The Glade 4.0

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I sometimes get frustrated that ... while I agree with almost all of you at various times, I disagree with you at least as often. I don't have a common set of axioms with any of you. You know what? That's fine, and probably true for everybody to some extent, but, in the interests of clarity in other discussions, I'm going to put it all out there.

At my heart, I am an wannabe-anarchist who reluctantly agrees some basic authority structure is both inevitable and necessary. I hold the individual as sovereign, but will grudgingly agree that society does need some controls.

This has implications everywhere.

Government: Government needs to be hobbled, collared, and controlled. They are public servants, not our masters, and need to be reminded of that constantly. They are not our nannies, it is not their responsibility to look after us for our own good. Government is a necessary but dangerous tool that if we let up our vigilance, will soon become our father-figure, and that's where tyranny starts.

The Corporation: The large, immortal entity known as the publicly traded corporation has similar issues as government, but it's far less necessary for society. Like government, the corporation is a tool, but as an organization, the legal rights and priviledges we have granted it allows it to take on a life of its own, developing an organizational personality of sorts. The problem is, these personalities are, at best, sociopathic. The legal construct of the corporation is flawed -- it forgot to take into account the inherent malevolence of human authoritarian social constructs.

Religion: Khross tells me that religion is just subset of the corporation, which may or may not be accurate, but there are certainly similarities. Ultimately, religion is a construct used to control people, at a far more insidious level than either government or the corporation. Religion attempts to control the hearts and minds of its adherents, bringing every part of the human being into submission to authority, even down to their dangly bits. Religion has just as much potential for harm as government, but it also has no benefit to its existence. It is solely a means for human beings to manifest control over each other.

Trade Unions: let's incorporate the workers too. A prime example of two wrongs not making a right, here we take power away from the individual worker and willingly hand it over to an authoritarian organization, ostensibly for their own benefit. And it ultimately benefits nobody but the union leadership. Unions are problematic for the same reasons as the three above.

I pick on religion a lot because it's more often the topic of discussion here, but ultimately, I see it as just a part of the same big problem. I believe biggest, single fundamental problem with the human animal is our willingness to surrender our own sovereignty and subjugate ourselves to other human beings. I believe individuality and an unwillingness to submit to authority for authority's own sake is the most important virtue a person can have. Freedom is a wonderful thing. Most people don't know how to use it though, and when given freedom, use it to freely subjugate themselves once again. It's a type of insecurity whereby we do not trust ourselves. Judaeo-Christianity even makes this a religious doctrine, "I know, LORD, that a man's way of life is not his own; no one who walks determines his own steps." (Jeremiah 10:23).

Bullshit. It belongs to each of you to determine his own path. Don't throw it away and hand your allegiance to those who do not deserve it. I don't care if it's President or Pope, CEO or Union Boss. You are master of your own mind. That's the only thing nobody can take away from you.


Ultimately, that's my position in a nutshell. You don't have to agree. I'm not your master either.

Your views are very similar to mine Talya, only difference I suppose is that I accept and rather than actively resent it, I work within its realms to make it work for me.

Sociopathic... maybe, but I also understand without power and influence, you can not change those which you want to change.

Wait, seriously, WTF is Jackie??

Religion: Khross tells me that religion is just subset of the corporation, which may or may not be accurate, but there are certainly similarities. Ultimately, religion is a construct used to control people, at a far more insidious level than either government or the corporation. Religion attempts to control the hearts and minds of its adherents, bringing every part of the human being into submission to authority, even down to their dangly bits. Religion has just as much potential for harm as government, but it also has no benefit to its existence. It is solely a means for human beings to manifest control over each other.

The clearest evidence comes from the anthropologist Richard Sosis, who examined the history of two hundred communes founded in the United States in the nineteenth century. Communes are natural experiments in cooperation without kinship. Communes can survive only to the extent that they can bind a group together, suppress self-interest, and solve the free rider problem. Communes are usually founded by a group of committed believers who reject the moral matrix of the broader society and want to organize themselves along different principles. For many nineteenth-century communes, the principles were religious; for others they were secular, mostly socialist. Which kind of commune survived longer? Sosis found that the difference was stark: just 6 percent of the secular communes were still functioning twenty years after their founding, compared to 39 percent of the religious communes.

What was the secret ingredient that gave the religious communes a longer shelf life? Sosis quantified everything he could find about life in each commune. He then used those numbers to see if any of them could explain why some stood the test of time while others crumbled. He found one master variable: the number of costly sacrifices that each commune demanded from its members. It was things like giving up alcohol and tobacco, fasting for days at a time, conforming to a communal dress code or hairstyle, or cutting ties with outsiders. For religious communes, the effect was perfectly linear: the more sacrifice a commune demanded, the longer it lasted. But Sosis was surprised to discover that demands for sacrifice did not help secular communes. Most of them failed within eight years, and there was no correlation between sacrifice and longevity.

Why doesn’t sacrifice strengthen secular communes? Sosis argues that rituals, laws, and other constraints work best when they are sacralized. He quotes the anthropologist Roy Rappaport: “To invest social conventions with sanctity is to hide their arbitrariness in a cloak of seeming necessity.” But when secular organizations demand sacrifice, every member has a right to ask for a cost-benefit analysis, and many refuse to do things that don't make logical sense.

Yeah, religion is obviously used for control. And I'll even agree that a lot of times that control is a bad thing, but some amount of control is necessary for a civil society to survive.

It's pretty obvious Taly has a bias against organized religion strong enough to cause her to commit numerous logical fallacies in her explanation of its alleged perils.

Your tirade in the 46% thread was completely devoid of logic and reasoning. I have my personal reasons why I don't think religion is all that useful but to declare, with any objectivity, that religion is a net bane in society in some sort of quantifiable fashion is, quite frankly, the height of lunacy.

and the positives need to resort to things like "a sense of belonging,"

Again, no matter how "obvious" it may seem to you, you have not established quantifiable metrics to make your point. As someone who allegedly professes a love for the scientific method, logic and reasoning, you should give your position a serious reconsideration.

Your opinion would be in a minority, then.

In the scientific community, maybe.

A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, finds that...just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power, according to a survey of the general public conducted by the Pew Research Center in July 2006.

...The Pew Research Center poll of scientists also found that levels of religious faith vary according to scientific specialty and age. For instance, chemists are more likely to believe in God (41%) than those who work in the other major scientific fields. Meanwhile, younger scientists (ages 18-34) are more likely to believe in God or a higher power than those who are older.

It's only the light green you need to worry about. The dark green includes Pantheists. Pantheism is just poetic atheism, and makes up a huge chunk of the sciences.

It's also interesting how, without variation, age and experience cause scientists to lose faith. It's like a significant proportion of them still hold on to childhood faiths into university, then lose it as they start to practice.

Also, the percentage changes as you approach the top echelons of the natural sciences. The linked pole included anyone with any type of science degree. Move into those performing experimentation, or even just those in the core natural sciences, and the numbers start to change. 93% the National Academy of Science in the USA, for instance, call themselves atheist.

I believe that study is linked here, but I don't have access.

WTF? How does "belief in a higher power" translate to atheism? You can't just claim a group because it helps your argument.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

WTF? How does "belief in a higher power" translate to atheism? You can't just claim a group because it helps your argument.

Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, has described Pantheism as "sexed-up atheism." That may seem flippant, but it is accurate. Of all religious or spiritual traditions, Pantheism - the approach of Einstein, Hawking and many other scientists - is the only one that passes the muster of the world's most militant atheist.

So what's the difference between Atheism and Pantheism? As far as disbelief in supernatural beings, forces or realms, there is no difference. World Pantheism also shares the respect for evidence, science, and logic that's typical of atheism.

However, Pantheism goes further, and adds to atheism an embracing, positive and reverential feeling about our lives on planet Earth, our place in Nature and the wider Universe, and uses nature as our basis for dealing with stress, grief and bereavement. It's a form of spirituality that is totally compatible with science. Indeed, since science is our best way of exploring the Universe, respect for the scientific method and fascination with the discoveries of science are an integral part of World Pantheism.

That was a value thrown out off the cuff. I believe the number is closer to 80%, which is still a strong majority.