Curt Doolittle

Category: Religion, Myth, and Theology

  • Is Atheism A Threat To Humanity Due To Its Lower Birth Rates? Religion Often Requires Couples To Have Children, But As Religion Loses Its Grip On The People, They Tend To Have Fewer Children Than Required To Maintain The Population.

    THE ANSWER IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN OTHER POSTERS SUGGEST.

    I’ll try to do it justice.

    The answer is yes, that it’s correlative. Empirically, yes in the aggregate atheists have fewer children.  And yes, its partly causal.

    1) Reproduction is losing it’s economic utility as a guarantee of old age security.

    2) Consumer capitalism raises the cost of creating ‘middle class and working class children’ and so birth rates decline along with industrialization.

    3) Atheism is highly correlative with education, and education correlative with income, and income correlative with decreased reproduction. (Children are a net negative on career development because they are time consuming. Or conversely, careerism in two income household deprives both individuals of the time necessary for child rearing. )

    4) Prettier women have more children, married women have more children, women who stay at home have more children.  Less attractive women have fewer children. Unmarried women have fewer children. Women who work have fewer children.  This is all just data.  We have put women into the work force and decreased their rate of breeding RELATIVE to the rates of breeding in other civilizations. (This was most evident in russian and japan, both of whom are facing serious long term economic problems because of it.  You cannot easily have both the employment of women AND paid retirement and health care. At least, that’s what it looks like.)

    5) With the advent of redistribution, loss of male property rights, and child support and financial support, Women are “marrying the state”, or “marrying the state via child support”. Both of these do statistically decrease reproduction, as they also render the males economically not viable for other women. (That’s the data. Sorry if it’s unpleasant.)

    6) The lower classes are dramatically shifting out of monogamy into serial monogamy.  Humans are naturally serially monogamous in tribal life. Monogamy is economically competitive, but not natural to man – we evolved to manage relationships that last on the order of four years – long enough for a child to walk with a migrating tribe.  The moral prescription for monogamy, and therefor for higher reproduction rates associated with monogamy, was caused by (a) the agrarian mode of production and the family farming unit (b) the politically dangerous problem of single men unable to have access to sex – the source of most revolutions. Monogamy was imposed by religious leadership for these reasons – although we are still trying I think to link all that history together. It looks like it’s a natural evolution, not just the copying of an idea worldwide.

    CONCLUSION
    1) The strain on the rest of the planet’s biomass by our enormous population is pretty severe. It’s possible we’re more than twice the population that the planet can handle.  We do not need more people.  There are no pollution problems. There are few resource problems. There is a population problem.
    2) We have created an economic and political system of intergenerational redistribution that requires constant growth and constant new generations. 
    3) Consumer capitalism seems to put a cap on uncontrolled population expansion.

    So it isn’t clear that we need to increase population. In fact, just the opposite. And we could do so, but our current system of redistribution is a system of dependencies that we can’t likely get out of without a political crisis.

    So the glass is half full (declining population) and half empty (we are dependent upon population growth that the earth cannot sustain, and which causes political infighting.).

    In these cases Atheism is correlative with lower reproduction in the upper classes, and CAUSAL with reproduction in the lower classes.

    I hope this makes sense.

    Curt

    https://www.quora.com/Is-atheism-a-threat-to-humanity-due-to-its-lower-birth-rates-Religion-often-requires-couples-to-have-children-but-as-religion-loses-its-grip-on-the-people-they-tend-to-have-fewer-children-than-required-to-maintain-the-population

  • WHY SHARIA LAW IS APPRECIATED BY MUSLIMS (harsh statements warning) First, befor

    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/many-muslim-world-want-sharia-law-land-survey-160939872.htmlON WHY SHARIA LAW IS APPRECIATED BY MUSLIMS

    (harsh statements warning)

    First, before we start this discussion we must understand that the Islamic civilization, outside of the former Soviet Union, is en large, poor, comparatively ignorant, abysmally ignorant of what we consider ‘scientific thought’ (or even engineering) and has illiteracy rates that range from 20-60%.

    So, when you ask a people if they would prefer a philosophical, political and legal system that they are familiar with, understand, and they consider ‘just’, you’re going to see positive survey responses. But it’s also because they don’t know the alternatives, and certainly can’t compare them.

    In the west, our christian ancestors relied first upon scripture, and then upon ‘natural law’ to help control abuses by the state. It wasn’t until we understood that it was an independent judiciary, the common law and property rights that were the source of freedom, not scripture, and certainly not government, that we abandoned these moral arguments in favor of rational ones. So we too had our episode of desiring the equivalent to Sharia in our past. The only difference is that we have incorporated greek rationalism -reluctantly- since the time of Augustine (and arguably, always.)

    Sharia law is effectively communist. Islamic radicalism has adopted the tactics of world communism for this reason: it’s a revolt by the lowest level civilization, containing the lowest status people outside of sub saharan africa, revolting against the rest of us. Islam grants social status to all equally. This is lost on the rest of us. We live in an aristocratic society where status is EARNED through demonstrated actions. We consistently hear muslims criticizing our interest in heroism. They find our way of life antagonistic – immoral even. Even here in the west, after a century and a half of attack on aristocracy by communism, socialism, feminism and postmodernism (the only politically meaningful being feminism because of the numbers of women who vote against aristocracy) we still retain our heroic culture. (Although, hollywood is having a very hard time producing heroic movies, when they make their money on the international market, without using space aliens.) At least, the majority of white males still practice western aristocratic values. And it is those values that gave us science, reason, and rule of law. (Something which westerners are no longer taught, because it would interfere with state sponsored socialism and the religion of postmodernism practiced by liberals.)

    We must also understand that Islamic society is corrupt, familial, and tribal (because it still inbreeds heavily), as well as mystical and arational. Access to oil revenues via the state grants groups luxuries and idleness that are status enhancing. So just as we have corruption in the west, as special interest and racial groups compete for control of the state, privileges, redistribution and tax revenues, the islamic world, or at least the oil rich regions, compete for access to those revenues.

    Because their society is pervasively corrupt, and tribal, and the western division of the ottoman empire into current states ignored tribal boundaries, these governments are not only terribly corrupt but tribally biased. Just as the USA should break into regions so that the coasts don’t continue to oppress the center and south, the Islamic countries need to be broken into a federation of tribes – something oil revenues make impossible.

    Justice in a corrupt and arbitrary and mystical society is unpredictable if not impossible.

    People rarely reform themselves if they can blame others. So they conveniently blame others – muslims, and Palestinians in particular, almost always choose the bad decision whenever it is presented to them.

    So Sharia is something they understand and trust, it is not arbitrary, not open to much interpretation, and difficult to corrupt. It favors the poor and ignorant. It gives status to people who are at the bottom of the human prestige pyramid, if not the bottom of it’s ethnic pyramid. Muslims are lower class backward outcasts in the rest of the world despite the promise of prestige that their religion promises them.

    It is not irrational for people in these circumstances to prefer Sharia. In fact, given the arbitrary state borders, the level of tribalism, mysticism, ignorance, and corruption in their civilization it is THE CORRECT SOLUTION FOR THEM until they develop rule of law. And they cannot develop the rule of law without a middle class, commercial society. You just can’t. Period. Commercial society disregards familial incentives. WE are all family in the market. This is intolerable to the primitive tribal, familial, and inbred cultures.

    I don’t complain about Muslims wanting Sharia law in their countries. I complaint about our courts excusing behavior because of it, and I complain that muslims do not integrate into western society, and they persist in their inbreeding.

    The only way we can tolerate Muslim culture in the west is to prohibit intermarriage and interbreeding out to six generations (by genetic test, and under threat of deportation) and to shutter all mosques and schools. That islam is practiced as a personal religion at home is one thing. That it is propagated as a political and legal system is another and is a violation of the rest of our rights. The moment that you state that your religion affects law and property, it is no longer a religion. It is politics.

    And in the case of communism and sharia law, It is war on civilization itself.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-01 10:28:00 UTC

  • THE LOGICAL CONTRADICTION IN THE POSTMODERN RELIGION The modern histories of rel

    THE LOGICAL CONTRADICTION IN THE POSTMODERN RELIGION

    The modern histories of religion and socialism exhibit striking parallels in development.

    1) Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau)

    2) Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism).

    3) Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism).

    4) Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation).

    5) Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).

    6) The prevailing skeptical and irrationalist epistemologies in academic philosophy thus provided the Left with a new strategy for responding to its crisis. Any attack on socialism in any form could be brushed aside, and the desire to believe in it reaffirmed.

    7) [P]ostmodernism is a symptom of the far Left’s crisis of faith. Postmodernism is a result of using skeptical epistemology to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism.

    If one is interested in truth, then one’s rational response to a failing theory is as follows:

    1) One breaks the theory down to its constituent premises.

    2) One questions its premises vigorously and checks the logic that integrates them.

    3) One seeks out alternatives to the most questionable premises.

    4) One accepts moral responsibility for any bad consequences of putting the false theory into practice.

    This is not what we find in postmodern reflections on contemporary politics. Truth and rationality are subjected to attack, and the prevailing attitude about moral responsibility is again best stated by Rorty: “I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t care much about our past sins.”

    One could, after doing some philosophy, come to be a true believer in subjectivism and relativism. Accordingly, one could come to believe that reason is derivative, that will and desire rule, that society is a battle of competing wills, that words are merely tools in the power struggle for dominance, and that all is fair in love and war. That is the position the Sophists argued 2400 years ago.

    The only difference, then, between the Sophists and the postmodernists is whose side they are on. [The Sophists, marshalled] subjectivist and relativistic arguments in support of the political claim that justice is the interest of the stronger. The postmodernists—coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of socialist theory—simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice – is the interest of the weaker.

    – Hicks, Stephen R. C. (2010-10-19). Explaining Postmodernism

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 03:44:00 UTC

  • ON RELIGION I don’t attack religions for being religions, or being predicated on

    ON RELIGION

    I don’t attack religions for being religions, or being predicated on whatever causal relations, for whatever reason. This is because I understand that ARATIONAL thinking is useful as a defense against reason that we disagree with. It allows us to exit the rational conversation and continue to pursue our preferences, albiet with arational, rather than rational thought.

    What I care about are the consequences of any line of thought. And in particular, that any line of thought produces negative economic consequences, because negative economic consequences reduce ALL choices for ALL people and positive economic consequences improve ALL choices for ALL people.

    If I argue in favor of the morality of PROPERTY, this allows people to adopt whatever religion that they want to, and to form in to whatever groups they want to. I have no greater concern if people gather into groups based upon religion, historical reference, or preference for a particular artist’s music, or any other reason that they want to group together.

    That is the whole point of market and property. Market and property allow us to compete on means in the market, even if we have completely opposite ends.

    The reason that we can’t all live peacefully together is that governments are monopolies, which define a monopoly of property rights, and as such we compete to gain power over government so that we can implement our version of property rights, rather than, government is a set of institutions administers the market, using PRIVATE property rights, so that groups may create whatever COMMON Property Rights among themselves that they prefer to.

    Capitalism is the only form of tolerance. The market doesn’t care about your color, or creed. Everyone is the color ‘gold’.

    Postmodernism is a religion that promote socialism, and socialism is harmful, and removes choices, and destroys the market. As such, I object to the argument that postmodernism, and its political wing ‘liberalism’, do not claim to be a religion that seeks power. I object to the argument that Islam is a religion of peace rather than a religion of tyranny and poverty. And I object to the fact that both Postmodernism and Islam will of necessity destroy economic productivity, and freedom.

    And In both cases, most likely, my race.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 02:47:00 UTC

  • The Religion of Postmodernism as a Reformation of Christianity

    [T]HE PURPOSE OF RELIGION IS TO CONCENTRATE POLITICAL POWER Either as a resistance, or as a military force. That is the purpose of a religion. EIther to take power, or to resist power. Religions concentrate human efforts. POSTMODERNISM IS A REFORMATION OF CHRISTIANITY Postmodernism is just the most recent religion in a long history of religions. 7) Postmodernism is a reformation of Protestantism. – Resisting Capitalism in response to the failure of socialism in both theory and practice (1960ad). 6) Socialism is a reformation of catholicism – French, then german, then worldwide resistance to anglo industrial capitalism. (1850ad) 5) Protestantism is a reformation of Catholicism. – Germanic countries exiting Mediterranean taxation and occupation. (1520ad) 4) Islam is a reformation of Judaism and Christianity – Enabling arab conquest of the Byzantines and Sassanids who were exhausted by war with each other. (600ad) 3) Christianity (Catholicism) is a reformation of Judaism. – adaptation to the roman conquest. (80ad), and eventual success by mobilizing the underclasses and women. Made possible by exhaustion of seafaring Rome by conquering landed Europe. 2) Judaism is a reformation of Zoroastrianism. – Exiting persian conquest, as a means of unifying various tribes. (650bc) 1) Zoroastrianism was authored by Zarathustra (Zoroaster) ( 1500-1000bc) Exiting the stone age, and adapting to the agrarian revolution, in order to concentrate political and military power, possibly to separate western tribes from eastern tribes. Religion is the means by which we make people believe untrue things in order to get them to cooperate according to one scheme or another.

  • WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND POSTMODERNISM? CHRISTIANS (conse

    WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND POSTMODERNISM?

    CHRISTIANS (conservatives) keep their hands out of your pockets, and demand you behave ethically and morally in public – AND POSTMODERNISTS (liberals) put their hands into your pockets and that is their only demand.

    That appears to be the only difference.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-06 09:36:00 UTC

  • The Signaling Properties Of Secular Democratic Humanism Versus Christian Aristocratic Egalitarianism

    [D]EMOCRATIC SECULAR HUMANISM IS A RELIGION It is based upon false premises, and counter to observable fact. It is no less mystical or absurd than an omniscient omnipotent, artificial deity. It’s purpose is to accumulate power. IT IS A WAR ON AN OLD RELIGION BY A NEW RELIGION. The equality of man, the relativity of values, the irrelevance of norms, the equality of cultures, the permanence that technical innovation will ‘save us’, and a dozen other mythos, attribute untrue properties to man and society, in an effort to cast the extended order of human cooperation and competition as an extended family. Humans do not act in this way. Even practitioners of the religion do not act this way. If they did, they would tolerate the old religion. But they don’t. And, in fact, they only tolerate any religion with lower status signals than their religion. TRADING THE HIGH TRUST SOCIETY FOR FALSE, FREE STATUS SIGNALS And those free status signals are the ‘psychological device’ that provides the incentive for adopting the new democratic religion, rather than the old religion’s promise of life after death. This is the technological innovation of democratic secular humanism: it has replaced false promise of afterlife, true status signals, true suppositions about human nature, and true economic principles, with false status signals, false suppositions about human nature, and false economic principles. The net of this new religion has been the destruction of the nuclear family and a the slow regression away from the high trust society that the west built by local outbreeding over more than a thousand years. Because trust in *kindness*, which is an emotionally loaded term for the human need for acceptance and positive status signals, is counterproductive to the economic requirement for trust in trade and contract. [IDEA: positive signals for mere existence versus positive signals for economic action.] The innovation of the west that allowed it to create greater relative wealth at lower rates of corruption, and to tolerate higher risk and innovation, finally consumer credit, was the high trust society. And we can demonstrate empirically that increases in diversity of norms and culture, even race, cause accelerating decreases in trust. Our governmental conflict is just an expression of this difference. It is NOT POSSIBLE to create a civic religion without status signals. Humans value status more than money. No civic religion will ever exist that does not. However, the question is, what actions do those signals produce in the real world? Let’s see: SIGNALS OF TRUSTWORTHINESS IN CONTRACT [A]bsolute respect for the commons and private property, Competition, Individualism, the nuclear family, truth telling, adherence to contract, and conformity to commercial norms, were innovations adopted by the western cultures under manorialism (feudalism), as people sought to demonstrate that they were fit to rent land. Males embraced chivalry because it allowed them to achieve status signals without fighting, and in turn, it allowed them to achieve status through service. Further it did not require extraordinary wealth to do services, as did fighting. [T]hat it takes a long time to change signaling strategies once the capture of fossile fuels permits industrialization, therefore freeing the woman from the drudgery of the home and the man from teh drudgery of the field, and gives us enough free wealth and time to afford to educate our young is certainly good reason to extend property rights to women, and to extend political enfranchise to all consumers and laborers. This is true. But the practical reality is our goods and services may be cheaper and the least of us we may live better than nobility of the past, but that does not change the reality that we are vastly unequal in temperament and ability, and most of us require extraordinary training and reinforcement by others to maintain the high trust society that we buit by accident was counter to intuition and behaviorally expensive to maintain. People universally demonstrate a preference for the benefits of material productivity. Always. Yet they long for the behavior of the tribe and family, despite universal and inescapable tribal poverty, and despite universal and inescapable low trust in family-dominated, in-breeding-in-extended family societies. Be careful what you wish for. You’re getting it. [P]rogressive ideology is a longing for a return to the tribe. It is cheap false status signals that produce negative economic consequences. Cultures are empirically demonstrable to be unequal, and democracy only works in the west because the west started out as aristocratic. Without western culture the west will be like every other barbaric low trust civilization on the planet. Progressive ideology is to the west what christianity was to rome. There is no difference. It is mysticism in different robes. -Curt

  • (From Another Thread: Very Meaningful Ideas in this post) DEMOCRATIC SECULAR HUM

    (From Another Thread:

    Very Meaningful Ideas in this post)

    DEMOCRATIC SECULAR HUMANISM IS A RELIGION

    It is based upon false premises, and counter to observable fact.

    It is no less mystical or absurd than an omniscient omnipotent, artificial deity.

    It’s purpose is to accumulate power.

    IT IS A WAR ON AN OLD RELIGION BY A NEW RELIGION.

    The equality of man, the relativity of values, the irrelevance of norms, the equality of cultures, the permanence that technical innovation will ‘save us’, and a dozen other mythos, attribute untrue properties to man and society, in an effort to cast the extended order of human cooperation and competition as an extended family.

    Humans do not act in this way. Even practitioners of the religion do not act this way. If they did, they would tolerate the old religion. But they don’t. And, in fact, they only tolerate any religion with lower status signals than their religion.

    TRADING THE HIGH TRUST SOCIETY FOR FALSE, FREE STATUS SIGNALS

    And those free status signals are the ‘psychological device’ that provides the incentive for adopting the new democratic religion, rather than the old religion’s promise of life after death.

    This is the technological innovation of democratic secular humanism: it has replaced false promise of afterlife, true status signals, true suppositions about human nature, and true economic principles, with false status signals, false suppositions about human nature, and false economic principles.

    The net of this new religion has been the destruction of the nuclear family and a the slow regression away from the high trust society that the west built by local outbreeding over more than a thousand years.

    Because trust in *kindness*, which is an emotionally loaded term for the human need for acceptance and positive status signals, is counterproductive to the economic requirement for trust in trade and contract. [IDEA: positive signals for mere existence versus positive signals for economic action.]

    The innovation of the west that allowed it to create greater relative wealth at lower rates of corruption, and to tolerate higher risk and innovation, finally consumer credit, was the high trust society. And we can demonstrate empirically that increases in diversity of norms and culture, even race, cause accelerating decreases in trust. Our governmental conflict is just an expression of this difference.

    It is NOT POSSIBLE to create a civic religion without status signals. Humans value status more than money. No civic religion will ever exist that does not. However, the question is, what actions do those signals produce in the real world?

    SIGNALS OF TRUST

    Absolute respect for the commons and private property, Competition, Individualism, the nuclear family, truth telling, adherence to contract, and conformity to commercial norms, were innovations adopted by the western cultures under manorialism (feudalism), as people sought to demonstrate that they were fit to rent land. Males embraced chivalry because it allowed them to achieve status signals without fighting, and in turn, it allowed them to achieve status through service. Further it did not require extraordinary wealth to do services, as did fighting.

    That it takes a long time to change signaling strategies once the capture of fossile fuels permits industrialization, therefore freeing the woman from the drudgery of the home and the man from teh drudgery of the field, and gives us enough free wealth and time to afford to educate our young is certainly good reason to extend property rights to women, and to extend political enfranchise to all consumers and laborers. This is true.

    But the practical reality is our goods and services may be cheaper and the least of us we may live better than nobility of the past, but that does not change the reality that we are vastly unequal in temperament and ability, and most of us require extraordinary training and reinforcement by others to maintain the high trust society that we buit by accident was counter to intuition and behaviorally expensive to maintain. People universally demonstrate a preference for the benefits of material productivity. Always. Yet they long for the behavior of the tribe and family, despite universal and inescapable tribal poverty, and despite universal and inescapable low trust in family-dominated, in-breeding-in-extended family societies.

    Be careful what you wish for. You’re getting it.

    Progressive ideology is a longing for a return to the tribe. It is cheap false status signals that produce negative economic consequences. Cultures are empirically demonstrable to be unequal, and democracy only works in the west because the west started out as aristocratic. Without western culture the west will be like every other barbaric low trust civilization on the planet.

    Progressive ideology is to the west what christianity was to rome. There is no difference.

    It is mysticism in different robes.

    -Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-25 02:07:00 UTC

  • PARETO ON THE “DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION” “The weakness of the humanitari

    PARETO ON THE “DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION”

    “The weakness of the humanitarian religion does not lie in the logico-experimental deficiencies of its derivations. From that standpoint they are no better and no worse than the derivations of other religions. But some of these contain residues beneficial to individuals and society, whereas the humanitarian religion is sadly lacking in such residues. But how can a religion that has the good of humanity solely at heart . . . be so destitute in residues correlated with social welfare? . . .[Because] the principles from which the humanitarian doctrine is logically derived in no way correspond with the facts. They merely express in objective form a subjective sentiment of asceticism. The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by too much fondling is to do good to the bird. We are not . . . forgetting that humanitarianism has had some socially desirable effects. . . . But . . . humanitarianism is worthless from the logico-experimental point of view. . . . And so for the democratic religion in general.”

    It’s not a surprise that I concur with his argument.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 09:45:00 UTC

  • Western (protestant christian) values are aristocratic values. (Aristocratic ega

    Western (protestant christian) values are aristocratic values. (Aristocratic egalitarian values).

    The western male did not adopt aristocratic values because he desired them. He adopted them because they were to his advantage.

    They were to his advantage because they were the values of the land holding aristocracy. He had to have them if he wanted to join the economy.

    These values are minority values. THey will always be minority values.

    And we are a minority in the country were we were once the majority.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-02 18:51:00 UTC