Ernest Sparks

apropos hinduwoman's proof-
please forgive a cultural insert-

opera
MOSES UND ARON
Arnold Schönberg
(in German)
start of Act I scene 4
--------------------------------------------------------

israelite chorus:
Bring you good tidings, word from the mighty new god?
Come you to lead us, once more to make us hopeful?
We yearn to give him gold, goods, and living offerings!
Take, do not ask us. Self love compels us, forces us to make offerings,
not only for his favor; giving itself is pleasure, the highest favor.

[Moses comes forward, Aaron moves backward and away]

Moses:
The only one, the infinite, All-powerful one, the Omnipresent one, invisible, inconceivable, demands no offering from you.

Aaron:
He's chosen this folk before all other people...

Moses:
He wants not a part, for everything's wanted.

Aaron:
...and gives you alone his unbounded holy favor. On your knees then, to give him worship!

[Aaron moves forward, Moses moves backward and away]

israelite choruses alternating:
To worship, whom? Where is he? But I see him not!
Has he gentle or angry mein? Are we then to love him or to fear him?
Where is he? Point him out!
We want to kneel down. We want to bring beasts forth to him,
and gold, wheat, and barley and wine!
All will go to your god almighty, if we are his people,
If he is our god and if he guards us well.
But then where is he? Point him out!

Aaron:
Close off your vision and stop up your hearing! For in this way shall you see and hear him!
No living man otherwise perceives him!

israelite chorus, whispering:
Can he never be seen? Is he never visible?
He, your most mighty of gods, cannot show himself before us?

[Moses moves forward part way, Aaron moves backward to meet him at a distance]

Aaron:
But the righteous SHALL see him.

[young girl, young man, older man and priest step out of crowd]

young girl:
I saw how HE gleamed!

young man:
He soars as a god!

older man:
He must be our god!

priest:
Then why need the murderer ever fear him?

[Aaron stands next to Moses at a distance]

Aaron:
Who sees him not is forsaken.

israelite chorus:
Then we must all be forsaken, since we still see him not! HA! HA! HA!
Keep away with your new god, with this almighty one,
Through him we do not want our freedom!
Keep far away, like your god! The all-present deity!
We fear not, nor love we your god;
So little does he give reward or chastise!
Keep away with this almighty one! keep away!
Through him we do not want our freedom!

[the israelite crowd divides, one part leaves]

Moses:
Almighty one, now my strength is exhausted,
And my thought becomes powerless in Aaron's word!

.................................................. .

thanks for your patience!

Albert Cipriani

Irish says:
Untrue. Your statement assumes a one-to-one correspondence between a true experience and existence. But any number of psychological tests have demonstrated that the same stimuli produces different (as you would say) “veridical” experiences.

For example, we only know for sure that three shots were fired in Daley’s Square because a police radio happened to be on at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, tape recording the shots. Listening to the ear-witness testimony, you’d have to believe that anywhere from one to five shots were fired.

Experiences are simply untrustworthy, especially the oxymoron known as “spiritual experiences.” The Catholic Church, in stark contrast to the Protestant churches, has always been skeptical of them. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Bill Snedden

You should deny them. Vociferously. Anyone who portrays the likes of Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, & Alvin Plantinga as "uneducated, inbred, dullards" deserves to have his/her head handed to him/her on a platter.

Mistaken, yes , but stupid, surely not!

I don't need outrage to reach out to my fellow humans. In fact, I think my reach extends further if I open my hand rather than close it...

You're suggesting that self-proclaimed Christians living in the U.S. are somehow being forced into participating in this "sex, drugs, rock & roll" society?

Who's being naive, again?

I find myself in agreement with Deke and keyser_soze on this one. I don't see any evidence of any overall "moral decline" over the last century. What I do see are changing mores and an overall increase in freedom of conscience and behavior among humans. I see that as either an increase in morality (increased freedom) or at least no overall decline (due to changing mores).

I don't agree. When I say "successful", I'm thinking more in terms of something akin to psychological growth. If you're familiar with the work of Abraham Maslow, my view of a successful society would be one in which individuals have a greater opportunity to reach the level of self-actualization.

Technological achievement is not a necessity for such realization, but it does make it vastly easier and much more likely in that it permits the lowest level needs (physiological & safety) to be more readily provided to a greater percentage of society, not just the ruling class or privileged elite, as is often the case in monarchical societies.

Your closing example is interesting, but I wonder how many primitive societies possessed the practice and yet not the concept of slavery. It wouldn't render the practice any more desirable (or at all moral). I really don't see the applicability of your story to the question at hand.

To wit, I've noticed as I get older that I feel less and less well-educated. I've come to believe that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I really know. Such a realization might easily lead to despair, existential angst as it were, but would we really argue that a blissful ignorance is preferable to a well-informed angst?

I wouldn't. I don't think you would, either. No lover of truth for its own sake could ever hold with such a notion: "Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously" Edith Stein, canonized St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1998.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Albert Cipriani

Dear Bill,
If I believed in reincarnation, I’d believe that in your last life you were a cat. You seem so serious. Have you noticed how cats don’t walk, rather, they place their paws precisely where they decide is best. That’s how your words come across to me. Trust me, this is neither an insult nor a compliment, just the amusing impression you make on me.

“A turd by any other name would stink as bad.” What a neat trick, as morals decline we just rename our fall from grace as our changing morals. Why didn’t Moses thing of that! I can’t wait till Judgment Day to use your method to explain away all my moral faults.

You say that you see This is a blatant equivocation of freedom and morality. Something tells me you can’t actually believe this. Surely Saddam and sons were far more free than I, yet even my worst enemy would consider them less moral than me.

Catholicism defines freedom as the ability to choose good. Not in choice itself, but in a qualified choice lies our freedom. For example, the addictive choice of pornography, drugs, and sin in general is no choice at all. It is counterfeit freedom. But in your scheme of things, it seems that choice itself, any choice, is in itself an exercise of freedom and therefore a moral choice no matter what is chosen.

The problem with his hierarchy of needs is that it assumes an exact correlation between objective needs and the subjective experience of those needs. But both pain and pleasure are mental states as opposed to necessary reflexes. Ergo, we don’t want to participate in a world without toilet paper because we have toilet paper, where the world immemorial has got along just fine without toilet paper and never experienced the lack of that need until this last century.

Feral children have illustrated this principal as well. I read of one in France who thought nothing of reaching into a boiling pot of potatoes to eat one. Such physical feats were accomplished with no indication of pain nor physical damage. It’s as if, to a certain extent, reality itself corresponds to how we think about it. The feral child knew nothing of boiling water and did not expect to be hurt by it, so the boiling water did not hurt.

What technology provides for our physiological needs it takes back from our highest psychological needs. Like a short change artist, it gives but takes back more.

Like the interstate highway system, the independence technology provides atomizes community life and our sense of belonging. The “World Community” is a fiction. Ergo, the fact that technology is shrinking the world is a euphemism for it bulldozing all of our once-upon-a-time real human communities. – Sincerely, NOT the Unabomber Disguised as Albert the Traditional Catholic

hinduwoman

albert,
When and if E.Ts finally appear every human being will be able to see them. No one will have to take my unsupported word that they are here. But in the case of God that is not the case.

Your insistence that Catholicism is rational does not mean anything. Because I too can say that Hinduism is far more rational and credible, and I can only hope that face to face with Yama you will own up your mistake and hope in your next life you will not be misled by false religions.

Albert Cipriani

Moderator moderator with your back to the wall,
Whose the ugliest of us all?

Keyser says: Is that how it works? All an atheist has to do is warn a theist that the mud hole calleth and he’s about to be called names, and then it’s OK for the atheist to call me names? Those names stand? Keyser’s name-calling has been standing the test of time for hours now.

I don’t get it… unless Kyser’s ad hominem means I’ve won the argument… unless your countenance of it and complicity with him means he’s doing your dirty work. – Disappointed, Albert the Traditional Catholic

theIPU

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#cumhoc

Non causa pro causa

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism....html#noncausa

Albert Cipriani

Dear IPU,
Before you’re allowed to ascribe logical fallacies to statements, those statements must be in the form of a logical argument, not, as mine were, in the form of a mere assertion. Don’t believe me?

OK, I dare you to use them on your wife. The next time she tells you that she loves you just because you are who you are, correct her with the “non causa pro causa” tag. Then, when she says ever since you’ve been logging onto the Infidel Internet site your intellectual snobbery has become enough to shame the French, pin the “cum hoc ergo propter hoc” tag on her.

Oh, and let us know what hospital you’ll be recuperating at so we can send Get-Well and Stop-Being-Stupid cards. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

keyser_soze

Actually, the bigot comment was an attack more on your superstitious nature than what you think. But I'm sure by now you've already found out what the definition of bigot is...

And you seem to have no problems setting up strawmen, ad hominems, well poisoing, and a dozen other tactics. We merely call you on them, we don't whine about them. We point them out. Are you on so soft a footing that you cannot do the same? When I post such a warning, I EXPECT it to be attacked. Your response was expected, and actually, having read your posts for quite a while, I expected more of an attack than a whimper. Perhaps you are feeling a bit under tonight? Let me know, I'll lay off until tomorrow or something. I'm only here for the conversation, and the reparte, nothing personal. I seriously doubt that anything that I say, or anyone else for that matter, will change your world view. I simply enjoy ribbing you a bit, and I expect to get ribbed in return.

keyser_soze

And not to let you think you won, lest you assume it. I think no one fails to see the weakness of your argument. And if I get called down, so be it. But think on this, did the moderator do anything other than point out that you were poisoning the well, this VERY day? I did not need it pointed out to me that I had made an attack, I stated that I was. Just relax, no one is taking it personally on either side.