- Oct 6, 2008
- 125,095
- 60,651
1. Reason or Morality....Which one should guide society?
Either our ability to use logic and reason, or obedience to the morality forged in the crucible of millennia of human interactions and experience?
I know....both would be nice. But, with secularism in the ascendancy, the cultural battle rarely allows for compromise.
2. Begin with the tools involved: The human mind may be worshiped, but it cannot be trusted. That is why we codify laws.
Eugene Debs said Even if I could, I would not lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.
a. Demagoguery is the attempt to convince the people that they can be led into the Promised Land. America would be better if the electorate would notice the similarities between Lose Weight Without Dieting, and Hope.
3. The Bible is the wisdom of the West. It is from the precepts of the Bible that the legal systems of the West have been developed- systems, worked out over millennia, for dealing with inequality, with injustice, with greed, reducible t that which Christians call the Golden Rule, and the Jews had propounded as That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.
It is these rules and laws which form a framework which allows the individual foreknowledge of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.
a. This is the great contribution of our Judeo-Christian foundation to Western civilization. The principles of justice are laid down in the Torah and the Gospels, and implemented through human actions memorialized in judicial codes.
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."
4. Since the 18th century Enlightenment, many Westerners have made the mistake of believing that reason can exist separate from civilization, and that enlightened necessitates a repudiation of religion.
a. In the Middle Ages, people were irrational and superstitious and ignorant, and went around killing each other in religious wars. The view developed that disapproval of these characteristics and events meant embracing of an anti-religion viewpoint, and then progress, liberty and happiness must follow!
b. 'The Enlightenment' has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking.\
5. And events that came from the Enlightenment resulted in 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.' While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty.
But did said 'enlightenment' actually oppose " blind faith or obedience"? Or did it simple superimpose a different object of genuflection?
a. Voltaire claimed that the infamy was not just the Catholic Church, but phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him. Christianity itself, he cried "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous."
b. Unlike France, thinkers in Britain and America embraced religion as an amalgamation with social virture, in the former and political liberty, in the latter.
c. The French invested reason with the same dogmatic status as religion, creating a secular reflection of the Catholic Church.
Reason, or nature, or the general will, became the civil religion. Thus authoritarianism was there from the time of the French Revolution.
d. The philosopher Condorcet believed that the application of mathematics and statistics to social policy would result in general happiness, truth and virtue.
e. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets.
f. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes todays liberals doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.
Breitbart, "Righteous Indignation."
So....where, then, is the great change, the great difference between the bending of the knee to what we call God, or the bending of the knee to the god called reason?
And, is the world better due to this change?
Either our ability to use logic and reason, or obedience to the morality forged in the crucible of millennia of human interactions and experience?
I know....both would be nice. But, with secularism in the ascendancy, the cultural battle rarely allows for compromise.
2. Begin with the tools involved: The human mind may be worshiped, but it cannot be trusted. That is why we codify laws.
Eugene Debs said Even if I could, I would not lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.
a. Demagoguery is the attempt to convince the people that they can be led into the Promised Land. America would be better if the electorate would notice the similarities between Lose Weight Without Dieting, and Hope.
3. The Bible is the wisdom of the West. It is from the precepts of the Bible that the legal systems of the West have been developed- systems, worked out over millennia, for dealing with inequality, with injustice, with greed, reducible t that which Christians call the Golden Rule, and the Jews had propounded as That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.
It is these rules and laws which form a framework which allows the individual foreknowledge of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.
a. This is the great contribution of our Judeo-Christian foundation to Western civilization. The principles of justice are laid down in the Torah and the Gospels, and implemented through human actions memorialized in judicial codes.
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."
4. Since the 18th century Enlightenment, many Westerners have made the mistake of believing that reason can exist separate from civilization, and that enlightened necessitates a repudiation of religion.
a. In the Middle Ages, people were irrational and superstitious and ignorant, and went around killing each other in religious wars. The view developed that disapproval of these characteristics and events meant embracing of an anti-religion viewpoint, and then progress, liberty and happiness must follow!
b. 'The Enlightenment' has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking.\
5. And events that came from the Enlightenment resulted in 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.' While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty.
But did said 'enlightenment' actually oppose " blind faith or obedience"? Or did it simple superimpose a different object of genuflection?
a. Voltaire claimed that the infamy was not just the Catholic Church, but phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him. Christianity itself, he cried "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous."
b. Unlike France, thinkers in Britain and America embraced religion as an amalgamation with social virture, in the former and political liberty, in the latter.
c. The French invested reason with the same dogmatic status as religion, creating a secular reflection of the Catholic Church.
Reason, or nature, or the general will, became the civil religion. Thus authoritarianism was there from the time of the French Revolution.
d. The philosopher Condorcet believed that the application of mathematics and statistics to social policy would result in general happiness, truth and virtue.
e. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets.
f. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes todays liberals doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.
Breitbart, "Righteous Indignation."
So....where, then, is the great change, the great difference between the bending of the knee to what we call God, or the bending of the knee to the god called reason?
And, is the world better due to this change?
