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@ResurgetExFavilla
If that happened, it would just be a powerful unspoken referendum that people prefer a more lax moderation environment.
I would say it reflects the real world where there are people who enjoy intelligent, informed debate and others who like to troll. That's just how the world is..!
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Let me suggest a different take.
At about 9AM this morning I bought a newspaper.
You can apply all the analysis and logic you like onto that sentence but it won't help you decide it is true.
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@Castin
I would prefer an area restricted to 'members of good standing'. Membership would be invitation by the siteowner or their appointed deputy and can be revoked atany time but the sort of poster invited would be a good self-policer anyway. The area would be read-only for ordinary and new members.
It's unashemedly elitist and undemocratic idea, but DA is a privately owned board not a public service. No one is prevented from debating in the public area so free speech is unaffected, but the elite are expected to hold themselves to high standards or suffer demotion.
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@Tejretics
Wouldn't it result in the site appearing to have no activity? People - especially noobs - would see only a fraction of what might interest or concern them or could usefully contribute to. i think It would establish groupthink,not debate,as the basis of DA.
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@PGA2.0
My point is that it is only recently we hae started to thin in terms of conflicted brain processes. Primitive man saw it a fight between gods and devils; later it was about 'cosmic consciousness' and 'destiny'. But really its justs down to the way our brains haver evolved to help us reproduce before we die.
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@Castin
I'm not leaving until I find out what colour the ball is.
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They already exist - its just that you've never been invited to one.
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@secularmerlin
I am asking you to think about the issues in terms of brain processes rather than abstracts.
As eusocial animals it is necessary we can distinguish between that which is good for us and our group from that which is bad for us and our our group. I am suggesting that somewhere in your head a lump of neurones is repsonsible for taking a number of inputs and outputting its best guess as to something's probable "harm or benefit", those words being intended broadly. That output is placed into your consciousness and is your 'subjective judgement' of its morality.
As we are dealing with what is a neural net, the mapping between input and output may be complicated and messy - far more then simply subjective morality begin proportioal to 'harm/wellbeing' and can be wrong in many cases. Also as brain are all different, different people may well judge the 'morality' of the same thing differently.
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@secularmerlin
Let me suggest that critters have been able to distinguish between 'hot things' and 'cold things' for millions of years, long before they had any concept of thermodynamics and 'heat energy'. Our 'heat sense' is a thermometer - it's not as precise or reliable as a mercury-in-glass affair but it does the same job.
That is to say that the more objective heat energy something has the subjectively hotter it feels - that correlation isn't accidental; its the whole point of evolving a heat sense.
Suppose our 'moral sense' is very like out 'heat sense' but it estimates, not heat energy but, 'harm'. That doesn't mean our moral sense accurately measures the harm or benefit of something - it means we get a sensation that is a rough and ready estimate of harm/benefit similar to the way our heat sense gives us a rough and ready estimate of temperature.
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@3RU7AL
We clearly have to interact with something to gain knowledge of its existence - I don't think that is being disputed. My position is that it is not necessary for me to know that X exists for X to exist. If I step on a landmine I may never know of its existence - but exist it did.
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@3RU7AL
I am very confident a poll would reveal most people don't think verifiability is a condition of existence.So you believe in consensus reality?If a majority of humans believe there are some sort of gods that control our lives, does that automatically mean that gods exist?
What I believe is that the way most people use language the truth/falseness of 'X exists' does not depend on the existence of X being verified. In other words verification reveals but does not change the truth/falseness of 'X exists'.
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@3RU7AL
I might argue that keithprosser's usage of 'exists' is what most of us call 'might exist'.
You could - but you'd be wrong! I am very confident a poll would reveal most people don't think verifiability is a condition of existence.
btw, if you do some browsing you can find thousands of pages of argument over whether existence is a property or not.
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I think just about everybody except Brutal uses the word 'exists' in a way that makes it independent of verifiability. I honestly think it would be much easier if Brutal shifted position rather than everybody else did! I might argue brutal's usage of 'exists' is what most of call 'known to exist'.
Existence is rather a special case amongst properties - indeed there are any number of heated arguments about whether 'existence' is a property at all! But IMO that "problem" is more to do with framing a tidy definition of 'property' than being difficult conceptually; our brains are understand the difference between existence and non-existence intuitively and non-verbally (ie no dictionary definition is needed).
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@secularmerlin
But suppose there is a red ball in a sealed box. If you like we can say the box has never been opened and no-one has ever seen inside nor ever will.
Thus I am saying it is 'unknowable' there is a red ball in a box; however I want you to accept it as a brute fact that there is red ball in the box, and moreover there has been since the beginning of time.
In those circumstances anyone who believes there is a red ball in the box is correct! There is no way to demonstrate or prove their correctness; their faith that there is a red ball in the box is not justifiable; it is basically a groundless, lucky guess. But it is (we are supposing) correct.
But how/why does anyone believe in a groundless guess? Answer: faith.
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Suppose RJFs (red jungle fowls) have mostly red feathers with just a few white ones and chickens are the other way around.
At the outset the 'average' bird is,say, 90% red feather, 10% white feather.
A mutant is born with more than average white feathering-say 15% For some reason the extra white feathers are an advatage, so the mutant has many offspring, all with slightly more white feathers than average. Hence in the next generation the 'average bird' is 89% red, 11% white.
Suppose that advantage of white feathers is that it confuses some predator. That means the more white feathers you have the more offspring you have before you get eaten. Hence each generation will be- on average - slightly whiter than the one before. After a few generations the flock will have transformed from being mostly red "RJFs" into being mostly white "chickens".
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@Shed12
Imagine a trolly problem that has two options, one option results in one death; the other option leads to two deaths. Most people would say that the first option was better, but many assert capital punishment - which means two die instead of one - is morally justified
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In my view the execution of a murderer is neither just nor moral - it is done to maintain the credibility of the deterrent.
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@Shed12
we learn that when we perceive something usually there seems to be something external that the perception closely corresponds to.Can you give an example?
Perhaps it would be better to put it the other way around.... I'd rather have said that what we learn by experience is that some of our perceptions do not correspond to an externality. By having experiences of particular examples of perceptions some of which seem to correspond and others seem not to correspond our minds construct 'abstract sets', viz 'reality' and 'illusions'.
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Clearly not. Nothing in the scenario suggests you really know the colour; if you did know by some indirct method then you could be lieing or mistaken.... under such circumstances 'simply accepting' your word can't possibly be justified.Should you simply accept my word?
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@secularmerlin
The question can be viewed as a historical one or a theological one - but not both at the same time!
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@Shed12
I would suggest that - simply by living and interacting with the world - we learn that when we perceive something usually there seems to be something external that the perception closely corresponds to. More rarely we experience a perception that doen't seem to correspond to anything external on further examination.
Through interaction with other humans we acquire language and learn to express our experience of the world by saying objects that correspond to our perceptions of them are labelled 'real' (and collectively constitute 'reality'); on the other hand perceptions that do not correspond to external objects are called 'illusions'.
I'd say that implies our intuition and language is based on a particular trichotomy of object, perception and the relatioship between them and we can neither experience nor express any other.
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@PGA2.0
How much do you know of the Preterist argument? If you don't know much about it how can you say it is insufficient?
As I understand it, preterism is concered with the prophetic elements of scripture. Preterists argue amongst themselves concering whether a prophesy has alreay been fullfilled or is yet to be fulfilled - they do not concern themselves so much with the validity of prophesy; the truth and reality of prophesy is taken as a given.
Prophesy flies in the face of scientific understanding of the world. As I see it, that means we have a stark choice; we can posit the existence of the 'supernatural' not restricted by such things as cause and effect and finite properties or we can reject the reality of prophesy.
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@YeshuaBought
I think we have to clear up what is meant by 'Early Christians'.
Paul was an 'early christian' chronologically, but many people believe Pauline Christianty (the sort that dominates the NT) is not completely faithful to jesus's original message.
So while Jesus was deified 'quite early' the very earliest of Jesus' followers - and jesus himself - may not have done so.
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@PGA2.0
Suppose someone dies of a heart attack in a New York hotel room. The Haitian housekeeper says its because some enemy used voodoo. Is she right? More to the point, how could you prove to her that it wasn't voodoo?
People who claim 'goddidit' are in the same position as the housekeeper - they are making a claim that can't be refuted, only dismissed.
In 2018 cosmologists are still working hard on discovering the real mechanisms behind the origins of the universe. It's seems to be some job, ust as doing an autopsy on a heart-attack victim is harder than saying 'it was voodoo'.
So to PGA I say that his belief is no more than rank superstition and shows a lack of intellectual curiosity. 'Goddidit' is not - strictly speaking - illogical. It is boringly obvious that an if an entity capabale of creating universes and enabling prophesy existed it would explain everything.
'Goddidit' is an answer - but you have to believe it to believe it, just as only another Haitian would believe the housekeeper!
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@secularmerlin
What makes something just?
What makes something just what?
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@drafterman
But the mod team here has opted to voluntarily neuter itself as their style of moderation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As opposed to being high-handed?
It's a no-win.... you can please some of the people all of the time.. etc.
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@PGA2.0
With blind indifference chance happenstance, there is no reason or logic.There is always the possibilty that there is no reason or logic.But you continue to find it when you discuss origins. It is woven into the fabric of the universe. We discover there is a way in which things work and a causal pattern to their existence.Plus you continue to use it.
Damn English is so ambiguous! I mean that there may be no reason in the sense of 'reason = purpose or goal'. I think that reasons in the sense of 'prior causes' are real enough, but may be not so the 'teleological' sort of 'reason'. You my have meant somehing else entirely - that happens!
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@secularmerlin
My version of the cosmological arguiment runs along the lines that the origin of the universe is damned odd, but you can use 'god' to explain it by using an adjective of no more than 3 syllables, such as 'infinite' or 'transcendent'.
i think it would be better to forget about the kca and discuss hawking's ideas that involve imaginary time and the 'no boundary condition', but I'm unsure many people are very familiar with it.
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@Mopac
Of course that is the obstacle! I grew up in a non-religious (NOT anti-religious) atmosphere and was never exposed to the idea that the bible is authoratative. All my school mates were the same as me and I only met real religious types when I went to uni. I didn't get why they belived in it then and I don't know why people believe in it now!Mopac wrote:the scriptures I accept as being valid witness(which you don't, and I'm not trying to argue that) make it clear to me why this is the case.
To quote Porgy and Bess,
The things that you lib'le
To read in the bible...
It ain't neccessarily so.
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@Goldtop
It's as if its 'tame rap' - produced by a covert government department to counter the influence of real rap....
I found it.... anodyne.
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@Stephen
I think it is anachronistic to describe ancient Judaism as racist. The conflicts between tribes was not based on irrational race hatred but on the desire for land and power. In those days it was believe the gods intervened very directly in the affairs or men, and winning or losing a battle depended more on one's relations with your tribe's deity than on tactics or strategy.
It must be understood that YHWH was the Hebrew's god and the Amelekites (e.g.) had a different god that looked at their interests only. YHWH didn't hate non-Hebrews - he had no feelings forthem at all. If YHWH was pleased with the Hebrew they would win their battle, if he was displeased with them the Hebrew would lose, whoever they were fighting. But that isn't only applicable to YHWH and the Hebrews - it is how the relationship between men and gods was believed to be right across the ancent middle east.
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@ethang5
I would say that it is the view of someone who views history as a human affair and not as a chess game played by gods.
When Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Judah to end the Babylonian exile it was as a vassal state with no more royal family as it had been before. It was run as a Persian satrapy under Persian appointed governors such as Zerubbabel and Seshbazaar. Alexander the great defeated the Persians in 333BCE and the Jews fell under into Greek hands, becoming part of the Seleucid empire around 220 BCE.
The Maccabean revolt against the greek rulers led to a period of Jewish independence between c. 150 BCE and 55 BCE which was ended by Roman occupation which was on-going in Jesus' day.
Thus the Jews had become accustomed to foreign domination. Mainstream Judaism remained militant, but Christianity offered a pacifist, quietist alternative. That required the re-invention of God - no longer a god of war but now a god of humility.
Now I don't mind (much!) if anyone prefers to think that god changed his mind, or it's what God planned all along. But I do mind when it is asserted or implied that I don't know what I'm talking about.
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@secularmerlin
For his benefit, the special pleading is that god gets special treatment as being an exception to the general rule that everything has a beginning/cause etc.Mopac asked:How does the cosmological argument commit a special pleading falllacy?
Formally, God being uncaused is not a conclusion in the Kalam - it is an assumption made at the outset so that the argument goes through. That is to say that if I accept god is uncaused the argument seems valid, but I am not obliged to accept that god is causeless.
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Ok - now I know..
Kids should be listening to real music and singing like...
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Who or what is Drake?
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@Tradesecret
I'd hazard that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is the reason any system will eventually break down.
If we think of life (in general, not the life of an individual) as a self-sustaining process then it can be self-sustaining without begin optimal.
The system we have now - parents reproduce then die - works fine for keeping the process ticking over. A sub-optimal self-sustaining system is presumably easier to get up and running than an optimal one. Perhaps we just have to wait for immortality to evolve... but it may be a long wait.
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The change in the way God (YHWH) is depicted in the two testaments is obvious to anyone. One of the most notable is Marcion of Sinope who taught that the god of the OT was a completely seperate entity from the NT god. He discarded the entire OT from his version of the bible.
Really there are two options. One if the traditional theistic route of having a 'old' and 'new' covenant. However atheists such as myself look to social changes and historical events to explain why the traditional god of the Hebrews (invented in a primitive, tribal and nomadic setting) was no longer suitable for the post-exilic Jews who were an impoverished subject race on the fringes of the Hellenic world.
The biggest difference is that traditional Judaism aspired to future greatness on earth in worldly terms. Christianity was pessimistic and saw no future for the Jewish people in this world - not against the mighty power of Rome - so it transferred hope to another world. Christianity was pacfist in relation to this world, so had no use for the warmongering YHWH - so God's whole character and personality was changed. However the OT was retained to give a semblance of continuity and legitimacy to the new faith, despite it incongriguity.
Or so I am led to believe.
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But what definition of 'God' suits both these:
"Mars was the roman god of war."
"God so loved the world he gave.... etc"
I don't think there is a single, simple definition of god/God - although if it restricted to capital-G od then its a lot easier, but then you might want to distinguish between the OT and NT versions.
But as a rule 'atheists' disbelief in gods is only part of a wider rejection of 'woo' including ghost and ESP so atheist tend to lump all god-like things together because none of them are real.
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@secularmerlin
I'd say that mopac's idea is that everything has a 'why', and then you can ask 'why' about that 'why'...and so on.
Mopac claims that, finally, the 'why' is 'God' and there it has to stop because 'God is the ultimate reality'.
Deep and difficult it is not. If there is any more to it... well, that's for mop to tell me.
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@PGA2.0
With blind indifference chance happenstance, there is no reason or logic.
There is always the possibilty that there is no reason or logic.
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A good example of the difference between us is that you wrote "it is historically reasonable and logical to believe these predictions happened before the fact."
I cannot accept prediction to be 'historically reasonable' or 'logical'. Seeing the future is an extrordinary claim. You would (rightly!) call me a liar if/ I claimed to see the future because preduction is neither 'reasonable' nor 'logical'. If a prediction appears to 'come to pass' you can either suppose the laws of cause and effect are suspended or you can suppose some guy set out to deceive.
Can I prove it is fakery? Possibly not, but we know fakery goes on and moreover it doesn't require the suspension of physics - just a man with a pen and some ink.
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Would you care to comment on my earlier post? https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/572/post_links/25427
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@ethang5
When i read something like that I have to wonder if it's true and, if it is true, if it is really only liberals who are guilty of it.Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago.
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@PGA2.0
The autonomic behavior-control circuit? It seems very complicated. Is that an assumption, a made up circuit, or can you go to a brain and demonstrate such a circuit?
Most of what you posted is bluster and I don't want to re-open the evolution debate all over again right now. But the question above is a fair one.
I can't pretend to be an expert in neuro-anatomy, and I am certainly not familiar with all the literature on the subject, but I am aware there has been a lot of work done in this area in recent years. Googling related terms will throw up a lot of good stuff.
I will confess that the picture I painted of an 'autonomic behaviour control circuit' is very much a layman's simplification, but it is in no way misleading and totally consistent with modern views of brain function, as well as I understand it. I can't link to an article on the 'ABCC' because that is my interpretation, invented on the spot to put over the general idea in a forum post that is - in the end - only for fun.
So I can't demonstrate that circuit, but I can link to an article that includes the sentences:
"Patients with vmPFC lesions are more likely to endorse killing one person to save multiple others in moral dilemmas involving high levels of conflict." and "However, empathy is not solely the product of activation in the dACC and insula, and as such the absence of activation in these regions in moral judgment studies does not strongly argue against the involvement of empathy in moral judgment."
There can be little doubt that brain hardware plays a large part in our moral sense.
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@Stephen
Yes. She clarified things in post #3, probably while you were composing your reply to post #1, judging from the timestamps. Its annoying when that happens!
I don't think she has had a satisfactory reponse to #3 yet...
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@ethang5
Thank you. It is obvious you have a concept in your mind when you say God. One of your founding criteria is creation of the universe. Though it doesn't have to be.
I meant 'created the universe' as an example of the sort of thing that people might disagree about what constitutes a god. I think we all have a list of qualities and properties that something must have to qualify as a god. I'm not even sure what the properties of, eg. Mars are, but people seem happy to call him a god. I doubt there is a single defintion of 'god' that everyone would agree with 100%, but I'd be interested in anyone's attempt at it!
As an atheist I deny the existence of any entity that transcends the laws of physics or any foreseeable extension to such laws. I deny there is any 'cosmic consciousness', or similar term! I believe there is only matter and energy; life and consciousness emerge from them without being bidden by a master planner.
My atheism is a consequence of my materialist view of reality - it's not the other way around. The universe came into being in a way that we are yet to discover) consisting of matter and energy. What we see today is the result of the interactions of matter and energy over billions of years as dictated by laws and no god - or truly god-like thing has ever existed.
However although gods don't exist, religions do exist and they are important for the understanding of history and of the present -hence my inteest in the subect.
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@PGA2.0
The unbeliever wants to live his/her life on their own terms. They do not want to be accountable and they make up their own morality which results in
I despair about what can be done about the theistic myth that atheits just want to commit crimes! PG - everyone is tempted all the time and almost always we resist it. The theistic myth is that we resist temptation because of God, or faith etc. But the real reason is that we are born wired-up to behave appropriately for a social animal.
What blocks us from behaving totally selfishly is a circuit in the brain that tells us 'That is wrong'. That circuit was put there by evolution because we are a social species and some method of ensuring eusocial behaviour is necessary for our long-term survival. So when we see an old lady our cognitive logical brain might think 'I could steal her handbag and gain use of the money in it', but in 99.99% of cases such thoughts don't get to over-ride the strong signal that 'stealing is wrong'.
That is what is happening inside a human brain when we are tempted - our cognitive, logical side sees things one way but the autonomic behaviour-control circuit conflicts with it. Primitive man - and modern theist - imagines this as a battle between the forces of good and evil, but its not. It is the result of our brains being wired up for eusociality but also to be alive to opportunties, even though most of those opportunities are summarily dismissed.
Or it's god and the devil fighting over possession of your soul. It's definitely one or the other.
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@secularmerlin
I'm second guessing PGA a bit here because its his idea - I hope you don't think I go along with it!What makes scripture any more than the subjective opinions of the men who wrote them? Which scripture (for many religions have a holy book) is the most moral? If you can answer the second question what makes that answer more than your subjective opinion?
The reason PGA would give is probably that its because scriptures are divinely inspired. Of course that's nonsense if you don't believe in gods in the first place, but it must seem perfectly reasonable if you believe god is real, which PGA clearly does.
I am also sure he would choose the Bible as the most moral scripture because it is the one 'inspired' by the god he believes in.
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@ethang5
Orwell was a socialist who abhorred the way Stalin perverted the ideals of Marx. Animal Farm tells the story of how the socialist ideals of Old Major (Marx) cause a revolution. A brief period of peace and plenty ensues until power is grabbed by Napoleon (Stalin)and the other pigs, leaving the other animals worse off than they were before.
It was a damning criticism of the russian regime, but not in any way a criticism of socialism or communism per se; indeed Orwell intended to show that Stalinism was a form of trannical dictatorship, not at all what socialism and communism should be.
I'd like to say that Orwell was an "anti-communist socialist", but I have to stress that the 'communism' he detested was a Stalinist perversion of Communism, not the Marxist/Leninist ideal.
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@Stephen
J6 said see wants to know if people's own experience of God left them with the impression God has emotions.
I'm disquaified from answering!
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