The X virtuous men of history or whatever

[Murtak]

Tzor do you actually have any arguments other than "waaaa, anyone who argues against me is a bad person because, look, a three-headed monkey"? That latest post is utter drivel. Frank's stance is actually coherent. There is no need to like it, but at least e makes sense. You do not. Instead you do what you are actually accusing Frank of: you construct straw men, which you then try to tear down.

For the record, this is Frank's stance (if I get it wrong, please correct me, I haven't followed this thread closely):
- Faith has no discernable benefits.
- Faith has discernable downsides.
- Thus faith is overall a bad thing.

Instead he proposes science as an approach to life and society. This means he is in favor of constantly evaluating and questioning our assumptions and trying to come up with better solutions. The preferred method for this is by using measurable and repeatable experiments (contrast this with "because this book says so").

I guess I can understand how this is threatening to a conservative like you, but all you have to offer in response is quoting dictionaries and stringing your quotes together with bullshit. Mind you, I actually want to see a good debate about topics like this - but this one is very one-sided. So far you haven't put forth a single coherent thought. I guess that's why they call it "faith" instead of "reason" I guess.

[mean_liar]

Faith actually has benefits.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/04/us/re ... finds.html

[Username17]

Sigh. You're quoting research from 1995. It showed that people with social networks perform better. Faith based social networks provided that benefit as well.

However, subsequently we did very large studies isolating just the prayer. And well, Prayer is bad for you.

Social networks are good. Even religious social networks. But the fact that they are religious is bad. The religion is mildly bad for you, the companionship is very good for you. It's a net benefit, but not as much of a net benefit as if you got the same people to hang out and do anything else with their lives.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Of course, unless it's good for you.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1550 ... t=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1259 ... t=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1571 ... t=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1692 ... t=Abstract

[mean_liar]

Also, the argument that religion is a net benefit is something I think you poo-poo'd extensively, isn't it?

I mean, how more likely are you to have that wonderful social support network with a religion than you are without it?

[tzor]

Tzor do you actually have any arguments other than "waaaa, anyone who argues against me is a bad person because, look, a three-headed monkey"? That latest post is utter drivel. Frank's stance is actually coherent.

How the hell is Frank's stand coherent? All of Frank's statements are made without proof. When you start making blanket statements like All X are Y, the burden of proof is on the person making the blanket statement.

This Hitler is a Catholic, QED argument is the perfect example of arrogant bullshit statements that may seem coherent but are still statements of crap. It's crap because you can't claim you are X and then by your actions and beliefs proclaim the exact opposite. When you are the master of lies it is easy to spin a lot of stories, and Hitler was a master of lies.

Let us consider then the facts, as presented in Wiki's "Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs."

Yes it is true that he publically said "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." One also has to consider this along with all the other context in his life. After all, while he considered himself a "Catholic" consider the following:

On April 29, 1945, Hitler and Eva Braun married in front of a civil servant of the city of Berlin, without a religious service or blessing ceremony for their marriage.

Even publically, religion was a tool, a way to get the people to follow and obey, nothing more.

Early on, Hitler expressed his opinion about God and religion as follows, "We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany."

And now for some not too public quotes and commentary from his friends.

Goebbels notes in a diary entry in 1939: "The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay." Albert Speer reports a similar statement: “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

In the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler is recorded as saying that "only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age" were responsible for the demise of the Roman Empire. In 1941, Hitler praised an anti-Christian tract from AD 362, neo-platonist and pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate's Against the Galileans, saying "I really hadn't known how clearly a man like Julian had judged Christians and Christianity, one must read this...."

The only thing he liked from the Catholic Church was it's pomp and hierarchy mostly taken from his childhood.

In his childhood, Hitler had admired the pomp of Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organisation of the clergy. Later, he drew on these elements, organizing his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical forms into events or using phraseology taken from hymns. Because of these liturgical elements, Hitler's Messiah-like status and the ideology's all-encompassing nature, the Nazi movement is sometimes termed a "political religion". Hitler himself, however, strongly rejected the idea that Nazism was in any way a religion.

Hitler was not a practicing Christian, but believed in Arthur de Gobineau's ideas of struggle for survival between the different races, among which the "Aryan race" — guided by a pantheistic providence — was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization. In Hitler's conception, Jews were enemies of all civilization, especially the Volk; this idea was rooted in an ideology based on Social Darwinism and antisemitism. His understanding of Darwin was incomplete and based on the "survival of the fittest" in a social context, as popularly misunderstood at the time.

Last and probably not least, while he may have toyed with the ideas, his followers under his leadership were not.

In 1998 documents were released by Cornell University from the Nuremberg Trials, that revealed Nazi plans to exterminate Christianity at the end of World War II. The documents cover the Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis and demonstrate the deliberate genocide of Jews during the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were killed. One senior member of the U.S. prosecution team, General William Donovan, as part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled large amounts of documentation that the Nazis also planned to systematically destroy Christianity.

But Frank would rather point to an episode of papal politics to prove that Hitler was a true shining example of the Catholic Church and thus prove that all religion is evil and you are most willing to exclaim "brilliant" at that pile of putrid horse maure.

[mean_liar]

Also, the argument that religion is a net benefit is something I think you poo-poo'd extensively, isn't it?

I mean, how more likely are you to have that wonderful social support network with a religion than you are without it?

Ah, here's what I should have posted, from those crazy religious kooks from the Archives of General Psychiatry:

"Religiously involved people consistently report greater social support than the religiously uninvolved"

"...support provided by religious sources appears to be more satisfying and more resilient than support from secular sources".

http://books.google.com/books?id=Bci9KQ ... q=&f=false

[Username17]

So having successfully demonstrated that the fact that religions ostracize people of other or no faiths, and that this has real health consequences, your solution is... to get everyone to join the majority regional faith? Really?

Because my solution is to do community organizing and tear down all the faiths so that no one will be excluded from social networking.

Upon discovery that the apartheid system hurts the people it discriminates against, the correct solution is to remove the apartheid, not to get everyone to apply for membership in the protected group.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

So if the data supports, extol. If the data contradicts, disregard.

Let me know when you have your utopia up and running and we'll run some studies on it. The rest of us will continue to discuss history and the present and the currently extant social support networks of the non-religious which were studied and the fact that they're apparently not as good at providing support as religious organizations.

By the by, I hear centrally-planned economies and giving the means of production to the workers is an awesome concept. You might want to try that one out too and let us know how it turns out.

Or maybe if we're using ideals then can I posit a religious utopia and argue that your non-religious one is inherently inferior? Is that fair game too?

[Username17]

By the by, I hear centrally-planned economies and giving the means of production to the workers is an awesome concept. You might want to try that one out too and let us know how it turns out.

Pretty awesome? As I recall, it showed the fastest increase in life expectancy and standard of living in human history and caused the poorest and most backward country in Europe to win the space race in a single generation.

So if the data supports, extol. If the data contradicts, disregard.

What data are we disregarding?

Social networks are demonstrably very beneficial to people. In areas with high religious presence, non-religious people are extremely distrusted. In the United States for example, Atheists are the most hated group. Nevertheless, in very nonreligious societies like Denmark, social networking and community ties are very high. And indeed, social isolation for religious people who happen to be minority religions is also crushingly large.

What does that tell us in aggregate? It tells us that religious people are exclusionary douchebags. People who kick others out of their social group unless they drink the koolaid and submit to the correct interpretation of today's invisible sky fairy of choice. Because we have done the controls. Large number of atheists don't make people isolated, but large numbers of religious people make small numbers of atheists isolated.

Joining a church to get socialization for yourself is a dick move. It's selfish. It's you perpetuating a system that hurts people in exchange for the social lifelines to help yourself. Religious groups are the enemy of the nation.

Now tell me: what data point am I excluding? Is it the social isolation of Christians in Muslim and Buddhist countries? Is it the social isolation of Muslims and Buddhists in Christian nations? Is it the lack of social isolation by anybody in secular countries? What? Tell me the part of the data set that I am not taking into account in my theory.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Wait... Because you pick and choose some quotes, suddenly atheists == Nazis?

How noble of you.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

Gonna throw this into the hat. Ultra-Orthodox Jews more likely to jaywalk Anyone know of a followup?

[Neeeek]

Gonna throw this into the hat. Ultra-Orthodox Jews more likely to jaywalk Anyone know of a followup?

There are people who hesitate to jaywalk?

[Crissa]

I'm hesitant to jaywalk, but I'm not hesitant to walk upon a vehicle parked in a crosswalk.

-Crissa

[Caedrus]

Gonna throw this into the hat. Ultra-Orthodox Jews more likely to jaywalk Anyone know of a followup?

There are people who hesitate to jaywalk?

I can't remember the last time I jaywalked.

[tzor]

I genenerally do not walk beteen the intersections although I have crossed an intersection before the "walk" sign appears, especially in those places where the "walk" sign is not automatic and the traffic lights are already favorable. (The later can be considered "jaywalking")

[mean_liar]

...what data point am I excluding?

The fact that you're at best talking about meta-inclusion at a societal level, when the benefits of social networking exist within the context of communities, not nations, and that you probably know there's a difference but have no interest in mentioning it and would instead make me do it.

[Crissa]

The fact that you're at best talking about meta-inclusion at a societal level, when the benefits of social networking exist within the context of communities, not nations, and that you probably know there's a difference but have no interest in mentioning it and would instead make me do it.

...What?

The benefits of inclusion work at many levels. If you're in the dominant religion you:[*]Get asked to more job interviews.[*]Receive more job offers.[*]Are not outed by ceremony.[*]Receive better care/attention.

And these are without the people being part of your community or nation. They just treat you better on these issues because they assume you have their side, or, like health, they just know more about things you're likely to suffer.

If you're in the dominant part of a community, you:[*]Get better support from the police.[*]May pay less at local stores, via better perks or zip-code segregation.[*]Get better offers of housing.

And if you're part of a church or local organization you get the personal benefits of being in the dominant culture:[*]A place to organize ceremony.[*]Support when you're ill or misfortune.[*]People to talk to and share events with.[*]Less bullying.

These last issues actually relate to why people in the dominant part of the culture live longer, report higher happiness, and generally have better health.

Nearly none of these things are done out of any racism or malice, and yet, it still results in the same results: Evil done to minorities.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

There are people who hesitate to jaywalk?

I like to look first.