Posted on 01/06/2003 12:58:43 PM PST by HumanaeVitae
Whenever I want an informed opinion on information technology, and especially the way it's similar to building a car, the Amish are among the last people I consult.
The same could be said for education, art, and a significant amount of organized religion. Yet, I don't think many conservatives would consider abandoning these institutions. They have simply been misused by the left.
Just look at the good that comes from Free Republic. Sure, some of us (myself included) may have a tendency to surf a little too long on this site. But look at how effective it is in sharing news, information, opinions, and coordinating political action.
Books and plays are also a form of virtual reality/escapism, but you don't see them criticized in this piece (or most other articles lamenting technological advancement). I wonder why that is?
It seems that Mr. Lind doesn't like the idea of people escaping the "real world" to entertainment. But if they don't do it through books or websites or tv programs, they'll just do it by daydreaming. I think people have a natural inclination to escapism and using their imaginations. It's silly to blame technology for what is a natural trait for most people.
Stupid comment, stupidly written.
Probably thinks it's a good idea if we all lived in TeePees, and toil the soil with our bare hands and oxen, and see the witch doctor when we get sick.
This is nothing but Luddism, not conservatism.
So9
I'm certainly with you there. But it is, after all, the liberals (sociology and litcrit majors) who hit the tech support lines with broken "coffee cup holders" and mice that are useless because they're at the edge of the mousepads...
But I've no patience with the fellow above. Every great work of literature is an alternate reality, and I defy him to characterize, say, Paradise Lost as a tool of the devil...
The author is really bringing up the ideas that Thomas Hobbes' did in 1668 with Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. 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. And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies), they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was: they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace, and for their salvation from their enemies. And the second was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of their own invention. For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king, whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by ourselves.
[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.
In relation to the article, also consider these ideas:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xliv. Of Spiritual Darkness From Misinterpretation of Scripture
[1]Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air";[Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.
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.
(Bold added for emphasis.)
So you're FR homepage says you like to debate atheists?
Well, based partly on the above Thomas Hobbes:
As an atheist, I maintain that the societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice to pagan idols.
Do I have a Catholic argument from you to counter my atheist position on abortion?
Conservatives used to know that information does not equal knowledge and that knowledge does not equal understanding.
This statement is pure BS. Real conservatives STILL know this.
Russell Kirk, who may have been the only conservative in the post-war American conservative movement, forbad the importation of television sets into his ancestral manse, Piety Hill. One day, in his absence, his wife and daughters smuggled one in. Dr. Kirk discovered it, and they in turn soon discovered him, high in the tower with television in hand, pitching it off the roof.Are we begging for attention, or is this just moronic? Russel Kirk was the "only conservative" of the last sixty years? Mr. Lind, eat my copy of Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution." It's not autographed by Kirk, so it is unofficial? I didn't realize I had to live before 1941 to read it. Or, perhaps Mr. Lind hasn't run across those Kirk-autographed copies of the Goldwater platform of '64 that are going for $14 a pop on E-Bay...
Kirk ought be applauded for heaving the tellie off the roof, but not because of any statement of its stupidity, or depravity. With the act, he launched Rock 'n' Roll. I'm writing the Hall of Fame with the news, and I damned well expect a monument to this first television launch.
Nevertheless, one wonders what Mrs. and Miss Kirk had going for the television? Was it Milton Berle? Or, perhaps, Russ was upset that Mr. Television stole a line or two? I doubt the female Kirks found anything more enjoyable in the flying tellie they couldn't find in pulp. Did Russ fling copies of "The Merry Widow" from the chimney, too? I'm thinking that the aerodynamics of vinyl disks were more successful in flight than early televisions.
Oh, and this business of the Amish Klein clan: would it be this same Thomas Klein who's attempted pirating of a Yahoo domain upset the company to litigation? Yahoo! Inc. v. Thomas Klein ?
I've always wondered about the Amish: is theirs the leading technology of the 12th 17th or 19th centuries? That rubber on their carriages sho weren't found c. 1750. What's the cut-off date?
I say it is a stupid and unnecessary summary execution of a truly innocent human being, a ritual murder for the sake of vanity (individually and societally).
Just saying it is evil and not illustrating your reason(s) is intellectually lazy (slothful) and shows no real conviction to others about your commitment to such a position. This is antithetical to accomplishing a goal of changing the minds and/or hearts necessary for ending the grisly pagan practice.
Obscurity of doctrine is of no help and actually assists the Enemy (earthly or otherwise, if you so believe). Walking in obscurity of doctrine, in your Christian terms, is like kneeling before Beelzebub.
Tell me, Sir Dashwood, why is abortion a "pagan practice"? Pagan as opposed to what?
Why is human life sacred if we're nothing more than animals?
Go back through my previous posts and check out my "intellectual laziness".
You asked for it...
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