Well, all ideas owe their very existence to objective facts within the physical world. So I must ask, where did you derive these ideas from?
Isn’t the more important question why the most prominent atheists haven’t become anarchists? Are there any at all (certainly not the four horsemen - Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens)?
Dawkins is a particularly depressing case. He has repeatedly stated that he thinks laissez-faire (or even as close as we got during the Thatcher years) is “apalling.” He has actually drawn upon evolutionary theory showing that co-operation is often a good strategy in order to make this case. So he must believe co-operation is widespread. Accordingly one would assume he would be able to conclude that a more liberal system could function well, perhaps better. On the contrary, because he understands how people will endogenously co-operate, he thinks a system of endogenous co-operation is bad and a system of exogenous coercion is good. So what can we conclude from this: apparently Dawkins thinks laissez-faire capitalism means a system where everyone is forced not to co-operate!
Wow, if they add “coercion” to those sins, I’m in! [:D]
Look what I found in Praetyre’s link.
“Martin Luther described a changeling who laughed and acted happy when bad things were happening, and cried when things were going well….[M]ost experts now believe that child was severely autistic. Martin Luther went on to describe him as a “mass of flesh” that should be beat to death. “
Now, that here is some good old religious tolerance.
No. I’ve considered that option (it would make a lot of things in life a whole lot easier, especially given my devoutly Christian parents) and, like you, I find it untenable. I am a theist, I do believe in God in some sense… I just don’t think I know anything about God and I don’t think anyone else knows any more about God than I do. I don’t think it is a larger leap to believe “some telic entity with unknown attributes created the physical universe in a manner consistent with what we can observe” than to believe “the universe just is.” Neither position is very satisfactory, as both are reflections of our ignorance of ultimate origins, but I feel that the former is a more natural and human way to cope with our ignorance.
I don’t equate theism and religion. Most religion is more concerned with certain behaviors or activities - rituals - than beliefs. The obsession with dogma is unique to the major monotheistic religions and even there, it is a relatively small group of fundamentalists within each of these religions that actively pursues this obsession and enforces non-challenge of the “orthodoxy.” I think religion in natural order society would be much more ritual and much less dogma than we are used to in the West.
Clayton -
P.S. - I would like to see someone study the role that religion plays in reproduction. It is my observation (first-hand) that religion plays an enormous role in connecting reproductive partners and (by extension) families. In other words, I think religion plays a role in selection and I think this may be its most important role in society. Just a suspicion.
LOL
Screw God, tonight I’m getting lucky [H]
You’re thinking of alcohol.
Yuo guys are great, lolol
Blame it on the a a a a alchohol? I’m not big on Rap but it seems fitting!
Actually the OP makes some sense, in that statism is unfounded faith itself. And it might be worthwhile to try to persuade statist atheists using this.
As for belief, yes, you might not be able to completely escape taking at least some things on faith. But this doesn’t mean you should believe everything, so I think it’s best to preserve some skepticism. By applying Occam’s Razor you can arrive at a simple set of axioms and sort through the mumbo-jumbo.
Let’s examine an atheist point of view. When an atheist claims “God does not exist”, it does not produce a direct proof of God’s non-existence. Instead, by applying the principles put together by Popper, he sees religion is not falsifiable and does not respect the principle of parsimony. Therefore he concludes the existence of God is not worthwhile to take into consideration.
Similarly, statism can be shown to be a bad choice of a default position. So an anarchist could take the pro-state evidence, say historical data, and show it does not constitute scientific evidence, but rather twists every fact into supporting a pre-existing point of view. He then goes on to show anarchism is simpler than statism, therefore the latter fails Occam’s Razor. So he concludes supporting a state isn’t worthwhile.
Then each of these people put together the conclusion they arrived at and the problems that are raised by either theism or statism, be it religious chores one would otherwise be bound to follow or abusive behavior of states. On this basis, they reject theism/statism. In essence, this is some sort of skeptical argument.
The anarchist doesn’t claim “the state does not exist” he claims “the state shouldn’t exist” (for whatever reason(s). Further, many, many athiests do try to show that religion (and the existence of god) is false.
Yes, what did I say? The state is obviously there, I’m not talking about belief in its existence, but about belief in its desirability.
Secondly, I’m pretty sure you can’t positively prove religion is wrong, because it’s not falsifiable (every possible mean of disproof ends up confirming it if you play their game). Instead you can assume it’s wrong until proven otherwise and place the burden of proof on the religious.
Yes, informally it is said “God does not exist”. But you can’t disprove positively just about everything one comes up with. If I say “There’s a hidden sun on the sky that you can’t detect”, you can’t really disprove that as in finding arguments against it. But you can assume I’m wrong and ask me to prove it, which I can’t.
I’m not disagreeing with the argument that you cannot prove that god doesn’t exist, just that many, many atheists simply do try to prove such a thing.
Yes, atheism and anarchism seem unrelated in that sense, as atheism posits that there is no god(s), not necessarily that god is simply undesirable (although there are atheists like Richard Dawkins who have made such cases).
Is this towards the Abrahamic religions, or all religions?
The thread is meaningless because it has nothing to do with economics and political theory. If you are going into the influence of the church on the State or the economics of it, that’s different, but instead it’s slamming everyone who isn’t atheist as not having any reason. You can apply reason to religion, but as I have stated the attacks are not researched and it’s more of bashing the mainstream Abrahamic religions instead of actually researching various religions individually and coming up with a view of them. Various religions mean various things and the text of various religions are symbolic and mean many things. Not all religions treat or see their gods the same way, nor view life and death and the universe the same way. You talk of reason, but it’s as you see religion as being unreasonable because it’s what may influence people and how they act. It’s a cultural and personal persuasion that needs no one else. Whether you be a Christian, Odinist, Satanist, Buddhist, or any other pagan religion (too many to list), I don’t think “reason” can simply explain everything in life. People view how the world works differently that can be measured and evaluated simply with “reason”. Some people want to find what life “means” and sometimes they find the answers to be subjective and esoteric.
My mind. I don’t believe that has an existence in the objective physical realm.
Satanism (Church of Satan more specifically) is against any form of tolitarianism. The same with Odinism.
Such shows the power of value statements in everyday speech. In your face emotivists!
I find Keynesian Economics and Theism have the same concept: a central power is or needs to be present in order to keep its subordinates orderly and in check. Anarcho-Capitalists deny that the role of a central regulator needs to be present; furthermore, a polycentric system would be more efficient than the former.
Haha, would that make a Agnosticist the equivalent of a political neutral?
This is quite simply one of more ridiculous things I’ve ever read. This person honestly thinks that ancap fits in well with atheism. He doesn’t provide any evidence to justify that conclusion, but just tosses it up in the hope he’ll get a response. On the web, we call this trolling. Can I just ask our writer, firstly, what brought this on? Did he have a bad experience earlier that day that he rationalized into this ‘mumbo-jumbo’ rant against organized religion, or what?
Secondly, and in the interests of keeping this short & sweet, let our educated author consider the consequences of atheism, which he accepts on faith: what was the reaction of Marx & Engels upon the release of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, which our esteemed author presupposes the truth of at the outset? Were they, as Socialists, horrified at the idea that there was no Creation, and that there is no God ‘up there’ predestinating man and the universe? Did they react in shock at the assault to their theory, and spend the rest of their working lives trying to refute it?
In a word, no. They in fact wrote back & forth to one another with delight: at last, here is the scientific justification for our scientific socialism! Once you deabsolutize God, you absolutize man. And this is the precondition of all Statism, not anarcho-capitalism.
The question should be better asked, therefore: how can anyone that is an atheist be a believer, at the same time, in freedom? They are, in fact, anti-thetical, and what ends up happening is that you must try and hold the two positions in dialectical tension. If there is no God predestinating man, then man must do the predestinating…ie: the State our esteemed ancap is so dead against. Therefore, in stating his opposition to theism on rational grounds, he has, instead, illustrated pure irrationality. As Van Til said, ‘(humanistic) rationality ends in irrationality’. People can disagree with this, and I fully expect they will, but they have no answer for it. There is nothing in all of human experience or history to suggest otherwise.
Our esteemed author has, instead of illustrating a rational argument against theism, caught himself in his own trap, as do all like him. When Dawkins says he is opposed to laissez-faire, he is logical. The only alternative our esteemed author has to changing his mind and becoming a raving mad socialist is to adopt Sartre’s existentialism, where, for him, his neighbour is the devil. Try living that for just one day in the real world!
The most disappointing thing about the anarcho-capitalism our esteemed author is so in love with is that it requires an irrational leap of faith to hold on to if you are an atheist. What people should be asking is why are there so many Christians out there that hold that the State should be responsible for everything from economics to health care, education to welfare? Scripture no-where gives this kind of authority to the State, and Scripture is meant to be our highest authority. The atheist, on the other hand, has no higher authority than himself, or so he thinks. In fact, what ends up happening is that man’s highest authority becomes the State. And this, in conclusion, is why our anarho-capitalism is considered to be on the lunatic fringe of scholarship, and not taken seriously by any authorities anywhere in the world, and why Socialism is taken seriously by most political and social groups in the world.
I assume we will see shortly what our esteemed, but, as has been demonstrated, irrational, author values most: his ancap, or his atheism. Or will he continue, as expected, to hold the two in dialectical tension, sitting on the fence? I expect it will be the latter, but we’ll see. Could be fun!
So if that paragraph is exclusively a product of your mind, then the literature you cite is useless. In that case, If you lived out your life as a lobotomy patient, drug addict, or isolated in a dark cave, then your memory, cognition, personality, perception, and consciousness would not be affected. But wait… How can there be a cause and effect and between one thing that has physical properties, and the other that has none? How would I come to the idea of a centaur, subjective fact, without studying the relationship between a man and a horse (entities)? You couldn’t define spirituality but, ironically, Wikipedia was able to do it for you. You’re just describing Cartesian Dualism using vague new age rhetoric. This is the part where philosophy overlaps with neuroscience, and those are some pretty big shoes to fill.
Here is the bullshit that you just pulled:
Weaseled in the atheism = faith myth
Implicitly lied about Darwin being an atheist
Equivocated evolution with atheism
Invoked the atheism ----> communism non-sequitur
I’m glad to see these banal straw man still up and running. It’s just on the reasons I stopped watching debates on religion.
Your argument is circular. For your argument requires the assumption that a world external to your mind exists, the very fact that you are seeking to establish!
The concepts of each of a “lobotomy patient”, a “drug addict”, and an “isolated [person] in a dark cave” are concepts of your mind which (a) imply that a world external to your mind exists and (b) may or may not, in their implication of that implication, be accurate. But that does not diminish the reality to your mind of the concept itself.