Civil Commotion

The New York archdiocese is about to close seven more churches.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced on Friday the shuttering of seven more churches as part of the biggest reorganization in its history, a process of parish consolidations that will leave the archdiocese 20 percent smaller than it was last year.

Three of the churches on the latest list to be closed are in the Bronx, one is in Manhattan and the other three are north of the city. They are added to more than two dozen church closings that were announced last November.

Philosopher Michael LaBossiere has announced.

It might be wondered what it is to be a presidential uncandidate. One defining characteristic is the inability to win the election, but there is obviously more to it than that. Otherwise Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee would also be uncandidates.

What truly makes an uncandidate is that he exemplifies what voters claim they want, but would assure catastrophic defeat in the election.

What do you know? Just as I was sitting here marshaling the arguments against the prospect of a gag-me-with-a-spoon Huckabee presidency, Michael Hamar was pointing toward a WSJ/NBC poll which finds that Americans are far more comfortable with the idea of a LGBT presidential candidate than an evangelical candidate.

More Americans are more comfortable with a gay presidential candidate than they are with an evangelical Christian candidate. Talk about an indictment of what the Christofascists have done to destroy the Christian brand! Personally, I hope the trend continues …

Yes, the brand has gone bad. Not only have science and Biblical scholarship dispositively established that the Abrahamic narratives are false, the ‘nones,’ ‘dones,’ and sundry skeptics have left church, rejecting outright the cultural Christianity that tended to tamp-down the extremists.

In other words, there is hardly anybody left in church but the loonies who actually believe all that crazy stuff; the wackos have concentrated, that is, and you’ve got to be blind to not see the nuttery and degradation at the bottom of Christian thought. It’s just as I’ve said about a bazillion times: Most people have too much sense and decency to be good Christians; it’s the ones who don’t that you have to watch.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
III: General Remarks on Morality

§298   “Morality for its own sake” — an important step in the denaturalisation of morals: in itself it appears as a final value. In this phase religion has generally become saturated with it: as, for instance, in the case of Judaism. It likewise goes through a phase in which it separates itself from religion and in which no God is “moral” enough for it: it then prefers the impersonal ideal –. This is how the case stands at present.

“Art for Art’s sake”: this is a similarly dangerous principle: by this means a false contrast is lent to things, it culminates in the slander of reality (“idealising” into the hateful). When an ideal is severed from reality, the latter is debased, impoverished and slandered. “Beauty for Beauty’s sake”, “Truth for Truth’s sake”, “Goodness for Goodness sake” -— these are three forms of an evil eye for reality.

Art, knowledge and morality are means: instead of recognising a life-promoting tendency in them, they have been associated with the opposite of Life, with “God” -— they have also been regarded as revelations of a higher world, which here and there transpires through them -—

“Beautiful” and “ugly”, “true” and “false”, “good” and “evil” -— these things are distinctions and antagonisms which betray the preservative and enhancing measures of Life, not necessarily of man alone, but of all stable and enduring organisms which take up a definite stand against their opponents. The war which thus ensues is the essential factor: it is a means of separating things, leading to stronger isolation -—

Once again, a passage that I don’t recall ever seeing in any of the finished books, but very perceptive. I am put in mind of Winston Churchill’s famous remark, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Everything that is has a context.

Clearly, I was wasting my time when I selected those geophysics electives.

Promiscuous women cause earthquakes, claims Iranian cleric