Scholarly Hypatia Was Murdered by a Degenerate Clique of Christian Fundamentalists

[Pompey Bum]

What is you view of the Khmer Rouge (Communist Party of Kampuchea) acts of genocide? Here is a documentary, but there are shorter ones on YouTube you could check out as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqiSgciK16k

Their political programme can hardly be described as Marxist. They were more akin to ancient Sparta with a youthful military caste than Marxism-Leninism. I like the way how you totally ignored the massive U.S. bombing campaign which drove people into the cities to escape the horror of the countryside. Just because people call themselves communist does not mean that they are. Oh and did you know that the U.S. supported Pol Pot and his government when the Vietnamese government invaded and overthrew his regime? Food for thought.

Let me make this more hypothetical. Suppose the Khmer Rouge were communist by your way of thinking, would you approve of the actions taken? Do those means justify a communist end?

And just to make it more interesting, let's say they were lying about being middle aged and having a master's degree in Shakespeare. Would you approve?

[YesNo]

And just to make it more interesting, let's say they were lying about being middle aged and having a master's degree in Shakespeare. Would you approve?

I think there's a lot of lying going on. I don't know how to classify it. Some bothers me more than others.

If we compare Hypatia with the Khmer Rouge, it would seem that the Khmer Rouge was worse and more recent. I can imagine that Christians have learnt some lessons since the time of Hypatia, but the Khmer Rouge is very recent. My concern with all of this is to identify what thought processes made these acts possible and then rethink them somehow.

Also any sharp distinction between atheism and theism is not all that sharp. We use the same words.

[Pompey Bum]

I think there's a lot of lying going on.

You're not kidding.

I have seen the ghost of my aunt when she died over 20 years ago. I was in Maine, in graduate school, minding my own business, when she appeared in the student common room of the house where I was staying. We had a brief conversation in our minds and she vanished. Later I got a call from my parents saying that she had died.

Somebody pass the marshmallows.

[mortalterror]

Somebody pass the marshmallows.

I'm not prepared to call bull**** on that, however unlikely and out of the norm it seems. I've read about things like that occurring to people and have had similar experiences myself. There are other more mundane explanations, often more psychological than paranormal, but once you've actually experienced something like that a totally rational explanation is never completely satisfying. I prefer the logical, scientific explanation, but I leave a small window of doubt open for other possible explanations. I don't believe that most cases of miracles are authentic, but I also don't rule them out completely either. It seems like there are so many accounts by so many people over the years that if even one or two were real it would change everything we think we know about the nature of reality.

[Pompey Bum]

I'm not prepared to call bull**** on that

Yikes, I sure am. I don't begrudge YN his views, but I do begrudge him his sanctimoniousness, especially in the face of a whopper like that. Fess up when you fib, YN, and let's all move on. You too, RT.

[mortalterror]

And just to make it more interesting, let's say they were lying about being middle aged and having a master's degree in Shakespeare. Would you approve?

proof.jpg
In case anyone doubts that I have a BA in Engish.

[Pompey Bum]

Washington, huh? Suddenly it all makes sense. [ ]

[mortalterror]

Yikes, I sure am. I don't begrudge YN his views, but I do begrudge him his sanctimoniousness, especially in the face of a whopper like that. Fess up when you fib, YN, and let's all move on. You too, RT.

The thing about that is there are always multiple possible interpretations of events, and depending on the observers personal philosophy one interpretation will always be more likely than another. Personally, I like to leave myself a little latitude, a measure of wiggle room for my conclusions. When it comes to religion or science I am largely convinced but with reservations. I have my doubts about the accuracy of both. I find that in cases of extreme credulity or incredulity what most subjects boil down to are the bedrock issues of probability, justification, and warrant.

Interestingly enough, I've read studies where atheists were more likely to believe in the supernatural than theists were. There appears to be a psychological replacement going on. When they reject religion they replace it with a belief in magic, ghosts, psychics, aliens, lucky charms, the evil eye, etc. Conversely, the more religious and orthodox a person was, the less likely they were to believe in such things. Sometimes, I wonder if the Inquisition was an attempt by the Church to impose rationality on superstitious peasants, and cleanse Europe of all irrational belief in magic or fairies rather than a witch hunt like it's often portrayed.

One of the things I've noticed in the atheist community is their unwillingness to trust authority figures or subscribe to the official explanation on certain subjects. This leads large numbers of people to believe in some very far fetched things. I've long wanted to see statistics on the religious beliefs of 9/11 truthers or people who think Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy, just to confirm this hunch, but to my knowledge nobody has gathered that data yet. There are so few studies done on the beliefs of atheists compared to the massive data pool on believers. It's really a shame how little we know about this interesting minority of society.

[Red Terror]

I admire Lenin's conception of true morality which is based on class interests not on superstitious nonsense. This is the truth. This is what's real!!!

Lenin said:

"But is there such a thing as communist ethics? Is there such a thing as communist morality? Of course, there is. It is often suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality. This is a method of confusing the issue, of throwing dust in the eyes of the workers and peasants.

In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality?

In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God's commandments. On this point we, of course, say that we do not believe in God, and that we know perfectly well that the clergy, the landowners and the bourgeoisie invoked the name of God so as to further their own interests as exploiters. Or, instead of basing ethics on the commandments of morality, on the commandments of God, they based it on idealist or semi-idealist phrases, which always amounted to something very similar to God's commandments.

We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class concepts. We say that this is deception, dupery, stultification of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landowners and capitalists.

We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle. Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.

The old society was based on the oppression of all the workers and peasants by the landowners and capitalists. We had to destroy all that, and overthrow them but to do that we had to create unity. That is something that God cannot create."

By the way, do you know that the U.S. invaded the Soviet Union???? I wonder if any of you are aware of this little item of history?

I agree with you about the problems with the US and Vietnam and Pol Pot. I am old enough to remember those days and I am not trying to justify them.

Let me make this more hypothetical. Suppose the Khmer Rouge were communist by your way of thinking, would you approve of the actions taken? Do those means justify a communist end?

[Red Terror]

I agree with you about the problems with the US and Vietnam and Pol Pot. I am old enough to remember those days and I am not trying to justify them.

Let me make this more hypothetical. Suppose the Khmer Rouge were communist by your way of thinking, would you approve of the actions taken? Do those means justify a communist end?

I'm still waiting for an answer to the question I posed about the U.S. invading the Soviet Union. In the interim I will leave you all with a little reflection about why the Russians clamped down on Eastern Europe from 1945-1989.

Of course it is not possible for the people of an un-bombed, un-invaded nation really to understand what happened to the Russians. The Nazis and their allies occupied Soviet territory in which 88,000,000 people had lived. They destroyed, completely or partially, fifteen large cities, 1,710 towns, and 70,000 villages. They burned or demolished 6,000,000 buildings and deprived 25,000,000 people of shelter.

They demolished 31,850 industrial enterprises, 65,000 kilometers of railway track and 4,100 railway stations; 36,000 postal, telegraph and telephone offices; 56,000 miles of main highway, 90,000 bridges and 10,000 power stations. The Germans ruined 1,135 coal mines and 3,000 oil wells, carrying off to Germany 14,000 steam boilers, 1,400 turbines and 11,300 electric generators.

Any reflection on these figures by American city dwellers will undermine the idea that Russia can have no motive in the world except aggression. Farm people, too, will see another possibility when they think of the meaning of 98,000 collective farms and 2,890 machine and tractor stations sacked and the following numbers of livestock slaughtered by the Germans or carried away by them: 7,000,000 horses, 17,000,000 cattle, 20,000,000 hogs, 27,000,000 sheep and goats, 110,000,000 poultry. What would the American countryside be like if this kind of scourge had passed over it? And what feelings would be left behind?

The Germans and their satellites were no more tender with Soviet cultural institutions. They looted and destroyed 40,000 hospitals and medical centers, 84,000 schools and colleges, and 43,000 public libraries with 110,000,000 volumes. Some 44,000 theaters were destroyed, and 427 museums. Even the churches did not escape, more than 2,800 being wrecked.

In this country these figures do not burn holes in the page, but in Russia what they represent has been burned so deeply into the minds of the people that generations of safe living would be required even partially to eradicate them. There are between Nashville and Atlanta some people who still feel deeply about what General Sherman did on his march to the sea nearly a hundred years ago. What would our feelings be if the United States had been ravaged, as Russia was, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, with 15,000,000 people killed, twice as many made homeless, and 60,000,000 treated to every degrading and brutalizing experience that the fascist mind could invent? Only then could we really know how the Russians feel about their security from future attack through East Europe.

The Rule of Fear and Hindsight in World Politics

D. F. Fleming

The Western Political Quarterly

Vol. 3, No. 4 (Dec., 1950), pp. 528-537

Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association

http://www.jstor.org/stable/442512?s...n_tab_contents

[Pompey Bum]

The thing about that is there are always multiple possible interpretations of events, and depending on the observers personal philosophy one interpretation will always be more likely than another. Personally, I like to leave myself a little latitude, a measure of wiggle room for my conclusions. When it comes to religion or science I am largely convinced but with reservations. I have my doubts about the accuracy of both. I find that in cases of extreme credulity or incredulity what most subjects boil down to are the bedrock issues of probability, justification, and warrant.

Oh, I'm completely open to ghosts being demonstrated under laboratory conditions with repeatable results. I'm not holding my breath, though. And I am of the opinion that YN is deliberately lying about his aunt (or whoever it was supposed to be). But if I found out that he wasn't lying, I would apologize.

Interestingly enough, I've read studies where atheists were more likely to believe in the supernatural than theists were. There appears to be a psychological replacement going on. When they reject religion they replace it with a belief in magic, ghosts, psychics, aliens, lucky charms, the evil eye, etc.

I have noticed that sort of credulity among some internet anti-theists. But most of the atheist intellectuals I have known--or at least the ones I have discussed the subject with--pooh-poohed ghosts and such things. But of course my experience is not a randomized one, as presumably a study would be.

Sometimes, I wonder if the Inquisition was an attempt by the Church to impose rationality on superstitious peasants, and cleanse Europe of all irrational belief in magic or fairies rather than a witch hunt like it's often portrayed.

No doubt some of the friars in the field believed that's what they were doing, but the institutional goal was the promotion of unanimity and uniformity (that is, orthodoxy) by the destruction of dissent (that is heresy). But orthodoxy is not synonymous with theism or even Christianity. Indeed, many an unorthodox/heretical Christian went into the flames.

[Danik 2016]

For the sake of context I am including the link of the whole discussion about the faith in the supenatural which I found quite interesting:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...69#post1263969.
Personally, in spite of considering myself a predominantly rational person, I feel that the uncanny is present around us. And it is well so: without it neither the fairy stories nor the horror stories based on supernatural issues would ever affect us. And there wouldn´t be any nightmares either.

[Pompey Bum]

Thanks, Danik. This is from November 29, 2014. It is remarkably similar to what I just said to MT:

I will believe in ghosts when they can be conjured up in laboratory conditions with repeatable results. Until then, they remain a matter of faith, and I do not have faith in their existence. (It is a source of amazement and amusement to me, by the way, how many people believe in ghosts, or souls, or soul mates, or a host of other things they find cool, but disdain faith in God as wishful thinking--but I guess that is for another discussion). I don't believe in ghosts, but of course I am open-minded to the possibility of their eventual "discovery."

Personally, in spite of considering myself a predominantly rational person, I feel that the uncanny is present around us. And it is well so: without it neither the fairy stories nor the horror stories based on supernatural issues would ever affect us. And there wouldn´t be any nightmares either.

But that is only to say that the irrational mind is a part of the human experience. Take a stand, Danik. Do you or do you not believe in ghosts?

[Danik 2016]

I myself didn´t have this experience. But I heard storys including one of a person of my family, that is very close to me. So I believe yes that there are sensitive people with visions and forebodings. You yourself describe an experience in the same thread that might have an rational explanation or not.

[Pompey Bum]

No, as I said at the time, there was nothing supernatural about it. But your sudden conversion is interesting. If you believe there are "sensitive people with visions and forebodings" then you must think there is something that their sensitivity allows them to perceive. So despite your professed rationalism (and consequent rejection of religion), you do accept things that may not have a widely accepted rational explanation. Are you only a rationalist when rejecting a point of view you don't particularly like? Or are you just in the closet about being superstitious?