What's The Harm In Belief?

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baleeted

Last edited by Legato on 16 Dec 2008, 6:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

Legato: Slowmutant is Canadian, so discussion of American law is irrelevant to him. Canada's government is derived from that of the UK, which itself is at least nominally tied to Anglicanism.

Oh s**t, I feel like an idiot. Canada doesn't have separation of church and state....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341574,00.html

This s**t happens more often than most people would think.

Last edited by Legato on 16 Dec 2008, 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

But it is not representative of religious people as a whole. It is not indicative of how I, or slowmutant, or ToadOfSteel, or even Ragtime and Iamnotaparakeet, would behave. I am as disgusted by those people as you are, so please stop trying to lump me in with them.

That was not my intention. The purpose is to illustrate how religion is so easily taken to the extreme. In a way, I have to respect these people for not being hypocrits. After all, Jesus himself tells people to place their faith on God to provide for them and not to rely on the material world for anything.

The key is, what part of religion prevents you from performing these actions? The answer is no part of it, it's human rational thinking that saves us, not religion.

EDIT: To clarify further, it's not belief in gods that does this, it's belief in religion that does this.

"What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. For Germany's prestige in East and West and before the whole world this handshake with the Papacy, the greatest moral power in the history of the world, is a feat of immeasurable blessing. ...May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria, praising Adolf Hitler for the Concordat, July 24, 1933

"In this way the Catholics will profess again their loyalty to people and Fatherland and their agreement with the farsighted and forceful efforts of the Führer to spare the German people the terror of war and Bolshevism, to secure public order and create work for the unemployed."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria, encouraging German Catholics to vote "yes" in the upcoming plebiscite to re-elect Hitler and support his decision to withdraw from the League of Nations, November 10, 1933

"[Adolf Hitler is] the tool of God, called upon to overcome Judaism..."
- Father Senn, a Catholic priest, writing in a Catholic publication, May 15, 1934

"[It is good that Catholic organizations] reject all subversive attitudes and conduct, refrain from any political activity and especially will resolutely repel all attempted approaches of Communism. ...[The clergy should always act] in full loyalty to Church and State."
- Statement of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, August 23, 1935

"Good Catholics have always been good patriots. Surely not good Catholics staged the revolution of 1918, Catholic soldiers indeed have not been deserters, and good Catholics will never be on the side of revolutionaries, no matter how badly things are going."
- Bishop Rackl of Eichstätt, Sermon, May 26, 1935

"You are witnesses for the fact that on all Sundays and holidays at the main service we pray in all churches for the Führer as we have promised in the Concordat. ...We will today give an answer, a Christian answer: Catholic men, we will now pray together a paternoster for the life of the Führer. This is our answer."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria, Sermon, responding to newspaper story about a Swiss Catholic asking children to pray for Hitler's death, July 7, 1936

The annihiliation of the Cathars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathars#Suppression
This is also where the phrase "Kill them all and let God sort it out" came from, with some semantic differences. Ah, the tolerance of the faithful...

Condom infection:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7014335.stm

I will assume you are not denying the Inquisition of the Crusades, as that is completely ignorant. As for the current Pope's guilt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rat ... se_scandal

Hope that helps.

No, it's not. It is based on secular values.

I would like to agree, I'm not educated enough on Canada's government to make that claim. If we were talking about America, I would quote Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.

Actually, we do. Canada is not a theocracy. Americans, just admit you don't know sh*t about us.

When this continent was first settled by Europeans, they brought the Christian religion with them. You know, the missionaries who basicallly destroyed the indigenous peoples? It's in the history books.

On this, I think you are correct. It can be found in Sections 1 & 2 of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But even if there was no law or clause actually stating that there is a separation of church and state, it still wouldn't make Canada or any other country a theocracy. A theocracy has an offical state religion AND the religion is basically the same as the government. Many Muslim countries are examples of theocracies. The United Kingdom, however, actually does have a state religion (Church of England), but it is not a theocracy and, oddly, secularism is far more wide-spread there than it is in America.

So?

Impressive. I wonder how much of it is actually true.

What is truly impressive is the counterpoints you have made to my claims and the research you provided to back it up. I am truly amazed and I bow to your superior logic. Consider my mind changed, where is my Jeebus cracker??

But if your answer to the question "Do you believe God exists?" is anything but "yes", you are, by definition, an atheist.

Yep.



Canada has an explicit state religion, and there are few protections, if any, against government endorsement of religion. That is not separation of church and state. Not having separation of church and state is not equal to being a theocracy, and to assert so is quite strange.

Other than that, I know milk comes in a bag and everyone in Vancouver is a pothead. *sarcasm*