Political discussion thread

And that is why friends should never talk religion or politics.

rushfan4 wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: ^Regardless of the veracity of the Christian faith, it's inaccurate to describe God as being "invented by medieval dickweeds."  From history, we can say that our first record of the Christian God appears in the ancient Jewish Torah.  Christianity, which claims to be the fulfillment of Judaism, appeared in the first century AD.  The Christians followed Jesus Christ, saying that he was the Son of God, who had come to inaugurate his kingdom in the world, died and rose for our sins, and would return in judgement.  He's not an imaginary friend, He was a real person.  The leaders of the early church were not "medieval" and they were not "dickweeds;" they were leaders of a fringe group who must have really believed what they said they did, because in the first few centuries AD, being a Christian was a really good way to get yourself killed. The "medieval dickweed" is a Bill and Ted reference that I added for humorous effect, albeit ill-advised since it has been taken literally as a reason to try and negate my comment.  As I noted in my comment "during Caesar's time".  Religion is first and foremost a tool that was invented by man (not God) to attempt to explain why we are here, and it is a tool that has been exploited since its beginnings to control the behavior of the people that the leaders rule.  In my opinion, God is nothing more than Santa Claus for adults.  An imaginary person/character created to control the behavior of citizens of a nation, etc...  You had better be good or you will go to hell.  You had better be good or you'll get no presents.  If you are good you will go to heaven.  If you are good you will get presents.    At any rate, this is all totally irrelevant and that is what you religious bigots do not get.  I fully respect your right to believe in what I consider to be an imaginary being but you have no right to make me believe in said imaginary being and no right to make me behave as you are taught within these scriptures.  And that is my whole point.  That is why I believe so fervently in the separation of church and state.

I understand what you're trying to say now that you clarify the "medieval dickweed" part (sorry, I've never seen Bill and Ted, so I didn't get the reference).  Understand that I was not trying to negate your comment, but to clear the history up, because I fully respect everyone's right to criticize my religion, but not to make up their own historical facts.  You weren't, and I thought you were, so I apologize for that.

Anyway, I don't deny that Christianity has been used for manipulative purposes many times.  The medieval church, for example, was full of corruption and power-hungriness.  But if you consider the origins of Christianity, it seems unlikely that it was used as a power grab.  As I pointed out in my previous post, Christianity was a fringe group in it's early days, filled with many impoverished people and leaders who abstained from seeking public office more than they tried to gain power.  Most of Jesus' original followers were painfully executed for their beliefs, and for the first few centuries of the church's existence, being a Christian was an entirely unprofitable experience.  You had persecutions continuing on and off for centuries, and a general dislike of the Roman people for Christians, whom they termed "haters of mankind" for their shunning of sinful, worldly pleasures.  Power struggles and power grabs simply do not happen under these conditions.  Christianity doesn't teach that "good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell," either.  According to Scripture, we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.  Christians are called to do good works, also, but these works flow out of thanksgiving for our redemption and love for others.

I don't know where you got the idea that either I or Alex was a "bigot."  I'm not, and from what I've heard from him, he's not either.  I never said anything about your comment on the church imposing their beliefs on people because I agree with it, for the most part.  I disagree with you on abortion because I believe that an unborn baby is a human life and thus deserves equal protection under the law as much as any other human being.  However, in general, I think that what people do in private is their own business.

^Regardless of the veracity of the Christian faith, it's inaccurate to describe God as being "invented by medieval dickweeds."  From history, we can say that our first record of the Christian God appears in the ancient Jewish Torah.  Christianity, which claims to be the fulfillment of Judaism, appeared in the first century AD.  The Christians followed Jesus Christ, saying that he was the Son of God, who had come to inaugurate his kingdom in the world, died and rose for our sins, and would return in judgement.  He's not an imaginary friend, He was a real person.  The leaders of the early church were not "medieval" and they were not "dickweeds;" they were leaders of a fringe group who must have really believed what they said they did, because in the first few centuries AD, being a Christian was a really good way to get yourself killed.

Negoba wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Feel free to ignore this, too: The Case Against Billionaires "So if it were true that the world’s economies rely on their super-rich to do well, as today’s oligarch-inspired, right-wing economics argues, then why are world's "austerity" economies doing so poorly?    It’s because billionaires are not job creators, they are somewhere between symbiotes and parasites. That’s not meant as a personal insult against billionaires, many of whom are decent people. But it’s meant as a statement of common sense. If vast fortunes are being hoarded in the hands of very few people who can’t possibly spend that much money in their lifetime or their kid’s lifetime or even their kid’s, kid’s, kid’s, kid’s, lifetime, then it’s essentially being wasted." http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13698-the-case-against-billionaires No, I won't ignore that, because it's an actual contribution to the discussion, not a disrespectful caricature of people you disagree with. I read the article, and although some of it makes sense, there's a big flaw in the guy's argument; namely, that he's right about billionaires not stimulating the economy by purchasing, but ignores how they do stimulate the economy by creating products.  The rich provide the supply, the middle class provide the demand.  They wouldn't be so "reluctant" to invest in business if the government didn't do everything in their power to make business as unprofitable as possible, which seems to be their policy right now. Still, do rich people really need all their money?  Probably not.  But they have earned it, and it's their right to keep it.  It's not like there are no charitable rich people in this world, either.  Bill Gates, for example, has both created thousands of jobs and donated billions of dollars to charity.  I think the government should focus on building and supporting the middle class instead of tearing down rich people.  And no, you don't need to take money away from rich people to support the middle class. This intrigues me, though: Our most prominent Founding Father warned of the dangers of individuals becoming mind-bogglingly rich. In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..." That doesn't sound like conservatism or liberalism to me.  It sounds like Distributism, an economic system which I'm not sure would actually work, but which I've heard about and am interested in exploring further.   The question is whether concentrating wealth in individuals encourages economic robustness any more than simply encouraging the currencies, goods, and services to circulate naturalistically. I would posit that the hoarding that is what makes billionaires billionaires does nothing to encourage the economy and certainly is worse than a more evened out wealth distribution where the entire population both supplies and consumes.   Having a few hoard the wealth, and then control the flow, is exactly what most decry when governments do it (except government at least have to pretend it's for the good of society).

That's why I find Jefferson's statement and the philosophy of distributism intriguing, because it claims to get the wealth out of the hands of the government (liberalism/socialism) and out of the hands of the privileged few (capitalism) and to get the "means of production" into everyone's hands.

A bachelor's degree is getting rather worthless now. Imagine how devalued it will be when everyone has one. Sure your population might be smarter...might....but:

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: ^^Ignoring Slarti's first post, a blatant strawman, I would like to talk about government-funded higher education.  I've heard it said that "education is emancipatory," and I wonder if higher education might be something that we make available to all Americans.  The GI bill facilitated a huge economic boom in the years following WWII, after all.  I don't think it's a good idea now (we're in so much debt that we can't be taking on any more expenses) but if, theoretically, we did reduce the debt, would it be good or bad for the federal government to take a further role in supporting higher education?  What about state governments?

If you really have to make something available to everybody, start with health care. Though the education thing is too f**ked up here and the bubble will explode. More people will go under for wanting a useless bachelor's degree than for a house. But even more go under for health bills. 

Feel free to ignore this, too:

The Case Against Billionaires

"So if it were true that the world’s economies rely on their super-rich to do well, as today’s oligarch-inspired, right-wing economics argues, then why are world's "austerity" economies doing so poorly?   

It’s because billionaires are not job creators, they are somewhere between symbiotes and parasites. That’s not meant as a personal insult against billionaires, many of whom are decent people. But it’s meant as a statement of common sense. If vast fortunes are being hoarded in the hands of very few people who can’t possibly spend that much money in their lifetime or their kid’s lifetime or even their kid’s, kid’s, kid’s, kid’s, lifetime, then it’s essentially being wasted."

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13698-the-case-against-billionaires

Way to go Silhouette Man

I hope he's a Prog fan.

Edited by Slartibartfast - January 03 2013 at 14:24

Epignosis wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: I believe there are more important issues than abortion, for the simple fact that it HAS been legal for multiple decades now. I believe there are more important issues than Dream Theater, for the simple fact that they HAVE been on Prog Archieves for a long time now.Wow.  So stupid.

You're oversimplifying my position. I am Pro-Life, yet for some reason have been recently rooting for the party that is usually Pro-Choice - why is that? Well, first let's start off with the fact that abortion has been legal for quite a while even though there have been many Pro-Life leaders elected. So one has to ask "are these leaders liars or are they incompetent?" To some degree I believe both. I think the absolutist positions they have taken and the way they have vilified their opponents has increased the resistance rather than caused any progress. And the fact that these leaders have lied about so many other subjects, even challenging scientifically and mathematically provable ideas, has led me to question their sincerity/sanity.

On a sidenote that I feel is related to that last sentence, I'm reading a very interesting book called "Who Is This Man?" that seeks to explore the person of Jesus. The last chapter was about education and how it has its roots in early Christianity. The auther makes some very interesting points about how Jesus added a phrase - "and all your mind" to the commandment to love God with your heart and soul. He points out how many of the preserved texts of pagan scholars owe the fact that they have been preserved to monks from the early church who copied not only Christian scrolls but pagan writings as well. The point is that the Church should not be in the business of scoffing at knowledge and learning, but embracing it, even if that means challenging ideas long held fast by the church - the intellectual muscle grows through resistance just as any other muscles do. Unfortunately, the movement of "the Christian Right" seems to have made it their business to encourage their followers to avoid anything that comes from an opposing viewpoint, and in doing so they have begun to turn their followers into mindless barbarians.