Ah, Kant, the destroyer of "Pure Reason"; Kierkegaard, the quintessential Christian knight; and Nietzsche, the greatest irrationalist there ever was.
Call 'em what you will, the "heroes" or "villains" of our generation, but they are influential.
postmodernism is pure bullshit
Amen!
You might be slighting bull droppings in this comparison. In contrast with postmodernism, there is benefit to be derived in the form of fertilizer and primitive fuel from the other.
One of the persons I knew back in college was a philosophy major. He was one of the unhappiest, depressed persons I have ever met. His major gripe was that philosophy was useless as a means of explaining anything occurring in the real world.
"In other words, everything that exists is all in our heads."
Those who espouse this have never taken up my challenge to step in front of a moving Peterbilt. I wonder where this reluctance to fully embrace their beliefs comes from?
So this is great fun! The good Doctor has hit exactly on my own critique of postmodernism, which goes something like this: Postmodernism states that there are no truths. But that statement is in itself an assertion of truth. So by postmodernism's own reasoning, postmodernism can't be true. Q.E.D. To which I add: A philosophical system that can be so easily punctured by the likes of me, a two-bit amateur philosopher, can't possibly be a good means for understanding the universe.
The quoted Kierkegaard statement, "Faith requires the crucifixion of reason" is interesting to me because the statement itself ia an act of reasoning. Obviously, those who wish to discard reason feel compelled to use reason to explain same. But why? If reason is bunk, then why bother going through all those contortions? Because to simply discard reason without thinking about it, to blithely charge off ignoring reality and pretending that the world is something that can just be made up from whole cloth in one's head, is a state that is indistinguishable from mental illness! And since it's indistinguishable from mental illness, one can arguue that it *is* a mental illness, or at the very least pathological. Clearly the postmodernists don't want to be labeled as insane, but since the place that they wish to get to cannot be distinguished from insanity, they must implicitly admit the truth of the very thing they seek to disprove in order to justify their intended destination. Any system of thinking that starts with kind of inherent contradiction cannot possibly lead to anywhere useful. And what's worse, because truth can be so easily twisted in such a system, it makes a very useful weapon for those who seek to impose tyranny.
And that's what is really dangerous about postmodernism. It's a handy way for those who crave raw power over others to rationalize their lust in big fancy words.
snoring citizen wrote: His major gripe was that philosophy was useless as a means of explaining anything occurring in the real world.
He was right to be depressed at least about the state of post modern philosophy.
It is the task of philosophy to provide an integrated view of reality to enable one to live in this universe. That is exactly the opposite of what is provided by the philosophy he studied. Post modern philosophy a disintegrated view of reality that pertains to as many alternate universes as there are followers.
To reason means more than to have reasons.
To use logic means more than to play word games.
To think means more than to have fuzzy images and sounds buzzing in your head.
Words are more than merely weapons to be used to confound your enemies.
Knowledge of what these things are and how to use them is not given to us automatically. We must learn what they are and discipline our minds to use them correctly all the time.
It is not easy.
Ideas matter. Fundamental ideas matter most.
"We (empiricists) still pin our faith on its (truth's) exisitence, and still believe that we gain an ever better position towards it by systematically continuing to role up our experiences and think."
William James, The Will to Believe
Rational: I really thing that the purpose of postmodernism philosophy -- apart from nearly every other philosophical system that has ever been devised -- is not to seek to understand the universe, but to provide (or rationalize) an escape from it.
Cousin Dave wrote: A philosophical system that can be so easily punctured by the likes of me, a two-bit amateur philosopher, can't possibly be a good means for understanding the universe.
I would say you are far more than a two-bit amateur philosopher. You cut to the core and found the fatal flaw in the so called post modern philosophy. They had to pretend they were making statements of truth in order to deny that there is such a thing as truth. They had to use reason in their attempt to destroy reason. They thereby demonstrated the axiomatic character of the existence of truth and necessity of reason. No further analysis is required to dismiss it as the pretentious nonsense it is.
If you are only a two-bit amateur philosopher, the rest of us need to learn to be worth at least as much. Our lives and our civilization depends upon it.
Anonymous wrote: the purpose of postmodernism philosophy ... is not to seek to understand the universe, but to provide (or rationalize) an escape from it.
I think you give its founders and followers more credit than they deserve. They are small men of smaller character who could not tolerate the achievement of the few mental giants who give us the foundation of the enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Rather than rise to the challenge, they chose to distort and destroy that foundation in hopes of reducing the giant's stature to that of their own.
Considering they have taken over academia, the MSM, the bulk of the Democratic party, and well over half of the Republican party, they appear to be well on their way to achieving their goal. However, this is not a demonstration of the power of their ideas, its a demonstration of the power of ideas as such.
The few mental giants are still mental giants. Their achievement stands as a testimony to the power of man's mind. What is happening is that all the rest of us and our civilization are being driven to extinction. The actual achievement of the small men is reduction of everything to a zero - a big fat very dead zero.
Ideas matter. Fundamental ideas matter most.
I generally agree with everyone posting here, and I highly regard Dr. Sanity, I am a devoted reader of this blog. But even bullshit has a positive purpose (in a garden, for example) and I would like to float the idea that in the arts, there is a way to see the postmodern dialog as an argument in service of the imagination, that most of the problems that we are identifying with it is in a confusion between instruments that engage the imagination and instruments that engage reality.
Yes, the education of the creative communtiy has been poisoned and yes, most are simply whackjobs... still, there are redeeming aspects and we certainly have enjoyed a great many adventures along the way, even though we have had to muck about in no small amount of B.S.
Sh-tcanning (I'm getting weary of the trash talk, this discussion and you all merit a higher plane than this) the entire corpus of the artworld is a little too radical and not very conservative in the sense of care-taking of our fellow citizens no matter how silly or even stupid they have become.
Last night, I was talking to two old friends who I have become estranged with over the civilizational conflict. In my (art) world, it has been pretty dicey advancing common sense into conversations tweaked by the insanities that our good doctor S. so effectively dissects in this blog. More often than not, I am usually dismissed if not vilified as a fascist along the way, somethign I'm sure many of you have experienced as well. Immediately in our conversation, my buddies wanted to talk about the war and how young kids today are too estranged from current events (the Private Idaho effect critiqued in this post) and that they should be drafted into the molitary so that they would get a dose of reality. They looked to me for a response. Frankly, I didn't want to talk about it, past discussions melted down in scorching heat, no light was possible. Finally, I said that there was important work to be done in the military, that the military mission was too important to run a day care for people who didn't want to be there. I think (but it mught merely be hope) that my old and now distant friends understood in some distant way that they were thinking in a trivial manner... that this was a big reason why I didn't want to waste my time talking about geopolitics with them anymore.
Trivia is not categorically bad. And postmodernism isn't entirely bullsh-t. The problem might be a msiapplication of imagination for reason and visa versa. Maybe all we have to do is figure out how and when to use one and the other.
Fascinating. Thank you for writing this.
I too read Hicks' book Explaining Postmodernism, and was surprised to learn that what started out as an attempt to save Faith turned out to undermine it even further. Indeed, each successive philosopher since Kant seemed to bollix it up even further.
I think Adler is correct -- the Enlightenment philosophers ignored the ancients too much; as a Catholic, I'd say the missing element is mysticism.
Truth can be apprehended through one or a combination of empiricism, mysticism, rationalism and yes, emotions. Maturity is understanding how. (Me still working on that part).
That is, in some cases, my feelings might tell me something true. In other cases, my feelings are irrelevant to what the truth is. I may apprehend something as true for psychological reasons, but mistake them for mystical truth. And vice versa.
It's really about observation, knowing yourself, using reason clearly, dealing with mysticism, and having your work checked by responsible others.
YMMV.
YMMV wrote: It's really about observation, knowing yourself, using reason clearly, dealing with mysticism, and having your work checked by responsible others.
How are you going to identify that the so called "responsible others" are in fact "responsible" rather than simply providers of an alternate brand of bullshit?
If you can do that reliably, why do you need them to check your work?
If you can't, why bother having them check your work?
Thanks Doc, inspireing words, as usual. A lot of nice conclusions here in comments that have not yet been distilled into the pure essence you aptly describe. As long as the Left insists that bullshit is ice cream, we'er in for one hell of a battle.
Anonymous-X: It isn't the intent (or at least it shouldn't be) of rationality to throw the arts overboard. Art is systematic in its own way; it has its own rules and logic and conventions. Its logic may seem strange when compared with scientific logic, but it's a logic nonetheless. Otherwise, how could we ever judge a piece of art as "good" or "bad"? And that's really getting to the issue that we are talking about here...
I think you are seeing the word "postmodernism" as a label for an artistic style, while we are discussing it as a philosophy in general. There are artists, who label themselves postmodernists, whose work I quite like. However, of the ones I do like, I've noticed something: their work doesn't really follow the philosophical postmodernist ideals. Let's take, for example, the architect Frank Gehry. I've been incredibly impressed with some of this work, such as his Guggenheim building in Spain, and the Disney Concert Hall. However, I don't see Gehry's work as postmodernist. In fact, I would claim that most of what he does is an extension of Modernism, the main difference being that Gehry has available to him computerized design tools and modern materials that the Modernists didn't have access to. If Frank Lloyd Wright had had CAD tools and titanium in his day, would he have done works similar to Gehry? Possible; you can see him starting to go that way in his final few works, including the Marin County Civic Center and the Guggenheim in New York.
Now, if Gehry were really a postmodernist in philosophy, he would deny the fundemental truths in CAD, and he would never be able to produce those works. So obviously he believes in rationality at some level at least. And, I would claim, that in this context the meaning of the word "postmodernism" is simply that which is implied by the word's construction: the art movement which temporally follows Modernism. Yeah, you have your Deconstructionists who dream of building gigantic buildings which not only discard asthetics but are also utterly uninhabitable. I don't see any of those guys getting commissions.
It's like, back in the '80s when I used to listen to New Age music. Some people I told this were shocked. They asked me how I could possibly believe in the crystals and all that stuff. My response always, "To me, New Age is just a label for a style of music. Nothing more". Then they'd say, "Oh, well then" and admit that some of the music was pretty pleasant. The point is, any art that successfully speaks to the audience, even if the artist considers himself a postmodernist, will still follow the rationality that is embedded in art. It's a different set of rules from what science uses, but it's a set of rules nonetheless. I don't see it as incompatible with rationalism at all.
I once went to an art exhibit by an artist who really was postmodernist in philosophy. And here's how it worked: Each piece of art had a long, whiny printed lecture taped up next to it that informed me of exactly what I supposed to get from the art, what my opinion of it was required to be, and how the art proved that the artist's opinion was so much more valid than anyone else's. Most of the art consisted of multimedia pieces of random junk. I'd look at something made up of bits of twine, broken pencils, and clippings of the artist's hair, read the first part of the speech that said "This demonstrates the cruelty of the white man towards Jewish lesbian Venitian female gondoliers of color". And I'd think "Man, I didn't get that from the artwork at all", and dismiss the whole thing as bollocks. Behold postmodern art.
There was one piece of art in the exhibit that was different. It was a pretty simple portrait of a middle-aged couple. But there was, somehow, a huge sadness reflected in it. I got the impression that they were the beloved parents of a child, who perhaps had lost those parents at a young age. The speech next to it confirmed that they were the artist's parents, who were both heavy smokers and had both died in their '50s of lung cancer. The artist, needless to say, didn't have much love for tobacco companies. I read that bit and I thought, "I get this one. I may not agree with the artist's conclusion, but I feel it and understand it." The artist's emotions over the topic had driven her out of her conceits and, for a moment, back into the rational world of human commincation through art. And I, the non-painter, non-visual-artist, understood. It was the one good piece of art in the whole show.
"Finally, I said that there was important work to be done in the military, that the military mission was too important to run a day care for people who didn't want to be there."
AnonymousX
A very nice line, indeed. But I think your two 'friends' will hate you even more in the morning, because it is they who are actually the "fascists" - thought control fascists, or anti-thinking fascists. You are simply not allowed by them to have a thought which does not parrot their groupist mantras.
"Each piece of ["postmodern"] art had a long, whiny printed lecture taped up next to it...."
Cousin Dave
I guess that in order to be postmodern you must not be postmodern. "It's complicated", after all.
"What does it mean to "know" something as opposed to merely having an opinion?"
Ask an engineer. We don't deal in opinion, we deal in what works.
If an engineer says a bridge collapses under a certain load, it will. No amount of pining for a non-collapse or offering opinion about how it may not collapse will prevent it, because the shear strength of the bolts holding it together is not subject to "opinion"
Postmodernism starts and ends with its stated goals. Goals, though, are often mutually contradictory.
IMHO postmodernism tosses out consistency in favor of the goals supposedly to be achieved. Its drawing power comes from the glittering generalities of postmodernism's stated goals, and its "win-win" approach to achieving goals. If you don't have to be consistent with anything, everybody can achieve their goals, so the theory goes. Consistency is then regarded as the hobgoblin of small minds.
The problem is, in the absence of consistency, what takes over as a guide to action?
Pretty much the same thing that takes over in the absence of the rule of law: The loudest voices, the strongest personalities, the most organized movements, and the scariest threats.
R S wrote: Pretty much the same thing that takes over in the absence of the rule of law: The loudest voices, the strongest personalities, the most organized movements, and the scariest threats.
The takeover may be determined by such groups but the results are determined by the iron bound laws of reality - no exceptions. See the 20th Century for far too many sad examples of their results.
Prepare for more of the same during the 21st Century. As they say: "You ain't seen nothin yet."
Much of this article leads me to believe you have not read much that any of these philosophers have written. The rationalists and the empiricists would both have rejected the postmodernist, who are really centered around men like Derrida and others who utterly deny true knowledge is possible at all either through reason or experience.
Postmodernism is bullshit. But:
“Have you ever wondered why the political left is so relentlessly hostile to Christianity and Judaism?”
Yes. It’s because (excepting lefty Christians and Jews) they’ve been put on the defensive. You can be an intelligent “fisher of men”, or you can try to get em into the net by screaming fire and brimstone at em (and yes I know that the latter can be more fun!).
”It is immensely interesting to observe how the left's topsy-turvy thinking about this conundrum works: realistically, rationally, and logically the left finds itself unable to criticize the excesses of Islam in any way, shape or form--without exposing for even the most dim-witted to see, the fatal flaws and contradictions in their own religion--which disavows reality, reason, and logic.”
One problem with this (and I’m aware there may be a time constraint), is the lack of concrete examples of this kind of reasoning from the left. Not from obvious designated ‘representatives of The Left’ like Ward Churchill or Sheehan, who nobody would’ve given a shit about until people like O’Reilly made them famous, but the real ones. Greenwald is making a living out of doing exactly this, practically every single day.
"Ask an engineer. We don't deal in opinion, we deal in what works."
Purple Avenger | Email | Homepage | 03.16.07 - 12:46 pm |
Absolutely.
And if any engineer ever makes a mistake, it is the postmodernist feelies making the most noise about not being protected.
On a related note, someone please tell me why all those flawed Ford Explorers suddenly stopped rolling, no matter the tires on 'em?
Where are all the burning Chevy pickup trucks?
Or, as I recently tried to explain yet again to My Moonbat Brother(tm) -- "Gravity. It is not just a notion, it is the law."
He does not believe that.
But I can't get him up on the roof to prove it, either.
VERY GOOD ARTICLE, Dr. Sanity!
The Machine smiles.
.
CO2 PARASITES EXPOSED
O.k., so you haven't seen it yet? And you think it's no longer available? Well, maybe by now it isn't, but as of when I watched it you could still view and/or download the clip.
You can get the URL from the clip-info in the (not in-page) RealAudio viewer and use a download program (like FreshDownload) to acquire it. As far as I know that's legal, but if I find out it isn't, I will delete it. I won't be happy about that, but, if I have to ...
Anyway, here's the page link.
http://novakeo.com/?p=860
And, here's the clip URL, if you want to jump right in
http://www.novakeo.com/news/
vide...ming_swindle.rm
If you use FireFox, just click on their Download Helper to acquire the clip with a minimum of effort.
Oh, and I didn't use Google to find it. I used Yahoo.
Did you know Big Bad Boring Al used to be a memeber of the board of Google? I don't know if that's why they pulled the clip that was on their site, but Google does have a pattern of pulling conservative anti-anything that questions P.C.-think, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a connection.
I commend everyone who has posted in this comments section. This has to be one of the most intelligent blogs on the internet. Although, that might not be saying much.
If objective truth is unknowable -- as per the post-modern paradigm -- then that post-modern "truth" is itself at least as suspect as any other. The inherent irony escapes them. The typical post-modernist is a feckless parrot who is seldom able to examine any proposition beyond the bumper-sticker impact on a fellow parrot.
Put another way, if a person rattles off some post-modernist drivel in the forest and no one hears, it is still most assuredly drivel.
I hate post-modernism with a passion, but a woman who avoids you like the plague can't be all bad.
A couple of your commentators have already pointed out glitches in your arguments concerning philosophy.
I would only add this:
You are a bit hard on Kant. Harder in fact than Stephen Hicks,who is only explaining the antecedents for Post Modernism in that they derive from an argument of Kant's. You forget two things. Firstly, no man is responsible for what others do in his name, particularly when the philosophy has developed considerably since Kant. Secondly, in philosophy, it is possible to recognise the value of the criticism of pure reason that Kant makes without coming to the same conclusion that he does. In fact, the Post Modernists have done just that. They have rejected God with the same certainty that he embraced it.
I have a bit of a problem with Stephen Hicks portrayal of Kant as being anti-enlightenment. I (and most commentators) see him as being part of the tradition of reason. Nevertheless I generally do not disagree with Hick's analysis of the roots of Post Modernism. He is correct in his assessment that Rousseau was seen (incorrectly) as an Enlightenment philosopher and hence the Great Terror as a failure of the enlightenment, which lead to anti-enlightenment thought.
Kant was also responsible for another great philosphical idea - the Categorical Imperative, I don't propose to elaborate on this except to point out that this exists in stark contrast to utilitarianism as a basis for morality. Quite clearly, Marxism is usually assumed to be a utilitarian philosophy.
Funny, I can't find those "most commenters" in this thread.
.
It has been a long time, but doesn't strict empiricism (all knowledge comes only from our senses) lead only to Solipsism?
And I wouldn't call Plato's idealism "rationalism."
The cave and the shadows isn't much more rational than the brain-in-the-vat.
Read "Six Great Ideas" by MJ Adler.
The 6 ideas are Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Liberty, Equality and Justice. The book is an introduction to Western thought on these topics. (The ideas we judge by and the ideas we govern by.)
machine said "
"Gravity. It is not just a notion, it is the law."
Actually, there is no gravity - the earth sucks
Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Liberty, Equality and Justice.
Cool.
If only Adler had figured out how to get the morally blind psychopath to 'get' all that stuff..
I Kant and I won't.
You give network news and Oprah a couple of years and 50% of the people could be convinced that Earths gravity is decreasing and is indeed reaching crisis stage if we dont act.
Though blunted by the Enlightenment, Christianity and Judaism are still dangerous because they rest on faith, which is not based on observable reality.
Reason, the only valid means of cognition, requires 'empirical' observations to be integrated into a *non-contradictory* body of knowledge in order to be true. This process is not automatic and can be quite difficult with higher level concepts, but it enables us to know the truth with certainty.
If something thought proven is later disproved, there must have been some contradiction. Perhaps there was a mistake in the analysis or maybe microscopes just got better; knowledge is amended or expanded.
The idea of omniscience is an article of faith that must not be allowed to discredit the conclusion that reason makes certainty possible.
Quaint though it may be in modern secular society, faith is terribly destructive to human understanding of reality to the extent it is not completely jettisoned.
Morality and good will (non-compulsory charity) can be validated with certainty without any reference whatsoever to faith. But that is another topic...
What to do with all those eyewitnesses to Christ walking around with holes in his body then?
Pliney. Wasn't even a Christian, yet wrote about Christ's ressurection matter of factly as a point in time reference for one.
Oh yeah, it was long ago so it doesn't count.
Ignore history at your own peril, keep listening to the deconstructionists' mantra that all history must be lies because all history was written by the victors even though it was not and you will reap the destruction that you sow.
The Machine often wonders if that desire isn't imbedded in many today, actually.
The pro choice people have chosen death in any form, above all for themselves.
The Machine chooses life.
.
The Machine wrote: What to do with all those eyewitnesses to Christ walking around with holes in his body then?
The short answer:
Ignore them!
The long answer:
Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable. Reports of eyewitness reports are even more unreliable. The latter kind of reports are called hearsay and are inadmissible in a court of law or logic.
Add more layers of reports of reports and you have the telephone game effect in which the final report has little to no relationship to the first. Further, the so called eyewitness reports of an ancient unreproducible event that contradicts all of known science has no credibility at all.
Reports of extraordinary (aka supernatural) events requires very extraordinary evidence. No such evidence exists for a resurrected Jesus and much less evidence exists for the existence of Jesus as god on earth - any time - any place - any how.
Hence the use of the word "Faith" wherein no evidence is required for belief and contradictory evidence has no impact on said belief. The more challenged the faith holder is, the more violent he becomes.
The holder of faith cannot use reason nor can he supply evidence to support his faith. All he can do is issue endless piles of words without objective referent and resort to the use of deception, misrepresentation, and force to gain submission to his version of "the faith".
It is interesting to note that there are and have been thousands of such "faiths". They each assert they are the "one true way" in some manner. They cannot all be right but they can all be wrong.
Hence rely on reason and the currently available evidence. Ignore the multiply transliterated reports of fantastic ancient events. Consider them at best literary devices used to support the hidden or not so hidden agendas of their writers. They are anything but evidence for what the writers are pretending to report.
SteveH:
That is easy to do. Gravity is dependant on mass, and the launching of satellites and probes into space reduces the mass of the earth. So we must reject all space exploration, direct tv, etc. in order to preserve earth's precious gravity.
ARH: But Christianity and Judiaism have not rejected reason as a path to understanding creation. Post-Modernism rejects reason for faith alone, but cloaks the rejection of reason in the language of reason.
Humans are both irrational and rational at the same time, and knowing that allows a person to maintain a balance. Faith - Christ is the Risen Lord; Reason - fuel, oxygen, and heat will sustain a fire.
JDK, I don’t think Dr.S is too hard on Kant. Besides the rationalist/empiricist false dichotomy in epistemology, the deontological/consequentalist false dichotomy owes much to Kant. Aristotle avoids both.
Ever observed one fight viciously to defend their sense of hope?
If anti-spirituality was mandated, couldn't that be considered "intitiating force?"
Is green still green to the colorblind?
Who made the better Cap'n, Kirk or Spock?
So many questions. So little time.
Mikey NTH wrote: But Christianity and Judiaism have not rejected reason as a path to understanding creation.
When reason and faith are in conflict, its reason that is to be sacrificed. Judaism is a bit more practical on that matter than Christianity but there is insignificant difference between their core ideas.
Part of reason is carefully not assuming what you are trying to prove. Yet faith in ALL its forms is only that without any attempt to prove. The dogma of the faithfull are to stand alone without proof or demonstration.
At their core, faith and reason are in deep conflict and in total contradiction. The one by necessity drives out the other. To the degree one follows reason, one lives and prospers. To the degree one follows faith,... well, see the dark ages for informative detail.
>>At their core, faith and reason are in deep conflict and in total contradiction.>>
No they're not. Not anymore than geometry is irrational by accepting the basic postulates. The basic postulates cannot be proven - we take them on "faith". The rest of the discipline is reasoned from those postulates. If you don't accept them, then the rest is worthless. Judaism and Christianity rest on a base of belief in a Supreme Being. Both religions reason from that point. Since you don't accept the base, obviously the rest seems baseless, but that doesn't mean that they're unreasoned.
Was it Chesterton who pointed out that the insane man is the most logical of all - it's just that his assumptions are outside reality that makes him insane?
Speaking of postmodernism and pure bullshit, why hasn't anyone mentioned nominalism?
suek,
What you are proposing is pure rationalism. You assume your and my starting postulates are totally arbitrary (disconnected from reality and accepted on faith) and then we can only reason deductively from them. Such is not the case.
The basic axioms and principles of objective metaphysics and epistemology (even geometry) are inductively derived from the sum total of human knowledge in which they are implicitly embedded. Proof, in their case is reduction, to the facts of reality as ultimately any proof is.
There is more to reason than is contained in your philosophy. It is not that my understanding of faith that is is deficient, its your understanding of the full scope of reason that is lacking. Both induction and deduction are proper processes that can be done correctly.
However, starting in the middle of a 5000 year old random collection of notions, myths, fantastic stories, and demanding proof based upon nothing is not the way to do it.
>>There is more to reason than is contained in your philosophy.>>
Well...that's _your_ assumption.
Post-modernism claims that there is no truth, only competition for power. Thus post-modernism bears a limited resemblence to fascism. No surprise, then, that some of its founding theorists were Nazi sympathizers or collaborators, and that others eagerly embraced various mass-murdering thugs.
suek wrote: Well...that's _your_ assumption.
You have given me all the evidence I need to form a valid conclusion about you. Your current statement is simply more of the same. You believe all fundamental statements are assumptions - meaning statements without necessary connection to reality or evidential foundation. That one fact indicates a serious lack of understanding of reason on your part.
ARH,
I had the same conversation with suek on another blog six months ago. She dismisses reason with a flip of her hand. Oh, and she contends one cannot be moral without the Bible to show/tell them how to be so.
Phoenix,
I call you a liar.
Prove otherwise.
>>You believe all fundamental statements are assumptions>>
There is only one fundamental statement in which we absolutely disagree:
I believe there is a Supreme Being. You believe there is not.
All else follows from that point.
suek wrote: I believe there is a Supreme Being.
Is that an assumption?
Phoenix wrote: I had the same conversation with suek on another blog six months ago.
I don't know if suek is a he or a she and I don't care. I will simply use the generic he. Partly because I refuse to be politically correct on principle. Mostly because its stupid to keep writing he/she/it when he will do just as well.
I can believe you had much the same conversation with him. He is a common garden verity of intellectual thug who specializes in circular argumentation.
The primary indicator that he is an intellectual thug is that he thinks he has discovered an impregnable intellectual position that is beyond argument. In particular, if all thought starts with assumption and all assumptions are as good or bad as another, then all arguments are equally valid or invalid. So he need not argue to the point, or coherently, or consistently. He need only argue.
An important secondary indicator is his tendency to not mean what he says or say what he means. He has special shape shifting meanings for "faith" and "transcendent". I suspect also his use of "god" is also quite a shape shifting thing.
Finally, he does not argue to learn. He argues to win points by getting his opponent upset. Unfortunately for him, I am quite happy he is what he is. He makes a very valuable foil against which I can make some very important points. I would be quite disappointed if he changed.
Suek,
Here is my answer to your initial attack. Your words are in quotation marks and >< marks. I have included a fellow commenter who uses your name and our words to show that it is you.
"If you're not religious...what or who formulates your ideal?"
When I first read this, it implied to me that you thought anyone who does not adhere to a religious belief is incapable of thinking. That is, living in this world and being able to do the right thing without a religious system to tell me what to think. I see that I was right. Thank you for answering. I should have been more specific as your circumspect answer does not satisfy that you believe this is 100% correct. But no matter. We are walking up parallel, one-way streets that will never cross. I'll continue walking until your sanctimony gets the best of you and your transparency defines your intentions to take me down as subaltern to the world you embrace. You are being polite.
>And how do you know the difference? For example, do you _believe_ there is no God, or do you _know_ there is no God?<
I believe there is no God. Just as you believe there is one. God's existence cannot be proved, so in that, we sit in the same boat. I do, however, wish his existence could be proved because I would like to believe. It would give me comfort, I think. I continue to disdain all religion, however, and even if God's existence were proven to be a truth, I would not adhere to any religion.
Atheism is not a choice or an act of will - like theism, it is a consequence of what one knows and how one reasons. I have more of an absence of belief in the existence of any gods. Considering man lived hundreds of thousands of years before Christianity came to be by direct order of Constantine, reason tells me that belief in God is not a requirement on this planet for a fulfilling life based on personal choice without the script of religion to guide those choices.
>You state that your ideals are based on reason, but even with perfect reasoning, you must start with certain unprovable assumptions. What are yours?<
My thinking is based on reason and whatever objective reality I can hold on to when I can quiet the individual realities that are part of my upbringing and life experience. The greater those personal realities dominate my intellect, the poorer thinker I am. Wishful thinking is not truth, and it is truth I ascribe to. It is my choice because truth matters.
Do you believe that there is only one 'right' religion? One 'true' god? If so, how can that be?
.
Phoenix | 11.26.06 - 6:21 pm | #
"When I first read this, it implied to me that you thought anyone who does not adhere to a religious belief is incapable of thinking"-Phoenix
How did you find that implication? I took it at face value. She wanted to know what were your guiding lights if you had no Theistic based morality. At least, that is what I thought she meant.
I have known many non-believers and almost all of them were decent human beings with a good set of moral values, at least, as judged so by our society. I was once just like you, except I may not have been too nice. It is very difficult to be objective about one's self, but I do harbor some belief that I was socially acceptable but less than I should have been inside myself.
So, I don't see how you thought suek was denigrating in any way. I did notice that you made assumptions about her motives, as though there were ulterior ones lurking. You seem to do that a lot.
So, here is my question, since you never seem to be able to accept at face value what another says or asks, is this perchance a projection of your modus operandi?
straightarrow | 11.26.06 - 11:50 pm | #
ARH,
We are walking up the same one-way street. You nailed her as fast as I did.
And to give credence to my 'proof', it took place on Betsy's Page. Betsy mentioned in a post that she was a non-believing Jew. I made a comment that had little to do with anything as it was the first time I'd commented on the blog, and out of the waters came these sharks circling for blood. "Straightarrow's" remark: "You seem to do that a lot." made me laugh as he bases that on the one comment. Frightening folks on the attack with zero ability to 'hear' what another has to say so intent are they to tear you up as a heathen.
Phoenix,
I call you a liar.
Prove otherwise.
suek | Email | Homepage | 03.17.07 - 9:00 pm | #
Suek,
I call you a witch.
Prove otherwise.
.
HE'S NOT SO THINK AS YOU DEAD HE IS
"God not so dead: Atheism in decline worldwide
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Thursday, March 3, 2005
Gurat, France – There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble.
"Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.
His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.
Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.
Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, "Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance"."
http://www.worldtribune.com/ worl...3432.91875.html
But still, Humpty ARH Dumbty scoffs as he heads for the precipice.
You can tell that a person is a fool when they mock others more disciplined, honest, humble or knowledgable than themselves
"Suek,
I call you a witch.
Prove otherwise.
.
Phoenix "
WHAT WE ARE, WE SEE IN OTHERS, EVEN WHEN IT ISN'T THERE
Phoenix wrote: We are walking up the same one-way street. You nailed her as fast as I did.
Quite likely. Its like shooting fish in a barrel. Much too easy.
There is no creativity in their argumentation. We might as well argue by the numbers. They give augment 3 followed by argument 12. We reply with argument 6 and they reply with argument 7. In endless circles.
Its like pushing buttons on a damn copying machine. I keep hoping to see something new. Nah... This "faith" argumentation stuff is way over 20,000 years old and nothing but empty embellishment has has been added since the the beginning. Even though the different cults use different words, the total content is still zero.
Sad isn't it. Hundreds of millions of people have fought to the death over a damn zero and we are still at it.
The Machine cries.
.
JDK, I don’t think Dr.S is too hard on Kant. Besides the rationalist/empiricist false dichotomy in epistemology, the deontological/consequentalist false dichotomy owes much to Kant. Aristotle avoids both.
Quite possibly you are right about Aristotle, but that wasn't my point. Consider:
1. Marx had an interesting theory. Whenever that theory was put into practice it led to totalitarianism, mass murder and economic collapse. Ergo Marx's theory was wrong.
2. Marx was influenced by Hegel.
3. Ergo Hegel was wrong.
(3) doesn't follow from (1) {it might be independently true}.
Hence Pat should blame Rorty, Foucault and Derrida for the evils of Post Modernism. If she thinks Kant is wrong too, fine, but she needs to make a case against what Kant said not on the consequences of what Kant's disciples thought, and to an extent that's what she did do. However, apart from a quoted "Kierkegaard", she doesn't mention any of the high priests of Post Modernism (at least in this article).
This is very odd in that I doubt most people who support post modernism regard Kant as being quite so central as Hicks. In fact my memories of university are that left wingers loathed Kant precisely because of his religious convictions. So this article struck me as rather like attacking Marxism by criticising Hegel.
Phoenix said:
>>She dismisses reason with a flip of her hand. Oh, and she contends one cannot be moral without the Bible to show/tell them how to be so.>>
When challenged, Phoenix replied:
>>Here is my answer to your initial attack. Your words are in quotation marks and >< marks. I have included a fellow commenter who uses your name and our words to show that it is you.>>
I've copied and pasted all the quotes indicated by you as mine. I've cut out all responses that are yours.
"If you're not religious...what or who formulates your ideal?"
>And how do you know the difference? For example, do you _believe_ there is no God, or do you _know_ there is no God?<
>You state that your ideals are based on reason, but even with perfect reasoning, you must start with certain unprovable assumptions. What are yours?<
Three questions for you. Show me where it says I contend that you cannot be moral without the Bible. In fact, show me where the bible is mentioned at all.
JUST A "COINCIDENCE?"
"It was Friday night; the holy Shabbat that has watched over the Jewish nation since their redemption from Egypt. Henoch fumbled for something in his pocket, he found it; it was the scraps of hard bread that he had collected the entire week. He had rationed his meager portion of daily bread so that at the end of the week he could sanctify the Shabbat by reciting the kiddush over a few crusts of bread.
He was determined to do this one mitzvah, even if it would be his last. To the utter amazement of those near him on the line, and despite their feeble protests, he proceeded to recite the kiddush as if he was standing at his Shabbat table. He ate a crumb and shared the rest with the other Jews around him.
On that night the heavens opened up to hear my grandfather's kiddush. And at that exact moment, the mechanism which operated the chamber of death malfunctioned. Thirty years later he was still around to tell the story of his fateful Shabbat at Auschwitz."
No. There are no "coincidences."
It may be possible to deny one, or even a few. But there are thousands of such "coincidences," if you know where to look for them. And that's the catch. The deniers won't look, because that would require them to change. Of course, if they did look and find the evidence, they would only find a way to deny it.
Thoughtful rational people will see the connection. Rationalizers will not.
Suek,
Give it up. Whatever you want to know is in archives, November 26, at Betsy's Page. I owe you no explanation or proof of anything. You called me a liar - I showed I am not a liar. Now you just eat that accusation and grok that I spanked you with your own haughty words.
You give the faithful a bad name with your skulking predatory nature on blogs as you look for someone who says anything anti-religious. I've watched you voice your creepily insipid poison on unsuspecting people twice since you tried it with me, and that was by chance. Is it your mission to challenge and evangelize into a guilt-ridden stupor those who suffer your intrusions?
One does not discuss, debate by responding with questions in place of answers. You have no answers, and your supercilious insistence that others answer your officious demands is a transparent device to cover your inner wicked nature. What a miserably unhappy person you are.
.
Phoenix...
I can only say "Wow."
>>You called me a liar - I showed I am not a liar. Now you just eat that accusation and grok that I spanked you with your own haughty words.>>
Just "Wow".
there are thousands of such "coincidences," if you know where to look for them
Not long ago, while finishing up a project, I was also pondering my screwball idea that spirituality is simply a form of existence in a higher dimension. (*raised eyebrows, a smirk or two*) Then I found myself at the top of the ladder with the piece of trim I was going to mark and cut only to find out I’d absentmindedly brought up the drill instead of the pencil. But I placed the trim JFTHOI. It fit perfectly. Over 10’ long and within 1/32” tolerance, which I had just randomly pulled from the pile while engrossed in pondering the spiritual. Lucky me! I installed it.
Then I thought: “Did I just get so engrossed in theorizing that I somehow suspended the ‘disbelief of the material’ which allowed a brief two-way connection with my spiritual self (which according to my overly abstract yet IMHO elegant theory, knows everything everywhere in the material world including that the trim piece would fit). I thought, maybe that's how it works? Faith lets one look back through that normally one-way window? Then.. Nah. Better not tell anyone that story.
Until now.
Well, I get to show off my ignorance, I guess. (Warning: I am not a philosopher, nor do I play one on TV.)
My understanding is that Kant's transcendental idealism made the point that we receive input through the senses (empiricism) and that input is then ordered by the mind (rationalism) into knowledge. He achieved a synthesis that is hard to beat today. (It is called a Critique of PURE Reason because pure reason excludes empiricism.) What the pomos did with it is another thing entirely.
Kierkegaard's central point about reason was NOT that it be abandoned, but that faith in God could not be achieved through reason. That's why he called it a 'leap of faith,' but it was always a leap to belief first in ethics, then in God, not a rejection of reason.
FWIW
Postmodern, and even modern, philosophy tends to give me a headache.
We should oppose any system of thought or philosophy that makes successfully negotiating a stop sign impossible. For example, if our senses are not reliable, we cannot tell if a semi-truck is coming. If the law of non-contradiction is not in effect, the truck could be coming and not coming at the same time and in the same direction. If the law of cause and effect is not in play, we cannot be sure that a resulting accident would damage the sports car we are in or its passengers. Lastly, if truth does not correspond to reality, the reality of the approaching ‘semi’ might prove deadly. Philosophical systems must allow us to survive in the real world in which we live.
Perhaps those who deny these basics should try running more stop signs. The results would be extremely convincing.
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