Sep 102011
From Unwanted Blog reader Bruce came a link to a Youtube video from an Australian TV show “The Gruen Transfer.” One recurring feature of the show is a contest between advertising companies to “sell the unsellable.” In this one, the task was to sell Australians on the idea of banning religion.
[youtube nhAKzYr4-wg]
I kinda doubt this would be very effective. But it would be all kinds of entertaining to what a whole lot of people go ape if ads like this started airing.
25 Responses to ““Let’s Ban All Religion””
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After reading the entirety of the Koran, and being raised Roman Catholic, the idea sounds great to me.
Besides the fact that Roman Catholicism implies something like cannibalism on the body of Jesus if you buy it all, Islam states (by the time you finish up the Koran) that you should not only kill all non-believers in Islam on sight, but then steal everything they own, as that’s the will of Allah.
The less said about how Allah well purposely mislead individuals from their birth forward to hurl them into damnation, the better.
Anyway, it makes “predestination” look like a beneficent and merciful theological concept in comparison.
Apparently, Allah does that just for kicks.
I said it before, I’ll say it again…the sooner Islam is an extinct religion on this planet, the better.
Nothing like having read the Koran to serve as a complete epiphany in your world-view.
By the way Scott, you’ve stated in the past that you’ve got some sort of religious theology that you agree with, though you’ve never stated what exactly it was.
My two best guesses are Judaism and Viking religion.
Want to go out on a limb, and give details?
> Want to go out on a limb, and give details?
Nope.
I’m willing to bet it’s agnosticism or atheism.
> Want to go out on a limb, and give details?
My guess would be that he suspects we’re living in a simulation.
Odd as it may sound, I try to keep my religious beliefs and inclinations out of the blog. I try to restrict postings about religion not to theological matters, but to “real world” matters such as politics and science.
It matters to me precisely none at all if you believe that the Earth was created by God X for Reason Y, and that there is Afterlife Z awaiting believers. What will set me off is when someone puts forward beliefs that contradict observable fact. I don’t care what your Holy Text says or how much you believe it; if you say that the Earth is 10,000 years old, you’re wrong, and I’m going to tell you. If you try to enact government policy based not on facts and reason but on anti-science theological notions based on faith, I’m going to complain.
“Faith” is for when you don’t have “facts.”
What’s your beef against Islam, it’s no better or worse than Judaism, Christianity, or Roman Catholicism?
Are you sure you’ve read the Koran? If you have, then I suggest you read the Torah and the Bible: both the Old and New Testaments.
I read those also, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Nag Hamadi library.
You should read the Koran some time; I assumed it was no big deal either… it starts out being extremely boring and repetitive, but after Mohamed cuts out of Mecca for Medina and gets a few converts and military victories under his belt, things dramatically change.
It starts out saying that good followers of Islam should have nothing to do with infidels, but by the time you get to the end what you should do is kill or enslave them, because that’s okay, as is taking their property after they are dead or enslaved.
However, you are not to walk up to people at random, say: “You look like you may be an infidel to me!” and then kill them so can rob the corpse. You should first make _sure_ they are an infidel, then you can cave their head in.
You must have missed the part where we are all considered Muslims 🙂
You must have missed the part about how if you don’t consider *yourself* a Muslim, you have 3 options when confronted by the Islamists: a) convert, b) if you’re a Christian or Jew you can pay the jizya and live in dhimmitude (I met a Jew who lived in dhimmitude in Iran, it wasn’t fun) or c) if you don’t convert, and you’re not a Christian or Jew willing to pay jizya and live in dhimmitude, they kill you.
Only if the they realise that Mohammed is a true prophet of God, and although he’s miricle-challenged compared to Moses or Jesus, nobody has seen Gabrial except him, and what Gabrial has told him is the complete and accurate truth direct from Allah… except when it gets revised later on.
Like I said everyone, instead of reading _about_ it, or getting someone’s opinions of it, read the thing itself.
It will take a while to do, as it’s not short by any means, but I can guarantee by the time you’re done, your feelings toward Islam are to undergo a great revision.
The difference between reading the Koran and what became of Islam, and the New Testament and what became of Christianity is that if Islam hadn’t been moderated the would have been a 24/7 bloodbath, and if the New Testament hadn’t been betrayed for individual’s personal and political gain, it really could have been a pretty nice place to live, with everyone watching out for everyone else.
Brianna wrote:
“b) if you’re a Christian or Jew you can pay the jizya and live in dhimmitude”
I rather got a kick about the part where the Jewish tribes* can pay ransoms to The Profit (may His treasure chest be ever blessed), or be slaughtered or enslaved to the last man, woman, and child.
Behold the origination of Mafia “Protection” money.
I imagine the big fall-out between Islam and the Jews was that little problem about no interest on loans. Islamic banks have been figuring out clever ways to comply to the letter of that law while bypassing the spirit of it ever since. 😀
* I also want to know what exact poison the vengeful Jewish woman fed to him that killed him three years later.
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You might as well try to ban all ideology.
Sorry, but calling for banning religion goes against everything that Western Civilization stands for.
> calling for banning religion goes against everything that Western Civilization stands for.
Wrong. That would be in the highest tradition of Western Civ. What would be against everything Western Civ stands for would be *actually* banning religion.
Well put. No one needs to ban religion as it will eventually die out on its own
Only to be replaced by some other cult or “ism”.
True enough. Some sort of need for faith seems built into humans. On a bell curve, of course… some have no use for the supernatural whatsoever; other cling to it desperately. And as nominally atheistic regimes like the Soviet Union have demonstrated, most people, when stripped of classical religion, just form a brand new one, such as an irrational faith in the State or the “historical dialectic” or the Party or the Folk or whatever.
Well, we’d be better off without one big time religion anyway. Evangelical atheism has murdered over 100 million people and counting. Next to those guys, the Islamics really are the “religion of peace”. 🙂
> Evangelical atheism has murdered over 100 million people
Communism =/ atheism. Communism kills, regardless of whether it’s atheistic or Christian or whatever.
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=3855
20th century Communism was characterized not by atheism, but by transference of faith in a supernatural god to a supernatural State. And interestingly, both the Soviet Commies and the American SuperChristians shared a lot of ideology in common. Both got all kinds of uppity about morality, for instance. Both would use the terminology about science at the drop of a hat, but were actually about as anti-science as you could get. Both were massive appeals to authority, with faith in books of pronouncement written by folk long since dead.
I don’t know if there has been a true Communist society (The Soviets were Socialists, not Communists; even the name of the USSR stood for Union of Soviet _Socialist_ Republics)
The plan was that Socialism would evolve into Communism at some future point, and the government would “wither away” and become completely decentralized – a concept that one would expect to be dear to the hearts of Libertarians.
About the closest thing to real Communism seen in the past few hundred years were the Native American tribes, where individual members of the tribe didn’t have much private property and all food and tools belonged to the tribe, to be used as needed by any of its members – a concept that was also dear to some splinter Christian religious groups that formed in, or moved to, the United States.
Libertarians are not anti-government nor do they want the government to go away or wither away to nothing. Contrary to what many people think about Libertarians. Libertarians recognize some government is essential and they also recognize some tax is also essential to support that necessary government.
Also, the Native American tribes were a far cry from being communistic. They had very little government (only if it was necessary) and were for the most part decentralized even within the different tribes.
Communism has a strong Centralized Politburo and all the communes are heavily centralized themselves. In communism the state is supposed to grow stronger and more centralized.
That is what countries that called themselves “Communist” said, but you could kiss that concept goodbye after Stalin arrived, and the concept rapidly turned into “you do what we say, or you are a enemy of society and should be killed or imprisoned – or especially with the USSR…are mentally ill.”
That followed in all “communist” societies that followed the Russian revolution and Stalinist conception of how things were to be done.
You want to do a alternative history book, do one where Leon Trotsky succeeds Lenin rather than Stalin.
His concept of world-wide evangelism of Marxist/Communist revolution would have caused all the capitalist governments on the globe to unite in an effort to bring the USSR down* ASAP, much like Europe united against Napoleon.
At least Stalin’s concept of “Communism in one country” was a tactical sound one if the USSR didn’t want to get run over, pronto.
* Of course, some of them tried that militarily during the Russian civil war. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that one of the main reasons the US got involved in WWI was that our ruling class saw the widespread anger against their current governmental systems that was already becoming manifest in the French, British, and especially German troops in 1917, and thinking that “We had better get this over fast, or first they, and then we, are going to be hanging from nooses.”
Does that include the religion of the state as the almighty and all powerful moral entity over all of our lives?
More people believe seem to have faith in the religion of the state than any other religion. Liberals AND conservatives seem to accept the moral authority of the state above all else.
Some of us are highly skeptical of that religion!
Ed L
“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.” — Demosthenes: Philippic 2, sect. 24
Evil, evil, Michael Bloomberg!: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276816/mayor-bloomberg-and-soul-american-politics-matthew-j-franck
I mean it could have been non-denominational… I mean, we all believe in the Judeo-Christian God, don’t we?
I love the use of the word “Almighty” in the article. 🙂
Today, National Review has this oddball group of conservative Roman Catholics and conservative Jews; which is one of the strangest political alliances I’ve ever seen.
“He was the Son Of God.”
“We didn’t think that.”
“You nailed him to a cross!”
“No, the Romans did that.”
“Funny, that’s not what the Bible says.”
“Oh, the Bible… are you going to trust that old thing?”.