MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:51 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 5:47 pm
MG 2.0 goes through elaborate mental gymnastics to turn me into his existential enemy. MG 2.0 is not my enemy. The fact that he is a person of faith is no threat to me, let alone an existential threat. It is his bigotry and divisiveness that I see as a threat to civil society.
As I think I’ve already said, but if not clearly…here goes again, I do not see YOU as a person as an existential threat. I have little doubt that you as a person are a decent and good human being. It is the secular humanist anti/non theistic school of thought that I believe poses a danger to civil society over the long haul.
That's what polite people call "sophistry." You have labeled me a "secularist" You are waging war against secularists. The sophistry is a simple excuse to avoid facing the fact that fear and hatred of your fellow humans permeates your worldview.
Here's how I think a person interested in promoting civil society would approach the library book issue you described. The vast majority of people would agree that not all books that have ever been and will ever be written are appropriate for a public elementary school's library. Also, it is not possible to stock every elementary school library with every book ever written, someone must decide which books will be contained in the library. We call them librarians.
Each librarian is a person, and although they educate themselves about children's literature, they are individuals who will make different decisions about which books to include in a library. Some books may be in nearly every library, while others may not.
A librarian being a human being, it is entirely foreseeable that they may include a book in an elementary school library that is inappropriate. In a civil society, someone who thinks a book in the library is not appropriate would raise the issue with the librarian, explaining why they thought the book is in appropriate and asking why the librarian selected the book to be in the library. That gives both individuals the chance to hear what the other person has to say and perhaps resolve the issue through mutual agreement. If not, there is a person who is in charge of the school, who we call a principal, who can get input from interested parties and decide the issue. And from there, one could go to the school board, the state's education department, or even the legislature. In a civil society, at each stage of discussion, there would an opportunity for discussion, including listening to and taking into consideration the viewpoints of others.
One could label this the "running to government" approach. It seeks to deprive each student of the school of the ability to check out the book from the library.
Another approach would be for a parent to take interest in the books that their child checks out and reads from the library and discuss it with them. They could even require their child to let the parent read a library book before the child reads it. If the parent becomes aware of a title that they do not want their child to read, they can tell the child.
Or they could send their child to another school or even home school.
One could label this the "self-reliant" approach. The parent takes responsibility for what their child reads and works with the child to make sure the child only reads "appropriate" books. The solution to the problem does not involve depriving anyone else's liberty or freedom.
And there a host of other solutions that people interested in promoting civil society could arrive at that would allow the library to provide a wide range of reading materials while still allowing parents to exercise the degree of control over their children's reading that they choose.
In a civil society, we would call this "solving a problem." Disagreements between or among people will arise in a civil society. A civil society should anticipate that those disagreement will arise and provides mechanisms to resolve them. However, that requires an understanding by the citizens of a civil society that they will not always get their way in any disagreement and agree that having a civil society is more important than winning any specific disagreement. above all, a person who supports civil society does not respond to not getting their way by trying to destroy the very things that allow a civil society to exist.
Here is what a person who believes in and promotes civil society would not do with a disagreement over library books: whip up an angry mob to try and intimidate librarians and other school officials into getting their way. They would not not make anonymous threats to the life and safety of librarians, teachers or principals. They would not engage in histrionics to inflate the types of disagreements we should expect to arise in civil society into extential crises that amount to declaring war (holy or cultural) against those with different points of view.
You aren't just waging war against ideas floating around in the ether. You are waging war on fellow humans, flesh and blood people just like yourself, and the harm I described above is a direct consequence of your holy war.
MG 2.0 wrote:As I mentioned to malkie, Canadians, even if their society has become more secularized, in practice, as a result of governmental control and its historically entrenched views/inclinations towards less liberty and freedom in comparison to what our founding fathers envisioned (those that carried the day anyway), still carry the principles and ideas taught in the religious teachings of their forefathers in their hearts/consciousness.
Religious belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for liberty and freedom. The evidence is overwhelming that people can be "good" without God and "bad" with God. Frankly, you are conflating historical contingency with causation. You are also conflating religion and politics. Let's just skip the dance and do the full Godwin: that the religious teachings of the founders and their ideological descendants justified slavery is sufficient to conclude that there is room for independent judgment as to the merits of the founders beliefs in 1776.
MG 2.0 wrote:Generationally, this may not last forever as the whispers of those principles and teachings taught within a religious system of thought and action gradually disappear from the collective consciousness.
Oooo. This is sounding like a Clive Barker horror story. Specific tenets of specific religious traditions have come and gone for tens of thousands of years. We have no idea which concepts were religious in origin or adopted by religion from some other source. The golden rule, for example, is simple common sense that appeals to consistency. It doesn't depend on religion in any way.
MG 2.0 wrote:It is GenZ’s somewhat radical departure from the faith of their fathers that is causing some degree of consternation for many as to where this may lead as we look to the future. For reasons I’ve already laid out in this thread.
I like the way Tim Minchin said it in his Christmas song, White Wine in the Sun:
Tim Minchin wrote:I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
It means they're worthy
Not everything about the "faith of their fathers" is by definition "worthy." The faith of their fathers is a collection of ideas that Generation Z, like your generation and every generation before them, gets to sort through and decide which are "worthy" and which are not. They get to do that. And the fact that they do not think the way you do does not justify your waging of war against them.
MG 2.0 wrote:We see some of those unfortunate inclinations expressed in recent history as we are observing the cultural divide as to what is and isn’t appropriate for young innocent children to be exposed to in regards to sexuality. Apparently there are those that seem to have little or no difficulty accepting pornography in the school system of America’s schools. Secularism at its best/worst?
This is a crystal clear example of the bigotry that permeates your worldview. It's fairly obvious that you have no definition whatsoever for "secularism" other than "people who do not believe in MG 2.0's God." You use it solely as a pejorative label. That is the very essence of bigotry. I will state what I am confident is a 100% non-controversial proposition among people of not-faith: no public school library should contain pornography. To try and slur millions of your fellow humans by asserting they have little or no difficulty accepting pornography in school libraries is simply bigotry of the most malicious kind.
Some folks have raised an issue about the appropriateness of a significant number of books found in school libraries. OK, which books? Why are they inappropriate? Why did the librarians who included them in school libraries think they were appropriate. If any of them truly meet the definition of "pornography," it would have set a record for fastest resolution of a problem in history -- it would be pulled everywhere it exists at once. And not just out of school libraries -- from public libraries, amazon, barnes & noble –– basically everywhere except adult bookstores.
Why? Because "secularism," they way you use the term, simply does not exist. People of non-faith may subscribe to a number of different ideologies, or to bits and pieces of all kinds of different ideologies including those found in religion. But virtually none of them include putting pornography in school libraries. The "secularism" or "secular humanism" or "cultural marxism" that you rail about exists almost entirely in the imaginations of you and your fellow holy/cultural warriors.
Do you even know what percentage of the librarians that included "pornography" in the school library are people of faith? Or did you just assume they were "secularists" out of pure bigotry?
So, if you want to discuss books, tell me which ones students should not be free to check out in their school library, and we can read them and make an effort to learn why they were chosen to be included in the school library. Then we find out if we agree or disagree on question and debate the merits of the books. But, as far as I'm concerned, as I don't have any school aged children anymore, I'm happy to let those who are directly affected solve the problem.
MG 2.0 wrote:Of course, there are other areas also where secular humanist anti theists are also trying to work themselves into the very fabric of traditional morality and ethical behavior (relativism). It is a war of sorts as you have alluded to. Two diametrically opposed schools of thought have a difficult time coexisting, even though people that may consider themselves to belong to one or the other of these schools of thought CAN and DO exist together as neighbors and often cosponsors of various charitable endeavors, etc.
MG 2.0, you've shown such a high degree of moral relativism in your discussions about Mormonism that it's amazing that you expect anyone to take this statement of yours seriously. Do we have to go beyond slavery in the U.S. to dispense with your notion that religion is actually based on any object set of morals and ethics? Or are we going to play an infinite game of "No true scotsman." You are just as much a moral relativist as I am. You just purport to choose from a narrower range of morals and ethics.
MG 2.0 wrote:The million dollar question is whether this civility would/will continue if secular non/anti theistic majorities were to gain the upper hand. Religious folks, generationally, have been the ‘glue’ that hold things together. Not religiously powerful governments, mind you…but individuals and churches.
What "civility." Apparently you've missed the fact that the most fanatical religious folks in America aren't being "glue" -- they're functioning as a giant maul and splitting wedge. And you are right in there being "anti-glue" with the worst of them. You haven't even given the barest definition of "civility" to this point. At best, you've used it simply s a synonym for "religiosity." Congratulations -- you've proved a tautology. You've simply created a fantasy history out of whole cloth and claimed it represents reality.