RE: Indoctrination

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GotSteel -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 4:21:24 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn Unless you have the numbers to back up the implicit notion that these Catholics and Baptists successfully used any religious arguments for their participation in the deregulation mania. I'm explicitly not pushing that notion right here: quote: ORIGINAL: GotSteel quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn If you could point out to the audience here just how the notion of "god hates sex" had anything to do with Goldman Sachs effectively running the NY Fed and supplying one US Treasury Secretary after another (Rubin, Paulson), or how oil company lobbyists keep popping up in the EPA, or how Monsanto's Michael Taylor keeps insinuating himself into every administration, from Bush I right up until this administration, that would be of potential benefit. It doesn't, I've never ever taken the position that those two things have a causal link. I really can't ask you guys strongly enough to stop adding "all" to my arguments in completely inappropriate places. If you want to debate somebody who thinks that all of Americas problems stem from religion you will need to look elsewhere. I'm perfectly well aware that there's more than one problem in our country, are you? So, please let me explain my position. Don't ignore what I'm saying and hand me your turd. Furthermore I'll ask you again, are you aware that there's more than one problem in our country?

Edwynn -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:25:08 AM)
A good number of readers of any of my posts in this and in other threads are able to discern that I am well aware of a number of problems in this country and in the world, your comprehension level notwithstanding. In any event, we are discussing the cause of these problems, and in my estimation you seem to have blind focus on one particular cause, regardless of actual magnitude of that cause. I am pointing out that secular ideology, particularly of the political sort, is far greater cause of a number of problems than religious influence.

PeonForHer -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:31:02 AM)
quote: As a child, I heard we can't consciously control our ear lobes, so I had a look at a muscle chart and tracked down the area of my sensorimotor self image that covers those muscles in front of a mirror in order to learn how to do it. Aswad, did your parents lock you in the house a lot when you were a child?

vincentML -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:49:15 AM)
quote: I'm saying (a) that a fatwa, as used here, is an edict (decree or ruling) by someone with the authority to make one (e.g. Obama), in this case an edict of extrajudicial killing, and (b) that BHO's use of drones on targets in the ME is pretty much guaranteed to be incompatible with their values in the sense of not permitting peaceful coexistence. I've stated no opinion here on BHO's choice of targets, and particularly not in his own frame of reference, according to his own goals. As you say, I have no solid knowledge on his guiding principles, which is one of the things that make it incompatible with my own values: the opaque nature of the decision making process, and the extrajudicial nature of the execution of these fatwas (if you'll pardon the loan). Please clarify so I can frame an appropriate answer. Are you saying here that the incompatability lies between the premise at the starting point of Obama's logic as against the values of the values in the ME or more pointedly in Pakistan's tribal region?

PeonForHer -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:55:29 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn I am pointing out that secular ideology, particularly of the political sort, is far greater cause of a number of problems than religious influence. How you'd separate the two kinds of ideology is a very vexed subject. Just saying. There are some thinkers, particularly in the post-modern tradition, who believe that the entire Enlightenment project - thinking in general, not just science, let alone political thought - owes more to attitudes 'smuggled in' from what preceded that Enlightenment than its proponents currently realise.

vincentML -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 6:20:30 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: PeonForHer quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn I am pointing out that secular ideology, particularly of the political sort, is far greater cause of a number of problems than religious influence. How you'd separate the two kinds of ideology is a very vexed subject. Just saying. There are some thinkers, particularly in the post-modern tradition, who believe that the entire Enlightenment project - thinking in general, not just science, let alone political thought - owes more to attitudes 'smuggled in' from what preceded that Enlightenment than its proponents currently realise. You make a very good point. It is an error to think the Protestant Revolution and the Catholic Reformation/Reaction simply melted away with the rise of science and political liberalism. Additionally, militant Islam very much plays a role in the political calculations of this post-modern era.

Edwynn -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 9:18:03 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: PeonForHer quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn I am pointing out that secular ideology, particularly of the political sort, is far greater cause of a number of problems than religious influence. How you'd separate the two kinds of ideology is a very vexed subject. Just saying. There are some thinkers, particularly in the post-modern tradition, who believe that the entire Enlightenment project - thinking in general, not just science, let alone political thought - owes more to attitudes 'smuggled in' from what preceded that Enlightenment than its proponents currently realise. In the US more so than in other Western countries, religion certainly is a part of some variants of political ideology. What I am separating out are issues for which religion does not play any significant role, such as most regulation. Some adherents of 'free markets' are religious, some are atheists, some agnostic, but in any case I never see any reference to religious considerations in the arguments for or against, nor any discernible religious undertone. Not in any serious debates on the issue, in any event.

Kirata -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 10:37:05 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn What I am separating out are issues for which religion does not play any significant role, such as most regulation. Some adherents of 'free markets' are religious, some are atheists, some agnostic, but in any case I never see any reference to religious considerations in the arguments for or against, nor any discernible religious undertone. Not in any serious debates on the issue, in any event. I think you may be underestimating the role of religion here. From a historical perspective, the cultural norm placing a positive moral value on doing a good job because work has intrinsic value for its own sake was a relatively recent development (Lipset, 1990). Work, for much of the ancient history of the human race, has been hard and degrading... The attitudes toward work which became a part of the culture during the sixteenth century, and the economic value system which they nurtured, represented a significant change from medieval and classical ways of thinking about work (Anthony, 1977)... With the Protestant Reformation, and the spread of a theology which ordained the divine dignity of all occupations as well as the right of choosing one's work, the underpinnings of an emerging capitalist economic system were established. As to the current state of affairs... The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued “productive industry” without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America’s balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty — *virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion... Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the “Protestant ethic” and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism... After flourishing for three centuries in America, the Protestant ethic began to disintegrate, with key elements slowly disappearing from modern American society, vanishing from schools, from business, from popular culture, and leaving us with an economic system unmoored from the restraints of civic virtue. Not even Adam Smith — who was a moral philosopher, after all — imagined capitalism operating in such an ethical vacuum.* Bailout plans, new regulatory schemes, and monetary policy moves won’t be enough to spur a robust, long-term revival of American economic opportunity without some renewal of what was once understood as the work ethic — not just hard work but also a set of accompanying virtues, whose crucial role in the development and sustaining of free markets too few now recall. The bolded italics in these excerpts are mine, but I want to stress that I'm not suggesting that ethical behavior is impossible without religion. What I am suggesting is that ethics, a country's basic moral philosophy, is more important than it's economic system. Good people can make a bad system work, but enough bad people will destroy anything. References: http://rhill.coe.uga.edu/workethic/hist.htm http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_work-ethic.html K.

Aswad -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 4:44:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: PeonForHer Aswad, did your parents lock you in the house a lot when you were a child? Naw, I was pretty much self regulating. And if they had, I would've just become Houdini, minus the drowning. [:D] IWYW, — Aswad.

Aswad -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 4:46:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: vincentML Please clarify so I can frame an appropriate answer. Are you saying here that the incompatability lies between the premise at the starting point of Obama's logic as against the values of the values in the ME or more pointedly in Pakistan's tribal region? I'm saying that if my values lead me to trying to kill you while your values say I shouldn't kill you, then that's an incompatibility right there. Is that clearer? (I'm happy to try again if not.) IWYW, — Aswad.

Aswad -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:04:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata Good people can make a bad system work, but enough bad people will destroy anything. Hell, yes. That's one of the tragic things that I found so moving in Der Untergang, the convincing rendition of the sheer number of good people that were caught in the middle of a proverbial apocalypse. While there were a bunch of douchebags there, too, the vast majority were in fact quite decent, good people who did their best in the midst of everything falling apart, and kept on trying, despite the near certainty of being caught by an advancing army that eventually committed, for instance, on the order of up to 2 million rapes of civilians (a quarter million or so were gang raped to death in Germany alone). When good apples don't chuck bad apples out of the basket, the whole basket spoils, more often than not. (And, in case some of our Soviet apologists should care to object, let me just forestall that by pointing out that I'm aware that the Soviets eventually did try to curb some of this. Toward the end, you could often get a soldier killed on the spot just by claiming he'd done a thing like that, with no evidence presented. But this doesn't change the numbers, which- while varying between sources- tend to the high end of the estimation range.) When good apples don't chuck bad apples out of the basket, the whole basket spoils, more often than not. I've often said good intentions are both the source of most problems in Norwegian politics, while good people are the reason the country gets by even if the system itself is screwed in most conceivable ways as far as implementation is concerned. (Kind of close to the Reich, actually, with our Labor Party having an ideology that could best be described as a modernized, less proud, more humble version of the original ideology of the NSDAP. And the system fucked up in many of the same ways.) And with that, we return to our scheduled programming. [:D] IWYW, — Aswad.

jlf1961 -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 5:59:50 PM)
Can I let you people in on a secret? I have it on good authority that Reality TV shows, the talent shows like X Factor etc, America's Next Top Model and stuff like that are loaded with subliminal messages that is supposed to turn you into willing servants of the NWO. The only safe channels to watch are CSPAN1, CSPAN2, and the Playboy Channel. By the way, the truth is that President Obama is an alien/human hybrid, like the royal family of Great Britain.

meatcleaver -> RE: Indoctrination (12/3/2012 10:51:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: jlf1961 By the way, the truth is that President Obama is an alien/human hybrid, like the royal family of Great Britain. The Royal family aren't hybrids, they are 100% alien.

GotSteel -> RE: Indoctrination (12/4/2012 3:49:51 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn A good number of readers of any of my posts in this and in other threads are able to discern that I am well aware of a number of problems in this country and in the world, your comprehension level notwithstanding. Great then it should be really obvious to you that changing the subject between one problem and another and pretending that my argument applies to your red herring when I've explicitly stated otherwise is majorly dishonest.

GotSteel -> RE: Indoctrination (12/4/2012 5:00:20 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Quite simply put, we're talking about two entirely different things, and if you're unable- rather than unwilling- to recover my point from what I've already said, it would probably take an unjustifiable amount of time and effort to lead you to the point I was making. Yes we are talking about two different things, you've incorrectly added your definition of axiom into my worldview in order to make the claim: quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: vincentML How do you answer GotSteel's claim that Faith is a faulty premise that pollutes logic in solving other issues? It's been answered several times in this thread already: axioms are indispensable in making logic actually do anything. I've been pointing out that error to you for several pages now. quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: You're talking about axioms (self evident truths) it doesn't get much more self evident than being able to find your own ass. You shouldn't even have to use both hands. Under about a million and one assumptions, the location of the ass is hard coded into your neural fabric, and in terms of self evident truth it is meaningless, as there are a number of things hard coded into your neural fabric that have no meaningful correlates in the real world. Dropping a few assumptions, you could be stuck in the frickin' Matrix and be able to fire those neurons in interaction with the machine to provide you with the illusion that you've found your ass, while in fact you've never found, seen or felt your ass, as your mind is entirely without any route to accessing your ass. Sure enough, it would seem meaningful that your mind and the simulation agreed, in the context of your simulated life, but that's as far as it goes. You seem to be thinking that I don't get what you're saying, I do get it, I'm perfectly well familiar with solipsism. I just don't buy into conspiracy theories without good reason to do so. quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Now, Wikipedia has, among other things, this to say about axioms: «As used in modern logic, an axiom is simply a premise or starting point for reasoning. Axioms define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted within the particular domain of analysis, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory and domain dependent) truths.» Um that wikipedia is really overstating the dictionary entry it's citing as a source quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad For instance, simplified, if we postulate (set forth the axiom) that lives have equal value, and that conserving life is the foremost moral imperative, then we might- in the domain of ethics- deduce that the most ethical measure is the one that conserves the most lives total, though there's obviously a ton of other axioms to that which I didn't list in this absurdly simple example. But if we postulated, instead, that ending lives is the foremost moral imperative, then we would similarly deduce- with equal correctness- that the most ethical measure is the one that kills the most people, with the same caveats. Without a choice of axioms, postulates, or whatever else you prefer to call it, rationality itself cannot determine the correctness of either conclusion. With an arbitrary choice of axioms logic can from there be used to determine that either conclusion is correct or any other conclusion one wants to reach for that matter. quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Yes, what you've been reared with is so familiar that it provides an illusion of selfevidentiality, but in the end, whatever you want to do is going to come down to arbitrary givens, hardwired instincts and nothing else, with rationality providing only a means to effectively pursue what derives from another source than rationality. Thing is you've got a conspiracy theory in there mucking up your whole line of reasoning to get to that conclusion. This is an example of what I'm talking about, that one bad position breaks all sorts of other stuff down the line. You've put solipsism is credible in and unicorns are credible pops out: quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: GotSteel Well here's an american group who has faith in unicorns: What's your point? I don't mind if people believe in unicorns (of whatever sort). IWYW, — Aswad. All right I absolutely have to get going at this point, I'll have to come back to the rest.

vincentML -> RE: Indoctrination (12/4/2012 8:18:06 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: vincentML Please clarify so I can frame an appropriate answer. Are you saying here that the incompatability lies between the premise at the starting point of Obama's logic as against the values of the values in the ME or more pointedly in Pakistan's tribal region? I'm saying that if my values lead me to trying to kill you while your values say I shouldn't kill you, then that's an incompatibility right there. Is that clearer? (I'm happy to try again if not.) IWYW, — Aswad. It is abundantly clear. Problem is you are now mucking the issue of axioms with values. A logical deduction and conclusion based on an axiom need not have anything to do with values. Put another way different logic systems may be incompatable with each other while each system is coherent within itself depending upon the premise. If Obama begins with the premise that it is desirable to disrupt terrorist groups the world over by use of drones it may follow logically that the drones are a suitable means to the end, and fuck all cares about the compatability with the values of the Pakistanis. Now, Obama's premise may be faulty and the logical conclusion does not lead to the desired effects or there are unintended consequences which are more harmful to the cause. In a similar vein, the use of the existence of a supernatural world as an axiom for logical outcomes in the material world is faulty, unless you can come up with an instance where such a premise has lead to a logical prediction that worked in the world of Nature. The idea that an axiom may be just a starting point regardless of its validity in mathematical system building or in a logical system is fine until it comes to testing it in real world applications. Then its validity rises or falls on the success of the outcomes it predicts. And so does the logical system. Otherwise, you are just going down the rabbit hole.

GotSteel -> RE: Indoctrination (12/4/2012 6:57:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad That's precisely because I don't implicitly trust that anything I believe myself to know has any actual truth to it. I hope that I'm misunderstanding this because what I'm seeing sounds seriously mentally unhealthy.

Kirata -> RE: Indoctrination (12/4/2012 8:19:34 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: GotSteel quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad That's precisely because I don't implicitly trust that anything I believe myself to know has any actual truth to it. I hope that I'm misunderstanding this because what I'm seeing sounds seriously mentally unhealthy. The alternative to Aswad's position is to implicity trust that anything one believes oneself to know must actually be true, a stunning conceit that is without doubt the single most notable characteristic of virtually every pestilent whacko who has ever infested humankind. K.

PeonForHer -> RE: Indoctrination (12/5/2012 5:51:40 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata The alternative to Aswad's position is to implicity trust that anything one believes oneself to know must actually be true, a stunning conceit that is without doubt the single most notable characteristic of virtually every pestilent whacko who has ever infested humankind. It's also the conceit of someone who stays alive by jumping off the railway track rather than getting splattered by what he believes he knows is an oncoming train. Just saying.

Edwynn -> RE: Indoctrination (12/5/2012 7:06:20 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: PeonForHer quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn I am pointing out that secular ideology, particularly of the political sort, is far greater cause of a number of problems than religious influence. How you'd separate the two kinds of ideology is a very vexed subject. Just saying. There are some thinkers, particularly in the post-modern tradition, who believe that the entire Enlightenment project - thinking in general, not just science, let alone political thought - owes more to attitudes 'smuggled in' from what preceded that Enlightenment than its proponents currently realise. I forgot to mention in my earlier response: These post-modern thinkers you speak of, to whatever degree correct, are not going back far enough, they are speaking to that one transition alone. It is obvious in reading the first religious texts that a number of "secular" items were 'smuggled in' to that process. In any case, humans are innately curious and innately social, and the desire to understand the world (universe) and the need to find a way to deal with each other are what begat religion and philosophy. Philosophy, religion, morality, "common sense," have crossed paths and intertwined through out history. In Oriental philosophy/religion these concepts and resulting precepts are noticeably more integrated, e.g.

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