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It could as easily be because France is also just pretty racist.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:17
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Crowsbeak posted:You know secular morality was at one time based explicitly on racial hirarchy right? I had no idea and I don't really see mentions of racial hierarchy in any of the early humanist manifestos for instance but I'll take your word for it. I'm not particularly concerned with what it used to be - the principles as laid out by secular humanism today is inconsistent with slavery and more generally oppression. The Bible on the other hand is, and always will be, in favor of slavery and misogyny.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:26
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Bates posted:I had no idea and I don't really see mentions of racial hierarchy in any of the early humanist manifestos for instance but I'll take your word for it. I'm not particularly concerned with what it used to be - the principles as laid out by secular humanism today is inconsistent with slavery and more generally oppression. The Bible on the other hand is, and always will be, in favor of slavery and misogyny. And any liturgical Christian will tell you that sola scriptura is a stupid idea and would probably suggest that the bible is about as applicable as a very outdated humanist text.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:35
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Ideally women in a free society would get to wear what they want. While it's probably true a lot of the women wearing burkas do so because they are forced to, either directly or by social pressure, forcing them not to wear them kind of seems like fighting a wrong with another wrong - you are still forcing them to do something. I think this is similar to prostitution, where some women do it only because they have no other choice, but rather than making it illegal and creating even more trouble for them we should instead combat the symptoms that lead to this being their only choice to begin with. Also in both cases it's the women themselves who are being punished.
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Mar 22, 2017 20:14
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Avalerion posted:Ideally women in a free society would get to wear what they want. While it's probably true a lot of the women wearing burkas do so because they are forced to, either directly or by social pressure, forcing them not to wear them kind of seems like fighting a wrong with another wrong - you are still forcing them to do something. I think this is similar to prostitution, where some women do it only because they have no other choice, but rather than making it illegal and creating even more trouble for them we should instead combat the symptoms that lead to this being their only choice to begin with. Such a world is easily conceivable: it's closer to current-day Sweden or Japan than either is to Saudi Arabia.
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Mar 22, 2017 20:24
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Bates posted:I had no idea and I don't really see mentions of racial hierarchy in any of the early humanist manifestos for instance but I'll take your word for it. I'm not particularly concerned with what it used to be - the principles as laid out by secular humanism today is inconsistent with slavery and more generally oppression. The Bible on the other hand is, and always will be, in favor of slavery and misogyny. Read Voltaire and Hume then get back to me. Also secular humanism today also has a big boner for mass war against non secular humanists considering the number that love Hitchens and Harris.
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Mar 22, 2017 20:30
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Crowsbeak posted:Read Voltaire and Hume then get back to me. Crowsbeak posted:Also secular humanism today also has a big boner for mass war against non secular humanists considering the number that love Hitchens and Harris.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:00
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Cingulate posted:I've not read Voltaire, but I'd like to think I'm not completely uninformed about Hume and I don't see what you're going for here? "Less hawkish than the epitome of American interventionism" is a pretty poor comparison.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:04
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OwlFancier posted:"Less hawkish than the epitome of American interventionism" is a pretty poor comparison.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:08
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As in I'm not sure there is anyone in the world today more hawkish than the US at the height of its interventionalist bent. It's not a terribly useful comparison.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:18
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It's a group reasonably well matched on most demographic factors, but with religion on top. What would be a better comparison?
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Mar 22, 2017 21:24
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It's probably worth pointing out that Harris and Hitchens were pretty happily aligned foreign policy-wise with the hard-right christians and neocons that shared their massive hate-boner for Iraq and Afghanistan. Their chauvinistic imperialist bullshit might not have come from the same place, but it shared the same view of the adversary. Hitchens' interventionism in particular was a particularly nasty brew of parochial middle class english prejudices, a reinvention of white man's burden for the modern age, a belief that the savage peoples of the world should be redeemed by benevolent white anglo-american pedagogy, albeit cloaked in the language of liberal progress rather than nineteenth century racial pseudoscience. A crusading missionary zeal that killed and displaced millions.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:28
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"Not hawkish" It is a position that it's possible to take. That invading people is not a good idea.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:27
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Cingulate posted:I've not read Voltaire, but I'd like to think I'm not completely uninformed about Hume and I don't see what you're going for here? "(And one could say that if their intelligence is not of another species than ours, then it is greatly inferior. They are not capable of paying much attention; they mingle very little, and they do not appear to be made either for the advantages or the abuses of our philosophy.)" "(And it is a big question whether among them they are descendants of monkeys, or if monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man is the image of God: behold a pleasant image of the eternal Being with a flat black nose, with little or no intelligence! A time will come, without a doubt, when these animals will know how to cultivate the earth well, to embellish it with houses and gardens, and to know the routes of the stars. Time is a must, for everything.) " Hume "«I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences... Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men»" Also Kant The Negroes of Africa have not received any intelligence from Nature that rises above foolishness. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to suggest even one example of a negro who has displayed any talent. As he himself verifies, among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who have wandered far away from their homelands, even though many of them have been liberated, not one exists who has succeeded in anything great, either in the arts or the sciences or in any other noteworthy thing. On the contrary, among the whites, people continuously rise above the low point that they were and they evolve through their superior qualifications, attaining worldly fame. The difference therefore between the two races is an essential one: It appears to be equally big, both with regard to the capabilities of the mind, as well as to the color.) Also I love that you're only defence of a blood thirsty mad man like Hitchens is he's dead. Also you defend Harris because he only suggest we use nukes on possibly one middle eastern nation. The superiority you assume that your belief there is no god gives you is quite hilarious. Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 21:33
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TomViolence posted:It's probably worth pointing out that Harris and Hitchens were pretty happily aligned foreign policy-wise with the hard-right christians and neocons that shared their massive hate-boner for Iraq and Afghanistan. Their chauvinistic imperialist bullshit might not have come from the same place, but it shared the same view of the adversary. Hitchens' interventionism in particular was a particularly nasty brew of parochial middle class english prejudices, a reinvention of white man's burden for the modern age, a belief that the savage peoples of the world should be redeemed by benevolent white anglo-american pedagogy, albeit cloaked in the language of liberal progress rather than nineteenth century racial pseudoscience. A crusading missionary zeal that killed and displaced millions. Crowsbeak posted:Also I love that you're only defence of a blood thirsty mad man like Hitchens is he's dead. Also you defend Harris because he only suggest we use nukes on possibly one middle eastern nation. The superiority you assume that your belief there is no god gives you is quite hilarious. And I defend Harris simply insofar as I'm pointing out when people outright lie, because, lying is bad. Crowsbeak posted:The superiority you assume that your belief there is no god gives you is quite hilarious. I hope the religious people I've talked to ITT - e.g. Bolocko - have felt respected by me. Now for your points on Hume and Kant: yeah, they thought non-whites inferior, but your claim was "secular morality was at one time based explicitly on racial hirarchy". Which I don't see supported here: just because you hold some belief doesn't mean it's in any way central to your morality. I'd say Hume's morality is built on anti-rationalism and sentimentalism, not on a racial hierarchy.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:18
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I would say someone who claims to be a humanist while writing off sections of humanity as not actually human might not have a very defensible concept of humanism.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:27
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The colonialism, slavery and apartheid that drove much of western society economically throughout the 19th century certainly seems to have been explicitly justified on the basis of a pseudoscientific racial hierarchy. If we take "secular morality" to mean the prevailing ethical norms of a society divorced from any singular religious tradition, then I think it'd be fair to say european and american 19th century society was explicitly racist in its secular morality, to the point of being a fundamental belief. Racism wasn't just an unpalatable side dish to european enlightenment values, it came part and parcel with many of the young sciences of the time. Anthropology, for instance, was intimately intertwined with justifying and abetting the imperial project through study of native cultures.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:38
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TomViolence posted:The colonialism, slavery and apartheid that drove much of western society economically throughout the 19th century certainly seems to have been explicitly justified on the basis of a pseudoscientific racial hierarchy. If we take "secular morality" to mean the prevailing ethical norms of a society divorced from any singular religious tradition, then I think it'd be fair to say european and american 19th century society was explicitly racist in its secular morality, to the point of being a fundamental belief. Racism wasn't just an unpalatable side dish to european enlightenment values, it came part and parcel with many of the young sciences of the time. Anthropology, for instance, was intimately intertwined with justifying and abetting the imperial project through study of native cultures. It's clear they were both really racist (by our standards; probably average by their times?). But I don't think it's accurate to say this was central to their ethics. OwlFancier posted:I would say someone who claims to be a humanist while writing off sections of humanity as not actually human might not have a very defensible concept of humanism. (Ok, maybe Hume and Kant don't go together well, but that's a different thing.)
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Mar 22, 2017 22:41
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TomViolence posted:My point was that it's not merely religious societies where women's modes of dress are influenced by an objectifying male gaze. An incredibly weak point. Patriarchal hegemony is a huge issue worldwide, and religion is absolutely a major factor in spreading and maintaining societal and gender identities. Pretending otherwise is misguided at best. TomViolence posted:The colonialism, slavery and apartheid that drove much of western society economically throughout the 19th century certainly seems to have been explicitly justified on the basis of a pseudoscientific racial hierarchy. If we take "secular morality" to mean the prevailing ethical norms of a society divorced from any singular religious tradition, then I think it'd be fair to say european and american 19th century society was explicitly racist in its secular morality, to the point of being a fundamental belief. Racism wasn't just an unpalatable side dish to european enlightenment values, it came part and parcel with many of the young sciences of the time. Anthropology, for instance, was intimately intertwined with justifying and abetting the imperial project through study of native cultures. This shows a serious lack of historical knowledge on the subject. Eugenics is definitely a lovely secular ideology, but where oh where did the idea that non European Whites aren't fully human come from? Certainly couldn't be based off the idea that it was questioned whether Africans and Native Americans even had souls during the early colonial days. The primary source letters are ripe with great quotes about how they are incapable of being "saved" by Jesus because of their subhuman qualities. Racial hierarchies are religious based ideas, not secular ones. It's explicitly written in religious texts that certain tribes are favored by God and the others should be destroyed or are hell bound. The conservative wing then, like assholes from the Heritage Foundation now, used secular and scientific rhetoric to mask their regressive world views. It must be some wild coincidence that actual scientists at the forefront of innovation just happen to be in the progressive end of their generations overall, while religious leaders trend conservative overall. Even during the Nazi eugenics days the overwhelming majority of real scientists said  are a load of poo poo. Nice historical revisionism to make religion seem better and secularism seem worse, though.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:14
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RasperFat posted:Certainly couldn't be based off the idea that it was questioned whether Africans and Native Americans even had souls during the early colonial days. The primary source letters are ripe with great quotes about how they are incapable of being "saved" by Jesus because of their subhuman qualities. Preempting the apologetics: the only church that didn't consider the possibility seriously was the catholic church, and two of the four powers that had both hands deep in the transatlantic slave trade were ruled by devout catholics anyway, with the abolition of freedom of conscience in France passed in the same breath as the first slave codes. The church definitely didn't make Brazil or Haiti any less of a hellscape. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 23:18
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Yes, the church must be destroyed in its entirety. It merely exists to control men and keep them sedate by brainwashing.quote:when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; The first step towards utopia is elimination of these bodies and the removal of those who run them.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:26
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Because when think of the revolution, the first thing I want to do is destroy the work of people who worked hard for poor pay? The gently caress kind of revolution spends its time demolishing architecture and art?
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Mar 22, 2017 23:33
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OwlFancier posted:Because when think of the revolution, the first thing I want to do is destroy the work of people who worked hard for poor pay? Revolution is impossible if the poor are controlled by religious morality or false hope that if they are servile they will be rewarded. You may look at a church or cathedral and simply see a nice looking building. That building though represents hundreds of millions who were never able to exist in reality or fulfill their full potential because of the priest's lies.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:40
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I think if you're ascribing magical beliefs to a building you might not have grasped the idea of rejecting superstition. You might as well burn down the factory rather than repossessing it.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:43
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OwlFancier posted:I think if you're ascribing magical beliefs to a building you might not have grasped the idea of rejecting superstition. You're right. It's more important to kill the religious elite, but the fact is people will still worship, still have some notion of god, until you destroy all symbols of it. There is nothing magical about a swastika, but it still represents something, it has a semiotic connection to other ideas. The same is true for a cross, crescent, or peacock angel.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:48
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rear end struggle posted:You may look at a church or cathedral and simply see a nice looking building. Walk into the church and you might see the crucifix which hangs in condemnation of your whole project of violent revolution.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:54
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RasperFat posted:This shows a serious lack of historical knowledge on the subject. Eugenics is definitely a lovely secular ideology, but where oh where did the idea that non European Whites aren't fully human come from? Okay, here I'm gonna transcribe a source from one of my textbooks to try and demonstrate that scientific attitudes based on supposed physiological difference were a significant basis of the secular, pseudoscientific racism of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: T.A. Joyce, Assistant in Dept of Ethnography, British Museum, and Secretary of Anthropology Society, writing in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, 1910-11 posted:Mentally the negro is inferior to the white. The remark of F. Manetts, made after long study of the American negro, may be taken generally as true of the whole race: "the negro children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose that the development of the negro and white proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and the lateral pressure of the frontal bone." This explanation is reasonable and even probable as a contributing cause; but evidence is lacking on the subject and the arrest or even deterioration in mental development is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take their place in the negro's life and thoughts. At the same time his environment has not been such as would produce in him the restless energy which has lead to the progress of the white race; and the easy conditions of tropical life and the fertility of the soil have reduced the struggle for existence to a minimum. But though the mental inferiority of the negro to the white or yellow races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the negro is largely a creature of his environment, and it is not fair to judge his mental capacity by testsin mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the white man, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the negro. If you're going to throw around accusations of historical revisionism you probably shouldn't try and erase the scientific narratives that, appearing bereft of overt religious motive and wholely invested in the advancement of a flawed but nonetheless scientific vision of human knowledge, gave credibility to racist 19th-century worldviews. Yes, there were papal bulls justifying slavery, yes there were missionaries and forced conversions and genocides brought about on religious grounds. My position is not a denial of this, it's an acknowledgement that secular societies can and do harbour the same chauvinistic ideas and that they cannot solely be layed at the doors of the religious. I'm not against secularism, quite the opposite. I just think a great deal of the blanket revulsion people display to the unwashed faithful carries with it echoes of the imperialist attitude to the "irredeemable savages" 19th-century imperialists saw it as their duty to uplift. It's the same pious chauvinism, just dressed up in new clothes.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:56
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Bolocko posted:Walk into the church and you might see the crucifix which hangs in condemnation of your whole project of violent revolution. im sure glad we literally destroyed the world waiting for jesus at least we can pray
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Mar 23, 2017 00:04
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RasperFat posted:Racial hierarchies are religious based ideas, not secular ones.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:04
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rear end struggle posted:Revolution is impossible if the poor are controlled by religious morality or false hope that if they are servile they will be rewarded. We'll get new architecture and art, divorced of the fascistic Christian imagery. It's about as much of a loss as losing the mansions built by slave hands.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:08
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Of course that's a loss, what is the point of a revolution in the name of the builders of the world that tries to bury the things they built...
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Mar 23, 2017 00:13
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I can definitely conclude from this topic that some members of the secularists are hostile to history.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:14
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rear end struggle posted:im sure glad we literally destroyed the world waiting for jesus Why did you do that? Jesus literally cautioned against doing that.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:19
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OwlFancier posted:Of course that's a loss, what is the point of a revolution in the name of the builders of the world that tries to bury the things they built... Just on the contrary, comrade, name me one hand that carved the stone of the vatican, laid the pillars of the pantheon, placed the tile of the sacred mosque. All of their achievements are already buried. Lost to "great men" that claim their sweat and blood as their own. The churches of the future will be monuments to all, a celebration of the species and of humanity united, free of nations, race, religion. This is the utopia I strive for, it is either this or destruction of the species.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:21
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OwlFancier posted:Because when think of the revolution, the first thing I want to do is destroy the work of people who worked hard for poor pay? To be fair, even within religious traditions iconoclasm can play an essential role in reform, revolution and redistribution. Many of the early protestant reformers explicitly set out to dismantle and expropriate the hoarded wealth of the church in order to fund things like feeding the neglected poor. Of course, there's no way they would have done this on the basis of their deeply held faith and conviction, because religiously motivated acts cannot by definition ever be good.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:22
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TomViolence posted:Okay, here I'm gonna transcribe a source from one of my textbooks to try and demonstrate that scientific attitudes based on supposed physiological difference were a significant basis of the secular, pseudoscientific racism of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: Eugenics was literally a flash in the pan. It only had credence from the early 1900s to the 1930s, by which point it's practices and underpinnings had been criticized and debunked. A brief academic history of eugenics Eugenics took early knowledge of evolution and synthesized it with folk theory. It literally would not have happened without the previous bigotry instilled by and reinforced by religion. Darker skin had been associated with being "impure", which was the basis for "weak" genetics in some races. poo poo Mormonism held that belief into the 70s, and most White churches in the 1800s through the early 1900s were not that cool with race relations. Scientists and especially biologists are not shy about the lovely history of eugenics, and will gladly explain in clear terms why it was wrong and how we can prove it was wrong. Again I'm not saying that religions are the sole cause of these societal problems, I'm saying they are hurting far more than they are helping. Gender roles are realized and reinforced by religion in a generally sexist fashion; I didn't think this was a contentious fact.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:25
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TomViolence posted:religiously motivated acts cannot by definition ever be good. Crowsbeak posted:I can definitely conclude from this topic that some members of the secularists are hostile to history. Panzeh posted:We'll get new architecture and art, divorced of the fascistic Christian imagery. This is Richard Dawkins' favourite piece of music. I'm not sure what team you're on, but I'm on whatever team protects this music.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:28
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Crowsbeak posted:I can definitely conclude from this topic that some members of the secularists are hostile to history. History is not stones sitting on the ground or stained glass or whatever's engraved on an old ceiling. History is what we do as human beings. It's kinda funny watching people go on about how the worst thing ISIS ever did was blow up some stones in Palmyra.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:29
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Accusing secularism of justifying racism is pretty weak sauce. 'racial science' is like the definition of a pseudoscience. You start with a conclusion, and then go hunting for evidence. It's all backwards. The reason the enlightenment was concurrent with colonialism, was because the scientific revolution gave the Europeans better weapons, which they used to exploit. The rationalization for that exploitation comes after the fact, not before. If the enlightenment hadn't of happened, but they still got that opportunity, or if any other region of the world 'got there first', they would used their local cultural value system to justify their exploitation, after the fact. There's nothing unique to European values or secularism that makes that exploitation any easier, saying otherwise is lacking perspective, and also kind of racist.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:30
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rear end struggle posted:Just on the contrary, comrade, name me one hand that carved the stone of the vatican, laid the pillars of the pantheon, placed the tile of the sacred mosque. All of their achievements are already buried. Lost to "great men" how claim their sweat and blood as their own. Who says the atheist Left lacks religious faith? See it here, a shining city on . . . somewhere just past the horizon. We take what is built by men for the glorification of all men, and we replace it with something else built by men for the glorification of wait
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Mar 23, 2017 00:30
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