Yet another religious cult raided

[kandrathe]

I have indeed a cultural bias against organized religion (but I guess you understood that from my posts). To me also organized religion is based on power. Most (if not all) of the countries were e.g. guys can marry their 9 year old niece are highly religious. And actually this is one of the reasons why Europe and the US are in Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment according to our leaders. Our enlightened views on marriage and equality are fruits of our religious freedom (in the sense of that you wont be killed if you are an atheist:) ) In a modern society women are in fact equal to men (no scientific reason to think otherwise) so in our societies it is a good thing that we 'order' (using the law) people to behave likewise.

Good, we admit to our biases. Now, do you agree that our governments should convert people to our way of thinking with the force of state, national, international governmental laws (e.g. Native American culture, Black Culture, Iran, Rwanda, Congo)?

I just know about a lot of happy families and 400 days of paid childcare leave. I know that Sweden and especially Denmark are the among most prosperous countries in the world and people are (according to polls) the happiest overall.

Anecdotally, I know some too. I have a large number of distant relatives there (the ones that stayed behind). I think that culturally Scandinavia has some huge problems with the disintegration of the family. In America, we to have some areas where the concept of family is gone, and in those areas crime and violence have sky rocketed.

Did you see they have the Happiness Conference 2008?

Here is what I'm concerned about, an excerpt from the Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels)

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical get riled up about this shameful intention of the communists. What is the present family based on? On capitalism, the acquisition of private property. It exists in all of its meaning only for the bourgeoisie, but it finds its complement in the enforced lack of families of the proletarians and public prostitution. The family of the bourgeois naturally falls by the way-side with this, its complement, and both will vanish when capitalism vanishes. Are you accusing us that we want to end the exploitation by parents of their children? We confess to that crime. But, you say, we abolish the closest relationships, by putting social education in place of the domestic one. And, isn't your education, too, determined through society? Through the social circumstances, within whose scope you educate, through the direct or indirect involvement of society, by means of the education system, etc.? The communists are not inventing the influence of society on education, they are only changing its character, they tear education away from the influence of the ruling class. The common turns of speech about family and education, about the close relationships of parents and children become the more revolting the more as a result of burgeoning industrial development the family ties for the proletarian are torn apart and children are simply transformed into articles of trade and instruments of labour.

By removing the dependence on the family, it is replaced by dependence on the state. I suspect that the intentional destruction of family is a part of the socialist/communist agenda as laid out by Marx and Engels. You see here also the concept of "tear education away from the influence of the ruling class", which is what I experience in my local school systems. Communist Manifesto

What does it say about religion?

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.” “There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

Here is a notably biased link to a Christian Philosophy Site that describes the failure of this world view in its modern state expressions. I don't believe that we have found a substitute to modern religion for establishing the framework for a compassionate society of just law. I'm not saying that all religious dogma is just, only that it presents a framework as outlined by the American Revolution for a just society.