User Tag List

+ Reply to Thread
Page 32 of 32 FirstFirst ... 222829303132
Results 311 to 316 of 316

Thread: Is god-belief beneficial?

  1. #311
    Original Ranter
    Points: 297,679, Level: 100
    Level completed: 0%, Points required for next Level: 0
    Overall activity: 42.0%
    Achievements:
    SocialRecommendation Second ClassOverdrive50000 Experience PointsVeteran
    Mister D's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    416524
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    117,861
    Points
    297,679
    Level
    100
    Thanks Given
    25,296
    Thanked 53,469x in 36,444 Posts
    Mentioned
    1102 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    But because they live it not many realize it, some even celebrate it.
    I don't exempt myself. It's impossible to avoid without unplug from society altogether.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


    ~Alain de Benoist


  2. The Following User Says Thank You to Mister D For This Useful Post:

    Chris (01-04-2023)

  3. #312
    Points: 123,366, Level: 85
    Level completed: 17%, Points required for next Level: 2,684
    Overall activity: 60.0%
    Achievements:
    50000 Experience PointsSocialVeteran
    FindersKeepers's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    173984
    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Posts
    35,702
    Points
    123,366
    Level
    85
    Thanks Given
    25,436
    Thanked 26,625x in 16,267 Posts
    Mentioned
    271 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Mister D View Post
    It's not really a question of Stalin. Communism was uniformly brutal. And, yes, the killing was done to advance communism and all it entails including atheism.

    That's a bit of a misnomer. Communism was doomed to fail for several reasons, but Marx was clear about not trying to force a lack of religion. Churches even hung portraits of Stalin, so a lot has been misrepresented and misreported. Which isn't unusual.
    ""A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul" ~George Bernard Shaw

  4. #313
    Points: 665,213, Level: 100
    Level completed: 0%, Points required for next Level: 0
    Overall activity: 90.0%
    Achievements:
    SocialRecommendation Second ClassYour first GroupOverdrive50000 Experience PointsTagger First ClassVeteran
    Awards:
    Discussion Ender
    Chris's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    433307
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    197,542
    Points
    665,213
    Level
    100
    Thanks Given
    31,981
    Thanked 80,896x in 54,714 Posts
    Mentioned
    2011 Post(s)
    Tagged
    2 Thread(s)
    Marx, from On The Jewish Question:

    ...Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is no longer the spirit of the state, in which man behaves – although in a limited way, in a particular form, and in a particular sphere – as a species-being, in community with other men. Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra omnes. It is no longer the essence of community, but the essence of difference. It has become the expression of man’s separation from his community, from himself and from other men – as it was originally. It is only the abstract avowal of specific perversity, private whimsy, and arbitrariness. The endless fragmentation of religion in North America, for example, gives it even externally the form of a purely individual affair. It has been thrust among the multitude of private interests and ejected from the community as such. But one should be under no illusion about the limits of political emancipation. The division of the human being into a public man and a private man, the displacement of religion from the state into civil society, this is not a stage of political emancipation but its completion; this emancipation, therefore, neither abolished the real religiousness of man, nor strives to do so.

    The decomposition of man into Jew and citizen, Protestant and citizen, religious man and citizen, is neither a deception directed against citizenhood, nor is it a circumvention of political emancipation, it is political emancipation itself, the political method of emancipating oneself from religion. Of course, in periods when the political state as such is born violently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in which men strive to achieve their liberation, the state can and must go as far as the abolition of religion, the destruction of religion. But it can do so only in the same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to the maximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the abolition of life, the guillotine. At times of special self-confidence, political life seeks to suppress its prerequisite, civil society and the elements composing this society, and to constitute itself as the real species-life of man, devoid of contradictions. But, it can achieve this only by coming into violent contradiction with its own conditions of life, only by declaring the revolution to be permanent, and, therefore, the political drama necessarily ends with the re-establishment of religion, private property, and all elements of civil society, just as war ends with peace.

    Indeed, the perfect Christian state is not the so-called Christian state – which acknowledges Christianity as its basis, as the state religion, and, therefore, adopts an exclusive attitude towards other religions. On the contrary, the perfect Christian state is the atheistic state, the democratic state, the state which relegates religion to a place among the other elements of civil society. The state which is still theological, which still officially professes Christianity as its creed, which still does not dare to proclaim itself as a state, has, in its reality as a state, not yet succeeded in expressing the human basis – of which Christianity is the high-flown expression – in a secular, human form. The so-called Christian state is simply nothing more than a non-state, since it is not Christianity as a religion, but only the human background of the Christian religion, which can find its expression in actual human creations.

    ...Christianity sprang from Judaism. It has merged again in Judaism.

    ...Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.

    The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.

    Marx's view of religion is summarized in Encounter in Humanization: Insights for Christian-Marxist Dialogue and Cooperation, Chapter 4: Marx’s Critique of Religion:

    ...Taking Feuerbach’s lead, Marx developed a theory of religious alienation -- that man projects his own perfection into the supernatural and calls the sum of these qualities ‘God’. This process, Marx said, actually alienates man from himself.

    But Marx did not stop at the recognition of this alienation. He went beyond Feuerbach in asserting that it is the economic and social forces that drive human beings to create illusions such as God. Herein lies the genius of Marx. Merely recognizing the fact that man is alienated from himself does no good as long as man is not emancipated from the underlying causes of alienation found in the economic order. For "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their beings, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."

    Marx’s analysis of the human predicament and alienation leads him from the criticism of religion to the criticism of society. Religion cannot be disposed of, nor can the problem which begets religion be solved, without a radical change of the society and the economic system. Feuerbach’s calculation was wrong when he believed that mere criticism of religion could remove religion from the minds of the people.

    Marx sees the criticism of religion only as a preliminary step to the criticism of society, and criticism of society goes hand in hand with the revolutionary political action which not only changes society but also destroys the basis of religion.

    ...In the Manuscripts, Marx writes:

    Atheism... has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the practically and theoretically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man’s positive self- consciousness.

    ...Marxism, manifesting a profound humanism as the heart of its inspiration, naturally opposes religious persecution. It opposes coercive methods aimed at religion. The few references to religion made by Marx in his later years indicate that, in spite of his lack of interest in this kind of problem, his view on religion and atheism did not change as the years passed. Thus, for instance, in his "Critique of the Gotha Programme" (1875), Marx argues: "Everyone should be able to attend to his religious as well as his bodily needs without the police sticking their noses in."

    ...At any rate religion can make people content in their soul, in their consciousness, but in an imaginary way and not in any complete and real way. The medicine it offers cannot help to cure the disease from which society and man are suffering; it can only help to alleviate the pain. It therefore seems to Marx to be pointless simply to take this pain relieving drug away from man, quite apart from the fact that as long as the disease lasts it would be futile. It is instead a question of curing the disease itself and thus making the opiate superfluous. Marx poignantly says:

    The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. ... The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the saintly form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of right and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

    ...At this point one might as well ask the question why Marx’s criticism was particularly aimed at Christianity among all the religions. The answer is quite obvious. Christianity was the dominant religion in the society which Marx knew. Also, along with Hegel, he considered Christianity as the absolute religion which synthesized in itself all the religious tendencies which the history of man had manifested. That is why Leslie Dewart says that Marxist atheism is truly anti-theism, and specifically and historically anti-Christian anti-theism.

    To sum up Marx’s critique of religion: Marx believed that as long as the human being remains under the control of alien forces, let it be the power of nature or the various forces of society, religion will persist. As long as the human being is incapable of eradicating social evils, the need for "illusory compensation" will continue to exist. What is needed is that human beings must redeem themselves from the bondage of external forces. The only redemption open to them is that which will be gained through their own labour. When one is redeemed by one’s own potentialities, one will realize that the ideals which are rooted in one’s nature need no longer be projected beyond society and history into an unearthly realm. Human beings will recognize that it is the power within themselves that establishes the conditions of their own dignity and destiny. To hold that the evil of this world will be redeemed by an agency beyond the human person and time is to destroy the motive for secular transformation. If the secular transformation is to be achieved, people must destroy the foundation upon which religious illusion flourishes. Thus in the course of building a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the development of all," one must fight religion because it will inevitably stand in one’s path. And yet, in the new transformed society there will be no need to persecute religion, for its essential function will have disappeared. There will no longer be an exploiting class, nor will the common people stand in need of religious consolation. Religion itself will disappear of its own accord without persecution. This contention is at the heart of everything that Marx wrote, and is not, as has been maintained by some, a youthful enthusiasm of Marx which he abandoned on attaining maturity. The autonomy of the human person -- that was the goal Marx wanted to achieve through his critique of religion. Marx’s criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man, hence with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.

    So, yea, Marx wasn't for the coercive eradication of religion.


    (Sorry so long but Marx cannot be summarized in pithy comments.)
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

  5. The Following User Says Thank You to Chris For This Useful Post:

    carolina73 (01-11-2023)

  6. #314
    Points: 24,149, Level: 37
    Level completed: 84%, Points required for next Level: 201
    Overall activity: 32.0%
    Achievements:
    10000 Experience PointsVeteran
    LWW's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    2602
    Join Date
    Jan 2021
    Location
    People's Midwest Republic of Ameristan
    Posts
    8,067
    Points
    24,149
    Level
    37
    Thanks Given
    2,880
    Thanked 2,592x in 1,879 Posts
    Mentioned
    50 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    Bad things happen despite the huge numbers of people who say they believe in gods. Did god-belief prevent millions of innocent murders? Clearly it didn't.

    It is another reason people band together to protect their right to their lives.

    Isn't sin doing those things your god doesn't like?
    Still confused over humanity’s free will?
    "Buy a man eat fish, the day, teach a man to a life time! "
    "As one computer said, if
    you're on the train and they say 'PORTAL BRIDGE' you know you better make other plans."
    - Joseph Robinette Biden -

  7. #315
    Points: 264,301, Level: 100
    Level completed: 0%, Points required for next Level: 0
    Overall activity: 86.0%
    Achievements:
    50000 Experience PointsSocialVeteranTagger First ClassOverdrive
    Awards:
    Activity Award
    MisterVeritis's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    307871
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Location
    Northern Alabama
    Posts
    104,523
    Points
    264,301
    Level
    100
    Thanks Given
    94,656
    Thanked 39,245x in 27,866 Posts
    Mentioned
    385 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by LWW View Post
    Still confused over humanity’s free will?
    Are you still obsessed with free will?
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

  8. #316
    Points: 143,721, Level: 91
    Level completed: 19%, Points required for next Level: 2,929
    Overall activity: 74.0%
    Achievements:
    Social50000 Experience PointsOverdriveVeteran
    carolina73's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    43638
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Posts
    57,470
    Points
    143,721
    Level
    91
    Thanks Given
    56,047
    Thanked 43,643x in 28,237 Posts
    Mentioned
    154 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by FindersKeepers View Post
    He wasn't ostensibly a Catholic. He was flat-out a Catholic.

    However, that doesn't really factor in when we're talking about whether killing can be attributed to religion/atheism or not.
    Only at a young age. He then used the Church to his advantage to gain power but disposed of it once he gained it.

    But that is not unusual. Even American Presidents will become regular Christians. One even claimed he never listened to the sermons.
    Last edited by carolina73; 02-18-2023 at 01:00 PM.
    Let's go Brandon !!!

+ Reply to Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts