Posted on 10/30/2002 10:20:42 AM PST by MikalM
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:41:19 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
'Tis the time of disemboweled gourds and spooky black cats and sickly terrifying vice presidential ghosts, of dressing up the wee ones in carefully branded molded-plastic heavily trademarked Disney-owned characters and sending them out into the 'hood with a flashlight and a cute plastic pumpkin bucket and a small semiautomatic weapon and some nice candy-corn mace.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
You refer to him as a "major-newspaper columnist," but he's really not. He is not published in print, only the SFGate.com page. Even the Hearst people are too smart to put him where people might run across him by accident. If you want him, you have to go looking for him. Don't.
He's the equivalent of a shock jock -- you only hear them when you tune them in. Tune him out. If you want to yell at the Chron, fine, but don't make him infamous when he isn't even famous yet.
You refer to him as a "major-newspaper columnist," but he's really not. He is not published in print, only the SFGate.com page. Even the Hearst people are too smart to put him where people might run across him by accident. If you want him, you have to go looking for him. Don't.
Morford's the equivalent of radio shock jocks -- you only hear them when you tune them in. Tune Morford out. He's not a Ted Rall, with a national audience of bleating sheep. If you want to yell at the Chron, fine, but don't make him infamous when he isn't even famous yet.
Funny...I never thought of it that way, but the parallels are most definitely there. He even has a "going-too-far" suspension in his record, from the time when he advocated adult-adolescent sex and got bounced off his electronic soapbox for a week. Morford was obviously hired by Phil "Lizard Bait" Bronstein to play to the SF GUARDIAN/WEEKLY online demographic, stimulate interest in the print version and catch their ad revenue.
I guess the reason why I post his nonsense is that it so beautifully embodies the whole SF Bay Area liberal-bigot/hipsterist mentality that I have to deal with here. (I live in Oakland.) And it never hurts to take a look at what agendae these types are pushing, politically, culturally or spiritually. Too, a lot of people were so upset by his cretinous take on the Blue Angels a couple of weeks back that I'm sure his Inbox was filled with FAR more than the usual amount of abuse.
Okay, I promise -- no more Morford postings.
Funny...I never thought of it that way, but the parallels are most definitely there. He even has a "going-too-far" suspension in his record, from the time when he advocated adult-adolescent sex and got bounced off his electronic soapbox for a week. Morford was obviously hired by Phil "Lizard Bait" Bronstein to play to the SF GUARDIAN/WEEKLY online demographic, stimulate interest in the print version and catch their ad revenue.
I guess the reason why I post his nonsense is that it so beautifully embodies the whole SF Bay Area liberal-bigot/hipsterist mentality that I have to deal with here. (I live in Oakland.) And it never hurts to take a look at what agendae these types are pushing, politically, culturally or spiritually. Too, a lot of people were so upset by his cretinous take on the Blue Angels a couple of weeks back that I'm sure his Inbox was filled with FAR more than the usual amount of abuse.
Okay, I promise -- no more Morford postings.
Good to see ya around, BTW.
His Royal Podness
Yes, here are a few ideas...
Question the Practice of Halloween... Or the Christian Practice of Satanism
The Sir Francis Dashwood Journal | 10-31-02 | Sir Francis Dashwood
Posted on 10/22/2002 5:11 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood
It never ceases to amaze me that most Christians would criticize me for being an atheist, yet they will "celebrate" a macabre pagan holiday. They inculcate their children into the practice of it and feed them the most unhealthful things you could give a child to eat.
Likewise, many atheists criticize me for being a "right-winger." Most atheists are so caught up in their polemics, they have become nothing more than anti-Christians - or what I call the Religious Left (a collaboration of the Marxist religion, neo-pagan animal/tree/earth worshipper eco-fascists and general technophobes).
Why do you "celebrate" on certain "holidays," what are you celebrating, do you really know? Or have you been so lost in the conformity of it all to really take a look at what you partake in?
As you ponder this, two noted Christian philosophers support my secular argument...
Søren Kierkegaard from The Sickness Unto Death:
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization… (emphasis mine)The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself.
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[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.
[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. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
As you think further, exactly what is Halloween?
Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were usually active and propitious.Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also a night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night...
Can you guess my source here???
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOPICS: Activism; Apologetics; Catholic; Charismatic Christian; Current Events; Eastern Religions; Ecumenism; Evangelical Christian; General Discusssion; History; Humor; Islam; Judaism; Mainline Protestant; Ministry/Outreach; Moral Issues; Orthodox Christian; Other Christian; Other non-Christian; Prayer; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics; Religion & Science; Skeptics/Seekers; Theology; Worship; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: GRAVEN IMAGES; HERESY; IDOLATRY; SATANISM; Click to Add Keyword
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other things to consider:
Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is erroneously listed as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. English has more commonalties with Greek and Latin.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. This cannot be reconciled with the fact that it is a Hebrew word...
Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin by age 9, has this to support my assertions in Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Consider this, from Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in their public acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
[24] The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches, and church-yards.
Another interesting quote:
(Source is unattributed)
Controversy over the origin of the word witch is valid when one considers the etymology of the term in other languages: venifica (Latin), hexe (German), streghe (Italian), etc. Only in it's English form has the word assumed a benign origin: wicca, purportedly meaning "wise."Any debate must center on recent claims that advance a positive and socially acceptable meaning for a term that has in all ages and most languages meant "poisoner," "frightener," "enchanter," "spell-caster," or "evil woman."
Anthropologists have shown that even in primitive societies, notably the Azande, the definition of witch carries malevolent connotations. Therefore, are we to assume that the only "good" witches in the world were English witches? This, however, becomes difficult to accept when one considers the term wizard, which stems from the Middle English wysard = wise, versus the Old English wican = to bend, from whence witch is supposedly derived. All in all, it seems to be an unsuccessful attempt to legitimize a word that probably originated by onomatopoeia - the formation of a word that sounds like what it is intended to mean!
Anyone want to have the debate? I also posted a thread entitled Ethereal Explorations dealing with many of the same issues...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.