Defintions elucidate things and so help our understanding of them.

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jul 5, 2011 at 03:25

Dear Moshe ,

Thanks for your input.

>I have the impression dear Janus that all we are doing here is arguing about DEFINITIONS.<

Definitions are quite important in human discourse.Without definitions you can't have clarity of thoughts. And without clarity you can't make any verifiable statements. I suspect this is the reason why religion loves obscure places and imprecise, nebulous vocabulary so much.

> For you winning wars where the REALISTIC chances to win are close to negligible, is still in the realm of the NATURAL and POSSIBLE. For me, when such wars are won systematically and repeatedly, as a matter of routine, is WARS WON AGAINST REALITY.<

Without getting further involved into discussion on probabilities, I can tell you about one war on reality that I am definitely not going to wage. I am not going to try to make any religious person a Pyrrhonian, if you know what I mean. Reading religiously inspired texts on this forum and elsewhere and seeing around me upsurge of religious obscurantism and irrationalism , I appreciate much better Schopenhauer's saying that children should be by all means kept away from religious indoctrination until they can think for themselves, i.e. to the age of 15-17. I don't deny religion can do some good but the damage it does in the process to rational thinking is hardly compensated by its other few good effects.

> Of course, post factum you can always find the "rational" factors behind the impossible.<

You seem to be very generous with definitions, dear friend, when you speak of doing impossible things.A short reflection might tell you though that impossible things by definition cannot happen. If they could, then they would be possible."Impossible" in this context is a misnomer and you should rather speak of "improbable".

> Besides I think that I could agree with most of your standpoints except those stemming from some weird and original historiography of the Jews which is apparently popular in some circles but most of which is based mainly on speculations and is severely biased, and therefore untrue and misleading.<

We greatly diverge on this important point. I suspect the reason has something to do with Schopnenhauer's saying. Monotheism is a dangerous utopia of dubious origin.As to "some circles' you visibly strongly dislike I can tell what they are - European Enlightenment and Rationalism which have done for the progress of this world during a short time much more than all the obscuratist Oriental cults implanted here for millenia.The latter keep telling us in their hubris they possess the absolute truth 'revealed to somebody somewhere. Well, a swift glimpse into their teachings shows two sad things.First, they don't have any truth if you try to apply a stricter criterion of truth, only ancient Oriental myths and a very imprecise and manipulative language.And they are in essence unable to admit they are or even may be wrong.

Anyway, I take comfort in the thought that Jews have contributed a lot to this great European Enlightenment and that Israel is a modern secular state and not a rabbi-ridden theocracy like ancient Israel and that every third or fourth Jew is an atheist or agnostic unlike their ancient ancestors.

With kind regards, Jan

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