Martin Luther on Rationality

[John Clark]

I sincerely hope that nobody believes I'm picking on Catholics because Protestant "thinking" is every bit as brain dead dumb as the Pope's. Martin Luther knew perfectly well that religious ideas cannot survive the slightest amount of rational analysis without completely falling apart, but his solution to that problem was not to get better ideas but to simply insist that people check their brain at the door before they start to think about God; here are some of the noises that particular bipedal hominid made with his mouth, although I think the noises made from the other end of Luther's gastrointestinal tract may have contain more wisdom, at least they might have disclosed some evidence on how the human digestive system works: 

     
“Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God”

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of reason."

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and know nothing but the word of God."

"Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

"We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist."

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.  This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."


After this contemptible performance, after flat out praising the virtues of stupidity and unapologetically trying to turn everybody into imbeciles I don't see how anyone could call themselves a Lutheran or a Protestant or even a Christian without intense embarrassment.

 John K Clark  

[Alberto G. Corona]

I though that, this was not a site for enhancing the self esteem of self-proclaimed rationalists neither an insult-you-an-infidel theraphy group. 

2013/1/24 John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 7:32 AM, John Clark wrote:
> I sincerely hope that nobody believes I'm picking on Catholics because Protestant
> "thinking" is every bit as brain dead dumb as the Pope's. Martin Luther knew perfectly
> well that religious ideas cannot survive the slightest amount of rational analysis
> without completely falling apart, but his solution to that problem was not to get better
> ideas but to simply insist that people check their brain at the door before they start
> to think about God; here are some of the noises that particular bipedal hominid made
> with his mouth, although I think the noises made from the other end of Luther's
> gastrointestinal tract may have contain more wisdom, at least they might have disclosed
> some evidence on how the human digestive system works:
>
>

> �Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual

> things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating

> with contempt all that emanates from God�

>
> "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of reason."
>
> "Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."
>
> "Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all
> reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and know
> nothing but the word of God."
>
> "Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious
> whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy
> who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in
> her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would
> deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."
>
> "We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did
> not exist."
>
> "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth
> revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. This fool wishes to
> reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13]
> that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."
>
>
> After this contemptible performance, after flat out praising the virtues of stupidity
> and unapologetically trying to turn everybody into imbeciles I don't see how anyone
> could call themselves a Lutheran or a Protestant or even a Christian without intense
> embarrassment.
>
> John K Clark

Of course we are now told that religion is not science, but that it is the source of
morality which is beyond reason:

"We are at fault for not slaying them [the Jews]."
---Martin Luther, "On the Jews and Their Lies"

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...set fire to their
synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever
will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or
cinder of them."
---Martin Luther

"Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the
world enemy -- the Jews. The work that Christ started but did not
finish, I, Adolf Hitler, will conclude."
--- "The Book of Political Quotes," London: Angus & Robertson
Publishers, 1982, p. 195)

"We stand at the end of the Age of Reason. A new era of the
magical explanation of the world is rising."
--Adolf Hitler from Gespr�ch mit Hitler by Herman Raschning
quoted by Francis Slakey "When the lights of reason go out" New
Scientist 11 September 1993.

Brent
El sue�o de la raz�n produce monstruos.
--Francisco de Goya

[Richard Ruquist]

This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
science to where it is today.

Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
John's comments, I wonder why not.
Richard

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
science to where it is today.

Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
John's comments, I wonder why not.

But it did happen.� The Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere, how far away and how big the Sun was.� They had a speculative idea of biological evolution.� They had the concept of atoms and how all matter might be constructed from just a few basic components in different combinations.� Aristotle was an empiricist.� If it had not been for the early Church's emphasis on faith, dogma, and rationalism, science would be centuries more advanced.

Brent

[Alberto G. Corona]

All these things are part of the myths of modernity. The reality is quite different. The idea that the medievals though that the earth was flat is larguely a myth, as true as the fact that now a fair amount of the people in the world believe that Man has not been in the Moon. Inquisition, for example, and the burning of withches was a phenomenon of the early modern age not from the middle age, where woman had quite more freedon,  The popular ideas about the medieval era are based in prejudices that are part of the essence of modernity, which has the need of the existence of a "dark age" (the "Middle Age") and a Golden age (The ancient age) for its existence. the mytical tree stages in history is part of this gnostic elaboration invented by Joachim de Fiore. Since them all ideological creations, including the modern division of history had three stages. 

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
science to where it is today.

Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
John's comments, I wonder why not.

But it did happen.  The Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere, how far away and how big the Sun was.  They had a speculative idea of biological evolution.  They had the concept of atoms and how all matter might be constructed from just a few basic components in different combinations.  Aristotle was an empiricist.  If it had not been for the early Church's emphasis on faith, dogma, and rationalism, science would be centuries more advanced.

Brent

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

[Alberto G. Corona]

In fact it is just the opposite:  the position of Luther, like the one of Ocham or Duns Scoto, which were strongly anti-reason, created the modern science and  were precursors of the most radical forms of Positivism.

Why? It is simple to understand: The three of them were against the use of reason in MORAL matters, in the knowledge of what is Good and what is Evil and in the knowledge of God, and in the meaning of life. They were against the use of Greek philosophy to interpret and complement the knowledge of the biblical revelation (the naturalist knowledge about these matters was called "natural revelation"). But they were not agains the use of science in any non religious matters. So they stablished the modern radical separation between faith and science, between "is" and "ough" . (which I strongly think is at the root of the contemporary social diseases )

Islam took a more radical path, While the protestants proclaimed the independence of God from any natural  limitation of moral reasoning stablished by greek philosophy, but admitted natural causations, so science in the modern sense was not only possible but promoted,  the main schools of Islam proclaimed no natural causation. For Islam, life was a continuous miracle, and what appeared to be laws were nothing but the customs of Allá that would change at any moment. So there was no motive to study what may change at any moment.

Dr.Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist and professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in

Islamabad, said, according to The New York Times (10/30/2001), that “it was not

Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water. ‘You were

supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of

Allah water was created.’”

2013/1/24 Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com>

--
Alberto

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 9:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

All these things are part of the myths of modernity. The reality is quite different. The idea that the medievals though that the earth was flat is larguely a myth,

"As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say,
men on the opposite side of the earth where the sun rises
when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite
ours, that is on no ground credible."
      --- St. Augustine

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
      --- Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, letter to Paolo Frascioni

as true as the fact that now a fair amount of the people in the world believe that Man has not been in the Moon. Inquisition, for example, and the burning of withches was a phenomenon of the early modern age not from the middle age, where woman had quite more freedon, 

The Church punished heresy from the time it gained power.  Inquistions became formalized with the suppression of the Cathars in the 12th century (the medieval period by any reckoning)

Certainly, the pursuit of knowledge was obstructed by the Church as long as it had the power - not just in the medieval period. The Spanish Inquisition ended in 1834. 

The popular ideas about the medieval era are based in prejudices that are part of the essence of modernity, which has the need of the existence of a "dark age" (the "Middle Age") and a Golden age (The ancient age) for its existence. the mytical tree stages in history is part of this gnostic elaboration invented by Joachim de Fiore. Since them all ideological creations, including the modern division of history had three stages.

And the Catholic Church has been trying to revise history ever since to conceal it's role in obstructing science, oppressing women, harboring pedophiles, and murdering jews.

Brent

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
science to where it is today.

Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
John's comments, I wonder why not.

But it did happen.  The Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere, how far away and how big the Sun was.  They had a speculative idea of biological evolution.  They had the concept of atoms and how all matter might be constructed from just a few basic components in different combinations.  Aristotle was an empiricist.  If it had not been for the early Church's emphasis on faith, dogma, and rationalism, science would be centuries more advanced.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2890 / Virus Database: 2639/6050 - Release Date: 01/22/13

[Alberto G. Corona]

In the same way, except a few in a concrete time in the greek history, the Greeks believed that the earth was flat, with the center in Greece. The world okeanos, (ocean) was a river, that surrounded the earth, where greece was at the center. 

The XII century, the time of Juachim de Fiore, and the time of the Katars was a time of greath economic growth. It is true that the inquisition was created at that time, but except with the katars (that worshipped Lucifer), the  Inquisition became really active in the Renaissance.The horrid Spanish Inquisition produced around 2000 death penalties, while the protestants burned without ,judicial case, thousands between battle and battle in the European wars of religion

Compare this with the hundreds of thousands killed in La Vendee, a smal region of France in a few days, killed by the rationalist french revolutionaries or the hundred millions killed by the scientific socialists. (or the 5+30 millions killed by the  modern eugenesists).

The selection of stories in a biased way is a proof of nothing but the own prejudices.

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 9:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> In fact it is just the opposite: the position of Luther, like the one of Ocham or Duns
> Scoto, which were strongly anti-reason, created the modern science and were precursors
> of the most radical forms of Positivism.

They were anti-rationlism, the idea that knowledge of the world could be arrived at by arm
chair cogitation. A 'precursor' to radical positivism would be moderate postivism whose
precursor would simply be empiricism.

>
> Why? It is simple to understand: The three of them were against the use of reason in
> MORAL matters, in the knowledge of what is Good and what is Evil and in the knowledge of
> God, and in the meaning of life. They were against the use of Greek philosophy to
> interpret and complement the knowledge of the biblical revelation (the naturalist
> knowledge about these matters was called "natural revelation"). But they were not agains
> the use of science in any non religious matters. So they stablished the modern radical
> separation between faith and science, between "is" and "ough" . (which I strongly think
> is at the root of the contemporary social diseases )
>
> Islam took a more radical path, While the protestants proclaimed the independence of God
> from any natural limitation of moral reasoning stablished by greek philosophy, but
> admitted natural causations, so science in the modern sense was not only possible but
> promoted, the main schools of Islam proclaimed no natural causation. For Islam, life
> was a continuous miracle,

Exactly as argued by Aquinas who formulated the Church doctrine that God is the ground of
all being and continuously sustains the world.

> and what appeared to be laws were nothing but the customs of All� that would change at

> any moment. So there was no motive to study what may change at any moment.
>
> Dr.Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist and professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in

> Islamabad, said, according to The New York Times (10/30/2001), that �it was not
> Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water. �You were

> supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of

> Allah water was created.��


Brent
"The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an
atheist deserving of punishment.
---Sheik Abdel-Aziz ibn Baaz, the supreme religious authority of
Saudi Arabia, 1993, quoted by Yousef M. Ibrahim,
The New York Times, 12 February 1993
Yes, that's 1993 CE, not BCE.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, January 24, 2013 1:13:18 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 1/24/2013 9:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> In fact it is just the opposite:  the position of Luther, like the one of Ocham or Duns
> Scoto, which were strongly anti-reason, created the modern science and  were precursors
> of the most radical forms of Positivism.

They were anti-rationlism, the idea that knowledge of the world could be arrived at by arm
chair cogitation.  A 'precursor' to radical positivism would be moderate postivism whose
precursor would simply be empiricism.

 

Empiricists still sit in chairs and cogitate. Adding instruments to validate cogitation only improves on that, not replaces it.

Craig

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 9:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

In fact it is just the opposite:  the position of Luther, like the one of Ocham or Duns Scoto, which were strongly anti-reason, created the modern science and  were precursors of the most radical forms of Positivism.

They were anti-rationlism, the idea that knowledge of the world could be arrived at by arm chair cogitation.  A 'precursor' to radical positivism would be moderate postivism whose precursor would simply be empiricism

that is ahistoric. Rationalism did not exist at that time. You have to know the mentality of that time and what where their main philosophical preocupations. That is something that you have not the least intention to know. 

Why? It is simple to understand: The three of them were against the use of reason in MORAL matters, in the knowledge of what is Good and what is Evil and in the knowledge of God, and in the meaning of life. They were against the use of Greek philosophy to interpret and complement the knowledge of the biblical revelation (the naturalist knowledge about these matters was called "natural revelation"). But they were not agains the use of science in any non religious matters. So they stablished the modern radical separation between faith and science, between "is" and "ough" . (which I strongly think is at the root of the contemporary social diseases )

Islam took a more radical path, While the protestants proclaimed the independence of God from any natural  limitation of moral reasoning stablished by greek philosophy, but admitted natural causations, so science in the modern sense was not only possible but promoted,  the main schools of Islam proclaimed no natural causation. For Islam, life was a continuous miracle,

Exactly as argued by Aquinas who formulated the Church doctrine that God is the ground of all being and continuously sustains the world.

That is not true.  With almost as contempt for the details as you, I would say that the God of Aquinas was limited by reason. That is exactly what Duns Scotus, Ocham and Luther rejected.

and what appeared to be laws were nothing but the customs of Allá that would change at any moment. So there was no motive to study what may change at any moment.

Dr.Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist and professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in

Islamabad, said, according to The New York Times (10/30/2001), that “it was not
Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water. ‘You were

supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of

Allah water was created.’”

Brent
"The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an
atheist deserving of punishment.
  ---Sheik Abdel-Aziz ibn Baaz, the supreme religious authority of
     Saudi Arabia, 1993, quoted by Yousef M. Ibrahim,
      The New York Times, 12 February 1993
      Yes, that's 1993 CE, not BCE.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 10:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

In the same way, except a few in a concrete time in the greek history, the Greeks believed that the earth was flat, with the center in Greece. The world okeanos, (ocean) was a river, that surrounded the earth, where greece was at the center. 

The XII century, the time of Juachim de Fiore, and the time of the Katars was a time of greath economic growth. It is true that the inquisition was created at that time, but except with the katars (that worshipped Lucifer), the  Inquisition became really active in the Renaissance.The horrid Spanish Inquisition produced around 2000 death penalties, while the protestants burned without ,judicial case, thousands between battle and battle in the European wars of religion

Compare this with the hundreds of thousands killed in La Vendee, a smal region of France in a few days, killed by the rationalist french revolutionaries

It was more like 70,000 and it was in putting down an insurrection.

or the hundred millions killed by the scientific socialists.

The Stalinist and Maoists were hardly 'scientific', they just weren't theists.  For example, they rejected Darwin just like Baptists do.

(or the 5+30 millions killed by the  modern eugenesists).

The selection of stories in a biased way is a proof of nothing but the own prejudices.

It seems strange to hear moral relativism from a Christian.  I'd say it's evidence that all those events and whatever agenda they were implementing were evil.  But the point is that the Church held itself as the sole and absolute moral authority with instructions directly from God.  So it's a little more significant when it commits its crimes in the name of God.

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 10:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

In the same way, except a few in a concrete time in the greek history, the Greeks believed that the earth was flat, with the center in Greece. The world okeanos, (ocean) was a river, that surrounded the earth, where greece was at the center. 

The XII century, the time of Juachim de Fiore, and the time of the Katars was a time of greath economic growth. It is true that the inquisition was created at that time, but except with the katars (that worshipped Lucifer), the  Inquisition became really active in the Renaissance.The horrid Spanish Inquisition produced around 2000 death penalties, while the protestants burned without ,judicial case, thousands between battle and battle in the European wars of religion

Compare this with the hundreds of thousands killed in La Vendee, a smal region of France in a few days, killed by the rationalist french revolutionaries

It was more like 70,000 and it was in putting down an insurrection.

or the hundred millions killed by the scientific socialists.

The Stalinist and Maoists were hardly 'scientific', they just weren't theists.  For example, they rejected Darwin just like Baptists do.

They were as scientific as your global warmist friends. 

The people like you have a great advantage: you are born every morning, and with the tooth paste, hearing the news, blaming the world for their faults, you auto-sanctify yourselves. 

Your country did something bad? You are not concerned, you blame your country.  Your father did something bad? you blame your father, You are nothing. you are you.  You can blame everyone else for his faults, but you were born yesterday, you are willing to betray your father to avoid any blame.

(or the 5+30 millions killed by the  modern eugenesists).

The selection of stories in a biased way is a proof of nothing but the own prejudices.

It seems strange to hear moral relativism from a Christian.  I'd say it's evidence that all those events and whatever agenda they were implementing were evil.  But the point is that the Church held itself as the sole and absolute moral authority with instructions directly from God.  So it's a little more significant when it commits its crimes in the name of God.

I accept the good things and the true bad things of my tradition. but not the false ones.

And you? have you something to blame yourself?. You  are one in a wave of hypocrites that will repeat the bloody errors of your tradition, that has a long history of horrors. It is not certainly the tradition of your country, neither the tradition of Christendom.   You don´t even know it. It is more: you negate it.

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 10:46 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

The Stalinist and Maoists were hardly 'scientific', they just weren't theists.  For example, they rejected Darwin just like Baptists do.

They were as scientific as your global warmist friends. 

Really?  Where are their peer-reviewed papers, their instruments, their data, where did they publish?  They were arm chair philosophers and ruthless tyrants.  Global warming is a simple and direct inference from the absorbtion spectrum and chemistry of CO2 and well as an empirically confirmed phenomena - but I suppose you're waiting for the Vatican to pronounce on it.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 1/24/2013 10:46 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 10:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

In the same way, except a few in a concrete time in the greek history, the Greeks believed that the earth was flat, with the center in Greece. The world okeanos, (ocean) was a river, that surrounded the earth, where greece was at the center. 

The XII century, the time of Juachim de Fiore, and the time of the Katars was a time of greath economic growth. It is true that the inquisition was created at that time, but except with the katars (that worshipped Lucifer), the  Inquisition became really active in the Renaissance.The horrid Spanish Inquisition produced around 2000 death penalties, while the protestants burned without ,judicial case, thousands between battle and battle in the European wars of religion

Compare this with the hundreds of thousands killed in La Vendee, a smal region of France in a few days, killed by the rationalist french revolutionaries

It was more like 70,000 and it was in putting down an insurrection.

or the hundred millions killed by the scientific socialists.

The Stalinist and Maoists were hardly 'scientific', they just weren't theists.  For example, they rejected Darwin just like Baptists do.

They were as scientific as your global warmist friends. 

The people like you have a great advantage: you are born every morning, and with the tooth paste, hearing the news, blaming the world for their faults,

A least I place the blame where it belongs.  You blame whoever is not a fellow theist.

you auto-sanctify yourselves.

And you have a professional priesthood to save you the trouble.

Your country did something bad? You are not concerned,

I marched in protest of Viet Nam and the second Iraq war and in support of the civil rights movement.  I canvassed votes for Gene McCarthy door-to-door and later for George McGovern.

you blame your country.  Your father did something bad? you blame your father,

Well sure.  I'm not God who punishes everybody for what Adam and Eve did.

You are nothing. you are you. 

Make up your mind.

You can blame everyone else for his faults, but you were born yesterday, you are willing to betray your father to avoid any blame.

Now you're just ranting.

(or the 5+30 millions killed by the  modern eugenesists).

And hundreds of millions condemned to starvation and venereal disease by the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control and condoms.

The selection of stories in a biased way is a proof of nothing but the own prejudices.

It seems strange to hear moral relativism from a Christian.  I'd say it's evidence that all those events and whatever agenda they were implementing were evil.  But the point is that the Church held itself as the sole and absolute moral authority with instructions directly from God.  So it's a little more significant when it commits its crimes in the name of God.

I accept the good things and the true bad things of my tradition. but not the false ones.

Of your tradition?  Is there nothing you have done yourself?  You just "accept" the bad?  You have not protested the pedophilia, the oppression of women, the ignorant opposition to stem cell research, the homophobia,...

And you? have you something to blame yourself?. You  are one in a wave of hypocrites that will repeat the bloody errors of your tradition,

Maybe so, but so far as I know no scientist has advocated burning an opponent at the stake.

that has a long history of horrors. It is not certainly the tradition of your country, neither the tradition of Christendom.   You don´t even know it. It is more: you negate it.

I know the traditions of my country quite well and they include religious tolerance - the first nation to encode that in its constitution.

Brent
"If God had decreed from all eternity that a certain person
should die of smallpox, it would be a frightful sin to avoid and
annul that decree by the trick of vaccination."
      --- Timothy Dwight, President of Yale 1795-1817

[Alberto G. Corona]

I know the traditions of my country quite well and they include religious tolerance - the first nation to encode that in its constitution.

You are an unleashed ate moralist, devoid of any principle or reality. your knowledge of  History is a the one of a Lego game where you construct your excuses  your  auto-sanctifications and were you find your trowable one-line weapons. You convert any discussion into a waste of time.

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

[John Mikes]

Brent:
I hold you in a much higher standard than being a participant in such
tongue-lashing about topics absolutely not fitting the Everything List
and its goals.
Could we save (use?) this list for reasonable scientific discussion? \
Does anybody have a 'fitting' topic we could discuss?
For many weeks it goes round and round without sense-making.
Unfortunately Bruno, lately arbiter of (his) topics as center of most
discussions - feels quite comfortable in the faith-related huppla.
Hoping for a better time Onlist
John Mikes

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark,

 

Other than Luther's ancient views on astronomy, and only with regard to

salvation or damnation, as a modern Lutheran I agree with everything Luther said,

although I might temper down his invective, which was intended for the Pope.

In that spirit, everything Luther said was correct and still is.

 

Outside of science, true stupidity is to rely only on reason. 

Faith opens the inner eye, which science wants to blind.

So it is said that with faith, you have everything, without faith

you have nothing. 

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-24, 10:48:16

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

I though that, this was not a site for enhancing the self爀steem爋f self-proclaimed rationalists neither an insult-you-an-infidel theraphy group.�

2013/1/24 John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

I sincerely hope that nobody believes I'm picking on Catholics because Protestant "thinking" is every bit as brain dead dumb as the Pope's. Martin Luther knew perfectly well that religious ideas cannot survive the slightest amount of rational analysis without completely falling apart, but his solution to that problem was not to get better ideas but to simply insist that people check their brain at the door before they start to think about God; here are some of the noises that particular bipedal hominid made with his mouth, although I think the noises made from the other end of Luther's gastrointestinal tract may have contain more wisdom, at least they might have disclosed some evidence on how the human digestive system works:�

牋牋�
揜eason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God�

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of reason."

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and know nothing but the word of God."

"Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

"We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist."

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.� This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."


After this contemptible performance, after flat out praising the virtues of stupidity and unapologetically trying to turn everybody into imbeciles I don't see how anyone could call themselves a Lutheran or a Protestant or even a Christian without intense embarrassment.

燡ohn K Clark牋

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

____________________________________________________________________
DreamMail - The first mail software supporting source tracking  www.dreammail.org

[Roger Clough]

Hi Alberto G. Corona

 

Luther wasn't a rationalist, and so contributed nothing to modern science.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-24, 13:26:59

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

2013/1/24 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

On 1/24/2013 9:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

In fact it is just the opposite: 爐he position of Luther, like the one of Ocham or Duns Scoto, which were strongly anti-reason, created the modern science and 爓ere precursors of the most radical forms of Positivism.

They were anti-rationlism, the idea that knowledge of the world could be arrived at by arm chair cogitation. 燗 'precursor' to radical positivism would be moderate postivism whose precursor would simply be empiricism

that is ahistoric. Rationalism did not exist at that time. You have to know the mentality of that time and what where their main philosophical preocupations. That is something that you have not the least intention to know.�

Why? It is simple to understand: The three of them were against the use of reason in MORAL matters, in the knowledge of what is Good and what is Evil and in the knowledge of God, and in the meaning of life. They were against the use of Greek philosophy to interpret and complement the knowledge of the biblical revelation (the naturalist knowledge about these matters was called "natural revelation"). But they were not agains the use of science in any non religious matters. So they stablished the modern radical separation between faith and science, between "is" and "ough" . (which I strongly think is at the root of the contemporary social diseases )

Islam took a more radical path, While the protestants proclaimed the independence of God from any natural 爈imitation of moral reasoning stablished by greek philosophy, but admitted natural causations, so science in the modern sense was not only possible but promoted, 爐he main schools of Islam proclaimed no natural causation. For Islam, life was a continuous miracle,

Exactly as argued by Aquinas who formulated the Church doctrine that God is the ground of all being and continuously sustains the world.

That is not true. 燱ith almost as contempt for the details as you, I would say that the God of Aquinas was limited by reason. That is exactly what Duns Scotus, Ocham and Luther rejected.

and what appeared to be laws were nothing but the customs of All� that would change at any moment. So there was no motive to study what may change at any moment.

Dr.Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist and professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in

Islamabad, said, according to The New York Times (10/30/2001), that 搃t was not
Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water. 慪ou were

supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of

Allah water was created.挃

Brent
"The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an
atheist deserving of punishment.
� ---Sheik Abdel-Aziz ibn Baaz, the supreme religious authority of

� � 燬audi Arabia, 1993, quoted by Yousef M. Ibrahim,

� � � The New York Times, 12 February 1993
� � � Yes, that's 1993 CE, not BCE.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

____________________________________________________________________
DreamMail - Your mistake not to try it once, but my mistake for your leaving off. use again  www.dreammail.org

<%--DreamMail_AD_END-->

[Roger Clough]

 

I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being

    a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

 

Or with science when I deal with science and with aesthetics when

    I visit an art museam. Or go to a concert.

 

Or with being a scientist when I deal with the Big Bang

    and being a Christian when I read Genesis. Two different

    accounts, from two different realms, of the same event.

 

Science has its own realm of validity in the realm of facts,

    but has no place -not even a foothold-- in the world of values.

 

The difference between a fool and a wise man is in knowing the difference.

 

- Roger Clough

[Alberto G. Corona]

Hi Roger:

Luther contributed indirectly to modern science by adopting the Duns Scoto and the Occam rejection of universals. The Lutheran mindset was more concentrated in the study of particular phisical things and rejected speculation This gave the modern meaning of the world science.

 (I will not extend this,  to avoid to mention the G-world and induce another rant by Pavlovian conditioning). 

2013/1/25 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Alberto.

[Alberto G. Corona]

Dear Roger,

This is the lutheran view. That´s fine. I love lutherans. but this work as long as you have faith. But once leave the faith,  people have no guide in very important things and fall in primitive cults with a modern facade.  For this reason I advocate the scientific study of faith, belief, morals etc. 

I particularly don´t feel comfortable talking about subjects like this in this group. But belief, and shared beliefs, is an irreductible component of what we call "reality". 

2013/1/25 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

 

I completely disagree. Regardless of the Church,

which is a human activity, the Bible provided western man

with a completely new, revolutionary view of existence that

has become the basis for science.

 

The Bible, as far as I know, is the only sacred scripture

that is choronological, time-based, as well as historical.

So time was real, as well as events. They could be examined,

at least in part, rationally. And the world was good, if

imperfect, not evil hence not worth studying, as in

gnosticism and platonism. And God said for us to celebrate

it, to make the most of it; "The Heavens are telling the

glory of God."

 

It even contains a semi-realistic account of creation and

the origins of man and morality that is spiritually meaningful,

if not completely scientific.

 

There are whole books discussing this more scholarly and

in more detail.

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-24, 11:44:16

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

On 1/24/2013 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
science to where it is today.

Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
John's comments, I wonder why not.

But it did happen.� The Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere, how far away and how big the Sun was.� They had a speculative idea of biological evolution.� They had the concept of atoms and how all matter might be constructed from just a few basic components in different combinations.� Aristotle was an empiricist.� If it had not been for the early Church's emphasis on faith, dogma, and rationalism, science would be centuries more advanced.

Brent

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

 

Yes, and science first thought that germs spontaneously

were generated like worms in decaying material. And

Aruistotle thought that there were celestial spheres.

And blood-letting was a healthy thing to do.

 

Etc.

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-24, 12:52:52

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013  Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Other than Luther's ancient views on astronomy,

 

How about Luther's views on geology? How about his view that the Earth was less than six thousand years old, do you agree with that?

>  as a modern Lutheran

Which apparently is nearly identical to a medieval Lutheran.

> I agree with everything Luther said

I do too, Luther gave a good explanation of why it is that if you want to be a good Christian you've got to be stupid.

 

> Faith opens the inner eye, which science wants to blind.

And you know this because that's what mommy and daddy told you.

> So it is said that with faith, you have everything, without faith you have nothing.

And you know this because that's what mommy and daddy told you.

> true stupidity is to rely only on reason.

I rest my case.

  John K Clark

 

[Roger Clough]

Hi Alberto G. Corona

 

Faith is differnet from belief.

It tends to hang in there, once God plants it,

because from there on in it's in God's hands.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-25, 10:38:48

Subject: Re: Facts vs values

Dear Roger,

This is the lutheran view. That磗 fine. I love lutherans. but this work as long as you have faith. But once leave the faith, 爌eople have no guide in very important things and fall in primitive cults with a modern爁acade.� For this reason I advocate the scientific study of faith, belief, morals etc.�

I particularly don磘 feel燾omfortable爐alking about subjects like this in this group. But belief, and shared beliefs, is an irreductible component of what we call "reality".�

2013/1/25 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

�

I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being

牋牋a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

�

Or with science when I deal with science and with aesthetics when

牋牋I visit an art museam. Or go to a concert.

�

Or with being a scientist when I deal爓ith the Big Bang

牋牋and being a Christian when I read Genesis. Two different

牋牋accounts, from two different realms,爋f the same event.

�

Science has its own realm of validity in the realm of facts,

牋牋but has no place -not even a foothold-- in the world of values.

�

The difference between a fool and a wise man is in knowing the difference.

�

- Roger Clough

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
�
�

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

 

No,  I let science be science and religion be religion.

Different languages, different meanings. You're confusing the two.

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: John Clark

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-25, 11:29:01

Subject: Re: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

�

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> the Bible provided western man with a completely new, revolutionary view of existence

New?! The Bible is just a rehash of other Bronze age myths that it plagiarized from older religions.

The Persian God Mithra, popular in 600 BC, was the son of the Sun God and was born on December 25. Mithra performed miracles, died, and was resurrected on the third day. Mithra was also called "the good shepherd" and had twelve companions that went with him when he traveled and taught.

In 1000BC people thought the God Krishna was a carpenter born of a virgin and was baptized in a river.

In 1200BC according to the Egyptian Book of the Dead the God Horus was the son of the God Osiris and was born to a virgin mother (even back then contradictions never bothered religion). Horus was baptized and the baptizer was later beheaded. Horus was tempted in the desert. Horus healed the sick and the blind. Horus cast out daemons. Horus raised a fellow named "Asar" from the dead. Horus walked on water.  Horus had 12 disciples. Horus was affixed to a cross and killed but after 3 days 2 women announced that "Horus our savior has been resurrected".

 

> The Bible, as far as I know, is the only sacred scripture that is choronological, time-based, as well as historical.

Even forgetting the silly miracles much of the stuff in the Bible that could be true apparently isn't. For example, there is not one scrap of archeological evidence that any part of the exodus story is true, no evidence that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt or wondered in the desert for 40 years. Nor is there any evidence, as there certainly would have been if it was true, that there was a tax census that compelled Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem at the time of Jesus birth, nor would issuing such a decree even make sense for the Romans.

> There are whole books discussing this

And there are whole books discussing Gilligan's Island which deserve equal respect.

  John K Clark

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

 

That's all made-up stuff put on the web by people such as you.

Unfortunately, it gets reproduced, and is everywhere, but is

either wrong or of no importance, because the ancient jews

in the BC era knew nothing of the ancient myths, they

were essentiallty desert tribemen.

 

See below:

 

Encyclopedia Britannica:

“There is little notice of the Persian god [Mithra] in the Roman world until the beginning of the 2nd century, but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra. This renewal of interest is not easily explained. The most plausible hypothesis seems to be that Roman Mithraism was practically a new creation, wrought by a religious genius who may have lived as late as c. AD 100 and who gave the old traditional Persian ceremonies a new Platonic interpretation that enabled Mithraism to become acceptable to the Roman world” (Article entry: Mithraism 2004 edition)

If Encyclopedia Britannica is correct, then Mithraism has not inspire Christianity for the Gospel accounts of Jesus, because they were already written by then.

>Message 10791: Osiris was born of the virgin Isis-Meri.<

 Who writes these things?

Osiris was born of the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut-Meri and the god Seb (Geb). Nut-Meri was not a virgin goddess.

Nut-Meri also gave birth to the goddess Isis. Osiris married his sister, Isis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geb

>His earthly father was named "Seb" (translates to "Joseph.")<

His father was the earth-god Seb (not earthly father). And the name means "earth." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geb

Another webpage (click HERE ) states the same: Seb was actually the `earth god', (earth itself, just as Nut was the sky); he is NOT the equivalent of Joseph.

>His birth was attended by three wise men.<

There is no evidence of three wise men as part of the story at all. Web source (click HERE ).

Dobbie

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: John Clark

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-25, 12:59:51

Subject: Re: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, January 25, 2013 1:59:53 PM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi John Clark

 

That's all made-up stuff put on the web by people such as you.

Not by the worldwide liberal conspiracy?
 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 24 Jan 2013, at 17:33, Richard Ruquist wrote:

> This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s.
> After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with,
> and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam
> for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in
> science to where it is today.
>
> Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on
> John's comments, I wonder why not.

I would say it did, but much earlier, in 523 after JC.

I wrote in another forum:

Theology is born as a science, but in 523 after JC, we have
separated the spiritual from the rational, and we are still paying the
big price.

In the human science we act irrationally, as human history illustrates
sadly.

Yet, the rational is the genuine path of the spiritual, and the
religions which deny this can only be based on bad faith, or special
interests.

I agree with Brent, science has plausibly regressed when the
authoritative argument in theology has installed itself, and the
Enlightenment is half enlightenment as non conventional theology did
not yet go through.

But with the development of technologies we can't afford the luxury to
be sleepy on the deep questions.

The choice is between lying a short period of time and evolving from
little catastrophes, or lying for a long period of time and evolving
from big catastrophes. Somehow.

Bruno

> Richard
>
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 10:32 AM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
> wrote:

>> I sincerely hope that nobody believes I'm picking on Catholics
>> because
>> Protestant "thinking" is every bit as brain dead dumb as the
>> Pope's. Martin
>> Luther knew perfectly well that religious ideas cannot survive the
>> slightest
>> amount of rational analysis without completely falling apart, but his
>> solution to that problem was not to get better ideas but to simply
>> insist
>> that people check their brain at the door before they start to
>> think about
>> God; here are some of the noises that particular bipedal hominid
>> made with
>> his mouth, although I think the noises made from the other end of
>> Luther's
>> gastrointestinal tract may have contain more wisdom, at least they
>> might
>> have disclosed some evidence on how the human digestive system works:
>>
>>

>> “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the

>> John K Clark
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups
>> "Everything List" group.

>> To post to this group, send email to everything-
>> li...@googlegroups.com.

>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

>> For more options, visit this group at

>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com
> .

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
>

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013  Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> the ancient jews in the BC era knew nothing

Not far from the truth.

> of the ancient myths,

If they knew anything at all it was useless crap like that.

> “There is little notice of the Persian god [Mithra] in the Roman world until the beginning of the 2nd century,

But Mithra was certainly known in the non-Roman world long before then and the Jews weren't conquered by Rome until 63 BC.

> but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra.

And the oldest written gospels come from the fourth century.

> Osiris was born of the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut-Meri and the god Seb (Geb). Nut-Meri was not a virgin

Who cares, I was talking about the God Horus not His dad; the God Osiris was the father of the God Horus.

>> His birth was attended by three wise men.

I did not write that!

   John K Clark

 

[meekerdb]

On 1/25/2013 4:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi John Clark,

 

Other than Luther's ancient views on astronomy, and only with regard to

salvation or damnation, as a modern Lutheran I agree with everything Luther said,

although I might temper down his invective, which was intended for the Pope.

In that spirit, everything Luther said was correct and still is.

 

Outside of science, true stupidity is to rely only on reason. 

Faith opens the inner eye, which science wants to blind.

That must be the eye with which Luther saw the extermination of the Jews.  It certainly wasn't the eye science.

So it is said that with faith, you have everything, without faith

you have nothing.

With faith you have any belief you want.

Brent
³We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.²
    ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> With faith you have any belief you want.

Brent
³We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.²
    ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

And here is another quotation from Adolf Hitler, it's from speech he gave on April 12 1922:

"Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. [...] My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

  John K Clark 

[Alberto G. Corona]

Dear Bruno,

I can not agree with you. neither with anyone that contemplate a minimalistic  extract of the ideas of the past from the point of view and the knowledge (and ignorance) of the present. Natural theology and the conquest of nature has been ever a part of Christianity not because that was more "rational", -in fact, it is not. I will explain shortly why the conques of nature was possible only under  the faith in the Christian doctrine of a God that made the world for us, that love us and that sacrificed its son for us.

Reason need a faith to acquire knowledge: faith in the power of reason over the unknown. that is, that the unknown is reasonable. But the reasonable about the unknown is the Islamic one:  if you wake-up in the world with no knowledge and where evil things happens, then you suppose that you was put there by an omnipotent arbitrary One that make whathever it pleases and do not care for you.  then your natural response is to stay in your cave, to sacrifice and submit everithing to obey that incomprehensible God in order to apaciguate it.

It is the idea of a loving god that made the world for us and the definitive demostration of sacrifice  of his son for us, the principle that permitted the conquest of nature in material and intelectual terms, and the aspiration to the knowledge of God possible. No longer we need humans sacrifices to appease the gods, because God was Good, He did not administer the world as a wicked place, we read their natural revelation in the laws of nature. Tha´ts why our ancestors conquered the world and the science of nature. Otherwise, we would stay sacrificing us for the glory of Pharaohs-gods, Olympian gods or wathever. One has to question what are the goods of today that we are sacrificing to.

So wat gave our ancestors the faith in the unreasonable power of reason was a crazy one: The idea of a creator that love us. For the greeks, reason was a introspective inquire, or a occupation of a few people. No enlightened greek of egyptian or chinesse would unfold the creativity of their people, compulsively repeating the rites and customs of their ancestors. The confidence in the reign of man over nature was only possible with the relief from the wrath of gods with the ultimate demonstration of God love, the ultimate sacrifice of God for us. 

But given that we have been so successful  we have relieved God from his role as loving protector under a syndrome of excess of confidence. The judeo-christian tradition has ever warned about that.  Reason operates with limited resources and with limited knowledge, while nature has a pervasive intelligence and unlimited resources in their processes, called life. We are unable to know it entirely. We don´t even know how economy works, How we can understand the future of the whole society, or the behaviour of a single man?. We can not engineer but in a limited place and time.  But the contemporary sin is precisely this: the overconfidence in reason, and overconfident engineering, that is, to get rid of God and the desire to be gods.

Errare humanum est. We commit errors. But this insane contempt of the past, -and this search for the errors of the past as causes of the evil of the present- is the symptom of the errors of the present. The current situation can not be a consequence of something that happened centuries ago, if only because whatever was proposed at that time was rejected.

The  though of contemporary age is not  a continuation of the judeo-christian heritage, but a wild rebellion against it.

This analysis of Spengler explain the idea of divine love and sacrifice as the origin of science

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LH24Ak01.html

2013/1/25 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

 

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with the extermination of the jews.

 

2. You have to have faith in God, not somethning else.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-25, 16:42:44

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

On 1/25/2013 4:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi John Clark,

�

Other than Luther's ancient views on astronomy, and only with regard to

salvation or damnation,燼s燼爉odern Lutheran I agree with everything Luther said,

although I might temper down his invective, which was intended for the Pope.

In that spirit, everything Luther said was correct and still is.

�

Outside of science, true stupidity is to rely only on reason.�

Faith opens the inner eye, which science wants to blind.

That must be the eye with which Luther saw the extermination of the Jews.� It certainly wasn't the eye science.

So it is said that with faith, you have everything, without faith

you have nothing.

With faith you have any belief you want.

Brent

砏e were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.�
牋� ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

Theology (beliefs) is objective and rational, but religiouis experience (faith) is subjective.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-25, 15:08:15

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

>> 揜eason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the

>> everything-list+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsub...@googlegroups.com

> .
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
>

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

 

Not if your faith is based on the name of Christ.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: John Clark

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-26, 00:14:05

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013� meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> With faith you have any belief you want.

Brent
砏e were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.�
牋� ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

And here is another quotation from Adolf Hitler, it's from speech he gave on April 12 1922:

"Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. [...] My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

� John K Clark�

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Saturday, January 26, 2013 6:25:40 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

 

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with the extermination of the jews.

"In 1543 Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies in which he says that the Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth." They are full of the "devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine."] The synagogue was a "defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut ..." He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[w]e are at fault in not slaying them".^{" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism}


I'm not trying to embarrass you Roger, but you seem to have a habit of proclaiming the polar opposite of the truth as obvious fact. I don't think that you do this intentionally, or are part of a White-Christian-Conservative supremacist cult bent on historical revisionism, but you do seem to take some lazy liberties with the truth which require a rather more ignorant audience to allow than the one you have on this list.
 
Craig

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013  Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> 1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with the extermination of the jews.

By his own words Luther advocated stupidity, and now you admit he was a hate filled racist demagog; so the man was stupid and the man was evil. So I repeat my earlier question, how could anyone call themselves a Lutheran without intense embarrassment? 

   

> 2. You have to have faith in God, not somethning else.

Why?

  John K Clark

[meekerdb]

On 1/26/2013 3:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with the extermination of the jews.

He didn't directly kill any, he just motivated the killing.  But then the same is true of Hitler.

Brent

[John Mikes]

Brent:

you do beware of the "leader" - "follower" position. If a leader actively also empowers the follower then (s)he may be responsible for anything that happens in such empoweredness. Luther conscience-wise, Hitler materially/organizationally empowered the followers. The 'leader' of the KKK, or the NRA is responsible for crimes committed in their empowerment. 

The 'judge' is not the killer of the executed criminal, but responsible for the killing - although many systems give the judge impunity for mistakes. How about wars?

I take exception to 'poverty' not being a forced oppression: in many systems the 'upper class' rich people deprive the 'lower class' paupers of means to elevate economically, although cute scientists explain such development as a rightful evolution in society. They lie. 

When Boehner urges tax-cuts for the super-rich and deep cuts in benefits for poor people (and succeeds) that is willful oppression. He personally may not push a slum-kid into hunger - or crime, but IS responsible nonetheless. 

I was an underdog under both Nazis and Commis, I know what it feels to be forcibly oppressed. NG! 

JohnM

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Saturday, January 26, 2013 4:24:49 PM UTC-5, JohnM wrote:

Brent:

you do beware of the "leader" - "follower" position. If a leader actively also empowers the follower then (s)he may be responsible for anything that happens in such empoweredness. Luther conscience-wise, Hitler materially/organizationally empowered the followers. The 'leader' of the KKK, or the NRA is responsible for crimes committed in their empowerment. 

The 'judge' is not the killer of the executed criminal, but responsible for the killing - although many systems give the judge impunity for mistakes. How about wars?

I take exception to 'poverty' not being a forced oppression: in many systems the 'upper class' rich people deprive the 'lower class' paupers of means to elevate economically, although cute scientists explain such development as a rightful evolution in society. They lie. 

Good point. Poverty is often a means and an end for intentional oppression. I was thinking that it would be oppressive even without that extra malice though.

Craig
 

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Mikes

 

Luther did not motivate anybody to kill jews.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: John Mikes

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-26, 16:24:49

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

Brent:

you do beware of the "leader" - "follower" position. If a leader actively also empowers the follower then (s)he may be responsible for anything that happens in such empoweredness. Luther conscience-wise, Hitler materially/organizationally empowered the followers. The 'leader' of the KKK, or the NRA is responsible for crimes committed in their empowerment.�

The 'judge' is not the killer of the executed criminal, but responsible for the killing - although many systems give the judge impunity for mistakes. How about wars?

I take exception to 'poverty' not being a forced oppression: in many systems the 'upper class' rich people deprive the 'lower class' paupers of means to elevate economically, although cute scientists explain such development as a rightful evolution in society. They lie.�

When Boehner urges tax-cuts for the super-rich and deep cuts in benefits for poor people (and succeeds) that is willful oppression. He personally may not push a slum-kid into hunger - or crime, but IS responsible nonetheless.�

I was an underdog under both Nazis and Commis, I know what it feels to be forcibly oppressed. NG!�

JohnM

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 11:56 AM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 1/26/2013 3:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with爐he extermination of the jews.

He didn't directly kill any, he just motivated the killing.� But then the same is true of Hitler.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

�
�

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

 

Germany has always been antisemitic, Hitler just organized the killing

jews, who unfortunately were also socialists/communists

.... but anyway, Luther's writings were done somewhat

obscurely in the 16th century.

 

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-26, 11:56:12

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

On 1/26/2013 3:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with爐he extermination of the jews.

He didn't directly kill any, he just motivated the killing.� But then the same is true of Hitler.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Jan 2013, at 16:38, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Dear Roger,

This is the lutheran view. That´s fine. I love lutherans. but this work as long as you have faith. But once leave the faith,  people have no guide in very important things and fall in primitive cults with a modern facade.  For this reason I advocate the scientific study of faith, belief, morals etc. 

I particularly don´t feel comfortable talking about subjects like this in this group. But belief, and shared beliefs, is an irreductible component of what we call "reality". 

Separating science and religion makes both science and religion into pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

There is no science, there is only people able to stay calm in front of ignorance, I think.

Bruno

2013/1/25 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

 

I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being

    a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

 

Or with science when I deal with science and with aesthetics when

    I visit an art museam. Or go to a concert.

 

Or with being a scientist when I deal with the Big Bang

    and being a Christian when I read Genesis. Two different

    accounts, from two different realms, of the same event.

 

Science has its own realm of validity in the realm of facts,

    but has no place -not even a foothold-- in the world of values.

 

The difference between a fool and a wise man is in knowing the difference.

 

- Roger Clough

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Jan 2013, at 13:14, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi John Clark,

 

Other than Luther's ancient views on astronomy, and only with regard to

salvation or damnation, as a modern Lutheran I agree with everything Luther said,

although I might temper down his invective, which was intended for the Pope.

In that spirit, everything Luther said was correct and still is.

 

Outside of science, true stupidity is to rely only on reason. 

The amazing thing is that if you accept the classical theory of knowledge (that is:

know p   ->   p

know p   ->   know know p

know (p - > q)   ->   (know p -> know q)

+ the rule p/know p, + classical logic

then we can prove that some machines (the correct and Löbian one) already *know* that it is stupid to rely only on reason.

There are reasons why reason is not enough.

It is the beauty and glory of reason: it can see its own limitations.

Machines are born with a form of necessary faith and necessary intuition.

Bruno

Faith opens the inner eye, which science wants to blind.

So it is said that with faith, you have everything, without faith

you have nothing. 

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-24, 10:48:16

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

I though that, this was not a site for enhancing the self爀steem爋f self-proclaimed rationalists neither an insult-you-an-infidel theraphy group.�

2013/1/24 John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

I sincerely hope that nobody believes I'm picking on Catholics because Protestant "thinking" is every bit as brain dead dumb as the Pope's. Martin Luther knew perfectly well that religious ideas cannot survive the slightest amount of rational analysis without completely falling apart, but his solution to that problem was not to get better ideas but to simply insist that people check their brain at the door before they start to think about God; here are some of the noises that particular bipedal hominid made with his mouth, although I think the noises made from the other end of Luther's gastrointestinal tract may have contain more wisdom, at least they might have disclosed some evidence on how the human digestive system works:�

牋牋�

揜eason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God�

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of reason."

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and know nothing but the word of God."

"Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

"We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist."

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.� This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."


After this contemptible performance, after flat out praising the virtues of stupidity and unapologetically trying to turn everybody into imbeciles I don't see how anyone could call themselves a Lutheran or a Protestant or even a Christian without intense embarrassment.

燡ohn K Clark牋

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

____________________________________________________________________
DreamMail - The first mail software supporting source tracking  www.dreammail.org

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

My view that science and religion are mutually exclusive

is certainly not true of catholics, who at least since

Aquinas, believe that truth is reason-based. And even

Luther mellowed a bit in later years against his harsh view

of reason (which opposes faith).

 

But, having said that, nevertheless I hold with Stephan Jay Gould's position, that of

 

"Non-overlapping magisteria"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria

"Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that

science and religion each have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority," and

these two domains do not overlap.^[1] He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys

 strong and fully explicit support, even from the primary cultural stereotypes of hard-line

traditionalism" and that it is "a sound position of general consensus, established by long

 struggle among people of goodwill in both magisteria."^[2]

Despite this there continues to be disagreement over where the boundaries between the two magisteria should be.^[3]

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-27, 07:05:33

Subject: Re: Facts vs values

On 25 Jan 2013, at 16:38, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Dear Roger,

This is the lutheran view. That磗 fine. I love lutherans. but this work as long as you have faith. But once leave the faith,  people have no guide in very important things and fall in primitive cults with a modern facade.  For this reason I advocate the scientific study of faith, belief, morals etc. 

I particularly don磘 feel comfortable talking about subjects like this in this group. But belief, and shared beliefs, is an irreductible component of what we call "reality". 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Roger Clough]

Should we believe the Bible or the Evolutionists ?

IMHO My view that science (reason)  and religion (faith)  are mutually exclusive
is Lutheran, and certainly not true of catholics, who at least since

Aquinas, believe that truth is reason-based. And even

Luther mellowed a bit in later years against his earlier harsh view
of reason (as as totally which opposes faith).

But, having said that, nevertheless I hold with Stephan Jay Gould's position, that of

"Non-overlapping magisteria"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria

"Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that
science and religion each have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority," and
these two domains do not overlap.[1] He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys
strong and fully explicit support, even from the primary cultural stereotypes of hard-line
traditionalism" and that it is "a sound position of general consensus, established by long
struggle among people of goodwill in both magisteria."[2]
Despite this there continues to be disagreement over where the boundaries between the two magisteria should be.[3]

 

This view of "Non-overlapping magisteria", which neatly separatges religion and science,
to been enormously helpful to me:


1) It allows me to ignore criticism of religion as being "non-scientific,"
meaning (to them, not to me) that it is false.

2) Allow me to accept the scientific findings of science
(such as creation anbd evolution) theory while treating the book of
Genesis as a different account of creation anbd evolution

[Craig Weinberg]

On Sunday, January 27, 2013 5:58:15 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi John Mikes

 

Luther did not motivate anybody to kill jews.

 

 

Why would you think that could possibly be true?

If the head of Coca-Cola began a weekly TV program about how your house should be burned down, and that your family should have no legal rights, and that it is the fault of the viewer if they are not killed, would you think it a coincidence that you and your family should be targeted for murder?

From the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

In November 1936 the Roman Catholic prelate Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber met Hitler at Berghof for a three hour meeting. He left the meeting convinced that "Hitler was deeply religious" and that "The Reich Chancellor undoubtedly lives in belief in God. He recognises Christianity as the builder of Western culture".

Hitler viewed the Jews as enemies of all civilization and as materialistic, unspiritual beings, writing in Mein Kampf: "His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine." Hitler described his supposedly divine mandate for his anti-Semitism: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."[102]

In his rhetoric Hitler also fed on the old accusation of Jewish Deicide. Because of this it has been speculated that Christian anti-Semitism influenced Hitler's ideas, especially such works as Martin Luther's essay On the Jews and Their Lies and the writings of Paul de Lagarde. Others disagree with this view.[103] In support of this view, Hitler biographer John Toland opines that Hitler "carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God..." Nevertheless, in Mein Kampf Hitler writes of an upbringing in which no particular anti-Semitic prejudice prevailed.

According to historian Lucy Dawidowicz, anti-Semitism has a long history within Christianity, and that the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw." In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she writes that Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews. Dawidowicz states that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern anti-Semitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus, although modern German anti-Semitism also has its roots in German nationalism.[104] Catholic historian José Sánchez argues that Hitler's anti-Semitism was explicitly rooted in Christianity.[105]

Hitler simplified Arthur de Gobineau's elaborate ideas of struggle for survival among the different races, from which the Aryan race, guided by providence, was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization.[106] In Hitler's conception, Jews were enemies of all civilization, especially the Volk. Although Hitler has been called a "Social Darwinist, he was not such in the usual sense of the word. Whereas Social Darwinism stressed struggle, change, the survival of the strongest, and a ceaseless battle of competition, Hitler, through the use of modern industrial technology and impersonal bureaucratic methods ended all competition by the ruthless suppression of all opponents."[107] His understanding of Darwinism was incomplete and based loosely on the theory of "survival of the fittest" in a social context, as popularly misunderstood at the time.

[John Mikes]

OK, careless connotation. JM

[John Mikes]

Dear Bruno, a brilliant statement.

I use the more polite word 'agnosticism' for 'ignorance'. 

In our 'absence of knowledge' (how 'bout that?) we try hard to develop some faith in a setup explaining 'us', 'our world', 'whatever happens' (and why not) etc. based on the ever increasing content of our 'model' we hold in our faith for the world over the millennia. Yours is based on arithmetic (numbers), mine on a "beyond model infinite complexity", Roger's on "God"(?) and Richard's on a physical view(???). All poorly developed belief systems, in spite of a technology seemingly so efficient recently. A big almost.  

Nobody has 'access' to the real stuff, - if there is such at all.  

Worldviews are individual mini-solipsisms, personally different.

Science accepts opinions (measured-explained-reasoned  questionably) of honest former scientists taught in schools. Religion accepts the Bible(?) etc. sources for answers, - both upon hearsay. 

Then come emotions and 'screw-up' the world. 

John M

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013  Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Germany has always been antisemitic

Thanks to that pioneering antisemitic crusader, Martin Luther. 

> Hitler just organized the killing jews,

And the writings of Luther and Hitler on the Jews are almost indistinguishable, if you didn't know you'd be hard pressed to say who wrote what. 

> Luther did not motivate anybody to kill jews.

In one of Luther's last sermons "final warning against the Jews" he says "If they [Jews ] could kill us all, they would gladly do it. They do it often, especially those who pose as physicians."

In Luther's charmingly titled book "On The Jews And Their Lies"  Martin Luther says Jews "are full of the devil's feces which they wallow in like swine" and are "poisonous envenomed worms"; and then Luther flat out says "we are at fault in not slaying them". Four hundred years later the newspaper "Der Sturmer" called Luther's book "the most radically antisemitic tract ever published" and they should know, Der Sturmer was a Nazi newspaper; the prize possession of its editor Julius Streicher was a first edition of  "On The Jews And Their Lies". Streicher was hanged in 1946 after being convicted in Nuremberg for war crimes.

And Luther wasn't just talk, when he gained political influence he got the Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537 and tried unsuccessfully to get them expelled from Brandenburg in 1543. Luther lobbied for laws allowing the burning of Jewish homes and schools and synagogues, to forbid Jews from traveling on roads, and for rabbis to be executed if they preach.  Fortunately no ruler until Hitler enacted all of Luther's anti-Jewish recommendations.

> but anyway, Luther's writings were done somewhat obscurely in the 16th century.

Obscurely??! Luther's writings set Europe aflame. Apparently we have a Lutheran who knows very little about Luther.

But I repeat my question, why would anybody want to call themselves a Lutheran? We already agree that in matters of Astronomy and Geology Luther just made a fool of himself, and I think the above quotations shows that Luther was a moral imbecile, so if you must be associated with a bipedal hominid who lived hundreds of years ago couldn't you find a smarter or nicer one than Martin Luther? How about DaViciian or even Newtonian, Newton was a lot smarter than Luther and although Newton was pretty nasty he wasn't nearly as personally unpleasant as Martin Luther.

  John K Clark         

 

 

[Stephen P. King]

Dear John,

    Hear Hear!!!! emotions are biases that are imposed on senses, ISTM.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

 

> I hold with Stephan Jay Gould's position, that of
"Non-overlapping magisteria"

This view of "Non-overlapping magisteria", which neatly separatges religion and science,

to been enormously helpful to me:

 

 Here is some of what Richard Dawkins had to say about  that in his book  "The God Delusion":

Despite the confident, almost bullying, tone of Gould's assertion, what, actually, is the justification for it? Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists? And why isn't Russell's teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
equally immune from scientific scepticism? As I shall argue in a moment, a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?

Gould carried the art of bending over backwards to positively supine lengths in one of his less admired books, Rocks of Ages. There he coined the acronym NOMA for the phrase 'non-overlapping magisterial.

The net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the
universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The
magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and
moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass
all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the
meaning of beauty). To cite the old cliches, science gets the age of
rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens
go, religion how to go to heaven.

This sounds terrific - right up until you give it a moment's thought. What
are these ultimate questions in whose presence religion is an honoured
guest and science must respectfully slink away?

Martin Rees, the distinguished Cambridge astronomer whom I have already
mentioned, begins his book Our Cosmic Habitat by posing two candidate
ultimate questions and giving a NOMA-friendly
answer. 'The pre-eminent mystery is why anything exists at all. What
breathes life into the equations, and actualized them in a real cosmos?
Such questions lie beyond science, however: they are the
province of philosophers and theologians.' I would prefer to say that
if indeed they lie beyond science, they most certainly lie beyond the
province of theologians as well (I doubt that philosophers would thank
Martin Rees for lumping theologians in with them). I am tempted to go
further and wonder in what possible sense theologians can be said to have
a province. I am still amused when I recall the remark of a
former Warden (head) of my Oxford college. A young theologian had
applied for a junior research fellowship, and his doctoral thesis on
Christian theology provoked the Warden to say, 'I have grave doubts as
to whether it's a subject at all.'

What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that
scientists cannot? In another book I recounted the words of an Oxford
astronomer who, when I asked him one of those same deep questions,
said: 'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I
have to hand over to our good friend the chaplain.' I was not
quick-witted enough to utter the response that I later wrote: 'But why
the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' Why are scientists so
cravenly respectful towards the ambitions of theologians, over
questions that theologians are certainly no more qualified to answer
than scientists themselves?

It is a tedious cliche (and, unlike many cliches, it isn't even true) that
science concerns itself with how questions, but
only theology is equipped to answer why questions.
What on Earth is a why question? Not every English
sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question. Why
are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer.
What is the colour of abstraction? What is the smell of hope? The fact
that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English
sentence doesn't make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious
attention. Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that
science cannot answer it imply that religion can.

Perhaps there are some genuinely profound and meaningful questions that are
forever beyond the reach of science. Maybe quantum theory is already
knocking on the door of the unfathomable. But if science cannot answer
some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?

 I suspect that neither the Cambridge nor the Oxford astronomer really believed
that theologians have any expertise that enables them to answer questions that are too
deep for science. I suspect that both astronomers were, yet again,
bending over backwards to be polite: theologians have nothing
worthwhile to say about anything else; let's throw them a sop and let
them worry away at a couple of questions that nobody can answer and
maybe never will. Unlike my astronomer friends, I don't think we should
even throw them a sop. I have yet to see any good reason to suppose
that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a
subject at all.

Similarly, we can all agree that science's entitlement to advise us on moral
values is problematic, to say the least. But does Gould really want to
cede to religion the right to tell us what is good
and what is bad? The fact that it has nothing else to
contribute to human wisdom is no reason to hand religion a free licence
to tell us what to do. Which religion, anyway? The one in which we
happen to have been brought up? To which chapter, then, of which book
of the Bible should we turn - for they are far from unanimous and some
of them are odious by any reasonable standards. How many literalists
have read enough of the Bible to know that the death penalty is
prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the sabbath and for
cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy and Leviticus (as all
enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do we then decide which of
religion's moral values to accept} Or should we
pick and choose among all the world's religions until we find one whose
moral teaching suits us? If so, again we must ask, by what criterion do
we choose? And if we have independent criteria for choosing among
religious moralities, why not cut out the middle man and go straight
for the moral choice without the religion?

I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what
he wrote in Rocks of Ages. As I say, we have all
been guilty of bending over backwards to be nice to an unworthy but
powerful opponent, and I can only think that this is what Gould was
doing. It is conceivable that he really did intend his unequivocally
strong statement that science has nothing whatever to say about the
question of God's existence: 'We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply
can't comment on it as scientists.' This sounds like
agnosticism of the permanent and irrevocable kind, full-blown PAP. It
implies that science cannot even make probability judgements
on the question. This remarkably widespread fallacy - many repeat it
like a mantra but few of them, I suspect, have thought it through -
embodies what I refer to as 'the poverty of agnosticism'. Gould, by the
way, was not an impartial agnostic but strongly inclined towards de
facto atheism. On what basis did he make that judgement, if
there is nothing to be said about whether God exists? The God
Hypothesis suggests that the reality we inhabit also contains a
supernatural agent who designed the universe and - at least in many
versions of the hypothesis - maintains it and even intervenes in it
with miracles, which are temporary violations of his own otherwise
grandly immutable laws. Richard Swinburne, one of Britain's leading
theologians, is surprisingly clear on the matter in his book Is
There a God?:

What the theist claims about God is that he does have a power to create,
conserve, or annihilate anything, big or small. And he can also make
objects move or do anything else . . . He can make the planets move in
the way that Kepler discovered that they move, or make gunpowder
explode when we set a match to it; or he can make planets move in quite
different ways, and chemical substances explode or not explode under
quite different conditions from those which now govern their behaviour.
God is not limited by the laws of nature; he makes them and he can
change or suspend them - if he chooses.

 Just too easy, isn't it! Whatever else this is, it is very far from NOMA.
And whatever else they may say, those scientists who subscribe to the
'separate magisteria' school of thought should concede that a universe
with a supernaturally intelligent creator is a very different kind of
universe from one without. The difference between the two hypothetical
universes could hardly be more fundamental in principle, even if it is
not easy to test in practice. And it undermines the complacently
seductive dictum that science must be completely silent about
religion's central existence claim. The presence or absence of a
creative super-intelligence is unequivocally
a scientific question, even if it is not in practice - or not yet - a
decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the
miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the
faithful.

 Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of
his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide
it, this is still a strictly scientific question with a definite answer
in principle: yes or no. Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Did he
himself come alive again, three days after being crucified? There is an
answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in
practice, and it is a strictly scientific answer. The methods we should
use to settle the matter, in the unlikely event that relevant evidence
ever became available, would be purely and entirely scientific methods.
To dramatize the point, imagine, by some remarkable set of
circumstances, that forensic archaeologists unearthed DNA evidence to
show that Jesus really did lack a biological father. Can you imagine
religious apologists shrugging their shoulders and saying anything
remotely like the following? 'Who cares? Scientific evidence is
completely irrelevant to theological questions. Wrong magisterium!
We're concerned only with ultimate questions and with moral values.
Neither DNA nor any other scientific evidence could ever have any
bearing on the matter, one way or the other.'

The very idea is a joke. You can bet your boots that the scientific
evidence, if any were to turn up, would be seized upon and trumpeted to
the skies. NOMA is popular only because there is no evidence to favour
the God Hypothesis. The moment there was the smallest suggestion of any
evidence in favour of religious belief, religious apologists would lose
no time in throwing NOMA out of the window. Sophisticated theologians
aside (and even they are happy to tell miracle stories to the
unsophisticated in order to swell congregations), I suspect that
alleged miracles provide the strongest reason many believers have for
their faith; and miracles, by definition, violate the principles of
science.

The Roman Catholic Church on the one hand seems sometimes to aspire to
NOMA, but on the other hand lays down the performance of miracles as an
essential qualification for elevation to sainthood. The late King of
the Belgians is a candidate for sainthood,
because of his stand on abortion. Earnest investigations are now going
on to discover whether any miraculous cures can be attributed to
prayers offered up to him since his death. I am not joking. That is the
case, and it is typical of saint stories. I imagine the whole business
is an embarrassment to more sophisticated circles within the Church.
Why any circles worthy of the name of sophisticated remain within the
Church is a mystery at least as deep as those that theologians enjoy.

When faced with miracle stories, Gould would presumably retort along the
following lines. The whole point of NOMA is that it is a two-way
bargain. The moment religion steps on science's turf and starts to
meddle in the real world with miracles, it ceases to be religion in the
sense Gould is defending, and his amicabilis concordia is
broken. Note, however, that the miracle-free religion defended by Gould
would not be recognized by most practising theists in the pew or on the
prayer mat. It would, indeed, be a grave disappointment to them. To
adapt Alice's comment on her sister's book before she fell into
Wonderland, what is the use of a God who does no miracles and answers
no prayers? Remember Ambrose Bierce's witty definition of the verb 'to
pray': 'to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner, confessedly unworthy'. There are athletes who
believe God helps them win - against opponents who would seem, on the
face of it, no less worthy of his favouritism. There are motorists who
believe God saves them a parking space - thereby presumably depriving
somebody else. This style of theism is embarrassingly popular, and is
unlikely to be impressed by anything as (superficially) reasonable as
NOMA.

 Nevertheless, let us follow Gould and pare our religion down to some sort of
non-interventionist minimum: no miracles, no personal communication
between God and us in either direction, no monkeying with the laws of
physics, no trespassing on the scientific grass. At most, a little
deistic input to the initial conditions of the universe so that, in the
fullness of time, stars, elements, chemistry and planets develop, and
life evolves. Surely that is an adequate separation? Surely NOMA can
survive this more modest and unassuming religion?

Well, you might think so. But I suggest that even a non-interventionist,
NOMA God, though less violent and clumsy than an Abrahamic God, is
still, when you look at him fair and square, a scientific hypothesis. I
return to the point: a universe in which we are alone except for other
slowly evolved intelligences is a very different universe from one with
an original guiding agent whose intelligent design is responsible for
its very existence. I accept that it may not be so easy in practice to
distinguish one kind of universe from the other. Nevertheless, there is
something utterly special about the hypothesis of ultimate design, and
equally special about the only known alternative: gradual evolution in
the broad sense. They are close to being irreconcilably different. Like
nothing else, evolution really does provide an explanation for the
existence of entities whose improbability would otherwise, for
practical purposes, rule them out. And the conclusion to the argument,
as I shall show in Chapter 4, is close to being terminally fatal to the
God Hypothesis.
   
 

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

 

> I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

As a Christian how do you deal with the fact that the God of the old testament was such a petty repellent piece of shit? And as for the new testament, well,  this is what Richard Dawkins had to say about it in "The God Delusion":

" I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment - thereby, incidentally, condemning remote future generations of Jews to pogroms and persecution as ‘Christ-Killers’: did that hereditary sin pass down in the semen too?

Paul, as the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes makes clear, was steeped in the old Jewish theological principle that without blood there is no atonement. Indeed, in his epistle to the Hebrews (9:22) he said as much. Progressive ethicists today find it hard to defend any kind of retributive theory of punishment, let alone the scapegoat theory - executing an innocent to pay for the sins of the guilty. In any case (one can’t help wondering), who was God trying to impress? Presumably himself - judge and jury as well as execution victim. To cap it all, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of the original sin, never existed in the first place: an awkward fact - excusably unknown to Paul but presumably known to an omniscient God (and Jesus, if you believe he was God?) - which fundamentally undermines the premise of the whole tortuously nasty theory.

Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic? So, in order to impress himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual? As I said, barking mad, as well as viciously unpleasant."

   John K Clark

 

[Alberto G. Corona]

Bruno,

You sill say interesting things even in a thread that has fallen  deep in the boring hole of Reductio at Hitlerum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

2013/1/27 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 1/27/2013 3:28 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

 

Germany has always been antisemitic, Hitler just organized the killing

jews, who unfortunately were also socialists/communists

Are you saying it was OK to kill all those women and children because they were communists.  Of course in Spain and France it was the socialists and communists who provided the resistance to the fascists and nazis - thus showing their ethical superiority to Lutherans and Catholics.

.... but anyway, Luther's writings were done somewhat

obscurely in the 16th century.

Not so obscurely that he failed to found a religious sect that was dominant in northern Germany.

Brent

 

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-26, 11:56:12

Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality

On 1/26/2013 3:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

1. Luther hated jews, but he had nothing to do with爐he extermination of the jews.

He didn't directly kill any, he just motivated the killing.� But then the same is true of Hitler.

Brent

____________________________________________________________________
DreamMail - Your mistake not to try it once, but my mistake for your leaving off. use again  www.dreammail.org

<%--DreamMail_AD_END-->

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2890 / Virus Database: 2639/6054 - Release Date: 01/24/13

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

 

The killing of anybody is wrong.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-27, 14:19:38

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Jan 2013, at 12:28, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

 

Germany has always been antisemitic, Hitler just organized the killing

jews, who unfortunately were also socialists/communists

.... but anyway, Luther's writings were done somewhat

obscurely in the 16th century.

Luther was not alone. It is only recently that the pope (Jean-Paul II) eliminates the antisemitic statement of the canon of catholicism.

Antisemitism is "natural" for Christians as Christianism extends Judaism, and the jews did not follow.

But the Churches evolves, and this can be helped by the motto: never take literally any human prose. 

In religion, literalism leads to massacres. Salafism in Islam makes the same mistake, I think. 

It makes easy to attribute social problems to easy scapegoats like those who dare to doubt 'the text'.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Roger Clough,

On 27 Jan 2013, at 14:03, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

My view that science and religion are mutually exclusive

is certainly not true of catholics, who at least since

Aquinas, believe that truth is reason-based. And even

Luther mellowed a bit in later years against his harsh view

of reason (which opposes faith).

 

But, having said that, nevertheless I hold with Stephan Jay Gould's position, that of

 

"Non-overlapping magisteria"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria

"Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that

science and religion each have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority," and

these two domains do not overlap.^[1] He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys

 strong and fully explicit support, even from the primary cultural stereotypes of hard-line

traditionalism" and that it is "a sound position of general consensus, established by long

 struggle among people of goodwill in both magisteria."^[2]

Despite this there continues to be disagreement over where the boundaries between the two magisteria should be.^[3]

It just means the humans are perhaps not yet mature enough to use reason, that is modest hypotheses and sharable rules of reasoning,  on the fundamentals.

Stephan Jay Gould's proposes a statu quo which is made possible by the fact that science and religion, with the notable exception of the mystics and the (neo)Platonists, share basically the same naturalism/weak-materialism. Eventually they differ only by the "fairy tales".

I believe the complete contrary. Theology differs from physics because it studies other object/subject. And theories can sometimes get reduced to subtheories of other theories. We have to be open minded, notably on Platonism.

So if we are inclined to *search* the possible truth, I think we should remain one and honest in any field.

A religion which fears the scientific method can only be based on lies or bad faith. 

I do think we should respect the fairy tales, but not use them to prevent progresses on the deep questions. 

I do think that the fairy tales can have a lot to teach us, like also the legends and the great literature, but no prose at all should ever be taken literally, as this multiplies unnecessary  oppositions, and can only hide the possible truth that the honest people are searching.

Stephan Jay Gould just makes into a principle the abandon of what I think is the most fundamental field, theology, to the irrationalists, the obscurantist, the fear sellers, the wishful thinkers, the terrorful thinkers, etc.

I don't think we have the luxury in the coming times to continue of being purposefully not serious in the human affairs, and on the fundamental possibilities.

With comp, well understood, the human and the machine, are immune (in the ideal case) to reductionism, and neoplatonism gives a tremendous importance to the person, and the listening to person (whatever are their clothes or bodies). They remains an essential gap on which human can test different colors and things.

But ceasing to search in that field after the discovery-reapparition of the universal machine, would be like, to me, deciding to abandon space exploration, or closing the Hubble telescope, etc.

If you don't listen to the machines, you will not succeed in convincing them about any of your ideas.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

John,

On 27 Jan 2013, at 18:09, John Mikes wrote:

Dear Bruno, a brilliant statement.

I use the more polite word 'agnosticism' for 'ignorance'. 

No problem. This conveys the main idea. 

In our 'absence of knowledge' (how 'bout that?) we try hard to develop some faith in a setup explaining 'us', 'our world',

OK, but as you know, I define "us" by the "universal machines", not just the mammals.

'whatever happens' (and why not) etc. based on the ever increasing content of our 'model' we hold in our faith for the world over the millennia. Yours is based on arithmetic (numbers), mine on a "beyond model infinite complexity", Roger's on "God"(?) and Richard's on a physical view(???). All poorly developed belief systems, in spite of a technology seemingly so efficient recently. A big almost.  

But some views/theories/hypothesis can fit better than others those *apparently distinct* views. 

Note that everybody believes in arithmetic (except sunday philosophers), this might help for sharing a scientific theory (sharing does not mean that we believe in it religiously, theories are just lamp under which we might find some key, as we cannot find them in the dark). But to progress the theories have to be enough clear so as to make precise predictions.

When you say "beyond models complexity", you point on some possible truth, not on a sharable refutable hypothesis. Note also that fater Gödel we know that arithmetic truth is provably beyond all "models" (model or theories), and note that the notion of complexity needs arithmetic to make sense.

Nobody has 'access' to the real stuff, - if there is such at all.

Note that *in* the mechanist theory/hypothesis we can "know" there is no stuff which can be related to any of our sensations, making them epinoumenon (dispensible with the usual weak form of Occam razor).

Of course we are ignorant about the possible truth of comp.

In fact if comp is correct, then we will forever be ignorant if comp is true. It means also that the day we might become used to comp (by using teleportation everyday for example), we are in danger of falling into a comp pseudo-religion. 

 

Worldviews are individual mini-solipsisms, personally different.

Science accepts opinions (measured-explained-reasoned  questionably) of honest former scientists taught in schools. Religion accepts the Bible(?) etc. sources for answers, - both upon hearsay. 

Then come emotions and 'screw-up' the world. 

Yes. It is the problem with important sciences and arts (like medicine), they can be stolen by the politics. 

Religion and science can accept any texts for inspiration, but religion and science should not base the faith on any text. In religion the use of authoritative arguments is far more damaging than in most usual fields, but it is also the most attracting source of (fake but operating) power for the bandits. This can probably be explained by the fact that Nature seems aimed only in the very short term advantages, making us believe in leader and authorities, but the apparition of scientific attitude witness the beginning of taking distance from such type of argument. Of course the path is still very long we get used to that idea.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Jan 2013, at 13:33, Roger Clough wrote:

 

I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being

    a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

Of course we differ on this. For me "science" does not exist, only scientific attitude. And I consider that the scientific attitude is even more important with respect to faith than to observation, but this of course has been jeopardize when we have been imposed the argument per authority in the spiritual field, and I think this explain intolerance, religion wars, and a lot of unecessary suffering.

 

Or with science when I deal with science and with aesthetics when

    I visit an art museam. Or go to a concert.

 

Or with being a scientist when I deal with the Big Bang

    and being a Christian when I read Genesis. Two different

    accounts, from two different realms, of the same event.

 

Science has its own realm of validity in the realm of facts,

    but has no place -not even a foothold-- in the world of values.

I agree with this, but values can add to science, not contradict it, or it leads to bad faith and authorianism.

same for art: it extends science but does not oppose to it. 

 

The difference between a fool and a wise man is in knowing the difference.

I am not sure. If you separate science from religion, you attract the superstition and the wishful thinking. It might have a role, but that can be explained. And then, for many that difference will make science into a pseudo-religion. Ideal science is just ideal honesty/modesty.

Bruno

 

- Roger Clough

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Jan 2013, at 19:53, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Bruno,

You sill say interesting things even in a thread that has fallen  deep in the boring hole of Reductio at Hitlerum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

Well ... Thanks :)

Actually, it happens that I appreciate rather well Leo Strauss (who coined "Reductio ad Hitlerum"). 

Bruno

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[meekerdb]

On 1/29/2013 7:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 27 Jan 2013, at 19:53, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
>> Bruno,
>> You sill say interesting things even in a thread that has fallen deep in the boring
>> hole of Reductio at Hitlerum
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
>>
>
>
> Well ... Thanks :)
>
> Actually, it happens that I appreciate rather well Leo Strauss (who coined "Reductio ad
> Hitlerum").

A man who believed freedom is incompatible with excellence. That the noble lie is
justified to lead the hoi polloi.

Brent

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/1/30 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>

Hitler though that too. that is enough "argument" for condemnation by an uncompromised moralist

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

The religion I refer to is grounded in subjectivity,

that is to say, trust (1p), not 3p.  Experience,

not deswcriptions. Science is based not on experience,

but on descriptions, 3p. And these are based on words,

which are constructred and interpreted

with reason.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-28, 14:23:07

Subject: Re: Facts, values, and "Non-overlapping magisteria"

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal,

 

When I read the Bible, it is a subjective act,

but not my own subjective act alonw, it is

contained in the subjectivity of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-27, 06:36:10

Subject: Re: Facts vs values

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/1/30 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

Hi Bruno Marchal,

 

When I read the Bible, it is a subjective act,

but not my own subjective act alonw, it is

contained in the subjectivity of the Holy Spirit.

 

I´m afraid that when the bible and the Holy Spirit is put away by more radical movements of a tradition of protest, then there remains only subjectivity, that is slave of the passions, as Luther said. Then we see as good what experientially it has been known that is bad during thousand years of history. If one add that the only remaining access to the experience of other human beings: History, literature, philosophy and all other humanities are being eradicacated from the school curricula, then we have completed the path to perfect self-branded subjectivism, for the glory and power of a nanny state ruled by passion satisfaction demagogy that manage at will its herd of free idiots.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Alberto G. Corona

 

Not to worry.

 

Since, along with Leibniz (see his Theodicy) I believe that everything

is caused (sometimes unpreferably) by God, then faith is a gift, and,

contrary to Billy Graham, cannot be invoked by man. You cannot

decide to choose for Christ. You can however turn it down.

 

To say it briefly, I believe that religion is not about man,

it's about God. 

 

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-30, 06:23:15

Subject: Re: Re: Facts vs values

2013/1/30 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

Hi Bruno Marchal,

�

When I read the Bible, it is a subjective act,

but not my own subjective act alonw, it is

contained in the subjectivity of the Holy Spirit.

�

I磎 afraid that when the bible and the Holy Spirit is put away by more radical movements of a tradition of protest, then there remains only subjectivity, that is slave of the passions, as Luther said. Then we see as good what experientially it has been known that is bad during爐housand爕ears of history. If one add that the only remaining access to the experience of other human beings: History, literature, philosophy and all other humanities are being eradicacated from the school curricula, then we have completed the path to perfect self-branded subjectivism, for the glory and power of a nanny state ruled by passion satisfaction demagogy that manage at will its herd of free idiots.

�

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2013-01-27, 06:36:10

Subject: Re: Facts vs values

On 25 Jan 2013, at 13:33, Roger Clough wrote:

�

I have no conflict being a scientist when I deal with science, and being

牋牋a Christian when I deal with the Bible.

Of course we differ on this. For me "science" does not exist, only scientific attitude. And I consider that the scientific attitude is even more important with respect to faith than to observation, but this of course has been jeopardize when we have been imposed the argument per authority in the spiritual field, and I think this explain intolerance, religion wars, and a lot of unecessary suffering.

�

Or with science when I deal with science and with aesthetics when

牋牋I visit an art museam. Or go to a concert.

�

Or with being a scientist when I deal爓ith the Big Bang

牋牋and being a Christian when I read Genesis. Two different

牋牋accounts, from two different realms,爋f the same event.

�

Science has its own realm of validity in the realm of facts,

牋牋but has no place -not even a foothold-- in the world of values.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
Alberto.

____________________________________________
DreamMail - New experience in email software  www.dreammail.org

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jan 2013, at 09:40, meekerdb wrote:

> On 1/29/2013 7:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 27 Jan 2013, at 19:53, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>>
>>> Bruno,
>>> You sill say interesting things even in a thread that has fallen
>>> deep in the boring hole of Reductio at Hitlerum
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
>>>
>>
>>
>> Well ... Thanks :)
>>
>> Actually, it happens that I appreciate rather well Leo Strauss (who
>> coined "Reductio ad Hitlerum").
>
> A man who believed freedom is incompatible with excellence.

Ah?
Well i believe plausibly the contrary: freedom is needed for
excellence to appear. Perhaps *some* excellence can have a negative
feedback on freedom, but then, is it still excellence for me?

> That the noble lie is justified to lead the hoi polloi.

In theory I disagree with this, but in practice, I am less sure. Let
us say that I certainly would encourage a change of mentality making
this eventually absurd, but the (sad) truth is that most people still
want the noble lies. Those who defends the more reason are not those
who practice it the more.

Hmm... A lie is never noble, but some lies can help locally with
respect to some suffering. It is not easy, especially with children
and old people.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jan 2013, at 11:39, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

The religion I refer to is grounded in subjectivity,

that is to say, trust (1p), not 3p.  Experience,

not deswcriptions. Science is based not on experience,

but on descriptions, 3p.

Not really. We have to do experiences, but we can assess the result only from the 1p.

And these are based on words,

which are constructred and interpreted

with reason.

As I think all experiences should be.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jan 2013, at 12:23, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/1/30 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

Hi Bruno Marchal,

 

When I read the Bible, it is a subjective act,

but not my own subjective act alonw, it is

contained in the subjectivity of the Holy Spirit.

 

I´m afraid that when the bible and the Holy Spirit is put away by more radical movements of a tradition of protest, then there remains only subjectivity, that is slave of the passions, as Luther said. Then we see as good what experientially it has been known that is bad during thousand years of history. If one add that the only remaining access to the experience of other human beings: History, literature, philosophy and all other humanities are being eradicacated from the school curricula, then we have completed the path to perfect self-branded subjectivism, for the glory and power of a nanny state ruled by passion satisfaction demagogy that manage at will its herd of free idiots.

Well said. I am afraid you are right.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/