IQ & Atheism

[Joseph Tracy]

Hard to think of Albert as having IQ problems.
On Mar 1, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> "All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All
> these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it
> from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual
> towards freedom." - Albert Einstein
>
> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>  
> wrote:
>>
>> On Mar 1, 2010, at 9:34 AM, David Morris wrote:
>>
>>> -------------------------------------------
>>> Doublethink:
>>> To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness
>>> while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two
>>> opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and
>>> believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
>>> morality while laying claim to it
>>> ---------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> I'm not an expert on early Christian history/theology, but I think
>>> Incarnation wasn't a widely-accepted belief for the earliest
>>> Christians.  The First Council of Nicaea was convened to "lay  
>>> down the
>>> law" on the Incarnation in 325 AD.  How widespread belief in
>>> Incarnation was before that is a matter widely debated.
>>
>> Your knowledge is quite accurate. In the decades leading up to the  
>> imperial
>> political endorsement of those bishops favoring incarnation/  
>> Gospel of John
>> as definitive theology , which occurred at Nicaea  there were  
>> strongly
>> divergent views and differing written gospels. According to John  
>> Crossan and
>> several other scholars the theology of incarnation-messiah- 
>> sacrificial
>> lamb-resurrection  came from converted Pharisees who used their  
>> scriptural
>> expertise to shape the theological interpretation of this  
>> charismatic Jesus
>> figure. The Pharisees already believed in a messianic deliverer  
>> and "that
>> good bodliy resurrection" as Deuce called it, and they had a  
>> literacy which
>> is likely to have been rare among Jesus's followers. So even  
>> though Jesus
>> warned against the ideas of the Pharisees. it was converted   
>> Pharisees like
>> Paul who shaped the religion most and carried over certain  
>> theological
>> ideas.
>>
>> All this is far more relevant to Pynchon than it might seem. The  
>> life,
>> death, and continued life through his children of Webb Traverse is  
>> a small
>> scale american version of this story, and on many levels ATD is  
>> about the
>> interaction between spiritual or scientific revelation/experience and
>> entropy/human frailty/ power politics.
>>
>> Pynchon Uses Dynamite as a multivalent image that refers to:  
>> scientific
>> breakthrough, the explosive technologies driving western technology,
>>  warfare between left/right or underground/above ground,  a spiritual
>> breakthrough akin to rebirth or death and resurrection. All this is
>> amplified by the fact that dynamite's root greek word "dunamos  
>> "( power,
>> force) is used dozens of times in the the New Testament in phrases  
>> like "You
>> shall receive power from on high."  Or as a certain Knight said,  
>> "that
>> rabbit's dynamite" ; and as it is further written in the book of  
>> Armaments
>> "Lord , bless this thy holy hand grenade that with it thou mayest  
>> blow thine
>> enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy"
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> But beyond that, if one rejects fundamentalism, all else is a matter
>>> of personal, not official belief, and thus only as dumb as the
>>> individual.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>  
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The Incarnation is impossible as a matter of logic.  If you can  
>>>> believe
>>>> in The Incarnation, you can believe anything.  There are many  
>>>> negative
>>>> adjectives that can be applied to fundamentalism, but it is no  
>>>> dumber than
>>>> "mainstream" Christianity.
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "liber enim librum aperit."