Maksutov wrote:There are some great Mormons.
There are 16 million Mormons. In a pool of 16 million anything, I think basic stats says (sorry Lemmie, hope I'm not reaching beyond my grasp here) that there will be some good people and bad people. There are great, self-actualized, successful people within a pool of 16 million of [fill in the blank]. How could one maintain the failure of communism with so many great Russian chess players? On the grounds of DCP, we should all convert to Judaism, as Israel can actually boast of over-representation in science achievement (Nobel Prize winners etc). They should be baptizing Mormons; not the other way around.
In the social Darwinist world of certain apologists, achievement is the premiere benchmark. Think of the great totalitarian and oppressive regimes out there: what is a key argument that all of these institutions use to justify and evangelize themselves? "Look at our great athletes and scientists!"
This is a terrible way to justify a religion or society, but for apologists who can't win an argument on its own terms, resorting to the nice cars of their up-line is all they've got.
There's this Jewish atheist who Analytics and Billy Shears both quote all the time, I can't remember his name. But anyway, one of the things Analytics pointed out from his material, is that a secular libertarian society goes out of it's way to make room for the individual -- all individuals, if possible. In Social Darwinist terms, among many others, this is the very definition of waste. The true test is how those on the margins of societies are treated and are able to integrate.
Keep that pole dance going.