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It's amazing how the Castro regime was unable to stamp out people's faith

SDET

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The Castro brothers expropriated Catholic schools, exiled priests because executing them would cause too much of an outrage even for a dictatorship, officially declared Cuba an Atheist state, prohibited religious gatherings and much more. Cuba was 90% Catholic in 1958 and is still 50% Catholic despite the regime's attempts to stamp out religious faith. I think that's just amazing.

Religious history complicated in communist Cuba

The Communist Party that has ruled the island ever since closed churches, nationalized properties owned by religious organizations and forced the faithful underground.

The sweep was so broad in the 1960s that Castro even closed down the Jesuit high school he and his brother attended, forcing the priests to pack up and move to Miami. It was one of over 400 Catholic schools closed throughout the nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Cuba
 
Soviets tried it as well and failed.

Christian resilience in the face of oppression is a beautiful thing.
 
The Castro brothers expropriated Catholic schools, exiled priests because executing them would cause too much of an outrage even for a dictatorship, officially declared Cuba an Atheist state, prohibited religious gatherings and much more. Cuba was 90% Catholic in 1958 and is still 50% Catholic despite the regime's attempts to stamp out religious faith. I think that's just amazing.

Religious history complicated in communist Cuba



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Cuba

I only know what I saw. A few years ago we were in the pretty little town of Trinidad, with the inevitable Catholic church in the town square, on Good Friday. Everyone in the town came out, they paraded casks and little shrines to saints on their shoulders through a packed route through the town, two priests leading the march. The atmosphere wasn't solemn or jovial either, just social.
The woman we were staying with was strong Catholic- she disapproved of the beach resort near the town because the European women were topless on the beach.
 
Faith is a tenacious form of ignorance. That's why it's a lie to call any country atheistic, as if that can ever be mandated. There is an evolved human tendency to employ superstition that transcends politics. People often need comfort more than they need intellectual credibility.

If they're satisfied to pretend their problems away, they deserve neither.
 
Makes sense. Atheism tends to spread when you have tolerance and freedom of religion. Religion spreads when people are oppressed because they have nothing else to hold on to. That's why religions always preach to the down trodden.
 
I only know what I saw. A few years ago we were in the pretty little town of Trinidad, with the inevitable Catholic church in the town square, on Good Friday. Everyone in the town came out, they paraded casks and little shrines to saints on their shoulders through a packed route through the town, two priests leading the march. The atmosphere wasn't solemn or jovial either, just social.
The woman we were staying with was strong Catholic- she disapproved of the beach resort near the town because the European women were topless on the beach.

I don't plan on visiting Trinidad next month because it's too tourist oriented. So far Santa Clara and Cienfuegos (including El Nicho and the Escambray Mountains) are on my itinerary. After those, I will evaluate where to go next, perhaps Camaguey.
 
Surprising that a leftover of Spanish colonization still hasn't died out yet
 
Faith is a tenacious form of ignorance. That's why it's a lie to call any country atheistic, as if that can ever be mandated. There is an evolved human tendency to employ superstition that transcends politics. People often need comfort more than they need intellectual credibility.

If they're satisfied to pretend their problems away, they deserve neither.

It can be mandated by governmental policies and persecution of people who believe.

And seeing as atheism is literally based on your own personal opinion, intellectual credibility doesn't come into it.
 
I don't plan on visiting Trinidad next month because it's too tourist oriented. So far Santa Clara and Cienfuegos (including El Nicho and the Escambray Mountains) are on my itinerary. After those, I will evaluate where to go next, perhaps Camaguey.

There's a hotel on the square in Santa Clara with a bar on the roof with great views and occasionally music. I wish I could remember the name of it. There's glass bricks in the stair and elevator shaft with bullet holes in them from the revolution when Che took the town.
The town's kind of laid out like a wagon wheel with the square at the hub, but we still took a couple tries to get to the centre from the Autopista. Will you be driving? Park just off the square and give someone a couple pesos to watch the car. The hotel will take care of it after you check in.
Have a great time.
Oh, doors with a green triangle on them are casas particulaire. They have a room with ensuite available for rent, they can be a good option. Ask about nearby paladares, homes licensed to seat 12 for dinner (though every one we went to pushed that number).
 
It can be mandated by governmental policies and persecution of people who believe.

Much more often, the religious do the persecuting. Besides, your faith is in your head, and they still can't control that. Only the physical expressions of faith (ie., charity, misogyny, murder) can be seen, heard or restricted in any way. Many of them are harmful and nonsensical.

And seeing as atheism is literally based on your own personal opinion, intellectual credibility doesn't come into it.

Well, it does when people do stupid **** out of faith. BTW, implying that my atheism is just an opinion is like saying that faith isn't just an opinion. Faith is the opinion that the world is magical. You're welcome to it but it's pretty juvenile. Atheism is just the act of trying to live life without using juvenile magic to explain our situation.

Like a child's security blanket, faith has value to the one who relies upon it for comfort but, to the objective observer, it's just a tattered old rag that should have been thrown out years ago.
 
"Catholicism. The stickiest religion known to man" Dara O'Briain.

 
Much more often, the religious do the persecuting. Besides, your faith is in your head, and they still can't control that. Only the physical expressions of faith (ie., charity, misogyny, murder) can be seen, heard or restricted in any way. Many of them are harmful and nonsensical.



Well, it does when people do stupid **** out of faith. BTW, implying that my atheism is just an opinion is like saying that faith isn't just an opinion. Faith is the opinion that the world is magical. You're welcome to it but it's pretty juvenile. Atheism is just the act of trying to live life without using juvenile magic to explain our situation.

Like a child's security blanket, faith has value to the one who relies upon it for comfort but, to the objective observer, it's just a tattered old rag that should have been thrown out years ago.

The greatest mass murderers in history were atheists. What was that saying about people in glass houses and stones?

It's your opinion that they are "harmful" and "nonsensical". Nothing but.

Depends on your definition of stupid ****. You seem to think any sort of faith or religious activity is "stupid ****". Lots of people disagree with you on that. Faith is the understanding that there are things out there--- mysteries--- that are outside of our understanding or comprehension, and the acceptance of a set of beliefs about them. Atheism is pretty much the same thing--- there is no proof that God doesn't not exist, yet people still blindly follow that idea.

That's why I find agnosticism much more intellectually honest and based in reality then atheism.

People have been talking like you have for over a hundred years, yet in that span you have made no significant progress.
 
There's a hotel on the square in Santa Clara with a bar on the roof with great views and occasionally music. I wish I could remember the name of it. There's glass bricks in the stair and elevator shaft with bullet holes in them from the revolution when Che took the town.
The town's kind of laid out like a wagon wheel with the square at the hub, but we still took a couple tries to get to the centre from the Autopista. Will you be driving? Park just off the square and give someone a couple pesos to watch the car. The hotel will take care of it after you check in.
Have a great time.
Oh, doors with a green triangle on them are casas particulaire. They have a room with ensuite available for rent, they can be a good option. Ask about nearby paladares, homes licensed to seat 12 for dinner (though every one we went to pushed that number).

Driving in Cuba is a bad idea. If you have a collision, you will not be allowed to leave the country until all claims are certified as settled. You could be stuck there for up to a year. My plan is to gawk at random classic vehicles and assure the owner that I will hide when he tells me to duck if he wants to work for me.
 
Driving in Cuba is a bad idea. If you have a collision, you will not be allowed to leave the country until all claims are certified as settled. You could be stuck there for up to a year. My plan is to gawk at random classic vehicles and assure the owner that I will hide when he tells me to duck if he wants to work for me.

It's an adventure. Narrow streets, horse-drawn vehicles, very aggressive hitch-hikers... Took us forever to find our way out of Havana onto the Autopista and some of the back roads are, uh, daunting.
I envy you. We blew our travel budget last September so I won't be going anywhere 'till next winter.
 
It's an adventure. Narrow streets, horse-drawn vehicles, very aggressive hitch-hikers... Took us forever to find our way out of Havana onto the Autopista and some of the back roads are, uh, daunting.
I envy you. We blew our travel budget last September so I won't be going anywhere 'till next winter.

Those green triangles you speak of are for LEGAL casas. Some of the smaller towns might not have any. Do you have an indication of what to expect if one stays in an illegal casa particular which should only cost about $10 per night?
 
The Castro brothers expropriated Catholic schools, exiled priests because executing them would cause too much of an outrage even for a dictatorship, officially declared Cuba an Atheist state, prohibited religious gatherings and much more. Cuba was 90% Catholic in 1958 and is still 50% Catholic despite the regime's attempts to stamp out religious faith. I think that's just amazing.

Religious history complicated in communist Cuba



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Cuba

I don't know about your conclusion. When 40% of the nation loses its faith within a little more than 50 years, I'd say that's remarkable.
 
Those green triangles you speak of are for LEGAL casas. Some of the smaller towns might not have any. Do you have an indication of what to expect if one stays in an illegal casa particular which should only cost about $10 per night?

No, never did that. We stayed in three, Trinidad and two in Havana, all licensed.
We found this site has lots of useful tips...

Casa Particular / Homestay | Cuba-Junky

It says the signs on the doors are blue, but I'm pretty sure of the green triangles. Might be early dementia, though.
It also says the government doesn't license them in small places to try to keep tourists in certain places. That's probably true.
As for what to expect, I'll say we never went anywhere and felt at risk, BUT we don't travel with bags and cameras dangling off us either. A taxi driver might be a good source of advice.

edit- just googled it and my memory is failing. The signs are blue.
 
The greatest mass murderers in history were atheists. What was that saying about people in glass houses and stones?

It's your opinion that they are "harmful" and "nonsensical". Nothing but.

Depends on your definition of stupid ****. You seem to think any sort of faith or religious activity is "stupid ****". Lots of people disagree with you on that. Faith is the understanding that there are things out there--- mysteries--- that are outside of our understanding or comprehension, and the acceptance of a set of beliefs about them. Atheism is pretty much the same thing--- there is no proof that God doesn't not exist, yet people still blindly follow that idea.

That's why I find agnosticism much more intellectually honest and based in reality then atheism.

People have been talking like you have for over a hundred years, yet in that span you have made no significant progress.

As is typical from theists, you speak out of ignorance. Atheists are almost always agnostic. You can be both because they are two different things. Being atheist just explains whether you live your life by invoking superstitious magic. The agnostic part just explains that you don't claim to know, definitively, whether there are any gods. Someone can be an agnostic theist too, where they're not sure about any god's existence but play along anyway out of a sense of duty or fear of the unknown. There are many atheists who are not anti-theist, as well. Some don't believe but think it's a good thing for people to try to do.

As for your ignorant claim about atheists being history's greatest mass murderers, that's a very tired claim that theists constantly use to draw attention away from the FACT that they claim to be more moral than atheists and, yet, by far the greatest crimes against humanity in the world today are conducted by believers. When that asshole drove that truck into the crowd at the German Christmas market, he did so for GOD. The entire middle east is embroiled in sectarian conflict over disputes about GOD. GOD has caused more human dysfunction than atheism ever could. Atheism has no inherent dogma. When atheists attack, it's because they have some non-religious dogma, like the redeeming power of communism, driving their actions.

So, nice try...
 
As is typical from theists, you speak out of ignorance. Atheists are almost always agnostic. You can be both because they are two different things. Being atheist just explains whether you live your life by invoking superstitious magic. The agnostic part just explains that you don't claim to know, definitively, whether there are any gods. Someone can be an agnostic theist too, where they're not sure about any god's existence but play along anyway out of a sense of duty or fear of the unknown. There are many atheists who are not anti-theist, as well. Some don't believe but think it's a good thing for people to try to do.

As for your ignorant claim about atheists being history's greatest mass murderers, that's a very tired claim that theists constantly use to draw attention away from the FACT that they claim to be more moral than atheists and, yet, by far the greatest crimes against humanity in the world today are conducted by believers. When that asshole drove that truck into the crowd at the German Christmas market, he did so for GOD. The entire middle east is embroiled in sectarian conflict over disputes about GOD. GOD has caused more human dysfunction than atheism ever could. Atheism has no inherent dogma. When atheists attack, it's because they have some non-religious dogma, like the redeeming power of communism, driving their actions.

So, nice try...

Almost always, but not always, as people on this site have demonstrated. And generally speaking the atheistic atheists control the conversation far more from the atheistic side of the table then the agnostic atheists, do, so it's ultimately irrelevant.

Oh, from what I've seen there's plenty of self righteous pricks among atheists as well. Nice try though.

The fact that it wasn't in the name of atheism doesn't excuse the crimes that these atheists committed, whether you like that or not.

And last time I checked, God didn't commit mass murder in the Ukraine, or murder millions across Russia and China over a period of five decades. Atheists did that.

The "reedeming power of communism"? Lol okay bud......
 
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