Posted on 08/09/2002 10:52:13 PM PDT by jennyp
In fact, it was the growth of secularism into the openings left by sectarian infighting that forced the Church to concede capitalism (particularly to permit the lending of money at interest, which is an obvious prerequisite for any developed market economy), decency (in the form of toleration), and rule of law (as opposed to "benefit of clergy" special privlege).
Game, set, match.
Always, always, always. Always.
Didn't take you long to descend to the "Neener Neener Neener" level (or, more accurately, it didn't take you long to make it obvious that you have been arguing on that level).
By the way, I remember debating you on a different thread. You never quite got around to explaining your own moral system, did you?
Skeptics love to shoot spitballs and smugly congratulate themselves at having "debunked" whatever their target was. It is, however much more difficult to build and defend your own ethical system. Care to try?
Oh, you have tossed up such a wiffle ball that I really should refrain, but this time I simply cannot resist:
And the multitudes of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and none of them claimed that anything belonging to them was their own, but all things were common property to them.
--Acts 4:32
Well, then, it's intellectual dishonesty rather than mere incompetence to bring up the same points I shot down before.
Agreed.
However, the statement "religion overlayed on a society always ends in might-makes-right," is equally valid.
In fact, these are subsets of "government overlayed ..." etc.
Might-makes-right is such a large component of human nature, that no other outcome is possible.
Am I advocating no government? Nope.
I'm simply observing what everyone learned in kindergarten -- the big kids make the rules...
Let me get this straight. You say something puerile like "game, set, match" and then you accuse me of, what do you call it, "neener, neener, neener"?
On your second post from scripture; there's all kinds of contradictory statements in scripture. That's why the Catholic Church has the Magisterium. But back to you.
Now I remember you. When I was debating with "Physicist" you dropped in to fart out some kind of non-argument and then bailed. Right after I asked you to establish and defend your own moral standards for the governance of a society. Apparently you couldn't hang with that--especially when big words like "determinism" got thrown around.
If you want to argue with me--you state YOUR case. You know mine. Otherwise we're done, chief.
The "No True Scotsman..." Fallacy, used by yet another. That's two days in a row.
The standard is liberty. Its want is responsible for more human caused misery than all other causes combined.
For the record, law preceded Christianity, as did charity, and rudimentary science and mathematics.
Before you go off on some BS rant about license as liberty, I'll state the liberty is synonymous with responsibility.
What ever does this have to do with the fact that I have posted a counterexample, and others have posted other counterexamples, to your claim that communism is necessarily atheistic? (There is also the other problem that, even if your claim were true, "all A are B" does not imply "all B are A".)
Care to 'fess up that you goofed on this point?
That's just a start. Columbus' Legacy of Genocide .
The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands] and the mainland" of America, a position he held until 1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa?ola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely 22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.By the way, the Spanish weren't athiests.Worst of all, these data apply only to the Caribbean Basin; the process of genocide in the Americas was only just beginning at the point such statistics become operant, not ending, as they did upon the fall of the Third Reich. All told, it is probable that more than one hundred million native people were "eliminated" in the course of Europe's ongoing "civilization" of the Western Hemisphere.
What? You mean the fact that all Swedes are blondes doesn't mean that all blondes are Swedish? Get outta here...
:^)
Here is an example of the fallacy of compilation.
A good illustration of this fallacy is provided by a Mark Russell bit from the mid-80s when a bunch of LaRouchies managed to get themselves on the Democratic state ticket in Illinois (IIRC): "They say, 'We are for a strong defense'. OK, nothing wrong with that. But then... they segue into the Twilight Zone... 'We are for a strong defense, the construction of a national tinfoil shield, and the mandatory testing of goldfish for herpes.'"
By your reasoning, anyone who rejects the notion of stretching tinfoil over the continental United States is an opponent of strong national defense.
It is difficult for me to attribute the entirety of the barbarity of communism with atheism. Little of their motivation was associated with it. Atheism was a device, not a goal, nor even a requirement.
You belittle your valid points when throw the Christian Nazis in with the Communists/atheists. They were neither. To imply otherwise is to invite skepticism with regard to other statements. Stick with facts, they work better.
True, of course, but watch out for the oldest political scam in the book -- the lumping together of genuine responsibility (e.g. keeping one's given word, supporting yourself and family honestly) and the personal preferences of the people in power (e.g. swearing fealty to the ruler's beliefs, supporting the ruler in the style to which he hopes to remain accustomed).
As I have already noted, Msg#69 uses the compilation fallacy in this manner.
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