= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ChristianKl comments on Rationality Quotes April 2014 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (656)
Promoting a century-and-a-half-old wrong idea looks pretty silly to me. You want to revive phlogiston, too, maybe?
That's a good thing. I am highly suspicious of ideologies which want people to adopt new moral frameworks, especially if it involves battle cries.
That's a feature, not a bug.
Oh yes, they certainly did. I take it, you approve of these efforts?
That question indicates being mindkilled. I happen to be able to discuss issues like that without treating arguments as soldiers.
Discussing cause and effects is hard enough as it is without involving notions of approval or disapproval.
The implication that somehow socialism isn't responsible for spreading atheism in Europe because socialist used some immoral technique is a conflation of moral beliefs with beliefs about reality.
I haven't said anything about morals. In particular, I haven't labeled any actions as immoral. I just inquired whether you approved of the efforts that the socialist governments have made in reality in the XX century to spread atheism.
Moreover, we are already past the question of whether the socialist governments made "a greater effort to push back religion and make people atheists" -- we know they did -- the issue now is the cost-benefit analysis of these efforts. You clearly like the outcome, so do you think the price was worth it? This is what I mean by the question about whether you approve.
I do approve of democratic socialism.
I'm heavily opposed to what currently happens in France when it comes to fighting religion.
But I guess both claims won't tell the average person here where much because the political background of European politics isn't that clear in English speaking forum.
The question wasn't which political system you approve.
The question was whether you think the outcome of more atheists in Europe was worth the cost incurred during the efforts of the socialist governments to suppress religion and promote atheism.
I'm living in a country in which the people who want socialism who had the most political power favor democratic socialism over communism.
In Germany you had a split in the left. One half thought that you need a revolution to achieve the goal of socialism and the other half thought that you can work within the democratic institutions to achieve the goal of socialism.
I haven't meet any young earth creationists in Berlin or for that matter people who doubt the theory of evolution so I'm completely happen with the state of affairs where I live. No catholics bombing protestants either.
On the other hand I don't approve of the kind of policies that exist in France or Soviet Russia. I'm not familiar enough with Swedish policies to tell you whether I approve of them.
This is a bit of a sideline, but if you're talking about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, I think modeling it as a religious conflict is the wrong way to go. The impression I get is more of religion as a shibboleth for cultural and political ties than the other way around.
Lucky you X-D
Right. Instead you had the Baader-Meinhof gang. They wanted socialism, too, didn't they?
There advocated way of getting there wasn't the "way through the institutions" but "revolution". There are Marxist arguments that revolution is the only way and that it's not possible to change the system from the inside.
According to our university constitution students are supposed to vote in an election for a 5 person group to represent the body of students of a university department. At our university the students of the political science department don't like this.
The elected 5-person body doesn't constitute itself and the decisions are rather supposed to make by a self governed open body in which everyone who wants can speak and that makes decisions via "consensus".
I don't see myself in that tradition or have any loyalty to that fraction. As far as current affairs go, I would want liquid democracy for those student institutions with some elected persons taken representative roles and not "consensus" style democracy.
It seems to me that you two are talking past each other. Here's what I hear:
ChristianKI: "Socialist movements and governments did successfully promote atheism and materialism in the populations of Europe. This is why Europeans do not tend to believe, as Americans do, that atheists are incapable of being moral." (This is a descriptive claim about history and public opinion.)
Lumifer: "We should not advocate socialism as a way of promoting atheism and materialism, because socialism is awful and Marxist ideas of historical progress are silly." (This is a normative claim about advocacy.)
You're using "socialism" vaguely. Iron curtain socialism was awful. North-western European social democracy is not.
What do we get if we Taboo socialism?
Detail