fubarobfusco comments on Rationality Quotes April 2014 - Less Wrong
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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.
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?
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