Page 19 of 20 FirstFirst ... 91011121314151617181920 LastLast
Results 361 to 380 of 395

Thread: The pope is resigning

  1. #361

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    "Christians". Christianity is all but moderate, and the Gospel of Mark tells us precisely that. Or so do the Church Fathers. Or all Christian Saints. Or the Catholic Tradition.
    Replace Christianity with Islam and now you will see how dangerous that sounds to everyone else. You know its funny, but only radical Catholics and evangelicals use such rhetoric.

    Secularism on the way out? Liberal agenda? Your rhetoric sounds more like the kind of intolerance so many have fought and sacrificed their lives to protect against since the dark ages of Catholic supremacy in Europe. Without this 'secular' thing called science you wouldn't have any of the modern comforts which you enjoy. Your church had for a 1000 years a noose around the neck of Europe and tried to do the same in America. The US has long since told Rome to shove it, Mexico and Latin America are more and more drifting further away from church traditions and ideals - every year. We are seeing such blasphemies as transsexuals and homosexuals tolerated as well women whom have kids of wedlock not treated with utter contempt down there. All these things your church preaches against. Yet you don't see us 'secularist liberals' calling for your rights to be stripped or make any attempt to prevent you from teaching yourself to believe in certain 'traditions' which have more in common with medieval papal bulls than they do with the original Christian church. You may not yourself call for atheism/agnosticism or for political secularism to be stamped out, but many of your elders in your very wealthy club do.
    Last edited by Admiral Piett; February 26, 2013 at 03:25 AM.
    Heir to Noble Savage in the Imperial House of Wilpuri

  2. #362

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    You're basically preaching a form of social conformism, aka herd morality, centered on a fake and anodyne relativism. Whereas we Christians are... proud to be ridiculed. Jesus was a great victim of ridicule. We grew out of catacombs. We built a new Rome when the pagans destroyed it. And when this humanism passes away, which it is already doing, it will be either us who will get our hands in the control pan... or Islam. At least in Europe. You pick the best choice for you.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

  3. #363

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    How is humanism passing away? Black Mark has already quoted the UK example where the proportion of people with "no-religion" has leaped up a full 10% in just ten years.

  4. #364
    Col. Tartleton's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    Cape Ann
    Posts
    13,053

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Humanism is Catholicism.

    At least the interesting kind.

    What are people's thoughts on the Emeritus Pope vs Cardinal decision?
    Last edited by Col. Tartleton; February 26, 2013 at 11:32 AM.
    The Earth is inhabited by billions of idiots.
    The search for intelligent life continues...

  5. #365

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Jeez. I am away for a few days (forgot the password and didn't bother to find it), and (s)he's at it again.

    Marie, I'd suggest you get a dictionary and use it. You tend to use words in their opposite meaning, then derive your conclusions from the original meaning, creating contradictions in every line.

  6. #366
    s.rwitt's Avatar Shamb Conspiracy Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Lubbock, Tx
    Posts
    21,514

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    "Christians". Christianity is all but moderate, and the Gospel of Mark tells us precisely that. Or so do the Church Fathers. Or all Christian Saints. Or the Catholic Tradition.
    When I say "moderate" I'm referring to those of us who value the tenants of the religion over the specific, man written rules. And we apply them to all, yes even homosexuals.

    We're also able to reconcile Enlightenment originated principles with religious morality, understanding that Christianity is primarily a personal affair and has very little to do with attempting to regulate the behavior of others. I just chalk it up to common sense, personally. On the other hand, we have views like yours.

    Also, I notice you're using the whole "Say something ridiculous and confrontational then pretend to be some persecuted purveyor of truth when people call you out on it" thing. It's ridiculous and only makes the rest of us look bad. The views you're putting forth are what turn people away from Christianity, they turned me away for a long time.

    And stop pretending like you ****ing speak for me.
    Last edited by s.rwitt; February 27, 2013 at 01:53 PM.

  7. #367

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    srwitt, the "Enlightenment Principles" are pure secularizing BS. Religion is not and can never be a solely private affair subject to secularity. Never. In that case, it is irrelevant. And so it is the case, that religion today is irrelevant. No matter what you say.

    Sar1n, as long as you're not capable of thinking dialectically, you'll write the same kind of response all the time. And it's not just theists that think dialectically: Hegelians do. Marxists do. Dialectics is the mainstay of anything that is not just pure simple nature science. Think dialectically, and not just linearly, and you'll be smarter and better for it. There is no metaphysics without dialectics.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

  8. #368

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    You're basically preaching a form of social conformism, aka herd morality, centered on a fake and anodyne relativism. Whereas we Christians are... proud to be ridiculed. Jesus was a great victim of ridicule. We grew out of catacombs. We built a new Rome when the pagans destroyed it. And when this humanism passes away, which it is already doing, it will be either us who will get our hands in the control pan... or Islam. At least in Europe. You pick the best choice for you.

    Pagans destroyed Rome?What?

  9. #369

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    Sar1n, as long as you're not capable of thinking dialectically, you'll write the same kind of response all the time. And it's not just theists that think dialectically: Hegelians do. Marxists do. Dialectics is the mainstay of anything that is not just pure simple nature science. Think dialectically, and not just linearly, and you'll be smarter and better for it. There is no metaphysics without dialectics.
    I don't think you even know what dialectic means. You're just resorting to your usual tactic of wannabe big words while using them in totally opposite meaning. Dialectic reasoning can't replace linear logic, only complement it. In the moment you get contradiction, you have a problem. Because dialectics only accept the possibility of supernatural and and things beyond what can be grasped by natural logic, not take existence of specific matters in this category as initial dogma and work from there like you do. You see, even Greek philosophers knew that dialectics can give you a possible answer, but can't give you a definite answer.

    I am actually thinking dialectically. You aren't, because in your reasoning, dogmas relating to metaphysics precede and absolutely overrule contradicting logical reasoning. Because of that, you are unable to see other possibilities and take them into account, you are narrowing your view to simple dogmatic blabbering that you unsuccessfully try to cover up with wannabe big words and using them in contradiction to their meaning. This is evident in the fact that you see only your opinion, taken as a fact, and anything opposing that is automatically in your mind reduced to nihilism, and you even use that term as insult, while it's a philosophical view not less valid than yours. My view, on the other hand, is totally different from both, but you are unable to accept it.

    The forums are acting up again, so I can't quote you directly from previous posts, but in one of your previous posts, you managed to say that "There is no such thing as self-contradiction", then argued that reality is self-contradictory, creating a contradiction to yourself. You used terms conformity, freedom, objective and subjective in their opposite meanings when it seemed suitable to you, redefined tradition to suit your own views, even argued that rationalism, dealing only in matters applicable to everyone (objective) and their logical conclusions as illogical, and even accused such system as being purely mental, while the opposite is true and it's your system being purely mental.

  10. #370

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    OK, "there is no such thing as a self-contradiction" meant "there is no self-contradiction here".

    Now on to your point.

    The given - the hard content of experience - cannot be reducible to the content of logic, which in its traditional Aristotelian meaning is just a subsequent experiment.

    As such we must go from a given. Revelation is descending, while knowledge by reason is ascending.

    The great irony of the matter is that while I take for granted the principles of Christian revelation, you take for granted that Scient-ism is the eschaton and that the data of phenomenal scientific experience are identical to reality and not just to mere mind.

    As such there is no synthesis here - no synthesis, because you cannot for sure question the very principles which you want to shove down. You claim I am a a dogmatic speaker, yet I am merely departing from the ranges of my possibility. You on the other hand, being blindly unable to perceive the structure of your own argument, consistently and totally fail to see that everything which you argue I am in fact applies to you, and that the foundations of your thinking are not dogma but just a contigent philosophical interpretation of the content of Science vis a vis the whole gnoseological problem.

    So as a matter of fact, you're parroting a narrow analytic-positivist view which is totally myopic to the contents of the structure of reality. You're also guilty of massive reification fallacies, and let's face - at least I'm honest when I take the Christian view to be the truth, instead of trying to argue from a pretense secular open-mindedness that is simply not present there. It's your system that is purely mental, as a matter of fact, because I can still claim from the pure sight of Jesus the God the primacy of Revelation as opposed to my own or your mental speculations and opinions. The objective of our conversation is to expose your -ism to absurd, and it is up to you to make the leap to Christianity or to any other different religion or metaphysics from thence on.
    Last edited by Marie Louise von Preussen; February 27, 2013 at 04:44 PM.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

  11. #371

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    The given - the hard content of experience - cannot be reducible to the content of logic, which in its traditional Aristotelian meaning is just a subsequent experiment.

    As such we must go from a given. Revelation is descending, while knowledge by reason is ascending.
    And here is your great fail. The human experience is a personal, subjective matter. It is the "I" in true sense, the "I" that you bashed in your posts. Only way you could count personal experience as objective is if you believe that you're the only conscious person in universe and everything else are automatons or fragments of your imagination. And in this case, surprise surprise, we're back to my point that your philosophy is applicable only to you, so keep it that way. I am not going to comment much on revelation, as the concept is absurd. Anything purely subjective to you that you can't prove or even prove that it's not just a piece of your imagination can't affect others, not if we want to live in society and not solitary. By the way...if you gain your knowledge from a single source, that you consider superior to you, alone, how can you be sure that it's telling you the truth? That's the thing I don't understand about religious folks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    The great irony of the matter is that while I take for granted the principles of Christian revelation, you take for granted that Scient-ism is the eschaton and that the data of phenomenal scientific experience are identical to reality and not just to mere mind.

    As such there is no synthesis here - no synthesis, because you cannot for sure question the very principles which you want to shove down. You claim I am a a dogmatic speaker, yet I am merely departing from the ranges of my possibility. You on the other hand, being blindly unable to perceive the structure of your own argument, consistently and totally fail to see that everything which you argue I am in fact applies to you, and that the foundations of your thinking are not dogma but just a contigent philosophical interpretation of the content of Science vis a vis the whole gnoseological problem.
    Irony is, I am not. You again comment on something that you do not understand. Science and its conclusions are not a dogmatic matter. The very idea of science is about discovering and describing principles that affect everyone, that are objective. It does not claim that matter and mind are identical. It makes no claims about mind at the moment, as it can't back it by anything, given the nature of the question. Some people equal it to the nonexistence of mind, I prefer to stick it in the "purely subjective" category. Something you still have problems grasping, apparently.

    You have absolutely no idea what are you talking about ranges if possibilities. You actually see just one possibility, granted by your dogmas. But as you venture into questions outside of scope of science, there isn't just one possibility. There is infinite number of them. Existence/nonexistence and forms of god(s) possible, those alone are infinite, let alone other topics like mind and spirit. You picked your belief from it. Okay, I'm not taking it from you. But others picked different possibilities, or like me, decided to stick with uncertainty. What I do protest is that your choice should in in any way affect others. For that, you should back it by something objective, something that applies to everyone. That religion can't do.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    So as a matter of fact, you're parroting a narrow analytic-positivist view which is totally myopic to the contents of the structure of reality. You're also guilty of massive reification fallacies, and let's face - at least I'm honest when I take the Christian view to be the truth, instead of trying to argue from a pretense secular open-mindedness that is simply not present there. It's your system that is purely mental, as a matter of fact, because I can still claim from the pure sight of Jesus the God the primacy of Revelation as opposed to my own or your mental speculations and opinions.
    Haha. Again, same problem with you. You take dogmas, based on one interpretation of old book, backed by nothing more than tradition, and say it's the truth. In fact, it is only your truth. But we all have our own truths, different ones. That's what you call human experience. My system deals with points concerning everyone, and considers points that can't be proven to be such as individual, subjective truths. I can back those points by virtually everything you can see around yourself, like the computer that you're using to read this. You? Only by that old book. This is the open-mindedness. As much freedom for everyone as is sustainable, both spiritual (mental) and material, and giving every possibility same space. Only matters imposed on everyone are matters that can be proved to be applicable to everyone. On the other hand, yours calls for one way of thinking and doing.

  12. #372

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Sar1n, I am not a builder of systems. I am a destroyer of systems. But you have done my work rather brilliantly. Christianity is not even a closed system, it is not even "philosophy" in the sense of the word, an -ism. Christianity is a path laid out and preserved for the sake of deliverance. There are no rational religions.

    You are stuck within a total relativism and a subjectivism which in hindsight on this debate prove this rather neatly. You are incapable, for all the "objectivity" of your fetishistic dogma of scientific truth (mixed in with a reification of truly monstruous proportions) to argue that there is any truth beyond the "I" and the content of his subjective relationship with the world. Everything which you claim is mine, it is me, in fact, it is you. Only you are capable of seeing how post-Cartesian/Baconian reified scientism is the magic wand of the Universe.

    You just replace the Bible for Science. Which then begs the question: is Science your totem? Is Scientism the new religion? We need only to converse with its followers to realize that such is the case. You have destroyed all the standards through which truth could be inquired, and have delivered yourself over to an ecstatic mysticism of phenomena coupled with an absolute dogma of concretized abstractions. You are Shamans. You're inquisitors. And oh to those who contradict this revealed truth.

    I prefer the dogmas of the Church, thank you. They are much better than Valentinian Gnostic Pantheism.

    http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com.br/2...-abstract.html

    Eric Voegelin famously (if obscurely) characterized utopian political projects as attempts to “immanentize the eschaton.” A related error -- and one that underlies not only political utopianism but scientism and its offspring -- might be called the tendency to “concretize the abstract.” Treating abstractions as if they were concrete realities is something Alfred North Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World, labeled the “Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness,” and what has also been called the “Reification Fallacy.” It has been an occupational hazard of philosophy and science since the time of the Pre-Socratics. The Aristotelian strain in Western thought formed a counterpoint to this “concretizing” tendency within the context of ancient philosophy, and also more or less inoculated Scholasticism against the tendency. But it came roaring back with a vengeance with Galileo, Descartes, and their modern successors, and has dominated Western thought ever since. Wittgenstein tried to put an end to it, but failed; for bad metaphysics can effectively be counteracted only by good metaphysics, not by no metaphysics. And Aristotelianism is par excellence a metaphysics which keeps abstractions in their place.

    We abstract when we consider some particular aspect of a concrete thing while bracketing off or ignoring the other aspects of the thing. For example, when you consider a dinner bell or the side of a pyramid exclusively as instances of triangularity, you ignore their color, size, function, and metal or stone composition. Or to borrow an example from a recent post, when aircraft engineers determine how many passengers can be carried on a certain plane, they might focus exclusively on their average weight and ignore not only the passengers’ sex, ethnicity, hair color, dinner service preferences, etc., but even the actual weight of any particular passenger.

    [Modern Scholastic writers often distinguish three “degrees” of abstraction. The first degree is the sort characteristic of the philosophy of nature, which considers what is common to material phenomena as such, abstracting from individual material things but retaining in its conception the sensible aspects of matter. The second degree is the sort characteristic of mathematics, which abstracts not only the individuality of material things but also their sensible nature, focusing on what is intelligible (as opposed to sensible) in matter under the category of quantity. The third degree is the sort characteristic of metaphysics, which abstracts from even the quantitative aspects of matter and considers notions like substance, existence, etc. entirely apart from matter.]

    Abstractions can be very useful, and are of themselves perfectly innocent when we keep in mind that we are abstracting. The trouble comes when we start to think of abstractions as if they were concrete realities themselves -- thereby “reifying” them -- and especially when we think of the abstractions as somehow more real than the concrete realities from which they have been abstracted.

    Mind and matter

    I have suggested in a couple of recent posts (e.g. this one) that the “mind-body problem” is essentially a consequence of Descartes’ reification of two abstractions. He first abstracted from the notion of matter everything but its mathematical features, relocating all qualitative features to the mind; and he then treated this mathematical abstraction from actual concrete matter as if it captured everything that really is there in actual concrete matter. Matter generally came to be regarded ever afterward as inherently devoid of anything but the sort of thing expressible in the mathematical language of a physics textbook. And this included the matter that makes up plants, animals, and human bodies, all of which were -- necessarily, if lacking anything except what could be captured in mathematical language -- to be regarded as utterly devoid of consciousness, thought, meaning, teleology, or like.

    Not that Descartes was alone in making this first abstraction -- Galileo had set the stage for it and other moderns put their own spin on it. But what was distinctive about Descartes was the other abstraction he added to it. Having removed colors, sounds, odors, tastes, heat, cold, and the like (at least as common sense understands them) from matter and relocated them into the realm of human consciousness -- making of them the “qualia” so much discussed by contemporary philosophers of mind -- Descartes faced the question of where consciousness itself was to be found. His answer was to take conscious thought -- which had for common sense and Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy alike been something properly attributed only to a human being as a whole -- to abstract it from the rest of human nature, and then to reify this second abstraction. For Descartes, what thinks is not a human being, but a res cogitans; that is to say, what thinks is just a “thinking thing,” thought made into a substance in its own right rather than an activity of a substance.

    And there was little else to do with thought once you’d characterized matter the way Descartes had. The only alternatives to making thought a substance in its own right would be to make of it a collection of little quasi-substances (essentially the solution of the property dualist) or to deny its existence altogether (the position of the eliminativist). And that is precisely why all the various brands of materialism, which chuck out Descartes’ res cogitans while essentially keeping his conception of matter, inevitably come across as disguised versions of either property dualism or eliminativism.

    Suppose aircraft engineers had got it into their heads that the average weight of airline passengers was all there is to airline passengers. And suppose the people responsible for planning the flight entertainment had determined that all airline passengers like to watch action movies during a flight, and got it into their heads that this was all there is to airline passengers. Then suppose that the two groups compared notes and decided that since each side had some pretty strong evidence in its favor, they faced a thorny “average weight/preference for action flicks problem.” Perhaps the entertainment planners would decide that average weight and a preference for action movies are both real aspects of airline passengers, and interact causally in a way we don’t understand. And perhaps the engineers would declare that the really scientific and hardheaded thing to do would be to reduce the attribute of preferring action movies to the attribute of having such-and-such an average weight. Or perhaps they’d decide that in light of the success of aircraft engineering practices compared to the questionable methods of the flight entertainment planners, maybe we should just bite the bullet and conclude that action flick preferences don’t really exist after all.

    I’m not saying the debate over the mind-body problem is as silly as that, but it is in my view based on a similar set of errors. The solution to the “average weight/action flick preference problem” is just to stop reifying the abstractions that generated the bogus problem in the first place. And that is essentially the solution to the dispute between materialists and Cartesian dualists. That is not to say that mind doesn’t raise important philosophical questions. Indeed, like other Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) philosophers I think that our intellectual powers, though not our perceptual or imaginative powers, are immaterial. But the meaning and justification of these A-T claims, and the relation between the immaterial and bodily aspects of human nature, are deeply misunderstood by philosophers whose thinking about these matters is framed by the Cartesian way of carving up the metaphysical territory.

    Scientism

    Again, I do not mean to deny that abstractions of the sort in question may have their uses. On the contrary, the mathematical conception of matter is extremely useful, as the astounding technologies that surround us in modern life make obvious. But contrary to what some proponents of scientism suppose, it simply doesn’t follow for a moment that that conception gives us an exhaustive conception of the material world, for reasons I have stated many times (e.g. here).

    Nor are the abstractions of physics the only ones we must be wary of concretizing. The neuroscientist who tells us that it is the brain or parts of the brain (hemispheres, “modules,” or whatever) that “interpret,” “perceive,” or “decide” this or that are making the same mistake Descartes was insofar as they abstract mental activities from their proper subject -- the human being as a whole -- and relocate them to an invented subject (albeit a material rather than immaterial one). In fact the brain and its components are not substances in their own right but are properly understood only in relation to the whole organism of which they are parts, and the “higher-level” features of a human being -- including conscious thoughts and choices -- are no less real or fundamental than the “lower-level” neurological features. It is only when we abstract out and reify the latter -- treating them as if they had a fundamental or independent status relative to the whole organism, which is the reverse of the truth -- that the former, “higher-level” features come to seem problematic. Those who suppose that neuroscience has “shown” that free will or the self are illusions, on the grounds that no such phenomena can be found at the level of neurons and neural structures, are like aircraft engineers who think that the utility of their data about passengers’ average weight “shows” that passengers have no other attributes except weight, on the grounds that passengers’ sex, ethnicity, food preferences, etc. cannot be read off from the data about weight. (M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Raymond Tallis, and others have made similar points. But the pop neuroscience industry hasn’t gotten the message, or doesn’t want to get it.)

    Then there is social science. When we abstract from concrete human beings their purely economic motivations, ignoring everything else and then reifying this abstraction, the result is homo economicus, a strange creature who, unlike real people, is driven by nothing but the desire to maximize utility. Nietzschean analyses of human motivation in terms of the will to power are less susceptible of mathematical modeling (and thus less “scientific”), but are variations on the same sort of error. Evolutionary psychology often combines abstractions of the natural scientific and social scientific sort. Like the neuroscientist, the evolutionary psychologist often treats parts of human beings as if they were substances independent of the whole from which they have been abstracted (”selfish genes,” “memes”), and adds to this reification the abstractions of the economist (e.g. game theory).

    As the neuroscientific and sociobiological examples indicate, the Reification Fallacy is often combined with other fallacies. In these cases, parts of a whole substance are first abstracted from it and treated as if they were substances in their own right (e.g. brain hemispheres, genes); and then a second, “Mereological Fallacy” (as Bennett and Hacker call it) is committed, in which what is intelligibly attributed only to the whole is attributed to the parts (e.g. the left hemisphere of the brain is said to “interpret,” and genes are said to be “selfish”).

    Naturally, New Atheist types commit fallacies of this sort with regularity, and add some of their own. In particular, they first fallaciously generalize from the irrationality and ignorance of some religious believers to all religious believers, no matter how obviously intelligent and educated. Then they abstract this fantasized universal irrationality and ignorance from every other aspect of real religious people and reify it into a demonized homo religiosus. All religious believers, no matter how decent their behavior and no matter how apparently clever and well-informed their arguments, are made out to be “really” just stupid bigots. This licenses the New Atheist to devote his attention to attacking this figment of his own imagination rather than actual defenders of religion.

    The irony is that while New Atheists and others beholden to scientism pride themselves on being “reality based,” that is precisely what they are not. Actual, concrete reality is extremely complicated. There is far more to material systems than what can be captured in the equations of physics, far more to human beings than can be captured in the categories of neuroscience or economics, and far more to religion than can be captured in the ludicrous straw men peddled by New Atheists. All of these simplifying abstractions (except the last) have their value, but when we treat them as anything more than simplifying abstractions we have left the realm of science and entered that of ideology. The varieties of reductionism, eliminativism, and the “hermeneutics of suspicion” are manifestations of this tendency to replace real things with abstractions. They are all attempts to “conquer the abundance” of reality (as Paul Feyerabend might have put it), to force the world in all its concrete richness into a straightjacket.

    Voegelin’s analysis of utopian politics was for a time transformed by intellectually inclined young conservatives into a catchphrase: Don’t immanentize the eschaton! Aristotelians, Wittgensteinians, Feyerabendians, and other anti-reductionists might consider a catchphrase of their own: Don’t concretize the abstract!
    Last edited by Marie Louise von Preussen; February 27, 2013 at 05:58 PM.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

  13. #373

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    Sar1n, I am not a builder of systems. I am a destroyer of systems. But you have done my work rather brilliantly. Christianity is not even a closed system, it is not even "philosophy" in the sense of the word, an -ism. Christianity is a path laid out and preserved for the sake of deliverance. There are no rational religions.

    You are stuck within a total relativism and a subjectivism which in hindsight on this debate prove this rather neatly. You are incapable, for all the "objectivity" of your fetishistic dogma of scientific truth (mixed in with a reification of truly monstruous proportions) to argue that there is any truth beyond the "I" and the content of his subjective relationship with the world. Everything which you claim is mine, it is me, in fact, it is you. Only you are capable of seeing how post-Cartesian/Baconian reified scientism is the magic wand of the Universe.

    You just replace the Bible for Science. Which then begs the question: is Science your totem? Is Scientism the new religion? We need only to converse with its followers to realize that such is the case. You have destroyed all the standards through which truth could be inquired, and have delivered yourself over to an ecstatic mysticism of phenomena coupled with an absolute dogma of concretized abstractions. You are Shamans. You're inquisitors. And oh to those who contradict this revealed truth.

    I prefer the dogmas of the Church, thank you.
    At least you are honest that there are no rational religions. But you, yet again, failed to see the consequences of that. If there isn't rational basis, nothing that you could prove that works for other people too, then it belongs just in your head. Religions oppose that, and by this, they are inherent source of conflict.

    You still don't get the idea behind science. Because you think only in terms of complete and static systems of thinking. Science is, by definition, neither. And it's not a religion either. It's a process, not a given dogma or mysticism. Its very foundation is in removing dogmas and working on objective issues. You can't see that, of course, because in your thinking only thing objective is given by god. This is obvious fallacy I've pointed out so many times already. You are apparently incapable of understanding science if you think it's dogmatic and arbitrarily imposed on people like religion is.

    Another thing you still don't understand is that regardless if I am only sentient being in the universe or not, or if I'm locked in a matrix, or any other possibility that would make the truth beyond "I" invalid, in order to be part of society, something that actually improves my experience, I have to treat others as sentient beings undergoing similar experience. Scientific thinking works with parts of this experience that are same of everyone. Only with this connection it's possible to interact with others on level that allows cooperation, eventually bringing society to the level we currently experience.

    That's why I prefer science and logic over dogmas of religion. Any religion.

    Edit: I see you've added some, rather amusing, article. Author apparently don't understand a bit about science, and has no idea about reasoning behind scientific system. He believes that science simply grabs an aspect, separates it, analyzes and considers it answer. That's far from truth. Science analyzes every available aspect and its interactions, then creates a model fitting these, tests it and then considers it valid until more data is available and model is improved or replaced. Unlike what author thinks, science does not separate an aspect and considers it whole entity, it is only part of model. Sadly, most people get their impression of science from popular display, designed for other purposes than actually properly explaining the science, and that results in such misinterpretations like this article.
    Last edited by Sar1n; February 27, 2013 at 06:34 PM.

  14. #374

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Science is dogma as much as the recipe for a cake is dogma.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert View Post
    the Church has only improved mankind in history

    For this there are words, but none that abide by the ToS.

  15. #375

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Ferrets54 View Post
    How is humanism passing away? Black Mark has already quoted the UK example where the proportion of people with "no-religion" has leaped up a full 10% in just ten years.
    Humanism isn't atheism.
    Quote Originally Posted by Col. Tartleton View Post
    Humanism is Catholicism.

    At least the interesting kind.

    What are people's thoughts on the Emeritus Pope vs Cardinal decision?
    Yes Catholic Church is very humanist.
    Swear filters are for sites run by immature children.

  16. #376
    Himster's Avatar Praeses
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Dublin, The Peoples Republic of Ireland
    Posts
    9,838

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Superstition and dogma was fun and useful for controlling the masses, but we don't need it anymore, more and more people are realizing this every day. The only thing that could bring back religions to the authority they enjoyed in the past would be a third world war, an event too many religionists seem to wish for.
    The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
    -Betrand Russell

  17. #377

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Kanaric View Post
    Humanism isn't atheism.

    Yes Catholic Church is very humanist.
    Humanist in a sense of human kaboobs, perhaps.

    Atheism is, by definition, more humanistic than any religion because it does not add arbitrary dogmas that limit human freedom.

  18. #378

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Sar1n, nobody is against "Science" here. What I am against is your own little subjective definition of "Science" which amounts again to a lot of a Priori philosophical and metaphysical assumptions. Without the assumption that numbers are reality, and without that little ridiculous game of reification which gives birth to the metaphysics of Scientism, you are incapable of presenting your worldview in concrete terms.

    "Science" itself, in the sense of traditional Physics or Biology, cannot answer this question. This is a question of a fundamentally different order - which begs the question: are you really capable of understanding what I am talking about? Are you capable of criticizing your own definitions to an extent which goes at their very roots? Are you capable of making a simple Cartesian experiment?

    This question is actually over. There cannot be question of *any* scientistic bias here: all of this is refuted. We go into Cartesian dualism, and Cartesian dualism is refuted. WE then move forward to material monism, and material monism is already refuted. We go into hegelianism and dialectical materialism, and both of these are extremely absurd notions.

    So the question here is not that I am trying to prove religion. It is that I am practically begging for you to prove your own particular metaphysics, and to safeguard it against the structural problems that beset every such complex thing as a world view. Since you are incapable of counter-arguing, resorting instead to puerile, obvious and extremely trite evidentialist sloganizing centered on the repetition of certain purely formal scientific procedures (this approach is totally incapable of avoiding all sort of philosophical paradoxes, such as witness paradoxx, the brain-in-a-vat paradox, the problem of solipsism, subjectivism, the fallacy of reification, etc...) means that you are far away from understanding what I am even talking about, to your own lack of fortune.

    Christianity continues, as usual. Despite the problems of... certain unfortunate points of view.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

  19. #379

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen View Post
    Sar1n, nobody is against "Science" here. What I am against is your own little subjective definition of "Science" which amounts again to a lot of a Priori philosophical and metaphysical assumptions. Without the assumption that numbers are reality, and without that little ridiculous game of reification which gives birth to the metaphysics of Scientism, you are incapable of presenting your worldview in concrete terms.

    "Science" itself, in the sense of traditional Physics or Biology, cannot answer this question. This is a question of a fundamentally different order - which begs the question: are you really capable of understanding what I am talking about? Are you capable of criticizing your own definitions to an extent which goes at their very roots? Are you capable of making a simple Cartesian experiment?

    This question is actually over. There cannot be question of *any* scientistic bias here: all of this is refuted. We go into Cartesian dualism, and Cartesian dualism is refuted. WE then move forward to material monism, and material monism is already refuted. We go into hegelianism and dialectical materialism, and both of these are extremely absurd notions.

    So the question here is not that I am trying to prove religion. It is that I am practically begging for you to prove your own particular metaphysics, and to safeguard it against the structural problems that beset every such complex thing as a world view. Since you are incapable of counter-arguing, resorting instead to puerile, obvious and extremely trite evidentialist sloganizing centered on the repetition of certain purely formal scientific procedures (this approach is totally incapable of avoiding all sort of philosophical paradoxes, such as witness paradoxx, the brain-in-a-vat paradox, the problem of solipsism, subjectivism, the fallacy of reification, etc...) means that you are far away from understanding what I am even talking about, to your own lack of fortune.

    Christianity continues, as usual. Despite the problems of... certain unfortunate points of view.
    Now it's crystal clear to everyone that you don't understand anything I'm writing here, so you're back to your old game of wannabe big words that you don't understand and hope that other people won't either and personal attacks.

    You have no idea about what science is or what's reasoning behind it's principles, as you continually show here. I've answered every argument in this post before. And calling me incapable of questioning my reasoning and seeing other's point, you who actually marked his(her? need clarification) religious dogmas as common sense, apparently incapable of grasping the fact that there is more than one or two possible answers to many questions raised here, that's quite absurd.

    Problem is, I actually can comprehend your reasoning, but you can't comprehend mine, not vice versa. You are a victim of religious indoctrination, incapable of seeing other's point and parrotting your religious dogmas and their "justification". You've accused me of many fallacies just because you have no real argument, but in fact it's you who's guilty of those. I've called you out on many of them already, and you failed to respond.

    As for my worldview, I wrote it here several times. It's incomplete on purpose. Unanswered questions are better left unanswered when the answers available are not justifiable. Only when it actually can be reliably determined what answer is right, then it can be accepted. You're incapable of taking this step back, realizing what you can and can't answer and treating these points as such.

    This discussion is over, because you are incapable of bringing something into it other than thousand times seen dogmas and blabbering.

  20. #380

    Default Re: The pope is resigning

    Quote Originally Posted by Sar1n View Post
    Now it's crystal clear to everyone that you don't understand anything I'm writing here, so you're back to your old game of wannabe big words that you don't understand and hope that other people won't either and personal attacks.

    You have no idea about what science is or what's reasoning behind it's principles, as you continually show here. I've answered every argument in this post before. And calling me incapable of questioning my reasoning and seeing other's point, you who actually marked his(her? need clarification) religious dogmas as common sense, apparently incapable of grasping the fact that there is more than one or two possible answers to many questions raised here, that's quite absurd.

    Problem is, I actually can comprehend your reasoning, but you can't comprehend mine, not vice versa. You are a victim of religious indoctrination, incapable of seeing other's point and parrotting your religious dogmas and their "justification". You've accused me of many fallacies just because you have no real argument, but in fact it's you who's guilty of those. I've called you out on many of them already, and you failed to respond.

    As for my worldview, I wrote it here several times. It's incomplete on purpose. Unanswered questions are better left unanswered when the answers available are not justifiable. Only when it actually can be reliably determined what answer is right, then it can be accepted. You're incapable of taking this step back, realizing what you can and can't answer and treating these points as such.


    This discussion is over, because you are incapable of bringing something into it other than thousand times seen dogmas and blabbering.

    If you think getting your head into a sandhole is nice, and such is the case with your limited subjectivist view, then you are most unfortunate. This is not just blabbering: there is a whole science of principles to which you adhere, whether you like it or not. Your absurd irrationalism does not change that, neither does it change the fact that your worldview is absurd and malicious. The Enlightenment has failed and it will pass, your views being a museum piece in a new age of religion. By being unable to go beyond immanence, all you propose is a totally empty, opaque, nihilistic, pantheistic mysticism.
    "Romans not only easily conquered those who fought by cutting, but mocked them too. For the cut, even delivered with force, frequently does not kill, when the vital parts are protected by equipment and bone. On the contrary, a point brought to bear is fatal at two inches; for it is necessary that whatever vital parts it penetrates, it is immersed. Next, when a cut is delivered, the right arm and flank are exposed. However, the point is delivered with the cover of the body and wounds the enemy before he sees it."

    - Flavius Vegetius Renatus (in Epitoma Rei Militari, ca. 390)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •