Can religion be banned?

FL_Panthers

Is this a realistic thing? Can the governments or someone else ban religion?

DesirousOfChange

I don't see any kind of "ban" happening in the US for a long time, if ever.

Freedom of religion is a foundation of the country.

I do see the potential for making bad behavior a crime -- such as shunning for religious reasons, which is religious discrimination. It's something that would affect business/commerce more than any one individual. There is the example posted on another thread of the JW employees of a business shunning a DFd JW who is a customer. Their employment can be terminated, and should be if they continue, as it could put the employer at risk of religious discrimination.

I could see a big legal battle in the future over medical centers not wanting to hire JWs because they are encouraged and praised (in WT publications) to violate HIPPA privacy laws. That is a huge financial risk for an employer in the medical community.

In the US, it will have to be the result of expensive litigation. Lawyers write the laws. The WT is not all that unusual in the fact that they stubbornly refuse change until it affects their pocketbook. (See the GM inquiry going on right now.)

Doc

gingerbread

Not any time soon in the United States. That is a Watchtower prophetic fantasy.

If the US government wanted to silence religions, they would have shut down the Westboro Baptist Church groups a long time ago.

Vidiot

Was Prohibition in the 1930s successful?

Laika

Individual countries have done this in the past and failed. The UN will never do it, they don't have the power.

What do you think Panthers?

Cold Steel

Well, it's been tried. In a country where people have guns, it's not a good idea. That's why Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others made disarming the people their number one priority.

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let’s not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.” --Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens. Introduced and with a new preface by H. R. Trevor-Roper. The original German papers were known as Bormann-Vermerke.

Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons

Jews (§5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1333) are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority. ... Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation.

Berlin, 11 November 1938
Minister of the Interior
Frick

As Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels insightfully put it: “The Fuhrer is deeply religous, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race... Both [Judaism and Christianity] have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed.”

It was clear that by the end of the war, Catholicism and anything else smacking of Christianity were next on the list. And though critics say that Germany before Nazism had tough gun laws, Hitler and his minions appeared in the streets with them on numerous occasions and, when captured, Hitler was only temporarily confined. You didn't see anyone except Nazis with guns after they came to power. But the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto managed to get their hands on a few handguns, and they terrorized the Germans with them, who they picked off in small numbers of one or two at a time.

Bottom line: If you're going to outlaw religion, you better get the guns, knives and other weapons out of the hands of those who might fight back.

Billy the Ex-Bethelite

WT prophecies were wrong on this count as well. Sure, many of us have turned away from religion after leaving WT, but I drive past plenty of churches that are booming... much more alive than the local Kingdumb Haul.

And Islam isn't going away any time soon. That's a religion that is able to ban governments.

cofty

It should never be banned but neither should it receive any special privileges or protections.

The only way to deal with superstition is to oppose its ideas with better, more rational ones.

It will never go away, but one day it might be more of a personal hobby like knitting.

Fernando

A similar question was asked around 500 years ago: "is freedom of religion possible?"

The question now: "is freedom from religion possible?"

I believe that's what this verse is saying:

(Revelation 18:21) . . .“Thus with a swift pitch will Babylon the great city be hurled down, and she will never be found again.

Once enough of us have awoken to the destructive nature at the heart of religion it could indeed be banned.

One imagines a similar process to cigarette smoking: start with education and increasing the cost of the habit.

Nathan Natas

Well, yes, of course religion can be banned. All you need is a totalitarian government with the will to do it.

Can religion be banned HERE?

(I'm assuming you are in the so-called "free world")

Are you high?

Religion can't be banned here as long as the social contract is in effect.

If religion was banned, wouldn't your anti-religion be banned also? or did you think you'd be a "priviledged character"?

Can religion be banned?

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