I am anti-authority. I am disobedient and even disrespectful towards authority.

I suspect authority. I don't trust authority.

I feel that it is dangerous to train a population to be obedient to authority.

I feel this training is given to the population by those in power via the creation of religions and the idea of worship of an authoritative "father" creator.

While following orders is important in many endeavors, blind obedience to authority which go against your own conscience is very dangerous.

"I was only following orders."

That is the excuse of people who have committed mass murder.

I think people should think for themselves and listen to their conscience when it comes to blind obedience of even God himself.

"God told me to kill my children..."

That is the excuse of a mother who killed her children.

The post below is the Milgram experiment. You don't have to read it, but it illustrates my point.

Obedience to authority can be dangerous.

Be your own authority in your life.

JB




***********************

Milgram experiment

If a person in a position of authority ordered you to deliver a 400-volt electrical shock to another person, would you follow orders? Most people would answer this question with an adamant no, but Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of obedience experiments during the 1960s that demonstrated surprising results. These experiments offer a powerful and disturbing look into the power of authority and obedience.

Introduction
Milgram started his experiments in 1961, shortly after the trial of the World War II criminal Adolph Eichmann had begun. Eichmann’s defense that he was simply following orders when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews roused Milgram’s interest. In his 1974 book Obedience to Authority, Milgram posed the question, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Method
The participants in the study were 40 men recruited using newspaper ads. In exchange for their participation, each person was paid $4.50.

Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator, with shock levels starting at 30 volts and increasing in 15-volt increments all the way up to 450 volts. The many switches were labeled with terms including "slight shock," "moderate shock" and "danger: severe shock." The final two switches were labeled simply with an ominous "XXX."

Each participant took the role of a "teacher" who would then deliver a shock to the "student" every time an incorrect answer was produced. While the participant believed that he was delivering real shocks to the student, the student was actually a confederate in the experiment who would pretend to be shocked.

As the experiment progressed, the participant would hear the learner plead to be released or even complain about a heart condition. Once the 300-volt level had been reached, the learner banged on the wall and demanded to be released. Beyond this point, the learner became completely silent and refused to answer any more questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and deliver a further shock.

Most participants asked the experimenter whether they should continue. The experimenter issued a series of commands to prod the participant along:

1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires that you continue.
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.
4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Results
The level of shock that the participant was willing to deliver was used as the measure of obedience. How far do you think that most participants were willing to go? When Milgram posed this question to a group of Yale University students, it was predicted that no more than 3 out of 100 participants would deliver the maximum shock. In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks.

Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels. It is important to note that many of the subjects became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at the experimenter. Yet they continued to follow orders all the way to the end.

Because of concerns about the amount of anxiety experienced by many of the participants, all subjects were debriefed at the end of the experiment to explain the procedures and the use of deception. However, many critics of the study have argued that many of the participants were still confused about the exact nature of the experiment. Milgram later surveyed the participants and found that 84% were glad to have participated, while only 1% regretted their involvement.

I agree. Matthew 10:16 King James Bible
"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." When I first got converted I had it backwards. Cause I was wise as a dove and harmless as a serpent. And what happened was I was the wolf in the midst of sheep. A friendly Atheist helped me with it though when she told me that there no absolutes. I really miss Alex.

Is that absolutely true?

Good question.

Yes, Alex is by far more loving and compassionate than any religious person I've ever met.

She's also significantly more intelligent.

If there are no absolutes then why did someone invent the word, "absolutely?"

How does anyone know there are no absolutes?

Are they absolutely positive of that assertion?

Can they prove it?


I assert that everything is just an "opinion."

Wouldee asserts that everything is "guesswork."
(except for his personal delusions of course. )

Abra bases his belief on what he calls reason and "facts."

Spider keeps seeing straw men everywhere.

This is a strange group of people in this forum.

Can you actually prove anything?

WHEN Socrates was sixty years old, Plato, then a youth of twenty, came to him as a pupil. When Plato was sixty years old, the seventeen-year-old Aristotle presented himself, joining the Teacher's group of "Friends," as the members of the Academy called themselves. Aristotle was a youth of gentle birth and breeding, his father occupying the position of physician to King Philip of Macedon. Possessed of a strong character, a penetrating intellect, apparent sincerity, but great personal ambition. Aristotle was a student in the Academy during the twenty years he remained in Athens. His remarkable intellectual powers led Plato to call him the "Mind of the School."

After the death of his teacher, Aristotle, accompanied by Xenocrates, went to the court of Hermias, lord of Atarneus, whose sister he afterward married. When Aristotle was forty years old, Philip of Macedon engaged him as tutor for his son Alexander, then thirteen, whose later exploits gained for him the title of Alexander the Great. Philip became so interested in Aristotle that he rebuilt his native city and planned a school where the latter might teach. When Alexander started out to conquer the world, learned men accompanied him to gather scientific facts. After his Persian conquest Alexander presented his former tutor with a sum equivalent to a million dollars, which enabled Aristotle to purchase a large library and continue his work under the most ideal circumstances.

When Aristotle was forty-nine years old he returned to Athens and founded his own school of philosophy. It was known as the Peripatetic School because of Aristotle's habit of strolling up and down the shaded walks around the Lyceum while talking with his pupils. In the morning he gave discourses on philosophy to his more advanced pupils, who were known as his "esoteric" students. In the afternoon a larger circle gathered around him, to whom he imparted simpler teachings. This was known as his exoteric group.

In passing from Plato to Aristotle, we at once become conscious of a distinct change in philosophical concepts and methods. This is all the more noticeable because of our ignorance of Aristotle's complete system. The writings which have come down to us comprise only about a quarter of his works. These are all incomplete, some of them seeming to be notes intended for elaboration in his lectures. They are often sketchy and obscure, highly technical and full of repetitions. Sometimes they are so abstruse that we are obliged to call upon the imagination to supply the missing links of his deductions. Before reaching our Western scholars his works passed through too many hands to remain immaculate. From Theophrastus they passed to Neleus, whose heirs kept them mouldering in subterranean caves for a century and a half. After that his manuscripts were copied and augmented by Apellicon of Theos, who supplied many missing paragraphs, probably from his own conjectures. Although the Arabians were acquainted with Aristotle's works from the eighth century onward, the Christian world paid little attention to them until three centuries later. In the eleventh century, however, the Aristotelian doctrine of Forms became the bone of contention which divided philosophers into two classes which, from that day to this, have remained separate. On the one side were the Nominalists, who maintained that Universals are mere names for the common attributes of things and beings. On the other side were the Realists, whose thought crudely resembled the Platonic doctrine of Ideas as independent realities.

It seems a great historic tragedy that Aristotle, who remained under the influence of Plato for nearly twenty years, failed to continue the line of teaching begun by Pythagoras and clarified by Plato. But Aristotle was not content to be a "transmitter." Plato claimed no originality for his ideas, giving the credit to Socrates and Pythagoras. Aristotle's failure in this direction may be due to the fact that, while both Pythagoras and Plato were Initiates of the Mysteries, Aristotle was never initiated and depended on logical speculation for the development of his theories. This accounts for his many divergences from the teachings of Plato, whose philosophy was based upon the wisdom of the ancient East. According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle fell away from his teacher while Plato was still alive, whereat Plato remarked, "Aristotle has kicked me, as foals do their mothers when they are born." While there is evidence that Aristotle never lost his high personal regard for Plato, the fact remains that in his later writings he never mentions Plato except to refute his doctrines, maintaining that the Platonic method is fatal to science.

At every period of the world's history some philosopher has asked the eternal question: Is there, in the universe or outside of it, an underlying Reality which is eternal, immovable, unchanging? The ancient Egyptians believed, as Hermes taught: "Reality is not upon the earth, my son. Nothing on earth is real. There are only appearances. Appearance is the supreme illusion." In the still more ancient East, only the eternal and changeless was called Reality. All that is subject to change through differentiation and decay was called Maya, or illusion.

It is the task of Philosophy to investigate this all-important question: What is real? At first glance, Aristotle's definition of philosophy seems to agree with Plato's. Plato described philosophy as the science of the Idea, the science which deals with noumena rather than phenomena. Aristotle defined it as the science of the universal essence of that which is real or actual. Plato, the Initiate, taught that there is one Reality lying behind the numberless differentiations of the phenomenal world. Aristotle maintained that there is a graded series of realities, each step in the series revealing more and more those universal relationships which make it an object of true knowledge. At the end of the series, he said, lies that which is no longer relative, but absolute.

Plato taught that "beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence, or Mind, the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea upon which all other ideas are grounded, ... the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all the order and harmony and beauty which pervades the Universe." This he called the "World of Ideas."

What, actually, is this Intelligence, this Cosmic Mind of which Plato spoke with such assurance? Theosophy explains that Universal Mind is not something outside the universe, but includes all those various intelligences which were evolved in a previous period of evolution. Evolution, therefore, is the further development of those intelligences. This unfolding is the result of conscious experience, beginning in the highest state of manifested matter and descending more and more into concrete forms until the physical is reached. Then begins the ascent, plus the experience gained.

Plato held that the Ideas, the Forms of things, are self-existent, and not dependent upon the ever-changing objects of the senses. The noumenon, according to Plato, is the real, the phenomenon only appearance. Aristotle wrote extensively in criticism of Plato's doctrine of Ideas, affirming that "no universals exist over and above the individual objects and separate from them." He refused any substantial reality to "the unity which is predicated of many individual things." Universal principles, he held, are real, and are the objects of our reason, as distinguished from the physical objects of sense-perception. Yet universals are real only as they exist in individuals. "It is," he said, "apparently impossible that any of the so-called universals should exist as substance." This conflict between Plato and Aristotle on the subject of reality led to almost infinite controversy and confusion among later philosophers. To the extent that Aristotle endows universals with reality, he is Platonic in thought. His commentators have endeavored to interpret Aristotle according to their predilection. One writer maintains that "according to Aristotle, the formal aspect of universality is conferred by the mind, and therefore, the universal, as such, does not exist in individual things, but in the mind alone." (William Turner, History of Philosophy, p. 132.) Another points out that while both the Categories and the Metaphysics are based on the assumption of the reality of individual substances, "the Categories (cap. 5) admits that universal species and genera can be called substances, whereas the Metaphysics (Z 13) denies that a universal can be a substance at all." Yet Aristotle is constrained to regard as "substance" the universal essence of a species of substance, "because the individual essence of an individual substance really is that substance, and the universal essence of the whole species is supposed to be indivisible and therefore identical with the individual essence of any individual of the species." (Encyc. Brit., "Aristotle," 11th ed.)

In maintaining this Aristotle seems to invalidate all his arguments against the existence of universals independent of particulars. It was doubtless such difficulties in the comprehension of Aristotle's real meaning that led H.P.B. to remark upon the abstruse character of his writings, asking, "What do we know so certain about Aristotle?" (Isis Unveiled I, 320.) It seems that in spite of his demand for research into particulars, Aristotle was forced to return to the Platonic view of origins. This is indicated by H.P.B.'s explanation of his theory of Privation, Form and Matter. As Lange points out in his History of Materialism, Aristotle's admission of the reality of the universal, in things, "leads, in its logical consequences, little as Aristotle cared to trouble himself with these, to the same exaltation of the universal over the particular which we find in Plato. For if it is once conceded that the essence of the individual lies in the species, the most essential part of the species must again lie on a still higher plane, or, in other words, the ground of the species must lie in the genus, and so on." (I, 88.) Thus, as one of Aristotle's translators has observed, "he is ultimately driven back to the very standpoint he derides in Platonism." This writer, Hugh Tredennick, makes clear the internal contradictions in Aristotle's thought:

He is emphatic that form cannot exist in separation from matter; and yet the supreme reality turns out to be a pure form. He blames the Platonists for using metaphorical language, and yet when he comes to explain the ultimate method of causation he has to describe it in terms of love or desire. The truth is that Aristotle's thought is always struggling against Platonic influences, which nevertheless generally emerge triumphant in his ultimate conclusions. His great contribution to philosophy was on the side of method; but it was Plato, acknowledged or unacknowledged, who inspired all that was best in the thought of his great disciple. (Metaphysics, Introduction, I, xxx.)

Deep, huh?

then I wonder why the world is so chaotic.
The examples cited in this thread are the extremes.
Obviously with the clear intention to diminish religious belief systems.
Such strategy lacks of validity since uses the extremes within the data instead of the average.
This strategy wery well used in biased statistical analysis in order to render results which follows an agenda instead of informing.
All this ridicule attempts to attack something for the simple fact that is not understood.
It is like when a person is drowning, and he/she so desperately moves his/her arms trying to keep his/her head above the water when he/she knows he/she is already lost.

I miss the sweet Alex.

Perhaps her telling you there are no absolutes helped - but she was wrong. There is at least one inarguable absolute that exists. And it cannot be proved otherwise.

You are so correct here. Thanks for keeping it short & sweet. The most direct way to the truth.

Furthermore, if there is any danger in obedience to a all loving God like my Heavenly Daddy. It's just for those who can't comprehend His real nature. That does not mean they are good or bad. Just shortsighted, that's all.

...and some poeple just like to go around taking swipes at everybody...right? LOL

And that absolute is that we will all die. There is no other complete absolute. All other "absolutes" can be changed either internally or externally.

And I feel this philosphy is shortsighted so now what?

I respect your position. what else can i do?
each one to his/her own.

Jennie, the OP was interesting.

The fact people can be told to deliver shocks to another person and they agree to it, is in itself scary.

Then they witnessed the duress of the reciever of the shock and continued, scary.

And the end shocks were considered dangerous and that many of them still used those shocks, scariest of all.


When will people learn, just because someone tells you something is right, does not always make it so.

Question and analyze everything for yourself, even when told that questioning is a sin or will cause you harm. If you are told that, you are being lead astray.

I think the study is not in correlation to the premise. The premise is "is following orders okay or should one think for themselves." The study just shows that human beings will question direct involvement in the hurting of others of their kind, but still gain enjoyment from watching the suffering of others.

Now no one likes to admit they enjoy the suffering of others, but like it or not you do. You need proof? The last time you went by an auto accident, did you look? Slow down maybe so that you could see better. It's okay, we have a term for it, rubber-necking. We all do it. We love to watch the news and see trouble in far off lands, it's not as cool when it's close to home, but add a few thousand miles or so, and "Whoa did you see that?!?"

The question of following orders, especially of a military man such as Eichmann is also spurious. Ask a marine, they'll tell you, "we follow orders or people die." Soldiers are taught, nay trained, to follow orders to the best of their ability. Serious penalties apply when they don't. Eichmann, being such a high ranking officer, had the ability to use "situational awareness" to countermand such an order, and hence was guilty. The sergants and corprals we executed after the war did not, and if they would have disobeyed their orders, would have met the same fate as following them.

Those in the study were told they must continue, but whether they did was at their own discretion. Most, followed the order, but that does not point to the heart of "why" they followed it, just that they did. The study doesn't validate Eichmanns actions, and it also does not prove the point that "following orders" is intrinsically evil.

Now I will agree with JB when she says we should question authority. I don't think that we do so near enough. What is it they say, always check your sources?