The treason of the intellectuals & “The Undoing of Thought”

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-treason-of-the-intellectuals----ldquo-The-Undoing-of-Thought-rdquo--4648

DECEMBER 1992
The treason of the intellectuals & “The Undoing of Thought”
by Roger Kimball

Burke
was right!
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When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.
—Alain Finkielkraut,The Undoing of Thought


Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities for re-establishing our former ignorance?
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des clercs. I said “famous,” but perhaps “once famous” would have been more accurate. For today, in the United States anyway, only the title of the book, not its argument, enjoys much currency. “La trahison des clercs”: it is one of those memorable phrases that bristles with hints and associations without stating anything definite. Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. The English translation, The Treason of the Intellectuals,[1] sums it up neatly.

The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, considered in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. In Benda’s terms, they were understood to be “all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or a metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession of non-material advantages.” Thanks to such men, Benda wrote, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.”

According to Benda, however, this situation was changing. More and more, intellectuals were abandoning their attachment to the traditional panoply of philosophical and scholarly ideals. One clear sign of the change was the attack on the Enlightenment ideal of universal humanity and the concomitant glorification of various particularisms. The attack on the universal went forward in social and political life as well as in the refined precincts of epistemology and metaphysics: “Those who for centuries had exhorted men, at least theoretically, to deaden the feeling of their differences … have now come to praise them, according to where the sermon is given, for their ‘fidelity to the French soul,’ ‘the immutability of their German consciousness,’ for the ‘fervor of their Italian hearts.’” In short, intellectuals began to immerse themselves in the unsettlingly practical and material world of political passions: precisely those passions, Benda observed, “owing to which men rise up against other men, the chief of which are racial passions, class passions and national passions.” The “rift” into which civilization had been wont to slip narrowed and threatened to close altogether.

Writing at a moment when ethnic and nationalistic hatreds were beginning to tear Europe asunder, Benda’s diagnosis assumed the lineaments of a prophecy—a prophecy that continues to have deep resonance today. “Our age is indeed the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds,” he wrote near the beginning of the book. “It will be one of its chief claims to notice in the moral history of humanity.” There was no need to add that its place in moral history would be as a cautionary tale. In little more than a decade, Benda’s prediction that, because of the “great betrayal” of the intellectuals, humanity was “heading for the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world,” would achieve a terrifying corroboration.

Julien Benda was not so naïve as to believe that intellectuals as a class had ever entirely abstained from political involvement, or, indeed, from involvement in the realm of practical affairs. Nor did he believe that intellectuals, as citizens, necessarily should abstain from political commitment or practical affairs. The “treason” or betrayal he sought to publish concerned the way that intellectuals had lately allowed political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such. Increasingly, Benda claimed, politics was “mingled with their work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers.” The ideal of disinterestedness, the universality of truth: such guiding principles were contemptuously deployed as masks when they were not jettisoned altogether. It was in this sense that he castigated the “desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action.”

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” In itself, this idea is hardly novel, as history from the Greek sophists on down reminds us. In Plato’s Gorgias, for instance, the sophist Callicles expresses his contempt for Socrates’ devotion to philosophy: “I feel toward philosophers very much as I do toward those who lisp and play the child.” Callicles taunts Socrates with the idea that “the more powerful, the better, and the stronger” are simply different words for the same thing. Successfully pursued, he insists, “luxury and intemperance … are virtue and happiness, and all the rest is tinsel.” How contemporary Callicles sounds!

In Benda’s formula, this boils down to the conviction that “politics decides morality.” To be sure, the cynicism that Callicles espoused is perennial: like the poor, it will be always with us. What Benda found novel was the accreditation of such cynicism by intellectuals. “It is true indeed that these new ‘clerks’ declare that they do not know what is meant by justice, truth, and other ‘metaphysical fogs,’ that for them the true is determined by the useful, the just by circumstances,” he noted. “All these things were taught by Callicles, but with this difference; he revolted all the important thinkers of his time.”

In other words, the real treason of the intellectuals was not that they countenanced Callicles but that they championed him. To appreciate the force of Benda’s thesis one need only think of that most influential modern Callicles, Friedrich Nietzsche. His doctrine of “the will to power,” his contempt for the “slave morality” of Christianity, his plea for an ethic “beyond good and evil,” his infatuation with violence—all epitomize the disastrous “pragmatism” that marks the intellectual’s “treason.” The real problem was not the unattainability but the disintegration of ideals, an event that Nietzsche hailed as the “transvaluation of all values.” “Formerly,” Benda observed, “leaders of States practiced realism, but did not honor it; … With them morality was violated but moral notions remained intact; and that is why, in spite of all their violence, they did not disturb civilization.”

Benda understood that the stakes were high: the treason of the intellectuals signaled not simply the corruption of a bunch of scribblers but a fundamental betrayal of culture. By embracing the ethic of Callicles, intellectuals had, Benda reckoned, precipitated “one of the most remarkable turning points in the moral history of the human species. It is impossible,” he continued,

to exaggerate the importance of a movement whereby those who for twenty centuries taught Man that the criterion of the morality of an act is its disinterestedness, that good is a decree of his reason insofar as it is universal, that his will is only moral if it seeks its law outside its objects, should begin to teach him that the moral act is the act whereby he secures his existence against an environment which disputes it, that his will is moral insofar as it is a will “to power,” that the part of his soul which determines what is good is its “will to live” wherein it is most “hostile to all reason,” that the morality of an act is measured by its adaptation to its end, and that the only morality is the morality of circumstances. The educators of the human mind now take sides with Callicles against Socrates, a revolution which I dare to say seems to me more important than all political upheavals.
The Treason of the Intellectuals is an energetic hodgepodge of a book. The philosopher Jean-François Revel recently described it as “one of the fussiest pleas on behalf of the necessary independence of intellectuals.” Certainly it is rich, quirky, erudite, digressive, and polemical: more an exclamation than an analysis. Partisan in its claims for disinterestedness, it is ruthless in its defense of intellectual high-mindedness. Yet given the horrific events that unfolded in the decades following its publication, Benda’s unremitting attack on the politicization of the intellect and ethnic separatism cannot but strike us as prescient. And given the continuing echo in our own time of the problems he anatomized, the relevance of his observations to our situation can hardly be doubted. From the savage flowering of ethnic hatreds in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to the mendacious demands for political correctness and multiculturalism on college campuses across America and Europe, the treason of the intellectuals continues to play out its unedifying drama. Benda spoke of “a cataclysm in the moral notions of those who educate the world.” That cataclysm is erupting in every corner of cultural life today.

In 1988, the young French philosopher and cultural critic Alain Finkielkraut took up where Benda left off, producing a brief but searching inventory of our contemporary cataclysms. Entitled La Défaite de la pensée[2] (“The ‘Defeat’ or ‘Undoing’ of Thought”), his essay is in part an updated taxonomy of intellectual betrayals. In this sense, the book is a trahison des clercs for the post-Communist world, a world dominated as much by the leveling imperatives of pop culture as by resurgent nationalism and ethnic separatism. Beginning with Benda, Finkielkraut catalogues several prominent strategies that contemporary intellectuals have employed to retreat from the universal. A frequent point of reference is the eighteenth-century German Romantic philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. “From the beginning, or to be more precise, from the time of Plato until that of Voltaire,” he writes, “human diversity had come before the tribunal of universal values; with Herder the eternal values were condemned by the court of diversity.”

Finkielkraut focuses especially on Herder’s definitively anti-Enlightenment idea of the Volksgeist or “national spirit.” Quoting the French historian Joseph Renan, he describes the idea as “the most dangerous explosive of modern times.” “Nothing,” he writes, “can stop a state that has become prey to the Volksgeist.” It is one of Finkielkraut’s leitmotifs that today’s multiculturalists are in many respects Herder’s (generally unwitting) heirs. True, Herder’s emphasis on history and language did much to temper the tendency to abstraction that one finds in some expressions of the Enlightenment. Ernst Cassirer even remarked that “Herder’s achievement is one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.” Nevertheless, the multiculturalists’ obsession with “diversity” and ethnic origins is in many ways a contemporary redaction of Herder’s elevation of racial particularism over the universalizing mandate of reason. Finkielkraut opposes this just as the mature Goethe once took issue with Herder’s adoration of the Volksgeist. Finkielkraut concedes that we all “relate to a particular tradition” and are “shaped by our national identity.” But, unlike the multiculturalists, he soberly insists that “this reality merit[s] some recognition, not idolatry.” In Goethe’s words, “A generalized tolerance will be best achieved if we leave undisturbed whatever it is which constitutes the special character of particular individuals and peoples, whilst at the same tim..................

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Finkielkraut focuses especially on Herder’s definitively anti-Enlightenment idea of the Volksgeist or “national spirit.” Quoting the French historian Joseph Renan, he describes the idea as “the most dangerous explosive of modern times.” “Nothing,” he writes, “can stop a state that has become prey to the Volksgeist.” It is one of Finkielkraut’s leitmotifs that today’s multiculturalists are in many respects Herder’s (generally unwitting) heirs. True, Herder’s emphasis on history and language did much to temper the tendency to abstraction that one finds in some expressions of the Enlightenment. Ernst Cassirer even remarked that “Herder’s achievement is one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.” Nevertheless, the multiculturalists’ obsession with “diversity” and ethnic origins is in many ways a contemporary redaction of Herder’s elevation of racial particularism over the universalizing mandate of reason. Finkielkraut opposes this just as the mature Goethe once took issue with Herder’s adoration of the Volksgeist. Finkielkraut concedes that we all “relate to a particular tradition” and are “shaped by our national identity.” But, unlike the multiculturalists, he soberly insists that “this reality merit[s] some recognition, not idolatry.” In Goethe’s words, “A generalized tolerance will be best achieved if we leave undisturbed whatever it is which constitutes the special character of particular individuals and peoples, whilst at the same tim..................



Read the last paragraph of that post above. There was a reason that I cut it off right at that point.
Come on, as many bright minds as we have here and nobody cares to comment on the article?

Those that preach tolerance and diversity as a cure all are the most intolerant of the lot.
Using such sugary syrup to disguise their true goals. -Tyr

[revelarts]

that covers a lot of ground in a -relatively- few words.

Dr. Francis A. Schaffer is the one i've read that's helped me get clarity on the concepts in the article you posted Tyr.

a few quick comments. I think that the article is generally correct. but i think they ground it in the wrong source. they speak of Socrates and the morals from that time. however while there was of course the acceptance and acknowledgment a rational framework for universal morals grounded outside of human "will" and "desires". They had no true universal standard to fix them to. (so for instance the greeks and romans didn't rise above there own a national and racial spirits as far as mankind as a whole is concerned. woman were less than human. abortion and infanticide allowed, not all citizens were as "equal as others" etc.. ) But here is where Judaism and and especially Christianity comes in and FILLS the whole in man's thinking on this. God as the creator is the outside universal standard for morality. And gives us the understanding of who mankind is. "created equal... of one blood." And what the true universal morals are. And a guide for us personally and as a society. From at least the middle ages on this understanding grounded western morals, law, science, philosophy and the arts. the intellectuals LIVED under an umbrella of Christain ideals of universal morality and a God created cosmos where man had a special place. Christianity weakened because of internal corruptions and human nature. Then people -the intellectuals in philosophy, christianity and science- began to question the foundation. Once the foundation was well undermined by doubt ...well anything goes at that point. There is no universal MORAL base if there is no God. Specifically a Christian God. REASON will lead you to this, if you're honest enough to be consistent. the only thing left are the vapors of christian influence in law and culture and finally in the pangs in people's God given conscious's that tells us 'THERE ARE UNIVERSAL MORALS.' 'Somethings are IN FACT right or wrong.' Even though they can't rationally explain why. we all KNOW IT.

But specifically to what you seem to apply it to, yes the modern intellectuals are riding that horse and are mainly on the left. However, we have to repeat, like the article states, some hold to the standards of "civilization" and "morals" intellectually but still DO horriblee things.
And I'd Add, selectively ignore some morals and replace it with their own version of "will to power".

When those on the right say even jokingly "we should make the M.E. a parking lot." this is not based in ANY morals or "rational thought" or civilization. Seems to me it's based in an over wrought survival instinct. The same with torture. and spying on every citizen. all things the right embraces. Racial fears and reactions aren't based in the BEST of civilizations "moral" codes either.

so it seems to me while the left openly embraces the trashing of Christian and/or civilized morals and rationality. And think they are doing the world a favor. The right verbally promotes old school universal morals and civilization but only selectively and mainly for what they consider the good of their nation or narrow group.

[revelarts]

“I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.”
How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/522965)



“We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.”

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”

"Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life."

"Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched."

“Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world.”
The God Who Is There (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/77364)


Francis A. Schaeffer

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Rev, sorry due to new family duties/ jobs, etc. - I am now engaged in, I will have to take a few days before delving into this subject again, addressing your posts. Both your replies show an awareness of the great complexity and historic nature of this current darkness being wrapped around us!
Thanks for wading in where others apparently either feared or were to indifferent to tread.
Again, sorry but my time is severely limited and it pains me not to have enough time to give adequate response and reply today.. -Tyr

[fj1200]

... nobody cares to comment on the article?

Did I miss your comments on it?

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Rev, sorry due to new family duties/ jobs, etc. - I am now engaged in, I will have to take a few days before delving into this subject again, addressing your posts. Both your replies show an awareness of the great complexity and historic nature of this current darkness being wrapped around us!
Thanks for wading in where others apparently either feared or were to indifferent to tread.
Again, sorry but my time is severely limited and it pains me not to have enough time to give adequate response and reply today.. -Tyr

Just a quick reply to this query now, as I must race out the door. .-Tyr

My second post had a comment . The next two sentences just after the question about nobody commenting at that time. Can you even read??? I just enlarged it in the quoted I kindly gave you now , in case you are truly double blind! -Tyr


Read the last paragraph of that post above. There was a reason that I cut it off right at that point.
Come on, as many bright minds as we have here and nobody cares to comment on the article?

Those that preach tolerance and diversity as a cure all are the most intolerant of the lot.
Using such sugary syrup to disguise their true goals. -Tyr
Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; Yesterday at 06:24 PM.

[fj1200]

My second post had a comment .

That was hardly a comment on the piece. It was a strawman fallacy.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

“I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.”
How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/522965)



“We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.”

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”

"Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life."

"Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched."

“Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world.”
The God Who Is There (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/77364)


Francis A. Schaeffer

And there you hit upon on it my friend. That grand betrayal was disguised to attempt to hide its main purpose-- to subvert the culture and move it away from Christian moral principles! Which is no different than is the Political Correctness championed by the libs/leftist and dems today. And back by the media, the government and so-called intellectuals(UNIVERSITIES ,ETC.) today in USA.

They rejecting Christian morality, seek to not only get their insane views accepted but insist on vilifying and attempting to destroy that morality and its followers.
This is not new even if many that actually see here in the USA today think it is. It can easily be traced back well over two centuries ...
Statism seeks to replace God and needs to destroy its opposition by vilification--hence Political Correctness was born. The government seeks cultural change to back its power grabbing. That Cultural change falls under the umbrella of Political Correctness= hence, vilifying the truth that its opposition strikes back with!
Boils down to darkness attacking the Light. As in evil principles being promoted over that of Christian principles.
They just chose to hide it under a political cause/ umbrella, advanced by the dem party and , government/media.

Nietzsche is dead!! God is not!--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

That was hardly a comment on the piece. It was a strawman fallacy.

Talk is cheap.. Prove it .......................
Fallacies are easily proven to be just that.
However, you speaking as if your word is an authority or as if God has just spoken is silly.

It was both a comment and a value judgment made by me directly about the core premise of the article(as in why the betrayal). You disagree but offer nothing but an accusation instead of any proof. And a false accusation at that. -Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Talk is cheap.. Prove it .......................
Fallacies are easily proven to be just that.
However, you speaking as if your word is an authority or as if God has just spoken is silly.

It was both a comment and a value judgment made by me directly about the core premise of the article(as in why the betrayal). You disagree but offer nothing but an accusation instead of any proof. And a false accusation at that. -Tyr


EDIT-- By the way, if you keep selectively "partially posting" my quotes(editing to serve your end) I'll will put you back on ignore.
I do not care to have to keep reposting my post in context because you edit it to try to gain advantage for you.

[tailfins]

EDIT-- By the way, if you keep selectively "partially posting" my quotes(editing to serve your end) I'll will put you back on ignore.
I do not care to have to keep reposting my post in context because you edit it to try to gain advantage for you.

The scroll wheel on my mouse works really well. I can see your WHOLE post. I see nothing wrong with quoting only the part of a post that catches someone's attention. Having said that, I agree with the premise of your post. I witness it every time I see code checked in full of try-catch statements.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The scroll wheel on my mouse works really well. I can see your WHOLE post. I see nothing wrong with quoting only the part of a post that catches someone's attention. Having said that, I agree with the premise of your post. I witness it every time I see code checked in full of try-catch statements.




My second post had a comment . The next two sentences just after the question about nobody commenting at that time. Can you even read??? I just enlarged it in the quoted I kindly gave you now , in case you are truly double blind! -Tyr

^^^^ That is the full quote, yet he saw fit to abbreviate it .
Why??? Was it too long or too complicated?
No.. Its a method he employs.
You like playing with your mouse going back and forth good for you but I do not like having to repost my earlier posts just because he habitually engages in "partial quoting" --even very short posts!
Its a damn tactic he employs--if you dont see it tough. Its not about you dumbass.
I told him to cease that kind of crap or else I'll place him back on ignore. I do not make idle threats..
Why does it concern you?--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Rev , check this one out too.--Tyr



http://erudito.livejournal.com/527319.html

The Undoing of Thought

Mar. 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 PM
knight
If one is puzzled by “progressive” Western opinion’s nonchalance in the face of fascism with an Islamic face, with how racist its anti-racism so often seems to be, with its indifference to the plight of Muslim women or Muslim gays, then read Alain Finkielkraut’s The Undoing of Thought and all is revealed.

Finkielkraut takes us through the intellectual history, and its underlying logic, whereby Enlightenment universalism became transmuted into its opposite.

In Part One—The Roots of the Human Mind—Finkielkraut starts, much like Benda (to whom the book is part homage and part continuation and updating), with Herder and de Maistre. A combination of German Romantics and French Theocrats, by appealing to unconscious affinities against Enlightenment rationalism, were involuntary innovators who founded the human sciences (p.28).

Well except for, one notes, economics: but, like Benda, intellectual debate for Finkielkraut is a Franco-German affair. Apart from Franz Fanon and de Maistre—who both wrote in French—all the thinkers he cites are French or German. The Anglosphere—apart from, as with Benda, Shakespeare—is an intellectual no-go area.

Yet it is perverse to discuss modernity, even in terms of history of ideas, so utterly unconcerned with the Anglosphere. The Anglosphere creates modernity. Key Franco-German thinkers (such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Marx) are clearly reacting to—and deeply influenced by—their experience and understanding of the Anglosphere. The French Revolution itself—the archetypal “modern” political upheaval—is, in all sorts of ways, a consequence of, and reaction to, the American Revolution. (Even though, in crucial respects, both Revolutionaries and Counter-Revolutionaries fail to understand it—a continuing theme.) The Continentals are so often much more parochial than they realise.

Like Benda, Finkielkraut sees the Alsace-Lorraine dispute as crucial in its influence on intellectual debate. In particular, by reawakening the debate between nation-as-contract and nation-as-spirit (p.30), which Finkielkraut regards as a crucial dichotomy.

He discusses the case of Goethe who, on reading a Chinese novel, was struck by how accessible the characters and their motivations were. Thereby completing his journey away from his earlier German Romanticism to seeing ideas and language as providing a more universal bridge across cultures (pp35ff). The artist (or thinker) may be born in a culture, but what they do should is to aspire to transcend it. Goethe had rejected Herder.

But, in German intellectual circles, Herder won. The acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine by the Gernan Reich helped make the cult of origins a patriotic duty. Nation-as-spirit won over nation-as-contract. With the later, brutal consequences that, as Finkielkraut notes, Benda predicted (p.46).

Part Two—Generous Betrayal—is about the intellectual reaction to the horrors of the Second World War and colonialism. Finkielkraut starts with the setting up of UNESCO which seemed to be motivated by the universalism of the philosophes. But this soon become very much not so. The reaction against the most brutal particularism of all was not a re-invigorating of universalism but an even more intense worship of particularism. The Second Death of Man (p.59) done in the name of A Dewesternized World (p.53). What began as a critique of fanaticism became a critique of Enlightenment thinking.

Finkielkraut takes a statement by Claude Levi-Strauss commissioned by UNESCO in 1951 to be a sign of the shift (pp55ff). The universalism of the Enlightenment was criticised as an instrument of imperialism, and thus oppression. It was, Levi-Strauss said, ethnocentric. The war against barbarism became a war against the concept of barbarian. With anthropologists leading the way: [o]nce [anthropologists] had flattered Europe’s vanity. They set about henceforth to nourish its guilty conscience. Savagery, barbarism and primitive man: these were just so many hateful and condescending stereotypes whose intellectual validity anthropology had undermined. (p57.)

The war against ethnocentrism pervaded the human sciences (again, ignoring economics). The discipline of History broke the notion of historical continuity, telling us not to see ourselves in the past (pp59ff), which became another country. Sociologists stressed the pluralism of our fleeting culture (pp60ff).

Finkielkraut lists the ways this new perspective meant agreeing with Herder. With a major divergence: Herder had spoken above all for his own people; the philosophers of decolonisation speak for the Other. Compounding, as it were, for the sins of their own tradition … (p.65)

But mirroring the logic still replicates the logic. So we have, in A portrait of the Decolonised World the result that There has been no place for such a collective subject in the logic of colonialism; now, in the logic of cultural identity, there was no room for the individual (p.68). Hence, [w]ith monotonous regularity these liberation movements have thrown up repressive regimes. This is because they have based themselves on the mystical notion of collective fusion rather than on the juridical conception of contract. They have drawn on political romanticism and conceived liberty as a collective attribute rather than as individual possession (p.70)

Now, one can well argue that ideas do not have such overwhelming causal primacy. But they can aid or resist trends. Of the two European versions of what a nation is, the Third World has massively opted for the worse one, and done so with the active blessing of Western intellectuals (p.73). [F]or culture as task … they substitute culture as origin (p.79), part of the great transformation of culture into cultural identity (p.81).

Finkielkraut considers the mixed role of Marxism in all this. Marx deplored nationalism but also denied any notion of social contract, insisting the key feature of society was conflict (p.71). Leninism (particularly under Stalin) resurrected national identity. But in Marxist terms—of something determined by the underlying processes of life, not something that was in anyway chosen. Having undermined the notion of nation-as-contract, Communism's death took with it the notion of a world common to all (pp 72-73). Which leaves nation-as-spirit free reign.

And so the strange convolutions of “anti-racism”. The word racism, in fact, is deceptive. It brackets under the same label two sorts of outlook whose genesis, logic and motivation are completely dissimilar … The former holds that civilisation is unitary: the latter maintains that there are multiple ethnicities that cannot be compared. It may be true that the first outlook leads to colonialism; but the second culminates in Hitler (p.75). With the substitution of the cultural for the biological conception of the collectivity, racism has not been abolished: it has simply returned to its starting point (p.77). While the annihilation of the individual is called “liberty”; and the word “culture” serves as a humanist standard for the division of the human race into collective, inaccessible and irreducible entities (p.83).

Where Benda was more inclined to see material interest and status-seeking, Finkielkraut is more concerned with the logic of ideas and more intellectual motives. But they are not incompatible perspectives—patterns of ideas, for whatever reason they are adopted, do have inherent logics to them. Finkielkraut discusses the effect on education and notes the irony in Claude Levi-Strauss, having helped set the trend off, then causing offence in a later lecture (to UNESCO in 1971) because he fails to shift his ground (p.78). For [t]he more the anti-racism of today resembles the racism of yesterday, the more the word “race” itself become sacrilegious (p.81).

Either way, the pattern of modern intellectuals displaying their moral and intellectual superiority by proclaiming their critical distance from their own culture and then displaying their moral and intellectual superiority by extolling other people’s attachment to their cultures is certainly dissected in highly informative way. Since the universal really is inherent in serious intellectual activity, but universalism itself is denied, one gets this Janus-like shifting of ground whereby one's own culture is critiqued in the name of universal principles but other cultures are endorsed in the name of the denial of universalism. Particularism as a universal principle. So criticising Muslims is Islamophobia while criticising Christians is just what sensible folk do.

Despite having been written in 1988, Finkielkraut’s essay is greatly illuminating about the apparent blindness of so many intellectuals in the West to fascism with an Islamic face. His analysis greatly illuminates the puzzle of why, among progressivists, derivatives of Hitler’s ideas (studiously repackaged—such as shifting from the Jewish people being the world’s most problematic folk to the Jewish state being the world’s most problematic state) seem to have more sway than derivatives of Lenin’s. Such as insisting on the primacy of identity and culture; romanticising nature; particularising science—contemporary “anti-capitalism”, is much more like Hitler’s than Lenin’s. Indeed, Lenin’s ideas mainly still have influence where his and Hitler’s overlap—such as the notion of a vanguard, the most obvious area where Lenin’s ideas still have influence (and, indeed, greatly influenced Hitler), or contempt for Christianity. But Hitler understood modernity a lot better than Lenin did, since he had to grapple with it much more complexly.

Part Three—Towards a Multi-Cultural Society—extends the critique to multiculturalism. Finkielkraut’s headings summarise his argument rather well: The Disappearance of the Dreyfusards (p.90)—i.e. those who decried xenophobic particularism in favour of chosen allegiance and individual dignity—A Pedagogy of Relativism (p.93), Culture in Pieces (p.99), The Right to Servitude (p.102).

Part Four—We are the World. We are the Children—extends the critique to postmodernism. The thesis, as his first heading says, that A Pair of Boots is a Good as Shakespeare (p.111). Where multiculturalists are about cultural fixity, the postmodernists are about cultural fluidity. A mix-and-match consumerist cosmopolitanism. But with no sense of anything universal, we are left with His Majesty the Consumer (p.118) and “A Society Which Has Finally Become Adolescent” (p.123), one engaged in the worship of youth (pp 125ff). Finkielkraut quotes Fellini: Only a collective delirium could have led us to regard fifteen-year olds as embodying all the master virtues (p.128). But if the past has no authority, why not worship the ignorant energy of youth?

Surely Finkielkraut is correct to note that those who decry consumerism have been most avid in undermining the supports for any genuine alternative. Ever since it arose out of the wreckage of Classical civilisation, the intellectual and cultural basis of Western civilisation has been structured around a shifting oscillation between Christianity and the Classical heritage. If both are rejected, what remains? A shifting parade of meretricious moralism, constantly repackaging itself as “cutting edge compassion”, the better to preside over status-seeking self-interest. A shallow intellectual consumerism that replicates and encourages what it professes to despise and has no serious sense of its own origins.

(There is certainly not any concept of Truth to appeal to: that is outmoded and oppressive.)

The final part is a single paragraph, entitled The Zombie and the Fanatic (p.133). The Fanatic being the person locked into their own culture under theories that refuse access, under pain of high treason, to doubt, irony or reason—that is to say everything which would help him break free of the colllective matrix. The Zombie being the person who is also bereft of access to higher aspirations, but via a leisure industry which reduces culture to the production of entertainment.

Intellectual activity giving way to a terrible and mocking encounter between those who refuse see their own culture and civilisation as having any claims, nor accept any universalism that might be appealed to, and those who insist on the primacy of their religious prescriptions sanctified as “culture”. A nice summary of Europe’s current predicament, written almost 20 years ago.

The Undoing of Thought is an essay that does give one most furiously to think.

[tailfins]

^^^^ That is the full quote, yet he saw fit to abbreviate it .
Why??? Was it too long or too complicated?
No.. Its a method he employs.
You like playing with your mouse going back and forth good for you but I do not like having to repost my earlier posts just because he habitually engages in "partial quoting" --even very short posts!
Its a damn tactic he employs--if you dont see it tough. Its not about you dumbass.
I told him to cease that kind of crap or else I'll place him back on ignore. I do not make idle threats..
Why does it concern you?--Tyr

I see you attacking someone who doesn't deserve it, asshole. I hate to break it to you, sweetie, but people don't hang on your every word.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I see you attacking someone who doesn't deserve it, asshole. I hate to break it to you, sweetie, but people don't hang on your every word.

No dumbass ,what you saw was me responding to this by him!



That was hardly a comment on the piece. It was a strawman fallacy.


Now, what is your problem, jackass?--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

My, my --how the rat duo scurries away.. :laugh::laugh:--Tyr

[fj1200]

Fallacies are easily proven to be just that.

:confused: Exactly. I know what you typed and I know the definition. Not much necessary beyond that.


...... I'll will put you back on ignore.

You make a lot out of nothing.

[fj1200]

And there you hit upon on it my friend. That grand betrayal was disguised to attempt to hide its main purpose-- to subvert the culture and move it away from Christian moral principles! Which is no different than is the Political Correctness championed by the libs/leftist and dems today. And back by the media, the government and so-called intellectuals(UNIVERSITIES ,ETC.) today in USA.

They rejecting Christian morality, seek to not only get their insane views accepted but insist on vilifying and attempting to destroy that morality and its followers.
This is not new even if many that actually see here in the USA today think it is. It can easily be traced back well over two centuries ...
Statism seeks to replace God and needs to destroy its opposition by vilification--hence Political Correctness was born. The government seeks cultural change to back its power grabbing. That Cultural change falls under the umbrella of Political Correctness= hence, vilifying the truth that its opposition strikes back with!
Boils down to darkness attacking the Light. As in evil principles being promoted over that of Christian principles.
They just chose to hide it under a political cause/ umbrella, advanced by the dem party and , government/media.

Nietzsche is dead!! God is not!--Tyr

You're grabbing at evidence which supports your already derived conclusion. In some respects Christians have been their own worst enemies by creating a version which is exclusionary and purposely seeks to keep out any that don't agree with the beliefs of the people and not necessarily the tenets of the religion. This can be seen historically where the church, churches I should say, have at times supported slavery, supported segregation, kept women from serving in leadership roles, etc.

Do some reject Christian morality? Of course some do. Do or have Christians rejected Christian morality and claim to be Christian? Undoubtedly. You can't solely blame outside forces when internal forces do as much or even more harm.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

You're grabbing at evidence which supports your already derived conclusion. In some respects Christians have been their own worst enemies by creating a version which is exclusionary and purposely seeks to keep out any that don't agree with the beliefs of the people and not necessarily the tenets of the religion. This can be seen historically where the church, churches I should say, have at times supported slavery, supported segregation, kept women from serving in leadership roles, etc.

Do some reject Christian morality? Of course some do. Do or have Christians rejected Christian morality and claim to be Christian? Undoubtedly. You can't solely blame outside forces when internal forces do as much or even more harm.

Without doubt some of that is true but its so minor when compared to the worldwide and broad spread dedication by hundreds of millions to justify their attacks on Christianity. Which are truly just attempts at defending a decision they made to not believe in God or to accept Salvation and follow Christ's teachings. Intellectuals and organized education do conspire to teach this mistake as gospel.
Nobody is blaming solely outside forces.
As to exclusionary practices by Christians-- such must be the case, for dilution of faith and truth is an easy(an often attempted) means of destroying both!


Sorry, my time now is so very limited--more later , if warranted....-Tyr

[fj1200]

Without doubt some of that is true but its so minor when compared to the worldwide and broad spread dedication by hundreds of millions to justify their attacks on Christianity. Which are truly just attempts at defending a decision they made to not believe in God or to accept Salvation and follow Christ's teachings. Intellectuals and organized education do conspire to teach this mistake as gospel.
Nobody is blaming solely outside forces.
As to exclusionary practices by Christians-- such must be the case, for dilution of faith and truth is an easy(an often attempted) means of destroying both!


Sorry, my time now is so very limited--more later , if warranted....-Tyr

Yes, yes, the argument of the unnamed globalists, etc. attacking Christianity. And your arguments center almost completely on outside forces as you don't acknowledge issues within Christianity. Nevertheless the Christianity you see IMO sees anything outside as dilution; You make a false argument of purity if faith is not centered on truth. There are countless examples of where exclusionary practices were followed to the detriment of Christianity.

IMO there are countless former Christians not because of the vast conspiracy but because society has changed and people don't see the church as the center of life. I think that's unfortunate and hope it can be changed but it won't be changed if exclusionary practices persist.

[revelarts]

You're grabbing at evidence which supports your already derived conclusion. In some respects Christians have been their own worst enemies by creating a version which is exclusionary and purposely seeks to keep out any that don't agree with the beliefs of the people and not necessarily the tenets of the religion. This can be seen historically where the church, churches I should say, have at times supported slavery, supported segregation, kept women from serving in leadership roles, etc.

Do some reject Christian morality? Of course some do. Do or have Christians rejected Christian morality and claim to be Christian? Undoubtedly. You can't solely blame outside forces when internal forces do as much or even more harm.

Yes, yes, the argument of the unnamed globalists, etc. attacking Christianity. And your arguments center almost completely on outside forces as you don't acknowledge issues within Christianity. Nevertheless the Christianity you see IMO sees anything outside as dilution; You make a false argument of purity if faith is not centered on truth. There are countless examples of where exclusionary practices were followed to the detriment of Christianity.

IMO there are countless former Christians not because of the vast conspiracy but because society has changed and people don't see the church as the center of life. I think that's unfortunate and hope it can be changed but it won't be changed if exclusionary practices persist.

"Vast conspiracy"? c'mon.
I think part of the problem here is that when people talk about the change in culture from a more christian base to the secular we have now is that you can name names and groups that had have had influence but it's an overall THOUGHT TREND that moves through culture and is picked up by others and carried forward that's going on. There's no need for a formal "conspiracy". But the roots of the thought trend can be traced to the treason of certain intellectuals

even though some of the specific situations we have now is just the outgrowth of thought trending, still they have been some philosophers, scientist, and educators, and yes even powerful rich "philanthropist", and a host of rank and file anti-religious foot soldiers who have in fact and deliberately set about to try to set aside the Christian cultural base.
There's a long list of academics that can be quoted that have practically and overtly said outright they wanted to overthrow the Christian cultural base at various points. especially in the academic halls.
And if the leaders in politics, law, science, biz etc are trained in these same halls what do you think the mind set will be of these people the generation following?

The transition of the colleges and university from Christian based, rationally Socratic, and Locke leaning natural law positions to the Enlightenment leaning, Nietzsche like and Hegelian philosophical base where God is excluded by default can be documented, ---If you want me to post a much longer post. --- It doesn't mean it's been a "planned" event but it has been relentless.
Those who followed Enlightenment thinking down to Nietzsche and Hegel have deliberately removed the foundation of morals. and replaced it with thin air and hand waving.

But yes, TO OFTEN christians have NOT upheld the standards they say they embrace. and have twisted the words of scripture to defend thing that are indefensible. (this is admitted in the article BTW)
But on the other hand the very SAME scripture has been used properly to fight against many of the problems you mentioned.

Slavery was attacked morally the strongest by Christians in public life who understood that God created all men. And that modern slavery was not a Godly or right institution. One of the men in England most responsible for the abolition of slavery there was William Wilberforce. He was an upperclass person who before he had a Christian conversion did not care about slavery but afterwords was convince that God had called him to the purpose of the abolition of slavery in Britain. He became a member of parliament and worked for over 30 years on changing the laws and finally just before his death saw it done.

The link below is a VERY well done documentary on the abolitionist movement in the U.S. which points out that the moral public attack on slavery was Christian based and and christian lead.
The Abolitionists . American Experience . WGBH | PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/abolitionists/player/)
Even though many Christians (and non christians) in the north and south were completely unmoved by the moral position.

Concerning woman's Roles in leadership.
First you have to go back to find out where in western history woman have ever had high standing? In Rome, in Greece? In the wilds or Germania? It wasn't until Christianity came to the front that women in the west in some cases where even considered HUMAN. And only following that came the woman's right's movement in the U.S. which were started by QUAKER women.

But as far as leadership roles go INSIDE the church and home. Yes, there are boundaries there that some scripture gives a broad OUTLINE of the parameters for. If some don't like it well, ok, whose right? the apostles or the new intellectuals?

But also as you say some INSIDE the Church have decided they they know better than God in various areas. These wolves in sheep's clothing have adopted the thinking of the enlightenment, Nietzsche and Hegel and brought it inside the Christian Seminaries no less. (one of the main reasons for the many denominational splits over the past 150 years) These people have AGREED with the destruction of the rational, moral foundations and the chucking of the Bible in favor of rootless "modern thought".

the Bibles ideas of marriage being just one place where many people who say they are Christians are now willing to compromise the scripture to agree with the current cultural trends and views on sex. It's all of a piece. These Christians may be SINCERE, but not realize they are NOT obeying God but are have been sucked into the cultural milieu created by "The treason of the intellectuals" over the past few hundred years.

[fj1200]

"Vast conspiracy"? c'mon.
I think part of the problem here is that when people talk about the change in culture from a more christian base to the secular we have now is that you can name names and groups that had have had influence but it's an overall THOUGHT TREND that moves through culture and is picked up by others and carried forward that's going on. There's no need for a formal "conspiracy". But the roots of the thought trend can be traced to the treason of certain intellectuals

even though some of the specific situations we have now is just the outgrowth of thought trending, still they have been some philosophers, scientist, and educators, and yes even powerful rich "philanthropist", and a host of rank and file anti-religious foot soldiers who have in fact and deliberately set about to try to set aside the Christian cultural base.
There's a long list of academics that can be quoted that have practically and overtly said outright they wanted to overthrow the Christian cultural base at various points. especially in the academic halls.
And if the leaders in politics, law, science, biz etc are trained in these same halls what do you think the mind set will be of these people the generation following?

The transition of the colleges and university from Christian based, rationally Socratic, and Locke leaning natural law positions to the Enlightenment leaning, Nietzsche like and Hegelian philosophical base where God is excluded by default can be documented, ---If you want me to post a much longer post. --- It doesn't mean it's been a "planned" event but it has been relentless.
Those who followed Enlightenment thinking down to Nietzsche and Hegel have deliberately removed the foundation of morals. and replaced it with thin air and hand waving.

But yes, TO OFTEN christians have NOT upheld the standards they say they embrace. and have twisted the words of scripture to defend thing that are indefensible. (this is admitted in the article BTW)
But on the other hand the very SAME scripture has been used properly to fight against many of the problems you mentioned.

Slavery was attacked morally the strongest by Christians in public life who understood that God created all men. And that modern slavery was not a Godly or right institution. One of the men in England most responsible for the abolition of slavery there was William Wilberforce. He was an upperclass person who before he had a Christian conversion did not care about slavery but afterwords was convince that God had called him to the purpose of the abolition of slavery in Britain. He became a member of parliament and worked for over 30 years on changing the laws and finally just before his death saw it done.

The link below is a VERY well done documentary on the abolitionist movement in the U.S. which points out that the moral public attack on slavery was Christian based and and christian lead.
The Abolitionists . American Experience . WGBH | PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/abolitionists/player/)
Even though many Christians (and non christians) in the north and south were completely unmoved by the moral position.

Concerning woman's Roles in leadership.
First you have to go back to find out where in western history woman have ever had high standing? In Rome, in Greece? In the wilds or Germania? It wasn't until Christianity came to the front that women in the west in some cases where even considered HUMAN. And only following that came the woman's right's movement in the U.S. which were started by QUAKER women.

But as far as leadership roles go INSIDE the church and home. Yes, there are boundaries there that some scripture gives a broad OUTLINE of the parameters for. If some don't like it well, ok, whose right? the apostles or the new intellectuals?

But also as you say some INSIDE the Church have decided they they know better than God in various areas. These wolves in sheep's clothing have adopted the thinking of the enlightenment, Nietzsche and Hegel and brought it inside the Christian Seminaries no less. (one of the main reasons for the many denominational splits over the past 150 years) These people have AGREED with the destruction of the rational, moral foundations and the chucking of the Bible in favor of rootless "modern thought".

the Bibles ideas of marriage being just one place where many people who say they are Christians are now willing to compromise the scripture to agree with the current cultural trends and views on sex. It's all of a piece. These Christians may be SINCERE, but not realize they are NOT obeying God but are have been sucked into the cultural milieu created by "The treason of the intellectuals" over the past few hundred years.

A couple of points: I said it's NOT a vast conspiracy and I think we agree on many of the issues you mention. The church, some churches, have been influential in creating positive societal change; slavery, segregation, etc. I have a working theory though that the church for the most part has followed society and not led society. If/when it has led then I think it has led from a minority position within religion.

My argument here is that the "vast conspiracy" is used as a substitute for introspective thinking. I don't disagree that there have been intellectuals that have contributed to the trend but there are intellectuals on the other side that sought to stem the trend.

OTOH I feel bad for replying with few words to your many words. :(

[revelarts]

A couple of points: I said it's NOT a vast conspiracy and I think we agree on many of the issues you mention. The church, some churches, have been influential in creating positive societal change; slavery, segregation, etc. I have a working theory though that the church for the most part has followed society and not led society. If/when it has led then I think it has led from a minority position within religion.

My argument here is that the "vast conspiracy" is used as a substitute for introspective thinking. I don't disagree that there have been intellectuals that have contributed to the trend but there are intellectuals on the other side that sought to stem the trend.

OTOH I feel bad for replying with few words to your many words. :(
no problem on the word count.
like i say, i sometimes i write a lot just so that i'm not misunderstood.

I think you're right it has often been the minority opinion from within Religious/Church thought has been the most active in positive societal change. With the rest of the rank and file in the church and the wider society often muttering agreement and beginning to act in legal and moral ways on the surface to the higher moral standards but quietly uncomfortable with Godly principals.

it's human nature.
we all have Paul's problem
We love the moral laws with our minds but our hearts often want just want to do what it wants morals and intellectual honesty and society be hanged.
Or in worst cases we love that the moral laws are imposed on OTHERS but we want to get away with every moral issue WE have because it's "not really that bad".

And I think you're right that the churches have followed society... from time to time. but only seriously in the past 200-150 years it seems to me.
Before that from the middle ages on it's been Church at the lead all areas including science. To be sure again with the majority often unduly influenced by society and with christian to often behaving far below the declared Christian standards. But the minority breaking through bringing light and moral progress and securing the rational foundations of thinking.

[fj1200]

Or in worst cases we love that the moral laws are imposed on OTHERS but we want to get away with every moral issue WE have because it's "not really that bad".

Yup, we agree for the most part but you nailed it with the above. :)

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

You're grabbing at evidence which supports your already derived conclusion. In some respects Christians have been their own worst enemies by creating a version which is exclusionary and purposely seeks to keep out any that don't agree with the beliefs of the people and not necessarily the tenets of the religion. This can be seen historically where the church, churches I should say, have at times supported slavery, supported segregation, kept women from serving in leadership roles, etc.

Do some reject Christian morality? Of course some do. Do or have Christians rejected Christian morality and claim to be Christian? Undoubtedly. You can't solely blame outside forces when internal forces do as much or even more harm.

The subject is not individual Christian purity or even purity of Christian churches, etc.
The subject is the treason of intellectuals and their overall commitment to destroy Christianity by false propaganda and deliberate cultural changes based solely upon a hate for Christian moral standards AND A SOCIETY BASED UPON THOSE STANDARDS.
And yes, globalists do exist and are an organized , extremely wealthy and politically powerful group effecting great change around the world.
To deny that fact either shows great ignorance or else deliberate deceit IMHO.
I did not just grab at anything. I did present an article to be discussed.
Here you jump to the defense of outside forces while trying to place blame on Christians themselves.
As if outside influences in society , culture, laws and regulations are willy nilly and none are designed to weaken and destroy Christianity--which is utterly absurd!--Tyr

[fj1200]

The subject is not individual Christian purity or even purity of Christian churches, etc.
The subject is the treason of intellectuals and their overall commitment to destroy Christianity by false propaganda and deliberate cultural changes based solely upon a hate for Christian moral standards AND A SOCIETY BASED UPON THOSE STANDARDS.
And yes, globalists do exist and are an organized , extremely wealthy and politically powerful group effecting great change around the world.
To deny that fact either shows great ignorance or else deliberate deceit IMHO.
I did not just grab at anything. I did present an article to be discussed.
Here you jump to the defense of outside forces while trying to place blame on Christians themselves.
As if outside influences in society , culture, laws and regulations are willy nilly and none are designed to weaken and destroy Christianity--which is utterly absurd!--Tyr

That's just a restatement of your position. Not much new there.

And the subject is Christian purity, or perception thereof, if a lack of Christian purity leads to what you blame on outside forces. But it's in your head so no competing arguments can fit.

[revelarts]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6Glf2DZY0vY/TpH72WaqnWI/AAAAAAAAAaw/W79qzZRQiBI/s1600/1995-01-02.Relativism_Resolutions.gif

Clavin here represents the intellectuals and the training on ethics given in academia.
and Hobbs is the half hearted attempt by some to question the "new" irrational foundation of civilization where they claim no standards.

Christians and traditionalist DO claim a standard but often only hold to it and defend it selectively.
The new intellectuals assert there are NO STANDARDS and actively work to undermined the notions of the western standards derived from a christian foundation.

There's a real difference. with profound effect.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

That's just a restatement of your position. Not much new there.

And the subject is Christian purity, or perception thereof, if a lack of Christian purity leads to what you blame on outside forces. But it's in your head so no competing arguments can fit.

You blame the effects of the war waged against Christians as their fault because of their failures--when thats a RESULT not a CAUSE!!
As usual you have it backwards, which is why you pointing out lack of Christian purity in their failings is as wrong headed as one can be.
The effect of massive and powerful outside forces weakening Christians is not why the Intellectuals and Academia have chosen to deliberately attempt its destruction--rather its an obvious symptom of the chosen clash and indicative of some of its successes!
Trying to point out the imperfections of individual Christians as a cause of or valid justification for Intellectual treachery is ironically laughable.
For much of that is the "fruited results" garnered by those that target it for destruction.
Its like deliberately cutting your kid--then self-righteously and savagely beating that kid for bleeding!-Tyr

[fj1200]

You blame the effects of the war waged against Christians as their fault because of their failures--when thats a RESULT not a CAUSE!!
As usual you have it backwards, which is why you pointing out lack of Christian purity in their failings is as wrong headed as one can be.
The effect of massive and powerful outside forces weakening Christians is not why the Intellectuals and Academia have chosen to deliberately attempt its destruction--rather its an obvious symptom of the chosen clash and indicative of some of its successes!
Trying to point out the imperfections of individual Christians as a cause of or valid justification for Intellectual treachery is ironically laughable.
For much of that is the "fruited results" garnered by those that target it for destruction.
Its like deliberately cutting your kid--then self-righteously and savagely beating that kid for bleeding!-Tyr

It's nothing like that at all. Repetitively blaming some mysterious overarching organization for religion becoming less important to some people in modern society I think is giving up and avoids looking at other causes. I don't dispute that there are intellectuals who are more interested in raising up man than acknowledging a higher power but I do dispute the power that you attempt to give them. Do you dispute the imperfections of individual Christians? I don't and I can point to problems in almost any major denomination that drive people away from God than towards.

As for me I will give more power to God to be inclusive and to be an answer for all than to blame something that is weaker than God.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

It's nothing like that at all. Repetitively blaming some mysterious overarching organization for religion becoming less important to some people in modern society I think is giving up and avoids looking at other causes. I don't dispute that there are intellectuals who are more interested in raising up man than acknowledging a higher power but I do dispute the power that you attempt to give them. Do you dispute the imperfections of individual Christians? I don't and I can point to problems in almost any major denomination that drive people away from God than towards.

As for me I will give more power to God to be inclusive and to be an answer for all than to blame something that is weaker than God.

The major weakening of the Christian church has came about from the combined efforts of those entities that actively oppose it and desire its utter destruction-be they spiritual enemies(Satan and demons) or human enemies- atheists, libs/dems/leftists/globalists , gays/trans/ muslims, academia etc.
Sure changing culture and public education system has also caused a reduction but the largest by far is the culmination of organized groups that push Christian destroying agendas.-Tyr

[fj1200]

The major weakening of the Christian church has came about from the combined efforts of those entities that actively oppose it and desire its utter destruction-be they spiritual enemies(Satan and demons) or human enemies- atheists, libs/dems/leftists/globalists , gays/trans/ muslims, academia etc.
Sure changing culture and public education system has also caused a reduction but the largest by far is the culmination of organized groups that push Christian destroying agendas.-Tyr

Repeating your opinion does not give your opinion any more weight.

[Motown]

The major weakening of the Christian church has came about from the combined efforts of those entities that actively oppose it and desire its utter destruction-be they spiritual enemies(Satan and demons) or human enemies- atheists, libs/dems/leftists/globalists , gays/trans/ muslims, academia etc.
Sure changing culture and public education system has also caused a reduction but the largest by far is the culmination of organized groups that push Christian destroying agendas.-Tyr

I think the major weakening of Christians and whatever denomination they belong to is due to Christians saying stupid shit in venues where it's not appropriate.

[Gunny]

Holy crap. A tyr vs rev thread. Last time I saw so many words it was in a novel. Or the encyclopedia :laugh:

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Holy crap. A tyr vs rev thread. Last time I saw so many words it was in a novel. Or the encyclopedia :laugh:

True, we both often write long replies. Rev goes into detail covering the bases and I more often go on a damn good rant. :laugh:
Better than jousting with fj that usually just tosses out one-liners that too often fly like lead balloons.

On this one however the Rev and I pretty much agree.--Tyr

[Gunny]

True, we both often write long replies. Rev goes into detail covering the bases and I more often go on a damn good rant. :laugh:
Better than jousting with fj that usually just tosses out one-liners that too often fly like lead balloons.

On this one however the Rev and I pretty much agree.--Tyr

Those of us that can't find our glasses AND have ADD ain't even trying, bubba.:laugh:

[fj1200]

Better than jousting with fj that usually just tosses out one-liners that too often fly like lead balloons.

And land right on your "arguments" crushing them into a thousand pieces. It's a sweet sound. :cool:

[revelarts]

Oct 5 2015
"In a huge victory for the right-to-die movement, California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law (http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-gov-brown-end-of-life-bill-20151005-story.html) a bill that legalizes doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in the nation’s most populous state. Brown’s action ends a yearlong saga prompted in part by the case of the late Brittany Maynard.
Maynard was a California native suffering from terminal brain cancer who made national headlines last year when she moved to Oregon (the first U.S. state to legally allow physician-assisted suicide) in order to be able to end her life. Before her death at age 29 on Nov. 1, 2014, she lobbied for California and other states to legalize doctor-assisted suicide, and her family has continued to advocate for the cause.
The California legislation initially stalled (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/07/us-usa-california-suicide-idUSKCN0PH2D820150707) amid opposition from the Catholic Church and other opponents. However, it was reintroduced and passed on Sept. 11 in a special legislative session (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/12/439590199/california-approves-physician-assisted-suicide-bill-heads-to-governor-s-desk)....."http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/05/california-legalizes-assisted-suicide-amid-growing-support-for-such-laws/The article mentions this battle has been going on for years. really it's been going on for over 200 years.
the question of right and wrong here is based on views of what life is. Who has authority to take it, when and why. And without God the only reason not to kill others (or yourself), even to make a dollar, is bad personal feelings and/or the wraith of others.
All the secular discussion back and forth only amounts to opinions based on feelings.
there's NO authoritative basis to BEGIN make a the decision.
ANY pragmatic device can be used as an excuse to kill or die. One persons line in the sand is as good as another's. Group consensuses of a family or state is just as arbitrary.
ONLY with an outside authority can you move toward a definitive right answer that applies universally.

But when God is removed from the equation in law and ethics these questions become matters of various human opinions and feelings, imagined pragmatisms, and changing (left leaning) social convention.

[indago]

And land right on your "arguments" crushing them into a thousand pieces. It's a sweet sound. :cool:

If only you can hear it, it really doesn't matter much...

[fj1200]

The article mentions this battle has been going on for years. really it's been going on for over 200 years.
...
ONLY with an outside authority can you move toward a definitive right answer that applies universally.

Hold on now. It's only a valid discussion of more recent history. I'll agree that people shouldn't "choose" to die because of family pressures but there are more families choosing that the elderly live by demanding more and more tests and extraordinary measures be taken than the opposite. Recent history has seen advances in medicine that keep people alive far beyond what people would have lived even a couple of decades ago. The reality is that people live in pain at the expense of government programs for the benefit of delaying their kids/grandkids emotional pain.

So what is the definitive right answer that we should be striving for? I don't think it's a true statement that God has been removed from the discussion. Did the Catholic Church discuss the issue looking for that answer or did they intractably state opposition?