I'd rather religion not exist at all anymore, publicly or privately. If people would simply ditch their superstitions and invisible super heroes then the world would be a better place.

but you can pray to the little green alien from the Flintstones for all I care as long as it is private.

If the little green alien demanded to love thy neighbor, help the needy, feed the hungry, then I'd have no problem with it.

My issue with the fairy tales people want to believe and the super heroes they want to worship is that they demand homosexuality and premarital sex be considered a sin, women be treated as second class citizens, fans of rival super heroes be slaughtered, and so on and so forth. Whether expressed publicly or held privately, those kind of beliefs stand in the way of progress.

Or that everyone should believe that "progress" is always a good thing.

However, enculturation is extremely powerful. Just like someone in the United States is much more likely to be Christian than Hindu and someone in India is much more likely to be Hindu than Christian, because the local culture has a tendency to teach people to adopt a certain religion, religious brainwashing can also lead otherwise tolerant people to be misogynistic, homophobic, etcetera.

I think religion does have some redeeming qualities. I like how Pope Francis for example has emphasized helping the poor and has spoken out against corporate greed, unlike his predecessor who only ever talked about all the sins people were committing. Beyond that however, there are too many people use the writings in books thousands of years old to spread hate and intolerance.

Wasn't she an Atheist?

Wasn't he a Christian?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- now there was a Christian.

Since I can't prove otherwise I'll have to take their word for it.

Hitler's Table Talk has Hitler often voicing stridently negative views of Christianity. Bullock wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and materialist, who saw Christianity as a religion "fit for slaves", and against the natural law of selection and survival of the fittest.[32]

Laurence Rees concludes that "Hitler's relationship in public to Christianity - indeed his relationship to religion in general - was opportunistic. There is no evidence that Hitler himself, in his personal life, ever expressed any individual belief in the basic tenets of the Christian church".[19]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

NATIONAL SOCIALISM OPPOSED TO WORSHIP 61

http://www.archive.org/stream/HitlersTableTalk/HitlersTableTalk_djvu.txt

A movement like ours mustn't let itself be drawn into meta-physical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It's not the Party's function to be a counterfeit for religion.

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself.

One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity
would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?

The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily
finds himself in opposition to the Churches. And that's why
they're heading for ruin — for science is bound to win.

As is noted in the first source you cited.

Mein Kampf, otoh, was written by Hitler himself.

Why do some christians think that ignoring evidence that doesn't support their agenda is an effective debating technique?

I was raised with the King James version and later the Revised Standard version.

Funny, I've never seen a Mein Kampf version in any of the churches I've attended or in any of the hotel rooms I've stayed in, in the United States and Europe.

Hitler claimed he was a christian and never renounced his christianity; no amount of wishful thinking by christian historical revisionists will change that fact.

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."

"I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a warrior."

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."



You should read more than the bible, you'd be amazed what else you don't know.

your out of context and undated quotes are meaningless.

hitler said different things to different audiences at different periods in his career. he persecuted the church and church leaders unless the were synchophants. he shut down catholic schools in 1939 and the catholic press in 1940. he put thousands of priests and church leaders in the camps to be killed. that's the kind of 'catholic' he was.

I also cited Mein Kampf in post 38.

Your opinion, otoh, is not based on evidence, just wishful thinking and a belief that christians are morally superior.

Christians do bad things, get over it.

if you don't see that, too bad for you.


hitler said different things to different audiences at different periods in his career. FOR PURELY POLITICAL REASONS.

he persecuted the church and church leaders unless the were synchophants.

he shut down catholic schools in 1939 and the catholic press in 1940. he put thousands of priests and church leaders in the camps to be killed. that's the kind of 'catholic' he was.


These things aren't merely my opinions. They actually happened. They're deeds, not words, and deeds are the measure of people's real beliefs. If Hitler was catholic, he was the kind of catholic who killed catholic leaders and catholic believers.

Your opinion, on the other hand, is based mainly on something hitler wrote when he was still trying to gain power in a country that was 95% Catholic and churchgoing. What's he going to write, "I hate the Church and intend to shut it down"? A winning message that would have been.

Trying to declare after the fact that monsters who profess to be christians aren't "true" christians is one way to support that nasty superiority complex.

Except you don't get to disown the sinners and only claim the saints.

Christians murder other christians every day, the prisons are overflowing with them.

And history is littered with the charred corpses of victims murdered in your religion's holy wars.

Like I said, get over it.


Hitler said he was a christian, and just like everyone else who makes that claim, unless I have evidence to the contrary, I have to take them at their word.

You don't get to decide who is and isn't a True Christian™.

You're entitled to your opinion but that's all it is.

In fact, I have never read the Bible from cover to cover. I leave that to my fundy relative.

Like I said, people don't need an excuse to be hateful, but certain belief systems encourage it. Libertarianism is in some ways like a religion itself. 'Freedom' is the deity to be worshipped, and the libertarian fairy tales claim that if everyone embraced freedom the same way Christians are supposed to embrace Jesus, then we could have Heaven on Earth (utopia). Then again, they also claim that one's person financial freedom (to pay as few taxes as possible, if any) is more important than the lives of the sick and needy (who'd have no social safety net in this libertarian utopia). So libertarianism is also dangerous in that regard.

But the danger of libertarianism does not excuse the danger of organized religion.

She stated that she was an Atheist in this video:

Ayn Rand on Religion

It is the absence of belief in gods.

Maybe, someday, that will fade, in the meantime it seems to me that merely keeping it out of the public would be a mjor, major progressive step.

But many choose not to! Does that mean we should stop trying to make the world a better place for all?

I appreciate that.

We'd be colonizing Mars and soaring around in flying cars now.

Instead, we're wasting money and blood in this endless ridiculous argument over which imaginary skydaddy has the biggest dick.

to extinguish itself so some other beings can catch a break and maybe do better than we have.

I am so sick of the nonsense gobbling up the atmosphere. It needs to all go away

to respond because it might hurt their feelings. Maybe it's just crazy Christian cultists but they are by far the loudest. They are also the ones passing laws against voters, women, gays, etc. So no, I guess I don't feel bad for calling them out.

My Dad always used to say - Never talk about Politics or Religion. It might be nice to go back to that

To prove it. Or the Religion forums.

and stop trying to get their crazy books enacted in to law I will be happy to be quiet. Until then, no.

into society, governments and law. As it stands, religions threaten autonomy and human rights

I personally vow, here and now, publicly to STFU and never speak another unkind word about religion when they leave us alone.

We, the mockers, are not trying to stop anyone from practicing religion, we want religion to stop pushing it's archaic, hateful, homophobic and misogynistic ideal onto us as a society and into our laws.

The minute that organized religion leaves our autonomy and human rights alone, that's the minute I will stop criticizing and mocking them.

Til then, it's on.

They don't seem to understand that those who want to live by their rules already are.

:tiphat:

If we really truly followed the quote, "keep religion to yourself." The idea would have been long dead by now.

To drive out people of faith from DU...and in the coming political campaign, to show the voters that Dems hate them and wish they would leave the progressive alone.

I see so many attempts to divide it is remarkable.

...when they try to tell voters that Democrats are just a bunch of godless commies who want to ban the Bible and send religious believers to the gulags.

Like healthcare and education, it makes it easier for them to scream about socialism and how we're going to take all their money.

When we pass sensible gun control legislation, it makes it easier for them to scream about how Obama and the UN are going to take over the world, and especially all their freedom and guns.

When we work to get black people their votes back, it makes it easier for them to scream about how Muslim Kenyans are going to enact sharia law on the nation.

When we repeal laws like DADT and DOMA, it makes it easier for them to scream about the gay agenda and how we're here to destroy marriage and rape their children.

Here's a thought:

Why don't we stop giving a flying fuck what the right wing nut-jobs think and just do the right fucking thing?!

Tired of this crap.

Edit: yeah, fuck self-censorship. If it's offensive, than I hopefully won't be thinking/saying it in the first place.

with the crap the republicans push, it would help?

Willing to lie. I've always thought that it is much easier to tell the truth--you then have nothing to hide. People respect a person willing to own up to their mistakes, and even more so a person who refuses to hide. It is, in part, a reason Warren and Sanders are so popular. People are tired of the bs spoonfed to us. When the media is not entirely complicit with the corporatocracy, people will recognize the truth, imo.

belief system.

They cannot be private. They MUST change you to their beliefs. They are right, you are wrong and they must fix that. Closed minds are stubborn.

I have been saying for years that if religion were kept out of the public sphere, I would have no problem with it. I do not care what people believe, as long as they do not try to infringe on my rights to not have to live under their rules. Instead, religion is getting more and more in-your-face. As they escalate, so will I.

It is a free nation and I can chose not to associate myself with anyone who does it if it bothers me.

Especially in America even before America was America.

generally no one knew your religion unless they happened to see you go into a church/temple or they attended your church. And even if you knew, you didn't talk about it. If you did something nice for somebody or they did something nice for you, you didn't bring a god into it. The people you interacted with in stores, on the street, etc., did not shove religion into your face and you refrained from same. It was considered private.

I consider the forceful insertion of the fundamentalist Christian religion into every facet of public/secular life to be the beginning of all this hurtful nonsense, and if that doesn't stop, the pushback certainly won't go away. Many of us consider some of these beliefs to be dangerous nonsense and do not want the results to be made public policy.

Religion will only be private when it stops existing.

DON'T tell me "God had a better plan for her" and expect me to nod in fucking agreement

unless I want to make a statement then I tell them the truth, that I'm non-religious. Most times I don't care to blow anyones bubbles

And don't just keep repeating the same line over and over again as if it's reasoned discourse.

In other words, if you're going to enter the kitchen, make sure you can stand the heat.

were always felt when I was alone. I never felt the need to "witness" to anyone about it or even talk about it to anyone else. To me, it would cheapen the experience to just blab all over the place about it, when I think it should be a personal and private experience. It is none of anyone else's business really.

I don't get the ones that think that everyone should convert to their brand of religion or go to some place to be punished for eternity. The more zealous those types get, the more they make me hope they are right about me going to a different place than them for eternity, because I sure wouldn't want to spend eternity with them and eternity without them doesn't sound like punishment to me.

Where I live, the my way or the highway version of Bible Belt right wing Christianity is the majority and they push it on you and they are obnoxious about it. I don't want to spend eternity with them. So, I refuse to become Christian like them.

I don't know why religion cannot be a private matter. At the very least, harassing people by proselytizing should be considered rude, but these people where I live are overwhelming with it. I finally learned to try my best to avoid those types of people.