Thomas_More
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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.
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.
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.
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.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?
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.
How hard is it to say:
He did it of his own accord.
Or, he did it of his own volition.
Or, he did it wilfully.
Or, he willed it so.But, he did it of his own FREE will is meaningless.
Then admit that using the adjective “free” is meaningless and undisciplined in a materialist thinker. That’s all.
Otherwise you are countenancing laziness in terminology and hence laziness of thought in those one hopes to educate in materialism.
Failing which, allow membership to idealists, which absolves you of inconsistency.
I meant a religious person*, an idealist, or anyone not interested in history might be sick of wage-labour, wars, famine, global devastation, and like the sound of our message. If they agree with our object, why can’t they join us?
My gripe is with the inconsistency of those talking about the materialist conception of history, and then affirming free will, which makes nonsense of their “materialism.”
If you believe in free will, don’t pretend to materialism and insult the great materialist thinkers thereby.*Of course, not a religious fanatic, because those have no love, care or interest in the Earth or of life upon it. But most people who believe in a god and in free will are not fanatics. They are, in fact, just most people.
” is the socialist equivalent of how many angels you can get on the point of a pin.”
Only because you lot won’t drop the adjective “free.”
If one doesn’t believe in free will, why go along with the popular but meaningless use of the term? Used thus, what does it mean? It means nothing. It’s loose language, and that leads to loose thinking.
Funny why we all
insist on the correct interpretation of the word socialism then! Since loose terminology is fine.You would need to demonstrate that you are a socialist for no reason. That you did not become one, but just are one.
You would need to demonstrate that you only have feelings and thoughts you want to have. That you will to will.
Funny that you’d be a socialist then!
It would invalidate the materialist conception of history, if the mind were independent of motive.
“Free will is a flat denial of social science.”
(Western Socialist).Necessarians have even been more stringent in backing deterrent, preventative, measures against malefactors than free willies have been, which would horrify Godwin.
Whilst being a Necessarian, and knowing that guilt and punishment are unphilosophical, Hobbes supported the ultimate punishment – the death penalty – not as punishment, but as deterrence. If a deterrence, as he believed, it fitted in with his necessarian outlook.
Today, of course, we know it is not a deterrence; that in fact more murders result following executions. So the necessarian argument cannot be used to justify the death penalty.Knowing that choice is motivated, not free, is what has us doing political work to influence minds: trying our best to nudge the chain of causation, of which we are all part, in the direction of socialism.
Fortunately, our work is not alone. Many strands unconsciously support our efforts, as does capitalism’s inability to solve the problems it creates.
