No. That' s NOT the poll question. Not this month, anyway.
The new poll question is:
IN THE MODERN ERA, WHICH IS MORE DANGEROUS:Please cast your vote, at the top to the right.
Science infected with politics?
or
Religion infected with politics?
Feel free to comment on your vote in the comments section.
Let's play ball!
14 comments:
More dangerous than either is poor science masquerading as religion, infected with politics.
Easy.
Politics infected with religion.
Where's Luther or Roger Williams when we need him?
JJ, that's a pretty good summary of what I mean by "science infected with politics." But of course, the question is open to interpretation.
Not hard.
A king and a witch doctor are very dangerous in concert.
When a "religion" uses the police power of the state to search out and destroy enemies, the persecutions are terrifying, unrelenting.
Addendum:
I am surpised that most folks think science infected with politics is more dangerous.
When the following question is posed...
"Who is man's Savior, Christ or the State?".... and the many respond The State.... then relentless mayham and murder result.
A review of simply 20th Century history should be convincing.
Although, with all due respect to Bruce, it really is not an "either or" question.
Whatever mask Satan wears to obscure and deceive is ever frightening.
The words of Christ comfort us...
"Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom..."
PS
I am not Anonymous.
I am Another Kerner who forgot to sign in correctly.
The Addendum is mine.
This happens to me more and more often these days.
:-)
Anon, aka, Another: duly addenda'd.
Interesting take, m'dear! I hadn't thought about it in just that way before.
To balance that out, consider: Science, and its activist offspring technology, can create tools of great mass destruction. Witness, for example, the 20th century.
Is not the choice of "the state" a turning away from religion then? Those who chose the state believed, after all, in the doctrine of the social survival of the fittest.
I think JJ has it about right: poor science, masquerading as religion, infected with politics. Now that is what I call covering all the bases.
Man will worship something, sometimes anything, even science so called.
I take "worship" to be a religious thing.
It was that dialectical materialist Leon Trotsky who was supposed to have said: "God is the State, the State is God."
Some have opined that "evolution" is a religion,very thinly disguised.
It is the State (politics), however,which has control of the weapons.
He who controls the weapons and the engine of the State has the power to destroy.
The brutes are unleashed when they hold the reins of political power.
Of course politics infected with religion certainly has the problems pointed out here, but if Bruce meant religion infected with politics, it's a whole different, rather wimpy, monkey- It seems to me religion infected with politics has always just devolved into an empty shell which tries to hold onto some semblance of meaning to its practitioners, but just ends up passing away once the political ideology it was infected with falls out of fashion. No one really cares that it goes away since anyone who stuck with it wasn't really in it for the religion anyway.
Science infected with politics, on the other hand, ouch. I won't infect this conversation with politics by mentioning anything newer than Eugenics.
On the bright side, since science infected with politics is bad science, the facts of the world eventually demonstrate it to be wrong, given enough time and non infinite resources to maintain the flawed paradigm (communist economics...).
Yikes, Scott....
Ideas have consequences.
The Marxist paradigm has been described as the "Evil Empire"... an apt title, I think.
The Marxist/Stalinist idea resulted in the death 8 million Kulaks in the Ukraine alone and millions more enslaved and murdered across the entire planet before "communist economics" was noted to be a "flawed paradigm".
I guess it depends on what a person means by dangerous.
I'd heard it depends upon what a person means by "is". Heheheh.
See? This is the trouble with polls. It is almost impossible to post a question that people universally understand.
If someone could point out where religion infected with politics is dangerous, and not the converse, I'd appreciate the example.
Lutheranism infected with left wing politics is hardly dangerous, in the way question was addressed.
Genetics, on the other hand, infected with politics, has a pretty clear record of danger.
The point on communist economics is NOT that it isn't dangerous, quite the contrary- only that it is ultimately self correcting because it eventually has to pass basic tests against observations. Which it failed.
I only blame the poster of the poll for any confusion, since he worded the poll differently than he posed the question!
Well, if this is the most confusion (meaning: only one person is confused here) that I've ever caused, I'd be amazed. Confusion, mayhem, disorder: my work here is done.
Scott, however, does make an interesting distinction. If I had said Politics infected with religion, he would have thought "theocracy" right? I think that is what I meant.
I perhaps could have posed the question thusly: Which is more dangerous in the modern era: theocracy or faux science in the service of political interests?
But that would have confused a whole different segment of the viewing public...
I still think Jacobsen nailed the Most Dangerous scenario, in his comment above.
Help me out here, Scott.
I begin to think we might be agreed, and talking around one another....
Or maybe not.
How can evil be "self correcting"?
You mean maybe that eventually folks simply figure out that something ain't workin' right like the Pilgrims after dabbling in socialism throughout a tough first winter?
Yup, Brother Bruce, you have surfaced as a clever pollster.
So, what, pray tell then, do you mean by "politics", other than governance by the few or the many or something in between?
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