Response to Dennis Prager's "If There Is No God"
"There Is No God" by Dennis Prager, Townhall.com
We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion.
I can't disagree here. Those Crusades were pretty bad, as is the terrorism of Islamic extremists (and all other extremists).
What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies.
I also agree here. Atrocities based on secular/atheistic ideologies have been committed (though I strongly disagree with the claim that Auschwitz was committed by atheists; the fascist Nazis, though perhaps not as much as their Spanish and Italian counterparts, were Christians, if bad ones).
For all the problems associated with belief in God, the death of God leads to far more of them.
So, while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God's existence, what is provable is what happens when people stop believing in God.
1. Without God there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in God are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in God. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."
True, God represents a clearer picture of what is right and what is wrong. But people's interpretations of God's will have certainly led to "subjective opinions" on who deserves to die, ranging from the "sinner" to the "infidel."
2. Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.
If Dennis Prager had bothered to study the eminent ethologist and atheist Richard Dawkins (with whom I disagree on almost every one of his assessments of the worth and purpose of man) and his The Selfish Gene, he would know that a human being has more of an intrinsic purpose or meaning than a pebble, even for secular biologists. A human exists, for example, as a machine to act out (with some cultural exceptions) what his genes dictate to him to ensure fitness; a pebble has no DNA and, as a result, is formed randomly through natural processes. I disagree with this view and the view Dawkins espouses in the text, but Prager should note that atheists often do find an "objective meaning to life" (though all life is basically equal in "worth" from the genetic point of view).
3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no God. We live, we suffer, we die -- some horrifically, many prematurely -- and there is only oblivion afterward.
'Tis grim, indeed. I like Judaism's answer more than simply rotting in the ground without any direction... At any rate, I fail to see how this statement shows an inherent problem with atheism, or to phrase that a little bit differently, I fail to see how an "atheist" would convince himself to believe in God because he wants to go somewhere pleasant when he dies. It would be logical for somebody to want to go somewhere happy; yet, what somebody believes in, I'd like to think, is based on something more than a matter of choice and convenience. It's convenient to believe in a religion's concept of the afterlife, but I don't think that's usually why believers believe.
4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.
Yes, it is easy to see how a world without organized religion can be based on feelings and emotions rather than a given set of immutable values. Nonetheless, we cannot overlook that many "instruction manuals" have existed in the secular world to try to establish what is a good life and what is a good world; Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" comes to mind.
5. If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.
I agree. That's why many secularists also believe in social justice, bringing criminals like Hitler to justice while their still alive. Still, I agree with Prager's concern.
6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.
Was Western Europe ever based on Judeo-Christian values? If so, when did Judeo-Christians die for them? And if they believe in little, why did many European nations establish successful government-run health care programs? Clearly, they believe in something. Humanism is often that something, but there can be other ideologies that lead to important and necessary innovations that benefit society as a whole. Evils are the result of secular societies, but so are institutions that serve the common good, like private charities (for those of you who don't agree with socialized medicine).
7. Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.
I can't accurately refute or defend this claim because I simply don't understand the foundation of this argument, but I'll try to come up with a response. People who call themselves Christians, including the priests involved in molestation scandals and the KKK who used to lynch blacks and burn crosses, lehavdil, have applied plenty of irrational beliefs to societal circumstances. I think this is a really hasty generalization, and even Orthodox Jews would admit that somebody can act morally without being religious.
8. If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.
Oh, here is the "selfish gene" theory that Prager neglected in his earlier discussion. I guess he picks out the parts of Dawkins' book that he feels are relevant while ignoring others that disagree with his assertions (just like when Judeo-Christian values seem to ignore plenty of verses from the Bible).
9. If there is no God, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.
True, life can have no "sanctity" unless you believe in "sanctity," which is a religious principle. As a result, many non-religious people equate humans and other animals in worth, but even more do not (for instance, those few secular people who eat beef or pork but not family members...).
10. Without God, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer -- because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.
This is an interesting assumption that I largely agree with, but I also acknowledge that people can be inspired by plenty of other things: hate (Hitler's inspiration for Mein Kampf), family (Americans' inspiration to save money for their children), ambition (athletes' quest for gold medals), and the constant need to be right (Dennis Prager's columns), among many others. Many great works of literature, music, and architecture have been inspired by things other than faith in God, and I think it's unfair and irresponsibly misleading for Prager to point out unconventional paintings rather than beautiful modern symphonies to construct his argument that age and religion define quality.
11. Without God nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.
This is in keeping with my commentary earlier on number 9. I also admit that religious people often see an intrinsic holiness in language (especially us Jews, who believe that one's name and one's essence are basically the same thing, as demonstrated by our reverence for God's name and the power it represents). Nevertheless, sensibilities change over time. Religious Jews felt that Yiddish, mame-loshn, should be the national language of Israel based on an understanding of the intrinsic sanctity of Hebrew, loshn koydesh; that doesn't stop today's religious Jews from using modern Hebrew in day-to-day dialogue about non-holy matters. Can this be viewed as an example of when "the very notion of profane speech is mocked"? I'm not entirely sure myself.
12. Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.
Didn't he just say that secularists believe that humans are equal to animals? See Prager's number 9.
13. Without God, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.
I agree.
14. "Without God," Dostoevsky famously wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in God, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes -- specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes -- dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.
Again, trying to rewrite history by saying that the fascists were secularists. No they weren't; totalitarianism is not to be equated with a belief in man's ability to triumph over God. Mussolini instituted many reforms that were in keeping with Catholic doctrine, including laws against public swearing and rulings that closed down bars. Religion was taught in public schools, and the Catholic Church was allowed to control all marriages in Italy. Many if not most Nazis were also Christians.
As noted at the beginning, none of this proves, or even necessarily argues for, God's existence. It makes the case for the necessity, not the existence, of God. "Which God?" the secularist will ask. The God of Israel, the God of America's founders, "the Holy God who is made holy by justice" (Isaiah), the God of the Ten Commandments, the God who demands love of neighbor, the God who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the God who is cited on the Liberty Bell because he is the author of liberty. That is the God being referred to here, without whom we will be vanquished by those who believe in less noble gods, both secular and divine.
I would capitalize "He" and "Whom," and I would set "god" in lowercase in the question, "Which god?"... but I won't criticize Prager here with such relatively trivial matters. I agree that his column argues for God, and obviously, it argues for what he perceives to be the true God. Nonetheless, I think this conclusion (the way he phrases it) isolates some of our closest allies, like peaceful Hindus and Buddhists, while bringing in those Prager disagrees with the most: radical Islamic extremists, who also believe in many attributes of God that Prager just lists.
posted by I, the Progressive Jew at
1:05 AM
12 Comments:
Alright friend. You wish for some comments, so here are some as we run:
"The Nazis were Christian, though not as much as their Italian and Spanish counterparts."
Um hardly. Hitler was very derisive of Christianity calling it a slave religion. While he did often invoke the name of God in campaigning, it was as authentic as Guiliani promising to appoint judges who would overturn Roe vs Wade.The reality of Hitler jailing priests and ministers outweighs his campaign rhetoric.
I will reflect on your refutations by point to save space...
1. Who deserves to die
This is hardly as you claim. Christians hardly pretended (in any reasonable number) throughout history that the good book gave them justification for their bad deeds. And Muslims are simply reading their Koran and following it.
2. Human vs pebble.
You missed the point. Prager is engaging in hyperbole.
4. Instruction manuals.
We also cannot deny that the Communist Manifesto has led to untold suffering. So, let's pitch that idea yea?
6. West is Judeo Christian?
I sincerely hope this is a rhetorical question and that you're joking.
Continued...
10. Other motivations for art
Hitler's Mein Kamph was awful. Fellow fascist Mussolini said it was the worst book he'd ever read. It's amusing to point to Hitler because he was such a poor artist that he underscores Prager's point.
11. Language
Unless we are to argue that the language Jews speak instead of Yiddish is profane, the simple answer to your question is no.
12. Humans are God.
It does indeed contradict an earlier point. Unfortunately secularism is highly contradictory. Listen to Peter Singer discuss animal rights, and the LACK of rights for the handicapped. And try and pretend that his worldview is coherent. Pointing out flaws in a contradictory theology will produce contradictions.
14. The fascists were Christians.
Again, no they weren't. Mussolini, while needing teh Church for power, was extremely anti-religious in his private conversations. Noting that many Nazis were Christian (which is disputable) doesn't mean Nazism, in and of itself was Christian. Otherwize, since Democrat "Christians" are pro-abortion...this utterly proves that abortion is a Christian ideal.
You end on a rather weak note. "Claiming that we need OUR God isolates our allies and emboldens our enemies." That's nonsense. No Islamofascist believes in Pragers main points. And indeed, most Muslim savages don't believe in free will. "Allah determines who is for him and who is against him."
Most of your points are quick sniping and devoid of meaning. Sorry, this post fails the smell test.
the aliens are here and they love christ!!! plus: 'Conversation with Jesus!! search 'aliens', 'jesus'
1.
Christians absolutely have "pretended" that their religion justified their bad deeds. During the Crusades, popes promised those who served on their side to reclaim Jerusalem and wipe out the Muslims (and massacring Jews along the way) that their loyalty would grant them admission into heaven if they were to die while fighting or en route. Thousands of crusaders were convinced and thus believed in this nonsense. This should not reflect negatively on Christianity, but only on those who have fallen for such brainwashing, on all sides.
And how do you explain peaceful Muslims? That they're "bad" Muslims for not following the straight word of the Koran by ignoring their duty to kill the infidel? Does that make the rest of us bad Jews and Christians for not immediately killing those we consider to be Amalek, as the Bible commands us to do "in every generation"? Or does our objection to polygamy make us bad God-fearing monotheists?
2.
You missed my point. Obviously Prager does not believe in what he says in that second sentence; rather he is trying to summarize the arguments of "secularists." I acknowledge this, but my point was that he was misrepresenting many secularists' claims by using the absurdity of pebble vs. human. Obviously, his absurd statement did not summarize but actually severely distorted a secular view in the process.
4.
I'm not pitching that we adopt communistic ideals. You missed my point entirely; it was a response to Prager. What I'm saying is that often secularists base their values on what they consider to be texts with an almost sacred status, and that Prager misrepresented those guys when he said they didn't. (You can even view my objection as a pseudo-attack on secularists' indoctrination, but because you approached my post as though everything I say is wrong, you were even able to miss that this statement wasn't aimed at insulting the Bible or even Prager, in actuality).
6.
Which part came across as a joke? That secular thinkers believe in something, or that good as well as evil can result from secular societies? Or was it my concern about the Judeo-Christian values in Western Europe? I can answer this last point here: Prager has previously said that today's Western European values run counter to our own, which is fine, but he has also said that historically Western European values have offered us little in terms of Judeo-Christian values to emulate. For instance, he attacked the notion of "equality," which has been a French value for hundreds of years (since their revolution, which was inspired by Americans' revolutionary success). I was just wondering when it was that Western Europe as a whole decided to scrap these values.
3, 5, 7, 8, 9.
You know, if you agree with anything I say, feel free to comment on those points, as well. I don't need to have the final word on anything, even if you agree with what I say.
10.
I wasn't referring to Mein Kampf or to Hitler as art/artist, respectively, but simply used the text and its author to demonstrate other factors that can inspire people to do things. I specifically speak about art later in that response.
11.
I never said that the language Jews use instead of Yiddish (Hebrew) was profane, but rather that some early Zionists and a huge percentage of American Jews in the 1940s (notably Orthodox Jews, but also some Reform Jews, who generally opposed the formation of Israel altogether) noted that the everyday use of Hebrew was, in itself, an act of sacrilege. I respect your answer, but please note that this issue has never been a "simple" one to resolve, even if you think it sounds absurd. And though you might think I've habitually made up history about fascists, you should look up the politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. This is one of my areas of expertise in academia.
12.
Fair enough. Point taken. I still think Prager should have settled his own contradiction. If he is to say that secularists as a whole believe one thing, he shouldn't say that secularists as a whole believe in something else. He might clarify that large numbers believe in either, and many believe in both, somehow. Logic can be used to explain the absurd. It can even be used to change minds.
13.
I never associated Nazism or fascism with Christianity; I said that many Nazis and fascists were Christians, and this includes those involved in the regime and war machine that perpetrated crimes (from important party officials to the lowly guys who operated the trains that led Jews into the death camps). I don't think Mussolini or Hitler were good Christians, or necessarily even believers, but their ranks certainly included many, many Christians. By no means should you consider this an attack on Christianity.
And you shouldn't use "Democrat" with a capital "D" as an adjective. It comes across as ignorant and rude, even if you don't mean it that way (and even if you think I'm being dumb by trying to be politically correct right now). A "Democrat" is a person, and the adjective is "Democratic"; "Republican" is both a person and an adjective. It's a bit like saying, "I don't understand why those people wear Jew hats." If one doesn't know the specific term, at least "Jewish," the accepted adjectival form, would sound less offensive. If you want to attack an ideology, like liberalism, use your words and reasoning rather than something that sounds purely insulting (and since you argued well here, I don't see why you felt the need to add on the epithet).
I thank you for your comments.
Further comments:
1. The Pope promised during the Crusades that those who fought and died to protect their bretheren and repel the Muslim savages from the holy land would be forgiven their sins. This forgiveness has been distorted to pretend that the Pope approved of the horrible crimes committed by Peter the Hermit against not only Jews, but other Christians as well.
And yes, by the tenets of their faith, peaceful Muslims are "bad" Muslims.
2. Not really. If we arise by chance, then we really have no more intrinsic value than anything else. This is seen by the secular drive to give animals human rights, slaughter babies in the womb, and proclaim that keeping the globe from heating up 2 degrees in the next three hundred years (because some ice will melt) is worth killing millions of Africans. While he should've said "plant" instead of "pebble" he's got that 100% right.
4. Granted I was short in my response here. I don't believe everything you said is wrong, which is why I didn't refute EVERYTHING. Still, the comparison of Marx to the Bible is silly. One was a moral code for giving to others. The other was a tome of selfishness and taking from others. Marx spent much of his life taking what didn't belong to him, and had no problem putting those ideas to paper. Far from "an instruction manual to a better life", the Communist Manifesto reads like a list of demands from a petulant child to their parents. It's a great example of "living according to your feelings",in this case, that he was owed what he wanted.
6. Well, your question if the West was founded on Judeo Christian values seemed like a joke. And I hoped it was. Another simple answer to "when did they die for them", you already provided: The Crusades saw hundreds of thousands die for their faith over centuries. For one.
And the nonsense about "successful" health care programs....wow.
14. You pretended that the Fascists weren't secularists. They were. Fascism was a nationalist (instead of classist) based form of socialism. And socialism always seeks to replace God with the state.
And I used the word Democrat to describe people. If you're offended, oh well. Perhaps I should've said "Christian" Democrats (as that sounds more grammatically correct). There is nothing ignorant nor rude about associating someone with their political ideology. When did "Democrat" become an epithet? A Democrat is a member of the Democratic party. Saying that Democrat is offensive is beyond stupid. I have no desire to bow to the word parsing that the left engages in that makes normal words "ugly" and "offensive" on a whim. If you find the term Democrat to be an attack, perhaps you have a secret guilt you need to address.
Make no mistake, I will gladly converse and share ideas with you, but I play no politically correct games.
1.
And you don't think the crusaders themselves thought they were doing what was right and true?
And you didn't respond to my concern about the double standard, that we might be bad Jews and Christians for not immediately killing everybody we might think is a descendant of Amalek (Haman, Hitler, etc.). This is a tenet of the faith for anybody who reads the Bible literally. (That's not to say that various movements within Judaism and Christianity haven't reinterpreted the verses that deal with Amalek, just as those "bad" Muslims have reinterpreted the violent parts of their religious texts.)
2.
If we arise by chance, we have no intrinsic value or meaning, of course. But based on the secular "selfish gene theory" view, we absolutely do have a purpose--propagation of the individual gene, and all of our genes in general because most have evolved to work together. Prager uses "purpose" and "meaning" without any differentiation, but they are two very different things. Dawkins believes that humans and all animals and plants have a purpose, but not necessarily meaning as we religious people understand it. Like I said, Prager misrepresents this view.
4.
My comparison of the Communist Manifesto to the Bible (in influence, not content) was no more absurd than when Prager compared Ellison's choice to use the Koran in his private swearing-in ceremony to a choice for somebody to use Mein Kampf, which he called "the Nazi Bible." Marx's writings about history and its phases are worth a read simply for their Hegelian philosophical value. Most of the communists we know of today--e.g., the old Soviets and the Cubans and the Chinese and the North Koreans--probably have never read the Manifesto or Marx and Engel's essays on history as communism is placed in a series of phases.
6.
By "when did they die for them," "they" refers to Judeo-Christian values and "them" refers to Western Europeans. Sorry for not specifying my antecedents. I was asking, when did Western Europeans as a whole decide to abandon these values?
And even if you disagree with me about whether the programs are successful, why would it be that secularists felt the need to at least try to help one another on such a massive scale, seeing as they don't find meaning in each other's lives and existence in general?
14.
I disagree with you on the point that socialism always seeks to replace God with the state. True, almost all socialist systems that we've seen have been secular in nature, but I don't think the idea itself makes religion unnecessary. Especially if we think religion helps us understand the afterlife, life's meaning, and all the other points Prager mentions in this column.
And are you one of those conservatives who thinks it's historically justifiable to say that "fascism" was a liberal idea? I'd like to hear why you think so, if you do; my view is based on the principle that "liberal" connotes change that looks toward new and innovative ideas and "conservative" connotes change that aims to reinstate tried-and-true methods from the past. With this dictionary-based definition, it's impossible to say that fascism is liberal, just as it's impossible to say that communism is conservative.
"Democrat" is borderline offensive as an adjective. The word itself is not offensive, but using it as adjective can be. Just as "Jew" isn't offensive usually, but only when the tone or use as an adjective makes it so.
1. No. Evil people usually realize they're doing evil. I find no reason to believe anyone would find justification in their acts against fellow Christians (who they're supposed to defend by the way).
BTW, the majority of Crusaders not only thought they were doing good....they WERE doing good.
2. The selfish gene theory is nonsense. Read D'Souza's refutation of it. (I'm way to drunk to give it justice.)
4. To be honest, the more you ramble on about this the more confused I am. I really have no clue what you're trying to debate here, and as such will drop it.
6. Well, I showed one example of when "they" died for "them". To be honest, since my example covered several centuries, and hundreds of thousands of dead Christians....I feel I more than answered your question.
And to health care...it's nice to see the goalposts have moved from "successful" to "nice".
The secularists put a great deal of meaning into existance...after all, there is nothing after. Moreover, I see no reason to pretend that these morons who deliberately adopted a failed program meant to curry votes...were great humanitarians. Doing something you know will hurt people is evil, not good.
14. OK, let's not speak in hypotheticals here. Socialism has, without a single exception, tried to replace God with the State. Perhaps a Christian socialism is possible, but it hasn't been tried yet.
To your rather silly question about whether facism was liberal...of course it was. It was f'ing socialism. It sought to tear down the state and rebuilt it in the Fascist image. Since no socialism has ever been conservative, of course the idea was liberal. Minimum wage, free health care, state ownership of the human body, eugenics, abortion, all of these are liberal ideas.
By your own definition, of course Fascism was liberal. It was all about finding the miraculous "third way", that had never been tried before. The Fascists were hostile to tradition, and wore such opposition on their sleeves. Since communism and fascism are kindred ideologies, it's as ridiculous to pretend theyre spectrum opposites as it is to pretend that about Judaism and Christianity.
1. I'm glad we moved the goal post from Christianity is "always" about doing good to "usually," with "the majority" of Christians doing good.
And you can't say that most crusaders were good Christians in the same discussion where you say that the Crusades represented a time when Judeo-Christian values died in Western Europe... If the majority of crusaders were acting in keeping with those good values, then how can we say their values disappeared in Western Europe during the Crusades? You contradict yourself.
2. The selfish gene theory is not nonsense. It's an important development in behavioral psychology, whether you and I agree with it. Even a really horrible theory, like Hitler's racial superiority, is also not nonsense because calling it that gives us no reason to study what it was and why so many fellow Nazis bought into it. With an explanation of "why" comes an answer to "how can we avoid it in the future." Likewise, if we practice ignorance or name-calling when speaking of the "selfish gene theory" we will not be knowledgeable enough or open enough to directly refute its tenets.
4. To use simple English, which you will understand, Marx's manifesto has values in it. People liked them and adopted them, then distorted them. Most socialists and communists, or the citizens in their countries, have never read and certainly never understood its contents. Thus, comparing the Bible to the Manifesto in influence is no more ridiculous than when Prager compared Mein Kampf, which is filled with genuine hatred, to the Bible.
6. If you are suggesting that Judeo-Christian values died for Western Europeans during the 1200s, I guess the Founding Fathers' adoption of Judeo-Christians (which I personally don't believe to be true) in the late 1700s could be considered a radical and reactionary move, huh?
And I guess the type of health care system in Britain, France, and other Western European nations are evil (and let's throw in Canada, too). That's why they help the poor. That's why people don't worry about where their prescription money is going to come from. That's why the overall life expectancy in Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the UK, and hell, even Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Belgium, and Luxembourg, is higher than in the United States. Yeah, people are dying left and right. The wicked men who enacted the laws that created those programs ought to rot in Hell for committing such evil... and to their own people! My goodness!
By the way, the godless Canadians and British and French would never elect a person who tried to abolish the government-run health care system, so your claim that people wanted such a system only before they realized that their systems would fail is completely unfounded. If these systems failed, why are people still preserving them? And why are they living so damn long?
14. The fascists represented a "third way," yes, but in Italy abortion was outlawed, and literature on contraceptives was banned. Sure, women were given the vote there, but homosexuals were killed and even declared to be against the law under Mussolini. This third way leaned, more often than not, toward "social conservatism" to maintain the status quo in terms of race, religion, and political beliefs. Many economic policies were socialist, but social values were largely quite reactionary.
Several things on your list ("minimum wage, free health care, state ownership of the human body, eugenics, abortion, all of these are liberal ideas") were actually not enacted in fascist countries. In fact, "state ownership of the human body," "eugenics," and "abortion" were rampant even during the old days of the Kaiser and el Rey.
The problem is that you're associating a powerful government with "liberalism" because a powerful government is a key part of liberal thought in the United States. You're being too narrow-minded in your perception of what "liberalism" entails. In Europe, however, a powerful central government existed for hundreds of years in most countries under monarchies, and thus, Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler, for example, were more like monarchs with unlimited power. Returning from a system of democratic rule (which was attempted in Germany and even got Hitler elected) to powerful central governmental authority is thus "conservative"--returning to the old ways and maintaining the status quo. Good try, though.
And to respond to your claim that "without a single exception" socialism has tried to replace God with the state, I guess you're right........ wait, unless I can find just one example of where that's not true. That's pretty easy to accomplish. Here's one: HaKibbutz HaDati. Google it.
Try not to make absurd statements using extreme diction like "without a single exception." Those arguments are too easy to utterly decimate.
1. I never claimed Christians always do good. I claimed the vast majority of Crusaders did good. Considering I addressed the idea that the murderous Crusaders "thought they were doing good", I don't know why you object. I could almost keep with you if it was just the Jews being murdered...but it was Christians as well. How could they think they were doing good when they were pillaging the very people they were sent to save.
2. Sigh. Hooray for the liberal tolerance to where everything, no matter how ridiculous, must have some merit. Some validity. While an interesting theory, there is quite a bit of evidence that contradicts it. Why would anyone give to charity? Why rush into a burning building to save someone? Why serve in the armed forces, police, fire department, or any low pay high risk job?Why give up a seat on the bus to a stranger? The theory doesn't explain many human behaviors, and indeed seems to run counter. Heck, it doesn't even explain quite a bit of animal behavior, such as guppies eat their young.
There is no benefit is studying Hitler's "racial superiority" theory. Hitler killed anyone who disagreed with him, and put anyone on staff who was willing to do as he asked.
6. The Judeo Christian values our founding fathers enshrined in our constitution is painfully obvious. Our rights come from God, not man. The bill of rights were believed to be inalienable, to be free of government confiscation, to have basic rights in trial, to have the right to defend yourself, etc.
As for your various proofs, they are all unmitigatably wrong. The British system that you so hailed has recently ruled that people's lives should not be saved if it costs too much. Many drugs are not covered by plans, and due to Britain banning them, are so expensive they can't be afforded. In Canada, the system is so poor that hundreds of thousands flock across the border to get BETTER health care in America. The system has been such a failure that even it's inventor has come out in favor of scrapping it. Our system mandates that life saving aid MUST be given no matter what, but the British are saying let them die if it's too expensive.
And pointing to sheer life expectancies as proof their system works is idiotic. You know life expectancy simply takes the age everyone dies and figuring a median age right? Americans smoke and drink more heavily than in other countries. We have more violent deaths, especially in minority communities. We have higher rates of obescity. Drunk driving claims more people here than in any country that I'm aware of in Europe. All of these factors drive our life expectancy down.
As long as we cover everyone, even if it's bad...its fair! And God knows, we care more about fairness than success!
Sarkosy has promised to reign back government, INCLUDING health care. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569345/'Don't-end-French-health-care-for-expats'.html
Sakozy has already started cutting back on the health care system. He seems to have modest goals, but they are still smaller govt plans.
The Brits may not want it, but they're getting cuts as well.
Going back real quick.
1. I never claimed Judeo Christian values died during the Crusades. I got your question backwards. My mistake. It took me three more reads to get it right.
Not surprisingly, the slide for Europe began in their embrace of socialism. State sponsored abortion, paying for sex changes, the refusal to call evil evil, banning of guns, etc.
Back to Health care:
I don't remember saying they only wanted health care because they didn't know what it was, I said that about dictators and evil plans. Many people will always vote for the guy who promises newer shinier stuff. For less work. And more free money. And let's not forget a new hot plate.
And now for the fun part, the life rates. Our rate, according to wikipedia is 77.7 years. Britain? 78.4. So despite our increased violence, accident rate, obescety, and other health factors, the "superior" system is only getting 7-8 months more life out of these people? That's the big hype? The average is a couple months, to two years more than us. Only Spain has a dramatic difference of about 4 1/2 years.
With all of our problems, we're STILL within a year of all those socialist countries who supposedly do it better. YAAAAAWN.
theleftfromtheleft.blogspot.com
Look at the neat lil post about the lovelies in Europe.
And onto the supposedly conservative socialism:
While you are correct that Italy banned abortion and contraceptives, it was not out of some religious belief, but out of the idea that it was a woman's responsibility to have many babies to repopulate the Fascist party. Women were seen as a commodity to breed future workers. So abortion was not bad on a religious or moral ground, but because it hurt the state. Since the state felt it controlled the individual's body, it enacted this policy. The Italian position sought to promote "race hygene" and wanted the most fit women to procreate more...which is, say it with me Eugenics.
Hitler decriminalized abortion, as long as the babies were minorities of course. Indeed for the unfit, for babies with defects, and for non Aryans, the abortions were often forced. As were sterilizations. The mentally unfit, the physically handicapped, the old, the sick, often were done away with to keep the race pure. Again, eugenics in play. And the views on sex were hardly conservative either. Hmmm.
So, iindeed, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists were eugenic, and Hitler was semi-pro abortion.
Across the sea, these views on race were being shared by Sanger, and all of our lovely progressives. These mores still stand in the Democratic party today, but now we call it choice instead of overt racism.
And again, your refutation of one of my major points is to admit, "Well, yea it was happening, but....." Well, yea Germany did those things...BUT, they were there before Hitler. Ok, granted. But they were there DURING Hitler too.
So, no, I'm not simply saying the Nazis were leftists because they favored big government, I'm saying the Nazis and Fascists were leftists, because they were socialists, and all socialists are leftists.
The Nazis were quite interested in Socialism. While there was no "minimum wage" so to speak in Germany, EVERY price was approved of by the regime, as they told businesses what price they would buy goods at, what prices they'd sell at, what the wages would be for the workers, how much they'd pay in taxes, and how much they were allowed to make in profit. If teh company lost money...oh well, but if they made "too much", it was confiscated...think of it as the father of the windfall profits tax.
Mussolini was far from the economic fanatic that Hitler was, but he too was a proponent of wage and price controls, including a minimum wage.
And as for Habutz...I tried looking for it, but everything came up in Hebrew. Sorry, couldn't read it. The one or two English pages were bland with little to no info. Shrug.
1.
Don’t you believe that Christians who follow the tenets of their faith always do good (meaning the rest are wicked because they’re bad Christians)? I fail to see how killing innocent people in the name of “doing God’s work” makes any sense in terms of Christian ideals. And I can’t believe that a Christian, familiar with the history of these events, can argue that the crusades were largely good and that crusaders were largely good given the sheer number of dead innocent Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And yes, I even have a problem with the Pope’s statement (via your paraphrase): “The Pope promised during the Crusades that those who fought and died to protect their bretheren [sic.] and repel the Muslim savages from the holy land would be forgiven their sins.” Doesn’t this mean that the Pope condoned the slaughter of countless innocent Muslims—men, women, and children who weren’t even involved in defending their holy land but just happened to live there? Oh, but they deserved to die for believing in a false God, those savages… ‘Tis the Christian way of fixing the problem.
Maybe some of the crusaders who committed atrocities were convinced that the Christians they were killing were expendable or in their way of reclaiming Jerusalem, or maybe they thought they were heretics, or some other issue entirely. I really don’t know, so I’m not going to defend any of them or try to justify their motives. But do we agree that the crusaders who killed other innocent Christians were bad people and bad Christians? Or do you have contentions with that idea, also?
2.
I wholeheartedly believe that if we study the theories that caused hatred and if we study the reasons why people fell for those completely ridiculous theories, we are better equipped to defend our own beliefs, both religious and moral. This is what you criticize as “liberal tolerance”? I didn’t say Hitler’s theory itself has merit; I said the study of it has merit. I already pointed out the major flaw with the selfish gene theory, which is the inexplicable influence and power of human culture (which can clarify why people do the things that they do when those things seem to make them less “reproductively fit”), but you keep bringing this up as a reason why the theory should not be studied at all.
If you bothered to read Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene Theory, you’d realize that Dawkins criticizes people’s unjustifiable obsession with the rights of animals over those of humans even more vehemently than he criticizes the religious.
6.
“Our system mandates that life saving aid MUST be given no matter what, but the British are saying let them die if it's too expensive.”
One reason life expectancy is consistently better in Europe is because people don’t stress out about preventative care, because the fact is that “our system” makes people think going to the doctor for a check-up is a waste of money. Regular doctor visits, like conservation, is a luxury of the rich in this country. When’s the last time you went to the doctor when you had the flu? The truth of the matter is that when somebody poor goes to the hospital on the verge of death, “our system” is only concerned with stabilizing that person and sending him or her back out on his or her ass, not fully treating the patient back to tip-top shape.
And what about all of those reports of the homeless and the indigent being transported to free clinics because hospitals don’t want to treat them? Our system has so many flaws that criticizing somebody else’s system before we criticize our own is downright irresponsible, and even more idealistic than people who support government-run health care.
The free market also ensures that life is not the number one priority in decision-making. When a car company like Ford decides whether or not to institute a recall on seatbelts or anything they’ve found to be unsafe, they compare the cost of out-of-court settlements for the percentage that will be hurt or killed versus the cost of the recall itself, and whichever route is lower in cost, they’ll take. It’s a disgusting reality of private enterprise, and it’s quite true in the medical industry, as well.
“Americans smoke and drink more heavily than in other countries. We have more violent deaths, especially in minority communities. We have higher rates of obescity [sic.]. Drunk driving claims more people here than in any country that I'm aware of in Europe. All of these factors drive our life expectancy down.” I’m not sure if all of those statistics are correct (especially the drinking and smoking), but if they are, no wonder those filthy liberals say so many unpatriotic things! Americans really do suck! And can you imagine how long those Europeans with their good habits would live if they had a health care system like ours? Maybe to 200! Hot damn!
I'll briefly respond to your 2nd response in a row, since it was Shabbos and I didn't refresh the page from when I last left my computer a day ago.
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Okay, thanks for answering the question. I think your answer would be different from Prager's, since he implies that for hundreds of years (at least well before 1776), Western Europe has had values that we should not emulate because they do not resonate with our own Judeo-Christian values. If they did have Judeo-Christian values at the time we drafted our Constitution in the 1780s, we wouldn't really be so unique in forming a country based on liberty and Judeo-Christian ideals (which he believes is what happened). But then again, he contradicts himself on more than one occasion, so I'll not try the answer the question for him here.
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I never said fascism was rooted in religion, or that the abortion policy was based on morals. I said it was conservative rather than liberal. If policies existed before Hitler/Mussolini/Franco and were "tried and true" methods that the fascists were trying to adopt, they were conservative, by definition. You said it yourself. The reason you're wrong regarding your use of terms is that you associate "conservative" with "moral" and "liberal" with "big government" and "immoral." Those terms ("liberal" and "conservative") are generally believed to be relative for each society, so a modern American definition of "conservative" is not the same as it is in France, or even the same as it was in this country 150 years ago (when "liberal" and "anti-slavery" were associated, since now most conservatives and most liberals believe that slavery was wrong).
One might even think of eugenics (especially the eugenics that royal families throughout Europe engaged in with each other) as a conservative value, but I do not want to explore that here. This is meant to be a Jewish/political blog; I might refer to it in a later post.
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I don't know what "Habutz" is, but here's a website that was the top hit on Google for the term I mentioned: http://www.kdati.org.il/info/English/About_Kdati.htm
Orthodox Judaism (they even have a yeshiva) + Socialist Society = HaKibbutz HaDati
You don't even need to read the historical background to see my point. A kibbutz is an agriculture-based socialistic system in Israel, largely founded by secular Jews, and here's one that is Orthodox ("haDati," "the Religious"). Again, try not to use the phrase "without a single exception." There's an exception to every rule, except for that rule that says there's an exception to every rule.
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