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To: Dimensio
I'm trying to understand the mentality of people who cannot comprehend the difference between saying "there are no gods" and simply not saying anything at all regarding gods. I'm not sure if it is a genuine comprehension problem or an act of deliberate dishonesty




Arthur Koestler once shed a little light on incomprehensable devotion:


The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.
We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.

1,136 posted on 06/26/2002 4:22:51 PM PDT by tpaine
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To: tpaine
Who is Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest as the son of Henrik K. Koestler, an industrialist and inventor, and Adele (Jeiteles) Koestler. His parents were Jewish, but later in 1949-50 Koestler 'renounced' his religious heritage. As a businessmann Henrik Koestler was unprejudiced - he financed disastrous inventions like the envelope-opening machine and radioactive soap. In 1922 Koestler entered the University of Vienna (1922-26), and became attracted to the Zionist movement. During this period he worked with the revisionist, militant Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky. Koestler left for the Palestine in 1926 without completing his degree. First he worked as a farm laborer and then as a Jerusalem-based correspondent for German newspapers. In 1929 he was transferred to Paris, a year later to Berlin where he became science editor of Vossische Zeitung and foreign editor of B.Z. am Mittag.

From 1932 to 1938 Koestler was a member of the German Communist Party, but left the party during the Moscow trials. He lived in France in 1932-36, earning his living as a free-lance journalist. Koestler travelled in the early 1930s Mount Ararat, Baku, the Afghan frontier, and Turkmenistan (then the Turkmen Soviet Republic), composing propaganda on Soviet progress. In Turkmenistan he met the American poet Langston Hughes, who later portrayed Koestler in his autobiography. In Paris Koestler edited the anti-Hitler and anti-Stalin weekly Zukunft.

Google Search on Koestler Click here for more info on Koestler, Hardly a U.S. Constitutional authority

1,149 posted on 06/26/2002 4:32:04 PM PDT by MJY1288
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