the OP
Feel free to take it up with the author if you think he is talking about the "pinnacle of human" endeavour being anything else
Is a Humanity based religion where we should go ? Any god concept is excluded
- Thread starter river
- Start date
Feel free to take it up with the author if you think he is talking about the "pinnacle of human" endeavour being anything else
Sad but true.
And how is the OP evidence of your claim that I am not even on the par with the OP?Thanks for the irrelevant strawman, though.
I'm still waiting for you to support your generalisation that godlessness tends to exacerbate problems of existence, and that such is also applicable to Humanism.
Ho hum.
That's not necessarily an insoluble dilemma. But if there is one point in this question that is certain it is that religion is no solution. Its bigotry, exclusivity and misogyny, its pettiness and the conceit it generates in the believer will prevent forever its being a solution to anything.
If humankind fails to make fellowship, co-operation and compassion work for them on a global scale then Nature, pitiless, indifferent and "red in tooth and claw"[from Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850.] will take the solution out of our hands and impose one that is not likely to be to our advantage. We risk our existence by failing to recognise that far from being the ones who will solve the dilemma, Nature recognises us as the dilemma itself!
Nature has no remit to care for us. It will not mourn our extinction. It will thrive and prosper without us.
"Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana.
I cite as an example for all of us an unsung hero, a man and a reformer who sought no fame but achieved greatness despite his indifference to it.
From UK Yahoo Answers- a site that I believe welcomes attributed quotes:
uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071228150144AAu62TO
According to "The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography," Welsh social and educational reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858) is reported to have uttered the following words to his partner W. Allen on the dissolution of their business partnership:
"All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer." (1)
Robert Owen was born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire (Wales) on May 14, 1771, the sixth of seven children. His father was a saddler and ironmonger who also served as local postmaster; his mother came from one of the prosperous farming families of Newtown. (2)
A "doer" more than a "talker," utopian socialist Robert Owen founded the famous New Lanark Mills in Scotland as an example of the viability of co-operative factory communities. Many industrialists actually visited these "model factories" and some even adopted parts of Owen's system. Owen attempted to extend these into agriculture - advocating collective farming, as in New Harmony, Indiana. Although most of these efforts failed, he continued on his social work - becoming the head of one of the largest trade union federations in Britain in 1843. (3)
A bare chronicle of dates and brief biographical details do not do justice to this remarkable man. His epitaph on the Owen Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery London reads:
"He organised infants schools. He secured the reduction of the hours of labour for women and children in factories. He was a liberal supporter of the earliest efforts to obtain national education. He laboured to promote international arbitration. He was one of the foremost Britons who taught men to aspire to a higher social state by reconciling the interests of capital and labour. He spent his life and a large fortune in seeking to improve his fellowmen by giving them education, self-reliance, and moral worth. His life was sanctified by human affection and lofty effort." (4)
Granted you had a point or two to make .... but if you are going to encapsulate it in inflammatory strawman then i think you have to calm down a bit and take a look at themes presented in the op before you try and level accusations at others
Thanks for the irrelevant strawman, though.
I'm still waiting for you to support your generalisation that godlessness tends to exacerbate problems of existence, and that such is also applicable to Humanism.
Ho hum.
Since I didn't encapsulate it as such, your comment is somewhat redundant. :shrug:
Now, are you going to address those points that you so graciously conceded I had made, or are you perhaps going to dance around it some more until we all just tire of your constant evasion?
However, since you know you are unable to support your generalisation, and I know you are unable to, and by now most other people who cared to follow are also aware that you are unable, there is nothing more to be gained from trying to stop you evading the point.
So I won't push you any further, and you can let your little dancing feet have a rest.
Your first line in post 19 suggests otherwise
:shrug:
So indicating how a statement you made does not apply to me/the argument I presented, and the subsequent labelling of that statement as a strawman, is itself to be considered an inflammatory strawman???
Wow - you just keep dancing, LG.
And don't forget to turn the lights out on your way out.
The problem is that you are running with the idea that bigotry is ultimately dictated by reason when it is actually determined by difference.
Iow after all is said and done, if you manage to eliminate those cultural institutions that you deem as illegitimate, you will be left with the same problem.
Iow bigotry runs much more deeply than the cultural institutions you define as grating to your values. In fact we could say that it's a manifestation of your bigotry.
The problem is that to solve this issue you need to have recourse to assets that can establish self hood beyond the bodily designation of a particular country or community and thus it's simply not a possibility for someone who's notions of self hood are strictly relegated to the corporeal body
perhaps if I did actually make the statement to you.So indicating how a statement you made does not apply to me/the argument I presented, and the subsequent labelling of that statement as a strawman, is itself to be considered an inflammatory strawman???
I didn't.
Hence, your strawman ... not mine
just following your lead
:shrug:
Re your argument on bigotry: Quite to the contrary, religious bigotry by definition is generated by and is a feature of unreason. People, generally, are not reasoned into religious faith but are inculcated with it as defenceless children. They learn bigotry from a very early age. But I agree with you that bigotry is nurtured by difference, it is nurtured by the exclusivity of religious faith.
If I exclude religion from consideration, if I eliminate those cultural[?] institutions [all religious faith IOW] then I have removed a significant hindrance to a "universal set of values" no matter how improbable a goal it may be. It cannot be stressed too strongly that the divisiveness of religious faith is a powerful foe of universal agreement on anything.
Selfhood beyond the bodily designation of a country or a community? What assets are these that establish selfhood? One is led to the ineluctable conclusion that you see religious faith as a beneficent universal force that binds people of various faiths and cults. Kindly disabuse me of this before I fall from my chair transfixed by uncontrollable mirth.
Self, unsullied and unalloyed, and the Golden Rule are the essential ingredients.
Let's try to keep our exchange on a serious level.........agreed?
Given that post 19 was a direct response to your post to me (perhaps you have not been following the thread?)...
So now you're saying that the comment I made (which you exampled as evidence) was a response to a comment you made not to me but to someone else??
Ho hum.
Granted that your initial comment in this thread was not a response to me specifically, you are undoubtedly aware that this is a forum... and that you can not limit responses to what you post to just one person - unless you operate through PMs.
A comment to one is therefore a comment that all can respond to.
So not making the statement to me is, alas, no defence here.
On the contrary, bigotry, regardless whether it appears under the guise of gender, creed, nationality, geography, annual income, marital status, age, education or many, many, many, many other possibilities has only one reason : difference.
Incorrect
The nature of difference can be promulgated by the communities it appears in or learned from forces external to the said the community.
Incorrect
See opening response for a broad but as yet not exhaustive list of avenues for differences that bigotry can manifest through
Oh, you know : god .... just a minor detail of theistic philosophical discourse
err .... no.
I believe its the folly of gross materialists to hanker for the fulfillment of desire that the material world technically can not provide ... or alternatively sourly default to the notion of an impersonal universe of no ultimate consequence (with the same said desires spoken before hand raging not-all-the-time -so-quietly in the background if they haven't yet already culminated fully into turning to ash in the mouths of the said parties) with a good measure of cerebral pretensions about civil justice for good press coverage/income protection
which, for some funny reason, never acts as anything more than a momentarily reprieve in the standard atmosphere of antagonism that dictates the mainstay of affairs in the material world
It will probably require a bit more diligence on your side of things
:shrug:
It was a reminder/clarification of the OP
IOW unlike you, I never left the subject what was given in the first post
If you disagree, take it up with the author
:shrug:
Nor have I - I responded to your post, highlighting a generalisation that you do not seem able to support.
Everything since is just a result of your evasion.
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So how do you propose to solve this problem?
I guess then that, for example, people who have two functioning kidneys, and who refuse to give one away to a person with kidney failure, are then also bigoted, petty, conceited etc.
IOW, it's in the nature of material life that resources are scarce, and it is impossible to distribute them evenly to everyone without thereby causing harm in the process.
Really? So who is speaking on behalf of nature? Surely just some men.
What do Owen's opponents say?
When someone insists that the others person is "generalizing" and "evading", then such an insister is proposing themselves to be "The Judge, above the other party."
Actually, I find that you are the one who doesn't want to discuss, even though you continue the argument.
The unsupported generalisation within that post.
Care to retract it yet, or care to explain how Humanism (a godless philosophy) tends to exacerbate those problems?
It's a simple enough question, surely?