Mudcat, you have completely misunderstood. I was speaking strictly to the politics of the matter. Do you really have any doubt that the Democrats are not going to produce attack ads claiming that people will lose their mortgage deductions? Perhaps you should visit the reality based world every now and then.

Not only will the Democrats run ads about losing the mortgage deductions, they will line up a series of ministers to tell how losing the deduction for charitable gifts will ruin their churches.

Sure, feel free to spend as much Republican advertising money as you want to clearing up any misunderstanding that may ensue.

Then you can explain how great it is that people will be paying a tax on those mortgages and on their credit card debt.

Then you can explain how everybody’s paycheck is going to be reduced to only their current “take home pay” but that it is not really costing anybody anything.

Then you can explain to people how all that money that they have already saved and paid taxes on is going to be taxed again at 23% when they spend it. Finally saved up that million dollars? Great! You owe the government $230,000 now.

Since I actually manage to save money, instead of spending every cent I earn, I would probably come out ahead under the FairTax; but don’t be naïve, the FairTax is not a serious or viable tax proposition and is never going to come close to being implemented.

However, it has wonderful possibilities for destroying the credibility of any politician dumb enough to back it. Why do you think there hasn’t been a flood of support from politicians already?

If you want to see this concept in action, go back and look what the Democrats did to Jim DeMint in the 2004 election in South Carolina before DeMint disavowed his support for the FairTax and dropped it like a hot potato.

I too am a proponent of the Fair Tax; however, you will not convince Jeff (or anyone else), who is relatively open minded, that the Fair Tax is a viable alternative to the convoluted quagmire of special exemptions we lovingly refer to as the million page tax codes by calling him moronic.

I too strongly suggest anyone interested actually read "The FairTax Book: 'Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS'" by Neil Boortz and John Linder.

My favorite website.

than that. A tax on mortgage and interest above prime, where did you find that? While I find your postings interesting, this one is far out in left field. The Christmas spirits must have begun to flow.

Here it is Mike, right from HR 25 the FairTax legislation:

HR 25, Section 802 (a)(3)(B)(ii)(I) .. says the tax will apply to: “the excess (if any) of the rate paid on such debt over the basic interest rate (as defined in section 805)”

“such debt” refers to any debt with underlying interest (back up in definitions under Section A).

HR 25: Section 805 defines the basic interest rate as the Feds short term interest rate for each month.

Any interest incurred on debt over the monthly Fed rate is considered taxable as “financial intermediation services.”

All debt that you pay interest on, car loans, mortgages, credit cards, student loans, etc. All taxable.

But I'm sure that Hillary would be too kind and fair to bring any of this up during an election.

Christmas spirits in 2 hours and fifteen minutes!

as I certainly missed that during my initial reading. I owe you one. Seems as if Mr Boortz and Linder have some "splainin" to do. I stand corrected.

Impolite Russians must say Nuvish, eh?

Vee Vishnu a Merry Christmas!

______________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

I just vishnu would stop posting stupid things...

Yes, I'm sure that God speaks to Huckabee, that's what scares me.

Which is it: You speak tongue-in-cheek when you say that God speaks to Him (so that, more likely, Huckabee is delusional), or that you are afraid that an actual message from the actual deity would muck things up?

Now, I agree with you about the wrongness of the imposition of certain beliefs. Not all beliefs, though. I believe that rape is wrong, for instance, and I am glad that our government "imposes" this belief. J.S. MIll's On Liberty is sometimes thought of as the locus classicus for political liberalism. If that is true, then I am a political liberal, because I agree with the core (the "Harm Principle") of what he argues there.

My problem with the set of all of your assertions is simply that it is an inconsistent set. If "all religions are true," what do you do about those religions that include among their beliefs the precept that, say, Sharia law must be imposed upon the infidels or that our society's laws should conform to the teachings of the Bible?

You are forced to say that they are wrong (and you do at least imply that they are in what you say here).

________________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

We have a law against rape.
No matter who is President, he will have to enforce that law--be he atheist or otherwise.
You are missing the boat when you assume we must mix religion of any kind and our government.
This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with religion, just that it is sure to make a government fail if it is imposed by a particular belief.
We are a nation of our own laws, not of men!

Why did you say this? What has it to do with anything I've said?

_______________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

Do we really agree on something? – the wrongness of the imposition of certain religious beliefs on others. I extend this into the political arena as well.

I continue my own belief, that all religions can be true, in the mind of that person or even a particular culture (Hindu, Muslim, Christian). It’s their chosen pathway to Nirvana/happiness/eternal life. However, religion turns into a social club and the true essence of its meaning becomes clouded, when a person or religion aligns their belief system with exclusivity (“only we will go to Heaven”). In addition, religion becomes a way for warmongers and irrational rulers to gain power by imposing their religion on others through political means, as stated in your example of Sharia law. I believe the true essence of any religion, including the teachings of Jesus, was to ‘do no harm’ as the Wiccan’s say.

To live in any modern society, the great religions do need a good scrubbing and sanitizing (to use your word), otherwise, humankind would be acting very much like animals. Christians have sanitized their belief system and the Bible for centuries, and for good reason, as shown in some of the examples I made in a previous post:

“the Bible says everyone who works on Sunday should be killed, slavery is alright, women should be submissive, rowdy teenagers should be stoned to death, you should eat flesh and drink blood, non-believers and followers of other religions should be killed, homosexuals should be killed, you should sell everything in order to enter heaven (Jesus says this)”

Do you, as a Christian believe in these tenets? Do you sanitize the Bible, which is the word of God? Most likely, you do.

Do I believe exclusivity is wrong in a religion – yes. That is the fundamental principle I see as wrong in any religion. Is this religious sanitization as well? Most likely.

“the Bible says everyone who works on Sunday should be killed, slavery is alright, women should be submissive, rowdy teenagers should be stoned to death, you should eat flesh and drink blood, non-believers and followers of other religions should be killed, homosexuals should be killed, you should sell everything in order to enter heaven (Jesus says this)”

Well, whoever put this list together did a sloppy job. It combines flatly false claims about what the Bible teaches (Where did it say that we should drink blood?) with superficial interpretations (the context in which Jesus tells the rich man to sell everything makes it clear that this was his advice only to that individual) with teachings that pose difficulties but are by no means insurmountable (and are offered here in utter ignorance of how they have been addressed by centuries of biblical scholarship.)

But even in the worst case here, there is a vast difference between what you have in mind by "sanitizing" and what I do.

You would not permit a theist to be truly serious about her theism or a monist to be truly serious about her monism. The only elements that you will permit as the true "essence" of religion are the ones that you have determined are common to them all. Of course, when you run across an example of a religion that doesn't fit into your preconceived idea, it must be rejected. And I wonder by what objective criterion it is to be rejected.

You would tell Christians who think that the identity of the person of Jesus Christ is the very core of their religion that they are mistaken. And the Buddhist who maintains that the fundamental insight is pratityasamutpada--"this being given, that arises"--is, misguided. The same goes for the Hindu who holds that the core truth is that "Atman is Brahman." None of these competing truth claims, believed by millions of adherents of the respective religions, really gets at the point of religion. No, each of these religions is really about "not causing any harm." And so all of the things that they have thought important are just so much chaff.

Tell me that they are all false and you will have said something coherent. A discussion of why I should think them false would be extremely interesting. I just completed a semester of teaching Asian philosophy--Indian and Chinese--in which, in addition to figuring out what is believed, we raised the question of whether there are any reasons to think each to be either true or false. A sample: I argue (not merely assert) that the Theravada Buddhists' concept of personal identity is incompatible with their belief in reincarnation. Very, very interesting stuff. I can imagine a vigorous debate with the Buddhist who disagrees with me. At least I do him the honor of taking his beliefs as serious truth claims worthy of assessment. You, on the other hand, would pat him on the head and tell him that the real point of his religion is the saccharin advice: Don't hurt anyone (or anything).

Finally, on your comment about people who say "only we will go to heaven," imagine the following dialog:

Baptist: "Only those who confess faith in Christ will go to heaven."

Unitarian: "That's terribly exclusive and arrogant of you. What have you to say to our Buddhist and Hindu friends sitting here? Don't you think they'll go to heaven, too?"

Buddhist: "I wasn't planning on it. In fact, I don't believe in it. I was hoping to achieve Nirvana."

Hindu: "And I am seeking that enlightenment that will result in the realization of my oneness with Brahman. Heaven and Nirvana are both false concepts."

Atheist: "You're all wrong. Here's the true account of the afterlife: First we die; then we rot."

________________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

Muddle, don’t put words into my mouth, please. You sound as though you are arguing with yourself now. My words were about the true essence of religion, ‘to do no harm’ to others, as in the Golden Rule. This fundamental rule is prevalent in most religions, as far as I can determine. I never said this was the ONLY essence, so stop trying to twist my words.

“Tell me that they are all false and you will have said something coherent. A discussion of why I should think them false would be extremely interesting”

I’ve been speaking (writing) coherently, however, you have not been listening, or just won’t allow yourself to understand. And please discuss on this blog why you think that the other great religions are false. I would be interested to know your opinion on the topic of the assorted false religions.

“I argue (not merely assert) that the Theravada Buddhists' concept of personal identity is incompatible with their belief in reincarnation. I can imagine a vigorous debate with the Buddhist who disagrees with me. At least I do him the honor of taking his beliefs as serious truth claims worthy of assessment”

What BS, muddle. In one breath you say you argued how a Buddhist ‘religious’ concept is ‘incompatible’, while in the next breath you talk about how you honor his beliefs – it’s apparent, by your arrogance, that the only belief you honor, is your own.

And your example of the religious conversation between the Christian, UU, Buddhist, Hindu and Atheist, sums up exactly what I am saying. We all have a different path, to get to our God/god/Nirvana/happiness/enlightenment...

Let it go. We are all beating a dead horse here.

Have you read American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges ?? Good book it is written by a presbyterian minister who trained at Harvard. He explains the nefarious ways of some of our modern "wolves in sheeps clothing". Hurt and rescue selling, lots of damnation, lots of violence in the name of God. Starting with the crusades and moving forward to the "creationist museum" where dinosaurs were all vegetarians and the size of a large dog.

Not one of us will change the opinion of another person here..give it up. I love the avatar, but I think Cal is going to have a fit.

Have a good holiday.

I need to have a look at the Hedges book as well.

But, as always, the Chesterton quote governs what conclusions we are entitled to draw:

"A Confucian has stolen my hair brush! Down with Confucianism!"

I think it is a mistake to suppose that the sole object of debate is to convince your actual opponent. Debates are occasions on which views--and the reasoning for those views--are aired and third parties may assess the views and the arguments.

Very, very interesting is the fact that atheist philosopher Anthony Flew, who has been rather active in public debates against the likes of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, has changed his mind in light of the arguments. In fact, Flew said this recently in an interview:

"There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."

I love his line about Dawkins' "comical effort" in The God Delusion.

Dawkins, of course, resorts to unflattering social science explanations to explain why this notorious atheist is now an advocate of intelligent design: he is growing senile.

________________

Floor Mosaic, 3rd cent. church, North end Sea of Galilee

I have a coupon to Books-a-Million, so I'll go check it out....

glad you like the avatar. Muddle was the one who brought it up... I was actually just posting it to see if it was the one he was referring to, in his post today. He seems to be the only one of his ilk, that has a sense of humor and who wasn't mad, at least in the beginning.

is the Wiccaan one. We have practiced it in Transilvania since the beginning of time, as brought to us by Jafet, the first son of Noah.

Happy Solstice Festival to everybody! (aka Christmas by the un-enlightened)

-----------------------------------
Making you think twice......

And your example of the religious conversation between the Christian, UU, Buddhist, Hindu and Atheist, sums up exactly what I am saying. We all have a different path, to get to our God/god/Nirvana/happiness/enlightenment...

I'll begin with your closer. What is it that you think here? Do the Christian heaven, Muslim Paradise, Buddhist Nirvana, Jain Kevala and Hindu Moksha (union with Brahman) all ACTUALLY exist SEPARATELY as eschatological destinations in the way that Aruba, Peoria, Bangkok, and Moscow exist as separate potential destinations? Is dialog between adherents of different religions like conversations struck up between travelers at an airport? ("Yes, we are spending Christmas in London this year. Hope it won't be too cold. I hope your family enjoys Jamaica. We were there last year....")

Or is it that you are supposing that these respective religious beliefs cannot be taken literally, but must be "de-mythologized"? What is it that REALLY happens to us all?

There IS a truth of the matter, egven if NONE of us gets it right. What is it that you think?

What BS, muddle. In one breath you say you argued how a Buddhist ‘religious’ concept is ‘incompatible’, while in the next breath you talk about how you honor his beliefs – it’s apparent, by your arrogance, that the only belief you honor, is your own.

Allow me to take a moment to provide some detail on this Buddhist belief. Then I'll make my point.

This variety of Buddhism maintains that what we call persons are really just bundles of fundamental constituents called "dharmas." Dharmas are kind of like atoms as conceived in Western philosophy, except that they exist only instantaneously. The result is that a person at one instant of time consists of one bundle of dharmas, and in the next instant consists of an entirely new bundle, so that NOTHING that existed in the first instant is found existing in the next. So a person AT a time is a bundle. A person OVER time is a SERIES of bundles that are causally related in some carefully specified way. The photo that is my avatar is me at age 5 or 6. I n what sense am I now, at 50, THE SAME PERSON as the child in the photo? The Buddhist answer is that the bundle that constitutes me today is a causal descendent of the bundle that constituted that child.

By contrast, Jainism believes that individual persons are identical to souls or spiritual essences called "Jivas." Jivas are immaterial substances substantially similar to the soul as conceived by Western mind-body dualists. If asked what sense in which I am the same person as the child in the photo, the Jain would say that I am essentially a soul/jiva, and the jiva that inhabits my body today is identical to (i.e. "the same thing as) the jiva that inhabited the body of the 5 year old.

Both Buddhists and Jains believe in reincarnation. But the concepts are RADICALLY different. The story is very straightforward on Jainism. Reincarnation involves literal transmigration of a soul. My body dies, but the soul to which I am identical carries over to the new life (human or animal) that comes into existence somewhere in the world. The new life is still ME in the sense that it is the SAME, numerically identical, soul. And if I ever escape this wheel of birth, death and reincarnation and achieve Kevala, it will be ME who does it in the sense that it is my soul that achieves it.

Buddhists cannot say this. There is no soul or substantial self of any kind. (There are no such things as substances of any kind, as a matter of fact.) So the story has to be that person A who dies is "the same" as the new person B who is born in the sense that B is a part of the same causal "stream" of which A was a part.

Now, first of all, Jainism and Buddhism say radically different things about the nature of persons and personal identity. THEY CANNOT BOTH BE CORRECT because the claims are mutually exclusive.

Second, the claims are not, and are not intended to be, subjective or private stories that individuals "choose to believe" for some therapeutic or otherwise instrumental reason. They are claims about the ACTUAL NATURE of persons in the ACTUAL world, and, as such, they compete in the arena of metaphysics. That is, the Buddhist concept of the self is not merely a religious belief, but a theory in metaphysics that competes not only with other religious beliefs, but with other philosophical accounts of personal identity. As such, it may be assessed by DOING PHILOSOPHY. We may ask, for instance, whether a "bundle theory" of persons can account for all that we plausibly believe about pesonal identity. (Suppose that bundle A commits a crime as a 20-year-old. Bundle Z is arrested for the crime, a year later. A and Z are not identical but related by some relation R. Is that relation sufficient for saying that justice is done if Z is convicted and sentenced for what was done by A?)

Now, suppose that, upon examination, I conclude that the Jain account of personal identity is coherent, whereas the Buddhist account is not.
First, logic itself dictates that they cannot BOTH be true, so I can hardly be charged with arrogance or imperialism, or whatever for thinking this. SOME religious beliefs MUST be false.

And OF COURSE I think that my own beliefs are true and exclusively so. To believe P is to believe that P is true. And to believe that P is true entails thinking that anything that coradicts P is false.
Either you have beliefs that are every bit as exclusive, or you have no beliefs at all (which, I suppose, would not be altogether surprising, given the Unitarian thing.)

Here is a relevant blog that I posted a year or more ago: On the Virtue of Intolerance

The pluralist/Unitarian avoids such assessments by never taking the beliefs seriously in the first place. So long as you keep the conceptual systems out of focus and fuzzy, or relativise them, or treat them as not being literally true--none of them--but only "useful fictions," you disregard them.

The rational assessment of religious truth claims TREATS them as truth claims, which is what they are intended to be. The Unitarian approach does not.

________________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

"I just completed a semester of teaching Asian philosophy--Indian and Chinese--in which, in addition to figuring out what is believed, we raised the question of whether there are any reasons to think each to be either true or false."

Please post when it will be available again. I'd like to sign up for it.

I've been interested in Chinese philosophy for many years. Their devotion to honor and respect has always intrigued me. A civilization that's been in existence that long must have a great many lessons to share.

My grad school minor at UW-Madison was in South Asian Studies, so that I could do work in Indian philosophyy to complement my major in philosophy.

The minor is what got me hired for my first teqaching position in the utterly brutal philosophy job market. The college had a course in Asian philosophy (Indian and Chinese), as well as stuff in ethics and philosophy of religion, that they wanted me to teach.

I taught Asian philosophy for the first time the following fall. By that time, I knew precious little about Chinese philosophy, and was terrified over the prospect of teaching it formally. Of course, I presented Indian philosophy first that semester in order to stall as long as possible (and cram as for an exam) before getting to Chinese.

I remember that in the early weeks of the semester we were discussing the "Hindu" notion of Brahman. A student asked, "Is this concept of Brahman similr to the Tao of Taoism?" I had absolutely no idea whether it was or not, so, in my panic, I bluffed: "That's a great question. Please keep it in mind until we get to Taoism, and we can make the comparisons then."

Over the years, I have, of course, been forced to learn much about Chinese philosophy, and, frankly, I enjoy discussing it even more than the fascinating issues involved in Buddhism, etc.

The centuries-long dialog/clash between Confucianism and Taoism is particularly interesting. Both may be construed as accounts of what it is to flourish or live well as humans. Confucianism maintains that we live well in the context of human culture, where uniquely human faculties (reason, etc) are cultivated and employed, and where there is a well-defined social structure of morality and propriety. Taoism rejects all of this and urges that we do well insofar as we find ourselves in harmony with nature, which, in turn, puts us in harmony with Tao itself.

So you get this "culture versus nature" thing going. It's the differnce between valuing cultivated gardens or pristine wilderness areas; or between French gardens with all of their rational symmetry or English gardens with their natural, wild and "wispy" character.

I find much to admire in Confucianism. In particular, a central claim there is thatg we flourish as humans to the degree that we learn to love other humans--the doctrine of Jen (pronounced "wren") or "human-heartedness." I think that Jen compares favorably to the Christian idea of agape or unconditional love.

I can suggest a good starter book. Fung Yu-Lan, A Short History of CHinese Philosophy has great, brief and accessible chapters on the various schools of thought.

(It is hard to find decent texts in Asian philosophy, because many authors are drawn to a more post-modern or continental perspective, and thus would not recognize a philosophical argument if it bit them on the butt.)

________________

My Opie impression: circa 1963.

Well stated Main.....nice to hear some reasonable people around here. It would be wonderful to see a few of the coexist bumpers insted of the plethora of fish I see....perchance to dream.

"once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right"
"listen to the thunder shouting, "I AM, I AM, I AM"

thanks for your comment, it's appreciated. I do have the 'coexist' bumper sticker on my car, so honk if you see me on the road...

To be such a supporter of Wicca you sure hate Christians, by they way they do practice Witchcraft- is that of God? Do you think we are all of bunch of STUPID people? By the way SMART people(Christians) have something to back it up with? I am sick of people thinking Christians are dumb, sorry I'm a Christian and I am not dumb!

Yeah, the world would love to have one religion that you could do whatever- but friend I got news that's not the way it is. If you want one religion why do you hate Christians?

Yeah, there is ONE GOD- that is why we celebrate Christmas, God made a way for us through Jesus. ONE GOD.

oh, stop with the idiot knee jerk reactions to my posts, bpr. I never said I hate ANYONE. Get a life and get your butt off these blogs - you're on way too much. I'm surrounded by loads of Christians in my life, and I love quite a few of them, however, the right-wing evangelicals, I take them with a grain of salt. I really liked Jimmy Carter, a Christian. So, knock off your venomous spewing and personal attacks. Go wash that glitter out of your brain, I mean hair.

Umm...this has NOTHING to do with Main Stream's views. (Hey, I love debating him! ), but he has an objectionable avatar to say the least.

Click here to see it (in case it's removed later by him).

Main Stream, you're letting your true self come out with your hateful comments to bpr. She's a nice lady. Treat her as such.

How did you get so kind- man alot of harsh words! I have to wash my hair again, kids - love them, God made them. Jimmy Carter would be the what you call Christian you would like- Please-

You never did answer is what Wicca believes in witchcraft of God? By the way you sure sound like you hate me. I like you.

Aren't all Christian right wing evangelicals- including your Jimmy Carter? So then you like all Christians.

I forgot to tell you I am not leaving, I like you too much.