Posted: Feb 14, 2011 5:26 pm
Lion IRC wrote:The Plc wrote:Lion IRC wrote:Hi Davian,
Yes you can take religion for a test drive.
Thats the beauty of it - its voluntary. Nobody can force you. Nobody can stop you.
Except if you live in an Islamic theocracy, where apostasy or blasphemy is rewarded by the death penalty, sometimes even if you're not a citizen of that country. If you live in the UK, unelected Bishops decide on laws that effect every you and every other citizen's life such as for example, vetoing humane euthanasia legislation because of their creepy taboo morality. If you live in Ireland, you'll know the catholic church has more or less dictated authoritarian social policies for centuries - contraception was only made legal only pretty recently, and it's still behind the rest of Europe when it comes to other birth control laws. If you live in Northern Ireland, you'll know that the largest political party is a fundamentalist Christian one, who abuse their power to try and force creationist nonsense into schools and museums, attack homosexuals, and collude with the other Christian parties to absurdly block birth control measures. And I haven't even mentioned the publically funded state faith schools scandal that is such a obscenely theocratic feature of countries like the Britain, Ireland other European countries. I could go on. What if you're unfortunate to be born to seriously religious, or even casually religious parents, won't they impose religion on you? How many innocent babies are baptised each year? Aren't children coerced into going to religious ceremonies virtually every week if they were born to a religious family?
You haven't a leg to stand on here, you surely know that religion is rammed down the throats of billions of people day after day. I can only presume, as I've before reading your posts, that you don't actually mean what you write.
No I didnt know that. It it true? Billions of people who dont want religion being forced into it by ....by whom?
Atheism has been an available menu option for 50,000 years.
Palaeolithic humans were perfectly capable of being atheists if they wanted to. If some shaman wandered into camp
and told the group of cave people..."I'm on a mission from God" the tribe could either throw him off a cliff
or they could say ..."prove it"
...and still throw him off a cliff later anytime they liked.
BTW - If this...
"I can only presume, as I've before reading your posts, that you don't actually mean what you write"
Then why bother?
I just gave you a description of a sample of the all ways religion is imposed and forced upon people all the world today. You did quote it, but didn't address it, even though you quoted it. Religion is forced upon people by illiberal governments, over zealous family members, influential church bodies, and so on.
In the very recent Handmaid's Tale thread in which Lion was the core participant, this issue - Lion's bare assertion that religion isn't imposed on people - was discussed. This assertion of Lion's was opposed by myself and others, and Lion completely failed to respond.
For example, I wrote
As for this platitude about Christianity not being forced on people; besides from the objection that Cookiejohn brought up and to which I'll add later, I know from personal experience that it's total bullshit. I had Christianity rammed down my throat from a very young age, both from by my parents (I don't blame them, they were fucked up in their turn...) and by the Church-State education system - which incidentally happens to be one of the more obscenely theocratic features of my country's political landscape. I won't give details, and won't paint a picture of harsh brutality like in the Handmaid's Tale, but I will attest that I felt coerced and threatened into Christian practice and observance nearly every day until I very thankfully left the system of indoctrination shortly after I became a legal adult. And that's nearly without me mentioning how I used to actually believe the Christian doctrines that were taught to me as assumed fact.
But let's return to the original objection to the assertion that Christianity is not forced on people. Let's phrase the objection in the form of two direct questions to Lion and let's us hope he can answer them unequivocally. 1) What is it that you as a Christian believe happens to believers after they die? And 2) What do you as a Christian believe happens to non-believers after they die?
If his answers are those of Jesus' teachings in the Bible, the Bible that Lion is so enthusiastic about, then he's forced to admit that people that don't 'choose' Christianity will fucking go to hell. Any tripe about The Handmaid's Tale being ungodly and unchristian will look positively Russellan in it's clarity and logic when compared to apologia about hellfire doctrine not involving threats and coercion.
Lion never responded to any of this, or anybody's post on the topic, but continued to post in the thread about a different issue. Is it not reasonable then to assume that he had no answer to it? That he had no justification for his original assertion? That he knows himself that he was wrong? If otherwise, why didn't he post a serious rebuttal? This is why I think he can't genuinely believe what he writes, as his intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency is so palpable. He shouldn't assert the truth of something he's failed to demonstrate when given ample opportunity.
I genuinely don't understand the rest of Lion's post and the point he's trying to make about people being pushed off cliffs because the language and grammar seems so odd to me. I find it too difficult to parse.