• Narri N. (they/them)@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I really don’t understand this post. It kinda reminds me of my own schizoposting tendencies I used to have back in the day, where I used to post different song lyrics quotes without context or comment that I was certain would translate my inner troubles for everyone who happened to read them. Surprisingly it never worked, no one ever understood, probably because I didn’t understand me myself.

    So to answer the question: the best, if the revolutions in question would improve the material conditions of the proletariat worldwide. Questions of afterlife and higher power should be left for institutions that hold no secular power, and each individual’s own discretion imo.

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Questions of afterlife and higher power should be left for institutions that hold no secular power, and each individual’s own discretion imo.

      Disagree. “Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism” - Lenin

      • Narri N. (they/them)@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        Perhaps I misspoke or something because I agree with that sentiment which you use to disagree with mine.

        ps. don’t bother replying to me here, I really made a mistake making this reply/venturing out to the catholics of all people. I’ll be blocking this community and moving on for my own sanity.

        • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I disagree with the statement that the socialist party should not be concerned with questions of religions, or that organized religion should exist, powerful or not.

          It must be abolished as other institutions of the ruling class.

        • sousmerde_rtrdataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          1 month ago

          (Before you block me or this community : i’m sorry if i gave you a bad opinion of catholics or religions in general, i’d have preferred to avoid that(, and i edited my comment afterwards).
          If i may give my opinion : don’t be so sensible, strength is a virtue and weakness is a vice, if you feel like losing your sanity because of your environnement then perhaps work on hardening yourself ? (feels like a stupid sentence)
          I( will) love you, it’s even easier since you’re a complete stranger, may you forgive my aggressiveness.)

      • sousmerde_rtrdataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        1 month ago

        You’re not answering to me, but would you say that communism is incompatible with religion ?
        I can’t even begin to see the link, except that it was during a century when people rejected everything(, antithesis moment), including religions for more than one reason(, republicanism//royalism, sciences//faith, miracles, rational morality, …).
        If you believe that religions are incompatible with communism i’m a little bit interested.

        • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          You’re not answering to me, but would you say that communism is incompatible with religion ?

          Yes. Marxism is materialist by nature. Religion is idealist by nature, it posits that one should believe in things not based on evidence but based on faith. This makes the two incompatible on a very basic level.

          Expanding on “true roots of religious fog”: from a materialist perspective, religion is just another tool of control, similar to capitalist propaganda or police. Even at its least reactionary (e.g. liberation theology) it is a vessel for deradicalization and misdirection of the rightful anger of proletariat.

          Notice that this is not to say that all religious people are bad or stupid; just as a worker struggling under capitalism but defending it, they were misled and lied to; but they can still be comrades in the revolution. Read Lenin’s “Socialism and Religion” for more.

          • sousmerde_rtrdataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
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            1 month ago

            Thanks for developing 👍

            I obviously disagree, but that would be a long debate once again…

            I intended to do other things today, but in short :

            • Many definitions of God are rational(, e.g. the First Cause, the Maximum/Perfection, the Truth, the ultimate nature of reality, and at least dozens more) ;
            • It’s just the anti-religious propaganda of the XIXth century that insisted to oppose science and religion while theology was taught rationally for millenias ;
            • science only means knowledge, the scientific method isn’t a revolution, and only litteralists are shocked by Darwin(, we’ve already known about artificial selection for millenias, natural selection wasn’t a big step), Galileo wasn’t killed but condemned to stay at home and because he published a book portraying the Pope as Simplicio, despite him financing most of Galileo’s researchs throughout his life, and way less witches were burned that you would assume ;
            • too many things to say, but the Church never rejected the results of experiments, only their interpretations

            religion is just another tool of control

            Because it makes you content ? Wouldn’t you say the same about sports or video games ?
            It’s social engineering to make people more virtuous, a collective pledge. Its goal is to create God’s Kingdom/City/Utopia, hard to deny it, it’s even in the Lord’s prayer.

            I wrote that quickly, and probably won’t answer you for the next 8-12h

            • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              Many definitions of God are rational

              Einstein’s “god” probably is. Mainstream christian god, as described by the bible, definitely isn’t.

              It’s just the anti-religious propaganda of the XIXth century that insisted to oppose science and religion

              Lenin explicitly acknowledges this; bourgeois revolutions did indeed oppose religion, but for different reasons to Marxists. Bourgeois being opposed to something doesn’t make it our friend - other examples are feudalism and aristocracy.

              theology was taught rationally for millenias

              Rationality is different from materialism. Theology is based on an explicitly idealist concepts which it then rationally develops. Just as perfectly valid logic being applied to an incorrect statement, it doesn’t make the conclusions any more valid.

              Because it makes you content ? Wouldn’t you say the same about sports or video games ?

              Yes, to a degree. But a crucial difference is that sports and video games only provide basic pacifying effect, while religion tries to answer concrete questions about human existence, and most often does it in ways convenient to the ruling class. It is a much more powerful tool in that sense.

              I doubt our discussion would be of much value. I won’t be able to come up with anything that’s not been written already by Engels and later Lenin.

              • sousmerde_rtrdataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
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                21 days ago

                Long comment ahead, that happens when i leave the phone for the computer, sry :/ :

                Einstein’s “god” probably is. Mainstream christian god, as described by the bible, definitely isn’t.

                I.d.k. how Einstein described God, if it’s like Spinoza, as we often hear, then i hope that it wasn’t entirely like Spinoza, who was closer to atheists than i first thought.
                But you’re mentioning the Bible, what’s the one you’re thinking about, the Eternal ? If so, well, Eternity is difficult to grasp, perhaps that God is only the First Cause(, and what that Cause became).
                I’m thinking about that one : I am what I am
                Christian theology didn’t stop with the New Testament, just like for every other religion.

                Rationality is different from materialism. Theology is based on an explicitly idealist concepts which it then rationally develops.

                Religious axioms like the golden Rule ? Ethicists have tried to start from a material standpoint, and theologians as well, like, i.m.o. God’s existence is certain under some definitions : I know that something exist, i can’t doubt that something is existing right now(, Descartes wasn’t the first to start from this), hence God defined as the All necessarily exists, whatever that All may entail.
                And my argument would be that God is even greater than the All, e.g. by distinguishing quality and quantity, etc.

                I first learned about materialism//idealism in regard to consciousness, and in that regard, i believe that consciousness is a product of our material body(, in other words the pseudo-material body, that we’re being conscious of, only exist in our consciousness ; while our really material body exists outside of our consciousness, and that holds true in the case of a simulation), even if i leave some room to entertain a twist.
                On the other side, i hope that you’re not materialist to the point of denying that there are at least two worlds(, an infinity more would say Spinoza i.i.r.c., i never went beyond the beginning of two of his books t.b.h.), one of Idea(l)s and the other material. Saying that the world of Idea(l)s is inside or produced by the material world would only make it a qualitatively different subworld inside the material world, justifying the distinction. Mesuring a nervous signal and linking it to a complete chart to give it some meaning wouldn’t be the same as measuring a thought or a qualia. But since you probably agree that there are obviously at least two distinct world, material and immaterial/ideal, then that paragraph wasn’t useful.
                God is both in the material and ideal world(, and the others inaccessible to humans), i don’t understand the materialist point of view. (edit : i was thinking that God defined as Highness could be seen as (the )All ; but if Highness is seen as Maximum/Perfection, then S.H…e would exist in the ideal world, yet only in potential in the material world)
                If you’re stating distinctions like “it’s not idea(l)s that creates the environment, but the environment that creates our idea(l)s”, then it’s kinda obviously both ? And it’s not because humanity discovered God, or at least the few we can fathom, that God was hence created, just like scientific inventions that are discoveries of a now unveiled pre-existing potential of our reality.

                What i agree with is that in order to change the material conditions, then having a materialist approach is useful(, and we can see God in the inviolable rules of our reality, as well as in causality), however changing the spiritual conditions is useful as well, and that was the point of this post : material conditions will never be enough to quench our thirst. Leaders of nations should probably be more materialists than idealists in their decisions, they should especially precede them with experiments to fully understand the consequences. However, individuals should perhaps be a bit more idealists than materialists when we’re interacting with other persons, as well as when planning for the future ?
                Wouldn’t you say that stoics are idealists when they say “you’re sad because of your consciousness and not because of the world, so it’s your decision to stop being sad” ? Would a materialist like you claim that prayers have no use ?
                I believe that attributing a consciousness to, e.g., a car or a computer, will make me take more care of it, such feelings bring material consequences.

                But i agree with you that educating the masses won’t change their social position, most crimes are made by young males in poor urban areas, i don’t&won’t deny the evident influence of material conditions on ideas, we imperatively need to have the same standard of living throughout Earth.
                But our standard of living is higher and our population is multiplied and yet we/i still look at the past with the admiration of something unreachable, everyone in the Renaissance expressed h.er.im.self beautifully, we’ve lost that. And our present could be worse though, but we don’t even aim for a well-defined goal, so what promise are westerners even standing for.

                I doubt our discussion would be of much value. I won’t be able to come up with anything that’s not been written already by Engels and later Lenin.

                I believe that this sentence could be taken on the first degree, but if it’s also a reference to the way i ended that comment, then it’d be a pertinent critic, and i use that occasion to rectify myself and say instead that i should have no good reason to refuse a debate, since it’d be like refusing to learn, i.e. to be better. (“no good reason” was a bad choice of word, i feel late and i’d like to hurry up so it does feel like debating/learning/‘becoming better’ isn’t the best use of my time, and perhaps yours as well)
                I don’t think i’ve read Lenin’s “Socialism and Religion”(, even if it’s possible with such title), it’s now added to a list of books i should read.

                This song, from Max Romeo, who died recently, is the first that Red Creators Network made.
                Joshua is an interesting name, because Jesus can be written Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) YHWH saves, in aramean Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), and Joshua is also the name of the son of Nun, an homonym with the equivalent of the First Cause in Egypt, and the successor of Moses, in other words “Joshua, son of Nun” echoes “Jesus, son of God”.
                Moreover, nun(נוּן or nun–vav–nun) means fish in hebrew, and is also the 14th letter in the middle of the alphabet, with a numerical value of 700, that apparently gave us the N through semitic/phenician similarities with the greek, but it looks like a J : נ. You also have other interpretations apparently, such as the snake here, or seed there. The wiki article confirms the link with the snake, who’s never assimilated to the devil in Genesis.
                Many names in the old testament start with a J, even Mark was named John(, “YHWH has shown grace”), Mark being his greco-roman name. It’s perhaps not coincidental that the name of the first two gospels of Mark and Matthew look similar, with the M preceding the N. Unlike Mark, Matthew was an hebrew name that means gift of YHWH. There’s also the tribe of Judah and Simeon.

                It doesn’t prove anything about Jesus-Christ, it may have been a relatively frequent jewish name, Isaiah/Yesha‘yahu also means “YHWH saves”, and is the most cited in the Gospels. There are other layers to the appellation son of God, such as stating that Adam was the son of God and that we descend from Eve&Adam, or discussing the differences between the son of Man and the son of God. If you read the gospels, you’ll see that their authors weren’t lying because they talked in symbols, sometimes signs, and others straight-out explanations. These texts were meant to provide for a lifetime of contemplation, and were deeply thought of, probably at first from memory through many announcements, and in a very specific time, the second temple being destroyed in 70 A.D., around the first gospel of Mark, etc.
                Don’t doubt that the people of the past knew this if they’ve read the gospels with a minimum of devotion, it’s written clearly enough, more than in some places of the old testament, but we’re still ignoring that great mystery in 2025, and unavoidably it’ll leak from the Internet one day, it’s kinda miraculous that it hasn’t already have, it’s not even really hidden(, and i’m not even tempted to read a book to know all of them, it’s a pleasure to understand by oneself).
                There are some books of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted allegorically, and others more rationally. Even if there’s always a mix of both, the Gospels followed the former while the holy Quran followed the latter.
                (Edit : and it’s been some time since i began to think that christian teachings are more adapted to individuals, and islamic teachings to states/leaders, making a fusion easier)
                I’veno doubts about overly weird “coincidences” though(, i still remember three of them that happened this year), if it means that God sees us then it’s frightening. I can only hope to somehow lighten the weight of my sins, and wouldn’t trust someone that doesn’t recognize s.he’s a sinner(, and/or who isn’t scared of lengthening its list).

                In short, i choose both materialism and idealism, sorry if i wrote this too long comment while missing the point of view that you have on this, i.d.k. much about the opposition idealism//materialism.

    • sousmerde_rtrdataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      Don’t hesitate to be more precise on what you didn’t understood. And say that you didn’t understood the context, not that there is none(, or that i’m a schizo, w/e that may mean, it’s a bit of an all-encompassing term currently).
      I’m sometimes imprecise on purpose, but it doesn’t feel like i overdid it here, did you read the selftext ?

      If you believe that my (rhetorical )question would be answered by opposing material conditions with the afterlife, then you may have missed my explicit mention of God’s kingdom, as well as the tweet mentioned ?
      If i’m vulgar : what’s the point of all being wealthy enough if we’re also all assholes ?
      The quote about our eternal thirst that can’t be quenched is infinitely more rich&eloquent.

      I’m a theocrat first, and a communist second, a libertarian and other stuff as well, like in favor of a real/direct democracy, e.g. through sortition like in Athens, and don’t see an incompatibility.
      So if you’re saying that religions deal with the Sky while secular institutions deal with the Earth then i’ll disagree.
      A transition to theocracy should be progressive though, with many decades or even 1-2 centuries of cohabitation with atheists.
      Worth adding my discovery 1-2 week ago that some venezuelan communes are very pious.

      I don’t think that talking about it will be useful, nor do i aim to convince you.