tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post1806893561584233169..comments2024-03-26T14:20:38.103-04:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: The Burden of ProofUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-58506197112969369762014-05-23T20:19:49.455-04:002014-05-23T20:19:49.455-04:00The empirical evidence of real life validates what...The empirical evidence of real life validates what you learned there. You have to be a science-based, atheist "ethicist" to come up with a position denying that morality is real - even as you flail against the immorality of your ideological opponents - it takes that kind of sciency realism to come up with something like that. Oh, they give themselves a dispensation to suspend consistency in a case like that, so it's OK. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-55432545238093331852014-05-23T17:23:29.483-04:002014-05-23T17:23:29.483-04:00Re: Vidal and Day: I know. I haven't read a...Re: Vidal and Day: I know. I haven't read anything on any website as radical as what I came across in seminary. I was actually truly radicalized there.<br /><br />Which, of course, is an impossibility, as all I learned there was fairy tales and myths.<br /><br />Anyway....Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-30992714993100675082014-05-23T16:56:19.654-04:002014-05-23T16:56:19.654-04:00The least bad of them have not said anything to ma...The least bad of them have not said anything to match James Coyne, Jeremiah Wright, nothing as significant intellectually, socially, politically or spiritually. They haven't said anything scientifically as interesting as what Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake or John Searles has. <br /><br />I read O'Heir's piece at Salon about Gore Vidal and, as entertaining and interesting as he was, I can't help but feel that Vidal is fading fast into the past. I don't think he has said anything that matches the Liberation Theologians or Dorothy Day in radicalism. <br /><br />The online athiests are as close to indulging in Orwellian hate minutes as I've seen. I had an aunt I loved dearly, who, when she was very old and had suffered a lot, spent all day sitting on her couch watching the phony judge shows, getting upset by them. I thought it was a horrible way to spend her last days and she had the excuse of being in her late 80s. The kids who spend all day doing that now are going to be really mean by the time they get old. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-61500298330874333742014-05-23T16:18:54.248-04:002014-05-23T16:18:54.248-04:00America has no public intellectuals, outside of Ch...America has no public intellectuals, outside of Chomsky.<br /><br />We have popularizers, like Sagan and Tyson. And we follow the Pied Piper of Dawkins because he plays the tune we want to dance to.<br /><br />Derrida traveled between France and California, teaching at two different universities and attending seminars where he would frequently lecture. Foucault use to make public appearances on occasion at the institution that paid his bills. The lectures were always SRO.<br /><br />Try to imagine that in America. Foucault wrote incisively about the nature of power; Derrida wrote incisively about the nature of television and evangelism and of religious belief (he was a professor of Philosophy of Religion in CA). Much of what he said on TV and evangelists concerned, of course, America.<br /><br />America couldn't be bothered to so much as notice.<br /><br />I've given up (again!) on on-line atheists. They are prattling children repeating bromides. They have no understanding, and don't want any. Like monkeys in a cage, they just want to fling poo. That quote you started the post with is an devoid of content and thought as it is of insight. What can you do with people like that? Insist that they are taking over the world, and only you can oppose them?<br /><br />That's the argument that draws 300+ comments every time Salon posts another article about Cosmos and the creationists. As if anyone besides the handful of people at Salon is paying attention to the subject, or the creationists, for that matter. They tell me repeatedly that 30% of the American public "believes" in Creationism.<br /><br />A far higher percentage claims to believe in God; but their ideas about God are just as disjointed as creationism. I honestly think most people keep contradictory ideas in their head (the fossil record v. creationism for example) because they really don't care that much about the ideas in the first place.<br /><br />Much like all the on-line atheists who insist THEY are the only "rational ones." If they stopped hating religion and just started ignoring it, what raison d'être would they have?Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-7120872920231306052014-05-23T16:07:42.879-04:002014-05-23T16:07:42.879-04:00I have found, in my several online interactions wi...I have found, in my several online interactions with these big name scientist, atheists, that if you come up with a point they can't comfortably answer or dismiss that they will get as angry as any Biblical fundamentalist will. They don't want to consider anything that challenges the would be hegemony of their scientism and atheism. <br /><br />I know I keep on about rights and moral obligations to respect those but I got into this as a political animal and I continue to think that is the most practically important aspect of it. I don't want to have to trust that the residuum of morality that atheists retain as a cultural holdover from the religious milieu in which they were born lasting through even two generations of atheism as a majority position. I look to what Vernon Kellog found in the intelligentsia of Germany during the First World War and what that became in the next generation. And they had a real intelligentsia, whereas we've got the celebrity atheists plus Tyson. I've had several young people who I know don't understand what the issues are assure me that Tyson is brilliant, though I find him quite pedestrian as I did Sagan. His response to people bringing up the historical inaccuracy he was peddling, that he was just reading a text someone else wrote, to be stunningly bad behavior for an alleged academic and intellectual. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-1141346839708544242014-05-23T14:12:59.105-04:002014-05-23T14:12:59.105-04:00Whenever Dawkins' "thought" is subje...Whenever Dawkins' "thought" is subjected to reasoned critique, his supporters always retreated to ad hominem or "He didn't say that!" or some other redoubt.<br /><br />I've yet to find one who can discuss the issues rationally and from an informed basis, largely because Dawkins is neither rational nor informed in his critique. His argument rests on the notion that the rest of the world is crazy, and only he and those who agree with him are sane.<br /><br />The standing joke in seminary is about the student who went in devout, and came out an atheist. As soon as science majors have a joke about the evolutionist who came out a creationist, call me. Not that creationism has any basis, but when your education puts you through such an epistemological wringer you are forced to fish or cut bait (defend your beliefs or abandon it, along with the Sunday school paradigms you've been clinging to), we can talk about these matters on an equal basis.<br /><br />Philosophy majors face the same challenge. But science majors learn one thing: the correctness of the science. If they learn everything they know is wrong, can they learn science?<br /><br />They certainly can't learn how to reason.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.com