Lysander Spooner was an anarchist, writer, and legal theorist who died in 1887. [wik] [wc]
Spooner was raised a deist and spent some good effort attacking christianity’s obvious sillinesses. He was also skeptical about trial by jury [gutenberg] and considered the US legal system to be, um… illegal. He was a man of his time, correctly identifying slavery as unconstitutional. [gutenberg]
He was not the reverend Spooner that “spoonerisms” are named after; that was Archibald Spooner.
This one is also good:
Since I’ve got photoshop up, here’s one I’ll do as an extra:
Not fussed with anarchists, especially the modern variety. The exceptions would be Chomsky, and Emma Goldman.
@#1: +Howard Zinn.
polishsalami @ # 1: Chomsky considers himself a Jeffersonian, not an anarchist.
A non-racist non-slaveowning non-religious-kook non-imperialist jeffersonian? A JINO!
Marcus Ranum @ # 4 – sfaik, Chomsky is not and never has been a yeoman farmer either.
Marcus Ranum @ # 4: … non-religious-kook …
Er, how does this pertain to Massa Thomas?
@ Pierce R. Butler
#6
Perhaps non-(religious kook) pertains to Chomsky.
Yes – Chomsky is not so desperate to believe in a higher power as Jefferson was. I admit, I am deeply suspicious of the rationality of deists; it’s faith but it’s dishonest on top of it all.
colinday @ # 7 – All the negative criteria cited by our esteemed host @ # 4 describe Chomsky.
Marcus Ranum @ # 8: … I am deeply suspicious of the rationality of deists; it’s faith but it’s dishonest on top of it all.
In a pre-Darwin, pre-astrophysics milieu, deism seems a fairly rational(ist) option – more so than theism, at least.
The October 2019 issue of Harper’s Magazine has a forum about how the US Constitution was never meant to be a document binding for all time but a temporary one to meet immediate needs. But now it is venerated as if it were a religious text and has become as a result an utterly reactionary document.
@ Pierce R. Butler #9
Agreed on the deists – there’s nothing particularly irrational about thinking that the universe was created by some powerful entity, especially at a time when alternative theories were not highly developed and there wasn’t much definitive evidence for any theory.
<snicker>
Infinite regress; what created the creator?
(It’s an epitome of irrationality)
[wild topic drift]
Me, I think anarchism is also an ideology. And I ain’t an ideologue.
I was going to reply here that the FtB blogger with the most orthodox Left politics is Mano, but I went to bed. Now he turns up here commenting on the US Constitution?
polishsalami, where is this insinuated contrast?
(Left, right or orthogonal, a citizen/resident should be familiar with the US constitution)
PS when I see your nym, I can’t but help think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac
John Morales @ # 12: Infinite regress; what created the creator? (It’s an epitome of irrationality)
The same regress applies to insensate physical forces.
At some point, one has to accept the limitations of reason when faced with a dearth of reliable information.
Pierce:
Heh. You imagine you are somehow disputing my bleedingly obvious point?
How is that somehow contrary to what I wrote?
—
You’re spluttering :)
Perhaps get yourself together and try to come up with an actual objection, if that’s how you feel.
—
Anyone who has done programming will know that you need an exit condition when recursing, even presuming an infinitely large stack. Reason.
[obs, it’s worse than that: the justification is a version of the fallacy of composition — everything in the universe is created from prior stuff, therefore the universe is created from prior stuff.
As I noted, an epitome of irrationality]
John Morales @ # 18: … my bleedingly obvious point?
How do you derive “epitome of irrationality” from “bleedingly obvious”? That seems … contrary to what you wrote.
You’re spluttering :)
Nope, just a slow blink.
John Morales @ # 19 – Are you trying to provoke an eyeroll too?
For some reason, people tend to read what they think I write, not what I write.
What’s bleedingly obvious is my point, and what’s irrational is the claim that imagining another realm of existence accounts for this one — though at the expense of now having some new putative realm which is not accounted for. Well, obvious to anyone with a modicum of logic.
Face it, deism is basically just an etiolated version of theism.
But fine, you keep on thinking that the thing that made the things for which there is no known maker and that causes and directs the events that we can’t otherwise explain and doesn’t need to have been made in not a particularly irrational idea, and making ocular contortions as your objection to my contention, instead of conceding the obvious.
[such quietude!]
Modern version: simulation hypothesis.
John Morales @ # 21 – Trying to impose 21st-century atheist-blog-chatter standards on 18th-century philosophers contributes only to anachronism and confusion.
John Morales @ # 22: such quietude!
Listen carefully, and you’ll hear a deep sigh.
Eye-rolling, eyebrow and deep sighs. Tiresome am I.
That’s what you think I’m doing?
Tell ya what, I’ll give you some give surcease.
“In a pre-Darwin, pre-astrophysics milieu, deism seems a fairly rational(ist) option – more so than theism, at least.”
I grant it may seem so until one considers the implications. No C21 info required for that.
They were very smart, but steeped in goddism. And sure, goddism-lite is better than the full cream version.
(Perhaps, as with the agnostics, some were smart enough to cook up excuses plausible to plebs about their actual atheism, and took the secret to their grave. I like to think so.)