Good News: And No Religion, Too
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I agree but I was answering — refuting— comrade TM who claimed that other Party members did hold that view.
Many party members have ferociously defended free will.
And when told to read the materialists, merely retort that these are old hat and have been exploded by Marx.
Gobbledygook!
One flatly told me that there is no refutation of free will in the writings I recommended.
And when I said that, apart from the philosophers’ works, all one has to do is undertake some contemplation of their own conscious feelings and thoughts, and trace their antecedents, they just mocked, and repeated “Of course we have free will.”
And you don’t need names, because you well know that we’ve been having this debate since 2005, on the old Yahoo forum, and with you separating the term from its modern use, and ridiculing me.
Even as a meaningless term, supposedly unrelated to its idealist origin, why should it elicit such a vociferous defence?
Hi Tom,
Time lag is a funny thing across zones.
Thank you for your lovely words on people of faith who share socialist ideas and its appeal.
You know I once had chats with wez and Matt my Christian faith and my socialist views.
Matt was initially surprised that I was a person of faith…
Often, I believe, faith communities are subjected to far right ideations and ‘red scare’ and abase people who express socialist ideas.
I dream and consciously will for a money-less and socialist society.
I talk often on changing the mode of production, based on the science of antagonistic change agency. There must be a better way: a science of production that meets all and every want and need.
Some socialists might be skeptical of my faith and treat me with caution. Some people of faith do the same about my non-capitalist stance (socialism stance).
I have conflated my faith with socialism, so walk like many others in that position in the shadows of alienation. Twice displaced… but content in it.
I have posted here for some time, and have always been welcome to chat- at times it raises a brow (preconceptions if vitriol will spout allayed in chat! people of everyday desire to change the mode sharing ideas and options)
I know, some in the SP may welcome me, and some may not.
I accept that concern. As I know socialists had and have been treated poorly by fanatical religious-political actors (likely labouring under political interference greater than they think).
You know, I have got to know so many here and and glad to use the term comrade and brother/sister/ and preferred pronouns for personhood.
Be safe, and again, lovely words, thanks.
🙂Thanks L.B.
Of course, fanatics like Armageddonists of various new churches shouldn’t ever be welcome, because they despise this world and its well-being. They even look forward to a nuclear conflagration, so they can depart to Heaven and see the unbelievers blasted into Hell.
But they would never apply for membership anyway.Ah! Now that would be the doomsday sayers!
Wishing to bring down a whole world for their own selfish needs!
I had to smile Tom at your reply. Thanks.
Membership is a funny thing and stuffed full of inclusions and exclusions in any structure!
My failures in being a member of any club/group is what defines me: I hear the people on the margins deeper- and echo back.
Stay safe and thanks for the smile that suddenly beamed on my face.
Stay safe,I have been in and out of the party.
Socialism may (I didn’t say could, ALB, but may – so no overgrown-adolescent remark is called for!) happen in spite of our little party, as various threads come together and realisation dawns. I don’t see party numbers swelling any time soon, so that’s my hope.
The doomsday-sayers among Christians are not just the U.S. type, but the fanatical sects attached to Eastern Orthodoxy too, real Athanasians, creationist and armageddonist. They descend in a direct line from the fanatics of the early centuries C.E.
The Russian state church has even named a 19th century Russian saint the patron of nuclear weapons, and its bishops sprinkle holy water over the missiles.
The best Christians, ready-made for socialism, are the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites.
The modern Catholics are fine by me too. They don’t try to convert people, accept evolution, and are international, unlike the Orthodox churches.
S.J. Gould says that Italian seminarians he spoke to were astounded to hear that half of Americans reject Darwin.
So your anathema for using the mere words “free” and “will” in conjunction only applies to members of the Socialist Party. Members of the Roman Catholic Church, the church that banned Voltaire’s works and excommunicated anyone of their flock that read them, is exempt. Not only can its priests continue to propagate the doctrine if Free Will but its followers should also be allowed to join the revolutionary socialist party. Are you having us on or being wilfully provocative? Voltaire must be turning in his grave.
No. As I said, Catholics HAVE TO believe in free will. They are not calling themselves materialists.
I have no problem with idealists being idealists. It is to be expected. They are not being inconsistent.
Free willies (even if only linguistically) with a claim to materialism are inconsistent at worst, lazy in thought and expression at best. (And lambasting me for decades and making out I am the one misreading the materialists, or else calling them old hat and behind the times).
The second are those at whom Voltaire would turn in his grave.
separating the term from its modern use
What is its modern use? People who have read a bit about philosophy will know what its historical use was and why it was controversial (and even progressive as a weapon in the rising bourgeoisie’s ideological battle against mediaeval obscurantism).
But I doubt many others will see much difference between your “did it of own volition” and “did it voluntarily” or “did it of own free will”. Maybe they should but they don’t. And it’s unfair to those who don’t to then attribute to them the idea of a supernatural “self” which won’t be what they believe.
Not that someone would normally say “I did it of my own free will”. That sounds rather pompous and the sort of thing you would only say on some formal occasion as in a court of law. I suspect some are defending it because they as interpreting you as saying that they didn’t do something “of their own volition”. Which, ironically, you wouldn’t object to them saying. Some may do this vociferously, dismissing you as a crackpot for saying that they were forced to do something “of their own volition”.
It’s you who are being vociferous here by pedantically insisting that the word should only be used in its 18th century sense. Actually I agree with you that it can be confusing to use it other than in that sense but I don’t see the need to make a big song and dance about it. It doesn’t make the user a philosophical idealist.
The second half of your comment is philosophical speculation.
I wouldn’t say “philosophical” speculation. That something was going on in the brain when we think would have been that in the 18th and 19th centuries as philosophers sat in their armchairs contemplating. Though even in the 19th century such “speculation” could be a scientific like Darwin’s conclusion that there must be something like what was later identified as genes.
Today, with regard to the brain, it has been established and verified that there is a correlation between recordable brain activity and thinking. That is no longer speculation. What is speculation, ie open to testable hypotheses, is what is the relationship between the two. For instance, does thinking cause brain activity or does brain activity cause thinking or are they part of one and the same process? I don’t know what neurologists are concluding, though there seems to be some evidence that brain activity precedes thinking in some circumstances at least. For instance:
I don’t claim to have any special knowledge in this field but am mainly relying on what I read in the Skeptical Inquirer.
” But I doubt many others will see much difference between your “did it of own volition” and “did it voluntarily” or “did it of own free will”. Maybe they should but they don’t. And it’s unfair to those who don’t to then attribute to them the idea of a supernatural “self” which won’t be what they believe.”
But then they shouldn’t explode with rage when I try to explain that cause and effect apply to feelings and thoughts as much as they apply to a ball hit by a bat. And they shouldn’t then insist that their will is free and that I am a bum who thinks he understands materialism but doesn’t.
” Not that someone would normally say “I did it of my own free will”. ”
Where have you been? It’s common parlance every day, but especially in the third person: “He did it of his own free will.” “You’ve got free will.” Among party members too, including H.O. “Every socialist knows he has free will.” It’s on TV, in law courts, in the street, everywhere you go. But if you say “volition” you are asked “What does that mean?”
It seems to me you do only hear selectively. You don’t hear common everyday speech, like, “It’s his own free will.”
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