those who peddle theology instead of philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

there is a group here that peddle theology instead of philosophy…
we can count Ecmadu as one such peddler but there are others…
Ur and Observe and Pedro and wendy are also such example…
and that there are others, but I can’t remember their names right now…

and what is the connection between them? for the most part, the most
part they are conservative politically…

and how would you know someone who is a theologian, not a philosopher?

they announce they have the truth and everyone else is in error who doesn’t believe
in this truth…two things set these theologians apart? first of all, they will not,
under any circumstance, reveal the reason why their truth is “THE TRUTH”… it is
assumed that their truth is the one and only truth… and they attack all other “truths”
as being wrong, heretical, bogus, fake news, to name a few such attacks upon
other truths…

the second aspect of these theologians is that their truths, however highlighted,
is usually, usually a fairly simple truth…there is but one god and his name is…
there is but one ism or ideology and that ism is call… “capitalism”
as an example…

and this is why ILP is in such a mess… there are some, a few seekers of truth,
and then there are the theologians who already have the truths, the answers…
and that is why makes them theologians instead of philosophers, they hold a truth
and wish to convert everyone else to this truth…and that boys and girls isn’t
philosophy…

but Kropotkin, you proclaim a “truth”…
why can’t we be like you?

you haven’t engaged in some sort of reevaluation of values in which every personal truth is
rent asunder and burnt down to its essentials and then valued…I have reevaluated
all my truths… recall that I have changed my political positions three times
and have changed my philosophical positions more then that… and even here,
I have on several occasions, attacked my own position, for example, I began a
thread attacking liberalism… and I have encouraged those theologians
who hold truths to engage in some sort of reevaluation of values where every value
is attacked…but alas, no takers… their truths are unevaluated and taken for
granted… hence we have no movement in ILP… just the same arguments over
and over again…personally, I have thrown out several different diverse
arguments to wake up people from their being asleep…

if you say, I hold a truth… then you too are a theologian… holder of a truth
and trying to convert others to that truth…

theologians… have you ever asked yourself, could I be wrong? perhaps,
I am mistaken… and that will be the first step to becoming a philosopher…

Kropotkin

2

I was born into jehovah’s witnesses.
I shifted into non theism and some kind of evil based ideology.
Later/now, i am at the point where i can clearly have good ideas,
and am friends with LDS / Mormonism.

Criticism can’t be let loose like a rabid attack dog.
Criticism needs to be as precise as possible.
Zero in on the tiny aspect of a larger issue.
Zooming in and out.

I have positive intentions.
That’s enough for now.

3

Interestingly, we are much more tolerant than your lot. We allow, and indeed enjoy for you to have your different opinion, to be godless. We announce you are wrong because we give you that space, to have that opinion. We don’t expect you to be able to be religious, that is earned. The opposite is not true. For you, we are not in error. We are errors.

The truth is arrived at, conquered like a mountain. If you do not see what we are saying, no amount of explaining will do that. We are not so much developing theory as sharing notes. Again, what does set us apart is that we afford you the right to be wrong.

Ours they don’t attack so much as seek to erase. In order to even believe that there are many truths, considering that truth is arrived at, conquered like a mountain, actual truth, the mountain peaks, has to be erased. Truth has a certain shine, a presence indeed like a mountain. To have it present would deny the possibility of substituting imagination.

Truth, however highlighted, does tend to be.

I find it is your side that tends to be most hostile to polytheism, natural religion, and any kind of divergence. Anyway, I thought that you believed in 0 gods? What bothers you is not the number of gods posited, but that gods are posited. For the same reason it bothers you that truth is posited. It reminds you of your godlessness. Otherwise, there is no reason it should bother you.

“Capitalism” is a term invented by communists. If you have religion, you do not need an ideology. Gods pertain to the Earth, to things. So does philosophy, truth. Truth has no ideology. What bothers you about Trump is that he has no ideology.

This is why right wing politicians can make concessions in official political forums, but left wing ones cannot.

Nothing would offend us more. I find your lot tends to get angriest when they least feel an attempt is being made to convince them. Then we are called arrogant and such things.

4

The grand accuser of his own guilt - the California Communist - “Only we know true virtue”.

5

So who are you calling-out in this rather aggressive post? Is this a political thread against conservatives? A philosophical thread? Or a personal attack on particular individuals? From a philosophical point of view, you probably need to focus it better, to better identify an actual philosophical issue that you want to discuss. As opposed to political divisiveness or psychological frustrations with particular people.

It seems to me that the political left is just as guilty as the political right, if not far more so. Left politics these days is all about aggressive in-your-face moralism. It’s all about denouncing opponents as sinners, as “bigots”, as “racists”, as “xenophobes” or whatever it’s supposed to be this week. The universal in all of it is that these benighted heathens are supposedly Bad People. Old style theology in avant-garde ‘woke’ dress.

Perhaps the way to address it is to refrain from all the hot-button social issues threads and raise the level of conversation to a more abstract conceptual level. That’s how philosophy addresses things. Move from the ethical level to the meta-ethical level. Instead of trying to defend or attack some social issue as good or evil, ask what the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’ mean, and how their use can be justified.

Most people have evolved their views during the course of their lives.

But how tightly do we grasp onto the views that we hold right now? How willing are we to tolerate disagreement, right here?

Perhaps the best way to think of our current beliefs is as working hypotheses. And as such, they are inevitably fallible works-in-progress. Other people may or may not be of help to us in evolving our views, but they won’t be if we aren’t open to the possibility.

Perhaps there needs to be more willingness to actually listen to what other people are trying to say. Few ILP participants are trained philosophers and they may not state their positions very well. Instead of attacking everything they say and attacking them personally in the process, it might be better to listen to them with some interpretive charity and try to discern the germ of an idea that they are trying to express. They might actually have some good ideas that would be of use to us in evolving our own thinking.

And conceivably we might be of help to them too. That won’t happen if we respond to whatever they say by hitting them with a hammer. We have to be friendly and sympathetic such that they want to express their ideas in a less combative fashion and to listen to what we say to them without reflexively rejecting it. It might be best to agree with others whenever we can and to package our disagreements in the form of sympathetic questions or counter-examples.

The first rule is to be humane. Other people will never agree with us unless they want to. The goal in rhetoric is to bring others to that point.

6

good old man…is it a custom where you live to not write sentences? theology is a part of philosophy that stems from religious scripture that is authoritative, not explanatory(though it contains explanations) but is not authoritative itself but limited to the interpretation, elaboration, and explanation of the authoritative scripture itself. the work of a theologian might be much more superior than that of somebody who denies religion or rejects the certainty of the existence of God and might have much more to do with actual reality(despite its set of presupposed beliefs) than that of a skeptic without such prejudices. theology is an application of philosophy to religious scripture, same way science is applied to engineering without being engineering itself.

7

The trained ones are the worse.

Some teacher gave them an ‘A’ once so now they understand the universe.

8

amazon.co.uk/Simulacra-Simu … 0472065211
Check this shit out…number 1 in academic philosophy…work that holds as much academic or philosophical value as a drunk homeless mumbling on a park bench at 2 am…think about the quantities of dullards who are are pressed every year by the current state of humanities in higher education system. it is scary how polluted the academic, intellectual and public sphere is with this thrash everywhere…makes it practically impossible for a layman to discern a charlatan and a clown from authority and an intelligent person…dangerous game…no religion, no humanities…no philosophy…law breaking down…no death penalty…

9

From another thread ‘‘a look at legacy’’, written by Observe

"I think you have that confused a bit mate.

First - in today’s US politics there is -
the authoritarian socialist party (created out of the old democrat party) and
the constitution party (created out of Trump populism taking over the old republican party).

Originally the divide in the US was between -
those who favored a strictly republican government (very little democracy) - Republican party and
those who favored total democracy (very little structured republic) - Democrat party.

The old Democrat party was primarily the old slave-state confederacy turned liberal party to disrupt the republican structure. The old Republican party was primarily the progressive industrial union turned economic conservative party to gain world economic power. And the contention was between -
northern economic industrialism using banking control and
southern social classism using tradition and religion.

In order to achieve the global socialist agenda (total government control) an anti-constitution, anti-republic movement had to be formed. The freed-slave south and the liberals were used to begin that movement primarily through media - music, films, liberal press - creating a grass-roots underclass to rebel against structured republicanism (law and order). Socialism requires a massive underclass (to be the worker/labor party) and small elitist class (to be the management privileged class). Then those two classes (only one party by then) must be brought into war against each other in order to create a communist state (such as California).

So now the battle is actually between -
democratic republic - constitutional red states versus
big government dependency socialism - big brother blue states

The global socialists (communists in the end) have all but totally usurped the US and won the battle against the constitutional US. The extreme billionaire class (same as the original southern plantation owners) using global affiliates (such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, EU, UK) have used media, medicine, and money to corrupt and disrupt constitutional law and order - allowing for socialist authoritarianism not merely in the US but across the globe.

Mr Trump - a former democrat - stood up for the constitution - against anti-American socialism. He had to choose the republican party merely because they were more in favor of constitutional law and order over socialist mob control tactics (the manipulating media liberals). Any third party effort would never get anywhere - so he substantially changed -
the republican party into the pro-US Constitution Populist party forcing
the democrat party to quickly become the anti-US authoritarian socialist party.

Now -
the “blue states” are the big government dependency slave owners (BLM, Antifa, media billionaires) and
the “red states” are the limited government constitutional freedom fighters

And that Jan 6 “insurrection” was totally fake (FBI conducted) in order to help socialists create the image (false flag) that the conservatives trying to maintain actual democratic voting (as opposed to socialist manipulated fraud voting) were trying to take over the government - which is what the socialists had already very largely achieved in secret - the “deep state”.

In a sense the socialist media was right - the constitution conservatives were trying to take-back their government from the deep-state - and led by the deep-state FBI and filmed so as to make it appear that the conservatives were the anti-Americans when the exact opposite had already been secretly established.

Once the FBI got caught - they announced that there was no planned insurrection at all (else they would have been publicly revealed as the guilty party). But they are still holding all of those who can testify to the truth of the staged event in prison as political prisoners (something that socialists do very very often).

The war - world wide - is between
authoritarian oligarchy versus
constitutional individual rights.

K: this is what a theological post looks like.

Kropotkin

10

Actually, that book is a work of art.

11

philosophy has fallen from a serious activity, conducted by serious minds and personalities(like Kant or Leibniz or Socrates), to something dullards too stoupid for science at higher education or nerds and mentally unstable kooks do.

12

Says the California communist cult pundit. :laughing: #-o
=D>

13

Wrong thread. :wink:

14

Actually, my bad, it is the right thread.

15

Oh, wait, the same post is in two different threads. Accounts for my confusion.

16

Pooooooouuuuddddd eahhhhhhjjj…

17

K: and here is another fine example of a theological post…
I have expressly written threads explaining why I am not a communist…
and I have denounced communism almost as much as I have denounced
capitalism… and if Observe were a philosopher, one devoted to the truth,
he would have acknowledge that, but he is a polemicist, one who is
engaged in selling a point, and not with any type of engagement with the truth…
thus he is a theologian, not a philosopher…

if he is so wrong about me being a communist, then I must wonder what else
he is wrong about? But he will never know because he has no engagement with
seeking the truth… he will never, NEVER have an reevaluation of values
because that would require honesty and courage… two traits Observe lacks…

Kropotkin

18

@Kropotkin:

A theologian is someone who studies religions. Pretty sure that Ecmandu, UrWrongx1000, Observer, Pedro and Wendy don’t fit that category. Of course, that’s not what you meant by “thelogian”. What you actually meant is “someone who is not interested in truth”. By associating theology with lack of interest in truth, you insulted every theologian out there. You insulted every person who studies religions.

It’s not particularly clear what’s the purpose of this thread. What exactly do you want? If you want to complain about other forum members, you should probably do it in the “Meta” subforum. Moreover, your complaints should be specific. Rather than complaining about other people’s psychology, you should complain about their forum activity (what they post, where they post it, when they post it, how frequently they post it, etc.) This way you make sure that 1) your complaints are properly understood, and that 2) other people retain as much freedom as possible. Complaints such as “Ecmandu has no interest in philosophy” are a bit problematic. What does that mean? What exactly do you want? And how can we enforce it? Moreover, by making sure you don’t complain about other people’s psychology, you make other people a bit more certain that your goal isn’t merely to paint other people’s reputation in dark colors.

Agree 100%.

19

And why is that a theological post?

20

Peter,

I’m going to put you on the spot now.

I actually get along with people really well.

Do you?

It doesn’t seem like it to me.