Clayton: It's good to be skeptical. Your examples don't show why there is a problem, only religion is a problem as it is the opposite of skepticism. I apologize if I begin to sound like a broken record pointing this out, but it's important to distinguish between the narrow, Western Christian Inquisitional conception of "religion" versus the wider social phenomenon of religion. While religion has played an enabling role in most State orders, so have many other social institutions (e.g. finance) and it is a grave mistake to single religion out for special punishment as if it is the key enabler of the State (ala Zeitgeist). There is nothing inherently aggressive or coercive about spinning yarns of the deeds of great deities or gathering to engage in worship rituals or meditation and prayer or liturgy or the reading and writing of spiritual books which is what comprises the vast majority of religious activity. Even the superstitious aspects of religions get a bad rap. Superstition is just a coping mechanism when no better explanation is known for something. If people get sick and die whenever they are around dead bodies, what is "wrong" with suggesting that, perhaps, there are evil spirits hanging around dead bodies and it's best to stay away? Sure, it may be a factually incorrect explanation but, from the point of view of human ends, it gets the job done and that's all that really counts in the end. And it's not like educated modernity has dispelled superstition - just look at the Parenting Industrial Complex (as Steven Pinker has rightly called it), it's the outgrowth of white, Western hand-wringing nanny psychology and is mostly a sophisticated, scientific-looking complex of superstitions and other bullshit. Clayton -
It's good to be skeptical. Your examples don't show why there is a problem, only religion is a problem as it is the opposite of skepticism.
I apologize if I begin to sound like a broken record pointing this out, but it's important to distinguish between the narrow, Western Christian Inquisitional conception of "religion" versus the wider social phenomenon of religion. While religion has played an enabling role in most State orders, so have many other social institutions (e.g. finance) and it is a grave mistake to single religion out for special punishment as if it is the key enabler of the State (ala Zeitgeist). There is nothing inherently aggressive or coercive about spinning yarns of the deeds of great deities or gathering to engage in worship rituals or meditation and prayer or liturgy or the reading and writing of spiritual books which is what comprises the vast majority of religious activity.
Even the superstitious aspects of religions get a bad rap. Superstition is just a coping mechanism when no better explanation is known for something. If people get sick and die whenever they are around dead bodies, what is "wrong" with suggesting that, perhaps, there are evil spirits hanging around dead bodies and it's best to stay away? Sure, it may be a factually incorrect explanation but, from the point of view of human ends, it gets the job done and that's all that really counts in the end. And it's not like educated modernity has dispelled superstition - just look at the Parenting Industrial Complex (as Steven Pinker has rightly called it), it's the outgrowth of white, Western hand-wringing nanny psychology and is mostly a sophisticated, scientific-looking complex of superstitions and other bullshit.
Clayton -
Don't really have the time right now to get into all of this (maybe later, if you want), but I hope you see that what you just wrote, as a defense of religion, is a very very weak one.
Religion actually is an aggression, it is an aggression against the rational mind of human beings. In the case of children, it is far worse to break their minds than to break their legs.
Beh, I only believe in physical aggression. Lying to children is not a crime, sorry. Kids are not 'special'.
Yeah, this is the Dawkinsian thesis. I don't have much to say in response except that you're clearly equivocating on the definition of the word "aggression."
I like the old atheists better, anyway.
But while we're at it, why don't we make sure to keep tabs on everything parents say to their children, and then BUST them in the face when they don't pass the standards of our free speech board.
Or not.
I don't understand how you could call religion "aggression" and not ny other custom, ethic, habit. If anything you can just speculate it will fad away when it becomes increasingly more untenable/ costly/ ignored all of which may very well go hand in hand with a "realized" market mentality. Either way discussions/ speculations like these are semi-worthless to comical.
Ricky James Moore II: Beh, I only believe in physical aggression. Lying to children is not a crime, sorry. Kids are not 'special'.
Suppose someone would mentally torture their child into a deep depression to the point of suicide, but they wouldn't ever strike them. Crime or not crime*?
* this requires that I know how you believe crimes ought to be dealt with.
Not a crime. A-hole thing to do, but oh well.
Ricky James Moore II:Not a crime. A-hole thing to do, but oh well.
You guys are going down the wrong rabbit whole. You have to ask yourself how criminality is defined. What legal agencies are subscribed to at the tim of the incident?
People under contract can be confined by various statuates, I am talking about in a natural circumstance where you haven't made any specific agreements about what norms you will abide by; which is really all that libertarian legal theory is concerned with since any arbitrary and crazy 'laws' can theoretically be agreed to by contracted right.
Even more to the point, what would other (extended) family members do about it? Note that the idea of parents torturing their children is about 99.9% myth since we are not the descendants of those who tortured their children (unless you want to make the case that torture somehow increases a child's chances of surviving and reproducing), so this is all castles-in-the-air bullshit to begin with. But given that we are dealing with sociopathic parents who have no empathy for their children, the first line of defense provided by Nature is the extended family, not the State, not Richard Dawkins, not even PDAs or anarcho-capitalist courts.
not Richard Dawkins
lol.
Clayton: Note that the idea of parents torturing their children is about 99.9% myth since we are not the descendants of those who tortured their children (unless you want to make the case that torture somehow increases a child's chances of surviving and reproducing), so this is all castles-in-the-air bullshit to begin with.
Note that the idea of parents torturing their children is about 99.9% myth since we are not the descendants of those who tortured their children (unless you want to make the case that torture somehow increases a child's chances of surviving and reproducing), so this is all castles-in-the-air bullshit to begin with.
So because you survive and have sex it's wasn't mental torture?
Re: 99.9% myth.
1.
In North America, for example, approximately 15% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men were sexually abused when they were children.[11][12][13] Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as 'friends' of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.[11] Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; studies show that women commit 14% to 40% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls.[11][12][14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
2.
This really doesn't bother me. Saving the world = boring.
Nielsio,
If there are people who need religion as a coping mechanism to have a "near perfectly rational" mind, would you have these people destroyed in order to eliminate religion?
I went through an athiest phase and almost went insane when I realized that in that context right and wrong was just a matter of opinion. I don't understand why athiests don't become nihilistic hedonists. It's just not rational to care when there is no ultimate cause for anything.
Giant_Joe: Nielsio, If there are people who need religion as a coping mechanism to have a "near perfectly rational" mind, would you have these people destroyed in order to eliminate religion?
Huh? I've advocated nothing of the sort. The way to deal with religion is through science.
Wrong is that set of actions which are discretely anti-society. We have a society (division of production and property rights) because it benefits us. Discretely anti-societal actions are theft, murder, rape, etc. They hurt society.
So it's very rational to care about wrongs. If nobody would care about wrongs, we'd all be dead very soon.
The only real cause are your own values. Worshipping some being (imaginary or not) is not a life worth living.
What is beautiful is the world around you. Open your eyes.
Clayton: Note that the idea of parents torturing their children is about 99.9% myth since we are not the descendants of those who tortured their children (unless you want to make the case that torture somehow increases a child's chances of surviving and reproducing), so this is all castles-in-the-air bullshit to begin with. So because you survive and have sex it's wasn't mental torture?
You're not comprehending what I wrote. Go back and read it again, carefully. Are you familiar with evolutionary arguments?
Re: 99.9% myth. 1. In North America, for example, approximately 15% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men were sexually abused when they were children.[11][12][13] Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as 'friends' of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.[11] Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; studies show that women commit 14% to 40% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls.[11][12][14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
I would like to see how much of that 30% are one of the biological parents. I'll quote Kanazawa and Miller from their book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters on the related subject of parents killing their children:
"At first sight, it appears that killing children makes no sense from the evolutionary psychological perspective, which emphasizes reproductive success. Why would parents kill their own children? [Martin] Daly and [Margo] Wilson have two answers to this question. The first answer is that they don't. Daly and Wilson discovered that what often passes as parents killing their children in police statistics is actually stepfathers killing their stepchildren, who do not carry their genes. It looks as though biological parents are killing their genetic children in the statistics because the police, uninformed by Darwinian logic, make no distinction between biological parents and stepparents in their record keeping. Biological parents very seldom kill their genetic children.
Their second answer to the question is that sometimes parents have to make tough choices. All parents, even wealthy ones, have limited resources to invest in their children. Every dollar, every minute, every effort that they invest in one child is another dollar, another minute, another effort that they cannot invest in other children. Their evolved psychological mechanisms therefore compel them to invest most efficiently, which usually means that they invest more in children who have the greatest prospect for reproductive success, at the cost of other children whose reproductive prospect is gloomier." [Emphasis added]
I suspect that a diligent search of the records in the case of sex abuse would turn up similar results since having sex with your Dad is not a very good strategy for a woman's reproductive success. The argument that "she's a minor, she can't fight back" doesn't really matter since nature will have worked around the problem in other ways (for example, mama-bear protection of daughters or whatever).
Yes, I've watched this video. I will repeat, saying that Jesus Camp is aggression against children is equivocating on the meaning of the word aggression.
* Excerpt from Chapter 6 "Guys Gone Wild", pp. 119-120
Wrong is that set of actions which are discretely anti-society. We have a society (division of production and property rights) because it benefits us.
So what if it's wrong? I'll do it and get away with it. In this framework, I really don't see why I should serve society if I can be better off by not serving it. What's the point of spending hours and hours of one's life to promote some idea that might make society better if the likelihood of it happening as a result of their efforts is zero? Isn't their time better spent serving themselves and not society? What about brilliant people who are able to get away with criminal activity? Why should they "co-operate" with society if it benefits them more not to?
Selfishness causes people to be immoral. Does this even matter to the nihilist?
I suppose with no dogma, people have no point from which to make sense of the world.
So what if it's wrong? I'll do it and get away with it. In this framework, I really don't see why I should serve society if I can be better off by not serving it.
You'd be an idiot if you didn't. Technically, it is impossible. You can't act contrary to your subjective self-interest.
Actually, that doesn't even make sense to the nihilist/egoist. Everyone is always selfish (they just lie to themselves or believe nonsense) and nothing is 'moral' or 'immoral'.
Nonsense. You don't need to believe in magical floating values to do what you want. Everything you do is ultimately up to you. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' a priori. Oh well, deal with it.
I pretty much agree with what you've said, Ricky. I'm just confused by militant anti-theism by some libertarians. Isn't it a bit un-libertarian to be against something that's largely a cultural thing/coping mechanism that people could choose to not be a part of? I just don't see where the NAP or contracts are violated because some people in some other community have faith in a religion.
Well, the militant anti-theism comes from the Secular Humanist Left which dominates modern Euro-American culture. Ironically, the main reason they hate more mainline Christians is that they are basically another sect of Christianity and are having doctrinal squabbles as per usual. Their Millinarian dogmatism and obsession with heresy hunting (everyone is a racist/theocrat/fascist/sexist) puts the Baptists to shame.
I think theism is incredibly stupid and not a position worthy of any philosophical consideration (in fact, I consider it a non-position); but if people want to believe in crazy nonsense that is their problem.
Clayton: Clayton: Note that the idea of parents torturing their children is about 99.9% myth since we are not the descendants of those who tortured their children (unless you want to make the case that torture somehow increases a child's chances of surviving and reproducing), so this is all castles-in-the-air bullshit to begin with. So because you survive and have sex it's wasn't mental torture? You're not comprehending what I wrote. Go back and read it again, carefully.
Are you familiar with evolutionary arguments?
Re: 99.9% myth. 1. In North America, for example, approximately 15% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men were sexually abused when they were children.[11][12][13] Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as 'friends' of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.[11] Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; studies show that women commit 14% to 40% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls.[11][12][14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse I would like to see how much of that 30% are one of the biological parents. I'll quote Kanazawa and Miller from their book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters on the related subject of parents killing their children: "At first sight, it appears that killing children makes no sense from the evolutionary psychological perspective, which emphasizes reproductive success. Why would parents kill their own children? [Martin] Daly and [Margo] Wilson have two answers to this question. The first answer is that they don't. Daly and Wilson discovered that what often passes as parents killing their children in police statistics is actually stepfathers killing their stepchildren, who do not carry their genes. It looks as though biological parents are killing their genetic children in the statistics because the police, uninformed by Darwinian logic, make no distinction between biological parents and stepparents in their record keeping. Biological parents very seldom kill their genetic children. Their second answer to the question is that sometimes parents have to make tough choices. All parents, even wealthy ones, have limited resources to invest in their children. Every dollar, every minute, every effort that they invest in one child is another dollar, another minute, another effort that they cannot invest in other children. Their evolved psychological mechanisms therefore compel them to invest most efficiently, which usually means that they invest more in children who have the greatest prospect for reproductive success, at the cost of other children whose reproductive prospect is gloomier." [Emphasis added] I suspect that a diligent search of the records in the case of sex abuse would turn up similar results since having sex with your Dad is not a very good strategy for a woman's reproductive success. The argument that "she's a minor, she can't fight back" doesn't really matter since nature will have worked around the problem in other ways (for example, mama-bear protection of daughters or whatever).
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac] Yes, I've watched this video. I will repeat, saying that Jesus Camp is aggression against children is equivocating on the meaning of the word aggression. Clayton - * Excerpt from Chapter 6 "Guys Gone Wild", pp. 119-120
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac]
So what if it's wrong? I'll do it and get away with it.
That's what everyone says. They're almost always wrong.
In this framework, I really don't see why I should serve society if I can be better off by not serving it.
I think this is the logic underlying the moral pragmatism that most statists hold. The police officer may be vaguely aware that, in some sense, his paycheck is collected coercively but then, why should he care? He may not even "believe" in the system of coercive collection of his paycheck but he can be paid this way, so why not?
What's the point of spending hours and hours of one's life to promote some idea that might make society better if the likelihood of it happening as a result of their efforts is zero? Isn't their time better spent serving themselves and not society?
I think you're sensing the root problem with collectivism... of course you should spend your time bettering yourself because you can't know how to better society in any case.
What about brilliant people who are able to get away with criminal activity? Why should they "co-operate" with society if it benefits them more not to?
Well, I think that's precisely why States exist... they keep winning at what they're doing, why the hell should they quit?
I'm not so sure that the link between selfishness and immorality is as strong as the Catholic worldview would suggest.
Giant_Joe: Wrong is that set of actions which are discretely anti-society. We have a society (division of production and property rights) because it benefits us. So what if it's wrong? I'll do it and get away with it. In this framework, I really don't see why I should serve society if I can be better off by not serving it.
You're begging the question. What makes one happy? Personally, I find great hapiness in helping other individuals and society at large. The insight that certain actions are detrimental to other individuals and society at large greatly repels me from doing them. The knowledge of having done those actions would cause me personal unhapiness to a great degree; to the point of damaging my capacity to have positive emotional joy.
You must have heard of post traumatic stress disorder.
It's dogma that prevents you from making sense of the world.
Wish this forum had rep points! This is awesome!
I am an agnostic theist, meaning, that I reserve a vague, back-of-the-mind angst regarding the ultimate reason that anything exists rather than nothing. The idea that the universe exists at the behest of an intentional being of some sort is no worse an explanation than any of the others out there.
Giant Joe, who says there can't be right or wrong in an atheistic worldview? You're providing reasons apart from theology as to why having rules in society is a "good" thing (and "good" could be irreducible). This is/ought burden of proof on the theistic side is never met because they assume "God has a prerrogative to assign moral value." Says who? "Well he just does." Okay, why should I do what God tells me to? Answer #1: "Well that's a silly question, in essence what you're asking is 'why should I do what I should do?'" Answer #2: "Because he'll torture you forever if you don't."
Answer #1 makes a little sense, but there is no reason as to why this couldn't be the case given atheism. Yeah, some people are going to get away with killing others. I guess that means we should make a better effort to protect ourselves and enact justice in this world. And I'm even closer to Ricky James Moore on this particular topic, but it has nothing to do with my atheism. I just think the Argument From Morality is an atrocious one on so many levels. Ideal Observer Theory works perfectly in a Godless universe, if morality is to exist objectively and ontologically. The problem is that the theistic side (a la Greg Koukal / William Lane Craig) in this debate is being, for lack of a better word, obtuse.
I did comprehend what you wrote. Surviving and having sex causes offspring. This in no way disproves that mental torture (and other forms of abuse) goes on. Religious people tend to have a lot of offspring, actually.
OK, but you're still not comprehending what I wrote. I said we are not the descendants of people who tortured their children. In fact, quite the opposite, we are the descendants of people who meticulously - even self-sacrificially - cared for their children.
There are two significant things you're missing about this statement. First, it is a statement about "us" and "our ancestors", that is, it is not a statement about any individuals then or now or individual bloodlines. So, sure, there can be exceptions to the rule... the children who managed to survive the torture and go on to have children of their own and (likely) pass on the genetic disposition for child-torture. Second, it is a statement about genetic dispositions but we are (obviously) not determined by our genetics, so the mild-mannered, passive person can commit murder in the right circumstances, for example. Nevertheless, the statement still stands unless you want to make the case that torture enhances survival.
Now, I had originally responded to a statement in one of your earlier posts that suggested that child abuse and torture is relatively common. It is this suggestion - the idea that child abuse is common, not that child abuse occurs - that is the myth and is easily disproved by the above evolutionary argument. Until just 250 years ago, the average human being lived at the subsistence level, on the equivalent of about $2/day in modern terms (Steven Landsburg explains this in his book More Sex is Safer Sex and in an online Slate article on the subject). The children of child abusers and neglecters would be at a massive survival disadvantage vis-a-vis their peers in loving, caring homes parented by self-sacrificial parents, all things equal*.
As for "mental torture", I plead ignorance. I don't know what "mental torture" is. I suppose there may be a case to be made that certain forms of education and indoctrination are bad for a child but, again, I think this is something that should be argued out by family members who actually have an interest in the welfare of a child on a case-by-case basis, not decided by the hoary head of Richard Dawkins for all of society. I think part of the problem in this discussion is that you seem to think that Jesus Camp is common in the US and elsewhere... it's not, it's a really fringe thing.
*This ceteris paribus is crucially important because explaining a lot of the abuse that really does occur within the family context relies on looking long and hard at the sometimes perverse reproductive incentives facing parents versus the interests of their children. For example, a parent may be better off (from a Darwinian point of view) abandoning his almost grown child to mate with a healthy, young woman who doesn't want any step-children around. Two healthy children by her will give him more grandchildren than continuing to invest in previous child. These dynamics are explored in the book I referenced earlier by Kanazawa and Miller, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMzwAEI56-4
This will probably give Nielsio a heart attack but I just find it funny as hell. And a little cute. It definitely is a commentary on the vapidity of this kind of religion.
Giant Joe, who says there can't be right or wrong in an atheistic worldview?
Anyone who is not an apologist, pretty much. Will Provine, Max Stirner, Sidney Parker, L.A. Rollins, John Beverly Robison, Benjamin Tucker, James L. Walker, Dora Marsden, John Henry Mackay, Richard Joyce, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong and J.L. Mackie - just off the top of my head. And let's not forget Harry Browne and Ludwig von Mises. Though they doesn't really address it, Anthony de Jasay and - to some extent - Jan Narveson also fit as moral non-cognitivists. I also strongly suspect James J. Martin was an moral nihilist. Given this spread, it would look like the Rothbardians, Randites and religious nutters are the odd-men out in libertarianism and atheism.
Sinnot-Armstrong's work is particularly interesting because it demonstrates dozens of arguments, none of which have been successfully addressed by moralists; and argues that even if almost every argument against morality were wrong there is still strong reason to doubt that there is any truth to morality.
Morality is a religious concept. Mores exist, morality does not. Ethos exist, ethics do not. Virtu exists, virtue does not. All of this rights and wrongs is just a bunch of hand-wavy rhetoric to convince tools to do things they have no logical reason to do.
Clayton,
You're making a mistake similar to Hoppe's. You're jumping to biological evolution when psychological evolution is where you should be looking at.
The Childhood Origins of World War II And The Holocaust http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/06_childhoodOrigins.html
and
http://www.psychohistory.com/
http://freedomainradio.com/FreeBooks/Psychohistory.aspx
Giant_Joe:In this framework, I really don't see why I should serve society if I can be better off by not serving it.
And indeed, that would be the rational choice.
Giant_Joe:Why should they "co-operate" with society if it benefits them more not to?
They shouldn't and anyone who claims they should, is trying to impose some objective set of values on that person. All appeals to "society" fail the smell test of methodological individualism.
Nielsio:The only real cause are your own values.
This ^^, contradicts
Nielsio:Worshipping some being (imaginary or not) is not a life worth living.
this ^^.
Nielsio:What is beautiful is the world around you. Open your eyes.
If you could get beyond your anti-religion, anti-theist bias you might really benefit, assuming you can muster an open mind, from Gerard Casey's Lou Church lecture a year ago. You worship, it's just a different mental abstraction, and just as subjective as any other. No better or worse.
Ricky James, yeah I'm aware of them and their arguments. I'm not really sold either way, although I would classify myself tenatively as a Nietzschean. I just think there are defensible views supporting morality on atheism. Not right per se, but defensible. Craigians and Christian apologists (about every one of them sans Swinburne I think) I don't think make the case that objective morality exists given theism but not given atheism. Their standard of reasoning for morality on atheism is much more taxing and persnickety than the standards they grant themselves while defending theistic morality. That's why I can't stand that particular argument.
Well, I don't believe theistic morality makes any sense, either. God can be some kind of all-seeing hangman, but he can't change the laws of logic or subjectivity.
Without derailing the thread, I thought I'd pose a quesiton to Ricky in light of his thoughts of morality as mere sophistry and illusion: Is it because the claim to self-evidence is futile? Is it because you're a nominalist? Is it because you're a materialist?
After that, what are the laws of logic and what sort of being do they have?
It's because I'm a radical subjectivist. Value only exists in relation to actual values of a specific individual, and these only relate to the world according to ideas he has about how to act on those values; whether he is correct or not doesn't change this in the slightest. The idea of value or good apart from my value and things I perceive as goods is an abuse of language; and the idea of some 'imperative' floating out there apart from whatever exists within the bounded rationality of a real person is just blatant ignorance of subjectivity.
No amount of sophistry and moralizing can ever get over the 'if I don't care, I have no reason to do it'. Reasons are always an individual's reasons; physical objects exist whether a person is aware of them or not; imperatives consist of a person wanting to do something.
The laws of logic and materialism have nothing to do with it, but the laws of logic are just non-precisive abstractions about being in general. Anything that was not non-contradictory would not count as real, or as a thought, or as a proposition.
That being said I don't consider everything usually classed as moral philosophy to be useless or meaningless, I just hold it to be substantially more contingent and hypothetical rather than moral. I'm an Epicurean, not because I believe in eudaemonia, but because I think Epicureans are more or less correct in how to achieve what they aim at, and what they aim at is more or less appealing.
Clayton, You're making a mistake similar to Hoppe's. You're jumping to biological evolution when psychological evolution is where you should be looking at.
I know what DNA is. I don't know what a meme is. While there is something to Dawkins' memetics - ideas are repeated, they change over time and they even influence the behavior of their host brains - I think the idea is pretty vague because what an idea is is so vague. Evolutionary psychologists use the criterion of "culturally universal behavior" to filter through the vast array of culturally-conditioned human behavior to find those behaviors which we can reasonably conclude are down to genetic disposition, I see no similar criterion in memetics.
Also, I don't see how you can just conclude, like that, that it's "a mistake". On what basis do you judge it to be a mistake to look at how evolution impacts human behavior??
Virtu exists, virtue does not
Which is why I like the concept of the Hellenistic word "arete" a littile better. Also good call on Dora Marsden, it is sad she is almost forgotten (I have not been able to fing "The Definition of the Godhead anywhere yet though).
While I wouldn't say that Jesus camp is an agression per se (I define it as positive action), but it is surely a mental torture. Nielso has a point here.
P.S. there is a good word, passive agression. I think that could be applied to jesus camp.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Ricky James Moore II: Capitalism = economy. There is no alternative to capitalism as an economy. Anyone who denies this is just plain ignorant.
Capitalism = economy. There is no alternative to capitalism as an economy. Anyone who denies this is just plain ignorant.
Not only is that hilariously untrue,it's ironic given the word's historic usage.
I don't really want to comment or read anything here.I have near zero in common with many of you.I may return periodically when there's something you need to know.
Near Mutualist/Libertarian Socialist.
Scott F: Ricky James Moore II: Capitalism = economy. There is no alternative to capitalism as an economy. Anyone who denies this is just plain ignorant. Not only is that hilariously untrue,it's ironic given the word's historic usage.
While I don't agree with RJM, I see where he is coming from. I think it would be more acurate to say that Capitalism = Markets, and that economy is just witnessing and studying of markets.
However the reason why I want to respond here is to ask you Scott. Please don't let historical lingo influence you so easily. Simply because the communists used Capitalism in a defamatory way, doesn't mean it's defamatory. Any group of individuals could start using any word they want in a derogatory way. In fact people do this in slang, and we generally acknowledge it a very poor way of intillectually getting your message across.
Even though capitalism was used in a defamatory way histoircally, and even in it's origins, it is really inconsequential. The definition most widely adopted today is entirely compatible, entirely relevant, and really is the best word to be employed when describing a privately directed economy.