Funny, no. That’s why so many people turn to religion. Religion has every answer to every question.
I knew how I was supposed to behave. The “nice” parts were no problem for me. Be a good person, sure. But seeing gays as sinners, Racism being pretty much accepted, evolution is a lie and the universe is just 6000 years old? C’mon man!
Get real!
Sure, but you are still referring to real things. No miracles. That’s my meaning.
Yes, but sometimes it is quite in contradiction with human nature. This is what I mean by “confusing”. It is said one should behave in this way or this way, but that does not correspond to reality.
And also the use of vague concepts, opened to a lot of different interpretations, while being quite dogmatic at the same time.
Not sure that’s true.
The context of coffee’s statement was that he was an engineer and solved engineering problems. Pretty sure that’s what he meant.
Ok, I see what you mean. In Catholicism, you must believe in a lot of magical things too (in order to be called a Catholic) which I feel difficult.
Definitely vague and confusing. Yes. That’s also what makes it a terrible source for morality.
1 Like
2022:
U.S. Atheists 7%
France Atheists 32%
Least Religious Countries 2023.
Apparently, France is the country with the highest proportion of atheists in the West.
1 Like
Also, there is a big difference in the feeling of being safe to declare yourself an atheist. Ask anyone who goes to a mainline church if they believe all the stuff in the Bible, or the Creeds, or everything the preacher. Churches are very aware of this.
1 Like
Well, I wanted to add: don’t worry, they are socialists and romantics instead.
I think you may find that the term “socialist” takes on a different meaning in the U.S.
Socialist here often implies caring about others. That’s a good thing. But many of us also know that it is a form of government that immigrants have learned to hate. That difference makes politics even more confusing in the U.S.
Many French are no practitioners.
In 2019-2020, 51% of the population aged 18 to 59 in mainland France declared that they had no religion. Increasing over the past ten years, this religious disaffiliation concerns 58% of people without migratory ancestry, 19% of immigrants arriving after the age of 16 and 26% of descendants of two immigrant parents.
If Catholicism remains the leading religion (29% of the population declares themselves Catholic), Islam is declared by a growing number of faithful (10%) and confirms its place as the second religion in France. The number of people declaring another Christian religion is also increasing, reaching 9%. The frequency and intensity of religious practice varies depending on the declared religion: only 8% of Catholics regularly attend a place of worship, compared to just over 20% of other Christians, Muslims and Buddhists, and 34%. Jews.
The processes of religious transmission between generations shape the religious landscape in the long term: 91% of people raised in a Muslim family follow the religion of their parents. This transmission is also very strong among Jews (84%), it is less among Catholics (67%) and other Christians (69%). With identical characteristics, the fact of having grown up in a family of mixed religious or Catholic ancestry is decisive in the process of secularization of the descendants of immigrants.
2 Likes
“But many of us also know that it is a form of government that immigrants have learned to hate.”
Ah? Why?
Well, Latin Americans often come from places like Venezuela or Nicaragua where they were impacted negatively by socialism implemented by people like Ortega. They transfer that experience here, not realizing the difference between socialism and dictatorship.
1 Like
The Episcopal/Anglican Church, last I knew wasn’t nationalist, they are definitely not fundies. The Catholic Church leads getting up into government, of course. I think Lutherans pretty much stay out of politics, although a crazy anti-abortionist brought politics to one Lutheran church in eastern Kansas in recent years, killing the Lutheran doctor who assisted women with abortions. Assassination of George Tiller - Wikipedia
Nowhere is safe from guns in the U.S. As a child, I was told God’s House was a safe place. Even when I “Lost Faith in Faith” (see Dan Barker) I still though a church was a safe place. Not in the U.S. at least, it is not. I should have known this from the history of Black Churches, but I that didn’t seem to register until Tiller’s assassination. The ELCA was dragged into politics on that day though, which I think was a very sad day in U.S. history.
Here’s the problem, I could list some churches in the U.S. that might not be nationalists and/or fundies, but the thing is, once I do, they could be dragged into the political arena, without even wanting to violate the First Amendment. Sometimes some churches aren’t given a choice. Now that I say that, that Orange Creature dragged the Episcopal Church into politics when he was in office, shoving a female priest or he had his thugs shove her. Can’t find the one where the female priest talks about being shoved by his thugs, but there is this: DC Episcopal bishop: 'I am outraged' by Trump church visit | AP News
While I am a heretical apostate, I really felt for the priest. Not only that, I have a female friend who was a priest and she is still outrage by it and loathes the the orange creature. Despise might be the better word.
As I said, I could list some churches, but when I do, they’ll get dragged into politics one way or the other.
Any type of government depends mainly on the people who make up the government.
Republican governments are very good in most Western nations, but they do not work well in the rest of the world.
1 Like
Could you give examples? As I said, a republic is not the only condition for freedom against religion and despots, but it is one of them. Other conditions are (representative) democracy and free-market.
Take care, words meaning may change with time.
In my opinion when Montesquieu uses the word republic, he means democracy.
And he is a moderate. for him, virtue is the quality needed in a republic.
Virtue is “love of the country, that is to say, love of equality”, and he adds that "the good man, in question, is not the a good Christian man, but the man of good politics… He is the man who loves the laws of his country, and who acts out of love for the laws of his country. » Political virtue is therefore neither moral virtue nor Christian virtue; on the other hand, the formulas “love of laws”, “love of the homeland”, “love of equality” are equivalent: loving one’s homeland does not mean loving the land of one’s ancestors, but loving the laws of one’s country , and to love the laws of one’s country is necessarily to love the equality of status and treatment that their application implies for all the citizens who are part of it.
But the love of equality must not be excessive.
And, about France as about any other country and people, i am very cautious in front of clichés.
2 Likes
I though almost everywhere in the world besides Western nations was an example, but let’s look at Latin America; they are officially republics yet they are riddled with dysfunction.
Latin America countries have been socialist (dictatorship) for a long time, right? Also there might be a strong culture of Catholicism, and honor.
I think peace and prosperity comes from a combination of the right approaches to ethics (secular humanism and feminism), to politics (liberal republic and representative democracy) and to economy (rather free-market).
Humanism, in my definition, is nothing else than bourgeois ethics: science, technology, property, happiness, etc.
Even if many humanists and socialists don’t see themselves as bourgeois, there is nothing more bourgeois than their way of life: reading books, developing culture and science, debating, often owing one or more property, using the last technological products, etc. To hide that, they might need to act as proletarians, or to have a certain rhetoric, but it is just a play role and a diversion, it has nothing to see with their actual way of life.
I guess the catholic priests during the Ancien Régime also had to act and talk as if they were poor, committed to the fate of the masses, etc.