Atheists destroy churches, attack the faithful

[Crossbow]

another person hand waving away the human rights abuses from Unyielding Marxist Atheists by declaring the victims to be dissidents.

Lionking? You would be well served to read the thread, my post from almost two months ago destroying that argument.

Plus another person refusing to consider that totalitarian Chinese Communists ARE Unyielding Atheists.

It is amazing how powerful that argument has proved to be in this thread, really remarkable that people just keep saying totalitarian while ignoring th atheist part

If it is possible, then actually provide a simple answer to a simple question. To wit:

Do you actually care anything about human rights?

I have asked you this question several times and yet have consistently failed to provide a good answer to it even though you have made scores of postings in this thread.

 

[Thor 2]

When you speak in an echo chamber and hall of mirrors, careful what you might be describing. In years of trying, you have yet to draw any meaningful distinctions among the words tossed into your salads, conflating atheism with Marxism.

The Big Dog has been wielding that blunt weapon, (atheism = communism), for as long as I have been in the forum. Doesn't seem to have landed a telling blow in all that time, and no converts have rallied to his side. Must be frustrating I suppose.

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip*

That to me is a pattern. That they believe that there is a struggle between atheism and theism in China suggests that part of the motivation comes from their atheism. How much, I can't say. That's the question I'm asking.

*snip*

I think we are all aware that this is your question. I don't know about you, but it is evident that TBD has already decided on an answer, long before the question was asked.

However, I will give you my answer, for what it is worth:

The motivation of the Chinese government is, of course, mainly power. Nothing corrupts like power. However, they have also a real intention to Make China Great Again. They do what they think will:

1) Maintain their power.
2) Make China Great Again.

The set of actions they perceive to be necessary for #2 includes keeping religions from gaining any significant influence. Since they are presumably atheists, no religion is safe from this.

Hans

 

[Hlafordlaes]

(A) My point is on how the metaphysical beliefs behind atheism (metaphysical naturalism, i.e. "the universe is all there is") for some atheists possibly influence their political actions.

A reasonable question.

(B) I am quoting from the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party when they frame it as "atheism vs theism", "materialism vs idealism" and "science vs superstition".

An unreasonable use of concepts and misappropriation by the Chinese.

(C) As an atheist yourself, are you not at least curious about that? The impact of atheism on actions when it is declared as a platform by a political party with real power?

Repeat of (A), but in light of (B), misdirected.

...Communist doctrines ARE the point.

Indeed.

What do YOU think they mean when they write that it is a struggle between atheism and theism? Are they acting as unbiased observers?

What they mean is to misdirect and associate preferential reasoning (political ideology) with scientific reasoning, in a transparent and laughable attempt at science-washing BS.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

See above.
***

"The Quiet Man" is my favorite John Wayne movie.

The whole movie is priceless and is also my favorite. In reality, to live in a hidebound culture like that would be a nightmare, but the movie makes for wonderful fiction.

 

[The Big Dog]

Mmmm, the delicious wafting scent of No True Atheist in the morning.

Question: (B) I am quoting from the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party when they frame it as "atheism vs theism", "materialism vs idealism" and "science vs superstition".

Response: An unreasonable use of concepts and misappropriation by the Chinese.

que sera sera

 

[The Great Zaganza]

So TBD, what are your thoughts on Ayn Rand?

 

[David Mo]

Mmmm, the delicious wafting scent of No True Atheist in the morning.

Question: (B) I am quoting from the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party when they frame it as "atheism vs theism", "materialism vs idealism" and "science vs superstition".

Response: An unreasonable use of concepts and misappropriation by the Chinese.

que sera sera

"¿Qué será, será?"
Una mermelada in your head.

Your knowledge of politics is as disastrous as your knowledge of Spanish.

China today is to Marxism and Communism what General Al-Sisi is to democracy in Egypt.

And we are still waiting for an objective report explaining that atheism has to do with the persecution of the Uighurs or clandestine churches.
We already know that there is persecution. That the Chinese CP declares itself to be atheist, too. Now the link between the two is missing.

It is absurd to say "Christians drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima". Or is it not?

 

[dann]

That raises a good question: the role of Marx and Marxism, and how the CCP adopted and changed Marxism in all this.

I found the following article on Wiki about 'Marxist Leninist atheism' where similar atrocities in the old Soviet Union are described, similar to what has been happening in China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist–Leninist_atheism

The Bolshevik government's anti-religion campaigns featured propaganda, anti-religious legislation, secular universal-education, anti-religious discrimination, political harassment, continual arrests and violence.[40]

Initially, the Bolsheviks expected that religion would wither away with the establishment of socialism, hence after the October Revolution they tolerated most religions, except for the Eastern Orthodox Church who supported Tsarist autocracy.

Yet by the late 1920s, when religion had not withered away, the Bolshevik government began anti-religion campaigns (1928–1941)[41] that persecuted "bishops, priests, and lay believers" of all Christian denominations and had them "arrested, shot, and sent to labour camps".[42]

In the east, Buddhist Lamaist priests "were rounded up in Mongolia, by the NKVD in concert with its local affiliate, executed on the spot or shipped off to the Soviet Union to be shot or die at hard labor in the mushrooming GULAG system" of labour camps​

It would be fascinating to outline the philosophies behind these actions, and what contribution (if any) Marxist developments and atheism played in what has been happening.

Lenin was long dead in 1928 and probably shouldn't be blamed for the politics of his successor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_Joseph_Stalin#Lenin's_retirement_and_death
Stalinism shouldn't be referred to as Marxism-Leninisn.

 

[Crossbow]

"¿Qué será, será?"
Una mermelada in your head.

Your knowledge of politics is as disastrous as your knowledge of Spanish.

China today is to Marxism and Communism what General Al-Sisi is to democracy in Egypt.

And we are still waiting for an objective report explaining that atheism has to do with the persecution of the Uighurs or clandestine churches.
We already know that there is persecution. That the Chinese CP declares itself to be atheist, too. Now the link between the two is missing.

It is absurd to say "Christians drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima". Or is it not?

Well said.

What so many theists fail to realize, that even if one is dealing with a country which is an officially atheist country and which oppresses is theist citizens, then that does not automatically mean that an officially theist country is automatically more a moral country.

After all, there have been many, many, many cases throughout history which have shown that officially theist nations have horribly oppressed their own citizens.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Mmmm, the delicious wafting scent of No True Atheist in the morning.

Question: (B) I am quoting from the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party when they frame it as "atheism vs theism", "materialism vs idealism" and "science vs superstition".

Response: An unreasonable use of concepts and misappropriation by the Chinese.

que sera sera

You missed a part: "What they [the Chinese] mean [to do] is to misdirect and associate preferential reasoning (political ideology) with scientific reasoning, in a transparent and laughable attempt at science-washing [ideological] BS."

Perhaps the editing will assist you in parsing the point.

 

[GDon]

After all, there have been many, many, many cases throughout history which have shown that officially theist nations have horribly oppressed their own citizens.

Yes, and how would you investigate whether their theism had anything to do with the oppression? If the officially theist nation's official mouthpiece claimed "it is theism vs atheism!", would that count as evidence contributing towards that idea?

 

[Doubt]

Since we have no way to stop the Chinese government from doing what they do, we must extend a hand to the persecuted and invite them to the US as refugees.

 

[The Big Dog]

"¿Qué será, será?"
Una mermelada in your head.

Your knowledge of politics is as disastrous as your knowledge of Spanish.

China today is to Marxism and Communism what General Al-Sisi is to democracy in Egypt.

And we are still waiting for an objective report explaining that atheism has to do with the persecution of the Uighurs or clandestine churches.
We already know that there is persecution. That the Chinese CP declares itself to be atheist, too. Now the link between the two is missing.

It is absurd to say "Christians drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima". Or is it not?

Plenty of Jews worked on the bomb.

It is no more absurd to say Chinese atheists are surpressing religious people than catholic kings used the inquisition to surpress other religions.

Try it out.

 

[LSSBB]

Since we have no way to stop the Chinese government from doing what they do, we must extend a hand to the persecuted and invite them to the US as refugees.

I thought the new policy was "Tough, stay home and make your country better", and wish them luck. Plus maybe thoughts and prayers.

 

[Doubt]

I thought the new policy was "Tough, stay home and make your country better", and wish them luck. Plus maybe thoughts and prayers.

No. That is only for South of the border types. Also we ignore why those people want to come here.

In the case of China, we address perceived root cause of the problem present in the country to bash others but consider no actual solutions or deeper analysis. After all, this is not about solving problems. This is about grandstanding rhetoric used to displace attention.

 

[David Mo]

Plenty of Jews worked on the bomb.

It is no more absurd to say Chinese atheists are surpressing religious people than catholic kings used the inquisition to surpress other religions.

Try it out.

It wasn't the Jews who decided to drop the bomb. A Christian president of a Christian country ordered the bomb to be dropped. However, to say that Christians and Jews dropped the Hiroshima bomb is as absurd as to say that atheists are trying to suppress religion in China. This is doubly absurd. First, because it is not true that the Chinese government wants to suppress all religion in China. It wants to suppress uncontrolled forms of religion. Secondly, because it does not do so in the name of atheism, but in the name of the power of the totalitarian state.

Your mania of blaming "Atheism" is only an ultraconservative prejudice.

This has already been explained to you about two hundred times. Try to think a little and offer news arguments. Your mantra is worn-out.

 

[dann]

Maybe this will help TBD understand the difference between an atheist (James Randi) and the government of China. Randi visited China in 1988 with some other skeptics to investigate paranormal clams:

Kendrick Frazier:(...) we’ve seen a film clip that Phil Klass took during our China investigations of this woman writhing on a table while the Qigong master is in the other room doing his thing, and she is supposedly responding to it. But you set up the controlled conditions where she didn’t know when he was doing his thing and vice versa. I was the record keeper. It was a fairly astonishing thing for us to see. Describe what you remember about that.
James Randi: I remember that the Qigong master wasn’t very happy about that when we suggested the protocol for it. The woman on the table, she must have been very embarrassed because he would be going through his things like this and we put up the screen, the whole business, and she would suddenly start kicking like crazy, as you see in the film.
Then she would open her eyes and look around as if to get a hint as to whether she should have done that. She was rather disconcerted to say the least. I was embarrassed because it caught them out that it just didn’t work, because she didn’t move when he signaled her to move.
The parapsychologist who ran these tests with [“psychic”] kids was named Mr. Ding. The kids got such lax conditions, it was just ridiculous. They were supposed to tell how many matches were in a box with a certain color on them or what the colors were. Mr. Ding ran the tests.
They were always right, except one of the little flaws in his experimental protocol in my mind was that they were allowed to go into the school yard and play around with the boxes and maybe even peek into them, as you could imagine.
We suspected them of that, but of course Chinese children wouldn’t do a thing like that, would they? And they were always right—until we taped up the boxes. They didn’t understand why we would tape up the boxes. Maybe because you’re peeking, I don’t know. The experiment rather failed at that point.
This Mr. Ding, you’ve heard he went to prison. The government actually caught on to this and they decided this was a disgrace to the Republic of China.
Still ‘Amazing’: A Conversation with James Randi (Skeptical Inquirer Volume 41.2, March/April 2017)

 

[kellyb]

It is no more absurd to say Chinese atheists are surpressing religious people than catholic kings used the inquisition to surpress other religions.
Try it out.

I completely agree with that. You do need to say about the Inquisition "Catholics [did all that bad stuff during the inquisition]" for it to be the equivalent of your thread here.

Isn't the moral of the story that separation of church and state is a very good thing? That when the religion and the government are fused, the religion is in most ways a completely different thing from what it is in democracy/democratic republic with freedom of religion?

 

[The Big Dog]

I completely agree with that. You do need to say about the Inquisition "Catholics [did all that bad stuff during the inquisition]" for it to be the equivalent of your thread here.

Isn't the moral of the story that separation of church and state is a very good thing? That when the religion and the government are fused, the religion is in most ways a completely different thing from what it is in democracy/democratic republic with freedom of religion?

Well that would depend then on your view of whether atheism can be a religion, a position with which I do not disagree...

 

[Thor 2]

As Bill Maher famously said: "Atheism is a religion in the same way that abstinence is a sex position."

When will the religious ever stop making the absurd claim that atheism is a religion.