I wasn't speaking of spirituality or inspiration to the billions of people and the hearts he touched with his message. This was about a leader, philospher and revolutionary who failed to deliver at practical methods of managing a large population. Christianity, in all of its good intentions and heart warming stories and parables still cannot provide the motivation for someone to work a low wage job and to the dirty work. The biggest defect in Christianity is that it brought no new laws for humans to follow. I am not trying to advocate any religion over another but as flawed as they may have been, Moses and Muhammad did a half decent job of creating some laws required for people to live by. Look my views are simple. To live on earth, read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. To live in heaven, read the Bible, Quran, Torah or whatever pleases you heart.
Umm... there are plenty of people who sacrifice wealth for Christianity.. Jesus PBUH undoubtedly achieved what he wanted to achieve. Whether that fits today's frame of success is irrelevant. In fact it shows that we have failed him. Because we should just our success by the things he wanted us to do over today's criteria. The purpose of life to a Christian is not to make money or to maximize the rate of developing new technology. S whether Christianity makes you get your ass up in the morning or not is a horriffic measure of its success. Nevermind that if you had in your heart what Jesus PBUH wanted you to have in your heart, you would in fact work hard for something worthwhile with MUCH less regard for monetary wealth.
Most people think, Great God will come from the skies, Take away everything And make everybody feel high. But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth: And now you see the light, You stand up for your rights.
There are many different standards of success and I think in Jesus' case he was using a different standard.
It'd be excellent if the people who namecheck this book also had an adequate understanding of history, and could realize that the conditions of labor and wages in late-eighteenth century England were utterly alien from the economic conditions we have now. The entire idea of capitalism is woefully out-of-date. The only reason it persists as an ideology is because of the influence of hegemonic power. If you are not a billionaire, and you blindly idealize the capitalist system, then you have been suckered. The worst part is that you think it's your own decision.
Again you are minterpreting my commentary on Jesus. I wish not to discuss the divine or argue his message of peace, love and care for humanity. The side I wish to discuss is that of a young carpenter who rose from the lower class (Jews) according to Romans, and became an influencial leader of a group of people. Now the "failure" that I so often cite in my posts is that of a leader who failed to actually establish a system which isn't metaphysical in nature and which can provide humans the structure required to live as a funtional parts of a civilized and ordered society. The harsh reality is the world works well where everyone plays their role no matter how small or insignificant it may be. The flaw in socialism and all forms of collectivism is that if everyone were to share equally in terms of food and wealth then there would be no incentive to produce anything. Everyone would look at someone else to do the work. That is just human nature, we look to make the most of our time and labor with the least amount of energy expenditure. What I am trying to get to is that you can tell people till infinity on how to love, share and look after his fellow man but you can't force him into doing so. Thus there must be an external variable, what we call "INCENTIVE". For religions, its mostly the thought of going to heaven and the fear of being forsaken to hell for eternity. However, in real world situtations all people do not have the same beliefs and desire as others. So in order to intice them to do something you must provide material incentive. That is where Capitalism takes over and excels with the simple condition to which man must live, that is his desire to accumulate private property. Thus, in that sense all religions fail to solve that basic need of man. You must feed the stomach before the soul. That is the reality of our existence on this planet whether we like it or not and keep denying it in hope of greater purpose. Now I do agree the soul needs nurishment as well for humans to survive, thus we seek the divine and spiritual connection, desperately hoping to make sense of time and space around us.
Jesus never said anything of the sort. What he did say was not to neglect the poor and not to be so blinded by greed that material possessions rule your life. For the record Christian capitalists are among the largest givers of charitable donations in the world.
For the record Christian capitalists, particularly in the US lobby quite successfully for massive tax cuts for themselves that cut services to the poor and lower middle class in an amount dwarfing their charitable contributions by a huge margin. This explains why the poor and middle class have a higher standard of health and living in Western Europe where the folks are less Christian. This is not to say that a form of Christianity not opposed to social justice could not do better than is done in the US-- at least in theory, though yet to be shown in practice. In Scandinavia some Christians are proud to pay taxes to their welfare state as their Christian duty to the less fortunate.
I am now very tired of your condescending attitude toward the faith of many people, including myself. You would do very well to familiarize yourself with the proverb regarding judging not. Believing that excessive taxation in the hopes that the poor are helped is a bad way to help the poor does not make somebody a hypocritical Christian. Perhaps you should take a cue from Deckard earlier in this thread. You can make your point without assailing somebody's faith or integrity. The faster you learn that, the more effective your arguments will be.
I agree on the negative attacks on faith. However to continue the civilized discussion i hoped this to be, it doesn't have to do with the taxes. It has to do with the de humanizing things that the rich capitalists do to the working poor and the conditions they are put in, in order to gain the capital.
This isn't exactly the working conditions of the industrial revolution. Several years ago, I worked for several months in a factory. We weren't exactly suffering. Pretty good conditions and plenty of breaks.
1) Failure implies that there was an attempt, that is where your logic is flawed. 2) Feeding the stomach before the soul will create greed and dissatisfaction. A nice example to contrast this is Ramadan for Muslims. Teaches you how to feed your soul without actual food. Teaches patience, gives you a slight taste of what it feels like to be really hungry. Abstinenece from sex, food, drink, drugs, everything. It is you and your soul and you start nourishing it by thanking God, praying, reading inspiring stories, doing good deeds, etc etc.. By the end of it, you come out appreciating every meal, and confident of your soul. Thus, in that sense capitalism fails to solve that basic need of man. You must feed the soul before the stomach. That is the reality of our existence on this planet whether we like it or not and keep denying it in hope of satisfaction through temporary consumption. Now I do agree (obviously) the stomach needs nourishment for humans to survive, so we seek a hard-earned buck, desperately hoping that feeding the stomach (consumption) will also fill the humongous gap left by a lack of spiritual connection and soul nourishment. Unfortunately, the nature of money for a pure capitalist is such that the gap will grow expnonetially bigger with each dollar consumed. Thus it will never be filled. This is apparent in lots of places. Look at these new indeces showing the "happiness" of a country. As difficult as it is to measure these things, one can't deny that these lists almost always look like the upside down version of the richest countries in the world lists. The solution, then, is to not have that gap in the first place. The way to do that is to nourish your soul and make sure it's strong enough to handle the temptations of excessive wealth. But Jesus PBUH will be back one day for the most epic "I told you so" the world will ever witness. Till then, we need to just keep trying to figure out a way in which the benefits (not only financial benefits) of capitalism, socialism and communism can be combined to form a new breed.
Well now your conservative political views on taxation are somehow due to your religion. I assume you are sincere in this assertion, but I don't believe they come from Catholic teachings. As an alumni of a Catholic grade school, middle school, high school and university I would ask you to cite Catholic teaching on this issue to support your position on taxation as a way to fund social services for the poor and lower middle class.
To follow up on Mathloom's post I think you are judging Jesus by the wrong standards. What you are really looking at is a question of values and if the values you are judging Jesus on is creating an economic system then obviously Jesus failed but I don't think that was what Jesus was about. I'm not a Christian but from my own limited understanding of Jesus was that he wasn't making an argument for a particular economy or even a system of governence but arguing for a change in values that placed spirituality above material pursuits. That could be interpretted as a critique of Capitalism but my own take on it is that whatever the economic system Jesus' message was that those are secondary to having a right value system. You also have to consider the time Jesus lived in. Politics, economics and religion weren't as seperate as we consider them today so Jesus does touch upon those issues but I don't think those are completely analogous to a modern view of things. Similar discussions could be made about any ancient philosopher but you have to consider the context. To say that Jesus was a failure since the didn't create an economic system or political system that people followed would be like saying Jesus is a failure since he didn't invent the airplane. Jesus didn't seem to care that much about economics or politics, although he mentions them, but values. Considering we are still debating his message 2000 years later I would say he suceeded in that message.
The point is its not the governments responsibility to tax and distribute wealth. As a matter of fact you can argue that since the "New Deal" and the "Great Society" disasters of government meddling, conditions have gotten worse for the very people who they intended to control, I mean help. Also, the divide between rich and poor has gotten larger since both these plans are intended to keep the poor suckled to the government teet and strip all motivation and dignity away from their victims. Pop quiz hot shot? If Europe is so great then why doesn't everyone in America want to go there? Oh wait because they have higher taxes, higher cost of living, less moral standards, and no self reliance.
I think many Americans would want to work in Europe given the strength of the Euro and Pound versus the US Dollar. At the same time its not everyone in Europe wants to come here too to enjoy our less regulated system. Personally I would want to go Europe for the less moral standards.
Well said Pastor Rocketsjudoka. Great sermon. Jesus cared about how money was used, how it was earned (honesty?), how it was valued (justly) but as far as how much of it one accumulates- that never was an issue. In fact when a poor widow gave 2 cents in the temple treasury Jesus pointed out that she was giving everything she had to God and said her gift was larger than all the others. All the things Jesus was successful for happened in the hearts of people. His followers were unselfish, generous and honest.
I love how you took my words and created a whole new point of view and I will tell you are mostly right we need the spiritual connection with the higher power. Some men call that "salvation" and we are all looking for it in the end. But since the argument was about economics hence "Christian Capitalist" which in itself is ironic and contrary to what Jesus preached. Nonetheless, in speaking of capitalism, a man of strong faith such as you might see it as just pure greed and human exploitation. However the undeniable truth is that in all of its evil and promotion of material selfishness, this system does feed billions of mouths every day and compels people to contribute labor in order to achieve a decent standard of living. Capitalism in purest form is the basic desire to maximize your time and labor for the highest reward possible. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Your reward is heaven, mine is freedom to live comfortably in the world while still helping people around me and giving away more than just money such as my time, kindness and generosity. The difference is in the end I don't want anything in return. No paradise, no virgins, nothing. I just want to turn into ash or some form of energy and travel away into the dark emptiness of the universe. Your viewpoints based nominal value "billionaire" alone fails at the point where historically capitalism was never based on benchmark value of wealth. Another failure is to realize that the richest men in the world so called "billionaires" are mostly first generation self made entrepreneurs. Gates, Buffet and Helu are all what they are because of capitalism. Now the real beauty is that this hedgemonic power is also responsible for the largest donations in history to charitable causes Gates and Buffet Foundations. Futhermore your historical inqury into capitalism is inaccurate. Perhaps I can push you in the right direction. Read about the middle ages, feudalism, famine of the 14th century, mercantilism etc... All of which led to the rise of capitalism. The greatest short-coming in your historical studies is the concept of Private Property which has been discussed in details by Locke, Hobbes, Smith and Hume. Without the rights to private property, man is deprived of his his labor and time, and is a mere slave to to his master: human or divine illusion.
ghettocheeze: It's fairly obvious that you didn't understand my post - people who profess the virtues of capitalism as an ideology treat the idea as a permanent one - without factoring in the great deal of historical change that has taken place since the formulation of capitalism. The changes that have occurred over the past 250 years have altered how humans live to such a degree that the capitalist ideology no longer accurately responds to modern conditions. It only persists as an ideological smokescreen for those who are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo. No, but the continuation of capitalism, the failed ideology that it is, continues based on the influence wielded by those institutions who have the most to gain from perpetuating the myth of the 'free market'. What exactly are you arguing here? Gates, Buffet and the like may be what they are because of capitalism, but millions of people living at or near poverty level, people who can't afford health insurance, can barely pay their bills, can't afford to attend college and face the prospect of a life of drudgery that they will more than likely bequeath to their heirs are also where they are because of capitalism. And pointing out that some wealthy dudes contribute money to charity doesn't mean much when the system that made them wealthy is the reason why we need charity in the first place. This is such a vague argument that I wonder whether you even know what all these phrases mean, but the condescension is cute. Your understanding of capitalism here is far too general - but, I'd imagine, if you link all these things to the rise of capitalism you may as well go back to the first time that someone traded one good for another, right? So, early homo sapiens must have been practicing capitalism then - and that means it's always been here and is therefore just and natural! Come on. You can play connect the dots with just about anything with these broad categorizations and vast expanses of time. Did you know that Silly Putty is directly related to the clay tablets of the ancient Mesopotamian cultures? As for the "greatest short-coming" in my historical studies, I'd like to point out that many other people than the ones you recited have dealt with the concept of private property, and not all of them with glowing reviews - but all these ones are from the 17th/18th centuries. I'm sure you could drop many more names in there - but Locke, Hobbes, and the others sent their ideas out into the world of their times - and we no longer live in their world. That is, unless, you prefer the completely ahistorical view that they somehow expounded eternal truths that remain true no matter how much the world changes - and that perspective doesn't speak well for your own ability to think historically. But, far be it from me to be condescending. The rights to private property mean little in a world were so few have the means to express those rights. It's like telling people they have the right to live on the moon. And most men are now being unfairly compensated for their labor and their time and, as one will quickly find when one doesn't have enough to pay for basic expenses, are wage-slaves to the capitalism system (even though, theoretically, they have the 'right to property'). Of course, the greatest trick here is that so many of those who are trapped in capitalism have adopted the ideology of their masters. Amazing.
