If you remember your Bible, the Hebrews in question were not exterminated. — Olivier5

No one said they were. But if you remember your Bible many thousands died. This is what Marx was talking about. And, like Engels, he expected many to be killed as a result of the revolution the two of them were promoting.

It is an unfortunate polemical statement. It's very different from Hitler's "scientific racism". — Olivier5

Unfortunate or not, it was made, it was racist, and advocated the physical "extirpation of entire nations". It's the same ideology. The only difference is that Marx and Engels had no means of implementing their ideology whereas Hitler did. And before him, Lenin and Stalin.

Besides, Hitler didn't exterminate the Slavs either. In fact, he changed his policy from extermination to Aryanization.

you forget — Apollodorus

I didn't. Stop being so confrontational. Just because I didn't mention the moon's of Jupiter either doesn't mean I FORGOT them.

The concentration camp is a very old idea. Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented it. Remember the US deportation of the Navajo in 1864 (the Long Walk of the Navajo). There are other examples throughout history.

he expected many to be killed as a result of the revolution the two of them were promoting. — Apollodorus

Why yes. So your point is?

It's the same ideology. The only difference is that Marx and Engels had no means of implementing their ideology whereas Hitler did. — Apollodorus

Marx achieved far more than Hitler. You can say what you want of Stalin but the USSR was a country of peasants in 1917, and it won the space race less than 50 years later, while also winning the second world war in the meantime... So communism did work for them, in a way that Nazism did not.

Indeed. The best you can do is ally yourself politically, maritally or otherwise with some who do share enough of your values, in the hope of promoting them. — Olivier5

Yes, I agree. Not only for the general peace and well-being of the parties involved, but also so that you can join forces with those who have the same aim.

Unfortunately when you ally yourself in a marriage, values are important, but so are a lot of other things, too many to mention here, and some of them are unattainable in combination with some others, or it's just fate that does not align you with an ally who is not all lies, so I am saying I've an old man, and still single, because I was wise enough (or chicken enough) in my twenties to fear the horrible burden of being trapped-- ether for me, or for my spouse.

I more and more realize that a good marriage is not so much sex and love and giving and taking, but more like looking out for each other, watching each other's backs. This necessitates the compatibility along with the differences that complement each other. My present gf and I have totally different attributes. She's sociable, I am more introspective. She charms people and gets along with everyone, even when not in friendly terms -- for instance, when she needs to return a merchandize, or get a refund for a trip -- and she gets her will done, while I fix things around the house easily, and know the difference between postmodernism and logical positivism. On top of this, I constantly crack jokes she does not like, and she still smiles and closes one eye to them, while she speaks trivial stuff and I listen intently and make big eyes at what she says, and agree with her all the time. For the two of us it's a small price to pay for the benefits we give and take, and we mutually revel in the joy of the exchange.

Kudos for the historical facts of you last post. Agreed. But disagree that religion can only change people from good to bad (e.g., it’s not like Christian slave owners were good people prior to their discovery or indoctrination into JC’s teachings), or that atheism cannot produce bad consequences that would not occur where spiritual beliefs to be present:

I reckon that those who commit suicide after perpetrating mass shootings generally (?) do not believe in an afterlife. And, if no afterlife, why should so doing be egregious to the person in question? I likewise reckon that a good sum of the greed-is-good gurus among the economic elite also lack belief in an afterlife of any sort (despite their public pronouncements) and hold the same roundabout motives for prioritizing maximum financial profit for themselves in this life over the global community’s wellbeing (as in the repercussions upon future generations of the global warming and the planets 6th mass extinction currently unfolding, in significant part due to a pyramid-scheme global economy founded on the axioms of unlimited resources and infinite expansion). In cases such as these, lack of spirituality becomes detrimental to the actions of the individual relative to the community at large. On a different note, I’ve come across self-proclaimed “formerly bad” persons who’ve become good on grounds of “having found Jesus”. And they were indeed amiable to myself and the community for the time period I knew them—this despite my not having been spiritual at the time and our debates into these matters.

IMO, it's neither religion nor lack of religion that is the culprit. People can use either perspective to give more power to themselves in actualizing the goals which they seek. As two examples of the latter, either that of increased personal autocracy and control over all other or, else, that of an equality (siblinghood, or however else one may term it) of intrinsic worth between themselves and all who surround. One can use the same religion (such as Christianity) for either end, just as one can use irreligious physical facts (such as those regarding biological evolution) in the same ways.

she gets her will done, while I fix things around the house easily, and know the difference between postmodernism and logical positivism. On top of this, I constantly crack jokes she does not like, and she still smiles and closes one eye to them, while she speaks trivial stuff and I listen intently and make big eyes at what she says, and agree with her all the time. For the two of us it's a small price to pay for the benefits we give and take, and we mutually revel in the joy of the exchange. — god must be atheist

Complementarity of skills is a good thing in a couple. But there need to be some common ground on values I believe.

You must know the saying: Marriage is like a besieged city: those who are out want to get in, and those who are in want to get out....

A thorough survey of the philosophy of ethics reveals a stark and disturbing truth viz. no existent moral theory that's made a clean break from theism manages to draw a clear boundary between that which is moral (good, mandatory) and immoral (bad, prohibited). I — TheMadFool

Huh. Plato's ethics? Virtue Ethics? Stoicism? Confucianism? Buddhism?

If you hold the "Big Daddy" view of God, your moral point of view is inherently childish, selfish and fearful--what won't you do to avoid a good spanking? What would you do if there was no spanker, or if spanking took a holiday, so to speak?

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/10/04/

I would place chattel slavery on a par with the Holocaust in terms of the atrocities committed, so I concede the point that monotheists can do pretty horrible things. Still, there is something particularly sinister in the mass killing of folks in an industrial ethnic-cleansing mode, for no other reason than
pseudoscientific hatred.

To associate the Nazis with the Catholic Church as a whole is simplistic and even a blatant denial of history. The CC was persecuted by the Nazis much more and offered more resistance to Nazism than Protestant churches.

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg

Yeah, religion...or ideology.

Marx achieved far more than Hitler. You can say what you want of Stalin but the USSR was a country of peasants in 1917, and it won the space race less than 50 years later, while also winning the second world war in the meantime... So communism did work for them, in a way that Nazism did not. — Olivier5

You're just proving my point really. IMO it's better to be a "peasant" than to be dead. So we'll have to disagree on that one.

Besides, during the forty years of wilderness Marx was talking about, many Hebrews died, some killed by other Hebrews, others killed by God’s plagues, etc.

Exodus 32:

"26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."

God killed many more of them for disobedience through plagues, etc.

"35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made …"

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJV

This is what Marx and Engels were talking about: the reactionaries or counterrevolutionaries will be killed.

Engels’ definition of revolution was “the most authoritarian thing that exists; it is the act, whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon; and the victorious party must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries” - Engels, F., “On Authority”, 1874, MEW, Band. 18, s. 308.

And he advocated the “extirpation of entire reactionary nations” which you seem to agree with:

“The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too. Is a step forward” (238).

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 227 – 238.

It wasn't a real question. It is not possible for the attitudes of Reason to qualify as arbitrary given that arbitrary means 'without reason'. Her attitudes are the exact opposite of arbitrary. To insist they are arbitrary is obviously question begging.

Your own view is easily refuted. 'The good', whatever that may be, is not a mind on your view else your view is just my view differently expressed. But that is sufficient to sink it, for if 'the good' is not a mind how the hell does it issue imperatives and value things?

Also, even if it could - and it can't- how, exactly, would its imperatives not be arbitrary given you are so insistent that if it was a mind they would be?? Hard to fathom why what emanates from a platonic form would not be arbitrary whereas what emanates from a mind is. And no good you insisting that what emanates from the good can't possibly be arbitrary given this is the good we are talking about, for that was my point in respect of Reason. Perhaps you will accept it now that you see you must make the same point about your own view

It wasn't a real question. — Bartricks

Oh! My bad for replying, then.

Yes, a subtler mind would have understood the dialectic.

You asked me to explain why God's prescriptions and values would not be arbitrary.

I did that. God is Reason and Reason's prescriptions and values are the opposite of arbitrary for arbitrary means without reason.

You then repeated your criticism as if the problem was that I hadn't understood it.

I then asked you how exactly anything Reason does can be arbitrary, given what arbitrary means.

You then asked me to define Reason (Reason is the source of all reasons). And then you told me your own view. A view that, as well as being bonkers, would be subject to the same arbitrariness charge you levied at mine. I asked you to explain how prescriptions that emanate from a platonic form are less arbitrary than those that emanate from a mind. You haven't answered yet

So given our history of exchanges on this thread where you've asked bogus questions of me, how do I now know that your latest statements are in fact real and not bogus?

Click ignore dude, you’re wasting your time trying to discuss anything with Bartricks. Check his post history, he isn’t capable of having a discussion please ignore him so he will go away.

Thanks. I'll confess to me having some fun for the time being. :blush: But, yea, you're right.

:up:

Okay. We differ on well-documented facts so there's nothing more to discuss. In the main you've conceded my point that it is, in fact, imaginable for mass murder of millions to have happened in "traditional JCI contexts", which suffices for me.

In the context of my dispute with Olivier5, my point is that "traditional JCI contexts" have not precluded or prevented wholesale slaughter, ethnic cleansing, slavery or genocide by mobilized "believers" and their kings, emperors & führers. I'm not claiming that religion causes mass atrocities, etc, though, throughout history the world over, religious authorities have excused – rationalized – politically-driven mass murders, and still do. Killing "in the name of God" (or "destiny") is, IMO, a greater evil than killing in the name of the State alone (e.g. USSR, PRC, Khmer Rouge, NK) because in the latter case the killers know (and accept via indoctrination) that they sacrifice their guilt-less consciences to "the glory and defense" of the State, in contrast to those "doing God's will" and who thereby "believe" they are absolved of all guilt ("sin") for mass murdering those demonized (dehumanized) as "enemies of God's people" ("infidels").

Lol, I know it can be entertaining. Guilty of it myself at times. It’s just going to take forever for him to go away if each of us play with him. :lol:

Nothing for me to argue against here.

:grin:

Just answer the question.

Yeah, religion...or ideology. — Janus

The problem is some seem to imagine that ideology is somehow "better" than religion. Which of course isn't the case. There are lots of ideologies that are just as bad if not worse than religion. Any system that is too dogmatic tends to lead to more problems than it solves.

I can't think of anything that is ideology free, can you?

I can't think of anything that is ideology free, can you? — Tom Storm

Not really. That's what I'm saying. Even scientific disciplines may develop their own ideologies and the same applies to all systems of thought. Obviously, even more so to political systems. But some seem to think that just because their system isn't religious, this somehow makes it automatically "better". In reality, a lot of human knowledge is based on belief, religious or otherwise.

Killing "in the name of God" (or "destiny") is, IMO, a greater evil than killing in the name of the State alone (e.g. USSR, PRC, Khmer Rouge, NK) because in the latter case the killers know (and accept via indoctrination) that they sacrifice their guilt-less consciences to "the glory and defense" of the State, in contrast to those "doing God's will" and who thereby "believe" they are absolved of all guilt ("sin") — 180 Proof

Any evidence for that or is it just personal opinion?

Complementarity of skills is a good thing in a couple. But there need to be some common ground on values I believe. — Olivier5

Comprehension, on the other hand, and non-superficial reading skills, are very good to have on a philosophy website. What you said here I covered in the first one or two sentences in the same post that you are critiquing. I wish, I wish, I wish people would take themselves seriously. I've given up all hope to be myself taken seriously by others, but to besmirch their own reputation is a sad story to see.

You are not getting it. Which is worrying, given the point is so simple.

The claim that morality requires God (which is demonstrably true) is not equivalent to the claim that belief in God is necessary for moral behaviour. Indeed, they are so obviously not equivalent that I think anyone who regularly conflates them is a total berk. — Bartricks

I know, right. And sometimes some people act as if others are stating such things even though they haven't...

Jeesh.

Some folk, huh?

I can't think of anything that is ideology free, can you? — Tom Storm

Trees, mice, birds, inanimate objects, many directly perceptible things, celestial bodies, causality...

Off the top of my head.

Trees, mice, birds, inanimate objects, many directly perceptible things, celestial bodies, causality. — creativesoul

All the trees and mice I have known have been heavily into Ayn Rand.

moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God — Bartricks

Hmmm. Something just dawned on me...

Given the breadth of differences between societal, familial, and/or cultural mores in addition to the fact that so many of them are in direct contradiction with others'...

If moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God, then God is one confused, mixed up, contradictory, incoherent motherfucker...

Ya know?

:meh:

There are already far too many such ideologues.