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Liberal Democracy and God

Mole

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Ever since the Enlightenment discovered that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, we have been limiting power with some success, for the House of Commons limited institutional power over slaves in 1833, and power over women was limited in the early part of 20th Century in Australia and New Zealand, and power over children was limited by our criminal courts at the end of 20th Century.

And it was liberal democracy that limited power, for the very purpose of liberal democracy is the limitation of power.

On the other hand, the very purpose of God is to maximise power. After all He created the whole universe and holds the power of life and death over each and every one of us, and this being not enough power, He can consign us to Hell or take us to Heaven in the afterlife.

So liberal democracy limits power and God maximises power.
 

esidebill

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Ever since the Enlightenment discovered that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, we have been limiting power with some success, for the House of Commons limited institutional power over slaves in 1833, and power over women was limited in the early part of 20th Century in Australia and New Zealand, and power over children was limited by our criminal courts at the end of 20th Century.

And it was liberal democracy that limited power, for the very purpose of liberal democracy is the limitation of power.

On the other hand, the very purpose of God is to maximise power. After all He created the whole universe and holds the power of life and death over each and every one of us, and this being not enough power, He can consign us to Hell or take us to Heaven in the afterlife.

So liberal democracy limits power and God maximises power.

A few things to pick out. You have to really find your definition for God first. I'd like you to put into your own words, what God is. I'll describe afterwards and maybe try and help you with the question.
 

Lark

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I would say a result of the Enlightenment rather than what the age what trying to do... aha.

I'm pretty sure the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was thought up by a conservative and they saw it as relating not to absolute monarchs but the absolutism they saw in demagogues or elections.

I'm not sure that the enlightenment was automatically about limiting the power of government or anyone else, in fact it sparked of most of the modern political ideologies and a lot of them were very short on limiting themselves, the authorities or others they thought should be invested with power. The enlightenment essentially made mankind over confident and invested it with the belief that there wasnt anything that wasnt knowable or changeable or immune to reinvention, there was a real disabling of consequential thinking for a while too, or at the very least the negative consequences of change where considered less important than the possible positive ones.

The feminist and other champions of womens and childrens liberation are among the greatest critics of the enlightenment since it was gender blind and paid no attention what so ever to those groups. Its been attacked as an entirely male enterprise which failed to know itself and its prejudices.

Victor has created his usual goodies vs. baddies dichotomy because he's all set to attack God and any believers who rise to the bait. As usual he's wrong though.
 

esidebill

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I'm pretty sure the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was thought up by a conservative and they saw it as relating not to absolute monarchs but the absolutism they saw in demagogues or elections.

I'm not sure that the enlightenment was automatically about limiting the power of government or anyone else, in fact it sparked of most of the modern political ideologies and a lot of them were very short on limiting themselves, the authorities or others they thought should be invested with power. The enlightenment essentially made mankind over confident and invested it with the belief that there wasnt anything that wasnt knowable or changeable or immune to reinvention, there was a real disabling of consequential thinking for a while too, or at the very least the negative consequences of change where considered less important than the possible positive ones.

The feminist and other champions of womens and childrens liberation are among the greatest critics of the enlightenment since it was gender blind and paid no attention what so ever to those groups. Its been attacked as an entirely male enterprise which failed to know itself and its prejudices.

Victor has created his usual goodies vs. baddies dichotomy because he's all set to attack God and any believers who rise to the bait. As usual he's wrong though.

Cool way to look at it. I'd be fine with him attacking me over God if he could prove he had the credentials to do so.
 

Mole

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The Godheads

A few things to pick out. You have to really find your definition for God first. I'd like you to put into your own words, what God is. I'll describe afterwards and maybe try and help you with the question.

There is the Hindu God, Ganesh, with the head of an elephant. And there is the Christian God with three heads. And there are all the Gods in between.

We are meaning creating animals and have created ten thousand Gods to give meaning to our lives.
 

Mole

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Keeping God off the streets.

Cool way to look at it. I'd be fine with him attacking me over God if he could prove he had the credentials to do so.

Credentials, credentials? I have street cred. As I swagger down the street, the little children cry, look out, look out, here comes Victor; the pretty girls bat their eye-lashes at me; and only my biggest, strongest and toughest lieutenant approaches me to keep me apprised of the God botherers. They all know, Victor is here, Victor is here to keep God off the streets.
 

esidebill

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There is the Hindu God, Ganesh, with the head of an elephant. And there is the Christian God with three heads. And there are all the Gods inbetween.

We are meaning creating animals and have created ten thousand Gods to give meaning to our lives.

Not good enough.
 

Mole

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The Silence of Jesus

I'm pretty sure the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was thought up by a conservative and they saw it as relating not to absolute monarchs but the absolutism they saw in demagogues or elections.

I'm not sure that the enlightenment was automatically about limiting the power of government or anyone else, in fact it sparked of most of the modern political ideologies and a lot of them were very short on limiting themselves, the authorities or others they thought should be invested with power. The enlightenment essentially made mankind over confident and invested it with the belief that there wasnt anything that wasnt knowable or changeable or immune to reinvention, there was a real disabling of consequential thinking for a while too, or at the very least the negative consequences of change where considered less important than the possible positive ones.

The feminist and other champions of womens and childrens liberation are among the greatest critics of the enlightenment since it was gender blind and paid no attention what so ever to those groups. Its been attacked as an entirely male enterprise which failed to know itself and its prejudices.

Victor has created his usual goodies vs. baddies dichotomy because he's all set to attack God and any believers who rise to the bait. As usual he's wrong though.

If only Jesus, or even one of his disciples, had once said they were opposed to institutional slavery, your position would be secure. But neither Jesus nor his disciples, even once, opposed institutional slavery.

And from that silence of Jesus and his disciples, all the other evils followed, like patriarchy, the abuse of children, the abuse of homosexuals and two thousand years of anti-semitism, climaxing in the holocaust.
 

esidebill

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They tell me God will judge me on the last day, and I dread His words, which are sure to be, "Not good enough".

I dislike people who beat around the bush :p Honestly, what is your knowledge of the Christian God. Just tell me everything you know off the top of your head.
 

Mole

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The Trinity

I dislike people who beat around the bush :p Honestly, what is your knowledge of the Christian God. Just tell me everything you know off the top of your head.

The christian God is three persons in one God. So the street defintion is the three headed God called Trinity.
 

Mole

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So thats all you base your arguments on? That description of God?

And then God went on to order Abraham to murder his son to test his obedience. But not being satisfied with that he became offended by us and in order to forgive us, he tortured his Son to death.

Tell me truly, is God the kind of person you would invite to dinner on Long Island?
 

esidebill

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And then God went on to order Abraham to murder his son to test his obedience. But not being satisfied with that he became offended by us and in order to forgive us, he tortured his Son to death.

Tell me truly, is God the kind of person you would invite to dinner on Long Island?

Well, who is to say God is actually a person at all? Hehe.
 
H

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I have street cred. As I swagger down the street, the little children cry, look out, look out, here comes Victor; the pretty girls bat their eye-lashes at me; and only my biggest, strongest and toughest lieutenant approaches me to keep me apprised of the God botherers. They all know, Victor is here, Victor is here to keep God off the streets.

Victor does it like a boss!

naughty-memes-like-a-boss21.jpg


like-a-boss-t-shirts_design.png
 

onemoretime

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I'm pretty sure the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was thought up by a conservative and they saw it as relating not to absolute monarchs but the absolutism they saw in demagogues or elections.

Dude, that's Lord Acton, well known for being a Liberal of his day. The statement was made in a letter arguing against the doctrine of papal infallibility:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Then again, he also said:

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Ultimately, the power corrupting argument is one against consolidation of power, be it in a king, emperor or pope. It's also a 19th Century argument, and not so much an Enlightenment one, since, for many, the ideal of the Enlightenment was that power be concentrated in a benevolent enlightened despot. Democracy and representative government were a distinctly English perversion of that idea. It was only later in the Modern Era that these became less about protecting one's rights as an Englishman and more as universal ideals for humanity, mostly arising because of the dominance of the British Empire during that era.

I'm not sure that the enlightenment was automatically about limiting the power of government or anyone else, in fact it sparked of most of the modern political ideologies and a lot of them were very short on limiting themselves, the authorities or others they thought should be invested with power. The enlightenment essentially made mankind over confident and invested it with the belief that there wasnt anything that wasnt knowable or changeable or immune to reinvention, there was a real disabling of consequential thinking for a while too, or at the very least the negative consequences of change where considered less important than the possible positive ones.

The major issue was that the powerful began to believe that everything could be understood through Reason. Empiricism had only secondary importance; what was of primary importance was that everything made logical sense. It was Ti on extreme overdrive. Luckily, Hume and Kant stepped in to knock some sense into the movement and ground it in a more intuitive grasp of reality.

The feminist and other champions of womens and childrens liberation are among the greatest critics of the enlightenment since it was gender blind and paid no attention what so ever to those groups. Its been attacked as an entirely male enterprise which failed to know itself and its prejudices.

This is of course, natural. Women, after all, have typically been the strongest defenders and most stalwart guardians of religion, for they are the ones with the spiritual power of creation within, and the ones with all-powerful, despotic rule over the children. Children have most acutely represented spirituality and faith. It is by faith alone that we connect with our parents, and trust that they will provide for and protect us, while guiding our moral education.

Men grow to separate from that structure and fulfills his duty apart from it in some way. Historically, a woman's growth led to the assumption of power within the structure, and she fulfills her duty within it.

Victor has created his usual goodies vs. baddies dichotomy because he's all set to attack God and any believers who rise to the bait. As usual he's wrong though.

Who knows what Victor is up to?
 

Mole

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Who knows what Victor is up to?

Well, the nicest thing, the sweetest thing, is that Victor doesn't know himself, for he is reaching into the unknown with radioactive metaphors with a short half-life. Victor has had one success with a radioactive metaphor with a long half-life, and that is the metaphor of Jack Flak.

The metaphor of Jack Flak has not decayed and we can only presume, after many thousands of posts, that the metaphor of Jack Flak has a long and stable half-life, quite unlike many of the metaphors Victor has given us.

Each metaphor takes us into unknown territory, for a metaphor is a bridge between the known and the unknown.

And indeed Victor himself is a refugee from the analog world to the digital world. Victor is a digital migrant. Victor has crossed the metaphoric bridge from the analog to the digital.

Some are born digital; some have digital thrust upon them; and some achieve digital citizenship. And why not, Victor's very DNA is digital; the very computer he is writing on is digital; and the very words he is using are digital, comprising twenty-six digital letters of the alphabet.
 
A

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^Interesting post.

On the other hand, the very purpose of God is to maximise power. After all He created the whole universe and holds the power of life and death over each and every one of us, and this being not enough power, He can consign us to Hell or take us to Heaven in the afterlife.

I believe God's purpose is to have a relationship with us; for a family; hence creation of mankind.

There is the Hindu God, Ganesh, with the head of an elephant. And there is the Christian God with three heads. And there are all the Gods in between.

There is only one creator of our universe. Our existence is not an accident.

If only Jesus, or even one of his disciples, had once said they were opposed to institutional slavery, your position would be secure. But neither Jesus nor his disciples, even once, opposed institutional slavery.

And from that silence of Jesus and his disciples, all the other evils followed, like patriarchy, the abuse of children, the abuse of homosexuals and two thousand years of anti-semitism, climaxing in the holocaust.

What graffiti'd bridge did you steal that from??

We have a free will to choose good or evil; faith or faithlessness. None of us are saints, nor will we ever be "good enough". That's where Jesus comes in and dies on the cross for us. We aren't saved by good works, "lest no man should boast". It's by grace through faith...

They tell me God will judge me on the last day, and I dread His words, which are sure to be, "Not good enough".

Not. Are you a goat?

I dislike people who beat around the bush :p Honestly, what is your knowledge of the Christian God. Just tell me everything you know off the top of your head.

+1
 
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