Subj : Bible
To   : FRANK MASINGILL
From : RALPH ZETTER
Date : Wed Nov 01 2000 11:00 pm

>  CJ> As any professional philosopher well knows, it doesn't take
>  CJ> much slippage in clarity to introduce confusion.
> 
>  FM> Quite true; that is the reason I attempt to be very careful to
>  FM> read "professional" philosophers just as I read and listen
> 
>  RZ> to all >  FM> other thinkers - with as much criticism as I can
>  RZ> bring to bear.  As >
> 
>  RZ> > As you probably know, the analytic school of philosophy was
>  RZ> > much concerned with this very issue.  It makes for rather
>  RZ> > dry
> 
>  RZ> reading, > but it is important work for the philosophical
>  RZ> entreprise. One should > always be aware, of course, that what
>  RZ> a particular term means to one
> 
>  RZ> > philosopher may be quite different from what it means to
>  RZ> > another. "God" is but one notorious example.
> 
>  FM> you well know, my first introduction and still my guide in the
> 
>  RZ> world >  FM> of critical thought is Eric Voegelin who was not
>  RZ> a "professional" >  FM> philosopher but a "professional"
>  RZ> political scientist.  The myriad of >  FM> his students (a
>  RZ> growing body) are thankful that he was not impressed >  FM> by
>  RZ> academic titles - even his own!
> 
>  RZ> > His peculiar usage of "gnostic" is another example--but
>  RZ> > we've already been through that, haven't we?
> 
>  RZ> Didn't the gnostics believe that we were pieces of God that
>  RZ> become trapped in the world, and that through their teachings
>  RZ> we could regain our divinity?
> 
>         Close enough and it was the assumption of a plan of
> salvation that if scrupulously and carefully followed, could bring
> this poor alienated soul OUT of a wicked world created, often, by an
> evil creator God into a "perfection" lying with the "good God" far
> beyond the world.

Yeah, I'm a bit familiar with the gnostic belief that an evil god made the
world.

> 
>         Voegelin saw this pattern being followed not only in the
> thought of a Joachim of Flora forecasting a perfect, final, Third
> Age of the Spirit but even by such thoroughgoing "incarnation of the
> spirit" philosophers as Hegel and Marx and by the Comte who quite
> consciously attempted to ORIGINATE a new and final religion of
> science with himself as high priest and all of the holidays for
> Christian saints renamed for men of science.  True scientific

Looks like he wanted to replace God with science. Maybe he couldn't give up
the idea that there 
was some hidden truth to it but had to replace it with something that
suited his fancy a little 
better.

> openness is DESTROYED in such schemes.  The ideologues like Hitler
> and Stalin were merely carrying out the doctrine prescribed by these
> gnostic thought systems.  But, as I pointed out to Curtis,
> gnosticism was not the only pattern.  Hitler used magic extremism
> and whatever else would help sign a program for the attainment of
> perfection hauled into THIS world.  Lenin was a little less vulgar
> and Stalin was not his first choice as a follower but the end result
> was mass murder in the interest of promoting perfection on earth
> just the same.  Such programs have failure written into them but the
> attractiveness of "this worldly perfection" and a giddy happiness
> for the "alienated soul" unable to cope with the reality in
> authentic faith.  

But for some reason, even today man tries to make a flawless society. Seems
like he only 
causes us regular folk more misery. :-)

> 
> Frank
> 
> --- PPoint 2.07
>  * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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