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darobin (1316)
Yay, regression!
Political summer in France is usually slow. Apart from the new government decreasing taxes for the richest and increasing prices of fundamentals (transport, telephone, tv...) for everyone (do the math: who loses most?) not much happened.
But now that september's around, things have started... Budgets for culture, research, and education have been slashed down. The system that allows artists to live with irregular income is being dismantled. The 35h work week system is being tortured, slowly turned into a 39h week paid 35. That's only the beginning of course, but people are acting surprised. It's not as if it were any different from the Juppé or Balladur governments...
It gets better. Gay/Lesbian and Feminist organisations have been removed from the various governmental agencies in charge of 1) Family, 2) Sexual Education, and 3) Gender Equality to be replaced with two wonderful organisations: a group of Catholic Integrists from the Opus Dei and a bunch of so-called "pro-life" assassins. Oooh, I can tell the months to come are going to be fun in some political areas!
I guess some day I'll understand why religious people are so often so intent on forcing their own life-styles unto unsuspecting innocents. Chosing to live by the rules of religion Foo is fine by me so long as you don't kill or steal. But attempting to force me to follow those precepts, either directly, by polluting politics with religious considerations, or by infiltrating state organisations is an act of direct aggression. It's so obvious, I don't even understand how those people don't realise that it's downright evil.
If you frequent religious circles and know people like that and are close enough to them to understand what can produce such mental configuration, I'd be happy to know about it. Last time I checked World Domination and Crush Everything Different were not moral imperatives.
I guess that all hope that the coming five years might not be as bad as they looked they would be can now be left behind. Hmmm, anyone have suggestions for civilized countries out there?
Or is it a BUG?"
"Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)"
--Larry Wall in <6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
why so many religions tend to force their values (Score:2)
This is off the top of my head, and not well-thought-out, but seemed to be useful at first glance, so I thought I'd comment: try comparing religion to biology, particularly in regards to evolution.
You might ask "what could produce such a
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
You must have forgotten about the "Kill them all, for surely god shall know his own." in the crusades. There is nothing in biology to explain the crusades and the mass killings. Christianity bludgeoned its way through history rather than evolved.
When fanatics of any ideology get power to push their own agendas it is a bad day for everyone eventually.
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
yes...and the quote comes from the question one asked 'how shall we tell the christians from the cathars?'. So they simply killed everyone thinking that 'god shall surely know his own.' Problem solved.
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
Yes, I know this quote well and thank you for the english version of it for I'd been wondering about that for quite a while, but always when away from a computer and/or google (surely you'll know what I mean). I know there is much about Christianity (and other religions) that is totally despicable. However, I also know there have been great thinkers in their midst, some of which were incredibly open-minded (especially during the Middle Ages, contrary to common opinions). As an atheist, I would rather see
-- Robin Berjon [berjon.com]
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
> Christianity bludgeoned its way through history rather than evolved
Evolution is never toward any goal. It just *is*. That something evolves does not mean that it gets better. The crusades and the spanish inquisition may have influenced individuals to raise their children christian so they would not be tortured or killed. That affects the numbers of christians in future populations. That could be reasonably compared with evolution.
I'm not saying the comparison is ideal, or even useful beyond chatting
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
Thanks for underlining this aspect. I am aware of the problems any ideological -- not just religion -- system faces when it wishes to survive: it needs a way to spread and perpetuate itself. It's only logical, and thus far there's little wrong with that.
On the other hand, if you truly want to look at it from an evolutionary point of view (I think there are limits to the application of evolution to social science, it's much more complex than that -- but lets pretend we're still at a sufficiently sim
-- Robin Berjon [berjon.com]
Re:why so many religions tend to force their value (Score:2)
> it wishes to survive: it needs a way to spread and perpetuate
> itself. It's only logical, and thus far there's little wrong
> with that.
by comparing with evolution, I did not mean to say that thier actions were logical or justified. In fact, biological evolution is neither logical nor justified... it just *is*. There are many biological facts about humans which are illogical in an of themselves, but at no point in our evolution did our
Germs, Guns, and Steel (Score:2)
1) ambush
2) overwhelming force
This minimized the chance that a member of the band would get wounded and/or die. This is because he member was extremely valuable and necessary to the survival of the group. A loss of one member emperiled the whole band.
That
It depends on the context (Score:2)
Re:It depends on the context (Score:2)
It should be noted that one can oppose abortion without reference to any religious beliefs [l4l.org]. In fact, I'd say that for the most part, I do, politically speaking. I have no desire to force my religion upon others. (Propagate through rational persuasion, yes, but not force.) In Kiev, Ukraine I saw a monument to Vladimir, who learned from the Bible that you had to be baptized, and thus forced his entire country to be baptized in the Dniper river or perish. (Very much like Charlemagne.) This kind of thing
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
Re:It depends on the context (Score:2)
Re:It depends on the context (Score:2)
You'll have remarked that I'm not taking any side in this post.
Always a wise policy, when possible. ;)
Abortion : as you pointed out, it depends on the definition of what an homicide is.
I think the primary thing that bothers me, from a political point of view, is that pro-abortion folks deny the rationality of considering abortion to be murder. There's not even a sense of, "Yes, I can see how you might see it that way." Is it that odd and unreasonable to say, "Hey, I don't think it's right to kil
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
Re:It depends on the context (Score:2)
In a democracy, laws should not be edicted on the sole criterion of their (subjective) morality. Laws are supposed to help and protect citizens. (That's why I consider the DMCA being a bad law, for example.) Obviously, crash
Resistance futile, send money. (Score:2)
Religion wanders into the domain of telling people stories about how their lives are fascinatingly central to everything. They rarely actually express it quite that blatantly, but nobody feels quite satisfied when a religi