For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination, a blasphemous inversion of God's dispensation.

How long will it take for this poisonous mindset to disappear? The Enlightenment in the Western world happened a long, long time ago; when will Muslims stop force-feeding themselves a goofy code based on a bunch of goofy myths?

The goofy myth of the Enlightenment is leading Europe over a cliff too.

Europe's current problems -- which are merely a blip in the bigger historical picture -- result from a misguided mutation of Enlightenment thought. It's a mutation that took hold with the French Revolution; specifically, the corrupt notion that equality is more important than freedom.

The real gift of the Enlightenment was man's uncovering of that self-evident truth: individual liberty. It's the development that gave birth to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the American idea. Mankind took a long time -- and lots of painful trial-and-error -- to uncover these important truths. But it happened, because it was inevitable; it was inevitable because truths are just that, and man's capacity for reason eventually brings them to light.

The central premise of Islam is stuck way back in the pre-Enlightenment dark ages. But because they too are men, with human brains, Muslims will eventually come to discard the unenlightened mythology that poisons their own lives (while simultaneously threatening the lives of others). Essentially, the Islamic world is still going through the "painful trial-and-error" part of the process. But an eventual embrace of freedom, a discarding of the destructive mindset, is as inevitable for Muslims -- and the Chinese, and everybody else who's still wrangling their way through it all -- as it was for Western society.

In the long-term picture, mankind will continue to become more free, not less. What you see in Europe, in the Muslim world, in contemporary big-government America, are just temporary troughs in the bigger arc of liberty.

Freedom is not some arbitrary invention. It is a natural state that was simply coated and obscured with multiple layers -- tyranny, monarchy, servitude -- during those times when mankind was still figuring stuff out. The Enlightenment began the process of removing those layers. Mankind, through reason and intellectual growth, will continue to discard them. Because once you know, there's no going back.

tomcat:

That is the misguide. The self-evident truth comes from Judeo-Christianity, not reason.

Well, the particular mythology you cling to just happens to be largely compatible with reason (just ask Aquinas). Outside its mythology, though, Judeo-Christianity is itself an intellectual development.

Anyway, the key point here is the "self-evident truth" part, no matter the route at which it is arrived.

No, the source is all importnant. If it is God granted then it pre-exists the state and every state is required to recognize it or be considered illegitimate. If men aren't Created and are not endowed with rights then the only rights they have are those granted by the state.

If men aren't Created and are not endowed with rights then the only rights they have are those granted by the state.

On this we certainly (and obviously) agree.

How about I tweak my above argument to say this: Judeo-Christian style thought is an inevitable development for all mankind, and thus guarantees a future that points toward more liberty.

I mean, does that work for you? Where we may disagree is that I still assert that reason is the engine. Perhaps Judeo-Christianity helped foster an environment in which reason could begin thriving when it did, but it was still reason that did the work.

Yes, we are endowed with rights -- and that self-evident truth stands regardless Who or what you think did the endowing.

No. Darwinists arrive at the perfectly reeasonable conclusion that Man is just a variant of amoeba and the thought of natural rights would then be nonsense.

Reason can't get you where you need to go.

Darwinists arrive at the perfectly reeasonable conclusion that Man is just a variant of amoeba and the thought of natural rights would then be nonsense.

It is the fact of consciousness that endows man with natural rights. That's the Cliff Notes version, of course, but it's the nut of the argument.

It is not the state but the members of it who endow the rights.

It's like the Masters Golf Club. Nobody thinks that requires a god to be legitimate.

tomcat:

Consciousness?

Harry:

There's no difference in a democracy. And no one has a right to join Augusta.

Consciousness? Yes, consciousness: the awareness of self that humans possess and that other animals do not. (Yeah, yeah, I know my name is "tomcat.")

Whether God created us or we evolved from amoebae (or both), it is our consciousness -- and our ensuing recognition/sympathy that other humans have it too -- that furnishes our natural rights.

Harry's logic is impressive. One could make a case for chattel slavery, forced equality or any number of majority based social arrangements enforced with state coercion using the same reasoning. The one thing he forgets is that the world is not filled only with such reasonable folks as himself. As hard as it may be for Harry to believe, there are some distinctly unreasonable types out there as well. The majority who endows rights, has the power to rescind those rights, unless we can reach a consenus regarding certain rights which are beyond the power of man to either endow or rescind. On what basis could such a claim be made other than by acknowleding a power above man or even the majority of men?

tomcat:

Raise your hand to a dog and see if it reacts--they're aware of themselves.

Huh. I didn't realize dogs react to stimuli.

Sheez, you know what I mean by "consciousness." Come on -- it's not like you to split hairs like that.

Splitting hairs? My point is that you can't derive rights from reason. Your response is "you know what I mean"? I rest my case.

I didn't say rights are derived from reason.

I said it is man's ability to reason that leads him to embrace the truth of natural rights, and to thus exalt individual liberty.

Not sure what the big controversy here is, unless it's some offense you've taken to my calling religion "mythology." Which is certainly a valid reason to be offended, I guess, if one's identity is tightly tied to religious faith.

But for (um) God's sake, the real point I'm trying to make here is that Muslims are still clinging to ridiculous old ideas ("For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination"), but that the inevitability of intellectual evolution will lead them to eventually discard these poisonous notions and lighten the heck up.

They aren't going to stay forever in the dark ages, hurting themselves and others.

No problem with mythology, but the mythology is the only way to derive the rights--the entire philosophical project of modernity is to find a way to derive them through reason and it has failed. They either flow from the myth or from the state. In one case they are eternal and independent of Man--in the other temporary and at the whim of the sovereign power.

For no particular reason that I could think of, while reading this thread, I was suddenly reminded of the poem by William Blake:

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, mock on: ?tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beam divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel?s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton?s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel?s tents do shine so bright.

It's true that a majority in control can do anything, but it can -- and has -- done anything when it appealed to the divine.

There is no crime of secularism that was not anticipated and exceeded by religion.

I defy Orrin to cite any instance in pre-secular Western history (before 1700, let's say, when religion was unchallenged) when a majority did not impose its will on whatever minority was handy.

The so-called restraint of appealing to a deity is a myth. It has never restrained anything, and many, many times it has created new reasons for atrocities that would never have occurred to a secularist.

Harry:

Pre-1700 minorities ruled everywhere.

Tom, pay attention. Orrin is the one who has justified chattel slavery. I'm the one against it.

Orrin, you have confused the point about Augusta golf club. The people in it make their own rules; they don't depend on god.

Getting into the club and getting into the United States follow different procedures in detail, but if a golf club can be self-governing without reference to a deity, anybody can.

Your statement about minorities ruling everywhere pre-1700 makes no sense. I was thinking, especially, however, of Pirenne's discussion of how the bourgeoisie defined itself in "Early Democracy in the Low Countries."

Harry:

No, traditional slavery is morally justified. Chattel slavery is immoral.

The voluntary association of a golf club is not the same, Harry. There is no coercive power involved. Government 101 is still a college subject, I believe. Your reasoning is as stalinist as your political sympathies. Who cares what you think about chattel slavery when a majority disagrees?

Who cared about Garrison?

Oliver Stone.