Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on December 07, 2009, 09:16:04 pm
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Seems like this guy is trying to be the next Ted Haggard (http://rawstory.com/2009/12/rick-warren-harder-to-be-atheist/)
Not believing in a Supreme Being takes more faith than believing in one, according to Pastor Rick Warren. "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist," Warren told Fox News anchors Steve Doocy and Martha MacCallum Monday.
"You know, Steve, if I'm walking down a mountain and I see rock out of place and I go 'that's an accident.' If I'm walking down a mountain -- on the trail -- and I find a Rolex that's evidence of design," he explained. "It actually takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in God."
Warren laughed at the idea that Humanists would place ads in large cities that read "No God?... No problem."
While Warren scoffs at atheists, he seemed to respect every other belief system. "The are 600 million Buddhists in the world. There are 800 million Hindus. There are one and a half billion Muslims and there are 2.3 billion Christians. The actual number of secularists in the world is actually quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan," said Warren. "You know the future of the world -- you may not like this -- is not secularism, it's pluralism. So we better find out what everybody believes."
Bashing on atheists isn't new for the pastor who has also compared gay marriage to pedophilia.
In April of 2007, Warren told Newsweek that he "never met an atheist who wasn't angry" and that "far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together."
"Thousands died in the Inquisition; millions died under Mao, and under Stalin and Pol Pot," Warren said in 2007. "There is a home for atheists in the world today—it's called North Korea. I don't know any atheists who want to go there. I'd much rather live under Tony Blair, or even George Bush."
EDIT: added the rest of the article. Seemed rather short.
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why are ignorant assholes allowed to make news?
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And why do people insist on bringing said "news" to our attention? :p
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Because unfortunately people like this have a fair amount of sway........
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Ah, heuristic illusions are wonderful.
Illusory correlation explains so much.
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"is not secularism, it's pluralism. So we better find out what everybody believes."
You don't want to know what I believe, over here in my Jungian Agnosticism.
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Stalin and Hitler were both religious actually (although it's hard to tell what Stalin was to be honest). So he's wrong on the numbers.
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Even if they weren't religious, it's important to point out that very few people have ever died in the name of atheism. People die in the name of religion every day.
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I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one. It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something. :nervous:
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I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one. It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something. :nervous:
For Science!
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Ugh, Rick Warren.
I'd love to have a debate with this asshole about how the human perception of beauty in the environment is more of a result of thousands of years of the human mind attempting to make sense of and find meaning in the world around it (you know, like religion), and not the result of some higher being taking time out of his busy day to make a rock on a mountain look pretty for a part of his creation he knew was going to **** up.
But that would be like arguing with a brick wall.
I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one. It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something. :nervous:
You apparently missed that South Park episode didn't you? :p
(http://media.southparkstudios.com/img/content/season10/1013.jpg)
Science damn you, United Atheist Alliance!
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I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one. It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something. :nervous:
Sure, in much the same way that mental health is less a delusion than an absence of delusions.
Not that I consider faith a delusion, but I want to be careful to steer away from the suggestion that atheists have some kind of gaping hole or absence in their lives.
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Not that I consider faith a delusion, but I want to be careful to steer away from the suggestion that atheists have some kind of gaping hole or absence in their lives.
Considering faith is belief in the absence of proof, it's getting pretty close to a classic definition thereof.
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Funny that he mentions Buddhism in there, considering Buddhism is generally atheistic, and those Buddhist sects that do (sloppily, I would argue) include a vague deity certainly don't consider it a creator.
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Not that I consider faith a delusion, but I want to be careful to steer away from the suggestion that atheists have some kind of gaping hole or absence in their lives.
Considering faith is belief in the absence of proof, it's getting pretty close to a classic definition thereof.
Well, okay, yes, 'faith' is a cognitive illusion springing from some elements of our neural hard-wiring, but I am open to others who want to derive value from that illusion. In the end everything's arbitrary, so I don't see it as a bad thing so long as it doesn't lead them to restrict the freedom of others who do not share their particular illusion.
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I'd reply to this but I don't have faith that Pastor Warren would care.
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I get annoyed when people think belief is rational. It's not, by definition. Go ahead, believe in the magical father figure in the sky, just don't claim there's a logical basis to it. Geez.
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The notion that the Soviet and Chinese states are atheistic breaks down the moment you look at what are in effect shrines to Mao and Stalin. It's closer to god-emperor stuff than anything else.
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i personally dont like atheists, i dont like bible thumpers either. really i dont think i like anyone.
The notion that the Soviet and Chinese states are atheistic breaks down the moment you look at what are in effect shrines to Mao and Stalin. It's closer to god-emperor stuff than anything else.
thats not atheism thats communism. marx was a paranoid bastard. he thought everything religions did was to control people. just cause your paranoid doesnt mean their not out to get you.
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Why do people continue to argue about this if all of them are too stupid to listen to anyone in the first place?
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because some of them arent too stupid
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thats not atheism thats communism. marx was a paranoid bastard. he thought everything religions did was to control people. just cause your paranoid doesnt mean their not out to get you.
Could you perhaps point to the place in the Manifesto or Das Kapital where Marx advocates a system of leader-worship of the kind seen the USSR, PRC, or DPRK?
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Why do people continue to argue about this if all of them are too stupid to listen to anyone in the first place?
because it amuses us too, lets face it this thread just took up 5 minutes of my free time and mildly amused me, just like it did for most of the people who have read it and successfully diverted the thinking time of everyone who posted here.
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I'm keeping out of this. I'm not in the mood.
BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week. This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.
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BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week. This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.
So you admit to trolling last week then? :p
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So you admit to trolling last week then? :p
LOL.
This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.
I disagree, some of us have a sense of humour. :D
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I'm keeping out of this. I'm not in the mood.
BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week. This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.
Forcing people to confront their own cognitive dissonance is not trolling.
Though I grant they look awful similar.
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Funny that he mentions Buddhism in there, considering Buddhism is generally atheistic, and those Buddhist sects that do (sloppily, I would argue) include a vague deity certainly don't consider it a creator.
True, but they still believe in spirits and souls and other things like that. I think what this guy was referring to was people who don't follow any of that stuff......
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Ugh, Rick Warren.
I'd love to have a debate with this asshole about how the human perception of beauty in the environment is more of a result of thousands of years of the human mind attempting to make sense of and find meaning in the world around it (you know, like religion), and not the result of some higher being taking time out of his busy day to make a rock on a mountain look pretty for a part of his creation he knew was going to **** up.
But that would be like arguing with a brick wall.
I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one. It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something. :nervous:
You apparently missed that South Park episode didn't you? :p
(http://media.southparkstudios.com/img/content/season10/1013.jpg)
Science damn you, United Allied Atheist Alliance!
fixed.
... Really, the title is kindof correct, it takes more balls to believe in not being able to know everything eventually than to pussy out and say its just a higher being did it.
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Even if they weren't religious, it's important to point out that very few people have ever died in the name of atheism. People die in the name of religion every day.
Who cares what you shout when you kill somebody? For the party? For Freedom? For God(s)? For concept X? For science?
Doesn't mean you're actually doing it for that reason... And it doesn't matter to the guy who ended up dead.
Oh, regarding that article:
TrashMan approves (+10)
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Even if they weren't religious, it's important to point out that very few people have ever died in the name of atheism. People die in the name of religion every day.
Who cares what you shout when you kill somebody? For the party? For Freedom? For God(s)? For concept X? For science?
Doesn't mean you're actually doing it for that reason... And it doesn't matter to the guy who ended up dead.
It matters for Rick Warren according to what he said. That was kinda the point, I presume.
Of course it doesn't really matter.
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It's all meaningless anyway. We in the west are living in the last days of religious relevance - it's been coming since the enlightenment, but it's only recently that we've really started to shine a light into the last few places "god" can hide. Give it a few more generations and, assuming we've not killed ourselves through environmental degredation or nuclear fire, atheism or agnosticism will be the biggest belief system in the western world, and it's all downhill from there. It'll take longer to get into the less educated parts like Africa, South America and the red states in America (Oh Snap! :p) but it'll happen. Let Rick Warren and his ilk believe what they want, and fight the battles against religion-inspired idiocy that are worth fighting (abortion, stem cells, environmental protection, palestinan rights, extremist terrorism etc.), but this ****? Ignore it as the irrelevance it's becoming.
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IMO, it's not hard to find anyone in the world of several billion people that believe something false and who are adept at making the news. I even have no problem with people arguing against his unfounded "points" to the death.
I'm not offended until the fight becomes hostile against religion itself, it's possible to have a rational mind with faith. Maybe not literally but there are personal / philosophical reasons to believing in a supreme being since nothing will ever be 100% proven or completely answered. The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.
He assumes the existence of God therefore basis all his premises trying to prove there is a God rather than being objective and unbiased; assuming there could not be a god... Everyone is smart enough to figure out that he's logically fallible and he's wrong in assuming that it takes "more faith" to believe in a purely natural world where no god exists because of his inability to look at it objectively. I don't think it's wrong for him to assume the existence of God but I do believe it's wrong to criticize and wrongly "belittle" those who rather look at it rationally/objectively which honestly is where everybody should start.
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We in the west are living in the last days of religious relevance
While that may be true in Europe, most of America is still VERY religious. According to surveys a few years ago about half of all americans don't accept the theory of evolution, and there is still a lot of fighting about that topic going on because so many of them still want creationism taught in high school SCIENCE classes. So far the only thing stopping them has been the seperation of church and state, but this is also subject to the interpretation of the judge because they can claim states rights.
Let Rick Warren and his ilk believe what they want
Part of the problem has been him and his ilk have been exporting (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/exporting-anti-gay-culture-war) their BS overseas, especially to Africans. Believe me, Africa is a very dark place when it comes to this. There anything supernatural goes without question.
EDIT: Here is another article (http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=150800) that partly touches on this towards the end.
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Why do people continue to argue about this if all of them are too stupid to listen to anyone in the first place?
Because they're too stupid to ignore the topic completely?
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why are ignorant assholes allowed to make news?
We all need a little happieness to know that we are better off than someone else :p :D
Or just not as screwed up as others ;7
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Stalin and Hitler were both religious actually (although it's hard to tell what Stalin was to be honest). So he's wrong on the numbers.
Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.
Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.
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Weird, I always thought that they were non-religious.
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Stalin and Hitler were both religious actually (although it's hard to tell what Stalin was to be honest). So he's wrong on the numbers.
Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.
Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.
Ah, subgrouping. Wonderful heuristic.
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Maybe not literally but there are personal / philosophical reasons to believing in a supreme being since nothing will ever be 100% proven or completely answered. The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.
I've never had a problem with people who believe there must be a God to explain why the universe exists, but when you start claiming that there must be a God to explain how, then I've got a problem.
My problem with that line of thinking is that it's anti-logic, anti-rational thought and anti-science. "Let's not bother with research into evolution or the big bang. We already know God did it, why do we need to look into those things."
Rick Warren merely shows his ignorance here. It doesn't require more faith to be an atheist. It doesn't require any faith at all. That's the entire point of being an atheist. It does, however, require more brainpower than he comes equipped with though. Because if you don't have a sufficient level of understanding to see how things like evolution or the big bang would work it becomes much simpler to believe in some magical being who did it all in the blink of an eye.
Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.
It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. Bear in mind that the actions of a non-Christian religious tyrant would look exactly the same if he didn't disclose what religion he had. Stalin got rid of the religious leaders because they were a danger to him, as was religion itself. When you have a large amount of power in the hands of someone other than a tyrant then the tyrant will always view that person as a potential threat.
It's actually pretty hard to tell which religion Stalin actually had. It seems to change based on who you talk to. I've heard people say he was agnostic or atheistic for the most part.
Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.
Again, far more complicated than you make out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler#Religious_beliefs).
So the claim that atheists have killed more than religious people are obviously based on very odd interpretations of what an atheist is.
Then we get to the point that those killed by Stalin were basically due to him trying to advance a communist agenda. But if you count those numbers as "Deaths by atheism" you then open the door to the question "Exactly how many people have died as a result of Western Christian leaders pushing a capitalist agenda?" That's a hard question to answer with no control group but you could make the argument that the number is pretty high.
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Maybe not literally but there are personal / philosophical reasons to believing in a supreme being since nothing will ever be 100% proven or completely answered. The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.
I've never had a problem with people who believe there must be a God to explain why the universe exists, but when you start claiming that there must be a God to explain how, then I've got a problem.
My problem with that line of thinking is that it's anti-logic, anti-rational thought and anti-science. "Let's not bother with research into evolution or the big bang. We already know God did it, why do we need to look into those things."
Rick Warren merely shows his ignorance here. It doesn't require more faith to be an atheist. It doesn't require any faith at all. That's the entire point of being an atheist. It does, however, require more brainpower than he comes equipped with though. Because if you don't have a sufficient level of understanding to see how things like evolution or the big bang would work it becomes much simpler to believe in some magical being who did it all in the blink of an eye.
I agree and very elegantly put... way better than I could have said.
Your also correct when you say it takes no faith to be an atheist, if I implied that it took "any" it wasn't on purpose. :)
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Thing is, until recently, science wasn't certain what, precisely, made a plain fly, but you didn't find people saying that, because we carried on building planes that work, God must have been carrying them, if so, he dropped a few, and guided some into some buildings...
Science isn't believing that something is immutable fact on the basis of what we 'think' is true, it really shouldn't even be in contention with Religion, science never really had a problem with the existence of Religion until it started stumbling onto Religion's 'turf' (Creationism, Evolution etc), in fact, Religion is perfectly happy to make use of science such as Television, Printing, Audio technology etc when it suits them, as long as it doesn't tread on their toes.
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According to surveys a few years ago about half of all americans don't accept the theory of evolution,
Your survey is broken. The people who will even bother responding to it are the people who will answer affirmatively, just for starters.
The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.
That's also not possible. Faith is belief in the absence of proof. Such a decision cannot, by definition, be rational.
Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.
While I tend to favor the theory that Hitler became what he became because he was, more or less, crazy (David Khan explained it best in his analysis of Hitler's actions as ultimate consumer of German intelligence in Hitler's Spies: Hitler's strength derived from his inflexible will that enthralled all around him, and that in turn derived from an underlying neurotic anxiety. Hitler was so effective because he was ultimately crazy, but it broke down eventually when he stopped altering the world to suit him by not pursuing Sea Lion and instead launching Barbarossa; and after that it got worse.), this ignores the fact that the people who actually carried out the Final Solution were almost to a man perfectly sane. To say nothing of the actual Wehrmacht being populated exclusively by men who at least began the war sane.
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I'd love to have a debate with this asshole about how the human perception of beauty in the environment is more of a result of thousands of years of the human mind attempting to make sense of and find meaning in the world around it (you know, like religion), and not the result of some higher being taking time out of his busy day to make a rock on a mountain look pretty for a part of his creation he knew was going to **** up.
This reminds me of a favorite quote:
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Of course, it's really more about the fallacy of believing humanity to be invulnerable, but I've always like it. :)
That's also not possible. Faith is belief in the absence of proof. Such a decision cannot, by definition, be rational.
I have to disagree somewhat here. I agree (Basically) with your definition of faith, but I think that faith can be based on evidence that doesn't offer absolute proof. And if we're totally honest, a lot of science does as well. Is it irrational to believe something because there is a lot of evidence, even if there is no proof? For example, I believe that P != NP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem), even though there is no absolute proof that this is the case: just a lot of evidence. We don't have proof of anthropogenic global warming, but more than enough evidence that we need to at least take the possibility very seriously. Likewise with spiritual things: you may never have absolute "proof" in this life, but I strongly believe that if someone honestly seeks to know God, God will give them enough evidence to sustain their faith, which will gradually get stronger and stronger as more evidence is collected. I don't think this kind of faith is irrational at all.
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For example, I believe that P != NP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem), even though there is no absolute proof that this is the case: just a lot of evidence.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
From the linked article:
The main argument in favor of P ≠ NP is the total lack of fundamental progress in the area of exhaustive search. This is, in my opinion, a very weak argument. The space of algorithms is very large and we are only at the beginning of its exploration. [. . .] The resolution of Fermat's Last Theorem also shows that very simply [sic] questions may be settled only by very deep theories.
—Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University
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:confused: Are you trying to disagree with him? I can't be sure since that's about exactly what I thought he said.
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He's saying there is lots of evidence for P != NP. I'm saying that's not true.
Hunches are not evidence.
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Seems like this guy is trying to be the next Ted Haggard (http://rawstory.com/2009/12/rick-warren-harder-to-be-atheist/)
In April of 2007, Warren told Newsweek that he "never met an atheist who wasn't angry" and that "far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together."
"Thousands died in the Inquisition; millions died under Mao, and under Stalin and Pol Pot," Warren said in 2007. "There is a home for atheists in the world today—it's called North Korea. I don't know any atheists who want to go there. I'd much rather live under Tony Blair, or even George Bush."
EDIT: added the rest of the article. Seemed rather short.
Crap, my quoting skills failed me.
YIPES
But oh great pastor, did we not rid the world of the infidels during the Crusades? What about World War II?
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He's saying there is lots of evidence for P != NP. I'm saying that's not true.
Hunches are not evidence.
Meh, in retrospect perhaps that wasn't the best example to choose. The point I was trying to make is simply that people can make rational decisions on less than absolute proof, and that this applies to spiritual and philosophical problems as well as scientific and mathematical ones.
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Right. There is no absolute proof in science; theories are the highest level of knowledge. Disconfirmation is possible, but confirmation is impossible.
Thus, the scientific worldview involves perpetual openness to possibility, shaped by a perpetual awareness of probability.
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I've never had a problem with people who believe there must be a God to explain why the universe exists, but when you start claiming that there must be a God to explain how, then I've got a problem.
My problem with that line of thinking is that it's anti-logic, anti-rational thought and anti-science. "Let's not bother with research into evolution or the big bang. We already know God did it, why do we need to look into those things."
I wanted to highlight this point, since I think it's one very worth repeating. Many of the great scientific minds of the past were religious to some extent (or at least deist), and I think that many of them viewed their discoveries as a way of furthering their own faith. I can't remember who exactly, but I know I've seen quotes to the effect of treating scientific study as a means of "knowing the mind of the Creator," of seeing just how God's creation functioned at some fundamental level and seeing that as a means of glorifying God in turn. It's an incredibly sad that we've now come to a point where you see the prominent voices in modern Christianity essentially advocating a head-in-the-sand anti-intellectualism approach, avoiding new discoveries because of their potential implications. Maybe zombie Galileo needs to come back and kick some ass...
(Hee, banner ad. "Is there a God? Click to find six reasons that God exists!" :lol:)
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You know it doesn't really matter too much... religion.... non-religion. What I liked about that article was that the thing that matters is pluralism and the idea, albeit maybe a difficult one for some to deal with, is that we have to try and learn to get along with people despite belief (or non belief). There are some limits to that plurality but people need to learn how to get along and how to solve problems. It really doesn't matter who you are.
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True, but they still believe in spirits and souls and other things like that. I think what this guy was referring to was people who don't follow any of that stuff......
No, they don't. Buddhism rejects the notion of an essential, unchanging self, (as well as an essential, unchanging anything), and the soul runs in direct opposition to this. Most people really don't realize how little the essential Buddhist teachings actually claim to reveal about unobservable phenomena.
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Likewise with spiritual things: you may never have absolute "proof" in this life, but I strongly believe that if someone honestly seeks to know God, God will give them enough evidence to sustain their faith, which will gradually get stronger and stronger as more evidence is collected. I don't think this kind of faith is irrational at all.
I tend to believe that this kind of search is simply someone cherry-picking favourable outcomes as proof and if you had the same data but a different goal you'd be able to show evidence for that one too (For instance, there is a God but he no longer cares, or there is no God only the Devil). You can claim it's rational but it's shows a very poor experimental procedure.
But when all is said and done if that's what you want to believe my argument with you would be largely philosophical.
It's an incredibly sad that we've now come to a point where you see the prominent voices in modern Christianity essentially advocating a head-in-the-sand anti-intellectualism approach, avoiding new discoveries because of their potential implications.
Very sad. And it's the main reason why people must continue to challenge the Rick Warrens of this world and show how hidebound their thinking really is. If they wanted to sit and stew in their own stupidity that would be fine. The problem is that they want everyone else to join them.
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Kara, can I quote you on that elsewhere?
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True, but they still believe in spirits and souls and other things like that. I think what this guy was referring to was people who don't follow any of that stuff......
No, they don't. Buddhism rejects the notion of an essential, unchanging self, (as well as an essential, unchanging anything), and the soul runs in direct opposition to this. Most people really don't realize how little the essential Buddhist teachings actually claim to reveal about unobservable phenomena.
Good point, although reincarnation is a central theme.
Your survey is broken. The people who will even bother responding to it are the people who will answer affirmatively, just for starters.
IIRC it was a Gallop poll, so it wasn't my survey. "survey" was the wrong choice of words. Even if it is off by plus or minus 10 percent, that is still a significant portion of people in America who genuinely believe it.
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Good point, although reincarnation is a central theme.
Rebirth is a central theme. The Buddhist notion of rebirth is more abstract than the intact transfer of identity found in, say, Hinduism. It is a conception of death as the disintegration of one's skhandas, and their simultaneous integration into a new series of processes, which are interdependently related to the old ones.
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thats not atheism thats communism. marx was a paranoid bastard. he thought everything religions did was to control people. just cause your paranoid doesnt mean their not out to get you.
Could you perhaps point to the place in the Manifesto or Das Kapital where Marx advocates a system of leader-worship of the kind seen the USSR, PRC, or DPRK?
i htink thats more of an asian thing. besides i never said anything about leader worship, however i do recall from political science 101 that marx did include a statement of religious institutions being instruments of control (im not a big intellectualist prick so i wont spend 15 minutes looking up a quote proper). leader worship comes entirely from the leader's ego. lets face it, any one of the great tyrants of history would make great cult leaders, if they didnt already have huge amounts of power.
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The USSR was not an asian country.
While Marx had a point about religious institutions, the problem with communist countries was that the communist institution itself effectively replaced religious institutions as a means of control.
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The USSR was not an asian country.
*Looks at a map*
:lol:
I do agree with your assessment of communism and its methods of control. What better way to control people than to control their faith? However, when looking at this, one has to consider that communism wasn't really conceived for the farmer's benefit, or his understanding, or anything like that. IIRC, Marx thought that communism would only be successful in an industrialized society, working on finding confirmation on that.
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I'm still holding out hope that we can take the less retarded path and end up as a Star Trek: TNG society without nuking ourselves into oblivion first.
Seriously though, it is the essence of capitalism at its core. Start everyone on the same footing, and those who are better will succeed.
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The USSR was not an asian country.
*Looks at a map*
:lol:
You can define Asian different ways though. "Asian" as a physical location, yes, the larger parts of the USSR were on the Asian continent. Peter the Great irreversibly made Russia much more a European nation than an Asian one, though.
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Granted, but the definitive assertation that the USSR was not an Asian country still makes me laugh.
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i htink thats more of an asian thing. besides i never said anything about leader worship
Right, I did. And then you said, 'that's not atheism that's communism' and made a comment about Marx being a paranoid bastard. I concluded from this that you were arguing that the sort of cultism I was discussing was, well, communistic. So I wanted you to support that argument. If I misunderstood what you were trying to say, well, never mind.
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Granted, but the definitive assertation that the USSR was not an Asian country still makes me laugh.
The majority of the Russian population are white and lives west of the urals. Russia's political and economic centers are all west of the urals, and russian culture has far far more in common with europe than it does with asia. Even the russian language is completely unrelated to any of the asian lanugages. Therefore, the USSR was not an asian country, although it did have asian minorities.
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IIRC, Marx thought that communism would only be successful in an industrialized society, working on finding confirmation on that.
The thing "city folk" keep forgetting, and by "city folk" I mean that live, work and die in an urban environment/educational environment, is that "industrialized" can't exist without a little thing called agriculture.
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The thing "city folk" keep forgetting, and by "city folk" I mean that live, work and die in an urban environment/educational environment, is that "industrialized" can't exist without a little thing called agriculture.
The bourgeoisie don't realize that they couldn't survive without the proletariat?
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You mean the farmer couldn't survive without the city slicker to buy his stuff? That's a load of malarky, with fewer customers the would just grow less.
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You need to get a dictionary.
You just spouted (in favor of I might add) a pretty interesting flavor of Marxist communism. The "elite" should realize they only could be there on the backs of the working man.
working man= proletariat, in your example, farmers.
Means of production- in this example, agriculture
That leaves the bourgeoisie to be the "city folk" the cultural elite.
You just definied a class struggle in favor of the working man. Karl Marx would be proud. Karl Rove, less so.
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Damn.
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I lol'd.
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Kara, can I quote you on that elsewhere?
Feel free.
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IIRC, Marx thought that communism would only be successful in an industrialized society, working on finding confirmation on that.
This is what I get for not reading up, Marxism is about:
The productive capacity of society is the foundation of society, and as this capacity increases over time the social relations of production, class relations, evolve through this struggle of the classes and pass through definite stages (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism). The legal, political, ideological and other aspects (ex. art) of society are derived from these production relations as is the consciousness of the individuals of which the society is composed.
So in pure philosophical terms, the productive capacity is broadly defined. You might find scholars and philosophers who would define it more narrowly, but I don't think you can exclude argiculture from the "productive" definition. It certainly is not excluded in communist nations.
Source is wiki, fyi. I read the Communist Manifesto once, probably 20 years ago. Never wanted or needed to go back and re-read it. I probably should, if nothing else than to demonstrate why I am not even close to a communist, regardless of what Glenn and Rush may claim.
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Project Gutenburg has it, but they seem to be having website issues. I don;t recall it being a particularly long book. Wiki has some excerpts though:
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
And specifically one of the 10 tenets of traditional communism:
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country
and:
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
I see that as a merging of ag and industry in the minds of the communist. According to my reading of that, they are the same, they share the same struggles, and are all generally considered proletariat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
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IIRC, Marx thought that communism would only be successful in an industrialized society, working on finding confirmation on that.
The thing "city folk" keep forgetting, and by "city folk" I mean that live, work and die in an urban environment/educational environment, is that "industrialized" can't exist without a little thing called agriculture.
Agriculture is industrialized.
You mean the farmer couldn't survive without the city slicker to buy his stuff? That's a load of malarky, with fewer customers the would just grow less.
Also, yeah, just wanted to point out that that's exactly the opposite of what Inquisitor said. The farmers are the proletariat, the bourgeoise the city folk. But I think I'm seconding Inquisitor's correction.