patrick.net

uh, never judged any race as inferior, or defended anyone for doing that.

And yet the whole point of this thread is something along the lines that it's so important that we are honest with ourselves about differences that race bring to a person, strictly in the biological sense (not due to relatively short term cultural differences).

nothing about race in my reply, only pointing out that you have appointed yourself the thought policeman.

Either a lie, or you're stupid. Go back and read it. If you said that you think grilled human baby legs are delicious, and I comment that that's fucked up, it doesn't make me some kind of thought policeman, it makes me an observer of the truth, which you claim to respect, when it's your incorrect truth.

By your reasoning, this whole thread is about your policing the way people want to think. A certain kind of thinking is PC BS in your view because it doesn't fit your prejudice.

By the way, I have never heard the phrase that "race doesn't exist," other than from you. OF course it exists. But this accepted view:

A longstanding orthodoxy among social scientists holds that human races are a social construct and have no biological basis

Is a view that I more or less agree with. To the extent that it's not true, this can be overcome (if it were desired ) in a few short generations of adapting to another culture. The authors point about recent changes in the human genome, supports rather than contradicting this point.

No less than 14% of the human genome, according to one estimate, has changed under this recent evolutionary pressure.

IF change can happen so quickly, in just hundreds of years, again, this supports the idea that the behavioral differences from one race to another are indeed primarily a social construct.

Clark has documented four behaviors that steadily changed in the English population between 1200 and 1800, as well as a highly plausible mechanism of change. The four behaviors are those of interpersonal violence, literacy, the propensity to save, and the propensity to work.

Profound events are likely to have profound causes.Homicide rates for males, for instance, declined from 0.3 per thousand in 1200 to 0.1 in 1600 and to about a tenth of this in 1800. Even from the beginning of this period, the level of personal violence was well below that of modern hunter-gatherer societies. Rates of 15 murders per thousand men have been recorded for the Aché people of Paraguay.

Social scientists are going to use this notion of short term evolutionary changes in the genome as evidence that they are right that significant differences are due to culure and social differences. But that's not saying that "race doesn't exist."

thunderlips11 says

japan and germany are successful precisely because of their lack of diversity.

Shhh! That's dangerous talk!.

Seriously, by having a largely homogeneous population, it's easier to solve problems as everybody is unified.

Yes. WW2 proved what awesome problem solvers the Germans and Japanese are.

The PC view is not to have a view . Which renders anyone who subscribes to this BS, moronic.

A longstanding orthodoxy among social scientists holds that human races are a social construct and have no biological basis. A related assumption is that human evolution halted in the distant past, so long ago that evolutionary explanations need never be considered by historians or economists.

Social scientist is almost an oxymoron. Has anyone ever heard a biologist say that evolution in our species has come to a halt? I didn't think so.

Clearly our species is still subject to evolution and natural, as well as artificial, selection. And clearly there were, and to a much lesser extent still are, isolated lines of lineage along which the filtering of genes has happened within our species. One need only look at red hair or blue eyes as examples of this.

I don't read too much about what social scientists say, but the biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists all agree that the historical notion of race is largely arbitrary. That's not to say that one could not come up with a definition of race that is scientific and precise and models our species genetic diversity, but so far no one has come up with a scientific definition of race.

What we call race is like what we call continents and oceans. What is the definition of a continent? A large land mass? That's not a definition. It does not let you distinguish continents from each other or from other things. Is India part of the large land mass that includes Europe and Asia? What's the criteria for deciding that?

The Webster definition is

one of the great divisions of land (such as North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or Antarctica) of the Earth

That's not a real definition either! It's a list! And going by that "definition", no other planet in the universe would have continents even if it were an atom for atom copy of Earth because by definition only Earth has continent.

And oceans are no different. Planet Earth has only one ocean, but we give it several different names, which vary across the world, even though they are all one body of water. The division between the Atlantic and the Pacific is an imaginary and arbitrary line that all the fishes ignore.

So what is race? If race is defined by physical characteristics like it has been traditionally, then shouldn't red heads be considered the Ginger race? Red hair sticks out more than skin color especially on the battlefield. Shouldn't blue-eyed blondes get their own race? And such physical characteristics contradict the genetic lineages shown in the original post. I know many Indians (hey, I work in IT, what do you expect?) that are darker than the average African American, yet they are Caucasians like me. I know many Chinese women who are far whiter than me. I mean porcelain white. We Italians look like Mexicans compared to them. So skin color, the defining characteristic of race historically, clearly isn't an accurate genetic/lineage based grouping.

And if we are going by genetic code, which seems reasonable and the point of this thread, then why are Africans only one race even though Africans, being the oldest population, is also by far the most genetically diverse. Shouldn't there be several races instead of one African race?

Furthermore, Caucasians like us of European stock, are genetically closer related to Africans and Indians (India, not Native American) than Asians and Native Americans are. I'm not sure I'd like buying into the 19th century theories that the further way from Africa your lineage is, the more evolve you are. That would make Native Americans the most evolved, followed by Asians, and then us Europeans far behind. Yet, we Europeans were the ones who created democracy, rational philosophy, and science. Not bad for a third-place race.

I have no problem with a scientific definition of race, but I sincerely doubt that any scientific, genetically meaningful definition of race would generate the same groupings that human history has, just like the definition of continental plate does not remotely relate to the continents we historically named.

WTF? That looks nothing like the seven continents!

Since any scientific grouping of people by genetics and lineage isn't going to look anything like the historic races, why even use such a loaded word that will cause everyone to reject it? Why not come up with a new word that represents the criteria for the grouping and carries no historical baggage. I think that is what scientists would most likely do.

Of course, today populations are interbreeding and people are moving away from their region of origin by hundreds, thousands, and even over 10 thousand miles for work or seeking a better life. The little genetic diversity our species has, and it's damn little compare to our closest relatives the chimps, is going to be eliminated over the next few hundred years anyway.

In time, the genetic difference from different lineages will all be piled into a single group, the world population, and the same filters will apply to the entire group. Diversification requires time and isolation, and we have lost isolation. So eventually, we'll all look Brazilian, a country full of interbreeding of various ethnicities. And given how hot Brazilians are, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Of course, we could take an even better route. Let's get rid of these organic bodies, digitize the human mind, and run our brains as virtual neural networks that can
- be backed up
- be downloaded into robotic bodies
- spawn multiple instances of ourselves
- periodically synchronize those instances so we retain a single identity

If we do that, we cure death along with so many other problems our world has.

This single statement irrefutably validates your severely handicapped rose colored glasses tainted intellect.

Dan8267 says

If we do that, we cure death along with so many other problems our world has.

www.youtube.com/embed/iauIP8swfBY?start=13&end=37

SoftShell says

This single statement irrefutably validates your severely handicapped rose colored glasses tainted intellect.

In your worthless opinion. What is an organic body other than a machine subject to disease and decay? What thought or sensation could not be experience through technology instead of biology? The answer is none.

I always knew Dan was Cypher!

We are spiritual beings. Not to be confused with religion, i.e. we do not have souls, we are souls. Think Thomas Aquinas.

It is hard to replace something that is not organic to the physical universe with something that is...

indigenous says

we do not have souls, we are souls.

Define soul. And I mean define it, not provide some vague-ass description that leaves wiggle room for bullshit.

PC Is About Control, Not Etiquette

I’d like to speak today about what political correctness is, at least in its modern version, what it is not, and what we might do to fight against it.

To begin, we need to understand that political correctness is not about being nice. It’s not simply a social issue, or a subset of the culture wars.

It’s not about politeness, or inclusiveness, or good manners. It’s not about being respectful toward your fellow humans, and it’s not about being sensitive or caring or avoiding hurt feelings and unpleasant slurs.

But you’ve heard this argument, I’m sure. PC is about simple respect and inclusiveness, they tell us. As though we need progressives, the cultural enforcers, to help us understand that we shouldn’t call someone retarded, or use the “N” word, make hurtful comments about someone’s appearance, or tolerate bullies.

If PC truly was about kindness and respect, it wouldn’t need to be imposed on us. After all, we already have a mechanism for the social cohesion PC is said to represent: it’s called manners. And we already have specific individuals charged with insuring that good manners are instilled and upheld: they’re called parents.

Political Correctness Defined

But what exactly is PC? Let me take a stab at defining it: Political correctness is the conscious, designed manipulation of language intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda.

PC is best understood as propaganda, which is how I suggest we approach it. But unlike propaganda, which historically has been used by governments to win favor for a particular campaign or effort, PC is all-encompassing. It seeks nothing less than to mold us into modern versions of Marx’s un-alienated society man, freed of all his bourgeois pretensions and humdrum social conventions.

Like all propaganda, PC fundamentally is a lie. It is about refusing to deal with the underlying nature of reality, in fact attempting to alter that reality by legislative and social fiat. A is no longer A.

To quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

[T]he masters … stipulate that aggression, invasion, murder and war are actually self-defense, whereas self-defense is aggression, invasion, murder and war. Freedom is coercion, and coercion is freedom. … Taxes are voluntary payments, and voluntarily paid prices are exploitative taxes. In a PC world, metaphysics is diverted and rerouted. Truth becomes malleable, to serve a bigger purpose determined by our superiors.

But where did all this come from? Surely PC, in all its various forms, is nothing new under the sun. I think we can safely assume that feudal chiefs, kings, emperors, and politicians have ever and always attempted to control the language, thoughts, and thus the actions of their subjects. Thought police have always existed.

To understand the origins of political correctness, we might look to the aforementioned Marx, and later the Frankfurt school. We might consider the work of Leo Strauss for its impact on the war-hungry think tank world. We might study the deceptive sloganeering of Saul Alinsky. We might mention the French philosopher Foucault, who used the term “political correctness” in the 1960s as a criticism of unscientific dogma.

But if you really want to understand the black art of PC propaganda, let me suggest reading one of its foremost practitioners, Edward Bernays.

Bernays was a remarkable man, someone who literally wrote the book on propaganda and its softer guise of public relations. He is little discussed in the West today, despite being the godfather of modern spin.

He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and like Mises was born in Austria in the late nineteenth century. Unlike Mises, however, he fortuitously came to New York City as an infant and then proceeded to live an astonishing 103 years.

One of his first jobs was as a press agent for President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, an agency designed to gin up popular support for US entry into WW1 (German Americans and Irish Americans especially were opposed). It was Bernays who coined the infamous phrase “Make the World Safe for Democracy” used by the committee.

After the war, he asked himself whether one could “apply a similar technique to the problems of peace.” And by “problems,” Bernays meant selling stuff. He directed very successful campaigns promoting Ivory Soap, for bacon and eggs as a healthy breakfast, and ballet. He directed several very successful advertising campaigns, most notably for Lucky Strike in its efforts to make smoking socially acceptable for women.

The Role of “Herd Psychology”

Bernays was quite open and even proud of engaging in the “manufacturing of consent,” a term used by British surgeon and psychologist Wilfred Trotter in his seminal Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War published in 1919.

Bernays took the concept of herd psychology to heart. The herd instinct entails the deep seated psychological need to win approval of one’s social group. The herd overwhelms any other influence; as social humans, our need to fit in is paramount.

But however ingrained, in Bernays’s view the herd instinct cannot be trusted. The herd is irrational and dangerous, and must be steered by wiser men in a thousand imperceptible ways — and this is key. They must not know they are being steered.

The techniques Bernays employed are still very much being used to shape political correctness today.

First, he understood how all-powerful the herd mind and herd instinct really is. We are not the special snowflakes we imagine, according to Bernays. Instead we are timorous and malleable creatures who desperately want to fit in and win acceptance of the group.

Second, he understood the critical importance of using third party authorities to promote causes or products. Celebrities, athletes, models, politicians, and wealthy elites are the people from whom the herd takes its cues, whether they’re endorsing transgender awareness or selling luxury cars. So when George Clooney or Kim Kardashian endorses Hillary Clinton, it resonates with the herd.

Third, he understood the role that emotions play in our tastes and preferences. It’s not a particular candidate or cigarette or a watch or a handbag we really want, it’s the emotional component of the ad that affects us, however subconsciously.

What We Can Do About It

So the question we might ask ourselves is this: how do we fight back against PC? What can we do, as individuals with finite amounts of time and resources, with serious obligations to our families, loved ones, and careers, to reverse the growing tide of darkness?

First, we must understand that we’re in a fight. PC represents a war for our very hearts, minds, and souls. The other side understands this, and so should you. The fight is taking place on multiple fronts: the state-linguistic complex operates not only within government, but also academia, media, the business world, churches and synagogues, nonprofits, and NGOs. So understand the forces aligned against you.

Understand that the PC enforcers are not asking you, they’re not debating you, and they don’t care about your vote. They don’t care whether they can win at the ballot box, or whether they use extralegal means. There are millions of progressives in the US who absolutely would criminalize speech that does not comport with their sense of social justice.

One poll suggests 51 percent of Democrats and 1/3 of all Americans would do just that.

The other side is fighting deliberately and tactically. So realize you’re in a fight, and fight back. Culturally, this really is a matter of life and death.

We Still Have Freedom to Act

As bad as PC contamination may be at this point, we are not like Mises, fleeing a few days ahead of the Nazis. We have tremendous resources at our disposal in a digital age. We can still communicate globally and create communities of outspoken, anti-PC voices. We can still read and share anti-state books and articles. We can still read real history and the great un-PC literary classics. We can still homeschool our kids. We can still hold events like this one today.

This is not to say that bucking PC can’t hurt you: the possible loss of one’s job, reputation, friends, and even family is very serious. But defeatism is never called for, and it makes us unworthy of our ancestors.

Use humor to ridicule PC. PC is absurd, and most people sense it. And its practitioners suffer from a comical lack of self-awareness and irony. Use every tool at your disposal to mock, ridicule, and expose PC for what it is.

Never forget that society can change very rapidly in the wake of certain precipitating events. We certainly all hope that no great calamity strikes America, in the form of an economic collapse, a currency collapse, an inability to provide entitlements and welfare, energy shortages, food and water shortages, natural disasters, or civil unrest. But we can’t discount the possibility of these things happening.

And if they do, I suggest that PC language and PC thinking will be the first ornament of the state to go. Only rich, modern, societies can afford the luxury of a mindset that does not comport with reality, and that mindset will be swiftly swept aside as the “rich” part of America frays.

Men and women might start to rediscover that they need and complement each other if the welfare state breaks down. Endless hours spent on social media might give way to rebuilding social connections that really matter when the chips are down.

More traditional family structures might suddenly seem less oppressive in the face of great economic uncertainty. Schools and universities might rediscover the value of teaching practical skills, instead of whitewashed history and grievance studies. One’s sexual preferences might not loom as large in the scheme of things, certainly not as a source of rights. The rule of law might become something more than an abstraction to be discarded in order to further social justice and deny privilege.

Play the Long Game

I’m afraid it might not be popular to say so, but we have to be prepared for a long and hard campaign. Let’s leave the empty promises of quick fixes to the politicians. Progressives play the long game masterfully. They’ve taken 100 years to ransack our institutions inch by inch. I’m not suggesting incrementalism to reclaim those foregone institutions, which are by all account too far gone — but to create our own.

PC enforcers seek to divide and atomize us, by class, race, sex, and sexuality. So let’s take them up on it. Let’s bypass the institutions controlled by them in favor of our own. Who says we can’t create our own schools, our own churches, our own media, our own literature, and our own civic and social organizations? Starting from scratch certainly is less daunting than fighting PC on its own turf.

Conclusion

PC is a virus that puts us — liberty loving people — on our heels. When we allow progressives to frame the debate and control the narrative, we lose power over our lives. If we don’t address what the state and its agents are doing to control us, we might honestly wonder how much longer organizations like the Mises Institute are going to be free to hold events like this one today.

Is it really that unimaginable that you might wake up one day and find sites with anti-state and anti-egalitarian content blocked — sites like mises.org and lewrockwell.com?

Or that social media outlets like Facebook might simply eliminate opinions not deemed acceptable in the new America?

In fact, head Facebook creep Mark Zuckerberg recently was overheard at a UN summit telling Angela Merkel that he would get to work on suppressing Facebook comments by Germans who have the audacity to object to the government’s handling of migrants.

Here’s the Facebook statement:

We are committed to working closely with the German government on this important issue. We think the best solutions to dealing with people who make racist and xenophobic comments can be found when service providers, government, and civil society all work together to address this common challenge.

https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not-etiquette-0

Dan8267 says

Define soul. And I mean define it, not provide some vague-ass description that leaves wiggle room for bullshit.

You want a physical universe description of something that is exterior to the physical universe. It is something that is not organic to the physical universe.

indigenous says

You want a physical universe description of something that is exterior to the physical universe. It is something that is not organic to the physical universe.

If it's exterior to the physical universe, where does it exist?

How much does it weigh?

Is a soul made of hydrogen, helium or carbon?
Where is the Soul Code stored? In Soul DNA?
Do other animals have souls, or only savannah apes? Not Chimps, Whales, Dolphins, or other higher order animals?

Where does a soul come from? How does it merge with a human being? At birth or in the womb?

How can you know that something that can't be quantified exists?

I'm not surprised somebody who believes in an economic philosophy that insists quantitative measurements are nonsense, believes in baloney like souls.

indigenous says

Think Thomas Aquinas.

Why? He's a religious thinker who 'proved' that masturbation was worse than rape using the Bible.

indigenous says

PC Is About Control, Not Etiquette
...
PC is best understood as propaganda

An example of even a broken clock being right some of the time and why the content, not the source, determines the validity of a point.

Political correctness on the left and Fox News on the right are both propaganda in a culture war that us liberals are sick and tired of. I don't give a shit if you listen to the Beatles or Garth Brooks, climate change is still happening and the solution isn't to hug a tree. This goes for all other problems. We need good engineering solutions, not political pettiness.

thunderlips11 says

Where is the Soul Code stored?

In a place that has no time, that has no dimension, and has no form, i.e. it, we are exterior to all.

thunderlips11 says

I'm not surprised somebody who believes in an economic philosophy that insists quantitative measurements are nonsense, believes in baloney like souls.

And I'm not surprised by your conclusion. You are well read but don't offer much insight...

Dan8267 says

An example of even a broken clock being right some of the time and why the content, not the source, determines the validity of a point.

As Socrates said knowing that you don't know is THE prerequisite to learning. You need that remedial...

indigenous says

You want a physical universe description of something that is exterior to the physical universe. It is something that is not organic to the physical universe.

So in other words, a soul is by definition supernatural. Then your soul is bullshit and does not exist.

Nothing supernatural could interact with the natural world in any way shape or form without violating conservation laws, which simply does not happen. A ghost could not lift a penny because doing so would introduce measurable amounts of energy to the system as well as violating the conservation of momentum. Put simply, if anything interacts with the natural world, it must obey natural laws, and is therefore natural, not supernatural, itself. So if anything does exist out of nature, by natural law, it cannot interact with anything in nature. It cannot even send a signal or message to nature.

Therefore, the soul you postulate can not exist as you require it to both be supernatural and to have an effect in nature.

Whether or not you accept this argument is irrelevant. It is logically consistent and only depends on well-accepted laws of nature that have never been observed to be violated. And if you truly reject those laws, then you should be daftly afraid of the U.S. possessing nuclear weapons as well as being afraid of airplanes and automobiles because all of these technologies depend upon our accepted laws of nature being accurate.

thunderlips11 says

indigenous says

You want a physical universe description of something that is exterior to the physical universe. It is something that is not organic to the physical universe.

If it's exterior to the physical universe, where does it exist?

How much does it weigh?

The attempt of proof is easier done via a negative. To this day computers are not able to emulate a soul with all its complexities and feelings. People have been saying that it's just a matter of time for a while now, but there is something lacking in AI which has had a tremendously hard time in becoming even vaguely human in any way.

thunderlips11 says

Why? He's a religious thinker who 'proved' that masturbation was worse than rape using the Bible.

I'm just talking about the one aspect of his work. No one should be deified as perfect.

thunderlips11 says

If it's exterior to the physical universe, where does it exist?

How much does it weigh?

Is a soul made of hydrogen, helium or carbon?

To know an object is to be able to describe its properties and behaviors. For example, I know what a ball is because I can list its properties (radius, color, elasticity, mass, etc.) and behaviors (throwing, bouncing, rolling, interactions with other objects). I know what an electron is because I can its properties (charge, mass, speed and location (granted with a degree of uncertainty), etc) and its behaviors (attraction to positive charges, lack of decay, interactions with photons, etc.). Knowing a thing is knowing its properties and behaviors.

If you cannot list the properties and behaviors of a soul, then you don't know what it is. If you don't know what it is and there is no reason to believe it exists, then you are just making up bullshit. I could just as easily say that every person has an invisible, undetectable, supernatural elf in his ass that is responsible for every thought, every feeling, and every action made by that person. Such an argument would carry as much weight as indigenous's soul argument.

thunderlips11 says

indigenous says

Think Thomas Aquinas.

Why? He's a religious thinker who 'proved' that masturbation was worse than rape using the Bible.

So true. People who appeal to authority using Thomas Aquinas are idiots. He's a typical Dark Age pseudo-intellect.

The belief in souls is just evolutionary and cultural baggage. This is how the fiction of a soul was invented.

www.youtube.com/embed/V9mFNgu6Cww

More on religious nonsense.

www.youtube.com/embed/uFrcu0kbKOY

Not sure about the very end of the video, but it does show that people will believe ridiculous things because of their ignorance. It should be no surprise that thousands of times as many religions were created in antiquity than are created today. Ignorance breeds religion.

indigenous says

In a place that has no time, that has no dimension, and has no form, i.e. it, we are exterior to all.

WHERE is that?
HOW do you know such a place exists?
indigenous says

And I'm not surprised by your conclusion. You are well read but don't offer much insight...

But enough insight to know that an assertion offered without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Quoting Medieval Barbarian Theologians who themselves are quoting an Iron Age Book is an argument from authority. YOU should be able to summarize Aquinas' evidences FOR souls in a pithy fashion yourself. Of course, Aquinas simply took souls as a given, in that Dark Age.

Dan8267 says

If you cannot list the properties and behaviors of a soul, then you don't know what it is. If you don't know what it is and there is no reason to believe it exists, then you are just making up bullshit. I could just as easily say that every person has an invisible, undetectable, supernatural elf in his ass that is responsible for every thought, every feeling, and every action made by that person. Such an argument would carry as much weight as indigenous's soul argument.

Exactly.

What we are going to get now is a bunch of a priori "logical" reasoning based on some assumptions that have not been proven.

We will hear that there is a Space Duck in our brains, who lives beyond the universe; which contacts us somehow from beyond the universe. Then we will hear "The Space Duck explains X, Y, and Z. Read Thomas Aquackus"

But without first proving there is a Space Duck, and that it resides in a Place beyond the Physical Universe, and we know it and the place it dwells in exists because of evidences A, B, and C, any and all "logical" reasoning arising from a Space Duck in our brains rests on unproven assumptions and therefore can be dismissed.

indigenous says

As Socrates said knowing that you don't know is THE prerequisite to learning. You need that remedial...

But once you've learn something, you do know. Again, appeal to authority means nothing and is the tool of the weak minded.

However, if we're going to use that principle, then you should reject all religion and all supernatural beliefs. Such beliefs were created because of ignorance. An earthquake happens and the clerics say "the gods are angry with us" because they don't know about plate tectonics. Lighting strike and Zeus is angry because the ancients have no concept of the electromagnetic force and Faraday's Laws. Today, ignorant and foolish people take any mystery as room for bullshit. This is the God of the Gaps argument.

The only honest statement about a mystery is "I don't know the answer, yet." not "god did it.". This is why belief in the supernatural that you propose violates the very principle you are trying to use to support your supernatural nonsense.

indigenous says

thunderlips11 says

Why? He's a religious thinker who 'proved' that masturbation was worse than rape using the Bible.

I'm just talking about the one aspect of his work. No one should be deified as perfect.

The fact that you used Appeal to Authority opens your authority up to attack. If you don't want the baggage associate with a person, then make the argument you think is right based on its merit rather than who originally authored that argument. You reference a Dark Age idiot expecting us to accept his arguments, not based on any reason or evidence, but simply because he's famous and popular in some circles of academia.

Yes, a broken clock can be right sometimes, but you have given us no reason why we should cherry-pick the same arguments from Aquinas that you do. Why should those arguments, which you never even properly or clearly reference, be accepted when others should be rejected? In other words, you don't support the arguments in any way except Appeal to Authority and the authority you appeal to is a well-known idiot who thinks that masturbation is far worse than rape! Yeah, that's going to be convincing.

By the way, saying that no one is perfect is just a cop-out to dismiss criticism of your debunked source. One could just as easily dismiss the horrors of the holocaust by saying the Nazi's weren't perfect. It's a dumb argument no matter who you are trying to absolve, and such arguments are very inconsistently used. A private citizen kills a cop he feels threaten by and he gets the death penalty. A cop kills a sleeping 9-year-old girl or an unarmed man who is no threat, and the cop is acquired before trial because nobody is perfect. Very inconsistent with the alleged principle. Very consistent with hypocrisy.

thunderlips11 says

We will hear that there is a Space Duck in our brains, who lives beyond the universe; which contacts us somehow from beyond the universe. Then we will hear "The Space Duck explains X, Y, and Z. Read Thomas Aquackus"

The reality is that if Thomas Aquinas had used logic correctly and state that the Christian god does not exist, he would have been executed, burned at the stake as a heretic. Given that, should we really consider his work to be honest? Aquinas certainly was not unaware of the monstrous cruelty of his religion. Essentially, he was no different than a modern day Arabic Muslim who believes that anyone not a Muslim is an infidel. Giving Aquinas respect is like giving Osama bin Laden respect.

indigenous says

More traditional family structures might suddenly seem less oppressive in the face of great economic uncertainty

I never pass up an opportunity to ridicule the term "single mom", which is always said with a plaintive little whine as though the moron in that predicament couldn't have avoided it if she'd had half a brain. We had a good example in Las Vegas when a 25 year "single mom" who was "stressed out" (another current excuse term) because security guards wouldn't let her sleep in her parked car and decided to mow down people on the sidewalk, killing one and inuring others. This example from Jim Crow 1956 probably never occurred to her: http://www.shorpy.com/node/13115?size=_original#caption

indigenous says

Schools and universities might rediscover the value of teaching practical skills, instead of whitewashed history and grievance studies.

It made a former liberal editor of our local newspaper mad when I wrote a letter in response to a story about problems in schools today and said "My mother (1902-1997) and her generation was the last generation of real teachers to teach real subjects in real schools. She taught the greatest generation as youngsters in the 20's and 30's who would in a few years be winning World War II. Youngsters their age today are scared to death of words! The editor, John Young, whom I still admired, left Waco for Colorado Springs a couple of years later, finding I'm sure a more hospitable place for his ideas.

This subject can be summed up by Aquinas' the unmoved mover/prime mover and causality and that the cause is exterior to the moved. Yes a priori and the 5 ways that prove God exists.

thunderlips11 says

HOW do you know such a place exists?

Everyone achieves this by death, some get exterior without death, either way this is a subjective thing.

Dan and Lips want to get out a microscope to look at something only visible through a telescope, metaphorically speaking. But since you already know about this it is a waste of time to try and show you anything...

Dan8267 says

Aquinas certainly was not unaware of the monstrous cruelty of his religion.

actually, christianity itself doesn't dictate cruelty at all, utterly unlike islam.

but once government and religion were unified, yes, of course people had no right to question it, because that would be questioning the government.

Dan8267 says

Aquinas certainly was not unaware of the monstrous cruelty of his religion.

actually, christianity itself doesn't dictate cruelty at all, utterly unlike islam.

but once government and religion were unified, yes, of course people had no right to question it, because that would be questioning the government.

Agreed. I still see the egregious need to vilify Christianity and other mostly peaceful religions here. Christianity always had a large spectrum of totally different branches and mostly only became violent when government took it over. Compared to all the good things it has brought and the amount of people its missionaries have helped it is certainly at least a wash, probably much better (and this is completely separate from the topic of whether someone thinks it is logical to have such a belief or not). And even the (believed to be) Christian faiths considered more "radical" such as Jehova's Witnesses or Scientology leave the rest of the population largely alone.

but once government and religion were unified, yes, of course people had no right to question it

Politicians Incessantly want to conflate the two. The constituents are oblivious to the illogic of this.

indigenous says

This subject can be summed up by Aquinas' the unmoved mover/prime mover and causality and that the cause is exterior to the moved. Yes a priori and the 5 ways that prove God exists.

That goes back to Plato - but it's a theory without evidence, and therefore is FLOOSH! dismissed. It's only dorm room bullshit session material.

indigenous says

thunderlips11 says

HOW do you know such a place exists?

Everyone achieves this by death, some get exterior without death, either way this is a subjective thing.

How do you know this? Did you talk to somebody who came back after being Dead a while?

indigenous says

Dan and Lips want to get out a microscope to look at something only visible through a telescope, metaphorically speaking. But since you already know about this it is a waste of time to try and show you anything...

The point is YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW. Only a priori bullshitting. If you want to show something, show the evidence for your assumptions, rather than assuming the evidence and reasoning from there.

mell says

Christianity always had a large spectrum of totally different branches and mostly only became violent when government took it over.

For many centuries in Europe, there was no separation of church and state. So, it's not that they government took over the church, it's that the church was the government. Unfortunately, we have certain actors in america who don't believe in separation of church and state, who don't respect that separation and who are not content to practice the faith within the confines of their church and their homes. And they make up all sorts of excuses how they are being oppressed how they cannot live according to their conscience and how they have a non negotiable one path to salvation (which for some reasons requires them to disregard the separation and compare the current american government to roman heathen).

thunderlips11 says

Seriously, by having a largely homogeneous population, it's easier to solve problems as everybody is unified. You can't blame various social problems on another race, since there really aren't any sizable numbers of them, and since it's not an issue, improving things is actually a lot easier.

If you believe that americans would be more receptive to a european welfare state model if everyone was of the same race, you are greatly mistaken. United States if the most individualistic nation on the face of the earth and this form of goverment/social structure will be met with fierce resistance regardless of the demographics of the population.

actually, christianity itself doesn't dictate cruelty at all, utterly unlike islam.

Unfortunately, that doesn't matter. What matters is how the followers behave, and that is never constricted by the good parts of a holy text because if the followers were rational in the first place, they would not be followers. The Christian mythology promotes both good and evil, even the New Testament is pro-slavery, but even if we had a morally perfect New Testament, it doesn't make a difference. The real history of actual Christianity bears no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Oh, and Jesus's teachings aren't that great. They are no different than what every society teaches to young children, say kindergarteners. Be nice to people. Don't be mean. Such childish teachings, however pleasing to our desires, are utterly inadequate for the complex modern world. Hell, they weren't even adequate to the ancient world. If a man breaks into your home intent on raping your entire family, you should not harm him in any way according to Jesus's teachings. "Whatever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me." So you have to let him rape your entire family comforted in the knowledge that enduring this suffering is what god wants and give you a place in heaven, which is all that matters. Suffering in this life doesn't matter at all.

How much more does Jesus's teachings fail to address modern moral problems like
- protecting the environment for future generations
- man-made mass extinctions of wild life
- the rights of sentient non-human life on Earth like apes, dolphins, and whales
- the development of artificial intelligence than may achieve sentience
- the morality of capitalism and how it creates economic inequality
- the exploitation of less developed nations by more developed ones
- the moral dilemmas of genetic manipulation of offspring including manipulations for resisting diseases, increasing intelligence, preventing birth defects, and choosing physical traits like blue eyes
- if we achieve interstellar travel and find native life forms on other planets, how do we treat them, as pure resources or as creatures with rights

There are many moral questions that apply to the modern era that simply would be nonsensical to the Iron Age. Jesus's moral teachings are a dismal failure when applied to the modern times. We need deeper and more advanced morality based on our enhanced understanding of mathematics and nature. We need morality based on game theory, not fictitious gods and supernatural forces.

but once government and religion were unified, yes, of course people had no right to question it, because that would be questioning the government.

And that is a fundamental flaw of all religions no matter how good their tenants, holy text, or clerics are. Any irrational system can be co-opted by governments and other organizations with nefarious agendas precisely because the people are accepting irrationality. Rational people are exponentially harder to manipulate than irrational ones. Religion not only promotes but in fact demands irrationality in the form of faith. If one is crazy enough to have faith in a god, then one is crazy enough to following the image of a god, projected by bad people, that promotes evil and violent actions.

The only cure for not following a bad religion is not following any religion.

mell says

Christianity always had a large spectrum of totally different branches and mostly only became violent when government took it over.

More precisely, when the branch became powerful. All religions that gain power do evil and, almost by definition, become the government because they are authority centers.

mell says

Compared to all the good things it has brought and the amount of people its missionaries have helped it is certainly at least a wash, probably much better.

Far worse when you include big events like the crusades, the Inquisition, the genocides of the Native Americans, and the Holocaust.

And quite frankly the good attributed to religion would have happened without religion. There is an altruistic aspect of human nature that has nothing to do with religion. Hell, it's not just human nature. Squirrels have altruism, but not religion. Altruism does not require lies about supernatural entities. In fact, altruism is more stable without such lies.

thunderlips11 says

That goes back to Plato - but it's a theory without evidence, and therefore is FLOOSH! dismissed.

How do you refute it? Floosh does not count.

thunderlips11 says

Did you talk to somebody who came back after being Dead a while?

Sactly

thunderlips11 says

a priori bullshitting.

So then you could throw out Pythagoras therom as it is merely a priori.

dublin hillz says

If you believe that americans would be more receptive to a european welfare state model if everyone was of the same race, you are greatly mistaken.

I'm not so sure about that. Most of the rejection of social safety nets by conservatives is based on their faulty assumption that it's blacks getting free stuff. In reality these social services are used by whites and veterans, but the perception among red necks is that it's all blacks getting free stuff and so they oppose it.

indigenous says

So then you could throw out Pythagoras therom as it is merely a priori.

Clearly that is not what thunderlips11 is saying. The Pythagorean Theorem has many a priori proofs. You have provided no proofs but only circular logic and assertions.

dublin hillz says

mell says

Christianity always had a large spectrum of totally different branches and mostly only became violent when government took it over.

For many centuries in Europe, there was no separation of church and state. So, it's not that they government took over the church, it's that the church was the government. Unfortunately, we have certain actors in america who don't believe in separation of church and state, who don't respect that separation and who are not content to practice the faith within the confines of their church and their homes. And they make up all sorts of excuses how they are being oppressed how they cannot live according to their conscience and how they have a non negotiable one path to salvation (which for some reasons requires them to disregard the separation and compare the current american government to roman heathen).

And yet the Magna Carta emerged fairly early on. I would assert that the times you are mentioning were short-lived. Religion always influenced politics but there hardly ever was a government solely government by religious dogma throughout Christianity. Bear in mind that for many issues moral and even practical arguments have long coexisted side-by-side with arguments solely based on religion. There are plenty of people for example that make a case for why homosexuality or abortion is "wrong" to them without citing religion (no matter whether one agrees with this or not). Ironically all the greatness and standard of living (as well as the few dark spots) that has emerged from Europe and the US and which we still benefit from today has been achieved mostly under Christian influence (not dogma) or a predominantly Christian culture (with all of its offshoots). I can only speculate the cases you are referring and but none of those involve violence against others, more like passive resistance. I do not share the notion that the US has any significant problem with Christians if that was what you were alluding to.