Religion is Totalitarian

Pete wrote, "I would even argue that socialism is more logically in step with Christianity than capitalism with its emphasis on self sacrifice and altruism."

Claude replied,

That’s a baloney argument made by Peikoff long ago in his Objectivist lectures. Mises, of course, disproved that by pointing out that capitalism is based on the social institution of “Division of Labor”, in which I produce something that YOU want and need, and YOU produce something that I want and need. It’s hard to get more altruistic than that. “Selfish” productivity would be autarky: withdrawal from the social advantages of division of labor, producing everything for yourself, by yourself. By that standard, the feudalism of the middle ages was much more individualistic than modern capitalism. Division of labor is NOT "individualistic." Howard Roark wasn't designing buildings for himself.

Claude, you've been around Objectivism long enough to know that that's not what Objectivists mean by "selfishness," "altruism" and "individualism." You have a habit of dropping context and misrepresenting the meaning of the statements you're replying to. "Selfishness" (or "egoism") simply means the pursuit of self-interest as the ultimate end or goal of one's action. "Altruism," in the Objectivist lexicon, means self-sacrifice -- the placing of others above self. A person who producers for others in a division of labor economy does so in order to profit from it. He or she is acting selfishly not altruistically. Yes, the producer is providing a good or service for others, but as a means to his own profit. "Individualism" means that every individual is an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life. It does NOT mean withdrawing from society to become an isolated producer.

Then you say,

[Y]our statement regarding the apparent “waste of resources” represented by the great cathedrals of Europe is nonsense. Read Mises. Profit takes different forms, the most basic of which is psychic profit. All life in the middle ages revolved around the church. Those who built the cathedrals were not slaves, and there was no sentiment by Christians of the day that the labor and stones used to build the cathedral could be better employed building condominiums as decided by “rational” profit-and-loss market calculation.

I think what Pete meant is that the resources used for the construction of the cathedrals could have been better spent in the service of legitimate human needs and values instead of on behalf of religious mysticism. The fact that the builders got "psychic profit" from it because they shared a belief in Christianity does not alter that fact.

Given the obvious fact – obvious to everyone but you, apparently – that these cathedrals represent real achievement – artistically and in some cases scientifically – i.e., positive contributions to human culture, it’s narrow-minded and boorish to say, “Yeah, sure, they’re pretty, but that’s about all. The whole enterprise was just a big waste of labor, stone, and mortar.”

Back with the insults, I see. If someone doesn't agree with you, he's narrow-minded and boorish.

It’s as stupid as Picasso’s statement about the Apollo 11 moon shot: “It means absolutely nothing.”

The great cathedrals were the Apollo 11 moon shots of their day. They were public works, just as Apollo 11 was a public work.

Nope, that analogy won't fly. There's a big difference between a cathedral and an Apollo 11 moon shot -- BIG difference! That fact that latter happens to have been publicly financed is irrelevant. The moon shot was a testament to man's reason, greatness and glory, even as a project that was publicly financed. The cathedral was the exact opposite -- a monument to man's subjugation under the yoke of religious mysticism. The Apollo moon shot replaced God with man as the rightful occupier of the heavens.

Recent bestselling books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchins, and Richard Dawkins, which blame all ills on religion and credit all progress to atheism, obviously treat atheism as more than just a personal statement of skepticism. As I posted before, if it were merely that, they wouldn’t have bothered writing books about it, and others wouldn’t have bothered reading them.

But atheism is not skepticism about a God; it is the rejection of a belief in God. The books that Harris et al. are writing are critiques of religion, to be sure, but I'd be surprised if the authors blamed all of the world's ills on religion, as you claim.

For them, atheism is intimately connected with a purely materialist conception of the universe.

What do you mean by "materialist"? Objectivists are not materialist in the same sense that, for example, Robert Kolker is. They recognize the existence of consciousness. They just don't believe that it exists independently of a physical body. As I've argued in previous posts, in order to be aware, one must be aware in some particular sensory form or modality-- sight, hearing, taste, etc. The form of perception needn't be one of our existing five senses, but it must be some sensory form; otherwise, there would be no awareness. To be sure, we can have dreams and hallucinations that are not perceptions of the external world, but these always take the form of one of our five senses. Without input from the external world and without a brain and nervous system, there would be no perceptual experiences and no memories from which dreams and hallucinations could arise. In short, consciousness, whether extrospective or introspective, requires physical organs of perception and cognition. Without these, it simply wouldn't exist, because it would have no form or character. So in this respect, consciousness does not and cannot exist independently of a physical organism, and would necessarily have arisen after the emergence of life.

If this is what you mean by "materialist," then the denial of a disembodied consciousness is indeed "materialist" in that sense. You've argued elsewhere that if there were no mind, there would be no matter, because mind and matter are correlatives; one is understood only in contradistinction to the other. If you want to make that argument, fine, but in the absence of living organisms, what we now call inanimate matter would still exist.

Most of them would agree with that. Where they would disagree is in this: they believe that what they are preaching is merely a common-sense philosophy; I believe that what they are pushing is, when studied closely, a religion, and one requiring as much pure faith as Christianity.

Atheists are pushing a faith-based religion? Pardon me, but doesn't religion require faith in the supernatural or the belief in a higher unseen power that controls human destiny and demands obedience, reverence and worship? That's always been my understanding of the term. Yet you now claim that atheists are themselves religious. By the same token, you attribute positive features to religion, lauding it with having inspired great works of art, yet contrast it to common-sense philosophy when you accuse atheists of being religious. So, which is it? Is religion common-sense philosophy or not?

The danger of such a religion is that it has sometimes led to a man-centered “cult of personality.” Yes, religion has sometimes led to that too.

So, now we have two kinds of religion, according to you: atheist religion and theistic religion. Lovely. So what then do you mean by the term "religion"?

But let me ask you a question: if you would take a dangerous sojourn out of Galt’s Gulch for a minute and join me in the real world, is it better to live with the occasional Jim Jones, his poisoned Kool Aid, and 900 dead; or with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, their gas chambers, gulags, and killing fields, and 140 million dead?

If that were the only alternative! But it isn't. To reject Jim Jones and other forms of oppressive religion is not to embrace atheistic mass murderers. Then you say to Teresa, in your typically condescending manner:

Finally, my dear Ms. Isanhart, I humbly remind you that there are as many – I suspect more – miserable atheists as there are miserable members of faith. They can found on the couches of psychotherapists and psychiatrists, and at their doctors getting prescriptions for Prozac and Paxil.

I doubt that the atheist mantras – there is no God; the universe is nothing but matter, void, and motion; there is no inherent meaning or purpose to life and existence – are the keys to personal happiness.

The idea that atheism implies that "there is no inherent meaning or purpose to life" is a straw-man allegation if I ever saw one, and it is certainly not a position that Objectivism embraces. I should think that you would already know that, if you're as familiar with Objectivism as you imply. According to Rand, the moral purpose of life is the achievement of one's own happiness here on earth -- not in some life beyond the grave -- which doesn't mean that people who recognize it as such will always be successful in their pursuit of that goal.

- Bill

Post 21

Saturday, March 29, 2008 - 9:54am

Naturally, you have some specific examples in mind. So please take any one of the works I used in this thread and give us the actual context.

Claud, are you seriously denying that the...

Medieval:

The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Church to eliminate the of the Catharsof Languedoc
When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success, he declared a crusade against Languedoc , offering the lands of the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence led to France s acquisition of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to An estimated 1,000,000 people died during the crusade.^[2]^[3]

Spanish:

The Spanish Inquisition was set up by King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile in 1478 with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV. In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal authority, though staffed by secular clergy and orders, and independently of the Holy See. It aimed primarily at converts from Judaism href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism">Judaism and Islam href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam">Islam (who were still residing in Spain after the end of the Moorish control of Spain), who were suspected of either continuing to adhere to their old religion (often after having been converted under duress) or having fallen back into it, and later at Protestants; in Sicily and Southern Italy, which were under Spanish rule, it targeted Greek Orthodox Christians. After religious disputes waned in the 17th century, the Spanish Inquisition more and more developed into a secret police against internal threats to the state.

Portuguese:

According to Henry Charles Lea^[7] between 1540 and 1794 tribunals in Lisbon, Port
o, Coimbra and Évora burned 1,175 persons, another 633 were burned in effigy and 29,590 were penanced, but documentation of at least fifteen Autos-da-fé between 1580-1640 - the period of the Iberian Union - disappeared, so the real numbers must be higher.

and Roman Inquisitions had any effect on common folk, including artists, Claude?

In 1542, Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a permanent congregation staffed with cardinals and other officials, whose task was to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines;^[8]; it thus became the supervisory body of local Inquisitions. Arguably the most famous case tried by the Roman Inquisition was that of Galileo Galilei in 1633. Because of Rome's power over the Papal States, Roman Inquisition activity continued until the mid-1800s.

Not to mention the Church's collusion with the Nazi Party. Everybody wants to forget about that one.

Post 22

Saturday, March 29, 2008 - 10:26am

Shannon: It is typical for religionists, and you are no exception to this rule, to dodge the issue as soon as the going gets rough… and it gets rough from the very start, since all religions are based on lies and a lie cannot be made credible, in spite of what Goebbels wanted. To the point: You haven't replied to my request for proof to your statement: "That we only observe and measure time as a relation among material entities in no way means that it cannot exist without those material entities" (Post 100 of "Forum : Article Discussions : Ayn Rand and Evolution"). By time count, almost 3 months went by since then and I'm still expecting your reply.

On atheism: An atheist will always declare himself to be such and not pretend what he isn't. Neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Mao ever took that position. (You state that Stalin recommended a friend of his to read Darwin, but this doesn't make an atheist of Stalin. After all, to attack Evolution as you did in "Ayn Rand and Evolution", you had to read at least some of Darwin's teachings on the origin of species and yet this didn't make an atheist of you, right?) In what refers to Mao I never presented any doubt that he loved his mother. I merely stated that Mao followed, doing so consciously or subconsciously makes no difference, the Confucian teachings he received in his youth, based on the Jesuit statement that religious teachers only need to conduct a child's education for seven years of its youth to impress the religious teachings in its mind. Mind you, why do you think that religions make such a fuss of baptizing a child as soon as possible? Because they perfectly know that this imprisons the child's mind so that it will be almost impossible for the kid to lock himself out of the religious cell.

On Hitler: He most emphatically was not an atheist. As he said himself: "The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. [original italics] For God's will gave men their form, their essence, and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other… Hence, today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. [original italics]" - [Adolf Hitler, from "Mein Kampf," translation by Ralph Mannheim.]

"Hitler certainly appeared to be a theist, and claimed to be a Christian. He made it known to those entrusted with the Final Solution that the killings should be done as humanely as possible. This was in line with his conviction that he was observing God's injunction to cleanse the world of vermin. Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy ("I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so" [quoting Hitler]), he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God--so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty." [Pulitzer Prize winner John Toland from "Adolf Hitler," pp 507, talking about the Autumn of 1941.] - This "I am now as before a Catholic..." quotation from Hitler was recorded in the diary of Gerhard Engel, an SS Adjutant, in October 1941. Hitler was speaking in private, not before a mass audience, and so it is difficult to dismiss the comment as propaganda lies.

In 1933 the Vatican signed a Concordat with Germany making Roman Catholicism the only recognized religion in Germany. Franz von Papen, German Vice-Chancellor, who signed the Concordat for the Nazi government, was named Papal Chamberlain by Pope Pius XII. Hitler himself always held good relations with the Church.

Being universally believed that the Vatican has such a tremendous power over its adherents, I always wondered why the Church didn't do anything to remove dictator Hitler from history. After all, the Pope could easily have declared that all those that stood and supported Hitler were to be immediately excommunicated. Since the Church was even more powerful then, than it is today, this would surely have produced the sufficient pressure to get rid of the tyrant (though, I am sorry to have to add, a later Pope even received Castro, another dictator, and did nothing to remove him from ruling Cuba).

Now, let's provide a few proofs of religious "culture":

Inquisition: In Spain alone estimated 31,912 heretics were burned at the stake. In Protestant Germany 100,000 witches were burned to the stake, and some 30,000 in Britain.

Another proof of religious "culture":

The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre: In one week, almost 100,000 Protestants perished.

A further poof of religious "culture":

Hypatia: Believed to have been the reason for the strained relationship between the Imperial Prefect Orestes and the Bishop Cyril, Hypatia attracted the ire of a Christian population eager to see the two reconciled. During March 415, her chariot was waylaid on her route home by a Christian mob, possibly Nitrian monks led by a man identified only as "Peter". She was stripped naked and dragged through the streets to the newly christianised Caesareum church and killed. Some reports suggest she was flayed with ostrakois (literally, "oyster shells", though also used to refer to roof tiles or broken pottery) and set ablaze while still alive.

Another proof of religious "culture":

Giordano Bruno: The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, handed over to secular authorities on February 8 1600. At his trial, he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." A month or so later he was brought to the Campo de Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600. The Italians raised a monument in remembrance of Bruno at the place where he was burned.

Another proof of religious "culture":

Copernicus: He wisely preferred to have his writing De revolutionibus orbium coelestium published after his death, for the obvious motive of avoiding persecution by the Church. What happened to Galilei later on proved this to be a prudent decision… but also provided another evidence of religions enmity towards scientific investigation, a religious position that continues unabated to this day (see, for example, the Vatican's present-day declarations, the Islam, etc.)

Another proof of religious "culture":

Galileo Galilei: He was convicted in 1633 of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of the "Holy Scripture", and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Further proofs of religious "culture":

Karlheinz Deschner: A very detailed description of Christian persecution, torturing and murder (which includes all wars instigated, promoted and/or initiated by Christianity) in "The Criminal History of Christianity" (8 volumes).

A thoughtful comment: All the terror suffered by the population living under the threat of torture and untimely death should not be left forgotten!

The Islam doesn't fare any better in what refers to religious "culture" and there's enough literature (and even a movie called Fitna) available on this.

The string of people you mention as authors of works of art and the buildings, etc. you show, were produced, as you evidently pretend to emphasize, "inspired" by religious beliefs. Considering the Jesuit statement to which I refer above, this can be considered to be part of the truth. But it is not the whole truth. The full picture is presented by the fact that the only way for talented people to better their own physical existence during the harshest times of religious domination, was to operate within the all-encompassing rules of religion. The examples I presented above suffice to bear witness for this. Whoever thought any differently from what religious authorities commanded, only insured his continued existence by either shutting his mouth of following the established dictum of the Church (universally applied through sheer terror, which, by the way, isn't really the right way for human life to live). Those who dared to raise a different opinion - see above - or followed a different path, paid their audacity with their life.

Persecution, torture and killing are the "arguments" that evidenced the "kindness" and "piousness" religions put forth for ages without end (this still goes on, as the fact that publishing caricatures result in deadly persecution). All this contributed to establish, among many other purposes, religion's continuous aim of domination. But producing" a world that is nothing but "a valley of tears" may enhance the hope among the general population that "the coming life" - an apparent "paradise" that religions don't need (nor can) demonstrate - will not subdue the terror imposed in "this" life.

During the whole length of religion's domination (and, as it seems, we are now running the risk of its deplorable return) nothing was done nor allowed to be done to better human existence. On the contrary; even where death wasn't directly brought to people by religion through torture, burning at the stake, etc. etc., the existence of religion itself sufficed to bring suffering and death to the population, since taking a bath was considered to be a sin and cats were declared to be "companions of the devil" (another of those figures that don't exist, like angels, "god", etc.). Hence, beside filthiness collaborating to spread illness, everybody did well to get rid of cats, and this allowed rats to proliferate and introduce the plague in every possible color, which killed ¾ of the European population and, as late as the 19^th century, devastated the population in many other places (like the yellow fever in Argentina).

Beyond all the works of art (a very monotonous kind of art, I would say and, in what refers, for example, to the cathedrals, a colossal waste of resources, as Pete correctly points out in post 10) religions can't show anything that brought any betterment to human existence (not even a small security pin). The Islam even forbids to portray the human figure (Evolution's highest product!!).The great accomplishments of mankind: medicine, engineering, transport, food conservation, etc. to mention just a few, did not come from religion. As a matter of fact, nothing practical at all came from it. Oh, yes, I almost forgot music, but then, the title of a certain piece of music, neither enhances nor diminishes the feelings if produces (see Ayn Rand's "The Romantic Manifesto" for this). Personally, Bach's "We hurry" (Wir eilen), a cantata, makes me cry with sheer joy every time I head it, though he surely wrote it for some religious ceremony.

Fortunately, things changed and continue to change with time. The king's need for gold encouraged the work of the alchemists and out of their search for transmutation came the beginning of chemistry. This is only one of the many examples that finally produced the Renaissance. Painfully but necessarily, the human intellect demolished all barriers that religion had set up. Finally, the human mind, with its identifying characteristic, reason, came to life. The Renaissance started, a true rebirth of the mind, a name, as I mention in my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe", not even its enemies dared to oppose. (By the way: are you a teacher or do you really think that here at "Rebirth" you are dealing with some kind of utter fools that must be told when the Renaissance, etc. took place? If that's your opinion, I wonder why you participate in all these threads, for fools live at such a low level that nothing can change them - though I would rather say that Objectivist's minds are placed at such a stratospheric height that it will never be able to come close to or even parallel them).

Due to the evolution of our brain, which religious people senselessly deny (but then, I would say that all they do is senselessly directed against mankind), reason, the human faculty, now has a defending and promoting force. It is called Objectivism and it was deduced from reality by a female - that part of mankind that religions of all sorts so specifically despise - which, I would say, had the greatest mind humanity will ever know.

Objectivism, Shannon, is indestructible because mankind's progress is unstoppable, against what all "missing links", as Ayn Rand called them, want to do. As Charles Freeman states in his book "The Closing of the Western Mind" (a book I recommend you to read, though you probably won't): "If a tradition of rational thought is to make progress, it is essential that it builds in tolerance. No authority can dictate in advance what can or cannot be believed, or there is no possibility of progress.

(Edited by Manfred F. Schieder on 3/29, 10:43am)

Post 23

Saturday, March 29, 2008 - 6:06pm

This is my response to Claude's post number 11 (which was a response to my posts 8 & 9).

Regarding the Renaissance, the main thrust behind my argument was that in looking at the arts prior to and after the Renaissance, the quality and quantity was markedly improved afterward. The Enlightenment is of course the time period when reason really came into focus in the West, but it seems to me that the Renaissance helped pave the way for the Enlightenment philosophically. I see the two as inextricably linked. If you feel that's an erroneous view historically, please point out why (I admit that I'm not a historian, and I don't claim to be an expert on this subject).

In any event, just look at Europe in the middle ages, pre-Renaissance. It was a highly superstitious time due to the pervasive influece of religion, not too different than the Taliban's Afghanistan. Yes, great minds still were able to create things here and there, but just look at how much better things got after the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Unless you dispute that these changes were for the better, what do you suppose were the fundamental reasons for the improvement?

(PETE) And alas, we get to the old atheist dictator argument. First off, atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview.

(CLAUDE)Wrong. Atheism = materialist conception of the universe. Its first official pronouncement was in a long poem having to do with cosmogony titled “On The Nature of Things” (De Rerum Natura) by Lucretius.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0131:book=1

If atheism were simply a denial of God or gods, with nothing to replace it, then the Lucretiuses and the Sam Harrises, and the Richard Dawkinses wouldn’t bother to write books, and others wouldn't bother reading them. No. Atheism is a philosophy in search of some shaping force to assert as a positive; that’s why DARWIN is so important to atheists on the extreme right and the extreme left.

Atheism in not a philosophical system of ideas. If there is a philosophy that Harris, Dawkins and other of today's prominent atheists advovate, it is probably secular humanism. Again, atheism is merely a rejection of the supernatural. The fact that an atheist could either be Joseph Stalin or Ayn Rand shows that atheism tells us very little about a person's philosophy.

(PETE)Atheism is merely a rejection of a false cosmology, and a rejection of the idea that there exists a book which contains actual instructions from the creator of the universe.

CLAUDE If you’re speaking of the Bible, theism has no necessary connection with fundamentalism or Biblical literalism. That connection only exists in your imagination.

Technically, you're right. One could be a deist or a pantheist, but that's not the notion of God that atheists generally attack. Heck, even I'm agnostic with respect to that sort of conception of the unkown. But for practical purposes, the vast majority of theists today believe that:

1. a certain book contains the teachings of the creator of the universe,

2. that this deity monitors each of us individually and will accordingly punish or reward us upon death (or maybe even in this life)

Whether someone believe the Bible is the literal or just the 'inspired' word of God is irrelevant.

(PETE) To give an analogy, I suspect Claude Shannon rejects astrology as having no merit, and that we could thus technically call him a non-astrologer. And despite being a non-astrologer, I suspect Claude would concede that that tells us nothing about his moral compass and overall worldview. It's the same thing with atheism - atheism is not a system of ideas by any means.

(CLAUDE) Not so. I have no militant agenda against astrology. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al., do have militant agendas against theism. It bothers them no end that other people believe in God. It doesn't bother me that others might believe in astrology. Additionally, I reject astrology as explanatory because there are better explanations from other sources; not because I find astrology inherently absurd, or inherently evil, and I wouldn’t judge someone who did find astrology convincing as mentally ill or morally depraved (as Dawkins judges theists).

Claude, where did I assume you had a 'militant' agenda against astrologer? I just merely said that in the sense you are someone who does not believe in astrology, you're a 'non-astrologer'. This is would be like calling me a "non-theist", a label I would not reject for the purpose of this argument.

Unfortunately, I have to run and will not be able to address the remainder of your posts until tomorrow at the earliest. Just wanted to chime in while I had a few moments.

Pete

Post 24

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:26am

Ms. Isanhart penned:

Claud, are you seriously denying that the...

Medieval:

The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Church to eliminate the of the Catharsof Languedoc
When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success, he declared a crusade against Languedoc , offering the lands of the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence led to France s acquisition of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to An estimated 1,000,000 people died during the crusade.[2][3]

The number of dead appear to be inflated almost by a factor of ten, but that’s irrelevant. The so-called Cathar Crusade had much more to do with the realpolitick of the day: land; alternative governments (i.e., Toulouse) and wealthy nobles threatening established governments (Rome); control of lucrative trade routes; etc.; than it had to do with religious belief, per se. This was not a religious war.

Spanish:

The Spanish Inquisition was set up by King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile in 1478 with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV. In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal authority, though staffed by secular clergy and orders, and independently of the Holy See. It aimed primarily at converts from Judaism href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism">Judaism and Islam href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam">Islam (who were still residing in Spain after the end of the Moorish control of Spain), who were suspected of either continuing to adhere to their old religion (often after having been converted under duress) or having fallen back into it, and later at Protestants; in Sicily and Southern Italy, which were under Spanish rule, it targeted Greek Orthodox Christians. After religious disputes waned in the 17th century, the Spanish Inquisition more and more developed into a secret police against internal threats to the state.

As you can see from the date of inception, the Spanish Inquisition was a product of the Renaissance – you know, the time when (according to Rand) “man’s mind was freed from the shackles of subjugation to religion and mysticism.” So much for that fantasy.

According to scholars of the Inquisition, the death toll was somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. Of course, that’s 5,000 or 10,000 too many. But I noticed you demurred when I asked you a straightforward question: outside of Galt’s Gulch – in the real world where things are imperfect and normal human beings must take incremental steps (not great leaps) toward improvements in society – would you rather live with theists like Torquemada and his ilk, who killed 5,000 to 10,000? Or atheists like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and their ilk, who, in the name of their various man-centered philosophies, killed 140 million? It’s a simple question and a fair one. Why won’t you answer it?

Portuguese:

According to Henry Charles Lea[7] between 1540 and 1794 tribunals in Lisbon, Port
o, Coimbra and Évora burned 1,175 persons, another 633 were burned in effigy and 29,590 were penanced, but documentation of at least fifteen Autos-da-fé between 1580-1640 - the period of the Iberian Union - disappeared, so the real numbers must be higher.

I’m waiting for the numbers to add up to something like 140 million dead. So far, you proven the exact opposite of what you presumably set out to prove. You’ve proven that religious societies – even mean ones! – are a lot safer than atheist ones. Don’t forget that 140 million number.

In 1542, Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a permanent congregation staffed with cardinals and other officials, whose task was to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines;[8]; it thus became the supervisory body of local Inquisitions. Arguably the most famous case tried by the Roman Inquisition was that of Galileo Galilei in 1633. Because of Rome's power over the Papal States, Roman Inquisition activity continued until the mid-1800s.

Galileo was courted and feted by Church officials with whom he got along just fine. He was, however, deathly afraid of the Aristotelian secular astronomers of the day. The reason Galileo got in trouble with the Church was that he wrote a treatise in the form of a Platonic dialogue (Dialogue Concerning the Chief World Systems) in which he caricatured a friend and patron from the Church – Pope Urban VIII – as a dunce, and wrote himself in the dialogue as the smart guy.

Apparently, Pope Urban VIII didn’t like that, so he put his former friend under house arrest.

That wasn’t a very nice thing to do, I agree. But Galileo himself admitted that his problem with the Church stemmed from that dialogue and his nasty portrayal of a high-ranking official and former friend, and not his scientific theories. The relevant issues here are politics, egos, and hurt pride; not “science vs. religion.”

My dear Ms. Isanhart. There never WAS any warfare between science and religion. That’s a myth. The myth was started and perpetrated originally by French intellectuals during the Enlightenment as part of their own power politics, which involved an outspoken anticlerical campaign. In addition to Galileo, Newton was whitewashed too. As we learn from Professor Kolker – and others who have written long scholarly books on the subject – Newton was a total mystic: he believed that his physics were establishing mystical truths about the universe as enunciated by the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). This, of course, was unacceptable to the Enlightenment propagandists, so they started and spread the myth of Newton as being simply this big, fat INTELLECT – pure rationality. The only problem is that it’s completely untrue.

As for Copernicus, he was inspired by religious/mystical ideas of Plato (specifically, from a famous dialogue titled “Timeous”): according to Plato, just as “The Good” occupies a central place in man’s soul as a kind of fire, so too must a real fire be at the center of the universe. Ergo, the sun – a big fire – is at the center of the universe, not the earth. Heliocentric, not geocentric. It’s true because Plato said so. That’s the reasoning that Copernicus found compelling. As a matter of fact, Aristarchus of Samos had already come up with the heliocentric theory in antiquity; it was rejected by astronomers of the day for a very good reason: it didn't accord with observational evidence.

It didn’t matter to the Church whether the Earth was the center of the universe, or whether the sun was the center. In fact, the Church accepted the geocentric model mainly on the authority of Aristotle. From a Biblical perspective, the Church was indifferent. Furthermore – and following Aristotle on this – it was no great compliment to Man to put the Earth at the center of things: the center of the universe was the place of IMPERFECTION; a sort of universal trash bin, toward which everything fell. PERFECTION lay OUTSIDE the center – with God Himself at the periphery (as a Prime Mover, causing all the inner spheres to spin successively; each concentric sphere spinning progressively slower until you get to planet Earth, which doesn’t spin at all). So if a scientist wanted to move the home of mankind from the trash bin to someplace a little more honorable, away from the center…heck, that was just fine with the Church. What the Church objected to about Copernicus was this:

Up until Copernicus, scientific theories were considered a mere “saving of the appearances”; i.e., mere explanations for perceptual phenomena. This meant that any explanation was considered to be as good as any other explanation as long as it could explain and predict – i.e., “save” – the phenomena in question. There was no question of “ultimate TRUTH” here. All theories were EQUAL, as long as they served this practical purpose of “saving appearances.” What Copernicus began to believe about his application of Platonism to astronomy, however, was that it wasn’t just one possible competing truth among many, but rather THE LITERAL ACTUAL TRUTH.

So what the Church didn’t like about Copernicus was not a new theory about the nature of the heavens; but rather a new theory about the nature of THEORY. This did not fly in the face of the Church's Biblical faith (since the Bible has nothing to say about any of this); it flew in the face of its Aristotelian inheritance.

The ones who really hated Copernicus and Galileo were the Aristotelian academics of the day; not the Church.

Many fat, scholarly books, in fat scholarly languages, have been written about this topic, Ms. Isanhart. I'm afraid the vote is in on this one.

Not to mention the Church's collusion with the Nazi Party. Everybody wants to forget about that one.

(Sigh!)

The Church’s “collusion” with the Nazi Party (as well as the “collusion” of Pope Pius XII) was a lie started by the KGB to undercut the moral authority of the Vatican. The lie first surfaced in a play called “The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy”, which played in Germany in 1963, and in the U.S. in 1964. In fact, Pope Pius XII was vehemently anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi. He sheltered about 5,000 Jews (450+ in the Vatican and the rest in nearby monasteries and convents) from Nazi atrocities. The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, was so impressed with the Pope’s actions, that he converted to Catholicism after WWII and assumed the Pope’s given name. Orthodox Jews, of course, consider Zolli merely to be an apostate, who “abandoned” the Jews of Rome during the German invasion of Italy while he hid safely in the Vatican. In fact, Zolli was hiding with over 400 other Jews in the Vatican, and with thousands more hiding nearby. So much for collusion with Nazis.

Now back to my original request which you ignored:

Please take any ONE of the artists whom I mentioned – Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Swift, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, Michelangelo, Wren, Gaudi, de Sully – and show us that their creations (the creations I cited in my previous post) were not inspired by any religious feeling or impulse at all, but were done under duress and threat of harm by the supposedly religiously suppressive society in which they lived.

Post 25

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:58am

Objectivism, Shannon, is indestructible because mankind's progress is unstoppable...

Jawol!

The reason I can't waste time with you MS is that you're plainly a nut-case. I don't know what sort of dark background you have; I'm not particularly interested either. But you give yourself away as simply a True Believer in the Ayn Rand cult. In fact, a book I'll recommend to you (though you probably won't read it) is "The Ayn Rand Cult" by Canadian journalist Jeff Walker (Open Court Publications).

Isn't it interesting that Ayn Rand carried a good-luck charm in the form of a gold watch, yet she lambasted physicist Robert Oppenheimer for carrying around a good-luck charm in the form of a rabbit's foot?

What I want to know about the dark clouds in your soul, MS, is this: why, why, why, WHY is it important to a guy like you -- who certainly appears to have gone around the block a few times -- to go to bed at night feeling that "Objectivism is indestructible"? It's nutty. Do you think Kolker goes to bed at night feeling, "Thank GOODNESS Newton and Einstein are indestructible! Nothing...absolutely NOTHING will ever knock those guys or their theories off their perch!!" Or do you think it's more like this: "I was able to solve THIS problem using differential calculus; THAT problem using general relativity; ANOTHER problem using quantum mechanics...gee, I hope something even better comes along in a few years so that I can just plug some numbers into ONE equation, get an answer, and go play tennis."

I suspect it's the latter. He doesn't care if Newton and Einstein are "indestructible"; and you shouldn't care if Objectivism is "indestructible", and for the same reason: it isn't. Nothing -- no theory, whether scientific or philosophical -- is immune from change, alteration, and (GASP!!!!) improvement.

Now, I have no doubt that as a True Believer in the mold of Leonard Peikoff, you would be incapable of making such changes, alterations, and improvements to Objectivism. And for the same reason that these would never come from Peikoff: you've pre-determined, in a narrow-minded, doctrinaire, intellectually bigoted fashion, that the thought system that helps you go to sleep at night, feeling that "all is safe; all is right", is already perfect; nothing will be added to it because nothing can be added it (because by definition, anything added to perfection will merely detract from it).

Sorry, but it smacks just a little bit too much of "Fuhrerism" and "the perfection of the thousand-year Reich." In other words, it stinks.

So, I would be very interested in reading your reply as to why you're the kind of guy who needs perfection and indestructibility in anything in order to sleep soundly at night. But if you're wondering why I don't waste time responding and re-responding and re-re-responding to your superficial posts on various topics...just read, re-read, and re-re-read the above.

Post 26

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 3:09am

From Post 23:

Regarding the Renaissance, the main thrust behind my argument was that in looking at the arts prior to and after the Renaissance, the quality and quantity was markedly improved afterward.

Um...Heeeee, heee, haaaa, haaaa, HAAAA!

(Ahem!) Yes. Very closely reasoned argument. Compelling. Unanswerable, in fact. How 'bout this:

"Decided: iced-tea is a marked improvement over lemonade! The objective evidence as evidenced by an Objectivist is that I tasted lemonade and didn't much like it! I then tasted iced-tea and requested more! Ergo, iced-tea is objectively better --- better in a deep, philosophical sense -- than lemonade!

And don't you dare think for one moment that there's the slightest element of purely subjective taste involved in any of this!"

Very good argument, Pete! I can tell immediately that you're a person of deep learning and wide experience.

Where do you teach?

Post 27

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 7:07am

.. in the real world where things are imperfect and normal human beings must take incremental steps (not great leaps) toward improvements in society – would you rather live with theists like Torquemada and his ilk, who killed 5,000 to 10,000? Or atheists like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and their ilk, who, in the name of their various man-centered philosophies, killed 140 million? It’s a simple question and a fair one. Why won’t you answer it?

You're asking me how I'd rather die, not live. I'd be forced to fake it in either era. My thinking would be forced, not free.

Is it possible Hitler and Stalin gained power without the help of Christians? Mao and Pol Pot without the help of Buddhists and Muslims? The German, Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese populations were not atheist as a whole, even if some of they're tyrannical leaders claimed to be. I submit these individuals were mystics, not atheists. Their entire view of life more than suggests this. Every "what, how, and why" was answered with a shrug, or fuzzy, convoluted, emotionally charged rhetoric. Atheism demands, clear, coherent answers to these life questions. Faith does not.

How weak does a religion have to be in order to sanction neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother and submission overall? That's how those leaders rose to power, with the full cooperation of the faithful. How easy was it for church going, bible reading Christians to betray the very principles you're claiming never caused these historic, murderous episodes? A little too easy, as history now bares out.

I think these histories would have been very different if atheism were actually employed. Instead, faithful populations fully complied with whatever dogma was put before them, fascism or Christianity, it made no difference. The one alternative that was not presented fully undressed was, in fact, atheism.

Atheism, all on it's own, leads to a "live and let live" view of the world. Faith, of any kind, does not.

Christian leaders in this country spew the same kind of hate Hitler did. Too many of their followers would be willing to line up and pull the switch on innocent human beings in alms to faith. It's a sickening testament to the destructive power of faith and religion. Faith, ultimately, leads to destruction. There's nothing real at it's base. Atheism and the rejection of faith makes a stronger foundation imperative.

Post 28

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 8:18am

Shannon (Addendum to Post 22): From "On the Cross of the Church", by Karlheinz Deschner: "Christianity can be and must be accused of many atrocities for which there are no excuses. But worse than all this is the fact that it didn't bring happiness to mankind."

But precisely Happiness is Objectivism's highest moral goal: to make people happy, as William Dwyer states in Post 20 above. Ayn Rand made a specific point of this in "Atlas Shrugged": "You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours." Which makes any further discussion pointless.

P.S. 1: Besides, you still haven't provided proof to your statement as I mention in Post 22 and "Jawohl" includes an "h" (you will probably now say from "Heil" but you're wrong, for it is you who shows a total incapacity to change your way of looking at things). What's more, also as Dwyer says, since you have no valid arguments for your position, you resort to insults. If someone doesn't agree with you, he's narrow-minded and boorish. You use "flames" in your replies, which, in accordance with Wikipedia, is the hostile and insulting interaction between Internet href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet users. This is not constructive, does not clarify a discussion, and does not persuade others.

P.S 2: Wow! What do you know! I read "The Ayn Rand Cult" by Jeff Walker (for I read everything related with Objectivism), another of these senseless attacks against Objectivism for, as Luke Setzer clearly showed in "The Grinning Face of Evil" (http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Setzer/The_Grinning_Face_of_Evil.shtml) Objectivism is NOT as cult, as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and, another example, Scientology is.

Post 29

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 9:56am

The premise of Claude Shannon's argument is that the works of religious people are the products of their religious beliefs.

It is far more plausible to argue that such works were achieved in spite of, not because of religious beliefs.

Religion is the promotion of sacrifice and faith (which is itself the ultimate sacrifice) and produces nothing. The great (popular) works of art offered as examples were all products sold to the powerful and very rich religious leaders of the time. Pleasing them was profitable. Heritics were severly punished.

It is psychobabble nonsense to pretend that the artistry depended for its existence on the stupid religion of either the customer or the artist. It depended on the rationality, productiveness, and self-interest of the artists.

The game of religion is always to pretend that all good is to the glory of god and all evil is the fault of man because shaming and humiliating the victim is the first step in systematically robbing and ruling him. Giving credit for his art to religion while leaving him the credit for his sins is standard operating procedure for misanthropic mystics.

One could as easily argue that government "produces" office furniture since they are a principal buyer of office furniture.

Post 30

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 10:09am

Nothing -- no theory, whether scientific or philosophical -- is immune from change, alteration, and (GASP!!!!) improvement.

NO theory, whether scientific or philosophical?? What about the theory that "no theory is immune from change, alteration and improvement"? Is that theory immune from change, alteration or improvement? If it is, then the theory is false, because it is self-referentially inconsistent. And if it ISN'T immune from change, alteration and improvement, then it is theoretically deficient and is therefore false as well.

To say that a theory is not immune from change, alteration or improvement is to say that the theory is not true as it stands, because if it were, then it would be immune from change, alteration or improvement. If a theory is true, then it cannot be improved upon; if it can be improved upon, then it is not true. So, if every theory can be improved upon, then no theory is true, which is not only absurd, but self-refuting as well.

In short, it is self-contradictory to assert a theory as true and simultaneously to declare that it can be improved upon. If one recognizes that it can be improved upon, then it makes no sense for one to assert it as true.

The error in religion and totalitarianism is not its commitment to certainty, but the basis on which it claims certainty -- namely, faith instead of reason.

- Bill

Post 31

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 11:40am

In post 30 it is written:

NO theory, whether scientific or philosophical?? What about the theory that "no theory is immune from change, alteration and improvement"? Is that theory immune from change, alteration or improvement? If it is, then the theory is false, because it is self-referentially inconsistent. And if it ISN'T immune from change, alteration and improvement, then it is theoretically deficient and is therefore false as well.

I reply:

The assertion that no physical theory is immune from potential falsification and open to change is not a physical theory or hypothesis. It is an observation ABOUT physical theories which has been borne out to some extent by experience. Most of 19th century physics has been empirically falsified. As we find out more facts it is reasonable to expect that some of our favorite theories will not cover some of these new facts.

A case in point: The original Big Bang Theory (or hypothesis) has been modified to account for observations showing that the rate of expansion of the cosmos is accelerating. In the original theory it was assumed that the rate of expansions would be slowed down gravity and perhaps be stopped and reversed. This, apparently, is not the case. The discovery of accelerating expansion came as a big surprise to the astrophysicists.

One must distinguish between an X type assertion and an assertion ABOUT X type assertions. The latter is a meta-X assertion. In this way we do not get into self referential troubles.

The best way of looking at scientific theories is to regard them as provisional. They are accepted as long as they predict correctly and have not been empiricall falsified. The previous statement is not a scientific statement. It is a statement about scientific theories.

The Great White Hope in physics is to get a theory that will account for reality in both the large and the small. It will be an extension of -both- the Standard Model and of General Theory of Relativity. These theories will be demoted to special cases and heuristics. Useful in restricted context, but not generally valid. This is what happened to classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics.

Bob Kolker

Post 32

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 1:27pm

In response to my last post, Claude Shannon has decided to resort to insults as opposed to civil argument in his post number 26. Claude apparently thinks that any opinion about the comparative quality and quantity of Western art pre and post Renaissance is totally subjective. I get the impression that he doesn't think that the Renassaince and Enlightenment brought any overall improvement in the human condition.

Claude, I don't know if you've laid it out in a previous post (if so, please link me to it), but can you give a basic summary of what your religious beliefs are? I ask not because I want to start a debate on what you believe, but because I want to get a better feel for how much common ground (if any) there is between your worldview and the ideas of Objectivism. This will help me see if there is enough common ground for us to have a productive discussion, or if our views are so far apart on certain fundamentals that neither of us is doing the other a favor by having a discussion.

A few quick questions:

- You are clearly a theist of some variety. What notion of God do you hold? Do you subscribe to a certain denomination?

- I get the feeling that you do not advocate a literal or fundamentalist interpretation of scripture. Am I correct on this?

- What aspects of Objectivism (if any) do you agree with?

- What benefits do you get (or do you seek) by posting on an Objectivist website?

To be fair, I will lay out my own views. I consider myself an atheist with respect to any human conception of a deity. I believe that if there is some grander intelligence in the universe that lies beyond human perception, then it is completely unknowable to us and futile to ponder it. Thus, like I said previously, I guess you could say I'm agnostic with respect to a deistic or pantheistic view of the world. My interest in Objectivism comes from it being what I feel is the best philosophical system of ideas that humans have yet come up with. Anything else you want to know, just ask...

Post 33

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:32pm

What about the theory that "no theory is immune from change, alteration and improvement"? Is that theory immune from change, alteration or improvement?

To echo Prof. Kolker:

That's a simple declarative statement ABOUT theories; not a theory itself.

The fact that you couldn't distinguish the difference is very telling.

Post 34

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:42pm

Claude apparently thinks that any opinion about the comparative quality and quantity of Western art pre and post Renaissance is totally subjective. I get the impression that he doesn't think that the Renassaince and Enlightenment brought any overall improvement in the human condition.

Nice save, Sneaky Pete! We're not talking about "overall improvement in the human condition"; we're talking about works of art. Stick to the topic.

No, I don't think that comparisons between pre-Renaissance art and post-Renaissance art need be subjective. I think that YOUR opinions on such comparisons are subjective...as well as distorted through the lens of your cult leader, Ayn Rand.

Cough up the heavy credentials that will give at least a little heft to your opinions; OR...prove your opinions with arguments. To say "It's obvious [to anyone in Galt's Gulch] that post-Renaissance art was better than pre-Renaissance art" marks you as someone parroting the party line, rather than as someone who can say, "The Rachmaninoff Vespers are objectively better than medieval motets BECAUSE: X, Y, Z."

If you can't do that, than you're merely saying that you prefer iced-tea to lemonade.

Post 35

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:59pm

The premise of Claude Shannon's argument is that the works of religious people are the products of their religious beliefs.

That's a premise of your own devising. I neither said it nor implied it. My argument is simple:

The great religious works of the past -- specifically, the ones I cited in my post above -- were done from religious feeling and religious impulses.

Were there other, practical impulses, too? Of course. That says nothing about the existence of religious impulses.

It is far more plausible to argue that such works were achieved in spite of, not because of religious beliefs.

Religion is the promotion of sacrifice and faith (which is itself the ultimate sacrifice) and produces nothing.

That's merely a bias that one needs to mouth in order to pass the toll-gate into Galt's Gulch. Obviously, the religious people who produce things on account of their religion, or to serve their religion, or to glorify their religion, would disagree. But let's not take other people's experiences into account! A small fact like that might puncture the huge hot-air balloon of belief you've created for yourself.

The great (popular) works of art offered as examples were all products sold to the powerful and very rich religious leaders of the time.

LOL! Ein Deutsches Requiem by Brahms was sold to powerful and rich religious leaders of the time? You're not even acquainted with the music, let alone the circumstances of its writing...let alone Brahms, who was very much a "freethinker" for his day (late 19th cent.) yet was deeply inspired by religious sentiment! Dvorak's "Stabat Mater" was sold to powerful and rich religious leaders! LOL! Beethoven...who kowtowed to no one -- wrote his Missa Solemnis under duress to rich and powerful religious leaders! Heeeee, haaaa!

I do believe, you're culturally bereft. Put down Atlas Shrugged; shut off Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto; and learn about something else for a change! Get educated.

It depended on the rationality, productiveness, and self-interest of the artists.

Mere "Rationality", "Productiveness", and "Self Interest" produce loaves of bread. Not cathedrals, requiems, masses, and epic poems on the story of Man's Fall from Paradise.

Post 36

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 4:25pm

Atheism demands, clear, coherent answers to these life questions.

Pete contradicted this by writing:

atheism is not a system of ideas by any means.

He earlier elaborated on this:

First off, atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview. Atheism is merely a rejection of a false cosmology, and a rejection of the idea that there exists a book which contains actual instructions from the creator of the universe.

If Atheism is merely a negation; if it's a "not X"; if it is NOT a system of ideas by any means; and if it's NOT a philosophy or worldview; I'm afraid I don't see how it can "demand clear, coherent answers to these life questions" regarding the big whats, hows, and whys. A mere intellectual negation cannot demand anything.

These two statements by you also conflict with each other:

Atheism demands, clear, coherent answers to these life questions.
Atheism, all on it's own, leads to a "live and let live" view of the world.

How can atheism lead to "live and let live" when it also "demands" answers to certain questions? If it "demands" certain kinds of answers, then it vehemently rejects other kinds of answers. The history of the 20th century should be proof enough to any intellectually honest person that the vehement rejection of certain answers has taken the form of gulags, gas chambers, einsatzgruppen, forced marches, barbaric medical experimentation, and killing fields. That's anything but "live and let live."

The fact is, Ms. Isanhart, it's only within the safety of a society with an already established religious value system that there's such a thing as "atheism all on its own." That's the problem right there with your statement. In societies in which religion has been stamped out, atheism never just "stands on its own" but is always the thin end of the wedge of some perverted man-centered worldview: national socialism; Marxist communism; Italian fascism; Japanese Imperialism (in which Emperor Hirohito simply claimed to be God).

It's very nice and cozy to be a mild-mannered atheist in a religious society. It's worse to be a believer in an officially atheist society; and it's the worst thing of all to be one kind of atheist in another kind of atheist society. There, you are simply "at the mercy."

For what it's worth, you should consider this:

In "Thought Reform and The Psychology of Totalism" author Robert J. Lifton -- a psychiatrist who debriefed former prisoners and brain-washing victims in communist China under Mao -- pointed out in his patient profiles that the ones who came out of this sort of torture with their minds still intact where those with some sort of religious faith. Atheists, such as various journalists and scientists who managed to get imprisoned, were psychologically and spiritually completely broken by the various forms of torture: they were spouting Marxist propaganda by the time they were released.

Post 37

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 4:29pm

Claude,

I will speak to my own area of expertise, which is music (a subject in which I have a bachelor's degree). What music do you think has more depth of emotion, harmonic sophistication & nuance, interesting counterpoint, etc: Bach's Mass in B minor, or the very best Medieval chant piece? The fact is that for centuries in the Middle Ages, the rate of musical innovation was extremely slow. In fact, from 500 to 900, serious music consisted of little more than monophonic chant. The rate of musical development during the medeival period is dwarfed by that of Renaissance and that which has followed it.

I will concede the point that there was no magical moment in which what we now call the Renaissance began. Cultural evolution is a gradual proces. The general trend I'm pointing out which I don't think can be denied, though, is that religiosity began to decrease in the West with the re-discovery of the works of Greece. Religion at this time was by no means eliminated, nor was it marginalized, but it was tempered with the notion that there should be some emphasis on happiness in this world (as was finally stated explicitly during the enlightenment).

By the way, do you plan to address any of the other points from my previous posts?

Post 38

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 4:47pm

Claude writes:

Atheism demands, clear, coherent answers to these life questions.

Pete contradicted this by writing:

atheism is not a system of ideas by any means.

He earlier elaborated on this:

First off, atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview. Atheism is merely a rejection of a false cosmology, and a rejection of the idea that there exists a book which contains actual instructions from the creator of the universe.

If Atheism is merely a negation; if it's a "not X"; if it is NOT a system of ideas by any means; and if it's NOT a philosophy or worldview; I'm afraid I don't see how it can "demand clear, coherent answers to these life questions" regarding the big whats, hows, and whys. A mere intellectual negation cannot demand anything.

I'm a little confused. You seemed resolutely certain earlier in this thread that atheism is a philosophy. Now you are using my view to counter Teresa's argument. Have you changed your mind on that point?

Post 39

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 5:33pm