A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy. *** If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value? *** If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic? *** Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
Funny, the government seems to think it's their job to mandate everyone having health insurance. That's pretty big. Are you for or against that?
It seems to me that casting this issue - government benefits and so on being awarded to homosexual couples who 'marry' on the basis that they are no different than heterosexual couples - in the light of 'government interference' is disingenuous at best. That's not what it's about, never was.
Never fails to amaze me how liberals take first one side, then the other, depending entirely what they need today to get what they want. Whatever tool it takes to disrupt the culture, to twist change into a never-ending desire for absolute novelty, to reduce everything and everyone to a slave, a cipher or a nobody. All gray.
Except for the people driving this. For them, and I presume Martin, the rules and 'standards' they are attempting to push never quite apply to them. Under normal circumstances, it would be self-destructive behavior, until we remember that the planners only intend to destroy other selves.
I think the government should not be in the business of defining marriage at all. All partnerships should be legally defined only for tax purposes, and should be external to personal flat taxes.
Marriage should be a commitment exercised performed under the ethical system a person chooses; subsequent to a marriage (or living together, or whatever arrangement two people choose) a legal partnership could be formed which is not marriage, but which contains the rights of partnership.
LGBT's don't want legal partnership. They reject it consistently. Just as they reject the permission to participate in the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Marriage is and has been Holy Matrimony, where a new family is formed by the promissory compact made with a third party (God). It was compromised by no-fault divorce laws made by the state in the 1970's. That was the first weakening of marriage, where the state substituted itself as the third party. From there, culture including media ridiculed marriage (and white males) and marriage devolved to the point where it is culturally meaningless, with many couples living together and breeding without any legal or moral union binding them, and even children being created by multitudes of single mothers and random men. The destruction of marriage is almost complete, even without the LGBT assault.
LGBT's could fight for equal rights under contractual partnership; but they reject that.
They want to conquer and destroy the ethical/moral institution which is currently called marriage, because the ethics and morals surrounding marriage are onerous to them. By allowing LGBT's to marry, the institution of marriage is rendered meaningless, and it can be opened up to any combination of marriage membership which is loud and obnoxious enough to force it, because it no longer has any ethical or moral meaning.
LGBT marriage will be the precedent that removes moral consideration in favor of "equality", which is the rallying cry of Leftism.
When equality replaces moral considerations in society, Social Justice will have leveled everyone - except the Social Justice administrators (the Left) to the equality of the herd.
>Funny, the government seems to think it's their job to mandate everyone having health insurance.
I have no idea how to solve the healthcare issue. The only political issues I have a strong opinion about are:
The State should not be able to tell people not to do drugs in the privacy of their own homes.
The State should not make it illegal to burn the national flag.
The State should not have to approve someone's chosen life partner before they sign a contractual agreement.
Since I'm against the State mucking around with people's private lives, then I guess that makes me a conservative, no?
>Never fails to amaze me how liberals take first one side
"The Other is this....The Other is that..."
You realize of course that this makes the two party oligarchy very happy. They love to see you hate the other party, and in fact their continued existence depends on it. Every few years they swap power based on this attitude, and it keeps both of them in power. You remember the Emperor in Return of the Jedi? Laughing and saying, "Good, good! Let the hate FLOW through you!"
The winner-take-all voting system is a pile of poop, and I won't participate in American politics until it comes to an end and this silly "team sports" style nonsense stops.
>I think the government should not be in the business of defining marriage at all. All partnerships should be legally defined only for tax purposes, and should be external to personal flat taxes.
Yes! Thank you. That is exactly the solution, I think. The government should offer contract law, and that should be between two consenting adults. Shouldn't matter what kind of adult. If I want my best friend to be my next of kin and have visitation rights, then so be it.
>LGBT's don't want legal partnership.
It's impossible to make broad, sweeping statements like that. If we recognized two separate institutions, contract law via the government and holy matrimony via churches, and the government allowed contract law to apply between any two consenting adults, I don't think you'd have a problem at all. I think the word "marriage" is where everyone gets hung up.
@Stan: the more I read this, the more I recall C. S. Lewis having warned us of it all back in 1943 with his book "The Abolition of Man". I wonder if he knew how soon this sort of thing would come to a head?
Steven, I wonder if his reference to "chestless men" (i.e. gutless - I think) means that his age was as infested as our own age is. The turn of the century was a high time for Progressive proto-totalitarians. In fact, they loved the Russian revolution, and they Potemkined western journalism much in the same manner as the current MSM doesn't report on anything which reflects badly on the Left. They even had a eugenics program endorsed by the Supreme Court.
Some folks never learn anything from history, probably because they just know that they are so unique and so very special that history has never been blessed with someone of their eliteness... so why care about what happened back then? Ideology always trumps knowledge, because in the AtheoLeftist worldview knowledge doesn't exist if it doesn't support the worldview. I.e., Rationalization as a worldview: if a premise doesn't fit the conclusion, then the premise is false (never the conclusion).
@Stan: I believe what he meant by 'chests' was objective morals. The head (intellect) and the belly (appetite) are ruled by the Chest.
Lewis wrote “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."
We permit people to turn everything into a subjective morass ruled by the guy with the biggest gun, and are shocked that you cannot trust anyone anymore... to do anything that is not calculated to bring him and his chosen associates more power.
It's funny, the more 'civilized' and progressive they paint themselves, the more they seem determined to drive man back to the law of the jungle. With them as the top predator.
Yes, I guess I forgot the metaphor at play there. It's been a while since I read that. But there is no mistaking the false morality of the new proto-totalitarians: it is well defined by Alinsky. Don't forget that Obama taught Alinsky tactics during his time in Chicago. We now have Alinsky in charge of the executive branch of the USA. That coupled with a maleducated populace that has been indoctrinated in the false morality of the left, a population which is in thrall to Alinsky and paganism, and what you get is what we have now.
Alinsky focused on always "cloaking" the actual objctives in faux morality. That's what is going on with gun control - eliminate semi-auto guns by invoking the image of dead children, cloaking the fact that that rational, reasonable people do not kill children with their semi-automatic weapons, only insane people do that, and only a very, very few of them.
The Left uses children and any crisis to emotionally drive further toward their objectives. They are shameless, because shame requires the ability to fail one's morality; the Left believes that they ARE morality, which is defined for, and applicable to, the Other. Just watch as they nag and nanny the behaviors of the Other, while ignoring their own intrusions onto personal freedom.
Example: They screamed "free speech" until they controlled the universities; then they shut off access to alternative ideas. The contradiction is transparent to them, because the tactics don't matter in the pursuit of total control.
I looked up a word hanging about in my head - 'Charientocracy' - and found this question out on the web:
"Lewis foresaw a society where the cultural elite, via the educational system, served as gatekeepers to the ruling or Managerial Class. To gain admittance, you must appreciate the same literature/art and echo the same evaluation of it. Those who expressed a differing opinion did not advance. Has this society materialized?"
I'm not sure. In some ways I think a case for it could be made, but it's not as clear to me as perhaps it ought to be. A lot of 'highbrow' art escapes me and escapes me still - and I am not the dullest tool in the shed.
I think I fail the test for 'fitness' in the Managerial Class less because I am uncultured than because I do not lust for the Inner Ring.
11 comments:
But...that's exactly why I champion the rights of homosexuals to marry.
The government should not be interfering in people's private lives and choices.
It's pro-big government to oppose same sex marriage.
Funny, the government seems to think it's their job to mandate everyone having health insurance. That's pretty big. Are you for or against that?
It seems to me that casting this issue - government benefits and so on being awarded to homosexual couples who 'marry' on the basis that they are no different than heterosexual couples - in the light of 'government interference' is disingenuous at best. That's not what it's about, never was.
Never fails to amaze me how liberals take first one side, then the other, depending entirely what they need today to get what they want. Whatever tool it takes to disrupt the culture, to twist change into a never-ending desire for absolute novelty, to reduce everything and everyone to a slave, a cipher or a nobody. All gray.
Except for the people driving this. For them, and I presume Martin, the rules and 'standards' they are attempting to push never quite apply to them. Under normal circumstances, it would be self-destructive behavior, until we remember that the planners only intend to destroy other selves.
I think the government should not be in the business of defining marriage at all. All partnerships should be legally defined only for tax purposes, and should be external to personal flat taxes.
Marriage should be a commitment exercised performed under the ethical system a person chooses; subsequent to a marriage (or living together, or whatever arrangement two people choose) a legal partnership could be formed which is not marriage, but which contains the rights of partnership.
LGBT's don't want legal partnership. They reject it consistently. Just as they reject the permission to participate in the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Marriage is and has been Holy Matrimony, where a new family is formed by the promissory compact made with a third party (God). It was compromised by no-fault divorce laws made by the state in the 1970's. That was the first weakening of marriage, where the state substituted itself as the third party. From there, culture including media ridiculed marriage (and white males) and marriage devolved to the point where it is culturally meaningless, with many couples living together and breeding without any legal or moral union binding them, and even children being created by multitudes of single mothers and random men. The destruction of marriage is almost complete, even without the LGBT assault.
LGBT's could fight for equal rights under contractual partnership; but they reject that.
They want to conquer and destroy the ethical/moral institution which is currently called marriage, because the ethics and morals surrounding marriage are onerous to them. By allowing LGBT's to marry, the institution of marriage is rendered meaningless, and it can be opened up to any combination of marriage membership which is loud and obnoxious enough to force it, because it no longer has any ethical or moral meaning.
LGBT marriage will be the precedent that removes moral consideration in favor of "equality", which is the rallying cry of Leftism.
When equality replaces moral considerations in society, Social Justice will have leveled everyone - except the Social Justice administrators (the Left) to the equality of the herd.
Steven Satak,
>Funny, the government seems to think it's their job to mandate everyone having health insurance.
I have no idea how to solve the healthcare issue. The only political issues I have a strong opinion about are:
The State should not be able to tell people not to do drugs in the privacy of their own homes.
The State should not make it illegal to burn the national flag.
The State should not have to approve someone's chosen life partner before they sign a contractual agreement.
Since I'm against the State mucking around with people's private lives, then I guess that makes me a conservative, no?
>Never fails to amaze me how liberals take first one side
"The Other is this....The Other is that..."
You realize of course that this makes the two party oligarchy very happy. They love to see you hate the other party, and in fact their continued existence depends on it. Every few years they swap power based on this attitude, and it keeps both of them in power. You remember the Emperor in Return of the Jedi? Laughing and saying, "Good, good! Let the hate FLOW through you!"
The winner-take-all voting system is a pile of poop, and I won't participate in American politics until it comes to an end and this silly "team sports" style nonsense stops.
Stan,
>I think the government should not be in the business of defining marriage at all. All partnerships should be legally defined only for tax purposes, and should be external to personal flat taxes.
Yes! Thank you. That is exactly the solution, I think. The government should offer contract law, and that should be between two consenting adults. Shouldn't matter what kind of adult. If I want my best friend to be my next of kin and have visitation rights, then so be it.
>LGBT's don't want legal partnership.
It's impossible to make broad, sweeping statements like that. If we recognized two separate institutions, contract law via the government and holy matrimony via churches, and the government allowed contract law to apply between any two consenting adults, I don't think you'd have a problem at all. I think the word "marriage" is where everyone gets hung up.
@Stan: the more I read this, the more I recall C. S. Lewis having warned us of it all back in 1943 with his book "The Abolition of Man". I wonder if he knew how soon this sort of thing would come to a head?
Martin said,
">LGBT's don't want legal partnership.
It's impossible to make broad, sweeping statements like that."
Certainly the loud, celebrity LGBT types who dominate the conversation and the homosexual landscape have consistently rejected legal partnerships.
But yes, the gov't should get out of the "marriage/matrimonial legitimization" business.
Steven,
I wonder if his reference to "chestless men" (i.e. gutless - I think) means that his age was as infested as our own age is. The turn of the century was a high time for Progressive proto-totalitarians. In fact, they loved the Russian revolution, and they Potemkined western journalism much in the same manner as the current MSM doesn't report on anything which reflects badly on the Left. They even had a eugenics program endorsed by the Supreme Court.
Some folks never learn anything from history, probably because they just know that they are so unique and so very special that history has never been blessed with someone of their eliteness... so why care about what happened back then? Ideology always trumps knowledge, because in the AtheoLeftist worldview knowledge doesn't exist if it doesn't support the worldview. I.e., Rationalization as a worldview: if a premise doesn't fit the conclusion, then the premise is false (never the conclusion).
@Stan: I believe what he meant by 'chests' was objective morals. The head (intellect) and the belly (appetite) are ruled by the Chest.
Lewis wrote “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."
We permit people to turn everything into a subjective morass ruled by the guy with the biggest gun, and are shocked that you cannot trust anyone anymore... to do anything that is not calculated to bring him and his chosen associates more power.
It's funny, the more 'civilized' and progressive they paint themselves, the more they seem determined to drive man back to the law of the jungle. With them as the top predator.
Yes, I guess I forgot the metaphor at play there. It's been a while since I read that. But there is no mistaking the false morality of the new proto-totalitarians: it is well defined by Alinsky. Don't forget that Obama taught Alinsky tactics during his time in Chicago. We now have Alinsky in charge of the executive branch of the USA. That coupled with a maleducated populace that has been indoctrinated in the false morality of the left, a population which is in thrall to Alinsky and paganism, and what you get is what we have now.
Alinsky focused on always "cloaking" the actual objctives in faux morality. That's what is going on with gun control - eliminate semi-auto guns by invoking the image of dead children, cloaking the fact that that rational, reasonable people do not kill children with their semi-automatic weapons, only insane people do that, and only a very, very few of them.
The Left uses children and any crisis to emotionally drive further toward their objectives. They are shameless, because shame requires the ability to fail one's morality; the Left believes that they ARE morality, which is defined for, and applicable to, the Other. Just watch as they nag and nanny the behaviors of the Other, while ignoring their own intrusions onto personal freedom.
Example: They screamed "free speech" until they controlled the universities; then they shut off access to alternative ideas. The contradiction is transparent to them, because the tactics don't matter in the pursuit of total control.
I looked up a word hanging about in my head - 'Charientocracy' - and found this question out on the web:
"Lewis foresaw a society where the cultural elite, via the educational system, served as gatekeepers to the ruling or Managerial Class. To gain admittance, you must appreciate the same literature/art and echo the same evaluation of it. Those who expressed a differing opinion did not advance. Has this society materialized?"
I'm not sure. In some ways I think a case for it could be made, but it's not as clear to me as perhaps it ought to be. A lot of 'highbrow' art escapes me and escapes me still - and I am not the dullest tool in the shed.
I think I fail the test for 'fitness' in the Managerial Class less because I am uncultured than because I do not lust for the Inner Ring.
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