Democracy as religion

Athena · June 13, 2008, 3:34pm

Democracy as religion begins in Athens. It begins with a belief in many Gods and evolves away from believing in supernatural beings, to believing, reason, is the controlling force of the universe. By this, I do not mean reason as thought, but the cause of the effect. Such as, gravity is the reason things to fall to earth. Chlorophyll is the reason plants turn the sun’s rays into energy the plant can use for growth. Humans don’t have chlorophyll for photosynthesis, so they must eat plants and animals to get this energy. As you might realize, the way to know God, the reason for all things, is to study nature, not to study mythology. There are things we can learn from mythology that are socially important and personally helpful, but the story tellers were telling stories, and did not understanding the causes of effects through scientific study, that is God made manifest. This means, democracy rest on science and reason, not myth and superstition.

The_Art_of_War · June 13, 2008, 4:44pm

Ummm well, that’s a bad name seeing as Democracy is a political system already and not a religion.

However, it seems that you are getting at a sort of Aristotelian [size=85](is that a real word?)[/size] religous view point. It appears that you are worshipping the teleological system rather than an outside being. I have thought this idea interesting in the past and I think its a fun way to think. However, it seems that you are describing a form of belief which is nonexistent today.

Did I get that right?

Athena · June 13, 2008, 8:50pm

Okay, bye-

Mr_Reasonable · June 13, 2008, 8:52pm

Ignore the newbie. I think there’s a point to be made in what you’re saying. Go on please…

The_Art_of_War · June 14, 2008, 12:59am

I get the feeling I did something wrong D; I know I’m a noob, but the only way for me to get better is for someone to point out my errors.

Iosepusmagus · June 14, 2008, 7:27am

Greek democracy as a religion? Greek democracy as a manifestation of human reason? Hmmmm… I won’t really make that announcement when our histories don’t really record that utopian democracy your painting. I think Athenian democracy had also contributed a lot to there lost to the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war.

Reason as the controlling force of the universe? Hmmm… which reason, if you mean the human one I have to disagree as reality does not bend to our whims in a hurry. I think human reason is only capable of connecting the dots on the things he can observe, nothing more not really a cause of an effect.

And I have to disagree with you on your stance with mythology. Firstly we have no evidence that the ancients has malice in telling these stories, their stories are anything but lies and hoax for them, the poets I think are not there to fool but to offer their explanation on various phenomena.

We can’t know God through science as science only dwells in the physical. To investigate in the metaphysical, scientific measurements falls short.

Athena · June 14, 2008, 1:46pm

The subject of the decline of Athens is important, because the US democracy is evolving about the same, in the about the same amount of time, but that is a different thread. Unless of speak why Zues didn’t want man to have fire. He knew when man had the technology of fire, he would discover all the other technologies and than rival the gods. That is being technology smart without the wisdom to use that technology. Which brought both Athens and the US to starting wars they shouldn’t have started. Hum, problem here- science is critical to democracy, and how do we avoid being technologically smart with a lack of wisdom? No, that isn’t where I wanted to take this thread.

I wish we all studied Cicero, a Roman statesman who studied in Athens, and that we also knew that literate in the days of the US forefathers meant literate in Greek and Roman classics. Later I will provide Thomas Jefferson quotes to support what I am saying. For now, today’s science and Cicero is an awesome combination!

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Cicero-Philosopher.htm

The fact is that everything which grows and flourishes contains in itself a natural heat without which it could not grow or flourish. Everything which has within it heat and fire is stirred and enlivened by their motion. And while anything grows and flourishes, this motion is steady and regular. And so long as it remains so with us, our life and consciousness continue. But when this vital warmth grows cold and finally extinct, we ourselves decline and die.
…the veins and arteries throb constantly with a fiery pulse. It has often been observed that if the heart is torn out of any animal, it continues to beat violently like a flickering fire. Therefore everything which lives, whether it is animal or vegetable, lives only by reason of the heat enclosed within it. From which it can be seen that this heat has by nature a vital force within itself which permeates the whole world. (Cicero)

From which it follows that as all the elements of the universe are sustained by heat, so the whole universe is itself preserved through all the ages by a similar power: the more so, because it must be understood that this hot and fiery principle is so infused throughout the whole of nature that it provides the life-force and is the source of all that comes to be, and from it is born and nourished every living creature and every plant whose roots are in the earth.
That which we call Nature is therefore the power which permeates and preserves the whole universe, and this power is not devoid of sense and reason. Every being which is not homogeneous and simple but complex and composite must have in it some organising principle. In man this organising principle is reason and in animals it is a power akin to reason, and from this arises all purpose and desire. (Cicero

More Cicero quotes and explanations of what men like Newton have to do with the US being a democracy, I think will make my point about our political organization being based on the science of organization and reason. But this needs to be worked on one bite at a time. It is a lot of information to chew on.

Iosepusmagus · June 14, 2008, 2:32pm

Oh yes I see, Cicero is very good in rhetorics (I’m actually reading his two philipic against M.A.), though I don’t actually get the point of Cicero here. Is he proposing that fire as the base element?

Do explain your assesment more.

Athena · June 14, 2008, 11:38pm

I don’t think we should get overly hung up on definitions. As a person who does a lot of writing, I am very aware of how difficult it can be to think of the word that means what we want to say. Imagine trying to explain the universe without today’s scientific concepts and “words”. So Cicero speaks of this fundament energy/heat that must be in everything, from living animals to what fills the universe. From which it follows that as all the elements of the universe are sustained by heat This is indeed a scientific fact, not just an ignorant idea about fire.

Oops, out of time for today- here is an explanation of the ancient ideas about fire. I hope I remember to come back with a modern cientific explanation of that energy- shall we say protons and electrons, from which all else is manifest?

http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/TheosophyAndTheEnvironment/Series-Part3of16.html

Different Forms of Fire

Fire is perhaps the most refined, subtle, and mysterious of the Elements. Theosophically, it is the source of the other Elements, and it relates to processes like thought and feeling, which are not really physical. The fire of constructive thought is creative; the fire (energy) in food is preservative; a raging fire out of control is usually destructive. Creation, preservation, and destruction are natural phases of existence for all creatures from birth to death, another ancient concept. The Secret Doctrine (II, 114) relates Fire to the three phases as follows:

The Spirit, beyond manifested Nature, is the fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery Spirit thereof – air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire; Earth, solid fire. All is fire – ignis, in its ultimate constitution. … Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver.

The_Paineful_Truth · June 15, 2008, 12:46pm

At least here in this country, democracy has almost attained the status of a religion or a religious ideal. We’re all the time saying majority rules within government, or socially. But the Athenians learned pure democracy doesn’t work, which the US founders well knew and so deliberately avoided it. Simple democracy is nothing more than the tyranny of the majority over a minority (e.g. slavery and you could even say the Holocaust).

Thus the Romans employed a republican system with, ostensibly, protection (if not equal) for all Roman citizens. The holes in their system were obvious, both in the lack of rights of non-citizens, and the eventual undermining of the republican senate by the emperors.

Our failure, as predicted by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, was in the eventual corruption (apathy, greed, ignorance) of the electorate, devaluing integrity in favor of those who tell us what we want to hear. Perhaps if we hadn’t had the truth-killing religions of Christianity and democracy cum socialism, we’d have made it further–a lot further.

Iosepusmagus · June 15, 2008, 2:10pm

What the-?

Care to expound on that? I will be amused if you do.

Athena · June 15, 2008, 3:48pm

We have a little confusion here. Democracy as political organization, is different from democracy as religion, and democracy as religion, does not mean patriotism or political party afiliation. Religion is about our understand of ourselves in relation to God and each other. I started a thread “Democracy as political organization” under the social forum, for discussing the political aspects of democracy.

Democracy as religion is the foundation of democracy as political order. And I really relate to The Paineful Truth’s comment

We seem to forget Europe was Christian and it was not Christianity that gave us democracy. Democracy comes from Greek and Roman classics, and few Christians were literate. However, those who were literate, were literate in the classics, so an understanding of democracy did come through Christians who were so education. Without this literacracy, no one saw democracy in the bible. Replacing liberal education which used the classics to transmit a culture essential to the meaning of our democracy, liberty and freedom, with education for technology, and leaving moral training to the church, as Germany did, has almost completely destroyed our democracy.

“Moral” comes from a Greek concept meaning to know good manners and The Law. When we add an “e” to moral, we get “morale”, that high spirited feeling coming out of believing we are doing the right thing. We should have never dropped our education for good moral judgement and left moral training to the church, because doing so devastated our understanding of morality and God. And to know The Law, well this is science and the search for truth, and coming to know universal laws. These concepts have been Christianized and the memory of them as coming from Athens, has been lost to us, and now the US is in big, big trouble.

The_Paineful_Truth · June 16, 2008, 1:02pm

I’d be glad to, but your patronizing attitude chides that I should keep my pearls to myself.

Iosepusmagus · June 16, 2008, 1:05pm

Oh, ok?

Athena · June 16, 2008, 2:46pm

I explained how Christianity has distorted truth and almost destroyed our democracy. Why the personal jabs, instead of addressing the issue?

Athena · June 26, 2008, 3:07am

Well, let’s try some Kant thoughts on this idea that we can know God by studying nature.

Physics: The Pre-Critical Period
Kant’s early pre-Critical publications (1746-1756) are devoted primarily to solving a variety of broadly cosmological problems and to developing an increasingly comprehensive metaphysics that would account for the matter theory that is required by the solutions to these problems. Kant’s first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746), explicitly attempts to solve the vis viva controversy, which had been hotly contested ever since Leibniz’s attack on Descartes’ laws of motion in the Acta Eruditorum in 1686. While Kant attempts to occupy an intermediary position between the Cartesian and Leibnizian positions by maintaining that both mv and mv² could be conserved in different contexts, what is of particular note is how his solution in Parts II and III rests on the conception of force developed in Part I. According to this conception, force is understood in terms of the activity of substances, an activity that Kant then uses to explain how the motions of bodies are generated, to solve the mind-body problem, and to account for both the possibility of other, actually existing worlds and the three-dimensionality of space.

Kant develops his account of the nature of substance in greater detail in A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755). While the first two sections of this work undertake revisions of Wolff’s principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, the third section argues for two substantive principles that are alleged to follow from the principle of sufficient (or rather, following Crusius, determining) reason, namely the principles of succession and coexistence. The main thrust of the principle of succession is directed against Leibnizian pre-established harmony, arguing that only causal connections between substances can bring about changes in their states. Kant’s position appears to be designed to account primarily for changes of bodily states (with changes in mental states being parasitic upon them, as was explicitly asserted in the True Estimation). For he maintains that mutual changes of state require mutual interaction, where it is clear that changes in motion are precisely the kind of mutual change that he has in mind (since one body cannot move closer to another without the other body moving closer to it). The principle of coexistence then argues that harmonious causal interaction between otherwise isolated, independently existing substances is possible only by means of God’s coordination (just as Leibniz thought was required for harmonious relations between the states of such substances).

Athena · June 26, 2008, 3:21am

Are not both Cicero and Kant speak of the same moving force of which we speak when speak of the Big Bang and all the following ideas of creation? The fire is the energy of the Big Bang that is the priori mover of all things.