Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
SM: What is not being said is that Zadokite is the same word as Sadducee, the Greekish NT term for the established priesthood (the successors of Zadok). Most of the sources I went through just assume you know they are synonyms, just as they assume you know they are often associated with Samaritans (because any priestly class with a temple-based form of Judaism might invoke legends of Zadok and lines of descent to legimate their status, including). The problem with what we know fo the Sadducees is that the sources are hostile and, of course, not historic in any modern sense. So how do we figure out in a modern historic sense who they were and what they believed? Note well, though, the treatment the term gets in the JE's section on 'In Literature'. CJ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=40letter=S Name from High Priest Zadok. Name given to the party representing views and practises of the Law and interests of Temple and priesthood directly opposite to those of the Pharisees. The singular form, Ẓadduḳi (Greek, Σαδδουκαῖος), is an adjective denoting an adherent of the Bene Ẓadoḳ, the descendants of Zadok, the high priests who, tracing their pedigree back to Zadok, the chief of the priesthood in the days of David and Solomon (I Kings i. 34, ii. 35; I Chron. xxix. 22), formed the Temple hierarchy all through the time of the First and Second Temples down to the days of Ben Sira (II Chron. xxxi. 10; Ezek. xl. 46, xliv. 15, xlviii. 11; Ecclus. [Sirach] li. 12 [9], Hebr.), but who degenerated under the influence of Hellenism, especially during the rule of the Seleucidæ, when to be a follower of the priestly aristocracy was tantamount to being a worldly-minded Epicurean. The name, probably coined by the Ḥasidim as opponents of the Hellenists, became in the course of time a party name applied to all the aristocratic circles connected with the high priests by marriage and other social relations, as only the highest patrician families intermarried with the priests officiating at the Temple in Jerusalem (Ḳid. iv. 5; Sanh. iv. 2; comp. Josephus, B. J. ii. 8, § 14). Haughty men these priests are, saying which woman is fit to be married by us, since our father is high priest, our uncles princes and rulers, and we presiding officers at the Temple—these words, put into the mouth of Nadab and Abihu (Tan., Aḥare Mot, ed. Buber, 7; Pesiḳ. 172b; Midr. Teh. to Ps. lxxviii. 18), reflect exactly the opinion prevailing among the Pharisees concerning the Sadducean priesthood (comp. a similar remark about the haughty aristocracy of Jerusalem in Shab. 62b). The Sadducees, says Josephus, have none but the rich on their side (Ant. xiii. 10, § 6). The party name was retained long after the Zadokite high priests had made way for the Hasmonean house and the very origin of the name had been forgotten. Nor is anything definite known about the political and religious views of the Sadducees except what is recorded by their opponents in the works of Josephus, in the Talmudic literature, and in the New Testament writings. Read more: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=40letter=Ssearch=sadducee#ixzz0cNlVFfME Legendary Origin. Josephus relates nothing concerning the origin of what he chooses to call the sect or philosophical school of the Sadducees; he knows only that the three sects—the Pharisees, Essenes, and Sadducees—dated back to very ancient times (ib. xviii. 1, § 2), which words, written from the point of view of King Herod's days, necessarily point to a time prior to John Hyrcanus (ib. xiii. 8, § 6) orthe Maccabean war (ib. xiii. 5, § 9). Among the Rabbis the following legend circulated: Antigonus of Soko, successor of Simon the Just, the last of the Men of the Great Synagogue, and consequently living at the time of the influx of Hellenistic ideas, taught the maxim, Be not like servants who serve their master for the sake of wages [lit. a morsel], but be rather like those who serve without thought of receiving wages (Ab. i. 3); whereupon two of his disciples, Zadok and Boethus, mistaking the high ethical purport of the maxim, arrived at the conclusion that there was no future retribution, saying, What servant would work all day without obtaining his due reward in the evening? Instantly they broke away from the Law and lived in great luxury, using many silver and gold vessels at their banquets; and they established schools which declared the enjoyment of this life to be the goal of man, at the same time pitying the Pharisees for their bitter privation in this world with no hope of another world to compensate them. These two schools were called, after their founders, Sadducees and Boethusians (Ab. R. N. v.). The unhistorical character of this legend is shown by the simple fact, learned from Josephus, that the Boethusians represent the family of high priests created by King Herod after his marriage to the daughter of Simon, the son of Boethus (Ant. xv. 9, § 3; xix. 6, § 2; see Boethusians). Obviously
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
SM: And crucial is that in the Scrolls the foremost grievance against the priests is that they have distorted the calendar and are holding their festivals at the wrong time. Clearly, the Essenes (if that is what they were) of the Scrolls were essentially *dissident Sadducees*. Calendrical questions in early religion cannot be underemphasized. For a thousand years Christians fought fiercely over the proper date on which to celebrate Easter. For more than three hundred years after the Canopus decree of Ptolemy III Euergetes (and, the Egyptians being expert astronomers who knows for how many years before that?) the Egyptians refused to accept leap years until the Julian calendar was imposed upon them by Augustus. Well a solar calendar makes very good sense for farmers. A lunar calendar makes me think of monotheism coming from belief in a moon god and temple cult (I'm just imposing my modernist mind on all this, this is not scholarship). Pharisees and Sadducees are identified with 'lunisolar' calendars. Christian Easter if fixed using lunisolar means. I think one reason why the hypothetical sectarian settlement of Qumran has been pinned to the 'Essenes' is because of the solar calendar argument. However, evidence for other calendars have also been found in the texts. Some now doubt the 'sectarian settlement hypothesis', saying Qumran was a military site and that in times of trouble the texts were stored near there. Others question the existence of 'Essenes'--for example, they cite instead some sort of reformed Zealot movement, with John the Baptist as its shining example. Others say that Qumran was probably a military site only later claimed by Jewish sectarians of some sort. We clearly are not dealing with history in any modern sense here. We have loads of speculation, most likely corrupted/variant religious texts, pre-modern histories and literature, and archaelogical evidence though. http://www.essene.com/Church/ShawuiCalendar.htm Dead Sea Scroll Calendars Several calendar systems have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including solar and lunar methods of reckoning. Before very many of the Scrolls were translated, there was much talk of a solar calendar used by Essenes at Qumran. Once more scrolls became available, with their many references to lunar and other methods of reckoning, scholars have corrected the earlier misinformation about a sole use of a solar 364 day calendar among Essenes. All serious scholars now concede that a lunar calendar system is also documented by the scrolls. It is likely that the many types of calendar systems represented at Qumran are indicative of the general transition, from lunar phase to fixed week calendars, which became popular among some sects and in the dominant Roman church. Although some Dead Sea Scrolls do have a relationship to Yeshua's Nasarene Essenes, the 364 day solar calendars of Qumran do not seem to among them. (Qumran was probably an Osseaen Camp, rather than a Nasarene community. According to Epiphanius, these two sects were related, but not identical. They probably represent the two Essene sects spoken of by Josephus. They differed in such basic areas as marriage, and perhaps Calendar observance. They both shared a vegetarian diet and a disdain for Pharisee sacrifices and scriptures.) I'm not vouching for the veracity or profundity of anything I'm citing here. I'll just say it was interesting to try and take in. http://www.jewishmag.com/14mag/essenes/essenes.htm One of the differences between the Essenes and the Pharisees was in the calendar. The Jewish people today follow the calendar of the Pharisees. This calendar is based on the moon. The month will have either 29 or 30 days depending on the sighting of the moon. Since a lunar year is 29.5 days times 12 months equaling 354 days. A solar year is 364.25 days, therefore the lunar year is short by 10.25 days from the solar year. The rabbis therefore had to add extra month every three years to make up this difference, otherwise the holidays, (such as Pesach would not be celebrated in the beginning of the summer) would rotate around the year. To the Essenes, this calendar was an abomination. Their calendar was a solar calendar. Each month had 30 days. One month in three had 31 days, hence each season (three months ) had 91 days. Each year had 364 days. The holidays began on the same day of the week each year (as opposed to our calendar where the New Year varies from year to year on which day of the week it falls). Practically speaking this caused a big rift in relations between the Essenes and the other two groups. When the Pharisees and Sadduccees celebrated the holidays, the Essenes worked. Conversely, when the Essenes celebrated the holidays, the other two groups worked. Although no known record of conflict is recorded, we can deduce that due to the reclusive nature of the Essenes, conflict was minimized. Historians have long pointed to the Essenes as the forerunner to the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
On 1/7/10, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: ^ CB: Luther didn't have that much of a conflict belieiving in both, as most of the Bible is Ye Olde Testament, which is full of affirmation of the right divine of princes and landlords. Moses was a king of sorts, handing down the Ten Commandments as law, i.e. state backed custom. Most of the Bible is the history of a state power, with standing bodies of armed men, and a repressive apparatus. David was a king. Solomon was a king. The communism is in the New Testament, which is a small section. I think my posts show that the 'communism' parts are not really just the NT nor even early Christians (or early Christian Jews). The term 'Essenes', as an influential branch of Pharisee Judaism (for an analogy think of the later Sufi relative to both Sunni and Shia Islam). That is, what were in effect 'Christian' and/or 'Jewish' Essenes. ^ CB: I didn't mean to ignore your discussion of Essenes. But Essenes are not in the text of the Bible, or at least the Bible that Luther had, are they ? ^^^ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
I'm not sure what Martin Luther knew or when he knew it. But perhaps the more interesting groups are the Anabaptists who emerge in Europe--which brings us back to the 19th century, eventually. I grew up close to Mennonite communities, and their intellectuals still talk of why they now embrace 'pacifism' because of all the violence and conflict in post-Reformation Europe. No, the Essenes are not a group mentioned in the Bible, if I am at all clear on what groups do get referred to. But some have explicitly linked John the Baptist to the Essenes, while others point out, actually baptism by full immersion was common across a lot of groups within the broader Abrahamism. Others point out how the Essenes seem to have beliefs that come from other traditions as well. You might find these texts and discussions interesting. http://nazirene.org/essene_gospel_of_peace_book1.htm http://mb-soft.com/believe/txo/pharise2.htm CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
That Nazarene.org site is, to say the least, 'fascinating'. If I understand such discussions correctly, the Essenes might have emerged or at least co-extended to the Samaritans. And Jewish Essenes might be identified as part of the Pharisees. I probably don't know ethnicities from branches of religions from sects from sub-sects from philosophies. But one distinction would be: did this or that particular group seek converts? On to more scholarly sources, this whole thread is well worth reading: http://www.mail-archive.com/or...@panda.mscc.huji.ac.il/msg01050.html In prior posts, I have discussed the possible connection between Enochian sects of Judaism and the Rechabite clans (or guilds). By referring to Boccaccini's marvelous _BEYOND THE ESSENE HYPOTHESIS_, I am careful to point out that Boccaccini would NOT agree with me that the Essenes came out of a Samaritan matrix. On page 29 he writes: Epiphanius offers another piece of interesting evidence. As did other late Christian authors, he mistook the Essenes for a Samaritan sect, yet he located a genos of Jews with a strikingly similar name, the Ossaioi, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea (Haer. 19.1.1-4, 10). The idea that the Essene movement had to be PARTICULARLY Judah-ite does not seem to cross Boccaccini's mind very seriously. And yet he notes comments about the ANTIQUITY of the Essenes that would, by definition, have to precede the emergence of Judah (the son of Israel): Page 24: Pliny, takes pleasure in amazing his readers by saying of the Essenes for thousands of centuries a people has existed that is eternal... Some modern readers are already quick to dismiss such comments as propaganda or error, and that the Essenes can only be defined within the confines of the JEWISH (i.e., Judah-ite) theology, if not the post-Maccabean Jewish theology! And yet the Boccaccini is perfectly comfortable discussing Enochian theology that precedes even the rise of the Zadokites. At some point, one has to wonder about the semantic confusion that could be standing in the way of seeing the multiple possibilities for interpreting the roots of Enochian sectarianism, and its influences on the rest of Hebrew thought. Historians point to the emphasis on Zadokites in the Dead Sea Scrolls as an indication that the Essenes were derived from group of Jewish Zadokite priests. In the past I have pointed out that another interpretation is that since the Essenes were a voluntary association, Zadokite priests could have elected to JOIN the Essenes, rather than the Essenes were established to protect Zadokite preeminence. But there are other solutions as well. After the rise of the Maccabeans and the Hasmoneans, the Samaritan temple was quite proud of the authenticity (which doesn't appear challenged) of their OWN Zadokite priesthood. This priesthood comes from a time that a Jewish high priest fled/moved to Samaria and established his lineage there. This is a slightly different trajectory from the rise of Dositheanism, where a devotion to the Jerusalem cultus is transplanted amongst Samaritans which creates ethnically Samaritan people who are religiously Jewish. So now we have THREE possible avenues for the Zadokite presence moving into Samarian environs. And thus THREE possible ways for Samaritan Zadokites to become a part of the pan-Hebrew Essene movement. But *WAS* the Essene movement pan-Hebrew? The Suda/Suidas material explicitly says it was. It says that the Rechabites (certainly non-Jewish, but based on Jeremiah's discussion at least partly Hebrew) were the source of the Essenes. Here's a helpful URL on the Suda article: http://www.stoa.org/sol-bin//search.pl? Search for the Epsilon article number 3123. Search results for epsilon,3123 in Adler number: Headword: Essaioi Adler number: epsilon,3123 Translated headword: Essenes, Essaioi Translation: Jews, ascetics, who differ exceedingly from the Pharisees and scribes with reference to their mode of life;[1] progeny[2] of Jonadab, son of Rechab the righteous. They are fond of one another and more pious than others: they turn away from pleasure as from an evil, but they assume moderation, self-control, and the capacity not to succumb to passions as virtues. And marriage is despised among them, but taking to themselves other people's children while they are still young and teaching them, they consider them as kin, and stamp them with their own customs. And they reject all baseness and practice every other virtue. They cultivate moral speech, and are generally assiduous in contemplation. And hence they are called Essaioi, [Sitters][3] with the name signifying this, that is, [they are] contemplators.[4] Essaioi very much excel and are very much superior to the Pharisees in their mode of life.[5] Greek Original: Essaioi: Ioudaioi, askêtai, Pharisaiôn kai grammateôn tên askêsin ex epimetrou dianestêkotes, progonoi Iônadab, huiou Rhichab tou dikaiou.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
All this puts me to mind of that masterwork of 20th century science fiction, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'. Martin Luther certainly didn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls or all the new scholarship on them to refer to. Think of the NT as a Christian Talmud. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/78441912.html Nobody doubts the scrolls’ authenticity, but the question of authorship has implications for understanding the history of both Judaism and Christianity. In 164 B.C., a group of Jewish dissidents, the Maccabees, overthrew the Seleucid Empire that then ruled Judea. The Maccabees established an independent kingdom and, in so doing, tossed out the priestly class that had controlled the temple in Jerusalem since the time of King Solomon. The turmoil led to the emergence of several rival sects, each one vying for dominance. If the Qumran texts were written by one such sect, the scrolls “help us to understand the forces that operated after the Maccabean Revolt and how various Jewish groups reacted to those forces,” says New York University professor of Jewish and Hebraic studies Lawrence Schiffman in his book Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls. “While some sects were accommodating themselves to the new order in various ways, the Dead Sea group decided it had to leave Jerusalem altogether in order to continue its unique way of life.” And if Qumran indeed housed religious ascetics who turned their backs on what they saw as Jerusalem’s decadence, then the Essenes may well represent a previously unknown link between Judaism and Christianity. “John the Baptizer, Jesus’ teacher, probably learned from the Qumran Essenes—though he was no Essene,” says James Charlesworth, a scrolls scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary. Charlesworth adds that the scrolls “disclose the context of Jesus’ life and message.” Moreover, the beliefs and practices of the Qumran Essenes as described in the scrolls—vows of poverty, baptismal rituals and communal meals—mirror those of early Christians. As such, some see Qumran as the first Christian monastery, the cradle of an emerging faith. --- Of course none of this rules out the possibility that Qumran was a religious community of scribes. Some scholars are not troubled that the Essenes are not explicitly mentioned in the scrolls, saying that the term for the sect is a foreign label. Schiffman believes they were a splinter group of priests known as the Sadducees. The notion that the scrolls are “a balanced collection of general Jewish texts” must be rejected, he writes in Biblical Archaeologist. “There is now too much evidence that the community that collected those scrolls emerged out of sectarian conflict and that [this] conflict sustained it throughout its existence.” Ultimately, however, the question of who wrote the scrolls is more likely to be resolved by archaeologists scrutinizing Qumran’s every physical remnant than by scholars poring over the texts. The dead sea scrolls amazed scholars with their remarkable similarity to later versions. But there were also subtle differences. For instance, one scroll expands on the book of Genesis: in Chapter 12, when Abraham’s wife Sarah is taken by the Pharaoh, the scroll depicts Sarah’s beauty, describing her legs, face and hair. And in Chapter 13, when God commands Abraham to walk “through the land in the length,” the scroll adds a first-person account by Abraham of his journey. The Jewish Bible, as accepted today, was the product of a lengthy evolution; the scrolls offered important new insights into the process by which the text was edited during its formation. The scrolls also set forth a series of detailed regulations that challenge the religious laws practiced by the priests in Jerusalem and espoused by other Jewish sects such as the Pharisees. Consequently, scholars of Judaism consider the scrolls to be a missing link between the period when religious laws were passed down orally and the Rabbinic era, beginning circa A.D. 200, when they were systematically recorded—eventually leading to the legal commentaries that became the Talmud. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
On Jan 11, 2010, at 10:11 PM, CeJ wrote: Historians point to the emphasis on Zadokites in the Dead Sea Scrolls as an indication that the Essenes were derived from group of Jewish Zadokite priests. What is not being said is that Zadokite is the same word as Sadducee, the Greekish NT term for the established priesthood (the successors of Zadok). And crucial is that in the Scrolls the foremost grievance against the priests is that they have distorted the calendar and are holding their festivals at the wrong time. Clearly, the Essenes (if that is what they were) of the Scrolls were essentially *dissident Sadducees*. Calendrical questions in early religion cannot be underemphasized. For a thousand years Christians fought fiercely over the proper date on which to celebrate Easter. For more than three hundred years after the Canopus decree of Ptolemy III Euergetes (and, the Egyptians being expert astronomers who knows for how many years before that?) the Egyptians refused to accept leap years until the Julian calendar was imposed upon them by Augustus. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Also interesting is what Engels wrote in 1843: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm The New Moral World No. 21, November 18, 1843 Germany had her Social Reformers as early as the Reformation. Soon after Luther had begun to proclaim church reform and to agitate the people against spiritual authority, the peasantry of Southern and Middle Germany rose in a general insurrection against their temporal lords. Luther always stated his object to be, to return to original Christianity in doctrine and practice; the peasantry took exactly the same standing, and demanded, therefore, not only the ecclesiastical, but also the social practice of primitive Christianity. They conceived a state of villainy and servitude, such as they lived under, to be inconsistent with the doctrines of the Bible; they were oppressed by a set of haughty barons and earls, robbed and treated like their cattle every day, they had no law to protect them, and if they had, they found nobody to enforce it. Such a state contrasted very much with the communities of early Christians and the doctrines of Christ, as laid down in the Bible. Therefore they arose and began a war against their lords, which could only be a war of extermination. Thomas Munzer, a preacher, whom they placed at their head, issued a proclamation, [162] full, of course, of the religious and superstitious nonsense of the age, but containing also among others, principles like these: That according to the Bible, no Christian is entitled to hold any property whatever exclusively for himself; that community of property is the only proper state for a society of Christians; that it is not allowed to any good Christian to have any authority or command over other Christians, nor to hold any office of government or hereditary power, but on the contrary, that, as all men are equal before God, so they ought to be on earth also. These doctrines were nothing but conclusions drawn from the Bible and from Luther’s own writings; but the Reformer was not prepared to go as far as the people did; notwithstanding the courage he displayed against the spiritual authorities, he had not freed himself from the political and social prejudices of his age; he believed as firmly in the right divine of princes and landlords to trample upon the people, as he did in the Bible. ^ CB: Luther didn't have that much of a conflict belieiving in both, as most of the Bible is Ye Olde Testament, which is full of affirmation of the right divine of princes and landlords. Moses was a king of sorts, handing down the Ten Commandments as law, i.e. state backed custom. Most of the Bible is the history of a state power, with standing bodies of armed men, and a repressive apparatus. David was a king. Solomon was a king. The communism is in the New Testament, which is a small section. ^^^ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
^ CB: Luther didn't have that much of a conflict belieiving in both, as most of the Bible is Ye Olde Testament, which is full of affirmation of the right divine of princes and landlords. Moses was a king of sorts, handing down the Ten Commandments as law, i.e. state backed custom. Most of the Bible is the history of a state power, with standing bodies of armed men, and a repressive apparatus. David was a king. Solomon was a king. The communism is in the New Testament, which is a small section. I think my posts show that the 'communism' parts are not really just the NT nor even early Christians (or early Christian Jews). The term 'Essenes', as an influential branch of Pharisee Judaism (for an analogy think of the later Sufi relative to both Sunni and Shia Islam). That is, what were in effect 'Christian' and/or 'Jewish' Essenes. Talmudic Rabbinical Judaism is actually a development later than early Christianity, but we can see it clearly springs from Pharisee Judaism, post-second temple, with the important 'learning and dissemination centers', not coincidentally, originally located where Shia Islam's still are. The OT material is a real mix and would take far more knowledge than I have of it to make much sense here in such a limited space. However, I think more recent analysis is that it is largely revived, revised, and combined myths imposed on and justifying a sort of historic, royal rule that is no where near as ancient as popular belief would have it. Its rule was not that much before the early Christian period and was quickly overwhelmed by and circumscribed by the Persian and Roman realms (with a brief Greco-Macedonian/Alexander period in there somewhere). Materially it seems to have emerged from of a much larger, dominant Canaanite culture (as did the Phoenicians, who got all over the Mediterranean in colonies rivalling the Greeks and Romans), and as for archaelogical remnants in what is now 'Israel', it seems to be confused with Samaritan culture. The real issue with the Christian bible is all that later handiwork done to make the OT and NT appear to be a 'seamless' text. Rabbincal Talmudic Judaism largely develops as a rejection of Christian Judaism--they obviously took great pains to try and purge Christian influences out of their own developing canon, which is an early middle age codification of 'oral law'. It is also a continuation post-temple of schisms along some older understanding of Judaism vs. Samaritanism. Little wonder perhaps that the early Christians made such great conversions among the Judeo-Samaritans, a people that post-mos know next to nothing about. A couple more points. When early Islam identified an Abrahamic tradition (a term now largely adopted by Christians and Jews), it was identifying a tradition that was much more diverse than what we know today (as we anachronistically and what we, with great bias, impose largely as European Christian and European Jewish ideas onto the insight). One clear dichotomy was between monotheists and polytheists. And that is a distinction that cuts across a lot of cultures and religions in the Levant, Babylonia, the ME and W. Asia. That would have included proselytising Arab Jews, monotheist Arab tribesman (who may have been practicing an isolated form of 'Judaism'), etc. If Abraham could be identified as an historic personage rather than just a legendary figure, one is hard-pressed to make him a 'Jew' of any modern or even late classical sort. He appears to have come from an area where Aramaic (a W. Semitic language) and Kurdish (an Indo-European language, close to Persian, Pashtun) were spoken. One highly speculative account says the original 'Jews' were mixed tribal people migrating into what would later be called 'Judea'--mostly outcasts-- who were predominantly Indo-Europeans (linguistically speaking) and who only later assimilated to dominant Aramaic/Canaanite. How ironic for all the racists caught up in ideas about 'Semitic' being someting to do with race, including the Nazis and the Zionists. The best known of the suppressed gospels of Jesus by the way was written in Aramaic, most likely for Aramaic-speaking Jews who considered themselves 'Jewish Christians'. One reason it ultimately might have been suppressed was its Christology not meshing with the ones that did get to remain canon (although none really explicitly put forth a 'trinitarian' view of Christ, 3/4 do tend to play up his 'divinity'). Rabbinical Judaism largely rejects Jesus's role as messiah, so they don't even have to touch on his divinity or status as god. Which brings me back to the original point. Attempts to revive a sort of proto-communism because it was found in the early Christian religions have strong analogies in Judaism and Islam as well as other 'Abrahamic' religions. But I think one strong limitation has always been it is a communism that rejects the mainstream of humanity, the larger society that plays material host to it. CJ
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
THESE were not Christians. I'm not sure we would call them communists
today but the source is a late 19th century, early 20th century work:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=Eartid=478
Their Communism.(comp. B. M. ii. 11).
No one possesses a house absolutely his own, one which does not at
the same time belong to all; for in addition to living together in
companies [ḥaburot] their houses are open also to their adherents
coming from other quarters [comp. Aboti. 5]. They have one storehouse
for all, and the same diet; their garments belong to all in common,
and their meals are taken in common. . . . Whatever they receive for
their wages after having worked the whole day they do not keep as
their own, but bring into the common treasury for the use of all; nor
do they neglect the sick who are unable to contribute their share, as
they have in their treasury ample means to offer relief to those in
need. [One of the two Ḥasidean and rabbinical terms for renouncing all
claim to one's property in order to deliver it over to common use is
hefker (declaring a thing ownerless; comp. Sanh. 49a); Joab, as the
type of an Essene, made his house like the wilderness—that is,
ownerless and free from the very possibility of tempting men to theft
and sexual sin—and he supported the poor of the city with the most
delicate food. Similarly, King Saul declared his whole property free
for use in warfare (Yalḳ.,Sam. i. 138). The other term is heḳdesh
nekasim (consecrating one's goods; comp. 'Ar. vi. ; Pes. 57: The
owners of the mulberry-trees consecrated them to God; Ta'an. 24a:
Eliezer of Beeroth consecrated to charity the money intended for his
daughter's dowry, saying to his daughter, 'Thou shalt have no more
claim upon it than any of the poor in Israel.' Jose ben Joezer,
because he had an unworthy son, consecrated his goods to God (B. B.
133b). Formerly men used to take all they had and give it to the poor
(Luke xviii. 22); in Usha the rabbis decreed that no one should give
away more than the fifth part of his property ('Ar. 28a; Tosef., 'Ar.
iv. 23; Ket. 50a).] They pay respect and honor to, and bestow care
upon, their elders, acting toward them as children act toward their
parents, and supporting them unstintingly by their handiwork and in
other ways
Not even the most cruel tyrants, continues Philo, possibly with
reference to King Herod, have ever been able, to bring any charge
against these holy Essenes, but all have been compelled to regard them
as truly free men. In Philo's larger work on the Jews, of which only
fragments have been preserved in Eusebius' Præparatio Evangelica
(viii.), the following description of the Essenes is given (ch. xi.):
Read more:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=Eartid=478#1297#ixzz0bzYDE8DA
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
From there he got the chance in 1849[11] to emigrate to the United States (as one of the Forty-Eighters). ^ CB: I wonder if he fought in the US Civil War. I don't see Weitling mentioned in this section from Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature the critique of other communist tendencies below from the Communist Manifesto. In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm 3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others. The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form. The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians). The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement. Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat to an organisation of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans. In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel. Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society. But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them — such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production — all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character. The significance of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
It was Weitling or another major exile that was involved in the American abolitionist movement and organized a German-speaking regiment in the Union army. I need to check my book on the Ohio Hegelians. . . . Oh, the individual in question is August Willich. At 08:48 AM 1/6/2010, c b wrote: From there he got the chance in 1849[11] to emigrate to the United States (as one of the Forty-Eighters). ^ CB: I wonder if he fought in the US Civil War. I don't see Weitling mentioned in this section from Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature the critique of other communist tendencies below from the Communist Manifesto. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Yeah, and Willich was a true communist or something, as M E categorize the Socialist and Communist Lit CB On 1/6/10, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: It was Weitling or another major exile that was involved in the American abolitionist movement and organized a German-speaking regiment in the Union army. I need to check my book on the Ohio Hegelians. . . . Oh, the individual in question is August Willich. At 08:48 AM 1/6/2010, c b wrote: From there he got the chance in 1849[11] to emigrate to the United States (as one of the Forty-Eighters). ^ CB: I wonder if he fought in the US Civil War. I don't see Weitling mentioned in this section from Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature the critique of other communist tendencies below from the Communist Manifesto. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] ] Could God die again ? : Dennett
Daniel_Dennett wikipedia note: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-February/019940.html Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. Dennett's research centers on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Dennett is the author of several major books on evolution and consciousness. He is a leading proponent of the theory known by some as Neural Darwinism (see also greedy reductionism). http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-February/019941.html http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-February/019942.html Dennett is also well known for his argument against qualia, which claims that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. This argument was presented most comprehensively in his book Consciousness Explained. The term Neural Darwinism is used in two different ways. In one usage it is the theory that consciousness can be explained by Darwinian selection and evolution of neural states. In the other it describes a process in neurodevelopment where synapses which are being most used are kept while least used connections are destroyed or 'pruned' to form neural pathways. Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to distinguish between acceptable and erroneous forms of reductionism. Whereas reductionism means explaining a thing in terms of what it reduces to, greedy reductionism comes when the thing we are trying to understand is explained away instead of explained, so that we fail to gain any additional understanding of the original target Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptionist, in line with the views of zoologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptionism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the views of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. This has led to some backlash from Gould and his supporters, who allege that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's. [1] ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ? : Dennett
Another post from Ralph on Dennett. CB Dennett's Breaking the Spell Ralph Dumain rdumain at igc.org Wed Feb 1 02:33:18 MST 2006 Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] On necessity and law in human history Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] I suspect this is bullshit, but what do you think? Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003472X/qid=1138785320/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-9455841-5053647?s=booksv=glancen=283155 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] ] Could God die again ? : Dennett
Dennett's Breaking the Spell http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-February/019846.html Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Wed Feb 1 07:58:48 MST 2006 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] www.darwin.ws Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Philipp Frank: historical background Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Ralph Dumain I suspect this is bullshit, but what do you think? Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003472X/qid=1138785320/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs _b_2_1/002-9455841-5053647?s=booksv=glancen=283155 From Publishers Weekly In his characteristically provocative fashion, Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, calls for a scientific, rational examination of religion that will lead us to understand what purpose religion serves in our culture. ^^^ CB: Well, today religion is not biologically or evolutionarily functioning ,as ancestor worship would have been highly adaptive in relation to the environment of the first humans. Rather today religion is as Feuerbach and Marx analyzed it, and then of course it is big in the class struggle, dividing the working class in countries and internationally. The current U.S. war on Islam is , obviously front and center in capitalist strategy for continuing to dominate the world. So, now I see a way in which the Dawkins and Dennetts' vulgar biological determinism diverts from anti-capitalist struggle. ^ Much like E.O. Wilson (In Search of Nature), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Dennett explores religion as a cultural phenomenon governed by the processes of evolution and natural selection. Religion survives because it has some kind of beneficial role in human life, yet Dennett argues that it has also played a maleficent role. He elegantly pleads for religions to engage in empirical self-examination to protect future generations from the ignorance so often fostered by religion hiding behind doctrinal smoke screens. Because Dennett offers a tentative proposal for exploring religion as a natural phenomenon, his book is sometimes plagued by generalizations that leave us wanting more (Only when we can frame a comprehensive view of the many aspects of religion can we formulate defensible policies for how to respond to religions in the future). Although much of the ground he covers has already been well trod, he clearly throws down a gauntlet to religion. (Feb. 6) Copyright C Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ? : Dennett
Religion and science: a reply to a right-wing attack on philosopher Daniel Dennett http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-March/020130.html Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com Wed Mar 22 07:21:18 MST 2006 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Global_economy Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Religion and science: a reply to a right-wing attack on philosopher Daniel Dennett Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/denn-m21.shtml The 19 February 2006 issue of the New York Times Book Review carries a tendentious attack on Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, the latest work by American philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dennett is best known as a philosopher of evolutionary biology and for his earlier books, Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea—works that make significant contributions to the defense of Darwinism and philosophical materialism. In his earlier books, Dennett showed himself to be a skilled and thoughtful popularizer of the most important philosophical ramifications of the modern conception of evolution, and a shrewd exposer of many of the superficial attempts to discredit it or sow confusion about it. He is also acutely sensitive to the politically reactionary role played by those who are now attempting to reintroduce creationism under the guise of “intelligent design.” Dennett is himself an ardent atheist. In the intellectual climate that prevails in academia, these positions require a laudable degree of courage. Breaking the Spell proposes a radical venture: to make a scientific study of religion. Dennett rejects the idea of the late Stephen Jay Gould that religion and science occupy two separate “magesteria” that ought to and can co-exist peacefully as long as neither intrudes on the other’s dominion. Dennett refuses to abide by the injunction that scientists should refrain from looking too closely at religion. Dennett’s proposal to study religion does not mean only subjecting religion’s claims to logical scrutiny. It is not for him only a matter of counterposing religion to science. Instead, he seeks to use the methods of science to inquire into the natural reasons for the continued prevalence of religion. Why is it, he asks, that religion has not only survived, but expanded in influence even after its claims about the world have been shown to be false? Dennett’s book does not attempt the exhaustive investigation that it proposes, but it does provide an introduction to a significant body of existing literature on the subject and proposes a number of potential avenues of development and inquiry. Dennett is undeniably correct to claim that a taboo exists that creates real barriers to the study he proposes. To look at religion under the scrutinizing microscope of science is regarded, within the prevailing intellectual climate, as entirely unacceptable. Dennett is also right to insist that such a study is all the more necessary in light of the immense political influence still wielded by religion in modern life. For this reason, he expects hostility not only from the official representatives of the major religious denominations, but especially from those academics and intellectuals eager to defend religion for essentially political reasons. A particularly banal and duplicitous example of such a “defense” of religion was provided in Leon Wieseltier’s assessment of the book, which appeared in the February, 19 issue of the New York Times Book Review. Wieseltier is the literary editor of the New Republic, a journal in which the right-wing trajectory of the Democratic Party intersects with that of the Republican neo-conservative right. Wieseltier embodies the magazine’s orientation. He is crass defender of American imperialism and a member of the Project for a New American Century, which argued for an invasion of Iraq from the time of the group’s inception in the mid-1990s. Prior to this review, Wieseltier’s most recent polemical exercise was a denunciation of Steven Spielberg’s film Munich for being “anti-Israel.” The first question that ought to be asked about Wieseltier’s review is why he was asked to submit it in the first place. One presumes that the Times Book Review could have easily called upon an expert in philosophy, biology, anthropology or comparative religion, to suggest only the most obvious disciplines. Instead it decided to commission a right-wing ideologue to perform a hatchet job on Dennett’s book. Given Wieseltier’s religious and political commitments, his selection is highly significant because of what it says about the agenda of the New York Times Book Review editors. They chose him in order to give a platform to a defender of religion to attack science. Wieseltier knows enough to realize that religion cannot be defended by attempting to refute what science has to say about it. There is
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ? : Dennett
[Marxism-Thaxis] Religion and science: a reply to a right-wing attack on philosopher Daniel Dennett Ralph Dumain rdumain at igc.org http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-March/020131.html Wed Mar 22 08:15:33 MST 2006 I read Wieseltier’s weaselly review, and while I understand the reaction against him, there are a few things here that trouble me. A picture is painted of an intellectual climate so rabidly repressive and pro-religion, or intimidated by religion, that Dennett is innovative, courageous and iconoclastic even to bring up religion as a topic for scientific study, i.e. by the fundamentalists' nemesis, evolutionary biology. Is this true? Is Dennett doing something so bold, so innovative, so cutting-edge, so threatening, that it stakes out a hazardous new territory in the manner of Galileo and Darwin? It may be that my perception and experience are skewed, and that what seems to be relatively straightforward and banal is horribly shocking. Nobody ever thought to examine religion scientifically before? Could this be true? Or has the ideological climate deteriorated so badly that a Dennett is one of the few holding down the fort for a scientific view of the world? Why is this a radical venture? Tell me. It is difficult to tell from any of these reviews what the scientific content of Dennett's claims actually are. I missed his talk in DC. Two friends attended it, both of whom hold comparable views. One thought he was terrific, the other thought he was insipid. The former is reading the book likes it, the latter hasn't looked at it. The one who is reading it has not yet told me of its substantive scientific content. So what am I to make of this? The charge of scientism means little unless one knows what scientism is and the object of study allegedly being violated thereby. One could also say the same of reductionism. It is, unfortunately, rather difficult to say whether Dennett is guilty or innocent of either from these reviews. I am inherently suspicious of sociobiology as an avenue to explanation of social and ideological phenomena, though undoubtedly evolutionary biology must be a component of our understanding along with social theory. It's too bad we don't have a social climate that promotes a more sophisticated public discourse. At 09:21 AM 3/22/2006 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] ] Could God die again ? : Dennett
My take on the New Atheists (including Dennett) here: http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant/Papers/129476/The-New-Atheism--and-New-Humanism- Jim F. -- Original Message -- From: c b cb31...@gmail.com To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] ] Could God die again ? : Dennett Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 12:31:33 -0500 Dennett's Breaking the Spell http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2006-February/019846.html Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Wed Feb 1 07:58:48 MST 2006 Criminal Lawyer Criminal Lawyers - Click here. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=uVD2IJSbzxLWN6ynpamQswAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAADNAAAiFgA= ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Another biologist on religion. Wilson is a main sociobiologist. CB http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-November/019411.html Wilson: science and religion are incompatible Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Thu Nov 17 13:52:26 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] OBSERVORMAN: the 'contemplative attitude' student rebellion Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wilson: science and religion are incompatible Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [Marxism] Wilson: science and religion are incompatible acpollack2 at juno.com acpollack2 at juno.com mailto:marxism%40lists.econ.utah.edu?Subject=%5BMarxism%5D%20Wilson%3A%20sc ience%20and%20religion%20are%20incompatibleIn-Reply-To= Mon Nov 14 11:38:34 MST 2005 Check out http://www.harvardmagazine.com/lib/05nd/pdf/1105-29.pdf (found at aldaily.com), which is E.O. Wilson's intro to the new combined edition of Darwin's books. In it he quotes Darwin attacking Christianity as a damnable doctrine and wonders why anyone would want to believe in it. This in the course of Wilson arguing AGAINST recent and increasing attempts to claim science and religion can and should be reconciled. He also takes a swipe at Marxism-Leninism for its alleged theory of humanity as a blank slate. His arguments, while themselves one- sided, are worth engaging with. A more nuanced version of what he calls scientific humanism, i.e. the notion that people are products of both nature and nurture, is of course fully compatible with a mature Marxist analysis. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Wilson is another reactionary ignoramus, certainly not a new atheist, any more than his pal Dawkins is new. At 01:43 PM 1/6/2010, c b wrote: Another biologist on religion. Wilson is a main sociobiologist. CB http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-November/019411.html Wilson: science and religion are incompatible Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Thu Nov 17 13:52:26 MST 2005 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] OBSERVORMAN: the 'contemplative attitude' student rebellion Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wilson: science and religion are incompatible Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [Marxism] Wilson: science and religion are incompatible acpollack2 at juno.com acpollack2 at juno.com mailto:marxism%40lists.econ.utah.edu?Subject=%5BMarxism%5D%20Wilson%3A%20sc ience%20and%20religion%20are%20incompatibleIn-Reply-To= Mon Nov 14 11:38:34 MST 2005 Check out http://www.harvardmagazine.com/lib/05nd/pdf/1105-29.pdf (found at aldaily.com), which is E.O. Wilson's intro to the new combined edition of Darwin's books. In it he quotes Darwin attacking Christianity as a damnable doctrine and wonders why anyone would want to believe in it. This in the course of Wilson arguing AGAINST recent and increasing attempts to claim science and religion can and should be reconciled. He also takes a swipe at Marxism-Leninism for its alleged theory of humanity as a blank slate. His arguments, while themselves one- sided, are worth engaging with. A more nuanced version of what he calls scientific humanism, i.e. the notion that people are products of both nature and nurture, is of course fully compatible with a mature Marxist analysis. ___ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
When I look at the archives, my Weitling post looks cut off. Something must have happened with the text pasted into the gmail. At any rate, more interesting is his own work in pdf online. www.duke.edu/web/secmod/primarytexts/Weitling-SinnersGospel.pdf Do it as a separate download (right click, save as...), or your browser is likely to 'hang'. Also interesting is what Engels wrote in 1843: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm The New Moral World No. 21, November 18, 1843 Germany had her Social Reformers as early as the Reformation. Soon after Luther had begun to proclaim church reform and to agitate the people against spiritual authority, the peasantry of Southern and Middle Germany rose in a general insurrection against their temporal lords. Luther always stated his object to be, to return to original Christianity in doctrine and practice; the peasantry took exactly the same standing, and demanded, therefore, not only the ecclesiastical, but also the social practice of primitive Christianity. They conceived a state of villainy and servitude, such as they lived under, to be inconsistent with the doctrines of the Bible; they were oppressed by a set of haughty barons and earls, robbed and treated like their cattle every day, they had no law to protect them, and if they had, they found nobody to enforce it. Such a state contrasted very much with the communities of early Christians and the doctrines of Christ, as laid down in the Bible. Therefore they arose and began a war against their lords, which could only be a war of extermination. Thomas Munzer, a preacher, whom they placed at their head, issued a proclamation, [162] full, of course, of the religious and superstitious nonsense of the age, but containing also among others, principles like these: That according to the Bible, no Christian is entitled to hold any property whatever exclusively for himself; that community of property is the only proper state for a society of Christians; that it is not allowed to any good Christian to have any authority or command over other Christians, nor to hold any office of government or hereditary power, but on the contrary, that, as all men are equal before God, so they ought to be on earth also. These doctrines were nothing but conclusions drawn from the Bible and from Luther’s own writings; but the Reformer was not prepared to go as far as the people did; notwithstanding the courage he displayed against the spiritual authorities, he had not freed himself from the political and social prejudices of his age; he believed as firmly in the right divine of princes and landlords to trample upon the people, as he did in the Bible. Besides this, he wanted the protection of the aristocracy and the Protestant princes, and thus he wrote a tract against the rioters disclaiming not only every connection with them, but also exhorting the aristocracy to put them down with the utmost severity, as rebels against the laws of God. “Kill them like dogs!” he exclaimed. The whole tract is written with such an animosity, nay, fury and fanaticism against the people, that it will ever form a blot upon Luther’s character; it shows that, if he began his career as a man of the people, he was now entirely in the service of their oppressors. The insurrection, after a most bloody civil war, was suppressed, and the peasants reduced to their former servitude. If we except some solitary instances, of which no notice was taken by the public, there has been no party of Social Reformers in Germany, since the peasants’ war, up to a very recent date. The public mind during the last fifty years was too much occupied with questions of either a merely political or merely metaphysical nature ? questions, which had to be answered, before the social question could be discussed with the necessary calmness and knowledge. Men, who would have been decidedly opposed to a system of community, if such had been proposed to them, were nevertheless paving the way for its introduction. It was among the working class of Germany that Social Reform has been of late made again a topic of discussion. Germany having comparatively little manufacturing industry, the mass of the working classes is made up by handicraftsmen, who previous to their establishing themselves as little masters, travel for some years over Germany, Switzerland, and very often over France also. A great number of German workmen is thus continually going to and from Paris, and must of course there become acquainted with the political and social movements of the French working classes. One of these men, William Weitling, a native of Magdeburg in Prussia, and a simple journeyman-tailor, resolved to establish communities in his own country. This man, who is to be considered as the founder of German Communism, after a few years’ stay in Paris, went to Switzerland, and, whilst he was working in some tailor’s shop in Geneva, preached his new gospel to his fellow-workmen. He formed
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Was I referring specifically to Nestorians? No, that is why I used the broader term 'non-trinitarian', which would include Christians who did not think Christ a god, and if 'divine', no more divine than the rest of humanity. The Nestorians appear to have 'softened up' C. Asia to Islamic conversions later on. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
The piece that CB had posted was referring to the first century
Christians, several centuries before the First Council of Nicea--by
the fourth century we could say that the sectarian lines dividing
Christians from Jews and Samaritans (and 'pagans') were already well
in place. In the first century, you couldn't.
One line of interpreting Jesus Christ and his ministry sees it as
emerging from a very interesting branch of the Pharisees--the Essenes,
even though the early Christians are seen as being 'anti-Essenes', and
that might well have been how they differentiated themselves from the
communities that originally they belonged to. This sort of Judaism, by
the way, would be quickly misunderstood if we imposed modern and
post-modern ideas of Judaism onto it,. There is another modern/post-mo
anachronism that leads people to think post-temple Judaism stopped
developing even before the early Christian period and that
Christianity sprung full-blown as the modern religion we know it as
today from this Judaism (or as some religious Jews would have it,
Christianity sprung from something other than Judaism, in order to
deny this huge schism in early Talmudic Rabbinical Judaism). Judaism
and Christianity underwent enormous changes in competition with each
and then later, for example, with the rise of Islam. Mostly the
'center of action' for all this interaction was not 'Palestine' but
'Babylonia'.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=Eartid=478
A branch of the Pharisees who conformed to the most rigid rules of
Levitical purity while aspiring to the highest degree of holiness.
They lived solely by the work of their hands and in a state of
communism, devoted their time to study and devotion and to the
practise of benevolence, and refrained as far as feasible from
conjugal intercourse and sensual pleasures, in order to be initiated
into the highest mysteries of heaven and cause the expected Messianic
time to come ('Ab. Zarah ix. 15; Luke ii. 25, 38; xxiii. 51). The
strangest reports were spread about this mysterious class of Jews.
Pliny (l.c.), speaking of the Essene community in the neighborhood of
the Dead Sea, calls it the marvel of the world, and characterizes it
as a race continuing its existence for thousands of centuries without
either wives and children, or money for support, and with only the
palm-trees for companions in its retreat from the storms of the world.
Philo, who calls the Essenes the holy ones, after the Greek ὅσιοι,
says in one place (as quoted by Eusebius, Præparatio Evangelica,
viii. 11) that ten thousand of them had been initiated by Moses into
the mysteries of the sect, which, consisting of men of advanced years
having neither wives nor children, practised the virtues of love and
holiness and inhabited many cities and villages of Judea, living in
communism as tillers of the soil or as mechanics according to common
rules of simplicity and abstinence. In another passage (Quod Omnis
Probus Liber, 12 et seq.) he speaks of only four thousand Essenes,
who lived as farmers and artisans apart from the cities and in a
perfect state of communism, and who condemned slavery, avoided
sacrifice, abstained from swearing, strove for holiness, and were
particularly scrupulous regarding the Sabbath, which day was devoted
to the reading and allegorical interpretation of the Law. Josephus
(Ant. xv. 10, § 4; xviii. 1, § 5; B. J. ii. 8, §§ 2-13) describes
them partly as a philosophical school like the Pythagoreans, and
mystifies the reader by representing them as a kind of monastic order
with semi-pagan rites. Accordingly, the strangest theories have been
advanced by non-Jewish writers, men like Zeller, Hilgenfeld, and
Schürer, who found in Essenism a mixture of Jewish and pagan ideas and
customs, taking it for granted that a class of Jews of this kind could
have existed for centuries without leaving a trace in rabbinical
literature, and, besides, ignoring the fact that Josephus describes
the Pharisees and Sadducees also as philosophical schools after Greek
models.
Their Communism.(comp. B. M. ii. 11).
No one possesses a house absolutely his own, one which does not at
the same time belong to all; for in addition to living together in
companies [ḥaburot] their houses are open also to their adherents
coming from other quarters [comp. Aboti. 5]. They have one storehouse
for all, and the same diet; their garments belong to all in common,
and their meals are taken in common. . . . Whatever they receive for
their wages after having worked the whole day they do not keep as
their own, but bring into the common treasury for the use of all; nor
do they neglect the sick who are unable to contribute their share, as
they have in their treasury ample means to offer relief to those in
need. [One of the two Ḥasidean and rabbinical terms for renouncing all
claim to one's property in order to deliver it over to common use is
hefker (declaring a thing ownerless; comp. Sanh. 49a); Joab, as the
type of an Essene, made
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Could God die again? Death of God theology was a 1960s phenomenon that casts light on the narrowness of the current debate Nathan Schneider guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 October 2009 09.00 BST It is a familiar scene. A religious revival has just swept through the United States, spurred in part by fear of a non-Christian foe abroad. Among its dissidents there arise a handful of outspoken men – say, three or four of them – proclaiming as loudly as they can a caustic version of atheism, one directed especially at the US's brand of public religion. They inspire a volley of responses from the pious and enough public enthusiasm to make their books bestsellers, all the while forcing us to ask once again what the place of religion is and should be in the modern world. This could be the early part of the present decade, at the height of the Bush years, and the men, the so-called new atheists: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. But it could also be the middle of the 1960s, and the men, of all things, theologians. Death of God theology was a movement that reached its peak in April 1966, when Time magazine published what became one of its biggest-selling issues. The cover simply asked, in large red letters over a black background, Is God Dead? The cover story, written by John T Elson, explained the ideas of a crop of young theologians who were raising Cain in American seminaries by proclaiming, in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, God is dead! Because of Elson's death on 7 September, death of God theology has been back in the news. And the timing may be just right; perhaps it can help us dig our way out from the tiresome trenches of the new atheist controversy. According to two of the movement's chief exponents, Thomas J J Altizer and William Hamilton, it represented an attempt to set an atheist point of view within the spectrum of Christian possibilities. They took it as a given that the onset of modernity had undermined the traditional idea of God. Altizer sought to reframe theology by affirming both God's absence and a world redeemable through faith in human creativity. The death of God, he argued, should be embraced as the fulfillment of Christ's incarnation and death, the final self-emptying of God into us and the world. The uproar caused by these assertions nearly cost him a job at Emory University. Hamilton lost his. Those associated with the movement took pains to insist that they each took quite different approaches. Paul van Buren, for instance, argued that the language of God is no longer adequate and needs to be discarded in exchange for a renewed focus on the ethics of the historical Jesus. Two others, Harvey Cox and Gabriel Vahanian, began from the belief among sociologists at the time that an inevitable process of secularisation was at work, leaving religion on the margins of the social structure. Cox embraced the prospect of a secular city, one infused with a renewed Christianity, freed from the dogmatic and institutional trappings of churchiness. Vahanian, in his 1961 book The Death of God, decried the bland religious revival that the likes of Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale had carried out in the 1950s as domesticated and its God, as actress Jane Russell then put it, a livin' doll. He sought a new kind of faith that would tolerate no such impostors. Implicitly or explicitly, these radicals took their bearings from the memory of the second world war. All cited the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's call for religionless Christianity in his letters from a Nazi prison. They often shared the podium with Richard Rubenstein, a rabbi who declared God unthinkable after the Holocaust. Unlike some of the prominent atheists of today, these thinkers knew intimately the theology they were attacking. Life after God, they believed, could not move forward without understanding the debt it owed to the religious culture that had gone before. Consequently the movement went far beyond the simplistic, scientistic concept of God common to both contemporary atheists and many of their critics: a cartoonish hypothesis, some kind of all-powerful alien. Altizer spoke of the God of direct experience; van Buren, the God conjured in language; and Cox, the God that arises in the life of societies. These are incisive approaches that, lately, have too often been forgotten in exchange for the caricature. Ultimately, the death of God movement fizzled after only a few years in the limelight. It turned out to be a last gasp of the liberal Protestant theology that was quickly losing ground in American culture and politics to a more literalistic evangelical tide. The rise of such conservative religion at home and abroad forced sociologists to recant the strongest versions of the secularisation thesis. Just last year, Christianity Today had its own cover with a black background and red letters. It said, God Is Not Dead Yet. The movement's prophets, looking back, don't agree on its legacy.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again?
Unlike some of the prominent atheists of today, these thinkers knew intimately the theology they were attacking. Life after God, they believed, could not move forward without understanding the debt it owed to the religious culture that had gone before. Consequently the movement went far beyond the simplistic, scientistic concept of God common to both contemporary atheists and many of their critics: a cartoonish hypothesis, some kind of all-powerful alien. ^ CB: Don't most believers have a relatively simplistic concept of God ? ^^^ Altizer spoke of the God of direct experience; van Buren, the God conjured in language; and Cox, the God that arises in the life of societies. These are incisive approaches that, lately, have too often been forgotten in exchange for the caricature. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality. --- Karl Marx Terry Eagleton is a disgrace. As for Schneider, the content of his article belles its bullshit title. There's no connection between the Death of God movement and the new atheism, or the old. So here are my bullet points. 1. 'Death of God' theology can be criticized in the same manner as Marx criticized Young Hegelians like Bauer and Feuerbach---the discussion remains entirely within the boundaries of ideology--in this case mythology--and simply juggles mythical concepts cut off from the realities that generate them. Only the higher criticism of the early 19th century made something progress, whereas the Death of God movement simply rationalized a dying (for the intelligentsia) religion. Altizer is an interesting character, but it's all nothing more than the retooling of mythology within mythology. 2. The lack of sophistication of Dawkins, Harris, Shermer and others in or out of the official grouping of the new atheists, is another matter entirely. They don't have to be familiar with the intricacies of theology and prove their competence thereto in order to engage in debate about the falsehood of religious belief. All this liberal religion is very much a subterfuge in any case, playing a shady game of as if while being very cagey about what one actually commits oneself to--a game played by intellectuals who are too smart to believe what the ordinary person purports to believe but not honest enough to cut oneself loose from it. One finds this among liberal Jewish, Christian, and presumably other religionists. What Dawkins et al are deficient in is far more serious. First, they are philosophically naive or inept. They don't understand the interplay between the realms of philosophy and empirical science (cum scientific theory), and they don't understand how philosophy works. So when they make the leap to philosophical statements, they think they are still engaging in straightforward scientific propositions. But it's much worse than this. Dawkins et al don't know, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW, anything about history or society or politics. (Hitchens knows something, but doesn't want to know it anymore, except for name-dropping self-promotion.) They want to read society, culture, and history directly off of biological evolution or cognitive psychology, unmediated by any engagement with real history or sociology. At 02:39 PM 1/5/2010, c b wrote: Could God die again? Death of God theology was a 1960s phenomenon that casts light on the narrowness of the current debate Nathan Schneider guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 October 2009 09.00 BST ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Ralph Dumain wrote: What Dawkins et al are deficient in is far more serious. First, they are philosophically naive or inept. They don't understand the interplay between the realms of philosophy and empirical science (cum scientific theory), and they don't understand how philosophy works. So when they make the leap to philosophical statements, they think they are still engaging in straightforward scientific propositions. ^ CB: Not defending anybody, but isn't Dennett a philosopher or philo pro ? ^ But it's much worse than this. Dawkins et al don't know, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW, anything about history or society or politics. (Hitchens knows something, but doesn't want to know it anymore, except for name-dropping self-promotion.) They want to read society, culture, and history directly off of biological evolution or cognitive psychology, unmediated by any engagement with real history or sociology. CB: Biologist Dawkins , like Jared Diamond, seems to become a species of Social Darwinists/Vulgar materialists, not surprisingly. They reduce human history to natural history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
Yes, but I'm not using the artificial grouping of new atheists created by the news media. There are prominent atheists of different stripes. I'm addressing only the non-philosophers--the scientists or quasi-scientists--who engage in philosophical arguments. Dawkins is no philosopher, and neither is Harris. Michael Shermer, who is I guess an old or at least not new atheist, is the worse of the lot--well, maybe Harris is--as Shermer is peddling a load of fertilizer called evolutionary economics and whose major inspiration is Ayn Rand. I'm not so familiar with Dennett, but the last presentation I remember he did in DC was so godawful, I'm inclined to dismiss him, too. Philosophy in the USA is pretty damn narrow as well. At 04:34 PM 1/5/2010, c b wrote: Ralph Dumain wrote: What Dawkins et al are deficient in is far more serious. First, they are philosophically naive or inept. They don't understand the interplay between the realms of philosophy and empirical science (cum scientific theory), and they don't understand how philosophy works. So when they make the leap to philosophical statements, they think they are still engaging in straightforward scientific propositions. ^ CB: Not defending anybody, but isn't Dennett a philosopher or philo pro ? ^ But it's much worse than this. Dawkins et al don't know, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW, anything about history or society or politics. (Hitchens knows something, but doesn't want to know it anymore, except for name-dropping self-promotion.) They want to read society, culture, and history directly off of biological evolution or cognitive psychology, unmediated by any engagement with real history or sociology. CB: Biologist Dawkins , like Jared Diamond, seems to become a species of Social Darwinists/Vulgar materialists, not surprisingly. They reduce human history to natural history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
On 1/5/10, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: Yes, but I'm not using the artificial grouping of new atheists created by the news media. There are prominent atheists of different stripes. I'm addressing only the non-philosophers--the scientists or quasi-scientists--who engage in philosophical arguments. Dawkins is no philosopher, and neither is Harris. Michael Shermer, who is I guess an old or at least not new atheist, is the worse of the lot--well, maybe Harris is--as Shermer is peddling a load of fertilizer called evolutionary economics and whose major inspiration is Ayn Rand. I'm not so familiar with Dennett, but the last presentation I remember he did in DC was so godawful, I'm inclined to dismiss him, too. Philosophy in the USA is pretty damn narrow as well. CB: Of course, all of them are selling books and entertainers, and they have to say something (pseudo-)new. Don't be a copycat is an important American value. (Dawkins is British, ok). What are some of the ways in which they stumble and stunt philosophically ? At 04:34 PM 1/5/2010, c b wrote: Ralph Dumain wrote: What Dawkins et al are deficient in is far more serious. First, they are philosophically naive or inept. They don't understand the interplay between the realms of philosophy and empirical science (cum scientific theory), and they don't understand how philosophy works. So when they make the leap to philosophical statements, they think they are still engaging in straightforward scientific propositions. ^ CB: Not defending anybody, but isn't Dennett a philosopher or philo pro ? ^ But it's much worse than this. Dawkins et al don't know, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW, anything about history or society or politics. (Hitchens knows something, but doesn't want to know it anymore, except for name-dropping self-promotion.) They want to read society, culture, and history directly off of biological evolution or cognitive psychology, unmediated by any engagement with real history or sociology. CB: Biologist Dawkins , like Jared Diamond, seems to become a species of Social Darwinists/Vulgar materialists, not surprisingly. They reduce human history to natural history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:49:44 -0500 Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org writes: The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality. --- Karl Marx Terry Eagleton is a disgrace. As for Schneider, the content of his article belles its bullshit title. There's no connection between the Death of God movement and the new atheism, or the old. So here are my bullet points. 1. 'Death of God' theology can be criticized in the same manner as Marx criticized Young Hegelians like Bauer and Feuerbach---the discussion remains entirely within the boundaries of ideology--in this case mythology--and simply juggles mythical concepts cut off from the realities that generate them. Only the higher criticism of the early 19th century made something progress, whereas the Death of God movement simply rationalized a dying (for the intelligentsia) religion. Altizer is an interesting character, but it's all nothing Feuerbach was a rather important thinker for the Death of God crowd. Then again, the theologians had already pretty much baptized him anyway. Karl Barth, the proponent of neo-orthodoxy, had already Feuerbach a central figure for 20th century theologians. And likewise Nietzsche and Freud had become required reading for the theologians too. I suppose that intellectually, the radical theology movement, including the Death of God crowd, pretty much regurgitated the ruminations of the Young Hegelians, and those influenced by them in the 19th century. more than the retooling of mythology within mythology. 2. The lack of sophistication of Dawkins, Harris, Shermer and others in or out of the official grouping of the new atheists, is another matter entirely. They don't have to be familiar with the intricacies of theology and prove their competence thereto in order to engage in debate about the falsehood of religious belief. All this liberal religion is very much a subterfuge in any case, playing a shady game The New Atheists, in my judgment, know enough theology in order to be able to debink its claims. Where they are lacking in sophsitication is in their grasp of social theory, both Marxist and non-Marxist. Their explanations of religion and religious phenomena, therefore, tend to biologistic, idealist, and abstract as a consequence. of as if while being very cagey about what one actually commits oneself to--a game played by intellectuals who are too smart to believe what the ordinary person purports to believe but not honest enough to cut oneself loose from it. One finds this among liberal Jewish, Christian, and presumably other religionists. That's long been the position that humanist philosophers have taken in regards to liberal theology., i.e. Sidney Hook, and Corliss Lamont. What Dawkins et al are deficient in is far more serious. First, they are philosophically naive or inept. They don't understand the interplay between the realms of philosophy and empirical science (cum scientific theory), and they don't understand how philosophy works. So when they make the leap to philosophical statements, they think they are still engaging in straightforward scientific propositions. But it's much worse than this. Dawkins et al don't know, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW, anything about history or society or politics. (Hitchens knows something, but doesn't want to know it anymore, except for name-dropping self-promotion.) They want to read society, culture, and history directly off of biological evolution or cognitive psychology, unmediated by any engagement with real history or sociology. At 02:39 PM 1/5/2010, c b wrote: Could God die again? Death of God theology was a 1960s phenomenon that casts light on the narrowness of the current debate Nathan Schneider guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 October 2009 09.00 BST ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Love Spell Click here to light up your life with a love spell! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=M5A_47JH9RXrBsf2KgqXcQAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAADNRwA= ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Could God die again ?
We already got the atheist millenarianism revival with that stupid book, Empire. But looking back, way back, we see that: Here was an action man. But alas ME reviled him--and resented him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Weitling Wilhelm Weitling From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Wilhelm Weitling. Wilhelm Weitling (October 5, 1808 – January 24, 1871)[1] was an important early German anarchist, communist or socialist. Part of the utopian socialism movement, he was viewed with contempt by Marx[2] and Engels[3] (although the latter, at a very early period, called him the founder of German communism[4]). Contents [hide] * 1 Life * 2 Works * 3 Notes * 4 References * 5 See also * 6 External links [edit] Life He was born in Magdeburg, Prussia.[1] As a travelling sartorial journeyman/apprentice he came to Paris in 1838, during the July Monarchy, and later to Switzerland. Working twelve-hour days as a tailor, he still found time to read Strauss and Lamennais. After joining the League of the Just in 1837, Weitling joined Parisian workers in protests and street battles in 1839. Tristram Hunt called his doctrine a highly emotional mix of Babouvist communism, chiliastic Christianity, and millenarian populism: Following the work of the Christian radical Felicité de Lamennais, Weitling urged installing communism by physical force with the help of a 40,000-strong army of ex-convicts. A prelapsarian community of goods, fellowship, and societal harmony would then ensue, ushered in by the Christlike figure of Weitling himself. While Marx and Engels struggled with the intricacies of industrial capitalism and modern modes of production, Weitling revived the apocalyptic politics of the sixteenth-century Münster Anabaptists and their gory attempts to usher in the Second Coming... Much to Marx and Engels's fury, Weitling's giddy blend of evangelism and protocommunism attracted thousands of dedicated followers across the Continent.[5] In the book Gospel of Poor Sinners he traced communism back to early Christianity.[6] [7] His book Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom was praised by Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach and Mikhail Bakunin, the latter of whom Weitling was to meet in Zürich in 1843.[8] Karl Marx, in an 1844 review, referred to the unbounded brilliance of the literary debut of the German worker,[9] but what won from Marx this high-sounding praise was simply the fact that Weitling's appeals were addressed to the workers as a class.[10] During his stay in Zürich, he was arrested for revolutionary agitation, and extradited to the Kingdom of Prussia. From there he got the chance in 1849[11] to emigrate to the United States (as one of the Forty-Eighters). [edit] Works He published several revolutionary works: * Die Menschheit. Wie Sie ist und wie sie sein sollte, (1838/39) German text online * The Poor Sinner's Gospel, (Das Evangelium eines armen Sünders. 1845) * Ein Nothruf an die Männer der Arbeit und der Sorge, Brief an die Landsleute, (1847) * Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom, (Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit), (1849) German text online ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
