WIP

I didn't want to start this topic yesterday, because the gunman's identity was still unknown, but it was already suspected to be a hate crime. The "parking dispute" excuse, seems to be coming from the killer's wife.....as if it's okay to kill three people if they take your parking spot or something! That could possibly be even more informative about how much they value some lives over others! On the general topic of atheism/antitheism, I've tried in private discussions I've been involved in and especially on the few forums I have participated in (I don't do social media), to get the point across to young...almost entirely male new atheists, that the old tropes about: atheism describing a lack of belief/ not a belief system, nobody can commit a genocide or murder on behalf of atheism, to be vapid and shallow ideological beliefs. I could plainly see that...since I had become an atheist long before the rise of the internet, that the cyberworld was turning atheism into a movement with an ideology! You could see it starting to come together in the early 2000's with the rise of new atheist celebrities, and in the last 10 years, the atheist movement has clearly fractured into competing ideologies...often over political differences, which usually range from mainstream liberal to radical libertarian. The great untold story that most non-atheists who have never went to a local atheist group meetup or spent a great deal of time on atheist forums online, is the problem that both cyber and real world atheists who want to have an atheist - non-theistic identity are almost all men, and almost all white and middle class! There seems to be a certain comfort zone needed to be and remain an atheist in mostly religious societies. If someone is living on the economic margins or is living in some of the extreme conflict zones that keep growing in size today in the third world, it's pretty rare to find anyone who will self-describe as an atheist! When it comes to women...there could be a number of reasons why atheist movements don't appeal to many women...it tends to be dry and bereft of emotion and social concerns, and...don't quote me on this, but if you have come across Dual Process Theory as an explanation for how our decision-making systems work, we are informed by some psychological researchers that female test subjects will skew towards intuitive understandings and decisions more so than men. Going with intuitions is going to mean often incorporating that sense of 'presence' that many of us may sometimes feel at different times in our lives. If this experience is more common among women than men, you're not going to have a majority of women becoming atheists! The best the radical antitheists trying to stamp out religion could hope for, is a transition away from organized religion to spiritual-based beliefs. And many of the women who do go to atheist meetups or even on some of the online sites, or attend atheist or skeptic conventions in particular, have come away with horror stories about male sexual predators and the lack of interest and concern from the organizers...who in the case of at least one of the major skeptic organizations is a sexual predator and a rapist himself. But, I won't mention the name, because aside from claims and testimonials, he hasn't faced any criminal charges....yet! Could be another Bill Cosby story but what we do know for certain is that a lot of women have a lot of bad things to say about him and his skeptic organization! Online, I've noticed many of the worst misogynists are often atheists. The Christian or fundamentalist misogynist may often be condescending or demeaning to women, but I seem to come across a lot of young male atheists who are outright hostile and a possible danger to women in the real world. I've mentioned a time or two, because of my tendency to stray towards pessimism even when it leads to uncomfortable conclusions, that I started to notice that new atheism is invariably attached at the hip to the enlightenment interpretation of progress and making a better world through the application of new technologies. We can see a lot of problems with the technologies we have now, and I am endlessly frustrated or worse by all of the pompous high-minded atheists claiming to be basing their beliefs on reason and the scientific process..all nevertheless have a faith in a better world provided by human invention and innovation, and they sure as hell don't have a damned bit of evidence to support this 'faith-based' belief! All of these facets of modern atheism mean to me that for many, atheism IS becoming a belief system, and worse- a faith based belief system on a core set of principles that cannot be proven with evidence or logic.

Out here in the real world (no equations necessary), every time a Muslim does anything bad, we get another round of Islamic extremism, and all 1.5 billion Muslims are expected to apologize and make another declaration that they will root out their extreme thinkers to turn them over to police authorities!* Reuters news service and the major newspapers that show up on a google search inform us that this terrorist's motives are "disputed." But, thanks for the window into upside down world! *Islamic and all anti-western terrorism is safely decontextualized by mainstream media, so that the average news consumer can't make a connection between U.S., Euro and other foreign policy and the rise of terrorist groups.

I think there is a lot more to the story than Brian Williams "misremembering!" His original version of the story 10 years ago was a fabrication, according to testimony of some soldiers who claim his chopper came in an hour later and what he learned about the incident was from interviewing them. Then he places himself right on the chopper that got shot down, and a whole lot of people...other military staff and NBC staffers had to be in collusion with this fabrication of the facts. It wouldn't be the first and last time they fabricated a lie to tell a war story. Recall Pat Tillman, being a hero who sacrificed his life to save his fellow soldiers.....until we learned that he was actually killed by friendly fire. Or Jessica Lynch who deflated the hero or heroine story that was being framed around her after she was wounded and taken to an Iraqi hospital before the war ended. She decided the truth was more important than being a phony hero, and a bunch of generals and media wags had egg on their face for deliberately fabricating their war story. Since teleprompter reader - Brian Williams is one of the most gung-ho pro war propagandists in news media, I'm inclined to believe that it fits the pattern over recent years and he just wanted to insert himself into the story a little more than he deserved. And a whole lot of people were willing to go along with it, until some soldiers let some air out of the tire!

It's not like it's some great existential mystery that has no answer! If you really want to know, you can find paleo research by archaologists which correlate closely with the ways most "modern" hunter-gatherers in isolated corners of the world had been living up until recent history. But, why are you insisting that hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon for example, should be greatly different than our distant ancestors in Africa and the Old World? The evidence should indicate that before 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers did not usually face the pressures that modern hunter-gatherers have faced from encroachment and conflicts with landowners and farmers. The traits that correlate broadly across different hunter-gatherer bands around the world in more modern times, should provide a reasonable representation of what early life was for the human race prior to the rise of agriculture and overcrowding.

That was the point I was making earlier! Many, but not all of the barbarian tribes that fanned out from Central Asia...likely because of drought and famine, were largely herding, patriarchal tribal societies that placed high value on fighting and warfare...especially fighting from horseback. Some, like the Germantic tribes that migrated into northern Europe and eventually attacked the Roman Empire, were rigorously egalitarian, in spite of their warrior culture that included a religion that prized valour in battle above all other virtues. But, they were likely the exception to the rule. The matrilocal (not matriarchal) city-states that were able to resist the invasions, would obviously be forced to become more warlike themselves and coopt the values of the barbarian invaders, even if they resisted and repelled them. And all this of course doesn't make the transition to warring societies a good think! I even came across a recent article last week commenting on a study published in one of the psychology evidence, which finds a great deal of anecdotal evidence that many soldiers in ancient times ended up with the modern psychologically damaging symptoms we call PTSD today. What you refer to as "matriarchy" was egalitarianism! When the original anthropologists like Louis Henry Morgan began writing books about the last of the longhouse-dwelling indians, such as some of the Iroquois Confederacy still hanging on to tradition in the 1840's, they described often and incorrectly as matriarchal, because the houses and homelife was matriarchal in these horticultural societies where the division of powers in general were that the men dealt with affairs outside the home and village life, such as hunting, warfaring, and exploring possible new territories; while the women had their own hierarchy organized around clan mothers who ran life in the longhouses, the farming and division of food supplies, and dealt with disputes or crimes committed within the community. Worth noting that when it came to larger, political affairs of the tribe, the chiefs could be removed from power by the clan mothers...so, they had a veto power over the chiefs if they really wanted to remove them from office. Needless to say, a female vote or veto, was not something that existed in any JudeoChristian patriarchal society, so during the 19th century and prior, it's not surprising that Europeans often described the Iroquois and other highly organized farming communities as matriarchies....still doesn't make it the apt description though! The hunter-gatherers are a different story than the horticultural societies and even the settled hunter-gatherers who lived along river valleys and rich coastal areas. Our early ancestors were rigorously egalitarian, without the establishment of either male nor female power structures.

And my point is that at least they have principles they may have been taught in Sunday school which may be nagging at them in later adult life if they find themselves falling into the typical selfish motivations that guide the majority of people these days. If they are regular churchgoers in their adult life...even if it's one of those damn prosperity gospel, dominionist right wing churches....it's still a place, and may be the only place during the week, where they have to consider the needs of others...at best a universalist appreciation for the global community (whom we are told by standard Christian dogma are all equal and important to the creator), but still the opportunity to think of others instead of their own selfish concerns...including their immediate family. That's a role that doesn't get filled by secular culture in a capitalist society. I had to scroll back to remind myself that this is about Bill Maher....someone who shoots off his mouth in a slightly more informed way than every f***ing idiot you hear at work making comments about big issues in the news. What you are attempting to do here is have it both ways: a. the Bible is a monstrous book that makes adherents act worse than they would otherwise b. Christians don't follow the book So, which is it? I think that the Catholic Church's new pope - Francis is an example of how the Church as an organization could succesfully ignore the Christian social gospel through two popes...who used the right wing excuse of fighting communism for allowing right wing dictators to murder and persecute Catholic priests who pushed back against right wing military dictators backed by the U.S... but the message which priests and bishops like Oscar Romero in El Salvador felt called to follow - directly confronting violent ruthless dictators, still served as an indictment of the establishment priesthood that had become comfortable with influence with the powerful, as well as accumulating earthly riches. JPII and Ratzinger, could run away and obfuscate that message, and spend decades promoting fascist and even nazi-sympathizer priests/while persecuting the revolutionary theology of the priests and many Jesuit theologians they considered too close to communism. But, the proposed elevation of Oscar Romero to sainthood (I know it means diddlysquat in reality) provides the opportunity to focus on a man who the CIA-backed military and landowners in El Salvador wanted promoted to bishop because they thought he was safely on their side...since he was trained by Opus Dei, and appeared to be a typical conservative Catholic priest. But, Romero apparently read his bible a time or two, and knew what Christian principles were/and what they were not! So, he felt compelled to bite the hand that was feeding him....and the rest is history, because they had to have him killed to get him out of the way and replaced with a suitably compliant priest. But, the takeaway for me is that the beatitudes and the bible verses and the traditions were always there to serve as an indictment against those who ignored or obfuscated the meaning of a tradition that calls on the church hierarchy to promote peace and universal wellbeing....regardless of whether or not they are following it! A naturalist/ or humanist equivalent, would be using our presumed supremely rational decision-making abilities to appreciate the failures of the political and economic systems we have lived under since the enlightenment, and do a real, honest assessment of what they have provided that is of value/and what ways of thinking - irrational faith in future technology developments and progress, capitalist economics, and see just how rational most of the people claiming to be rationalists and following the most reasoned courses of action, actually are! I I just presumed you were influenced or quoting Pinker's latest mainstream book - Our Better Angels, because he has received the widest audience of those who follow this line of thinking. My recent discovery that he has some of the wealthiest men in the world (Bill Gates, Steve Zuckerberg) are no doubt, a big part of the reason why his views are getting so much exposure and being parroted across all media...and not just at TED talks. But, the core debate: whether we are vile creatures perfecting ourselves through increased knowledge and affluence/ or creatures that were formerly well-adapted to an earlier way of life, and struggling to adjust to civilization, goes back as far as Jean Jacques Rousseau and a few other enlightenment philosophers, who were greatly interested and fascinated with some of the early explorers' reports of often encountering happy, peaceful, harmless savages, as they roamed about the New World. Until the age of enlightenment, most philosophers considered the course of history to be circular, or something close to circular, and that life in the future wouldn't change much from the past. This way of thinking encouraged a general fear of change and even the advanced civilizations of their day - Rome and Ancient Greece, were cautious about adopting new inventions until they had time to test them out and get accustomed to them. Similarly, there was a fear of digging into the earth and exploiting its mineral wealth...but that was largely because prior to the time of Descarte's doctine of dualism, the earth was not inert and lifeless, but full of spirits that might get angry and need to be appeased whenever men were digging underground for gold, gems, and essential metals - lead, copper, iron, tin etc.. So, even early on in the enlightenment, there are a few philosophers like Rousseau, asking pointed questions about how the new thinking about history, exploiting nature, and invention will pan out in the future. The prevailing opinion has gone with the opposite premise of Rousseau: rather than man being in a state of grace, he's a violent, killer ape, who attempts to conquer and exploit his environment, as well as battle with all potential competitors. This is the prevailing theme still today, even though it requires carefully misrepresenting the data from the past regarding how warlike we really were/ and how peaceful we actually are today! It's a popular myth, because it tells a story that a lot of people want to believe in....especially those wealthy, liberal capitalists like Gates, Buffet and Zuckerberg - who want to believe that their personal pathways to accumulating vast amounts of wealth have been a benefit for humanity. But, even lesser creatures than the billionaires among us, want to believe in a Star Trek-like future, and want a pleasing tome that will tell them that there's just a few bumps along the road, but we're on the right track, so don't worry, it will all turn out okay in the end. The opposite message, which I strongly believe is much, much closer to the truth, is that we are already in a calamitous situation that there already may be no escape from, because of the technologies and the political/economic structures we have built to run this world. A utopian vision that living within the limits of the natural environment and promoting equality over competition, is not a very hopeful message in these times. But, it is closer to the truth even though it points the way towards a frighteningly dystopian future for the human race. The basic problem with comparing atheists with Christians with Muslims with Hindus with Buddhists etc. etc., is that, at best, all these stats can do is show correlations on one or two issues, without providing supporting evidence for causation, because we would have to know what sort of lives atheists are living in comparison with the religious communities. My first suspicion is that most atheists tend to be comfortable middle class liberals, and that has a lot of bearing on how good/or not good a job they are doing in the social indicators. On the general topic of how happy or unhappy family life is, it is often mentioned that marriage and divorce rates show a sharp distinction between atheists and religious believers, with divorce being much, much higher among self-described evangelicals than atheists. But, the success and health of marriage is going to depend on a lot of other issues besides religious beliefs. The evangelicals may be harmed somewhat by belonging to churches that are almost phobic in their attitudes towards sex...especially regarding girls having sex! So, they are encouraged to remain abstinent and plunge into a marriage at a younger age than they would otherwise...before they have had time to pursue their full educations and really determine whether their prospective mate is really suitable over the long haul. But, there are many other extenuating factors...especially income levels. It is far more likely that someone with a higher income is going to be living in a situation facing less anxiety and stress than someone on the economic margins, struggling to get by! And, that stress and anxiety over financial issues...including the powerful incentive to work longer and longer hours, will play a large role in determining the health of their marriages.

I have also been in and out of this forum...sometimes because I've got tired of repeating myself, and come back when I feel like I have something new to say; and sometimes I've just been too busy to keep track of discussions and find myself too far behind to catch up. Be that as it may, I find this to be one of the few open forums where it is even possible to have a discussion with conservatives and rightwingers, because of the general tendency of the right to want to control, shout down and ridicule all opposition....those are the kinds of forums I abandon and never return to! Some of the U.S. ones began with an attempt to maintain a neutral balance, but over a period of months or years, more and more rightwingers come in/more and more liberals (there are few real leftists) leave...especially female members...and then they just end up as rightwing playpens with a few presumably middleaged, white, christian, male forum hogs running wild in the place! So, let's just say, I find this place to be much better than what I usually find out there. But, the reason why I am responding to your post this time is your last point about "this place being pretty much dead...and a place for forum junkies and tired arguments." So, why are you here?

Neither the establishment left/nor the establishment right, will give up on FPTP willingly! Because the present system almost guarantees the muddling, ineffective government that is out of touch with rising populist movements on issues like environment, economics, race relations etc.. The establishment likes things the way they are, and they want to keep it this way!

And, since they all have systems of proportional representation (why not include other examples like Israel?) all of their problems are because of proportional voting, right? I think Greece serves as one big reason why PR is so important! Because the rise of a brand new party(from the ashes of a fake socialist mainstream party that sold out the people and adopted the austerity measures handed to them by the troika) that can provide the kind of representation the majority of people were demanding, is something that cannot happen in the North American sham democracy systems! When there is a popular movement rising up and resisting being coopted by the two or at most - three mainstream parties, the movement will either run out of steam or be faced with the risky and usually fruitless task of engaging in a violent revolution to overthrow the existing government. With FPTP and the increasingly autocratic political/business regimes taking away more and more decision-making power from the democratic process through ever-expanding "trade" and banking 'partnerships,' the democratic process is more and more left with the window-dressing of deciding on social policies...while economic decisions have to be in compliance with international binding agreements! Any government elected under an FPTP system has been either bought off or caved to international pressures by the time they form a government...even if they have declared themselves opposed to an unpopular treaty proposal....in case anyone remembers Chretien and NAFTA!

Sexual dimorphism does not explain male domination, regardless of how much it is trotted out as an answer to the question of why we have built a civilization around male domination and denial of female influence. What you will find if you investigate any non-patriarchal society, like the one Tim G cites - the Mohawks, are societies where women are more collectively organized for their own safety and wellbeing than the men are. So in brief, in a Mohawk long house, which was usually organized around a grandmother, had a daughter with an abusive or lazy husband, he would get kicked out and have to live in one of a few long houses for bachelors and unmarried men, regardless of how big or tough he was. He would have an army of women beating on him, if he tried to force his way. So in this respect, when some anthropologists look for primate origins of our behaviours, they should be taking a greater look at Bonobos - who exhibit similar behaviour, than the typical exhibit of Chimpanzees as the progenitors of male aggression. Most of the "overwhelming" was a simple matter of being more violent and aggressive than most matrilocal societies. There have been historical exceptions, such as the Berbers and Tuaregs of North and Saharan Africa, where many tribes held on to their matrilineal and matrilocal values in spite of the violence they were faced with by invading Arabs and the imposition of Islamic cultural values on them. Many, if not most of them, tended to take what they considered of value from foreign cultures...including foreign religion...and adapt it to values they considered important. Certainly settled and increasingly larger villages and early cities, could lend themselves towards becoming hierarchical, patriarchal societies....but not necessarily as a rule! Because all we have to do is contrast the Harappan city states of the Indus Valley, such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, with Sumeria and ancient Egypt. Not much can be clearly known of those cities in what is today - Pakistan, except that they were well planned...including streets and water and waste removal systems. As well, the first building of Mohenjo Daro, shows all of the houses in the city were built according to an identical floor plan. So the city would have looked like a collection of matchbox mud-brick houses with few other types of buildings except for public baths. There were no temples or palaces, nothing to indicate a source of government or overt control of the city. It looked like an overgrown beehive, because of its uniformity, and the only traces of hierarchy that can be discerned by archaeologists are in personal adornment. The people wore little, if any clothing, but some statues indicate that some men and women wore more jewelry and had more elaborately styled and decorated hair than others. Other than that, they were all living in identical houses...almost certainly organized around a clan mother...similar to the traditional Mohawk family grouping, and radically different than the way of life in Mesopotamia. So, what we end up with, are lots of factors that have to be put together to get us where we are today....but did not necessarily have to happen this way!

Interesting article on a subject that badly needs to be discussed today. Because the last time American and western culture in general, took a look in the mirror at itself was at least 40 years ago, when many social scientists and observers started noticing that the rapid increases in wealth, technology applications, production and energy use, were not showing any improvements in polling data on happiness and the general sense of wellbeing. As we got richer, most people were feeling more anxious and unsatisfied with life, and trying to understand why! As well, it was certainly realized....even before there was a clear understanding of climate change that the world of the early 70's - with half the population it has today, was destroying ecosystems, causing extinctions, and using up resources at unsustainable rates. The feminist writers and academics of the 60's and 70's, certainly noticed that...for the last 5000 years, what we call civilization had been constructed on a foundation of male values - competition, aggression, exploitation and much later - individualism, but to the exclusion of female values of cooperation, collectivism and peacemaking or appeasement....as a side issue, it's interesting to note that most of the antonyms of aggression are disparaging terms - complaisant, impotent, timid, weak etc....tells you something about what modern 'civilized' culture really values! Certainly isn't those Christian virtues that get an occasional mention on Sunday! Since you cite a Wikipedia entry for further reference, I'll post the one on Patriarchy if anyone cares to explore further. In general, there is no clear example of family and social organization we term patriarchy before 5000 years ago. The first example cited is disputed by some...but that's hairsplitting, since it's clear that patriarchies arose and spread forth conquering and changing the core values of neighbouring tribes from at least 4000 years ago. The Wiki article also cites "James DeMeo" as a source...which it shouldn't, since his historical theory on the rise of patriarchy, he called "Saharasia" is viewed today as a gross over-simplification of a much more complicated historical process. The reason why there was clearly NO patriarchal early hunter-gatherer societies (I'm talking to you - Boges) is because modern anthropologists are in general agreement that our basic fundamental understanding of paternity - that each child has one and only one father, was a historically recent development! This fact also deep-sixes some pseudosciences like evolutionary psychology, which tries to find evolutionary biological explanations for modern cultural behaviours. Anyway, studies of the few, last remaining hunter-gatherer family groups that were largely uncontaminated by western explorers, evangelists and exploiters - in the Amazon Valley until relatively recently, showed that they mostly had what is called a "partible" theory of paternity...meaning that it was believed that every man who had sex with a woman prior to giving birth, was a father of the child. The actual father of the child was of little concern in societies that were rigorously collective - sharing food, work, ritual life, and child-rearing duties. In the typical pre-modern Amazon tribe, the mother who gave birth to the child was not saddled with near 100% of the childcare responsibilities....as a typical mother in a nuclear family is today! That point needs to be made clear and underlined - that the family structure of immediate return hunter-gatherers, later more advanced hunter-gatherers and the non-livestock raising early horticultural societies were all also organized around collective family groups. Needless to say, it is difficult or near impossible to return to collective living in modern technological societies...Frederich Engels tried it, after being greatly influenced by the work of early American anthropologist - Louis Henry Morgan. But, the collectivization plans failed among nations that tried to apply Marx and Engels version, and only seemed to have some success among religious sects that were already heading towards a collectivist way of thinking. But, regardless of all the crap about failures of socialism that's regurgitated on a continuous basis by fans of capitalism, it's important to know where we started from! Because, any and all behaviours we are really 'hardwired' for, and that are not adaptive behaviours that have come as a response to cultural pressures, are going to be the ones that were valued by original modern humans and their ancestors...NOT the values we have been inculcated with for the last 5000 years! Now, I have to go back and separate out the other possible founding principles of patriarchy, since I wrote more to explain them than I originally planned. So, One: A theory of paternity. There can't be a motive for men to try to take possession of the women they desire, and set up a system where they, and only they have exclusive access to fathering children, if the men don't understand the basic principles to begin with! Two: Agriculture which includes livestock-raising. In very recent archaeological research, in Asia Minor and the Middle East, it's been realized that the rise of the Age of Agriculture, was not a sudden historical demarcation from the past, but part of a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to full time farming which took place over thousands of years. Biologists researching the domestication of grains - towards non-shattering varieties that could be harvested, started seeing evidence that rye grains were being hybridized as long as 18,000 years ago. The prevailing belief among anthropologists is that hunter-gatherers in this area during the Pleistocene...an era of cold and rapidly changing weather extremes, would not have allowed any tribal group to live in one place and farm...even if they wanted to. The first plantings were along hillsides and mountainsides..which confused anthropologists at first....wondering why they didn't plant in river-valleys...but it now appears that the seeding was done by hunter-gatherers who would return weeks later to see what was growing at various elevations. It's not until the beginning of the Holocene, with its stable weather, that we see large population increases, and a gradual transition away from migratory living to settled farming communities. The declines in health after agriculture attributed to poorer diet and backbreaking work, are likely the root of Garden of Eden folklore about living in a paradise that was abandoned. But, even after full time farming begins, it's still thousands of more years before we see a transition from matrilocal & matrilineal family organization, towards one organized and controlled by men only! This is why many anthropologists believe that the addition of livestock herding and raising was an essential ingredient to patriarchy. Because, among horticultural societies...and we had many here in the New World prior to the European conquests...the women did much and could do much of the work of planting and harvesting food. It's once animals are added, that we have communities where the men are primarily responsible for managing and protecting their herds, that we have communities where men can have a monopoly over most of the food produced and how it is distributed! But, even with livestock, they didn't all necessarily become patriarchal Three: Violence and warfare After populations continued to grow to levels where there could be conflicts over land and resources, we come to a time when warfare can become a common preoccupation. Even among warrior cultures, that highly esteem valour in battle, we don't necessarily have patriarchies; but by this time all of the ingredients are in place to remove women from power and influence within their communities. The original patriarchies of the Old World displaced and supplanted the gods and goddesses and the basic cultural values of towns and villages they conquered - one example being the Harappan cities of the Indus Valley, which, after their last Indo-Aryan invasion, went from matrilocal family structure (where men moved in with their wive's families) to patriarchies...as they are today...where the bride is married off at a young age to her husband's family and her...often hostile in-laws. Put all these ingredients together, and then maybe add this latest one noted by the linguists - that a transition to literate culture became part of the process leading to patriarchy. Because...well, first of all, it has to be noted that up until very modern times, very few people in any literate society could actually read and write themselves! Reading and writing was the domain of a powerful elite group of men in the society....like the scribes mentioned in the Bible. Whatever caused the rise of patriarchy and prevailing religious and philosophical cultures that entrench it...this should be seem as a great historical error on the path of civilization....and not something to be valued or held on to, because patriarchy has not only been a devastating cultural adaptation for women, it has also made the lives of most men one of misery and deprivation! And if we keep on with our patriarchal values of warfaring and aggressive competition for available resources, there won't be a human race on this planet for more than a few more generations anyway!

I don't mind contrary arguments and claims...these are issues that are difficult to figure out and none of us have complete information, or know exactly what sources to trust. But I get tired of someone who just wants to play gotcha! Most of these issues we're sifting through, are big and have big implications for a lot of people in the world. So, turning all the misery, death and destruction in the world into a game is demeaning and maybe even psychotic.

And since the theme of this thread is: let's throw crap at the wall, and condemn everything Muslim...their religion, governmets, people etc., let's at least note that this Islamic State appears to have violated core Islamic jurisprudence by burning a captive alive - ISIS Fires Cleric for Opposing Burning Alive of Jordanian PilotA Saudi cleric with the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) jihadist group has been removed from his post after objecting to the burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot, a monitoring group said Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the cleric, known by the nom-de-guerre Abu Musab al-Jazrawi, raised objections during a Thursday meeting to the way pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh was killed. "He raised objections during the weekly meeting that takes place between clerics and IS leaders in the Aleppo area," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. The relevant point of fact in this story is that it clearly disproves the BS that saturates this whole board about that other religion that can't be reasoned with and can only be destroyed! Religions reflect the conditions on the ground! At best, religions can provide a community, a hopeful outlook on the future, and a set of beliefs, practices and rituals which can focus an individual to care about more things in life than his/her own immediate needs and desires. Considering the times we are living in, any religion can be a benefit/ or cause harm, depending on how well/or how badly, the living conditions are for its followers...and I don't care what religion you're talking about! We have seen the rebirth of warrior christianity, and capitalist christianity dominating mainstream religious life for the past century! So, what happens now? Well, most of what Obama and America (including little brothers - Canada and England) can do now is to either strengthen ISIS's hand, or back off and let the locals and surrounding nations restore sanity! Whether they win or not, has nothing to do with what is/and what is not in the Quran! I've tried to make that point before, but right now, ISIS has created an issue that...according to the highest religious authorities in Sunni Islam, is unIslamic.....and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference! They'll just hire new clerics who tell them what they want to hear. The silver lin Egypt's top Muslim authority, the 1,000 year old Al-Azhar university revered by Sunni Muslims around the world, issued a statement expressing "deep anger over the lowly terrorist act" by what it called a "Satanic, terrorist" group. Egypt's top Muslim authority, the 1,000 year old Al-Azhar university revered by Sunni Muslims around the world, issued a statement expressing "deep anger over the lowly terrorist act" by what it called a "Satanic, terrorist" group. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, said the killers themselves deserved to be "killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated." In Qatar, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, headed by prominent cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood that has influence across the region, called the burning of Kasaesbeh a criminal act. "The Association asserts that this extremist organisation does not represent Islam in any way and its actions always harm Islam," it said. The Islamic State posted a religious edict on Twitter, which ruled that it is permissible in Islam to burn an infidel to death. However, senior clerics across the Islamic world argued that inflicting death by fire was always banned under Islam. "The Prophet, peace be upon him, advised against burning people with fire," Sheikh Hussein bin Shu'ayb, head of the religious affairs department in southern Yemen, told Reuters in Aden. Saudi cleric Salman al-Odah wrote on his Twitter account: "Burning is an abominable crime rejected by Islamic law regardless of its causes." "It is rejected whether it falls on an individual or a group or a people. Only God tortures by fire," he added. See! Only God tortures by fire.....just like in Christianity!

Not necessarily! I think there is a clear set of principles promoting empathy, unselfishness and non-violence as the general principles that can be derived from the New Testament. I have also mentioned before that...especially when the Church-added verses and re-interpretations are omitted, the Gospel of Jesus is radically pro-women's liberation compared with any other teaching of that time. There are a number of things that can considered universal Christian values, but they can just as easily be ignored and even directly opposed by those claiming to be Christians. So, on that point I disagree. If all those calling themselves Christians were trying to follow the gospel, the world would be a better place today. But, in so doing, he understands that gun-toting violent Christianity is anti-Christian. Don't believe the crap that Stephen Pinker writes (Our Better Angels in particular). His hopeful presentation of a glorious humanist future...with a few little bumps on the road, is total crap...but unfortunately the kind of crap that a lot of very, very powerful people today want to hear. Bill Gates is a high profile fan for one...and last week, I learned that another dotcom asshole - Steve Zuckerberg has Our Better Angels no. 1 on his book club reading list! You don't have to have a credible argument if you can enlist a small coterie of billionaires and politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair on your side! In a nutshell, other works I've read which are critical of Pinker and similar presentations of savage, warlike human ancestors, are doing it from cherrypicking the limited archaeological data available, along with jumbled up categories of modern so called hunter/gatherer groups...most not legitimately falling under that classification in the first place, regardless of how violent they are. But, the big failing of this notion that civilization is becoming more peaceful is that it doesn't count state-sponsored violence in the tallies! So, terrorism is a crime, but anti-terrorist strategies by governments are not. I don't see eliminating religion and a corresponding rise in secularism as necessarily helpful or unhelpful. The one difference is that the claimed adherents of existing religions may have their holy books held up in their faces when there is a groundswell to change, while the emerging secular humanists have no similar book to follow and can go off in any direction: pro destructive, exploitive capitalist or pro-environment as no. 1 principle.

Enjoy! As soon as Harper gets dumped out on his ass, Canada may go back to the previous stature of trying to be independent of U.S. foreign policy.

No wonder I try to ignore your posts!

I guess it's that I don't see the rise of Imperialism in Japan as a promising development...regardless of whether U.S. policymakers consider it useful or not. Same goes for this Modi in India! Just as in the Middle East, the U.S. gives little thought beyond their needs of the moment as they go about choosing allies and enemies abroad.

I agree that facts are an essential guide regarding moral questions, and regarding Harris's lecture, I got the impression that he saw future progress leading towards a narrowing of those possible right answers.

Yes, I think we've all heard of Brazil! And Brazil became independent long before the US of A started trying to join the empire club. So once again, The Monroe Doctrine has nothing to do with the post I wrote - which was a critique of the European colonial empires. How the hell do you connect April Glaspie with this anyway? The only part where I criticized modern U.S. foreign policy regarding Portugal, is that the U.S. turned a blind eye to the Portugal empire as long as they were sufficiently anti-communist...same goes for South Africa in that regard. Reagan and Thatcher had to be shamed into allowing sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, and had no intentions of enforcing them even afterwards.

Wow, you're a dreamer, aren't you? Back when the interwebs was fairly new, I thought that this new technology would lead towards a more informed public, because new and relevant information could get past any gatekeepers trying to control the public access to information. But, what seems to have happened, is an opening of the floodgates, where it's hard to distinguish between real and unreal, without wasting time stamping out forest fires of fraud and misinformation! One way to weigh the results regarding which side is telling or not telling the truth, is which side has the most money or powerful vested interests behind it. When it comes to vaccines and every other related medical claim, this is going to become increasingly difficult as pharmaceutical companies and Big AG (GMO's) are financing more and more of the medical and biological research that's being done. Nevertheless, on the vaccine front, the only one that seems questionable to me is the mass flu immunizations that are pushed on us every year. The flu vaccine often misfires....as it has this year, and the risk for the general population...who would be at little or no risk of dying from the flu, is that annual vaccination weakens the immune response to these pathogens. So, if the flu shot is a misfire, those of us who avoid getting the flu shot have less of a chance of catching the flu than those who take it every year! I think we should go back to the original tactic of providing flu shots for the groups who are at risk, but not mass immunization against the flu. Different story for some of these lethal diseases including whooping cough, which we thought were sicknesses of the past, but are coming back at us today with a vengeance, because of: a. antivaxxers, who do poor risk assessment....so if there is a one in a hundred thousand chance that the MMR vaccine might cause autism, thats a risk that's far, far less than not getting the vaccine and reviving diseases that used to kill thousands....and are coming back to do it all over again! b. libertarians and assorted individual rights extremists, who don't understand..or don't care, that when it comes to the big trump cards, the wellbeing of society as a whole trumps your individual rights to be a complete a**hole!

Are any of the colonies I mentioned in the Americas? Your response is so obscure I'm wondering if you were on some mind-altering substance when you wrote this down. Monroe Doctrine: significance is the U.S. policy justification for declaring to have the right to interfere in the affairs of all states in the Americas. April Glaspie: significance is the heresay evidence from an underling that she gave Saddam Hussein the "green light" to invade Kuwait back in 1990. So, how do these points connect with anything from my post other than an attempt at name-dropping?

You're mixing two different themes together here! The last time....several years ago, I checked the religioustolerance website, the homepage noted that there were at least 33,000 different Christian sects in the world, and I'm sure that you can find a self-proclaimed Christian arguing on every side of every issue going! But, that doesn't exactly mean that Christianity in total is post-modern or has no core ethical teachings or moral principles. It's more a matter of whether Christian advocates...especially those in high positions of authority, are actually following those principles! I'm surprised to see Bill Maher make that point....maybe he is actually learning something of late! Because you can't find a clear Christian justification for even being a soldier who has to kill in the line of duty...let alone find Christian justification for being an assassin or a sniper...regardless of the situations that might justify such actions. Let's just say that early Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas had to reach back to Aristotle or other Greek philosophers, rather than find a clear moral argument for Just War in the New Testament! But, Catholic theologians had to throw something together! Because...if Christians are completely honest about the origins of their faith, they have to admit that their religion began as an end of days cult, that did not foresee the world lasting another generation, let alone carrying on permanently and making the institutions of government - including war policy, a necessity. But, it's not just in regards to modern warrior christianity where right wing opportunists have created a new religion; the traditional social gospel of Judaism through Christianity was turned on its head by the rise of Prosperity gospel theorizing, that wealth is a sign of God's blessings and poverty is a sign of not being in God's favour is the reverse of the traditional vantage point that the rich are always under suspicion for how they have gathered such great amounts of wealth, and how much they are beholden to the things of this world. While the poor...who are the subjects of derision and disregard in modern right wing christianity, are the focus of attention of both New Testament teaching and the prophets of the Old Testament. Regarding important issues of today like the environment - this is one area where traditional Judeo-Christian teaching has to be shifted away from the traditional attitude towards the Creation. So, in modern progressive Christianity having dominion over the Earth means being a caretaker or custodian, looking after God's creation/not rendering or exploiting the Earth, which I have read, is much closer to the original Hebrew definition of having dominion. So, this is one issue where Christian tradition put us in a hole that's hard to get out of! But, regardless of what any religious tradition says/or doesn't say, if there is the will to improve general quality of life, it can be done! A lot of people...in the west at least, are leaving Christianity and traditional religion behind, mostly because it doesn't have a clear role to play in our lives, living in typical modern urban environments. But, what people move towards is harder to define. Most don't seem to be really interested in big questions to life, or big social and ethical issues...at least not until they are nearer to death. The drift from Christianity looks more like a trend towards further hedonism, rather than any move towards a secular-humanist future. And among that secular humanist minority, the majority of new atheist/humanist writers seem to have exchanged their faith in God or religion for a faith in technology and human progress. This "faith" has almost universal appeal anyway....but it still doesn't address how 7+ billion people are going to deal with future resource scarcities or environmental destruction.

From the way you worded that response, I'm not sure whether it means you agree with me or believe that facts alone provide the answers to all moral quandaries.

I suppose historians and ethicists from a variety of backgrounds will argue the point for as long as there are people living on Earth; but for me, what sets the European empires apart from earlier Muslim and Chinese empires that had expanded their reach, was a clear, thought out argument that they were racially superior to the natives of all lands they explored and conquered, even if the natives converted to Catholicism. At first, when Spain began expanding on the gains acquired by Columbus Expeditions, they even argued whether or not the natives they found were even human and had "souls," let alone be worthy of conversion! Even if they converted, they were still relegated to lives of slavery that were worse than slavery practiced in the Arab World and elsewhere, because...regardless of what stories you can find about the brutalization of slaves in Africa and the ME compared to the Americas, NOBODY practiced eugenics prior to the American experiment - which began informally with large plantation owners selectively breeding slaves they owned for a variety of desired characteristics...just as they did with their pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens etc.! Racism in the Muslim World certainly was not institutionalized as it was in the Americas, otherwise we wouldn't see so many Arabians with obvious levels of African traits. Slavery was an institution closer to indentured servitude/not generational breeding of a population with no human rights and closer in status to domestic animals than people! Another prior empire that had every capability that Europe had - to go global, was the Chinese Empire of the middle ages. It's worthy to note that until around the year 1500, when an Emperor banned the construction of large, ocean-going junks....declaring them to be in violation of Confucian principles, Chinese explorers had sailed throughout the Indian Ocean, and it's still being argued today, how far west into the Pacific they traveled. Nevertheless, they established trade routes, embassies, but NOT colonies, as they expanded abroad. So, something set the Euros apart from previous empire-builders. Let's not forget that by the early 1700's, Thomas Malthus was noting (mostly from the English example) that populations expand exponentially and eventually outstrip food supply. After the dieoff caused by the second Bubonic Plague, European populations were expanding rapidly...in England, they were running out of trees within miles of cities and towns prior to the advent of coal furnaces. So, there may have been an incentive caused by overcrowding and food shortages to drive foreign conquests. But, I believe the big reason goes right back to the common Euro notion of superiority...even during the times when they had nothing to brag about. Being non-christian meant being unsaved, but being dark carried the added indictment of being likely a descendent of Ham....Noah's cursed third son. David Duke was still mentioning it back in the 70's when he could get on mainstream radio and TV; and that dogma began as a legitimization for permanently enslaving darker races, and was a continued touchstone all the way through the years of segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, and voting rights restrictions. Up until recent decades, there was virtually no such a phenomena as liberal critics of Euro and later - American Exceptionalism. And, once there were liberal criticisms of these toxic attitudes, it didn't take long for a conservative reactionary blowback to try to push things back in the other direction! So, in the final analysis - YES, I do think there was something different about the European Conquest. It combined an increasing decline in food and resources at home, with a religious tradition that viewed nature as something separate from God and placed the Creation beneath man....supposedly the pinnacle of God's Creation! Along with an attitude that darker peoples are also there to be exploited and likely not even fully human, and the age of Colonization and "enlightenment" was a disaster for most of the rest of the world, and may seal all our fates eventually also! Because the concept of progress we have today, with our equal and almost completely unchallenged faiths in capitalism and technological progress are using up the Planet's capacity to recycle wastes and maintain necessary balance to support all aerobic living organisms, all at a faster and faster rate of destruction. Now that the rest of the world has adopted (by coercion) our version of capitalist progress, fears about Muslim invasions and sharia law look laughably insignificant!

If Obama starts more foreign wars before most of the existing foreign ventures are settled, does that make it okay? Certainly seems to be bipartisan as far as U.S. mainstream politics goes? If Obama charges and incarcerates more whistleblowers using a revived 1917 WWI law, than every other president since Woodrow Wilson, does that make it okay? If Obama allows the abrogation of privacy and allows unrestricted NSA surveillance on Americans and everyone else in the world, does that make it okay? If Obama keeps Guantanamo open, does that make it okay? If Obama pushes for fast track authority to enact a "trade" agreement that will definitively place the world's national governments firmly under corporate control (TransPacific Partnership), does that make it okay? If Obama bails out the major banks and offers nothing to homeowners who were defrauded by Countrywide and other scam artists, does that make it okay? Now that the Gulf of Mexico has no viable off shore drilling sites left, and Obama allows the oil companies to drill offshore along the east coast...offering protection of Alaska as the consolation prize, does that make it okay? And, the same principles apply on the Canadian scene, if we displace Harper and find Justin Trudeau to be another shape-shifting Liberal, who will calculate the advantages of keeping any promises made after he is safely in Office!