Pappa Joe Stalin eliminated mysticism. . . 
Posted on 12/01/2001 10:28:24 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
By Gary L. Morella
I have a question for those who believe that the atheistic worship of the state is to be recommended over an appreciation of a "higher" or "natural" law as the foundation for the rights that government ought to secure for the common good.
Natural law can be readily appreciated in the American experience, given the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary ... to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ..."
Natural law is something above power or force that gives content to the notion of justice. This notion suggests that there is a higher law by which the positive law of the state is to be measured and judged. Slavery was ultimately abolished in America because of the recognition of this "higher law."
Thomas Aquinas sets the most famous variation of this approach in his Summa Theologica. His natural law is a participation in the wisdom and goodness of God by the human person, formed in the image of the Creator. It expresses the dignity of the person and forms the basis of human rights and fundamental duties. This was the approach later used by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," which contains references to Aquinas.
Simply put, what has state worship done for us lately? We only have to look at recent history for an answer. We saw the deaths of six million Jews and 20 million Ukrainians in the concentration camps and gulags of Hitler and Stalin, respectively. Today, we see the killing of 40 million innocents in what should be their safest place of refuge, their mothers' wombs.
If the state is the final arbiter of the law, the sole dispenser of rights, we're in big trouble, given the lessons of history. The state can easily take these rights away with catastrophic consequences. This is inevitable when each man is a universe unto himself, courtesy of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which ignored a very important question: What happens when each citizen's "personal universe of rights" collides with another's? In the absence of some absolute, immutable, higher law, knowable through reason and not just faith, we're left with anarchy.
But more to the point, the traditionally recognized goal of a respected political regime is the common good. Does killing our children when they're most vulnerable and promoting aberrant behavior that leads to physical ruin meet that goal?
The fact is that ignorance of the necessity for human law to be rooted in the natural law has led to the major ills plaguing society today. This has nothing to do with theocracy. It has everything to do with common sense and the rule of right reason. This is obvious to any Christian who knows that God's supreme gift to us was the opportunity to choose him freely.
Interestingly, those decrying theocracies have no problem accepting a "state religion of amorality," which is promoted by demagogues who won't stand for any opposition. This is the current state of affairs in a "politically correct" but "morally bankrupt" America for which we can thank the example of the former "adolescent-in-chief," whose main claim to fame was making the country more comfortable with its vices.
Pappa Joe Stalin eliminated mysticism. . .
Like Kennedys, Cuomos, Liebermans and Clintons, for instance?
Yes.
I shared this thread with the author. Here is his response:
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 8:51 AM
Subject: Fw: Some simple questions for the brain-dead on that site you sent me that even the terminally dumbed-down should be able to answer.
An observation. Those who hide behind aliases on websites have something to hide, usually their stupidity. [The author is not familiar with Free Republic and screen names here---proud2brc, of course, I post my own name and location on my FR profile]
I'm not referring to you, but to what I saw last night. That is why, Brian, I don't give such people the time of day. If one of them has the courage to sign his name to his suppositions and criticism, then I am more than happy to dialog with him. And with the help of God, for His glory alone, and through the intercession of Mary, and Saint Joseph, all the Archangels, Angels, and Saints, I will piecemeal logically destroy his arguments for the sake of his immortal soul. It has been my experience, however, that such emperors want disguises to keep people from seeing that they're not wearing any clothes.
By definition if you believe in the state solely, which is what worshipping the state is, i.e, as a god, you are not believing in THE God. Atheism means not believing in THE God, from a Christian perspective, which is where I'm coming from and for which I make no apologies for. All I saw on that site was sophism, and poor attempts at that, which deny this truth.
Something cannot be and not be at the same time in the same place. Btw, statism in Websters means, concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly cenralized government, with a statist being an advocate of statism. There are absolutely no connotations, at least in my edition of Websters, where belief or nonbelief in God has anything to do with statism. So why would anyone want to refer to a statist as someone not believing in God as was one of the strings on the looney site? Moreover, why would anyone want to misuse the word statist to imply such an error? I certainly didn't. I didn't incorrectly say "I have some questions for those statists" since by doing so I could easily exclude anyone who believed in God. I came directly to the point, which would be good advice for those on that site. I was addressing the pathetic plight of atheisists whose misery loves company, and who have caused much misery as a result. [See the attachment.]
But those who don't have the guts to use their names instead of aliases did, implying that I was wrong when they don't know simple definitions of words that they throw around trying to snow people. The title the paper put on my op-ed was completely correct. What has atheism done for us lately? Answer, nothing but misery on unimaginable scales.
Anyone who says that atheism has not accounted for human death and misery by orders-of-magnitude over the abuse of religion since the dawn of man is brain dead. I gave examples from the latter part of the 20th Century alone as more than enough evidence of that.
And calling yourself Christian is a long way from being Christian. If you murder innocents by the millions, you are not Christian, which includes particularly those who directly commit abortions and who are complicit in those murders to include our so-called Catholic politicians. You can't believe in the Christian God, because if you did, you would be in terror of the certainty of going to hell for eternity suffering the worst punishments possible. What are you if you don't believe in God? Easy answer, you're an atheist. What else can you be. An agnostic is nothing more than a watered down atheist believing that God can't be knowable. If God can't be knowable, how can you believe in Him? Our catechism teaches that God made us to KNOW, love and serve him in this world in preparation for the next. God can be known, in other words.
Good morning,
Gary
Attachment
For Jean-Paul Sartre in "Existentialism and Humanism," there is no eternal truth because there is no divine mind to think it. It was Sartre who provided a basis for the non-Naturalism of moral judgments, a deep reason why "Is can never ground an Ought." An atheist like himself, Sartre observed, has to be thorough-going. If God is dead and out of the picture, with Him must go everything that assumes His existence. Sartre felt that those who thought God could be excised and the world and society would still look basically the same are simply foolish.
The theist or believer holds that human beings are creatures of God. One could consider creation analogous to the human artisan who fashions something for a purpose, a useful or good purpose else quality control dictates that it be discarded. The artisan's work is what it is because of this purpose that is the work's nature and, as such, a means for evaluation of the work. If man is an artifact of God's, man has a nature that provides a measure of his action. Acts that thwart his nature, i.e., acts that are unnatural, are bad, those that fulfill its potential are good. There is this criteria of good and bad action antecedent to a person doing anything at all. He will be good if he fulfills the purpose his Maker has embedded in him, and bad if he does not.
In a Godless world there are no natures because there is no divine artisan. Consequently, there are no guidelines one must consult before acting. One is free to do whatever he wants. His is a total freedom which is not a freedom measured by what he is or what he is designed for. This is Sartre's warped view of the world. One's initial glee that with the dropping of all constraints life is a "bowl of cherries" is dispelled by Sartre's gloomy description of what absolute freedom is like. There are no excuses as there is nothing to diminish our responsibility for what we do. This becomes a freedom too far which man is condemned to. Anything is permitted if God doesn't exist. Many have taken the Sartrean or Nietzschean route looking at the implications of man not having a nature or a destiny or any basis at all in the way things are for appraising them one way or another. This nihilistic mentality takes the form of modernist slogans such as "there is no such thing as right or wrong," "don't impose your morality on me," "I'm OK, you're OK," "reproductive rights," "get out of my bedroom," and one of my personal favorites, "get your rosaries off of my ovaries." This madness has resulted in a juridical devolution that allowed a so-called "c"atholic, and I use the term loosely, Supreme Court justice to declare that each of us has the right to define the universe as he wishes, to determine the point and purpose of our reproductive system, to approve or disapprove of abortion. In short, anything goes. The Supreme Court de facto by this decision has made universal emotivism the law of the land leaving unanswered the question of how long can any society endure or stave off anarchy on such a basis.
How does all this translate to the essence, existence questions? From Sartre's standpoint, for the theist, essence precedes existence as theists see God as a creator and His creation as possessing the nature God gave them, a nature which provides a gauge of the possessor in terms of seeking the good. Contrast this with the atheist who eliminates the Creator resulting in no essence thereby providing no antecedent guide for action. The statement cannot be made that one ought to do something which is a function of a human nature which can be appealed to for judgment reinforcement. Absent a nature, what we are is defined by the acts we perform - existence preceding essence.
Jacques Maritain in "Existence and the Existent" countered Sartre with another look at Thomas Aquinas. Maritain described two fundamentally different ways of interpreting the word existentialism. One being to affirm the primacy of existence, but as implying and preserving essences or natures, and as manifesting the supreme victory of the intellect and of intelligibility which is what he considered authentic existentialism. The other being to affirm the primacy of existence, but as destroying or abolishing essences or natures, and as manifesting the supreme defeat of the intellect and of intelligibility. He called this "apocryphal existentialism," the current kind as practiced by Sartre and company, an existentialism which no longer signifies anything at all. He reasoned that, if you abolish essence, or that which esse posits, by that very act you abolish existence or esse. These two notions he held are correlative and inseparable defining an existentialism that is self-destroying.
The existentialism of Sartre in which the primacy of existence is asserted is paid for by the abolition of intelligible nature or essence - "the" characteristic of the atheistic existentialism of today. This finite chaotic existence of subjects devoid of essence, the atheistic option, is foisted on mankind resulting in a radically irrational world making a succession of absolute and irrevocable choices which involves it irretrievably in a morass of ever-new situations which are unresolvable. The supreme irony is that the atheists demand absolute choices as a function of moral relativism, not of universal, absolute, immutable laws predicated on the natural good. Consider the following scenario.
Atheists have no problems with the notion that there are no absolute truths, i.e., everything is relative, because absolute truths have a religious connotation which they would be very uncomfortable with.
Imagine someone arguing that human dignity is not absolute, but merely relative. There are two replies to such relativism, one theoretical and the other practical. First, a relativist actually makes an absolute claim in stating that "everything is relative."
Not only do relativists theoretically contradict themselves with their own first premise, they contradict themselves in practice. As Peter Kreeft notes, "The relativist lets the cat out of the bag when you practice what he preaches, when you act toward him as if his own philosophy of relativism were true. He may preach relativism, but he expects you to practice absolutism." (Ref the "absolute" rights to desecrate the Mother of God such as happened at Penn State a few years ago.) Kreeft gives the example of telling his relativist students that all women in the class will flunk. Given their relativist premises, the students have no argument to make against so blatantly unfair a practice. Who are they, after all, to IMPOSE THEIR BELIEFS ON HIM?
Now apply this reasoning to the dignity of all human life. Many today wish to apply relativism to the value of human life, arguing that manhood is not absolutely, but only relatively, applicable to all human beings. But the lines drawn in such application, based on convenience, are completely arbitrary. If someone tells you that life is complex and demands such arbitrariness, you could ask him, "so does that mean that you wouldn't mind if a thief, faced with the 'complexity' of his own existence, decides to draw some arbitrary lines and steal your wallet?"
No one in his right mind stands for the relativistic view of human dignity when it comes to his or her own human dignity. Each of us - even the hardened secularist who preaches relativism - instinctively recognizes that our dignity as persons implies certain moral absolutes of behavior. These moral absolutes are a function of the Natural Law, without which anarchy exists.
I repeat a question which is never answered. What keeps said atheistic, relativistic society from deciding that a certain group is undesirable and thus can be eliminated for the good of the whole? It's happening in Holland with Euthanasia which started out as physician assisted suicide, evolved to voluntary euthanasia, and now is pure and simply involuntary euthanasia. Are people worthless because they are old? Tell that to Pablo Casals who was a virtuoso cellist at 90. It's happening to millions of babies in the womb - the holocaust of our time with the blessings of an activist judiciary who usurp the legislative branch of government by making laws instead of interpreting them contrary to the tenets of a Constitution which, if it means anything, must remain static to give any kind of meaning to "separation of powers."
Just who would you appeal to in a Godless society when the knock arrives at your door and you're told, it's time for you to meet the great nothing? Surely, even atheists would hold that you have some rights? But what happens when those rights are perceived to be yours alone and the appeal for your life is taken as FORCING YOUR BELIEFS DOWN SOMEONE ELSE'S THROAT. What do you do in such a situation?
The bias of contemporary existentialism is to manage at all costs to make atheism livable no matter how ridiculous the consequences. The question of what if by chance that could not be managed does not even arise. It is deliberately squashed and forbidden for very good reasons - a little thought easily proves its illogic. The straw that breaks the camel's back is that Sartre declares himself firmly optimistic, leaving the tragic sense to Christians. There is nothing equal to the stature of a Nietzsche and his disciples whose most original and highly appreciated contribution of their existentialism to our age, per Maritain, is the renunciation of any measure of grandeur.
Intelligibles are objects of thought. The metaphysician knows that his task is to search for the ultimate foundation of the intelligibility of things as of every other quality or perfection of being. He finds it in pure Act, and understands that in the final analysis there exists no human nature if the divine Intellect did not perceive its own Essence, and in that Essence the eternal idea of man, not an abstract and universal idea as our ideas are, but a creative idea. Maritain says "that a philosopher is not a philosopher if he is not a metaphysician." This would seem only logical since philosophy is a search for the truth and if the search leads to a capitalized version of Truth, i.e., Perfect Truth, what better vehicle for bridging to the supernatural, to theology, than metaphysics. To constrain a philosophy to the natural realm when it leads elsewhere is bad science by any definition. You don't say to the mathematician, "sorry, you cannot extend Newtonian mechanics to N or curved space because we won't let you." That would be an absurdity which is the correct descriptor for Sartrean existentialism.
Maritain goes on to describe the original error that underlies all the modern existentialist philosophies. "Ignorant of or neglecting the warning of the old scholastic wisdom, that 'the act of existing cannot be the object of a perfect abstraction,' these philosophies presuppose that existence can be isolated. They contend that existence alone is the nourishing soil of philosophy. They treat of existence without treating of being. They call themselves philosophies of existence instead of calling themselves philosophies of being." This reduces to the realization that the concept of existence cannot be detached from the concept of essence. These are inseparable in that they make up the same concept, albeit varied, of being which precedes the judgment of existence in the order of material or subject causality, with the judgment of existence preceding the idea of being in the order of formal causality.
Metaphysics uses the concept of existence to know a reality which is not an essence, but is the very act of existing. Existence cannot be detached from essence as it is always the existence of something, of a capacity to exist. It is the primary source of intelligibility for Maritain, but not being an essence or an intelligible, this source has to be super-intelligible. Maritain asks "why should it be astonishing that at the summit of all beings, at the point where everything is carried to pure transcendent act, the intelligibility of essence should fuse in on absolute identity with the super-intelligibility of existence, in the incomprehensible unity of Him Who is?"
Maritain describes Thomism as an "existentialist intellectualism" which, coupled with Thomas's insistence on the primacy of the speculative, illustrates the essential difference which sets this philosophy apart from contemporary existentialism that is false because it denies speculation in favor of action and confuses knowledge with power.
Thomas teaches that in every authentically moral act, man, in order to apply the law, must grasp the universal in his own singular existence where he is alone face to face with God. The contemporary atheistic existentialists, on the other hand, reject the ethical universal along with all essence. They repudiate it, moreover, dismiss it out of hand and believe that if there were a system of moral rules, those rules would automatically apply to particular cases making a mockery of all morality. What the liberal ideologues have done is to suppress generality and universal law with the end result that liberty, their battlecry, is suppressed. This in turn suppresses reason. I'm reminded of an old game show of the 50s-60s called "Truth or Consequences." The title is apropos today. We don't want the truth; the consequences are Planned Parenthood vs. Casey where freedom for the autonomous unencumbered self is confused with license as every man becomes his own god, creating his own universe. The fact that said universes invariably collide was totally ignored by the majority of our illustrious Supreme Court justices.
Feuerbach declared that God was the creation and the alienation of man; Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. They were the theologians of our contemporary atheistic philosophies. Evidently, it never occurred to them why would someone invent an immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, all-merciful, all-just because mercy without justice has no meaning, eternal God when the inventors would bear equal responsibility for obeying Same and suffer the same consequences for disobedience. No one would invent a God like that; you would invent a "feel-good" god to make you comfortable with your vices - a god in a constant state of evolution as a function of man's increased technical prowess. This god exists today where faith is watered down so as not to offend the sensibilities of modern man whose self esteem must survive at all costs. The question must be asked, "why were Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Sartre and their disciples so bitter?" The answer is simple. If man is not known to God, if he only has the experience of his personal existence and his subjectivity, then he also has the experience of his desperate solitude. He longs for death and beyond with total annihilation the only thing left for him. Everything linked to the combat for the salvation of self resembling a posture of faith has disappeared. The soul has been evacuated. With it went the sense of sin and the dignity of the existent with the grandeur of its liberty. "The nothingness in the existent has been replaced by the nothingness of the existence," per Maritain. In short, misery loves company with this sorry trio having many companions today.
And he's humble, too.
Hardly. Where exactly is this proof of "hundreds of millions?" Maybe thousands, or even tens or hundreds of thousands or a million or two (as your posts claims, but provides no proof) but certainly not hundreds of millions. You seem to have a decimal problem.
So, he still thinks his title's fine huh? Looks like the author's an idiot after all. Even your earlier statements implied recognition of an error.
"And with the help of God, for His glory alone, and through the intercession of Mary, and Saint Joseph, all the Archangels, Angels, and Saints, I will piecemeal logically destroy his arguments for the sake of his immortal soul. "
{big grin} The author can get an account here in a hart beat. It's been my experience that someone displaying such email bravado will chicken out of debating his ridiculous error publicly. I'd rather he do it here, but if he's not up to it, he's welcome to speak with me directly and at his convenience.
Bill Carson,
32 Coral Dr.
Key Largo, FL 33037
FR@nobsys.net
(305) 453-0244 Please only call after 7PM. If he emails me first, I'll give him a toll free number.
"I will piecemeal logically destroy his arguments for the sake of his immortal… "
Here's what Mr. Morella needs to support: Atheism implies statism. Surely it must or he wouldn't now be defending his reference to "atheists" in an article critical of "atheistic statists". He needs to explain to this "brain-dead…terminally dumbed-down…pathetic … miserable atheist who's hiding behind an alias" why the following title and opening is not just as idiotic as his own:
What has Religion Done For Us LatelyPerhaps he sees nothing wrong with either, and he'd be happy reading a discussion of "terrorist" but substituting the word, "theists". Perhaps he's just more "tolerant" of having his ideology bundled with that of those who committed crimes against humanity. And yes, they may believe in God and be terrorists. Many simply think that we are so evil that their God will reward their sacrifice. To claim otherwise is simply denial, dishonesty, stupidity or ignorance. And no, agnostics don't necessarily believe that "God can't be knowable". They simply don't know."I have a question for those who believe the religion that inspired killing of tens of thousands of innocents at the WTC is to be recommended over an appreciation of a more rational way of life."
"[See the attachment.]"
Sorry, I don't read attachments recommended by people who make such stunningly stupid errors in the title and opening sentence of their own articles. He'll have to have the courage to explain whatever else he wishes to tell me in his own words after he succinctly explains his first appalling error.
Heh, he does sound like quite a piece of work.
But your God will forgive your ignorance in the end anyway, right?
Atheism? Been there, done that, looked into it in depth, embraced it, grew up a little, moved on, thanks. I don't need to go backwards.
Good point!
So have I, at length. The difference between you and I is that I studied theistic murders as an atheist and atheistic murders as a theist. My investigation has been objective, and I do not deny the sin of theistic men nor ignore the evil of atheistic men.
I suggest you again study the issue, and this time try to bury your anti-theistic bias, for it has made your analysis lose its objectivity.
You can start with this:
Nearly 170 million people probably have been murdered by governments in the 20th Century, 1900-1987; over four-times those killed in combat in all international and domestic wars during the same years. What are the statistics of this global bloodbath and what governments have done this? What about the United States?
This researcher is not biased, unlike you (or even me, if you will). He is not examining these numbers from either a theistic nor atheistic perspective.
These are the numbers for pre 20th century democide. These numbers, totals of all killing of citizens by their governments, are estimates of murders by all types of governments including theistic and all others. Totals are around 133 million over several thousands of years. Compare this to 200 to 400 million by atheistic statist regimes JUST OVER THE LAST CENTURY. Clearly, you need to do some more (objective)research.
[Because this data is so essential to the topic at hand, I would specifically request that readers refrain from asking the moderators to remove this essential data.]
BS. This guy has been debating, publicly, the liberal anti-religious professors and media types in State College PA, home of PSU, for longer than FR has been in existence. He has publicly debated the homosexual agenda folks at meetings to debate the inclusion of sexual orientation as a civil right as well as homosexual partner benefits (I was there with him), at PSU as well as the State College PA school district. He has been published in national conservative Catholic periodicals. His life has been threatened because of his willingness to publicly, unflinchingly, and unfailingly debate his position.
Finally, because of his duties and responsibilities, I doubt he has time to waste, as you and I do, to publicly defend his positions on FR. FR is big time stuff to us maybe but not necessarily to those really involved in fighting the culture wars.
I'll forward your personal info to him none-the-less.
Being that you acted in a kind of intermediary roll, alerting him to this thread and passing his reply to us, I presumed that you'd pass my entire response to him. If you haven't' done so, please do.
If that thickheaded ideologue is unable to defend his own stupid words against my challenge, and you feel that you can, your welcome to try. (I'll be unavailable until tomorrow evening though.) Regards, Bill
and he's humble too
He raises a valid point. Why is it so few Freepers are willing to sign their names? Anyone who has visited my FR profile page knows that I am Dr. Brian Kopp of Cambria County PA. I have often wondered this myself, and I have considered changing my screen name to my proper name.
And he is no less humble than his humble critics here on this thread.
two points. first, atheists have been known to murder and kill -- hitler, stalin, genghis khan, pol pot, etc. i doubt bin laden actually believes in the religion he espouses of a god that wants martyrs. he uses religion to gather followers; he is not a believer himself.
second point is that if allah is not the real god as many christians and jews would suggest, then following islam is like being atheist, except that you do have a set of philosophies of life that when applied correctly are for the betterment of mankind.
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