After the Fall

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When the seriously atheist Communist regime in Albania stepped down , for the first time in many years people could worship without worrying about disappearing. It is important to touch the PC base so as not to make atheists uncomfortable - of course ATHEISTS never persecute the religious, Albania was a case of government officials who happened not to believe in God dealing summarily with dissidents who happened to be theists.

As we all know, Albania is religiously mixed. Orthodox in the south, Catholic in the north, and a lot of Muslims. So not a few summers ago, I was in Albania - never you mind why - and at one point I visited a town in the northwest. The town was perhaps one third Catholic, the rest Muslim.

On tha weekend Mass was said in the local Catholic church for the first time in a lot of years. There was great rejoicing, festivities, dancing in the streets. The interesting thing was - the Muslims were out there rejoicing right beside the Catholics. Embracing, dancing together. Reveling in their freedom, at last, to worship God.

It is wonderful how those who know and believe can come together - ignoring theological detail - when they are surrounded by antitheist activists.

But what can be the reason of that?

Guessing the atheist groups ticked off both religious groups enough that they figured fighting with each other was stupid and to unite against a common enemy. Whether it lasts, who knows.

Oh, don't worry. In a few years they will be beheading, bombing and burring each other alive again like they have since the beginning of religion.

Waiting...

I am curious about if it is common after a Communist Regime fallen

I see where you are going with this. Though, Communism was against scientific truth just as much as any religion. The researchers in the USSR that worked on any research into evolutionary biology had to hide and obfuscate what there actually working on because truth flew in the face of the Communist mythology. Delusion is always delusion. Asserting something is so when the facts demonstrate it is not is always insanity - same thing in the case of a magic sky-daddy and some crazy collectivist model of society.

Well yeah, it sucks to live in albania. Opiate of the masses and all that.

They finally got that fix they were jonesing for.

Depends on the country, and if there is any memories of self-government.

Sad thing too, to be out from the shadow of newer tyranny only to run under the shadow of the old tyranny, fear of the bright sun light of freedom and reason it would seem.

That's why the 2 largest atheist societies in the 20th century combined killed 120 million people- including people whose only act of dissent was not giving up their faith. That's why there are no known religious adherents left anywhere in North Korea- including the concentration camps. In 600 years of crusades, they killed about 2 million people. At that rate, atheists during the cold war killed people at about 7200 times more people a year than the crusaders did.

An interesting assemblage of view points.

As to whether it is common - not that many Communist regions were as inexorably bent on eradicating religion as Albania. If any of what I have heard is true [none of it first hand, the only Communist or formerly Communist state I have visited is Albania] it is more common to license and regulate churches, minimizing the probability of dissident activity and anticipating gradual decay.

In Albania, most of those who knew what it meant to worship God were dead or rather old.

The view that worshipping God implies tyranny is at best tragically ignorant and more likely stupid. Can organizations become tyrannical? Ydes, any organization can become tyrannical. But that is like saying that freedom is tyranny because so many liberators have become dictators.

OrderandChaos30, you may or may not see where I am going, but I do not see where you are going. True enough, those who know God have a lot in common with the scientists who are not gleichgeschaltet, and I for one would make recognize as a brother eithe a Doukhobor who knows God or a microbiologist doing original research. But that was not in my original intent.

the point, if it needs clarification or expansion, is in fact very closely linked to the thread on the Eucharist:

Believers, being stuck willy nilly with the Natural Reasoning Mind [cf Rex Andrews], are inclined if left alone to think up stories to make "sense" of the ineffable by making it see to fit in the world. We invent techniques and mechanisms and theories and it is all like phlogiston - reasonable sounding but empty.

And then - like any two academics - we quarrel about our theoretical differences. "The current flows from POS to NEG" "Dummkopf, the current flows NEG to POS" "Does not!" "Does so!" "Death to the unbelievers!"

When the Godhaters come and tell us to shut up... And not to wear crosses or head coverings... And not to assemble... And to trample on the crucifix...

THEN we may just stop niggling about theoretical sandcastles and realize children of God are brothrers.

It is the same old BS attack that assumes atheism = communist. And the claim comes that they killed people in the name of atheism rather than communism . Which is an incredibly stupid claim similar to thinking that since most Nazis considered themselves Catholic , their kills are attributable to Christianity.

Communist countries may have been atheistic in name, but the reason you go around killing people who don't quit their beliefs is that you want them to worship you. Those tyrannical countries were about making a religion of worship to a single person or regime but by another name. A cult of personality.

Can you blame them? Religion has been so successful at that, that ideologies tried to do it and they were rather successful.

The current humanist groups are against any sort of non-sense, idiotic ideologies that cause people to kill each other, religions happen to be one of them, communism is also another of them.

Meanwhile, anti-science, anti-rational , anti-individual thought postures not unlike that of those used by communism and nazism are still being pushed by countries that are still living in the medieval age - That is countries that are still not secular aka those Muslim countries. They still believe in the crusades for god's sake.

And of course, a similar anti-rational and anti-individual thought agenda comes from so-called 'conservative' groups that would like the west to go back to the medieval age.

I for one, think they suck. We already have enough evidence of what religion does when it is mixed with state. The medieval ages sucked, they were a crap sack world and it halted progress for a thousand of years.

QFT

DO not be so deliberaly pandaesque bloedig stupid.

A. Not all Communist regimes need be seriously atheist, nor am I at least so stone duhm I do not know that.

B. Not all atheist regimes are Communist, nor am I at least so stone duhm I do not know that.

BUT - mon ami Vexillifer, if you can stop grooming and playing with your banderita a moment -
a dictatorial regime soon realizes that people who look to God for instructions and not just to Glorious Leader are threats to their continued power. And so the Church in Geneva chases Anabaptists, and the Albanian Communists git every believer, and the Nazis and Stalinists make things hot for clergy who don't play ball.

And if my brother COULD utterly eradicate religion he would.

Atheists who are not ANTITHEISTS - the kind of atheist I was - do not kill people off. Neither do theists who do not see atheism as a threat - the kund theist I am - persecute atheists or heretics.

But the people who rant against theists and atheists and heretics and all the other Green Monkeys starting with people like me who DO dare to be different - give them a lever and they will thwack a Green Monkey with it.

Correct.