All you know of me our my ideas which are not original but learned from sources far greater than me who I quote. You are repulsed by ideas which open the human heart to the religious emotion as opposed to acquired negative emotions. Religious emotion invites and encourages the natural human attraction to eros. You prefer metaphysical repression in order to increase the influence of secularism which isolates Man from its source replacing it with the Great Beast. They are poison to you. I support them and have provided links for those who may need to further contemplate the human condition. You prefer to keep the attraction to eros out of education leading to metaphysical repression, and I support those efforts furthering human being.I get along well with some theists, some of whom have called me names, but we worked it out. There is not much to criticise about your ideas because they are patchwork and formative, often unorganised and contradictory. I don't much care about them; I have other interests.
So Nick, I simply dislike you as a human being - no hard feelings, we can't like everyone. I cannot make this more clear. I don't hate you, just as I don't hate centipedes, Bobbit worms and snakes - I just find them rather revolting and would prefer that they not be near me.
A curious characteristic of the secular mind represented by Greta is the belief that all the horrors we all know of that have occurred in the world over time are somehow correctable by the same quality of being that created the problem. All those who recognize the human condition are considered exponents of misanthropy. From this perspective Jesus was also an exponent of misanthropy.Nick_A wrote:
"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact." Malcolm Muggeridge
That is just a misanthropic truism claimed to be fact without a skerrick of evidence or justification, a weak and invalid axiom based on the most jaundiced possible perspective. It's is what happens when one allows an analysis to be skewed by emotion - so the flawed analyst will believe that only the angles they focus on are real, in this case, Muggeridge's famous misanthropy.
One reason I like Malcolm Muggeridge is because of the purity of his conversion. He had the heart and intelligence to admit the futility of the path he was on in his need for meaning.
https://jimmylong.net/2013/11/23/the-un ... man-heart/
Human being is double edged. It is capable of both the greatest compassion and greatest atrocities. Simone Weil, a former atheist, put it this way in reply to the famous observation from Marx: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” She wrote “revolution is the opiate of the masses.” Recognition of the human condition is not misanthropy, it is a sign of human intelligence.The story of Malcolm Muggeridge’s life is quite interesting. He went from being a heavy drinking, womanizer with communist sympathies to being a devoted Christian who used his powerful intellect and deep faith to write some of the most profound books of the last century. He lived through the horror of two world wars and saw firsthand the brutality and depravation that occurred under dictators like Joseph Stalin. He also knew the depths of his own sin and thus cherished the salvation secured for him on the cross.
Muggeridge wrote, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” What is he saying here? He means that the sin nature of human beings is self-evident. The pages of history are filled with example after example of human cruelties ranging from hurtful words on a child’s playground to the loss of nearly 3,000 in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
The advent of the 24-hour news cycle has only heightened out awareness of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Our technological advances have provided new opportunities for cyber-bullying and email scams, and have created new venues for purveyors of child pornography. Great strides in scientific achievement have merely made it possible for radical regimes bent on annihilation of have the ready means of accomplishing their diabolical goals……………………………….
The Greta mind is concerned about what Man does. She believes it will change through the means of progressive education. The religious mind is concerned with what we ARE. We know we can become human if we begin to recognize the human condition for what it is and for that we need help from above.