Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

The Horn

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Religion and government do not go together . Religion is far more dangerous than government if it is abused, which it often has been as long as organized religion has existed .
Progressives are not opposed to Christianity or any other religion per se . They are opposed to
religion and religious leaders getting power . which is always a guarantee of tyranny and oppression . Just look at Iran and Saudi Arabia .
Progressives don't care what religion people follow as long as they mind their own business and keep their religion to themselves . Nor are they necessarily atheists . Some are , but by no means all . Without separation of church and state , tyrannical theocracy is inevitable .
 

patrick jane

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Religion and government do not go together . Religion is far more dangerous than government if it is abused, which it often has been as long as organized religion has existed .
Progressives are not opposed to Christianity or any other religion per se . They are opposed to
religion and religious leaders getting power . which is always a guarantee of tyranny and oppression . Just look at Iran and Saudi Arabia .
Progressives don't care what religion people follow as long as they mind their own business and keep their religion to themselves . Nor are they necessarily atheists . Some are , but by no means all . Without separation of church and state , tyrannical theocracy is inevitable .
The progressives want to be socialists
 

rexlunae

New member
I liked this article and think it explains it quite well.


Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-progressivism-faith-inherently-contradictory



The premise of the article is:
[FONT=&]Leftists want government to do the work of God — transform human beings into perfect creatures for a perfect utopian.[/FONT]

If people were "perfect" according to some idealized standard, why would we need a government? A swing...and a miss, I'd say.
 

eider

Well-known member
Wrong. They went together perfectly for the founding fathers

Huh..?
Look.... I don't know, but the www is just full of reports that your founding fathers were steeped in crimes against humanity, slavery, genocide, pillage, rape, masonry and unbiblical sexual relations......
Is this the era of the Salem witch trials????


So I need you to help...... how exactly did Christianity and Government combine for the founding fathers to work so perfectly?
 

Selaphiel

Well-known member
Religion and government do not go together . Religion is far more dangerous than government if it is abused, which it often has been as long as organized religion has existed.

I agree that the OP is total nonsense, it demonstrates a severe lack in understanding of both what religion and progressivism is, not to mention that both of those terms have very diverse meanings.

But I have to disagree with you here. This is not true either historically or conceptually. Historically, non-religious tyranny far outweighs religious ones. The 20th century alone outweighs all historical religious tyrannies combined (and even that is problematic, because politics/religion as a divide is both an artificial and modern conception, so to say that the crusades or the arabic conquests were religious and only that is a rather poor and lacking understanding of those events). Of course you can go the Christopher Hitchens route and claim that Stalinism and nazism were religious in nature, but that is flatlining the concept of religion to the point that it is defined as everyth)ing and nothing (nothing in the sense that Hitchens at the same time has to define religious heroes like Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr. as essentially secularly motivated, which is equally absurd). There are almost no significant conflicts in world history (<5%) that can be defined as exclusively religious in their motivations.

All ideologies have the potential to be totalizing and tyrannical, including western secularism, who in their zeal to convert the, in their eyes, primitive cultures of the world to our view have caused massive damage. This is not something that is unqiue to religion or that religions are any particularily potent at. And there is no such thing as a non-ideological culture or government. Human weakness and frailty, the will to dominate others is what corrupts ideologies, including religion, and a truly religious person should know their own potential for destruction and the selfishness that drives it.

Progressives are not opposed to Christianity or any other religion per se . They are opposed to religion and religious leaders getting power.

No, that is a misunderstanding of what secularism entails. Religion HAS power and religious leaders can get power, a religious leader can have political power just fine. But the goal of a secular ideology is that a religious leader with political power must argue their positions in a universal language, not relying on reference to particular creeds or confessions. This is generally a good idea, even if the idea of a universal and neutral language/reason is naive.


Without separation of church and state , tyrannical theocracy is inevitable .

Not really true. It can happen and it has happened, but it is not inevitable. Do you see the Scandinavian countries as tyrannical theocracies in the modern period? Norway had a state church until 2012, Sweden until 2000 and there still is a state church in Denmark. In fact, it is historically impossible to understand the development of the welfare states in these countries without reference to the Lutheran church. The development of safety nets for the poor and the development of free education for all people originated with the church. But of course, this was informed by the Lutheran idea of the separation between two kingdoms.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
I'm afraid a reasoned rebuttal is pointless when dealing with the horn

I enjoyed your post, though :thumb:
 

The Barbarian

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As James Madison noted, establishment is bad not only for society, but for the Church. It's a telling fact that American, which outlawed establishment of religion (not merely any particular religion) outright, is among the nations with the highest percentage of believers, while Sweden, with an established church, is one of them most secular of nations, with few believers.

It's commendable that religious persecution by the state in most Scandinavian nations was relatively mild (usually exile) the fact remains that it was the result of establishment.


An established church is always evil. It's intrinsically opposed to God, who set each person as the caretaker of his own soul.
 

jgarden

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I liked this article and think it explains it quite well.

Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

The premise of the article is:
[FONT=&]Leftists want government to do the work of God — transform human beings into perfect creatures for a perfect utopian.[/FONT]



Given that "The Donald" fails to see the need to ask for God's forgiveness from sin because he can achieve perfection through self-correction, doesn't that conform to "Tambora's" definition of a "leftist?"
 

ClimateSanity

New member

Given that "The Donald" fails to see no need to ask for God's forgiveness from sin because he can achieve perfection through self-correction, doesn't that conform to "Tambora's" definition of a "leftist?"
Trump doesn't believe in Orthodox Christian doctrine. Apart from christianity, why apologize? You either recognize your error and change course or you don't. You can tell the offended party that you were wrong and will stop. You can the offended party they deserve better treatment. But what does an apology do anyway? All I can see is that it serves the ego of the offended party by seeing you grovel.
 

The Horn

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G;*** Jester , tyranny is terrible whether it is communist tyranny where people are persecuted for their religion, or theocratic tyranny, where people are persecuted by religious fanatics .
Russia has gone from one extreme to another since the collapse of the Soviet Union .
In the past, Christians, Jews,Muslims and Buddhists in the Soviet Union were persecuted and many were executed , such as members of the clergy .
Now, with the blessing of Putin, the Russian orthodox church is getting more and more power ,
it is starting to persecute ATHEISTS , and especially gay people . Gays in the Soviet Union were also persecuted .
American religious fanatics and professional homophobic bigots such as Scott Lively , have been encouraging the Orthodox church to persecute gay people in Russia.
And in the Muslim region of Chechnya in the Caucasus , gay men have been rounded up and put in concentration camps and subject to torture and murder .
Tyranny is tyranny .
 

Nick M

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The reason is simple. You shall not covet, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery doesn't fit with their world view.
 

Angel4Truth

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I liked this article and think it explains it quite well.


Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-progressivism-faith-inherently-contradictory



The premise of the article is:
[FONT=&]Leftists want government to do the work of God — transform human beings into perfect creatures for a perfect utopian.[/FONT]

Theres no utopia without Christ. They still believe the devils lie, that eve believed in the garden (you can be as God)
 

steko

Well-known member
LIFETIME MEMBER
I liked this article and think it explains it quite well.


Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-progressivism-faith-inherently-contradictory



The premise of the article is:
[FONT=&]Leftists want government to do the work of God — transform human beings into perfect creatures for a perfect utopian.[/FONT]

Theres no utopia without Christ. They still believe the devils lie, that eve believed in the garden (you can be as God)

In 1516 Sir Thomas More coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'.

It's made up, it ain't real, ain't gonna' happen, it's nowhere.
Those that believe in a man-made perfect environment and through that will develop the perfect man are like the song, "Nowhere Man" by the Beatles. They're nowhere people...dreamin' an ideal like John Lennon's "Imagine".

As you say, A4T, only the LORD!
 

Angel4Truth

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In 1516 Sir Thomas More coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'.

It's made up, it ain't real, ain't gonna' happen, it's nowhere.
Those that believe in a man-made perfect environment and through that will develop the perfect man are like the song, "Nowhere Man" by the Beatles. They're nowhere people...dreamin' an ideal like John Lennon's "Imagine".

As you say, A4T, only the LORD!

Amen brother! May He come quickly.
 
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