Leftism as Secular Religion

[seer]

What I wrote regarding life at the biological level is a fact. The strictly biological purpose of any living organism [be it a butterfly, a cat, or one of the owners of a Christian internet website] is to survive long enough to breed.

So rape could be perfectly moral as long as one spreads his seed...

Human rape: An evolutionary analysis

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...62309583900274


A Natural History of Rape

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Natural_History_of_Rape

[seer]

What I wrote regarding life at the biological level is a fact. The strictly biological purpose of any living organism [be it a butterfly, a cat, or one of the owners of a Christian internet website] is to survive long enough to breed.

So rape could be perfectly moral as long as one spreads his seed...

Human rape: An evolutionary analysis

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...62309583900274


A Natural History of Rape

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Natural_History_of_Rape

[seer]

I qualified my remarks with the phrase "at the biological level" and that holds true. At the biological level the purpose of any living organism is to procreate and pass on its genes. Nothing else, at that level, matters.

If I follow that logic rape would be a perfectly valid option.

[seer]

Not at all. It's a fact of existence - get used to it.

If I follow your logic on reproduction rape would certainly be a viable option.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

If I follow your logic on reproduction rape would certainly be a viable option.

Why? The concept of rape is a human construct and includes some notion of morality. I was not referring to human societies but to the strictly biological.

One of the distinctions separating humans from other animals is that humans are, at least as far as we are aware, a species that is capable of ethical behaviour. That is one of the main differences between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom and our concept of morality [as in mores developed by culture] explains how morality differs between different human societies. In other words, what may be deemed "moral" by one human society may be deemed "immoral" by another human society.

Animals have no such concepts. Humans tend to anthropomorphise animal behaviour [just ask anyone who has pets]. However, animal behaviours, again as far as we can deduce, come from instinct and not rational deliberations that are developed over periods of time nor do animals have cultures [as we define the term]; although many animals live in complex social groups.

Hence in strictly biological terms what we term "rape" may produce reproductive benefits for those animals involved. We also know that many male animals will kill the offspring of another male in order to bring the female back into oestrus. The behaviours of dolphins [another highly intelligent mammal] appears to include what we would describe as rape, infanticide, and, on occasion, incest.

However, for human cultures, rape is generally deemed to be immoral, except, as often occurs during conflicts where it can be used as a means of humiliation and/or the exercising of power. The latter is often the motivation behind rape in civilian cases.

That human societies even have a concept of "rape" as well as the fact that the assault does tragically occur within our various cultures would indicate that for many men it is indeed a "viable option".

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

If I follow your logic on reproduction rape would certainly be a viable option.

I have just noticed your two duplicate posts! I had similar problems a day or so ago!

[seer]

Why? The concept of rape is a human construct and includes some notion of morality. I was not referring to human societies but to the strictly biological.

Either biological reproduction and survival are the primary goals or not. And if that is true rape is a perfectly acceptable option. Subjective ethical considerations are secondary.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Either biological reproduction and survival are the primary goals or not. And if that is true rape is a perfectly acceptable option. Subjective ethical considerations are secondary.

At the biological level reproduction and survival are the primary goals.

You are confusing biological facts with human constructs of morality. There is no morality at the biological level.

[seer]

At the biological level reproduction and survival are the primary goals.

You are confusing biological facts with human constructs of morality. There is no morality at the biological level.

No duh! That is why survival is primary - ethics are secondary - so rape is a perfectly acceptable option.

[JimL]

Wasn't sure where to put this. I'm interested in the secular take on it. Where do you find meaning and fulfillment in your life? Let's try to keep things civil; I'm not really looking for debate here.

Source: Dennis Prager

One of the most important books of the 20th century — it remains a best-seller 59 years after it was first published — is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

Marx saw man's primary drive as economic, and Freud saw it as sex. But Frankl believed — correctly, in my opinion — that the greatest drive of man is meaning.

One can be poor and chaste and still be happy. But one cannot be bereft of meaning and be happy — no matter how rich or how sexually fulfilled one may be.

The greatest provider of meaning for the vast majority of human beings has been religion.

In the West, Christianity (and on a smaller scale, Judaism) provided nearly all people with the Bible, a divine or divinely inspired text to guide their lives; a religious community; answers to life's fundamental questions; and, above all, meaning: A good God governs the universe; death does not end everything; and human beings were purposefully created. In addition, Christianity gave Christians a project: spread the Good News, and bring the world to Christ. And Judaism gave Jews a project: Live by God's laws of ethics and holiness and be "a light unto the nations."

All this has disappeared for most Westerners. The Bible is regarded as myth, silly at best, malicious at worst — there is no God, certainly not the morality-giving and judging God of the Bible; there is no afterlife; human beings are a purposeless coincidence with no more intrinsic purpose than anything else in the universe. In short: This Is All There Is.

So, if the need for meaning is the greatest of all human needs and that which supplied meaning no longer does, what are millions of Westerners supposed to do?


The answer is obvious: Find meaning elsewhere. But where? Church won't provide it. Nor will marriage and family — increasingly, secular individuals in the West eschew marriage, and even more do not have children. It turns out, to the surprise of many, that marriage and children are religious values, not human instincts.

In the West today, love and marriage (and children) go together like a horse and a carriage for faithful Catholics, Orthodox Jews, religious Mormons and evangelical Protestants — not for the secular. I know many religious families with more than four children; I do not know one secular family with more than four children (and the odds are you don't either).

The answer to the great dearth of meaning left by the death of biblical religion in the West is secular religion. The first two great secular substitutes were communism and Nazism. The first provided hundreds of millions of people with meaning; the latter provided most Germans and Austrians with meaning.

In particular, both ideologies provided the intellectual class with meaning. No groups believed in communism and Nazism more than intellectuals. Like everyone else, secular intellectuals need meaning, and when this need was combined with intellectuals' love of ideas (especially new ideas — "new" is almost erotic in the power of its appeal to secular intellectuals), communism and Nazism became potent ideologies.

With the fall of communism and the awareness of the extent of the communist mass murder (about 100 million noncombatants) and mass enslavement (virtually all individuals in communist countries — except for Communist Party leaders — are essentially enslaved), communism, or at least the word "communism," fell into disrepute.

So, what were secular intellectuals to do once communism became "the god that failed"?

The answer was to create other another left-wing secular religion. And that is what leftism is: a secular meaning-giver to supplant Christianity. Left-wing religious expressions include Marxism, communism, socialism, feminism and environmentalism.

Leftism's guiding principles — notwithstanding the principles of those Christians and Jews who claim to be religious yet hold leftist views — are the antitheses of Judaism and Christianity's guiding principles.

Judaism and Christianity hold that people are not basically good. Leftism holds that people are basically good. Therefore, Judaism and Christianity believe evil comes from human nature, and leftism believes evil comes from capitalism, religion, the nation-state (i.e. nationalism), corporations, the patriarchy and virtually every other traditional value.

Judaism and Christianity hold that utopia on Earth is impossible — it will only come in God's good time as a Messianic age or in the afterlife. Leftism holds that utopia is to be created here on Earth — and as soon as possible. That is why leftists find America so contemptible. They do not compare it to other nations but to a utopian ideal — a society with no inequality, no racism, no differences between the sexes (indeed, no sexes) and no greed in which everything important is obtained free.

Judaism and Christianity believe God and the Bible are to instruct us on how to live a good life and how the heart is the last place to look for moral guidance. Leftists have contempt for anyone who is guided by the Bible and its God, and substitute the heart and feelings for divine instruction.

There may be a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, but the biggest clash of civilizations is between the West and the left.

source

© Copyright Original Source

Rightism, as secular religion.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

No duh! That is why survival is primary - ethics are secondary - so rape is a perfectly acceptable option.

You are confusing biological imperatives with human constructs [i.e.morality/ethics]. There is no morality at the biological level. That is a fact.

[seer]

You are confusing biological imperatives with human constructs [i.e.morality/ethics]. There is no morality at the biological level. That is a fact.

I'm not confusing anything - "biological imperatives" dominate, subjective ethical considerations are secondary - that is why rape is a perfectly acceptable option, and why moral objections against rape are meaningless.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I'm not confusing anything - "biological imperatives" dominate, subjective ethical considerations are secondary - that is why rape is a perfectly acceptable option, and why moral objections against rape are meaningless.

At the biological level. However, human societies do not exist entirely at the biological level because we have something that no other animal, as far as we know has, and that is the concept of ethics and morality.

[seer]

At the biological level. However, human societies do not exist entirely at the biological level because we have something that no other animal, as far as we know has, and that is the concept of ethics and morality.

But so what? Ethics and morality take a back seat to biological drives. On tribe destroys another tribe and takes their land and resources and they thrive, and pass on their seed. That is perfectly acceptable. Subjective moral considerations carry no weigh. Biology is key.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

But so what? Ethics and morality take a back seat to biological drives.

Not within human societies which require co-operation in order to survive and therefore social cohesion is paramount.

Hence, we generally find that in human societies certain biological impulses are not condoned because such behaviours may strain that social cohesion. Furthermore, all human society has a culture and that culture, and its accepted mores, underpin law codes and/or social codes of what is deemed to be acceptable behaviour within each society.

On tribe destroys another tribe and takes their land and resources and they thrive, and pass on their seed. That is perfectly acceptable. Subjective moral considerations carry no weigh. Biology is key.

You are employing a morally subjective phrase i.e. "perfectly acceptable" which suggests some form of moral position on the behaviour you have outlined. I would also point out that organised warfare is a comparatively recent human phenomenon.

However, at the biological level the behaviour you have described may be a necessary requirement to ensure the survival of one specific group, albeit at the expense of another, and of course individuals from the defeated group may be incorporated into the victorious group.