Welcome to Hell, Pope Francis
Liberty, voluntary exchange, mutual consent, and the protection of property and contract rights secure individuals’ sovereignty over their own minds, bodies, and souls, the freedom to pursue their own interests. That is the real crux of the animus directed at capitalism—liberty’s economics—from proponents of both statism and religion. The Pope will never say that his condemnation of capitalism is a condemnation of individual autonomy, nor that it is an embrace of statist collectivism and coercion. Those, however, are the choices. Unfortunately, history has never moved in a straight line forward. A general embrace of his ideology would be a giant step backward. Justice requires accountability for one’s ideas, and Pope Francis is not being held to account. His vision is not the road to salvation, any more than Lenin’s, Stalin’s, Hitler’s, or Mao’s were. It is the road to a not-at-all-subtle dictatorship that will “condemn and enslave men and women.” The Pope would see us in a collectivized hell on earth—a new Dark Ages—and the Catholic Church once again reigning supreme over the misery.
This is an excerpt. Please click the link above for the full article.
This is an excerpt. Please click the link above for the full article.
He has no chance at appealing to the educated, affluent populations to support his fairy tales and dogma. That population is leaving him behind, slowly.
To maintain power (this institution's sole purpose since its beginning), they must find new sheep to be led through life.
There are many poor and poorly educated.
People are most easily made comrades by assigning blame to a common foe.
There is a socialist movement throughout the world, which provides a handhold to the first and second world countries.
Capitalism is uncontrolled by the church, therefore it is a threat.
It is all about power, and I don't see the church handing out it's billions to the masses to free them.
It did seem that his alliance co-opting the viros to retrogress to the Christian asceticism of St. Francis of Assisi by endorsing carbon credits was an attempt to get back into the Indulgences racket -- but the ideology prevailed (Marx was wrong again): *Common Home" denounces the "carbon credit" scheme for not being enough -- they demand wallowing in poverty and the retraction of the Industrial Revolution as an absolute, with no loopholes for industry buying its way out of poverty in the shakedown.
For myself, I accept NO authority. I am a free, individual with a mind that works, living in reality, and I have all I need within myself required to make my way through this life without a bunch of nonsense getting in my way.
Yes. Only Catholics view the Pope as authoritative. No other Christian sect recognizes him as anything more than a political figure.
For example, if you travel to Portland, you are subject to the Portland mayor and police - not the LA versions. Same difference: each sect is equivalent in this example to its own city.
I was not advocating for the Pope, just trying to clarify that there are hundreds of Christian religions that should not get lumped in just because the Catholic Church's leader becomes a socialist. It doesn't matter whether one ascribes to religion or not, it is important to recognize that there are critical differences that separate the various faiths from one another because their individual principles and doctrines differ. To lump them all in together is like equating libertarians with Objectivists - there is some overlap of principles, but some distinct differences that separate them.
As to Christian religions, there is one Christian religion, there are as you say hundreds of sects and even cults based on that one religion. But it really doesn't matter, any belief/faith system without a means to prove or disprove it, is a path to a wasted life and is of absolutely no credibility or merit for a properly working mind to pay attention to, other than to reject it and the person espousing such as a person not worth listening to.
As to equating Libertarians with Objectivists, there is no overlap of principles. Libertarians don't seem to have any solid principles other than non-aggression which is probably closer to pacifism than anything else. They as well as christians, operated based on belief in and faith that all people would want to live as they do, if just shown the way.
Your arguments are simply nonsense and I'm done reading them.
"any belief/faith system without a means to prove or disprove it, is a path to a wasted life and is of absolutely no credibility or merit for a properly working mind to pay attention to"
I agree. Can you understand that? I AGREE!
"Is there any difference between the encyclical’s philosophy and communism? I am perfectly willing, on this matter, to take the word of an eminent Catholic authority. Under the headline: 'Encyclical Termed Rebuff to Marxism,' The New York Times of March 31, 1967, reports: 'The Rev. John Courtney Murray, the prominent Jesuit theologian, described Pope Paul’s newest encyclical yesterday as ‘the church’s definitive answer to Marxism.’ . . . ‘The Marxists have proposed one way, and in pursuing their program they rely on man alone,’ Father Murray said. `Now Pope Paul VI has issued a detailed plan to accomplish the same goal on the basis of true humanism—humanism that recognizes man’s religious nature.’'
"Amen.
"So much for those American 'conservatives' claim that religion is the base of capitalism—and who believe that they can have capitalism and eat it, too, as the moral cannibalism of the altruist ethics demands.
"And so much for those modern 'liberals' who pride themselves on being the champions of reason, science, and progress—and who smear the advocates of capitalism as superstitious, reactionary representatives of a dark past. Move over, comrades, and make room for your latest fellow-travelers, who had always belonged on your side—then take a look, if you dare, at the kind of past they represent."
The Catholic Church formulated Christian dogma for centuries. It is representative of Christianity in all fundamentals, including its ascetic, other-worldiness, and duty to sacrifice.
Your religious wars between competing sects are irrelevant, and so is your constant proselytizing for religion and claims that Ayn Rand was "mistaken" for rejecting it. Religious faith is fundamentally antagonistic to a philosophy of reason and egoism and there is no excuse for your obnoxious evangelizing on an Ayn Rand site.
"The Catholic Church formulated Christian dogma for centuries. It is representative of Christianity in all fundamentals, including its ascetic, other-worldiness, and duty to sacrifice."
"This is why you fail." - Yoda.
You can not separate in your mind one set of beliefs from any other. You just lump them all into the same category irrespective of their competing and often diametrically opposed views on various matters. You fallaciously assert that A = B = C ad infinitum. You more closely represent the very point I make than you could possible know. And yet you do not know it.
Your lumping Objectivism with fascism is irrational and dishonest. Christian religious sects are all varieties of the Christian religion based on faith in and duty to a supernatural god. They agree in essentials and are all rejected because of what they are in essence. Variations in dogma between competing sects, no matter their being at each others throats over nonsense claimed to be "diametrically opposed", is irrelevant; differences over what you have faith in are arbitrary and of no concern to the rational.
Rand explained how existence is primary and, additionally, the logical corollaries of that fact. It's not something you accept because she wrote it; they are concepts you have to understand.
I agree with Rand that intelligence and existence are primary. I just disagree that there is an end to that existence as atheism dictates. Rand, in conflating the Catholic Church with "religion" got caught in a fallacy of association that led her to believe that since she couldn't make sense of the Catholic belief system that necessarily all religions were nonsensical. This led her to atheism as the only recourse, but also led her to take positions as mandated by that atheism. I think it was a mistake. She would have been safer to have taken an agnostic view of the matter and simply said "I don't know". That would have allowed for inquiry into either side as long as the position could be explained logically. And no, it wouldn't have been fence-sitting, but rather the avoidance of being pigeon-holed in order to appear to remain consistent with that choice.
I do ignore you, because you refuse to contemplate the alternatives. You aren't even willing to have an honest thought experiment on the matter and so must resort to serially down-voting my every post simply out of spite. It is wholly unbecoming. One can disagree amiably without being so thoroughly disagreeable, and I will warn you one last time to amend your ways or as a paying member I will seek your censure.
Every mystic faith does not have to be examined in detail to know to reject faith in the supernatural for what it is.
Your claimed history of Ayn Rand's thought process in rejecting religion is false. You are misrepresenting her. You don't dictate what she should have said to be "safe" on behalf of your religion. No "safety" is required in rejecting your irrationalism, whose obnoxious repetition does not belong on this site.
You miss the point of these forums entirely. They are to discuss possibilities. They are to exercise the mind. They are to invent and to explore - not mindlessly parrot with a zeal that you claim only possible of the "religious".
In this case, you are mistaking logical analysis for conflation. Rand did not imply, "that intelligence and existence are primary." Quite differently, she wrote that "existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness". This is a "crucial distinction" between what goes on inside and outside your head.
Accepting beliefs attempts to shortcut our ability to identify things that exist by replacing knowledge with thoughts and notions not anchored in reality. Ideas, based on any variant of Existence being created by something outside of Existence, will undercut your ability to understand everything...and that would be hell.
If I've read you correctly, what you are actually saying is that the source of the value is more important than the value itself. I can't have read that correctly because that is the fallacy of appeal to authority. That is the kind of logic that says since so-and-so said A, that A is correct solely because I believe in A's authority. I disagree with this idea and would suggest that it is the other way around entirely - that it is the idea that gives merit and authority to the individual. It is precisely the values, doctrines and merits of a given philosophy that lend credence to its originator! As such we should avoid the trap of appeal to authority by focusing not on who said it, but on the position itself. This further helps us avoid the trap of prejudice as well by uncoupling our preconceptions about the source itself.
"In this case, you are mistaking logical analysis for conflation. Rand did not imply, "that intelligence and existence are primary." Quite differently, she wrote that "existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness". This is a "crucial distinction" between what goes on inside and outside your head."
I am not quite sure what your assertion is here. I was restating using your own words. I used intelligence to indicate consciousness separate and apart from the rest of existence. But without consciousness/intelligence, there is no perception of existence separate from the consciousness itself. Thus both must exist for anything to be considered at all. Existence without a consciousness to perceive it precludes this conversation, rendering it null and void.
"Accepting beliefs attempts to shortcut our ability to identify things that exist by replacing knowledge with thoughts and notions not anchored in reality. Ideas, based on any variant of Existence being created by something outside of Existence, will undercut your ability to understand everything...and that would be hell."
Not sure what you're trying to say here either. I'm familiar with the statements, just not sure where you are trying to go with them with respect to the sub-thread. I'd appreciate an explanation.
Further, I have read Piekoff's work "Objectivism". And again, I take what is said and weigh it against my experience and my knowledge and come to my own conclusions. Independent thought should not be such a crime to an Objectivist.
You are a religionist in fundamental contradiction with Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason that is the purpose of this forum. You can believe whatever you want to by any arbitrary means of "weighing evidence" you feel like, but persistently evangelizing faith while misrepresenting Ayn Rand, as well as others here, does not belong here and you know it.
The acceptance of an idea which has no basis in existence, as knowledge, because it is attributed to 'God', a vision, a dream, an infallible pope, or any other floating abstraction is making a similar error.
Which is more important: the belief or the source of the belief?
What you said indicated to me that you placed the origin of the belief of higher importance than the belief itself and I wanted to make sure I wasn't reading you incorrectly.
To me, the principle validates and proves the authority of the person presenting it, not the other way around.
Existence can't be proven, it just is, regardless of any presentation.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pri...
"It is implicit in any awareness, but it has to be grasped conceptually and held as an absolute."
I'm unusual in this gathering. I follow Christianity--but not the Roman Catholic faith. The two are very different. (And for me the flowering of the Roman Catholic faith will always be the Papacy of Alexander VI.)
I also suspect Francis, by conflating the Bible with the Koran, has betrayed an even darker purpose.
The pope's recent poop about the Bible and the Koran plus (the forgiving) God and (the okay with raping and murdering) Allah all being pretty much the same thing gave me the willies.
I'm also an ex-Catholic, who, while reading the article, wondered if the Pope may sizzle or even melt if sprinkled by holy water.
Perhaps he should be thus watered down while encircled by renegade priests all raised by capitalist families.
His last words could be, "Et tu, Padre Brute?"
Or maybe "Of course, you'd here too, (not "Father" but) Daddy Warbucks!"
You go be you and I'll go bhe me.
Have a nice day.
God is good.
Jesus is the door to salvation.
I did not give you that -1 = 0 by the way (as seen at the moment).
God understands, I'm sure.
They are saving YOU from the temptation of money. Saving you from eternal damnation, pure altruism on their part.
/sarcasm
We could aptly call this Crony Christianity, just like the Crony Capitalism he is against but way too compartmentalized to understand that he, just like governments created this problem. Perhaps, he like the ilk that had proceeded him realized they'd be out of work and would have to create value instead of usurping value in order to survive. He, like those that govern are nothing but humanoids; the only true 'Other Race' on this planet.