The_Reginator
Active member
From my limited understanding, that last line of yours quoted above seems to make a lot of sense.
Does anyone know of any studies of sorts that show whether or not any Buddhists have converted???
How the specter of syncretism is being used to islamize the faith
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Does anyone know of any studies of sorts that show whether or not any Buddhists have converted???
I don't know of any. There have to have been some. Large chunks of their spirituality (or whatever the word would be) simply are not all that different. Buddhism, however, so far as I am aware, does not assign any particular importance to a Supreme Being. It's more of a life philosophy (that is possibly an over-simplification).
Stephen Williams, a former British soldier, raised without faith embraced Zen Buddhism before a surprising encounter led him to Catholicism and Opus Dei. While staying at a French Zen monastery that had been built on the site of a former Catholic orphanage abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century, he came found some of its Christian icons retained by the Buddhist monks and felt compelled to pray "Our Father". On his return to England he came across the writings of Thomas Merton and became “intrigued” by the Catholic monastic tradition, soon finding himself “deeply inspired” by what he was encountering, specifically in the Trappist and Carthusian monastic traditions. Here is the story:
Some lines of poetry allegedly written by Karl Marx:
“I wish to avenge myself against the one who rules above
Yet I have power within my youthful arms
To clench and crush you with tempestuous force,
While for us both the abyss yawns in the darkness.
You will sink down and I shall follow laughing,
Whispering in your ears “Descend,
Come with me friend”
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited,
I know it full well,
My soul, once true to God,
Is chosen for hell.
With disdain I will throw my gauntlet
Full in the face of the world,
And see the collapse of this pygmy giant
Whose fall will not stifle my ardour.
Then will I wander godlike and victorious
Through the ruins of the world
And, giving my words an active force,
I will feel equal to the Creator.”
From the Youtube video "Was Karl Marx a SATANIST!?" by Thoughts on Thinking.
So how could someone who claimed to be an atheist have any designs on your soul? Look at you. You slyly deny by implication that sin can cause the loss of one's soul by asking how exactly does one share a soul. Can you lose it or can't you? What is Salvation for?
Couldn't a satanist design an apparently atheistic system which gave him the power to cause people to lose their souls by lack of access to healthy religion and by controlling peoples' outcomes and social attitudes? Marx was a student of Hegel so could not be said to have grown up ignorant of religion and spiritual realities.
You have changed from discussion of a political system to discussion of individuals of a particular political persuasion.
Goal post shift duly noted.
That quote is from Act 1 from a play (Oulanem, A Tragedy) started, but never finished by K Marx when he was 21 (and had literary ambitious).
The first act includes a soliloquy in which Oulanem laments mortality and the inevitable destruction of the world by God, and asks himself if he must destroy the world in turn in defiance. This closely echoes themes from Goethe's "Prometheus", an 18th-century poem much admired by authors of the early Romantic era.
"Prometheus" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which the character of the mythic Prometheus addresses God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. The poem was written between 1772 and 1774 and first published in 1789. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published an anonymous and unauthorised version in 1785. It is an important work of the German Sturm und Drang movement.
Sturm und Drang, meaning "Storm and Stress" in German, was a literary and artistic movement in late 18th-century Germany. It emphasized individual emotion, intuition, and rebellion against the constraints of Enlightenment rationalism. Key characteristics included a focus on passionate expression, strong emotions, and a rejection of rigid artistic and social norms.
I think we can claim that Goethe was not a Satanist, but young at heart.
There is no serious claim that Marx was a Satanist, instead he was an undistinguished poet that came close to plagiarizing Goethe (apparently a trend, initiated by Jacobi
)On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that fake news and conspiracy theories are promoted via youtube. Youtube per se is not a valid reference.
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Yes but do we have to assume Marxism could only have plans related to the material world?
You're still mixed up about the goal post shift. Marx had studied religion and philosophy. It is quite possible he designed his system to give the proletariat the power to squeeze more than just material things out of the hands of the well-off.
The founder of the political system is not relevant to a discussion of a given political system?
Why can't Marxism have surreptitious spiritual goals? Do you have to take them at their word?
I do not assume, I know. It is in the writings and it was taught in school. Dialectical materialism is a philosophical approach, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that combines Hegelian dialectics with materialism. It posits that material conditions, particularly economic factors, are the primary drivers of social and cultural change. This framework emphasizes that reality is shaped by tangible interactions and the ongoing evolution of material circumstances, rejecting idealism. Idealism is any theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or spirit, or mind or spirit as capable of existing independently of matter. Marx and Engels adopted a thoroughgoing materialist approach, holding that any attempt to combine or reconcile materialism with idealism must result in confusion and inconsistency.
Additionally Stalin had an "atheist five year plan" from 1932 to 1937...it was declared that the concept of God would disappear from the Soviet Union.
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I am positing that Marx and Engels' surreptitious goal was to suppress the healthy religious practices which allow a Christian to be saved. This would allow the proletariat to share in everybody's best thinking.
They may have recognized that class structures were based in part on some peoples' ability to manage the economy. The point may have been to hand the proletariat the power by destroying the ability to be saved, thus allowing the proletariat to share in the best thinking of those who otherwise would have been in charge.
Of course Stalin wanted to suppress religion. But it may not have been because the Communists were blissfully ignorant of the power of spirituality and sin. Clearly, Marx was not, and Stalin had studied for the priesthood before he became a Communist. The Communists may have wanted to deliberately manipulate sin in order to let the poor share in the best thinking of the management classes.
Do you think intelligent people could have lived in the world and studied religion and come to the conclusion that it does not exist and society would be better off focusing solely on material things? Could it not be that they wanted to manipulate spirituality and sin by controlling access to religion?
As a dramatist, doesn't Marx make a convincing megalomaniac with a God complex? Do you really think he pulled all that out of his hat when he decided he'd like his dogmatically materialistic self to write a play?
Engels has EXPLICIT writings on the elimination of religion (nothing surreptitious in Marxist writing) - see for example Anti-Duering:
What ever Stalin was taught at the seminary, his actions and words, do not show it made an effect on him having religious faith. I do not think that Stalin wanted to "manipulate spirituality and sin", he wanted to create an industrialized Communist State and be the head of it because he liked power, good food and surviving (the purges)
Yes, Marx, Engels and Stalin saw an effect of religious beliefs on people. They did not interpret it as a good thing: "religion is the opium of the people" (Das Volk in Marx words) Marx stated that religion was a tool to lull the poor into complacency, accepting their horrible fate and allowing being abused. Religion in Marx writing, echoed by Engels and Stalin, is what keeps the working people from joining the class struggle and developing an enlightened Communist consciousness.
No, as a dramatist, Marx strikes me as not very good one. I do not think you fully understand Prometheus and the spirit of the Sturm und Drang movement from which Marx copied. Young Werther, the novel that made Goethe famous in the Sturm und Drang generation was published in 1774, Goethe wrote Prometheus between 1772-1774, before he was 26 years old. Sturm und Drang was overly dramatic, so the words in Prometheus have to be taken in context. Generations of young people have felt kinship to Young Werther and Prometheus, it is not surprising that Marx imitated it at 21. I draw no conclusion from that youthful indiscretion.
This is the last response I write on the issue- it has enough information for you to continue researching. My response also point to boundaries for proper inference and unsubstantiated hypothesis. Presently, social media has facilitated the spread of fake news, inaccurate stories and doubtful conspiracy theories at a pace not seen before. We do well to keep a discipline of looking for good sources and developing a good criterion when interpreting facts, never jumping to conclusions, nor indulging in theories before understanding the issues well. That is a reason I took care in writing answers to your postings. Please take the answers and study, and do not present hypothesis that have no support.
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I've been largely (though not entirely) staying out of this thread in recent days, as I think the rest of you have this under control and there's really nothing I can add to it. I am curious, though, as to what you mean by "best thinking". You use the term three times in this one post, as well as in a previous post. Could you elaborate?
You paint a picture of a world divided between the dogmatically atheist and the thoroughly Christian.
You neglect to realize that spirituality still exists without religion. If Communists take away religion, they are then free to use spirituality to control the abler classes to help the poor. Maybe you've been saved all your life and not had the misfortune of falling into sin in any serious way. If you lived under Communism, you may find the poor want to find out all about what you think via sin. They may have used pressure and the threat of inappropriate psychiatric institutionalization to get you to date the D students for fear of being branded antisocial, or they may simply judge and envy you and watch you carefully to persecute you if you pray for them by perhaps taking away your job and giving you a far lower one. Soon you would not have your thoughts to yourself. You would in a sense be possessed by the people against whose sinning you had no defense, unless you were willing to give up everything for your faith.
This may be the unwritten vehicle by which the Communists strove to create a classless society: destroy the spiritual barriers of the abler classes.
Stalin may have realized the Red Army finally had enough strength to effect a turnaround when he reburied Timur the Lame, ostensibly out of respect for his curse.
The quality of his dramatism is not the issue. He betrayed that he knew about matters of the spirit.
My support is all the pieces were present in Communism to create a system in which the concupiscence of the envious poor was salved by destroying the spiritual barriers of the abler classes.
My (ex-)wife was raised under the communist system in Poland, and I never heard her, or any other Poles, speak of being forced to date or socialize with anyone they didn't want to. Not clear where you're getting that, could you provide any examples of this ever having been done in actual practice? (She did tell me that the party loyalists more or less stuck to their own social circle, nobody else wanted anything to do with them.)
Broadly speaking, the education system encouraged well-achieving students to go as far in their education as their abilities would take them (much hinged on how well you could do on examinations that required massive amounts of mindless rote memorization), and for those of more modest aptitudes, they were steered towards vocational tracks. There certainly wasn't any effort to hammer everyone down into mediocrity.
Goal posts have shifted.
Are we discussing Marx or Marxism? There are quite a few differences.
To start the thread discussing the political system and then switch to the founder of said system when the discussion doesn't go quite right is, in fact, a shift in the goal posts.
So long as you do not conflate the qualities of the founder with the qualities of the system.
Because the atheistic nature of the system precludes any spirituality.
The actions of the system in question indicate a strong aversion to any type of spirituality.
This is a note on
Our brains enjoy catching patterns; in particular, serial patterns are used frequently to infer causality, where there is none. Our brains fill in the wholes of the missing information, with prejudice, fallacies (like Post hoc, ergo propter hoc- "after this, therefore because of this). The first step is to have a complete vision of all the alternatives- hidden variables might be causing a strong serial correlation. For example, Education increases the income (GDP) of a country. First, it also works the other way around, richer countries devote more resources to education, children stay longer in school. Hidden variables: richer countries have better infrastructure- schools are nicer, roads to get to school better and transportation is widely available. Richer countries have more educated parents that value education and are willing to foster the discipline needed for their children to pursue higher education, etc. This systematic way of looking at the information is training for making better arguments, even 100% verbal arguments. The training has another positive effect, it makes us more objective, and helps when people want to stubbornly cherry pick arguments to confirm their early beliefs (Confirmation bias, another form of bad analysis) .
As for education - there is no good way to measure accurately the influence of education on GDP (we know there is a positive correlation, but it is overstated)- the only valid approach to estimate causality is to measure it in individual cases- which is being done in a big project, which is mostly financed by the foundation of Warren Buffet.
If you want to get a sense of the deceit of serial correlations, visit and play with time series in this website: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
A note on this comment. Making a good case, building a causal hypothesis takes a lot of work. We are inundated with attractive correlations- simple, often visually clear associations that lead (not very good) journalists to write articles, with catchy titles. Even when we are alert to th difference between correlation and causality, it is easy to fall prey, as we have very few examples of proven causality to learn from.
Our brains enjoy catching patterns; in particular, serial patterns are used frequently to infer causality, where there is none. Our brains fill in the wholes of the missing information, with prejudice, fallacies (like Post hoc, ergo propter hoc- "after this, therefore because of this). The first step is to have a complete vision of all the alternatives- hidden variables might be causing a strong serial correlation. For example, Education increases the income (GDP) of a country. First, it also works the other way around, richer countries devote more resources to education, children stay longer in school. Hidden variables: richer countries have better infrastructure- schools are nicer, roads to get to school better and transportation is widely available. Richer countries have more educated parents that value education and are willing to foster the discipline needed for their children to pursue higher education, etc. This systematic way of looking at the information is training for making better arguments, even 100% verbal arguments. The training has another positive effect, it makes us more objective, and helps when people want to stubbornly cherry pick arguments to confirm their early beliefs (Confirmation bias, another form of bad analysis) .
As for education - there is no good way to measure accurately the influence of education on GDP (we know there is a positive correlation, but it is overstated)- the only valid approach to estimate causality is to measure it in individual cases- which is being done in a big project, which is mostly financed by the foundation of Warren Buffet.
If you want to get a sense of the deceit of serial correlations, visit and play with time series in this website: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
There are a host of other sins. They could have been taught to judge or hate the abler classes or simply to regard their neighbors' goods as fit to be coveted by right. And she didn't live under the Communist system because Communism has never been realized by any state, only by small communes of dedicated hobbyists here or there. Socialism is what the so-called Communist countries practiced.
Do you think you have to actively seek to commit sin? Isn't it enough to simply not take measures such as prayer and meditation to avoid sin? The system teaches people to regard the means of production as their right. It teaches that coveting their neighbors' goods is their right. Do you think you won't have a communion of sin just because you never mention sin? Does sin and spirituality go away if you never mention it in your official source documents?
We know that Communist revolutionaries have called for a slow march through the institutions of the West. You talk as if we can't logically postulate that we may be feeling their effects unless they are stupidly obvious, backed up by citing the names of logical errors. This despite the sea change in the statements of recent Popes in support of Communism.
Okay, then, socialism, I am aware of the difference, but socialist systems actually did exist and can be assessed for their merits or demerits as the case might be.
As to the two things you cite here, neither of which have anything to do with being forced to date or socialize with others, there could be a kernel of truth to it. People there had very little personal property, and they would routinely help one another, because they were all in the same boat. They tended very much to live in one another's pockets. If your neighbor is in need of help today, you may be tomorrow, and you may need his help in return. And "tall poppy syndrome" exists even in market economy societies --- "don't 'up' yourself", "who does he think he is?", and so on.
There's a reasonable possibility to draw conclusions about. He may have matured in the direction of realizing the limitations of only being able to copy already-published work.
Sure, Marx was copying. The reason he invented Communism was he wasn't happy with his own skills and inspirations. That's exactly what it is about Communism. A poor dramatist wished he was better so he invented a system to keep spiritual barriers low so he could cheat and copy.
What you said is 100% compatible with designing a system which used pretexts to deprive the people of religion. Then, he could hope to form rapports of sin with people whose inspiration or intelligence he coveted. He could even hope to make himself personally powerful by seeing it implemented even though it didn't happen in his lifetime except on a small scale such as the Paris Commune and only in the first step away from Capitalism.
That is related to the point of the thread. Subversive elements may be trying to destroy prayer and the faith because they'd like to have what you have.