How does the indoctrination of children into a religion (or into a political party or anything else for that matter) not limit their personal freedom throughout the course of their lives? Had it not been for said indoctrination, religion would by now be a lot closer to being a thing of the past, and people in large parts of the world would objectively be freer (and thus happier, since everyone wants to bring happiness into this) for it, no?
When that happens, and I don't see how it eventually might not, the requirement for optimal social solutions to be "balanced" in terms of also appealing to people who believe things that aren't true will be gone, again benefitting society as a whole because of the increased efficiency and ease of implementation of these solutions. I think that's pretty solid reasoning for wanting to speed the process of religion becoming obsolete up, via civilised venues such as discourse, of course. And anyway, the study of religion would still exist in this future, the ideas wouldn't be lost forever or anything, they would merely be treated as myths and leverages of power over lower classes or over women or whatever, i.e. what they actually are.
tl;dr: Sweden > Iran.
Quote from: HHC on May 21, 2014, 11:50 PMIt has a lot to do with the Auschwitz experience, but that doesn't explain all. As the UK and Australia are equally drifting in messed up and self-destructive political correctness, even though they have absolutely no reason to feel inner guilt about things that happened in the past.
Perhaps it's just a matter of old glory lost.
To anyone who believes the UK has nothing to feel guilty about, I highly recommend watching this documentary series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%282012_TV_series%29On that note, if nationalistic ideals (essentially delusions of superiority) are so positive and healthy for the general atmosphere in a country, why is it that every such project so far has ended in bloodshed, genocide, racism, denial and eventually inherent fear of ever repeating the same mistake? How can that be healthier for a nation (let alone for, you know, humanity) than treating other cultures and systems of belief as intrinsically equal and equally interesting and worthy of study? Worldwide globalisation of values, knowledge, commerce, perhaps political power in the end, for all the fearmongering of eradicating individual cultures, is probably healthier for everyone involved, the only potentially sustainable way forward for the species. If anything, I feel small countries like Slovenia, with their languages on the brink of extinction, would stand a better chance of remaining relevant in a global atmosphere like that, where everyone is openly invited to visit and study them, as opposed to trying to run some sort of jealous nationalistic protectionism in the face of US, Russia and China permanently jockeying for position.
