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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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I think Catholicism and Main stream Protestantism, and even Judaism and Buddism and Islam have much to say in the American dialogue. The media likes to focus on the fundies. And the more we have left the public square naked of spirituality, the more the fundies have filled it.
As for the Rabbi, I think he was clear enough. If he opposes social darwinism, and accepts the truth of Darwinism, how could he identify the two as the SAME (rather than historically linked)
As it happens there is a discussion at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York on a related topic. Here are some quotes they assembled as a prelude:
"SHABBAT LUNCH: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS
What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful and blundering low and horribly cruel works of nature!
--Charles Darwin (in an 1856 letter)
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
--Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species (1859)
The world is not characterless, it acts with a uniformity that gives meaning to its existence ... The salvation for which man strives is to live in rapport with that meaning.
--JAC, p. 461
Just as the magnetic needle is the source of our knowledge of the earth’s magnetism, so is man’s salvational behavior the source of our knowledge about God...(this requires) no blind leap into the dark.
--QJA, pgs. 80,88
Jewish religion maintains the eventual triumph of justice over brute force as the very essence of faith in God.
--BVJR, p.43
There is no reason to hope that eventually all manner of things will be well... The kind of order and complexity produced by evolution has nothing to do with the right or the good. Moral ideas can not be part of the scheme until evolution produces creatures like us; and we, being accidental offshoots of the universe, have no power over the whole and very little within it... (this view) allows us to see ourselves as trying to rise above unpromising origins, rather than having spoilt everything.. It is a dark view but not an ignoble one.
--Janet Radcliffe Richards, Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction (2000)
The God idea is not the reasoned allocation of chaos, cruelty, pain and death in some neat logical scheme. It is the passionate refusal of every atom in the human being to be terrified by these ogres.
--Judaism as a Civilization, p. 330 "
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by lord of the mark
I think Catholicism and Main stream Protestantism, and even Judaism and Buddism and Islam have much to say in the American dialogue. The media likes to focus on the fundies. And the more we have left the public square naked of spirituality, the more the fundies have filled it.
As for the Rabbi, I think he was clear enough. If he opposes social darwinism, and accepts the truth of Darwinism, how could he identify the two as the SAME (rather than historically linked)
As it happens there is a discussion at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York on a related topic. Here are some quotes they assembled as a prelude:
"SHABBAT LUNCH: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS
What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful and blundering low and horribly cruel works of nature!
--Charles Darwin (in an 1856 letter)
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
--Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species (1859)
The world is not characterless, it acts with a uniformity that gives meaning to its existence ... The salvation for which man strives is to live in rapport with that meaning.
--JAC(Judaism as Civilization, Mordechai Kaplan), p. 461
Just as the magnetic needle is the source of our knowledge of the earth’s magnetism, so is man’s salvational behavior the source of our knowledge about God...(this requires) no blind leap into the dark.
--QJA(Questions Jews Ask, Mordechai Kaplan), pgs. 80,88
Jewish religion maintains the eventual triumph of justice over brute force as the very essence of faith in God.
--BVJR, p.43
There is no reason to hope that eventually all manner of things will be well... The kind of order and complexity produced by evolution has nothing to do with the right or the good. Moral ideas can not be part of the scheme until evolution produces creatures like us; and we, being accidental offshoots of the universe, have no power over the whole and very little within it... (this view) allows us to see ourselves as trying to rise above unpromising origins, rather than having spoilt everything.. It is a dark view but not an ignoble one.
--Janet Radcliffe Richards, Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction (2000)
The God idea is not the reasoned allocation of chaos, cruelty, pain and death in some neat logical scheme. It is the passionate refusal of every atom in the human being to be terrified by these ogres.
--Judaism as a Civilization, p. 330 " |
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Leftists abhor Islamic fundamentalism just as much as they do any kind of religious fanatacism. But in America, at least, the Christian fundies are the ones who are still the more pertinent threat. They have their talons sunk into the highest of our leaders and currently have the Republican leader of the Senate jumping through hoops in a desperate bid to appease them before his 2008 presidential run. It's Christian fundies who are making the push to put their beliefs in public schools for the purposes of early indoctrination. Islamists have no such weight here. When they are the folks pushing stupid things like the stickers on us, then maybe a thread like this will feature the Koran. Will that make you happy then? |
Who really gives a damn about some idiot stickers? This isnt the scopes monkey trial. Theyre not going to ban teaching evolution. They'll put on some stickers saying "evolution is only a theory" POTM has already learned in school the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. If the fear is that some DONT understand that, and will be misled by "evolution is only a theory" than just put on stickers explaining what a theory is, and that its NOT a hypothesis.
I mean I dont see this going anywhere. POTM is learning genetic and evolutionary biology in school, and this if friggin Virginia, not exactly the most progressive state in the union.
If anything the REAL problem QOTM and I see with "conservatives" in education is the overemphasis on standardized testing, on homework, the retreat from progressive approaches to learning - not a battle about evolution. And the conservatives on those issues are as likely to be corporate conservatives, and broader social conservatives, as fundies.
The focus on the evolution battle is a matter of importance to NON-Parents - its not about education, its a symbolic kultur-kampf on both sides, that is distracting from real issues.
And ALL these issues are things we can argue about and decide democratically, in our political system. A far cry from taliban totalitarianism. (I'll admit to an exception for anti-abortion bomb throwers who use Anti-democratic means - if you want to call THEM taliban, go right ahead). Calling your political opponents, of right or left, Taliban or equivalent is just McCarthyism.
What I disliked about Frist's appearance was his not the substance of his views (so one political party wants to change traditional - but not constitutionally required - rules to help its guys get judgeships - sleazy, MAYBE, but not beyond the bounds. What bothered me was his implicit endorsement of the victim rhetoric of the religious right - but I see the victim rhetoric coming from the left as well, where minor things as taken as major, and where attempts to slow down progressive social changes are seen as equivalent to genocide. It seems to be the nature of kultur-kampfs to produce this paranoia on both sides.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Not today, no. They're fighting an uphill battle just to get their liberakism taught in school. Once they've won, they get to go on towards banning religion. The mistake moderates always make regarding lefties is they seem to think their aims are limited to their immediate struggles. Amongst themselves, they talk about establishing a dictatorship of the proletartiat. When we on the right attempt to point this out, we're accused of being alarmists and conspiracy theorists. |
guevs view, modified somewhat.
Radical social groups always have extremists, who talk about something more radical. And you can always make a slippery slope argument, however stretched.
Which is not to say one shouldnt oppose the sticker movement. But one should not let that opposition lead one to undermine the tolerant principles that lay behind liberal society - there ARE situations where it is necessary to do so - when someone is picketing abortion clinics in such a way as to make them unuseable, when someone is using a church or mosque to organize acts of violence, when a political party advocates the violent overthrow of the state, perhaps -, but the temptation to undermine toleration to quickly is a recurrent problem.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
quote:
Actually, we're quite open about our aims, lotm. We aren't hiding our goals, unlike the RR. |
well no, you communists dont hide your goals. Similarly, the handful of loonies who bomb abortion clinics dont hide their goals either. But all the social democrats, trade unionists, etc who claim not to be communists and to just want social reform are the ones who are dangerous, just as its the fundies who say they only want to get back to social policy and constitional jurisprudence circa 1955 who are the dangerous ones. They dont really want to go back to the 1950s, when there was prayer in the schools and homosexuality was a disease, they want to go to the Republic of Gilead.
[Sarcasm mode off]
But continue to dream your little dreamy cream until you are either forced to flee to Israel or get caught up in the Republic of Gilead. |
dreamy cream???????
Im trying to defend this liberal state, both from the paranoid fundies and from the paranoid reaction to them. Not that moving to Israel would be such a disaster. I can see where for someone like you the fundies are godsend (pardon the expression), the more extreme the better. Something to stir things up when liberal free market consensus was freezing you out of history, and all that was left was to determine the exact bounds of the welfare state.
Ah for Clintonism again.
Hillary will save all.
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:19
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LOTM:
Tolerance is one of the two pillars of the Anglo-Saxon core value of democratic restraint, essential to the American democracy. But it is often not well understood.
Democratic restraint is the value that says that the State shouldn't be able to pressure or coerce however it wants (in the US, it goes to the point that "small government" is seen as highly positive, and there is often a fear of the government that would look puzzling to a European, especially a Frenchman). It is also the calue that says that society shouldn't be able to coerce or pressure however it wants. John Stuart Mill talks quite a bit about making sure that societal groups shouldn't be let alone when they are very strong and try to bully other groups.
So, "tolerance" isn't simply about giving freedom of speech, of worship etc. to the people, it's also about preventing the people to stomp on other people's rights.
In today's US, the Christian fundies are one of the strongest, if not THE strongest social group. Without even saying that they want a theocracy, we can affirm that they want to stomp out the teaching of evolution, that they want to use schools to indoctrinate children to their beliefs, and they want to stomp out lifestyles in opposition to their beliefs (homosexuals). If they are left to their own devices, they'll create extremely intolerant societies, in which the "non-tolerated" people will suffer from the social pressure, no matter what the laws say. We have an example on 'Poly: Thorn is gay in southern Virginia, and he seriously suffers from living in an extremely closeminded community.
It's for the sake of tolerance that the fundies must be checkered. Just like it's for the sake of tolerance that any powerful social group that intends to stomp out the beliefs of others should be checkered.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
It's for the sake of tolerance that the fundies must be checkered. Just like it's for the sake of tolerance that any powerful social group that intends to stomp out the beliefs of others should be checkered. |
They should be opposed using democratic and liberal methods. Obviously not be violence. But also not by engaging in illiberal and McCarthyite rhetoric, like equating them to the Taliban.
You look from a distance and want them beaten. Period. I live here, to me it matters how they lose. Win or lose, they will still live here, as they have for hundreds of years. I want reconciliation with them. Which it seems to me is not consistent with demonization of them. Ive met members of fundamentalist churches, and theyre not all monsters who go around beating up on Gay people, though they may not share my views on gay rights (as I may not share yours or Guevs or Boris's views) To me as important as stopping stupid stickers, or pointless constitutional amendments, is getting away from the Kulturkampf, and reaching out to each other as Americans, based on what we have in common. To me that means that at the same time we advance the rights of gays, we acknowledge how threatening that is to some people - and we remind them gently that all we want is for some states, where they for the most part dont live, to have the right to choose to legalize gay unions - when we demonize them as Taliban or fascists for not sharing our views on gay marriage, we REINFORCE what the right tells them, that the lefts goal is to force gay marriage on every state in the union, as (from therir point of view) change after change has been forced on their states and communities for 50 years.
Similarly, what I see with jokes like this, is not an attempt to reconcile the fundies to modern science, but precisely the opposite - an attempt to tell them that the folks who believe in evolution hate the bible, and laugh at those who believe in it. This serves only those who delight in the kulturkampf.
Last edited by lord of the mark on 12-05-2005 at 20:49
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:19
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quote:
Originally posted by lord of the mark
They should be opposed using democratic and liberal methods. Obviously not be violence. But also not by engaging in illiberal and McCarthyite rhetoric, like equating them to the Taliban. |
I absolutely agree. Anti-fundy ideological vigilantism would create the very same problems as the fundies, because the fundies are acting as ideological vigilantes. And the fight against fundies' bullying, if not done properly, could result in bad restrictions of the freedom of speech.
quote:
You look from a distance and want them beaten. Period. I live here, to me it matters how they lose. Win or lose, they will still live here, as they have for hundreds of years. I want reconciliation with them. Which it seems to me is not consistent with demonization of them. Ive met members of fundamentalist churches, and theyre not all monsters who go around beating up on Gay people, though they may not share my views on gay rights (as I may not share yours or Guevs or Boris's views) To me as important as stopping stupid stickers, or pointless constitutional amendments, is getting away from the Kulturkampf, and reaching out to each other as Americans, based on what we have in common. |
I can understand your feeling. It's very important to have them beaten properly, and it's also important that they don't become alienated from the mainstream society. Again, I think the sticker we're discussing in this thread is provocative and doesn't solve the problem.
But I wanted to add that letting them free to bully however they want (I know it's not what you advocate, but I think you are more lenient than me on the matter) wouldn't correspond to tolerance. At least not to the tolerance that made the US into the democracy it is now.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
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"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. "
Barack Obama.
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12-05-2005 00:47
I think I prefer the Jewish approach to things, rather than the Fundy Christian approach. 
So, making false accusations leftists of happily defending Islamic Fundamentalism while practicing unrivalled hatred towards Christianity isn't being derogatory towards a differing view? Your first post was dripping with derogatory sentiment, so this is a most amusing whine.
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