Posted on 06/07/2002 8:55:19 AM PDT by KentuckyWoman
Brief Biography
Paul Kurtz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, founder and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the Council for Secular Humanism, and Prometheus Books, and editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry Magazine. He is a former Co-President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). BA, New York University; MA and PhD, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Humanist Laureate and President of the International Academy of Humanism.
Books
This is a selected list of books by Paul Kurtz.
Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, October 2000). Cloth, $32.95.
Embracing the Power of Humanism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, Jne 2000). Cloth, $24.95.
The Courage to Become: The Virtues of Humanism (Praeger/Greenwood, 1997). July, 1997.
Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz (Transaction, 1994).
The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (Prometheus, 1992).
The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal (Prometheus, 1986).
Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (Prometheus, 1987).
Exuberance: An Affirmative Philosophy of Life (Prometheus, 1977).
Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism (Prometheus, 1991).
A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology (Prometheus, 1985).
In Defense of Secular Humanism (Prometheus, 1983).
The Fullness of Life (Horizon Books and Prometheus, 1974).
The Humanist Alternative (Pemberton Books and Prometheus, 1973).
Decision and the Condition of Man (University of Washington, 1965).
A Secular Humanist Declaration (Prometheus, 1980).
Building a World Community (Prometheus, 1988).
Challenges to the Enlightenment (with Timothy J. Madigan, ed.) (Prometheus, 1994).
Humanist Manifestos I and II (Prometheus, 1973).
Living Without Religion (Prometheus, 1988).
Humanist Manifesto 2000 (Prometheus, 2000).
Skeptical Odysseys (Prometheus, 2001).
Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm (Transaction Publishers, 2001).
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Having gotten that out of that way - I decided to quit wasting my time several years trying to educate the un-educatable like you who are SO certain that they know everything that they are unwilling to even entertain ideas that might upset their comfortable little lives. Enjoy yours for as long as you can.
There is an intentional effort by "foreign and domestic enemies of the Constitution" to destroy America and our Bill of Rights. This has been going on for decades, and is obvious to anyone who follows the news.
Some call it the "New World Order". I tend to use the term "tyrannical vampires", or something along those lines. Regardless of the name of the enemy, they are for real, and their goals are very clear.
They seek to take our guns, our property and our Rights. They want to turn us all into slaves, just like the communists did with millions.
Criticize her effort to sytematize the problem, if you will, but don't just scoff at her facts, because you think she has exaggerated the foe's success. In point of fact, she is dealing with an Educationalist mindset that goes back many decades. (See Myths & Myth Makers In American "Higher" Education.)
Now if you want to discuss the specific mindset in the NEA and what can be done about it, that opens up many subjects.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
This is EXACTLY why I decided to post this when I couldn't find it here in a search. She has covered much of the same ground that I have covered over the last few years and I thought did a pretty good job of summing things up. This is SO hard to detail in a short period of time. We either winding up sounding like some paranoid nut-case or some right-wing fundamentalist even though we can PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that what we are saying is true and factual. I have gotten to the point that when I am speaking somewhere that I take along a trunk full of GOVERNMENT documents and booklets and transcripts in case I need them for back-up. I have found that people don't WANT to know what's really happening as long as their color TV and new car are safe! Sad, isn't it?
It is now known that teaching of music actually increases mathematical skills (The Greeks knew this), so there is nothing wrong in teaching the arts.
And frankly, I know a lot of techies who seem to have no ability to reason at all, beyond their specialty. They can write programs but their common sense has fled the coop. Sifting the fine nuances of social discourse, or piercing through the clever lies of politicians, often requires more than a simple scientific bludgeon.
One of the groups often mentioned in the discussion of the NWO is the Council on Foreign Relations. They do have influence. In fact, you can thank them for our brand new Homeland Security Agency. They actually came up with it over two years ago - before W. was in the White House and long before September 11. It is their plan that the current administration has and continues to implement. As far as a conspiracy goes, there isn't one. They did it all out in the open. Check it out. for yourself.
All you do is create a cover story that is actually very close to the real story, even with the same sources and much of the truth. That way anyone investigating the real story also stumbles on the cover.
But you make sure the cover has a totally insane element - such as the involvement of giant squids from Mars - and you give it to a really paranoid but loud nutcase to spread - while supplying him with proof that he finds incontrovertible. Then you make sure the nutcase gets a lot of coverage.
When a real journalist (if there are any left) starts to cover this, he stumbles on the nutcase first. At that point he either gives up in disgusts or includes the nutcase as part of his story. Either way the truth is ignored or discreditted by being associated with the gerbil who is going on about Octopi from Mars.
It's an old trick. And it always works.
Yes, it is very sad. The problem is two-fold. People are almost afraid to really look at how far things have drifted, because that pulls on their conscience and requires action to preserve our heritage. That is the lazy factor.
But there is also a problem with perspective and focus. Most people simply do not know many people as devious as many in Education, today. They simply are not able to understand why anyone would deliberately misguide children entrusted to their schools. Because most people are not ideological, themselves, the idea of people committed to an ideological thought pattern is foreign to them, and difficult to grasp. What we must do is find ways to make those thought processes that mislead the teachers, themselves, from their own school days on, more understandable to normal (non-ideological) parents. My essay on the Myth Makers--linked above--is one effort to explain the phenomenon. Those I analyze and attack there, are all accepted gurus in American Educationalist circles, with thought patterns typical of a lot of others.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
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