If Kevin Phillps is right in "American Theocracy" the failure of our empire will disillusion us the same way it did the Spanish, the Dutch, and the English, all of whom are now rather secular (or at least more so than before). Speaking of sad.

I agree, though, that there seems to be a worldwide surge in fundamentalism. In the case of countries like India or Iran this may be a reaction to the increase in awareness of competing peoples. That is, these societies are noticing they aren't acting in an insulated world of their own but have to deal with others.

In the case of America I am persuaded by Phillips that it goes along with power. Why it does is less clear but may include the impression of power being divinely bestowed.

The Phillips view explains why Europe's basic society is free of this trend. This does not include the not-assimilated Muslims, though.

I'm always a bit baffled that some people feel the need for a larger purpose. What's wrong with just living? Let's imagine a person that maintains that life without God would be meaningless. Let's then ask "Wouldn't you still love your children, obey the law, and want justice for all?" Can we imagine this person saying "No"?

I think it is a distrust of others. The "larger-purpose" crowd thinks others need it, not themselves. It may be hard for them to believe, but most of us would behave exactly the same (and I mean the VAST majority) if it were slam-dunk proved God did not exist, to everyone's agreement.

I think nothing can be done to change the minds of the fundamentalists--they are outside of reason. A lesson from recent history may offer a strategy, though. Consider two social campaigns that were very successful in changing behavior: those against indoor smoking and drunk driving.

Perhaps a similar campaign against "indoor" (inside politics) religion will get some traction if we continually point out the damage and danger. If we can make it embarrassing to discuss religion in political venues we'll have made some progress.

Michelle, I'm impressed by your connection of the fight against the Christian Right to electoral college reform -- too many people get caught up in conspiracy theories of the voting booth (albeit perhaps true) when the real problem isn't a corrupt system, it's the system as it was intended to work (so much for the great founders of the republic everyone wants to recruit as allies against the Right).

But fix the electoral college, and what do you get -- the Christian Right still presents what is to many an incredibly compelling story, a romantic view of history and the country's potential as a city upon a hill. Break the GOP stronghold on that story, and we end up with... Democratic Christian nationalists. Rushdoony, whom you write about so well, adored JFK's rhetoric. And although JFK was a lot better on a lot of issues, he did follow the Christian nationalist vision of a redeemer nation all the way to Vietnam. For that matter, the Cold War, the 20th century's version of manifest destiny, was as much a Democratic project as a Republican one.

So: Beyond busting up the electoral college, do we need to bust up the two-party system?

You write: "I believe that human beings can literally conquer the universe and should and I think social and economic liberalism is the best way to structure society to do it."

With all do respect, how is this anything but a secularized version of dominionism?

Religions Dominionists want to impose their specific laws. Within the Pax Humanica (not real Latin I know) I describe or subsrcibe to as it were, humans and even non-humans (assuming we run into them) will have:

1) their animals needs taken care of (food/sleep/shelter/etc.)

2) the opportunity and freedom to say what they will and do what they will (even politically) as long as it doesn't involve harming other sentient beings

This means ideally, that everyone will have the freedom and opportunity to find their own best way of expressing their beliefs without fear of social or institutional reprsial.

Re: I'm always a bit baffled that some people feel the need for a larger purpose.

Basic human nature. and a little like asking why people feel the need to have sex since they can after all live without it.
And even you are involved in some larger purpose as is evidenced by the very fact you are taking an interest in a topic that lies outside the day-to0day minutiae of your own life.

Why didn't you just name your book "Protocols of the Elders of Christian Dominionism" so it could be easily cataloged as fiction?

Are there some scary people out there trying to use Christian churches for their own ends? Sure. But the danger isn't a particular set of religious beliefs anymore than a communist economic system was the danger posed by the Soviet Union.

Aggressive authoritarianism or totalitarianism in whatever guise is the danger. People who think they know best, people who want power over others are the danger regardless of how they masquerade or what "ism" they use. They need to be unmasked for what they are.  They use fear and faux enemies to gain and keep power.

Unfortunately your book and cause will just give pretenders another faux enemy to rail against to enhance their own status with their followers. 

What a shame. 

Religion can provide no more answers about "why" than science can - not once you realize that God is a question, not an answer. Where did God come from? Why does God exist?

It is also not true that you can't gain an ethical system from evolution. The smartass answer is that since there is no god and religion is a byproduct of evolution, you most definitely can gain ethics through evolution. The more serious answer is that you don't need religion to realize the value of human life, family, etc. Once you start looking past an individual and towards society, you will arrive at ethics strikingly similar to the "God-given" variety. All the world's major religions subscribe to very similar systems of ethics -- is it because all those various gods magically happened to have the exact same ideas about ethics, or is it because those rules actually make most sense in human society?

"do we need to bust up the two-party system?"

Oh, hell, yeah, as long as both sides are corrupt members of the War Party.

There needs to be a near-total political house cleaning - perhaps fumigating would be a better term - of both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and most of the managerial bureaucrats in the administrative branch (certainly everybody over at the Pentagon, the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.)

Never happen, of course.

My view: there really isn't ANY way to stop the Christian right from continuing to gain power - until they overreach themselves.

Which they will - sooner or later. Domestically or internationally or both.

Iran is likely to be their international overreach. Another ten-year Vietnam is going to seriously damage this country's lust for "American Empire".

Domestically, I'm not sure what will trigger the backlash.

Another question people need to think about is: just how do you expect fifty-five million people are going to react to that overreach and the subsequent backlash?

Presumably most of them will sulk or get depressed. Tough. The real problem will be the real fanatics. Things could get ugly.

I assume when he says "literally conquer", he really does not mean "literally" or "conquer".

He means transform ourselves, expand into the universe, and learn to deal with it - and possibly even control it (assuming the heat death of the universe is not an absolute.)

And that is obviously entirely different from any form of dominionism.

"Even if you profess no religion, you can't really gain an ethical system from evolution."

Incorrect.

Religion does NOT deal with questions of "ultimate meaning" - it fakes that and produces incorrect answers based on conceptual imagination.

You can derive correct behavior in almost all situations from a consideration of the long-term economic consequences of cooperation vs coercion.

And you can also derive purpose directly from the fact that death is to be rejected, not feared or accepted. Life - existence - is the source of all value and purpose. That makes ocntinuing that existence the only primary purpose. All other purpose flows from that reality.

The very term "ultimate meaning" has no meaning beyond continuity of exiztence. Only purpose and behavioral principles matter. If your purpose is to survive in a society of sentient entities on this particular planet, then there are logical corollaries to that and to the economic, evolutionary and cultural histories of those entities that determine the best way for those entities to act in all situations.

It does not lead to social darwinism (at least if you're dealing with rational entities - unfortunately with most humans, you're not - you're dealing with chimpanzees.)

There is no need for "external" explanations of these matters.

Just because YOU can't derive these principles doesn't mean it can't be done.

What makes Kingdom Coming "fiction"?

This is really a reply to the last two posts. I fully respect those who construct an ethical system without reference to theistic religion. I just think it's a big mistake to use evolutionary biology as your organizing principle. The foundation of the latter is natural selection which is a pretty poor choice for an ethical system. As far as I can see, it leads inevitably to social Darwinism, which didn't work out too well, as we all know. It works fine for biology, badly for culture and ethics. I think Stoicism provides a better model. But it's not a science; it's a philosophical system.

I do object to the implied globalization of your principles. "I believe thus and so; therefore everybody who believes differently is superstitious and/or ignorant." It's nearly as objectionable as the Christianists who apparently want to forcibly convert everyone who disagrees with them. Once again, as others have said, these lunatics aren't really Christians. What happened to the idea of constructing a public space in which people agree to disagree on matters of personal belief and live in tolerant diversity?

If we've become this polarized, then the yahoos and know-nothings have already won.

 We are already in the universe, so we can't expand into it.  Every being ever in existence has dealt with the universe, because we have no choice.  Controlling the universe is a meaningless phrase.  And, "heat death" of the universe is another meaningless phrase.  The universe, by definition is everything, and it always will be.  Even the most pessimistic theory says the universe as we think it exists now, will continue for longer than it has existed before.  But, after that it still exists, but not like it does now. (maybe)  If you want to discuss the fate of the planet we live on, that's another story.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Physicist Frank Tipler worked the numbers on human expansion, with the assumption that people would not schlep their bodies over light-year distances, instead traveling in some kind of compacted way such as data. Using only the volatiles (fuel) contained in the large planets here, humans could colonize the galaxy in about one million years.

He also assumed (hoped) the universe would collapse, for two reasons. One would be so that previously dispersing signals would come back together. This meant the evidence of previous humans could be collected and the people resurrected.

The second reason was to skew the collapse into asymmetry, garnering an exponentially increasing energy source, which would allow computation speed to approach infinity, enabling Eternity for all humans living in a perfect virtual world.

Unfortunately for Tipler's imagined Heaven, the universe looks likely to expand in a runaway mode, so we'll never run out of space, but we'll get a bit lonelier.

Ain't science fun?

Some of us on the coasts sometimes chuckle over the fact that the regions that are the most up in arms over family values also have the highest rates of family dysfunction -- divorce, teen pregnancy, etc.

Quotes like the one above are really seen as disengenuous by me and other "theocons" like me.

It's easy to have lower divorce rates when the state you live in has given up, largely, on the idea of even getting married to begin with. Like the man who bemoaned to me what he feared the energy crises in California would falsely portray about California's energy consumption. Because, as he pointed out to me, "California's per capita energy consumption is among the lowest of the states. I was personaly involved with many in California's latin community at the time and I really felt to respond to him that a more likely reason for California's low per capita consumption rate had more to do with the fact that you had many small apartments housing in excess of 15 individuals in a single apartment with only a light or two, the TV and the oven using electricity. So to claim that families are worse off in certain states simply because they have higher rates of divorce and teen pregnancy than the one you live in is like saying that a swamp almost completely steril of life from environmental disaster is better off than a swamp that has currently has recently lost a higher percentage of it's wildlife population than the currently nigh sterril and contaminated swamp has.

So one place to start is to insure that the claims you make are not dependant on a witholding of all relevant information.

Then, when you employ the word "fiction," you mean you disagree with the considered judgment of the writer -- in this case, Michelle Goldberg. And I would say that your judgments are incorrect.

Dominionist political power arises out of the influence they have upon the results of Republican primaries in "red" Congressional districts. Over the past 20 or so years they have been instrumental in replacing one after another moderate Republican with radicals, many of whom are sympathetic to Dominionist demands to amend the Constitution to their liking.

There is no evidence of which I'm aware that what you characterize as the "Schiavo fiasco" or the fact of Tom Delay's indictment has embarrassed the Dominionists. Indeed, these events seem to have served as further proof of America's sinfulness and to have added to the energy they bring to their struggle against their bugbear, secular humanism.

This dwelling on perceived inequality in the electoral system, and the seeming delusion that this nation's system has ever acted in a from less skewed, for one side or the other, (things such as gerimandering have existed through this nation's entire history) seems to be rather hypocritical in light of a movement that sees it's opposition as seeking some fantasy vision of what was the 40's and 50's.

One could say that the above condescending attitude could be what could, or could help, propel 'liberals' in their ideology. Often when people feel they've explained some phenomena that they've overcome it, nevermind if their expaination can withstand all rigours, they want to feel to have overcome any ideology that may threaten their current lifestyle choices. If they've explained an event then they are above it. Conservatives are often labeled as anti-rational because the question some of liberal's questioning. Yet isn't eternal questioning the halmark of an openmind? It seems both sides often suffer from the idea that if their questions or answers are questioned that the individual questioning isn't giving due heed to logic, because to them it's so 'clear' that they are more logical.

And I'm the troll because I respond in light of my religious beliefs.

"But science as a system can deal only with questions concerning the material world, just as religion deals with questions of ultimate meaning. Even if you profess no religion, you can't really gain an ethical system from evolution. It leads to social darwinism. I think the philosophical mistake both sides have made in this debate is looking to their ultimate authority (be it science or religion) for types of meaning it can't provide."

Well said!

While I know ID is not in the realm of science I don't think it's just a political strategy to destroy scientific authority.

Otherwise I agree with you.

Well look at current marriage rates per 1000. Of course the likes of Nevada and Hawaii are skewed but look states like Massachusets and compare it with the likes of Utah or Idaho and then think about the comparative populations. Here's the CDC's site link to a pdf that shows the current rates by state of marriage.

www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/marriage90_04.pdf

It only stands to reason that if fewer people on average actually commit to matrimony that of course rates of breaking those vows will be lower. Of course then you have the exception like my home state which has a very high birth rate when compared to it's population and yet it has the lowest per capita divorce rate. And all this in the confines of what many still wrongly call a theocracy.

Yes, I've never read Tipler's books yet, but I did have some idea of his speculations. Interesting stuff.

Some Transhumanists get caught up in trying to speculate WAY out into the future. Then they get dogmatic about it, which is even worse! I try to avoid that, as I assume that our knowledge is not as great as it will be once Transhumans have accelerated brain power and nanotech - and perhaps femtotech and picotech - systems to investigate the physical universe in more detail and on a greater scale than anything we can do locked on this one planet.

I assume scientific knowledge that we take for granted as fact today will to some degree be supplanted by Transhuman scientific knowledge. So I don't concern myself about such issues as the eventual run down of the universe, or whatever.

I figure we have plenty of time to think about such things when we're really GOOD at thinking about such things.

Given that K. Eric Drexler posits that nanotech could produce a million-fold speedup of sentient thought - and systems of such could produce even greater speed - resulting in a million years of R&D per calendar year, I'd say it's premature to spend much time speculating about the ultimate fate of sentient entities or the universe in our present state.

One step at a time.

But it's fun to speculate - as long as one doesn't become dognatic about the conclusions.

Which, of course, is the problem with the religious community.

One doesn't have to assume that all the various sects will continue to be united, or that the majority of Christians will necessarily join them to recognize that the political influence they DO have is dangerous and could become more dangerous.

Calling this danger a "fiction" is putting one's head in the sand. It's cognitive dissonance - like believing the Iran war won't happen because it's too terrible to contemplate or conflicts with one's preferences in the matter.

If a prominent Democrat shared a conference stage with a member of, say, the Black Panthers or the Spartacus League, it would be grist for a thousand shrieking pundits, but Republicans consort with hardcore theocrats and never pay a political price.

If Republicans don't pay a political price for sharing a stage with hard-core theocrats, it isn't because Democrats and liberals haven't tried to make them pay a price.  On the contrary, they have usually tried very hard.  It just hasn't worked too well.

One of the great mistakes of progressive politicians and activists is to assume that a majority of the country is as revolted as they are by these people.  You see, while only a tiny fringe of people would share any political views with the Sparticist Youth League, a much, much larger proportion of people have quite a bit in common with the likes of James Dobson or Pat Robertson.  What's more, even if they don't agree with them on a lot of issues and even if they think they are prone to making dumb statements, an even larger proportion of people don't viscerally hate the theocrats the way liberals do. 

This is part of a fundamental misunderstanding of the electorate that is pervasive among progressives.  They assume that because a majority of people disagree on the issues with the Christian nationalists (to use Michelle's term) that they automatically are willing to fight them.  Perhaps that's true on an issue by issue basis - I think if the fundies tried to affect access to contraception in some significant way, for example, people would be up in arms.  But on a cultural, political level, the fundies speak to a lot of people.  If the choice is between a politician who wears his faith on his sleeve and connects on a cultural level with fundamentalists and an elitist intellectual who stresses the need for science-based policy and getting religion out of politics, the first guy will almost certainly win.

The thing people tend to forget is that Bill Clinton was one of the rare politicians who could span this gap.  He could speak to the Southern Baptist Convention as fluently and he could speak to the National Academy of Sciences.  As long as progressives persist in ignoring this, they are doomed to wander in the wilderness.

Re: To state the "purpose" idea more precisely, I mean a larger purpose given by something outside of the observable.

Political ideals are not “observables” either and political activism may involve goals that extend far beyond the activist’s life span.
I sometimes tell people that my mother was a Catholic, my father was a Republican, and in some ways that dichotomy was meaningful, since politics for my father was an interest that played much the same role that religion did for my mother.

The notion of deriving an ethical system from evolution is as absurd as the notion of deriving an ethical system from gravity. They are both claims or theories of fact -- descriptive, not prescriptive.

For that matter, insofar as religion deals with claims of fact -- God's existance, Jesus, Heaven with 77 Perpetual Virgins, and so forth -- one can't derive morality from religion.

It is absolutely impossible to derive (logically) any statement of morality from facts. You need a prior statement of morality as a premise.

-- Insane George W. Bush comment #394: See, free nations do not develop weapons of mass destruction.

I look forward to reading this book. This is something that has frightened me ever since I read A Handmaid's Tale back in the mid-80s!

The discussion of why this is happening now is interesting, and I have one suggestion. Michelle pointed out that there is a desire to go back to a kind of small town life that no longer exists. I'd go a bit further and say it is an attempt to go back to a kind of local community--which could easily exist in cities--that doesn't exist.

It used to be that people had a lot more connections with their community through clubs like the Masons and the Eagles, through community organizations, through sports leagues, etc. That's the thesis of the book Bowling Alone. And over time these bonds have weakened and become shredded. Lots of reasons--suburbanization, modern telecommnications (and now the internet), television, the automobile, etc. This is not to say that people no longer have community ties, or that clubs and local organizations no longer exist. They just are a lot less central.

But the one community organization that has survived this trend is the church. It has survived by evolving, as it has continuously evolved for 2000 years.

So now potential opinion leaders in the community only have contact with their church and their coworkers. Now in most workplaces, politics and religion are taboo subjects. So the only place in the community where one might discuss these things by default becomes the church.

This is not inherently bad, except that the Christian nationalist types are going to spread their views in church--it's their natural environment. So a guy who might have gotten some various one-on-one personal political views from his fellow lodge members, his bowling team, etc., now might only hear it in church.

So the implication here is that among other things, Democrats and liberals need to reach out to people in their communities. They need to make sure their neighbors and coworkers know that there is more than one way of looking at the world. And for the community organizations that still exist, democrats need to be joiners.

All easier said than done. I'm a classic example of a non-joiner. But I want to change that.

Exactly what point do you think I am missing?

I did not say the issue is statism. I said aggressive authoritarianism (i.e. bullying) which can occur at various levels and forms of organization.

My point is that the real threat is people, individuals or groups, who want to control others by unscrupulous means, usually by inducing anger and fear of something or someone.  

Your response is persuasive.  Those of us who have accepted the notion that divorce rates -- unadjusted for marriage rates -- are indicators of social dysfunction are going to have to do a rethink.

And there's no pride in the condescending and intended biting irony of the above?

As to why people look for higher purposes--for an "ultimate" reason for their actions, it might be helpful to look at this page on split-brain experiments:

When a split brain subject is subjected to tests where the left half of their brain does not know the correct answer, it will often make something up based on the information it does have.

In this particular test, each hemisphere was simultaneously presented with a different cognitive test. Each hemisphere was presented with a picture and told to pick the object which relates to that picture. The left hemisphere was shown a chicken claw, while the right viewed a snow scene. You can see that the patient is pointing to a chicken with his right hand, and a shovel with his left. After each hemisphere responded, the left hemisphere was asked to explain its choices. The way the subject verbally interpreted the double field stimuli is of particular interest. When asked what images he saw on the screen, the patient responded, "I saw a claw and I picked the chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel."Trial after trial, this kind of response occurred. The left hemisphere could easily and accurately identify why the right hand chose the corresponding picture that it had, and then subsequently, and without batting an eye, it would incorporate the right hemisphere's response into the framework. While observers knew exactly why the right hemisphere and made its choice, the left hemisphere could merely guess. What is interesting is that the left hemisphere did not offer its suggestion in a guessing vein but rather as a statement of fact.

So when we do something, but we don't have a reason why, we make up a reason without even knowing it.  Which suggests that our conscious world of reasons and rationalizations isn't the dominant cause of our decision making--it's just what we use to explain our decisions to other people.

I'm not sure those who stick to the "observable" world are any more free from this phenomenon than fundamentalists.  No one can escape a toddler's never ending series of "Why?" questions--every motivation can itself have a motivation, and people want to find an "ultimate" motivation to end the infinite regress.  So whether you pursue God, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, or Freedom as your ultimate motivation, you can still ask what motivates that ultimate motivation?  Atheists ask "Why God?" and that is a good question, but the Naturalistic Fallacy suggests we will never have a good answer to the question "Why Goodness?

The truth seems to be that there is no "ultimate" reason, but that's not a major problem because reason isn't what drives us, it's just what we use to justify ourselves to other people.  Freeing ourselves from the delusion that we use reason to justify and choose actions rationally is, perhaps, a vastly larger task than freeing people from the delusion of Biblical literalism.

Fundamentalism = traditional Christianity. I think perhaps first of all we need to be clear about what we are talking about. While you make a very articulate argument, Michelle, you seem to be operating with the same set of assumptions as those you portray as "Christian Nationalists".

First, it seems to me what we are experiencing is just the latest manifestation of the end of the "absolute ethic" that existed in Western Civilization at least among most of the population up until the 19th Century. Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead, and that we have killed Him." What he was talking about imo, and I think this is common among Nietzsche scholars, is that "science" as in scientific enquiry, and in Nietzsche's case, philology, had shown that the Christian religion was not so much founded, as "forged", as in a metal is forged. Historians of Roman history knew that early Christian texts were crudely written and at odds with themselves. "Family values" from a Roman perspective very much meant the rejection of Christianity as anti-thetical to Classical learning and thought, as Theodore Mommsen pointed out. We see a version of this basic truth coming out now with the Dan Brown book/movie. . .I would of course refer to Nietzsche's famous 3rd Essay in the Geneology of Morals as well. . .

Second, Max Weber, a very Nietzschean thinker, but greatly influenced by Marx as well, carried on this thought with his concept of "disenchantment of the world". In other words we no longer have an absolute ethic to guide behavior in all the various values spheres associated with human existance. The traditional Christian believes that his actions on earth influence his attainment of salvation in the afterlife. In political matters the traditional Christian perspective is one of disinterest, "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's". Even Puritans, who carried the Christian ascetic ethic to extremes never would have assumed that they "knew" God's will. . . rather it would have been an existance with a high probability of doubt, ceaseless prayer, and constant self-searching, which is the very opposite of what we see among the "religious right" or "Christian Nationalists" today. . .

I think instead that what we are dealing with is a profound confusion of values, whihc may be your argument afterall since I have not read your book. That various interests and individuals hope to "re-enchant" the "old Gods" and provide that missing absolute ethic which will define all the value spheres - political, spiritual, legal, familial, ethical, erotic . . . This will provide the believer with a certain amount of certainty and "meaning to life", but will also open them to endless maniputation and swindle since the interests of their masters are very much tied to this world, not the next.

So in effect we see nothing new here, just another attempt to provide an absolute ethic to define the meaning of life for a culture which is hopelessly polytheistic. . . Communism and Fascism attempted this as well. I would refer to William Pfaff's, The Bullet's Song, since this seems to be his argument as well. . .

Religion does NOT deal with questions of "ultimate meaning" - it fakes that and produces incorrect answers based on conceptual imagination.

And who made you a World Expert on what religion "deals with" (there's a epistomologically precise phrase)?

How about this proposition: everybody shut up about religion who: (1) is not attending religious services OR (2) has not studied religious texts to the extent he/she actually knows them. Hmm, just got real quiet.

You know, I frequently tell my daughter that you can't learn when you're talking because you can't hear what's being taught. It seems like she's not the only one who could or should take that lesson to heart. But, she's an 8 y/o chatterbox and even in the midst of that yakking, still displays a fine curiosity about the world around her. Which is more than can be said for the TPM Band of the Ignorati, the members of which believe their intellectual nerf darts are actually penetrating the reality of religious belief. Talk about deluded.

We pray to see life as it is, to understand it and to make it better that it was. We pray so that reality can break into our souls and give us back our awareness of the Divine Presence in life. -- Joan Chittister

I personally stick pretty closely to a self-imposed rule: don't talk on subjects about which I know nothing. Its corollary is significant, too: if a subject is sufficiently provoking, study it. I recommend the rule and its corollary to you. You may find the results of implementing this rule surprisingly satisfying: more reading and thinking, less talking. And then when you do talk, you will feel a particular pleasure in actually knowing what you are talking about! (And, there's always the chance that you will find your original position was wrong!)

There is a saying, "opinions are like a**h***s, everybody has one." Some opinions are based on learning, thought and insight; others are just, well, stink air.

mp

What, you're not going to post links to apologetic sites also? you think a lone reference to an open reference site is enough to 'balance' things out. Two anti- sites and one site that either side can access. I hope you're not going to pretend to be "fair and balanced" on this.

Too bad there's no slanderous "extranshuman.org" to childishly fire back at you.

I still find it funny that despite all your assertions that you will leave me alone you still cannot. You must hide behind the referance to a "certain religious troll" perhaps you are just doing as you wish others to do to you, Mr. "Certain Transhuman Troll."

Granted, Russia has plenty of its own problems. And it should also be noted that communism was, in many ways, a form of organized state religion with its own rituals and prophets and symbols and everything. Then again, Russia is in many ways a pretty screwed up country, and has been so for several hundred years at least.

As for the "official" churches, I'm not sure which countries you're talking about. Not France, not Germany, not Netherlands or Austria or Hungary.

So you would love your children less if you didn't believe in God and an afterlife? That is a comletely foreign concept to me. How does lying to youself make you love your kids more or give that love more meaning? I wake up knowing that every day could be my last and that makes me love my kids even more.

"That is so short is what makes life so sweet"- Emily Dickinson

You are affirming my point--by saying that "seeking some fantasy vision of what was the 40's and 50's" is in effect worse than the increasing influence of the party base, means that (to you) it is more vital to interrupt the progress of the Christian Dominionists than it is to fix the long term problem of electoral imbalance. I disagree. Remember that this whole thread is about what we can do; whipping up a partisan frenzy makes one side look just as unhinged as the other, and so far that hasn't worked at all.

The potential for gerrymandering has been around as long as this country has existed. However, the careful mapping voter habits combined with computerized Geographic Information Science makes it possible to exploit congressional redistricting moreso than any time in our history. The result is an electorate cut up and primed to support the party base. Look at any congressional map and you can see that somethin' aint right.

I argue that it is the two-party system that allows extremes on both sides to chip away the tempering influence of the moderate middle of America. Party Unity, which is a helpful proxy for the influence of the party base, has been increasing since the 70s and is at its highest level in 50 years. Extreme ideology and the unwillingness to reach a compromise is the real danger, and it just so happens that Christian Dominionists are on the up and up. I say that the solution won't come from the phalanx of "anti"-Dominionists, because they are just as invested in the two-party system as the Christian Dominionists are.

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/gov310/CO/partyunity/index.html

"human beings can literally conquer the universe and should"

Is this a joke of some kind? What are you proposing? Kicking some quasar ass? Reversing the expansion of the universe? Telling black holes to "knock it off or else?"

This I do know:

There is not a shred of physical evidence that there is a God or an afterlife.

If I know a book is about alien abduction, I don't need to read it to know that it made up by humans and not true.

If I know a book is about reincarnation, I don't need to read it to know that it is made up by humans and not true.

If I know a book is about exorcism, witchcraft, channeling past lives, Santa Claus or the healing power of crystals, I don't need to read it to know that it isn't true.

I am guessing you are a religious person. Have you read all of the texts of all of the religions in the world? How did you choose your religion (and thereby reject all the others) if you didn't read all of the texts?

Good, it seems we agree. We are not talking about Religion, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather politics which is something else. . . back to value spheres back to absolute ethic. . . back the to basic confusion in values. . .

A long time ago, Bertrand Russell addressed the issue of believing something because we think it makes people behave better, as opposed to believing something because you think it is true.

Russell would say that if you believe the truth is that it's not knowlable if there is a god or not (agnosticism), but you choose to advocate people believe in a god because they will behave more ethically - what you're doing is advocating mind control and encouraging people not to think critically. In the long run this will result in a society that gets itself in trouble because of its close-mindedness.

Well, the fact that the USA can be BS'ed by a moron like Bush for so long after 9/11 shows that we live in a country with many people who are not good critical thinkers. Certainly many of our institutions have discouraged critical thinking. Therefore, we are in trouble as a country. We need to confront irrationalism wherever we find it.

Tom

"Which suggests that our conscious world of reasons and rationalizations isn't the dominant cause of our decision making--it's just what we use to explain our decisions to other people."

This relates to brain experiments where it seems clear that our conscious minds in fact are sort of like computer MONITORS rather than the CPUs themselves - they present or reflect decisions made at a lower level. The logic is still there - but the thing doing the chattering is not the logic device.

As for the "reason" question, we Transhumans answer that one by not looking for a "reason", we look for a "purpose". And the only purpose that is an irreducible primary that includes all other purposes is survival.

And I would say that declaring reason to be a "delusion" on a par with faith is completely incorrect. As I said above, the logic is still there in both the mind and the external world. The only "delusions" are the reasons people use to justify their reactions to their fear of death.

"I personally stick pretty closely to a self-imposed rule: don't talk on subjects about which I know nothing."

On the contrary, it's apparent you ONLY talk about subjects about which you know nothing.

Stuff your smarmy insults, religious troll.

What, did you think I was going to cut you some slack, like some of the more polite posters around here?

Dream on!

While you're dreaming on, buzz off.

"Exactly what point do you think I am missing?"

I told you - elementary strategy.

I agree that authoritarianism is a problem. But you can deal with specific expressions of that as well as dealing with the principle in general.

In a sense, this refers to some other comments people have made about how Christian Nationalism is a "bigger problem than people want to deal with."

Well, you can enlarge almost any problem to a bigger level - as I do when I say it's all based on the human fear of and conceptual awareness of death as the defining characteristic of human nature.

As a radical Transhumanist, as I've said before, none of these discussions here is particularly relevant to my position or my proposed overall solutions.

Nonetheless, it is possible to deal with these issues on a more particular level without ignoring the larger issues.

It's not helpful to just throw every specific problem overboard and worry about even larger issues unless you're prepared to deal with those larger issues directly.

I don't bother discussing how to solve the human problem - except as a principle - because I know it isn't going to happen anytime soon because we don't have the technology.

Doesn't mean I can completely ignore everything else going on in the world (although I'll admit I spend too much time HERE!)

As I said, this is elementary strategy and tactics.

I have never "proselytized" here for Transhumanism unless I was specifically asked about it, or I made a statement about how Transhumanism sees an issue.

I have generally kept entirely to the issues being raised here, whether political or otherwise.

However, in the case of these threads, I early on specifically requested people to reveal their own religious persuasions so as to identify their bias. I asked this because I KNEW somebody was going to start making pro-religious comments in response to the topic under discussion under the guise of not being so biased.

I revealed MY bias immediately.

In the post above, I specifically identified one cult which is indistinguishable from the sort of Christian Nationalists we are discussing here. I contrasted it with Transhumanism in order that people reading these posts can see where I and the troll are coming from.

You are correct - this is a political blog. The discussion is about the political reaction that progressives should take to the political rise of Christian fanatics.

I don't see any point in granting the Christian fanatics any particular room to dominate the conversation.

The definition of a troll is someone who enters a conversation for the deliberate purpose of disrupting that conversation by posting material which is inappropriate, irrelevant, or impolitely antagonistic to the subject under discussion or the persons discussing it.

The trolls on this site have been fairly sophisticated about their approach compared to the sort one finds on HuffPo or Slashdot. That doesn't make their purpose any different.

Much of this discussion has moved in the wrong direction.

Arguing about religion is just fine for late nights in the dorm, but it's absolutely the wrong way to go in politics. Standing up in public and finding fault with the espoused beliefs of Republican voters will be seen, justifiably, as more proof that Democrats are arrogant and isolated from the majority of Americans.

Look, we don't need to convince people to change their religion before they vote for our candidates. If that's true, we should give up now.

Like I said at my blog, someone's religion is none of our business, but their behavior is. Specifically, their behavior in the polling booth.

How about this proposition: everybody shut up about religion who: (1) is not attending religious services OR (2) has not studied religious texts to the extent he/she actually knows them. Hmm, just got real quiet.

Your point (1) would have merit if religion was contained to religious services. But it's not. Once religion starts getting mixed up with politics, and this definitely is the case in America, religion becomes everyone's business, believer or not. Confine religion to churches and homes and you'll quickly find that atheists, agnostics, and other assorted infidels do not care what Gods others believe in.

Your point (2) is well taken. I can't speak for others but I have read the Bible often enough to form a qualified opinion about it. It is a collection of antiquated texts of questionable origin, very vague and often self-contradictory, which can be used to justify just about anything from helping the poor and loving thy neighbor to slavery and misogyny. The Bible has spiritual value and it is unquestionably a very important historical document. That doesn't mean using it as the organizing principle of a society is a good idea, not any more than using Wizard of Oz would be.

The analogy with a science blog is laughable given that religion is in many ways the exact opposite of science. It's more like left wing vs. right wing - try telling people that they may not post on liberal blogs unless they're Democratic party members and see how far you get.

Depends on who you want elected. I imagine the Republicans appreciate not having to bother with attack ad's protraying Democrats and progressives as highly bigoted schizophrenic anarchists who do not represent viable alternatives to most Americans.

It is so much easier to get the Democrats to do it to themselves, although the Swift Boat style groups might sue for intentional interference in livelihood.

We read about the Republican phone jamming dirty tricks exposed by jurnalists. I have to wonder if they stopped at telephone communications.

If love is just some pretended romanization mixed with biologicaly embeded hormonal responses then that does a great deal to diminish the meaning of my deep emotions. It does not make the connection less profound biologicaly or psychologicaly but it rather diminishes the scope that I hold of love. If love is not what I believe it is then it's not worth anything more than the perpetuation of our species and some fanciful lie we pretend to ourselves.

What is love if you can't commit to eternal devotion without 'pretending' or lying? Perhaps if you've only ever seen love as some bilogical contraption to keep the race going than it's no outstanding divergence to take all you can from the fleeting phenomena and count it a blessing. But I derive my highetened motivation to make the most of each day with my loved ones with something to exceed that of mere gratidtude for the lucky fortunes of biologicaly induced case of happenstance connectedness. You see I'm certain that our affections litteraly transcend all bonds of time and space. I believe that they are the key to our existance and the intended end thereof. Yes I lack empirical proof for such. But I pray I'm never such a fool as to think that all that is not empiricaly discernable or rationaly explainable to the finite mind to be beyond reality and truth. If that day ever came I'd be truly lost, to love, or to anything of any real value.

That love is eternal is what makes it so worth every sacrifice every minuit of every day of life that it ever demands of one. Love is eternal. I can't prove it to any other individual against there will, but I'll assert it's truthfullness still the same for as long as I'm granted power. Love binds all good together, and it's bind is eternal and ever transcending.

The truth seems to be that there is no "ultimate" reason, but that's not a major problem because reason isn't what drives us, it's just what we use to justify ourselves to other people. Freeing ourselves from the delusion that we use reason to justify and choose actions rationally is, perhaps, a vastly larger task than freeing people from the delusion of Biblical literalism.

Or freeing ourselves from the nature of our perceptions of the nature of other's Biblical literalism.

I appreciate your post. Though I find your conclusion to be little more than a likely percipitation of your own need to find a reason. But you are wise in stating that it is only what "seems" to be the truth. You are far wiser than many many people.

"smarmy" "religious troll" and "buzz off"

You do like those words.

I'll give you the reason ambiguity, although I do happen to think every goal should have a reason - even if the reason is nothing more than "have fun" - whatever that might mean in the specific instance.

Do not mistake my use of the term "survival" to mean "minimal survival." That is NOT sufficient.

As William Burroughs once said, "Survival must be calculated in immortal terms. Beware a fool's survival."

Or, if you meant that survival is not a "sufficient virtue", I do not recognize the term "virtue" per se as useful. What I mean is that survival has corollaries, and those corollaries lead directly to "correct behavior". In a society of sentient entities who acted rationally, all would act correctly out of the logic of the total needs of survival. This would automatically - assuming sufficient knowledge as well, of course - lead to the maximization of everyone without conflict.

Even the "life boat" paradigm that Ayn Rand couldn't properly answer can be answered by that logic - "Two heads are better than one even when it looks like two heads are worse than one."

Bill Clinton was one of the rare politicians who could span this gap

And both Al Gore and Jimmy Carter are both publicly "born-again" Christians, Gore once a divinity student.

I just ran across two very interesting quotes from Gore on topic; I posted them in a My Blog post here.

Matter of fact, now that I think more on it, I wouldn't consider anyone who doesn't know some of the history of Carter's sister Ruth and her reaction towards the more nascent version of the "Christian right" as particularly well-informed on this topic. Also, in an appearance on Larry King Live several months back, I recall Jimmy Carter talking very specifically about the Christian Right, faith-based initiatives, and separation of church and state. (I remember it because I posted a bit of the transcript, I think it was here on this site, but I am not sure....can't think of what to use to search for it right now.)

*Sigh* This is the fourth time I have rewritten this in the past hour. I really wish I was better at writing, I can't seem to even get close to what I want to say.

I really hate even appearing like I am trying to suppress alternate points of view. I was always brought up that if your values are worth anything, they can't be harmed by testing them against opposing views.

That is especially true about religion. It is not important what peoples opinions about God are, it's God's opinion of them that counts.

And I don't think I am wise enough to tell anybody how to live their lives. I am not even that certain about how to live my own life. I just do the best best I can and pray that I can be forgiven for the parts that I get wrong.

But I had to make these statements; I am getting really worried about the future of the Democratic party, and I do not get concerned easily.

Normally, I wouldn't be concerned. Society is a lot tougher and harder to change than most everyone realizes.

But something is wrong, our institutions are far off kilter. I have been noticing it since it started a little less than a year ago.

This concern over some politically active Christians, the Jefferson raid, there is so much that shouldn't, that couldn't be happening.

But it is. I don't understand why anyone even worries about Christianity as a threat, the days of the all powerful church is centuries in the past.

The problem is, people have lost faith in our government, our institutions, in the rule of law itself. They worry about every little htreat, because they don't think our institutions are strong enough to withstand a challenge.

Think about the Jefferson raid a few days ago. It doesn't matter if Jefferson is guilty or innocent, the American public doesn't trust the government as is. To violate the separation of powers that way was so incredibly stupid as to be bordering on high treason.

We have to restore faith in our government, our laws, or we will lose everything. The Democrats HAVE to win control of at least one of the branches of government in September. It isn't good, not for America, not for even the Republican Party, for power to get so far our of balance, expecially at such a critical time in our nations history.

If we can't restore faith in our laws immediately, perhaps we can at least give people some relief from the fear if the Democrats regain some power.

And thats the problem. We might not succeed even in that.

In the past few days, I have been really proud of the Democratic Party. Reid and Dean have been saying exactly the right things.

And, thanks to Josh Bolton, so has Bush. Normally, I would applaud that. But the damage to the Republican party is not only repairable, but with Josh Bolton in charge, likely.

Josh Bolton is unlike anyone the Democrats have come up against in recent years. I wouldn't get so confident about even the September, 2006 elections, unlike Rove, Josh is pragmatic and incredibly smart.

If Democrats lose focus, even for a second, they are at extreme risk of losing their current advantage. They don't have the trust of the voting populace, nobody does, the Democrats just appear to be the lesser of two evils.

Most importantly, that means that Democrats must project a clear and unambiguous position on the major issues, and most importantly, avoid Republican attempts to cast them as the party of fringe groups, of wild eyed radicalists with pie in the sky ideas and fantasy based philosophies.

I don't think Josh would do that, to be honest, I admire him.

But I think there is going to be a lot of Republican supporters who are going to try and draw Democrats into these "fringe" positions, most especially by exaggerating the traditional liberal biases that cause concern among most voters.

Take religion, for example.Even if you are not a particularly religious person, most people feel comfortable knowing that there is somebody taking care of business, religion wise, just in case they are wrong about religion being irrelevant.

What they don't feel comfortable about is a group that needs to attack religious people, they view it with the same concern one would view someone kicking a puppy.

Toss in comments like master races and superior beings, anything about "the bell curve", and various far fringe philosophies, and you get a very nervous voting public that is going to start thinking that perhaps the Democrats are not the lesser of two evils, at least, with the Republicans, they know what to expect.

We need to be very careful. We could blow this chance, and there is so much more than an election riding on it.

Should be safe to rail against religion here, but I take your point about a public position.

I'm with you on the main goal. Whether the Democratic Party is healthy or not I'm in the "anything but the GOP" camp until further notice.

Have to disagree with TH that the writing is just fine. He just disagrees with some of the content.

It doesn't matter what love is. It doesn't matter if it's just hormones and chemistry and psychology. What matters is that love is real. The feelings are real, the things people do for love are real. Why do you need to have some higher order justification or "reason"? Why the need to be so special? Isn't the fact that you are alive (and capable of love, regardless of what it might be) special enough?

Is there a god? Should we have invaded Iraq?

You need to answer those questions rationally in my view if you are going to be in the reality based community.

Does love make you feel good? Does believing in god make some people feel secure?

I assume the answer to both of those questions is "Yes". I also think there is an obvious sense in which "love" exists because you feel it. I don't think it is obvious that a god exists because it makes some people feel good to think that. That is where you need to rationally analyze or you get out of touch with reality.

Tom

You utterly avoided any direct addressing of what I pointed out.

Is there a god? Should we have invaded Iraq?

You need to answer those questions rationally in my view if you are going to be in the reality based community.

What good is your view of the "reality based community"? It's just a pretended fantasy world. Your grasp on reality is no better than mine. Yet you pretend an elite status to decide who has "right" to be in your imagined "elite" club. Thus you can denigrate all others as incompetent and unworthy of whatever influence they may exercise. What elitist BS.

"in my view"

"I assume.."

The very fact that you think that you have an adequate grasp on "reality" shows your disconect from the reality of your situation. If you were being realistic, in light of your limited human scope of comprehension, you wouldn't pretend any real capacity to grasp "reality" nor to discern who is and is not also a member of it. All you can do, following any logic, is say who's illusion of realitiy matches your own. NO ONE can see reality as it really is, unless that individual is omniscient. And you don't think it's possible to know that such a being exists.