Space Engine

I don't think most violence stems from faith, many atheist rulers were also very violent, caused wars etc. Its more of politics in faith. For example crusades would still have happened even without faith, but under some other excuse. At the end it was war for land. Its pretty apparent after watching documentry(which was aired on Al Jazeera I think) related to that. Also many kings stopped war after they become religious.
(As far as current issue of ISIS etc. , I'm not very well versed on the issue but this could be a case where religion directly causes violence. But I have seen many speeches by imams in mosques where they showed videos of "look at these crusaders(reffering to USA) killing your children in xyz islamic country" and trying to incite "jihad" so western intervention could atleast be part of the reason). 
Anyways, as this is Space Engine forums,
1)Which political ideology do you think a government should have so it is best suited for Space Exploration?
2)Do you think Space exploration would be more efficient if we had one global economy/global political system?
3)Do you support a complete ban on religion in our space colonies? (I don't)
4)Do you think private companies have an incentive for space exploration without any government subsidy/support? If not, and you think govt. should support, to what extent?
5)Will you support a political government which prioritises long term (setting up a moon, mars base etc. ) over short term (but things which need attention now) like healthcare etc.?    

More questions
6)How do you think land on Mars, Moon should be marked as belonging to certain countries(like some islands are)? Should it be like Antartica or should it be "first come first serve" or do you think it should not belong to any particular nation/political entity? What about private space companies owning land? (I think "treaties" exist for these issues but I don't think they will be followed when the time comes).   
7)Do you think one way trip folks should be allowed to commit suicide if they feel bored?
8)Weed in space?        
Need not answer all questions, just want to hear different opinions on these matters.
^really sorry for my grammar mistakes in english

ephu wrote:

Source of the post I don't think most violence stems from faith, many atheist rulers were also very violent, caused wars etc.

I never said most violence stems from faith, I said that faith was a significant contributor to the world's problems. Also, faith does not equal religion. I defined faith in my previous post. Lacking religious belief does not mean you lack faith altogether.

HarbingerDawn wrote:

Source of the post What about people who commit violence or other terrible acts who are inspired by Christianity, for example?

May I remind you that I'm Catholic. Christians and Catholics are very different based on what they perceive in the bible. And my family and I do not condone violence unless its for self defense.

ZackG wrote:

HarbingerDawn wrote:

Source of the post What about people who commit violence or other terrible acts who are inspired by Christianity, for example?

May I remind you that I'm Catholic. Christians and Catholics are very different based on what they perceive in the bible. And my family and I do not condone violence unless its for self defense.

I was not making any comment on your religion. Also, Catholicism is a type of Christianity, it is not separate from it.

Permian Therapsid wrote:

Source of the post Even thou I do think that some of the ideas of communism and socialism are very good I myself do not approve all of them. I do think private ownership is okay but the government ownership is also something that should exist in certain things

I think I don't understand the idea behind this very well. Socialism it's not exactly about private property or ownership, It's about the private property of the so called means of production. Let me explain this a little since it's a very common misconception that I myself had before (exacerbated by that cliche/propaganda of the evil communist that wants to rob your television). Your computer, your house, your refrigerator, your car, all are your private property. Socialism respects that property, no serious communist has ever thinked about taking out these kind of properties unless they where used as means of explotation of others. What is a mean of production? Is the set of capital invested, machinery, land property etc... that is used for the production of.... products (obviously). Communists think that this kind of property shouldn't be private at least for the companies that employ vast ammounts of workers. Who should own that then? Either the State or a democratic well organized council formed by the workers of the company (people who know the necessities of the company and the people that work in it since the moment they take part of this decission making and assume by themselves the duties of the entire ensamble). By workers here we don't refer to people that work a lot (I'm sure Warren Buffet workes very hard), the criteria is much more subtle, a worker for a communist is a person that sales his work force for a certain price (the salary) to a firm while not having any factual control over this, let's say "commercial agreement". With this idea we mean that when you go for a job interview you are really seling your time and force in exchange of a salary, but you are not putting the price in this exchange, the costumer (the company as a whole) is deciding for you your salary, so you don't actually commerce with your work fairly. "Well", someone could say, "I can always quit are search for another job", and you are right, but in the end you don't have many chances, you have very intrisic needs, you need to eat, you need a good health, a good sanitation, a right to comunicate why not, all of those needs push you like in a hijack to accept very unfair conditions, and in the end you really have very little options, no control at all of the price of what you are selling (not control of your salary and your labor contidions) since refusing to accept the price of the company means insecurity, means that you could become even homeless or die because of the most ridiculous health problem that could have been solved with a certain ammount of money. To prevent this kind of situations there is the public sector founded by the taxes and guided by the common interest of a society with certain values and priorities, but the public sector in the capitalist economy tends to be weaker and weaker and have less control over those issues. So no, you still have no factual control. "Well the company loses if it makes the salary too low because another company only with better salaries would compete and outrun the other becuase more people would present their job submissions to them, so in the end this "work commercial agreement" is fair, it's subject to offer and demand and it translates to an optimal equilibrium for both parts" someone could think, but in reality this is totally unrealistic since for each job there is an army of people competing with you, obviously that who agrees the most with the conditions has more probabilities of getting a job than you, the one that is prepared to be exploited would always be behind you, so you really don't make the deal optimal for you in a strict sense but optimal for the company that has imposed upon you this mechanisms so they can perfectly change person at wish if you cry out for better condition.

The idea is way more complex and detailed but in a sense it's just that. Communists want this labor agreements without presures induced by monumental entities like the company you are aplying for. And the root of the mechanisms that guarantee that you get stuck in explotation is the property of the means of production. Once the property is common to all the workers (in the factory in the office etc...) or to the entirety of society (when the owner is the state), the workers assume the guide of their own conditions adapted to the real offer and demand of their production. A democratic well organized council of workers in property of their own company would be very interested in making the company succesfull while maximizing their standards and conditions, instead in this society we have workers that only care for their labor conditions (logically) and owners of the company that only care for the sales, both sides competing against the other, and with very different powers (consider also in the extreme that there are companies that are so important for the current economic system that have more income than the GDP of many countries in the world, that can make pressure politically and economically to change the law in their favor even in a continental scale). Socialist unions where created to make at least fairer these discrepancies of interest beetwen both parts, to diminish the power for the company in those negociations, but in the end the goal of a communist is to erase the private property of the means of production and make it for the workers or society, since unions in the end are just a momentary solution for the worker and in the end can make the company go a little worse (and that in the end is bad for the workers and society).

HarbingerDawn wrote:

Source of the post I would argue that the willingness to accept a belief and integrate it into your worldview without examining it to see if it makes sense or is supported by facts and empirical evidence is, while not the sole root of the problem, certainly a significant contribution

Very wise words indeed. It reminds me of the "Ethics of Believe" by William K. Clifford. An amazing scientist and one of the precursos for the theory of relativity. It has been one of the most delightfull and clear readings I have had on the topic of faith. I like when he explains with many examples how faith, believing without evidence it's harmfull for society as a whole even if that faith is expresed in a very personal way. Even if your faith is not harmfull and don't expresses itself in the interactions with other people its a glorification of a thinking method that is randomly dangerous and beneficial.

I always think of Earth as a giant spaceship where we have to make very good decissions or we could be screwed (this reasoning has worked for many centuries for individual states or even cities since they where more isolated systems with their own problems). For those decissions you want a democratic rational-thinking-based debate that should ideally resemble a scientific debate. Faith is an obstacle to that since it makes part of the thinking process dependant on subjective experience, missconceptions and fallacies. Even a religion based on the dogmatic aproach to all the modern scientific knowledge, a religion that accepts the big bang, quantum physics, the standard model, genetics, plate tectonics etc... would still be harmfull since each scientific discovery or change (something usual in science) would creat a scism or a religious contrast. A religion that can adapt rationally to the circumstances of current knowledge is not a religion at all. In the end if our spaceship discovers a new force or a harm it would be science and only science what is going to save us all with the maximum probability. Why? because a jet engine works!

FastFourierTransform wrote:

I think I don't understand the idea behind this very well. Socialism it's not exactly about private property or ownership, It's about the private property of the so called means of production. Let me explain this a little since it's a very common misconception that I myself had before (exacerbated by that cliche/propaganda of the evil communist that wants to rob your television). Your computer, your house, your refrigerator, your car, all are your private property. Socialism respects that property, no serious communist has ever thinked about taking out these kind of properties unless they where used as means of explotation of others. What is a mean of production? Is the set of capital invested, machinery, land property etc... that is used for the production of.... products (obviously). Communists think that this kind of property shouldn't be private at least for the companies that employ vast ammounts of workers. Who should own that then? Either the State or a democratic well organized council formed by the workers of the company (people who know the necessities of the company and the people that work in it since the moment they take part of this decission making and assume by themselves the duties of the entire ensamble). By workers here we don't refer to people that work a lot (I'm sure Warren Buffet workes very hard), the criteria is much more subtle, a worker for a communist is a person that sales his work force for a certain price (the salary) to a firm while not having any factual control over this, let's say "commercial agreement". With this idea we mean that when you go for a job interview you are really seling your time and force in exchange of a salary, but you are not putting the price in this exchange, the costumer (the company as a whole) is deciding for you your salary, so you don't actually commerce with your work fairly. "Well", someone could say, "I can always quit are search for another job", and you are right, but in the end you don't have many chances, you have very intrisic needs, you need to eat, you need a good health, a good sanitation, a right to comunicate why not, all of those needs push you like in a hijack to accept very unfair conditions, and in the end you really have very little options, no control at all of the price of what you are selling (not control of your salary and your labor contidions) since refusing to accept the price of the company means insecurity, means that you could become even homeless or die because of the most ridiculous health problem that could have been solved with a certain ammount of money. To prevent this kind of situations there is the public sector founded by the taxes and guided by the common interest of a society with certain values and priorities, but the public sector in the capitalist economy tends to be weaker and weaker and have less control over those issues. So no, you still have no factual control. "Well the company loses if it makes the salary too low because another company only with better salaries would compete and outrun the other becuase more people would present their job submissions to them, so in the end this "work commercial agreement" is fair, it's subject to offer and demand and it translates to an optimal equilibrium for both parts" someone could think, but in reality this is totally unrealistic since for each job there is an army of people competing with you, obviously that who agrees the most with the conditions has more probabilities of getting a job than you, the one that is prepared to be exploited would always be behind you, so you really don't make the deal optimal for you in a strict sense but optimal for the company that has imposed upon you this mechanisms so they can perfectly change person at wish if you cry out for better condition.

The idea is way more complex and detailed but in a sense it's just that. Communists want this labor agreements without presures induced by monumental entities like the company you are aplying for. And the root of the mechanisms that guarantee that you get stuck in explotation is the property of the means of production. Once the property is common to all the workers (in the factory in the office etc...) or to the entirety of society (when the owner is the state), the workers assume the guide of their own conditions adapted to the real offer and demand of their production. A democratic well organized council of workers in property of their own company would be very interested in making the company succesfull while maximizing their standards and conditions, instead in this society we have workers that only care for their labor conditions (logically) and owners of the company that only care for the sales, both sides competing against the other, and with very different powers (consider also in the extreme that there are companies that are so important for the current economic system that have more income than the GDP of many countries in the world, that can make pressure politically and economically to change the law in their favor even in a continental scale). Socialist unions where created to make at least fairer these discrepancies of interest beetwen both parts, to diminish the power for the company in those negociations, but in the end the goal of a communist is to erase the private property of the means of production and make it for the workers or society, since unions in the end are just a momentary solution for the worker and in the end can make the company go a little worse (and that in the end is bad for the workers and society).

Well I see I did word my response very badly, as I did in fact know that people are allowed to own property in socialism. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to go to Soviet Union and buy stuff there. But what I did mean was that I am fine with a company employing people. Of course not all companies are good for employees, especially large international ones.

This is also why I do not really like at all the fact that the current government of my country has a tendency for privatization of government owned companies like part of the the railways and some of the health care. The current way how the Centre Party (Keskusta) National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) are working while in power is not in all cases the very good at all in my opinion. The Social Democrats and other socialists have not have the best governments either.

Permian Therapsid wrote:

Source of the post This is also why I do not really like at all the fact that the current government of my country has a tendency for privatization of government owned companies like part of the the railways and some of the health care. The current way how the Centre Party (Keskusta) National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) are working while in power is not in all cases the very good at all in my opinion. The Social Democrats and other socialists have not have the best governments either.

I agree with you on this.

Antza2 wrote:

I agree with you on this.

I hope the government would stop with all this privatization of public sector, but I do not think they will. Also it would likely just make services more expensive, I think.

Permian Therapsid wrote:

Source of the post Also it would likely just make services more expensive, I think.

It probably will. As a person who needs to visit the hospital regularly, I've noticed the increase in the costs of public healthcare already.

Antza2 wrote:

Permian Therapsid wrote:

Source of the post Also it would likely just make services more expensive, I think.

It probably will. As a person who needs to visit the hospital regularly, I've noticed the increase in the costs of public healthcare already.

That is the downside of badly planned healthcare reform. I hope it would not become too expensive for common people.

I believe a Confederal Style democracy would be best, it would take months with current technology to get between planets, and the same time with warp-drives to get between stars. So it wouldn't be a good Idea to have a unitary dictatorship as it would take years for legislation to get to the farthest territories and people would hate being ruled by someone months away (like in the colonial era).

ephu wrote:

Source of the post 2)Do you think Space exploration would be more efficient if we had one global economy/global political system?

The beginning of space exploration we would need a global political system to unite people towards a common goal, the soviet union did this and they advanced in space exploration faster than the US.

ephu wrote:

Source of the post 3)Do you support a complete ban on religion in our space colonies? (I don't)

That would be a massively stupid Idea.

ephu wrote:

Source of the post 4)Do you think private companies have an incentive for space exploration without any government subsidy/support? If not, and you think govt. should support, to what extent

My Idea of collectivism such companies would be given government Incentive based on how much they Benefit society.

ephu wrote:

Source of the post 5)Will you support a political government which prioritises long term (setting up a moon, mars base etc. ) over short term (but things which need attention now) like healthcare etc.?  

 Short-term goals, people won't be happy if the government is spending money on something that won't happen for a long time rather than on things that need to be taken care of now.

HarbingerDawn wrote:

ZackG wrote:

Source of the post watch innocent lives die in front of my eyes from Islam

I would agree that religiously inspired oppression and violence is a serious problem, but why single out Islam? What about people who commit violence or other terrible acts who are inspired by Christianity, for example? If we're going to be addressing religious violence and other crimes in the name of religion, we might as well address the whole spectrum, not single things out.

I try to avoid these kinds of discussion, based on the fact that (whatever the OP says about keeping what is said in here, in HERE) it spills over into other areas. Same as when talking to friends at home etc...
But I can't let that go without comment.


Firstly, the holy Islamic scriptures explicitly state that non-believers are to be executed. Sure, most other religion's texts say things like this to some extent (if not executed, a flogging or some other corrective corporal punishment is required), but Islam is the only religion I know of that has not updated accepted practice in line with the 'generally tolerant' world views of today. ALL other religions have. Islam is also the only religion that, in line with it's scriptures, routinely practices the death penalty for anyone leaving the religion.


Also, personally being from the UK, I haven't seen people of a non-Islamic faith do the following to promote their faith:

• use cars or vans as pedestrian seeking missiles
• bomb the sh!t out of children while at a concert
• rape kids and avoiding arrest despite being reported years beforehand, so they don't get offended

So, in short, how dare you try and equate a few isolated cases of criminal acts in today's world by people who happen to be non-islamic, to a dedicated campaign of terrorist activity committed by people who are still living millennia in the past. A faith that still uses a set of rules from the time when humans used stone to chisel those rules out, to justify the slaughter of innocents.

The sooner this backwards "religion of peace" is wiped off the face of Earth, the better.

MrZoolook, I agree with a lot of what you said. I was never trying to say that Christianity is as problematic as Islam. However, there are a few issues that I would like to address.

MrZoolook wrote:

Source of the post Firstly, the holy Islamic scriptures explicitly state that non-believers are to be executed.

So does the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 17:2-7, Deuteronomy 13:6-16).

MrZoolook wrote:

Source of the post  Islam is the only religion I know of that has not updated accepted practice in line with the 'generally tolerant' world views of today.

And exactly how are the "accepted practices" updated? Some Christian sects have governing hierarchies that determine such things, but some others are pretty decentralized. And certainly the holy texts have not been updated to remove passages that advocate atrocities. If Christianity is so evolved, why are there still so many Christians (at least in my country, and some others that I know of) who continually use their religion to advocate for injustice, and in some cases as a basis for murder?

MrZoolook wrote:

Source of the post rape kids and avoiding arrest despite being reported years beforehand

I feel compelled to mention the Catholic church here...

MrZoolook wrote:

Source of the post so they don't get offended

Citation please?

As I've said before, Islam has more than its share of problems, but it is either naïve or ignorant to suggest that other religions don't have theirs as well. To criticize Islam - to the exclusion of all other religions - is to promote a double standard.

MrZoolook wrote:

Source of the post Also, personally being from the UK, I haven't seen people of a non-Islamic faith do the following to promote their faith:

Well, that surely depends on how narrow you define "faith", but if you make it include political objectives, you must surely have been living under a rock if you haven't heard about incidents matching all your points.

HarbingerDawn wrote:

Source of the post  To criticize Islam - to the exclusion of all other religions - is to promote a double standard.

Not really.  If the police put more resources into catching a serial killer, do they promote a double standard if they don't also allocate extra resources to fight jaywalking?

We don't have to single out Islam specifically.  We should single out political religion, whatever people name it.  But it doesn't change the fact that there's one religion founded by a political warrior, and another founded by an apolitical pacifist.

midtskogen wrote:

Source of the post Not really.  If the police put more resources into catching a serial killer, do they promote a double standard if they don't also allocate extra resources to fight jaywalking?

Are you seriously saying there is the same difference between two religions and between a crime and a bad habit?

midtskogen wrote:

Source of the post But it doesn't change the fact that there's one religion founded by a political warrior, and another founded by an apolitical pacifist.

Let's not forgot that some hundred years ago, the first was an highly developed society in a golden age of knowledge, while the second was a bunch of fanatical sheep throwing one doomed holy war after another at the holy land.