Philosophy Now Forum

Here is my take:

• When one is forced by one's own predicates to surrender the very core of possibility of argument from value and principle, and when one's view of the world, life, existence and meaning has been riddled by the tyranny of pure contingency, one has by one's own effort and assent excavated the ground under one's own feet and ends up in a territory of 'argument from circumstances'. In this case the sheer randomness of atoms in motion in a world of chaos.
  
  If that is one's core definition, one will inevitably have to become what one defines. And one becomes incapable of any definition of value and principle. This is I think what we have witnessed here, by and large, and this is the effect and consequence of radical liberalism as it destroys ideation and intellect. These veer away from the requirement of strong definitions of value and represent the shirking of responsibility at a predicative level. It leads to the undermining of our cultural inheritance.
  
  In the end this contingent perspective, the domination of these predicates, 'the screeching of jackdaws always in our ears', reduce one to the ultimate argument of radical liberalism: the emotional appeal with blaming, hatred and contempt. Wyman just offered a first-rate example of it, but so do Vege-Taxi, UK Rising, Sthita, and my absolute fave Lacewing, who took her emotional appeal to the logical conclusion, destroying the platform of conversation through emotional manipulation: dialectical murder.
  
  Devoid of the possibility of recognising and articulating metaphysic value at the most crucial level, and of meaning and principle that interpenetrate becoming and which are available to us in as salvific rational agents, people captured by these ideas become termites in a destructive project fuelled by perverse emotionalism. To avoid facing the consequences of their choices what they do is continue destructive processes, continue destroying the possibility of dialectical conversation.
  
  Ideas have consequences.

It took me a couple of times to get what you said, but it does seem that way.

I don't know who first wrote it, but it is true: secularism is an ideal which, once having found a voice, must impose its values (or lack thereof) in order to achieve its goals. And rather than face the consequences of their ideas, they become angry and/or retreat to the safety of their termite mound.

"secularism is an ideal which, once having found a voice, must impose its values (or lack thereof) in order to achieve its goals."

Pretty much the more rabid proponents of any philosophy will try to impose their values on the nonbelievers. As far as I can tell: rabid theists and rabid atheists are the same in this.

henry quirk wrote:"secularism is an ideal which, once having found a voice, must impose its values (or lack thereof) in order to achieve its goals."

Pretty much the more rabid proponents of any philosophy will try to impose their values on the nonbelievers. As far as I can tell: rabid theists and rabid atheists are the same in this.

This is very typical of the atheistic mindset: it sees the surface, imagines it is studying the ocean's depths and feels free to make banal comments from the sanctuary of its “termite mound.”

No one denies that religion often acts unwisely, even irreligiously, but it acts. There is no question that Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is dynamic!

A secular society can never do more than react to any given situation. That is why unless the European nation regains its footing firm ground, its culture is doomed by the influx of a religious people who can marshal their forces under a common banner.

"secular society can never do more than react to any given situation"

When has there ever been a purely secular society? Seems to me: any and every society has been and is a healthy gumbo of competing and cooperating perspectives and philosophies.

And: you're the second person today to get up my nose with reducing and generalizing comments. Seems to me: I've done you the courtesy of addressing you as 'one' instead if as a mouthpiece for some aggregated viewpoint. Sure would be nice if you would return the favor.

henry quirk wrote:"secular society can never do more than react to any given situation"

When has there ever been a purely secular society? Seems to me: any and every society has been and is a healthy gumbo of competing and cooperating perspectives and philosophies.

And: you're the second person today to get up my nose with reducing and generalizing comments. Seems to me: I've done you the courtesy of addressing you as 'one' instead if as a mouthpiece for some aggregated viewpoint. Sure would be nice if you would return the favor.

You do yourself a discourtesy by doing exactly what I said: looking the surface, imagining you are studying the ocean's depths and making banal comments, meaningless comments, from your sanctuary.

You are perplexed by anyone who does not passively assent to ' the screeching of jackdaws,' to use Gustav's analogy.

"Multi-cultural societies": gawd, I love oxymorons.

There you go again with the insults.

I don't expect you or any one to assent to anything and nuthin' I've posted in-forum could possibly be taken as such a thing.

All I do here (or anywhere) is speak for me, foist up my perspective.

In the context of this thread I've offered up the foundation for why I'm an atheist. I can take being called a moron for my own idiocies; I can't, however, abide with this lumping in, this aggregation, that so many seem to enjoy doing.

'You're *X, then obviously you're like all those others who ascribe to X, or, obviously you're just parroting what another thinks. No way, no how, do you stand alone.'

As I just told someone else in another place: insulting and off-putting.

My skin is apperently just too thin today to even read responses without my sphincter tightening up.

So: I'll leave you (and others) to your varied in- forum businesses...ne: gonna go watch cartoons.









*just about any label you care to apply

henry quirk wrote: In the context of this thread I've offered up the foundation for why I'm an atheist. I can take being called a moron for my own idiocies; I can't, however, abide with this lumping in, this aggregation, that so many seem to enjoy doing.

Ah, yes. The ole' 'lack of evidence' argument. How incredibly shallow and banal. It leaves you with feet planted firmly on thin air and at home with the other jackdaws.

Henry Quirk wrote:I can take being called a moron for my own idiocies; I can't, however, abide with this lumping in, this aggregation, that so many seem to enjoy doing.

There is I think a very easy solution to all upset, all sense of offence, and the varied - and often creative! - characterisations that people come up with in forums and certainly on PN when they want to lay-in to their adversary:

Water off a duck's back. Pay no attention to it at all and 'argue on'.

I wish to suggest that though we have emotions and sentiments, and we have to respect that, this is not really the place to be emotional (or sentimental) nor to feel offence. Is it fair and reasonable to say that what we are talking about here is among the more important topics? I think it is. We should make an effort then to keep operating at the level of idea.

I have been so mercilessly wounded here so often - I am the true man of sorrows it would appear - that I have contracted with a therapist to help me recover the scattered bits of myself. I've cried, I've raged, and in the end I found that if I just didn't give a fuck-all what anyone said (of my character) I could better weather the tumilt of argument and stick with the fucking issues.

I suggest that this emotionalism and sentimentalism is a cheap and destructive substitute for 'manliness' in the world of ideas.

This forum is riddled with 'female energy' and contingent, sentimental argumentation.

I have to wonder if folks like Henry make it a habit to wallow in self-pity when they discover the world isn't the way they want it to be.

The Inglorious One wrote:...

A secular society can never do more than react to any given situation. ...

I disagree, it is that they have kept a saccharine christian morality that stops them acting.

That is why unless the European nation regains its footing firm ground, its culture is doomed by the influx of a religious people who can marshal their forces under a common banner.

So fear of the Muslim eh! Maybe, maybe not, as over here we are importing a shitload of radical African and Eastern Europeon Christians. Me I think you're right and it's about time to raise the secular atheist banner and do away once and for all with the godbotherer but I doubt this will happen until after we've had another bout of Theist Wars and this time they'll have advanced weaponry so we can also test the thesis that seems popular with the current crop of godbotherers that it was atheism that cause more mass deaths in the past and not technology and that the godbotherer is inherently more merciful.

UK Rising wrote:I disagree, it is that they have kept a saccharine christian morality that stops them acting.

You mean that the 'saccharine Christian morality' is still present and operative in secular culture, despite being secularised? Or that they remain saccharine because they remain Christian?

Saccharine as in bathetic, fawning, servile, mushy, etc. The opposite being unsentimental? Unadulterated? Hard-edged?

Me I think you're right and it's about time to raise the secular atheist banner and do away once and for all with the godbotherer but I doubt this will happen until after we've had another bout of Theist Wars and this time they'll have advanced weaponry so we can also test the thesis that seems popular with the current crop of godbotherers that it was atheism that cause more mass deaths in the past and not technology and that the godbotherer is inherently more merciful.

With respects, you are (to quote Lacewing) 'spewing' a bunch of unprocessed ideas here. I notice this happens often among the philosophers of PN. They very quickly get muddled in the puddle of contingency. Yet there are much larger issues here. Europe, as one of the only spots on the globe that has become quite secularised, has been accused of sacrificing its link with its 'value structure' and 'value essence'.

Certainly, this is my trend of argument though I struggle to become certain of what in religious values I definitely wish to preserve. But that is not the point. The point has to do with the ability to define values, and to construct them on a foundation. This has to occur in the individual, and there has to be something more than mush or treacle out of which to construct an unsentimental, unadulterated and hard-edged cultural philosophy.

This is essentially what is being discussed int his thread. What, outside of anecdotes with little relationship to the essences, is your relationship to these issues? I grasp that you think 'godbother' is a non-productive and, it would seem that you say, a negative pursuit. But should you not be asked for more argument here?

One book I have suggests that there are the three ways of contending with, and resisting, evil:

1. To return evil for evil — the positive but unrighteous method.
2. To suffer evil without complaint and without resistance — the purely negative method.
3. To return good for evil, to assert the will so as to become master of the situation, to overcome evil with good — the positive and righteous method.

It's a bit simplistic, I think, but the first two outline what we see in Europe today: an influx of people committed to the first and the other under the influence of the Brave New World's humanistic drug of choice, “Soma.”

Number “3” is where it gets complicated, primarily because of a gross misunderstanding of “turn the other cheek" that radical liberals have taken to heart. In the proper cultural context, it is not telling us to just stand there dumb and passive like Europe is doing, but to take a positive attitude and do the best thing possible to show the offender the error of his ways. Europe is committing cultural suicide because of its addiction to Soma.

In context, “turn the other cheek” specifies that the person has been struck on the right cheek. Given the social customs of the day, a backhand blow with the right hand was the way a superior hit an inferior, whereas one fought social equals with fists. "Turning the other cheek" would have the effect of forcing the “superior,” were he to continue with the beating, to use an overhand blow with the fist — which would have meant treating the peasant as an equal.

The history of mankind is the history of the blending of cultures and ideas. The belief that cultures and people can get along within a single society without all yielding to a "Higher Power" is a pipe dream, an illusion radical liberalism. I don't have the answer; I don't know how to awaken people up from the Somac illusions, but I think it's fair to say the victimization ploy of atheists is beginning to wear thin and doesn't play as well as it used to.

The point has to do with the ability to define values, and to construct them on a foundation. This has to occur in the individual, and there has to be something more than mush or treacle out of which to construct an unsentimental, unadulterated and hard-edged cultural philosophy.

 

Yes, and it's important to know what you're dealing with.

I come from a Judeo-Christian background that traditionally teaches humility; the culture now invading Europe is just the opposite. It's honor-driven. It is less concerned with truth and justice than “saving face.” In just about any news story interviewing an immigrant, “humiliation” is the major concern of the immigrant. What Westerners see an normal, they see as humiliating and a reason to return the perceived “evil” with evil. Language is used for effect, not to convey the truth of the situation. Without an "unsentimental, unadulterated and hard-edged cultural philosophy," European culture and civilization is doomed.

I wonder how Lacewing's philosophy deals with the reality of it all?

Never-mind. I got side-tracked.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:You mean that the 'saccharine Christian morality' is still present and operative in secular culture, despite being secularised?

Where did you get this idea that there are hard cut-off points in cultural history or that a secularised culture is one that cannot contain the theist? Or even that there are any wholly secularised cultures out-there?

Or that they remain saccharine because they remain Christian?

Bit of both I suspect, personally 'they' ought to take a leaf from the OT tub-thumpers and bring a bit of fire and brimstone back.

Saccharine as in bathetic, fawning, servile, mushy, etc. The opposite being unsentimental? Unadulterated? Hard-edged?

More saccharine in the sense of thinking Christ's message of love should apply to everyone when Christians don't actually apply it this way. No, don't tell me, they're not real christians.

With respects, you are (to quote Lacewing) 'spewing' a bunch of unprocessed ideas here. I notice this happens often among the philosophers of PN.

Do you? Well rest assured that these ideas are long-thought out and deeply felt.

They very quickly get muddled in the puddle of contingency. ...

And yet the contingent is where we live.

Yet there are much larger issues here. Europe, as one of the only spots on the globe that has become quite secularised, has been accused of sacrificing its link with its 'value structure' and 'value essence'. ...

What do you mean by 'secularised? That we don't go to church anymore? Doesn't appear to be the case in the bulk of European countries.

This 'value structure' and 'value essence', is this a belief in a 'God'? If so this belief appears to exist in the bulk of the population so what are you saying is missing?

Certainly, this is my trend of argument though I struggle to become certain of what in religious values I definitely wish to preserve. ...

Bit of a problem that given what you appear to be arguing for.

But that is not the point. ...

Seems a pretty big one given what you are arguing for.

The point has to do with the ability to define values, and to construct them on a foundation. This has to occur in the individual, and there has to be something more than mush or treacle out of which to construct an unsentimental, unadulterated and hard-edged cultural philosophy.

Why are you unwilling to allow the individual to construct their foundation upon what they like?

This is essentially what is being discussed int his thread. What, outside of anecdotes with little relationship to the essences, is your relationship to these issues?

Just the same as everyone else, I'm living in interesting times.

What 'essences' are these?

I grasp that you think 'godbother' is a non-productive and, it would seem that you say, a negative pursuit.

It's 'godbotherer' - someone who bothers 'God' not 'godbother' which I presume is someone in the act of bothering me about their 'God'. Is either negative? Don't think so as I can understand it a quite useful rock but when it involves bothering me then yes, I think it a negative thing. Especially when it's two opposed godbotherers having a fight.

But should you not be asked for more argument here?

Why? What would convince you to change your ideas?