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Wednesday 5 February 2014
Sunday 2 February 2014
Why hard Atheists shouldn’t be taken seriously
Why hard Atheists shouldn’t be taken seriously
by Steve Harris.
The people who concretely affirm that there is in fact no higher being whatsoever are among the people that I do not agree with nor trust. I see such declarations as the epitome of self importance. Hard atheism is a belief structure and it is just as prideful and dangerous as the unflinching beliefs of religious extremists.What he means to say, but doesn’t quite say, is that hard atheists and other fundamentalists base their beliefs in themselves, not in the world. They are using ideology to make themselves seem more important than they are. You can see this phenomenon in every belief system, from white power to hard greens to democrats and onward. The only philosophies that escape it, briefly, are those that negate the self, but even the Buddhists now are mostly egocases: “I am, indeed, holier and more passive (non-aggressive) than thou.”
…But, like hard-line religious fanatics, the hard atheists’ character flaw is an uncompromising belief in self. The individual fanatic and hard athiest both share the belief that they are right and disagreeing others are terribly misguided and wrong…
“Why Hard Atheists Shouldn’t be Taken Seriously” by Edgar Alverson
Belief systems based in promoting the individual in the name of changing the world are “cult-like” in that like viruses, they attack the ego and lowered self-esteem, and make their victims act in zombielike obedience toward impossible or untenable goals.
I stopped posting at the internet infidels forum (see my parting shot using Alverson’s article) for this reason. I went there hoping to find people who, like me, believe our society is off-course and we should re-create it using the best ideas we have and discarding the worst. I figured that if they were atheists, they had already rejected much of the thought-conditioning around them; instead, I found that they accepted that thought conditioning, and revelled in the rebel identity granted them by telling off God.
This resulted in a forum where the admins did not know basic philosophy, the posters would chime in with smarmy comments but would tolerate blatant ignorance as long as it was atheistic, and there was a cult of revenge against Christians. When that forum was newer and healthier, its members rejected this kind of schoolboy bullying. But now it seems encouraged, and ignorance is rife, all while calling Christians ignorant, stupid, etc. and implying that all who are not good liberal atheists are somehow redneck morons who got on the internet because AOL dropped a computer in their laps.
When I was a blaspheming youth, I did it because I believed the religious path was a failure — and for most interpretations of religion, I still believe this, although I also now believe that the same problem applies to science, politics, philosophy and culture — not to make myself into some Antichrist Superstar. My goal was to find an ideological truth, use it to get humanity back on course, and then — go back to doing what I always do. My life is full, in fact possibly overflowing, and I don’t have a need to compensate for failure in it. What I would like, selfish perhaps, is to get my species to stop failing so the future is brighter and the smart people around me stop flaking out.
In the same way, I reject the idea of becoming self-righteous: “I have the right answer, you’re all below me, therefore I rise.” When I believe I have the right answer, I am the attack dog of its ideology, but that is because I believe the ideology will affect the world in positive ways, leaving my condition relatively unchanged. Ask yourself: if your ideology impacted the world as you would like it to, what would be your change in status? If the answer is that you go from night watchman to king, beware, you’re in a cult state of mind.
Alverson does a good hit job on the hard atheists, who were like the skeptics a blooming internet cult for computer programmers and others, but now are fading. We really need to look out for this mindset, as it occurs everywhere, including in people of all religions.
Saturday 1 February 2014
Liberalism offers you half of a civilization
Liberalism offers you half of a civilization
Joseph de Maistre famously said that “wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.” While I acknowledge the importance of religion, and more importantly of sacralization, I think basic civilization-building is a far simpler process.
In the most essential terms, civilization is an agreement. It’s a decision to leave behind the near total autonomy of independent hunter-gatherer bands in exchange for certain options offered by stability. My feeling is that what really drove it was the urge by parents to have suitable breeding partners for their children.
To keep such a venture together, there must be a very basic understanding that all can rely on. It is most fundamentally an agreement to collaborate, and it works because it is based on the most essential of promises: good to the good, and bad to the bad.
Both halves of this are essential. If you do well by the civilization, you must be rewarded; if you harm it, you must be excluded from the benefits to those who did not transgress. Although it mentions two categories, this simple promise also creates a third, which is “…and nothing to those who do neither good nor bad, but simply participate.”
This of course creates tension and nobody likes tension (well, until they get bored). As a result, a market is formed for those who offer a path into civilization that has less tension. This path is achieved by cutting out parts of the equation that require people to be constructive. Instead of “good to the good, and bad to the bad,” the new paradigm is “bad to the bad” which implies reward on an equal level for those who do good and those who simply participate.
This makes simple participation more important than doing good. It also makes it more efficient; it is pointless to spend extra energy for no reward when you can simply avoid a few taboos, thus not be “bad,” and get the same reward as if you had done well. However, there is also social pretense to consider. You want to look as if you are doing good things. This encourages the creation of institutions through which individuals can make a small monetary contribution or otherwise demonstrate support, and be assumed to be doing good. It also encourages the creation of jobs and roles well where one can succeed without doing anything good, productive or helpful.
Jonathan Haidt has posited a more complex version of this schism based on six categories. In the illustration below, liberal concerns are indicated in yellow, conservative in blue, and shared concerns in green:
- Care/Harm
- Fairness/Cheating
- Liberty/Oppression
- Loyalty/Betrayal
- Authority/Subversion
- Sanctity/degradation
- Care/Harm
- Fairness/Cheating
- Liberty/Oppression
This difference can be wholly explained by the focus differences between liberals and conservatives. Liberals focus on the individual; conservatives focus on the whole, the process and the civilization. Thus a liberal is inherently utilitarian in that what matters most to them is that people consider their own situation good; a conservative, who looks more at the whole, finds it most important to see what the results as affect everyone and the future of the civilization will be.
Christopher Lasch, a former liberal, distanced himself from the movement when he saw how it was creating a wave of narcissism, or self-worship, spreading across the United States. As he hints, this is a natural outpouring of the focus on the individual. With “good to the good, bad to the bad” the individual is incentivized to do good; with “bad to the bad” only, the individual out of the box considers himself perfect and to be a good person, only for not having done bad. There is zero positive contribution requirement.
As a result, narcissism — or more properly “solipsism,” which is an inverse of the normal relationship where we see ourselves as part of the world, and one in which we see the world more as part of ourselves, corresponding to the Greek hubris — spreads because people are encouraged to see themselves as perfect without having to prove it, thus the only requirement for them is to intend something, to wish it or to feel it. They become atomized and isolated in their own little worlds.
This is why liberalism offers you half of a civilization. It ignores half of what is necessary for a healthy civilization and, in return for your accepting that, makes you a member of society just as you are. This erodes societies in any form, whether through hopeless shrugs in the Soviet Union, to rigid ideological mania in the French Revolution, and finally to consumerist-socialist narcissism here in the USA and EU. It takes a whole civilization to stay functional. But where the individual fears, there will always be a liberal offering an easier way, but at the price of civilization itself.
Wednesday 29 January 2014
Tuesday 28 January 2014
Monday 27 January 2014
~ MESSAGE TO ALL POLITICIANS ~ by WheepingWillow2
A great from the heart speech wrote by an ordinary American Lady, That can apply to us all. Suffering from the ravages of Private central Banking issuing the currency as a loan at interest!
Sunday 19 January 2014
Friday 17 January 2014
The Romanian Missing Child a New False Flag Low?
This is a new false flag in my opinion,And one that shows how low these tratiors in the Establishment will go. It has in my opinion the one purpose of stopping any one who complains about the mass influx of Romanians into the country. In effect a tool against UKIP and there assured victory in the upcoming Euro elections
I for one think did the child ever exist just like Saddam nuclear weapons. Or if he is missing then best to look at the BBC they have an history of this on behalf of this Bunch of traitors and perverts in Parliament. For if he did exist then it is most likely he has been abducted by the Government itself.
Beware of the Mass media coverage of this story there are in the pay of the mega bankers just the same as our TRAITOR politicians.
I for one think did the child ever exist just like Saddam nuclear weapons. Or if he is missing then best to look at the BBC they have an history of this on behalf of this Bunch of traitors and perverts in Parliament. For if he did exist then it is most likely he has been abducted by the Government itself.
Beware of the Mass media coverage of this story there are in the pay of the mega bankers just the same as our TRAITOR politicians.
Saturday 11 January 2014
Saturday 4 January 2014
Friday 3 January 2014
Wednesday 1 January 2014
Tuesday 31 December 2013
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