Basically, I assert that the value of never in one's life stealing anything would far exceed the collective intrinsic value of everything that is not rightfully yours. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

You are weighing things with monetary value (gold bullion, art work, buildings, luxury cars, airplanes, ships, land, etc.) against things that do not have monetary value

We can determine the intrinsic value of objects (gold is about $19,422.4 a pound, a Boeing 777 goes for about $320 million, a loaf of good bread is about $4.90). Just how much is your compromised conscience, compromised moral value (whatever that is), compromised integrity, destroyed reputation, freedom being in jeopardy, and so on worth? I couldn't find a listing for the dollar value of your integrity--or anybody else's. If there is a dollar value for integrity, it probably varies from person to person.

IF one does not value the "moral goods" that you value, THEN it is entirely conceivable that whatever one could steal would be worth it -- including the loss of freedom for a period of time. Perhaps a year or two in prison balances favorably with stealing an assortment of high value goods--provided one could liquidate the undiscovered objects later.

To believe the evidence needs faith but the belief in Jesus is grounded in reason. Can you see the difference? — TheMadFool

Of course I can see the difference. Actually, I'll concede the issue. belief is based on evidence, and the principle evidence that produces religious people is the concrete live evidence displayed by family and community: Other people believing.

Your view on faith can be supported too. Lots of people claim deep faith in God, but would not for a minute consider healing by faith as opposed to healing by science.

Why did the people believe Jesus was the son of God? This is a valid question and the answer is the miracles he performed. — TheMadFool

Jesus performed a number of miracles. That's one piece of evidence. Then there was Jesus himself--who was to some very compelling evidence--just his personhood--prior to his death. I wasn't there -- you weren't there. 99.999999% of all those who have believed that Jesus was the son of God were not there. Of the .0000001% who were there, saw Jesus walking around, heard Jesus speak, witnessed the miracles, split a bagel and cream cheese with Jesus--not all were convinced. Then there was the resurrection. Again, not everybody believed it. The intended beneficiaries of Jesus incarnation apparently didn't believe it (something that Paul deals with extensively).

What 99.999999% of believers have is a report of miracles, a report about Jesus, a report about the resurrection. The report we have (the New Testament--the Gospels) is clearly not an objective report about things seen and believed. We are 2000+ years removed from that report.

We 99.999999% need one big piece of faith to get to the evidence. We have to believe that the New Testament account of Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection is reliable evidence. It may be. Then, once we believe that, we have to believe that Jesus demonstrated he was the Son of God. Again, we are 2000+ years removed. We can't experience Jesus in Jerusalem, short of getting into a time machine and going back there.

I'll grant you there is evidence. I have no objection to people taking the NT as evidence. What I object to is the rejection of faith as the critical step.

Is there a religion that relies on evidence to attract, keep, and nourish believers?

I agree the rigor of rationality was of poor quality in the past and don't meet modern standards. However, the point is, evidence was provided and the concept of faith collapses. It doesn't make sense to provide evidence and then appeal to faith. — TheMadFool

I don't know what the rigor of rationality was thousands of years ago. Certainly, some people were extremely discerning and some people were credulous. I do not know whether we can really understand the ancient mind. (Brains haven't changed; cultures have changed.)

If religion is all about faith then why did so-called prophets perform miracles? — TheMadFool

Jesus didn't heal the sick, or raise the dead as evidence -- he did so as a sign that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He didn't do anything to prove to people he was the Son of God.

However, it's obvious that we live in a world where our sphere of control is limited. People, weather, stock markets are unpredictable and these affect our lives. These unpredictable factors sum up to fate. — TheMadFool

No, I don't think that sums up fate--not the way I understand fate, anyway.

Fate has an author. All of the myriad interactions which result in an outcome are not authored, they just happen, and there is no author involved.

Fate is superstition. Determinism is a largely unprovable theory, but as a theory it follows rules. Fate (presumably) doesn't follow rules.

Here's a medieval hymn to fate (Fortuna, Fortune)

O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable,
ever waxing or waning; hateful life
first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty and power it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel, you are malevolent,
well-being is vain and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled you plague me too;
now through the game I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate crushes the brave,
everyone weep with me![3]

My point is that the role of faith in religion is at the same level as in other human knowledge e.g. science. — TheMadFool

I don't think that is true. So, you think everything is as opaque as religion is?

When Apple develops a new product, they neither hope nor have faith that it will do well. They have run the numbers, sliced and diced the market, tested, tested, tested, researched, started over again -- yada yada yada -- to make sure that what they offer will sell. That's why Apple has $246 billion dollars of cash on hand.

Drug companies may hope that their new blockbuster drug will make it through testing -- there are no guarantees what works on a rat will work on a man, but they aren't running on faith, hope, and charity -- especially not charity.

If religion has validity, it doesn't have to be the same as everything else.

So, with the rather recent collapse of the Soviet Union in human history and with it the threat of mutually assured destruction, are we in a better situation today to enjoy a safe future? — Question

Russia didn't junk the Soviet Union nuclear weapons, and we didn't junk ours. The numbers of bombs may have been reduced, but we were grossly over-supplied, so a modest reduction doesn't amount to much. Further, the delivery systems are still in place. I don't think B52s are still flying around waiting for orders to fly over the USSR, but the silos are mostly still there, and so are the nuclear subs.

The UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them -- one way or another. North Korea could just about catapult one from its side of the DMV and wipe Seoul out. It doesn't need an ICBM to do that. (Of course I don't mean NK could literally catapult a nuclear weapon anywhere.)

So... according to the doomsday clock subcommittee of the Union of Concerned Scientists, we're about as close to doomsday now as we have ever been (3 or 4 minutes before midnight -- doomsday.)

I don't let doomsday bother me; does it bother you?


Destruction Eve

Not everyone who lived in and about Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' crucifixion thought he had risen from the dead. I doubt if very many people thought Mohammed rode a horse to heaven at the time. we don't know if Moses even existed. Anyway, Moses didn't purport to part the sea, God parted the waters and drowned the Egyptians.

I think rational people can believe in God. God, and religion, serves and has served many useful functions.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. — Hebrews 11:1

No religion can be transparent, so things not seen have always needed to be taken on faith. Religion is the vessel into which many of our hopes are placed, without knowing whether hope will be fulfilled.

Tiptoe Through the acronym TULIP...

This is what Calvinism stands for in 5 nutshells

Total depravity: We cannot respond to God's offer of salvation, since our will—indeed, our whole being—has been rendered incapable by sin. This contrasts with Christian traditions that say we have sufficient free will to respond to God's offer of salvation or that we can "cooperate" with grace.

Unconditional election: God chooses to save some people, not because of anything they have done, but according to his sovereign will. This contrasts with other Christian traditions that teach that God desires to save everyone, but only elects those whom he foreknows will respond to his grace.

Limited atonement: Christ died for the sins of the church, not for the whole world. This contrasts with traditions that teach that Christ died for all, even though all may not appropriate the benefits of his sacrifice.

Irresistible grace: Those God elects cannot resist the Holy Spirit's draw to salvation. This contrasts with Christian traditions that teach that we are able to reject God's forgiveness—thus, while God may choose to save everyone, not everyone chooses to believe.

Perseverance of the saints: By God's power, believers will endure in faith to the end. Other Christian traditions teach that people can forsake faith and lose salvation.

Me

The point Thorongil was making, and I'll make the same point is that God's mercy is great. Look, in the system of belief we are talking about, God knows us. He, after all, made us. He knows we are certain to fail at perfection, and are likely to fail even when the bar is set so low that we trip on it. God loves us, maybe even LIKES us. If he didn't, he would not put up with us. Not only does he love us, he loves us so much he was willing to humble himself to the extent of becoming one of those smart apes.

You can not tempt God into punishing you. You (we) are way too little, God is way too much.

Fascinating Factoid: Job is commemorated by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod in their Calendar of Saints on May 9, by the Roman Catholic Church on May 10 (pre-1969 calendar), and by the Eastern Orthodox Church on May 6.

In some ways yes, but I haven't read any of Feuerbach. "Maybe" the devil on his left shoulder said, "you should." I have read some of Marx ("Not nearly enough" the devil said.) and liked what I read.

I came across, stole, or developed some of the ideas I have about religion back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. I can't recover sources, specific influences, yada yada yada at this point. Too late.

You seem very well read, a deep thinker. What's your intellectual background?

What is your pick? — Beebert

I pick

that's just the way things worked out. — Bitter Crank

I've spent way too much time around Christianity to have no emotional connections with it -- and that has been a long struggle -- but intellectually, i believe that human beings created the gods and religion. We created the gods in our own image and it is a high point of human culture. Some of our gods have represented the most practical needs (like fertility of the soil, that we might eat), and some of them represented our highest aspirations. Some of them have been really awful.

We are members of the primate family. We are very bright, yes, opposable thumbs, sure; big-brained, imaginative, language wielding, fire-using, tool making, primates. We were cast into this world unprepared to deal with all of the screwy contradictions which we have found in the world and especially in ourselves, and it drives us up the wall.

(it was the ideas of Calvin, evangelical calvinists, fundamentalists, Luther and Augustine that drew me to madness — Beebert

Write on the blackboard 100 times (a la Bart Simpson), "Fuck John Calvin, Fuck Martin Luther, Fuck Augustine, and double fuck all fundamentalists."

Yes, I've heard about Zizek. Zizek hasn't been quoted here in video just recently (as far as I know) but he has a following here. Or at least he did on the old Philosophy Forum. The old Philosophy Forum was resurrected as The Philosophy Forum and then died. Resurrections which occur before death are especially miraculous.

One of the interpretations of the Death of God is that God becoming incarnate in Jesus--the "God lies in a manger" image. The incarnation was not the death of God, but in becoming flesh, Heaven was emptied of God. God "died" on the cross. What remained was God's spirit in the world, no longer secluded, but here, in this world.

Obviously I have no way of knowing whether that is true or not. I sort of like it, but an empty heaven is somewhat troubling. All that vacant real estate. What are the angels doing in the meantime, unsupervised as they are?

Are all our prayers ending up in an email address from which no responses are ever sent? Or do we receive an automated message? "God is out of the office at this time. His time is not your time, so please do not hold your breath waiting for an answer." Or maybe, "Your call is very important to God. Please stay on the line. All calls will be answered in the order they were received. You are caller # 7,342,965.681. Your wait time is about 1 billion years, give or take 15 minutes. If you don't want to wait, call back at a later time."

I generally find it hard to appreciate St Paul. — Beebert

I think it is safe to say that quite a few people find it hard to appreciate Paul. Paul was something of a self-powered buzz-saw. Brilliant guy, no doubt. Paul is useful if, for not other reason, that he shows to us that believers were forming up in the Jewish diaspora, either with the help of their own memories of Jesus, with the help of apostles or with other workers.

Paul found formation in progress and helped it move forward. He helped systematize the formation, and thus, stamped later Christianity with P-A-U-L. Either God wished that it would happen that way, or that's just the way things worked out. Take your pick.

I was at a psychiatric hospital for a month because of this horrendous belief. It drove me to madness. I can't take it anymore. Show me the goodness of christianity. I can't find it anymore. — Beebert

I'm sorry your have been troubled enough to need hospitalization. You are by no means the only person at this forum who have experienced these kinds of problems. Over the years (I'm 70) I haven't been very successful at managing the kind of obsessive thinking that takes on a life of its own. It captures the spotlight of our attention.

I think it might be the case that the way you are approaching your encounter with scripture is being directed less by your cognition and more by mood. This isn't a failing of your ability to think, it's a consequence of your mood disorder, or whatever it is. But it's very tough to think clearly when we do not feel well.

The long passage Agustino quoted is an important one: In it the author makes very clear that we can know nothing about God. God is beyond our entire skill set. God spoke through the prophets, not the other way around. Maybe God became flesh in Bethlehem--"God lies in a manager, in flesh now appearing" as a Moravian hymn puts it--to overcome the problem of his utter otherness.

Why are those deemed "religious" considered weak and inferior to those proclaimed irreligious and/or atheistic? — Lone Wolf

Some people think that religiousness is weak, weepy, and inferior to the strong, dry-eyed and superior atheistic view. To the extent that this occurs, I think there are two reasons:

First, there is a strain of American culture that especially values rational, can-do, no-nonsense, materialism. (It isn't limited to Americans, of course.) The archetypal cartoon character business man is a strong-jawed, two-fisted, unsentimental, knows-what-he-wants-and-knows-how-to-get-it character. He's a warrior of business.

Then there is the STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) lobby. I have nothing against applying STEM to the problems we face, it is just the case that many of our problems are rather more immaterial and intractable than extracting more energy from sunlight. Like... poverty, militarism, maldistribution of wealth, and all of that.

There has been an evacuation of religious institutions which began in the 1960s. Did Yeats in 1919 capture the force behind the departure of so many Christians?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. — William Butler Yeats

WWI and WWII can not have helped but undermine the bedrock beliefs of Christianity and Judaism. If an all-powerful God keeps watch, why did so many die? Where was God? For many, the distasteful but unavoidable conclusion is that God is absent.

A third influence is the scholarship which led to a critical examination of biblical texts that began in the 19th century. What critical Biblical scholarship revealed was that biblical texts had a complex structure and history (though it isn't the case that nobody noticed some of this before). These studies undermined the formerly secure confidence in texts. These studies were one of the causes of the rise of fundamentalism -- a reaction to this scholarship. What put the wind in the sails of fundamentalism was Charles Darwin.

I think it is safe to say that what many Americans (can't speak for Europeans) saw at Sunday morning services was too often kind of weak, weepy, and sentimentally soft. Certainly there were pastors, priests, nuns, monks, and laity who were tough, hard, dry-eyed, and unsentimental. But... not the majority.

Well, I guess some Christians are gun-toting, but some aren't, such as the Amish denomination who do not believe in any kind of violence. — Lone Wolf

The historic peace churches (Quaker, Mennonite (includes Amish), Church of the Brethren) and pacifist groups within otherwise non-pacifist denominations (like Catholic Workers, Anglican Peace Fellowship, Baptist Peace Fellowship) don't make up a large percentage of Christians -- unfortunately. A better measure of gun-toting vs. non-gun-toting would be the percentage of Americans (whatever the hell they believe in) who are gun toters. It's not possible to say precisely, but it is between 33% and 50%. And some households account for a disproportionate share of the guns.

So it is probably the case that many Christians are gun toters, and many are not. And that would apply to non-believers as well -- many are, many are not.

Isn't there a contradiction between your first statement:

you can't choose to believe or not believe - it's a function of your genetic make-up and your life experiences. — CasKev

and your second statement?

I currently don't believe in a higher power or an afterlife. That won't change until I am presented with strong evidence of such, or at least a very convincing argument. — CasKev

Presumably your life experiences and genetic make up led you to not believe in a higher power or an afterlife. Then, you claim that you need strong evidence or convincing argument. My guess is that your genetic makeup and life experiences would rule out ever recognizing either such forms of evidence.

I think you are correct that life experiences and genetic make up have a lot to do with it, more than strong evidence (what? an appearance of the divine?) or convincing argument.

Half the people in the world think — Joseph Campbell

"Half of the people are drowning, and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.
Half of the people are stoned, and the other half are waiting for the next election." — Stephen Schwartz, librettist for Bernstein's Mass

t is all the doctrines and dogmas of calvinism, lutheranism, augustinianism etc that destroys me. — Beebert

If they bother you, then leave them alone. One can give a good reading of the entire Bible without consulting Calvin, Luther, or Augustine.

And I have more problems with teachers of Christianity like John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards than with the New Testament itself. — Beebert

Right. Well, none of these guys died for your sins. But they occasionally had good things to say. Like Luther: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”

↪Bitter Crank Are you a christian? — Beebert

I am a baptized, confirmed Christian, though I have spent decades stewing over how much of the Christian creed I can honestly say. I'm 70. The whole business is still very conflicted.

I do believe Jesus was born 9 months after a conventional conception, lived somewhere in Galilee, and at some point was inspired and preached a compelling message to Jews. He probably was crucified because he had become a pain to the local authorities. His literal resurrection from the dead is something of a problem. I am not altogether sure about God, either. Why the uncertainty? Oh, it's the other believers who make faith difficult, don't you know. They say such crazy things, sometimes.

↪Bitter Crank Yes but take the rest of that passage. — Beebert

Edward Schillebeeckx [a Catholic theologian, died in 2009] offers a provocative comment on the Matthean judgment scene: “I believe - and I say this with some hesitation - that at the last judgment perhaps everyone will stand at the right-hand side of the Son of Man: 'Come all you beloved people, blessed of the Father, for despite all your inhumanity, you once gave a glass of water when I was in need. Come!'”

I know God is just. I just don't understand what is just with creating me sick and demanding me to be healthy under the threats of eternal torture. Not just punishment for a few years. Not even punishment for thousands of years. But forever!! For eternity! That is insane. I just can't wrap my head around how that is just when I had NO saying in all this in the first place. — Beebert

My feeling about some Christians is that they are more interested in finding a way to assign people to hell than they are to get people into heaven.

The basis of the Final Judgement is in Matthew: "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

That's it. Be merciful to those who are suffering.

the more I see how disgusting I find some christian writings (even early writings) I am starting to feel that much of it is based on hatred. — Beebert

It is not at all surprising that a religion that offered a way to eternal life would attract dissenters who thought the gate was way too open. That's just people for you. "That's just too good a deal, must be something wrong with it."

There is a gap (mind the gap!) between the man Jesus and all writings about Jesus, by Christians, and others. How long was the gap? 20 to 80 years at least. Paul's writings were first, but Paul had not met Jesus. The lives of the disciples and those who followed jesus (apart from the 12) are largely unrecorded. The people who wrote about Jesus and assembled the writings that make up the New Testament are separated in time and place from Jesus.

The editors of the NT took what writings they had, related it to oral traditions that existed in the very early church (which congealed after the death of Jesus), and referenced material in the older books of Jewish religion. There are writings that were excluded because they didn't seem appropriate, relevant, or consistent. The book of Revelations, for instance, was a contentious addition (if I remember from past study).

The most reliable material we have about Jesus is in the New Testament. Take it or leave it.

My guess is that most enduring religious movements began in the dark -- that is, no one was taking notes at the time. A man was inspired and preached--Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tse, Jesus... others. People who heard shared and remembered, perhaps for several generations. A religious practice developed around the remembered and shared preaching. Eventually what was remembered was written down, and informal practices became official: A religion emerges.

All that aside, what in the Gospels makes you think Christianity was based on hatred?

I dislike photos that are overcomposed. Lots of wedding and family photos are like this. — geospiza

Why do people like to have their wedding and family photos taken this way--lined up looking like they were waiting for the firing squad to begin?

In the early days of photography, the results were often very rigid-looking because people had to sit still for an eternity (in photographic time--maybe 20 to 40 seconds--to get a clear picture. Is that how that 'look' or 'style' become associated with photography?

Or, is it the fault of people who do wedding photography? Are they just unimaginative? Or is it people who get married that have that problem?

Why do people hate getting their picture taken so much that they look like they were going to be shot--literally?

like this. — darthbarracuda

I can't imagine what seeing that would be like in real life.

Honesty, by definition, doesn't allow for lying. A rigid approach to morality doesn't allow mercy. Love trumps truth-telling if it can be determined that the truth will cause more harm than a lie. In honesty, love, and truth, we have to take it one situation at a time. The golden rule is as good a navigational compass as we have got.

I'm cool with space exploration, hell, if I had the opportunity I'd fucking go to the moon! Space colonization is what is nauseating. I'd like to be aboard a spaceship that simply watches. — darthbarracuda

I'm cool too with space exploration, but why would you fucking go to the moon? We already know what it looks like (dry, gray, bumpy, round) Have you been to Vladivostok yet? Milwaukee? Odessa? Aleppo? (Never mind; too late, nothing left.) Pyongyang? (Better book your flight soon; it might be disappearing any day now.)

You probably won't be required to take a dose of Pepto Bismol. It seems unlikely that we will send anybody to Mars more than once or twice, then that will be it for both space exploration and galactic colonization.

I am not armed with evidence right now, but I bet if I had the time and other resources I could find a lot of evidence of horrible things done in the name of "progress".

The removal of Native Americans is probably one example. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yes, the aboriginal genocide wasn't done just in the name of progress, it was done as progress. The European conception of the New World was that it was a wasteland (because it was wild and uncultivated) and needed to be improved--tamed and brought under cultivation. They were wrong about that. The aboriginals had brought much of North America under human control. The forests were kept free of undergrowth to make hunting game easier. prairie fire was used to increase forage for buffalo. Most of the tribes -- coast-to-coast -- engaged in some kind of agriculture. Corn, tomatoes, potatoes,, chili peppers, avocados, cranberries, blueberries, huckleberries,, papayas,, passionfruit, pineapples, strawberries, squash, tobacco, and chocolate (plus a few others) were developed by native American people. Several of the foods (corn, tomatoes, potatoes in particular) required extensive plant breeding to become the major food crops they were when Europeans arrived.

Better for who? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

That would be "Better for whom"; who is the subject case, whom is the object case (object of the preposition 'for')

The beneficiaries (are better off now than they would have been in 1067 and 1867).

How do you know?
— WISDOMfromPO-MO — "Bitter

If there is no such thing as progress, then there is no way of measuring whether people are better off now than they were 100 or 1000, 10,000, or 1,000,000 years ago. I assume that progress's occurrence delivers changes which people consider beneficial.

Food production is far greater; deaths of children and women during childbirth are much lower now than they were 100, 1000, or 10,000 years ago Adult men and women die of fewer diseases now than in the past, and longevity has increased. What diseases? Polio, Tuberculosis, Small Pox, leprosy, and some others. They are healthier (more robust) now than in the past.

Progress is not without costs, of course. Progress has enabled humans to live more complex lives. We could measure 'progress' by energy consumption. We consume far more energy now, per person, than we did in 1867 or 1066. Global warming, resource depletion, and increasing species' extinction are all effects of our energy consumption and more complex lives.

So, by definition, progress exists. It's another question whether the value of progress to those who are its beneficiaries more than balances out the harm it does.

If you can't get wisdom from your bartender, why drink? — noAxioms

Good point!

My avatar is an illustration of the American Flamingo — geospiza

I have a plastic pink flamingo in my yard, for purposes of low camp. Audubon was spared this embarrassment.

I was educated in a Calvinist school and was taught good science. Then the church (mine included, but perhaps not the school) seemed to declare science some sort of adversary. — noAxioms

A similar thing happened in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (a mostly German branch of Lutheranism in the US) in the 1980s. It was engineered. It split the synod, congregations, and institutions. The institutions (like the seminary and college administrators) adopted a very conservative, literalist Biblical view. A lot of talent and congregations left to join mainstream Lutherans.

There was nothing inherently, theologically conservative about the German Lutherans in the US. Like I said, it was engineered. It wasn't a mass-movement change.

How did this change come about in your experience?

The predictable objection is, "We abolished slavery. We enfranchised women. We eradicated polio. We ended Apartheid. We have reduced violence to historically low rates. We increased the amount of leisure time people have. How can you not believe in progress?" — WISDOMfromPO-MO

And more besides.

Perhaps the problem is that "progress" implies cumulative and continual change in the direction that is thought to be advantageous. We see in our past that at times we have made progress and then the progress we made receded. We can see this in the longer term (the period of Roman ascendency, then a period of Roman recession and disintegration) and in the shorter term. In 1973 the right to have a safe abortion seemed secured. Forty-odd years later, it no longer seems assured at all.

I don't think history is cyclical, nor is history following a course -- like, toward ever more progress. One event follows another, and this event leads to that event, and if sometimes the result is pleasant, at other times it is not.

Still for now, life is better than it was in 1067 or 1867. If progress happens over the short run, it also plateaus at times, where things don't keep getting better. They just putter along.

One thing about your collapsing foundation metaphor:

Building can be (and sometimes are) built so that the stability of the structure depends on a few members at ground level--City Bank Bldg. in NYC. Other buildings (thinking of a very, very big low-rise building like the Pentagon) aren't going to collapse all at once -- indeed, can't collapse all at once. Philosophical systems can be more like the pentagon. or they can be like a City Bank Bldg. One won't fall all at once, the other one could (theoretically--given the right stresses).

Here's a page charting the evolution of Mondriaan's style from figurative to abstract:

The claw foot chair is not well equipped to grasp its escaped ball, but feels compelled to reach anyway. Sort of like life itself. Should I change my handle from "bitter crank" to something else? What would you suggest.

I would have sworn that was Frank Lloyd Wright art deco. — geospiza

Mondrian Vs. Frank Lloyd Wright:


FLW would never use primary colors, and his art deco designs were representative in an abstract way.