Recent trends in some academic circles have called into question conventional notions of truth and reality. The claim is made in these circles that all statements, whether in science or literature, are simply narratives — stories and myths that do nothing more than articulate the cultural prejudices of the narrator. In this view, one narrative is as good as another, since each is expressed in the language of its particular culture and thus contains all the assumptions about truth and reality embedded in that culture. Texts have no intrinsic meaning. Rather, their meanings are created by the reader. The conclusions are then drawn that no narrative can have universal validity and that “Western” science is no exception..

But more importantly than that, you would adopt a strictly materialist stance in all things. Why? Because materialism (along with behaviorism, etc) tends to free you from having to worry about things you can’t see. And you can’t see, touch, feel or measure interior states.

But you can measure things that appear in our common material reality. We can all agree that there are twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, and so on. Measurement, in its purest sense, is entirely democratic, because the same data is available to and easily provable to anyone. Anyone can get the same results, and thus materialism becomes the new standard of truth and objectivity.

I’m so glad that two plus two still makes four here. I think we should all remember the importance of what you’ve said in the block quote above.

These comments and others remind me of the great experiment that took place in the world over two hundred years ago. The idea of Enlightenment, liberty, and such is how the Founding Fathers came up with the United States

Right! That’s exactly where I am going with this, and with the Freemason pieces as well.

Tim, you’ve essentially re-invented the wheel on the “Ahrimanic current” here. Which is fine, and you’re easier to read than Steiner.

Oh, good. Cause I thought I was just shooting in the dark on this one. I have read some stuff regarding that and “got” it in the past, but I think now I really am starting to understand how this works. And the key thing that I have always been missing in these equations is how to understand what the people think they are or were doing who have been involved in this. They don’t see themselves as doing evil - they think they are helping us.

Hell, maybe they are! Who knows? I’m still working out my reaction to this current.

“People who don’t believe in anything are always afraid of people who believe in something.”

See, it seems to me the opposite is true. No agnostic ever blew up a building for his lack of belief…people who believe are almost always people with agendas- and the stronger the belief, the bigger the agenda.

Somewhere in their thought process, they’ve decided to accept something as objectively true..the problem is usually that ‘objective truth’ comes with someone else’s rules attached: gays are ‘disordered,’ liberals can save the world, meat is murder, God gave us the promised land, etc etc ad nauseum. Not always bad but always with a flip side.

OTOH, the seeker is seldom a threat to anyone, nor is the apathetic person.

Rose- I’m not sure to what extent it’s ‘worked,’ except that we heretics are not currently being burned or having stakes driven through our tongues…that’s an improvement, at least.

In order to avert the chaos caused by moral relativism, it would seem that we require an alternative standard to be installed in it’s place. So let’s say that you wanted to be true to this idea of internal liberty, and that you wanted people to be able to think or feel or believe whatever they see fit – but without letting things get totally crazy socially. How would you ensure such a thing?

Ah! These comments and others remind me of the great experiment that took place in the world over two hundred years ago. The idea of Enlightenment, liberty, and such is how the Founding Fathers came up with the United States which they were not sure would work, but they hoped against hope to change world views at the time. (All of this over-simplified, of course).

I ahte reading crap like this. Religion has not been suppressed, it has blossomed. We have LESS chaos, less murder, longer lives, medicine & technology, all impossible without the freedoms brought about by the enlightenment.

I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. I don’t know if it’s necessarily false. I find that a lot of the apologism for the errors of our current ways revolve around this arguement and so I am wary of it. Likewise, there was a relevant quote from one of the talking heads of The Power of Nightmares: “People who don’t believe in anything are always afraid of people who believe in something.”

The Enlightenment appeal to liberty invariably led to the suppression of religion, which led to the suppression of morals, which led to social chaos

I ahte reading crap like this. Religion has not been suppressed, it has blossomed. We have LESS chaos, less murder, longer lives, medicine & technology, all impossible without the freedoms brought about by the enlightenment.

But an important value of liberalism is pluralism- pluaralism acknowledges different operational levels in which society can function. The founding fathers gave people the freedom to choose their own spiritual paths without fear of the state breathing down their backs. But they balanced it out by putting checks so people could not the use the state for their own religious purposes.. So we live in a pluralistic society where people are free to be materialists, religious, etc. and no one really has to fear prosercution from the state.

And lastly we have a world where people are intergrating science with spirituality. My two favorites Colin Wilson, and Robert Anton Wilson

In the Star Trek fictional universe, the Prime Directive, Starfleet’s General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets; The Prime Directive dictates that there be no interference with the natural development of any primitive society, chiefly meaning that no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or alien races. It also forbids any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept totally secret.