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GK Chesteron

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Flann 5
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Re: GK Chesteron

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Hi Interbane or Stahrwe.
I wonder if either of you could put the link to Chesterton's book on this thread?
I know it's on another thread somewhere, but just for convenience, so anyone following the discussion can see what is being discussed.
Thanks.
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Re: GK Chesteron

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ant wrote:Yes. It's an exercise he no doubt performed.
But what he's saying is that it does eviscerate his soul the way it does to some.
I don't think he's saying its a complete waste of time.
He's saying he will not perform this exercise because he believes it is dehumanizing, and he doesn't want to dehumanize his study of humanity. Talk about presuppositions.

ant wrote:But let's not get into a debate about your fact'less conclusion that Nature is without purpose because you and a few celebrity scientists say it is.
Let's not, since it's irrelevant.
Flann wrote:Hi Interbane or Stahrwe.
I wonder if either of you could put the link to Chesterton's book on this thread?
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/c ... ontent.htm
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Interbane

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Re: GK Chesteron

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Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.'
Above is a mistake that ant often makes. The above is a false dichotomy, that something came from nothing, or that something came from god. Naturally, this doesn't answer where god came from(we aren't allowed to ask).

The issue is that there is no reason to assume there was ever nothing. Stahrwe once mentioned that he thinks there is an issue of infinite regress in the idea that something always existed. But that's a fallacy that pertains to a chain of reasoning, not a theoretical construct.

"Something" could have always existed, no supernatural appeals required.
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Interbane

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Re: GK Chesteron

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GKC wrote:But this notion of something smooth and slow like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion. It is an illogically as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question. An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny. The medieval wizard may have flown through the air from the top of a tower; but to see an old gentleman walking through the air in a leisurely and lounging manner, would still seem to call for some explanation. Yet there runs through all the rationalistic treatment of history this curious and confused idea that difficulty is avoided or even mystery eliminated, by dwelling on mere delay or on something dilatory in the processes of things. There will be something to be said upon particular examples elsewhere; the question here is the false atmosphere of facility and ease given by the mere suggestion of going slow; the sort of comfort that might be given to a nervous old woman traveling for the first time in a motor-car.
Here, GKC is saying that he finds no comfort when evolutionists tell him the process is lengthy and gradual. He believes it is a different of type, and no amount of slowness would ever help in the explanation. Of course, his writing is nearly a century old, so I can't fault him for rejecting evolution. I can say that the above passage is precisely the sort of irritating prose GKC has throughout his entire book. Instead of making a clear, concise argument, he dresses his points up in verbose swaddling that smells convincing until you strip away the dress.

There's not any real argument in this part. He's merely saying that just because evolution is supposedly a slow, gradual process, he still isn't convinced. Unmentioned is the fact that evolution isn't slow simply to be convincing. Here's your sign theology.
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Re: GK Chesteron

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GKC wrote:What we know, in a sense in which we know nothing else, is that the trees and the grass did grow and that a number of other extraordinary things do in fact happen; that queer creatures support themselves in the empty air by beating it with fans of various fantastic shapes; that other queer creatures steer themselves about alive under a load of mighty waters; that other queer creatures walk about on four legs and that the queerest creature of all walks about on two. These are things and not theories; and compared with them evolution and the atom and even the solar system are merely theories.
Now we know who started abusing the word theory! I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly wonder. Is there abuse of the word earlier than Chesterton?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nce-words/
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Re: GK Chesteron

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Interbane, this isn't About the Chesterton matter you're talking about, but it is about Chesterton. He's been proposed for sainthood, just in the early stages of that in which people are asked to testify to miracles he was responsible for. Okay, this might be joke stuff, but the article in which I read about this was quite an appraisal of GKC himself. I think stahrwe would like it, because the writer is certain that GKC was a genius. The writing by James Parker sizzles, too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nt/386243/
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Re: GK Chesteron

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Flann 5 wrote:Hi Interbane or Stahrwe.
I wonder if either of you could put the link to Chesterton's book on this thread?
I know it's on another thread somewhere, but just for convenience, so anyone following the discussion can see what is being discussed.
Thanks.

Most of Chesterton's works, at least those which are known, are in the public domain and are available free of charge. I have posted a few links below.


Chesterton Guttenburg

This one includes THE EVERLASTING MAN
Chesterton resources
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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Re: GK Chesteron

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DWill thanks for the comment. I had seen the article quite a while ago. Although I have many friends who are Catholic, I am not.
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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Re: GK Chesteron

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DWill wrote:Interbane, this isn't About the Chesterton matter you're talking about, but it is about Chesterton. He's been proposed for sainthood, just in the early stages of that in which people are asked to testify to miracles he was responsible for. Okay, this might be joke stuff, but the article in which I read about this was quite an appraisal of GKC himself. I think stahrwe would like it, because the writer is certain that GKC was a genius. The writing by James Parker sizzles, too.
Thanks for that. I didn't know he was responsible for miracles.

His prose is great for fiction. He's expressive, with flower language and an easy to read style. I can see how he's convincing to the religious crowd.
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Re: GK Chesteron

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GKC TEM part 1 wrote:I should try to see even this earth from the outside, not by the hackneyed insistence of its relative position to the sun, but by some imaginative effort to conceive its remote position for the dehumanized spectator. Only I do not believe in being dehumanized in order to study humanity. I do not believe in dwelling upon the distances that are supposed to dwarf the world; I think there is even something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size
Chesterton's attitude against dehumanization was probably a familiar refrain in the aftermath of the Romantic movement, which itself was a reaction to the Industrial Age. The Romantic poets —Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth—often celebrated natural beauty and lamented man's separation from nature. Chesterton came onto the scene a few decades later. He was born about fifteen years after the 1860 publication of Origin of Species.

I'm just trying to better understand the historical context. We tend to celebrate our scientific accomplishments these days, but back then you can imagine the profound changes that had taken place during the 1800s and why many folks would have idealized England's more pastoral past.

I believe Chesterton was fond of that American poet and Transcendentalist, Walt Whitman, who wrote, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (about five years before Darwin's book). .

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
-Geo
Question everything
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