Brandon Buck _BB_

Oh sorry, I get what you meant now. The rightful owner statement would be similar to the government owning the citizen. But the minutia of property rights kind of removes us from the metaphorical representation to an analagous comparison. For the layman, it's enough to point out that taxation mirrors tithing in that you are expected to pay it because you allegedly owe it for services rendered but not requested. To go into it any further than that would dilute the meaning of the excercise. That level of comparison is the go to place when someone attempts to refute a metaphor. For instance, the atheist statist would argure that God doesn't actually provide THE ROADZ and the Christian would argue that tithing isn't compulsory. And then both would smugly claim victory. [eyeroll]

Thanks for that but this isn't a property rights discussion. It's a correlation between government and religion from the perspective of how people tend to view them. Specifically, how most atheists tend to view the state in the same manner they formerly viewed their god(s).

Recently, I responded to a thread on an athiest forum wherein the author was lanmenting how religion is being used to restrict her freedoms. She's a twenty year old student who lives at home and her mother is a fundie Christian preacher. She mentioned how happy she will be when she gets out of her mother's house and is able to live freely on her own. So, being the smartass that I sometimes am, I warned her that once she's free from her mother's use of Christianity as a tool of control, there will be another religion people will use to control her, which has all the requisite tools of control that religion does. Of course, someone asked what I meant and another poster (whom I've debated statism with) responded that I was talking about taxation. To his credit, he went on to say that I presented a lot of sound arguments but that my position is a bit too optimistic for his tastes, but that's inconsequential. My answer to him was thus: I didn't become an A because I hated T. I became an A because the power of G is illegitimate, abusive and destructive. Legend: A= atheist or, anarchist T= tithing or, taxation G= gods or, governments And then I got to thinking... has someone put together a comprehensive, allegorical comparison between statism and religion? If so, can you share a link to it? If not, can you all help me devise a list of similarities? Stef has done a great job of this in a podcast but I think it would be nice to have a graphic with some side by sides, preferrably with the same beginning letters, as in the above.

I think that's what they think Somalia is like. I agree. But even if that were happening in Somalia, which in some ways it is, it isn't a reflection of anarchy.

"He struggled from birth with mental illness," Right. And this woman suffers from a strange neck illness...

Unfortunately, there has been another college campus attack, although this prepetrator used a knife rather than a gun. From what the story says, it is suspected that the kinfe was an Ex-acto, although that isn't confirmed, to my knowledge. It's sad to say but I can already see this event causing the gun control crowd to crow even louder, especially if the two victims in critical condition survive. Story here.

I've had some doozies pulled on me but my all time favorite was when Jan Helfeld explained to Stef that without the state, corporations would drive tanks down the roads of neighborhoods, point their guns a the front doors of random houses and demand all the owners' money. I was like... daFUQ did he just say? And then I wondered why I was surprised. [dazed]

Can you clarify how “initiation” is different from “use”? And how would that change the author’s point? Sorry, but I’m a bit confused - they both seem the same to me. If the NAP proscribes the use of force, it proscribes self defence. If I use force to defend myself from attack, I have not initiated its use, the attacker has. In the case of Rothbard's hypothetical starved child... if I have knowledge that a child is locked in a house being starved, I am no longer a moral actor when I forcibly enter the other person's property in order to remove the child to safety. In simple terms, I've used force but I've not initiated it.

“Clearly, to give money out on the front end right after a disaster, when many of these people lost everything, with a promise to do something down the road, I think is counterproductive to what the program was designed to do,” says Montoya. Really? That's kinda how the state does things, isn't it? Takes our money and makes promises down the road... But yeah, those coon asses spent the money on crawfish, Bud Light, Mardi Gras beads and fishing tools. But hey, if the federal government hadn't given it to them, it would have just gone to waste.

Violence is not the inevitable outcome of conflict. True, it is the most common outcome in this world where violence is so commonly used, but that doesn't mean it is inevitable. I would also argue that the mimetic conflict Girard explains isn't problematic in and of itself. If it's two children and a newly discovered toy, the assumption might at first be that the second child wants the toy simply because the other child has it. A sort of greed to have what aothers have, as it were. However, what I see there is one child not wanting to miss out on the fun the other child is going to have with the new toy. And what's wrong with wanting to have fun? If it's two rationally reared children, the conflict will be resolved by sharing and the end result will be both kids having fun with the same toy. And... perhaps the toy maker will get to sell another toy after the parent of the second child sees that it is providing so much joy. Ultimately, there are any number of different ways that conflict can be productive. I can't help but think of George Carlin's Ten Commandmants bit where he explains that coveting actually drives the free market. As Oedipus goes, Freud was observing a population of people who were reared in utterly brutal circumstances. I don't dispute that my son saw me as a competitor for his mother's affections at some point in his development but there is no plausible explanation whatever for assuming that it had anything to do with sexual desire. Like I explained above, he was a kid who saw some fun/affection being had and like all other children, he wanted to have as much he could have of it. Fortunately, he was never denied any affection from his mother. Like with the toy above, we shared. And the conflict that could have been never was.

If we're inherently violent, then mimetics doesn't work very well. i.e., if I'm born with violence as my nature, there isn't much Stef and people like him can do to make me peaceful. I don't know if you actually got that bit from Girard or not but in any case, I strongly disagree that we're inherenty violent. We are inherently self centered and because of that, we can be moved to violence as a means to an end but in as much as human nature is concerned, we are actually more prone to peaceful means than we are violent ones. The simple reason for this is that violence is always dangerous and any being that is self centered is also risk averse, for obvious reasons. But we are also mimetic, for sure. We learn from our environment and as such, if we're reared in an unsafe, violent environment, we will be violent. Likewise, if we're reared in a safe and comforting environment, we will be empathetic, compassionate and non violent. From the rest of the excerpts you provided, it seems to me that his thesis is based solely on the observation of adult or, already learned behavior and that's not a very good foundation for determining how society can move toward a more peaceful existence. If we presuppose that people are always going to behave the way people behave today, the only options we have for any semblance of liberty involve the use of force, which effects exactly the opposite of what it purports to do. Instead of focusing on how adults behave and how we could change their behavior, we have to focus on why adults behave the way they do. We can't change that which is already carved but we can change that which hasn't been carved. In my opinion, this focus on the why is what separates Stef from every other libertarian activist and philosopher who has been before him. He has been the doctor who actually looked for the cause of the cancer rather than focusing on the treatment. We need to treat the cancer once we have it but in the end, the patient always dies. We have to prevent it in order to effect real change.

A science teacher in an Idaho town is being investigated after parents complained that he used the word vagina while teaching a class on reproduction.... to tenth graders. The science teacher in questions maintains that the sex ed class he was teaching is not compulsory and he said that he only teaches it because the health teacher refuses to. Read the entire story here.

I like the table of contents metaphor, although I agree that it could use some polishing. Welcome to the forum!

A German shoe company has found that pakages sent via US Postal Serrvice are ten times more likely to not reach their destination if boxed with its signature atheist logo tape... http://io9.com/packages-sealed-with-atheist-tape-go-missing-10x-more-460984925

"The report suggests that the much-touted Welfare to Work policies of the 1990s that appeared to successfully move welfare recipients off the public dole may have been a mirage."

Am I to understand that you don't have a specific claim to examine? If not, that's fine but I'm just wondering. I also agree with your last statement here but I'm a bit hesitant to entertain any religion's truth claims. That's not to say I'm unwilling to consider a supernatural event experienced by a religious person but to consider X, Y or Z religion's truth claims is, in my opinion, a wild goose chase. Religions make a ton of truth claims about a ton of things and frankly, all of them I've ever read about are based on the same false premise.

Ah, well, it appears I owe you an apology as well. I didn't mean any ill intent with the word obsess. I did mean to use the word obsess but clearly, you and I don't have the same reaction to the word. In any event, you didn't cause me to challenge my world view but that doesn't mean you can't. I've changed my world view so many times in my life that most of the people I know think I may be insane, and I think a lot of the folks here can sympathize with that. Most people aren't open to new ideas so changing a world view is foreign to them. If you have specific examples, I'm happy to explore them with you.

With all due respect, I've resorted to none of the tactics I've been accused of and to boot, I haven't put words in your mouth. It is you who did that. To wit: "It's not enough that some sick people are cured; EVERYBODY has to be cured!" Really? I didn't say anything of the sort. Should I not read that as ridicule, sarcasm or at least a bit snarky? We can continue this discussion or you can bow out, either is fine with me. However, for future reference, please understand that I will never ridicule you or level personal attacks. I will be blunt, direct and honest with my positions but I'll not attack you or anyone else. And if I do come off as rude or if I am proven wrong, I will apologize and/or acknowledge my mistake accordingly.

I didn't say they aren't extraordinary. I said they aren't magic. And no, everybody doesn't have to be cured. But let me ask you, if aspirin only cured on in a million headaches, how many bottles of aspirin do you think Bayer would sell? All of the claims you report as supernatural possibilites are, in fact, anomolies of the human body. They're all internal and there is a ton of knowledge about the internal workings of the human body that we simply don't yet have. That we don't understand them isn't a reason to credit the supernatural. You can if you like but doing so is an impediment to finding a real answer. And no, I haven't moved the goalposts. I maintain that gods and ghosts do not exist. It is you who keeps adding events and explanations in order to prove your point. If you're certain, then lay out your best case first and save everyone the time of arguing point by point. []

No, we have documented cases that some people who were misdiagnosed as terminal have visited religious sites. Has an amputee ever been cured at a religious site? Billions of sick people have visited these sites with no positive results, so if this handful of cases are indeed supernatural, it is far too undependable a thing to obsess over, don't you think?

"I don’t care how wacky the brain can be~" When I read that excerpt, what I extract from it is: "I don't want to know what really happens, I want affirmation that it's superatural".

Extraordinary evidence that you're wrong? The human brain. We still do not understand how the brain processes information or how consciousness even works. We can tell which parts of th brain are responsible for certain emtions but we don't know how those parts interact with the other parts and we cannot tell how one neuron communicates with another... other than electrochemically. That being said, those of us who do not accept that the supernatural exists don't actually have proof of that negative but, when we can explain the above, we will. We do know enough about the brain to know that it facilitates belief in the supernatural and, we can demonstrate that phenomena repeatedly. We also know that the brain causes people to think... they can fly.... they are Jesus... they are Yosimite Sam... et al. We know that the brain constructs "movies" for us to view while we are sleeping and we know the brain can fool us into thinking a man on a stage can pull a quarter from behind a child's ear. We also know that people share a lot in the way of environment, so it's no surprise at all that two people could think they saw the same thing that they didn't actually see. Again... the magician fools hundreds at a time. In the end, you can choose to believe accounts of events and beings that science has never, ever been able to observe with any sort of instrumentation and that cannot be repeated or, you can accept that the human brain is an extraordinary illusionist.

You've asked no question. I see assertions, insults and demands but I see no curiosity.

You've already learned how and you don't agree with it. In fact, you've mocked it.

The problem with that argument is that we have no way to know how a business owner would structure his pricing in the absence of sales tax. The likelihood is that due to competition, the prices of goods would not go up and thus, profits would not go up. Ulitmately, the compulsory nature of the tax is all one needs to demonstrate in order to prove it is not voluntary. I disagree. There is another side to the equation. Although it's a very small amount, when there are taxes on goods, it will inevitably reduce demand for that product. In Michigan, there is a $.06/$1 sales tax. So, that means that every customer must pay $.06/$1 more than they would have given there was no tax. This amount is not very significant, but it does add up. Any profits a business does not make because of government (regardless of how small the profits or government is) is still wrong. Government should not be able to take any money from you because you are not consenting of the government, regardless of the fallacious social contract. I'm sorry, I didn't think about that when I responded. You're correct, if taxation causes consumers to spend less, that reflects negatively on the overall profits of businesses. I was thinking from a profit margin perspective only.