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To: Hank Kerchief
At the heart of all superstitious beliefs, sometimes explicit, but always implicit, is the promise that there is something more than reality, something above reality, something which cancels the requirements of reality, a secret that enables those who know it to rise above mere reality, to defy it and get away with it.

The name for that is gnosticism. There's another problem. Somewhat of a pendulum swing. It denies the reality that is recognized. This denial has found good ground ever since historicism struck the Continent blind to the flesh and blood of history. You know the history.

253 posted on 02/07/2003 10:07:34 PM PST by cornelis
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To: eastsider
Ghosts being resurrected here.
254 posted on 02/07/2003 10:13:52 PM PST by cornelis
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To: cornelis
At the heart of all superstitious beliefs, sometimes explicit, but always implicit, is the promise that there is something more than reality, something above reality, something which cancels the requirements of reality, a secret that enables those who know it to rise above mere reality, to defy it and get away with it.

The name for that is gnosticism.

It could as well apply to most flavors of Christianity or religion in general, for that matter. Dostoevsky said the nihilists proclaimed, "God is dead, everything is allowed." But the nihilist's were wrong. If God is dead, nothing is allowed, and nothing is forgiven, and no one can get away with anything. Christianity says a man can do wrong all his life, and in an instant be forgiven of it all, and be rewarded for it with eternal bliss. Isn't that, the ultimate universal "get-out-of-jail-free" card that allows one to escape the consequences of their choices.

Hank

257 posted on 02/08/2003 5:24:46 AM PST by Hank Kerchief
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To: cornelis; thinktwice
There's another problem. ... It denies the reality that is recognized. This denial has found good ground ever since historicism ...

There are an infinite number of ways to avoid, obfuscate, and deny the truth. There is only one way to discover and embrace it. All of America's public institutions (e.g. government schools) and most private institutions are engaged in the systematic destruction of that only means to truth, ruthless objective reason.

The PC, multicultural, social/moral relativism movement is nothing more than an all-out nihilistic assault on reason. The last few generations in this country have been intellectually and morally cripled by the modern mind-molesters called educators.

Hank

259 posted on 02/08/2003 5:43:00 AM PST by Hank Kerchief
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To: cornelis
This denial has found good ground ever since historicism struck the Continent blind to the flesh and blood of history. You know the history.

I had to look "historicism" up and discovered this ...

historicism -- a theory of history that holds that the course of events is determined by unchangeable laws or cyclic patterns.

So I'd like to know what you're talking about because, frankly, it seems to me like historicism most aptly applies to a fatalistic theological approach to history.

268 posted on 02/08/2003 8:28:11 AM PST by thinktwice
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