In my study of ancient history I found that ancient empires after conquering a nation would import foreign immigrants for the purpose of weaken that nations culture in order prevent it from rebelling against the Empire. After reading this it struck me that this is exactly what Western governments are doing to themselves and their people. Did these ancient rulers know something that are governmental leaders don’t? Watch the video and decide for yourself.
Tag: Nonsense
Against Reason, Systems and Idols
Against Reason[1], Systems and Idols
“Reason is what I believe, those that disagree with me are therefore, unreasonable.” Everyone
I have noticed that very reasonable and intelligent men differ widely on a large number of issues. All seem to cling to the idea that their view is reasonable and the other side is unreasonable[2]. This would seem to point to the possibility that the problem may lie in the concept of reason itself. Of course, to examine reason is like asking an eye to see itself. When reason looks at reason, it does so through a dirty lens, and this brings us to the place to begin our investigation of reason.
In my contemplation of reason I came up with a number of answers as to why reasonable men disagree. One of the most obvious is that some men are contentious and simply enjoy fighting and arguing. Of these men you could say, they love controversy because it gets their intellectual juices flowing and therefore it has become like a drug; they have become addicted to arguing and debating. They actually enjoy fighting with words and ideas and to them life would be boring without a good fight going on. These people are often blinded to truth by their love for the fight. Their real goal is not the truth but to win the argument[3].
The human ego needs to be addressed when discussing reason, for when we use reason to examine reason it is like looking at yourself in a mirror. However, it is not just any mirror. It is like the magical mirror of the step mother in Snow White. The one that hung on the wall and was asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all?” Of course, the mirror called reason would be asked who is the smartest of them all. The egotism of reason is a very subtle form of intellectual pride that hides itself in “a search for the truth.” A search for the truth that can lead to intellectual pride, belittling of others and name-calling akin to; they’re stupid, morons, imbeciles, etc.
Moreover, the thing that we call reason is often captured and locked up by the idols or systems we create in our minds. Reason then becomes a slave to the system, serving and supporting the system. The explanation for this, is that reason works best when things are concrete, and systems make ideas that should be fluid to become concrete. This is why many so-called intellectuals believe that they can capture the truth and put it into their system. However, the truth is that you cannot capture the truth by any system or ideology, no more than you could capture a great river in a tea-cup. This is the first lesson you should learn in reason 101, i.e. reason has her limits and one of those limits is that she cannot be put into a closed system and still be reason.
Still, another lesson taught by true reason is that reason does not necessarily reign, nor is it the chief element in the state of mind that we humans call intelligence. In fact, reason that has been captured by a closed system can make you quite miserable and very narrow minded. True reason is happy to share its place with the imagination, the will and the emotions[4]. In other words, it knows when not to be reasonable. It knows that it is finite and it is not God. A lesson that many who fancy themselves as philosophers and intellectuals should learn.
What happens when reason forgets that she is not God? Well, she will attempt to storm the very throne of God and pretend to be God. In this, she becomes what the ancients called an idol. We could conclude from this that the building of systems is nothing more than modern man’s building of temples for the idols of the human mind.
When reason alone looks for God, she is not searching for God with a capital G, she really is looking for a god that she can manipulate and place in her system or her temple of idols. Of course, for some any god that they might find is too finite and small for their system, so they simply make their system the absolute while throwing God out of the temple. In this, the human mind becomes a workshop for making idols and its greatest tool is the thing we call human reasoning. If you do not believe me check our history[5]. What you will find is that reason will lead into a system, the system evolves into a movement, as the intellectual wins and captures lesser men in their systems, then the system and movement will harden and become an ideology or a school of philosophy. In this, the ideology becomes the absolute (idol) that the mass man blindly follows.
Those who work in this factory of idols are the so-called intellectuals among us; mere men who really believe they understand the universe or at the least they pretend to. They are usually very intelligent, are fast thinkers and talkers that amaze and entertain the mass man with their knowledge. Many of these intellectuals serve as priest in our temples of human reason (universities). The chief characteristic of these people is not the level of their intelligence but rather that they are ignorant of their own ignorance and have the ability to dress their systems up as science and convince the masses that it is the truth with a capital T. Once the systems are formed and made absolute, the priests will call on their slave of reason to justify their systems.
In all this, we see so-called reasonable men disagree, and reason is demonstrated to be a slave of the human will and all of its rebellious passions. Surely reason is a dirty lens that darkens as much as it enlightens. Remember that as much evil has been done in the name of reason as by religion. In fact when religion does evil its practitioners say it’s reasonable.
This raises the question, have you been captured by an intellectual, a system or idol?
“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).
[1] I am not against reason, but rather the abusive of reason and exalting it to the place of God. Reason is the gift of God, but like other gifts from God (sexuality) she is often terribly abused and taken to extremes.
[2] If you want to see a circus go to YouTube and watch the intellectuals argue and debate the issues. All claiming to be reasonable and the other side unreasonable.
[3] “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned” (Titus 3:9-11).
[4] The best worldview that encompasses these three parts of the human psyche is Christianity.
[5] The truth about intellectual can be seen in Paul Johnson book “Intellectuals”. He concludes his book by saying “What conclusions should be drawn? Readers will judge for themselves. But I think I detect today a certain public skepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academies, writer and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that skepticism”
Dogma?
“Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded” C.K. Chesterton.
The world is filled with ideas, and many of those ideas could be classified as dogmas. Now, a dogma is an idea that has hardened to a point that is no longer thought about but just accepted on authority. The word dogma is not used as much today, this may be because it sounds too religious for a secular age, which itself has accepted the dogma of secularism. However, we do have a word or idea that is very close to it. It is the word presumption. A presumption is an idea that we take for granted without much thought or for the most part, without any or little thought.
In view of the above it is a self-event truth that all men have and live by dogma to some degree. One thing that can be said about the religious man is that he has accepted parts of his faith as dogma while the secular man is still in a state of denial, believing he is living by reason alone or in some neutral zone free of presumption or dogma. He has reached the unconsciousness of grass and he glories in it calling it tolerance or enlightenment.
Of course, there are some men who have very little dogma. Some of these folks fancied themselves as skeptics. Skeptics claim not to live by or believe dogma according to their dogma. The only dogma that they can believe is the dogma of skepticism. According to them, you must doubt everything except skepticism. Then you have the agnostics who believe nothing because they believe that it is impossible to be certain about the truth. Of course, they are certain agnosticism is true. We should not leave out the relativist which believes everything and nothing, and that everyone is right except the person that believes others are wrong. Of course, they believe that the skeptics, and the agnostics are right. The only person that they do not agree with is the dogmatist. They do not seem to like people who think they know something which is true.
Out of all of the above, the relativist is the one most likely to be tossed about by every wind of teaching that comes along, for they lack a foundation of truth by which to judge any new ideas. As it has been said, “a man who believes nothing will believe anything.” In fact, the relativist really does not believe in objective truth. What they believe in, is personal truth, i.e. truth is what you believe. What makes it true is that you believe it. Most of these folks belong to the same cult, the cult of personal opinion.
The relativist are also the most likely to become fanatical and completely out of balance. Many progressive folks fall within this group always moving forward without knowing which direction is forward; always seeing a cause to give their meaningless life purpose. To me, the really progressive person is the one that when traveling in a direction that is not working turns around and goes in a different direction, like back. Of course, if you are a relativist you don’t know which way is back.
It may be time for all of us to ask some serious questions about some of our new dogmas. Question like, are they really taking us forward or are they simply getting us deeper into the woods. So, deep that we will never find our way out. Why not try putting some of your dogmas, or the lack of it to the test? Start with your religious assumptions using the Bible as an objective standard to judge your ideas. You do not have to believe it, but simply use it as a source of information to compare your personal dogma with. You also might try the same exercise politically with the Constitution and other founding documents. In doing this you might find these source documents truly refreshing and challenging.
More Nonsense of the New Atheists.
More Nonsense of the New Atheists.
The new atheists claim that they do not bear the burden of proof in their argument against God because atheism is not a belief but rather it is a non-belief. Right, atheists nor anyone else, is able to prove or disprove a non-belief. Nor can they argue for or against a non-belief. In fact, you cannot even speak about a non-belief other than simply to say, “I do not believe it”. A non-belief is nothing and how can you possibly speak of nothing? However, I know of only a handful of intellectual atheists who are consistent and refuse to speak about the subject of God.
If you are arguing for or against something you are not arguing from a state of non-belief because that is impossible. If you argue, you must be arguing from some other position or ideology than a non-belief. You cannot as, most atheists do, argue against God and then claim atheism as a non-belief. Atheists must argue against God from either naturalism or a materialistic worldview and both of these ideology’s depict a belief system. As soon as the atheist appeals to these ideologies to prove his atheism he shoulders the burden of proof. In other words, the minute the atheist open their mouths using naturalism or materialism to support his atheism he assumes the burden of proof.
In essence, they have to borrow or steal beliefs from other ideologies to support their un-belief in God. If they don’t want any burden of proof, they should simply shut their mouths and not form arguments from either materialism, scientism or naturalism. Of course, this will not happen because the majority of new atheists are filled with beliefs, emotions and appetites by which they feel compelled to justify their beliefs or should I say un-belief. Therefore, they will continue to use the meaningless argument of having no burden of proof to justify their endless talking and arguing about a subject they say does not exist. Nonsense!
Out of the Box Thinking
Out of the Box Thinking
Before you do what some call “out of box the thinking”, You might want to know something about box thinking and boxes. First, you must know what the box is that you are in and you must admit you are in it, and then you must be able to find or create a different or new box. For all thinking is done in one box or another. There are linguistic boxes, cultural boxes, ideology boxes and paradigm boxes. However, no thinking is done outside of all boxes. In other words, there is no such thing as a free thinker or out of the box thinker. To think otherwise is to think in the worst box of all ” the stupid box.”
Now there are some huge problems to overcome for those who fancy themselves out of the box thinkers. One is that there are few, if any human beings, who are able to create a completely new box. The limitations of box building seemed to be understood just a few decades ago, when people seemed to sense that only intellectuals of the highest degree could think about box building. However, because of are fantastic education system and our love for pure knowledge, we can now all build boxes. Maybe, each of us can have our own box? The truth is, that very few are able to know the box that they are in much less create a new one. Box makers are few and far between; they are men like Moses, Plato and Jesus. In fact, most boxes are not made by individual, but by complete cultures over a long period of time with a lot of hard work.
What most people mean by “out of the box thinking” is thinking without a foundation of any authority, which in the end simply means giving your own option on a subject with no appeal to an authority outside and other than yourself. One thing that could be said for out of the box thinkers is that in appealing to themselves as the only authority needed, they have saved themselves a lot of laborious study, which is usually required for box building.
I should be careful, for if I say too much, some in the educated class might get the idea to hire these out of the box thinkers to teach everyone to build these easy self created boxes. We could even standardize the boxes, We Westerners are good at that, and then our university could mass-produce out of the box thinkers. We could have the loony bin box, the chaos box and the confused box and in this, we could all be different and the same, at the same time. The America dream comes true, everyone in their own box.
Lyle Duell 