On How Religion Cheapens Life

Actually, complete materialism also justifies any degradation or suffering, as it's all passed off as a means to an end.

I wish you'd back your statements up with reasoned argument.

Since when has materialism (the concept that all is matter, that the transcendental doesn't exist) been passed off as a means to an end?

Does your statist, nihilist, elitism require you to examine slavery and social stratification?

Come on, you can do better than cheap ad homs...
 
AnyOldIron said:
If anything, their actions were motivated by an enhanced sense of positive freedom, as you said, that they knew what was best and worked on the basis that the ends justify the means, that it is morally justified to sacrifice people for the 'greater good' if needed. It wasn't a belief in a lack of innate value that caused this, it was a belief in the value of their own judgement, as you mentioned.
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I believe to INTENTIONALLY sacrifice some when IT CAN PRESUMABLY BE AVOIDED is a moral wrong. And this is not the same as soldiers going off to war when your survival is put at stake by an outside enemy. The difference is deciding to control the destruction of mankind yourself, instead of letting our species meet it's natural population control mechanisms in the greater universe. fearing chaos, loss of control, the existence of others not under one's control, the central planners being ultimately powerful, become ultimately corrupt, because of the corrupting nature of power. And the truth is, they're already corrupt going in.

The phenomenal success, robustness and vast social impact of the internet is a demonstration of the power of non hierarchical networks. We could be like this, but our elitist controllers prefer hierarchy. They control resources and use planned disruption in lifestyle to induce a fear of shortage, and a spike in aggession. they also use media control to explain how these created conflicts can be resolved: which opinion will lead to a "better" world, which products make us beautiful, which activities and products the popular and successful prefer, etc...

Nihilism makes it very hard to justify killing. It states that because meaning and value aren't innate and only sourced from other humans, killing those sources of meaning and value would be like someone cutting off their own air supply.... [/B]
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But how do you know a source of meaning has value?

Isnt' that a rather puerile and arbitrary view?
 
So to clarify, while Anyoldiron doesn't espouse that eliminating religion would bring world peace, he does think it's true. LOL. Way to distance yourself from the herd, sonny-boy!

Ok, once more for the slow kid...

Eliminating religion per se wouldn't bring world peace, but accepting the reality that we only have one existence, and that in that existence we derive meaning only from other people certainly makes war as rational as cutting off one's own air supply.
 
I believe to INTENTIONALLY sacrifice some when IT CAN PRESUMABLY BE AVOIDED is a moral wrong.

So do I. I was refering to Mao, Stalin and Lenin and their use of positive freedom, differentiating it from nihilism.

They control resources and use planned disruption in lifestyle to induce a fear of shortage, and a spike in aggession. they also use media control to explain how these created conflicts can be resolved: which opinion will lead to a "better" world, which products make us beautiful, which activities and products the popular and successful prefer, etc...

Who is they?

But how do you know a source of meaning has value?

Isnt' that a rather puerile and arbitrary view?

All value is dictated by the person doing the judging, that is the core of what I have been saying, that of humans realising that meaning and value can only be derived from other humans.
 
AnyOldIron said:
So to clarify, while Anyoldiron doesn't espouse that eliminating religion would bring world peace, he does think it's true. LOL. Way to distance yourself from the herd, sonny-boy!

Ok, once more for the slow kid...

Eliminating religion per se wouldn't bring world peace, but accepting the reality that we only have one existence, and that in that existence we derive meaning only from other people certainly makes war as rational as cutting off one's own air supply.
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As would a conversion to a one-world religion. If the entire world converted to, oh let's use Buddhism, we'd all by happy-happy too.

This is ridiculous punditry. "If we all thought alike, well then we wouldn't be enemies!" Well, DUH! Of course we wouldn't.

If the entire planet was catholics there would be no... blah, blah. It is meaningless, even more meaningless than life is in a nihilist POV. If the entire planet believed the same way, regardless of what way that was, there would be no war.
 
As would a conversion to a one-world religion. If the entire world converted to, oh let's use Buddhism, we'd all by happy-happy too.

You are completely missing my point Damo.

I am not saying we would be happy if we all believed the same. I am stating that the current popular view of existence, with an afterlife and innate meaning, cheapens the existence we have.

I am refering to a basic shift in the perceptions of existence, in the same way that Newton created a basic shift in perceptions of the universe and Darwin did in perceptions of origins of species, that would increase the value of life by reasoning that to kill another, for example, is akin to cutting off one's own air supply, because you are ending a potential source of meaning.
 
If I may interject here, there is as much diversity of opinion among those who are not religious -- or who do not believe in an afterlife -- as there is among those who are religious. If the situation were reversed and, say, 90% of the world rejected the idea of an afterlife, we would be no more homogeneous than we are today.
 
If the situation were reversed and, say, 90% of the world rejected the idea of an afterlife, we would be no more homogeneous than we are today.

But we would have a situation where the fragility and preciousness of life will be placed firmly in front of people who recognise that this existence is... it.
 
AnyOldIron said:
If the situation were reversed and, say, 90% of the world rejected the idea of an afterlife, we would be no more homogeneous than we are today.

But we would have a situation where the fragility and preciousness of life will be placed firmly in front of people who recognise that this existence is... it.
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Agreed, and that would, I think, be a good thing on balance. The world would be no more monolithic or homogeneous than it is today, however.
 
AnyOldIron said:
As would a conversion to a one-world religion. If the entire world converted to, oh let's use Buddhism, we'd all by happy-happy too.

You are completely missing my point Damo.

I am not saying we would be happy if we all believed the same. I am stating that the current popular view of existence, with an afterlife and innate meaning, cheapens the existence we have.

I am refering to a basic shift in the perceptions of existence, in the same way that Newton created a basic shift in perceptions of the universe and Darwin did in perceptions of origins of species, that would increase the value of life by reasoning that to kill another, for example, is akin to cutting off one's own air supply, because you are ending a potential source of meaning.
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And I am saying that it is equally cheapened and that atrocities have been committed by those who valued human-assigned values to life, and even gave examples above.

Then you later say that if everybody believed "this" way we would have peace. But we wouldn't. Lenin could still exist, while the US still could. Hitler could have existed as well and another group assigned a lesser value by their human-assigned standards.

This is another time where you assume that because people accepted the 'human-assigned' value to life, because this life was the only one they got, they would stop warring on each other only because that is what you, yourself believe. I am pointing out that it is, first and foremost, pointless to argue it as any sort of reality, then that it also ignores human nature to begin with.
 
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