Yes One of the original purposes of organized religion was to govern and control the people. (Tell them what to do. Keep them in line.) An Organized Religion is essentially a Government without geographic boundaries. I was trying not to open that can of worms but you popped the top.
Yes. The separation of church and state is to protect the State from the Religion. Many people get that backwards.
Is the income for those religions that effectively collect taxes included in the taxman or clergy totals? (Example: Mormons.) Same question for countries that have a State Religion. REALLY hard to guess who of taxman or clergy collected more.
Prostitution, taxman, religion, money, banking, power and influence - what's the difference: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/19/buddhist-sexual-abuse-triratna-dennis-lingwood https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/mar/25/co-op-bank-paul-flowers-hellish-months ?????????
OK, just look at this "deeply religious" Roman Catholic monster and tell... http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/05/w...cribes-torture-and-killing-on-vast-scale.html Zizek keeps mentioning how easy it was to "reconcile" Japanese militants with Buddhist "overlay", in a heartbeat and just carry on regardless... And one could go on in all directions: Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Islamic or Jewish "pious" sociopaths, so gimme a break with "cilivilising role of organised religion", pretty please...
Organised religion absolutly has a (as you put it) cilivilising role. It's the rule, your links are exceptions. Taking isolated instances of social misbehavior as a representative sample of the group from which they claim allegiance is invalid. Were your argument valid... The countries of old Yugoslavia (Tito's Yugoslavia) are a well know spawning ground for international criminals, gangs and mafias. It's common. There are too many to easily list them all. (This is an obvious outcome of Tito's policy of allowing international criminals to live in peace so long as their crimes were committed outside Yugoslavia and they returned the money and spoils to Yugoslavia to be injected in the failing economy. If you give safe harbor to international criminals you are going to have a lot of them.) I'm not even getting into all the war crimes out of old Yugoslavia over the last few decades. Were a sample comprised of those international criminals representative of the people of Tito's Yugoslavia then (according to your logic) everyone from old Yugoslavia would be an international criminal. --- Interestingly Interpol's name for one of those international crime organizations is "Pink Panthers." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers So one has to ask...- nah, just kidding.
Oh, dear, dontchajustluvthis.... OKI, so "Real Socialism" was a phenomenally civilised and civilising society, nothing bad at its foundations, Stalin and co. were just "bad apples"... More military education, vicar? See above. Would you be so generous in stretching it to any and all ideologies, faiths etc.? Yes or no?!? WTFFFFFF?!?!?!?!? What have you been smokin'?!? I bet from the same pipe as Trump, high on Sweden!!! 1) One man's "criminal" is another man's "freedom fighter". Remember your little war with the UK? Or Mandela, for instance? Mmmm, I love those arguments for breakfast - I eat their purveyors in a single bite! 2) Tito allowed, for instance, various Abus from Palestinian freedom movement safe passage, NOT residency, to get rid of Israeli death squads on their tail, and given the state terrorist activities the US is engaged in (from whenever up to the present) - I understand... However, when you guys were fighting the British, you were sucking up to the French and the Dutch, getting arms and supplies, even lines of credit from them, so you could "defend yourselves from dictatorship and injustice"... Go figure... Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. 3) If there is some kind of direct connection between what Tito and co. did and the present - you sure as Hell haven't shown it (and you certainly aren't qualified, as opposed to me, for instance), so WTF?!? And if you did, it would have to be systemic, kinda similar to what I accuse various organised religions of doing, so no, you have no clue what you are saying, what the consequences of such stance are and so on. Seriously, talk of stuff where you were qualified... 4) Do NOT engage me in the latest ex-YU wars, please. You do not have the stamina to go toe-to-toe with me on that one... Oh, dear... Pink was my favourite cartoon ever, from the music onwards... Jeeezzzuuusss!!!
@gorski I'm ignoring your derailments. My point was you were taking isolated atypical examples of whole and using that as an absolute definition of the whole. That is not valid. And yes, it apples to "any and all ideologies, faiths etc". Using atypical examples to define the whole is never valid. Based on your "WTFFFFFF?!?!?!?!?" and the following rants about it's validity, clearly you don't like it much when the atypical examples are used to define your whole. And your calling BS on it pretty much proves my point.
Oh, I see you are trying to wise up. Tell you what - given the fact you lost this round hands down, too - next time stop yourself from even starting... Btw, everything you said above - EVERYTHING - is a pack of you-know-what, talking from your arse, not having a clue generally or more specifically, not having a clue about thinking systemically!
You 'won' nothing. Funny that you don't recognize the "Tito's Stalinist" in "Tito's Stalinist Yugoslavia" you used earlier is an oxymoron. Tito and Stalin were opposed at a basic level which is why Stain kicked Tito out of the social club. ... and why the term Titoism was coined, because Tito clearly wasn't a "Real" Stalinist.. (And we were in dire need of another *ism and *ist.) Titoism came and went in under 50 years because it was unsustainable. (The USSR didn't last much longer. 1922-1991.) Tito perpetually had his hand out for foreign money. (A charity state.) Your so called "free" education was effectively funded with economic aid and loans that could never be paid back. Post WWII Tito even asked the US for help. He received both economic and military aid from the US. Thus your criticisms of the US are largely "looking a gift horse in the mouth" because YOU in Tito's Yugoslavia benefited from them. One of the places I agree with your criticism of the US is that our military budget is too high. Our reasons aren't the same however. Part of the reason our military spending is so high is that we hand out military aid far too easily. If we didn't support weak-tit governments with destined to fail economies we could put more money into other things. The international crime out of old Yugoslavia goes back to their ideas that things should be free so yes it does have continuity. Free education doesn't do much for you when you can't employ your workers to the extent that mass numbers go to other countries just to find work. Or when you can't employ your workers to the level of their educations. What good is a taxi driver or a retail store clerk with a PhD? Particularly if they have to take the job abroad. At times Tito's tiny Yugoslavia was responsible for 19% of the entire worlds emigrant workers. It's hard to imagine a country smaller than the state of Kentucky having 410,000 emigrate workers in the 60's, let alone over a million later. Pretty sad. ----- For the reading pleasure of the popcorn enthusiasts and history buffs. (There is much more out there if you look.) ----- The Economy of Tito's Yugoslavia: Delaying the Inevitable Collapse ""in the last ten years of Tito's rule ---. Despite the pumping of huge amounts of foreign funds into the country, household income declined sharply in the second half of the 1970s."" ""The annual inflation rate was -- two-digit numbers, and a few years before Tito’s death, it accelerates and reaches 40% per year."" ""the departure of over 1.1 million (or 20% of the workforce) Yugoslavs to temporary work abroad"" ""Thus, the Yugoslav economy was in a terrible condition in the late seventies, but this was masked by the increase in foreign loans of epic proportions, combined with a dramatic increase in economic emigration."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titoism ""Although still claimed as official policies, virtually all aspects of Titoism went into rapid decline after Tito's death in 1980"" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito-Stalin_Split ""Tito used the estrangement from the USSR to obtain US aid"" http://www.history.com/this-day-in-...tary-and-economic-aid-to-communist-yugoslavia ""United States gives military and economic aid to communist Yugoslavia"" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan ""in 1948 Tito broke decisively with Stalin on other issues, ---- Yugoslavia requested American aid. American leaders were internally divided, but finally agreed and began sending money on a small scale in 1949, and on a much larger scale in 1950-53. The American aid was not part of the Marshall Plan."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia ""Unemployment was a chronic problem for Yugoslavia"" ""the unemployment rates were among the highest in Europe during its existence"" ""The departure of Yugoslavs seeking work began in the 1950s, when individuals began slipping across the border illegally."" ""From 1961 to 1971, the number of guest workers from Yugoslavia in West Germany increased from 16,000 to 410,000."" ""By the early 1970s 20 percent of the country's labor force or 1,1 million workers were employed abroad."" ""From 1970 onwards, despite 29% of its population working in agriculture, Yugoslavia was a net importer of farm products."" ""the foreign debt grew at an annual rate of 20%, and by the early 1980s it reached more than US$20 billion.""
Oh, really - well it silenced you nicely... Well, until now - and since your memory is a little short, one must keep reminding you of your own... shortcomings... 'You ready? OKI, round three - let's gooooo... Didn't I already warn you, several times, in fact, you can not think systemically? Well, you can't! Moreover, the arrogance of a bugger trying to teach me of the nature of Tito's regime, when I am a social scientist from ex-YU, who was also a pro-democracy activist there, when it was dangerous to do so - really is mind-bogglingly... self-assured, shall we say... Worthy of an American politician, I would have thought... You know, these people with big guns, running around the world, not being bothered to learn a little about it before they start meddling in other people's affairs, creating umpteen more problems and a helluvalot more trouble than they "solve" with their "zero-sum game" approach of a big bully and a state terrorist attitude... Check out Chomsky, you may actually learn a thing or... thirty three, in your blessed ignorance and fan-like, uncritical attitude... First of all, there is no contradiction in being and staying a Stalinist and fighting Stalin's dictate, oh clever one... In fact, all the kerrrrfffffufle was about "who da boss 'ere"! Stalinist methods were used (see Goli Otok, one of the "Gulag Archipelago camps" in ex-YU) to silence the vocal, open Stalinists amongst us, from 1948 onwards and there was no "nice and easy does it" with them, at home or abroad. Perhaps next time, if you wouldn't be so lazy to remember the "IIYF", you wouldn't need to eat so much humble pie, while egg is running down your face... You have tons of literature on the topics, btw, oh confident one... ("PCBism" is a little clumsy but OK, if you insist... ) No, really? Shoot, someone should have told me, living in complete ignorance, all these years... I mean, what was I doing there, with my blinkers (double-on) all the time?!? PCB, you're my Deepak Chopra of MDL!!! Thank you from the deepest depths of my... something or other... (Why do people working on dismantling something vicious - from the inside, when it's hot and dangerous to attempt to do so - never get told of these things?!? I guess this is why we have the US Military in our world... To spread the good news!!! [Mind, it's a bit expensive a service but OK... ]) Oh, wait, is that like the rest of the Europe after WWII? Like Germany and other countries that actually LOST the war? And bugger me but I thought that "we" were "allies"? Like, oh, I dunno - UK etc. Remember the Marshall plan? (Shoot, not sure if Tito already was a Marshall back then... Jeez, never thought of it as such a clever plot by the US back then, already... ) OK, OK, in YU back then, that kind of help was called "Truman's balls" (balls = eggs in Serbo-Croat ), so people had fun with such help, since in the packages there were eggs, too... Dried, I think, if memory serves... Aaaahhh but then, there is a crucial little question: did the US do it for "charity" reasons? Hmpffff... All the literature I've been through over a few decades of quality free education I have had - was not so gullible and self-aggrandising. If I vaguely remember correctly: it had something to do with "self-interest", Capitalism and free markets, interests of the owners/Capital, expanding worldwide as the innermost need of Capital and so on and so forth... But nice try in establishing PCBism... Oh, I think you'll find that elementary maths could help you a great deal in all this: over more than 4 decades YU had received $20 billion in such loans, which over time incurred the same amount in interest. Now, how "charitable" was that, especially given the fact the lenders knew full well it was not "sustainable" (to use your terms), i.e. repayable. In fact, it was their task to push such money for a very simple purpose - modern day loan shark type slavery, thanx to monopolistic capital. If you do not trust me, try searching a bit online. Moreover, it is not only limited to "foreigners" - oh, Hell no!!! - you may find whole American cities looking like what Americans imagine 3rd world countries look like (for instance Detroit)... You will find it to be a Capitalist policy with anything but charitable aims. Zweistein! Btw, we (the insiders) fought Tito for unsustainable strategy a wee bit earlier than your brave bravado from a safe distance... So, please, enlighten me, whydontcha... But that ACTUALLY had to do with not seriously engaging with the alleged policy/strategy of workers self-management - however, let's not get into that one, as I am talking Martian colonies with you now... But hey, if you are talking of free education in Sweden (and similar, better structured Social Democratic societies we, the insider critics, advocated), for instance - you know what you can do with that "free education" conservative smirk on your face... (Ever heard "Beware of Amer... [pardon ] Greeks bearing gifts"?!? DAMN! WHY DIDN'T THEY LOOK REALLY, REALLY CAREFULLY INTO THAT TROJAN HORSE'S MOUTH, INDEED?!?!?!? ) Sure, tremendously. Btw, nothing to do with hard work of ex-Yugoslavs, the lazy, incapable sods, having ćevapčići and Šljivovica all day long, for decades, eh? All to do with Americans. We all lived on those $20 bill for 45 years, ha? Nah, nah, make it double: plus $20 bill of money sent home from YU Gastarbeiters throughout the world. Fook, write that down in a paper to be published in "Economist" and I am sure "Nobel Prize for Maths in Economy" is to follow, move over Stigliz... Awwww, poor baby, he needs some self-patting on the back, eh? Now, now, dontchaworry, I'll help with that, I can't bear that no one wants to do this for you, such politically and militarily benevolent creatures of the biggest hearts in the world: did you read that in some Military financed text-book, maybe? Yes, well, now, I'll be damned! Perhaps if you'd read a bit of Chomsky, you may regret those words very, very bitterly... Start with up-until-then-OK Colombia and see where it got, after some such "benevolent" helping round from the American Gov, with, say, heavily subsidised wheat "gift". See what it does to the Colombian peasants and then their economy. Soon after that there comes a need for chemical and full on warfare, which weapons needed to be bought from - you guessed it - the benevolent and ever helpful US etc. etc. Just one small example of the US Gov "benevolence" and "enlightened" approach to world-wide influence and "help"... Can I quote you on this? WOW! "We" brought the idea to the world?!? WOW! We ARE better than we thought, after all!!! I'll be singing naked round the table, dancing merrily all night long, drinking.... whiskey and being proud!!! (Btw, grammar and style, Sir: that military style of yours keeps forgetting you need some commas in there, to occasionally breath a little... ) But very jolly for the West, you see, since they (ex-YU Gastarbeiters) built the US little project, especially projects like Berlin and alike. Oh, together with even many more Turks and other 'great unwashed' - but hey, every big white tower gets built by a lot of dirty, poorly paid, unmentioned workers... Not that you guys mind. In fact, it is presumed. But don't take my word for it: search online for "brain drain" and ye shall find! And then, ye shall weep, given the "crime" insinuations of a 3-year old... Oh, I forgot: the US was built from such people, from grounds up! Refugees from EU and slaves from Africa and Asia (Asians building US railroads were not exactly treated very well...) etc. So, in short, your "lectures" are really piss poor attempts at building a "moral high ground" built on human garbage! FYI, economic reforms were stopped by Tito in the 60-ies, since he felt he was losing power ([now, let's go back to the beginning, informatively] remember, he was a Stalinist, after all and couldn't just give the power away from the Communist Party he presided over, just like he presided over the country and its Military [ - oh, wait, he wasn't, you say... ]), then he opened the borders and... Ach, never mind the ex-Yugos helped the US project of building the Capitalist West - you just carry on, keep on bitchin', while violently contradicting yourself at every turn... in your "clear PCB logic"... The rest of your "contribution" is such "high level" I can't stop laughing my head off...
To revisit the original topic, I'm sure that those people (Tito, Stalin, the US, et.al.) all had free will when they decided to implement their own agendas. My conclusion is that when presented with an opportunity to act, we have the choice of how to conduct ourselves with respect to ourselves and others. And that constitutes free will. Whether or not GOD exists. @nodnar: History is a funny thing. When the actual players expire, it becomes open season for (mis)interpretation and rewriting for the sake of convenience, or to serve another agenda. "There are three sides to any story...Yours, Mine, and the truth". Carry on...
There is no such thing as absolute truth, says Adorno to Hegel, since there are many different interests... Just don't call historians, please - then we're in real trouble, with kilometre long posts...