All religions will eventually fail

Or when enough of the populations dies out and the only people left are rational and free thinkers.

I know the odds are against it.. but it could happen

we cannot pinpoint any time in human history when we've lived without religion of some sort.  just as the human mind is incredibly elastic and adaptable, so religion (a product of the human mind) is incredibly elastic and adaptable.  read mircea eliade if you want to find that presented in considerable detail.

the only way to fix humanity's problems is to end humanity, folks.  call me pessimistic, but so far all of history has borne me out on that.

you got that right...

So? Does that mean we should allow superstition taboos? I am really glad Galileo bothered to tell the truth and look how long it took a fucking club of superstition to say "oops my bad".

Screw your pessimism. You want to bitch about me and my blasphemy of religion and yet you want the end like they do?

The end will happen and that is a "no fucking shit". But in the meantime I am going to spend my life, even if I fail, trying to pull humanity's head out of it's ass so our ride can be extended, even if it wont be forever.

Life sucks sometimes and bad happens and humans can be cruel. But we also do good things too.

Welcome to reality Ibwiek.

Check out the book The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer. There's a link on his website to a full PDF version that's available for anyone to read for free. If you do a Google search on "the authoritarians", it should be the first or second result. Brian's posts often strongly remind me of the people Altemeyer calls "authoritarian followers".

Far more likely that the few who survive are religious zealots. Or will become so, because with the death of civilisation comes the return of mystery and unanswerable questions en masse. Fear of the unknown, a need for discipline, and threats on the horizon are breeding grounds for religion. Freethinking and logic become luxuries that can't be afforded.

But humanity isn't a disease. We wouldn't be capable of recognising that we're making a mess if we were that bad.

We are to a degree, but we are also selfless and compassionate and generous to a degree. There's never been a poll or study on the numbers, but I suspect they are rather equal.

       Yes, to a degree you are correct.  Whether the degree of good to bad among humanity is acceptable to me or not is a matter of opinion.  My natural inclination is to trust people but personal experience combined with observation of humans in general has taught me that the vast majority should be approached with everything from caution to outright suspicion.  

 A metaphor from history that I identify with comes from reading about the American war in Viet Nam.  When many of our young, inexperienced soldiers were sent to aid the south Vietnamese they were perhaps mostly neutral as to their feelings toward them. They certainly didn't regard them as the enemy, initially.

  Later when the American soldiers began to discover after firefights that many of the South Vietnamese civilians who were being friendly with them during the day were also the same people who were trying to kill them at night ( as the Viet Cong ) the Americans refused to trust any of them.   There was simply no way to vet the civilians as to who was VC or not so the soldiers fell back upon the only other option available to them ...they withdrew their trust and replaced it with overt suspicion. 

 The soldiers' need to survive trumped all other issues and if trusting no one who was Vietnamese accomplished that goal then so be it.

     Well, if your assessment is correct and roughly 50 percent of humanity is not worthy of trust then those odds are all I need to rationally justify maintaining vigilance because that's an unacceptably large percentage of potential enemies.  

 To me that's like playing an even more dangerous game of Russian Roulette except that with your projected 50 / 50 odds instead of there only being one cartridge in the the six shot revolver, now their are three cartridges waiting to blow your head off.  Sorry, but I like those odds even less.

point me to ANY post ever where i say that is your goal.  i have said it's impossible, but i've never said it's your goal.  as far as i can tell, you have no goal.  you've certainly never offered any constructive suggestions with all the shrill pissing and moaning you do about every conceivable issue.

never mind the fact that i said NOTHING EVEN APPROACHING THAT ANYWHERE IN THE POST YOU'RE RESPONDING TO.  i say "never mind" because i think everybody expects non sequiturs of you by now.

and your evidence for this naked assertion is what?  me saying you're full of shit?  do you identify yourself so completely with the atheist movement that my calling your bullshit automatically makes me a co-conspirator with fanatical theists everywhere?

wow, and you do, huh?  i've travelled a quarter of the fucking world.  as far as i can tell, you've never gotten out from behind your dishwater in fucking virginia.

btw, there are quite a few states like those you mentioned whose official ideological position is atheistic.  in other words, history has shown us that religion can be an excuse for oppression, but there is no conclusive evidence it's a prime motivator.  if you really think a world without religion (SPEAKING HYPOTHETICALLY, NOT IDENTIFYING YOUR "GOAL," SO SAVE IT) would be a world without bloody dictatorships, or even a world with fewer bloody dictatorships, you're an even bigger idiot than i thought.

oh wait, that's right, anytime a leader manipulates the people you call that "religion."  wow.  i can win arguments too if i change the meanings of words until they're practically unrecognizable.

i'm reading it.

i'm re-reading it.

i'm re-reading it.

i'm comprehending it perfectly.

i'm just not seeing what is has to do with ANY FUCKING POINT I'VE EVER MADE TO YOU OR ABOUT YOU.

oh, that's right, i'm talking to brian.  i almost fell back into the trap of expecting a logical progression.

just drop it.  you're embarrassing both of us.

                              Blah blah blah, non of that stuff really matters if you don't own guns.   Buy a gun and your life will start to have real meaning.

a. oh yeah, DC and Northern VA, so you know all about government oppression first-hand...

b. never said you didn't.

c. not putting the work down, brian.  i'm putting YOU down.  as usual, you're so allergic to criticism you try to deflect it onto anything else.  it's always me knocking atheism or knocking manual labor, but nothing i ever say could possibly apply to you...

i don't give a shit how you make a living.  my father is a construction worker and my mother taught kindergarten in eastern kentucky.  what DOES piss me off is when a dishwasher in middle america tries to tell me i need to experience some time in oppressive societies, as if you're some fucking dissident, as if you have any more fucking idea what that's like than i do.  you don't.

and that affects me how?  i don't teach in the US, never have, never will.  and everything i've ever read about the american teachers' union gives me the impression that it's one of the most corrupt out there, so i don't know that i would support it.

Do you know which country iwbiek lives in? Hint: it isn't Canada.

And yeah, the sole problem is we don't spend enough on education. Just throwing money at a problem fixes everything...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-report_n_3496875.html

yeah, i've never even been near canada.  the farthest north i've ever been is o'hare airport.

yet i knew he lived in virginia.  and since i joined this board in 2008, i know i've said where i live at least as many times as he's said where he lives, maybe even more.

yet more proof of his lack of attention to people's posts.

BRIAN,

i live in a post-communist country.  my parents-in-law watched soviet tanks roll in in 1968, crushing the tiny flowers of freedom of expression that had just started to bloom.  my wife can remember greeting her primary school teacher with "cest praci" ("glory to work" ).  my brother- and sister-in-law both went to pioneer camp.  just like you, i've never experienced oppression first-hand, but i'm much closer to its lasting effects than you are.

yes, the country i call home has universal, compulsory healthcare, and it's great.  but if you think corporations don't run the show even here, forget about it.  if it weren't for a huge branch of US steel, my city would not be nearly as nice as it is.  as much as corporations irritate me, i'd rather have them running the show here than gustav husak, and i say that as a marxist.

oh, it also has a flat tax rate, and that's great too.  i'd damn sure rather pay taxes here than back home in the states (i've done both).

maybe by now a couple google searches have reminded you where i live...

And another post not read.

  Yes, there is a strange disconnect within Brian's mind.  He only hears what he want's to hear and therefore responds inappropriately.     In the same vein, could you imagine Brian trying to put the moves on some female who didn't want his advances ?  Every time she slapped his face he would be unable to understand why and would just keep pawing at her.  He would never figure it out.

the answers you got from your russian friends are also typical of czechs and slovaks.  the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people had no sense of ideological conflict (despite the official press's hamfisted efforts to instill that in them), nor that they were "living history."  like most folks, they just went through everyday life and didn't think too much about it.

first of all, like most ideological positions, what makes someone a "marxist" depends on who you ask.  with me, it primarily means taking a materialistic view of history, wherein economic and political factors, especially technological advances in production, are the prime movers of human development: religions, political ideologies, even things like fashion trends, are all at base symptoms of a society's objective, material circumstances at any given time.  i disagree with marxists like lenin and the young sidney hook who argue that being a marxist necessarily entails always taking a revolutionary stance against the rule of the bourgeoisie.  for example, i think europe is best left alone at the present time, to pursue its own peculiar developments: developments which, quite frankly, marx was unable to foresee.  now, on the other hand, if there were to be a proletarian revolution in the united states tomorrow--well, put me on a plane and have my dad's .22-.270 waiting for me when i get off.  i want to be among the first to stroll into the capitol in fatigues with that sucker slung over my shoulder, ready to expropriate everything in sight, and sit on any revolutionary tribunal they'll let me sit on.  neither bush nor obama would fare too well before me.  i think a soviet-style revolution in the US could only do the world good.

i'm also a trotskyist in terms of endorsing the idea of "permanent revolution," i.e., that the dictatorship of the proletariat must carry its work to its logical conclusion: a worldwide revolution.  it has to be all or nothing, at least among the developed powers.  stalin's great error (i use that term loosely, since he knew exactly what he was doing; he never fumbled in his goals) was insisting on "socialism in one country."  this doomed the soviet union from the start.  no socialist country can truly exist as socialist at the mercy of the global market, and no single country can truly be self-sufficient, because of the distribution of the earth's resources if for no other reason, so the only option is to eliminate the world market as it is.

as for the soviet system being a failure or not, that's another subjective question.  i will say this: the fact that the system "collapsed" is no necessary indicator of failure.  all systems will "collapse"--i.e. cease to exist as they are--eventually.  the end of the soviet union, the warsaw pact, etc., was not a catastrophic event, anymore than the fall of rome (or the break-up of czechoslovakia, for that matter).  the incredible successes of the soviet system in turning a backward, fanatically religious empire that was the last truly feudal society in europe into an industrialized world power in an unbelievably short amount of time cannot be disputed.  neither can the human cost, but history invariably shows us that great leaps require great sacrifices.  the question is, is it worth it?  that's a question that can never be answered definitively for every situation.

my own personal feelings about the soviet system are mixed, and anyone who doesn't have mixed feelings about it just flat out doesn't know enough about it.  however, i will say this: had i been in petrograd in 1917, among the revolutionary workers and the kronstadt sailors, well...there's no question in my mind whom i would have stood with.

i hope that answers your question.

the same reason why christians bother to teach entire courses debunking heresies that haven't existed in over a millennium (montanism, marcionism, donatism, sabellianism, etc.): solidarity with tradition and centuries of intellectual and emotional investment.  it all traces back to the personal animosity between stalin and trotsky.  when stalin condemned trotsky and invented the "trotskyist conspiracy" out of thin air, he was just playing power politics.  trotsky's views were no more controversial than stalin's, and stalin even passed many of them off as his own after his power was secure: de-kulakization, emphasis on heavy industry--these sorts of things were advocated by trotsky and ridiculed by stalin while lenin was advocating NEP and moderation in dealing with peasants and small entrepeneurs.

even with trotsky safely impotent in exile (his assassination was unnecessary; he never would have been able to set foot in the soviet union again), it served stalin's purpose to raise up the specter of an international organization of "trotskyist" saboteurs, an organization that never existed, whenever he needed an excuse to eliminate some people.  the fact that those condemned for being members of this fictional massive conspiracy actually confessed to it in show trials didn't help matters.  these confessions were often made voluntarily, out of a grotesque sense of communist solidarity (i.e. it was better for the party for the accused to confess to an untruth than insist the party was wrong).  all over the world, those communist parties allied with the CPSU were strongly encouraged to purge their own ranks of "trotskyists," which they did.  shit, even years after stalin's death, the vietnamese communist party was brutally massacring hundreds of "trotskyists" in vietnam--a total absurdity!

anyway, you can see how deep a hole worldwide communism has dug itself into on the trotskyist issue.  to admit trotsky was wronged, even today, would mean far more ideological backpedalling than any party anywhere is willing to do.  even during perestroika, even on the eve of the break-up of the soviet union, there was never any serious talk of rehabilitating trotsky.  it was just too much to ask.  even as late as 2005, when fidel castro's autobiography was published, castro's interviewer in the book asks him if one couldn't consider che a trotskyist of sorts, and castro is very quick to squash that idea.

For what? So they can train more people to become "lowly dishwashers"? It's a fucking racket, they get paid and get their pensions for what?

It's a nice idea that it might fail but there are so many nongs out there. Still. Islam is sillier and more morally inconsistent than all the other religions. When I get depressed I read the intros on WikiIslam and the Council of Ex Muslims of Britain. Brave people, muslim atheists.