stalin and betrayed his own country to advance the cause of atheism and communism.

Legitmate to note these regimes did not correct themselves but were brought down by Christians (Poland being Exhibit A).

Your excuse that "everybody does it" is invalid. Christians never did what atheists did in the USSR. No one had ever done in history what they did. Christians do not preach murder as a part of their dogma. Atheists in the USSR did. In 1918, Zinoviev flat out stated that 10% of the Russian people would have to be "liquidated". Walter Duranty (who was an associate of Crowley and celebrated Black Masses with him before drifting off into a vague nihilism) excused the murder of 7 million in the Ukraine with the infamous comment: "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs"

There is no Christian figure who compares; No Christian failure which compares.

You know what? As important as history is, and as important as it is not to repeat mistakes, I don't care. I don't care if atheists did this, or Christians did that. All that is in the past. I've never compared modern people to those of the past, I don't bring up the Crusades or witch hunting. We live in the here and now. If you live in the past instead of looking to the future we'll never move on as a race. You may personally know some horrible atheists, and know all about 'our' horrible history, but atheists are majorily good people. Just like Christians. No one has anything to fear from atheists as a group, and if a regime were to come about, we'd fight right beside you against it.

ElvisFan42 · Jan 17, 2007

Voegelin said:
I imagine you don't like it. But that is the history of the 20th century. Atheist regimes dominated a large part of the world and we know what they did. Atheists all the time throw up the Crusades, the Inquistion or other events of centuries ago (always in a very distorted way--never explaining the reasons) but we are not suppose to mention what atheists did in the Soviet Union and China when many of us have relatives who were imprisoned or murdered by those regimes? We're not supposed to mention that history when many of the killers are still alive?

The largest atheist organization in history was the League of Militant Atheists headed by Joe Stalin's flunky E. Yaroslavsky. Read what his 2 million plus atheists did to believers. Its not pretty. He set the stage for the Holodomor (which was carried out by another atheist).

No, I'm not saying being a non-believer means one must be as Yaroslavsky or Mao. That would be absurd. But it is legitimate to point out what the recent history of atheistic regimes has been. It is legitmate to note that westerners who supported brutal regimes in Russia and China included many atheists. ACLU director Corliss Lamont, a humanist, supported Stalin during the Show Trials and after Stalin was exposed as a homicidal maniac. There must have been some but I can't think of one notable atheist who stood up and denounced in no uncertain terms what atheists were doing in the USSR. People such as George Bernard Shaw went to the USSR when the repression and mass murders were occurring and praised that regime. The publisher of the New Republic, Michael Whitney Straight, was an agent of Stalin and betrayed his own country to advance the cause of atheism and communism.

Legitmate to note these regimes did not correct themselves but were brought down by Christians (Poland being Exhibit A).

Your excuse that "everybody does it" is invalid. Christians never did what atheists did in the USSR. No one had ever done in history what they did. Christians do not preach murder as a part of their dogma. Atheists in the USSR did. In 1918, Zinoviev flat out stated that 10% of the Russian people would have to be "liquidated". Walter Duranty (who was an associate of Crowley and celebrated Black Masses with him before drifting off into a vague nihilism) excused the murder of 7 million in the Ukraine with the infamous comment: "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs"

There is no Christian figure who compares; No Christian failure which compares.

None? Not likely, should we discuss the English empire which was intertwined with the church? The Spanish, the Romans after Christianity? In any event, They all committed great sins against humanity, in the name of Christ none the less, these athiests you point to did things out of greed, not in the name of athiesm. It doesn't appear that having religion has made any greedy world leaders any less evil. Does the amount of people a Soviet leader killed compared to the amount a king of England killed matter? They both used brutal, inhumane methods. Neither is worse than the other. You arguement that athiests commit greater crimes than non-athiests caused it is baseless.

Maxwell511 · Jan 17, 2007

Voegelin said:
Legitmate to note these regimes did not correct themselves but were brought down by Christians (Poland being Exhibit A).

Exhibit B.

xMinionX · Jan 17, 2007

They say the darndest things indeed.

Maynard Keenan · Jan 17, 2007

Looks like something written by someone very ignorant, or someone looking to cause trouble.

Ampoliros · Jan 18, 2007

Voegelin said:
In Tibet, atheists used dynamite to blast over 5,000 monasteries off Himilayan hillsides. In Moscow, the Church of Christ the Savior was dynamited by atheists. Fairly straighforward destruction. The perverted stuff and mass murders which are well documented happened in the Ukraine between 1918 and 1933. Rape as political policy, women crucified to barn doors, men ridden like horses to their church, told to pray to their God and then hanged. Between 1935 and 1938, atheists in the USSR turned on each other. One major atheist after the next got a bullet to the back of the head by his fellow atheists during the Show Trial era. Who knows exactly what they did in China and Cambodia. Mostly we know the death toll: over ten times the number killed in the Holocaust. I don't know if there has ever been an atheist regime which did not engage in mass atrocities. Certainly none in the 20th century refrained. From Bela Kun to Hoxha to Mao, the story was always the same.

Again with this "evil atheist commies" stuff. While points other posters have made certainly hold true (namely, that atheism isn't the root cause of what causes stuff like this); I'd like to ask something quite basic:

Would you prefer that non-Christians automatically associate you with the worst of Christianity's history? The Crusades? Inquisition? Hitler? Fred Phelps? The Puritans? Should we judge you like you are judging all of us?

Madcoil · Jan 18, 2007

Is someone going to throw something, or what?

Lisa0315 · Jan 18, 2007

Ampoliros said:
Again with this "evil atheist commies" stuff. While points other posters have made certainly hold true (namely, that atheism isn't the root cause of what causes stuff like this); I'd like to ask something quite basic:

Would you prefer that non-Christians automatically associate you with the worst of Christianity's history? The Crusades? Inquisition? Hitler? Fred Phelps? The Puritans? Should we judge you like you are judging all of us?

Very good point especially since Jesus made the same point. In Matthew 7, Jesus warns against judging and says that by whatever measure we judge, that is the measure that we will be judged by.

Lisa

Lisa0315 · Jan 18, 2007

Madcoil said:
Is someone going to throw something, or what?

FOOD FIGHT! Let's kill the flying spaghetti monster!

RealDeal · Jan 18, 2007

Lisa0315 said:
FOOD FIGHT! Let's kill the flying spaghetti monster!

Throwing food at a spaghetti monster only makes it stronger. What we need are knives and forks! Unbutton your top pants button people, it's eatin' time!

Robbie_James_Francis · Jan 18, 2007

Even if this was not written by a Christian it is, unfortunately, not without a grain of truth, however small. To me the whole attitude looks a lot like typical psychological projection. They know that atheism is not iself fundamentalist, and only when it happens to be tied up with other ideologies (Marxism etc.) does it involve such opression. Most religions, on the other hand, contain fundamentalism inherently, even if most religious people are not fundamentalists.

(I know this is by far not the point of the thread, but I'd just like to point out that cannabis actually isn't physically addictive. Sorry...just thought it needed to be said. At least I won't start ranting about how the Netherlands has some of the lowest drug addiction levels in the Western world.)

peace

Lisa0315 · Jan 18, 2007

RealDeal said:
Throwing food at a spaghetti monster only makes it stronger. What we need are knives and forks! Unbutton your top pants button people, it's eatin' time!

I disagree with your interpetation of this doctrine. The Book of Meatballs clearly shows that it is FOOD which must be thrown. Knives and Forks! You are clearly a liberal and will justify ANYTHING. When Meatballs says that we partake of the Spaghetti Monster, it does not mean literally! It is symbolic!

Voegelin · Jan 18, 2007

Lisa0315 said:
Very good point especially since Jesus made the same point. In Matthew 7, Jesus warns against judging and says that by whatever measure we judge, that is the measure that we will be judged by.

Lisa

Don't believe the Bible suggests we be potted plants.

When atheists attack the faith I believe we have an obligation to respond. Currently there are several very judgemental, very vicious books out attacking the Christian faith. Search on "Christian Fascism" to find them. They are being reviewed by the New York Times and others in the liberal media. These books are nothing more than Christian versions of the Elders of the Protocols of Zion. They should be denounced, not reviewed as if they make legitimate points. They do not.

If atheists and their allies are going to slander the faith by claiming Christians in America are fascists, if they are going to constantly claim Christians are out to create a repressive theocracy if the New York Times is going to give these books publicity, then it is incumbant, I believe, for Christians to remind people of what atheists have done in recent years in Tibet, in Cambodia, in Cuba, in Poland, in the USSR.

We can bring up old history too. French Revolution might be a good place to start to educate people on what atheists and "anti-clerics" have done when they gain political power. Hungary in 1919 is a good example too.

jayem · Jan 18, 2007

Voegelin said:
.

If atheists and their allies are going to slander the faith by claiming Christians in America are fascists, if they are going to constantly claim Christians are out to create a repressive theocracy if the New York Times is going to give these books publicity, then it is incumbant, I believe, for Christians to remind people of what atheists have done in recent years in Tibet, in Cambodia, in Cuba, in Poland, in the USSR.

I think the issue raised in the OP is somewhat different. It's to postulate what a country would be like where a majority of the population are non-theists. Certainly in the old USSR, Poland, Cambodia, the situation was that the government was headed by people with totalitarian leanings, who also rejected traditional religion. But it's not fair to say the bulk of the various populations were not still religious.

There already are countries where most of their populations are atheist/agnostic. There is a list on adherents.com. Now I don't how these numbers were determined or accurate these are. Sweden is #1, followed by Vietnam, Denmark, Norway, and Japan. Judging by this, I'd say that countries with significant non-religious populations are pretty much like any others. Many are pleasant places with high standards of living and much personal freedom, and some are not.

http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html

Voegelin · Jan 18, 2007

jayem said:
Certainly in the old USSR, Poland, Cambodia, the situation was that the government was headed by people with totalitarian leanings, who also rejected traditional religion. But it's not fair to say the bulk of the various populations were not still religious.

There would have been more had not millions been murdered. As a Catholic, I'm sure you know about the Ukraine. Your faith was a minority to begin with and was virtually wiped out (many ethnic Germans in the Ukraine were Catholic. 300,000 of them were murdered by atheists between 1919-1933...ever read the letters begging for help? They were published in U.S. newspapers in the upper midwest but not in the New York Times. Heart-wrenching.

Stalin did call Yaroslavsky and Kaganovich off their crusade to wipe out Christians when he needed cannon fodder for World War Two. Then atheistic communism was dropped in favor of patriotism with a hint of religion in it. But after the war, the repression continued).

I do not believe the actions of atheists in countries as far removed from each other as Poland and Cambodia can be dismissed as anomalies. We are taking about billions of peole enslaved. It took millions of people to keep them down. Millions of believers in atheism. Not all were vicious. But many were.

Atheists stop their attacks on us, I'll be glad to let the past be the past. But I see no indication their rhetoric has cooled from the time of the League of Militant Atheists. The charges against the faith by atheists are very, very similiar (don't you, as a Catholic, get sick of the misrepresentations about the Inquistion, the Galileo case and the Crusades by atheists? I'm not Catholic and I do).

ElvisFan42 · Jan 18, 2007

Voegelin said:
Atheists stop their attacks on us, I'll be glad to let the past be the past. But I see no indication their rhetoric has cooled from the time of the League of Militant Atheists. The charges against the faith by atheists are very, very similiar (don't you, as a Catholic, get sick of the misrepresentations about the Inquistion, the Galileo case and the Crusades by atheists? I'm not Catholic and I do).

There will always be attacks against Christianity, and there is nothing wrong about fending them off, but you make it sound as all athiests were trying to kill of Catholics. Most athiests couldn't care less, they just want to be left alone. Can I blame all Protestants for letting the Irish starve and murdering the Irish for being Catholic? No one has misrepresented the Inquisition, it was the Catholic church abusing their power plane and simple.

Maxwell511 · Jan 18, 2007

ElvisFan42 said:
Can I blame all Protestants for letting the Irish starve?

That would be unfair, not all Protestants are Capitalists.

"We shall be equally blamed for keeping the Irish alive or letting them die and we have only to select between the Economists or the Philanthropists - which do you prefer?"

Lord Clarendon

Guttermouth · Jan 18, 2007

If atheists were the majority, I can tell you some things for sure.

We would not require a group anti-god statement before our government meetings.

We would not feel the need to create monuments in the courthouse rotunda about the 10 rules of being an atheist.

We would not ask students to make an anti-god proclamation before the start of each school day, nor would we get bent out of shape if the school didnt sponsor such things.

We wouldnt claim there is a war on atheism if we went into a store and someone wished us a Merry Christmas.

We wouldnt feel the need to have an anti-god rally before sporting events and graduation ceremonies.

We would not feel the need to add atheist slogans to our currency, or modify the national pledge to state that atheism rules our nation.

We wouldnt falsely claim that we arent allowed to express our opinion about atheism in the public square.

We wouldnt, as the majority, claim to be the persecuted minority.

We would not prevent believers from marrying or sponsor other institutionalized discrimination because they have a differing belief system.

We would not feel the need to destroy the beauty of our public parks by erecting atheist monuments, and claim persecution if a Christian cried foul.

In short, we would not feel the need to force others to immerse themselves in atheism as a means of making ourselves feel more secure in our beliefs.

Atheists as a majority

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