The Religion word

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

I wasn’t appealing to authority, just referring people following this thread to the opposite point of view.But I don’t see what your problem is. Those studying sub-atomic particles observed that this part of the universe (of everything) moves in a different way from other parts and came up with a theory to explain this (quantum physics). I don’t see how the Observer Effect is a problem, it’s just another observation to be taken into account when formulating a theory (essentially describing the pattern observed). It doesn’t mean that the universe has a mind or is a mind. That’s a hypothesis of course just as is that a god created the universe in 5 or 6 days. Whether it’s worth testing any more than the Creationist view is a matter of debate, not that I can see how it could be tested. It doesn’t seem to be taken seriously by most people involved in this research and analysis.I’m not an expert in quantum or any other kind of physics, but this is an argument about what do we mean by knowledge.

 Well, its more than an argument about what do we mean by knowledge; it is also an arguement about what we mean by  rationality. I hope that it is now clear and apparent to all that the notion that  you can call one group of people who hold religious beliefs as irrational  and another group who are socialists as rational is an utter absurdity.  . It is absurd not only because it is entirely possible for a religious person to want and understand socialism  and therefore be a socialist but also because there is no such thing as a person who is not both rational and irrational We have discussed quantum physics on this thread and the religious views of physicists like Peter Russell who draws on his understanding of Physics.  Whatever you might think  of Russell’s views and whether or not they are sound, they are not irrational in the ordinary sense of the word. Russell and others like him, marshall a great deal of scientific  evidence and logic to make their case and this hardly constitutes an example of a irrational mind at work.  Maybe a deluded mind  – the jury is still out on that one – but not an irrational mind I recently came across a book by someone called Ray Percival  –  The Myth of the Closed Mind: Understanding Why and How People Are Rational.  I have not read it  but it seems that Percival ‘s argument is that people always are inevitably rational.  I think this going too far but we seem to have the opposite problem  with the SPGB which holds that religious people are irrational and justifies the exclusion of religious  people from the organization on the grounds that a socialist organisation requires a rational approach to changing society and admitting religious and therefore irrational people will undermine the socialist project.   This is false not just because socialists too are fully capable or being irrational at times  but also because  religious ideaa, whatever else they may be,  are often highly rational and sophisticated ideas. as we have seen   The SPGB needs to follow up on this insight  and come to the rational conclusion that you don’t actually need the bar on religious applicants to ensure the socialist nature of the organisation and that without such a bar you have everything you could possibly need to ensure that only socialists  can join the SPGB  – whether they be religious or not

[ALB]

robbo203 wrote:

Well, its more than an argument about what do we mean by knowledge; it is also an arguement about what we mean by  rationality. I hope that it is now clear and apparent to all that the notion that  you can call one group of people who hold religious beliefs as irrational  and another group who are socialists as rational is an utter absurdity.  . It is absurd not only because it is entirely possible for a religious person to want and understand socialism  and therefore be a socialist but also because there is no such thing as a person who is not both rational and irrational

This is a bit of a caricature of our position. I don’t think any member says that all religious people are irrational or that all socialists are entirely rational. What we are talking about is taking a rational attitude, i.e one based on tested and verified evidence, to the evolution of the Earth, of life, of humans and of society but, more importantly, about social change, ie accepting that humans make history and that gods don’t intervene in this.I don’t think even you would be in favour of admitting every religious person who agreed with socialism (and getting it through majority democratic political action) whatever their religious views, would you? Take this lot for instance:http://www.paradism.org/Some good stuff there about a world without money.Then there’s this, which is not bad either, which reveals who they are:http://www.raelpress.org/news.php?item.274.1And who are the Raelians? What do they stand for? According to the wikipedia entry on them:

Quote:

Raëlism, or the Raëlian Church, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 byClaude Vorilhon, now known as Raël. The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human and when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans they made, they previously misinformed (on purpose) early humanity that they were angels, cherubs or gods. Raëlians believe messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others who informed humans of each era. The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism )

Over to you, Robbo. Rational or irrational? Acceptable or not?

[Young Master Smeet]

Gnome wrote:

This is no longer necessarily the case with the discovery in recent years of solar systems with ‘earth-like’ planets.

Indeed, but there is evidence to suggest that the leap from single celled life to multi-cellular is by no means direct or automatic: so the probability is that the vast majority of these life bearing planets have nothing more than amoeba on them.  Even if we suppose that a few others have made the leap to complex life, it remains unlikely that they have made the further step to intelligent life.  Even if they did achieve something like intelligence, there’s no reason at all to suggest that it would be something that we could recognise or comprehend, as they would be the specific products of their own evolutionary chain.Anyway, my point in sharing the quote was that the narcisissism involved is similar to the idea of God (especially the wacky idea that a transcendant entity would have a relationship to our minds that we have to an ant, never mind any sense of reciprocity or obligation).Interestingly, Grant Allen was a proponent of the Ghost Theory of God (which early party members gave some credence to, I believe).  Anyway, his interestingly looking book is available online.The evolution of the idea of God: http://archive.org/stream/evolutionofideao00alle#page/n5/mode/2upI believe it is superceded by modern anthropology, but still, it has that Victorian brio about it.  Of course, part of the point of materialism is that ideas do have an origin and an evolutionary basis.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Well, its more than an argument about what do we mean by knowledge; it is also an argument about what we mean by  rationality. I hope that it is now clear and apparent to all that the notion that  you can call one group of people who hold religious beliefs as irrational  and another group who are socialists as rational is an utter absurdity.  . It is absurd not only because it is entirely possible for a religious person to want and understand socialism  and therefore be a socialist but also because there is no such thing as a person who is not both rational and irrational

This is a bit of a caricature of our position. I don’t think any member says that all religious people are irrational or that all socialists are entirely rational. What we are talking about is taking a rational attitude, i.e. one based on tested and verified evidence, to the evolution of the Earth, of life, of humans and of society but, more importantly, about social change, ie accepting that humans make history and that gods don’t intervene in this.I don’t think even you would be in favour of admitting every religious person who agreed with socialism (and getting it through majority democratic political action) whatever their religious views, would you? Take this lot for instance:http://www.paradism.org/Some good stuff there about a world without money.Then there’s this, which is not bad either, which reveals who they are:http://www.raelpress.org/news.php?item.274.1And who are the Raelians? What do they stand for? According to the wikipedia entry on them:

Quote:

Raëlism, or the Raëlian Church, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 byClaude Vorilhon, now known as Raël. The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human and when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans they made, they previously misinformed (on purpose) early humanity that they were angels, cherubs or gods. Raëlians believe messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others who informed humans of each era. The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism )

Over to you, Robbo. Rational or irrational? Acceptable or not?

  I think it is certainly implied in the Party’s position that individual’s with religious beliefs cannot be admitted, no matter how sympathetic to the socialist cause, because they cannot be trusted to stick to the party case.  The suggestion is made that if such individuals were to be admitted they might in time become a majority and thus by a process of boring from within – entryism  – subvert the Party and what it stands for. This is an essentialist view of religious minded individuals .  You are not just talking about the need for “taking up a rational attitide”  You are saying that religious people cannot take up such a rational attitude because they are religious, this despite the fact that Ive shown that religious ideas can be highly rational in that sense.  Saying  something is rational is NOT the same thing  as saying it is sound   and you constantly tend to confuse these two things. Do you know what “rationality” is? In any case, you forget that membership of the SPGB depends on many things not just (currently) on a rejection of religion.  The membership application form,  if I remember correctly,  asks applicants for their views on such things as what is capitalism, what is socialism, class struggle ,  reformism , leadership  and the need to democratically capture state power to abolish capitalism amongst other things So my answer to your question is that someone who is a Raelian cultist  is: 1) probably very unlikely to want to even apply for membership of the SPGB so you are worrying about nothing . The process of “self selection” would take care of your concernsand2) Even  if he or she did apply  his or her Raelian views on all these other much more important aspects of the Party  case would presumably soon or later reveal  themselves in the very  process of applying for membership and so would lead to rejection of the applicant. You don’t need to screen out Raelians on the basis of their religious beliefs – a sufficiently dense screen or barrier already exists to ensure that such people do not get into the Party.  One other thing that is often overlookied is that membership of a relgion does NOT imply acceptance of everything  that that religion stands for. Most , or many, catholics, for example,  reject the Church’s teachings on contraception, sex before marriage and abortion. So you have to look at the individual religious applicant on a case by case basis and not just assume what he or she thinks on the basis of his or her religion The problem with the Party – and this is where is shows its irrational side too – is that it cannot seem to see that if you explicitly incorporate opposition to any and every  form of religious beliefs into this “protective screen”,   you  effectively screen out all sorts of people who are as much socialists as you but who just happen to have certain religious beliefs that in no way interfere with their socialist convictions.  People like Northern lights, for example. This is just absurd.  There is no rational justification for doing this  and in fact it makes the SPGB itself look like a religious cult itself in competition with other religious cults: “we are the pure ones, we are the chosen people”. Bollocks to that. I want socialism and therefore I adopt a hands-on pragmatic view to getting socialism which means getting as many people as possible to join the cuase and as quickly as possible. I have no interest in dogmatically displaying my  “socialist purity” If someone’s religious ideas were ever going to interfere with their socialist convictions then this would come out “in the wash”, so to speak, and show itself in one form or another –  perhaps in the form of advocacy of some form of political leadership and the abandonment of a democratic approach to politics. Fine – if that happens,  then expel the individual on those grounds but don’t presume that the religious applicant to the Party is going to develop those ideas, automatically .  That is a prejudiced and irrational position to take but it is one that the Party unquestionably does take.  One could just as easily say that because 99% of atheists are non socialists and some of these are enthusiastically pro capitalist  – that one should therefore ban atheists from joing the party Thats nonsense but so is the party’s attitude to religious applicants

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Interestingly, Grant Allen was a proponent of the Ghost Theory of God (which early party members gave some credence to, I believe).  Anyway, his interestingly looking book is available online.The evolution of the idea of God: http://archive.org/stream/evolutionofideao00alle#page/n5/mode/2upI believe it is superceded by modern anthropology, but still, it has that Victorian brio about it.

I remember reading that book ages ago in school even before I became a socialist. If I recall correctly, he argues that what was inside the Ark of the Convenant was a phallic symbol. In other words, that god was a prick. Good point, as he would be if he existed in view of what he’d have let happen.

[ALB]

Just looked up how the WSPUS deals with this question. Their questionnaire takes a different form from ours in that they make a statement and then ask the applicant to tick “I agree” or “I disagree” and write “Why I think so”.See: http://wspus.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/App_d.pdfHere is the last of the 8 statements:

Quote:

Supernatural ExplanationsSocialists hold that materialist explanations of human society and the rest of nature supersede supernatural ones. A religious perspective won’t necessarily prevent anyone from striving to abolish capitalism and its evils, and the ethical elements of religious teachings may even be what first make many people aware of the injustices of a class-divided society. But they don’t in themselves lead to an understanding of the causes of such injustices. (More often than not, religious institutions themselves justify and commit them.) The world socialist perspective is in any case essentially post-religious, because the case for socialism hinges on the scientific use of evidence. Socialists therefore look on supernatural explanations as obsolete.

Don’t know if this satisfies people here. This at least brings out what we are looking for (acceptance of  “materialist explanations” and of “the scientific use of evidence”) and is less confrontational to religion in that it doesn’t single it out in particular but treats it as one sub-set of “supernatural explanations”. Could this be the formulation we’re looking for?Incidentally (or perhaps not) the previous statement reads:

Quote:

7) Historical MaterialismThe socialist point of view rests solidly on the materialist conception of history, a way of looking at things that focuses on how human communities meet their actual survival needs by producing what they need to live (their economic systems, in other words). Out of this process the human brain weaves its ideas, which eventually exert their own influence on the cycle, causing it to become more and more complex as society evolves.This approach, known as historical materialism, is a scientific method for helping us understand how and why capitalism does what it does. Armed with this understanding, socialists realize that capitalism can never deliver the goods for the vast majority of people. Other approaches, lacking this focus and overlooking the basis of capitalist society, can easily miss this point, so that their advocates get bogged down in vain efforts to make capitalism work for the majority.

 

[robbo203]

Well,  the WSPUS approach certainly seems superior to, and  rather more nuanced than,   the SPGB’s.  There is the hint of  a suggestion that the holding of religious views is irrelevant to one being a socialist or not  – which is my position. A religious socialist would not necessarily disagree with the suggestion that  the (ethical elements of religious teaching) “don’t in themselves lead to an understanding of the causes of such injustices”.  People are capable of wearing different caps on their heads at different times.  A religious scientist does not let her religion get in the way of her science. Nor would a religious socialist let his religious views get in the way of his understanding and advocacy of socialism  ( and if it  did, it would “come out in the wash anyway” – as I have always argued –  and express itself as opposition to some real aspect of the case e.g.. the principle of anti-leadership  and you would have a legitimate case for expulsion on those grounds rather than the mere holding of religious ideas per se which is irrelevant The bit on historical materialism is reasonably OK but it is important to recognize that it is historical materialism and not metaphysical materialism that is being emphasized.  My only quibble would be with the expression the “human brain weaves its ideas”. This seems to treat mind as a mere epiphenomenon incapable of “downward causation” – of interacting with or influencing  the brain even though it is  ultimately dependent on the brain .I tried to explain this in the thread on materialism  On the other hand the peice  does acknowlege that ideas do have an influence – as in  they “eventually exert their own influence on the cycle”So does the WSPUS now accept religious applicants – or certain categories of religious socialists – albeit under stringent conditions?

[Anonymous]

Whereas,

robbo203 wrote:

I certainly don’t claim that the Party has declined in numbers simply because of its policy on not admitting religious people. That would be absurd.  After all as Gnome points out that policy has been in place since 1904 and there was a time – just after the war – when the party was much bigger than it is.

and…

robbo203 wrote:

The question of religion is a matter of indifference to me

it rather begs the question as to why he demonstrates such an obvious obsession with the issue.However, considering these statements and as…

robbo203 wrote:

We are all both irrational and rational whether we are religious or not

a compelling argument as to why the party should change its “irrational” policy on not admitting religious people has yet to be made. 

[robbo203]

Groan.  Obviously you have some difficulty following a logical train of thought.  It not me who has an “obsession” with religion but the Party – by flagging up religious belief as a reason for turning down applications for membership from solid socialists –  whereas from my point of view the question of religious  beliefs is or should be utterly  irrelevant.  Thats what I mean by it being a matter of indifference to me,It is an irrational policy to turn away socialists when the point of  having a political  party is surely to grow – not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of that growth.  That is a compelling enough  argument for jettisoning this daft  and irrelevant anti-religion policy and if you cant see that well then,  yes,  you are irrational!In fact the policy itself which is allegedly designed to ensure (according to ALB) that only people with a  …ahem  ..rational view of society and history can join it,  is itself irrational and self defeating from that point of view since paradoxically being in denial about the irrational aspects  in all of us whether we are in the SPGB or not , and claiming to be completely rational is itself an example of irrationality to add to the other examples of irrationality one could list about the SPGB

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

It is an irrational policy to turn away socialists when the point of  having a political  party is surely to grow – not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of that growth.  That is a compelling enough  argument for jettisoning this daft  and irrelevant anti-religion policy and if you cant see that well then,  yes,  you are irrational!

And you, my friend, are sooooooooooooo predictable; never fail to take the bait !Incidentally, how’s the party in Spain going?  Must be about to surpass the SPGB soon I would thought with so many trabajadores religiosos to swell its ranks. 

[northern light]

gnome wrote:

And you, my friend, are sooooooooooooo predictable; never fail to take the bait !Incidentally, how’s the party in Spain going?  Must be about to surpass the SPGB soon I would thought with so many trabajadores religiosos to swell its ranks. 

This is intriguing, and confusing ?I take it ex-member robbo203 is living in Spain, and has joined a socialist party over there, is that correct?Nothing wrong with that, is there?  The Forum is open to all. The bit I am naive about  is, “the bait.”  Perhaps an explanation is in order, ………… por favor.

[Anonymous]

northern light wrote:

This is intriguing, and confusing ?I take it ex-member robbo203 is living in Spain, and has joined a socialist party over there, is that correct?Nothing wrong with that, is there?  The Forum is open to all. The bit I am naive about  is, “the bait.”  Perhaps an explanation is in order, ………… por favor.

 It’s just a bit of tongue-in-cheek banter, northern light.  I’ve known Robin (robbo203) for over 30 years; nice bloke really but takes himself far too seriously    He’s been, and still is, one of the SPGB’s most ardent critics, both when he was a member and since, but at the same time one of its staunchest defenders, warding off constant attacks, particularly from those on the ‘left’. He possesses the rather irritating tendency of giving the impression that he alone is the purveyor of all perceived wisdom who has to have the very last word on a particular topic, yet despite having been in Spain for some eight years we still look forward to the emergence of a genuine socialist party.Anyway, must go now as I’m off to Canterbury with some fellow-comrades to carry out some ‘abstract propagandism’.

[northern light]

Hi gnome, thankyou for that generous illuminating reply.Hope the Canterbury trip is/was pleasant and fruitful.

[steve colborn]

 ‘abstract propagandism’Haven’t heard that term in years! Are people still calling us, “abstract propagandists?

[Anonymous]

northern light wrote:

Hi gnome, thankyou for that generous illuminating reply.

You’re more than welcome, northern light…

northern light wrote:

Hope the Canterbury trip is/was pleasant and fruitful.

A brief report appears over on this thread:-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/kent-sussex-branch-stall-%E2%80%93-canterbury#comment-2806

steve colborn wrote:

Are people still calling us, “abstract propagandists?

Yes, quite often.

[Author]

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