is the pope a catholic?
I just re-read this post and the comments to it. It was an interesting discussion. Pity not too may people actually got what I was trying to say. Must be my fault...
Maybe one day when I can recover some mental equilibrium I'll try to explain it better.
There's a form of secular fundamentalist extremism loose on this planet which won't be happy until its morals are the only "valid" ones surviving. Make no mistake about it, it is fundamentalist and extremist in nature. And it's covert. It doesn't like to be exposed.
Most of its followers have no idea what they've signed up for, but they agree on one thing: Only they are right. Only their values are the right ones. Anyone who has different values is automatically wrong and to be dismissed or even vilified and despised.
Doesn't that sound like fundamentalism and extremism to you? Are you sure I'm not talking about you?
You know I'm wrong whenever I carry on like that, but why are you so blind to the fact that you do it too? Yes, you!!!
Now fuck off and don't think any more about it...
Go on! Fuck off! You make me sick!!!
Maybe one day when I can recover some mental equilibrium I'll try to explain it better.
There's a form of secular fundamentalist extremism loose on this planet which won't be happy until its morals are the only "valid" ones surviving. Make no mistake about it, it is fundamentalist and extremist in nature. And it's covert. It doesn't like to be exposed.
Most of its followers have no idea what they've signed up for, but they agree on one thing: Only they are right. Only their values are the right ones. Anyone who has different values is automatically wrong and to be dismissed or even vilified and despised.
Doesn't that sound like fundamentalism and extremism to you? Are you sure I'm not talking about you?
You know I'm wrong whenever I carry on like that, but why are you so blind to the fact that you do it too? Yes, you!!!
Now fuck off and don't think any more about it...
Go on! Fuck off! You make me sick!!!
posted by The Editor at
10:25 AM
12 Comments:
Please, say a few more words, oh bearly bearable sage: How do we recognize this secualar fundamentalism in others? What are its symptoms? Would it include, for instance, a blanketing intolerance in pronouncements or more active measures against all forms and practioners of various religions? Would it be a failure to ever qualify an anti-religious remark or to note any good that has come of religion?
Or is it a smugness in declaring that cannot be known with certainty may be denied with finality?
Ya gotta say more because I am too darn lazy to go back and read the linked post.
"Bearly bearable? I am bearable in a bear sort of way? I like that. Welocme back GS. Just when I'm convincing myself that everyone has rightly deserted this blog, you come back from vacation and deposit four pearls of wisdom. I am honoured.
It is exactly as you say. I whish I had access such eloquence. Envy grips my throat and chokes me shitless. I am forever doomed to writing Vogon poetry.
But it is not limited to what you say, GS. Another of their stunts is to peddle the word "amoral". They are "amoral". This is a load of horseshit and when I finally figure out which logical fallacy they are employing I will give it a more apt label.
They attack, for instance, a morality which holds that abortion is wrong, yet they refuse to admit that to say that abortion OK is not also a moral stance, albeit an opposite one.
Two opposing sets of morals. The adherents of each side believing absolutely in the rightness of theirs and vilifying those who sit on the opposite side. Each blaming the other for the world's woes. Each side utterly full of shit whilst it seeks to destroy the other.
Don't for a minute believe that those tricky, obfuscating, equivocating anti-god (anti-soul, anti-spirit, anti-everything which can't be measured by their "logic" or their instruments) people are in any way agnostic.
And they like to wear the cloak of "science". They pretend to be "scientifc" whilst breaking the cardinal rule of science (i.e. she who makes the assertion must be able to prove its validity) to adopt a "scientifically" gnostic postion.
They are wankers in possession of sophistry which blinds their followers.
Sings, "wankers to the left of me, wankers to the right of me, stuck in the middle with you..."
I've given up expecting anything sensible from them. They are as full of it as those they oppose.
Do you think I could learn from this also, GS? But who do I oppose?
As an agsnostic, I have no idea whether the spiritual realm is "real" or "non-existent", or, if it is real, which particular "reality" is the "real" one. And I will not fall into the trap of assuming that therefore none of it can be "real".
Therefore who am I to invailidate their beliefs?
As a wannabe scientist I assert that science has nothing to say about this because it is outside the realm of science. To say therefore that science infers that there is no god, no spirituality, no soul, etc, is another wank.
Believers in the Big Three, claim "God said..." when there is not one iota of empirical proof that God even exists.
Believers in the non-existence of God get cocky because there is not one iota of empirical proof that God exists. Yet the fail to add that "emirical proof" is an oxymoron in the realm of the non-physical. And that is their shell-game stunt. They are just as much fraudsters at a sideshow fleecing the gullible as those on the other side of the Great Spiritual Divide.
Sitting on the ridgeline are a few true agnostics and an equally small number of buddhist masters. And the agnostics are starting to eye the buddhists off with a bit of a query...
Is this good enough, GS?
Quite clear now, Gerry.
My study group, which convened for readings of Talmudic wisdom literature nearly 20 years ago, is chewing on William James "Varieties of Religious Experience" these days. I am digesting the second chapter in preparation for my turn presenting the material. You might, if you have time, find James' effort interesting. A quote from Lecture II:
The theorizing mind tends always
to the oversimplification of its
materials. This is the root of
all that absolutism and one-sided
dogmatism by which both
philosophy and religion have been
infested."
Personally, I quibble with James' assertions despite his cautious phrasing, on almost every page.
I can point to nothing more substantial than a hunch, an intuition that (as you put it) "the spiritual realm" IS non-existent. But I can barely put this suspicion in words. And even if I had a convincing explanation...it would still leave us where we all stand now: putative mechanisms by which the universe demonstrates or demands moral behavior are not readily discernable and it all comes down to the view of the individual whether or not to give a damn about darning the holes in the frayed world or just grabbing one last piece of cake for himself before the lights go out.
GS, you once said that I make you think. Well, you make me work damn hard! (And that's a GOOD thing... :-)
Your comment has nicely Segwayed (from the verb "to scoot along on a Segway") us into my final comment on the problem I have with atheism which will become my next blog post.
On oversimplification: At what point does the application of Occam's Razor become the heinous crime of oversimplification?
I think the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle has a lot going for it. It all depends where, how, or why one is simplifying as to whether or not that then becomes OVERsimplification.
I, for one, due to my own intellectual failings, have not the wherewithall to read or digest long reams of dissertation which might perhaps be easily boiled down to a few paragraphs.
I think things get a bit prolix when one tries to cover all possible angles of something in any one given work. This may be fine for academic tomes (where one is, after all judged on how MUCH one writes), but may not be all that useful in blogging or at afternoon tea parties.
Another problem I have is the endless hair-splitting, the subdivision of a philosphical position into a myriad of substrata merely for the purpose of not having to fess up to where one stands philosophically (see next post) And if necessary, an endless stream of neologisms is created for no discernable purpose other than to equivocate and obfuscate about some very basic topic.
It seems as if, rather than be nailed down anywhere, the modern "philospher", utters the magic words "Not necessarily..." and then proceeds to escape (exit stage left), never having declared a particlarly disadvantageous position, by uttering a steaming pile of meretricious sophistry.
But I may be wrong. It may just be my own stupidity...
Now, back to my heinous "oversimplification":
You said "putative mechanisms by which the universe demonstrates or demands moral behavior are not readily discernable and it all comes down to the view of the individual whether or not to give a damn about darning the holes in the frayed world or just grabbing one last piece of cake for himself before the lights go out."
I was saying nothing about any universe "demonstrating or demanding" moral behaviour. Nor was I making any comment about whether we should try to save the world or ourselves. You seem to have misunderstood, old chap.
Here, let me explain. Again... (I'll keep it real simple here, GS.) ;-)
[1] Morals and values are merely the right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse kind of judgements people make about a given behaviour.
[2] We all make them all of the time, or we would not be exhibiting any "behaviour" whatsoever. We'd be catatonic.
[3] The fundamentalist extremist asserts that only their personal morals/values are ones by which everyone should live. Everyone else is wrong and must be dismissed, attacked, or vilified. It is either egocentric or blindly tribalist in nature, depending on the thought informing the behaviour i.e. selfish thought = egocentricity; no thought = default to the individual's tribal identification. (Go on, ask me what I mean by "tribal identification".) My point is that secularists (usually those powered by atheism) are not exempt from this kind of thinking.
I'm sorry, GS, I can't say it simpler than that without going into the realm of oversimplification. I hope this was not too prolix. ;-)
I fancy I completely understand your point #3 but a red flag went up on point #1: ...merely the right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse kind of judgements...
nothing "mere" about judgment, even though it seems as commonplace as drawing breath.
Bluey, no, have not heard of Father Bob. But I do acknowledge that Catholicism does occasionally throw up a few social activists. But they're more the exception, than the rule.
About "social capitalism", I think the good Father has lost the plot. "Social capitalism" is an oxymoron, or there's something I have failed to understand about the psycopathic nature of The Corporation.
Sorry, Bluey, I thought you knew... Although I once killed a few Vietnamese on behalf capitalist imperialism, I no longer have one good word to say about it. Time you read my blog PROPERLY, boy!
GreenSmile, you may well say there is nothing "mere" about judgement. but you weasel out of the issue. Tell us, please do, how one can arrive at ideas of right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse without having made some form of judgement calls in order to arrive there?
Waiting...
Bluey, you and I have a very different understandings of the terms "capitalism" and "free enterprise". You, I feel use the terms the way that the American propagandists use them. Next you'll be telling me how wonderful and imperative it is that we install our "democracy" all over the world...
[cold shiver]
As to the rest of your comment. I think this link may provide you with tens of wonderfully enlightening hours of reading. Maybe even for Father Bob. And then both of you will know why capitalism will ALWAYS grow into a monster. Communist and socialist phiolophers have been pointing this out for more than a hundred and fifty years now, it's only those (most of us in the Western world) who have been benfiting from the exploitation and subjugation inherent in capitalism who have been happily and blindly singing its praises...
And now of course we've become so addicted to our corrupt lifestyle (based absolutely on the exploitation and subjugation of others) that we'd rather go to war to preserve and "improve" our lifestyle rather than own up that we're the most corrupt, piratic, murderous, lying, cheating bastards on the planet.
By the way, any idea how much hate-inducing propaganda was piled up against tsocialism and communism over the last 100 years in order to get us to denounce it and go to war against it. Cui bono?
I'm still as mad as hell for the way I got lied to to get me to go kill some Vietnamese whose only "crime" was that they had had it with French capitalism and certainly did not want american capitalism. All they want was to try out a different economic model. One from which no outsiders could exert control or syphon off profits. I got used in an American war crime.
Nah, Bluey, you can stick the word "capitalist" (chiselled in large friendly granite letters) up your arse.
Here endeth my rant...
Bluey: I was nearly sucked into trying to explain further till I realised that you couldn't even be bothered to follow up on the link I provided. I can't make you go there. I can't make you read the material there. I thought you might be interested. I might have been wrong.
They have a lot to say about what capitalism is, and why it's not as romantic a picture as the one you're apparently hypnotised by. They also promote an alternative economic model which I thought you migh have gotten enthusiastic about.
But none of that can happen whilst you don't go there. I give up.
Hey Greensmile... :-)
Maybe this reply of mine got lost in amongst all the other stuff, so I've reprinted it here. I really would be interested in your reply:
GreenSmile, you may well say there is nothing "mere" about judgement. But you weasel out of the issue. Tell us, please do, how one can arrive at ideas of right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse without having made some form of judgement calls in order to arrive there?
To this I would perhaps add:
Are you saying ther are people out there who have no morals, no values, i.e. people who truly define nothing as right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse?
Bluey: I might have been a bit harsh...
I'll put something together and get back to you, OK? But God help you if you don't get it THEN! If I can get it, you can! :-)
Ok, capitalism... The current form of capitalism is a global monster which will eat its youg and then it will eat itself. Bakan's book The Corporation tells it well enough. It's all about shareholder-driven imperatives which will enslave us all. Capitalism is now totally about the minimisation of production costs and the maximisation of profits for shareholders. Workers are a mere tradable commodity now. If someone else will do it cheaper, you're sacked. If a machine can do it cheaper, you're sacked. It's also about manipulating the consumer to make him want what they want him to want. Need creation has become a science. And the consumer has become an addict and a puppet.
What starts innocuously enough as your idyllic "village capitalism", leads soon enough to a few village rich dudes who then become "employers" who then begin to collude to manipulate the local labor market to maximise their returns. Soon they are Big Business in a whole heap of villages, and "the farmer standing on the side of the road selling his own produce for barter or currency" cannot find any buyers because Big Boys are selling it cheaper and so he is forced to sell cheaper too, and the Big Boys will push it down till he can't be bothered any more and they buy his farm or he sells direct to them for peanuts. Eventually they dominate the whole world and there are just a ruling few whilst the masses are ensnared. Right back to where we are now. This is called "free enterprise" and "free trade". It is expansionist, it is predatory and it is adversarial (hi Kurt), nay, it is canibalistic.
What prevents your "village capitalism" from "evolving" as I have indicated above? That's the question. No controls? "Free enterprise"? What stops me hiring poeople and paying them peanuts to run my farm whist I buy oil futures and buy more farms?
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