74 replies to this topic

[vote_for_bush]

Lazarus Long = Individually we can "make a difference," together however we stand a much better chance. 
This is the real power of religion and politics, the reason I often remind people that all religion is politics and sadly as practiced, visa versa.

Well, at least you started off the sentence wonderfully. :-)


Politics and Religion are both 100% about making the world a better place.
Unfortunately some people want to condemn them without trying them for more than one selfish prayer or one uninformed vote.
Do you not like Right-wing Conservative Christian Republicans because we want to stop people from becoming addicted to drugs, porn, and entertainment when they could be saving the world from mass murderers that blow themselves up just to kill some random people in Israel because Jews had to move back to Jerusalem after 2000 years when people were killing them all over the world?
...or do you hate us for upholding the Ten Commandments like the Founding Fathers of the United States of America?
Why the opposition when there are so many worse things to oppose?
Frankly, with your supposed love of life, I'm suprised you all aren't Catholic or Southern Baptist.
I can only asume you are misunderstanding them because of the language barrier.
Have you really ever even taken the time to dig beneath the surface and learn what Christian leaders are trying to teach those 1,500,000,000 people?
We're trying to get to Heaven, wanna help? :-)

...or would you rather get a visit from Pastor Deacon Fred? :-)

Edited by vote_for_bush, 17 November 2003 - 02:10 AM.

[Bruce Klein]

*chuckle*

Heaven sounds nice.. but I'd like to make heaven on earth.

Are Godly ethics pro or anti Immortalism?

I choose the third (Null) choice in this poll... as I think we can work to bring people together by finding commonality in a fight against a common foe - death... it seems to me that wrangling over the past only distracts from creating a positive future.

[Bruce Klein]

Saw this on your custom page... quite funny

[Mind]

OK, so here is a list of the Ten Commandments (the catholic version...similar to most others)

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother

5. Thou shalt not kill.

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

7. Thou shalt not steal.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.


I would have to vote no on the first 3. The reason being that "vanity" is listed in the bible as one of the seven deadly sins, and in the words of Nietzsche "I cannot believe in a god that needs to be praised all the time."

4 through 8 seem reasonable. They are generally represented in the laws of most societies.

I would have to vote no on 9 & 10. While I would deem it wrong to steal your neighbors wife (if you yourself have entered into a voluntary contract with a woman/man of your own) or steal your neighbor's property, I do not see the problem with desiring them. If you like the look of your neighbor's car, just go out and buy one yourself.

Since their are only 2 options in the poll and I only favor half of the commandments...well...hmmm...er...I'll have to vote them down.

[Mind]

9. If you want to be immortal then you best not lok at my Hannah or you'll be eaten your balls for breakfast in Hell. Amen. :-)
10. I just heard on the news the other day about some guy dying over a car. Greed will getcha. Sure will.

9 & 10 are concerned with the act of covetting. If I look at someone, envy something, desire a person, but never do anything there is no harm done. It is only when there is action that the person "dies over a car" and those actions refer to commandments 4 through 8.

[Lazarus Long]

Politics and Religion are both 100% about making the world a better place.

Sadly this is an example of the problem, you see it does not follow from what I said nor is it anymore than wishful thinking, an assumption and neither proven by or derived from facts, it is not empirically or historically true in any case.

Politics and religion are only a smaller percentage about making the world a better place, they are BOTH one hundred percent about power. The physics of politics is the power of the will. How we find a divine aspect to identify with spirituality is predicated more on the application of will and a balance of love and hate than about any single set of authoritarian principles imposed by one generation upon another. How we balance our focus on love and hate determines the percent we are able to reach the abstract ideal described by you.

As I said elsewhere, the way both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche can be reconciled is through is the understanding that the Will to Love transcends and unites a Will to Life & Power. Together and combined with a Will to Love these can even transmute Hate. Transmute it well past blind ambition and biblical revenge into creation.

The Will to Love does not emanate from a divine source, it is found like a seed inside each of us, what can happen sometimes if we are very good at expressing this Will to Love is that it will resonate like ripples across society and on to larger and larger planes of awareness and in this manner find what you seek. The Will to Love may lead to a "divine understanding" in anyone, anywhere, of any ethnic background, creed, or culture, anytime.

Rules don't make us love, that may even be an oxymoron. You see the Will to Love is in constant struggle within us all with the Will to Hate. The Hate is far from divine and it is as much a part of politics and religion as speech and rules, as much a part of your speech often as any professed love. At the very best your intitial premise is a half truth; Politics and religion may both be fifty percent about making the world a better place. Because both manipulate both love and hate in the mass mind of man. Apparantly you seek to ignore the idea that it is the Will to Hate which leads to Death.

You ignore hate at your peril for it is by such ignorance that even angels fall.

[Lazarus Long]

Do you not like Right-wing Conservative Christian Republicans because we want to stop people from becoming addicted to drugs, porn, and entertainment when they could be saving the world from mass murderers that blow themselves up just to kill some random people in Israel because Jews had to move back to Jerusalem after 2000 years when people were killing them all over the world?

This is all false, from the idea that the means applied to the cause are more important than the result in the case of public behavior, to the self fulling apocalyptic prophecy of Zionist incompatibility with their Islamist breathren.

The Christian Conservative extremism is not about the cure it is about the profit from the means. The drug war is failure because logically it is not meant to succeed, it only manipulates fear and markets. If the Christian Right wanted solutions then they should have long ago given up on failed and counter productive methods. But you see all too many profit from those methods and those that profit resist change.

With respect to the Israel it is a sadder state as this violence need not happen but will continue till people remember there is no inherent contradiction between religions, only a conflict of the powers of the hierarchies that manipulate them.

[Lazarus Long]

...or do you hate us for upholding the Ten Commandments like the Founding Fathers of the United States of America?

Again false witness, I can only speak for myself but I do not hate you nor hold anything but esteem and love for the Founders of this Nation. I admire them in-spite of real flaws, I appreciate their wisdom even at the price it came by. But I seek to learn from them not copy them, nor especially their mistakes.

Yes many founders were religious folk, many were pacifists too. Many, until religious and political zealots came and manipulated fear, lived in harmony with the Native People. But the Ten Commandments are as inspirational to the founders like the Magna Carta was, maybe even less so. As a matter of fact both are far less a legal instrument than the Declaration of Independence which describes our spirit as a wellspring of law but nowhere is made canon.

[Lazarus Long]

Before I continue to dissect your flawed and somewhat self serving arguments I have some questions for you reverend.

If your Jesus reappeared this very moment right before you do you think he would claim to be a Christian?

A member of any particular extraction, sect, or creed?

Don't you think he would sound more than a little self serving if he did?

In fact how would you ever recognize your savior, because he survives your tests of sacrifice, acid, and fire?

How would you ever distinguish what you seek from that which you fear the most?

Isn't that at the core of your apocalyptic AntiChrist deception?

Perhaps Bush is the AntiChrist not a savior and perhaps you should think long and hard about your assumptions.

[advancedatheist]

About your poll:

(1) I don't understand why we're supposed to do what a god says.

(2) The Ten Commandments are superstitious. Telling us not to work on the sabbath, not to worship other gods (which implies that other gods exist!), not to make graven images and not to take some god's name in vain are intellectually on a par with saying, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back."

(3) The Ten Commandments set a rather low standard of conduct, since you can obey eight or nine of them by doing nothing. You have to exert yourself to steal, murder, commit adultery and so forth. By this standard, someone in a chronic vegetative state would be obeying them.

(4) We're forbidden to steal and covet, but we're not commanded to produce. We're forbidden to murder, but not commanded to preserve human life. We're forbidden to bear false witness, but not commanded to seek knowledge and the truth. We're forbidden to commit adultery, which is meaningless without a definition of "marriage."

(5) As I alluded up above, the Ten Commandments implicitly support polytheism. What are we supposed to do if another god, just as powerful as the first, comes along and gives us a different set of commandments?

[kevin]

The Ten Commandements are a series of 'thou shalt nots' because it is much easier to rule with fear than with reward. Leaders could NOT afford to 'reward' everyone for doing good. It was much more expedient and cheaper to rule with fear and actual punishment and promise the much more cheaply bought reward of a 'life in heaven'.

History shows that structured religions throughout time were largely a manufactured means of control using the universal desire to explain our mortality as its' currency. 'Thou shalt nots' were much easier to purchase than 'thou shalts' which explains why the rules codified by many religions come from that perspective.

[MichaelAnissimov]

A post was removed here because it contained bad language... please check the ImmInst forum guidelines before posting.

[outlawpoet]

The problem with the Ten Commandments is that only four are universally useful, one depends on a particular definition of marriage for application, and the rest are relatively fine points that depend on religious definitions of sin. So the Ten Commandments are hardly a complete axiomatic moral system.

In addition, the Ten Commandments are coercive rather than convincing in nature. They exist and function not because of their correctness but because of imposed authority. So they become swiftly less useful as belief in that authority degrades. This limitation also limits their moral basis. The logic of being a good person because someone else will hurt you if you don't borders on the ridiculous. Even if moral law could be imposed by authority, one would hope that authority would at least bother to appear moral.

Lastly, the Ten Commandments cannot be logically seperated from at least a weak form of Christianity. And there are no variants of Christianity without downsides. The primary downside is the neccesity for blind belief. Perhaps worse is the viral tendency for religious belief to poison objectivity and inquiry in order to ensure a place for itself. A large and horrible example of this is the phenomena misnamed as Christian Science, and all the unneccesary deaths caused thereof. A smaller individual example is the common misrepresentation of science as an ideology by many threatened theologians. And perhaps most damning is that religions have a tendency to lag some ten to fifteen years or more behind in areas of social justice, because of Churchly conservatism. It is harder to update viewpoints when they are both distributed and justified by Authority(of God) rather than argument. A few particularly egregious examples are the late adoption of racial equality by many churches, the continuing persecution of gay and transgendered individuals, and Continuing support of nasty memes like Deathism, Why Life Must Suck In Order to Be Meaningful, the naturalistic is-ought fallacy, and other obstructionist ideas.

And worst of all, religion contains no unique moral truths. Despite the popular identification of religion as a source of morality, I can name no church that champions rights or justice in a forum not pioneered by other more agile philosphies. In fact, religious morality has no advantage over perhaps the simplest modern moral system, a symmetrical respect for individual volition. So there is no advantage whatsoever in champion any religious system in terms of moral content, unless such a religion is neccesary for moral behavior, which is how religions justify themselves, generally. According to many religious theologians it is Impossible to be a moral person without accepting their religion. It is Neccesary. Again, justified by fiat, rather than demonstration.

I think it is clear we would derive no real advantage in popularizing the Ten Commandments, and engender very serious disadvantages. Even a severely out of date philosphy like simple humanism brings one closer to the forefront of moral theory. (complex or modern humanism is perhaps the best explored and defended theory, and I recommend it as a transitional point to transhumanism and beyond)

On the other hand, the poll uses the terminology "suppress". I think it is counterproductive, often, to crusade against religion, because it becomes a personal aggravation long before it becomes useful. One's arguments should focus on subjects in direct relationship with how much these subjects warp their holder into irrational behavior, as I've said before. There are generally many more illogical and unhelpful opinion one can help your friends divest themselves of, before you get to religion. That being said, sometimes you get to a point where avoiding presenting arguments further is just craven dishonesty. You have to put up or shut up at some point, if you really care about someone.

[outlawpoet]

Well, I was trying to address whether the Ten Commandments were helpful or not. It's not a useful system because it's very incomplete and comes with a lot of other baggage.

And if God did indeed create me to obey or burn in Hell, I would say yes, it would be better not to obey, because a God that intentionally subjects humans to such things is not someone you'd want to go along with. Since obviously the personage is disturbed, sadistic, or doesn't have your best interests at heart.

It's silly to have rules that depend on social conventions that aren't always so. Not everyone subscribes to the same kind of marriage. Some societies don't even have formal marriage. So why have a basic level moral law that addresses a special case? that seems irrational.

[thefirstimmortal]

...or do you hate us for upholding the Ten Commandments like the Founding Fathers of the United States of America?

...or would you rather get a visit from Pastor Deacon Fred? :-)

Despite your claims about our forefathers, the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion with a vision to spread the gospel and the 10 commandments to the world.

The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson, not a one had
professed a belief in Christianity....

[thefirstimmortal]

"As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..."
Treaty with Tripoli (signed 1797, approved by President George Washington, signed into law by President John Adams)

[thefirstimmortal]

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no
other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power
and profit.
-- Thomas Paine, (1737-1809), The Age of Reason, pt. 1, "The Author's Profession of Faith"

[thefirstimmortal]

Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of
tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and
seeks to pursue us into eternity.
-- as quoted by Thomas Paine

[thefirstimmortal]

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
Thomas Paine

[thefirstimmortal]

The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from
the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of
religion ever set up.
George Washington

[thefirstimmortal]

Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
-Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"

[thefirstimmortal]

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." Jefferson

[thefirstimmortal]

"And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter."
Jefferson- letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

[thefirstimmortal]

The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Superstition gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. John Adams

[outlawpoet]

An interesting set of quotations, to be sure, TFI. I wonder, if I could impose on you to format your quotations within a single post. I love all the data you're adding, but dislike scrolling so much, since my screen is pretty small.

particularly excellent John Adams quote at the end, I shall have to steal it.

[thefirstimmortal]

The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods.
John Adams

[thefirstimmortal]

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." Jefferson

[thefirstimmortal]

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." James Madison-"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

[thefirstimmortal]

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church." "The Age of Reason" (1793)Thomas Paine

[thefirstimmortal]

"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did." Ben Franklin