No Mutants Allowed

Meaning, we used to ridicule strongly religious people, while valuing rational thinkers, but we might very soon do the opposite - ridicule non-believers as arrogant, or even worse - outright heretical.

What do you mean?

I mean, all such mindsets are coached into society, generations at the time. We take for granted a direction towards more rational thinking, less superstition, and take for obvious that superstition is silly. But the pendulum can swing (as it has in the past), making rationality "silly" (or rather arrogant and heretical) and superstition the obvious norm

Well, you have a Vice President that's draging his wife along on every journey, in fear of having to be along with another woman, to do 'comitting a sin'. Curious how many christians there are in power right now ... I really do not like the idea of seeing a new religious war. Not with nuclear weapons at hand.

Not necesarily war, but yes, change in attitudes. People pride themselves with the illusion that their thought and opinion is their own, when it is given to them by their surroundings. I'll be the first to admit, the way I think and percieve the world is thanks to my parents, grandparents, as well as the attitude of the society I live in -

- Norway has a strong tradition for secular attitudes. But then again, I am very aware of myself. A lot of people aren't, and are quick to adopt new norms, new "rules of acceptance", such as these new waves of in-the-open racism. It's a new norm, and we've seen before, how quickly new norms replace old ones

I am maybe exagerating, but you don't know what might be in 50 years, or 70 for that matter. There is no rule that states there will never be a new religious war. And right now, we experience a huge rise of religous fanatism by christians in the US. Because Betsy De Vos and Pence, are religous fanatics in my eyes.

You can't just reduce everything to the surroundings, people react differently to the same stimuli, sure the envirorment plays a part but there is still something individual about your own thoughts.

What prompted me this time was some internet comment angrily associating irreligiousity with liberalism (which we now know is totally fucking gay, nobody wants to be a stinking liberal). This combined into a new insult: A liberal who does not even believe in god (the worst kind, perhaps)

Crni, I didn't say "never will be religious war", I just said I wasn't talking about war in particular, but attitudes. War WILL be, war always is, so, that's a given. We will all have war.

Walp, I know, the free thinkers are the ones who eventually become "traitors", which is a horrifying prospect. In every hostile scenario, traitors are worse than enemies, because they go against their own people.
During Nazi Germany, "traitors" fled the country in droves - OR, were thrown into camps along with gypsies, Jews and Slavs.

I think irreligiosity is on tje rise, but along with it are the cries of the fanatics who are scared about it.

Hopefully it's as harmless as that.

Exactly Zeg! This mindset that you're talking about is what I find so ... worrysome. I mean think about the 60s for a moment, cuban crysis. You had people like Le May openly talk about 'nuking the russians' back to the stone age. And this was all more or less simply driven by politics. Religious people, including christians openly believe in the end times and aomw also work towards it ...

Even the Catholic church is trying to shed some it's more abrassive public policies to try and attract more young people. Religion is feeling the raise of both non denominational theism, agnosticism and atheism and some of them are gettin scared.

Organized religion has no room in the age of aquarius.

Toront, ideally no, but human behavior is often very un-ideal. Organized religion is extremely beneficial when it comes to keeping peple misinformed, it has been a useful tool for centuries. By teaching religion, you ALSO teach blind adherence, it's in the very mechanism of belief: The sky is blue *because*, as opposed to the sky is blue *because lengthy explanation*