Among many other flaws, Leftists consistently forget the paving material on the proverbial Road To Hell…

Jus’ Sayin’…

** Anything But….
(Note: None of this may be at all accurate…including this note.)

“I don’t know whether there is a God or not,” is not a belief.

“I know there is not a God,” is a belief.

I don’t know which camp you are in, but the subtle-ish derision in your writing would indicate the latter. You’re using “superstitious” as a question-begging epithet.

Let’s start with what we know: we know nothing. The solipsists say that we cannot know anything outside of our own mind. If they’re right, then it takes a leap of faith just to believe that objective reality exists at all. If they’re wrong, well, then, go ahead: prove objective reality exists without already assuming that it does. If you succeed, congratulations, you’ll be the first.

What else takes faith? Believing something as orderly and rational as the universe could have happened spontaneously. Thinking that it may have is not irrational, but believing deeply that it did takes faith. The universe appears to have been designed to meet a specification. To see that is to sense the vastness of the intelligence behind it. The appearance of design is not proof of design, but it is evidence.

Then there is rational thought itself. We expect things that we can observe in the physical world to withstand the test of inference; we expect to make reliable predictions predicated on a predictable universe. But why should we assume the universe is necessarily predictable? That’s faith, too. Physicists believe physics itself has changed at least once since the big bang, and that it could change again at any time.

Do you ever dream? Ever see someone you know is dead, and even in your dream you’re a little surprised to see him or her, but you don’t question it? Why shouldn’t reality be like that? If our universe were irrational, would we even notice?

It’s one thing to think all of this orderliness, without which rational thinking couldn’t exist, may have come about without God. It’s faith to believe it must have.

If superstition means a belief in things unseen, then you have your superstitions and I have mine.

parker: Ah, the gentler word you used was “prevaricate” as in:

Prevaricate definition, to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/prevaricate

So you don’t have any real knowledge of America leftists on-board for the gulags. Leftists span a large range, which seems to escape you. I figured as much.

Tell me about the camps where millions are exterminated or examples of ex-leftists like me being routinely murdered in the UK or France or Italy, where reallio-trullio leftists also live and make no bones about being leftist.

Yet the same people who are appalled at this mass rejection of all physical and recorded evidence which seems capable of overcoming all cognitive dissonance among the Leftists are, themselves, the most strident believers and supporters of the Christian religion…..The irony…

My view is that the existence of a Supreme Being can be neither proved nor disproved. As such, the belief or disbelief in the existence of a Supreme Being is irrelevant in evaluating political views or in evaluating evidence in our everyday lives.

That being said, as a non-churchgoer it is my observation that believers in a Supreme Being tend to have a greater doses of humility in their makeup than atheists do. As believers view themselves as humble sinners before a Supreme Being, they also tend to be more humble in politics. Observe the arrogance of many on the “progressive” side of the aisle- an arrogance which often goes along with their KNOWING there is NOT a Supreme Being. As such, they have nothing to rein them in. As for me, I do not know.

In general, I don’t consider it a good idea to mix religion and politics. But I thought I would respond this time.

BTW, them as have a strong dislike for “Puritans” and “Fundamentalists” would be advised to read Chapter 22 of C.D. Darlington’s The Evolution of Man and Society. He points out that most of the scientific and engineering advances in Great Britain from 1650-1850 came from religious Dissenters. Like those yucky Puritans. Quakers. Presbyterians. Etc.

The following pertains to the “true-believers” not the non-believing power-mongering opportunists along for the ride.

In doing some research about Hitler’s brand of national socialism being mischaracterized as right-wing by Stalin and others, I did some reading about the term ideology. Eric Voegelin’s (New Science of Politics), and Hannah Arendt’s (Origins…) ideas are very illuminating. Unlike the term’s contemporary and loose usage to describe many political ideas not constitutive of ideology, here the meaning of ideology is very specific. The analysis below leans completely on the thinking of Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, an Thomas Heilke.

From my essay “As a polar opposite of empirical science, ideology is not “truth-seeking” primarily from ‘observation, experience, or reflection’ of events in the real world writes Thomas Heilke in “Eric Voegelin on the Idea of Race.” For ideology, the logical coherence of a system of deductions from the original premise becomes its OWN verification. (Heilke, 169). Rephrased, an ideology explains everything from the deductive expansion of a first premise without regard to the real world for verification. The ideology purportedly merits a claim of truth because of its own internal logical consistency. In Hannah Arendt’s words, ‘Ideologies always assume that one idea is, sufficient to explain everything in the development from the premise, and that no experience can teach anything because everything is comprehended in the constant process of logical deduction. . . The ideology treats the [historical] course of events as though it follows the same “law” as the logical expression of its “idea.” ‘

Again from my essay: “The ideologist, though claiming to be scientific, turns scientific methodology upside down. So if the ideologist’s deductions appear not to work — unlike the scientist who modifies his hypothesis or throws it out — the ideologist manufactures the result by forcing the real world to fit his ideas. As a direct consequence, history becomes an unfolding re-directed by the ideologist’s original single idea. History then, is always unfolding limited to the dictates of ideologist.” (From Socialism, Butchery, and Utopia: The Mischaracterization of National Socialism as Right-Wing.” Copyright 2019.

Hence, to the ideologue facts may be co-opted, or they may be dismissed because they contradict the internal coherence of the system. This is why leftist secular apocalyptic utopians Comte, Condorcet, Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, want to re-craft human nature — which they see as malleable — and the world to fit their uptopian visons.

I think agnosticism is a lack of superstitious belief. Atheism is a faith-based belief as much as any other religion.

Mike