Liberal view of Government.

[Diogenes]

Theistic religions create better behaved people by using a characteristic of mankind (fear of retribution) against his baser nature. (desire to get an advantage over his fellows.)

Again they dont. The mafiosi in Italy are all going to church every sunday and they are generous donors to the catholic church, yet they will kill an opponent without hesitation. Why? Because they can ask the lord for forgiveness next sunday. Forgiveness is granted and they will go to heaven anyway. I dont know, I dont quite see how that teaches them anything?

I have a friend that constantly quotes the rare and uncommon as proof that the majority General case does not hold sway. If I talk about the Relationship between AIDS and Homosexuality or IV drug use, he will quote back to me "Ryan White." If I say sunlight promotes health and creates Vitamin D, he'll say "Skin Cancer." If I say most serial killers are men, he'll say "Aileen Carol Wuornos" or "Lizzy Borden." His answer to anything is "no it isn't."

I doubt the Mafiosi makes up even 0.01% of the practicing Christian population. I have long stated that Optimization of any system seldom yields 100%. Efficiencies just aren't there. Electric motors are around 95% efficient. There is very little that can be done about that other 5%, but it ought not be used as a reason against building electric motors.

Theism is in the Firmware, and is reinforced by the software.

No theism is a virus, or maybe a trojan horse.

The evidence is against you. Archeology has consistently found evidence of religion in people thousands of years ago who never heard of Christianity It is not whether humans will have a religion, but what kind it will be.

The evidence appears to be that humans have a genetic predisposition to religion. Surely you've read science articles concerning this?

[Diogenes]

The mormons (a cult) are coming to Austria more and more recently, but they tried it here even when my father was still studying medicine. Now back then times were better and political correctness was not forced on us like it is today.
So there they were standing in their suits shouting arround all sorts of crap. There was a big pile of people standing arround them, interested in what this was all about. One of the mormons was asking "so do you believe that Jesus was an example of a force against drug abuse". Well my father is quite knowledgeful when it comes to the bible and said:
"You know, the wedding to Kanaan? First Jesus turned water into wine and then when he was drunk he offended his mother. >What shall I do with you woman?> he had shouted at her. Not the kind of behaviour I would expect from an "example of a force against drug abuse"."
Lots of loud laughter and the whole pile of people dissolved really quickly after that, leaving the mormons standing in the rain.
Of course nowadays the political correctness that has been forced on us by religious fundamentalists wants to prevent us from doing just such a thing. I dont see anything bad in what my father did. He showed the guy that his believes are crap and that he better go sell his crazy elsewhere.

Two points come immediately to mind. Wine and Drugs are perhaps equivalent in vector direction, but not in scalar degree, but your father's example does reinforce a point I made previously. Emotion (levity) beats facts and reasoning any day of the week.

Secondly, I have several Mormon friends. They are good people, and I dare say a lot of denominations would do well to be as dedicated to their faith as the Mormons are to theirs. I find the whole Joseph smith and the golden tablets and the magic glasses thing to be very silly, but I cannot deny that the Mormons appear to be very upstanding people in their own personal lives (and works).

Does it hurt for people to believe in silly things? Sometimes, but not always.

[KitemanSA]

"You know, the wedding to Kanaan? First Jesus turned water into wine and then when he was drunk he offended his mother. >What shall I do with you woman?> he had shouted at her.

Wasn't it the other way round?

Not only was it the other way around, but there is no indication that Christ was drunk in any way. Nor is there any indication that he shouted at his mother.

3 And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
4 And Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

Sounds more like she said, "we're out of wine", and he said "So?"

[MSimon]

Wine and Drugs are perhaps equivalent in vector direction, but not in scalar degree,

True. Wine clouds the brain more than most recreational drugs. Especially if you consider them on a population weighted basis.

The anti-drug hysteria is not reason based. It is faith based (in more ways that one).

[mvanwink5]

There are two issues here it seems to me. One issue is personal use of substances and the other is the attempt by others through indirect or direct use of force to limit substance use.

Personally, I don't engage in the use of "recreational" drugs but don't support efforts by others to use force to limit their use. Prohibition merely floods the prisons and increases violent crimes (and funds terrorists overseas) without stemming actual drug use. Just my 2 cents.

[TallDave]

It does indeed make a difference. The distinction here is that the communists and their gulags were an outlier trying to become part of the whole and never making it, while the Catholic church was the be-=all and end-all (especially end-all) for "Christianity" for almost a thousand years. The Soviets were NOT humanists, as was pointed out repeatedly by many humanists, try as they would to take over the term. The Catholic Church WAS "Chistianity" for a millenium. Christians can't disown "inquisitions", merely learn from them and try not to do them again. Humanists disowned "gulags" at the time and since. Two different situations.

The Communists were not outliers, there were something like 2 billion of them and their ideas trace back to Thomas More, one of the leading Renaissance humanists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism

If anything, the smaller numbers of atheist liberal democrats opposing Communism were the outliers. And lots of humanists thought the Soviets and Chinese were just great.

Nor was the Catholic Church was the end-all, be-all of Christianity. They were merely its primary institution for a period of time, an institution which eventually fractured under the weight of its own contradictions and corruption, and in fact many Christians were persecuted by the Church for speaking out against its malpractices. And even with all its flaws, it was generally far better than the cruel pagan religions it gradually replaced. Secular humanists started much later, in better circumstances, so they have less excuse for murdering 100 million people.

But I'm not saying the Catholics didn't do terrible things, or that Christianity doesn't own their mistakes.

Again, my point is just that you can't claim your philosophy is superior on the basis that your least desirable practitioners can be ignored while everyone else's have to be accepted as a relevant metric. Part of the test of a meme is how easily it can be corrupted to bad ends, and secular humanism was at best no better than Christianity in that respect.

Now, if you would argue secular humanism as consistent with principles of liberty and democracy is superior to the historical practice of Christianity, that's certainly true... but the key element there is liberty and democracy, not secular humanism.

[TallDave]

Personally, I don't engage in the use of "recreational" drugs but don't support efforts by others to use force to limit their use. Prohibition merely floods the prisons and increases violent crimes (and funds terrorists overseas) without stemming actual drug use. Just my 2 cents.

I'm glad more people are coming around to this point of view. Drugs are bad, don't do drugs, don't let your kids do drugs, but don't create a huge mess by trying to treat a medical problem with the criminal justice system.

[KitemanSA]

Again, my point is just that you can't claim your philosophy is superior on the basis that your least desirable practitioners can be ignored while everyone else's have to be accepted as a relevant metric.

Sorry, I don't think you know what my philosophy is.

My original statement:

Humanists had the humanity to create a just and caring society. Religions generally gave us atrocities "in God's Name".

The some folks, you included, started trying to condemn "humanists" with communism. This is equivilent in my book to condemning Christ for Satanists. Just because someone takes a thought and twists it all into tangles, doesn't mean they are part of the main thread of the thought. Communism may have derived thru twisted minds from "humanism" (not proven in my mind) but that doesn't make them any more humanist than Satanists are Christians.

Catholics however DEFINED what it was to be Christian for about half a millenium or more. And the Catholic Church promulgated a number of the world's worst atrocities, "in God's Name", WHILE they were effectively the be-all and end-all of Christianity.

My original statement stands true and unsullied.

[TallDave]

Kiteman,

Sorry, I don't think you know what my philosophy is.

I use "your" in the generic sense of anyone making an argument.

The some folks, you included, started trying to condemn "humanists" with communism.

Communism was based on secular humanism. It was a dream of secular humanists for centuries. It brought billions of people under the rule of a philosophy built on secular humanism. It was a massive failure because without any checks and balances on the power of the State, secular humanism merely provides a perfect excuse for brutal totalitarians like Mao and Stalin to do virtually anything, no matter how horrible or self-serving, for the alleged "good of the people."

Humanists cannot disown the sins of Communism any more than Christians can disown the wrongs of the Church -- nor should they. Humanists learned from Communism's failure and became liberal democrats, just as Christians rebelled against the corruption of the Church.

Catholics however DEFINED what it was to be Christian for about half a millenium or more.

Which is only a quarter of the time Christianity was growing and evolving.

[KitemanSA]

Communism was based on secular humanism.

Hmmm. "Secular Humanism" is a recent derivitive. How can communism, which predates it by almost a century be based on it?

[KitemanSA]

The idea of a classless, stateless society based on communal ownership of property and wealth stretches far back in Western thought long before The Communist Manifesto. Some have traced communist ideas back to ancient times, such as in Pythagoreanism and Plato's The Republic; or (perhaps with more justification) to the early Christian Church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (see Christian communism).

PS: Thanks for the link.

[TallDave]

They actually appear about the same time -- the term "secularism" coined in 1851, Marx formed his idea in 1845.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

Communism is similar to what More described in his "Utopia" -- leaders allocating resources based on reason.

[TallDave]

(perhaps with more justification) to the early Christian Church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (see Christian communism).

Yes, the idea had many roots. Communism as practiced was, generally, explicitly atheist -- secular humanism.

Of course, secular humanism itself is mostly a Christian construct. Removing Christ from the paradigm turned out not to work very well in the absence of liberal democracy and property rights.

[KitemanSA]

They actually appear about the same time -- the term "secularism" coined in 1851, Marx formed his idea in 1845.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism
Communism is similar to what More described in his "Utopia" -- leaders allocating resources based on reason.

The term "secular humanism" was coined in the 20th century, and was adopted by non-religious humanists in order to make a clear distinction from "religious humanism". Secular humanism is also called "scientific humanism". Biologist E. O. Wilson claimed it to be "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature".[1]

Indeed, it was fairly LATE in the 20th century. So how is communism based on it?

Again, thanks for the link.

[TallDave]

Obviously the phrase was coined then, not the concept. This is quite clear from the wiki. You should really read the whole link, rather than leaping at any apparent inconsistency.

Many humanists were secularists before the 1960s, you know. They just weren't commonly called "secular humanists."