The real history of the Crusades.....

[Murat B.]

A couple of Guinness before I head down to early mass to pray for the hellbound heathen. My favourite part of the day...

Enjoy the mass brother...don't mix the beer with wine though. Nasty....

 

[Riotbeard]

And as for glass houses, the secularists and atheists glass houses have huge smatterings of red on their walls. It's a human matter. We don't need belief or disbelief for that.

Of course! That's why I don't start threads attacking other countries or cultures, when the U. S. military has probably killed as many or more civilians in the last decade than any of the worst dictators or religious extremists. The thing is, there is one person pathologically making threads about how terrible somebody else's religion is, so the rest of us are going to say that maybe a little more naval gazing on the part of Christians might be useful too. What did that guy say? Something about people without sin casting the first stone. But what do I know?

Also I am a socialist, and our name is mud in the U.S., but I don't sit around defending stalin or the USSR? Of course, Marxists have done horrible things. They have also done good things. I will defend Cuba on specific issues or at least I don't think their a particularly bad government considering the poverty of the region, most people would be better off living in Cuba than in any other Caribbean Island. Plus Castro is better that batista, but it's certainly not a model government.

My point being we all live in glass houses, so maybe more empathy towards other groups is preferable even when you don't agree with their choices than talking about how much better you are.

 

[Riotbeard]

A couple of Guinness before I head down to early mass to pray for the hellbound heathen. My favourite part of the day...

Enjoy the mass brother...don't mix the beer with wine though. Nasty....

I always liked Voltaire formula:

These three things cannot all be true: God is all powerful, God is all good, and evil exists.

Or David Hume on Miracles is quite brilliant.

 

[Kieran]

Boys, you's are cracking me up! :laydownlaughing

Dublin tonight is fine and dry - but not for long. I'll be in town in about twenty minutes, in brother Shawn's local, McDaids. Enjoy your Christmas, fellers, or Festivus, or Winterval, or... :celeb:

 

[Riotbeard]

Boys, you's are cracking me up! :laydownlaughing

Dublin tonight is fine and dry - but not for long. I'll be in town in about twenty minutes, in brother Shawn's local, McDaids. Enjoy your Christmas, fellers, or Festivus, or Winterval, or... :celeb:

Yeah I am Trying to get as much done as possible before traveling to my family for the holiday! I do have a nice ale though now that its appropriate.:celeb: Merry Christmas friend.

 

[calitennis127]

They would not be MY quotes, would they now?

The point here is simple, murat. You agree with the aforementioned on what you dub "religion". Yet, you are a follower of Ayn Rand, who had a more fanatical and fanciful cult behind her in the 1950s and 1960s than any Pope or caliph ever could have dreamed of creating.

Reading the book "The Ayn Rand Cult" a few years ago was great reading for some serious laughs. Talk about belief in fairy tales.

You do know Rand is the antithesis of Marxism and Communism right? And there is no room for fairly tales in Objectivism right? Maybe one day you will grow up to be an individual too and not take orders from old perverts in Vatican who banned shellfish but was OK with slavery...:laydownlaughing

Rand was in agreement with Marxists and Communists on the question of religion, as well as the nature of society, which she conceived of in strictly government v. individual terms.

And if you think that Objectivism doesn't entail believing in fairy tales about history, then you simply have no idea what you are talking about. I had a friend who I converted from objectivism to libertarianism after I showed him how many utterly pathetic errors were made in historical analysis by objectivists. Their shallowness and sloppiness in trying to be scholars are the direct results of their inane first principles.

What Rand believed about history was by and large completely ignorant. It was especially comical to read her comments on the history of the United States. She was an ignoramus.

And, she was a scumbag to boot. Read Justin Raimondo's biography of Murray Rothbard and focus on the part that describes Rothbard's interaction with the Randian freaks during the 1950s, such as the time when Rothbard and his wife were at Rand's apartment with their libertarian circle and Rand screamed at Rothbard "Divorce her!!!!!!!" when Rothbard's wife told the group that she was Christian.

So much for tolerance in a free society, huh?

Rand was a clown, an ignoramus, and a scumbag. And you can see it from the idiot disciples she has at the Ayn Rand Institute.

 

[calitennis127]

Just like you cannot distance yourself from creationists, right? After all, it is in the good book.

I absolutely can distance myself from the Protestant fundamentalist idiots who have made Christianity look so dumb in the public sphere with their misunderstanding of Scripture and their ignorance of all relevant subjects.

Are you not aware of the immense amount of ink that has been spilled by Catholics such as Karl Keating, Dave Armstrong, and Patrick Madrid in refuting Protestant nonsense?

I am sure protestants feel the same about your brand of nonsense. The common point? It is all nonsense.

How is it that it is always OTHERS that misunderstand this religion business Cali, but YOU understand it perfectly well? Don't you find it at least a bit...unusual?

No, it is not about me individually. It is about the capital-T Tradition of the Catholic Church. For 1500 years there was unity more or less in this regard, until the disastrous Protestant Reformation resulted in the splintering of Christianity into hundreds of sects and the injection of Biblical literalism into the forefront of Christianity.

And if everything else other than what you believe is nonsense, and others call what YOU believe nonsense, isn't it reasonable that maybe all of it is nonsense?

My views are not some kind of fringe nonsense along the lines of believing that a demented woman who read detective novels and smoked cigarettes was the greatest ethicist in the history of mankind. The Catholic Church is a far more powerful and intellectually serious institution than anything Mizz Rand ever could have spawned.

 

[calitennis127]

Everybody knows that the catholic church has done considerable work in cleaning up the name of Christianity in the last couple years. Come on Murat... They haven't had any significant scandals.

Read the work of religion scholar Philip Jenkins on the Catholic Church's clergy abuse scandal. It will show you how wrong you are.

 

[calitennis127]

I think the only point Murat and I are trying to make is that Christians and Muslims fighting about who has the worst history is two people in glass houses throwing rocks at each other. The irony is that each group only believes the other persons house is made of glass.

No, actually many Christians do acknowledge misdeeds on their part, and Madden is case and point. Did you read the article?

I would say in general most people and groups would do better to look at themselves more before talking about how horrible other groups are. Wait, that sounds somewhat familiar...

Agreed, when atheists call the Catholic Church "intolerant", they should first perhaps examine the history of anti-religous/atheist governments in the twentieth century and prior that killed millions of people precisely for reasons of intolerance. The Spanish Inquisition was absolutely nothing in comparison to the regimes of Robespierre, Lenin, or the 20th Century Communists in terms of intolerance.

Atheists are often the worst offenders when it comes to throwing stones from glass houses.

Oh, and how about the left making such a big deal out of Watergate when it was Democrats such as FDR, Kennedy, and LBJ who started wiretapping?

Oh, we can't go there, can we? What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, is it?

 

[calitennis127]

There is such a thing as scientific method. "The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning."

And this method does not result in 100% foolproof perfect answers at every step of the way. Scientists abbreviate and cut corners and make mistakes just like people in every other profession. Case and point was how Galileo was dead-wrong about orbital patterns (and he wouldn't admit it), but Kepler came along and corrected him to prove that they were indeed elliptical, not circular as Galileo insisted.

Also, by the way, Ayn Rand's basic conception of the world highly contradicts the findings of sociobiology, which are much more in line with the Church's teaching on society.

As you can see, you cannot compare it to blind faith. Science is OK with correcting itself in light of new evidence. Faith doesn't.

The intellectual history of the Catholic Church and of Christianity at large is something that goes well beyond mere faith, Murat. I encourage you to read some of the weightier articles from the 1920s Catholic Encyclopedia. They are some of the most erudite, information-packed articles you will ever get your hands on and they will help you see the detail and intellectual rigor that has gone into the Catholic/Christian tradition of thought.

 

[calitennis127]

And as for glass houses, the secularists and atheists glass houses have huge smatterings of red on their walls. It's a human matter. We don't need belief or disbelief for that.

Also I am a socialist, and our name is mud in the U.S., but I don't sit around defending stalin or the USSR? Of course, Marxists have done horrible things.

Well, do you care to explain why the left hasn't owned up to these crimes? They never stop talking about the Holocaust but they are very curiously quiet about the atrocities of Communist regimes throughout the world. Every schoolchild in America knows about the Holocaust, but maybe 2% know that there was a genocide of 15 to 20 million Ukrainians in the 1930s.

That is because the leftist-socialist education system has dishonestly covered it up, just like Walter Duranty of the New York Times did.

My point being we all live in glass houses, so maybe more empathy towards other groups is preferable even when you don't agree with their choices than talking about how much better you are.

Agreed.

 

[calitennis127]

To Riot and Murat together, let me say this: I think that one of the failings of so many modern people (and this is where the leftist elimination of Classical studies has been so pernicious) is that they fail to realize some of the most basic realities about civilization.

Is religion in large part bullshit? Sure it is. Is religion often a hypocritical or pretentious farce? Sure it is. Do clergy say silly things? Sure they do. But civilization itself is based on constant pretentiousness and tolerance for imperfection. Does anyone go by the perfect letter of the law at a job? No. Do university leaders truly mean it when they talk about the importance of academic rigor in speeches in front of thousands of students and parents? No.

Hypocrisy and failing to live up to standards is the norm of human beings in general, not just clergy. For goodness sake, Karl Marx was a vile racist and the analysis of history in the Communist Manifesto is one of the dumbest things I have heard or read in my life.

But there is an underlying, divinely ordained moral order to the universe that is of a transcendent nature. None of us can alter it. Our interaction with it may be very complex and filled with contradictions and riddles, but the spiritual realities of the soul and grace are fixed facts of the human experience.

 

[Riotbeard]

I think the only point Murat and I are trying to make is that Christians and Muslims fighting about who has the worst history is two people in glass houses throwing rocks at each other. The irony is that each group only believes the other persons house is made of glass.

No, actually many Christians do acknowledge misdeeds on their part, and Madden is case and point. Did you read the article?

I would say in general most people and groups would do better to look at themselves more before talking about how horrible other groups are. Wait, that sounds somewhat familiar...

Agreed, when atheists call the Catholic Church "intolerant", they should first perhaps examine the history of anti-religous/atheist governments in the twentieth century and prior that killed millions of people precisely for reasons of intolerance. The Spanish Inquisition was absolutely nothing in comparison to the regimes of Robespierre, Lenin, or the 20th Century Communists in terms of intolerance.

Atheists are often the worst offenders when it comes to throwing stones from glass houses.

Oh, and how about the left making such a big deal out of Watergate when it was Democrats such as FDR, Kennedy, and LBJ who started wiretapping?

Oh, we can't go there, can we? What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, is it?

I don't disagree with any of this stuff. I could care less what FDR, Kennedy or LBJ did. A bunch of liberal capitalist are not my ideological brethren. Talk about it all day.

 

[Riotbeard]

And as for glass houses, the secularists and atheists glass houses have huge smatterings of red on their walls. It's a human matter. We don't need belief or disbelief for that.

Also I am a socialist, and our name is mud in the U.S., but I don't sit around defending stalin or the USSR? Of course, Marxists have done horrible things.

Well, do you care to explain why the left hasn't owned up to these crimes? They never stop talking about the Holocaust but they are very curiously quiet about the atrocities of Communist regimes throughout the world. Every schoolchild in America knows about the Holocaust, but maybe 2% know that there was a genocide of 15 to 20 million Ukrainians in the 1930s.

That is because the leftist-socialist education system has dishonestly covered it up, just like Walter Duranty of the New York Times did.

My point being we all live in glass houses, so maybe more empathy towards other groups is preferable even when you don't agree with their choices than talking about how much better you are.

Agreed.

It's news to me if people are unaware that the USSR killed millions more than the nazis. Trotsky (although I am no Trotskyist, I am a Democratic Socialist, much more moderate) had his redeeming moments and was overall a well intentioned man, hence why he was exiled from a horribly corrupt government. I do think it's fair to guess that Marx himself would have opposed the USSR. Most of the British communist party eventually disavowed the USSR although far too late.

Communism or socialism like any society is open to the abuse of corrupt people. In my opinion a doctrinal marxist revolution also open a lot of doors for dictator (like I said I am not a doctrinal marxist). I am probably a little left of the current European socialist (not communist) states but not much.

 

[Murat B.]

To Riot and Murat together, let me say this: I think that one of the failings of so many modern people (and this is where the leftist elimination of Classical studies has been so pernicious) is that they fail to realize some of the most basic realities about civilization.

Is religion in large part B.S.? Sure it is. Is religion often a hypocritical or pretentious farce? Sure it is. Do clergy say silly things? Sure they do. But civilization itself is based on constant pretentiousness and tolerance for imperfection. Does anyone go by the perfect letter of the law at a job? No. Do university leaders truly mean it when they talk about the importance of academic rigor in speeches in front of thousands of students and parents? No.

Hypocrisy and failing to live up to standards is the norm of human beings in general, not just clergy. For goodness sake, Karl Marx was a vile racist and the analysis of history in the Communist Manifesto is one of the dumbest things I have heard or read in my life.

But there is an underlying, divinely ordained moral order to the universe that is of a transcendent nature. None of us can alter it. Our interaction with it may be very complex and filled with contradictions and riddles, but the spiritual realities of the soul and grace are fixed facts of the human experience.

Up until the bolded part, I cannot disagree with much of what you say. But I am of the opinion that morality evolved as mankind evolved and its hijacking by religion has been one of the saddest things in human history. No divine direction is needed to be good. Or bad.

 

[calitennis127]

To Riot and Murat together, let me say this: I think that one of the failings of so many modern people (and this is where the leftist elimination of Classical studies has been so pernicious) is that they fail to realize some of the most basic realities about civilization.

Is religion in large part B.S.? Sure it is. Is religion often a hypocritical or pretentious farce? Sure it is. Do clergy say silly things? Sure they do. But civilization itself is based on constant pretentiousness and tolerance for imperfection. Does anyone go by the perfect letter of the law at a job? No. Do university leaders truly mean it when they talk about the importance of academic rigor in speeches in front of thousands of students and parents? No.

Hypocrisy and failing to live up to standards is the norm of human beings in general, not just clergy. For goodness sake, Karl Marx was a vile racist and the analysis of history in the Communist Manifesto is one of the dumbest things I have heard or read in my life.

But there is an underlying, divinely ordained moral order to the universe that is of a transcendent nature. None of us can alter it. Our interaction with it may be very complex and filled with contradictions and riddles, but the spiritual realities of the soul and grace are fixed facts of the human experience.

Up until the bolded part, I cannot disagree with much of what you say. But I am of the opinion that morality evolved as mankind evolved and its hijacking by religion has been one of the saddest things in human history. No divine direction is needed to be good. Or bad.

Well I completely disagree on that, as I see religion and morality going hand-in-hand. But at least we can agree that civilization in general is a pretentious lie, and that spiritual religion is not by any means the only culprit in terms of hypocrisy.

 

[Murat B.]

Up until the bolded part, I cannot disagree with much of what you say. But I am of the opinion that morality evolved as mankind evolved and its hijacking by religion has been one of the saddest things in human history. No divine direction is needed to be good. Or bad.

Well I completely disagree on that, as I see religion and morality going hand-in-hand. But at least we can agree that civilization in general is a pretentious lie, and that spiritual religion is not by any means the only culprit in terms of hypocrisy.

Cali,I really hope that the fear of divine judgement is NOT the only thing that is keeping you "moral".

 

[shawnbm]

I know from where Murat comes, but talking of objectivism and doing good because "it is the right thing to do" opens up a philosophical and (yes, I say) theological Pandora's Box for its proponent. Is there a concession of an objective reality that must be adhered to? Is relativism, in all its forms, therefore, a farce, a weakness in the human intellect? Is there an absolute Truth a la the Platonic allegory of the cave? What exactly is living a certain way because it is the right thing to do? Who says? Is that something a person like myself would call natural law in the created order? We could go on and on and agree to disagree, but talking of objectivism and "the right thing" is likewise based on faith principles or at the very least on a primordial intuitive thought about a truth, a centrality of something beyond our ability to conduct a scientific experiment to start accumulating empirical evidence. I mean, as Lewis wrote decades ago, why is it considered unfair and improper--across all human languages, cultures and traditions (religious or otherwise)--for a person to cut in front of another; for such a person to presume they have more rights than others waiting in line? If there is no objective reality or barometer of "the right way" to act amongst the created order?

 

[calitennis127]

Up until the bolded part, I cannot disagree with much of what you say. But I am of the opinion that morality evolved as mankind evolved and its hijacking by religion has been one of the saddest things in human history. No divine direction is needed to be good. Or bad.

Well I completely disagree on that, as I see religion and morality going hand-in-hand. But at least we can agree that civilization in general is a pretentious lie, and that spiritual religion is not by any means the only culprit in terms of hypocrisy.

Cali,I really hope that the fear of divine judgement is NOT the only thing that is keeping you "moral".

Murat, I really hope that you realize spiritual religion is the most basic source of inspiration/guidance for decent morality in people, on a fundamental level.

 

[calitennis127]

We could go on and on and agree to disagree, but talking of objectivism and "the right thing" is likewise based on faith principles or at the very least on a primordial intuitive thought about a truth, a centrality of something beyond our ability to conduct a scientific experiment to start accumulating empirical evidence.

Eloquently stated. However, I would add that empirical evidence bolsters your argument; it is not tangential to it.

On the other hand, the findings of sociobiology contradict the basic view of human nature that someone like Rand held.