If you could make just one law that everyone obeyed...what would it be?

[Deleted]

That everyone is an equal amongst each other, that humanity as a whole is secular and believes in the allure of science and understanding. People would have the right to there own sexual definition, and the promise to further there destiny above our petty restraints designed to shackle human spirit.

Also, all those who hate cats - will be thrown into a cat infested house and locked there for a week.

Think that covers it all...

[Elegiac]

Ez-mode answer. Kant's categorical imperative: Only do to others what you would have them do to you. End of thread, end of woes.

Flaw in the argument: someone who enjoys being raped.

[Deleted]

Atheists to keep to themselves.
Religious people to keep to themselves.

None is ever going to convince either.

Not yet, but within a few hundred years those silly religious people will be non existent. Like all things people furiously believed, in the stone ages.

And no, I have nothing against religious people. You are entitled to your own opinion.

[Deleted]

Question, how come atheists are taking an aggressive approach of religion?

I don't believe in it, not at all - i think it's a sham. But i cant disprove that it MAY be real, as such im agnostic.

Just curious, if any atheists can further my understanding of there viewpoint on religion (If possible, im not sure if the rules restrict it)

[Salech]

Ban all cell phones.

[kivipää]

Oh, is that why UK, for example, doesn't want the EU to be more united? Because of religion? Who knew, I thought it was because of economy, poverty, greed, selfishness etc.

But you're right, most wars were carried because of religions, right. I mean when Hitler and Stalin... wait, no, that was racism and despotism. Ok, maybe in WW1 when Austro-Hungary attacked... wait, no, that was because of a wish for land and greed. Ok, ok, the crusades, the knights templar attacked in the name of religion... if you exclude the piles of gold and the power they got of course.

In truth, very few wars were in the name of religion. Religion was used as a motive, but the true motives were greed, need for power and wealth. So even if you removed religion... well North Korea doesn't seem really nice and willing to enlighten and become united with the rest of the world... unless the rest of the world is under them. Neither did USSR.

Well, aren't you a condescending little ****. I'll adress your post regardless, just so you can swallow the words you tried to shove into my mouth.

Firstmost, I never said anything about wars, "recent" or othervise. You brought them up all on your own when you started throwing your little fit. My point is about modern day world, and how and why people used to do thing in days long past holds little relevance to it. That alone makes about three quarters of your post redundant monologue.

Now then, lets discuss that small amount of relevance that past actually holds, namely, cultural differences. there are two major things that affected the development of local cultural quirks; enviroment, and abstract beliefs (religion). As civilization advanced and distances "shortened", the cultural quirks interacted and melded from wider than just from the neghbouring tribe, for example. As a result, you could travle further and further and still understand the customs of people you met there. In areas where such development did not happen, the cultural landscape stayed looking like a quilt.
Now, most of the agression you mentioned is/was driven by greed and/or other survival based qualities of the human race, but as one of or other qualities includes empathy found in almsot all of us in some quantity, we've always been more comfortable to use agression to people different from us. Combined with the development of travel so you could go farther to get what you wanted, and the spread of cultural homogenization so you actually wanted to go farther to take it, led to co-operation between tribes and settlements, and to concepts like trade.
This process has continued until this day, and the lack of major cultural and ideological differences is the reason for the lack of open conflict between major European populations. Even though some of our leaders might be able to go far enough to agress against one another, the population would need something majro in a big way to push them to support such an act. That's why countries like UK, as you mentioned, settle for furthering their personal agenda via less destructive means.

Now then, two things have allowed for Europe to homogenize in such a matter compared just to, say, a hundred years ago. Technology has removed distance limitations and enviromental necessities from spread and evolution of culture, and the populations have become increasingly secular.
Now look at the rest of the world. We have been in the information age for quite some time now. Even in the far reaches of the globe, technology has almost completely torn down the walls of distance and enviroment. Still, unlike in Europe, even neghbouring countries can have vastly differing laws and cultures and can hold a great dislike, or even hostility, toward them. Not all of them are such backwards hellholes and people ofter want to believe, either. The major difference is that most of these areas are not secular. They still hold their religion in extremely high regard, and are thusly less receptive to ideology and beliefs contradictory to their own. People are easily annoyed when their beliefs are challenged, which is part of the reason why you lashed against me in such an agressive way, and why I was annoyed enough to start my answer in such an irritated manner.
No, I'm not trying to paint religion as an impassable wall in the way of peace, prosperity and all that good stuff. It's simply a speed bump. We can already see signs around the globe that we've started a slow process toward eventual "world culture". I am saying, however, that the artificial barriers religion still holds up after technological barriers have fallen slows the process in a major way.
And now you want to point out to me that this does nothing to greed that is still ultimately behind every negative interaction. And I agree, it does not. Hovewer, it will invariably raise the treshold of acting upon our greed across the globe. And when we'll all think in similar ways, with similar paths of reasoning, we'll ultimately end up following similar ideology. And the more similar we think, the more likely we'll be to work out our conflicts of interest alltogether as mutually beneficial compromises.

I hope this was a sufficient explanation on why your tantrum was off the mark. I'm sorry for calling you a twat. I'll leave it in (censored) just because I like it when a long ramble of mine reflects the change in my mood while I write it.

[Archimon]

TL;DR auspergers

Infracted: Please post more constructively.

[breadisfunny]

i would have to agree with the eye for an eye law.

[Deleted]

Bunching together different disconnected behaviours under an ideological label is always dumb, whether it be calling all christians pedophiles, all atheists anti-theistic loudmouths, or just about anything else.

Many of us don't represent /r/atheism. Many of us have our worldview and accept that not everyone shares it as long as they accept ours, much like you do. But going out of your way to insult entire groups just because of a few loudmouths is not going to help either one of us get what we wish for. That's an individual responsibility, not something that has to do with whether and/or in what you believe. Waiting for someone else to throw the first stone so you can claim "they started" when you act the same way, like Orbitus and Snowraven seem to take pride in doing, is not a good solution either.

Respect takes everyone a long, long way.

I don't know where I said all atheists were evil or fanatics, if I implied it somewhere, I'm sorry.

Yet I see many people who claim religion is root of all evil around. And I'm kind of sick of that. It's not. It's not the best thing since sliced bread either. But you can't say as some have that banning religion would solve all world problems. That, to me, seems ignorant and insulting to people who do care about religion. Tell me, if I said banning science would solve all world problems, do you think people would be ok with that? No they wouldn't, and they'd be right not being ok with that since I'd have no basis for what I just said, similarly to how people say that banning religion would solve all problems have no basis to theirs.

I don't mind atheists who are ok, even said that, I even have friends who don't belive in any God and I never tried to convince them otherwise, and as long as they don't try to convince me religion is bad, everything is peachy. You can ask letmesleep from the forum around here, I never once tried to shove religion down his throat and he never tried to convince me otherwise either. And everything is ok.

But seeing comments like "ban religion and you'd solve all problems" just reminds me of those fanatical religious people who say homosexual people should go away because they're a plague to God or that X religion is best religion and rest should go die etc. And I don't like that.

But feel free to give me a good reasonable idea on why you think banning religion would solve all world problems and I'll admit I was wrong.

[Tinykong]

If I could issue one edict and have it be followed by everyone, it would be:

Never again shall people fart in a work place restroom in the presence of others. Seriously, what makes people feel like it's okay to fart obnoxiously loud in the bathroom while in the presence of others? You wouldn't do it in the copier room, don't do it in the bathroom while other people are in visual range.

[Deleted]

Well, aren't you a condescending little ****. I'll adress your post regardless, just so you can swallow the words you tried to shove into my mouth.

Firstmost, I never said anything about wars, "recent" or othervise. You brought them up all on your own when you started throwing your little fit. My point is about modern day world, and how and why people used to do thing in days long past holds little relevance to it. That alone makes about three quarters of your post redundant monologue.

Now then, lets discuss that small amount of relevance that past actually holds, namely, cultural differences. there are two major things that affected the development of local cultural quirks; enviroment, and abstract beliefs (religion). As civilization advanced and distances "shortened", the cultural quirks interacted and melded from wider than just from the neghbouring tribe, for example. As a result, you could travle further and further and still understand the customs of people you met there. In areas where such development did not happen, the cultural landscape stayed looking like a quilt.
Now, most of the agression you mentioned is/was driven by greed and/or other survival based qualities of the human race, but as one of or other qualities includes empathy found in almsot all of us in some quantity, we've always been more comfortable to use agression to people different from us. Combined with the development of travel so you could go farther to get what you wanted, and the spread of cultural homogenization so you actually wanted to go farther to take it, led to co-operation between tribes and settlements, and to concepts like trade.
This process has continued until this day, and the lack of major cultural and ideological differences is the reason for the lack of open conflict between major European populations. Even though some of our leaders might be able to go far enough to agress against one another, the population would need something majro in a big way to push them to support such an act. That's why countries like UK, as you mentioned, settle for furthering their personal agenda via less destructive means.

Now then, two things have allowed for Europe to homogenize in such a matter compared just to, say, a hundred years ago. Technology has removed distance limitations and enviromental necessities from spread and evolution of culture, and the populations have become increasingly secular.
Now look at the rest of the world. We have been in the information age for quite some time now. Even in the far reaches of the globe, technology has almost completely torn down the walls of distance and enviroment. Still, unlike in Europe, even neghbouring countries can have vastly differing laws and cultures and can hold a great dislike, or even hostility, toward them. Not all of them are such backwards hellholes and people ofter want to believe, either. The major difference is that most of these areas are not secular. They still hold their religion in extremely high regard, and are thusly less receptive to ideology and beliefs contradictory to their own. People are easily annoyed when their beliefs are challenged, which is part of the reason why you lashed against me in such an agressive way, and why I was annoyed enough to start my answer in such an irritated manner.
No, I'm not trying to paint religion as an impassable wall in the way of peace, prosperity and all that good stuff. It's simply a speed bump. We can already see signs around the globe that we've started a slow process toward eventual "world culture". I am saying, however, that the artificial barriers religion still holds up after technological barriers have fallen slows the process in a major way.
And now you want to point out to me that this does nothing to greed that is still ultimately behind every negative interaction. And I agree, it does not. Hovewer, it will invariably raise the treshold of acting upon our greed across the globe. And when we'll all think in similar ways, with similar paths of reasoning, we'll ultimately end up following similar ideology. And the more similar we think, the more likely we'll be to work out our conflicts of interest alltogether as mutually beneficial compromises.

I hope this was a sufficient explanation on why your tantrum was off the mark. I'm sorry for calling you a twat. I'll leave it in (censored) just because I like it when a long ramble of mine reflects the change in my mood while I write it.

Funny start. Yes, you did not say about wars in specific, but you did talk about global unification, which is kind of slowed, at best, by wars.

That said, I like your post, quite well thought. However, to tackle some points. North Korea today. It is a non-religious state. I doubt anyone still practices religion in there, and if they do it's mostly isolated. Yet they don't seem interested in uniting with their southern brothers. And it has nothing to do with differences in religion here, even if the people in the south still do some worship. It has everything to do however with ideologies.

While I see a ball someone may see an egg shaped object. This also comes ideology wise. While someone sees capitalism as best system and the free market and all that, another sees state planned economy the best idea. Now think a bit, is it true that, even on these forums, there's people wanting more control over some services (medical, educational etc) while others want the opposite, more freedom, almost to the point of no state at all? What happens when most of the people in a country want one side and most of the people in another want another? Then you end up with problematic relations at best.

I gave the example of North Korea since it's the perfect example how somewhere where religion doesn't really exist anymore there are still major other problems in people thinking the same way or even similar. The people in N. Korea don't think similar to the people in Cuba, also a country that has seen little religion for a long time.

My point is, religion is not such a major bump in the road in the face of unification of the human race and removing it does not mean we'll start to follow similar ideologies. Humans have always prided themselves in comparing "us" with "them". Us the guys with amazing country system in North Korea versus them, the people trying to wreck us in the USA, the capitalist pigs. Us, the people who don't want immigrants because they're stealing our jobs, versus them, the immigrants that ruin our country. Us democrats versus them republicans. Us in this house versus them the neighbours who steal my electricity and this is why we pay so much.

Yes, religion is a bump sometimes in the face of unification, Turkey and the EU is a perfect example... but it's not the only bump and most times it's not even such a major one. Greed, corruption, ideology, way of thinking, the "us" versus "them" mentality, these are all even bigger bumps. Our ideology won't become unificated just if religion goes away. Why? Simply because the people in some desert in Africa need different things then the people in London. And as such they'll still think differently.
Even religion itself is a perfect example of people not agreeing. Christianity. It split because the high leaders didn't agree on same ideas regarding it. This shows that even in a society that followed same principles as most people were christian, the ideologies and fights for power still triumphed against the idea of unity. Same would happen in anything else. People still (even me and you) see the world as a fight between my tribe and your tribe. my tribe the enlightend, who's always right, and your tribe of enemies and others who don't share anything of what we think.

I see you don't agree with me... and neither do I with you, I'm sorry. I somehow see your points just that I don't share them.

[Deleted]

I don't know where I said all atheists were evil or fanatics, if I implied it somewhere, I'm sorry.

Yet I see many people who claim religion is root of all evil around. And I'm kind of sick of that. It's not. It's not the best thing since sliced bread either. But you can't say as some have that banning religion would solve all world problems. That, to me, seems ignorant and insulting to people who do care about religion. Tell me, if I said banning science would solve all world problems, do you think people would be ok with that? No they wouldn't, and they'd be right not being ok with that since I'd have no basis for what I just said, similarly to how people say that banning religion would solve all problems have no basis to theirs.

I don't mind atheists who are ok, even said that, I even have friends who don't belive in any God and I never tried to convince them otherwise, and as long as they don't try to convince me religion is bad, everything is peachy. You can ask letmesleep from the forum around here, I never once tried to shove religion down his throat and he never tried to convince me otherwise either. And everything is ok.

But seeing comments like "ban religion and you'd solve all problems" just reminds me of those fanatical religious people who say homosexual people should go away because they're a plague to God or that X religion is best religion and rest should go die etc. And I don't like that.

But feel free to give me a good reasonable idea on why you think banning religion would solve all world problems and I'll admit I was wrong.

I'm sorry, what? Read my post. I never accused you of saying that, nor did I even remotely imply that banning religion would be a good idea.

[lockedout]

Mine would have to be to pedestrians or anyone for that matter to not be so damn oblivious to others around them.

I know that's asking a lot but it would make people stop raging and killing people in the streets.

My law would be that everyone has to give me money.

[Garnier Fructis]

My law would be that everyone has to give me money.

I... I think you win this thread.

[stumpy]

Don't forget your towel.

[cubby]

Flaw in the argument: someone who enjoys being raped.

Nope, because they wouldn't want something done to them, generally speaking, without their permission. Argument stands.

[Hooked]

If you use slang you get banished from the country.That would be my law.

[Rinoa]

Politicians can't lie or make promises they can't keep. That'd solve so many huge problems.

[vizzle]

Everyone pays me a penny in tax once a month.

[ColbaneX]

Be excellent to each other.