Is Atheism a threat to Freedom

Post Reply New Topic

what god do klansmen believe in? last i checked these "glass house" jokes are not getting old.

Atheism only believes in no gods.


again:


Marxism is a political philosophy, as well as an economic and sociological worldview, which is based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis and critique of capitalism, a theory of social change, and a view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The three primary aspects of Marxism are:

1. The dialectical and materialist concept of history — Humankind's history fundamentally is a struggle between social classes. The productive capacity of society is the foundation of society, and as this capacity increases over time the social relations of production, class relations, evolve through this struggle of the classes and pass through definite stages (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism). The legal, political, ideological and other aspects (e.g. art) of society are derived from these production relations as is the consciousness of the individuals of which the society is composed.
2. The critique of capitalism — Marx argues that in capitalist society, an economic minority (the bourgeoisie) dominate and exploit an economic majority (the proletariat). Marx argues that capitalism is exploitative, specifically the way in which unpaid labour (surplus value) is extracted from the working class (the labour theory of value), extending and critiquing the work of earlier political economists on value. Such commodification of human labour according to Marx, creates an arrangement of transitory serfdom. He argued that while the production process is socialized, ownership remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This forms the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society. Without the elimination of the fetter of the private ownership of the means of production, human society is unable to achieve further development.
3. Advocacy of proletarian revolution — In order to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Upon this, material foundation classes would be abolished and the material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would dissolve.

That is irrelevant. The god question is not the core of marxist philosophy. It's a minor detail. Marxism isn't derived from atheism. Marxism didn't grow naturally out of atheism. It's a political philosophy that traditionally incorporates atheism. That's a huge difference. To say that Marxism is a form of atheism is like saying that anchovy pizza is a type of fish.

@Vince: thank you

Again stop pulling a Bill Clinton.

No, I mean from the side of Christianity and Christian theism, not politics. Marxism doesn't have any real political influence, and if anybody thinks otherwise, they're a nutjob.

Actually, Vince's reasoning here is reasonably solid. Most Marxisms really put the grand emphasis on Marxist social philosophy, but the metaphysics isn't considered as relevant.

I'm not splitting hairs here. This isn't a matter of the definition of "is", it's a matter of the meaning of subset, and that's a huge deal. What you're doing is the equivalent of calling musical theater a type of dance. It simply isn't. You are making a huge factual error and pretending that it's not.

And how is it you are the authority on what is or isn't relevant?

I'm not, but you are making a huge fool of yourself by not seeing the obvious relevance of understanding what a subset is when you're trying to categorize things.
Marxism is as much a type of atheism as my house is a type of stove.

Apparently Inuyasha has never seen a Venn diagram.

I actually have seen a Venn Diagram. That said, just because Vince, LKL, and Awesomelyglorious says something isn't related doesn't mean it isn't related. Again, you three don't have that kind of authority and additionally have a substancial incentive involved in making the statement you are making.

So then you stop trying to pull it with your vague definitions of "faith" and "religion".

You're the biggest puller of Bill Clinton's on this board. So much do you pull a Bill Clinton, I'm tempted to just start calling you Monica.

The argument is not that it 'isn't related.' The pizza analogy really is a rather good one.

I am probably a much higher authority on Marxism than you are. Marxism in general refers to the social philosophy of Karl Marx, with people even being able to take on the label of "Marxist" based upon agreement with that social philosophy more than other issues.

Look. Let me break this down for you.

There is a question, which goes "do you believe in gods (or a god)?".
If a person's answer is "yes", then he or she is a theist.
If the answer is "no", regardless of certainty or reason for not accepting the claim that there is a god (even if the reason is that the person has no idea what a god is), the person is an atheist.

This is the entire extent of the theist/atheist issue.
Politics, philosophy, all that other stuff is separate issues.

No philosophy is directly derived from atheism, since atheism itself isn't an assertion. It's just the state of not having accepted a certain specific claim to be true. Atheism can be arrived at for many different reasons. Some of those reasons might cause a person to also adopt various political and philosophical views, while in other cases, certain political and philosophical views might lead a person to be an atheist.

Atheism and antitheism are not the same thing. Atheism is what I described above. Antitheism is the positive assertion that theism is in some way a bad idea.

In order for Marxism to be a form of atheism, it would have to be derived directly from atheism. It is not. However, a form of antitheism is a part of Marxism. But even that isn't enough to say that Marxism is a form of antitheism. For Marxism to be a form of antitheism, its very central core principle would have to be antitheism. It is not. The central core and philosophical basis of Marxism is something more along the lines of anti-captialism. Furthermore, for Marxism to be a form of antitheism, it would have to completely fall apart if you removed its antitheistic aspects. It would not. If you take Marxism and you erase antitheism from its list of incorporated ideas, most (if not all) of its core ideas will stand largely unchanged.
Marxism is not in any way a form of atheism. Marxism is a political philosophy which incorporates (but doesn't even particularly emphasize) a form of antitheism in its ideology, in more or less the same way that a happy meal incorporates table salt. So tell me, sir, is happy meal a type of mineral?

I'm not splitting hairs here. You can go ask an expert in political philosophy, theology, linguistics or whatever you want if you feel like it.