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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:23pm PT
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The King Troll wrote-
"...one of the most hateful posters I..."
Yes, I got the talking points memo through the underground many months ago. "Hater" is the fundamentalist Christian's latest "attack" word.
Go away.
At least I argue with substance and evidence
Rich! Hence my opening comment above.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:28pm PT
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Ghandi: Be the change you seek in the world.
Ghandi blew it completely.
He preached ahimsa (nonviolence) and was killed by violence.
No balance, as you need himsa (violence) also.
When the good doctor goes to repair the damaged body he creates violence against the body in order to repair it.
Lopsidedness is not intelligence.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:29pm PT
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i avoid these threads, but i have 9unfortunately) published recently on a related topic so feel guilted into a couple of quick posts-- i'll do this as two separate and quick notes.
First, on religious and political history and terminology: As Lissie notes, most folks in current debates use "Christian" as if it had a stable and obvious meaning, then anachronistically project their current sense of the term onto distant places and people. The term "deist" appeared in the 17th century, but used differently than it is now. By the 19th century, historians of religion were using "deist" to refer to a new group of intellectuals associated with the Enlightenment who had moved away from key elements of period Christianity. Jefferson, Paine, and even Franklin are better described as Deists than as Christians in their theology. (There is currently a sense in the serious literature that our labels are less useful for serious work than we;'d like, but for our purposes here on the old ivy-covered Supertopo, where a remedial survey level of discourse would be an accomplishment, they still work just fine.)
Second, on the literature: The best quick survey of US religious history is Jon Butler's Awash in a Sea of Faith. For anyone genuinely interested in the serious historical work on period American intellectual history, Henry May's Enlightenment in America remains a good starting point. A bit dated now, but it's a classic for a reason. And for those interested in the way that popular religion-- especially millenarian Protestantism --worked in the revolutionary period, Ruth Bloch's Visionary Republic remains important.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:38pm PT
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K- Isn't it astonishing you find more coverups-untruths-hoaxes than anyone can shake a stick at. Except when it comes to the greatest one of all!
Has anyone else noticed this mother of all ironies besides me. Regarding this fundamentalist Christian.
Why didn't you stick to your letter. Doesn't your word count?
http://supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1083108&msg=1116783#msg1116783
Geez. I mean, it was only dated just a couple days ago.
It's the internet-driven information age. "It's Ovah for Jehovah." (Say it ten times so it sinks in deep.) It's over for all local tribal Mesopotamian Gods.
But if anyone wants to talk about Diacrates (the one Einstein speculated about) or Hypercrates (personification of fate / destiny: cf: Grim Reaper, personification of death), I'd love to.
K- too much time pouring over bible code, you spent. Go climbing. Go to school on Huston Smith's The World's Religions. Adapt. Upgrade.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:41pm PT
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On "Christian Nation." The phrase itself is old, but it's only recently that it's emerged as a bit of historical jargon or political art. The key figure was a UC Berkeley and GTU graduate named Rousas Rushdooney who began to argue late '50s, early '60s) that the conventional accounts of the United States as a constitutional republic, grounded in a social contract amon rulers and ruled, based on natural law as understood by period ENlightnment science, was a Satanic fraud. The US, said Rushdooney, was not a constitutional republic but rather a "Christian Nation" that had inherited Israel's original covenant of the Old Testament. That covenant had been obscured by demonic and Satanic forces-- ancient Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, etc.--which had found their way into American political and legal culture and which had to be expunged.
Rushdooney and his followers believed that America's Enlightenment heritage had to be cast out so that the nation could return to Biblical Law (he thought that any Old Testament proscription remained binding unless specifically rescinded by the New Testament).
Since by the 1960s even most conservatives thought that stoning adulterers was probably a bit much, and since it seemed a bit on the wingnut side to talk about Jefferson as a Satanist, kinder and gentler forms of Rushdooney's claims began to appear in the 1980s, especially in the work of David Barton who attempted to write "history" books showing that all the Founders (including Jefferson and Franklin) were really 20th -century style Christian fundamentalists. Barton's "quotations" made it into any number of high-level speeches, he himself became number 2 of the Texas State GOP, and even Rushdooney's institution, The Chalcedon Foundation, became a player in D.C.
So when that member of the TX State BoE steps up and proudly claims to have removed Jefferson and the Enlightenment from history textbooks, we aren't just in the presence of the typical flat-earther-let's-end-science-ed-in-public-schools Bible thumper. This guy, and presumably some of his colleagues, are genuine "conservatives" in the old European sense of the word; They not only don't believe in parliamentary democracy or that the US is a constitutional republic; they believe that the very idea of a constitutional republic is a fabrication by Satanists.
Since we're Americans and like our tragedies (and farces) to have a happy ending, here's a bit of good news: The return to Biblical Law (execution for adultery, drunkenness, cursing, masturbation, oral and anal sex, witchcraft, usury, etc.) would mean that virtually all the posters on ST would be killed, so we'd have no more threads like this one.
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dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
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Mar 15, 2010 - 01:59pm PT
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Informative post, klk. Thanks!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Mar 15, 2010 - 02:00pm PT
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WBrawn- Well, we finally agree on something you wrote. I knew it was just a function of time.
I quoted Ghandi on one point: "Be the change you seek in the world." You won't hear me quote him on being a pacifist in a nature red in tooth and claw.
We agree!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Mar 15, 2010 - 02:10pm PT
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People keep complaining about "religious" threads, but I think they're just a guilty pleasure for most.
I enjoy them and I think many of the posts are remarkably insightful and literate on both sides.
I mean, can you think of a more important question than does god exist?
The great problem here is simply the morphing definition of the discussion: what do you mean by god?
Gods of a particular flavor like Zeus and Jehovah are vulnerable to hard evidence, vaguely transcendent notions of "deity" are, of course much more difficult to argue against.
Belief in deity is ubiquitous throughout the world, throughout history, so many deities, so much absolutism and no real answers only the human directive to have faith.
Perhaps the real question is if God exists why does he choose so many masks? Why does he choose to remain hidden and how could he create a world in which life is forced to feed on life in order to survive, a world filled with "natural" evil?
Watched a time lapse film of a 6 month old child dying of small pox. I challenge anybody to watch that same film and believe in a universal presence of grace in this world.
The argument that natural evil is a function of man's free will simply doesn't live up to the terrible realities of existence.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 15, 2010 - 02:11pm PT
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Largo:
For such a young kid you really are very sneaky. People learn by using thought processes they have gone through before but in slightly new ways. So you throw spiritual states at me phrased like the particles that pop into and out of the vacuum state in QFT. Have to watch you, I think. You must be a socialist.
I understand socialists can be thrown off balance by only one thing – the truth. At least that is what republicans are telling me. Here is an attempt at truth.
Whatever spirituality is, I am looking for only one thing. The perfect moment on earth is to sit on a ledge in the sun banging your heels so the toes don’t hurt. Then to take in deep breath of cool air while listening to the leaves moving in the breeze. I don’t seek a state higher than this.
Every creature seeks something. It’s a biological imperative. What does this creature seek?
Even in the late sixties I saw that Americans were worshipping greed with such intensity they were fully prepared to destroy everything else. Now I was old so I knew I would be dead long before the americans would have their way. So it would be no problem for me personally – as long as I cared only for myself.
As long as I was content to be the lowest form of life on earth.
I'll rob a picture posted earlier on ST. This is the world as it existed when I was very young. The bar was incredibly high.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Mar 15, 2010 - 02:42pm PT
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Largo:
For such a young kid you really are very sneaky. People learn by using thought processes they have gone through before but in slightly new ways. So you throw spiritual states at me phrased like the particles that pop into and out of the vacuum state in QFT. Have to watch you, I think. You must be a socialist.
Damn, that's funny. And don't start calling me no socialist. I've been watching, for the last 11 interminable years, El Presidente Hugo Chavez systamatically tank Venezuela (where my house is and where my two daughters were born) with his hare-brained Socialismo. Somehwere a socialist balance must be attained, but I don't know where that is.
But let's go back to one thing you said: "People learn by using thought processes they have gone through before but in slightly new ways."
This is a process of evaluating and contrasting and accruing that results in a new understanding or new outcome - perhaps like making slight changes to a sequence on a boulder problem and finally climbing the thing. You have "learned" how to do it.
What I'm talking about is a kind of spontaneous knowing that is not a process or the fruit of a state - at least not so far as I can tell - but rather is aligned with being or abiding or conscious presence. Oddly, this only comes by letting go of wanting any outcome, any knowledge, any thing, including "God."
I've never been able to stabalize this at all, and only brush against it here and there. If I'm sounding vague, it's owing to my partial understanding and exerience of all this. I don't "know" what the hell I'm talking about, but am trying to but words to some very slippery and for me, transient, experiences.
JL
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jstan
climber
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Mar 15, 2010 - 03:04pm PT
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We are getting somewhere. I think I got all of that.
Jan should chime in here eventually. I don't know enough to guess how eastern thought fits in to this.
I do some of this consciousness testing also. The first step for me is to turn the voice off. I need to get a stop watch so I can track my progress. I know that goes counter to your valid point on "no output/ no goal" but whatever works will most likely be a mixture.
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Lissiehoya
climber
Saint Louis, MO
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Mar 15, 2010 - 05:05pm PT
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But Paul, the American Revolution and the French Revolution took drastically different paths with regards to Christianity. In terms of effects, they look nothing alike regardless of any "common" Enlightenment influence.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 15, 2010 - 05:13pm PT
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"Since we're Americans and like our tragedies (and farces) to have a happy ending, here's a bit of good news: The return to Biblical Law (execution for adultery, drunkenness, cursing, masturbation, oral and anal sex, witchcraft, usury, etc.) would mean that virtually all the posters on ST would be killed, so we'd have no more threads like this one."
and.......and
care to break more detail out for us?
Actually we will need scores on this.
EDIT:
So I guess I can stop repeating my claim that the word christian does not mean anything?
Thanks to Kerwin I know now this is old news.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Mar 15, 2010 - 06:29pm PT
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I have taken the time and extensive use of calories for thinking (exhaustive questioning), to prove the existence of God beyond any question that any other human can ask.
I will upload this when I get to a place with a better connection. It is so poor where I am for a few days that I cannot upload, and I read the entire thread, out of monumental boredom.
To "believe" or "not believe" is to remain ignorant.
To ask real questions (writing them), and answer them, and ask real questions of your answers, and answer them, and so forth, until every related question of every identifiable contradiction is answered, is to advance your knowledge, and precludes any need or incentive to believe or not believe.
The human mind learns knowledge by asking and answering questions, that is, progressively identifying and resolving contradictions, that which statements do not effect, and that which intellectually lazy people do not effect.
God is not as any of the religions or churches describe. She is vastly beyond the descriptions of which the amusing little humans on Earth create their religions, churches, beliefs and other institutionally lucrative illusions.
The effort to prove the existence of God was so exhaustive it is the only process of which I have stated that I will not repeat for anyone. Would not a God obviously create such a design?
In the process to flawlessly prove the existence of God one also learns the complete functional design of the human mind, or vice versa.
All answers to all perceived contradictions become efficient upon learning the complete functional design of the human mind. An intelligent species would logically teach that knowledge to its young, as the first priority, after potty training. No human institution does so, by design. It is learned only by individuals who do it on their own. YOU can do so, by design.
To convey such knowledge to another mind requires that the conveyor ask all the related questions, and that other mind must answer them, and question their answers, and so forth, that which no intellectually lazy person, or a person too busy with their other interests and life necessities will do.
I am a common laborer by trade, which allowed the time for my mind to be asking and answering questions while sweeping floors or carrying construction materials to carpenters, etceteras, and was paid enough for food and rent, a simple life style including serious climbing.
Consider your opportunity to advance your knowledge by the only process which will do that, by design of the human mind.
Therefore.....Your paper US dollars, over-printed for the normal greed of the government dolts, lost 17 percent of their value last year, against international currencies, the source of most of your food and other materials. Dollars will lose another about 20 to 30 percent more in 2010, and worse thereafter.
The US Christian DemocanRepublicrat War and Police Regime, and its infrastructure, are about to collapse with no possible escape because there will be no useful medium of exchange for them to function, while the rural people will enjoy the food they grow. Just a trite old, routinely repeated phenomenon.
Get out of debt or abandon your current high lifestyle. Put your dollars into personally useful materials (tools), a real skill, good garden land, guns and ammo, silver or gold, if you wish.
Advance your knowledge to therefore inherently enjoy life more.
And laugh yourself to tears at the humans, the best comedy on the rock, creating the contradictions they cannot resolve because they did not learn the questioning process of resolving them at the moment of any inadvertent creation of them.
If you want clues on the nature of God, you may inquire by email, but you cannot understand God without asking and answering all the related questions, as with all knowledge.
DougBuchanan.com
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Mar 15, 2010 - 06:32pm PT
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Wow, it uploaded.
Stand back everybody, you may be subjected to what some of my cool SuperTopo colleagues who question nothing, call "diatribes".
It is actually rabble rousing, trouble causing, arm waving and general carrying on.
The National Park Service pigs are to blame.
Doug
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Mar 16, 2010 - 11:48am PT
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While discussions of god's existence are interesting, its not really what the OP is about. Here are the changes to Texas social studies curriculum....soon coming to your children's education.
 A greater emphasis on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” This means not only increased favorable mentions of Schlafly, the founder of the antifeminist Eagle Forum, but also more discussion of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association and Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.
A reduced scope for Latino history and culture. A proposal to expand such material in recognition of Texas’ rapidly growing Hispanic population was defeated in last week’s meetings—provoking one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out in protest. "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist," she said of her conservative colleagues on the board. "They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."
Changes in specific terminology. Terms that the board’s conservative majority felt were ideologically loaded are being retired. Hence, “imperialism” as a characterization of America’s modern rise to world power is giving way to “expansionism,” and “capitalism” is being dropped in economic material, in favor of the more positive expression “free market.” (The new recommendations stress the need for favorable depictions of America’s economic superiority across the board.)
A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism. Disgraced anticommunist crusader Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator censured by the Senate for his aggressive targeting of individual citizens and their civil liberties on the basis of their purported ties to the Communist Party, comes in for partial rehabilitation. The board recommends that textbooks refer to documents published since McCarthy’s death and the fall of the Soviet bloc that appear to show expansive Soviet designs to undermine the U.S. government.
Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism. Great Society programs such as Title IX—which provides for equal gender access to educational resources—and affirmative action, intended to remedy historic workplace discrimination against African-Americans, are said to have created adverse “unintended consequences” in the curriculum’s preferred language.
- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.
Excision of recent third-party presidential candidates Ralph Nader (from the left) and Ross Perot (from the centrist Reform Party). Meanwhile, the recommendations include an entry listing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson as a role model for effective leadership, and a statement from Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Mar 16, 2010 - 12:07pm PT
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Yep. The country is doomed and it's not because of atheists. That stuff above is just plain scary. I'm moving to Turkey. We seem to be going backwards here, and not just economically.
Dave
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Mar 16, 2010 - 12:46pm PT
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"When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun." -- Happy Hans 1939
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 16, 2010 - 01:03pm PT
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A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.
Yaay southern white people.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Mar 18, 2010 - 12:00pm PT
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Ghandi blew it completely.
He preached ahimsa (nonviolence) and was killed by violence.
No balance, as you need himsa (violence) also.
When the good doctor goes to repair the damaged body he creates violence against the body in order to repair it.
Lopsidedness is not intelligence.
Come on Werner! Just how would Gandhi have done better using violence? He's the most beloved person in India! Nobody thinks he blew it completely but you.
Perhaps you would prefer the Bhagavad Gita standard of brothers going to war with each other after gambling their wife away in a fixed dice game and killing everyone on both sides except for a dozen or so. Did that really turn out so great? All generally good people too.
Over a million people died in the partition of India, maybe a lot more. There was plenty of violence that nobody, including Gandhi was able to stop. A Hindu teacher of mine was taking a train from where he lived in Pakistan to India. He knew he would be a dangerous journey so he rode in the car the Muslims were in. Other Muslims stopped the train and killed all the Hindus aboard. He was the only one who made it. Just an interesting tale.
Yet it was an extremist Hindu who killed Gandhi who uttered "Ram" (God) in his last breath and you choose to cut on him here? Dude...
Peace
Karl
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