Speaking of Walter Block, he likes religion.
“You people are doing the Lord’s work. The FSP is one of the freshest practical ideas for promoting liberty that has come out of the libertarian movement in the past few decades. May you succeed beyond your wildest dreams, and thus demonstrate in yet another empirical way the benefits and blessings of liberty.”
-Block on the Free State Project
http://freestateproject.org/about/endorsements#block
Block on Religion:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block103.html
Me on Religion:
I believe in a religion. But that shouldn’t matter to you, as long as I am not infringing on your rights, and your not infringing on mine. We are all humans.
I just watched that Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross so I’m pumped up and I’m ready to make another short but poignant observation. Religion and belief in God are two different things. I believe in God and I suppose I believe in a Jewish God but I do not go to temple. I don’t actively participate in the religion but I do believe in God. Hatred for religion often becomes hatred for the idea of God in general but they are two different things. Either way, correlation or no correlation with intelligence, libertarianism isn’t about God, it isn’t about religion, it’s about the NAP. That’s it.
Even today the catholic church gets tax money from different nation-states. That is an outright tax.
And the money they get through ‘voluntary’ donations can be considered a tax as well. You know, “pay us or you’ll burn in hell forever”. That sounds like fraud/moral extortion to me.
Also you must bear in mind that since the catholic church was the only ‘legal’ church for more than a thousand years, church owners/rulers could easily extort money whithout directly ‘taxing’ their subjects. But that clearly was a tax in two different ways. First there was a monopoly in ‘religious services’ - and second, the religious services were fraudulent in their own right.
By the way, has any of the theists in this site (or elsewhere) managed to PROVE any of their delusional assertions? No? I thought so.
AMAZING. Are you going to prove the existence of this ‘jewish god’ entity?
From previous posts of yours, I wouldn’t consider you as an authority on ‘libertarianism’ or ‘non-aggression’, but of course, ppl are free to post anything they want… (except when the rulers of this ‘intellectual forum’ feel like censoring their subjects, that is.)
Quote JakobM:“AMAZING. Are you going to prove the existence of this ‘jewish god’ entity?”
Well I don’t want to answer for bloom here but you see when you ask for “logical proof of a God entity”- you’re asking for the impossible because God as is, is not a logical entity or concept. God is beyond that. Where everything in the universe that we know of is limited and finite, God is unlimited and infinite. Can the concept of an infinite being really be explained logically? Of course not. Believing in God is first and foremost an emotional experience and connection. You can try to argue and debate about God’s existence all day but argument alone will never be sufficient for you to believe in a God, you have to “feel it”(especially since by your post you’ve already rejected it emotionally). A being that doesn’t simply exist outside of us in the Heavens, but also “in” us and in everything that exists as it is.
That really sums it up for me personally. I’ve felt the power of a divine being and attribute what I felt to be God. I’m not saying God spoke to me and said “Hey man how’re you doing, I’m god”- but that’s what I felt. I spent most of my life not being very religious till I did, and it was a feeling I had gotten only after intense suffering. Its hard to describe and I can see why religious people are labeled nuts for anyone who never felt that way…but it is what it is and I apologize that it irks you so much.
more Block on religion and his pro-theist atheist position:
It can’t. So you seem to be admitting that your position is meaningless and outside rational discourse? If you admit that your position is not something that can be rationally discussed then it seems to me that you must remain silent about your ‘religious opinions’.
So you are a pantheist?
Well, that’s your personal experience. And your personal experience does not belong to the category of revealed/organized religion and political manipulation to which I was mostly referring to.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to prove the validity/veracity/truthfulness/etc of the dogmas of the church of X, then your personal experience would be irrelevant and you would be back to square one.
In other words, revealed religion is a ‘social’ phenomenon, not a personal one. As a social phenomenon revealed religion is surely tied to politics, and so libertarianism has something to say about it. And of course common sense has something to say about it too.
By the way, are you ‘jewish’? If not, then your experience is quite at odds with the ‘beliefs’ of Dr. Bloom?
Your ignorance is not our problem. Here, educate yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BWFpBTqSN0&feature=related (Bertrand Russell debates Copleston).
Doesn’t matter whether I can prove God exists or not. You can’t prove God doesn’t exist. The point I was making is that belief in God has nothing to do with libertarianism. Libertarianism is based on the NAP. It’s not based on belief/disbelief in God.
What can you prove?
I’m no expert. What is libertarianism all about if not the NAP?
All a principled libertarian can possibly say about religion is: don’t try force others to believe what you believe or hurt others if they believe something different from what you believe. Anything a libertarian says outside of that is not being said as a libertarian but as a theist or atheist, as the case may be. Libertarianism has nothing to say about God.
Quote by JakobM It can’t. So you seem to be admitting that your position is meaningless and outside rational discourse? If you admit that your position is not something that can be rationally discussed then it seems to me that you must remain silent about your ‘religious opinions’.
Well what Bloom was saying is that he believes in a God but doesn’t exactly follow the dogmas of “church X”- you then asked him to prove the existence of God which is always going to be impossible because its something that must be felt.
Quoteby JakobM So you are a pantheist?
I’m a Muslim, but when you talk about this monotheistic concept of God, he is the universe, he is us, and he is beyond that. God isn’t a being that dwells somewhere else or has human constrictions like Zeus. Humans like to rationalize a God being so they think of him as an old man with a beard in the clouds- but that’s just a guy in the clouds playing King- God is infinite and unlimited.
Quote JakobM "If, on the other hand, you wanted to prove the validity/veracity/truthfulness/etc of the dogmas of the church of X, then your personal experience would be irrelevant and you would be back to square one.
In other words, revealed religion is a ‘social’ phenomenon, not a personal one. As a social phenomenon revealed religion is surely tied to politics, and so libertarianism has something to say about it. And of course common sense has something to say about it too."
I say its both. Everyone can feel God in my opinion, you just have to actually be open to it or else your heart is closed off. When these religions were first revealed that’s what people went through. Of course then people lost their way and Churches and the like became institutions of a political nature. So its only natural that most will reject them, even religious people like me.
Quote JakobM “By the way, are you ‘jewish’? If not, then your experience is quite at odds with the ‘beliefs’ of Dr. Bloom?”
No but I am Muslim- so many of our beliefs are shared and unlike what you’d hear with Political institutions regarding Jewish and Muslim relations- consider him brethren.
prove god exists!/you can’t prove it doesn’t! [/thread]
You are way more ignorant than I am.
Now, when you ‘feel’ ready to prove your delusions let me know. I’ll be waiting.
That theists are liars. That’s all I have been proving in this thread.
False. Current scams like christianity, islam, judaism were ‘revealed’ to only one guy. All the rest of people who believe in them are dupes who rely on second hand ‘information’
By the way, do the voices that you hear in your head tell you that women must be enslaved, stoned, etc, if they don’t follow ‘god’s orders’?
Hmmm. I think you didn’t even bother to read a single post here eh? The topic is : prove the veracity of the claims of revealed religions or admit that you are liars.
So, I’m all ears.
JakobM, you know nothing of religion. You just spew blind assertions out and claim that everyone else must defend themselves and prove you wrong or you are “right”. Yet, you can’t comprehend what’s behind various religions.
Hey, if you can prove to me that Asatru (and everything involved from Runes to holidays) and all that was involved with pre-Christian European culture and religion is completely useless and bares no spiritual significance I’ll paypal you a dollar.
JakobM wrote the following post at Tue, May 11 2010 10:29 PM:
That theists are liars.
some theists are liars, many theists were indoctrinated and just follow what they were told by their parents etc, some theists even do not claim anything, just keep their beliefs to themselves.
“Furthermore almost every Austrian economist up to Rothbard was religeous”
Rothbard was religious? says who? (serious question)
Mises was certainly not religious.
And some theists believe they have received direct communication from God. Who’s to say they haven’t? 
They have to prove they heard him. If it’s just in their head, they’re crazy OR God is crazy.
“Hmmm… So I’m God, what can I do today… Oh, I know ! I’m going to speak to someone, but nobody else will hear me ! MUHAHAHAHHAHAA !!”
Prove to who? The only person they really need to prove it to is themselves, if it means they change their life around.
Quote by JakobM “False. Current scams like christianity, islam, judaism were ‘revealed’ to only one guy. All the rest of people who believe in them are dupes who rely on second hand ‘information’”
That’s only false to you because you can’t wrap your mind around that concept, but that’s ok. The people who believed in them were guided by whoever received the revelations and felt God themselves after receiving the knowledge. They were told they were crazy by people just like you back then. But as a believer myself, I say again you would only feel it if your heart is open to it. Or else its quite impossible.
Quote by JakobM “By the way, do the voices that you hear in your head tell you that women must be enslaved, stoned, etc, if they don’t follow ‘god’s orders’?”
No and why would I? I told you already I didn’t hear voices in my head or anything like that when I “felt” God. So why would you say something like that, lol are you having fun? Islam doesn’t condone any of those behaviors, but since your idea of Islam is obviously coming from Taliban and other activity I see where you’re coming from so I don’t blame you for being ignorant, you hear it on the news so what else would you know about it? Enslaving women or stoning people to death won’t be found in Quran. I understand you seem pretty mad about religion, perhaps you had a bad personal experience, or blame it for other people’s bad experiences, or something like that? Its easy to take any ideology and turn it into a reason for violence by the illiterate and uneducated. Democracy being used to push war has been done already too.
Its impossible to prove anything to you anyway. Your MIND IS ALREADY CLOSED OFF from believing in God. You just want to have a good time arguing about something that bothers you internally and its obvious. So what’s the point? You are not someone who wants genuine answers.
There are many logical proofs for God’s existence and most of them depend on a certain view of philosophy and meaning already -namely an aristotelian-thomist one.
These proofs are logical primarily because they are reductio ad absurdum proofs (from what I gather) and they are divided into these headings: cosmological, ethical, and ontological.
These are all topics in old metaphysics -they’re so old I’d rather not even talk about them but if you have the time you can go google them.