The Libertarian War on Church Was Wrong

Miscellaneous History
61

To back my argument up, I really should hunt down the cite - I think it’s Hoppe - where he argues that the increase in the power and prevalence of the State order has correlated with a reduction in cultural variety, the number of languages, and so on. If I can remember where I read/heard this, I will cite it.

Please do if you can, also make sure and let me know if I am addressing your key point(s), as I am usnsure at the moment.

P.S. I did not mean to sound like I was calling you an Enlightenment parrot, I just enjoy taking a dig at the Enlightenment anytime and any chance I can (it wasn’t meant to refect on you)

62

I would rather read, and get more “truth” from the Iliad or The Book of John than some boring math or science book. It makes life more fun for me.

First off John is a farce, that really doesn’t fit in with the other Gospels. It ismy view that the only reason it made it into the Bible was because Jesus says “I am” instead of “you say it is so” when they ask if he is the messiah. BUt this is neither here nor there.

Second, what??? I can gaurantee you there is more truth in the first chapter of that science book than in all of any religous text, or anything else based on conjecture.

63

Second, what??? I can gaurantee you there is more truth in the first chapter of that science book than in all of any religous text, or anything else based on conjecture.

I think that depends on what is meant by ‘truth.’ A science textbook can tell you a lot about physics or whatever, but a religious text(or just a really a great piece of literture) can tell you a lot more about the human condition and how different people approach and deal with it.

I REALLY hate how people have come to equate scientific facts with ‘truth’.

64

I really hate how people think anyone who disagrees with superstition is an atheist…

If it isnt physical, it is subjective. If it is subjective, it isn’t true. That is the way I see it. But I guess it all depends on how you define truth. I think leaving truth up to subjectiveness is not only a fallacy, but dangerous.

65

I said the “Book of John”, not the Book of John as it relates to the “Bible” (whatever the hell the term Bible means) in a Xtian (whatever the hell that term means) context, If you can’t accept someone liking a Christian text, would it have been better if I would have said I find more truth in Goethe? As it is essentially the same argument. Don’t focus on the text I cited, that was ancilliary to my point being made.

I can gaurantee you there is more truth in the first

Lol:

Τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια (John 18:38)

66

It is not irrelevent if he was trying to correlate a specific doctrine with sociological actions and the consequences of them. It is not irrelevent if he was looking at how an institution was formed and the social ramifications that came out of a specific institution as a particualr time. Anything is or is not irrelevent based on context.

In addition, one religion cannot very well blame another religion for being bad. Since they both derive knowledge from faith – that could very well tell them anything. If it’s okay to believe things based on faith, a murderer’s intuition of God’s message is still valid.

Under the assumptions that such catagorizations as religions actually do and can exist, sure they can. Just as I can blame anyone I want for anything I want, or state how Bach is better than Brittany SPears and claim it to be 100% truth, as I am 100% truth, and I am not joking. Or if you wish, I can will untruth.

Luckily, God doesn’t exist. And we shouldn’t waste our time with it.

But you just did. Besides, I would rather read, and get more “truth” from the Iliad or The Book of John than some boring math or science book. It makes life more fun for me.

I don’t use use force or intimidation.

Everything is an act of force, and intimidation is a legal term

But it’s certainly possible that people are going to argue against your beliefs

It’s also possible that most secular humanists are downright boring and unpleasent to be around, so they could lose by just not being very fun.

I mean the conclusions from this discussion can only be irrelevant. Since religionists can shift the weight to ‘truth of God as commander of the universe’ that they believe makes Libertarianism or political pragmatism, as here implied as a given, problematic. So it it can only be a waste of time to walk down this avenue expecting two parties to agree. And as I don’t believe this myself, but in the meta of the conversation itself, I don’t believe I am wasting my time in intervening. A so called ‘war on the church’ can only be made on the grounds of questioning the objective truth – and it must be objective since they believe in exists here and not just in their minds; as a valid concept and not just unknowable qualia or feeling – of the religion’s claims themselves.

I don’t deny the category of religion exists. And I say that they can’t blame each other because they both use the same faith methodology. Neither claims to care about objective truth, until it is time to say the other one is crap. Then they don’t care so much about the faith. Then when a philosopher or scientist challenges them, they crawl back in their turtle shell ‘faith’ again. Or worse: claim both the scientist and themselves are based on faith; but somehow manage to claim themselves the moral victory all the same.

I retract my statement about ‘force’. But I think at the very least if people can put forward a belief, then at the very least they can grant equal ‘force’ to others. And even if my force be greater than theirs, if we belief that a stronger argument is greater force than a weaker one, then we must grant that they themselves believe that they are using more force than I. And in so doing, must grant me the privilege of using a disproportionate amount of force – in the definition we are using here of force.

I think you are confusing types of truth. Liking ice cream and paintings-enjoyment are both subjective epistemology; you can have all the claim you want to 100 percent truth. Religion is a claim in the realm of objective epistemology. So is atheism. Atheism and religion are in conflict. You liking ice cream versus me liking ice creaming is not. No one is tryng to limit discussion to one type of epistemology or the other – nor to rule out aesthetics – but to make the distinction and be honest. Iliad and a math book are both disected the same way when we extract ‘truth’ from it (and not just enjoyment): we have to reason to others about what it says. It is just an example of objective epistemology, with subjective epistemology cherry on top.

It could very be that in a free society most won’t live simply to entertain you. There might not even be big sports stadiums or Olympicses – ZOMG!

67

I really hate how people think anyone who disagrees with superstition is an atheist…

I actually changed my above post, because I’v realized that it wasnt, strictly speaking, accurate.

If it isnt physical, it is subjective. If it is subjective, it isn’t true. That is the way I see it. But I guess it all depends on how you define truth. I think leaving truth up to subjectiveness is not only a fallacy, but dangerous.

I kinda disagree with the subjective=/= true. There are certain areas where that isnt necessarly the case(such as art criticism).

However, leaving that issue aside, I never said the truth should be left to subjectivness, but should NOT be limited to scientific inquiery. There are other ways to approach learning, such as the construction(and refutation) of philosophical arguments.

I think this tendency to equate science with ‘truth’ is part of the reason of the supremecy of mainstream economics. They can claim to be speaking the ‘truth’ because they approach economics ‘scientifically’ while other schools(such as the Austirans), who reject the scientific approach cant have ‘the truth’ Because its not ‘scientific’

68

If you can’t accept someone liking a Christian text, would it have been better if I would have said I find more truth in Goethe?

If Goethe is all based on conjecture, then no. Its just as much goobledy ga as the Bible. It is fun and healthy to philosophize on the nature of reality. But 5000 years of subjective philosophy came to know far less truth about the world than the first 100 years of the Scientific Revolution.

What is truth? pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said “I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release the King of the Jews?”

They shouted back “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged…"
I could go on, that is from my physical Bible, not read off the internet. I am not some uneducated atheist. I like to read the things I disagree with as to better understand them.

So I guess my point is… so what? Truth is what can be objectively verified. Anything else is just conjecture. You can believe it, or take it with a grain of salt. The choice is up to you.

69

Pilate asks Τι εστιν αληθεια; (“What is truth?”)

but this is in response to Jesus saying: πᾶς ὁ ὢν ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας ἀκούει μου τῆς φωνῆς.

“Those who care about the truth follow me.”

Hence, my position that religion is about a claim to truth. And without the claim to truth there can be no setting free or following Jesus. So that must be the central issue.

In fact, in context the claim by Pilate is what makes Jesus punishable over someone who was actually criminal like Barabas, even though there are no real charges. A position, we find it, in defense of the absurd laws of the state and the mob since Pilate is a prefect of the Roman state! Who here is so ‘skeptical’ that they would make a claim like this in a court of law?

70

Religion is a claim in the realm of objective epistemology.

I think I am saying that ontology by a long shot trumps epistomology (in fact, in a way it is its creator) and it is the ontic being that can or can not choose to enter epistomological arguments. So much as a Religion, self, or whatever does not wish to define itself or justify itself with epistomological standards, and claims a form of ontological truth it trumps any episomological framework. If something claims ontological truth, it is up to another ontic to verify or reject it by their own standards.

While objective material reality may exist, and may be the only thing to exist (and I say it does) I can only know something through my being (dasein).

That said, closing statement is yours: I really don’t want to get into this topic on this thread.

71

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Logic isn’t some arbitrarily chosen “method,” it’s the expression of the law of non-contradiction, and it’s the same everywhere in the universe.

…And a “hunch” isn’t the same thing as superstition, one is a guess that could possibly be right, and the other is the act of irrationally clinging to something that clearly isn’t.

72

(The above was meant to be a reply to a post by Clayton on the first page)

73

Well, I think religion is also a claim to objective ontology: there is something conscious out there and consciousness emerges from matter (making it an object). In addition, heaven and hell – if they fit people in them – have to have a size and location (and thus an object). But even subjective ontology (like math or concepts) can be epistemically objective. That is you can say things about it, quantify it, do testing, etc.

So on both fronts religion is fighting:

A subjective ontology/objective epistemology: writing, reading, etc. about the concepts or feeling of religion.

and objective ontology/objective epistemology: making inferrences from/about the existence of an object (God) and places (hell/heaven).

Either or both of these count as the όντος. It is what is there in a religion.

And from this we can making claims about the validity/coherence of their concepts on the one hand. And on the other hand, we can expect God and heaven/hell to line up to the same expectations of any other type of object. Namely, that we can ask where exactly they are, how big, etc.

74

@John Ess:

lol, sorry I can’t help myself:

So much as I am unique and owner of all my properties: I have the ability and power to claim to be all and all to myself, undefinable by language, forever changing, and forever perfect (and I hold this as ontological fact). Everything I claim is valid. Any authority I wish to arbitrarily subject myself to (be it religion, freedom, reason, good, country, whatever) becomes valid. Of course, if such an authority can hold no power over you (that is John Ess) your rejection becomes valid as well. In this sense religion is valid. In the sense of some one who rejects but yet can still categorize it and deal with it, religion is valid.

If some one can not reject the tenets: there is the immaterial, a thing can not be itself, and a square circle exists and claim that these things are a fundamental part of their being, it is valid in an ontological sense. Of course you can easily shrug off and be non cognitive to such silly things, but so long as something is seen as valid by me it is valid, no matter how or why. And so long as you are catagorizing me in terms that can help affirm the fact that I belive in a square circle the concept of “Dondoolee believes in square circles” exists, is recognized, and a part of your reality in some form.

The thing that I claim as valid is forever true and forever valid so long as I have some form of power to make it such. If I recognize a god as being a fact and self evident just because of the very essence of my being, so be it. It is not religions claims that matter, but my acknowledgment and agreement of the religous claims. The power of my claim, by my power of being, by my power of describing and categorizing is the validation. From an ontological point of view the language is not the totality of the logic, I am.

75

I’ve presented no criticism of logic. But Austrian methodology is not merely logic.

I didn’t say they are they same. I said you cannot formally distinguish between them.

John Ess asked me to explain this, so I will.

To provide a formal distinction between two categories is to provide a decision procedure (or “algorithm”) to determine whether a thing is a member of the one category or the other. For example, let us say you want to formally distinguish between even and odd numbers. You could say, “divide the given number by 2, if the result is a whole number, then it is even, else it is odd.” This is a formal distinction. Many words we use differentiate between things that we cannot formally distinguish because they are just too fuzzy and complex. This is especially true when discussing human feelings and experience of the physical world. Science, helps us construct formal procedures for distinguishing many kinds of things in the physical world. For example, you can use the techniques chemistry to identify the elemental composition of an unknown substance. You can use an oscilloscope to distinguish between different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. And so on.

Clayton -

76

Faith is the single most destructive thing in human history imo. Faith in states, religions, theories, friends, family.

It may be valid to you. But I would really encourage all people to stop relying on what is valid to you, and start relying on what is valid to any objective observer.

77

I’m not even sure I agree with this completely, but I think you’re great.

78

I would say ignorance is the most destructive thing in human history. My faith in my family, in my morals, in myself (esteem) etc provide me great comfort and an advanced capacity to socialize.

79

I would say ignorance is the most destructive thing in human history. My faith in my family, in my morals, in myself (esteem) etc provide me great comfort and an advanced capacity to socialize.

I would agree with that. Tho I think faith is just a product of ignorance. You don’t know, so you have faith this is happening, or will happen. You dont know if you’re family will “jack” you, so you have faith that they won’t.

Im not saying faith in itself is bad. Just that, it is faith in Hitler that allowed Nazi’s, and faith in Stalin that allowed USSR. Faith in the church that led to the dark ages. Etc, etc Faith in business that leads to corporatism… it just goes on

80

Is it faith or is it conviction? Is their no basis for this “faith” of yours?