[Vision2020] Earmark and intial comments on Ralph's Religion and morality

[Phil Nisbet]

Chas

Hardly.  If one posts an article, it is most common to show the authority of 
the person who is postulating an argument.  You are not likely to go to your 
plumber to get advice on medicine are you?

You ask, Chas, that we not look at Paul's other loony notions.  Do you 
commonly give credence to authors who make otherwise crazy statements?  If, 
for example, Charles Manson or John Hinckley Jr. were to write a piece 
supporting atheism, would you deal with their writings in the same light as 
a real scholar?

Mr. Paul hides who he is under the banner of being a 'secular humanist', yet 
in all of his articles he is far from open and is in fact a very dogmatic 
atheist.  Ralph seems to share his exclusivist atheist dogmas and therefore 
chooses to credit a person with otherwise very nutty ideas, because he 
supports some of the same dogmas that Ralph does.

A real secular humanist would be more scientific in his or her approach.  
This particular screed by Paul is no more than an atheist evangelicalism 
which starts with the premise that religious faith will result in bad 
societal results.

I ask you Chas, was lack of morality, murder, abortion, violence and gun 
play the mark of Orthodox Jewish Communities?  There can be little doubt 
that within any number of religious orthodoxies, moral values are high and 
society is not falling apart at the seams.  Yet Paul's thesis seems to be 
that because a Hassidic community is orthodox, it will by its nature result 
in very nasty behaviors including such anti-social activity as robbery rape 
murder gun violence and a host of other ills.

Please note that Paul does not even get the stats right.  The religious 
affiliation of the Brits almost exactly mirrors that of the US.  There is 
15% of the population of the USA who are not affiliated with a faith or are 
atheists and the number in England is 17%.

Paul compares numbers of people who say they are affiliated in the USA with 
figures for who actually attend churches, mosques or synagogues in England 
and then suggests that lower rates for abortion, rape, murder and violence 
in the two societies are related to the amoralism of the 'more' religious 
nation.

The truth is that about the same numbers of people actually go to services 
in both nations and Paul was comparing apples to oranges.  America is no 
more or less religious than Great Britain.

Further, the reasons for higher levels of violence in American Society from 
the very beginning of our country are not likely to be laid at the door of 
religious faith.  Initially in our very diverse US religious base, we had 
more atheists and theists and humanists than did Britain, but even in the 
beginning we had a culture with a greater acceptance of drinking, dueling, 
whoring and the rest.


If you look at demographics for the USA, you will find that within the 
country, the greatest numbers of non-affiliated and atheist beliefs are in 
the Western States and if Paul's premise were accurate, one would expect 
that violence would be much restrained in places like Nevada and Idaho.  Do 
you think that that is the case?

And we can readily establish that within any number of orthodox faiths, the 
level of morality is indeed higher and the violence and asocial behavior one 
sees elsewhere is less likely.

We can even look at socialist societies in which atheism is very much the 
rule and the governing principle and ask, were those societies more moral?  
Was Pol Pot’s regime a non-violent bed of roses?  How do you think you would 
have been received in Soviet Russia under Stalin?

West Germany was definitely more religious than was East Germany and yet in 
the combined nation today, the bulk of crime occurs in the Eastern portion.

So, just as he did in his study purporting that the Christians were 
responsible for the Holocaust, Paul avoids cases which show his case to by 
invalid.  Hitler and his henchman were not bible thumpers and I think that 
Paul is shameful for denigrating the many Christians who chose to condemn 
Hitler and shared the same fate in the Concentration Camps as Jews.

A shill is an associate of a person selling a good or service, who pretends 
no association and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The 
intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage other 
potential customers, unaware of the set-up, to purchase said good or 
service.
I am not selling anything Chas.  I do not care what your religion is.  I am 
not selling you salvation or societal bliss.  I am perfectly happy that 
Ralph is an atheist or that Nick is into Eastern Religions or that Rose is a 
Quaker and glad that we have that sort of diversity.

Paul on the other hand is suggesting that if we were only less religious in 
our society, we would be more moral and would as a result have less violence 
and crime and mayhem.  He is trying to act as a customer, a person simply 
giving you scientific data, yet what he is real doing is shilling his point 
of view.

Ralph posts similar arguments from various sources.  He very often posts 
things which are indeed not true with regard to Jewish beliefs and further 
lumps Jewish orthodoxy into the same catergory as evangelical Christianity.

Both Ralph and Mr. Paul are seeking to convert you Chas.  They want you to 
be part of their utopian vision.  They do not seek diversity, they seek 
their brand os secular humanism in exactly the same way that conversion 
oriented religions seek converts.  In order to accomplish their mission, 
they are perfectly willing to denigrate others and not accept their views or 
leave them to their beliefs.  That they sell their bill of goods under the 
banner of science, bothers me, as does their intolerance and disregard for 
inclusivist religious communities.

And I will react as any adult threatened Jew will react, Chas, when 
anti-Semitic remarks and falsehoods about my faith are put forward by any 
group of persons.  Ralph and his ilk see their comments attacking Judaism as 
simply anti-Religion, but anti-Semitism can be both religious and racial or 
simply one and not the other.

Phil Nisbet

>From: Chasuk <chasuk at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Chasuk <chasuk at gmail.com>
>To: Phil Nisbet <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>
>CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Earmark and intial comments on Ralph's Religion 
>and morality
>Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 00:24:38 -0700
>
>On 9/30/05, Phil Nisbet <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > the article being quoted by a man whose main claim to fame is that he is 
>a dinosaur illustrator who worked on Jurrasic Park and is a shill for the 
>athiest cause
>
>My first comment about this thread, formed as a question: does anyone
>else find this sort of sniping childish, and more than a little bit
>tiresome?  My second comment: would you kindly attack the substance of
>Mr. Paul's study, rather than his reputation?  I don't remember the
>Latin which describes this type of fallacious logic; maybe Nick can
>help me out here.  Lastly, in what way is Mr. Paul a "shill" for
>atheism?  Does he in any way disguise his atheism?  If not, then is
>Billy Graham a shill?
>
>I don't know whether Mr. Paul or Billy can be described as "shills,"
>but I could certainly describe you as "shrill."  What is it about
>Ralph Nielsen that gets your hackles up?  I might find it funny, if it
>wasn't so unpredictable, and, well, rather unseemly among us putative
>adults.

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