I will comment on the WaPo ABC poll you think will upset me when I can see the numbers behind the numbers. They admit they polled 1000 people, by phone (already a problem as phone polls are notorious for being unreliable) and, since the categories reported aren't attached to any numbers, we have no idea how big the sub samples of those are. I have no idea if the sample you seem to want to take such pride in "non-religious" is a large one or even what "non-religious" comprises. If, as with the PEW category "Nones", it includes people who aren't members of any denomination, I would be included in that group you seem to want to represent as being atheists. So, already, the assumption it does what you want it do doesn't work. If it is a conglomeration of disparate groups, it doesn't tell you much.
I would wonder at a poll of 1000 that sampled in proportion to the presence of a group in the general population. For atheists that would be a sample of fewer than 30 people. I wouldn't trust that sample to tell you anything about atheists in the general population and what they think. I can't even seem to find the kind of atheist I know in the hundreds I encounter online. Most of the atheists I know, personally, aren't bigoted jerks like you and your blog buddies. If the percentages in the polls aren't representative of the general population, that is also a problem with the assertion it tells us anything about the population it allegedly represents.
Considering we got into a huge fight a couple of years ago over one of your favorite shows, 24, torture promotion porn making the torture advocate, Rupert Murdoch money, it's kind of rich for you to think you've got something to tell me about it. Not to mention your habitual approval for the Israeli actions in Gaza and elsewhere. I'm also on record as disapproving of torture there and generally. In fact, I just posted part of an old piece I did arguing why it should be illegal. It wasn't the only one I wrote to that effect.
More generally, it is your beloved TV that is the foremost promoter of torture to the American people, including that show you love which presents young(ish) Sutherland as a sexy torturer. And you called me a snob the last time I pointed out how much I hated TV. See also: my comment dissing American movies the other day.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Pawel Lukaszewski - O Clavis David
Wells Cathedral School Choralia, conducted by Christopher Finch
O Oriens
Samford A Cappella
A luminous and different choral style, using resonance to amazing effect.
O Oriens
O Oriens,
O breaking dawn
splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:
splendor of eternal light and the sun of justice
veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
come and enlighten those who linger in darkness and the shadow of death.
O Clavis David - Magnificat
O Clavis David - Magnificat
No singers listed
Peter Witte
O Clavis David
Michael Schmoll, Chor: Corona Vocalis
Levente Gyöngyösi
O Clavis David
Coro Universitario de Mendoza - Andreas Meier conductor
No singers listed
Peter Witte
Michael Schmoll, Chor: Corona Vocalis
Levente Gyöngyösi
O Clavis David
Coro Universitario de Mendoza - Andreas Meier conductor
"Journalism" c. 2014 Explained in One Sentence
It's all about clicks and the cliques that can be attracted to click them.
The Atheist "Left" Its Magical Thinking And The Disastrous Results
Yesterday I criticized the idea that egalitarian democracy, economic justice, social equality were compatible with materialism, that those rarest of fragile phenomena in politics and society could just, somehow, manage to arise from the substrate of assumptions and ideas that constitute materialism. That assumption of substrate neutrality for those central holdings of authentic liberalism, the program of any legitimate left in regard to materialism is, I think, central to the failure of the left. It is implicated in many if not all of the disastrous and self-impeaching trends in the left for the past century and a half and it has alienated the left from its natural base among people who reject materialism.
That concept of substrate neutrality in regard those very concepts such as equality and justice is especially bizarre when asserted by materialists because materialism is, itself, incompatible with the idea that the effects wouldn't be determined from their causes. In the radically restricted and monist system that is materialism different causal precedents would necessarily lead to different effects. You couldn't start from something which produced, say, a real effective and determining belief in universal equality or its resultant economic justice, change one of the essential components that led to that kind of potent belief in equality and come up with that belief in its most potent form from the radically changed causal antecedent of the results. Yet materialists who assert that their purported devotion to equality and justice are the product of their materialism instead of in essential conflict with it are in constant denial that magic has to, somewhere, be involved in their alchemy. They have to constantly violate their materialism to hold both things and, when push comes to shove, it is as likely to be their ideals that suffer on behalf of their materialist faith.
That is especially true when that most useful of ideas in the culture of atheism is brought into the mix, Darwinism. There the would-be lefty atheist has to pretend the entire history of Darwinism WITHIN SCIENCE never happened to maintain the illogical balancing act between their ideology and their ideals. It is an inconvenient and unmentionable fact that human eugenics was and still is an inevitable conclusion whenever it is a required belief that natural selection is a universal law of science. That is shown by mainstream Darwinsts from Charles Darwin, through his closest associates such as Haeckel and Galton, right up through the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Fischer and Haldane, through the period of DNA fundamentalism of Watson and Crick and the Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists and even, I suspect, as non-adaptationist genetics and epigentics are placed in a marriage of convenience with natural selection. Eugenics has been asserted by most of its main figures, promoted by them in both its most aggressive or passive forms. The history of conventional Darwinism shows that the short post-war period when eugenics was discredited, socially, is the fluke not eugenics.
That eugenics is central to Darwinism as relevant to the human species was noted by Darwin, both in his endorsement of the most extreme form of it, stated in works he endorsed by both Galton and, even more so Haeckel*. The attempt to distance scientific Darwinism from "Social Darwinism" depends on the lie that Charles Darwin, himself, didn't state that they were identical in the fifth and sixth editions of Origin of Species and that assumption was held and asserted by virtually every conventional Darwinist from then on. It was the anti-eugenic Darwinists such as Franz Boaz who were the flukes, not the Karl Pearsons, Ronald Fishers, James Watsons, and Francis Cricks. And such people as Richard Dawkins occasionally let slip that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, blaming Hitler for making it disreputable.
Whatever else you might justifiably say about the throughly repulsive though entirely conventional Darwinist*, Ernst Haeckel, he was honest about both the usefulness of Darwinism for atheism and its logical conclusions, given his ideological foundation. It was Darwinism to which he credited the "final triumph" of materialist monism which has no room for such concepts as justice and morality and that it necessitates a belief in innate inequality in humans and that the extermination, by nature and by human beings as agents of nature, of even entire ethnic groups of human beings is inevitable and the way of nature. Since natural selection is a development from Malthus and incorporates and extends his assumptions, I don't see how a materialist could hold that those aren't essential to the idea and that it doesn't, inescapably, refute the very bases of political liberalism, as, indeed, Haeckel stated in writing which Darwin endorsed. You would have to acknowledge something outside of their materialist monism for that to not be an inevitable conclusion and that is not permitted under materialism. And the same is true for other materialist systems of thought, such as Marxism and its various sects and cults.
In an article published in The Nation in 1997, Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh issued a sort of atheist fatwa against the critics of Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, the currently fashionable form of biological determinism. The central issues in their condemnation are old ones, as old as the use of biology as a pillar of atheist ideology, accusing the critics of those of the intellectually unforgivable, of being religious. In the process, I'll point out, they conveniently ignore quite a bit of stuff, even claiming the most prominent critics of Sociobiology, Gould, Lewontin and Hubbard as allies for the defense of the very things they rejected. It's such a mish-mash of stuff - including falsified history - that it would take a series of posts to sort it out but it is based on pretending that natural selection and history of Darwinism isn't strong evidence that it is basically at odds with the central pillars of the left. Inequality IS the central assumption of natural selection, it is intrinsic to the idea, it is an inescapable conclusion of that idea BECAUSE IT IS THE FOUNDATION OF IT. In materialist monism it will always and inevitably lead to the conclusion that equality and justice are illusions. It will turn the moral obligations central to liberalism into the opposite, a foolish generator of dysgenic forces in the human population which could lead to our extinction. The only possibility for someone to hold that both natural selection is valid and that the very foundations of the left are true is to acknowledge that there is more to life, to the universe than what is included in that materialist monist system which is the actual god of atheists faith.
I think the failure of that materialist "left" is due to the fact that its central faith is incompatible with what defines a real left and it, inevitably, will turn on the great underclass that is the genuine center of leftist politics, turning them from the image of God into the "unfit" or at least "the masses" to be managed by an elite of the most fit or those who are in some way superior. Not a single, even Marxist government, has not had that as its major failing and in most a central aspect of its very being. The failure of the atheist left is founded on the basic conflict between their faith and their alleged ideals which will always, in practice, be placed aside for their atheism. I think that the election losing condescension and snobbery that is inherent to the secular left is a cultural product of it. The People are not such fools that they don't notice at least that much of it. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nellie Bly turn in Nickled and Dimed hardly makes up for it. As I've said before, I'd guess that book was read more by church folk devoted to social justice than atheists.
* Based on no less an authority than Charles Darwin, also by Thomas Huxley.
Update: I have set out the extensive record of endorsement of Ernst Haeckel, Francis Galton and other eugenicists, scientific racists and advocates of both eugenics and the salubrious effects of the "unfit" being killed, up to and including entire ethnic groups by Charles Darwin. I don't hesitate to say that the case is open and shut and based, entirely on Charles Darwin's published words endorsing specific works in which those things are said, especially by Haeckel, the record of his endorsement of Haeckel is massive, specific and without reservation. Charles Darwin has a unique place in the history and phenomenon of Darwinism, his identification of Haeckel's POV with his own was explicit in the introductory pages of The Descent of Man, throughout that book and in many existing letters in his own hand. If you want to deny that record you will need documents in which Charles Darwin retracted his endorsement after he made it, which would need to be not too long before his death. In order to overcome the documentary record in Darwin's words nothing short of more of Darwin's words will do it. So long as it's an honest evaluation of the truth you want, which I have generally found people of your ideology aren't really interested in.
That concept of substrate neutrality in regard those very concepts such as equality and justice is especially bizarre when asserted by materialists because materialism is, itself, incompatible with the idea that the effects wouldn't be determined from their causes. In the radically restricted and monist system that is materialism different causal precedents would necessarily lead to different effects. You couldn't start from something which produced, say, a real effective and determining belief in universal equality or its resultant economic justice, change one of the essential components that led to that kind of potent belief in equality and come up with that belief in its most potent form from the radically changed causal antecedent of the results. Yet materialists who assert that their purported devotion to equality and justice are the product of their materialism instead of in essential conflict with it are in constant denial that magic has to, somewhere, be involved in their alchemy. They have to constantly violate their materialism to hold both things and, when push comes to shove, it is as likely to be their ideals that suffer on behalf of their materialist faith.
That is especially true when that most useful of ideas in the culture of atheism is brought into the mix, Darwinism. There the would-be lefty atheist has to pretend the entire history of Darwinism WITHIN SCIENCE never happened to maintain the illogical balancing act between their ideology and their ideals. It is an inconvenient and unmentionable fact that human eugenics was and still is an inevitable conclusion whenever it is a required belief that natural selection is a universal law of science. That is shown by mainstream Darwinsts from Charles Darwin, through his closest associates such as Haeckel and Galton, right up through the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Fischer and Haldane, through the period of DNA fundamentalism of Watson and Crick and the Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists and even, I suspect, as non-adaptationist genetics and epigentics are placed in a marriage of convenience with natural selection. Eugenics has been asserted by most of its main figures, promoted by them in both its most aggressive or passive forms. The history of conventional Darwinism shows that the short post-war period when eugenics was discredited, socially, is the fluke not eugenics.
That eugenics is central to Darwinism as relevant to the human species was noted by Darwin, both in his endorsement of the most extreme form of it, stated in works he endorsed by both Galton and, even more so Haeckel*. The attempt to distance scientific Darwinism from "Social Darwinism" depends on the lie that Charles Darwin, himself, didn't state that they were identical in the fifth and sixth editions of Origin of Species and that assumption was held and asserted by virtually every conventional Darwinist from then on. It was the anti-eugenic Darwinists such as Franz Boaz who were the flukes, not the Karl Pearsons, Ronald Fishers, James Watsons, and Francis Cricks. And such people as Richard Dawkins occasionally let slip that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, blaming Hitler for making it disreputable.
Whatever else you might justifiably say about the throughly repulsive though entirely conventional Darwinist*, Ernst Haeckel, he was honest about both the usefulness of Darwinism for atheism and its logical conclusions, given his ideological foundation. It was Darwinism to which he credited the "final triumph" of materialist monism which has no room for such concepts as justice and morality and that it necessitates a belief in innate inequality in humans and that the extermination, by nature and by human beings as agents of nature, of even entire ethnic groups of human beings is inevitable and the way of nature. Since natural selection is a development from Malthus and incorporates and extends his assumptions, I don't see how a materialist could hold that those aren't essential to the idea and that it doesn't, inescapably, refute the very bases of political liberalism, as, indeed, Haeckel stated in writing which Darwin endorsed. You would have to acknowledge something outside of their materialist monism for that to not be an inevitable conclusion and that is not permitted under materialism. And the same is true for other materialist systems of thought, such as Marxism and its various sects and cults.
In an article published in The Nation in 1997, Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh issued a sort of atheist fatwa against the critics of Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, the currently fashionable form of biological determinism. The central issues in their condemnation are old ones, as old as the use of biology as a pillar of atheist ideology, accusing the critics of those of the intellectually unforgivable, of being religious. In the process, I'll point out, they conveniently ignore quite a bit of stuff, even claiming the most prominent critics of Sociobiology, Gould, Lewontin and Hubbard as allies for the defense of the very things they rejected. It's such a mish-mash of stuff - including falsified history - that it would take a series of posts to sort it out but it is based on pretending that natural selection and history of Darwinism isn't strong evidence that it is basically at odds with the central pillars of the left. Inequality IS the central assumption of natural selection, it is intrinsic to the idea, it is an inescapable conclusion of that idea BECAUSE IT IS THE FOUNDATION OF IT. In materialist monism it will always and inevitably lead to the conclusion that equality and justice are illusions. It will turn the moral obligations central to liberalism into the opposite, a foolish generator of dysgenic forces in the human population which could lead to our extinction. The only possibility for someone to hold that both natural selection is valid and that the very foundations of the left are true is to acknowledge that there is more to life, to the universe than what is included in that materialist monist system which is the actual god of atheists faith.
I think the failure of that materialist "left" is due to the fact that its central faith is incompatible with what defines a real left and it, inevitably, will turn on the great underclass that is the genuine center of leftist politics, turning them from the image of God into the "unfit" or at least "the masses" to be managed by an elite of the most fit or those who are in some way superior. Not a single, even Marxist government, has not had that as its major failing and in most a central aspect of its very being. The failure of the atheist left is founded on the basic conflict between their faith and their alleged ideals which will always, in practice, be placed aside for their atheism. I think that the election losing condescension and snobbery that is inherent to the secular left is a cultural product of it. The People are not such fools that they don't notice at least that much of it. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nellie Bly turn in Nickled and Dimed hardly makes up for it. As I've said before, I'd guess that book was read more by church folk devoted to social justice than atheists.
* Based on no less an authority than Charles Darwin, also by Thomas Huxley.
Update: I have set out the extensive record of endorsement of Ernst Haeckel, Francis Galton and other eugenicists, scientific racists and advocates of both eugenics and the salubrious effects of the "unfit" being killed, up to and including entire ethnic groups by Charles Darwin. I don't hesitate to say that the case is open and shut and based, entirely on Charles Darwin's published words endorsing specific works in which those things are said, especially by Haeckel, the record of his endorsement of Haeckel is massive, specific and without reservation. Charles Darwin has a unique place in the history and phenomenon of Darwinism, his identification of Haeckel's POV with his own was explicit in the introductory pages of The Descent of Man, throughout that book and in many existing letters in his own hand. If you want to deny that record you will need documents in which Charles Darwin retracted his endorsement after he made it, which would need to be not too long before his death. In order to overcome the documentary record in Darwin's words nothing short of more of Darwin's words will do it. So long as it's an honest evaluation of the truth you want, which I have generally found people of your ideology aren't really interested in.
Mikołaj Zieleński - Magnificat
Magnificat
Bornus Consort, Linnamussikud de Tallin
Score
In researching and posting this meditation on The Magnificat, I keep having to say that one setting or another is a big surprise to me. This is among the biggest. It is excellent and by a composer I never knew existed before finding this recording. Poland isn't a a country that figures highly in the conventional teaching of music history until Chopin and not too much after him. The surprises in my research of this shows that the conventional teaching of music history, designed to be stuffed into the lecture schedule of a four-year university music degree program is hardly an adequate view of what really happened in music. What is true of Poland is likely true of most other places and composers not included in that curriculum and the textbooks written to fit into it.
The triple chorus version would, I imagine, have been intended for a specific church with specific locations for the three choirs. The doubling of voices with instruments would, I'd also imagine, be in keeping with performance practice of the time and place, Zieleński had obviously heard the Venetian style of music which used this kind of instrumentation. The extent to which composers in Venice or other places would have been aware of Zieleński, I don't know but I would imagine there could have been mutual influences.
Here is a performance without instruments by The Choir of Warsaw School of Economics, Tomasz Hynek conducting. I have a feeling few American schools of economics have such a fine choir.
I keep finding new settings to put on my list. Instead of running out of things worth posting I'll never fit them all in. I'll have to do this next year, too if I'm still around.
Bornus Consort, Linnamussikud de Tallin
Score
In researching and posting this meditation on The Magnificat, I keep having to say that one setting or another is a big surprise to me. This is among the biggest. It is excellent and by a composer I never knew existed before finding this recording. Poland isn't a a country that figures highly in the conventional teaching of music history until Chopin and not too much after him. The surprises in my research of this shows that the conventional teaching of music history, designed to be stuffed into the lecture schedule of a four-year university music degree program is hardly an adequate view of what really happened in music. What is true of Poland is likely true of most other places and composers not included in that curriculum and the textbooks written to fit into it.
The triple chorus version would, I imagine, have been intended for a specific church with specific locations for the three choirs. The doubling of voices with instruments would, I'd also imagine, be in keeping with performance practice of the time and place, Zieleński had obviously heard the Venetian style of music which used this kind of instrumentation. The extent to which composers in Venice or other places would have been aware of Zieleński, I don't know but I would imagine there could have been mutual influences.
Here is a performance without instruments by The Choir of Warsaw School of Economics, Tomasz Hynek conducting. I have a feeling few American schools of economics have such a fine choir.
I keep finding new settings to put on my list. Instead of running out of things worth posting I'll never fit them all in. I'll have to do this next year, too if I'm still around.
Friday, December 19, 2014
O Clavis David
O Clavis David
Dominican student brothers in Oxford.
O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
who opened and none can close
claudis, et nemo aperit:
you shut and none can open
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
those who in darkness dwell and from the shadow of death.
Dominican student brothers in Oxford.
O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
who opened and none can close
claudis, et nemo aperit:
you shut and none can open
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
those who in darkness dwell and from the shadow of death.
Christmas Wish
One thing I wish is that someone in my family would need their car worked on in the next few days. The garage in the next town were they all go is owned by a lovely Lebanese family and at Christmas they give their old customers the most wonderful baklava type pastry made by the mother. Not too sweet with lots of nuts. The best I've ever had.
I think I'll go sabotage someone's car by dark of night. Unfortunately, I don't drive anymore or I'd sabotage mine.
I think I'll go sabotage someone's car by dark of night. Unfortunately, I don't drive anymore or I'd sabotage mine.
Anonymous - Magnificat
Magnificat
Perfugium - Church of St . Joseph in Krakow
Bogumil Kowalska , Natalia Forging , Joanna Przybyłowska ,
Bozena Solarz - Sopranos
Zofia Nowak , Magdalena Rychiak - Altos
James Blycharz , Matthew Solarz , Matthew Smith - Tenors
Michael Klos , Peter Przybyłowski - Bases
Perfugium - Church of St . Joseph in Krakow
Bogumil Kowalska , Natalia Forging , Joanna Przybyłowska ,
Bozena Solarz - Sopranos
Zofia Nowak , Magdalena Rychiak - Altos
James Blycharz , Matthew Solarz , Matthew Smith - Tenors
Michael Klos , Peter Przybyłowski - Bases
Vytautas Miškinis - O Radix Jesse
O Radix Jesse
State choir VILNIUS
Conductor Povilas Gylys
How's that for your divided parts? I'd like to know how many there are in this setting.
Rihards Dubra - O Radix Jesse
O Radix Jesse
Choir of Merton College, Oxford
State choir VILNIUS
Conductor Povilas Gylys
How's that for your divided parts? I'd like to know how many there are in this setting.
Rihards Dubra - O Radix Jesse
O Radix Jesse
Choir of Merton College, Oxford
Because The Law, The Prophets and The Gospel Are Radical I Am Radical
Years ago, before the rise of the new atheism, back when it was still just atheism, back before its online archive lists, I remember reading an article in one of the lefty magazines I subscribed to* which criticized religious leftists because the author said they needed a crutch to support their radicalism but that atheists didn't need that. Which, at the time, I was willing to accept out of that habit of fairness to different points of view and the faith that because we all claimed to have the same goals that our differences didn't matter. What I've come to see was never based in a rigorous consideration of the situation and the liklihood of which attitudes and actions were likely to lead to those goals being made real in politics and in life.
In part that passive acceptance was due to not having the resources to really investigate the claims made in that article. It's something that, after looking far more deeply at what atheists say and do since going online, I think is evidence free bilge. For example, the article included praise for the most prominent atheist in the United States, Madalyn Murray O'Hair who, I have since learned, had as many flaws as any sleazy TV based hallelujah peddler or corrupt cardinal and a record of the most vulgar materialism, theft and fraud behind the thinnest of false fronts. She was presented by the article as some kind of radical activist by virtue of her war against religion. For a lot of people reputedly on the left, that is the defining issue for them, atheism and hatred of religion. It is why you encounter people allegedly of the left who still hold a torch for Christopher Hitchens and who mistake Sam Harris as a lefty. To continue with the general theme from yesterday.
Such folk cannot conceive of a Christian as being a political radical, far more radical, in just about every case I've confronted, than the callow atheist who accuses you of holding regressive positions you don't, even those who idolize Hitchens, who actually did hold them. It is a never ending thing, having people on the supposed left doubt your credentials as a leftist because you, as the vast majority of people on the left, are not atheists. And, I would say, that I have known more atheists formerly of the left turn conservative than I have religious leftists who have turned. My experience is that it is not unknown for religious people to become more liberal as they age. I have become far, far more radical as I abandoned the self-imposed blinders of agnosticism and have seen that a real program of the left is founded in religious values that atheism corrodes. Atheism which, like almost all of it, is based in materialism, at least.
I am radical because The Law and the prophets and The Gospels, Acts and the epistles are all radical. I was a radical while I was an agnostic and hostile to religion because of the tradition I inherited from Christians. I think that's what accounts for whatever liberalism the largest majority of non-religious people in the United States holds, it's a habit of that tradition in their habits of thought. It can endure for a generation or two but will, I've observed, deteriorate the farther from its roots it gets.
American style liberalism, as opposed to the libertarian, laissez-faire, British-European "liberalism" is a product of that tradition and that it cannot be sustained without the metaphysical foundation that it is based in and of which it is an expression. I believe that because that is what history has shown and my own experience has been. I believe that the liberalism I believe in, far more radical than any materialist substitute, is the only practical chance of saving us, our environment and our democracy. Equality, rights, justice and the moral obligation to respect those are only durable in so far as they are believed to be an absolute gift and equal endowment given by and a requirement made by God. Any other attempt to give them a foundation is liable to the same corrosion mentioned above. I am as certain of anything in politics as I can be that that is true. Materialism is to liberalism as fluoric acid is to human tissue.
The assumption that liberalism was "substrate neutral" was always baseless. As are many of the other assumptions of secular liberalism. It is not even compatible with materialism and a denial of the reality of moral obligations, liberalism will be corroded by those, without any doubt. Another foundation that had the same properties would work but I doubt it would work as well without the radical and audacious holding of the Hebrew tradition in regard to human beings and their relationship with the very creator of the universe and humans to teach other.
The author of that article mistook that foundation for a crutch instead of what it really is, the prerequisite for those things to work or even exist. When I look at the position of atheists in history and in culture, I see every reason to conclude that is the case.
* I can't find the article online. Though I'm certain of the magazine and the author of the article, as well as the person quoted, I will leave it at this until I find the definite citation. As I say, it's a line I've heard from atheists many times.
In part that passive acceptance was due to not having the resources to really investigate the claims made in that article. It's something that, after looking far more deeply at what atheists say and do since going online, I think is evidence free bilge. For example, the article included praise for the most prominent atheist in the United States, Madalyn Murray O'Hair who, I have since learned, had as many flaws as any sleazy TV based hallelujah peddler or corrupt cardinal and a record of the most vulgar materialism, theft and fraud behind the thinnest of false fronts. She was presented by the article as some kind of radical activist by virtue of her war against religion. For a lot of people reputedly on the left, that is the defining issue for them, atheism and hatred of religion. It is why you encounter people allegedly of the left who still hold a torch for Christopher Hitchens and who mistake Sam Harris as a lefty. To continue with the general theme from yesterday.
Such folk cannot conceive of a Christian as being a political radical, far more radical, in just about every case I've confronted, than the callow atheist who accuses you of holding regressive positions you don't, even those who idolize Hitchens, who actually did hold them. It is a never ending thing, having people on the supposed left doubt your credentials as a leftist because you, as the vast majority of people on the left, are not atheists. And, I would say, that I have known more atheists formerly of the left turn conservative than I have religious leftists who have turned. My experience is that it is not unknown for religious people to become more liberal as they age. I have become far, far more radical as I abandoned the self-imposed blinders of agnosticism and have seen that a real program of the left is founded in religious values that atheism corrodes. Atheism which, like almost all of it, is based in materialism, at least.
I am radical because The Law and the prophets and The Gospels, Acts and the epistles are all radical. I was a radical while I was an agnostic and hostile to religion because of the tradition I inherited from Christians. I think that's what accounts for whatever liberalism the largest majority of non-religious people in the United States holds, it's a habit of that tradition in their habits of thought. It can endure for a generation or two but will, I've observed, deteriorate the farther from its roots it gets.
American style liberalism, as opposed to the libertarian, laissez-faire, British-European "liberalism" is a product of that tradition and that it cannot be sustained without the metaphysical foundation that it is based in and of which it is an expression. I believe that because that is what history has shown and my own experience has been. I believe that the liberalism I believe in, far more radical than any materialist substitute, is the only practical chance of saving us, our environment and our democracy. Equality, rights, justice and the moral obligation to respect those are only durable in so far as they are believed to be an absolute gift and equal endowment given by and a requirement made by God. Any other attempt to give them a foundation is liable to the same corrosion mentioned above. I am as certain of anything in politics as I can be that that is true. Materialism is to liberalism as fluoric acid is to human tissue.
The assumption that liberalism was "substrate neutral" was always baseless. As are many of the other assumptions of secular liberalism. It is not even compatible with materialism and a denial of the reality of moral obligations, liberalism will be corroded by those, without any doubt. Another foundation that had the same properties would work but I doubt it would work as well without the radical and audacious holding of the Hebrew tradition in regard to human beings and their relationship with the very creator of the universe and humans to teach other.
The author of that article mistook that foundation for a crutch instead of what it really is, the prerequisite for those things to work or even exist. When I look at the position of atheists in history and in culture, I see every reason to conclude that is the case.
* I can't find the article online. Though I'm certain of the magazine and the author of the article, as well as the person quoted, I will leave it at this until I find the definite citation. As I say, it's a line I've heard from atheists many times.
Hate Mail File
No, I won't take back calling Michael Kelly a war criminal, nor would I take it back for any of the propagandists leading the United States into the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, a clearly illegal war brought by the Bush II regime which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, enabled some truly horrible people and which is ongoing in the so called "Islamic State" terror which is as certain a product of that illegal war as Al Qaeda and the Taliban were products of Reagan's war in Afghanistan. Journalists who act as propagandists for illegal, unprovoked and idiotic wars should be considered among the worst of criminals and prosecuted. That none has been is a serious danger in the age of mass indoctrination and the selling of lies by the mass media. That Kelly died in the war he mongered doesn't change that he helped bring it about. I have entirely more sympathy for the military driver who died with him, he didn't cause the war that got them both killed.
If you didn't quite get it from the tenor of yesterday's post, I don't cut journalists any slack because they kill people with their keyboard instead of guns and bombs and tend to have college degrees and, unless they decide to have their big, neat, cool, military adventure, clean fingernails.
Pavel Chesnokov - Magnificat
Magnificat
Julia Shibanova - Soprano (?)
Olga Stupneva - Director (?)
Another
Gabriel Appeared
I'm posting this one because the bass soloist is quite amazing to hear and watch. Here's another recording that you can follow with the music.
Gabriel Appeared
Male choir "Kovcheg"
soloist: Alexey Doroshenko
Precentor (?) Alexey Telnov
Revealing to Thee the pre-eternal counsel,
Gabriel came and stood before Thee, O Maiden,
and in greeting said:
Rejoice, earth that has not been sown!
Rejoice, burning bush that remains unconsumed!
Rejoice, unsearchable depth!
Rejoice, bridge that leads to Heaven!
Rejoice, ladder raised on high that Jacob saw!
Rejoice, divine jar of manna!
Rejoice, deliverance from the curse!
Rejoice, restoration of Adam;
the Lord is with Thee!
Pavel Chesnokov's musical style is high romantic, in places his voice leading reminds me of Mahler's choral music. The Russian romantic choral style is very distinctive and rich, nearly symphonic in sound at times but almost always very clear.
Julia Shibanova - Soprano (?)
Olga Stupneva - Director (?)
Another
Gabriel Appeared
I'm posting this one because the bass soloist is quite amazing to hear and watch. Here's another recording that you can follow with the music.
Gabriel Appeared
Male choir "Kovcheg"
soloist: Alexey Doroshenko
Precentor (?) Alexey Telnov
Revealing to Thee the pre-eternal counsel,
Gabriel came and stood before Thee, O Maiden,
and in greeting said:
Rejoice, earth that has not been sown!
Rejoice, burning bush that remains unconsumed!
Rejoice, unsearchable depth!
Rejoice, bridge that leads to Heaven!
Rejoice, ladder raised on high that Jacob saw!
Rejoice, divine jar of manna!
Rejoice, deliverance from the curse!
Rejoice, restoration of Adam;
the Lord is with Thee!
Pavel Chesnokov's musical style is high romantic, in places his voice leading reminds me of Mahler's choral music. The Russian romantic choral style is very distinctive and rich, nearly symphonic in sound at times but almost always very clear.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Antonio Soler - Magnificat
Magnificat
Concerto Italiano (Rinaldo Alessandrini)
This is an interesting setting, the first thing that I thought was even a bit strange were the quasi-barbershop quartet harmonies in the very beginning of it.
As a contrast to what I said about Bach's setting of "omnes generationes" notice how Soler says it once in a chordal passage at about 1:45 and that's that, whereas other parts of the text are emphasized by repetition and more contrapuntal treatment. Different composers will want to bring out different parts of the text in different ways.
Concerto Italiano (Rinaldo Alessandrini)
This is an interesting setting, the first thing that I thought was even a bit strange were the quasi-barbershop quartet harmonies in the very beginning of it.
As a contrast to what I said about Bach's setting of "omnes generationes" notice how Soler says it once in a chordal passage at about 1:45 and that's that, whereas other parts of the text are emphasized by repetition and more contrapuntal treatment. Different composers will want to bring out different parts of the text in different ways.
O Radix Jesse
O Radix Jesse
Cantarte Regensburg, Hubert Velten
O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
O Root of Jesse, who stands as a sign of The People
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
before whom kings will shut their mouths
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
to whom The People will pray
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
come and free us, with no delay.
Cantarte Regensburg, Hubert Velten
O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
O Root of Jesse, who stands as a sign of The People
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
before whom kings will shut their mouths
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
to whom The People will pray
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
come and free us, with no delay.
Healey Willan - O Adonai
O Adonai
Vancouver's Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Rupert Lang, director.
Healey Willan at Evensong and Benediction [Live] - Magnificat, Ps. 117 and improvisation
A glimpse of Healey Willan (1880-1968) accompanying the Anglo-Catholic liturgy of the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Toronto. Recorded live at Vespers and Benediction in 1966.
Vancouver's Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Rupert Lang, director.
Healey Willan at Evensong and Benediction [Live] - Magnificat, Ps. 117 and improvisation
A glimpse of Healey Willan (1880-1968) accompanying the Anglo-Catholic liturgy of the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Toronto. Recorded live at Vespers and Benediction in 1966.
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