“Its like attacking the hammer because someone used it to kill another.”
Not really.
The hammer has many valuable uses and only on the rarest of rare occasions is one used to kill. Religion has limited value, tons of negative aspects, and is regularly used to justify doing terrible things (sometimes with a hammer.)
I have no idea what analogy can be used for religion. All I know is that the hammer one doesn’t work well.
Lausten, perhaps the tools analogy is not the best, but my primary point is that religion is more a tool . . . okay, maybe a symptom? . . . of a much larger and more exhaustive problem - that leaders can and do use [name your -ism] to motivate/manipulate their followers to pursue the leadership’s goals, and, while great good can sometimes result, so can great evil. And it really doesn’t matter whether the -ism used is a religion or some other 'ism - the fatherland, motherland, der fuhrer, dear leader, king and country, or any other thing or idea people have been convinced is worth killing or dying for.
There you go. Another right winger hanging themselves with their own logic
Yep, I think I said that. I also said cults aren’t always bad.
Your point is?
Unquestioning loyality and dying for a lie
If they ask why we died tell them because our fathers lied
RUDYARD KIPLING 1865 to 1936
Player, are you saying that there is never a good reason for war, that we should just zero the defense budget and be done with it?
Again, what is your point?
A just war???
Yep, I think I said that. I also said cults aren’t always bad.I don't know Gene well enough to say, but this seems like a typical right wing statement. As much as they talk about values, they are willing to compromise them when it suits them. The means are judged based on the desired ends.
Cults are defined by excess. To a cult member, taking literal poison can make sense if it can be connected to the ideal of the cult. Republicans today are showing how much they will look the other way on values if it gets them the judges they want or the tax cuts they want.
Player, all wars are bad in a lot of ways, but are you saying that nothing is worse? Should we, for example, have not gone to war for our independence, or fought in World War II, or allowed North Korea to take over South Korea? I’m just trying to understand your position on this, whether you’ve actually ever given it any real thought.
Lausten, interesting comments. Do you honestly think the “left wing” (as opposed to the “right wing”) are value pure and have all the answers? What values do I seem to be compromising? Just curious.
As regards cults, I don’t recall any definition saying cults must act excessively. Certainly the potential is there for any highly motivated group, especially groups, such as the military, who often place their lives on the line, but such attitudes are not bad in and of themselves. Again, are you really of the opinion that there are no left wing cults?
Lausten,
Right now, you live in a country that has a leader that cannot lead effectively due to judges. Do you want a country led by judges or a president? An example would be Mexico and Venezuela are counties that have a system of being led by judges. The Republicans have got it right on the judges. As far as tax cuts. You can fix that. Nothing stopping you and the rest of the democrats from sending in more money. Oh, wait, you don’t want to send in any more money, do you. You just want some one else to send in more money. Maybe all the business. No trickle-down effect there in the Democrats math is there?
On the cults. You are spot on. Couldn’t agree more.
As far as religions are cults. I would try and separate them this way. The most common factor of all gods is control of some sort of knowledge. Now, religions as you are using them here don’t have to have gods. But they seem to have some sort of knowledge that the followers want. Cults do not necessary seek knowledge. For example, a rock song by Led Zeppelin may have created a following that formed into a sort of a cult. It starts with a Tee-shirt and then ends up as a tattoo and a hand sign.
Point being. “Religion are cults”. I think is backwards. Cults can form into religions. In doing so, they may keep aspects of the cult. But I have not seen a lot of Religions forming into cults. “Cults can be Religious” works better for me. The main factor of religion is teaching good vs. bad. Cults are like the Democrat Party. Does not have to have any morals. Just a common need for greed.
Cults can be good in the same way a broken clock is correct on the time twice a day… by accident.
There is no such thing as a good religion or cult because they use irrational/illogical means to create their philosophy. Doing good due to bad reasoning is not commendable. If you shoot at me to kill me but miss and accidentally kill the bear that’s about to maul me, I’m not going to thank you.
I will never take away whatever benefits religion, cults and other groups of that nature, can give us, but I refuse to give them credit. The same results could have been gotten by positive, rational means.
I don’t know enough about how the US military and other western militaries operate to know where I stand on all their methods. Pretty sure the North Korean military uses methods we’d all agree are bad, but it sure produces good soldiers- hopefully we use better methods to get the same (or better) results.
Gene, not going to play “whataboutism”. I explained the values. Do I need to get specific about how much time was spent on Monica and how much of Trump’s behaviors have been dismissed, or the outrage over Obama suggesting we negotiate with world leaders vs the praise for Trump making an unplanned stop at the Korean border?
As for cults, I’m not using your definition, I’m using the dictionary.
Lausten, I agree that we’re getting much further into a political discussion than I wanted to go. Clearly we’ll never agree on a number of points. The only other observation I’ll make is that, in most cases, although I doubt we’ll agree even on this, each of our positions are built on what we perceive to be solid, fact based, foundations, and yet we fail to agree. I guess that just means we’re human.
3point14rat, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. The second (of 5) definition for “cult” in Merriam Webster is “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work.” Having great devotion to something is not bad, in itself, as you seem to postulate. And, using this definition of cult, I think, is quite valid today, given the number of non-religious groups whose members evince great, often excessive devotion to their cult’s idea or movement.
My key point remains . . . whatever you want to call them, these groups who’s members have great devotion to the idea or movement basis for the cult, regardless of whether its religion based or not, regardless of whether it has some rational basis or not, is always going to be vulnerable to leadership manipulation and is therefore not much more than a tool of that leadership to wield for good or bad. Further, its a waste of time to attack the foundation of such groups, given their devotion (which explains the skeptics’ failure to make significant headway agains tsuch groups, and, instead, we should be focusing on group leadership, its own motivations and goals, and work on those leaders, instead.
Ya, I wasn’t getting my hopes up that I’d convert you in a few posts. We’re different people who grew up in very different environments and have lived very different lives, so it would take a ton of ink (would that be electrons in this medium?) to make one of us completely change our minds.
I just like to hear what others think, give my thoughts, and have an interesting conversation. Your points are not really fundamentally different, more just differences in a bunch of details.
It doesn’t help that ‘cult’ and ‘religion’ and lots of other words have a range of definitions, so having ours line up perfectly is wishful thinking.
Gene i wonder why you have to go back 80 and 160 hundred years when talking about just wars
Player, not knowing what you consider defensive, I was playing it safe. I also happen to believe Vietnam (a proxy battle/friendly nation request), the First Gulf War (friendly nation request/US interests), and Afghanistan (imminent threat) were defensive wars. The second Iraq war, even I’m not sure about that one. The developing Cyber War with China and Russia is, IMHO, clearly defensive. Its my sincere hope it doesn’t move to other realms of war, but both China and Russia are pushing hard because, after Obama and now Trump, they perceive the West as being weak.