Because you used AI to build one?A lot to unpack here, but there's really only one bit that's worth discussing with you:
That's a strawman. Why did you write it?AI Generated Content
England headed for A Caliphate
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Bomb#20
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Because you used AI to build one?A lot to unpack here, but there's really only one bit that's worth discussing with you:
That's a strawman. Why did you write it?
What the bejesus are you on about? How do you figure what I used AI to build was a strawman?Bomb#20
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Speaking of what the bejesus are you on about, in what sense is Dr. Z "tolerating" those people? Are you blaming him for not flying here from Denmark to focus his life on fixing American politics? And where the bejesus did he say you should treat all Muslims the same, or treat any secular, liberal Muslims as terrorists?
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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A lot to unpack here, but there's really only one bit that's worth discussing with you:
That's a strawman. Why did you write it?
Don2 prompt said:
DrZoidberg
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Are you seriously crediting Marx with the idea of letting poor people vote?!? Where do you get this stuff? Educated people had been advocating "universal manhood suffrage" at least since the English Civil War in the 1640s. It was actually put in place during the French Revolution. Most U.S. states did away with property qualification for voting long before 1848; Vermont never had it at all. Marx wasn't even original about giving women the vote -- that idea goes back to the American Revolution. Once the electorate was expanded to all people, that wasn't Marxism that had conquered, but Liberalism. Marx was just half-heartedly cheering from the sidelines while simultaneously calling elections "deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament".
I suggest asking ChatGPT about what Marx meant. You seem to have trust issues when I say it.
The reason Marx didn't like liberal democracy is because those parliaments tend to be dominated by the middle-class elite (what he called the bourgeoise). This btw is still the case. The core of Marx's message is that when people are empowered they tend to serve themselves. Since most people are poor, Marx argued, only poor people should be in power. This is what he meant by the "dictatorship of the proletariate". He didn't have a solution for how this was to be achieved.
He understood that if there's a communist revolution and members of the working class takes power this will form a new aristocracy. He wanted, whatever system is put in place, to make sure leaders (on every level) are only ever recruited by the least empowered.
BTW, just to be clear. I don't agree this is a good idea. I'm just explaining what Marx meant. He was a prolific writer. We don't need to speculate on what he meant. He explained himself pretty good.
A general problem with Marx's work is that he creates bang on analyses of societal problems without coming with any workeable solution. But that's not worthless. Accurately figuring out what problem needs to be solved is absolutely critical in order to later solve it.
The Paris commune was short lived. They didn't have time to come up with systems to combat corruption or systemic biases. Even if that's what he had in mind it was the start of something, rather than a complete system.
Newton wasn't talking about social change or philosophy. He was talking about science. I'd say they're different domains. And science often comes to inspire philosophy. So clearly this was in the air. That said, Newton was arguably the world's greatest scientific genius. Arguably the greatest genius who has ever lived. So those are good shoulders for Marx to stand on.
Montesquieu, Pitt and Hamilton all thought that wealthy people are more suited to rule. This is a hypocrisy at the core of classical liberalism right from the start. The Enlightenment elite all looked down on the working class and came up with all manner of hoops and rules in order to exclude them from gaining any real power.
Liberals right from the start have seen themselves as a superior elite. I think they, generally, still do.
This is what Marx reacted against.
Marx thought he was doing science. He wasn't. He was a modernist (ie positivist). We don't think like that anymore. We're postmodernists today.
I'm just trying to explain what Marx actually thought and said. I'm not arguing that Marx was right about everything. I don't think he was.
I do think you are wrong about the Arabs though. Christian refugees of weird ideas had been pushed east and south. Jews was spreading all over the Middle-East. Judaism was turning into a version of Christianity in this period. Islam is very similar to Nestorian Christianity. The Quran has plenty of Nestorian hymns copied verbatim. The Arabs couldn't possibly have been more primed to adopt Islam. Remember... they started out as Jews or Christian. They only became a new religion after winning a lot. Any army in that period who won a lot would have invented a new religion.
Plague had decimated both Rome and the Persians. The only way they could keep fighting was through their Arab client kingdoms.
All it needed was an Arab to say "hey guys, why don't we stop fighting each other and just take it all for ourselves?" Which is exactly what happened.
The guy poised to take over after Mohammed was Ali. Did he? No. Instead the elected the most capable general. That tells you the power of good ideas and how likely they were to come to pass. Ali was only elected caliph after four successor caliphs. He was a terrible leader and was quickly assassinated.
I think analysing the Islamic conquest through a Marxist lens makes a lot of sense. Yes, Mohammed was a military and political genius. But they're not that rare. These people do exist in the world. And people tend to recognise their capacity, so they keep being lifted to the top.
Hmmm.... I think you're looking at it backwards. Whatever religion came upon the innovation to aggressively proselytise and be open to all would win. The question is just who would come up with it first. Electronic consumer products work the same way. Someone comes up with an innovation (anybody could have come up with) and become dominant.
They didn't write it down. There's that.
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DrZoidberg
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All culture is about collaborating with others. To build something together greater than the sum of it's parts. Yes, that's true for Protestantism. But that's also true for every culture and religion that has ever existed. Protestantism is not special in this regard.
I think you're reduced my argument to something so simple that it's trite. And silly. I didn't say that or think it. I recommend going back to look at some of my previous posts. I think I explain myself pretty good.
That has nothing to do with Protestant theology and everything to do with Protestants and Catholics fighting each other to a standoff after a hundred years of determinedly not playing nice with others. But Calvin enthusiastically participated in heresy executions, Henry VIII, Elizabeth and the Stewarts executed subjects for being Catholic, and Edward VI in contrast tolerated Catholics but burned some of his fellow Protestants at the stake for being the wrong kind of Protestant. America's founding myth is the Protestant Puritans having to leave England for America in search of religious freedom because of persecution by the Protestant Anglicans; the ugly truth is they sailed in search of religious freedom to Holland, found it, didn't like it, and then sailed to America to set up their own theocracy, where they persecuted Quakers who'd actually come to America in search of religious freedom. As for Luther, his anti-Jewish rants are legendary, and they echoed down the ages. In Sweden it was a crime for a Christian to convert to Judaism right up until 1951.
As far as turning Islam protestant goes, it's a little late for that -- Islam was protestant from the get-go. It has the same theological emphasis on the authority and literal truth of scripture, the same contempt for the appeals to reason and natural law so prominent in Catholic theology, and the same every-preacher-for-himself fragmentation. Here are a couple of good articles on it.
Islamic Counter-Reformation - First Things
Here in the West, one response to the growth of militant extremist Islam has been to suggest that Islam needs a “reformation”—that is, some kind of reform and renewal....firstthings.com
Why Islam doesn’t need a reformation | Mehdi Hasan
Those who are calling for a ‘Muslim Martin Luther’ should be careful what they wish forwww.theguardian.com
If Islam got a Martin Luther of its own, "To whose door will the 95 fatwas be nailed?"
They'd just do what the Buddhists in China did. They took Buddhism, scraped it clean from it's content and replaced it with protestantism. Buddhist on the surface. Protestant on the inside. In practice it became a blend. But mainline Buddhism now is a version of protestantism. Whenever we look at Buddhism practiced in isolated communities it's all super weird. Why? Because it's original Buddhism.
And why would they do it? In Asia they were all traumatised by European imperialists pushing around their old ancient empires and thought, "if we're to beat the Europeans we need to be more like the Europeans". So they set about Europeanising every facet of society, including religion. To the point where the elite all walked around in top hats.
There might come a time when Arabs get sick of always losing to the westerners. And coming to the realisation that Islam isn't working anymore and need to be more like western religion. BTW, if it hadn't been for the sudden importance of oil to the world, I am convinced this shift would have happened by half a century ago. People like winning. Intelligent people model their behaviours on the behaviours of winners. That's always been true.
Bomb#20
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Did you not understand the question, or are you refusing to answer it? I didn't ask why the bot wrote it; I asked why you wrote it.A lot to unpack here, but there's really only one bit that's worth discussing with you:
That's a strawman. Why did you write it?
Don2 prompt said:
So instead of explaining why you strawmanned me, you're doubling down, nay, tripling down -- you repeated the same blatant misrepresentation of me twice more. And that's not even counting the additional false claims about me in that paragraph. Reasserting your fabrication rules out the already meager possibility that it was an honest mistake -- if you cared whether you'd misunderstood then you'd have asked. Sayonara.
[And no, declining to address Don's failed attempt at a substantive counterargument is not an evasion -- there's no point in engaging on substance with a guy who doesn't argue in good faith. If somebody else thinks there was a good point embedded somewhere in Don's post, let me know and I'll explain why it wasn't.]