tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post1497877676991678925..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Apocalypse Now or LaterStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-8420938990173218782016-01-04T10:02:53.546-08:002016-01-04T10:02:53.546-08:00Thank you for the information. Correction made.Thank you for the information. Correction made.Stuart Schneidermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-5165548419634012272016-01-04T08:33:52.676-08:002016-01-04T08:33:52.676-08:00One small correction: Dawkins referred to Trinity ...One small correction: Dawkins referred to Trinity College, Cambridge and not to King's College, Cambridge. Trinity always had the strongest academic superstars, perhaps owing to its wealth and spectacular wine cellar. My college, while close to the top in student performance, always lacked great thinkers among the fellows.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-37607361726448724042016-01-03T21:40:17.095-08:002016-01-03T21:40:17.095-08:00The stock market today is mainly super computers s...The stock market today is mainly super computers selling and buying in millionths or trillionths of a second. The rest are plungers, speculators, shysters, dupes, and the Fed (indirectly).<br /><br />Japan's market lost 75% of its value 20 years ago. It hasn't risen much, if at all.<br /><br />Plus, how can an economy "grow" perpetually? What do robots and wage serfs buy?<br /><br />In "False Dawn" 20 years ago, John Gray argued that lassais faire and Free Market ideas were a rigid dogma like any other.<br /><br />Tell me where I'm goin' wrong here? as the rich Simple Guy who's "for the folks" says. And then cuts off guests mid-sentence. -- Rich LaraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-9363792999347306352016-01-03T18:10:44.765-08:002016-01-03T18:10:44.765-08:00I don't believe literary fiction will do the j...I don't believe literary fiction will do the job. First, they are writing for themselves and the critics, and they won't do the imagining necessary because the critics won't accept it. Secondly, they don't have the practice at the kind of imagining needed. I'd guess the Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler types would have a chance. Science fiction writers could do it; alternative futures are what they're about. Of course, critics won't accept them--not lit'ry, don't you know.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-61084968265449014262016-01-03T12:44:20.736-08:002016-01-03T12:44:20.736-08:00Stuart: Religions establish moral principles, tea...Stuart: Religions establish moral principles, teach those principles, persuade large number of people to follow them and recommend that people follow them on the basis of a higher power or authority. If you dispense with all that in favor of science, you will find yourself in an amoral world where we can all do as we please, but where we believe that it will all work out well. But, isn’t that a supreme leap of faith?<br /><br />The interesting thing about the statement above is that religions are pluralistic containing subjective experiences while science attempts to be absolute, finding objective truths of the world around us. As soon as you say "God is X" someone else can say "God is not X" and you have no basis for discernment. Although even science can hit those paradoxes in quantum scales like whether an electron is a wave or a particle. <br /><br />And then you can reverse again and claim absolute spiritual things like "All religions reach towards the same God, and that there is an absolute spiritual nature, a world behind the world, that can't be quite known, except through metaphor." But you're still trapped not really knowing how to face conflict between metaohors, and its always easier to say your metaphors are more accurate, more useful.<br /><br />So the first hope we can say might be "A good religion is one that can share truth with other religions." And "A good religion should teach a morality that is contagious and will be followed even by those who don't believe in your God."<br /><br />Christianity is especially paradoxical with Jesus trying to turn accepted truth on its head, so the meek will inherit the earth, and we should turn the other cheek, and the only commandments we need are to love God, love our neighbor as ourselves. And Jesus's message had the effect of freeing people from putting earthly authority of kings and tyrants over God, and they became willing martyrs, willing to die for their beliefs. So not very practical, but in 300 years, Christianity became the official religion of the declining roman empire. And Jesus's radical theology was co-opted into state power and the church outlasted the empire itself now 1700 some years later.<br /><br />So we can say Christianity is a religion of sustaining values, but its strange the same religion that started with martyrs, raising the status and dignity of all people, how it can as easily be perverted into political power. And the U.S. perhaps the most christian nation on earth, we're the only nation that has used nuclear weapons against civilians. And somehow even after the fall of the Soviet union, we have to stay the only remaining world superpower, willing and able to dictate our reality on others anywhere in the world, and believe we have the wisdom and authority to do so.<br /><br />And Christians who started with a belief that the meek shall inherit the earth, that we have to dominate the earth, back to the old testament that Jesus sought to replace with a more loving view of God. So what good are Christian values if they lead to actions that are completely contradictory to Christianity.<br /><br />But maybe that's the secret to all power - you claim you're a religion of peace, while every day your actions are for war and domination, and as long as you can convince people of your righteous causes, they'll leave you to keep dominating others in their name.<br /><br />And we started here on questions of apocalypse, and Christianity is also an apocalyptic religion, Jesus will come again with a sword, and separate the good from the bad, and we'll all be judged. I don't quite understand how that fits into his Good News. <br /><br />At least religion perhaps helps us handle political chaos - when state power wanes or becomes corrupt, we all have our inner faith in a world behind the world to sustain us through it, and we can carry the stories of what was lost, so someday some of it can be restored.Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com