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Jorge

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Posts posted by Jorge

  1. Something that struck me this morning. I can't write worth a damn but .....

    I find you on the store shelf, I don't know you but I know your author, and I don't like him. Patiently however, like any good scholar, I set aside my need to to rip you in half and tare out your pages. I set aside some of my immediate ammunition, I forget the things I know and invite you into my camp to talk things over. Maybe you are not the treacherous louse I took you to be. I disagree with you, I spit in your face but still - patiently so as to see the full measure of your folly - I give you some of my men, to build with and plan. Before I know it my men are yours and they take up your cause, a resounding chorus in my brain cries for my impeachment. I turn to see my ammunition was stolen, my men have deserted me, you stand their laughing and I reach for my sword. You do nothing but speak, "What sort of man would bring weapons to this peaceful discussion?"

    I should have never let you into my camp, offered my men or forgotten what I knew to be true - but then, what sort of man would that make me?

    Okay so it struck me today just how much of learning requires a kind of forgetting, of putting our weapons away when we meet a new author and just how fricking weird that experience is when I think about it.

  2. The only conversations I have had that went anywhere with religious people were with Moderates, people with at least half a working rational faculty. Even then I was not able to talk about metaphysical truth but have gone somewhere talking about concrete issues like the psychology, sociology and history of religion. Properly confronted these people can be made, if nothing else, to see the benefits of questioning religious authority on real life issues.

    "Says who?" was one of the greatest moral achievements in human history.

  3. Blowing a huge amount of money on something like lit crit or "women's studies" is hardly useful, and supporting these organizations is something I sometimes have trouble doing (I attend a typically left wing university).

    It is not always even needed. Work hard in a field and the Capitalist system will reward you appropriately. Don't listen to the Michael Moore's out there, or any on here. Hard work is rewarded.

  4. Islam has hardly received the pounding it deserves, it has rather been given a polite speaking to about OUR "faults" and attempts at appeasement.

    That is why we must endorse 9/11 as both a day of Remembrance and a day of Education.

    You may celebrate America's founding as you like, as merely a day for fireworks apparently as you seem to have trouble understanding its Republican virtues for, you know, Founding the Republic!

    You may also choose to remember 9-11 as merely a tragedy while other people mark it in a more productive fashion.

  5. At most you have a "duty" to share your concerns with him before agreeing to the exchange.

    There is no duty to do anything of the sort. Let the buyer research the situation on their own. There is no duty, Kantian or otherwise, to offer the consumer any information about the product than what you as a seller would like to put forward.

  6. I always find it funny when I hear Xian apologists say God can do anything - except the logically contradictory.

    The "Higher Order", is by definition beyond us, so whatever it is can do what it wants. Remember the couplet of the Mad Arab, "That is not Dead which can Eternal Lie and in Strange Eons of Time, even Death may Die."

    Your imagination is the limit. Literally.

    As for God being beyond logic, sure. Logic is basically just a tool, as is the scientific method. To talk about God as beyond logic and scientific reasoning you need some other way of knowing the divine reality.

    I find those other ways of knowing quite deranged and dangerous myself.

  7. Unsupported assertion.

    Defend please.

    Dates are marked and remembered for a particular purpose. The Revolutionary War marked the triumph of Republican values and is still remembered by many for this. 9-11 marked a triumph of Islam, we should remember that well and use the day to educate ourselves about the threat.

    Or perhaps we should celebrate Islam?

  8. 1) I agree about the High Middle Ages being a Golden Age of Europe equal to, and in some areas surpassing, Rome. People who dismiss it as the "Dark Ages" are just plain ignorant.

    However, I think the ignorance is understandable. People in these parts remember Athens and Rome because they were so much like us, the society of the High Middle Ages is basically alien and what made it unique has basically vanished. Don't get me wrong, some of its institutions like the University survive and it made the rest of Europe's rise to dominance possible but what aspects of its morality and identity survive?

    People identify with Rome because at its core it was about Republicanism, Citizenship and other ideas shared by the democratic world today. As widespread and profound as the High Middle Ages' Christian Identity was, where is it today? Fractured by denomination, race, class, gender, nationality etc. As successful as the Guild system was, where is it and its anti-Capitalist attitudes today? Where is the feudal system? Etc etc etc.

    The Hundred Years War, Papal Schism, growth of secular powers, cut throat mercantilism, fricking Plague and Europe's damn-near-suicidal (literally) Reformation wiped that culture out (more or less, history is not simple but you get what I mean I hope), no matter the dizzying heights of its accomplishments.

    We are closer today to 1 AD than 1200 AD.

    Again, I admit I am generalizing quite a bit here but I hope you get the gist of what I mean.

    2) The OP was about a specific source. Let's face it, despite Christianity's contributions to historic writing, modern American Evangelicalism is about self serving, comfortably counter factual, myth making. I think the OP was talking about Christian history in a Regent University, not Fordham University, sort of way.

    I don't think anyone can claim a Christian or an Atheist (or whatever) is totally bound by their personal biases but the closer you get to American Xian Fundies, the closer you get to history books that begin "In Accordance with Prophecy...."

  9. A side note but something in your post interested me....

    No property is in an object nor is having an object around you property. Something about the object has to be identified and harnessed in some manner. Needing to use something for it to even be property indicates that some knowledge is required. Touching an object won't tell you how to use it. Looking at a fossil on the beach won't make the fossil yours, because no amount of use is involved. However, once an idea involving use comes about, ownership is possible.

    I own land inthe Annapolis Valley I have literally never stepped foot on through inheritance. A great deal of it has never been touched by civilized man, it still the wilderness it was when the Indians trampled through it. Do I somehow not own it? Must I give it up to the "First Nations Peoples" gobbling up everything in the province?

    I am curious to know how this discussion of IP rights relate to land rights.

  10. A good guide for me has been to remember that our modern, or Post Modern, "Education" system is the product of the Mysticist/Altruist axis and has a vested interest in destroying facts and reality in the name of an evil mythology.

    Always remember most professors these days have a vested interest in blaming Capitalism for the Great Depression, "Islamophobia" for the Crusades and so forth.

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