Marduk is the TRUE god and all worshipping this Jesus are condemed
Paul Filseth
References: <bndipe$doi$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk>
"Malcolm" <mal...@55bank.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> "chris" <www...@infionline.net> wrote...
> > > What this means is that, uniquely, Christianity is credible
> >
> > What this means is that Christianity is like every other religion.
>
> No, that's a canard spread by people who don't like to feel that
> Western culture has anything superior to offer.
Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
It has a great many superior things to offer, which is why most other
cultures are tripping over themselves trying to copy or import our
advances. Our culture came up with science, math, industrialization,
medicine, democracy, rule-of-law, respect for human rights, capitalism,
anti-racism, women's liberation, the Red Cross, the SPCA, newspapers,
muckraking journalists, novels, movies, television, the web, and the
well-tempered scale.
But nobody's perfect. We also inflicted on an unsuspecting world
bad things like software monopoly, smallpox, communism, Christianity,
and cultural relativism. Fortunately, there are those trying to undo
the damage. Some mistakes are easier to correct than others: Linux
is growing fast, but getting rid of smallpox took years and communism
took decades. Christianity looks to be the hardest of all -- we've
been working on that one since the time of Voltaire and we'll probably
still be on the job long after cultural relativism is remembered only
by a few specialists in ancient fads. We were spreading the idea
that Christianity is like every other religion long before the silly
notion that Western Culture has nothing superior to offer reared its
brain-damaged head, and you damn well know it. You're just indulging
your addiction to shameless strawmen. Do you think God will reward
you for bearing false witness against your neighbor?
> When atheists try to attack the roots of Christianity, the best
> they can do is the "Jesus was mythical" nonsense.
So you're stipulating that that's an even better theory than the
much more popular theory that Jesus was just a reform-minded rabbi
who stepped on too many toes and got himself crucified, and then his
superstitious followers deluded themselves that this was a divinely
ordained blood-sacrifice and he was magically resurrected, because
that felt better than throwing in the towel when they lost their
messiah?
--
Paul Filseth Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only
To email, delete the x. proved it correct, not tried it. - Donald Knuth
Chris Michael
"Paul Filseth" <pg...@lsil.com> wrote in message
news:2003110210...@lsil.com...
> Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
> It has a great many superior things to offer, which is why most other
> cultures are tripping over themselves trying to copy or import our
> advances. Our culture came up with science, math, industrialization,
> medicine, democracy, rule-of-law, respect for human rights, capitalism,
> anti-racism, women's liberation, the Red Cross, the SPCA, newspapers,
> muckraking journalists, novels, movies, television, the web, and the
> well-tempered scale.
Our culture (whether you mean American or Western) did not some up with
science although we have elevated it to greater levels than ever before.
Maths and science probably started somewhere in present day Iraq. (Hence the
Iraqi Information minister pointing out that we all lived in caves when they
were civilised).
The ancient Greeks had democracy. (Or is a 3000 yr old culture in the middle
east counted as "Western"?). Plato preached sexual equality. The Greeks were
also extracting salicylic acid (aspirin) to treat fever and for pain relief.
The Rule of Law is no invention of the west either. Whilst I agree with you
that current Western Culture is the most impressive yet seen on this planet
(Danikan be damned), I think that to attribute the west with devising many
of the items in your list is arrogant (which is fine by me), but also wrong.
I would agree that most of the items have reached their Zenith under Western
Civilisation but to say "we came up with then" is wrong. (Yes, you can have
movies, the web, and newspapers, not sure what the SPCA is.)
I think Mr Bush may agree with you however, afterall he once complained that
the problem with the French was that they had no word for "entrepreneur".
Chris
Nori Otaku
>
> Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
> It has a great many superior things to offer, which is why most other
> cultures are tripping over themselves trying to copy or import our
> advances. Our culture came up with science, math, industrialization,
> medicine, democracy, rule-of-law, respect for human rights, capitalism,
> anti-racism, women's liberation, the Red Cross, the SPCA, newspapers,
> muckraking journalists, novels, movies, television, the web, and the
> well-tempered scale.
Excuse me? Western culture did not invent democracy (Greeks did), math
(Arabs), medicine (Greeks), rule-of-law (Hammurabi).
Even if you consider Greece to be Western (debatable), that still leaves
two of the *big* things you listed in the hands of Arabic culture.
--
NoriOtaku :: Change 'spam' to 'com' to send mail
Eric Pepke
> Excuse me? Western culture did not invent democracy (Greeks did), math
> (Arabs), medicine (Greeks), rule-of-law (Hammurabi).
>
> Even if you consider Greece to be Western (debatable), that still leaves
> two of the *big* things you listed in the hands of Arabic culture.
That's one of the things I don't like about the term "Western." The
other is that it always makes me think of Clint Eastwood.
Greece is definitely considered Western. Very roughly, "Western"
means anything associated with the Indo-European family of
languages. Sometimes "Western" extends to Sumer and ancient
Egypt. It doesn't cover Arabia, but it does cover Persia. It's
a pretty lousy and imprecise term.
As far as Arabs inventing math, I'm sure they did, just as I'm
sure Australian Aborigones invented math as well. But you're
probably thinking of the contributions that Arabs made much
later, such as algebra. The so-called Arabic numerals were
actually Indian.
Joshua
>
> Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
> It has a great many superior things to offer, which is why most other
> cultures are tripping over themselves trying to copy or import our
> advances. Our culture came up with science, math, industrialization,
> medicine, democracy, rule-of-law, respect for human rights, capitalism,
> anti-racism, women's liberation, the Red Cross, the SPCA, newspapers,
> muckraking journalists, novels, movies, television, the web, and the
> well-tempered scale.
No, our culture destroyed math, science, and urbanization in the
middle ages. Math and the sciences were kept by the Arabic world when
the only people who could read in Europe were priests. The first novel
was written in China. The rule of law goes back to far before Greece
and Rome. We INVENTED racism. Others have pointed out that almost
nothing on this list can be attributed to western civilization.
There was nothing special about Western Europe when it expanded to try
to colonize the world, except an arrogance and ignorance that is still
around today. That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious
assumption of absolute moral principles and God as the one true
standard. Like Bob Dylan sings, you don't ask questions when god's on
your side.
[snip brief bit where he admits western civilization has made
mistakes]
Geoff McCaughan
> Excuse me? Western culture did not invent democracy (Greeks did), math
> (Arabs), medicine (Greeks), rule-of-law (Hammurabi).
I think medicine would better be attributed to Egypt. Although like most
ancient medicine a lot of what they did was bunk, they were the first [that
we have records of] to attempt a real knowledge-based diagnosis and
treatment. You were probably better off being ill in New Kingdom Egypt than
pretty much anywhere for the next ~3000 years.
Paul Filseth
> Excuse me? Western culture did not invent democracy (Greeks did), math
> (Arabs), medicine (Greeks), rule-of-law (Hammurabi).
> Even if you consider Greece to be Western (debatable), that still leaves
> two of the *big* things you listed in the hands of Arabic culture.
"Chris Michael" <no...@m.pls> wrote:
> The ancient Greeks had democracy. (Or is a 3000 yr old culture in the middle
> east counted as "Western"?).
Yes, I was counting the Greeks as Western. If you want to define
them as not part of the same culture as us, fine; but our culture is
at least a descendant of theirs.
> Our culture (whether you mean American or Western) did not come up with
> science although we have elevated it to greater levels than ever before.
That could be said of other things on my list too. I don't mean
to suggest that nobody ever did any of those things before at all, just
that Western culture took them to so much higher a level as to be doing
something qualitatively new. Other cultures had a few individual
scientists and mathematicians; the West created a multigenerational
professional community who published their research, systematically
checked one another's work, and was thereby able to discover the laws
explaining almost everything. It's a whole different ball of wax.
> The Rule of Law is no invention of the west either.
Rule of Law doesn't mean you have laws, like Hammurabi. Rule of
Law means King James tells a judge how to decide a case, and Chief
Justice Coke countermands the royal decree on the grounds that it's
unconstitutional, and the judge follows the law instead of the King.
Did the Babylonian government do that?
> Whilst I agree with you that current Western Culture is the most
> impressive yet seen on this planet (Danikan be damned), I think that
> to attribute the west with devising many of the items in your list
> is arrogant (which is fine by me),
Glad to hear it. :-)
> but also wrong.
Possibly so, but I'm not convinced yet. Anyway, that isn't
the issue. Malcolm accused those of us who argue that Christianity
is no better than other religions of being down on our own culture,
so I figured a little pro-Western cheerleading was in order. If I
really am claiming more credit for the West than it deserves, that
just proves my point all the more...
> I would agree that most of the items have reached their Zenith under Western
> Civilisation but to say "we came up with then" is wrong. (Yes, you can have
> movies, the web, and newspapers, not sure what the SPCA is.)
> I think Mr Bush may agree with you however, afterall he once complained that
> the problem with the French was that they had no word for "entrepreneur".
[Notes:
Hammurabi was Babylonian; Arabs hadn't occupied that area yet.
The Arabs learned a lot of their math from the Greeks.
Greece isn't in the Middle East.
The SPCA is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Bush is an idiot. ]
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>The ancient Greeks had democracy. (Or is a 3000 yr old culture in the middle
>east counted as "Western"?).
Western Europe at that. More importantly, in this context, it is the
lineal ancestor of what we now call Western culture.
--
John Secker
Chris Michael
> Yes, I was counting the Greeks as Western. If you want to define
> them as not part of the same culture as us, fine; but our culture is
> at least a descendant of theirs.
>
Granted, however as greece would have benefited from ideas that came from
further east, our culture has inherited some aspects of ancient Eastern
culture including advanced maths which underpins our entire modern world.
They were also master astonomers.
> That could be said of other things on my list too. I don't mean
> to suggest that nobody ever did any of those things before at all, just
> that Western culture took them to so much higher a level as to be doing
> something qualitatively new.
If I may humbly suggest, if you didn't mean to suggest that nobody ever did
those things before, you should probably not used the wording you did, i.e.
"Our culture came up with science, math, industrialization, medicine,
democracy, rule-of-law." I suspected you may actually have meant as much,
but you are a victim of your own precision ;-). You more than many are
pretty careful with your words and how you use them so when you said "Our
culture came up with..." I thought you meant to suggest that our culture
came up with...
> Other cultures had a few individual
> scientists and mathematicians; the West created a multigenerational
> professional community who published their research, systematically
> checked one another's work, and was thereby able to discover the laws
> explaining almost everything. It's a whole different ball of wax.
Granted, I have no problem with your clarified postion, I just disputed that
they were all born in the West.
> Possibly so, but I'm not convinced yet. Anyway, that isn't
> the issue. Malcolm accused those of us who argue that Christianity
> is no better than other religions of being down on our own culture,
> so I figured a little pro-Western cheerleading was in order.
No problem with that, its good to recognise ones faults but many "liberals"
I guess Malcom would call them, seem to denigrate their own culture on
principle. I couldn't agree more about the primacy of Western culture (I
even had a chuckle at Silvia Belesconis comments to that effect a couple of
yrs back), and share your disdain for "cultural relatism"
> [Notes:
> Hammurabi was Babylonian; Arabs hadn't occupied that area yet.
Nori stands corrected ;-)
> The Arabs learned a lot of their math from the Greeks.
The Indians and Arabs both made huge contributions to maths to the extent
that you shouldn't take it away from them by saying the greeks taught them
most of what they know. Until only about 500 years ago most innovations came
from the east and Islam. It was only with the enlightenment and the
increasing secular nature of western culture that the west was able to
overtake the east.
> Greece isn't in the Middle East.
Not on a political map maybe, but what relevance is that to the world of
3000 yrs ago. It is very much in the middle east region. Cyprus (Mycenean
Greeks, of which I am half) is only about 60 miles from Israel. There was
all sorts of trade and cross polination of ideas in that region. Today,
Greece is in Europe, and Egypt isn't. To imply that justifies devising a
group that includes ancient greece and the west, but excludes ancient egypt
or or other ancient eastern cultures seems a bit convenient.
> The SPCA is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Yes, that occured to me just after sending off the post. Being brits we have
to stick a Royal in front of our SPCA (yet we only have a national society
for the prevention of cruelty to children).
> Bush is an idiot. ]
I suspect you may well be right. Still, when he isn't scaring the crap out
the rest of the world, he does at least provide amusement. Roll on '04.
Chris Michael
"Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1cadc0ff.03110...@posting.google.com...
> We INVENTED racism. Others have pointed out that almost
> nothing on this list can be attributed to western civilization.
>
an expression of this. The west no more invented racism than it invented war
or murder. The west may have been the first to give it the name racism, and
more benevolantly the first to identify it as being not a good thing. (You
will find less racism in the modern west than in the modern other parts of
the world.)
> There was nothing special about Western Europe when it expanded to try
> to colonize the world, except an arrogance and ignorance that is still
> around today. That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious
> assumption of absolute moral principles and God as the one true
> standard. Like Bob Dylan sings, you don't ask questions when god's on
> your side.
>
> [snip brief bit where he admits western civilization has made
> mistakes]
>
You really are down on the west aren't you. I think what this thread shows
is the cultures vary across time as well as space. There is nothing
inherently superior about western culture, however currently it is the one
in the ascendant. Maybe now we are keeping science and other aspects of
culture alive just like the arabic world did 500 years ago, and it is
currently the arabic world which is embroiled in destroying math, science
and the like. Again, I don't suppose there is anything inherently infererior
about the arabic world, but it is an undeniable fact that currently it is in
a state of turmoil and new science, art and other intellectual output is no
where near as abundant as the west.
As for the West expanding and colonising the world, well that may be true,
but if it comes down to conquer or be conquered, I know which side I want to
be on. (The Europeans were always going to prevail against any others on
account of the virulant diseases which evolved in Europe in response to the
population density and livestock. European germs killed far more indigenous
peoples than Europeans did).
Tom Breton
[...]
> No, our culture destroyed math, science, and urbanization in the
> middle ages. Math and the sciences were kept by the Arabic world when
> the only people who could read in Europe were priests.
Not to forgive Christianity's Dark Ages, but that's a very one-sided
view. Your multiculturalism classes didn't bother mentioning, for
instance, Ireland's preservation of many materials through the Dark
Ages.
> The first novel
> was written in China. The rule of law goes back to far before Greece
> and Rome. We INVENTED racism. Others have pointed out that almost
> nothing on this list can be attributed to western civilization.
>
> There was nothing special about Western Europe when it expanded to try
> to colonize the world, except an arrogance and ignorance that is still
> around today. That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious
> assumption of absolute moral principles and God as the one true
> standard. Like Bob Dylan sings, you don't ask questions when god's on
> your side.
Just so there's no mistake, not all atheists hold with this sort of
West-bashing, and I for one am appalled. I think that what Joshua
said above is foolish and mean-spirited. The fact that this same sort
of thing is being taught in our universities as fact is truly
disturbing.
--
Tom Breton at panix.com, username tehom. http://www.panix.com/~tehom
Chris Michael
"John Secker" <jo...@secker.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:EYyJFuAwxYq$Ew...@secker.demon.co.uk...
> Yes, it's Western. Greece is not in the Middle East, it's in Europe, and
> Western Europe at that. More importantly, in this context, it is the
> lineal ancestor of what we now call Western culture.
Yes nowdays it is. Perhaps 3000 yrs ago they did not think about the
political landscape 3000 yrs hence.
Chris Michael
"John Secker" <jo...@secker.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:EYyJFuAwxYq$Ew...@secker.demon.co.uk...
> Yes, it's Western. Greece is not in the Middle East, it's in Europe, and
> Western Europe at that. More importantly, in this context, it is the
> lineal ancestor of what we now call Western culture.
Yeah yeah, like the IRA are Irish, but Bob Geldof is British. This seems to
be all about picking and choosing. Greek culture was itslef influenced
heavily by other cultures in the Middle East, so we have inherited from them
as well. (Middle East is a political and geaographical region.
Geographically, it is middle east region.)
Chris Michael
"John Secker" <jo...@secker.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:EYyJFuAwxYq$Ew...@secker.demon.co.uk...
> Yes, it's Western. Greece is not in the Middle East, it's in Europe, and
> Western Europe at that. More importantly, in this context, it is the
> lineal ancestor of what we now call Western culture.
Please tell me the longitudes and latitudes at which the Middle East begins
and ends.
strider
> Thats a bit unfair. Humans are naturally tribal, and racism is really just
> an expression of this. The west no more invented racism than it invented war
> or murder. The west may have been the first to give it the name racism, and
> more benevolantly the first to identify it as being not a good thing. (You
> will find less racism in the modern west than in the modern other parts of
> the world.)
Actually racism, as it refers to biologically determined and
evolutinarily/hierarchically ordered races, is in fact both recent and
"Western." How exactly it developed is still a focus of much debate.
In the American case the two major books on the subject are probably
Winthrop Jordan's "White Over Black" which argues European society was
peculiarly suited to racism and Edmund Morgans's "American Slavery,
American Freedom" which argues that racism was invented to satisfy
economic needs.
The dominant theory in Europe during the 18th century was called
Climactic Determinism and it maintained that human beins were changed
by their enviornment. So, the French weren't different than the
Chinese so much by birth, but by virtue of the environment in which
they were born.
> You really are down on the west aren't you. I think what this thread shows
> is the cultures vary across time as well as space. There is nothing
> inherently superior about western culture, however currently it is the one
> in the ascendant. Maybe now we are keeping science and other aspects of
> culture alive just like the arabic world did 500 years ago, and it is
> currently the arabic world which is embroiled in destroying math, science
> and the like. Again, I don't suppose there is anything inherently infererior
> about the arabic world, but it is an undeniable fact that currently it is in
> a state of turmoil and new science, art and other intellectual output is no
> where near as abundant as the west.
Of course this is partially at least the fault of the west and
imperialism (read PARTIALLY).
> As for the West expanding and colonising the world, well that may be true,
> but if it comes down to conquer or be conquered, I know which side I want to
> be on. (The Europeans were always going to prevail against any others on
> account of the virulant diseases which evolved in Europe in response to the
> population density and livestock. European germs killed far more indigenous
> peoples than Europeans did).
Of course, who wants to be conequered? By why should it always come
down to conquer or be conquered? Did any of the civlizations in north
or south america pose any kind of threat to Europe?
Jeffrey Straszheim
> As far as Arabs inventing math, I'm sure they did, just as I'm
> sure Australian Aborigones invented math as well. But you're
> probably thinking of the contributions that Arabs made much
> later, such as algebra. The so-called Arabic numerals were
> actually Indian.
Even more than that, Al-Khwarizmi's "Al-jabr and Al-muqabala",
which is considered the premier Arabic algebra text (and from
whence we got the word "algebra"), itself contains little original
material. Mosly, it copies older, more sophisticated, Indian
sources. It was, however, well written and easy to follow (by
the standards of the day), and was popular among Italian
mathematicians in the late middle ages.
-- Jeffrey Straszheim | A sufficiently advanced
-- Programmer, Math Geek | regular expression is
-- http://www.shadow.net/~stimuli | indistinguishable from
-- stimuli AT shadow DOT net | magic
strider
> Yes, I was counting the Greeks as Western. If you want to define
> them as not part of the same culture as us, fine; but our culture is
> at least a descendant of theirs.
>
Actually this claim is really very interesting to analyze. It's not
really like we can draw clean lines of causation from Greece to the
present where ancient Greek culture never died out and always held
sway in Europe. In a number of ways, the reason this is true is
precisely because we *think* it's true. We don't tend to locate the
origins of our society in Egypt, or Sumaria despite the fact these
civilizations had enormous impact on the history of Europe. The Greeks
stand as so important because thinkers have returned to them as
ancient repositories of knowledge. Again and again people have
maintained Greece as the origin of "western civilization" and so it
has become true in that people really have read their texts, returned
to ideas about their past and used them in the present, but not in
that Greek civilization really is the same as ours.
Additionally, it's really very difficult to pick out one civilization
by itself over a massive swath of time (the best example I can think
of really, is China, but this may be do to my relative lack of
knowledge about China). What I mean by this, is that cultures tend to
borrow from one another and that our present ethnic, national and
geographic boundaries rarely flow backwards unproblematically into the
past. We think of France as a coherent national entity, but France
didn't exist as a nation of Frenchmen until the late 19th century (see
Eugen Weber "Peasants into Frenchmen"). Americans think of themselves
as a more or less unified nation, similar in culture and even sharing
a collective past. Yet Americans come from all over the globe,
American culture is the product of thousands of different peoples.
Plenty of Americans who think of the American revolution as *their*
past, migrated here in the 20th century.
The idea of a western civilization uniting the "developed" world is
really quite new. Is Japan western? Their political structure is
heavily influenced by American Democracy, their economic mode of
organization is basically market based (basically, not absolutely).
Yet Japan has a much longer tradition, a much greater past than one
might get from simply puting them in the western box, and a present
much more like the U.S. than one might guess from calling them
"eastern."
What this all is attempting to get at, is that the whole idea of a
western civilization autonomously supplying advances in thought and
sending them out across the world is terribly short sighted from a
historical perspective. This is not to say European enlightenment
hasn't been profoundly influential. It just was also not something
autonomously thought up by a couple of Europeans outside the
international realm that affected Europe's past and the enlightenment
present.
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>> Greece isn't in the Middle East.
>
>Not on a political map maybe, but what relevance is that to the world of
>3000 yrs ago. It is very much in the middle east region. Cyprus (Mycenean
>Greeks, of which I am half) is only about 60 miles from Israel.
but that doesn't mean that Cyprus is Greece. Gibraltar is inhabited by
Britons, but that does not mean that Britain is a Mediterranean country.
Rhodes is about 400 miles west of Israel, mainland Greece a couple of
hundred miles more.
> There was
>all sorts of trade and cross polination of ideas in that region. Today,
>Greece is in Europe, and Egypt isn't. To imply that justifies devising a
>group that includes ancient greece and the west, but excludes ancient egypt
>or or other ancient eastern cultures seems a bit convenient.
>
>
arbitrary "devised" grouping. Furthermore Roman culture, the basis for
"the West" borrowed very heavily from the Greeks, as it did not from
the Egyptians or the more eastern civilisations.
--
John Secker
Paul Filseth
> No, our culture destroyed math, science, and urbanization in the
> middle ages.
This is true, but it doesn't conflict with what I said. One
can create something, then destroy it, and then create it again.
> The first novel was written in China.
It was? What and when? (It's amazing the things I can learn by
shooting off my mouth on Usenet. :-)
> The rule of law goes back to far before Greece and Rome.
"Rule of law" is a term-of-art. It means the law gets enforced
on the government, not just on its subjects. If you know of a society
that did that before England, share.
> We INVENTED racism.
What's your evidence for that? Racism is normal human behavior.
I wouldn't be surprised if Australopithecus robustus was wiped out by
genocidal A. africanus.
> Others have pointed out that almost nothing on this list can be
> attributed to western civilization.
That's just silly. I might have made a mistake or three, but
"almost nothing"? Come on.
> There was nothing special about Western Europe when it expanded to try
> to colonize the world, except an arrogance and ignorance that is still
> around today.
What was special was their superior weaponry. Their arrogance and
ignorance hardly made them special -- the cultures they conquered were
for the most part arrogant and ignorant too. Arrogance and ignorance
are the normal state of mankind, just like racism.
> That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious assumption
> of absolute moral principles and God as the one true standard.
The assumption of absolute moral principles isn't a religious
assumption; that one's also common to mankind. The notion that moral
principles are just a matter of opinion is yet another innovation of
Western culture.
> snip brief bit where he admits western civilization has made mistakes
You seem to have lost the context. That wasn't me "admitting"
anything. That was the *primary* claim of my post. All the arrogant
pro-Western boasting was there *in a supporting role*, to justify my
criticism of one particular Western contribution to the world.
Zayne
> Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
> It has a great many superior things to offer, which is why most other
> cultures are tripping over themselves trying to copy or import our
> advances. Our culture came up with ... muckraking journalists, ....
And this is a good thing? Other cultures are tripping over themselves to
promote muckraking?
Malcolm
> long before the silly notion that Western Culture has nothing superior to
> offer reared its brain-damaged head, and you damn well know it.
>
Deism - the idea that Christian monotheism is correct but the more magical
side of Christianity is wrong.
Then in the second half of the nineteenth century, Marxism developed, which
saw Western capitalist culture as the most advanced manifestation of human
society, but still only a transitional stage in the historical process
leading to Communism. The capitalist means of production was seen as
determining the religious superstructure - Christianity.
It was only really at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the
twentieth century with (dubious) scholarship about vegetation myths that it
began to be advanced that Christianity was itself one of these vegetation
myths.
Finally, as you say, with increased travel, independence of ex-colonies, and
non-Christian immigration into Western countries, people began to put about
the notion that all cultures and religions are equal in value.
>
> So you're stipulating that that's an even better theory than the
> much more popular theory that Jesus was just a reform-minded rabbi
> who stepped on too many toes and got himself crucified, and then his
> superstitious followers deluded themselves that this was a divinely
> ordained blood-sacrifice and he was magically resurrected, because
> that felt better than throwing in the towel when they lost their
> messiah?
>
This isn't something we've argued about. It is of course possible to come up
with a much better argument that "The Jesus Myth", but it hasn't been
advanced at any length at least for the few months I've been a regular here.
Joshua
> smurf_...@hotmail.com (Joshua) writes:
[...]
> > The first novel
> > was written in China. The rule of law goes back to far before Greece
> > and Rome. We INVENTED racism. Others have pointed out that almost
> > nothing on this list can be attributed to western civilization.
> >
> > There was nothing special about Western Europe when it expanded to try
> > to colonize the world, except an arrogance and ignorance that is still
> > around today. That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious
> > assumption of absolute moral principles and God as the one true
> > standard. Like Bob Dylan sings, you don't ask questions when god's on
> > your side.
>
> Just so there's no mistake, not all atheists hold with this sort of
> West-bashing, and I for one am appalled. I think that what Joshua
> said above is foolish and mean-spirited. The fact that this same sort
> of thing is being taught in our universities as fact is truly
> disturbing.
Why are you appalled? I'm not insulting you, and I don't think I've
said anything mean. I think we are sophisticated enough to understand
that our ancestors don't need to be the good guys in every struggle,
or even in most. They could be the bad guys, couldn't they?
I don't think I was foolish at all to reply and say what I did.
It is saddening to me to see some historical figures defended based on
outdated views simply because we cheer for them like a sports team. I
will give one quick example, but there are so many that I see every
day. Columbus killed and enslaved the indigenous people of North
America. But as NBC put it, most people outside of Europe at the time
were cannibals and this was justified. Of course that's nonsense, but
it lets people harbor this warm feeling in their heart for Columbus.
I'm saddened because some people will never realize that a beloved
historical figure or cause is human and corruptible. That realization
is a powerful one that presses home what I believe is a very important
consideration in politics: there is no absolute way to tell right from
wrong. In the end, all we have are each other, individual judges of
right and wrong in every situation. That's why we need democracy and
respect for others' cultures. Everyone needs to bring their views to
the table, and no one should be silenced.
I am happy with myself as an individual, not because of where I came
from, but because of who I am. I do not need people to tell me fairy
tales about the heroic exploits of Columbus and Cortes in
cannibal-infested lands to be secure in who I am. I do not need to be
told the African slave trade was a minor hiccup in what was otherwise
a peaceful culture that respected diversity.
And I certainly don't need a professor or someone in a usenet group
telling me what to think. Just like anyone else, I can decide for
myself what is right and wrong. Just like anyone else, I have to.
Chris Michael
> What's that got to do with anything. Cyprus may be inhabited by Greeks,
> but that doesn't mean that Cyprus is Greece. Gibraltar is inhabited by
> Britons, but that does not mean that Britain is a Mediterranean country.
> Rhodes is about 400 miles west of Israel, mainland Greece a couple of
> hundred miles more.
Cyrpus is a greek Island populated by greeks. That much is a fact. And as we
wre talking about cultural influences then yes, the fact that there were
greeks living withing spitting distance of these other cultures is relevant
as to how much swapping of ideas went on.
> Greece is in Europe, Israel and Egypt are not. That is geography, not an
> arbitrary "devised" grouping.
And what the hell is Europe if not an arbitary grouping. It is hardly spilt
along tectonic lines now is it? Israel is in Europe as far as the Eurovision
song contest is concerned. If Turkey gets its way it is soon set to join the
EU. The tories want us to leave Europe and join NAFTA. Tell me at which
point Europe ends and Asia begins.
> Furthermore Roman culture, the basis for
> "the West" borrowed very heavily from the Greeks, as it did not from
> the Egyptians or the more eastern civilisations.
Cultures continually cross polinate. The further back one goes in time, the
less clear the lines of dscent are. You seem to think that culture is
biology and that there are simple lines of descent where one culture always
springs from one and only one. This is rather silly.
Anyway, weren't you about to tell me the longitudes and latitudes that
define the middle east and cite your reference?
> --
> John Secker
>
Chris Michael
"strider" <strider...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3f37935a.03110...@posting.google.com...
> Of course this is partially at least the fault of the west and
> imperialism (read PARTIALLY).
Partially is about the word I would use as well, I agree with you.
> Of course, who wants to be conequered? By why should it always come
> down to conquer or be conquered?
Because people are people.
> Did any of the civlizations in north
> or south america pose any kind of threat to Europe?
Well they may have asked the same question about us after all we were as far
from them as they were from us. Yet we clearly did pose a threat to them. So
yes, given time they could have been a threat. With technology, it really
was a winner-takes-all situation. Whichever culture/part of the world which
was first to master a few technologies (metallurgy, agriculture, maths,
literacy, maritime skills) was naturally going to become dominant over all
others. In any event, conquering was really just the icing on the cake. The
fate of many indigenous races was sealed the first time they came in contact
with a disease ridden European.
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>Yes nowdays it is. Perhaps 3000 yrs ago they did not think about the
>political landscape 3000 yrs hence.
What's that got to do with anything? The question was whether Greek
culture was the ancestor of what we now call "Western Culture". The fact
that the Greeks did not have some 3000-year plan to pass their ideas
around the globe is irrelevant.
--
John Secker
John Secker
<Za...@newthing.com> writes
>
>And this is a good thing? Other cultures are tripping over themselves to
>promote muckraking?
They should be. Have you noticed that in most countries those in power
are falling over themselves to suppress muckraking journalists? Apart
from the obvious tyrannies, Zimbabwe and Russia are two recent examples
where state power has been directed against an independent press.
Muckraking journalists are our most important weapon against those in
power - and I explicitly include all the Western democracies in that. If
they did not fear being exposed there is little any of our rulers would
not do.
--
John Secker
Geoff McCaughan
> Greece is in Europe, Israel and Egypt are not. That is geography, not an
> arbitrary "devised" grouping.
But the geographical division between "Europe" and "Asia" *is* an
arbitrarily devised grouping. There's no sound reason [other than cultural]
to make a distinction between the two ends of the eurasian continent, and if
one makes a distinction between cultures on a sharp boundary in the absence
of natural barriers, the line will inevitably be devised rather than reflect
some real division.
Joshua
> smurf_...@hotmail.com (Joshua) wrote:
>
> > The first novel was written in China.
>
> It was? What and when? (It's amazing the things I can learn by
> shooting off my mouth on Usenet. :-)
I don't remember what and when, but I do remember reading that the
first novel was written in China. I encourage you to do the research
yourself if you're interested.
[snip]
> > We INVENTED racism.
>
> What's your evidence for that? Racism is normal human behavior.
> I wouldn't be surprised if Australopithecus robustus was wiped out by
> genocidal A. africanus.
Someone else posted a pretty good reply with evidence that racism is
modern and western.
Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no biological
"races." Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin
does not mean a person is European. These are artificial
classifications we've created and have nothing to do with some natural
law governing human affairs. Racism is not normal human behavior.
There is really very little "normal" human behavior at all if you're
talking about universals. Again, this goes right to the core of what
we're disagreeing on. People think that just because they've known one
culture their entire life, it is the only normal and correct one on
the planet. A lot of generalizations about what makes women
attractive, for example, (young, extremely skinny, playful, etc.) are
very American and not universal at all. Racism is not universal
either.
[snip]
> > That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious assumption
> > of absolute moral principles and God as the one true standard.
>
> The assumption of absolute moral principles isn't a religious
> assumption; that one's also common to mankind. The notion that moral
> principles are just a matter of opinion is yet another innovation of
> Western culture.
No, the notion that moral principles are a matter of opinion is the
result of an application of common sense. Otherwise why have laws? If
moral principles are the same everywhere, why do we even need to say
them?
Here is the problem of absolute moral principles. This is really what
has bugged me all along. Let's say you are a law-maker. Your job is to
take absolute moral principles and relay them to the masses. These
absolute laws are timeless and perfect; they wouldn't be absolute
otherwise, would they? The trouble is, as the law-maker, you aren't
just relaying these laws, you're creating them. Only you can get to
the perfect truths behind your laws; others only have access to the
fleeting, human interpretations you've given. That gives you an
advantage no one else has. It gives you access to the eternal laws of
the universe, while everyone else can only listen to you and agree. It
makes you god.
We need absolute moralality? Whose version of it should we choose? As
soon as you've asked that question, you realize that there is no such
thing as absolute morality at all: only copies of copies of
corruptible, human laws.
That's important because the West cannot claim to have some natural
law governing its system of morality; our laws reflect our opinions.
Our culture is our way of life, not the way of the universe.
You're right to say that this transcends religion, but the idea that
western ideals are universal is a very Christian one. I think it would
be very hard to have moral absolutes without god in the picture, and I
have never heard an argument for such a thing. I'm sure there are
atheists who believe their system of morality is absolute, and that's
their right. But where did their absolute system of morality come
from? I doubt they'd have a good answer. Prove me wrong!
> > snip brief bit where he admits western civilization has made mistakes
>
> You seem to have lost the context. That wasn't me "admitting"
> anything. That was the *primary* claim of my post. All the arrogant
> pro-Western boasting was there *in a supporting role*, to justify my
> criticism of one particular Western contribution to the world.
No, I understood the context. But my main point was to demonstrate
some of your misconceptions :-) Just think of me as helping your
primary claim a little bit.
strider
> The
> fate of many indigenous races was sealed the first time they came in contact
> with a disease ridden European.
Not really true. In the US, through the 17th century Native Americans
still possesed enough power to destroy the conquerors. Jamestown
actually could not have existed without Native American help (the
supposedly superior European conquerors couldn't even feed themselves
and didn't posses the military power to force the Natives to give them
their food). In the 18th century, Europeans gained a broad foothold,
but Natives still possesed enough raw military power to shape European
policy, and even as this changed became very adept at playing one
power off against the other untill the War of 1812 changed all of
that. For relevent historical works see The Middle Ground by Richard
White (makes the point that Native Americans and Europeans coexisted
in a fairly equal manner from 1650-1815 in the Great Lakes region),
The Ordeal of the Longhouse by Daniel Richter (a fantastic history of
the Iroquois) and A Sprited Resistance by Gregory Evens Dowd (a
history of Native American spiritual unification movements from about
1740-1812).
So, if it's kill or be killed why didn't the Native Americans just
kill when they had the chance?
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>Cultures continually cross polinate. The further back one goes in time, the
>less clear the lines of dscent are. You seem to think that culture is
>biology and that there are simple lines of descent where one culture always
>springs from one and only one. This is rather silly.
>
posted on this subject - I have pointed out that the Greeks were
influenced by many older cultures, many of them eastern, and that
ultimately we are all descended from Africans anyway. By hey, why not
introduce a straw man?
>Anyway, weren't you about to tell me the longitudes and latitudes that
>define the middle east and cite your reference?
>
--
John Secker
John Secker
<geo...@spam.fqdn.com> writes
>> Greece is in Europe, Israel and Egypt are not. That is geography, not an
>> arbitrary "devised" grouping.
>
>But the geographical division between "Europe" and "Asia" *is* an
>arbitrarily devised grouping.
were discussing what makes up "Western" culture. You may well be right
that the boundaries of Europe were drawn on a cultural basis, but that
only makes my point - the boundaries of Europe included Greece for
cultural reasons, ie Greek culture is aligned with Europe, not the East.
> There's no sound reason [other than cultural]
>to make a distinction between the two ends of the eurasian continent, and if
>one makes a distinction between cultures on a sharp boundary in the absence
>of natural barriers, the line will inevitably be devised rather than reflect
>some real division.
>
question is how to make sure that the devised groupings are consistent.
As far as I am concerned, the important points are that Western culture
is generally derived from Roman, and the Romans were heavily influenced
by the Greeks. The ancient Greeks also directly influenced Western
thinking when their writings were "rediscovered" during the Renaissance.
--
John Secker
Chris Michael
> told the African slave trade was a minor hiccup in what was otherwise
> a peaceful culture that respected diversity.
>
Lets not forget that one of the factors that allowed for the slave trade was
the fact that tribes in Africa would sell captives from other tribes to the
slave traders. Its not just the "white devils" to blame. You are playing a
bit of a dangerous game. For my part, I think that there is pretty much the
same mix of arsholes and saints, fools and geniuses across races. If you
want to start suggesting that Westerners are particularly bad (which you
seem to be doing by applying species-wide attributes to Westerners alone),
then you are accepting of the priniciple that there are substantial
differences between races and that it is legitimate to discriminate on the
grounds of race. If you are accepting of this, then you can't really then
rubbish Nazi-like organisations who also agree that there are sunstantial
differences between races.
Chris Michael
Granted, I made a poor point (hell, I'll even concede irrelevant). However,
the greater point as to whether Greek culture was the ancestor of what we
now call "Western Culture" I disagree with. AN ancestor maybe, THE ancestor
definitely not. Western Culture (and indeed most other cultures) has many
ancestors. The English language itself shows influences from all over the
world.
strider
> It happened more gradually than this. The 18th century saw the growth of
> Deism - the idea that Christian monotheism is correct but the more magical
> side of Christianity is wrong.
Your brief intellectual history here (and the parts I've cut out) kind
of misses the whole, independent (secular) justification for
government, science etc. idea from the enlightenment. Even theistic
philosophers attempted to justify the political order independently
from religion. This had a lot to do with the reformation. With the
spread of competing and murderous sects of Christianity it was no
longer good enough to justify government based entirely on a
particular reading of the bible because people disagreed over how to
properly read the bible. This was a big part of the spread of secular
reason, and attempts to seperate philosophical and scientific inquiry
from theology.
As to a history of the development of moral relativism, I wouldn't
place Marx or Desits as particularly important. Neither of them are
relativist at all, especially not Marxists. Marxism is firmly rooted
in the idea that we can come up with true and valid ideas about social
order, progress, the end of history and morality. Take this out and
Marxism collapses.
Prigator
>Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no biological
>"races." Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin
>does not mean a person is European. These are artificial
>classifications we've created and have nothing to do with some natural
>law governing human affairs.
That is so perfectly politically correct; it sounds like we could wipe out
racism in one swell foop if only it were true. How warm and human and
wonderful! Hold that thought and take a stroll through Harlem at midnight.
See how much snuggly peace and harmony you can inspire.
>Racism is not normal human behavior.
There you are dead wrong. Have you had freshman anthropology? All primitive
tribes call their own members "the people," and the neighboring tribe, which an
outsider cannot tell the difference by looking, are considered animals without
souls. Bigotry is the default position throughout the world and throughout
history. 'Twas ever thus.
You said it yourself:
>People think that just because they've known one
>culture their entire life, it is the only normal and correct one on
>the planet.
Standards of beauty may vary, foods and religions and other "norms" run the
gamut with locale. But racism is a constant across cultures in history. It
will take time to rid outselves of it. The races can co-exist, but bigotry
will not be simply dismissed by PC nonsense such as "there is no such thing as
race."
Doug Chandler
Chris Michael
> It is rather silly of you to take that implication from what I have
> posted on this subject - I have pointed out that the Greeks were
> influenced by many older cultures, many of them eastern, and that
> ultimately we are all descended from Africans anyway. By hey, why not
> introduce a straw man?
It is not a straw man. You said "Furthermore Roman culture, the basis for
"the West" borrowed very heavily".
THE BASIS. That very much implies a line of descent. And pointing out that
the greeks were influenced by
many older cultures certainly does not dispute the implication that cultures
have such lines of descent. If you had said that the greeks borrowed from
contempories that would have been a different matter.
> >Anyway, weren't you about to tell me the longitudes and latitudes that
> >define the middle east and cite your reference?
> >
> No.
In which case how do you propose to show that Greece is not in the middle
east?
Chris Michael
> I don't remember what and when, but I do remember reading that the
> first novel was written in China. I encourage you to do the research
> yourself if you're interested.
That's not how references are usually cited. If Paul fails to find the
reference is that because he didn't look hard enough, or it doesn't exist,
or the server is down.
> Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no biological
> "races." Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin
> does not mean a person is European. These are artificial
> classifications we've created and have nothing to do with some natural
> law governing human affairs.
Silly me, there was me thinking that sickle cell aneamia only affected those
of african descent. And all those paleobiologists that are able to trace
human migration in the past by sections of DNA, they all have it wrong? And
oriental people are not lacking an enzyme that westerners have to metabolise
alcohol. And it isn't only oriental people who have the epicanthic fold.
Gee, those stupid scientists wasting their time on all that work. They could
have just asked someone from the humanities who would have been able to tell
them it was all a waste of time.
> A lot of generalizations about what makes women
> attractive, for example, (young, extremely skinny, playful, etc.) are
> very American and not universal at all. Racism is not universal
> either.
Or then again it may be because young skinny people are more likely to be
fertile than old people, and likely to be healthier than not so skinny
people, all else being equal. Silly americans with their ideas that a good
mate is a healthy specimen likely to pass on good genes.
> No, the notion that moral principles are a matter of opinion is the
> result of an application of common sense. Otherwise why have laws?
To enforce them.
>If
> moral principles are the same everywhere, why do we even need to say
> them?
Laws are not there to "say" moral principles. They are there to enforce
them.
> Here is the problem of absolute moral principles. This is really what
> has bugged me all along. Let's say you are a law-maker. Your job is to
> take absolute moral principles and relay them to the masses. These
> absolute laws are timeless and perfect; they wouldn't be absolute
> otherwise, would they? The trouble is, as the law-maker, you aren't
> just relaying these laws, you're creating them.
You are (if you are any good at your job) converting a spec (what we want
the law to acheive) into a law that enforces that requirement. The society
decides the moral principles, the lawmaker converts these into corresponding
laws. And in the west we don'e have "the law-maker", we have a (flawed, but
still there) democracy(s) where the people have some say in the moral
principles that hold them together, and a legislature to create laws that
reflect those principles.
>
> We need absolute moralality? Whose version of it should we choose?
Mine of course ;-)
Chris Michael
> True, but it is devised by geographers, not by people in this group. We
> were discussing what makes up "Western" culture. You may well be right
> that the boundaries of Europe were drawn on a cultural basis, but that
> only makes my point - the boundaries of Europe included Greece for
> cultural reasons, ie Greek culture is aligned with Europe, not the East.
History is written by the victors. So if it suits the victors to think (or
have others think) that they are sole descendants of great historical
civilisations that is what will go in the books. It is not a case of the
boundaries of Europe being drawn on a cultrural basis so much as the
boundaries of "western culture" being imposed either in the wrong place, or
where no such boundary exists.
Morgan Landry
Hash: SHA1
On 2003-11-13, Prigator <prig...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> That is so perfectly politically correct; it sounds like we could wipe out
> racism in one swell foop if only it were true. How warm and human and
> wonderful! Hold that thought and take a stroll through Harlem at midnight.
> See how much snuggly peace and harmony you can inspire.
>
You must have fallen asleep in your freshmen
psychology class when they taught that race is
not a biological concept. The only race that truly exists is the human
one.
Morgan
- --
Email me at morganlandry at linuxmail dot org.
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strider
prig...@aol.com (Prigator) wrote in message news:<20031112042431...@mb-m04.aol.com>...
> That is so perfectly politically correct; it sounds like we could wipe out
> racism in one swell foop if only it were true. How warm and human and
> wonderful! Hold that thought and take a stroll through Harlem at midnight.
> See how much snuggly peace and harmony you can inspire.
You don't propose an argument here to prove the statement incorrect.
You just label it PC. It is not clear that the set of PC statements
are all false. If you would like to make this clear, please provide
and argument. (Note: it's also not clear that PC statements are all
true, and I have not claimed that)
Additionally, it's not clear that because racism exists in America
(the Harlem example), racism is the normal state of human affairs
across time. This would require a more substantive claim than such
anecdotal evidence.
> There you are dead wrong. Have you had freshman anthropology? All primitive
> tribes call their own members "the people," and the neighboring tribe, which an
> outsider cannot tell the difference by looking, are considered animals without
> souls. Bigotry is the default position throughout the world and throughout
> history. 'Twas ever thus.
Bigotry and racism are not necessarily the same thing. I'll define
what, at least in the historical literature, is often thought of as
racism (these conditions together are necessary and sufficient):
a) the human race can be divided up into a set of biologically
distinct races
b) these races are different in much the same way species are
different; they represent different evolutionary stages.
c) some race (usually the one of the person who is racist) represents
the highest stage, and the rest are ordered by how close they come to
this highest stage.
Yup, this whole thing is really pretty modern. Now of course people
have made distinctions between each other across time, sometimes skin
color is important, sometimes skin color is not so important. But race
is not a universal ideology.
Even Europeans didn't always consider race to be the main sign of
worth. For example, when dealing with Africans Europeans did not at
first assume that "blackness" was the same as inferiority. I have
cited the literature on this in an earlier post, I could find more if
you are interested.
In point of fact the enlightenment idea of race was Lockean and
environmentalist. Human beings (who were considered to be biologically
the same across class and race) became different through the
experiences of their life. The reason people were different in
different parts of the world was due to the environment of the country
they lived in (hot/cold moist/dry) and the society they were raised
in. This can clearly create prejudice, but it's a different kind of
prejudice than modern racism.
> Standards of beauty may vary, foods and religions and other "norms" run the
> gamut with locale. But racism is a constant across cultures in history. It
> will take time to rid outselves of it. The races can co-exist, but bigotry
> will not be simply dismissed by PC nonsense such as "there is no such thing as
> race."
No, ideas of race in fact aren't the same across history. I have
already shown how they weren't the same even in Europe.
Somehow you seem to think the idea that racism isn't the natural state
of human affairs implies that racism is easy to get rid of. This does
not follow. Marxism is not the natural state of affairs, and look how
many millions of Russians were killed whilst it persisted. Ideas have
power, and don't just go away with the snap of one's finger.
Just Jak!
> racism in one swell foop if only it were true. How warm and human and
> wonderful! Hold that thought and take a stroll through Harlem at midnight.
> See how much snuggly peace and harmony you can inspire.
No, how clinical and accurate. Science doesn't inspire snuggly peace
and harmony, it just describes facts. The fact that race is not a
biological concept has nothing to do with social and cultural
differences. I think the point being made was just that,
biologically, the term race has no merit and no definition. It's a
mishmash of ethnicity, geography and perceived cultural differences
(whether they're actually there or not). Nothing PC about it.
Genetically, there's no such thing as 'race' as we think of it.
> There you are dead wrong. Have you had freshman anthropology? All primitive
> tribes call their own members "the people," and the neighboring tribe, which an
> outsider cannot tell the difference by looking, are considered animals without
> souls. Bigotry is the default position throughout the world and throughout
> history. 'Twas ever thus.
Sadly true. Events in Rwanda over the last decade prove this out.
Hoo-toos and Tutsis killing each other because they perceived the
others as inferior...
Medieval Europe, Pre-Columbian America, the Middle East, Asia. Groups
of people that we might think of as the same 'race', but who have or
had extreme bigotry towards others that of the same 'race'.
> Standards of beauty may vary, foods and religions and other "norms" run the
> gamut with locale. But racism is a constant across cultures in history. It
> will take time to rid outselves of it. The races can co-exist, but bigotry
> will not be simply dismissed by PC nonsense such as "there is no such thing as
> race."
Oh, there is such a thing as race, but it's a perceived distinction,
rather than an actual one. Back in the late 1800s, when you talked
about racism in America, you weren't talking about black or white or
hispanic or asian, you were talking about Irish, Italian, Slavic or
any non-Anglo-Saxon 'whites' (I know I'm simplifying, blacks and
hispanics and asians WERE seen as inferior, but I'm making a point).
I can't remember the last time I saw a "No Irish Need Apply Sign" and
that's because our perceptions of race changed...and eventually, if we
work at it, our current perceptions of race will change too...
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>Granted, I made a poor point (hell, I'll even concede irrelevant). However,
>the greater point as to whether Greek culture was the ancestor of what we
>now call "Western Culture" I disagree with. AN ancestor maybe, THE ancestor
>definitely not. Western Culture (and indeed most other cultures) has many
>ancestors. The English language itself shows influences from all over the
>world.
>
would certainly not claim any single culture as THE ancestor of Western
civilisation - and if any were to claim this title, it would be Rome.
Taking the British as the acme and epitome of Western culture, as we
naturally may, there are influences from all over the world, but British
education at the height of Empire taught Greek and Latin, not Hindu or
Chinese, and the people who spread the Empire read Homer and Virgil.
--
John Secker
John Secker
<strider...@yahoo.com> writes
>So, if it's kill or be killed why didn't the Native Americans just
>kill when they had the chance?
>
stupid white people would eventually do to them.
--
John Secker
Eric Pepke
> >"races." Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin
> >does not mean a person is European. These are artificial
> >classifications we've created and have nothing to do with some natural
> >law governing human affairs.
>
> That is so perfectly politically correct; it sounds like we could wipe out
> racism in one swell foop if only it were true. How warm and human and
> wonderful!
Regardless of political correctness; it's largely true. A biological
distinction would talk of subspecies and, if the differences aren't
very large, varieties. If we were to make a biological division of
humans, the first cut would be between Australian Aborigines and everyone
else. The distinctions are fairly substantial and might make a case for
two subspecies of humnand. The distinctions between everyone else are
probably only strong enough to support varieties.
> Hold that thought and take a stroll through Harlem at midnight.
> See how much snuggly peace and harmony you can inspire.
Not a good example. Harlem is starting to be an upscale neighborhood
now, recovering from the hit it took due to Northern migration after
World War II. Besides, I've walked through Harlem and SouthCentral LA
late at night without any worries. However, I am not exactly a small
person.
> >Racism is not normal human behavior.
>
> There you are dead wrong.
Of course, you're right here. Also, the categorization of race
depends on the culture. In Spain and many other parts of Europe,
Gypsies are considered a separate race. Han Chinese consider
Mongolians to be a separate race. Lots of cultures consider Jews
a separate race. In Mexico, people with Mayan features are viewed
as a separate race from the more European-looking people. Racism
in these cultures is based on what's available.
> >People think that just because they've known one
> >culture their entire life, it is the only normal and correct one on
> >the planet.
Popping the stack up one, this sounds like someone who has only
recently become aware of other cultures and is quite impressed
with neophyte knowledge but who has not actually gone and lived
in some other cultures, which would rapidly disabuse him of any
xenophilia.
Push the stack again...
> Standards of beauty may vary, foods and religions and other "norms" run the
> gamut with locale.
Some standards of beauty vary, but there are universals. Clear skin
is everywhere a sign of beauty. Although cultures vary in the amount
of body fat considered beautiful, everywhere, an apple shape is
considered more beautiful than a pear shape.
Chris Michael
> Race is not a biological concept, by the way.
It must be a pigment of the imagination then.
dug
> will not be simply dismissed by PC nonsense such as "there is no such thing as
> race."
Bigotry will indeed not be simply dismissed. Nevertheless, Joshua is
100% correct. Race as a biological term is indistinct. It has no
boundaries, though you can speak of modalities. Race as a social class
is no different than say, 'southerner'.
If you are politically correct, you will continue to parrot the
concept of race just like Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, the KKK, the
White Aryan movement, and whoever else can make political hay out of
it. Keeps the funds rolling in...
--doug
strider
> Because they didn't realise what those helpless and obviously rather
> stupid white people would eventually do to them.
If the rule is kill or be killed then the Indians should have killed,
otherwise the rule doesn't work. Your point makes it clear the
Europeans didn't have to kill, they *chose* to, and some people
*choose* not to kill. Thus it's not actually kill or be killed, and
this is just an empty justification for colonialism.
Malcolm
would certainly not claim any single culture as THE ancestor of
> Western civilisation - and if any were to claim this title, it would be
> Rome.
>
Empire. We use the Roman alphabet. English also has the unique feature, I
think for any language, that the proper way to form an adjective for any
noun is to take the Latin (or Greek) word. So if I want to talk about cancer
genes in mice I refer to "murine oncogenes".
>
> Taking the British as the acme and epitome of Western culture, as we
> naturally may,
>
science politics and economics Britain reigned supreme, until shattered by
the Second World War.
>
> there are influences from all over the world, but British education at the
> height of Empire taught Greek and Latin, not Hindu or Chinese, and the
> people who spread the Empire read Homer and Virgil.
>
order a cup of coffee in French - no devations like "can I have a biscuit
with that?" allowed. Homer and Virgil aren't read even in translation.
However plenty of Commonwealth (meaning non-white) authors on the
curriculum.
Tom Breton
> You must have fallen asleep in your freshmen
> psychology class when they taught that race is
> not a biological concept. The only race that truly exists is the human
> one.
Sneering at him isn't much of an argument. I'm sure that what you say
is true, that this is taught in your freshmen psychology class. I
also know that this is more likely to reflect political fad than an
open-minded examination of the question. Indeed, I wouldn't expect
today's schools to give thoughtful answers answer to any politically
charged question.
--
Tom Breton at panix.com, username tehom. http://www.panix.com/~tehom
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>
>It is not a straw man. You said "Furthermore Roman culture, the basis for
>"the West" borrowed very heavily".
>THE BASIS. That very much implies a line of descent.
Indeed. And a "line of descent" does NOT imply only one ancestor. "The
West" has inherited more of the Roman than of any other contemporary
culture. In its turn Rome took a good deal of its culture from the
Greeks - far more than from the Egyptians, say. I struggle to see your
point here.
--
John Secker
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>
>History is written by the victors. So if it suits the victors to think (or
>have others think) that they are sole descendants of great historical
>civilisations that is what will go in the books.
You are confusing biological descent with cultural inheritance. The West
explicitly took large amounts of both Greek and Roman culture wholesale
during the Reformation. That did not require them to have a drop of
Greek blood in their veins.
> It is not a case of the
>boundaries of Europe being drawn on a cultrural basis so much as the
>boundaries of "western culture" being imposed either in the wrong place,
Wrong in your humble opinion, I take it? So where would you draw the
boundaries, and why?
> or
>where no such boundary exists.
In which case the concept of Western culture is null. So what are you
arguing about?
--
John Secker
John Secker
<no...@m.pls> writes
>Silly me, there was me thinking that sickle cell aneamia only affected those
>of african descent. And all those paleobiologists that are able to trace
>human migration in the past by sections of DNA, they all have it wrong? And
>oriental people are not lacking an enzyme that westerners have to metabolise
>alcohol. And it isn't only oriental people who have the epicanthic fold.
>Gee, those stupid scientists wasting their time on all that work. They could
>have just asked someone from the humanities who would have been able to tell
>them it was all a waste of time.
>
concept or not? All you appear to be doing is pointing out that our
characteristics depend on our genes, and that the gene pool is not
uniform across geography. Duh.
(By the way, we are all of "African descent")
--
John Secker
Paul Filseth
> > That could be said of other things on my list too. I don't mean to
> > suggest that nobody ever did any of those things before at all,
> > just that Western culture took them to so much higher a level as
> > to be doing something qualitatively new.
>
> If I may humbly suggest, if you didn't mean to suggest that nobody
> ever did those things before, you should probably not used the
> wording you did
Possibly not, but...
> ... when you said "Our culture came up with..." I thought you meant
> to suggest that our culture came up with...
...I don't accept your premise. "Came up with" doesn't mean "was
first to invent". It's perfectly normal to talk about two people
coming up with the same idea independently, and they're seldom both
first.
In any event, I was talking about Malcolm's claim that we "don't
like to feel that Western culture has anything superior to offer.".
So I posted a list of superior things Western culture offers. It's
not who creates something first that matters, it's who creates it in
a form the world can use. There was some guy who figured out species
could evolve by natural selection twenty years before Darwin did. He
was a tree-specialist, he limited his theory to trees, he published
in an obscure forestry journal, and nobody noticed. Does he deserve
credit? Certainly. But does he deserve the level of credit we give
Darwin? Not in my book. Darwin had the big picture, he understood
the full implications, and he did the hard part -- he gathered the
evidence for it. We got our knowledge of evolution from Darwin, not
from what's-his-name. Likewise, when other societies acquire math
and science, etc., they use the versions Western culture came up with.
Ramanujan learned to do higher math from European textbooks, not
Indian ones. Even if some Indians thought of it first, it was the
West that offered math to the world.
> The Indians and Arabs both made huge contributions to maths to the
> extent that you shouldn't take it away from them by saying the greeks
> taught them most of what they know.
That's not what I said. They learned a bunch from the Greeks.
If priority is what counts, "most" is irrelevant. If quantity is
what counts, Westerners created most math themselves, starting in
the Renaissance. Take your pick.
> > Greece isn't in the Middle East.
>
> Not on a political map maybe, but what relevance is that to the
> world of 3000 yrs ago. It is very much in the middle east region.
If Greece is in the *Middle* East, where the heck is the *Near*
East? Italy?
> Cyprus (Mycenean Greeks, of which I am half) is only about 60 miles
> from Israel.
You mean you're half Greek Cypriot? Half Mycenean Greek? Half
the Mycenean Greeks in the world? :-)
> There was all sorts of trade and cross polination of ideas in that
> region. Today, Greece is in Europe, and Egypt isn't. To imply that
> justifies devising a group that includes ancient greece and the
> west, but excludes ancient egypt or or other ancient eastern
> cultures seems a bit convenient.
Whether the group is justified is immaterial. People *think* of
ancient Greece as the foundation of Western culture. Like it or not,
the convenient group exists as a popular conceptual category. It's
the category Malcolm appeared to be talking about so it's the category
I talked about.
Look at it this way: my college had a "Western Civ" requirement
for decades. It included Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle in its
"Great Books" series. Then, in the 70s, Western culture got into
the whole spirit of not being so full of itself, and the school added
a "Non-Western Culture" requirement. There were lots of courses that
satisfied it; for instance, I took a class that covered some ancient
Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist classics. Does that give you a picture
of the general situation? Now let's pretend you're the professor in
charge of the Non-Western Culture program. And let's say a prof in
the Classics department wants more than three undergraduates to take
his course on Homeric religion, so he gets the bright idea that
ancient Greece wasn't Western culture and applies to have his class
satisfy the requirement. Are you going to approve it?
> "John Secker" <jo...@secker.demon.co.uk> wrote...
> > Cyprus may be inhabited by Greeks, but that doesn't mean that
> > Cyprus is Greece. ...
>
> Cyprus is a greek Island populated by greeks. That much is a fact.
Half a fact. Northern Cyprus is a Turkish half-island populated
by Turks.
> > Greece is in Europe, Israel and Egypt are not. That is geography,
> > not an arbitrary "devised" grouping.
>
> And what the hell is Europe if not an arbitary grouping. It is
> hardly spilt along tectonic lines now is it? Israel is in Europe as
> far as the Eurovision song contest is concerned.
If you want to classify Cyprus as Greece because a bunch of
Greeks moved there, well, Israel exists because a bunch of Europeans
moved there.
> If Turkey gets its way it is soon set to join the EU. The tories
> want us to leave Europe and join NAFTA.
Britain's an island. Who is to say what continent an island
is part of? There are two French islands surrounded by Canada.
Istanbul, on the other hand, is on the European mainland.
> Tell me at which point Europe ends and Asia begins.
The Bosporus. The word "Asia" originally referred specifically
to the part of Turkey on the other side of it. The fact that Europe
and Asia are connected around the back is immaterial -- 3000 years
ago, the involved parties weren't prepared to go that way.
--
Paul Filseth Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only
To email, delete the x. proved it correct, not tried it. - Donald Knuth
Chris Michael
> True enough, but there are degrees. Everyone has many ancestors, and I
> would certainly not claim any single culture as THE ancestor of Western
> civilisation - and if any were to claim this title, it would be Rome.
> Taking the British as the acme and epitome of Western culture, as we
> naturally may, there are influences from all over the world, but British
> education at the height of Empire taught Greek and Latin, not Hindu or
> Chinese, and the people who spread the Empire read Homer and Virgil.
> --
Yes, but that does not necessarily show a more direct line of descent, it
could be that of the ancient cultures the British preferred the greek and
roman so taught that. Afterall, why did they not teach about 2000 yr old
Britain? I certainly appreciate your earlier point that if a culture (us
say) decides to base itself on an earlier culture, or at least make frequent
reference to it (greek, roman), then to a large extent it becomes self
fulfilling and the later culture, through choice, can be said to be based on
the earlier culture. However that does not exclude other contempory cultures
from also possibly being able to claim descent. More importantly though is
that their were a number of civilisations that were in the Middle
East/Meditteranean, and collectively (along with some civilisations in
ancient china) they made great contributions to what is today called Western
Civilisation.
> John Secker
>
Paul Filseth
> > > "chris" <www...@infionline.net> wrote:
> > > > What this means is that Christianity is like every other religion.
> > >
> > > No, that's a canard spread by people who don't like to feel that
> > > Western culture has anything superior to offer.
> >
> > religion long before the silly notion that Western Culture has
> > nothing superior to offer reared its brain-damaged head, and you
> > damn well know it.
>
> It happened more gradually than this. The 18th century saw the
> growth of Deism - the idea that Christian monotheism is correct
> but the more magical side of Christianity is wrong.
You might want to consider reading the actual words of actual
Deists before you push that definition of Deism.
It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the
other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of
the Creator
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is
none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more
repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this
thing called Christianity.
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.
- Thomas Paine
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, and do not find in our particular superstition
(Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded
on fables and mythology.
The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god
as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god
is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious.
- Thomas Jefferson
Theism is the doctrine that there is a God who reveals Himself to us
*by proxy* -- through prophets, scripture, messiahs, and other such
hearsay. Deism is the idea that Christian monotheism is incorrect;
that monotheism is incorrect; that all theism is incorrect -- it's
the idea that there's a God who reveals Himself directly to everyone,
through His creation and through man's natural capacity for reasoning.
It was the 18th-century Deists who *figured out* Christianity is just
another lame myth.
> Then in the second half of the nineteenth century, Marxism developed,
> ... with (dubious) scholarship about vegetation myths that it began
> to be advanced that Christianity was itself one of these vegetation
> myths.
What the heck is a vegetation myth? Whatever, your history of
some other strand of Western philosophy hasn't much to do with us.
We learned to freethink from the Deists, and they were spreading the
so-called "canard" before any of that other stuff happened.
> Finally, as you say, with increased travel, independence of
> ex-colonies, and non-Christian immigration into Western countries,
> people began to put about the notion that all cultures and religions
> are equal in value.
Quit putting words in my mouth -- I didn't blame any of those
things for the notion that all cultures are equal. Whether they're
to blame or not, the notion that all cultures are equal and the
notion that Christianity is just like other religions are two
different notions with two different histories. Deal with it.
> This isn't something we've argued about. It is of course possible
> to come up with a much better argument that "The Jesus Myth", but
> it hasn't been advanced at any length at least for the few months
> I've been a regular here.
And you don't think that has anything to do with the fact that
you're here, wanting to talk about "The Jesus Myth" all the time?
Atheists by and large are a lot more interested in arguing that God
is a myth than Jesus, whether they think Jesus is a myth or not.
Whether there was a Jesus has no bearing on whether there's a God;
it's a matter of history and anthropology. And semantics.
Paul Filseth
> Tom Breton <te...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > We INVENTED racism. ... There was nothing special about Western
> > > Europe when it expanded to try to colonize the world, except an
> > > arrogance and ignorance that is still around today. ...
> >
> > Just so there's no mistake, not all atheists hold with this sort of
> > West-bashing, and I for one am appalled. I think that what Joshua
> > said above is foolish and mean-spirited.
>
> Why are you appalled? I'm not insulting you, and I don't think I've
> said anything mean.
Of course you don't think you have -- "Your enemy is never a
villain in his own eyes." But the two claims of yours I left in
above are exactly what Tom said they are.
> I think we are sophisticated enough to understand that our ancestors
> don't need to be the good guys in every struggle, or even in most.
Who said they were? That's not what Tom was on about. Some of
us apparently are only sophisticated enough to understand that our
ancestors don't need to be the good guys, but aren't sophisticated
enough to understand that obvious character flaws in our ancestors are
not a particularly good reason to blind ourselves to quite similar
character flaws in our non-ancestors. People are people, and tribal
hatred, ignorance and arrogance are commonplace. Claiming the West's
ignorance and arrogance make it special, and defining racism in some
peculiar way to exclude ethnic violence among non-Westerners, isn't
rational. Self-righteousness comes in many forms, and one of them is
"The idiot who praises in enthusiastic tones, all centuries but this
and every country but his own."
> It is saddening to me to see some historical figures defended based
> on outdated views simply because we cheer for them like a sports
> team. I will give one quick example, but there are so many that I
> see every day. Columbus killed and enslaved the indigenous people of
> North America. But as NBC put it, most people outside of Europe at
> the time were cannibals and this was justified. Of course that's
> nonsense...
It's (a) such *obvious* nonsense, and (b) so clearly offensive
to a wide range of politically active people, that you're making an
extraordinary claim when you say NBC said that. If they'd said that,
there would have been a firestorm of condemnation. So it should be
easy to find references to it. Do you have any evidence that they
said it?
> there is no absolute way to tell right from wrong... no one should
> be silenced.
Why do you believe no one should be silenced? Do you have some
way to tell right from wrong that's better than the silencers' way to
tell? If you think you have, how can you tell your way is better, if
there's no absolute way to tell right from wrong? Conversely, if you
don't think you have a better way, then why do you put any more trust
in the conclusions of *your* way than in the contrary conclusions of
*their* way?
> I am happy with myself as an individual, not because of where I came
> from, but because of who I am. I do not need people to tell me fairy
> tales about the heroic exploits of Columbus and Cortes in
> cannibal-infested lands to be secure in who I am.
> I do not need to be told the African slave trade was a minor hiccup
> in what was otherwise a peaceful culture that respected diversity.
You may not have been insulting us before, but now you are. You
are insinuating that those of us who think more highly of Western
culture *do* need such fairy tales. Why are you doing that?
Paul Filseth
> > > We INVENTED racism.
> >
> > What's your evidence for that? Racism is normal human behavior.
>
> Someone else posted a pretty good reply with evidence that racism
> is modern and western.
You're talking about the 'racism, as it refers to biologically
determined and evolutionarily/hierarchically ordered races, is in
fact both recent and "Western."' post, I presume? That's not
evidence; that's defining words so as to get the answer you want.
Racism refers to treating people badly because they aren't the same
race as you. When I praised the West for its anti-racism, I wasn't
talking about how we were the ones who figured out evolution results
in a bush and not a ladder. I was talking about how our culture
figured out that treating people badly because of their ethnicity
isn't fair.
> Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no biological
> "races."
Well, maybe sort of, in the sense that "cavity" isn't a dentistry
concept because dentists distinguish about ninety different types of
cavities and talk about those rather than about "cavities".
> Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin does not
> mean a person is European.
So? Race and color aren't the same thing. That's why we ban
discrimination based on "race, creed, or color". Black Africans and
black Australians are different races. This is evidence against the
existence of biological race?
> These are artificial classifications we've created and have nothing
> to do with some natural law governing human affairs.
Why? Because you say so? Because your ideology trumps your eyes?
People tend to look more like their close relatives than like their
distant relatives. Therefore you can get information about who someone
is related to by looking at him. That's a natural law governing human
affairs, and animal affairs too. If you're a Caucasian then you share
a lot more 1000th cousins with Britney Spears than if you're an Ainu.
> There is really very little "normal" human behavior at all if you're
> talking about universals.
That's not fact. That's "blank-slate" behaviorist ideology.
It's pre-Copernican in its self-centeredness. Why would you believe
it? There's normal dog behavior, normal whale behavior, normal rat
behavior, normal chimp behavior. What, Adam and Eve were somehow
magically born one day to Australopithecines without any of their
parents' behavioral wiring? It's ridiculous. People are animals.
We have instincts, just like everyone else.
> Racism is not universal either.
Of course it isn't -- some people have the wit not to fall into
that mental trap. And some people have the good fortune to be born
into a culture that figured out it's a trap and cautions them against
it.
> > > That arrogance was and is based in part on the religious
> > > assumption of absolute moral principles and God as the one
> > > true standard.
> >
> > The assumption of absolute moral principles isn't a religious
> > assumption; that one's also common to mankind. The notion that
> > moral principles are just a matter of opinion is yet another
> > innovation of Western culture.
>
> No, the notion that moral principles are a matter of opinion is the
> result of an application of common sense.
Really? It looks to me like that notion is mostly confined
to Westerners and people Westerners have taught it to. Go tell a
Palestinian that whether Hebron should belong to the Jews or the
Arabs is just a matter of opinion, and see what he says. Can you
produce examples of non-Westerners independently coming up with the
principle that morality is a matter of opinion? If not, why do you
suppose that is? Do you think only Westerners have common sense?
> Here is the problem of absolute moral principles....
What was at issue here wasn't whether morality is absolute, but
whether believing it is made the West distinctively arrogant. That's
implausible. But if you want to run off on a digression, go for it...
> Let's say you are a law-maker. Your job is to take absolute moral
> principles and relay them to the masses. These absolute laws are
> timeless and perfect; they wouldn't be absolute otherwise, would
> they? The trouble is, as the law-maker, you aren't just relaying
> these laws, you're creating them.
That's illogical. If they're timeless, they aren't created.
> Only you can get to the perfect truths behind your laws; others
> only have access to the fleeting, human interpretations you've given.
Huh? A law-maker has no better access to perfect truths than
anyone else. Probably less, since he has power and power corrupts.
The mere circumstance that it's his job to make good laws doesn't
mean he's competent to.
> That gives you an advantage no one else has. It gives you access to
> the eternal laws of the universe, while everyone else can only
> listen to you and agree. It makes you god.
(Hey, the thread is still about atheism!) Why would it make him
god? Why should anyone suppose a god has a better handle on moral
truth than a human has? Because the god says so?
> We need absolute morality? Whose version of it should we choose?
Version? If there's absolute morality, there's only one version.
That kind of goes with "absolute".
> As soon as you've asked that question, you realize that there is no
> such thing as absolute morality at all:
Do I? Mostly what I realize when people ask that question
and then answer it the way you do is how poorly thought through most
meta-ethical reasoning is.
> That's important because the West cannot claim to have some natural
> law governing its system of morality; our laws reflect our opinions.
Well, that is a problem for the West, since so much of it has
bought off on moral relativism. But hey, cultural fashions like that
come and go. Maybe in a hundred years relativism will be unpopular
and the West can claim its morals reflect Natural Law again.
> You're right to say that this transcends religion, but the idea that
> western ideals are universal is a very Christian one.
Western ideals tend to be in violent conflict with Christianity.
It's a big reason atheism is becoming popular. Western ideals are
mostly about equality, democracy, and human rights; and Christians
are worshipping the "Supreme Fascist". :-(
> I think it would be very hard to have moral absolutes without god
> in the picture, and I have never heard an argument for such a thing.
Then you should get out more. You might start by checking out
Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.
> I'm sure there are atheists who believe their system of morality is
> absolute, and that's their right. But where did their absolute
> system of morality come from?
Do you understand that thinking there's absolute morality and
thinking your own system is it are two different things? There's an
absolute truth as to what the laws of physics are, but that doesn't
mean we think our current models are more than just approximations.
> I doubt they'd have a good answer. Prove me wrong!
Let's start by seeing whether you have a good answer to my
question about your claim that "no one should be silenced" in the
other sub-thread.
> Just think of me as helping your primary claim a little bit.
But you aren't. You're the poster-child for the claim I was
refuting -- that people who argue that Christianity is no better
than other religions are just relativists and West-bashers.
Morgan Landry
I never said it was, but I sure did enjoy it. :)
> I'm sure that what you say
> is true, that this is taught in your freshmen psychology class.
Yes, it was.
> I
> also know that this is more likely to reflect political fad than an
> open-minded examination of the question. Indeed, I wouldn't expect
> today's schools to give thoughtful answers answer to any politically
> charged question.
>
*shrugs* he argues to pay attention to your freshman anthropology
class, while I threw that argument back in his face. There are a lot
of fads occurring in universities today, but this time, the fad got it
right: race is a social concept, not a scientific one. Although
"scientists" about 200 years ago to the present have argued that race
is real. Ever picked up a copy of _The Bell Curve_? I'm using it in my
English report about how white supremacy developed in literature. It's
really scary.
Morgan
Paul Filseth
> For my part, I think that there is pretty much the same mix of arsholes
> and saints, fools and geniuses across races. If you want to start
> suggesting that Westerners are particularly bad (which you seem to
> be doing by applying species-wide attributes to Westerners alone),
> then you are accepting of the principle that there are substantial
> differences between races and that it is legitimate to discriminate on
> the grounds of race.
That doesn't follow. "Westerner" isn't a race. To (mis)quote
Kevin Nealon, "Eat your heart out, Japan! Midori Ito just got her
butt kicked by America's very own Kristy Yamaguchi!"
strider
> Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
I've been mulling over how best to reply to this for a few days now in
my spare time. For a little background on me, I'm working in a PhD
program in history specializing in early American history especially
Native American history. As one might guess from this I'm used to
thinking about cultures in a comparative perspective, to analyzing
their developments and trajectories as well as other aspects of
history. Basically, I think this statement is profoundly wrongheaded
on a number of levels. One problem I have in responding is that the
literature is vast on this subject, so I'm going to try to flesh out
where I'm coming from and why I think this statement is headed in the
wrong direction.
First, I am not a moral relativist. I think we can make truth claims
even about right and wrong. I am not a postmodernist or a
poststructuralist.
Early anthropologists used to think of cultures as evolutionary.
Anthropology was once the study of "primitive" people who were lower
on the Darwinistic ladder than the European societies (and I'm using
that word fairly broadly) the anthropologists themselves came from.
This idea coexisted very nicely with a racialized hierarchy where
"whites" were at the top, and others were curious steps back into the
primordial past.
It's a myth that this kind of thinking was first challenged in the
90's or the 70's or the 60's. In fact as anthropology became more
scientific in the early 20th century (I'd say the 30's) this hierarchy
began to conflict with the new goals of anthropology. Scientific study
of cultures required viewing human beings as essentially similar so
that the study of what were once viewed as "primitives" was the study
of all.
This required a certain kind of cultural relativism. Constantly
critiquing the subjects of study by their relation to one's culture is
not a good way to go about study. By abstracting oneself from such
questions, anthropologists could view their own societies critically.
(This analysis has come from an article entitled "Native American
Studies and the End of Ethnohistory" by Melissa L. Meyer and Kerwin
Lee Klein published in a volume entitled Studying Native America. This
is a good place to go, for a more in-depth analysis and more sources).
The point here is that for quite sometime the idea that "western"
culture does not represent a superior state of existence has been
around and accepted for quite some time, and evolutionary ideas about
social development weren't thrown out just in the last ten years or
so.
In American history the so-called "progress" or "Whig" narrative of
history fell out of fashion more recently. It used to be that
historians of America viewed the past as a gradual and inevitable
unfolding of the wonder of the present. After WWII, as historians
became more interested in issues like race, class, and gender this
idea began to be questioned. Today it is no longer accepted, and
scholars do not generally approach the past as a worse version of the
present. This has been profoundly helpful, as it has allowed
historians to analyze historical change by admitting the good and the
bad. For example the American Revolution, in addition to some of the
good things we often think about it, also compromised the position of
Native Americans and led towards encroachment on their lands, murder,
and forced relocations (on the death of the progress narrative and
some fantastic insights on history see Joyce Appleby's article "A
Different Kind of Independence: The Postwar Restructuring of the
Historical Study of Early American" in the William and Mary Quarterly,
April 1993).
This has hopefully shown that scholarship has moved away from that
type of claim and explained a little about why. Now I'd like to
present my various specific problems with it.
a) What is "western" culture?
When and where is western culture? What holds it together as a concept
and construct? If western culture is the parts of the world that have
been influenced by Europe, wouldn't that be everywhere? Is Japan
western? West of what?
As these questions suggest I don't really like discussing "western"
culture. I think it implies that the west exists apart from the rest
of the world and thinks up things on its own, outside an
international, intercultural context. It also implies a great deal of
unity, where only recently have people begun thinking about themselves
as similar. I would like to be more specific, and try to avoid terms
which tend to give off broad, general impressions that are not true.
b) How do we compare cultures?
I have no idea how to say culture a is better then culture b. I will
dispense with some plausible answers.
"culture a is better than b because it defeated and destroyed it." My
problem with this is two fold. First (and this will be a theme) how do
we know it was the "culture" of a that allowed it to destroy b? Why
not accident, geographic placement, disease, or economy? I would
suggest that generally cultures don't destroy, but people, and the
reasons people destroy are not bounded just by culture but also by
luck, economy, having a good staple crop, the list goes on and on.
Second, this could arbitrarily be called superiority, but it seems to
me an implausible basis to say culture a is better than b. A has
probably done something morally wrong in destroying b (remember I'm
not a moral relativist), and so might be inferior in a sense.
"culture a is better than culture b because it is more productive."
Once again, we assume that culture is solely responsibly, and again
the criteria seems somewhat artbitrary.
"culture a is better than culture b because it provides a greater
number of valid truth claims." First off, the ability to provide good
truth claims is directly impacted by a number of factors not easily
attributable solely to culture, like wealth, and luck. Secondly, it
just doesn't make sense to me that this means "better." It seems like
this claim only shows that it's more effective at a certain task,
namely producing truth claims, that while important isn't the end all
and be all of human existence.
Notice that I have not slipped into relativism, in the sense that I
think things are still right and wrong. Cultures can assert truths or
falsehoods. It just strikes me as ridiculous to argue that one culture
is better than another based solely on this.
c) "western" or "modern" culture has produced the most egregious mass
murders in the history of man.
From the 26 million Russians killed during WWII, to Nazi death camps,
to the firebombing of Tokyo, to the NINETY SIX PERCENT demographic
decline amongst Native Americans in California (see Albert L. Hurtado
"Indian Survival on the California Frontier), to the world's only
known institution of trans generational slavery, "western" culture has
racked up quite a list of destruction. If it has provided the tools
for going to the moon (in whatever sense it can be thought of as
autonomous) it has also not provided the means to use such
technological marvels without mass horror. "Western" culture invented
and perfected many terrible things.
Again, I am not maintaining that all ideas in "western" culture are
invalid or no more valid than anyone else's. I am not attacking the
idea that some notions are right and some are wrong.
Thanks for getting through all of my reply. I hope it made some sense
and was helpful.
Paul Filseth
> As to a history of the development of moral relativism, I wouldn't
> place Marx or Deists as particularly important. Neither of them are
> relativist at all, especially not Marxists. Marxism is firmly rooted
> in the idea that we can come up with true and valid ideas about social
> order, progress, the end of history and morality. Take this out and
> Marxism collapses.
There's no conflict between being relativist and thinking you
have true and valid ideas about morality, provided what you think is
true and valid is *relativism itself*. Marx wrote:
What is "a fair distribution"?
Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is
"fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on
the basis of the present-day mode of production? ... Have not also
the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair"
distribution?
It sounds pretty relativistic to me. YMMV.
strider
> There's no conflict between being relativist and thinking you
> have true and valid ideas about morality, provided what you think is
> true and valid is *relativism itself*. Marx wrote:
>
> What is "a fair distribution"?
> Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is
> "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on
> the basis of the present-day mode of production? ... Have not also
> the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair"
> distribution?
>
> It sounds pretty relativistic to me. YMMV.
I'd like to know exactly where that passage is (though that may be
difficult as translations vary).
I think Marx here is describing the distribution of his present day
and showing how ideology can make what is objectively *not* fair seem
fair. Are you denying the infamous "from each according to his means
to each according to his ends" idea as Marx's idea of an objectively
fair distribution? His basic idea is that the unfairness of capitalist
distribution will manifest itself more completely than any other
because of just how stratified it will make society. He thinks
capitalisms will drown in its own productive output. He may also be
critiquing what he calls "bourgeois socialism," which "attains
adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of
speech." (Manifesto)
Marx certainly seems to think communism is better than capitalism:
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase
accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a
means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the pas dominates the present; in
Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living
person is dependent as has no individuality. (again the Manifesto, I
really don't want to deal with Kapital again)
Here Marx lays out as clearly as Marx can (he is an awful writer)
what's wrong with capitalism. It alienates man, turning him into a cog
on the machinery of capitalism "living labor is but a means to
increase accumulated labor." Communism will liberate man, stop the
alienation and allow for the creation of the "species being" when the
"present shall dominate the past" and history can finally be escaped.
Here Marx is taking his cues from Hegel. The unfolding stages of
society are seen as allowing the human to develop more fully and
completely (for Hegel in the manifest unfolding of Geist, for Marx in
the liberation of man from the tyranny of capital and the true freedom
of the kingdom of freedom). Marx was not a relativist. Communism was
better than capitalism, just as capitalism was better than feudalism.
Marx also said at the end of the manifesto "In short, the Communists
[read people who follow me] everywhere support every revolutionary
movement against the existing social and political order of things."
It's kind of tough for a relativist to suppose world revolution. If
every social order is equivalent, why support the overthrow of any?
Chris Michael
"Paul Filseth" <pg...@lsil.com> wrote in message
news:2003111900...@lsil.com...
> "Chris Michael" <no...@m.pls> wrote:
> > For my part, I think that there is pretty much the same mix of arsholes
> > and saints, fools and geniuses across races. If you want to start
> > suggesting that Westerners are particularly bad (which you seem to
> > be doing by applying species-wide attributes to Westerners alone),
> > then you are accepting of the principle that there are substantial
> > differences between races and that it is legitimate to discriminate on
> > the grounds of race.
>
> That doesn't follow. "Westerner" isn't a race. To (mis)quote
> Kevin Nealon, "Eat your heart out, Japan! Midori Ito just got her
> butt kicked by America's very own Kristy Yamaguchi!"
The West is indeed quite multiethinic (something I personally think is a
good thing), but is still predominantly composed of the causcasion race.
That is why non caucasions are referred to as minorities in many countries
in the west. The "East" is not a race either, but, going Eastwards it is
composed of Semites, Arabs, and then further East Mongoloid races. Africa is
not a race either, but is predominantly composed of Negroids.
Many western, west bashers have in mind white people when they get all
guilty over supposed western misdeeds. (Ask Michael Moore who in further
deference to the stereotype equates the west not only with white, but with
men as well).
Your insistance on accuracy is as always appreciated ;-). And feel free to
do a search and replace on "Westerner" with "caucasian". I have met enough
west hating bleeding heart liberals to know that they usually have "white"
in mind, even if they don't overtly state it, when they talk of the evils
the west has committed now and in the past. I am not sure it substantially
changes my point.
Chris Michael
> You mean you're half Greek Cypriot? Half Mycenean Greek? Half
> the Mycenean Greeks in the world? :-)
The first ;-), and indeed I suppose the second, given the Greek Cypriots are
descended from Mycenean Greeks. (Cyprus's btw name is drived from the greek
word for copper, and this reflects the fact it was a source of copper in the
ancient world. If I can can premptively anticipate John and point out that I
appreciate this is not relevant to anything, but some people might be
interested in it anyway as a standalone fact. Cyprus is also the only
country with a map on its flag. Also irrelvant, but it may come in handy in
Trivial Pursuits).
> >
> > Cyprus is a greek Island populated by greeks. That much is a fact.
>
> Half a fact. Northern Cyprus is a Turkish half-island populated
> by Turks.
The above is even less than half a fact. It is a Cypriot Island bisected
along the
east west axis by a DMZ. In the North is an illigitimate government that is
not
recognised by any country in the world except for Turkey. This has been the
case since the
illegal invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974. Britain incidently renaged on
a treaty to protect Cyprus in the event of such an invasion. UN General
Assembly resolution 37/253 (1983) states that the General Assembly "demands
the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from the Republic of
Cyprus." Turkey will not comply with this nor any other UN resolution. (And
we know what ought to happen to coutries that flaunt UN resolutions. I have
no problem with that, although a bit more consistancy would be nice.)
It is now causing problems for Turkey's hopes of joining the EU. All member
states by
implication drop any claims to sovereignty over the lands of any other
member states. This is clearly a problem for a country that illegally holds
the land of a state whose entry to the EU is somewhat more assured. A
cynical person may think that it is Turkey's strategic postioning, and
Cyprus's lack of mineral reserves (copper notwithstanding) which has allowed
this situation to
persist for thirty years, in contrast to no more blatent invasions
of sovereign states, which has led to swift (and warranted IMHO) action.
Particlarly in the case where there was in fact an agreement to protect.
Northern Cyprus is if anything even less legitimate than North Korea as a
country. (The government there is at least Korean).
Also it WAS not populated BY Turks. It IS populated WITH Turks (amongst
others), but it was populated BY Greeks several thousand years ago. FWIW,
the irony (or inconsistancy, or downright hypocrisy; take your pick ;-)) of
the fact that I am now defending a "western" country at the expense of an
"eastern" one, or indeed the fact that I am now sounding quite patriotic
despite earlier posts decrying patriotism, has not escaped me. Of course
neither does it make me incorrect as regards the politics surrounding Cyprus
which you are now even better informed on ;-).
I enjoyed the Feynman* link so much that I thought one good link deserves
another. The link below has a bit more detail on the issue, with a further
link to the Republic of Cyprus homepage in case you wanted to know more.
http://www.btinternet.com/~argyros.argyrou/introduc.htm
* James Gleick author of Chaos: Making of a Science has written a very
thorough biography or Feynman.
Chris Michael
>
> Half a fact. Northern Cyprus is a Turkish half-island populated
> by Turks.
What is a half-island? ;-)
Igtheist
> European germs killed far more indigenous
> peoples than Europeans did).
Geesh, now the germs are european? Didn't the chinese invent these
like everything else. :) You know, like bubonic plague, smallpox,
and the flu.
Igtheist
I disagree with just about everything you have to say in your various
posts to this entire thread. I think that the others are doing a
good job of demolishing your unfounded beliefs.
I am curious though. What educational system poisoned your mind?
Igtheist
> There are a lot
> of fads occurring in universities today, but this time, the fad got it
> right: race is a social concept, not a scientific one. Although
> "scientists" about 200 years ago to the present have argued that race
> is real.
I guess it all depends on how you define your terms ... doesn't it. I
don't think race is defined scientifically the way you want it to be.
Do you have any supporting evidence for your contention? Have you
ever heard of ring species? Are you now going to argue that there is
no such thing as a species? Do you know the least bit what you are
talking about? Nix that, I know the answer to the last one.
Igtheist
> Our culture came up with ... muckraking journalists, ....
>
> And this is a good thing?
I know the definition is " To search for and expose misconduct in
public life." but many people use it to mean "... in private life.".
One good the other bad.
Malcolm
> other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of
> the Creator
>
>
> Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is
> none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man,
> more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this
> thing called Christianity.
>
>
> 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.
> - Thomas Paine
>
>
> The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god
> as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god
> is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious.
> - Thomas Jefferson
>
years of Western Christianity. An Ancient Greek would have celebrated such a
god.
>
> Theism is the doctrine that there is a God who reveals Himself to us
> *by proxy* -- through prophets, scripture, messiahs, and other such
> hearsay. Deism is the idea that Christian monotheism is incorrect;
> that monotheism is incorrect; that all theism is incorrect -- it's
> the idea that there's a God who reveals Himself directly to everyone,
> through His creation and through man's natural capacity for reasoning.
> It was the 18th-century Deists who *figured out* Christianity is just
> another lame myth.
>
what point the deist God dissolves into a metaphor. As for figuring out that
Chrisitianity is just a lame myth, the Reformation did that to the Catholic
Church. However it took three hundred years before reform reached the stage
of deism, and another fifty to a hundred before it reached its logical
conclusion of atheism.
>
> What the heck is a vegetation myth? Whatever, your history of
> some other strand of Western philosophy hasn't much to do with us.
>
important in the idea that Christianity was based on a myth.
>
> We learned to freethink from the Deists, and they were spreading the
> so-called "canard" before any of that other stuff happened.
>
and was hardly a rationalistic movement.
>
> Quit putting words in my mouth -- I didn't blame any of those
> things for the notion that all cultures are equal. Whether they're
> to blame or not, the notion that all cultures are equal and the
> notion that Christianity is just like other religions are two
> different notions with two different histories. Deal with it.
>
culture, surely?
>
> And you don't think that has anything to do with the fact that
> you're here, wanting to talk about "The Jesus Myth" all the time?
>
"The Jesus Myth" is considered to be a crackpot theory by all serious
scholars. Not being really qualified, I've got to defend the academic
consensus.
>
> Atheists by and large are a lot more interested in arguing that God
> is a myth than Jesus, whether they think Jesus is a myth or not.
>
>
> Whether there was a Jesus has no bearing on whether there's a God;
> it's a matter of history and anthropology. And semantics.
>
is true or not.
Malcolm
>
experiments, from drug trials to sociology. If race wasn't a scientific
concept we wouldn't be able to do that.
However the social importance of race far outweighs its biological
importance - genetic differences within ethnic groups are greater than
genetic differences between them.
John Secker
<pg...@lsil.com> writes
>> These are artificial classifications we've created and have nothing
>> to do with some natural law governing human affairs.
>
> Why? Because you say so? Because your ideology trumps your eyes?
>People tend to look more like their close relatives than like their
>distant relatives. Therefore you can get information about who someone
>is related to by looking at him. That's a natural law governing human
>affairs, and animal affairs too. If you're a Caucasian then you share
>a lot more 1000th cousins with Britney Spears than if you're an Ainu.
>
of "races", as normally understood, is valid. All you are saying is that
groups who have more common recent ancestors will tend to be more alike
than those who have fewer. But to jump from that to the use of a word
like Caucasian as if it means something solid is not, it seems to me,
valid. How do you tell if someone is Caucasian? Can you give me any
yardstick by which I can decide whether someone is Caucasian or not. If
you can't, what does the word mean? Is it just a broad description of a
physical type, like "blonde"? It reminds me of the discussion recently
about whether someone can be described definitively as being "in
Kansas". Someone may be "obviously in Kansas", but some small proportion
of the wave functions of their atoms will be outside the State. I would
be described as "obviously Caucasian", I think - but my mother is Irish,
and the red in my beard comes, they say, from the Spanish who were
shipwrecked in the Armada. And if I have a little bit of Spanish in my
ancestry, then quite likely I have an even smaller bit of Moorish blood.
So am I Caucasian?
--
John Secker
Joshua
> smurf_...@hotmail.com (Joshua) wrote:
> > > > We INVENTED racism.
> > >
> > > What's your evidence for that? Racism is normal human behavior.
> >
> > Someone else posted a pretty good reply with evidence that racism
> > is modern and western.
>
> You're talking about the 'racism, as it refers to biologically
> determined and evolutionarily/hierarchically ordered races, is in
> fact both recent and "Western."' post, I presume?
No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
to buy and sell members of other races.
> That's not evidence; that's defining words so as to get the answer you want.
> Racism refers to treating people badly because they aren't the same
> race as you. When I praised the West for its anti-racism, I wasn't
> talking about how we were the ones who figured out evolution results
> in a bush and not a ladder. I was talking about how our culture
> figured out that treating people badly because of their ethnicity
> isn't fair.
Ethnic groups aren't the same thing as races. Our culture invented
racism; no one before us needed to "realize" that all races are
created equally. No one else needed to be told that large noses and
dark skin did not imply lesser intelligence.
>
> > Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no biological
> > "races."
>
> Well, maybe sort of, in the sense that "cavity" isn't a dentistry
> concept because dentists distinguish about ninety different types of
> cavities and talk about those rather than about "cavities".
>
No, in the very real sense that there are no biological races. Sure,
there may be lines of descent, but the lines are always fuzzy and the
exceptions are always greater than the rule.
> > Dark skin does not mean a person is African, and light skin does not
> > mean a person is European.
>
> So? Race and color aren't the same thing. That's why we ban
> discrimination based on "race, creed, or color". Black Africans and
> black Australians are different races. This is evidence against the
> existence of biological race?
What exactly is your definition of "African" in biological terms?
What's the difference between an African and a Jamaican?
> > These are artificial classifications we've created and have nothing
> > to do with some natural law governing human affairs.
>
> Why? Because you say so? Because your ideology trumps your eyes?
> People tend to look more like their close relatives than like their
> distant relatives. Therefore you can get information about who someone
> is related to by looking at him. That's a natural law governing human
> affairs, and animal affairs too. If you're a Caucasian then you share
> a lot more 1000th cousins with Britney Spears than if you're an Ainu.
That's exactly where you're wrong. Race is supposed to be something
that transcends culture. You can be an American, English, French, or
whatever, but you're still white. You can be an African American,
African, or whatever, but you're still black. The idea of racism is
that these races carry certain characteristics with them that cross
cultural boundaries. The trouble is, with cross-breeding,
recombination, sexual reproduction, and a host of other things, the
lines between races just aren't there. If you define Africans as being
dark-skinned with large noses, you're likely to find that those are
the only things you find in common among those people. That's
important because you can't say "someone is dark-skinned and has a
large nose, therefore he's dumb."
>
> > There is really very little "normal" human behavior at all if you're
> > talking about universals.
>
> That's not fact. That's "blank-slate" behaviorist ideology.
> It's pre-Copernican in its self-centeredness. Why would you believe
> it? There's normal dog behavior, normal whale behavior, normal rat
> behavior, normal chimp behavior. What, Adam and Eve were somehow
> magically born one day to Australopithecines without any of their
> parents' behavioral wiring? It's ridiculous. People are animals.
> We have instincts, just like everyone else.
Of course, but if you look at history and where cultures have
encountered one another, you'll see that there are more differences
than similarities. People have different languages, customs, sexual
preferences, etc. Someone said, for example, that skinny women are
attractive world-wide. Not true. Slightly wider women are more
fertile. You can get 5-6 kids out of them, and in cultures where
children are important, they are more attractive. In the middle ages,
of course, we've all heard that being fat was a sign of health, and
that made you attractive. People have instincts to eat, sleep,
reproduce, protect their young, etc. But that has little to do with
treating people differently based on the color of their skin or their
ancestry. That's sort of a weird behavior, don't you think?
>
> > Racism is not universal either.
>
> Of course it isn't -- some people have the wit not to fall into
> that mental trap. And some people have the good fortune to be born
> into a culture that figured out it's a trap and cautions them against
> it.
and some people aren't even aware of it
[snip]
> > Here is the problem of absolute moral principles....
>
> What was at issue here wasn't whether morality is absolute, but
> whether believing it is made the West distinctively arrogant. That's
> implausible. But if you want to run off on a digression, go for it...
Here is the point. If you believe in moral absolutes, fine. I believe
everyone needs to kill their first-born son. I'm not sure if I got it
quite right, but I know I'm close. Fine. There's nothing wrong with me
thinking that, but when I invade your country or your home and kill
your family when you disagree with me, that's arrogance. When we
traded Africans like animals because they didn't speak English and
didn't worship God, that was arrogance. When we called everyone
outside of Europe a cannibal and used it as justification to slaughter
Native Americans, that was arrogance. And now, when Americans look at
American Indians and African Americans that have been discriminated
against for generations and chalks it all up to racial inferiority,
that is arrogance.
> > Let's say you are a law-maker. Your job is to take absolute moral
> > principles and relay them to the masses. These absolute laws are
> > timeless and perfect; they wouldn't be absolute otherwise, would
> > they? The trouble is, as the law-maker, you aren't just relaying
> > these laws, you're creating them.
>
> That's illogical. If they're timeless, they aren't created.
exactly
> > Only you can get to the perfect truths behind your laws; others
> > only have access to the fleeting, human interpretations you've given.
>
> Huh? A law-maker has no better access to perfect truths than
> anyone else. Probably less, since he has power and power corrupts.
> The mere circumstance that it's his job to make good laws doesn't
> mean he's competent to.
exactly
> > That gives you an advantage no one else has. It gives you access to
> > the eternal laws of the universe, while everyone else can only
> > listen to you and agree. It makes you god.
>
> (Hey, the thread is still about atheism!) Why would it make him
> god? Why should anyone suppose a god has a better handle on moral
> truth than a human has? Because the god says so?
Well, if you are making laws that everyone has to live by, that's one
thing. If you claim that they are the approximations of absolute
morality, you're claiming to have knowledge of absolute and timeless
truths. How can you know those truths without being God?
> > We need absolute morality? Whose version of it should we choose?
>
> Version? If there's absolute morality, there's only one version.
> That kind of goes with "absolute".
exactly. There is only one version, and it is completely inaccessible
to human beings. In fact, it doesn't even relate to us.
> > That's important because the West cannot claim to have some natural
> > law governing its system of morality; our laws reflect our opinions.
>
> Well, that is a problem for the West, since so much of it has
> bought off on moral relativism.
Do you think kings in Europe who claimed to have power from God
Himself believed in moral relativism?
> > You're right to say that this transcends religion, but the idea that
> > western ideals are universal is a very Christian one.
>
> Western ideals tend to be in violent conflict with Christianity.
> It's a big reason atheism is becoming popular. Western ideals are
> mostly about equality, democracy, and human rights; and Christians
> are worshipping the "Supreme Fascist". :-(
Look, you're like a lot of people I see on Fox News and CNN. You have
the liberal spirit in your heart, but you don't understand reality.
When we slaughter a nation of Native Americans, it's just a kid
story... make it into a cartoon and put it on TV. When we launch
crusades on the Islamic world in an attempt to wipe them off the face
of the earth, it's really a good thing, because we stole enough books
to understand the math and science from the buildings we destroyed a
thousand years ago. The African slave trade wasn't our fault at all
because some Africans helped us. Colonialism is a great thing for all
parties involved. A good way to promote democracy is to put ten years
of economic sanctions on a war-torn country and watch over a million
of its civilians die in poverty and despair, while putting food and
medicine in the hands of the elite in exchange for their oil, all the
while bombing their sewers and power plants into the stone age and
leaving depleted uranium and unexploded ordinance in your wake. Let me
tell you, what we are taught in third grade and on NBC has little to
do with the real world. I can talk to a hundred nieve people about
foreign policy and have them all tell me it's about freedom and
happiness, but that doesn't change the fact that foriegn companies are
looting all the oil out of Iraq after such actions were protected by
the president. Historically western principles have little to do with
human rights, democracy, or any of that other nonsense. They have to
do with colonialism, imperialism, racism, and raw arrogance. Liberal
guilt doesn't solve anything, but neither do fairy tales.
And western ideals are very Christian. I am living in the greatest
Christian nation of our time at the moment, and the fact that it's my
country too doesn't change its ideals. It doesn't change the fact that
people in America think it's okay to rape a woman as long as she's
drunk but suddenly have a problem when two men want to get married or
have a child.
[snip]
> > I'm sure there are atheists who believe their system of morality is
> > absolute, and that's their right. But where did their absolute
> > system of morality come from?
>
> Do you understand that thinking there's absolute morality and
> thinking your own system is it are two different things? There's an
> absolute truth as to what the laws of physics are, but that doesn't
> mean we think our current models are more than just approximations.
How do you know there is an absolute truth to what the laws of physics
are? If you know that, you know something that no other human being
knows. If you know our systems of morality are all "pretty close"
approximations to the real one out there somewhere, you know something
that only God Himself is supposed to know. Maybe the real one is "eat
your children and let the species die" and we've all been wicked
sinners since the beginning of human history.
> > I doubt they'd have a good answer. Prove me wrong!
>
> Let's start by seeing whether you have a good answer to my
> question about your claim that "no one should be silenced" in the
> other sub-thread.
I don't remember that sub-thread. Who should be silenced? The people
who say things that disgust us both, no doubt. But why?
Paul Filseth
> You must have fallen asleep in your freshmen psychology class when
> they taught that race is not a biological concept.
And freshman psychology class is the right place to learn
biology, is it?
Paul Filseth
> prig...@aol.com (Prigator) wrote...
> > > Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no
> >
> > That is so perfectly politically correct...
>
> Regardless of political correctness; it's largely true. A biological
> distinction would talk of subspecies and, if the differences aren't
> very large, varieties.
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." A race is a
variety.
> If we were to make a biological division of humans, the first cut
> would be between Australian Aborigines and everyone else. The
> distinctions are fairly substantial and might make a case for two
> subspecies of human. The distinctions between everyone else are
> probably only strong enough to support varieties.
To say there are biological races means no more and no less than
that there's a first cut.
> Also, the categorization of race
> depends on the culture. In Spain and many other parts of Europe,
> Gypsies are considered a separate race. Han Chinese consider
> Mongolians to be a separate race. Lots of cultures consider Jews
> a separate race. In Mexico, people with Mayan features are viewed
> as a separate race from the more European-looking people.
There are three reasons for this sort of variation in perception.
People tend to be poor judges of ancestry in cases where the visible
differences are minor. Some people are of mixed race, which creates
a continuum that discrete categories can only approximate. And
taxonomy always has subjective disagreements between "joiners" and
"splitters"; these are disagreements about labels rather than facts.
Your examples cover the gamut. Calling Jews a separate race
is just an error -- Arab Jews tend to look like Arab Moslems and
European Jews tend look like European Christians and atheists. Mexico
has a racial continuum. And Gypsies are (or were) a Caucasian ethnic
group (they may for all I know have by now interbred with non-Gypsies
enough to no longer be genetically distinguishable). A "joiner" will
label all Caucasians as part of the same big race; a "splitter" will
divide the various ethnic groups into two or more separate races, and
may put Gypsies in a different race from other Spaniards. What's
objective is the cuts -- the tree structure that reflects the history
of the human race's dividing itself into groups that breed a lot more
intra-group than inter-group. How big and/or genetically distinct a
subtree has to be to qualify as a "race" is just semantics.
John Secker
<mal...@55bank.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>> race is a social concept, not a scientific one.
>>
>Ethnic origin is something that scientists control for in all sorts of
>experiments, from drug trials to sociology. If race wasn't a scientific
>concept we wouldn't be able to do that.
write "If ethnic origin wasn't a scientific concept .....". What you
wrote does not make sense, unless you think that "race" and "ethnic
origin" are synonyms.
--
John Secker
Eric Pepke
> epe...@acm.org (Eric Pepke) wrote:
> > prig...@aol.com (Prigator) wrote...
> > > > Race is not a biological concept, by the way. There are no
> > > > biological "races."...
> > >
> > > That is so perfectly politically correct...
> >
> > Regardless of political correctness; it's largely true. A biological
> > distinction would talk of subspecies and, if the differences aren't
> > very large, varieties.
>
> "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." A race is a
> variety.
On the other hand, "a rose is a rose is a rose."
The naming game is a bit like trying to map words like "psychopathy" and
"insanity" to psychiatric terms. Psychopathy seems to map onto sociopathy,
which seems to map onto the Axis II Cluster B Antisocial Personality
Disorder. But does insanity map onto anything? Perhaps APD and maybe
schizophrenia, but only mood disorders if you're in California and eat
Twinkies.
Anyway, I figured you'd pipe in, because we've crossed swords on
the race issue before.
> > If we were to make a biological division of humans, the first cut
> > would be between Australian Aborigines and everyone else. The
> > distinctions are fairly substantial and might make a case for two
> > subspecies of human. The distinctions between everyone else are
> > probably only strong enough to support varieties.
>
> To say there are biological races means no more and no less than
> that there's a first cut.
Except that none of the definitions I've seen of race hold the
distinction between Australian Aborigines and everyone else as
important as they should be. In all cases I've seen, people seem
to consider AAs similar to Africans, but in fact Europeans and
Asians are much more similar to Africans than any of them are to
AAs. This is true whether one is in favor of the cladistic or the
descent variety of classification.
AAs and everyone else seem to be different in even mental abilities.
About fifteen years ago there was a study, like a game of "Concentration."
Europeans, Asians, and Africans all did better when the objects were
geometric shapes. Australian Aborigines did better when they were
pictures of rocks. This includes AAs that were "raised as white."
> > Also, the categorization of race
> > depends on the culture. In Spain and many other parts of Europe,
> > Gypsies are considered a separate race. Han Chinese consider
> > Mongolians to be a separate race. Lots of cultures consider Jews
> > a separate race. In Mexico, people with Mayan features are viewed
> > as a separate race from the more European-looking people.
>
> There are three reasons for this sort of variation in perception.
> People tend to be poor judges of ancestry in cases where the visible
> differences are minor. Some people are of mixed race, which creates
> a continuum that discrete categories can only approximate. And
> taxonomy always has subjective disagreements between "joiners" and
> "splitters"; these are disagreements about labels rather than facts.
>
> Your examples cover the gamut. Calling Jews a separate race
> is just an error -- Arab Jews tend to look like Arab Moslems and
> European Jews tend look like European Christians and atheists. Mexico
> has a racial continuum. And Gypsies are (or were) a Caucasian ethnic
> group (they may for all I know have by now interbred with non-Gypsies
> enough to no longer be genetically distinguishable). A "joiner" will
> label all Caucasians as part of the same big race; a "splitter" will
> divide the various ethnic groups into two or more separate races, and
> may put Gypsies in a different race from other Spaniards. What's
> objective is the cuts -- the tree structure that reflects the history
> of the human race's dividing itself into groups that breed a lot more
> intra-group than inter-group.
So you hold for descent rather than cladism. Good for you. So do I.
> How big and/or genetically distinct a
> subtree has to be to qualify as a "race" is just semantics.
I shall summarize our positions.
Yours:
"Race is a valid concept, essentially indistinguishable from variety.
OK, so people are stupid, and they make errors, but if they didn't,
it would be OK."
Mine:
"Because people are stupid, and they make errors, race is hopelessly
muddled as a concept and has effectively little relationship
to actual characteristics of people."
Chris Michael
"Igtheist" <igtheist_N...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ec75c602.03112...@posting.google.com...
more people than non European germs. I merely stated that European Germs
killed more people than Europeans themselves did. Your comments above are
not
incompatible with what I said. (I think the pox is one of ours btw ;-),
way-to-go old-Europe).
(Actually its probably the case that non-western germs just want to be left
in
peace to do their own thing. It is only Western germs which
are pathonogenic. Just ask smurf_muncher. He himself must be a westerner of
course, because only westerners are evil enough to eat smurfs.)
Chinese germs may for all I know have killed more people than did Europeans,
and their
germs ;-). I do know that modern human germs have evolved over the last few
10s of millenia due to high population densisities, and intimate contact
with livestock (intimate here meaning living near, not sleeping with,
although this has also been known to happen) once
people stated living in cities, and farming. This reached its zenith in
Eurasia.
Of course Europeans have seen the error of their ways now, and no longer
beleive in germ warfare ;-).
Having said all that, I wouldn't want you to think I can't spot a good bit
of irony, which I am guessing your reply was ;-).
Chris Michael
"Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
> No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> to buy and sell members of other races.
The Europeans may have bought the slaves; but hey guess who sold the slaves.
Yes, other Africans. Still I guess you don't want to think about that, you
would prefer to think that all ills come from the west.
Chris Michael
"John Secker" <jo...@secker.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Yq7uZgAAuqv$Ew...@secker.demon.co.uk...
Someone may be "obviously in Kansas", but some small proportion
> of the wave functions of their atoms will be outside the State. I would
> be described as "obviously Caucasian", I think - but my mother is Irish,
> and the red in my beard comes, they say, from the Spanish who were
> shipwrecked in the Armada. And if I have a little bit of Spanish in my
> ancestry, then quite likely I have an even smaller bit of Moorish blood.
> So am I Caucasian?
Part caucasion by the sounds of it. The fact there is no pure 100% caucasion
does not invalidate the concept of caucasion (or negro etc). In the real
world, there is no such thing as a perfect circle. Yet, we can call items
such as clock, circular. 10p piece? Well that has some kinks it it, I'm not
sure it could be called a circle, maybe, maybe not. It doesn't invalidate
the concept of circles though does it?
Igtheist
smurf_...@hotmail.com (Joshua) wrote in message news:<1cadc0ff.03112...@posting.google.com>...
> No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> to buy and sell members of other races.
You need to review your grade school history lessons. Europeans held
slaves of all races. Not only that so did just about everybody else.
Heck if you are to believe some of these African Studies professors
then the Egyptians were black. Which would mean that blacks were one
of the earliest to practice the enslavement of another race, the jews.
> Ethnic groups aren't the same thing as races. Our culture invented
> racism; no one before us needed to "realize" that all races are
> created equally. No one else needed to be told that large noses and
> dark skin did not imply lesser intelligence.
What fairy tale version of history were you brought up on. The reason
Europeans had such an easy time defeating many of these cultures is
because they hated each other so much. Many cultures like the
chinese felt they were the center of the world and everyone else were
unworthy barbarians.
> No, in the very real sense that there are no biological races. Sure,
> there may be lines of descent, but the lines are always fuzzy and the
> exceptions are always greater than the rule.
Funny I'm not convinced. Again the example of ring species. The
lines are fuzzy there two. Even the concept of bald is fuzzy. So
what.
> If you define Africans as being
> dark-skinned with large noses, you're likely to find that those are
> the only things you find in common among those people. That's
> important because you can't say "someone is dark-skinned and has a
> large nose, therefore he's dumb."
What's one got to do with the other. Believing there are races has
nothing to do with being a racist. Just because I know there are
drugs doesn't make me an addict.
> and some people aren't even aware of it
Like what? Blind people? When I'm traveling south of the border it's
"Hey, Gringo". You think that were I to have stopped in on some four
century african tribe they wouldn't have noticed the difference?
> When we
> traded Africans like animals because they didn't speak English and
> didn't worship God, that was arrogance.
I don't think those were the reasons. Do you think the Spanards
enslaved blacks because they didn't speak english?
> When we called everyone
> outside of Europe a cannibal and used it as justification to slaughter
> Native Americans, that was arrogance.
> And now, when Americans look at
> American Indians and African Americans that have been discriminated
> against for generations and chalks it all up to racial inferiority,
> that is arrogance.
Speak for yourself. I chalk it up to cultural differences. As an
example, Jews tend to have more money and are more educated because of
their culture. They tend to marry older and have a religious
requirement to learn to read. Both cultural factors tend to make for
differences between them an Puerto Ricans who start families a decade
younger.
> Look, you're like a lot of people I see on Fox News and CNN. You have
> the liberal spirit in your heart, but you don't understand reality.
> When we slaughter a nation of Native Americans, it's just a kid
> story... make it into a cartoon and put it on TV. When we launch
> crusades on the Islamic world in an attempt to wipe them off the face
> of the earth, it's really a good thing, because we stole enough books
> to understand the math and science from the buildings we destroyed a
> thousand years ago. The African slave trade wasn't our fault at all
> because some Africans helped us. Colonialism is a great thing for all
> parties involved. A good way to promote democracy is to put ten years
> of economic sanctions on a war-torn country and watch over a million
> of its civilians die in poverty and despair, while putting food and
> medicine in the hands of the elite in exchange for their oil, all the
> while bombing their sewers and power plants into the stone age and
> leaving depleted uranium and unexploded ordinance in your wake. Let me
> tell you, what we are taught in third grade and on NBC has little to
> do with the real world. I can talk to a hundred nieve people about
> foreign policy and have them all tell me it's about freedom and
> happiness, but that doesn't change the fact that foriegn companies are
> looting all the oil out of Iraq after such actions were protected by
> the president. Historically western principles have little to do with
> human rights, democracy, or any of that other nonsense. They have to
> do with colonialism, imperialism, racism, and raw arrogance. Liberal
> guilt doesn't solve anything, but neither do fairy tales.
Now that's funny. Can you point out exactly where Paul has ever
advocated any of the stuff you are whining about. I guess you live
in a fantasy world where if only the Muslims, or the Aztecs, or the
Japanese had managed to gain the upper hand then the world would have
been a politically correct love fest.
> And western ideals are very Christian. I am living in the greatest
> Christian nation of our time at the moment, and the fact that it's my
> country too doesn't change its ideals. It doesn't change the fact that
> people in America think it's okay to rape a woman as long as she's
> drunk but suddenly have a problem when two men want to get married or
> have a child.
WTF? Talk about gross generalizations! This and the last paragraph.
Boy you really like to lump people together. Your a lumper. Much
like a racist. I also detect more that a slight wiff of hatred of
America and all things European and Western.
Igtheist
If I recall correctly the Arabs already had a thriving business in
African slaves before the Europeans were on the stage. The Europeans
just became the new customers. I guess it made the slaves feel
better to be owned by Arab masters who knew they weren't inferior,
while being worked to death, literally.
Given the current affairs in Riwanda with Hutu vs. Tusi situation
these little tribal affairs don't seem so high minded to me. Funny
thing is that I understand the problems in Riwanda relate to slavery
of one of those tribes by the other ... now! Let's see they are
hacking the arms of children and leaving the alive on a mass scale.
A lesson in morality for us depraved westerners.
Cyran Rantez
> > You must have fallen asleep in your freshmen psychology class when
> > they taught that race is not a biological concept.
>
> And freshman psychology class is the right place to learn
> biology, is it?
In some senses, yes, though I think Morgan forgot to include the word
"entirely."
However, in most cases, race is determined by genes, and therefore I
agree with the intent I read from your question, and think it would be
best learned in Biology, rather than Psychology..
Cyran R.
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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S.A.Joyce
> UN General
> Assembly resolution 37/253 (1983) states that the General Assembly
"demands
> the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from the Republic of
> Cyprus." Turkey will not comply with this nor any other UN resolution.
(And
> we know what ought to happen to coutries that flaunt UN resolutions. I
have
> no problem with that, although a bit more consistancy would be nice.)
We know what ought to happen to countries that make ostentatious
displays of UN resolutions? Hm... I'm afraid I don't...
We interrupt this conflict for a word from the English Department:
This is the second post this week in which I've seen "flaunt" misused.
I overlooked the first instance, figuring it might be a transient slip.
But a second suggests it's time to reach for the dictionary. From the
context, I gather that the author wanted to say that Turkey *flouts*
(scorns) the UN resolution. To say instead that Turkey *flaunts" (makes
a conspicuous display of) the resolution turns the accusation into an
absurdity--not the author's intent, I would guess.
I apologize for the interruption. Now, back to the jolly battle between
East and West...
--
=SAJ=
To reply, delete NOSPAM from address.
http://tangents.home.att.net/
Paul Filseth
> > Western culture is the best culture mankind has developed so far.
>
> think this statement is headed in the wrong direction.
> First, I am not a moral relativist. I think we can make truth claims even
> about right and wrong. I am not a postmodernist or a poststructuralist.
There's a debate on that in another Marduk subthread. Feel free
to jump in.
> Early anthropologists used to think of cultures as evolutionary.
Aren't they? Does current Syrian culture resemble 1950s Syrian
culture or 1950s Bolivian culture more closely? If it's the former,
how is that to be accounted for if cultures aren't evolutionary?
(Which is not to say Darwinian, of course. Cultural evolution seems
Lamarckian.)
> Anthropology was once the study of "primitive" people who were lower on the
> Darwinistic ladder than the European societies (and I'm using that word
> fairly broadly) the anthropologists themselves came from.
There is no such thing as a Darwinistic ladder. That's not how
Darwinian evolution works.
> This idea coexisted very nicely with a racialized hierarchy where
> "whites" were at the top, and others were curious steps back into
> the primordial past.
Racism has no bearing on the subject at hand. Saying one culture
is better than another doesn't say anything one way or the other
about the innate characteristics of the people. Cultures are memes.
Criticizing someone's culture is no different from criticizing his
religion.
> In fact as anthropology became more scientific in the early 20th
> century (I'd say the 30's) this hierarchy began to conflict with
> the new goals of anthropology. Scientific study of cultures required
> viewing human beings as essentially similar so that the study of what
> were once viewed as "primitives" was the study of all.
That's absurd. Whether humans are essentially similar, by
whatever criterion you have in mind, is an empirical question.
Science doesn't require us to prejudge empirical questions. It
requires us not to. You might as well say scientific study of
chemistry requires viewing all Carbon-12 atoms as essentially
similar. They are; but that's beside the point -- if they hadn't
been we could still have studied chemistry scientifically. If
anthropology takes human similarity as an axiom then anthropology
is cargo-cult science.
> This required a certain kind of cultural relativism. Constantly
> critiquing the subjects of study by their relation to one's culture
> is not a good way to go about study.
"I'm here to kill you, not to judge you."
- Conversations with Dead People
If you have a goal that critiquing conflicts with, don't critique.
That in no way indicates that it's wrong to critique, or that there's
no objective basis on which to critique, or that critiquing isn't a
worthwhile activity for someone else with different goals. Anthropology
is itself a culture; if it goes in for cultural relativism, it has no
business critiquing other activities on the grounds that they aren't
anthropology. Different strokes for different folks.
> By abstracting oneself from such questions, anthropologists could
> view their own societies critically.
That's self-contradictory. How can they view their own societies
critically if they abstract themselves from criticizing societies? You
can't have meant that the way it came out.
> The point here is that for quite sometime the idea that "western" culture
> does not represent a superior state of existence has been around and
> accepted for quite some time, and evolutionary ideas about social
> development weren't thrown out just in the last ten years or so.
So? That doesn't support Malcolm's position, since the 30s are
a lot more recent than the 1700s. And it isn't a reason to think the
West didn't evolve a superior culture. Ideas aren't right because
they're old and accepted.
> In American history the so-called "progress" or "Whig" narrative of history
> fell out of fashion more recently.
It fell out of fashion. "Your wording is admirably precise".
(Incidentally, a "progress" narrative and a "Whig" narrative are two
different things.)
> It used to be that historians of America viewed the past as a gradual
> and inevitable unfolding of the wonder of the present.
That sounds an awful lot like more recent historians claiming to
be better than their predecessors. It's a "progress" narrative of
the history of historians. If it's even a fair characterization of
earlier historians' views.
> For example the American Revolution, in addition to some of the good things
> we often think about it, also compromised the position of Native Americans
> and led towards encroachment on their lands, murder, and forced relocations
Those were bad things, weren't they? And our culture isn't in
favor of them any more, right? How is this not progress?
> This has hopefully shown that scholarship has moved away from that type of
> claim and explained a little about why.
Yes -- changes in interest and changes in ideology. Imagine if
the professionals who study microorganisms that attack human bodies
lost interest in intervention, and devoted themselves to description.
And then they criticized people who wanted to resurrect the practice
of medicine on the grounds that doing pathology scientifically requires
that we abandon the obsolete notion of one person being sicker than
another. How is what you're describing different from that?
> Now I'd like to present my various specific problems with it.
> a) What is "western" culture?
> When and where is western culture? What holds it together as a concept and
> construct? If western culture is the parts of the world that have been
> influenced by Europe, wouldn't that be everywhere? Is Japan western?
This is simply a matter of degree. The world is a continuum but
if that's a reason not to talk about it using either/or words, then
we can't talk about it at all. Some people have internalized Western
culture more than others. Britain is very Western; Japan is less so,
but still a lot more Western than Pakistan.
> West of what?
West of the Byzantine Empire. Our culture is the descendant of
the cultures of the barbarians who conquered the Western Roman Empire,
and who then took up using a lot of the cultural debris they found.
> As these questions suggest I don't really like discussing "western"
> culture.
> I think it implies that the west exists apart from the rest of the world
> and thinks up things on its own, outside an international, intercultural
> context.
Once again, this is a matter of degree. There is of course some
cross-fertilization. But that doesn't mean we can't identify paper as
a Chinese invention and radio as a European invention.
> It also implies a great deal of unity, where only recently have people
> begun thinking about themselves as similar.
What's your basis for that? Consider the literal meaning of the
word "catholic".
> b) How do we compare cultures?
> I have no idea how to say culture a is better then culture b. I will
> dispense with some plausible answers.
> "culture a is better than b because it defeated and destroyed it." My
> problem with this is two fold. <snip>
My problem with it is one fold -- it isn't a plausible answer.
> "culture a is better than culture b because it is more productive." Once
> again, we assume that culture is solely responsible, and again the criteria
> seems somewhat arbitrary.
If you don't value productivity much. Productivity is what makes
the happiness of large numbers of humans possible. If what you value
is ecology, then the best human culture is none. And the second best
is hunting and gathering, with extremely low population density and
horrendous infant mortality. If that's your goal, I won't argue the
point; I'll simply retract my claim. Western culture is the best one
consistent with the continued existence of billions of people. If you
want people to survive, productivity is important.
Culture is of course not solely responsible for productivity;
but it's largely responsible. Singapore isn't more productive than
Malaysia because of its natural resources.
> "culture a is better than culture b because it provides a greater
> number of valid truth claims." First off, the ability to provide good
> truth claims is directly impacted by a number of factors not easily
> attributable solely to culture, like wealth, and luck.
Solely, shmolely. Culture is the dominant factor in determining
wealth. It doesn't determine luck, of course; it's the other way
around. We in the west are lucky to have inherited a better culture,
and our predecessors created it mostly by dumb luck too. It wasn't
because they were better people.
> Secondly, it just doesn't make sense to me
> that this means "better." It seems like this claim only shows that it's
> more effective at a certain task, namely producing truth claims, that while
> important isn't the end all and be all of human existence.
_Counting_ truth claims is of course silly -- a monograph on the
anatomy of a beetle species doesn't carry as much weight as the least
of Einstein's 1905 papers. But producing lots of valid truth claims
is just a symptom of an underlying characteristic: using a method for
deciding what to believe that favors truth over error. That, like
productivity, is very helpful in achieving just about any goal, unless
what you want is wars between armies of superstitious zealots.
> Notice that I have not slipped into relativism, in the sense that I think
> things are still right and wrong. Cultures can assert truths or falsehoods.
> It just strikes me as ridiculous to argue that one culture is better than
> another based solely on this.
But of course no one based it solely on that. There are lots of
reasons. Western culture invents (or reinvents and makes practical
for mass adoption) useful technologies and other memes faster than
other cultures. People are generally freer in Western society. A
lot more people want to immigrate than emigrate. Most foreign aid is
from the West. And so forth.
> c) "western" or "modern" culture has produced the most egregious mass
> murders in the history of man. From the 26 million Russians killed
> during WWII, to Nazi death camps, to the firebombing
> of Tokyo, to the NINETY SIX PERCENT demographic decline amongst
> Native Americans in California
Murder is common in practically every society. The West ran
up higher numbers because of better technology. (Both the mechanical
kind and the social organization kind.) If another culture would
have murdered millions too if only they'd had the power to, I don't
give it credit for its inability to create technology. Do you have
reason to think Western culture is more naturally inclined to murder
than other cultures?
> "Western" culture invented and perfected many terrible things.
Yes. But do you know a way to produce only good ideas? I don't.
People produce a mix of ideas, put some into practice, and hopefully
throw away the bad ones after they've done a finite amount of damage.
If we hang on to the good ideas they can do an unlimited amount of
good in the long run. More ideas are better than less.
> Again, I am not maintaining that all ideas in "western" culture are invalid
> or no more valid than anyone else's. I am not attacking the idea that some
> notions are right and some are wrong.
Glad to hear it. So any given aspect of a culture may be based on
a right or a wrong notion. Different cultures have different notions.
So every culture has different good and bad points. Mathematically,
it's ridiculous to imagine that all these different combinations would
coincidentally add up to the same sum, so that every culture is on
balance exactly as good as every other. Surely you'd agree that Danish
culture was better than German culture in the 1930s?
If one culture _can_ be better overall than another, theoretical
arguments for cultural relativism are kind of beside the point. To
say that Western culture isn't the best is simply to say that some
other culture is better. So name a better culture, or else explain
how somebody can add up a hundred sets of a hundred random numbers and
get the same total a hundred times.
Culture is software. It's a technology, like Linux. Linux is
better than it used to be. And it's better than Windows.
Paul Filseth
> > Marx wrote: What is "a fair distribution"?
> > Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is
> > "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on
> > the basis of the present-day mode of production? ... Have not also
> > the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair"
> > distribution?
>
> difficult as translations vary).
It's from the "Critique of the Gotha Program".
> I think Marx here is describing the distribution of his present day
> and showing how ideology can make what is objectively *not* fair
> seem fair.
Marx wasn't talking specifically about prevailing conditions -- that
was just an example he threw out. He was replying to the following:
The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments
of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative
regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the
proceeds of labor.
The Gotha Program was the manifesto of the Social Democrats. Marx
was arguing with other leftists, basically saying they were a bunch
of screw-ups who didn't understand socialism.
> Are you denying the infamous "from each according to his means to
> each according to his ends" idea as Marx's idea of an objectively
> fair distribution?
I couldn't say. Marx tends not to use morality-laden terms. He
comes off to me as thinking the above arrangement would be in the best
interests of the workers of the world.
> Marx certainly seems to think communism is better than capitalism:
I've seldom known a moral relativist to be shy about making moral
judgments. If that's an inconsistency, well, I'm not committed to the
premise that Marx was 100% consistent.
> Marx was not a relativist. Communism was better than capitalism,
> just as capitalism was better than feudalism.
That doesn't commit him to believing communism is _objectively_
better. Relativism isn't nihilism. Relativists with morals tend to
argue that moral judgments are some species of preference. Of course
Marx _preferred_ communism. Your quotes seem to me to support that
reading as easily as they support a moral realist reading.
> It's kind of tough for a relativist to suppose world revolution. If
> every social order is equivalent, why support the overthrow of any?
Did you see what Smurf Muncher wrote?
... there is no absolute way to tell right from wrong. In the end,
all we have are each other, individual judges of right and wrong
in every situation. That's why we need democracy and respect for
others' cultures. Everyone needs to bring their views to the
table, and no one should be silenced.
If there's no truth to the matter of whether something is right or
wrong, why condemn censorship? But people pull off that sort of
mental gymnastics all the time. I don't assume Marx didn't do the
same.
If you know of any place where Marx addresses the issue of moral
relativism more squarely than in my original quote, share.
Gwar
On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Paul Filseth wrote:
> I was talking about how our culture figured out that treating people
> badly because of their ethnicity isn't fair.
Then why haven't they stopped doing that?
> If you're a Caucasian then you share a lot more 1000th cousins with
> Britney Spears than if you're an Ainu.
But Britney Spears is not from Caucasia.
> Christians are worshipping the "Supreme Fascist".
You can love your neighbor & not worship the supreme fascist.
> Then you should get out more. You might start by checking out
> Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.
What about Britney Spears as well for a little variety?
> Do you understand that thinking there's absolute morality and
> thinking your own system is it are two different things?
Doesn't X still equals X? Did something cataclysmic happen?
> ... people who argue that Christianity is no better than other
> religions are just relativists and West-bashers.
Is that such a bad thing or is that relative to the degree one holds
allegiance to this supreme fascist thing you were talking about?
Paul Filseth
>
> ...Many western, west bashers have in mind white people when they
> get all guilty over supposed western misdeeds. ... I
> have met enough west hating bleeding heart liberals to know that
> they usually have "white" in mind, even if they don't overtly state
> it, when they talk of the evils the west has committed now and in
> the past. I am not sure it substantially changes my point.
While I stipulate that there are quite a few west-bashers who
are in fact anti-white racists, Joshua gave us no reason to suppose
he's one of them. We're discussing the merits of cultures, which
is to say, the merits of the memes typically taught to children in
various places. Joshua answered in the same spirit -- his proposed
explanation for Westerners being particularly bad was Western
philosophy and religion. While his argument was IMHO erroneous,
it's clearly fair game for him to respond to "Western is better"
with "Western is worse". There are racists who agree with him; but
then there are racists who agree with me. Their existence isn't our
fault and doesn't count against our respective arguments.
Paul Filseth
> > > Cyprus is a greek Island populated by greeks. That much is a fact.
> >
> > Half a fact. Northern Cyprus is a Turkish half-island populated
> > by Turks.
>
> The above is even less than half a fact. It is a Cypriot Island
> bisected along the east west axis by a DMZ. In the North is an
> the world except for Turkey. This has been the case since the
> illegal invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974.
Well, that's the thing. You're right that the world doesn't go
along with Turkish rule over the north half; but then the world also
doesn't think Greece rules the south half, let alone all of it. Yet
you called it a "greek island". So evidently world recognition isn't
relevant to what sort of an island it is. South Cyprus is a Greek
half-island because most of the people living there are ethnic Greeks,
whether it's ruled from Athens or not. And the same criterion makes
north Cyprus a Turkish half-island, regardless of what the folks in
Ankara have done.
> Turkey will not comply with this nor any other UN resolution. (And
> we know what ought to happen to countries that flaunt UN resolutions.
> I have no problem with that, although a bit more consistency would
> be nice.)
We know what happens to countries that get superpowers annoyed
at them. (Come to think of it, somebody was going to help us out
in Iraq and suddenly wouldn't even host our troops. Hmm. Which UN
resolution did you say that was? :-)
> Also it WAS not populated BY Turks. It IS populated WITH Turks
> (amongst others), but it was populated BY Greeks several thousand
> years ago.
What does it mean to populate "with" but not "by"? How could it
contain Turks if Turks didn't populate it? Are you talking about who
was there first? If so, Cyprus was populated by its old people and
is populated with its children. If you're suggesting the Greeks have
more right to be there than the Turks, keep in mind you're trying to
sell that theory to an American. And if you think of yourself as a
Greek, what's an American? Just a Norwegian, invited in by Englishmen,
living on land Englishmen stole from Mexicans, land Mexicans stole
from Indians*, whose ancestors probably stole it from other Indians.
What the heck is an Englishman, anyway? He's just a German living on
land Germans stole from Welshmen. The hell with all that. Everyone
has an equal right to live freely in the country he was born in.
(* A silly name. But if I call them Beringian-Americans, nobody
will know what I'm talking about.)
Paul Filseth
> > Thomas Paine wrote:
> > > It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the
> > > other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of
> > > the Creator
>
> So Paine believes in "the Creator" and he got that idea from
> Christianity.
Yep. And that has nothing to do with the case. Kepler surely
got the idea of using math formulas to explain planet orbits from
Ptolemy. That doesn't mean he thought the Ptolemaic formulas were
the best wrong formulas. For instance, he had his own earlier set of
wrong formulas that he thought were better; and he must have thought
Copernicus's wrong formulas were better since he went for a model with
the sun in the center.
> > > Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is
> > > none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man,
> > > more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than
> > > this thing called Christianity.
>
> And the religion he doesn't believe in is the Christian religion.
Do you even listen to yourself? If there were such a thing as
"the" religion Paine didn't believe in, that would mean he believed
in all the other ones.
> > > 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.
>
> Then claims that his ideas sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus.
Don't put words in the mouths of the dead. What you say is in
no way implied by what he said. Paine was brought up in a Christian
environment. When he realized Christianity was lame, he modified it
until it no longer seemed lame to him, and at that point he'd come
as far from where he started as he was from other religions. And he
*noticed*. He realized he had no reason to treat Christianity as
better than other ones, and, being a bright guy, he didn't. Which
one he started from is beside the point -- people could have gotten
to Deism from anywhere. That the 18th-century Deists were former
Christians is an accident of culture.
> > Thomas Jefferson wrote:
> > > The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god
> > > as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god
> > > is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious.
>
> And he got the idea that to be "cruel, vengeful and capricious" from
> 2000 years of Western Christianity. An Ancient Greek would have
> celebrated such a god.
"Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods everything that is a
shame and a reproach among men." - Xenophanes
Christians celebrated such a god more consistently than ancient
Greeks did. I don't know of any culture where the notion that
kindness is good and cruelty is bad can't be found. The problem
wasn't that the Greeks admired the characteristics Jefferson listed,
but that most people have double standards and won't blame a god for
what they'd blame in a man, because religions actively push double
standards. Christianity doesn't get credit for Jefferson having
seen through that scam any more than Greek religion gets credit for
Xenophanes.
> > Theism is the doctrine that there is a God who reveals Himself to
> > us *by proxy* ... Deism is the idea that ... all theism is
> > incorrect -- it's the idea that there's a God who reveals Himself
> > directly to everyone...
>
> It's a halfway house to atheism.
Quite so. The Deists were freethinkers.
> Deists are monotheists,
No. Monodeists. To say Deism is close to Christianity is
to say the Jewish prophets, the Bible, St. Paul's visions, Jesus
being the Son of God, salvation through Jesus's sacrifice and
resurrection, and the concept that the rest of us should believe
all that stuff on faith, are mere details of no importance to the
overall picture of Christianity.
> but you can ask at what point the deist God dissolves into a
> metaphor.
At the point where you stop believing in Him. It's perfectly
obvious that Paine took God very seriously. He said he wrote his
book specifically to fight atheism -- his point was that all the
horrible things in Christianity and other religions were evidence
against religion, not evidence against God. Jefferson might have
been an atheist, for all I know -- he was in politics so he had
every reason to lie about it if he was one.
Historically, I think the progress of 19th-century science
is what did it to most freethinkers. The popular vision of nature
as a harmonious system of "beneficence to all" had to give way
to Tennyson's "nature red in tooth and claw". Darwin said he
couldn't believe a merciful God would make a cat play with a
mouse.
> As for figuring out that Christianity is just a lame myth, the
> Reformation did that to the Catholic Church. However it took three
> hundred years before reform reached the stage of deism, and another
> fifty to a hundred before it reached its logical conclusion of
> atheism.
Bingo. Once people realize we can apply our own intellects and
judge for ourselves what we're being told, it's just a matter of time
before we work out the right answer.
> > We learned to freethink from the Deists, and they were spreading
> > the so-called "canard" before any of that other stuff happened.
>
> Fair enough. Though freemasonry was closely connected to the deist
> movement, and was hardly a rationalistic movement.
Freemasonry was the 18th-century equivalent of the UUs -- they'd
take anybody. Rationalists went there to find fellowship with people
who wouldn't hate them for being rationalists.
> > ...the notion that all cultures are equal and the notion that
> > Christianity is just like other religions are two different
> > notions with two different histories. Deal with it.
>
> Though Christianity has a special status as the religion of the
> superior culture, surely?
But Western religion could have been anything. Western culture
wasn't superior when it adopted that religion. The West started a
death-spiral in the Peloponnesian War and didn't pull out until the
Renaissance. If any religion deserves special status as the religion
of the superior culture, it's the one the West adopted after it got
its wits back -- the civic religion whose prophet was John Locke and
whose sacred revelation is "the consent of the governed", that's now
almost universally paid lip service to here, and usually believed in,
even by people who've never heard of Locke.
> So the God they don't believe in is the deist God.
Give it a rest. We don't believe in the deist God, the Shinto
Gods, the JCI God, the Greek Gods, the Hindu Gods, the Gods of space
aliens, or the Gods of any of the religions nobody has thought up yet.
> > Whether there was a Jesus has no bearing on whether there's a God;
> > it's a matter of history and anthropology. And semantics.
>
> It has a bearing on whether the most popular and influential form of
> theism is true or not.
Not really. Christianity is wrong even if Jesus existed, and
even if he was the Son of God.
Paul Filseth
> > People tend to look more like their close relatives than like their
> > distant relatives. Therefore you can get information about who
> > then you share a lot more 1000th cousins with Britney Spears than
> > if you're an Ainu.
>
> But Paul, while this may all be true, it does not show that the
> concept of "races", as normally understood, is valid. All you are
> saying is that groups who have more common recent ancestors will
> tend to be more alike than those who have fewer. But to jump from
> that to the use of a word like Caucasian as if it means something
> solid is not, it seems to me, valid.
Well, to fill in the hole in the argument I'd also have to refer
you to empirical evidence that "Caucasian" matches one of the groups
who have most of their ancestors in common. See below.
> How do you tell if someone is Caucasian? Can you give me any yardstick
> by which I can decide whether someone is Caucasian or not.
Identify the genes that are found more often in those called
"Caucasian" in common usage than in the general population, and see
if the person in question has a proportion of those genes that
reflects membership or a proportion that reflects nonmembership.
> If you can't, what does the word mean?
Irrespective of whether its possible to tell, what the word
means is the same sort of thing that the word "mammal" means. You
take all the living animals commonly called mammals and consider their
last common ancestor. This species is the "ur-mammal". A "mammal"
is then any descendant of that species -- this is what we mean when
we talk about whether an extinct animal or a living hard-to-classify
animal is a mammal. Varieties of a species are analogous, although
a little hybridization among varieties makes the edges fuzzy. (A lot
of hybridization means there aren't varieties.)
Consider the set of your ancestors many thousands of years ago.
Count someone twice if he's your great-times-N grandfather by two
routes because of inbreeding; and so forth. So after 100 generations
there are 2^100 ancestors, far more than the population of the Earth,
because there was a lot of inbreeding. (Some people have shorter
generations than others, so the number at a particular time won't be
a perfect power of two, but that doesn't change the analysis in any
significant way, so let's ignore it for simplicity.) If most of those
2^100 people are _the same people_ as the contemporary set of people
you get if you do the same procedure starting from me instead of from
you, that means you and I are part of the same subtree of H. sapiens
that existed at that particular time in the past.
If you could do this analysis for everybody and every time in
the past, you'd get a rough tree structure corresponding to the
history of mankind breaking up into groups of people who relatively
seldom breed outside their group. The branches are real biological
facts of history, relatedness, and genetics. So to say "Caucasian"
is a biologically meaningful classification is simply to say it
corresponds to one of the subtrees. It does. The North Asian subtree
split between the ancestors of Caucasians and non-Caucasians about
30,000-40,000 years ago, according to the genetic distance data in
"The History and Geography of Human Genes". That's two thousand
generations or so, so a Caucasian is anybody who shares most of his
2000th cousins with other Caucasians.
It may in some cases be impossible to tell which group someone
is part of, if there's been too little genetic drift. And groups
that once split can later recombine. We can imagine a world in which
Caucasians and American Indians took up breeding randomly. After
a few generations, almost all our descendants would look similar and
be genetically half-and-half. Then there would be only one race.
But that wouldn't make "Caucasian" meaningless; it would simply make
it a category of interest primarily to historians.
> Is it just a broad description of a physical type, like "blonde"?
No. If you look up "race" in a lot of dictionaries, the common
thread running through most of the primary definitions is relatedness.
The number one definition in my dictionary is "a group of persons
related by common descent, blood, or heredity." (In common usage of
course it has to be a _big_ group. There's a continuum from clan to
tribe to ethnic group to race. If there were still Neanderthals we'd
talk of subspecies.) The reason race gets tied up with things like
"blonde" is because people use features like that as evidence to infer
which group you were born into.
> I would be described as "obviously Caucasian", I think - but my
> mother is Irish, and the red in my beard comes, they say, from the
> Spanish who were shipwrecked in the Armada. And if I have a little
> bit of Spanish in my ancestry, then quite likely I have an even
> smaller bit of Moorish blood. So am I Caucasian?
Yes, for one obvious reason, and one less obvious. A "little
bit" doesn't wipe out the fact of "all but a little bit". It's silly
to call somebody with fifteen great-great-grandparents from Japan and
one from Korea "non-ethnic-Japanese".
And second, going by how race was distinguished by classical
physical anthropology before anthropologists decided talking about
race was unfashionable, the Moors are a Caucasian ethnic group. The
main geographical barrier that accounts for Negroids and Caucasoids
accumulating differences by genetic drift isn't the Mediterranean.
It's the Sahara. If Moors are black, well, race isn't color. (And
there has of course been some interbreeding. This probably introduced
genes for dark skin into the Moors' gene pool that became more common
by natural selection.)
Joshua
> "Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
> > No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> > Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> > racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> > another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> > to buy and sell members of other races.
>
> The Europeans may have bought the slaves; but hey guess who sold the slaves.
> Yes, other Africans.
Listen to me. If people weren't paying for slaves, no one would have
been selling them.
> Still I guess you don't want to think about that,
I'll think about it, but I won't use it as some sort of lame apology
or justification for the African slave trade. Africans didn't ask for
an outside force to swoop in and forcibly start buying and selling
them like cattle.
What if the shoe was on the other foot? We'd be learning about some
terrible and cruel empire that invaded some God-Fearing Country of
ours, only to be repelled in a victory for all that is Good and Right.
> you would prefer to think that all ills come from the west.
Now you're just putting words in my mouth.
Corruption is as old as time itself, and all governments are
inevitably corrupt, just as any human invention will be. But there is
absolutely no reason to say our culture is the best culture ever
invented. There is no perfect, God-Given Reason that the Western way
of life should be held above all others. Our way of life is
responsible for some terrible violations of human rights, and that
seems difficult to ignore. Obviously it's not impossible.
I believe in democracy and human rights, but I don't believe the West
has a history of upholding those principles.
strider
I probably would leave well enough alone except that I made a rather
stupid mistake with words that misrepresented my opinions. Basically I
didn't properly differentiate between current scientific consensus (as
I understand it) on evolution and past (not necessarily scientific)
ideas about it. The reply is based largely on my poor word choice, and
if we are going to disagree, it is probably worth my trying to at
least express coherently my position for Paul to disagree with.
pg...@lsil.com (Paul Filseth) wrote in message news:<2003112722...@lsil.com>...
> strider...@yahoo.com (strider) wrote:
> Aren't they? Does current Syrian culture resemble 1950s Syrian
> culture or 1950s Bolivian culture more closely? If it's the former,
> how is that to be accounted for if cultures aren't evolutionary?
> (Which is not to say Darwinian, of course. Cultural evolution seems
> Lamarckian.)
When I used the term "evolutionary" I meant a very specific concept,
not necessarily implied by the term. Unfortunately social scientists
and natural scientists have used different meanings for the same word.
When I say evolutionary, I mean evolutionary in the sense of progress.
The idea I disagree with is that culture necessarily or (to use a word
I hate) "naturally" develops into superior forms over time.
> There is no such thing as a Darwinistic ladder. That's not how
> Darwinian evolution works.
This is how social scientists at the time thought about it. They
thought of it in terms of a ladder they thought they were borrowing
from natural scientists. I believe some biologists bought into a
similar notion of a hierarchy of biological/evolutionary races, but I
know less about them than the social scientists. Certainly biologists
now (at least for the most part) don't think that way.
> That's absurd. Whether humans are essentially similar, by
> whatever criterion you have in mind, is an empirical question.
An empirical question that has been answered. The cultural differences
between human beings don't map onto biological differences.
> That's self-contradictory. How can they view their own societies
> critically if they abstract themselves from criticizing societies? You
> can't have meant that the way it came out.
They viewed their own society "critically" in the sense of being able
to analytically examine it, not in the sense of being able to maintain
is was better or worse than other cultures. Again my verbage could
have been clearer.
> So? That doesn't support Malcolm's position, since the 30s are
> a lot more recent than the 1700s. And it isn't a reason to think the
> West didn't evolve a superior culture. Ideas aren't right because
> they're old and accepted.
I agree with very little Malcolm says. I was disagreeing with your
statement, not agreeing with Malcolm.
> That sounds an awful lot like more recent historians claiming to
> be better than their predecessors. It's a "progress" narrative of
> the history of historians. If it's even a fair characterization of
> earlier historians' views.
One must always view ones opinions as more correct than the opinions
of others, regardless of whether they lived in the past or present in
order that one hold them. Historians have not claimed that we must
assume all present knowledge to be equal to all past knowledge in
truth value. They merely think that its existence in the present is
not in itself a valid claim to truth, and that the past does not
inevitably resolve itself into better and better stages towards the
glorious present.
> Those were bad things, weren't they? And our culture isn't in
> favor of them any more, right? How is this not progress?
Pointing out a specific good feature of current society does not prove
all history is progress. I do *not* claim that nothing is ever more
truthful than anything else.
> Yes -- changes in interest and changes in ideology. Imagine if
> the professionals who study microorganisms that attack human bodies
> lost interest in intervention, and devoted themselves to description.
> And then they criticized people who wanted to resurrect the practice
> of medicine on the grounds that doing pathology scientifically requires
> that we abandon the obsolete notion of one person being sicker than
> another. How is what you're describing different from that?
My poor use of language did not properly differentiate.
Anthropologists study culture. Biologists study life. Anthropologists
no longer view cultures as "superior" or "inferior" in the abstract.
One culture may be better at a specific function (like providing a
reason to keep living, or producing truth claims). Admittedly many
anthropologists shy away from claiming one culture produces more truth
claims than another. As you have pointed out this is
self-contradictory (dealing with this problem is an important task
these days in the social sciences generally). The analogy would be if
biologists started claiming cows were objectively "better" than
chickens. Biologists don't do this. They may claim one is better
nutritionally for humans, or that vaccines provide better protection
from viruses than leaves.
> Yes. But do you know a way to produce only good ideas? I don't.
> People produce a mix of ideas, put some into practice, and hopefully
> throw away the bad ones after they've done a finite amount of damage.
> If we hang on to the good ideas they can do an unlimited amount of
> good in the long run. More ideas are better than less.
My point was that western culture has murdered more innocents than any
other. This seems to me like something worth including if one were
trying (in my view wrongheadedly) to say culture a is better than b.
> Glad to hear it. So any given aspect of a culture may be based on
> a right or a wrong notion. Different cultures have different notions.
> So every culture has different good and bad points. Mathematically,
> it's ridiculous to imagine that all these different combinations would
> coincidentally add up to the same sum, so that every culture is on
> balance exactly as good as every other. Surely you'd agree that Danish
> culture was better than German culture in the 1930s?
I disagree that because culture a is based on, or produces, more
cogent arguments and truth claims than culture b, it follows that it
is better. It is only better at the production of truth.
> If one culture _can_ be better overall than another, theoretical
> arguments for cultural relativism are kind of beside the point. To
> say that Western culture isn't the best is simply to say that some
> other culture is better.
I think comparing cultures in the hopes of finding a "better" one is a
poor decision and not a terribly interesting or important analytic
endeavor. It's more useful to ask, "how does culture a work?" than if
its better.
>
> Culture is software. It's a technology, like Linux. Linux is
> better than it used to be. And it's better than Windows.
I'll agree with you here. Linux is better than windows :). But I don't
buy the culture/software analogy.
Joshua
> "Chris Michael" <no...@m.pls> wrote in message news:<bq2c8i$klb$4...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> > "Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
> > > No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> > > Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> > > racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> > > another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> > > to buy and sell members of other races.
> >
> > The Europeans may have bought the slaves; but hey guess who sold the slaves.
> > Yes, other Africans. Still I guess you don't want to think about that, you
> > would prefer to think that all ills come from the west.
>
> If I recall correctly the Arabs already had a thriving business in
> African slaves before the Europeans were on the stage. The Europeans
> just became the new customers.
Of course. This is the type of story that truly warms the patriotic
heart. Apparently Europeans and Americans weren't the murderous,
pillaging invaders I had pictured at first. They were only new
customers. Does any of this make sense to you? That the shining,
Perfect example of a human culture, handed down to man by God Himself,
is Tolerant and Perfect and Right simply because it's only as
murderous and terrifying and destructive as others with no respect for
human rights?
[snip]
> Given the current affairs in Riwanda with Hutu vs. Tusi situation
> these little tribal affairs don't seem so high minded to me. Funny
> thing is that I understand the problems in Riwanda relate to slavery
> of one of those tribes by the other ... now! Let's see they are
> hacking the arms of children and leaving the alive on a mass scale.
> A lesson in morality for us depraved westerners.
You might think that every warm-blooded Patriot with a hatred in his
heart for all things foreign and uncivilized would share your
criticism of The Hutus, who slaughtered three million Tutsis in
Rwanda. But you'd be wrong. Madeline Albright was struggling with the
technical definition of "genocide" after 800,000 Tutsis were massacred
in 100 days in Rwanda, but she did know that those loathsome Africans
started civil wars all the time and shouldn't be bothered. Let them
run their own affairs. People might accuse the U.S. of imperialism.
But wait, you say, the class struggle in Rwanda shows that even those
backwards and tribal dark-skinned people who worship strange gods are
capable of destroying each other. Racism isn't so bad in comparison,
you say. Never mind that the Belgians exploited the system the Hutus
and Tutsis had for the benefit of mother country. Never mind that they
handed out cards to distinguish one from the other so they knew which
ones to favor, and never mind that the western world sat by and mused
about the savageness of these people while the whole thing errupted
years later. That was yesterday, this is now. And somehow it makes us
look better, you say, but perhaps you've forgotten how. It had
something to with one godless ethnic group enslaving another, though,
and you're sure of that.
strider
Maybe we agree, there is a way Marx is a relativist, I will explain
further on.
>
> Did you see what Smurf Muncher wrote?
>
> ... there is no absolute way to tell right from wrong. In the end,
> all we have are each other, individual judges of right and wrong
> in every situation. That's why we need democracy and respect for
> others' cultures. Everyone needs to bring their views to the
> table, and no one should be silenced.
>
> If there's no truth to the matter of whether something is right or
> wrong, why condemn censorship? But people pull off that sort of
> mental gymnastics all the time. I don't assume Marx didn't do the
> same.
With no ofense intended to Smurf Muncher, Marx was smarter, and a far
more systematic thinker. I have basically argued for what I take to be
the orthodox interpretation of Marx, that communism represents the
*end* and the objectively *correct* and *better* mode of social order.
This is not relativistic.
Marx's morality does not seem to have many of the features we are used
to. Infact Marx thought much of this was superstructure, hiding the
real driving history of economics. To the extent Marx was morally
neutral, he challenged signicant contemporary morality as being just a
mask for self interest.
This forces me to back off my original claim somewhat. Marx should be
in a history of relativism, in so far as the idea that morality is
merely articulated as a mask for self interest (though it does not
originate with him, Plato argues against much the same thing) is
proposed by him. But, Marx is not a relativist because he thinks the
key to unlocking human potential can be found by studying economic
relations, which he thinks leads one to the *objective* conclusion
that communism is both superior and necesary.
Chris Michael
"S.A.Joyce" <s.a....@NOSPAM.att.net> wrote in message
news:2Tsxb.344002$0v4.18...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> This is the second post this week in which I've seen "flaunt" misused.
> I overlooked the first instance, figuring it might be a transient slip.
> But a second suggests it's time to reach for the dictionary. From the
> context, I gather that the author wanted to say that Turkey *flouts*
> (scorns) the UN resolution. To say instead that Turkey *flaunts" (makes
> a conspicuous display of) the resolution turns the accusation into an
> absurdity--not the author's intent, I would guess.
>
> I apologize for the interruption. Now, back to the jolly battle between
> East and West...
You should have felt free to pick me up the first time. If being corrected
is the price I pay to be better informed, pick away ;-). I don't want to
flout the rules of language, nor indeed flaunt my ignorance.
Chris Michael
> "Chris Michael" <no...@m.pls> wrote in message
news:<bq2c8i$klb$4...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> > "Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
> > > No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> > > Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> > > racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> > > another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> > > to buy and sell members of other races.
> >
> > The Europeans may have bought the slaves; but hey guess who sold the
slaves.
> > Yes, other Africans.
>
> Listen to me. If people weren't paying for slaves, no one would have
> been selling them.
What!!! Are the African tribes little children that need to be protected
from sophisticated cunning westerners!!! And what you say is wrong
historically. Westerners were not the first customers, merely the biggest.
Even if that were not the case, they sold them, they are as culpable, if not
more so. Unless of course you think of them as primatives who need to be
treated like children, absolved from guilt because they were led astray by
westerners
> I'll think about it, but I won't use it as some sort of lame apology
> or justification for the African slave trade.
How on earth do you figure I was justifying the slave trade? I was merely
re-aportioning blame.
> Africans didn't ask for
> an outside force to swoop in and forcibly start buying and selling
> them like cattle.
>
Nor did Westerners ask for a fully fledged slave trading system to be in
place when they arrived in Africa, but there was. So like the African slave
traders, they thought fuck morality, we can get rich. See the pattern?
People can be scum, regardless of where they come from.
> > you would prefer to think that all ills come from the west.
>
> Now you're just putting words in my mouth.
>
I am interpretting your words in a way that many others have interpretted
them ie. that you are a Western basher on principle. If it were just me,
then you could chalk it down to my misunderstanding. As it is, everyone
contributing seems to have interpretted your words in a similar manner to
me. That being the case, you need to modify the way you express your
thoughts so that you do not sound like a reflexive west basher.
>
> I believe in democracy and human rights, but I don't believe the West
> has a history of upholding those principles.
The west may not always live up to its own ideals, but the fact that it has
these ideals is something that many other cultures do not. We have the
ideals, and don't always live up to them. Many other cultures do not have
these ideals AND do not live up to them.
Chris Michael
> "Chris Michael" <no...@m.pls> wrote in message
news:<bq2c8i$klb$4...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> > "Joshua" <smurf_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
> > > No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> > > Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> > > racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> > > another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> > > to buy and sell members of other races.
> >
> > The Europeans may have bought the slaves; but hey guess who sold the
slaves.
> > Yes, other Africans.
>
> Listen to me. If people weren't paying for slaves, no one would have
> been selling them.
What!!! Are the African tribes little children that need to be protected
from sophisticated cunning westerners!!! And what you say is wrong
historically. Westerners were not the first customers, merely the biggest.
Even if that were not the case, they sold them, they are as culpable, if not
more so. Unless of course you think of them as primatives who need to be
treated like children, absolved from guilt because they were led astray by
westerners
> I'll think about it, but I won't use it as some sort of lame apology
> or justification for the African slave trade.
How on earth do you figure I was justifying the slave trade? I was merely
re-aportioning blame.
> Africans didn't ask for
> an outside force to swoop in and forcibly start buying and selling
> them like cattle.
>
Nor did Westerners ask for a fully fledged slave trading system to be in
place when they arrived in Africa, but there was. So like the African slave
traders, they thought fuck morality, we can get rich. See the pattern?
People can be scum, regardless of where they come from.
> > you would prefer to think that all ills come from the west.
>
> Now you're just putting words in my mouth.
>
I am interpretting your words in a way that many others have interpretted
them ie. that you are a Western basher on principle. If it were just me,
then you could chalk it down to my misunderstanding. As it is, everyone
contributing seems to have interpretted your words in a similar manner to
me. That being the case, you need to modify the way you express your
thoughts so that you do not sound like a reflexive west basher.
>
> I believe in democracy and human rights, but I don't believe the West
> has a history of upholding those principles.
The west may not always live up to its own ideals, but the fact that it has
Paul Filseth
> > > We INVENTED racism.
> >
> > What's your evidence for that? Racism is normal human behavior.
> ...
> No, you and I both know what racism means. When Europeans viewed
> Africans as less then human simply because of their origin, that was
> racism. That's a far cry from tribal war or one nation invading
> another. It's the view that as Europeans, they had the god-given right
> to buy and sell members of other races.
And you think Chinese who called Europeans "foreign devils"
were using it as a term of respect? And Japanese who wouldn't let
people born into ethnic Korean families be citizens even if their
families had lived in Japan for two hundred years thought of Koreans
as their equals? And Moslems who bought and sold African kidnap
victims thought Allah didn't approve?
> > Racism refers to treating people badly because they aren't the same
> > race as you. When I praised the West for its anti-racism, I wasn't
> > talking about how we were the ones who figured out evolution results
> > in a bush and not a ladder. I was talking about how our culture
> > figured out that treating people badly because of their ethnicity
> > isn't fair.
>
> Ethnic groups aren't the same thing as races.
That's a distinction without a relevant difference. A race is
just a collection of related ethnic groups and being picked on because
of your ethnicity hurts just as bad as being picked on because of your
race. People who look Tibetan get treated as inferiors in their own
country, by fellow Asians. If you call that "non-racism" because of
some quibble, who cares? Terminological technicalities aren't what
make racism objectionable.
> Our culture invented
> racism; no one before us needed to "realize" that all races are
> created equally. No one else needed to be told that large noses and
> dark skin did not imply lesser intelligence.
So Arab slave traders thought their victims were as smart as
themselves, did they? If there was something unique about Western
racism, so what? Every culture intellectualizes the things it does
in culturally idiosyncratic ways. If Westerners justified bad
behavior in pseudo-scientific terms, while Moslems justified theirs
in pseudo-Islamic terms, whoop-de-do. No doubt Chinese justified
theirs in pseudo-Confucian terms. Everybody's unique. It doesn't
make a difference to the victims.
> No, in the very real sense that there are no biological races. Sure,
> there may be lines of descent, but the lines are always fuzzy and the
> exceptions are always greater than the rule.
The lines are fuzzy, but so what? The line between Mauna Loa
and Mauna Kea is fuzzy. Does that mean they aren't two mountains?
Does that mean you can't correctly, objectively and unambiguously
identify which volcano 99% of the rocks on them came from?
When you say the exceptions are always greater than the rule,
what evidence for that do you have?
> What exactly is your definition of "African" in biological terms?
A (Negroid) African is a person who's descended mainly from the
subtrees of the human species that stayed in Africa when another
subtree formed from people who emigrated to Asia, some time between
100,000 and 50,000 years ago.
> What's the difference between an African and a Jamaican?
Beats me.
> > Why? Because you say so? Because your ideology trumps your eyes?
> > People tend to look more like their close relatives than like their
> > distant relatives. Therefore you can get information about who someone
> > is related to by looking at him. That's a natural law governing human
> > affairs, and animal affairs too. If you're a Caucasian then you share
> > a lot more 1000th cousins with Britney Spears than if you're an Ainu.
>
> That's exactly where you're wrong. Race is supposed to be something
> that transcends culture. You can be an American, English, French, or
> whatever, but you're still white. You can be an African American,
> African, or whatever, but you're still black.
What the heck does that have to do with what I said? Who your
cousins are transcends culture.
> The idea of racism is that these races carry certain characteristics
> with them that cross cultural boundaries.
It's nothing of the sort. There's nothing racist about the idea
that races carry characteristics that cross cultural boundaries. It's
just an obvious fact: people have systematic differences in anatomy
and in the proportions of various sets of genes in their cell nuclei,
depending on which subtree they got most of their genes from. Deal
with it. The idea of racism is that race is a good reason to
discriminate against people, which is a completely different matter.
> The trouble is, with cross-breeding, recombination, sexual
> reproduction, and a host of other things, the lines between races
> just aren't there.
Lines are immaterial -- people still don't breed randomly. There
hasn't been _enough_ recombination to erase the peaks and valleys in
the distribution of genes. We can certainly hope this changes -- it
would be nice if some day racial differences are a thing of the past
and there's one less difference for bigots to latch onto. But it
hasn't happened yet, and saying it has is reality avoidance.
> If you define Africans as being dark-skinned with large noses, you're
> likely to find that those are the only things you find in common among
> those people.
But that would be a ludicrous way to define "African".
> That's important because you can't say "someone is dark-skinned and
> has a large nose, therefore he's dumb."
What's your point? Are you trying to insinuate that anybody who
doesn't buy into the idiotic ideologically motivated garbage that
there are no races is a racist? Nobody rational wants to say what you
propose. That's not what race is about. Race is about the history of
genetic drift.
> > People are animals. We have instincts, just like everyone else.
>
> Of course, but if you look at history and where cultures have
> encountered one another, you'll see that there are more differences
> than similarities.
That's just a perception people have, because the differences tend
to cause the problems and therefore get the attention.
> People have different languages, customs, sexual preferences, etc.
With the same threads running through them. Languages come in
a few standard types, while vastly more perfectly possible language
types never or hardly ever occur. There are always customs about who
you can have sex with, who makes the rules, and who you have to be
nice to and who you don't. There are gays in every culture, and a
lot more straights.
> People have instincts to eat, sleep, reproduce, protect their young,
> etc. But that has little to do with treating people differently based
> on the color of their skin or their ancestry. That's sort of a weird
> behavior, don't you think?
Weird in the sense of goofy and unreasonable. Unfortunately not
weird in the sense of rare.
> > Of course it isn't -- some people have the wit not to fall into
> > that mental trap. And some people have the good fortune to be born
> > into a culture that figured out it's a trap and cautions them against
> > it.
>
> and some people aren't even aware of it
Mostly small children, unfortunately.
> > What was at issue here wasn't whether morality is absolute, but
> > whether believing it is made the West distinctively arrogant. That's
> > implausible. But if you want to run off on a digression, go for it...
>
> Here is the point. If you believe in moral absolutes, fine. I believe
> everyone needs to kill their first-born son. I'm not sure if I got it
> quite right, but I know I'm close. Fine. There's nothing wrong with me
> thinking that, but when I invade your country or your home and kill
> your family when you disagree with me, that's arrogance.
There's an awful lot wrong with you thinking that. But thinking
morality is absolute doesn't mean thinking it's okay to kill your kid;
and it doesn't mean thinking it's okay to kill someone's family if he
disagrees with you. If you want to debate absolutism, why don't you
address absolutism, instead of making up a bunch of unrelated nonsense
and denouncing it? It's not arrogant to disagree with you about the
nature of meta-ethics; and even if it were it couldn't be distinctively
arrogant of Westerners, because most non-Westerners disagree with you
about it too.
> When we traded Africans like animals because they didn't speak English
> and didn't worship God, that was arrogance.
Well, y'all ought not to have done that. (It was lumpers like you
who traded them, not individualists like me.) If you mean Westerners
who did that were arrogant, well, sure, but Arabs did it too. So while
it was certainly arrogant, what you claimed was that Westerners were
_especially_ arrogant, and it doesn't support that contention.
> When we called everyone outside of Europe a cannibal
Have you considered the merits of conforming your statements to
reality?
> > > Let's say you are a law-maker. Your job is to take absolute moral
> > > principles and relay them to the masses. These absolute laws are
> > > timeless and perfect; they wouldn't be absolute otherwise, would
> > > they? The trouble is, as the law-maker, you aren't just relaying
> > > these laws, you're creating them.
> >
> > That's illogical. If they're timeless, they aren't created.
>
> exactly
>
> > > <Another falsehood snipped>
> >
> > <I point it out.>
>
> exactly
Okay, so you say illogical things, I point out that they're wrong,
and you say "exactly". Are you thinking this supports your case?
> > (Hey, the thread is still about atheism!) Why would it make him
> > god? Why should anyone suppose a god has a better handle on moral
> > truth than a human has? Because the god says so?
>
> Well, if you are making laws that everyone has to live by, that's one
> thing. If you claim that they are the approximations of absolute
> morality, you're claiming to have knowledge of absolute and timeless
> truths. How can you know those truths without being God?
2 + 7 is 9. Angular momentum is conserved. Hey, everybody, look
at me -- I'm God!
> There is only one version, and it is completely inaccessible
> to human beings. In fact, it doesn't even relate to us.
Why? Because you say so?
> > > That's important because the West cannot claim to have some natural
> > > law governing its system of morality; our laws reflect our opinions.
> >
> > Well, that is a problem for the West, since so much of it has
> > bought off on moral relativism.
>
> Do you think kings in Europe who claimed to have power from God
> Himself believed in moral relativism?
They mostly don't claim that any more. What king in Europe
has power in this day and age, beyond the power to embarrass his
"subjects"?
> > > You're right to say that this transcends religion, but the idea that
> > > western ideals are universal is a very Christian one.
> >
> > Western ideals tend to be in violent conflict with Christianity.
> > It's a big reason atheism is becoming popular. Western ideals are
> > mostly about equality, democracy, and human rights; and Christians
> > are worshipping the "Supreme Fascist". :-(
>
> Look, you're like a lot of people I see on Fox News and CNN. You have
> the liberal spirit in your heart, but you don't understand reality.
This from the guy who says we said "we called everyone outside
of Europe a cannibal", and equated moral absolutism with murdering
someone's family. Stop saying false things before you lecture me
about understanding reality.
> When we slaughter a nation of Native Americans, it's just a kid
> story...
What's your point? The West isn't in favor of that sort of thing
any more. Western ideals weren't about equality, democracy and human
rights back when Westerners did that.
> When we launch crusades on the Islamic world in an attempt to wipe
> them off the face of the earth, it's really a good thing, because we
> stole enough books to understand the math and science from the
> buildings we destroyed a thousand years ago.
Either produce a person who actually believes that garbage, or
else stop misrepresenting your opponents' position. Who the heck in
the West believes the Crusades were a good thing because we stole
books and learned math and science? The only people who still believe
they were a good thing are nutcase religious extremists who aren't
really all that enamoured of science.
> The African slave trade wasn't our fault at all because some Africans
> helped us.
Stop misrepresenting your opponents' positions. It wasn't my
fault because I never traded slaves. It wasn't the West's fault
because guilt isn't collective. The people who pointed out Africans
helped Westerners didn't do it to show it wasn't Westerners' fault,
but to refute your claim that the West is _especially_ bad.
> Colonialism is a great thing for all parties involved.
Stop misrepresenting your opponents' positions. I take it you're
a graduate of the Make Up Nonsense, Impute It To "Them", And Pat
Yourself On The Back For Not Believing It school of debate?
> I can talk to a hundred nieve people about foreign policy and have
> them all tell me it's about freedom and happiness, but that doesn't
> change the fact that foriegn companies are looting <snip>
You were talking about _ideals_. If the West sometimes fails
to live up to them, well, are you going to claim the West invented
hypocrisy too?
> Liberal guilt doesn't solve anything, but neither do fairy tales.
So quit pushing fairy tales about what your opponents believe.
> And western ideals are very Christian. I am living in the greatest
> Christian nation of our time at the moment, and the fact that it's my
> country too doesn't change its ideals. It doesn't change the fact that
> people in America think it's okay to rape a woman as long as she's
> drunk
People who think that are a small minority. That idea is neither
distinctively Western nor Christian.
> > Do you understand that thinking there's absolute morality and
> > thinking your own system is it are two different things? There's an
> > absolute truth as to what the laws of physics are, but that doesn't
> > mean we think our current models are more than just approximations.
>
> How do you know there is an absolute truth to what the laws of physics
> are? If you know that, you know something that no other human being
> knows.
Bosh. It's a tautology. The laws of physics are whatever the
universe does.
> If you know our systems of morality are all "pretty close"
> approximations to the real one out there somewhere,
I said nothing of the sort. Most systems are obviously nowhere
close, since they disagree with one another so much.
> you know something that only God Himself is supposed to know.
I don't care a whole lot what "God Himself" is supposed to know,
since (a), there's no such thing, and (b), no one who supposes Him to
know seems to have a sensible explanation for why He knows.
> Maybe the real one is "eat your children and let the species die" and
> we've all been wicked sinners since the beginning of human history.
Maybe so. If you have an argument for why that's the case, I'm
all ears. Whether you do or not, how does that possibility support
your position that "there is no such thing as absolute morality"?
> > > I doubt they'd have a good answer. Prove me wrong!
> >
> > Let's start by seeing whether you have a good answer to my
> > question about your claim that "no one should be silenced" in the
> > other sub-thread.
>
> I don't remember that sub-thread. Who should be silenced? The people
> who say things that disgust us both, no doubt. But why?
You assume too much -- I didn't say anyone should be silenced.
You said no one should be silenced, and I invited you to explain your
reasoning process. I did this, not because I disagree with you, but
because you appear to have stumbled onto the good idea that no one
should be silenced by blind luck rather than coherent thought. I'll
splice in the exchange:
"> there is no absolute way to tell right from wrong... no one should
> be silenced.
Why do you believe no one should be silenced? Do you have some
way to tell right from wrong that's better than the silencers' way to
tell? If you think you have, how can you tell your way is better, if
there's no absolute way to tell right from wrong? Conversely, if you
don't think you have a better way, then why do you put any more trust
in the conclusions of *your* way than in the contrary conclusions of
*their* way?"
Paavo P
"Paul Filseth" <pg...@lsil.com> wrote in message
news:2003112804...@lsil.com...
> The Gotha Program was the manifesto of the Social Democrats. Marx
> was arguing with other leftists, basically saying they were a bunch
> of screw-ups who didn't understand socialism.
>
Which also led to situation that Marx and his followers allied with Secret
Police in Several European countries (Britain, France,Germany,Russia) to
eliminate "screw-ups". This caused several conflickts giving birth to the
myth of "Terror of Anarchism".