Indeed, and what does that have to do with it anyway?
One can be atheist and not dislike religion.
In general I think religion has a neutral effect on the world; many bad things happen due to it, but it also seems like lots of good comes about due to religion as well. Arguably both the good and the bad can be ascribed to the people without taking their religious beliefs/preferences into account.
I think religion by itself is good. Religion, however, tends to get coupled with politics. Politicians exploit religion for political purposes. Many wars were fought for political goals with religion as a justification.
Essentially that’s what I’m trying to say; Palestine vs. Israel is mostly cultural/political rather than religious (IMO).
Well, what I’m roughly saying is that the principles which support an industrial, libertarian society are not the same principles upon which a small religious commune can be based on.
I don’t think that conservative religious communities are fully compatible with libertarian principles. The most obvious reason is that such communities can only be self-sustaining if they manipulate children to mold them into future believers. It’s not as if children will independently discover religion X and so join association X.
Well, I independently discovered Evangelical Baptism at the age of 15 or 16, then read into the material and became a born-again Christian. I exchanged numerous e-mails with faithful believers and pastors and expanded my knowledge about the Bible and the history of Jesus Christ. If there was a Baptist church in closer proximity, I probably would’ve attended service there as well.
Just few years later, I advocate Richard Dawkins as one of my top three thinkers on mises.org. I remain friendly towards Baptism, I do, however, realize that religion is an emotional and faith-based part of one’s personality and that reason should rely on other sources. So while I would contend that there’s no logical evidence for God, I don’t see an urgent need to give up my belief in a caring and loving God on an emotional level.
Goes to show there are actually people who did not have to be intdoctrinated as a child to get in closer contact with a belief system.
And yet biology isn’t a matter of what paths a life form will take, but rather what paths a life form can take.
And yet again, there is evidence that there are differences in the brain structure of transgendered individuals as well as homosexual males.
Anyways, the point is easy to grasp, biology doesn’t trump one’s values. The only thing that can ever trump one’s values is causality, and that has much to do with biology as nuclear strong force has to do with the breathing rate of rainforest tree frogs (hint: not a damn thing connects one to the other as you espouse…).
LOL. I suppose he`s never heard of loud Christian Heavy Metal then.
Because democracy has been so great for the mayority?? A mayority looses out to a minority in every state system. The bottom line of wealth redistribution schemes always favors the few over the many. In North Korea the winners are the commisars and in USA the winners are the Lockeed-Martin executives, but the outcome is the same - ultimately only a small group of people wins more than looses. Thus mayority of people is always better served without predation.
Well have to do something about this heresy. Youd think Calvinism was bad enough, but now this thing? It just keeps on spreading. (Nominal) Catholics, once more into the breech!!
That’s a pretty far-reaching assumption that is based upon your own presumptions. Individuals can just as much embrace religion x even though they were raised either athiests or secular as vice versa. As long as conservative religious communities allow for individuals to leave as they please then they would be compatible with libertarian principles, yet whether they are desirable is another question.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!
My disagreement with Hoppe is not that I think certain sectors of libertarian society will not be culturally conservative, but that he seems to think cultural conservatism is a prerequisite for libertarianism. Ie, a person is not really a libertarian if they aren’t culturally conservative and a society will never become libertarian unless it adheres to cultural conservatism.
He does this by trying to connect vague statements about “alternative lifestyles” with certain logical economic arguments that are sound don’t actually apply to his vague generalizations about such non-culturally conservative beliefs and actions.
I do think it’s important to recognize that there will be a lot of diversity in libertarian societies. There probably will be areas that refuse to allow people entry, ostracize, expel &c based on race, sexuality, national origin, favourite sports teams, redheadedness, etc etc etc. But of course for every place that refuses, ostracizes and does whatever else to these people there will be plenty of places that don’t.
Libertarian societies will be diverse in a meaningful way. Unlike the coercive “diversity” of modern America, which is really just using centralization to smash minority opinions, lifestyles &c, (whether they be conservative, liberal, “alternative” or culturally marxist).
Am I the only one that found this criticism a bit ironic coming from someone with a Mencken avatar?
NERDS. When i created this thread i did not insert the hyphen between Hans and Hermann, some admin just had to correct me. Or JT has OCD
Byzantine: Can you source that?
I can’t. Walter Block, in a piece criticizing right and left libertarians for their deviations from “plumb-line libertarianism” cited that part of Hoppe. I’m not even sure exactly where I found the Block piece to begin with.
gocrew:
To be honest, given his assertion that, in a free society, homosexuals and other such ‘deviants’ would have to be removed, I cannot see how he is a libertarian in good standing.
GilesStratton: It’s called private property.
If you’re interested in engaging me in conversation, you’ll have to make more sense than that.
That is me. I’m cool with everyone doing whatever they want as long as (1) they are not violating my property rights, and (2) aren’t out violating the property rights of my neighbors. While I have no authority over my neighbors, I don’t like disharmony in my area.
This should be this thing: http://mises.org/journals/scholar/block15.pdf
First hit on Google for “plumb-line libertarianism”.
I guess I didn’t explain my meaning well enough. What I meant by discover is literally discover. If religion X were the ‘true’ religion then you should be able to discover its content on your own. You wouldn’t need to be indoctrinated in it or look it up on some ‘sacred’ book.
On the other hand, individual, unguided philosophical inquiry can lead you to deism, or agnosticism, or atheism.
What the people who advocate ‘faith based communities’ ultimately want to do is BAN any kind of dissident thought. It’s the ultimate attempt at thought control. I think that can hardly be called libertarian…
ps:
Well, Mises was NOT an advocate of revealed religion was he ?
I think my previous response to Sphairon addresses your post as well.
Now, trying to make some on-topic comments : I don’t know if Hoppe advocates this kind of religious tribalism – I doubt it. I do know that in his “A theory of…” which I suppose can be regarded as an exposition of his political theory, he says almost nothing about revealed religions/churches. The only two comments I could find are critical of religion. It seems to me that Hoppe went from standard libertarianism to advocacy of conservatism for some reason.
ps:
Which sounds very very close to the quintessential statist argument : love it or leave it.
Juan, the reality is, and has been going on for 100s of posts, is that you confuse your preferences with libertarianism, and then criticize others for doing the same.
You have a hard on for revealed religion. We get that. Personally, I’m not too fond of it either. But your right to dictate who can practice it, how they can come to it, and if they can teach it to their children is not at all within any non-partisan definition of libertarianism.
Just as you revile Giles for perhaps taking issue with gays or different races or atheists, you are guilty of the exact same thing, but try to hide your narrow preferences behind a guise of pluralism. To a degree, BP does this as well.
No, libertarianism is not freedom but with all of the exceptions you would like to impose. It is Calvinists, teaching their children their faith, whether you like it or not, if not for the sake of religious and personal freedom, then because you have no higher claim to the legitimacy of another man’s non-aggressive actions.
We could have saved, literally tens of thousands of words on this forum, if you would practice the same tolerance, you claim to use as a basis for your moral positions.
This isn’t a personal attack, so I hope you don’t take it as such. It’s just long past due that someone pointed out that this isn’t right and wrong, but a battle of personal preferences, both sides using libertarianism as justification, when libertarianism, simply cannot apply to either side specifically in the debate.
The bottom line, is whether or not you can prove that revealed religion is involuntary or coerced. If you can’t, it’s long overdue for you to let this go.
Of course it does, you change your definitions to suit your purposes. You are dogmatic in your assumptions and lift up the belief systems you favor as the ones individuals can discover freely while you condemn those you detest as those that need indoctrination.
Of course, there’s no reason why an Amish individual who abandons the faith needs to still be embraced by the faith-based community, or a monk who abandons the faith needs to be accepted as apart of a monastic community. However, I really doubt that such an individual would be completly ostracized, Georges Santyana lived out the last decade of his life at a Covenant despite his own athiesm, and he would definately still have the right to his property, though this would become a fuzzy issue with communal situations like monastaries. In addition, you draw a false dichotomy between such communities and the state for faith-based communities doesn’t imply that they claim the right of arbitration as the state does, if they do that’s a different matter than the one being discussed now.
If one doesn’t agree with the dogma of faith-based communities, then don’t join them, its that simple. But nor does that give one the right to condemn them, rather one must accept that you have different preferances and beliefs.