Destruction of Ancient Churches

[Kitsune]

I have a question for most of the group. Many have a strong dislike for Christianity. What I am curious about is would you like to see the destruction of many ancient churches or do you consider them to be historic objects?

[Companion Cube]

I'm not sure how a dislike for religion translates to a desire to wipe it from the historical record.

What sort of ancient churches are you talking about?

[General Zod]

I have a question for most of the group. Many have a strong dislike for Christianity. What I am curious about is would you like to see the destruction of many ancient churches or do you consider them to be historic objects?

Meaningless either/or nonsense. If a church has genuine historical or artistic value, and it isn't an undue burden to keep it around then there's no reason to destroy it. If it's just taking up space and isn't anything beyond a general use building then there's no reason to keep maintaining a decrepit facility. You aren't going to find too many people willing to demolish the Sistine Chapel regardless of how much they hate religion, but some generic meeting hall that served as a center of worship? Who cares?

[Singular Intellect]

I guess I'd be all for the destruction of churches so long as reputable schools, universities and other educational facilities are being built in their place.

However, I wouldn't be interested in demolishing them just because I strongly dislike religion. That would wasted resources and manpower.

What I would instead do is just ensure that said buildings no longer have any maintenance or funding for their upkeep, unless some specific building had real historical significance. Said funds would be poured into other more useful endeavors, like education, housing the homeless, etc, etc.

All others would obviously fail and collapse of their own accord after significant time, and we can hand hold the believers who would obviously be stricken and tell them "it must be god's will".

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think it would be a waste of centuries of manhours producing buildings that are quite unique in this day and age given their designs and lost craft. Destroying something related to a concept I don't care for is not a productive venture in my eyes.

[Simplicius]

I'd rather see newer churches destroyed, because most of the ones I've seen built have been shitty modular-type buildings with no architectural merit that probably will have deteriorated to uselessness in a couple of decades anyway. Older churches, no. I actually like old New England-style churches just for their style.

[Darth Wong]

I have a question for most of the group. Many have a strong dislike for Christianity. What I am curious about is would you like to see the destruction of many ancient churches or do you consider them to be historic objects?

Some of them are obviously historic objects. However, that should be determined by the same standards we would apply to any other historic object, ie- how old is it, how unique is it, is it salvageable, etc.

[Kanastrous]

The aesthetic and historic value of the individual structure is what counts, not its ecclesiastical origin.

[FSTargetDrone]

Would the question be asked of Greek Temples? Or other ancient buildings with religious origins?

Anyway, we don't have much in the way of "ancient" churches in the US but I agree with the idea of saving them purely for their aesthetic value. There's a few churches near me that are quite interesting as far as architecture goes (One Lutheran church in particular that is constructed of nearly-black stone) and that I feel would be worth saving if they fell out of use as originally intended. Sometimes churches can be converted to other uses (restaurants, even apartments) while keeping the facade intact.

[Kitsune]

We have locally a restaurant which is a converted church...expensive though, only eaten there once.

I don't advocate destroying historic churches either because they have aesthetic or cultural value. I just wanted to get a feeling of the pulse on that subject here.

I know what others mean about some modern churches being both ugly and blocky. I also see them go up in places which were open fields which had some productive value in eco-systems and ask "How many churches do we really need"

[Bounty]

The idea itself is preposterous. It's a building, and often one with a significant historical, artistic and technological value; no matter who built it or what purpose it used to serve, it's part of our cultural heritage now.

What I would advocate - and what many churches already do today - is to expand the function of these churches. The Sacré-Cœur, for instance, is still used as a church, but it's also a living museum and a repository of related artworks. If you're going to pay for upkeep of these buildings, the least you can do is open them up to the public, or use them as multi-functional exhibition halls; assuming of course that the building is in a condition to support those activities.

[Mayabird]

I know what others mean about some modern churches being both ugly and blocky. I also see them go up in places which were open fields which had some productive value in eco-systems and ask "How many churches do we really need"

Yeah, there's a BIG difference between a thousand year old cathedral and some glitzy, ritzy, tasteless megachurch erected last year in the same style and quality as a McMansion. Although, I wouldn't be opposed to keeping a couple of the latter if only to be museums/testaments to human stupidity/warnings to future generations.

[Ender]

I got to tour the ancient churches of Italy. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe them. If they were destroyed I'd be very upset.

[loomer]

I stepped foot in Saint Mary's in Sydney a while back, and was awestruck.

Not by God. By us as a species and we've done. The question is not one of tearing down an edifice of god but a tribute to man's willingness to build ultimately useless structures of extreme beauty for pointless reasons. They're both humbling and a source of spite.

So in short, no, I would not. Though it does depend on individual merit of the structure.

[Dooey Jo]

I have a question for most of the group. Many have a strong dislike for Christianity. What I am curious about is would you like to see the destruction of many ancient churches or do you consider them to be historic objects?

You'd have to be pretty rabidly anti-religion in order to want to destroy ancient cathedrals just because they were built in the name of Christianity. I wonder if such a person would also like to destroy the Pyramids of Giza and Teotihuacan, which were also religious buildings.

[Kitsune]

Well, the Taliban did with statues of Buddha.....

[Kanastrous]

Yeah, there's a BIG difference between a thousand year old cathedral and some glitzy, ritzy, tasteless megachurch erected last year in the same style and quality as a McMansion.

I notice that companies hawking cheap, tacky, easily-erected steel prefab structures spend a lot of their resources pitching their product to church congregations.

[Davey]

I got to tour the ancient churches of Italy. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe them. If they were destroyed I'd be very upset.

You can say that again. What amazes me the most is that the whole thing was designed and built without the useage of computer assisted designs, electronics or modern machinery, all that and it's still damn cool!

On a sidenote, when I go into an art gallery, usually I end up see a bunch of abstract art that looks more like someone absent-mindedly spilled a botched batch of paint on the canvas, stuck a nametag on it and cooked up some bullshit about it being symbolic and people expect me to like it because people say I'm supposed to like the symbolism and it was created by some big-name artist. Unfortunately for them, I appreciate what I see, I don't appreciate merit. But when I go to these really old churches, I get to see these intricate marble statues and gargoyles that look so realistic and lifelike, so carefully proportioned and so awesome I could spend all day looking at just one, and I can't help but marvel at how they did it without computers or without fancy power tools. I don't want to see that destroyed either.

[General Zod]

Well, the Taliban did with statues of Buddha.....

Generally people who want to destroy other religious structures are religious fanatics wanting to annihilate their competition, as opposed to actual atheists.

[Kitsune]

Generally people who want to destroy other religious structures are religious fanatics wanting to annihilate their competition, as opposed to actual atheists.

Might be in there an argument on the proto-orthodox. The proto-orthodox as religious fanatics destroyed much of the literature of the competing Christian sects.

[Junghalli]

I have no particular desire to see churches destroyed. Then again I don't really have a particular antipathy toward religion, as long as nobody tries to shove it down my throat.

[Rye]

Well, the Taliban did with statues of Buddha.....

Generally people who want to destroy other religious structures are religious fanatics wanting to annihilate their competition, as opposed to actual atheists.

While that's generally true, the "as opposed to actual atheists" is a modern development in all fairness (as society as a whole has become more civil). The Enlightenment and Marxist revolutions all involved lots of religious icon smashing and general persecution.

[General Zod]

While that's generally true, the "as opposed to actual atheists" is a modern development in all fairness (as society as a whole has become more civil). The Enlightenment and Marxist revolutions all involved lots of religious icon smashing and general persecution.

Don't many Marxist societies tend to venerate their leaders in much the same way Catholics venerate the Pope ala personality cults though? In some ways being borderline religions themselves? (Kim il Jong being a prime example).

[Stark]

While that's generally true, the "as opposed to actual atheists" is a modern development in all fairness (as society as a whole has become more civil). The Enlightenment and Marxist revolutions all involved lots of religious icon smashing and general persecution.

They were motivated by belief, however; they weren't disinterested non-believers. It was part of their political goals to destroy organised religion.

[Rye]

While that's generally true, the "as opposed to actual atheists" is a modern development in all fairness (as society as a whole has become more civil). The Enlightenment and Marxist revolutions all involved lots of religious icon smashing and general persecution.

They were motivated by belief, however; they weren't disinterested non-believers. It was part of their political goals to destroy organised religion.

It certainly was. "Disinterested non-believers" are usually the decadent that don't care about injustice because they're not subject to it. Motivated secularist unbelievers definitely do have a history of attacking the church for iconoclastic purposes. They certainly haven't done it as much as rival religious groups, and they appear to have grown out of it much faster, but, as I pointed out, it is misleading to reject those atheists as "actual atheists" as it would be with historical christians and their neutered modern western equivalents like the CofE.

Don't many Marxist societies tend to venerate their leaders in much the same way Catholics venerate the Pope ala personality cults though? In some ways being borderline religions themselves? (Kim il Jong being a prime example).

Yes, though this is an interesting hypocrisy (the hierarchy of religion being foisted from an elite supporting a mutant form of Marxism), it's not vital to intellectual atheist secularism motivating people to smash churches. Ideology alone can do that, and ideology can be a matter of faith beyond logical belief, that's where it starts to become a religion, in my view. The bizarre Kim Necrocracy is certainly bordering on if not theistic. Enlightenment and revolutionary marxist ideologies were not theistic, however.

They were "actual atheists" extremely interested in destroying organised religion, which is something I think can be understood here. The thought of one of those megachurches built in Africa while the poor starve would fill me with some shadenfreude if it was destroyed, especially in some freak accident. The same applies to other examples of religious significance that we'd associate with injustice, like the kabbah. They're symbols of what's wrong with the world, and this was as true to the enlightenment era people and the soviets as to us (and in usually a much less intellectual fashion, to the rival religious groups, who usually see them as bad because they're rivals/satan/etc). I grasp the desire or temptation to just define them as "outside our group" because it makes things superficially easier, but I don't agree with it.

I believe it's counterproductive and distasteful in the long run, of course, I would think most here do. The key to "defeating" religion as far as matters is to have society change to deal with it and neuter it. I'd think it'd be unlikely to remove it entirely without some sort of genetic prompting away from the behaviours and automatic pattern recognition we all live by.