Curt Doolittle

Theme: Religion

  • AND REPRODUCTION (from a post I answered on Quora) “….Atheism is correlative w

    http://www.quora.com/permalink/BKTUIZixFATHEISM AND REPRODUCTION

    (from a post I answered on Quora)

    “….Atheism is correlative with lower reproduction in the upper classes, and CAUSAL with reproduction in the lower classes.”

    QUESTION:

    “Is atheism a threat to humanity due to its lower birth rates?”

    ANSWER: 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 Doolittle

    http://www.quora.com/Is-atheism-a-threat-to-humanity-due-to-its-lower-birth-rates/answer/Curt-Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-10 01:16:00 UTC

  • 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

  • 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

  • DO 90% OF AMERICANS AGREE ON? God and Country. Hard work and success. Eduction a

    http://news.yahoo.com/americans-agree-god-country-sex-ed-125513919.htmlWHAT DO 90% OF AMERICANS AGREE ON?

    God and Country. Hard work and success. Eduction and voting.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-14 00:11:00 UTC

  • Why Did Stephen Hawking Cancel His 2013 Trip To Israel?

    Noam Chomsky, a radical leftist, a man filled with hatred, the only philosopher supporting left intellectuals, and perhaps one of the most immoral men in the world, convinced Hawking not to go.   

    This is neither a criticism of Hawking, nor support for israeli policy, but a statement about Chomsky’s career as a purveyor of destructive political ideology.

    It’s also proof that most intellectuals are terribly incompetent outside of their direct discipline.  And it’s further evidence that academia is insuated from and fails to understand basic economics, basic geopolitics, and have unfortunately adopted not the skeptical empiricism that science recommends, but instead, much of the ideological platform of the postmodernist movement, and it’s intentional misrepresentation of the nature of man.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Stephen-Hawking-cancel-his-2013-trip-to-Israel

  • Why Did Stephen Hawking Cancel His 2013 Trip To Israel?

    Noam Chomsky, a radical leftist, a man filled with hatred, the only philosopher supporting left intellectuals, and perhaps one of the most immoral men in the world, convinced Hawking not to go.   

    This is neither a criticism of Hawking, nor support for israeli policy, but a statement about Chomsky’s career as a purveyor of destructive political ideology.

    It’s also proof that most intellectuals are terribly incompetent outside of their direct discipline.  And it’s further evidence that academia is insuated from and fails to understand basic economics, basic geopolitics, and have unfortunately adopted not the skeptical empiricism that science recommends, but instead, much of the ideological platform of the postmodernist movement, and it’s intentional misrepresentation of the nature of man.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Stephen-Hawking-cancel-his-2013-trip-to-Israel

  • 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 STATE VS GOD I’m not really sure how a bureaucracy run by human beings under

    THE STATE VS GOD

    I’m not really sure how a bureaucracy run by human beings under the auspices of the common good, is any different under the state theocracy or the religious theocracy.

    They’re both bureaucratic monopolies, and bureaucratic monopolies are made of human beings with human incentives. The bigger a bureaucracy gets the fewer of its members are elites and the more of them are average people who are insulated from the competition of the market and increasingly act like they are insulated from the competition of the market.

    And if history is any measure, a weak federal church is a lot less warlike and oppressive than a strong federal legislature.

    I mean, the data is the data.

    The state is worse than the church.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-22 00:34:00 UTC

  • How Do Christian Conservatives In The Usa Explain The Very High Teen Birth Rates In The Bible Belt?

    INCREDIBLY FUNNY BUT TERRIBLY BAD ANSWERS : HERE IS THE CORRECT ONE.

    Here is the correct, and entirely impolitic one. It also accounts for poverty and IQ statistics.

    Diversity increases extremes.

    —PART 1 – CAUSATION—
    ECONOMICS OF RACE AND REPRODUCTION

    QUESTION: “Why is single motherhood so common in the south?”

    Well, of course I don’t like to say the impolitic truth and then have to fend off the ignorant. Quora is peopled by the demographic that does not rely on data. We know this because almost all questions there can be answered easily with available data. But since all data of meaning requires knowledge of economics and statistics, and ignorance of economics and statistics is pervasive, this prohibits access to comprehension of that data, and prohibits resolution of questions of popular opinion and political doctrine.

    As such, it’s tedious to answer impolitic questions here. That is why few people do it.

    That said, I will do my best:

    FAMILY STRUCTURE

    1) Family structure and family economic structures determine poverty. The nuclear family is highly efficient economic structure. The two income nuclear family is the most efficient economic structure. For a male it is the smallest tribe he can be alpha in, and maintain access to a female as he declines in desirability For a woman she is the alpha female in her tribe of one, and has a monopoly claim on his production for the duration of her childrearing, despite her declining ‘desirability’ during this time. The nuclear family also places asset demands on the male, and therefore delays marriage and mating, both of which increase the skill level, work experience of the members.

    2) Redistribution undermines the family and increases poverty, partly because men in the lower classes are less desirable (and able) than women in the lower classes, because men are more widely distributed in feature and ability than are women, with more men at the very top (nobel prize winners) and more men at the bottom (persistently impulsive criminality). Our Y chromosome is where nature experiements, and our wider male distribution affects mating under monogamy, and less so under polygyny, because under polygyny, a smaller number of more desirable males can be shared amongst a larger number of marginally more desirable females.

    3) Racial groups are more or less ‘desirable’ as mates worldwide, not just in the states. This has largely to do, as best as any of us can tell, with a mating preference for females with thinner skin in contrast to mates with thicker skin as a signal that is different from the thicker skin of males. Since the only uniform scale of beauty across all cultures, other than symmetry, is quality of female skin clarity, this is the only selection preference necessary to explain racial preferences, other than the rate at which we appear to have exited Africa and begun the process of near-speciation (racial diversification), and the problem of access to vitamin D in the northern climes. This research is impolitic and the people who pursue it are ostracized from academia so it has moved to being conducted under a different guise, or now to china where such things are considered only logical. But the research is available. And it shows that fairer, thinner skin on females with finer features, is more desirable regardless of racial group.

    4) People mate almost entirely within race (<15%) and prefer to associate, work, and live within racial groups. With the consumer marketplace for goods the only shared environment. Extremes can run counter to this fact with crossing occurring at the lower and higher ends of desirability where each individual has better options in mates and often better access to social class by crossing racial boundaries.

    5) Even where racial admixture occurs, it places downward pressure on extra-group status and opportunity (desirability). In other words, racially mixed children maintain the lower of their racial preferences. Altough in black and hispanic communities and families children are still ranked in preference by skin color because it grants access to status both mating and social.

    ECONOMICS
    6) Impulsivity (the ability to resist impulses) varies between the races, with the east asians the least impulsive distribution, and the subsaharan african population the most impulsive. Impulsivity is a positive reproductive strategy unless external (climate) pressures punish survival. Impulsivity places a high penalty on learning ability which favors long periods of ‘frustration’ and concentration.

    7) Impulsivity affects both trustworthiness and creditworthiness. Nuclear families have higher more stable incomes, and are more creditworthy, as well as more economically efficient. As such high densities of nuclear families will produce higher wealth. Higher wealth will generate greater opportunity. Greater opportunity within a geography will increase demand for housing in that geography. Housing in that geography will increase in price. People who live in more impulsive, less efficient groups will of course, be unable to gain access to that geography and its opportunities.

    8) For these reasons (Which I assume I should use graphs to illustrate) the reason that poverty and single motherhood are so prevalent in the south is that 74% of black mothers, and a high percentage of hispanic mothers are unmarried. And they live in close communities reliant on support from extended family members, with populations too high to integrate into more successful communities. White single motherhood is on the increase in the lower classes, and teh USA, Ireland and New Zealand, where the postmodernist and feminist movements have been most successful, have the highest rates of single motherhood among whites, and the countries of southern europe who remain familially integral the lowest: Italy, Greece, Spain and Luxembourg.

    TRUST AND OPPORTUNITY
    All humans are faced with opportunities for both cooperation and conflict at all times. We must choose how to apply our limited time effort and resources to a limited number of opportunities.

    All opportunities other than exchanges of commodities purely on price, consist of a network of cost and benefit tradeoffs. All cost and benefit tradeoff’s are simple.

    We trade (cooperate) on all sorts of terms, but economic status, social status, values, language, culture(mythology, habits) are significant terms. Every variation in every property that is not identical in interest is a negative.

    Status signals (status and reputation) have higher value in-group than across groups. Therefore status pressure to encourage each of us to adhere to agreements is of higher value in-group.

    Therefore we trust and cooperate in-group at lower cost and risk than across group.

    This is why people break into racial, cultural, socioeconomic, educational, generational, occupational groups. Because it’s the lowest risk pool of people with the lowest cost of cooperation, even if it’s less productive it may also be the only pool available to you where you can find someone willing to pay the higher cost of cooperating with you across groups.

    Political discourse assumes we want to help each other and we do. The problem is the logic of that statement -it’s meaningless when we CAN help everyone, we must still choose the best return on our help. And we do. And that is how it is. Anything else is irrational.

    SOUTHERN RELIGIOSITY
    Race is the reason for ‘everything’ in the south, including religiosity. Although southern religiosity we must understand is a rebellion against the state, after the north conquered the south. Race is the reason for everything in america. People are born, live, reproduce, associate, work with, and speak to, people within their racial groups except where they participate in the marketplace together.

    RATES OF POVERTY BY RACE
    Page on Carseyinstitute…

    RATES OF SINGLE MOTHERHOOD BY RACE
    LINK: KIDS COUNT Data Center…

    There is no end of data on this subject.


    —PART II—
    CORRELATION NOT CAUSATION

    States are, in general, rational economic alliances, usually run by an oligarchy, and usually the oligarchy grants monopolistic privileges to key industries in order to fund them sufficiently that they can compete outside of the local market where returns are highest.  We call this corporatism.  It is a rational system. Unfortunately, the natural incentive of all monopolies, and of course, a political bureaucracy is by definition a monopoly, are self interested and will prey upon their populations to the limits at which they can maintain power.

    Religions are ARATIONAL (not irrational) and they are a means of setting the moral limits to the actions of the state. Religions are resistance movements. Mystical religions consist of rational ends, but stated irrationally.  The only religion that is compatible with the state rather than an opposition to it is polytheistic, or what we today would call ‘history worship.”  The state will attempt to control religious doctrine to the best of its ability. In some cases it succeeds – theocracy results.  This is usually bad, because while oligarchic monopolies are self interested and predatory, they are also economically productive.  Theocratic bureaucracies are self interested and predatory but economically unproductive, and they manufacture ignorance in volume.

    The south is religious as a means of opposing the state. First, in response to the conquest by the north. Second as a resistance to the north.  Third as a resistance to racial integration.  Fourth as a resistance the feminist and postmodern attack on the family using redistribution and law. 

    I will leave it to you whether the use of arational methods to resist the state is effective (it is) or and whether or not it is right (it appears that the feminist, socialist, and postmondern movements have systemically increased poverty by destruction of the nuclear family.)

    —PART III – CONCLUSION—

    There is a correlation between southern religiosity and single motherhood, but there is no causal relationship.

    I hope that this was helpful and informative.

    Curt Doolittle

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-Christian-conservatives-in-the-USA-explain-the-very-high-teen-birth-rates-in-the-Bible-Belt

  • 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