quote:
Crashfrog wrote:
"Communist dictatorships are not atheist; They deified and worshipped the state"
Isn't that the "NO True Scotsman" fallacy?
You know, the Nazis deified the aryan race, does that make the majority of them atheist? Not really, since even they where religious (many where Christian).
Communist nations deified the state, but they didn't believe in a real God. does that make them deists, since they "deified" the soviet state?
Go back to my Bible? GO back to your history books! These are the same people who formed the "Militant Atheist International" that was totally against any form of God or religion. That would be apeculiar title of an organization that wans't openly Atheist.
As for your interpretation of the Bible: see Exodus 20:13. I'll bring more back in a minute.
Quote tags, man. PLEASE learn to use them.
Been here all along but too busy to participate - had a minute - here goes.
The part about Nazis is pretty disjointed and distracting, and your logic doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe you intended it that way.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing about Communists being atheist, because one has to first be clear about the label when applied to a group or government. That said:
Atheism as an official state religion doesn't make sense to begin with, because you can't practice atheism. Atheism is the absence of a god-belief. Even in the form of positive denial, it is not a religion that is practiced. Try defining the actions of an atheist as a practiced religion and you will find that most of your daily routine could be called the same because it does not require a god to be there. Crash's point, which you don't seem to be picking up, is that their central ideology is not based on atheism; rather, they suppress all religions, viewing them as threats to the power of the state. Whether the individuals participating in those activities were atheists or had their own private beliefs is difficult to determine and not especially relevant.
Back to the OP,
it seems there have been a lot of tangents in this thread. Issues that I would like to see discussed more are: a simple basis for judging abortion as a moral or immoral act, whether a universal yes/no or a set of criteria (such as the rape/incest clause spoken of); philosophically/biologically/somehow defining a human being; and in the pragmatic arena, the idea of optimizing restriction/permission of abortion to achieve the most beneficial results for a society. Do all those seem close enough to the OP to work in here at some point? The first is probably the easiest, the second a maybe, and the last may be for another thread... just looking for feedback.
™ Version 4.2
