Rabbi Hirshfield:

I hope you are well. I have apparently been permanently banned by WAPO for posts that don't even come close to the hate that you permit. Try the posts of TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ2. Far more hateful than anything I have ever written. But, so be it. There are other things to do and other places to go. Plus, I'm sure that you realize how easy it is to go around the ban. However, the flagrant anti-leftist bias in WAPO makes it not worth it. I have zero tolerance for supporters of torture, and I have zero tolerance for people who deny that Israel is one of the worst torturers on the planet. BTW, I am a Jew and quite happy about it.

BTW, very nice essay, one of your best. I wish you well even though you turned out to be a major jerk.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
COLORADODOG
“COVER UP?”
POSTED BY: | JUNE 10,

The cover up is nothing more than a myth.

If you want to blame someone for pedophilia and pederasty try the Sexual Revolution. Try the ACLU defending NAMBLA, try the American Psychiatric Association that confirmed the importance of the new, better designed research and removed homosexuality from the official manual that lists mental and emotional disorders.

Try blaming the Court that elevated gay sex to the status of conjugal love. This is a Court that said in “Lawrence v. Texas” that traditional moral values serve no legitimate purpose to the State and cannot be used as a basis for Civil Law though it is the basis for all Civil Law.

The advocates of homosexual lifestyles are impervious to its consequences. In New York schools alone a study showed 5 percent of PSS teachers are pedophiles, in respect to 0.25% in all Catholic priests of the last 30 years and little if anything is done about it by public school officials. One child in the New York Public Schools is said to be molested per day by PSS personnel.

The problem is this. When the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, and its Psychiatrists and Psychologists are telling you homosexuality poses no problems and the Bishop acts on such advise you have a hard time blaming the Church.

The lunacy you speak of is all on the left.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The left has given us the Sexual Revolution and hence the Culture of Death. That is the setting the Church has to exist in, and it has done everything it possibly could to combat it.

Consequently, a doctor killing some 60,000 unborn children, the nation responsible for some 50 million unborn being murdered by abortionist, and 43 million abortions / yr. worldwide, has a devastating affect on the value of human life and little children. It is even more exacerbated by selling the child’s flesh after the abortion and this is why we are witnessing a state of social decadency.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
COLORADODOG
“COVER UP?”
POSTED BY: | JUNE 10,

Is this what you call a cover up and doing nothing? Below are the links to the Church’s, investigation and public publication conducted on the scandal. To claim Church hasn’t done anything about it and are still covering up is preposterous.

The publications of these investigations are open to the public.

http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/response3.pdf

USCCB - The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States. A Research Study Conducted by the. John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/ - Cached - Similar pages

U.S. Bishops' John Jay Study on Clergy Sexual Abuse and the ...and the Catholic Church. John Jay Study Reveals Extent of Abuse Problem. Four percent of priests serving over last 50 years accused of abuse.

www.americancatholic.org/news/clergysexabuse/johnjaycns.asp

Catholic Priest Abuse Scandal Statistics from the Executive ...by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States A Research Study Conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice

www.bringyou.to/apologetics/PriestAbuseScandal.htm - Cached - Similar pages

John Jay Study reports problem of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy nationally. The John Jay College of ... http://www.usccb.org:8765/query.html?col=&qt=HOMOSEXUAL+PRIEST&Go.x=7&Go.y=12

Microsoft Word - cleric5.doc
... victims reported to law enforcement was age 14.7 Table 3.5.1 ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PRIEST / DEACONS, GROUPED BY NUMBER OF ALLEGATIONS Number of Allegations Count Percent 1 2,411...

http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/cleric5.pdf- 51.0KB - U.S. Bishops' Web Site - PRIEST: 1 34%

If you haven’t heard, homosexuals are no longer allowed to enter the priesthood. Notwithstanding, there have been no more child abuse cases discovered since the Bishops have acted.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
“CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?”
COLORADODOG |
POSTED ON JUNE 10, 2009 8:05 AM

IRT;
"Half-truths will do you in."

“What about the "half truth" of claiming to be "pro-life" and supporting capital punishment and pre-emptive war?”

ANS:
There are two different issues here. One is Abortion, the deliberate and intentional taking of an innocent defenseless human life. The second issue is the just taking of a human life in retribution for the life the murderer has taken. The murderer forfeits his right to life by taking the life of another unjustly.

The innocent unborn has done nothing to be executed for; the unborn is innocent, the murderer forfeits his right by the unjust taking of a human life, as does the abortionist..

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“WHAT DOES BUDDHISM HAVE TO DO WITH TILLER?”
POSTED on JUNE 9, 2009

ANS:
If man is bereft of all wants, cravings, and passion, he will have no passion for the unborn, as did Tiller who legally murdered some 60,000 unborn innocent defenseless children.

Nor did our highest Court have any compassion for the unborn. During the third attempt to ban “Partial-Birth Abortion,” four Apocalyptic Justices Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer were asking how far out of the birth canal was the child when the abortionist plunged a surgical scissors into the back of the skull of the little infant struggling for its first breath. The abortionist poising as a doctor then takes a vacuum and suck out the little child’s brains.

Pro-life never caused Tiller’s death the Culture of Death did. Life, under the Abortion ethic, is devalued and cheapened. Tiller had not valued human life and neither did his murder, nor did the Court, that initiated the legalization of murder.

These four justices could not see the child, could not see a human person, as Tiller couldn’t. They were without a sense of reality, bound up in rhetoric, detail, circumstances, and it blinded them to the reality of the child. Pilate asked Jesus “Truth? What is Truth.” He was looking at Truth itself and couldn’t see it.

The Justices couldn’t see the child but were trapped in the rhetoric of their own errors. Subsequently, the Buddhist who eschews from that which exist, Buddhism characteristically describes reality in terms of process and relation rather than entity or substance.

All phenomena arise in interrelation and in dependence on causes and conditions, and thus are subject to inevitable decay and cessation. The casual conditions are defined in a 12-membered chain called dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) whose links are: ignorance, predisposition, consciousness, name-form, the senses, contact, craving, grasping, becoming, birth, old age, and death, whence again ignorance.

Hence, when man operates in a world of fantasy, the Natural Law cannot be mitigated and tragedy ensues. Buddhism, though it seeks the good takes the wrong turn and ends up at a dead end. Hence Spinoza and his followers eventually end in Materialism, as did the Evolutionist, as did Freud when they couldn’t find the real God they substituted their idea of a god that doesn’t exist. Hence, Communism.

Note Farnaz does not respond to the fact she was caught using other ID's by

kjohnson3 | February 17, 2009 10:29 AM

by: themoderate | February 11, 2009
9:42 PM

and by: Mary_Cunningham | January 13, 2009 7:22 AM

Again her other ID's-
Observer12, Observer31, Yael1, ivri5678, Billy8, nadinebatra, stadtbear, Spark1, Shark2, Spidermean3, DOUG_WHITE, FTH123 MANSOUR112, hsnkhwj, Zebra4 and ????

and some possible straw-men-

Whistling and pgibson being recent straw men.

and a combination straw-man and then a "friend"-

stadtbear

and one must wonder after all this trickery, if Farnaz was not the infamous impersonator named SUSAN_JACOBY????

And she says "Jesus" weeps?? Farnaz is a professed Jewish atheist who also believes said Jesus did not even exist!! Again, Farnaz is one very strange person!!!

TTWSY - again, not an accurate portrayal the Buddhist view. All states, and the existence of all dieties and individual entities, are viewed as temporary and ultimately mind-made (in exactly the same way that dreams are made).

While the relative world seems to rely on causal relationships based on the concept of determinism, the Buddhist views none of these activities as permanent or fundamentally real - all and everything in the phenomenal universe is both co-dependent and transient at every moment (this includes any 'spiritual' realm that one might conceive of).

There is no 'salvation' without a true realization of the Dharmakaya (and one's identity with it) - and which is the essential and timeless reality behind all manifest realms/worlds/heavenly regions/dimensions and ineffable activities that comprise the spontaneously existing or manifest universe.

You may refer to this essential reality as God if you wish - but by no means is this understanding of the Absolute accompanied by the idea of an individual and separate creator with a specific identity and personality.

The Nirvanic state consists of the full realization of this fundamentally aware infinitude - and is beyond all characterization.

Nothing more can be said about it.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
POSTED on JUNE 9, 2009

IRT:
“And any heaven you may find yourself in will be temporary, as regards the Buddhist view of such things.”

ANS:
Yes, Nirvana is a state of mind and can be partially achieved while still living. However, at death, the Buddhist never leaves the Universe; he somehow becomes one with it.

“Nirvāna is meant specifically - as pertains to gnosis - that which ends the identity of the mind (citta) with empirical phenomena. Doctrinally Nibbāna is said of the mind which "no longer is coming (bhava) and going (vibhava)", but which has attained a status in perpetuity, whereby "liberation (vimutta) can be said.”

Moreover, as you’ve said, Nirvana is not permanent, since the Buddhist is believed by some to be reincarnated and return to his next life.

The Buddhist attempts to define life after death and attempts to simulate what Christianity has known since its inception. The problem with the Buddhist is he never leaves the Universe. He maintains a temporary existence where the Buddhist becomes one with nature and empties himself from all wants.

Again, eternal happiness for a Christian is the perfection of human nature. The Christian is not emptied of all things, but fulfilled of all things; all the Christian’s potentialities are realized. Happiness is achieved by obeying the Commandments, to the Buddhist it is a flight from reality. The former is costiveness; the latter is negativity.

The Buddhist, in the end, doesn’t want anything because his mind is a blank and this his eternal bliss. Hence, “Scholarly knowledge, ritual, and performing good deeds were considered of comparatively little spiritual value,” to the Buddhist. Hence, there is no Charity, no Love that identifies the Christian.

For the Christian, man’s end is not in the world, but in Heaven, resting in the nature of God. God is not of the world, neither will be man. Hence, Paradise is not a place since place is quantified. Therefore Heaven is a state of existence as the Buddhist believe Nirvana is a state of existence.

However, the Buddhist remains in the world and the Christian no longer needs the world, the world will end. The Buddhist is caught up in an odyssey searching for eternal happiness in a world of change and fleeting vanities. Contrary to Christians, the Buddhist’s state is temporary.

TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ2 wrote:

"Half-truths will do you in."

What about the "half truth" of claiming to be "pro-life" and supporting capital punishment and pre-emptive war?

What about the "half truth" of claiming to be a defender of helpless children when it comes to abortion and then looking the other way while Bishops, Cardinals and the Pope continue to hide pedophile predators in the clergy?

Those well studied in religion like you often cherry-pick their morals and scriptures for the convenience of their arguments and political prejudices.

Are you part of the O'Reilly Catholic clergy?

CCNL, I haven't seen that much tapdancing since Gregory Hines died. "I don't condone violence, but I'm glad that he's dead."

Sounds a lot like "will someone rid me of this troublesome priest?"

Athena, Athena, Athena,

As noted before, this article summarizes my position:

From Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer's Opinion and Editorial pages-
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090607_Lessons_from_the_life_and_death_of_Dr__Tiller.html

"The slaying of Dr. George Tiller last Sunday was an evil, despicable act. The fact that he was shot dead near his wife makes it even more heinous. That the killing took place at a house of worship makes it blasphemous. Or more blasphemous.
For the taking of human life is almost always a crime against God, as well as man. "Thou Shalt Not Kill," lays the cornerstone of not only our Judeo-Christian civilization, but also of every culture in which the highest aim of the individual is to lead an ethical life.
Tiller was killed at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kan., where he served as an usher. A suspect, Scott Roeder, is in custody.

I was pleased to see the antiabortion movement immediately condemn Tiller's killing. This, even though he was the medical director at Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, which is one of only a few clinics in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

He became infamous for championing partial-birth abortion, the late-term procedure in which the skull is cracked open and the brains are sucked out, something the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan said "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

I oppose everything Tiller stood for. I wanted him prosecuted in our courts. Unfortunately, that's now impossible. This man's life was taken. His family mourns. His death diminishes the rest of us. Anybody who is not outraged by this shooting lacks humanity. Tiller deserved to live out his golden years in quiet, savoring whatever sunsets were left to him, watching his grandchildren run across the lawn.

We should all pray for the repose of the soul of Dr. George Tiller.

Then, we should pray for his victims."

The news is reporting that Tiller's family is going to close his clinic. The terrorists have won this round. I'm sure that CCNL and Globalone will come out with wonderful proclamations about how this is "saving babies" now.

TTWSY - more Buddhist education coming your way....Nirvana is not conceived of as a place, but as one's natural state of mind, free of obscurations. The ultimate view is that neither the states of Samsara or Nirvana are different, in any way e.g they serve a conceptual function only.

Nonduality is a very hard nut to crack.....

And any heaven you may find yourself in will be temporary, as regards the Buddhist view of such things.

See the Tibetan Book of the Dead (the Great Liberation) just below for the considered fate of folks that find themselves dead - but still quite aware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_book_of_the_dead

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“THE ERRORS OF BUDDHISM”
POSTED: JUNE 8, 2009 11:37 AM

The Buddhist rightly sees pain and suffering in the world, but he sees no happiness in the world. To eliminate this pain, man must escape from the world of feelings and desires, yet he remains in the world in an indescribable state of Nirvana.. Christians believe that man is not of the world but is destined for a supernatural existence of eternal happiness in Heaven.

So the Buddhist gets it half-right, but he fails to see the other half, that the end of man is not Nirvana where man rest in himself but man is destine to rest in God. Contemplation of one’s self is a Buddhist tenant, but in Christianity, the levels of contemplation are not of self but of God, drawing man to God and not to himself.

Buddhist have something similar to Paradise in that they have Amitabha or a Western Paradise. Amitabha is something like the Christian God who appears to those who believe in him at the time of their death and carry them to Paradise. a pure land endowed with miraculous characteristics ensuring its inhabitants easy entry into Nirvana.

In the many variations of Buddhism, there is a belief in incarnation. Consequently man’s life is an eternal circle somewhat like Marx’s philosophy of a circular approach to the perfect man on earth for a period of time and history repeats itself over and over and over.

Christianity points man to eternal happiness resting in the providence of God. Instead of being bereft of all desires and feelings, the Christian has all desires fulfilled; all his potentialities are realized.

The Buddhist’s triumph is a negation of all things. In Christianity the triumph of man is the positive achievement of complete happiness. Though the Buddhist and Christian both achieve perfection, Christian perfection is a fulfillment; Buddhist perfection is an emptying of all things.

Buddhist perfection is the achievement of Nirvana, a state of supreme liberation, a lack of all cravings, pains and sufferings. A somewhat petrified existence of inanimate suspension, or the lack of all feelings. In contrast, Christianity is an existence in the eternal love of God. Hence, St. Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless Lord, until they rest in you.”

TTWSY - you really have to get off the Spinoza kick - it's a red herring of the first magnitude.

As for experts on the machinations of the State, you could start with Machiavelli, but I'd recommend more modern authorities - see your nemisis, that genius Karl Marx below on beaurocracy, followed by another early social scientist of note, Max Weber....who wrote the book on the self-preserving and aggrandizing nature of beaurocracies (and beaurocrats).

The 'evils' of beaurocratic institutions are no doubt what you must be intending as regards 'the godless' State, and so forth. Hey, we have plenty of god-filled beaurocrats right here!

Totalitarian leaders (with and without religion) have coincidentially been allied with Communism and Nazism and both of whom rather oxymoronically referred to themselves as 'socialist' - thus giving the lie to presumed ideological differences between leftist and rightest political regimes e.g. the godless vs the god-filled.

We have plenty of contemporary global examples of each style of political regime, in any direction you care to look. And both kill their citizens without compunction.

Personally, I can't imagine Karl Marx as being even a little bit supportive or congratulatory of modern Communism (much less Spinoza).

Leftist and rightest dictatorial regimes enforced by military might, are equally festering blights on humanity as run by deeply narcissistic, self-serving leaders and their lackeys.......some of whom are praying, and others who apparently are not. And none have anything to do with socialism.

True socialism, on the other hand, is quite a different matter...the roots of socialism are deeply established virtually everywhere and in every society in the West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“SPINOZA DIDN’T GET IT RIGHT”
POSTED: | JUNE 8, 2009 11:37 AM

Half-truths will do you in. Spinoza sees that if Civil Law is not obeyed than the social order becomes disruptive or chaotic. Therefore, Spinoza concludes “that only in the State that justice and law, injustice and transgression are conceivable. The individual, in order to be able to live according to reason, must surrender his rights to the community. Hence, No man can ever act according to his convictions, if a law of the State stands in the way.”

What Spinoza fails to see is what the Founding Fathers saw, and that it is the people who define the community, not the community defining man. Since man is a social being, man orders the society to be in consonance with human nature. Hence the common good is based on the nature of man and thus, the State exist only for the good of man.

Moreover, Spinoza’s God has potentiality that makes him mortal, and material. However, God is infinite and unchangeable or else he wouldn’t be God.

Subsequently, Spinoza is a prelude to Marxism, and Communism, where the individual exist for the Good of the State that may or may not be for the good of the individual. Hence, if anything proves to be an obstacle to the State, the State has the authority to destroy it for self-preservation.

Accordingly, the old and infirm contribute nothing to the State and Hitler decided to exterminate them. Joseph Fletcher, the recent late Chairman of Ethics at the University of Virginia, concurred. Fletcher defined humanity as did the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, and because of Roe, we have the Tillers of America and the death of over 50 million unborn.

Fletcher claimed if a person didn’t have an IQ over 40 or if they were disabled in anyway, or even repugnant to look at, they could be eliminated. Two doctors wrote in the AMJ that orphans in a New York State Orphanages should be used to test Swine Flu Vaccine since they contributed nothing to the State but were a burden on it.

No, Spencer never got it right; he only got it half-right, and that has proved to be atrociously brutal and shockingly cruel.

Rabbi Hirschfield

You quote

“Under no circumstances is a fetus considered a human life, according to Jewish law. Ironically, Maimonides, calling a fetus a rodef, uses this law to explain why a baby must be aborted if the pregnancy endangers the mother's life.”

Is this where it ends? .. Law .. Mortal mans law.

Question – If Maimonides or the Supreme Courts Justices had been in Jacobs camp near
Ephrath touting their “Law” as Rachel labored hard … wouldn’t this
“Law” be a hostile action over and against Gods divine plan for Israel and all
His creation?

Mans law would give us the 11 Tribes of Israel, how do you reconcile this "Law" Rabbi, both then and now?

Life is chaos - order, complexity and new systems arise spontaneously out of seeming disorder.

See in particular fractal geometry and holography - where the whole is contained in each and every part(icle).....an excellent physical representation of nondual reality.

'....see the world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour....'

- William Blake

Only the mystic sees the transpersonal & true reality behind all religions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“SPINOZA & MORALITY”
POSTED: | JUNE 8, 2009 11:37 AM

Consequently, once the Divine personality is removed, God acts out of sheer necessity--that is, God cannot act otherwise--His action is no more good than it is evil.

To say, with Fichte, that God is the moral order, is an open contradiction; no such order exists where nothing is free, nor could God, a non-moral Being, have established a moral order either for Himself or for other beings.

If, on the other hand, it be maintained that the moral order does exist, that it is postulated by our human judgments, the plight of pantheism is no better; for in that case all the actions of men, their crimes as well as their good deeds, must be imputed to God.” Hence we have destroyed free will.

“Thus the Divine Being not only loses the attribute of absolute holiness, but even falls below the level of those men in whom moral goodness triumphs over evil.” Subsequently:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14217a.htm

“According to Spinoza the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament are not without error and are not inspired in the strict sense. They do not teach us with certainty as to the nature of God and His characteristics, but only concerning obedience to God, piety, and love.

Consequently the text of the Bible can never come into conflict with philosophy and civil law. But, according to Spinoza, the limitations of philosophy and law are also clearly defined. As it is only in the State that justice and law, injustice and transgression are conceivable, the individual, in order to be able to live according to reason, must surrender his rights to the community.”

Here is a major mistake in Spinoza. Man under Spinoza’s regime exist for the good of the Sate. Hence, once man becomes a drag on the State, he becomes expendable (Marx). In Christianity, the State exist for the common good of mankind. Thus, Abortion under Christianity is a violation of man’s relationship to the State. In Pantheism, the State dictates the meaning of life, not God.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“SPINOZA & PANTHEISM”
POSTED: | JUNE 8, 2009 11:37 AM

Spinoza's pantheism was realistic: the one being of the world had an objective character. But the systems that developed during the nineteenth century went to the extreme of idealism.

Summary Of The Pantheistic Doctrine:

Reality is a unitary being; individual things have no absolute independence; they have existence in the All-One, the ends of which they are the more or less independent members;

The All-One manifests itself to us, so far as it has any manifestations, in the two sides of reality-nature and history;

The universal interaction that goes on in the physical world is the showing forth of the inner æsthetic teleological necessity with which the All-One unfolds his essential being in a multitude of harmonious modifications, a cosmos of concrete ideas (monads, entelechies). This internal necessity is at the same time absolute freedom or self-realization.

It has often been claimed that pantheism by teaching us to see God in everything gives us an exalted idea of His wisdom, goodness, and power, while it imparts to the visible world a deeper meaning. In point of fact, however, it makes void the attributes that belong essentially to the Divine nature

For the pantheist, God is not a personal Being. He is not an intelligent Cause of the world, designing, creating and governing it in accordance with the free determination of His wisdom.” Hence there is no Natural or Moral Law.

If consciousness is ascribed to Him as the one Substance, extension is also said to be His attribute (Spinoza), or He attains to self-consciousness only through a process of evolution (Hegel).

But this very process implies that God is not from eternity perfect: He is forever changing, advancing from one degree of perfection to another, and helpless to determine in what direction the advance shall take place.”

Hence, morality also changes, and consequently there is no meaning of morality. Abortion becomes morally legitimate because its what ever man thinks morality is. Subsequently, we have a Rabbi praising a mass murder Tiller who has murdered some sixty thousand unborn children. We have Tiller’s murderer being the moral equivalence of Tiller.

“Indeed, there is no warrant for saying that He "advances" or becomes more "perfect"; at most we can say that He, or rather It [God], is constantly passing into other forms. Thus God is not only impersonal, but also changeable and finite-Which Is Equivalent To Saying That He Is Not God.”

Hence, the creation and justification of chaos, the contradiction of reality, of God.

TTWSY - my last on the Absolute. Read my links and learn something new about God - countless millions have preferred the view below......for millenia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“THEISM”
POSTED: | JUNE 8, 2009 11:37 AM

IRT;
This is pure theism, with God as a distinct supernatural entity/personality - it has nothing to do with pantheism, which says that (divine) consciousness is pervasive throughout creation and in all life forms. One is dualistic, and one is monistic - very big difference!!

ANS:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pantheism

The doctrine that God is the transcendent reality of which the material universe and human beings are only manifestations: it involves a denial of God's personality and expresses a tendency to identify God and nature.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm

“Pantheism is simply Atheism. In any of its forms, it involves Monism, but the latter is not necessarily pantheistic. Emanationism may easily take on a pantheistic meaning and the same is true of the modern doctrine of immanence.

Spinoza's pantheism was realistic: the one being of the world had an objective character. But the systems that developed during the nineteenth century went to the extreme of idealism.

They are properly grouped under the designation of "transcendental pantheism,” as their starting-point is found in Kant's critical philosophy.

Kant had distinguished in knowledge the matter which comes through sensation from the outer world, and the forms that are purely subjective and yet are the more important factors.

Furthermore, Kant had declared that we know the appearances (phenomena) of things but not the things-in-themselves (noumena). And he had made the ideas of the soul, the world, and God merely immanent, so that any attempt to demonstrate their objective value must end in contradiction. This subjectivism paved the way for the pantheistic theories of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

The system of Hegel has been called "logical pantheism,” as it is constructed on the "dialectical" method; and "panlogismus,” since it describes the entire world-process as the evolution of the Idea

According to Schelling, the Absolute is the "identity of all differences"-object and subject nature and mind, the real order and the ideal; the knowledge of this identity is obtained by an intellectual intuition.

The Absolute, therefore, is Mind; but it attains its fullness only by a process of evolution or "becoming,” the stages of which form the history of the universe.

Other visions of the role of the divine in human life can be found below, and has much in commmon with the Pagan, Neopagan, and Neoplatonic views of both the past and the present.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
COLORADODOG |
PEDAPHILES AND PEDERASTY
POSTED JUNE 7, 2009 9:15 AM

IRT:
"When is your Church going to stop the violation of little boys while you pontificate to the rest of us about abortion and your Pope and Cardinals look the other way?
Is life more important?"

ANS:
The Church didn’t cover up anything. You might try checking John Jay Study the Bishops initiated and what the Church has done before you make such an uninformed comment.

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/PriestAbuseScandal.htm

The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors
by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States

A Research Study Conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"In June 2002 the full body of Catholic bishops of the United States in their General Meeting in Dallas approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The Charter created a National Review Board, which was assigned responsibility to commission a descriptive study, with the full cooperation of the dioceses/eparchies, of the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

The National Review Board engaged the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York to conduct research, summarize the collected data and issue a summary report to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops of its findings. This report by the John Jay College is authorized for publication by the undersigned.

Accordingly, the Board approached John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct such a study. The College assembled an experienced team of researchers with expertise in the areas of forensic psychology, criminology, and human behavior, and, working with the Board, formulated a methodology to address the study mandate.

Data collection commenced in March 2003, and ended in February 2004. The information contained in this report is based upon surveys provided by 195 dioceses, representing 98% all diocesan priests in the United States, and 140 religious communities, representing approximately 60% of religious communities and 80% of all religious priests."

THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A COVERUP BY THE CHURCH nor does it sound like the Church is closing their eyes to the problems.

TTWSY sez:

'However, religion ceases to exist where, as in Pantheism, the deity is pronounced to be devoid of all consciousness. A deity without personality is no more capable of awakening the sense of religion in the heart of man than is the all-pervading ether or the universal force of gravitation.

Religion is essentially a personal relation, the relation of the subject and creature, man, to his Lord and Creator, God.'
_______________

This is pure theism, with God as a distinct supernatural entity/personality - it has nothing to do with pantheism, which says that (divine) consciousness is pervasive throughout creation and in all life forms. One is dualistic, and one is monistic - very big difference!!

Regarding 'the heart of man' and religion -certain forms of Buddhism (tantric) and other monistic religions talk of the very subtle (divine) mind (rigpa in Dzogchen) being located in the 'cave of the heart'.

This defines the Atman of Vedanta as well -an unspecified location within where the timeless, all-knowing, and vitalizing 'spirit' resides in each living thing.....and there is only One.

See the links below - compare the Christian and Judaic interpretations with nondualistic views......

http://www.nonduality.com/asmi.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_am_that_I_am

Two things:

1) Everyone should go out to Andrew Sullivan's blog on The Atlantic website and read the very personal stories of women who have had late-term abortions. It may not change your mind, but it will certainly make you aware of why women have late-term abortions.

2) In answer to Farnaz... the "Judeo-Christian-Moslem" God is the one in the Bible, Talmud, and Koran. Many people in the world do not view the Divine in this particular way. Pagans view the Divine as both male and female, and this both equal. Hindus believe in many aspects of the Divine (male and female). Many others do not believe in any Higher Power. We've already discussed what Buddhists believe, but there are different denominations of Buddhism just like there are Christian denominations.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“RELIGION AND RELIGIONS”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

Those who don’t achieve eternal happiness do so by their personal choice. No one is proscribed from achieving his destiny. However, man must seek it.

I ask you, what happens to those who fail to achieve this Buddha nothingness?

IRT:
“…this is the ultimate Powerball play.
Someone else has done all the heavy lifting - the Creator Himself, no less, but incognito as a fellow human...." I can see the appeal, but it seems kind of tricky at the same time. Buddhism is buffoonery, you say?? “

ANS:
Buffoonery is used in the sense that Buddhism is a self-contradiction. The “someone else doing the lifting” is Jesus, the Son of God. That’s simply because man cannot save himself without God.

Hence it is written that the disciples wondered much, saying: Who then can be saved? “And Jesus beholding, said to them, ‘With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.’”

From what has been said, it is plain that the concept of deity required for religion is that of a free personality. The error of mistaking many nature-deities for the one true God vitiates, but does not destroy, religion.

However, religion ceases to exist where, as in Pantheism, the deity is pronounced to be devoid of all consciousness. A deity without personality is no more capable of awakening the sense of religion in the heart of man than is the all-pervading ether or the universal force of gravitation.

Religion is essentially a personal relation, the relation of the subject and creature, man, to his Lord and Creator, God.

Religion may thus be defined as the voluntary subjection of oneself to God that is to the free, supernatural Being (or beings) on whom man is conscious of being dependent, of whose powerful help he feels the need, and in whom he recognizes the source of his perfection and happiness. It is a voluntary turning to God.

In the last analysis, it is an act of the will. In other words it is a virtue, since it is an act of the will inclining man to observe the right order, springing from his dependence on God. Hence, St. Thomas (II-II, Q. lxxxi, a. 1) defines religion as the virtue, which prompts man to render to God the worship, and reverence that is His, by right.

The end of religion is filial communion with God, in which we honor and revere Him as our supreme Lord, love Him as our Father, and find in that reverent service of filial love our true perfection and happiness.”

Back to the topic (as noted previously in case you missed it)

From yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer's Opinion and Editorial pages-
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090607_Lessons_from_the_life_and_death_of_Dr__Tiller.html

"The slaying of Dr. George Tiller last Sunday was an evil, despicable act. The fact that he was shot dead near his wife makes it even more heinous. That the killing took place at a house of worship makes it blasphemous. Or more blasphemous.

For the taking of human life is almost always a crime against God, as well as man. "Thou Shalt Not Kill," lays the cornerstone of not only our Judeo-Christian civilization, but also of every culture in which the highest aim of the individual is to lead an ethical life.

Tiller was killed at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kan., where he served as an usher. A suspect, Scott Roeder, is in custody.

I was pleased to see the antiabortion movement immediately condemn Tiller's killing. This, even though he was the medical director at Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, which is one of only a few clinics in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

He became infamous for championing partial-birth abortion, the late-term procedure in which the skull is cracked open and the brains are sucked out, something the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan said "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

I oppose everything Tiller stood for. I wanted him prosecuted in our courts. Unfortunately, that's now impossible. This man's life was taken. His family mourns. His death diminishes the rest of us. Anybody who is not outraged by this shooting lacks humanity. Tiller deserved to live out his golden years in quiet, savoring whatever sunsets were left to him, watching his grandchildren run across the lawn.

We should all pray for the repose of the soul of Dr. George Tiller.

Then, we should pray for his victims."

The history of Christianity is strewn with apologists, whereas Eastern religions seldom bother to justify their philosophies - realizing that truth in whatever form, is based on individual experience in a completely subjective world.

It seems clear that one discovers a way to the truth they seek through their own efforts. Salvation and transcendence are a private matter, no doubt best achieved as solitary pursuits.

Harangues aimed at justifying one's religious beliefs convince no one, convert no one, and save no one from themselves.

Preaching the superiority of one's religious beliefs is taken as the first sign of doubt among the unconvinced.....

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“ETERNAL BLISS IS MAN ALONE, NOT THE CHURCH’S OR GOD’S.”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

IRT;
“One life to live, and then it's on to eternal bliss, or eternal suffering - needless to say, most have and will continue to miss out on the 'eternal bliss' part - right time, right place, right beliefs, and right with God...” Instead, what many Westerners prefer is a complex set of beliefs concerning messiahs and redemption, arising out of a real-world fatalism based on life's inevitable 'sinning and suffering', but also mixed with equal parts of unrealistic optimism that salvation is near at hand - by proxy. “

ANS:
Thus, it comes down to two simple choices:

Do you wish to place your trust and your life in the words of, a Buddha, who was a man subject to error like every man, and is said to have no emotions or feelings? Therefore, he by his dictates cares not for you or for anything.

On the other hand, should you choose a loving God who loved man so much that He sent His only Son so that man may have everlasting happiness and has given man every means and every chance to rest in God’s eternal happiness?

ANS:
Therefore, the choice of eternal happiness is man’s alone.

ROMANS 1: 19 cf.
“Do you show contempt for the riches of God’s kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed. .God "will give to each person according to what he has done."

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil …but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good. For, God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

You, therefore, have no excuse…”

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“ETERNAL BLISS”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

IRT:
“Your revered Benedict (as Cardinal Ratzinger) famously described Buddhism as 'mental masturbation'. A great ecumenical genius, that man. I can see why some folks choose to follow his lead.”

ANS:
People don’t follow the Pope; they follow the word of God. The Pope is the guardian of God’s word, its counselor, and its protector.

http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_ec21na.htm

Nostra Aetate
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: The Second Vatican Council

“Among nations, the Church considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.

The Church’s tasks are promoting unity and love among men, and nations. She considers … what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship. Man is a unity of one, with one final goal, His providence, His manifestations of goodness, and His saving design extend to all men

Men seek religions to answers the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which … deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, sin, suffering, and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment, and retribution after death? What finally is the ultimate inexpressible mystery that encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?

Religions…bound up with an advanced culture have struggled to answer the same questions.

In Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition, through either ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust.

Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world. It teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination, and each, in its own manner, by proposing "ways," comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites..

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“CHRISTIANITY V. BUDDHISM”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

Buddhism is a religious, monastic system, that started with the same morbid view that conscious life is a burden and not worth living, and that true happiness is to be had only in a state like dreamless sleep free from all desires, free from conscious action.

The perfection of a Buddhist is to become loosed from the chains that bind him, viz. passion, and feeling. “The Third Noble Truth is the ending of dukkha. To be free of dukkha one must extinguish this very craving so that no passion and desire remain.” Consequently, the Buddhists are to extinguish the very reason he exist.

IRT:
“Nagarjuna was a master dialectician and sage that clarified several of the essential teachings to be found in Buddhism - his equal has seldom been seen in the Buddhist world or elsewhere.”

He claims nothing is true or false. Then what he says is not true or false nor is he real. Therefore, he makes himself irrelevant, and that is what he claims is being perfect.

Christianity is the perfection and the fulfillment of all one’s potentialities; perfection is actualization not negation. A Buddhist prefects himself by denying his existence in an escapade to nothingness. Of course, if you have a headache, and your solution is to cut off your head, there will be no headache.

IRT:
“The observations of Buddhism are not traditionally very well received in the West, and certainly not by conventional Christians.”

ANS:
That is because Buddhism a contradiction of human nature.

IRT:
“And are widely misunderstood as 'pessimistic and nihilistic'...what they never deny is that life consists of a lot of suffering, and then you die. This is not different from the observations and experiences of any sane person that has lived a few decades...."

ANS:
Yes, Buddhists do not deny suffering, but they don’t admit to happiness. Though the body dies, the soul is immortal. To the Buddhist, immortality is becoming nothing. Hence, all consciousness is destroyed; all feelings and passions cease to exist. However, the purpose of human life is a longing for the eternal Love of God, but with the Buddhist there is no Love and there is no God; there is only Nothingness.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“CHRISTIANITY V. BUDDHISM”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

IRT:
“If Jesus lived - The Sermon on the Mount has a distinctly Buddhistic feel to it - upon hearing a translation of the Sermon, a noted Zen master declared ' that man is a great Boddhisattva, and very close to Buddhahood'. It does sum up the best truths to be found in Christianity.

ANS:
If Jesus lived? If you doubt if Jesus lived, how can you believe Buddha, your patron saint, who lived some 500 years before Christ, existed, or for that matter even to know your beloved Spinoza, who was a prelude to Communism, had ever existed..

The Sermon on the Mount is perfect in all the precepts by which the Christian life is molded. Buddhism is the antithesis of Christianity. Where Christianity seeks eternal life, Buddhism seeks eternal death, darkness, and mummification.

Buddhism, and all pagan religions are plagiarists of Christianity because their systems of belief are irrational, viz. they don’t work because they are a contradiction to human nature and the Natural Law (NL).

However if heathens didn’t have some truth or reality to their belief, they would die on the vine, and most do. Consequently, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Muslim religions are cut into so many versions of contradictory cults that their failures are inevitable because truth does not contradict truth. There is only one God and hence, one truth. All men are of the same nature. Hence, there is only one universal objective Natural Moral Law measured by human reason and consequently is the same and applicable for all men.

Religions that begin in the world end in the world. They seek an eternal existence that all men do because it is an innate desire of all human nature. However, they compound their frustration by seeking eternal existence of happiness in a world that is only transient and fugacious.

Consequently, the beliefs of worldly man initiated religions, instead of the whole truth, hold only half-truths, and contradictions that only lead to frustrations, disappointments, and social disorder. Hence, the only solution to their situation under their religious regimes is to escape into nothingness or into the drug culture.

TTWSY - here were are almost in agreement. Neither matter nor the Void of Emptiness are separate from one another, even for an instant.....see below the paragraph on 'interpenetration' in particular.

Without phenomena, there would be no science, no us, no anything......but the question is, what exactly is the nature of phenomena? Indeed, it does come down to metaphysics by most standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_philosophy

Farnaz - a great website for Buddhist sutras...

http://www4.bayarea.net/~mtlee/

Back to the topic:

From today's Philadelphia Inquirer's Opinion and Editorial pages-

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090607_Lessons_from_the_life_and_death_of_Dr__Tiller.html

"The slaying of Dr. George Tiller last Sunday was an evil, despicable act. The fact that he was shot dead near his wife makes it even more heinous. That the killing took place at a house of worship makes it blasphemous. Or more blasphemous.

For the taking of human life is almost always a crime against God, as well as man. "Thou Shalt Not Kill," lays the cornerstone of not only our Judeo-Christian civilization, but also of every culture in which the highest aim of the individual is to lead an ethical life. Tiller was killed at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kan., where he served as an usher. A suspect, Scott Roeder, is in custody.

I was pleased to see the antiabortion movement immediately condemn Tiller's killing. This, even though he was the medical director at Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, which is one of only a few clinics in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

He became infamous for championing partial-birth abortion, the late-term procedure in which the skull is cracked open and the brains are sucked out, something the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan said "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

I oppose everything Tiller stood for. I wanted him prosecuted in our courts. Unfortunately, that's now impossible. This man's life was taken. His family mourns. His death diminishes the rest of us. Anybody who is not outraged by this shooting lacks humanity. Tiller deserved to live out his golden years in quiet, savoring whatever sunsets were left to him, watching his grandchildren run across the lawn.

We should all pray for the repose of the soul of Dr. George Tiller.

Then, we should pray for his victims."

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE |
“BUDDHISM PERFECTION TO EMPTYNESS”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:28 PM

IRS:
TTWSY cynically quotes the following:
“Consequently, As the great Buddhist dialectician Nagarjuna says, 'The nature of Reality is Emptiness and is co-dependent, mere appearance. It is neither real nor unreal, but there is not a single thing to be found anywhere that is truly independent or self-existing.”

IRS:
“And this is exactly right - quantum mechanics struggles to figure out why this seems to be so, and how it could be so........”

ANS:
To the contrary, Quantum Mechanics cannot define reality, nor can any Empirical Science. Empirical Sciences assume reality exist, or else they could not postulate anything. Consequently, Empirical Science’s material object is matter, and its formal object is the predication and postulation of the order that exists based on the movement of things from potency to act, or vice-versa.

Without reality, there would be a void of emptiness. However, we know that things do exist or else we would not even know that we exist. Consequently, it would be absurd to believe you don’t exist because you couldn’t believe anything. Accordingly, we know we can believe in many things that are real. Hence, from the efforts of Empirical Science planes fly, lights light, and there is a Law of Gravity.

However, the Science of Being and Existence is the Science of Metaphysics, not Empiricism. Metaphysics, is the intellectual pursuit of knowledge of the fundamental principles of Being, through the recognition of First Principles of thought and the subsequent constituting of a method of reasoning through Laws of Logic to arrive at the predication of the cardinal truths of our existence.

IRT TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ2

When is your Church going to stop the violation of little boys while you pontificate to the rest of us about abortion and your Pope and Cardinals look the other way?

Is life more important before it is born than after?

Hi Farnaz - it's really remarkable e.g. the commonalities to be found in the links below! Spinoza was quite a singular genius who believed in the preeminence of intuition, and seems clearly pantheistic with his view that all things (God/Nature/Man) are of one (spiritual) substance. A man far ahead of his time.....

He was misunderstood by some as a materialist - perhaps even by that most famous admirer, Einstein. For seemingly not having been exposed to Eastern thought, his monism is in sharp contrast to a far more familiar Cartesian dualism. This could be one reason why we don't hear much about Spinoza's vast influence on the Enlightenment.

It's interesting to note that Pantheism is indeed different from the Pandeism (Deism) of our famous Founders....because they incorporated a tacit Newtonian mechanical view of the universe in their enlightened philosophy.....which has distinctly dualistic/Cartesian overtones (and which gave considerable impetus to the continuing development of modern science). Einstein was a firmly entrenched dualist, for example - as are most scientists (by necessity?).

Ironies - I wonder if it's a stretch to say that science was slow to develop in the East precisely because of the pantheism/monism so prevelant there?! I'm sure I've seen that idea somewhere....

As far as my understanding of Gnosticism goes, it's the pursuit of real spiritual knowledge in contrast to religious faith. It has much in common with the Greek mystery religons and esoteric Judaism, from which it undoubtedly arose.

The Nag Hammadi Library (Robinson), The Gnostic Bible (Shambala) and the writings of On Faith panelist Elaine Pagels are all good references that you are probably familiar with.

There is a certain obscure kinship with Buddhism (mythology aside) because in both cases the ultimate spiritual goal is transcendence through personal effort. Gnosticism is also not exclusively a dualistic view, as can be seen in reading over the link below.

Certain radical Zen Buddhists are famous for declaring that reality and all phenomena are of one substance (one taste) - which is beyond description....there being fundamentally no inside, outside, or contrasting 'other' with the true nature of existence. Nagarjuna all over again......

If this is even remotely what Spinoza was getting at, I can see why he didn't catch on with everyone!

And please excuse all the uncalled for bloviating of an early Sunday morn.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

TTWSY cynically quotes the following:

'Consequently, As the great Buddhist dialectician Nagarjuna says, 'The nature of Reality is Emptiness and is co-dependent, mere appearance. It is neither real nor unreal, but there is not a single thing to be found anywhere that is truly independent or self-existing'.

And this is exactly right - quantum mechanics struggles to figure out why this seems to be so, and how it could be so........

If Jesus lived - The Sermon on the Mount has a distinctly Buddhistic feel to it - upon hearing a translation of the Sermon, a noted Zen master declared ' that man is a great Boddhisattva, and very close to Buddhahood'. It does sum up the best truths to be found in Christianity.

Nagarjuna was a master dialectician and sage that clarified several of the essential teachings to be found in Buddhism - his equal has seldom been seen in the Buddhist world or elsewhere.

The observations of Buddhism are not traditionally very well received in the West, and certainly not by conventional Christians.

And are widely misunderstood as 'pessimistic and nihilistic'......what they never deny is that life consists of a lot of suffering, and then you die. This is not different from the observations and experiences of any sane person that has lived a few decades.......

Instead, what many Westerners prefer is a complex set of beliefs concerning messiahs and redemption, arising out of a real-world fatalism based on life's inevitable 'sinning and suffering', but also mixed with equal parts of unrealistic optimism that salvation is near at hand - by proxy.

One life to live, and then it's on to eternal bliss, or eternal suffering - needless to say, most have and will continue to miss out on the 'eternal bliss' part - right time, right place, right beliefs, and right with God....this is the ultimate Powerball play.

Someone else has done all the heavy lifting - the Creator Himself, no less, but incognitio as a fellow human..... I can see the appeal, but it seems kind of tricky at the same time. Buddhism is buffoonery, you say??

Your revered Benedict (as Cardinal Ratzinger) famously described Buddhism as 'mental masturbation'. A great ecumenical genius, that man. I can see why some folks choose to follow his lead.........

re. Spinoza - freedom for religion and freedom from religion. If not for the secular vision of the Founders and the rule of secular law (the State) - we'd have a theocracy no different than that of Saudi Arabia......this is what Spinoza intuitively understood - along with those American visionaries; Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, et al.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“SPINOZA AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:24 AM

IRT:
“The God of Spinoza was somewhat closer to the beliefs of our early Founders, the Deists e.g. Franklin, Jefferson, et al. although with a decidedly pantheistic overlay (see transpersonal reality).

Now try reading Spinoza - one of those 18th century philosophers that did get it.”

ANS:
Spinoza a neo-Platonist and Monist, was a pantheist, and ultimate materialist. You say Spinoza got it right. Yes, he got it right if you don’t mind becoming a materialist. Russia, China and, North Korea are illustrious examples of what Monism has wrought. Try living in one of their countries.

“According to Spinoza the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament are not without error and are not inspired in the strict sense. They do not teach us with certainty as to the nature of God and His characteristics, but only concerning obedience to God, piety, and love.

Consequently, the text of the Bible can never come into conflict with philosophy and civil law. But, according to Spinoza, the limitations of philosophy and law are also clearly defined. As it is only in the State that justice and law, injustice and transgression are conceivable.

The individual, in order to be able to live according to reason, must surrender his rights to the community. Then, too, he must obey the government in everything, even against his reason and conviction, unless a command contradicts universal feeling, as the murder of parents. That is a direct contradiction of the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence.

Freedom of thinking and speaking, however, cannot be forbidden by the State; if it has the power to do this, the right, indeed, cannot be denied it, but the prohibition would be disadvantageous to it, because its own existence would be endangered by such tyranny.

No man can ever act according to his convictions, if a law of the State stands in the way. Thus, Spinoza upholds only a partial freedom of conscience.

On the other hand, the government has the right to supervise the external practice of religion. It is easy to understand that the Church councils and synods of Holland took energetic measures against this work, which appeared anonymously in 1670. Up to 1676 at least thirty-seven decisions or edicts against the work had appeared.”

Sorry my friend, if the Founding Fathers were anything like Spinoza there wouldn’t have been a United States but another USSR or China.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“BUDDHISM”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:24 AM

IRT:
ANS:
Buddhism is a religion of materialistic pessimism, a belief in nothingness. It is a religion that denies reality and ultimately denies itself. Yet it culminates in a contradiction of itself.

Hence,
“The First Noble Truth is the realization that all worldly phenomena are dukkha, unsatisfactory.

Every aspect of existence is ultimately fleeting and unfulfilling, subject to birth, decay, disease, and death. “The Third Noble Truth is the ending of dukkha. To be free of dukkha one must extinguish this very craving so that no passion and desire remain.”

Buddhism begins In the world and ends in the world, but man is not of the world. Consequently, the Buddhist strives to be nothing. What absurdity! .Fortunately, the final end of man is Love, not death, and not emptiness, or not a void of pessimism.

Man’s whole life is based on love. Therefore, to extinguish love as the Buddhist says we must do, is to destroy the purpose of man’s existence. Namely, the Second Noble Truth states the cause of “dukkha” (phenomena that doesn’t’ exist?): craving for the pleasure of the senses, which can never be fully satisfied, and aversion from pain.”

That dissatisfaction is caused, not because things don’t exist, but because they can’t realize all man’s potentialities. Man seeks perfection, but nothing in the world is perfect. Its wiles and vanities are fleeting. Perfection is the fulfillment of all man’s potentialities; his desires are satiated, fulfilled. That is eternal happiness.

Only God and those who rest in him are perfect. St. Augustine says,’ Lord our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Unfortunately, happiness is something that the Buddhism denounces. It claims that all passions and feelings are verboten because they can’t be satisfied or are not real. Therefore, to be perfect is to become nothingness. Hence, that means to cease to exist in reality summoning up unadulterated pessimism. Buddhism can’t believe in anything because nothing exists. Buddhism is a self-contradiction.

Consequently, As the great Buddhist dialectician Nagarjuna says, 'The nature of Reality is Emptiness and is co-dependent, mere appearance. It is neither real nor unreal, but there is not a single thing to be found anywhere that is truly independent or self-existing'”

How ridiculous, if reality doesn’t exists neither does Nagarjuna, and neither does his exhortations; they are buffoonery as is he.

TTWSY and so forth.....

Einstein is not making your case for you, so why conjure up the spirit of Einstein??

He didn't believe in a personal God and you do, so how are these two views similar, or even remotely related?

An impersonal creator is completely without foundation - and in fact, makes no sense (it is by definition, an oxymoron).

The truth is, Einstein didn't know, and had not the slightest idea how it all came to pass.....but apparently you do.

You, my friend, have the last word in all things pompous - who is in your league, other than that famously Crossanized Catholic, CCNL?

PS...there is no Natural Moral Law other than in your imagination, but science tells us there are natural laws. Modern science knows nothing of moral laws - and isn't interested, since it's an untestable hyposthesis.

And even so, these natural laws do not function without one another e.g. in isolation - and the true substance of these 'laws' is not known apart from the observable relationships that allow said laws to function.

So far as we know, there is no substance to substance, in the ordinary sense of the word.

This is what Einstein refused to believe - being an avowed materialist.

You may infer God as a causitive agent if you like, based on your religious background and preferences - there is no conclusive evidence for your beliefs.

That's what faith is all about.......

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
“EINSTEIN”
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:24 AM

IRT:
“And even if it happens to be Albert Einstein - who denied the truth of quantum mechanics until the time of his death....he called the phenomenon of non-locality (see Bell's theorem) 'spookiness at a distance'. He just didn't like uncertainty...but he did get relativity in a very big way.

ANS:
Whether Einstein was a Deist or whatever, he believed in the Natural Law (NL), and the Natural Moral Law a derivative of the NL, and he was not a Pantheist.

Consequently, Einstein believed a Supreme Intelligence created the Universe, designed the Natural Law that orders the Universe, and it just wasn’t Einstein’s imagination. He saw the order in the Universe and as anyone with common sense should know, ordering presupposes an orderer with an intelligence. Hence, Einstein said that order revealed only a glimpse of God to him and mankind.

Your attempt to diminish Einstein’s scientific achievements is pompous claptrap. Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2).
***
Although Einstein never coming to a belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe.” His Universe was a created Universe that is ordered by an Intelligence, who is God. That’s not Einstein’s imagination, and its not haphazard lunacy. Einstein’s God is a necessity and a reality. And Einstein makes note that Thus, any scientists who cannot see God and His Natural Laws caused the Universe, as Einstein said, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
POSTED JUNE 6, 2009 9:24 AM

IRT:
“The concept of God/gods is optional, but not necessary.......as always, it's a personal choice. I really think it depends on the depth of our imagination.”

ANS:
So God is optional but not necessary. Yes, that is correct if you live in the alternate world, where up is down and down is up, and good is evil and evil is good, and where, if a Buddhist, you can’t know anything until your nothing. Hence, no sense of explaining how nothing caused itself, and how matter caused the spiritual, a.k.a. ideas, language, judgments, and chaos caused order, and matter created an intellect and a free will, when nothing in the Universe has either but man.

We’re experiencing such buffoonery right now in America, where a baby isn’t a baby and while its being born we can plunge a surgical scissors into the back of its skull and suck out its brains in order to preserve its organs and flesh which sells on the open market for collagen at $500/lb.

Consequently, here’s what Planned Parenthood, the oxymoron that doesn’t plan parenthood but prevents it, and if it fails to prevent it, it helps the mother murder her unborn, had to say:

Planned Parenthood president Mary Calderone

“Abortion is the taking of a life Late-term fetuses are being dissected and their parts sold for huge profits. Only 2 percent of late-term fetuses have any abnormalities. They range in age from 4 to 7 months. Sometimes the babies are born alive, and the doctor must break their neck or beat them to death or put them to drown in the garbage with her mother's blood.

According to the Rabbi, an abortionist is a hero, showing compassion to a mother who wants to have her child murdered.

Pretend you are the child, and in the womb, a curette first cuts your leg off, then your arm, the other leg and then the other arm and then if you’re not dead yet he cuts your throat and your head falls off. Maybe you are scalded to death with saline, and you just happen to survive, then the butcher throttles you to death. You could be sucked out by a powerful vacuum, arms, legs, pieces of the heart liver of while being alive.

Beverly McMillan:
“On why she stopped doing abortions: "It got to where I couldn't stand to see the little bodies anymore."

There is a God and it is written, Mt 18:6

"But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea."

Posting once again the fundamental Buddhist orientation on consciousness -

Don't think that physicsts of note haven't referenced this esoteric view to a very considerable degree - there is plenty of recently published material available for review.

Also recommended for viewing by both fallen and active Catholics that are trying to find their way.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
THEBOBBOB
POSTED JUNE 2, 2009
“THE WILL OF GOD”

IRT:
“For a human to claim to know, absolutely, what God wants is the mark of insanity. To impose that supposed absolutism on others is Religious Fanaticism and must be condemned.”

Was Jesus insane, a fanatic? Are His Ten Commandments deranged, His great Two Commandments harebrained? Are His Beatitudes madness.

God told his disciples to go forth and teach all nations what He has taught them and He will be with them till the end of the world. Namely, and God will speak through them, and protect His Church’s teachings and beliefs with the Holy Spirit from the errors of man. Hence, it is written, Matthew 19:23-30 “Who then can be saved? And Jesus beholding, said to them: With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.”

For God not to insure His Church, (which He spent some 33 years instituting} against error, viz. from having man screw it up in a matter of few years, God would be a fool. But God is not a fool; He is Omniscient and Prescient.

The necessity for an infallible Church protected by the Spirit is substantially illustrated by the existence of some 26 to 35 thousand different denominations of Christianity alone, not to mention all the other religions defining who is and what God wants.

2 Cor 4: 27cf.
“Therefore…we renounce the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor adulterating the word of God: but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience, in the sight of God.

And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.”

Those who are dishonest, walk in craftiness, and adulterate the word of God. The truth is hidden from them. Hence, the unbeliever’s conscience remains in darkness.

God’s will is manifested in the Scriptures. In addition there is man’s conscience notwithstanding the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments. ”Love your neighbor as you love yourself and as God loves you,” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Moreover, there is the command, “Give unto God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesars.

According to Professors Lanza and Berman in their new book,
"Biocentrism", the last frontier is Consciousness.

An excerpt:

"However, the Grand Canyon or Taj Mahal are only real when you get there." p. 160.

"Third Principle of Biocentrism:

The behavior of subatomic particles- indeed all particles and objects- is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves." p. 93.

"So the table has been set in the public mind for biocentrism's jump to the reality that its all only in the mind, that the universe exists nowhere else. p. 167.

For reviews of Buddha legends see:

http://festivals.iloveindia.com/buddha-purnima/buddha-purnima-legends.html and

http://www.holymtn.com/gods/buddhahistory.htm

TTWSY.........

Recommend reading something beyond Catholic literature as regards the nature of consciousness. And thank you - the nature of our subjective existence has been supported in every way by your posts. Opinions and beliefs are not proof of anything, no matter how strongly felt.

And even if it happens to be Albert Einstein - who denied the truth of quantum mechanics until the time of his death....he called the phenomenon of non-locality (see Bell's theorem) 'spookiness at a distance'. He just didn't like uncertainty...but he did get relativity in a very big way.

The God of Spinoza was somewhat closer to the beliefs of our early Founders, the Deists e.g. Franklin, Jefferson, et al. although with a decidedly pantheistic overlay (see transpersonal reality).

Now try reading Spinoza - one of those 18th century philosophers that did get it.

Later on, you'll be ready to explore Buddhism....a religion and philosophy that not only gets it, but is quite compatible with the cutting edge physical science of today (if reality can be called 'physical'). We know that the science of Newton is a convenience, but doesn't reflect the deeper nature of things.

The concept of God/gods is optional, but not necessary.......as always, it's a personal choice. I really think it depends on the depth of our imagination.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Buddhism

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
CONSCIENCE:

PROOF OF CONSCIENCE

2 Corinthians 4: 1 3.
“Therefore seeing we have this ministration, according as we have obtained mercy, we faint not. But we renounce the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor adulterating the word of God: but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience, in the sight of God.”

Therefore, since God has said every man has a conscience, then to deny man has a conscience is to refute God. However, only the foolish would refute God, who is Omniscient and Prescient, All Knowing and Wisdom and Truth.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
POSTED: | JUNE 4, 2009 1:18 PM
“THERE IS NO NATURAL MORAL LAW,” SAYS WHO?

IRT:
“Oh Boy - he's at it again. There is no
'natural moral law'... period. This idea was debunked ages ago - when science came along.”

ANS:
What science debunked the idea there is no Natural Moral Law? Certainly not Aristotle, the Father of Logic and the Scientific Method. It certainly was not Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Certainly Not Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, Max Planck, Von Braun, Wernher, Albert Einstein, Sir Francis Bacon, Gabriel Stokes, and James Clerk Maxwell.

Do you wish to rebuke one of our great contemporary scientists of our time, Albert Einstein?

“Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist:

"I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.—Albert Einstein.”

Thus, any scientists who cannot see God and His Natural Laws caused the Universe, as Einstein said, are brain dead.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
PERSIFLAGE
CONSCIENCE:

See Link below for a complete but simple explanation if you want your answer. A succinct answer is below.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04268a.htm

The perception of sin in the genuine sense is gradually formed until the age which we roughly designate as the seventh year, and henceforth the agent enters upon the awful career of responsibility according to the dictates of conscience.

On grounds not ethical but scholastically theological, St. Thomas explains a theory that the unbaptized person at the dawn of reason goes through a first crisis in moral discrimination which turns simply on the acceptance or rejection of God, and entails mortal sin in case of failure. (I-II:89:6)

The natural conscience is no distinct faculty, but the one intellect of a man inasmuch as it considers right and wrong in conduct, aided meanwhile by a good will, by the use of the emotions, by the practical experience of living, and by all external helps that are to the purpose.

The natural conscience of the Christian is known by him to act not alone, but under the enlightenment and the impulse derived from revelation and grace in a strictly supernatural order.

As to the order of nature, which does not exist but which might have existed, St. Thomas (I-II:109:3) teaches that both for the knowledge of God and for the knowledge of moral duty, men such as we are would require some assistance from God to make their knowledge sufficiently extensive, clear, constant, effective, and relatively adequate; and especially to put it within reach of those who are much engrossed with the cares of material life. It would be absurd to suppose that in the order of nature God could be debarred from any revelation of Himself, and would leave Himself to be searched for quite irresponsively.

Being a practical thing, conscience depends in large measure for its correctness upon the good use of it and on proper care taken to heed its deliverances, cultivate its powers, and frustrate its enemies.

Even where due diligence is employed conscience will err sometimes, but its inculpable mistakes will be admitted by God to be not blameworthy. These are so many principles needed to steady us as we tread some of the ways of ethical history, where pitfalls are many.

These al Christa terrorists hate America and pose a danger to decent people across the country. No one should fear death for going to their doctor or church. We need to use the laws already on the books and break up their terror networks before they strike again.

More on the Triple Goddess theme:

" Gimbutas interpreted iconography from neolithic and earlier periods of Europen history evidence of worship of a triple goddess represented by:

1."stiff nudes", birds of prey or poisonous snakes interpreted as "death"

2.mother-figures interpreted as symbols of "birth and fertility"

3.moths, butterflies or bees, or alternatively a symbols such as a frog, hedgehog or bulls head which she interpreted as being the uterus or fetus, as being symbols of "regeneration" [27]"

From answers.com

Yes, the laws of Wicca are simple: if it harm none, do as you will; what you do comes back to you threefold. No sin, no burning in everlasting perdition, etc. It's your Hell - YOU burn in it.

One more time, it is the Natural Moral Law of the Horned God and The Triple Goddess!!!!

"God's Natural Law" pre-supposed belief in the Judeo-Christian-Moslem God. There are many people in the world, not to mention the U.S., who do not believe in this concept of the Divine. Or, for that matter, believe in a Divine being at all.

I am NOT pro-abortion. Like most people I believe there is no question that he fetus if carried to term is a human being. What its rights are at different stages of development is a more difficult question. But the death of Dr Tiller compels me to note the following:

Operation Rescue has managed the public debate in such a manner that the public often believes that the alternative to late abortions (which Dr Tiller performed) is a healthy, happy infant.

The problem is, that a normally developing child cannot be aborted in the third trimester simply because of the "desires" of the mother in any state in the US, including Kansas.

Third trimester abortions do not happen just to fit the convenience of the mother. These are children with gross deformities, who cannot live once delivered. Anacephalic (no head or brain) infants, blood vessel abnormalities that mean that the mother CANNOT safely deliver the child without bleeding to death, or where the fetus has already died in the womb (yes, some doctors believe that these dead fetuses must continue to be carried until delivered), etc. These abortions are pretty rare (he was one of only a very few who did this procedure-- I heard the statistics of only 3 such clinics in the country).

In these late abortions the choice is between a child who will not survive in any case and may either kill the mother in the process or may mean she can never have another child, OR aborting this child, so that the mother will survive and may be able to have other children. (The issues in the abortion of a 10 or 11 year old girl who has been raped, or is the victim of incest, is a different one, albeit no less heartbreaking.)

This is not a black white issue...it is a tragedy no matter how they decide. Most families who face this decision do not survive, even when both parents are in agreement, because of the stress and lingering guilt--even as they felt they had no choice. It is a horrible decision to have to make.

I would love the day when abortions are never necessary, but there are times when, as horrible it is, may be the lesser of two evils.

Pr Chris

Please provide at a least a modicum of evidence that 'God gave man consciousness'.

A person so well versed in the law should know that solid evidence is the best proof of one's assertions and beliefs.

Otherwise, it's all hearsay.......

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
THEBOBBOB
POSTED JUNE 2, 2009
“THE WILL OF GOD”

IRT:
“For a human to claim to know, absolutely, what God wants is the mark of insanity. To impose that supposed absolutism on others is Religious Fanaticism and must be condemned.”

ANS:
It is not fanaticism it’s common sense, the conceived is human and to take its life is murder, religion or no religion. Fanaticism is to stab a little child in the back of the neck, suck out its brains, and sell its flesh on the open market at $500/lb.

God gave man an intellect so that man may be able to reason to do good and avoid evil. Therefore, God gave man His Two Great Commandments, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself and as God loves you,” and “Do unto others as you would do unto your self.”

Second God revealed His will when He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and Jesus gave man the Corporeal Works of Mercy. Not only are these things written, but also they are imbued in mans human nature.

Third, God gave man a conscience. You do have a conscience. It should tell you what is right and wrong. However, if you don’t exercise it, it becomes atrophic and useless, as do all the muscles of your body when they are not exercised.

The way you exercise your conscience is to seek the truth so that your conscience may be informed. An uninformed conscience is an atrophic one and a dead one.

Fourth God sent his Beloved Son to you that you may know God’s will. Consequently, Jesus established a Church and endowed it with impeccable certitude, viz. infallibility in its teachings of faith and morals so that man may not screw it up.

Thus, it is written, Mt. 28:20 Mt.10; John 15: 26-27
". Mt. 28:20 "...

Further, God told his Church, “What ever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and what ever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven

Subsequently, The Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), states:

"Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows:

“That the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" Historical or scientific assertions made "for the sake of our salvation" would be inerrant too.”

Fifth, the authority of the Scriptures is verified by the miracles performed by their author Jesus and by the fruits that the teachings themselves bear.

In viewing the link below we can see what 'natural moral law' is all about....what we see here are a host of archaic philosophers and religionists, and nary a scientist in the lot - and odd to say, all of them men.

And as usual, subjectively defining and prescribing the divinely inspired moral laws by which we must conduct ourselves.

Once again - there are no objective laws to be found outside of the mental constructs of human beings.....we are trapped by our own consciousness.

As a consequence, nothing can be proven to exist outside of this consciousness. I'd like to see proof to the contrary.

Regarding this generously provided and more modern list of all-male physicians and researchers, opinions vary as regards when a human can be considered a fully functioning and biologically autonomous human - for all practical purposes, one would think when that human has emerged from the womb and is breathing on their own....whatever their cognitive capacity.

What we don't know about these medical experts is their stand on the pro-choice position....are they for it, or against it? What is their religious persuasion?? I would guess that there is one......

These diatribes against the pro-choice position are filled with hyperbole and histrionics, not to say zealotry.....

Read my lips - Roe v Wade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

FETUSES AREN’T HUMAN?

After you’ve enlightening or corrected Dr. Lejeune, “The Father of Modern Genetics,” you might also inform the Embryologist, Microbiologists, and Doctors and Professors of Medicine below as well.

Dr. LANDRUM SHETTLES sometimes called the "FATHER OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION":

"Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade_, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."

DR. HYMIE GORDON, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

DR. MCCARTHY DE MERE, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee:

"The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."

DR. ALFRED BONGIOVANNI, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine:

"I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."

DR. RICHARD V. JAYNES:
"To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous."

PROFESSOR EUGENE DIAMOND:
"...either the justices were fed backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

Statement by PAUL E. ROCKWELL, M.D.:

"Eleven years ago while giving an anesthetic for a ruptured entopic pregnancy (at 8 weeks gestation), I was handed what I believe was the smallest living human ever seen. The embryonic sac was intact and transparent. Within the sac was a tiny human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid, while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed, with long, tapering fingers, feet, and toes. It was almost transparent, as regards the skin, and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of the fingers."

"The baby was extremely alive and swam about the sac approximately one time per second, with a natural swimmer's stroke…. When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost his life and took on the appearance of what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo at

"Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.—Mother Theresa"

FETUSES AREN'T HUMAN?

That's very interesting. Maybe you ought to tell that to one of the greatest Geneticists in the world.

“Dr. Jerome Lejeune, known as "The Father of Modern Genetics," also testified that human life begins at conception before the Louisiana Legislature's House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice on June 7, 1990.

Dr. Lejeune explained that within three to seven days after fertilization we can determine if the new human being is a boy or a girl. "At no time," Dr. Lejeune said, "is the human being a blob of protoplasm.

As far as your nature is concerned, I see no difference between the early person that you were at conception and the late person which you are now. You were, and are, a human being."

Dr. Lejeune also pointed out that each human being is unique -- different from the mother -- from the moment of conception.

He said, "Recent discoveries by Dr. Alec Jeffreys of England demonstrate that this information [on the DNA molecule] is stored by a system of bar codes not unlike those found on products at the supermarket...it's not any longer a theory that each of us is unique."

Dr. Jerome Lejeune died on April 3, 1994. Dr. Lejeune of Paris, France was a medical doctor, a Doctor of Science and a professor of Fundamental Genetics for over twenty years.

Dr. Lejeune discovered the genetic cause of Down Syndrome, receiving the Kennedy Prize for the discovery and, in addition, received the Memorial Allen Award Medal, the world's highest award for work in the field of Genetics.

He practiced his profession at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades (Sick Children's Hospital) in Paris.

Dr. Lejeune was a member of
The American Academy of the Arts and Science,
A member of the Royal Society of Medicine in London,
The Royal Society of Science in Stockholm,
The Science Academy in Italy
The Society of Science in Argentina,
The Pontifical Academy of Science and,
The Academy of Medicine in France.

THE NATURAL MORAL LAW (NML)

The Natural Moral Laws are the universal objective Commandments for human behavior. The sooner man lives within them, the less violence will ensue, and that is a historical fact.

These tragic consequences are unequivocally illustrated in the violence visited upon the people of China, the Middle East, and the people of North Korea, Sudan, and the Congo wrought by the violence of their leaders.

Law is order based on intelligence. The NML flows from the Natural Law (NL) by which God orders the Universe and man. The NL governs the Universe, and orders all the things created in the Universe to act in accordance with its laws. Hence, all things act according to their nature. Therefore, Fish act according to the fish’s nature; trees act according to the nature of trees, and so forth. Only man has a choice to not act according to his nature and destroy himself, and many do.

The nature of a thing is the fundamental principles of a substance that makes it be what it is. Nature is the definition of the object defined. Man has a peculiar nature; he has a soul (the force of life) that is spiritual. Hence, he has an intellect and free will. He can think, make judgments, write books, score music, design clothes, build cities, roads, houses, and govern himself.

Man’s behavior, unlike all the creatures of the Universe, is governed by the NML. No other creatures in the Universe have moral responsibility.

These laws are manifested in man’s conscience, and revealed in the Ten Commandments and Scriptures. They are know by the fruits they bear Thou shalt not steal, lie, murder, or commit adultery, commit fornication, pederasty, pedophilia, or any illicit sex.

These perversions violate man’s nature. When violated, consequences follow—pestilence, famine, war, death, the Four Horsemen. Hence, AIDS, STDs, and death follow illicit sex. Fifty million unborn died from Abortion, 43 million die worldwide/year, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.

Since all men have a human nature, the NML applies to all men; therefore, it cannot be subjective. Man may choose to ignore them, and believe they don’t exist, but he cannot choose the consequences that ensue when he violates them.

Hitler, Mao, and Stalin ignored them and destroyed their nations.. You can close your eyes to their existence, but the consequences remain and so does the devastation. Whether you believe it or not, the NL doesn’t care.

Ahh, there is only one true Natural Law and that is the one established by the great Babs!!!

Or is it the Laws of the Horned God, The Triple Goddess or the reincarnated Supreme Court Justices of 1973???

Oh Boy - he's at it again. There is no
'natural moral law'... period. This idea was debunked ages ago - when science came along.

Life is purely subjective at every level and in every domain, based on whatever relative standards one chooses to apply.

Acorns are not oaks, and fetuses are not people - murder involves the wanton, pre-meditated killing of a full-fledged person.

The law very firmly discriminates between legal abortions and the homicide of a person.

The rest is subjective blather.......

What "Natural Moral Law"? We here in America don't follow that. We follow the Constitution, the U.S. Legal Code, and various laws enacted by the States. In Kansas, that means that late term abortions were legal. So you can take your "Natural Moral Law" and stick it.

TILLER A MURDER IS MURDERED BY ANOTHER MURDER. EVIL BEGETS EVIL.

Indeed Tiller’s murder was an act of terror but not on just women as the feminist pretend, or on just America, but on all mankind. Nor was Tiller murdered by an extreme Christian as is contended by others.

There are no Extreme Christians. You’re either a Christian or your not. Christians do not believe in murder; they believe in the Fifth Commandment that the Court banned from the Public Square and Public Schools because it might contaminate little minds. Maybe if it had contaminated a few young minds, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened nor would George Tiller have happened.

Only those who call themselves Christians in name approve of murder, murder of the unborn. Hence, in the Senate, Kennedy, Leahy, Durbin, Kerry, and all the dissonant Catholics in government like Pelosi are dead, viz. Catholics in name only.

One murder murdered another. Violence begets violence. Truth sets one free. Tiller was a doctor; he knew that the unborn was a human person, yet, he murdered sixty thousand unborn children.

The Natural Moral Law (NML) is ubiquitous; it rains on all human nature. It does not discriminate, nor compromise. Man may choose to rebuke it, but he cannot choose the consequences that ensue. Those consequences fall on all, the unbeliever and the believer. Unfortunately, the non-believer infects all society.

Mt 4:4 “It is written, ‘Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.”

The murderer of Dr. Tiller was no better than the one he murdered. Neither believed the NML; neither believed its precepts. Hence evil begot evil.
.
America’s troubles began when our Medical institutes abandoned the Hippocratic Oath. Consequently, evil pursued evil. The Court wrote its own Natural Law and redefined human nature in “Roe v. Wade”

February 1997 - National Prayer Breakfast in Washington attended by the President and the First Lady. "What is taking place in America," she said, "is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another.

Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants. It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."—Mother Theresa

Unfortunately, both murderers, Tiller and his assassin, used violence to get what it wanted.

IN REPLY TO (IRT)
"TILLER’S MURDER IS AN ATTACK ON AMERICA"
TILLER IS A MURDER WHO ATTACKED THE POSTERITY AND PROVIDENCE OF AMERICA.”

WHO IS THE MURDERER?

“The unborn are people and "all people are created equal (the Declaration) with "the right to be secure in their person"(the IVth Amendment)
ANS:
To the contrary, the Murder of George Tiller was an act of Murder upon a Murderer and an act of violence against all mankind. The violence Tiller visited upon women was the 60,000 murders Tiller preformed on women by murdering their unborn children.

The women who flagitiously paid a murderer to have their unborn children murdered reciprocated Tiller’s violence with their own violence upon their unborn. Tiller’s murders were reciprocated by the murder of Tiller. Hence, violence begets violence.

Evil begets Evil. The Sexual Revolution begets Abortion. Abortion begets Embryonic Stem Cell Research upon unborn children. Subsequently, there ensues the malevolent Culture of Death.

Homosexuality, encapsulated in the Sexual Revolution, fermented pedophilia, pederasty, AIDS, STDs, and eventually the Drug Culture and Suicide.

It is unmitigated hypocrisy to support these cultural abominations and then to lament the murder of Tiller. Those who advocate such nefarious immorality have inevitably wrought such tragedy upon themselves. Abortionists had unwittingly created this reckless profligate of evil and they share in the consequences their evil has wrought.

There is a Natural Moral Law (NML); though many don’t believe it. Tiller, the child murderer didn’t believe in it; Tiller’s murderer didn’t either. They paid the consequence. Their God was the world, itself, and the world has devoured them both.

Unfortunately, when evil triumphs, the innocent suffer too. Those innocent that suffered here were the 60,000 unborn children murdered by Tiller.

The smallest act of immorality echoes throughout humanity like a pebble dropped into the center of a silent pond. Its ripples travel to all the edges that contain the pond. Likewise, evil travels to the boundaries of all mankind, and as well, all humanity is defiled.

The Natural Moral Laws are the universal objective Commandments for human behavior. The sooner man lives within them, the less violence will ensue, and that is a historical fact. These tragic consequences are unequivocally illustrated in the violence visited upon the people of China, the Middle East, and the people of North Korea, Sudan, and the Congo wrought by the violence of their leaders.

I recently read an article that postulated something I have often thought about: People don't REALLY believe that a baby is being murdered, when an abortion takes place.
They may say so, but they don't believe it. If they did, then what kind of moral monster stands outside a building where they KNOW, that inside babies are being brutally murdered, and does nothing substantive to stop that crime?
I have NO agreement with those people who DO believe they have the right to kill abortion doctors. But I also can see that if you truly believe that a baby is being murdered, morally you have no real choice but to take real action.
If my neighbors KNEW someone was in my house and going to kill me, wouldn't their inaction be morally reprehensible?
Does saying "Well anything I do will just get me arrested and in trouble myself" actually cover your responsibility to an about-to-be-murdered baby?
What IS true, is that people don't like abortion. And from there we begin arguing and ratcheting up the rhetoric to the point where we make jumps across rhetorical valley's with little holding us up but our real emotions. This is what in part makes us human. But it is also dangerous.
Just like the word marriage has had a traditional meaning, and it now rankles many when non-traditional partners want to use that word to describe their unions, so does the word murder have a traditional meaning,normally reserved for people who are killed outside of their mother's womb. Interestingly, the very people who insist on using the word marriage in its traditional sense, find no need to give this same 'respect' to the word murder. Instead they use it in rhetorical flourishes against a legal medical procedure and claim to actually believe it. Yet when you ask where were they when these horrific murders were taking place they have no good answer but to say that they are pro-life. When you ask how they feel about the man who stopped those 'murders' by killing the doctor performing them, they distance themselves from him in any way they can, including repeating that they are pro-life.
I believe, that they really don't believe babies are being murdered. Most of the pro-lifers I have met are very nice people, good people. They would never stand by while a baby was really being murdered. I believe they know its not murder, but can not otherwise describe the horror of what they contemplate when imagining an abortion of a human life in the womb. So then rhetoric comes in strong, the word murder is used because to them it makes sense, a human life has been exterminated. But even so, they must not really see it as the same as killing a baby, or why would they just be standing there?

It may not be murder, but it is not always done in self-defense, either. No other situation allows for the assumption of self-defense before the act is even committed, which abortion does. Even the acts of soldiers in wartime come under scrutiny. The killing of human fetuses; let's be honest, they are human inasmuch as they have no potential for anything else; is wrong. But, they are worth money to the economy as fodder for fertility clinics, and for scientific research as much as they are for abortionists.

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Every assassination and murder is an attack on everyone, on any nation and on the whole of Human race.

Not just this one or just this nation.

Every human being is a fellow a brother. That includes those Humans that have been conceived but not born yet.

So, UNJUSTIFIED Abortion ON DEMAND. Just because the baby is not wanted or conceived outside of marriage, or the product of an Adulterous relation.

Is also an Assassination a Murder.

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For those who say the actions of Roeder were the actions of one man and do not reflect on the anti-choice movement, they are fooling themselves to ease their conscience.

Those who standby and allow the rhetoric of Randall Terry to incite the faithful bear culpability in the act. Terry said that it was unfortunate Tiller didn't get a "trial of a jury of his peers and to have a proper execution." This statement is chilling. It is vigilante justice spoken aloud. It is unconstitutional.

Those who perpetrate this violence are no better than the radical Jihadists who terrorize others. Roeder is a domestic terrorist and Terry, O'Reilly and other strident anti-choicers who incite hatred and egg on violence are nothing short of aiding and abetting murder.

The anti-choice movement can not divorce itself from Roeder, Rudolph and the other murderers simply because it makes them feel better. Just as the defense of "just following orders" is not acceptable neither is the defense of "I never told him to do anything."

In 1170 Henry II asked what manner of knights he had who would let a lowly priest treat him as a common and four of his men assassinated Thomas Becket on the alter of his church. Much earlier Pontius Pilot tried to wash his hands of the murder of Jesus. History is rife with the weak and fearful who encourage others to do their dirty work and then refuse to share the blame.

Operation Rescue and other anti-choicers have not repudiated Roeder. Randall Terry's words are thinly veiled thanks to a domestic terrorist, who like the terrorists of 9.11, believes he will receive his reward in heaven.

I don't call for their death, I only ask that God have mercy on their souls.

too bad the killer didn't get aborted before he was born.

Rabbi,

You noted:

"When zealots act as they did this week in
Kansas, they are making war on America, upon the constitution and the rule of law."

It was not those/"they" zealots. It was ONE "nut-job".

With respect to abortion, lets recommend some things to do to reduce said ending of young life (it is life no matter how you define the moment of human creation).

Once again, here are some suggestions for your next sermon/commentary:

It is obvious that intercourse and other sexual activities are out of control with over one million abortions and 19 million cases of STDs per year in the USA alone.

from the CDC-2006

"Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain a major public health challenge in the United States. While substantial progress has been made in preventing, diagnosing, and treating certain STDs in recent years, CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.1 In addition to the physical and psychological consequences of STDs, these diseases also exact a tremendous economic toll. Direct medical costs associated with STDs in the United States are estimated at up to $14.7 billion annually in 2006 dollars."

How in the world do we get this situation under control? A pill to temporarily eliminate the sex drive would be a good start.

And teenagers and young adults must be constantly reminded of the dangers of sexual activity and that oral sex, birth control pills, and chastity belts are no protection against STDs. Might a list of those having an STD posted on the Internet help? Sounds good to me!!!! Said names would remain until the STD has been eliminated with verification by a doctor. Lists of sexual predators are on-line.

Is there a difference between these individuals and those having a STD having sexual relations while infected???

Thank you for your calm, deeply considered, truly religious analysis. Your article is the one thing everyone should read on this issue.