For Better or Worse, Liberalism is a Relgion, not just a Political Philosophy

1. The end-game of liberalism is socialism - it will come a little bit at time (through "compromise") but ultimately it leads down the same road as the USSR. The USSR past its first few years didn't practice pure communism, as your crowd so likes to point out, real communism didn't really exist. The USSR was just highly socialist - on the sliding scale of socialism vs. capitalism. So what the USSR did to nonbelievers is entirely relevant.

2. So what? All politicians pander to the masses - duh. You conveniently ignored the second part - where I pointed out the specific way leftist politicians are trying to correct perceived injustices in society. - just like other religions do.

3. No idea what you're talking about - except that it's clear you want to go on the typical "Christians = anti-science" rant. Sure, a lot of us are anti-science, some of us are very pro-science, but what does that have to do with what I said? Sounds like someone just wants to vent a little.

4. It's very similar to what prior religious figures espoused isn't it? The less represented/more disenfranchised crowd is going to pull the resentment card on those who are better off than them. I don't blame them for that - it's similar to how Christianity got popular - but don't pretend the characteristics aren't similar.

As to "you need a church for a religion. You need a Bible"...no you absolutely don't. If a large segment of the liberal secularist crowd worships the state as a deity, I'm going to call it for what it is - worship of an idol. It's why Conservatives in the US are overwhelmingly more Christian (percentage-wise) than liberals - they already have a place of worship. Secular Liberals didn't, until they found the state.

 

See the goal here is to turn 'liberals' and atheists into statist sheep at the mercy of a cult, lead astray by our religious clerics like Ted Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barak Obama. Liberals have drank the 'Kool-Aid', while conservatives are independent-minded thinkers.

 

You do that, Murikawins. Whatever makes you feel better. I don't get it, but that's fine. I'm sure some people will agree with you.

 

Wrongo! I made it pretty clear I don't see any difference between Conservatives who practice Christianity and Secular Liberals who worship the State. Neither of the two groups (I put myself in the former category) are "sheep".

 

Independently drinking from the hope and change Trump trough. Trumps ideology is religious too. He a money changer from the New Testament, and a Muslim with several wives.

 

. That is because your ideal is a conservative who is not religious. They are the ones who do not 'worship' at all. Its bull(*)(*)(*)(*). There no reason to assume a liberal is any different from a conservative. Secularists do not worship anything. They believe something.

 

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There are always a few of those.

 

Huh? I just said I'm a Christian...the whole point of the thread is that everyone worships something.

 

Everyone does not worship something. That's unsupported nonsense. I worship nothing. Never have. There you go. Proven false.

Politicians deal with law.

Religions deal with spirituality.

You seem to be having difficulty accepting these universally known facts.

 

But they don't. Everybody believes something. Every belief held or acted upon is not being worshiped. Stop trying to turn the secular into the religious for your convenience. If you expand your set of beliefs by presupposing a non material supernatural existence or the presence of a diety or several, you are no longer working in the world of secular beliefs. It does not matter what role those supernatural dieties may function in your life or society. the fact your reach outside of our known world for them is basic to the definition of religion.

 

State and liberalism are not religions, or farts whenever you feel sick because nobody wants you and seeking help from the God The Terrible. State is a divine idea brought down to big man and you can see that a small man cannot stay in the state structure and Liberalism is not chaotic thinking of whatever you want but responsibility of the big man that is ready to judge in the world events. State and liberalism are not a raw in the shop, not a 'piazza'.

 

I wouldn't call it a religion. It's more of a cult. Like when Jim Jones told his followers to drink the koolaid, they all did type of cult. They don't have their own thoughts...

 

Calling liberalism a "religion" is simply ignorance of the English language.

The answer is in your dictionary.

Although if you do want to classify it as a religion, it warrants all sorts of legal benefits from that classification.

 

The problem with such an inclusive definition is that it describes everything, which means that it really describes nothing. College football meets the definition, and I don't think it is very useful to compare a "belief" in a sports team to what religions represent.

The idea that Christianity and agnosticism are equivalent in terms of their reliance on faith-based propositions is incorrect. Beyond the faith-based proposition that solipsism is false, if you want to go that far down the rabbit hole, agnostic positions don't assume any more than they have to. Religious people make numerous assumptions about the world that can't even be tested. For instance, when an agnostic makes a claim about the nature of sin or morality, they are making claims about how human beings with brains that evolved by natural selection operate, not appealing to supernatural causes that cannot be tested. My evidence for a deity I created five minutes ago is equivalent to the evidence religious people have for their chosen deities, which is to say none--it's pulled out of thin air. The reason you are equating the two is because many so-called agnostics have indeed succumbed to the allure of fantasy and replaced Christianity with egalitarianism.

I agree that liberals have something similar to a religion, but it isn't exactly religion and isn't predicated on worship of the state. The faith-based propositions liberals have adopted are the ideas of universal morality and egalitarianism. Much like traditional religion, they are based on factually incorrect propositions in the case of the former and unfalsifiable hypotheses in the the latter.

"- When you have no belief system - you must find one. Some of us like to pretend we're nihilists/moral relativists - the reality is we've been conditioned over the millions of years to need some sort of grounding. Right from wrong, in other words."

Some of us really are. I will actually link to a thread in which I basically lay out my moral philosophy, if you can even call it that. It is based on pure materialism and requires no supernatural appeals. I'm actually thinking about re-posting it and seeing if I can get anyone to rebut my positions:

http://www.politicalforum.com/religion-philosophy/447741-sam-harris-anyone-3.html

By the way, I'm not trying to take a condescending attitude toward you, and I know that many religious people are certainly more "enlightened" than many of those who claim to be agnostics, especially you. Silly people who are just using agnosticism to harass Christians should stay out of the debate altogether, and I can totally understand why you don't have much respect for agnostics or atheists in light of their behavior.

Leftism has taken on that quality in recent years, though it isn't quite like Christianity. The egalitarianism has especially gotten to the point of absurdity.

I basically agree with you.

 

Similarities between political philosophy and religious doctrine does not equate the two. One can be a good Samaritan and an atheist.

 

Of course. Morality is just an all-inclusive word for pro-social emotions, and anyone can have that--it isn't derived from holy texts.