Atheism and the end of the world

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M*W: That's a very scary premise, but fortunately, it's only in your mind. There is no god to let go of you, anyway. So, yes, you could be right that I wasn't a christian in the first place. I just went through the motions of christianity, hoping, always hoping, there was a god and he would save me. So, not true.

 

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People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

this is a common mistake made by theists, typically those of the fundy type, they believe atheism is essentially socialist or communist in nature. Thus, atheism should be rejected since socialism and communism are evil. How stupid!

the first thing we should note is there is an automatic and almost unconscious assumption made by these theists that their religion is somehow equivalent with captialism.

Communism is not, however, inherently atheistic. It is possible to have communistic or socialistic views while being a theist and it isn't at all wrong to be an atheist while staunchly defending capitalism, which is a combination often found among objectivists and libertarians.
their existence alone demonstrates, that atheism and communism are not the same thing.

is christianity opposed to commuism? No, the opposite, actually. There is nothing in the gospels which even so much as suggests a divine preference for captialism, now is there.

quite a bit of what Jesus said supports many of the of socialism and even communism. He specifically said that that people should give all they could to the poor and that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

basic communism states to hold all property in common rather than privately, is practiced by numerous Christian communities now and throughout history. references to it can be found in Acts:

Acts 4:33-35 "With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. "
The similarity to Marx's principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" should be obvious.

and here again in Acts:

Acts 5:1-11 "But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. "Ananias," Peter asked, "why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!" Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it.

The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter said to her, "Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price." And she said, "Yes, that was the price." Then Peter said to her, "How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out." Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things."

their deaths served as an example to all the others of what would happen if they, too, held back profits for themselves instead of giving everything to the community.
so we can see that this was the first christian commune(ist) society.

so please lets get away from this silly reference to atheism and communism being the same, the bible is basically a communist manifesto.

 

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Atheism and the end of the world
Huuumm..... about the stats presented at the beginning of the thread...

A correlation? Perhaps. But is there a causal relationship between the 2 variables?

One can find a correlation between the amount of peanuts the average elephant eat in a lifetime with the number of asteroids that hits the earth every century, but is there a causal relationship between the two variables?

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Im curious,is atheism still their state policy?

 

SamCDKey:

I actually agree with your premise: Secularism is not good for humanity.

Accordingly, I suggest a return to a rational religion, to afford man his necessary mytho-poetic experience. Something like the old polytheisms of Europe seem to me ideal for the West, specifically as the pagan religions never debased science, society, family, philosophy, et cetera.

It was something a man, woman, and even a slave, could appreciate as a beautiful framework of cultural expression.

But the worse thing? If this trend continues, the West will die. There is simply no way a civilization can exist without births.

I pray to Odin, Zeus, Chu Chulainn, et cetera, et cetera, that this will not happen.

 

Gesser, it was communism among the new believers after Jesus' resurrection, not among the entire population.

 

Geeser, and the local churches should be communal to some degree, even today, but that is far different from such a set-up at the national level, for remember, "Congress shall make no law establishing religion," so if you really want to enforce Christianity for your national communism, then you'll have to amend the Constitution, good luck.

 

True, but neither can it with exponential growth. The goal should be zero population growth, perhaps less until the Earth's population of humans is stabilized at a sustainable amount.

 

The Earth can sustain a far greater population than it can now.

It can sustain -at least- 50 billion people, with only moderate increases in farming techniques and land usage. In fact, it could even do so today - if we dealt with our land more.

Also, it would be reasonable for the world's hellholes to be taken over by better powers and those lands used more efficiently.

 

Actually the present population is not sustainable. Fisheries are depleting, soil is dying. "Efficiency" in agriculture means artificial fertilizers that are derived from oil. That alone is not sustainable, never mind the adverse effects that use of fertilizer has on soil and fisheries. Industrial agriculture assisted by petroleum products have given our time great riches, but this is a one-time deal. Thereafter, organic farming and a decrease of our impact on the ecosystem is necessary if we are to live as a species.

 

Fisheries are depleting not because we are using the fish too much, but that our fishing industry is focused way too much on excess.

Soil cannot "die". Soil can always be renitrated and left fallow for a growing season. We can also make more fertilizers to rejuvinate said soil.

Petroleum projects can and will be replaced by others -a s will the entire petroleum industry.

 

Use downhole heat from extant oil well-holes to power biodiesel production plants, and windmills can power them too.

 

I kind of feel the same way. If people are to have religion, I wish it'd be a thing closer to people.

Something like the Romans had.

 

Well settle for worshipping trees, creeks, and lakes, when you can easily worship the Creator of those?

 

Nature? People do.

 

Roman:

Precisely. And great quote from Seneca.

 

:bugeye:

i think the fact that education and atheism are correlated with each other, and both negatively correlated (overall) with global fertility, suggests a few things.

I propose that atheists tend to be better educated, and given that they've thought about the "god delusion" and realised its stupidity, have better critical thinking abilities. They are also probably better at planning when its best to have children, and give more thought to the quality of lives of those children, rather than just pushing them out willy nilly, and so are more likely to use contraception.

Doesn't fertility refer to ones ability to participate in the reproductive process - being separate from the use of contraception, which prevents conception (hence the term contraception)?

So wouldn't the use of contraception be the main factor in determining birth rate?

Oh and,
Atheists scream YOUR name during sex!!!

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"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

 

Any chance you could explain how you arrived at that figure? Thanks.

 

This sounds like hooey at best. 50 billion?

Farming requires more land space per human than apartment buildings. From this observation ALONE, how in the hell could even a moderate increase in land space per individual lead to sustenance of 50 billion people?

Curiousity: what are the world's hellholes?

This ILEA document seems to be a more well done and interesting paper on the subject (keeping in mind that ILEA has been closed). I'm not verifying the accuracy, however the author gives sources. The maximum Earth population (in short) is dependant on many various factors.

Religion or lack thereof did not seem to be considered as one of those various factors however.