The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgiving

[SJHovey]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

I hear you--remembering is not so easy anymore. But to hear that from a major party's VP candidate was so appalling, it was hard to forget.

She claimed to echo Lincoln. That is, not that we were fighting a holy war, or that she presumed to know who God may favor, but that she hoped we were doing what God would favor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnGSk6N0Ugg

 

[WisconsinWildcard]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

That's just silly. One of Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot's main things was to stamp out God, a very clear connection. To say that connection is as strong as any connection of Christians to going into Iraq is laughable.

This is such a frivolous conversation. In a venn diagram of beliefs/values, Mao/Stalin/Pol Pot would have as much crossover with an average nonbeliever as Hitler would an average believer. Any conclusion beyond stating that they were all truly monsters is quite tenuous.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

This is such a frivolous conversation. In a venn diagram of beliefs/values, Mao/Stalin/Pol Pot would have as much crossover with an average nonbeliever as Hitler would an average believer. Any conclusion beyond stating that they were all truly monsters is quite tenuous.

Hitler's connection to Christianity was tenuous at best and in reality non-existent other than cynical use for propaganda purposes at certain times and he killed many believers. If you could ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others who ended up with the same fate as him, he'd beg to differ with you.

Obviously your average nonbeliever in no way does what Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao did, but that doesn't change that those folks explicitly rejected God and any related acknowledgement or practice and slaughtered those who did. No way they fall anywhere but in the nonbeliever is we're doing Kepler's tally. Putting Hitler in any sort of Christian category is far far more questionable.

 

[WisconsinWildcard]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Hitler's connection to Christianity was tenuous at best and in reality non-existent other than cynical use for propaganda purposes at certain times and he killed many believers. If you could ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others who ended up with the same fate as him, he'd beg to differ with you.

Obviously your average nonbeliever in no way does what Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao did, but that doesn't change that those folks explicitly rejected God and any related acknowledgement or practice and slaughtered those who did. No way they fall anywhere but in the nonbeliever is we're doing Kepler's tally. Putting Hitler in any sort of Christian category is far far more questionable.

I can say right away, defining atheism as a whole as "explicitly rejecting God" really puts us in an early divide. I am trying to say that the religiosity of these people is largely irrelevant to the horrible acts they did. We understand a lot about neurobiology at this point, and what creates a psychopath/sociopath/whathaveyou, and religion seems to have no change positive or negative on this.

Here is a question. By most accounts, I am a pretty good person (not perfect) as are all the non-believers I know. Do you think most non-believers are good people because of their non-belief or in spite of their non-belief?

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Hitler's connection to Christianity was tenuous at best and in reality non-existent other than cynical use for propaganda purposes at certain times and he killed many believers. If you could ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others who ended up with the same fate as him, he'd beg to differ with you.

Obviously your average nonbeliever in no way does what Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao did, but that doesn't change that those folks explicitly rejected God and any related acknowledgement or practice and slaughtered those who did. No way they fall anywhere but in the nonbeliever is we're doing Kepler's tally. Putting Hitler in any sort of Christian category is far far more questionable.

Depends. If we're counting death strictly by believers and non-believers then you guys get him, sorry. If we're counting deaths with the motivation to kill believers/non-believers, then you get a pass on Hitler's non-Jews but we get a pass on Mao and Pol Pot's non-religious deaths.

But the whole thing is massively dumb. These deaths were due to the madness of the leadership -- if Mao had been a 16th century Frenchman he'd have been killing right and left in the name of the Lord. He happened to get hatched 50 years after Marx with a bone to pick against the colonialists.

I forget exactly how we went down this path, but my point was that religiosity doesn't cause morality. It can ground it, but a religious person is just as likely to be a complete SOB because our powers of rationalization are infinite. By the same measure, lack of religiosity also doesn't cause morality. It can ground it (in an existential reality where we are the only moral actors in the universe it's up to us to take up the burden of ethical action), but an atheist can also justify his depredations despite that sense of responsibility, or even be blind to it entirely.

 

[burd]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

She claimed to echo Lincoln. That is, not that we were fighting a holy war, or that she presumed to know who God may favor, but that she hoped we were doing what God would favor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnGSk6N0Ugg

Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."[/B]
A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.


Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, "What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys." As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets."God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said

Very Lincolnesque

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Kepler had made the comment about nutjobs and that it's surprising they haven't killed anyone yet, making the assertion (one he's made many times) that such folks are dangerous and certainly more dangerous than his harmless fellow liberals.

Well, Bob, I would think you even you will admit that right now the world over it's the overly religious who are making the news.

 

[joecct]

Well, Bob, I would think you even you will admit that right now the world over it's the overly religious who are making the news.

The SSPX?

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

The SSPX?

What's Opus Dei up to these days?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Well, Bob, I would think you even you will admit that right now the world over it's the overly religious who are making the news.

Afraid to use the "I" or "M" words?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Depends. If we're counting death strictly by believers and non-believers then you guys get him, sorry. If we're counting deaths with the motivation to kill believers/non-believers, then you get a pass on Hitler's non-Jews but we get a pass on Mao and Pol Pot's non-religious deaths.

But the whole thing is massively dumb. These deaths were due to the madness of the leadership -- if Mao had been a 16th century Frenchman he'd have been killing right and left in the name of the Lord. He happened to get hatched 50 years after Marx with a bone to pick against the colonialists.

I forget exactly how we went down this path, but my point was that religiosity doesn't cause morality. It can ground it, but a religious person is just as likely to be a complete SOB because our powers of rationalization are infinite. By the same measure, lack of religiosity also doesn't cause morality. It can ground it (in an existential reality where we are the only moral actors in the universe it's up to us to take up the burden of ethical action), but an atheist can also justify his depredations despite that sense of responsibility, or even be blind to it entirely.

You really think Hitler was an actual believer in Christ who would go to heaven (assuming Christianity has things correctly for the moment)? Few (if any) believers now or then would agree with you.

I'll let this one go. We've danced around it enough. I understand the difficulty in admitting that the biggest mass murderers in history were explicitly people who as one of their main policy goals was to drive Christianity out of their country and crush those of faith in their midst.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Afraid to use the "I" or "M" words?

No more than you seem afraid to admit they're religious. After all, the two great expansionist, universalist, evangelical faiths also happen to be the ones that have been the most violent when in their purified, concentrated form. They are good to the extent that they are tamed and/or attenuated. In their pure form they are lethal.

History is pretty clear on the fact that the more you let any obsession push all the other values out of your life, the more grief you're going to cause others. "In all things, moderation."

The enemy of civilization is neither religion or its lack. It is the drive for purification. That's what pogroms, inquisition, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and ISIS have in common.

 

[GrinCDXX]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

I'll let this one go. We've danced around it enough. I understand the difficulty in admitting that the biggest mass murderers in history were explicitly people who as one of their main policy goals was to drive Christianity out of their country and crush those of faith in their midst.

Perfect illustration of what makes Bob such a hypocrite when he refers to others as "trolls".

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Bob's gonna Bob. When you hit one of his idée fixe he becomes a crusader for his particular worldview. I think we can be magnanimous because after a long run of dominance many of his inclinations are now receding into history. His ideal world may be a hell, but it's a hell that's falling in the polls. Fast.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

No more than you seem afraid to admit they're religious. After all, the two great expansionist, universalist, evangelical faiths also happen to be the ones that have been the most violent when in their purified, concentrated form. They are good to the extent that they are tamed and/or attenuated. In their pure form they are lethal.

History is pretty clear on the fact that the more you let any obsession push all the other values out of your life, the more grief you're going to cause others. "In all things, moderation."

The enemy of civilization is neither religion or its lack. It is the drive for purification. That's what pogroms, inquisition, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and ISIS have in common.

Of course they're religious. Who would ever say they weren't?

Nice continued try though to paint Christians as bad for what Islamic folks do.

You see it as obsession, a very poor word choice in my book. But you often use such definitional terms to try to categorize people. Webster's defines obsession as follows: "a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling." Surely you can grasp that folks who have some sort of religious belief don't buy being pigeon holed into being defined in such a way?

Anything can be done in an overboard fashion. Maybe we can agree that Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao took their anti-religion views too far?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Bob's gonna Bob. When you hit one of his idée fixe he becomes a crusader for his particular worldview. I think we can be magnanimous because after a long run of dominance many of his inclinations are now receding into history. His ideal world may be a hell, but it's a hell that's falling in the polls. Fast.

I don't believe or not believe something because it's in fashion for the moment or not. If you think my world view would be a hell for anyone, you really have no idea what I believe or think (not the first time I've noted this).

 

[burd]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

If you think my world view would be a hell for anyone, you really have no idea what I believe or think (not the first time I've noted this).

That's pretty funny. So if I don't think your world view would be hell for anyone, I do an idea what you believe or think?

How did you come to know what world view "anyone" would consider hell?

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Maybe we can agree that Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao took their anti-religion views too far?

I am curious: do you really think those guys were primarily motivated by anti-religiosity? I think it's very clear that the former was eliminating any potentially threatening alternate power center, and the latter two were exterminating all of Westernized culture in general. The were "anti-religious" in the sense that a bulldozer is "anti-wainscotting": it's just one of the things that gets plowed under.

 

[Foxton]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

Can you all quit playing the no true scotsman game with Bob? TLDR xtians good, everything else is bad. Same thing 5mn always does but with a little less martyr complex.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS VIII - I am certiorari we'll be arguing until Thanksgivin

That's pretty funny. So if I don't think your world view would be hell for anyone, I do an idea what you believe or think?

How did you come to know what world view "anyone" would consider hell?

True. Maybe someone somewhere thinks a world where all are treated with respect and courtesy would be hell. Of course Kep was talking about my world view, so I think I am more qualified to know about that than you or Kep. Maybe you missed that part.