I bet it could be underrated too.

I'll grant you "could be" if you grant me "is not currently."

Of course, the word "faith" means even more things than "free will" does, so...

IMO faith is most beneficial when it gets the faith-ee to surrender control of his/her life and take what comes to them. Not to say that they adopt a passive stance toward life... but just that they learn to accept the randomness of it all, as well as the reality that life deals you shit sometimes, rather than going because of it. You know, being all zen and stuff.

IMO faith is least beneficial when it takes the form of "certainty regarding one's belief system" because that effects no change whatsoever on the person (as if the message of the Bible were, 'God loves you and wants you to learn some theology') and only makes a little dogmatist out of him/her.

This may not surprise you, but I see the world in an exact opposite light.

I had to let go of my faith to accept the randomness of it all and take up a stance of accountability in my life, which is much better now because of it.

My faith (what little I had of it) ='d passive stance. It's in God's hands, He's got a plan, Prey for an answer (instead of, you know, educating yourself and figuring it out)

Well yeah. I'm not saying that people always come to that conclusion. I've seen plenty of Christians who do take a passive stance toward life, like what you described. It's just not a perspective that I share(d). I think the Bible is pretty clear about calling people to action, but there I go with the pointing out how nobody agrees on what their own religion means.

You'd think God would have given us some concrete rules or something....



Full Circl'D

Honestly, I think what most influences most Christians is not the Bible itself, but the culture they live in etc. The early church was a commune, literally -- and you know that ain't gonna fly in the places where people have had enough of Hoo-Sayne. So that cherry-picking thing... yeah that happens all the time.

Sometimes I just want the entire bible-belt strapped down in an A CLOCKWORK ORANGE style cinema and forcefully educated.

A lot of the shit that you hear coming from "mainstream" America would've been embarrassing fifty years ago.

Be like Job?

Yeah... fifty years ago..

Click to view attachment

*waits for a Tojo Hitler to run for office*

>.>

<.<

WTF is hoo-sayne?

I thought that was it, but I wasn't sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgySDqa8zgQ

0:35 to be precise.

I forgot that was his middle name.




Yeah, those people shouldn't be voting.

That's...wow. Sad.

I really hate how when the media goes to West Virginia they say "hey lets find the stupidest inbred looking hicks and find out what ignorant things they have to say!"

I dare say you can find racist uninformed morons in any state in the union but WV gets singled out as "Hill Billies" so thats what they love to show.

<_<

>_>

Granted I have no desire to ever return there, I'm just saying whats on TV and the radio has little to do with my first 11 years of growing up there.

That's the part that makes me weep.

Not in Alaska.

The racist uninformed morons in Alaska have too much room to hide in, and can survive in the wild for weeks at a time.

Yeah, I'm in Washington State, you know...Seattle, Starbucks...an odd mix of hippies and conservatives (a LOT of farming in Washington State, and framers tend not to be liberals). But right next door is Idaho, and about 70 miles from me is a little town called Hayden lake, Idaho. Home of the Northwest Arayan Brotherhood (who, BTW, have endorsed Obama as their candidate because having Hillary as president scares the sh!t out of them).

I hate people who frame other people.

But those guys who make custom frames for photos and paintings are alright in my book.

*Is wondering why they didn't endorse McCain*

Because almost all "neo-nazis" are imbeciles.

Oh, alright... I admit it. It's ME!

I am as I am, even online.

You may bow and send me your TFs...

"almost"

Wow, 63 pages...

Anybody found god yet?

How about Waldo?

I only have 16 pages.

I have 26.

I only say that because of 80% of the neo-nazis I have met in person are idiots and 90% of the neo-nazis I have met on the internets are also idiots. The other 10% counts towards those hard-core guys from Europe who are super-educated, and those local guys I got off the neo-nazi track after convincing them that their ideals were misguided.



God = George Burns = dead

EDIT: I changed local from 99 to 80% when I realised I have only converted one out of 9 local Neo-Nazis... and im too damn lazy to figure out how many percentages that would be.

I found a troll...

Hey, it ain't my fault you haven't had the wherewithal to bump this turkey to
INH yet.

Why don't you ask a mod to do it....

Threads can just be left alone, you know. They don't all have to be closed or INH'D.

But people can be warned for spamming, though

Pardon me for telling a joke in a mostly dead thread. Sheesh.

A super-educated neo-Nazi? That's like a hardcore GEEWUN fan who loved Beat Machines....it doesn't exist.

I'm willing to grant you that one could be a super-educated fascist, but not a neo-Nazi. Why? Race.
Nazism's defining characteristic is militant, extreme racism. Nazism without racism isn't Nazism, it's fascism.
Anyone who's "super-educated" would know that the differences between the "races" of humanity are so minuscule that to claim any one of them to be inferior or superior to the others is ludicrous.

That's just one (of a good number of) reason why you can't have a "super-educated" neo-Nazi.

*pisses on the collective memory of the Third Reich*

That felt good. Back to calling Atheists godless heavens and theists weak-willed children.

Mwa Ha Ha! Victory by typo!

It's times like this I think opposed individuals should oughtter be locked in a room together and bets taken on what will be found 24 hrs later.











'kay, I actually feel like that all the time. THUNDERDOME'D!

TWO NUTS ENTER

PE-CAN LEAVES

I would like to, with all due respect, call bullshot on that. There is absolutely no reason why a well educated person couldn't also be racist and/or fascist.

Yeah. It's sorta like psychohistory. Education applies more to masses but not necessarily individuals. It increases the worldliness of mass populations. That, in turn, tends to lower their prejudices. But there are still highly-educated racists.

Obscure Sci-fi reference FTW!

Trust me, neos from outside North America are WAY different. And I'm sorry, Fascism has nothing to do with race. National Socialism as a political strata has nothing to do with racism at all. It is just that that only purveyors of National Socialism also embraced Racialism that makes you think so. In fact, at the time in which it was implemented, National Socialism actually WORKED to a great benefit. Of course, it wouldn't work in today's free-market world economy very well, if at alll.

Of course you also seem to realise the foolishness of Neo-Nazis. The biggest downfall is that MOST neo-nazis are racists, as opposed to the few who are Nationalists. Most Neo-Nazis I have come into contact with (locally or abroad) still believe that both terms are equal, or do not understand the meaning. And you are wrong, National Socialism (what you call Nazism) without racism isn't Fascism. They are still two totally different systems. Fascism has a bad rap indeed, the only nations or states that used it (Germany, China, Vietnam, Rome, Italy) have all used racial undertones that influenced their politics, but this is their own skew of the system, not the ideals themselves. Fascism CAN exist in the world, but so far has only been used for oppression. If a Fascist leader (note: a leader does not need to be a dictator in this case), if he has the soul of the People in mind, instead of the State, can build and maintain an effective and prosperous nation.

So it would appear that you need to learn more than propoganda about the thing you speak of.

That sounds like you're envisioning a sort of benevolent fascist leader, in the same vein of the notion of a benevolent king/ruler/dictator.

Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it isn't possible.

True enough...

In that they don't shave their heads, tattoo every inch of their body, and actually shower? Yes they're different. Racist scum is racist scum regardless of the wrapper it presents itself in though.


Yes, I already said that.


So National Socialism isn't a racist ideology despite the fact that it's had racist under and overtones every time it's tried? What kind of logic is that?
That's like saying segregation isn't a racist policy, even though it's created racial inequalities every time it has been implemented.

Sure, in theory National Socialism could be worked out to exclude the racist ideologies, but given that racist ideology emerged every time it was tried leads me to believe that National Socialism is an inherently racist ideology.


Are you referring to the economic revival in Germany following Hitler's rise to power? Yes that was impressive. To bad Jews and other "undesirables" were forbidden from taking part in it.


In that they still adhere to an inherently insane racial ideology? That they think killing millions of people based on race is justified? Yes, I recognize the foolishness of that.


So you claim to know more about National Socialism then neo-Nazis? Interesting. If most neo-Nazis view racism as inherent to the National Socialism ideology, doesn't that make National Socialism a racist ideology?


A couple things wrong here.
It's hard to define what Fascism and Nazism are exactly because there's no established philosophy behind them.
We can look at the works of Tom Paine, John Lock, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke and say "that's western democracy."
We can look at the works of Karl Marx and sat "that's Communism."

There is nothing we can point to and say "that's National Socialism" or "that's Fascism." There's Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, but that's far from being a coherent outline of any type of political ideology. It's just Hitler rambling on and on.

So for you to say "this is where Fascism ends and where National Socialism begins" is foolish because there's no clear blueprint as to what these two ideologies contain. They're very similar, and they became even more similar as the relationship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany got closer.

And when you remove racism from National Socialism, you're really left with a form of Fascism. The racist ideologies of the Nazi party were what set it apart from the Fascist Party in Italy.

Italy didn't adopt overly racist programs until the Mussolini/Hitler relationship got very buddy-buddy, and only because Mussolini realized he was the junior partner in the Axis and he wanted to suck up to Hitler.
Prior to this there were a good number of Jews in the Italian Fascist Party, and the racist policies Mussolini enacted as a way to suck up to Hitler were negatively received by the Italian people.

The fact is, and Hitler admitted this himself, he based many of the National Socialist ideals on those adopted earlier by Fascist Italy and Stalin's corrupted form of Communism.
The fervour pitch nationalism, the glorification of the military and state over the individual, the unification behind a strong "leader," all of this stuff was pioneered by the Fascist and Bolshevik movements. Hitler just took it, fine tuned it so it would fit better in Germany, and added his own brand of militant racism to the mix.
So when you remove racism from National Socialism it's no longer National Socialism. It simply becomes German Fascism.


Hey, I'll admit that Fascism has its redeeming qualities, some of which I would like to see injected into western democratic process. National Socialism though? No, that's an inherently evil ideology.
I see Fascism as something that can be controlled. National Socialism is just something that can't be justified due to it's inherent racist ideologies.

As for a benevolent Fascist dictatorship? Sure, you could get one, two, maybe even three good leaders out of it. Eventually though the Fascist leadership would become complacent. Then you'll end up with either a power mad lunatic as leader or a just a lazy and corrupt oligarchy.

Rather then adopting Fascism outright I believe its more redeeming qualities should be incorporated into the western democratic system.


As opposed to the propaganda of a state and ideology that hunted down and killed members of my family because some art house reject didn't like their racial makeup?

FTR the "totalitarian" systems of government are a pet hobby of mine. Communism, Fascism, Nazism, I've read plenty on all of them. I've studied them, both from historical and ideological points of view. I know what I'm talking about.
Granted I probably haven't been to neo-Nazi lunch-ins or bought that slick looking Swastika lapel/hat/medal/pocket knife, but I would like to think I know my stuff.

FWIW, I'm all for a philosopher-king.

I wish I had the ability to design and implement a political system and nation simulator game. The few ones I've ever tried (mostly for academic purposes in high school gov class) were far from having sufficient detail to be instructive. All this does remind me of this game concept I had a while back though.[/offtopic]
o/` And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a philosopher-king~

o/` It is! Hurrah for the Philosopher-King, hurrah for the Philo-sopher-King!