Liberal Democracy and God

[Mole]

Are you a goat?

Even this goat knows that hypnosis can be induced by any repetition. And the repetitiion of religious dogma is no different. So the purpose of the repetition of religious dogma is to hypnotise the faithful.

And why is this?

This is because under hypnosis our critical faculties are asleep and we will believe anything we are told.

 

[onemoretime]

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.

Let's not forget that the very parts of his body that I'm assuming that he's using to type the digital letters of the alphabet are digital themselves. Indeed, the very word "digital" is a metaphor.

It's good for Victor not to know where he's going. When you know where you're going, you can only get to where you've already been. What's important is that no matter where he goes, Victor is welcome.

The question is, though, does Victor create the metaphors, or is Victor the metaphor himself, with other metaphors not being so much creations as incarnations?

 

[Sniffles]

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.

Well by today's standards, Lord Acton would probably be considered a conservative. I think you're referring to Tocqueville's arguments about democracies degenerating into "tyrannies of the majority".

 

[Xyk]

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

Ehhh, this one is debatable. Logic points to an accidental existence. The whole "too complex to happen accidentally" argument is inherently flawed. Consider an infinite universe with an infinite number of possible planets that might conceivably hold life. Let's say, for argument's sake (because I have no idea what the actual chance is), that there is a 1 in 10^398 chance that something as complex as human life could occur as an accident and chain reaction. In an infinite universe, there is bound to be one planet that had exactly the right circumstances at exactly the right time to create life exactly the right way. It's actually extremely likely.

 

[Beorn]

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.

This is dumb.

First, I don't know how to respond to blaming the holocaust on a jew.

Second, Jesus was anything but silent. His behavior was entirely subversive to the established institutions of power at the same time he avoided establishing any political organization himself that would inevitably be corrupted. Obviously, I don't buy the idea that Jesus instituted Peter as the first pope.

The man hung out with whores for crying out loud.

In our current day white elites make broad proclamations about equality and freedom all the while treating people of color they have relationships with as inferior.

Justice Thomas may be the most outspoken about this writing: “On the surface, Yale Law School was everything I’d hoped it would be. The students were smart, the environment relaxed but intellectually exciting. Yet I still felt out of place. I was among the elite, and I knew that no amount of striving would make me one of them."

Oh... wait... Thomas is RC. They probably just didn't like him because he abused children during study breaks.

 

[Mole]

A Signal Moral Failure

This is dumb.

First, I don't know how to respond to blaming the holocaust on a jew.

Second, Jesus was anything but silent. His behavior was entirely subversive to the established institutions of power at the same time he avoided establishing any political organization himself that would inevitably be corrupted. Obviously, I don't buy the idea that Jesus instituted Peter as the first pope.

The man hung out with whores for crying out loud.

In our current day white elites make broad proclamations about equality and freedom all the while treating people of color they have relationships with as inferior.

Justice Thomas may be the most outspoken about this writing: “On the surface, Yale Law School was everything I’d hoped it would be. The students were smart, the environment relaxed but intellectually exciting. Yet I still felt out of place. I was among the elite, and I knew that no amount of striving would make me one of them."

Oh... wait... Thomas is RC. They probably just didn't like him because he abused children during study breaks.

I guess it is a shock to realise Jesus and his disciples took institutional slavery for granted, just like everyone else around them.

Today we know that institutional slavery was the world's greatest evil, but neither Jesus, his disciples or the people of the era knew this.

 

[Mole]

Logic points to an accidental existence.

Surely natural selection is not accidental.

 

[Sniffles]

Sure Victor and that's why institutional slavery was largely abolished during the Medieval period. :rolli:

 

[Mole]

Sure Victor and that's why institutional slavery was largely abolished during the Medieval period. :rolli:

We both know that institutional slavery was abolished for the first time in human history by the House of Commons in 1833.

Then the Royal Navy was ordered to sail into the Atlantic and sink any Yankee slave ships.

 

[Sniffles]

We both know that institutional slavery was abolished for the first time in human history by the House of Commons in 1833.

Survey saids........XXX

Western Christianity saw matters differently. Its spread through western Europe was accompanied by calls for an end to chattel slavery. Saint Bathilde, the wife of the seventh-century Frankish king Clovis, was canonized, in part, for her efforts to free slaves and end the slave trade.

The result of hers and similar efforts was that, by the eleventh century, slavery had been effectively abolished in western Europe. The lone exceptions were areas under pagan or Muslim control. By the time Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica in the thirteenth century, slavery was a thing of the distant past. That's why Aquinas paid little attention to the subject, devoting himself instead to the issue of serfdom, which he considered "repugnant."

http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/ethics/BP_Christianity_and_Slavery.htm

Of course I've shown you this several times before in the past Victor. Is this the time it's going to finally sink in?

BTW, you also realise that religious revivalism was a key factor in the cause for abolishing slavery in the 19th century right? I mean one of the more famous person involved was John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace".

 

[Mole]

Survey saids........XXX

Of course I've shown you this several times before in the past Victor. Is this the time it's going to finally sink in?

BTW, you also realise that religious revivalism was a key factor in the cause for abolishing slavery in the 19th century right? I mean one of the more famous person involved was John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace".

You mean I can't hang slavery round your neck?

 

[Sniffles]

Does that mean you have no real counter-argument to present?

 

[Xyk]

Surely natural selection is not accidental.

I was referring to existence on a cosmic scale. Natural selection is accidental in that individual creatures don't usually select their mates in order to create Victor or Xyk in a distant future. That's an unexpected consequence. Our ancestors chose their mates based on their fitness for their environment and their ability to survive, as well as for silly sexual reasons. There's no long-term plan in mind when individuals choose their mates.

 

[A window to the soul]

It's actually extremely likely.

-technicolor yawns-

 

[Mole]

Snow and Soot

Does that mean you have no real counter-argument to present?

I find it hard to understand how you can say institutional slavery was abolished before 1833 when your country was conducting highly profitable institutional slavery up to and past 1833. In fact the Royal Navy was sent to shut you down.

On the other side of the ledger, my country has never known institutional slavery.

So I am pure as the driven snow, while you are black as soot.

 

[Sniffles]

How long are you going to ignore simple historical fact Victor?

 

[onemoretime]

I think the point is that religious people are no less evil than the rest of us, and yet, many of them spend an awful amount of time trying to convince us otherwise

 

[Beorn]

I guess it is a shock to realise Jesus and his disciples took institutional slavery for granted, just like everyone else around them.

Today we know that institutional slavery was the world's greatest evil, but neither Jesus, his disciples or the people of the era knew this.

The world's greatest evil lies in the heart of every person.

Individualism may free people to some extent from the tyranny of others, but it doesn't free them from the tyranny of their own evil hearts. This was one of the fundamental flaws of the enlightenment that progress would not only yield the good like a small pox vaccine, but also the nuclear bomb.

Moreover, If you understand this you are less prone to pat yourself on the back for the "progress" society has made. You understand that people are filled with evil and more often then not progress just means that we have become better at hiding our evilness. So instead of having black slaves on our plantations we have children working in sweat shops far out of sight and mind. Rather than having indentured servants and surfs we have indian visa slaves amongst us forced to work for low wages out if fear of being deported. Rather than having concubines we have abused troubled young women doing porn.

Western society has been transformed from a repugnant pile of dead bodies into nice white washed tombs. Much easier on the eyes, but still filled with death.

The only answer to this ever lurking evil is the triad of truth, beauty and goodness which I believe is perfectly personified in the triune God. These were present at the beginning of the enlightenment when Christianity still held some sway, but eventually were discarded as reason was "freed" from religion. Then we looked only to the God of progress.

And what has that God yielded us?

Without truth, beauty and goodness Modern life has brought with it not only great comfort and convenience, but we must deal with a materialistic fast paced life where tensions are constantly high because of the demands of pragmatism, yet we are surrounded on all sides by gigantic indifferent institutions of business and government.

The enlightenment was a lie. We cannot create our own paradise of meaning with reason alone. In the wake of this colossal failure we have seen the rise of popular postmodernism where people weary and despondent from the unfilled promise of the enlightenment have surrendered any real search for meaning favoring irony and indifference.

Stop living in the 17th century, Victor, and join the rest of us in the 21st century. You seem to be one of the few people who can't see with their own eyes the evils that the enlightenment has visited upon us. Even ignorant ass postmodern hipsters can see it and I know you're far smarter than most of them.

 

[A window to the soul]

I think the point is that religious people are no less evil than the rest of us, and yet, many of them spend an awful amount of time trying to convince us otherwise

Yes.

 

[Beorn]

I think the point is that religious people are no less evil than the rest of us, and yet, many of them spend an awful amount of time trying to convince us otherwise

The problem is that all people spend their time convincing themselves that they aren't any worst than the next guy when the truth is that we are all horrifically evil living only by the grace granted to us by God and each other.


[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otx49Ko3fxw"]Sufjan Stevens- John Wayne Gacy[/YOUTUBE]

"In my best behavior I'm really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards for the secrets I have hid"