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    Things to make you think...

    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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    #2
    Re: Things to make you think...

    From the reading for my history discussion today:

    I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

    I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

    But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

    I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

    All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

    I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
    As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

    No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

    It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
    BUT some perhaps will say--Are we to have no word of God --no revelation? I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

    THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

    (snip)

    It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

    Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

    (thalassa will give a cookie to the first person to identify the writer and work)
    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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      #3
      Re: Things to make you think...

      I got it... but I cheated by googling a sentence. It's (in white) Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. I'm not sure whether I get a cookie for that. :

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        #4
        Re: Things to make you think...

        I was going to guess Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson off the top of my head.

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          #5
          Re: Things to make you think...

          [quote author=Gwen link=topic=446.msg6703#msg6703 date=1288036997]
          I got it... but I cheated by googling a sentence. It's (in white) Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. I'm not sure whether I get a cookie for that. :
          [/quote]

          sure you do!
          Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
          sigpic

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            #6
            Re: Things to make you think...

            Yay! *munchmunch* ^_^

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              #7
              Re: Things to make you think...

              A favorite essay by a favorite writer.
              Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                #8
                Re: Things to make you think...

                Nathan Wolfe's jungle search for viruses
                Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                  #9
                  Re: Things to make you think...

                  I am in the most redneck bar I know (remember, I's a redneck), lookin at two dudes makin' out. And no one seems to care. Society has comes a long way.
                  "Don't ever miss a good opportunity to shut up." - Harvey Davis "Gramps"

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                    #10
                    Re: Things to make you think...

                    A cookie if you can identify the writer and title of one of my favorite poems...

                    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
                    That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
                    And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
                    And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
                    The work of hunters is another thing:
                    I have come after them and made repair
                    Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
                    But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
                    To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
                    No one has seen them made or heard them made,
                    But at spring mending-time we find them there.
                    I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
                    And on a day we meet to walk the line
                    And set the wall between us once again.
                    We keep the wall between us as we go.
                    To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
                    And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
                    We have to use a spell to make them balance:
                    'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
                    We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
                    Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
                    One on a side. It comes to little more:
                    There where it is we do not need the wall:
                    He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
                    My apple trees will never get across
                    And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
                    He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
                    Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
                    If I could put a notion in his head:
                    'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
                    Where there are cows?
                    But here there are no cows.
                    Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
                    What I was walling in or walling out,
                    And to whom I was like to give offence.
                    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
                    That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
                    But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
                    He said it for himself. I see him there
                    Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
                    In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
                    He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
                    Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
                    He will not go behind his father's saying,
                    And he likes having thought of it so well
                    He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
                    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                      #11
                      Re: Things to make you think...

                      Robert Frost?

                      Don't remember the title.
                      life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                      Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                      "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                      John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                      "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                      Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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                        #12
                        Re: Things to make you think...

                        I cheated, title is Mending Wall
                        life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                        Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                        "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                        John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                        "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                        Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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                          #13
                          Re: Things to make you think...

                          I favor his Birches and of course the Road Not Taken, myself. Especially Birches.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Things to make you think...

                            The "free market" ideal in economics assumes that everyone
                            -has infinite money,
                            -a perfect education about the entire economy and all of its products,
                            -never pays shipping costs, or there's a flat rate for world wide delivery in the same time frame,
                            -that people only make self-centered decisions related to price and quality alone.
                            -that companies can start up easily in any industry, regardless of the costs and planning
                            -and of course, taxes and tariffs are a non-issue.

                            The theoretical results of this perfect free market? In the long run nobody makes any profit or loses anything at all that they won't regain. But why would they need profit, if everyone has infinite money?
                            "A true initiation never ends"-Robert Anton Wilson
                            http://www.hermetic.com/crowley
                            "Reality has become a commodity"-Stephen Colbert 1/29/07
                            http://www.chaosmatrix.org/
                            "Sometimes, when you can't breathe, there are people there to breathe for you" - Aesop Rock
                            http://upholdingmaat.wordpress.com

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Things to make you think...

                              [quote author=thalassa link=topic=446.msg5883#msg5883 date=1287789403]

                              [/quote]Thanks. I seriously needed that reminder.
                              "A true initiation never ends"-Robert Anton Wilson
                              http://www.hermetic.com/crowley
                              "Reality has become a commodity"-Stephen Colbert 1/29/07
                              http://www.chaosmatrix.org/
                              "Sometimes, when you can't breathe, there are people there to breathe for you" - Aesop Rock
                              http://upholdingmaat.wordpress.com

                              Comment

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