On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:36:44PM -0800, Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote: > On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Chris Olson - SunPS wrote: > > Philip Hart wrote: > > > On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Johne Cook wrote: > > > > (It's not his politics that worry me, it's his religion, > > > Same thing. > > Excuse me? Are you stating that politics and religion > > are the same thing, or that they are in OSC's case? > Well, from my perspective as a physicist, an atheist, and a reductionist > (all one thing in my opinion), all belief is the same stuff - hooey. So that is your belief, then? > But that's not a productive argument. Rather I should say that it seems > to me people have a set of mostly emotional viewpoints on what's right, > and that they effectively practice their religion and politics > accordingly. This is true, I think, except that many people do not do what they think is right, and of course religion has a prominent role (if not a role to the exclusion of other factors) in forming those emotional viewpoints. Or more accurately, the religion in which a child is brought up in, with the understanding that the beliefs of the parents are a more important formative factor than the sterile edicts of religious doctrine. At least until the child becomes able to question his parents, which sadly is usually too late to save him/her/it. > E.g., it seems to me that consistent Christians should be > communists, but of course aren't. This is a dangerous game here; you're telling people how you think they should behave based on your understanding of their beliefs, when you have already admitted you neither understand nor respect their beliefs, and then judging them based on their adherence to your standard of conduct derived from your imperfect understanding of their beliefs. I don't see any support for communism in Christianity unless you are coming into the question with a preconception that communism is a moral and desirable form of government/economics and other forms are neither moral nor desirable. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp