Such is the state of the world right now...
" Silence and complicity allowed wholly unscientific fields to emerge in academia and dominate campus culture with lies and bigotry. Silence and complicity also allowed the UK and Canada to adopt fascism. Actual fascism, not the imaginary stuff people have been screeching about for the past year. They’re trying to bring it to the US and Australia as well. " Sorta like how Isreal is mean and evil, and bullying poor defenseless Palestine for kicks? Also, arguably, western culture is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian values. How many millions prosper under the resultant institutions of western society? Even our homeless have a comparatively higher quality of life than many places, and we’re constantly seeking ways to continue to improve further. Devolving Wilds
Land “T, Sacrifice Devolving Wilds: Search your library for a basic land card and reveal it. Then shuffle your library.” |
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How many hundreds millions suffer from those institutions?
The truth is that the judeo-christian values have NOTHING to do with the prosperity of a country. Just take a loot at South america, it's an extremely strong majority of christians and it's, in many country, a shit hole. Much of the southern part of Africa is in the same boat. No, what caused this prosperity is imperialism. By having colonies a bit everywhere, much of Europe prospered through the pilfering of resources and population of colonies. Same go with the USA, it prospered through slavery, wars and pilfering of resources from other nations. There's very few countries that have prospered and didn't do it through the suffering of others. Build of the week #9 - Breaking your face with style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y
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It is true, Christianity is not even the cause of the west great achievements.
The two great period of western civilization were the greek/roman era and the enlightenment, two period were christianity was either absent or criticized. Human rights and the end of slavery in the west is not a christian feat but the result of French/US revolution. Christianity have been pushing europe into the dark ages from the fall of the roman empire until the enlightenment. So yea there is nothing of value christianity brought to europe like there is also nothing of value for Europe in the Islamic religion. So after all the problems the old christianity created you want another Semitic religion to create again those same problems. Nowadays christianity at least in europe does not try anymore to control people lives unlike what Islam is trying to do. Still Islamic veil is culturally all what freedom thinkers and fighters tryed to erase. It is a symbole of a new bigotery against women. T Those women who claim this veil is freedom for them are right, but only because wearing it they can avoid getting beaten, sexually molested or insulted in their culture. In Europe/US the only reason those women wearing veil are getting insulted in the street is because of terrorist attacks. Poe Pvp experience https://youtu.be/Z6eg3aB_V1g?t=302 Last edited by Head_Less on Jan 7, 2018, 9:44:47 AM
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I’m not going to argue on behalf of the synergistic feedback religiosity and culture have on one another; others present the argument better than I, and I don’t believe it is any more or less fact or speculation than your counter argument, ergo I said “arguably,” i.e., the argument could be made, but I am not well versed enough in the subject matter to produce nuanced discussion on it.
Instead, to generalize, every culture does good and every culture does bad. In any culture with one or more religions, religiosity will inform some part of that culture’s behavior, both for better and for worse. Imperial exploitation is a hallmark in Western history, with the caveat that this is equally true of every other great culture; however, I attribute this more to classist/elitist/corporatist culture than to Western culture as a whole. When the constituent people, the “masses,” become aware of these exploits, they tend to put pressure on the ruling classes to right their wrongs. What is salient is that the West has committed many wrongs, but it has also achieved many great things. The aggregate effect of this is, IMO, the best we’ve got, and to suggest that Western religiosity has only done harm is naive at best. Devolving Wilds Land “T, Sacrifice Devolving Wilds: Search your library for a basic land card and reveal it. Then shuffle your library.” Last edited by CanHasPants on Jan 7, 2018, 4:35:44 PM
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" mate, in america most people believe in god, the level of unscientific nonsense in the minds of the populous is beyond all hope, you standing on a building with a bullhorn 24/7 preaching wont change anything, at all. " actual fascism? Care to explain? When it comes to what matters the people of america are deeper under the jackboot of their government both metaphorically and literally than any of the countries you just mentioned, and are just as powerless if not more so to do anything about it. " ultimately prosperity is relative, you can only measure it vs what other people have. Someone with a million $ is only wealthy because most other people dont have that much, by itself the number is meaningless, a guy with a million in a world where every other person has 1000x as much is a poor person. Prosperity is having more than someone else, and when u look at it I think ur right, mostly comes from empire, from suppression, from being unfair. The reason some people have more than others is generally because they took what other people had and then used it to build a system that perpetuated that divide. That is true both nationally and internationally. |
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As I've said before, theism is a choice but religiosity is all but forced. Those who sit and watch until they know with absolute certainty before they act, never act; the nature of inductive reasoning is such that no amount of supporting evidence can ever prove the point, while a single piece of valid evidence can disprove it. At some point, the knowledge-seeker grows impatient and, desiring to become a man of action, becomes sure enough of the well-supported but unproven claim to act as if it were true. Although we often delude ourselves to preserve a false sense of rationality, the distance between a hypothesis and a theory is always a leap of faith. In every act we perform, from our work to our meals to simply getting out of bed in the morning, we reveal which of our hypotheses we have invested enough faith in to drive off the hesitancy of skepticism. I can see your religion by simply watching what you physically do.
That said, it is possible to be religiously fickle, to act in accordance with one principle in one moment only to betray it in the next, or to act in such a way as to bring about new evidence that shatters a long-held conviction. That we are religious is as constant as whether we are moving or not, but what religion we hold is as variable as the catalog of actions we can choose from. In that sense, it is wise to avoid zealotry, and to take time to refine one's religious beliefs as new evidence comes to light. It would be astonishingly elitist to say the values of a religion believed by the vast majority of the inhabitants of a country have nothing to do with the prosperity of said country. While I readily acknowledge the importance of intellectuals to seek out new evidence and further refine the assumptions we work under, the vast majority of humankind are not philosopher kings. How many such heretic geniuses do you think there were? The mainstream religion(s) of a population establish(es) the collective morality and thus influence(s) how most people will act. To pretend that a tiny fraction of atheists were responsible for a great success while the actions of millions of people were all but irrelevant... I mean, wow. But that's not what faerwin is saying, to be fair; the above would be a strawman if I pretended otherwise. Instead, faerwin contends that Western civilization's success was like that of a prosperous thief, born not of self-sufficient work but of victimization of others. And I must admit that, to some trivial extent, he's partially correct; I have little doubt that some imperialists stole from foreign lands then fenced their ill-gotten gains into the Western economies. However, again I ask you; how many such imperialists do you think there were? Do you imagine such illegitimate economic injections were actually more to account for Western prosperity than the mores of the majority of its people? And how did the mores of these non-Western civilizations weaken their defenses to make such exploitation possible? If the imperialists arrived with superior weapons technology to overwhelm defenses, why did the West have a technological advantage prior to imperialist conquest? I don't think you can run forever from the conclusion that the most prosperous societies are those with the best morality due to the best religions. (This is comparative, mind you; being the best in a contest doesn't mean being perfect, and in the context of a later contest could appear hilariously weak.) There is a lot, or at least something, about some denominations of Christianity that was perhaps not absolutely correct, but more correct than their historical competitors. As Mr. Carter says: numbers don't lie; check the scoreboard. And while I am emphatically for improving beyond even our current conception of best practices, I would at least implore caution before relegating a battle-proven, successful belief system to the memory hole that is the dustbin of history. In contrast, communism. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jan 8, 2018, 2:22:27 PM
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" Mate, did you just assume my religion? :p I’m not bullhorning anything. I’m agnostic, but I view religion as an evolutionarily beneficial institution insofar as it is a source of social cohesion. I don’t personally agree with the dogma of anybody’s religion, but if it provides benefit to somebody else then who am I to be so arrogant to judge what are otherwise prosocial choices? If anything, the bandwagon atheists are the only ones I resent, emphasis on bandwagon, given their claims of affection toward science and their abandonment of the scientific method in favor of personal bias*. No less infantile than the ones you deride. *Not that the devoutly religious uphold the scientific method, but then again most of them don’t make claim towards it either—the distinction, they’re not pretentious about their beliefs. Edit: In my original comment, I was referring to academic fields of study that were given license to accredit their own body of research, i.e., outright make shit up and sell it. " Deeper under the jackboot? Care to explain? Do you mean we can be imprisoned for not recognizing somebody’s made up gender? Or for speaking the wrong language in the wrong part of town? Because I don’t think that’s the case; I’m specifically referring to the absence of free speech in those countries. Devolving Wilds Land “T, Sacrifice Devolving Wilds: Search your library for a basic land card and reveal it. Then shuffle your library.” Last edited by CanHasPants on Jan 8, 2018, 4:54:02 PM
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" It began in Europe for the most part although we also saw it in China. Europe royalties waged wars in many neighboring countries many centuries ago, plundering the natural resources, the money and the people to use as slaves. This caused these countries to have a higher level of living and allowed science (mostly military science) to develop faster. Meanwhile, the countries that ended up as victims of those ambitions became poorer and poorer and became unable to defend themselves. In the best cases, they became assimilated, in the worst cases, they were wiped out. The major winners of those wars were the countries now known as France, Great Britain and Spain and to a lesser extend, Italy. Italy is an odd exception due to it hosting the capital of the christian world but it still worked. Now, after the conquest of Europe was mostly settled, colonization began. French colonized much of Africa and pacific and atlantic islands, as well as north america (which they later lost). England colonized the rest of north america, australia, india and a ton of other areas everywhere in the world. Spain was more modest with colonizing south america and mexico mostly. From those colonies, they forwarded much of their resources towards the main land (which eventually led to the revolt of almost all of their colonies and their following independence). Once again, having such wealth allowed two things. The need to constantly develop military technology to ensure their superiority in combat and the luxury of scientific research as a job field. Just to reiterate, it was the centralized power of a country that received all the resources, not some random company (like today). The colonization of the Americas were different than the rest because there has been a very active war between France and England, which forced the new continent troops to be armed with the latest technology of the time period. Also, due to the travel distance and the lack of other nearby colonies, reinforcement of troops was extremely slow to do and they had to enlist the colonists and the natives for their wars. This caused those colonies to assimilate the technologies and realize that if they were to rebel against their nation, they wouldn't be able to react appropriately to it. The rise of north america came mostly from slavery. When your work force are treated as more dispensable than a pig, then you can only get rich as you force them to do whatever work you want with extremely little cost. I don't think I need to explain in great details this part. Modern imperialism come mostly from the exploitation of Africa and the oil wars of the middle east. That said, it isn't exclusive to that as there's also the culture explosion that came from the US following WW2. Oddly enough, for the first time in history, money stopped being backed up by real resources and countries began printing money from thin air without having inflation happen. I'm not well-read enough about this subject to enter in a discussion but if you are curious about it, I'm sure you can find good books that explains it. Essentially, this allowed nations that were prosperous to stay that way without having to keep plundering (at the same ratio) and without experiencing what should have been a rapid decay, similar to what happened to the ex URRS. " Warmongering cause rapid growth of military technology and Europe was extremely war prone for most of its existence. It's also because Europe had an abundance of natural resources compared to most other territories and this allowed population to be higher than elsewhere. Build of the week #9 - Breaking your face with style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y
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"It's hilarious how ignorant you are of the relevant history. Do you even Google, bro? Owning slaves in colonial America was like owning a car — owning even a single represented the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in today's US currency, although a slave in poor health or old age might be acquired cheaper (similar to modern new vs used car markets). Owning enough slaves to run a plantation was equivalent to owning a fleet of vehicles today — it was a clear indicator of being a wealthy businessman, or at least a formerly wealthy one. As such, only a tiny fraction of Americans in slave-owning territories actually owned slaves (much as most residents of today's major cities don't own automobiles), and only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction owned more than a handful of slaves. So while it's true they were treated as subhuman and that's horrible, they weren't treated as more disposable than pigs; they were treated as being about as disposable as automobiles. In fact, you could sell a slave for enough money to buy hundreds of pigs. And as the region transformed from a British colony to the 1850s south, the price of slaves only increased, approximately doubling over 200 years even after factoring for inflation. In terms of how slaves were fed, healthcare, etc: well, do you take your vehicle in for maintenance to keep it in peak operating condition? As one might suspect, big plantation owners almost always made sure their slaves were well taken care of to sustain their value, while poorer slave-owners were unfortunately less consistent about protecting their investment — just because you know you should doesn't mean you always do. Interestingly, on the modern day (happening right fucking now) Arab slave trade, a slave costs mere hundreds of dollars; for $1000 US you could easily purchase two highest-quality slaves, perhaps even three if you got a good deal. I guess the Muslim criminals gangs of North Africa just view human life as a tad more disposable than the plantation owners did. "Really? So right now Western civilization is making itself rich by stealing from the prosperity of Africa and Saudi Arabia? As far as the first goes, I genuinely wonder what it is they have that we're pillaging; as far as the second goes, I'm afraid you may have falsely conflated the Clinton Foundation with Western civilization. Or do you mean: the military-industrial complex has sold us on needless interventionism in those regions, and the imperialist thieves are stealing from the US taxpayer by telling us it takes over a trillion dollars to build a single fighter jet? "Are you implying we should maybe return to the gold standard, or am I misunderstanding you? When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jan 8, 2018, 9:41:57 PM
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African countries are getting most of their natural resources (mainly diamonds and other gemstones) exploited for pennies and then resold at high prices in western (and China) civilizations.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/africa/looting-machine-tom-burgis-africa/index.html This is also true for other generic metals. The middle east doesn't stop at saudi arabia. There was billions of dollars exploited from Koweitt and brought to the west. There was also a very considerable amount exploited from the war in Afghanistan and Iran but due to the US soil exploitation booming, it's became far less profitable than originally expected. And yes, the war industry did sell their war, but it was accepted on the premise of looting and making money from resources (read: oil) pilfering. As for the backing up of money, gold isn't required but SOMETHING should back it up. Right now, it would be like a company that has 100 millions stock value when the company isn't worth more than 1 million. When (not even a if at this point) it fails, it will bring an era of extreme turmoil... If you think the economy crash of 2008 was bad, when it blows up, it will be post cold war Russia... http://www.cliometrics.org/conferences/ASSA/Jan_00/rosenbloom.shtml Looks more like a few thousands rather than tens of thousands Still, do you really think that this "investment" didn't pay for itself? Build of the week #9 - Breaking your face with style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y
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