Posted on 01/29/2006 8:13:04 AM PST by STD
I think you should try and take my whole post "in context"
i've read alot of the same old inventive anthropic principle which is always being re-invented. Hawking said "We see the universe the way it is because we exist" "the universe has properties we observe today because if its earlier properties had been different, we would not be here as observers. This cosmological analysis is given a false scientific place and called the anthropic principle. I've even heard "the universe is the way it is because we are observing it. This misleadingly sounds as though "observation" affects the universe somehow. But again, the anthropic principle is NOT science , evolutionists created the illusion that it is.
It is a tautology. If I said all tables are tables, you can obviously see its circular form. It is always true and cannot ever be untre.
But these tautologies are not about the empirical world. It explains nothing about our observations.
They masquerade as though they convey knowledge and information. They convey none.
Why does the universe have such highly iprobably properties? Answer. It's just a matter of random chance - there are countless other universes lacking those properties.
This argument tries to "dilute" nature's design by adding other universes that lack design. The more improbable the observed designs are, the more "other universes" must be added to make the dilution effective.
So this argument claims that on the average nature has no design, no favor toward life or humankind.
I would call this the "Many Universes scenario"
BTW, this is not even an hypothesis because it is not testable.
I grow so tired of this junk science
Leaping Lizards! but what I think you’re right. [grin]
“The intended "final cause" here -- the goal or purpose -- is to destroy language itself as a conveyer of meaning authenticated by actual human living experience over long time frames within given traditional historical cultures.”
Destroy the language (that is, its meanings), kill the culture.
“To "kill" language in this sense, together with its ability to support a private culture at all, all you have to do is "dissolve" the presently-existing cultural consensus.”
By ‘dissolving’ the present meaning of words and terms, such as ‘property’, ‘natural rights,’ ‘consent of the governed’, ‘liberty’, ‘right of conscience’, ‘republic’, or the very word ‘right’ itself. Make your own list [smile] - it is virtually endless.
“The Marxists figured this out a long time ago.”
And called it ‘dialectics’ - now often called ‘deconstruction’. Big words for little minds.
Thank you, Betty, for yet another excellent exposition.
So true... the tactic being employed daily in Americas august Institutes for Head Shrinking.. We call colleges anecdotally.. and employ great fanfare and are regarded famously as places to increase the size of the head instead of shrink it..
All I can say is Gollleee and Shazaam.. fancy that...
Still, I'm trying to "drill down" to the concept of symbols (words) being transformed (meanings) over time, via conscious "operators" devoted to this purpose. To transform a culture, you first have to "deculturate" the meanings of words as they have been historically understood.
'nuff said. You already know all this anyway.
Thank you so very much, hosepipe, for your excellent post/essay!
I love your provocative new tagline. But if that's the way you really feel, then I think you don't know what a myth is.
Should you have any questions in this regard that you think I might help with, please don't hesitate to give me a yell.
Meanwhile, thanks for the cartoon! A picture is worth a thousand words!
THNX TX!!!
Amen to that, YHAOS!
Common sense has no good repute these days. The "expert class" alone commands our allegiance, with their smelly little "doctrinal orthodoxies" that seem very much to me like evidence of too long a stay in "SecondRealityLand." The inmates are running the asylum. Or at least they think they are.
In this claim they have endless devotion in their turn, from the slavish MSM, who provide the soap-box and megaphone each and every time one of these idiots gets a bright idea. This gets read into the "cultural echo-chamber." Arrrgggghhhhh!
To the extent that "average," "everyday," "real" people (hopefully of common sense), the common man, whatever you want to call generic humanity, don't object to this schema, then it proceeds. As the wise man says, "all that is needful for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Sigh.
Thanks so much for your penetrating and provocative post, YHAOS!
Permit me to expand a bit:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
. . . . . from A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776, Philadelphia.
“... such is become the prostitution of language that sincerity has no longer distinct terms in which to express her own truths.”
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 22 January, 1783 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ME, Vol 4, pg 205)
“If we cannot learn wisdom from experience, it is hard to say where it is to be found.”
. . . . . George Washington, letter to Bushrod Washington, 10 November, 1787
When we seek purity (clarity) in our choice and use of words and terms, we demonstrate that we are impelled by a desire to seek distinct terms in which to express our own truths; a precise communication of an idea, unclouded by ambiguities. As an idea matures, it begins to form boundaries about the distilled essence of its import; the core of its being, so to speak. When in the course of the lifetime of an idea that it has come to the point of considerable maturity, yet its proponents, ostensibly in pursuit of purity, remain engaged in disputes, even among themselves, over its simplest boundaries, it may be reasonably surmised that precise communication in distinct terms has not been the point of the conversation.
What, then, is the point? Confronted with the repeated failures of their intellectual and practical systems, Socialists seem constitutionally incapable of drawing the obvious conclusions. Gaining no wisdom from their devastating experiences, it is indeed hard to say from whence, and if ever, they will find wisdom. Instead, bristling with hostility, they respond to each successive failure by launching increasingly shrill and irrational attacks against a western civilization that has now posted a “no outlet” sign at the entrance to the blind sidetrack that is Socialism. The point, then, must be obfuscation, in the form of deceit and misdirection, but to what end?
The instrument of self-correction that we have installed in Western Civilization resides in the idea of the Perfectability of Man. Having both a secular history and a religious history, we may nonetheless surmise its roots originate from our culture’s Judeo-Christian tradition. The idea does not necessarily imply the notion that Man can achieve perfection, rather that he is capable of bettering himself and his condition; that, indeed, his very nature impels him to seek an elevation of himself and his condition. It is this idea that allows Western Civilization to correct its faults and liberate its virtues, and with increasing force, as its elements come to be better articulated and more accurately applied.
Exhibiting a degree of perverseness that can only be regarded as deeply pathological, much of our Intellectual Community, which is almost uniformly Marxist, has sought to reverse this process of self-correction, using our culture’s discarded faults as weapons with which to attack and destroy its virtues. Raised and schooled in Western Culture environs, they can hardly plead ignorance as an excuse for their miscreant behavior.
The passage from the Declaration of Congress Assembled, cited above, was truly not the work of one man, or of a committee, or even of the entire general assembly. It came from the psyche of the colonial community, and its well-spring arose from centuries of the accumulated political, economic, societal and ethical thought of all of Western Civilization. Mr Jefferson and the gathered assemblage in Philadelphia simply produced a perfect essence of Natural Rights as one object of their labors. Madison confirms this in an observation made almost a half-century later:
“Nothing can be more absurd than the cavil that the Declaration contains known and not new truths. The object was to assert, not to discover truths, and to make them the basis of the Revolutionary act.”
. . . . . James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 6 September, 1823
If there is one thing of which we may be sure, it is that Man is not perfect, and therefore we must assume that neither are his works. Yet, in the more than two-and-a-quarter centuries since Mr. Jefferson gave us that eloquent and stirring passage, no one has seen fit to suggest an acceptable alteration. The American People have seized upon it, and so made it a part of their psyche that even more than a century of intense socialist indoctrination has failed to dislodge it. It has become the keystone of Western Civilization.
Not being able to inflict so much as a modicum of damage upon the keystone, our Intellectuals have elected, instead, to dismantle all of Western Civilization, brick by brick, and so bury its keystone in the rubble, that it will never again see the light of day. In that socialist theories are borne out of, and reside within, the normal confines of Western Civilization, as do the intellectuals who champion their cause, to what can we ascribe this essentially self-destructive behavior? In a word, what is their reasoning?
To describe their behavior as self-destructive and pathological is to suggest that the answer is to be found in psychiatry, and I believe that, indeed, is where it is to be found. All the classic signs are in evidence, the defense mechanisms, the rage, the paranoia, and the obsessive compulsive insistence on endlessly repeating the same failed behavior in the belief that different results can be obtained the next time it is tried. But, at the bottom of it all, I believe, lies the simple fact that liberty, which is at the core of all Jeffersonian liberalism, scares the very hell out of the whole of the Western Liberal Establishment.
What a beautiful, extraordinary essay/post, YHAOS.
The "end," the operative teleology here -- Aristotle's final cause -- seems to be the extinction of Man. Once you "murder God," the "murder of man" must ineluctibly follow. Just as sure as night follows day.
Thank you so very much, dear YHAOS, for your profound meditation on the theme of "knowledge vs. wisdom." Needless to say perhaps, but I share your main insight here, that wisdom trumps knowledge any day, when it comes to essential human well being.
YHAOS rhetorically asked: "What is their reasoning?"
Their 'reasoning' is simply the outward manifestation of what dwells within----narcissism, diabolical narcissism and the envy, covetousness, vengeance seeking, etc., that stream forth from their narcissum. I see them as Caine to our Abel.
Re: your messages #84 & #87
It’s true, word usage naturally evolves over time, but not to the extent that ‘to keep and bear’ now means ‘not only may you not carry, you aren’t even allowed to own’ or that free speech now means only what college presidents, US Senators, and a majority of nine black robes say it means. So, it turns out that ‘OW!’ and ‘G’on!’ (and a dirty face) are not guilty of the cold-blooded murder of the English Tongue. Rather it’s ‘Newspeak’ and ‘Group Think’ who are the guilty parties. Front & Center, Mr. Orwell; you called it. Fade to black, ‘Enry ‘Iggins (GB Shaw); not even close.
Marxists/Socialists know this. When they canÂ’t have everything at once, always they first seize the Ministry of Information (news & education) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the national police). In our own country, the America-Haters run news & entertainment, the public schools, and most of higher education, and have turned them all into socialist government indoctrination centers. Of late, News has taken some severe hits and seems almost to be declining into oblivion (may it depart unsung, unmourned). Regrettably, not so the fate of the rest, all which are bound in a seemingly unshakable socialist grip. In higher ed, even the Masters of the Universe themselves seem incapable of working up the nerve to challenge the America-Haters who run their institutions.
And, recent events must give us pause to wonder what transpires in our Federal security agencies.
“To the extent that "average," "everyday," "real" people (hopefully of common sense), the common man, whatever you want to call generic humanity, don't object to this schema, then it proceeds.”
"State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings."
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787. (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ME, Vol 5, pg 257)
I donÂ’t think Mr. Jefferson had in mind the books that Oprah carries on her list.
"But if our children are to be brot up in ignorance, we cannot expect that they will understand the nature of true liberty.”
. . . . . Rev. Hezekiah Balch, then of Philadelphia, December 18, 1795 to President Washington
Ever it has been an American axiom our liberties can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, “and that too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction,” as Mr. Jefferson was given to observe. To say that we have been betrayed is to put the case mildly.
“the extinction of Man”
The extinction of Western Civilization would certainly bring the extinction of Man as we know the species. It is truly astounding that our intellectual and cultural leaders are so fearful of liberty that they would risk consigning their wives and daughters (and husbands & sons) to the tender mercies of Islamic lunatics rather than submit to libertyÂ’s benefits.
“wisdom trumps knowledge any day, when it comes to essential human well being.”
Yes. And finally, kindly allow me to observe that although wisdom is not possible without knowledge, knowledge without wisdom is worse than merely useless; it is deadly.
I don't know. I'm torn between 'gollleee' or 'shazaam'. LOL!
The murderous brother, huh? Well, they are that - murderous.
Thank you for your engaging posts!
As if there was nothing worse than death in Life.
The irony is that such supine behavior in the face of active threats just encourages and supports the culture of death.
Sigh.... whatta world we live in, dear sister!
What a world, indeed, dear sister in Christ! Thank you for all your insights!
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