BS: Militant atheism has become a religion

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:02 AM

It's not fair, really. We religious people have to work HARD for many years to form a good relationship with God. We have to engage in study, contemplation, self-examination ("the unexamined life is not worth living"), meditation, prayer, good works, self-discipline, the development of a degree of humility, recognition of the divine not only in oneself but in others too, acceptance of responsibility toward others as equals...it's a long and arduous course.

While all the atheist has to do to find God is...look in the mirror!

This is what my father did every day. He got up, looked out upon His worldly dominion with satisfaction, knowing He that was sovereign over all of it, went to the washroom, and looked at the face of God in the mirror while He shaved Himself. He then exercised His Godly and omnipotent powers over all the poor fools, dullards, and other lesser beings in His world for the rest of the day. Every day. He ruled!!!

It's so much simpler and less demanding than the religious life! And you get to be "Number One". And you're always right, and other people are always wrong. Bonus! No wonder it's become such a popular lifestyle choice.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:35 AM

You forget that most men are married, regardless of whether they have irrational fear and doubt.   If you don't have God to tell you how to live you still have a wife.

Joking apart, there are people out there who actually think that not being religious is vanity.   Honestly, hanging is too good for them...

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:39 AM

Dogmatism is not equal to religiosity. Some dogma are religious and some religionists are dogmatic, but they are not identical sets. Religion is not the ONLY form of irrationality around, after all!

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:43 AM

It's worse than vanity, mate! It's sheer appalling hubris and overweening egotism of the most extreme sort. ;-) It's thinking that YOU are the center and source of everything important, which is exactly what every ego loves to think about itself. It's thinking that you're the boss.

Great philosophers and great theologians are aware of this problem that arises with ego, but the average man is not, because he's been quite sure that he was the centre of everything important right from the moment he first drew breath as a wailing infant. This makes his life a survival/competition game...that is, "survival of the fittest" (or the most devious)(or the cleverest)(or the richest)...and from that is derived pretty much every ugly, sordid, and brutal aspect of human life. The ego's triumph is to assert that it is number 1 and it plays the game to WIN. Anyone who wants to be number 1 surely doesn't want a God in the picture, do they? That would imply that they're not number 1, and it would also make it incumbent upon them to treat others as they would wish to be treated themselves, given that others are just as valuable in the sight of God as they are.

You're right that most men have a wife. However, my father was never under the impression that his wife was in charge of how he was going to live. Hardly. ;-) The man was as self-governing as Genghis Khan. As for his wife, my mother, she was equally self-absorbed and determined to have things HER way, so they butted heads for an entire lifetime and both had it THEIR way...in most respects...although my father did so to a greater extent, being utterly oblivious to anyone else's "way". I have seldom seen a more flagrant case of 2 grimly determined egos in my life than those two. And never for a moment did religion play any part in their lives. They managed to make a Hell for themselves entirely without religion.

I was not well impressed.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:05 PM

It's not fair, really. We religious people have to work HARD for many years to form a good relationship with God. We have to engage in study, contemplation, self-examination ("the unexamined life is not worth living"), meditation, prayer, good works, self-discipline, the development of a degree of humility, recognition of the divine not only in oneself but in others too, acceptance of responsibility toward others as equals...it's a long and arduous course.

While all the atheist has to do to find God is...look in the mirror!

Ah, this demonisation of atheists by Christians is a dirty business. Unfortunately for "you religious people", it isn't only "you religious people" who take that long and arduous course. Not only that, a goodly number of "you religious people" don't take it in any case. Now get yourself off to confession: the "degree of humility" bit of the course didn't work in your case.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:41 PM

So, can atheists actually be good musicians??...after all, 'they ain;t got no soul'!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:49 PM

In the original post, our resident Jack tar stated that he has a thesis that the more 'atheist' you are is a reflection of how a religious past you had. Correct me if I read that wrong?

When he bandies the word around perhaps he gets confused between being anti religion ie nobody should have an imaginary friend and not being impressed when religion is allowed to influence laws affecting rational people who don't buy into such nonsense.

Examples here in The UK include Sunday opening, easter being moved around the calendar regardless of how illogical it makes the spacing of public holidays and not having to abide by laws set up to protect people on equal terms.

If people want to collectively hug each other in a drafty old church and sing chants that would make Charles Wesley cringe, no problem. If there are people saying that is wrong or that Muslims shouldn't have a quick time out for Friday prayers, then they should be repelled every bit as much as those who would wish law to reflect religious interpretation.

I just think some of the more sanctimonious Mudcat brethren can't tell the bloody difference. ..

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:55 PM

The straw man you chaps are battling here is one of your own creation.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:22 PM

"Correct me if I read that wrong?"

Your read wrong. The statement was in quotes. Is is one of the theses of the article. It is defended in the article. I put it there so people might be curious and read the article.

I find the article interesting. I think it parallels a lot of the behaviors I see here. Politically, my beliefs, Joe Offer's beliefs, Little Hawk's beliefs are no threat to science or the beliefs of any other person. Why are we mocked? Why are we taunted? Why are childish tantrums thrown when we express them.

Why do apparently otherwise sane people give themselves license to throw any any semblance of self-restraint and civility.

Could this be why? From the article. ....

"All I get out of such exchanges is the confirmation that believers will say anything to defend their faith and that some atheists have turned evangelical. Nothing new about the first, but atheists' zeal keeps surprising me. Why "sleep furiously" unless there are inner demons to be kept at bay? In the same way that firefighters are sometimes stealth arsonists and homophobes closet homosexuals, do some atheists secretly long for the certitude of religion? Take Christopher Hitchens, the late British author of "God Is Not Great." Hitchens was outraged by the dogmatism of religion, yet he himself had moved from Marxism (he was a Trotskyist) to Greek Orthodox Christianity, then to American Neo-Conservatism, followed by an "antitheist" stance that blamed all of the world's troubles on religion. Hitchens thus swung from the left to the right, from anti–Vietnam War to cheerleader of the Iraq War, and from pro to contra God. He ended up favoring Dick Cheney over Mother Teresa."

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:35 PM

""It's so much simpler and less demanding than the religious life! And you get to be "Number One". And you're always right, and other people are always wrong. Bonus! No wonder it's become such a popular lifestyle choice.""

Perhaps, if you ha spent a little time under the control of the Jesuit brotherhood, you would recognise your father in them also.

That attitude and behaviour is by no means limited to those who are non religious, and neither is any human fault, foible, or vice you can recall.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:25 PM

"neither is any human fault, foible, or vice you can recall."

Why attack religious people for being like every other human unless you have a personal beef with religion?

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:51 PM

I understand the word dogmatism.

But, what is the definition of godmatism?

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:45 PM

"Militant atheism has become a religion"????

Hard to say...atheists seem so devoutly religious, spending massive amounts of time and energy deeply meditating on battling the center of nothing...then disappointed that they couldn't feel a victory!!!...THEN screaming at others that there is no nothing they could find in all of it!

That's why they make so much sense....eh??

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:45 PM

"Militant atheism has become a religion"????

Hard to say...atheists seem so devoutly religious, spending massive amounts of time and energy deeply meditating on battling the center of nothing...then disappointed that they couldn't feel a victory!!!...THEN screaming at others that there is no nothing they could find in all of it!

That's why they make so much sense....eh??

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 06:53 PM

Militant anything becomes religion. Religions do not require logic or reason save in the confines of their self-established parameters. Jesus said, Mohammed said, Moses said, Confucius said, etc. Who cares? You weren't there to hear it and so your assertions about what they said is based on what someone else says someone else says someone else heard. Recall when GWB said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Instant religion. A new crusade. And over 100,000 souls sent to say hi to their respective makers. The banks are failing, our money is worthless, we need more more more. The almighty dollar became the new face of the world religion and money itself became the new prophet to worship. Fuckin' spare me. Join the Westboro Baptist Church. Brilliant PR and stupid eyes. I heard that Ann Coulter is their High Priestess and Dick Cheney their Pope.

Really.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:46 PM

...and Barrack Obama is...what?? Their false prophet??...or Messiah??

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:53 PM

The thing is, GfS, you took that as though it was addressed to you. It wasn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:11 PM

Not too good that, o Guest. There's a complicated picture here all right. About half the world's people adhere to one or the other major religions. I happen to think that religious belief is deluded. I have no time for bogus disciplines such as theology (am I losing friends??). I think that organised religion is, first and foremost, a very earth-bound way of keeping people in check (and it works far better and for far longer than any political regime in history, no matter how authoritarian, you can name). But here's the thing. I really would like to change the world, but I will never do it. So I need a different gambit. It's best not to call masses of people deluded. They are, in most aspects of their lives, no such thing, and I'd better confront that. Better to assert that religious belief is deluded (a notion from which I cannot be swayed) but that people, on the whole, are just fine, because (uncomfortable though it may be for big religion) religious belief informs people's everyday lives in only the slightest, most tangential way, on the whole (I know there are exceptions, of course). Their path is not mine, but their end result may be just as "good" (go on, argue...) as mine. If I don't acknowledge that, I've lost the argument. Having conceded a fair bit there, I then turn sharply around and tell believers that they'd better shut up about their faith imbuing them with their moral framework. That is the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Find one atheist with superb moral values and that bogus tenet is immediately shot to pieces. You do not need religion to be good. Some very bad people claim to be religious and some very good people have no interest in the Almighty. And vice versa, of course. Next, I find it very tiresome when I hear religious people rattling on about their "spirituality". If you boast about your spirituality, as one or two people here are wont to do, what you are actually saying is that you have assumed for yourself a mysterious dimension to your existence that raises you above the other poor souls around you. There is nothing more conceited than claiming that you are a "spiritual person". Get off your arse and tell us what you are actually on about! I love nature. I'm an expert on the wild flowers of the British countryside and I know loads about birds and butterflies as well. I've taught myself about geology and meteorology too, and I have a stunning collection of cloud photographs. I can go outside right now and show you where that new comet is supposed to be (bloody clouds...) I'm not swanning around like some around here telling people how spiritual I am. I'm out there loving all that I see around me and I can't get enough of it. That leaves me precious little time for contemplating my spiritual navel. I have a bit more time to waste posting to this forum at the moment because of my bad back, but once that gets fixed I won't have time for this! I love the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, and my knowledge of the latter two would lose most people. I never miss a chance to visit local churches and cathedrals alike and I stood in front of a Titian Madonna for half an hour last year, transfixed. Spiritual was it? Of course not! Mysticism is in the eye of the conceited delusionals only. I have never had a vision, an out-of-body wotsit or a transcendental moment that I haven't managed to come back from (helped, perhaps, by the fact that I have never taken an illicit drug in my sheltered life). The Lord hath never appeareth unto me, nor hath he spake unto me in a dream. My back's wrecked, my tinnitus plagues me and I was born with bad bones. But I'm here and because I'm here I'm a winner. What I've got is great, and a damn sight better than what most people have got (though a bit more more Talisker would be useful), and I don't need no God to pester for even more!

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:20 PM

It's taken a few years, Steve, but at last we agree on something. Bless you my son.

The fookin' Irish are as hard-headed as Newfies.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:30 PM

Who are you, dad?

Flippin, 'eck, I didn't half go off on one there. Cor.

But does anyone see that as an atheist manifesto? I hope not! But it's my bloody atheist manifesto and I've just read it back to myself and I'm wondering where all that rabid militancy is supposed to be.

"You go your way, I'll go mine, judge me as to whether I'm being good and I promise not to call you deluded. I will not promise not to call your beliefs deluded, because you'd rather I told you the truth, eh? Now, let's talk about evidence..."

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:04 PM

'But does anyone see that as an atheist manifesto?'

Not I. It is but a chimera in a drop of water, relegated to our thoughts.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:41 PM

As a btw, Shaw, you are brilliant.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:54 PM

Flattered though I potentially am, I'd still like to have an inkling as to who you are. Any danger...?

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:49 PM

Guest: "The thing is, GfS, you took that as though it was addressed to you. It wasn't."

Thing is, I don't know what you are talking about, nor how you arrived at that conclusion....???

Steve Shaw: "I love the music of Bach, Beethoven ...."

Hmmm....Do you really want to re-visit Beethoven's quotes again??....Aw, why not???.......Beethoven. (when asked how he could come up with the music that he did):""No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him."

And: ""Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

And: "The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are."


Maybe he wasn't really a musician....OR maybe he didn't know what he was talking about...OR he just said those things to piss you off...Ya' think???

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:58 PM

The thing is, GfS, you took that as though it was addressed to you. It wasn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 12:03 AM

Mudelfs, would you please either delete or identify the the cowardly GUEST, trying to slur my ethnic group.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 12:29 AM

It was a joke, Jack. Newfoundlanders are not an ethnic group. They mostly are displaced Irish people.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 12:38 AM

Please delete or identify this coward.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 01:13 AM

Like the angel said, Steve, "you've led a wonderful life."

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 03:02 AM

Guess: "Like the angel said, Steve, "you've led a wonderful life."
..angel from where???

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 03:05 AM

Someone is getting touchy again. ..

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 09:26 AM

Guffers rears his clottish head again! Old chap, I know better than to get mired with you in discussions of anything remotely serious. On that score thou hast shat in your own bed one too many times. Suffice to say that I do not admire my heroes of art or science for what they did or said outside the spheres for which they are most noted. I'll even put up with a bit of murkiness (Furtwangler and Richard Strauss were fabulous, though both had questionable connections with the Nazis. They just about pass my test. Wagner was a horrible man, antisemitic and racist, and would have made a good Nazi. I won't have his music in my house. I have got a red line). Riposte all you like, Guffo. I won't be responding. I have no intention, you see, of sitting at this keyboard of mine having to question my own sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 03:36 PM

That's indicative of someone who has nothing to say worth anything....and who can't answer, if the bias isn't going his way...and his bias is away from reality.
...yeah, Beethoven didn't know what Beethoven was talking about, he should have checked first with Steve!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,GUE
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 03:44 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Ron Davies
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 06:36 PM

"cosy Christian line"


Didn't take long for our beloved Mudcat atheists to show their true colors. Always the soul of tolerance, never attacking someone else's beliefs,   open to new perspectives and not in the least dogmatic.

Right.

And I'm the president of the US or the king of England, take your choice.

Looks like the OP had it right.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 08:08 PM

Yeah, damn those miserable athiests anyway! Who do they think they are, behaving just like fundagelical "Christians"[sic]!

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 10:41 PM

Personally, I like where Beethoven was plugged into....and he even showed up with proof!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 02:35 AM

Ah, yes, dear old Ludwig v is the best example you people could possibly choose to make your case. He loved and served his god all his life; who showed his reciprocal love & appreciation by rewarding him with the worst affliction a man of his calling could possibly suffer and left him to get on with expressing his worship the best he could for the rest of his miserable life. Why, what a dear kind old deity you poor people do believe in and choose to lavish your love on, to be sure.

Is that 'militant' enough atheism for you, just for once and despite what I said about it above? If so, sorry Jack. But don't any of you dare to accuse me of having a 'religion'!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 03:27 AM

Ron Davies adds his name to the list of those who feel threatened by reality. Cosy little Christian indeed. ..

Atheism does not describe a wish to rid the world of religious superstition. Communism fits that bill perfectly, but then only as a perceived threat.

Today, Christians celebrate something that never happened. An executed criminal coming back to life. Wonderful metaphor and of use as a story with a moral, although the actual moral escapes me. As does messing the rest of us around with the date. It would make more sense to pick a date and stick to it if the rest of us have to plan industry downtime on it.

But that's the point really, isn't it? Christianity affects me through Sunday restrictions on commerce and insisting the holi in holiday means holy, yet the minute you question the relevance of it, which you have every right to, you are called s militant atheist.

The difference between religious equality and religious privilege is?

Right. That's it. Going to get my hammer and nails. ..

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 05:11 AM

"Atheism does not describe a wish to rid the world of religious superstition."
I'll drink to that.
Not sure what 'militant atheism' is - I've yet to see atheists terrorising pregnant women outside family planning clinics or, as is happening here in Ireland, pro-lifers (sic) mail-shotting the entire population prior to the Government, who has been forced into reviewing the law on abortion announcing its findings following the death of a woman who died in childbirth because, according to the doctors, "Ireland is a Catholic country".
I certainly am aware of 'articulate and vocal' atheists, but the "militants" of this world are those who forbid discussions on The Theory of Evolution, or the clergy who (way back admittedly, but still within living memory) physically broke up and tried to destroy traditional dancing, smashing musical instruments in the process, or the hospital staff who refuse to put "none" in the box marked "religion" on my entry form and instead put "not disclosed" or, when I lived in the UK, somewhat hilariously put "Church of England".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 06:37 AM

I'm not sure that Ludwig was quite the God-botherer you assume him to have been, Michael. He was no atheist by all accounts but he appeared to have a very personal and individualistic view of the power and glory. He often referred to the divine or the Godhead rather than God directly, and once he was quite rude to a fellow who suggested to him that a particular manuscript would soon be finished "with God's help". One of his last works, composed when he was totally deaf, has a movement headed Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart ("A convalescent's hymn of thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian mode") - "the divinity" or "Godhead" if you like, but a bit arm's-length from "God". The movement itself, in the third manifestation of the "hymn", amasses incredible power that obliterates any hint of reverence or mysticism. I also think that, of all the greatest composers' efforts, Beethoven's music most represents triumph emerging from very earthbound, human struggle, and there isn't much intrinsic in it that is especially religious. Not to me anyway, but I'm biased!

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 07:10 AM

Steve ~~ What about

"The Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819 to 1823. It was first performed on 7 April 1824 in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei were conducted by the composer.[1] It is generally considered to be one of the composer's supreme achievements. Together with Bach's Mass in B minor, it is the most significant mass setting of the common practice period" wiki

then?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 10:30 AM

Here's an article that sheds important light on this subject.


Has dogmatism become the new religion?

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 11:28 AM

Well, Michael, Vaughan Williams wrote a lovely little Mass in G minor for unaccompanied singers, one of my favourites, yet he was an avowed atheist. "There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass," he said. Yes, Beethoven penned that magnificent Mass, but then most composers of that time saw it as de rigeur to write at least one Mass. I think it's interesting that he made the final movement of the Choral Symphony, with the The Ode To Joy, into a far more secular than religious experience. True, it has one reverential and hymn-like passage, but it also includes a good dash of marching-band militarism, and its overall appeal is more to the brotherhood of man than to any deity.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 11:54 AM

"Militant", I assume in this context, means aggressively argumentative and assertive about the falsity of theism. How can that possibly be construed as religious? This is a bewildering mishmash of semantic tapdancing.

Spiritual matters are not really suited for argument; surely the last thousand years or two have demonstrated that. They don't yield to "rightness versus wrongness", since they are not empirical phenomena, and their perceptions are not subject to objectification or physical proof, are only haphazardly repeatable, and are usually not subjected to enough analysis to identify underlying laws and principles.

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 12:22 PM

Point taken, Amos, but are these really spiritual matters?

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 12:56 PM

Steve Shaw: "Point taken, Amos, but are these really spiritual matters?"

You have certainly pointed out Beethoven's afflictions...but those were 'external', by way of his hearing loss...but alas, the spirit WITHIN him, was certainly in touch with something that could not be seen, nor heard, but by his spirit..and translated into sound, music.
Perhaps, if some musicians today could tap into the same, God only knows what would be manifest!
By the way, it has often been said, that genius in music is where technology(tools of the day) meets the spirit within.
I'm quite sure that applies to other fields, as well.
Though Beethoven has passed, his music still lives on...touching the spirit in new listeners, though the centuries....ever wonder what that resonating node is??

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Musket
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 01:00 PM

Nice take on Beethoven Goofus.

I thought you would have preferred Bach?

Woof!   Woof!

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 01:20 PM

I'm impressed, Goofy! A cohesive, fairly well-reasoned post!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 01:44 PM

They mostly ALL are...but there is no friction without movement!

BTW, 200.

GfS