End Of A Lewes Forum Thread

Dull stuff move on move on....

Rationalist-

EF Benson FYI famously chronicled the foibles of the sweetly pretentious parochial middle classes - (Hint hint ).Nadine Dorries FYI is a Conservative MP known for her trenchant views on abortion in support of which she produces as much science as her critics.

Logic is only a species of maths ,(or visas versa, …no don`t start ), tautological ,and useless for judging competing ideas in time . I`m afraid you disappear up your prolix fundament giving us directions to the shops in terms of sub atomic physics . We drive on ,shuddering, rationalist.

Later in the spittle flecked rant you feel free to use inference somewhat more freely “….From Milton to Wilberforce the road lay through Voltaire….." God knows what you think that means ,and please don`t tell me . Then equally perversely , you will not accept HG Wells as a spokesman of rationalism , or John Maynard Keynes . Well if you think Economist are tea leaf readers you cant be all bad.

I did not seek here to “Prove god exists” . I opined that rationalism/science has nothing to add to moral choices( slavery/not slavery ,remember ?) and the arrogance it engenders about other ways of thinking has been harmful . Crimes perpetrated by regimes claiming be based unscientific principles do matter as exemplars of this view.

Your incandescent insight that Christians and Jews have not always seen eye to eye is not required and I am not criticising Darwin .I am criticising those who think Darwin has something say about “ should” as well as ‘could” , “why “ as well as “how “ .You seemed to be claiming such a wider authority .If not you are claiming nothing .

So did the Fabian eugenicists , so did the Nazis , so did Marx.( I see you are spouting some half baked breeding theory as well ugh)

You ask what few poets and some religious fanatics did .Well here’s the thing . In fact abolition was part of a new sensibility which lead for example to the factory Acts and the entire Victorian horror at the misery they saw around them . Men had frequently thought rationally but lacked sympathy. The pity of Dickens for what is really child abuse , the groping of poets for sublimity for the “ Child within the man” , for values beyond economic or functional and the famous conscience of the nonconformists .

Science provided many tools good and bad but the political drive for humanity was not formed of this new and developing sensibility that was largely against he rational romantic as opposed to classical .

A lot of this rage , with all due respect ,is inconsiderately composed and tediously jejune ( Your evident familiarity with mein kampf is plain scary). Still there were some good bits .

Be less nutty

Amen