well I am not Christian, or am not part of any other religion. I am siding with the religious though because I see their point of view on how absurd it is to try to say that no religion is libertarian. religion can be a cultural system but as a Soren Kierkegaard implies, faith is a subjective matter and it is different for everyone. So in that sense, a religion can be just a libertarian as atheism.
but how is the bible, for example, against individual liberty or property rights?
Just as one might partition his mind between english and math?
That’s an interesting point, but it ignores the way I’m using the word “partition.” Aside from the fact that formal studies have shown that mathematical reasoning is highly based in language, the point I’m making would be more akin to believing that 2+2=4 in some instances but =5 in others.
well I am not Christian, or am not part of any other religion. I am siding with the religious though because I see their point of view on how absurd it is to try to say that no religion is libertarian. religion can be a cultural system but as a Soren Kierkegaard implies, faith is a subjective matter and it is different for everyone. So in that sense, a religion can be just a libertarian as atheism.
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say that religions can be compatible with libertarainism but not that the religions themselves are libertarian? Also, it depends on what religion one is talking about. Some of the basic moral tenets of Christianity and Islam, at least as interpreted by some, are in no way compatible with libertarianism. I’m thinking specifically about something like the Old Testament belief that one has the right to own slaves so long as done in the way Yahweh proscribes.
interesting point but since you said you agree with me on my statement, then you agree that Libertarianism stresses that politcal/economic thought is separate to faithful thought. therfore, the extreme skepticism and rationalism that you are talking about would only apply to political/economical thought and not faithful thought since they are separated.
This is the disambiguation difference between you and RJM. He has stated “No Religion (as a cultural system) is Libertarian”. While you have taken the route of calling religion a individual set of beliefs on nature or values, therefore religion can be Libertarian. This thread was not to debate subjective values but Religion (with a capital R). That is why I feel this thread was a bunch of shit flinging over nothing.
It is not a debate of the Bible. A sort of side note, the christians I am friends with enjoy the bible very much while they are strongly embarrased by their Religion (not their values/beliefs).
2+2=/=5 based on mathematical principle. So you are saying that one cannot believe in the supernatural because of study of nature? That does not follow because the supernatural cannot be studied naturally. Faith is “a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.” I do not have faith because my thoughts on the matter are “I don’t see why not,” but I don’t feel strongly about it. Someone having faith, however, would not really need to partition his mind unless he believes what he believes contrary to reason. Reason is basically just going with the evidence. If someone thinks that the Bible or just the general acknowledgement of a higher power is good evidence that there probably is one, they are being reasonable. And there are probably thousands of different reasons people have for beliving in a deity. If someone becomes aware of evidence for there being no deity, and if that evidence is stronger than the evidence for a deity, they are being unreasonable if they maintain faith (relative certainty.)
I am not necessarily arguing that religions are libertarian, but I am just saying that the question should not even be considered in Libertarian philosophy since it stresses that economic/political thoughts are separate to faithful ones
2+2=/=5 based on mathematical principle. So you are saying that one cannot believe in the supernatural because of study of nature? That does not follow because the supernatural cannot be studied naturally. Faith is “a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.” I do not have faith because my thoughts on the matter are “I don’t see why not,” but I don’t feel strongly about it. Someone having faith, however, would not really need to partition his mind unless he believes what he believes contrary to reason. Reason is basically just going with the evidence. If someone thinks that the Bible or just the general acknowledgement of a higher power is good evidence that there probably is one, they are being reasonable. And there are probably thousands of different reasons people have for beliving in a deity. If someone becomes aware of evidence for there being no deity, and if that evidence is stronger than the evidence for a deity, they are being unreasonable if they maintain faith (relative certainty.)
People can say they have faith based on reason all day long, but doing so is an equivocation. Faith is defined as believing something in the absence of a reason. If one wants to claim belief in the supernatural based on reason, that’s fine, but said person does not have faith. I also dispute the idea that the supernatural can be based on reason, but I’ll let that go for now.
What you’ll find if you ask the overwhelming majority of believers is that they believe in the supernatural for anything but reason, such as conformity with cultural norms, the wish to overcome death, or even making one feel better about the hardships of life. To me, the majority accept statism for similar rationales, i.e. not based on reason but based on a hope that X will come true if the state does it (having taken no time to critically examine it themselves).
Religion is a world view. Libertarianism is a political philosophy.
So uhhh…
Look it up. Religious faith means no such thing. And faith in general means believing “in the absence of proof” which is totally different from “in the abscence of reason” and not unreasonable at all (A few definitions include that it often means “without reason”, but this is not the original or common meaning. I do not defend anyone who has faith “without reason.”) Proof is in no way a necessity for believing something. People who are anti-religion become used to defining things based on their own prejudices against religion. Things like “faith” and “dogma” are in no way supportive of the claim that religion is ridiculous because it’s basically just reiterating the subject matter of religion, yet they (most people who attack religion) use the words like they are striking blows to religion. Same thing with saying “fairy tales” when talking about religion or creationists saying “you believe we all came from monkeys?” It’s very rhetorical and very circular. Excuse me for the tangent but it’s been done in almost all arguments I’ve been involved in and it’s a common mistake to believe that “faith” requires a lack of reason.
People do hold religious beliefs mostly due to this. That’s completely unreasonable. What you said was that faith required people to partition their mind and I don’t think that’s correct as long as they don’t aviod evidence that challenges their beliefs and take it into consideration. It’s understandable that most are afraid to do this, but if one does so and holds their position they have done nothing unreasonable and your statement is false. But what I think is that you believe faith to be unreasonable in the first place and therefore assume that anyone who comes to that conclusion is lying to themselves.
For the layman you are probably correct about most cases, but that doesn’t just apply to people with “faith,” but people just naturally accept the world around them.
Lifted from wikipedia:
"Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning, by establishing symbols that relate humanity to truths and values[1]"
Citation:
“While religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a “cultural system” (Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973). A critique of Geertz’s model by Talal Asad categorized religion as “an anthropological category.” (Talal Asad, The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category, 1982.)”
Theists often jest there are only two religions 1) God is God or 2) Man is God.
One interpretation of the symbols above could be 1) there are mysteries in the universe Man can not explain or 2) Man can explain everything in the universe.
I believe #1. If you have new evidence for #2 I am willing to consider it.
Hmm my personal interpretation of Man is God is a bit different. If one takes God to be everything and not a completely seperate identity(like the Old man in Michaelangelo’s painting).
Since man is part of “everything”, man is part of God yet can have no influence over god. Like how a water bubble is a temporary thing which is created then dies off, that is part of the ocean- but is not the all-encompassing ocean itself. I suppose there are so many deities/religions out there- that for non-theists its simpler to cast off all talk of God as reference to the same concept. But then talking about it at all becomes more of a game of “I’m more right than you are” rather than any actual understanding between different perspectives.
The deal is that it depends on what the religion teaches as a political system. Christianity has a pretty well defined personal code of behavior, but for politics, you can look at it any number of ways. There doesn’t seem to be an explicit condemnation of coercion with respect to property rights (I’m not even sure they had the concept of rights that we do today), so there are a lot of ways you can read into things. Personally, I think Jesus would have been a voluntary anarcho-communist, but hey, that’s my reading into it.
Also, the reason I think Christianity is a peculiar case is that it puts a lot more emphasis on the supposed afterlife and deems worldly concerns as secondary. Again, that’s always been my interpretation even when I was a Christian, but I could be wrong. At least with Islam and traditional Judaism, there is a lot more explicit recommendations regarding public behavior, law, and cultural norms.
What’s funny is I actually found faith in Christ partly due to becoming Libertarian.
Look it up. Religious faith means no such thing. And faith in general means believing “in the absence of proof” which is totally different from “in the abscence of reason” and not unreasonable at all (A few definitions include that it often means “without reason”, but this is not the original or common meaning. I do not defend anyone who has faith “without reason.”) Proof is in no way a necessity for believing something. People who are anti-religion become used to defining things based on their own prejudices against religion. Things like “faith” and “dogma” are in no way supportive of the claim that religion is ridiculous because it’s basically just reiterating the subject matter of religion, yet they (most people who attack religion) use the words like they are striking blows to religion. Same thing with saying “fairy tales” when talking about religion or creationists saying “you believe we all came from monkeys?” It’s very rhetorical and very circular. Excuse me for the tangent but it’s been done in almost all arguments I’ve been involved in and it’s a common mistake to believe that “faith” requires a lack of reason.
I believe we’re largely talking around one another because of a definitional issue, which I identified earlier, but it perhaps needs to be made more clear.
First, there are a few different senses in which one can use the term “reason.” One sense is what I would call a rationale. For example, say that I believe the ball hit the floor when I dropped it because God pushed it down with his invisible hand. This explanation is a reason in a very loose sense; it is a rationale that attempts to explain the phenomenon, but it is superficial. In the other sense, there is reason broadly defined: the very idea of critical thinking and logical argument. In this broad sense, one cannot even argue against reason since the very argument would affirm it in the denile, wrapping one in contradiction. I was using reason in this broad sense.
Second, this is still an equivocation. Your definition makes no distinction between faith and reason. If the two were identical, you would use them interchangably, but even you do no such thing. People who have faith may use reason up to a point, but once it reaches that point faith embarks upon its own course, jettsoning reason itself, and it is at that point that I complain. Classical definitions may say X, Y, or Z when defining “faith” but that matters little. What matters is the distinction between faith and reason as concepts.
Third, the idea that faith is defined as simply believing something “without proof” seems absurd. The only area where one gets proof is in something such as mathematics. Proof means one is absolutely certain. Very few areas of life fall into that category.
People do hold religious beliefs mostly due to this. That’s completely unreasonable. What you said was that faith required people to partition their mind and I don’t think that’s correct as long as they don’t aviod evidence that challenges their beliefs and take it into consideration. It’s understandable that most are afraid to do this, but if one does so and holds their position they have done nothing unreasonable and your statement is false. But what I think is that you believe faith to be unreasonable in the first place and therefore assume that anyone who comes to that conclusion is lying to themselves.
For the layman you are probably correct about most cases, but that doesn’t just apply to people with “faith,” but people just naturally accept the world around them.
It may be true that they look at evidence and decide to hold their position, but that does not mean those people are using reason in doing so. They are using faith, as I explained above. I’ve had religious people accuse me of having faith, which they can only maintain if they ignore the definitions of terms. One major reason for this equivocation is that faith smuggles in the concept of the supernatural, while reason does not. For that alone, the two words cannot be used interchangably.
What’s funny is I actually found faith in Christ partly due to becoming Libertarian.
That is interesting. I ended up becoming an atheist not long after accepting libertarianism.
I think you need some William Lane Craig 
I think the world needs less William Lane Craig. I grow tired of his cosmological/teleological/whatever arguments.
Nobody needs any William Lane Craig