Posted on 10/22/2002 5:11:40 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood
It never ceases to amaze me that most Christians would criticize me for being an atheist, yet they will "celebrate" a macabre pagan holiday. They inculcate their children into the practice of it and feed them the most unhealthful things you could give a child to eat.
Likewise, many atheists criticize me for being a "right-winger." Most atheists are so caught up in their polemics, they have become nothing more than anti-Christians - or what I call the Religious Left (a collaboration of the Marxist religion, neo-pagan animal/tree/earth worshipper eco-fascists and general technophobes).
Why do you "celebrate" on certain "holidays," what are you celebrating, do you really know? Or have you been so lost in the conformity of it all to really take a look at what you partake in?
As you ponder this, two noted Christian philosophers support my secular argument...
Søren Kierkegaard from The Sickness Unto Death:
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization… (emphasis mine)
The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself.
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
As you think further, exactly what is Halloween?
Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were usually active and propitious.
Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also a night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night...
Can you guess my source here???
Who is we? Mouse in your pocket?
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...now they are merely children's games.
Satanism is fun for all ages...
Ghastly French curse, liberals think it is part of Constitutional verse...
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My 10 year old plans on being some kind of creepy guy.
He's not planning for college?
False dichotomy, ad hominem abusive, ad hominem circumstantial, ad hominem to quoque, red herring, straw man, fallacy of false cause non-causa, fallacy of accident, hasty generalization and weak analogy...
Consider the idolatry of Feng shui (unsure of spelling). The Chinese idolatry of furniture arrangement. Amazing.
If they claim to have "faith," where is it placed, upon what is it built? In their God or in Mammon?
Bravo! Whitty. Intelligent.
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is erroneously listed as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. English has more commonalties with Greek and Latin.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. This cannot be reconciled with the fact that it is a Hebrew word...
Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin by age 9, has this to support my assertions in Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Consider this, also from Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in their public acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
[24] The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine...
Is it also applicable that the conflict between the Judaic and pagan are at work here, in this discussion?
Most of these folks have litle sense of humor. All Hallow's Eve is defensible and few know the practice of how a corrupt practice can be spiritualised and set right, but that is due to ignorance and a lack of imagination.
Nope, for many, condemnation and accusation suffices. They are the sort of "christian" who would have supported Massachusettes banning Christmas and making it illegal not to work on Christmas. Such is life....<>
There are plenty of holy clergy around :)<>
If we follow Paul's advice, we Christians are allowed to accept the good of anything: art, music or even holidays.
So dress your kid like a NYFD firefighter, and let him eat candy...
Ah, so you can't defend atheism's greatest achivements? No surprise there.
My, my! He certain can string along some big words with total disregard of sentence structure! Guess that's what you have to resort to when you're run out of logic. ;-)
Becky
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