BTW, can we put the whole referring to the politics of posters here as religious beliefs thing to rest?
Any time you want to stop putting the religiousness of your thought processes on public display, I'll stop referring to them as religious beliefs. Deal?
This is a political forum on an atheist message board, if any of us can be accused of holding our politics religiously, then we all can. That includes the Libertarians, whether they like it or not.
Well, the Libertarians do hold their politics religiously. Not sure why you're making an issue of that, though -- yes, I vaguely recall somebody submitting a couple of libertarianesque arguments to this thread about five hundred posts ago, but he seems to have skedaddled.
Of course, all of us can be accused of holding our politics religiously -- it's a free internet and anybody who likes playing "I'm rubber you're glue" is allowed to -- but not all who accuse another of holding his politics religiously will be able to point out a specific example of religious thinking on his part.
Now then, let's review the bidding, shall we?
Gospel wrote: Yes, everyone who sticks around is subject to and agrees to the laws of the land.
I wrote: An "agreement" is a "meeting of the minds". It happens when someone says "I agree", not when someone says "he agrees".
Gospel wrote: Sooo.... You're saying what exactly?
You wrote: I'm not sure, but it could be that laws have minds, and you need to come to a personal agreement with them before you are subject to them. Seems like a rather odd take to me though.
And to my response to this, you responded: "Given that I said nothing about gods, killing, or neighbors, that would be a very odd take indeed." For pete's sake, man, look at what I wrote! I said nothing about being subject to laws, needing to come to a personal agreement, or laws having minds! You just made up all that garbage and imputed it to me! You patently think it's unreasonable for me to bring up gods, killing and neighbors about your post when you didn't say anything about those; but apparently you think it's perfectly sensible for you to bring up subjection, need, and anthropomorphic laws when I didn't say anything about those! Why don't you subject your own hypotheses to the same level of critical thought you subject mine to?
Well, it's perfectly plain why you don't. It's because I rejected
the metaphysics of your politics, and you hold to your metaphysics
religiously. You thought about the controversy in my exchange with Gospel
exactly like Christians all too often think about exchanges involving Christian political theories. Those of us who've argued with Christians on the net have surely seen arguments run about like this:
Christian 1: We are creations of God; He has every right to control us, as a potter has the right to control his pot.
Atheist: There's no such thing as God.
Christian 1: Sooo.... You're saying what exactly?
Christian 2: It could be that he's saying there was no Divine command so he ought not to be prohibited from killing his neighbor.
Because Christian 2 accepts the
metaphysics of his politics religiously, he fails to distinguish between a challenge to his political view that anti-murder laws should be enforced, and a challenge to the metaphysical opinion that he personally uses to justify his political opinion.
And that's exactly what you did. I challenged Gospel's metaphysics, and you took it as a challenge to a political position, because in your head the political position and the metaphysical belief go hand-in-hand. But that's not a problem with the political position, and that's not a problem with rejection of the metaphysics. That's just a problem with your head. It's okay to outlaw murder in a godless universe; likewise, it's okay to subject people to laws in an agreed-to-laws-less universe. Politics doesn't depend on metaphysics except in the heads of Christians and Libertarians and similar religious folk.
So get your head on straight and put away religious beliefs.