I don't get all your references; e.g. Rev Lind, Loftus, Perkoff etc so I am somewhat at a loss. The same goes for Gnostics .. that is a term that I would have to look up someday. I am also confused by the terms: empiricism and enlightenment. I understand their English-language meanings of course, but not in your usage to label (or critique) my analysis.
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
I’m sorry, I should not use things that are unknown. Barry Lind is the guy who claims to be a minister but supports only things that violate the Bible. He is the guy talk shows call to give the atheist perspective by a "minister" on any topic in a debate.
John Lofton is an atty and Christian who believes very strongly in the Constitution. He has his own Saturday talk show on the Net.
Leonard Peikoff is Ayn Rand protégé. Through his cousin he met her and they became very close. He inherited her estate and later started the Ayn Rand institute and is considered the nations icon of Objectivism which is merely a rehash of reason and enlightment which is merely a rehash of Gnosticism. Ayn was a disciple of Nietzsche. Rand basically ran a cult with herself the high priestess, Peikoff, Alan Greenspan and other groupies where the elders and they ran it like a church. They had to read Atlas Shrugged as their Bible and John Galt was sort of their Jesus or prophet. If anybody got out of order or out of doctrine the elders usually punished them by demanding a few reading of Atlas Shrugged. If folks continued to question church doctrine they were excommunicated.
Gnostic is a derivative of Gnosis or knowing. Gnostics believed that all truth including spiritual is possessed by Gnosis or knowing not faith. Today’s church is filled with this and it is the root of the isms like Marxism, including all the collectivist style giver-ments like Communism, also Darwinism, scientism, etc.. Basically Gnostics claimed the material world was the hell and rejected a heaven and hell of Christianity. They believe a corporal existence imprisons man but through Gnosis he can find heaven on earth. And it gives us our earth worship of today where religions worship a spirit in material objects. I can’t remember whether it was Huxley, Saint Simon, Shaw but one of the folks referred to it as Immanentizing of the Eschaton. In short man becomes his own savior.
The Bible for example says the following Eph 6:12 “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Gnostics and even dominionist and most of Christianity think we struggle against the material world, not spiritual wickedness. Today’s dominionist think that if they take over DC and turn it into a theocracy then Jesus can return. In short God must wait for man to correct the material and political world for his return. That is why I also fear the CNP and many of the TV Christian leaders who share this theology.
The movement merely gets renamed over and over be it communism, enlightenment, reason, objectivism yada, yada it all promotes a Utopia of man manipulating the evils of the material world whereby he brings heaven to earth by his own Gnosis.
Now the enlightenment movement was born of Gnostics. It basically has at its core the components I pointed out in the prior post, of scientism, empiricism and natural law. You ask specifically about empiricism and I answer that in your next question.
VoR writes Along those lines:
Q) Do YOUR senses not carry information for your brain to analyze?
Q) Does Faith replace Reason in a truly religious person?
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
Empiricism was seen in the statement of doubting Thomas who said to the other apostles that if he can’t see the wounds of Jesus and put his hand into those wounds, he can not believe. In other words truth can only be ascertained in the physical word as perceived through the senses. Now the problem with the senses is they are only as good as the transmission. For example amputees will often feel sensation in limbs that our not there. The best example that has put empiricism in the ash can is the classroom example of the teacher at the podium. Half way through his lecture somebody burst into the room with a gun and steals the teacher's notes and briefcase and leaves the room. When the class room calms down the teacher asks the students if they’d help him identify the robber by writing down what the saw. He gets back bunch of garbage. Yet everybody saw the same thing but reported it differently. In law since the beginning of mankind the eye witness was sacred, but today in law it has been diminished to folk lore based on studies and DNA. Why does this happen, because the transmission is corrupted by filters. Another, maybe better example is those art pictures that if you stare at for a long time or keep trying to focus harder or lesser on a picture that eventually you see a completely different picture. Now you continue to look at the exact same picture and all the pixels come into the brain the exact same way for the 20 minutes you stare at it, but all of a sudden it is a completely different picture. This is a processing issue and the fallacy of one of the legs of enlightenment and reason.
Faith does not replace reason, but quite the contrary it is a complement. In the Bible God says, Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD:
In short one is to ask all the questions, why should I believe in a mythical friend, why do you let me suffer, if you are God and you let so much evil happen you aren’t much of a God. He says bring it on and let us reason it out.
Einstein’s associates at Princeton used to refer to him as the pastor. He was continually communicating to God for his revelations that irritated his colleges. Einstein was revealed concepts that defy the natural world. He then reasoned these bizarre concepts that his peers told him were insane to formula. He was thinking in another dimension that men of reason would never be availed.
Now God told his people to do similar things in the Bible that would make no sense to a man of reason. For example the walls of Jericho. Ok God we have a battle going on here and you are telling us to march around the walls seven times and then blow our horns. OUR YOU STARK RAVING MAD? Do you want us all killed. But they were men of faith and did this stupid thing, then blew their horns and the walls fell. Well today we understand the principle because engineers understand sound waves and vibration at certain frequency and our military uses such sound today in war to pulverize things. But consider thousands of years ago with no science and to get that instruction.
In short the secular man is working with part of his tools. It is like a blind man driving across the country in a Caddy is likely to find more trouble than a guy using his eyesight driving the same car. Look at you having eyes compared to a blind man, like being Einstein having God compared to his reasoned physic genesis buddies at Princeton. He and I can tell you all day long about that extra sense or power and that is about as useful as you telling the blind man about sight.
VoR writes
My vote for GWB was based on economics - IMO Gore (in 2000) and Kerry (in 2004) were likely to accelerate the introduction of more entitlements than GWB. I have previously made the mistake of voting for a 3rd party candidate (Perot), and inadvertently helped beget Clinton.
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS.
Well you used faulty reason. If you based you thinking on economics, it makes no sense as he was a Marxist in TX. Your reason failed you. Gore nor Kerry could have gotten a thing through congress. The only thing Clinton got through was his $50B resuscitation bill. Heck Bush did that his first week with NCLB, let alone senior drugs that in 15 years will be a trillion dollar boondoggle getting worse each year. You must live in a purple state to say you made a mistake with Perot, such that your state wasn’t already drawn for a certain candidate to win no matter what. In the last election only 17 states were purple states, so you were in the minority. Now what you failed to realize is that although Perot didn't win, he got his entire agenda passed by congress except for NAFTA that Bush 1 had ready to pass when Klinton took office.
You have to decide is it more important that your agenda win or your team jersey win. Perot's agenda won. Third party agenda’s always win, because the winner immediately triangulates that electorate by passing their agenda and co-opting them for his party. If Klinton had not co-opted Perot’s base by passing all his agenda, Klinton would not have won a second term. Klinton decimated Perots party within six months of taking office. But to do that he had to swallow hard and pass legislation that made his Dem base angry.
I don’t know how anybody of reason having seen Bush increase Title 1 spending, increase Americorp spending, initiate NCLB the biggest thing to that point since the Great Society, increase spending on Planned Parenthood greater than any president ever, start stem cell research spending, send $15B to Africa, start a trillion dollar war on some country that we had absolutely no business being in, give hundreds of millions to 9/11 folks who made millions each plus what they got from the companies and insurance industry and then fund the airlines for hundreds of millions more, increase spending on STW programs, join UNESCO to urinate more millions down the UN rat hole that Reagan got us out of, tell Fox to have his nation colonize us and tax our welfare system to the brink of bankruptcy, many of the border hospitals bankrupted and closed, fund faith based charities, yada, yada. If you process all that data and then tell me it is reasonable to vote for the guy for a second term when he makes the Democrats spending of the last 60 years look like tightwad right wing extremist, then whatever this reason and enlightenment thing you talk about, I want to get as far away as possible from it. Heck I’d listen to palm readers before I’d indulge in this nonsensical behavior.
Look, Clinton was one of the more conservative presidents we have had. I hated the man intensely, but I have to be objective. As Joe Sobran said, Bush is leaving his legacy as being he made Clinton into one of the great conservatives of the past century. And the same thing would have happened to Kerry and Gore, checkmate. No legislation except what the Repub congress permitted through. How come some moron with no reason powers like me, saw this back in ’98 by merely reading some of the TX newspapers on the NET and you still didn’t see it after 4 years of his presidency?
VoR writes: …If a politician can couch his support for 'Senior Drugs' in charitable terms - and many of us buy his nonsense - then the Trojan Horse has been successfully deployed.
DJ: Does that make Christianity wrong or the messenger wrong?
VoR: Actually, it makes the electorate susceptible to the snake oil of entitlement programs. The politician ('messenger') is exploiting the gullibility of the public.
Q) But WHY is the public so gullible on this subject?
A) Because religion-inspired altruism acts a Trojan Horse on behalf of Socialism in our politics.
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
First off Bush did not couch senior drugs in charitable terms. The majority of seniors where against it and covered under another plan that they now became optional. He would have been ridiculed to death if he had called it charitable because seniors control all the wealth. He couched it as an entitlement option to their existing plan. If he wanted to couch it as welfare it would have been means tested and moved down to lower ages that didn’t have a another plan as the seniors already had. Again, I think your hatred for anything Christians is so great that you are completely devoid of reason or objectivity. In short your premise becomes your proof. I don't mean to be harsh, but it seems that this is clouding your reasoning.
Here is the down and dirty, you can couch any entitlement in any terms you want. You can call it socialism, Marxism, the coins of Judas, that you will go to hell if you take it, or anything else you want to say, THE PEOPLE WANT THEIR FREE CHECK, religion has nothing to do with it. Religious people don’t vote for entitlements because they care for the poor, they vote because they want their free check for themselves. Here is a simple consideration to play with in your mind. Offer a program like senior drugs but say that folks who take charitable deduction on their tax returns will not be able to participate because as Christians we know they want to help the poor. My friend you think DC has a problem with a backlash on immigrants, you think we have a problem in Iraq, 100M armed Christians would run of DC killing and pillaging everything and everyone in sight. IT IS ABOUT THE MONEY FOR THEMSELVES AND NOT ABOUT THEIR CONCERN FOR THE GIVER-MENT CARING FOR THE POOR.
If you go through and do a religious test on welfare votes, I assure you that more Christians in congress like Ron Paul voted against it than voted for it. It is the Sanders, Kucinich, Klinton, Obama, Kerry, Kennedy on and on that haven’t seen a church in 4 years that pass this stuff.
VoR writes
Another question for you: do all Christians vote for the same candidate? If they don't, does that make them inconsistent, or somehow invalidate their beliefs?
No they don’t and not at all. Most Christians vote for what entitlements they get. I go to a fundamentalist church and I asked the Klinton voters in the ‘90s why they voted for Klinton and it is the same reason my parents did. They want giver-ment benefits. Klinton told my parents that the Repubs were going to take away their SS. Now you and I know this is totally insane but I could not convince my parents. My mother said I can’t take that chance. Mind you she could live nicely if they did take her SS away.
But mom you go to church every day, read the Bible everyday, you spend 4 hours a day in prayer, how can you vote for a man who is pro-abortion.
Son, SS is my money and the Repubs are not taking it away.
VoR writes
PS: it is impressive how your recitation/interpretation of a parable changed the course of a city council meeting. I don't have as much experience as you do with City Govt hearings, but it does seem miraculous that you won them over with the 'she has sinned' approach. Did you have any other facts on your side besides the parable of the Good Samaritan, or was that sufficient to carry the day?
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
I had no other facts but the Samaritan and the rich man as I only had three minutes and that is what spontaneously came into my head. I had about 4 minutes to come up with a response before I spoke. Because I had written a completely different speech and had never heard of this organization nor ever envisioned a Christian organization doing such a thing, I had to wing it understanding she had done huge damage and made my original speech useless.
Another one was about 15 years ago we had this gay thing that became big making us one of the gay centers on the East Coast. The city council had decided to give them a bunch of special rights, it was a done deal and our Christian Mayor who runs the city council said he would allow to hear public response but he wants nothing negative about gays behavior. It had already been reported that the council had a 100% vote for approval but never the less they grant speeches as a courtesy. So my friend Linda who was a 25 cute short blond, innocent, decides to call all her friends and have them sit in the seats which is about 300 along with the gays. The gays wear an arm band to let you know they're there so she had her folks wear a different arm band. She then took her turn to speak and she started reading the advertisements out of a gay newspaper looking for meat so to speak. Well these are beyond vulgar and obscene and Mayor Vinroot keeps screaming at her that she can't use those words and stop that vulgar talk or the cop will take her out of there. She politely said there is absolutely nothing wrong with what I’m saying, I’m merely reading their newspaper that they are very proud of, looking for dates, and she continued reading while the council is horrified and grimacing. The 100% vote went the other way.
There was the one time I nicely gave a 3 minute speech on their land banking Karl Marx scheme. I did not prevail. I started my speech with, my fellow travelers, and thanked them for implementing one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. Well they gave me a tongue lashing saying no one has ever called us Communist in our entire history, yada, yada. Well the next day, my phone is ringing off the hook and at church people are coming up to me, all asking that I inform them when I give my next speech so they can tune in. I didn’t think anybody watched this crap on TV.
VoR
Perhaps others should take your approach in political fights against entitlement programs by refering to them as sinful?
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
I will say that I find my approach or Linda’s approach to get right at the root of a fallacy and lay it bare does work. Certainly fundamentalist Christians would join a fight against welfare when taught what the Bible actually teaches.
VoR
Anna & you may be right about GWB's motivations for supporting the Illegal Immigration bill - those are certainly interesting theories.
BTW, this thread has gotten a bit stale due to the elapsed time - feel free to visit
http://voice.townhall.com if you wish to continue the dialog.
DESKJOCKEY RESPONDS
I try to present stuff outside of the talking points used by the Republicrats and their sycophants to deceive the folks of the real agenda. I use to do political writing in the ‘90’s and was published on some sites that asked me to provide them content.