Yakk

But, how in the hell is that different than why european colonialist governments spread religion amoung their colonies?

By spreading their religion, they produced people more governable by their Empire. By blocking out and supressing other religions, they made the people resistant to opposing the Empire.

Communist cared if people where athiests -- religion was a counter-revolutionary force, and other pseudo-theological hand-wavey labels where used to explain why having a Religion was evil.

Same shit, different pile.

That is oversimplistic. One might say "wrong".

There where many points of friction between secular authorities and the Pope. Most of the changes done in the Anglican Catholic Church where simple repeals of the Authority of the Bishop of Rome over the Bishops of England. Acts done after the fact, such as the claiming of large tracts of Church land for the nobility, point out exactly how much secular governance the Bishops of that era where engaged in.

And why, again, was the divorce desired? He thought the people of England where not ready for a Queen, and his first wife had only produced a live Daughter. A secular matter of inheritance was the reason behind the religious schism in England.

The continuance of the Anglican church, and the religious wars that followed, where shockingly lined up with the succession. Mary, Queen of Scots, was legitimate if and only if the schism with the Catholic church was invalid, and Elizabeth was legitimate if and only if the schism with the Catholic church was valid.

Can you guess what the professed religion of Mary and Elizabeth was?

Saying that "Communism used Atheism as a means to and end", and not acknowleging that religions, historically, have been an important part of social glue that was merged continuously with secular life. The seperate of church and state is a historical anomoly -- one that I like -- but claiming secular motives for religious wars and crimes is no evidence that the wars where not religious in nature. If that was your standard, then you get to throw out most religious wars -- even the Crusades involved secular kingdoms.

I see little difference significant between the "religion" of Communism and the "religion" of Catholicism and the "religion" of Anglicanism. The Communist religion is Athieistic, the Catholic and Anglican religions are monotheistic.

Yes.

It is normal, as in "if you don't use lots of social force, it will happen", that Religion and State end up mixing. It happens in the USA right now -- find me a single US congresscritter who will admit to being an Athiest.

I'm not saying that "normal" is good. "Normal" is just what usually happens when you don't explicitly try to do something. "The normal state of affairs for a rock is lieing on the ground. The normal state of affairs for water is flowing downhill."

America, the USA, was created because of tax disagreements with an incompetent regency in England. You had a king who was being run by a regency who where bleeding the soon-to-be American colonies dry.

There was, by this time, a heck of alot of religious freedom in the British Empire. As an example, a huge number of Penn. Amish fled the USA for the colony of upper Canada (Ontario, the Waterloo/Kitchener region) because they knew the British Empire was tolerant of religious minorities, and didn't trust the newly formed USA to be nearly so tolerant.

The US revolution was a tax revolt, first and foremost, and those that led it also added the newfangled French idea of "the state and the church are seperate" in order to help pacify fears by the large number of religious groups in the USA that they would be surpressed by a new state religion.

We are living in strange times. Failing to realize this will make you see history with a seriously warped bend.

__________________
Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.