Since religion can not be out lawed, should it be delegated to DADT status?

[MNDemNY]

Not just within the military, but in all aspects of life?

[polichick]

1. Good luck trying to keep the "fishers of men" quiet! nt

[MNDemNY]

3. So, that's a vote for locking them up?

[polichick]

8. Not locked up, but I'd love for them to be raptured asap. nt

[MNDemNY]

9. I keep checking, every morning.

:o

[chemp]

2. Hell yeah

The I could fire all the outspoken Christians I work with.

I'm tired of the "You're gonna burn in hell", and "he worships Satan" crap I have to deal with.

[Warpy]

4. Some flavors of Christians are compelled to pretend

no one outside of their church has ever heard of Jesus, so they are directed to pester colleagues and strangers alike with their view of the man.

DADT would be seen as persecution by those folks.

Remember, they see TV programs that aren't all Jesus, all the time as persecution. They see religious freedom for other folks as persecution. Above all, they see the separation of church and state as persecution.

While the majority of us would love DADT regarding religion, you would never be able to shut the martyrs up.

[MNDemNY]

5. But then you could lock them up, maybe in Kansas' "Born again prison" LOL.

[barbtries]

6. i love that idea

GAWD i love that idea! to not be evangelized ever again...what a blessing that would be.

[anonymous171]

7. Would anti-religious speech be outlawed as well? nt

[MNDemNY]

10. It's need would be eliminated.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Not legallly (that is against freedom of speech), but in the UK it is to some degree so socially

It is generally considered as bad manners to 'talk religion' or as one political spokesman put it to 'do God', except with people whom you know well. This was even the case when the UK was much less secular - the saying 100 years ago was 'A gentleman does not discuss politics or religion'. The politics bit has to some degree gone out of the window since then; but there is still a feeling of constraint about wearing one's religion on one's sleeve.

[MNDemNY]

12. A good step. too bad that ship has long since sailed from this side of "the pond"!

:(

[darkstar3]

13. That's what it USED TO BE.

There was a time, not so long ago, that religion was too taboo a subject to discuss with people with whom you were not VERY close, which essentially boils down to DADT.

[charlie]

15. Yep. There used to be more religious equanimity

I'd occasionally be admonished, "you need churchin', boy", but it wasn't meant to be an affront any more than being told I needed to wash my ears. Nobody worried about me "infecting" their kids.

And ostentatious piety, let alone the hammy showboating that's fashionable today, was unseemly and sometimes considered rude.

Between then and now, the intensity of public religion got turned up way past 11. I think a concurrent increase in our narcissism had a lot to do with it.

[Silent3]

14. DATIYWODAISMADBOD

Don't Ask Tell If You Want Or Don't And It Shouldn't Make A Damned Bit Of Difference

DADT is a pretty poor model for how homosexuality should be handled, so I wouldn't want to see that idea emulated in any other context. No employer or government agency should care about either your religion or your sexual orientation, but you shouldn't have to hide either thing either, and if one way or another someone finds out about your religion or orientation, it shouldn't affect your status in the slightest so long as you're doing your job.

[rug]

16. You mean relegated.

[Igel]

17. It is.

People very, very seldom ask me about my religion. I don't tell, and nobody makes me.

Those who do tell are liable to any penalties society inflects for tattling. Granted, in many cases it's penalty-free, but that would be the case in the military under DADT--if your sargeant is gay and 80% of your platoon is gay, I imagine that discussing it among yourselves would be fairly risk free (assuming nobody files a report).

I guess what a lot of people are saying is that they don't want a DADT, but a don't-ask/don't-be-allowed-to-tell. That's something different, I think.

[humblebum]

18. Only if atheism receives the same status, after all

more have died under atheism and atheistic dictators than all religious wars combined in all of human history.

[darkstar3]

19. Pure unsubstantiated bullshit.

Read here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x220464

Then, if you somehow have proof that these murders committed by atheists are somehow due to atheism itself, post it there, or here.

[humblebum]

24. Umm? "League of the Militant Atheists",

"The Godless", "Storming the Heavens", all card-carrying Communists were required to renounce religion and to accept atheism and to persecute and report any religious adherents,the establishment of "Scientific Atheism as the state "religion", hundreds of thousands of clergy executed, thousands of religious structures leveled or converted to other uses, millions upon millions executed, starved, or sent to gulags or concentration camps. Newspapers like "The Atheist" widely circulated while al religious material was banned. Religion was openly mocked in print, in assemblies, and over the airwaves while the benefits of "Scientific Atheism" were praised. Atheism was interjected very openly at every level of society and the Soviet model was exported to China, South Asia, and Eastern Europe. The philosophical orientation (positivism)was identical to that of many prominent atheists today.

Ya know? One might just be tempted to think that organized atheism just might have had something to do with all of this. People were not systematically imprisoned or killed because they weren't Communists, but because they would not accept atheism. All Communists were atheists, but not all atheists were communists. There were many more atheists than card-carrying communists.

[humblebum]

25. Another sample:

"The Commissar for Education, Anatole Lunacharsky, published in Pravda of March 26, 1929, an article entitled "The Anti-religious Struggle in the School,'... Theatres, concerts, moving pictures, radio, visits to museums, richly illustrated scientific and especially anti-religious lecturers, well-arranged periodical and non-periodical children's literature all this must be set in motion, developed, completed, or created for the great objective of most quickly transforming the growing generation into an absolutely atheistic one.'"

[darkstar3]

26. And they did all of this because they believed atheism was superior?

They did all of this 'in the name of atheism'?

Or did they do it because organized religion of any kind was a threat to the authority of the state?

As has been established in this forum before, Stalin and others were notorious liars, bent on using religion or the lack thereof to further their own political ends. If Stalin killed because he was an atheist, then Hitler killed because he was a Catholic.

It is overly and dangerously simplistic to blame the known genocides of the twentieth century solely on religion or the lack thereof.

ETA: I don't see a single link in what you've posted. If you have sources to back up your assertions, I'd love to see them.

[rd_kent]

23. Uh, no they havent.....

Please name one of these dictators that killed people in the name of atheism.


Why do you keep coming back? Always with a new user name after being tombstoned.......

[onager]

27. China had good reason to crack down on Xianity.

The (Chinese) Viceroy: "Say to the Christian nation that another Christian nation has declared war against us and when it sends the next batch of missionaries, to send also ten thousand rapid-fire guns and two hundred thousand pounds of Lyddite Shells.

We, being a heathen nation, do not make them."

:rofl:

This was the caption of a cartoon published during the Boxer Rebellion.

Of course, we only ever hear the persecution stories about the poor Xian missionaries, who were only trying to save the local heathens from hellfire.

Or as I like to put it - the Xian missionaries were simply replacing one ancient ignorant superstition with a different ancient ignorant superstition.

There is another side to the story, as always:

The ordinary people hated as well as feared foreign missionaries...

As the missionaries used money to attract believers, many locally recruited Chinese Christians were bad people who joined the church just for a living. These Chinese Christians bullied the local people and committed crimes. In the eyes of local Chinese people, the Western church protected these crimes...

On the social level, Western missionaries, especially the Catholics, often misused their treaty-rights in China. There were many occasions when Western missionaries interfered in local Chinese official affairs, either on behalf of the Chinese Christians or in order to win more believers.

Some missionaries once went so far as to demand the transfer of two Qing provincial governors!

http://www.thecorner.org/hist/china/boxer.htm

A-a-a-a-n-d Xian missionaries are still at it today in Asia. Here's an eyewitness account of Chinese Baptist missionaries in northern Thailand:

...the missionaries always promised to give lots to the people if they converted. Meanwhile the villagers were still asking for medicine that the missionaries apparently weren't including in the deal...

There would be no traditional practices, songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at Christmas...

Children are taught that their parents are living under the power of darkness and bondage, teaching disrespect to parents in direct contradiction of the missionaries own religious texts.

http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/blackfriday.html

[kwassa]

29. This "in the name of atheism" is a false argument

No one has to kill in the name of atheism to be killing because of atheism.

[classysassy]

20. The feeble minds

of the anti-Christians,are doing more to destroy this country than all the americans enemies on this planet.So please lower your voices,stop trying to explain things you know nothing about.

[darkstar3]

21. sd;fhirreh;ih;ewi/;lka;

Yeah, it's kinda like that. :eyes:

[rd_kent]

28. What the FUCK????

did you forget your sarcasm tag? Please tell me you did!

[Random_Australian]

22. I voted 'no opinion'. I'd say that if it were socially very impolite to ask

someone's religion, and right out when hiring and in the workplace that would be optimal.

However, I don't really know what effect bringing in a law about it would do. The harder something is to discern, the less likely a law is to be effective.

(I assumed that is what you meant by 'delegated to DADT status')

[iris27]

30. Laws and government should not be involved in any way, but I'd be

quite happy if we had Britain's social attitude toward public discussion of theological beliefs here. (Which is to say, everyone pretty much keeps it to themselves.)