Page 3

religion is what you make it, no more, no less

6/1/2006 11:49:41 PM

Quote :

"Clear5: The only thing worse is to watch someone like BridgetSPK who if you read any of her other posts in the soap box could be the definition of weakness hop right along beside."

Pardon? Hop right along beside? I've simply pointed out a few ridiculous things I've read in this thread. Three things, to be exact.

I have hesitated to post in certain threads because I suspected there were dumbasses out there who would dismiss a thread based on my very vague association with it. I got over that hesitation when I realized that nobody cared that much. Apparently, I was wrong.

6/2/2006 12:06:58 AM

Quote :

"I thought God wants us to trust each other."

Nietzscheified: "The church wants you to think that God wants you to trust the church."

Quote :

"McDanger, I dont generally like christian values but this thread reeks of someone who just read some Nietzsche and bought everything hook, line, and sinker without thinking. There are Christians in this thread explaining how their beliefs do give their life meaning and you have the arrogance to tell them it does no such thing. Thinking they have a weak morality is one thing but when someone tells you what their beliefs and values are and that they are rooted in this life, its fucking stupid to then turn around and tell them that is not what they belive. The only thing worse is to watch someone like BridgetSPK who if you read any of her other posts in the soap box could be the definition of weakness hop right along beside. "

I read Anti-Christ recently and agreed with a lot of it and disagreed with some of it. A lot of it is speculation in the form of "Let's see where it goes if we assume I'm right..." I would venture that McDanger has quoted the parts that he agrees with and that are not too far out there.

As a matter of fact it takes a great deal of thinking to begin to agree with Nietzsche at all -- to disengage the automatic reactions I was raised with, "pity == good" and "all life is sacred," etc. -- you have to start all over. You have to reevaluate "values." This is part of why Nietzsche says a) that few people understand him and b) that he is disgusted with Germans of his era. People are not in the habit of thinking in ways that they are not in the habit of thinking. Mental inertia is one of his obstacles.

The Christians in this thread that say that say their beliefs give their lives meaning, but Nietzsche would argue that they merely think it gives them meaning when in fact it does not. I think he would say that they become docile herd animals who merely think they are doing something important. I disagree with Nietzsche here -- if you're doing what you think is the right thing to do, and you're satisfied with your judgement of what's right, far be it from me to tell you that's not good enough. You make your own rules.

Personally I don't agree with Nietzsche totally. I don't think he's a unique ultimate antiprophet or any such special thing. I do find his take on Abrahamic religions to be very refreshing and pretty agreeable. The point: Among religions Christianity is not special. It happened to gain popularity and it did so by adapting to survive and take root in the minds of its followers. Also, Paul was an ass. I'm on board about that far.

Where I really disagree with Nietzsche is when he suggests that Abrahamic religions are just no damn good. I think it's OK to be shortsighted about your beliefs, because if that's your whole world then that works for you. I don't like to be shortsighted myself, but I can't fault others for it and I can't fault the religious leaders of the ancient past for setting the precedent of self-preservative brainwashing.

6/2/2006 3:00:38 AM

Quote :

"Christianity alleviates the fear of death by giving people a purpose that is postmortem-oriented. That is the entire reason why it is nihilistic."

I think that's mischaracterizing things just a bit. Acheiving a certain position in the afterlife is not the purpose that Christianity offers, although it is what some dimwitted Christians take away from it, I'll grant.

Even if you were right about the first, it wouldn't make Christianity nihilistic. For that I think you need go no further than the definition of the fucking word.

6/2/2006 3:32:11 AM

Quote :

"if you're doing what you think is the right thing to do, and you're satisfied with your judgement of what's right, far be it from me to tell you that's not good enough."

Not too far for me. If someone thought it was a good idea to poke his eyes out and live under a bridge, and he was satisfied with his judgment, wouldn't you be inclined to say it's not good enough, that he made a terrible mistake?

Quote :

"I think it's OK to be shortsighted about your beliefs, because if that's your whole world then that works for you."

I think it's NEVER okay to limit your whole world. How can you know what is best if you choose to limit your knowledge?

6/2/2006 8:09:36 AM

Quote :

"If someone thought it was a good idea to poke his eyes out and live under a bridge, and he was satisfied with his judgment, wouldn't you be inclined to say it's not good enough, that he made a terrible mistake?"

Living under a bridge is OK. Poking your eyes out I don't suggest, but they are your eyes to poke out, not mine. This hypothetical person is the sole judge and jury for whether their life is what they want it to be. I would be inclined to ask him to reconsider, but not to tell him he's wrong. He's not ruining my life.

Quote :

"I think it's NEVER okay to limit your whole world. How can you know what is best if you choose to limit your knowledge?"

Well, surely it's not OK for you. You value knowledge, like me. You and I and Nietzsche, we prefer to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But Christians...

Christians don't seem to have a problem with limiting their whole world. If you lay down the ten commandments and the example of the life of Christ and you say "This is it, just DO THIS," a lot of people have taken that and just done it, and they are awfully happy with themselves. Christians believe they do know what is best, without looking at reality -- they think the Bible says how to live very clearly, or they think the clergy can tell them if they have any questions. They're not harming my life by limiting theirs.

(Well, many of them do cause harm -- that's another story. Fuck the Inquisitors. I wouldn't call them good Christians, you know?)

If Christians and self-blinded bridge-dwellers want to do live shortsighted lives, what business is it of mine if they do not bring harm to another living being in this world?

6/2/2006 9:32:49 AM

Quote :

"as a matter of fact it takes a great deal of thinking to begin to agree with Nietzsche at all -- to disengage the automatic reactions I was raised with, "pity == good" and "all life is sacred," etc. -- you have to start all over. You have to reevaluate "values.""

Plently of gullible people have no problem dropping their traditional values to a nice sales pitch. It does not require much intelligence or thought.

6/2/2006 10:07:20 AM

Quote :

"I think that some people, still unable to release their religious beliefs, would find a new justification in all of it. Either the aliens were work of the devil to "test our faith", or the Bible was just the revelation of God to our planet."

Seeing is believing. I cannot imagine educated western countries accepting Christanity the same way after E.T. contact. There is no relevant scripture for Aliens from another planet in any of the mainstream Religions. Most educated people would question all of the Religions of the world rather immediately after such a phenomenon. I would assume myself that many people would look to the Aliens for answers.

6/2/2006 11:07:35 AM

^
What if we found fossilized alien bones?

6/2/2006 11:41:52 AM

^ You've got me there.

6/2/2006 11:48:14 AM

Okay, damn. First of all, I need to lock up my laptop when I've been drinking, especially after Game 7 victories.

Okay -- back to responses again, but before I do that -- I want to point out that I don't buy Nietzsche's arguments wholesale. I don't go so far as him in many cases, but one thing I do agree with is that Christianity lifts up the weak emotions, emotions of a society in decline, and turns them into virtues. You have to admit that pity is a central concept to Christianity, and to Christian charity. It's corrosive. We can define in which cases compassion for somebody is pity or well-warranted, but that's another affair.

Let me start with Clear5 first because he said something that kinda torqued me off:

Quote :

"I dont generally like christian values but this thread reeks of someone who just read some Nietzsche and bought everything hook, line, and sinker without thinking. "

Without thinking? Hook line and sinker? Do you know to what extent I agree with Nietzsche? We've discussed something to the effect of 5-6 outtakes from one of many works. Sounds like you're the one that didn't think, here. Do you know how many viewpoints I mull through to come to any given conclusion? My conclusions are never final states, to do so would be to become stagnant. Knowing is a barrier to learning (paraphrasing Frank Herbert here, but it's true). Taking a snapshot of my opinion and judgements on things is never exactly where I'll stand in a week, a month, or a year. Everybody should continually modify their conclusions as their reasoning gets better and their breadth of data gets wider.

You're just trying to turn me into a parrot. You just don't know any better.

Quote :

"There are Christians in this thread explaining how their beliefs do give their life meaning and you have the arrogance to tell them it does no such thing. Thinking they have a weak morality is one thing but when someone tells you what their beliefs and values are and that they are rooted in this life, its fucking stupid to then turn around and tell them that is not what they belive. "

It's not stupid to inform them that the shifting of prime importance of life to what happens after one dies cheapens what happens here. Their life is centered on a meaning that cannot be experienced, that sits over the horizon of possibility. To claim that this is vacuous is not arrogant, it's reductionist.

Quote :

"The only thing worse is to watch someone like BridgetSPK who if you read any of her other posts in the soap box could be the definition of weakness hop right along beside."

You need to check out the actual definitions of weak and strong that have been operationally defined for this thread and this discussion. This isn't the first time somebody got their feathers ruffled because the wrong definitions were used.

Shivan Bird comes up with a pretty good point -- the hypocrisy of American Christians keeps them from being as much of a nuissance as modern-day Muslim extremists.

Quote :

"But the Arabs seem to have lost all connections with reality altogether."

Mm I'd argue that anybody who believes in the events of the Bible would have lost connection with reality. The concepts of sin, of redemption, of God, of souls -- all of these things have no actual reflection in reality.

Quote :

"religion is what you make it, no more, no less"

Not true. Religion and philosophy in general is a lot more subversive than you think. They can determine things we don't even think about -- the very foundations and frameworks that we move within, the base assumptions.

Quote :

"Nietzscheified: "The church wants you to think that God wants you to trust the church.""

I don't think Nietzsche would argue that Church-independent trust of God is a good thing either.

I jive with Contrast's post up until this part:

Quote :

"I think it's OK to be shortsighted about your beliefs, because if that's your whole world then that works for you. I don't like to be shortsighted myself, but I can't fault others for it and I can't fault the religious leaders of the ancient past for setting the precedent of self-preservative brainwashing."

Just because the subject is religious in nature doesn't mean that people deserve a bye for the falsification of reality. Everybody does what they think is "right". Everybody. That's why people follow decisions they've made -- I'm sure we can dig up many historical examples of people acting like monsters, and agree that yes, people can be faulted for the faults they perpetrate.

Quote :

"I think that's mischaracterizing things just a bit. Acheiving a certain position in the afterlife is not the purpose that Christianity offers, although it is what some dimwitted Christians take away from it, I'll grant. Even if you were right about the first, it wouldn't make Christianity nihilistic. For that I think you need go no further than the definition of the fucking word."

Grumpy you need to start reading things in their entirety before you punch "Post Reply!". I explained that Christianity, which sat in opposition of natural morality to reverse them (which actually Judaism accomplished before hand) and then which placed the focal point of life PAST life is what makes it nihilist in nature. There could be better explanations of what Nietzsche meant, but this is what I took away from it.

Quote :

"Plently of gullible people have no problem dropping their traditional values to a nice sales pitch. It does not require much intelligence or thought."

But to drop them and actually perform a revaluation of all values -- that's not exactly an easy task. To build a new structure atop old foundations is easy enough. But to really sit there and deconstruct the foundations of ancient ontology, of religious systems of thought that are so engrained into us -- that's not an easy feat at all. I think you're confused just what we're talking about, because to claim its easy to unravel the entire problem is silly. If you think it's easy to unravel absolutely everything we experience and hit upon the pure meaning of Being, then please tell me.

Quote :

"Seeing is believing. I cannot imagine educated western countries accepting Christanity the same way after E.T. contact. There is no relevant scripture for Aliens from another planet in any of the mainstream Religions. Most educated people would question all of the Religions of the world rather immediately after such a phenomenon. I would assume myself that many people would look to the Aliens for answers."

There's also no relevant scripture for the existence of ancient dinosaur bones, or for the Earth moving around the sun, or for other planets to exist. We know those things, and people still believe. Trust me dude, they'd just believe that Aliens are the "beney ha'elohim", or some variant or continued existence of the "Sons of God" who bred with early humans to create the "nephilim".

I'm not talking about all people, but many would.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 11:53 AM. Reason : .]

6/2/2006 11:52:31 AM

the bible is a good story with some good moral lessons but should not be taken as absolute fact by any means

6/2/2006 11:54:53 AM

I think the argument of this thread is that the Bible does not contain good moral lessons.

But you didn't read the thread, did you?

6/2/2006 11:57:38 AM

so in order to post in this thread i have to agree with everything you say

6/2/2006 11:59:32 AM

^No, but it's a good idea to read the thread.

6/2/2006 12:02:39 PM

So, in order to get the most out of life, you have to be a selfish prick?

6/2/2006 12:03:57 PM

I'm not even going to respond to that. Give me something I can work with, not a snarky one-liner.

6/2/2006 12:07:01 PM

You know the best thing about being Jewish? It's that people don't take pot shots at your religion to try to come off as intellectuals.

Actually, that's a lie.

The best thing about being Jewish is the money.

6/2/2006 12:19:07 PM

Well there's a pretty good critique of Judaism in The Anti-Christ as well, as a foundation for explaining the ills of Christianity. It's not like Judaism gets a bye in any sense, but the "God on the Cross" ideal is really what separates Christianity from Judaism -- (and what eventually led to this thread being made).

6/2/2006 12:22:19 PM

Quote :

"You're just trying to turn me into a parrot"

If I am trying to make you into a parrot it is because you sound like a parrot. Through out this entire thread instead of trying to read the views of other posters and reply accordingly youre plugging in a Nietzschean argument wheter or not it fits.

Quote :

"It's not stupid to inform them that the shifting of prime importance of life to what happens after one dies cheapens what happens here. Their life is centered on a meaning that cannot be experienced, that sits over the horizon of possibility. To claim that this is vacuous is not arrogant, it's reductionist. "

Except the problem is they are telling you that it does not shift the importance to what happens after life. Charity and love are things that can be experienced in this life. People are trying to tell you that they believe X and youre trying to "inform" them they actually believe Y so that you can continue to call their religious beliefs nihilistic.

Quote :

"You need to check out the actual definitions of weak and strong that have been operationally defined for this thread and this discussion. This isn't the first time somebody got their feathers ruffled because the wrong definitions were used."

I know how Nietzsche uses the words "weak" and "strong". BridgetSPK is an egalitarian leftist, easily the most politically correct person in the soap box and someone who couldnt even manage to commit suicide correctly. Trust me, she fits the definition.

And something I didnt mention earlier: for all your talk about Islam from earlier in this thread, I would just like to point out that charity is one of the five pillars.


[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 12:39 PM. Reason : ]

6/2/2006 12:27:03 PM

Quote :

"If I am trying to make you into a parrot it is because you sound like a parrot. Through out this entire thread instead of trying to read the views of other posters and reply accordingly youre plugging in a Nietzschean argument wheter or not it fits. "

Wait, so since because I don't agree with the replies thus far, I'm a parrot? That's a strange way to explain it. I'll just agreeing when I hear a decent argument.

Quote :

"Except the problem is they are telling you that it does not shift the importance to what happens after life. Charity and love are things that can be experienced in this life. People are trying to tell you that they believe X and youre trying to "inform" them they actually believe Y so that you can continue to call their religious beliefs nihilistic. "

You still don't understand the interpretation of charity brought up in this thread. Read again. Try again. I refuse to continually waste my time retyping the same arguments over and over again. I did that already for 7 pages in the agnosticism thread. They can believe X all they want, but charity is based on certain things, which are Y.

Quote :

"I know how Nietzsche uses the words "weak" and "strong"."

You sure fooled me.

Quote :

"And something I didnt mention earlier: for all your talk about Islam from earlier in this thread, I would just like to point out that charity is one of the five pillars."

And thus you've delivered the coup de grace to your own credibility. If you had actually read the entire thread, and managed to comprehend what you read, you'd know I don't endorse Islam.

6/2/2006 12:38:06 PM

Quote :

"(McDanger) Just because the subject is religious in nature doesn't mean that people deserve a bye for the falsification of reality. Everybody does what they think is "right". Everybody. That's why people follow decisions they've made -- I'm sure we can dig up many historical examples of people acting like monsters, and agree that yes, people can be faulted for the faults they perpetrate."

What they deserve a bye for (what I cannot judge them for) is dealing with adversity of which I have no concept whatever. When they invented Monotheism they were in a completely different world from this one -- practically the only historical records we have are myth. In the short run it brought them peace and security. In the long run it turned a lot of us into zombies, and yes that is their doing, but I can't say I would have done differently nor that it was The Wrong Thing for them to do.

6/2/2006 12:38:13 PM

Quote :

"I refuse to continually waste my time retyping the same arguments over and over again."

Why, from what i've seen, thats pretty much what the author of the piece did.

6/2/2006 12:42:14 PM

Quote :

"Why, from what i've seen, thats pretty much what the author of the piece did."

I selected the quotes based on their distinctions from each other, and how they could order our discussion.

If you don't realize the differences in them, you don't know how to read. If you assume that 5-6 quotes are a good way to judge what has been written in the rest of the entire work, then you don't know how to reason.

6/2/2006 12:43:41 PM

Quote :

"If you assume that 5-6 quotes are a good way to judge what has been written in the rest of the entire work"

i've read all i need to read.

6/2/2006 1:07:13 PM

I didn't mean to judge the content, I meant to judge the "repitition of the same arguments over and over again".

6/2/2006 1:08:25 PM

Quote :

"i've read all i need to read."

Let me guess: The Bible?

6/2/2006 1:08:35 PM

no, i've read all i need to read of the excerpts to know that i don't want to read the whole book.

6/2/2006 1:14:15 PM

^just messin with you.

6/2/2006 1:16:03 PM

^I thought so, but wasn't sure.

6/2/2006 1:17:44 PM

Quote :

"I'm not even going to respond to that. Give me something I can work with, not a snarky one-liner."

I'm sorry if you didn't like my "snarky one-liner" but I was simply cutting through all of the BS to the heart of the matter.

It seems to me that your position is that in order to be totally fulfilled in life you need to do whatever you want to do, regardless of the consequences. It is all about your desires and wants and the ultimate goal is to squeeze every bit of that out while you have the ability to do so.

6/2/2006 1:21:26 PM

The idea is that "good morals" consist of the heightening of power, and that happiness occurs when an obstacle is overcome.

This can happen in a variety of ways -- a good example of this would be a scientist, delving into his field. Happiness for that scientist is overcoming the obstacle of "not knowing" and into a state of "knowing more than he once did".

Edit, let me elaborate

Yes this means there would be a nobility, a higher class, and a lower class. There'd be those who are content in working their jobs, content in just doing one thing and serving their purpose in society. This is a natural order, to have higher people and lesser people. Christian equality destroys this concept, and since its so engrained into our society, most people consider such a world view to be evil.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 1:26 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2006 1:25:11 PM

How can you say that? Being equal in God's eyes in no way effects one's lot in life or how they choose to pursue it.

6/2/2006 1:31:50 PM

I think we're not connecting on some level here, sounds like you're misunderstanding my position.

We can go through the Bible and pick out the places where quite blatantly, it's taught that anybody who rises to any sense of power (monetarily, intellectually, or through independence) is cast down, vilified, and reviled by God and the 'righteous'. You could pick out the places better than I could, presumably, since you probably read it more often than I do.

6/2/2006 1:37:31 PM

Quote :

"There's also no relevant scripture for the existence of ancient dinosaur bones, or for the Earth moving around the sun, or for other planets to exist. We know those things, and people still believe. Trust me dude, they'd just believe that Aliens are the "beney ha'elohim", or some variant or continued existence of the "Sons of God" who bred with early humans to create the "nephilim"."

The reason people can know 'these things' and 'still believe' is because the Human Race is alone, according to all Religions. There has never been a text that addresses anything otherwise. Fossils of dinosaurs don't effect anyone's religion, and neither do planets orbitting the sun. These things can all be tucked inbetween the seams as unimportant to God's plan for humans. However, little green men with 'bigger and better' technology definitely would!

6/2/2006 1:58:45 PM

You're probably right, but the responses I was coming up with will be the excuses manufactured and believed by extremists, and maybe fringe extremists. You might even get new extremists by people who are terrified of the aliens and want a human explanation of their existence.

6/2/2006 2:05:39 PM

Quote :

"I explained that Christianity, which sat in opposition of natural morality to reverse them (which actually Judaism accomplished before hand) and then which placed the focal point of life PAST life is what makes it nihilist in nature."

Everything I said stands, no matter how many times you repeat yourself. Christianity doesn't place the focal point after death, and until you give us some idea of what the "natural morality" is, I don't see how you can claim that religion of any kind runs counter to it.

Besides all this, you seem very proud of yourself for knowing what nihilism means...why aren't you applying it? Even the fucking definition you quoted makes it pretty damn clear that Christianity is the exact fucking opposite of nihilism. The one holds that there are morals that have an underlying basis and that all human life is sacred. The other holds that there are no morals with any actual basis and that human life is worthless. You know this. Why do you keep trying to fit a round peg in a square hole?

6/2/2006 2:31:29 PM

The Da Vinci Code was so right.

6/2/2006 3:14:19 PM

^ You would readily believe a lie.

6/2/2006 3:40:37 PM

Quote :

"the Human Race is alone, according to all Religions"

The human race is nothing special, according to Buddhism.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 3:42 PM. Reason : no html in quotes /shrug]

6/2/2006 3:41:14 PM

God damn it Grumpy -- if you can't or won't read the thread, then don't comment in it or on it. I have no idea how to respond to you without repeating myself a thousand times, or without repeating parts that have already been stated that you just didn't read.

I'm not going to supply you with information you refuse to garner on your own -- if you can't pay the topic of conversation that much respect, then I'm not going to pay your responses any. I provided Nietzsche's idea of rise, and idea of decline -- and thus the moralities that stem from both. If you don't know what the position is, then either you need remedial courses in reading comprehension or you need to buck up and actually do the reading.

One thing I wanted a slant on was the changes in Christianity since these things were written -- things are going to be different nowadays because people have adapted their practice. I don't agree with a foundation of lies in any case, but the change in situation surely has changed or modified some of the points being made about the harmfulness of a system of beliefs grounded in the imaginary. That's part of the purpose of this thread.

Things have changed a great deal, so how then are these beliefs still justified now? If many of the positive aspects of them stem from the fact that people are not committed to their practice, that says a lot.

Edit -- this shouldn't be viewed as a reduction of my censure for the ideas and beliefs of Christianity, but I'm identifying with the fact that it is practiced much differently today than it is written.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 4:22 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2006 4:15:21 PM

dude....just because grumpy disagrees with you (as do i) does not mean he is ignorant and it doesnt mean that he is lazy and it doesnt mean that he has not read the thread.

The points that the author makes are so totally absurd that its impossible to respond to in a way that you will deem acceptable. You want people to respond to the end points of the arguments when most of us are not willing to conceede the underlying basis of it (i.e....one persons definitions of words)

6/2/2006 4:22:04 PM

It's not that he doesn't agree with me -- it's that he demonstrates that he obviously did not read the thread. He asks for information that I have provided, sometimes in multiple places.

Quote :

"The points that the author makes are so totally absurd that its impossible to respond to in a way that you will deem acceptable"

You mean a way that demonstrates comprehension of the terms and material? I highly doubt that. It's not that I don't agree with you, it's that you don't demonstrate any comprehension.

Edit:

Many of the terms are even taken straight from Christianity itself -- check out how it feels about human nature if you aren't sure.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 4:29 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2006 4:27:23 PM

again...we all understand the terms...and why should we respond to the arguments when we think the terms and the basic premises used to make them are absurd??

6/2/2006 4:29:20 PM

Again I'll tell you, many of the terms were operationally defined by Christianity.

I provided ample places for you to check that out both in Nietzsche's works and references to Christian works.

Admit it -- you stopped reading it at some point (if you even attempted in the first place) and then went straight to jumping on the "Post Reply!" button.

6/2/2006 4:30:37 PM

I'm somewhat curious...what makes a moral good or bad, other than personal preference? Certainly some morals are pretty much universally accepted, but it seems that ultimately morals are somewhat arbitrary.

6/2/2006 4:33:23 PM

ok...keep it up

6/2/2006 4:33:41 PM

The "rise and decline" bit he simply assumes to be true, without much basis that I can see. Saying that a society and its ideas are in decline when they seem to many to be quite manifestly better than their predecessors is something that requires a bit more groundwork than you or your beloved Kraut seem to have provided.

Even if Christianity is by its nature an instrument and a friend of this dubious decline, it would not be Nihilistic by any conventional definition of the word.

6/2/2006 4:42:27 PM

^ You should read the Da Vinci Code. It will change your life.

6/2/2006 4:47:25 PM

Quote :

"The "rise and decline" bit he simply assumes to be true, without much basis that I can see. "

It's more than a basis, it's an analysis of cultures, their tendencies, and the religions that reflect them. Besides, his analysis is rooted in the fact that sin, redemption, and all of the other imaginary forces I've listed earlier don't exist, and an interpretation of nature and life in nature.

Quote :

"Saying that a society and its ideas are in decline when they seem to many to be quite manifestly better than their predecessors is something that requires a bit more groundwork than you or your beloved Kraut seem to have provided."

Sigh... what's your justification here? Christianity saw Rome through it's fall and locked Europe into a Dark Age. Our current knowledge of science, our current "enlightenment" is a result of the Renaissance, born of the loss of faith in Christianity.

Besides, if you knew shit about shit, you'd know that Nietzsche was a Polack.

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 5:19 PM. Reason : was a Polack. That mofucka dead.]

6/2/2006 5:13:21 PM