Meme Thread for Memes and other assorted Lulz

[Speaker to Animals]

It's really ridiculous when you engage in a common fallacy in the same post where you claim to be some master philosopher. Then you went on to criticize the length of my post, as if that is some kind of argument against it. I mean.. we are talking about philosophy here. It's not exactly known for "short arguments easily understood". If you want Jack Handy philosophy, that's fine, but do not then act like you are somehow superior to everybody else here. We all went to college. Most of us studied philosophy and continue to do so now.

There is no debate with the "I wrote a book on philosophy so I am right". That's really beneath you.

[SuburbanFarmer]

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.

My death cult is better than your death cult.

Imagine what humans could have done over 2,000 years without a huge chunk of them viewing the world as a temporary dumping ground, on their way to Candyland....

[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.

My death cult is better than your death cult.

Imagine what humans could have done over 2,000 years without a huge chunk of them viewing the world as a temporary dumping ground, on their way to Candyland....

Probably very little.

[Hastur]

No individualism without Christianity.

https://allenmendenhall.liberty.me/sanc ... istianity/

That was a long read: the gist is that Christianity broke the power of king, and monks created markets, a tenuous connection at best. I'd say guns had more of an impact. Guns increased the individual's Right of Violence to the point that society had to make a deal with them.

There is a lot more there. Christianity focused on the individual as the path to salvation. Not the focus on the tribe or clan as was the norm in Judaism and throughout the ancient world. The door was opened. I don’t think we westerners can fully perceive how immersed in individualism we are. Like fish, unable to notice the water.
In Sweden I’m a bit on the border. We have a lot of old collectivist baggage not havin been fully Christianized until the 12th century and then nationalizing the church in the 15th. We only had 300 years of Catholicism. It was not enough to rid us off collectivism.

The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth undermined the ancient patriarchal family of the Greek and Roman models by emphasizing the moral agency of individuals and their correlative responsibilities. “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law,” Jesus declared, adding that “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Such a statement would have appalled and baffled the ancients with their ancestor worship and their consecration of hearth and home.

The Apostle Paul broadened Jesus’s lessons and instructions to encompass a wider notion of justice grounded in moral equality. He championed a collaborative social order that would support, nourish, and discipline its members separately and on a case-by-case basis. Individuals, not groups, were admitted into heaven based on their personal beliefs and inner convictions. Society thus needed to motivate individual sanctification.

The gift of grace was available to anyone who chose to accept it; consequently, everyone possessed a basic dignity that legal institutions had to recognize. “The quality of individual will or disposition,” explains Siedentop, “was becoming the Christian leitmotiv. Paul’s imagery of depth had fostered the sense of a realm of conscience that demanded respect. Individual agency and divine agency were now understood as parts of a continuum.”

[Martin Hash]

I don’t think we westerners can fully perceive how immersed in individualism we are. Like fish, unable to notice the water.

Nice.

You're right, of course: Christianity's concept of "individual" salvation, not requiring others' permission nor contribution, is indeed a big step towards liberty.

[Kath]

This used to be a lulz thread, for funny pictures and stuff.

[katarn]

Drowning the topic in goobly-speak provides no insight.

That was actually a thought out and coherent response from StA. You can disagree with it all you want, but dismissing half a printed page of text as "drowning" the topic and dismissing some entry level terminology as :goobly-speak" is not sound debating. Your response provides no insight; instead it dismisses on poor grounds his actual effort at insight.

[Martin Hash]

Says you. (Notice how I did that? You can learn too, just follow my lead.)

[katarn]

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

Brevity is the soul of wit, but it is not the soul of good arguments. Good arguments are concise, yes, but concise is not the same as simply short-- to be concise an argument still has to incorporate its components. Dr Hash, you certainly don't need me to tell you you have the capacity to win most debates you enter, but it might pay to actually win them before unleashing a string of pomposity unwarranted by your argument.

Unless, of course, by winning a debate, you mean having people around the conversation think you won. That's different than having the better argument. I admire you and your life accomplishments, but you hamstring yourself with these outbursts of self-congratulation. You don't need to have written a book on philosophy to understand an issue, nor does having written a book (or several in your case) mean you already understand it. You responded in good faith to Hastur and actually read his posts. Those are the conversations that make me keep coming back here (even if I rarely post)-- the ones where we work off each others' ideas rather than dismissing them because we are the most qualified person on the board.

[Kath]