I didn't take the football away. I let you take it away from yourself. When you start from the position that your view is better because it's firmly grounded in metaphysical certainty, and end up at the view that, eh, I just chose to go with this metaphysics because it works out better than other things we've tried, it's not I who's taken anything away from you or your position. You did it all yourself. Well done.
Tom, it's not my position, it's just a position. And you've now back tracked so far that you've chosen your values by fiat, or at best, pragmatically (which, by the way, is my starting point). It was fun to watch you shuffle, though. I always suspect that behind every moral absolutist is a moral pragmatist. I wonder how Bob sees this move you've taken.
Interesting. You stipulate that the DoI writers were just taking those things to be self-evident, even if they aren't, but then suggest that we need a ground. Since I offered nature as a ground, and your reply is that those things aren't self-evident in nature, why don't we just take them to be?
“All men are created equal” or “rights” or “inherent dignity”—none of these things are self-evident in nature. Therefore [see above].
I took the implication to be that self-evidency was important, or at least that they are self-evident in Natural Law (or in light of God, or whatever). If that's not the case, then why on earth would it matter whether they're self-evident in nature?
Tom, you wrote: By contrast, the principles of the French Revolution and other disastrous modern schemes like communism were indeed composed a priori.
That’s factually incorrect, but I recognize that you were just throwing a jab at things you don’t really understand or care to, so it can be dismissed as a bit of a joke. Funny stuff, too, sort of like me suggesting that Aquinas was an Epicurean.
However, you’ve also a.) Implied that principles of Natural Law are self-evident, and b.) stated quite clearly that they were not “derived a priori.” However, in order for them to be self-evident, they must, in fact, be “derived a priori.” They need not be analytic, and in fact you’ve implied in other comments that they are in fact synthetic, but they are still a priori. Otherwise, they do not contain the evidence of their truth. Put differently, anything that is not derived a priori, but derived a posteriori, requires something else (some relation, say) to demonstrate its truth. So, you have to make a choice: either your principles are self-evident, which, given your only real criticism of non-theistic grounds, is clearly a major reason for adopting Natural Law views of morality for you, or your principles are not self-evident, and not “derived a priori.”
I’ll be honest, I don’t read General Ivolgin, so I’m not quite sure why he brought up their a priori nature (and for Aquinas, though he didn’t use the terminology because it would have been a strange anachronism in his time, they were certainly a priori for him; he’s quite clear about where the first principles of Natural Law come from), but this is not a trivial issue. If they are in fact derived a priori from first principles then, while we might quibble about their self-evidency (the principles are self-evident for Thomists, but the secondary principles generally aren’t), in order to criticize the principles themselves, we have to either call into question the first principles, or call into question the reasoning from those first principles to the secondary principles of Natural Law, which are the ones we have to live by. If, on the other hand, they are not “derived a priori,” that is, if they don’t come before experience, but are instead derived empirically, then criticisms of the secondary principles of natural law need not have anything to say about the first principles (including God), but can simply point out that their empirical basis is flawed. So you can’t have it both ways, and you have to be really clear about which way you want to have it: self-evident and a priori or empirical. Otherwise, there’s no discussion anyone can have with you on the subject.
Tom, well, no and no. A priori derived a posteriori is not a priori, and therefore not self-evident. And communism, at least of the Marxist variety, is distinctively empirical, even if wrong. I am starting to wonder if you know what these words mean, much less the ideas to which you're applying them.
I have played with these for hours upon hours (I'm having flashbacks right now; I think I might have a little bit of PTSD), and I can say with certainty that: a.) 95% of the differece between any two tops in a given battle is a result of the launcher, and b.) with the same launchers, it's mostly about weight: the heavier tops will win about 80% of the time.
Beyblades? They're spinning tops. They've been around for thousands of years, and somehow toy makers have convinced us to buy them for $8 a pop because they have relatively crude (mostly mythology or astrology-related) decals on top.
Granted, I say this as someone who has forked out far too much money for these things. But seriously, they're tops! That run into each other.
And by 1776, I mean you stopped there, not that you were only there.
If you choose to ignore the last 200 years, because the problems, but not necessarily the answers, are perennial, well, I suppose that says all anyone needs to know about you. "I found an answer I like; anything that comes up later that might contradict it be damned!"
Why would I write it, Tom? And here, to boot? If you want a list of references, send me an email and I'll be happy to send one to you. If you want a treatise, then I'm afraid I'm not going to give you one. In addition to the fact that my own work on these issues has been empirical, not philosophical, my own ideas are too muddled for me to put something coherent together. If you want a lit review, well, I can tell you my going consulting rate. I doubt you'll find it's worth it.
That comment was too condescending, I apologize. I'll say this, Tom. I think you're a smart guy, but you're incredibly limited. These are weighty issues, which have of course been dealt with by greater minds than both of ours combined, and perhaps on some level you are correct: morality comes from some sort of reason-giving creator (though what that creator would look like, I have no idea; I kind of like Spinoza, though). But regardless of whether you're right on that point, the way you get there is clearly wrong, not only because there are plenty of ways to get to morality, through reasoning, without starting with God, but also because even if there weren't, simply saying so doesn't make it so. If Kant's second critique teaches you nothing, it should at least teach you that. These are problems, in the classic sense of the word, and no amount of hand waving and "law of the jungle" dismissals will make the problematic nature of these issues go away.
What's more, the more you fall back on a few thinkers within a particular line of thought, ignoring all of the problems with that line of thought, the less serious your position will be. Or put a different way, while it is undoubtedly true, as I've seen you argue elsewhere (and agreed with you readily), that those thinkers have had a huge influence on the way we see the world, including ethics, that doesn't mean that we can't look at those thinkers who have worked very hard to challenge some of that influence (even if, as some French folk might argue, even those challenges are overwhelmingly determined by that influence).
As I said in an earlier comment, what inevitably happens, in the hands of human beings, when you ground values in a single point of origin (usually God, or to be all French, a transcendental signifier), those values inevitably devalue themselves -- they become values in and of themselves, instead of serving a purpose (like, say, the values they were originally supposed to serve -- good, justice, Reason, Truth, whatever -- which values also devalue themselves when they're grounded in a single point, immovable, unquestionable, etc.). History is rife with proof of this proposition, and even if you don't think it challenges the nature of values themselves, or their objective origin, it's something you have to grapple with, and simply saying "man is fallen" is no serious form of grappling (I'm looking at you, Bob). If nothing else, it makes your assertion that values must be grounded in God problematic not simply as a metaphysical proposition, but as an ethical one, and since we're having an ethical discussion, you'd do well to address the problem.
But it's a problem that you won't find in Aquinas, or in Descartes, or hell, even in Kant (though you'll find the seeds of the problem in Kant; again, the second critique is your starting point, with maybe a little Hume). You'll find it in Hegel, and you'll find it in Marx, and Nietzsche, and Freud, and Heidegger, and Sartre, and Foucault, and Levinas, and Moore, and Mill, and even much of the 20th century Anglophone philosophy that dominates our universities today (places that, I know, you dislike for their bias against Aquinas -- but rest assured, these philosophers don't read Hegel or Marx any more than they read Aquinas). Hell, some of these people ultimately agree with you, but they address the problems, and that makes them real players in the game, players that, for the same reason that you should be dealing with the ones who disagree with you, atheist heathens like me should be dealing with the ones who agree with you (you should be dealing with the ones who agree with you as well; Totality and Infinity would be a good place to start).
Yeah, you are taking a very limited view of nature if you think it means "law of the jungle." But whatever.
And what does self-evident mean here? Self-evident in light of God is certainly not self-evident in any meaningful sense, because it's only "self-evident" when some other premise else makes it evident, which is, of course, a contradiction. (Christians weren't the first to derive natural laws, by the way, or even equality of all men.)
My point is that if morality is rational, nature is rational, and reason is natural, then morality falls out of that as readily as it falls out of a reason-giving creator, because the only difference is, in fact, the creator. Like I said, it raises the question of how reason got mixed up in all this anyway, but your position just begs that question. And since we're not really having a metaphysical discussion (lest you think we are, there is a God, no there isn't, is not a metaphysical discussion), I'm not really inclined to take your position all that seriously since it begins with silliness like, "Without God all things are possible," which, if anything is self-evident, the falsity of that statement is (it's the logical equivalent of saying, "Without gravity all things are possible," or "Without Twinkies all things are possible," and I say this as someone who takes metaphysics, and even theology, quite seriously; it's just that you're not offering a sophisticated version of either).
Now if you had said, simply, "Without God, another ground for an objective morality is necessary or we're faced with a really bad sort of relativism," I'd say that's probably true (though there are more sophisticated versions of relativism), but then I'd also say, you might want to read some of the vast literature on ethics of the last 50 years, much of which tackles just this issue (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're not particularly interested in the last century of "Continental" thought, from Husserl on).
Anyway, what you're doing, in essence, is starting with a metaphysical position (a fairly richly conceived notion of God, causality, reason, morality, etc., even if one that you haven't reflected on all that much), thinking out its consequences, and then, without considering any other starting point, removing your basic metaphysical position and assuming that all of the consequences must go with it. And you're doing so a.) because the limited reading you've done on these topics comes through a tradition that generally builds on that metaphysical position (or some variant of it), and b.) you lack imagination.
And don't pretend that I'm dismissing that tradition. Far from it. I'm simply pointing out that there is a great deal of thought from the last 230 years that has challenged much of it, and since you're clearly stuck sometime around 1776, I don't find your "law of the jungle" oversimplifications all that interesting, and I can't imagine why anyone else would.
I'd say that "Without God, all things are possible" has to be one of the most metaphysically dubious statements ever, and morally as well, but the statement is just ironic enough to say it for me.
Of course, the idea that you need God for metaphysics, or ethics/morals, is one that can only come through a lack of imagination. There are certainly other ways to ground them. What's more, when one grounds ethics in an immovable God, those ethics inevitably devalue themselves, or in more recent parlance, become fetishized. I think even Voegelin said something similar to that, though I'll leave it to our resident expert to correct me if I'm wrong.
One route: if reason is natural, and nature rational, isn't nature enough? I ask that sincerely. There are metaphysical questions that raises, of course, but the ethical points Tom and Bob are making beg those same questions.
Have you seen the "Re: Your Brains" WoW video? It's my favorite of the Coulton-WoW genre. And it's also about work, but with zombies instead of monkeys, and zombies are definitely cooler than monkeys.
Many of the original "libertarians" were socialists. ;) Maybe not Marxists, but then didn't Marx once quip that, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist"?
I don't recall a time when no one thought that North Korea had a nuclear program. The U.S. has known about that program, and publicly stated so, since the mid-90s (and before that, even, if you consider some of their other actions to be part of a nulear program), and actively tried to put an end to it through negotiation and the promise of aid. What's more, no one doubted, and it was well publicized at the time, that when that aid didn't come, the nuclear program was resumed.
Maher is essentially a "New Atheist," and while not all New Atheists are the same, one of the more common features found among them is a complete inability to think rationally about religions (I don't just mean religious ideas, but religions themselves). Witness Jerry Coyne's recent blaming of the Holocaust on religion -- the Jewish religion. When it comes to religion, they become standard bigots (yeah, I said it!). If they weren't equally irrational when it comes to Christianity as when it comes to all other religions, one might almost say they look like the American Religious Right.
What I wonder is, from what does one ask that question? In Islam's history, there are periods of extreme religious tolerance. Granted, there are periods of religious intolerance, as well, but these are present in pretty much every religion and culture: when the culture/religion is unthreatened, everyone's welcome; when it feels threatened, put 'em up against the wall.
What’s more, at the turn of the last century, many Middle Eastern intellectuals were actively calling for a more liberal, European-style Muslim culture. That Islam, and in particular, Islam from a particular region of the world, is less liberal now, in many ways, than it was a century ago has less to do with something inherent in Islam than it has to do with the fact that the people of that part of the world have been, at different points, the dupes of Europe (particularly the British; see 1917), exploited for their resources, the center of war over their resources, used as pawns in the Cold War by both sides, occupied, had their oppressive dictators propped up by foreign powers, and that doesn’t even get to the Israeli-Palestinean conflict (the Brits again, too!). It’s a mess over there, and while they’re not blameless, it’s also not surprising that militant strains have become more prominent in that region (Pakistan has similar reasons for a strong militant wing of Islam).
So, the question one has to ask of someone who questions whether Islam and “American ideals” are compatible is, what Islam are you talking about? The one that’s arisen in a political and economic context that promotes militancy? Or the strain, which has existed for centuries, that is as peaceful as any other religion (which might not be saying much, I admit), which admits tolerance and has, at points, even worked towards liberal Western ideals itself? Perhaps these people, instead of believing that Muslims need a better PR campaign, should actually do a little reading. Because they are clearly coming from a position of ignorance, and I can’t imagine it’s the job of Muslims to cure them of that. And besides, when one ignorantly wonders whether, from the perspective of one’s own values, another culture is inherently inferior, based entirely on perceptions garnered, again in ignorance, from the actions and words of a few members of that culture, that sure looks like prejudice, if not the dreaded “bigotry.” And I’ll be damned if that’s not what Tim’s rational people are doing. I guess we can call a spade a club for the sake of discussion, but the more I think about it, the more I see that they really are spades.
When you say you denouce x as you denounce y, it doesn't say anything about x being justified because of y. In fact, it seems to me to do quite the opposite. If you don't think, for example, that violence against your self or your own people is justified, and you denounce violence against another "just as" you denounce it against yourself, isn't that saying that if you think the violence against yourself is unjustified, you think the violence against others is unjustified for the same reasons?
The only thing that excuses the latter is that Heidegger is operating somewhere between radical parody and schizophrenia. That doesn't make him any more appealing to read (in fact, it's best not to read him), but it does at least make him seem like less of a monster.
Also, it cracks me up when Bob agrees with him.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend Jukebox and Open Thread”
I didn't take the football away. I let you take it away from yourself. When you start from the position that your view is better because it's firmly grounded in metaphysical certainty, and end up at the view that, eh, I just chose to go with this metaphysics because it works out better than other things we've tried, it's not I who's taken anything away from you or your position. You did it all yourself. Well done.
"
Tom, it's not my position, it's just a position. And you've now back tracked so far that you've chosen your values by fiat, or at best, pragmatically (which, by the way, is my starting point). It was fun to watch you shuffle, though. I always suspect that behind every moral absolutist is a moral pragmatist. I wonder how Bob sees this move you've taken.
"
Interesting. You stipulate that the DoI writers were just taking those things to be self-evident, even if they aren't, but then suggest that we need a ground. Since I offered nature as a ground, and your reply is that those things aren't self-evident in nature, why don't we just take them to be?
"
Tom, you wrote:
“All men are created equal” or “rights” or “inherent dignity”—none of these things are self-evident in nature. Therefore [see above].
I took the implication to be that self-evidency was important, or at least that they are self-evident in Natural Law (or in light of God, or whatever). If that's not the case, then why on earth would it matter whether they're self-evident in nature?
"
Tom, you wrote:
By contrast, the principles of the French Revolution and other disastrous modern schemes like communism were indeed composed a priori.
That’s factually incorrect, but I recognize that you were just throwing a jab at things you don’t really understand or care to, so it can be dismissed as a bit of a joke. Funny stuff, too, sort of like me suggesting that Aquinas was an Epicurean.
However, you’ve also a.) Implied that principles of Natural Law are self-evident, and b.) stated quite clearly that they were not “derived a priori.” However, in order for them to be self-evident, they must, in fact, be “derived a priori.” They need not be analytic, and in fact you’ve implied in other comments that they are in fact synthetic, but they are still a priori. Otherwise, they do not contain the evidence of their truth. Put differently, anything that is not derived a priori, but derived a posteriori, requires something else (some relation, say) to demonstrate its truth. So, you have to make a choice: either your principles are self-evident, which, given your only real criticism of non-theistic grounds, is clearly a major reason for adopting Natural Law views of morality for you, or your principles are not self-evident, and not “derived a priori.”
I’ll be honest, I don’t read General Ivolgin, so I’m not quite sure why he brought up their a priori nature (and for Aquinas, though he didn’t use the terminology because it would have been a strange anachronism in his time, they were certainly a priori for him; he’s quite clear about where the first principles of Natural Law come from), but this is not a trivial issue. If they are in fact derived a priori from first principles then, while we might quibble about their self-evidency (the principles are self-evident for Thomists, but the secondary principles generally aren’t), in order to criticize the principles themselves, we have to either call into question the first principles, or call into question the reasoning from those first principles to the secondary principles of Natural Law, which are the ones we have to live by. If, on the other hand, they are not “derived a priori,” that is, if they don’t come before experience, but are instead derived empirically, then criticisms of the secondary principles of natural law need not have anything to say about the first principles (including God), but can simply point out that their empirical basis is flawed. So you can’t have it both ways, and you have to be really clear about which way you want to have it: self-evident and a priori or empirical. Otherwise, there’s no discussion anyone can have with you on the subject.
"
Tom, well, no and no. A priori derived a posteriori is not a priori, and therefore not self-evident. And communism, at least of the Marxist variety, is distinctively empirical, even if wrong. I am starting to wonder if you know what these words mean, much less the ideas to which you're applying them.
On “Societal Constructs Often Result In Sub-Optimal Leisure Options”
I have played with these for hours upon hours (I'm having flashbacks right now; I think I might have a little bit of PTSD), and I can say with certainty that: a.) 95% of the differece between any two tops in a given battle is a result of the launcher, and b.) with the same launchers, it's mostly about weight: the heavier tops will win about 80% of the time.
"
Beyblades? They're spinning tops. They've been around for thousands of years, and somehow toy makers have convinced us to buy them for $8 a pop because they have relatively crude (mostly mythology or astrology-related) decals on top.
Granted, I say this as someone who has forked out far too much money for these things. But seriously, they're tops! That run into each other.
On “Weekend Jukebox and Open Thread”
Bob was in his youth back then, so he'd know. ;)
I kid because I love, Bob, because I love.
Anyway, things were probably pretty rosy prior to that if you were a white, male land owner who wasn't in debt. Otherwise, not so much.
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If it is self-evident, then it is of course a priori.
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Whitman said he contained multitudes. I'm not so certain he thought everyone did. ;)
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Tom, I type fast. :)
And by 1776, I mean you stopped there, not that you were only there.
If you choose to ignore the last 200 years, because the problems, but not necessarily the answers, are perennial, well, I suppose that says all anyone needs to know about you. "I found an answer I like; anything that comes up later that might contradict it be damned!"
"
Why would I write it, Tom? And here, to boot? If you want a list of references, send me an email and I'll be happy to send one to you. If you want a treatise, then I'm afraid I'm not going to give you one. In addition to the fact that my own work on these issues has been empirical, not philosophical, my own ideas are too muddled for me to put something coherent together. If you want a lit review, well, I can tell you my going consulting rate. I doubt you'll find it's worth it.
"
That comment was too condescending, I apologize. I'll say this, Tom. I think you're a smart guy, but you're incredibly limited. These are weighty issues, which have of course been dealt with by greater minds than both of ours combined, and perhaps on some level you are correct: morality comes from some sort of reason-giving creator (though what that creator would look like, I have no idea; I kind of like Spinoza, though). But regardless of whether you're right on that point, the way you get there is clearly wrong, not only because there are plenty of ways to get to morality, through reasoning, without starting with God, but also because even if there weren't, simply saying so doesn't make it so. If Kant's second critique teaches you nothing, it should at least teach you that. These are problems, in the classic sense of the word, and no amount of hand waving and "law of the jungle" dismissals will make the problematic nature of these issues go away.
What's more, the more you fall back on a few thinkers within a particular line of thought, ignoring all of the problems with that line of thought, the less serious your position will be. Or put a different way, while it is undoubtedly true, as I've seen you argue elsewhere (and agreed with you readily), that those thinkers have had a huge influence on the way we see the world, including ethics, that doesn't mean that we can't look at those thinkers who have worked very hard to challenge some of that influence (even if, as some French folk might argue, even those challenges are overwhelmingly determined by that influence).
As I said in an earlier comment, what inevitably happens, in the hands of human beings, when you ground values in a single point of origin (usually God, or to be all French, a transcendental signifier), those values inevitably devalue themselves -- they become values in and of themselves, instead of serving a purpose (like, say, the values they were originally supposed to serve -- good, justice, Reason, Truth, whatever -- which values also devalue themselves when they're grounded in a single point, immovable, unquestionable, etc.). History is rife with proof of this proposition, and even if you don't think it challenges the nature of values themselves, or their objective origin, it's something you have to grapple with, and simply saying "man is fallen" is no serious form of grappling (I'm looking at you, Bob). If nothing else, it makes your assertion that values must be grounded in God problematic not simply as a metaphysical proposition, but as an ethical one, and since we're having an ethical discussion, you'd do well to address the problem.
But it's a problem that you won't find in Aquinas, or in Descartes, or hell, even in Kant (though you'll find the seeds of the problem in Kant; again, the second critique is your starting point, with maybe a little Hume). You'll find it in Hegel, and you'll find it in Marx, and Nietzsche, and Freud, and Heidegger, and Sartre, and Foucault, and Levinas, and Moore, and Mill, and even much of the 20th century Anglophone philosophy that dominates our universities today (places that, I know, you dislike for their bias against Aquinas -- but rest assured, these philosophers don't read Hegel or Marx any more than they read Aquinas). Hell, some of these people ultimately agree with you, but they address the problems, and that makes them real players in the game, players that, for the same reason that you should be dealing with the ones who disagree with you, atheist heathens like me should be dealing with the ones who agree with you (you should be dealing with the ones who agree with you as well; Totality and Infinity would be a good place to start).
"
Reminds me of my favorite neuroscience joke. The functions of the hypothalamus are the four F's: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sex.
OK, so there aren't a whole lot of neuroscience jokes to choose from.
"
Yeah, you are taking a very limited view of nature if you think it means "law of the jungle." But whatever.
And what does self-evident mean here? Self-evident in light of God is certainly not self-evident in any meaningful sense, because it's only "self-evident" when some other premise else makes it evident, which is, of course, a contradiction. (Christians weren't the first to derive natural laws, by the way, or even equality of all men.)
My point is that if morality is rational, nature is rational, and reason is natural, then morality falls out of that as readily as it falls out of a reason-giving creator, because the only difference is, in fact, the creator. Like I said, it raises the question of how reason got mixed up in all this anyway, but your position just begs that question. And since we're not really having a metaphysical discussion (lest you think we are, there is a God, no there isn't, is not a metaphysical discussion), I'm not really inclined to take your position all that seriously since it begins with silliness like, "Without God all things are possible," which, if anything is self-evident, the falsity of that statement is (it's the logical equivalent of saying, "Without gravity all things are possible," or "Without Twinkies all things are possible," and I say this as someone who takes metaphysics, and even theology, quite seriously; it's just that you're not offering a sophisticated version of either).
Now if you had said, simply, "Without God, another ground for an objective morality is necessary or we're faced with a really bad sort of relativism," I'd say that's probably true (though there are more sophisticated versions of relativism), but then I'd also say, you might want to read some of the vast literature on ethics of the last 50 years, much of which tackles just this issue (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're not particularly interested in the last century of "Continental" thought, from Husserl on).
Anyway, what you're doing, in essence, is starting with a metaphysical position (a fairly richly conceived notion of God, causality, reason, morality, etc., even if one that you haven't reflected on all that much), thinking out its consequences, and then, without considering any other starting point, removing your basic metaphysical position and assuming that all of the consequences must go with it. And you're doing so a.) because the limited reading you've done on these topics comes through a tradition that generally builds on that metaphysical position (or some variant of it), and b.) you lack imagination.
And don't pretend that I'm dismissing that tradition. Far from it. I'm simply pointing out that there is a great deal of thought from the last 230 years that has challenged much of it, and since you're clearly stuck sometime around 1776, I don't find your "law of the jungle" oversimplifications all that interesting, and I can't imagine why anyone else would.
"
I'd say that "Without God, all things are possible" has to be one of the most metaphysically dubious statements ever, and morally as well, but the statement is just ironic enough to say it for me.
Of course, the idea that you need God for metaphysics, or ethics/morals, is one that can only come through a lack of imagination. There are certainly other ways to ground them. What's more, when one grounds ethics in an immovable God, those ethics inevitably devalue themselves, or in more recent parlance, become fetishized. I think even Voegelin said something similar to that, though I'll leave it to our resident expert to correct me if I'm wrong.
One route: if reason is natural, and nature rational, isn't nature enough? I ask that sincerely. There are metaphysical questions that raises, of course, but the ethical points Tom and Bob are making beg those same questions.
"
Have you seen the "Re: Your Brains" WoW video? It's my favorite of the Coulton-WoW genre. And it's also about work, but with zombies instead of monkeys, and zombies are definitely cooler than monkeys.
On “Pop Quiz”
Many of the original "libertarians" were socialists. ;) Maybe not Marxists, but then didn't Marx once quip that, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist"?
On “Muslims and PR: A response to comments”
Dude, do you know what the word history means?
On “American Decline!”
Hmm... what's a few years ago? 1956? 1994?
I don't recall a time when no one thought that North Korea had a nuclear program. The U.S. has known about that program, and publicly stated so, since the mid-90s (and before that, even, if you consider some of their other actions to be part of a nulear program), and actively tried to put an end to it through negotiation and the promise of aid. What's more, no one doubted, and it was well publicized at the time, that when that aid didn't come, the nuclear program was resumed.
On “Muslims and PR: A response to comments”
Maher is essentially a "New Atheist," and while not all New Atheists are the same, one of the more common features found among them is a complete inability to think rationally about religions (I don't just mean religious ideas, but religions themselves). Witness Jerry Coyne's recent blaming of the Holocaust on religion -- the Jewish religion. When it comes to religion, they become standard bigots (yeah, I said it!). If they weren't equally irrational when it comes to Christianity as when it comes to all other religions, one might almost say they look like the American Religious Right.
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What I wonder is, from what does one ask that question? In Islam's history, there are periods of extreme religious tolerance. Granted, there are periods of religious intolerance, as well, but these are present in pretty much every religion and culture: when the culture/religion is unthreatened, everyone's welcome; when it feels threatened, put 'em up against the wall.
What’s more, at the turn of the last century, many Middle Eastern intellectuals were actively calling for a more liberal, European-style Muslim culture. That Islam, and in particular, Islam from a particular region of the world, is less liberal now, in many ways, than it was a century ago has less to do with something inherent in Islam than it has to do with the fact that the people of that part of the world have been, at different points, the dupes of Europe (particularly the British; see 1917), exploited for their resources, the center of war over their resources, used as pawns in the Cold War by both sides, occupied, had their oppressive dictators propped up by foreign powers, and that doesn’t even get to the Israeli-Palestinean conflict (the Brits again, too!). It’s a mess over there, and while they’re not blameless, it’s also not surprising that militant strains have become more prominent in that region (Pakistan has similar reasons for a strong militant wing of Islam).
So, the question one has to ask of someone who questions whether Islam and “American ideals” are compatible is, what Islam are you talking about? The one that’s arisen in a political and economic context that promotes militancy? Or the strain, which has existed for centuries, that is as peaceful as any other religion (which might not be saying much, I admit), which admits tolerance and has, at points, even worked towards liberal Western ideals itself? Perhaps these people, instead of believing that Muslims need a better PR campaign, should actually do a little reading. Because they are clearly coming from a position of ignorance, and I can’t imagine it’s the job of Muslims to cure them of that. And besides, when one ignorantly wonders whether, from the perspective of one’s own values, another culture is inherently inferior, based entirely on perceptions garnered, again in ignorance, from the actions and words of a few members of that culture, that sure looks like prejudice, if not the dreaded “bigotry.” And I’ll be damned if that’s not what Tim’s rational people are doing. I guess we can call a spade a club for the sake of discussion, but the more I think about it, the more I see that they really are spades.
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When you say you denouce x as you denounce y, it doesn't say anything about x being justified because of y. In fact, it seems to me to do quite the opposite. If you don't think, for example, that violence against your self or your own people is justified, and you denounce violence against another "just as" you denounce it against yourself, isn't that saying that if you think the violence against yourself is unjustified, you think the violence against others is unjustified for the same reasons?
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The only thing that excuses the latter is that Heidegger is operating somewhere between radical parody and schizophrenia. That doesn't make him any more appealing to read (in fact, it's best not to read him), but it does at least make him seem like less of a monster.
Also, it cracks me up when Bob agrees with him.
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