If atheists ruled the world

Originally posted by Melanerpes
But if your atheist rock didn't actively ban people from practicing religion, what would prevent new religions from developing? Perhaps your own children become interested in "finding a deeper meaning"?

What would prevent religious people from other rocks from sending missionaries to evangelize or colonize your rock?

How many people would really ca ...[text shortened]... ng "bad manners?" Do you think that would be sufficient to maintain the atheist status quo?

"But if your atheist rock didn't actively ban people from practising religion, what would prevent new religions from developing?
Perhaps your own children become interested in "finding a deeper meaning"?"

Nothing prevents it, but all evidence currently suggest religiosity trails off the more education and material comfort
(not wealth, comfort) you have.
Also the main point of the society is not that everyone must be atheist, but that religion gets nowhere near the governance/decision
making process. Actual and proper separation of church and state.

"What would prevent religious people from other rocks from sending missionaries to evangelize or colonize your rock?"

The airlock?

Emigration, rather than simply visiting, requires quite an effort, as it takes a lot of energy to move people and stuff around
from rock to rock, and each one has strict limits on the amount of resources available to it and thus the number of people
it can hold.

You would have to apply for permission to emigrate into another society, and breaking in illegally is almost impossible,
because the only way in, is through the strictly controlled airlocks.
[EDIT: and stowing away on a space ship is going to be nigh on impossible too, they would be monitoring their mass
with gram levels of accuracy at the minimum, and O2 usage as well, 1 extra person would be detected the moment
they kicked the engines in and detected slightly less acceleration than expected even if unusually high
oxygen usage/CO2 emission didn't give you away before undocking.]

If your goal is to disrupt the society, rather than join it, you are not likely to be granted permission to emigrate.

However, as I have stated, atheism isn't particularly fragile.
The more educated and comfortable the people, the weaker religion gets.


"How many people would really care whether they were displaying "bad manners?" Do you think that would be sufficient to maintain
the atheist status quo?"

Their may well be a few people who go to other societies with missionary zeal to try to change things.
They are unlikely to be very popular, not many people want to spend their lives preaching to a hostile crowd.
Most people simply want to live in a society they fit into and they can live happily in.
If you lived on a theist rock, (god rock?) of your denomination, then you would find like minded people and churches and such
with a governance making laws you agree with.
If you (as a theist) went to an secular rock, then you find people who disagree with you, laws you disagree with, no churches,
and feel generally much like an atheist currently feels like living in Texas.... isolated and alone (despite there being a lot more of them
than you might think).

Why would you chose that?

There might as I say be a few missionaries who would do that, but if they get past immigration, they are going to be few and far between,
and unlikely to get anywhere with a comfortable well educated populous.

Try going to the science forum and see dasa's attempts to preach his version of creationism for a feel of what these missionaries would be up against.
It's not that they hold those views, its that they try to impart them on everyone else that causes the trouble.

Being a theist on a secular rock would be no trouble.
Being a preacher on a secular rock is going to make you unpopular.
Although I would add that your treatment is likely to be vastly better than that of an atheist in a highly theist society.

Originally posted by googlefudge
[b]"But if your atheist rock didn't actively ban people from practising religion, what would prevent new religions from developing?
Perhaps your own children become interested in "finding a deeper meaning"?"

Nothing prevents it, but all evidence currently suggest religiosity trails off the more education and material comfort
(not wealth, comfo ...[text shortened]... is likely to be vastly better than that of an atheist in a highly theist society.[/b]

You strike me as the kind of person who doesn't keep house plants.

Am I right?

Originally posted by googlefudge
[b]"But if your atheist rock didn't actively ban people from practising religion, what would prevent new religions from developing?
Perhaps your own children become interested in "finding a deeper meaning"?"

Nothing prevents it, but all evidence currently suggest religiosity trails off the more education and material comfort
(not wealth, comfo is likely to be vastly better than that of an atheist in a highly theist society.[/b]

would your rock be a secular rock (separation of church and state, but where everyone would be completely free to assemble, worship, and speak as they wished)

or would it be an atheist rock (in which everyone would be required to be an atheist)?

Originally posted by Green Paladin
You strike me as the kind of person who doesn't keep house plants.

Am I right?

Well that's out of left field.... I have cacti (they flower beautifully if you water them just right) does that count?

Originally posted by Melanerpes
would your rock be a secular rock (separation of church and state, but where everyone would be completely free to assemble, worship, and speak as they wished)

or would it be an atheist rock (in which everyone would be required to be an atheist)?

It would be a rock initially colonised by an atheist/rationalist/humanist collective.

The state would be entirely secular.

But people would have the right to assemble, and worship freely ect.


The point of these habitats is there are huge numbers of them, so you can get together a collective
of like-minded people and colonise one/several without having to worry about taking territory from
anyone else.

(also there is a distinction between rocks in the same orbit where getting from one to another is very
low energy and easy, and between rocks in different orbits where getting from one to another is higher
energy and harder.
Also when I say orbit I am talking about round the sun, not round the earth)

So an analogy would be large numbers of Jew's getting together and moving to Israel, to form a Jewish country.
Or the Mormons travelling to Nevada to form a new colony. (hoping I got the history right on that one)
Except there are no natives to expel first.

So it's not so much you set up a rock and hang a sign on the door saying no theists allowed.

But that you get an collective of like minded people who want to form a society together, and they (purchase, rent,
whatever economics are involved) get a Rock or Rocks and go and set up their new society in them.

It would be entirely possible to put a sign on the front saying no theists, But I wouldn't want to live in the kind of
society that would do that.

So my hypothetical society wouldn't.

Originally posted by googlefudge
It would be a rock initially colonised by an atheist/rationalist/humanist collective.

The state would be entirely secular.

But people would have the right to assemble, and worship freely ect.


The point of these habitats is there are huge numbers of them, so you can get together a collective
of like-minded people and colonise one/several with ...[text shortened]... to live in the kind of
society that would do that.

So my hypothetical society wouldn't.

Hypothetical societies are the best!

Originally posted by Agerg
Atheists don't rule worlds; but if they did, Earth would [b]probably be the best world in the universe[/b]

Best world in the universe, according to who, Atheist?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Best world in the universe, according to who, Atheist?
Kelly

YouTube&feature=related


I think you missed the joke.....

Originally posted by googlefudge
It would be a rock initially colonised by an atheist/rationalist/humanist collective.

The state would be entirely secular.

But people would have the right to assemble, and worship freely ect.


The point of these habitats is there are huge numbers of them, so you can get together a collective
of like-minded people and colonise one/several with ...[text shortened]... to live in the kind of
society that would do that.

So my hypothetical society wouldn't.

So what would unite everyone on your rock? Unlike, say the Jews in Israel, there would be no common belief system or sacred laws or rituals to maintain the collective identity.

And I suspect that your rock would probably attract a lot of "free-thinking spiritual-but-not-religious" types who, like atheists, don't support organized religion but unlike atheists, still have strong personal beliefs in some sort of God or supernatural presence.

What happens if these free-thinking believers come to outnumber the atheist population?

Originally posted by Melanerpes
So what would unite everyone on your rock? Unlike, say the Jews in Israel, there would be no common belief system or sacred laws or rituals to maintain the collective identity.

And I suspect that your rock would probably attract a lot of "free-thinking spiritual-but-not-religious" types who, like atheists, don't support organized religion but unlike at ...[text shortened]... .

What happens if these free-thinking believers come to outnumber the atheist population?

The idea is that you get together a set of like minded (to whatever degree deemed appropriate) people.
The starting point of this was 'if atheists ruled the world' which is why I was specifying atheist, but of course
atheism is an absence of belief that encompasses a broad range of people, so the unifying thing/s would be
something else.

Secular humanism, free thinking, rationalism, and broad agreement on type and feel of governance spring
to mind as plausible candidates.

You could form a group however you liked, but the group I would prefer to join/form would (mostly as a bi-product)
be mostly to almost exclusively atheist.

And I don't know why this Rock would attract a lot of liberal theists, as they are more likely (in my opinion) to
form their own groups and colonise their own Rocks.

There are a great number of secularists in the world, more than enough to be able to fill thousands of Habitats
(dependent on hab' size) full to brimming.

Of course some/many might well want to live in societies that include theists, but plenty enough wouldn't.

The idea is that with tens of thousands (at least, probably hundreds of thousands, but it depends on how big
you build them) of separate Hab's/Rocks to chose from, you can pick those, and/or join the founding groups of,
those that appeal to your own world view and beliefs.

I realise that this could lead to some extreme societies if totally unchecked, how you might deal with say a group
wanting to form a Muslim society living under strict sharia law. The problem being not so much the original settlers,
assuming no coercion involved, they chose it, but their offspring which didn't.

But that is a separate and much bigger conversation.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Now, that is my kind of video, these young guys sound like brilliant
intellectuals as well as good Christians standing up for the faith.

The "brilliant intellectuals" standing up for your faith are actually taking the p*$$ out of fundamentalism. All the garbage they parody is taken form fundamentalist christioan sites.

I like the guy that says without his religion and "Thou shalt not kill" he would have murdered several people! Therefore all atheists are potential killers. Hilarious.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
The "brilliant intellectuals" standing up for your faith are actually taking the p*$$ out of fundamentalism. All the garbage they parody is taken form fundamentalist christioan sites.

I like the guy that says without his religion and "Thou shalt not kill" he would have murdered several people! Therefore all atheists are potential killers. Hilarious.

But I still like them anyway. They do seem a little simple minded,
however if they believe most of what they say, that could be
remedied.

Originally posted by RJHinds
But I still like them anyway. They do seem a little simple minded,
however if they believe most of what they say, that could be
remedied.

This is what I like about you.

Nobody has to parody you....

You do it all yourself.

Originally posted by googlefudge
The idea is that you get together a set of like minded (to whatever degree deemed appropriate) people.
The starting point of this was 'if atheists ruled the world' which is why I was specifying atheist, but of course
atheism is an absence of belief that encompasses a broad range of people, so the unifying thing/s would be
something else.

Secular ...[text shortened]... but their offspring which didn't.

But that is a separate and much bigger conversation.

And I don't know why this Rock would attract a lot of liberal theists, as they are more likely (in my opinion) to
form their own groups and colonise their own Rocks.

liberal theists might be strongly attracted to a secular rock where there was a broad agreement on tolerance of minorities. They might find that on the other rocks where secularism was not valued, the majority faith soon developed into a tyrannical theocracy.

the liberal theists (and perhaps even a good number of orthodox theists) might also agree with the atheists on a wide range of other issues not directly related to religion - perhaps they'd all share a strong commitment to preventing poverty and protecting the environment.

Originally posted by Melanerpes
And I don't know why this Rock would attract a lot of liberal theists, as they are more likely (in my opinion) to
form their own groups and colonise their own Rocks.

liberal theists might be strongly attracted to a secular rock where there was a broad agreement on tolerance of minorities. They might find that on the other rocks where secularism ...[text shortened]... aps they'd all share a strong commitment to preventing poverty and protecting the environment.

"They might find that on the other rocks where secularism was not valued, the majority
faith soon developed into a tyrannical theocracy."


Which is a strong argument against theism and religion don't you think?


Anyhow, the way I was envisioning this, Is that groups get together to form a society for
running one, or more, of these habitats.

Are you trying to tell me that it would be impossible, or even hard for a bunch of secularists to
form a group to do that without some theists butting in?

I am sure there would be societies of people drawn together by some other common ground,
such as a a common national identity, or something esoteric like Nick's fans. (did I spell that right?)

But you seem to be arguing atm that it wouldn't be practically possible to form a group of atheists
to colonise one of these habitats and I can't see any reason why that would be hard.