The goal isn't to justify immorality, but to erect a social edifice that supports conservative American ideals. When objectives are based in divine authorship and extant in a society still anathema to explicit atheism, the rhetoric often carries more weight. Further, as elucidated by Nicholas Wade in The Faith Instinct, people are inherently drawn to superstition and not solely of the traditionally religious kind.
Take this example where HuffPo includes End Times prophesy or "believing the world will end in their lifetime", as one of the "craziest beliefs" shared by Americans. Now don't get me wrong - such superstitious beliefs are generally accepted by loonies. But what of the religion of modern leftism and its parallel beliefs in the END OF THE WORLD? In 1968, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlrich wrote The Population Bomb, in which he confidently states:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.For such accurate soothsaying, Ehrlich has won just about every award possible, including the MacArthur Fellow Genius grant. Additionally, I needn't rehash the histrionics concerning global warming and 1970's global cooling, amongst other beliefs like nuclear winter (feel free to add more in the comments). Basically, liberals love apocalyptic predictions just as much as those unrefined Bible thumpers.
Smog disasters in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles.
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.
It's a common aphorism that a society not sufficiently conservative will become liberal. Well perhaps I'll add a corollary:
A society lacking a traditionally religious construct will adopt pseudo-religious ideas inexorably linked to the current liberal zeitgeist.We're already seeing mainstream acceptance of Gaiaism, New Age, "spiritual but not religious", vegetarianism, and animal rights. Read any atheist website if you need convincing that repudiation of traditional religion leads to the modern leftist Church and associated doctrine like the saturated fat myth and global warming.
The choice isn't that attractive, but it might be the only one we've got.
24 comments:
Thats why when people ask me what are the two most powerful cultural groups in America. I say the religious right and the secular left. The secular left is very much a real political and cultural force as the religious right. I have made a point in discussions with my friends, that we should start referening to liberals as the secular left. That as the secular left has defined many Christian Evangelicals who vote Republican as the religious right. We should define irrelgious to unitarian liberals who vote Democrat as the secular left. Dave is basically a member of the secular left, instead of a mere liberal. They will absolutely hate us calling them the secular left, because it implies that many liberals are incapble of independent thought. Also it implies that they are an actually political and cultural force with influence, and not the underdogs anymore.
The crucial difference is that when the secularists believe in these scenarios they often have a plausible and sometimes even reasonable explanation (e.g. nuclear winter during the cold war).
Also several of the ideas you mentioned (nuclear winter, saturated fat) are/were believed by both the secular left and the religious right.
Perhaps a more useful way of understanding this is that some percentage of the population are natural worriers/doomsdayists. Because they are worried they will attempt to rationalize their fears by pointing to an external cause which is determined by their beliefs.
Their is another group of doomsdayists. These are people who are not normally worriers. They might become worried for personal reasons if some threatening guy pulled a gun on them. They can also become worried if they are warned of some impending threat. Everyone likes to imagine that they are the rational doomsdayists.
Here are a list of major concerns along with who mainly share them:
Lib = Liberals
Con = Conservatives
LT = Libertarians
HBD = Human Bio-Diversity believers
Sec = Secularists
Rel = Religious (Specifically Christian and Jewish)
Fut = Futurists, people who believe that technology will increase dramatically in the near future
The list isn't perfect, so be nice with your critiques.
1 Lib,Sec - Global Warming
2 Lib,Sec - Overpopulation
3 Lib,Sec - Genetically modified foods
4 Lib,Sec - Massive Environmental Destruction that is not global warming based (e.g. the Amazon being cut down)
5 Lib - Nazis/KKK/racists taking over society
6 Sec - Religious Right
7 Con,Rel - Decline in Religion
8 Rel - God Smiting Everyone
9 Con,Rel, some HBD - Decline of Marriage
10 Con,Rel - Lapse of moral values exemplified by the hook-up culture
11 HBD - Dysgenic Breeding
12 HBD - NAM immigration
13 Con, some Sec, some HBD - Rise of China
14 Con,Rel,HBD - Muslim immigration
15 LT - The Fed destroying the economy
16 LT, Con - The government becoming more socialist.
17 Lib,Con,Sec,Rel, Fut - Nuclear Winter (in the 1980s)
18 Fut - Gray Goo Scenario (i.e. self-replication nanotechnology destroying everything)
19 Fut - Evil AI
*Here are a list of major concerns along with those who mainly shares them
Actually the holiest tenet of Modern Left Religion is that of Boasian Equalitarianism.
Their professed faith in the high holy goal of ethnoracial equality is absolutely paramount. Their antiracism crusades, urban school reform policies (NCLB, and now RTTT), and social justice movements are all primarily based on the notion that in a proper world all ethnoracial groups would have the same levels of success in academic achievement and in socioeconomic status.
Just like conventional Christians do not really believe in all the hocus-pocus supernatural baloney that they profess to believe in (if they did they would all be eager to die and go up to Heaven ASAP, right?), the modern leftists do not really believe that Asians and Jews are really innately as dumb as non-Jewish Whites or that Blacks and Hispanics are really as smart, otherwise our Leftie friends would be happy to send their children to schools populated with large proportions of Blacks and Hispanics. But we all know that Modern Leftist parents are just as apt as Right-wing parents to decide to bail out and move to the burbs or to opt to spend big bucks on private schools in order to avoid having their children be dragged down by children of lower IQ ethnoracial groups.
My little sister is an ardent atheist and believer in most statist/leftist apocalpyse scenarios. She definitely treats it as a religion. She witnesses, seeking to gain converts. The beliefs are the higher authority from which all other beliefs, prescriptions, proscriptions, etc. must flow.
The secular left uses the same lack of reasoning as the religious right:
God said it - I believe it - that settles it
Gore said it - I believe it - that settles it
(The argument is over.)
The left-wing eco-nuts are too wonderful. Here's something more on Paul Ehrlich:
In 1980 an American economist, Julian Simon resolved to show Ehrlich up. He set up a bet wherein he would sell Ehrlich $1,000 dollars worth of any five commodities that Ehrlich chose. Ehrlich would hold the commodities for ten years. If the prices rose -- meaning scarcity -- Simon would buy the commodities back from Ehrlich at the higher price. If the prices fell, Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference. Professor Ehrlich jumped at the bet, noting that he wanted to "accept the offer before other greedy people jumped in."
In October 1990, Ehrlich paid Simon a check for $570.07. As Simon had predicted, free markets provided lower prices and more options. Simon would have won even if prices weren't adjusted for inflation.
Simon offered to raise the wager to $20,000 and use any resources at any time that Ehrlich preferred. Ehrlich refused, and later claimed that he was "goaded into making a bet with Simon on a matter of marginal environmental importance."
Ehrlich had a vasectomy shortly after receiving tenure at Stanford -- showing once again that tenure does limit production.
.....
Or consider these quotes from John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal:
I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.
Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.
....
Or these quotes, from Newsweek, back in the 1970's:
This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.
There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
....
Right-wing nut jobs who make outrageous statements get prominent coverage in the liberal MSM. Isn't it strange that equally goofy leftists such as Ehrlich never get the same mention?
Off topic but hilarious.
Many often speak of the worthless degrees some women get. This article shows what they are worth.
You can't make this stuff up.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/one-in-four-lap-dancers-has-a-degree-study-finds-2063252.html
One in four lap dancers has a degree,
study finds 'Women motivated by career and economic choices, not coercion,' says report
By Sarah Cassidy, Social Affairs Correspondent
Friday, 27 August 2010
"The first academic research project into lap dancing has found that, rather than being uneducated young women who have been coerced into the industry, one in four dancers has a degree and has been attracted by the money.
"Dancers took home an average of £232 a shift after paying commission and fees to the club, with most working between two and four shifts a week – giving them annual incomes of between £24,000 and £48,000 a year."
"The researchers found no evidence of trafficking in the industry, and concluded that career and economic choices were motivations for dancing rather than drug use or coercion."
Leftism is an atheist christian heresy. it is almost identical the christianity in its 1st premises--collectivism ("society""the church) altruism(taxes public service, tithing/charity) and mysticism(rousseauian romanticism/idealism/constructivism, god created everything and exists)
the situation now is identical to the Rome detailed by gore vidal in Julian. leftism=christianity, conspiracy theories=gnosticism, homosexual celebrity worship=magna mater/cybele/adonis cults, gaianism=animism and mormonism as a mystery cult
christianity took over the ruling class and bureacracy of rome way before it filtered down into the masses. they turned all roman observance to christian, retaing the form (pontifex maximus, the vestments, holidays like saturnalia, lupercalia etc) while changing the content
the transition among the elites is almost complete and the tea party people are the sad last remnant of the patrician stock's mos maiorum from before the 60s, maybe even the 30s
@OneSTDV
"A society lacking a traditionally religious construct will adopt pseudo-religious ideas inexorably linked to the current liberal zeitgeist."
In other words, a human being obeying his natural instincts will be drawn to the left.
The only way to get them to subscribe to conservatism is to hold them in the thrall of a supernatural force that the elite will know is a sham.
Thus, you want a super-powerful elite in control of a deluded masses. But don't worry, it'll be OK, because it's for the good of conservatism, the one true creed.
You'd have loved my great-grandfather -- he was a Stalinist.
@Underachiever
"The crucial difference is that when the secularists believe in these scenarios they often have a plausible and sometimes even reasonable explanation"
Exactly. Thank you, Underachiever.
Comparing the belief that anthropomorphic global warming could have a catastrophic impact on the environment, which is endorsed by the preponderance of relevant experts....
...to the belief that the world will end because God has decreed it?
One is entirely a matter of faith. The other is overwhelmingly a matter of reason. I can't imagine anyone intelligent likening the two except to be a jackass.
@N.U.O.S.U
"Dave is basically a member of the secular left[...]"
OK.
"They will absolutely hate us calling them the secular left, because it implies that many liberals are incapble of independent thought."
I don't hate that term, it's fairly accurate. But do you actually believe that I'm not capable of independent thought?
I'm sure no one cares, but six years ago, I was a full-time reader of the National Review. I read a few other right-wing publications as well. What turned me off was when there was that Intelligent Design debate. NRO published a lot of articles supporting I.D, all of them were full of falsehoods, and were at heart attacks on the human mind.
It really opened my eyes to the tendencies that here OneSTDV proudly admits to. Lie, lie, lie, as long as it's for our side.
I'm not interested in that shit.
I'd make my peace with Leftists, Gaians, whatever.
AS SOON AS THEY STOP FLOODING WHITE SOCIETIES WITH NON-WHITES!!!!!!!
We're already seeing mainstream acceptance of Gaiaism, New Age, "spiritual but not religious", vegetarianism, and animal rights.
You group together a lot of things that don't really belong together. Vegetarianism and animal rights can be, and often are, justified on basic scientific and moral grounds. Gaiaism is probably a religion, but New Age nonsense has been around forever as even religious believers have all kinds of supernatural believes that contradict their own faiths.
And will anyone, considering the bloody history of religion and what it's done, consider "Gaiaism" or "New Age Nonsense" really that dangerous?
As for your military example, read the Federalist Papers 8 and 24 by Alexander Hamilton. There was nothing the Founding Fathers feared more than standing armies.
Here he credits Britain's geography with allowing it to have a weak liberty and thus preserve liberty.
The kingdom of Great Britain falls within the first description. An insular situation, and a powerful marine, guarding it in a great measure against the possibility of foreign invasion, supersede the necessity of a numerous army within the kingdom... No motive of national policy has demanded, nor would public opinion have tolerated, a larger number of troops upon its domestic establishment. There has been, for a long time past, little room for the operation of the other causes, which have been enumerated as the consequences of internal war. This peculiar felicity of situation has, in a great degree, contributed to preserve the liberty which that country to this day enjoys... If, on the contrary, Britain had been situated on the continent, and had been compelled, as she would have been, by that situation, to make her military establishments at home coextensive with those of the other great powers of Europe, she, like them, would in all probability be, at this day, a victim to the absolute power of a single man. ..
If we are wise enough to preserve the Union we may for ages enjoy an advantage similar to that of an insulated situation. Europe is at a great distance from us. Her colonies in our vicinity will be likely to continue too much disproportioned in strength to be able to give us any dangerous annoyance. Extensive military establishments cannot, in this position, be necessary to our security. But if we should be disunited, and the integral parts should either remain separated, or, which is most probable, should be thrown together into two or three confederacies, we should be, in a short course of time, in the predicament of the continental powers of Europe
Hear Hamilton reassures the American people that the Constitution doesn't require standing armies, but puts their existence to a vote every two years. It's obvious from the context that there was nothing the American colonists feared more than a strong military.
A stranger to our politics,...would be naturally led to one of two conclusions: either that it contained a positive injunction, that standing armies should be kept up in time of peace; or that it vested in the EXECUTIVE the whole power of levying troops, without subjecting his discretion, in any shape, to the control of the legislature.
If he came afterwards to peruse the plan itself, he would be surprised to discover,...that the whole power of raising armies was lodged in the LEGISLATURE.. and that instead of the provision he had supposed in favor of standing armies, there was to be found, in respect to this object, an important qualification even of the legislative discretion, in that clause which forbids the appropriation of money for the support of an army for any longer period than two years a precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real security against the keeping up of troops without evident necessity.
This was the American attitude, especially among conservatives, up until WWII.
@ Dave:
I'd respond to your tripe but I'm really just exasperated with individuals like you. I started this blog primarily to get away from that shite.
But I'll make exception for this comment:
In other words, a human being obeying his natural instincts will be drawn to the left.
No a human being surrounded by leftist propaganda and inculcated in leftist indoctrination factories (i.e. public schools and elite universities) will be drawn to the left. And as I've admitted before, idealism is more attractive than realism. They don't have truth - they have nice fairy tales and good PR.
The only way to get them to subscribe to conservatism is to hold them in the thrall of a supernatural force that the elite will know is a sham.
No, the only was to disabuse them of leftist noble lies is through the supernatural. And while this may seem wierd, the correlation between conservatism and religiosity says it might be true.
Thus, you want a super-powerful elite in control of a deluded masses. But don't worry, it'll be OK, because it's for the good of conservatism, the one true creed.
It's not a creed based on faith. HBD, gender realism, etc are all based on 100 years of empirical data and 100,000s of man-years of anecdotal data. We need to stop the leftist religion that denies these realities.
One is entirely a matter of faith. The other is overwhelmingly a matter of reason. I can't imagine anyone intelligent likening the two except to be a jackass.
Admittedly, I'm not that informed on global warming (though I've read a little). What I have read a substantial amount on is the saturated fat myth. Now, almost every single nutrition academic as well as institutions like the American Heart Association is 100% behind the idea that saturated fat and high protein diets are unhealthy. This is a 100% fabricated lie with absolutely no actual evidence behind it. In fact, essentially all the data shows the exact opposite.
The belief in the healthiness of low-fat diets is entirely based upon faith. If faith is defined as the antithesis of reality, in belief in things unseen, then the saturated fat myth (a leftist concoction to undermine masculinity and glorify noble non-white savages) is faith just like believing in Revelation.
"The belief in the healthiness of low-fat diets is entirely based upon faith."
Assuming you are correct that low-fat is bad, then I agree and shame on scientists.
However, the average person should take what scientists say on faith because they are not smart enough to question the scientists appropriately.
I have to say that this whole concept of left 'religion' is somewhat irrational.
Even recent 'real' religions such as Mormonism and Scientology have adhered to core tenets for a greater duration than most any left wing ephemera with the broad exception of Communism/Socialism/Marxism. Most of the examples cited are more akin to fads - and many are given up by the left when it becomes empirically clear that they are not true. This makes these examples fundamentally different from religion insofar as religion completely disregards contrary evidence.
I agree that equalitarianism might count as a modern left religion - however to attribute it to Franz Boas might be ignoring the fact that human malleability is also integral to a Communist/Socialist/Marxist ideology which I believe is at the bore of most leftist 'religion-esque' phenomenon.
OneSTDV, if you follow evolutionary psychology, you have to accept that the reality is a product of our mind, that indeed is hardwired for accepting what is real and what´s not. Nobody has ever perceived the reality without a mind. The reality exist, no doubt. There are men outside? Yes, but only because we all have also minds ready to accept men as realities. For a horse there are no men, at least no men as we know they are.
Do the United States of America exist? Yes, but only because we have a common mind structure, common culture and common experience. But America can not be touched. It is, entirely, a shared concept on our mind. The notion of God is just a little step away. Either the world includes an Creator or not, God express a deep mistery that can not be expelled from our minds; Because we can not reason indefinitely in a chain of causalities, we would be completely paralized without beliefs. The better beliefs for survival reasons are shared beliefs, because we are social. And better again, old beliefs and norms that resist the tests of History. Reason is a good filter, but better is time. Reason is very limited. It works with models and simplifications. Real contrast of ideas with time in the history is the best selection nechanism.
If we don't choose well our beliefs our mind will still need beliefs for action, so we will absorb beliefs in the raw wild way using our social, rational and mytical filters. The raw way of achieving social conformity, rational security and history is with state planning, ideologies and invented historical tales from demagogues.
A real seeker for truth would study the structure of the mind, not the pure reflexes and basic instincts, but the higher human faculties. That for now only can be achieved trough introspection. And such introspection has been done already by the great philosophers of antiquity. Don´t expect Evolutionary psychology to have a detailed theory of mind, because this science is in its infancy. Spirituality is real, because it is in the structure of our mind. Among the great philosophers I read Voegelin because it has a superb combination of introspection, history and religious knowledge.
Sorry for this weird answer. I como form the blog "wiew from the right", that comment on this post. My response is just a answer to your comment in that blog.
Thanks.
The catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming fanatics go way beyond reasoning. Scientific American has an excellent article in next month's issue explaining the phenomenon:
Eternal Fascinations with the End:
Why We're Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise
Our pattern-seeking brains and desire to be special help explain our fears of the apocalypse
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eternal-fascinations
I started this blog primarily to get away from that shite.
You're tired of liberals so you start a blog where you insult them every day and talk about how much they suck and openly plot to eradicate their influence. And, below your daily attacks on liberals, you include an open discussion forum.
Hmm.
They don't have truth - they have nice fairy tales and good PR.
This doesn't contradict my interpretation of your argument. According to you, human instinct towards idealism draws us to the left. Only by the invention of more elaborate lies can the leftward drift be stopped. According to you.
"Admittedly, I'm not that informed on global warming (though I've read a little)."
Wait. You ran your mouth about a topic you're not informed about? You?!
"The belief in the healthiness of low-fat diets is entirely based upon faith."
Possibly. But your posts about diet tend to be your most factually-based. You don't invent up a vampire who will drink your blood if you eat too many carbs.
That's because the facts are there. You prefer the facts to be there.
You lie when the facts aren't there, but you wish that they were. That's why people lie, that's when myths are created: when our dreams aren't backed up by facts. And if you lessen the moral burden to tell the truth, then that is when lies will be told.
Environmentalism is a religion. It has its weekly rituals (putting out the blue box); it has its dogmas that must not be questioned (catastrophic, man-made global warming) and its corresponding heretics (Bjorn Lomborg, and everyone else who has a hint of scepticism regarding the dogma of catastrophic, man-made global warming); it has its prophets (Al Gore, David Suzuki, etc.); it has its eschatologies (global warming will melt the ice caps and flood and drown us all, OR there’ll be a new ice age (back in the ‘70s, that was the prediction), OR the mushrooming global population will destroy us, etc., etc. – “unless we take drastic action”, though it turns out never to be enough)); it has its special days and observances (Earth Hour, Earth Day); it has its sacred documents (the Kyoto Accord; Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”); it has its faith-inspired politically active organizations (Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, etc.); it has a system of sacrifice and atonement (offsetting one’s “carbon footprint” through various acts – tree-planting, donating to conservationist and environmentalist causes, blah blah blah); it implicitly has a creation account (evolution by natural selection, or Darwinism, which it of course shares with philosophical materialism – this makes man not special in any way, and not to be specially favoured, so it does constitute an important aspect of the philosophical basis of environmentalism); it has its daily observances (sorting and putting things in recycling bins, and composters); it has its deity to be respected and honoured (Gaia / Mother Earth / Mother Nature), it even has outright worship for those so inclined (various Wiccan and New Age practices); and it has, in the minds of some of its proponents, special dietary restrictions (the vegetarians and vegans who invoke concern for the environment, as well as animal suffering / death, as their reasons for eschewing meat consumption), and various other self-denial actions (riding a bicycle or walking rather than driving a car / truck / SUV); like many religions and sects, it has a certain colour associated with it symbolically (green); and certain symbols (globe motifs; the three recycling arrows Mobius loop triangle).
Shades of Jesus on a tortilla chip: environmentalists see nature crying in a block of ice...
A society lacking a traditionally religious construct will adopt pseudo-religious ideas inexorably linked to the current liberal zeitgeist.
If "Right" is only defined as traditionally religious, then that's a self-affirming sentence.
I think the habit of falling into religious thinking is due to humanities abhorence for mental labour. Most people would rather do hard physical labour than really think hard for extended periods. So, people start to follow whatever idea "feels right" and then they can stop thinking and follow the ordained priest of your new religion to find out what to "do". If it feels right to be a vegan, then you'll read a vegan cookbook and stop eating meat rather than deal with the guilt of ending the lives of animals for your sustenance. Rather than reconcile the fact that you love your pet guinea pig and still want to eat bacon. Likewise, if it "feels right" to you that some sky-god will smite your enemies and those doctors who perform abortions will be punished in hell for eternity, you'll keep going to church and putting money in the plate.
However, the average person should take what scientists say on faith because they are not smart enough to question the scientists appropriately
Why should they? And which scientists [nutritionists] are the ones should they take on faith?
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