To all Christain Lefties (Help me?)

[Owen-]

Hi, ill introduce myself :)

I'm Owen and I'm NOT a Christian, but I am totally behind Christian Communism. I am currently having a debate with several Christians on the matter and this group was pointed out to me :)

anyway my question:

Do you think Communism/Socialism could only occur with everyone believing in god? why/why not?

[Nwoye]

no.

[Owen-]

why/why not?

I'm looking for help arguing - can anyone lend a hand?

Thanks,
Owen.

[Decolonize The Left]

It is highly unlikely that communism would occur in a completely theist society because Christianity is an institution and a hierarchical one at that. Hence it operates in fundamentally anti-communist ways in terms of its structure.

Furthermore, many branches of communism are explicitly atheist or anti-theist. Finally, if you include the anarcho-communists into this society, the anti-authoritarian tendencies of these individuals would make it difficult to impose a "lord" over them, be it a deity or a man with a hat.

- August

[ComradeMan]

Do you think Communism/Socialism could only occur with everyone believing in god? why/why not?

On a purely theoretical basis I think that the two are neither mutually dependent or mutually exclusive- so my answer is no.

The problem with belief in God, is exactly which belief in God? If you mean clericalism, theocracy and institutionalised religion then my answer would be a resounding no, if you mean personal spirituality and perhaps what people call "folk religion", i.e. the spirituality of the people then I personally think that they could even be complementary.

[Kléber]

No, because human nature is not evil. You don't need god to tell you killing babies is wrong.

[ComradeMan]

No, because human nature is not evil. You don't need god to tell you killing babies is wrong.

Just to play Devil's Advocate here... are you so sure about that?

Ancient societies the world over practised various forms of human sacrifice, including children, they probably did not think what they were doing was wrong at all.

Most Romans would have thought it absurd to say that slavery was wrong or evil.

What we deem good or bad is often the reflection of our own societies social constructs.

Now, I agree with you that killing babies is evil. But I think it's also dangerous to assume that their is some innate idea of good and bad, at least for everything. Of course a biologist would argue perhaps that killing babies was against our species survival instinct but gorillas and lions do it, so where does our sense of good and bad come from? I do not have the answer to this but I am sure you can see it's problematic if we want to make moral value judgements.

[Kléber]

It's a good thing you're restricted, ComradeMan, you damn baby-killer apologist :p :lol:. Just kidding, I shouldn't make fun of your restriction since I don't know why you are restricted and I know better than to question our alien overlords.


Ancient societies the world over practised various forms of human sacrifice, including children, they probably did not think what they were doing was wrong at all.There have been patron gods and goddesses of particular city-states that have required sacrifice, but there has always been anti-sacrifice sentiment in those societies as well. For example, in Mesoamerica, the god Huitzilopochtli demanded blood sacrifices of POW's, virtuous selfless nobles etc. But the priests of Quetzalcoatl were against sacrifice and warned that if humans bought too many favors from Huitzilopochtli with sacrifices, Quetzalcoatl might have to return and punish all the transgressors.


Most Romans would have thought it absurd to say that slavery was wrong or evil.
Who knows? There were Romans who wrote disapprovingly of slavery. And there were many revolts, where the slaves rising up must have not been slavery fans.


There was a book I read recently called "All Can be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the New World (http://www.amazon.com/All-Can-Saved-Religious-Tolerance/dp/0300125801)." Maybe you can find it on google books or something. The author hammers the point really hard, but the interesting thing about it was, it has a lot of translated records from the Spanish Inquisition - so you can see how the heretics thought and verbally defended themselves. And there are also depositions by commoners that together with the inquisition files show that surprisingly, they had very modern ideas about religious freedom, even though they were being tortured and burned hundreds of years ago in an age and country where Catholic orthodoxy supposedly dominated everyone's philosophical discourse. I think that people in the feudal era thought more independently than we give them credit for, but it wasn't until the social rise of the bourgeoisie in the 1500's that progressive thinking started to get committed to paper in a major way.


Now, I agree with you that killing babies is evil. But I think it's also dangerous to assume that their is some innate idea of good and bad, at least for everything.I sort of agree with you I think. I think our instinctive morality is the best we've got. To paraphrase Laozi, if somebody tries to write down a moral code and turn it into state policy, they're A) obviously doing it in response to a social problem that has causes and solutions in the material world, without the realm of philosophical moralism and B) they're probably deliberately inserting loopholes for themselves.


Of course a biologist would argue perhaps that killing babies was against our species survival instinct but gorillas and lions do it, so where does our sense of good and bad come from? I do not have the answer to this but I am sure you can see it's problematic if we want to make moral value judgements.Sure, yeah, I didn't mean to use moral language seriously, my bad. I don't think there is anything necessarily "evil" about killing a baby, I just think that humans naturally view that with disgust. Maybe that is just an evolutionary peculiarity for us. If lions or gorillas were sentient and we were on animal rev left, babykilling wouldn't even be an issue.

[ComradeMan]

Kleber, catch your points.... I'm glad you see my point about it's being sticky- didn't know about those other sources, will check them out!

PS. I wonder what persuasion animals are? I imagine orangutans to be individualists....:D

[Kléber]

Leafcutter ants have been developing communist fungicultural production for tens of millions of years with an advanced division of labor and 7 castes, none of whom have exploitative privileges (although the garbage disposal caste have shitty lives).. so we must turn our eyes to the ground :D

[SouthernBelle82]

I'm looking for help arguing - can anyone lend a hand?

Thanks,
Owen.

I consider myself a Christian religiously and a communist politically. What would you like assistance on? Anything in particular? Maybe not to be so vague.

[SouthernBelle82]

Hi, ill introduce myself :)

I'm Owen and I'm NOT a Christian, but I am totally behind Christian Communism. I am currently having a debate with several Christians on the matter and this group was pointed out to me :)

anyway my question:

Do you think Communism/Socialism could only occur with everyone believing in god? why/why not?

I see your question now. With communism my understanding is it's a private thing. I'm with that. I'm Christian and even Jesus says to pray in your closet and all that. As far as other religions go like Judaism and Islam I'm not sure about them honestly. One thing I like about communism is it doesn't care whether I'm Christian or not. It doesn't have anything to do with my personal religious beliefs. I can believe in the flying spaghetti monster, faeries or God and it doesn't mean anything honestly.

[SouthernBelle82]

Just to play Devil's Advocate here... are you so sure about that?

Ancient societies the world over practised various forms of human sacrifice, including children, they probably did not think what they were doing was wrong at all.

Most Romans would have thought it absurd to say that slavery was wrong or evil.

What we deem good or bad is often the reflection of our own societies social constructs.

Now, I agree with you that killing babies is evil. But I think it's also dangerous to assume that their is some innate idea of good and bad, at least for everything. Of course a biologist would argue perhaps that killing babies was against our species survival instinct but gorillas and lions do it, so where does our sense of good and bad come from? I do not have the answer to this but I am sure you can see it's problematic if we want to make moral value judgements.

The thing with moral judgments and words like "good" and "evil" is it's in the eyes of the beholder. If you drive by a pregnancy clinic and see a woman going in you might think she's going to have an abortion and she might be doing that. If one says "killing babies is evil" and one sees the woman going to have an abortion one may say how she's evil but the person viewing doesn't know the circumstances. Perhaps the woman is saving her child and her self from being in an abusive relationship or perhaps she just found out her child won't live very long after being born and won't want it to have pain and suffering.

[spiltteeth]

As far as I know Christian's are one of the few groups to actually put communism in practice :

from Wiki :


Famously, Czech Taborites in XV. century attempted to build a society of shared property in city Tabor in south Bohemia.

European Radical Reformation of Anabaptist and different groups of Brethren started processes which later led to communal movements of Shakers or Hutterites.

In the 1600s the True Levellers, followers of Gerrard Winstanley, believed in the concept of "levelling men's estates" in order to create equality. They also took over common land for what they believed to be the common good.

In the 1800s The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially called Mormons, attempted to live a form of Christian communalism called the Law of Consecration, using organizations described as the United Order.

Étienne Cabet, founder of the Icarian movement. His version of communism was deeply Christian, but also anti-clerical in that it opposed the established Catholic Church in France. Cabet is famously quoted as saying, "Communism is Christianity [...] it is pure Christianity, before it was corrupted by Catholicism"

There's a bunch of other, smaller movements, Tolstoy's communes etc, even a Christian Marxist community in america.
Check out JesusRadicals - they are anarchist Christians.

[ComradeMan]

The thing with moral judgments and words like "good" and "evil" is it's in the eyes of the beholder. If you drive by a pregnancy clinic and see a woman going in you might think she's going to have an abortion and she might be doing that. If one says "killing babies is evil" and one sees the woman going to have an abortion one may say how she's evil but the person viewing doesn't know the circumstances. Perhaps the woman is saving her child and her self from being in an abusive relationship or perhaps she just found out her child won't live very long after being born and won't want it to have pain and suffering.

I think you can see the difference between legal abortion and human sacrifice can't you?
:thumbup1: