Oh, so well do I remember, way back before "Woody Guthrie's Guitar" got banned at the ol' Brain Trust, being part of a long discussion, not a fight, with Tena and some other folk over Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of The Constitution of the United States and Max Farrand's The Framing of the Constitution of the United States and other such stuff. Back before those were available on pdfs and you had to type out things from the dead tree editions to make your arguments. Now it's what they've bought at Amazon and watched on premium cable and how everyone who doesn't come from a major city on the East, West coast or the coast of a Great Lake are poopy-heads, what they ate or how their rumatiz and stomach are acting up.
So, big deal. I only pay attention to that stuff as I find it useful, now.
I do have to say that as I was stacking wood the other day, thinking about the brawl here over the honor of St. Charles Darwin, how in the constant chorus of "You don't have any evidence" sung while pretending that massive evidence in the very words of Darwin and virtually all of the relevant figures in science wasn't provided, I think there is something to discern about the atheist personality, the ability to pretend that evidence they don't like isn't there.
It was while thinking about a relative who, as he was dying, bitterly announced to his family, the medical staff he was being so difficult to and anyone else who visited him out of a sense of moral obligation that he was an atheist ever since he figured it all out at the age of six. That there was nothing to it, that life sucked and then we died and rotted. It was like the last act of a play that included the scene of him declaring at a family Christmas in front of his truly saintly parents that he celebrated by reading William Burroughs' A Junky's Christmas.
Here he was, on his death bed, surrounded by evidence to the contrary, all around him, of his family who had taken care of him in his long and horrible decline, grace which was certainly not easily demonstrated, considering what a jerk he was being, in real life, and he still denied it. Maybe you had to know him and them to understand that.
I think a lot of atheism is just a result of willful denial by people who want to deny reality that is there to be seen by people who choose to see it.
"I think a lot of atheism is just a result of willful denial by people who want to deny reality that is there to be seen by people who choose to see it."
ReplyDeleteIt's about power and selfishness (disguised as self-assertion), mixed with equal parts ignorance and arrogance.
And about excluding humility as much as possible. Which makes them similar to a lot of Christians, actually, and explains why they identify themselves by bashing those Christians (who they mistake for all Christians).
It's the beam in the eye, in other words, and about how that is all they choose to see.
There is a definite love of hurting other people in way too many atheists I've known. I've known non-atheists that was true of but I doubt the percentage is as high. I think it's one of the things they hate the most about religious belief is that they think people get some positive feeling from it.
DeleteSparky, how about explaining how misrepresenting Darwin (only you called him a saint) makes any point at all? other than "some 19th century middle class brit was not as enlightened as I *think* I am".
ReplyDeleteAs I'm not the one misrepresenting him, I having presented him in his own words, I don't know what you think you mean.
DeleteWere you drinking when you wrote this?
Your "Darwin's own words" is about as honest as the doctored PP video. And you still haven't explained why you are obsessing about Darwin.
DeleteConsidering the only words you've quoted from Darwin were the often quote-mined "aid we must give" passage, and you quote mined even that, and I've given entire paragraphs, two or three at a time, with what he cited in those paragraphs and other paragraphs and entire letters to support my point about them, I'm entirely justified in pointing that out. The defenders of the phony post-war, eugenics free Charles Darwin who has to be lied into existence, ignoring what he and those whose eugenics were inspired by him said, never quote him in full, ever. And they never put what he said in a full context of what he said.
DeleteAnd, as I've explained, at length. over, literally dozens of posts why I've written so much about the direct relationship of Charles Darwin to eugenics in both the English language and the German language and, inevitably, for that, his relationship with Nazi eugenics, your claim that I "still haven't explained" CONFIRMS MY POINT THAT YOU PEOPLE DENY WHAT'S LAID OUT, EXPLICITLY RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES.
Are you so blind that you can't see the evidence of your own behavior that you provide as you believe you're refuting my point that you only see what you choose to, being willfully blind to all else?
I was drinking when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray...
ReplyDeleteNothing you write goes astray. And if it was astray, it would be a nice stray.
DeleteI've got so few friends I've got to keep the ones I've got.