Re: Pope blames atheism for all the worlds problems.
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Madnak,
The Pope is talking about the atheistic regimes that arose in the 19th and 20th century. Your wrote:
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So humanists aren't placing themselves above God, they are merely suggesting that we - human beings - are the most powerful entities in our immediate vicinity. And that therefore we have the best chance of improving things.
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Stalin and Mao would agree with you. The Pope is saying that when these regimes took God out of the equation, injustice and innocent suffering increased.
Stu
[/ QUOTE ]The same thing that makes us recognize Stalin and Mao as evil, is what is so evil about religion. It is not that they are atheists. It's that they demand your heart and your mind. They wish to have total control over every aspect of our lives private and personal. They want to have control over our sons and daughters. Our labor and our pleasure. We can give nothing short of obedience to them.
It's not because of atheism or because of a hopeful idea, that Stalin and religion is evil. You can put God into any totalitarian government and it's still evil. It's not lack of god or inclusion of god that make the numbing of the human spirit, the freedom which we enjoy destroyed, the pleasure that we desire dulled, offend our moral sense. These are sufficient reasons to be offended. If it comes from edicts by the Pope, or an atheist. The slavery of man is a great cruelty.
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