coComments related to Jego

it will be the central conc

2009-02-05T05:31:54.660+01:00
it will be the central concern of my next post! What is the basis of Morality in a democracy? That means my comments to that future post will be the same as the ones in this one. Haha. What a great time-saver. Seriously, you have expounded on your alleged basis in the comments section already. Is this absolutely necessary? What about Padre Damaso and the price of rice in Tuguegarao? ;)

Can 'democracy' be theistic an

2009-02-05T04:17:23.744+01:00
Can 'democracy' be theistic and neutral? Yes, we have established that. It is not necessary for it to be atheistic, only to be neutral. So closed topic, yes? Next. *WE* define morality? By what right? By what possible warrant do we have to define what is moral and what is not? Again absent the giver of those universal morals, whom the Founders called Nature's God, we only have Nature itself, and Science the tool for studying nature. And what does that Science tell us? That men are NOT created equal; that to the fittest belong all rights. Ubermensch over untermensch. We the People is a myth according to Science. Perhaps, we differ in approach against the power of Damaso, DJB. I want to change him; you want to kill him. But he won't die. He's been here longer than the both of us. I think I have the better approach.

IF Democracy is to be regar

2009-02-05T03:45:35.150+01:00
IF Democracy is to be regarded in any manner as being “theistic” then how indeed can it be “neutral” towards other, contradictory theisms? By nature theisms don’t agree with one another on the most essential of points. Im surprised this question is being asked at all. Again we have to go back to the Creed. It is both theistic and neutral. And no, DJB, the Founding Fathers werent all Deists; they were an entire rainbow of religious beliefs. Franklin and Jefferson were. Jefferson himself wasnt a Deist in the same sense Voltaire was, that is he didnt believe God went on vacation after establishing his laws. When he was having a crisis of conscience due to his compromise with slavery, he wrote, "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." His justice cannot sleep forever? That isnt Deism in the strictest sense. I leave you with Jefferson's bill on Religious Freedom:
"Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion . . . ."
So yes, democracy can be theistic and neutral. I thought you wouldnt tinker with history anymore, DJB. Move on. You have bigger fish to fry.

Haha. Jesus will agree with yo

2009-02-04T11:39:56.740+01:00
Haha. Jesus will agree with you about the public display of piety and religiosity, mb. Although he may raise an eyebrow about the masturbation thing. :D

People will be offended. We ca

2009-02-04T10:51:42.814+01:00
People will be offended. We can't say no one should be offended. That's the price you pay for living in a free society. Lots of things offend me, but I tolerate them because that's the price you pay. Enough of this PC ek. Yeah I know. Not that easy. And not everybody is like that. Two words: Danish cartoons. Christians in the west for example take in in stride when their religious icons are routinely defaced, but some people of faith havent reached that level of sophistication yet. Danish cartoons.

Manuelbunacamino batting for p

2009-02-04T10:10:25.042+01:00
Manuelbunacamino batting for political correctness? What's the world coming to? :D But missingpoints will win his bet. If the atheist bus comes to Manila, there will be those who will claim to be offended. There will be a lot of them. Aminin na natin 'to. Freedom from being offended has become an inalienable right. Naka!

Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg!
2009-02-04T08:59:14.300+01:00
Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg! It aint so, DJB.

Mother of pearl. Sabi ko nga l

2009-02-04T08:58:00.636+01:00
Mother of pearl. Sabi ko nga last word, tapos may tanong ka pa pala. Haha. Religion, as I used the term, is 'belief in a transcendent being', the opposite of your faith. Deist, Theist, it doesnt matter. Jefferson believed that the Creator laid down laws of morals as well as the laws of nature, and then leaving us with the tools of reason, let us find our own way. That is a religious faith. The answer to your question is No, they werent, and there is a Christian explanation for that. Im sure you already know this since you were a good little Catholic boy. But just in case you forgot, Christianity teaches that God's 'law', his morality if you will, is written in the hearts of men no matter what religion or un-religion they have. This was expounded by Paul in Romans, I believe. Another Christian teaching is man's fallen nature, also expounded by Paul in Romans: he knows the right thing to do but does the wrong thing, and the wrong thing that he shouldnt do, that he does, oh wretched man that he is. So no. Morals preceded Moses. Last na yan ha? ;)

In a sense Freedom of Relig

2009-02-04T08:19:10.694+01:00
In a sense Freedom of Religion is the balm applied by Democracy to the wound it creates in the body of Religion by taking away Theology as the determiner of Human or Civil Morality and replacing God with the Word of the Constitution, the People’s Free Will. Good gravy, DJB. Endless repetition of this mantra, this myth of Democracy, isnt going to make it come true. The idea of liberty and justice and the worth of a human life didnt come from democracy. It came from religion. The Christian religion to be exact. You should come to grips with this reality and move on instead of trying to rewrite history. Accept it and move on, man. Im posting these links again: Here's your fellow atheist John Grey, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science (retired in 2008).
Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today's secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not assume any connection between atheism and liberal values - on the contrary, he viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.
Here's another atheist philosopher Jurgen Habermas, quoted in this article:
Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.
Your mythologizing Democracy aint cuttin' it, DJB. Science aint cutting it. Science says we are not created equal; the fittest survive, the weakest perish. The Creed says 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' and you reduce this Creed to mere poetry? You hold this piece of poetry above Science? Of course you dont. Because you recognize the Creed. It is only by a transcendent source that the Creed makes sense, for if it were mere poetry, then Science, your religion, says we are NOT created equal and we should be living by that creed instead. Move on, DJB. Accept that liberty and justice came from a transcendent source, a Creator -- theist, deist, whatever -- and move on. You can say, 'I believe they came from a Creator but we dont need him anymore since we humans have learned all we can from him' if you like. This is much better than your mythologizing Democracy. Democracy is tyranny of the majority without the Creed. Democracy is NUTS without the Creed. As always, last word is yours.

Ah, but Sam Harris would claim

2009-02-03T04:54:49.717+01:00
Ah, but Sam Harris would claim that they were No True Atheists, danilo. Dawkins offers a variant of the No True Scotsman thing: They didnt do it in the name of atheism. It's like saying smoking doesnt kill you because you dont do it in the name of nicotine. ;)

But just so you know, the I

2009-02-03T04:14:46.689+01:00
But just so you know, the Islamofascists are just as evil and insane as the Christian fascists. Sigh. Meet Sam Harris. Let DJB speak for himself, Sam! The Human Beings have got to get together and kick them both to Kingdom Come. They already tried that, dontcha know? (Hitch and Harris wants to bomb them too.)

But not the toddlers!

2009-02-02T11:53:55.113+01:00
But not the toddlers! A ban then! A ban on Catholic parents teaching their kids the Catholic faith. See where this slippery slope leads?

but I think it just means t

2009-02-02T11:45:49.417+01:00
but I think it just means that those schools could happily ditch the religion classes and still produce decent citizens. Theyre Catholic schools. Anyway, they didnt ditch their religion classes and still they produce decent citizens such as you and -- cough -- I.

"If the parents dont" Dyaskeng

2009-02-02T11:38:07.399+01:00
"If the parents dont" Dyaskeng Calipjo-Go yan. :D

"If the parents" I meant. Baka

2009-02-02T11:37:19.454+01:00
"If the parents" I meant. Baka makita ako ni Calipjo-Go.

DJB, youre arguing that Cathol

2009-02-02T11:36:42.092+01:00
DJB, youre arguing that Catholic schools should stop teaching Catholicism. That's silly, unless you believe the children belong to the State. Your beef is with the State teaching religion. If a parent doesnt want a Catholic education then they won't send them to Catholic school, yes?

Why? What’s wrong with bein

2009-02-02T09:00:45.002+01:00
Why? What’s wrong with being related to chimpanzees? You can't borrow money from them. And their toilet habits are atrocious!

Wait, what? We're someone's Hi

2009-02-02T08:46:07.219+01:00
Wait, what? We're someone's Hi-Definition TV?

but i think its funny that

2009-02-02T04:55:40.404+01:00
but i think its funny that the sole fact that some atenistas became athiests is proof that catholic education isn’t rationality destroying. You have to excuse blackshama. He's a biologist. (Joke lang, professor. :) ) GK Chesterton said, 'Without God, there wouldnt be any atheists.' Haha.

But Gabby, maybe Blackshama's

2009-02-02T04:40:14.294+01:00
But Gabby, maybe Blackshama's Ateneo friends have not experienced anything that they could attribute to a communion with the divine. In that case, it is a reasonable position to take. "I have no experience with the divine, and unless I do, I won't believe in it." That makes sense. What doesnt make sense is, "I have no experience with the divine, therefore YOU shouldnt believe in it."

It should be in light of re

2009-02-02T04:30:25.267+01:00
It should be in light of reason illuminated by faith. Just like Science. Hey, maybe there is something in this Science-is-Religion thing, no?

Sigh. And just like that Dick

2009-02-02T04:06:18.628+01:00
Sigh. And just like that Dick Dawkins is back. But I suppose since we afford banign0 his rant-and-rave space, we can afford DJB his as well. Mother of pearl, I'd gladly join DJB's fight against Padre Damaso, but I often find myself defending Damaso instead. Blackshama, Bencard, and the other Catholics are willing to fight Damaso, too, but alas, DJB is alienating his would-be allies. There has to be something wrong with that technique. It's almost benign0esque. (I was a product of Catholic elementary and high school. Id like to think I turned out ok. ;) )

Yes, that's the problem. The m

2008-07-10T06:04:15.614+02:00
Yes, that's the problem. The mutual mistrust between the upper/middles and the masa. The middles especially, since they are the ones who are more in contact with the masa. They have abdicated their traditional role as leaders of the masa and instead identify themselves with the uppers. (Our heroes of the Philippine revolution of 1896 were from the middles.) The masa is now a problem to be solved rather than a power we can use in building the nation.

“The problem with elections

2008-07-10T04:59:36.335+02:00
“The problem with elections is that the electorate elects idiots” It's more complicated than that. Our system has been so thoroughly gamed that 'the people's sovereign choice' is based on... nothing. There is no rational way on which a voter can base his or her judgments. It's not that the electorate elects idiots; it's just that the electorate doesnt have enough information, and let's be blunt, the electorate often doesnt know what to do with the information even if they did have it. There's also a psychological component. Ive read an article by Conrado De Quiros where he said GK's Tony Meloto would make a good president, but added that Meloto would probably not want it. (He doesnt, as his speech says.) The problem is this: Power is more attractive to the evil man than it is to the good man. An evil man will actively seek it, a good man will shun it. Good men (and women) who are thrust into positions of power do so reluctantly, and would give it up as soon as they can. Evil men (and women) seek it, chase after it, and cling to it if allowed to do so by the people whom they govern; would cling to it if they could get away with it. And if they couldnt, would see to it that their ilk, their cronies, their relatives, their friends, their coterie of evil, would continue in their stead. We are more likely to have a bad government than a good one. This doesnt mean that all who seek positions of power are evil of course. Im sure there are those who are actually good and would like to see change. It's just that the electorate wouldnt know one way or the other.

coComments related to Jego

it will be the central conc

Can 'democracy' be theistic an

IF Democracy is to be regar

Haha. Jesus will agree with yo

People will be offended. We ca

Manuelbunacamino batting for p

Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg! 2009-02-04T08:59:14.300+01:00 Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg! It aint so, DJB.

Mother of pearl. Sabi ko nga l

In a sense Freedom of Relig

Ah, but Sam Harris would claim

But just so you know, the I

But not the toddlers!

but I think it just means t

"If the parents dont" Dyaskeng

"If the parents" I meant. Baka

DJB, youre arguing that Cathol

Why? What’s wrong with bein

Wait, what? We're someone's Hi

but i think its funny that

But Gabby, maybe Blackshama's

It should be in light of re

Sigh. And just like that Dick

Yes, that's the problem. The m

“The problem with elections

Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg!
2009-02-04T08:59:14.300+01:00
Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg! It aint so, DJB.