Posted on 10/22/2005 8:16:33 PM PDT by TradicalRC
**For nearly as long as there have been villages, there have been village atheists,***
For a moment I thought it said village idiots. Had to re read it.
is a little like saying that the Maoist guerrillas of Peru’s Shining Path are cognate with the Democratic Leadership Council.
Well, the Democrats really don't have access to the arms yet or the necessary hinterlands populated by subsistence farmers.
The Left may hate the United States above all other countries but, ironically, there is no uglier charge the Left can make than that someone is "anti-government." Since the American Left (unlike that in every other country) is dedicated to ensuring a monopoly on firearms by the authorities and regards anti-government sentiments as inherently reactionary, I doubt there will ever be a Leftist anti-government revolt in the USA.
Add to the above the further irony that the bastion of the American Left is among coastal bluebloods and who regard anti-banker subsistence farmers of the heartland to be "Nazis" and you really have a picture. Put the two together and you begin to suspect that maybe David Rockefeller really is Secretly Behind Communism (though he's getting kinda old to be very hands-on these days).
The left is both of these people. They are on the side of the Shining Path and the Mohammedan crazies and they are all for strengthening the government we have. Their affinity for the various "rebel" groups is related to most of those groups' totalitarian possibilities, I think. This group or that group is the one who will get it right when they take power. With the arabs, they just believe they are useful to put the Crats back into control of this government. The Left sees The Great Sweep Of History and cannot see beyond their noses.
Perhaps the most thoroughgoing anti-dogmatist yet is John Gray, a dismal professor of philosophy at LSE. He wrote a book called Straw Dogs in which he not only denounces religion as well as secular placebos for religion like Communism and multi-culturalism, but also secular humanism itself.
He posits the extinction of the human race as desirable, however.
Why?
Because in attempting to renounce all dogma he defaults to the anti-humanist dogma of deep ecology.
What these self-proclaimed rationalists fail to realize is:
(1) Reason, or logical analysis, is merely a tool. It can be used to build a great variety of simultaneously self-contradictory edifices.
(2) Reason is a limited tool. As Godel proved several decades ago, any language of formal logic is necessarily incomplete.
(3) The human brain has inherent limitations. The assumption that the human mind can autonomously comprehend the universe correctly is ridiculous on its face.
If one believes in God, then in the case that God exists one has formed a correct view of reality.
If one believes only in the power of reason, then one has a flawed view of reality under every scenario.
He who sitteth in the heavens, shall surely have the last laugh.
This fool Frenchman made a vain boast. And now for eternity he shares the fate of all the fools who have continuously rejected God prior to their first death.
Maybe not. It is reported that, on his deathbead, Voltaire spent his final hours "screaming" for a priest -- which his Masonic friends refused to fetch for him. But God knows the heart.
I found this web site because I was looking for response to the Sam Harris’ book from “the other side.” I happen to agree with much of what he says but I think people spent too much time reading and engaging in conversation with people they already agree with. What’s the point of that? You never learn anything by listening to what you already know. Yet that’s what most people do, we humans have a confirmation bias, we attend to things that confirm our beliefs and discount or ignore those that contradict our ideas. If you believe men wearing hats are bad drivers every time you see a bad driver with a hat you are going to think “see I know it” and you won’t even notice all the good drivers wearing hats.
It would be nice if I had the time to provide this loving forum with another point view and respond to many of the post here but I only have time to respond to one.
Zionist Conspirator wrote ….
“It is illogical to denounce religion for killing people when in the absence of G-d neither mass murder, the extermination of the entire human race, nor anything else, can be objectively morally wrong. “
It is illogical to denounce the non-religious when revelations from god have been used to justify mass murder and attempted exterminations of entire races of humans as morally right. That what the 911 hijackers did. On the other hand mass murder has never been justified on purely rational grounds, there’s always some dogma involved.
“Materialists insist that only physical phenomena exist and that human thoughts are mere nerve impulses, then promptly criticize others for having different nerve impulses than themselves.”
They are not objecting to your nervous impulses it is the irrational and whimsical they object to. Not all materialists are reductionists. Nerve impulses do not equal thought but show me thought without nerve impulses.
“One of the dogmas of "anti-dogmatists" is that reality is purely physical and ultimately meaningless and that human beings have no more purpose than cockroaches. …Why would a cockroach wish to do such a thing? “
As far as anyone knows cockroaches don’t wish. Whether apes or chimps do is subject to reasonable debate. But humans do wish and humans create meaning, I don’t know any reasonable secularist that would argue otherwise. Spiritual explanations for spiritual things is perfectly reasonable but when the spiritual tries to explain the physical that it runs in to problems (such as violating the laws of physics). Would you allow physical explanations of purely spiritual things? Or want bridges built by spiritualist? Hospitals staffed with witch doctors? Public policy based on ancient poem?
Seems to me that's happened somewhere else once upon a time. Gee, I wonder where.....
In a democracy (civil government is more accurate) the churches are mandated to lobby to influence the government. If you demand absolute separation of church and state, then you give rise to the Moral Majority. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That is why the ACLU lobbies the courts, which are anti-democratic, to forstall any reaction.
It is illogical to denounce the non-religious when revelations from god have been used to justify mass murder and attempted exterminations of entire races of humans as morally right. That what the 911 hijackers did. On the other hand mass murder has never been justified on purely rational grounds, there’s always some dogma involved.
Notice that our happy little guest completely ignored the fact that in the absence of G-d the extermination of entire races of humans is not, and can never be, objectively immoral.
They are not objecting to your nervous impulses it is the irrational and whimsical they object to. Not all materialists are reductionists. Nerve impulses do not equal thought but show me thought without nerve impulses.
Since all thoughts, however irrational or whimsical, are mere biochemical reations in the brain, what difference does it make? According to you, I can't help but think what I do. Be happy.
As far as anyone knows cockroaches don’t wish. Whether apes or chimps do is subject to reasonable debate. But humans do wish and humans create meaning, I don’t know any reasonable secularist that would argue otherwise.
Hmmm. "Humans create meaning." The only problem is that no human being can create an objective meaning for anyone but himself (and I would maintain even the meaning he creates for himself is subjective). Yet secularists (since they reject the Ultimate Reality of G-d) must base society on an "objective meaning" which some humans create and then force on the rest of the population. Secularists are always complaining that religious people want to "impose their values" on other people, but at least religious people have an excuse for doing so. Secularists want to impose their values on other people but must somehow talk themselves into believing that their values represent some sort of objective moral/ethical reality. Sorry. G-d can impose an objective moral system on the entire human race, but no human being or group of human beings can.
Spiritual explanations for spiritual things is perfectly reasonable but when the spiritual tries to explain the physical that it runs in to problems (such as violating the laws of physics). Would you allow physical explanations of purely spiritual things? Or want bridges built by spiritualist? Hospitals staffed with witch doctors? Public policy based on ancient poem?
You forgot to attack Western Civilization for defiling the beautiful and immeasurably wise beliefs of indigenous pipples with alien European science and rationalism. You know, like how science is basically a "male" rape of nature? Remember, secularists aren't against all religions equally.
Why don't you go back and rejoin the Indians who were invoking their ancestral spirits against Thanksgiving?
thanx for the history lesson. I'm much the better person now.
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