James White’s “abominable anti-Catholicism” as Dave (rightly I think) calls it, seems governed by that same “spirit” which governed many of his “reformed Christian” forbears of the sixteenth century. Of these Erasmus spoke:
“I behold them coming out from their sermons, with fierce looks and threatening countenances, like men that just came from hearing bloody invectives and seditious speeches.”
http://books.google.com/books?&h...countenances%
22
Mr. White’s attitude is indeed lamentable, but not particularly surprising. After all, he is a PROUD heir of that system which excited in its adherents, not after decades or centuries of decline, but FROM ITS VERY INCEPTION, such an indomitable spirit of pride and ferocity.
White's errors, and those of people like him, must always be strenuously opposed even as we continue to pray for them.
That was certainly entertaining.
However there is one problem with your conclusion Dave, you called that line of thinking "doublethink"...thats incorrect. How do I know? Because I was reading that book last night and towards the end of Part2 Ch9 I remember George calling it "BlackWhite"...
If I remember correctly "blackwhite" is when you like a person for holding to idea "A" yet hate another person (your enemy) for holding to idea "A"...
...I dont have the book at the moment so if you dont mind look it up and quote it or else I will when I get home.
Interesting. Yeah, I don't remember that, and I'm not sure if I still have the book (I read it over 30 years ago).That would be exactly what White is doing, indeed. I looked up this stuff on Wikipedia:
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According to the novel, doublethink is:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.[1]”
Another quote from the novel, when Winston starts to think about doublethink as he exercises:
“His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the art of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink.[2]
. . . Doublethink was a form of trained, willful blindness to contradictions in a system of beliefs. Doublethink differed from ordinary hypocrisy in that the person who was "doublethinking" had to deliberately forget the contradiction between his two opposing beliefs — and then deliberately forget the fact that he had forgotten it. He then had to forget the forgetting of the forgetting, and so on; this process of intentional forgetting, once begun, continued indefinitely. Orwell describes this endless process as a kind of "controlled insanity."
. . . Over the years since Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, the term doublethink has grown to be synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by simply ignoring the contradiction between two worldviews.
"Doublethink"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
This is true of what White is doing here, in the specific analogical sense in which I noted the logical contradiction.
But
But "blackwhite" is, however, more directly applicable, as you say. It's a more specific type of doublethink:
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Blackwhite is defined as follows:
“...this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.”
—Orwell, 1984
An understanding of the word 'blackwhite' is important to understanding Nineteen Eighty-Four because it embodies several of the essential themes of the novel. It is both an example of Newspeak and doublethink. Perhaps more important however is that the word represents the active process of rewriting the past, control of the past being a vital aspect of the Party's control over the present.
The ability to blindly believe anything, regardless of its absurdity, can have different causes: respect for authority, fear, indoctrination, even critical laziness or gullibility. Orwell's blackwhite refers only to that caused by fear, indoctrination or repression of one's individual critical thinking ("to know black is white"), rather than caused by laziness or gullibility. A true Party member could automatically, and without thought, expunge any "incorrect" information and totally replace it with "true" information from the Party. If properly done, there is no memory or recovery of the "incorrect" information that could cause unhappiness to the Party member by committing thoughtcrime. This ability is likened to the total erasure of information only possible in electronic storage.
"List of Newspeak words"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Lis..._Newspeak_words
"I agree with virtually everything he and his co-authors state in that book (hence many quotes)."
I wonder where, if at all, you disagree with Sproul's book?
-Turretinfan
I haven't found anything yet. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know.
Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek where Mr Spock used blackwhite logic to disable a bunch of androids?
Beats me. Sounds like it would fit that show tho!
Paul, they had episodes on like that all the time... but it was usually Kirk who used logic to defeat the droids. (then again, I haven't seen the original series in a while, so there may be a few that I've missed).
I was thinking about the episode with Harry Mudd in it...
R.C. Sproul has done some admirable work. I have benefitted from attending several Ligonier Conferences.
However, Mr. Sproul does not understand presuppositionalism. Van Til was not always the clearest writer, which explains some of the problem, but more generally, Sproul does not seem to have reflected on the insights of Thomas Kuhn, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi or 20th Century epistemology generally.
Presuppositions are inevitable. One cannot even ask questions without relying on presuppositions. The difference is between non-Christian presuppositions that lead to irrationality & contradictions & Christian presuppositions which provide solid foundations for knowledge, for reason, for induction, for math, science, moral obligations, language and so on.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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