FSM / Letter Against the Christians / Cyberspace Rendezvous / Bush as Bible

The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Love it, live it.

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Bryan Caplan, a great market anarchist, also has some things to say about religion, in his "Letter Against the Christians". Some extracts :

Has Christianity elevated people's moral character? I see Christianity as a very negative force here (though like I said, this heavily depends on what is in fact moral). For example, I think that one of our highest duties is to believe what is true; and as a corrolary, we must be objective, intellectually honest, open-minded, and look for disconfirming as well as confirming evidence for our beliefs. And I will say that Christianity has been the major opponent of this virtue: even in today's "liberal" atmosphere, Christian religions inculcate irrationality, dogmatism, close-mindedness, and emotionalism.

In the long run, we aren't going to eliminate poverty by giving charity to people; we have to increase our total production. And this is another area where Christianity is, on the whole, a sinner. (...) Christianity focuses almost exclusively on redividing a fixed pie of wealth, never on producing more.

Graeco-Roman culture was much more tolerant than Christianity. They focused a lot more on economic growth and earthly progress. They usually believed in reason and science, even if some of their methods were poor. And they were far from amoral: such noted moralists as Aristotle, Epicurus, and Epictetus arose from classical civilization, and they were widely read, at least among the educated classes.

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I have included Cyberspace Rendezvous on our list of links for a while. It is a pleasant blog, but for some reason his comments sections don't work. You can post comments but they never show up. Sometimes I disagree with things he says and can never comment. Isn't that awfully annoying ? I can't even email him to ask why. I'm thinking of taking the link down.

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I know I'm really extending this mish-mash edition by adding a fourth point, but have you noticed Bush officials saying that what he said about reducing energy dependance was a "metaphor" ? What a wonderful example of the Christian worldview. To the Christian, nothing means what it says. And George Bush, after all, is the closest thing we have to Jesus.