In defense of religion -- the stupidity of militant atheism

[Doug]

I take all my opinions on BF Skinner from Noam Chomsky.

 

[Diuretic]

Here comes an admission, I've never read anything by Chomsky. I should have. I haven't.

I have read a lot of Skinner though, read several of his books, read a biography of him and read some of his scientific papers (undergrad studies).

 

[Doug]

Chomsky can be infuriating. But on some subjects, he is right on target. He laughs at the ridiculous post-modernists, for example; and in his skepticism about social "science" in general he is excellent. However, he is deeply unrealistic about the world.

 

[Diuretic]

Chomsky can be infuriating. But on some subjects, he is right on target. He laughs at the ridiculous post-modernists, for example; and in his skepticism about social "science" in general he is excellent. However, he is deeply unrealistic about the world.

If he's agin the post-modernists then I'm a fan. I can't stomach that rubbish. I must read him in that case. And yes, from the little I know of his ideas more broadly I would have to agree with you about his view of the world. But having said that I suppose everyone is allowed to have aspirations of how they think the world should be, just that they need to be aware of the reality of it first.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

Without a hint of patronising (patronisation??) that was a terrific read Doug.

Yep, we are easily shaped. I like to think humans are a bit more than a bunch of conditioned responses but I also remember reading that Fred Skinner and his wife brought up their daughter according to his philosophy (meaning his mindset arising out of his behaviourist research) and she was reported as being (at university, I think she went to Harvard) well adjusted if a little distant from people. I would think having B.F.Skinner as yer dad might have done that. I read his Walden Two and I have to say I felt a wee bit chilled. I prefered the original Walden (but I'm a wannabee anarchist).

I believe you are right on the money with how children develop. They get their sense of normality from their parents. If their parents are dissolute shit bags then that's normal to the kids. That ain't theory, I've seen it over the years. It's fact as far as I'm concerned.

Your grandchildren are learning important human values. Those values pre-date Christianity. But I am so glad they don't go back as far as the Druids. I've seen their altars (Chislehurst Caves, Kent) and it's not nice to realise they sacrifice humans to their gods.

Good, they can make their own minds up later. Bertie Russell and his "Why I Am An Atheist" would be interesting. But in the interests of balance they should also he exposed to the later writings of Malcolm Muggeridge.

Personally - don't fall about laughing - I think our kids should be taught about Aristotle from an early age (using Bruner's spiral curriculum idea) and Aristotle's ideas of human flourishing and virtue ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, ironically written for his son). We need to be morally educated from when we are very young, if we aren't exposed to that then later in on secondary English we might realise what Tennyson meant when he wrote about, "nature red in tooth and claw". If we have to introduce God then so be it. I don't have a problem with kids learning the predominant moral culture of their environment, they can make up their own minds later on (when they read Bertie).

I believe you are right on the money with how children develop. They get their sense of normality from their parents. If their parents are dissolute shit bags then that's normal to the kids. That ain't theory, I've seen it over the years. It's fact as far as I'm concerned.

My father, a drunken, drug addicted (far before it was fashionable) lapsed Cafflik, card carrying Communist, and the best street fighter in crim infested, pre-Café Latte culture Fitzroy, would fit your classification of “dissolute shit bag” to a tee, Dee.

So would I, until I stopped drinking and drugging nearly 22 years ago.

Yet this boozy Bolshevik forced me to attend a Christian Brother’s Belsen, a Presbyterian Babble study, and a Methodist Sunday Indoctrination School, as well as the Mumbo-Jumbo Mass and cannibalistic Holy Communion, to “give me both sides of the story.”

He then listened to my pleas and allowed me to go to work before my 14th birthday when I punched and broke the Principal Christian Bugger’s nose and got expelled.

All this religious insight was to be as useless as the Pope's nuts, until I stopped drinking and did something about my loony feelings of being marooned, like Superman, on a strange planet inhabited by even stranger and inexplicably belligerent people. Superman's undoing was Kryptonite, mine was Remy Martin, beer, and the occasional bong.

To cut a long and very convoluted story short, by the age of 16 I was living (when I could afford the rent) in a bug-infested bed sit in Gore Street Fitzroy. The rent was two and a half quid a week out of my apprentices 6 quid a week, so decent food became a luxury item.

When I couldn’t afford to pay the rent and eat too, I slept in parks and shop doorways, rather than return “home” and admit "defeat." The Fitzroy coppers would inevitably find my possie, kick my arse, and tell me to "move on."

They wouldn't even "vag" me and thus give me a bed for the night and a "doorstep" - a thick slice of stale bread with "Mira Plum" Jam spread on it - for breakfast.

Fuck me Foley but I hated those bastards!

Back in those days, if a strapping teenager tried to mooch a cold pie from the Salvos or Saint Vinnys they would tell him to go home and "apologise to your parents" (stiff shit if your parents were dissolute shit bags!) and THEY would feed you.

In the Sallies eyes, a boy of sixteen that was trying to cadge food must be sinful. Thank Christ their demenour to the down-and-outers has mellowed since those days.

Hardly surprising then, by 17 I was burglarising, smash and grabbing, bashing and boozing, and rapidly heading for the “big league,” before I broke my neck in a night watchman and police car chase/crash, in which two of my mates were shot, one fatally.

When I was released from hospital some months later and taken to Fitzroy watch house to be charged, I met my first “decent copper,” Detective John Sadler, who was instrumental in turning my young life around.

In fact, I went from a copper hating, anti-social petty crim to a neo-Nazi and, eventually, a fanatical crusader against evil atheistic Communism that killed for the cause.

Ironically, my “rebirth” as a dedicated anti-communist was to do far more physical and psychological damage to me and many others than a lifetime of crime.

But I digress.

Reading your posts over the last couple of months, I have come to the conclusion that you too have the same qualities as John Sadler. I've no doubt that somewhere there is a Crow Eating version of Danny Henderson that you have saved from becoming a “dissolute shit bag.”

However, I see in this post you put all anti-social behaviour down to nurture. I cant agree.

Knowing the horrendous incidence of alcoholism in the Henderson family going back many generations, I have no doubt that genetics, specifically alcoholism, played a big part in my and many other's criminal/anti-social behaviour.

For instance, my eldest daughter, Danielle, is a recovered alkie and my youngest daughter, Mandy, is a HIV positive, heroin addicted street prostitute with drug induced schizophrenia.

This despite both of them being brought up by their maddeningly normal mother, and her sickeningly decent de-facto, since we divorced when the kids were 6 and 7 years old.

As my old AA sponsor says, “The fruit never falls far from the tree.”

So if you're still “in the job,” or have any residual influence with those who are, believe me, genetics, even if indirectly, definitely contribute to anti-social behaviour.

But decent treatment can even overcome defective DNA.

 

[Diuretic]

Still in the job, got perhaps three to go (all being well with health and the rest of it). Sadler sounds like a good bloke. Not that unusual in the demons there (worked with a few over the years) but I bet he would never have put his hand up to go to the stick-ups with another Danny (Walsh) and of course Fish who is getting up the nose of both Spring Street and St Kilda Road alike.

I appreciate the thought but I doubt if I've been able to emulate Sadler although if I stretch my mind back a bit I think I may have stuck my hand out once or twice to do something other than grab someone's collar. I really hope I have because in 37 years in the job I want to be able to say I've made a difference and not just made a career. The latter would be an unsatisfying and empty claim.

As for nature/nurture, I agree with you. I think I over-egged culture. Just as we no longer believe in (well most of us don't believe) demonic possession being the cause of crime (just using this as an example) and accept that there are a range of causes (social, psychological, physiological etc) there are a range of causes for, in this example, addictions.

I hear the trite phrase, "addictive personality", pumped out. That plays nicely into the "you must have willpower" crowd who can conveniently blame the individual for allegedly being weak-willed. A nicely compartmentalised solution that shifts everything back to the individual and means no social programmes have to be funded and no medical research is required.

Humbug.

We are simply pieces of meat, (http://www.electricstory.com/stories/story.aspx?title=meat/meat)
our brains are made of meat, we're edible. Our brains function by electro-chemical means. We're meat machines. And it's easy for things to go wrong with us. But we don't like to admit we're intelligent meat so we build up myths about ourselves. Of all the other life forms on Earth, meat and non-meat, we are the best. We are the best because God created us in His image. Therefore we're special. That circular argument stops us from understanding that we're just highly adaptable organic forms that can big note themselves as a species. None of us have the right to aim slogans at each other when something in us breaks down or doesn't work properly.

Now I know this is all a bit metaphysical for some so I'll leave it there.

Chips - you should write your autobiography if you haven't already done so.

Fitzroy - wasn't that Squizzy Taylor's hangout back in the 1920s?

And people think The Sopranos were tough

 

[Doug]

Science has been so successful at understanding the physical world, that everyone tries to pretend their own opinions about political and social matters are "scientific".

Hogwash. The sciences are physics, chemistry and biology. I'll let geology and one or two others slip in too if their practitioners insist, but here is a good rule of thumb: if it calls itself a "science," it isn't.

Marx called his philosophy "scientific socialism". And we have had "food science", "military science", "social science", "behavioral science", etc etc. Horsefeathers. All we have in these fields at best are sets of rules of thumb, various empirical observations of varying quality, usually well-mixed with the political prejudices of whoever is doing the study.

We can accumulate all kinds of interesting empirical facts about how humans behave -- although usually these facts are about how American college students who volunteer to take part in psychological experiments behave, or about what people who are polled choose to tell the pollsters -- but there is simply no equivalent, for human behavior, to the set of laws we have discovered to explain the behavior of atoms and molecules.

And that is because humans are not just atoms and molecules, which brings us around to the topic which started this thread.

For Chomsky's dismissal of postmodernism, go here.

It should also be noted that if we have a choice between our intellectuals becoming socialist activists, following the grand narrative of human progress, or their retreating into pomo naval-gazing, for God's sake let us encourage them to take the latter course.

If you would like to read an original essay by a postmodernist, which no one in the world has ever read before you, visit here. If the essay you see is not interesting, just click on the site again. This is also a handy site for college students who have a PoMo professor and a term paper assignment.

 

[Diuretic]

I'm onto the last link I've used it before. I was being driven nuts by my academic supervisor in a postgrad degree, she was banging on about something called "whiteness". I didn't have a bloody clue what she was on about (still don't), but the jargon was impressive. So I appreciated the info in that link when I first read it. I felt a lot better about myself, I was beginning to have self-doubts (the imposter syndrome isn't confined to women).

I hate that post-modernist jargon, it's only used to exclude others from the circle. Give me clear thinking and clear prose any day.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

Still in the job, got perhaps three to go (all being well with health and the rest of it). Sadler sounds like a good bloke. Not that unusual in the demons there (worked with a few over the years) but I bet he would never have put his hand up to go to the stick-ups with another Danny (Walsh) and of course Fish who is getting up the nose of both Spring Street and St Kilda Road alike.

I appreciate the thought but I doubt if I've been able to emulate Sadler although if I stretch my mind back a bit I think I may have stuck my hand out once or twice to do something other than grab someone's collar. I really hope I have because in 37 years in the job I want to be able to say I've made a difference and not just made a career. The latter would be an unsatisfying and empty claim.

As for nature/nurture, I agree with you. I think I over-egged culture. Just as we no longer believe in (well most of us don't believe) demonic possession being the cause of crime (just using this as an example) and accept that there are a range of causes (social, psychological, physiological etc) there are a range of causes for, in this example, addictions.

I hear the trite phrase, "addictive personality", pumped out. That plays nicely into the "you must have willpower" crowd who can conveniently blame the individual for allegedly being weak-willed. A nicely compartmentalised solution that shifts everything back to the individual and means no social programmes have to be funded and no medical research is required.

Humbug.

We are simply pieces of meat, (http://www.electricstory.com/stories/story.aspx?title=meat/meat)
our brains are made of meat, we're edible. Our brains function by electro-chemical means. We're meat machines. And it's easy for things to go wrong with us. But we don't like to admit we're intelligent meat so we build up myths about ourselves. Of all the other life forms on Earth, meat and non-meat, we are the best. We are the best because God created us in His image. Therefore we're special. That circular argument stops us from understanding that we're just highly adaptable organic forms that can big note themselves as a species. None of us have the right to aim slogans at each other when something in us breaks down or doesn't work properly.

Now I know this is all a bit metaphysical for some so I'll leave it there.

Chips - you should write your autobiography if you haven't already done so.

Fitzroy - wasn't that Squizzy Taylor's hangout back in the 1920s?

And people think The Sopranos were tough

I'll get back to you tomorrow, Dee. I'm cooking Kai and getting ready to watch the ODI in India.

 

[Diuretic]

I'll get back to you tomorrow, Dee. I'm cooking Kai and getting ready to watch the ODI in India.

Cheers Chips, here's to a good game there

 

[Chips Rafferty]

I'm onto the last link I've used it before. I was being driven nuts by my academic supervisor in a postgrad degree, she was banging on about something called "whiteness". I didn't have a bloody clue what she was on about (still don't), but the jargon was impressive. So I appreciated the info in that link when I first read it. I felt a lot better about myself, I was beginning to have self-doubts (the imposter syndrome isn't confined to women).

I hate that post-modernist jargon, it's only used to exclude others from the circle. Give me clear thinking and clear prose any day.

Thanks for clarifying that, Dee. I thought it was rather inconsistent with your previous posts.

I was going to write a lengthy dissertation on the devastating effects of pulverizing poverty, filth, booze, unbelievable brutality, and the ensuing feelings of abject hopelessness, but decided instead to let pictures and Australia's favourite alcoholic poet say it for me.

As I said, my old man was a Commie. So would even Gunny L be, if he was born into THIS.

This is Fitzroy. This is typical of where I grew up.

Fitzroy, measuring a mile by a mike and a half, with 35, 000 people crammed into single storey hovels, consistently had more murders per annum than Chicago.

Murders were superficially investigated and quickly forgotten. Essentially police were posted there to keep the crims confined within its miserable margins and to turn a blind eye to them killing each other.

On top of such degradation, Melbourne’s "decent' Protestant Establishment denied the mainly Catholic denizens of this den of vice and desperation a decent job because of their evil Fenian faith. Trades and labouring jobs were our lot.

Is it any wonder many turned to crime.

Is it also any wonder that whenever I hear the brainwashed Bubbas here regurgitating their Calvinazi inculcated conditioning about poverty being a self-inflicted sign of God's disfavour, I want to punch the high and mighty, hypocritical Huguenot \!/ out of them!

The Christian’s religious rabbit’s foot, Christ, fed the contemporary Fitzroyites without fear or favour. His Pharisaic followers merely fulminate that their slothfulness and fundamentally felonious nature is because they lack Massa's Protestant work ethic.

Yes, Squizzy Taylor was born in Fitzroy.

So was Mary McKillop, my maternal grandmothers first cousin, whose father was also a degenerate drunk.

 

[midcan5]

Interesting discussion here, religion, faith, drunks and poverty, quite a mishmash. Liked the 'we are meat.' Skinner and Marx and Christ all mixed together. We grew up near poverty with two drunks for genes, yes we have our drunks, but most though AA or so other pressing reason, like kids, managed to lick it or live with it. Children need stability and example, we were constantly ready to be carted off to the orphanage but mom has hard tough values too. Faith too, mom's religion was so powerful she still prays for her first born atheist. Most are religious, a few nutty from booze and faith and Nam. Our children, one an atheist, the other not sure, but both doing wonderful, married and happy. Who can ask for more.

 

[Diuretic]

Yes, Squizzy Taylor was born in Fitzroy.

So was Mary McKillop, my maternal grandmothers first cousin, whose father was also a degenerate drunk.

I wasn't aware she was born in Fitzroy, of course us Croweaters like to claim here because of her work in Penola.

Powerful piece of footage there Chips - I thought it was pre WWI when it opened up and then I read the notes (I always read the manual afterwards) I couldn't believe it.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

I wasn't aware she was born in Fitzroy, of course us Croweaters like to claim here because of her work in Penola.

Powerful piece of footage there Chips - I thought it was pre WWI when it opened up and then I read the notes (I always read the manual afterwards) I couldn't believe it.

Places like Fitzroy were the inexorable result of religion supported, racist inspired, pseudo 18th century sciences like Phrenology and hereditary criminality.

Anyone who thinks appalling states of affairs like Fitzroy didn’t come about because of racist Protestant religious prejudice, hasn’t studied the proto Seppo's social engineering experiment that founded a continent-sized concentration camp for undesirables in far off Australia.

Australia was to be a Christo-capitalist paradise, an extension of the Northern Ireland Plantation. An Antipodean Belsen, where a genetically rebellious criminal class of "Currency" lads and lasses would provide a hereditary Squattocracy of “Sterling” Englishmen with a constantly replenishing slave labour force - to replace the Blacks who had just been emancipated.

England's hereditary Proddie establishment wanted Australia to be a hypocritical psalm-singing hellhole, where a Catholic or a Cockney could get a thousand lashes for not attending the ruling classes Church services on Sunday, or, horror of horrors, talking back to his betters.

People think I’m exaggerating when I say that Untermensch whites were treated worse than “Abos” in Fitzroy, Collingwood, and Richmond. Where “The Aboriginal Protection League” at least ensured our Aborigine neighbours didn’t go without blankets and the basics to keep kith and kin together, like their supposed white overlords.

The self-mollifying reason given by decent folk to forget about the Fitzroyite’s plight was they were all genetically inferior Irish Caffliks and Coons with a common problem of work-shy alcoholism.

Such was the fascistic racist thinking that was drummed into decent people’s infantile minds in their mammon worshipping churches every Sunday.

Even as a kid, when I read Nazi nonsense in my Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia about how Britons just beat their Kraut cousins for brain weight and consequent intelligence, I completely rejected such claptrap racist thinking.

By age eleven, I totally rejected a world where Biggles and his gay (in both senses!) blade squadron could conquer China before Elevenses, as self-aggrandizing Anglo-Saxon cant covering up for a deep-seated sense of racial (for want of a better word) inferiority.

Unsurprisingly, I empathised with the Abos, and all the other “boongs” and the “Chows,” who were relegated to wretched sub-human also-rans in dire need of a permanent paternalistic administration of Kiaps and Christians supervising the raping of their resources and women.

So it is to my undying shame that I finally succumbed to “The West’s” common Anglo-Germanic “work ethic” value system; with its infotainment media’s incessant drum beat calling all to conform to the Christo-capitalist idea of decency, and joined the fashionable anti-“Communist” crusade.

Of course at the time I was a psychologically disturbed drunk. Now, as a socially acceptable sober and thoroughly decent and successful old man - by society’s sham standards - I can only wonder what “normal” folk’s excuse for wanting to oppress supposedly lesser beings is. (Don’t answer that, Dee, I already know )

At 65 years of age, if The University of Hard Knocks has finally taught me one worthwhile thing, it is you can’t go far wrong by opposing everything that “decent folk” hold dear.

And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!"
Whoa-oh-oh

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

And the sign said anybody caught trespassin' would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and-a yelled at the house, "Hey! What gives you
the right?" "To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in"
"If God was here he'd tell you to your face, Man, you're some kinda sinner"

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Now, hey you, mister, can't you read?
You've got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't even watch, no you can't eat
You ain't supposed to be here
The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside
Ugh!

[Lead Guitar]

And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a
penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine."
Wooo!

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Sign
Sign, sign

FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND - "Signs" lyrics

 

[Eightball]

It's interesting that you see the welfare state as sort of parental metaphor. I would have used the metaphor of a welcome helping hand rather than the sometimes ambiguous hand of the parent.

The Welfare state or mentality of that type of government institution does indeed have it's good and bad sides.

It's not unlike what is taught in addictive recovery programs..i.e. AA, and other similar ones.

"Enabling" is the bane of humanity when it is exercised to the extent of neutralizing or replacing the human being's innate drive to face challenges of life, that are survivlistic.

Welfare programs do have their merit as the "State" can help the "weak" to get on their feet. The big "if" is when the welfare state, or mentality or thrust must "back-off" and allow what they, "kick-started" a chance at self-reliance, or an initiating of inner strength, that is innate in humanity.

Conservatives often are bashed for their "hands-off" approach to the alleged "weak" or "down trodden" of our society, and we have on the other side of the "see saw" the Welfare group when in full swing, that can't release it's helping hands and let the "baby" take it's own first steps and even fall and get a few minor hurts.

Sadly, the true and noble humanitarians have been pushed aside and basically made "moot" by the melding of the Welfare mentality with the wide swinging/all inclusive liberal approach to politics.

Sadly, welfare help should be devoid of politics, but it always gets infected with this insidiousness that takes a free ride, using the weak and needed as fodder to gain political clout.

There was a time when welfare was handled solely by the various churches, missions, societies based on religious doctrine/values...etc...(Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc.) As secularism or more specifically Voltairism has come to prominence in Europe and even the U.S.A.(not as extreme yet, but just wait, it is getting there), those original sources of welfare have lost much influence and impact. Church membership has made myriads of once lively/active churches in Europe, just empty mauseleums on Sundays.

At one time, Great Britain was a major missionary sending nation to the world. That included the U.S.A. as one of G.B.'s recipients. Great men of God circuit-traveled the by-ways of towns on horse back and afoot and afloat, bringing the Good News to so many. Now our Mother Country is receiving Christian missionarys back on their shores to bring a revival of biblical Christianity back.

Christianity, per se', has not brought war. It is man who has brought war, as he has not followed Christ's clear, biblical teachings. The tenents of the Crusades were based on human pride, and religiosity, that monikered itself in Christianity, not unlike Adolf Hitler who skewed the clear biblical teachings of the 1,000 year reign of Christ to be his National Socialist Party of the 1930's.

God wants man to live in recognition of His Lordship, but man has skewed that, because of his innate sinful nature that demands self recognition, self determination, and self control. The Crusades did indeed move Islam out of Spanish Europe, but atrocities were committed by both parties claiming God or Allah's "green light" of approval. Neither group, were operating under any "green light" but their own manmade interpretation of what they, "wanted" their Creator to be, not what was clearly revealed in Christ via the bible.

Even a "nimrod" of a human being can read the New Testament, and clearly see that the very nature of Christ went "counter-point" to so many of man's "in the name of Christ" manuevers, that resulted in wars, and rumors of wars.

Jesus said, "I and the Father are one". How can anyone misinterpret that? Does the Crusades, and Jesus's life meld and agree? When Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, was He all of a sudden a deluded loonie?

We also come to the point that so many are willing to accept Jesus as a good guy or maybe a prophet, but the "Son of God".........well that's too much. We do the old "pick and Pull" wrecking yard approach to reading or interpretting the bible. If it suits our wants, then it's ok, if doesn't, then we throw it out. This is not unlike what Thomas Jefferson did when he created his own Jeffersonian bible. He was indeed a great man, and intellect, but he revealed the self determinism of man when he refutes or rejects His Creator's omnipotence or authority.

Let's be honest with ourselves. We humans by nature, don't want to be subservient or placed in a position to answering to any authority if possible. The rampant running of red lights, the Hollywood stops at stop signs is just a smidgeon of evidence of mankinds abhorrence to authority..... Receiving too much change from a store? Who will call it to the attention of the cashier, who might be docked pay if the cash register doesn't jive with the receipts? Even picking alcohol or other addictions to the detrement of our spouses and children is man's self-centered, out of control, life, without a Higher Authority to answer to.

Doug has raised important questions.

In fact his questions cause many to deflect and try to minimize the impact of his original post. It is a sad reflection of man's fallen state of mind. We may be at the highest of the biological pecking order, but we are no more than common animals when we darken our minds with rejections of Creative authority. The majority of the great minds of the past that have contributed to human society with great inventions that have relieved so much human hardship were bible believing men and women. True biblical Christianity spawns creativity in the human soul like no other system of belief. Just look up the many contributors to humanity of the past.. the inventor of the electric motor/generator, Michael Faraday, Washington Carver, the great Agri-Chemist, Sir Isaac Newton,... the names go on and on.

The biblical life allows man to be relieved of the burdens of life that way him/her down, and allow his/her creative juices to flow uninhibited to the blessing of humanity and the glory of God.

The intellectual mind, creates it's own stumbling block, as it is shrouded or covertly shrouded in self-pride. It is one of the most insidious diseases of humanity. Wisdom is the wise use of knowledge. Intellect is no better than dung when is lacks the ability to exercise intelligence with wisdom.

 

[DiogenesDog]

God wants man to live in recognition of His Lordship, but man has skewed that, because of his innate sinful nature that demands self recognition, self determination, and self control. The Crusades did indeed move Islam out of Spanish Europe, but atrocities were committed by both parties claiming God or Allah's "green light" of approval. Neither group, were operating under any "green light" but their own manmade (sic.) interpretation of what they, "wanted" their Creator to be, not what was clearly revealed in Christ via the bible.

Even a "nimrod" (may I interject that you are using this word in a disparaging sense when it means "a mighty hunter before Yahweh" - was that your intention?) of a human being can read the New Testament, and clearly see that the very nature of Christ went "counter-point" to so many of man's "in the name of Christ" manuevers (sic.), that resulted in wars, and rumors of wars.
Jesus said, "I and the Father are one". How can anyone misinterpret that? Does (sic.) the Crusades, and Jesus's 9sic.) life meld and agree? When Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, was He all of a sudden a deluded loonie? (sic.)

One

God wants man to live in recognition of His Lordship, but man has skewed that, because of his innate sinful nature that demands self recognition, self determination, and self control.

How could God have wants? That indicates that God has limitations and is not at all all powerful.

The lordship of Infinite Good, the quality that the Universe appears to be a source of all supply, does appear God like. The wise use of resources and the distribution of those resources in ways that benefit all Infinite Good's seemingly "created" sentient inhabitants seems to me to be the message that is repeated in world scripture and in the words of the scruffy Nazarene rebbi whom some would identify as a being called Christ. My reading is that Christ is a condition of extraordinary understanding of the ways of Infinite Good. Christ as a being separate from the rest of mankind is a construct of the establishment and co opting of the ideation of the "Jesus People" and the supernaturalism of the "Christ Cults" by the Emperor Constantine and his myth making mother, Helena, whom some call Saint,

The nexus of moral philosophy, objective science and pious practice (religion) is not now nor has it ever been so hidden that it is not readily accessible by a quiet and mindful observer. It has however been dressed up in "cloth of gold", lordship of man over man, and superstition. That is where we find paternalism, dominionism and the greatest sin of all, money chasing money especially in the temple.

Two

The Crusades did indeed move Islam out of Spanish Europe, but atrocities were committed by both parties claiming God or Allah's "green light" of approval.

How did you establish that bit of history. The Princes in the redoubt of Asturias and their guests, the Christian paternalist from the rest of Spain had as little mutual respect and willingness to cooperate with the rest of Europe and the rest of Europe had to cooperate with them. Islamic Spain had little need of the rest of the Muslin world in their realm of seeming toleration. They traveled and traded as they saw fit to the east. They were set upon by their fellow Muslims with by robbery, piracy, kidnap and ransom, and constant backbiting as un-Islamic and shirkers.

No. The crusades and the Reconquista of Spain, 1000-1250, may share a bit
in the way of time line, but Asturias' interests were hardly in common cause with the Crusades. The Princedom of Asturias became wonderfully rich because they traded as they chose with the Ummayad Caliphate in Cordoba. They were the center of European trade with Muslim Spain by virtue of their location behind a nearly impenetrable mountain range to their south and occupying a long east/west coast line facing the North Sea.

You seem to have such a good command of a lot of historical knowledge. It is just a bit too crafted in the way of apologetics.


Three

Neither group, were operating under any "green light" but their own manmade (sic.) interpretation of what they, "wanted" their Creator to be, not what was clearly revealed in Christ via the bible.

I must agree with what you say here. But, do understand, I accept this in absence of supernatural presumptions or other myth drenched superstition. The advanced state of Bonobo man is still one of blood lust, orgasmic play and avarice.

Why do I sign my observations with

I AM . . . ?