[autarchprinceps]

Organised religion should be banned. I want to say that I would stand up for anybodies human rights, but religion is just so fundamentally incompatible to our modern world and way of life, that deep down I just want it gone.

[swat535]

USSR already tried this in 1928 and as you are aware it didn’t workout that well for them..

Christopher Hitchens, one of the most outspoken people against religion also tried to accomplish this (to a much smaller degree of course) so that people may live in some sort of utopia where the churches are empty on Sundays and science is the absolute rule of the law.

Unfortunately all that accomplished as well was getting people excited about the next “Hitch slap” instead of pursuing intellectual curiosity.

I used to think like you but after reading all the religious texts from abrahamic religions and actually meeting many religious people I no longer completely brushing off the idea of worshiping a God. One can distinguish between extreme religious dogma and having sacred beliefs.

Further, even if you somehow get rid of this entirely (and by extension removing Easter, Christmas and so on from calendar) people will pick something else to believe in as you can always observe the rise of tautology and religiosity in humans. Just look at the woke culture, crypto followers and the holy activism in tech today as some examples.

[autarchprinceps]

Well, it is an "outrageous" belief for a reason, but as for the communist nations, there are significant differences in both how much they tried to suppress it, and how much it worked. Poland is the main outlier I know of, the USSR switched back to cooperating with the orthodox church as part of the means to organise support against the nazi invasion.

Most of the other eastern block nations are still quite a lot less religious today. Even West vs East Germany is still clearly visible.

I think most people are by their nature mildly agnostic. A lot of christians in western Germany don't go to church, don't follow most rules, or even know about them. It is mostly inertia of tradition. That is even more true of the celebrations. It's not like they are actually christian, that's because most people didn't care about why the celebration exists. They switched to christianity, if they had to, once they still got to celebrate their traditional celebrations mostly in the same way. That's why christianity differs quite a bit from country to country or areas in general, as well.

Non of this screams true believer. A lot of celebrations today, at least here, are completely worldly, with not even a veneer of christian reasons. Easter & Christmas still exist, but predate christianity anyway. No other christian events have survived into modern time with more than a fringe crowd. Most other celebrations are without any involvement of church or Jesus/God. Day of Work/1. May, Carnival, and an endless stream of local culture festivals, none of which are christian, or even really heaven. It's just a reason to party, dance and celebrate, not to worship anything.

That's also why the actual forbidding of religion becomes unnecessary, at least here. The last few decades have seen a decrease of at least 2% per year in both major churches in Germany. At some point at least locally they loose enough traction to be relevant at all, but when is very different depending on region.

[simonsarris]

I for one am excited for you to read about the French Revolution, how they tried to do this, and what they tried to create in its place.

My belief that I'm confident is true is that every single person is religious. Quite religious, usually. They're just mostly in denial. And as for organizing...

[giardini]

I think it would be better to tax non-profits just as we do profit-seeking corporations.

Let people get together and worship but there's no reason to allow the accumulation and skimming off of billions of dollars from the tax economy by churches or other "charitable" organizations. They use the infrastructure and members of society just as much as anyone.

[autarchprinceps]

If only. I heard this is a big thing in America, but here in Germany it is worse than that. It's not about them being tax free, but us being taxed for them, and on two levels. One the one hand normal taxes are somewhat used for church purposes, sometimes because of historic buildings, sometimes to support church owned schools, hospitals, etc, because the church is "too poor to pay for that", but there is even an outright religious tax that is completely forwarded to either the catholic or lutheranian church. You can deny being in a church, but the default assumption is, that you are of the regional majority religion. I had to deny being catholic twice and lutheranian once, to avoid paying an additional 9% income tax.