mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yeah, that was Freud's idea if i recall correctly.
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The Alleged Troubles With Atheism
- Thread starter Jagella
- Start date
Yeah, that was Freud's idea if i recall correctly.
Looks like a list made up for an argument.
I see no comment that I would support as a person of Faith.
Example.
1) Atheism would be exploring a personal path of other avenues of hope. (Could be offered in many ways, but not the way offered in the OP)
2) Atheism explores existence via non spiritual methods.( Could also be offered in many ways, but can also contain the thought offered by your OP)
Regards Tony
I couldn't quickly find citations for the earlier information I posted about Stalin's paranoia, but not to worry. Here's some other information about that and other mental illness he suffered.
Read it and weep! Would you care to concede that paranoia rather than Marxist philosophy led to Stalin's terrors?
By the way, I watched some YouTube videos about Marx's philosophy, and I don't see how it necessarily would lead to violence.
You're simply not making a convincing case.
That's very similar to what Freud argued, and I think that it may help explain the psychology of Christian belief in a Heavenly Father. However, that hypothesis falls short of explaining theism in a Jew or Muslim because they don't see God as a Heavenly Father. I like to explain the idea of God as originating in an instinctive subjection to an "alpha male" or "alpha God" if you will. We worship God kneeling like subordinate male wolves lower their snouts to the ground in the presence of the alpha-male wolf.
Yes, I think I can understand how "pure communism" like pure capitalism might be impossible. At least we know that no such economic systems were ever employed by any nation. America, for example, out of necessity mixes some socialism into its capitalism. Why do you ask?
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
No.
I'll just focus on number one on the list. It's true that without religion there is a existential vacuum/emptiness but people have solved this some other way.
See Frankl and his logotherapy.
Augustus
…
5th time lucky...
If Stalin was an outlier, and if his behaviour was radically different from his peers then it might be relevant. You do realise that Stalin wasn't even the worst though? Mao and Pol Pot were even more violent. Also Stalin wasn't fundamentally different from Lenin, and Lenin was very explicit about his promotion of violent methods in pursuit of some delusional utopian fantasy.
So unless your argument is that Lenin's Red Terror, Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot's Year Zero were all caused by Stalin's (speculated) paranoia, it is pretty much irrelevant to the question.
And if Stalin was so mentally impaired and such an awful Marxist-Leninist, how was he so close to Lenin and how did he take over the Party instead of Trotsky (and why did Trotsky also preach violence?) And if a political system allows a delusional person to take charge and rule for decades with near unlimited power, perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with that political system.
As has been pointed out 5 or more times, the topic is Marxism-Leninism, and you don't understand how the dictatorship of the proletariat would lead to violence despite Lenin noting it gave absolutely free reign for the elite to use violence until society had reached its communist utopia?
The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental question of the modern working-class movement in all capitalist countries without exception... Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory of any revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of revolutions, or else does not want to know anything in this field... The scientific term ‘dictatorship’ means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force.
Lenin
Again, it's very simple:
- You don't believe in the perfectibility of humanity or that humanity can reach some magical permanent global utopia.
- You don't believe that a self-appointed elite should have unlimited power to do whatever they want until they have guided humanity to this magical utopia.
- You do believe that giving a self-appointed elite unlimited power to use violence in pursuit of a delusional millenarian goal will lead to violence
Is it fair to say the above 3 points are correct? If not feel free to offer a correction.
If not, you agree with me. Simple.
So you agree that offering a self-appointed, explicitly violent elite unlimited power until they reach the utopian state expected of "pure communism" is a pretty bad idea, right?
5th time lucky...
Whatever that means.
Stalin's mental state is obviously very relevant to our understanding of the behavior of dictators. We now know that mental illness in powerful men can result in much tragedy.
I'm still wondering how you measure evil and violence and if there's any objectivity at all to it.
Your burden here is to demonstrate that Lenin promoted "violence" because he was influenced by Marx rather than for some other reason.
We need not speculate. After a quick and easy search on Google, I found the article
French Psychoanalyst Draws Up Mental-Health Profile of Pol Pot which tells us:
Now we have evidence that not only was Stalin mentally ill, but so was Pol Pot! Other Communist leaders then likely inflicted their brutality as a result of their respective mental illnesses rather than Marxist influence.
No political system is perfect, and depending on the conditions of the people ruled over by that system, despots can be expected regardless of that system's ideology.
If that's the topic, then why keep posting examples of violence without linking that violence directly to the ideology of Marx? You may have tried to do so, but I've posted evidence that you are wrong in that regard.
But none of us need to be wrong. All we need to do is make good use of online information about these issues. When I pointed out Stalin's paranoia, for example, you like I could have easily looked it up, yet you apparently didn't bother to do so. Neither did you bother to research the mental states of the other leaders you mentioned like Pol Pot. If you had done so, then you might have a very different perspective on Marxism and its social impact.
So I have a homework assignment for you. Please make use of online resources like Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia to research Mao to see if he suffered from a mental illness that could explain his despotism. Please report your findings in your next post.
Augustus
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Why keep posting examples of the explicitly violent nature of Marxism-Leninism to make the point that Marxism-Leninism is an explicitly violent, millenarian ideology?
Instead of correcting the same fallacious arguments again and again, I'll just leave this here and see if you can make a rational argument against it. Obviously you'll avoid it again though.
The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental question of the modern working-class movement in all capitalist countries without exception... Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory of any revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of revolutions, or else does not want to know anything in this field... The scientific term ‘dictatorship’ means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force.
Lenin
Lenin advocates the elite has an unrestricted use of violence in the cause of the revolution until the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer needed (i.e. there is a global communist utopia). Members of the elite who used violence in pursuit of their goals were therefore acting in accordance with the diktats of Marxism-Leninism. They were not mentally ill "bad apples", their rule was "absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force."
You agree that the global communist utopia is impossible.
Unless you support unrestricted use of violence, forever, in support of a goal you admit is impossible, you agree with me.
Do you support unrestricted use of violence, forever, in support of a goal you admit is impossible?
Some of what you posted about Marxism does appear to indicate that Marx's ideas could lead to violent behavior especially by revolutionaries, but revolutionaries are violent by nature, and it's a stretch to blame Marxism for violence and persecution.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. A rational argument against what?
Lenin was a really bad man if he said that!
He's factually incorrect because the American Revolution succeeded without dictatorship.Anyway, what does this have to do with Marx?
Probably. So what about it?
Agree with you about what?
No.
You didn't do your homework! Let's take a look at Mao to see if he's in the same league as Stalin and Pol Pot, two violent despots who committed atrocities due to mental illness who just happened to be Communist leaders. Here's an article about Mao's psychological state, Psychology of Evil – Mao’s Terrifying Vision which tells us:
Note that we are not told that Mao's vision for China was a direct reflection of his Marxism.
The more we look at the evidence, the less we can justifiably blame Marxist philosophy for the deadly deeds of Communist leaders.
Augustus
…
There we go. Wasn't that hard was it
Could have saved yourself a lot of effort by just accepting in the first place that millenarian ideologies that advocate for unrestricted violence in pursuit of delusional goals are a bad thing that leads to violence.
To show you how inane this argument is seeing as you've already accepted you do not support violent, millenarian ideologies as they can lead to violence.
Hitler, Himmler, Heidrich, Eichmann, Bormann, Goebbels, tens of thousands of SS members, etc. were all violent thugs who, by coincidence, just happened to be Nazis. They could just as easily have all been Social Democrats.
Their fanatical commitnent to the extremely violent ideology of Nazism had no connection to their propensity to commit violence.
It was just a coincidence.
Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann and Heidrich were all just rabid anti-semitites who happened to conduct the Holocaust. Their rabid anti-semititism had nothing to do with their desire to remove Jewish people from Europe. They were probably just mentally ill because someone on the Internet who never met them diagnosed them. We should thus ignore their explicit anti-semititic ideology as having any impact on their crimes against the Jewish people.
There we go. Wasn't that hard was it
I don't get it--I never argued for "unrestricted use of violence, forever, in support of a goal (I) admit is impossible."
Generally, very few if any people are going to turn violent simply because they are exposed to ideologies even if those ideologies explicitly advocate violence. If I glorify murder, how many people are going to murder just because they know that murder is a pet idea of mine? They would be complete idiots if they did. For that very small crowd who murder because they know it's my idea, they're no doubt already very troubled people possibly mentally ill.
LOL. Do you seriously think that the Nazis committed heinous acts just because they became acquainted with Hitler's ideology? If we consider the historical setting, many of those destined to become Nazis later on were very embittered for many reasons not the least of which was Germany's defeat in World War I. They also were exposed to a culture that had persecuted Jews for centuries blaming those Jews for Germany's problems including its economic woes after the Great War. Hitler acted as the spark that set that kindling aflame using his mastery of speech and propagandistic skills. What mattered to Hitler wasn't his ideas but his inspiring people to back him in his goal to rule the world.
So again, your treatment of the social impact of ideology is very shallow ignoring alternate and far more probable explanations for violence for which we have good scientific and historical evidence. And that scientific evidence, I should add, is evidence that you've ignored. So if we consider inane ideas, what can be more inane than to believe that millions of people murdered millions of other people for no other reason than that a political philosopher supposedly told them to?
So please say hello to Senator McCarthy for me. I see he is alive and well.
Augustus
…
Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred in unselfish loyalty to one’s tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political ideology, ad majorem gloriam dei... homicide committed for selfish motives is a statistical rarity in all cultures. Homicide for unselfish motives is the dominant phenomenon of man's history. His tragedy is not an excess of aggression but an excess of devotion... it's loyalty and devotion which makes the fanatic." - Arthur Koestler
Well done, you have described the kind of conditions that allow violent, millenarian ideologies to take hold.
You have also noted that culture (which includes ideology) can make people hostile to other groups).
Although despite ideological hostility to Jews among many Germans, the holocaust happened in a specifically Nazi context.
So you just have to get rid of the foolish motion that the Holocaust had nothing much to do with Nazi ideology and was just "Germans being Germans"
You seem to have lived a very sheltered life.
Violence isn't something that is only done by "bad people" because they are "mentally ill" (and Internet speculation that someone is mentally ill is not scientific evidence). Actual science shows that high levels of empathy (generally seen as a good thing) can lead to support for violence against "oppressors".
Humans are a violent species, but most people need to legitimise their use or support of violence via ideology.
They don't become violent simply because someone tells them to, they buy into a vision of the future and embrace the violent methods promising to get them there.
I'm amazed you are so hostile to the idea that beliefs, values and future desires influence behaviours.
Say hello to Quisling and Petain
You started off absolving Marxism-Leninism as being responsible for societal violence, and you've moved onto absolving Nazism...
Who is Arthur Koestler, and why should anybody care what he says? I wonder if he's ever visited a ghetto in a large American city and had a "cursory glance" of a drive-by shooting instigated by the trafficking of illegal drugs and concluded that that homicide was not influenced by "selfish motives." Or for that matter I wonder if he concludes that selfish motives have nothing to do with the wealthy Americans who acted to create that impoverished ghetto to begin with.
I hope you now understand that the large majority of people don't robotically reply "I hear, oh master, and I obey" whenever some nut advocates violence.
I didn't say that culture can make people hostile toward other groups; rather, hostility toward other groups creates ideology. An excellent example that proves I'm right is that of the early Christians who were furious with the Jews who did not join their sect. As a result of that failure on the part of those Christian evangelists, they started to include anti-Jewish narratives in their writings. The Gospel of John is perhaps the most notorious example of such anti-Jewish rhetoric on the part of Christians. So as we all can see, the ideology followed the hostility rather than the other way around.
The roots of the holocaust go way back long before Hitler and the Nazis as I've just documented. Martin Luther, as another good example of such a root, became angry with the Jews when they refused his attempts to convert them. (Does that sound familiar?) His outrage led him to write his "On the Jews and Their Lies" treatise in which he advocated for the persecution of the Jews. As many historians have noted, Luther's anger toward the Jews led ultimately to the Nazi's genocide upon them.
You seem to have run out of good arguments and have resorted to ad hominem fallacies.
If "internet speculation" doesn't count as having scientific validity, then why should anybody pay any attention to what you say? Besides, the material I posted about the mental illnesses of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao is legitimate science.
Citation please.
That is correct. The violent tendencies come first and when acted upon the violence is excused with ideology. That's what I've been arguing all along, and I'm glad to see you're getting it.
I don't know how hostile I am to your idea that ideology can create monsters out of peaceful people. I just see it as the nonsense that it is.
Anybody who can read can see that I didn't absolve Nazism, but it looks like you're trying hard to absolve the Nazis! They can't help that they were not able to resist Hitler's ideology.
Augustus
…
The ability to commit violence in defence of the in-group is evolutionarily advantageous. I'm sure you must agree with that.
Given this fact, it's ludicrous to think that good people cannot be convinced to commit violence on behalf of the in-group when we have millennia of evidence to show otherwise.
"Sometimes we commit atrocities not out of a failure of empathy but rather as a direct consequence of successful, even overly successful, empathy,"
Does Empathy Have A Dark Side?
Don't be silly. Violent tendencies exist in all humans. We aren't all automatons though.
As to which drives violence, it's a dynamic process.
Ideology does develop from a combination of environment, experience and individual and group psychology, and it in turn influences environment, experience and individual and group psychology.
Mass coordinated violence doesn't come from lots of people simultaneously deciding to commit random acts of violence then retrospectively agree to concoct an ideology to justify it though.
Ideology binds people into a group and tells people what is required to be a good group member. If what is required to be a good group member is violence, then it makes people more likely to commit violence.
The ability to bind people into ever larger groups and have them take individual risks and commit violence in the cause of the group can obviously be evolutionarily advantageous.
Your argument that ideology is simply after the fact rationalisation that plays no actual causative role in behaviour is clearly wrong.
Forum posts are not science, so have no scientific validity. They are for entertainment.
Speculating about the mental health of people you have never met let alone clinically examined is also not science. It is journalistic speculation.
And then may drives further hostility and exponentially increase hostility.
There's a big jump from being prejudiced against Jews to carrying out the holocaust.
A small group of extremists can very much change society by spreading their ideology.
Anti-semitism has existed since pre-Christian times. Simple prejudice tends not to lead to genocide though.
Luther was obviously Anti-semitic, but despite his bigotry wanted Jews to convert.
Nazi anti-semitism was based on scientific racialism, which is why even Christian "Jews" or atheist "Jews" were still the enemy.
The final solution was based on this racialist idea of Jewishness, and its potential to "pollute Aryan blood". There was no room for "convert or else" in this ideology. No escape route.
Religious anti-semitism is very bad, but "scientific" racialist anti-semitism is worse.
Ideology matters.
(lots of "good people", liberal and progressive men of science, believed in racialism and eugenics btw. It was "rational" a bit like believing in climate change is today. They didn't know they were wrong and their beliefs would later be deemed pseudoscience. The kind of person who is a secular humanist today would likely have been both racialist and eugenicist 100 years ago. Ideology matters.)
Again, don't be silly. People can be persuaded by an ideology or they can reject it. Their choice.
There are 2 possible positions for you to take though:
1. Nazism made society more violent
2. Nazism didn't make society more violent
If you agree with 1, you agree with me about violent millenarian ideologies causing increased societal violence.
If you agree with 2, you absolve Nazism from being a harmful ideology that causes increased societal violence.
Which is it to be?
Yes, and as civilization arose, people needed to create ideologies to smooth over any objections to that violence. That's why people came up with religious and social ideologies to justify the acts of the rulers and their subjects. In time of war, for example, when a society needed a resource like land which was already occupied, the ensuing forcible seizure of that land was justified by claiming a God ordered the taking.
As I see it, if people agree to participate in deadly violence to gain some unjust advantage, then they were never "good" to begin with.
If we're not automatons, then truly good rational people would never commit violent acts against the innocent regardless of what idea some politician/philosopher may have.
So what ideology ever influenced you merely because you became acquainted with it? I see that Marx's philosophy didn't influence you. How did you resist it?
Using ideology to justify violence has been a recurrent act in history having happened many times. We can see that in the Old Testament, for example, when the Israelites wrote of their mass killings of their enemies to gain real estate. God told them to do it!
You're getting it! Yes, the need of an individual to fit into the group causes them to follow ideology. In other words, the need comes first, and then the acceptance of the ideology ensues. Note that in all groups individuals need to be accepted into the group, and to do so they accept whatever the group's ideology might be. The ideology of one group can be very different from the ideologies of other groups, so the details of the ideology is not important. The people will accept it if they need or want something from the group.
You can prove my argument wrong by citing an ideology you've accepted just because you've become familiar with it. After all, if you want to characterize others as swallowing ideas for no good reason, so you should be so inclined yourself.
Of course. That's why ideology by itself is unable to cause violence.
Augustus
…
Wrong way round.
Civilisation only arose due to ideologies as they were needed to build groups beyond the level that could be sustained by personal relations.
Primitive humans were violent without ideology.
Ideology can civilise or make more violent.
That's just a product of your ideology.
Ideology defines what is good. Ideology defines what is rational. Ideology defines who is innocent.
People deemed good by the standards of their society have always committed violence against those deemed innocent by others.
People don't have a choice but to be born into a society.
Ideology is the basis of all societies beyond small kin groups. It creates altruism and violence.
People are socialised into an ideology (hence violent ideologies tend to violent societies) and they may later adopt different ideologies that they find appealing.
The details of the ideology are massively important, unless you think there is no difference between being born into a secular humanist society, a Nazi society or a salafi-jihadi society.
People are social animals and susceptible to peer pressure, the more widespread violent ideologies are, the more likely a random person is to adopt one.
I notice you dodged the simple question at the end in favour of spending more time constructing strawmen.
What I said:
Again, don't be silly. People can be persuaded by an ideology or they can reject it. Their choice. (notice your obvious misrepresentation of my argument in the quoted post)
There are 2 possible positions for you to take though:
1. Nazism made society more violent
2. Nazism didn't make society more violent
If you agree with 1, you agree with me about violent millenarian ideologies causing increased societal violence.
If you agree with 2, you absolve Nazism from being a harmful ideology that causes increased societal violence.
Which is it to be?
Do you believe ideology (for example Nazism) can make a society more violent than it would otherwise have been without the presence of that ideology?
Should we try to limit violent extremism and promote positive beliefs, or is it pointless as "bad people" will always do bad and "good people" will always do good?
Again, probably not. Like I said about Hitler, the delivery of the ideology is what can really spark the kindling aflame. If there is no kindling, then there will be no combustion.
Isn't that a very apt analogy and poetic too?
Yes, we should obviously limit wanton violence against the innocent, but I'm not sure what "positive beliefs" are. And for that matter, I don't normally categorize people as inherently good or evil. My solution to the world's problems, violence in particular, is to make sure people are well off. I've seen so much evil that results from evil.
Your stance on the supposed negative effects of ideology on people reminds me of those who denounced comic books as corrupting American youth. Later, it was rock and roll, and more recently video games have been blamed for violence in the young. I suppose it's easier for us to find something or somebody else to blame when things go wrong.
But I'm really interested in your own ability to resist ideology while all the other "robots" will do whatever it says. I've been exposed to ideology, religion in particular, and it never really inspired me to do anything. I did turn to Christianity for about two years, but that was because I was in need, and Christian dogma appeared to be what I felt could solve my problems. As soon as I realized it was a scam, I trashed it.
And like any other kid growing up in America, I had all the nonsense jammed down my throat about all the wonders of the USA. Every school morning I was forced to lie as I pledged allegiance to the flag. All that ideology never really inspired me to do anything.
So it appears that I, like you, am one of those people upon whom ideology has no apparent effect. What makes us so special?
Augustus
…
Not really apt as it shows a lack of understanding of what ideology is.
The kindling is built from ideology too. It tells us how to interpret events and how we should rectify perceived injustice.
Turtles all the way down.
That's ideology.
Also how you would organise society to achieve this is ideology.
And how you would persuade people they are well off is ideology.
Etc.
You could only think that if you don't really know what ideology is.
Ideology is our system of values, our ideas of good/bad, desirable/undesirable, our vision if what makes a good society and what things harm society, what behaviors should be rewarded and what should be punished.
We interpret the world via ideology, and people with different ideologies may see the world very differently.
Personally I think these are very consequential for societies.
Why do you think they are not?
You couldn't be more mistaken, I certainly don't think I see the world without ideology. That would be delusional. You certainly don't either (no human does).
No one can resist ideology in general. It is a necessary part of human cognition. The idea we can view the world neutrally is just a conceit.
Of course, we can resist specific ideologies be they Nazi, Marxist, Secular Humanists, Christian, etc. (although we absorb lots of beliefs from our environment), but rejecting one ideology is done via the acceptance of another.
But the idea our values and beliefs don't have any impact on our behaviours seems rather naive to me...
You have been massively impacted by the culture you grew up in (no shame in that per se, it's true of us all).
You've shown it in this thread with your US centric worldview and an inability to understand others see things from a non-American perspective.
You are the one who knows!
Your concept of ideology doesn't work because it posits a "primal ideology" from which original human action sprang. Again you've got it backwards. The behavior and instincts of primal humans eventually led to ideology when we evolved the ability to think about how to live in a civilized environment. Do you really think that hominids had ideology that determined their behavior?
Human instincts were at the bottom.
No, that's actually morality rather than ideology. Seeing there is some confusion over the common understanding of ideology, let's take a look at a Google definition:
ideology - a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
So it appears that I have the correct understanding of ideology, and you do not; you've mistaken morality for ideology. It would behoove you to check your facts before posting what you believe to be true.
My but we're a smarty! But I know what ideology is now because I looked it up.
Consequences actually lead to ideology as I've already explained numerous times. Since we now have the commonly accepted definition of ideology, we should see that people come up with ideas to form the basis of economic or political theory. That theory results from conditions under which people live. It's an attempt to solve problems, problems that existed before the ideology..
In my own experiences, I've never been influenced to do anything by ideology. I've adopted ideology to try to solve some of my problems. Currently, I have no ideology at all.
So what is your ideology, and why do you have that ideology rather than some other ideology? Did you just accept that ideology for no reason other than becoming familiar with it?
Then you need to explain why I have no ideology.
I can't argue against incredulity!
Culture is not ideology (see the definition above). I have no system of ideas, economic or political.
I am really bad!
But what's even worse are your lines of reasoning. Rapping up this post, I should reiterate that you don't even know what ideology is! You've also failed to clarify what your own ideology is after several of my inquiries. So you can't even use yourself as evidence that your assertions about ideology are correct. You characterize others as mindlessly adopting violent ideology, but you are loathe to put yourself into that same category which defeats your own arguments.