Meme Thread for Memes and other assorted Lulz

[Speaker to Animals]

Marxism and Fascism are both political offshoots of the category of philosophy that includes Hegel, Nietzsche, etc. This is a specific view of morality that stems from the combination of materialism and idealism.

It's pretty silly and sophomoric to confuse Christianity with any of that. Those are interesting schools of philosophy to study. Just get it right. That entire framework is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

If you are materialist and idealist, then (1) you only acknowledge the real existence of the material world (no God), and (2) you believe you cannot really know anything directly since you believe everything you understand about the world is a mental picture formed in your brain from sense data. If you sit down and consider the implications, a lot of propositions follow from those two things that all lead to the consequentialist and utilitarian moralist perspectives of Marxism.

Christianity leads in the opposite direction.


The only vague similarity that Christian thought has to Marxism is a unique form of historicism in which Christians believe there is an inevitable end to history since we believe God told us how it is going to end (even if only vaguely and not *when*). But between now and then, there exists no real concept of historicism outside of the final end (which is just a prophecy, not a deterministic process). Marxists believe in a deterministic history in which everything progresses inevitably towards some utopian state in the future. That utopian state is, for all intents and purposes, their "God", since from that is derived the basis for determining what is right and wrong. If killing fifty million people through starvation and death camps gets us to the utopian state, then that is the right thing to do, since delaying the inevitable conclusion of political-economic history only prolongs the greater misery of everybody else.

Morality, in this sense, should be considered inseparable from teleology. What you believe to be true about the final end of Man forms the basis for what you consider right and wrong. If the final end of Man is God, then your concepts of right and wrong flow from God. If your final end of Man is some post-scarcity Star Trek federation in which nobody suffers or toils, then right and wrong stem from whatever makes that happen sooner that doesn't cause more harm to the more humans than not. If you believe everything is meaningless and materialistic, then the final end of Man is a meaningless extinction event after a string of failed civilizations, making right and wrong a matter of hedonism and maximizing personal good over collective good.

[Martin Hash]

Drowning the topic in goobly-speak provides no insight.

[Martin Hash]

The only one here who’s written a book on philosophy is me.

[Speaker to Animals]

^^^ First post -- not an argument, but a surrender.

Second post -- fallacious. Weird that an "expert" on philosophy engages in common fallacies like appeal to authority.

[Martin Hash]

BTW, my book, “Philosophy of an Old Cyber-Cowboy,” begins with neurotransmitters.

[Martin Hash]

I’m not going to discuss mysticism except to pity the people who dabble in it.

[Martin Hash]

If you can’t make your point in one sentence, you’re going to lose a debate to me every time.

[Martin Hash]

When your doctor explains your condition and treatment, he's NOT appealing to authority; he IS the authority.

[Martin Hash]

(I could do this all day but I've got to get back to the new book I'm working on.)

[Fife]

muh authoritie