We can come up with better ethical principles than any religion

A bit OT, but you might be interested to see Hitchens response to the recent Freedom from Religion conference. About halfway down the page:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2701379…

Notice how Card neatly segues between the demands of Moronism [it makes so much more sense to skip the middle em] and the demands of civil society. If Card wants to join a totalitarian organization, which demands utter allegiance, that's his business. But the strictures of his voluntarily chosen cult have nothing whatsoever to do with the organization of civil society.

And that's why religion is always evil: It's never ever enough for the religious to simply declare, "This is how we want to live." Every time, without exception, no matter how "liberal" the religious are (or think they are), it always comes down to, "This is how everyone should live." Because it's (supposedly) God's choice, not man's.

Another fucking moron who will go to his grave with his crap morals, bullshit beliefs, and arrogant, egomaniacal, holier-than-thou attitudes intact.

Fucking, fucking, fucking asshole.

He's a crappy science-fiction author to boot. I can't even force myself to finish reading his shit.

The LDS church is one such community. The homosexual community seems to be another.

OS Card is comparing apples to oranges here. A sexual orientation with a strong genetic component and a religion. The whole essay is an example of logical inconsistencies and sloppy thinking justifying the worst of bigotry. As a religious bigot he doesn't care.

One can be a gay, Mormon, parent, US citizen, US soldier or scientist etc.. Sexual orientation is just one component of people's being.

Sort of ironic that a people who were oppressed and run out of the midwest after their leader was hung seem to find it so easy to oppress other people.

And who is Card to judge other people and tell them what to do? In the Mormon religion he is a god in training*. He needs to pay more attention to the training part than the god part.

*Mormons believe the best of them don't go to heaven. They become gods and get their own planet to populate with literally their own children. All gods are married. There is a Mrs. Jehovah although no one knowns much about her. She is apparently busy getting laid and getting pregnant a lot.

A lot of Xians consider Mormons a nonXian derivative although these days, who cares? They have benefited from the general tolerance of our free country without bothering to extend that principle to others.

There is an army base in the hills above SLC with its guns pointed down towards the city. In case the Mormons revolt. To be fair, Fort Douglas has been decommissioned.

Every time, without exception, no matter how "liberal" the religious are (or think they are), it always comes down to, "This is how everyone should live."

Well, except for the Unitarians.

Steven Weinberg: "With or without [religion] you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

I have a problem with your first item on your commandments, oh Might Pee Zed.
The rule should not be "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", but should be "Do unto others as THEY would would have you do unto them."

The first wording allows for rationalisations such as "Well, if *I* were gay, I would want society to discourage me from acting certain ways." or "If I were a heathen, I would want to be converted to Christianity." or "I would like to be spanked really hard while wearing two wetsuits and a dildo up my arse".

The revised wording avoids such problems.

Card states that:

I wonder if they realize that the price of such "tolerance" would be, in the long run, the destruction of the Church.?

Wasn't the same thing stated back in the 60s when LDS was trying to prevent blacks from joining? Last I've seen, the hypocrisy of the Mormon's hasn't declined by eliminating their official racist policy, it's expanded to the point of presidential politics. Why any self-respecting homosexual would want to be a member of the LDS church completely baffles me, but Card's pseudological blather is from a different galaxy altogether.

Very sad.

The idea that a "community" would demand "utter allegiance" is one particular to Card's religion, and has nothing to do with homosexuality. There is no gay hierarchy that gays are required to show "allegiance" to, any more than there is a heterosexual hierarchy that heterosexuals show allegiance to.

As for his writing...Ender's Game was a book I thought was pretty good when I first read it, but the more books of his I read, the less I liked any of them. Card has a very confused and deranged theology and, the older he has gotten, the more he has inserted it into every facet of every book.

Hitchens has a point about how religion can serve to rationalize all sorts of nasty acts, but it's still true that the Western powers have been mucking around in the politics of the Middle East (can you say oil?) since the end of WWI. It's like saying that the troubles in Northern Ireland are due to that crazy Roman Catholicism, instead of a national history where a certain religious minority got the short end of the stick socially and economically. Thankfully, the peace process in Northern Ireland didn't get stuck on religion, and managed to make progress despite how the religious divide was a factor there.

Seriously, WTF? I wish I could speak with Card and ask him where he gets the idea that "society" (by which he evidently means "the government") has the right to, or even can, regulate peoples' sexual activity?

"This applies also to the polity, the citizens at large. Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

So the law should be enforced on a selective bases. Is that because you know anti-homosexuality laws are inherently unjust and unenforceable Orson Scott Card? Yes, I am sure passing laws that every knows are evil will really enhance respect for the law.

Here is what I often offer as a very high level foundation for morals that do not require religion.

Make your actions and reactions such that their effect is to decrease suffering and increase happiness while maintaining or promoting free will among humans.

The details of doing this is what we should be debating. using this as a foundation allows us to consider what is good policy and what is bad policy with human beings as the backdrop rather than any religion or entity. Sure there will be disagreement about whether gun control reduces suffering, or abortion or gay marriage. but it forces people to explain how policy or individual actions will affect humans rather than stupid remarks like "it will destroy the sanctity of marriage".

Some have offered that promoting free will is redundant because they presumed that promoting free will directly leads to happiness. I think the trilogy must be looked at together. You only have to look as far as Britney Spears to see that unlimited free will doesn't necessarily lead to unlimited happiness.

P.S. Ender's game and Treason are two of my favorite SF books. I am so saddened that Card turns out to be such a close d minded idiot.

Regarding your third point:

"I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." - EM Forster

My personal favorite rewording of the "Golden Rule" -- Don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you.

Looking at the principles you just put down, it reminds me that one of the biggest insults thrown at atheists is "you don't have moral guidelines".

In a religious society such as we live in, being an atheist is mostly a matter of personal choice that comes with maturity in reasoning. Such being the case, it is difficult to separate our personal morals from the morals that our former religion/religious parents taught us. And so it can be argued: What happens to those who grow up in an atheist household, and those who adopt atheism thinking it is cool?

Moral guidelines are not religious guidelines, they are social guidelines that our parents and our society teach us. But religion has taken hold of them claiming itself to be the only authoritative source. So, why not make some social-moral guidlines that stand apart from religious heap of junk? And who would be better at doing it than the atheists without any un-reasonable attachments?

That would also take care of the insult that our kids don't have any moral code of conduct.

There are homosexuals high in the Mormon Church, Orson. Having rules against them, or fighting gay marriage for Mormons AND non-Mormons, doesn't change that fact. Know this. Imagine it. At lesast one guy high up in the Church is having wicked gay sex, and others are either covering up for him or pretending they don't see. Church rituals and pageantry attracts gays and non-gays alike. Power attracts gays and non-gays alike. Larry Craig didn't look like a gay bathroom cruiser; neither do closeted Mormon leaders. Given that, why can't the children of a lesbian or gay couple have parents with civil married rights?

Oh dang, there goes my respect down the toilet for my long-cherished copy of Card's "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy"--flush, suck, blorbbbbbb... gurgle gurgle, flush. My badness, what an excruciating drivel! Well that will entail a serious re-reading, and if I happen to find anything remotely offensive in it along these lines and in this spirit, my copy might up and follow my respect.

Card states that:

I wonder if they realize that the price of such "tolerance" would be, in the long run, the destruction of the Church.?

That is a demonstrably false statement. Just stupid. Societies that tolerate or ignore GLBT are no different from ones that do. Except the level of gratuitous violence and murder and official state oppression go down. Along with a lot of human suffering like the homophobic bathroom cruising Larry Craigs bring onto themselves.

Card is free to believe whatever wingnutty evil things he wants. He is not free to impose his wacko religious views on anyone else. That is the law in the USA. You would think that someone whose leader was hung and cult run out of the midwest by force and violence would get it. You would be wrong.

Good post PZ, The ideas posted by Orson are clearly bad and bigoted religious ideas.I doubt anyone on this blog would disagree with that.
The first two of your pricipals you give are very sound, though certainly derived from our cultural (and religious) heritage.
The third one conains more food for thought:
"Your first loyalties are to yourself and the individuals who love you."
Because it may open a huge can of worms when considering personal loyalty against common good - as if you knew one of your bothers had committed some horrible crime. It is also one you would be going against if you sacrificed your life for a bunch of strangers. Is that necessarily a bad thing to do?
I am not saying it is wrong, just that on its own it may not always be that simple.
But beyond that, you cannot come with moral principals derived from science that can hep us find our way in Iraq. (Or if you can sell it to Hitchens first and then let us know.)

"The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships."

I see. He complains, above, about hypocrisy, and here he wants to make hypocrisy the rule of behaviour.

Not only for the homosexuals, either; they must pretend to be straight, but everybody else must pretend that the rules are actually being obeyed.

Wouldn't want to "shake the confidence of the community..."

Sounds exactly like all the fundamentalist churches I knew; sure, the pastor is diddling kids or the elder's wives or ..., but --"Shhh! Wouldn't want to shake the faith of the baby Christians!"

Nauseating.

Let's not be hasty: Card is clearly right about at least one thing in all that mess: no one can serve two masters.

O'course, I fail to see why anyone would want to serve a master when they could be a free agent, but people seem to have a need to seek out other people that tell them what to do. If you owe allegiance to two different societies/codes of conduct/ethical principles, and they come into conflict, you have to choose between them.

Well, two things: Card is talking about the homosexual community, not homosexuality, so statements like this:

OS Card is comparing apples to oranges here. A sexual orientation with a strong genetic component and a religion.

are wrong.

His ideas about what the "homosexual community" wants seem to be completely out of whack, though. So in an essay with several dozen important ideas within it, he seems to be correct on *two* of them. And they're fairly trivial ones.

*cough*

Geoffrey Miller, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of New Mexico (New Scientist, 11/18/07):

"... (E)volutionary moral psychology will reveal the social conditions under which human moral virtues flourish. ... Thus, science will kill religion - not by reason challenging faith, but by offering a more practical, universal and rewarding moral framework for human interaction. A naturalistic moral philosophy will replace the rotting fictions of theological ethics. ... (A)pplied evolutionary psychology will help Enlightenment humanism fulfil its long-stalled potential to make us all brighter, wiser, happier and kinder."

Michel Onfray, philosopher (interview in Science and Society, February 2006):

"Atheism is neither immoralism nor amorality; it is another moral system that supposes that the rules of all inter-subjectivity should follow a contract between the actors of the relationship. ... An atheist's morals remain to be shaped. ... I believe esthetics, in particular contemporary esthetics, is an excellent opportunity to give up the theological model for the foundation of a moral system."

Richard Dawkins (Edge.org, January 2006):

"(M)ental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. ... (W)e shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it..."

Not to imply, of course, that ALL the pastors were doing this; just that this was the attitude to whatever potential scandal arose. And there was always something.

Excuse me, doesn't Mr. card imply that by a careful definition of "community" and related criteria of belonging one can be "controlled" in any way imaginable? I mean, if I'm a computer programmer I can't possibly serve any "community" of long-haired people, can I? One would only have a basic understanding of algebra of sets to dictate any possible restriction to the "community" as well as to those who don't belong to it. That is, the whole mankind.
Maybe he should spell it "LSD".

"I know heterosexual and homosexual couples, and I don't even think much of, let alone obsess over, their private physical behavior. I see them as people who love each other, which ought to be enough for all of us." -PZ

I prefer not to think about the physical side of homosexuality. That should be a private matter between consenting adults.

PZ,

What sloppy thinking to talk about religion in the way you do. It makes about as much sense as talking about atheism being a force for evil or not. You need to get down to specifics before you make such claims. Communism is certainly a force for evil, but that doesn't mean secular humanism is.

It's quite clear that certain religious sects are clearly a force for evil because of the religious tenets they hold. Cleary an religious sect that holds that "God hates fags" or "Apostates must be killed" is a force for evil.

Also, why lump religions together as if all are irrational, theistic, or exclusionary. I know that some religions aren't theistic and some are not exclusionary. I'm not sure that every religion is irrational because I don't know the tenets of every religion on the planet. I see no reason why a religion couldn't be rational.

Correction: The Geoffrey Miller quote is from the 11/18/06 issue of New Scientist.

I enjoy Card's books, but since he started speaking out politically I confess it's been hard for me to want to buy more of them. Sometimes his attitudes though strike me as really odd, because it's difficult to glean from his novels. I haven't read all of them, of course, but there was one I read many years ago called Songmaster which always struck me as overtly homosexual. Maybe it was just a very strong subtext, I'm not sure anymore, but this kind of tirade from him is very sad.

And frankly, every time I hear someone complain as though the homosexual acts themselves are dirty and depraved, etc. etc., I wonder if he cares that most homosexuals think the exact same thing about straight sex?

One of my grad school classmates was a high school English teacher. The topic one day in her senior comp class was a short story about sexual identity. Some of the boys in her class were extremely uncomfortable with the story and expressed their disdain for the gay first-person narrator of the story. When she asked them if they knew any gay people, they were quick to disavow any such knowledge and said further that they didn't want to know any such people because it would be impossible to see them without imagining the disgusting things gay people did. The teacher then said, "You call me Mrs. Smith, so you know I'm married. Do you think of the things I do with my husband every time you see me?" The boys shrieked in dismay and babbled incoherently that of course they didn't and why would she even think that?! My classmate is a tall, attractive blonde woman and I daresay several of her senior boys had indeed thought about her in sexual ways. She sparked a real panic in them. I don't know how many of them learned from it.

What sloppy thinking to talk about religion in the way you do

Take that plank out of your own eye, there, Macker:

Communism is certainly a force for evil

no, it's not. It was made out to be, but no more so than:

It's quite clear that certain religious sects are clearly a force for evil because of the religious tenets they hold

go read Marx, and tell me that all his writing was just a "force for evil".

talk about sloppy thinking.

Card is a moron. You can't serve two masters? WTF does that mean? Is a member of the 'homosexual community' serving a master any more than a member of the 'heterosexual community'?

I'm an atheist, heterosexual and a soldier, I'm also an undergraduate student with the OU, does that mean, according to Card, that I have 4 masters? Can I not be a successful soldier because I'm to busy lusting after members of the opposite sex? Can I not study for an academic award because I am too busy serving as a soldier? (Now there's a master for you!)

Let's face it, Card sets up homosexuality as an all-encompassing dictat as to how a 'member' of that community should behave and act. He fails to see that this is the preserve of his church and that homosexuality is nothing more than one small part of what comprises the individual. I get the idea that he thinks that there are roving gangs of homosexuals out there, sneaking up on poor unsuspecting individuals and converting them to their 'way of life', usually when they are at their most vulnerable. Oh wait, I think I sense some projection...

"... (E)volutionary moral psychology will reveal the social conditions under which human moral virtues flourish. ... Thus, science will kill religion - not by reason challenging faith, but by offering a more practical, universal and rewarding moral framework for human interaction. A naturalistic moral philosophy will replace the rotting fictions of theological ethics. ... (A)pplied evolutionary psychology will help Enlightenment humanism fulfil its long-stalled potential to make us all brighter, wiser, happier and kinder."

That is patently absurd. Morality and Ethics are prescriptive not descriptive, there's no way evo-psych can tell us what morality is.

And they wonder why evo-psych gets a bad name.

We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible.

He goes on and on about self-control but he can't manage to control his own irrational hatred of homosexuality.

What a surprise! Another fucking fundamentalist hypocrite.

I can't stand these self-righteous pricks!

I prefer not to think about the physical side of homosexuality. That should be a private matter between consenting adults.

Unlike heterosexuality? Which should be public and forced?

But Sailer raises the real question. What exactly is morality? It isn't a scientific principle, as you all surely know. And "atheist morality" is kind of a silly phrase, like "nonJapanese geography" or "non-Impressionist art." Nonsense, literally.

Where exactly does YOUR morality come from? Science? No. Science never has pretended to preach morality. What mom and dad told me? No, too many religious moms and dads. The needs of society? Much too vague. The desires of others? Subjective by definition, and often idiotic, if not insane. And...

I'm not sure that every religion is irrational because I don't know the tenets of every religion on the planet. I see no reason why a religion couldn't be rational.

What exactly would make it a "religion"? As opposed to "things a bunch of people say about the world."

"use their sexual powers responsibly"

How did he know my super power?

Okay, I know that "you're just closeted" is one of the sillier responses to homophobic rants. But really, how can one not lodge that allegation when Card writes:

As a not-particularly-pure-minded heterosexual adolescent, I understood the intensity of sexual desire;

...

The average fifteen-year-old teenage boy is genetically predisposed to copulate with anything that moves.

...

The Church has plenty of room for individuals who are struggling to overcome their temptation toward homosexual behavior. But for the protection of the Saints and the good of the persons themselves, the Church has no room for those who, instead of repenting of homosexuality, wish it to become an acceptable behavior in the society of the Saints.

Within the Church, the young person who experiments with homosexual behavior should be counseled with, not excommunicated. But as the adolescent moves into adulthood and continues to engage in sinful practices far beyond the level of experimentation, then the consequences within the Church must grow more severe and more long-lasting; unfortunately, they may also be more public as well.

Concerning the discussion of homosexuality in Songmaster, I must agree with those who held that Ansset "was" not a homosexual, though he engaged (or attempted to engage) in homosexual acts. As Kinsey pointed out, most American males (and many American females), even as long ago as the 1950s, had SOME kind of same-sex sexual gratification or experience. Engaging in homosexual behavior one time does not mean that you have that as your inevitable destiny.

Just as our natural desires for heterosexual contact outside of marriage are to be curbed, we are also taught to curb homosexual desires -- along with many, many others. It is not easy for any of us to control those things we desire most (though of course we always do well at controlling those desires we barely have at all).

Card writes: "who are tempted toward homosexuality"

There is a word for people who think homosexuality is a temptation. We call those people "homosexuals." I know it's juvenile to assume that all anti-homosexuals are closet cases, but the very language some of them use is rather suggestive.

One thing that must be understood about OSC, and many who share his views, is how they see the homosexuality community.

They believe that since homosexuals can't reproduce on their own, they prey on the heterosexual community (ie, mostly children or young adults who are impressionable), in order to sustain their numbers. The homosexual community does this by making youngsters aware of their lifestyle as a 'choice' (which it is, but has sinister implications in religious context), so that when individuals meet there is the dangerous path of acceptance that is available.

That is the basis for the 'community' and 'master' codespeaks. Nevermind the reality, but they see open homosexuality as something of a parasite.

Homophobia is almost solely a religious problem. While many forms of bigotry and other evils can be sustained and propagated by atheists, homophobia seems to require arbitrary religious precepts to make any sense at all.

AIUI this hasn't always been so - there was of course a time when homosexuality was considered a "bourgeois deviation" among Marxists, for example. But though you get the occasional charming comment such as the one from Guy above, you will search far and wide to find an arrantly homophobic atheist.

It's a good thing that not all Mormons have minds as tightly closed-up as Card's. Otherwise I'd be short some good friends.

Of course, believing everything to be true that a particular church says, is a quick way to end up mightily confused. Recognizing the central truths - most of which are prttey much like the first two PZ has - is the imortant part, and you can throw out the rest. (I'm still trying to understand the Orthodox Jews who complained that running busses, or subway trains, past their synagogue would keep God from hearing their prayers. I was taught that it's what's in your heart that matters ... and all the closed-mind types come up way short.)

Card is not a good SF writer, he is willing to sacrifice science for his weird-ass religious views.

I believe Card's general argument is reasonable, if you limit his arguments to the LDS church. He isn't arguing that homosexuals are bad. He's arguing that the definition of "LDS" is believing that the LDS prophets spoke truly. The LDS prophets said homosexuality is wrong. So if you're going to identify yourself as LDS, it's hypocritical to support homosexuality.

I do disagree with Card about what society as a whole needs to do. The voluntary community of the LDS church should be allowed to set whatever restrictions they like. The nation, on the other hand, should be extremely permissive. Same-sex marriage should be permitted. I'd argue that polygamy should be permitted also, as long as it isn't coerced in any way and no abuse is happening.

Homophobia is almost solely a religious problem.

And yet communists look down on it too, and sometimes brutally repress it. I think it's a "religious" idea in some ways, and all Communist societies grew out of societies that were religious before them, of course, but I think in general, atheism is perfectly compatible with almost any form of bigotry.

My lack of god, this is 17 years old. Hasn't OSC said anything equally bigotted in the near-term? Certainly there's more material than this to work with.

Clicking on 'talk' in your first line links to 'we_can_come_up_with_better_eth.php', going nowhere.

I can't look at your 'talk', so I have no idea how you could say you didn't think religion was necessarily a force for evil.

This mystified me. How could something based on lies be good? If anyone takes the lies on good faith and then acts on them they will get cheated. How can it ever be good to cheat people who act in good faith?

I see no reason why a religion couldn't be rational.

I am surprised no one has pulled you up on this.

The bit that stops them being rational is 'faith'. I.e the bit where you have to think something without evidence.

Considering the history of the mormon church, having been driven westward by neighbors who attacked them as perverts and sexual deviants, you'd think they'd want to exhibit tolerance.

-jcr

Is the only reason a human does not kill another human "fear of consequence"? I think so. There are 2, well, 3 justice systems.

Justice System 1 is the primitive justice system where we sill A kills B and C, being member of B, kills A. Justice is served.

Justice System 2 is the contemporary justice system where A kills B and then society puts A in jail or sentences him to death.

Justice System 3 is the imaginary justice system where the murderer will pay in the afterlife.

A believe that the the only reason an atheist doesn't kill (with motive) is because the of Justice systems 1 and 2. We do not believe in Justice system 3. I don't believe we naturally kill without motive unless we are a sociopath like Mr. Brooks (for those who have seen the movie).

Even considering a Mormon for President is a sure fire recipe for political disaster. Please examine the creed, and the oaths that Mormon males swear. They are incompatible with political service, since Mormon males basically swear to turn over their political and ethical judgement to the LDS church. And this church, the Latter Day Saints, has in the past asked their male followers to kill in cold blood! And they did so, without question Just the kind of people I want running the US. If Romney is elected, the Mormon church will run America. Or can we have a Mormon show us this is not true, without lying, or obfuscating, of course.

So, as us atheists congeal and unite, how are we going to come up with our moral code? Is there going to be a vote or something? I mean, to rebut all the religious moral codes don't we need a standard set? Maybe 10?

And yet communists look down on it too, and sometimes brutally repress it. I think it's a "religious" idea in some ways, and all Communist societies grew out of societies that were religious before them, of course, but I think in general, atheism is perfectly compatible with almost any form of bigotry.

Well no. Religion brings it up, sustains it, and provides it for a seemingly inexhaustible succession of dictatorships—that usually can’t wait to implement religion’s well-proven and time-tested framework for oppression—as a means for structurally necessary scapegoating.

Communist regimes and the like have nothing whatsoever to do with rational atheism. They are religion incarnate.

The evolution of naturalistic ethics:

In a sense, all ethical systems are naturalistic in origin since there is no supernatural realm imparting ethnic knowledge. (Unless we are dualists or Nature essentialists, everything humans do or think is "natural.") Only a subset of these ethical systems, however, purport themselves to be naturalistic in justification. By that, they assert that they are derived from a naturalistic understanding of the world - that is, scientific, logical, rational, non-theistic, and evolutionist.

But perhaps the modern quest for a "true" naturalistic ethics is folly. "Naturalist" ethics seem to have no firmer grounding than theological ethics. Their principles and precepts change abruptly by era, ideology, and even individual. Perhaps they reflect little more than the competition of ideas based on differential memorability, replicability, and zeal of adherents (aspects of the cultural selectionism discussed by Donald Campbell and others) - especially among elites - in the context of a particular historical moment that includes techno-economic and demographic trends.

If scientific paradigms and technology evolve through competition of ideas with "success" based on effectiveness, the effectiveness of a "naturalistic" ethical system is not a function of how naturalistic, rational, or benign it is, but rather how successful it is in attracting and maintaining followers in a particular time and place - just like any other belief system, including religious faiths and ideologies.

Consider the history of such system, using just a few examples. Do these successive ethical/ideological systems reflect a) truly scientifically derived ethics, b) any kind of trend or tendency, or c) are they just reflections of contemporary social, economic, and intellectual currents as interpreted, extracted, and rationalized by certain subcultures within the intellectual class?

Cult of Reason - Hebert
Dialectical Materialism - Marx
Monism - Haeckel
Fabianism - Webb
Objectivism - Rand
Technocracy - Veblen
Humanist Manifesto I - Dewey
Ecological Ethics - Hardin
Evolutionary Utilitarianism - Singer
Transhumanism - Bostrom
Religious Naturalism - Goodenough

No matter how hard I have been pressed to "convert" to the homosexual persuasion I have found two retorts which deter even the most ardent pervayer of pucedom.
"What kind of boy do you think I am?" and "I'm saving myself for the man I marry!" Usually takes care of 'em. If that fails "I think I hear my wife calling me!" has gotten me out of some sticky wickets.

But, that was back when I had lot's more of my hair and a lot more of my own teeth. No guy had made a pass at me, except during an attempt to sell me a funeral plot or nursing-home care, for over 15 years! Is there no pity in this world?

"I prefer not to think about the physical side of homosexuality. That should be a private matter between consenting adults.

Unlike heterosexuality? Which should be public and forced?"

I just think it is in very poor taste to discuss the details in a public setting.

Of course, we do need to teach human reproduction and what counts as child molestation to our children.

How are these guys going to react when scientists eventually discover the genetic components of same-sex sexuality? Do you think they'll go into spasms of denial, or will they reinterpret it as "god's will" somehow?

So, as us atheists congeal and unite, how are we going to come up with our moral code?

Y'know... I was sitting around discussing this very topic with a few friends the other day... I'd been telling them about an experiment I did with my second cousins (who are 6 and 9 years old, respectively) in which I got them to come up with a few "ten commandments" that were obviously superior to the ones the jehova cooked up. (#1 was cool: "be nice to puppies, kittens, and small animals")

Someone needs to set up a website with a digg-like interface so that people can suggest "commandments" and vote on them as well. Then always list the top ten at any given time. I wonder if the experiment would work and what we'd wind up with as a shared set of values. My guess is that a community-commandment set would be a lot better than what jehova cooked up. Of course the mormon-woos might put "hate fags" as a commandment and click-bomb it up to #1.

I'd do it except I don't have the web-scripting skills.

Orson Scott Card IS a terrific science fiction writer. He has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

That people here are spouting sour grapes about his literature because of his personal religious views is disappointing, to say the least.

That said, man!

If you think his religious/moral views are confused, just read about his political persuations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card

I am cursed with imagination. Whenever I encounter views like this from people like Card, in my mind they start morphing into ants. Their faces elongate into little tiny mouths and they grow antennae. When they finish talking they fall back into line...left, right, left, right, hup, hup...

To be fair to robots, fearful eyed little lemmings, and goose-stepping Nazis, sometimes they turn into those, too.

(I tend to be a bit antisocial to avoid the constant distraction.)

Re: #28 of Brian Macker -- "Communism is certainly a force for evil, but that doesn't mean secular humanism is"

Brian, you obviously don't know the first thing about communism. Who's version of communism would be the first queston: Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, etc.? Clearly, Stalin and Mao are antithetical to Marx, Lenin and Trotsky in that Stalin "invented" "Socialism in one country" and Mao subscribed and practiced it. This is opposite from Marx's version of a world-wide socialist revolution where nationalism was to be overcome, not endorsed. Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his post as part of his last will and testament and Troksty called Stalin the "gravedigger of the revolution" (which he eventually was) because he knew where Stalin's strategy would lead. So just because Stalin was a monster who came to power largely because the young Soviet Union was virtually destroyed by a coalition of capitalist nations is no reason whatsoever to believe that "communism" is somehow inherently evil.

Go read some Marx, Engles, Lenin and Troksy and some history too. You might learn something.

And that's why religion is always evil: It's never ever enough for the religious to simply declare, "This is how we want to live." Every time, without exception, no matter how "liberal" the religious are (or think they are), it always comes down to, "This is how everyone should live." Because it's (supposedly) God's choice, not man's.

It's "evil" to suggest that there are better ways of doing things? It's "evil" to have normative concerns about our fellow humans?

I would suggest that this is hardly the case. Your own suggestions that people shouldn't live under the thumb of religion (at least, that's my understanding of your use of the word "evil") would seemingly put you at odds with yourself.

Religion isn't "evil". The problem with religions is 1) that the preponderance of their unique claims about reality are almost certainly simply wrong, which is problematic in its own right. 2) No vetting process for retaining ideas that work and discarding ones that don't. This is why the nonsense of 2000+ years ago has been so easily grandfathered into today's world.

#58: Someone needs to set up a website with a digg-like interface so that people can suggest "commandments" and vote on them as well. Then always list the top ten at any given time.

Neat idea. Perhaps seperate postings of the top ten commandments according to religious affiliation--or lack of.

Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Make No Commandments

Commandment #2: Schmuck! Can't you understand English!

Card was a great science fiction writer 20 years ago. His stuff now is well nigh unreadable.

Never liked his novels, now I know why.

SG

"I see no reason why a religion couldn't be rational.
I am surprised no one has pulled you up on this.
The bit that stops them being rational is 'faith'. I.e the bit where you have to think something without evidence.
Posted by: mark"

Mark, Buhddism has a lot varied branches including systems like Zen. The only thing they have that needs an act of faith is reincarnation, but there is nothing in the religion that says you have to believe it. There is no God, there are paths you can try to obtain certain psychological states, but no demand that you believe them. I don't see why the some Buhddists cannot be considered rational.

Card was a credible writer in the 80s. He hasn't written anything worth reading in well over 15 years.

There may indeed be some rational Buddhists, but every single one I've met, be they of the North American converted variety or culturally virgin straight out of the Himilayas, though pleasant and sociable, they were one and all afflicted with almighty doses of flagrant and fantastic woo.

And yet communists look down on it too, and sometimes brutally repress it.

as a sidenote, the leading communist groups in the united states are very pro-queer. you might want to take a look at leslie feinberg's lavender & red series at the worker's world website before assuming such a thing.
http://www.workers.org/lavender-red/

Card is not a good SF writer, he is willing to sacrifice science for his weird-ass religious views.

He's willing to sacrifice science for story... which does NOT necessarily make him a bad SF writer. "Science Fiction" is the label for a broad (and vaguely defined) genre, only a very small subset of which even claims to be concerned with rigorous portrayals of science. Show me the equations of The Martian Chronicles or the data that support Stranger in a Strange Land or the peer-reviewed biological theories that predict the sandworms of Dune. Criticize him for his "weird-ass" religious views and I'm right there with you; criticize his work because he sometimes uses it to promote those weird-ass views, and I'll cheer even louder. But claiming that his weird-ass views somehow magically negate his skill as a writer or his place in his genre just strikes me as a bit of childish sour-grapes.

Card was a great science fiction writer 20 years ago. His stuff now is well nigh unreadable.

Yah, well the same could be said of many other SF writers, and of literary artists in general, without regard to their views on theism or human sexuality. Some folks only have a few great stories to tell.

I notice a general tendency -- maybe it's just a sad aspect of human nature -- toward trashing people we disagree with even regarding things unrelated to the disagreement. "Card isn't even a good writer" is a case in point. So is the pervasive habit of trashing A** C*****'s looks. Face it, if she looked exactly the same but were a liberal secular academic who regularly showed up at atheist meetings to speak on the evils of superstition in the public square, she'd be at the top of all our Hot Babes lists, and nobody would even notice the alleged Adam's apple.

IMHO, this habit of adding an "and you're ugly, too" ad-hominem tag at the end of an otherwise substantive criticism just trivializes the whole argument, and destroy any good the original criticism might do.

BTW, I have a bit of recent personal experience on this point (OK, I really just want to brag): Last night (Saturday) I had the privilege of being in Fenway Park as Curt Schilling mowed down the Indians to set up today's ALCS Game 7. Now, based on things I've heard him say and things he's reported to have written in his blog, Schilling seems to be something of an obnoxious religious-right pr!ck... but that didn't keep me from enjoying his pitching.

While we are inventing new and better religions, a pastime that hasn't worked so well in the past, here is one.

Existentialism, which says that you have free will and are responsible for your actions. To my mind this has always been a restatement of reality.

You will make choices and be responsible for your own actions whether you like it or not.

One can graft this common sense notion onto other philosophies if one wants to, Xian existentialism, Buddhist etc..

So blast away. Heresy trials start this evening. LOL

In my view, there are mainly 4 categories of people that can write this kind of nonsense :

1. Ahmanidejads : those who deny their existence in their own country

2. Larry Craigs : closet gays who have lived their lives following the principles exposed in this essay, and because of their frustration want to deny to others like them the right to do what they wanted to do all their life. I spent 13 years in that closet, so I know how it feels in that closet. My hand was my lover.

3. Ignorants : those who are 100% heterosexuals, and that do not have any gay friend or a family relative, and can't even understand that whatever the particular combination of genetic predisposition and environemental factors is, the result is a spectrum with many colours when it comes to sexual appetites and fantasies.

4. Procreators : sex if for reproductive purposes only

I really wonder why any religion would want to continue defending them in 2007. Why don't they just give up.
I mean after having treated women as secondary citizens, and given up on that one, after having enforced slavery, and given up on that one, now they are left with two things to defend, anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion. And guess what, they'll give up. One day they'll give up, because they have been in the business of giving up for the last 200 years. They'll give up or people will give them up. So maybe in the end we'll get closer to true reliogisity, that of Einstein or deSpinoza, the creative blend of science and the humanities that will tell the story as it really is, the most beautiful story of all...

Communist regimes and the like have nothing whatsoever to do with rational atheism. They are religion incarnate.

I'm not sure what you mean by rational atheism. I'm sure Lenin thought he was the most clearheaded rational unsentimental guy in the world, and in some ways he was. So did Ayn Rand. And Sigmund Freud. All were pretty screwed up in different ways, but so was Madelyn Murray O'Hare. Does that make her atheism irrational in itself?

What I'm saying is something that I thought would be obvious and unarguable. Atheism has no morality. It can't. You can be moral and an atheist, but your morality has to come from somewhere else. And actually I think it has to on some level have some kind of irrational root.

But maybe I should just ask, what is "rational atheism"?

Orson Scott Card IS a terrific science fiction writer. He has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Yeah, and Michael Moore is the greatest documentary producer in the universe because he won at Cannes... Get real. At one time things like winning Hugo or Nebula awards meant something to me, but that was before I realized that the same 3-4 authors are **Always** on the best seller list, even when half of them are not that good, and that most awards are given out not by a popular vote on if they are good or not, but based on the voting of a handful of insular, societally disconnected, art critics, whose only qualification is that they tend to go, "Wow!", at all the *right* things according to the writers/producers that are popular and ultra famous at the time, or (in the case of Cannes) kiss the right asses among the, "This week we hate group X, so anyone making a film/book/TV show about how bad X is needs to get a pat on the back!"

Card most likely won what he did when he did because *at that time* his books resonated with the ass kissers or hate fan clubs going around at the time. Its almost never about how well something it written, how believable the characters really are, or anything else rational. Its how warm and fuzzy it makes the judges feel (or how uncomfortable, without making them too uncomfortable). The biggest hack in the universe could win something like a place on the top seller list, and have, just by not making too many spelling mistakes and catering to the latest trends in stupidity. Thankfully it takes a real cult following (and I mean cult in the truest sense) to elevate them to the people where they are still on the shelf 20+ years after they stop writing anything worth even reading the back covers (Steven King anyone?).

But seriously, I have read a few things by Card. I wasn't impressed and a damn well know that, unless some other comity artificially limited my choices "first", there is no way I would have awarded him jack, had I been one of the people on either group voting for his "awards". His books are dry, boring and just not readable, and I only say that of about 4-5 of the people whose books I *have* read, out of probably 300+ authors. Mind you, there are worse, but its not hard to find better. lol

---

As to the comment about rational religions... Yeah, its possible to have a religion that is 90% rational. Its the 10% that isn't that eventually jumps out and disembowels the whole premise though. For example, despite some wacky old world nonsense involving Alchemy and magic weapons, Hinduism isn't too bad. Their gods are more like obvious charactures of real people, or not that omniscient or omnipotent. Basically just more powerful people, who make real mistakes. Hardly something you worship in the sense most religions would, but more like looking up to an uncle. Only... Some nuts really truly believe in all the alchemy BS and would like to see "Western" science replaced with "Vedic" science...

And as for Buddhists... All find and good to talk about how you don't "have to" believe in the woo woo involved, but there are sects that have gone past *requiring* woo woo to actually suggesting that Buddha was some Jesus like figure and therefor an actual god (how else do you explain how no one since him has ever performed a real miracle or *ascended* to higher consciousness?). If there is any woo at all in a religion, some people invariably go overboard with it, and in "most" cases, the consequence has, until recently, always been the replacement of the sane and rational version with the woo woo version, because it tends to be more successful to place things you can't have *beyond* a persons reach, with magic, heaven, transcendence that only "chosen" people can achieve, or other excuses for why it doesn't really work at all, than it is to convince people that its worth believing the stuff that sort of does work, while just ignoring all the shit that doesn't. That, and the ones that insist on the former idea that its beyond normal reach tended, in the past, to get pissy and kill everyone that refused to accept that it *did* all work, but only *under special circumstances*.

That last issue is the only one that has changed much. And its not changed so much that even Buddhists haven't once and a while gotten violent over whose right and wrong (even if it is, for them, rare).

I just think it is in very poor taste to discuss the details in a public setting.

Of course, we do need to teach human reproduction and what counts as child molestation to our children.

Depends on the setting. I think you'll agree there are plenty of places you would be shocked to hear some hetero couple get up and start discussing their sex life in detail. PTA meeting? Mom's 80th birthday party? But if you go to a public lecture on human sexuality or a workshop on how to be a better lover, maybe a few details might creep in?

Not sure why you bring up child molestation, but it would seem to be the opposite of what you say. There you want to discuss inappropriate homosexual touching just as much as heterosexual touching.

Am I missing something here?

Please stop ruining Ender's Game for me. :-(

This makes me sick... I never knew this! And I am a big fan of Card's "Ender Series"...

Buhddism has a lot varied branches including systems like Zen. The only thing they have that needs an act of faith is reincarnation, but there is nothing in the religion that says you have to believe it. There is no God, there are paths you can try to obtain certain psychological states, but no demand that you believe them. I don't see why the some Buhddists cannot be considered rational.

Well, to start with, faith in reincarnation (which implies the existence of some equivalent of a soul to be reincarnated) is a nontrivial matter.

But absent the (apparently optional) belief in reincarnation, Zen Buddhism as you describe it does, in fact, sound fairly rational. It also sounds nothing like a "religion," in the commonly accepted sense of the word. I mean no offense to Buddhists (and I'm taking your description, you should pardon the expression, on faith), but a system of thought that requires no belief in any divine being, and whose key article of faith is optional, whose point is to help people find "paths [they] can try to obtain certain psychological states," sounds more like a self-improvement group than what most folks would understand as a "religion."

#71, well I may be an atheist but I feel lucky. I was born in a family, in a country, France and never needed religion to tell me the stories. I learned the stories in the Bible and a few made sense, most others didn't. I loved science.

But it is also clear that I am part of a very small % of the poulation of the world that had this chance. The rest still needs to be told the story, just the story as it really is. Science has not succeeded so far in telling the story because for most people they get the story told until they are 16 or 18 and then it stops. 10 years late they can't even add 2/3 + 1/2, so how are they going to learn the story.
Religion is best at story telling, in a beautiful setting, putting music, making it emotional. And doing it a life long, not stoping at 18. For me Carl Sagan was my "apostle" of true reliogisity. He had this unique gift of telling the story with beauty, emotion, always thinking about who he is taling to, non scientists.
Most people don't realise that if Religion gave up its 2000 years old worldview, it could become a formidable architect of change. Tell the story as it really is, especially now that the world is going to face its biggest challenge ever, how to lead us towards a more Intelligent society, one that can avoid to over consume its resources and considers all men as equal in their right to live and to polute.

Okay, this proves that Card is completely nuts:

Unless Democrats speak now to stanch the flow of blood and stem the tide of panic in Iraq, then the situation will soon move beyond the ability of our brave soldiers to contain it. We can only succeed with the trust and support of the Iraqi people -- which, until now, we have largely had, solely because we kept reelecting George W. Bush, whom they knew to be a man of his word.

The President's word was given. The American people may have been sold the false idea that the war has been badly run, but they certainly did not vote to withdraw unilaterally from Iraq. The President's word is therefore our word.

From this moment on, if we come to defeat in Iraq, it will not be President Bush's fault. It will be, completely and exclusively, the fault of the Democratic Party. And it is the responsibility of the Democratic Party -- or at least the saner members of that party -- to speak up and do all they can to prevent that defeat.

So, CalGeorge, I take it, then, that Mr Card doesn't care at all that President Bush lied to the country about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction?

OS Card is a piece of work. He is obviously intelligent, at least on some level, and I really enjoyed some of his SF that I read before I learned the unvarnished truth about him. That said, he is crazy, and his obsession with homosexuality is telling... His whole discourse on how engaging in gay sex does not make one homosexual reads to me like some pretty heavy rationalization, on the part of a likely closet case. I bet Larry Craig tells himself the same thing, right after he zips up in the men's room...

Okay, this proves that Card is completely nuts:

"Unless Democrats speak"...followed by gibberish

This whole thread was unnecessary. The above evauation says it all. Card is nuts.

Fundies always toss the commandment about lying. Not smart, at least the holocaust deniers waited until most of the participants and victims were dead before trying to rewrite history.

His older books were OK, Enders game and a few others. The newer stuff was unreadable. His latest seems to be a future story about the fundie death cultists in the US involved in a civil war with the liberals or some such.

I wonder which side he is on. More to the point, I wonder which side the Mormons are on. On second thought, screw wondering and reactivate and upgrade Fort Douglas. Just in case.

So, CalGeorge, I take it, then, that Mr Card doesn't care at all that President Bush lied to the country about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction?

Since the President's word is our word, we lied about the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

#33 PsychoAtheist: Card is a moron. You can't serve two masters? WTF does that mean? Is a member of the 'homosexual community' serving a master any more than a member of the 'heterosexual community'?

No, but even if it were, how come nobody can serve two masters? Is that some kind of law of physics like gravity or something?

I love it when the wise sages spout out the wise soothsay sayings like they're self-evident axioms with no need for explanation.

It's like he's trying really really hard to convince himself of something.

But, I'm probably reading too much into things here. After all, a virile young cigar is sometimes just a cigar. I'm sure a guy who likes to write about naked boys fighting in a shower hasn't got anything to hide.

I should be interested to know if Professor Myers or any of the commenters on Pharyngula have read the work of the biologist David Sloan Wilson who looks at religion in an evolutionary perspective, and if they have, what do they think of it?

I'd just like to point out that in reading just two of Card's books, I thought that he came off as a bit of a pedo.

I remember at least three or four scenes in Ender's Game in which a bunch of naked little kids fight in showers, or run around a space station for "training." My favorite, if you can call it that, though was in a book whose title I can't remember: A peasant child is invited by a trio of older rich boys to a picnic. Long story short, the older ones rip the kid's clothes off and smear cake all over him.

I'm just sayin'.

And when I read the statements of those who claim to be both LDS and homosexual, trying to persuade the former community to cease making their membership contingent upon abandoning the latter, I wonder if they realize that the price of such "tolerance" would be, in the long run, the destruction of the Church.

The sooner, the better.

so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

Beyond homosexuals, there also seems to be no place in his world for people who don't want to marry or reproduce.

#48 Mark, there's no fundamental reason why a religion has to be based on faith. Some are and of course they are irrational.

#32Ichthyic, I've read Marx and his stuff is a force for evil. Like this evil document. It's the same paranoid us vs. them crap as many other religions, in this case bourgeois vs. proletariat. Because it is irrational garbage that requires a whole lot of self deception just like faith based religions.

Marx advocated all sorts of evil policies like doing away with private property, doing away with the bourgeois, dictatorship by the proletariat, and violent overthrow of the government. Even his beneficent sounding phrase "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is an insidious call to enslave some in service to the state.

Perhaps you should take off your rose colored glasses. Get with the program man. Marxism has been and always was evil.

#48 Mark, there's no fundamental reason why a religion has to be based on faith. Some are and of course they are irrational.

#32 Ichthyic, I've read Marx and his stuff is a force for evil. Like this evil document. It's the same paranoid us vs. them crap as many other religions, in this case bourgeois vs. proletariat. Because it is irrational garbage that requires a whole lot of self deception just like faith based religions.

Marx advocated all sorts of evil policies like doing away with private property, doing away with the bourgeois, dictatorship by the proletariat, and violent overthrow of the government. Even his beneficent sounding phrase "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is an insidious call to enslave some in service to the state.

Perhaps you should take off your rose colored glasses. Get with the program man. Marxism has been and always was evil.

Little Boots - er, you seem to have missed the bit where I address that specifically. As I say, homophobic Marxists were commonplace once upon a time, but these days homophobic atheists of a Marxist or any other stripe are very hard to find.

On a related note, much as it may pain us the line about Stalinism being a religion needs to be put to rest. Stalinism borrowed a lot of features from religion, but its seal against reason was nowhere near as complete, because while it wanted to treat certain works as if they were divinely revealed, it didn't have a God to attribute them to or any other way to make the idea of their infallibility seem plausible given their human authorship. If we try to extend the word "religion" to cover all forms of nonsense we will simply over-extend the word and blur the clarity of our message.

Wow. I used to be a huge Orson Scott Card fan, until I found out just what an arrogant, bigoted asshole he truly is. IT just seems strange to me that a man who wrote (note the past tense -- some of his older fiction is good indeed, but his recent rehashing of work is just tired and lame and utterly unnecessary) some really good stuff, and fiction that is sympathetic to gay characters (see Songmaster and The Call of Earth) could be so rabidly and vocally homophobic.

I live near OSC, and have run into him on several occasions in public here, and he is in every way a self-righteous, egotistical schmuck.

So this week already we've done racism and now we're doing homophobia. Well all I can say is: GOOD>

I don't like poofters or blacks. Or women, Jews and foreigners for that matter. Bloody lot of them should be strung up. That'd teach them a lesson. Why, when I was a boy I was regularly strung up by my housemaster. Made me the man I am today. Didn;t do me any harm.

Frankly I can't wait until we're allowed to shoot poor people again. After all, shooting the Welsh and the French is all well and good but we will run out of them eventually. There's quite a few poor people around, I should know, I've been scraping the blighters off my Bentley for hours today after plowing through a benefit queue. And there's too many immigrants coming over here, stealing our jobs....well obviously *I* don't have a job, I have an estate and some shotguns and a predilection for spanking. String the lot of them up and THEN shoot them. Especially the poofs with their "Ooooh I'm so good at interior decorating and I have dress sense". Bastards.

Have I missed the point somewhere?

Louis

There is a word for people who think homosexuality is a temptation. We call those people "homosexuals."

Bisexuals exist, too...

How are these guys going to react when scientists eventually discover the genetic components of same-sex sexuality? Do you think they'll go into spasms of denial, or will they reinterpret it as "god's will" somehow?

Both.

Like how global warming doesn't exist, isn't our fault, isn't a problem, and is too difficult and expensive to stop anyway. Or how HIV doesn't exist, doesn't cause AIDS, and was made by the CIA.

Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his post as part of his last will and testament and Troksty called Stalin the "gravedigger of the revolution" (which he eventually was) because he knew where Stalin's strategy would lead. So just because Stalin was a monster who came to power largely because the young Soviet Union was virtually destroyed by a coalition of capitalist nations is no reason whatsoever to believe that "communism" is somehow inherently evil.

Go read some Marx, Engles, Lenin and Troksy and some history too. You might learn something.

If you really read Lenin (he's a lot more boring than the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics*), you will indeed learn something. Like how he ordered the Party to seize power first and ask what to do with it later. Never mind the manufactured Ukrainian famine. Wasn't he the guy who asked, rhetorically, how he was supposed to make a revolution without shootings? (And who ordered the shooting of the whole imperial family long after the revolution, for no obvious reason?)

I remember reading some quite evil sayings by Trotsky, too, but I can't remember.

True Scotsmen, the lot of them.

* A book so heavy it can just be held in one hand (if you aren't too wimpish) and consists mostly of endless tables of chemical & physical properties.

Marx advocated all sorts of evil policies like doing away with private property

uh, exactly HOW is that evil?

you must have a rather bizarre sense of good and evil;
but then, whenever you use the terminology, it's all relative, eh?

"from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is an insidious call to enslave some in service to the state.

huh?

whoa, have you got it backwards.

you're in "not even wrong" category.

Bill Dauphin,
Not to hijack the thread into a discussion of Buddhist theology, but "faith in reincarnation" is not a central tenet. The closest to a unified set of central tenets for the disparate schools that you are likely to find is the "Basic Points Unifying the Theravada and Mahayana" (google that phrase and it should come up, I am not good at using HTML tags to imbed links). The points may or may not apply to the Vajrayana sects (mainly Tibetan Buddhists), who have their own oddities.

On a related note, much as it may pain us the line about Stalinism being a religion needs to be put to rest. Stalinism borrowed a lot of features from religion, but its seal against reason was nowhere near as complete, because while it wanted to treat certain works as if they were divinely revealed, it didn't have a God to attribute them to or any other way to make the idea of their infallibility seem plausible given their human authorship.

Of course they did have such a god (lowercase in Pravda tradition, huh, huh, heh, heh).

There's a nice painting (with lots of red) where it doesn't take a lot of imagination to identify Lenin as the Father, Stalin as the Son, and the sunrays falling on both (yellow, not red) as the Holy Spirit.

Even without Stalin (and Mao), what is the Great Socialist Future (the thing all those Lenin statues are looking and pointing to) other than a materialistic heaven and salvation, and the Revolution other than a holy war?

And what is this talk of "plausible"? It was simply asserted. On pain of death (or Siberia and death there), you were supposed to take it on, wait for it, faith.

Like how it was simply asserted that all national conflicts had been solved in the best possible way (so that mentioning the existence of one was apostasy).

"uh, exactly HOW is that evil?"

Are you that naive?

And what is this talk of "plausible"? It was simply asserted. On pain of death (or Siberia and death there), you were supposed to take it on, wait for it, faith.

Let me rephrase.

Power comes out of gun barrels.

And before gun barrels had been invented, it came on the edge of the Sword of Inquisition... Onward, Christian Soldiers. Onward. Not Forward -- that would be Communist.

Are you that naive?

are you that stupid?

you can't see you are expressing the EXACT same level of "sloppy" thinking you accuse PZ of?

wow.

I can take any political system, twist the tenets of it so that it becomes "morally untenable", too.

have you ever read John Stuart Mills on the "tyranny of the majority", perchance?

great example of the evils of democracy.

I laugh that you accuse PZ of anything, considering how much MORE you exhibit the tendency to overextend and generalize.

If you would pause to consider, for just a moment, that it was in fact, slavery to the state, that was the very impetus for Marx to write his treatise, and why it was embraced by a whole group of people entirely "oppressed" by a traditional dictatorial hereditary monarchy.

so, which is the more intrinsically "evil":

a dictatorship?

a democracy?

communism?

theocracy?

that you even apply such simplistic terms speaks volumes about your ability to think clearly WITHOUT ridiculous generalizations and mischaracterizations.

like i said...

not even wrong.

Some years ago I picked up one of his books--even before knowing who he was--and abandoned it after the first chapter. It reeked of the authoritarian impulse. That a great many juvenile males absorbed in power fantasy take nourishment from Card's writing (along with a great many other 'acclaimed' sci-fi authors) doesn't surprise me, and why man-on-man action would make them quake in their jackboots: it so readily fits the old misogynistic dynamic of viewing the sex roles based on dominant/submissive. A male would never ever willingly take on the submissive role lest he risk complete and utter emasculation in the eyes of 'male society'--which is the only 'society' that ever seems of interest to them.

Wasn't the same thing stated back in the 60s when LDS was trying to prevent blacks from joining?

Posted by: Eric | October 21, 2007 11:47 AM

It wasn't about preventing blacks from joining. They were "fine" with blacks joining. The issue revolved around their idiotic belief that blacks were cursed and could not become members of the priesthood. This, in effect, was to prevent from entering the Temple and holding offices within the church.

During the civil rights movement, when out-right racism became a "no-no" the message came down from god that blacks were okay now... Or as the Mormons expunged from their doctrine:

Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions impose on them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God, and his murder of Able being a black skin. . . . Noah's son married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, thus preserving the negro lineage through the flood. . . . the negro are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concern. . . . " (Mormon Doctrine, 527-28; 1966 orig. ed., changed in the current ed.

Communism is certainly a force for evil, but that doesn't mean secular humanism is.
Posted by: Brian Macker | October 21, 2007 12:46 PM

No more or less than any economic system. The problem is people, not economic systems.

As for communism, there's quite a bit more of it in the world than many care to admit. And it works fine when the people who work it work it so it's fine. It's only when the bastards get in power does communism, capitalism, or any other "ism" go to hell.

Ichthyic,

You don't understand why getting rid of private property is evil and you think that reveals sloppy thinking on my part. You're not even making an argument. You'd think that 100 million dead might give you a clue.

Orson Scott Card IS a terrific science fiction writer. He has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Posted by: Gingerbaker | October 21, 2007 2:26 PM

Not really. It's more like two and done. Since then his books have gotten progressively worse and I stopped reading them at least a decade ago. Long before I knew what a creep he'd turned out to be.

it doesn't matter what organization you are talking about -- if it tells you you must obey, that it is more important than the people who care about you, walk away.

Amen. I would change it to "who care about you and whom you care about", but what you have written is correct.

Two guidelines you have quoted:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

and...

Love one another.

...are straight out of the Bible.

The third...

Your first loyalties are to yourself and the individuals who love you.

is IIRC echoed in one of the "Timothy" epistles in the NT - to paraphrase "But if any has not provided for his own and especially those of his own house, he hath denied the faith...". I don't have a bible handy but I'll look it up when I get the opportunity.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that some pretty good stuff got adulterated in the translation, and things were put in to serve other agendas. I used to ignore manic street preachers - now I aggressively engage them and attack the fallibility of the book they cling to and drool over. "Repent, you brainwashed child of the genocidal Blood God" is pretty much my opening line.

Your first loyalties are to yourself and the individuals who love you.

I think of the adults, and even children, who have run into deep swift water to save drowning children unrelated to them, and sometimes been drowned themselves in the attempt. I think of the men and women who have run into burning houses, or into the middle of muggings, to rescue perfect strangers; or who hid and smuggled Jews in and from Nazi-ruled Europe, or blacks in and from the pre-Civil-War American South.

And I think of the other adults who could not be bothered to pick up a phone and call the police when they heard a woman like Kitty Genovese being mugged and murdered on a public street, because they "didn't want to get involved".

And upon these considerations I think your rule #3 (quoted above) needs to be rewritten, because as phrased it stinks.

You'd think that 100 million dead might give you a clue.

oh?

killed by COMMUNISM, were they?

how many killed by DICTATORSHIPS?

how many killed by REPUBLICS (I've said "democracies", but really, there aren't any functional pure democracies).

ok, you're a fucking idiot, and not worth debating.

'nuff said.

"We Latter-day Saints..."

Well, isn't that a nice Freudian truncation of "Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints..." Seems like Card thinks he's a saint, not merely the member of a church with the name "saint" in it.

BTW, if God, or the church of LDS, is his master then then the country must follow: that he is a slave.

I really liked Ender's Game but I stopped buying his books when his whack job religion started to interfere with his work. I hope his sales drop like a rock.

"No more or less than any economic system."
Not true. You can't just slap any economic system together and expect it to work. There are economic laws and they are just as harsh when you try to break them as any physical law.

"The problem is people, not economic systems."

No the problem is economic systems that don't take human nature and economic law into account.

Part of the very evil of communism is the belief, that you've just expressed, that it's only a matter of getting the right people into power and things will work fine. That's just not the case. No matter who is in power if you try to impose certain economic policies the results will always be bad. Then the natural action, for a person who believes like you do, is to search for those responsible for corrupting the system. Then come the purges, the spying, he attempt to find scapegoats.

This is all the perfectly predictiable outcome of an irrational ideology like Marxism.

Ichthyic, Spoken like a true believer.

Brian, if you're counting the Ukrainian famines as due to Communism, are you also counting on the capitalist side of the ledger preventable famine and disease in the developing world due to material exploitation? And how about here, where people die prematurely from preventable conditions, due to lack of access to routine medical care? How are you accounting for those in your tallies?

Because if you're not, you've got a clear double standard going on in your actuarial bookkeeping.

I'm with Bill Mahr on this one ... these people don't have values, they have issues.

#67...Zen hasn't disposed of Karma, which is a commonly understood to be a supernatural justice system.

One of the "Three Pillars of Zen" is "great faith".

#75...Depending on the branch of Buddhism, adherents may believe in hoardes of enlightened beings. The typical Tibetan Buddhist pays a lot more attention to Padmasambhava than Gautama.

#52 was intended purely as wicked satire so if someone actually sets up a collection of community developed "commandments" I shan't engage.

And before moral codes are concocted, doesn't it stand that it should be properly defended that moral codes are good things to have in the first place? Why can't we proceed Darwinianly like all the other speciies?

It seems that before we can justly criticize someone else's moral code we need a fixed scientific basis for our own position (which is different from arguing that adherence to a code due to belief in it's supernatural origins is poor judgement).

For example, I disagree with PZ's justification for his first tenet. The Golden Rule is the basis for civilized behaviour in human society - oh? I think we could find counter examples of relatively well behaved societies that don't/didn't rely on this rule. And even if we couldn't, does it automatically follow that it HAS to be true for all societies or that there isn't a better alternative rule? I'm willing to be convinced but let's see some science.

If we're going to get all cocky and start devising rules to live by we need to be on better footing than "We all agreed we like these the best" because that's not a whole lot different than the reasoning behind the ones we like to skewer.

Thalarctos,

That's a pretty clear example of moral equivalence. In one case you have communists collectivizing farmland directly causing a famine in which people die of what are unnatural causes. That is people of all ages dying from starvation due to an attempt to do away with private property directly in line with Marxist ideology.

In the other case you have people dying from natural causes sooner than they otherwise might if given the latest and most expensive treatment. That in a system where if they really wanted to make it a priority in their lives to live longer they could make that choice by sacrificing other goals.

Funny thing is that in your preferred system, Communism, you get both effects. People not getting the latest medical technology and people dying of starvation, and people waiting on long lines for the opportunity to buy a bar of soap.

Yeah, I see a big difference between the two.

Funny thing is that in your preferred system, Communism,

Projecting much, Brian? You don't know the first thing about me or any "preferred system" of mine.

Yeah, I see a big difference between the two.

Really? "Dead of starvation" looks pretty much the same under any political system to me, but no doubt, you have a much more detailed understanding of anatomy, physiology, and pathology than I do.

So you should then be able to clearly and rigorously explain the economic law that means people can die from Communist-caused famines, but not from capitalist-caused famines, and the mechanisms behind it. And you haven't explained whether there can be mercantilist-caused famines; I can't wait to see your analysis of that.

I'm waiting raptly for your detailed scientific analysis--don't disappoint me by just calling names and quoting from your collection of John Birch pamphlets.

Please stop ruining Ender's Game for me.

It is a good book. Unfortunately, OSC seems intent on re-writing it over and over again. Most of his subsequent work is self-derivative and repetitive. (That's something I can also be accused, of but I'm not a professional entertainer)

Existentialism, which says that you have free will and are responsible for your actions. To my mind this has always been a restatement of reality.

What's the evidence for free will?

Existentialism is very very cool but it really falls on its face if we're all meat robots(tm)

Thalactros,

LOL! Really how does one cause a famine via captialism? One can certainly cause one via state intervention in the economy with socialist or mercantilist price controls, like what's happening in Zimbabwe right now, but capitalism itself can't cause famines.

You're the one defending Marxism and Communism so if you don't prefer it then I suggest you not bother doing so.

Projecting much, Brian?

he seems to think that anybody that calls him on his idiocy is defacto a communist.

sound familiar?

say, Macker, are you related to Joseph McCarthy by any chance?

You're the one defending Marxism and Communism so if you don't prefer it then I suggest you not bother doing so.

we're not DEFENDING communism.

we're attacking your complete idiocy and generalizations about it, just like you attacked PZ for the same thing.

that you are unable to see that is quite telling.

that you project back and claim we are communists is actually not unexpected.

and, again, you're a fucking idiot.

Existentialism is very very cool but it really falls on its face if we're all meat robots(tm)

or zombies.

Yep enders game was ok to good when i was a teenager, but reading it as an adult there's a lot that disturbing and in his later books the themes get stronger. Might is right, you have to learn how to be a real man (often with violence), women are for baby making (see the Bean series) etc. but what really put me off this creep was reading some of his early short stories dedicated to wife and church that have quite horrific anti choice, violent sub plots.

Finding out that he was writing of death to liberals series suddenly was no shock at all. By the way gay male friends of mine loved the very early "songlines" stories. Dont know what that means.

Where is the science in Card's science fiction? Who can read his work (unless dear friends insisted on its importance) without reaching a point where you have to throw the book across the room? Who wrote the reductio plot on Ender's Game? "A child is manipulated into defeating galactic foes by being the best at a hyped up virtual reality game, while his sister upends the political establishment by writing pseudonymously on the internet." And that asshat's religious ravings about the proper use of genitalia among those who imagine they'll be some other planet's Gob and Gobbess when they die, is to be taken every bit as seriously as any other fantasy of theirs?

All I can say is I'm glad I'm of an age that my brain was warped by Heinlein, Asimov and Baum instead.

LOL!

Actually, your ignorance of political and economic history is sad more than it is funny.

Really how does one cause a famine via captialism? One can certainly cause one via state intervention in the economy with socialist or mercantilist price controls, like what's happening in Zimbabwe right now, but capitalism itself can't cause famines.

3 worlds for you, Brian: Irish Potato Famine.

For a more modern example, since you are so positive that capitalism cannot cause or exacerbate famine and poverty, you should be able to easily demonstrate what prevents it, and you should be able to show that entities such as World Bank and IMF debt policies are getting a bad rap over their consequences in debtor nations.

That is, you should be able to, if it's not just a religious tenet you hold for lack of examination and study, but you've really examined the documentation.

Do you, for example, know the amount of wealth transfer from the developing world to the developed world over the last, say, three centuries? And you can speak to those effects and definitively rule out any connection between that amount of wealth transfer and the current economic state of those countries?

Do you know what the effects of debt relief are projected to be, and you've done the analyses that refute those projections, or you can point to the ones you took into account in forming your considered opinion?

And how do you reconcile your "private property as first principle" with that wealth transfer? Are you really arguing that theft is all right, provided it took place long enough ago, or am I missing some nuance here?

I am curious how you did all that; please show your work.

You're the one defending Marxism and Communism so if you don't prefer it then I suggest you not bother doing so.

Sigh. You so disappoint, Brian--since you claim to know what system I prefer, I was looking forward to your learned discourse on the nuances of my opinions on micro- and corporate capitalism, pink and green capitalism, entrepreneurialism, and micro-lending, among other topics.

Ichthyic had you pegged exactly. You don't really know a thing except what's in the John Birch literature, and you fling names in lieu of real debate, because you got nothin'.

OSC represents the views of the LDS "church" pretty well, and while I know some wonderful people who happen to be Mormon, they really want to convert everyone.

As for the Buddhist thing, has anyone replied who is actually Buddhist? Couple of comments:

Karma is cause and effect. Nothing supernatural.

"Reincarnation" is not a central tenet of the philosophy-only because the original word is hard to translate. The energy or "spirit" continues as something else. A piece of wood becomes ash in a fire. The ash becomes part of the soil. The molecules become something else.

There was only one thing the Buddha said that mattered, and that was on his deathbed (I'm paraphrasing): Find your own way. Everything else was only supposed to be practice--not doctrine.

Don't forget the plagiarism.

"The Chronicles of Alvin Maker" is a gussied-up version of the Joseph Smith story. "Songs of a Distant Earth" is a similarly-tweaked version of the Book of Mormon. I've never seen him mention that he totally ripped off someone else's story to 'create' them.

It was after reading the Alvin Maker series that I gave up on OSC. As for his politics and religion, why should I listen when a thief crows about his 'morals' to me?

As for the rest of it.. Well, I honestly don't see anything stranger in the LDS church than I see in the Catholic, Baptist, or any other faiths. Whichever you grew up in is going to seem more normal and sane to you than the others. I don't give the LDS any passes - but I don't think they're any stranger or less 'christian' than the others. I wish I didn't see so many straw-man attacks against them, it makes me worry about other faiths that I'm not as familiar with - What if the stories I hear about them are straw men too??

And Brian..
"uh, exactly HOW is that evil?"

Are you that naive?

You know, you might get a lot more people to agree with you if you'd ANSWER THE &#^$% QUESTION.

Sheesh! What is it today with people acting just like the religious types? Hurled invective, ad-hominem, strawmen, ignoring requests for citations, walking out rather than answering the questions asked... Is there some kind of bug going around on Pharyngula this week??

You people are scaring me..

The lesser of TWO Weevils!

Uh oh. I think Mr. Card faces a dilemma. Should he continue to be a member of the heterosexual community? Or should he continue to be in the LDS community?

One thing is certain: one cannot serve two masters.

This is a buybull quote: 'one cannot serve both gawd & mammon'.
Definition:
1. Bible. Riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god in the New Testament.
2. often mammon Material wealth regarded as having an evil influence.
So that's a quote outta context.

I rather liked some of Card's work: A Plague Of Butterflies was a rich, powerful story. The Ender series was most intriguing, though I'd have guessed that he was Catholic & Portuguese (if memory serves) from the content, that is, if I were to make the error that a man is what he writes.
Newsflash - a man & his work are not synchronous.
I've not read anything by him recently.

Creationist and a raving homophobe? Hmmm...I may consider steering clear of any of his work in the future.

One thing is certain: one cannot serve two masters.

This is a buybull quote: 'one cannot serve both gawd & mammon'.
Definition:
1. Bible. Riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god in the New Testament.
2. often mammon Material wealth regarded as having an evil influence.
So that's a quote outta context.

I rather liked some of Card's work: A Plague Of Butterflies was a rich, powerful story. The Ender series was most intriguing, though I'd have guessed that he was Catholic & Portuguese (if memory serves) from the content, that is, if I were to make the error that a man is what he writes.
Newsflash - a man & his work are not synchronous.
I've not read anything by him recently.

Creationist and a raving homophobe? Hmmm...I may consider steering clear of any of his work in the future.

"Irish Potato Famine"
Two words for you, "Not captitalism".

all religions are natural all come from the nature of man since there are no entities of a supper natural nature from any where that came and gave us religion. all religions came out of man and man alone. so why do we ever engage in argument about morals and religion as did it give us morals and purpose or not.

I only read the Ender series all of which I found some what disturbing the first more so and diminishing with each successive book. the first I would say owes a lot to Rod Serling and is less intellectual and more emotional. the rest of his stuff just is pretentious mystical rubbish not unlike the quoted stuff I read here way to much in the head
maybe he should write a new second book of Mormon. we need another contrived perfect solution for mankind we have not have a new one for a few years now it must be getting to be time for one.
I was taught that society, is an agreement like language is an agreement on what words mean. the group agrees what is moral how to do things what things can be done and which can't be done
the big problem we are having at present and possibly the problem all through history is that agreement does not seem to be a one time thing and changes over time some individuals seem to cope with change better than others some seem to be definetly threatened by it.
"no way to delay the troubles coming every day" F. Zappa

"Irish Potato Famine"

Two words for you, "Not captitalism".

Really, Brian, you consider that a rebuttal? If you don't consider the displacement of the Irish tenant farmers under British estate consolidation, and the shipping of Irish food products to foreign markets--leaving the Irish food supply vulnerable to potato monoculture--reminiscent of modern capital practices, perhaps you would consider explaining for us:

1) how it was not proto-capitalism; and

2) when capitalist entities carry out the very same actions today in the developing world, how they are prevented by definition from causing or exacerbating famine, whether in fast- or slow-motion.

I mean, really, we can have an honest disagreement about this, but you've *got* to hold up your end of the debate. If it's as obvious as you say it is, you should find connecting the dots very easy.

Get back to me when you have an argument more substantial than just repeating "Nuh-uh! And you're a Communist!".

. we need another contrived perfect solution for mankind we have not have a new one for a few years now it must be getting to be time for one.

I thought 'ol L-ron took care of that with "dianetics", which of course ended up becoming scientology.

I don't think that one's finished fucking up as many people as it possibly can, yet.

"You know, you might get a lot more people to agree with you if you'd ANSWER THE &#^$% QUESTION."

How do you know they don't agree with me already? Not many people are going to have a problem understanding that abolishing property rights is evil. Wouldn't that mean taking away property from the owners of the property? Wouldn't that be like well stealing? Isn't stealing evil?

Isn't advocating the commission of a crime against another, incitement, and isn't that also evil? So wouldn't that make communists who advocate taking away peoples property rights committers of evil acts?

Do I really have to explain all this? I was assuming that it was only the one poster that was naïve. Perhaps there is some sort of self selection going on at the blog which causes an increased density of such people.

Now abolishing property rights requires stealing, unless, of course, under communism you think that property rights are going to evaporate by magic. But then I really don't see how this is any different than the magical thinking of other kinds of religion.

"Hurled invective, ad-hominem, strawmen, ignoring requests for citations, walking out rather than answering the questions asked... Is there some kind of bug going around on Pharyngula this week??"

Is that directed at me or are you just slinging mud around about other people and hope that some sticks to me. Seems like a pretty slimy tactic in and of itself.

Thalarctos,

The processes that lead up to the situation in Ireland were not the natural economic outgrowths of a laissez-faire system. There were all sorts of restrictions on the conquired and occupied Ireland that had nothing to do with natural rights and free enterprise.

Aren't you aware of that?

Nice twist calling it proto-capitalism. Also nice twist treating non-captitalist countries as if they had captialists systems just because they trade with foreign entities.

#130...I've lived in Thailand long enough to know that "
Karma is cause and effect...Nothing supernatural" is utter BS. Ask 99.99% of Thai Buddhists what it means, and they can go into grand detail regarding precisely what hell you'll be reborn in for this or that negative action.

As for your summation of "real Buddhism", it's only your opinion, which differs greatly from the vast majority of practitioners in the world. I've got great respect for the meditative tradition, and practice it myself, but you've got to understand that many folks born into Buddhism (as opposed to those who discover it as college freshmen) are quite aware of the ludicrousness of Christianity and Islam, and are more than happy to present Buddhism as a "rational" religion, when in fact they harbor a good deal of supernatural notions.

David Marjanović is right; anyone arguing a variant or relative of the argument "It wasn't communism itself that was the problem, it was just bad implementation" is perpetrating the True Scotsman fallacy.

Whatever the sins of capitalism, which are admittedly many: Since the Russian revolution, has the movement of refugees flowed from capitalist to communist countries or the reverse? Where have the most grievous ecological disasters been produced, in communist or capitalist countries? The most grotesque inequalities, with a tiny aloof elite and the majority of the people in squalor? The greatest absolute emiseration? Famine after multitude-killing famine, including Ethiopia? Since WWII, or the end of the Cold War, which countries are more miserable: those that marketized and joined the global trade system, or those that maintained command economies and practiced autarky? And what does that say about the predictive power of dependency theory / Liberation Theology / World System Theory? (For those tempted to assert that European social democracies are "non-capitalist" or some other formulation designed to salvage communism in principle, keep in mind that during the Cold War they were always considered part of the capitalist Western bloc.) No, I'm not anti-welfare, anti-regulation, or anti-public services. You need not be in order to be against communism.

Without getting into debates about what precisely falls under the rubric of "capitalism" (Just bourgeois democracies? "Proto-capitalism" too? Marketized social democracies? Mercantilism? Colonialism? The contemporary global system of economic trade?), let's consider the work of Amaryta Sen on the causes of famine. The key factor is the absence of democracy, as occurs in dictatorships and colonies (even colonies of democracies).

If you don't consider the displacement of the Irish tenant farmers under British estate consolidation, and the shipping of Irish food products to foreign markets--leaving the Irish food supply vulnerable to potato monoculture--reminiscent of modern capital practices, perhaps you would consider explaining for us:

1) how it was not proto-capitalism; and

Well, for starters, that sounds a great deal like Stalin shipping off the vast majority of the Ukraine's agricultural products in "redistribution". Except, of course, that Stalin's version directly caused the deaths by starvation of seven million people.

Was Stalin a proto-capitalist?

which countries are more miserable: those that marketized and joined the global trade system, or those that maintained command economies and practiced autarky?

did you know that COMMUNIST china owns most of our national debt at this point? outproduces the US in exports by a very large margin? Will likely surpass the US as a world superpower in less than 20 years? but then, that's based on the expansion of capitalism, albeit in a State controlled political system.

seriously there are no true communist (read: marxist) countries (never were), just like there are no true democracies, and for the same reasons. socialism is not marxism is not communism. Likewise, capitalism is not democracy (nor need it be democratic, for that matter).

aside from that fact, it was never the issue in this thread that it's "capitalism vs. communism".

the issue is one of overgeneralization.

Whatever the sins of capitalism, which are admittedly many: Since the Russian revolution, has the movement of refugees flowed from capitalist to communist countries or the reverse?

be careful that you don't set up your very own Scottsman's fallacy.

Was Stalin a proto-capitalist?

Exactly my point--Brian asserts there is a qualitative difference between Communism using those techniques in one context, and capitalism using the same techniques in other contexts. He claims that the one leads to famines, and the other--by definition--cannot.

I'm asking him to elucidate that difference that he claims is so obvious.

You seem to be confusing serfdom with capitalism.

Was Stalin a proto-capitalist

well, he certainly wasn't a proto-socialist, now, was he.

and you should have used Mao, whose "redistribution" efforts and attempts to turn everyone into a farmer ended up causing far more deaths than Stalin did. It's funny how that seems to be forgotten in favor of Stalin's accomplishments.

at last, best estimate, Mao was responsible for over 50 million deaths (conservatively, according to several sources). OTOH...

http://parisar.wordpress.com/2006/09/23/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in…

we'll probably never know the real numbers, since there is no way to get the Chinese gov't to cooperate on gathering any more relevant data.

still, if one looks at what Mao was trying to do, it had far less to do with communism than it did with egomaniacal stupidity.

again, generalizing deaths as attributable to communism itself is exactly the same kind of generalization that Macker criticized PZ religious commentary for.

no, wait, it's worse, since PZ actually has evidence to support contentions of the damage specific religious sects cause (hell, he posts them at least once a week), though he does tend to extrapolate from that a bit (with reason, since there is a demonstrable link in the patterns of rationalizations involved).

You seem to be confusing serfdom with capitalism.

No, you're confusing merchant capitalism and tenant farming with serfdom.

How do you know they don't agree with me already? Not many people are going to have a problem understanding that abolishing property rights is evil. Wouldn't that mean taking away property from the owners of the property? Wouldn't that be like well stealing? Isn't stealing evil?

First and foremost, There's a big difference between 'wrong' and 'evil'. Stealing is usually wrong, quite often it's even illegal - but EVIL? Are you saying then that stealing enough food to keep your family from starving is evil? Were all the people who had to scavenge for clean water and food in the aftermath of Katrina evil for doing so? I think you're stretching wayyy too hard here.

Second, didn't the early christians in biblical times share everything?

"All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
(Acts 2:44-45)"

Are you saying then that even the most faithful of the early christians (at least in the biblical story) were all evil?

Isn't advocating the commission of a crime against another, incitement, and isn't that also evil? So wouldn't that make communists who advocate taking away peoples property rights committers of evil acts?

Ah yes, even advocating it is evil now! Truly a monumental stretch you are making! Is your real name 'Armstrong' by any chance?
Do I really have to explain all this? I was assuming that it was only the one poster that was naïve. Perhaps there is some sort of self selection going on at the blog which causes an increased density of such people.

So asking questions is dense now? Asking you to explain yourself so we/I can be sure of exactly what you mean is naive and stupid? I think we'll have to differ on that one. Don't even try to justify that one anymore you've jumped down more than one person's throat now simply because they asked you to explain yourself.

"Hurled invective, ad-hominem, strawmen, ignoring requests for citations, walking out rather than answering the questions asked... Is there some kind of bug going around on Pharyngula this week??"

Is that directed at me or are you just slinging mud around about other people and hope that some sticks to me. Seems like a pretty slimy tactic in and of itself.

Neither - And both. Not directed solely at you, no. Nor is it simply 'mud-slinging'. The thread about Jeffery Dahmer is one other very strong example of what I'm referring to. Had I meant you, I'd have directed it at you, not at 'people', 'you people', or in references to a bug 'going around on Pharyngula'. When a bug is going around, that -usually- means that several people are involved. Since you haven't walked out rather than answering questions, (yet), it would make sense to assume that I was probably referring to other threads/people as well, now wouldn't it?

As to what was directed at you; If the shoe fits, wear it. Plenty of insults, plenty of strawmen and refusal to answer. Plenty of snippy replies with no substance behind them - And you've got the gall to call MY tactics slimy?

Do I really have to explain all this? Perhaps there is some sort of self selection going on at the blog which causes an increased density of some people... (No more polite coming from me that it was from you, is it?)

The lesser of TWO Weevils!

The processes that lead up to the situation in Ireland were not the natural economic outgrowths of a laissez-faire system.

And the ones in the current developing world are? Is that what protects them?

There were all sorts of restrictions on the conquired and occupied Ireland that had nothing to do with natural rights and free enterprise. Aren't you aware of that?

Again, this is different from the current developing world how? Is that what protects them?

Nice twist calling it proto-capitalism.

You're not familiar with the relationship between merchant capitalism and capitalism? I'm sorry, I assumed you knew that.

Also nice twist treating non-captitalist countries as if they had captialists systems just because they trade with foreign entities.

You claimed capitalism cannot cause or exacerbate famines. The debtor nations are engaged in trade with foreign capitalist entities, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which have policies that exacerbate the existing problems in those countries. Sometimes that leads to choosing between food and medicine or debt repayment. Slow-motion famine is no less deadly than an instant one; it just takes longer to unfold.

I'm not defending corrupt dictators or anti-democratic processes here. But for you to claim that capitalism cannot exacerbate economic problems in countries that--whatever their economic heritage--participate in a capitalist economy, and that these exacerbated problems never result in lower quality of life or loss of life, is a laughable claim.

The debtor nations are engaged in trade with foreign capitalist entities, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which have policies that exacerbate the existing problems in those countries.

segue to related...

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN21360617

Ichthyic: "still, if one looks at what Mao was trying to do, it had far less to do with communism than it did with egomaniacal stupidity."

Remarkably, famine-inducing egomaniacal stupidity appears to have free reign in communist regimes: Soviet Union, Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea ... Why do you suppose that is?

Don't blame colonial slavery; Leopold II was a bad apple. Condemn Shinto Imperialism? No, just Hirohito's mismanagement. And the Shining Path was simply academia gone bad.

I have no problem assigning blame to capitalism for its real domestic and global problems. (But I have no respect for mega-conspiracy theories that blame all of the world's woes on American capitalist imperialism.) If only some would do the same for Marxism.

(Would you prefer that I used the term "state capitalism," following Lenin, rather than "communism"? Does the term "real existing socialism" ring a bell? No, it wasn't used to refer to social democracies.)

Julia Sweeney gives an explanation of some of the things Mormons presumably believe. This is her at TEDtalks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtIyx687ytk

It makes pretty cheesy science fiction.

Raven said it best, but it bears repeating: sucking the occasional dick is not such a time-intensive and dogma-laden activity that it automatically competes with religious beliefs and obligations. It pains me to see someone so smart and talented - someone who's mercilessly slammed the Republicans on immigration, no less - talking about homosexuality like it's an organization instead of an inborn trait.

Some interesting reading about Card:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034

I don't mind Mormons, I just wish they'd keep it to themselves. You know, all that preaching in public, logical ineptitude and credulous superstition. I mean, normal people don't flaunt it all over the place.

I did not choose to be gay, but I am bloody glad I am. Card, however, chose to be a Mormon. He chose to be a pathetic bigoted religious crazy-head. What a tosser.

Were the typical movie theater to have as many projectors as this thread does, the screen would be slag on the stage.

Ender's Game has been my favorite book since I was in about 9th grade. It's one of those books that really hooks gifted kids, probably especially those of us isolated in tiny little rural places.

So also while in high school, I started RPing original characters in Virtual Battle School on OSC's website. Probably because I was struggling with my own sexuality at the time (but really, who isn't in high school?), I played a gay character. Naturally, there was nothing graphic. He was an army commander, and I would demonstrate his struggles by posting about dreams, his crush on another commander, that sort of thing. No other player ever complained, and several played along with support.

So I was pretty surprised to get an e-mail from the moderator saying the character had to be straight, or I had to get rid of him. I said no, that I wasn't breaking any rules of the community or angering other people. The mod apparently went to OSC with it, because the next e-mail I received was a very lengthy one directly from him going on and on about it being a "family" site for young teenagers (apparently my being a young teenager and gay didn't register) and he didn't have a problem with homosexuality because he wrote about it (as if that twisted form he wrote about was representative) etc, etc. They told me I was welcome to stay without the character, and naturally I told them to go screw themselves, and several others quit with me.

In other words, I'm not surprised.

#155,

I don't know what book the author of that essay read, but it sure as fuck wasn't Ender's Game. I've read Ender's Game. I read the story of a boy who thought he was playing a video game. The adults kept him in the dark, horribly in the dark. He didn't learn the truth until the very end.

"Tell me it was only a game!"

Condemn a man for what he has done, not for what you wanted him to have done.

I'm surprised to find Buddhism lauded in the above. I would have thought that the notion of 'two truths' would have been enough to put most athiests off the religion, in general. I wouldn't have thought that type of paternalism would have been attractive to a free-thinking crowd.

Once someone tells you it's ok to lie to people and use 'skillful means' for their own good, everything else they say should meet with some pretty hefty skepticism, don't you think?

I don't think the 'supernatural' elements should be considered the problem, Buddhism has, historically, adapted to every culture it has entered. I imagine by now, North American teachers have developed plenty of 'non-supernatural' re-interpretations of the old Asian mythologies Buddhism participated in. In those systems, most of those things were just 'nature' and nothing 'super' about them.

The problem with all religions, for me at least, is that the significance of their eschatology is grounded in your acceptance of their cosmology. I feel no real urge to 'awaken' from my ignorance and realize how my ignorant desires have created harmful attachments to ephemera, no real urge to be suspended in some heavenly infinity, or whatever other dubious rewards religions offer. They diagnose our 'problem' and then offer their 'solution', but I'm not interested in their opinions on the matter.

I'm pretty comfortable with a messy, socially constructed, utilitarian, fairly-relativistic ethic, as well, mind you.

>That people here are spouting sour grapes about his literature because of his personal religious views is disappointing, to say the least.

Don't presume. I started disliking his work long before I knew he was a religious wacko.

It all started when I realized that Ender, his sister Valentine, his brother Peter, Mazer Rackham, the hive queen, Jane, etc. etc. are ALL THE SAME FREAKING CHARACTER. They're all cast from the same exact smarter-than-thou, smugly moralizing, self-important mold. Once that hit me, I could read no further. I practically stopped mid-sentence.

I read his book on writing recently, though, and thought it was okay.

I've seen Elaine's notes and heard Card on the phone, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Hitler Hypothesis is correct; it is simply impossible that Ender's Game and Speaker were written by someone who did not have a very detailed knowledge of Adolph Hitler's life.

Simply impossible?

I don't know what book the author of that essay read, but it sure as fuck wasn't Ender's Game. I've read Ender's Game. I read the story of a boy who thought he was playing a video game. The adults kept him in the dark, horribly in the dark. He didn't learn the truth until the very end.

"Tell me it was only a game!"

Condemn a man for what he has done, not for what you wanted him to have done.

Thats actually the whole point it allows the kid who just committed genocide to be sympathetic.

it's
"Ender, you just killed an entire alien race"
"I didn't think I was doing anything wrong"

but with enough plot in the way that that flimsy excuse actually holds water.

Now I haven't read the book, so i don't really know how bad it is but still Ender not knowing is sort of the basis of the whole hitler sympathizing criticism.

I imagine by now, North American teachers have developed plenty of 'non-supernatural' re-interpretations of the old Asian mythologies Buddhism

They have, with Stephen Batchelor leading the way. Question is, when you suck out the deities, yidams, karma, reincarnation, mantras, gaudy temples, holy gurus, incense, cultural "baggage", etc., can you really expect to have a Buddhism that can transform the mind?

or whatever other dubious rewards religions offer

If "self knowledge" or "higher consciousness" is part of the package, you'd be a fool to ignore it. Whether there's anything to those claims is another matter.

But I have no respect for mega-conspiracy theories that blame all of the world's woes on American capitalist imperialism.

Despite Brian's laughably wrong guess that my preferred system is Communism, I'm actually an advocate of locally-based micro-capitalism + entrepreneurialism. I don't think it's a mega-conspiracy theory to point out that in many ways, corporate capitalism is inimical to entrepreneurialism.

thalarctos: "in many ways, corporate capitalism is inimical to entrepreneurialism."

I am not opposed to corporate capitalism as part of a regulated mixed economy that includes small entrepreneurs, local co-ops, state-owned firms, public welfare, and private charities. To paraphrase Mao, let a thousand economic flowers bloom.

Left to their own devices corporate capitalists become enablers of communist regimes - demanding official recognition, lobbying for the removal of sanctions, engaging in trade, selling advanced technologies. The anticommunist Henry Ford helped Stalin industrialize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Or consider the career of pro-communist capitalist Armand Hammer. Communist states have lots of cheap nonunion (except state controlled-unions) labor and rulers eager to purchase technology no matter the cost to public living standards. Today corporate lobbies press for policies friendlier to state sponsors of terror and to the remaining communist regimes. Capitalists will, if given the opportunity, sell their enemies the rope to hang them with. Hence, they need to be put on a leash for the national good.

Card scribeth thusly:

We Latter-day Saints know that we are eternal beings who must gain control of our bodies

This points to a fundamental flaw not just of Mormonism, but of many religions: The idea of dualism, or a separation of the mind from the body. "We must gain control of our bodies" makes it sound like we're alien brains dropped into meat puppets that we can barely operate properly.

The whole damned thing reeks of Scientology, frankly; but the idea of separation between mind and body -- or "soul" and body -- is one of the most pernicious lies extant in religion, and automatically sets up adherents to such beliefs for failure.

Of course, as a Mormon Card also believes that God is married, and has (with Mrs. God) created billions of "spirit babies" that are born into human bodies; Armageddon, he believes, will be presaged by an end to childbirth since the supply of these spirit babies will have run out, and the last generation of souls will then have to duke it out with Satan's minions.

So in addition to internalizing a poisonous belief in self-adversarialism, he's part of a group that has externalized that struggle into a very convenient, very monochromatic worldview, the classic us/them false dichotomy which has, for a dozen millennia, justified some of the most appallingly inhuman slaughter imaginable.

Is it any wonder he's a mediocre SF writer? Hell, he doesn't have the depth of human empathy required to explore "alien" ideas within his own species, let alone that of other intelligences entirely.

"And frankly, every time I hear someone complain as though the homosexual acts themselves are dirty and depraved, etc. etc., I wonder if he cares that most homosexuals think the exact same thing about straight sex?"

I've never met a homosexual (and I've known many - including myself) who thinks this. Why on earth would you believe that gay men find straight sex dirty and depraved?

Although I've always found Card pretty distasteful both as a writer and as a political thinker (this last term is used loosely), it seems to me that this is an awful lot of sound and fury being loosed upon an essay that was published nearly 20 years ago. Queer politics have come an awfully long way since then, and to give Card the benefit of the doubt, shouldn't we try to get a sense of how (if at all) his views have evolved (or at least been designed intelligently)?

It's silly to decide you don't like Card's books because of this sort of thing. Eventually even orchestra's in Israel began playing Wagner. Mel Gibson is a raving bigot but I enjoyed Apocalypto very much. Even seriously flawed thinkers can have insights into the human condition. Much to my shame, I really love to listen to Van Morrison (and I'm a jazz person and a musician) but have you ever listened to the man speak? Cheese and rice what a chucklehead. How could this guy have made Astral Weeks?

In the case of authoritarian nutbags like Card, and wingnuts who like to spew eliminationist rhetoric in general, the version of the Golden Rule that I advocate is:

"Do unto others what they say they want to do to you. But do it first."

It's hard to believe, in this day and age, that anyone would still try to defend communism/Marxism as a serious alternative to capitalism. Or, more precisely, to the kind of regulated capitalism that drives the economies of all the industrialized democracies. That argument is over, and communism lost.

Alan @155:

I don't know what book the author of that essay read, but it sure as fuck wasn't Ender's Game.

No, it wasn't Ender's Game; it was the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, as it plainly says on the page.

As it happened, though, SFWA members vote on the Nebula awards, and Card's sequel Speaker for the Dead was out. Card's publisher helpfully sent all SFWA members a free copy to help its chances of getting the Nebula like Ender's Game had.One day I spotted it on her coffee table.

Cassidy, the strangest thing about your experience with your gay character in that RPG is that, from your description, your character sounds exactly like Ender himself, down to the crushes on other commanders. Ender's Game is one of the gayest sf books I've ever read, and I mean that in a good way. And despite the fact that Card is evidently a complete pig personally and religiously, I still like the first four Ender books a great deal. I have no interest in reading his other stuff, however.

Mark S, "It all started when I realized that Ender, his sister Valentine, his brother Peter, Mazer Rackham, the hive queen, Jane, etc. etc. are ALL THE SAME FREAKING CHARACTER. They're all cast from the same exact smarter-than-thou, smugly moralizing, self-important mold. Once that hit me, I could read no further. I practically stopped mid-sentence." Do you realize how much this sounds like Heinlein's work? (Or William S. Burroughs for that matter.) All the male characters are variations on what Alexei Panshin (I think) called The Heinlein Individual, and all the female characters are variations on Barbie, only Barbie with an IQ of 160 or so. RAH's story "All You Zombies" is a sort of template, where the same character meets older and younger and female versions of himself. And yet I enjoy much of Heinlein's work, even as his politics make me giggle or wince, depending.

Jason, it's hard to believe that anyone, in this day and age, would try to defend capitalism -- even "the kind of regulated capitalism that drives the economies of all the industrialized democracies." It is responsible for at least as many deaths as communism/socialism -- see Amartya Sen's work on famine, or Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts. That 100 million figure beloved of so many anti-communists was surpassed in India alone, according to Sen and his collaborate Jean Dreze, in a decade or so, thanks to neoliberal "reforms." And that's just one country. Where that leaves us for an alternative I don't know, but capitalism doesn't work either.

Thalarctos,

I like how you have conversations with yourself. You even seem to have voices in your head that respond for me.

I know all about the subjects you have brought up and the interpretations of such events by leftist ideology. The idea that the Irish Potato Famine occured in an environment of free market captialism is ludicrous.

You can read about what steps the British took to cause and exacerbate the Irish Potato Famine here: http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=88

The rest of your taunts are likewise based on an ill informed understanding of the principles involved.

Unfortunately, I don't have as much time for you as you desire. You see I'm busy preparing for a halloween charity and don't have time for your nonsense.

What on earth makes you think that the world bank is an organ of free market captialism? You've got to be kidding me.

There is a clear mechanism by which communism, meaning Marxist communism, not the Hitterite type, leads to disruption of markets and thus famine. You've failed to show any comparable free market mechanism which would cause a famine. You only mention state programs.

I also find it laughable that you consider yourself a champion for free markets. It's quite clear you don't prefer them as I originally surmised. It's quite clear you can't distinguish government programs from market processes.

Ichthyic,

"Was Stalin a proto-capitalist

well, he certainly wasn't a proto-socialist, now, was he.

Actually he was a socialist since communism is a form of socialism. There's nothing proto about it. Hitler was a socialist also, he just wasn't a democratic socialist.

BTW, we don't live in a captialist society, it's a mixed economy.

You seem to think that the current conditions between China and the US somehow show that capitalism is defective or inferior. The actual reason for the current conditions have nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with a quasi-governmental organ, the Fed, and it's policy over the past fifteen years of rapid expansion of the money supply.

I predicted this back during the Clinton administration and have been long precious metals and hard assets for a long time. This economy is screwed and precisely because of the anti-market actions taken by our government.

I think it's really silly that you think someone stealing some bread to survive a short term crisis fits the category "Abolishing Private Property". I'm sure I've thought much more deeply than you about property rights in crisis situations. You seem to be playing the same game Thalarctos does, having some private dialog in your mind with your imagined alter ego of me.

The word Communism is a term commonly used today to mean those of the Marxist kind. Which is involuntary as Marx originally imagined it if you've actually read his texts. I'd give a detailed analysis of why Marx's theories are evil but I don't have time for it now.

In any case it is clear that I did mean specifically communism of the Marxist type and I do believe it evil and can support that. So I was not being sloppy. Clearly I was not referring to sharing, or communal ownership, or collective ownership of things like corporate stocks. Clearly I wasn't talking about Hitterites. So clearly you were wrong.

Wow. That pretty much wraps it all up for anybody who isn't Brian Macker. Sure sucks not to be as right as him.

#141--you actually bring up a good point about Buddhism--the masses of people who claim they "believe" it, and yet are actually practicing a hybrid of practices that aren't Buddhist at all. This correlates with what I call "Christmas Tree" Christians--people who claim to be Christians, and yet have no real knowledge of the religion itself.

The woowoo of the Philipine temples has been a concern to monastics, and is also an issue in other countries. The problem is that they are practicing a sham Buddhism, and are just like most Americans who claim to be Christian in the US.

While one can be wary of religion due to the bs that is circulating, especially the attempts to control a secular society, there are interesting ideas to consider. I have found, without getting sucked into the ritualistic, magical thinking aspects, that there are ideas to ponder and compare to other texts, and add to the understanding of a culture.

By the by, I grew up Buddhist, and was a monastic for a while, and I found there were no Buddhists at my college, but that was an awful long time ago. So, I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Shoot, I had a thought about religion as inspiration for art and music, but I should put that on my own blog.

Which overly ambitious galactic empire is Brian Macker (unintentionally, but otherwise utterly) annihilating by his subjectively unintentionally malicious act of regurgitating economics screeds, whose unparalleled keyboard-fu has been re-mapped by our cephalopod overlords into killing words?

Sure sucks not to be as right as him.

Sure does.

Oh, well, I just heard some good news: the animals in the Wild Animal Park in San Diego are now safe from fires--at least for the moment. Against that backdrop (it was threatened earlier on), no right-wingnut's ignorant japes can spoil that news.

Don't know how far south you are, Ken, but I hope things are also ok where you are. It's really bad for those in the San Diego area; I hope you're spared from going through that.

I'm breathing clean air (for now) up here in the North Bay, at least one bridge away from The City, because I've had enough of earthquake season, riot season, fire season and mudslide season, having grown up behind the Orange Curtain in the Nation State of Disneyland until I spent a number of years surviving various abodes in El Lay. I got plate glass in my diner food during the Rodney King riots, and dug out my Quadro 950 from under an avalanche of books in Sancti Monia during the Northridge quake. Only an uncharacteristically short morning walk prevented my spouse and I from discovering Nicole Simpson on her lawn in our neighborhood. Helicopters and news crews were so much like scenes from Day of the Locust that when an opportunity to move North, it was time to pick the evil I hadn't tried yet.

Apparently, So Cal has all the National Guard available for fire lines that the free market will allow. I don't miss those Santa Ana winds this time of year.

Where that leaves us for an alternative I don't know, but capitalism doesn't work either.

Perhaps you could provide us with a list of First World countries that have rejected capitalism. Or explain what it is that you do for a living - I suspect it will involve participating in a capitalist system.

Wow, Ken--you're making me appreciate my boring life :). (glad you're out of the fire/everything else zone!)

...the masses of people who claim they "believe" it, and yet are actually practicing a hybrid of practices that aren't Buddhist at all

No, I think you're missing my point. I'd say that if you want to know what Buddhism is, you ask the people who self-identify as Buddhists. You let these folks tell you if their practices are Buddhist or hybrid, and you don't rely heavily on elite gurus and philosophers. I'm wary of anyone who thinks they've distilled "real Buddhism" down to a principle or two...the "true Scotsman" fallacy, once again.

I have no problem thinking about anal sex.
I think that people like Card should spend a certain amount of time each day thinking about buttsex. Then, maybe they'll get over the knee-jerk fifth-grader "Eeew, cooties" that seems to underpin homophobia in many cases.
Please, someone link Card to goatse so he can begin the process of desensitization.

I think it's really silly that you think someone stealing some bread to survive a short term crisis fits the category "Abolishing Private Property". I'm sure I've thought much more deeply than you about property rights in crisis situations. You seem to be playing the same game Thalarctos does, having some private dialog in your mind with your imagined alter ego of me.

You totally ignored the actual question(s) that I asked, just as you did before. Why am I not suprised? Could you TRY to be a little less stereotypical? You completely ignored the main question, the question of 'evil' itself.

Please point out where I make any claim that "someone stealing some bread to survive a short term crisis fits the category "Abolishing Private Property".

YOU asked 'Isn't stealing evil?' YOU were the one who who called communism 'stealing' and called it evil. I responded to what you actually wrote, rather than going off on how much more thought I'd put into it than anyone else had. (And your evidence for this? And it has *what* to do with my actual questions?)

Your 'imagined alter ego' seems to be leaving real posts on this board, so how can you say *I'M* the one imagining conversations?

I've made no claims about 'how deeply I've thought about property rights in crisis situations', but already you're absolutely sure you've done more and deeper thinking than I? Spoken like a true fundamentalist sir! (I'm not saying you are one, but you're sure as hell showing all the classic signs!)

'Clearly you were talking about Marxism'? Others including myself have been talking about several different forms of communism, and we've actually SAID so. At what point in the conversation did you say that we should only be discussing Marxism, and when did/why should we agree to do so? We're supposed to just know, huh? The same way you know exactly how deeply any of us has thought on any particular subject, or which forms of government any of us support, I suppose?

THIS is why we asked those questions that you seem to find so naive. Perhaps in future you could try answering them instead of descending to childish name-calling?

Why am I trying to discuss anything with you? You can't answer simple questions, nor can you carry on a discussion without making up what you think the other people know and feel. Since you're already more sure of what we know than we are ourselves, perhaps you should just carry on the conversation yourself, and fill in our parts as you see fit? You seem to be to doing so well already! (NOT!)

Bah! I'll save my debates for people who can understand, ask, and answer simple questions without assuming everyone else knows exactly what you're talking about, even as they ask you to explain yourself. Until you can answer the actual questions that you're asked and base your replies on what others actually say, I suspect a lot of your conversations are going to go this way.

'Clearly you are wrong'? - I don't believe I actually made any statements, I asked you several questions. Rather than answer them, you claimed that you know what I was thinking - and now you tell me that I was CLEARLY wrong!

I don't have time to waste with idiots. Really, don't bother answering me, I don't care what more you have to blather. 3 Strikes, you're OUT.

Lesser of TWO Weevils

you actually bring up a good point about Buddhism--the masses of people who claim they "believe" it, and yet are actually practicing a hybrid of practices that aren't Buddhist at all.

Rjaye, you bring up something I've wondered about for some time, but have never had a chance to follow up on.

When I worked with Cambodian patients at the Refugee Clinic, I often heard variations on the theme of "Lord Buddha failed to save us from the Khmer Rouge".

I wonder whether that's particular to the experiences of war and genocide the Khmer underwent, plus finding themselves surrounded by Christianity (which actually does have the concept of "saving"), or whether it's more widespread among lay Buddhists from other cultures as well.

Of course, it's counter to official Buddhist doctrine, but it's clearly the way people ordinarily think of the Buddha. So I was just wondering if you've encountered this elsewhere, or whether you'd say that it perhaps seems to be more specific to the Khmer in the US.

Another theme I'd love to follow up on, but haven't ever had time, is claims of UFO sightings shortly before Phnom Penh fell. Perhaps someday...

Ken Cope,

Don't read those "economic screeds" if you don't want to learn anything. I was asked to support a position and I did. Apparently you have no problem with an economic screed like "Das Kapital" since you are chiming in on the other side of the issue.

Weevils,

I was responding to Ichthyic not you. It was addressed to him. Apparently I misremembered one of your comments as one of his. I wasn't responding to you specifically. So most of your post is moot. I don't blame you for getting confused because of my error, but some of your response was.

Sure I think I know more about the issue of property rights than Ichthyic. The guy reads Marx and is utterly clueless as to the evil crap therein. I'll deal with him again in another post because he is still quite confused.

You seem to have a real hankering to have your questions answered. What is it about my attacks on communism2 that bother you?

"'Clearly you were talking about Marxism'? Others including myself have been talking about several different forms of communism, and we've actually SAID so."

Actually this statement was directed at Ichthyic. In post #32 he wrote "go read Marx, and tell me that all his writing was just a 'force for evil'. talk about sloppy thinking." Which of course is nonsense since I specifically meant to include Marxism.
Your claim that you have "said so" is also nonsense. In fact you never mentioned the issue of other forms of communism in the context of communism. You only brought up early Christians on the issue of sharing and I didn't discuss that with you. I will shortly.
"At what point in the conversation did you say that we should only be discussing Marxism, and when did/why should we agree to do so?"

I don't care what you discuss. I wasn't discussing anything but communism definition number two, and definition number three from the American Heritage dictionary. If you want to have a side conversation then don't pretend that I'm participating. Also please learn the language, and how to read someone's writing in context. I've never left the subject of Marxism in all it's forms. Your dispute with me is based on an equivocation on your part between the different meanings of the word communist.

My dispute with PZ Myers was not. I think it's perfectly possible to have a religion which fits any of the definitions in the dictionary that is not a "force for evil". The same cannot be said for Marxism. Marxism contains inherent flaws that make it evil. Of course that doesn't mean that everyone who is duped by Marxist philosophy is evil but I have my doubts that they can make the proper ethical decisions when it comes to others people's property when they collect in large numbers.

"We're supposed to just know, huh?"

Well, the most common usage of the word "communism" is to refer to Marxism. In fact it has two entries in the dictionary. When people bitch about the evils of communism they usually aren't discussing the Amish. Since there are two meanings to the word like any English speaker (or speaker of any language) you are suppose to pick up on this from the context.

Again this issue doesn't apply to my dispute with PZ Myers statement because there is no definition of religion that would change his meaning for the better.

The same way you know exactly how deeply any of us has thought on any particular subject, or which forms of government any of us support, I suppose?"

Oh, I can tell how deeply you've thought based from your responses. Ichthyic hasn't thought deeply at all. He doesn't even understand why abolishing private property is evil. I tried to give him a clue with a quick few sentences, and not a treatise on the issue of ethics, but he's still seems to be clueless. It's quite clear that he believes Marxism to be a workable system. So I think his politics are clear.

Thalarctos is obviously a leftist who doesn't understand the principles of capitalism who was attempting to disparage the free market by claiming capitalism was responsible for the Irish Potato Famine, and presumably a bunch of other episodes of starvation, and mass murder. Which is ridiculous since is nothing about the principles of capitalism from which such things would naturally arise. The same cannot be said for Marxism which has tenets that directly lead to theft of property, conflict and bloodshed. Nothing can more clearly evil that abolishing property rights by force. I shouldn't have to explain any of this to any intelligent and well read person.

Thalarctos showed a preference for the deaths directly attributable to communism to those he falsely attributed to capitalism. He felt that had I been using a double standard. It was clear that he felt when the tally was done (using his erroroneous methods) that capitalism would come out with the short end of the stick. Thus my statement about his preference. If he didn't prefer the communist tally then he really shouldn't have brought the issue up.

He has so far totally failed to provide any mechanism by which capitalism, as in free markets, would cause a famine. The mechanisms by which communism disrupts markets and causes famines is well known, at least to those with a little bit of economic education. Hell if he's from the US it should be in his blood since one of the first episodes of starvation in this country, the story of Thanksgiving, was all about a voluntarily communist group starving until they abandoned their principles.

The following statement is not one that is made by someone who has a preference for capitalism over communism: "are you also counting on the capitalist side of the ledger preventable famine and disease in the developing world due to material exploitation?" The man obviously has serious problems with capitalism and was void of criticism for Ichtyics belief that communism2 isn't a force for evil.

Now back to your questions. Your first post to me was extremely nasty. Then you expect me to be at your beck and call to answer your questions.

" "uh, exactly HOW is that evil?"
Are you that naive?
You know, you might get a lot more people to agree with you if you'd ANSWER THE &#^$% QUESTION.
Sheesh! What is it today with people acting just like the religious types? Hurled invective, ad-hominem, strawmen, ignoring requests for citations, walking out rather than answering the questions asked... Is there some kind of bug going around on Pharyngula this week??"

I asked him if he was naïve because he was asking why abolishing property rights was evil (and ignoring several other clearly evil ideological components espoused by Marx). It is naïve. So I have a question for you. Do you understand why abolishing property rights is evil? This is not a hard question.

Now I can see how that would bruise Ichthyics ego (and any other Marxist sympathizers around) but I don't consider it particularly nasty. The tone was certainly no less abrasive than Ichthyics first comments to me.

So given your initiation of nasty behavior why should I directly answer your questions? Expecially since they were distracting, off topic, and open ended. Do you really expect to be schooled in my ethical beliefs in the comments section of an article that is soon to be buried at the back of a blog?

Perhaps we can maintain the scope of the discussion to why the stealing advocated by Marx is evil and then broaden out to the issue of stealing in general. Perhaps you should consider that I am communicating for the sake of brevity here. It might be that I have ethical principles that do not succumb to ethical dilemmas but I choose to speak in a way that people who do not understand my principles can understand. People understand that stealing is evil, at least they should, and certainly evil in the way Marx proposes. Marx proposes to steal from everyone, with no regard to how they came about their possessions.

Now we could discuss the ethics of "stealing" bread but that is a very long discussion and it is hardly a simple question. Long and the short of it is that in emergency situations what we would normally call stealing is not stealing. There are issues such as state of mind, intention to pay restitution, and the like that count on defining an act as "stealing" vs. not. A similar example would be if you picked up someone else's wallet thinking it was yours and left with it. You would be depriving them of their property but not stealing. Your intent mattered.

So when I have time I could discuss these issues but frankly I am not inclined to answering diversionary questions. Especially from nasty trollish commenters.

Apparently you have no problem with an economic screed like "Das Kapital" since you are chiming in on the other side of the issue.

And with that lethal keyboard combo, you just unwittingly wiped out a hive colony's queen ship. You'll clearly change the world. To do so more effectively, have you considered posting anonymously to the internet? You could even use an assumed name like, for example, "Demosthenes." That way, your mommy and daddy could discuss your posts over the dinner table and they wouldn't even know you wrote them!

So when I have time I could discuss these issues but frankly I am not inclined to answering diversionary questions. Especially from nasty trollish commenters.

So, How about that, Mr. Smarty-Pants Communist? Mr. College Professor? Mr. Beatnick? Mr. Hippie? What have you done for me lately?

Thalarctos showed a preference for the deaths directly attributable to communism to those he falsely attributed to capitalism.

Liar.

Oh, and just one more thing, Brian.

Thalarctos...he...He...he...his...he...he

You really shouldn't assume things, Brian. You know what they say: when you "assume", you make an "ass" out of--oh, hell, Brian, just forget it. You were an ass long before you posted.

Thalarctos,

Sure you were in the middle of showing me how capitalism caused more deaths than communism till I shut you down. What with your "preventable famine and disease in the developing world" the number killed by capitalism must far exceed anything perpetrated by the communists.

What's the death rate on malaria, like 3 million a year, and how long has capitalism been exploiting third world countries like one hundred years. That's three hundred million right there (of course they were less in the past but I'm just mocking so it doesn't matter). Then add in all the other preventable diseases.

Surely you prefer a measly 100 million to what 600-900 million. The there was the slave trade, we can chalk that up to proto-capitalism going all the way back to the Romans and their gold consumerism. Didn't they have private property, currency, and trade back then, well then hell, it must be capitalism. I betcha they even had tariffs and guilds, so they were mercantilist and thus surely proto-capitalists. What about all the wars between the proto-capitalists, and heck weren't the Nazi's capitalists too (National Socialism sounds like a mercantilist name what with the nationalist part).

I mean where could you be going with this argument than some tu quoque fallacy? Why don't you come up with some principle of capitalism which naturally leads to starvation gulags and death camps? You're the one who seems to think free markets are responsible for such things.

Clue me in. When we buy stuff like oil from Chavez that doesn't mean he's running his country on capitalist principles? Just like when Christians buy a piece of jewelry down in the diamond district that means any Jews selling stuff are running their lives on Christian principles? Is that how you see things?

So when the feds tax me and lend that money to some third world dictator that's your idea of capitalism? That's what you're whining about right?

You claim to be pro-capitalist so why the fuck waste my time with this garbage when you've got a bonefied supporter of Marx at your disposal to straighen out on the merits of captialism? Strange capitalist you are. A pro-capitalist who doesn't even know what capitalism entails.

Perhaps you should consider that I am communicating for the sake of brevity here.

ROFLMAO

is THAT what you call your endless idiotic ranting?

why the fuck waste my time with this garbage

project much?

Thalarctos,

If you want your sex know via your handle then pick something feminine or advertise the fact. Bears aren't exactly feminine. You're right though. I shouldn't be assuming anything, like that you are even telling the truth. I'll make sure to refer to you as "it" from now on, as it fits your demeanor.

So far all I've got from you guys is a pitiful understanding of ethics, history, and economics, naïve and pointless questions, plus a bunch of name calling. Not to mention sad attempts at arguing for one of the most murderous ideologies of all time, Marxism.

Typical behavior of blog trolls hiding behind assumed names. So are you three the enforcers on this blog who route out anyone who doesn't fit the political leanings of the blog?

Look at your own behavior. You called me a John Bircher, and now an ass. The other two are no better.

What did I do to deserve that. I called someone naive for believing the Marx's advocating the abolishing of property rights wasn't anything evil.

You had no argument except to spin out of control over the fact that you were arguing against capitalism in preference to communism and I called you on it. Don't argue that capitalism is worse than communism if you don't want to be seen that way. You certainly are no advocate of capitalism as you pretend to be. So who's living the lie?

Ichthyic,

I was brief with you but you weren't liking that were you? In fact the very people I'm arguing with now were complaining about my short responses to you. Telling me to answer the @##$$### question, etc.

Mrs. Bear wanted a treatise and weevel wants a complete discourse on the nature of property rights and theft because he can't figure out that abolishing property rights is unjustified theft on a scale that boggles the mind.

When I said the communism2 was a force for evil, I damn well meant exactly what I said. There was nothing sloppy about it at all.

To me this is sounding like the f!!king "race" threads all over again. It is by no means clear to me that when you people drop these gigantic abstractions like "communism" and "capitalism" into the punch bowl that you are all referring to the same actual aggregations of historical, economic, political, and anthropological phenomena. I read this whole g!!!amn thread trying hard to find a good way to get traction to argue my own two cents' worth, but I think it is far too conceptually muddled as it stands--and combined with various demonstrations of unnecessarily hardened points of view, I don't see it going much of anywhere useful.

So, at the risk of distracting from further consideration of Orson Scott Card's various shortcomings, here's what I suggest you all do, if you really want to keep going with this. It's the same thing that should have been done with the various race threads: start from fairly small assertions about fairly small things, figure out what the agreements and disagreements are about those, build upward in complexity from these known reference points to see what more can be said, and forget about top-down argumentation regarding big -isms until you're all relatively clear that you're not talking past each other. You'll all still end up disagreeing about many things, I would assume, but the conversation will have been ever so much more productive, data-laden, and interesting.

Looking back at the thread it seems that major (yet not explicitly articulated) issues likely to underlie much of the discussion so far pertain to the degree to which coercion should be (or could be allowed to be) manifest in a society, and to disagreements about what "coercion" might actually be considered to be in the first event. Those seem like good enough places to start. Are there some types of coercion that are more "evil" than others? Why? Are some "necessary evils"? Why? Is there any way to avoid (some of) these directly, or do certain kinds of societal trade-offs entail a certain amount of coercive drag? Are all forms of coercion created equal? In what ways might coercion be isotropically or anisotropically distributed in order to fulfill particular kinds of ethical norms?

(It might also be nice if some of you could connect these ideas back to the stuff PZ was talking about back at the beginning fo the thread.)

Why don't you all see if you can get a handle on something more fundamental like that before continuing on to more complicated perspectives, or before returning to your rather unproductive way of dealing with this rather important debate.

--pr

I would just like to point out that half of all the bears in the world are female.

start from fairly small assertions about fairly small things

Ok: Brian the Lyin' Libertarian is one of the dumbest trolls we've ever had.

That seems pretty unassailable.

(Brian, here's a clue for your own good: if you ever see a mother bear with cubs, it would be a Really Bad Idea to walk up to them, thinking that your common Y chromosomes will create some kind of male bonding.)

Most of us have pre-set conceptions about the properties of complex concepts, prismatic, so prismatic. I don't think some people will ever question, much less give up, their certainty that libertarianism or communism or religion or atheism is inherently evil, etc. etc.

Zealots cannot be reasoned with. They can only be mocked. And even that has a tendency to backfire.

Yeah, PZ, I thought of that before I mentioned it. However the masculinity of animals isn't really tied to such facts. Think Bear Bryant. Besides her handle is a greek name that ends in "os" which is also masculine. No big deal really but just another attempt on her part at distraction.

Thalarctos,

Your faux outrage over me saying you've show a preference for communism over capitalism is wearing thin. Same with your outrage over the fact that I assumed you were a guy.

Now it's my turn.

Oh, noez, you assumed I'm a libertarian (and a John Bircher). Outrage of outrages. You must be wrong about anything you've ever said. This proves you assume everything. Plus I'm totally insulted that you tried to pigeonhole me.

Hypocrite.

Thalarctos,

BTW, the difference between those ancient Christians and Marxist ideology is that one is voluntary and the other is coerced. Feel free to join a commune just don't force me to. Why weren't you intelligent enough to figure out the difference?

I hope you didn't use that biblical example because you thought it might carry weight with me. Were you assuming I was a Christian?

Also your pink capitalism, green capitalism, micro-lending stuff is pretty light weight. Sort of like pop-economics. The pink and green stuff is sort of like deciding whether you are going to buy only Christian music.

Was this the earth shattering information you were going to use to rock my soul?

You know I have arguments with Libertarians, Anarchists, Christians, Austrian Economists, and they often dislike my popping holes in their arguments, but at least they are polite, well most of them.

So, in answer to what people see as hatred and bigotry by a Mormon living on the East Coast, we should aim artillery at Salt Lake City?

Point One: Salt Lake City is only about 30% Mormon, and from what I've heard it's about 50% homosexual. So, purely from a numeric standpoint, that places you right alongside the homo murderers.

Point Two: Genocide isn't really a good answer to a problem of tolerance, and by espousing it you reveal your absolute lack of humanity.

I think that the people here have a warped conception of what "Faith" is. Faith is knowing something is true without seeing it; it isn't knowing something is true without evidence. It has more to do with a different method of gathering information than blind obedience.

Science will NEVER kill religion until they can prove it to be false, and this is impossible. They rely on different methods of learning truth.

Lastly, if you actually cared about what he was saying instead of wanting to earn liberal cred with your true believers, you might notice that this essay was written BY a Mormon, TO Mormons, ABOUT Mormons. You cannot by a Mormon and be openly homosexual. You will be excommunicated. The point of the essay (and the "two masters" comment) is to explain that trying to change the Mormon Church to justify homosexual behavior is completely incompatible with the beliefs of the Church itself.

His POINT is that you can choose to be homosexual or Mormon, but not both--and that if you believe Mormonism, then homosexuality is WRONG.

If you aren't Mormon, this essay has little substance for you, and criticizing it is an exercise in intellectual masturbation.

There is a word for people who think homosexuality is a temptation. We call those people "homosexuals."

Bisexuals exist, too...

How are these guys going to react when scientists eventually discover the genetic components of same-sex sexuality? Do you think they'll go into spasms of denial, or will they reinterpret it as "god's will" somehow?

Both.

Like how global warming doesn't exist, isn't our fault, isn't a problem, and is too difficult and expensive to stop anyway. Or how HIV doesn't exist, doesn't cause AIDS, and was made by the CIA.

Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his post as part of his last will and testament and Troksty called Stalin the "gravedigger of the revolution" (which he eventually was) because he knew where Stalin's strategy would lead. So just because Stalin was a monster who came to power largely because the young Soviet Union was virtually destroyed by a coalition of capitalist nations is no reason whatsoever to believe that "communism" is somehow inherently evil.

Go read some Marx, Engles, Lenin and Troksy and some history too. You might learn something.

If you really read Lenin (he's a lot more boring than the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics*), you will indeed learn something. Like how he ordered the Party to seize power first and ask what to do with it later. Never mind the manufactured Ukrainian famine. Wasn't he the guy who asked, rhetorically, how he was supposed to make a revolution without shootings? (And who ordered the shooting of the whole imperial family long after the revolution, for no obvious reason?)

I remember reading some quite evil sayings by Trotsky, too, but I can't remember.

True Scotsmen, the lot of them.

* A book so heavy it can just be held in one hand (if you aren't too wimpish) and consists mostly of endless tables of chemical & physical properties.

On a related note, much as it may pain us the line about Stalinism being a religion needs to be put to rest. Stalinism borrowed a lot of features from religion, but its seal against reason was nowhere near as complete, because while it wanted to treat certain works as if they were divinely revealed, it didn't have a God to attribute them to or any other way to make the idea of their infallibility seem plausible given their human authorship.

Of course they did have such a god (lowercase in Pravda tradition, huh, huh, heh, heh).

There's a nice painting (with lots of red) where it doesn't take a lot of imagination to identify Lenin as the Father, Stalin as the Son, and the sunrays falling on both (yellow, not red) as the Holy Spirit.

Even without Stalin (and Mao), what is the Great Socialist Future (the thing all those Lenin statues are looking and pointing to) other than a materialistic heaven and salvation, and the Revolution other than a holy war?

And what is this talk of "plausible"? It was simply asserted. On pain of death (or Siberia and death there), you were supposed to take it on, wait for it, faith.

Like how it was simply asserted that all national conflicts had been solved in the best possible way (so that mentioning the existence of one was apostasy).

And what is this talk of "plausible"? It was simply asserted. On pain of death (or Siberia and death there), you were supposed to take it on, wait for it, faith.

Let me rephrase.

Power comes out of gun barrels.

And before gun barrels had been invented, it came on the edge of the Sword of Inquisition... Onward, Christian Soldiers. Onward. Not Forward -- that would be Communist.

all religions are natural all come from the nature of man since there are no entities of a supper natural nature from any where that came and gave us religion. all religions came out of man and man alone. so why do we ever engage in argument about morals and religion as did it give us morals and purpose or not.

I only read the Ender series all of which I found some what disturbing the first more so and diminishing with each successive book. the first I would say owes a lot to Rod Serling and is less intellectual and more emotional. the rest of his stuff just is pretentious mystical rubbish not unlike the quoted stuff I read here way to much in the head
maybe he should write a new second book of Mormon. we need another contrived perfect solution for mankind we have not have a new one for a few years now it must be getting to be time for one.
I was taught that society, is an agreement like language is an agreement on what words mean. the group agrees what is moral how to do things what things can be done and which can't be done
the big problem we are having at present and possibly the problem all through history is that agreement does not seem to be a one time thing and changes over time some individuals seem to cope with change better than others some seem to be definetly threatened by it.
"no way to delay the troubles coming every day" F. Zappa