Malik23 wrote:rusmeister wrote:Oh, and I think there is a definite distinction between calling people turnips(your accusation) and describing it as an end run or logical conclusion of a certain kind of thought (GKC's actual statement).
Let's look at his actual statement:
When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.
No, he's not talking about a certain kind of thought. A turnip isn't a kind of thought. It is an organism. He is comparing one organism (skeptical humans) to another kind of organism (turnips) in virtue of a similarity between their "thoughts." But turnips don't have thoughts, and don't ask questions. That imagined similarity is so obviously false, so obviously inapt, that we can only conclude this comparison between the two organisms was meant to be
insulting to one of them . . . and I don't mean the turnip. Either this argument is very stupid, or very churlish. Take your pick.
But my dear Malik, you ARE going to die. Then where will all your fine philosophies be?
Philosophy will continue on . . . but that's not really the point. Philosophy was never intended as a get-out-of-jail card for mortality. You are asking too much of philosophy if you think it is supposed to do something for me after I'm dead. You might as well ask where all my fine philosophies were before I was born. That question is equally nonsensical. I don't understand this insistence you have on only finding meaning in something beyond your existence. What possible effect could it have on me if it's beyond my existence?
Christianity is the most positive philosophy in existence and is not at all nihilistic. It merely acknowledges what most evolutionary scientists admit, that the universe is running down, that we do all die and must leave this world. It fiercely condemns suicide and embraces life.
The difference, as I've pointed out, is that evolutionary scientists aren't trying to deny the truth of the universe, while Christianity is nothing but a denial and rejection of it. The cost of your "positivity" is reality itself. Christianity is only positive in as much as it leaves reality behind.
On the first one, an insult is a personal attack, not a statement that people can be either wrong or even stupid, or that wrongness can lead to stupidity. It is not a personal attack to say that a person can be wrong or make themselves stupid through consistently being wrong. That or you are saying that no one can possibly make themselves wrong and through heavy fallacy make themselves stupid. You seem to gleefully do this (what you accuse Chesterton of) when the target is a frothing fundamentalist Christian.
On the second point, well, that's your dogma, as much a dogma as any of mine, and therefore we cannot discuss it. As to where your philosophy was before you were born - these arguments have been raised, century after century. They are not new and there is much to learn from reading old books. Hopefully, some day you will pick up that book I recommended, "The Everlasting Man".
As to the effect of your philosophy - it's logical conclusion is predictable now, in this life, and that conclusion must be that a meaning that ends has no lasting meaning. Everything that you have become, everything that you have learned, will be made nothing. And your children will start all over again from scratch. But our lives have no point. Once I realize that I will be dead in a few years - and could die today - there is no reason why I should not die today, because in the long run, it makes no difference. Chesterton, Nietzsche and Plato are all rotting masses, and even their writings could someday be lost - a final end even to any legacy. Suicide becomes a logical option; and Christianity attacks this idea fiercely.
On the third point, you don't seem aware of the teachings of Christianity of the need to bring about change in one's life and do and bring good to others, which has countless practical applications that bring positivity into the world - a small example out of ten million: the placing of others above self resulting in a driver not trying to shove you out of the way, but rather giving way to you, and when you shove him out of the way, rather than going into 'road rage' and wanting to get back at you, he forgives you, supresses even a curse, and says a prayer for you. Now that is certainly contrary to our selfish human nature, but if that doesn't bring positivity and optimism into the world, I don't know what does.
On the other hand, you seem determined to not hear what I am saying, so once again, end of discussion.
No offense, and a happy Easter to you!
I'll leave you with this, Malik,
If Christ is risen, nothing else matters.
If Christ is not risen, .... nothing else matters.
Christ is risen!!!
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one." Bill Hingest ("That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis)
"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." G.K. Chesterton
