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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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Somebody refresh my memory; wasn't Agathon formerly a halfway-rational human being, as opposed to being more psychotically anti-faith than Sava? I seem to remember something like that, less than a year ago now...okay, either way, I'm officially introducing a supplement to Godwin's Law.
ELOK'S LAW: Anyone who advises the destruction or suppression of literature or other media of communication, by burning or any other means, is probably best ignored, simply because the end of society's discussion or exchange of ideas will ultimately lead to the end of human civilization.
Maybe this should be called "Voltaire's Law." Nah, screw him, he should have staked the claim while he was alive, in some more concrete form than that one whiny quote the ACLU always drags up.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Blah blah blah... you sound just like John Stuart Mill. Meanwhile in the real world, people aren't particularly nice or reasonable and are prone to fanatical beliefs that do serious damage.
Your Enlightenment liberalism has been a dead duck since Nietzsche. |
Is that so? Then tell me, given the evidently large numbers of people who believe differently from you, why should they not rise up and kill you just to shut you up to keep you from disupting society further? There are different measures of good and bad, and you give me no reason to suppose yours should be imposed over mine rather than vice versa, even supposing there should be such an imposition at all. If you want to convince us that yours is not a "fanatical belief," you're not doing a bang-up job of it so far.
I do find the Enlightenment naive in many ways, but the basic precept of encouraging free speech with all its negative repercussions always appeared to me to be self-evident. That is to say, if you believe dangerous ideas should be repressed, am I agreeing or disagreeing with you when I have you killed to shut you up?
Personally, as you might have noticed if you think back on just about anything I ever wrote, I do not believe people are nice and reasonable. Quite the opposite. I believe humanity is insane and prone to brutality, and my view of human nature has been dubbed obscenely pessimistic by roughly half of the people I ever debated with here at poly. But I believe that also obligates us all the more to watch our own conduct first and foremost, as we are in the best position to do so. People won't stop being insane and brutal until they decide not to themselves, and one person is a start.
Finally, please don't mention Nietzsche to me. If hateful screaming of ad hominems and pitiful amateur psychoanalysis of your opponents made you a philosopher, Ann Coulter would be considered the new Socrates. But it doesn't, she ain't, and Nietzsche was a delusional incompetent who still holds an audience only by virtue of his appeal to the spirit of pointless adolescent rebellion. Kind of like Catcher in the Rye, only with bigger words, and in German.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by bfg9000
If she allows herself to be seduced by me, she shares my values. If she is that open to a sexual experience, she will have one. And it might as well be with me instead of someone else. |
And if you're willing to manipulate her values to achieve your desired end of sex, regardless of what they actually say, you must share those values, right? 
Seriously, if you're not even respecting her beliefs there's a problem with this relationship, even I can tell. Healthy relationships are not based on subversion of one person's principles by the other. Even if you like the sex, you'd do better in the long run to let it go, because chances are that you'll hurt her or yourself, or both, by playing this game.
Yes, I know, you're trying to free her from the naughty evil ideology that consumes her life, but she's presumptively a big girl, and can make decisions on her own. She has chosen to have or hold on to her current beliefs, and if they do need to be tested it shouldn't be by someone with an avowed ulterior motive. Soul-searching should be done with an eye for the truth, whatever it is, not "whatever gets me laid." That's more than a little arrogant and inconsiderate to me.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
Is that so? Then tell me, given the evidently large numbers of people who believe differently from you, why should they not rise up and kill you just to shut you up to keep you from disupting society further? There are different measures of good and bad, and you give me no reason to suppose yours should be imposed over mine rather than vice versa, even supposing there should be such an imposition at all. If you want to convince us that yours is not a "fanatical belief," you're not doing a bang-up job of it so far. |
Gee... I'm convinced... I guess if people believe differently than doctors on medical matters we should allow them to set hospital policy.
And where did I say that I have to give you a reason. I didn't. In a world where a large number of people believe in things like astrology and are incapable of being convinced otherwise, your view has no merit. It just isn't practicable.
quote:
I do find the Enlightenment naive in many ways, but the basic precept of encouraging free speech with all its negative repercussions always appeared to me to be self-evident. |
Well it's not, or everyone would agree with it.
quote:
That is to say, if you believe dangerous ideas should be repressed, am I agreeing or disagreeing with you when I have you killed to shut you up? |
This is like a bad first year paper. Your agreement or disagreement matters not. Again... take the case of experts like doctors... are we to listen to you or to the doctors? Should we shoot the doctors for disagreeing with you?
Your mistake is to assume equality between expert beliefs and non-expert beliefs. The "who's to say" question is irrelevant -- in practical terms the experts say. If you don't like it, too bad.
There is no equality between experts and non-experts. That is a trivial fact which everyone accepts, except in the field of ethics and politics, but there is no good reason not to accept it there too.
In the case of the Bible, it is simply a collection of false doctrines. People might like them, or believe them, but that doesn't make them any less false. They also have a pernicious effect on society in that many believers wish to impose this crap on others.
quote:
Personally, as you might have noticed if you think back on just about anything I ever wrote, I do not believe people are nice and reasonable. Quite the opposite. I believe humanity is insane and prone to brutality, and my view of human nature has been dubbed obscenely pessimistic by roughly half of the people I ever debated with here at poly. But I believe that also obligates us all the more to watch our own conduct first and foremost, as we are in the best position to do so. People won't stop being insane and brutal until they decide not to themselves, and one person is a start. |
Then abandon your ridiculous position. Some views can be recognized by all competent observers to be toxic, in the same way that some medical practices are recognized by all doctors to be dangerous or ineffective.
quote:
Finally, please don't mention Nietzsche to me. If hateful screaming of ad hominems and pitiful amateur psychoanalysis of your opponents made you a philosopher, Ann Coulter would be considered the new Socrates. But it doesn't, she ain't, and Nietzsche was a delusional incompetent who still holds an audience only by virtue of his appeal to the spirit of pointless adolescent rebellion. Kind of like Catcher in the Rye, only with bigger words, and in German. |
No. Sorry... I'm no Nietzsche worshipper, but that characterization is just laughable.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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Well, if you want to look at it "functionally," as such, why are you even bringing up points if you're not going to defend them and investigate them, try to see others' perspectives on them? WTF kind of philosophy teacher are you? Why are you posting this crap if you're not even going to discuss it? Is this some form of existential stress relief, gratifying yourself by annoying the world with reminders of your presence to no purpose but to validate your significance in the universe? If that's the case, I might as well tack you on the ignore list with Molly. If you're just going to ridicule and never argue or persuade, there's no point in wasting time with you.
As for expertise, a priest is a moral "expert," as is a theologian. You say the source is flawed, yes, but you won't even discuss your alternative so that we can probe it, you just say everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You appear to be a complete hypocrite...
EDIT: Okay, I've had time to calm down a little. Let's try this again. So far as I can tell, you are arguing in your last post largely based on the example of fundies of a peculiar stripe who refuse modern medicine. Thing is, there are two issues there, moral and medical. Medically, they have no position, though they try to establish one in the hopes of justifying their beliefs to the outside world. That's bad practice, but it doesn't make the other side of it, the moral one, automatically wrong, it just makes them suspect as a source. And morally, they may make their own decisions, though they should not force them on others even by their own beliefs. Free will and so on.
They may also teach such beliefs to their children, and their children may continue to follow those beliefs once they reach adulthood. They appear to be unhealthy beliefs, and you can tell them that all the evidence you find is clearly pointed that way, but they have the right to believe and practice whatever they want so long as nobody else is hurt without consent. If you want to keep them from teaching their children, well, good luck. They live with the kids, there's no way to stop them from passing it on, and if you try to take their kids away and put them in a "healthier" environment you just open a whole new can of worms.
Who will raise the kids instead of them, for starters, but also how you're going to keep them from acting on another of their principles, Those Damn Yankees Need to Leave my Family Alone. Practically speaking, they're not going to take that crap from you, and if you think they should just because you say so and you're an intellectual special person, I see no difference between that and the power of medieval clergy. Democracy cannot exist if unpleasant ideas are just dismissed out of hand, if the rights of individuals to think for themselves are denied in the name of "rationality," of all things. I know, you're a commie, but we probably shouldn't even go there. Apparently you stand for the rights of all people to cooperate in doing what you want to do, or something. Beats me. No, come to think of it, doesn't your sig have a quote about democracy? I don't know what you propose as an alternative, let's leave it at that for now.
The opinion of authorities is not acceptable on morals simply because morals are too all-encompassing, too pervasive. All abstract ideas are like that. Nixon had lots of experience with government but he was clearly no expert on obeying the rule of law. We all have a vested personal interest in interpersonal relationships, so that makes claims of authority suspicious.
Beyond that, I trust other authorities because they have formal training; a doctor knows his anatomy, a lawyer knows the letter of the law, a statistician knows the kind of crap that makes my head hurt. A moral expert...may have been trained by another moral expert, who in turn was trained, and they may have set up some kind of ethics college but it still means squat because ethics/morals are not grounded in the immediately apparent and concrete. There is no big book of ethics that you trust, and if one appeared the first question you would ask would probably be, "does this sound ethical to me?" And that is based on nothing more than your gut instincts of fair play, or possibly the opinions of a large group of dead men who left systematic writings of their sense of fair play. Specifically, you seem to agree with certain ancient Greeks, but even there isn't it a question of, "does this sound right to me?" How can there be a formal, ultimate human authority on ethics?
Nietzsche I don't trust just because everyone who likes him seems to have a different take on what he really says, most of their explanations of it appear to be rank sociopathy regardless of their individual interpretations, and trying to read the man himself is no help. He spends all his time blathering about how everyone who disagrees with him is a fool and generating these hypothetical constructs of how those people arrived at their errors. They are weak, and created their morality in an effort to justify their weakness! If anybody else said that it would be a blatant ad hominem, but Nietzsche has mad artsy style or something so coming from him it's brilliant. He responds to all criticisms by laughing at religion to divert attention away from himself, or by writing some obscure prose that sounds pithy but basically means that being right is defined in terms of how much one agrees with him. Or something. I can't figure out what he's babbling about, every attempt people make to explain him to me sounds juvenile and stupid; it would seem I have no option but to stick a dunce's cap on his dead mustachioed head and toss him into a corner.
Last edited by Elok on 07-04-2005 at 05:01
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:16
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quote:
Well, if you want to look at it "functionally," as such, why are you even bringing up points if you're not going to defend them and investigate them, try to see others' perspectives on them? WTF kind of philosophy teacher are you? |
Evidently one who knows better than you.
quote:
Why are you posting this crap if you're not even going to discuss it? |
And, pray tell, where did I say I wouldn't?
quote:
Is this some form of existential stress relief, gratifying yourself by annoying the world with reminders of your presence to no purpose but to validate your significance in the universe? If that's the case, I might as well tack you on the ignore list with Molly. If you're just going to ridicule and never argue or persuade, there's no point in wasting time with you. |
Well, I bumped out a couple of reasons, but you have seen fit to ignore them.
quote:
As for expertise, a priest is a moral "expert," as is a theologian. |
How so? They tend to quote from dogma, rather than actually looking at the world.
quote:
You say the source is flawed, yes, but you won't even discuss your alternative so that we can probe it, you just say everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You appear to be a complete hypocrite... |
I told you my alternative. We burn the religious crap. Why? Because its bollocksm, and more importantly its pernicious bollocks. Similarly we should outlaw alternative medicine because its bollocks, along with psychics and all sorts of other crap that have no rational foundation.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
EDIT: Okay, I've had time to calm down a little. Let's try this again. So far as I can tell, you are arguing in your last post largely based on the example of fundies of a peculiar stripe who refuse modern medicine |
.
That's just an example. I favour suppression of fanatical religious beliefs of all sorts.
quote:
Thing is, there are two issues there, moral and medical. Medically, they have no position, though they try to establish one in the hopes of justifying their beliefs to the outside world. That's bad practice, but it doesn't make the other side of it, the moral one, automatically wrong, it just makes them suspect as a source. And morally, they may make their own decisions, though they should not force them on others even by their own beliefs. Free will and so on. |
Free Will has nothing to do with this issue (at least not in any direct sense).
OK. Here's what I was sort of poking fun at before. The liberal position that says that we should not force our decisions on them is itself the very kind of absolutist moral principle that liberals seem to abhor.
What if their beliefs include the belief that it is right for them to impose their beliefs on others? Obviously the liberal principle will not allow them to, effectively forcing itself upon them. So the idea that liberalism allows everyone to have their own morality is pure bunk. In its own way liberalism is just as absolutist as any other moral system.
The problem with religious fanaticism is that it tends not to confine itself to people's personal lives. There may well be the odd hermit or mystic, but they are in the minority. The whole point of religious morality is largely to interfere in people's private lives and to excoriate as sinners those who don't toe the line. Religious people vote, and since we have free voting in our societies they tend to vote for forms of social conservatism that are at odds with the fundamental values of liberalism.
It's just the old problem - liberalism is supposed to be tolerant, but the one thing it cannot be is generally tolerant of the intolerant. Sometimes it can be, when intolerance is at a low ebb (as it is in most countries outside the USA), but when fanatics attempt to subvert it, it should suppress them or be in conflict with its own values.
quote:
They may also teach such beliefs to their children, and their children may continue to follow those beliefs once they reach adulthood. |
And if some people taught their children to drink animal blood or do something else that was unhealthy or based on crazy and dangerous ideas, it would likely be banned. Why? Because that kind of thing is child abuse. Of course the people who believe it don't think so, but does any sane person really believe them?
What people fail to notice is that regular religion is also just as silly. There's a whole load of anti-sex and anti-gay crap that has no rational foundation. These beliefs are harmful to their possessors and harmful to the people they interact with.
quote:
They appear to be unhealthy beliefs, and you can tell them that all the evidence you find is clearly pointed that way, but they have the right to believe and practice whatever they want so long as nobody else is hurt without consent. |
This is the problem. While this generally happens, there are cases where the intolerant and the lunatic will use liberalism's freedoms to slay it.
Also, it's not that they appear to be unhealthy beliefs, they are unhealthy beliefs. They are also false. We know they are false. Every day science discovers some new fact that further damns religion to irrelevance. Experts simply have more of a say in these matters because they are experts. As I said, we do this all the time, except with politics, but that is just as much a matter of expertise as the others (hence the large civil service bureaucracies in all advanced nations).
quote:
If you want to keep them from teaching their children, well, good luck. They live with the kids, there's no way to stop them from passing it on, and if you try to take their kids away and put them in a "healthier" environment you just open a whole new can of worms. |
I'm quite happy to do that, although I don't think it will take half as much effort as you do. Dumping all tax giveaways for religious organizations and a proper school curriculum would be a start.
quote:
Who will raise the kids instead of them, for starters, but also how you're going to keep them from acting on another of their principles, Those Damn Yankees Need to Leave my Family Alone. Practically speaking, they're not going to take that crap from you, and if you think they should just because you say so and you're an intellectual special person, I see no difference between that and the power of medieval clergy. |
So? That is a practical issue, not a moral issue.
quote:
Democracy cannot exist if unpleasant ideas are just dismissed out of hand, if the rights of individuals to think for themselves are denied in the name of "rationality," of all things. |
Sure it can. It already does. In many countries it is simply illegal to engage in certain religious practices (like polygamy and marrying child brides) because these things are regarded as pernicious.
That's essentially my point. Liberals do a lot of hand waving about book burning and censorship, without noticing that (a) we already have these things and they believe in it; and (b) such practices are vital to keeping liberalism alive.
quote:
The opinion of authorities is not acceptable on morals simply because morals are too all-encompassing, too pervasive. |
Religion also purports to adduce certain facts. Facts that are in conflict with science. That's enough to boot it out.
And some people are simply better at moral reasoning than others. I know, I have to grade their papers (and by better, I don't mean "agree with me" I just mean better able to understand the ethical issues).
Moreover, by accepting liberalism we already accept the sovereignty of the liberal principle of morality, and this requires us to trample on the intolerant and fanatic should it become necessary.
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All abstract ideas are like that. |
Well, that's an extremely broad and implausible claim.
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Nixon had lots of experience with government but he was clearly no expert on obeying the rule of law. We all have a vested personal interest in interpersonal relationships, so that makes claims of authority suspicious. |
This anti-authoritarianism is just a pose. We accept authority and experts all the time. You haven't made a strong case for issues of religion and ethics being any different.
quote:
Beyond that, I trust other authorities because they have formal training; a doctor knows his anatomy, a lawyer knows the letter of the law, a statistician knows the kind of crap that makes my head hurt. A moral expert...may have been trained by another moral expert, who in turn was trained, and they may have set up some kind of ethics college but it still means squat because ethics/morals are not grounded in the immediately apparent and concrete. |
Of course they are. What else could they be grounded in? We all largely agree about most ethical issues, it only seems that we don't because noise only accompanies disputes.
quote:
There is no big book of ethics that you trust, and if one appeared the first question you would ask would probably be, "does this sound ethical to me?" And that is based on nothing more than your gut instincts of fair play, or possibly the opinions of a large group of dead men who left systematic writings of their sense of fair play. Specifically, you seem to agree with certain ancient Greeks, but even there isn't it a question of, "does this sound right to me?" How can there be a formal, ultimate human authority on ethics? |
There already is. In areas of medical research we have them, the people who draft and interpret the law have similar sorts of training.
Your position is a kind of facile relativism. The fact is that people might say that they are relativists, but in practice nobody is because we all know it isn't true.
quote:
Nietzsche I don't trust just because everyone who likes him seems to have a different take on what he really says, most of their explanations of it appear to be rank sociopathy regardless of their individual interpretations, and trying to read the man himself is no help. He spends all his time blathering about how everyone who disagrees with him is a fool and generating these hypothetical constructs of how those people arrived at their errors. They are weak, and created their morality in an effort to justify their weakness! If anybody else said that it would be a blatant ad hominem, but Nietzsche has mad artsy style or something so coming from him it's brilliant. He responds to all criticisms by laughing at religion to divert attention away from himself, or by writing some obscure prose that sounds pithy but basically means that being right is defined in terms of how much one agrees with him. Or something. I can't figure out what he's babbling about, every attempt people make to explain him to me sounds juvenile and stupid; it would seem I have no option but to stick a dunce's cap on his dead mustachioed head and toss him into a corner. |
He's not the greatest thinker who ever lived. But he is one of the first to raise the obvious problem in opposition to people like Mill that people in general are not rational or even perfectible.
Mill seems to assume that the goodness of human nature means that rationality will win out in the end. But we know from bitter experience that it doesn't and that irrationality can wreak appalling havoc on humanity. So we either side with the sceptical, rational people who may disagree over some things, but who will put their beliefs to the test and who do agree that some things are obviously wrong, or we side with the people who have abandoned reason and empiricism.
It's not a choice that our society can avoid. Sooner or later (and perhaps sooner) the question of suppressing fanatical religious loons will raise its head. For our own safety and that of the human race.
You can't say that liberalism opposes this, because the very principles of liberalism demand it should the occasion arise.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:16
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Couple things here.
Apostle Paul says very clearly that the one who unites himself with a prostitute is united with her in both body and spirit. So to sleep with someone, anyone, is to form a union that should not be broken.
My question for you, is this. Are you willing to live your life according to scripture? If so, then these are the steps I think you should take.
First of all, if she wants to stop, you should stop. The more you are together, the harder it will be in the end if the two of you do not end up marrying.
Secondly, you need to seriously consider whether you are willing to marry this woman, and want to stay with her the rest of your life. Ideally, you would have done this before trying out the wares so to speak, but what's done is done, and we are picking up the pieces after.
If you are unwilling or unable to marry this woman, than you need to be up front with her about this.
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06-04-2005 22:35
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