Why is there religion???

[BaalChatzaf]

2 minutes ago, moralist said:

You're right, Brant.

Bob's failure is his own to deal with and has absolutely nothing to do with my choice to walk a completely different path from his.

My successes come from helping other American Capitalists to be successful, because that's how American Capitalism works.

WIN/WIN

Again... you really should take another long hard look at Francisco's Money Speech. I didn't make this up. I got it from Ayn.

 

Greg

 

 

Poor me.  I just do the job my customer required me to do, and I get paid. 

[moralist]

19 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Nobody pays taxes?

No... only successful American Capitalist producers don't pay taxes, because their customers pay their taxes for them.

 

Greg

[moralist]

5 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Poor me.   

That was your own free choice, Bob. Your government only grooms students to be employees... not  independent Capitalist businessmen. Your choice explains why, for all of your government education, you're totally ignorant of the simple business principle of parity.

Greg

[moralist]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

There I was pickin' cotton and I found this pot o' gold . . .

The pot of gold is saving up the money you earn from picking other people's cotton, and use it to buy your own land and grow your own cotton. You're still picking cotton, but it's your OWN cotton.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, moralist said:

That was your own free choice, Bob. Your government only grooms students to be employees... not  independent Capitalist businessmen. Your choice explains why, for all of your government education, you're totally ignorant of the simple business principle of parity.

Greg

I was an independent contractor.  I found my clients and signed contracts with them.  While I was a contractor I paid quarterly taxes  just like you.  I paid my own fica (ouch!)  out of my earnings  and I bought my own medical coverage.   I never  hired anyone to work for me though.  I was incorporated in Massachusetts as an LLP  to limit my liability.  

your contempt for people who work for a wage is remarkable.  Did you ever hire any of the miserable workers who apparently you despise because they do not own their own business?  Yes or No.  Do tell us.  

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, moralist said:

No... only successful American Capitalist producers don't pay taxes, because their customers pay their taxes for them.

 

Greg

your customers/clients are not only paying your taxes,  they are buying your food,  paying for your utilities,  purchasing fuel for you vehicles etc.  But if you ask your customers what they thought they were doing they would probably answer:  I was paying Greg for goods/services delivered.  

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, moralist said:

No... only successful American Capitalist producers don't pay taxes, because their customers pay their taxes for them.

 

Greg

your customers/clients are not only paying your taxes,  they are buying your food,  paying for your utilities,  purchasing fuel for your vehicles etc.  But if you ask your customers what they thought they were doing they would probably answer:  I was paying Greg for goods/services delivered.  

[moralist]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I was an independent contractor.    

You had said you worked in one company for decades. That's an employee. That's not having your own business.

Greg

[moralist]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

your customers/clients are not only paying your taxes,  they are buying your food,  paying for your utilities,  purchasing fuel for your vehicles etc.  But if you ask your customers what they thought they were doing they would probably answer:  I was paying Greg for goods/services delivered.  

(shrug) So?

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

7 minutes ago, moralist said:

You had said you worked in one company for decades. That's an employee. That's not having your own business.

Greg

The last ten years of my working life were spent as an independent contractor.  Before that I was a prole. 

[moralist]

18 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The last ten years of my working life were spent as an independent contractor.  Before that I was a prole. 

That's just someone a business won't give benefits to because they're too old.

You already amply demonstrated you know nothing about running your own business. You did fine as an employee. That's what the government trained you to be.

 

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

48 minutes ago, moralist said:

That's just someone a business won't give benefits to because they're too old.

You already amply demonstrated you know nothing about running your own business. You did fine as an employee. That's what the government trained you to be.

 

Greg

I made good money every year I worked.   It is true that I am not a business man.  I became an independent contractor  (same sort of thing as a plumber or electrician)  because it was easier to get work that way.  In my heart I am a plain old working stiff.  I just found a better way to be a prole. My business model was simple.  The client told me what he wanted and I did it for  him or I made it for  him.  Very much like a carpenter.  My capital expenses were minimal.  Computers,  office supplies  and a vehicle.   I worked at home mostly and telecommuted.  I came into the clients office only when face to face contact was required.  It was a simple arrangement which is all I could manage.  In business terms, I am a simpleton.  In technical terms  they don't come much smarter than me. My interest was in the task,  not growing a business. While I was doing my software thing I was also tutoring for $$$$.   Again a simple service.  Teach a course and get paid for the course  or tutor a kid and get paid by the hour.  Again mostly labor for bucks.  In the case of software I also created the programs and tested them.  So I never turned out tons of steel.   Just thousands of lines of code. I am of the same sort as my ancestors in Europe who went around fixing pots and pans and sharpening knives.  One can make a good living at it, if one is efficient but it is far away from big-time capitalism.  

 

I am not in the same class as genuine industrialists who build large firms.  That is way over my pay grade. 

I favor the capitalist system but I am not a capitalist.  I am in the final reckoning,  just a prole. No long term vision. My vision extended to solving the problem at hand.  Finish it and get on to the next problem.  Very simple.  But that is not what builds industries.  I leave that to the real capitalists.  

By the way Greg,  what Great Thing have you built that will outlive you???????

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, moralist said:

That's just someone a business won't give benefits to because they're too old.

You already amply demonstrated you know nothing about running your own business. You did fine as an employee. That's what the government trained you to be.

Greg

Seems according to his subsequent post he did about what you are doing, just doesn't come with your circular and moralistic rationalizations.

--Brant

you simply play, "I'm king of the moral mountain, and I feel fine"

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, moralist said:

That's just someone a business won't give benefits to because they're too old.

You already amply demonstrated you know nothing about running your own business. You did fine as an employee. That's what the government trained you to be.

 

Greg

I earned my keep the way my father earned his.  He was a CPA and a sole proprietor.  I was an applied mathematician and software designer.  Also a data-base maven.  My father learned from his father  who learned from his father all the way back to Eastern Europe.  The government had nothing to do with it. In my family line the fathers educate the sons in the way they should go.

[moralist]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I made good money every year I worked.

Lots of employees do, Bob.

By the way Greg, what Great Thing have you built that will outlive you???????

Houses... fruit trees... grapevines... and a variety of products I've created, designed, produced, and sold which will be in use long after I'm dead..

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

5 hours ago, moralist said:

Lots of employees do, Bob.

 

 

Houses... fruit trees... grapevines... and a variety of products I've created, designed, produced, and sold which will be in use long after I'm dead..

Greg

I wish software  were as long lived.  Several of the systems I created  ran for several years, but advancing  technology rendered them obsolete.  So it goes.  But I never set out to create anything immortal or that would outlive me.  I produced services and and products which met my customer's needs for which I received payment.  Just like a doctor, or a carpenter,  or a plumber.  Very few medical doctors create anything that outlives them.  They treat the conditions of their patients and go on to treat the next patient or deal with the next condition.   I solved problems  and went on to the next problem.  

What I did was upright and honest.  My customers were happy to receive my software and services.  I was happy to receive payment.

A good plumber installs pipes and fixes leaks.  His customers are happy with the work, and he is  happy to receive payment. And so on.

Honest work for sufficient pay.   It is  a blameless way of living and without it society would not exist.   I regret nothing and I am proud and happy about my performance.   You depend on this mode to keep your toilet flushing,   your car running and your computer working (I assume you did not write the operating system you use on your computer).  I leave it to the capitalists and the visionaries to create for the ages.   That is not what I do or did. 

[william.scherk]

Here's Sean Carroll's attempt to sum up a point of view, self-excerpting at his blog from his recent book, "The Big Picture" ...

Here’s a story one could imagine telling about the nature of the world. The universe is a miracle. It was created by God as a unique act of love. The splendor of the cosmos, spanning billions of years and countless stars, culminated in the appearance of human beings here on Earth — conscious, aware creatures, unions of soul and body, capable of appreciating and returning God’s love. Our mortal lives are part of a larger span of existence, in which we will continue to participate after our deaths.

It’s an attractive story. You can see why someone would believe it, and work to reconcile it with what science has taught us about the nature of reality. But the evidence points elsewhere.

Here’s a different story. The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium condition. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world.

That’s a pretty darn good story, too. Demanding in its own way, it may not give us everything we want, but it fits comfortably with everything science has taught us about nature. It bequeaths to us the responsibility and opportunity to make life into what we would have it be.

I don't know if Sean Carroll can rise above the Everyone-But-Me-God-And-Rabbi-Cahn-Pays-Taxes controversy. Who knows? But perhaps food for thought.

[Brant Gaede]

The universe as a miracle does nothing for science--that's the universe as it is, was and will be re physicality. It does, however, sustain many scientists in their endeavors, including the greatest scientist ever, Newton.

Even many if not most atheists need myths to live by. Unfortunately, many use myths to suppress and destroy their human betters. Not that that doesn't happen with religionists as with past-day Christianity and present-day Islam. The people hurt the most by (embracing) Islam are the Muslims themselves. For the massive human destruction of the last century, the communist, fascist, Nazi secularists had to come with secular religions unto themselves. That's 100 to 200 billion people, depending on how the actual wars are thrown into the basically genocidal totals. Qua pure genocide, the Nazis did 6 million Jews and other sub human (to them) undesirables, The USSR 20 to 30 million if not more, Cambodia up to 3-4 million, China 40 million (?)--(and let's hear it for imperial Japan vs China in the 1930s and WWII).

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

For the massive human destruction of the last century, the communist, fascist, Nazi secularists had to come with secular religions unto themselves. That's 100 to 200 billion people,

 

Billion?

[william.scherk]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Even many if not most atheists need myths to live by.

Every totalitarian genocidal apex predator needs a cult.  The totalitarian Cambodian cult was a natural outgrowth of the psychopathy of its leader.  The trappings of an authoritarian cult change with time and fashion. Putting heartless authoritarian sociopaths into power is within the hands of democracies. Generally they avoid this trap, at least since the end of the last world war.  Democracies tend to be self-flushing of the most morally-absent, on balance.  

Megalomania is kind of an occupational hazard when a cult forms at a state apex. Even if not utterly a sociopath, a cult framework builds its standard administrative forms around a ruler and the personal dissolves into the state and all its symbols. The most trenchant examples today are found in Chechnya and Azerbaijan.

An example of the struggles that authoritarianism has with democracy is obvious in Russia, legacy states of the Soviet Union, Turkey and states emerging from autocracy (like Burma). The totalitarian regimes remaining seem like natural 'enemies' of any thinking atheist who shares Randian precepts.

Many atheists take a stand as humanists (and apart, perhaps from the atheism of the O'vishes). The 'secular humanists,' so-called, have carved out their own moral territory that sometimes firmly aligns with Randian precepts and sometimes does not.

How many paragraphs does it take to make a  link between atheism and sociopathic genocidal megalomaniacs?

3 hours ago, Sean Carroll, in 'The Big Picture' said:

The universe is not a miracle

Imagine that.

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

The universe as a miracle does nothing for science

Miracle of misdirection! 

Quote

That's 100 to 200 billion people, depending on how the actual wars are thrown into the basically genocidal totals. Qua pure genocide, the Nazis did 6 million Jews and other sub human (to them) undesirables, The USSR 20 to 30 million if not more, Cambodia up to 3-4 million, China 40 million (?)--(and let's hear it for imperial Japan vs China in the 1930s and WWII).

Let's hear it for the atheist cult that enfolds totalitarian Korea's Kim Jong Un. Or give that guy some respect for deepening his power and killing his own family in so doing. Dratted atheists and fellow-travellers.

My own opinion is that a non-belief in supernatural beings (like gods) does not tell you much, alone. That person X and person Y are both non-believers does not allow a generalization beyond the evidence. Weighting atheism with the morally-deranged or morally-defunct is a mug's game. It is statistical whoopee. It is not rational and doesn't give you accurate sums.

Put another way, reifying atheism as an actor or causal agent leads to errors (of attribution), and a thumb on the scales of objectivity. We must take care in presuming failure to accept a supernatural X in one's heart means Z -- or any other particular thing about that heart.

Eg, our favourite clueless toad and troller, moralist,  has reified the atheism and rational-footings of any and all who strongly challenge his arguments and claims. When he puts on his Z-ray specs, imputing to himself superiority, we all look the same, like suckers, because we do not have X in our hearts. This is bizarre and inept even by the lowest standards of reasoning.

It is this haywired moralizing ineptitude that hauls out the same old boilerplate character-judging bullshit every time, and which ultimately poisons the pond.

Whether Bob or Jonathan, Merlin or Stephen,  me, or anybody,  one awful template. Pissing on the character of each challenger repetitively renders  a good man, a top man, a perfect estimator -- in a degenerate private math, informed by Z-ray readings.  

Lest I be assigned guilt for errors in my own moral math ...

Hey, hasty, sloppy and/or unwarranted generalizations in themselves are conversation-starters, no?

Brant, I use your boilerplate as jumping-stone, not a jab.  I am sure I fail to uphold my own standards at times, and deserve the rubbishing sloppy arguments invite.

This message will self-destruct in ... thirty minutes.  Or rather, this message will be ruthlessly edited for taste and civility and in the interests of brevity.  If my standards are obviously breeched, this will become an evaporating wet-spot on the fabric of discussion.

Edited May 27, 2016 by william.scherk
Fulmination added

[BaalChatzaf]

12 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

Billion?

There never were 100 billion (with a B)  homo-sapiens.  We only emerged about a quarter of a million years ago and 75,000 ybp  Mt. Toba a super volcano blew and kill all but maybe about 5000 breeding pairs of humans.  Our kind of primate did not start getting numerous until about 200 years ago.

[Brant Gaede]

49 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There never were 100 billion (with a B)  homo-sapiens.  We only emerged about a quarter of a million years ago and 75,000 ybp  Mt. Toba a super volcano blew and kill all but maybe about 5000 breeding pairs of humans.  Our kind of primate did not start getting numerous until about 200 years ago.

Where's your info on that death rate? From DNA analysis?

There were a hell of a lot of people 200 years ago.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

Every totalitarian genocidal apex predator needs a cult.  The totalitarian Cambodian cult was a natural outgrowth of the psychopathy of its leader.  The trappings of an authoritarian cult change with time and fashion. Putting heartless authoritarian sociopaths into power is within the hands of democracies. Generally they avoid this trap, at least since the end of the last world war.  Democracies tend to be self-flushing of the most morally-absent, on balance.  

Megalomania is kind of an occupational hazard when a cult forms at a state apex. Even if not utterly a sociopath, a cult framework builds its standard administrative forms around a ruler and the personal dissolves into the state and all its symbols. The most trenchant examples today are found in Chechnya and Azerbaijan.

An example of the struggles that authoritarianism has with democracy is obvious in Russia, legacy states of the Soviet Union, Turkey and states emerging from autocracy (like Burma). The totalitarian regimes remaining seem like natural 'enemies' of any thinking atheist who shares Randian precepts.

Many atheists take a stand as humanists (and apart, perhaps from the atheism of the O'vishes). The 'secular humanists,' so-called, have carved out their own moral territory that sometimes firmly aligns with Randian precepts and sometimes does not.

How many paragraphs does it take to make a  link between atheism and sociopathic genocidal megalomaniacs?

Imagine that.

Miracle of misdirection! 

Let's hear it for the atheist cult that enfolds totalitarian Korea's Kim Jong Un. Or give that guy some respect for deepening his power and killing his own family in so doing. Dratted atheists and fellow-travellers.

My own opinion is that a non-belief in supernatural beings (like gods) does not tell you much, alone. That person X and person Y are both non-believers does not allow a generalization beyond the evidence. Weighting atheism with the morally-deranged or morally-defunct is a mug's game. It is statistical whoopee. It is not rational and doesn't give you accurate sums.

Put another way, reifying atheism as an actor or causal agent leads to errors (of attribution), and a thumb on the scales of objectivity. We must take care in presuming failure to accept a supernatural X in one's heart means Z -- or any other particular thing about that heart.

Eg, our favourite clueless toad and troller, moralist,  has reified the atheism and rational-footings of any and all who strongly challenge his arguments and claims. When he puts on his Z-ray specs, imputing to himself superiority, we all look the same, like suckers, because we do not have X in our hearts. This is bizarre and inept even by the lowest standards of reasoning.

It is this haywired moralizing ineptitude that hauls out the same old boilerplate character-judging bullshit every time, and which ultimately poisons the pond.

Whether Bob or Jonathan, Merlin or Stephen,  me, or anybody,  one awful template. Pissing on the character of each challenger repetitively renders  a good man, a top man, a perfect estimator -- in a degenerate private math, informed by Z-ray readings.  

Lest I be assigned guilt for errors in my own moral math ...

Hey, hasty, sloppy and/or unwarranted generalizations in themselves are conversation-starters, no?

Brant, I use your boilerplate as jumping-stone, not a jab.  I am sure I fail to uphold my own standards at times, and deserve the rubbishing sloppy arguments invite.

This message will self-destruct in ... thirty minutes.  Or rather, this message will be ruthlessly edited for taste and civility and in the interests of brevity.  If my standards are obviously breeched, this will become an evaporating wet-spot on the fabric of discussion.

I dealt with and deal with Greg in my own way. By my lights I am successful. Others will have to do the same if they care about his prognostications as they fall on them--or whatever. By Greg's lights he has had and has a proper moral. personal and business life. I would bet that that's true and for the reasons he has stated. He frequently is not civil, but that also comes with silly.

As for atheism--I am an atheist, classically rendered. But I semantically switched out to simple pantheism. God is reality, in all its aspects. I respect reality, I do not worship reality. Morality comes from human qua human reality convergence. That morality is reflected in individual rights philosophy but goes deeper and into the person, not mere social existence. This works for me as what I think of as being a modern man. It's a long way from working for billions of people run over by or threatened by totalitarianism to lesser forms of statism, many embraced by them. In present times Christianity provides some relief for in a Christian country all bow down equal before God which gives the peasant strength against the king, but not for what happens when kings are removed. Then it's frequently deuces wild.

--Brant

gotta keep working on philosophy, for pantheism is philosophy, as in the base of the philosophy of science, as in the basic "Basic" principles "Principles" [of] objectivism "Objectivism"

[Roger Bissell]

46 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There never were 100 billion (with a B)  homo-sapiens.  We only emerged about a quarter of a million years ago and 75,000 ybp  Mt. Toba a super volcano blew and kill all but maybe about 5000 breeding pairs of humans.  Our kind of primate did not start getting numerous until about 200 years ago.

 

Where's your info on that death rate? From DNA analysis?

There were a hell of a lot of people 200 years ago.

--Brant

 

It appears that Brant is correct on this. Apparently the total number of human beings who were ever alive is about 108 billion. (Sorry for doubting you on this, Brant!)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/fire-in-the-mind/2013/08/11/how-many-people-ever-lived/#.V0ipD_Mo6M8

REB

[william.scherk]

I speculate and lose my shirt:

4 hours ago, william.scherk said:

if Sean Carroll can rise above the Everyone-But-Me-God-And-Rabbi-Cahn-Pays-Taxes controversy. Who knows?

Further back in the logjam of argument I must go. I am pretty ignorant about a pantheist  argument on ethics, or a pantheist incarnated in philosophy. At first glance/think it seems unassailably vague and nice and suitable for mixed company,  but I then I find Schopenhauer, a demiurge of metaphysical evul, O'vish style 

From my standby in times of ignorance in philosophy, the sometimes catty online wonkery at http://plato.stanford.edu/  

15. Pantheism and ethics

If, as we have suggested, there is room for value in pantheism then there is room for ethics. But does pantheism prescribe any specific ethics? There are two respects in which pantheism might be thought to have significant ethical implications.

Firstly, for pantheism, there is no higher power, no external authority to tell us what to do. Insofar as it rejects any sense of a transcendent external lawgiver or—to put the matter more positively—insofar as it regards deity as the distributed possession of all, pantheism may be represented as endorsing the Kantian doctrine of the autonomy of ethical judgement. But the implications of this are open. It can lead to either democratic communitarian ethics or to individualism. Paradoxically, it might equally well result in a species of conservative conformity to whatever is deemed to be the ‘natural state’ of the world every bit as stifling to the human spirit as conformity to whatever is deemed to be ‘the will of God.’

Secondly, it may be argued that pantheism is able to give a particularly strong ground for an ethic of altruism or compassion. To Schopenhauer (with whom this argument is particularly associated) only genuinely altruistic or compassion actions have moral worth, but only pleasure and pain are capable of motivating the will, from which he concludes that genuinely moral action is possible only if the pleasure and pain of others can stir us to action as directly and immediately as can our own pleasure and pain. It is not enough that we sympathetically imagine ourselves in their shoes, he argues, we must literally feel the pleasure and pain of others as our own, an attitude that will be rationally grounded only in a monistic metaphysics in which the distinction between ego and not ego becomes a trivial or illusory one between two manifestations of the same underlying unity. (Schopenhauer 1839) Schopenhauer includes nonhuman animals in this argument. To the charge that what is defended here remains but a species of egoism— metaphysically enlarged, but still morally worthless — it may be replied that self-concern is to be deprecated only insofar as it is something that exists in contrast with concern for others; a contrast which no longer finds any purchase in this scheme.