Posted on 03/05/2006 1:16:28 PM PST by little jeremiah
Excellent point. People keep themeselves mesmerized via the mental novocain (or maybe Roxanol) of TV, radio, and what passes for "music". Many like that sound 24 hours a day. Drowns out the doubt and fear in the mind; of course, the doubt and fear is just swept under the rug, so to speak, and returns manyfold as soon as the novocain drip is turned off.
16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker
The belief that man can simply create and/or imagine without having some sort of prior knowledge is erroneous. Man's intellectual capacities are finite, not infinite. Example: We know from observation that there are but three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. From mixtures of these three comes a palette of other colors.
If man can simply 'imagine' something as is suggested, then it ought to be a piece of cake to shut one's eyes, and then using every ounce of the imagination, imagine a fourth primary color--something totally unique--never seen before.
Man can no more imagine a fourth primary color than could ancient man simply imagine unseen dimensions,demons, principalities, powers, and spirits. The question that needs asking is: What was it that ancient man saw and experienced that allowed him to 'imagine' these things?
Gee, give Sade the credit when Montaigne said it hundreds of years before. (Not to mention that Shakespeare put the same thoughts in Hamlet's mouth)
If you have seen Puff the Magic Dragon, you are smokin' somethin' or havin' a wee bit much of the bottled spirit...
You need to read the book... to get more of the context...
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Man can no more imagine a fourth primary color than could ancient man simply imagine unseen dimensions,demons, principalities, powers, and spirits.
I left this out...
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.[10] Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached, it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream. And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal, stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the brain....
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
Great article for a bookmark, by the way... I will have to look for any of the writer's other titles...
This is a great thread. Be back later.
WOW!!....
Thanks for a great article post....
Regards
The credit is all due to the author. Her articles are posted now and again on FR.
I wish I had time to participate more.
Reminds me of a half finished article I started a couple of years ago. The simple subject of how to know truth.
:-)
BTW, am working on an article covering a small spectrum of Vedic subjects including yugas, Puranas and such. I'll be freepmailing it to several people, let me know if you would like it.
Bump To The Top.
Read it, folks, if you haven't.
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