> Inconsistent? Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a > definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined, > amorphous ideology?
It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it is to define fascism: http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal, and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more, than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that is still not openly discussed. > They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the > insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR. > Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social > engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by > changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be > transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories > that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you > acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten, > and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the > creationists do). > > > You make my point. They had scientific rational reasons they put forth for > their policies. It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as > other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural > revelation and faith. That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to an appeal to supernatural revelation is. > Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe > and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in > Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was > also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the > dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and > reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the > opposition. > > > They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning. I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions, which is arguably 90% of philosophy. > Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"? > > > I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of theism > exists. Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain about > God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about, > a-gnostic. So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is was > an extreme position and so deserved a name. Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems. > When Dawkins, who is often castigated as > a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that > there is no God, he said "6". And since you like to credence original usage > of words over current usage you should know that agnosticism was originally > just considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God. I don't have such a preference. I am trying to apply reductio ad absurdum to your argument. You accuse me of obfuscating meaning by going against the current use of a word. If that is not permissible, anyone who did it before me should also be denounced, so let's retreat to the original definition. > And even deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were considered > atheists because they didn't believe in the god of theism. I get that. I wouldn't be particularly offended to be labeled "atheist agnostic", in the sense that I do not believe in any of the gods described in abrahamic religious texts. But I know nothing about god in general. > Yes, I used to tell people I was an agnostic. But the problem was that they > assumed I was just on the fence and undecided about their God (usually > Christian in the U.S.). But I wasn't at all undecided about Yaweh, any more > than I was undecided about Zeus or Baal or Thor. I understand that, I have the same problem. > And although I supposed > there could be some god-like being, e.g. the great programmer in the sky of > our simulation, it was a bare possibility which I estimated to be less > likely than finding a teapot orbiting Jupiter. So I decided it was > disingenuous to call myself an agnostic, and also led to annoying attempts > to convert me. Right, my wife makes a similar argument (not giving the religious people any ammunition by making it sound that you are open to considering their belief system). I can see your point. Telmo. > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
