The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

You're saying the powers that be manipulated Christian doctrine for their own methods when they started burning people.

I knew we'd get on the same page eventually.

We're all on the same page.

Because the fact that this strongly held faith can be manipulated and its adherents so readily steered by Caesar reveals the tenuous nature of its claim to be divinely inspired. Vast numbers of its adherents are simply going through meaningless motions and repeating what they've been told, stories deemed "sacred" simply through long descent. Someone might object that it is unfair to criticize a religion because of the behavior of its followers. But ultimately a religion can't be separated from the actions of those who practice it.

Those followers of Christ who practice tolerance, offer help to the needy, and clamor for social justice are a credit to humanity. Those who use the same faith to uphold racial discrimination, sexual subjugation, and ethnocentric nationalism block social progress and contribute to the deterioration of human relations everywhere.

Spirituality and a belief in the hereafter is a general human need.

Russia is a good example of that, decades of "godless communism" meant the orthodox church came back with a vengence.

It also allowed the religious right to frame communism/atheism as not only godless, but demonic and evil.

You can't address that, and also addresss housing, healthcare, employment rights etc. by doubling down on atheism.

I'm not saying anything about atheism though. I've pointed out that religions – in this case Christianity – can serve the psychological functions you refer to. But these questions can also be addressed without recourse to scripture – and probably were, long before the written word. And one can certainly reject belief in an afterlife without being an "atheist". Many religions do – and did, before Christian conversion. Organized religion isn't the exclusive path to self-understanding and inner peace. The fact that the shell of organized religions can be used to promote the oppression of others and that multitudes of adherents flock to these churches is an indictment of religion's self-proclaimed monopoly at fulfilling the general human needs you mention.

I don't know if religion has a monopoly as such.

Look at North Korea, that's personality worship disguised as politics, the Kims are similar to the Pharoahs in that respect.

Your perspective is very much based on Geography.

We've had Puritanism, it didn't work, that's one of the reasons we've still got a monarchy, reaction to Uncle Joe Stalin type of Christianity.

Our culture is different, Falstaff displays three admirable qualities despite being a villain. Three qualities admired over here, good living, wit and irreverence.

Now the first two are fairly universal, but irreverence is an English trait, which explains why we're right down the tables in terms of religiosity just behind Scandinavia.

We don't like being told what to believe, and evangelical atheists are every bit as bad as their Christian counterparts, believe me.

There's a thing called the Sunday Assembly, for Atheists and Agnostics to meet up for all the things they miss about church, and they sing "cool" songs like We are the Champions.

As someone who had to go to church as a kid I can tell you the only good thing was going home, that sense of relief when it was all over was pretty spectacular.

Sitting with a bunch of white middle class people singing soft rock ballards and listening to sermons on why Richard Dawkins is so clever is my idea of hell.

At least church promised something after you'd had to sit through all that crap.

I spend my Sunday mornings either in bed or at car boot sales.

Personality worship, social conformity, and public performance are all religious practices in NK.

I agree. However, there are places for the critical discussion of religious belief which aren't evangelist.

Aping religious behavior like that sounds ridiculous. I have no problem with skeptics getting together and sharing their experiences but copying the traditions of believing communities is embarrassingly unimaginative.

Making empty promises is pretty poor compensation – listening to a scientific lecture might at least inform you of some empirical discoveries and increase your sense of wonder and your appreciation of life. Until the singing started.

Jesus was a law giver, and he laid out his laws in bible. His laws prescribed a punishment and one of those punishment was burning people. It was not twisted or manipulated it was done as Jesus commanded. When the cult was in the minority, they could not go around burning people at the stake. Once they gained control of government, they were free to carry out God's other commandment. God even commanded that rape victims be stoned to death if they did not cry out. The bible is a book of God's commandments that didn't make the top ten.

The Christians maintains that their God is a perfect being, then when all the inhuman punishments in the bible are bought up their excuse is that it was the times. You can’t have it both ways, either God is a perfect being or he is a product of the times. It long been known that the bible contains no knowledge that was not available at the time. A perfect being who had knowledge of past and the future would not have prescribed all these medieval punishments thought up by psychopaths. God’s book when actually read shows he is a fraud.

“If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace or your most intimate friend—saying let’s go and worship other Gods …you must not yield or head any such person. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you will surely kill them, your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God.”

Deuteronomy 13:5-10

That is a cult building rule and it is meant to keep cult members in the cult using the punishment of death. They are making an offer you can’t refuse.

Jesus didn't write Leviticus.

I'm glad I don't live in America whose laws allow schools to be shot up on a daily basis and healthcare is unaffordable.

Your thread title is about Conservatives, yet about 80% of your post is railing against religion with only about 20% addressing the title.

Your problem isn't with Conservatives, it's with religion, all religion regardless of message or practitioner.

You are one of those evangelical atheists I spoke to Hightor about earlier, and I really can't see any difference between you and Billy Graham, you're two sides of the same coin.

And how is that working out?

You've got a mobilised group of religious fundamentalists hell bent on turning America into a theocracy.

We don't have anything remotely like that.

Tony Blair deliberately stayed schtum when asked if he prayed with Dubya because he knew it would not go down well over here.

So much for your "secular" and " one nation under God" country.

You can't have it both ways.

Btw, the slave owning, tax dodging, aristocrats who set up your constitution were not remotely left wing.

How did that work out? I haven't seen anybody burnt at the stake for blasphemy in a couple hundred years. Nobody burnt at the stake for witchcraft. It wasn't the Christianity principals that helped found the country it was a secular government that put a stop to some of the worst Christian practices.

There have always been religious crazies and there always will be. Mass media has made it much easier to spread the sickness explains the larger numbers now.

Sence this madness did not originate over here but was imported from the old world it must have a dormant stage and you can look forward to a revival. Revivals were very popular here and help spread the illness.

The book religion is based on is the same book over there. It is picked through cafeteria style as to what they want to enforce this week.

Public opinion can and does shift.

One nation under God was added later during a period of religious revival.

It was not that way originally, but sickness can spread and infect things.

What is a conservative? Someone that wants to maintain the status quo. The Conservatives wanted England to stay in power.

America was one of the most left style governments in the world at the time.

If the Constitution had not put a stop to the Christian practice of burning people at the stake, and it did, how can the Christians say the Constitution was based on Christianity? If the Christians had any control over our Constitution, burning people at the stake would be legal today. Can you imagine what a cult building tool that was. If you worshiped another God, you could be burnt at the stake like in Florida if you would not convert you were killed, and your body hung in a tree with a sign on it that you would not convert. This would help with their membership.

This cult spread based on murder violence and torture. It is beyond me how anybody can truthfully look at the history of Christianity and believe that cult has anything to do with a God. If burning people at the stake was legal today the members ship in churches would not be declining so rapidly today.

Lack of burnings at the stake is not unique to America.

The last person burned at the stake in England was 1612, before your founding fathers had even been born, so your constitution had zero effect on stake burnings.

It's like the old Sufi joke about clapping to keep tigers away.

At times it feels like I'm talking to an adolescent.

Slave owners are not left wing which is why Thomas Paine left the US in disgust.

Even though your constitution has had zero effect on stake burnings it has ensured a **** ton of mass shootings.

That's not seen as a good thing outside the US.

And your constitution did nothing to prevent the genocide of the Native Americans, (a genocide that inspired the Holocaust,) if anything it enabled it.

I misspoke, sorry, according to other figures it was 1789. The puishment was banned in 1790.

The last person burned was Catherine Murphy in 1789, but it was for counterfeiting, not heresy/apostasy/witchcraft etc.

Hanging and drawing wasn't much better, but at least we don't have capital punishment anymore.

Btw, the furore about witches in the 1600s wasn't motivated by the church but by James I who had a persecution complex about them.

He believed witches tried to sink his ship when he was sailing back from contintental Europe.

At the trials the witches confessed, (most people did under torture,) and their confessions were used for some of the scenes in Macbeth.

All the stuff about sailing in seives and conjuring up a storm is lifted straight from the trial transcript.

Not to mention James I being a descendent of Banquo, whose reflection may have appeared in the mirror when first performed in court.

What, will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?

Marx called religion the opium of the people for a reason, not just for its soporific effect on the general population, making it easier to control by the powers that be, but because it's highly addictive.

Look what happens to heroin addicts when you try to take it away from them.

Often it's more trouble than its worth.

Fantasy is always much more attractive than the often-harsh facts of reality. Mankind has always been troubled by death and how to deal with it. Fantasy can be custom made and does not have to conform to laws of the universe. When one a family member dies it is much more comforting to believe they will survive death and live forever. It is much more comforting to tell people that their loved one didn't die and is in heaven. I believe this is how religion got started as a way to comfort family members and try to remove the fear of death. My wife of 52 years is seriously ill and she in the hospital and it would be easy to believe in a fantasy, but I would still rather face reality.

You are right people don't just get addicted to substances they get addicted to ways of thinking.

Gambling is an addiction I never understood, the house has the odds and wins in the long run. Gambling changes the marks brain chemistry. There is also sex addiction, and at least I can at least understand that.

People of different cultures have all contemplated what happens after death. There is no doubt what happens to the physical body so they had to invent the soul that was eternal and would survive death. Fantasy does not have to be based on facts it can be made up whole cloth. Religions are made up of the fantasy from thousand of years and thousands of men’s imagination. They have had thousands of years to prefect their fantasy.

We are much more likely to believe something we want to believe than something that makes us uncomfortable. The Pleasure principal states that we will go toward pleasure and away from pain. Mental pain is as real as physical pain and we will do anything to avoid it. Many people cannot understand suicide and people think that if they had done something different the relative would not have committed suicide but reality the suicide victim is avoiding crushing mental pain. Eternal life is real, but it is our genes that we pass down that will have eternal life.