Toto

Radorth: please start your own thread (RRP is a possibility) where you can articulate and defend some position on the founders. What you are posting is completely off-topic to this thread.

Radorth

That's ridiculous. Actually I'm more on-topic than the whole last page. What are you doing, trolling around looking for excuses to cut me off?

Fine

Rad

Toto

Rad - you are a hoot. I told you that you could start a new topic and you accuse me of trying to cut you off?

This thread has wandered a bit, but its essense is a discussion of tactics for secular activism. You were posting a quote that you didn't get into the thread on the Constitution before I closed it.

If you have a problem with the moderation of this board, please note the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000680" target="_blank">New Rule</a>.

Toto

The original poster has abandoned this thread. Before it gets hijacked again, someone please give the moderators a reason not to close it, or it will be closed by tomorrow.

Celsus

Moderators: This is my last post in this thread since I have just been made aware of the ruckus caused.

Galiel,

I don't know what kind of points you're trying to score here, but you seem to have taken them personally. If so, grow a thicker skin.

Anyway, I am an unemployed fresh graduate, mostly self-educated, although my degree was significant in shaping my worldview. You may not like jargon, but it helps to keep sentences concise. I have had experience working in Africa with the poor. Just because the poor don't know the reasons for decisions that fucked them over does not mean they are not concerned with getting those policies changed for their benefit. I have also witnessed firsthand how structural adjustment policies (created from neoclassical economic assumptions of minimalist government, removal of market "imperfections" and the like) have fucked over education, health and economies, and therefore I am very dismissive of neoclassical economics (and I am fortunate in that recent economics Nobel Laureates would agree with me) in general.

In principle, my objections are based on their over-emphasis on deductivism without questioning their extremely shaky assumptions. Do you really not know what the neoclassical framework is? (hint: the websites you linked operate on that assumption, and you can quite clearly see the lack of empiricism they employ) Do you really not understand the terms, "methodology", "deductivism", and "empirical basis"? If you don't, then you could have just asked politely without the petulent outburst. I assumed you were intelligent and probably well-read, therefore I assumed you would at least know what the long words meant (and maybe even their historical context). You should take that as a compliment. If I had to explain every term, I would have had to write you an essay rather than an aside.

Joel

(The point is: our discussion should have been in a new thread. You didn't necessarily have to participate in the one Gurdur and I were having, but it wasn't right to disrupt this one further. However, seeing your behaviour, I have no further wish to discuss anything with you.)

galiel

Pot, kettle.

Close the thread.

Gurdur

Let's be a bit fairer to Devnet, shall we ?

from the OP:
More or less, yes. However the danger's in militant intolerant secularism.

The absolutely best is a humanist system (and you can be secular or religious humanist) that keeps everyone within check of reasonable social rules, and otherwise promotes tolerance and knowledge.

Not necessarily; this would claim such are nescessitated developments, and that would seem not to be true.

Well, we can afford to tolerate it say in Iran, since the alternative is far worse - marching in there to tell everyone what to do, causing hatred and backlash for the next 100 years. Not very rational.
Better the slow spread of peaceful persuasion, no ?

Not really; raise living standards, improve womens' rights, and suddenly having children is much more expensive, and women have more say. This leads naturally to a declining birthrate.

"Rational" would be the wrong word here; a better term would be "Ethical", or "Enviromentally-aware".

This is a rare development. See comments above.

It won't work on a global scale.

It worked in Turkey only because at the time of Ataturk enough people could see the very Turkish nation was threatened with disintergration.

I think materialism per se is somewhat diametrically at odds with humanism on some important questions.

No, this idea won't work all that well as an exclusive teaching; better off with comparative philosophy, ethics and history.

Not really. It's still between those with power and those without, as ever.

I'm afraid this is too simplistic.
Humanism is a far better rallying call than even secularism.
__________________

Given. Devnet raised fair questions, which were simply not adequately dealt with. Devnet may have gone, but others might be interested in exploration of those ideas and counter-responses.

[ December 15, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

galiel

Interesting point. I have never quite understood the urgency with which so many Infidels reject the "humanist" label, particularly when the two are combined into "secular humanism", thus making clear that the human values at its core derive from rational, not religious or spiritual, origins.

Surely few people here, regardless of political bent, would disagree with the values promulgated by, say, the UN Unversal Declaration of Human Rights, or the Humanist Manifesto ver. 2, or the US Bill of Rights, for that matter. Pick whichever seems most in harmony with your beliefs. These are all secular humanist documents that assert basic human rights. If one is guided by similar principles, one is, in essence, a humanist.

Why the strong opposition to the term?

Celsus

galiel,

Check your PMs

Joel

avalanche:ix

"Nor is your little theory any concern of the world's, since it's so off-the-planet."

yes, which is why we must strive to make it on-the-planet.




"You'll have to do better than this if you wish to make a rational argument."

who said i wished to make a rational argument? i scarcely have to convince those who would be re-programmed anyway.

"Since you already seem to have lept to false conclusions, your mocking of me seems to me to be a bit like being savaged by a sick sheep. But go ahead anyway !"

oh i will. in fact, i allready am.

"Doubtful, very."

regardless of your doubts it's true.


"Ah, you prefer fantasy uninterrupted by facts.
OK, now I see."

the reason why they believe in something has nothing to do with my vision.

"You still haven't explained how that is supposed to increase rationalism."

it seems somewhat elementary that an increase in brain capacity would increase rational thought, does it not? ofcourse, we'd have to guide the newly programmed subjects along the way so they don't get taken in again by religion.

"Ah, the light dawns. You wish to troll."

ehm, because i extoll the benefits of communism as it has affected the nations it has inhabitated, i am a troll? forgive me if i fail to grasp your logic. you appear to have some biased personal thing against communism.