Humanism in 2006
ralph
beat. Although the pitiful number of organised humanists (max 8,000) has
been publicised, many commentators, of all faiths and none, seem to feel
that the battle for hearts and minds has actually been won.
The religious obviously deplore this, on the basis that those without
religion have no morals. So we have nothing to feel smug about there.
But the fact that most people have actually rejected religion, probably
because of the acknowledgment of scientific truth, leaves this majority
as humanists by practice, even if they do not realise it.
Of course, in the present state of Bush rejection, this is popularly
associated with creationists, and of the hypocrisy of torture denial.
Mr. Blair, also in trouble on many fronts, is classed as a near-Bush on
the religious issue.
A couple of years ago the word humanism hardly appeared on the airwaves:
now it is everywhere. How can we exploit this situation, and how can we
export it?
--
ralph
David V.
> .... A couple of years ago the word humanism hardly appeared
> on the airwaves: now it is everywhere. How can we exploit this
> situation, and how can we export it?
By explaining what Humanism is and how opposing it they are
opposing humanity.
--
Dave
....If you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an
ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish
the useful ideas from the worthless ones - Carl Sagan, 1987.
jt...@tatehealthcare.com
of fundamentalist religiosity we're witnessing are death rattles: those
of Christians and of Muslims.
Capitalism spreads rationality (yes, perhaps at the cost of other life
values), and this rationality spreads into every aspect of life,
displacing dogma as it does so; thus promoting secularism.
Of course, Humanism is about more than secularism--secularism is the
easy part, actually. Humanism is also about creating a humane social
world; that's the hard part. My guess is that we Humanist should spend
less time battering religious myths, and more time promoting a humane
social world.
Jeff
John Brockbank
less time battering religious myths, and more time promoting a humane social
world. >
It has long been my view that the main factor which puts people off humanism
is that it is seen as wholly negative. a mere anti-religious cult. Of
course this is fostered by religious people but there is truth in it as
well.
ralph
"jt...@tatehealthcare.com" <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> writes
>My sense is that SECULARISM has already won the debate and the flairs
>of fundamentalist religiosity we're witnessing are death rattles: those
>of Christians and of Muslims.
But that is old news. What has impressed me in recent months is the
actual use of the "h" word.
>
>Capitalism spreads rationality (yes, perhaps at the cost of other life
>values), and this rationality spreads into every aspect of life,
>displacing dogma as it does so; thus promoting secularism.
Except in the capital of capitalism!
>
>Of course, Humanism is about more than secularism--secularism is the
>easy part, actually. Humanism is also about creating a humane social
>world; that's the hard part. My guess is that we Humanist should spend
>less time battering religious myths, and more time promoting a humane
>social world.
>
Absolutely. I've been trying to do that here, without a lot of success.
--
ralph
Lucien Saumur
than a free world. A better world is most often interpreted as meaning a
socialist world which is the opposite of a free world.
jt...@tatehealthcare.com
fundamentalists are making lots of noise as they retreat.
Consider that the most thriving churches in the US are the
"megachurches." These institutions minimize theology as they maximize a
sense of community and boost members' self-esteem. The architecture,
and often the names, are quite secular. God is at the center of their
activities in name only.
jt...@tatehealthcare.com
Humanism is committed to fostering a better world. That better world
includes freedom, but not anarchy; freedom but not rule of the wealthy
and strong; freedom but not neglect of society.
Like it or not, we're all products of society; we're all maintained by
society; we're all free to the extent that society offers us options
for developing and using our potentials. We will only have a good
society to the extent that we seek that "better world."
A community could freely decide to become socialist. Socialism isn't
the opposite of freedom; totalitarianism is.
The Nordic countries are the most socialist of Western liberal
democracies, and also are considered to have the highest overall
quality of life.
Roger Johansson
jt...@tatehealthcare.com wrote:
> Humanism is committed to fostering a better world. That better world
> includes freedom, but not anarchy; freedom but not rule of the wealthy
> and strong; freedom but not neglect of society.
We have an organisation http://www.iheu.org/
IHEU is backed up by humanist organisations in most countries in the
world.
It works together with other NGO's (non governmental organisations) to
stop violence in the name of religion, fight against defamation laws
which hinder criticism of religions, etc...
> Like it or not, we're all products of society; we're all maintained by
> society; we're all free to the extent that society offers us options
> for developing and using our potentials. We will only have a good
> society to the extent that we seek that "better world."
>
> A community could freely decide to become socialist. Socialism isn't
> the opposite of freedom; totalitarianism is.
These old labels, socialism, totalitarianism, freedom,etc.. are causing
problems when we discuss. If we explain in practical terms what we want
without using labels we can easier find practical solutions for the
future of our society.
I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
Private property is registered in the car register and house and land
register like today, and we can set an upper limit for the sum of all
property, the same for everybody in these register computers. This
ensures material equality and a maximum of freedom for every
individual. When we win the global election we abolish money and let
everybody who had less property register new property for free up to
the common limit.
The few who today are richer than the average they have to decide what
they want to keep of what they owned before.
Workplaces are ruled democratically by the people who work there.
The society as a whole is ruled like today, democracy, parlamentarism,
a transparent participative democracy. The Nordic countries have been
accepted as an ideal for how countries in EU should work
democratically.
I know that a lot of things are still faulty here in Scandinavia too,
but we are struggling to remove the obstacles for how the society
should work.
The obstacles are mainly old traditions with a religious basis.
Even if we have very little influence for the churches there are social
traditions formed over thousands of years under the influence of
religion, and these traditions are more difficult to handle than purely
theoretical ideological differences.
> The Nordic countries are the most socialist of Western liberal
> democracies, and also are considered to have the highest overall
> quality of life.
There was a study published in 2005 that showed how social problems,
which the church says it is a good factor against, are actually more
common in creationist countries than in less religious countries.
Scandinavia and Japan were found to have least problems and USA had
most, out of the industrialized countries in the study.
--
Roger J.
Lucien Saumur
<jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote in message
news:1136031080.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Lucien wrote: "Organized humanism has failed because it has sought 'a
> better world' rather
> than a free world. A better world is most often interpreted as meaning
> a
> socialist world which is the opposite of a free world."
>
> Humanism is committed to fostering a better world. That better world
> includes freedom, but not anarchy; freedom but not rule of the wealthy
> and strong; freedom but not neglect of society.
The rich do not rule. They only have one vote like everybody else.
They do not rule when they spend their money. It is "their" money and, in a
free society, they can spend it as they please.
Stealing from the rich is as much stealing as stealing from the poor.
In a free society, nobody, including the state, is allowed to steal.
Socialism is about stealing.
David V.
>
> The rich do not rule.
In America they do.
> They only have one vote like everybody else.
They have greater access to politicians than those with less
money. By making large contributions to the right political
action committee you can sit and chat with the president and if
you "donate" enough money you can even stay overnight in the
White House. There is a direct connection between those donations
and the political agenda of those it's donated to.
> They do not rule when they spend their money. It is "their"
> money and, in a free society, they can spend it as they
> please.
And they spend millions of it on political donations. The result
has been huge amounts of corporate welfare and tax increases on
the poor.
> Stealing from the rich is as much stealing as stealing from
> the poor.
No, it is not. If one takes a thousand dollars from a
millionaire, he won't even know it's gone. Take the same amount
from a poor person and they won't be able to eat for a month.
> In a free society, nobody, including the state, is allowed to
> steal. Socialism is about stealing.
So is any other system.
Lucien Saumur
"David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:W5ednefqDLYzWyve...@sti.net...
> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>
>> The rich do not rule.
>
> In America they do.
>
>> They only have one vote like everybody else.
>
> They have greater access to politicians than those with less
> money. By making large contributions to the right political
> action committee you can sit and chat with the president and if
> you "donate" enough money you can even stay overnight in the
> White House. There is a direct connection between those donations
> and the political agenda of those it's donated to.
You can expect anyone including the rich to use every means at their
disposal to protect themselves and their property.
David V.
> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>
>>> The rich do not rule.
>>
>> In America they do.
>>
>>> They only have one vote like everybody else.
>>
>> They have greater access to politicians than those with less
>> money. By making large contributions to the right political
>> action committee you can sit and chat with the president
>> and if you "donate" enough money you can even stay overnight
>> in the White House. There is a direct connection between
>> those donations and the political agenda of those it's
>> donated to.
>
> You can expect anyone including the rich to use every means at
> their disposal to protect themselves and their property.
Does that make it right? You made a statement. I proved it wrong,
and all you have in reply is a non sequitur?
ralph
Roger Johansson <roge...@gmail.com> writes
>
>jt...@tatehealthcare.com wrote:
>
>> Humanism is committed to fostering a better world. That better world
>> includes freedom, but not anarchy; freedom but not rule of the wealthy
>> and strong; freedom but not neglect of society.
>
>We have an organisation http://www.iheu.org/
>IHEU is backed up by humanist organisations in most countries in the
>world.
>It works together with other NGO's (non governmental organisations) to
>stop violence in the name of religion, fight against defamation laws
>which hinder criticism of religions, etc...
>
religion, but showing how humanity can live humanely (morally) without
it.
>I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
It's also important that we do this in a way that shows people we are
sane and rational, yet attuned to the needs of the emotions.
--
ralph
Lucien Saumur
> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>
>>>> The rich do not rule.
>>>
>>> In America they do.
>>>
>>>> They only have one vote like everybody else.
>>>
>>> They have greater access to politicians than those with less
>>> money. By making large contributions to the right political
>>> action committee you can sit and chat with the president and if you
>>> "donate" enough money you can even stay overnight
>>> in the White House. There is a direct connection between those
>>> donations and the political agenda of those it's donated to.
>>
>> You can expect anyone including the rich to use every means at
>> their disposal to protect themselves and their property.
>
> Does that make it right? You made a statement. I proved it wrong,
> and all you have in reply is a non sequitur?
My reply is not a non sequitur.The rich get involved in politics to protect
themselves from attack and not to attack anyone as do socialists.
.
theBeaver
>
> I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
> Private property is registered in the car register and house and land
> register like today, and we can set an upper limit for the sum of all
> property, the same for everybody in these register computers. This
> ensures material equality and a maximum of freedom for every
> individual. When we win the global election we abolish money and let
> everybody who had less property register new property for free up to
> the common limit.
>
> The few who today are richer than the average they have to decide what
> they want to keep of what they owned before.
>
> Workplaces are ruled democratically by the people who work there.
> The society as a whole is ruled like today, democracy, parlamentarism,
> a transparent participative democracy. The Nordic countries have been
> accepted as an ideal for how countries in EU should work
> democratically.
You are naive in the extreme. Perhaps you are fooled by your relatively
homogeneous society into thinking that communism (which is essentially
what you describe) is a desirable form of government.
Conditions of inequality arise naturally when some people work harder
than others. People work harder than others to gain an advantage, and
if that advantage is not there, they will not work harder. They may not
work at all. People who work hard will expect reward, and will resent
the expectation by lazy people that they deserve their "fair share"
without working. They will, rightfully and with vigor, defend with
force the fruits of their labor. They may be fighting for the welfare
of themselves, of their own family, or for others they love, but they
will fight. They will make moral judgements: They will love whatever
they regard as good, and protect it from those they regard as bad, and
if forced to, they will fight to the death.
This is human nature, and if you disregard the essential nature of man,
you cannot be a humanist.
Let me make a brash statement: The free market system has NO problems.
All that you see as problems are in fact problems with details of law
or problems intrinsic in human nature, not problems with capitalism. If
you see good people starving and dying, that is in fact a consequence of
man's indomitable will to procreate. His expansive nature will
ultimately overturn ANY attempt at control or form of government, so
people will starve uner ANY system. Under true capitalism, the
survivors will at least roughly correlate to the more intelligent and
the harder working. Under communism, the survivors are those who
brandish the party doctrine, who are part of the enforcement arm of
government, or whoever ultimately wields physical force.
Mankind did not evolve in the kind of society that you promote, and he
is not adapted to it. To think that there is ANY governmental form that
will totally banish injustice is absurd. If the best we can do is
minimize it, then the existence of injustice is not proof of a flaw in
the system.
Capitalism IS a moral system. It is the ONLY moral system. People are
free: To apply their OWN morality by allocating resources they have
saved through free trade. You cannot accuse capitalism by pointing to
modern societies, because there are no purely capitalistic societies.
Governments that attempt to allocate resources are inherently amoral:
They cannot make good moral judgements because 1) they cannot ascertain
the truth of an individual's condition, and 2) they cannot efficiently
allocate resources based on economic need and individual needs.
Government, to the extent that it attempts to be "fair", acts in a
ham-handed way, enforcing a lowest-common-denominator "morality" that is
blind to individual differences, and individual goodness.
You naively say abolish money, but money is an indispensable tool. As
well as vastly promoting economic efficiency, it provides a common
measurement tool for judging the worth of EVERYTHING. Is extending the
life of an old woman one year worth $1,000,000? Perhaps not, if that
$1,000,000 can buy vaccines to immunize 100,000 children, many of whom
would die without vaccine. I have now put a dollar price on a human
life. Should I sacrifice the education of my children to save the life
of the impudent jerk next door? No, not in a million years. Since the
cost of saving his life can be measured in dollars, and the cost of my
children's education can be measured in dollars, money can help me apply
resources consistent with my moral judgments.
Resources are limited. Mankind will find some way of exhausting his
resources by breaking the bonds that have previously constrained him.
His choices will then be of a kind that bring life to one and death to
another. To the extent that capitalism enforces restraint on the lives
of some now, it cannot be judged bad. It is better to have attrition
and restraint based on an individual's exercise of his moral sense, than
the cataclysmic destruction of good AND bad that inevitably follows from
naive attempts, such as yours, to avoid any measure of pain now.
--
Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not compatible
with mental maturity. -- Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of
self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to
the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of
events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. -- Bertrand
Russell
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human
Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman,
and published by Princeton University Press.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should
be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how
despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than
be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." [Albert Einstein]
"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there
is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small
way or a large way." -- Mark Twain
"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there
can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as
God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is
exactly of the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested
upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they
said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the
subject.' The argument is really no better than that." -- Russell
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
Roger Johansson
ralph wrote:
> >We have an organisation http://www.iheu.org/
> >IHEU is backed up by humanist organisations in most countries in the
> >world.
> >It works together with other NGO's (non governmental organisations) to
> >stop violence in the name of religion, fight against defamation laws
> >which hinder criticism of religions, etc...
> Humanism should not be about fighting
> religion, but showing how humanity can live humanely (morally) without
> it.
You often have to fight religion to stop all the violence that is done
in the name of the religion. How can you stop stoning of women without
struggling against sharia laws?
> >I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
> It's also important that we do this in a way that shows people we are
> sane and rational, yet attuned to the needs of the emotions.
If an idea doesn't sound absurd to begin with it is a fruitless idea,
it is not a new idea. (Albert Einstein)
Why would abolishing money be such a strange idea?
We have a lot of experience of moneyless systems, every well
functioning family is a moneyless society, we only need money outside
the family, inside the family we do not trade and pay for everything
the members do and consume.
The small children have nothing to exchange, and the older children
should not work, they should go to school. So we share the resources
the family as a unit has.
Abolishing money is just a way to make all humans part of the same
family.
Making all work voluntary gives all individuals a maximum of personal
freedom.
What more can you ask for from a society system?
--
Roger J.
David V.
Wow! Two non sequiturs in a row. Your claim was that the rich do
not rule. They do. They also attack the middle class. Apparently
you haven't been watching American politics lately.
Lucien Saumur
> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>
>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>
>>>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>>>
>>>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The rich do not rule.
>>>>>
>>>>> In America they do.
>>>>>
>>>>>> They only have one vote like everybody else.
>>>>>
>>>>> They have greater access to politicians than those with
>>>>> less money. By making large contributions to the right
>>>>> political action committee you can sit and chat with
>>>>> the president and if you "donate" enough money you can
>>>>> even stay overnight in the White House. There is a
>>>>> direct connection between those donations and the
>>>>> political agenda of those it's donated to.
>>>>
>>>> You can expect anyone including the rich to use every means at their
>>>> disposal to protect themselves and their property.
>>>
>>> Does that make it right? You made a statement. I proved it wrong, and
>>> all you have in reply is a non sequitur?
>>
>> My reply is not a non sequitur.The rich get involved in politics to
>> protect themselves from attack and not to attack anyone as do socialists.
>
> Wow! Two non sequiturs in a row. Your claim was that the rich do
> not rule. They do. They also attack the middle class. Apparently
> you haven't been watching American politics lately.
Everything seems to be a non sequitur to you.
We may be sure that there is no future for organized humanism if it sees
itself a nothing more than the atheist branch of the Socialist Party.
David V.
No, just you.
Mani Deli
<lsa...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>The rich do not rule. They only have one vote like everybody else.
and they have purchesed crooked voting machines, and have the power to
finance election shenanigans and give us a two term unelected
president.
>They do not rule when they spend their money.
if you only listen to Fox News.
>It is "their" money and, in a
>free society, they can spend it as they please.
in order to get the worst government money can buy and big tax breaks
etc.
>Stealing from the rich is as much stealing as stealing from the poor.
>In a free society, nobody, including the state, is allowed to steal.
>Socialism is about stealing.
Corporate socialism is about stealing.
ralph
Johansson <roge...@gmail.com> writes
>You often have to fight religion to stop all the violence that is done
>in the name of the religion. How can you stop stoning of women without
>struggling against sharia laws?
>
By showing Muslims that humanism is a better way to live. Not, I admit,
an easy task, but then neither is altering their behaviour by fighting.
>> >I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
>
>> It's also important that we do this in a way that shows people we are
>> sane and rational, yet attuned to the needs of the emotions.
>
>If an idea doesn't sound absurd to begin with it is a fruitless idea,
>it is not a new idea. (Albert Einstein)
>
This does not imply that ideas that sound absurd are necessarily good
ideas. There are countless absurd ideas which are fruitless.
>Why would abolishing money be such a strange idea?
>
Humans in a global society need to trade goods and services if they are
not self-sufficient; that is, if they live in a developed society. Over
the last few thousand years we have developed the most efficient medium
of exchange for our trades. It is known as money.
>We have a lot of experience of moneyless systems, every well
>functioning family is a moneyless society, we only need money outside
>the family, inside the family we do not trade and pay for everything
>the members do and consume.
>The small children have nothing to exchange, and the older children
>should not work, they should go to school. So we share the resources
>the family as a unit has.
True, but irrelevant.
>
>Abolishing money is just a way to make all humans part of the same
>family.
You have, as we put it, the cart before the horse.
>Making all work voluntary gives all individuals a maximum of personal
>freedom.
>What more can you ask for from a society system?
One which works.
We have, in society, many jobs which people would not do voluntarily,
unless they were saints. (Like collecting rubbish, to begin with.) There
are not enough saints to go round.
>
>
--
ralph
Roger Johansson
ralph wrote:
> >If an idea doesn't sound absurd to begin with it is a fruitless idea,
> >it is not a new idea. (Albert Einstein)
> This does not imply that ideas that sound absurd are necessarily good
> ideas. There are countless absurd ideas which are fruitless.
A really good new idea in the social field sounds very strange simply
because the capitalist propaganda has prepared the minds of people to
react in that way. They are not stupid, they have built up defence
systems for capitalism in people's minds.
Especially americans and people who have seen a lot of US manufactored
propaganda react strongly against all ideas which threaten the money
system, the tool for pushing people around against their will.
> >Why would abolishing money be such a strange idea?
> Humans in a global society need to trade goods and services if they are
> not self-sufficient; that is, if they live in a developed society. Over
> the last few thousand years we have developed the most efficient medium
> of exchange for our trades. It is known as money.
You have just told us how capitalism works, can't you imagine any
positive alternative?
> >We have a lot of experience of moneyless systems, every well
> >functioning family is a moneyless society, we only need money outside
> >the family, inside the family we do not trade and pay for everything
> >the members do and consume.
> >The small children have nothing to exchange, and the older children
> >should not work, they should go to school. So we share the resources
> >the family as a unit has.
> True, but irrelevant.
Not irrelevant at all, we have a world which is suffering from
capitalism and creationism, we are looking for a new system without all
the flaws of capitalism.
Moneyless social systems are very interesting to study.
> >Abolishing money is just a way to make all humans part of the same
> >family.
> You have, as we put it, the cart before the horse.
You cannot understand how any other system than capitalism could work.
Well, you are not supposed to be able to imagine such things, you are
programmed to get angry every time somebody suggests an alternative to
capitalism.
And you are probably a good pupil, do you remember what to reply now?
"Hitler and Stalin, both very very bad. Communism, very very bad."
"We need money to be able to live and trade like before, the highest
goal for all americans."
> We have, in society, many jobs which people would not do voluntarily,
> unless they were saints. (Like collecting rubbish, to begin with.) There
> are not enough saints to go round.
So we need to keep capitalism so we can push people around?
Is that what you are saying?
Don't you realize that we should not force people to do stuff?
We should not let a few rich dudes take the important decisions in our
society, we should do it ourselves, through democracy.
Individual freedom and capitalism don't work together.
Democracy and capitalism doesn't work together either, so maybe it is
time for capitalism to be thrown upon the scrap heap of history. It can
come to rest there, together with the authoritarian soviet communism
which didn't work in a modern world either.
If the engineers and planners cannot create good workplaces they will
not get any voluntary workers, isn't that a good thing?
--
Roger J.
theBeaver
> So we need to keep capitalism so we can push people around?
> Is that what you are saying?
Somebody always gets pushed around, in ANY system. You apparently want
to give non-productive, lazy, and dishonest people a bigger whip.
> Don't you realize that we should not force people to do stuff?
You should not force people to pay for what they take? Consumers should
not compensate the producers? Did you really buy the "noble savage"
paradigm? Do you really think, contrary to history and historians, that
human nature can be changed? Have you no concept of evolutionary
psychology? I can recommend a book: "The Blank Slate" by Steven
Pinker. From Pinker:
"Marx and Engels did not explicitly embrace the doctrine of the Blank
Slate in their writings, but they were adamant that human nature has no
enduring properties. It consists only in the interactions of groups of
people with their material environments in a historical period, and
constantly changes as people change their environment and are
simultaneously changed by it. The mind therefore has no innate
structure but emerges from the dialectial processes of history and
social interaction. As Marx put it: 'All history is nothing but a
continuous transformation of human nature.'"
And:
"The brains behind the American Revolution (which is sometimes labeled
with the oxymoron "conservative revolution") inherited the tragic vision
of thinkers like Hobbes and Hume.... The legal scholar John McGinnis
has argued that their theory of human nature could have come right out
of modern evolutionary psychology. It acknowledges the desire of
individuals to further their inteests in the form of an inalienable
right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The state
emerges from an agreement instituted to protect those rights, rather
than being the embodiment of an autonomous superorganism. Rights need
to be protected because when people live together their different
talents and circumstances will lead some of them to possess things that
others want. ("Men have different and unequal faculties for acquiring
property," noted Madison.) There are two ways to get something you want
from other people: steal it or trade for it. The first involves the
psychology of dominance; the second, the psychology of reciprocal
altruism. The goal of a peaceful and prosperous society is to minimize
the use of dominance, which leads to violence and waste, and to maximize
the use of reciprocity, which leads to gains in trade that make everyone
better off....
"The feature of human nature that most impressed the framers was the
drive for dominance and esteem, which, they feared, imperils all forms
of government. Someone must be empowered to make decisions and enforce
laws, and that someone is inherently vulnerable to corruption. How to
anticipate and limit that corruption became an obsession of the framers.
John Adams wrote, "The desire for the esteem of others is as real a
want of _nature_ as hunger. It is the principal end of government to
regulate this passion." Alexander Hamilton wrote, "The love of fame
[is] the ruling passion of the noblest minds." James Madison wrote, "If
men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to
govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would
be necessary."
> We should not let a few rich dudes take the important decisions in our
> society, we should do it ourselves, through democracy.
> Individual freedom and capitalism don't work together.
Capitalism is a close to individual freedom as you can get.
David V.
>
> A really good new idea in the social field sounds very strange
> simply because the capitalist propaganda has prepared the
Which is no different than the propaganda you are putting out.
Roger Johansson
theBeaver wrote:
> > So we need to keep capitalism so we can push people around?
> > Is that what you are saying?
> Somebody always gets pushed around, in ANY system.
So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system which causes
enormous problems, suffering and death. You want to be pushed around.
Or do you think you would be one of the people who push others around?
> You apparently want
> to give non-productive, lazy, and dishonest people a bigger whip.
I want to take the whips out of the hands of the rich, nobody should
have a whip.
My system doesn't involve any whips, it gives all individuals a maximum
of freedom.
I take the power tools away from the creationist idiots who ruin our
world.
> > Don't you realize that we should not force people to do stuff?
> You should not force people to pay for what they take?
That is the basic principles of capitalism, and the results of the
exchange principle are detrimental to mankind in many ways, it makes
slaves out of most people, wage slaves. The money system is just a more
modern type of slavery.
The exchange principle is a hopeless basis for a society, a lot of
people have nothing to exchange.
> Consumers should not compensate the producers?
If you write a computer program you want people to pay you for it.
But a lot of people helped you to write your program, some people made
clothes for you, others made food and transported it for you, millions
of people have cooperated to create the machine you are working with.
The program you think you are the owner of has actually been produced
by millions of people, the program belongs to the world. You should be
happy that you live in such a rich part of the world that you can sit
there and write programs. Why aren't you in the mines in Borneo,
working really hard? You were born lucky, and now you want to become
rich and get a big whip too? The more money you have the more power
over other people do you have.
> Did you really buy the "noble savage"
> paradigm? Do you really think, contrary to history and historians, that
> human nature can be changed? Have you no concept of evolutionary
> psychology? I can recommend a book: "The Blank Slate" by Steven
> Pinker. From Pinker:
Incredible amounts of capitalist propaganda in your brain detected.
> "The brains behind the American Revolution (which is sometimes labeled
> with the oxymoron "conservative revolution") inherited the tragic vision
The american constitution and the american society are two completely
different things. Today we can easily see that USA is the most
dysfunctional and dangerous society on this planet. And they had to
fool their own citizens before they could start ruling the whole
planet. But things are changing. The era of american power is coming to
its end, the world will become more peaceful.
> of thinkers like Hobbes and Hume.... The legal scholar John McGinnis
> has argued that their theory of human nature could have come right out
What americans call nature is the creationist system. There is nothing
natural at all in that system. It takes a lot of training and a
constant consumption of violence to keep it running.
> the use of reciprocity, which leads to gains in trade that make everyone
> better off....
Today, after capitalism has ruled for hundreds or thousands of years,
is everyone in the world better off? No, not even the citizens of USA
themselves are all better off.
The poor in USA have less than most people in other parts of the world.
Capitalism accumulates the money and the power to a few hands. It is
like playing Monopoly, the game ends when one person has all the money.
Capitalism needs a lot of state intervention to work, to compensate for
the inherent faults of the capitalist system.
> > We should not let a few rich dudes take the important decisions in our
> > society, we should do it ourselves, through democracy.
> > Individual freedom and capitalism don't work together.
> Capitalism is a close to individual freedom as you can get.
Have you even tried to design a society?
Or are you simply defending the one that already exists because they
told you all your life that capitalism is the best possible system?
The one they have in USA was not created by modern day people, it is a
stone age system with a few nice modern words on top of it.
--
Roger J.
theBeaver
> So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system which causes
> enormous problems, suffering and death. You want to be pushed around.
> Or do you think you would be one of the people who push others around?
>
Your error is in thinking that it is the "capitalist" economic system
which causes the enormous problems. Please list "the problems". It is
easy to make the case that our problems are caused by over-population,
subcultures that reject the work ethic, envy, a belief that other people
are the cause of your problems, religion, nationalism, etc. If you
don't agree, perhaps YOU are part of the problem. Governmental systems
that allow limited capitalism, such as the US, also have built-in favors
for the wealthy and powerful, but these are NOT capitalism and they need
to be done away with. Until you can distinguish between free trade and
governmental artifice in support of special interests, you are barking
up the wrong tree. Perhaps you need a label, an "ism", for this form of
government in order to be able to recognize it?
>
>>You apparently want
>>to give non-productive, lazy, and dishonest people a bigger whip.
>
>
> I want to take the whips out of the hands of the rich, nobody should
> have a whip.
> My system doesn't involve any whips, it gives all individuals a maximum
> of freedom.
> I take the power tools away from the creationist idiots who ruin our
> world.
>
A maximum of freedom means that if I take common raw materials and
produce a widgetX that people love, I should be able to trade freely
with other people for the other widgets that I need. I should have
property rights to all of my widgets. That is capitalism. That is also
freedom. Freedom implies disparity of wealth and accumulation of
wealth. Freedom implies favoritism, as you are free to distribute your
wealth to the ones you choose. Capitalism is freedom. Self-proclaimed
"designers" of supposed idyllic social systems like you and Karl Marx
have some basic misunderstandings of human nature. Try reading Pinker's
book, or any book on evolutionary psychology.
>
>>>Don't you realize that we should not force people to do stuff?
>
>
>>You should not force people to pay for what they take?
>
>
> That is the basic principles of capitalism, and the results of the
> exchange principle are detrimental to mankind in many ways, it makes
> slaves out of most people, wage slaves. The money system is just a more
> modern type of slavery.
> The exchange principle is a hopeless basis for a society, a lot of
> people have nothing to exchange.
>
If they have nothing to exchange, then they must either live on the
charity of others or take what they need by force. They have no other
choice, no matter what governmental system they live under. Under
capitalism, in a world where resources have already been claimed,
charity would be the option of people with wealth. Under any other
system, wealth distribution is decided, to some greater degree, by needy
people. This is a dangerous system: Giving the people who need
something the power to take it without compensation.
>
>>Consumers should not compensate the producers?
>
>
> If you write a computer program you want people to pay you for it.
> But a lot of people helped you to write your program, some people made
> clothes for you, others made food and transported it for you, millions
> of people have cooperated to create the machine you are working with.
Yes, and I compensated them for these things, you idiot! I traded
something! If there is unfair exploitation of workers at the other end
of the chain, then address that: There is nothing wrong with my trades.
Western civilization has disrupted primitive cultures extensively,
exploited their resources, installed puppet governments, provided
despots with modern weapons. There are children working in sweatshops
because they did not die of disease, because their cultures were
unprepared for the temptations of western ways, because their parents
are unscrupulous, because soldiers and police are protecting the
interests of those who pay them, etc! There are problems that are
intrinsic in human nature and the human condition, and can undermine ANY
governmental system.
> The program you think you are the owner of has actually been produced
> by millions of people, the program belongs to the world. You should be
> happy that you live in such a rich part of the world that you can sit
> there and write programs. Why aren't you in the mines in Borneo,
> working really hard? You were born lucky, and now you want to become
> rich and get a big whip too? The more money you have the more power
> over other people do you have.
>
Yes, I was born lucky. If the people in the mines in Borneo were in my
position, they would be even more jealous of their wealth than I, would
recklessly squander it on short term pleasure, or would lose it to
crooks tempting them with get-rich schemes. One rather obvious
principle in life is that you should not entrust your wealth to
irresponsible people. I trust no one but myself to guard my own wealth,
and this is borne out by eons of experience with human nature. You
would put the control of wealth into the hands of people who do not
comprehend or appreciate the labor that went into producing that wealth.
The ones who can best appreciate it are the ones who produce the
wealth in the first place, and there is no better guardian.
>
>>Did you really buy the "noble savage"
>>paradigm? Do you really think, contrary to history and historians, that
>>human nature can be changed? Have you no concept of evolutionary
>>psychology? I can recommend a book: "The Blank Slate" by Steven
>>Pinker. From Pinker:
>
>
> Incredible amounts of capitalist propaganda in your brain detected.
>
>
>>"The brains behind the American Revolution (which is sometimes labeled
>>with the oxymoron "conservative revolution") inherited the tragic vision
>
>
> The american constitution and the american society are two completely
> different things. Today we can easily see that USA is the most
> dysfunctional and dangerous society on this planet. And they had to
> fool their own citizens before they could start ruling the whole
> planet. But things are changing. The era of american power is coming to
> its end, the world will become more peaceful.
>
Contrary to what one would expect from all of human history?
>
>>of thinkers like Hobbes and Hume.... The legal scholar John McGinnis
>>has argued that their theory of human nature could have come right out
>
>
> What americans call nature is the creationist system. There is nothing
> natural at all in that system. It takes a lot of training and a
> constant consumption of violence to keep it running.
>
>>the use of reciprocity, which leads to gains in trade that make everyone
>>better off....
>
>
> Today, after capitalism has ruled for hundreds or thousands of years,
> is everyone in the world better off? No, not even the citizens of USA
> themselves are all better off.
> The poor in USA have less than most people in other parts of the world.
>
The USA incorporates SOME capitalism, but also has fallen prey to the
usual temptations of power: To use the tools of government to protect
special interests. Once again, you fail to distinguish between
capitalism and the American form of government. The fundamental
principles of capitalism, free trade and property rights, must be the
STARTING POINT of any viable system. Some massaging may be done around
this core, but these principles are vital. You begin by rejecting the
very essentials of freedom.
> Capitalism accumulates the money and the power to a few hands. It is
> like playing Monopoly, the game ends when one person has all the money.
> Capitalism needs a lot of state intervention to work, to compensate for
> the inherent faults of the capitalist system.
>
>
>>>We should not let a few rich dudes take the important decisions in our
>>>society, we should do it ourselves, through democracy.
>>>Individual freedom and capitalism don't work together.
>
>
>>Capitalism is a close to individual freedom as you can get.
>
>
> Have you even tried to design a society?
> Or are you simply defending the one that already exists because they
> told you all your life that capitalism is the best possible system?
> The one they have in USA was not created by modern day people, it is a
> stone age system with a few nice modern words on top of it.
>
A prudent man would not design a society by throwing out the baby with
the bathwater, by ignoring the history of thousands of years of
struggle, or the wisdom of many conscientious and brilliant men. The
problems are intractible, and a wholesale redesign by a mediocre
intellect who cannot comprehend the lessons of history or human nature
is about as likely to succeed as the failed attempt of Karl Marx.
Roger Johansson
theBeaver wrote:
> > So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system which causes
> > enormous problems, suffering and death. You want to be pushed around.
> > Or do you think you would be one of the people who push others around?
> Your error is in thinking that it is the "capitalist" economic system
> which causes the enormous problems. Please list "the problems".
Ackumulation of all power in a few hands, very uneven distribution of
food and medicines, causes wars and conflicts over money, is wasting
enormous amounts of human effort in thinking about money, robbing
people, worrying about money, gambling for money, opressing people to
get more money, etc..
> > I want to take the whips out of the hands of the rich, nobody should
> > have a whip.
> > My system doesn't involve any whips, it gives all individuals a maximum
> > of freedom.
> > I take the power tools away from the creationist idiots who ruin our
> > world.
> A maximum of freedom means that if I take common raw materials and
> produce a widgetX that people love, I should be able to trade freely
> with other people for the other widgets that I need. I should have
> property rights to all of my widgets. That is capitalism. That is also
> freedom.
That is freedom only if you are very rich. For all others it is
slavery.
If you think you need to be a businessman to enjoy life you have a sick
mind.
You want to get richer on other people's expense.
Business and games like poker have a lot in common.
The most ruthless and violent gets the power and the money.
In the future society you can do whatever you like, except plotting and
scheming to limit others feedom to gain advantages. The constitution in
a moneyless society makes it impossible to trade, as there are no
money, and everybody already own everything they are allowed to own to
uphold the economic equality.
Capitalism often talks about contracts between free individuals, but in
reality only one of the parties are free, free to hire and fire people,
free to force people to work with the help of the money system and
property rights. If everybody really are equal economically capitalism
is no fun anymore, it couldn't even work.
> > That is the basic principles of capitalism, and the results of the
> > exchange principle are detrimental to mankind in many ways, it makes
> > slaves out of most people, wage slaves. The money system is just a more
> > modern type of slavery.
> > The exchange principle is a hopeless basis for a society, a lot of
> > people have nothing to exchange.
> If they have nothing to exchange, then they must either live on the
> charity of others or take what they need by force.
That's what causes a lot of crime and violence. That is a good reason
to abolish capitalism.
> They have no other
> choice, no matter what governmental system they live under.
Under the utopia system all citizens are guaranteed the same material
standard as everybody else. Nobody has to beg anybody for anything.
> > If you write a computer program you want people to pay you for it.
> > But a lot of people helped you to write your program, some people made
> > clothes for you, others made food and transported it for you, millions
> > of people have cooperated to create the machine you are working with.
> Yes, and I compensated them for these things, you idiot! I traded
If you live in a rich industrialized country you owe the rest of the
world a lot. Your country has for hundreds of years been stealing from
the third world.
If you happen to live in USA your debt to the rest of the world is even
bigger.
Your wealth has costed a lot of blood and suffering for hundreds of
millions of people around the world. The 20th century is mainly the
history of USA and its foreign policy. A lot of wars, a lot of dead
people, in the name of capitalism.
>> You were born lucky, and now you want to become
> > rich and get a big whip too? The more money you have the more power
> > over other people do you have.
> Yes, I was born lucky. If the people in the mines in Borneo were in my
> position, they would be even more jealous of their wealth than I, would
> recklessly squander it on short term pleasure, or would lose it to
> crooks tempting them with get-rich schemes. One rather obvious
You are incredible. You not only have unjust power over these people
for historical reasons, you take their food and copper and iron, make
them sow your clothes, and now you say they would waste all the money
if they had them and badmouth their personalities.
What about your own personality? Can you really get out of this in the
future by saying that you had been totally brainwashed and didn't
understand what you were talking about?
> > What americans call nature is the creationist system. There is nothing
> > natural at all in that system. It takes a lot of training and a
> > constant consumption of violence to keep it running.
> > Today, after capitalism has ruled for hundreds or thousands of years,
> > is everyone in the world better off? No, not even the citizens of USA
> > themselves are all better off.
> > The poor in USA have less than most people in other parts of the world.
> The USA incorporates SOME capitalism,
Of course, your backdoor out of this is to blame the US government, not
capitalism.
Blame the politicians, blame the democracy, but don't blame the system,
capitalism.
USA is the most capitalist country in the industrialized world, and
capitalists have more power there than in any other industrialized
country.
> > Capitalism accumulates the money and the power to a few hands. It is
> > like playing Monopoly, the game ends when one person has all the money.
> > Capitalism needs a lot of state intervention to work, to compensate for
> > the inherent faults of the capitalist system.
--
Roger J.
Lucien Saumur
Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside by the socialists
within.
ralph
Roger Johansson <roge...@gmail.com> writes
>
>A really good new idea in the social field sounds very strange simply
>because the capitalist propaganda has prepared the minds of people to
>react in that way. They are not stupid, they have built up defence
>systems for capitalism in people's minds.
>
>Especially americans and people who have seen a lot of US manufactored
>propaganda react strongly against all ideas which threaten the money
>system, the tool for pushing people around against their will.
>
brainwashed by Mr. Murdoch, but because I have worked in it. Having been
an employee for 25 years, I decided to form my own business and employ
others. After 20 years I had not made a lot of money, but I had housed,
clothed and fed my family, and educated my children. I had also enough
over to enjoy my retirement, in which I do work voluntarily for
community projects.
Neither did I exploit my employees nor my clients, even though I
employed the first at a fraction of the rate which I charged them to the
second. Both were happy with the arrangement; many of my ex-staff have
gone on to make good careers, at least one in her own business.
So, before assuming that your correspondents hold their opinions through
weak-mindedness, please consider the possibility that they have
experience which you lack.
--
ralph
theBeaver
> theBeaver wrote:
>
>
>>>So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system which causes
>>>enormous problems, suffering and death. You want to be pushed around.
>>>Or do you think you would be one of the people who push others around?
>
>
>>Your error is in thinking that it is the "capitalist" economic system
>>which causes the enormous problems. Please list "the problems".
>
>
> Ackumulation of all power in a few hands, very uneven distribution of
> food and medicines, causes wars and conflicts over money, is wasting
> enormous amounts of human effort in thinking about money, robbing
> people, worrying about money, gambling for money, opressing people to
> get more money, etc..
>
1) In the US, 38% of wealth is in the hands of the top 1%. This,
however, is not a monolithic block of money grubbers. Warren Buffett,
at about 30-40 Billion, believes he is undertaxed and favors raising
taxes on wealthy people. He has said that it is not fair that his
secretary pays a higher percentage of taxes than he. Bill Gates gives a
tremendous amount of money (billions) to charity, and does not, and has
no plans to, use any but a very small fraction of it for his personal
consumption. Based on the 2 wealthiest men in America, I see no cause
for alarm. A great many of the rest of the wealthy in America have
earned their wealth and feel compassion and generosity for the less
wealthy, having been there themselves.
2) How does capitalism cause wars? Concern over the wealth of a nation
relative to the wealth of other unfriendly nations causes wars,
regardless of whether they are capitalist, communist, dictatorships, or
whatever. Nationalism, religion, greed, and fear appear to me to be the
primary causes of war. Capitalism is free trade and ownership of
property. I do not see how this necessarily precipitates war.
3) "Wasting enormous amounts of time thinking about money." Wow! No,
they're not thinking about green money. Hopefully, they're thinking
about how to do something useful to earn money, which is time well
spent. Some of them are they're thinking how to steal money, but
obviously that's something that capitalism must protect us from, by the
definition of capitalism.
4) "Robbing people" is not consistent with capitalism, by the definition
of capitalism. Our laws generally attempt to eliminate theft of all
kinds. "Generally" I say, since of course we can all find exceptions,
but stating "robbing people" is endemic to capitalism is foolish.
5) Gambling for money? Capitalism is free trade and ownership of
property. How does this necessarily precipitate gambling? Risk-taking
in the market place, yes. And this is proper, since they are ultimately
risking their own money rather than somebody else's (which they would in
your utopia), and people are much more careful with their own money than
other people's. Progress necessitates risk of capital, since the future
is not predictable. Or are you talking about horse betting and casinos?
Silly.
6) "Oppressing people to get more money"? Give examples! You mean
using force? Using legal means to extract money? Is this part of the
definition of capitalism? Or is it due, in those cases where it occurs,
to an abuse of the legal system that could be eliminated without
eliminating capitalism, itself?
7) "Unequal distribution".... This is a consequence of freedom. The
freedom to save for the future. You would eliminate people's ability to
save. If someone tried to concentrate wealth, you would steal it from
them. You would break down their doors and steal their widgets. If
someone saved $10000 for that trip to Australia that he'd always wanted
to take, you'd say that is not allowed, because not everyone can do
that. If he wanted to save extra money to give his children a better
education than the plain vanilla one, you'd say he can't, because not
everyone can do the same. You'd say he must have cheated to achieve
wealth, or that he couldn't have done it without the rest of society to
help him. You'd never admit that hard work and virtue might actually be
the cause of his wealth, or that such things should perhaps be rewarded.
The truth is that they couldn't have accrued wealth without a great
many other PRODUCTIVE people. Perhaps they owe some debt to productive
people, but then that's exactly who gets paid under capitalism.
Roger Johansson
ralph wrote:
> >A really good new idea in the social field sounds very strange simply
> >because the capitalist propaganda has prepared the minds of people to
> >react in that way. They are not stupid, they have built up defence
> >systems for capitalism in people's minds.
> >Especially americans and people who have seen a lot of US manufactored
> >propaganda react strongly against all ideas which threaten the money
> >system, the tool for pushing people around against their will.
> Roger, I do not support the capitalist system because I have been
> brainwashed by Mr. Murdoch, but because I have worked in it. Having been
> an employee for 25 years, I decided to form my own business and employ
> others. After 20 years I had not made a lot of money, but I had housed,
> clothed and fed my family, and educated my children. I had also enough
> over to enjoy my retirement, in which I do work voluntarily for
> community projects.
Of course there are people who can get by very well under capitalism,
but that single life experience is not a reason to keep capitalism
considering how many people are suffering all over the world so the
upper class in USA shall have their privilegies.
> So, before assuming that your correspondents hold their opinions through
> weak-mindedness, please consider the possibility that they have
> experience which you lack.
We are both old enough to know a lot about capitalism.
I have different experiences than you but know just as much about how
capitalism works as you do. What I have and you do not have is
education and knowledge outside your daily life, and outside the stuff
you get to know through media and education in USA. Knowledge about
different systems, which you lack if you have lived inside the media
world of USA, and you lack the ability to think outside the box you
have lived inside all your life.
>From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
engagements for hundreds of years, and with a very good education, it
is easy to see how US-americans think inside a very limited box.
I have debated with americans for 10 years, thousands of fairly
intelligent americans, and they have all said exactly the same
sentences, over and over again, as if somebody had formed their brains
in the same mold.
Citizens in a powerful country which has soldiers in thousands of
places outside its own borders have to be fooled and convinced very
strongly that the foreign policy is right.
--
Roger J.
theBeaver
>
>>From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
> engagements for hundreds of years, and with a very good education, it
> is easy to see how US-americans think inside a very limited box.
>
> I have debated with americans for 10 years, thousands of fairly
> intelligent americans, and they have all said exactly the same
> sentences, over and over again, as if somebody had formed their brains
> in the same mold.
>
> Citizens in a powerful country which has soldiers in thousands of
> places outside its own borders have to be fooled and convinced very
> strongly that the foreign policy is right.
>
>
You only expose your own ignorance when you say that we are "strongly
convinced that the foreign policy is right". Most humanists in America
despise Bushman and disagree with his foreign policy. Some of us also
read history and philosophy.
Many Europeans believe that all ills can be cured simply through
education and socialism, but their beliefs have not yet been tested.
My personal beliefs differ from most humanists, because most humanists
seem to lean towards socialism. But as an engineer, I have a tad less
idealistic view of humanity. Societies that do not in some way penalize
irresponsibility create an unstable system, and will eventually incur
the consequences of an expansion of that irresponsibility. An unchecked
and irresponsible welfare class will come to think it is their right.
It has grown in America since we tried to appease it, and it will be the
downfall of the US, also. This is not to say that I don't have sympathy
for people of lesser ability, or who are unable to work because of age,
illness, or disability. But there is an underclass in America that
rears its ugly head when they can get away with it, as in the LA riots
years ago, or when power goes out in NY. There are people who believe
good business means selling you something you don't need. There are
people who justify theft and murder because their subculture thinks
their ancestors were discriminated against. There are people who have
as many children as they can because they get welfare benefits from
that, and the children they produce of course end up as degenerate as
their parents. There are religious people whose eventual goal is to
take over the world by spawning huge numbers of children to spread their
Word. There is no check on these people, and they destabilize society.
Your average American does not believe there should be bounds on his
or America's growth, either due to his belief in the manifest destiny of
America or the rewards of God. You could almost argue that any form of
government is okay, because none of them will halt the self-destructive
proclivities of Man. What can any government do in the face of these
things? Nothing, really. I saw an estimate that the Earth could
sustain a human population of only 30 million people over the (very)
long term at a level equal to the standard of living in the US. This
refers to the time when all resources must be constantly renewed, after
all other resources have been exhaused. Human population is currently
over 200 times this level, so there is a huge dose of reality awaiting
us someday.
David V.
>
> So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system
> which causes enormous problems, suffering and death.
Why switch to a different one that would cause the same problems
- and more?
David V.
> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside by the
> socialists within.
Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be destroyed.
Maybe you're just dreaming.
Roger Johansson
theBeaver wrote:
> > I suggest that we abolish money and make all work voluntary.
> > Private property is registered in the car register and house and land
> > register like today, and we can set an upper limit for the sum of all
> > property, the same for everybody in these register computers. This
> > ensures material equality and a maximum of freedom for every
> > individual. When we win the global election we abolish money and let
> > everybody who had less property register new property for free up to
> > the common limit.
> >
> > The few who today are richer than the average they have to decide what
> > they want to keep of what they owned before.
> >
> > Workplaces are ruled democratically by the people who work there.
> > The society as a whole is ruled like today, democracy, parlamentarism,
> > a transparent participative democracy. The Nordic countries have been
> > accepted as an ideal for how countries in EU should work
> > democratically.
> You are naive in the extreme.
I didn't learn to think in america.
> Perhaps you are fooled by your relatively
> homogeneous society
My country has welcomed millions of refugees, so we have a lot more new
immigrants than you obviously know about.
25% of our population has come here during the last few decades, many
of them don't speak a word swedish.
If USA had welcomed the same amount of refugees per capita you would
have started a civil war, and a race war. To US-americans a mexican is
another race than white americans, a way of thinking which is totally
absurd for most europeans.
> into thinking that communism (which is essentially
> what you describe) is a desirable form of government.
Communism is what they had in soviet, they didn't abolish money.
Communism is dead and gone forever, but the american people will have
nightmares about communism for generations because they have been so
strongly brainwashed.
> This is human nature, and if you disregard the essential nature of man,
> you cannot be a humanist.
What you call nature is the culture of USA, a strongly creationist
society.
> Capitalism IS a moral system. It is the ONLY moral system. People are
> free: To apply their OWN morality by allocating resources they have
> saved through free trade. You cannot accuse capitalism by pointing to
> modern societies, because there are no purely capitalistic societies.
The same ideas I have heard a million times before from US-americans.
How can you all learn the same message and say it in the same way,
without
realizing that it is a way to fool the population of USA while the rich
in USA are stealing more and more of the Earth's resources?
--
Roger J.
David V.
>
> My country has welcomed millions of refugees, so we have a lot
You must not have learned that the USA is a country of
immigrants. Why would you arrogantly assume that your country has
taken in more immigrants than anyone else? Do you actually know
how many immigrants the USA has taken in lately? I sincerely
doubt it.
> If USA had welcomed the same amount of refugees per capita you
> would have started a civil war, and a race war.
Hasn't happened yet.
> Communism is what they had in soviet,....
Which we saw what they had and didn't want it.
> What you call nature is the culture of USA, a strongly
> creationist society.
ROTFLMAO! The COUNTRY is not creationist. Neither is the culture.
Only a small group of loud, and ignorant, religious fanatics are
fueling the whole creationism thing. When they die off, things
will go back to normal.
> The same ideas I have heard a million times before from
> US-americans.
Then maybe you should start listening. The system you propose is
doomed to failure.
ralph
Roger Johansson <roge...@gmail.com> writes
>
>We are both old enough to know a lot about capitalism.
>I have different experiences than you but know just as much about how
>capitalism works as you do. What I have and you do not have is
>education and knowledge outside your daily life, and outside the stuff
>you get to know through media and education in USA. Knowledge about
>different systems, which you lack if you have lived inside the media
>world of USA, and you lack the ability to think outside the box you
>have lived inside all your life.
>
>>From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
>engagements for hundreds of years, and with a very good education, it
>is easy to see how US-americans think inside a very limited box.
>
education of which you boast has not taught you that email addresses
ending in uk are unlikely to be situated in the US.
>I have debated with americans for 10 years, thousands of fairly
>intelligent americans, and they have all said exactly the same
>sentences, over and over again, as if somebody had formed their brains
>in the same mold.
>
More bombast. You have debated with three over the last week or so
(theBeaver, David V and Mani Deli). Please quote any sentence common to
any two of their posts.
>From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
engagements for hundreds of years
When was it Norway proclaimed its independence? 1905?
>Citizens in a powerful country which has soldiers in thousands of
>places outside its own borders have to be fooled and convinced very
>strongly that the foreign policy is right.
>
>
'Thousands" Roger? Is that the number of countries in the world your
advanced education tells you there are?
Far be it for me to defend any aspect of US foreign policy, but I find
that I am able to attack it with facts, rather than wild assertions.
--
ralph
Roger Johansson
ralph wrote:
> >>From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
> >engagements for hundreds of years, and with a very good education, it
> >is easy to see how US-americans think inside a very limited box.
> Bombast is not a substitute for argument, Roger. It is a pity that the
> education of which you boast has not taught you that email addresses
> ending in uk are unlikely to be situated in the US.
We have a lot of american influenced fools in my own country too,
because of the strong inluence of american media, which is even
stronger in britain.
Britain has played a dirty political game during the 20th century,
playing together with USA under the table while pretending to be a
european country officially.
That makes britain just as guilty as USA, they share the responsibility
for everything USA is guilty of during the 20th century.
The second world war, the backing up of hitler by wall street and
american nazism, it was all a way for USA (and its little european
ally, the treacherous Britain) to get the political and military
influence in the world they have today. Together they wanted to re-draw
the borders and change the political situation on this planet. Many
millions of democrats, socialists and communists died together with all
intellectuals and jews. WWII saved the ass of capitalism, without that
war the socialists would have taken over in most european countries.
> >I have debated with americans for 10 years, thousands of fairly
> >intelligent americans, and they have all said exactly the same
> >sentences, over and over again, as if somebody had formed their brains
> >in the same mold.
> More bombast. You have debated with three over the last week or so
> (theBeaver, David V and Mani Deli). Please quote any sentence common to
> any two of their posts.
I don't keep track names, I reply to studity wherever it occurs, so I
look only at the text, I don't know any names. Unless they really are
worth noting.
But the ideas are well known: Hitler and Stalin, connected in american
minds like siamese twins, an american can never say just hitler, it
comes out of his mouth as hitler_and_stalin, forever connected in their
brains by the force of the capitalist propaganda. So the basic ideas of
capitalism are:
1: Nazism and communism are the same thing, (even though america
supported one of them and tried to kill the other).
2: Money is the best invention ever, money and property rights.
3: Those who do not work don't get any food either, unless they are
rich, then they don't have to do anything.
4: Free trade is the best and the only possible game in the world.
> >From outside, from a small neutral country without military foreign
> engagements for hundreds of years
> When was it Norway proclaimed its independence? 1905?
That was a very peaceful affair, they wanted independence and nobody
stopped them from forming their own country. Swedish soldiers haven't
been outside our own country's borders for hundreds of years, except
for peacekeeping missions for UN in later years.
> >Citizens in a powerful country which has soldiers in thousands of
> >places outside its own borders have to be fooled and convinced very
> >strongly that the foreign policy is right.
> 'Thousands" Roger? Is that the number of countries in the world your
> advanced education tells you there are?
Had I meant thousands of countries I would have written that.
But I wrote places, because that is what I meant.
Do _you_ know the difference between a place and a country?
The number of countries in the world is somewhere between 200 and 300,
as far as I know. Too lazy to look it up :-)
> Far be it for me to defend any aspect of US foreign policy, but I find
> that I am able to attack it with facts, rather than wild assertions.
The creationist culture consists of those who think creating men is a
good idea.
They start training their little girls already when they are young,
they are forced to become very independent, but not in a nice way.
These hardened girls can have a lot of fun with the untrained boys of
the same age, until they get tired of that.
Creationism is a secret social system which administers the secret
creationist system.
They like gender roles, mobbing, strong minds, "the eternal love", "the
holy matrimony", the holy spirit, the secret order of power in the
creationist society.
Some political parties like the green want a kind of "local society"
which is the same thing as the christian community in new clothes.
There are a lot of reactionary and detrimental traditions on religious
ground we much investigate and abolish.
The boys are manipulated and trained (tortured) later in life, to get
even more magic power than the girls. The creationists create the minds
of men, and to put the holy spirit in a boys head you first need to
make him angry and tough, (that's the root cause of mobbing) teach him
to rely on his will power, which will melt away in the loving, so he is
for the rest of his life torn between weakness and strength.
He will for the rest of his life use his brain as a happiness gas tank
instead of using it to think with.
The creationist culture is the dominant cultural pattern in USA and to
lesser degree in Europe. Some of them are very worried about science
and darwinism in schools, because knowledge makes it more difficult to
fool people into accepting their gender roles and the creationist
lifestyle. Others don't worry about theoretical issues, they know that
the lifestyle they have learned from the old testament can just as
well be learned from and upheld by rock music or sports journalism in
the modern world.
When they realize that we are going to abolish the lifestyle, we are
going to abolish the whole secret social system, they might become
violent, and fight with weapons to preserve the creationist lifestyle
and the creationist system.
It is time to choose sides. Are you on the side of creationist
terrorists or the side of humanism and modern values like equality,
democracy, individual freedom and human rights?
http://iheu.org/ International Humanist and Ethical Union
Feminists are often reactionary and like moralism, they fight against
nudity, and they defend the creationist system. These feminist women
are usually very unaware of their own gender roles and how creationism
has formed their views.
A woman who has been trained and mistreated as a young girl, who became
strong and played with the minds of boys, who has waited for years for
the man of her life, who has become very happy, who has learned how to
be a strong adult woman, does she really represent the interests of
women in general, or do these "feminists" actually represent the old
creationist culture?
--
Roger J.
David V.
>
> Far be it for me to defend any aspect of US foreign policy....
Most Americans won't defend it either. :-)
David V.
>
> We have a lot of american influenced fools in my own country
That's a logical fallacy is a version of the ad hominem called
"poisoning the well." If you were as educated as you want us to
believe, you'd be able to do better than that.
Roger Johansson
David V. wrote:
> Roger Johansson wrote:
> > We have a lot of american influenced fools in my own country
> > too...
> That's a logical fallacy is a version of the ad hominem called
> "poisoning the well."
You can call it whatever you like but it is a simple fact.
More than 50% of the content in our media channels are made in USA.
(I'm watching "Joey" right now, waiting for the tonight show with Jay
Leno, for example.)
The young boys started using baseball caps 20 years ago, and trained
karate on the nicer class mates. Today you can see tiny 12 year olds
dressed in big bulky down jackets like american gang members, using a
very arrogant and threatening body language, like little weight lifters
with a heavy way of walking.
It would be comical if it wasn't so detrimental to their minds and the
social life in general. These boys have the same problems as many
american boys, it takes so much energy to be macho and defend their
honor so they have no mental resources left for studying in school.
This manly honor culture is very much a result of the strong american
influence in media channels. The manly honor is a part of the
creationist culture.
--
Roger J.
David V.
> David V. wrote:
>
>> Roger Johansson wrote:
>
>>> We have a lot of american influenced fools in my own
>>> country too...
>
>> That's a logical fallacy is a version of the ad hominem
>> called "poisoning the well."
>
> You can call it whatever you like but it is a simple fact.
It's not a fact. Your logical fallacy destroys your argument.
ralph
Johansson <roge...@gmail.com> writes
>
sincerity. I shall not respond to any more of your posts until you have
been. Take a copy of this with you to explain your visit.
Good luck!
--
ralph
Scott
> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside by the
>> socialists within.
>
> Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be destroyed.
> Maybe you're just dreaming.
what is humanism, Dave?
It's a fairytale, a myth, a stripped down religion. Outside of fantasy,
there is no such thing as the moral universalism in humanism. The only thing
that's rational is moral relativism because morality, with or without civil
rights, can only be expressed [rationally] in relation to a culture's code
of conduct. There is no rational argument for each and every person being
the possessors of something called human rights. If humanism and its human
rights could be talked about rationally, there'd be no need to make
*declarations* these universal rights being real. Since there are no moral
truths in naturalism, how then can it be that humans come to be possessors
of this moral realism if not by make-believe? Because man invented human
rights?.....Like man also invented god(s)? If so then neither one is real
and both are the stuff of fairytales. It's easy to talk about how people can
posses civil rights because they are relative to the social environment a
person is in or travels into. But what's a civil right in one culture's code
isn't necessarily so in another's moral code. A person can, in reality,
violate another person's civil rights. But civil rights and human rights
aren't necessarily the same thing. Civil rights are (cough) *believed* to be
subordinated to human rights. The closer a culture's civil rights mirrors
those of humanism, morality is thought to progress. Illusion and fairytale
since moral progress isn't possible if moral realism is rejected, and
naturalism rejects moral realism.
Without using examples, try giving your atheist's rational argument for
humanism's existence of human rights. Or if you'd rather, without using
examples, give a rational argument for the existence of evil. Why no
examples? Because using example to argue for the reality of something
without also supporting it with rationalism is nothing more than an appeal
to reason. Such appeals to reason are what religious people do. IOW you can
give example but you must have rational supporting argument. Compare:
Intelligent design advocates use examples from nature as appeal to reason
for their evidence of Intelligent Design. There problem is, they can't
rationally support their evidence. Well, I don't thing you can give a
rational augment for humanism either. Saying child rape is an example of
evil may or may not be true. It depends on the culture
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/632138/posts If you believe child
rape, for example, is a universal evil (a violation of human rights) you
need to do more than make an appeal to reason for humanism to be viable as
more than the stuff of (your) mythology.
David V.
> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:qJydnZOZGbd-hSfe...@sti.net...
>
>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>
>>> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside by
>>> the socialists within.
>>
>> Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be
>> destroyed. Maybe you're just dreaming.
>
> what is humanism, Dave?
>
If you have to come up with such an asinine strawman argument I
doubt the rest of what you wrote is worth reading.
Roger Johansson
ralph wrote:
> There is a strong feeling in the UK that humanism is now the one to
> beat.
You can't beat humanism, because they have a modern and rational view
of the world. To beat that you need to prove that science and tehnology
is a hoax, you need to prove that building cars and space ships could
never be possible, such vehicles would never work, because the
humanists, the scientists, the engineers, the sceptics, the atheists,
are wrong and don't know what they are talking about.
>Although the pitiful number of organised humanists (max 8,000) has
> been publicised, many commentators, of all faiths and none, seem to feel
> that the battle for hearts and minds has actually been won.
It is inevitable that more and more people need a defence against
religion, as desperate religions beome more violent, people need some
base to stand on, and humanism gives them that basis.
> The religious obviously deplore this, on the basis that those without
> religion have no morals.
> A recent study showed that secular countries actually have better morals, less problems of the social type, like young girls getting pregnant, violence, etc..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html
> So we have nothing to feel smug about there.
> But the fact that most people have actually rejected religion, probably
> because of the acknowledgment of scientific truth, leaves this majority
> as humanists by practice, even if they do not realise it.
Yes.
> Of course, in the present state of Bush rejection, this is popularly
> associated with creationists, and of the hypocrisy of torture denial.
> Mr. Blair, also in trouble on many fronts, is classed as a near-Bush on
> the religious issue.
> A couple of years ago the word humanism hardly appeared on the airwaves:
> now it is everywhere. How can we exploit this situation, and how can we
> export it?
I have written about humanism for years, many of my texts about
humanism versus creationism are here: http://humanist.250free.com/
--
Roger J.
theBeaver
And here are some excerpts from your stuff:
>The early humanism was expressed by Protagoras:
>
>Man is the measure of everything (for us humans.)
No -- I do not value "Man". I value individuals, myself and those that
I love, and animals, and good people in general. Yet I am a humanist,
so your definition is no good. _I_ am the measure of everything: I
have no choice about this, by the nature of animal life. And if I
decided to transfer my moral authority to someone else, that itself
would be a personal moral decision.
>Jesus: Do to others what you would like them to do to you.
>
How dare you give Jesus credit for this?
The Buddhist sacred literature says, "Hurt not others in ways that you
yourself would find hurtful." Confucius said, "Do not impose on others
what you do not desire others to impose upon you." Plato said, "And may
I do to others as I would that others should do to me."
>Humanism: The idea that the human is the center of the human world,
not >God or a King or any other authority.
"X is the center of the X world" is of course true by definition, isn't
it? I am the center of my world, you are the center of your world, etc.
So what have you really said? Senseless verbiage.
>Democracy and human rights in the modern world were based on humanist
>thinking.
>
>A secularised society is based on humanism. Rational thought, science.
>Shakespeares Hamlet.
>
Everything good is based on "humanism", of course, since there is no
God. "Humanism" is essentially defined as "good", isn't it? A gorilla
suckling and protecting her child is behaving as a humanist? Or not?
If not, then why not? Does she not have some sense of the consequences
of certain behavior, and is refraining from or performing various
actions based on that sense? Don't those actions rely on some relative
weighting of the values of other's lives? Doesn't the female gorilla
come to the aid of the human child that falls into its arena? Is there
no compassion here? Is humanism possible without compassion? One
cannot deduce a morality from reason alone, without a pre-existing sense
of what is "right".
>Modern humanism: The humanism is a democratic, non-religious, ethical
>view which defends the right of the human to shape his world by
>himself, not accepting authorities or powers like Gods or Kings.
"Democratic" is not implied or correlated with humanism. If I live in a
world of human beasts, it is not incumbent upon me to bow to their
wills, or give them any voice. Justice should reign, with or without
democracy. This is a foolish contention on your part. Democracy exists
as a concession to the power of others, and a check on the abuse of
power when placed in the hands of the few. The fact is, I presume, as
everyone presumes, the right to shape the world, within the limits of my
power. Democracy, to the extent that I acknowledge it, exists only by
virtue of my limited physical and mental powers. If the power and
intelligence to control that power were at my disposal, I would bring
justice to all creatures. And such force would be perfectly consistent
with humanism.
>Humanism is anti-dogmatic, and accepts change and development, it is
>against any fixed belief which could enslave humans.
"Accepts change and development", except when such change would violate
its basic assumptions. What ARE the guiding principles that let you
correctly select how to change and develop? How do you discriminate?
You must be dogmatic about something, or you risk morphing into little
Nazis, yourselves.
>Humanism tries to see the human being in all her complexity, with
>feelings, dreams and thoughts, the human cannot be characterized into
>simple categories.
Nice run-on sentence here. So I guess men are to be ignored by Humanist
thinking? Hitler had feelings, dreams, and thoughts. What's your
point? Avoid simplistic thinking? Things are always more complex than
the human mind can comprehend? Are you saying avoid the simple
religious model that characterizes people as miniature gods, granted
free will and a sense of right and wrong, and having a choice between
God's tit for eternity or burning hell? You call that simplistic? Of
course it is, but your attempt to say this poetically fell pretty flat.
Roger Johansson
> what is humanism, Dave?
Scott writes a lot of...
Try reading wikipedia about humanism instead,
their article is lot better than this.
Or go to www.iheu.org and follow links and
learn what humanists are doing in the world today.
Or read my texts about humanism to get a deeper and
clearer understanding of what humanism is.
David V.
> Scott wrote:
>
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
>> what is humanism, Dave?
>
> Scott writes a lot of...
>
> Try reading wikipedia about humanism instead, their article is
> lot better than this.
Why should I do that? I know what humanism is. Scott is the one
with the problem, not me. He needs to tear down humanism with an
army of strawmen so that he can feel smarter, better, than the
rest of us. He needs more psychological help than he does education.
Roger Johansson
theBeaver wrote:
> > I have written about humanism for years, many of my texts about
> > humanism versus creationism are here: http://humanist.250free.com/
> >Humanism: The idea that the human is the center of the human world,
> not >God or a King or any other authority.
> "X is the center of the X world" is of course true by definition, isn't
> it? I am the center of my world, you are the center of your world, etc.
> So what have you really said? Senseless verbiage.
You have obviously not understood what humanism is.
Read about humanism in some dictionary.
I think wikipedia has a good article about humanism.
Humanism appeared around the year 1500, as a reaction against the
limited world of thought in the religious Europe. Humanism is not
creationism.
> >Democracy and human rights in the modern world were based on humanist
> >thinking.
The humanists were searching for better ways to rule the world than to
let the pope decide everything for us. They found the greek democracy
and made it the basis for a new system, a non-religious non-dictatorial
system.
> >A secularised society is based on humanism. Rational thought, science.
> >Modern humanism: The humanism is a democratic, non-religious, ethical
> >view which defends the right of the human to shape his world by
> >himself, not accepting authorities or powers like Gods or Kings.
> "Democratic" is not implied or correlated with humanism.
Humanists created the modern democracy we live in now, based on the
greek democracy they dug up from the history.
Without those humanists we would still be living in a theocratic world,
ruled by the pope. Science and technology would be banned and we would
not have any computers. The modern development of thought, equality
between the genders, human rights, science, rational thought,
democracy, individual freedom, are all ideas based on humanism.
Humanism is the movement that lead us out of the medieval religious
world.
The era of enlightment was a consolidation phase for humanism, it
spread the idea of humanism to a big number of leaders.
Thomas Jefferson was very much influenced by humanism, for example.
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
David V. wrote:
> Roger Johansson wrote:
> > Scott wrote:
Note the names above, I replied to Scott's message.
> > Try reading wikipedia about humanism instead, their article is
> > lot better than this.
> Why should I do that?
My message was a response to what Scott wrote.
And it was directed to anybody who might need a
better text about humanism that the crap Scott wrote.
I seldom write messages directed to a certain person, I write
articles directed to all my readers, now and in the future.
There is no need to get personally involved.
I had to read through this thread again to remember who you are
and I will forget you again as soon as I click the send button for this
message.
And there is no negativity in that, I just concentrate on what is
really important, and names are seldom important. We are all the same
inside, we become different individuals mainly because of different
experiences and education, and because this creationist culture forces
every individual to be very independent and have a lot of
determination.
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
theBeaver wrote:
> > I have written about humanism for years, many of my texts about
> > humanism versus creationism are here: http://humanist.250free.com/
> >Humanism: The idea that the human is the center of the human world,
> not >God or a King or any other authority.
> "X is the center of the X world" is of course true by definition, isn't
> it? I am the center of my world, you are the center of your world, etc.
> So what have you really said? Senseless verbiage.
You have obviously not understood what humanism is.
Read about humanism in some dictionary.
I think wikipedia has a good article about humanism.
Humanism appeared around the year 1500, as a reaction against the
limited world of thought in the religious Europe. Humanism is not
creationism.
> >Democracy and human rights in the modern world were based on humanist
> >thinking.
The humanists were searching for better ways to rule the world than to
let the pope decide everything for us. They found the greek democracy
and made it the basis for a new system, a non-religious non-dictatorial
system.
> >A secularised society is based on humanism. Rational thought, science.
> >Modern humanism: The humanism is a democratic, non-religious, ethical
> >view which defends the right of the human to shape his world by
> >himself, not accepting authorities or powers like Gods or Kings.
> "Democratic" is not implied or correlated with humanism.
Humanists created the modern democracy we live in now, based on the
David V.
> David V. wrote:
>
>>Roger Johansson wrote:
>>
>>>Scott wrote:
>
>
> Note the names above, I replied to Scott's message.
Your comments were included under a quote from me. You got the
attributions wrong.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:qJydnZOZGbd-hSfe...@sti.net...
>>
>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>
>>>> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside by
>>>> the socialists within.
>>>
>>> Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be
>>> destroyed. Maybe you're just dreaming.
>>
>> what is humanism, Dave?
>>
>> It's a fairytale, a myth, a stripped down religion......
>
> If you have to come up with such an asinine strawman argument I
> doubt the rest of what you wrote is worth reading.
Bull shit, David, Naturalism bankrupts humanism like it bankrupts religions.
Nature is not moral!
Humanism is bull shit if Naturalism is true. It becomes as much an exercise
in make-believe as any religion. If Naturalism is true there is no true
morality like there is no true religion: "Let's just make believe humans
have rights outside of cultural contexts." For Humanism to be true morality
must be that of Moral Realism. There is no Moral Realism in Naturalism.
Naturalism being amoral disregards any such thing as moral realism. It's not
unlike your atheism rejecting the realism of a god.
A naturalist (or materialist IYW) in this sense MUST be both an atheist and
a moral relativist. Where atheism rejects god(s) naturalism goes one step
further and rejects every thing that isn't rationally objective. Good, evil,
and human rights, like god(s), are not rational concepts. You are welcome to
prove me wrong. I have yet to see an atheist do so. Instead they jump to ad
homonyms and attack me. Prove it, David. Prove that humans have inalienable
human rights. I know you can't do it. Oh, you can prove that humans have
civil rights because they are based upon cultural code. If you can't
rationally prove inalienable human rights are *real* then saying a culture's
civil moral code violates human rights is the stuff of your fantasy, and
your make believe.
OTOH you CAN be an atheist rejecting Naturalism (you'd be something akin to
a Buddhist) and still be consistent believing in Humanism. But that would
put you squarely in the supernatural/metaphysical camp as any theist or
Buddhist.
Go ahead, David, prove to me that evil is real, or prove to me that human
rights are real, and not simply the stuff of make-believe fantasy -- like
angels, a nice idea.
I know you can't present any rational evidence that'd make humanism vialble
to philosophical naturalism. If you believe otherwise and you're a
naturalist, a rational atheists, and a humanists it should be easy for you
to do. Attacking me is pointless and doesn't bother me at all. I can skim
past it faster than you can type an attack. Just trying to save you some
time.
Prove me wrong
Scott
John Brockbank
< "Scott" <sc...@nospam.net> wrote in message >
Your messages are rather full of words ending with 'ism' so it is difficult
to make any sense of what it might be that you are saying. One bit I did, I
think, get, when you asked for a rational justification for human rights.
(It might have been 'the existence of human rights' No matter, the
rationale is the same.)
In case anyone wants a definition of human rights, I won't bother except to
mention 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
Any person who is a humanist will agree that they should behave as they
would wish others to behave, and furthermore, they would say that is what
others should do as well, within a reasonable range of behaviour.
In seeking for some further 'proof', or some means of being 'absolute' you
are seeking in fact for a religion to lay down a law of a god. That is not
available to me.
So, in what circumstances are people's liberties taken from them? Of
course, people would disagree a bit about that, but that does not mean it is
not rational. The fact that humanism has no tablets of stone does not mean
it does not exist, it is just a bit fuzzy that's all. What the heck do you
want, fascism?
Roger Johansson
David V. wrote:
I just watched parts of a very moralistiv tv show.
It's a family show about a family where the father is a pastor or
something, and their biggest worry is that their children will have sex
before marriage.
So they talk to these youngsters with formulations like: As long as you
live in my house you do as I say.
So they go to a friends house, and get subjected to the same speech.
They are hunted everywhere they go to relax together.
This shows how the property rights are used to stop youngsters from
having sex or relaxing together before marriage.
Parents often use another trick to prepare their children for the
creationist life.
They are only nice and soft towards each other, in the bed when their
children are not around. At all other times they play a role, a formal
and stiff way to be with their children.
This intentional social abuse is gradually increased as the children
get older, so the youngsters become used to a tough and ego-based role
play.
Wise people let the children be children up to 5-6 years of age, others
start toughening them earlier.
That's why you can meet 25 year old boys who are very arrogant, very
convinced that they are the most normal beings on the planet, and they
are convinced that they know everything worth knowing. The lucky ones
of them will soon meet their fate, a lovely concussion that changes
everything. They have been robbed of their inner peace and have learned
to use a lot of ill power instead. To them real love comes as a schock.
And they are torn between love and normality for the rest of their
lives, that's what makes love into a drug. It becomes a speeded love,
for the man anyway.
Many parents actually believe that this is a "normal" way to be, and
they have been taught to believe that their lovemaking is a sin and
must be kept secret.
This results in 20 year olds who have not been treated nicely in many
years, so love with a partner can be a totally different and much
better way to be with another human.
Love becomes a schock for them, it becomes extremely good, compared to
their daily life earlier, when their parents and teachers sytematically
mistreated them to prepare them for the big love, the creationist
marriage.
The girls do not gain as much as the boys from making love, because
girls are trained to never relax, to always be ready to defend
themselves and their life role as woman.
Girls often have problems with orgasms because they are so controlled
personalities.
Boys are uncontrolled but live in a more violent and dangerous world.
Women are treated relatively nicely after the painful early teenage
years.
They need to build up stability so they can be the base station for a
man.
Girls are conditioned to have much more stable minds than boys.
Boys are left alone a lot when they are young. While the young girls go
through hard training the boys of the same age feel more free, and they
are forced learn to defend themselves physically, or become
intellectual.
When the grown man, arrogant, tough, filled with ego, meets real love
he gets a lovely concussion, and may need help from other people for a
while as he has to learn to live in the outer world without losing his
high.
In that way he can keep a lot of his magic powers and his feeling high
while step by step being led out into the "real world" again.
That is how they create a supernatural man, an angel, a new dictator, a
new member of the religious community.
His wife is happy just to serve her man, she has been trained for that
role all her life, so that is what she wants, usually.
They live in a very loving home as the first children are born, and
they let the children share their happiness. Later the parents start to
prepare their children for a tough world, which is seen as normality,
to make the love in the marriage so much stronger, in contrast to the
way men silently threaten each other to preserve their honor.
This social pattern is breaking up as we speak, women are learning to
be tough too, and the classical marriage is dissolving and new forms of
social life show up.
If they didn't have property rights and a money system they could not
force (help) people into the creationist culture.
So capitalism is the tool of creationism, a way to keep the stress
level high, everywhere except in the married bedlife. A violent
society, and maybe a brutal death penalty for some crimes keeps the
society at a high stress level, which makes the Love stronger, keeps
marriages together, and makes the christian community better than the
life outside the church. Today the community is called "Friends".
It is no coincidence that the most capitalist country is also the most
creationist country. They fought socialism to defend creationism
against falling together like a house of cards.
Democracy and some type of socialism, with taxes, welfare, public
health care, is a consequence of humanism, equality, individual
freedom, human rights, and other modern ideas which replaced
creationism.
Thomas Jefferson was a modern thinker, so he wanted a modern
constitution, based on democracy, human rights,etc.. but others wanted
a constitution which made it clear that creationism ruled, ..under
God.. etc.
The result was a compromise, of course, between progressive and
conservative forces.
....
> Your comments were included under a quote from me. You got the
> attributions wrong.
Cool. :-)
By the way, I learned modern english from a girl from white russia.
She said: It is very simple, you need only two words, whatever and
cool.
But use them in inverse, so when a whatever could fit you say Cool, and
when cool could could fit you say Whatever.
That confuses people so you can stay in the upper seat at all times.
She had recently moved to Amerika and had to learn social life quickly.
(The first who can say what girl I listened to wins a dollar.)
--
Roger J.
Scott
"John Brockbank" <wag...@screaming.net> wrote in message
news:43c2a...@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
>
> < "Scott" <sc...@nospam.net> wrote in message >
>
> Your messages are rather full of words ending with 'ism' so it is
> difficult to make any sense of what it might be that you are saying. One
> bit I did, I think, get, when you asked for a rational justification for
> human rights. (It might have been 'the existence of human rights' No
> matter, the rationale is the same.)
>
> In case anyone wants a definition of human rights, I won't bother except
> to mention 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
>
> Any person who is a humanist will agree that they should behave as they
> would wish others to behave, and furthermore, they would say that is what
> others should do as well, within a reasonable range of behaviour.
That could be anything. By that argument Osama is a humanist. The only thing
provable is that morality is a culture's code of conduct. Any thing more is
the stuff of mythology. There is no such thing as moral progress outside of
a cultural's code. Progress could be defined in how well the participants
conform to the code. Codes of conduct can change but that isn't progress. If
you were to say they can changer for the better or worst, you inadvertanly
are implying moral realism. In doing so you rejet naturalism as a viable
discription of reality. You can't even say one culture's code is better than
anothers in any objective way. That too implies moral objectivism/realism.
If you were to tell me you *prefer* your code to that of Osama's, my reply
will be a BFD. Because, since morality (to naturalism) is based upon
subjectivism, your subjective preference can't be objectively better than
his. Your preferences are equivolent.
Scott
Scott
"Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1136622955.6...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Well in principle I am a humanist. More to the point, I'm a Jeffersonian
human rights advocate. BUT I, like Jefferson, know that human rights must be
based upon Intuitionism (a self-evident truth) and cannot be rationally
grounded in nature. Jefferson knew he had to ground his Rights upon a
Creator. If naturalism is true then the Declaration of Independence is based
upon mythology.
David V.
> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:UISdnU9a9Px...@sti.net...
>
>> Scott wrote:
>>
>>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:qJydnZOZGbd-hSfe...@sti.net...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside
>>>>> by the socialists within.
>>>>
>>>> Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be
>>>> destroyed. Maybe you're just dreaming.
>>>
>>> what is humanism, Dave?
>>>
>>> It's a fairytale, a myth, a stripped down religion......
>>
>> If you have to come up with such an asinine strawman
>> argument I doubt the rest of what you wrote is worth
>> reading.
>
Yes, what you are putting out is called bullshit. You finally got
something right. If you haven't noticed by now I'm not even going
to waste my time trying to help you. I have far better, and far
more interesting things to do.
David V.
> David V. wrote:
>
> I just watched parts of a very moralistiv tv show.
If you get your morals from TV, or assume that what is on TV
represents my morals, then we have nothing to talk about.
theBeaver
Can you beat your dog and still be what you would call a humanist? Can
you be a wonderful person but not be a humanist? Could you opt for rule
by a benevolent, enlightened, and effectively omnipotent alien, one who
eliminated all major injustice, as opposed to rule by your beloved
democracy, in which there is still rampant injustice, and still be a
humanist? Is it possible for someone totally ignorant of science to
still be a humanist? Can a humanist believe that he is better than
someone else, or does that disqualify him from humanism? Is it possible
for Roger Johansson to be ignorant and disrespectful of evolutionary
psychology and still be a humanist? It is possible to be non-analytical
and superficial, and still be a Humanist? Oh Roger, our Humanist
Oracle, I beseech thee to enlighten us!
There is no necessary coupling between rationality and virtue. A
machine, or anyone without normal human empathy, could be a
super-analytical monster. Rational thinking will generally subvert
false and self-serving claims, as it does religion, but this does not
imply any virtue. And virtue can exist without rational thinking, the
way the gorilla protects the human child that has fallen into her cage.
It is virtue that is what we should recognize. Reason is as often a
tool of monsters as of good men. I hate to see so-called humanists
claiming credit for everything good in this world, when a wolf is
capable of expressing greater virtue than the "rational" man who
believes in human rights and science and democracy, and then goes home
and kicks his dog.
A society of gorillas can get along amicably under normal circumstances.
Would you criticize it for not being humanist? Similarly, if we can
find some non-humanistic way of getting along amicably, should we be
striving to change it? Would you want to act as the Great White Father
and bring reason and science to the backward tribes of Africa,
disrupting an equilibrium that has existed for thousands of years? In
other words, would you destroy social order the same as the European
imperialists of the past did, but in the name of Reason? Reason is not
a universal salve for injustice.
jt...@tatehealthcare.com
make steady progress; prosper; to grow vigorously; flourish
(dictionary.com). What is moral is what facilitates that thriving.
Now, there is no extra-human foundation for the conviction that humans
should thrive in their living; it's simply that thriving is good for
people--it is fully-developed health and happiness.
Why be moral? Being moral is part of human thriving; part of healthy
psychological development (Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson). The immoral or
amoral psychopath is not thriving; he is stunted in his development,
and his health and happiness are limited because of this.
So, morality is based in human nature. That's it. Outside of human
nature there, there is no morality.
theBeaver
> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should thrive: To
> make steady progress; prosper; to grow vigorously; flourish
> (dictionary.com). What is moral is what facilitates that thriving.
In other words, it doesn't sound much different than the practical
appliciation of Catholicism. That definition is total crap. It can't
be that "morality is based on thriving", since that would imply that if
we thrive, that we are moral, which is clearly not true. For example,
humans could flourish by raising farm animals in cages so small that
they can't move and live tortured lives. Mankind flourishes, and
animals suffer. Not moral. Use your f'ing brain.
> Now, there is no extra-human foundation for the conviction that humans
> should thrive in their living; it's simply that thriving is good for
> people--it is fully-developed health and happiness.
Fully developed health and happiness are impossible to poor, uneducated
people with minimal talent. Unless they are the beneficiaries of
charity or theft. Should they try stealing? Or is it perhaps possible
to live a moral life while not "thriving"? If we do not strive to
thrive, are we immoral?
> Why be moral? Being moral is part of human thriving; part of healthy
> psychological development (Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson). The immoral or
> amoral psychopath is not thriving; he is stunted in his development,
> and his health and happiness are limited because of this.
Total BS. Are you saying immoral people are never healthy and happy?
Are you saying that moral people are always healthy and happy? At least
psychologically? That's BS, too. Various chemicals in the brain can
make anyone "happy" or "unhappy". The happiest and healthiest people in
the antebellum South were plantation owners, holders of slaves.
> So, morality is based in human nature. That's it. Outside of human
> nature there, there is no morality.
>
Outside of "animal life", there is no morality. Please correct
yourself. Animals instinctively practice morality. Within most animal
groups, there is little killing. A social order comes naturally to
them, and they live per their instinctive rules, as do humans. The base
of human morality is the same as the morality of other animals. Most of
the reasoning that people do about morality just serves to clarify their
thinking or correct misinformation and previous misapprehensions.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:UISdnU9a9Px...@sti.net...
>>
>>> Scott wrote:
>>>
>>>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:qJydnZOZGbd-hSfe...@sti.net...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Lucien Saumur wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Organized humanism has been destroyed from the inside
>>>>>> by the socialists within.
>>>>>
>>>>> Since Humanism is growing, it sure doesn't seem to be destroyed. Maybe
>>>>> you're just dreaming.
>>>>
>>>> what is humanism, Dave?
>>>>
>>>> It's a fairytale, a myth, a stripped down religion......
>>>
>>> If you have to come up with such an asinine strawman
>>> argument I doubt the rest of what you wrote is worth
>>> reading.
>>
>> Bull shit,.....
>
> Yes, what you are putting out is called bullshit. You finally got
> something right. If you haven't noticed by now I'm not even going
> to waste my time trying to help you. I have far better, and far
> more interesting things to do.
Yep I knew you couldn't prove it
Scott.
David V.
Sounds good. I'll second what you said. But the problem with that
is that it does not leave room for certain people to disparage
Humanism to make their own philosophy appear to sound better.
Scott
<jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote in message
news:1136898543.2...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should thrive:
Why should they, aside from the fact humans have been doing a pretty good
job of thriving without this thing called human rights?
To
> make steady progress; prosper; to grow vigorously; flourish
> (dictionary.com). What is moral is what facilitates that thriving.
So, by that argument, the Chinese have the best morality after all!!!!
> Now, there is no extra-human foundation for the conviction that humans
> should thrive in their living; it's simply that thriving is good for
> people--it is fully-developed health and happiness.
First of all "good" is not definable (J. L. Mackie) and health and happiness
can be and is subjective.
>
> Why be moral? Being moral is part of human thriving; part of healthy
> psychological development (Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson). The immoral or
> amoral psychopath is not thriving; he is stunted in his development,
> and his health and happiness are limited because of this.
How do you know? Or is that just you opinion?
>
> So, morality is based in human nature. That's it. Outside of human
> nature there, there is no morality.
No one, not I, has said otherwise. Morality is a culture's code of conduct.
That much is provable. But unless morality is objective (aka Moral Realism)
there is no way to claim one moral code is better than another's:
http://www-phil.tamu.edu/~b-everman/victor/moral/Relativism_handout.pdf If
there is no way to rationally prove one code is better then another,
Humanism is as much an irrational belief as any religion. Like religious
adherents, humanists adhere to faith in an irrational truth. Saddam is being
tried for violating your fantasy.
If you are an atheist believer in Naturalism (duh. an ipso facto) and
Humanist, you need to rationally prove that humanism is not just another
made up fantasy akin to religions. Which means, to keep from relying upon
your own faith you must show that an objective morality can come from an
amoral Naturalism. Fat chance of that happening. It's been tried and failed.
Scott
David V.
> jt...@tatehealthcare.com wrote:
>
>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should
>> thrive: To make steady progress; prosper; to grow
>> vigorously; flourish (dictionary.com). What is moral is what
>> facilitates that thriving.
>
> In other words, it doesn't sound much different than the
Wow! A whole army of strawmen. It is far different than anything
Catholic.
>> Now, there is no extra-human foundation for the conviction
>> that humans should thrive in their living; it's simply that
>> thriving is good for people--it is fully-developed health
>> and happiness.
>
>
> Fully developed health and happiness are impossible to poor,
> uneducated people with minimal talent. .......
Then it is your duty to help them.
>> Why be moral? Being moral is part of human thriving; part of
>> healthy psychological development (Piaget, Kohlberg,
>> Erikson). The immoral or amoral psychopath is not thriving;
>> he is stunted in his development, and his health and
>> happiness are limited because of this.
>
>
> Total BS. ....
More strawmen snipped.
>> So, morality is based in human nature. That's it. Outside of
>> human nature there, there is no morality.
>>
>
> Outside of "animal life", there is no morality. Please
> correct yourself. Animals instinctively practice morality.
> ......
We're talking about conscious decisions.
What's your problem anyway? Why so bitter and negative?
David V.
>> finally got something right. If you haven't noticed by now
>> I'm not even going to waste my time trying to help you. I
>> have far better, and far more interesting things to do.
>
>
> Yep I knew you couldn't prove it
Of course not. How can you prove the Earth is round to a flat
Earther? They can't listen. You can't listen. That, and I didn't
even bother to read the rest of your post. I have no idea what
you want proven. Nor do I care.
Roger Johansson
The college boy doesn't want to talk about his relation with his
girlfriend with his father, so the father/pastor threatens him.
"How are you going to pay for the last year at college?"
"You mean I will have to pay for college myself?"
"Yes, if you want to take your own decisions you will also handle your
economy yourself."
Here we see how the money system is used to stop this young couple from
being together undisturbed.
Religious people invented the money system and property rights so they
could force people into the creationist social system. That is why some
say that the property rights were given by God and they could be
justified by referring to divine powers.
These social systems are just slightly refined versions of the
hierarchical social systems in the flocks of apes we lived in earlier.
The most violent person/ape has all the power, and rules over his
family with any means necessary, violence, murder, whatever.
They had no human rights, no laws.
--
Roger J.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>> Yes, what you are putting out is called bullshit. You
>>> finally got something right. If you haven't noticed by now
>>> I'm not even going to waste my time trying to help you. I
>>> have far better, and far more interesting things to do.
>>
>>
>> Yep I knew you couldn't prove it
>
> Of course not. How can you prove the Earth is round to a flat
> Earther? They can't listen. You can't listen. That, and I didn't
> even bother to read the rest of your post. I have no idea what
> you want proven. Nor do I care.
>
and you accuse me of strawmen LOL.
Scott
> jt...@tatehealthcare.com wrote:
>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should
>> thrive: To make steady progress; prosper; to grow vigorously;
>> flourish (dictionary.com). What is moral is what facilitates
>> that thriving.
>>
>> Now, there is no extra-human foundation for the conviction
>> that humans should thrive in their living; it's simply that
>> thriving is good for people--it is fully-developed health and
>> happiness.
>>
>> Why be moral? Being moral is part of human thriving; part of
>> healthy psychological development (Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson).
>> The immoral or amoral psychopath is not thriving; he is
>> stunted in his development, and his health and happiness are
>> limited because of this.
>>
>> So, morality is based in human nature. That's it. Outside of
>> human nature there, there is no morality.
>
> Sounds good. I'll second what you said. But the problem with that
> is that it does not leave room for certain people to disparage
> Humanism to make their own philosophy appear to sound better.
that's a testament to your philosophical prows....
John Brockbank
>> would wish others to behave, and furthermore, they would say that is what
>> others should do as well, within a reasonable range of behaviour.
< That could be anything. By that argument Osama is a humanist. >
My understanding of Osama Bin Laden (of course merely obtained from news
media assertions that he is (or was) an encourager of suicide bombers.
I do not accept that you as a fairly well educated person really consider
that is acting within a reasonable range of behaviour. I was not defining
humanism, I was arguing with your statement on the lines of suggesting that
human rights do not exist and that humanists can not provide a rational
argument for human rights. In short, the rational argument is that human
rights exist because we say they do. I doubt that a judge and jury would
accept a contention that the right to liberty of a person you had kidnapped
was merely a subjective opinion.
John Brockbank
someone else, or does that disqualify him from humanism? >
You message contained far too many questions for a considered reply, but
that one is easy. It depends what you mean by 'better'.
David V.
> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should thrive:
>
>
> Why should they
Why not?
David V.
> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:avmdndWzEu5...@sti.net...
>
>>Scott wrote:
>>
>>>"David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>>
>>>>Yes, what you are putting out is called bullshit. You
>>>>finally got something right. If you haven't noticed by now
>>>>I'm not even going to waste my time trying to help you. I
>>>>have far better, and far more interesting things to do.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yep I knew you couldn't prove it
>>
>>Of course not. How can you prove the Earth is round to a flat
>>Earther? They can't listen. You can't listen. That, and I didn't
>>even bother to read the rest of your post. I have no idea what
>>you want proven. Nor do I care.
>
> and you accuse me of strawmen LOL.
ROTFLMFAO!! That wasn't a strawman, that was an ad hominem.
Grow up.
David V.
> "
> that's a testament to your philosophical prows....
That's a testament to your spelling abilities.
theBeaver
Pinker, The Blank Slate, p.161:
"Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form
of social organization are aghast at the suggestion that they run
against our selfish natures."
"To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a
corrupting enterprise." -- Michael Oakshott
Pinker, op.cit., p.290:
"The two kinds of visionaries thereby line up on opposite sides of many
issues that would seem to have little in common. the Utopian Vision
seeks to articulate social goals and devise policies that target them
directly: economic inequality is attacked in a war on poverty,
pollution by environmental regulations, racial imbalances by
preferences, carcinogens by bans on food additives. The Tragic Vision
points to the self-interested motives of the people who would implement
these policies -- namely, the expansion of their bureaucratic fiefdoms
-- and to their ineptitude at anticipating the myriad consequences,
especially when the social goals are pitted against millions of people
pursuing their own interests. Thus, say the Tragic Visionaries, the
Utopians fail to anticipate that welfare might encourage dependency, or
that a restriction on one pollutant might force people to use another.
"Instead, the Tragic Vision looks to systems that produce desirable
outcomes even when no member of the system is particularly wise or
virtuous. Market economies, in this vision, accomplish that goal:
remember Smith's butcher, brewer, and baker providing us with dinner out
of self-interest rather than benevolence. No mastermind has to
understand the intricate flow of goods and services that make up an
economy in order to anticipate who needs what, and when and where.
Property rights give people an incentive to work and produce; contracts
allow them to enjoy gains in trade. Prices convey information about
scarcity and demand to producers and consumers, so they can react by
following a few simple rules -- make more of what is profitable, buy
less of what is expensive -- and the "invisible hand" will do the rest.
The intelligence of the system is distributed across millions of
not-necessarilty-intelligent producers and consumers.
"People with the Utopian Vision [like Roger Johansson] point to market
failures that can result from having a blind faith in free markets.
They also call attention to the unjust distribution of wealth that tends
to be produced by free markets. Opponents with the Tragic Vision argue
that the notion of justice makes sense only when applied to human
decisions within a framework of laws, not when applied to an abstraction
called "society". Friedrich Hayek wrote, "The manner in which the
benefits and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would in
many instances have to be regarded as very unjust _if_ it were the
result of a deliberate allocation to particular people." But that
concern with social justice rests on a confusion, he claimed, because
"the particulars of [a spontaneous order] cannot be just or unjust."
Op.cit, p.297:
"The feature of human nature that most impressed the framers was the
drive for dominance and esteem, which, they feared, imperils all forms
of government. Someone must be empowered to make decisions and enforce
laws, and that someone is inherently vulnerable to corruption. How to
anticipate and limit that corruption became an obsession of the framers."
jt...@tatehealthcare.com
foundation for a Humanist morality: non-dogmatic, non-coercive
discourse in which knowledgeable participants put forth reasons and
allow themselves to be affected by the better arguments; a mutual
exploration and learning process. This is an acknowledged idealization,
but does provide a target or goal.
We've seen the effects of this process over the past 500 years: the
gradual spread of democracy and human rights globally. It's uneven,
subject to backsliding under stress, and still has a long way to go.
But it's happening.
So if you're looking for a rock-solid foundation for belief (any
belief), you won't find it. Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature) put the final nail in that coffin. But if you're looking for
the best foundation for epistemology or morality, read Habermas. You'll
see that Humanist morality is the best (and most objective) option
today.
Roger Johansson
The "nature" Pinker talks about takes a lot of training and
manipulation to appear.
It is not nature, it is a culture.
> Pinker, The Blank Slate, p.161:
> "Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form
> of social organization are aghast at the suggestion that they run
> against our selfish natures."
> Pinker, op.cit., p.290:
> virtuous. Market economies, in this vision, accomplish that goal:
> remember Smith's butcher, brewer, and baker providing us with dinner out
> of self-interest rather than benevolence. No mastermind has to
> understand the intricate flow of goods and services that make up an
> economy in order to anticipate who needs what, and when and where.
> Property rights give people an incentive to work and produce; contracts
> allow them to enjoy gains in trade. Prices convey information about
> scarcity and demand to producers and consumers, so they can react by
> following a few simple rules -- make more of what is profitable, buy
> less of what is expensive -- and the "invisible hand" will do the rest.
> The intelligence of the system is distributed across millions of
> not-necessarilty-intelligent producers and consumers.
Wow, free market philosphers have thought trough all possible forms
societies and compared their faults and advantages, and found the
winner!
What a strange coincindence that that kind of society is exactly the
one we already have, or rather the one we had hundreds of years ago. It
is like trying all kinds of weapons a human mind can think out, compare
them in killing efficiency, fire power, range, weight, etc.. and come
to the conclusion that the best possible weapon is a club made out of a
heavy type of wood.
That means that our distant forefathers developed the best possible
weapons technology already thousands of years ago, and all development
since then was in vain. We could just as well have stayed stone age
people and used our hardwood clubs.
> "People with the Utopian Vision [like Roger Johansson] point to market
> failures that can result from having a blind faith in free markets.
Well, we are not blind. We know that millions of people in this world
suffer from malaria and lack of food. The free market system has not
distributed food and medicines in a rational way. Americans get
extemely fat, Indians are very thin, and millions of people starve to
death in Africa. Medicine to cure malaria is cheap to manufacture, but
millions suffer from this horrible disease.
Free market capitalism also make people kill each other because a few
can become extremely rich and powerful, and you only need to make more
money, in any way possible.
--
Roger J.
Scott
>>> Any person who is a humanist will agree that they should behave as they
>>> would wish others to behave, and furthermore, they would say that is
>>> what others should do as well, within a reasonable range of behaviour.
>
>
> < That could be anything. By that argument Osama is a humanist. >
>
> My understanding of Osama Bin Laden (of course merely obtained from news
> media assertions that he is (or was) an encourager of suicide bombers.
My reply it that is "So, why does that matter?"
Here's the thing and at risk of repeating myself: YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING
IS EVIL <period>. It's like playing a game of twenty questions. You can give
me and example of what you believe is evil (which is an example you implied
in your above Osama) such as child rape. You can make the claim the child
rape is an example of *real* evil. I can reply with "why?". Because my
knowing you canNOT give a rational (empirical) evidence for the reality, I
can ask you an endless string of whys until you either proclaim it a
self-evident knowledge (a moral realism) or because you don't like such and
such behavior (moral subjectivism). If evil doesn't lend itself to
empiricism (to rationalism), Naturalism holds that it ain't real. If evil
isn't real what's the point in humanism? It has no demons to concur.
>
> I do not accept that you as a fairly well educated person really consider
> that is acting within a reasonable range of behavior.
That's a loaded phrase. What is a reasonable range of behavior? (At one time
homosexuality was thought unreasonable by the American Psychiatric Society
then they took a vote and declared it reasonable. I know a professional
sociologist who finds that funny and uses it to deride psychiatry.)
Here's what you just did, and here is were I have to repeat myself: Unless
you can demonstrate the rationalism in evil (or in human rights IYW), you
just made an appeal to reason for belief in an irrationalism.
All you can do is give me a list of behaviors that you believer are examples
of evil (like your Osama's bombers). That may say something about your
beliefs but that won't prove evil is real. It's the same as arguing that
because people believe in a god then god must be real. You believe that
makes for proof? I don't. I don't think either argument holds up as
rational....but then I am religious and have no problem with admitting to
faith in irrational truths. How 'bout you?
Now I'm not disagreeing with you that Osama is an example of an evil person.
But I know such a statement can't be proven rationally about Osama.
Your using example of an evil without the possibility of rationally
supporting your belief is no different than an intelligent design advocate
using examples from nature as appeals to reason in an intellignetly designed
universe.
I was not defining
> humanism, I was arguing with your statement on the lines of suggesting
> that human rights do not exist and that humanists can not provide a
> rational argument for human rights.
I can prove civil rights exist because CRs are based upon cultural codes of
conduct. Morality cannot be thought of - rationally - without references to
a given culture/society. What is moral in one culture can be immoral in
another. That is to say - rationally - morality *must* be dependent upon,
and relative to, cultural mores. Humanism, like religions, OTOH, rejects
this inherent cultural dependency and believes human rights are independent
of mores. In fact, like religious laws, humanism holds that cultures are
subordinate to its <cough> proclaimed Rights. Humanism is a stripped down
religion, stripped of everything metaphysical but moral realism (truth IOW).
In short, the rational argument is that human
> rights exist because we say they do.
Circular. No different than saying "The bible is true because the bible says
it's true." Or even "god is exists because we say he does." So in short, you
did not make a rational argument. If there was a rational argument for human
rights then there would be no need to *declare* them existent.
I doubt that a judge and jury would
> accept a contention that the right to liberty of a person you had
> kidnapped was merely a subjective opinion.
That depends on the civil moral code the judge and jury are referring
to....which *is* subjective and provably culturally dependent upon the
culture's subjective mores. Saddam believes he was kidnapped by our
government. And there are those who believe Osama's bombers are freedom
fighters.
David V.
> ......So if you're looking for a rock-solid foundation for
> belief (any belief), you won't find it. Richard Rorty
> (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) put the final nail in
> that coffin. But if you're looking for the best foundation for
> epistemology or morality, read Habermas. You'll see that
> Humanist morality is the best (and most objective) option
> today.
You're absolutely right. There is no one perfect, rock solid,
foundation for any morality. Any system can be picked apart by
it's detractors. The interesting thing is that all those that
rail against one moral idea/system/foundation never replace it
with one that's better.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>>Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans should thrive:
>>
>>
>> Why should they
>
>
> Why not?
You tell me. Nature doesn't give a shit either way. The answer to either
question implies the universe isn't meaningless.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "
>> that's a testament to your philosophical prows....
>
> That's a testament to your spelling abilities.
>
and a testament to my dyslexia
Roger Johansson
Scott wrote:
> Here's the thing and at risk of repeating myself: YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING IS EVIL <period>.
Concepts like "evil" are religious and are not used in modern
secularized countries, only in very religious countries.
In a modern view actions can be good or bad, depending on what you
think about them. I just saw a scene from an american tv-series, where
a twelve year old boy is in prison, and is chained to a table to
receive a visit from his father.
The father is ordered "No physical contact".
In Europe we would call that bad, but not evil. It is not a good idea
to treat children like that, but in USA it is normal, and probably seen
as good by a lot of people.
Religious countries have more brutal laws and punishments, to make the
created love more powerful and speeded. The more religious the country
is the more primitive and brutal punishments are used.
You use the word "prove". That is also a religious way to see things.
You can't "prove" anything in the social field.
You can't treat people and their actions with some kind of logic rules.
Logic became authoritative during medieval times, and the religious
tried for hundreds of years to "prove" logically that God exists.
Nowadays science is the trusted frame of reference, so the religious
are trying to use science to prove that God exists. Intelligent design
and all that crap.
The church simply tries to use the way people think in a certain era to
convince them.
During the middle ages logic was relied on, so they tried to use logic,
today science is relied on so they try to use a scientific way of
reasoning.
> such behavior (moral subjectivism). If evil doesn't lend itself to
> empiricism (to rationalism), Naturalism holds that it ain't real. If evil
> isn't real what's the point in humanism? It has no demons to concur.
The point of humanism is that we have to think clearly, and critically,
and try to use science and our best judgement to solve problems. We
cannot rely on a certain person and his judgement, or rely on a
scripture written thousands of years ago by stone age people who wrote
down the creation myths they had told around the camp fires before we
invented writing.
> That's a loaded phrase. What is a reasonable range of behavior? (At one time
> homosexuality was thought unreasonable by the American Psychiatric Society
> then they took a vote and declared it reasonable. I know a professional
> sociologist who finds that funny and uses it to deride psychiatry.)
What is reasonable is dependent on what kind of culture we live in, and
it changes as we develop.
> I can prove civil rights exist because CRs are based upon cultural codes of
> conduct. Morality cannot be thought of - rationally - without references to
> a given culture/society. What is moral in one culture can be immoral in
> another. That is to say - rationally - morality *must* be dependent upon,
> and relative to, cultural mores. Humanism, like religions, OTOH, rejects
> this inherent cultural dependency and believes human rights are independent
Yes.
> of mores. In fact, like religious laws, humanism holds that cultures are
> subordinate to its <cough> proclaimed Rights.
No. Rights are part of religion, humanism is to think critically.
If we get along better without "rights" given to us by God we trow away
those rights.
We can invent rules and laws and rights ourselves, but those rights are
not God given eternal rights, they are what we think is reasonable.
In a modern constitution there is no need to use the word "rights", but
many countries had to compromise with the religious who wanted rights
in the laws.
You can say that all people have the right to not getting killed by
other people.
We could just as well say that it is illegal to kill other people. (no
"rights" involved)
The practical result is the same, but the first way of saying it refers
to an imagined God.
> Humanism is a stripped down
> religion, stripped of everything metaphysical but moral realism (truth IOW).
No, you think now about a humanism tainted by old religious ideas.
Remove the religious ideas completely and you will see a real humanism
which is free from religion.
If you live in a religious country you probably have met people who
call themselves humanists but still have some religious ideas. Maybe
that is why you got the impression that humanism is somewhat of a
religion.
Humanism is based on the needs and views of humans, in contrast to the
earlier paradigm which was based on God and his wishes.
--
Roger J.
David V.
>>
>>> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>>
>>>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans
>>>> should thrive:
>>>
>>> Why should they
>>
>> Why not?
>
> You tell me. Nature doesn't give a shit either way.
Who ever said that nature did care? Not me.
> The answer to either question implies the universe isn't
> meaningless.
So? You're not making any sense here. Your reply is a non sequitur.
Scott
"Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1137004209.4...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Scott wrote:
>
>> Here's the thing and at risk of repeating myself: YOU CAN'T PROVE
>> ANYTHING IS EVIL <period>.
>
> Concepts like "evil" are religious and are not used in modern
> secularized countries, only in very religious countries.
>
> In a modern view actions can be good or bad, depending on what you
> think about them. I just saw a scene from an american tv-series, where
> a twelve year old boy is in prison, and is chained to a table to
> receive a visit from his father.
> The father is ordered "No physical contact".
>
> In Europe we would call that bad, but not evil. It is not a good idea
> to treat children like that, but in USA it is normal, and probably seen
> as good by a lot of people.
It's not a good idea? Why?
If morality is individually relative (moral subjectivism) then everyone is
morally right....from there own point of view. If morality is culturally
subjective (moral relativism) then every culture is morally correct from
their point of view........EVEN if those points of views are 180 degrees STS
from someone else or from another culture.
> Religious countries have more brutal laws and punishments, to make the
> created love more powerful and speeded. The more religious the country
> is the more primitive and brutal punishments are used.
>
> You use the word "prove". That is also a religious way to see things.
> You can't "prove" anything in the social field.
> You can't treat people and their actions with some kind of logic rules.
Prove is a rule in logic and math. Also used loosely as a preponderance of
the evidence in courts of law. Moral realism is not a social field. Moral
realism is objective independent of social. Humanism's precepts states or
implies moral realism.
Now on the question of prove I don't care which use of "prove" is attempted.
It doesn't matter to me. All I need from atheists who believe in both
Naturalism and Humanism to connect the dots.
Naturalism: the belief that nature is all of reality and where nature is
amoral. You have no *real* right to life. There is no room (it appears) for
moral realism. Nature is rationally understandable.
So rational-atheistic humanists some how need to rationally demonstrate
(using evidence or logic) going from Naturalism to........dot, dot,
dot....humanism - the belief that everyone is somehow entitled/endowed with
inalienable human rights. And that such a belief isn't make-believe, a
fairytale, a myth(ology).
If a RATIONAL link cannot be made from (methodological) naturalism
to....dot, dot, dot.... humanism then going from one to the other is a
metaphysical leap of faith. Making that leap is in fact a rejection of
Naturalism, whether the person realizes he is doing so or not.
Without a rational connection, Humanism is a stripped down religion that has
deleted everything metaphysical but moral truth/realism.
>
> Logic became authoritative during medieval times, and the religious
> tried for hundreds of years to "prove" logically that God exists.
Can't be done. If it were possible Faith would have no point.. If a person
proved evil exist they paradoxically prove a god exists.
> Nowadays science is the trusted frame of reference, so the religious
> are trying to use science to prove that God exists. Intelligent design
> and all that crap.
From logic there is philosophically no proofs in science. Every theory is
open to skepticism. Theorems OTOH are mathematical proofs expressing a
theory.
> The church simply tries to use the way people think in a certain era to
> convince them.
>
> During the middle ages logic was relied on, so they tried to use logic,
> today science is relied on so they try to use a scientific way of
> reasoning.
>
>> such behavior (moral subjectivism). If evil doesn't lend itself to
>> empiricism (to rationalism), Naturalism holds that it ain't real. If evil
>> isn't real what's the point in humanism? It has no demons to concur.
>
> The point of humanism is that we have to think clearly, and critically,
> and try to use science and our best judgement to solve problems. We
> cannot rely on a certain person and his judgement, or rely on a
> scripture written thousands of years ago by stone age people who wrote
> down the creation myths they had told around the camp fires before we
> invented writing.
that made no sense at all to the question of human rights purported by
humanism. On the question of science and religion much of what has been
written is politically correctness BS.
You're contridicting yourself. "Humanism, like religion,...." answer: Yes"
then "No."
Rights are either a quality of being human (human rights) or they are a
product of culture (civil rights). What's a right in one culture isn't so in
another. Yet you disagree with that with your "Yes" above.
You are telling me you don't grasp the distinction.
>
> You can say that all people have the right to not getting killed by
> other people.
> We could just as well say that it is illegal to kill other people. (no
> "rights" involved)
> The practical result is the same, but the first way of saying it refers
> to an imagined God.
The second is termed negative right. You don't have the right to kill other
people. Could be civil or human.
>> Humanism is a stripped down
>> religion, stripped of everything metaphysical but moral realism (truth
>> IOW).
>
> No, you think now about a humanism tainted by old religious ideas.
> Remove the religious ideas completely and you will see a real humanism
> which is free from religion.
I think not. http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/moral-meaning.html You can
ignore the Chistian/Christology and the argument still holds.
"In response, I shall merely highlight key issues as well as symptoms of
Martin's flawed methodology. Martin's chief problem in defending
naturalistic moral realism is that it is long on epistemology and short on
ontology . While devoting much space to recognizing objective moral values
(e.g., IOT, WRE) or life's meaningfulness, Martin fails to present an
adequate metaphysical basis for thinking a naturalistic context of
non-conscious, valueless, impersonal, materialistic processes could produce
conscious, valuable/moral, personal, rights-bearing beings (value from
valuelessness). Martin believes that the finite, finely-tuned,
life-producing, consciousness-producing, and value-producing universe
ultimately came from nothing."
"Contra Martin's "empirical" claims that belief in God makes no moral
difference in society, agnostic political scientist Guenther Lewy of U-Mass
(Amherst) offers more extensive, nuanced empirical evidence supportive of
theistic belief's positive social and moral impact. In Why America Needs
Religion , Lewy observes:
adherents of [a naturalistic] ethic are not likely to produce a Dorothy Day
or a Mother Teresa. Many of these people love humanity but not individual
human beings with all their failings and shortcomings. They will be found
participating in demonstrations for causes such as nuclear disarmament but
not sitting at the bedside of a dying person. An ethic of moral autonomy and
individual rights, so important to secular liberals, is incapable of
sustaining and nourishing values such as altruism and self-sacrifice.
(A brief glance at some of the titles and topics at the naturalist-oriented
Prometheus Books' website illustrates Lewy's point.) "
>
> If you live in a religious country you probably have met people who
> call themselves humanists but still have some religious ideas. Maybe
> that is why you got the impression that humanism is somewhat of a
> religion.
>
> Humanism is based on the needs and views of humans, in contrast to the
> earlier paradigm which was based on God and his wishes.
I know a religion when I see it.
http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/manifesto1.html
<quote>
Today man's larger understanding of the universe, his scientific
achievements, and deeper appreciation of brotherhood, have created a
situation which requires a new statement of the means and purposes of
religion. Such a vital, fearless, and frank religion capable of furnishing
adequate social goals and personal satisfactions may appear to many people
as a complete break with the past. While this age does owe a vast debt to
the traditional religions, it is none the less obvious that any religion
that can hope to be a synthesizing and dynamic force for today must be
shaped for the needs of this age. To establish such a religion is a major
necessity of the present. It is a responsibility which rests upon this
generation. We therefore affirm the following:
FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not
created.
SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has
emerged as a result of a continuous process.
THIRD: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the
traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.
FOURTH: Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and civilization,
as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a
gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and
with his social heritage. The individual born into a particular culture is
largely molded by that culture.
FIFTH: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern
science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human
values. Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet
undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and
value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the
assessment of their relations to human needs. Religion must formulate its
hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.
SIXTH: We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism,
modernism, and the several varieties of "new thought".
SEVENTH: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences
which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It
includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation - all
that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living.
The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be
maintained.
EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human
personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and
fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist's
social passion.
NINTH: In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer
the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of
personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.
TENTH: It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and
attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.
ELEVENTH: Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his
knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly
attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume
that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage
sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.
TWELFTH: Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living,
religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage
achievements that add to the satisfactions of life.
THIRTEENTH: Religious humanism maintains that all associations and
institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent
evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and
institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and
program of humanism. Certainly religious institutions, their ritualistic
forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted
as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the
modern world.
FOURTEENTH: The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive
and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a
radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A
socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end
that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal
of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and
intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life
in a shared world.
FIFTEENTH AND LAST: We assert that humanism will: (a) affirm life rather
than deny it; (b) seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from
them; and (c) endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life
for all, not merely for the few. By this positive morale and intention
humanism will be guided, and from this perspective and alignment the
techniques and efforts of humanism will flow.
So stand the theses of religious humanism. Though we consider the religious
forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good
life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware
that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams,
that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set
intelligence and will to the task.
<end quote>
Now that is a mythology in the making. And to quote: "A socialized and
cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable
distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a
free and universal society" simply translates to: "WE have the Truth, the
Moral Truth and it is our evangelical mission to bring this truth to and
convert the rest of the world.
Scott
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>> Scott wrote:
>>>
>>>> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>>>
>>>>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that humans
>>>>> should thrive:
>>>>
>>>> Why should they
>>>
>>> Why not?
>>
>> You tell me. Nature doesn't give a shit either way.
>
> Who ever said that nature did care? Not me.
>
>> The answer to either question implies the universe isn't
>> meaningless.
>
> So? You're not making any sense here. Your reply is a non sequitur.
>
That's a failure on your part not mine. From past aruments, your problem,
Dave, is that you believe morality is just what it is. That is, you think a
person is either moral or they aren't moral <period>. You know no other
moral concept then Universalism. IOW it doesn't matter what part of the
world a person finds themself in, by anyone's standards morality is all the
same.
Well guess what? That isn't true. Morality can be completely different
depending upon which culture you find yourself.
David V.
> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:y6KdnWtMZ4g...@sti.net...
>
>> Scott wrote:
>>
>>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>>
>>>> Scott wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that
>>>>>> humans should thrive:
>>>>>
>>>>> Why should they
>>>>
>>>> Why not?
>>>
>>> You tell me. Nature doesn't give a shit either way.
>>
>> Who ever said that nature did care? Not me.
>>
>>
>>> The answer to either question implies the universe isn't
>>> meaningless.
>>
>> So? You're not making any sense here. Your reply is a non
>> sequitur.
>>
>
>
No. And I do understand, form your ad hominem, that you're not
really interested in a
mature discussion, so I'll move on to greener pastures. Thanks
anyway.
Scott
> Scott wrote:
>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:y6KdnWtMZ4g...@sti.net...
>>
>>> Scott wrote:
>>>
>>>> "David V." <sp...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>>>
>>>>> Scott wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> <jt...@tatehealthcare.com> wrote
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Humanist morality is based on the premise that
>>>>>>> humans should thrive:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why should they
>>>>>
>>>>> Why not?
>>>>
>>>> You tell me. Nature doesn't give a shit either way.
>>>
>>> Who ever said that nature did care? Not me.
>>>
>>>
>>>> The answer to either question implies the universe isn't meaningless.
>>>
>>> So? You're not making any sense here. Your reply is a non
>>> sequitur.
>>>
>>
>>
>> That's a failure on your part not mine. .
>
> No. And I do understand, form your ad hominem, that you're not really
> interested in a
> mature discussion, so I'll move on to greener pastures. Thanks
> anyway.
David, I have has studied sociology. I know and understand the what morality
is within the secular context. Within this context morality is relative to
culture, only! Culture contexts are the only way objective talk about
morality/ethics. When sociology does comparative cultural studies of moral
codes they find that there is some consistence and some wide variances in
comparative codes. What may be a right in one culture isn't necessarily a
right in another. So which culture has the correct, better moral code? There
is no objective empirical method to rationally make that determination.
Philosophers have been attempting to do just that and fail. To say one code
is better is to imply an objective standard independent of cultural
contexts. Some might call that independent standard God's Law, others might
call it Natural Law. Naturalism rejects both explanation for this
independent standard. Humanism holds that people have human rights but
ignores the philosophical conflict and pretends that a conflict doesn't
exist. But when pressed to make the rational connection(s) from Naturalism
to Humanism, I have yet to see a secular humanist accomplish the conection.
Not one of you have been able to. You can try and Google for it but to save
yourself some time I have tried and haven't been able to find a paper making
the conection.
Scott
Scott
Roger Johansson
Scott wrote:
> TWELFTH: Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living,
> religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage
> achievements that add to the satisfactions of life.
> So stand the theses of religious humanism.
Yes, there is a religious humanism, but that is not real humanism, it
is a compromise.
Some humanists think we need replacements for the old religion, so they
make it possible to do similar procedures as the church does, but
without the old religion.
You can have a humanist wedding, without religious ideas and symbols.
This is not mainstream humanism though.
Note that US-americans have their own version of concepts in the old
world.
They have their own kind of "football", their own kind of liberalism,
their own version of anarchism, their own kind of humanism, etc.. Many
ideas become different when formulated by strongly creationist and
isolationist people.
One could also say that the population in a country which wants to rule
the whole world has to be fooled, more fooled than any other people in
the world.
This means that a lot of stuff they teach US-americans in school is
twisted and different from the knowledge the rest of the world learns.
The words are defined differently and have different connotations.
For example the word communist is not a negative word to many people in
the world, but to americans it means something like fascist, criminal,
idiot, people who eat their own babies, etc..
> Now that is a mythology in the making. And to quote: "A socialized and
> cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable
> distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a
> free and universal society" simply translates to: "WE have the Truth, the
> Moral Truth and it is our evangelical mission to bring this truth to and
> convert the rest of the world.
That is your translation.
What humanists have is critical thinking and science. We know there is
no "Truth" we can rely on. We have to think for ourselves, we have to
agree on laws we want to follow, we want to create a society which is
good for us.
--
Roger J.
David V.
>
> Some humanists think we need replacements for the old
Don't forget, that "need" is part of a strawman argument. We do
not NEED those things, but they are fun and add a bit of spice to
life. Those that insist that those are "religious" artifacts,
don't get the point, and therefore feel the dire need to
disparage those that are able to realize that most of those
CULTURAL events predate religion. That they don't get it comes
from being stuck on a logical world of books an such. They loose
their ability to deal with humanity.
John Brockbank
Humanism, I have yet to see a secular humanist accomplish the conection.
Not one of you have been able to. >
It is a no brainer I'm afraid. You refer to 'God's Law as Naturalism'.
Every humanist would say that there is no such thing as God's law, and a
connection can not be between Humanism and a thing that is imaginary. 'Why
is a raven like a writing desk?', if you don't mind a literary allusion.
Scott
No I didn't. I said, "Some might call that independent standard God's Law,
others might
call it Natural Law." Natural Law is not Naturalism. It would seem you
don't understand the term
http://radicalacademy.com/philnaturallaw.htm
"During the 19th century natural law theory lost influence as utilitarianism
and Benthamism, positivism, materialism" __Materialism = Naturalism__
"To sum it up, then, we can say that the natural law:
a.. is not made by human beings;
b.. is based on the structure of reality itself;
c.. is the same for all human beings and at all times;
d.. is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for human beings to
discover;
e.. is the naturally knowable moral law;
f.. is a means by which human beings can rationally guide themselves to
their good. "
In sum. Natural Law is moral objectivism/realism since it isn't made by
human beings and becasue it "is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there
for human beings to discover" NLT rejects moral relativism and subjectivism
since it "is the same for all human beings and at all times"
How does you determine if a law is a just law or and unjust law? In NL
theory there are two types of law, or two levels. The first is Natural Law
the other is Positive law. A positive law is thought just if it conforms to
naturual law. If it does not conform then it is said to be an unjust law.
But the only moral theory compatible with Naturalism is Moral Relativism. In
which case there is no such thing as an unjust law. There is only law.
Scott
> Roger Johansson wrote:
>>
>> Some humanists think we need replacements for the old
>> religion.....
>
> Don't forget, that "need" is part of a strawman argument. We do
> not NEED those things, but they are fun and add a bit of spice to
> life. Those that insist that those are "religious" artifacts,
> don't get the point, and therefore feel the dire need to
> disparage those that are able to realize that most of those
> CULTURAL events predate religion. That they don't get it comes
> from being stuck on a logical world of books an such. They loose
> their ability to deal with humanity.
how mythological of you, dave
Scott
and that says it all!
What makes you think the religious don't have critical thinking and science?
That's like saying you can't be a *real* scientist if you are religious or
you can't get a *real* PhD if you are religious. I can march out a whole
list to the contrary.
You say there is no Truth we can rely on but I have yet to meet an atheists
who didn't argue from the POV of moral realism. I don't think you or David
know what that means. For example, you say "we want to create a society
which is *good* for us." What exactly does that mean? What is "good"? Is it
common good? Who decides what is the common good? The majority? What if you
don't agree upon what is the common good? Economically, should the common
good be based upon capitolism or socialism? What of the moral good? What if
the majority agree upon Sharia as the common moral practice?
In Naturalism good is totally subjective and relative.
http://www.answers.com/topic/naturalistic-fallacy I trust that you won't
make a fallacy when and if you define "good".
Scott
Scott
"Scott" <sc...@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:qNudnZq2M74...@wcc.net...
>
> "John Brockbank" <wag...@screaming.net> wrote in message
> news:43c924ed$1...@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
>>< But when pressed to make the rational connection(s) from Naturalism to
>>Humanism, I have yet to see a secular humanist accomplish the conection.
>> Not one of you have been able to. >
>>
>> It is a no brainer I'm afraid. You refer to 'God's Law as Naturalism'.
>> Every humanist would say that there is no such thing as God's law, and a
>> connection can not be between Humanism and a thing that is imaginary.
>> 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?', if you don't mind a literary
>> allusion.
>
> No I didn't. I said, "Some might call that independent standard God's Law,
> others might
> call it Natural Law." Natural Law is not Naturalism. It would seem you
> don't understand the term
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
The natural law or law of nature is a system of justice that exists
independently of the positive law of a given political order. Its usage has
varied through its history. It currently has a meaning in both moral theory
and legal theory, despite the fact that the core claims of the two kinds of
theory are logically independent. According to natural law ethical theory,
the moral standards that govern human behavior are, in some sense,
objectively derived from the nature of human beings or the cosmos in
general. According to natural law legal theory, the authority of at least
some legal standards necessarily derives, at least in part, from
considerations having to do with the moral merit of those standards.
In the philosophy of natural law, the idea that the concepts of law and
morality intersect in some way is called the "overlap thesis".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_law
Positive law is law that has been codified into a written form. The term is
often used in contrast with common law or natural law.
Various philosophers have put forward theories contrasting the value of
positive law relative to natural law. The normative theory of law put forth
by the Brno school gave pre-eminence to positive law because of its rational
nature. Libertarian philosophers usually favor natural law over positive
law.
Roger Johansson
Scott wrote:
> you say "we want to create a society
> which is *good* for us." What exactly does that mean? What is "good"? Is it
> common good? Who decides what is the common good? The majority? What if you
> don't agree upon what is the common good? Economically, should the common
> good be based upon capitolism or socialism? What of the moral good? What if
> the majority agree upon Sharia as the common moral practice?
Those issues are what we are discussing and we vote democratically
about them.
When we have come to an agreement we can abolish the old systems like
capitalism and creationism.
We now live in a transition stage, the people have taken the formal
power from kings, gangsters and businessmen, but we still allow these
old systems, simply because we have not yet come to an agreement about
what the post-capitalist, post-creationist system will look like.
--
Roger J.
John Brockbank
I am afraid to this humanist that is all just a lot of pseudo-philosophic
waffle. Humans decide laws. Humans decide whether their laws are unjust.
We hope that demoracy will work properly regarding the law.
John Brockbank
The constant cry of the religious person who does not understand that for a
person who does not believe in a higher power, the only way of deciding
things is for people to do it.
Of course some people affect that they do not want things done for the
common good, but, for example, there are few people who think that children
should not, by law, be educated.