Atheist wrote:

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Scales of Justice wrote:
Scales and Jameela, I find this reasoning about the irrational fascinating.  The power of faith is that you don't need evidence.  If you really believe that faith is all that is necessary, then by God, that is all that is necessary for you.  On the other hand, if you believe that works are required, well too bad, you have a lot of work to do.  God works in mysterious ways.  What is good for the goose, may not be good for the gander.    

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Jameela Lares wrote:

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 ... Atheist, I've often meant to speak to your assertion that there's no evidence for faith or that one believes progressively more preposterous things. In actuality, the parable picture of a tree growing out of a small seed is more like it. One takes a chance--sometimes with fear and trembling--and could not otherwise explain that consistent pattern that Reality itself takes in response to it, and faith grows. The next step is also minor, and so forth, but one builds up a consistent pattern of experience. C. S. Lewis somewhere said that faith is a tiny advancing edge of a--well, I don't remember, maybe the body of knowledge of past successes. Or as he said somewhere else, it may be a coincidence that things happen when I pray, but when I stop praying, the coincidences stop. I cite Lewis because he is articulate and also was an atheist up to age 31. He said that logic finally gave him no choice but to become a Christian, and he was even pretty miserable about it at the time. I'm still coughing and can't come up with much about your other point, except to say that the underlying argument--which is, I think, that there can't be a single truth since there are so many versions of it--doesn't sound particularly sound. I've been thinking that one might as well say that there can't be a right answer to a mathematical problem because people get wrong answers. But when you're dealing even with a human personality, you've got far more variants that you do with math, and by analogy I would think that God would have far more complexity that would seem--from this point of view--to seem pretty paradoxical. I'm not saying that all competing claims about God are somehow true--I don't think that even Hinduism says that--but just that God is hardly a theorem. As I say, this is all pretty off-topic by now. I think that most of us on this thread agree that justice should be done, as in the case of Rosa Parks, though we might often disagree about how that justice should be administered. JL

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Good morning, Jameela.  I hope you are feeling better.  All I can do is assert that there has never been evidence provided for the claim of the supernatural.  The burden of presenting evidence is on the person making the claim.  I can't prove the supernatural doesn't exist.  H*ll, I can't even define the word "supernatural".  People seem to use it when they lack knowledge.

All the claims of evidence has been an equivocation on the word "evidence".  In the search for truth there is no place for "subjective evidence".  The reason is that even the person who "has an experience" must interpret the experience and can never tell the difference from a brain malfunction and a real supernatural event unless the event is experience by others, and thus is objective.

What do you think would happen to an atheist that had schizophrenia?  They can't think the "voices" are from the supernatural, God or demons, because they don't believe in the supernatural.  If others don't hear the voices, then they must conclude they have a mental illness.  (No, I'm not saying theist are suffering from schizophrenia.)

What is it about the Bible (written by nomad, bronze age, goat herders) that leads you to believe in the supernatural?  

I truly admire your expertise with the language. Please don't take offense with my poor and limited writing style.   

Lest we forget wrote:

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Simple question for OtP: What, exactly, do you think should be done to combat the evils of global corporatism? Please list at least five specific actions or policies you would support.

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H.A. Opinion--Governor should pardon Kennard

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060508/OPINION03/605080324/1014/OPINION

Patriot wrote:

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 Lest We Forget, suppose the answer to both questions is "no", will you be able to continue the discussion?  I hate to see "canned" arguments, from left and right, about how now is better than the past and how we are better than any other nation. We have problems. Be creative! 

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If the answer is "no" to both questions - in other words, if Angeline cannot point to a single society in the past or present that even comes close to meeting her criteria of success - then the likelihood increases that a successful society along the lines she envisions may not be possible.  Surely, though, that cannot be the case; surely there has to have existed somewhere, at some time, a society that meets (or almost meets) her criteria.  I am not being sarcastic; surely it is not too much to ask that she point to just ONE real example.  I could probably think of some myself that come close to meeting her criteria, but I don't want to put words into her mouth.

Yes, we do have problems, and much of the twentieth century is a record of "creative" solutions to them - solutions that turned out to be utopian and (in some cases) incredibly destructive.  I can imagine all sorts of "creative" solutions to present problems; whether they are practical and can work in the long term is another question.  Social Security was a "creative" solution to a problem; it is due to go bankrupt.  Medicare was another "creative" solution to a problem; it is headed for insolvency. The "war on poverty" was a "creative" solution to a problem; it arguably created far more problems than it solved.  The French have certainly been "creative" in their attempts at social engineering; they are now enjoying mass demonstrations, a stagnant economy, and huge unemployment.  Housing projects were "creative" solutions to housing problems in the 1960s; most people now consider them eyesores and breeding grounds of further poverty.  "Educational reforms" of the sort we have seen for the past 30 or 40 years have certainly been "creative" (in fact, some new educational theory seems to be created every ten years or so); no one would claim that our students are better educated today than they once were.  Creating the Department of Education was a "creative" solution to the educational crisis; is education today any better than it was before the Department was "created"?

Forgive me, but I've been around long enough to see lots of "creativity" come and go, usually endorsed by very educated people in love with some new theory or some new abstract notion.  I am interested in solutions that actually have a chance of really working; I am not impressed by mere pie-in-the-sky "creativity."  That's why I keep asking for practical, real-world, empirical examples.  Surely it can't be THAT hard to provide some?  

off the plantation wrote:

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For instance, I hold that it's crucial right now to come to various types of international agreements about fair trade, climate change and terrorism. You, however, are innately suspicious of anything that even hints at international accord, mainly because, I think, you're still operating under superannuated ideas of the international polity derived from the USSR's ability to twist its client states' votes in the UN General Assembly (as if the USA didn't do the same). . . . Global corporatism is destroying the planet  on which we live, just as it has throughout its history. . . .  

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I'm not against international accords per se, although I am highly suspicious of the United Nations, simply because most of the governments represented there are not democracies.  The fact that until very recently some of the most odious governments on the planet had seats on the UN Human Rights Commission is a good example of the kind of thing I have in mind.  (See http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/24/global13258.htm)  If we can achieve international accords that benefit everyone on the planet, we should certainly try.

You say that "global corporatism" is destroying the planet; I would argue that industrialization has done enormous damage to the planet, and that industrialization has been practiced in most modern economies.  If you can give us some practical alternatives to industrial civilization (and there may in fact be some), I'd be glad to hear them.  Of course, you want to blame all modern problems on capitalism, so you ignore the fact that communism had a far worse record of pollution than any modern capitalist society.  (See, for example, http://www.fumento.com/commoner.html )

By the way, are you implying that "client states" of the Soviet Union and the "client states" of the U.S. were morally equivalent or equally oppressed?  If so, please explain.

Thanks.

I'll concede that it was industrialization that's done the environmental damage; the USSR, Soviet Block nations and now China had/have egregious records of envirocide, as do most of the capitalist nations of the developed world.

But this doesn't change the fact that the planet's resources, and its ability to absorb pollution w/out destroying the biosphere, are finite; and that the stresses put on those resources and regenerative powers by unrestrained, unregulated industrial development are rapidly reaching crisis level.

Thus, point number one:

1.)International accords on greenhouse gasses and other pollution to rein in the excesses of unregulated industrialization. It is capitalism that now is doing most of the industrialization, but I'll let that slide in the interest of intramural harmony.

2.) Renegotiation of NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and the other so-called "Free Trade" agreements so that all nations and corporations would have to abide by the same, fair, equitable workers' rights and environmental protection regulations. Adherence to these regulations would be required for any nation to participate in global commodities trade and finance capitalism. The voracious serach of capital for the lowest paid and most miserable labor force on the planet--the "race to the bottom"--must be tamed, domesticated somehow. Currently it's like trying to live with a partially domesticated elephant: it can do a helluva lot of work in a short time, but it also goes on a murderous rampage every once in awhile. We want the work, but nobody should have to live with the murderous rampage as just a "cost of progress" or "cost of doing business."  To ask people in developing nations to do that is obscene. and it's not like anybody actually asks them now, either.

These regulations would have to be eased in over a number of years. So if, say, China wants to continue to use slave labor to drive its industrial economy until they can figure out another way to undercut the cost of labor in relatively civilized, humane countries, such as those in the EU, they'd have a certain number of years before sanctions would set in. China would play ball. So would India. There's no other game in town, now: capitalism in one nation won't work anymore than socialism in one nation did.

3.) National markets--especially in agriculture--in marginal, developing nations in the Southern Cone must be protected through international trade agreements. These protections must go hand in hand with a sane land redistribution program designed to, 1.) make it possible for peasant farmers to own enough land to feed themselves and have a little left over to barter for cash in local markets, 2.) introduce those farmers to modern "green" farming techniques, techniques that are suited to the local biosphere and engineered to not destroy soil fertility or cause erosion.

4.)  I'll be back . . .

PS :I don't want to squabble anymore about the Cold War and moral equivalence and all that crap, OK? How many times do I have to say this? I'm not now nor have I ever been a member of the communist party: how's that?  This doesn't mean that I abjure marxian social analysis: think of me as a sort of agnostic Marxist . . .

Lest we forget wrote:

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Angeline, Thanks for the list.  Is there a nation in the world today that satisfies most of these criteria?  I don't disagree with some of the things you'd like to see (I do disagree with others), but it would help me if you could point to a country that successfully practices what you preach.  Alternatively, is there a period in American history in which you think the practices you advocate were successfully implemented?  Thanks.

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LWF:

Exactly what is your point here? That if it ain't been done we can't try it?

If Adam Smith and David Ricardo had spoken to Parliament in like 1800 and recommended public financing of railroads and other modern infrastructure, massive expansion of industrial production, the impressment of displaced agricultural workers and the urban residuum into an industrial proletariat, the creation of a new class of enormously wealthy, powerful parvenus, the digging up of half the Midlands for coal and industrial sites that would become the industrial epicenter of the world . . .  you'd have been one of those crusty country Tories who'd have snickered, "Is there any country in the world where this has been succesfully done? It would help me to know that there is actually a place, Mr. Smith, Mr. Ricardo, that practices what you preach."

The world changes, LWF. History doesn't proceed cautiously, at least not in the industrial age. It leaps ahead frantically, changes directions, hegemons, vocabularies, forms of polity. When the USSR fell and capitalism morphed into a global corporatist system to which "there is no alternative" as Francis Fukuyuma put it, all the rules changed, but, pace FF, history did not end. The social stresses and forces created by now-hegemonic capitalism did not suddenly resolve themselves in the absence of the Second World The public infrastructure and policies that people need now in the new world are different than they were 15 years ago. The fact that some of the things on Angeline's list haven't been tried anywhere is no indication that, in the new world pressed upon us by corporate hegemony, they aren't viable, possible, necessary.

LWF, I almost hesitate to say this, and I really don't mean it pejoratively, but your notion of history is really, genuinely conservative. Not "conservative"  in the faux meaning of the term, such as I applied to opportunistic apologists for the corporatist order like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter, but really truly conservative in that you look to the past for literal paradigms of future social organization. I'd be surprised if you didn't feel something of an affinity for the so-called Agrarians of the mid-20th century, John Crowe Ransome, Robert Penn Warren and those guys who made up the "Fugitives." That was a genuinely conservative group. They rejected modernity altogether, or at least profoundly distrusted it. 

Come on, admit it, LWF you've got a dogeared, much pored-over copy of the Fugitive manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, right beside your workstation, don't you?

Lest we forget wrote:

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OtP, I understand why you don't want to talk about the actual record of past socialistic schemes (it ain't pretty), so I'll won't press you on that. 

Lest,

And I'll return the compliment and won't press you to talk about the actual record of past capitalistic schemes (it ain't pretty).

Actually, I wish you'd get over this somewhat puerile notion that capitalism is anything other than an historical experiment too. It has no more claim to being natural, self-evidently true, normal, than did Aztec society, or Easter Island, or Greenland. 

All forms of human social and economic organization are historically contigent, based in power relations, geography and meterological events and cultural works that can, and will, eventually shift.

When a western reporter in the 40's asked Chou En Lai, Mao's general on the Long March, what he thought of the French Revolution (1789), the reply was edifying: "It's too soon to tell."

off the plantation wrote:

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 Lest, And I'll return the compliment and won't press you to talk about the actual record of past capitalistic schemes (it ain't pretty).

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I'll be glad to talk about the history of capitalism.  I know it isn't pretty.  It just isn't as ugly as most of the alternatives have been.

Liberal (in the original sense of the term), capitalist democracies have shown the capacity to evolve and improve and have usually not engaged in the deliberate slaughter of millions of people.  This has not been true of the sorts of societies founded by visionaries such as Chou En Lai.  By the way, it probably didn't take lots of Chinese many years to figure out whether it was too soon to tell if the Cultural Revolution had been a good thing. 

Capitalism evolves; communism collapses.

(I'll never forget talking with a student in the early 80s who still shares much of your current thinking.  At that time he was trying to justify the existence of the Berlin Wall on the grounds that the dirty West German capitalists had been luring all the most talented East Germans to emigrate and that something needed to be done to stop the brain drain.)

Oops - sorry; I forgot that you don't want to talk about communism (even though it's a perfect example of what happens when people let utopian schemes guide their thinking instead of focusing on what can actually be accomplished).

So, as I said before: why don't you just get back to outlining practical proposals?  Some of your earlier ones sounded intriguing.

I just noticed the following paragraph from the link I cited above.  It so eloquently explains the point I have been trying to make on this thread that I thought I'd pass it along:

Novak observes that the socialist speaks of possibilities while the capitalist speaks of realities. Socialism thus has appeal only in the abstract, as an ideal. However, Novak wants capitalism and socialism to be judged on their performance in the real world. Current arguments often have us contrasting capitalism’s realities with socialism’s ideals. Socialism is nearly always justified in terms of its vision. Novak’s method is to apply practical wisdom to examine what really happens in this world. Novak gives socialists credit for pure idealism–however unworkable their theory becomes in practice. Socialists receive rhetorical points by comparing their utopian vision with the flawed realities of existing capitalist societies; however, when each system is measured by its real-world performance, capitalism proves to be more productive of goods, services, and personal liberation. An ideal that cannot be put into practice is false and morally unacceptable.

off the plantation wrote:

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... Actually, I wish you'd get over this somewhat puerile notion that capitalism is anything other than an historical experiment too. It has no more claim to being natural, self-evidently true, normal, than did Aztec society, or Easter Island, or Greenland.  ...

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Angeline wrote:

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Wow - you guys make me proud to be at USM, for now anyway   Excellent discussion - far more eloquent (and even civil) than I usually manage. 

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Patriot wrote:

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off the plantation wrote: ... Actually, I wish you'd get over this somewhat puerile notion that capitalism is anything other than an historical experiment too. It has no more claim to being natural, self-evidently true, normal, than did Aztec society, or Easter Island, or Greenland.  ... Excellently point, Off the Plantation, it appears "Lest We Forget" is one of those who considers Capitalism to be the "God-given, Christian system" put on earth to oppose that "Atheistic, Communism System".  All discussions are repeats of canned apologetic discourse to reach the conclusion, "We are the best. Name a better system.  I have all my arguments ready for any you name."  

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Sorry, this dog won't hunt.  For one thing, I'm very skeptical about religion, so I have no theological commitment to capitalism.  In addition, its precisely BECAUSE I think the historical record of capitalism is so much superior to previous systems that I am reluctant to see it attacked unless a better practical alternative that has really worked somewhere can be pointed to.  I see the western free-market system as a splendid improvement over just about every other system that has ever been tried.  (It certainly beats having your heart ripped out at the top of a Mexican pyramid.)  I therefore think the western free-market system is worth defending and improving.  You guys (or gals) are the ones who attack it without pointing to anything that has ever worked better. 

Ironically, then, it is you who seem to have much in common with the theologically inclined.  You assume that the system that presently exists is deeply flawed (I would agree that it is flawed in many respects); you assume that there has to be something infinitely better (I would agree that it is possible that something marginally better might be devised); when I ask you to point to practical, real-world evidence of anything infinitely better, you tell me to have faith.  And when I point to the historical record of where utopian thinking has sometimes led in the past, you tell me that the past isn't relevant.  (I hear the same thing all the time from religious folk who don't like to discuss the often unattractive real-world record of religion.  Oh: I guess we're back to the improvised heart surgery, not to mention burnings-at-the-stake and some of the other pleasantries that have sometimes followed from THAT kind of utopian thought.)