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[Shadowlord]

Hey, man, if capital hill was getting covered by a thousand religious statues, all I'm saying is give me Lenin as an ironic counterpoint.

[Neonivek]

Zeus

Isn't the statue of Luncheon an homage to the statue of Zeus?

I'm going to believe that you just had a stroke and politely ask you to seek medical attention instead of shitposting until I find some reason to believe otherwise.

No really, isn't it?

[Shadowlord]

Luncheon stole turkey legs from the Gods, that's the opposite of an homage.

[smjjames]

Zeus

Isn't the statue of Luncheon an homage to the statue of Zeus?

I'm going to believe that you just had a stroke and politely ask you to seek medical attention instead of shitposting until I find some reason to believe otherwise.

No really, isn't it?

Being inspired by is totally different from copying it.

[Neonivek]

Homage is sort of separate than lifting.

[Shadowlord]

You can put up a statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger to honor lifting.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There is actually a statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger that honors lifting in Columbus, thus making this a contemporary rather than hypothetical question. I think it was even on public land.

[Max™]

Really? I mean, Ahnold had a beautiful physique at his peak, but so did Zane, and Zane had a beard.

[Reelya]

There was some historical significance to the Arnold statue however: it was erected at the location he won the 1970 Mr World competition, and at the time they were hosting an annual competition named after Arnie there. So it's more than "let's just erect some random bodybuilder statue".

[wobbly]

Where the fuck you guys putting these statues huh? Have you ever even been to capitol hill? Where, precisely, do you see room for 200+ statues of God, Allah, Satan, Perun, Zeus, and whatever other jackasses demands their statue? Once you decide that any religion gets a statue, everyone has to get one, but you can't just say "ok, so everyone gets one" without realizing that's a lot of fucking statues. Ugly statues. Stupid statues. And it won't stop there, because then someone else is going to complain about idolatry and demand their religions statue get taken down. Then what? Now you gotta negotiate with a religious authority, which means now the government has to decide which religious authority is the "real", representative one, all so that you can decide whether or not to add more ugly-ass statues. So now the government is establishing religion which is something we were trying to avoid in the first place.

What if you just made the statues really small though? Then you could fit lots. If you made them pebble sized you could even make a path out of them & people could walk over all the gods like some sort of 5 minute holy pilgrimage.

[Reelya]

Perhaps some sort of fractal packing can put multiple statues into the same space. e.g. from one angle you see a certain statue, from another angle, something completely different. It's definitely do-able, and it would fit the "Blind men and the Elephant" parable perfectly.

[Rolan7]

Yeah small ones could work I guess, practically.  Though then you have other worries, like "how many do the Christians get?  One for every denomination, or for every church?"  And that's before getting into minor cults, or that awesome Satanism example. 

The real answer is pretty simple, there shouldn't be religious iconography in places of governance.  If it's in public places at all, it should only be for historical value instead of any sort of veneration.  Like "This here statue of Jesus was erected by famous metalsmith X, who lived nearby.  It's made of bronze, ironically."

Did I mention that the DMV had a big ol Christmas tree when I visited - in mid November?  Fortunately they were really nice, so I ended up feeling welcome anyway, but in my opinion it's not appropriate.

Churches still get to erect their monuments on private property or advertising space, and so can everyone else.  That's totally fine by me.  Public land shouldn't venerate any religion, though.

Also, churches REALLY need to pay taxes, particularly when they're literally telling people how to vote.  In a case I saw personally, via sign right next to my early voting location.

[penguinofhonor]

It's notable that churches being untaxed actually helps keep religion out of the government. If church taxes become a thing, politicians will be incentivized to increase church attendance like they're currently incentivized to encourage business creation/growth. Having a lot of nonreligious or apathetic people in an area will literally deprive the government of funding. As an atheist, that worries me.

I'm not saying untaxed churches are the ideal solution, but they do solve some problems that any replacement system would also need to solve.

[martinuzz]

How do you make a statue of the FSM, with it's infinite number of noodly appendages?

[smjjames]

How do you make a statue of the FSM, with it's infinite number of noodly appendages?

A fractal ball of spaghetti, with noodles coming out of the noodles and noodles coming out of those and noodles coming out of THOSE, and ad infinitum.

It'd probably end up looking like some kind of eldritch horror.