Monday, October 12, 2020

A Couple of Items

One of the criticisms of the medieval period and the role of the Church is this relationship of science and religion – the Church supposedly placing a higher priority on voodoo than on actual scientific inquiry, blocking discoveries that threatened the established religious dogma, etc.

The most famous example, false as it is, is that of Copernicus and Galileo.  This episode is mocked by the moderns, just as other examples – regardless of the facts or lack thereof – are mocked. 

“How could such people believe such things?”

“Look at the Church standing in the way of science!”

“Whenever science and religion butt heads, science is always proven right.”

I wonder what people will say in a hundred years or more from now of our generation.  Haven’t we thrown away science and replaced it with the religion of a virus, a religion of critical theory, a religion of money growing on trees?  Can any of these be thought of as anything other than a religion (in the worst sense of the word)?

We look back with scorn at the book burnings, getting rid of ideas of which the establishment disapproves.  But what is it that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are doing that is different?  Are these not the modern version of the same thing, today’s book burnings?

What of witch hunts and burning witches at the stake?  One looks at the career ending cancel culture and sees that little has changed.

And let’s not start on the issue of child sacrifice.  We rightly look on such practices of the ancient world with horror: sacrificing a child in order to bring on a better world for the adult.  We have a modern word for the same thing: abortion.  It just that today the numbers are infinitely larger.

One of the big criticisms of God is the idea that this world cannot be the product of a good God.  Now, it isn’t any of the above modern practices that are at issue – it isn’t abortion, cancel culture, or the hell brought on by lockdowns and money printing that cause us to call into question the existence of God.  It is that we don’t live in some version of utopia: no child left behind, no one hungry, no one sick, no one poor, no one dying.  That sort of thing.

But I wonder: this world is not good compared to what world?  We have water, food, oxygen, natural resources that allow for an ever-improving standard of living in the right circumstances (private property and free markets).  Man has been given reason – a rational faculty.  We have been given everything necessary to sustain and enhance human life.  Have you tried living on Venus or Mars?

All of this leads me to wonder: the more we progress in the way that the left means that term, the more we return to the worst of humanity.  If there is one concrete feature of the left, it is that tradition is ignored, even mocked.

In order to progress, one must understand what one is progressing from and toward what one is progressing to.  Both the past (cultural tradition) and the future (toward what end) must be clearly understood and defined.  Otherwise “progress” means nothing more than “every day is a new day.”  One can never go wrong under such circumstances as there is not standard – either from the past or the future.  Here again, another concrete feature of the left; they can never be wrong.

Not learning from our past does nothing but bring us back to the same past.  Sure, we enhance the past with our modern technology.  I think for this we are worse off – we are more easily found, tracked, and traced.  We are more efficiently killed.  The meaning of life is much more easily taken from us.

7 comments:

  1. It seems that, for a brief period of time in human history, man was able to (apparently) move God (religion, spirituality) out of the picture and replace him with a new god--Science. However, science is made up of cold, hard facts and will never be able to fill the aching, hungry void within the human soul for something, anything, which transcends life and brings meaning to it.

    As a result, people everywhere are returning to the spiritual in whatever form it takes. This does not, as you bring out in your last paragraph, mean that we lose the benefit or detriment of science. We've gone too far for that, but it might mean that eventually science will take its proper place within the pantheon of man's knowledge. Worth pursuing, not worthy of worship.

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  2. Book burning, tech censorship great metaphor BM.

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  3. "Why doesn't God fix things?"
    Because He put Man in charge.
    Genesis 1:26: ¶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

    HPsalms 115:16: The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.
    If we want Him to fix things, all we have to do is tell Him that He can fix whatever He sees fit. Who's we?
    All of us.
    See the problem?
    The Postmillenialists thought that Christian civilization would inevitably grow to fill the Earth, with an age of progress & World peace, after which all of mankind would agree, "Come Lord Jesus." This model has been falling apart for over a century now. The other alternative is that it will get so bad that He has to step in to save the remanent. Jesus warned the disciples concerning the last days, that if those days were not shortened, no flesh would be saved. Extinction scenarios are no longer science fiction. There is a further answer to do with what His purpose in the Earth is, which is for us to bear fruit. I am working on this one, but it is very deep.
    HTH

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  4. "Haven’t we thrown away science and replaced it with the religion of a virus"

    Yes. It's called "The Covidean Creed" (funny)

    Here's a sample:

    "We believe in one Virus, the SARS-COV-2, the Almighty, destroyer of heaven and earth, that is all there is, seen and unseen.

    We believe in one Malady, Covid-19, the only son of SARS-COV-2, eternally begotten of the Virus, God from God, Darkness from Darkness, true God from true God, begotten, not made (probably) of one Being with the Virus.

    For diseases are they none but the One True Virus and Death comes not without Its presence. Thou shalt have no diseases before the One True Virus. They that die outside the Virus shall not have their passing told unto the people on a quotidian basis in hushed tones, but shall be quietly recorded in obscure tables when the time comes.

    Through the Virus all things were unmade.
    For us men (and women and all points in between) and for our damnation, it came down from heaven (or maybe from China or Maryland)..."

    We laugh, but it may be emblazoned on a stone somewhere for future generations to discover.

    "One of the big criticisms of God is the idea that this world cannot be the product of a good God"

    And yet, Christ's conception of what is good sets the moral standard of those (unwittingly no doubt) who make this accusation.

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  5. bionic - one of the problems of continually blaming DaLeft for the mess we're in is that it removes us 'adults' from culpability.
    I compare DaLeft to termites and termites do what termites do - they infest! Where's the owner?
    "If not us, who? The destruction of the ‘American Way’ accelerated under my watch – and yours, if you’re anywhere my age – so let’s fess up – we were part of the problem. How so? We let a bunch of ‘developmentally arrested’ adolescent know nothings take over the entire culture and country – every institution you can name is run by so-called liberals (fascists is a better word). It took them over 100 years, but let’s face it – they are in charge and they are not bashful about telling us that they are." - copied from my site.
    The steady erosion began in America's churches, spread to our education system, media, entertainment - all of which determine our politics.
    As you quote Chesterton about losing childlike faith in politics in another article - we have to realize that politics is the outage from the alimentary canal of American life and culture.
    In short, we're manure shovelers.
    Who's feeding DaBeast?

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    Replies
    1. Crush, the problem began well before 100 years ago. The die was cast well before any of us were born.

      You are correct: I am not (or have chosen not to be) as engaged in the battle as a George Soros or Antonio Gramsci or Karl Marx or Thomas Jefferson or Voltaire. Or Stalin or Hitler or Mao. All of whom have brought us to this moment.

      I hope I have done fine by this site, by my family, by the work I have chosen through which I make my living, by the institutions and causes I support. Yet, while swimming in mud (or manure), I get dirty just like everyone else. For this, you are right: none of us are clean.

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  6. From the beginning of our current condition I told a dear friend that we would all become zeks and lab rats(as if we were not already in that state snicker, snicker). Hence the 'lockdowns'.

    I will attempt to make my case...

    Quarantine is a medical term and its time frame is short. Hence, we were told it would be a two week period. Where did this magic two week period come from? Nobody seems to know the science behind it. It is simply an arbitrary and capricious time frame. Why do I say that? Simple, the experts new nothing of this virus and had to tell the public something to calm the fears that were spread by the media.

    Next we heard the terms self/social isolation. These are psychological terms. Also, they are used in rendition.

    Here is the winner - lockdowns. This is a criminal justice term associated with prisons.

    I have always wondered where the 6' rule came from? The experts don't say. Except that it is. Is what? 6'? In the US you are supposed to stay six feet away from everyone else. In the UK its 2 meters - 6.56168 feet. In Australia its 1.5 meters - 4.92126 feet. What do these experts know that our experts don't know? Or vice versa. To further my point a cough and travel 18 feet and a sneeze 24 feet... should not be at least 30 feet apart? Even if we are wearing the mandatory face diaper, #EveryoneDosePPEwrong, how does this prevent the spreading of a virus that is 10 μm?

    The only curve that has been flattened is the IQ of an already dumbed-down society we live in. Unfortunately we are be managed by a a bunch of elected and self appointed high IQ idiots.

    Again, zeks and lab rats are we not?

    On to the next step...

    For the acolytes of secular humanism - science - is the new religion. It is the new Canon Law. Its moral standard? There is no moral standard, a physical and metaphysical emptiness is the moral standard. Gain of fuction testing anyone?

    This is how it is done - think the horns of a bull - the center attack comes via the lobotomy box brigades, aka TV, computer, tablet and smartphone. The two horns are the educational system and organized religion. The church you say? Yes I do. Read Bella Dodd.

    Case in point - the ViacomCBS and Ad Council's lobotomy box and radio ad campaigns - #AloneTogether This was to promote social distancing. By the way a technique used in rendition. Orwellian much?

    Next up is this beauty... 'science is how we get back to normal'. The 'new normal'? The first time I heard that phrase that the dreaded vid was our new normal... I cringed and thought out loud that no, this is the new insanity.

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phrma-ad-shows-that-in-combating-covid-19-science-is-how-we-get-back-to-normal-301081388.html

    Lastly Information...

    If it was not for the internet wayback machine and people who PDF articles and rip video... how much would disappear? The fact checkers do the biding of 'the powers that be', do they not? I refer to the non-accidental loss of information as a new Ray Bradbury classic - Internet 451.

    Take care,

    Kevin
    The dumb kid from Tachikawa

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