Topic: Do you believe in god? - page 182. (Read 316048 times)

Please link, because I'm very doubtful about your Mormon studies.

Your interpretation is wrong. Sustained wealth is based on good economics and education which leads to new scientific achievements - a positive feedback.

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When did we stop with capitalism? I think I didn't got the memo

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” - James Madison

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” - George Washington

The wealthiest societies today were until recently very religions or colonies of said societies. It was not imperial China that kicked off the industrial revolution but the very christian and quite religious Great Britain. A more likely interpretation of the data is that increasing wealth leads to decadence and undermines religiosity. High IQ is associated with success and wealth. Low IQ countries stayed poor and religious.

Superstition and religiosity are distinctly separate entities. While it is true that both are currently correlated with low IQ I have argued that only the former will be associated with low IQ over the long term and provided reasons why this may be the case. I also highlighted religious groups that defy this correlation.  

What makes you think we will hold onto capitalism? We lost capitalism some time ago. Freedom requires a solid moral foundation to be maintained. Lose your moral foundation and the rest slowly collapses.

I guess the passage quoted above isn't going far enough. No peace even in yourself, all because of Jesus.

Jeez, I thought to myself wait, let me go check out this particular piece of writing and try to see if I can fathom a little bit the broader context of this particular cast so I went ahead and read the whole of chapter 10 and boy, is it ever confusing. I have to over and over again ask myself good f*ck I can't believe I once, long ago, read this same piece and it never occurred to me the incongruence generated by these writings of a culture that is so far removed from my Western experience, that I have to laugh to think that millions of Westerners actually follow so very blindly the cultural heritage of these writings and never realize the degree of separation between what these writings mean and their particular way of life which is completely removed from the intention of said writings.

It is so absurd in fact that I can't help and laugh about it. At least something positive for me in all of this.

Matthew 10:34-35
 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law"

The wealthiest societies today were until recently very religions or colonies of said societies. It was not imperial China that kicked off the industrial revolution but the very christian and quite religious Great Britain. A more likely interpretation of the data is that increasing wealth leads to decadence and undermines religiosity. High IQ is associated with success and wealth. Low IQ countries stayed poor and religious.

Superstition and religiosity are distinctly separate entities. While it is true that both are currently correlated with low IQ I have argued that only the former will be associated with low IQ over the long term and provided reasons why this may be the case. I also highlighted religious groups that defy this correlation.  

What makes you think we will hold onto capitalism? We lost capitalism some time ago. Freedom requires a solid moral foundation to be maintained. Lose your moral foundation and the rest slowly collapses.
  

#1
The correlation is lower IQ equals to less thinking equals to more superstition and religiosity which I think is very logical.

#2
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More religiosity means less avg. Iq of the population equals to less economic wealth.

#3
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So as long as we hold on to capitalism the end of religion is designed  to happen.

Some interesting links provided by criptix.

Link #1 highlights several studies that show that the average IQ of the religious is less than that of the nonreligious. Fair enough we have all likely met a fanatic at some point in our lives who is unable to coherently string two sentences together but insistent on trying to tell you everything about what is true.

There is certainly a large subset of the population who do not think for themselves but passively go along with whatever is popular. These are the people who embraced Hitler’s ideas on untermenschens, that wholeheartedly enforced Stalin’s purges, and who riot when their football teams win. They are also likely to blindly follow charismatic religious leaders when religion is popular.

However, we are now entering an age of atheism and religion is in transient decline. Soon many these individuals will be flocking instead to the atheist banner because as that will be the new “hip” thing. My suspicions is that this coloration will not only prove transient but that it will reverse. This has occurred already in some religious groups like the Mormons and probably the Jews as well.

http://www.mormonsandscience.com/religion--science-blog/education-and-religiosity-mormons-buck-the-trend

Link #2 states that there is a negative coloration between religiosity and wealth but is very sparse on the details. How much of a correlation? Does it still exist if we control for population size rather than simply looking by country. China for example is very big and very low on the religiosity index. Is it being given the same weight as Ghana?

However, let’s set that aside for a minute let’s assume the conclusion is correct and that there is a negative correlation between religiosity and per capita income. Does that mean that religiosity somehow prevents countries from getting wealthy? Probably not because the USA as well as most of Europe was very religious until very recently. The more likely conclusion is that wealth leads people to become less religious and embrace other things like hedonism.


Link #3 attempts to show that religion is in decline and that it will continue to decline using a simplistic mathematical model. “According to the model, a single parameter quantifying the perceived utility of adhering to a religion determines whether the unaffiliated group will grow in a society.” This model is obviously a gross simplification but it may be accurate for short term predictions. The model predicts that over the short term religion is going to decline and I actually agree. However, over the long term the model is overly simplistic and certain to be inaccurate. For example the data I discussed in the Health and Religion thread is not included in this model and would invalidate it over a long time horizon.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_religion
https://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1375
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Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."

Nope, I don't believe in god but I do believe that there might be something out there.

Yes you're right. You really blew us all out the water with your irrefutable 6000 year old earth argument.
We are still speechless to this day.  

Also, lest we forget you're astonishing argument skills, particularly with strawmen.

Yes, the truth can be quite unnerving at times. And that's why I show it to you in ways that you can't refute logically. Like the good propagandist that you have become, all you do is say you refute it without refuting it at all.

I am glad that you have waked up to the truth... as shown by your not being able to refute it with anything other than propaganda.

Yep

''The Persecution of the Christian Churches,'' summarizes the Nazi plan to subvert and destroy German Christianity, which it calls ''an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest.''

In the 1920's, as they battled for power, the Nazis realized that the churches in overwhelmingly Christian Germany needed to be neutralized before they would get anywhere. Two-thirds of German Christians were Protestants, belonging to one of 28 regional factions of the German Evangelical Church. Most of the rest were Roman Catholics. On one level, the Nazis saw an advantage. In tumultuous post-World War I Germany, the Christian churches ''had long been associated with conservative ways of thought, which meant that they tended to agree with the National Socialists in their authoritarianism, their attacks on Socialism and Communism, and in their campaign against the Versailles treaty'' that had ended World War I with a bitterly resentful Germany.

But there was a dilemma for Hitler. While conservatives, the Christian churches ''could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State.'' Given that these were the fundamental underpinnings of the Nazi regime, ''conflict was inevitable,'' the summary states. It came, as Nazi power surged in the late 1920's toward national domination in the early 30's.

According to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi leader of the German youth corps that would later be known as the Hitler Youth, ''the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement'' from the beginning, though ''considerations of expedience made it impossible'' for the movement to adopt this radical stance officially until it had consolidated power, the outline says.

Attracted by the strategic value inherent in the churches' ''historic mission of conservative social discipline,'' the Nazis simply lied and made deals with the churches while planning a ''slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment'' to eliminate Christianity.

The prosecution investigators describe this as a criminal conspiracy. ''This general plan had been established even before the rise of the Nazis to power,'' the outline says. ''It apparently came out of discussions among an inner circle'' comprised of Hitler himself, other top Nazi leaders including the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, and a collection of party enforcers and veteran beer-hall agitators.

Of course, the churches stayed in Hitler's good graces for only as long as the Nazis considered their cooperation expedient. Soon after Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, ''relations between the Nazi state and the church became progressively worse,'' the outline says. The Nazis ''took advantage of their subsequently increasing strength to violate every one of the Concordat's provisions.''

In 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced Nazi treachery in an encyclical that accused Hitler of ''a war of extermination'' against the church. The battle had been joined on some fronts. Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.

Still, in a society where the entire Jewish population was being automatically condemned without public protest, care was taken to manipulate public perceptions about clergymen who fell into Nazi disfavor. ''The Catholic Church need not imagine that we are going to create martyrs,'' Robert Wagner, the Nazi Gauleiter of Baden, said in a speech, according to the O.S.S. study. ''We shall not give the church that satisfaction. She shall have not martyrs, but criminals.''

But once they had total power and set off to launch a world war, the Nazis made no secret of what lay in store for Christian clergymen who expressed dissent.

In Munich, Nazi street gangs and a Gestapo squad attacked the residence of the Roman Catholic cardinal. ''A hail of stones was directed against the windows, while the men shouted, 'Take the rotten traitor to Dachau!' '' the outline says, adding: ''After 1937, German Catholic bishops gave up all attempts to print'' their pastoral letters publicly and instead ''had them merely read from the pulpits.''

Then the letters themselves were confiscated. 'In many churches, the confiscation took place during Mass by the police snatching the letter out of the hands of the priests as they were in the act of reading it.''

Later the same year, dissident Protestant churches joined in a manifesto protesting Nazi tactics. In response, the Nazis arrested 700 Protestant pastors.

Objectionable statements made by the clergy would no longer be prosecuted in the courts, the Nazis said. Statements ''injurious to the State would be ruthlessly punished by 'protective custody,' that is, the concentration camp,'' the outline says.

Yep






Matthew 10:34-35
 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law"

I wonder why there's so much hatred and killing in the world? Well, I'd like to chat some more but I need to hurry over to my church. We're having a bbq with hot dogs, potato salad and for entertainment were burning a few niggers on crosses.

Perhaps if you stopped focusing on the irrelevant parts (the vanity bit), and concentrated your efforts into the important parts (the truth), you'd be a lot less angry and a lot more wiser.
At the moment you're all upside-down, back to front and mixed up.

Twice.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_religion

https://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1375


Btw it is only hard to understand because religious people tend to be stupid. Fact.

Since you are so deluded with your own vain words, you will trip yourself up in ways that won't be fun for you. God's protection is leaving you. You are pushing Him away. Change, before there is no turning back for you.