It is a recurring theme that liberals/progressives/secular are on average more educated, more intelligent, more introspective and aware, and there is no shortage of their small organizations (FFRF, Atheist Republic, Richard Dawkins foundation.... To name a few)
Why haven't they had as much success as mainstream ideologies/religions (nationalistic, populist, mythological(Christian, Islamic..) why haven't they established a broad umbrella common ground organization with a mission statement (ie their own rational Bible) that systemically promoted tolerance equality, humanity, rational /critical /scientific thinking and further common goals in public policy?
Why have we seen good survival of religion and setbacks and back tracking in some societies (Iran, Afghanistan, turkey, Arab countries, most recently US)?
Shouldn't we develop a faith in our basic common creed outlasting and outsnarting "religionists" to continue the path of civilization?
What do you think of the regressive left, who condone and promote believers of minority religions though these minority religions are a beachhead and much worse than western religionists in countries where they're a majority and moreover are mostly nonintegrated antihuman rights closed off societies?
PS I assumed everyone was familiar with a new group of leftists that had stirred controversy with the censoring of free speech bcz it wasn't à la mode or siding with conservative minorities abusing their own bcz it was culture, so if ur not familiar with the term regressive left here's a very brief and incomplete intro
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Intelligent people will always be outnumbered by stupid people, as evidenced in the Bell Curve, and more popularly, the intro to the movie Idiocracy. See, intelligent people tend to think before they breed and try to postpone it for the best moment for both parent and child. So they tend to have fewer children, and some are so appalled at the state of the world they choose to have no children. Stupid people, on the other hand, put very little thought into birth control or family planning, hence "kids happen", and often at greater numbers than their parents can handle.
I feel that the left's tendency to be regressive at breeding is leading to their downfall; whereas the right's Bible mandated "go forth and populate the earth" ideology is still being promoted with gusto by people like the Duggars and the Quiverfull movement; couple that with homeschooling and even if they happen to breed an intelligent child amongst their herd of children, it will be kept down in ignorance and superstition, unless it happens to break free and end up here.
exilesky
Level 7
Sep 8, 2018
1
Yea. I'm talking about activism and finding ways to promote liberal agenda in public discourse, education, media and laws. Remember breeding more is not equivalent to more conservatives. In fact many many of liberals, people here.. Come from the worst backgrounds. Their breeding isn't a weapon in their favor. That's a bit condescending and discriminating btw.
And along the same lines, if this population really is more accomplished and intelligent, then they should eventually get the upper hand and find a way to convince and influence.
Maybe it is that the religious population is lead by really intelligent opportunists who know they can profit and capitalize from a large population...
Still liberals are struggling in many places today. That's not very intelligent or successful 
I think people tend to bond more easily over the negatives (i.e. what or whom we hate) than any long-term standing for equality, humanity, rationality etc (I really hate the term 'tolerance'
. I say "long-term" because we will join together to protest an incident but not indulge in the cult-thing that religion is. Also it MAY be that the secular, more intelligent minority are more likely to be introverts, and don't want or need the sense of community that the more sheep-like theists need.
Wendy965
Level 5
Sep 8, 2018
4
That question went in entirely a different direction than I had anticipated...
Why? In part I blame liberalism's core value of "inclusiveness" which, in recent years, has been taken to a self-defeating extreme. Yes, inclusiveness is a good thing in principle. In practice, we have allowed the enemies of rationality and free thought to robe themselves in the banner of "inclusiveness" and thus get an entirely undeserved seat at the table. Witness the non-controversy between evolution and "Intelligent Design", which should have been shot down decades ago, except that religious zealots have been able to claim successfully that we have ourselves been discriminating by not allowing them an equal voice for their views. Trouble is, their views don't deserve an equal voice until and unless they can provide equal scientific evidence for ID- which they will never do, since this would mean scientific evidence for the existence of God. And science explicitly can't prove this.
There's no reason to give equal time to religion, yet we keep doing it. There's no reason to treat religious views as deserving "respect" even though we disagree with them. Why would we respect a belief that condemns us? Just to prove we're better? To avoid frightening off the believers (who condemn us anyway)?
Giving equal time to those we know are wrong creates the impression that the truth is a negotiable item, that it lies on a spectrum between left and right. It doesn't. When white supremacists, for example, are on one hand, and protestors for equality are on the other, that doesn't make two groups of "very fine people"; it makes one group of very bad white nationalist/ conservative/reactionary/ often religious people, and then a group of liberal/secular/progressives.
Paul4747
Level 8
Sep 8, 2018
4
Do we possibly give equal time, undeserved as it is, BECAUSE atheists in general are thoughtful people? My first Post on this site was a question if others thought I was being unfair that I delete (unanswered) messages from men on dating sites if their profile states they are Catholic, Christian, etc.
Lately I've been watching this PBS special on DVD called "We Shall Remain", and it reminded me of a history lesson from grade school that I've obviously forgotten: North America was "founded" by white people who were pariahs in Europe because they were puritanical religious zealots. Full circle?
@Renickulous Supposing it's fascists we're talking about?
I'm not talking about the government suppressing speech, I'm talking about whether we bother to treat all points of view as inherently valid. They're not. For example, the point of view that different ethnic groups are biologically or morally unequal simply is not valid. I'm not going to spend time debating with someone who holds that belief, I'm simply going to point out that the human DNA controlling skin color and other physical traits has only changed within the last 5-10,000 years of our existence, and therefore there is no rational basis for believing that any visible differences have any meaning at all. Then the discussion is over as far as I'm concerned.
@Wendy965 Well, North America was colonized by many different groups... but America (the nation) was founded by secular humanists. Many authors of the Constitution were deists, and in our time, given their views and the way things have progressed, they would likely be atheists. There's good evidence that several were atheists even in their time, they simply couldn't reveal it.
Yes yes yes. It is a free society and free speech guaranteed to all. But
1 not all ideas are equal. Some are horrible and bad; nazi, religions..
2 a big question is can you be tolerant to intolerance or intolerant ideas. Bcz they gain power thru the core values of freedom and democracy and then destroy it.
Now I know that the main fight against nazi ideology in this country was not in censoring them but through active education arguments and better reach to all Americans but lately with trump becoming president and empowering them, u wonder how did that turn around
Because it’s far easier to confuse than to educate.
Those having achieved power by nefarious means use their ill gotten gains to confuse, trick, or simply lie to the ignorant. The educated, those aware of such tactics, don’t fall for it as they’ve learned from history. The uneducated, often primed to blame their lot in life on anyone else, are easily enraged.
It’s like hitler’s Brownshirts, even his closest cronies, all angry misfits looking to take what they were too lazy to earn. Poorly educated + Narcissistic leader/s = the dismantling of civilization.. It’s happening as we speak in the USA!
You ask, “What do you think of the regressive left, who condone and promote believers of minority religions though these minority religions...” The ‘regressive left’ is a new term to me.. though I may have been doing some back & forth with one today What I think is, given the same feeling of powerlessness the regressive right has long felt, having gone all-the-way-round the spectrum of ideology - they’re meeting up with each other on the far side! They’re fostering lies (because they’ve watched them work), concocting conspiracy theories (same reasons) and denouncing anyone lacking their perceived purity. They were the Anarchists of my hay days..
Varn
Level 8
Sep 8, 2018
5
Yes the term regressive left has been put forward by Bill Maher about liberals and hell sometimes religious zealots of minorities who claim they're left. How is a minority that terrorizes it's critics and dissidents and even free speech part of the left
what regressive left? it's the right that's regressive! liberals don't promote believers of minority religions, and minority religions are worse than western religionists HOW? your assertions make no sense because they're based on other assertions that are patently untrue. back to the left: we promote TOLERANCE of people who believe differently. that's different indeed from what you said. meanwhile, why do we need to become a religion in order to fight against religion? there is an organization called the freedom from religion foundation but it doesn't exist to convince everyone there are no gods. it's to make religionists stop persecuting the rest of us with religion. that doesn't mean we have to go around hating people who believe in various religions.
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genessa
Level 8
Sep 8, 2018
3
There's a category of the left who hate the majority religion fight it but support a lot of human right abuses that are part of minority religion bcz they think that's supporting minorities. That minority has even more hardcore believes than the majority especially regarding liberties, human rights, democracy, civil rights and that is evident in societies and countries where they're a majority. While everyone shud have equal rights, the left shudnt forget that a minority religion can be as or worse than any other religion and shudnt give them a slack regarding their misogyny, homophobia, etc etc
@genessa hey. I'm sorry. I just assume we're all on the same page.
The regressive left is a rising phenomenon, and they are called that by a small group of liberals, and I think we should call it out more, and it doesn't refer only the example in this video. It refers to a lot more of free speech abuses,..
@genessa I think you might have misunderstood me. I'm not calling for a dogmatic fixed religion and certainly not saying everyone is like that.
Posing 2 questions: why aren't liberals as focused and organized? (although fanatics are a minority, their organization makes them powerful)
2. There are people who confuse tolerance with defending oppressive practices among a minority religion withing a certain society (a majority elsewhere) as discussed by Dawkins, Harris and Maher, some leftists are persecuting victims of islamist societies seeking justice(whether in Muslim majority countries, or within minority societies in western countries; check death threats against armin navabi and Islamophobia accusations against maged Nawaz, a former jihadist!! now accused by some mainstream so called leftists as being islamophobic) and I'm asking what do u think of such leftists ? And my objection, everyone should be clear on that and to me both questions are related and one. Losing the compass, imo, the problem plaguing secular societies in 2018.
@kng01 that is something that the republicans and particularly the russians spread around in an attempt to divide: convince us we're unfocused and divided and useless. it encourages third-party voting, which DOES divide us. no, i am not misunderstanding you, and i didn't think you were advocating a dogmatic fixed religion. that never even occurred to me. i stand by what i said.
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@genessa I agree. Putin, Xi.. Those totalitarian régimes came back strong. But trump won right? The republicans and mainstream democrats have been dismantling democracy since Reagan. We can't always blame the other. The weakened education from its hiatus in the 60s (as per where to invade next? By Michale Moore), the systematic impoverishment and erosion of the middle class, the enslavement of the people through Healthcare and education costs.. Gerrymandering, controlling state and federal representative bodies, controlling local and national media.. I guess I'm just depressed
@kng01 i can't blame you for being depressed. i myself and between depressed and anxious. one small caveat: we don't really know whether trump actually won. this comes more and more into doubt as we learn more about the technical side of the election interference. if his "win" was purely by virtue of the propaganda end of that, then yeah, he won, but if numbers got changed, voters got purged.... that's different.
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If we adopt a canonical text and dogma; we would be a religion. The only common ground we have is disbelief in god. To adopt a text would be contradictory to the message that a book once put into print cannot be edited to reflect new understanding.
JimG
Level 8
Sep 8, 2018
1
Exactly. not adopting a canonical text, but a flexible adaptable mission and organizing to actually protect the secularism, liberties, and rights with separation of ALL religions from state
American Atheists is a national organization:
"Since 1963, American Atheists has protected the absolute separation of religion from government, raised the profile of atheists and atheism in our nation’s public and political discourse, and educated Americans about atheism."
The Pew Religious Landscape survey reported that as of 2014, 22.8% of the U.S. population is religiously unaffiliated, atheists made up 3.1% and agnostics made up 4% of the U.S. population.
The 2014 General Social Survey reported that 21% of Americans had no religion with 3% being atheist and 5% being agnostic.
LiterateHiker
Level 9
Sep 8, 2018
4
Enjoy being online again!
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