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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 15971
[Religious]
Date Posted:
8/2/2006
9:46:58 am EDT
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Views: 8,019
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Comments: 10
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A View Of The Truth: Spinoza's Faith In Reason
Author: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, The New York Times Source: International Herald Tribune (France)
Title: A VIEW OF THE TRUTH: SPINOZA'S FAITH IN REASON
Thursday marked the 350th anniversary of the excommunication of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he had been raised.
The Spinoza anniversary didn't get a lot of attention. But it's one worth remembering - in large measure because Spinoza's life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable.
The exact reasons for the excommunication of the 23-year-old Spinoza remain murky, but the reasons he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe are not. Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the creator's partiality to its beliefs and ways. After the excommunication, he spent the rest of his life - he died in 1677 at the age of 44 - studying the varieties of religious intolerance. The conclusions he drew are still of dismaying relevance.
Submitted by and Thanks to: Arts and Letters Daily (http://www.aldaily.com/)
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Community Thoughts: There are 10 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Spinoza Wasn't The First ! | Aug 2nd. at 9:33:18 pm EDT
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Libertarian (Langley, Washington) - Email Me - Web
Many centuries before, the Roman Poet Lucretius dug the foundations for the likes of Spinoza and many others. What led to the "Age of Reason" was the re-discovery of the ancient wisdom associated with our true heritage: the pholosophy of Greece and Rome.
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| Tapping The Article To Touch On Some Hot Topics | Aug 2nd. at 5:03:08 pm EDT
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karrie9 (Kenosha, Wisconsin) - Email Me - Web
“To the extent that we are rational, we each partake in exactly the same identity.”
Hot Topic!
“Norms” battle (empire-lites, fundamentalism, and so on) while painting multiculturalism and secularism as one huge smeary smudge of “them” or sameness.
I don’t want to play into that.
Very Hot Topic in the Pagan Community (not assuming all Witches are Pagan) !
Part of the reason Pagans haven’t better organized to identify and to fight for their freedoms and rights is their objection to “sameness” or being lumped together. [Web LINK]
A sound common ground [Web LINK] in a free society does not translate into a homogenous society or an identity that’s “exactly the same.” For example, being an American (if applicable) is only **part of** my identity. Being a Pagan is only part of my identity. I am an American Eclectic Neopagan and each one of you is who and what you are.
“Against this tendency we have no defense but the relentless application of reason.”
I admire and appreciate bright writers and minds such as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein but will add that logic is more than (1) "what is spoken," (2) the science of judgment, (3) reason, or (4) mere manipulation -- it offers a very emotional and deep journey. It's one of the shuttles of your loom, as it were, along with your joys, desires, work (earth) , tears, fears, hopes, and difficulties...
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| Reason Should Never Take A Back Seat To Belief | Aug 2nd. at 2:37:14 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
The problem that many of us have now- is the fact that there are far too many that have come forward to declare intimate knowledge of God's plan, mission, intent and so forth.
No cleric- or political underling likes to be gainsaid in anything. And from Phelps to the Pope- all are too eager to declare that they know best about what humans need- not because they know anything-- which they truly don't. But because there is power in being able to sway others into doing what they want-- because they claim to have the Ear and the mind of God. It is only for their own comfort and gain that they make such a claim-- and hope that the population is gullable enough to believe them. Which is why they target with vehemence those who actually know better whether or not they subscribe to the faith.
The true lights in the wilderness are not the ones who believe without question- but those who question the belief.
It was reason that brought about civilization and progress- it was unbending belief that still struggles to hinder it at every turn.
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| Sankhye Yoga | Aug 2nd. at 12:19:23 pm EDT
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Ahr-Ohn (Bridgeport, Connecticut) - Email Me
"It can be argued that the Iberian Inquisition was Europe's first experiment in racialist ideology."
This could only be argued up until William the Racist Bastard was able to claim Victory at Hastings.
"Spinoza's faith in reason as our only hope and redemption is the core of his system, and its consequences reach out in many directions, including the political. Each of us has been endowed with reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it."
Sankhye Yoga, which Pythagoras called Logic, is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita.
"It is for this reason that he argued that a government that impedes the development of the sciences subverts the grounds for state legitimacy, "
But the government which does not agree with this woman's conclusions would still have lots of Bombs.
Arawn
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