Meditations

[Oleander]

Mr. Rogers was just a great guy in general. If the majority of people were like him, I don't think we would have very many problems.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Unfortunately, the free will got in the way of that.

[Rooster5man]

Or just people having common courtesy, manners, etc. It'd help a lot.

But here's something everyone should know about the president Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54FRMedT_s

LOL, that's amazing. The tune reminds me of Tom Lehrer's "Elements" song.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Its has similarity this tune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1dy44jV8EM

I almost got it down.

[Rooster5man]

That's where it must've came from! See, I never watched Pirates of Penzance

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Neither have I.

[zombyrus]

Unfortunately, the free will got in the way of that.

That reminds me of something I read somewhat recently. In The Brothers Karamazov, one of the characters describes a daydream he had about Jesus's second coming, set in the Spanish Inquisition. The story is called "The Grand Inquisitor."

I'm very intensely abridging it, but essentially (as far as I'm concerned), the story is that the Grand Inquisitor decides to burn Jesus as a heretic, even though he is fully aware that it is actually Jesus. He says that Jesus, in effect, personally damned the tremendous majority of the human race because he gave them the freedom to damn themselves, without giving them any immediate incentive to follow Him. Ideally, every person would be able to find the light himself, but by allowing for free will, Jesus is essentially ignoring humanity's need for guidance, and even if some people could find the truth himself, many more people would not be able to resist temptation.

I'm not exactly doing it justice, but it's considered to be possibly the best argument ever made against Christianity.

[Oleander]

It's a bit misguided to say that there are levels of 'goodness' of arguments against any religion since by definition they are all non-falsifiable (at least the ones I am aware of). You can't really make logical arguments about Christianity because it isn't really a system based on classical logic.
However, I do think that is a *very* interesting story. I'd like to read it myself.

[zombyrus]

I see what you're saying. If you ask me, what constitutes a good argument against a religion is that it shows a contradiction or falsehood of the religion that had not already been thought of. I think it's harder to argue for religion, because religion is sort of on the defensive in such a discussion.

The Brothers Karamazov is considered by a lot of people to be pretty much the best book ever written. I honestly don't feel I got as much out of it as society at large did, but it's got a lot of good stuff.

[Redafro]

The conversation got a bit too long for me to read everything, but I did want to make some comments. I hope my tone isn't too negative, but I'm very discouraged by the negative response to my thoughts.

Well, the government's role in all that is to finance it and distribute resources between schools. The government shouldn't meddle with what is being taught nor should the schools get too intimate with the financiers: that'd get close to corruption. (Also, teachers are experts of education not law). Obviously discourse will take place so that these things can be coordinated, but that is another matter.

I like your drawing the line between education and governance, but I thought you wanted uniformity of education. I believe in uniformity of access to knowledge, but not uniformity of teaching practice. Regional, philosophical, and personal interests should have the freedom to play their part in any "public" education project. I really, however, have a great deal of problem with just being ok with the government we have just because it's better that what has been. There is still monstrosities in all current forms of governance, and I believe there is great room for improvement. To not even discuss possible improvement, or to fail to have any skepticism of our system seems self destructive and narrow minded to me.

Part of my approach is to make the "social contract" John Lock speaks of explicit: no government should have the right to govern without a contract with the individual it claims to govern. This would explicitly legitimize the government, and would make the government explicitly responsible for the services it is suppose to render. As things stand, many leaders do a horrible job and never have to suffer the slightest consequence. Rather, they get all kinds of retirement perks. It seems to me this, and other ideas, are well worth discussing rather than dismissing because our government is good enough.