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Eco-totalitarian
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Axiom



Joined: 18 Jan 2008
Location: Brisbane, Australia

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 4:47 pm    Post subject: Eco-totalitarian Reply with quote

This guy really did get into the xmas spirit.

Death threats anyone? Austrian Prof: global warming deniers should be sentenced to death

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/death-threats-anyone-austrian-prof-global-warming-deniers-should-be-sentenced-to-death/
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 5:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No surprise there. These people are posing as liberals and progressives. In reality they are hardcore authoritarians who want to impose their collectivist will on society. No different from Stalin or Mao or any other madman who has ever claimed to be acting in the interest of the "greater good" by imprisoning and killing anyone who dissents. If we give these people the power, they will use it against us. They need to be exposed for what they are, each and every time.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 5:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

While his position is clearly unreasonable, it is not ecological extremism: his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans, not the ecology in itself. That is a concern we all ought to share, so I can understand his frustration, even if that does not justify his suggestion.
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans,.


The Nazi party had the same concern.

They wanted to purify the race of genetically flawed or inferior people, so that future folks wouldn't suffer. (eg from genetic diseases).

Communists in the USSR killed 66 million christians in order to create their ideal society. After all religion is the casue of all violence, right?


No matter how far back you go in history, humans continuously try to create a better society by killing eachother. Darwin would be proud.
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falco



Joined: 26 Nov 2005

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Communists in the USSR killed 66 million christains


Really? Every single person killed was a christain? Stretching the truth a little I think....lol.
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 9:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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northway



Joined: 05 Jul 2010

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Junior wrote:
Fox wrote:
his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans,.


The Nazi party had the same concern.

They wanted to purify the race of genetically flawed or inferior people, so that future folks wouldn't suffer. (eg from genetic diseases).

Communists in the USSR killed 66 million christians in order to create their ideal society. After all religion is the casue of all violence, right?


No matter how far back you go in history, humans continuously try to create a better society by killing eachother. Darwin would be proud.


Including Christians, yes.
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comm



Joined: 22 Jun 2010

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 6:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Junior wrote:
Fox wrote:
his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans,.

The Nazi party had the same concern.

Worrying about 'future humans' is actually one of the most dangerous things people can do, particularly religious people.

If believing X sends your immortal soul to hell, and being born into a family that believes X makes it more likely that you believe X, then reducing the number of families which believes X is logically moral. The end of millions of innocent lives is nothing compared to saving billions of future souls.

Authoritarians will always want to control people, including those who don't even exist yet.
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

northway wrote:
Junior wrote:
Fox wrote:
his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans,.

No matter how far back you go in history, humans continuously try to create a better society by killing eachother. Darwin would be proud.


Including Christians, yes.



Quote:
If believing X sends your immortal soul to hell, and being born into a family that believes X makes it more likely that you believe X, then reducing the number of families which believes X is logically moral. The end of millions of innocent lives is nothing compared to saving billions of future souls.


I assume you're both getting at the same idea.

I'll admit that the crusades, the spanish inquisition, and the burning of witches were perpetrated in the name of what purported to be some form of christianity.
When you look closer though you can see the catholic church behind these atrocities, which to many is merely a political institution that has long gone astray, an obviously false representation of what is christianity. Certainly none of those atrocities is supported by actual scripture- it is moreso a hijacking, an abuse of the faith by nominal christians.

But for arguments sake lets entertain your assertion. Those events totalled 264,000 killed.

But thats a drop in the ocean compared to the 110 million killed by communist atheists. And thats not even counting those killed by nationalist China and Nazi Germany. Or the billion+ abortions performed against the advises of christianity.

Seems pretty obvious that atheism (and its darwinism religion) is the most dangerous philosophy ever embraced by humans.

Ref.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
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northway



Joined: 05 Jul 2010

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's convenient when all the bad guys are infidels and all the good guys are true believers, thanks C.S. Lewis.
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

northway wrote:
It's convenient when all the bad guys are infidels and all the good guys are true believers, thanks C.S. Lewis.


Not at all northway.

All religions have to some point been hijacked, misinterpreted or commandeered by politicians or leaders throughout history to accomplish their own objectives.

But atheism has already proved far more poisonous to humans than anything faith has come up with.


Quote:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Templeton Prize Lecture, London, 10 May 1983.

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that�s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that�s why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.

The same kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all divine dimension, was manifested after World War II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation of the �nuclear umbrella.� It was equivalent to saying: Let�s cast off worries, let�s free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let�s make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let�s stop our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the pursuit of happiness. If danger should threaten us, we shall be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb�

Today� s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: �This is the Apocalypse!�

Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.

Dostoevsky warned that �great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared.� This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that �the world will be saved only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.� Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth�

In its past, Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries. The Orthodoxy of that time knew how to safeguard its people under the yoke of a foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time fending off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders. During those centuries the Orthodox faith in our country became part of the very pattern of thought and the personality of our people, the forms of daily life, the work calendar, the priorities in every undertaking, the organization of the week and of the year. Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter�s forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.

It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that �revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.� That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.

The 1920�s in the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans were shot, one of whom, Veniamin of Petrograd, had been elected by the popular vote of his diocese. Patriarch Tikhon himself passed through the hands of the Cheka-GPU and then died under suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished. Tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to renounce the Word of God, were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to camps, exiled to the desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets in their old age without food or shelter. All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to their deaths for the faith; instances of apostasy were few and far between. For tens of millions of laymen access to the Church was blocked, and they were forbidden to bring up their children in the Faith: religious parents were wrenched from their children and thrown into prison, while the children were turned from the faith by threats and lies�

For a short period of time, when he needed to gather strength for the struggle against Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a friendly posture toward the Church. This deceptive game, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the help of showcase publications and other window dressing, has unfortunately tended to be taken at its face value in the West. Yet the tenacity with which hatred of religion is rooted in Communism may be judged by the example of their most liberal leader, Krushchev: for though he undertook a number of significant steps to extend freedom, Krushchev simultaneously rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession with destroying religion.

But there is something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment cells�they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian tradition would survive in Russia. It is true that millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the case in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained great acuteness and profundity.

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.

The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West�s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.

Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the �pursuit of happiness, �a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?

Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis�race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain �equality��the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today�s free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance�the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.

Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.

With such global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges, it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart�s preference for specific good or evil. Yet this remains true even today, and it is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end. The free people of the West could reasonably have been expected to realize that they are beset � by numerous freely nurtured falsehoods, and not to allow lies to be foisted upon them so easily. All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today�s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society. This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose�

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.
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northway



Joined: 05 Jul 2010

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't it a bit disingenuous to blame all of Christianity's faults on the Catholic Church while failing to offer atheism the same courtesy? Just as Catholicism might be a political institution gone astray, can't we say the same of the fascist and communist interpretations of atheism? Moreover, Communism with a capital C is awfully close to a religion in it's own right, considering its view of an inevitable path of history. Naziism, likewise, is quite religious in it's obsession with blood. Bottom line, you're focusing on merely one aspect of multifaceted ideologies and blaming all their ills on that singular aspect.
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

northway wrote:
Isn't it a bit disingenuous to blame all of Christianity's faults on the Catholic Church while failing to offer atheism the same courtesy? Just as Catholicism might be a political institution gone astray, can't we say the same of the fascist and communist interpretations of atheism? Moreover, Communism with a capital C is awfully close to a religion in it's own right, considering its view of an inevitable path of history. Naziism, likewise, is quite religious in it's obsession with blood. Bottom line, you're focusing on merely one aspect of multifaceted ideologies and blaming all their ills on that singular aspect.


The ground rules of christianity are set in stone, in a book that hasn't changed for 3-4000 years.
Any theological wanderings from the faith need only to open the rule book for quick correction.
Problem is that Catholicism not only banned the bible and tried to prevent its translation for centuries, it then replaced it with its own deliberately flawed translations, and then strictly limited its reading in services. Its really no surprise that catholicism is riven with all manner of practises and beliefs strictly banned in the bible itself. Its devolved into an institution of wealth and political power.

Can we same the same of atheism? Does it have a rule book, a creed? Several? Or is its rules constantly shifting and open to any kind of interpretation.
What is so great about atheism? Yes it allows a brief flirtation with the excesses of human will or rampant hedonism. It may be temporarily liberating to the individual. Ultimately though its empty and unsatisfying. It states that humans are accidental, purposeless, and limited to the physical. It lowers us to the level of apes or rather, insects, competing in a fight to pass on our genes.
Is it good for our communities, for our world communities? No. It involves no morality or moral authority, it views others as competitors, it is unforgiving, it is one-dimensional. Its also totally illogical scientifically speaking. The logical conclusion to the life on this planet- is that it requires a creator and that it shows deliberate design and purpose.
Everything about history tells us humans are incapable of their own salvation. This past century has been the bloodiest in human history. We aren't moving toward any human utopia. Human nature is unchanged from millenia ago.
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young_clinton



Joined: 09 Sep 2009

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
While his position is clearly unreasonable, it is not ecological extremism: his stated concern is the suffering and death of future humans, not the ecology in itself. That is a concern we all ought to share, so I can understand his frustration, even if that does not justify his suggestion.


Shame on the politicians that give into these Global Warming deniers. That is all I can say here. Hopefully we see a whole lot less of these people.
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young_clinton



Joined: 09 Sep 2009

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Junior wrote:

Is it good for our communities, for our world communities? No.


Atheism? It has its problems. Although I would like to know how you handle all the contradictions in the Bible?
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