Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Secular Humanism is effectively a reinterpretation of Calvinism along atheistic lines. Considering that predestination is a central theme of Calvinism, I have a hard time understanding this thought. Removing God from Calvinism doesn't leave one with much at all.
Without a mechanistic view of things, predestination is impossible. So without God, Calvinism gives us a sense of the universe as a great machine. Other cultures may see the universe as a great mountain or a great tree.....
The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#62Shame that this is what usually happens when you gets conquered. You're literally at the mercy of your conquerors. Why don't conquerors ever treat the people they conquered with respect, and work hard to make their life better? Why do conquerors always make life harder and worst for the people they conquered?
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#63> Christianity even today is used to excuse persecution and oppress. I guess that is totally fair as long as we also keep in mind that most of the biggest crimes against humanity were committed by proclaimed atheists.
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#64Because it helps to some degree I guess. Also keep in mind that the lack of religion is statistically worse as shown by too many examples. :-/
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#65Shame that this is what usually happens when you gets conquered. You're literally at the mercy of your conquerors. Why don't conquerors ever treat the people they conquered with respect, and work hard to make their life better? Why do conquerors always make life harder and worst for the people they conquered?
Any perspectives on post WWII Germany and the Marshall Plan? American textbooks teach that honorable conquest was the exact goal of that initiative. Is Germany worse off now? Or Japan? Or South Korea?
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) Please cite your statistical evidence. 2) Non-christian does not mean non-religious. Indigenous communities the world over have their own religions.
> 1) Please cite your statistical evidence. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot; all of them worse than everything even the Catholic church ever did.
So maybe communist ideologies have been used for as bad crimes as religion. But that doesn't prove for all lack of religion. In fact there's another example that proves a great many good to the lack of religion, that of democratic ideologies.
Now if I hypothesize, it seems I see a pattern, any time power is given absolutly to a fixed, non changing group of leaders, whose only mean of overthrowing is through force, it seems to cause atrocious violence. Such as when religion governs, or single ideologies such as communism or fascism governs, or when a single person in the form of a dictator does. Hence why democracy does slightly better.
On that note, ideologies that have as a goal to reign absolutly and supremely, which almost all religion have, and some other non religious ones, like communism and fascism have, then you can probably predict a long term negative impact of society, overshadowing all short terms benefits the ideologies might at first demonstrate.
It's also possible to attribute the harshness of communism to having to overthrow another entrenched great power, that of religion. So it should be considered, would a democratic state transition without atrocities to a communist one? Probably. Similarly, a democratic one would probably transition without atrocities to a religious one also. And this all goes back to having a way to transition that is alternate then simply through force. Any transition from a religious state, or a absolute ideology state, like communism, will require atrocious acts, because such state have no other means of self-adapting or correcting themselves. They're not agile in any way.
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#67Native Americans ..not Indians.
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to know why you think atheists would have been worse.
Atheists would have been worse because it is not a problem of religion per se. Western Christianity always held out hope that the church could oppose the state (and sometimes did). There is no real room for any competition to the state in a fully atheistic society. That's why Mao and Stalin were so bad. It wasn't because of atheist doctrines (outside of atheistic political doctrines), but there was too much power con…
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a very astute observation. Those of us who've seen secular humanist tenets of "rights", being cynically used for all sorts of geopolitical ends, will realize how easy it is to excite folk with such talking points. People don't realize the dangers of such universalist notions.
And of course there is no cross-cultural empistemology that allows us to know which rights are universal, so they always become an excuse to power.
I would've hoped those in "social sciences" would work to rectify such issues, but in their new garb of post-modernism, they've yet more become the new priesthood.
Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atheists would have been worse because it is not a problem of religion per se. Western Christianity always held out hope that the church could oppose the state (and sometimes did). There is no real room for any competition to the state in a fully atheistic society. That's why Mao and Stalin were so bad. It wasn't because of atheist doctrines (outside of atheistic political doctrines), but there was too much power con…
I don't see how that has anything to do with religion. Having multiple opposing powers is happens without religion, and having a single powerful authority happens with religion.
Also I think it is important to scope that "atheism" is usually a shorthand for "Western, Secular Humanistic Atheism" which is philosophically an off-shoot of Protestantism in general and Calvinism in particular. You get a different set of results when you look at Buddhist Atheists or Hindu Atheists for example (because in neither of these traditions is religion dependent on belief like it is in Christianity).
Hope that helps.