Stephen Hawking's misleading science

"Stephen Hawking's Universe" on Discovery Channel is worse than science fiction, because it suggests itself as more scientific, and its sophisticated graphics creates in the minds of most viewers "realities" about as certain as what is written in the book of Genesis.

Misgressions in Moscow: high school cheating, continues

another time hearing from a parent how the entire 9th grade class cheated on their final exams. now using their smart phones, either on them or in the restroom.
the teachers need good grades.
this is excellent training on how getting around the system, by avoiding or ignoring the rules, is the way to get ahead. another example of the misgressions in post-Soviet Moscow, still in 2013.

well-traveled in the worlds of ideas?

as there is geography, so there could be an ideography, a kind of world of ideas, mapped as it were, in which one travels, explores, become an experiential traveler, even a guide. not the physical world, but that of ideas conceived as a single, unified world.
and if there is a publication National Geography, so to there might be a historical ideography

echoes from Mt. Sinai

the lightning long ago atop a mount in Sinai -- even though which mountain is not truly known, and even if it never occurred -- has continued to echo down onto our times

"I'm proud to be an...?"

it is readily observable that (political) "nationalism" is strong amongst the majority of Americans, but also to be noted, in order to understand American psychology is an emotional (if somewhat naive) "state pride", ie an emotional loyalty and self-identification to one of what became 50 states, especially for those who live in the state where they were born. both of these aspects must be recognized in order to understand self-, community-, state- and national identity.

theology is biography sub specie aeternitatis

Schleiermacher's "theology" is one single example of how "theology", even at its most sincere and/or earnest, is in reality biography -- revealing itself in relation to "God" and within his time and tradition.

history of the psychology of theologian's presumptions

a history of the psychology of theologians (and related philosophers) should be written, focusing on the varied ways, in their minds, times and climes, they presumed to be able to think, write and speak of "God".

theology as sleepwriting, somnscribing

"theology" seems to have been done in a kind of dozing which was simply divine!

theology sub specie humanitatis

forty years study in the history of ideas...and years of travel and observation in various civilizational-culture traditions...

most men and women are, mainly unawares, just "hanging out", whether in theology, philosophy, science, bowling alleys or bars.

the problem with anthroposophists and Jungians

the decisive problem with most anthroposophists is that they only understand the world via anthroposophy, rather than anthroposophy via the world.
but the Jungians tend to be worse, they imagine they are the world.

the president's real opinion?

what does the President personally really think of the people he and his government do their best to control?

living in the world of ideas

who -- with waking enough -- did not begin as a novitiate in the ideas by which mankind lives in the world?
like a huge swirling storm in which one is lost and tossed..
or a great expanse of invisible though ordered ideas and forces..
or like a great fog in which one can see further the clearer one's ideas...

it is possible to make oneself traveled, experienced, at home in this world of ideas, so that one is no longer lost or confused in it
(realizing that most do not have occasion or will to come close to realizing such is imaginable)

and after the disenchantment of Modernity?

in so far as "post-modernism" is a disenchantment of "modernity" -- and seldom is this intended to return to some pre-modern clime of mind -- thenafter what remains?

sub specie aeternitatis and Job 28:24?

is there any direct relation of Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis to Job 28:24?

ants and Job 14:14

and when an ant dies, shall it live again?

Stephenwolf

what can continuing polite conversations mean to someone who has now for more than 40 years sought, studied, searched,...in libraries and nations,...in Alexandria, Jerusalem, Varanasi, Qufu,...in theology, religions, philosophies, history, science, biographies,...atop Mt Sinai, the Mount of Olives, Taishan,...at Troy, Mycenae, Rome, Tintern,...in Concord, Dornach, Weimar,...

old New Age problems

most believers in "'the' New Age" knew and know little realistic of the old(er) age(s), also of what and how their "New Age" repeats the "old(er)", thus also having an anachronistic naivete about its being "new".
their ahistoria is a childish ignorance -- which is also not new in history

Paley < -- > Lovelock

if amidst the misty ideas and new-age psychobabble (aka rhetoric?) of "Gaia", some clear(er) idea is to be argued, it would surely be interesting to compare the social, cultural and intellectual histories and contexts of Paley, et al's Clock-maker God and Lovelock, et al's the Gaia Hypothesis.

pre-Darwinian sundial-maker God

Cicero's sundial-maker God

total meaninglessness of the Christian story?

Nietzsche rejected the Christian myth for his own. But even if theology -- be it Lutheran, Pietist, Roman Catholic, Alexandrian, etc be merely or all-too-human, can this whole story -- in its fullness, breadth and depth -- have been only accidental beliefs, arguments, creeds, churches, devotions, sacrifices, crusades and wars,...about what was essentially arbitrary?

saved from the abyss?

even if Feuerbach was, in essence, wrong, years of reading in theology seem to reveal it as trying to save God from 'disappearing into an abyss'

human idolatries?

"What created by man -- mental or material -- to or for "God" when- or wheresoever was not really a human idol?

and how few see, or have seen, it so?

the personal a priori in Swedenborg's visions?

considering the character(s) of the spirit worlds experienced by Swedenborg, could lead to concluding that Kant's idea of a priori categories were also rather personal in Swedenborg's extrasensory sense.

Kant Forest

Kant is like a dense, dreadful forest in which many get lost, and after they happen out -- tired and probably troubled -- many are not likely to try to reenter again.

ventured in again today. finding my way around more and more, but needing good guide maps...
some news areas..

ahhh... so because we are moral, God (must) exist... unconvincing...

rumors of treasures...but really little or no gold. a few man-made structures mainly...

most are wise to just go around -- to avoid Kant Forest all together

philosophers in the cave?

in medias res...but what if Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, et al are merely cleverer cave-dwellers?

about the Scriptures, apes and such

yesterday afternoon in the new Starbucks in the rebuilt Hotel Moscow building (though, as it typical of such in the Russian capital, the hotel is still not reopened).
had an interesting meeting for a couple of hours about the Scriptures, apes and such, with Johnny Eichhorn, Sam Wilberforce, Ed Pusey, Big Ben Jowett, Charlie Darwin, Tom Huxley, Bob Chambers and a few others.

a popular waking state of sleep

one cannot understand the phenomena on the streets of Moscow with discerning how they do not notice, or are at most dimly and rarely aware, of the extent to which they are determined by forces -- social, habitual, moral, fashionable, mental, psychic -- external to themselves. less individuals per se than instances of social influences...like a shared waking sleep. social institutions as instincts.

"Newtonian"?

not only the views, ideas and attitudes of those who rejected Newton, eg Blake, Goethe, Steiner, et al, must be reexamined due to the deeper facts of Newton's life and thought, but the views of those who, like Clarke, Pope, Brewster, Jefferson and many others, deists or other, supported 'Newton the first real scientist', and who based their ideas on a misunderstanding of his.

Paley < theos > Plotinus

Paley's theology was profoundly not a Plotinian theo-sophy.

P(In)C

frankly: stupid and ignorant people have rights too; though not to be called intelligent and educated.

Paley, Darwin, the voyage of the Beagle, Plotinus

The outer voyage of the Beagle...
it was of eg Paley and not eg Plotinus as to what was to be thought "divine" by Darwin et many al.
not even as speculative theology was some "inner expedition of the Beagle" in consideration.
that they did not find the divine should perhaps not have surprised

God > Lenin > Jewels > ?

yestereve, as is common, a common crowd flowed casually across Red Square, most likely unawares (but certainly now reflective) of how it had been "sacred space" not so long ago. Lenin's Tomb was (un)holy ground. respect. silence. whispers. "awe".
Moscow's iconic Saint Basil's had been such for centuries before the Bolshevik Revolution.
and now? now that St Basil's is an icon and reopened tourist site, and hardly seen with awe...
and Lenin and his tomb are basically ignored...

where now is sacred there on Red Square? seen with "awe"?

the jewelry shops of GUM?

AC 360 "(Un)Reality TV"?

watching AC 360 Gossip