Formless wrote:Name one president that wasn't openly christian. You can't, because there isn't a goddamn one. Do you not see why this is a problem for your theory that it was because of some religious revival that Reagan could make such openly religious bigoted statements and NOT because the country has had a longstanding bias towards christianity?
How about..... Lincoln? Who is pointed out on
this very fucking site in Wong's creation theory page along with Jefferson and Washington (deists) along with that very same quote you're referencing. Holy fucking shit. I can understand not reading a history book, but you didn't read the atheism section on this very website? Here's Lincoln again: "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." My, that doesn't sound very Christ-y of him.
I like how you continue to ignore the point that the religious revivals are a symptom of widespread religion, NOT a cause of it. Very few people choose to join a religion who didn't start with a strong inclination towards said religion or strong community pressures to conform. You are the one simplifying things, not me.
How the fuck can a revival occur when there is already widespread religiosity? Check it out buddy: when your mom has a flare-up of herpes, it's because she wasn't having symptoms before, but now she is. She had the disease the entire time, sure, but it wasn't producing any effects. Christianity is the same way. The disease may persist, but in certain periods of US history it doesn't produce any effects. Can't motivate social progress, can't get its goals accomplished, low church attendance, greater attendance at liberal versus fundamentalist churches, etc.
You will notice of course that the First Great Awakining was before the American Revolution.
What the fuck does it matter that the first was before the Revolution? That's like pointing out that your mom got herpes before she was married.
They also were "characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase in interest in religion, a profound sense of guilt and redemption on the part of those affected, a jump in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations." Not a word of that indicates that people weren't already believers to start with, only that the Evangelical tumor specifically got bigger in that time and spawned other tumors. I mean, religious denominations. But you have to already have cancer to have a tumor grow. This supports my theory that a lack of religious activity is a poorer method of measuring religious influence than population statistics.
Your 'theory' is retarded, as are you, since you just quoted pretty much my exact point. "[A] sharp increase in interest in religion." Even if they were already believers, they weren't acting like it. They were acting like secularists, it was pissing the preachers off, and they organized a revolt.
The differences are mostly superficial. The all believe that Jesus Christ was their savior, that there is a Heaven and a Hell where finite crimes and good deeds alike are met with infinite rewards and punishments, that certain behaviors (especially sexual one's) are sins, that you should do your part to recruit members if possible and give money to the church if not, and so on. The different denominations overlap so much that on average there isn't much difference politically between a Baptist and an Evangelical. Try talking to them sometime. You can't tell them apart unless you already know what nuances to look for (or ask them upfront). The only one I can think of that might be easy to distinguish are Catholics due to the distinct terms they use (like the use of the word "priest" or "mass" or other things signifying the church hierarchy), and even that might just be my bias as a former Catholic speaking.
Spoken like an idiot who's never been to more than one church. There are huge differences between sects like those Westboro assholes, Pat Robertson (who's not much better), moving on to Ted Haggert and those megachurches, and other sects like the Unitarian Universalists. Nominally Christian, but barely even theist sometimes. I've been to churches with openly gay preachers, who's members were actually largely secular, if not atheistic. In fact, while almost all churches preach the idea of heaven, the idea of Hell is actually dying off. Bill Maher had a catholic priest say no one believes it in his documentary "Religulous," C.S. Lewis was against the idea, and most college level theologians regard the typical version of Hell that Pat Robertson talks about as absurd. Instead they see it as a place of separation from god where atheists will choose to be sad. No burning or demons or whatnot. So not only do they differ quite markedly in their politics, but dogmatically the differences between Christian denominations can be staggering, and is certainly significant.
But fuck that, eh? They've all got Jesus, so they're all the same, because if they weren't then you'd look like a total fucking dumbass, wouldn't you?
Bullshit on all accounts. Do you know what a social movement is? On a local scale, what you say has more validity: on a national scale, though, the silent majority is far more important. Political changes mean very little if a cultural change cannot be observed.
Do you think that all women were in the suffrage movement? Wrong. Hell, even if all the minorities had been in the civil rights movement they'd have still been a group minority. Actually this quote from you is largely incoherent. How about the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's? They had virtually no political agenda, it was purely a cultural and social movement. It was- and still is- largely demonized, and still is a minority, but they were able to push a lot of societal barriers. They didn't achieve all their goals, but they got some, and managed to piss off the religious right doing it, so high-fives for the bra-burning femi-nazis.
So that's three more examples for my point... and I'd love, but at this point don't really expect, an example for yours. Hmm... beating you over the head with facts... which seem to have no effect... and you produce no facts of your own..... Are you
sure you're not a Christian?
Brainless wrote:Samurai Rafiki wrote:Religion didn't have the arbitrary power to hijack the movement. They did it through cunning, by preying on the weaker elements of the movement and appealing to the vast apathetic or sympathetic majority.
The majority of whom already believed in their religion, and were preconditioned to listen to the crazies on the far end of the spectrum. You really suck at inductive reasoning, dude.
You really suck at thinking, dude. Once again, it doesn't matter that the population was nominally Christian, if the fundamentalists couldn't get their agenda through, and the secularists could, then the secularists were more powerful. When the fundies could and the secularists could not, the fundies were more powerful. We've had both states in our country, so obviously the power of religion has been in flux. I don't know how to make this more simple. My dog is rolling his eyes at me over here because, by now, even
he gets it.
Political progress is not as important as cultural momentum.
Politicians are ultimately concerned with job security. So you can't have political progress
without cultural momentum. You can't have the civil rights act in the culture of the 30's. You can't have suffrage in the culture of 1820. I don't know how these two ideas got partitioned in your mind, but it's really irritating hearing you spout pointless, irrelevant bullshit that doesn't even help your point.
If you read their arguments, you might just realize that many of them were secular concerns, such as the correlation between drunkenness and violence in society. Its not so simple that you can boil down the movement into who is running it. Their motives can be multifaceted you know.
If I go to the creation museum I can find some secular arguments too. They're bullshit veneers for a religious idea, just like those prohibitionist arguments from those Christian nuts.
Samurai Rafiki wrote:Way to let that one sail over your head. When religion is in the "back," social progress is carried forward, and often remains there.
Until the Regressives can find a way to undermine it at a later date by doing a "religious revival" that wouldn't work without an already strong, if silent, population base to work with.
Once again, if the revival happens, its because there were no obvious symptoms of the infection, which means that the immune system was (temporarily) winning the fight. The virus then mutates around the immune system and flares up again, and the cycle goes on and on, back and forth, until the virus kills us all or the immune system tears its teeth out permanently.
Do you not think about the implications of your own arguments before spewing them out, or are you so determined to defend your preconceived notions against all reason that you can't think straight?
lol, its funny how what you say is more useful against you than for you.
Patrick Degan wrote:Samurai Rafiki wrote:Patrick Degan wrote:Not correct. Atheism is not a "religion" and was not "set up" as one by the Bolshevik regime. Lenin disestablished the Orthodox Church, but did not actively suppress religion as a matter of principle or of overall State policy, but did act against clerics who actively supported the White cause during the Civil War. Stalin did attempt an outright suppression of religion from 1928-1939 for the same reasons he set about to liquidate the Kulaks —to eliminate any and all ideological challenges to his rule. However, when the Germans invaded in 1941, Stalin restored the Church as a morale booster to the populace, as he was seizing on every patriotic device he could lay his hands on to bolster the resistance against the Nazis. After the war, the Church was pretty much integrated into the fabric of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
I never said atheism was a religion. What I meant was that they made a religion out of communism, but I called it "atheistic" in the most literal sense of the word, because it lacked a god. It did, however, have dogmas, infallible claims, and messianic figures. Just because it didn't have a
supernatural doesn't mean that it wasn't quite close enough to a religion to tap into the same impulses in the populace.
Again, you are incorrect. The Communist Party did not proclaim its infallibility (a claim which is refuted simply by example of the
formal criticism of Stalin's crimes by Khruschev before the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956), nor did it set up Marx, Lenin or Stalin as "messiahs". As for "dogma", the Party promulgated its political doctrines, but those were not statements based on belief in a supernatural realm with its own rules but an ideological line laid down to direct Party action, and adjustable to suit changing circumstances. Really, do you even understand the difference between political doctrine and religious dogma in the first place?
Christopher Hitchens puts it better than I have been. "Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to
replace it. the solemn elevation of infallible leaders who were a source of endless bounty and blessing; the permanent search for heretics and schismatics; the mummification of dead leaders as icons and relics; the lurid show trials that elicited incredible confessions by means of torture . . . none of this was very difficult to interpret in traditional terms. Nor was the hysteria during times of plague and famine, when the authorities unleashed a mad search for any culprit but the real one. (The great Doris Lessing once told me that she left the Communist Party when she discovered that Stalin's inquisitors had plundered the museums of Russian Orthodoxy and szarism and reemployed the old instruments of torture.) Nor was the ceaseless invocation of a "Radiant Future," the arrival of which would one day justify all crimes and dissolve all petty doubts." ("God is Not Great" pg 246)
You should also take care to imagine this being said in that almost Churchill-like accent. =P
It's all very well and good to criticize Stalin after he's dead. You could criticize some dead popes too in the middle ages, but causing problems for the current regime was liable to get you turned into a candle. Hitchens is saying, like I should have, that it wasn't the religious doctrines that the totalitarian communists took up, it was the religious niche that they filled. I'm inclined to think that Daniel Dennet would have something salient to say, but I've not yet finished his book.