Quote of the Moment Archives
Jul-Sep 2002
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September 30, 2002:
"It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly
unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written
[of Jesus], 'He was the Messiah'. This would make him suspect of treason, but
nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars
of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic
oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says
twice that Josephus 'did not believe in Jesus as the Christ'."
- Peter Kirby, Testimonium
Flavianum.
September 27, 2002:
"The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the
producers. To free itself - for a while - from the limits set by reality, the
government initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator
could not dream of. It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with
money it will borrow from you tomorrow, which is to be repaid with money it will
borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on. This is known as 'deficit
financing'. It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the
connection between goods and money. It issues paper money, which is used as a
claim check on actually existing goods - but that money is not backed by any
goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing. It is a promissory
note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form of
taxes) out of your future production." September 24, 2002:
"Since Copernicus and Galileo, it has become clear that Plato's upthrust
finger points only at the cold emptiness of outer space. Now that men have
walked on the moon and laid bare the structure of the atom, mysticism has lost
all credibility in the physical realm. But mysticism still haunts the realm of
values. That realm has been fenced off as a special epistemological preserve
which reason may not enter. Mysticism has distorted the very concepts used to
make value-judgments. Many people who reject the metaphysics of the supernatural
are yet victimized by the residual mysticism that infects their evaluative
concepts."
September 21, 2002: "From
a post hoc perspective, anything can be made to seem 'miraculous'.
Because these miracle claims are devised after the fact, and based on a need to
believe that Jesus is real and that he performs miracles, Christians will latch
onto any improbable event that fits a preformed expectation they have in their
minds, but they ignore the thousands of other "improbable events" they
see every day but never notice because they carry no religious weight for them." September 18, 2002: "Objectivity
lies in the means of proving or grounding some claim, not in the range of its
applicability. Such a proof, if we can obtain it, will connect the claims (or
judgments) we make with the world itself that judgments aim to identify
correctly. That is the point of stressing objectivity, to note the connection
between what we judge, claim, think, etc., with what is the case, with
reality." September 15, 2002: "To review
biblical stories and analyze their unsound, primitive ideas could waste years.
It is far easier to undermine all religions, simultaneously, without
discrimination, by exposing their root irrational root cause. Traditional
philosophic arguments bearing on god belief foolishly first assume a mythical
god exists and then show that god's attributes are insupportable. To realize
that the idea of a Space Spook represents a simple error of logic, requires only
a short essay if properly done." September 12, 2002:
"Tennessee, of
course, was the state where in 1925, still within the memory of many people
living today, a teacher was put on trial for insisting on teaching the theory of
evolution. Fundamentalist Christianity had forced its way into the classroom and
required teachers to toe the line on the Bible. The fundamentalists at that time
had the support of the state, whose legislature forbade the teaching of
evolution." September 9, 2002:
"What is the psychological difference between the 'rhythm
method' and other means of contraception? The difference lies in the fact that,
using the 'rhythm method', a couple cannot regard sexual enjoyment as a right
and as an end in itself. With the help of some hypocrisy, they merely sneak and
snatch some personal pleasure, while keeping the marriage act 'open to the
transmission of life', thus acknowledging that childbirth is the only moral
justification of sex and that only by the grace of the calendar are they unable
to comply." - Ayn Rand,
"Of Living Death," The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, (New York: Meridian,
1990), p. 53.
September 6, 2002:
"Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so
there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only
individual minds and individual achievements - and a culture is not the
anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual
acheivements of individual men."
September 3, 2002:
"Clement
argues that God, the God of Israel, alone rules all things: he is the lord and
master whom all must obey; he is the judge who lays down the law, punishing
rebels and rewarding the obedient. But how is God's rule actually administered?
Here Clement's theology becomes practical: God, he says, delegates his
'authority of reign' to 'rulers and leaders on earth'. Who are these designated
rulers? Clement answers that they are bishops, priests, and deacons. Whoever
refuses to 'bow the neck' and obey the church leaders is guilty of
insubordination against the divine master himself. Carried away with his
argument, Clement warns that whoever disobeys the divinely ordained authorities
'receives the death penalty'."
- Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage Books, 1981),
pp. 40-41.
August 31, 2002: "Arthur
Schopenhauer wrote, 'Considered by daylight... and without prejudice, this famous Ontological Proof is really a charming joke'. One is tempted to agree. Yet, as we have seen, some well-known philosophers who have reputations as profound thinkers have taken it quite seriously. Given the problems with the
argument outlined here, it is difficult to understand why they do."
August 28, 2002:
"Philosophy
is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping. The
grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the
pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly
belong to the field of philosophy. Aristotle lived up to it and, in part, so did
Plato, Aquinas, Spinoza - but how many others? It is earlier than we
think." August 25, 2002:
"The oft-made
claim that only religion can provide an objective standard for ethics is
actually an assertion that there is no rational basis for ethics,
but by proposing an arbitrary belief system somehow the ethics you derive from
it are objective! For if there was a rational basis, 'faith' would
not be needed. Unfortunately, a system derived from arbitrary claims is itself
arbitrary, because it has no connection to the facts of reality: as the branches
of a rootless tree have no link to the earth. So the essential moral claim of
faith is this: 'there are no rational ethics, but if you just believe, then you
will have a guide for living'. And that is just another way of saying 'ethics
are arbitrary': a fine idea, if your aim is to disarm men's minds and pave the
way for the first demagogic thug who comes along." August 22, 2002:
"Jewish
monotheism did not stop the Jewish authors of the Wisdom literature from
speculating about semi-divine figures, any more than Christian monotheism has
prevented Christians from seeing Jesus as God. In this connection it is relevant
to keep in mind what may be called the degradation of ideas, something very
often significant in religious history. Statements which may perhaps have
originated as merely what [Christian apologist Professor J.] Dunn calls ‘some
form of poetic hyperbole’ can readily be taken more literally in the course of
their transmission." August 19, 2002:
"...it can be
seen that fundamentalists are not really defending a minor book of the Old
Testament when they insist that Jonah was a real person and that his story,
including the whale, is history. Rather, they are defending the words of Jesus
[in Matt. 12:40]. [Christian apologist Gleason] Archer [says] that, as Jesus'
resurrection was factual and served as an antitype of Jonah, the story of Jonah
had to be factual as well, since a fictional past episode cannot serve as a
prophetic source for a future literal fulfillment. What Archer does not consider
is that if the story of Jonah were accepted as an important allegory by the
people to whom Jesus spoke, then it would be logical for Jesus to use it as an
allegory for death and resurrection. Jesus' allusion to the story does not
require us to believe that he took it literally." August 16, 2002:
"There is as
far as I have seen nothing significant about Christianity that was novel:
everything of importance had precedents in other religions, pagan or Jewish, and
can easily be explained as a syncretic combining of numerous different ideas
into one. The combination was certainly novel and unique, as every religion is,
but not inexplicable." August 13, 2002:
"[Jean] Calvin... had never asserted that consciences should be free. How
could the perfected society of the elect tolerate among it those who challenged
its rules? The obvious answer to critics was to expel them from the city,
following excommunication. If they attempted to remonstrate, they were executed.
But execution, Calvin found, was also useful to inspire terror and thus bring
about compliance. One of his favourite ways of triumphing over an opponent was
to make him burn his books publicly with his own hands... He was particularly
severe with anyone who rebelled against his own rule, or who used the New
Learning to challenge the doctrine of the Trinity."
- Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Touchstone, 1995),
p. 289.
August 10, 2002:
"Predestination
seems to make out that all of us, all the time, whether we know it or not, both
when by ordinary standards we are acting freely and could help doing what we
choose to do and when we are acting under compulsion or when we are not
acting at all but are asleep or paralyzed - all of us are, really and
ultimately, as it were, acting out the irresistible suggestions of the Great
Hypnotist. This idea is incompatible with that of our being free agents,
properly accountable for what we do." August 7, 2002:
"Religionists
rarely, if ever, object to bible verses being 'taken out of context' by
clergypersons. Only when someone begins to take too close a look at bible law
and lore, to judge it like any other book, to dare to criticize its teachings
does 'context' become a consideration." August 4, 2002:
"The principle here is clear: there can be no philosophic breach between
thought and action. The consequences of the epistemology of religion is the
politics of tyranny. If you cannot reach the truth by your own mental powers,
but must offer obedient faith to a cognitive authority, then you are not your
own intellectual master; in such a case, you cannot guide your behavior by your
judgment, either, but must be submissive in action as well. This is the reason
why, historically - as Ayn Rand has pointed out - faith and force are always
corollaries; each requires the other." August 1, 2002:
"Because of the fall of Adam in the garden, and unlike the leaders of the
Eastern Orthodox Church, both Ambrose and Augustine believed in original sin and
that the responsibility for it lay with the genitals. Men should be ashamed of
the lusts they felt stirring there; and it was wrong for married coupls to make
love whenever they felt like it instead of waiting until bedtime." July 29, 2002:
"The
introduction of 'group rights' also results in unresolvable conflicts with
'individual rights'. 'Group rights' are rights that are possessed by a group of
people (such as by women, blacks, or gays) simply by virtue of belonging to that
group, whereas 'individual rights' are rights possessed by all
individuals by virtue of their status as autonomous beings." July 26, 2002:
"In Rand's Russia, religion offered the only organized
opposition to the Bolsheviks. Religion was viewed as communism's natural enemy.
Whereas communism was atheistic and materialistic, religion celebrated God's
existence and human spiritual redemption... Rand examined this opposition
between two dominant Russian cultural forces and refused to accept their
apparent hostility as evidence for their mutual exclusivity. She recognized that
something fundamental united the communists and the believers. Tracing their
essential similarities became one of Rand's earliest philosophical
preoccupations... For Rand, communism was a secular substitute for religion.
Like the Church before it, communism subjugated the individual to an allegedly
higher power. In this respect, religion and communism were identical. The
main difference between them was their respective agencies of domination. For
believers, it was God; for the communists, it was the state." July 23, 2002:
"Incredibly, Strobel's discussion of this 'rebuttal evidence' does
not even include a summary
of that evidence. Not only did Strobel fail to interview a single member of the
Jesus Seminar, Strobel neglected to quote or even summarize the Jesus Seminar's
arguments for their position. Again, this is odd for someone who is promoted as
a journalist. Instead, Strobel chose to interview an avowed enemy of the
Jesus Seminar--Greg Boyd--and wrote a chapter that is full of a conclusionary
statements but short on arguments which support these conclusions."
- Jeffrey Jay Lowder, The
Rest of the Story, a review of Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ: A
Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus.
July 20, 2002:
"A proof requires the use of premises known independently of the
conclusion. A proof of the primacy of existence could not begin by premising
facts external to consciousness, since that would beg the question. But it could
not begin by premising facts about consciousness itself, since the very thesis
implies that such facts cannot be known before we have knowldge of the external
world. To attempt the latter sort of proof, as some realists have, is simply to
endorse a Cartesian view that undercuts their case. The primacy of existence is
therefore not a conclusion at all. It must serve as an axiomatic foundation for
any inquiry into the nature and functioning of our cognitive capacities." July 17, 2002:
"Unlike
the doctrine of the Incarnation there has never been anything like an official
theory of the Atonement that has been accepted by most Christians and whose
nonacceptance would put them beyond the fold. It is significant that none of the
official creeds of Christendom state explicitly why there was an incarnation,
why Jesus as the incarnation of the Son of God died on the cross, why he was
resurrected from the dead, and why in order to be saved one must have faith in
him. This lack of creedal acknowledgment and sanction of a theory of the
Atonement suggests an unwillingness among Christians to be committed to the
same theory." July 14, 2002:
"Intrinsicism is associated with mysticism, since some non-sensory,
non-rational means of cognition is required to grasp the supposed universals.
Subjectivism is associated with skepticism: realizing that no universal
archetype or essence is to be found in metaphysical reality, the subjectivist,
still regarding this as the only possible means of conceptual knowledge,
concludes that concepts, absolutes, principles are fantasy creations, and that
'anything goes' is the motto of enlightenment. The essence of the subjectivist
attitude is that expressed by one of Dostoevsky's characters: 'Since God does
not exist, everything is permitted'." July 11, 2002:
"Who 'decides'? In politics, in ethics, in art, in
science, in philosophy - in the entire realm of human knowledge - it is reality
that sets the terms, through the work of those men who are able to identify its
terms and to translate them into objective principles." July 8, 2002:
"With their strong emotional appeal, such articles of faith [as the birth
of Jesus] can long survive, even when, for many people, they have ceased to
carry complete conviction. As the charming stories of events surrounding the
birth of the god-man some 2,000 years ago are recited and enacted every
Christmas, few celebrants will be troubled by thoughts as to whether such a
birth ever occurred, or whether the accompanying miracles ever took place.
Hundreds of years before Christianity, the birth, life, and exploits of Herakles
were celebrated by the Greeks, and few worshippers will have questioned the
belief that their hero, still in his cradle, actually strangled the serpents
sent by the goddess Hera to destroy him. Philosophers who asked: 'But are these
stories true?' would have been dismissed as spoilsports." July 5, 2002:
"The standard
Inquisition procedure of isolating and grilling suspects was followed - plus an
added step: the victims were usually stripped naked, shaved of all body hair,
and 'pricked'. The Malleus Maleficarum specified that every witch bore a
numb 'devil's mark', which could be detected by jabbing with a sharp object.
Inquisitors also looked for 'witches' tits', blemishes that might be secret
nipples whereby the women suckled their demons." July 2, 2002: "The universe
has not 'run down'; on this, theists and atheists can agree. Thus, the question
arises, 'Why?' The theist, true to the style of primitive man who explained
lightning by inventing a lightning god, posits an anti-entropic god. Rather than
examine his application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the theist prefers
to argue that it applies without exception - and he then posits an exception to
it as an explanation. But positing a god, for this or any other problem,
is not an explanation. It is an evasion, and a poor one besides. If the theists
cannot solve the entropy problem, a simple 'I don't know' would be much more
honest."
- George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, (Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1989), p. 255. Back
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