Posted on 03/16/2010 5:04:11 AM PDT by spirited irish
I'm sure they're all furiously googling the term as we speak. :^)
Julian Huxley was Aldous Huxley's brother. He was thick with the eugenicist movement; his grandfather was a creepy zoologist and pals with Darwin, and his other brother was an evolutionary biologist.
Georg Hegel, a master magician in the Hermetic tradition and an Enlightenment shock trooper of evil, discarded the rules and turned the concept upside-down by equalizing thesis and antithesis, which resulted in moral relativity
Not only did he equalize the thesis and antithesis, but he excluded any other possibilities. Demand the dialectic alone, create the thesis and the synthesis writes itself. The Hegelian dialectic denies the truth of the Trinity which states "three AND one." Not either/or. "God AND man."
It’s not a criticism, most people do not, but I think you may know little of history of the early Greeks, especially the philosophers. If you have an opportunity to learn of them, or if I’m mistaken, and you do know them, how was it that so many of them were so independent and individualistic (Socrates, for example)—they all preceded Jesus’ birth?
I have no idea what this means to you. It sophistry to me.
“Individualism, btw, is a perversion of the definition of man as an individual.”
An individualist is the opposite of a collectivist. Or do you think “collectivist” is a perversion of the definition of socialism as favoring “collective mankind” or “society” over individual men? In any case I do not think you know what an individualist means by individualism.
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/individual/whatisindividual.php
“... it is resentment of Christianity in particular that drives the destruction of this once great civilization.”
I have no doubt that a great many people, especially those who have swallowed the leftist Kool Aid despise Christianity, even when they know little or nothing about it beyond the fact that Christians, at least, have values. To resent something, I think you must at least know something about it.
What is destroying this country and this culture is a very simple thing, but it is complex and takes many forms, but in all it’s forms it is an assault on reason, on truth, and on independent individuals of character and decency, because they are an endictment of every relativist, hedonist, and seoncd-hander of every stripe, and of which our society is mostly comprised today.
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/objectivism/three_books.php
The link is to a short article I wrote some time ago defending Christianity against the assault of a small group of “philosophers,” in particular, but also against the general assault Christianity is under today. I am not a theist.
I’m not trying to convince you of anything, or change your mind about anything except, possibly, a mistaken assumption about those who are not theists. Most people automatically assume, because I do not believe in God, I must be an evolutionist, which I am most certainly not; or that I am what is called a materialist, or these days, a physicalist, which also I most certainly am not
Hank
The only thing I would question you on, and I mean no maliciousness, is this impulse you have to defend Christianity when you claim to be no theist. A Christian might argue that God has a hold on you in some fashion that you haven’t grasped just yet...or as Paul stated what Christ told him on the road to Damascus..”It is hard for thee to kick against the goads...”(old term for cattle prods)
Hmmmmm
INDEED.
Working out their script . . . as they have been for over 100 years . . . as documented here in their quotes of their plans . . .
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81
{”Historian Arnold Toynbee delivers a speech to the Institute for the Study of International Affairs at Copenhagen in which he explains:
“We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands, }
I think this “mysterious force” called “sovereignty” was the work of God that was implemented at the tower of Babel and is part of the work of the “restrainer” that keeps the Son of Perdition in check until the “end game” is to be carried out!
I was thinking of a passage from Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, when the character, agnostic Mark was asked to stomp on the image of Christ and spit on it in order to join “the secret society” and to be in union with the “MACROBES”.(The MACROBES was a term satirically and brillianly chosen by CS LEWIS to describe cloak of “science” that Demons were using to delude the “secret society folks”). Mark just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
It seems there may yet be a great many Marks out there that can’t quite ‘stomp” on Christ, though “they are sure such a person never really existed or if he did, he wasn’t divine”.
GREAT POINTS in your posts.
Thx.
snip: especially the philosophers
spirited: Though they may appear to you to be individual thinkers, all of their thinking began from a common source: irrational nature. Recall that Paul tells us that there are only two sources for all religions. He defines them like this:
either man will worship and serve the (living, rational) Creator of creation or he will worship and serve (irrational) creation.
Again, the idea that man is an individual, which means that he has an individual soul, mind, conscience, and will is uniquely Christian. The ancients knew of no such thing. And how could they when they believed that their destiny, even their thoughts, had been ‘written’ long before their birth by the sun, moon, stars, and planets? While they spoke of their fate, doom, and luck, today’s naturalists speak of determinism, cause, genes, and memes.
While Plato had some advanced ideas, they were nevertheless predicated on nature, fate, doom, and luck. It was in the hands of Christian Scholastics and other monotheistic thinkers of that time that Plato’s ideas were refined.
Plato(who received instruction from Socrates) was alive about the same era that Bhuddha received “his enlightenment” and when Confucious also began his teachings.
The Talmud and Mishna writing began to be seriously developed.
In fact the period from about the end of the 6th century BC until the 250 bc was a period in which many teachers and ethicists ‘seemingly’ sprout up spontaneously in parts of the inhabited world but not necessarily in communication with each other. Often many of these teachings and religious traditions were similar in scope and ethics.
Remember what Paul said,
<< Acts 17 >>
American King James Version
We are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or stone, graven by are and man’s device. 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent: 31 Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; whereof he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
I think there was a move of God affoot in the 400 “silent” years before Christ or so to quicken men’s hearts and to prep history for the coming of the messiah...to whisper into the hearts of spiritually thirsty men and women, to stir the hearts of kings....
The rise of these great gentile philosophers all at once in history and in disparate places suggests that God was not so silent after all.
“The rise of these great gentile philosophers all at once in history and in disparate places suggests that God was not so silent after all.”
Spirited: I agree. The great scholar Peter Kreeft calls this the Axial Period. A period when a question had occurred to many philosophers throughout the world’s widely separated civilizations. In essence, that question was: “Do the gods really exist?”
There was no need to be apologetic, you are asking a fair question from your point of view. Just one thing, though, the KJV translates it “pricks” as in thorns, which I think the Greek justifies.
I do not defend Christian doctrine, I defend the fact that Christians have principles and values and live for something more important than the immediate, and further, are neither a danger or threat to any decent honest person. I admire their virtue and character and find most of their detractors despicable, in contrast.
Here is an example of one defense I wrote, if you care to look at it:
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/objectivism/three_books.php
Thanks for the comment.
Hank
snip: “it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the....”
Spirited: Other strands of the ‘bond’,
are seething hatred and will to power.
“Though they may appear to you to be individual thinkers...”
No, they do not “appear” to be individual thinkers, they were. You have apparently not read them. When people discover things no one has ever known before, that is original and independent thinking.
Here is a recent article of mine on Anaximander, Thales, and Anaximenes that demonstrates, in spite of their mistakes, their originality and individuality, especially Thales.
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/phil_base/Intro_temp.php
“Recall that Paul tells us that there are only two sources for all religions. He defines them like this: either man will worship and serve the (living, rational) Creator of creation or he will worship and serve (irrational) creation.”
I personally have no use for any religion, so that point is meaningless to me. Truth is all that matters to me, and humans have only one faculty for discovering the truth—reason. Everything else is “unreasonable.”
“Again, the idea that man is an individual, which means that he has an individual soul, mind, conscience, and will is uniquely Christian. The ancients knew of no such thing.”
That’s absurd. The Hindus, for example, believed all those things at least a thousand years before the advent of Christianity. Their beliefs are fantastic and mystic, but they certainly believed in individual souls with minds and conscience and will, else they would not have been able to transmigrate. Apparently you never heard of the Vedas.
“Plato had some advanced ideas”
Except for Hume and Kant, Plato was perhaps the worst philosopher in history infecting it with very bad ideas that plague it to this day. Aristotle corrected some of those problems, but they were all reintroduced by Hume and Kant.
I do not know where your ideas come from, but they are not from an understanding of the history of philosophy. The things you point out as errors, “today’s naturalists speak of determinism, cause, genes, and memes,” are true enough, but it is not philosophy that is at fault, but all the anti-reason concepts that were introduced into philosophy by the likes of Hume, Berkley, and Kant, all good Roman Catholics, that is, Christians. If you do not like the philosophy dominating society today, as I do not like it, understand where it came from.
Hank
Interesting. Printed for wife.
Yep. In fact "the Delphi Technique" is nothing more than practical application of Hegelian thought... Either way, it relies on logic being abandoned for "herd mentality"...
the infowarrior
snip: You have apparently not read them. When people discover things no one has ever known before, that is original and independent thinking
Spirited: Not true. Additionally, I have read ‘of them’ by the light of both modern thinkers and thinkers as Augustine, Tertullian, and Ireneaus, for example.
These thinkers of great discernment have much to say about the philosophers that is well-worth knowing.
If one seeks discernment and a well-rounded picture, one must study its’ many facets.
That said, some of what the philosophers taught had virtue, much more, however, was quite peculiar, and much of that peculiarity-—superstition-— is taught as ‘scientific fact’ today. In particular, the scientifically disproved notion that life and consciousness somehow emerged from nonlife. Transmigration and metempsychosis are likewise back but dressed up as atheist-evolutionism.
‘When people discover things’—especially ‘unseen things’ such as ‘atoms colliding in a void’ ‘transmigration of souls’ ‘metempsychosis’ one must question the ‘unseen source-— the unseen ‘revelator’-— of such peculiar revelations and not simply accept them at face value.
Men have always lived by revelations from the unseen realm, and that most definitely includes the ancient philosophers, and we must never forget that fact.
The mind and its’ outworkings are not ‘material’ but immaterial; not physical but metaphysical; not a-spiritual but spiritual. Though atheist materialism claims otherwise, materialism is both a superstition whose taproot stretches back to the occult society of the Pharoahs and the fallen ‘condition of man.’
As for the Hindus, I recommend you turn to Ravi Zaccharias for better understanding of them. Born a Hindu, like you, he had no use for religion and fell into atheism and from there into nihilistic despair and thoughts of suicide. Today he ranks among the world’s most eloquent apologists for Christianity.
When Hindus speak of ‘souls’ it is not of the individual soul/mind/conscience but of a concept on the order of a nonindividual ‘spark.’
You quoted me: “You have apparently not read them. When people discover things no one has ever known before, that is original and independent thinking.”
Then wrote: “Not true. Additionally, I have read ‘of them’ by the light of both modern thinkers and thinkers as Augustine, Tertullian, and Ireneaus, for example.”
I’m not sure what you think is not true. If you mean discovering things no one has ever known before is not original and independent thinking, then what is it? You cannot just say something is “not true” without explaining why it is not true. When Thales showed the Egyptians how to use a triangle to measure the hight of the great pyramid, because no one knew how high it was or how figure it out, what do you call that?
I’ve read and studied all the church fathers, especially that Manichaeist Augustine, who slipped his paganism and neo-platonism into Bible teaching creating a synchretistic perversion, but what can one expect of someone who believed salamanders could live in fire and that there are people who get their nourishment from the air and have no mouths. That’s where you learned about philosophy? It explains much.
Since I did not say anything about the value of what any philosopher taught (most of it is actually rubbish), only that some of them, especially the early Greeks were original independent thinkers, so everything you say about what they taught is irrelevant.
I suspect you’ve read nothing from the Vedas, and probably not even the Bhagavad Gita, which I think you might do before giving lessons on Hinduism, especially recommending that fraud and huckster Ravi Zacharias, though it does not surprise me that anyone taken in by Augustine, could be taken in by a phony like Zacharias. Anyone who says their current beliefs are held as an escape from “nihilistic despair and thoughts of suicide,” is not someone I’d be interested in. I much prefer someone who starts with a sound mind. (You don’t send him money, do you?)
We’re not going to agree, I’m sure. But we are both free to believe and say what we believe. Wish you well, and good fortune, my friend.
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