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Maybe a whole lot of societies figured out that single parent households were terrible building blocks for a successful society so they came up with "fairy tales" that demonized premarital sex simply to avoid single parent households.

We've effectively done away with the religion and discovered that there isn't REALLY a witch but without stopping to think that maybe the witch was just a stand-in for REAL dangers that are out there.

For thousands of years the "sinfulness" of non-marital sex helped to minimize single-parent households in sucessful societies all over the globe.  Even if the "sinfulness" isn't real, there are still detrimental outcomes that we haven't come up with an alternative method to minimize.

This feels like it's applying a very modern lens to history without a lot of context. 

It gives a lot of credit to "successful" societies. It discounts the fact that women were treated as de facto property for most of human history. It discounts the fact that an average "household" was five people living in a tiny hovel for most of human history. 

And even these "successful" societies had crime and violence and war and whatever else. 

I do think single-parent households lead to bad outcomes, and that the family unit is an important building block. But I also think most previous societies had a mess of problems, honestly more than we have now. They're different problems, but it's not as if they figured out how to root out premaital sex or single parenthood. They just attached more baggage to it.

And shoot, we could do that. If a man has a kid out of wedlock, his bank accounts are tied to the baby mama. He can't have his own (this would reflect older laws wherein a wife couldn't do a bunch of stuff without a husband's sign off). We could also look to folks in the middle east. Plenty of societies there that take a hard line on single parent households. Do we feel they're very successful?

(Interestingly, older societies also made it a sin to eat pig. They did so because it could kill you, a real good use of religious law. But today, people seem to have strayed)

pig tastes good!

hasn't killed me yet

supposedly it's more healthy than beef

You should read the reviews of pre-marital sex!

To me this sounds like the typical leftist refrain that Communism will work . . .
next time.

Much like Communism, Atheism is theoretically great. I think that is why both are so popular among academics. Academically/Theoretically both make perfect sense. Obviously the reality hasn't been such a great experience.

In the 19th Century Freud warned that due to atheism, the 20th would see some terrible things. Well Communists killed hundreds of millions. The somewhat less militantly atheistic Nazis couldn't match that but they did their best.

On a more micro level for literally thousands of years religion helped to minimize one-parent families. Now we have less religion and more one-parent families.

You have a very skewed "knowledge" of things.


Atheism is a take on one and only one claim.  It doesn't have a dogma, it's not a world view.  It's simply not being convinced that a god exists.  Just because a few influential people took that and ran with it, bastardizing it along the way, doesn't mean it's wrong or evil or bad.  Those individuals were/are wrong or evil or bad. 
It's like Nietzsche's super man....he was describing a renaissance man, not an aryan race tasked with exterminating Jews.  Hilter took the ball and ran with it, doing things unthinkable by Nietzsche.  He couldn't have fathomed what an individual would do by bastardizing his idea. 

It's nonsensical to DO anything in the name of atheism.  There's no there there.  It'd be like going out and invading Canada because you lack a belief in fairies.  It's the most absurd idea possible. 

Communism wants to put atheism under its umbrella because religion is a great big fat lie.  It says, "dont worry, if justice isn't served in this life, the bad people holding you down will suffer FOREVER after they die."  As if "this life" and "forever" mean a god damned thing, lol.  Communism simply (and sure, poorly) suggested that if everyone has an equal share, there's no need for such silly lies.

OMG, OAM is a Marxist!!!  Well, no.  I'm certain he held many tenants I'd disagree with, but we're living out a big one he's probably right about:  when the few have so much and the masses have so little, the shit is going to hit the fan.  To me, that's not a radical idea.  It's pretty predictable, imo. 

Anyway, you can say Hitler pushed athiest views (again, a nonsensical term) and I can say there's tons of evidence he was a christian.  But at least I'm honest and decent enough to know that he didn't do what he did in the name of christianity.  I know he might have killed a son if god told him to or he'd enslave those around him since the bible literally tells you to, etc......but doing what he did is not something a ho-hum christian would suggest.

You say atheism is theoretically great.  It's functionally great, too, when you're part of the 99.999999% of atheists who are nice, normal people.  I've had multiple people now tell me I'm the best christian they know, as a compliment.  I'm a good person because it's the right thing to be.  I simply don't need the threat of hell or promise of heaven.  And living forever, even in a paradise, sounds awful.

Religion was invented (yes, invented) by the meek to trick the powerful into fearing the reprisal of their unethical actions.  The meek couldn't fight off the bandits and warlords, so they tricked them.  They duped them into thinking natural processes (rain, lightning, floods, disease, droughts, earthquakes, infant mortality, etc) were controlled by the gods and that bad things happened because of their bad actions.  For simple people, that connection made sense, and it put a literal fear of god in them.  And the rest is history.  Except despite now knowing infinitely more about the world we live in, much of humanity still cling to that silly lie that while shrewd, was simply conjured by people just trying to live their lives without being erased by bigger, meaner, more savage people.
****I'm not using meek and powerful as negative and positive descriptors, respectively....meek as in unable to fight off attackers and attackers being bigger and more powerful and thus - good at attacking

I know for a fact that this post will receive all the eye-rolls, but it's reeeeeally unremarkable in my eyes and plain as day.  If you can't see it, that's cool.  You do you.  But atheism doesn't change you, it just frees you up.  If you're a good person believing in a god, you'd be a good person if you don't.  If you're a corrupt shithead child-molesting thief as a believer, you'll be the same as an atheist. 

(shrug)

I hate those things.

To me this sounds like the typical leftist refrain that Communism will work . . .
next time.

Much like Communism, Atheism is theoretically great. I think that is why both are so popular among academics. Academically/Theoretically both make perfect sense. Obviously the reality hasn't been such a great experience.

In the 19th Century Freud warned that due to atheism, the 20th would see some terrible things. Well Communists killed hundreds of millions. The somewhat less militantly atheistic Nazis couldn't match that but they did their best.

On a more micro level for literally thousands of years religion helped to minimize one-parent families. Now we have less religion and more one-parent families.

Authoritarian societies cannot have two masters to serve. It's a lesson that you know well from your points about Henry VIII. We had all that talk about the divine right of kings, but a conflict ensued when a King wanted to do one thing while the Pope said another. If you have two competing authorities, and they're in conflict, the people don't know which one to follow. So Henry VIII broke the Church of England away from Catholicism to unite the authorities within the English monarchy. 

Stalin and Mao understood this. The State has to not only be the primary, but the ONLY, authority for the people. They had the power to enforce their authority, and didn't need to rely on threats of eternal suffering for non-conformity when they had MORE than enough capability (and little compunction against) to enforce threats with earthly suffering. If you introduce something that conflicts, especially something that can offer eternal reward for adherence, it can give people hope that if the religion says one thing and the state says another, that the religion is the one to be followed. 

The idea was to create a vacuum of authority that can only be filled by the State. 

The Biggest Pros And Cons Of Living In Each State | Babylon Bee

Reading this, I was reminded of high school friends worked at KFC explaining about deboning unsold chicken to make pot pie.

You take the leftover corny jokes, scramble them all together into a bland listicle.