Author Topic: Faith in Science  (Read 43448 times)

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Holden

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Faith in Science
« on: September 29, 2015, 09:57:48 am »
Schopenhauer wrote at a time when faith in science and an attendant optimism about humanity were gaining steadily in influence, and his writings must be understood as a powerful countercurrent probing the flaws of this belief, highlighting the limits of human knowledge, and stressing the forces within the human psyche that were—and remain—largely unappreciated.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Nation of One

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2015, 10:40:55 pm »
Ah, yes, the arrogance of humanism was gaining momentum, and Schopenhauer wanted to rain on their parade.   I remember the first time reading Schopenhauer's comments about the fanfare and red carpets and hogwash of societies' ceremonies.  I can just imagine what went through his mind when he witnessed the pomposity of that monkey business.

I guess it is difficult to be proud of being something we did not choose to be.

What are we anyway?  Are we the thing that should not be?

Am I not in awe of the computer?  I reflect upon factories where these little chips are manufactured.  I think about the computer factories while I am sitting on a toilet squeezing out a bowel movement.  I am not even trying to be offensive or vulgar.  It is what it is.  We are orangutans that can read, write, and do a little math.

All it takes to ground us, to grasp our true vulnerability as naked apes against hostile elements is to stay out in the woods for awhile ... alone ... with no water irrigation technology.

I don't know.  Who are we really?  Are we the human being as he/she is when plugged into the electric hive with water irrigation, or are we the pathetic creature curled up in dry leaves seeking warmth, wishing there were snow on the ground so we had some water to drink?

What are we?

Is it faith in science or just dependency on technology?

Do we hold our heads up high because we can light up a cigarette with a Bic lighter?

How would we light the cigarette otherwise?   Rubbing sticks together?

This is poetry, these discussions of hours.  Poetry.

What are we ... really?
« Last Edit: September 30, 2015, 10:50:18 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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The world cannot be dismissed as simply nonexistent
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2017, 09:17:39 am »
Quote from: Holden
Schopenhauer wrote at a time when faith in science and an attendant optimism about humanity were gaining steadily in influence, and his writings must be understood as a powerful countercurrent probing the flaws of this belief, highlighting the limits of human knowledge, and stressing the forces within the human psyche that were—and remain—largely unappreciated.

There is still a view of the world, the so-called "objective scientific view" that considers the observable, measurable, quantifiable world of matter (chemical properties) as disectable under the microscope - or the telescope (when it comes to man's curiosity about the heavens and "outer" cosmos).

And yet the representation of the entire world is dependent upon animal consciousness.  Whatever we experience as the objective world can only be a representation of sensory data that has been filtered through our mental faculties.  This is true for all animal life.

Again I refer to "Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought":

For Schopenhauer,the forms of intuition, time and space, together with causality, the only form of the understanding (Verstand), according to which all phenomena are connected to one another, exist a priori as the structure of the mind. They are subjective. 

Kant writes, "If the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us."

However, we are normally quite unaware of this so that space, time, and causality seem to be external and objective; earlier European philosophers, Schopenhauer argues, took them as the very nature of things, standing above and determining the world order.

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Note that the terms enclosed in three question marks are such that I lack familiarity with, and I do not intend to suggest otherwise.  I can only understand through the context in which they are appearing in the text.  I would encourage Holden to offer us some of his insight into such terms.  (Thanks in advance).
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The world may be understood in its empirical reality, as the senses and mind present it to consciousness and as natural science studies it, or it may be understood from the standpoint of philosophical truth and in its transcendental ideality. The world as representation is analogous to the relative truth of the everyday world (???samvrti-satya ???) of the Indians. There can be real knowledge "only of what exists in and for itself, and always in the same way," just as the Indians demand intrinsic being, ??? svabhāva ???. Schopenhauer maintained that the distinction between degrees of reality is expressed in Plato’s Myth of the Cave, "the most important passage in all his works," the meaning of which is that the world that appears to the senses has no true being but only a ceaseless becoming. This is also, he argues, a principal teaching of the Indians in the form of the doctrine of māyā, "by which is understood nothing but what Kant calls the phenomenon as opposed to the thing-in-itself."

By making it possible to distinguish true being from representation, the hidden thing-in-itself from appearance, Kant revealed with brilliant new clarity the truth of these ancient insights.   Without this separation of the real from the ideal there can in future be no serious philosophy.

Thus a teaching of Two Truths, shared by the Mādhyamika and Advait philosophers, finds a counterpart in the transcendental idealism of Schopenhauer. This brings us to the question of the relationship between the two different "truths" or levels of being. Here again we find a large measure of agreement: for all three of the teachings under review there is and can be no relationship. For Schopenhauer, causality is limited to the sphere of representation, which is in fact its creation; it cannot go beyond this to form a link with the being-in-itself of the world. For Advaita Vedānta and Hindu thought in general, there is and can be no common ground between the unreal and the real.

And for Nāgārjuna and the Madhyamaka, the world (??? samsāra ???) is nothing but reality (nirvāna) wrongly apprehended; it has no true being of its own, so there can be no question of relationship. Between the relative and the absolute truth, empirical reality and transcendental ideality, there exists no linkage. Like dream and waking consciousness, they exist on distinct planes and cannot be related.

And yet we have seen that the world cannot be dismissed as simply nonexistent. In consequence, its reality-status becomes shrouded in uncertainty, and all three of the teachings we are concerned with enter an area from which ambiguity cannot be eliminated. Which of the two truths is "true" at any given time and in any given context depends on the standpoint from which it is viewed. Schopenhauer speaks of the riddle constituted by the mysterious "world-knot," which binds together in an apparent unity the real and the ideal, and of "this dreamlike quality of the whole world" and "the phantasmagoria of the objective world." The world we know through the senses is, and it also is not; its comprehension is "not so much a knowledge as an illusion."

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It is no secret that theoretical physicists have been sounding quite similar to religious mystics for many decades now, so there is not so much a "faith in science", but a certain understanding that our truths are all relative in some way.

We observe impressions of sensory data filtered through the nervous system and never the actual so-called "objective world".

Let us not forget that exposure to the elements will cause the death of the creature in whose consciousness the entire cosmos depends.  Quite an incomprehensible riddle, that the empirical world that scientists claim to observe, measure, and quantify depends on the thin "psychic thread" of concious subjectivities.

Aa an example of pop-culture's fascination with such paradoxes, think of the film, The Matrix.  It brought transcendental idealism to the masses, no?  There was also Total Recall (the film adaption of Philip K Dick's story).
« Last Edit: June 23, 2017, 11:39:38 pm by Raskolnikov »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2017, 10:08:31 pm »
samvrti-satya:Literally  it means concurrent truth.
But in this context it means Shadow Truth.
The shadow always accompanies the body..one may think that the shadow has an independent existence.

Svabhava is a word used frequently in everyday conservation.One often says Mr X has a good or bad svabhava. Effectively,the implication here is about one's "innate,intrinsic tendency ".

Samsara:Again a word used often here.Although we pronounce it as Sansara.I'd say it means"worldly" or "materialistic" or base.
Some of my relatives tell me I need to be more "Sansaric"-what they mean is I should get married,have kids,chase the next promotion,move to a bigger house,get a loan,compete with the Joneses etc.

There is a reason why Schopenhauer is not taught in University.It is because the University is a part of the establishment.Teaching him would be akin to the Chruch sponsoring an atheistic book.


But there is a deeper reason too.Even if they wanted to have a Schopenhauer course in good faith,99.99% people won't be interested.
Not the socialists (too reactionary!),not the feminists and the social justice warriors  (too old-school!),not the progressives (too conservative!),not the happy go lucky kind(too depressing!), not the technology- obsessed(too much of a luddite!).

Here is a truth,if there ever was one:Schopenhauer will never sell.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Schopenhauer will never sell
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2017, 12:57:58 am »
"Schopenhauer will never sell."  ~  Classic HT, Holden ... classic


That post made me smirk a devilish grin, where I felt we are both so fortunate to have these inner eyes to see.

Thank you for verifying what those few words mean.  I knew I had heard samsara before ... sansara ... It's funny how so many want to push this sansara as something worth chasing, or somehow fulfilling.  Why can't they just live and let live, or live and let die, or simply consider the possibility that the Jones's are damn fools.

Like Daniel Quinn once wrote, it is not the top 1% who are so dangerous, but the 99% who defer to their status, who look at that as an enviable position to be in, to be "gods" ...   

Do you think that our genuine appreciation that Schopenhauer wrote to us is a sign of an inner wealth which no Jones or Patel in this world could ever take from us?

There must be many in our world who have a sense of the truths, not just Schopenhauer, but those ancient writers of Sanskrit, were articulating.

Quote from: Holden
There is a reason why Schopenhauer is not taught in University.It is because the University is a part of the establishment.

And the more brutal fact:
Quote from: Holden
But there is a deeper reason too. Even if they wanted to have a Schopenhauer course in good faith, 99.99% people won't be interested.

Not the socialists (too reactionary!),not the feminists and the social justice warriors  (too old-school!),not the progressives (too conservative!),not the happy go lucky kind(too depressing!), not the technology- obsessed(too much of a luddite!).

Here is a truth, if there ever was one:Schopenhauer will never sell.

This is all the more reason we can quietly thank our lucky stars that we have somehow, through whatever experiences or meditations or reflectiveness, been receptive "receivers" of his efforts.  This world can be a very dark and demented place ... as you so often point out, "devils in human form" tormenting one another,  subjecting themselves to being tormented, and then acting as though everything were just "grand."    Do you remember how much Caulfield hated that word, grand?

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OK, so, samvrti-satya in this context means Shadow Truth ... This is what Schopenhauer is referring to as the world as representation. 

Svabhava --- intrinsic being ... Do you remember reading where Schopenhauer refers to "orgasm" as the innermost essence of the will?  And yet, there are those of us who have seen through Nature's tricks, and we won't be duped.  For years I have stood up to people telling them that orgasms are soooo over-rated.  Many people will become defensive or abusive, accusing me of just not having had very good "sex".    No, Holden, I am quite confident that life is a cheat, and that sexual gratification is just one of the most fundamental hoaxes that has been played, and will continue to be played on our and other species.

May you continue to live courageously and to question the values of those who presume to advise you or to pressure you into "joining the herd".

It is safe to say that the majority of the members of our species must be under some kind of spell or hypnosis ...

To question "common sense values" is to cast doubt upon their optimistic delusions that "Nature/God knows what the hell it is doing."

I got a good laugh when Vonnegut wrote just before his death that he did not think evolution knew what the fuuck it was doing.

So many people believe silly things like, "everything happens for a reason" or that there is some kind of divine architect at work.

Why are they so threatened by the possibility that we are the product of some cosmic accident that keeps going around and around for what seems to be an eternity only because there really is no such thing as time or space at all.

"The I" is time and space.

Countless of our species have tried to make sense of something that there is no chance of making sense of.  Many walk around feeling defeated by our incapacity to understand life.  People say things like "we are so fuucked".

We might feel less frustrated if we face the limitations of our mental faculties.  Our brains are not equipped to fathom such things.

You hear New-Age type hogwash about "we only use 5 percent of our brains - imagine if we could us 10 or 25 percent."

I suspect that many human beings overestimate their own mental capacity.

At least I face the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

I'm going to smoke a cigarette and maybe read a few more pages of this book I had gotten the above from.

It touches upon things that have fascinated me ever since I read Schopenhauer.

My respect for him grows even deeper as I age.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2017, 10:03:52 pm by Raskolnikov »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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Thank you for writing here Mr.H.I think this message board is our own version of WWR or the Temptation to Exist.
In the US these Occupy Wall Street folks keep blaming the 1% as if the 99% are angels.

Here ,every single day they publish nonsense like the following:

https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.news18.com/amp/news/buzz/upsc-topper-tina-dabi-all-set-to-marry-rank-2-holder-athar-aamir-khan-1314920.html

https://www.google.co.in/amp/m.gadgetsnow.com/jobs/IIT-placements-Google-Oracle-Microsoft-offer-huge-salaries-on-Day-1/amp_articleshow/50006972.cms

http://googleweblight.com/i?u=http://m.indiatoday.in/education/story/iim-calcutta-placement-salary-hike/1/461346.html&grqid=iAm_XX1l&hl=en-IN

What are they trying to say? Become a top civil servant or a CXO, marry a person who earns even more than one does &then one would be over the moon? Then one would live happily ever after while the serfs toil in the field?

I can imagine how isolated Schopenhauer must have felt.News like this disgusts me.

But this hamster here is no longer on their wheel.He has kicked their wheel away for good.Now, he hides deep within the bowels of the earth in his solitary burrow,far,far away from the predatory gort-fatcats.

The book which you are reading ,I did read it somewhat a few months back.

There maybe people who can decipher the true nature of existence just by thinking about it but my journey towards the denial of the will to live has been through a lot of pain and suffering. Suffering has taught me a lot about what existence really is.

So,these fatcats  can go ahead and become civil czars, cxos and marry each other as much as they like,but this hamster here will be hiding in his deep and solitary burrow,with his copy of WWR and his bottle of fatcat repellent spray.

-Holden the Hiding Hamster.


La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2017, 10:23:52 am »
Herr Holden,
Thank you for your words. Very kind of you. I read the links. I suppose here happens the same thing but in a little different context. Here we have job fairs from time to time.
You write: "In the US these Occupy Wall Street folks keep blaming the 1% as if the 99% are angels." This is a remarkable observation, Holden. No, we are not angels. Not at all.
 
You write: What are they trying to say? Become a top civil servant or a CXO, marry a person who earns even more than one does &then one would be over the moon? Then one would live happily ever after while the serfs toil in the field?" Well, in the course of human history the serfs have always toiled in the fields, as you well know, and this will continue until humans are wiped off the face of the earth. This reminds me of the lesson classes in the secondary school. We studied the period of the French King Louis LXV, the Sun King. You see, war was his passion and he bled the French people, literally to death, even the nobility at that time was not spared the massacre in their ranks.Human nature remains unchanged.

You are a very brave person, Holden because you refuse to go along with this madness. The Hiding Hamster has understood the nature of human existence. Not many will attain this type of illumination. Stay safe.

Holden

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2017, 03:54:33 am »
Senor Raul,

Once again thank you very much for writing here. Could you please tell me how high is the divorce rate in Paraguay?
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #8 on: June 27, 2017, 08:04:04 am »
Herr Holden,
Thank you for your words. About the divorce rate I can only tell you what I hear or read. We have a statistics and census office but I don´t think they have an accurate rate. Just to give you an example, I remember that in 2014 there were 550 marriages more or less but 530 divorces in Asuncion. Most weddings here happen in January. Probably there would be more divorce cases if it weren´t for money issues. To file a divorce case costs mor or less USD 1,000 if there is common property but if there is no property probably USD 5,000 depending on the case.

Better late than never. I downloaded a biography about Arthur Schopenhauer written by an author named David Cartwright. I think I will finish it in maybe, who knows in two years. I read the first two chapters: 1 The Affirmation of the Will and 2 A Tour for a Trade. I underlined some information that caught my attention. Although you already know a great deal maybe you might find them interesting.

1805   April 20: Heinrich Floris dies; his wife and son believe that his death is a suicide.
1812   Winter: Regularly observes psychiatric patients at the Berlin Charité.
1813   May: Fearing military conscription and an attack by Napoleon, Schopenhauer leaves Berlin for a short stay at Weimar.
1819   Spring: While Schopenhauer is in Italy, his daughter is born in Dresden; the child dies late that summer.
1825   May: Returns to Berlin and begins to study Spanish.
1832   Beginning of the year: A depressed Schopenhauer isolates himself in his rooms for two months.
1835   It is likely that a second daughter, who dies in infancy, is born in Frankfurt.
1842   Caroline Marquet dies.
Summer: Meets with his sister Adele in Frankfurt, their first personal meeting in twenty years.
1848   March: Street fighting in Frankfurt disrupts Schopenhauer's life.
1849   December: Laments the loss of his white poodle Atma; soon thereafter acquires a brown poodle, also called Atma.

1 The Affimation of the Will
Arthur would recognize his own tendencies toward depression, anxiety, and melancholy as descending from his father: “Inherited from my father is the anxiety which I myself curse…and combat with all the force of my will.”

2 A Tour for a Trade
Sabbath-keeping devils in human form, of course, could also practice, in good faith, even worse deeds: “Then think of the Christians in America whose inhabitants were for the most part, and in Cuba, entirely exterminated.”84 Slaves and Native Americans, however, did not keep the Sabbath, so they were guilty of the vice of “Sabbathbreaking.”
The tombs of kings, heroes, and poets united in a single place those who were separated by social standing, space, and time, Arthur noted. Death was the great leveler. Arthur wondered what these great men took with them. He answered his own question: “The Kings left behind crown and scepter, heroes their weapons, poets their reputation; but the great spirits among them, whose distinction came from themselves and not from things external to them, take their greatness with them. They take everything they had here.

Had others had Napoleon's power, they would have done the same. But Napoleon's rare power also
…revealed the whole malice of the human will; and the suffering of his age, as the necessary other side of the will, revealed the misery that is inseparably united with the evil will, whose total appearance is the world. But this is just the purpose of the world; that it will recognize the unspeakable misery with which the will to life is bound and is, strictly speaking, one. Bonaparte's appearance thus contributes greatly to this purpose. The purpose of the world is not to be an insipid fool's paradise; rather, it is to be a tragedy in which the will to life recognizes itself and turns away from itself. Bonaparte is only a powerful mirror of the human will to life.

The difference between the person who causes suffering and the person who suffers is only in the world of appearance. All of this is the one will to life which is identical with great suffering, and through cognition of this, it can turn away from itself and end itself.102

The “above-mentioned way of looking at things” is to view the world and human existence as something that should not be, a claim that implied for Schopenhauer that both the fate of humankind and the behavior of most is miserable. Even the person of a fine nature and the genius is included in this description and, as such, is in reality a fellow prisoner. So, despite the drive to isolate themselves from one another, the noble and the base, the genial and the common, all are condemned prisoners whose proper address to one another should be “…instead of Sir, Monsieur, and so on, Leidengefährte, socii malorum, compagnon de misères, my fellow sufferer. However strange this might sound, it accords with the facts, puts the other person in the most correct light, and reminds us of the most necessary things, tolerance, patience, forbearance, and love of one's neighbour, which everyone needs and each of us, therefore, owes to another

“In my seventeenth year, without any learned school education, I was affected by the wretchedness of life, as was the Buddha when in his youth he caught sight of sickness, old age, pain, and death. The truth, which the world clearly and loudly proclaimed, soon vanquished the Jewish dogma that had been imprinted in my mind, and the result for me was that this world could not be the work of an all-good being, but rather that of a devil who had summoned into existence creatures, in order to gloat over the sight of their agony.”

Therefore, our worth, both moral and intellectual, does not come to us from without, but proceeds from the very depths of our own nature; and no Pestalozzian pedagogies can turn a born simpleton into a thinker; never!”. A thinker, for Schopenhauer, was born so.



Holden

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2017, 08:52:19 am »
Senor Raul,
Thank you for writing.I feel so wretched among people that I get tempted to hang myself.Only the thought of pain holds me back.People think of my as a very rude and unfeeling man.A very jealous and selfish man.I really am the Underground man Dostoevsky wrote about.

It feels terrible to be alive. I feel terrible.I feel as if I am suffocating, it is such a struggle to draw every breath. It is such a bother.

Tell you what,a few days back I was terribly sad.The day I posted 5-6 times here.You know how people say that sex takes their mind off other things.Well,it does not work for me that way.But I have to say that literature does take off the edge of the pain.

I am such a coward.I just cannot face the life.Why am I on this hell-planet?

My tragedy is that while I am very much older than Holden now,I am still as lost as he was.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2017, 04:56:04 pm »
Herr Holden,
As always thank you for writing. I don´t think there is anything wrong in how you view life. Yes, life is a calamity. Life is a curse. Life is torment, pain, and tedium. I am also a terrible human being and I would be more terrible if I dared to put my dark thoughts into actions. I am a coward too.
You passionately have written about life, and above all, felt about it. One acquaintance, who reads a little of psychology, said that I am also rude, unfeeling, selfish, etc. She said I should follow a treatment because I suffer from alexythimia, that is to say, emotional blindness. Ever heard of that word? Last month another person told me that I should go to her evangelical church and the pastors would cast out the devil in me. She said that would help me take interest in something in life.
Somebody else asked me what would happen in our lives if there was no suffering. He said that suffering was good because it gives us impulse or drive to achieve goals.
You, Holden and few others, are horrified. Yes, you see life in all its horrors and you feel repulsed. You are a soul. If you were a coward, Holden, you would have not been writing in this blog and sharing your thoughts. While others or millions love life and refuse to see themselves as lambs to slaughter in this place called Earth. I suppose they still have the capacity for endless distractions and games.  They have married to life.
And I think we will always suffer for eternity. Endless pain and agony.
We are born, because of our thoughtless progenitors, and unfortunately there is no way to be, forgive if my English is not correct, unborn. Stay well.

Holden

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Faith in Silence
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2017, 11:31:40 pm »
What do you think of this Senor, Raul?

La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #12 on: June 28, 2017, 07:23:17 am »
Herr Holden,
I dont watch much TV and watch movies either but I suppose a movie by Martin Scorsese is worth watching. I only saw Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro. Many years ago I tried to read a very difficult book, Atheist Manifesto by Michel Onfray where I learned of Father Ferreira and his missionary work and the persecution and tortured this Portuguese suffered in Japan. That´s my only reference. Silence was written by author Shusaku Endo.

Holden

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Gatsby
« Reply #13 on: June 28, 2017, 08:39:54 am »
Senor Raul,you are very knowledgeable.

Here is a quote for you:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther … And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Faith in Science
« Reply #14 on: June 28, 2017, 11:55:56 am »
Herr Holden,
I think it is you who is much knowledgeable. You cover philosophy, mathematics and literature. Not many are able to reach that much. I trust you are preparing your future stories in this blog or, who knows, you might write them in your own blog.  Be ready in case some people steal your words. That is the curse of every author.  Still thinking of leaving your job and go roaming this world? Stay well.