Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Pat]

Those terrorists were some of the most religious people around.

How do you quantify that? By the body count?

Actions speak louder than words

[CountDeMoney]

To expand on this. I was in India during the Bombay attacks (had been sitting at Leopold cafe drinking beer just a few days before they attacked it with hand-grenades and automatic weapons).

Please don't tell us you're one of those weirdo Indian dudes with an English accent.  That only works for the chicks.

No, I'm not

Thank Christ.  We had one of those in Emperor Gupta, and he'd all be about the Queen and shit like a typical Brit until someone mentioned "chutney" or "daughters set on fire to dodge dowrys", and then you'd think he was Straight Outta New Delhi.

[PDH]

This is a statement of personal belief, though. 

Next you will say he has faith in his system of belief, Islamofascist.

[Pat]

 

Yeah, I know about Gupta (I've occasionally been lurking here, on and off, since the forum's inception, and occasionally even posting, though under a different name and I don't think I ever had more than a few hundred posts on the old forum)

[Viking]

Presumably you would make the case that Islam is to Christianity what Aircraft Carriers are to Dreadnaughts?

Not at all.  I'm saying that insufficiently religious states will fail.  Sure, Chrisitianity is superior to Islam because of its' subordination to the authority of the state, but any faith is better than none.

That's a pretty definitive statement. Would you like to defend Aztec religion or Shakerism or Ba'al worship or Jehovas Witnesses vis a vis secular humanism as you might find in scandinavia, canada or japan?

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, I know about Gupta (I've occasionally been lurking here, on and off, since the forum's inception, and occasionally even posting, though under a different name and I don't think I ever had more than a few hundred posts on the old forum)

I mean, pick a team, ya know?  if you're going to be a Brit, be a Brit.  Don't get all defensive about people setting their daughters on fire because you have a pigmentation problem.

Also, a rule of thumb--
Indian chicks with Brit accents: hot.
Indian dudes with Brit accents: douchebag medical students.

[grumbler]

I assume this is a variance of the argument that a man who do not believe in god will not die for his country. Indeed, I do not doubt that many of the Americans who died in Iraq believed themselves to be doing god's work.

I assume this is some kind of weird attempt to preempt someone else's argument.  It makes no sense on its own.

But let's look at it from a larger perspective. What is Fukuyama's thesis? That we have reached, what he calls, "the end of history". I haven't read his books but I have been thinking in similar lines myself. My conclusions, however, are different.

I don't think you understand what Fukuyama meant by "the end of history." In fact, he has been changing the meaning as older meanings become less tenable.  What he was saying in his book is that "history" (which is just a catchy name to be used in a book title) is the search for the optimal organization of society, and that the free-market democratic state is what history was aiming for.  Now that this is the universally-accepted ideal (according to him 20 years ago) "history" is over.  Of course, China didn't become democratic as he assumed it shortly would, so history wasn't quite over by his standards, but you get the idea.

In a malthusian state of nature red in tooth and claw, with exponential population growth, you will have competition over resources. War, has, therefore, been a necessity of human life. Life has been nasty, brutish, and short. In this respect we have been no different from other creatures of nature. All traditional organized religions are pre-malthusian, adapted for these conditions.

You may, however, have noticed that human life has changed somewhat in the time following the industrial revolution for those people who participated in it. The industrial revolution led to, among many things, the invention and wide-spread use of contraceptives. Today almost all developed countries have stable or negative population growth (and so would America have, if not for hispanics and other immigrants who still maintain the reproductive habits of their countries of origin, but can not be expected to do so for much longer).

The global population is expected to peak around 2050 and then decline. It would have peaked, and declined, sooner, if America hadn't since Reagan worked against family planning in the third world (thankfully Obama removed these american conditions for "aid"). Of course religious people opposed all development, at every step of the way, in what is now the developed world, and now oppose it, at every step of the way, in the undeveloped world. This is because their religions are adapted to the conditions of the status quo and if society changes too much then they'll have to come up with something new. And sometimes the changes warranted are simply so incompatible with earlier doctrine that change is impossible. This is why the pope tell the Filipinos not to use condoms. He wants them to be poor, because catholicism is irrelevant in post-malthusian societies. One block away from the Vatican you will find a machine selling condoms. No one, even in Rome, cares what the pope has to say on the matter.

I will give you that newer mutations of christianity, merely based on different vague and mutually incompatible testimonies of the life of Jesus that can be interpreted pretty much any way you like, have an easier way of adapting and changing it's message. Islam, however, with it's necessarily literal interpretation of the Quran, which is the final revelation of God, recited to Mohammed by the arch-angel Gabriel, simply can not adapt - try to imagine, if you will, improving on the final word of God - and is therefore utterly incompatible with modern society with rules in the Quran that no one can pass off as merely symbolic, such as death for apostates, for example. Which is why they, more than anyone else, have made modernity their enemy.

What violent competition for resources there still is, today, are in places too poor to have military-industrial complexes of any importance. There is already almost no violent competition over resources, and we'll only see less of it. The Europe of the late 1800s saw little need for war, but of course, sooner or later the old order, entirely incompatible with what the world had become, must collapse. This was the Great War, which, indeed, might have been the war to end all wars, had it only gone differently. Though there is no way of knowing if that, indeed, was possible. Instead, as we know, the lack of satisfactory replacement of the old order gave way to competition over what new order would replace the old order. These were wars over ideas, not wars over resources. There is really very little reason to make war over ideas which is why we today prefer to vote on things and not make war over them, but of course, fascism and communism were not democratic ideologies. Fascism and communism are now dead, and I am grateful to America for their work to accomplish just that. But there is no longer any ideological competition to democracy resting on foundations claiming to be rational. Those are all dead. The American way of thinking that was relevant to the cold war is now archaic.

All rational people today see little reason for war. The problem is with those who remain irrational. As we have seen, and as America has had to experience. This is why there is no longer any use for religion in modern society, and why religions are the enemy of stability and modernity.

Wow!  Talk about garbage in and garbage out!    Global population would already have peaked if Reagan hadn't cut funding for contraceptives? The Malthusian state of nature is accepted as true (despite evidence to the contrary) without question?  The Bible is more vague than the Koran?  The implicit assumption that wars are fought over resources?  The explicit assumption that you know what "all rational people" know?

There are so many fundamentally debatable implicit or explicit assumptions here that your conclusions cannot be accepted as evidenced at all.

[CountDeMoney]

Tear 'em a new one, grumbler.  Show him who's tuff around here!

[Pat]

Yeah, I know about Gupta (I've occasionally been lurking here, on and off, since the forum's inception, and occasionally even posting, though under a different name and I don't think I ever had more than a few hundred posts on the old forum)

I mean, pick a team, ya know?  if you're going to be a Brit, be a Brit.  Don't get all defensive about people setting their daughters on fire because you have a pigmentation problem.

Also, a rule of thumb--
Indian chicks with Brit accents: hot.
Indian dudes with Brit accents: douchebag medical students.

A bit like Iranians in Sweden. They're all medical students too. Indian dudes in India are cool, though. The people in India are the nicest people I've encountered anywhere,  and that goes even for the Indian muslims (if they hated me for being a westerner I sure as hell didn't notice). And the food is great. Never eaten so well as in India. Every single meal was absolutely delicious.

[grumbler]

To just give away your life as if it had no meaning is to be a nihilist.

Not sure what you mean here, or how it applies.  The WTC attackers were not giving their lives away, they were sellling them for a cause, and getting top dollar (as they saw it).  This is the opposite of nihilism.

There are other irrational ways of thinking, some of them not related to religion, that can produce nihilism as well.

Rational thinking will lead to nihilism.  That is the problem with nihilism; it is pretty much irrefutable except by using concepts like faith.  Ultimately, the lives of any humans, and indeed of the race as a whole, is meaningless.  Compared with the scope and scale of the cosmos, whether you are good or bad, or live 20 minutes or 200 years, is unnoticeably trivial.  Only a god or some kind of immortality can give it meaning.

And you're wrong when you say no one here is arguing they are typical of anything in particular. *I* am arguing they are.

Ah, well you are communicating very poorly, then, because I don't know what you are arguing that the WTC attackers are typical of.

[The Brain]

Rational thinking will lead to nihilism.  That is the problem with nihilism; it is pretty much irrefutable except by using concepts like faith.  Ultimately, the lives of any humans, and indeed of the race as a whole, is meaningless.  Compared with the scope and scale of the cosmos, whether you are good or bad, or live 20 minutes or 200 years, is unnoticeably trivial.  Only a god or some kind of immortality can give it meaning.

You are joking?

[Pat]

I don't think you understand what Fukuyama meant by "the end of history." In fact, he has been changing the meaning as older meanings become less tenable.  What he was saying in his book is that "history" (which is just a catchy name to be used in a book title) is the search for the optimal organization of society, and that the free-market democratic state is what history was aiming for.  Now that this is the universally-accepted ideal (according to him 20 years ago) "history" is over.  Of course, China didn't become democratic as he assumed it shortly would, so history wasn't quite over by his standards, but you get the idea.

That's exactly what I thought he was saying, even though I said I hadn't read his books

Wow!  Talk about garbage in and garbage out!    Global population would already have peaked if Reagan hadn't cut funding for contraceptives? The Malthusian state of nature is accepted as true (despite evidence to the contrary) without question?  The Bible is more vague than the Koran?  The implicit assumption that wars are fought over resources?  The explicit assumption that you know what "all rational people" know?

There are so many fundamentally debatable implicit or explicit assumptions here that your conclusions cannot be accepted as evidenced at all.

I'm not asking to have it accepted as evidence. If you don't share my view, that's ok. You've done nothing to refute them though.

You need to read more carefully. I did not say it would already have peaked. I said it would have peaked sooner than when is now believed to be the time it will peak. It need not be a big difference, but I'm sure it'd be some difference.

I did not say the Koran is less vague than the bible. I said that the Koran is considered the final word of God. The testimonies on the life of jesus is just that, testimonies. Of course some people belive it to be the literal word of god anyway, but you don't have to see it that way. The Koran is the word of god, period.

Exponential population growth does lead to competition over resources. This is self-evident. That is not to say all wars must be waged over resources, but to say that there is no competition over resources is to say war must not be waged.

[Pat]

To just give away your life as if it had no meaning is to be a nihilist.

Not sure what you mean here, or how it applies.  The WTC attackers were not giving their lives away, they were sellling them for a cause, and getting top dollar (as they saw it).  This is the opposite of nihilism.

As they saw it. Exactly. From my view, they were giving their lives away.

There are other irrational ways of thinking, some of them not related to religion, that can produce nihilism as well.

Rational thinking will lead to nihilism.  That is the problem with nihilism; it is pretty much irrefutable except by using concepts like faith.  Ultimately, the lives of any humans, and indeed of the race as a whole, is meaningless.  Compared with the scope and scale of the cosmos, whether you are good or bad, or live 20 minutes or 200 years, is unnoticeably trivial.  Only a god or some kind of immortality can give it meaning.

No. I seem to be doing just fine. Maybe it's just you?

If you acknowledge that good things are good, and bad things are bad, and these things are good respectively bad because human nature makes some things fundamentally good and some things fundamentally bad, (like, for example, to live is good, and to die is bad), you will never end up with nihilism unless you consider bad things good. Or you suffer from depression or something that is unrelated to your philisophy.

And you're wrong when you say no one here is arguing they are typical of anything in particular. *I* am arguing they are.

Ah, well you are communicating very poorly, then, because I don't know what you are arguing that the WTC attackers are typical of.

The GIGO principe. Which, would be evident from context, since I was quoting a post of your talking about it. And which I SAID I MEANT, but of course you seem to be reading as poorly as always.

I'm with you. It's just that it's a good example of the GIGO principle. If you start with the assumption that there is an after-life, and you go there by doing certain things, then it can lead to things like that.

This is why arguing with grumbler never goes anywhere. It always becomes an argument about the argument.

[Pat]

No, I'm sorry, that was a bit flippant of me and I apologize. I do understand the nihilism argument. I'll try to adress it in a sec in more detail

[Neil]

I assume this is a variance of the argument that a man who do not believe in god will not die for his country. Indeed, I do not doubt that many of the Americans who died in Iraq believed themselves to be doing god's work.

To some extent.  However, far more importantly, it helps secure the social system.  It sates the masses, giving them the hope that although they might have much less than their betters, if they behave themselves they can enjoy the pleasures of life forever in the afterlife.

I will give you that newer mutations of christianity, merely based on different vague and mutually incompatible testimonies of the life of Jesus that can be interpreted pretty much any way you like, have an easier way of adapting and changing it's message. Islam, however, with it's necessarily literal interpretation of the Quran, which is the final revelation of God, recited to Mohammed by the arch-angel Gabriel, simply can not adapt - try to imagine, if you will, improving on the final word of God - and is therefore utterly incompatible with modern society with rules in the Quran that no one can pass off as merely symbolic, such as death for apostates, for example.

None of that is important.  What is important is rendering unto Caesar.

All rational people today see little reason for war. The problem is with those who remain irrational. As we have seen, and as America has had to experience. This is why there is no longer any use for religion in modern society, and why religions are the enemy of stability and modernity.

When you make such blanket statements as 'all rational people today see little reason for war', you're just begging to be shown to be wrong.  I can think of all kinds of situations where I would see a reason for war, and I am Reason.