From a weekly email from Jeff Myers  www.myersinstitute.com/


Western Civilization is at a crisis point.  We have abandoned the Christian values that allowed us to prosper and have stability and we are being directly threatened by the Muslim civilization through infiltration and direct attack.

Michael Savage says it best: Borders, Language, Culture,  without these a society cannot stand.

What Happens When Civilizations Die? "Comrade Ivan"--so nicknamed to defray suspicion--was high above the crowd on a tree stump denouncing the oppressive Russian government. In the midst of his tirade the Czar's police attacked the crowd with whips and sabers. Simmering with resentment, the assembled Cossacks and workers hurled themselves at their attackers. When it was over, two peasants and one police officer were dead, and many more were injured. Comrade Ivan's friends spirited him away in the nick of time, but he was eventually revealed as Pitirim Sorokin and imprisoned six different times by the Czar's government. For this he became a revolutionary hero. By the time the Czar fell, however, Sorokin was completely disillusioned. The revolution had seemed so beautiful and full of hope, but it arrived mired in ugliness and treachery. Having been branded a revolutionary by the Czar, he was now branded a counter-revolutionary for not enthusiastically endorsing Lenin's government. Sorokin was the enemy of all, and wrote in his diary, "I feel like a homeless dog." Finally, with threats against his family escalating, Sorokin came out of hiding, turned himself in and awaited execution. Because of the intervention of a former student, however, Sorokin was released and allowed to emigrate with his wife to the United States. In the U.S., Sorokin embarked on an astounding academic career studying social crisis. He had, after all, experienced it first hand. Sorokin founded the sociology department at Harvard and authored a colossal body of work that reshaped the field of sociology. But Sorokin's greatest legacy became his analysis of where our civilization is headed.  The Coming Threat of Collapse The more Sorokin wrote, the less amused his eastern establishment benefactors became. Sorokin confronted the decadence of the West with the same fervor he had used to confront the Czar and then the Bolsheviks. He called the West "sensate" for its infatuation with human-centered thinking and fleshly desire. His detailed analysis of history led to an inescapable conclusion: no civilization had gone this far in the wrong direction and survived. Sorokin taught that a culture becomes sensate when it bankrupts itself of truth. This doesn't mean that it dies immediately, he explained--it can live for decades off of the rich cultural inheritance of those who went before. But the outcome is certain. Sorokin's dire warnings infuriated the cultural elite of his day. How dare he suggest that the secular utopia they had constructed was broken beyond repair? But they must have sputtered in fits of apoplexy at his reasoning: [W]ithout the Kingdom of God we are doomed to a weary and torturing pilgrimage from calamity to calamity, from crisis to crisis, with only brief moments of transitory improvement for regaining our breath. In that case the way out will always be the ‘way of death,' ordeal and destruction. By the "kingdom of God" Sorokin meant a commitment to transcendent truth. It was civilization's only hope.  Will We Rise from the Ashes? Drawing on evidence of past civilizations, Sorokin predicted that out of the ashes of the sensate culture would arise a new "ideational" culture, literally the birth of a new civilization that reinvigorated culture, restore human dignity, and realign itself with God's principles. That was back in the 50s. Shunned for many years, Sorokin's writings are experiencing a new renaissance because if he was on target, we're living right now in the time of transition. Those who work with young people can see it; hungry for truth and thirsty for meaning, this generation of youth is poised to carry the world forward toward redemption--a new reformation, if you will--a renaissance of learning, of meaningful work, of cultural progress based on ultimate truth. The evangelical fervor in Asia, Africa and South America seems to provide evidence that this is so. In many ways, the story of history comes down to our own age. It's unsettling to think that everything our founders worked for, everything that millions have suffered and died for, will either thrive or die depending on the outcome of battles raging right now. But that is God's plan. "History is a vision of God's creation on the move," wrote Arnold Toynbee. God is moving. Our choice is to move with Him or stay still.

I seem to recall similar predictions during the "Gay '90's"--the 1890's.  The same things were predicted during the "Roaring Twenties"--and we got Prohibition.  During WWII it was doubted any civilization could exist amongst so much evil.  The 1960's, with some very ugly stuff to behold (anyone recall Charles Manson and his merry band?), had similar dire warnings.  Life goes on.  

Quoted: IBTMTTNF (In before the move to the nutter forum)

So folks with christian thoughts are not welcome in the arena of public debate?

I'm not discussing doctrine or religious details, but philosophy and the conflict between cultures, cultures based on religious ideas.

Like it or not, even atheism is a religious position.  So that makes everybody and their values religious at some level.

Quoted: Quoted: Like it or not, even atheism is a religious position.  So that makes everybody and their values religious at some level. So is a person who doesn't believe in Zues relgious about their non belief in Zues? to say that the god Zeus does not exist is a religious statement.  Is that YOUR religion or do you believe in Zues?

are you honestly asking or are you trying to provoke?

I have not and cannot explore every corner of the universe to see if I can find him, nor can I be sure that my detection methods are good enough to discover him even if I can locate him.  Therefore if I say that zeus does not exist, I must base my statemwnt on faith, rather than evidence.


atheism states that God does not exist.  That is a theological statement.  Theological statements are founded on faith, not direct empirical evidence.  Therefore atheism is a religiously held position.






However, despite our theological differences, I still think you would be a good movie mod.  But only if you get an avatar worthy of a mod.  

Quoted: So the same holds true for the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy I assume? I just find the notion that a person who doesn't believe in these things is taking a 'religious' position is absurd.

straw man argument fallacy.

But yes, at it's core, if you don't believe in the easter bunny or the tooth fairy, it's a religiously held position.  You have not searched everywhere in the universe for them nor are you all-knowing to be fully aware of everything that exists even if you could search the universe.

BUT

you can make a very well substantiated and reasoned conclusion about their existance based on what you DO know about the nature of the universe, the part that you HAVE observed and have experience with, and we naturally ASSUME that the properties and principles that we observe in our corner of the universe hold true in all other areas of the universe, so we can comfortably say that it is EXTREMELY unlikely that those two do not exist, and not loose any sleep over our intellectual honesty.

But we can't say we are 100% certain they do not exist.  99.9999999999999999% perhaps, give or take a nine.  And if you want to give me a Tec-nine, I'd sure not turn it down.

you are an FFL dealer, right?

tag like the retarded kid in dodgeball

not very sportsmanlike of you to pop a gasket.  Perhaps you do compare the existance of God to the existance of the easter bunny and the tooth fairy, and say that they are equivalent.  I do not, and therefore to set up a very easily defeatable  argument (easterbunnytoothfairy) and attack it successfully, and then say that the existance of God can be refuted just as easily, is the very definition of a straw man argument.

Here is why I do not think them comparable:  Remember what I said about making a decision based on what we have experience observing?  Every bit of what I observe, from the physical universe and it's detailed order and laws, the wonder of biological life, the human capacity to reason and understand the universe, and control and manipulate it, the transcendent moral order, the proven and observable extra-terrestrial nature of the scriptures (telling the end from the beginning), the cycle and flow of human history, to the inescapable and undeniable INTERNAL conviction that there is a God and I am accountable to Him, and on and on, EVERY BIT testifies that there is a Creator God and some of his nature can be known.

So if I can be intellectually comfortable with denying the existance of the EB and TF based on what little I know of the nature of the universe, I have a HUNDRED times more reason to be intellectually comfortable with my belief that God is real and his qualities can be known.  It is not true because I believe it, my wishful thinking does not make it true.  I believe it because I have been convinced that it IS true, and therefore I have no other choice but to believe a lie.

But I cannot stick God in a test tube and poke him with a pencil. So even though the weight of evidence is vast for me to believe, ultimately my position is a matter of faith.

And if you claim He does not exist, so is yours.