So the viewpoint I seem to be coming to is that religion is purely a matter of group evolutionary strategy choice. There can't be only one correct way. Religions are purposefully spreading erroneously selfish propaganda (that their way is the correct way) because it is necessary for the optimization of the group evolutionary strategy― refer to my prior posts yesterday on why we need to play this mind control game in order to control defection as an evolutionary strategy.
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We can objectively conclude that leftism is a group evolutionary strategy which results in eventual (but delayed!) self-destruction of large portions of the group, but that doesn't mean it isn't an effective strategy because culling the herd is probably an effective means of refining the gene pool, i.e. by participating in leftism you can gain some leverage if your individual strategy within the group strategy is effective for your genes surviving the periodic culling of collectivism.
With this opinion you are making a "religious" choice of your own. You are committing yourself to the belief that religion is not an objective measure of Truth. This inevitably leads to moral relativism and it is moral relativism that can take you to acceptance of slavery or genocide or "culling the herd" as the effective strategy of alpha males. I do not deny that reason can take you to these conclusions. However, before reason and before logic comes a critical metaphysical choice! Make a different choice and reason will take you in a diametrically opposing direction! Other have highlighted this choice to you before.
iamback, I have read about everything you posted.
Congratulations, you are probably more right them wrong and even the wrong is not caused by your intellect but your lack of humanity.
My main question now is if you want to help everyone or if you only feel bad that you haven't been invited to the predator's party.
l3552 was... essentially arguing that your error is not one of intellect but of metaphysics.
Fix your life? Fix your metaphysicshttp://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/06/fix-your-life-fix-your-metaphysics.htmlMetaphysics are your fundamental assumptions. These are chosen: they were chosen by you (although you probably weren't aware of choosing them, but just passively accepted them).
Fundamental assumptions are chosen - but they are not arbitrary; because the assumptions have consequences. You can choose whatever you want to believe - but sometimes you will not be able to make yourself live-by these chosen beliefs; and other times you will live by them (including thinking by them) such that they lead to nonsensical and therefore self-refuting outcomes.
The trouble is that in a world where people have stopped thinking- and when their assumptions lead to incoherent, nonsensical conclusions, instead of sorting-out their metaphysics - they just stop thinking (easier to do than ever before in human history - due to the ubiquity of mass media and social media).
Anyway - my point is that if you have certain (very common) assumptions, then you will either have a nihilistic, hope-less and despairing world view --- or else you will have to stop yourself thinking about anything serious.
There are innumerable commonly-held assumptions that lead to this: that Man has no free will, that the world is either random and unpredictable or else rigidly predetermined, that nothing exists except what has been described by 'science', that morality is a matter of opinion, that beauty is wholly in the eye of the beholder... oh, there are dozens of such.
Indeed, most of people's primary assumptions nowadays are of a type that lead to nonsensical or incoherent conclusions - so it is futile to complain about the low standard of rational public debate when rational debate is only possible on the basis that people are able and willing to examine and revise their assumptions when they lead to absurd outcomes.
Because perhaps the most absurd modern metaphysical assumption of all is that metaphysics is meaningless and all decisions should be made on the basis of 'evidence'!
Whereas (as quickly becomes apparent in any disagreement) unless there is agreement on metaphysical assumptions then the cannot even be agreement on what counts as evidence, leave aside the matter of evaluating the strength of evidence...