You’ve only insulted me. You were too bashful to contact Molyneux.
Basically, this is a thinly veiled attack on atheism and it’s implications. And above all on passion. You use words like “militant”, because you fear the strength and assertive aspects of the military more so than the violence. You use “almighty” and “idol” because you fear the passion of religious life moreso than the irrational aspects. And of course you believe atheists also hate the military and the church (the good parts rather than the weak aspects) so you resort to these pathetic provocations so that we might question ourselves and discontinue.
I can tell you that we won’t be intimidated. Not me. Not Molyneux. Not any of us.
Religious people do not like that atheists would ever organize or ever put anything into effect, so they have to be shout people down with these appeals to weakness and passionlessness that matches their own boredom. Their own resigning to mediocrity. The worst part is that it’s in the most passive aggressive and pathetic terms. Have some damned dignity.
I haven’t insulted anyone on this forum, Magnus. However, I don’t see any particular reason why I should accept unfounded attacks on my character. Like being called a troll, for instance.
Not really, I can’t say I’m big fans of atheists but I have no issues with Walter Block for example. It’s just funny that you choose religion to attack, how original of a Molynoid.
Yes, you are very passionate about your cult leader, and yes it is very irritating. More so when the leader just so happens to be a second rate thinker at best, and an arrogant fool at worst.
Or because many people use the term “militant atheist” to describe themselves.
Congratulations?
You’re like a broken record really. You echo the same tired nonsense as the rest of the libertarian left, and you erected a huge strawman that you didn’t even manage to known down about the whole thing being about some sort of crusade against atheism.
You can’t mount a crusade against anything. I want you to mount a crusade. That’s why I said have some damn dignity.
You have no problem with Walter Block because he’s never taken any philosophical position. Even the “first-rate” philosophers you read probably never say anything either. But to perhaps fetishize nonsense that has no effect on anything or yourself.
I’ve read plenty of philosophers in my day. And I know which ones people gravitate towards when they want writers that will stay enough in the abstract not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Not that that is the sole purpose of philosophy – it is not – but there are writers in the business of existence and then there are those that ignore it for it obvious reasons. It is apples and oranges. But there’s a reason that the Bible says not to eat one of these fruit.
It’s better to believe in subjective crap (like your own generic “religiousness”), so it has no real consequence or seriousness attached to it. It’s basically an armistice with other weak belief systems. And with Walter Block who takes no position and teaches at a Jesuit school (that blasted his latest lecture).
Rand would do you some good. Walter Block, in fact, has Atlas Shrugged assigned in his intro to economics courses. I can give him that much towards trying to corrupt the poor Jesuit bastards.
Stefan Molyneux is not a philosopher. He is a conman, a malignant narcissist, (some say a “successful psychopath”), peddling a pile of junk intrinsicist sophistry called UPB, which says that things are good or bad in themselves, for all people, at all times, everywhere. Context, which modifies all moral statements, is ignored. Thus his “advice” is worse than useless.
People who dare question his statements too deeply are not tolerated for long on the FDR forum. He owns the community and he owns their thoughts and feelings. And they pay him for it. That’s a cult.
John, I’m not sure where you got the idea that Walter Block doesn’t take philosophical positions. In fact, my strongest objection to the way that Dr. Block presents himself is that he takes positions all too readily, sometimes without explicitly acknowledging the complexity involved in the issues with which is concerned.
You sound like you haven’t read a lot of philosophy (but maybe own a thesaurus). Which is strange, because you apparently have a lot of time on your hands.
Actually John, I think that’s a pretty fair criticism of Stefan’s theory. I made a similar argument here. (And I hope you don’t accuse me of not having read much philosophy!)
Come on, Short Seller, there’s no need for that. We try our best to maintain a civil atmosphere around here, and while I acknowledge that John’s post may have been incendiary, there’s still no place for outright insults in response.
While Molyneux does tend to rhetorically kiss Rand’s ass, his philosophy deviates from hers in some key areas, so I see no reason to conflate the two. His emphasis is on universalism, striking at the root of ideology and direct action in one’s personal life as a precondition to any large-scale realization of liberty. In my understanding, Molyneux’s main insight is into the psychological and cultural preconditions that state legitimacy relies on.
I suppose it comes LL being poorly defined (in my opinion anyway), it’s clear when BP and Juan fit in to all of this but what about Roderick Long for example who (as far as I know) believes in the usefulness of the political means and yet describes themself as a left libertarianism. And what if Hoppe were to advocate agorism, where would that put him?
It was actually a referance to similarities between the Randroids and the Molynoids.
You mean, the weak assumption that parents = God = the state? And his dubious argument that somehow accepting that children are reliant upon their parents at any early age and should therefore treat them with respect translates into we must accept the state later in life. I wonder where the atheist communists who despise the family and the cultural conservative anarchists fit into this, how about the atheist who advocates the family?
It’s funny that Molyneux should attack Hoppe, Rothbard and Block for not sticking to their principles and teaching at state universities and yet he is having a child. How amusing.
I think it’s clear that you have a simplified misinterpretation of Molyneux. In my understanding, his point is that there is a psychological root to the submission to arbitrary authority, and the state is merely a large-scale institutional manifestation of this. This is perfectly in line with Etienne La Boetie’s observation about how the state relies on ideology and passive resignation. Molyneux is trying to point out the degree to which religion and abusive family relations may play into this, how the state relies on raw dogma and bigotry to obtain compliance and how behavioral patterns emerge as the reflection of an underlying culture. It’s hardly a concern to be brushed aside entirely ad hoc.