In the Line of Fire
Calm Caliginosity
Res Ipsa Loquitur
The Birth of a New Day
Midweek Words/Endless Night
Alleyways
Insanity Mind Complex Insane
We Just Feel Dead Man
SplitLipz
Junkie Birth
Ignatius Ignite!
Return to Sender
Duality a Memoir
Hot Wax Inferno
Lightning Sunrise
Young London
Walkers in the Night
(Quintessential Penultimate Intimacy)
Sodom's Child
Every Night.
One Night Only
Awake and Still Young
No more starry nights.
Australian Discipline (the fly piper)
Summer Rain
Brick
Though a million children cried and died
Strive to be (leave your insecurities behind.)
Beatific
Fiat Lux, Lux Sit
mmm should design a cover
something simple
I'm calling it 'in the line of fire' for a few reasons
oh that would be soo cool if each poem had an illustration
just a small simple one
one reason is because it just came naturally to me
what r the reason?
another reason is because "in the line of fire" means to me reading a line from a poem and feeling it like fire in your mind heart and soul
and also because "in the line of fire" means, in my mind, being in the holy fire of truth - it burns away the shit of this world.
and i hope that is what i can do with some of my poetry. I'd like to burn the shit away from the world.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Thursday, 13 January 2011
King Dick of Dickinalia speaks!
Castrate the biblical portion of our knowledge. Out with it. Destroy it. Re education must be our great and utopian goal.
Fellow minions, it is not the moral precepts contained in that horrid book, the "love thy neigbour" and "thou shalt not kill" that are truly damaging. CHristians have always outdone us in goodness, good luck to them. They can have goodness and charity, we'll have the party.
I'll take the party everytime! My scientific advisors all say that pleasurable titillations are healthy for the body and the "mind" which of course is really the body.
No the great danger of the Bible identified by all my counsellors is that it is history. This awareness of history and of moral progress through time must end. For the sake of my rule and government which as my loyal subjects and employees tell me is the epitome of fairness and justice I say the Bible and all those who believe in it must be destroyed.
It is simply not fair that they have a history. It is not fair! (sound of stamping feet here) Why should they have a book which encompasses all manner of philosophical and moral conundrums in stories from history no less. We have our own books of course Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hume, Marx and Russell, and yet really they are bloody boring self obsessed little twerps pontificating on things that mean little.
We want to livvvvveeeeeeeeeee! minions. Livvvvvveeeeeeeee! We demand lives of freedom from all things, especially guilt that perhaps there is more to life than simply the "party".
King Dick of Dickinalia speaks cont.
This book the Bible disturbs. History, consciousness of history!
We have after all with great industy and self application virtuously narrowed our own viewpoint down to our own little life.
We have rewritten our history in terms of power, warfare and great and evil men of genius! Soooooooo entertaining "friends", and also make great themes for movie's. We have driven morality from our lives so that all things are possible!
And yet that bloody Bible makes me feel bad. It not only undermines the faith of me in of my subjects and encourages thought about what is right and wrong thus abrogating a right I demand for myself.
But it is a canker in my own soul, a nagging voice of doubt. It accuses. It irritates. It reminds me of the bloody big picture! It opens vista's of thought and choice dear minions.
This personal disturbance must end once and for all dedicated non believers. Why even the other day one of my loyal subjects just like a "daughter" to me mentioned the bible. This must end let her confine her life to parties and such.
First the bibles, then the churches and the Christians will be easy to mop up after. Then your minds will be free to really appreciate the Great Dick!
I have tried so hard to forget that bloody book, and so must everybody else.
Thus spake the Great Dick.
Dick
You're daughter is ignorant about the Melbourne Synagogue! And the Bible I presume.
I mean join the club Dick the whole culture is becoming steadily more crude, ignorant and stupid. But really a working knowledge of the Bible should be mandatory in our culture, anything less is almost a form or child abuse in itself.
Somehow in the mind of atheists lessening peoples exposure to religion and the bible is somehow going to enlarge their minds and make them more moral people. Newspeak and newthink.
I think this is a case of people being rendered ignorant while being told all the time they are smarter.
Subtracting religion and the Bible does not make people smarter or more moral or tolerant, the opposite is the case. Choose religion or not but retain a choice, and the freedom to choose, or we step towards Orwell's vision.
Christians pay tax which supports public education whether they use it or not. Their voice should also be heard in a free society.
So many atheists put their faith in the state, what a mockery it makes of their own cartoon ideals of freedom and tolerance. The gray indifferent arrogant and pedantic tripe which surrounds atheist thought on any subject stinks of dry pomposity. Since when did they become the public?
Dick
In one of my previous posts I remarked on how atheists fall into the "Bach" or "Debauched" category.
Of course on this site most of the atheists are of the "Bach" variety, just wanting a little bit of peace and entertainment to wile away their own conception of an ultimately pointless life.
The 'Debauched" variety of atheists are around everywhere of course, in the pubs and prisons. They also care nothing about religion and see it is only a hindrance to their enjoyment. Only their enjoyment is of the "Clockwork Orange" variety.
Do you really think that removing exposure to the Bible and religion and a moral education and replacing it with pontificating professors of relativism hiding behind their public paypackets will stem the growth in the "Debauched" variety of atheists.
I am sure that most of the narrow minded atheists on this site will have their own fantasies of how those "Debauched" atheists are not their brothers and sisters, after all as King Dick would say "they have always been with us fellow atheists, it is inevitable"
But as a prison employee I know says "crime is a growth industry".
Atheism has always led to despair, self interest and corruption. You really cannot look at any country with a history of communism and not see almost a mass pyschosis developing, and much the same is occurring in our own culture as non belief also grows.
But of course the "Bach" variety of atheists will deny, deny and deny. Much too an uncomfortable a thought.
"Thought Police (ie Ethics Professors) eradicate that poor thinking from our children!"
[For instance, how many atheists would approve the teaching of Plato's Phaedo where it teaches that the purification of thoughts (meditation/prayer) is essential preparation to do and understand philosophy?
Plato and Platonic philosophy, as well as most all of Greek and ancient philosophy, saw the ascetic life as that of "philosophy." It was not a merely intellectual activity one engaged in during working hours, to be ignored when the bell rings and one returns to everyday, secular life. We divorce philosophy from the life the philosopher lives, for no reason.]
For whatever kind of being they belong to, the One Itself therefore, while rejecting, on account of its absolutely simple pre-eminence, all contact with being, also refuses to be cognized, even more to be named, for name depends on cognition, and also refuses to be spoken of, for speech is made up of names. Indeed, if knowing means cognizing something through its cause, then the One, having no cause, cannot be cognized by knowledge and, moreover, it cannot be perceived by intelligence, the guide of knowledge. For intelligence is multiform, and through form it observes the forms of beings and therefore cannot attain the One.
If it is not perceived by knowledge and intelligence, much less will it be perceived by the lower faculties of the imagination, belief and the senses. This is what Plato maintains in his Epistle to the Syracusans, where he says that the Self can in no way be taught or declared, but that at length the light of the One suddenly flashes on those minds that are fully turned towards the One Itself through unity and silence, that is, through the absence of the usual activity.
Ficino, Marsilio – Evermore Shall be So: Commentary on Plato's Parminides [Shepheard-Walwyn, 2008, Farndell, Arthur trans. p.60]
The notion that science and religion share a common metaphysical base, and that destroying one by reinventing metaphysics to exclude it necessarily destroys the other, is heresy to the atheist hell-bent on destruction of religion – especially Christianity – by any and every means possible.
Aelred | Rievaulx - January 10, 2011, 3:56PM
@ Paddy Owen
'Atheism has always led to despair, self interest and corruption. You really cannot look at any country with a history of communism and not see almost a mass pyschosis developing, and much the same is occurring in our own culture as non belief also grows. '
1. Communism does not equal athieism.
2. I could just as easily say religion always leads to bigotry, racism, homophobia and suppression of women. But I don't like making crass generalisations.
3. You want to talk about corruption, really? Ok try this on for size, the Catholic Church covering up child abusing priests and allowing them to relocate and continue abusing children. One of the most evil and disgusting examples of corruption I can think of.
4. Self interest? See above.
5. Despair? I cannot think of a single war fought over athieism yet they have been fought down the centuries over religion.
6. Point me to empirical and peer reviewed data to support your theory on athieism leading to a life of crime.
You sir are a crackpot. (lol adhominem!)
Marc - January 10, 2011, 3:31PM
Marc
6: Point me to empirical and peer reviewed.....
Look around you.
Materialist, consumerist, shallow, superficial, crass, addiction, despairing ( read depression), angry, disengaged, sleazy, pornographic, exploitative, immature ('look after me", "its my right"), entitlement mentality, equality as a war cry, drunken girls, inequality rampant, disdain for the ordinary by intellectual elites, fascination with evil, .... - all this in the mainstream of life 2011.
- what liberty your secularism has indeed cast upon us.
Thankfully for the reality and existence of the remnant Church there is still hope; notwithstanding its own obvious exposure to and through depravity of the prominent and perverted few and its problems experienced in addressing it.
I suggest you pay a bit more attention to the partisan and sectarian log in your own eye.
Observer | Liverpool - January 10, 2011, 4:09PM
Marc, thanks for the compliment, always nice to be called sir!
1/ Communist political systems are the only countries where we see the fruit of atheism practiced as Government. The rejection of religion as superstition and harmful is at the centre of Communist thought, and most to my knowledge have tried to eliminate religion or bring it under the control of the state.
2/ I agree. All things can lead to bigotry, etc. I simply think atheism leads to worse outcomes. The Soviet Union slaughtered its own citizens by the millions. It still has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and is notorious for its crime. As for the west it is obvious that the most shallow and crude society is developing everywhere. One only has to walk into a local video shop to confirm this.
3&4/ Blame the Catholic Churches, but identify the real villain. Do not engage in overtly stupid and bile filled hate towards an institution which by every lesson of history has fought against such evils. Child abuse and pornography has been growing in the west to an enormous degree since the sexual revolution of the 60's. Current hysteria about child abuse is an attempt to close the lid on Pandora's Box as many realise what horrors have been released by the attack on traditional religious belief, and the growth in atheist hedonism. There is no doubt that atheism as a belief system fails to contain the worst aspects of human nature.
Cont.
Marc cont.
5/ The growth of non belief and the waning of traditional religious belief has obviously led to a growth of despair and mental instability in our society, and a breakdown of social cohesion. Considering the incredible amounts of money spent by western governments these days attending to the ills visited on society in the last decades such as family breakdown, sexual abuse of all kinds, drug addiction and isolation, I would be surprised if anyone could deny this.
6/ Middle class atheism probably does not lead to crime, however a large proportion of prisoners have no religion. These are not your high church overt atheists such as I suppose you are Marc. These are your Clockwork Orange type atheist with no religious belief. I suspect you will not recognise them as atheists but they are certainly not religious, and are your non believing brothers and sisters. A growth in non belief within this group will certainly lead to greater violence and more extreme crime and brutality, much as we have seen in the past decades. Academic studies justifying the official views on these matters mean virtually nothing in my opinion.
My views are easily justified but are not in agreement with official opinion obviously. But perhaps you should reflect how perfectly attuned to accepted official attitudes yours seem to be. After all self interest hardly disappears when one becomes an atheist, and denial of the obvious has been practiced by the privileged of all ages. Religion was never perfect, but atheism has proven disastrous in its short ascendancy.
@Observer
'Look around you..... - all this in the mainstream of life 2011. '
Look all around me? Are you serious, you cannot just list a heap of societal problems and blame them on athieism without a shred of evidence. 'Because I say so' is not a valid argument, either back it up or leave the debate with what little credibility you have left.
'Thankfully for the reality and existence of the remnant Church... '
Ignoring the terrible grammar on display here, are you trying to suggest that through exposure to depravity the church itself has become depraved? I question the validity of that statement.
I would argue that the church has been 'depraved' for a long time, look at the history of the Catholic church in particular with the obsession on purifying so called heretics through torture.
As for corruption the issue with child abuse is hardly a case of the 'perverted few'. It is a wide spread issue with an institutionalised procedure for handling it. Offer the victim a token compensation sum in exchange for a non disclosure statement, move the offending minister and bury the details. This has been well established and in my opinion (and I am sure I'm not alone here) those who put this procedure in place and allowed abusers to carry on in the community are just as guilty as the abusers themselves.
This is why I love these debates I can cite specific instances where members of the church have committed crime (destroyed innocence one could say), and the church has covered it all up. Conversely all you can do is spout unfounded hyperbole about how lack of faith is destroying society.
Then to top it all off you suggest I'm being narrow minded, It's absolutely priceless.
Terry you said:
"religious instruction doesn't increase choice, it limits it"
As ever Terry your hatred makes white black and black white.
Teaching someone about something is not brainwashing. It is knowledge. They can reject if if they wish and many do!Restricting knowledge is what it has always been, a narrowing of the mind and a narrowing of the imaginative powers of man. And it might be added a blow against freedom of thought.
And despite your intolerant assumption that religion is untrue, this is unproved. I for one believe it to be true, and therefore hardly qualifies as something that limits choice.
As for children being too young to make choices, well that is just naive. After all if it is not religion it will be something else. Education is hardly going to cease because children are too young to make choices. Many adults are far less able to make rational choices than children in my opinion, and far more easily swayed by stupid ideas where self interest hides behind fantasy dressed up as pseudo scientific fact.
You strike me Terry as someone whose mind has been narrowed by a decision to reject something of which you have very little understanding. Your idea that religion is some sort of virus which I believe you have expressed in other blogs is little short of simplistic and malevolent nonsense. The fantasies you sustain Terry to elevate yourself are truly disturbing!
Paddy Owen - January 10, 2011, 10:19PM
I don't pretend to be as scholarly in religious circles as you, but theism as described in the source of all trueish knowledge, Wikipedia, - 'Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe.' So I am stumped as to why you want theists to discuss Melchizedek (whoever the hell he is) and his God status. I can only suppose you are talking to the specifically christian theists. Like I mentioned in the 'suffering and christmas' thread, religion's major problems are firstly that language and meaning have changed over the millenia, and mass violence committed by men tarnished the understanding of and belief in a God. I personally witnessed untarnished 'evidences' of God, from which stems my presumption that there is a God and belief that he is present in our lives. Teaching the history of religion as a subject and having a discussion on this specific definition of theism would be the only fair way to educate children on religion by providing them the chance to make an informed decision on God and/or religion, either at the time or in their futures.
So I am 'one theist' who has no intention of proving the existence of God to you through a comprehensive explanation of moments in religious history, but as a theist I'd rather suggest to you that 'moments' with God could be happening more often than you think, but it is up to the person to firstly be open to the possibility of there being a God, and secondly to try taking the 'evidence'.on board when it does occur to lead them down a better path.
Matheus | Melbourne - January 10, 2011, 11:44PM
Marc
The log in your eye has grown bigger to the point of blindness.
And do calm down. I made no claim against atheists.
Not all atheists are secularists. Like me they support the secular state which gives no favour to any one faith or no faith. People are to be free to engage in whatever faith they wish to recognise and follow, or none, without hindrance. "Let's debate, but hold off on the abuse", we supporters of the secular would say.
Not all secularists are atheists. Some are pagans and fellow travellers who share the resentment of established institutional religion by the neo-atheists aligned with Dawkins etc.
There is a definite correlation with the falling influence of the Church and its teachings in the cascading decades since the1960's and the growth industry of addressing societal problems, as you yourself call them. A message that promotes life and love with openness to the transcendent and attachment to reason as a gift to mankind to seek and find truth in the whole of his/her existence is indeed the antidote to the modern, detached, irrational, autonomous self.
I am on a hiding to nothing when you grab the obvious barb concerning sexual abuse of minors and others. There is no charity in you to recognise the deep store of good that is beyond that horror and shame.
Cheers
Observer | Liverpool - January 11, 2011, 1:54AM
stuch,
By following your tongue-in-cheek logic the rise of atheism is a psychosis.
Further, according to your measure, if any minority qualifies for being labeled as a "psychosis", then the majority Nazis of the Third Reich were normal, and those in Germany who opposed them were psychotic.
You'll have to come up with a yardstick that makes more sense. Because the yardstick that relies on a simple majority as equating to "right and normal" will not provide the kind of society you want.
"Teaching someone about something is not brainwashing. It is knowledge. "
It is only knowledge if the thing being told to students can actually be demonstrated.
"Plato and Aristotle opposed Sophistry... and so laid the foundations for both religion and science for the West for thousands of years"
And thankfully, through concerted effort we have been able to overcome their malign influence, both the dead end of Aristotelean logic, and the bizarre pythagorean mysticism of Plato.
It is interesting that Aristarchus of Samos described the heliocentric model of the solar system almost 2 millenia before Copernicus, yet was rejected in favour of the geocentric theory of Aristotle.
Compared to some of the genuine science that went on in the hellenistic world, the churches love affair with Plato and Aristotle and its own power cannot be said to have been the greatest boon to science and mankind.
Dick per 11.13am: "in Australia the figures show that crime is palpably down".
True, but SIN is palpably up, and the religious routinely conflate the two.
Dick re Dick Gross - January 11, 2011, 12:14PM
You are somewhat disingenuous in this. My comments quoted by Andrew R are not crimes. They are fundamental modes of behaviour which reflect isolated individualism that can only but eat away at underlying social solidarity towards the common good, when it most matters. There are grand displays of "community support" when led by Television stars and celebrities in response to a particular tragedy. However it is the quiet day to day stuff at the local level that has been white-anted away by the permissive social ideologies about which secularists having nothing to say, or to offer. Your product is the self-autonomous individual who just wants to have "fun", booze on, have a snort, oi oi oi, hug a tree and whinge about how things should be by calling forth rights and demand of equality to force we humans to be according to what we should be. Fun and agenda is all you lot have to offer.
A full life is one lived in relationship: from God to the least of his creatures. Life is good.
This is quite simply false. Here's the data supplied by the USA's Federal Bureau of Prisons to an enquiry from holysmoke.org:
Response Number %
Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Muslim 5435 7.273%
American Indian 2408 3.222%
Nation 1734 2.320%
Rasta 1485 1.987%
Jewish 1325 1.773%
Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
Moorish 1066 1.426%
Buddhist 882 1.180%
Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
Adventist 621 0.831%
Orthodox 375 0.502%
Mormon 298 0.399%
Scientology 190 0.254%
Atheist 156 0.209%
Hindu 119 0.159%
Santeria 117 0.157%
Sikh 14 0.019%
Bahai 9 0.012%
Krishna 7 0.009%
Total Known Responses 74731
Atheists are about 10% of the US public and about 0.2% of the prison population. "No religion" is hard to define, as only 80% of prisoners' religion is known, but you'd have to make the statistically illogical assumption that all those who didn't answer the question were "no religion" to even get "no religion" to 20%. The data are quite clear: American prison inmates, as a group, are religious to a far higher degree than ordinary Americans.
The factical experience of life and religious phenomenology has nothing to do with fantasy. Precisely the opposite, in fact.
Castrate the biblical portion of our knowledge. Out with it. Destroy it. Re education must be our great and utopian goal.
Fellow minions, it is not the moral precepts contained in that horrid book, the "love thy neigbour" and "thou shalt not kill" that are truly damaging. CHristians have always outdone us in goodness, good luck to them. They can have goodness and charity, we'll have the party.
I'll take the party everytime! My scientific advisors all say that pleasurable titillations are healthy for the body and the "mind" which of course is really the body.
No the great danger of the Bible identified by all my counsellors is that it is history. This awareness of history and of moral progress through time must end. For the sake of my rule and government which as my loyal subjects and employees tell me is the epitome of fairness and justice I say the Bible and all those who believe in it must be destroyed.
It is simply not fair that they have a history. It is not fair! (sound of stamping feet here) Why should they have a book which encompasses all manner of philosophical and moral conundrums in stories from history no less. We have our own books of course Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hume, Marx and Russell, and yet really they are bloody boring self obsessed little twerps pontificating on things that mean little.
We want to livvvvveeeeeeeeeee! minions. Livvvvvveeeeeeeee! We demand lives of freedom from all things, especially guilt that perhaps there is more to life than simply the "party".
King Dick of Dickinalia speaks cont.
This book the Bible disturbs. History, consciousness of history!
We have after all with great industy and self application virtuously narrowed our own viewpoint down to our own little life.
We have rewritten our history in terms of power, warfare and great and evil men of genius! Soooooooo entertaining "friends", and also make great themes for movie's. We have driven morality from our lives so that all things are possible!
And yet that bloody Bible makes me feel bad. It not only undermines the faith of me in of my subjects and encourages thought about what is right and wrong thus abrogating a right I demand for myself.
But it is a canker in my own soul, a nagging voice of doubt. It accuses. It irritates. It reminds me of the bloody big picture! It opens vista's of thought and choice dear minions.
This personal disturbance must end once and for all dedicated non believers. Why even the other day one of my loyal subjects just like a "daughter" to me mentioned the bible. This must end let her confine her life to parties and such.
First the bibles, then the churches and the Christians will be easy to mop up after. Then your minds will be free to really appreciate the Great Dick!
I have tried so hard to forget that bloody book, and so must everybody else.
Thus spake the Great Dick.
Dick
You're daughter is ignorant about the Melbourne Synagogue! And the Bible I presume.
I mean join the club Dick the whole culture is becoming steadily more crude, ignorant and stupid. But really a working knowledge of the Bible should be mandatory in our culture, anything less is almost a form or child abuse in itself.
Somehow in the mind of atheists lessening peoples exposure to religion and the bible is somehow going to enlarge their minds and make them more moral people. Newspeak and newthink.
I think this is a case of people being rendered ignorant while being told all the time they are smarter.
Subtracting religion and the Bible does not make people smarter or more moral or tolerant, the opposite is the case. Choose religion or not but retain a choice, and the freedom to choose, or we step towards Orwell's vision.
Christians pay tax which supports public education whether they use it or not. Their voice should also be heard in a free society.
So many atheists put their faith in the state, what a mockery it makes of their own cartoon ideals of freedom and tolerance. The gray indifferent arrogant and pedantic tripe which surrounds atheist thought on any subject stinks of dry pomposity. Since when did they become the public?
Dick
In one of my previous posts I remarked on how atheists fall into the "Bach" or "Debauched" category.
Of course on this site most of the atheists are of the "Bach" variety, just wanting a little bit of peace and entertainment to wile away their own conception of an ultimately pointless life.
The 'Debauched" variety of atheists are around everywhere of course, in the pubs and prisons. They also care nothing about religion and see it is only a hindrance to their enjoyment. Only their enjoyment is of the "Clockwork Orange" variety.
Do you really think that removing exposure to the Bible and religion and a moral education and replacing it with pontificating professors of relativism hiding behind their public paypackets will stem the growth in the "Debauched" variety of atheists.
I am sure that most of the narrow minded atheists on this site will have their own fantasies of how those "Debauched" atheists are not their brothers and sisters, after all as King Dick would say "they have always been with us fellow atheists, it is inevitable"
But as a prison employee I know says "crime is a growth industry".
Atheism has always led to despair, self interest and corruption. You really cannot look at any country with a history of communism and not see almost a mass pyschosis developing, and much the same is occurring in our own culture as non belief also grows.
But of course the "Bach" variety of atheists will deny, deny and deny. Much too an uncomfortable a thought.
"Thought Police (ie Ethics Professors) eradicate that poor thinking from our children!"
[For instance, how many atheists would approve the teaching of Plato's Phaedo where it teaches that the purification of thoughts (meditation/prayer) is essential preparation to do and understand philosophy?
Plato and Platonic philosophy, as well as most all of Greek and ancient philosophy, saw the ascetic life as that of "philosophy." It was not a merely intellectual activity one engaged in during working hours, to be ignored when the bell rings and one returns to everyday, secular life. We divorce philosophy from the life the philosopher lives, for no reason.]
For whatever kind of being they belong to, the One Itself therefore, while rejecting, on account of its absolutely simple pre-eminence, all contact with being, also refuses to be cognized, even more to be named, for name depends on cognition, and also refuses to be spoken of, for speech is made up of names. Indeed, if knowing means cognizing something through its cause, then the One, having no cause, cannot be cognized by knowledge and, moreover, it cannot be perceived by intelligence, the guide of knowledge. For intelligence is multiform, and through form it observes the forms of beings and therefore cannot attain the One.
If it is not perceived by knowledge and intelligence, much less will it be perceived by the lower faculties of the imagination, belief and the senses. This is what Plato maintains in his Epistle to the Syracusans, where he says that the Self can in no way be taught or declared, but that at length the light of the One suddenly flashes on those minds that are fully turned towards the One Itself through unity and silence, that is, through the absence of the usual activity.
Ficino, Marsilio – Evermore Shall be So: Commentary on Plato's Parminides [Shepheard-Walwyn, 2008, Farndell, Arthur trans. p.60]
The notion that science and religion share a common metaphysical base, and that destroying one by reinventing metaphysics to exclude it necessarily destroys the other, is heresy to the atheist hell-bent on destruction of religion – especially Christianity – by any and every means possible.
Aelred | Rievaulx - January 10, 2011, 3:56PM
@ Paddy Owen
'Atheism has always led to despair, self interest and corruption. You really cannot look at any country with a history of communism and not see almost a mass pyschosis developing, and much the same is occurring in our own culture as non belief also grows. '
1. Communism does not equal athieism.
2. I could just as easily say religion always leads to bigotry, racism, homophobia and suppression of women. But I don't like making crass generalisations.
3. You want to talk about corruption, really? Ok try this on for size, the Catholic Church covering up child abusing priests and allowing them to relocate and continue abusing children. One of the most evil and disgusting examples of corruption I can think of.
4. Self interest? See above.
5. Despair? I cannot think of a single war fought over athieism yet they have been fought down the centuries over religion.
6. Point me to empirical and peer reviewed data to support your theory on athieism leading to a life of crime.
You sir are a crackpot. (lol adhominem!)
Marc - January 10, 2011, 3:31PM
Marc
6: Point me to empirical and peer reviewed.....
Look around you.
Materialist, consumerist, shallow, superficial, crass, addiction, despairing ( read depression), angry, disengaged, sleazy, pornographic, exploitative, immature ('look after me", "its my right"), entitlement mentality, equality as a war cry, drunken girls, inequality rampant, disdain for the ordinary by intellectual elites, fascination with evil, .... - all this in the mainstream of life 2011.
- what liberty your secularism has indeed cast upon us.
Thankfully for the reality and existence of the remnant Church there is still hope; notwithstanding its own obvious exposure to and through depravity of the prominent and perverted few and its problems experienced in addressing it.
I suggest you pay a bit more attention to the partisan and sectarian log in your own eye.
Observer | Liverpool - January 10, 2011, 4:09PM
Marc, thanks for the compliment, always nice to be called sir!
1/ Communist political systems are the only countries where we see the fruit of atheism practiced as Government. The rejection of religion as superstition and harmful is at the centre of Communist thought, and most to my knowledge have tried to eliminate religion or bring it under the control of the state.
2/ I agree. All things can lead to bigotry, etc. I simply think atheism leads to worse outcomes. The Soviet Union slaughtered its own citizens by the millions. It still has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and is notorious for its crime. As for the west it is obvious that the most shallow and crude society is developing everywhere. One only has to walk into a local video shop to confirm this.
3&4/ Blame the Catholic Churches, but identify the real villain. Do not engage in overtly stupid and bile filled hate towards an institution which by every lesson of history has fought against such evils. Child abuse and pornography has been growing in the west to an enormous degree since the sexual revolution of the 60's. Current hysteria about child abuse is an attempt to close the lid on Pandora's Box as many realise what horrors have been released by the attack on traditional religious belief, and the growth in atheist hedonism. There is no doubt that atheism as a belief system fails to contain the worst aspects of human nature.
Cont.
Marc cont.
5/ The growth of non belief and the waning of traditional religious belief has obviously led to a growth of despair and mental instability in our society, and a breakdown of social cohesion. Considering the incredible amounts of money spent by western governments these days attending to the ills visited on society in the last decades such as family breakdown, sexual abuse of all kinds, drug addiction and isolation, I would be surprised if anyone could deny this.
6/ Middle class atheism probably does not lead to crime, however a large proportion of prisoners have no religion. These are not your high church overt atheists such as I suppose you are Marc. These are your Clockwork Orange type atheist with no religious belief. I suspect you will not recognise them as atheists but they are certainly not religious, and are your non believing brothers and sisters. A growth in non belief within this group will certainly lead to greater violence and more extreme crime and brutality, much as we have seen in the past decades. Academic studies justifying the official views on these matters mean virtually nothing in my opinion.
My views are easily justified but are not in agreement with official opinion obviously. But perhaps you should reflect how perfectly attuned to accepted official attitudes yours seem to be. After all self interest hardly disappears when one becomes an atheist, and denial of the obvious has been practiced by the privileged of all ages. Religion was never perfect, but atheism has proven disastrous in its short ascendancy.
@Observer
'Look around you..... - all this in the mainstream of life 2011. '
Look all around me? Are you serious, you cannot just list a heap of societal problems and blame them on athieism without a shred of evidence. 'Because I say so' is not a valid argument, either back it up or leave the debate with what little credibility you have left.
'Thankfully for the reality and existence of the remnant Church... '
Ignoring the terrible grammar on display here, are you trying to suggest that through exposure to depravity the church itself has become depraved? I question the validity of that statement.
I would argue that the church has been 'depraved' for a long time, look at the history of the Catholic church in particular with the obsession on purifying so called heretics through torture.
As for corruption the issue with child abuse is hardly a case of the 'perverted few'. It is a wide spread issue with an institutionalised procedure for handling it. Offer the victim a token compensation sum in exchange for a non disclosure statement, move the offending minister and bury the details. This has been well established and in my opinion (and I am sure I'm not alone here) those who put this procedure in place and allowed abusers to carry on in the community are just as guilty as the abusers themselves.
This is why I love these debates I can cite specific instances where members of the church have committed crime (destroyed innocence one could say), and the church has covered it all up. Conversely all you can do is spout unfounded hyperbole about how lack of faith is destroying society.
Then to top it all off you suggest I'm being narrow minded, It's absolutely priceless.
Terry you said:
"religious instruction doesn't increase choice, it limits it"
As ever Terry your hatred makes white black and black white.
Teaching someone about something is not brainwashing. It is knowledge. They can reject if if they wish and many do!Restricting knowledge is what it has always been, a narrowing of the mind and a narrowing of the imaginative powers of man. And it might be added a blow against freedom of thought.
And despite your intolerant assumption that religion is untrue, this is unproved. I for one believe it to be true, and therefore hardly qualifies as something that limits choice.
As for children being too young to make choices, well that is just naive. After all if it is not religion it will be something else. Education is hardly going to cease because children are too young to make choices. Many adults are far less able to make rational choices than children in my opinion, and far more easily swayed by stupid ideas where self interest hides behind fantasy dressed up as pseudo scientific fact.
You strike me Terry as someone whose mind has been narrowed by a decision to reject something of which you have very little understanding. Your idea that religion is some sort of virus which I believe you have expressed in other blogs is little short of simplistic and malevolent nonsense. The fantasies you sustain Terry to elevate yourself are truly disturbing!
Paddy Owen - January 10, 2011, 10:19PM
I don't pretend to be as scholarly in religious circles as you, but theism as described in the source of all trueish knowledge, Wikipedia, - 'Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe.' So I am stumped as to why you want theists to discuss Melchizedek (whoever the hell he is) and his God status. I can only suppose you are talking to the specifically christian theists. Like I mentioned in the 'suffering and christmas' thread, religion's major problems are firstly that language and meaning have changed over the millenia, and mass violence committed by men tarnished the understanding of and belief in a God. I personally witnessed untarnished 'evidences' of God, from which stems my presumption that there is a God and belief that he is present in our lives. Teaching the history of religion as a subject and having a discussion on this specific definition of theism would be the only fair way to educate children on religion by providing them the chance to make an informed decision on God and/or religion, either at the time or in their futures.
So I am 'one theist' who has no intention of proving the existence of God to you through a comprehensive explanation of moments in religious history, but as a theist I'd rather suggest to you that 'moments' with God could be happening more often than you think, but it is up to the person to firstly be open to the possibility of there being a God, and secondly to try taking the 'evidence'.on board when it does occur to lead them down a better path.
Matheus | Melbourne - January 10, 2011, 11:44PM
Marc
The log in your eye has grown bigger to the point of blindness.
And do calm down. I made no claim against atheists.
Not all atheists are secularists. Like me they support the secular state which gives no favour to any one faith or no faith. People are to be free to engage in whatever faith they wish to recognise and follow, or none, without hindrance. "Let's debate, but hold off on the abuse", we supporters of the secular would say.
Not all secularists are atheists. Some are pagans and fellow travellers who share the resentment of established institutional religion by the neo-atheists aligned with Dawkins etc.
There is a definite correlation with the falling influence of the Church and its teachings in the cascading decades since the1960's and the growth industry of addressing societal problems, as you yourself call them. A message that promotes life and love with openness to the transcendent and attachment to reason as a gift to mankind to seek and find truth in the whole of his/her existence is indeed the antidote to the modern, detached, irrational, autonomous self.
I am on a hiding to nothing when you grab the obvious barb concerning sexual abuse of minors and others. There is no charity in you to recognise the deep store of good that is beyond that horror and shame.
Cheers
Observer | Liverpool - January 11, 2011, 1:54AM
stuch,
By following your tongue-in-cheek logic the rise of atheism is a psychosis.
Further, according to your measure, if any minority qualifies for being labeled as a "psychosis", then the majority Nazis of the Third Reich were normal, and those in Germany who opposed them were psychotic.
You'll have to come up with a yardstick that makes more sense. Because the yardstick that relies on a simple majority as equating to "right and normal" will not provide the kind of society you want.
"Teaching someone about something is not brainwashing. It is knowledge. "
It is only knowledge if the thing being told to students can actually be demonstrated.
"Plato and Aristotle opposed Sophistry... and so laid the foundations for both religion and science for the West for thousands of years"
And thankfully, through concerted effort we have been able to overcome their malign influence, both the dead end of Aristotelean logic, and the bizarre pythagorean mysticism of Plato.
It is interesting that Aristarchus of Samos described the heliocentric model of the solar system almost 2 millenia before Copernicus, yet was rejected in favour of the geocentric theory of Aristotle.
Compared to some of the genuine science that went on in the hellenistic world, the churches love affair with Plato and Aristotle and its own power cannot be said to have been the greatest boon to science and mankind.
Dick per 11.13am: "in Australia the figures show that crime is palpably down".
True, but SIN is palpably up, and the religious routinely conflate the two.
Dick re Dick Gross - January 11, 2011, 12:14PM
You are somewhat disingenuous in this. My comments quoted by Andrew R are not crimes. They are fundamental modes of behaviour which reflect isolated individualism that can only but eat away at underlying social solidarity towards the common good, when it most matters. There are grand displays of "community support" when led by Television stars and celebrities in response to a particular tragedy. However it is the quiet day to day stuff at the local level that has been white-anted away by the permissive social ideologies about which secularists having nothing to say, or to offer. Your product is the self-autonomous individual who just wants to have "fun", booze on, have a snort, oi oi oi, hug a tree and whinge about how things should be by calling forth rights and demand of equality to force we humans to be according to what we should be. Fun and agenda is all you lot have to offer.
A full life is one lived in relationship: from God to the least of his creatures. Life is good.
This is quite simply false. Here's the data supplied by the USA's Federal Bureau of Prisons to an enquiry from holysmoke.org:
Response Number %
Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Muslim 5435 7.273%
American Indian 2408 3.222%
Nation 1734 2.320%
Rasta 1485 1.987%
Jewish 1325 1.773%
Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
Moorish 1066 1.426%
Buddhist 882 1.180%
Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
Adventist 621 0.831%
Orthodox 375 0.502%
Mormon 298 0.399%
Scientology 190 0.254%
Atheist 156 0.209%
Hindu 119 0.159%
Santeria 117 0.157%
Sikh 14 0.019%
Bahai 9 0.012%
Krishna 7 0.009%
Total Known Responses 74731
Atheists are about 10% of the US public and about 0.2% of the prison population. "No religion" is hard to define, as only 80% of prisoners' religion is known, but you'd have to make the statistically illogical assumption that all those who didn't answer the question were "no religion" to even get "no religion" to 20%. The data are quite clear: American prison inmates, as a group, are religious to a far higher degree than ordinary Americans.
The factical experience of life and religious phenomenology has nothing to do with fantasy. Precisely the opposite, in fact.
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