Monday, October 20, 2014

Seeing the light

On my birthday a couple weeks ago, I had dinner with a friend whose birthday is one day later, and she quizzed me about why I am not a Catholic any more. She is a Catholic, but let's say her outlook has evolved since her daughter turned out to be gay and got married and had kids.

In fact, I'd say she's evolved waaaay past what we Catholics (back when I was one) would have called a liberal Catholic. We don't agree on very much theologically, but we did agree that the recent Synod devoted to issues like divorce, gayness and stuff being held by a bunch of unmarried, straight (we presume) men only was "tone deaf."

I proposed that and she said, "That's a good word for it."

I haven't talked with her since the Synod broke up but I know she was disappointed that the bishops didn't show more kindness to divorced straight Catholics or married gay Catholics. But on the bright side, they at least talked about it. There are other religions that only lecture. And in that other United States too.

I don't think I have ever said so at RtO (although I have done so elsewhere) but it is only stating the obvious that the worst idea humans have ever had was universalizing salvationist monotheism.

10 comments:

  1. Not nearly as bad as socialism.

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  2. Yeah, all that murder and oppression in Denmark.

    Even on a merely political level, if you think aggressive war is a really bad idea, then socialism doesn't even make a mark, while universalizing salvationist monotheism is a formula for endless war.

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  3. "... while universalizing salvationist monotheism is a formula for endless war."

    Bollocks. Pure, unadulterated, bollocks. (Pro-tip: tense matters; highlighting added to emphasize what should already be glaringly apparent.)

    How you can manage to elide the historical truth underlying what Bret said is impossible to imagine. Socialism -- and no amount of shouting "squirrel!" will let the variant called "communism" wriggle free -- is the most anti-human, and therefore murderous, theology ever to defile the light of day.

    Socialism has killed more people than even Islamists could hope for.

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  4. But not nearly as many as either capitalism or Christianity.

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  5. But not nearly as many as either capitalism or Christianity.

    Two problems with that: it is, unsurprisingly, substantiation free; and, there is that pesky thing called time you have completely ignored.

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  6. He certainly did:

    'Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise."

    That is exactly what universalizing salvationist monotheisms do.

    It is not quite clear that capitalism, if left as free to itself as religion has been at times, would not be just as bad. We have an example that suggests it would be as bad as religion:

    http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414866611&sr=1-1&keywords=king+leopold%27s+ghost+a+story+of+greed+terror+and+heroism+in+colonial+africa

    Fixating on marxism is a form of self-deception. And Berlin was capable of cruelty in his antimarxism:

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n18/frances-stonorsaunders/the-writer-and-the-valet

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  7. It is not quite clear that capitalism, if left as free to itself as religion has been at times, would not be just as bad. We have an example that suggests it would be as bad as religion:

    Only you would equate King Leopold with capitalism.

    That is exactly what universalizing salvationist monotheisms do.

    Name two.

    It is also what universalizing salvationist materialistic religions did (and a few of their fundamentalist adherents still do) until reality bit, hard.

    Too bad about the hecatombs.

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  8. You don't think Leopold with his bonds and his P&Ls and investment contracts was a capitalist? What was he then?

    Hint: not a socialist. It was the Socialists who were his main critics in Belgium.

    Name 2 universalizing salvationist monotheims: Christianity and Islam.

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  9. What was he then?

    He was the state, which made The Congo Free State a government enterprise.

    Therefore, he was a communist.

    Christianity and Islam.

    Since when has Christianity aimed to impose its theology on non-Christians?

    As opposed to, say, Communism, a universalizing salvationist religion, or Islam.

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