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FirmhandKY -> RE: Hawking: Religion will be defeated by science (6/11/2010 6:19:06 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
quote:
Most Marxist still claim that Marxism is based on science.
The result has been endless misery, massive deaths, and at least two world wars.
Hi Firm. Gotta disagree here. I have looked under the bed and in the closet and I'll be fucked if I can find any science in Marx. A political-economic-materialistic-irreligious theory of class struggle .... Yes! But Science? I don't see it. So are we equating anything that is not religious to be Science?
Two World Wars? Wasn't WWI a conflict between Imperial Powers? The war began in 1914. Marxists came to power in 1917 and then had to fight a civil war in Russia. Don't think they were ever a factor in WWI. Were they?
No doubt that Marxism was a factor in the chaos of the Weimer Republic and deriviatives of it were factors in Italy and Spain but once Hitler took power and pushed back against France to the West and began to covet land in the East was not the genesis of WWII more Nationalist/Imperialist than marxist? And you could hardly call Japan marxist. They were clearly Imperialist in their motives.
Be interested in your reply.
Hi vincent,
A couple of different things went on in the thread, so it's easy to confuse the different lines of thought.
I never said WWI was a "science war". I actually said it was a political war, not related to religion.
The point about "Marxism" not being scientific is a good one. But it is not what Marxist philosophy says, nor what Marx, Engels and every Marxist leader since has said. They claimed it is science.
You and I might disagree that Marxism is "scientific", but there is indeed a clear lineage from Darwinism, and at the time that it was born (1800s), it was not laughed at. In fact, it gave color of authority to the Marxist movement. The claimed it as science (look at my last link for a contemporary claim of that). In the Soviet Union, you could even get a degree in "the science of Marxism".
Just like Hilter's eugenics and "final solution" grew out of the widely "acknowledged to be scientific" eugenics movement in the first part of the last century. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the subject, naming many of the scientist that supported it, and many of the nations that adopted laws based on the "scientific principles of eugenics".
My wider point was that if someone wishes to claim that this war or that war was "purely for religious reasons", and claim that "science couldn't lead to war and conflict", then they'd better be prepared for the counter-argument.
The fact is (as has been said by others) human beings have a great way of co-opting anything in support of what they want, and will claim both religion and science and anything else that they can to support their goals and objectives, good or bad.
So to claim that religion per se is the cause of conflict and destruction and wars is as wrong as it is to say that science is the cause of conflict and destruction and wars.
Human nature is at fault.
Firm
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