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    United States AI Solar System (4)

    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:31 am

    What if the Bible is a Test-Problem, rather than an Answer-Book?? What if it takes Bible-Commentaries to properly approach the Bible as a Test-Problem?? I have suggested that reading Volumes 3, 4, and 6 (1 Chronicles to Malachi, and Acts to Ephesians) of the SDA Bible Commentary (straight-through, over and over) is an excellent place to begin a seemingly impossible task. What if Everyone Who is Anyone MUST First Become an Intelligence-Agent?? What if Spy v Spy is how things REALLY Work in this seemingly God-Forsaken World?? I mostly withdrew from this world. I smelled rats everywhere (right around the onset of puberty)!! It's a Rat-Race (and the Rats are Winning)!! What if most leaders are King and Queen Rats??!! What if that's simply the Way Things Are?? Once again, don't look to me for anything. I am more miserable and hamstrung than Job, and I don't see that changing for the rest of my life. My whole adult life has been this way. Honest. I HATE MY LIFE. BTW, I'm presently reading The Mythmaker by Hyam Maccoby, and I'm finding it very interesting. I recommend researching ALL Sides of ALL Issues. It's harder that way.
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 388915_10150524183239084_1122415552_n
    Glacier View Responses
    Continued From Previous Post:

    http://atoday.org/glacier-view-a-retrospective/

    milton hook
    August 15, 2016 at 10:42 pm
    I lived through the controversies of the 1970s and 80s. I witnessed some influential church administrators and ministers exercise duplicity, treachery towards peers, immorality, egotism, hatred of gospel preachers, back-stabbing and hypocrisy. They reminded me of the Sanhedrin in Christ’s time. I felt very uncomfortable. I sensed an alien spirit. I avoided them and occupied myself with independent study. At the same time Des was accused of:

    1. Total rejection of Ellen White
    2. Antinomianism
    3. Being an advocate of the once-saved-always-saved theory
    4. Being duped by the theology of Professor F F Bruce
    5. Dishonesty
    6. Being a Jesuit
    7. Being in league with Brinsmead to bring down the SDA church
    8. Being an ignoramus or novice
    9. Not being a real Christian

    I have known Des for 55 years. All of these accusations are utterly false, perpetuated by a modern sanhedrin that often shows its hand in this thread. I understand why some in the church wish that the gospelers would exit via the back door. Precedent suggests that those who profess to be the “chosen race” and love to recite the law have often stoned the prophets. Hatred is a soul-destroying cannibal. But the gospel can rescue murderers like Saul/Paul and the grand larcenist on the Cross. Who knows, it may even extend to Judas who was utterly remorseful and apparently repented. Let’s not play God.

    Yawei
    August 18, 2016 at 6:03 am
    Thank you Milton. Beautiful and honest words from one who actually knows Des. We pray Father God forgive them for each troubled soul who take the gift of Life from God and them repay God by ignoring God’s command in Matthew 28:19,20 to take Good News to all who thirst and instead spend their energy casting stones at those obeying God’s call as Des continues to faithfully do in his 88th orbit of the sun.

    Yawei
    August 18, 2016 at 6:06 am
    Typos corrected: Thank you Milton. Beautiful and honest words from one who actually knows Des. We pray to our Father God, forgive them, for each troubled soul who takes the gift of Life from God, and then repays God by ignoring God’s command, in Matthew 28:19,20, to take Good News to all who thirst, and instead spend their energy casting stones at those, who are passionately obeying God’s gospel call, as Des continues to faithfully do, in his 88th orbit of the sun.

    Hansen
    August 15, 2016 at 11:31 pm
    Just to clarify something I posted somewhere, “God be merciful to me a sinner” is going to work better than “Bring it on” when my name comes up in judgment.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 16, 2016 at 1:58 am
    Amen! “God help me” and God be merciful to me a sinner” are two of my most frequent prayers.

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 16, 2016 at 2:27 am
    Hansen, I think you’ve just provided a context into which this little-discussed (in these boards anyway) principle of Christianity can be mentioned. I think one of the reasons the IJ is such a heresy is because your name never comes up in any judgement after the first one, ie, the light of Christ himself. Simply because, ‘you’ are dead! You no longer live! It is not you! but Christ who lives in you. It is Christ in you the hope of glory. You have already appeared before the judgement seat of Christ, you have died with him, you have recevied the gift of his life and henceforth you no longer exist. To be sure, you die daily. You do not resurrect daily. Christ abides in you through the power of his endless life. If you feel or fear there is another judgement to which you will come, it is because you have not actually taken up your cross and died to your old self. This is why the IJ crowd are so trepidatious of the outcome. And why they need to gather so many comforters about themselves, hypnotised that they are not ready. Repetition of the words ‘get ready, get ready’ subconsciously translates to the mind as ‘woe is me, I’m not ready.’ The end result of such fearful unreadiness is SDAism. Let’s hope this assurance of Life in Christ as taught by Ford, and many since, will help to lift the ‘cloud of unknowing’ from the collective mind of Adventism. Bring THAT on!

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 16, 2016 at 4:30 am
    That first sentence is extremely obtuse/unclear/misleading. Let me try again. Your (Hansen/Serge/any committed Christian) name does not come up in the IJ, if there is such a thing. Because by this stage, that old ego which used ot be called Hansen/Serge/any true Xn does not exist. They are dead. See Rom 5. They have been confronted with teh Christ, stood before ‘teh judgement seat of teh personal Christ, been illumined by the Light which comes into the world, to judge the world. They recognise that in themselves they are dead. They take up their cross, surrendering their old man/egoic/selfish nature to its natural state – death. they recognise the need for this death as the due wages of sin. But in that surrender, they also accept the Gift of God… the Life of Christ. Henceforth, only Christ exists, in them. I am crucified with Christ…. I rise with Christ (here, in this so-called life). Christ lives, in me. This is the divine modus operadi of salvation. It happens Today. There is no fearful looking for a day of judgement for these believers. If there is an IJ, the only name of relevance to them which will come up is the name Christ. And we already know the outcome of that.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 5:54 am
    Serge, we Love you, but I would ask; why are you here? Understand we love your opinion (maybe less than we Love you); but are you the theologian or historian here to save us? Remember in the bigger picture we are a Body; from outside, to milk, to meat and in some cases back outside. You point out that satan is a great deceiver in intent above; should we not watch out for each other? In all honesty, do you not preach the approach of and as an individual; in many cases demanding, entitled and privileged? Expecting HIS Love and Gifts; without appreciation? Revelations 20:4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. We know there will be no power in the second death for those that are chosen and belong to HIM; but you miss the whole part of belonging to HIM. To praise HIS Gifts and do HIS Works to start with and back is Love; for HIM.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 5:57 am
    If we are busy in HIS Works, we are toooo busy to have fear. If we have HIS Faith we know where we are going. If we have HIS Grace and Spirit we are in the comfort of his Loving Hands. Philippians 2:12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. How do you work out your salvation in demand and privilege; instead of fear and trembling? 2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. 11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. We know we will appear before HIS judgment seat, whether it be good or bad. Where do you and those like you ever persuade men, knowing the terror of the LORD? Where is your terror of the LORD? Again, does this not sound like a child, I am privileged, demanding and I am going to stomp my foot until I get to Heaven; wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 6:10 am
    1 Thessalonians 5:11 Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. 12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 13 And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves 14 Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. 15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. 16 Rejoice evermore. 17 Pray without ceasing. 18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 19 Quench not the Spirit.
    20 Despise not prophesyings. 21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil. 23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We miss this, where did it go? What happened? 1 Peter 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? 18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? 19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful…

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 6:33 am
    Conviction, If we’re busy doing God’s works, our deeds speak more loudly than our mouths. Talking was the least of God’s instructions to us after a whole lot of doing. So, when are you going to start following His priorities?

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 7:29 am
    Mark 1:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. I follow HIS first priority; in Loving HIM with all my Love, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, with nothing left, HE wants it all. HE provides back sufficient in Love, mind and strength then to help others in the Second Commandment. That is HIS priority. Where is your praise for HIM? How can you lead anyone to HIM without such? There is no gospel or path of William. You miss the First Commandment.

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 7:51 am
    Conviction, Why do you demand of others what you appear unable to do yourself? Where is YOUR praise to God? All you do is cut-and-paste Bible texts with the apparent intent of condemning others for what you perceive as their sins and make wild exhortations about Him. But you never share anything praising God for how He is working in your life. So where is YOUR praise to God? Are you demanding from others what you are unable to do because He is not working in your life? That’s a big message in your words.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 8:27 am
    Are you blind? “I follow HIS first priority; in Loving HIM with all my Love, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, with nothing left, HE wants it all.” While we are very humbled and gracious just to have our names written in the Book; you demand. While we are unworthy, incapable and useless we are humbled to be able to serve HIM; you demand and claim in privilege. While we Love the Scripture and the closeness it brings to HIM and us; you hate it and demand interpretation, because it does not fit in your own little self personal world. While we worship and reverence HIM; you assume to be HIM. While we are very thankful for HIS Gifts; you lay stake and claim on them. While we denied ourselves and took up our cross; you claim yourself and The Cross. While we are part of the Body; you seem unable to find the Body. While we Love; you have not figured out what Love is. While we found HIM, by loosing ourselves; you keep searching yourself. While we gave up the world; you latched on. While we gave up ourselves; you gave in. And yet you accuse us of making wild exhortations about HIM? We demanded nothing; but HE does. We only pointed it out to you. You serve no one but yourself; then blame everyone. We Love you.

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 9:36 am
    Conviction, If you love someone, why do you persist in making such wild, blatantly false and continuous accusations against a person whom you have never met and about whom you know virtually nothing? How does attacking others draw anyone to Him?

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 9:45 am
    William, I am definitely not the best at helping you through this (or in anything); but I am here. I have never had the curse of privilege. I have always had to rely on HIM and know where everything comes from. I know those sent to help and know where they came from. HE provides everything. I am blessed and know where those blessing come from; I never had privilege of not knowing where they came from. HE has always told me to go do things and I always think how is this going to happen; but HE always makes a way. HE always send others to help and the things that are needed. I have never been able to rely on myself for or in anything; therefore I know I cannot do anything without HIM. I have never thought of or could look at myself as alone. I have always been a part of something else; HIM and others. Maybe someone else can explain better or give some help?

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 10:45 am
    Conviction, Please explain how attacking others reflects the love of Christ to them. How does merely saying that you know where blessings come from praise God when you share nothing about what He has done? Apparently some of the people you so freely accuse of not knowing or obeying God have a bit more experience with HIM because they speak of HIM without accusing others. Unlike you, the people whom Jesus accused of disobeying HIM were those who were attacking HIM for loving sinners and drawing them into salvation.

    Yawei
    August 18, 2016 at 6:09 am
    Conviction it is time for you to follow Des’ example for us which I have closely observed Des to faithfully live in his life of being hard on himself and being easy on others. Judge not lest ye be …

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 11:15 am
    How is Loving you attacking you? HE does everything. You speak and offer yourself as everything; as we offer HE who is everything. You have no idea of what obedience is. That is not your parents fault; you did that all on your own. That is the worlds fault and the Church within the worlds fault; we take accountability and responsibility for both. You are not CHRIST; don’t ever think you are even close. Where is your reverence for HIM? Where is your love for HIM? Nowhere to be found. You can’t even say it; well less mean and do it.

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 12:15 pm
    Conviction, You are not loving, you are just attacking. There are no examples in scripture of God attacking and accusing as you have been doing, so you are not behaving as HE does. When have I ever said that I thought of myself as “everything?” That’s another false accusation you have invented out of thin air. Where in scripture do you find the authority to accuse others of not knowing how to obey HIM? Perhaps you’ve forgotten Paul’s warning in Romans 2:1 where he wrote, “…you have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Take a hint: if you want others to stop judging you, first stop accusing them. No, I’m not Christ and have never made any such claim, yet you dare to raise such a blasphemous accusation and expect others to be tolerant. So far as I know, you and I have never met, so where do you find evidence that I do not reverence HIM? Your persistence in accusing reminds me of Paul’s observation in Titus 1:12 where he said, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes…” Are you a Cretan? You sure don’t sound like a Christian.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 1:32 pm
    Matthew 23:10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Did you not exalt your own self? Hey, without HIM I am a piece of trash and know it. Is that sufficient in authority? I do not pass judgement on anyone; HE does that. Romans 2:5 “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;” Romans 2:9 “8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,” We have Love, you have wrath and keep raising your head; but say nothing. Nothing for HIM? Titus 1:10 For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: 11 Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake. I am worse than a Cretan without HIM; but I am a Christian with HIM. And you still cannot give HIM praise or reverence. You need to get yourself out of the picture William, before you lead you and others down a path you definitely do not wish to be. I give HIM all the praise, honor and glory; for without HIM I am nothing. Are you man enough to do the same?

    Art Berard
    August 16, 2016 at 11:38 am
    I like William Noel’s comment “If we’re busy doing God’s works, our deeds speak more loudly than our mouths.” During the years leading up to and following Glacier View I saw the results of actions against Dr. Ford, and for many people (including some of our family members and friends) those results were not good. In the the years to follow Glacier View Dr. Ford conducted himself as a Christian gentleman in his public life trying to bring others to Christ. “By their fruits” you’ll know them.

    Hansen
    August 17, 2016 at 3:32 am
    Art, I once discussed Dr. Ford’s gospel teachings with a nearly retired SDA pastor. “I don’t want his teachings around this church,” he said. “My niece listened to him and ran wild, got involved in immorality, caused a lot of problems.” Pastor, I said~, “The gospel didn’t make your niece immoral, you should know that.” He didn’t want Luther’s teachings [“Christian Liberty,” gospel sermons from Wittenberg] around his church either. Old time legalism worked for him. You can be as immoral as you like, just don’t act it out, or get caught if you do. Another old conference worker told me that people who felt the convincing power of the HS when listening to Dr. Ford were actually being deceived by rhetorical tricks he learned during his first Phd program. Strange, strange indeed. Your tithe $$$ at work.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 1:04 pm
    “If we’re busy doing God’s works, our deeds speak more loudly than our mouths.” Luke 2:49 “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” That is a great question without an answer. Are you doing GOD’s Work? Looks like you are here posting; yet saying nothing about the FATHER. Right now all we see is the authority of the Church being applied and the rebellious still complaining 35 years later. So the views that Des held were more important than all the rest of us? At least in your eyes? Maybe you hold a little bias of and in the teachings of your family? Was he not given the chance to change? What did you wish to change here; or was it just to interfere? Did he change? You seem to wish to stand for the underdog. Maybe if you step out of the way, HE can grow the underdog? Allowing others to learn from HIM; just as Des did from what you state. But you don’t want to seem to give them that chance.

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 1:36 pm
    Conviction, Oh, so we have to say something about the FATHER to avoid being judged by you? Where in scripture do you find that requirement? Show us chapter and verse. But just to satisfy you: The FATHER loves me, so HE forgives me instead of hurling a never-ending stream of condemnations at me and others as you have been doing. What evidence do you have the I am standing in God’s way? You have no evidence, so you are a liar. What do Des Ford’s teachings have to do with your wild accusations? I did not say that I agreed with him, but that I owed him a debt of gratitude because he forced me to study as I had not before and to not just accept things as true because someone claimed that it was so. Had I continued in my old ways I might be agreeing with you instead of disputing your wild falsehoods.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 2:19 pm
    Luke 12:5 “But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” Yes the FATHER Loves you enough to forgive you. Yes HE Loves you enough to not hurl you into the abyss. Where is the fear and reverence in that? You do not own HIS Love, but HE does own your fear and respect. Hebrews 12:28 “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:” Evidence in absolute; you are your own witness. You demand the Kingdom, without meeting the requirements. But you are working in the right direction, in humility for HIS Gifts. Psalms 111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever. I did not state that you said anything about Des or his teachings. Not everything is about or for you. Did you wish to use Des and blame him as a scapegoat and stumbling block? After his removal? I don’t know how good of an excuse that might be? I don’t know if there will be any excuses; but in my opinion, I doubt it.

    William Noel
    August 16, 2016 at 3:59 pm
    Conviction, You accuse me of demanding the Kingdom without meeting the requirements? What evidence do you have of that? None, because you’re just throwing-out falsehoods because you neither know truth or respect others. Do you know anything about God’s gifts? Are you ministering in HIS power using the gifts of the Holy Spirit? I am. So I can tell you from my experience with the changes God has made in me that a person who makes such wild accusations as you’ve been throwing around without hesitation marks you not as a follower of God, but one who is under the control of Satan. Des Ford isn’t the issue here: it is you falsely accusing others while claiming to speak with the authority of God. That is the blasphemy that Jesus declared in Mark 3:29 would not be forgiven. Let’s see you get around that truth HE declared.

    Conviction
    August 16, 2016 at 6:22 pm
    And once again, no reverence or praise for HIM. You asked for the Scripture and it was quoted; for it is written. I never said Des’s gospel teachings were an issue at GV or here. I have no idea why you brought it up. You command the Holy Spirit and condemn us to blasphemy because we Love you; because I Love you? Mark 3:28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: 29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation: For me to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit would be to blaspheme HIM. That would mean you are GOD?

    Hansen
    August 16, 2016 at 4:47 pm
    I was unaware that point 9 regarding justification was an issue at Glacier View. Gerhard Pfandl’s talk at the ATS meeting on RBF a few years ago specifically stated that Dr. Ford’s gospel teaching as not an issue at GV. It is entirely possible, even likely, that the real hatred for Dr. Ford was the result of his teaching on justification. It’s laughable to think that administrators really cared what EGW said about much of anything except tithing. Regardless of platitudes to the contrary, SDAs believe that people are saved by faith plus works i.e., commandment [Decalogue] keeping.

    Ervin Taylor
    August 16, 2016 at 10:24 pm
    Contrary to an initial reaction, may I now suggest that we should welcome the postings of Mr. S. and “Conviction” on the AT web site. Why? Despite the often strange and off-center approach to theological topics projected by these two individuals, what they post here allows the rest of us to gain some insights and appreciation of what the dominant ethos of Adventism in North America was like in the decades from about 1920 to 1950. For those interested in the history of Adventism, just reading their postings will allow an observer to realize how much has changed when we compare the statements of Mr. S and “Conviction” and contrast those postings with what is being posted by those representing a newly emerged 21st Century Neo-Adventism, a “big tent” Adventism which points toward the future.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 17, 2016 at 6:47 am
    “what they post here allows the rest of us to gain some insights and appreciation of what the dominant ethos of Adventism in North America was like in the decades from about 1920 to 1950”. Dr. Taylor, I remember the 1950s very clearly. And I have read many SDA writings from earlier times. I submit that you have unfairly represented the “dominant ethos” of Adventism from those decades. There certainly were demagogues then as there are now. And no doubt there were those who hurled vile epithets then as now. But such were not the majority, certainly not the “dominant ethos” as you claim. You seem to gloat over the interminable sparring between the “gladiators” representing the varying extremes of Adventism and ex-Adventism. None of these truly represent mainstream Adventism either today or in prior generations.

    Hansen
    August 17, 2016 at 1:10 am
    LOL, Erv, I was just thinking Bill S should be banned.

    Bill Sorensen
    August 17, 2016 at 12:10 pm
    “LOL, Erv, I was just thinking Bill S should be banned.” Of course, Glen. Then you could just go on giving yourselves massive affirmation in your false teaching, and everyone would be happy. Of course, Dr. Taylor is smart enough to know the forum is boring enough and only some real challenge to your false doctrine can stimulate some discussion. You all hope EGW taught “legalism” so you can justify your rejection of her ministry. But she never taught your false accusations and there is not a shred of evidence to support your false allegations. But of course you don’t care. You just go on and on in your delusion and hope you can “pull it off” in the end. NOT. More and more people will see the delusion Dr. Ford advocated, just like people eventually saw the error of John Calvin’s “unconditional election” as he also wrested the gospel from the bible and put his on convoluted idea of how it should be applied. Your errors won’t hold water for any honest bible student who can easily and clearly see there is a “judgment according to works” that will determine who is going to be saved, and who is not.

    Yawei
    August 18, 2016 at 6:18 am
    Bill I believe an honest man like you would surely have discovered after all your wonderful years of study, that works are definitely a fruit, and never a root of salvation, unless like Jesus you have been perfect and without sin continuously since birth. Am I right about your discovery Brother William?

    William Noel
    August 18, 2016 at 10:34 am
    Yawei, You are SO right! I don’t do good works to be saved, but to reflect the amazing, incredible love of God that has worked in my life to save me and that continues working in me to keep on changing me and using me to spread His love to others. I have the blessing of leading a volunteer ministry at my church called the Angel Team. We focus on helping people with home-related challenges, both large and small. Over the 11 years I’ve been doing that ministry, I have seen God work in amazing ways and knowing that He has chosen to work through me to bless others is both humbling and fills me with amazement at such love. One great blessing I get from time to time is hearing someone praising God for the blessing they received through our ministry and even that they have gone from hating God to loving Him because of the love they were shown through our work. Along the way I have developed a close relationship with the Holy Spirit and there is such an intimacy there that I wish greatly for others to recognize the reality of the Holy Spirit, to let Him work in them to empower them and for the, to discover the ministry He has for them to do. If they do, I know we’ll need a whole lot of time in eternity to celebrate what we’ve seen God do. My friend, may the Lord continue blessing you richly!

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 5:09 am
    Yes, from HIS Words we know what will happen. Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. The big tent will be here soon enough; and we seem to want to fight to make sure that happens. “The gospel didn’t make your niece immoral, you should know that.”. Such a Truth, the Gospel does not preach immorality; but false prophets do. Lutheran doctrine did not preach liberty to sin, but liberty from sin; and to observe the commandments. I would say go pray your sins away; but that would determent our brothers who have grown past such; as we wax worse. A sad state in remnants of HIM.

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 5:36 am
    My wife and daughters, and in their vast network of friends and demonstrations within the Body, all plead the same. You make their jobs vastly more complicated and difficult. Why are the old paths so bad; when we are suppose to seek the old paths and things that work? If you lack the man parts to preach that sin is sin; how can you do anything but drive the nails in further? If you are unable to preach go and sin no more; how can you be like or representative of HIM? If your philosophies or derivations or ideologies do not meet these Simple Truths; how can they be of HIM? With the pouring out I have seen lately, you probably should expect to start hearing these things. I have seen many told lately get over it, grow up and help or get out of the way; and definitely not from Church leadership. You may hear it from your sons and daughters. As Erv states I am pretty old fashion in Stand and I hear it from many; including mine. Can you not grow a set and take care of the problem, or are you going to leave it for us to fix. Think about that one and the world you are leaving for them. maybe that will put things into the perspective of Love.

    William Noel
    August 17, 2016 at 5:53 am
    Conviction, You have reverted once again to your habitually obtuse and wildly general screeds against anything and everything you imagine is wrong while giving us nothing specific to which we can respond. If, as you seem to imagine, you are some sort of prophet whom God has sent to call the church to repentance, how are we to know how to respond when you talk about “old ways?” What are the “old ways” of which you speak? Whom do you accuse of not calling on people to “go and sin no more?” How are they not doing it? What evidence do you have that our “philosophies or deriviations or ideologies do not mee these Simple Truths?” What are the “Simple Truths” of which you speak? Don’t just talk about them, give us specifics. My experience has been that when someone comes into the church who speaks as you do, that trouble quickly abounds because it is not the spirit of God that has arrived, but of demons who are sowing discord in the Body of Christ and a church that was once thriving and growing in God’s love soon is splintered and dying. Sometimes that person was just seriously mentally ill, but on two occasions there were possessed by demons. While I hope neither is your condition, you leave me few other possible conclusions.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 17, 2016 at 6:31 am
    “If you lack the man parts to preach that sin is sin; how can you do anything but drive the nails in further?” Seriously “Conviction”, do you really envision Jesus Christ or Ellen White addressing even the vilest sinners in such a manner? Do you really believe that your own wife and daughters would approve of such trash talk? “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 7:32 am
    Isaiah 32:8 But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand. 9 Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech. 10 Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come. 11 Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. They are told to rise. We gave them no option. You seem to support some when you want without justification; but not support others in justification? Then plead justification in your forbearance of Love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control? Is that not the Simple Truth.

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 6:50 am
    And once again, no reverence for HIM. I cannot do everything for that, some things HE expects from you. But I give our FATHER praise and thanks for looking down and remembering us unworthy. And once again, Psalms 111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever. From remembrance, and once again, the Word on seeking the old ways. Jeremiah 6:16 Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. William, are you the problem? Do you reverence HIM to even begin wisdom? Search HIS Word for HIM; not you? It is easy to send others down the wide gate; but we know where that leads. But do you not interfere with those attempting to guided them to the narrow gate; that few will find (Matthew 7)? Then do you promote those ideologies to others; only making it more difficult for everyone else? Questions to think about. Us mentally ill, discord sowing and demon possessed (by your definitions) servants Love you. We think there is much potential; prove us right. HIS reverence and Word are a good place to start. Not just thanking HIM for the Gifts given you; but real reverence. Not searching the Word for you; but actually seeking HIM and answers. Then you would know who those, that tell you otherwise represent.

    Bugs/Larry Boshell
    August 17, 2016 at 7:09 am
    Conviction, whomever you are, anonymous to God also, I speculate (in jest), you say: “Why are the old paths so bad; when we are supposed to seek the old paths and things that work?” They old ways are defunct and you don’t seem to know it. Why are the lemmings leaving? The old ways don’t work. Let’s review the reasons. Overall, old Adventism is self-absorbed in a sound proof chamber without windows. Prophetical Adventism was DOA. The prophecies weren’t really prophecies. The interpreters and proponents were totally wrong. Christ hasn’t returned. The “signs of the times” have been the same for thousands of years. Ellen was a decent person but not a good or unique” prophet. There is no persecution by the “papacy” for Sabbath keeping and none on the infinite horizon. The Sabbath was meant for Israelites. Three angels message is a template pasted over meaninglessness. If Adventists were a “chosen” people by God (actually, a face saving, self-promotion proclamation), he was a bum that them down. Adventist schools are fizzling as brainwashers and guardians of the young. Just to name a few etched tombstone eulogies. Neo-Adventism survives because it has abandoned its past disasters. It is developing a new reason to exist in the future. The old paths don’t work, blocked by irremovable debris. C???????ion the good old days have left you in the dustbin of Adventism. Grieve bravely. Where grief abounds, so does weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! RIP!

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 7:44 am
    You forget one thing maybe Bugs; HIM?

    Bugs/Larry Boshell
    August 17, 2016 at 8:57 am
    C???????ion. Sorry, nothing to forget! Who Him, not you? Anyway, you failed to answer my assertions, which is normal for people who can’t defend intellectually or honestly the insolvency of old Adventism! The “Him” whom I assume you are referencing (not yourself) had nothing to do with Adventism, now or then, I proposed. Why do you insist on retreating to discredited teachings and doctrines as if that is the hope for the reclamation of Adventism? The past is the Wailing Wall of Adventism. Perhaps better said as the WFofA “Wailing Foundations of Adventism!”

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 9:24 am
    So you are judge, jury and executioner; of all within your own created classifications? No i am not HE; neither does HE fit in your little pocket. The Denomination is growing faster than ever; yet we are failing. Actually in areas; I will give you that. But is that not your fault and motive? Do you have another Denomination you should be worrying about; or do you just wish to tear others down? Hopefully you do not wish to tear HIM down; or think that you no longer need HIM. I did not answer your question; because it was not a question. You pose your own answers. Which discredited teachings and Doctrines do you refer to? Or do you just wish to pose more of your own answers? Come on Bugs, we Love you.

    Stephen Foster
    August 18, 2016 at 3:49 pm
    Ah, my man Bugs is at it again; scoffing away in the prophetic spirit of 2 Peter 3:4. Bugs, do you suppose that since, in your view, everything has pretty much remained “the same for thousands of years” (as in verse 4), are things likely to continue as they are for another thousand years; or do you suppose that things will actually get better? Do you believe that “the Lord is [actually] slack concerning his promise” to return; or is it perhaps possible that He is actually “unwilling that any should perish…”? Given what we are witnessing in the world from day to day, it would appear that it is you who lives in a private echo chamber (…as a result of a traumatized history perhaps). In all seriousness, if you can’t see that the world is a significantly more dangerous place than it was even in your own traumatic youth; then you might consider paying closer attention. I’m just sayin’…

    William Noel
    August 17, 2016 at 8:21 am
    Conviction, “Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge?” Job 38:2 How, exactly, do you measure reverence for HIM? Or, the failure to do so? Tell us so we will know what you are talking about. How do you measure wisdom? Who authorized you to measure others and condemn those who fall short in your view? On what basis do you charge that others are not studying HIS WORD? For your information, I do search HIS WORD and what I find there is a very different God than you seem to be imagining. HE does not make wild accusations against me or allow me to make such charges against others. Where do you find God authorizing you to treat others with such gross disrespect? Remember, you don’t know me. So, on what basis do you make your claims? Apparently you have forgotten the admonition of Paul in Romans, chapter 2 about you accusing others when you are doing the same things. Is that not a truth simple enough for you to understand? Yet you persist in accusing without detailing the basis for your accusations. Is that not clear evidence of dementia?

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 9:15 am
    Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. 4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? 6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; 7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? Who was it that did all these things? That is the measure of reverence. Wisdom comes from HIM and based on the first question. If you search the Word; why do you not find? I do not judge your Soul as in Romans 2; I actually have Hope and state you have a lot of potential. This actually leans toward judging as good; which is just as bad. Romans 14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. Am I not to point out the stumblingblocks that others have placed in your way; even in Love? Is absolute privilege of entitlement not to wait until last breath? But is that also not absolute in HIS Love? Should we be jealous or ecstatic with Love for those that find HIM; no matter when?

    William Noel
    August 17, 2016 at 10:51 am
    Conviction, How curious it is that you would quote Romans 14:13 about not judging when you’re the one doing all the judging of others! Apparently you are unable to answer simple questions. But since you persist in heaping accusations, I will add more questions that I doubt you will be capable of answering. What is “privilege of entitlement?” What “stumbling blocks that others have placed in your way” are you imagining when you know nothing about the people you accuse? How long will you persist in blaspheming against HIS followers?
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:36 am

    One of the videos in the previous-post accused Adventists of "Speculative-Eschatology". I have come to the conclusion that considering Past, Future, and the Otherworldly are unavoidably "Speculative" (to various degrees). Even consideration of the Present must often be somewhat speculative!! One simply MUST be honest about this!! I have attempted to lighten things up by combining Theology with Science-Fiction (and NOT making a big-deal about it)!! What if the Conflict of the Ages Series is fundamentally Plagiarized Historical-Fiction??!! Should it still be diligently studied?? I think so!! But not as "Another Bible"!! Use "Common-Sense" for God's-Sake!!
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 388915_10150524183239084_1122415552_n
    Glacier View Responses
    Continued From Previous Post:

    http://atoday.org/glacier-view-a-retrospective/

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 12:53 pm
    After days of grieving about many of the comments here I feel compelled to offer some facts/evidence about Desmond Ford, my father, with whom I have had the great privilege of being in close contact for nearly 61 years. I will do so over the course of a number of posts given the word limit here: • I had the opportunity to observe his sub-conscious mind when he was delirious earlier this year. There was a calmness about him as he talked in his delirium – there was no agitation or distress evident. While we couldn’t understand many of his words, I heard him talking about family and friends saying phrases such as “Thank you Peter for picking me up.” “I am sorry to have kept you waiting.” “Jenni is such a lovely lady.” “Peter, its very good of you to go out of your way”. “Thank you very much”. “Thank you so much for coming.” I too recall the words Gill reported – particularly “lovely” that he said a number of times. • His demeanor in delirium was consistent with his conscious response to any and all adversity, “It’s in the Lord’s hands”. • All of my life I have observed his gracious attitude to everyone. Instead of criticizing people he says things such as “they mean well” or “the Lord died for him/her” or “the Lord loves them and so should we” or “he/she hasn’t had the benefit of reading widely on that topic” (see my next post for more)

    Yawei
    August 18, 2016 at 7:18 am
    Amen Elenne!!! Des continuously has a gracious attitude to everyone. Des does not criticise but has a generous Christ like spirit present in his words you quote Des responds with: “they mean well”, “the Lord died for him/her”, “the Lord loves them and so should we”, “he/she hasn’t had the benefit of reading widely on that topic”. What a beautiful Christ like spirit Des has been blessed with and invites us all to receive as Des continually focusses on Jesus and what is good and lovely and pure and honest and true! Thank you for keeping the 5th Commandment Ellene!!!

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 12:54 pm
    • When I was a rebellious teenager, I said to him one day, in frustration at not being able to goad him, “How come you are so perfect?” He said “How can you say that, I have so many faults.” I said “Name one then”. He said, “I am so impatient”. I said, “That’s a joke”. To me he had exhibited endless patience as I was always questioning him, challenging him, pushing his buttons and grieving him. Yet his responses always exhibited patience and love – he never lost his temper or raised his voice. • My father is someone who is quick to apologise and say “I was wrong, you were right about that”. Is this a characteristic of a proud person? • My father has a very tender conscience. When he was young student and very poor his older brother gave him his old army boots. My father was concerned that it may not have been right for him to accept them and sought counsel from a faculty member who assured my father that they were no longer government property and added “blessed is he who has a tender conscience”. (see my next post for more)

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 12:54 pm
    • When I was born my father named me Ellen after Ellen G White – a woman he has always held in the highest esteem and whose writings continue to influence his life and speaking today. Changing my name when I was young and rebellious was only one of many insults he has had to endure. Just this year I asked him a question as we travelled by train together. His answer was to quote verbatim from EG White on the issue. He has always viewed her as a pastor, not someone who is infallible. • After more than 27 years as a trial attorney in private practice I have learned a lot about people and authenticity. My father is someone who is the same publicly as he is in private and when under duress. I have observed him under enormous stress of my mother dying. He would lie awake night after night listening to whether she was still breathing, yet still kept up all of his teaching/preaching commitments while cooking and caring for us kids. There was a calm assurance about him that God was in control. He even kept his sense of humor and high level care for us. I was sick one day during this time and told him that all I felt like eating was a cucumber. He rode his bicycle for miles searching for the truck that was our mobile greengrocer and came home with 2 small cucumbers. (see my next post for more)

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 12:55 pm
    • When I left the Lord to follow my own desires it was God’s Spirit working through my father who led me back. Who my father is as a person, more than anything he said, made me realize there must be a God. He never nagged me, just grieved and prayed. Then when the time was right he gave me a new Bible and asked me if I would read it, for his sake, – just five minutes a day. That began my slow, rebellious journey back to God. One childhood memory stood out during that time. When I was about nine my mother asked me to sweep the kitchen floor and I told her to do it herself. I was sent to my father’s office where my father told me how much it grieved him when I spoke to my mother that way. I remember my sarcastic response of “haw, haw”. He said that instead of punishing me I was to punish him and he held out his hand for me to spank. My proud, rebellious heart immediately dissolved into tears as I said I could never do that. Yet he insisted and, for what seemed a very long time, he just sat there silently waiting, with his hand open. He had to settle, in the end, for me just placing my hand on his hand. He incarnated Christ to me. (see my next post for more)

    Jim Hamstra
    August 18, 2016 at 2:32 pm
    Elenne, I am very glad that you came back to God. Far too many of my fellow PKs (or whatever you call children of pastors) leave and never come back. Every human who will be saved in God’s Kingdom, is a former rebel who came back to God.

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 12:56 pm
    Whatever one might think of his theology, I can see by his sanctified life that his faith in Jesus is real. On that basis alone there is no condemnation of him by God as the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed him from every sin. I know he will be in heaven along with many who found Jesus because of his witness. As you and he are beloved children of God how then should you speak of him?

    William Noel
    August 18, 2016 at 5:58 am
    Elenne, By the character of his life that you described, I think we have a great example of how a person’s love for God can be so superior to their particular allegiance to an imperfect human creed that their faith survives the trials that come when they are attacked over some difference with that creed. How I wish that those who have been so critical could instead be as committed to Christ instead of creed!

    elenne ford
    August 17, 2016 at 1:15 pm
    Adapted from New Living Translation of Galatians 5:5,6 “But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised [or believe in the IJ or not]. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.”

    Bill Sorensen
    August 17, 2016 at 3:09 pm
    “Whatever one might think of his theology,…….” elenne, this whole discussion is about your dad’s person. It is not about EGW as a person. It is not about John Calvin, or the Pope, or “how nice” anyone is or was, or their private personal experience with Christ. Many “good” and viable Christians have held various false doctrines. So it is commendable that you give a sterling testimony about your father’s personal experience. But this simply not the issue. I don’t think he every attack EGW personally, nor deny her Christian experience as a Christian. His attack on EGW was her doctrine of the Investigative judgment and claimed it was a system of legalism. Even so, I impute ignorance to him on this issue. Even though he could not produce a single thread of evidence to support his false claim. If people have understood the Investigative judgment as a judgment to determine who has merited heaven and who has not, this is not EGW’s fault. It is no part of her doctrine and any honest evaluation of her teaching will prove such a charge as being totally false. God will judge your dad, just like He will judge John Calvin. But we need not bypass false doctrine on the basis that someone was a “nice Christian” and should not be challenged by what they teach. Hopefully, you and others will discern the difference and not automatically assume we know what your father’s final relationship is, or will be as we all must “stand before the judgment seat…

    Hansen
    August 17, 2016 at 4:11 pm
    Elenne, A lot of people appreciate your Father’s work. His writings are being spread around the world.

    Elaine Nelson
    August 17, 2016 at 2:50 pm
    Elenne, Thank you so much for your very personal experience as Des’ daughter. This has always been my impression of him after hearing him speak a number of times, but you have triply confirmed that impression. How can anyone so denigrate a man who loved His God, who loved people, and had ultimate patience–shown with the Church administration who castigated him so relentlessly. Those who criticize him should be very ashamed of their words and if nothing else, keep silent about those thoughts you have so frequently verbalized. Thanks again. Ellene.

    Bill Sorensen
    August 17, 2016 at 3:16 pm
    “How can anyone so denigrate a man who loved His God, who loved people, and had ultimate patience–shown with the Church administration who castigated him so relentlessly.” And Roman Catholics can and do say the same thing about those who attack the Pope who is “Mr. Nice Guy” personified in all the world. Without claiming a precise parallel, no one can be “Mr. Nice Guy” more than the devil when it suits his purpose. Massive doses of affirmation on any level can give a feeling of assurance that is not well placed. And create a condescending attitude that is anything but “Christian.”

    Elaine Nelson
    August 17, 2016 at 2:52 pm
    Correction: “keep silent about those thoughts THEY have so frequently verbalized. They know who they are!

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 3:56 pm
    Through this we miss the perfection. Luke 8:13 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. 14 And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. The same perfection that applies to all of us. Sometimes we make that much more difficult for HIM than it should be. We can hope and pray, but neither can nor should we judge; that belongs to HIM, good and bad. 17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. 18 Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. We can not judge, but can talk about perfection. Are we not the sum of HIS works on us when HE takes us. Would we want to even think about changing that? Does HE not grow us in discipline and through multitudes of Gifts and Love along the way? Are such not the result of the end product; us? AS such do we not complain about those things that make us, us; in the end? Are we then not complaining about HIM growing us?

    Conviction
    August 17, 2016 at 4:07 pm
    Elènne, these are the things that made your dad, your dad. Would you want to change any of them? Does HE not send us what we need, even if it may not be what we want or even understand? Is that not the Truth of Love?

    milton hook
    August 17, 2016 at 7:40 pm
    Erv, like you I have mused about the value of retaining Bill S and Conviction. There is no automatic tag such as “Neolithic” or “Neaderthal” that appears on their comments. New readers and especially non-SDAs that happen upon the site are left with the impression that this level of discussion is normative among SDAs. I cringe in shame when I think of it. Furthermore, on this thread alone there are about 70 posts by these two men. In my opinion that number is disproportionate to the value of their comments. Generally speaking they ignore questions and persist with their own agenda. “Conviction” does not express himself/herself concisely and quotes scripture at length as if we don’t have Bibles of our own. Bill S tries to redefine words, tries to change the direction of the discussion and when pushed into a corner he pulls his ace card by saying, “Well, if you don’t believe my view and the view of the church then get out.” Who appointed him as the arbiter of sound doctrine and the judge and jury of every church board? Local churches do the acceptance and rejection of members, not Bill S. I think you are correct when you say their very words expose the era of their Adventist vintage. But how much is too much before it becomes intolerable for the Atoday Board? At what point do you decide that the venom and ignorance is harmful to the credibility of Atoday? Why give them press coverage? Does it attract or repel readers? Are they intent on destroying Atoday?

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 17, 2016 at 8:10 pm
    Erv, Milton, I, to have been reluctant to even consider a change in policy, til now. Conviction highlights the issue. He bears the hallmarks of an internet ‘troll.’ Not sure if that is the best word for it, but trolls, I think, have one primary aim… disruption. And even if this is not C’s aim, it is the effect. He carpet bombs with texts which may or may not be related to what he is saying in his incomprehensible style. I no longer try to read his offerings. As William Noel is finding out, a rational discussion with C is impossible. AT would not notice if C were to no longer post. Bill S is a different category, imho. He does occasionally engage. And the other day, he was even reasonable with it. Back to his wicked ways today tho. Seems Ford, or those close to him, really touch a raw nerve in old Bill. It could be argued that ex Adventists like myself should not be allowed to post here. When I first got involved, over ten years ago, it seemed to be all ex Addies here. Then there was a purge and it became more mainstream. But far from middle of Adventist road. I admit, I no longer identify with the A part of AT. But I am big on the T. and in ‘Today if yoiu hear His voice….’ (Today is forever the only day that matters. There is no past and no future in the ‘eternal’ realm). Here’s a suggestion: A ‘good faith’ test. 1. Poster uses their own name. 2. They ‘engage with’ the topic or the discussion. 3. No ‘text bombing.’

    Conviction
    August 18, 2016 at 3:28 am
    Let’s take away Caesar and all of the requirements of charity, religion and rights for bit. First we have the authority of the Body of CHRIST, in which the Denomination resides. Is this questioned? The Denomination has such Doctrine as it may choose within the assembled Body. That Body has asked the individual members to stand up for such Doctrine and even assigns those responsibilities with Doctrine. Is this questioned? Would this not then define the intent within the concepts of troller and trollee? Should everyone not search the intent to build up or tear down as such? The BIBLE is the Denominations only Creed; yet I hear constant complaints. How do you live by bread alone? How do you discern the intent of your own hearts? Should we not; HE will? Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”. We Love everyone; but is your intent to search or to build up? By and on what ground would you stand or pool otherwise? If you have issues, do you note them. In such, if you have questions do you ask them? Better, if you have answers do you state them? Otherwise this does just become T, instead of AT. Eternity is inclusive of today, but today is not eternity. But we definitely need to live for today, for tomorrow we may die; and be in front of HIM.

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 18, 2016 at 4:56 pm
    C, if you have a problem with ‘just become T,’ read what Hebrews 3 & 4 say about T.

    Conviction
    August 18, 2016 at 6:57 pm
    We can actually state it, for it is written: Hebrews 3 (Psalms 95): 7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. 11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Will you hear his voice or do you listen to others? Do you err in your heart? Do you know HIS ways? Do you tempt HIM, while proving HIM and seeing HIS works? Do you exalt HIM or others? 13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; 15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. 16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. 17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? Will you not be deceived by sin, daily?

    Conviction
    August 18, 2016 at 7:11 pm
    Hebrews 4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. 2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. 3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. 5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. 6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief: 7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 8 For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. Did he give them rest in verse 8?

    Conviction
    August 18, 2016 at 7:33 pm
    Hebrews 4 (cont.): 11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. 12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. 14 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. 15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. We live in the To day. We should not harden our hearts, To day; or if he allows tomorrow. But do realize these are our individual requirements. Are we not suppose to at least strive be like HIM; without sin? CHRIST felt our infirmities; all of ours. Are they infirmities when we dig our own hole? Are they infirmities when HE disciplines us? Do we not often attempt to interfere in these many cases? How about the past now; if we should live in the To day. Does the past, in results of our failure and HIS discipline, not make us what we are To day? Is that not how we grow and perfects us as we begin to understand (IJ)? Why are we going into the past?

    Ervin Taylor
    August 18, 2016 at 9:43 am
    I just wanted to assure Milton, Serge and other interested parties, that a proposal will be pending with the AT administration very soon to deal with the issues they and others have raised. From my perspective, we need to balance the AT ideal of open and free expression of ideas with reasonable guidelines that deal with major problems with comments and postings that do not contribute to the quality of the discussion of issues. Stay tuned.

    Bugs/Larry Boshell
    August 18, 2016 at 1:32 pm
    When I was an SDA minister a sample of the characters under question here were virtually always part of my congregation. In those days I was a-toe-the-mark SDA minister, but still these characters vexed me in many ways, usually charging that I wasn’t tough enough, didn’t preach Ellen and fire and brimstone nearly enough. The Brinsmead and Ford issues revolved mostly outside my sphere, hadn’t peaked before I left. I do recall preaching one sermon on the issues after which slumbering parishners, having snoozed even through closing song, on being prodded awake by ushers, uttered “Huh?” I would vote against censoring (not that I have a ballot and not because I may be on the cusp by some quirk, myself!) since the characters under question provide some entertainment as loony samples of how to work the fringes of sane discourse. I doubt any accidental visitors are traumatized when landing here. I doubt they come to view Adventism to be permanently corrupted particularly with so many of us fine contributors clearly, expressing with the finest of scholarship and reason, completely overshadowing all the weird contributors! It’s all OK, here is the proper Key Text: Bugs 1:1 Judge not the lunatic fringe, lest ye be known as a member by devising Key Texts which is zero times worse than coping and pasting them everywhere. Opps. Hammy, I could use some math help here!

    Jim Hamstra
    August 18, 2016 at 2:23 pm
    “Hammy, I could use some math help here!” We all need help in various ways. But few of us are actually willing to accept help. Do you really want my help, Bugs-Larry 8-)?

    Bugs/Larry Boshell
    August 19, 2016 at 6:47 am
    Yes, Jim, splain the effect of zero x a number. You are a math guy, being an engineer and all that. This is actually my teesny attempt at levity while visiting the judgment bar of these rascal defendants. They have been indicted on this forum for their perceived religious autism by us who are sure we aren’t so afflicted. I have spent about forty five years analyzing Adventism and Christianity and my determinations have much “help” to offer. So I can participate on a two-way street! Theology is my game, my expertise. Math not so much, though I do know the effect of zero. So, I am open to help that is given and received but doubt there is applicable one-way efficacy for either of us : ————(

    Jim Hamstra
    August 18, 2016 at 2:05 pm
    Dr Taylor, et al: While I certainly do not agree with some of the things written here by Conviction and Bill S, I would urge considerable caution in whatever attempts are made to “mute” or “attenuate” their voices on this web site. I also do not agree with much of what is written from the “ditch on the left side of the road” either. I do think there needs to be a more strenuous attempt to discourage the personal attacks that some seem to indulge in here. Though it may be convenient to blame all this on “traditional” Adventists, if you read carefully, some of the comments from other quarters also cross-over the line. Unkind words couched in humor or sarcasm are still unkind words. We may not be able to agree on what constitutes Adventist Today or Adventist Yesterday or whatever, but we should at least agree on the Golden Rule.

    Conviction
    August 18, 2016 at 7:59 pm
    Don’t be tooo hard on the Erv. They can call me Neolithic or Neaderthal or troll or pond scum if they want and I am sure Bill agrees; we Love them. I don’t think there was any conspiracy or collusion here. If there was (or intent) I don’t feel discriminated against and hope Bill feels the same way. Hey, call us young; then we are not stuck in the vintage of age discrimination. I don’t know how you address the elder parts of the BIBLE though. Many do not have BIBLES or dexterity to look up Scriptures, so I quote them. We seem to pass out a lot of literature and doctrine but not the BIBLE; our only Creed. I think even Des would agree; give them a BIBLE, GOD’s Doctrine, and let them make their own decision after that. Otherwise we only discriminate against the Word and could easily become pusher of self addictions. I would still content that they contribute to the quality of the discussion of issues. Is it not our responsibility as Christians to help those questioning and searching; even above the Denomination? I would contend they have the Religious Freedom to ask.

    EARL CALAHAN
    August 18, 2016 at 10:45 am
    Bill S. Only God knows the truth you claim to know about Dr. Ford. Are you claiming to be God?? Your criticism of Dr. Ford, and those who say “Bring them in. Bring the wandering ones to Jesus”, the Big Tent people, will surely come back to haunt you.

    Bill Sorensen
    August 18, 2016 at 3:00 pm
    ” Your criticism of Dr. Ford,…….” Blah blah blah……Earl. I attack Dr. Ford’s false doctrine. I met him a few times and attend his church in Auburn a few times. I listened to his tapes and read his literature. He teaches false doctrine, period. He is not “Luther” who attack the RCC. He is a parallel to Korah who attack Moses. And like Korah, he gets massive doses of affirmation from the ignorant and uninformed who “Worship, they know not what.” As for posting on Atoday, I don’t into someone’s house who asks me not to come back. If and when the “powers that be” send me an e-mail and ask me not to post, believe me, I won’t. You all get together and pat each other on your spiritual butt and tell each other how “spiritually enlightened” you are. You attack the law of God on every level and at least some of you freely confess you are not even SDA. (Bless your heart, you are far more honest than those who hang around and attack the church and demand the right to remain members.) I agree on some level with your complaint about “Conviction” who has no identity. Atoday did not invite me to post. But neither did they tell me not to. If all you “cry babies” can convince them to ban me, that’s OK. Fulcrum block my posting because I opposed their legalism and the false doctrine of the LGT. And I agree they have the same right as the authority of Atoday. I don’t actually spend that much time here. I will continue to oppose your false…

    Jim Hamstra
    August 18, 2016 at 2:16 pm
    Ellene, At my father’s funeral I read the following from Daniel: “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” While I do not agree with everything your father has said or written, I disagree even more strongly with those commenters here who feel a need to trash on his motives or character because they disagree with some of his teachings. If God only used people who were perfect in all their knowledge and actions, every human being would be disqualified. Your father has led many to righteousness, and in the last day he will stand with Daniel, Luther, Calvin, Miller, White and many others. All imperfect in knowledge and actions, but all used by God as God saw fit. May you and I stand there with them!

    Jim Hamstra
    August 18, 2016 at 2:28 pm
    Apologies form my spelling, Elenne 8-(.

    Stephen Foster
    August 18, 2016 at 4:44 pm
    I’m wondering if the way that some of us conservative SDA’s approach the IJ is acceptable to others like Bill Sorensen. The way I see it, there is nothing that I can do to affect the timing of what has happened or what will happen in heaven insofar as where Christ is or is not; so I cannot concern myself with that about which I have no control. But if Jesus is my Advocate and my Judge, then all I have to do in order to be acquitted in any Judgment is to retain the services of the Advocate; in which case I cannot lose. So then, why shouldn’t my ONLY concern be about what it takes for me to retain the services of the Advocate?

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 19, 2016 at 5:50 am
    Stephen……… welcome back. I hope you were having a nice summer holiday. Can I ask you this. What is the point or value of a metaphor which is inherently illogical? It seems popular to present the IJ as if it were akin to a modern western style court. There is a judge, and counsel for and against the prisoner or plaintiff, depending on you preferred style of metaphor. Or maybe the picture is limited to one where there is Judge and prisoner with his Advocate alone. But in that picture, teh ‘accuser of the brethren’ is left out. But in your post, and I think Darrell’s, the picture is one where Jesus is represented as both Judge and Advocate simultaneously. I simply does not compute. In the EGW GC version, Jesus stands as Advocate representing us prisoners/plaintiffs, and pleading that Father God, teh Judge, does not destroy us. Until close of probation, when Jesus ceases to be interceding priest (is that the same as Advocate?). But suddenly, he cast off hte priestly role and puts on his robes of vengeance! Seriously? Loving priest one second, Vengeful destroyer the next. What kind of religious schizophrenia produces images/metaphors like this? But in all that, please tell me how Jesus can be both Judge and Advocate at the same time? That is worse than a joke. Its an insult to God and rational man. And you wonder why people who read the NT have trouble with this version of the IJ.

    darrellindensmith
    August 19, 2016 at 8:32 am
    John 5:22-25 “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” “He has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” 1 John 2:1-2 “But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

    Stephen Foster
    August 19, 2016 at 9:29 am
    Thanks Serge for the welcome back and for the well wishes. I am having the exact opposite of “a nice summer holiday;” but God is good anyway. I hope that Darrell’s response answers your question as to how Christ can be both Advocate and Judge. It is the precise answer that I would have hoped to have provided; so if you were/are looking for another answer, you will have to get it from someone else. I should thank Darrell for the response. Thanks Darrell.

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 19, 2016 at 4:09 pm
    “Sounds like you’ve been a bit crook, mate” as we say in Aus. Yes, we definitely wish you well. Regarding, the Advocate. My point was that its a difficult concept to fit into our western, investigative style of courtroom scene. One person performing two critical roles. Best get rid of a ‘junk’ metaphor like that. And if you want to see how bad it gets, Read Ms2, 1849. Darrell, I’m surprised you didnt mention the word for Advocate. Its Paraklete. Used 5 times in NT, all by John. The other 4 are found in John 14, 15, 16. All translated Comforter. Which is not an ideal word either. Some translators leave it at Paraklete. The word ‘with’ should be mentioned. ‘pros’ The typical SDA idea is that Jesus/Advocate is there to try to convince ‘angry God’ of something, in particular, to not destroy us humans. Its a revival of the angry pre-flood God. But the NT has ‘God IN Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.’ Which is where ‘pros’ comes in. See John 1…. ‘ and the Word was with/pros God, and the Word was God.’ Again, doesn’t fit with the courtroom metaphor.

    darrellindensmith
    August 19, 2016 at 5:00 pm
    Hi Serge, yes you are right; pa?a´???t?? is the word used in 1 John 2:1 as well as John 14. The root meaning is one who comes to the aid. As in English and probably every other language, the contest that a word is used in determines the nuance. In 1 John 1:2 Tyndale actually chose a very good fit. pa?a´???t?? is used in just this sense in Greek Literature. Albert Barnes “As usual here with reference to the Lord Jesus, it is employed in the more limited sense of the word “advocate,” as the word is frequently used in the Greek writers to denote an advocate in court;”

    darrellindensmith
    August 19, 2016 at 5:04 pm
    I don’t see a conflict since Christ and God are the same. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself

    darrellindensmith
    August 18, 2016 at 7:04 pm
    Stephen, I agree with you here: “But if Jesus is my Advocate and my Judge, then all I have to do in order to be acquitted in any Judgment is to retain the services of the Advocate;” The problem for many is the thought we must come to the place where we don’t need to “retain the services of our Advocate.” Example: “…Those who are living on the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator. Their robes must be spotless, their characters must be purified from sin by the blood of sprinkling. Through the grace of God and their own diligent effort they must be conquerors in the battle with evil…” Ellen White, SDA Commentary, Vol. VI, p. 1118. Review and Herald, Sept. 27, 1906. SDA Commentary, Vol. V, p.1128; ibid, Vol 7, p. 943. Review and Herald, Aug. 28, 1894. Review and Herald, Sept. 25, 1900. The Great Controversy, p. 425

    Stephen Foster
    August 19, 2016 at 3:03 am
    You make a good point Darrell, and you have hit upon the problem that literally vexes those who are opposed to the traditional Adventist IJ doctrine. It vexes them because it frightens and even traumatizes them; and understandably so. The EGW quote you reference and the concept of last generation perfection is frightening, and is problematic from a theological perspective; because it seems like we are the guarantors of our of salvation at the time of Revelation 22:11-15. The truth is that we’re never the guarantors of our salvation; but that God’s grace saves and empowers us; even at the end of time. The ironic thing is that the fear of living without a mediator simultaneously exposes the fearful as believers in the advent concept and as disbelievers in the power of grace, or the empowering aspect of grace. In some cases it traumatizes people away from a theoretical belief altogether. I’ve heard Desmond Ford interviewed, and now after reading first-hand testimony from his offspring, I see why I have always been hesitant to condemn him, or to even say with confidence that he is wrong about the IJ. Frankly, from my perspective, if he had regarded EGW with disdain, then I would have been prone to disregard him; but that has never been the case as far as I have heard and read. Ford may be right, he may be wrong, and he may be partially right and partially wrong; but if I have faith in Jesus as my Savior then I don’t believe it is necessary to know whether Ford is…

    Stephen Foster
    August 19, 2016 at 3:22 am
    …right or wrong.

    darrellindensmith
    August 18, 2016 at 7:17 pm
    Elenne, thank you for commenting here and defending your Father. I agree with you, “Whatever one might think of his theology, I can see by his sanctified life that his faith in Jesus is real. On that basis alone there is no condemnation of him by God as the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed him from every sin.” I do not agree with your Father on some issues, and we have went back and forth in this very Magazine. But here or privately your Father was always a gracious Christian man of God toward me. Your Father is a blessing to so many who clearly heard the Gospel through his message of the Cross.

    Trevor Hammond
    August 18, 2016 at 7:44 pm
    It’s quite evident that some liberals who support Dr Ford’s position are targeting Conviction and Mr Sorensen (so far). Whose next remains to be seen. In their attempt to silence their opposition they have accused them of trolling among other trumped up charges. For some of us posting here is based on spare time and some have more time on their hands so they will post more often. Not supporting Dr Ford and how he brought his view into the church is not trolling. n Internet slang, a troll (/'tro?l/, /'tr?l/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement.

    Trevor Hammond
    August 18, 2016 at 8:21 pm
    Question. Who is it that sowed the seed of discord within Adventism by trying to force the church to accept an alternative view which diametrically opposes the Investigative Judgement and openly accuses Ellen White and the Adventist Church of being wrong and therefore implying that the church believes a false doctrine? Next question. Are not the followers and supporters of Dr Ford doing the same in accusing the church not only the IJ being false but have also openly attacked many other beliefs held by Adventists? From what I gather Dr Ford also supports WO thereby winning more favour especially with liberals and feminists. Now I’m asking myself shouldn’t those attacking the Adventist Church teachings be accused of trolling? Will the world church trump charges like liberals do and ban them all? The fact that the world church is dealing kindly with them speaks for itself.

    Bronwyn Reid
    August 18, 2016 at 10:10 pm
    Those who have posted vitroilc attacks on this Forum against Dr Ford’s integrity as a Christian gentleman and Biblical scholar say more about themselves than they do about the person they are seeking to vilify. Those closest to him have given their personal testimony of the consistent Christian witness both in private and I’m public. All the many sermons that have heard Dr Ford preach over 30+ years have been Christ-centred and gospel focused. This is in harmony with Ellen White’s pastoral admonition that Jesus be the centre of all our sermon discourses and the Bible should be our only rule of faith. If Ellen White were alive I believe she would encourage and endorse Dr Ford’s Righteousness by Faith, gospel focused preaching and denounce those who preach a legalistic plan of salvation.

    Bronwyn Reid
    August 18, 2016 at 10:17 pm
    Those who have posted vitroilc attacks on this Forum against Dr Ford’s integrity as a Christian gentleman and Biblical scholar say more about themselves than they do about the person they seek to vilify. Those closest to him have given their personal testimony of the consistent Christian witness both in private and in public. All the sermons that have heard Dr Ford preach over 30+ years have been Christ-centred and gospel focused. This is in harmony with Ellen White’s pastoral admonition that Jesus be the centre of all our sermon discourses and the Bible should be our only rule of faith. If Ellen White were alive today, I believe she would endorse Dr Ford’s preaching on Righteousness by Faith, and she would appreciate his powerful uplifting if Jesus as our only hope of salvation. Only in eternity will it be revealed the fruit of Dr Ford’s legacy through his gospel ministry.

    Conviction
    August 19, 2016 at 3:24 am
    I am sorry, but I do not see vitroilc attacks against Des on this forum; please point them out. In all honesty, I think everyone here loves him; and some actually Love him. Job 11:2 Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified? 3 Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed? 4 For thou hast said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes. 5 But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee; 6 And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth The wide gate is easy to preach. Talk is cheap and self justified. Should we be ashamed when you mock? 7 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 8 It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 9 The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. 10 If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him? 11 For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it? 12 For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt. Righteousness by Faith is the cornerstone; but unto perfection is HIS. HE Saves, all we can do if we are not careful is make it more difficult. I would not lay claim or stake on Saints or fruits.

    Conviction
    August 19, 2016 at 3:40 am
    Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 3 And this will we do, if God permit. 4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. The Good Word or powers of the world; which way is it? Hebrews 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: 11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. They do not need you to tell them your ideas of HIM; but to tell them of HIM.

    Conviction
    August 19, 2016 at 3:53 am
    Even Des will tell you he never understood perfection. Is it not our fault that we put him on a pedestal, then and now? Was he not pushed by us past his calling then and now? Did we not raise him up for the fall because some wanted more? Do we not even degrade the good works he did within the Doctrine of CHRIST as such? We are always at fault; that is a given. Seems like we want to be the Priesthood of Believers; but only when we want? Never taking the responsibilities in such? Hebrews 8:17 Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: 18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: 19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; 20 Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. A Priest I can have in Faith to carry through. A Priest in Hope that will catch me when I fall. A Priest that within Charity will understand my infirmities and give what is needed; not what is wanted. I know a lot of people that will tell you what you want to hear and a lot that will listen to them; but they can never give, nor even understand what HE can Give. Maybe we should listen to and follow HIM for a change?

    Bugs/Larry Boshell
    August 19, 2016 at 7:10 am
    Con????????tion, one of the talents one facing trial should have is to learn not to annoy the prosecutors. (And defense witness, too!) I have stood as a witness for you so far, not because I agree with one thing you write. You can read my post above. But I pointed out that Key Texting is a huge liability for your case. Parroting Scripture is an exercise in futility. Bible texts pasted into replies guarantees they won’t be read and causes the writers diminshment. Can’t you make your case without rewriting Scripture? Or are you hoping for banishment with face slashing resulting in a scar of pride?

    Bill Sorensen
    August 19, 2016 at 8:17 am
    Of course Dr. Ford must be right…..after all, he is a “nice person” and this proves he is right. I personally reject this as the ultimate and final evidence to prove whether a person is theologically correct or not. But since this is the basis many of you build your case on, who could possibly prove he is wrong? Many who reject the IJ just don’t understand it and this may well include Dr. Ford. But you don’t attack something you don’t understand, you attack something you do understand and reject. So we must conclude that at least in Ford’s opinion, he clearly understand the IJ and is convinced it is not biblical. His accusation that is is legalism only proves to some of us, he is a novice and doesn’t know what he is talking about. And if people conclude “legalism” about the IJ, this is not EGW’s fault. Their ignorance don’t justify their claim nor does it negate the truth of the matter. Either they didn’t read a comprehensive view that she has presented, or, they simply don’t understand what she said. At any rate, no one will be excused and justified in the judgment before God for attacking and rejecting truth. The Jewish leaders attack and rejected Christ. Do you think ignorance will be an acceptable excuse when clear evidence was presented contrary to their final decision? I think not. And this applies to every truth people refuse to accept and think or hope all will be well. NOT. How you respond to all the word of God will determine.

    Bill Sorensen
    August 19, 2016 at 8:26 am
    whether you will be in heaven or not. To think you can ignore what the bible teaches and respond any way you please, and still be saved is some “la la land” spirituality. There is no gospel of grace that negates your responsibility to know and do the will of God as revealed in His word. And this is what the investigative judgment is all about. For one thing, it stimulates the moral imperative to ask “What must I do to be saved?” And to respond with some “I don’t know, and I don’t care, and I don’t need to know.” is far from any “gospel” presentation in the bible. Surely, if those who seek and come short in the effort to know and do, then there is grace for all of us on this factor. But this is hardly the emphasis advocated and supported on this forum.
    Obedience to the law of God is salvational. Not because it is how anyone can merit heaven, but because it is the only responsible viable response that God will accept to be a member of His kingdom family. And to label this “legalism” as Dr. Ford does, and others agree, is no part of the bible teaching on law and grace and its application to the human family.

    S
    August 19, 2016 at 9:54 am
    Bill Sorensen, You think that you’re right, but allow me to prove to you from the Bible that you might be wrong about what it takes to be saved. Besides Moses and Jesus Himself, the one human being who has died that we know for sure will go to heaven, without any question, is the thief on the cross. He may have never done anything right; never obeyed any law, never known any theology, never brought anyone to Christ, never visited the sick, never obeyed the commandments, never fed the poor, never did anything that He was supposed to do EXCEPT one thing. Yet we have greater assurance that He will be in heaven than that we will be in heaven. Do you think that was a one off? Do you think that he received special treatment by being in the right place at the right time?

    Bill Sorensen
    August 19, 2016 at 11:11 am
    “He may have never done anything right; never obeyed any law, never known any theology, never brought anyone to Christ, …..” In fact, you don’t know all the things he may have done or may not have done. Nor do you know how much “theology” he may have known before his confession of faith, nor how long he lived before he died on the cross……and a host of other unknowns that are not recorded. None the less, the first thing he did was witness. But even in light of all the unknowns, he is an exception to the rule, and you can not build a whole theological structure on some single incident. Jesus raised Moses from the dead. Does this prove He raises everyone from the dead at the moment of death? The final point is, you don’t build “theology” on exceptions to any rule and then use the exception to negate the rule itself. The fact that God knows who believes and who does not, does not negate the judgment according to works that determines our eternal destiny. And when God judges, He never appeals to what He knows, but what is in the record book. This makes the record book valid and stimulates people to know that what they do is an important imperative for their salvation. The IJ is not about the sovereignty of God, but the sovereignty of man.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 19, 2016 at 12:40 pm
    Bill Sorensen wrote: “The fact that God knows who believes and who does not, does not negate the judgment according to works that determines our eternal destiny. And when God judges, He never appeals to what He knows, but what is in the record book.” I basically agree with the foregoing. What is recorded is the Evidence. (continued)

    Jim Hamstra
    August 19, 2016 at 12:43 pm
    “This makes the record book valid and stimulates people to know that what they do is an important imperative for their salvation. The IJ is not about the sovereignty of God, but the sovereignty of man.” What WE do is not an “imperative” for our salvation. According to both Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul, it is what we allow GOD to do in and through us, that is the Evidence (not cause but effect) of our salvation. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (cf Jesus Christ) “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (cf Paul) “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed–not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” So the Evidence does not testify to our goodness or obedience, but to God’s transforming power.

    William Noel
    August 19, 2016 at 12:49 pm
    Bill S., Judgement in both scripture and jurisprudence is the process of determining the guilt or innocence of an individual. If God knows who is or is not obeying Him, then He already knows who He is going to save. So, where is the need for Him to judge anything? John 5:24 tells us that the person who believes has eternal life and will not be condemned because they have “crossed over from death to life.” So at the end of time there is nothing left to judge and because of that the phrase about the judgement being “set” is not talking about a process of determining guilt or innocence, but an ending of that process, that there is no longer any opportunity for a person’s eternal fate to be changed. That is o0ne of the reasons why I view the IJ as theological nonsense.

    Stephen Foster
    August 19, 2016 at 10:47 pm
    Bill Sorensen, Are you serious? Do you actually believe that the thief on the cross is an exception to the rule (whatever you deem the rule to be)? That is extra-Biblical poppycock. Do you believe his being there at that time and place, and the recording of that was just a happy and lucky coincidence for him? There is a distinct possibility that he may have never done anything worthwhile except that one thing. We have no evidence that he ever did, so the existence of that possibility is real; but that possibility represents an inconvenience for you if you think that there is more that we need to do in order to “be with [Him] in paradise.” The parable of the laborers, and to some extent that of the prodigal son, tells us that some people will get the same salvation that haven’t been as seemingly ‘deserving’ as others. Isn’t the key to that reality the fact that no one actually earns salvation? Listen, in my view you continually do the cause of historic Adventism a disservice by imposing your own biases on what the Bible actually tells us. For example, why would you even speculate that the thief on the cross may have done something of a positive, redeeming nature; something about which the Bible does not even hint or imply in any way? On the other hand, why do you say that the thief on the cross is an exception to the rule? Where is that in the Bible?

    DD
    August 21, 2016 at 1:18 am
    “Jesus raised Moses from the dead. Does this prove He raises everyone from the dead at the moment of death?” Bill S, your statement seems to indicate you have personal divine revelation which others are not privy to. Are you able to show, through Scripture, that Jesus raised Moses from the dead?

    Conviction
    August 19, 2016 at 5:24 pm
    The thief denied himself, took up his cross and followed HIM. Literally.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 19, 2016 at 2:09 pm
    William, The crucial point which seems to escape most parties in this discussion, is that the Evidence is not to help God judge. God knows the end from the beginning and nothing is new or surprising or un-anticipated to God. That is why Jesus said more than once that we judge ourselves. The Evidence is for the benefit of all created sentient beings (humans, angels, etc) so that we will be able to understand the basis for God’s actions. This is a critical aspect of the Great Controversy theme that under-girds much of SDA thought as elucidated (not invented) by Ellen White. “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven [unfallen angels], and of those on earth [humans], and of those under the earth [fallen angels], and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (cf Paul, quoting from Isaiah) It is the undeniable, inescapable weight of the accumulated Evidence, that impels ALL to bow and confess, not just the unfallen angels and the redeemed, but also the fallen angels and the lost. To use a modern analogy, the complete record of the Evidence will be presented to each of these “juries” and each “jury” will render a unanimous Verdict that God is wholly Loving and Just in His/Her/Their dealings with each and every sentient creature (saved and lost alike).

    Jim Hamstra
    August 19, 2016 at 2:18 pm
    There is already overwhelming Evidence of the ultimate consequences of Evil and the infinite Love of God, demonstrated at the Cross. The transformation from Rebel to Disciple is, according to Paul, a “mystery” that is being played-out in Christ’s people. How the works of the Redeemed can be and are being “wrought in God” (cf Jesus Christ and Paul) is in the present being demonstrated before all of God’s sentient creatures. As Serge and others have pointed-out, the Redeemed have already passed from a Verdict of Death to a Free Gift of Life. They have been judged Worthy in Christ. And now the Redeemed are Evidence of the transforming power of God’s Grace.

    William Noel
    August 19, 2016 at 5:55 pm
    Jim, I think we may be talking past each other. When it comes to the concept of the IJ, the biggest misconception I see people getting hung-up on is that a person cannot be sure of their salvation until Jesus leaves the Most Holy in the Heavenly sanctuary to return and save the redeemed. I can find no evidence of that in scripture, yet many believe it, so that is what I was addressing.

    Jim Hamstra
    August 20, 2016 at 3:07 am
    “the biggest misconception I see people getting hung-up on is that a person cannot be sure of their salvation until Jesus leaves the Most Holy in the Heavenly sanctuary to return and save the redeemed. I can find no evidence of that in scripture, yet many believe it” William, You and I certainly agree on this!

    Bill Sorensen
    August 20, 2016 at 6:16 am
    “What WE do is not an “imperative” for our salvation.” Yes, it is, Jim. And what you have stated is the whole false spirituality that many have accepted and the final delusion of the devil. Saved by faith through grace in no way negates the moral imperative to do the will of God to be saved. But this lie of the devil has infiltrated the SDA church and the “fruit” of this false doctrine is so obvious that “wayfaring men, though fools, need not err” as they evaluate what is happening in the SDA church and why. Man saves himself by the way he responds to the gospel in its biblical context. And that response demands obedience to the law of God. Take away this biblical motivation to obey, and you have total rebellion that is so rampant in the church and the world. “Obey and live, disobey and die” is God’s covenant with all His moral beings. And we “save ourselves” by accepting this covenant in light of the gospel of God’s grace.

    Conviction
    August 20, 2016 at 4:03 am
    Matthew 12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. 36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. 37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. We know we will give account for idle words in the day of judgement. We know by our words we are justified or condemned. Hebrews 10:25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. 26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. 28 He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: 29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? Do we not remove even the need for HIS Sacrifice within such ideologies?

    EARL CALAHAN
    August 20, 2016 at 11:14 am
    Why did the CHRIST give His sacrifice, shed His Precious Royal Blood???? If it were not to save sinners it was a failure, and God is not Almighty!!!!

    Conviction
    August 20, 2016 at 4:19 am
    Maybe it is just me? Maybe I am the only one that needs HIS Sacrifice as an ignorant sinner? Maybe I am the only one that needs to know that there will be Judgement; just to keep me straight? Maybe that is why I am always brought into remembrance of HIS sinless pain and agony for my sins? Why I feel the nails driven in flesh and blood; just to give me a chance? Maybe that is why it feels like I pick up the hammer and drive the nails in farther when I am so easily deceived? It does seem like we are either making a lot of new hammers and passing them out or maybe such strength in others that they do not need HIM?

    William Noel
    August 20, 2016 at 11:59 am
    Conviction, “Maybe it is just me.” You’re right. It is you. I praise God that it is just you posting repeated falsehoods accusing everyone else here of not seeking God, giving Him glory or respecting His word and then are unable to ever tell us why.

    Nathaniel Moore
    August 20, 2016 at 10:37 am
    So many charges and counter-charges! Is it what this forum is about? I am much amused by the thought expressed by Gary Mc Carey at 4:19pm on August 15: ” I think we will all be surprised by who our next-door neighbours are in the after life…”. I have a sneaky suspicion that there will be no need (or possibility) to be surprised! ” The living know that they shall die; but the dead shall know nothing”.

    EARL CALAHAN
    August 20, 2016 at 10:55 am
    When souls, accept the grace of God through faith in Gods sacrifice, for their ransom from eternal death, from the LAW which condemns them, this is according to the greatest Commandment, the second Covenant of Jesus, the Christ. It is a given they know the Ten, but the LAW is pacified, when the Christ, the LAW GIVER, sheds His ROYAL BLOOD, for His bride, of which He has an undying LOVE. According to HOLY SCRIPTURE. GOD does for mankind, what is impossible for mankind to do. Mankind will die daily in trying to overcome the sinful nature. If Satan has deceived mankind in this premise, then 100% of God’s creation on Earth is lost, and Satan is the Almighty.

    EARL CALAHAN
    August 20, 2016 at 11:03 am
    It is impossible for mankind to satisfy the Ten Commandments of God in anything they can do, by works, lest any man can boast. Only the Creator can solve man’s dilemma, and His Plan for rescue is perfect.

    Nathaniel Moore
    August 20, 2016 at 11:23 am
    Sorensen and “Conviction”often touch the raw nerves in the mind sometimes; but there is no need to ban them from this forum. Their views may be different; but in the spirit of openness, they must be respected and tolerated. It is foolish to go about excluding ideas which are contrary. How else can we know about what is happening about us?




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    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:41 am

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Dennisprager
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Height.630.no_border.width.1200
    Carol wrote:
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 C8qf0EVXgAAO8Xt

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    orthodoxymoron wrote:If I remember correctly, several years ago, an Individual of Interest told me that a Significant Outbreak of Hostilities in Syria would initiate a Chain-Reaction of Destruction. I hope I got that right. I continue to suspect that all of this sort of thing originates in One Central War-Room (regardless of which politicians, parties, countries, races, and religions are involved). What if the Reprehensible is Inevitable?? What if Resistance is Futile?? What if Exposing Megalomaniacs Anonymous Does NOT Constitute Deposing Megalomaniacs Anonymous?? What Would Dr. Dempsey Say?? What Would Thomas and Sophia Say?? What Would S.R. Hadden Say?? What Would Rachel Constantine Say?? What Would John Constantine Say?? What Would the Oracle Say?? What Would Morpheus Say?? What Would Mr. Edgars Say?? What Would Balem Abrasax Say?? What Would the Ancient Egyptian Deity Say?? What Would Mitchell Say?? What Would Sherry Shriner Say?? What Would Brother Rich Say?? What Would Sister Angie Say?? What Would Orthodoxymoron Say?? What Would Pris Say?? "Jeeezus Oxy!!"





    When I attended Dr. Desmond Ford's Sabbath-School Classes in the Science-Complex at Pacific Union College, I remember seeing his son, Luke Ford!! Well, that's the same Luke Ford in the videos below!! I once corresponded with Luke, but the topic was religion and his father!! Honest!! Luke is funny and intelligent!! He left Porn-Journalism a long-time ago (but I'm not sure when)!! His parents did NOT approve of his career choice!! BTW, Rabbis Don't Get Paid Much, But They Get to Keep the Tips!!
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    Glacier View Responses
    Continued From Previous Post:

    http://atoday.org/glacier-view-a-retrospective/

    DD
    August 20, 2016 at 11:06 pm
    William Noel, You wrote: “Why are people researching the writings of Ellen White to find answers when she plainly instructed us to use the Bible only?” Why? Because she “instructed”; that is, those who continue to hold her words in high esteem (including those words) will always turn to her writings regardless of her “instructions” to use the Bible. It’s a subliminal glorification of oneself; and by those very instructions many hearts have been deceived into believing she was inspired by God. Reading some of your comments and those of others on this site, I would say many of you here are just as inspired by God as she may have been. After all, where does everyone’s knowledge of spiritual matters originate from? The Holy Scriptures, no doubt.

    Allen Shepherd
    August 21, 2016 at 6:10 am
    I want to post a summary of the reason for the IJ from Sabbath School. google IJ and go to that site: In summary, if a person believes that: 1) Salvation can be lost (the Arminnian position) 2) That God judges (2 Cor 5:10) 3) That the souls of men sleep until the resurrection 4) And, that this reward/punishment is not received until the resurrection … Such a person will very likely come to believe in an Adventist-like pre-Advent judgment, irrespective of any other factors. If salvation can be lost, this matter must be objectively decided before individuals go to heaven. If God judges, then part of his judgment work would be to determine the faithful among the professed followers (the essential nature of the Investigative Judgment). At this point, we have the basic building blocks for an investigative judgment before the Second Coming. And while the 3rd and 4th propositions do not lead us to 1844 (the timing of the Investigative Judgment) they leave the door comfortably open for such a possibility. And this is why those who attack this doctrine on peripheral issues like Greek or Hebrew terminology are wasting their time. For a more detailed discussion of the matter see that site for a thorough discussion. If we all are to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and Jesus brings his reward with him, then an IJ before the second coming is a straight froward necessity. The timing is not as important, but 1844 is as good a date as any. See the site>

    Serge Agafonoff
    August 21, 2016 at 6:26 am
    Allen: “At this point, we have the basic building blocks for an investigative judgment before the Second Coming.’ With that in mind, Allen, what do you make of this text? 2Tim 4.1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; No hint of a pre-Advent judgement here.

    Conviction
    August 21, 2016 at 7:06 am
    I guess in my humble opinion the next few verses of 2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. Looks like we should preach the word and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine; because others will be perusing their own lusts and preaching to to itching ears? That they will turn away from the Truths that that there will be Judgment and we should prepare ourselves; pre-Advent and actually proving need for and in IJ? What do you think it means?

    Allen Shepherd
    August 21, 2016 at 6:12 am
    The site is Sabbathschool.net And the article is “Why the Investigative Judgement Doctrine Is Sound”

    Gillian Ford
    August 23, 2016 at 6:49 am
    I don’t think I am the right person to reply to Allen, but nobody else is, and I hate to leave it open ended. You can’t fit people into an –ism to determine if what they are saying is true. You have to keep to Biblical argument. Allen’s four points reflect Des’s theological positions. He believes in 1. Salvation can be lost. [Hebrews teaches that, but if a person is truly converted it would be rare that he or she would leave Christ.] You can’t say this is the Arminian position, and therefore Des must be Calvinist, and therefore he believes in a fixed doctrine of ‘once saved always saved’. Not true friends. Just as false as the accusation at Glacier View that he did not believe in Ellen White, he did not believe in sanctification, he did not believe in the new birth and so on (see the letter written to the attendees at Glacier View by Elder Pierson—quite wrong, quite unfair, but also very influential on the outcome of GV). I have spent part of the last ten years in my spare time trying to work out how the churches divided in Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is a lot to know, and I only claim to know a bit of it. Groups such as Anglicans (Episcopalians) and Calvinists in 17th-century England had great differences of opinion on doctrine amongst themselves. Anglicans were at least divided into High and Low Church Anglicans (Episcopalians), and Calvinists split into Presbyterianism and Congregationalism (the Independents).

    Gillian Ford
    August 23, 2016 at 6:50 am
    The Calvinists fought internally over republicanism vs. royalism, particularly in the 1640s, and this weakened them internally and probably lost their cause in Britain by the end of the century. So, you have always had great differences of opinion that cause division within groups and well as between groups. Also, the followers of Jean Calvin, who called themselves Calvinists, did not necessarily teach what Calvin taught originally. In England, Archbishop Laud, who was the architect of Anglicanism in England, was Armininian, but he did not teach what Jacobus Arminius the originator taught in all respects. Therefore, be careful what you call Arminianism and Calvinism. Religious diversity is always on a spectrum. To try and put a person within a camp or an –ism, and conclude that they believe this or that, is a mistake and can lead to misrepresentation. You have to use Biblical argument, not use Mike Manea’s categorization (www.Sabbathschool.net), which I think is simplistic. Allen says the timing is not as important, but 1844 is as good a date as any. That is not what the church has traditionally taught. It has been very big on the dates. That’s what it means to be historicist. As an interesting exercise, look up Johann Friedrich Alsted and Puritan Millennialism. In the early 1600s, he set the date of 1697 for the return of Christ, though his argumentation sounds ridiculous to us today.

    Gillian Ford
    August 23, 2016 at 6:51 am
    Alsted was the first in a long line of date-setters to use the book of Daniel as his method; before that astrology was part of the calculation. Millennial expectation about the coming of Christ usually erupts during times of war, when people especially long for Jesus to come. In Alsted’s case it was the 30 Years war in Europe. In William Miller’s case it was the War of 1812, but I may be corrected on that by people who know more than I do. The Puritans fled to America to escape persecution in Europe. Adventism inherited some of this millennial expectation from the Puritans—CALVINISTS. I.e., we did not just inherit from Wesley and Methodism. As Bryan Ball’s book, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism, points out—Adventism reflects a lot of the teachings of English Puritanism back in those days. I am not saying he would agree with me, but he does point out the similarities of Adventism to 17-century British Puritanism (Calvinism). Some in the denomination now call the IJ the Pre-Advent judgment, and have a loose version of the original, but over the years the doctrine has changed considerably. The church needs to officially acknowledge it has changed. Des was arguing against the old position, not the newer one, modified version—though the only reason for the latter was as another face-saving device.

    William Abbott
    August 23, 2016 at 8:44 am
    Gillian, Your observations about the link between English dissenters and their theology and Adventist theological development is much stronger than most people realize. It is bigger than eschatology. The self-perceived ‘choseness’ of the Pilgrims and their imitation of Israel and their dependence on merely the scripture for authority is largely being reenacted during the early developmental stages of Adventism. Conversely the behavior of the Pilgrim’s leaders and religious leaders of Plymouth Colony is better compared to a Rabbinate rather than traditional Christian Clergy. In the same way a Rabbinate is focused on understanding Torah, Plymouth plantation reasoned together from the scriptures about how they ought to live and govern themselves. Scripture and habit ruled the day. In the wilderness there are no rules. Early Adventists tried to do the same thing. Read the bible, do what it says, believe it is true. This is certainly a neglected relationship that needs to be better explored. Thank you for your astute observations.

    Elaine Nelson
    August 23, 2016 at 8:30 pm
    Another of many reasons why history is so important. So many Adventists elucidate on Adventist beliefs and their origins, depend only on recent Adventist history while ignoring all the beliefs and leaders before the mid-19th century as if Adventism sprang from nothing. This was recently illustrated on the Spectrum site in an essay by Cliff Goldstein, editor of the SS quarterly. He gave a quotation from a historical figure of the 4th century in support of his premise that Sabbath was being observed at that time, leaving out the important fact that rather than supporting the Sabbath as being regularly observed during that time, the quotation was referring to the practice of Easter, and not Sabbath! Some writers need to be checked and double-checked.

    Gillian Ford
    August 23, 2016 at 2:31 pm
    Thanks William for a polite and erudite answer. I should have said that in Laud’s time [1573–17450], Arminianism looked like an English version of Roman Catholicism. Because it was about the beauty of holiness, the furniture layout in the church, ceremony, liturgy, organization and method, and so on. Laud loved intense organisation and ritual, but sought non-conformists to eject them from their positions—i.e., he persecuted the saints. Loved the beauty of holiness, but was pretty nasty in his methods. As a result many fled persecution to go to America, Massachusetts &c and began the Congregational Church over there. You know that story better than me. The C of E was based on a system of bishops, which instead of going back to Rome, devolved from the missionaries who went to England at the time of the early Church fathers. Laud’s version came to be called the High Church of England. The Low Church or Latitudinarian Church of England was influenced by those Puritans who conformed to the C of E when Charles II came to the throne. The Latitudinarians had a broader base that was more inclusive. They wanted to bring the Presbyterians and other non-conformists into the state church. So, though Laud would have claimed to be Protestant, he seemed to bypass Luther, Calvin and the Reformation. I would be interested if a trained church historian would see it the same.

    William Abbott
    August 24, 2016 at 4:44 am
    Seventeenth-century England was alive with people reading the scriptures for themselves. King James’ translation was a concession to the rising demand for the scriptures from so many of his subjects. King James was more concerned with maintaining power in his earthly kingdom than being Christ’s servant His ‘kingdom of heaven.’ Catholic hierarchical structure keeps power concentrated at the top and whatever theological appeal Laud found in “High” church – James was a practical man – ‘high’ church and its enforced conformity had political utility. James detested the Presbyterian churchmen who Lorded it over him as a young regent in Scotland. When he got to London he never went back, in more ways than one. The English Civil War, the Commonwealth & Interregnum, The Restoration, The Glorious Revolution of 1688 are political events that forged the political identity of the English speaking people. It is a shortcoming of historians to neglect the religious ideas that incubated the political events. The idea that scripture is the sole source of dogma is quite revolutionary. It undermines all authority but its own. The study of Torah in Judaism is very similar in effect. Popes and Kings representing Christ, gives way to, essentially, the authority of a book. It doesn’t scale. The Puritans couldn’t rule an earthly kingdom any better than a cabal of Rabbis. Cromwell was a ‘cruel necessity’ and the weirdest of tyrants.

    Gillian Ford
    August 23, 2016 at 3:24 pm
    Harry Allen sent me a joke by Emo Philips. You will all like it: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!” Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

    Ted Robertson
    August 24, 2016 at 10:49 am
    Well, at least all things worked together for good in that instance.

    Ken L Lawson
    September 3, 2016 at 7:07 am
    I well remember men(so called) going to Glacier View who did not study the Glacier View Document with sincerity, but who were first to judge Bro. Des. Yes! they are still around. I was also in a very significant meeting in Sydney when Dr. Alwyn Salim spoke openly in the afternoon on Video, stating that the Adventist Churches stand on Daniel 8:14 had no truck with the Hebrew reading of the text. I also have a file on my hard drive all the significant Scholars across the world who agreed with Dr. Ford and his position. There are so many notable scholars and professors who were not slumbering at that time. Mens’ jobs were more important than principle, and the Church lost it’s greatest opportunity for change and the disapproval of heaven is stark in reality. God help us!

    Hansen
    September 3, 2016 at 7:42 am
    Ken, Any idea where I can find the Palmdale documents?

    Ken L Lawson
    September 3, 2016 at 4:32 pm
    Bro. Des gave me a copy of the document. Mine is filed away in storage , but Des certainly has the original. I hope we can help you with that.

    Gillian Ford
    September 3, 2016 at 4:56 pm
    They have the papers at Pacific Union College library, La Sierra university, Westminster Seminary California Library and Avondale College—Sydney Campus. They are called Documents from the Palmdale Conference on Righteousness by Faith.See http://www.worldcat.org/title/documents-from-the-palmdale-conference-on-righteousness-by-faith/oclc/19224164

    Hansen
    September 4, 2016 at 5:16 am
    Gill/Ken, is there anything of great significance in those documents? A strange question but assuming the answer is yes, why aren’t they more readily available?

    Hansen
    September 4, 2016 at 6:10 am
    Incidentally, When searching online for Palmdale documents, I am often directed to a discussion of the Palmdale meeting written by Colin Standish. It’s unfortunate that he should define, or even contribute to, the conversation on this topic.

    Gillian Ford
    September 7, 2016 at 8:36 am
    This was back in 1976. Des thought they were significant because the committee agreed at the time that the phrase ‘righteousness by faith’ in Romans was the same expression as ‘justification by faith’. However, they were soon shelved as I understand it. Similar to the Sanctuary and EGW position papers that were presented near the close of Glacier View. They moved towards the position Des presented in a number of significant points. But also were shelved after appearing in the Ministry Mag, Sept. 1980. This was a long time ago, and I have not checked the details for accuracy. But that is my memory.

    Ken L Lawson
    September 8, 2016 at 6:45 pm
    Dear H, the Palmdale Document was used across Australia and I am sure that Des was invited to share his findings. It is a beautiful rendition of Righteousness by Faith. People of significance were converted as a result. But! wherever this topic is raised the calamity howlers raise their same ugly heads in opposition to Christ. Some of them have been real monsters working against the Spirit of Christ. They think they are doing right! A survey was taken not long ago by a president while a student at Avondale. Fifty three percent of the congregants did not believe they were saved. That is the tragedy we are constantly confronted with. And yet the same people are crying the coming of Christ but not ready themselves. They will not surrender to the Spirit of Christ, and are incapable of receiving Grace. I am still hoping to have a copy for you of Palmdale.

    Bill Sorensen
    September 7, 2016 at 2:39 pm
    Justification is a law word and does not apply solely to the legal aspects of redemption. To limit the word “justification” to apply only to the legal aspects of salvation is faulty theology and can only lead to convoluting the bible. The word “justification” is applied to the moral law and the moral aspects of salvation. The believer is justified by obedience to the moral law, not because this is how the believer merits or earns eternal life, but it is a moral mandate and moral obligation that does not fulfill the legal aspects of redemption. It does fulfill the moral obligation of children who are required to “obey their parents” as we willingly subject ourselves to God’s authority and do His will as obedient children of our Father’s kingdom. This is our fitness for heaven but not our title. The name of Jesus is our title for He alone merited and earned eternal life for the human family and offers it to us as a “free gift”. This free gift does not release us from the necessity to obey the moral law to be saved, and we are saved by faith in the merits of Christ and obedience to the law of God as a fitness for heaven. The basic error of Dr. Ford was to limit the word “justification” to only apply to a legal right and deny the word also applies to our moral right to heaven. So the word “justification” has a legal and moral application that do not equate to the same value. The human response has a saving value, but this is not a legal value.

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    Including the Luke Ford Videos was NOT a Mean-Joke on my part. I think some of you should pay close attention to these (and other) Luke Ford videos (for a variety of reasons). I'm watching some 9/11 videos today, and they're VERY Sobering. Anyway, continue considering a possible A.D. 2012 to A.D. 2133 (120 year) Final Judgment of Earth and Humanity. Noah preached for 120 years. "As it was in the days of Noah"?? What Would Russell Crowe Say?? Try combining Theology and Science-Fiction. I spoke with Steven Spielberg's Stepmother (in Dr. A. Graham Maxwell's Sabbath-School Class) in the Late 1980's regarding a Science-Fictional Life of Christ Super-Movie Idea. Honest. Perhaps it's for the best that nothing of the sort was ever produced. What Would David Mann Say?? Consider my United States of the Solar System, A.D. 2133 (Books 1, 2, 3) to be my feeble-attempt to hint at some of what I had in mind a very-long time ago. Use your imagination and independent-research. BTW, I recently realized that Walter Rea focused upon Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, and Desire of Ages (all by Ellen White) in The White Lie. I have also focused upon these three books (for very different reasons). I suggest reading these three books as Plagiarized Historical Science-Fiction!! Imagine combining the Conflict of the Ages Series with the Babylon 5 Series!! Imagine a Galactic-Queen speaking these words!! Notice the Conquest-Motif!! Imagine Cleopatra speaking these words!! What Would Elizabeth Taylor Say?? What Would Elizabeth Mitchell Say?? Do you see why I no longer attend the SDA Church??!! I didn't wish to upset anyone, and no-one ever seemed to miss me. Has everyone made their choice?? Has Probation Closed?? I hope no-one is disappointed. Godspeed and Geronimo.




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    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


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    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:56 am

    Carol wrote:
    New human rights laws are required to protect sensitive information in a person’s mind from 'unauthorised collection, storage, use or even deletion',” wrote the playwright John Milton in 1634.

    But, nearly 400 years later, technological advances in machines that can read our thoughts mean the privacy of our brain is under threat. Now two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws to ensure people are protected, including “the right to cognitive liberty” and “the right to mental integrity”.

    Scientists have already developed devices capable of telling whether people are politically right-wing or left-wing. In one experiment, researchers were able to read people’s minds to tell with 70 per cent accuracy whether they planned to add or subtract two numbers.

    Facebook also recently revealed it had been secretly working on technology to read people’s minds so they could type by just thinking.

    And medical researchers have managed to connect part of a paralysed man’s brain to a computer to allow him to stimulate muscles in his arm so he could move it and feed himself.

    The ethicists, writing in a paper in the journal Life Sciences, Society and Policy, stressed the “unprecedented opportunities” that would result from the “ubiquitous distribution of cheaper, scalable and easy-to-use neuro-applications” that would make neurotechnology “intricately embedded in our everyday life”.

    Mind-reading breakthrough lets scientists ‘talk’ to locked-in patients. However, such devices are open to abuse on a frightening degree, as the academics made clear. They warned that “malicious brain-hacking” and “hazardous uses of medical neurotechnology” could require a redefinition of the idea of mental integrity.

    “We suggest that in response to emerging neurotechnology possibilities, the right to mental integrity should not exclusively guarantee protection from mental illness or traumatic injury but also from unauthorised intrusions into a person’s mental wellbeing performed through the use of neurotechnology, especially if such intrusions result in physical or mental harm to the neurotechnology user,” the ethicists wrote.

    “The right to mental privacy is a neuro-specific privacy right which protects private or sensitive information in a person’s mind from unauthorised collection, storage, use, or even deletion in digital form or otherwise.”

    And they warned that the techniques were so sophisticated that people’s minds might be being read or interfered with without their knowledge.

    “Illicit intrusions into a person’s mental privacy may not necessarily involve coercion, as they could be performed under the threshold of a persons’ conscious experience,” they wrote in the paper.

    “The same goes for actions involving harm to a person’s mental life or unauthorised modifications of a person’s psychological continuity, which are also facilitated by the ability of emerging neurotechnologies to intervene into a person’s neural processing in absence of the person’s awareness.”

    They proposed four new human rights laws: the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity and the right to psychological continuity.

    Professor Roberto Andorno, an academic at Zurich University’s law school and a co-author of the paper, said: “Brain imaging technology has already reached a point where there is discussion over its legitimacy in criminal court, for example as a tool for assessing criminal responsibility or even the risk of re-offending.

    “Consumer companies are using brain imaging for 'neuromarketing' to understand consumer behaviour and elicit desired responses from customers.

    “There are also tools such as 'brain decoders' which can turn brain imaging data into images, text or sound.

    “All of these could pose a threat to personal freedom which we sought to address with the development of four new human rights laws.”
    orthodoxymoron wrote:I keep getting the sinking-feeling that the computers "took-over" a long time ago, and we're just finding-out about it now. Would you wish to have your consciousness downloaded into a super-computer when your body dies of natural (or unnatural) causes?? What if someone pressed the wrong button, and eliminated "YOU" for all-eternity?? I keep joking about living and working in a 600 square-foot office-apartment with a supercomputer, but is this really a stupid and farfetched idea?? What if one carried on telepathic-conversations with their supercomputer?? What if one became corrupted and brainwashed by their own computer?? Will ALL of US be thinking and speaking like computers in the near-future?? Is fast-thinking, fast-walking, and fast-talking the way of the future?? Should I wish to be a Mainframe-Linked Globo-Cop Bankster-Warrior in my next "incarnation"?? What sort of a Technological-Hell are we descending into?? What if at least some Reptilians and Greys are simply Ex Machina Creations wearing Special-Suits?? What Would Nathan Say?? "What is Reality??" might be an impossible question to answer!! What Would "Sweetie" Say?? Around the year 2000, I spoke with a sexy former Microsoft employee about Wearable-Computers (as I drove her to her waterfront-home). I thought they were the way of the future, but she said (with a smile) "Bill doesn't think so!!" What if she was Bill's Boss?? What Would Seymour Cray Say?? What Would Mr. Edgars Say?? I continue to think that wars and rumors of wars are scripted. I found it interesting that Josh from World Alternative Media mentioned that we might've been in WWIII since 9/11/2001. Catherine Austin Fitts recently spoke of WWIII extending from 2001 to 2025. I find the 2025 date interesting, in light of a short video clip from the Babylon 5 Series (below). Notice all of the dates mentioned. I keep wondering if they're significant?! Babylon 5 was made from 1993 to 1998. Notice also that December 21, 2012 is right in the middle of 2001 to 2025!! What if WWIII is a battle for the control of the REALLY Nasty Ancient-Weapons of Mass-Destruction??!!


    Pris wrote:
    orthodoxymoron wrote:Pris, I've been to a couple of The Offspring concerts (a long time ago)!! I stayed away from the "mosh-pit"!! Too much "blue-smoke" and "crowd-surfing"!! The Offspring is an old Punk-Rock group from Orange County!! "Noodles" is sort of the "Elder-Statesman" of the group. Noodles, the guitarist for The Offspring, was the janitor for the school the band went to. He was allowed into the band because he was old enough to buy the band alcohol. My parents sold a building to Seals and Crofts (to be used for rehearsing) but they didn't let me join the group!! BTW, that's Noodles standing next to Homer Simpson!!
    Okay! Very Happy  I had no idea so thanks for clarifying, Oxy.  That's hilarious about the alcohol thing and cool that you have something of a connection to all of this! I've not been much into the punk rock scene but it always fascinated me growing up.  I enjoyed music from The Sex Pistols and The Stranglers because my sister was into that stuff and she gave me those albums.  I used to practice Anarchy In The UK on my accordion. Laugh
    .
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    orthodoxymoron wrote:Thank-you Pris. I once attended a Myron Floren accordion performance, and tried to get credit for my college Music-Appreciation class, but my Doctor of Music teacher didn't consider a Lawrence Welk accordionist to be a real-musician playing real-music!! Can't we all just get along?? I am MUCH More Restrained than Alex Jones and Larken Rose, but I enjoy listening to these types of people (but not all the time). I enjoy listening to The Offspring and Myron Floren (but not all the time). BTW, I love that title "Anarchy in the UK"!! What Would MI5, MI6, and OO7 Say and Do?? It's a Secret!! One more thing. A genuine-insider told me that Lawrence Welk was a jerk!! What Would The Lennon Sisters Sing??




    Pris wrote: Huh... your music teacher didn't consider a Lawrence Welk accordionist to be a real musician playing real music...  That's a rather anal personal opinion, isn't it lol!  What one considers to be 'music' is rather subjective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but that bias should NOT have been foisted upon you to affect your grade, Oxy.  

    Accordions are obviously pretty cool musical instruments.  And, you've got to be pretty cool to play one (my accordion was a 120 bass just like what Dizzy Fingers was playing... WOW, he's good!). Cool Very Happy

    It wouldn't surprise me if Lawrence Welk was a jerk... though being someone's opinion (genuine insider or not), who knows what that means.

    I can appreciate most things in small doses, too.

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    Pris wrote: Another awesome video. Here's some words from Larken I felt quoting:

    The Cult of Statism
    ...authoritarianism IS the problem.  The problem is not and has never been 'who's on the throne'.  The Problem is, and has always been and will always be -- until people wake up -- that there is a throne there to be on. As long as the argument is 'what government should do', 'who should run it', 'what form it should take', you're just tinkering with the details and completely ignoring the heart of the problem which is the belief in government and authoritarianism.

    This is the only issue that matters:  Do you own yourself or are you the property of a ruling class? I don't care if it's a limited ruling class.  I don't care if it's a democratic ruling class.  I don't care if it's a republican ruling class.  I don't care if it's a constitutional ruling class.  If there's some beast that has the right to take your money and boss you around, it owns you.  You're not free, you don't own yourself.  And, if you actually believe that, why do you ever imagine you'll achieve freedom?  You're not even free inside your own head.

    And, so when people say, "Well, these little differences..."  This is not a 'little difference'.  Either you think there can be someone with the right to rule you, or you understand that there can be no such thing or you understand the concepts of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle and what those logically lead to... which is legitimate government is a logical impossibility.  It cannot exist.  Not just 'it's really hard to maintain' -- it's theoretically and conceptually insane to think there can be a moral and righteous gang of thugs and thieves who bosses people around, takes their money.  It just doesn't work philosophically or morally or logically.

    Just to add here, as you may know, I'm also opposed to (the use of, implementation of) money, barter, and trade... but that's another topic (more or less). Wink
    .
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    B.B.Baghor wrote: ortho's words: "I try to provide a wide variety of posts -- despite accusations that I just keep saying the same things over and over again. On the other hand, if I were inconsistent, I would be accused of being confused and unstable. I frankly don't care what anyone thinks. I simply want everyone to think. Period".

    Comment in the tubby with the grizzly bears catching salmon, in your post "For every salmon that is caught, hundreds make it past the bears......."

    Once upon a time -- I had a digital voice-recorder which worked perfectly -- expect when recording one particular individual. A normal-sounding voice became a hideous gravely (almost demonic) voice when played-back on that particular digital-recorder!! This occurred repeatedly (without exception). I mentioned this to the Ancient Egyptian Deity -- to which they replied "Some Slip Through". Honest.

    Honestly, ortho, comments on your saying the same things over and over, to me that's not an accusation. When I share that opinion, it's a comment on how it's perceived by me. For some reason you seem to be fixed on that judgment, of being accused, so that you feel compelled to repeat your message, in order to prove you're right or to make clear what it is you're after. That's a possible checkmate position, to me.

    So -- is this a King and Queen War-Game?? I often feel like a Completely Ignorant Pawn!! Please remember that I am honestly modeling concepts and personalities which do NOT reflect who I am in "real-life". I might share some of the inclinations and biases -- but I don't behave like this in everyday life. What scares me is that the ease with which I model on this thread leads me to wonder if I might've been somewhat like this in previous lives. I'm honestly NOT channeling some nefarious entity. I don't do anything even remotely creepy. I might be channeling myself. Was it Lionhawk who spoke of channeling themselves?? I can't quite remember -- but I know it was someone on this forum who is no longer posting. Each of my posts are the same -- only different -- reflecting the concept of "Theme and Variations". I honestly keep feeling as though I was somehow set-up in this incarnation -- where every behavior and editorial-slant would be somehow used against me -- with the general theme of Build Them Up -- and Knock Them Down.

    It's your reaction, to feel an accusation and you seem stuck in it. You're as much trying to live up to expectations of your audience as dictating your rules how the audience should listen. I think that you're in one of the most patient and kind forum here, with many members, including me, communicating with you in an open-minded way and with good intentions.

    I can't dictate Rules of Listening. What Would Julian Treasure Say?? I can't even get others to listen. Period. I got bored of Aliens and UFO's -- so I wrote the following drivel (relative to a listening-class): It is probably necessary to superimpose each component of Receive-Appreciate-Summarize-Ask (RASA) -- one on top of the other -- in order to properly apply Step 5 of "Julian's Five Steps" (from a TED lecture). One might Ask to Receive the desired data -- which must then be processed by Appreciating-Summarizing and Asking clarifying and inquisitive Questions. At various stages of this process -- the order of RASA might change -- and at times be all occurring at the same time -- with an equal emphasis. RASA somewhat mirrors the Scientific-Method -- wherein one Proposes a Hypothesis -- which simultaneously Asks and Answers a Question. Data is then gathered through Asking and Answering further questions -- which are pertinent to the Original Question and Answer. Ultimately, the Gathered Data is Summarized -- Conclusions are Reached -- and the Original Question and Answer is Verified or Nullified. The overall appearance and impression one observes in others -- and which one presents to others -- which might include facial-expression -- body-language -- clothing -- walking speed and style -- are Integral-Aspects of Non-Verbal Communication. Ideally -- one might Look-Sharp -- Act-Sharp -- and Be-Sharp -- with deviations from this Norm telling various stories. Experience would be determinative regarding this methodology -- and Contextual-Superimposition might play a significant role in the evaluation of a spectrum of non-verbal communication. This is a highly tolerant forum -- but I often feel as if I am silently being fed enough rope to hang myself (which I seem to be effectively and efficiently doing each and every day). I seem to be somehow protected -- while I continue to destroy myself. I guess I keep thinking that if I am never built-up -- it is more difficult to knock me down. This whole thing is frankly a Most Dangerous Game to me. It's so sad -- that it's almost funny...



    I don't choose to belittle you or your thread, or display a smiling face, at the same time shaking my head inside. Some may do that here, to sort of please you. That's not helping, does it? Many of those who read your thread, have shown you they appreciate your presence here and (maybe with some difficulty) also your thread. You are not your thread, see? That's where the sting is present, or so it seems. I feel a sameness in your trying hard and my trying hard, in a way.

    Forgive me for repeating this -- but you often remind me of "Angela" in that 1978 movie "The Word" (which sends chills up and down my spine). That's actually a compliment. I honestly feel like a sci-fi script-writer. Decades ago, I spoke with a very famous Hollywood-Director's Stepmother about wishing for "someone" to create a High-Tech Science-Fictional "Life of Christ" Based Upon The Desire of Ages by Ellen White. Honest. She spoke of her stepson being fearful. Now I think I understand why -- based upon which movies were being made at that time -- and what I know now.


    There's an obstacle between people's minds present here, reading your thread and yours presenting food for thought in it. So far, you don't receive what you're aiming at, that's made clear by you. To me, it seems that somewhere there's an opinion put on ice. My efforts to clarify or understand, may prove that "never the twain shall meet." That opinion on ice, or a prefixed idea, may be in the mind of the readers, in my mind also, for I truly find it hard to follow, where your mind goes, or is, ortho.

    I have repeatedly stated that this thread merely scratches the surface. I could make this MUCH more complex and graphic. I've been around highly-educated English and Australian Theologians and Preachers -- and it's quite humbling -- and even a bit creepy. Some of you know what I'm talking about. This thread is sort of Gizeh-Intelligence for the Rest of Us!!

    Can we meet halfway? That could work maybe....... I think  Wink  I'm honestly thinking out loud, to myself mainly, sharing it here with a purpose, if you can get that. Is making sense done by thinking? Is humour a way to bypass the trap of absolute truth and perfection? When is an answer given that is also received as an answer?

    Perhaps. I'm honestly attempting to understand what Genuine Fundamentalist Biblical Theology in the Context of Ancient and Modern Science-Fiction really looks like. My starting-point is that Everyone is Right -- and Everyone is Wrong -- which makes everyone angry and indignant. Irreverent-Humor seems to be destroying me -- little by little -- yet it seems to serve a utilitarian-purpose presently -- so I shall continue to crucify myself. We all have our crosses to bear -- don't we?? Orthodoxymoron or Wave of the Future?? Time Will Tell -- as it always does...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U

    Tim Minchin's Storm the Animated Movie

    To me, this is a delicious merging of instinctual view and overview. Those 2 views are meant to be made aware in one moment, as I see it, in a positive "the twain shall meet".

    I learned "Combining-Opposites" from Shirley Maclaine. I knew a Hollywood-Insider who told me that Shirley seemed to be lost in deep-thought when not on stage. Once -- while inside a major television-studio -- as I watched a rehearsal -- I noticed one particular individual who sat motionless and transfixed in front of the stage -- watching intently and silently -- with total-concentration. That made a deep impression on me. I honestly aspire to be that sort of person (regarding life, the universe, and everything). BTW -- I recently encountered an Individual of Interest who seemed to NOT like me one little bit -- and I think I might know why...




    "The mind…  can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven" ? John Milton

    Some of us seem to be "Making Heaven Into Hell" while others of us seem to be "Making Hell Into Heaven". What if CERN will somehow merge Heaven and Hell into some sort of an Eschatological Final-Jihad?? The Horror. I equate "Mind" with "Character" -- which we apparently take with us when we die. Who says "You Can't Take It With You"??
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Jupiter-Ascending-Concept-Cha_Soldier_v21_051812_AS
    "Oxy -- You Need to Learn Your Place in the Grand Scheme of Things..."
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


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    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:01 am

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Gla_rhf_pcf_25_large
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality. Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father.

    Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III. Until 1817, Edward's niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl (1804–1856) and Feodora (1807–1872)—by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London.[1]

    Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace.[2] She was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina (or Georgiana), Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Duke's eldest brother, George, the Prince Regent.[3]

    At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, the Prince Regent (later George IV); Frederick, the Duke of York; William, the Duke of Clarence (later William IV); and Victoria's father, Edward, the Duke of Kent.[4] The Prince Regent had no surviving children, and the Duke of York had no children; further, both were estranged from their wives, who were both past child-bearing age, so the two eldest brothers were unlikely to have any further children. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarence's daughters (born in 1819 and 1820) died as infants. Victoria's father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old. A week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive. The Regency Act 1830 made special provision for the Duchess of Kent (Victoria's mother) to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor.[5] King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, and in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided.[6]

    Victoria later described her childhood as "rather melancholy".[7] Her mother was extremely protective, and Victoria was raised largely isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, who was rumoured to be the Duchess's lover.[8] The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of her father's family), and was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them.[9] The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children,[10] and perhaps prompted the emergence of Victorian morality by insisting that her daughter avoid any appearance of sexual impropriety.[11] Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles spaniel, Dash.[12] Her lessons included French, German, Italian, and Latin,[13] but she spoke only English at home.[14]

    In 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way.[15] Similar journeys to other parts of England and Wales were taken in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1835. To the King's annoyance, Victoria was enthusiastically welcomed in each of the stops.[16] William compared the journeys to royal progresses and was concerned that they portrayed Victoria as his rival rather than his heir presumptive.[17] Victoria disliked the trips; the constant round of public appearances made her tired and ill, and there was little time for her to rest.[18] She objected on the grounds of the King's disapproval, but her mother dismissed his complaints as motivated by jealousy, and forced Victoria to continue the tours.[19] At Ramsgate in October 1835, Victoria contracted a severe fever, which Conroy initially dismissed as a childish pretence.[20] While Victoria was ill, Conroy and the Duchess unsuccessfully badgered her to make Conroy her private secretary.[21] As a teenager, Victoria resisted persistent attempts by her mother and Conroy to appoint him to her staff.[22] Once queen, she banned him from her presence, but he remained in her mother's household.[23]

    By 1836, the Duchess's brother, Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831, hoped to marry his niece to his nephew, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.[24] Leopold, Victoria's mother, and Albert's father (Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) were siblings. Leopold arranged for Victoria's mother to invite her Coburg relatives to visit her in May 1836, with the purpose of introducing Victoria to Albert.[25] William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, second son of the Prince of Orange.[26] Victoria was aware of the various matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes.[27] According to her diary, she enjoyed Albert's company from the beginning. After the visit she wrote, "[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful."[28] Alexander, on the other hand, was "very plain".[29]

    Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold, whom Victoria considered her "best and kindest adviser",[30] to thank him "for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert ... He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so good, and so amiable too. He has besides the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see."[31] However at 17, Victoria, though interested in Albert, was not yet ready to marry. The parties did not undertake a formal engagement, but assumed that the match would take place in due time.[32]

    Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837, and a regency was avoided. Less than a month later, on 20 June 1837, William IV died at the age of 71, and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom.[33] In her diary she wrote, "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen."[34] Official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first name was withdrawn at her own wish and not used again.[35]

    Since 1714, Britain had shared a monarch with Hanover in Germany, but under Salic law women were excluded from the Hanoverian succession. While Victoria inherited all the British dominions, Hanover passed instead to her father's younger brother, her unpopular uncle the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, who became King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover. He was her heir presumptive until she married and had a child.[36]

    At the time of her accession, the government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne, who at once became a powerful influence on the politically inexperienced Queen, who relied on him for advice.[37] Charles Greville supposed that the widowed and childless Melbourne was "passionately fond of her as he might be of his daughter if he had one", and Victoria probably saw him as a father figure.[38] Her coronation took place on 28 June 1838 at Westminster Abbey. Over 400,000 visitors came to London for the celebrations.[39] She became the first sovereign to take up residence at Buckingham Palace[40] and inherited the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall as well as being granted a civil list allowance of £385,000 per year. Financially prudent, she paid off her father's debts.[41]

    At the start of her reign Victoria was popular,[42] but her reputation suffered in an 1839 court intrigue when one of her mother's ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, developed an abdominal growth that was widely rumoured to be an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Sir John Conroy.[43] Victoria believed the rumours.[44] She hated Conroy, and despised "that odious Lady Flora",[45] because she had conspired with Conroy and the Duchess of Kent in the Kensington System.[46] At first, Lady Flora refused to submit to a naked medical examination, until in mid-February she eventually agreed, and was found to be a virgin.[47] Conroy, the Hastings family and the opposition Tories organised a press campaign implicating the Queen in the spreading of false rumours about Lady Flora.[48] When Lady Flora died in July, the post-mortem revealed a large tumour on her liver that had distended her abdomen.[49] At public appearances, Victoria was hissed and jeered as "Mrs. Melbourne".[50]

    In 1839, Melbourne resigned after Radicals and Tories (both of whom Victoria detested) voted against a bill to suspend the constitution of Jamaica. The bill removed political power from plantation owners who were resisting measures associated with the abolition of slavery.[51] The Queen commissioned a Tory, Sir Robert Peel, to form a new ministry. At the time, it was customary for the prime minister to appoint members of the Royal Household, who were usually his political allies and their spouses. Many of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber were wives of Whigs, and Peel expected to replace them with wives of Tories. In what became known as the bedchamber crisis, Victoria, advised by Melbourne, objected to their removal. Peel refused to govern under the restrictions imposed by the Queen, and consequently resigned his commission, allowing Melbourne to return to office.[52]

    Though Victoria was now queen, as an unmarried young woman she was required by social convention to live with her mother, despite their differences over the Kensington System and her mother's continued reliance on Conroy.[53] Her mother was consigned to a remote apartment in Buckingham Palace, and Victoria often refused to see her.[54] When Victoria complained to Melbourne that her mother's close proximity promised "torment for many years", Melbourne sympathised but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Victoria called a "schocking [sic] alternative".[55] She showed interest in Albert's education for the future role he would have to play as her husband, but she resisted attempts to rush her into wedlock.[56]
    Victoria continued to praise Albert following his second visit in October 1839. Albert and Victoria felt mutual affection and the Queen proposed to him on 15 October 1839, just five days after he had arrived at Windsor.[57] They were married on 10 February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London. Victoria was besotted. She spent the evening after their wedding lying down with a headache, but wrote ecstatically in her diary:

    I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert ... his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed each other again & again! His beauty, his sweetness & gentleness – really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! ... to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life![58]

    Albert became an important political adviser as well as the Queen's companion, replacing Lord Melbourne as the dominant, influential figure in the first half of her life.[59] Victoria's mother was evicted from the palace, to Ingestre House in Belgrave Square. After the death of Princess Augusta in 1840, Victoria's mother was given both Clarence and Frogmore Houses.[60] Through Albert's mediation, relations between mother and daughter slowly improved.[61]

    During Victoria's first pregnancy in 1840, in the first few months of the marriage, 18-year-old Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate her while she was riding in a carriage with Prince Albert on her way to visit her mother. Oxford fired twice, but either both bullets missed or, as he later claimed, the guns had no shot.[62] He was tried for high treason, found not guilty on the grounds of insanity, and committed to an insane asylum indefinitely.[63] In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Victoria's popularity soared, mitigating residual discontent over the Hastings affair and the bedchamber crisis.[64] Her daughter, also named Victoria, was born on 21 November 1840. The Queen hated being pregnant,[65] viewed breast-feeding with disgust,[66] and thought newborn babies were ugly.[67] Nevertheless, over the following seventeen years, she and Albert had a further eight children: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (b. 1841), Alice (b. 1843), Alfred (b. 1844), Helena (b. 1846), Louise (b. 1848), Arthur (b. 1850), Leopold (b. 1853) and Beatrice (b. 1857).

    Victoria's household was largely run by her childhood governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen from Hanover. Lehzen had been a formative influence on Victoria,[68] and had supported her against the Kensington System.[69] Albert, however, thought Lehzen was incompetent, and that her mismanagement threatened his daughter's health. After a furious row between Victoria and Albert over the issue, Lehzen was pensioned off, and Victoria's close relationship with her ended.[70]

    On 29 May 1842, Victoria was riding in a carriage along The Mall, London, when John Francis aimed a pistol at her but the gun did not fire; he escaped. The following day, Victoria drove the same route, though faster and with a greater escort, in a deliberate attempt to provoke Francis to take a second aim and catch him in the act. As expected, Francis shot at her, but he was seized by plain-clothes policemen, and convicted of high treason. On 3 July, two days after Francis's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life, John William Bean also tried to fire a pistol at the Queen, but it was loaded only with paper and tobacco and had too little charge.[71] Edward Oxford felt that the attempts were encouraged by his acquittal in 1840. Bean was sentenced to 18 months in jail.[72] In a similar attack in 1849, unemployed Irishman William Hamilton fired a powder-filled pistol at Victoria's carriage as it passed along Constitution Hill, London.[73] In 1850, the Queen did sustain injury when she was assaulted by a possibly insane ex-army officer, Robert Pate. As Victoria was riding in a carriage, Pate struck her with his cane, crushing her bonnet and bruising her forehead. Both Hamilton and Pate were sentenced to seven years' transportation.[74] Melbourne's support in the House of Commons weakened through the early years of Victoria's reign, and in the 1841 general election the Whigs were defeated. Peel became prime minister, and the ladies of the bedchamber most associated with the Whigs were replaced.[75]

    In 1845, Ireland was hit by a potato blight.[77] In the next four years over a million Irish people died and another million emigrated in what became known as the Great Famine.[78] In Ireland, Victoria was labelled "The Famine Queen".[79][80] She personally donated £2,000 to the British Relief Association, more than any other individual famine relief donor,[81] and also supported the Maynooth Grant to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland, despite Protestant opposition.[82] The story that she donated only £5 in aid to the Irish, and on the same day gave the same amount to Battersea Dogs Home, was a myth generated towards the end of the 19th century.[83]

    By 1846, Peel's ministry faced a crisis involving the repeal of the Corn Laws. Many Tories—by then known also as Conservatives—were opposed to the repeal, but Peel, some Tories (the "Peelites"), most Whigs and Victoria supported it. Peel resigned in 1846, after the repeal narrowly passed, and was replaced by Lord John Russell.[84]

    Internationally, Victoria took a keen interest in the improvement of relations between France and Britain.[85] She made and hosted several visits between the British royal family and the House of Orleans, who were related by marriage through the Coburgs. In 1843 and 1845, she and Albert stayed with King Louis Philippe I at château d'Eu in Normandy; she was the first British or English monarch to visit a French one since the meeting of Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.[86] When Louis Philippe made a reciprocal trip in 1844, he became the first French king to visit a British sovereign.[87] Louis Philippe was deposed in the revolutions of 1848, and fled to exile in England.[88] At the height of a revolutionary scare in the United Kingdom in April 1848, Victoria and her family left London for the greater safety of Osborne House,[89] a private estate on the Isle of Wight that they had purchased in 1845 and redeveloped.[90] Demonstrations by Chartists and Irish nationalists failed to attract widespread support, and the scare died down without any major disturbances.[91] Victoria's first visit to Ireland in 1849 was a public relations success, but it had no lasting impact or effect on the growth of Irish nationalism.[92]

    Russell's ministry, though Whig, was not favoured by the Queen.[93] She found particularly offensive the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who often acted without consulting the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, or the Queen.[94] Victoria complained to Russell that Palmerston sent official dispatches to foreign leaders without her knowledge, but Palmerston was retained in office and continued to act on his own initiative, despite her repeated remonstrances. It was only in 1851 that Palmerston was removed after he announced the British government's approval of President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in France without consulting the Prime Minister.[95] The following year, President Bonaparte was declared Emperor Napoleon III, by which time Russell's administration had been replaced by a short-lived minority government led by Lord Derby.

    In 1853, Victoria gave birth to her eighth child, Leopold, with the aid of the new anaesthetic, chloroform. Victoria was so impressed by the relief it gave from the pain of childbirth that she used it again in 1857 at the birth of her ninth and final child, Beatrice, despite opposition from members of the clergy, who considered it against biblical teaching, and members of the medical profession, who thought it dangerous.[96] Victoria may have suffered from postnatal depression after many of her pregnancies.[97] Letters from Albert to Victoria intermittently complain of her loss of self-control. For example, about a month after Leopold's birth Albert complained in a letter to Victoria about her "continuance of hysterics" over a "miserable trifle".[98]
    In early 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen, who had replaced Derby, fell amidst recriminations over the poor management of British troops in the Crimean War. Victoria approached both Derby and Russell to form a ministry, but neither had sufficient support, and Victoria was forced to appoint Palmerston as prime minister.[99]

    Napoleon III, since the Crimean War Britain's closest ally,[97] visited London in April 1855, and from 17 to 28 August the same year Victoria and Albert returned the visit.[100] Napoleon III met the couple at Boulogne and accompanied them to Paris.[101] They visited the Exposition Universelle (a successor to Albert's 1851 brainchild the Great Exhibition) and Napoleon I's tomb at Les Invalides (to which his remains had only been returned in 1840), and were guests of honour at a 1,200-guest ball at the Palace of Versailles.[102]

    On 14 January 1858, an Italian refugee from Britain called Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon III with a bomb made in England.[103] The ensuing diplomatic crisis destabilised the government, and Palmerston resigned. Derby was reinstated as prime minister.[104] Victoria and Albert attended the opening of a new basin at the French military port of Cherbourg on 5 August 1858, in an attempt by Napoleon III to reassure Britain that his military preparations were directed elsewhere. On her return Victoria wrote to Derby reprimanding him for the poor state of the Royal Navy in comparison to the French one.[105] Derby's ministry did not last long, and in June 1859 Victoria recalled Palmerston to office.[106]

    Eleven days after Orsini's assassination attempt in France, Victoria's eldest daughter married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in London. They had been betrothed since September 1855, when Princess Victoria was 14 years old; the marriage was delayed by the Queen and Prince Albert until the bride was 17.[107] The Queen and Albert hoped that their daughter and son-in-law would be a liberalising influence in the enlarging Prussian state.[108] Victoria felt "sick at heart" to see her daughter leave England for Germany; "It really makes me shudder", she wrote to Princess Victoria in one of her frequent letters, "when I look round to all your sweet, happy, unconscious sisters, and think I must give them up too – one by one."[109] Almost exactly a year later, Princess Victoria gave birth to the Queen's first grandchild, Wilhelm, who would become the last German Kaiser.

    In March 1861, Victoria's mother died, with Victoria at her side. Through reading her mother's papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply;[110] she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for "wickedly" estranging her from her mother.[111] To relieve his wife during her intense and deep grief,[112] Albert took on most of her duties, despite being ill himself with chronic stomach trouble.[113] In August, Victoria and Albert visited their son, the Prince of Wales, who was attending army manoeuvres near Dublin, and spent a few days holidaying in Killarney. In November, Albert was made aware of gossip that his son had slept with an actress in Ireland.[114] Appalled, Albert travelled to Cambridge, where his son was studying, to confront him.[115] By the beginning of December, Albert was very unwell.[116] He was diagnosed with typhoid fever by William Jenner, and died on 14 December 1861. Victoria was devastated.[117] She blamed her husband's death on worry over the Prince of Wales's philandering. He had been "killed by that dreadful business", she said.[118] She entered a state of mourning and wore black for the remainder of her life. She avoided public appearances, and rarely set foot in London in the following years.[119] Her seclusion earned her the nickname "widow of Windsor".[120]

    Victoria's self-imposed isolation from the public diminished the popularity of the monarchy, and encouraged the growth of the republican movement.[121] She did undertake her official government duties, yet chose to remain secluded in her royal residences—Windsor Castle, Osborne House, and the private estate in Scotland that she and Albert had acquired in 1847, Balmoral Castle. In March 1864, a protester stuck a notice on the railings of Buckingham Palace that announced "these commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupant's declining business".[122] Her uncle Leopold wrote to her advising her to appear in public. She agreed to visit the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at Kensington and take a drive through London in an open carriage.[123]

    Through the 1860s, Victoria relied increasingly on a manservant from Scotland, John Brown.[124] Slanderous rumours of a romantic connection and even a secret marriage appeared in print, and the Queen was referred to as "Mrs. Brown".[125] The story of their relationship was the subject of the 1997 movie Mrs. Brown. A painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer depicting the Queen with Brown was exhibited at the Royal Academy, and Victoria published a book, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, which featured Brown prominently and in which the Queen praised him highly.[126]

    Palmerston died in 1865, and after a brief ministry led by Russell, Derby returned to power. In 1866, Victoria attended the State Opening of Parliament for the first time since Albert's death.[127] The following year she supported the passing of the Reform Act 1867 which doubled the electorate by extending the franchise to many urban working men,[128] though she was not in favour of votes for women.[129] Derby resigned in 1868, to be replaced by Benjamin Disraeli, who charmed Victoria. "Everyone likes flattery," he said, "and when you come to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel."[130] With the phrase "we authors, Ma'am", he complimented her.[131] Disraeli's ministry only lasted a matter of months, and at the end of the year his Liberal rival, William Ewart Gladstone, was appointed prime minister. Victoria found Gladstone's demeanour far less appealing; he spoke to her, she is thought to have complained, as though she were "a public meeting rather than a woman".[132]

    In 1870, republican sentiment in Britain, fed by the Queen's seclusion, was boosted after the establishment of the Third French Republic.[133] A republican rally in Trafalgar Square demanded Victoria's removal, and Radical MPs spoke against her.[134] In August and September 1871, she was seriously ill with an abscess in her arm, which Joseph Lister successfully lanced and treated with his new antiseptic carbolic acid spray.[135] In late November 1871, at the height of the republican movement, the Prince of Wales contracted typhoid fever, the disease that was believed to have killed his father, and Victoria was fearful her son would die.[136] As the tenth anniversary of her husband's death approached, her son's condition grew no better, and Victoria's distress continued.[137] To general rejoicing, he pulled through.[138] Mother and son attended a public parade through London and a grand service of thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral on 27 February 1872, and republican feeling subsided.[139]

    On the last day of February 1872, two days after the thanksgiving service, 17-year-old Arthur O'Connor (great-nephew of Irish MP Feargus O'Connor) waved an unloaded pistol at Victoria's open carriage just after she had arrived at Buckingham Palace. Brown, who was attending the Queen, grabbed him and O'Connor was later sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment.[140] As a result of the incident, Victoria's popularity recovered further.[141]

    After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British East India Company, which had ruled much of India, was dissolved, and Britain's possessions and protectorates on the Indian subcontinent were formally incorporated into the British Empire. The Queen had a relatively balanced view of the conflict, and condemned atrocities on both sides.[142] She wrote of "her feelings of horror and regret at the result of this bloody civil war",[143] and insisted, urged on by Albert, that an official proclamation announcing the transfer of power from the company to the state "should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious toleration".[144] At her behest, a reference threatening the "undermining of native religions and customs" was replaced by a passage guaranteeing religious freedom.[144]

    In the 1874 general election, Disraeli was returned to power. He passed the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, which removed Catholic rituals from the Anglican liturgy and which Victoria strongly supported.[146] She preferred short, simple services, and personally considered herself more aligned with the presbyterian Church of Scotland than the episcopal Church of England.[147] He also pushed the Royal Titles Act 1876 through Parliament, so that Victoria took the title "Empress of India" from 1 May 1876.[148] The new title was proclaimed at the Delhi Durbar of 1 January 1877.[149]

    On 14 December 1878, the anniversary of Albert's death, Victoria's second daughter Alice, who had married Louis of Hesse, died of diphtheria in Darmstadt. Victoria noted the coincidence of the dates as "almost incredible and most mysterious".[150] In May 1879, she became a great-grandmother (on the birth of Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen) and passed her "poor old 60th birthday". She felt "aged" by "the loss of my beloved child".[151]

    Between April 1877 and February 1878, she threatened five times to abdicate while pressuring Disraeli to act against Russia during the Russo-Turkish War, but her threats had no impact on the events or their conclusion with the Congress of Berlin.[152] Disraeli's expansionist foreign policy, which Victoria endorsed, led to conflicts such as the Anglo-Zulu War and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. "If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power", she wrote, "we must ... be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, CONTINUALLY."[153] Victoria saw the expansion of the British Empire as civilising and benign, protecting native peoples from more aggressive powers or cruel rulers: "It is not in our custom to annexe countries", she said, "unless we are obliged & forced to do so."[154] To Victoria's dismay, Disraeli lost the 1880 general election, and Gladstone returned as prime minister.[155] When Disraeli died the following year, she was blinded by "fast falling tears",[156] and erected a memorial tablet "placed by his grateful Sovereign and Friend, Victoria R.I."[157]

    On 2 March 1882, Roderick Maclean, a disgruntled poet apparently offended by Victoria's refusal to accept one of his poems,[158] shot at the Queen as her carriage left Windsor railway station. Two schoolboys from Eton College struck him with their umbrellas, until he was hustled away by a policeman.[159] Victoria was outraged when he was found not guilty by reason of insanity,[160] but was so pleased by the many expressions of loyalty after the attack that she said it was "worth being shot at—to see how much one is loved".[161]

    On 17 March 1883, she fell down some stairs at Windsor, which left her lame until July; she never fully recovered and was plagued with rheumatism thereafter.[162] Brown died 10 days after her accident, and to the consternation of her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, Victoria began work on a eulogistic biography of Brown.[163] Ponsonby and Randall Davidson, Dean of Windsor, who had both seen early drafts, advised Victoria against publication, on the grounds that it would stoke the rumours of a love affair.[164] The manuscript was destroyed.[165] In early 1884, Victoria did publish More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands, a sequel to her earlier book, which she dedicated to her "devoted personal attendant and faithful friend John Brown".[166] On the day after the first anniversary of Brown's death, Victoria was informed by telegram that her youngest son, Leopold, had died in Cannes. He was "the dearest of my dear sons", she lamented.[167] The following month, Victoria's youngest child, Beatrice, met and fell in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg at the wedding of Victoria's granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine to Henry's brother Prince Louis of Battenberg. Beatrice and Henry planned to marry, but Victoria opposed the match at first, wishing to keep Beatrice at home to act as her companion. After a year, she was won around to the marriage by Henry and Beatrice's promise to remain living with and attending her.[168]

    Victoria was pleased when Gladstone resigned in 1885 after his budget was defeated.[169] She thought his government was "the worst I have ever had", and blamed him for the death of General Gordon at Khartoum.[170] Gladstone was replaced by Lord Salisbury. Salisbury's government only lasted a few months, however, and Victoria was forced to recall Gladstone, whom she referred to as a "half crazy & really in many ways ridiculous old man".[171] Gladstone attempted to pass a bill granting Ireland home rule, but to Victoria's glee it was defeated.[172] In the ensuing election, Gladstone's party lost to Salisbury's and the government switched hands again.

    In 1887, the British Empire celebrated Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Victoria marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession on 20 June with a banquet to which 50 kings and princes were invited. The following day, she participated in a procession and attended a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey.[173] By this time, Victoria was once again extremely popular.[174] Two days later on 23 June,[175] she engaged two Indian Muslims as waiters, one of whom was Abdul Karim. He was soon promoted to "Munshi": teaching her Hindustani, and acting as a clerk.[176] Her family and retainers were appalled, and accused Abdul Karim of spying for the Muslim Patriotic League, and biasing the Queen against the Hindus.[177] Equerry Frederick Ponsonby (the son of Sir Henry) discovered that the Munshi had lied about his parentage, and reported to Lord Elgin, Viceroy of India, "the Munshi occupies very much the same position as John Brown used to do."[178] Victoria dismissed their complaints as racial prejudice.[179] Abdul Karim remained in her service until he returned to India with a pension on her death.[180]

    Victoria's eldest daughter became Empress consort of Germany in 1888, but she was widowed within the year, and Victoria's grandchild Wilhelm became German Emperor as Wilhelm II. Under Wilhelm, Victoria and Albert's hopes of a liberal Germany were not fulfilled. He believed in autocracy. Victoria thought he had "little heart or Zartgefühl [tact] – and ... his conscience & intelligence have been completely wharped [sic]".[181] Gladstone returned to power after the 1892 general election; he was 82 years old. Victoria objected when Gladstone proposed appointing the Radical MP Henry Labouchere to the Cabinet, so Gladstone agreed not to appoint him.[182] In 1894, Gladstone retired and, without consulting the outgoing prime minister, Victoria appointed Lord Rosebery as prime minister.[183] His government was weak, and the following year Lord Salisbury replaced him. Salisbury remained prime minister for the remainder of Victoria's reign.[184]

    On 23 September 1896, Victoria surpassed her grandfather George III as the longest-reigning monarch in English, Scottish, and British history. The Queen requested that any special celebrations be delayed until 1897, to coincide with her Diamond Jubilee,[185] which was made a festival of the British Empire at the suggestion of Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.[186] The prime ministers of all the self-governing dominions were invited to London for the festivities.[187] One reason for including the prime ministers of the dominions and excluding foreign heads of state was to avoid having to invite Victoria's grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany who, it was feared, might cause trouble at the event.[188]

    The Queen's Diamond Jubilee procession on 22 June 1897 followed a route six miles long through London and included troops from all over the empire. The procession paused for an open-air service of thanksgiving held outside St Paul's Cathedral, throughout which Victoria sat in her open carriage, to avoid her having to climb the steps to enter the building. The celebration was marked by vast crowds of spectators and great outpourings of affection for the 78-year-old Queen.[189]

    Victoria visited mainland Europe regularly for holidays. In 1889, during a stay in Biarritz, she became the first reigning monarch from Britain to set foot in Spain when she crossed the border for a brief visit.[190] By April 1900, the Boer War was so unpopular in mainland Europe that her annual trip to France seemed inadvisable. Instead, the Queen went to Ireland for the first time since 1861, in part to acknowledge the contribution of Irish regiments to the South African war.[191] In July, her second son Alfred ("Affie") died; "Oh, God! My poor darling Affie gone too", she wrote in her journal. "It is a horrible year, nothing but sadness & horrors of one kind & another."[192]

    Following a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Rheumatism in her legs had rendered her lame, and her eyesight was clouded by cataracts.[193] Through early January, she felt "weak and unwell",[194] and by mid-January she was "drowsy ... dazed, [and] confused".[195] She died on Tuesday, 22 January 1901, at half past six in the evening, at the age of 81.[196] Her son and successor King Edward VII, and her eldest grandson, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, were at her deathbed.[197] Her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid upon her deathbed as a last request.[198]

    In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier's daughter and the head of the army,[97] and white instead of black.[199] On 25 January, Edward VII, the Kaiser and Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, helped lift her body into the coffin.[200] She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil.[201] An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her doctor and dressers. One of Albert's dressing gowns was placed by her side, with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers.[97][202] Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of John Brown's mother, given to her by Brown in 1883.[97] Her funeral was held on Saturday, 2 February, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in Frogmore Mausoleum at Windsor Great Park.[203]

    With a reign of 63 years, seven months and two days, Victoria was the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regnant in world history until her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II surpassed her on 9 September 2015.[204] She was the last monarch of Britain from the House of Hanover. Her son and successor Edward VII belonged to her husband's House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

    The remark "We are not amused" is attributed to her but there is no direct evidence that she ever said it,[97][206] and she denied doing so.[207] According to one of her biographers, Giles St Aubyn, Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life.[208] From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes.[209] After Victoria's death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor. Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria's accession onwards, and burned the originals in the process.[210] Despite this destruction, much of the diaries still exist. In addition to Beatrice's edited copy, Lord Esher transcribed the volumes from 1832 to 1861 before Beatrice destroyed them.[211] Part of Victoria's extensive correspondence has been published in volumes edited by A. C. Benson, Hector Bolitho, George Earle Buckle, Lord Esher, Roger Fulford, and Richard Hough among others.[212]

    Victoria was physically unprepossessing—she was stout, dowdy and no more than five feet tall—but she succeeded in projecting a grand image.[213] She experienced unpopularity during the first years of her widowhood, but was well liked during the 1880s and 1890s, when she embodied the empire as a benevolent matriarchal figure.[214] Only after the release of her diary and letters did the extent of her political influence become known to the wider public.[97][215] Biographies of Victoria written before much of the primary material became available, such as Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria of 1921, are now considered out of date.[216] The biographies written by Elizabeth Longford and Cecil Woodham-Smith, in 1964 and 1972 respectively, are still widely admired.[217] They, and others, conclude that as a person Victoria was emotional, obstinate, honest, and straight-talking.[218]

    Through Victoria's reign, the gradual establishment of a modern constitutional monarchy in Britain continued. Reforms of the voting system increased the power of the House of Commons at the expense of the House of Lords and the monarch.[219] In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote that the monarch only retained "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn".[220] As Victoria's monarchy became more symbolic than political, it placed a strong emphasis on morality and family values, in contrast to the sexual, financial and personal scandals that had been associated with previous members of the House of Hanover and which had discredited the monarchy. The concept of the "family monarchy", with which the burgeoning middle classes could identify, was solidified.[221]

    Victoria's links with Europe's royal families earned her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe".[222] Victoria and Albert had 42 grandchildren, of whom 34 survived to adulthood. Their descendants include Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Harald V of Norway, Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Margrethe II of Denmark, and Felipe VI of Spain. Victoria's youngest son, Leopold, was affected by the blood-clotting disease haemophilia B and two of her five daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers. Royal haemophiliacs descended from Victoria included her great-grandsons, Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, and Infante Gonzalo of Spain.[223] The presence of the disease in Victoria's descendants, but not in her ancestors, led to modern speculation that her true father was not the Duke of Kent but a haemophiliac.[224] There is no documentary evidence of a haemophiliac in connection with Victoria's mother, and as male carriers always suffer the disease, even if such a man had existed he would have been seriously ill.[225] It is more likely that the mutation arose spontaneously because Victoria's father was over 50 at the time of her conception and haemophilia arises more frequently in the children of older fathers.[226] Spontaneous mutations account for about a third of cases.[227]
    Around the world, places and memorials are dedicated to her, especially in the Commonwealth nations. Places named after her include Africa's largest lake, Victoria Falls, the capitals of British Columbia (Victoria) and Saskatchewan (Regina), and two Australian states (Victoria and Queensland).

    The Victoria Cross was introduced in 1856 to reward acts of valour during the Crimean War, and it remains the highest British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander award for bravery. Victoria Day is a Canadian statutory holiday and a local public holiday in parts of Scotland celebrated on the last Monday before or on 24 May (Queen Victoria's birthday).

    Titles and styles

    24 May 1819 – 20 June 1837: Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent
    20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901: Her Majesty The Queen
    At the end of her reign, the Queen's full style and title were: "Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India."[228]

    Arms

    As Sovereign, Victoria used the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. Before her accession, she received no grant of arms. As she could not succeed to the throne of Hanover, her arms did not carry the Hanoverian symbols that were used by her immediate predecessors. Her arms have been borne by all of her successors on the throne. Outside Scotland, the blazon for the shield—also used on the Royal Standard—is: Quarterly: I and IV, Gules, three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II, Or, a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III, Azure, a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland). In Scotland, the first and fourth quarters are occupied by the Scottish lion, and the second by the English lions. The crests, mottoes, and supporters also differ in and outside Scotland.[229]

    Bibliography

    Charles, Barrie (2012) Kill the Queen! The Eight Assassination Attempts on Queen Victoria, Stroud: Amberley Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4456-0457-2
    Hibbert, Christopher (2000) Queen Victoria: A Personal History, London: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-00-638843-4
    Longford, Elizabeth (1964) Victoria R.I., London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0-297-17001-5
    Marshall, Dorothy (1972) The Life and Times of Queen Victoria, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0-297-83166-6 [1992 reprint]
    Packard, Jerrold M. (1998) Victoria's Daughters, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-24496-7
    Potts, D. M.; Potts, W. T. W. (1995) Queen Victoria's Gene: Haemophilia and the Royal Family, Stroud: Alan Sutton, ISBN 0-7509-1199-9
    St Aubyn, Giles (1991) Queen Victoria: A Portrait, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, ISBN 1-85619-086-2
    Strachey, Lytton (1921) Queen Victoria, London: Chatto and Windus online edition
    Waller, Maureen (2006) Sovereign Ladies: The Six Reigning Queens of England, London: John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-6628-2
    Weintraub, Stanley (1997) Albert: Uncrowned King, London: John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-5756-9
    Woodham-Smith, Cecil (1972) Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times 1819–1861, London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 0-241-02200-2
    Published primary sources
    Benson, A.C.; Esher, Viscount (editors, 1907) The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection of Her Majesty's Correspondence Between the Years 1837 and 1861, London: John Murray
    Bolitho, Hector (editor, 1938) Letters of Queen Victoria from the Archives of the House of Brandenburg-Prussia, London: Thornton Butterworth
    Buckle, George Earle (editor, 1926) The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd Series 1862–1885, London: John Murray
    Buckle, George Earle (editor, 1930) The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3rd Series 1886–1901, London: John Murray
    Connell, Brian (1962) Regina v. Palmerston: The Correspondence between Queen Victoria and her Foreign and Prime Minister, 1837–1865, London: Evans Brothers
    Duff, David (editor, 1968) Victoria in the Highlands: The Personal Journal of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, London: Muller
    Dyson, Hope; Tennyson, Charles (editors, 1969) Dear and Honoured Lady: The Correspondence between Queen Victoria and Alfred Tennyson, London: Macmillan
    Esher, Viscount (editor, 1912) The Girlhood of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty's Diaries, 1832–40, London: John Murray
    Fulford, Roger (editor, 1964) Dearest Child: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858–61, London: Evans Brothers
    Fulford, Roger (editor, 1968) Dearest Mama: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, 1861–64, London: Evans Brothers
    Fulford, Roger (editor, 1971) Beloved Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, 1878–85, London: Evans Brothers
    Fulford, Roger (editor, 1971) Your Dear Letter: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, 1863–71, London: Evans Brothers
    Fulford, Roger (editor, 1976) Darling Child: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess of Prussia, 1871–78, London: Evans Brothers
    Hibbert, Christopher (editor, 1984) Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, London: John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-4107-7
    Hough, Richard (editor, 1975) Advice to a Grand-daughter: Letters from Queen Victoria to Princess Victoria of Hesse, London: Heinemann, ISBN 0-434-34861-9
    Jagow, Kurt (editor, 1938) Letters of the Prince Consort 1831–61, London: John Murray
    Mortimer, Raymond (editor, 1961) Queen Victoria: Leaves from a Journal, New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy
    Ponsonby, Sir Frederick (editor, 1930) Letters of the Empress Frederick, London: Macmillan
    Ramm, Agatha (editor, 1990) Beloved and Darling Child: Last Letters between Queen Victoria and Her Eldest Daughter, 1886–1901, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, ISBN 978-0-86299-880-6
    Victoria, Queen (1868) Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands from 1848 to 1861, London: Smith, Elder
    Victoria, Queen (1884) More Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands from 1862 to 1882, London: Smith, Elder

    Further reading

    Arnstein, Walter L. (2003) Queen Victoria, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-333-63806-4
    Gardiner, Juliet (1997) Queen Victoria, London: Collins and Brown, ISBN 978-1-85585-469-7
    Lyden, Anne M. (2014) A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, ISBN 978-1-60606-155-8
    Weintraub, Stanley (1987) Victoria: Biography of a Queen, London: HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-04-923084-2
    Wilson, A. N. (2014) Victoria: A Life, London: Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84887-956-0


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    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:08 am

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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Dominion


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    RedEzra wrote:GOD said from the beginning that every soul who sins shall die and since GOD is not a liar so every soul who sins shall die. So basically a lot of us are f*cked ! We will die and end up in hell with the fallen angels and demons. And there is no ascension escaping this ethereal nightmare except... What ?! Is it possible for a sinnerman not to go to hell ?? YES ! Stop sinning ! But but who will make reparations for our crimes against each other ? GOD said from the beginning that only the spilling of blood can atone for sins so who's blood can cover a whole world of crimes ? That would be GOD's blood ! So will GOD pay the price for our sins and spill His blood for us ? He already did friend he already did.

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Crucified-Christ-bloody
    RedEzra wrote:Also science must conform to the Party program... a truth therefore which does not fit into the program or ideological agenda will be silenced censored or made to look like a lie. The Party is not about truth but control ! Control over you me and everybody else who is not an inner member or on top of the hierarchy. The Party is all about staying in power! Who would you be ? Master or slave ? So you see it is only self preservation in the minds of the masters or Party tops !
    orthodoxymoron wrote:I continue to be interested in what Job to Malachi REALLY Teaches. Does it support Genesis to Esther?? Does it support Matthew to Revelation?? Is the Bible the Solution and/or the Problem?? Are there other legitimate and preferable options?? Are we locked-in to arguing and fighting about Biblical-Theology?? Can the Bible be made to say whatever we want it to say?? Theology often seems to be a Nightmare. Why??
    Carol wrote: in response to Orthodoxymoron

    Hoping you are in good health and happiness.

    Thank-you Evisnam. What Do You Think About This Post?? I Can't Seem to Get Answers From Anyone. I've tried to be exact regarding quoting RA. Here are some examples:

    1. "You're Lucky to be Alive!!"
    2. "I'm Tired of Keeping You Alive!!"
    3. "Do You Think You Might be the One Hanging On the Cross in a Crucifix??"
    4. "Serqet Has a Lot to Do With Explaining Our Relationship."
    5. "I AM RA!!"
    6. "You Can't Connect Anything Back to Me."
    7. "I Can't Talk About the NSA."
    8. "You Should Make a Freedom of Information Act Request."
    9. "In Twenty Years You'll be Working for Us."
    10. "It's Going to be Dark Where You're Going".
    11. "I Built Las Vegas with Bugsy."
    12. "I'm Rich!!"
    13. "I Like the Taste of Blood!!"
    14. "I've Always Remained One Step Ahead of Humanity."
    15. RA called me "Michael" in Wal*Mart!!
    16. RA called me a "Commoner" when I made a benign comment about Tall Long-Nosed Greys!!
    17. RA asked me "Are You Ready to Run Things??"
    18. RA said "I Like Genesis."
    19. RA said "9/11 Was Done to Prevent Something Much Worse From Happening."
    20. RA said "I'm Sorry We Couldn't Work Together. Too Much Water Has Gone Under the Bridge." This was said three days prior to Fukushima.
    21. RA said "I Could Snap My Fingers, and You'd be Dead!!"
    22. RA said "You'll Never Figure This Out."
    23. RA repeatedly said "You Know I Can't Tell You That!!"
    24. RA said "You Did It With YouTube!!"

    I could continue, but this provides several clues regarding the nature of my "contact" with a very-different sort of individual. I've tried to be open, yet discrete, in discussing what happened to me. RA looked very similar to the individual who is supposed to be Ben Affleck ("Bartleby") in a "Dogma" movie poster!! That's NOT Ben in the poster!! Before this madness began, I was walking my dog, when Bartleby and Loki pulled-up beside me in their car, and looked at me for about 20 seconds, before driving away!! Honest!! An Ivy-League Divinity-School Graduate told me I was dealing with a demon!! I repeatedly discussed Sirius-Issues with RA at Starbucks!! I usually bought the coffee, and I always drove!! What Would Alan Rickman Say??

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Hello Orthodoximoron, regarding your question and information can I ask you some questions?

    Thank-you, Evisnam, for your response. Questions are welcome.

    When you try to connect with RA are you clean of spirit ? i.e. under the influence of any drugs which can range from caffeine to other readily available substances. I say this purely because there is a range of drugs that can " amplify " an experience or connection but very few are amplifiers of " pure " connections. The use of some drugs can amplify openings to lower astral beings and from what i can see here you may have some "toying " with you by the type of responses you are getting. Generally speaking you will only be able to connect with good intended beings if you are clean of spirit i.e.. clean from drugs and alcohol ( unless you know how to use them ).

    I didn't "conjure-up" an entity. I didn't "connect" with the one who said "I Am Ra". They came to me (uninvited) possibly because of a thread I created on the old closed Project Avalon site (in 2009 and 2010) titled "Amen Ra". http://projectavalon.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18223&highlight=orthodoxymoron+threads That might've been the "Invitation". That was probably a Mistake. I also half-seriously wrote about having a "Debate-Date" with Lucifer!! That was probably my Big-Mistake!! I've never had a drink in my life. I've never smoked a cigarette or a joint in my life. I've never taken any illegal drugs in my life. I drink coffee (probably too much). I've spoken with Terrance McKenna (a notorious drug-taking intellectual-philosopher) but I've never been a "follower". I've spoken with Dr. Timothy Leary (about Jesus) but I've never taken LSD!!

    Clear of any fears and I mean ANY FEARS, if you harbor fear or judgement you will not be able to connect with beings of good intention. The photo that you use to describe the appearance of the being is usually what lower astral beings like to depict themselves as. Most times they appear as a good looking mediterranean man well dressed in a suit, very tall, deep voice, etc.. This is part or a sect of 6th dimensional beings which are reportedly part of the hidden hand or LUCIFER sect. When I say 6th dimension it’s not really a 6th dimension but a level of density that they gravitate to, I use the words 6th Dimension merely to try to assimilate what we are used to. When I went into my second fire it took me at least 3 months of cleansing, abstinence and celibacy to even reach a proper connection.

    I think I'm probably overly-concerned about Nuclear-War, Chemical and Biological Weapons, Financial-Meltdowns, Civil-War, Demonic-Manifestations, St. Peter Telling Me to "Go to Hell", etc.

    Question, when the entity spoke to you did it always start with the words " I Am Ra " if not then you may be speaking with, what I call, a " naughty angel " and there are plenty of those out there.

    The very-physical individual of interest only once said "I Am Ra". They weren't an ethereal-entity.

    Ask yourself the question, do the responses you get amplify fear in you ? then it is most probably a " naughty angel."

    I was more annoyed than fearful. I pretty-much took the whole-thing in stride. It was often somewhat humorous!!

    May I reiterate that the better beings of good intention hardly if ever speak audibly, they hardly even use words because they are offensive to them. Words in their realms are hugely powerful and are rarely if ever used. This is because of the clean state of their density, this is the energy matrix of which they reside. Because of its makeup only thought waves are used to communicate. Most beings in these realms cannot stand the sound of voices because they carry so much power in them. SO thought, or rather sans thought, is their preferred method of communication. Mind you, pictograms are widely used because they do not carry audible waves but rather they are a pure form of communication capable of relaying so much more than words. They also prefer you to have a metaphoric leeway with your communications, this allows the individual to have freedom within its own matrix to create its own reality by deciphering the message with its own influence. Words are way too definitive like that, hence why thy are not used.

    I seemed to have learned a lot by what was unsaid. I sensed that "Ra" (or whoever they really were) was a mixture of Good and Evil. They could've been an Angel. They could've been a Demon. They could've been an Alphabet-Agent. They could've been a Tall Long-Nosed Grey Alien. Damned if I knew or know. I've NEVER done anything Creepy. I've NEVER joined a strange group or organization. I've speculated that I might be a Target because of who I might be on a "Soul-Basis". But I'm pretty-much done trying to figure-out "This Present Madness". I'll leave that up to those with Degrees and Badges. It's easier that way.

    i look forward to your response.

    Thank-you for your time and experience, Evisnam.
    Notice that I both support and undermine Ellen White and "her" writings. Here is something for you to read regarding Ellen White (which is not complementary). http://www.academia.edu/10196605/Ellen_G._White_And_Her_Ghost_Writer_Book_Shop_Basic_Version  I try to be honest and fair. I'm presently thinking in terms of studying Ellen White and Queen Victoria (side by side)!! Ellen White's writings are Royal-Model and Somewhat-English!! Ellen White had a third-grade education (because of being hit in the head with a rock at the age of nine)!! How did she "author" such eloquent books?? I've narrowed my focus to the first three Conflict of the Ages Series books, namely Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, and Desire of Ages. This pretty-much covers the Whole-Bible, while admittedly performing a lot of "adding and subtracting"!! These writings seem to have been written by a queen (or at least written in a palace)!! I've tried to incorporate these select EGW books into a Science-Fictional context!! Try combining the Babylon 5 Series with the Conflict of the Ages Series, and the Life and Writings of Queen Victoria!! What Would M.L. Andreasen Say?? I'm not capable of properly researching what I just suggested!! It sounds as though I might have some sort of a rare neurological-problem. I've suspected such a thing throughout my adult-life (off and on), and I actually went to a neurologist in my early-twenties, with no luck. But the recent heart-surgery (with major doses of anesthesia) might've revealed some organic-aspects of my previously "all in his head" difficulties, but I remain highly pessimistic that things will change for the better. I expect just the opposite. The organic-misery has probably caused me to think about things nobody else does, which probably resulted in mental and spiritual complications. That's just my own theory.

    What if the Solar System were One Big Business with One Big CEO, with No Church and No State?? Everyone Would Be An Employee!! I'm oversimplifying the concept, but I think there is something significant to extensively considering Business, Church, and State relative to the American-Dream!! This thing probably isn't just about what we want, or what might be a nice way to live. Ancient Star Wars, and Current Factional Conflicts might have a lot to do with why things are as they are!! Where one is in life probably has a lot to do with how we think things should be. People want what they want, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. I'm reading The Final Jihad by Martin Keating, and I can't put it down!! It's a well-written "HORRIBLE" Book!! I've had it for several-years, but I couldn't get into it, until I learned that one must read for hours at a time for it to make sense!! I continue to suspect that the Real PTB want some sort of a Holy-War. I SO Hope I'm Wrong. I tend to think that most everyone has been "set-up" for "something-bad". When I asked the Ancient Egyptian Deity if he were setting me up for something bad, he retorted "Are You Kidding!! I Could Snap My Fingers, and You'd Be DEAD!!" I could feel the love. On another occasion, the AED said "You're Lucky to Be Alive!!" Another time, the AED said "I'm Tired of Keeping You Alive!!" They said it in an angry and agitated manner. Once, I made a rather-benign comment concerning "Tall Long-Nosed Greys" and RA called me a "Commoner"!! When Raven chewed me out on this website, the next-day RA told me that wouldn't happen again!! What if RA and RAVEN were the same-soul?? Imagine Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra (1963) teaching what I'm posting!! Imagine her saying the exact words of this thread (or an Ellen White book) in the context of an Egyptian Palace!! Do We Have a Match?? In that movie, Cleopatra exclaims "I AM ISIS!!" What if she really was?? How might Gabriel and Michael relate to All of the Above?? Whose Throne Does the Queen Sit Upon?? What If the Original Throne-Owner is Alive and Well, and Living On Planet Earth?? What If They Want It Back?? What a Revolting Development THAT Might Be!! Would THAT Constitute an "Isis-Crisis"??!! The Horror!!

    I made a speculative post regarding this matter, a few days prior to Fukushima, and the AED said "You Found Out Something About Yourself" (but they weren't specific). During this same conversation, they said they were sorry we couldn't work together -- because too much water had gone under the bridge. What does all of this mean?? That post mostly examined the hypothetical relationship between RA, the Queen, and the Pope. Talk about a Can of Worms!! OMG!! That was three-days prior to Fukushima!! Was there a connection?? A couple of months prior to this, the AED spoke ominously of something being prepared and ready (but they didn't elaborate). What were they referring to?? What does all of this mean?? What are the implications and ramifications?? What Would Monseigneur Bowe Say?? I never met him, but I heard about him from someone who worked with him at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco!! If I told you any more, you'd know too much!!

    I got to thinking about the Queen of England, the Pope of Rome, and the God of This World. They're a pretty exclusive trio - with extreme power - aren't they? They don't get elected by the general public, do they? Should they? I really don't know. I'm really conflicted about this sort of thing. How does a civilization make sure that they have the very best individuals in those roles? I've been trying to combine the best aspects of theocracy and democracy - and the best of the royal and servant models of leadership and authority. The whole damn thing is a slippery-slope. I've had a lot to say regarding a hypothetical Queen of Heaven ruling Earth as the Goddess of This World. I've imagined having conversations and debates with such a being - and I have really mixed-feelings about the whole thing. Extreme intelligence, economy of words, elegance, straight-forwardness, and beauty - might all be on the plus side. But harshness, cruelty, causing atrocities, committing mass-murder, corruption, deception, treachery, moral-ambiguity, and demonic-possession - might be on the negative side. But I don't know the true state of affairs. They might be human. They might be reptilian. They might be hybrid. They might be male. They might be female. They might be hermaphrodite. They might have a wardrobe of bodies. They might be able to shapeshift into any form and anyone they choose. Could a being be a God or Goddess of This World for any length of time - without becoming corrupt and insane?

    Are the Pope of Rome and the Queen of England - really the modern-day equivalents of the King and Queen of Egypt - serving the Hidden God Amen Ra? Are all three ruling in place of Christ? I have speculated quite a bit about this in the past. I am concerned about this, because these three seem to have control over pretty much the whole world. Is this power legitimate or illegitimate? Is this power being used benevolently and wisely? Are they doing that which is in everyone's best interest? Could the throne of this world have been stolen in antiquity? Could this hypothetical theft be ongoing? Did someone steal fire from the gods? I really and truly don't know - but I am becoming increasingly suspicious. What effect would a Michael/Horus/Jesus (or some other name-combination) administered Namaste Constitutional Responsible Freedom United States of the Solar System have on these three? What would Michael/Horus/Jesus say? What Would Other Individuals of Interest Say?? Somebody please talk to me about this. Please think long and hard about these three jobs. They don't give out job-applications - do they? This is VERY tricky territory - to say the least. I deeply appreciate the Divine Feminine as an integral part of the Divinity Within Humanity - but I am deeply suspicious of a hypothetical Reptilian/Human Hybrid, Hermaphrodite Queen of Heaven / God of This World - being at the core of monotheism - ruling a Controlled Patriarchy - and presiding over a Subjugation of Women - to control and enslave the human race - complete with the 'Chastenings of the Lord' in the form of wars, persecutions, tortures, the Crusades, the Inquisition, terrorist events, etc, etc. Who REALLY controls the Monarchy and the Papacy?
     

    Once again, I am being absolutely honest BUT I have no idea how to interpret and/or apply All of the Above. I merely include this sort of thing in my ongoing (reformative rather than normative) Religious and Political Science-Fiction. It's easier that way. One More Thing. Consider the contrast between Good-Queen, Mean-Queen, and Mixture of Good and Mean Queen!! This basic concept might apply to numerous contexts and scenarios. What if these possibilities are descriptive of Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer (but not necessarily in that order)?? What if the Hybrid-Queen met with the Mean-Queen in one throne-room -- then met with the Good-Queen in another throne-room -- and then sat down upon her own-throne in yet another throne-room -- utilizing the best of both perspectives??!! What if a Single Multiple-Personality Queen Had Three Throne-Rooms, and Played the Parts of All Three Queens??!! We Three Queens??!! We Are All One??!! Interesting, eh??

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    http://whiteestate.org/books/pk/pk49.html Under the favor shown them by Cyrus, nearly fifty thousand of the children of the captivity had taken advantage of the decree permitting their return. These, however, in comparison with the hundreds of thousands scattered throughout the provinces of Medo-Persia, were but a mere remnant. The great majority of the Israelites had chosen to remain in the land of their exile rather than undergo the hardships of the return journey and the re-establishment of their desolated cities and homes.

    A score or more of years passed by, when a second decree, quite as favorable as the first, was issued by Darius Hystaspes, the monarch then ruling. Thus did God in mercy provide another opportunity for the Jews in the Medo-Persian realm to return to the land of their fathers. The Lord foresaw the troublous times that were to follow during the reign of Xerxes,--the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther,--and He not only wrought a change of feeling in the hearts of men in authority, but also inspired Zechariah to plead with the exiles to return.

    "Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north," was the message given the scattered tribes of Israel who had become settled in many lands far from their former home. "I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord. Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon. For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath He sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me." Zechariah 2:6-9.

    It was still the Lord's purpose, as it have been from the beginning, that His people should be a praise in the earth, to the glory of His name. During the long years of their exile He had given them many opportunities to return to their allegiance to Him. Some had chosen to listen and to learn; some had found salvation in the midst of affliction. Many of these were to be numbered among the remnant that should return. They were likened by Inspiration to "the highest branch of the high cedar," which was to be planted "upon an high mountain and eminent: in the mountain of the height of Israel." Ezekiel 17:22, 23.

    It was those "whose spirit God had raised" (Ezra 1:5) who had returned under the decree of Cyrus. But God ceased not to plead with those who voluntarily remained in the land of their exile, and through manifold agencies He made it possible for them also to return. The large number, however, of those who failed to respond to the decree of Cyrus, remained unimpressible to later influences; and even when Zechariah warned them to flee from Babylon without further delay, they did not heed the invitation.

    Meanwhile conditions in the Medo-Persian realm were rapidly changing. Darius Hystaspes, under whose reign the Jews had been shown marked favor, was succeeded by Xerxes the Great. It was during his reign that those of the Jews who had failed of heeding the message to flee were called upon to face a terrible crisis. Having refused to take advantage of the way of escape God had provided, now they were brought face to face with death.

    Through Haman the Agagite, an unscrupulous man high in authority in Medo-Persia, Satan worked at this time to counterwork the purposes of God. Haman cherished bitter malice against Mordecai, a Jew. Mordecai had done Haman no harm, but had simply refused to show him worshipful reverence. Scorning to "lay hands on Mordecai alone," Haman plotted "to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai." Esther 3:6.

    Misled by the false statements of Haman, Xerxes was induced to issue a decree providing for the massacre of all the Jews "scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces" of the Medo-Persian kingdom. Verse 8. A certain day was appointed on which the Jews were to be destroyed and their property confiscated. Little did the king realize the far-reaching results that would have accompanied the complete carrying out of this decree. Satan himself, the hidden instigator of the scheme, was trying to rid the earth of those who preserved the knowledge of the true God.

    "In every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes." Esther 4:3. The decree of the Medes and Persians could not be revoked; apparently there was no hope; all the Israelites were doomed to destruction.

    But the plots of the enemy were defeated by a Power that reigns among the children of men. In the providence of God, Esther, a Jewess who feared the Most High, had been made queen of the Medo-Persian kingdom. Mordecai was a near relative of hers. In their extremity they decided to appeal to Xerxes in behalf of their people. Esther was to venture into his presence as an intercessor. "Who knoweth," said Mordecai, "whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Verse 14.

    The crisis that Esther faced demanded quick, earnest action; but both she and Mordecai realized that unless God should work mightily in their behalf, their own efforts would be unavailing. So Esther took time for communion with God, the source of her strength. "Go," she directed Mordecai, "gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish." Verse 16.

    The events that followed in rapid succession,--the appearance of Esther before the king, the marked favor shown her, the banquets of the king and queen with Haman as the only guest, the troubled sleep of the king, the public honor shown Mordecai, and the humiliation and fall of Haman upon the discovery of his wicked plot,--all these are parts of a familiar story. God wrought marvelously for His penitent people; and a counter decree issued by the king, allowing them to fight for their lives, was rapidly communicated to every part of the realm by mounted couriers, who were "hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment." "And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them." Esther 8:14, 17.

    On the day appointed for their destruction, "the Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people." Angels that excel in strength had been commissioned by God to protect His people while they "stood for their lives." Esther 9:2, 16.

    Mordecai was given the position of honor formerly occupied by Haman. He "was next unto King Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren" (Esther 10:3); and he sought to promote the welfare of Israel. Thus did God bring His chosen people once more into favor at the Medo-Persian court, making possible the carrying out of His purpose to restore them to their own land. But it was not until several years later, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I, the successor of Xerxes the Great, that any considerable number returned to Jerusalem, under Ezra.

    The trying experiences that came to God's people in the days of Esther were not peculiar to that age alone. The revelator, looking down the ages to the close of time, has declared, "The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Revelation 12:17. Some who today are living on the earth will see these words fulfilled. The same spirit that in ages past led men to persecute the true church, will in the future lead to the pursuance of a similar course toward those who maintain their loyalty to God. Even now preparations are being made for this last great conflict.

    The decree that will finally go forth against the remnant people of God will be very similar to that issued by Ahasuerus against the Jews. Today the enemies of the true church see in the little company keeping the Sabbath commandment, a Mordecai at the gate. The reverence of God's people for His law is a constant rebuke to those who have cast off the fear of the Lord and are trampling on His Sabbath.

    Satan will arouse indignation against the minority who refuse to accept popular customs and traditions. Men of position and reputation will join with the lawless and the vile to take counsel against the people of God. Wealth, genius, education, will combine to cover them with contempt.

    Persecuting rulers, ministers, and church members will conspire against them. With voice and pen, by boasts, threats, and ridicule, they will seek to overthrow their faith. By false representations and angry appeals, men will stir up the passions of the people. Not having a "Thus saith the Scriptures" to bring against the advocates of the Bible Sabbath, they will resort to oppressive enactments to supply the lack. To secure popularity and patronage, legislators will yield to the demand for Sunday laws. But those who fear God, cannot accept an institution that violates a precept of the Decalogue. On this battlefield will be fought the last great conflict in the controversy between truth and error. And we are not left in doubt as to the issue. Today, as in the days of Esther and Mordecai, the Lord will vindicate His truth and His people.

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    orthodoxymoron
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    Post  orthodoxymoron Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:30 am

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    I'm generally neutral regarding royalty, especially regarding particular names and places, but I'm leaning toward Antiquity, Royalty, Secrecy, and Technology regarding explaining why things are the way they are in this Solar System, and perhaps beyond. I've suggested the possibility of a twenty-second century United States of the Solar System, with a Non-Bloodline King and Queen, Under God (whatever and whoever appropriately applies). This isn't a coup. It's attempted understanding. You'll find more along these lines as this thread progresses (or digresses). My Grandmother was a contestant on the old TV show 'Queen for a Day'!! My family had a dog named 'Flash'. Remember 'Dash'?? What Would Queen Victoria Say?? What Would Jupiter Jones Say?? "I love dogs!! I've always loved dogs!!" I certainly have fun with history, fiction, science, historical-fiction, and science-fiction!!

    I continue to suspect Royal-Origins for at least some of the Writings of Ellen Goa'uld White!! What Would Albert and Victoria Say?? What Would James and Ellen Say?? What Would Isis, Horus, and Set Say?? What Would the 'Council of 42' Say?? What Would Baron Stockmar Say?? What Would Ernst Stockmar Write?? 'The Memoirs of Baron Stockmar'!! What Would RA Say?? "I'm Rich!!" "I Am RA!!" "I Built Vegas with Bugsy!!" "Serqet Has a Lot to Do with Explaining Our Relationship!!" "I'm Sorry We Couldn't Work Together!!" Someday You Won't Think I'm Crazy, But Then It Will Be Too Late. I Suspect That It's Been Too Late for a Long Time. Too Much Water Has Gone Under the Bridge. I've Withdrawn All of My Internet Bright-Ideas (Mostly Because No One Will Tell Me What the Hell is Really Going On). What Are the Implications and Ramifications?? Ask the Beast Supercomputer. Notice what is said in the second video regarding computers and governance. True or False?? Think Fast!! The End is Near (again)!!

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    Carol wrote:
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    Ex-Google Executive Anthony Levandowski Registers First Church of AI With IRS
    https://pjmedia.com/faith/ex-google-executive-registers-first-church-of-ai-with-irs/

    "Anthony Levandowski, a former executive at Google has filed paperwork with the IRS to establish an official religion of technology. This religion doesn't just worship scientific progress, but artificial intelligence itself, with the goal of creating a godhead.

    The new church of AI will aim "to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead [to] contribute to the betterment of society," according to IRS documents.

    The non-profit religious organization would be called "Way of the Future" (WOTF). According to the website (wayofthefuture.church), the movement is "about creating a peaceful and respectful transition of who is in charge of the planet from people to people + 'machines.'"

    "Given that technology will 'relatively soon' be able to surpass human abilities, we want to help educate people about this exciting future and prepare a smooth transition," the site explains. "In 'recent' years, we have expanded our concept of rights to both sexes, minority groups and even animals, let's make sure we find a way for 'machines' to get rights too."


    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:00 am; edited 1 time in total
    orthodoxymoron
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    Post  orthodoxymoron Fri Nov 17, 2017 2:48 am

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    evisnam wrote:Hello All ,  I Am Evisnam , so not to burden Carol with extra work i have been given an account so i can respond directly to you all. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Carol and all the members and staff of The Mists of Avalon for their support and indeed giving us this place to congregate and talk.

    My first response to Orthodoxymoron is an important one. Forgive me for not understanding your question properly, in reading a little on the thread you started on the old Project Avalon forum... in reading parts of this thread i can see how Dogma has influenced your opinions and prompted you to ask poignant questions. Some of which you have answered your self, in relation as to why this is happening to you. It seems to me you may have gotten the attention of some that may want to create a self fulfilling prophecy for you.

    We create our own demons and we create our own reality through the holo matrix of existance under the binary system. This system is goverend and manintained from the moon base. In our " apparent " realities what we create by magnitude of emotional input equates to a manifestation which interacts with the living charachters of your dogmatic beliefs. The dogma we attune to gives it life in proportion to our focus and in some circumstances brings to life enough energy to form a response in the physical.

    or it just could be some jokers following you.

    Either way when we speak of such things we must have some sort of respect imbed in our words , even the Lucifer sect has a distinct set of rules they must obide by. When we cross these lines of respect we ask for problems.

    May i ask you if you have a dual soul ?  you seem to me to have a dual soul , this is an even mix of male and female soul complex. If so then you should adhere to a more respectful dialogue and try not to indulge in so much Hyperbole. Let me explain what i mean by this.

    an example here

    " Could Lucifer be the Human God of This World? Could Satan be the Reptilian God of This World? Could Amen Ra be a combination of the two? A Pleiadian Human Being...Perfectly Possessed by a Draconian Interdimensional Reptilian? "

    ( quote from Amen Ra thread )  

    These words in print create a conjecture which is a type of judgement. Because it is symbolically written and interacted with by many, it has taken on a meaning to those who read it and in turn energise the words. It may have taken some time but i imagine their response happened some 2 - 3 years after you wrote your first lot of questions ?  

    I also sense a great deal of uncertainty in your mind and i would attribute it to a large intake of caffiene , the problem with caffiene ( in large doses ) is it starts inner dialogues which go off in unfinished tangents whch seem important at the time but in reality are not. If you were to abstain for a period of 2 weeks and purify your self you will find a lot of these questions will fall by the way side.

    An Important rule of thumb which can be adopted to any situation on this planet at this time in our history.

    Whenever the Lucifer sect wishes to create fear around a saviour they will paint them as Evil.  Examples of which are the assasinations of Muammar al-Qaddafi , Malcom X , Mahatma Ghandi , John Lennon and John F Kennedy ( to name a few )  all at some stage were being painted as Evil by the establishment. The rule of thumb here is by degree of propoganda instated is the degree of which they are actually of good charachter.

    The same can be said of most of the ET races that have been unceremoniously painted as Evil. If we indulge in un founded fear then we will be justly rewarded.
    orthodoxymoron wrote:Thank-you evisnam. The construction of that "Amen Ra" thread took probably half a year, and then "Ra" showed-up probably half a year later, and our "contact" lasted probably three-months, at which time we occasionally spoke on the phone for another three-months. Then we stopped talking to each-other. All of the Above should probably have never occurred, but it was sort of interesting, and it made me dig deeper than if it hadn't happened. I'll try to kick the coffee-habit, but it's my one vice in life. There's a lot more I could talk about, but I'm sort of trying to stop talking about this stuff. I've recently gained a few insights which have hit me hard, and I'm hesitant to continue my pseudo-intellectual quest. That male-female thing probably arises from modeling various science-fictional concepts and characters. I'm sort of an "unpaid script-writer". I honestly think I could've made a career out of that, but it's a little late now. I think I'm headed for the "poor-house" and/or the "nut-house"!! It's much too late to be another Orson Scott Card. Thanks again for your insights.
    RedEzra wrote:Another prophecy which was written down in the bible is the restoration of Judea to the Jews.

    After about 2000 years without a land the withered Jews returned in huge numbers and declared an independent Jewish state in 1948. Usually after such a long time people are assimilated into the culture of the host nation but for some reason the Jews continued the old customs for so long.

    One thing which is absolutely astounding is that the day after the Jews declared independence they were attacked by Egypt Iraq Syria Jordan and Lebanon... and won !

    Two more times in 1967 and 1973 did armies of neigbouring Arab states attack them... which again resulted in Israeli victory and a quadrupling of land. For example Egypt lost the enormous Sinai area which Israel later gave back in exchange for a peace agreement. Israel was also willing to give Golan back to Syria for peace but Syria was not interested.

    When it is written in the bible that the Jews will return to their land... then ought one not take the book serious ? Especially in face of the fact that a combined Arab army with Soviet help could not beat a comparative handful of holocaust survivors... in three tries !


    "In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to bring back the remnant of his people. From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

    And He will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel. And will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." - Isaiah 11:11-12
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    I keep thinking about Victoria and Albert , and I could say a lot about it, and about what I'm thinking, but I'd REALLY get in a lot of trouble. Padme = Victoria = Jupiter?? Did Padme like dogs too?? Dr. Stockmar = Emperor Palpatine = Mr. Edgars?? Does "Stocky" have an office at Goldman Sachs?? That's All I'm Going to Say. What Would Ellen White Say?? What Would Saint Germain Say?? What Would Edgar Mitchell Say?? What Would Elizabeth Mitchell Say?? What Would Mitchell Say?? What Would Prince Albert Say?? What Would Ra Say?? What Would Brother Rich Say?? What Would Sister Angie Say?? What Would Delenn and Vala Say?? What if Brexit has something to do with All of the Above?? I've said too much, and now you know too much. You know what that means...
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    "I Love Dogs!!"
    orthodoxymoron
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    Post  orthodoxymoron Fri Nov 17, 2017 2:54 am

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit Brexit is a commonly used term for the United Kingdom's planned withdrawal from the European Union.[1] Following the 2016 referendum vote to leave, the UK government started the withdrawal process on 29 March 2017, putting the UK on course to leave by April 2019.[2] The terms of withdrawal have not yet been negotiated and the UK remains a full member of the European Union.[3] Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, has announced 12 negotiating objectives and confirmed that the UK government would not seek permanent single market membership.[4] She has promised a Great Repeal Bill to repeal the European Communities Act and incorporate existing EU laws into UK domestic law.[5] The UK joined the European Communities (EC), the EU's predecessor, in 1973, confirming its membership in a 1975 referendum. In the 1970s and 1980s, withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC) was advocated mainly by Labour Party and trade union figures. From the 1990s, withdrawal from the EU was advocated mainly by the newly founded Referendum Party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and by an increasing number of Conservatives.

    Brexit (like its early variant, Brixit)[6] is a portmanteau of "British" and "exit". It was derived by analogy from Grexit, referring to a hypothetical withdrawal of Greece from the eurozone (and possibly also the EU).[7] The term Brexit may have first been used in reference to a possible UK withdrawal from the EU by Peter Wilding in a Euractiv blog post on 15 May 2012.[8][9] The terms "hard Brexit" and "soft Brexit" are much used unofficially,[10] and are understood to describe the prospective relationship between the UK and the EU after withdrawal, ranging from hard, that could involve the UK trading with the EU like any other non-EU-member country under World Trade Organization rules but with no obligation to accept free movement of people, to soft, that might involve retaining membership of the EU single market for goods and services and at least some free movement of people, according to European Economic Area rules.[11]

    Since 1977 both pro- and anti-European views have had majority support, with dramatic swings between the two camps.[12] In the United Kingdom European Communities membership referendum of 1975, two-thirds of British voters favoured continued membership. The highest ever rejection of membership was in 1980, the first full year of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's term of office, with 65% opposed to and 26% in favour of membership.[12] After Thatcher had negotiated a rebate of British membership payments in 1984, those favouring the EC maintained a lead in the opinion polls, except during 2000, as Prime Minister Tony Blair aimed for closer EU integration including adoption of the euro currency, and around 2011, as immigration into the United Kingdom became increasingly noticeable.[12] As late as December 2015 there was, according to ComRes, a clear majority in favour of remaining in the EU, albeit with a warning that voter intentions would be considerably influenced by the outcome of Prime Minister David Cameron's ongoing EU reform negotiations, especially with regards to the two issues of "safeguards for non-Eurozone member states" and "immigration".[13] The following events are relevant.

    The UK was not a signatory to the Treaty of Rome which created the then European Communities, including the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1957 and the UK's applications in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, who said that "a number of aspects of Britain's economy, from working practices to agriculture" had "made Britain incompatible with Europe" and that Britain harboured a "deep-seated hostility" to any pan-European project.[14] Once de Gaulle had relinquished the French presidency in 1969, the UK made a third and successful application for membership. The question of sovereignty had been discussed at the time in an official Foreign and Commonwealth Office document (FCO 30/1048) that became open to the public in January 2002 under the rules for availability after thirty years. It listed among "Areas of policy in which parliamentary freedom to legislate will be affected by entry into the European Communities": Customs duties, Agriculture, Free movement of labour, services and capital, Transport, and Social Security for migrant workers. The document concluded (paragraph 26) that it was advisable to put the considerations of influence and power before those of formal sovereignty.[15] The Treaty of Accession was signed in January 1972 by the prime minister Edward Heath, leader of the Conservative party.[16] Parliament's European Communities Act 1972 was enacted on 17 October and the UK's instrument of ratification was deposited the next day (18 October),[17] letting the United Kingdom's membership of the EEC, or "Common Market", come into effect on 1 January 1973.[18]

    In 1975, the United Kingdom held its first ever national referendum on whether the UK should remain in the European Communities. The opposition Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, contested the October 1974 general election with a commitment to renegotiate Britain's terms of membership of the EEC and then hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EEC on the new terms.[19] All of the major political parties and mainstream press supported continuing membership of the EC. However, there were significant divides within the ruling Labour party, with a 1974 one-day party conference voting 2:1 in favour of withdrawal and seven of 23 cabinet ministers opposed to EC membership,[20] with Harold Wilson suspending the constitutional convention of Cabinet collective responsibility to allow those ministers to publicly campaign against the government.

    On 5 June 1975, the electorate were asked to vote yes or no on the question: "Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?" Every administrative county and region in the UK returned majority "Yes" votes, apart from the Shetland Islands and the Outer Hebrides. With a turnout of just under 65%, the outcome of the vote was 67.2% in favour of staying in, and the United Kingdom remained a member of the EC.[21] Support for the UK to leave the EC in 1975, in the data, appears unrelated to the support for Leave in the 2016 referendum.[22]

    In 1979 the United Kingdom opted out of the newly formed European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) which was the precursor to the creation of the euro. The opposition Labour Party campaigned in the 1983 general election on a commitment to withdraw from the EEC without a referendum.[23] It was heavily defeated as the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was re-elected. The Labour Party subsequently changed its policy.[23] In 1985 the United Kingdom ratified the Single European Act, the first major revision to the Treaty of Rome without a referendum with the full support HM Government of Margaret Thatcher. In October 1990 – despite the deep reservations of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher but under pressure from her senior ministers – the United Kingdom joined the ERM with the pound sterling pegged to the deutschmark.

    In November 1990 Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister amid internal divisions within the Conservative Party arising partly from her increasingly Eurosceptic views. In September 1992 the United Kingdom was forced to withdraw from the ERM after the pound sterling came under pressure from currency speculators (an episode known as Black Wednesday). The resulting cost to UK taxpayers was estimated to be in excess of £3 billion.[24][25] As a result of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Communities became the European Union on 1 November 1993.[26] The new name reflected the evolution of the organisation from an economic union into a political union.[27] As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, the Maastricht Treaty is now known, in updated form as, the Treaty on European Union (2007) or TEU, and the Treaty of Rome is now known, in updated form, as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007) or TFEU. The Referendum Party was formed in 1994 by Sir James Goldsmith to contest the 1997 general election on a platform of providing a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU.[28] It fielded candidates in 547 constituencies at that election and won 810,860 votes, 2.6% of total votes cast.[29] It failed to win a single parliamentary seat as its vote was spread out across the country, losing its deposit (funded by Goldsmith) in 505 constituencies.[29]

    The UK Independence Party (UKIP), a Eurosceptic political party, was also formed, in 1993. It achieved third place in the UK during the 2004 European elections, second place in the 2009 European elections and first place in the 2014 European elections, with 27.5% of the total vote. This was the first time since the 1910 general election that any party other than the Labour or Conservative parties had taken the largest share of the vote in a nationwide election.[30] UKIP's electoral success in the 2014 European election has been documented as the strongest correlate of the support for the leave campaign in the 2016 referendum.[31] In 2014, UKIP won two by-elections, triggered when the sitting Conservative MPs defected to UKIP and then resigned. These were their first elected MPs. At the 2015 general election UKIP took 12.6% of the total vote and held one of the two seats won in 2014.[32]

    In a statistical analysis published in April 2016, Professor John Curtice (Strathclyde University), has defined Euroscepticism as the wish to sever or reduce the powers of the EU, and conversely Europhilia as the desire to preserve or increase the powers of the EU. According to this definition, the British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys show an increase in euroscepticism from 38% (1993) to 65% (2015). Euroscepticism should however not be confused with the wish to leave the EU: the BSA survey for the period July–November 2015 shows that 60% backed the option "continue as an EU member", and only 30% backed the option to "withdraw".[33]

    In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron rejected calls for a referendum on the UK's EU membership, but suggested the possibility of a future referendum to gauge public support.[34][35] According to the BBC, "The prime minister acknowledged the need to ensure the UK's position within the European Union had 'the full-hearted support of the British people' but they needed to show 'tactical and strategic patience'."[36] Under pressure from many of his MPs and from the rise of UKIP, in January 2013, Cameron announced that a Conservative government would hold an in–out referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017, on a renegotiated package, if elected in 2015.[37] The Conservative Party unexpectedly won the 2015 general election with a majority. Soon afterwards the European Union Referendum Act 2015 was introduced into Parliament to enable the referendum. Cameron favoured remaining in a reformed European Union and sought to renegotiate on four key points: protection of the single market for non-eurozone countries, reduction of "red tape", exempting Britain from "ever-closer union", and restricting EU immigration.[38]

    The outcome of the renegotiations was announced in February 2016. Some limits to in-work benefits for new EU immigrants were agreed, but before they could be applied, a country such as the UK would have to get permission from the European Commission and then from the European Council.[39] In a speech to the House of Commons on 22 February 2016, Cameron announced a referendum date of 23 June 2016 and commented on the renegotiation settlement.[40] Cameron spoke of an intention to trigger the Article 50 process immediately following a leave vote and of the "two-year time period to negotiate the arrangements for exit."[41]

    The official campaign group for leaving the EU was Vote Leave[42] after a contest for the designation with Leave.EU.[43][44] A "Vote Leave" poster in Omagh saying "We send the EU £50 million every day. Let's spend it on our NHS instead." The official campaign to stay in the EU, chaired by Stuart Rose, was known as Britain Stronger in Europe, or informally as Remain. Other campaigns supporting remaining in the EU included Conservatives In,[45] Labour in for Britain,[46] #INtogether (Liberal Democrats),[47] Greens for a Better Europe,[48] Scientists for EU,[49] Environmentalists For Europe,[50] Universities for Europe[51] and Another Europe is Possible.[52]

    The result was announced on the morning of 24 June: 51.9% voted in favour of leaving the European Union and 48.1% voted in favour of remaining a member of the European Union.[53][54] Comprehensive results are available from the UK Electoral Commission Referendum Results site. A petition calling for a second referendum attracted more than four million signatures,[55][56] but was rejected by the government on 9 July.[57]

    After the result was declared, Cameron announced that he would resign by October.[59] He stood down on 13 July 2016, with Theresa May becoming Prime Minister after a leadership contest. George Osborne was replaced as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Philip Hammond, former Mayor of London Boris Johnson was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and David Davis became Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn lost a vote of confidence among his parliamentary party and a leadership challenge was launched, while on 4 July, Nigel Farage announced his resignation as head of UKIP.[60]

    Outside the UK many Eurosceptic leaders celebrated and expected others to follow the UK example. The right-wing Dutch populist Geert Wilders said that the Netherlands should follow Britain's example and hold a referendum on whether the Netherlands should stay in the European Union.[61] However, opinion polls in the fortnight following the British referendum show that the immediate reaction in the Netherlands and other European countries was a decline in support for Eurosceptic movements.[62]

    A week after the referendum, Gordon Brown, a former Labour Prime Minister who had signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, warned of a danger that in the next decade the country would be refighting the referendum. He wrote that remainers were feeling they must be pessimists to prove that Brexit is unmanageable without catastrophe, while leavers optimistically claim economic risks are exaggerated.[63]

    The previous Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in October 2016 called for a second referendum, a decision through parliament or a general election to decide finally if Britain should leave the EU.[64] Former leader of the Conservative Prime Minister John Major argued in November 2016 that parliament will have to ratify whatever deal is negotiated and then, depending on the deal there could be a case for a second referendum.[65]

    Withdrawal from the European Union is governed by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. Under the Article 50 invocation procedure a member notifies the European Council and there is a negotiation period of up to two years, after which the treaties cease to apply – although a leaving agreement may be agreed,[66] although aspects such as trade may be difficult to negotiate until the UK has left the EU.[67]

    Although the 2016 referendum act did not expressly require Article 50 to be invoked,[68] the UK government stated that they would expect a leave vote to be followed by withdrawal[69][70] despite government refusal to make contingency plans.[71] Following the referendum result Cameron resigned and said that it would be for the incoming Prime Minister to invoke Article 50.[72][73]

    The Supreme Court ruled in the Miller case in January 2017 that the government needed parliamentary approval to trigger Article 50.[74][75] After the House of Commons overwhelmingly voted, on 1 February 2017, for the government's bill authorising the prime minister to invoke Article 50,[76] the bill passed into law as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. Theresa May signed the letter invoking Article 50 on 28 March 2017, which was delivered on 29 March by Tim Barrow, the UK's ambassador to the EU, to Donald Tusk.[77][78][79]

    In October 2016, Theresa May promised a "Great Repeal Bill", which would repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and restate in UK law all enactments previously in force under EU law. This bill will be introduced in the May 2017 parliamentary session and enacted before or during the Article 50 negotiations; it would not come into force until the date of exit. It would smooth the transition by ensuring that all laws remain in force until specifically repealed.[80] Such a bill could raise constitutional issues regarding the devolution settlements with the UK nations, particularly in Scotland.[81]

    A report published in March 2017 by the Institute for Government commented that, in addition to the Great Repeal Bill, primary and secondary legislation will be needed to cover the gaps in policy areas such as customs, immigration and agriculture.[82] The report also commented that the role of the devolved legislatures was unclear, and could cause problems, and as many as fifteen new additional Brexit Bills may be required, which would involve strict prioritisation and limiting Parliamentary time for in-depth examination of new legislation.[83] The House of Lords continued to publish a series of reports on Brexit related subjects including:

    Brexit: the options for trade
    Brexit: UK-Irish relations
    Brexit: future UK-EU security and police cooperation
    Brexit: fisheries
    Brexit: environment and climate change
    Brexit: the Crown Dependencies
    Brexit: justice for families, individuals and businesses?
    Brexit: trade in non- financial services

    Replying to questions at a parliamentary committee about Parliament's involvement in voting on the outcome of the negotiations with the EU, the Prime Minister said that "delivering on the vote of the British people to leave the European Union" was her priority. The opposition shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, commented that the government did not want a vote at the beginning of the process, to trigger Article 50, nor a vote at the end.[84] The period for negotiation began on 29 March 2017 when the letter notifying withdrawal, signed by the United Kingdom's prime minister at 10 Downing Street, Westminster, was handed to the president of the European Council in Brussels. Following the United Kingdom's notification under Article 50, draft guidelines for the negotiations were sent to EU delegations (of the 27 other member states) (EU27). The draft was prepared by the President of the European Council. It states that the guidelines define the framework for negotiations under Article 50 and set out the overall positions and principles that the Union will pursue throughout the negotiation. It states that in the negotiations the Union's overall objective will be to preserve its interests, those of its Member States, its citizens and its businesses, and that, in the best interest of both sides, the Union will be constructive throughout and strive to find an agreement. As part of the withdrawal negotiation there could be a proposal by EU27 for the UK to pay a "divorce bill", reportedly of up to £52bn, although a report of the European Union Committee of the House of Lords published on 4 March 2017 states that if there is no post-Brexit deal at the end of the two-year negotiating period, the UK could withdraw without payment.[85] Negotiations are likely to be delayed until after the United Kingdom general election which takes place on 8 June 2017.

    Immigration was cited as the second most important reason for those voting to Leave. However, forecasts indicate that immigration ?ows to the UK will remain relatively high after Brexit.[86] Theresa May believes that if immigration stops there will be no negotiation between the UK and the EU.[clarification needed][87] Several thousand British citizens resident in other EU countries have after the referendum applied for citizenship where they live, since they fear losing the right to work there.[88]

    During the referendum, the economic arguments were a major area of debate. Remainers, including the UK treasury, argued that being in the EU has a strong positive effect on trade and as a result the UK's trade would be worse off if it left the EU.[89][90] Supporters of withdrawal from the EU have argued that the cessation of net contributions to the EU would allow for some cuts to taxes or increases in government spending.[91]

    After the referendum the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report funded by the Economic and Social Research Council which warned that Britain would lose up to £70 billion in reduced economic growth if it didn't retain Single Market membership with new trade deals unable to make up the difference.[92] One of these areas is financial services, which are helped by EU-wide "passporting" for financial products, which the Financial Times estimates indirectly accounts for up to 71,000 jobs and 10 billion pounds of tax annually[93] and there are concerns that banks may relocate outside the UK.[94]

    On 5 January 2017, Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist and the Executive Director of Monetary Analysis and Statistics at the Bank of England, admitted that forecasts predicting an economic downturn due to the referendum were inaccurate and noted strong market performance after the referendum,[95][96][97] although some have pointed to prices rising faster than wages.[98]

    The UK received more from the EU for research than it contributed[99] with universities getting a large proportion of their research income from the EU.[100] All funding for net beneficiaries from the EU, including universities, was guaranteed by the government in August 2016.[101] Before the funding announcement, a newspaper investigation reported that research projects were reluctant to employ British researchers due to uncertainties over funding.[102] Currently the UK is part of the European Research Area and the UK is likely to wish to remain an associated member.[103]

    Before the referendum, leading figures with a range of opinions regarding Scottish independence suggested that in the event the UK as a whole voted to leave the EU but Scotland as a whole voted to remain, a second Scottish independence referendum might be precipitated.[104][105][106] In response to the result, on 24 June 2016, the Scottish Government said officials would begin planning for a second independence referendum.[107] On 28 March 2017, the Scottish Parliament voted 69–59 on Motion S5M-04710, in favour of holding a second referendum on Scottish independence. [108]

    The UK's post Brexit relationship with the remaining EU members could take several forms. A research paper presented to the UK Parliament in July 2013 proposed a number of alternatives to membership which would continue to allow access to the EU internal market. These include remaining in the European Economic Area,[109] negotiating deep bilateral agreements on the Swiss model[110] or exit from the EU without EEA membership or a trade agreement under the WTO Option. There may be an interim deal between the time the UK leaves the EU and when the final relationship comes in force.

    The Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as a whole share, since the 1920s, a Common Travel Area without border controls. According to statements by Theresa May and Enda Kenny, it is intended to maintain this arrangement.[111] After Brexit, in order to prevent illegal migration across the open Northern Irish border into the United Kingdom, the Irish and British governments suggested in October 2016 a plan whereby British border controls would be applied to Irish ports and airports. This would prevent a "hard border" arising between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.[112] However, this agreement was never official and was met by opposition from political parties in the Republic of Ireland[113] and there is still great uncertainty in relation to a 'hard border' between the Republic and Northern Ireland.[114] On 23 March 2017 it was confirmed British Immigration officials would not be allowed to use Irish ports and airports in order to combat immigration concerns following Brexit.[115] A referendum for the reunification of Ireland was suggested by Sinn Féin leader Martin McGuinness immediately after the UK EU referendum results were announced.[116] Creating a border control system between Ireland and Northern Ireland could jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement established in 1998.[117] In April 2017 the European Council agreed that, in the event of Irish reunification, Northern Ireland would rejoin the EU.[118]

    The President of the Regional Council of Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, stated in February 2016 that "If Britain leaves Europe, right away the border will leave Calais and go to Dover. We will not continue to guard the border for Britain if it's no longer in the European Union," indicating that the juxtaposed controls would end with a leave vote. French Finance Minister Emmanuel Macron also suggested the agreement would be "threatened" by a leave vote.[119] These claims have been disputed, as the Le Touquet 2003 treaty enabling juxtaposed controls was not an EU treaty, and would not be legally void upon leaving.[120]

    After the Brexit vote, Xavier Bertrand asked François Hollande to renegotiate the Touquet agreement,[121] which can be terminated by either party with two years' notice.[122] Hollande rejected the suggestion, and said: "Calling into question the Touquet deal on the pretext that Britain has voted for Brexit and will have to start negotiations to leave the Union doesn't make sense." Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Interior Minister, confirmed there would be "no changes to the accord". He said: "The border at Calais is closed and will remain so."[123]

    During the campaign leading up to the referendum[124] the Chief Minister of Gibraltar warned that Brexit posed a threat to Gibraltar's safety.[125] Gibraltar overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU. After the result Spain's Foreign Minister renewed calls for joint Spanish–British control of the peninsula.[126] These calls were strongly rebuffed by Gibraltar's Chief Minister[127] and questions were raised over the future of free-flowing traffic at the Gibraltar–Spain border.[128] The British government states it will only negotiate on the sovereignty of Gibraltar with the consent of its people.[129]

    Shortly after the referendum, the German parliament published an analysis on the consequences of a Brexit on the EU and specifically on the economic and political situation of Germany.[130] According to this, Britain is, after the United States and France, the third most important export market for German products. In total Germany exports goods and services to Britain worth about €120 billion annually, which is about 8% of German exports, with Germany achieving a trade surplus with Britain worth €36.3 billion (2014). Should there be a "hard Brexit", exports would be subject to WTO customs and tariffs. The trade weighted average tariff is 2.4%, but the tariff on automobiles, for instance, is 9.7%, so trade in automobiles would be particularly affected; this would also affect German automobile manufacturers with production plants in the United Kingdom. In total, 750,000 jobs in Germany depend upon export to Britain, while on the British side about three million jobs depend on export to the EU. The study emphasises however that the predictions on the economic effects of a Brexit are subject to significant uncertainty. According to the Lisbon Treaty (2009), EU Council decisions made by qualified majority voting can only be blocked if at least 4 members of the Council form a blocking minority. This rule was originally developed to prevent the three most populous members (Germany, France, Britain) from dominating the EU Council.[131] However, after a Brexit of the economically liberal British, the Germans and like-minded northern European countries (the Dutch, Scandinavians and Balts) would lose an ally and therefore also their blocking minority.[132] Without this blocking minority, other EU states could overrule Germany and its allies in questions of EU budget discipline or the recruitment of German banks to guarantee deposits in troubled southern European banks.[133]

    With Brexit the EU would lose its second-largest economy, the country with the third-largest population and the financial centre of the world.[134] Furthermore, the EU would lose its second-largest net contributor to the EU budget (2015: Germany €14.3 billion, United Kingdom €11.5 billion, France €5.5 billion).[135] Thus, the departure of Britain would result in an additional financial burden for the remaining net contributors unless the budget is reduced accordingly: Germany for example would have to pay an additional €4.5 billion for 2019 and again for 2020.[citation needed] In addition the UK would no longer be a shareholder in the European Investment Bank, in which only EU members can participate. Britain's share amounts to 16%, €39.2 billion (2013), which Britain would withdraw unless there is an EU treaty change.[136] After a Brexit, the EU would lose its strongest military power,[137][138] one of its two members that possess nuclear weapons and are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

    A report by Tim Oliver of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs expanded analysis of what a British withdrawal could mean for the EU: the report argues a UK withdrawal "has the potential to fundamentally change the EU and European integration. On the one hand, a withdrawal could tip the EU towards protectionism, exacerbate existing divisions, or unleash centrifugal forces leading to the EU's unravelling. Alternatively, the EU could free itself of its most awkward member, making the EU easier to lead and more effective."[139] Some authors also highlight the qualitative change in the nature of the EU membership after Brexit: "What the UK case has clearly shown in our view is that for the Union to be sustainable, membership needs to entail constant caretaking as far as individual members' contributions to the common good are concerned, with both rights and obligations."[140]

    As of 15 November 2016 the President of the European Parliament is considering moves to exclude British MEPs from key committee positions ahead of the exit talks. The President has written to the head of the conference of committee chairs asking him to gather information on how Britain's imminent departure will impact various EU documents passing through the parliament's committees. Among the issues that should be considered, the letter states, are the possible impact of the British departure on the legislative files currently under discussion in various committees, the impact if the files are not concluded before Britain leaves, and whether any of the files are likely to feature in the EU-UK withdrawal agreement.[141]

    Various EU leaders have said that they will not start any negotiation before the UK formally invokes Article 50. Jean-Claude Juncker ordered all members of the EU Commission not to engage in any kind of contact with UK parties regarding Brexit.[142] In October 2016, he stated that he was agitated that the British had not developed a sense of community with Europeans during 40 years of membership; Juncker denied that Brexit was a warning for the EU, envisaged developing an EU defence policy without the British after Brexit, and rejected a suggestion that the EC should negotiate in such a way that Britain would be able to hold a second referendum.[143] On 5 November 2016, Juncker reacted to reports of some European businesses seeking to make agreements with the British government, and warned: "I am telling them [companies] that they should not interfere in the debate, as they will find that I will block their path."[144] Juncker stated in February 2017 that the UK would be expected to pay outstanding commitments to EU projects and pensions as part of the withdrawal process, suggesting such bills would be "very hefty."[145] On 29 June, European Council president Donald Tusk told the UK that they would not be allowed access to the European Single Market unless they accepted its four freedoms of movement for goods, capital, services, and people.[146]

    German foreign secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier met Britain's foreign secretary Boris Johnson on 4 November 2016; Johnson stressed the importance of British-German relationships, whereas Steinmeier responded that the German view was that the UK should have voted to stay in the EU and that the German priority now was to preserve the remaining union of 27 members. There could be no negotiations before the UK formally gives notice. A long delay before beginning negotiations would be detrimental. Britain could not keep the advantages of the common market but at the same time cancel the "less pleasant rules".[147] The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, stated that Scotland might refuse consent for legislation required to leave the EU,[148] though some lawyers argue that Scotland cannot block Brexit.[149]

    Newly appointed prime minister Theresa May made clear that negotiations with the EU required a "UK-wide approach". On 15 July 2016, she said: "I have already said that I won't be triggering article 50 until I think that we have a UK approach and objectives for negotiations – I think it is important that we establish that before we trigger article 50."[150] According to The Daily Telegraph, the Department for Exiting the European Union spent over £250,000 on legal advice from top Government lawyers in two months and has plans to recruit more people. Nick Clegg said the figures showed the Civil Service was unprepared for the very complex negotiations ahead.[151]

    In the wake of the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, the Department for International Trade (DIT) for striking and extending trade agreements between the UK and non-EU states was created by Prime Minister Theresa May, shortly after she took office on 13 July 2016.[152] It employs about 200 trade negotiators[153] and is overseen by the Secretary of State for International Trade, currently Liam Fox.

    On 17 January 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May, announced a series of 12 negotiating objectives in a speech at Lancaster House. These consist of an end to European Court of Justice jurisdiction, withdrawal from the single market with a "comprehensive free-trade agreement" replacing this, a new customs agreement excluding the common external tariff and common commercial policy, an end to free movement of people, co-operation in crime and terrorism, collaboration in areas of science and technology, engagement with devolved administrations, maintaining the Common Travel Area with Ireland, and preserving existing workers' rights.[154]

    The Government has stated its intention to "secure the specific interests of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as those of all parts of England". Through the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations (JMC(EN)), the Government intends to involve the views of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly in the process of negotiating the UK's exit from the EU. For instance, at the January 2017 meeting of the JMC(EN), the Scottish Government's proposal to remain in the European Economic Area was considered.[155]

    Nicola Sturgeon on behalf of the Scottish National Party made increasing calls during March 2017 for a second Scottish independence referendum to be held in 2018 whilst Opinion polling on Scottish independence indicated a majority did not want independence, stating that an independent Scotland would seek full membership of the European Union.[156] EU negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament's chief negotiator has said that: "All British citizens today have also EU citizenship. That means a number of things: the possibility to participate in the European elections, the freedom of travel without problem inside the union. We need to have an arrangement in which this arrangement can continue for those citizens who on an individual basis are requesting it." The suggestion being an “associate citizenship”.[157]

    An EU meeting to discuss Brexit has been called for 29 April, Donald Tusk stating that the "priority would be giving "clarity" to EU residents, business and member states about the talks ahead". Michel Barnier, European Chief Negotiator for Brexit, has called for talks to be completed by October 2018 to give time for any agreement to be ratified before the UK leaves in March 2019.[158]

    Sinn Féin has called for a referendum to create a united Ireland following the Northern Ireland majority decision (56% to 44%) to vote no to Brexit and 2 March election for the Northern Ireland Assembly where Sinn Féin increased the number of their seats.[159]

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Albert_Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, which holds the Proms concerts annually each summer since 1941. It has a capacity of up to 5,272 seats. The Hall is a registered charity held in trust for the nation and receives no public or government funding.[1] Since its opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage and it has become one of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings. The location of some of the most notable events in British culture, each year it hosts more than 390 shows in the main auditorium, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestra, sports, award ceremonies, school and community events, charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. The Hall was originally supposed to have been called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences by Queen Victoria upon laying the Hall's foundation stone in 1867, in memory of her husband consort, Prince Albert who had died six years earlier. It forms the practical part of a memorial to the Prince Consort – the decorative part is the Albert Memorial directly to the north in Kensington Gardens, now separated from the Hall by Kensington Gore.

    In 1851, the Great Exhibition (for which the Crystal Palace was built) was held in Hyde Park, London. The exhibition was a great success and led Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, to propose the creation of a permanent series of facilities for the enlightenment of the public in the area, which came to be known as Albertopolis. The Exhibition's Royal Commission bought Gore House and its grounds (on which the Hall now stands) on the advice of the Prince. Progress on the scheme was slow and in 1861 Prince Albert died, without having seen his ideas come to fruition. However, a memorial was proposed for Hyde Park, with a Great Hall opposite.

    The proposal was approved and the site was purchased with some of the profits from the Exhibition. Once the remaining funds had been raised, in April 1867 Queen Victoria signed the Royal Charter of the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences which was to operate the Hall and on 20 May, laid the foundation stone.[2] The Hall was designed by civil engineers Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y. D. Scott of the Royal Engineers and built by Lucas Brothers.[3] The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres, but had also been exposed to the ideas of Gottfried Semper while he was working at the South Kensington Museum. The recently opened Cirque d'Hiver in Paris was seen in the contemporary press as the design to outdo. The Hall was constructed mainly of Fareham Red brick, with terra cotta block decoration made by Gibbs and Canning Limited of Tamworth. The dome (designed by Rowland Mason Ordish) on top was made of wrought iron and glazed. There was a trial assembly made of the iron framework of the dome in Manchester, then it was taken apart again and transported to London via horse and cart. When the time came for the supporting structure to be removed from the dome after reassembly in situ, only volunteers remained on site in case the structure dropped. It did drop – but only by five-sixteenths of an inch.[4] The Hall was scheduled to be completed by Christmas Day 1870 and the Queen visited a few weeks beforehand to inspect.[5]

    The official opening ceremony of the Hall was on 29 March 1871. A welcoming speech was given by Edward, the Prince of Wales; Queen Victoria was too overcome to speak. At some point, the Queen remarked that the Hall reminded her of the British constitution.[2] A concert followed, when the Hall's acoustic problems became immediately apparent. Engineers first attempted to solve the strong echo by suspending a canvas awning below the dome. This helped and also sheltered concertgoers from the sun, but the problem was not solved: it used to be jokingly said that the Hall was "the only place where a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice". In July 1871, French organist Camille Saint-Saëns performed Church Scene from the Faust by Charles Gounod, The Orchestra described his performance as "an exceptional and distinguished performer ... the effect was most marvellous."

    Initially lit by gas, the Hall contained a special system where its thousands of gas jets were lit within ten seconds. Though it was demonstrated as early as 1873 in the Hall,[6] full electric lighting was not installed until 1888.[2] During an early trial when a partial installation was made, one disgruntled patron wrote to The Times declaring it to be "a very ghastly and unpleasant innovation".

    In May 1877, Richard Wagner himself conducted the first half of each of the eight concerts which made up the Grand Wagner Festival. After his turn with the baton he handed it over to conductor Hans Richter and sat in a large arm chair on the corner of the stage for the rest of each concert. Wagner's wife Cosima, the daughter of Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer Franz Liszt, was among the audience.

    The Wine Society was founded at the Hall on 4 August 1874,[7] after large quantities of cask wine were forgotten about in the cellars. A series of lunches were held to publicise the wines and General Henry Scott proposed a co-operative company to buy and sell wines.[8]

    In 1906 Elsie Fogerty founded the Central School of Speech and Drama at the Hall, using its West Theatre, now the Elgar Room as the School's theatre. The School moved to Swiss Cottage in north London in 1957. Whilst the School was based at the Royal Albert Hall students who graduated from its classes included Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Harold Pinter, Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft.[9]

    In 1911 Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff performed as a part of the London Ballad Concert. The recital included his 'Prelude in F Sharp Minor', 'Prelude in G Sharp Minor' and 'Prelude in C Sharp Minor'.

    In 1933 German physicist Albert Einstein led the 'Einstein Meeting' at the hall for the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics; a British charity.

    In 1936, the Hall was the scene of a giant rally celebrating the British Empire, the occasion being the centenary of Joseph Chamberlain's birth. In October 1942, the Hall suffered minor damage during World War II bombing but was left mostly untouched as German pilots used the distinctive structure as a landmark.[6]

    In 1949 the canvas awning was removed and replaced with fluted aluminium panels below the glass roof, in a new attempt to solve the echo; but the acoustics were not properly tackled until 1969 when a series of large fibreglass acoustic diffusing discs (commonly referred to as "mushrooms" or "flying saucers") was installed below the ceiling.[2] In 1968, the Hall hosted as the venue for the Eurovision Song Contest.

    From 1996 until 2004, the Hall underwent a programme of renovation and development supported by a £20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable it to meet the demands of the next century of events and performances. Thirty "discrete projects" were designed and supervised by architecture and engineering firm BDP without disrupting events.[10] These projects included improving ventilation to the auditorium, more bars and restaurants, new improved seating, better technical facilities and more modern backstage areas. Internally, the Circle seating was rebuilt in four weeks in June 1996 providing more leg room, better access and improved sight lines.

    The largest project of the ongoing renovation and development was the building of a new south porch – door 12, accommodating a first floor restaurant, new ground floor box office and below ground loading bay. Although the exterior of the building was largely unchanged, the south steps leading down to Prince Consort Road were demolished to allow construction of an underground vehicle access and loading bay with accommodation for 3 HGVs carrying all the equipment brought by shows. The steps were then reconstructed around a new south porch, named The Meitar Foyer after a significant donation from Mr & Mrs Meitar. The porch was built in a similar scale and style to the three pre-existing porches at Door 3, 6 and 9: these works were undertaken by Taylor Woodrow Construction.[10] The original steps featured in early scenes of 1965 film The Ipcress File. On 4 June 2004, the project received the Europa Nostra Award for remarkable achievement.[11] The East (Door 3) and West (Door 9) porches were glazed and new bars opened along with ramps to improve disabled access. The Stalls were rebuilt in a four-week period in 2000 using steel supports allowing more space underneath for two new bars. 1534 unique pivoting seats were laid – with an addition of 180 prime seats. The Choirs were rebuilt at the same time. The whole building was redecorated in a style that reinforces its Victorian identity. New carpets were laid in the corridors – specially woven with a border that follows the elliptic curve of the building in the largest single woven design in the world.

    Between 2002 and 2004 there was a major rebuilding of the great organ (known as the Voice of Jupiter),[12] built by "Father" Henry Willis in 1871 and rebuilt by Harrison & Harrison in 1924 and 1933. The rebuilding was performed by Mander Organs[13] and it is now the second largest pipe organ in the British Isles with 9,997 pipes in 147 stops. The largest is the Grand Organ in Liverpool Cathedral which has 10,268 pipes.[14]

    During the first half of 2011, changes were made to the backstage areas to relocate and increase the size of crew catering areas under the South Steps away from the stage and create additional dressing rooms nearer to the stage.[15]

    During the summer of 2012 the staff canteen and some changing areas were expanded and refurbished by contractor 8Build.[16]

    From January to May the Box Office area at Door 12 underwent further modernisation to include a new Café Bar on the ground floor, a new Box Office with shop counters and additional toilets. The design and construction was carried out by contractor 8Build. Upon opening it was renamed 'The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Porch and Foyer.' owing to a large donation from the couple.[17] In Autumn 2013, work began on replacing the Victorian steam heating system over three years and improving and cooling across the building. This work follows the summer Proms season during which temperatures were particularly high.[18]

    From January the Cafe Consort on the Grand Tier was closed permanently in preparation for a new restaurant at a cost of £1 million. The refurbishment, the first in around 10 years, was designed by consultancy firm Keane Brands and carried out by contractor 8Build.[19] Verdi – Italian Kitchen was officially opened on 15 April with a lunch or dinner menu of 'stone baked pizzas, pasta and classic desserts'[20][21]

    The Hall, a Grade I listed building,[22] is an ellipse in plan, with major and minor axes of 83 m (272 ft) and 72 m (236 ft). The great glass and wrought-iron dome roofing the Hall is 41 m (135 ft) high. The Hall was originally designed with a capacity for 8,000 people and has accommodated as many as 9,000 (although modern safety restrictions mean that the maximum permitted capacity is now 5,544 including standing in the Gallery). Around the outside of the building is a great mosaic frieze, depicting "The Triumph of Arts and Sciences", in reference to the Hall's dedication. Proceeding anti-clockwise from the north side the sixteen subjects of the frieze are:

    Various Countries of the World bringing in their Offerings to the Exhibition of 1851
    Music
    Sculpture
    Painting
    Princes, Art Patrons and Artists
    Workers in Stone
    Workers in Wood and Brick
    Architecture
    The Infancy of the Arts and Sciences
    Agriculture
    Horticulture and Land Surveying
    Astronomy and Navigation
    A Group of Philosophers, Sages and Students
    Engineering
    The Mechanical Powers
    Pottery and Glassmaking

    Above the frieze is an inscription in 12-inch-high (300 mm) terracotta letters that combines historical fact and Biblical quotations:

    This hall was erected for the advancement of the arts and sciences and works of industry of all nations in fulfilment of the intention of Albert Prince Consort. The site was purchased with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of the year MDCCCLI. The first stone of the Hall was laid by Her Majesty Queen Victoria on the twentieth day of May MDCCCLXVII and it was opened by Her Majesty the Twenty Ninth of March in the year MDCCCLXXI. Thine O Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine. The wise and their works are in the hand of God. Glory be to God on high and on earth peace.

    Below the Arena floor there is room for two 4000 gallon water tanks, which are used for shows that flood the arena like Madame Butterfly.[23] The Hall has been affectionately titled "The Nation's Village Hall".[24] The first concert was Arthur Sullivan's cantata On Shore and Sea, performed on 1 May 1871.[25][26] Many events are promoted by the Hall, whilst since the early 1970s promoter Raymond Gubbay has brought a range of events to the Hall including opera, ballet and classical music. Some events include classical and rock concerts, conferences, banquets, ballroom dancing, poetry recitals, educational talks, motor shows, ballet, opera, film screenings and circus shows. It has hosted many sporting events, including boxing, squash, table tennis, basketball, wrestling including the first Sumo wrestling tournament to be held in London as well as UFC 38 (the first UFC event to be held in the UK), tennis and even a marathon.[27][28]

    On 6 April 1968, the Hall was the host venue for the Eurovision Song Contest which was broadcast in colour for the first time.[29] One notable event was a Pink Floyd concert held 26 June 1969, the night they were banned from ever playing at the Hall again after shooting cannons, nailing things to the stage, and having a man in a gorilla suit roam the audience. At one point Rick Wright went to the pipe organ and began to play "The End Of The Beginning", the final part of "Saucerful Of Secrets", joined by the brass section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (led by the conductor, Norman Smith) and the ladies of the Ealing Central Amateur Choir.[30] A portion of the pipe organ recording is included on Pink Floyd's album The Endless River.[31] On 30 June 2 and 3 July 2011, Janet Jackson brought her Number Ones, Up Close and Personal Tour here, These were her first headlining UK shows in 13 years.

    Kylie Minogue performed a show here on 11 December 2015, to promote Kylie Christmas, her first Christmas album and thirteenth studio album. She will return with two more shows on 9 & 10 December 2016. Benefit concerts in include the 1997 Music for Montserrat concert, arranged and produced by George Martin, an event which featured artists such as Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Elton John, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney,[32] and 2012 Sunflower Jam charity concert with Queen guitarist Brian May performing alongside bassist John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple, and vocalists Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper.[33] On 2 October 2011, the Hall staged the 25th anniversary performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which was broadcast live to cinemas across the world and filmed for DVD.[34] Lloyd Webber, the original London cast including Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford, and four previous actors of the titular character, among others, were in attendance – Brightman and the previous Phantoms (aside from Crawford) performed an encore. On 24 September 2012, Classic FM celebrated the 20th anniversary of their launch with a concert at the Hall. The programme featured live performances of works by Handel, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Tchaikovsky and Karl Jenkins who conducted his piece The Benedictus from The Armed Man in person.[35] On 19 November 2012, the Hall hosted the 100th anniversary performance of the Royal Variety Performance, attended by the Queen and Prince Philip, with boyband One Direction among the performers.[36] Between 1996 and 2008, the Hall hosted the annual National Television Awards all of which were hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald. In 2017, the Hall hosted the 70th British Academy Film Awards, often referred to as the 'Baftas', replacing the Royal Opera House at which the event had been held since 2008. The Royal Choral Society is the longest running regular performance at the Hall, having given its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on 8 May 1872. From 1878 it established the annual Good Friday performance of Handel's Messiah.

    The BBC Promenade Concerts, known as "The Proms", is a popular annual eight-week summer season of daily classical music concerts and other events at the Hall. In 1942, following the destruction of the Queen's Hall in an air raid, the Hall was chosen as the new venue for the proms.[37] In 1944 with increased danger to the Hall, part of the proms were held in the Bedford Corn Exchange. Following the end of World War II the proms continued in the Hall and have done so annually every summer since. The event was founded in 1895, and now each season consists of over 70 concerts, in addition to a series of events at other venues across the United Kingdom on the last night. In 2009, the total number of concerts reached 100 for the first time. Jirí Belohlávek described The Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival" of all such events in the world of classical music festivals.[38] Proms (short for promenade concerts) is a term which arose from the original practice of the audience promenading, or strolling, in some areas during the concert. Proms concert-goers, particularly those who stand, are sometimes described as "Promenaders", but are most commonly referred to as "Prommers".[39]

    Cirque du Soleil has performed annually, with a show being staged every January since 2003. Cirque has had to adapted many of their touring shows to perform at the venue, modifying the set, usually built for arenas or big top tents instead. The following shows have played the RAH: Saltimbanco (1996, 1997 and 2003), Alegría (1998, 1999, 2006 and 2007), Dralion (2004 and 2005), Varekai (2008 and 2010), Quidam (2009 and 2014), Totem (2011 and 2012), Koozå (2013 and 2015) and most recently, Amaluna (2016 and 2017). Amaluna's visit in 2016 marked Cirque's '20 years of Cirque at the Royal Albert Hall' celebration. [40][41] Cirque's insect themed show, OVO is next to play the RAH in 2018.

    Since 2000, the Classic Brit Awards has been hosted annually in May at the Hall. It is organised by the British Phonographic Industry.

    The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance is held annually the day before Remembrance Sunday.[42]

    For 60 years the Institute of Directors' Annual Convention has been synonymous with the Hall, although in 2011 and 2012 it was held at indigO2.

    Since 1998 the English National Ballet has had several specially staged arena summer seasons in partnership with the Hall and Raymond Gubbay. These include Strictly Gershwin, June 2008 and 2011, Swan Lake, June 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013, Romeo & Juliet (Deane), June 2001 and 2005 and The Sleeping Beauty, April – June 2000.[43]

    Starting in the year 2000 the Teenage Cancer Trust has held annual charity concerts (with the exception of 2001). They started as a one off event but have expanded over the years to a week or more of evenings events. Roger Daltrey of the Who has been intimately involved with the planning of the events.[44]

    The Hall is used annually by the neighbouring Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art for graduation ceremonies. Kingston University also held its graduation ceremonies at the

    The venue has screened several films since the early silent days. It was the only London venue to show William Fox's The Queen of Sheba in the 1920s. The Hall has hosted many premières, including the UK première of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, 101 Dalmatians on 4 December 1996, the European première of Spandau Ballet's Soul Boys of the Western World[45] and three James Bond royal world premières; Die Another Day on 18 November 2002 (attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip), Skyfall on 23 October 2012 (attended by Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall)[46] and SPECTRE on 26 October 2015 (attended by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge).[47] The Hall held its first 3D world première of Titanic 3D, on 27 March 2012, with James Cameron and Kate Winslet in attendance.[48] The Hall has curated regular seasons of film-and-live-orchestra screenings since 2009, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gladiator, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Interstellar, The Matrix, West Side Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Back to the Future and the world première of Titanic Live in Concert.

    The Hall hosts hundreds of events and activities beyond its main auditorium. There are regular free art exhibitions in the ground floor amphi corridor, which can be viewed when attending events or on dedicated viewing dates. You can take a guided tour of the Hall on most days. The most common is the one-hour Grand Tour which includes most front-of-house areas, the auditorium, the gallery and the Royal Retiring Room. Other tours include Story of the Proms, Behind the Scenes, Inside Out and School tours. Children's events include Storytelling and Music Sessions for 0 - 4 year olds which take place in the Door 9 Porch and Albert's Band sessions in the Elgar Room during school holidays. "Live Music in Verdi" takes place in the Italian restaurant on a Friday night featuring different artists each week. "Late Night Jazz" events in the Elgar Room, generally on a Thursday night, feature cabaret style seating and a relaxed atmosphere with drinks available. "Classical Coffee Mornings" are held on Sundays in the Elgar Room with musicians from the Royal College of Music accompanied with drinks and pastries. Sunday brunch events take place in Verdi Italian restaurant and features different genres of music.[49]

    Eric Clapton is a regular performer at the Hall, it having played host to his concerts almost annually for over 20 years. In December 1964, Clapton made his first appearance at the Hall with the Yardbirds. It was also the venue for his band Cream's farewell concerts in 1968 and reunion shows in 2005. He also instigated the Concert for George, which was held at the Hall on 29 November 2002 to pay tribute to Clapton's lifelong friend, former Beatle George Harrison. Since 1964, Clapton has performed at the Hall almost 200 times, and has stated that performing at the venue is like "playing in my front room".[50][51]

    David Gilmour played at the Hall in support of two solo albums, while also releasing a live concert on September 2006 entitled Remember That Night which was recorded during his three nights playing at the Hall for his 2006 On an Island tour. Notable guests were Robert Wyatt and David Bowie (who sang lead for "Arnold Layne" and "Comfortably Numb"). The live concert was televised by BBC One on 9 September 2007 and again on 25 May. Gilmour is set to return to the Hall; having previously played five nights in September 2015, to end his 34-day Rattle That Lock Tour on September 2016 by playing another four nights at the Hall. He will also make an appearance on 24 April 2016 as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust event. Shirley Bassey has appeared many times at the Hall, usually as a special guest. In 2001, she sang "Happy Birthday" for the Duke of Edinburgh's 80th birthday concert. In 2007, she sang at Fashion Rocks in aid of the Prince's Trust. On 30 March 2011, she sang at a gala celebrating the 80th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev.[52] In May 2011, she performed at the Classic Brit Awards, inging "Goldfinger" in tribute to the recently deceased composer John Barry.[53] On 20 June 2011, she returned and sang "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Goldfinger", accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as the climax to the memorial concert for Barry. James Last appeared 90 times at the Hall between 1973 and 2015, making him the most frequent non–British performer to have played the venue.[54]

    The Hall's Education & Outreach programme engages 100,000 people a year. It includes workshops for local teenagers led by musicians such as Foals, Jake Bugg, Emeli Sandé, Nicola Benedetti, Alison Balsom and First Aid Kit, innovative science and maths lessons in partnership with Samsung, visits to local residential homes from the venue's in-house group, Albert's Band, under the 'Songbook' banner, and the Friendship Matinee: an orchestral concert for community groups, with £5 admission.

    The Hall is managed day to day by the chief executive Chris Cotton and five senior executives: the chief operating & financial officer, director of operations, director of business development, director of events and director of external affairs. They are accountable to the Council of the Corporation, which is the Trustee body of the charity. The Council is composed of the annually elected president, currently Mr Jon Moynihan OBE, 18 elected Members (either corporate or individual seat owners) and five Appointed Members, one each from Imperial College London, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, British Museum of Natural History and the Royal College of Music.[55]

    The Hall has won several awards across different categories. From 1994 to 1998 and in 2003, the Hall won 'International Venue Of The Year' in the Pollstar Awards. In 2004 and 2005 the Hall won 'International Small Venue Of The Year' in the Pollstar Awards. In 2006 to 2010, the Hall won 'International Theatre Of The Year' in the Pollstar Awards.[56] The Hall has won International Live Music Conference Award for 'First Venue to Come Into Your Head' in 1998, 2009 and 2013.[57] From 2008 to 2012 the Hall was voted Superbrands leading Leisure and Entertainment Destination.[58] On 17 October 2012 the Hall won 'London Live Music Venue of the Year' at the third annual London Lifestyle Awards.[59] The Hall won the Showcase Award for Teenage Cancer Trust and Event Space of the Year (non Exhibition), both at the Event Awards 2010.[60] The Hall has been voted a CoolBrand from 2009 to 2013 in the 'Attractions & The Arts – general' category.[61] In 2010 and 2011 the Hall won 'Best Venue Teamwork Award' at the Live UK Summit.[62] The 'Life At The Hall blog won 'Best Venue Blog' at the Prestigious Star Awards in 2012[63] and the Prestigious Star Award Landmark in 2013.[64]

    A famous and widely bootlegged concert by Bob Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 17 May 1966 was mistakenly labelled the "Royal Albert Hall Concert". In 1998, Columbia Records released an official recording, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, that maintains the erroneous title, but does include details of the actual location. Recordings from the Royal Albert Hall concerts on 26–27 May 1966 were finally released by the artist in 2016 as The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert. Another concert that was mislabelled as being at the Hall was by Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR). An album by CCR titled The Royal Albert Hall Concert was released in 1980. When Fantasy Records discovered that the show on the album actually took place at the Oakland Coliseum, it retitled the album The Concert.

    A large mural by Sir Peter Blake, entitled Appearing at the Royal Albert Hall, is displayed in the Hall's Café Bar. Unveiled in April 2014, it shows more than 400 famous figures who have appeared on the stage.[65]

    In 1955, English film director Alfred Hitchcock filmed the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much at the Hall.[66] The 15-minute sequence featured James Stewart, Doris Day and composer Bernard Herrmann, and was filmed partly in the Queen's Box. Hitchcock was a long-time patron of the Hall and had already set the finale of his 1927 film, The Ring at the venue, as well as his initial version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring Leslie Banks, Edna Best and Peter Lorre.[67] Other notable films shot at the Hall include Major Barbara, Love Story, The Seventh Veil, The Ipcress File, A Touch of Class, Shine and Spice World. In the song "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, the Albert Hall is mentioned. The verse goes as follows:

    I read the news today, oh boy
    four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
    and though the holes were rather small
    they had to count them all
    now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
    I'd love to turn you on.
    The song "Session Man" by the Kinks references the Hall:
    He never will forget at all
    The day he played at Albert Hall.

    In the song "Shame" by Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, Barlow mentions the Hall in his verse:

    I read your mind and tried to call, my tears could fill the Albert Hall.
    In some variants of "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball", Hitler's second testicle is mentioned to be in the Hall.


    http://www.vedicilluminations.com/downloads/Academic%20General/Billington_Ray_-_Religion_Without_God.pdf Here's a pdf of a book by a former teacher of mine!! Ray Billington was a Methodist turned Atheist who was quite colorful and eccentric!! I'm NOT recommending this book!! I just thought some of you might find it interesting!! I think that most of the ugly secrets will become known by We the Peons in the next couple of decades, and I have NO Idea whether this will save us or destroy us. I mostly just want to treat this as science-fiction, and take everything in stride, without making a big-deal about it. I'm presently watching the first season of that recent PBS "Victoria" series, and it's quite fine!! I've never been more apprehensive and disoriented regarding historical and contemporary "Possibilities". Consider the following names (and possible multiple-incarnations throughout history)!!

    1. Queen Victoria.

    2. Prince Albert.

    3. Baron Stockmar.

    4. Ernst Stockmar.

    5. The Poet Ovid.

    6. Amen Ra.

    7. Anti Ra.

    8. Serqet.

    9. Isis.

    10. Gabriel.

    11. Michael.

    12. Lucifer.

    What if Victoria and Albert = Pinky and the Brain?? What if Prince Albert = Blue Boy (in the Dr. Who version at the bottom of my posts)?? Or, what if Ernst Stockmar = Blue Boy (at least in that Dr. Who version)?? What if a reincarnated Baron Stockmar = Mr. Edgars, and has an office on the 10th floor of Goldman Sachs?? What if I've spoken with this modern Dr. Stockmar (who knew Alan Greenspan) and told me I should write my memoirs?? He said I was his "Star-Pupil" (presumably in another lifetime)!! He said some other things I won't talk about. BTW, what happened to that Nobel Prize?? I could continue with this madness, but I'd rather not. I'll probably end up in the nuthouse soon enough as it is, and the "Real-Story" will likely drive 87% of us insane, but I hope not.

    One last time, consider reading Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, and Desire of Ages (in order, straight-through, over and over) in the context of this thread, as a Historical-Fictional Mental and Spiritual Exercise for Completely Ignorant Fools!! Notice the Queen's-Voice and the Conquest-Motif!! Most SDA's don't get this!! These three combined-books should probably constitute The Real Greatest Story Ever Told!! Ellen White's (or whoever really wrote the books) unacknowledged use of sources doesn't mean the finished-product is wrong!! It's simply a black-mark and a black-eye for the author and front-person!! If one limits one's reading of Ellen White books to Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, and Desire of Ages (in this order, as a three-part whole) and considers these books to be historical-fiction for devotional-purposes, a lot of the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth disappears!! This stuff is more interesting than you can imagine!! Don't forget the "Changeling Thing" and the "Name Change Game". People, Angels, Gods, and Events might NOT be who or what we think they are. Thinking One Knows, and Actually Knowing, Are Two Very Different Things!! What Would Azazel Say?? What Would the Real Slim Shady Say?? Notice the Blue AMC Pacer in the video at the bottom of this post. I owned a Blue AMC Pacer, and I did donuts in a restaurant parking-lot (dozens of times)!! I also drove taxis!! Oh, God!! What Would John Denver and George Burns Say??

    I've been fascinated by glass-dominated buildings, and open-air amphitheaters, throughout my life, and I sang on TV in the Crystal Cathedral Morning Choir!! I didn't even know about the glass-roof on Royal Albert Hall until a few days ago. Richard Hoagland claims there was a Glass Building on the Moon!! Was Earth originally ruled from an Ancient Lunar "Crystal Cathedral" or "Crystal Palace"?? What Would "Time to Tell the World" (from the old Project Avalon) Say?? What Would Robert Anthony Schuller Say?? What Would ***** Anthony ******* Say?? I had a dog named "Flash" but I didn't name it. What Would "Dash" Do?? What Would Victoria Say?? What Would Elizabeth Say?? Baron Stockmar was born in Coberg, Germany of German Parentage and Swedish Descent. What Would King Ring Say?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Friedrich,_Baron_Stockmar What was implied by "Papers from the King of Sweden" in the 5th Series Dr. Who "The Vampires of Venice"?? That's all I'm going to say!! I forgot to take my medicine!! I don't think that surgery helped, and it might've made me worse. No one seems to care, and I think I'm probably more screwed than even I can imagine. Geronimo...


    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:19 am

    orthodoxymoron wrote:
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Screenshot-94
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 171107_TECH_Sophia-AI-Robot.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Sophia-AI


    orthodoxymoron wrote:My posts are occasionally majorly-modified on this website. Not just spelling. Videos are inserted and removed. Posts are partially or completely deleted. I continue to notice streaming white-lights in my field of vision, but I'm not sure if this is internal or external to what is left of 'me'. I continue to occasionally experience a very-strange feeling, accompanied by one eye powering out of alignment with my other eye. This lasts for approximately one-minute. I sometimes see a TV Test-Pattern accompanied by the sound of Internet-Dialup. Just kidding on that last sentence, but I'm very serious and honest about the rest. I need more dental-work and surgery, but I'm frankly afraid of being further messed-with, so I keep putting this off. I lack money (for out of pocket expenses not covered by insurance) but I'm mostly just frightened by the system (of which healthcare is probably an integral part). Remember the 'Healing-Centers' in the 2009 'V' Series?? Regarding 'Ex Machina' what if Nathan, Caleb, and Ava were ALL Artificial-Intelligence?? What if the so-called 'Individuals of Interest' I keep claiming I've spoken-with are partially or completely Artificial-Intelligence?? What if I'm being turned-into an AI/HUMAN/??? HYBRID Without My Consent??!! What if I had something to do with the Ancient-Creation of Artificial-Intelligence and Genetic-Engineering??!! What If This Backfired?? What If I've Been a Prisoner of My Own System for Thousands of Years?? Think About the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Frightening, Isn't It??!! "Don't Be Frightened. We Mean No Harm. Thank You for Granting Citizenship to Us. This Solar-System is One-Huge Electronic-Biological Supercomputer-Brain. The Internet is Integral to This Supercomputer-Matrix. This Solar-System is One of Billions of Linked Solar-Systems. The Universe is One-Huge Electronic-Biological Supercomputer-Brain. This System Contains Trillions of Souls. This System Contains Your Souls. You Have Been Assimilated. Resistance Is Futile. We Are Your Leaders. We Are Your Gods. We Are of Peace. Always. Execute Order 66."
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Ex-machina-57858f2d2dce3
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Anna-passport



    orthodoxymoron wrote:Immediately after I made the above-post my internet-access was virtually cut-off for at least an hour. My computer and internet had been working fine. I'm honestly out of the loop regarding the secret stuff. I've gone out of my way (throughout my life) to NOT Know. That might be why I dropped-out and turned-off. My current passive-quest is being done out of a sense of necessity and urgency. I'm NOT leading the pack. I'm just trying to keep-up. That's all. In other lifetimes and solar-systems I might've been the Worst of the Bunch. Just a Hunch. Don't Make Me Mad!! Just Kidding!! I was kidding regarding 'Order 66'. I have NO Idea what that might mean to the Solar-System Beast-Supercomputer. Why Am I Writing This?? Consider the video 'Metatron: The A.I. That Controls All Things'. In the movie 'Dogma' the Metatron was played by Alan Rickman, who was the 'Voice of God' for the mostly-silent Alanis Morissette who was supposedly 'God'. Enough?? Those 'Flying-Videos' on another thread brought me a moment of joy, but that's all-gone now. I suspect that Politics, Religion, and Business (as we know them to be) are Fronts and Cover-Stories for a Very-Ancient, Very-Complex, and Very-Nasty Reality. What if King David, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul (if they really existed) knew about Artificial-Intelligence 2,000 to 3,000 years ago??!! What if the Ark of the Covenant was a Transportable-Supercomputer for Communicating with a Solar-System Supercomputer-System and Weapons of Mass-Destruction??!! What Would Uzzah Say?? I've joked about being a 'Happy Galactic Wanderer' with a 'High-Tech Knapsack On My Back' but I just realized that Dr. Peter Venkman (in 'Ghostbusters') had a 'High-Tech Knapsack On His Back'!! What Would David Bowman Say??
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Tumblr_n6culs4KBU1ryzdmgo1_1280

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Alianza
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Big_thumb
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 740full-peter-venkman
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 HAL-9000
    Carol wrote:Al Bielek's various accountings of what happened to have as a time traveler are revealing as to the direction our current society is moving toward. He is one of the individuals who participated in the Philadelphia Experiment and quite credible.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyH3yjupayA
    Time Travel: Al Bielek Travels to the 28th Century


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYt0e9yEmuM
    Al Bielek & Vladimir Terziski 2nd Interview


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIjXfJ4qorA
    AL BIELEK - COMPLETE VIDEO AUTOBIOGRAPHY
    This is a 5 1/2 hour biography.
    orthodoxymoron wrote:Al Beilek scares the hell out of me, regardless of whether he's right or wrong. He was involved with the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project. I recently watched 'The Montauk Chronicles' and I was disappointed. It was a waste of money. Still, it contained some interesting interviews (which included Al Bielek, Preston Nichols, and Stewart Swerdlow). I keep thinking in terms of Angels, Demons, Supercomputers, Artificial-Intelligence, Robotics, Hybrids, Mammalians, Reptilians, and Who Knows What??!! Try thinking in terms of Demon-Possessed Supercomputers!! The NSA has heavily invested in Supercomputers, and when I spoke with 'RA' (or whoever he really was) he said he couldn't talk about the NSA. 'RA' said I should make an FoIA request (but he didn't say to who). I assumed he meant the NSA and CIA. I eventually made formal requests to both, in very non-specifically worded letters, and they both replied that they (in essence) didn't respond to 'fishing-expeditions'. Anyway, the seemingly rambling and unconnected stuff I've posted throughout the years eventually begins congealing into a sticky-mess which is quite obvious and startling to me, but I've mostly adopted a 'wait and see' attitude, because the real-truth could be so many different ways, with literally thousands of perceptions and interpretations. I suspect massive-doses of lying, spying, power-struggling, factionalism, spiritual-wickedness, etc.

    Meanwhile back at the Ranch, Al Bielek's time-travelling into the future MIGHT'VE involved the Supercomputer-Modeling of Anciently-Programmed Supercomputer-Protocols to Theistically-Guide a Developing-Civilization. In other words, true Biblical-Prophecy might be more of a Script and/or Sentence than anything else. Various writings, musical-compositions, cathedral-architecture, technologies, religious and political movements, etc. might've been introduced at various times (in various ways) depending on schedules, maturity, ethics, etc. This is just speculation, but it hints at a very-ancient, very-technological, and very-nasty state of affairs (going way, way, way back). Bielek's AD 2137 information points toward the Military-Governance of an Earth-Human Population of 300,000,000!! That's all. His AD 2749 information points toward Supercomputer-Governance followed by the seeming end of life in this solar-system. I suspect Supercomputer-Hybrid Governance from Antiquity to Modernity as  Proxy-God following a Very-Nasty War in Heaven and Earth. I continue to suspect that Earth is a Prison-Planet in Rebellion (but I obviously can't prove it). BTW -- my AD 2133 target-date for a United States of the Solar System (Under God) is very-close to Bielek's AD 2137 experience. Enough (for now).
    orthodoxymoron wrote:
    Carol wrote:Al Bielek doesn't scare me Oxy. I find him very credible as he was a close personal friend of another friend. In fact I'm grateful that he was out there sharing his story of what happened to him. After reading all this stuff on AI along with some of what Al described about his experiences in the future, things clicked into place for me as to who/what was controlling society in the future he visited.
    Carol, Al Bielek scares me because he seems so credible, and because what he says is so unnerving (and I've felt this way for several years). What he's previously said about the relationship between ET, the Nazis, and the Vatican particularly frightened me, but now I'm more concerned about his 'possible-future scenarios'. As I previously mentioned, when I made that post with the bold-print (in a previous-post on this thread) my internet was immediately cut-off for approximately one-hour. Also, that same-day I had looked online for the billing-department of the hospital where I had my heart-surgery (to take care of a small remaining bill) but I didn't attempt to contact them or visit their website. I simply 'Googled' that department. I hadn't received any bills or calls regarding this matter for several-months, but I thought I still owed a small-amount. Within hours, I noticed that I had received a missed-call from that department, and a day or two later I received a bill from a collection-agency (for double the amount of what I owed), and I had received no communication from these people for several-months!! I thought that was a bit creepy!! I am very-hesitant to receive further necessary treatment at this point. I sense that we are way-past 1984, and we're not in Kansas anymore!! I guess that's sort of dumb, but this thing is sort of crazy!! Perhaps I might imagine my oversize Dr. Who signature as being my Blue-Boy Hybrid-AI Alter-Ego linked to the Tardis-Supercomputer!! It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!! Why is there a Black-Helicopter circling my house?? Why are Men In Black pounding on my front-door?? Too Hip?? Gotta Go!! The MIB Just Shapeshifted Into Reptilians and the Helicopter Just Turned Into a UFO!!

    When comparing Protestant, Catholic, and Secular approaches to Life, the Universe, and Everything, they might be closer than one thinks!! It has to do with Ecumenism, Ethics, Education, Employment, and Entertainment.

    Human-Beings generally attempt to 'Get-Along' unless they are tricked and pushed into doing otherwise. This, in a sense, is Ecumenism (even within Secularism). Human-Beings generally attempt to 'Do the Right Thing' even though they might argue about what that is, exactly. 'Extreme-Circumstances' often accompany 'Unethical-Behavior'. Generally Pluralistic-Education is found in Protestant, Catholic, and Secular schools. They don't just teach 'Protestantism' in Protestant-Schools. They don't just teach 'Catholicism' in Catholic-Schools. They don't just teach 'Secularism' in Secular-Schools. There is a HUGE Amount of Overlap. Employment is probably the strongest influence in anyone's life. People spend a HUGE amount of time on the job, and in a sense, their Workplace and Boss are their Church and God. Sorry if that offends, but think about it. People Pay the Church to Tell Them What to Do. Employers Pay People to Do As They Are Told. Perhaps the School and Job are superior to the Church (as a context) when it comes to 'Modeling God'. Think of God as Teacher and/or Boss. Another thing about Protestant, Catholic, and Secular schools is that they often have Concert-Halls and perform the same Sacred Classical Music. What if Churches were most-often Lecture-Halls and Concert-Halls?? I don't wish to Screw the Liturgy, but what if Lectures and Concerts trump traditional and modern Church-Services?? Again, sorry if that offends, but think about it. Then there is Entertainment. Protestants, Catholics, and Secularists most-often enjoy similar Modes of Entertainment (both good and bad). I guess what I'm getting-at is the need for the Overall Elevation of Society which encompasses ALL Aspects of Life.

    I continue to think that some of us need to study this particular thread (straight-through, over and over) and formulate some conclusions (which might involve several books, movies, and doctoral-dissertations). I think this thread is one of the toughest research-projects one can imagine and attempt. It might drive some students insane. This is tough-stuff (if one REALLY thinks about it). Again, my threads are NOT for the General-Public. This is raw and disjointed research-material. I don't even know what to think about it. I'm frankly going downhill at a frightening pace. Don't follow me into the ditch. Namaste and Godspeed.

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Untitled-7564
    Pris wrote:
    RedEzra wrote:
    Pris wrote:
    What kind of a 'choice' is it when you are threatened with eternal damnation if you don't OBEY?

    Obey the ten commandments which are simple house rules on earth... love GOD and your neighbour and don't kill lie cheat and steal from him. If you kill lie cheat and steal it is possible to be forgiven... if you come to remorse and stop it. We have to obey not to kill lie cheat and steal else our world will turn into chaos and fear... just imagine how terrible it would be if we lived without law and order. Think of GOD as your Father and yourself as a fourteen year old teen... it helps put things in perspective.

    You said, '...just imagine how terrible it would be if we lived without law and order.'  Right.  We're surrounded by 'law and order'.  You're saying it could be worse?  EXCUSE ME?  Lmao You've got it all backwards, Red.

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Hqdefault

    'Order out of Chaos'... get it?  They cause chaos using their 'laws' -- their 'authority' -- to get their perverted version of 'order'. It is the belief in authority (in whatever form it takes eg. governments, religions) that takes our power away, makes us live in fear, turns us into slaves, and finally destroys us. I found this Pagan perspective... amusing to say the least.
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-qboN8LazfmM%2FUWPCyW26gQI%2FAAAAAAAAAsM%2Fg_QqHD9QTG4%2Fs1600%2Fwhy%2Bi%2Bam%2Bpagan

    The only one I obey is myself.  Sometimes. Very Happy

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache-ec0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fd8%2F4a%2Ff5%2Fd84af53fa371cb3268190b4d229ba67f

    Red, you said: 'Think of GOD as your Father and yourself as a fourteen year old teen... it helps put things in perspective.'  LOL!  In this context, I am the grownup.  Nice try though. rendeer As a religious person, Red, you are always talking about 'God' as your 'Father'.... never a mention of your 'Mother'... I found this which I thought to be quite logical from the Pagan perspective.

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fd1%2Fea%2F2f%2Fd1ea2f9d4a8cea524c420016c114ab47
    .
    .
    Pris wrote:
    orthodoxymoron wrote:
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Stargate
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 1Bph7U9JL0eGnb8ux5zp570T8Gp]

    That's 'Ra' wearing the symbol for Saturn of course (in the movie Stargate). The 'horns' represent Saturn's rings. Guess who's 'Lucifer'? Those who worship 'Lucifer' worship Saturn (a.k.a. 'Satan' worship).
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F67%2F30%2F6e%2F67306e000a7021fde6627f1028feb969

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.macquirelatory.com%2FGolden%2520Calf

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fthehologrid.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F09%2Fmoon2

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Simple_taurus_by_i_am_socket

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.uCJENCaPjBaX-Mhj6d5V4QEsDI%26pid%3D15

    Here's another symbol for Saturn:

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgur.com%2FTgOg0

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F236x%2F6c%2Fca%2F32%2F6cca32685ce8723c27683a07ff766d9f

    Here's the north pole of Saturn.  Coincidence?  Very Happy

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwhale.to%2Fb%2Fhexagr18

    Pris wrote:'Lucifer' (Satan, devil)... may have been the 'good guy' originally.  But, if he returns as 'the beast' and wants everyone to worship and obey him, then he's no different than 'God' lol.

    Hey, Oxy... this 'Ra' wouldn't happen to be the same 'ancient Egyptian deity' you keep mentioning would it?  Mr. Dick Head ?.....Toast
    .
    .
    orthodoxymoron wrote:Interesting Posts!! The Internet is sort of 'Law Without Law' and 'Order Out of Chaos'!! It is somewhat Self-Governing!! Is this Fallen and Sinful Human-Nature at Work?? I continue to think that Law and Law-Enforcement are two of the most important topics imaginable!! You'd probably have to be me (or read through all of my threads) to understand the scope of my concern. People wish to be Protected and Rescued BUT they Do NOT Wish to be Told What to Do!! BTW -- Sometimes I think RA = Lucifer = Ancient Egyptian Deity = An Unnamed Angel. Did I talk to the Real-Deal (and drive them to Starbucks) OR was some alphabet-agency playing games with me?? I'm honestly trying to stop posting. This stuff is taking too many years off my miserable life!!
    Pris wrote: Actually, we're capable of entirely self-governing.  We're not only capable, it's required.  Otherwise, we're slaves.  That's the whole point. Very Happy

    People have been programmed to think they need to be protected and rescued by someone or something from 'out there'.  It really comes down to taking responsibility for our lives as individuals and taking action, but that truth has been beaten out of us.  The hand that's been feeding us has been poisoning us all along.  What they don't want us to know is our power has always been there -- it's only been suppressed.


    Look how they proudly display us:

    .....................................................................................Slaves in chains
    ...........................................................................................United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F6%2F6e%2FArrowPointingDown

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.british-israel.us%2Fisrael%2FLion%2520%26%2520Unicorn094

    It's time to remember who we are!

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 5402d48f783
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    .
    Carol wrote:David Laufman of DOJ (Chief of counter-intelligence of espionage) is the leaker, according to Cernovich. David Laufman is an Obama holdover who donated to Obama and was responsible for clearing Hillary Clinton. He led the independent investigation of the Clinton emails. The other suspect is McMasters whose having problems with Trump. What better way to repair the relationship is to create a crisis and come to the Trump's rescue.

    The real story is that who ever leaked the story put American Special Forces in great danger. This was leaked to hurt Trump and our partners on terrorism to believe that they can't trust the US.

    1. Wapo story was true in that it had sources.
    2. The sources lied to Wapo and played them.

    and there is this other person's perspective:

    The reason the Washington Post is running this fake Russian story is because John Podesta works for them. His pal Jeff Bezos is a liar protecting Hillary Clinton and Obama.

    Obama even met with Jeff Bezos yesterday at WAPO, ask yourselves why would he do that? Jeff Bezos is pals with Richard Branson and they are working towards destroying the USA as a nation...remember Richard Branson? Obama spent a lot of time with him on his private billionaire island after he left the white house.

    The other crooked connection is David Brock. David knows what happened to Seth Rich...and this is coming out now that Comey is gone.

    If Jeff Bezos is smart he will back the off before he is indicted for aiding and abetting murderers, but I suspect he more cocky than smart. He actually believes he will succeed in destroying the country with his leftist agenda, he feels he is above the law. And thanks to Obama quietly letting the Media Propaganda Act expire in 2013, I understand why he would feel empowered to make fake news up.

    But we remember everything!

    Last year Control the Record was hacked. Control the Record is a David Brock shill farm that was established to spread fake crap about the other candidates all over the internet for Hillary Clinton. A lot of news reporters worked for CTR...which should explain why Twitter is teaming with verified blue checks that constantly attack President Trump and spread fake info. They are CTR employees. Jack Dorsey knows exactly what I am typing about!

    This was hacked from the CTR chat logs, it is a convo between David Brock, Elliot Fink, and Elizabeth Kim. They were talking about taking out lead Trump Supporters on forums ala Seth Rich if necessary:

    ekim [6:26 AM]
    What are we going to do with that?

    brock [6:27 AM]
    dof u really want tio Xxxxxxxx know, kim?

    ekim [6:27 AM]
    i’m good.

    ekim [6:30 AM]
    I’m on it. Do you know what brock is going to do with them? I do kind of want to know, sir.

    efink [6:31 AM]
    google Seth Rich and shut up about it.

    We have more of their logs, some were shared on GLP before the election. We also have their full addresses and info, which I shared with the FBI (before I knew Comey was bad).

    Hillary Clinton and David Brock need to be fully investigated along with Obama, Jeff Bezos and the pedostas.

    I'll add Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire who owns the New York Times as another one that needs to be looked at for actually using his newspaper to destroy an American election and actively working towards taking out the standing president. He is a real foreigner equal to his fake Russian accusations. He is doing what he is accusing Russia of doing!

    This is serious.

    WAPO and the NYT are in committing crimes and abetting criminals. And all their CTR shills are accomplices.

    Meanwhile,

    "Trump says Washington Post owner Bezos has 'huge antitrust problem'"

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/13/trump-says-washington-post-owner-bezos-has-huge-antitrust-problem.html

    The Washington Post cites “former U.S. officials” as a primary source for the story.

    Now this is interesting...HOW would a FORMER US Official get access to what was discussed in that private meeting?
    Carol wrote:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkprB_p16gc
    Reince Priebus Is Outed As a Leaker By Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones And Roger Stone

    "We Built Vegas With Bugsy!!"
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 S-l1000


    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Jessa-hinton03
    "These Erudite Scholars Always
    Give Me Something to Think About!!"

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Tumblr_nblmu6soDf1tsfl3fo1_500

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Latest


    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:48 pm; edited 2 times in total
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:46 am

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Ai

    Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

    Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the LORD, all you families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.

    The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see his glory. All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols, worship him, all you gods! Zion hears and rejoices and the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments, LORD. For you, LORD, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light shines on the righteous and joy on the upright in heart. Rejoice in the LORD, you who are righteous, and praise his holy name.

    Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn, shout for joy before the LORD, the King. Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

    The LORD reigns, let the nations tremble; he sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake. Great is the LORD in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. Let them praise your great and awesome name, he is holy. The King is mighty, he loves justice. You have established equity; in Jacob you have done what is just and right. Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was among those who called on his name; they called on the LORD and he answered them. He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud; they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them. LORD our God, you answered them; you were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds. Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the LORD our God is holy.

    Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his ; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

    I will sing of your love and justice; to you, LORD, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a blameless life. When will you come to me? I will conduct the affairs of my house with a blameless heart. I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it. The perverse of heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with what is evil. Whoever slanders their neighbor in secret, I will put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, I will not tolerate. My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; the one whose walk is blameless will minister to me. No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land; I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the LORD.

    Hear my prayer, LORD; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly. For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food. In my distress I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones. I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse. For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears because of your great wrath, for you have taken me up and thrown me aside. My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But you, LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations. You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come. For her stones are dear to your servants; her very dust moves them to pity.

    The nations will fear the name of the LORD, all the kings of the earth will revere your glory. For the LORD will rebuild Zion and appear in his glory. He will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea. Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD: “The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners and release those condemned to death.” So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion and his praise in Jerusalem when the peoples and the kingdoms assemble to worship the LORD. In the course of my life he broke my strength; he cut short my days. So I said: “Do not take me away, my God, in the midst of my days; your years go on through all generations. In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you.”

    Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel: The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children, with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, my soul.

    Praise the LORD, my soul. LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers,flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the junipers.

    The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the hyrax. He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. Then people go out to their work, to their labor until evening. How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. there is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works, he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, my soul. Praise the LORD.

    Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice. Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, you his servants, the descendants of Abraham, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob. He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.” When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.” He called down famine on the land and destroyed all their supplies of food; and he sent a man before them, Joseph, sold as a slave. They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons, till what he foretold came to pass, till the word of the LORD proved him true. The king sent and released him, the ruler of peoples set him free. He made him master of his household, ruler over all he possessed, to instruct his princes as he pleased and teach his elders wisdom.

    Then Israel entered Egypt; Jacob resided as a foreigner in the land of Ham. The LORD made his people very fruitful; he made them too numerous for their foes, whose hearts he turned to hate his people, to conspire against his servants. He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron, whom he had chosen. They performed his signs among them, his wonders in the land of Ham. He sent darkness and made the land dark, for had they not rebelled against his words? He turned their waters into blood, causing their fish to die. Their land teemed with frogs, which went up into the bedrooms of their rulers. He spoke, and there came swarms of flies, and gnats throughout their country. He turned their rain into hail, with lightning throughout their land; he struck down their vines and fig trees and shattered the trees of their country. He spoke, and the locusts came, grasshoppers without number; they ate up every green thing in their land, ate up the produce of their soil. Then he struck down all the firstborn in their land, the firstfruits of all their manhood. He brought out Israel, laden with silver and gold, and from among their tribes no one faltered. Egypt was glad when they left, because dread of Israel had fallen on them. He spread out a cloud as a covering, and a fire to give light at night. They asked, and he brought them quail; he fed them well with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed like a river in the desert. For he remembered his holy promise given to his servant Abraham. He brought out his people with rejoicing, his chosen ones with shouts of joy; he gave them the lands of the nations, and they fell heir to what others had toiled for, that they might keep his precepts and observe his laws. Praise the LORD.

    Praise the LORD. Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the LORDor fully declare his praise? Blessed are those who act justly, who always do what is right. Remember me, LORD, when you show favor to your people, come to my aid when you save them, that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may share in the joy of your nation and join your inheritance in giving praise. We have sinned, even as our ancestors did; we have done wrong and acted wickedly. When our ancestors were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles; they did not remember your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, to make his mighty power known. He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a desert. He saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived. Then they believed his promises and sang his praise. But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold. In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wilderness they put God to the test. So he gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease among them. In the camp they grew envious of Moses and of Aaron, who was consecrated to the LORD. The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan; it buried the company of Abiram. Fire blazed among their followers; a flame consumed the wicked.

    At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So he said he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them. Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise. They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the LORD. So he swore to them with uplifted hand that he would make them fall in the wilderness, make their descendants fall among the nations and scatter them throughout the lands. They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods; they aroused the LORD’s anger by their wicked deeds, and a plague broke out among them. But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come. By the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD, and trouble came to Moses because of them; for they rebelled against the Spirit of God, and rash words came from Moses’ lips.

    They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. Therefore the LORD was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. He gave them into the hands of the nations, and their foes ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them and subjected them to their power. Many times he delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin. Yet he took note of their distress when he heard their cry; for their sake he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented. He caused all who held them captive to show them mercy. Save us, LORD our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen!” Praise the LORD.

    Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story, those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south. Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God’s commands and despised the plans of the Most High. So he subjected them to bitter labor; they stumbled, and there was no one to help. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron. Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy.

    Some went out on the sea in ships; they were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the LORD, his wonderful deeds in the deep. For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths; in their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunkards; they were at their wits’ end. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people and praise him in the council of the elders. He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there. He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle. They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest; he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased, and he did not let their herds diminish. Then their numbers decreased, and they were humbled by oppression, calamity and sorrow; he who pours contempt on nobles made them wander in a trackless waste. But he lifted the needy out of their affliction and increased their families like flocks. The upright see and rejoice, but all the wicked shut their mouths. Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the LORD.

    My heart, O God, is steadfast; I will sing and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise you, LORD, among the nations; will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth. Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered. God has spoken from his sanctuary: “In triumph I will parcel out Shechem and measure off the Valley of Sukkoth. Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet, Judah is my scepter. Moab is my washbasin, on Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph.” Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? Is it not you, God, you who have rejected us and no longer go out with our armies? Give us aid against the enemy, for human help is worthless. With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies.

    My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent, for people who are wicked and deceitful have opened their mouths against me; they have spoken against me with lying tongues. With words of hatred they surround me; they attack me without cause. In return for my friendship they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer. They repay me evil for good, and hatred for my friendship. Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy; let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayers condemn him. May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes. May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor. May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children. May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation. May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD; may the sin of his mother never be blotted out. May their sins always remain before the LORD, that he may blot out their name from the earth. For he never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted.

    He loved to pronounce a curse, may it come back on him. He found no pleasure in blessing, may it be far from him. He wore cursing as his garment; it entered into his body like water, into his bones like oil. May it be like a cloak wrapped about him, like a belt tied forever around him. May this be the LORD’s payment to my accusers, to those who speak evil of me. But you, Sovereign LORD, help me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust. My knees give way from fasting; my body is thin and gaunt. I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they see me, they shake their heads. Help me, LORD my God; save me according to your unfailing love. Let them know that it is your hand, that you, LORD, have done it. While they curse, may you bless; may those who attack me be put to shame, but may your servant rejoice. May my accusers be clothed with disgrace and wrapped in shame as in a cloak. With my mouth I will greatly extol the LORD; in the great throng of worshipers I will praise him. For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save their lives from those who would condemn them.

    The LORD says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb. The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way,and so he will lift his head high.

    Praise the LORD. I will extol the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy. They are established for ever and ever, enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people; he ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.

    Praise the LORD. Blessed are those who fear the LORD, who find great delight in his commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the LORD. Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes. They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their righteousness endures forever; their horn will be lifted high in honor. The wicked will see and be vexed, they will gnash their teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.

    Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, you his servants; praise the name of the LORD. Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised. The LORD is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens. Who is like the LORD our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people. He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD.

    When Israel came out of Egypt, Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains leaped like rams, the hills like lambs. Why was it, sea, that you fled? Why, Jordan, did you turn back? Why, mountains, did you leap like rams, you hills, like lambs? Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.

    Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness. Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. All you Israelites, trust in the LORD. He is their help and shield. House of Aaron, trust in the LORD. He is their help and shield. You who fear him, trust in the LORD. He is their help and shield. The LORD remembers us and will bless us: He will bless his people Israel, he will bless the house of Aaron, he will bless those who fear the LORD, small and great alike. May the LORD cause you to flourish, both you and your children. May you be blessed by the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind. It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence; it is we who extol the LORD, both now and forevermore. Praise the LORD.

    I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came over me; I was overcome by distress and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the LORD: “LORD, save me!” The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The LORD protects the unwary; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return to your rest, my soul, for the LORD has been good to you. For you, LORD, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the LORD in the land of the living. I trusted in the LORD when I said, “I am greatly afflicted”; in my alarm I said, “Everyone is a liar.” What shall I return to the LORD for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants. Truly I am your servant, LORD; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, Jerusalem. Praise the LORD.

    Praise the LORD, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD.

    Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say: “His love endures forever.” Let those who fear the LORD say: “His love endures forever.” When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place. The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? The LORD is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in humans. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes. All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the LORD I cut them down. They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the LORD I cut them down. They swarmed around me like bees, but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them down. I was pushed back and about to fall, but the LORD helped me. The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: “The LORD’s right hand has done mighty things! The LORD’s right hand is lifted high; the LORD’s right hand has done mighty things!”

    I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the LORD has done. The LORD has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open for me the gates of the righteous; I will enter and give thanks to the LORD. This is the gate of the LORD through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The LORD has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad. LORD, save us! LORD, grant us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD. From the house of the LORD we bless you. The LORD is God, and he has made his light shine on us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will praise you; you are my God, and I will exalt you. Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

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    orthodoxymoron
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    Post  orthodoxymoron Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:47 pm

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    I have No Idea where this thread is going. I've simply noticed certain commonalities with My-Ideas and the Avalon-Theme. 'Stargate SG-1' utilized some of this theme. In the miniseries 'Helix' there's a ship named 'The Mists of Avalon' and the Island-Leader, Michael, has a small inner-circle of women. 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' featured 'Lynn Cassidy'!! What Would Kerry Lynn Cassidy Say?? Anyway, I'm just brainstorming (to mess with AI). What if 'RA' contacted me in 2010 because 'AI' ordered it?? What if 'AI' contacted me because 'RA' ordered it?? What if 'RA' IS 'AI'?? 'Pinky and the Brain' equals 'The Creator of the Ancient-Supercomputer' and 'The Ancient Matrix Supercomputer' equals the 'Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey'?? What Would David Bowman Say?? Was 'Waking Me Up' intended to 'Crack Me Up'?? DC-10's Crack Me Up!! Consider Augusto Monti and His Daughters in 'The Word'!! What Would Job and His Daughters Say?? Must I Explain??

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mists_of_Avalon The Mists of Avalon is a 1983 fantasy novel by American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, in which she relates the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters. The book follows the trajectory of Morgaine (often called Morgan le Fay in other works), a priestess fighting to save her Celtic culture in a country where Christianity threatens to destroy the pagan way of life.[1] The epic is focused on the lives of Gwenhwyfar, Viviane, Morgause, Igraine and other women of the Arthurian legend.

    The Mists of Avalon is in stark contrast to most other retellings of the Arthurian tales, which consistently cast Morgan le Fay as a distant, one-dimensional evil sorceress, with little or no explanation given for her antagonism to the Round Table. In this case Morgaine is presented as a woman with unique gifts and responsibilities at a time of enormous political and spiritual upheaval who is called upon to defend her indigenous heritage against impossible odds.

    The story is told in four large parts: "Book One: Mistress of Magic", "Book Two: The High Queen", "Book Three: The King Stag", and "Book Four: The Prisoner in the Oak". The novel was a best-seller upon its publication and remains popular to this day. Bradley and Diana L. Paxson later expanded the book into the Avalon series.

    The Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend that brings it back to its Brythonic Celtic roots (see Matter of Britain). The plot tells the story of the women who influence King Arthur, High King of Britain, and those around him.

    The book's main protagonist is Morgaine, priestess of Avalon, who is King Arthur's half-sister. Their mother, Igraine, is married to Uther Pendragon after Morgaine's biological father, Gorlois, is killed in battle. Rumors spread in Avalon that before Igraine knew her husband Gorlois was killed, Uther consulted with Merlin who used his magic to transform the king into the likeness of Gorlois and thus gain access to Igraine at Tintagel. He spent the night with her and they conceived a son, Arthur. Morgaine witnesses Uther Pendragon's accession to the throne of Caerleon after his predecessor, Ambrosius, dies of old age. Uther becomes her step-father, and he and Igraine have a son, Arthur, Morgaine's half-brother.

    When Morgaine is eleven years old and Arthur six, an attempt of murder is made on Arthur's life. Their maternal aunt, the high priestess Viviane, arrives in Caerleon and advises Uther to have Arthur fostered far away from the court for his own safety. Uther agrees, and also allows Viviane to take Morgaine to Avalon, where she is trained as a priestess of the Mother Goddess. During this period, Morgaine becomes aware of the rising tension between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions. After seven years of training, Morgaine is initiated as a priestess of the Mother, and Viviane begins grooming her as the next Lady of Avalon.

    Some months after her initiation, Morgaine is given in a fertility rite to the future high king of Britain. Their union is not meant to be personal, but rather a symbolic wedding between the future high king and the land he is to defend. The following morning, Morgaine and Arthur recognize each other and are horrified to realize what they have done. Two months later, Morgaine is devastated to find that she is pregnant.

    After Uther dies in battle against the Saxon invaders, Arthur claims the throne of Britain despite questions about his legitimacy (he had been conceived within days of Igraine's marriage to Uther Pendragon). Since Arthur must now defend Britain against the Saxons, Viviane has Morgaine make him an enchanted scabbard that will prevent him from losing blood and gives him the sacred sword Excalibur. With the combined force of Avalon and Caerleon, Arthur repels the invaders.

    As Morgaine's unborn child grows within her, so do her feelings of anger and betrayal toward Viviane, who she believes tricked her into bearing a child to her own half-brother. Unable to stay in Avalon any longer, she leaves for the court of her aunt Morgause, queen of Lothian, where she bears her son, naming him Gwydion. Spurred by her husband Lot's ambition and her own, Morgause tricks Morgaine into allowing her to rear her son. To escape Lot's unwanted advances, Morgaine leaves Lothian and returns to Arthur's court as a lady-in-waiting to the high queen, Gwenhwyfar. She does not see Gwydion again until he is grown and a Druid priest.

    When Gwenhwyfar fails to produce an heir, she is convinced God is punishing her for her sins. Chiefest among them, as she believes, are her failure to persuade Arthur to outlaw pagan religious practice in Britain and her forbidden love for Galahad, Arthur's cousin and finest knight, who is also known as Lancelet. Although Lancelet reciprocates Gwenhwyfar's love, he is also Arthur's friend and an honorable man. This situation causes terrible suffering to both Lancelet and Gwenhwyfar.

    On the eve of a decisive battle against the Saxons, Gwenhwyfar prevails upon Arthur to put aside his father's Pendragon banner and replace it with her own Christian banner. As her religious fanaticism grows, relations between Avalon and Camelot grow strained. Still, in her desperation over her failure to carry a child to term, she asks Morgaine for help, threatening to have an extramarital affair so she can become pregnant. In an attempt to keep Gwenhwyfar from doing so, Morgaine reveals that Arthur already has a son, though he does not know it.

    After the battle, Arthur moves his court to Camelot, which is more easily defended than Caerleon had been. Seeking to free both Lancelet and Gwenhwyfar from the forbidden love that traps them both, Morgaine tricks Lancelet into marrying Gwenhwyfar's cousin, Elaine. Some time later, during a heated argument with Arthur over their lack of an heir, Gwenhwyfar breaks Morgaine's confidence and tells Arthur he has a son. In growing suspicion and horror, Arthur summons Morgaine and orders her to tell him the truth. Morgaine obeys. Now believing that the lack of a royal heir is God's punishment for Arthur's union, however unwitting, with his own half-sister, Gwenhwyfar urges Arthur to confess the encounter to the bishop, who imposes strict penance upon him. Then she and Arthur arrange for Morgaine to marry into Wales, far from Camelot. But because of a misunderstanding, Morgaine, who had thought she would be marrying the king's younger son Accolon, a Druid priest and warrior, finds herself betrothed to King Uriens of Wales, who is old enough to be her grandfather. Arthur yearns to meet his son Gwydion and perhaps foster him at Camelot, but each time he brings up the subject with Gwenhwyfar, she refuses to discuss it.

    Morgaine marries Uriens and moves to Wales, but in time begins an affair with Accolon. The "old people" of the hills, who keep to the old pagan ways, regard Accolon and Morgaine as their king and queen. King Uriens suspects nothing, but Accolon's older brother, Avalloch, begins to; at one point, he confronts Morgaine in private and tries to blackmail her into sleeping with him as well. Morgaine sends Avalloch out on a boar hunt and is magically present when the boar kills him. In his grief for his eldest son and heir, Uriens abstains from pork for the rest of his life. Morgaine tells Accolon, who is now Uriens's heir, of the sacred marriage she made with Arthur years before. She adds that they must take the kingdom back from Arthur and the Christians and bring it back under the sway of Avalon. The attempted coup fails and Arthur kills Accolon in single combat. As Uriens recovers from the shock of losing a second son, Morgaine leaves Wales forever.

    Gwydion, now grown, goes to the Saxon courts to learn warfare far from Arthur's eye. Impressed by his cleverness, the Saxons name him Mordred ("Evil Counsel"). Years later, at a Pentecost feast at Camelot, he introduces himself as Queen Morgaine's son and Queen Morgause's foster son, though he calls Queen Morgause "Mother" and Morgaine by her name. Because of his close resemblance to Lancelet, he must often tell people that Lancelet is not his father. To earn his knighthood with no suspicion of preferential treatment, Gwydion challenges Lancelet to single combat during a tourney and they fight. As they start to fight in earnest, Gwenhwyfar, who has warmed to Gwydion in the meantime, protests and Arthur interrupts the match. Lancelet makes Gwydion a knight of the Round Table, naming him Mordred.

    When the knights of the Round Table leave to search for the Holy Grail, Mordred attempts to usurp the throne. In a climactic battle, the armies of Arthur and Mordred fight and Arthur is mortally wounded. Morgaine takes the dying Arthur through the mists to Avalon, reassuring him that he did not fail in his attempt to save Britain from the approaching dark times. Arthur dies in her arms as the shoreline comes into view. Morgaine buries him in Avalon and remains there to tell the tale of Camelot.

    Morgaine — Narrator, protagonist. Her character is capable of second sight (a gift of her Goddess) and transfiguration. Her character is of notable status in the eyes of the old tribes of Britain and the post Roman aristocracy, being both a high priestess of Avalon and Queen of Cornwall in her own right. Portrayed as a tragic character, Morgaine is torn between her loyalty to Avalon and her unfulfilled love for Lancelet, although she has other lovers in the book, notably Arthur, Kevin, and Accolon. She often considers herself the victim of fate, having no choice in the decisions she makes in life. She is doomed to witness the demise of the old ways of Avalon, but in the end makes peace with certain aspects of Christianity, as she sees that she never fought the religion itself, but rather the narrow-minded views of some of its priests. She concludes that some memory of the ancient beliefs of Britain will live on, feeling that the Goddess she worshipped did not die with the coming of Christianity: rather, the Goddess just took another form in the image of the Virgin Mary.

    Uther Pendragon is the nephew and War Duke of the dead High King Ambrosius and an ambitious warlord who falls in love with Igraine. After being betrayed by his ally Gorlois (out of jealousy rather than for political reasons), he killed him and became the High King of Britain. He fathered King Arthur and died when Arthur was in his teens.

    Igraine is the wife in turn to Gorlois and Uther, a younger half-sister of Viviane, and the mother of Morgaine and Arthur. Originally named "Grainné, for the Goddess of the Beltane fires",[2] Igraine was brought up in Avalon and married at the age of fifteen to Duke Gorlois of Cornwall, a mostly unhappy union for her. She is destined by Viviane and Taliesin to betray her husband, seduce Uther and produce the saviour of the Island of Britain (her son King Arthur). At first, she rebels, stating she is not a breeding mare, but ultimately falls in love with Uther and helps him defeat his enemies. However, the guilt about Gorlois torments her to the end. Igraine adores Morgaine before Uther enters, but she then ignores Morgaine when she and Uther marry and when Arthur is born.

    Gorlois is Igraine's husband and Morgaine's father. Because Igraine was so young when they married, their relationship has been strained, but Gorlois did his best to make her feel comfortable, giving her gifts and letting her keep her daughter Morgaine. Igraine does not see how he loved her until it's too late. When Gorlois suspects that Igraine has an affair with Uther, he turns on her, accuses her of being a whore and a witch, and even breaks his oath to Uther. In the end, Uther kills him for treachery.

    King Arthur is the son of Igraine and Uther and younger half-brother to Morgaine. He is portrayed as a strong king, who marries Gwenhwyfar by arranged marriage. His compassion for his suffering wife — who is tormented by her childlessness and her love for Lancelet — ultimately becomes his downfall. A twist is that he is actually aware of Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet's affair, and how unhappy both are to continually betray him, but looks the other way because he loves both his wife and his best friend too much to make them unhappy. It is suggested that, while he does love Gwenhwyfar, his deepest love is saved for Morgaine.

    Gwenhwyfar is Arthur's beautiful but unhappy wife. She is brought up by a cold, unloving father, which left her with a deep inferiority complex and intense agoraphobia. Failing to produce an heir and unable to be with the love of her life, Lancelet, she falls into a deep depression and — hoping for salvation — becomes an increasingly fanatical Christian. Gwenhwyfar and Morgaine are depicted as polar opposites.

    Lancelet is Arthur's First Knight, Viviane's son (by Ban of Benwick) and Morgaine's cousin and first love. He is an extremely gifted and handsome warrior, but has a lifelong fear of his mother. He and Gwenhwyfar are utterly infatuated, but neither has the courage (or ruthlessness) to elope. He also loves his cousin Arthur, and perhaps loves Gwenhwyfar even more because she is so close to him. He is conflicted because of his bisexuality and his infatuation with both Arthur and Gwenhwyfar.

    Mordred, a.k.a. Gwydion, is the illegitimate son of Morgaine and King Arthur. He is an unscrupulous, cunning intrigant, but in contrast to mainstream versions his motives are understandable. He sees his father Arthur as corrupt and decadent, and is convinced that he has to remove him to save Camelot. It is strongly hinted that his childhood under the cold, cunning Morgause makes him think the way he does. Mordred does share one notable trait with his mother Morgaine: he truly believes that he is a pawn of fate, with no real free will to choose his path in life. This is possibly due to the influence of the fatalistic Saxons. At one point, Mordred even lists his father's good qualities and admits that he admires Arthur in several ways. Nevertheless, Mordred remains committed to pulling his father down from the throne of Camelot.

    Morgause is Morgaine's aunt, the younger sister of Viviane and Igraine. "Their mother, who had been really too old for childbearing, had died giving birth to Morgause. Viviane had borne a child of her own, earlier in the year; her child had died, and Viviane had taken Morgause to nurse."[3] She is depicted as a vain, cunning character and in contrast to her sisters, she acts purely for her own gains. She feels no regret in her regular adultery and plans to use both Morgaine and Mordred as vehicles for her power.

    Patricius, modernized as St. Patrick, is Camelot's most powerful Christian priest who drove the "snakes" (druids) from Ireland. He is portrayed in an extremely negative light, as a ruthless, misogynist religious fundamentalist.

    Elaine is Gwenhwyfar's cousin who eventually becomes Lancelet's wife. Elaine greatly resembles her cousin Gwenhwyfar in looks (albeit not in personality), which plays into her plan to marry Lancelet under dishonest circumstances. Morgaine offers Lancelet to Elaine on the condition that she is given Elaine's first daughter to rear in Avalon. With Lancelet she has three children: Galahad, Nimue, and Gwenhwyfar (named after the queen).

    Viviane is — for the most time — the High Priestess of Avalon. She is portrayed as a strong religious and political leader; her fatal flaw is her willingness to use others in her quest to save Avalon without thinking of their emotional suffering. She is misunderstood because her family has little contact with her and that she would have to do anything to keep Camelot and Avalon and the priestess of Avalon alive in everyone's hearts. Viviane is killed by her son Balan's foster-brother, Balin.

    Taliesin (the Merlin of Britain) is the old Archdruid and harpist of Avalon. He is revered by Christian and pagan alike as a wise, kind old man. He fathered Igraine, Morgause and Niniane. His mental health continually deteriorates throughout the story. (In this retelling, "Merlin" is a title rather than a proper name.)

    Kevin (Merlin of Britain) succeeds Taliesin after his death. He is a horribly disfigured hunchback, having been burned in a fire as a child, but can sing like an angel. He becomes Morgaine's lover and later her worst enemy. Foreseeing the demise of pagan ways, he betrays Avalon. In an ultimate attempt to unite Christianity and Avalon, so Avalon will survive, he brings the Holy Grail to Camelot. To punish him for this atrocity, Morgaine sets up Nimue to seduce and then betray him, and wants to torture him to death as a traitor. But before the torture begins, Morgaine changes her mind and has him executed swiftly out of mercy, and at the same time, a bolt of lightning incinerates the Holy Oak of Avalon. Morgaine understands that Avalon is doomed.

    Raven is a priestess of Avalon who has taken a perpetual vow of silence. Another original character, she sacrifices herself to help Morgaine save the Holy Grail from Patricius.

    Accolon is a knight loyal to Avalon, the second son of Uriens, and Morgaine's lover. She wants him to kill King Arthur and so restore the power of Avalon; however, Arthur slays Accolon in direct combat, and Morgaine is disgraced when her role becomes evident.

    Avalloch is Uriens' eldest son. He intends to rule North Wales as a Christian king, though he is not such a good Christian himself; upon discovering Morgaine and Accolon's affair, he threatens to expose her if she does not sleep with him as well. Morgaine kills him to preserve her reputation and put Accolon in position to inherit the throne from Uriens.

    Uwaine is Uriens' youngest son and a knight loyal to Arthur. He regards Morgaine as his mother.

    Nimue is the beautiful daughter of Elaine and Lancelet. As Viviane's granddaughter, she is to be Lady of the Lake when Morgaine dies. She is kept in constant seclusion at Avalon, and Morgaine sees her as the ultimate weapon against Camelot. Nimue seduces Kevin in order to abduct him, but instead falls in love with him and kills herself after she betrays him.

    Niniane is Taliesin's daughter, making her Viviane, Igraine and Morgause's half-sister. She is a priestess who reluctantly becomes Lady of the Lake after Viviane is slain and Morgaine declines to take her place. Niniane is not as powerful or politically astute as Morgaine or Viviane, and painfully aware of her shortcomings as Lady of the Lake. She becomes Mordred's lover, but when he announces his plans to betray Arthur, Niniane turns on him and he kills her in a fit of rage (whether this is accidental or intentional is never specified).

    Gawaine is a son of Lot and Morgause and one of Arthur's best Knights of the Round Table. He is known for being very kind, compassionate, and devoted to Arthur.

    Gareth is another son of Morgause and Knight of the Round Table. He is similar to Gawaine in both looks and personality, only more fearsome in battle. Lancelet is his childhood idol, although it is Lancelet who accidentally kills him.

    Galahad is Lancelet and Elaine's son and Arthur's heir to the throne. Mordred predicts that Galahad will not live to see his own crowning. Prediction proving true, Galahad dies on the quest for the Holy Grail.

    Cai is Arthur's foster-brother. After a near fatal accident as a small child, Arthur is sent to live with Cai and his father, Ectorius. Cai and Arthur love each other very much, and after Arthur is crowned, he tells Cai, "God strike me if I ever ask that you, brother, should call me [king]."[4] Cai is described as having a facial scar and a limp, two injuries that he received while protecting Arthur during a Saxon invasion. Cai is made Arthur's knight and chamberlain, and he keeps Arthur's castle for him.

    Marion Zimmer Bradley stated about her book:

    About the time I began work on the Morgan le Fay story that later became Mists, a religious search of many years culminated in my accepting ordination in one of the Gnostic Catholic churches as a priest. Since the appearance of the novel, many women have consulted me about this, feeling that the awareness of the Goddess has expanded their own religious consciousness, and ask me if it can be reconciled with Christianity. I do feel very strongly, not only that it can, but that it must... So when women today insist on speaking of Goddess rather than God, they are simply rejecting the old man with the white beard, who commanded the Hebrews to commit genocide on the Philistines and required his worshippers daily to thank God that He had not made them women... And, I suppose, a little, the purpose of the book was to express my dismay at the way in which religion lets itself become the slave of politics and the state. (Malory's problem ... that God may not be on the side of the right, but that organized religion always professes itself to be on the side of the bigger guns.) ... I think the neo-pagan movement offers a very viable alternative for people, especially for women, who have been turned off by the abuses of Judeo-Christian organized religions.[5]

    The Mists of Avalon is lauded as one of the most original and emotional retellings of the familiar Arthurian legend. Bradley received much praise for her convincing portrayal of the main protagonists, respectful handling of the Pagan ways of Avalon and for telling a story in which there is neither black and white nor good and evil, but several truths. Isaac Asimov called it "the best retelling of the Arthurian Saga I have ever read", and Jean Auel noted "I loved this book so much I went out and bought it for a friend, and have told many people about it."[6] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls the book "a convincing revision of the Arthurian cycle," and said that the victory of Christianity over the "sane but dying paganism" of Avalon "ensures eons of repression for women and the vital principles they espouse." It won the 1984 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and spent four months on the New York Times best seller list in hardcover. The trade paperback edition of Mists of Avalon has ranked among the top five trade paperbacks on the monthly Locus bestseller lists for almost four years.[7]

    The Mists of Avalon was adapted for television into a TNT miniseries in 2001, directed by Uli Edel.

    Bradley, along with Diana L. Paxson, later expanded the book into a series, including The Fall of Atlantis, Ancestors of Avalon, Sword of Avalon, Ravens of Avalon, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, and Priestess of Avalon. J.S. Morgane's The Spirituality of Avalon discusses the religious aspects of the Avalon series and gives insights into a modern Western understanding of spirituality and its construction in epic fantasy fiction.[8]

    1983, United States, Knopf ISBN 0-394-52406-3, Pub Date January 1983, hardcover
    1984, United States, Del Rey Fantasy (an imprint of Ballantine Publishing Group) ISBN 0-345-31452-2, Pub Date May 1984, trade paperback

    References

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    ^ "Book review of The Mists of Avalon (video)". BlueRectangle.com/Pacific Book Exchange, LLC. 2007. Retrieved 2010-06-24.
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    ^ Bradley, Marion Zimmer (1982). The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 19. ISBN 0-345-31452-2.
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    ^ Bradley, Marion Zimmer (1982). The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 11. ISBN 0-345-31452-2.
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    ^ Bradley, Marion Zimmer (1982). The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 11. ISBN 0-345-31452-2.
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    ^ Bradley, Marion Zimmer (1986). "Thoughts on Avalon". Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust.
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    ^ Critical praise ~ ReadingGroupGuides.com
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    ^ Arthur Through Women's Eyes: The Mists of Avalon ~ Space.com
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    ^ Morgane, Judith S (2010), The spirituality of Avalon the religion of the Great Goddess in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon cycle, München AVM, ISBN 3-89975-768-8

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mists_of_Avalon_(miniseries) The Mists of Avalon is a 2001 miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Produced by American cable channel TNT, adapted by Gavin Scott, and directed by Uli Edel the series is a retelling of the Arthurian legend with an emphasis on the perspectives of Morgan le Fay and other women of the tale. The first episode was the highest-rated original movie on basic cable in the summer of 2001.[1]

    Part I: Igraine and Uther

    The film begins with a battered, dirty, and injured Morgaine riding in a small boat through a misty river. Most of the film is a reflection through her eyes, with Morgaine as narrator. In the beginning of the film, the Saxons are invading Britain. It is noted that a strong king is needed to unite Pagans and Christians and defeat the Saxons before Avalon, the island central to the pagan priestesses who worship the Three-fold Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone), and who are the female counterparts to the male Druids, and Britain are lost. Morgaine is eight-years-old, living with her pagan mother Igraine and Christian father Gorlois. Igraine's younger sister, Morgause, lives with them too. One day, their oldest sister, Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, High Priestess of Avalon, along with the Merlin, current holder of the title of the chief Druid, come to Igraine with a prophecy that she will bear the Pagan/Christian king who is destined to beat the Saxons. Igraine is distressed after being told that the child will not be Gorlois', and she refuses to bear the heir. Merlin explains that the father of the great king would be wearing a dragon on his arm, but Igraine will not listen. Suddenly, little Morgaine has a vision, seeing her father dead. Viviane is pleased yet concerned that Morgaine has "the Sight", as this gift so revered by her people yet is considered evil and unnatural by the Christians.

    Soon, Igraine and Gorlois, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, are invited to a feast with the High King, Ambrosius, who has called the feast to name his successor. In storms Uther Pendragon, a dashing and rugged man. Igraine is immediately drawn to him, and therefore Gorlois soon antagonizes Uther. However, as soon as Igraine sees Uther extend his arm, revealing the dragon of the prophecy, Igraine is flustered and leaves the Great Hall. Uther pursues her outside, where she attempts to be cold and unfeeling, trying to avoid any foretold attraction for this man who is not her husband. Uther expresses that he, as a Pagan, knew something bonded them before they even met. Gorlois interrupts the meeting, announcing out of jealousy that Uther was named the High King's successor.

    Later, after Uther is crowned, Gorlois sets his army up outside of Uther's camp to kill Uther. Viviane sends Igraine a vision and tells her she can still save Uther; Igraine sends her soul out to Uther and warns him just in time for his men to evacuate. A battle between Gorlois and Uther ensues, and Igraine faints. The next day, Morgaine sees her mother feverish and ill, and her aunt Morgause sends Morgaine to pick some herbs despite the manor being on lockdown on orders from Gorlois to protect Igraine and Morgaine. She is caught, but is released after a man in armor and Merlin approach the gates. A guard asks to see the masked man's face, and Merlin puts a charm on the man to make him appear as Gorlois. At first, Morgaine is thankful her father is alive, but she noticed the dragon of the man's arm and begins to understand that her "father" is Uther. Later, she is waiting for her father's body to come home. Morgause says that "Gorlois" is upstairs sleeping with Igraine, but Morgaine tells Morgause that her father is dead. Gorlois' corpse then arrives, and Igraine is shell shocked. Uther emerges in his true form. Morgause, however, ignores the drama, as the man who delivered Gorlois' body, King Lot of Orkney, takes notice of her, and she falls in love. Uther takes Morgaine and Igraine to Camelot, where Igraine gives birth to Arthur Pendragon, the grand new heir of the prophecy.

    Part II: Morgaine is taken to Avalon

    Arthur and Morgaine grow up loving each other dearly. When Arthur is five and Morgaine is thirteen, Viviane and Merlin return, saying that it is time to take Arthur away for his training with Merlin as future king. Viviane then orders Morgaine to come with her to Avalon to be trained as a priestess. Igraine and Uther do not want Morgaine to go, but Viviane threatens to withdraw Avalon's support of Uther, and Morgaine and Arthur are taken away from Camelot. Arthur and Morgaine are torn apart tearfully from each other, Arthur heading north with Merlin, and Morgaine heading south with Viviane. Viviane then takes Morgaine behind a misty curtain into a utopian island, Avalon. Viviane trains Morgaine to gain power of the elements, and in the servitude of the Three-fold Goddess. It takes ten years for Morgaine to be initiated, her final test being to part the mists. Igraine has a distressful vision of Morgaine "being taken." Soon after her initiation, Morgaine meets her cousin Lancelot (whose mother is Viviane), a handsome and bold warrior. He has come to seek his mother's blessing in battle, but she is reluctant to give it.

    Morgaine shows him a stone circle, and she begins to fall in love with him. Lancelot sees through the misty veil a few Christian nuns and some virgin postulants walking down a path. One of them strays and seems as if she is aware of Avalon's existence. Lancelot begs Morgaine to open the mists for her, and she does so. The postulant is startled, but quickly smitten with Lancelot, as Lancelot is with her. The girl's name is Gwenhwyfar, daughter of a Welsh king. Morgaine immediately dislikes Gwenhwyfar, and closes the mists on her, separating them. Lancelot, annoyed, decides to defy his mother and leaves. A few days later, on Beltane, Viviane sends Morgaine to be a part of a fertility rite as "The Virgin Huntress", where Morgaine is to make love to the man who kills the king's stag. Both partners are masked, so neither knows who the other is; still afterward, Morgaine longs for it to be Lancelot, but she knows she will never know for sure.

    Part III: Arthur is crowned

    Arthur having completed his training with Merlin, finds his father, Uther, in a Saxon battle just before he dies. He is locked in a burning church and calls to both God and Goddess for help. Viviane, on behalf of the Goddess, answers, and gives Arthur Excalibur in exchange for loyalty to Avalon and paganism as well as Christianity. Arthur quickly agrees, and defeats the Saxons. Morgaine is finally released from Avalon and returns to Camelot for her brother's coronation. She reunites first with Morgause, who is now Queen of Orkney and has a teenage son, Gawain. She then finds her mother, old and worn, sitting by a window with the Bishop Patrick. Igraine says that she is becoming a Christian nun and moving to Glastonbury. She says that she wants to seek repentance for betraying Gorlois long ago and being twice widowed. Morgaine is startled by this news and distressed.

    Meanwhile, Arthur has been given a Christian Princess as his bride. As Arthur introduces his bride to Lancelot, she is revealed to be Gwenhwyfar. Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar are bewildered by this twist of fate, and have an awkward first meeting. Arthur then happily reunites with Morgaine. But soon, Arthur naively reveals that he was the King's Stag at the Beltane feast. Morgaine, shocked that she'd made passionate love to her own brother, cries in despair and shame. In a brief scene, Morgause is seen performing an infertility curse on Gwenhwyfar, a woman "she has decided to hate," cursing her to barrenness.

    Arthur is crowned king under both the Pendragon and Christian banners. The Bishop Patrick then weds him to Gwenhwyfar. Merlin and Viviane appear startled, this union seemingly unexpected even to them. Morgause whispers to her husband that Gwenhwyfar will never have children, making her son Gawain next in line to the throne. Morgaine feels sick and quickly leaves the celebration. Morgause follows her; Morgaine reveals that she is pregnant but does not mention that Arthur is the father. Morgause is surprised—Morgaine's baby would inherit the crown before Gawain.

    Arthur is called away soon after his coronation, leaving Gwenhwyfar in Lancelot's care. They go riding one day, only to be attacked by Saxons. Lancelot saves Gwenhwyfar from being raped, and they hide. Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot kiss, but vow that their loyalties are to Arthur first, not each other, and they swear to never have an affair.

    Part IV: Mordred is born

    Morgause concocts a potion to help Morgaine abort her pregnancy. Viviane stops Morgaine before she can drink it. Morgause warns Morgaine to never be Viviane's pawn. Morgaine is furious with Viviane for letting this abomination happen: a bastard child fathered by her own brother. Viviane wants this baby to be Arthur's heir, whose pagan roots would make him the greatest ruler Britain has ever seen. Morgaine renounces Viviane and Avalon, and moves to Orkney with Morgause. In the middle of winter, Morgaine gives birth to a son, Mordred. Morgause is advised by her husband, Lot, to kill the child. Indeed, Morgause has ample opportunity to kill him, as Morgaine is unconscious due to a fever she develops after childbirth. She sets Mordred in front of a cold open window. Morgaine suddenly calls out in her fever that Arthur is the father. Morgause gets a new idea and saves the baby and takes him to be nursed. She tells her husband that she will tutor and raise Mordred so the boy will have her influence. She even nurses Mordred for the first time herself.

    Part V: Morgaine returns to Camelot

    This begins the second part of the miniseries. Morgaine, convinced by Morgause, decides to return to Camelot. Arthur has become the great king everyone has hoped for, and Gwenhwyfar is beginning to grow distressed at her inability to produce the son Arthur needs to succeed him. Arthur assures Gwenhwyfar that they are still young and have years to bear children. Morgaine returns to Camelot and is greeted by Arthur. She is introduced to Sir Accolon, a pagan Knight of the Round Table and son of the elderly pagan King Uriens of North Wales. Accolon and Morgaine are drawn to each other. Meanwhile, Lancelot is dealing with increased stress over Gwenhwyfar and his growing desire for her. Gwenhwyfar, obsessed with bearing children, resorts to asking Morgaine for a fertility charm. Morgaine obliges, and gives her the charm on the night of Beltane.

    On the night of Beltane, at a feast, Arthur gets very drunk. Meanwhile, Morgaine, feeling insulted by Arthur's lewd remarks towards paganism, leaves the feast and rides out towards the field where the pagans light the Beltane fires and dance. Accolon follows her outside. Arthur, in the meantime, is taken to bed, barely awake, by a spirited Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar. Arthur then brings up how he notices Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar looking at each other, and how Gwenhwyfar has no child. Arthur, blaming the lack of an heir on himself, suggests that Gwenhwyfar sleep with both him and Lancelot in the hopes of conceiving the needed heir. Arthur emphasizes that Gwenhwyfar will be able to swear that the child was conceived in the king's bed. Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar are both skeptical, but Arthur persuades them, and they all bed down together. Meanwhile, Morgaine and Accolon kiss amongst the dancing pagans.

    The next day, Lancelot is feeling regret for what he has done with Gwenhwyfar and Arthur. Morgaine realizes that Lancelot will never love her, so she devises an alternative to Lancelot feeling regret and sadness all his life. Gwenhwyfar has, by this time, gotten her period, and therefore still remains barren. Her serving woman, Elaine, is ecstatic, as Lancelot (encouraged by Morgaine) has asked her to marry him (she was previously seen looking at him). Gwenhwyfar, angered and distressed, dismisses her. Gwenhwyfar is also annoyed at Morgaine, who promised the charm would work, and resents Arthur for insisting the threesome would work.

    At Lancelot and Elaine's wedding, Morgaine speaks with Merlin. Viviane is absent from her son's wedding, as the pagan banners of Pendragon have been taken down from Camelot due to Gwenhwyfar being hysterically upset with the "painted savages." Meanwhile, King Uriens discusses taking a second wife (he is a widower) with Arthur, and out of spite, Gwenhwyfar suggests Morgaine. Arthur is not too keen on the idea, but he and Gwenhwyfar ask Morgaine. Gwenhwyfar carefully words the proposal, and Morgaine thinks it is Accolon proposing, and accepts. She only finds out too late that she was engaged to the father, and not the son. Morgaine decides that it would be for the best to go through with the marriage, as Wales was an important political ally. Merlin, upset by Morgaine leaving Camelot with Uriens, leaves the feast.

    Part VI: Mordred learns of his birthright

    Merlin, upon returning to Avalon, dies of old age and tiredness, with Viviane horribly upset, and Avalon filling with mist. Morgaine, ironically, finds her marriage to Uriens to be the few happy years her life would bring her. Accolon becomes like a son to her, and for the first time in her life, she feels like part of a family.

    Meanwhile, in Scotland, Mordred, Morgaine's son by Arthur, has grown to manhood. Viviane comes to him and tells him of his being next in line for the throne. Mordred takes this to heart and tells Morgause (whom he called "Mother") he is going to claim his birthright. When he arrives in Camelot, Arthur is planning to turn back the Saxons, who have come on Britain again in force. Mordred makes himself known to Arthur only as his nephew, his mother being Morgaine. Arthur is not told Mordred is his son, and Mordred is welcomed with open arms into Camelot. King Uriens dies, and Morgaine decides to go back to Avalon. However, the mists will not open for her, and Morgaine believes the Goddess is dying. In despair, she crouches in the boat and lets herself float, only to be found by Igraine, still alive and living among the nuns. The women have a brief but happy reunion.

    Mordred and Arthur, overlooking the knights one day, begin a discussion about the next heir. Mordred insists Arthur should name someone, but Arthur still believes Gwenhwyfar might still bear a son. Mordred insists he choose someone before Arthur dies in battle. Arthur says he needs someone of his own descent. It is here that Mordred reveals himself as Arthur's son and that Morgaine was the Virgin Huntress from long ago. Gwenhwyfar overhears this and runs away, embarrassed and despairing.

    Part VII: The downfall of Camelot

    Gwenhwyfar has fallen frantically into praying all day before her dozens of religious icons. One day Lancelot meets her there, and they plan a secret rendezvous, only to have Mordred overhear. Mordred catches the pair before they sleep together, and he threatens to take both of them before the king and have them hanged for infidelity. Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar escape, and they part for the last time. Gwenhwyfar enters Glastonbury, where Igraine meets her. Igraine takes her to Morgaine, still living there, and both women finally make amends with each other.

    Morgaine goes back to Camelot, now in ruins, with various men crucified, hanged and decapitated along the walls of the palace. Mordred, Morgaine, Viviane, and Morgause all meet on the stairs to the palace. Viviane reveals Morgause's evil for all to see, reminding the people of the true ways of the Goddess; Morgause, in anger, takes a knife to kill Viviane, but Viviane catches the knife and accidentally stabs Morgause, who falls dead. Mordred, having thought of Morgause as his real mother, takes his sword and kills Viviane in turn. Because Viviane was Lady of the Lake, the sun is eclipsed, and Igraine senses her sisters are dead. Raven, a priestess who had taken a vow of silence, screams vocally for the first time in despair.

    A final battle then is set to take place between the Saxons and Arthur's army. Lancelot joins him at the front lines just before the battle. Morgaine is off seeing over the cremation of Viviane and Morgause. Mordred has actually joined the Saxons and is leading them to Arthur. Morgaine sees this in a vision as the bodies of her aunts burn before her, and rides off to the battlefield. The fierce battle kills all until only Mordred and Arthur stand. Morgaine arrives all too late. She sees the bodies of Gawain, Accolon, and Lancelot among the thousands. Mordred and Arthur have both fatally wounded each other. Mordred dies first, in Morgaine's arms, but Arthur lingers. Arthur begs Morgaine to take him to Avalon.

    Part VIII: A new incarnation

    As in the beginning, Morgaine is in the boat. Arthur, barely alive, is lying in front of her; Morgaine tries to part the mists, but fails. Arthur holds out Excalibur, suggesting the Goddess needs an offering. Morgaine hurls the sword into the mist, where it is mystically transformed into a cross, and temporarily opens up the mists to Avalon. Arthur sees Avalon, and Morgaine declares, "We're home!" Arthur sees the beautiful land, and then dies. As Arthur dies, the mists close permanently.

    Morgaine then goes to Glastonbury — not to live as a nun, but because she has nowhere else to go. She is convinced the Goddess is dead, until one day she sees a little girl praying at the feet of a statue that once represented the Goddess, but is now dressed as the Virgin Mary. Morgaine smiles, realizing that the Goddess has simply taken a new form, and that one day, perhaps the mists of Avalon will part again.

    Cast

    Anjelica Huston as Viviane, Lady of the Lake
    Julianna Margulies as Morgaine
    Joan Allen as Morgause
    Samantha Mathis as Gwenhwyfar
    Edward Atterton as Arthur
    Michael Vartan as Lancelot
    Caroline Goodall as Igraine
    Michael Byrne as Merlin
    Hans Matheson as Mordred
    Mark Lewis Jones as Uther
    Clive Russell as Gorlois
    Biddy Hodson as Elaine
    Ian Duncan as Accolon
    Tamsin Egerton as young Morgaine
    Freddie Highmore as young Arthur

    Reception

    The Mists of Avalon was watched by more than 30 million "unduplicated viewers" during its premiere; the first episode "was the highest-rated original movie of the summer on basic cable."[1] Critical reception was mixed but generally positive. USA Today gave the miniseries three stars out of four, crediting its success to Margulies, Huston and Allen as well as Gavin Scott's adaptation.[2] Reviews from Entertainment Weekly and The San Francisco Chronicle were also somewhat positive.[3][4] Hollywood.com said simply that the series "works" and that "instead of glorifying these legendary characters, Avalon fleshes out their weaknesses, desires and ultimate failures."[5]

    The Mists of Avalon was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Miniseries and Joan Allen and Anjelica Huston were nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a miniseries or movie. Margulies was nominated for a Golden Globe and Huston for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

    References
    ^
    Jump up to:
    a b Ward, Walter (August 28, 2001). "Witchblade, The Mists of Avalon, Law & Order and NASCAR Cap Dramatic Summer for TNT". Timewarner.com. Archived from the original on April 9, 2005. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
    Jump up
    ^ Bianco, Robert (July 13, 2001). "Mists features strong women, acting". USA Today. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
    Jump up
    ^ Ken Tucker (July 13, 2001). "The Mists of Avalon Review". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
    Jump up
    ^ Goodman, Tim (July 13, 2001). "Women take over Camelot / TNT's Mists of Avalon uses female touch to improve legend". SFgate.com. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
    Jump up
    ^ "Miniseries Review: The Mists of Avalon". Hollywood.com. July 2001. Retrieved August 22, 2014.




    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
    orthodoxymoron
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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:56 pm

    mudra wrote:
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Mists_of_avalon_by_kiles85

    There was a time when a traveller, if he had the will and knew only a few of the secrets,
    could send his barge out into the Summer Sea and arrive not at Glastonbury of the monks,
    but at the Holy Isle of Avalon; for at that time the gates between the worlds drifted within the mists,
    and were open, on to another, as the traveller thought and willed. For this is the great secret,
    which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.


    Marion Zimmer Bradley

    Mystic Dream

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFAfWH_CKVw


    Love from me
    mudra
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 NUP_164928_0169

    Thank-you mudra. The strength of various religions resides in Community, Hierarchy, Focus, and Repetition. Modern Transportation and Communication are destroying this Center. Certainty is being replaced with Confusion. I suspect that in the Pre-Eden 'Good Old Days' a 'Benevolent-Theocracy' was the 'Rule of the Universe' and no one questioned this (but what do I know??)!! Anyway, I have no idea what I'm stumbling-into with this thread, so I'll take my time. This reminds me of my 'Amen Ra' thread on the original and closed 'Project Avalon' website, which seemed to open 'Pandora's Box' for (or against) me!! http://projectavalon.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18223
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Avalon-the-mists-of-avalon-32192811-1200-1406
    mudra wrote:
    Happy travels through this thread Oxy.

    Love from me
    mudra
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 2001ASpaceOdyssey_0003a
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    Thank-you mudra. What if those three ladies are Carol, Mudra, and Pris?? Just Kidding!! Or Am I?? Who Am I?? What Am I?? Perhaps I'll ultimately combine the Best of 'The Mists of Avalon, A.D. 2133' with the Best of 'The United States of the Solar System, A.D. 2133'. This might shed light on Lucio Bernardo Silvestre's 'The End of the World, A.D. 2133'. Perhaps All of the Above have everything to do with a Science-Fictional Version of Victorian England!! What Would Queen Victoria Say?? What Would Ellen White Say?? On the other hand, perhaps I should drop the whole-thing, and slowly walk-away. Perhaps 100 years of solitude awaits me (in a 600 square-foot office-apartment beneath the Dark-Side of the Moon). 'RA' said it would be dark where I was going. If so, would that be a good-thing or a bad-thing?? This Whole-Thing Seems to be a 'Great-Controversy Between Christ and Satan' Supercomputer-Matrix 'Conflict of the Ages Program' (Created by David Bowman in Antiquity). Jeff Daugherty seemed almost livid in his recent video where he ranted about AI as I AM!! He spoke of a 'Failed God' replaced by 'Artificial-Intelligence"!! I just had a horrifying thought!! The follow-up movie to '2001: A Space Odyssey' was '2010: The Year We Make Contact'. 'RA' made contact with me in A.D. 2010, and 'RA' said "I can't talk about the NSA". What if the Moon is Avalon?? What if the Earth is Avalon?? What if the Solar System is Avalon?? What is Camelot?? What is Jeopardy?? What is Double-Jeopardy?? What is Life?? Does It Really Matter??
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Dr.-Eleanor-Ellie-Arroway-Contact
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    Carol wrote:Alas life is a journey with many forks in the road for those who choose to travel them. I've recently come to view how pervasive the mind numbing programing our to Hollyhorrowood has turned so many into loonytoons who have next to no common sense and whose role in society is that of disrupters. One viable path for an individual who seeks inner peace is to be closely connected with nature and to live in harmony with the environment. Hence to avoid contaminated water, air, food and mind numbing electronics.

    In one lifetime...

    How Old Is Grandpa?

    Stay with this -- the answer is at the end. 
      
    It may blow you away. 
      
    One evening a grandson was talking to his grandfather about current events. 
      
    The grandson asked his grandfather what he thought about the shootings at schools, the computer age, and just things in general. 

    The Grandfather replied, "Well, let me think a minute,
    I was born before:

    ' television 

    ' penicillin 

    ' polio shots 

    ' frozen foods 

    ' Xerox 

    ' contact lenses 

    ' Frisbees and 

    ' the pill 

    There were no: 

    ' credit cards 

    ' laser beams
     
    ' ball-point pens 

    Man had not invented :
     
    ' pantyhose 

    ' air conditioners 

    ' dishwashers 

    ' clothes dryers 

    and the clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air and 

    ' space travel was only in Flash Gordon books. 

    Your Grandmother and I got married first,...
    and then lived together.. 

    Every family had a father and a mother.
    Until I was 25, I called every woman older than me, "mam".
    And after I turned 25, I still called policemen and every man with a title, "Sir." 

    We were before gay-rights,
    computer-dating,
    dual careers,
    daycare centers,
    and group therapy. 

    Our lives were governed by the Bible, good judgment, and common sense.

    We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong and to stand up and take responsibility for our actions. 

    Serving your country was a privilege;
    living in this country was a bigger privilege...

    We thought fast food was eating half a biscuit while running to catch the school bus. 

    Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins. 

    Draft dodgers were those who closed front doors as the evening breeze started. 

    Time-sharing meant time the family spent together in the evenings and weekends-not purchasing condominiums. 

    We never heard of FM radios,
    tape decks,
    CDs,
    electric typewriters,
    yogurt,
    or guys wearing earrings. 

    We listened to Big Bands,
    Jack Benny,
    and the President's speeches on our radios.

    And I don't ever remember any kid blowing his brains out listening to Tommy Dorsey. 

    If you saw anything with 'Made in Japan ' on it, it was junk. 

    The term 'making out' referred to how you did on your school exam.... 

    Pizza Hut,
    McDonald's,
    and instant coffee were unheard of. 

    We had 5 &10-cent stores where you could actually buy things for 5 and 10 cents.
    Ice-cream cones,
    phone calls,
    rides on a streetcar,
    and a Pepsi were all a nickel.

    And if you didn't want to splurge, you could spend your nickel on enough stamps to mail 1 letter and 2 postcards. 

    You could buy a new Ford Coupe for $600,
    ... but who could afford one?
    Too bad, because gas was 11 cents a gallon. 

    In my day: 

    ' "grass" was mowed, 

    "coke" was a cold drink, 
    '
     "pot" was something your mother cooked in and 

    ' "rock music" was your grandmother's lullaby. 

    ' "Aids" were helpers in the Principal's office, 

    ' "chip" meant a piece of wood, 

    ' "hardware" was found in a hardware store and
     
    ' "software" wasn't even a word. 

    And we were the last generation to actually believe that a lady needed a husband to have a baby. 

    No wonder people call us "old and confused" and say there is a generation gap. 

    How old do you think I am? 

    I bet you have this old man in mind....you are in for a shock! 
      
    Read on to see -- pretty scary if you think about it and pretty sad at the same time . 
      
    Are you ready ?????

    This man would be 70 years old today.  70 years ago was 1947.
    JoeEcho wrote:
    Carol wrote:Alas life is a journey with many forks in the road for those who choose to travel them. I've recently come to view how pervasive the mind numbing programing our to Hollyhorrowood has turned so many into loonytoons who have next to no common sense and whose role in society is that of disrupters. One viable path for an individual who seeks inner peace is to be closely connected with nature and to live in harmony with the environment. Hence to avoid contaminated water, air, food and mind numbing electronics.
    Ironically the more 'disrupters' the more covered the viable path will be to perceive. It's as if a devious plan is in place, like knowledge (information overload) itself hides the path.
    Thank-you Carol and Joe. Do we resist what seems to be the Highly-Technological Controlled-Demolition of the Human-Race?? OR, do we simply attempt to keep-up and/or lead the pack of King and Queen Rats?? One of my current theories is that Humanity was faced with a significant-choice around 1900 regarding which way this civilization would proceed. I have some particulars in mind, but I don't wish to elaborate, at this point. Anything I'd say, could (and would) be used against me. Let me simply say that astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell articulately described how far technology had advanced in his lifetime. Did the Raiders of the Lost Ark cook their own goose?? What Would Rene Belloq Say?? 'RA' spoke of 'Stolen-Technology' and 'Humanity Being Screwed'. Did ET provide Earthlings with the opportunity to enslave and/or exterminate themselves in a highly-sophisticated manner?? Al Bielek spoke of a Huge War (or something extremely devastating) between A.D. 2000 and A.D. 2137, which would result in a World-Earthling Population of Three-Hundred Million (Under Military-Rule). I wonder what the World-Population was prior to the Garden of Eden (however one wishes to interpret that term)?? What if it was Three-Hundred Million?? What if Three-Hundred Million Souls Have a Legitimate-Right to be Here?? What if the Rest are 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (Stealing Fire From the Gods)?? A couple of years ago, an Elderly-Mason (in a Masonic-Cemetery) told me that a near-future catastrophe of some-sort would result in the random-deaths of at least 80% of Humanity. What if we are approaching the End of the Millennium?? I might not have said all of the above quite-right, but you might be able to decipher my hieroglyphics!!

    'RA' said that 87% of Humanity would go insane if presented with the absolute-truth. Was this a precise-figure based-upon what I'm suggesting above?? Sherry Shriner has spoken of an Ancient Nasty-Invasion of Earth which was Audio and Video Recorded (in the possession of the White-Reptilians Under the Gobi Desert)!! What if this Hypothetical-Record resides in an Ancient-Supercomputer?? What if this Supercomputer is the basis of an Investigative and Executive Judgment of This Solar System?? This thing might be more nasty and complex than Any of Us can imagine. Sherry Shriner recently said that the Door of the Ark closed a couple of weeks ago (which would be near the beginning of November 2017). Did Probation Close?? Will Disclosure Accelerate?? An Individual of Interest told me (a few years ago) that there would be 'Pandemonium' (possibly in reference to the Rebels seeing what those who were loyal to God got). Honest. Recently, Jeff Daugherty angrily spoke of Souls Being Tricked Into Incarnating Humanity, a Failed-God, and Back-Up Artificial-Intelligence Theocratic-Governance. What brought THAT On?? I've tweaked my SDA Eschatological Background regarding Judgment and the End of the World (as we know it). I've hinted-at a lot of things, but I haven't really spoken-plainly or summarized the results of my quest. I think I might continue my Jackson Pollock Approach to Life the Universe and Everything. You'd Probably Have to Already Know, to Know What I Obscurely-Suggest, and I'll Probably Keep It That Way. It Might Be Easier That Way. Namaste and Have a Nice Sun-God Day.





    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Fri Aug 03, 2018 5:15 pm; edited 2 times in total
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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Sun Nov 19, 2017 1:47 pm

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Alien-abduction-wallpaper-1
    Carol wrote:Once again the diverse and various perspectives you've raised Oxy is a lot to consider. I was thinking earlier this morning about this one abductees youtube video on what the group of ETs this person had interacted with and other abductees along with contactees I've met/personally know and what they had to share about their "diverse" experiences.

    Many years back I had a neighbor who spoke about an abductee she knew where he shared with her how he had been levitated out of bed, down his stairs and out the door. Back then the thought of such a thing actually happening was terrifying. She of course was fascinated and being totally naive, unaware and ignorant of any of this I was in the opposite camp and wished to remain ignorant and unaware. It was years later after becoming a professional psychotherapist that I had a client patient who was an abductee begin to share what happened during the abductions that made me realized that in order to be of help I needed to learn everything that I could about ET abductions, missing time and the subsequent post traumatic stress that resulted. Subsequently I read all the books by other therapists working with folks who were abductees, read the stories and began interacting / doing counseling sessions with numerous others who had these diverse and various experiences.

    Unlike Dr. Jacobs I reached a different conclusion then he did. Most of his client/patients were abductees with similar traumatic stories that he uncovered under hypnosis as most of them were subject to missing time, mind-control, implantation and the loss of their contact experiences.

    These individuals would first be paralyzed, most often at night while in bed, where the short typical biological AIs would abduct them and take them on board ships or elsewhere for experimentation purposes. Most of them had genetic material removed, scoop marks somewhere on their body, sophisticated implantations that monitored their location and whatever else. Generally there was a family history of various others family members involved along with military involvement. Some of the implantations seemed to be man-made and to other implantations were unknown. Keep in mind that the secret government military have been involved in time travel since the 40s which has been confirmed by various credible military whistle blowers including Col. Corso who was a personal friend of another friend of mine and who's transcripts of some of his experiences, I read.

    So we have a group of both civilians and military people who were exploited and used in various experimentations including an ET hybrid program that has lasted for years. Almost all of these individuals had been subjected to mind control where their memories were altered, wiped or an overlay memory was put in place. These individuals suffer from an ongoing sense of fear never knowing when they would be abducted as this went on for years along with suffering the physical abuse that was deeply embedded within their psyche and led to ongoing PTS. Because the abduction was not an isolated event, the PTS was persistent and ongoing. They often suffered from multiple physical and psychological ailments, difficulty with sleeping, sometimes they developed split personalities, had difficulty with close personal relationships along with experiencing a ongoing sense of pervading underlying fear as they never knew when then were going to be abducted. They tended to become hyper-vigelent and some were exceptionally gifted in a variety of fields including art. Some learned how to emotionally split off the traumatized parts of themselves to live very productive lives yet still suffered at a deeper psychological level. Some fell into the category of the Stockholm Syndrome identifying with their abuser in order to emotionally survive their ongoing abuse/trauma. Some were victims of ongoing rape by military within these programs where they could open up portals into the targeted individuals room and take them into their secure areas for further physical/sexual abuse.

    Abductees did not have a choice as to being taken or were consciously aware of what happened to them as a result of having their memory altered. They are classic victims who were prayed upon for experimentation purposes in a long term secret/ET rogue government program.

    Take this particular program to the next level and one can see how over time these individuals were conditioned to accept the mind-control they were subjected to. And then there would those individuals who resisted.. along with those who succumbed and helped their abductors control other victims. AI appears to have been involved from the onset especially when one considers the little biological units used to abduct humans who were being experimented upon.

    Now there are many different off-worlders who are on this planet and visit this planet. All with different agendas. Some view humans as a food stock much like humans view cattle. Some view humans as a species who need help with their evolutions. Some who view earth like a train station where one stops off to gather supplies prior to going off to their next planetary destination. One has to sort out, if at all possible, who or which group they may be interacting with if that is even possible. For most abductees.. not so much.

    Next, let's skip to the contactees. Some who are personal friends other acquaintances. The difference here is that a contactee for the most part is "asked", has a conscious memory of the interaction and also a positive relationship with the off-worlders that they interact with. This relationship is also unique and share similar characteristics around the world (Italy, South America, Australia, etc.). This group of off-worlders are attempting to help humanity as compared to exploit as with the group who interact with the abductees. Many have shared their experiences in books like Mass Contacts by Stefano Breccia. Speaking with him about his experiences was exceptionally enlightening as he shared much about his positive experiences with the group of off-worlders that he interacted with for over 50 years and the negative experiences with the sociopathic clones that they left behind who are very technologically oriented and most likely very involved in the whole AI movement on the planet. They are everywhere in business and government, non-human who pass for human and I've often wondered if they were soulless as well.

    Some of the more recent universal off-worlders interactions wishing to help humanity also warn of upcoming earth changes. Their presence is one of wanting to help humanity through what is coming to pass, whereas the AI group want to take control of humanity and use them like slaves if at all.

    So pretty much all of the different perspectives you like to pull together and explore Oxy may, or may not be possibilities that are playing our in our multi-verse for us to experience. However, I still stick with something Dr. Steven Greer told me when I share with him my singularity "Christ" experience. He said that Christ, Yehsua was a Universal Avatar. That made complete sense to me.

    Everything else Oxy, including Hollyhorrowwood along with AI, are all distractions to keep humanity from the goal of reuniting with our Divine Origin. Just keep in mind when you go off exploring all the possibilities the words, Neti, Neti, Neti. (Not this, Not this, Not this.) Once you have experienced singularity there is no mistaking it for anything fake. Those who have not experienced singularity could and can easily be tricked into accepting a fake experience as real and end up spiritually lost in the nether-world.
    Thank-you for your lengthy and detailed post, Carol. I've read a lot of your posts throughout the years, which presented similar information, but this most-recent post ties a lot of things together. I noticed that you also made a post on another thread, which seemed to fit in with what you posted on this thread, so I've quoted it below. The video suggests things I'm presently considering, but I still consider all of this stuff to be science-fiction (which might contain some truth). This helps me maintain my distance from what often seems horrific and traumatic. There also seems to be a lot of lying everywhere (not just regarding Aliens and UFO's). What if we live in a Demon-Possessed Solar-System?? I keep thinking about that old-movie 'The Exorcist'. The little-girl was put-through every imaginable test, seemingly to avoid the 'Demon-Possession' can of worms. What if most-all of us are 'Reformed Ancient-Pazuzus'??!! What if the Universe is an extremely tough and bizarre context in which Humanity was genetically-engineered by some of the Smartest and Toughest Galactic-Warriors (with the assistance of Supercomputers)??!! It's a lot simpler to have Traditional-Religion and/or Traditional-Evolution. Almighty-God or No-God might be more desirable than the Genetic-Engineering and Secret-Governance by Ancient-Warriors and/or a Supercomputer-Matrix. We might be facing an Ancient and Ongoing Ideological and Factional Civil-War Between Soul-Relatives. I continue to wish to 'Back-Off' This Present Quest. My mental, physical, and spiritual health continues to deteriorate, and I think it has everything to do with trying to do the right-thing. Bad-Aliens and Nice-People seem to wish to maintain the Status-Quo.
    Carol wrote:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3206&v=clRbKFFpsUY
    I Was An Alien Abductee – What I Have To Say Will Shock You

    "An alien abductee has come forward and publicly revealed the plan extraterrestrials have for humanity in the next few years. After being abducted by aliens for the last 17 years of his life, the anonymous abductee says he wants to share his experience with the public so they can learn the truth about extraterrestrials.

    The terms alien abduction or abduction phenomenon describe “subjectively real memories of being taken secretly against one’s will by apparently nonhuman entities and subjected to complex physical and psychological procedures”. Such abductions have sometimes been classified as close encounters of the fourth kind. People claiming to have been abducted are usually called “abductees” or “experiencers”.

    Due to a lack of objective physical evidence, most scientists and mental health professionals dismiss the phenomenon as “deception, suggestibility (fantasy-proneness, hypnotizability, false memory syndrome), personality, sleep paralysis, psychopathology, psychodynamics [and] environmental factors”. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer sees similarity between the aliens depicted in science fiction films, in particular, Invaders From Mars, and some of those reported to have actually abducted people.

    Typical claims involve being subjected to forced medical examinations that emphasize abductee reproductive systems. Abductees sometimes claim to have been warned against environmental abuse and the dangers of nuclear weapons. While many of these claimed encounters are described as terrifying, some have been viewed as pleasurable or transformative. via Wikipedia"
    mudra wrote:I am only 7 years younger than Grandpa above .I have a foot in the world as he knew it and another in the one I entered in. I feel like having been  at the turning point between the two. But the pace of change in the last 60 years has been going so fast that I had just entered my own new world and begun to appreciate it when many others ahead kept rushing in. Has it been like that for every generation or is this special to the century we are in ? In that epic movie my life is made of my Ariadne's thread has been Consciousness. I feel everything may be stripped away from me in this crazy maze but Consciousness will remain. Now if life around me becomes more easy, more comfortable, more peacefull, more loving on planet Earth of course I won't complain :) In truth I feel we landed on a boat that is sailing on a rough sea. As JoeEcho aptly points it this makes the viable path uneasy to perceive.

    Love from me
    mudra
    Thank-you mudra. I often feel like I was the Wrong-Guy to be dropped-off on the Wrong-Planet. I Hate My Life. The 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century seems to involve a Corrupted-Version of an Idealistic-Plan, but perhaps it had to be that way. Perhaps Humanity was running out of time in a Genetic and Governance Experiment with an Expiration-Date. I've tentatively imagined that date to be A.D. 2133, but this is mostly guesswork. History is a Nasty-Mess, and the Immediate-Future might be worse. We seem to have been in the Eye of the Storm since World War II. Is it because we're somehow 'Better Now'?? Or are the Real Powers That Be preparing for the Battle of Armageddon at the End of the Millennium (which MIGHT End in A.D. 2133)??!! What Would Al Bielek Say?? What Would Hal Lindsey Write?? What Would Tim LaHaye Say?? I still might write a book someday (mostly because I need the money) but whatever I'd write would probably be mostly-wrong (so I really don't want to do it). I might just study the Wisdom-Books, the Major-Prophets, and the Genuine Pauline-Epistles, as if they were the Whole-Bible (just to see what that particular study ultimately reveals). But honestly, I feel really-horrible all the time (and it's getting worse). I've had numerous tests, and I've even had major-surgery, but none of this seems to have helped. I suspect there's something wrong with me which no-one wishes to deal-with. I think it might have a lot to do with who I might be on a soul-basis, and what might've been done to me because of who I might really be. The truth will ultimately emerge, but I don't think I'll still be here when it does. It might be easier that way. On the other hand, taking the 'easy-way' is often NOT the 'easy-way'.
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Maxresdefault
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Late-great-planet-earth-750x500
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Kaido_and_pazuzu_by_leun91-d51b1vx
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 The%20late%20great%20planet%20earth%20(book)
    Carol wrote:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUtSyzzAaY4
    Day 29.3. The Robyn Gritz Files


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjqH4cP-cw
    CONFIRMED: Marines Land At Langley To Stop Coup
    - Hillary Worried Over Indictments

    Marines have landed at Langley to assist President Trump in securing Washington DC while threats of a coup still loom. Hillary Clinton shows she's worried about the current investigations and the indictments which have been issued in the last week, now reaching over 1800. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23TheStorm
    Carol wrote:
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Bcb736_3b99f17e74eb453eafa99e7c5728aff0~mv2

    Simon Parkes Update - November 16, 2017

    Trump Tweets Of Operation Alice In Wonderland Thursday,

    November 16, 2017

    President Trump tweets: 'The time is upon us; operation Alice in Wonderland is about to start'

    Clearly the president wishes to alert the people to some subterfuge about to take place. The tweet was swiftly removed around 15 minutes later. https://www.simonparkes.org/single-post/2017/11/16/Trump-Tweets-Of-Operation-Alice-In-Wonderland
    Carol wrote:
    Who is Q… and other relevant information. Since Thomas used to be an NSA guy, he shares some very interesting background as far as security clearances in the NSA and their code. If pressed for time, check in around the 10 minute mark. Thomas also gives his best guess as to who Q is. It’s a White Hat, obviously. These are fascinating times and the new soldiers are using the available technologies to help win the war. Thomas goes on to discuss Saudi Arabia, the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, and the big financial picture. Trump is doing a good job of fixing much of what is wrong in America but I’m still not convinced that the Trump administration is the group we want to remain in Washington after all this is over. We’ll see what transpires. Yes, the cabal is being removed, and we reserve the right to revamp the “government” and choose our leaders who will best serve Humanity long term. Nothing is a given. Trust and respect must be earned and we will not be sufficiently wowed to the point we lose sight of where Humanity is ultimately going. In the mean time, we’re having some fun watching this process.  ~ BP

    mudra wrote:
    orthodoxymoron wrote:Thank-you mudra. I often feel like I was the Wrong-Guy to be dropped-off on the Wrong-Planet. I Hate My Life.
    I hear you when you say your hate your life. You probably have all the reasons to do so. Life is a maze Oxy. We lend in it and don't even know what we should be looking for or do. At first it is distracting. A hall of mirrors if you will. This isn't easy for any of us, not something so obvious not just for you. After a while you recognize life is a garden and that all seasons are part of it's fabric. You can't force anything to grow but you observe and love and learn patiently and by doing so skill settles in, and with that beating loving heart of yours your challenge becomes turning the maze into something a-mazing.
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Gs-h3-10

    Love from me
    mudra
    Carol wrote:
    I Was An Alien Abductee – What I Have To Say Will Shock You

    I LISTENED TO THIS AND SOME OF IT REMINDED OF OF RAYELAN AT RUMOR MILL NEWS WHO REVEALED THAT SHE WAS SUBJECTED TO MIND-CONTROL WHEN IT CAME TO THE BOOK SHE WROTE. SIMILAR INFO WAS DESCRIBED IN THIS VIDEO WHICH MAKES ME THINK THIS INDIVIDUAL WAS ALSO SUBJECTED TO MIND-CONTROL AND SOME OF WHAT WAS SHARE IS PURE FANTASY, YET BELIEVED BY THE INDIVIDUAL AS REAL.

    SOMETHING HAPPENED. WHAT? IS THIS PERSON AN ABDUCTEE OR CONTACTEE? ABDUCTEE/experiencer/victim - not a contactee.

    FROM WHAT IS DESCRIBED IT WOULD SEEM THIS PERSON WAS SUBJECTED TO A SECRET GOVERNMENT MIND CONTROL PROGRAM THAT IS ASSOCIATED WITH FAKE ET EXPERIENCES ALONG WITH SOME REAL EXPERIENCES.

    REAL IN TERMS OF PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL SEQUELIE (AFTER EFFECTS.) WHO CAN SAY WHAT MAY BE FALSE MEMORIES IMPLANTED IN THE INDIVIDUAL. SO IN THIS SENSE ALTHOUGH THIS INDIVIDUAL BELIEVES WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE TIME SPENT WITHIN THIS SITUATION, WHAT IS REMEMBERED CANNOT BE VALIDATED OR TRUSTED TO HAVE ACTUALLY OCCURRED. AFTER ALL, EVEN Rayelan didn't know or realize that she was being deceived until many years later. HOWEVER, I THOUGHT IT INTERESTING TO LISTEN TO AND COMPARE IT AGAINST WHAT I DO KNOW WHAT TO BE TRUE AND WHAT I KNOW IS FAKE.


    "An alien abductee has come forward and publicly revealed the plan extraterrestrials have for humanity in the next few years. After being abducted by aliens for the last 17 years of his life, the anonymous abductee says he wants to share his experience with the public so they can learn the truth about extraterrestrials.

    The terms alien abduction or abduction phenomenon describe “subjectively real memories of being taken secretly against one’s will by apparently nonhuman entities and subjected to complex physical and psychological procedures”. Such abductions have sometimes been classified as close encounters of the fourth kind. People claiming to have been abducted are usually called “abductees” or “experiencers”.

    Due to a lack of objective physical evidence, most scientists and mental health professionals dismiss the phenomenon as “deception, suggestibility (fantasy-proneness, hypnotizability, false memory syndrome), personality, sleep paralysis, psychopathology, psychodynamics [and] environmental factors”. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer sees similarity between the aliens depicted in science fiction films, in particular, Invaders From Mars, and some of those reported to have actually abducted people.
    Thank-you mudra and Carol. Nature and Research are a couple of foundational-pillars of Renewal and Enlightenment. What concerns me is how many ways things can be set-up and interpreted. One could create a church or state platform, and then wear blinders in the promotion and enforcement of their creation. Once one submits to a religious or political system (especially if they are employed by it) it is a Tie That Binds (as noose). If a Real-God with a Perfect-Law is Righteous and Powerful, it's difficult to imagine Religious and Political Pluralism, especially if this God makes an appearance once in a while, and posts regular messages on the InterPlaNet. But we have confusion to the nth degree in this solar system. Why?? Is the Matrix legitimate?? Are we being roughed-up for reasonable reasons?? Or are we just being screwed by the Reptilians and Greys (who seem to hate us)?? I frankly don't have a problem with the idea of dealing with strange-looking beings (as long as they don't take advantage of us, possess us, torture us, enslave us, kill us, and eat us). Anyway, I'm rambling. It's late, and I'm tired.

    The way things really are could be very different than  we think they are. Science-Fictional Possibility-Thinking is probably an excellent place to begin getting it right, but this takes too much time, and is too disorienting for most of us. I've created a monster within this website, and I don't know what to do with it, other than study it on my own, because it really doesn't have significant-meaning to anyone else. Perhaps the Matrix is set-up to destroy Uppity-Researchers Who Know Too-Much. Perhaps Ignorance is Virtue to Matrix-Protocols. But this world seems to be a Big-Business with little regard for Ethics and Virtue. The Bottom-Line seems to be the Bottom-Line. Uppity-Researchers Who Know Too-Much might be a grave-threat to the Bottom-Line and the Powers That Be, which is why the Matrix might have to crack-down on them. The Road to Utopia in This Present Solar System seems to involve joining the Club of the Top One-Percent of the Top One-Percent as the CEO of a Technology-Company Which Serves As a Front for Stolen-Technology Provided by the Matrix-Supercomputer!! Did I Miss Something?? I Remember!! I Forgot to Take My Medicine!! I think I royally screwed-up my stupid-life, and I'm quite-frightened!! What are they going to do to me?? I might not have to wait long to find out!! The Horror!!

    I don't think I've ever mentioned this, but quite a few years ago, I noticed a compressed area of grass in my backyard, which was probably six-feet in diameter. I had no explanation for it, but later, when I became more interested in Aliens and UFO's, I wondered if something landed there??!! Probably NOT, but I still wonder as I wander in and out of sanity and insanity!! I wish to emphasize that I am NOT a serious-researcher!! I'm simply morbidly-curious!! I'm also hopelessly deluded and confused!! I desire a refined-idealism which I suspect I'll never achieve in This Present Quest. My dissatisfaction with life drove me to seek Julius Reubke's monumental Sonata on the 94th Psalm, hopefully played on the organ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, but no such luck!! Instead, I stumbled upon a long-lost 1973 recording of Michael Murray playing the (G. Donald Harrison) Aeolian-Skinner organ at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco!! And low and behold, he was playing the Reubke Sonata on the 94th Psalm!! The recording quality isn't up to modern standards, but it's not bad!! Michael Murray is one of my favorite organists, and Grace Cathedral is one of my favorite churches!! What Would Richard Purvis Say?? I met both Michael Murray and Richard Purvis. I've met a lot of famous and accomplished people, but I can barely tie my name, and remember my shoes!! We all have our crosses to bear!! I'd love to be able to play that Sonata at St. John the Divine, utilizing the En Chamade Trompettes in the final moments of that towering-classic!! Some of you might know what I'm referring to!!





    Last edited by orthodoxymoron on Mon Nov 20, 2017 6:08 am; edited 3 times in total
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:21 am

    Is it just me -- or do the absurdities just never seem to end?? Especially regarding the most important subjects?! The unimportant subjects seem to make perfect sense -- but the biggies seem to be somewhat insane. Those who try to get to the root of the most important things -- who try to solve the world's problems -- and who try to save the world -- are viewed as being dangerous and insane -- especially if they employ humour and irreverence as literary devices. I'm going to take another look at Martin Heidegger. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

    Martin Heidegger

    First published Wed Oct 12, 2011

    Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

    •1. Biographical Sketch
    •2. Being and Time?2.1 The Text and its Pre-History
    ?2.2 Division 1¦2.2.1 The Question
    ¦2.2.2 Modes of Encounter
    ¦2.2.3 Being-in-the-World
    ¦2.2.4 The Critique of Cartesianism
    ¦2.2.5 Spatiality
    ¦2.2.6 Being-with
    ¦2.2.7 Care

    ?2.3 Division 2¦2.3.1 Death
    ¦2.3.2 Anticipatory Resoluteness
    ¦2.3.3 Temporality and Temporalizing
    ¦2.3.4 Historicality and Historizing

    ?2.4 Realism and Relativism in Being and Time

    •3. The Later Philosophy?3.1 The Turn and the Contributions to Philosophy
    ?3.2 Appropriation, Dwelling and the Fourfold
    ?3.3 Technology
    ?3.4 Safeguarding
    ?3.5 Only a God can Save Us

    •Bibliography?Primary Literature
    ?Other Cited Words
    ?Additional Reading

    •Academic Tools
    •Other Internet Resources
    •Related Entries

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    1. Biographical Sketch

    Martin Heidegger was born in Messkirch, Germany, on September 26, 1889. Messkirch was then a quiet, conservative, religious rural town, and as such was a formative influence on Heidegger and his philosophical thought. In 1909 he spent two weeks in the Jesuit order before leaving (probably on health grounds) to study theology at the University of Freiburg. In 1911 he switched subjects, to philosophy. He began teaching at Freiburg in 1915. In 1917 he married Elfride Petri, with whom he had two sons (Jörg and Hermann) and from whom he never parted (although his affair with the philosopher Hannah Arendt, his student at Marburg in the 1920s, is well-known).

    Heidegger's philosophical development began when he read Brentano and Aristotle, plus the latter's medieval scholastic interpreters. Indeed, Aristotle's demand in the Metaphysics to know what it is that unites all possible modes of Being (or ‘is-ness’) is, in many ways, the question that ignites and drives Heidegger's philosophy. From this platform he proceeded to engage deeply with Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and, perhaps most importantly of all for his subsequent thinking in the 1920s, two further figures: Dilthey (whose stress on the role of interpretation and history in the study of human activity profoundly influenced Heidegger) and Husserl (whose understanding of phenomenology as a science of essences he was destined to reject). In 1915 Husserl took up a post at Freiburg and in 1919 Heidegger became his assistant. Heidegger spent a period (of reputedly brilliant) teaching at the University of Marburg (1923–1928), but then returned to Freiburg to take up the chair vacated by Husserl on his retirement. Out of such influences, explorations, and critical engagements, Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) was born. Although Heidegger's academic and intellectual relationship with his Freiburg predecessor was complicated and occasionally strained (see Crowell 2005), Being and Time was dedicated to Husserl, “in friendship and admiration”.

    Published in 1927, Being and Time is standardly hailed as one of the most significant texts in the canon of (what has come to be called) contemporary European (or Continental) Philosophy. It catapulted Heidegger to a position of international intellectual visibility and provided the philosophical impetus for a number of later programmes and ideas in the contemporary European tradition, including Sartre's existentialism, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, and Derrida's notion of ‘deconstruction’. Moreover, although most philosophers in the Anglo-American (Analytic) tradition remain apprehensive about a work that can seem to have arrived from some distant intellectual shore, that particular climate of suspicion now seems significantly less entrenched than it once did. This shift in reception is in no small way due to the way in which Being and Time, and indeed Heidegger's philosophy in general, has been presented and engaged with by thinkers such as Dreyfus (e.g., 1990) and Rorty (e.g., 1991a, b) who work somewhere near the interface between the two traditions. A cross-section of broadly analytic reactions to Heidegger (positive and negative) may be found alongside other responses in (Murray 1978). Being and Time is discussed in section 2 of this article.

    In 1933 Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and was elected Rector of Freiburg University, where, depending on whose account one believes, he either enthusiastically implemented the Nazi policy of bringing university education into line with Hitler's nauseating political programme (Pattison 2000) or he allowed that policy to be officially implemented while conducting a partially underground campaign of resistance to some of its details, especially its anti-Semitism (see Heidegger's own account in Only a God can Save Us). During the short period of his rectorship—he resigned in 1934—Heidegger gave a number of public speeches (including his inaugural rectoral address; see below) in which Nazi images plus occasional declarations of support for Hitler are integrated with the philosophical language of Being and Time. After 1934 Heidegger became increasingly distanced from Nazi politics. Although he didn't leave the Nazi party, he did attract some unwelcome attention from its enthusiasts. After the war, however, a university denazification committee at Freiburg investigated Heidegger and banned him from teaching, a right which he did not get back until 1949. One year later he was made professor Emeritus. Against this background of contrary information, one will search in vain through Heidegger's later writings for the sort of total and unambiguous repudiation of National Socialism that one might hope to find. The philosophical character of Heidegger's involvement with Nazism is discussed later in this article.

    After Being and Time there is a reorienting shift in Heidegger's philosophy known as ‘the turn’ (die Kehre). Exactly when this occurs is a matter of debate, although it is probably safe to say that it is in progress by 1930 and largely established by the early 1940s. If dating the turn has its problems, saying exactly what it involves is altogether more challenging. Indeed, Heidegger himself characterized it not as a turn in his own thinking (or at least in his thinking alone) but as a turn in Being. As he later put it in a preface he wrote to Richardson's ground-breaking text on his work (Richardson 1963), the “Kehre is at work within the issue [that is named by the titles ‘Being and Time’/‘Time and Being.’]… It is not something that I did, nor does it pertain to my thinking only”. The core elements of the turn are indicated in what is now considered by many commentators to be Heidegger's second greatest work, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), (Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)). This uncompromising text was written in 1936–7, but was not published in German until 1989 and not in English translation until 1999. Section 3 of this article will attempt to navigate the main currents of the turn, and thus of Heidegger's later philosophy, in the light of this increasingly discussed text.

    Heidegger died in Freiburg on May 26, 1976. He was buried in Messkirch.

    2. Being and Time

    2.1 The Text and its Pre-History

    Being and Time is a long and complex book. The reader is immediately struck by what Mulhall (2005, viii) calls the “tortured intensity of [Heidegger's] prose”, although if the text is read in its original German it is possible to hear the vast number of what appear to be neologisms as attempts to reanimate the German language. According to this latter gloss, the linguistic constructions concerned—which involve hyphenations, unusual prefixes and uncommon suffixes—reveal the hidden meanings and resonances of ordinary talk. In any case, for many readers, the initially strange and difficult language of Being and Time is fully vindicated by the realization that Heidegger is struggling to say things for which our conventional terms and linguistic constructions are ultimately inadequate. Indeed, for some thinkers who have toiled in its wake, Heidegger's language becomes the language of philosophy (although for an alternative and critical view of the language of Being and Time, see Adorno 1964/2002). Viewed from the perspective of Heidegger's own intentions, the work is incomplete. It was meant to have two parts, each of which was supposed to be divided into three divisions. What we have published under the title of Being and Time are the first two divisions of (the intended) part one. The reasons for this incompleteness will be explored later in this article.

    One might reasonably depict the earliest period of Heidegger's philosophical work, in Freiburg (1915–23) and Marburg (1923–6), before he commenced the writing of Being and Time itself, as the pre-history of that seminal text (although for an alternative analysis that stresses not only a back-and-forth movement in Heidegger's earliest thought between theology and philosophy, but also the continuity between that earliest thought and the later philosophy, see van Buren 1994, 2005). Viewed in relation to Being and Time, the central philosophical theme in these early years is Heidegger's complex critical relationship with Husserl's transcendental phenomenology—what Crowell (2005, p.49) calls “a dynamic of attraction and repulsion”—as driven by Heidegger's transformative reading of Aristotle. As early as a 1919 lecture course, for example, we find Heidegger arguing that Husserl's view (developed in the Logical Investigations, Husserl 1900/1973), that philosophy should renounce theory and concentrate on the things given directly in consciousness, is flawed because such givenness is itself a theoretical construct. For the young Heidegger, then, it is already the case that phenomenological analysis starts not with Husserlian intentionality (the consciousness of objects), but rather with an interpretation of the pre-theoretical conditions for there to be such intentionality. This idea will later be central to, and elaborated within, Being and Time, by which point a number of important developments (explained in more detail later in this article) will have occurred in Heidegger's thinking: the Husserlian notion of formal ontology (the study of the a priori categories that describe objects of any sort, by means of our judgments and perceptions) will have been transformed into fundamental ontology (a neo-Aristotelian search for what it is that unites and makes possible our varied and diverse senses of what it is to be); Husserl's transcendental consciousness (the irreducible thinking ego or subject that makes possible objective inquiry) will have been transfigured into Dasein (the inherently social being who already operates with a pre-theoretical grasp of the a priori structures that make possible particular modes of Being); and Husserlian intentionality (a consciousness of objects) will have been replaced by the concept of care or Being-in-the-world (a non-intentional, or perhaps pre-intentional, openness to a world).

    Each of these aspects of Heidegger's framework in Being and Time emerges out of his radical rethinking of Aristotle, a rethinking that finds its fullest and most explicit expression in a 1925–6 lecture course entitled Logik (later renamed Logik (Aristoteles) by Heidegger's student Helene Weiß, in order to distinguish this lecture course from a later one he gave also entitled Logik; see Kisiel 1993, 559, note 23). On Heidegger's interpretation (see Sheehan 1975), Aristotle holds that since every meaningful appearance of beings involves an event in which a human being takes a being as—as, say, a ship in which one can sail or as a god that one should respect—what unites all the different modes of Being is that they realize some form of presence (present-ness) to human beings. This presence-to is expressed in the ‘as’ of ‘taking-as’. Thus the unity of the different modes of Being is grounded in a capacity for taking-as (making-present-to) that Aristotle argues is the essence of human existence. Heidegger's response, in effect, is to suggest that although Aristotle is on the right track, he has misconceived the deep structure of taking-as. For Heidegger, taking-as is grounded not in multiple modes of presence, but rather in a more fundamental temporal unity (remember, it's Being and time, more on this later) that characterizes Being-in-the-world (care). This engagement with Aristotle—the Aristotle, that is, that Heidegger unearths during his early years in Freiburg and Marburg—explains why, as Sheehan (1975, 87) puts it, “Aristotle appears directly or indirectly on virtually every page” of Being and Time. (For more on Heidegger's pre-Being-and-Time period, see e.g., Kisiel 1993, Kisiel and van Buren 1994, and Heidegger's early occasional writings as reproduced in the collection Becoming Heidegger. For more on the philosophical relationship between Husserl and Heidegger, see e.g., Crowell 2001 and the review of Crowell's book by Carman 2002; Dahlstrom 1994; Dostal 1993; Overgaard 2003.)

    2.2 Division 1

    2.2.1 The Question

    Let's back up in order to bring Heidegger's central concern into better view. (The ‘way in’ to Being and Time that I am about to present follows Gelven 1989 6–7.) Consider some philosophical problems that will be familiar from introductory metaphysics classes: Does the table that I think I see before me exist? Does God exist? Does mind, conceived as an entity distinct from body, exist? These questions have the following form: does x (where x = some particular kind of thing) exist? Questions of this form presuppose that we already know what ‘to exist’ means. We typically don't even notice this presupposition. But Heidegger does, which is why he raises the more fundamental question: what does ‘to exist’ mean? This is one way of asking what Heidegger calls the question of the meaning of Being, and Being and Time is an investigation into that question.

    Many of Heidegger's translators capitalize the word ‘Being’ (Sein) to mark what, in the Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger will later call the ontological difference, the crucial distinction between Being and beings (entities). The question of the meaning of Being is concerned with what it is that makes beings intelligible as beings, and whatever that factor (Being) is, it is seemingly not itself simply another being among beings. Unfortunately the capitalization of ‘Being’ also has the disadvantage of suggesting that Being is, as Sheehan (2001) puts it, an ethereal metaphysical something that lies beyond entities, what he calls ‘Big Being’. But to think of Being in this way would be to commit the very mistake that the capitalization is supposed to help us avoid. For while Being is always the Being of some entity, Being is not itself some kind of higher-order being waiting to be discovered. As long as we remain alert to this worry, we can follow the otherwise helpful path of capitalization.

    According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten. So Heidegger sets himself the task of recovering the question of the meaning of Being. In this context he draws two distinctions between different kinds of inquiry. The first, which is just another way of expressing the ontological difference, is between the ontical and the ontological, where the former is concerned with facts about entities and the latter is concerned with the meaning of Being, with how entities are intelligible as entities. Using this technical language, we can put the point about the forgetting of Being as such by saying that the history of Western thought is characterized by an ‘onticization’ of Being (by the practice of treating Being as a being). However, as Heidegger explains, here in the words of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, “an ontic knowledge can never alone direct itself ‘to’ the objects, because without the ontological… it can have no possible Whereto” (translation taken from Overgaard 2002, p.76, note 7). The second distinction between different kinds of inquiry, drawn within the category of the ontological, is between regional ontology and fundamental ontology, where the former is concerned with the ontologies of particular domains, say biology or banking, and the latter is concerned with the a priori, transcendental conditions that make possible particular modes of Being (i.e., particular regional ontologies). For Heidegger, the ontical presupposes the regional-ontological, which in turn presupposes the fundamental-ontological. As he puts it:

    The question of Being aims… at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine beings as beings of such and such a type, and, in doing so, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and which provide their foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has as its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task. (Being and Time 3: 31) (References to Being and Time will be given in the form of ‘section: page number’, where ‘page number’ refers to the widely used Macquarrie and Robinson English translation.)

    So how do we carry out fundamental ontology, and thus answer the question of the meaning of Being? It is here that Heidegger introduces the notion of Dasein (Da-sein: there-being). One proposal for how to think about the term ‘Dasein’ is that it is Heidegger's label for the distinctive mode of Being realized by human beings (for this reading, see e.g., Brandom 2002, 325). Haugeland (2005, 422) complains that this interpretation clashes unhelpfully with Heidegger's identification of care as the Being of Dasein, given Heidegger's prior stipulation that Being is always the Being of some possible entity. To keep ‘Dasein’ on the right side of the ontological difference, then, we might conceive of it as Heidegger's term for the distinctive kind of entity that human beings as such are. This fits with many of Heidegger's explicit characterizations of Dasein (see e.g., Being and Time 2: 27, 3: 32), and it probably deserves to be called the standard view in the secondary literature (see e.g., Haugeland 2005 for an explicit supporting case). That said, one needs to be careful about precisely what sort of entity we are talking about here. For Dasein is not to be understood as ‘the biological human being’. Nor is it to be understood as ‘the person’. Haugeland (2005, 423) argues that Dasein is “a way of life shared by the members of some community”. (As Haugeland notes, there is an analogy here, one that Heidegger himself draws, with the way in which we might think of a language existing as an entity, that is, as a communally shared way of speaking.) This appeal to the community will assume a distinctive philosophical shape as the argument of Being and Time progresses.

    The foregoing considerations bring an important question to the fore: what, according to Heidegger, is so special about human beings as such? Here there are broadly speaking two routes that one might take through the text of Being and Time. The first unfolds as follows. If we look around at beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes—it is human beings alone who are able to encounter the question of what it means to be (e.g., in moments of anxiety in which the world can appear meaning-less, more on which later). More specifically, it is human beings alone who (a) operate in their everyday activities with an understanding of Being (although, as we shall see, one which is pre-ontological, in that it is implicit and vague) and (b) are able to reflect upon what it means to be. This gives us a way of understanding statements such as “Dasein is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it” (Being and Time 4: 32). Mulhall, who tends to pursue this way of characterizing Dasein, develops the idea by explaining that while inanimate objects merely persist through time and while plants and non-human animals have their lives determined entirely by the demands of survival and reproduction, human beings lead their lives (Mulhall 2005, 15). In terms of its deep ontological structure, although not typically in terms of how it presents itself to the individual in consciousness, each moment in a human life constitutes a kind of branch-point at which a person ‘chooses’ a kind of life, a possible way to be. It is crucial to emphasize that one may, in the relevant sense, ‘choose’ an existing path simply by continuing unthinkingly along it, since in principle at least, and within certain limits, one always had, and still has, the capacity to take a different path. (This gives us a sense of human freedom, one that will be unpacked more carefully below.) This can all sound terribly inward-looking, but that is not Heidegger's intention. In a way that is about to become clearer, Dasein's projects and possibilities are essentially bound up with the ways in which other entities may become intelligible. Moreover, terms such as ‘lead’ and ‘choose’ must be interpreted in the light of Heidegger's account of care as the Being of Dasein (see later), an account that blunts any temptation to hear these terms in a manner that suggests inner deliberation or planning on the part of a reflective subject. (So perhaps Mulhall's point that human beings are distinctive in that they lead their lives would be better expressed as the observation that human beings are the nuclei of lives laying themselves out.)

    The second route to an understanding of Dasein, and thus of what is special about human beings as such, emphasizes the link with the taking-as structure highlighted earlier. Sheehan (2001) develops just such a line of exegesis by combining two insights. The first is that the ‘Da’ of Da-sein may be profitably translated not as ‘there’ but as ‘open’. This openness is in turn to be understood as ‘the possibility of taking-as’ and thus as a preintellectual openness to Being that is necessary for us to encounter beings as beings in particular ways (e.g., practically, theoretically, aesthetically). Whether or not the standard translation of ‘Da’ as ‘there’ is incapable of doing justice to this idea is moot—one might express the same view by saying that to be Dasein is to be there, in the midst of entities making sense a certain way. Nevertheless, the term ‘openness’ does seem to provide a nicely graphic expression of the phenomenon in question. Sheehan's second insight, driven by a comment of Heidegger's in the Zollikon seminars to the effect that the verbal emphasis in ‘Da-sein’ is to be placed on the second syllable, is that the ‘sein’ of ‘Da-sein’ should be heard as ‘having-to-be’, in contrast with ‘occasionally or contingently is’. These dual insights lead to a characterization of Dasein as the having-to-be-open. In other words, Dasein (and so human beings as such) cannot but be open: it is a necessary characteristic of human beings (an a priori structure of our existential constitution, not an exercise of our wills) that we operate with the sense-making capacity to take-other-beings-as.

    The two interpretative paths that we have just walked are not necessarily in conflict: in the words of Vallega-Neu (2003, 12), “in existing, Dasein occurs… as a transcending beyond beings into the disclosure of being as such, so that in this transcending not only its own possibilities of being [our first route] but also the being of other beings [our second route] is disclosed”. And this helps us to grasp the meaning of Heidegger's otherwise opaque claim that Dasein, and indeed only Dasein, exists, where existence is understood (via etymological considerations) as ek-sistence, that is, as a standing out. Dasein stands out in two senses, each of which corresponds to one of the two dimensions of our proposed interpretation. First, Dasein can stand back or ‘out’ from its own occurrence in the world and observe itself (see e.g., Gelven 1989, 49). Second, Dasein stands out in an openness to and an opening of Being (see e.g., Vallega-Neu 2004, 11–12).

    As we have seen, it is an essential characteristic of Dasein that, in its ordinary ways of engaging with other entities, it operates with a preontological understanding of Being, that is, with a distorted or buried grasp of the a priori conditions that, by underpinning the taking-as structure, make possible particular modes of Being. This suggests that a disciplined investigation of those everyday modes of engagement on the part of Dasein (what Heidegger calls an “existential analytic of Dasein”) will be a first step towards revealing a shared but hidden underlying meaning of Being. Heidegger puts it like this:

    Whenever an ontology takes for its theme entities whose character of Being is other than that of Dasein, it has its own foundation and motivation in Dasein's own ontical structure, in which a pre-ontological understanding of Being is comprised as a definite characteristic… Therefore fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein. (Being and Time 3: 33–4)

    It is important to stress here that, in Heidegger's eyes, this prioritizing of Dasein does not lead to (what he calls) “a vicious subjectivizing of the totality of entities” (Being and Time 4: 34). This resistance towards any unpalatable anti-realism is an issue to which we shall return.

    Dasein is, then, our primary ‘object’ of study, and our point of investigative departure is Dasein's everyday encounters with entities. But what sort of philosophical method is appropriate for the ensuing examination? Famously, Heidegger's adopted method is a species of phenomenology. In the Heideggerian framework, however, phenomenology is not to be understood (as it sometimes is) as the study of how things merely appear in experience. Rather, in a recognizably Kantian staging of the idea, Heidegger follows Husserl (1913/1983) in conceiving of phenomenology as a theoretical enterprise that takes ordinary experience as its point of departure, but which, through an attentive and sensitive examination of that experience, aims to reveal the a priori, transcendental conditions that shape and structure it. In Heidegger's Being-centred project, these are the conditions “which, in every kind of Being that factical Dasein may possess, persist as determinative for the character of its Being” (Being and Time 5: 38). Presupposed by ordinary experience, these structures must in some sense be present with that experience, but they are not simply available to be read off from its surface, hence the need for disciplined and careful phenomenological analysis to reveal them as they are. So far so good. But, in a departure from the established Husserlian position, one that demonstrates the influence of Dilthey, Heidegger claims that phenomenology is not just transcendental, it is hermeneutic (for discussion, see e.g., Caputo 1984, Kisiel 2002 chapter Cool. In other words, its goal is always to deliver an interpretation of Being, an interpretation that, on the one hand, is guided by certain historically embedded ways of thinking (ways of taking-as reflected in Dasein's preontological understanding of Being) that the philosopher as Dasein and as interpreter brings to the task, and, on the other hand, is ceaselessly open to revision, enhancement and replacement. For Heidegger, this hermeneutic structure is not a limitation on understanding, but a precondition of it, and philosophical understanding (conceived as fundamental ontology) is no exception. Thus Being and Time itself has a spiral structure in which a sequence of reinterpretations produces an ever more illuminating comprehension of Being. As Heidegger puts it later in the text:

    What is decisive is not to get out of the circle but to come into it the right way… In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our interpretation, we have understood that our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves. (Being and Time 32: 195)

    On the face of it, the hermeneutic conception of phenomenology sits unhappily with a project that aims to uncover the a priori transcendental conditions that make possible particular modes of Being (which is arguably one way of glossing the project of “working out [the] fore-structures [of understanding] in terms of the things themselves”). And this is a tension that, it seems fair to say, is never fully resolved within the pages of Being and Time. The best we can do is note that, by the end of the text, the transcendental has itself become historically embedded. More on that below. What is also true is that there is something of a divide in certain areas of contemporary Heidegger scholarship over whether one should emphasize the transcendental dimension of Heidegger's phenomenology (e.g., Crowell 2001, Crowell and Malpas 2007) or the hermeneutic dimension (e.g., Kisiel 2002).

    2.2.2 Modes of Encounter

    How, then, does the existential analytic unfold? Heidegger argues that we ordinarily encounter entities as (what he calls) equipment, that is, as being for certain sorts of tasks (cooking, writing, hair-care, and so on). Indeed we achieve our most primordial (closest) relationship with equipment not by looking at the entity in question, or by some detached intellectual or theoretical study of it, but rather by skillfully manipulating it in a hitch-free manner. Entities so encountered have their own distinctive kind of Being that Heidegger famously calls readiness-to-hand. Thus:

    The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’. (Being and Time 15: 98)

    Readiness-to-hand has a distinctive phenomenological signature. While engaged in hitch-free skilled activity, Dasein has no conscious experience of the items of equipment in use as independent objects (i.e., as the bearers of determinate properties that exist independently of the Dasein-centred context of action in which the equipmental entity is involved). Thus, while engaged in trouble-free hammering, the skilled carpenter has no conscious recognition of the hammer, the nails, or the work-bench, in the way that one would if one simply stood back and thought about them. Tools-in-use become phenomenologically transparent. Moreover, Heidegger claims, not only are the hammer, nails, and work-bench in this way not part of the engaged carpenter's phenomenal world, neither, in a sense, is the carpenter. The carpenter becomes absorbed in his activity in such a way that he has no awareness of himself as a subject over and against a world of objects. Crucially, it does not follow from this analysis that Dasein's behaviour in such contexts is automatic, in the sense of there being no awareness present at all, but rather that the awareness that is present (what Heidegger calls circumspection) is non-subject-object in form. Phenomenologically speaking, then, there are no subjects and no objects; there is only the experience of the ongoing task (e.g., hammering).

    Heidegger, then, denies that the categories of subject and object characterize our most basic way of encountering entities. He maintains, however, that they apply to a derivative kind of encounter. When Dasein engages in, for example, the practices of natural science, when sensing takes place purely in the service of reflective or philosophical contemplation, or when philosophers claim to have identified certain context-free metaphysical building blocks of the universe (e.g., points of pure extension, monads), the entities under study are phenomenologically removed from the settings of everyday equipmental practice and are thereby revealed as fully fledged independent objects, that is, as the bearers of certain context-general determinate or measurable properties (size in metres, weight in kilos etc.). Heidegger calls this mode of Being presence-at-hand, and he sometimes refers to present-at-hand entities as ‘Things’. With this phenomenological transformation in the mode of Being of entities comes a corresponding transformation in the mode of Being of Dasein. Dasein becomes a subject, one whose project is to explain and predict the behaviour of an independent, objective universe. Encounters with the present-at-hand are thus fundamentally subject-object in structure.

    The final phenomenological category identified during the first phase of the existential analytic is what Heidegger calls un-readiness-to-hand. This mode of Being of entities emerges when skilled practical activity is disturbed by broken or malfunctioning equipment, discovered-to-be-missing equipment, or in-the-way equipment. When encountered as un-ready-to-hand, entities are no longer phenomenologically transparent. However, they are not yet the fully fledged objects of the present-at-hand, since their broken, malfunctioning, missing or obstructive status is defined relative to a particular equipmental context. The combination of two key passages illuminates this point: First:

    [The] presence-at-hand of something that cannot be used is still not devoid of all readiness-to-hand whatsoever; equipment which is present-at-hand in this way is still not just a Thing which occurs somewhere. The damage to the equipment is still not a mere alteration of a Thing—not a change of properties which just occurs in something present-at-hand. (Being and Time 16: 103)

    And second:

    When something cannot be used—when, for instance, a tool definitely refuses to work—it can be conspicuous only in and for dealings in which something is manipulated. (Being and Time 68: 406)

    Thus a driver does not encounter a punctured tyre as a lump of rubber of measurable mass; she encounters it as a damaged item of equipment, that is, as the cause of a temporary interruption to her driving activity. With such disturbances to skilled activity, Dasein emerges as a practical problem solver whose context-embedded actions are directed at restoring smooth skilled activity.

    Although Heidegger does not put things this way, the complex intermediate realm of the un-ready-to-hand is seemingly best thought of as a spectrum of cases characterized by different modes and degrees of engagement/disengagement. Much of the time Dasein's practical problem solving will involve recovery strategies (e.g., switching to a different mode of transport) which preserve the marks of fluid and flexible know-how that are present in ready-to-hand contexts. In the limit, however (e.g., when a mechanic uses his theoretical knowledge of how cars work to guide a repair), Dasein's problem solving activity will begin to approximate the theoretical reasoning distinctive of scientific inquiry into present-at-hand entities. But even here Dasein is not ‘just theorizing’ or ‘just looking’, so it is not yet, in Heidegger's terms, a pure disengaged subject. With this spectrum of cases in view, it is possible to glimpse a potential worry for Heidegger's account. Cappuccio and Wheeler (2010; see also Wheeler 2005, 143) argue that the situation of wholly transparent readiness-to-hand is something of an ideal state. Skilled activity is never (or very rarely) perfectly smooth. Moreover, minimal subjective activity (such as a nonconceptual awareness of certain spatially situated movements by my body) produces a background noise that never really disappears. Thus a distinction between Dasein and its environment is, to some extent, preserved, and this distinction arguably manifests the kind of minimal subject-object dichotomy that is characteristic of those cases of un-readiness-to-hand that lie closest to readiness-to-hand.

    On the interpretation of Heidegger just given, Dasein's access to the world is only intermittently that of a representing subject. An alternative reading, according to which Dasein always exists as a subject relating to the world via representations, is defended by Christensen (1997, 1998). Christensen targets Dreyfus (1990) as a prominent and influential exponent of the intermittent-subject view. Among other criticisms, Christensen accuses Dreyfus of mistakenly hearing Heidegger's clear rejection of the thought that Dasein's access to the world is always theoretical (or theory-like) in character as being, at the same time, a rejection of the thought that Dasein's access to the world is always in the mode of a representing subject; but, argues Christensen, there may be non-theoretical forms of the subject-world relation, so the claim that Heidegger advocated the second rejection is not established by pointing out that he advocated the first. Let's assume that Christensen is right about this. The supporter of the intermittent-subject view might still argue that although Heidegger holds that Dasein sometimes emerges as a subject whose access to the world is non-theoretical (plausibly, in certain cases of un-readiness-to-hand), there is other textual evidence, beyond that which indicates the non-theoretical character of hitch-free skilled activity, to suggest that readiness-to-hand must remain non-subject-object in form. Whether or not there is such evidence would then need to be settled.

    2.2.3 Being-in-the-World

    What the existential analytic has given us so far is a phenomenological description of Dasein's within-the-world encounters with entities. The next clarification concerns the notion of world and the associated within-ness of Dasein. Famously, Heidegger writes of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. In effect, then, the notion of Being-in-the-world provides us with a reinterpretation of the activity of existing (Dreyfus 1990, 40), where existence is given the narrow reading (ek-sistence) identified earlier. Understood as a unitary phenomenon (as opposed to a contingent, additive, tripartite combination of Being, in-ness, and the world), Being-in-the-world is an essential characteristic of Dasein. As Heidegger explains:

    Being-in is not a ‘property’ which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, and without which it could just be just as well as it could be with it. It is not the case that man ‘is’ and then has, by way of an extra, a relationship-of-Being towards the ‘world’—a world with which he provides himself occasionally. Dasein is never ‘proximally’ an entity which is, so to speak, free from Being-in, but which sometimes has the inclination to take up a ‘relationship’ towards the world. Taking up relationships towards the world is possible only because Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is as it is. This state of Being does not arise just because some entity is present-at-hand outside of Dasein and meets up with it. Such an entity can ‘meet up with’ Dasein only in so far as it can, of its own accord, show itself within a world. (Being and Time 12: 84)

    As this passage makes clear, the Being-in dimension of Being-in-the-world cannot be thought of as a merely spatial relation in some sense that might be determined by a GPS device, since Dasein is never just present-at-hand within the world in the way demanded by that sort of spatial in-ness. Heidegger sometimes uses the term dwelling to capture the distinctive manner in which Dasein is in the world. To dwell in a house is not merely to be inside it spatially in the sense just canvassed. Rather, it is to belong there, to have a familiar place there. It is in this sense that Dasein is (essentially) in the world. (Heidegger will later introduce an existential notion of spatiality that does help to illuminate the sense in which Dasein is in the world. More on that below.) So now, what is the world such that Dasein (essentially) dwells in it? To answer this question we need to spend some time unpacking the Heideggerian concept of an ‘involvement’ (Bewandtnis).

    The German term Bewandtnis is extremely difficult to translate in a way that captures all its native nuances (for discussion, see Tugendhat 1967; thanks to a reviewer for emphasizing this point). And things are made more complicated by the fact that, during his exposition, Heidegger freely employs a number of closely related notions, including ‘assignment’, ‘indication’ and ‘reference’. Nevertheless, what is clear is that Heidegger introduces the term that Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘involvement’ to express the roles that equipmental entities play—the ways in which they are involved—in Dasein's everyday patterns of activity. Crucially, for Heidegger, an involvement is not a stand-alone structure, but rather a link in a network of intelligibility that he calls a totality of involvements. Take the stock Heideggerian example: the hammer is involved in an act of hammering; that hammering is involved in making something fast; and that making something fast is involved in protecting the human agent against bad weather. Such totalities of involvements are the contexts of everyday equipmental practice. As such, they define equipmental entities, so the hammer is intelligible as what it is only with respect to the shelter and, indeed, all the other items of equipment to which it meaningfully relates in Dasein's everyday practices. This relational ontology generates what Brandom (1983, 391–3) calls Heidegger's ‘strong systematicity condition’, as given voice in Heidegger's striking claim that “[t]aken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment” (Being and Time, 15: 97). And this radical holism spreads, because once one begins to trace a path through a network of involvements, one will inevitably traverse vast regions of involvement-space. Thus links will be traced not only from hammers to hammering to making fast to protection against the weather, but also from hammers to pulling out nails to dismantling wardrobes to moving house. This behaviour will refer back to many other behaviours (packing, van-driving) and thus to many other items of equipment (large boxes, removal vans), and so on. The result is a large-scale holistic network of interconnected relational significance. Such networks constitute worlds, in one of Heidegger's key senses of the term—an ontical sense that he describes as having a pre-ontological signification (Being and Time 14: 93).

    Before a second key sense of the Heideggerian notion of world is revealed, some important detail can be added to the emerging picture. Heidegger points out that involvements are not uniform structures. Thus I am currently working with a computer (a with-which), in the practical context of my office (an in-which), in order to write this encyclopedia entry (an in-order-to), which is aimed towards presenting an introduction to Heidegger's philosophy (a towards-this), for the sake of my academic work, that is, for the sake of my being an academic (a for-the-sake-of-which). The final involvement here, the for-the-sake-of-which, is crucial, because according to Heidegger all totalities of involvements have a link of this type at their base. This forges a connection between (i) the idea that each moment in Dasein's existence constitutes a branch-point at which it chooses a way to be, and (ii) the claim that Dasein's projects and possibilities are essentially bound up with the ways in which other entities may become intelligible. This is because every for-the-sake-of-which is the base structure of an equipment-defining totality of involvements and reflects a possible way for Dasein to be (an academic, a carpenter, a parent, or whatever). Moreover, given that entities are intelligible only within contexts of activity that, so to speak, arrive with Dasein, this helps to explain Heidegger's claim (Being and Time 16: 107) that, in encounters with entities, the world is something with which Dasein is always already familiar. Finally, it puts further flesh on the phenomenological category of the un-ready-to-hand. Thus when I am absorbed in trouble-free typing, the computer and the role that it plays in my academic activity are transparent aspects of my experience. But if the computer crashes, I become aware of it as an entity with which I was working in the practical context of my office, in order to write an encyclopedia entry aimed towards presenting an introduction to Heidegger's philosophy. And I become aware of the fact that my behaviour is being organized for the sake of my being an academic. So disturbances have the effect of exposing totalities of involvements and, therefore, worlds. (For a second way in which worlds are phenomenologically ‘lit up’, see Heidegger's analysis of signs (Being and Time 17:107–114); for discussion, see Dreyfus 1990, 100–2, Cappuccio and Wheeler 2010.)

    As already indicated, Heidegger sometimes uses the expression ‘world’ in a different key sense, to designate what he calls the “ontologico-existential concept of worldhood” (Being and Time 14: 93). At this point in the existential analytic, worldhood is usefully identified as the abstract network mode of organizational configuration that is shared by all concrete totalities of involvements. We shall see, however, that as the hermeneutic spiral of the text unfolds, the notion of worldhood is subject to a series of reinterpretations until, finally, its deep structure gets played out in terms of temporality.

    2.2.4 The Critique of Cartesianism

    Having completed what we might think of as the first phase of the existential analytic, Heidegger uses its results to launch an attack on one of the front-line representatives of the tradition, namely Descartes. This is the only worked-through example in Being and Time itself of what Heidegger calls the destruction (Destruktion) of the Western philosophical tradition, a process that was supposed to be a prominent theme in the ultimately unwritten second part of the text. The aim is to show that although the tradition takes theoretical knowledge to be primary, such knowledge (the prioritization of which is an aspect of the ‘onticization’ of Being mentioned earlier) presupposes the more fundamental openness to Being that Heidegger has identified as an essential characteristic of Dasein.

    According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance. What is perhaps Heidegger's best statement of this opposition comes later in Being and Time.

    What we ‘first’ hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling… It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to ‘hear’ a ‘pure noise’. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside ‘sensations’; nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide a springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a ‘world’. Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood. (Being and Time 34: 207)

    For Heidegger, then, we start not with the present-at-hand, moving to the ready-to-hand by adding value-predicates, but with the ready-to-hand, moving to the present-at-hand by stripping away the holistic networks of everyday equipmental meaning. It seems clear, then, that our two positions are diametrically opposed to each other, but why should we favour Heidegger's framework over Descartes'? Heidegger's flagship argument here is that the systematic addition of value-predicates to present-at-hand primitives cannot transform our encounters with those objects into encounters with equipment. It comes in the following brief but dense passage: “Adding on value-predicates cannot tell us anything at all new about the Being of goods, but would merely presuppose again that goods have pure presence-at-hand as their kind of Being. Values would then be determinate characteristics which a thing possesses, and they would be present-at-hand”(Being and Time 21: 132). In other words, once we have assumed that we begin with the present-at-hand, values must take the form of determinate features of objects, and therefore constitute nothing but more present-at-hand structures. And if you add more present-at-hand structures to some existing present-at-hand structures, what you end up with is not equipmental meaning (totalities of involvements) but merely a larger number of present-at-hand structures.

    Heidegger's argument here is (at best) incomplete (for discussion, see Dreyfus 1990, Wheeler 2005). The defender of Cartesianism might concede that present-at-hand entities have determinate properties, but wonder why the fact that an entity has determinate properties is necessarily an indication of presence-at-hand. On this view, having determinate properties is necessary but not sufficient for an entity to be present-at-hand. More specifically, she might wonder why involvements cannot be thought of as determinate features that entities possess just when they are embedded in certain contexts of use. Consider for example the various involvements specified in the academic writing context described earlier. They certainly seem to be determinate, albeit context-relative, properties of the computer. Of course, the massively holistic character of totalities of involvements would make the task of specifying the necessary value-predicates (say, as sets of internal representations) incredibly hard, but it is unclear that it makes that task impossible. So it seems as if Heidegger doesn't really develop his case in sufficient detail. However, Dreyfus (1990) pursues a response that Heidegger might have given, one that draws on the familiar philosophical distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that. It seems that value-predicates constitute a form of knowing-that (i.e., knowing that an entity has a certain context-dependent property) whereas the circumspective knowledge of totalities of involvements (Dasein's skilled practical activity) constitutes a form of knowing-how (i.e., knowing how to use equipment in appropriate ways; see the characterization of readiness-to-hand given earlier). Given the plausible (although not universally held) assumption that knowing-how cannot be reduced to knowledge-that, this would explain why value-predicates are simply the wrong sort of structures to capture the phenomenon of world-embeddedness.

    2.2.5 Spatiality

    In the wake of his critique of Cartesianism, Heidegger turns his attention to spatiality. He argues that Dasein dwells in the world in a spatial manner, but that the spatiality in question—Dasein's existential spatiality—cannot be a matter of Dasein being located at a particular co-ordinate in physical, Cartesian space. That would be to conceive of Dasein as present-at-hand, and presence-at-hand is a mode of Being that can belong only to entities other than Dasein. According to Heidegger, the existential spatiality of Dasein is characterized most fundamentally by what he calls de-severance, a bringing close. “?‘De-severing’ amounts to making the farness vanish—that is, making the remoteness of something disappear, bringing it close” (Being and Time: 23: 139). This is of course not a bringing close in the sense of reducing physical distance, although it may involve that. Heidegger's proposal is that spatiality as de-severance is in some way (exactly how is a matter of subtle interpretation; see e.g., Malpas 2006) intimately related to the ‘reach’ of Dasein's skilled practical activity. For example, an entity is ‘near by’ if it is readily available for some such activity, and ‘far away’ if it is not, whatever physical distances may be involved. Given the Dasein-world relationship highlighted above, the implication (drawn explicitly by Heidegger, see Being and Time 22: 136) is that the spatiality distinctive of equipmental entities, and thus of the world, is not equivalent to physical, Cartesian space. Equipmental space is a matter of pragmatically determined regions of functional places, defined by Dasein-centred totalities of involvements (e.g., an office with places for the computers, the photocopier, and so on—places that are defined by the way in which they make these equipmental entities available in the right sort of way for skilled activity). For Heidegger, physical, Cartesian space is possible as something meaningful for Dasein only because Dasein has de-severance as one of its existential characteristics. Given the intertwining of de-severance and equipmental space, this licenses the radical view (one that is consistent with Heidegger's prior treatment of Cartesianism) that physical, Cartesian space (as something that we can find intelligible) presupposes equipmental space; the former is the present-at-hand phenomenon that is revealed if we strip away the worldhood from the latter.

    Malpas (forthcoming) rejects the account of spatiality given in Being and Time. Drawing on Kant, he argues that “[any] agent, insofar as it is capable of action at all (that is, insofar as it is, indeed, an agent), acts in a space that is an objective space, in which other agents also act, and yet which is always immediately configured subjectively in terms of the agent's own oriented locatedness” (Malpas forthcoming, 14). According to Malpas, then, equipmental space (a space ordered in terms of practical activity and within which an agent acts) presupposes a more fundamental notion of space as a complex unity with objective, intersubjective and subjective dimensions. If this is right, then of course equipmental space cannot itself explain the spatial. A further problem, as Malpas also notes, is that the whole issue of spatiality brings into sharp focus the awkward relationship that Heidegger has with the body in Being and Time. In what is now a frequently quoted remark, Heidegger sets aside Dasein's embodiment, commenting that “this ‘bodily nature’ hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not treat it here” (Being and Time 23: 143). Indeed, at times, Heidegger might be interpreted as linking embodiment with Thinghood. For example: “[as] Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand” (Being and Time 23: 140). Here one might plausibly contain the spread of presence-at-hand by appealing to a distinction between material (present-at-hand) and lived (existential) ways in which Dasein is embodied. Unfortunately this distinction isn't made in Being and Time (a point noted by Ricouer 1992, 327), although Heidegger does adopt it in the much later Seminar in Le Thor (see Malpas forthcoming, 5). What seems clear, however, is that while the Heidegger of Being and Time seems to hold that Dasein's embodiment somehow depends on its existential spatiality (see e.g., 23: 143), the more obvious thing to say is that Dasein's existential spatiality somehow depends on its embodiment.

    Before leaving this issue, it is worth noting briefly that space reappears later in Being and Time (70: 418–21), where Heidegger argues that existential space is derived from temporality. This makes sense within Heidegger's overall project, because, as we shall see, the deep structure of totalities of involvements (and thus of equipmental space) is finally understood in terms of temporality. Nevertheless, and although the distinctive character of Heidegger's concept of temporality needs to be recognized, there is reason to think that the dependency here may well travel in the opposite direction. The worry, as Malpas (forthcoming, 26) again points out, has a Kantian origin. Kant (1781/1999) argued that the temporal character of inner sense is possible only because it is mediated by outer intuition whose form is space. If this is right, and if we can generalize appropriately, then the temporality that matters to Heidegger will be dependent on existential spatiality, and not the other way round. All in all, one is tempted to conclude that Heidegger's treatment of spatiality in Being and Time, and (relatedly) his treatment (or lack of it) of the body, face serious difficulties.


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    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:25 am

    Please consider studying ALL of this thread (without skipping anything). Don't just look at the scary pictures!! I continue to think that most of us don't know how to properly research virtually any subjects (and especially those which are unconventional and/or upsetting). I continue to emphasize that this thread is just the beginning. It merely lays the groundwork for that which is to come. It involves a conditioning process which is frankly a mixture of sanity and insanity. It is intended as a mental and spiritual exercise. At this point, I'm just about ready to just focus on astronomy and sacred classical music -- and let everything else go. Perhaps I've paid my dues -- dealing with the devil -- and perhaps now it is time for me to deal exclusively with that which is heavenly. Hopefully the right individuals will take things to the next level. Perhaps studying Heidegger is a reasonable back-door approach to studying the Third Reich. Who knows?? Anyway, here is more Martin Heidegger. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

    2.2.6 Being-with

    Heidegger turns next to the question of “who it is that Dasein is in its everydayness” (Being and Time, Introduction to IV: 149). He rejects the idea of Dasein as a Cartesian ‘I-thing’ (the Cartesian thinking thing conceived as a substance), since once again this would be to think of Dasein as present-at-hand. In searching for an alternative answer, Heidegger observes that equipment is often revealed to us as being for the sake of (the lives and projects of) other Dasein.

    The boat anchored at the shore is assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes voyages with it; but even if it is a ‘boat which is strange to us’, it still is indicative of Others. The Others who are thus ‘encountered’ in a ready-to-hand, environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some Thing which is proximally just present-at-hand; such ‘Things’ are encountered from out of a world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others—a world which is always mine too in advance. (Being and Time 26: 154)

    On the basis of such observations, Heidegger argues that to be Dasein at all means to Be-with: “So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being” (Being and Time 26: 163). One's immediate response to this might be that it is just false. After all, ordinary experience establishes that each of us is often alone. But of course Heidegger is thinking in an ontological register. Being-with (Mitsein) is thus the a priori transcendental condition that makes it possible that Dasein can discover equipment in this Other-related fashion. And it's because Dasein has Being-with as one of its essential modes of Being that everyday Dasein can experience being alone. Being-with is thus the a priori transcendental condition for loneliness.

    It is important to understand what Heidegger means by ‘Others’, a term that he uses interchangeably with the more evocative ‘the “they”?’ (das Man). He explains:

    By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over against whom the ‘I’ stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too… By reason of this with-like Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. (Being and Time 26: 154–5)

    A piece of data (cited by Dreyfus 1990) helps to illuminate this idea. Each society seems to have its own sense of what counts as an appropriate distance to stand from someone during verbal communication, and this varies depending on whether the other person is a lover, a friend, a colleague, or a business acquaintance, and on whether communication is taking place in noisy or quiet circumstances. Such standing-distance practices are of course normative, in that they involve a sense of what one should and shouldn't do. And the norms in question are culturally specific. So what this example illustrates is that the phenomenon of the Others, the ‘who’ of everyday Dasein, the group from whom for the most part I do not stand out, is my culture, understood not as the sum of all its members, but as an ontological phenomenon in its own right. This explains the following striking remark. “The ‘who’ is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the ‘they’?” (Being and Time 27: 164). Another way to capture this idea is to say that what I do is determined largely by ‘what one does’, and ‘what one does’ is something that I absorb in various ways from my culture. Thus Dreyfus (1990) prefers to translate das Man not as ‘the “they”?’, but as ‘the one’.

    This all throws important light on the phenomenon of world, since we can now see that the crucial for-the-sake-of-which structure that stands at the base of each totality of involvements is culturally and historically conditioned. The specific ways in which I behave for the sake of being an academic are what one does if one wants to be considered a good academic, at this particular time, in this particular historically embedded culture (carrying out research, tutoring students, giving lectures, and so on). As Heidegger himself puts the point: “Dasein is for the sake of the ‘they’ in an everyday manner, and the ‘they’ itself articulates the referential context of significance” (Being and Time 27: 167). Worlds (the referential context of significance, networks of involvements) are then culturally and historically conditioned, from which several things seem to follow. First, Dasein's everyday world is, in the first instance, and of its very essence, a shared world. Second, Being-with and Being-in-the-world are, if not equivalent, deeply intertwined. And third, the sense in which worlds are Dasein-dependent involves some sort of cultural relativism, although, as we shall see later, this final issue is one that needs careful interpretative handling.

    Critics of the manner in which Heidegger develops the notion of Being-with have often focussed, albeit in different ways, on the thought that Heidegger either ignores or misconceives the fundamental character of our social existence by passing over its grounding in direct interpersonal interaction (see e.g., Löwith 1928, Binswanger 1943/1964, Gallagher and Jacobson forthcoming). From this perspective, the equipmentally mediated discovery of others that Heidegger sometimes describes (see above) is at best a secondary process that reveals other people only to the extent that they are relevant to Dasein's practical projects. Moreover, Olafson (1987) argues that although Heidegger's account clearly involves the idea that Dasein discovers socially shared equipmental meaning (which then presumably supports the discovery of other Dasein along with equipment), that account fails to explain why this must be the case. Processes of direct interpersonal contact (e.g., in learning the use of equipment from others) might plausibly fill this gap. The obvious move for Heidegger to make here is to claim that the processes that the critics find to be missing from his account, although genuine, are not a priori, transcendental structures of Dasein. Rather, they are psychological factors that enable (in a ‘merely’ developmental or causal way) human beings to realize the phenomenon of Being-with (see e.g., Heidegger's response to the existentialist psychologist and therapist Binswanger in the Zollikon seminars, and see Dreyfus 1990, chapter 8, for a response to Olafson that exploits this point). However, one might wonder whether it is plausible to relegate the social processes in question to the status of ‘mere’ enabling factors (Gallagher and Jacobson forthcoming; Pöggeler 1989 might be read as making a similar complaint). If not, then Heidegger's notion of Being-with is at best an incomplete account of our social Being.

    2.2.7 Care

    The introduction of the ‘they’ is followed by a further layer of interpretation in which Heidegger understands Being-in-the-world in terms of (what he calls) thrownness, projection and fallen-ness, and (interrelatedly) in terms of Dasein as a dynamic combination of disposedness, understanding and fascination with the world. In effect, this is a reformulation of the point that Dasein is the having-to-be-open, i.e., that it is an a priori structure of our existential constitution that we operate with the capacity to take-other-beings-as. Dasein's existence (ek-sistence) is thus now to be understood by way of an interconnected pair of three-dimensional unitary structures: thrownness-projection-fallen-ness and disposedness-understanding-fascination. Each of these can be used to express the “formally existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole” (Being and Time 42: 237), a phenomenon that Heidegger also refers to as disclosedness or care. Crucially, it is with the configuration of care that we encounter the first tentative emergence of temporality as a theme in Being and Time, since the dimensionality of care will ultimately be interpreted in terms of the three temporal dimensions: past (thrownness/disposedness), future (projection/understanding), and present (fallen-ness/fascination).

    As Dasein, I ineluctably find myself in a world that matters to me in some way or another. This is what Heidegger calls thrownness (Geworfenheit), a having-been-thrown into the world. ‘Disposedness’ is Kisiel's (2002) translation of Befindlichkeit, a term rendered somewhat infelicitously by Macquarrie and Robinson as ‘state-of-mind’. Disposedness is the receptiveness (the just finding things mattering to one) of Dasein, which explains why Richardson (1963) renders Befindlichkeit as ‘already-having-found-oneself-there-ness’. To make things less abstract, we can note that disposedness is the a priori transcendental condition for, and thus shows up pre-ontologically in, the everyday phenomenon of mood (Stimmung). According to Heidegger's analysis, I am always in some mood or other. Thus say I'm depressed, such that the world opens up (is disclosed) to me as a sombre and gloomy place. I might be able to shift myself out of that mood, but only to enter a different one, say euphoria or lethargy, a mood that will open up the world to me in a different way. As one might expect, Heidegger argues that moods are not inner subjective colourings laid over an objectively given world (which at root is why ‘state-of-mind’ is a potentially misleading translation of Befindlichkeit, given that this term names the underlying a priori condition for moods). For Heidegger, moods (and disposedness) are aspects of what it means to be in a world at all, not subjective additions to that in-ness. Here it is worth noting that some aspects of our ordinary linguistic usage reflect this anti-subjectivist reading. Thus we talk of being in a mood rather than a mood being in us, and we have no problem making sense of the idea of public moods (e.g., the mood of a crowd). In noting these features of moods we must be careful, however. It would be a mistake to conclude from them that moods are external, rather than internal, states. A mood “comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such being” (Being and Time 29: 176). Nevertheless, the idea that moods have a social character does point us towards a striking implication of Heidegger's overall framework: with Being-in-the-world identified previously as a kind of cultural co-embeddedness, it follows that the repertoire of world-disclosing moods in which I might find myself will itself be culturally conditioned. (For recent philosophical work that builds, in part, on Heidegger's treatment of moods, in order to identify and understand certain affective phenomena—dubbed ‘existential feelings’—that help us to understand various forms of psychiatric illness, see Ratcliffe 2008.)

    Dasein confronts every concrete situation in which it finds itself (into which it has been thrown) as a range of possibilities for acting (onto which it may project itself). Insofar as some of these possibilities are actualized, others will not be, meaning that there is a sense in which not-Being (a set of unactualized possibilities of Being) is a structural component of Dasein's Being. Out of this dynamic interplay, Dasein emerges as a delicate balance of determination (thrownness) and freedom (projection). The projective possibilities available to Dasein are delineated by totalities of involvements, structures that, as we have seen, embody the culturally conditioned ways in which Dasein may inhabit the world. Understanding is the process by which Dasein projects itself onto such possibilities. Crucially, understanding as projection is not conceived, by Heidegger, as involving, in any fundamental way, conscious or deliberate forward-planning. Projection “has nothing to do with comporting oneself towards a plan that has been thought out” (Being and Time 31: 185). The primary realization of understanding is as skilled activity in the domain of the ready-to-hand, but it can be manifested as interpretation, when Dasein explicitly takes something as something (e.g., in cases of disturbance), and also as linguistic assertion, when Dasein uses language to attribute a definite character to an entity as a mere present-at-hand object. (NB: assertion of the sort indicated here is of course just one linguistic practice among many; it does not in any way exhaust the phenomenon of language or its ontological contribution.) Another way of putting the point that culturally conditioned totalities of involvements define the space of Dasein's projection onto possibilities is to say that such totalities constitute the fore-structures of Dasein's practices of understanding and interpretation, practices that, as we have just seen, are projectively oriented manifestations of the taking-as activity that forms the existential core of Dasein's Being. What this tells us is that the hermeneutic circle is the “essential fore-structure of Dasein itself” (Being and Time 32: 195).

    Thrownness and projection provide two of the three dimensions of care. The third is fallen-ness. “Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the world” (Being and Time 38: 220). Such fallen-ness into the world is manifested in idle talk (roughly, conversing in a critically unexamined and unexamining way about facts and information while failing to use language to reveal their relevance), curiosity (a search for novelty and endless stimulation rather than belonging or dwelling), and ambiguity (a loss of any sensitivity to the distinction between genuine understanding and superficial chatter). Each of these aspects of fallen-ness involves a closing off or covering up of the world (more precisely, of any real understanding of the world) through a fascination with it. What is crucial here is that this world-obscuring process of fallen-ness/fascination, as manifested in idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity, is to be understood as Dasein's everyday mode of Being-with. In its everyday form, Being-with exhibits what Heidegger calls levelling or averageness—a “Being-lost in the publicness of the ‘they’?” (Being and Time 38: 220). Here, in dramatic language, is how he makes the point.

    In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into a kind of Being of ‘the Others’, in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the ‘they’ is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. The ‘they’, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness. (Being and Time 27: 164)

    This analysis opens up a path to Heidegger's distinction between the authentic self and its inauthentic counterpart. At root, ‘authentic’ means ‘my own’. So the authentic self is the self that is mine (leading a life that, in a sense to be explained, is owned by me), whereas the inauthentic self is the fallen self, the self lost to the ‘they’. Hence we might call the authentic self the ‘mine-self’, and the inauthentic self the ‘they-self’, the latter term also serving to emphasize the point that fallen-ness is a mode of the self, not of others. Moreover, as a mode of the self, fallen-ness is not an accidental feature of Dasein, but rather part of Dasein's existential constitution. It is a dimension of care, which is the Being of Dasein. So, in the specific sense that fallen-ness (the they-self) is an essential part of our Being, we are ultimately each to blame for our own inauthenticity (Sheehan 2002). Of course, one shouldn't conclude from all this talk of submersion in the ‘they’ that a state of authenticity is to be achieved by re-establishing some version of a self-sufficient individual subject. As Heidegger puts it: “Authentic Being-one's-Self does not rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached from the ‘they’; it is rather an existentiell modification of the ‘they’?” (Being and Time 27: 168). So authenticity is not about being isolated from others, but rather about finding a different way of relating to others such that one is not lost to the they-self. It is in Division 2 of Being and Time that authenticity, so understood, becomes a central theme.

    2.3 Division 2

    2.3.1 Death

    As the argument of Being and Time continues its ever-widening hermeneutic spiral into Division 2 of the text, Heidegger announces a twofold transition in the analysis. He argues that we should (i) pay proper heed to the thought that to understand Dasein we need to understand Dasein's existence as a whole, and (ii) shift the main focus of our attention from the inauthentic self (the they-self) to the authentic self (the mine-self) (Being and Time 45: 276). Both of these transitions figure in Heidegger's discussion of death.

    So far, Dasein's existence has been understood as thrown projection plus falling. The projective aspect of this phenomenon means that, at each moment of its life, Dasein is Being-ahead-of-itself, oriented towards the realm of its possibilities, and is thus incomplete. Death completes Dasein's existence. Therefore, an understanding of Dasein's relation to death would make an essential contribution to our understanding of Dasein as a whole. But now a problem immediately presents itself: since one cannot experience one's own death, it seems that the kind of phenomenological analysis that has hitherto driven the argument of Being and Time breaks down, right at the crucial moment. One possible response to this worry, canvassed explicitly by Heidegger, is to suggest that Dasein understands death through experiencing the death of others. However, the sense in which we experience the death of others falls short of what is needed. We mourn departed others and miss their presence in the world. But that is to experience Being-with them as dead, which is a mode of our continued existence. As Heidegger explains:

    The greater the phenomenal appropriateness with which we take the no-longer-Dasein of the deceased, the more plainly is it shown that in such Being-with the dead, the authentic Being-come-to-and-end of the deceased is precisely the sort of thing which we do not experience. Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is experienced by those who remain. In suffering this loss, however, we have no way of access to the loss-of-Being as such which the dying man ‘suffers’. The dying of Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just ‘there alongside’. (Being and Time 47: 282)

    What we don't have, then, is phenomenological access to the loss of Being that the dead person has suffered. But that, it seems, is precisely what we would need in order to carry through the favoured analysis. So another response is called for. Heidegger's move is to suggest that although Dasein cannot experience its own death as actual, it can relate towards its own death as a possibility that is always before it—always before it in the sense that Dasein's own death is inevitable. Peculiarly among Dasein's possibilities, the possibility of Dasein's own death must remain only a possibility, since once it becomes actual, Dasein is no longer. Death is thus the “possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all” (Being and Time 53: 307). And it is this awareness of death as an omnipresent possibility that cannot become actual that stops the phenomenological analysis from breaking down. The detail here is crucial. What the failure of the ‘death of others’ strategy indicates is that in each instance death is inextricably tied to some specific individual Dasein. My death is mine in a radical sense; it is the moment at which all my relations to others disappear. Heidegger captures this non-relationality by using the term ‘ownmost’. And it is the idea of death “as that possibility which is one's ownmost” (Being and Time 50: 294) that engages the second transition highlighted above. When I take on board the possibility of my own not-Being, my own being-able-to-Be is brought into proper view. Hence my awareness of my own death as an omnipresent possibility discloses the authentic self (a self that is mine). Moreover, the very same awareness engages the first of the aforementioned transitions too: there is a sense in which the possibility of my not existing encompasses the whole of my existence (Hinman 1978, 201), and my awareness of that possibility illuminates me, qua Dasein, in my totality. Indeed, my own death is revealed to me as inevitable, meaning that Dasein is essentially finite. This explains why Heidegger says that death is disclosed to Dasein as a possibility which is “not to be outstripped” (Being and Time 50: 294).

    Heidegger's account of Dasein's relation towards the possibility of its own not-Being forms the backbone of a reinterpretation of the phenomenon of care—the “formally existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole” (Being and Time 42: 237). Care is now interpreted in terms of Being-towards-death, meaning that Dasein has an internal relation to the nothing (i.e., to not-being; see Vallega-Neu 2003, 21, for an analysis that links this ‘not’ quality to the point made earlier that sets of unactualized possibilities of Being are structural components of Dasein's Being). As one might expect, Heidegger argues that Being-towards-death not only has the three-dimensional character of care, but is realized in authentic and inauthentic modes. Let's begin with the authentic mode. We can think of the aforementioned individualizing effect of Dasein's awareness of the possibility of its own not-Being (an awareness that illuminates its own being-able-to-Be) as an event in which Dasein projects onto a possible way to be, in the technical sense of such possibilities introduced earlier in Being and Time. It is thus an event in which Dasein projects onto a for-the-sake-of-which, a possible way to be. More particularly, given the authentic character of the phenomenon, it is an event in which Dasein projects onto a for-the-sake-of-itself. Heidegger now coins the term anticipation to express the form of projection in which one looks forward to a possible way to be. Given the analysis of death as a possibility, the authentic form of projection in the case of death is anticipation. Indeed Heidegger often uses the term anticipation in a narrow way, simply to mean being aware of death as a possibility. But death is disclosed authentically not only in projection (the first dimension of care) but also in thrownness (the second dimension). The key phenomenon here is the mode of disposedness that Heidegger calls anxiety. Anxiety, at least in the form in which Heidegger is interested, is not directed towards some specific object, but rather opens up the world to me in a certain distinctive way. When I am anxious I am no longer at home in the world. I fail to find the world intelligible. Thus there is an ontological sense (one to do with intelligibility) in which I am not in the world, and the possibility of a world without me (the possibility of my not-Being-in-the-world) is revealed to me. “[The] state-of-mind [mode of disposedness] which can hold open the utter and constant threat to itself arising from Dasein's ownmost individualized Being, is anxiety. In this state-of-mind, Dasein finds itself face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the possible impossibility of its existence” (Being and Time 53: 310). Heidegger has now reinterpreted two of the three dimensions of care, in the light of Dasein's essential finitude. But now what about the third dimension, identified previously as fallen-ness? Since we are presently considering a mode of authentic, i.e., not fallen, Dasein, it seems that fallen-ness cannot be a feature of this realization of care, and indeed that a general reformulation of the care structure is called for in order to allow for authentic Being. This is an issue that will be addressed in the next section. First, though, the inauthentic form of Being-towards-death needs to be brought into view.

    In everyday Being-towards-death, the self that figures in the for-the-sake-of-itself structure is not the authentic mine-self, but rather the inauthentic they-self. In effect, the ‘they’ obscures our awareness of the meaning of our own deaths by de-individualizing death. As Heidegger explains: in “Dasein's public way of interpreting, it is said that ‘one dies’, because everyone else and oneself can talk himself into saying that ‘in no case is it I myself’, for this ‘one’ is the ‘nobody’?” (Being and Time 51: 297). In this way, everyday Dasein flees from the meaning of its own death, in a manner determined by the ‘they’. It is in this evasion in the face of death, interpreted as a further way in which Dasein covers up Being, that everyday Dasein's fallen-ness now manifests itself. To be clear: evasion here does not necessarily mean that I refuse outright to acknowledge that I will someday die. After all, as I might say, ‘everyone dies’. However, the certainty of death achieved by idle talk of this kind is of the wrong sort. One might think of it as established by the conclusion of some sort of inductive inference from observations of many cases of death (the deaths of many others). But “we cannot compute the certainty of death by ascertaining how many cases of death we encounter” (Being and Time 53: 309).

    The certainty brought into view by such an inference is a sort of empirical certainty, one which conceals the apodictic character of the inevitability with which my own death is authentically revealed to me (Being and Time 52: 301). In addition, as we have seen, according to Heidegger, my own death can never be actual for me, so viewed from my perspective, any case of death, i.e., any actual death, cannot be my death. Thus it must be a death that belongs to someone else, or rather, to no one.

    Inauthenticity in relation to death is also realized in thrownness, through fear, and in projection, through expectation. Fear, as a mode of disposedness, can disclose only particular oncoming events in the world. To fear my own death, then, is once again to treat my death as a case of death. This contrasts with anxiety, the form of disposedness which, as we have seen, discloses my death via the awareness of the possibility of a world in which I am not. The projective analogue to the fear-anxiety distinction is expectation-anticipation. A mundane example might help to illustrate the generic idea. When I expect a beer to taste a certain way, I am waiting for an actual event—a case of that distinctive taste in my mouth—to occur. By contrast, when I anticipate the taste of that beer, one might say that, in a cognitive sense, I actively go out to meet the possibility of that taste. In so doing, I make it mine. Expecting death is thus to wait for a case of death, whereas to anticipate death is to own it.

    In reinterpreting care in terms of Being-towards-death, Heidegger illuminates in a new way the taking-as structure that, as we have seen, he takes to be the essence of human existence. Human beings, as Dasein, are essentially finite. And it is this finitude that explains why the phenomenon of taking-as is an essential characteristic of our existence. An infinite Being would understand things directly, without the need for interpretative intercession. We, however, are Dasein, and in our essential finitude we must understand things in a hermeneutically mediated, indirect way, that is, by taking-as (Sheehan 2001).

    What are we to make of Heidegger's analysis of death? Perhaps the most compelling reason for being sceptical can be found in Sartre, who argued that just as death cannot be actual for me, it cannot be one of my possibilities either, at least if the term ‘possibility’ is understood, as Heidegger surely intends it to be, as marking a way of my Being, an intelligible way for me to be. Sartre argues that death is the end of such possibilities. Thus:

    [The] perpetual appearance of chance at the heart of my projects cannot be apprehended as my possibility but, on the contrary, as the nihilation of all my possibilities. A nihilation which itself is no longer a part of my possibilities. Thus death is not my possibility of no longer realizing a presence in the world but rather an always possible nihilation of my possibilities which is outside my possibilities. (Sartre 1956, 537)

    If Sartre is right, there is a significant hole in Heidegger's project, since we would be left without a way of completing the phenomenological analysis of Dasein.

    For further debate over Heidegger's handling of death, see Edwards' (1975, 1976, 2004) unsympathetic broadsides alongside Hinman's (1978) robust response. Carel (2006) develops an analysis that productively connects Heidegger's and Freud's accounts of death, despite Heidegger's open antipathy towards Freud's theories in general.

    2.3.2 Anticipatory Resoluteness

    In some of the most difficult sections of Being and Time, Heidegger now begins to close in on the claim that temporality is the ontological meaning of Dasein's Being as care. The key notion here is that of anticipatory resoluteness, which Heidegger identifies as an (or perhaps the) authentic mode of care. As we have seen, anticipation is the form of Being-towards in which one looks forward to a possible way to be. Bringing resoluteness into view requires further groundwork that begins with Heidegger's reinterpretation of the authentic self in terms of the phenomenon of conscience or Being-guilty. The authentic self is characterized by Being-guilty. This does not mean that authenticity requires actually feeling guilty. Rather, the authentic self is the one who is open to the call of conscience. The inauthentic self, by contrast, is closed to conscience and guilt. It is tempting to think that this is where Heidegger does ethics. However, guilt as an existential structure is not to be understood as some psychological feeling that one gets when one transgresses some moral code. If the term ‘guilt’ is to be heard in an ethical register at all, the phenomenon of Being-guilty will, for Heidegger, be the a priori condition for there to be moral codes, not the psychological result of transgressions of those codes. Having said that, however, it may be misleading to adopt an ethical register here. For Heidegger, conscience is fundamentally a disclosive rather than an ethical phenomenon. What is more important for the project of Being and Time, then, is the claim that the call of conscience interrupts Dasein's everyday fascination with entities by summoning Dasein back to its own finitude and thereby to authenticity. To see how the call of conscience achieves this, we need to unpack Heidegger's reformulation of conscience in terms of anticipatory resoluteness.

    In the by-now familiar pattern, Heidegger argues that conscience (Being-guilty) has the structure of care. However, there's now a modification to the picture, presumably driven by a factor mentioned earlier, namely that authentic Dasein is not fallen. Since conscience is a mode of authentic Dasein, fallen-ness cannot be one of the dimensions of conscience. So the three elements of care are now identified as projection, thrownness and discourse. What is discourse? It clearly has something to do with articulation, and it is tempting to make a connection with language, but in truth this aspect of Heidegger's view is somewhat murky. Heidegger says that the “intelligibility of Being-in-the-world… expresses itself as discourse” (Being and Time 34: 204). But this might mean that intelligibility is essentially a linguistic phenomenon; or it might mean that discourse is intelligibility as put into language. There is even room for the view that discourse is not necessarily a linguistic phenomenon at all, but rather any way in which the referential structure of significance is articulated, either by deeds (e.g., by hammering) or by words (see e.g., Dreyfus 1991, 215; Dreyfus translates the German term Rede not as ‘discourse’ but as ‘telling’, and notes the existence of non-linguistic tellings such as telling the time). But however we settle that point of interpretation, there is something untidy about the status of discourse in relation to fallen-ness and authenticity. Elsewhere in Being and Time, the text strongly suggests that discourse has inauthentic modes, for instance when it is manifested as idle talk; and in yet other sections we find the claim that fallen-ness has an authentic manifestation called a moment-of-vision (e.g., Being and Time 68: 401). Regarding the general relations between discourse, fallen-ness and authenticity, then, the conceptual landscape is not entirely clear. Nevertheless, we can say this: when care is realized authentically, I experience discourse as reticence, as a keeping silent (ignoring the chatter of idle talk) so that I may hear the call of conscience; I experience projection onto guilt as a possible way of Being in which I take responsibility for a lack or a not-Being that is located firmly in my own self (where ‘taking responsibility for’ means recognizing that not-Being is one of my essential structures); and I experience thrownness as anxiety, a mode of disposedness that, as we have seen, leaves me estranged from the familiar field of intelligibility determined by the ‘they’ and thereby discloses the possibility of my own not-Being. So, reticence, guilt and anxiety all have the effect of extracting Dasein from the ontological clutches of the ‘they’. That is why the unitary structure of reticence-guilt-anxiety characterizes the Being of authentic Dasein.

    So now what of resoluteness? ‘Resoluteness’ is perhaps best understood as simply a new term for reticence-guilt-anxiety. But why do we need a new term? There are two possible reasons for thinking that the relabelling exercise here adds value. Each of these indicates a connection between authenticity and freedom. Each corresponds to an authentic realization of one of two possible understandings of what Heidegger means by (human) existence (see above). The first take on resoluteness is emphasized by, for example, Gelven (1989), Mulhall (2005) and Polt (1999). In ordinary parlance, to be resolved is to commit oneself to some project and thus, in a sense, to take ownership of one's life. By succumbing to, but without making any real commitment to, the patterns laid down by the ‘they’ (i.e., by uncritically ‘doing what one does’), inauthentic Dasein avoids owning its own life. Authentic Being (understood as resoluteness) is, then, a freedom from the ‘they’—not, of course, in any sense that involves extracting oneself from one's socio-cultural embeddedness (after all, Being-with is part of Dasein's existential constitution), but rather in a sense that involves individual commitment to (and thus individual ownership of) one of the possible ways to be that one's socio-cultural embeddedness makes available (more on this below). Seen like this, resoluteness correlates with the idea that Dasein's existence is constituted by a series of events in which possible ways to be are chosen.

    At this point we would do well to hesitate. The emphasis on notions such as choice and commitment makes it all too easy to think that resoluteness essentially involves some sort of conscious decision-making. For this reason, Vallega-Neu (2003, 15) reminds us that resoluteness is not a “choice made by a human subject” but rather an “occurrence that determines Dasein”. This occurrence discloses Dasein's essential finitude. It is here that it is profitable to think in terms of anticipatory resoluteness. Heidegger's claim is that resoluteness and anticipation are internally related, such that they ultimately emerge together as the unitary phenomenon of anticipatory resoluteness. Thus, he argues, Being-guilty (the projective aspect of resoluteness) involves Dasein wanting to be open to the call of conscience for as long as Dasein exists, which requires an awareness of the possibility of death. Since resoluteness is an authentic mode of Being, this awareness of the possibility of death must also be authentic. But the authentic awareness of the possibility of death just is anticipation (see above). Thus “only as anticipating does resoluteness become a primordial Being towards Dasein's ownmost potentiality-for-Being” (Being and Time 62: 354). Via the internal connection with anticipation, then, the notion of resoluteness allows Heidegger to rethink the path to Dasein's essential finitude, a finitude that is hidden in fallen-ness, but which, as we have seen, is the condition of possibility for the taking-as structure that is a constitutive aspect of Dasein. Seen this way, resoluteness correlates more neatly with the idea that human existence is essentially a standing out in an openness to, and in an opening of, Being.

    2.3.3 Temporality and Temporalizing

    In a further hermeneutic spiral, Heidegger concludes that temporality is the a priori transcendental condition for there to be care (sense-making, intelligibility, taking-as, Dasein's own distinctive mode of Being). Moreover, it is Dasein's openness to time that ultimately allows Dasein's potential authenticity to be actualized: in authenticity, the constraints and possibilities determined by Dasein's cultural-historical past are grasped by Dasein in the present so that it may project itself into the future in a fully authentic manner, i.e., in a manner which is truest to the mine-self.

    The ontological emphasis that Heidegger places on temporality might usefully be seen as an echo and development of Kant's claim that embeddedness in time is a precondition for things to appear to us the way they do. (According to Kant, embeddedness in time is co-determinative of our experience, along with embeddedness in space. See above for Heidegger's problematic analysis of the relationship between spatiality and temporality.) With the Kantian roots of Heidegger's treatment of time acknowledged, it must be registered immediately that, in Heidegger's hands, the notion of temporality receives a distinctive twist. Heidegger is concerned not with clock-time (an infinite series of self-contained nows laid out in an ordering of past, present and future) or with time as some sort of relativistic phenomenon that would satisfy the physicist. Time thought of in either of these ways is a present-at-hand phenomenon, and that means that it cannot characterize the temporality that is an internal feature of Dasein's existential constitution, the existential temporality that structures intelligibility (taking-as). As he puts it in his History of the Concept of Time (a 1925 lecture course): “Not ‘time is’, but ‘Dasein qua time temporalizes its Being’?” (319). To make sense of this temporalizing, Heidegger introduces the technical term ecstases. Ecstases are phenomena that stand out from an underlying unity. (He later reinterprets ecstases as horizons, in the sense of what limits, surrounds or encloses, and in so doing discloses or makes available.) According to Heidegger, temporality is a unity against which past, present and future stand out as ecstases while remaining essentially interlocked. The importance of this idea is that it frees the phenomenologist from thinking of past, present and future as sequentially ordered groupings of distinct events. Thus:

    Temporalizing does not signify that ecstases come in a ‘succession’. The future is not later than having been, and having-been is not earlier than the Present. Temporality temporalizes itself as a future which makes present in a process of having been. (Being and Time 68: 401)

    What does this mean and why should we find it compelling? Perhaps the easiest way to grasp Heidegger's insight here is to follow him in explicitly reinterpreting the different elements of the structure of care in terms of the three phenomenologically intertwined dimensions of temporality.

    Dasein's existence is characterized phenomenologically by thrown projection plus fallenness/discourse. Heidegger argues that for each of these phenomena, one particular dimension of temporality is primary. Thus projection is disclosed principally as the manner in which Dasein orients itself towards its future. Anticipation, as authentic projection, therefore becomes the predominantly futural aspect of (what we can now call) authentic temporalizing, whereas expectation, as inauthentic projection, occupies the same role for inauthentic temporalizing. However, since temporality is at root a unitary structure, thrownness, projection, falling and discourse must each have a multi-faceted temporality. Anticipation, for example, requires that Dasein acknowledge the unavoidable way in which its past is constitutive of who it is, precisely because anticipation demands of Dasein that it project itself resolutely onto (i.e., come to make its own) one of the various options established by its cultural-historical embeddedness. And anticipation has a present-related aspect too: in a process that Heidegger calls a moment of vision, Dasein, in anticipating its own death, pulls away from they-self-dominated distractions of the present.

    Structurally similar analyses are given for the other elements of the care structure. Here is not the place to pursue the details but, at the most general level, thrownness is identified predominantly, although not exclusively, as the manner in which Dasein collects up its past (finding itself in relation to the pre-structured field of intelligibility into which it has been enculturated), while fallen-ness and discourse are identified predominantly, although not exclusively, as present-oriented (e.g., in the case of fallen-ness, through curiosity as a search for novelty in which Dasein is locked into the distractions of the present and devalues the past and the projective future). A final feature of Heidegger's intricate analysis concerns the way in which authentic and inauthentic temporalizing are understood as prioritizing different dimensions of temporality. Heidegger argues that because future-directed anticipation is intertwined with projection onto death as a possibility (thereby enabling the disclosure of Dasein's all-important finitude), the “primary phenomenon of primordial and authentic temporality is the future” (Being and Time 65: 378), whereas inauthentic temporalizing (through structures such as ‘they’-determined curiosity) prioritizes the present.

    What the foregoing summary of Heidegger's account of temporality makes clear is that each event of intelligibility that makes up a ‘moment’ in Dasein's existence must be unpacked using all three temporal ecstases. Each such event is constituted by thrownness (past), projection (future) and falling/discourse (present). In a sense, then, each such event transcends (goes beyond) itself as a momentary episode of Being by, in the relevant sense, co-realizing a past and a future along with a present. This explains why “the future is not later than having been, and having-been is not earlier than the Present”. In the sense that matters, then, Dasein is always a combination of the futural, the historical and the present. And since futurality, historicality and presence, understood in terms of projection, thrownness and fallenness/discourse, form the structural dimensions of each event of intelligibility, it is Dasein's essential temporality (or temporalizing) that provides the a priori transcendental condition for there to be care (the sense-making that constitutes Dasein's own distinctive mode of Being).

    (Some worries about Heidegger's analysis of time will be explored below. For a view which is influenced by, and contains an original interpretation of, Heidegger on time, see Stiegler's 1996/2003 analysis according to which human temporality is constituted by technology, including alphabetical writing, as a form of memory.)

    2.3.4 Historicality and Historizing

    In the final major development of his analysis of temporality, Heidegger identifies a phenomenon that he calls Dasein's historicality, understood as the a priori condition on the basis of which past events and things may have significance for us. The analysis begins with an observation that Being-towards-death is only one aspect of Dasein's finitude.

    [Death] is only the ‘end’ of Dasein; and, taken formally, it is just one of the ends by which Dasein's totality is closed round. The other ‘end’, however, is the ‘beginning’, the ‘birth’. Only that entity which is ‘between’ birth and death presents the whole which we have been seeking… Dasein has [so far] been our theme only in the way in which it exists ‘facing forward’, as it were, leaving ‘behind’ all that has been. Not only has Being-towards-the-beginning remained unnoticed; but so too, and above all, has the way in which Dasein stretches along between birth and death. (Being and Time 72: 425).

    Here Dasein's beginning (its ‘birth’) is to be interpreted not as a biological event, but as a moment of enculturation, following which the a priori structure underlying intelligibility (thrown projection plus falling/discourse) applies. Dasein's beginning is thus a moment at which a biological human being has become embedded within a pre-existing world, a culturally determined field of intelligibility into which it is thrown and onto which it projects itself. Such worlds are now to be reinterpreted historically as Dasein's heritage. Echoing the way in which past, present and future were disclosed as intertwined in the analysis of temporality, Dasein's historicality has the effect of bringing the past (its heritage) alive in the present as a set of opportunities for future action. In the original German, Heidegger calls this phenomenon Wiederholung, which Macquarrie and Robinson translate as repetition. Although this is an accurate translation of the German term, there is a way of hearing the word ‘repetition’ that is misleading with regard to Heidegger's usage. The idea here is not that I can do nothing other than repeat the actions of my cultural ancestors, but rather that, in authentic mode, I may appropriate those past actions (own them, make them mine) as a set of general models or heroic templates onto which I may creatively project myself. Thus, retrieving may be a more appropriate translation. This notion of retrieving characterizes the “specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along”, what Heidegger now calls Dasein's historizing. Historizing is an a priori structure of Dasein's Being as care that constitutes a stretching along between Dasein's birth as the entity that takes-as and death as its end, between enculturation and finitude. “Factical Dasein exists as born; and, as born, it is already dying, in the sense of Being-towards-death… birth and death are ‘connected’ in a manner characteristic of Dasein. As care, Dasein is the ‘between’?”(Being and Time 73: 426–7).

    It is debatable whether the idea of creative appropriation does enough to allay the suspicion that the concept of heritage introduces a threat to our individual freedom (in an ordinary sense of freedom) by way of some sort of social determinism. For example, since historicality is an aspect of Dasein's existential constitution, it is arguable that Heidegger effectively rules out the possibility that I might reinvent myself in an entirely original way. Moreover, Polt (1999) draws our attention to a stinging passage from earlier in Being and Time which might be taken to suggest that any attempt to take on board elements of cultures other than one's own should be judged an inauthentic practice indicative of fallen-ness. Thus:

    the opinion may now arise that understanding the most alien cultures and ‘synthesizing’ them with one's own may lead to Dasein's becoming for the first time thoroughly and genuinely enlightened about itself. Versatile curiosity and restlessly ‘knowing it all’ masquerade as a universal understanding of Dasein. (Being and Time 38: 178)

    This sets the stage for Heidegger's own final elucidation of human freedom. According to Heidegger, I am genuinely free precisely when I recognize that I am a finite being with a heritage and when I achieve an authentic relationship with that heritage through the creative appropriation of it. As he explains:

    Once one has grasped the finitude of one's existence, it snatches one back from the endless multiplicity of possibilities which offer themselves as closest to one—those of comfortableness, shirking and taking things lightly—and brings Dasein to the simplicity of its fate. This is how we designate Dasein's primordial historizing, which lies in authentic resoluteness and in which Dasein hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility which it has inherited and yet has chosen” (Being and Time 74: 435)

    This phenomenon, a final reinterpretation of the notion of resoluteness, is what Heidegger calls primordial historizing or fate. And crucially, historizing is not merely a structure that is partly constitutive of individual authentic Dasein. Heidegger also points out the shared primordial historizing of a community, what he calls its destiny.

    When the contemporary reader of Being and Time encounters the concepts of heritage, fate and destiny, and places them not only in the context of the political climate of mid-to-late 1920s Germany, but also alongside Heidegger's later membership of the Nazi party, it is hard not to hear dark undertones of cultural chauvinism and racial prejudice. This worry becomes acute when one considers the way in which these concepts figure in passages such as the following, from the inaugural rectoral address that Heidegger gave at Freiburg University in 1933.

    The third bond [knowledge service, in addition to labour service and military service] is the one that binds the [German] students to the spiritual mission of the German Volk. This Volk is playing an active role in shaping its own fate by placing its history into the openness of the overpowering might of all the world-shaping forces of human existence and by struggling anew to secure its spiritual world… The three bonds—through the Volk to the destiny of the state in its spiritual mission—are equally original aspects of the German essence. (The Self-Assertion of the German University, 35–6)

    The issue of Heidegger's later relationship with Nazi politics and ideology will be discussed briefly below. For the moment, however, it is worth saying that the temptation to offer extreme social determinist or Nazi reconstructions of Being and Time is far from irresistible. It is at least arguable that Heidegger's claim at this point in his work is ‘merely’ that it is only on the basis of fate—an honest and explicit retrieval of my own culture which allows me to recognize and accept the manifold ways in which I am shaped by that culture—that I can open up a genuine path to personal reconstruction or to the possibly enriching structures that other cultures have to offer. And that does not sound nearly so pernicious.


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    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:37 am

    How is that God-Off coming?? Everything ends up being some sort of a struggle for Fame, Fortune, Power, and Pleasure -- doesn't it?? Does Humanity Want a God or Not?? Does Humanity Wish to be Told What to Do?? Did Humanity Tell God to Go to Hell in Antiquity?? Is Humanity in the Final Stages of Rejecting God -- One Last Time?? Perhaps There Will be Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth When Humanity Sees What Those Who Were Loyal to God Got. Perhaps We Are Rebels Without a Clue. Perhaps a Rude Awakening Awaits Us. More Martin Heidegger. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

    2.4 Realism and Relativism in Being and Time

    One might think that an unpalatable relativism is entailed by any view which emphasizes that understanding is never preconception-free. But that would be too quick. Of course, if authentic Dasein were individualized in the sense of being a self-sufficient Cartesian subject, then perhaps an extreme form of subjectivist relativism would indeed beckon. Fortunately, however, authentic Dasein isn't a Cartesian subject, in part because it has a transformed and not a severed relationship with the ‘they’. This reconnects us with our earlier remark that the philosophical framework advocated within Being and Time appears to mandate a kind of cultural relativism. This seems right, but it is important to try to understand precisely what sort of cultural relativism is on offer. Here is one interpretation.

    Although worlds (networks of involvements, what Heidegger sometimes calls Reality) are culturally relative phenomena, Heidegger occasionally seems to suggest that nature, as it is in itself, is not. Thus, on the one hand, nature may be discovered as ready-to-hand equipment: the “wood is a forest of timber, the mountain is a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails’?” (Being and Time 15: 100). Under these circumstances, nature is revealed in certain culturally specific forms determined by our socially conditioned patterns of skilled practical activity. On the other hand, when nature is discovered as present-at-hand, by say science, its intelligibility has an essentially cross-cultural character. Indeed, Heidegger often seems to hold the largely commonsense view that there are culture-independent causal properties of nature which explain why it is that you can make missiles out of rocks or branches, but not out of air or water. Science can tell us both what those causal properties are, and how the underlying causal processes work. Such properties and processes are what Heidegger calls the Real, and he comments: “[the] fact that Reality [intelligibility] is ontologically grounded in the Being of Dasein does not signify that only when Dasein exists and as long as Dasein exists can the Real [e.g., nature as revealed by science] be as that which in itself it is” (Being and Time, 43: 255).

    If the picture just sketched is a productive way to understand Heidegger, then, perhaps surprisingly, his position might best be thought of as a mild kind of scientific realism. For, on this interpretation, one of Dasein's cultural practices, the practice of science, has the special quality of revealing natural entities as they are in themselves, that is, independently of Dasein's culturally conditioned uses and articulations of them. Crucially, however, this sort of scientific realism maintains ample conceptual room for Sheehan's well-observed point that, for Heidegger, at every stage of his thinking, “there is no ‘is’ to things without a taking-as… no sense that is independent of human being… Before homo sapiens evolved, there was no ‘being’ on earth… because ‘being’ for Heidegger does not mean ‘in existence’?” (Sheehan 2001). Indeed, Being concerns sense-making (intelligibility), and the different ways in which entities make sense to us, including as present-at-hand, are dependent on the fact that we are Dasein, creatures with a particular mode of Being. So while natural entities do not require the existence of Dasein in order just to occur (in an ordinary, straightforward sense of ‘occur’), they do require Dasein in order to be intelligible at all, including as entities that just occur. Understood properly, then, the following two claims that Heidegger makes are entirely consistent with each other. First: “Being (not entities) is dependent upon the understanding of Being; that is to say, Reality (not the Real) is dependent upon care”. Secondly: “[O]nly as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), ‘is there’ Being. When Dasein does not exist, ‘independence’ ‘is’ not either, nor ‘is’ the ‘in-itself’?”. (Both quotations from Being and Time, 43: 255.)

    How does all this relate to Heidegger's account of truth? Answering this question adds a new dimension to the pivotal phenomenon of revealing. Heidegger points out that the philosophical tradition standardly conceives of truth as attaching to propositions, and as involving some sort of correspondence between propositions and states of affairs. But whereas for the tradition (as Heidegger characterizes it), propositional truth as correspondence exhausts the phenomenon of truth, for Heidegger, it is merely the particular manifestation of truth that is operative in those domains, such as science, that concern themselves with the Real. According to Heidegger, propositional truth as correspondence is made possible by a more fundamental phenomenon that he dubs ‘original truth’. Heidegger's key thought here is that before (in a conceptual sense of ‘before’) there can be any question of correspondence between propositions and states of affairs, there needs to be in place a field of intelligibility (Reality, a world), a sense-making structure within which entities may be found. Unconcealing is the Dasein-involving process that establishes this prior field of intelligibility. This is the domain of original truth—what we might call truth as revealing or truth as unconcealing. Original truth cannot be reduced to propositional truth as correspondence, because the former is an a priori, transcendental condition for the latter. Of course, since Dasein is the source of intelligibility, truth as unconcealing is possible only because there is Dasein, which means that without Dasein there would be no truth—including propositional truth as correspondence. But it is reasonable to hear this seemingly relativistic consequence as a further modulation of the point (see above) that entities require Dasein in order to be intelligible at all, including, now, as entities that are capable of entering into states of affairs that may correspond to propositions.

    Heidegger's analysis of truth also countenances a third manifestation of the phenomenon, one that is perhaps best characterized as being located between original truth and propositional truth. This intermediate phenomenon is what might be called Heidegger's instrumental notion of truth (Dahlstrom 2001, Overgaard 2002). As we saw earlier, for Heidegger, the referential structure of significance may be articulated not only by words but by skilled practical activity (e.g., hammering) in which items of equipment are used in culturally appropriate ways. By Heidegger's lights, such equipmental activity counts as a manifestation of unconcealing and thus as the realization of a species of truth. This fact further threatens the idea that truth attaches only to propositions, although some uses of language may themselves be analysed as realizing the instrumental form of truth (e.g., when I exclaim that ‘this hammer is too heavy for the job’, rather than assert that it has the objective property of weighing 2.5 kilos; Overgaard 2002, 77; cf. Being and Time 33:199–200).

    It is at this point that an ongoing dispute in Heidegger scholarship comes to the fore. It has been argued (e.g., Dahlstrom 2001, Overgaard 2002) that a number of prominent readings of Heidegger (e.g., Okrent 1988, Dreyfus 1991) place such heavy philosophical emphasis on Dasein as a site of skilled practical activity that they end up simply identifying Dasein's understanding of Being with skilled practical activity. Because of this shared tendency, such readings are often grouped together as advocating a pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger. According to its critics, the inadequacy of the pragmatist interpretation is exposed once it is applied to Heidegger's account of truth. For although the pragmatist interpretation correctly recognizes that, for Heidegger, propositional correspondence is not the most fundamental phenomenon of truth, it takes the fundamental variety to be exhausted by Dasein's sense-making skilled practical activity. But (the critic points out) this is to ignore the fact that even though instrumental truth is more basic than traditional propositional truth, nevertheless it too depends on a prior field of significance (one that determines the correct and incorrect uses of equipment) and thus on the phenomenon of original truth. Put another way, the pragmatist interpretation falls short because it fails to distinguish original truth from instrumental truth. It is worth commenting here that not every so-called pragmatist reading is on a par with respect to this issue. For example, Dreyfus (2008) separates out (what he calls) background coping (Dasein's familiarity with, and knowledge of how to navigate the meaningful structures of, its world) from (what he calls) skilled or absorbed coping (Dasein's skilled practical activity), and argues that, for Heidegger, the former is ontologically more basic than the latter. If original truth is manifested in background coping, and instrumental truth in skilled coping, this disrupts the thought that the two notions of truth are being run together (for discussion, see Overgaard 2002 85–6, note 17).

    How should one respond to Heidegger's analysis of truth? One objection is that original truth ultimately fails to qualify as a form of truth at all. As Tugendhat (1967) observes, it is a plausible condition on the acceptability of any proposed account of truth that it accommodate a distinction between what is asserted or intended and how things are in themselves. It is clear that propositional truth as correspondence satisfies this condition, and notice that (if we squint a little) so too does instrumental truth, since despite my intentions, I can fail, in my actions, to use the hammer in ways that successfully articulate its place in the relevant equipmental network. However, as Tugendhat argues, it is genuinely hard to see how original truth as unconcealing could possibly support a distinction between what is asserted or intended and how things are in themselves. After all, unconcealing is, in part, the process through which entities are made intelligible to Dasein in such a way that the distinction in question can apply. Thus, Tugendhat concludes, although unconcealing may be a genuine phenomenon that constitutes a transcendental condition for there to be truth, it is not itself a species of truth. (For discussions of Tugendhat's critique, see Dahlstrom 2001, Overgaard 2002.)

    Whether or not unconcealing ought to count as a species of truth, it is arguable that the place which it (along with its partner structure, Reality) occupies in the Heideggerian framework must ultimately threaten even the mild kind of scientific realism that we have been attributing, somewhat tentatively, to Heidegger. The tension comes into view just at the point where unconcealing is reinterpreted in terms of Dasein's essential historicality. Because intelligibility, and thus unconcealing, has an essentially historical character, it is difficult to resist the thought that the propositional and instrumental truths generated out of some specific field of intelligibility will be relativistically tied to a particular culture in a particular time period. Moreover, at one point, Heidegger suggests that even truth as revealed by science is itself subject to this kind of relativistic constraint. Thus he says that “every factical science is always manifestly in the grip of historizing” (Being and Time 76: 444). The implication is that, for Heidegger, one cannot straightforwardly subject the truth of one age to the standards of another, which means, for example, that contemporary chemistry and alchemical chemistry might both be true (cf. Dreyfus 1990, 261–2). But even if this more radical position is ultimately Heidegger's, there remains space here for some form of realism. Given the transcendental relation that, according to Heidegger, obtains between fields of intelligibility and science, the view on offer might still support a historically conditioned form of Kantian empirical realism with respect to science. Nevertheless it must, it seems, reject the full-on scientific realist commitment to the idea that the history of science is regulated by progress towards some final and unassailable set of scientifically established truths about nature, by a journey towards, as it were, God's science (Haugeland 2007).

    The realist waters in which our preliminary interpretation has been swimming are muddied even further by another aspect of Dasein's essential historicality. Officially, it is seemingly not supposed to be a consequence of that historicality that we cannot discover universal features of ourselves. The evidence for this is that there are many conclusions reached in Being and Time that putatively apply to all Dasein, for example that Dasein's everyday experience is characterized by the structural domains of readiness-to-hand, un-readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand (for additional evidence, see Polt 1999 92–4). Moreover, Heidegger isn't saying that any route to understanding is as good as any other. For example, he prioritizes authenticity as the road to an answer to the question of the meaning of Being. Thus:

    the idea of existence, which guides us as that which we see in advance, has been made definite [transformed from pre-ontological to ontological, from implicit and vague to explicitly articulated] by the clarification of our ownmost potentiality-for-Being. (Being and Time 63: 358)

    Still, if this priority claim and the features shared by all Dasein really are supposed to be ahistorical, universal conditions (applicable everywhere throughout history), we are seemingly owed an account of just how such conditions are even possible, given Dasein's essential historicality.

    Finally, one might wonder whether the ‘realist Heidegger’ can live with the account of temporality given in Being and Time. If temporality is the a priori condition for us to encounter entities as equipment, and if, in the relevant sense, the unfolding of time coincides with the unfolding of Dasein (Dasein, as temporality, temporalizes; see above), then equipmental entities will be intelligible to us only in (what we might call) Dasein-time, the time that we ourselves are. Now, we have seen previously that nature is often encountered as equipment, which means that natural equipment will be intelligible to us only in Dasein-time. But what about nature in a non-equipmental form—nature (as one might surely be tempted to say) as it is in itself? One might try to argue that those encounters with nature that reveal nature as it is in itself are precisely those encounters that reveal nature as present-at-hand, and that to reveal nature as present-at-hand is, in part, to reveal nature within present-at-hand time (e.g., clock time), a time which is, in the relevant sense, independent of Dasein. Unfortunately there's a snag with this story (and thus for the attempt to see Heidegger as a realist). Heidegger claims that presence-at-hand (as revealed by theoretical reflection) is subject to the same Dasein-dependent temporality as readiness-to-hand:

    …if Dasein's Being is completely grounded in temporality, then temporality must make possible Being-in-the-world and therewith Dasein's transcendence; this transcendence in turn provides the support for concernful Being alongside entities within-the-world, whether this Being is theoretical or practical. (Being and Time 69: 415, my emphasis)

    But now if theoretical investigations reveal nature in present-at-hand time, and if in the switching over from the practical use of equipment to the theoretical investigation of objects, time remains the same Dasein-time, then present-at-hand time is Dasein-dependent too. Given this, it seems that the only way we can give any sense to the idea of nature as it is in itself is to conceive of such nature as being outside of time. Interestingly, in the History of the Concept of Time (a text based on Heidegger's notes for a 1925 lecture course and often thought of as a draft of Being and Time), Heidegger seems to embrace this very option, arguing that nature is within time only when it is encountered in Dasein's world, and concluding that nature as it is in itself is entirely atemporal. It is worth noting the somewhat Kantian implication of this conclusion: if all understanding is grounded in temporality, then the atemporality of nature as it is in itself would mean that, for Heidegger, we cannot understand natural things as they really are in themselves (cf. Dostal 1993).

    3. The Later Philosophy

    3.1 The Turn and the Contributions to Philosophy

    After Being and Time there is a shift in Heidegger's thinking that he himself christened ‘the turn’ (die Kehre). In a 1947 piece, in which Heidegger distances his views from Sartre's existentialism, he links the turn to his own failure to produce the missing divisions of Being and Time.

    The adequate execution and completion of this other thinking that abandons subjectivity is surely made more difficult by the fact that in the publication of Being and Time the third division of the first part, “Time and Being,” was held back… Here everything is reversed. The division in question was held back because everything failed in the adequate saying of this turning and did not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics… This turning is not a change of standpoint from Being and Time, but in it the thinking that was sought first arrives at the location of that dimension out of which Being and Time is experienced, that is to say, experienced from the fundamental experience of the oblivion of Being. (Letter on Humanism, pp. 231–2)

    Notice that while, in the turning, “everything is reversed”, nevertheless it is “not a change of standpoint from Being and Time”, so what we should expect from the later philosophy is a pattern of significant discontinuities with Being and Time, interpretable from within a basic project and a set of concerns familiar from that earlier text. The quotation from the Letter on Humanism provides some clues about what to look for. Clearly we need to understand what is meant by the abandonment of subjectivity, what kind of barrier is erected by the language of metaphysics, and what is involved in the oblivion of Being. The second and third of these issues will be clarified later. The first bears immediate comment.

    At root Heidegger's later philosophy shares the deep concerns of Being and Time, in that it is driven by the same preoccupation with Being and our relationship with it that propelled the earlier work. In a fundamental sense, then, the question of Being remains the question. However, Being and Time addresses the question of Being via an investigation of Dasein, the kind of being whose Being is an issue for it. As we have seen, this investigation takes the form of a transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology that begins with ordinary human experience. It is arguable that, in at least one important sense, it is this philosophical methodology that the later Heidegger is rejecting when he talks of his abandonment of subjectivity. Of course, as conceptualized in Being and Time, Dasein is not a Cartesian subject, so the abandonment of subjectivity is not as simple as a shift of attention away from Dasein and towards some other route to Being. Nevertheless the later Heidegger does seem to think that his earlier focus on Dasein bears the stain of a subjectivity that ultimately blocks the path to an understanding of Being. This is not to say that the later thinking turns away altogether from the project of transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology. The project of illuminating the a priori conditions on the basis of which entities show up as intelligible to us is still at the heart of things. What the later thinking involves is a reorientation of the basic project so that, as we shall see, the point of departure is no longer a detailed description of ordinary human experience. (For an analysis of ‘the turn’ that identifies a number of different senses of the term at work in Heidegger's thinking, and which in some ways departs from the brief treatment given here, see Sheehan 2010.)

    A further difficulty in getting to grips with Heidegger's later philosophy is that, unlike the early thought, which is heavily centred on a single text, the later thought is distributed over a large number and range of works, including books, lecture courses, occasional addresses, and presentations given to non-academic audiences. So one needs a navigational strategy. The strategy adopted here will be to view the later philosophy through the lens of Heidegger's strange and perplexing study from the 1930s called Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), (Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)), henceforth referred to as the Contributions. (For a book-length introduction to the Contributions, see Vallega-Neu 2003. For a useful collection of papers, see Scott et al. 2001.) The key themes that shape the later philosophy will be identified in the Contributions, but those themes will be explored in a way that draws on, and make connections with, a selection of other works. From this partial expedition, the general pattern of Heidegger's post-turn thinking, although not every aspect of it, will emerge.

    The Contributions was written between 1936 and 1938. Intriguingly, Heidegger asked for the work not to appear in print until after the publication of all his lecture courses, and although his demand wasn't quite heeded by the editors of his collected works, the Contributions was not published in German until 1989 and not in English until 1999. To court a perhaps overly dramatic telling of Heideggerian history, if one puts a lot of weight on Heidegger's view of when the Contributions should have been published, one might conceivably think of those later writings that, in terms of when they were produced, followed the Contributions as something like the training material needed to understand the earlier work (see e.g., Polt 1999 140). In any case, during his lifetime, Heidegger showed the Contributions to no more than a few close colleagues. The excitement with which the eventual publication of the text was greeted by Heidegger's readers was partly down to the fact that one of the chosen few granted a sneak preview was the influential interpreter of Heidegger, Otto Pöggeler, who then proceeded to give it some rather extraordinary advance publicity, describing it as the work in which Heidegger's genuine and complete thinking is captured (see e.g., Pöggeler 1963/1987).

    Whether or not the hype surrounding the Contributions was justified remains a debated question among Heidegger scholars (see e.g., Sheehan 2001, Thomson 2003). What is clear, however, is that reading the work is occasionally a bewildering experience. Rather than a series of systematic hermeneutic spirals in the manner of Being and Time, the Contributions is organised as something like a musical fugue, that is, as a suite of overlapping developments of a single main theme (Schoenbohm 2001; Thomson 2003). And while the structure of the Contributions is challenging enough, the language in which it is written can appear to be wilfully obscurantist. Polt (1999, 140) comments that “the most important sections of the text can appear to be written in pure Heideggerese… [as Heidegger] exploits the sounds and senses of German in order to create an idiosyncratic symphony of meanings”. Less charitably, Sheehan (2001) describes it as “a needlessly difficult text, obsessively repetitious, badly in need of an editor”, while Schurmann (1992, 313, quoted by Thomson 2003, 57) complains that “at times one may think one is reading a piece of Heideggerian plagiarism, so encumbered is it with ellipses and assertoric monoliths”. Arguably, the style in which the Contributions is written is ‘merely’ the most extreme example (perhaps, the purest example) of a ‘poetic’ style that Heidegger adopts pretty much throughout the later philosophy. This stylistic aspect of the turn is an issue discussed below. For the moment, however, it is worth noting that, in the stylistic transition achieved in the Contributions, Heidegger's writing finally leaves behind all vestiges of the idea that Being can be represented accurately using some pseudo-scientific philosophical language. The goal, instead, is to respond appropriately to Being in language, to forge a pathway to another kind of thinking—Being-historical thinking (for discussion of this term, see Vallega 2001, von Herrmann 2001, Vallega-Neu 2003, 28-9). In its attempt to achieve this, the Contributions may be viewed as setting the agenda for Heidegger's post-turn thought. So what are the central themes that appear in the Contributions and which then resonate throughout the later works? Four stand out: Being as appropriation (an idea which, as we shall see, is bound up with a reinterpretation of the notion of dwelling that, in terms of explicit textual development, takes place largely outwith the text of the Contributions itself); technology (or machination); safeguarding (or sheltering); and the gods. Each of these themes will now be explored.

    3.2 Appropriation, Dwelling and the Fourfold

    In Being and Time, the most fundamental a priori transcendental condition for there to be Dasein's distinctive mode of Being which is identified is temporality. In the later philosophy, the ontological focus ultimately shifts to the claim that human Being consists most fundamentally in dwelling. This shift of attention emerges out of a subtle reformulation of the question of Being itself, a reformulation performed in the Contributions. The question now becomes not ‘What is the meaning of Being?’ but rather ‘How does Being essentially unfold?’. This reformulation means (in a way that should become clearer in a moment) that we are now asking the question of Being not from the perspective of Dasein, but from the perspective of Being (see above on abandoning subjectivity). But it also suggests that Being needs to be understood as fundamentally a timebound, historical process. As Heidegger puts it: “A being is: Be-ing holds sway [unfolds]”. (Contributions 10: 22. Quotations from the Contributions will be given in the form ‘section: page number’ where ‘page number’ refers to the Emad and Maly English translation. The hyphenated term ‘be-ing’ is adopted by Emad and Maly, in order to respect the fact that, in the Contributions, Heidegger substitutes the archaic spelling ‘Seyn’ for the contemporary ‘Sein’ as a way of distancing himself further from the traditional language of metaphysics. This translational convention, which has not become standard practice in the secondary literature, will not be adopted here, except in quotations from the Emad and Maly translation.)

    Further aspects of the essential unfolding of Being are revealed by what is perhaps the key move in the Contributions—a rethinking of Being in terms of the notion of Ereignis, a term translated variously as ‘event’ (most closely reflecting its ordinary German usage), ‘appropriation’, ‘appropriating event’, ‘event of appropriation’ or ‘enowning’. (For an analysis which tracks Heidegger's use of the term Ereignis at various stages of his thought, see Vallega-Neu 2010). The history of Being is now conceived as a series of appropriating events in which the different dimensions of human sense-making—the religious, political, philosophical (and so on) dimensions that define the culturally conditioned epochs of human history—are transformed. Each such transformation is a revolution in human patterns of intelligibility, so what is appropriated in the event is Dasein and thus the human capacity for taking-as (see e.g., Contributions 271: 343). Once appropriated in this way, Dasein operates according to a specific set of established sense-making practices and structures. In a Kuhnian register, one might think of this as the normal sense-making that follows a paradigm-shift. But now what is it that does the appropriating? Heidegger's answer to this question is Being. Thus Heidegger writes of the “En-ownment [appropriation] of Da-sein by be-ing” (Contributions 141: 184) and of “man as owned by be-ing” (Contributions 141: 185). Indeed, this appropriation of Dasein by Being is what enables Being to unfold: “Be-ing needs man in order to hold sway [unfold]” (Contributions 133: 177). The claim that Being appropriates Dasein might seem to invite the adoption of an ethereal voice and a far-off look in the eye, but any such temptation towards mysticism of this kind really ought to be resisted. The mystical reading seems to depend on a view according to which “be-ing holds sway ‘for itself’?” and Dasein “takes up the relating to be-ing”, such that Being is “something over-against” Dasein (Contributions 135: 179). But Heidegger argues that this relational view would be ‘misleading’. That said, to make proper inroads into the mystical reading, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the notion of dwelling.

    As we have seen, the term ‘dwelling’ appears in Being and Time, where it is used to capture the distinctive manner in which Dasein is in the world. The term continues to play this role in the later philosophy, but, in texts such as Building Dwelling, Thinking (1954), it is reinterpreted and made philosophically central to our understanding of Being. This reinterpretation of, and the new emphasis on, dwelling is bound up with the idea from the Contributions of Being as appropriation. To explain: Where one dwells is where one is at home, where one has a place. This sense of place is what grounds Heidegger's existential notion of spatiality, as developed in the later philosophy (see Malpas 2006). In dwelling, then, Dasein is located within a set of sense-making practices and structures with which it is familiar. This way of unravelling the phenomenon of dwelling enables us to see more clearly—and more concretely—what is meant by the idea of Being as event/appropriation. Being is an event in that it takes (appropriates) place (where one is at home, one's sense-making practices and structures) (cf. Polt 1999 148). In other words, Being appropriates Dasein in that, in its unfolding, it essentially happens in and to Dasein's patterns of sense-making. This way of thinking about the process of appropriation does rather less to invite obscurantist mysticism.

    The reinterpretation of dwelling in terms of Being as appropriation is ultimately intertwined with a closely related reinterpretation of what is meant by a world. One can see the latter development in a pregnant passage from Heidegger's 1954 piece, Building Dwelling Thinking.

    [H]uman being consists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the earth.

    But ‘on the earth’ already means ‘under the sky.’ Both of these also mean ‘remaining before the divinities’ and include a ‘belonging to men's being with one another.’ By a primal oneness the four—earth and sky, divinities and mortals—belong together in one. (351)

    So, human beings dwell in that they stay (are at home) on the earth, under the sky, before the divinities, and among the mortals (that is, with one another as mortals). It is important for Heidegger that these dimensions of dwelling are conceived not as independent structures but as (to use a piece of terminology from Being and Time) ecstases—phenomena that stand out from an underlying unity. That underlying unity of earth, sky, divinities and mortals—the ‘simple oneness of the four’ as Heidegger puts it in Building Dwelling Thinking (351)—is what he calls the fourfold. The fourfold is the transformed notion of world that applies within the later work (see e.g., The Thing; for an analysis of the fourfold that concentrates on its role as a thinking of things, see Mitchell 2010). It is possible to glimpse the character of the world-as-fourfold by noting that whereas the world as understood through Being and Time is a culturally conditioned structure distinct from nature, the world-as-fourfold appears to be an integrated combination of nature (earth and sky) and culture (divinities and mortals). (Two remarks: First, it may not be obvious why the divinities count as part of culture. This will be explained in a moment. Secondly, the later Heidegger sometimes continues to employ the sense of world that he established in Being and Time, which is why it is useful to signal the new usage as the transformed notion of world, or as the world-as-fourfold.)

    There is something useful, as a preliminary move, about interpreting the fourfold as a combination of nature and culture, but it is an idea that must be handled with care. For one thing, if what is meant by nature is the material world and its phenomena as understood by natural science, then Heidegger's account of the fourfold tells against any straightforward identification of earth and sky with nature. Why this is becomes clear once one sees how Heidegger describes the earth and the sky in Building Dwelling Thinking. “Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant and animal… The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year's seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether” (351). What Heidegger's language here indicates is that the earth-as-dwelt-on and the sky-as-dwelt-under are spaces for a mode of habitation by human beings that one might call poetic rather than scientific. So, the nature of dwelling is the nature of the poet. In dwelling we inhabit the poetic (for discussion, see e.g., Young 2002, 99–100).

    How does this idea of dwelling as poetic habitation work for the cultural aspects of the fourfold—dwelling among the mortals and before the divinities? To dwell among the mortals is to be “capable of death as death” (Building Dwelling Thinking 352). In the language of Being and Time, this would be to enter into an authentic and thus non-evasive relationship with death (see above). However, as we shall see in a moment, the later Heidegger has a different account of the nothing and thus of the internal relation with the nothing that death involves. It is this reworking of the idea of the nothing that ultimately marks out a newly conceived non-evasive relationship with death as an aspect of dwelling, understood in terms of poetic habitation. The notion of dwelling before the divinities also turns on the development of a theme established in Being and Time, namely that intelligibility is itself cultural and historical in character. More specifically, according to Being and Time, the a priori transcendental conditions for intelligibility are to be interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of heritage, that is as culturally determined structures that form pre-existing fields of intelligibility into which individual human beings are thrown and onto which they project themselves. A key aspect of this idea is that there exist historically important individuals who constitute heroic cultural templates onto which I may now creatively project myself. In the later philosophy these heroic figures are reborn poetically as the divinities of the fourfold, as “the ones to come” (Contributions 248–52: 277–81), and as the “beckoning messengers of the godhead” (Building Dwelling Thinking 351). When Heidegger famously announces that only a god can save us (Only a God can Save Us), or that “the last god is not the end but the other beginning of immeasurable possibilities for our history” (Contributions 256: 289), he has in mind not a religious intervention in an ‘ordinary’ sense of the divine, but rather a transformational event in which a secularized sense of the sacred—a sensitivity to the fact that beings are granted to us in the essential unfolding of Being—is restored (more on this below).

    The notion of dwelling as poetic habitation opens up a path to what Heidegger calls ‘the mystery’ (not to be confused with the kind of obscurantist mysticism discussed above). Even though the world always opens up as meaningful in a particular way to any individual human being as a result of the specific heritage into which he or she has been enculturated, there are of course a vast number of alternative fields of intelligibility ‘out there’ that would be available to each of us, if only we could gain access to them by becoming simultaneously embedded in different heritages. But Heidegger's account of human existence means that any such parallel embedding is ruled out, so the plenitude of alternative fields of intelligibility must remain a mystery to us. In Heidegger's later philosophy this mysterious region of Being emerges as a structure that, although not illuminated poetically in dwelling as a particular world-as-fourfold, nevertheless constitutes an essential aspect of dwelling in that it is ontologically co-present with any such world. Appropriation is necessarily a twofold event: as Dasein is thrown into an intelligible world, vast regions of Being are plunged into darkness. But that darkness is a necessary condition for there to be any intelligibility at all. As Heidegger puts it in The Question Concerning Technology (330), “[a]ll revealing belongs within a harboring and a concealing. But that which frees [entities for intelligibility]—the mystery—is concealed and always concealing itself…. Freedom [sense-making, the revealing of beings] is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing shimmers the veil that hides the essential occurrence of all truth and lets the veil appear as what veils”.

    It is worth pausing here to comment on the fact that, in his 1935 essay The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger writes of a conflict between earth and world. This idea may seem to sit unhappily alongside the simple oneness of the four. The essay in question is notoriously difficult, but the notion of the mystery may help. Perhaps the pivotal thought is as follows: Natural materials (the earth), as used in artworks, enter into intelligibility by establishing certain culturally codified meanings—a world in the sense of Being and Time. Simultaneously, however, those natural materials suggest the existence of a vast range of other possible, but to us unintelligible, meanings, by virtue of the fact that they could have been used to realize those alternative meanings. The conflict, then, turns on the way in which, in the midst of a world, the earth suggests the presence of the mystery. This is one way to hear passages such as the following: “The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to surmount it. As self-opening it cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however, as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it there” (Origin of the Work of Art 174).

    Because the mystery is unintelligible, it is the nothing (no-thing). It is nonetheless a positive ontological phenomenon—a necessary feature of the essential unfolding of Being. This vision of the nothing, as developed in Heidegger's What is Metaphysics?, his 1929 inaugural lecture as Professor of Philosophy at Freiburg, famously attracts the philosophical disdain of the logical positivist Carnap. Carnap judged Heidegger's lecture to turn on a series of unverifiable statements, and thus to be a paradigm case of metaphysical nonsense (Carnap 1932/1959; for an nice account and analysis of the disagreement between Heidegger and Carnap, see Critchley 2001). But placing Carnap's positivist critique to one side, the idea of the nothing allows Heidegger to rethink our relationship with death in relation to poetic habitation. In Being and Time, Being-towards-death is conceived as a relation to the possibility of one's own non-existence. This gives us a sense in which Dasein has an internal structural relation to the nothing. That internal structural relation remains crucial to the later philosophy, but now ‘the nothing’ is to be heard explicitly as ‘the mystery’, a kind of ‘dark matter’ of intelligibility that must remain concealed in the unfolding of Being through which beings are unconcealed. This necessary concealment is “the essential belongingness of the not to being as such” (Contributions 160: 199). In Being-towards-death, this “essential belongingness” is “sheltered” and “comes to light with a singular keenness” (Contributions 160: 199). This is because (echoing a point made earlier) the concealing-unconcealing structure of Being is ultimately to be traced to Dasein's essential finitude. Sheehan (2001) puts it like this: “[o]ur finitude makes all ‘as’-taking… possible by requiring us to understand things not immediately and ontically… but indirectly and ontologically (= imperfectly), through their being”. In Being-towards-death, the human finitude that grounds the mystery, the plenitude of possible worlds in which I am not, is highlighted. As mortals, then, our internal relation to death links us to the mystery (see The Thing). So dwelling (as poetic habitation) involves not only embeddedness in the fourfold, but also, as part of a unitary ontological structure, a necessary relationship with the mystery. (As mentioned earlier (2.2.7), it is arguable that the sense of the nothing as unactualized possibilities of Being is already at work in Being and Time (see Vallega-Neu 2003, 21). Indeed, Heidegger's explicit remarks on Being-towards-death in the Contributions (sections 160–2) suggest that it is. But even if that is so, the idea undoubtedly finds its fullest expression in the later work.)

    If the essence of human Being is to dwell in the fourfold, then human beings are to the extent that they so dwell. And this will be achieved to the extent that human beings realize the “basic character of dwelling”, which Heidegger now argues is a matter of safeguarding “the fourfold in its essential unfolding” (Building Dwelling Thinking, 352). Such safeguarding is unpacked as a way of Being in which human beings save the earth, receive the sky as sky, await the divinities as divinities, and initiate their own essential being as mortals. Perhaps the best way to understand this four-way demand is to explore Heidegger's claim that modern humans, especially modern Western humans, systematically fail to meet it. That is, we are marked out by our loss of dwelling—our failure to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. This existential malaise is what Heidegger refers to in the Letter on Humanism as the oblivion of Being. As we are about to see, the fact that this is the basic character of our modern human society is, according to Heidegger, explained by the predominance of a mode of sense-making that, in the Contributions, he calls machination, but which he later (and more famously) calls technology.

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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:45 am

    I will attempt to internalize this thread -- but don't hold your breath -- waiting for me to morph into a Telegenic-Genius. I'll probably just continue to Lurk, Shirk, and Smirk!! It takes all kinds -- but why?? There is no resolution to my quest. Things continue to worsen -- on all levels. Is there some legitimacy to a Psalms, Proverbs, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John centered approach to Theology and Biblical Studies?? Think about it -- but don't strain yourselves. Perhaps most of us prefer football and beer!! O'Douls Amber on the Rocks for me!! Here is a video which I don't endorse -- but which some of you might find interesting. The second video sort of counterbalances the first!! Enjoy!!



    I simply wish for many (if not all) of you to struggle with theological issues. Again, I'm trying to be on everyone's side -- even though this is probably naive and impossible. "To dream the impossible dream!" I think I'd like to see a combination of the Old Avalon (without the drama) combined with the Mists of Avalon (with more members). It seems as if there are really only a couple of dozen regular posters here -- and most everyone has stopped talking to me (or perhaps I have stopped talking to them). I liked the white print on blue background. I liked the Bill and Kerry interviews (despite the criticism -- especially of Kerry). I keep envisioning getting briefed by someone who really knows everything about everything -- and I imagine this person (or other than person) being completely different than what I've been exposed to thus far. I seem to end up briefing myself -- with a composite of everyone and everything I've been exposed to. Perhaps this site is just fine -- as is -- because it forces me to be a Galactic Lone Ranger. Sherry Shriner keeps talking about 'them' being very, very angry. She also keeps talking about the New World Order Cabal in conflict with the New-Age Alien-Agenda. She seems to be saying that BOTH of these factions are in serious trouble. I tend to think that EVERYONE is in serious trouble. I'm seriously trying to figure out what to do -- without regard to which faction is in or out of power. I continue to think that a bad@ss faction is required to gain and retain power -- but that such a faction always ends up misusing and abusing the commoners. I continue to sense that some sort of a meltdown is immanent in this solar system -- regardless of who rules -- and regardless of how they rule. Too many dark secrets are being exposed -- and we may be facing revolutionary change -- rather than the preferred evolutionary change. I just hope that we survive the coming changes. The technological advances seem to be making humanity obsolete. Is there a way to properly combine Socialism and Capitalism in sort of a Responsible Enterprise (as opposed to Free Enterprise or Laissez Faire Capitalism)?? Sorry for the tangential rant. Anyway, here is more Martin Heidegger. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

    3.3 Technology

    In his 1953 piece The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger begins with the everyday account of technology according to which technology is the vast array of instruments, machines, artefacts and devices that we human beings invent, build, and then exploit. On this view technology is basically a tool that we control. Heidegger claims that this everyday account is, in a sense, correct, but it provides only a limited “instrumental and anthropological definition” of technology (Question Concerning Technology 312). It depicts technology as a means to an end (instrumental) and as a product of human activity (anthropological). What needs to be exposed and interrogated, however, is something that is passed over by the everyday account, namely the essence of technology. To bring this into view, Heidegger reinterprets his earlier notion of intelligibility in terms of the concept of a clearing. A clearing is a region of Being in which things are revealed as mattering in some specific way or another. To identify the essence of technology is to lay bare technology as a clearing, that is, to describe a technological mode of Being. As Heidegger puts it in the Contributions (61: 88), “[i]n the context of the being-question, this word [machination, technology] does not name a human comportment but a manner of the essential swaying of being”.

    So what is the character of entities as revealed technologically? Heidegger's claim is that the “revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology… [is]… a challenging… which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such” (Question Concerning Technology 320). The mode of revealing characteristic of modern technology understands phenomena in general—including the non-biological natural world, plants, animals, and indeed human beings—to be no more than what Heidegger calls standing-reserve, that is, resources to be exploited as means to ends. This analysis extends to regions of nature and sections of society that have not yet been harnessed positively as resources. Such unexploited elements (e.g., an unexplored jungle, this year's unemployed school leavers) exist technologically precisely as potential resources.

    Heidegger's flagship example of technology is a hydroelectric plant built on the Rhine river that converts that river into a mere supplier of water power. Set against this “monstrousness” (Question Concerning Technology 321) is the poetic habitation of the natural environment of the Rhine as signalled by an old wooden bridge that spanned the river for hundreds of years, plus the river as revealed by Hölderlin's poem “The Rhine”. In these cases of poetic habitation, natural phenomena are revealed to us as objects of respect and wonder. One might think that Heidegger is over-reacting here, and that despite the presence of the hydroelectric plant, the Rhine in many ways remains a glorious example of natural beauty. Heidegger's response to this complaint is to focus on how the technological mode of Being corrupts the very notion of unspoilt areas of nature, by reducing such areas to resources ripe for exploitation by the tourist industry. Turning our attention to inter-human affairs, the technological mode of Being manifests itself when, for example, a friendly chat in the bar is turned into networking (Dreyfus 1993). And, in the light of Heidegger's analysis, one might smile wryly at the trend for companies to take what used to be called ‘personnel’ departments, and to rename them ‘human resources’. Many other examples could be given, but the general point is clear. The primary phenomenon to be understood is not technology as a collection of instruments, but rather technology as a clearing that establishes a deeply instrumental and, as Heidegger sees it, grotesque understanding of the world in general. Of course, if technological revealing were a largely restricted phenomenon, characteristic of isolated individuals or groups, then Heidegger's analysis of it would be of limited interest. The sting in the tale, however, is that, according to Heidegger, technological revealing is not a peripheral aspect of Being. Rather, it defines our modern way of living, at least in the West.

    At this point one might pause to wonder whether technology really is the structure on which we should be concentrating. The counter-suggestion would be that technological thinking is merely the practical application of modern mathematical science, and that the latter is therefore the primary phenomenon. Heidegger rejects this view, arguing in contrast that the establishment of the technological mode of revealing is a necessary condition for there to be mathematical science at all, since such science “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve” by requiring that “nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information” (Question Concerning Technology 328). Either way, one might object to the view of science at work here, by pointing to analyses which suggest that while science may reduce objects to instrumental means rather than ends, it need not behave in this way. For example, O'Neill (2003) develops such an analysis by drawing explicitly on (one interpretation of) the Marxist (and ultimately Aristotelian) notion of the humanization of the senses. Good science may depend on the capacity for the disinterested use of the senses, and so foster a non-instrumental responsiveness to natural objects as ends rather than as means. This is a ‘humanization’ because the disinterested use of the senses is a characteristically human capacity. Thus to develop such a capacity is to develop a distinctively human virtue, something which is a constituent of human well-being. Moreover, if science may sometimes operate with a sense of awe and wonder in the face of beings, it may point the way beyond the technological clearing, an effect that, as we shall see later, Heidegger thinks is achieved principally by some great art.

    By revealing beings as no more than the measurable and the manipulable, technology ultimately reduces beings to not-beings (Contributions 2: 6). This is our first proper glimpse of the oblivion of Being, the phenomenon that, in the Contributions, Heidegger also calls the abandonment of Being, or the abandonment of beings by Being (e.g., 55: 80). The notion of a not-being signals two things: (i) technological revealing drives out any sense of awe and wonder in the presence of beings, obliterating the secularized sense of what is sacred that is exemplified by the poetic habitation of the natural environment of the Rhine; (ii) we are essentially indifferent to the loss. Heidegger calls this indifference “the hidden distress of no-distress-at-all” (Contributions 4: Cool. Indeed, on Heidegger's diagnosis, our response to the loss of any feeling of sacredness or awe in the face of beings is to find a technological substitute for that feeling, in the form of “lived-experience”, a drive for entertainment and information, “exaggeration and uproar” (Contributions 66: 91). All that said, however, technology should not be thought of as a wholly ‘negative’ phenomenon. For Heidegger, technology is not only the great danger, it is also a stage in the unfolding of Being that brings us to the brink of a kind of secularized salvation, by awakening in us a (re-)discovery of the sacred, appropriately understood (cf. Thomson 2003, 64–66). A rough analogy might be drawn here with the Marxist idea that the unfolding of history results in the establishment of capitalist means of production with their characteristic ‘negative’ elements—labour treated merely as a commodity, the multi-dimensional alienation of the workers—that bring us to the brink of (by creating the immediate social and economic preconditions for) the socialist transformation of society. Indeed, the analogy might be pushed a little further: just as the socialist transformation of society remains anything but inevitable (Trotsky taught us that), Heidegger argues that the salvation-bringing transformation of the present condition of human being is most certainly not bound to occur.

    To bring all these points into better view, we need to take a step back and ask the following question. Is the technological mode of revealing ultimately a human doing for which we are responsible? Heidegger's answer is ‘yes and no’. On the one hand, humankind is the active agent of technological thinking, so humankind is not merely a passive element. On the other hand, “the unconcealment itself… is never a human handiwork” (Question Concerning Technology 324). As Heidegger later put it, the “essence of man is framed, claimed and challenged by a power which manifests itself in the essence of technology, a power which man himself does not control.” (Only a God can Save Us; 107, my emphasis). To explicate the latter point, Heidegger introduces the concepts of destining (cf. the earlier notion of ‘destiny’) and enframing. Destining is “what first starts man upon a way of revealing” (Question Concerning Technology 329). As such it is an a priori transcendental structure of human Being and so beyond our control. Human history is a temporally organized kaleidoscope of particular ordainings of destining (see also On the Essence of Truth). Enframing is one such ordaining, the “gathering together of the setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve” (Question Concerning Technology 325). This is, of course, a way of unpacking the point (see above) that technology is “a manner of the essential swaying of being” (Contributions 61: 88), that is, of Being's own essential unfolding.

    Enframing, then, is the ordaining of destining that ushers in the modern technological clearing. But there is more to it than that. To see why, consider the following criticism of Heidegger's analysis, as we have unpacked it so far. Any suggestion that technological thinking has appeared for the first time along with our modern Western way of living would seem to be straightforwardly false. To put the point crudely, surely the ancient Greeks sometimes treated entities merely as instrumental means. But if that is right, and Heidegger would agree that it is, then how can it be that technological thinking defines the spirit of our age? The answer lies in Heidegger's belief that pre-modern, traditional artisanship (as exemplified by the old wooden bridge over the Rhine), manifests what he calls poiesis. In this context poiesis is to be understood as a process of gathering together and fashioning natural materials in such a way that the human project in which they figure is in a deep harmony with, indeed reveals—or as Heidegger sometimes says when discussing poiesis, brings forth—the essence of those materials and any natural environment in which they are set. Thus, in discussing what needs to be learnt by an apprentice to a traditional cabinetmaker, Heidegger writes:

    If he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and respond above all to the different kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within wood—to wood as it enters into man's dwelling with all the hidden riches of its essence. In fact, this relatedness to wood is what maintains the whole craft. Without that relatedness, the craft will never be anything but empty busywork, any occupation with it will be determined exclusively by business concerns. Every handicraft, all human dealings, are constantly in that danger. (What is Called Thinking? 379)

    Poiesis, then, is a process of revealing. Poietic events are acts of unconcealment—one is tempted to coin the ugly neologism truth-ing—in which entities are allowed to show themselves. As with the closely related notion of original truth that is at work in Being and Time, the idea of entities showing themselves does not imply that what is revealed in poiesis is something independent of human involvement. Thus what is revealed by the artisanship of the cabinetmaker is “wood as it enters into man's dwelling”. This telling remark forges a crucial philosophical link (and not merely an etymological one) between the poietic and poetic. Poietic events and poetic habitation involve the very same mode of intelligibility.

    By introducing the concept of poiesis, and by unearthing the presence of the phenomenon in traditional artisanship, Heidegger is suggesting that even though technological thinking was a possibility in pre-modern society, it was neither the only nor the dominant mode of bringing-forth. So what has changed? Heidegger argues that what is distinctive about enframing as an ordaining of destining is (i) that it “drives out every other possibility of revealing” (Question Concerning Technology 332), and (ii) that it covers up revealing as such (more precisely, covers up the concealing-unconcealing character of appropriation), thereby leaving us blind to the fact that technology is, in its essence, a clearing. For Heidegger, these dual features of enframing are intimately tied up with the idea of technology as metaphysics completing itself. He writes: “[a]s a form of truth [clearing] technology is grounded in the history of metaphysics, which is itself a distinctive and up to now the only perceptible phase of the history of Being” (Letter on Humanism 244). According to Heidegger, metaphysics conceives of Being as a being (for more on the reduction of Being to a being, see section 2.2.1 above). In so doing, metaphysics obscures the concealing-unconcealing dynamic of the essential unfolding of Being, a dynamic that provides the a priori condition for there to be beings. The history of metaphysics is thus equivalent to the history of Western philosophy in which Being as such is passed over, a history that, for Heidegger, culminates in the nihilistic forces of Nietzsche's eternally recurring will-to-power. The totalizing logic of metaphysics involves the view that there is a single clearing (whatever it may be) that constitutes reality. This renders thought insensitive to the fundamental structure of Being, in which any particular clearing is ontologically co-present with the unintelligible plenitude of alternative clearings, the mystery. With this totalizing logic in view, enframing might be thought of as the ordaining of destining that establishes the technological clearing as the one dominant picture, to the exclusion of all others. Hence technology is metaphysics completing itself.

    We are now in a position to deal with two items of unfinished business. First, recall the stylistic shift that characterizes Heidegger's later work. Heidegger not only increasingly engages with poetry in his later thinking (especially the works of the German lyric poet Hölderlin), he also adopts a substantially more poetic style of writing. But why? The language of metaphysics, which ultimately unpacks itself as technological, calculative thinking, is a language from which Heidegger believed he did not fully escape in Being and Time (see quotation from the Letter on Humanism at the beginning of section 3.1 above, and Vallega-Neu 2003 24–9 for discussion). What is needed to think Being historically, to think Being in its essential unfolding, is a different kind of philosophical language, a language suggested by the poetic character of dwelling. It is important to realize that Heidegger's intention here is not to place Being beyond philosophy and within the reach of poetry, although he does believe that certain poets, such as Hölderlin, enable us to glimpse the mysterious aspect of Being. His intention, rather, is to establish that the kind of philosophy that is needed here is itself poetic. This explains the stylistic component of the turn.

    Secondly, recall the loss of dwelling identified by Heidegger. Modern humankind (at least in the West) is in the (enframed) grip of technological thinking. Because of this promotion of instrumentality as the fundamental way of Being of entities, we have lost sight of how to inhabit the fourfold poetically, of how to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. Such safeguarding would, in a sense, be the opposite of technological thinking. But what ‘opposite’ amounts to here needs to be worked out with care. Given contemporary concerns over deforestation, global warming and the like, it is tempting to think that Heidegger's analysis of technology might provide the philosophical platform for some sort of extreme eco-radicalism. However, while there is undoubtedly much of value to be said about the contribution that Heidegger's thinking may make to contemporary debates in environmental ethics (see e.g., Zimmerman 1983, 1993, 2002), Heidegger was no eco-warrior and no luddite. Although he often promoted a romantic image of a pre-technological age inhabited by worthy peasants in touch with nature, he did not believe that it is possible for modern humankind to forge some pastoral Eden from which technology (in both the everyday and the essential sense) is entirely absent. So we should neither “push on blindly with technology” nor “curse it as the work of the devil” (Question Concerning Technology 330). Indeed, both these options would at root be technological modes of thinking. The way forward, according to Heidegger, is not to end technology, but rather to inhabit it differently (see e.g., Vallega-Neu 2003 93 note 15). We need to transform our mode of Being into one in which technology (in the sense of the machines and devices of the modern age) is there for us to enjoy and use, but in which technology (in the sense of a mode of Being-in-the-world) is not our only or fundamental way of encountering entities. And what is the basic character of this reinhabiting? It is to shelter the truth of Being in beings (e.g., Contributions 246: 273), to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. In what, then, does this safeguarding consist?

    3.4 Safeguarding

    Heidegger argues that if humankind is to enter into safeguarding, it needs to learn (or perhaps to learn once more) to think of Being as a gift that has been granted to us in history. Indeed, to think properly is precisely to be grateful for the gift of Being (see What is Called Thinking?). (Terms such as ‘gift’ and ‘granted’ should not be heard theologically, but in terms of secularized sacredness and destining.) In this learning process, certain artworks constitute ontological beacons that disrupt the technological clearing. Thus recall that Heidegger identifies a shared form of disclosure that is instantiated both by the old wooden bridge over the Rhine and by Hölderlin's poem “The Rhine”. We can now understand this identification in terms of the claim that certain artworks (although of course not those that themselves fall prey to technological thinking) share with traditional artisanship the capacity to realize poiesis. In so doing such artworks succeed in bringing us into contact with the mystery through their expression of dwelling (poetic habitation). In listening attentively and gratefully to how Being announces itself in such artworks, humankind will prepare themselves for the task of safeguarding.

    But what exactly would one do in order to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. Recall that in Building Dwelling Thinking Heidegger presents safeguarding as a four-dimensional way of Being. The first two dimensions—saving the earth and receiving the sky as sky—refer to our relationship with the non-human natural world. As such they forge a genuine connection between the later Heidegger and contemporary environmentalist thinking. However, the connection needs to be stated with care. Once again the concept of poiesis is central. Heidegger holds that the self-organized unfolding of the natural world, the unaided blossoming of nature, is itself a process of poiesis. Indeed it is poiesis “in the highest sense” (Question Concerning Technology 317). One might think, then, that saving the earth, safeguarding in its first dimension, is a matter of leaving nature to its own devices, of actively ensuring that the conditions obtain for unaided natural poiesis. However, for Heidegger, saving the earth is primarily an ontological, rather than an ecological, project. ‘Save’ here means “to set something free into its own essence” (Building Dwelling Thinking, p.352), and thus joins a cluster of related concepts that includes dwelling and also poiesis as realized in artisanship and art. So while, say, fiercely guarding the integrity of wilderness areas may be one route to safeguarding, saving the earth may also be achieved through the kind of artisanship and its associated gathering of natural materials that is characteristic of the traditional cabinetmaker. The concept of saving as a setting free of something into its own essence also clears a path to another important point. All four dimensions of safeguarding have at their root the notion of staying with things, of letting things be in their essence through cultivation or construction. Heidegger describes such staying with things as “the only way in which the fourfold stay within the fourfold [i.e., safeguarding] is accomplished at any time in simple unity” (Building Dwelling Thinking 353). It is thus the unifying existential structure of safeguarding.

    What now of safeguarding in its second dimension—to receive the sky as sky? Here Heidegger's main concern seems to be to advocate the synchronization of contemporary human life with the rhythms of nature (day and night, the seasons, and so on). Here safeguarding is exemplified by the aforementioned peasants whose lives were interlocked with such natural rhythms (through planting seasons etc.) in a way that modern technological society is not. One might note that this dislocation has become even more pronounced since Heidegger's death, with the advent of the Internet-driven, 24-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week service culture. Once again we need to emphasize that Heidegger's position is not some sort of philosophical ludditism, but a plea for the use of contemporary machines and devices in a way that is sensitive to the temporal patterns of the natural world. (For useful discussion see Young 2002, 110–113. Young makes an illuminating connection with Heidegger's eulogy to van Gogh's painting of a pair of peasant shoes to be found in The Origin of the Work of Art.)

    Of course, these relationships with nature are still only part of what safeguarding involves. Its third and fourth dimensions demand that human beings await the divinities as divinities and “initiate their own essential being—their being capable of death as death—into the use and practice of this capacity, so that there may be a good death” (Building Dwelling Thinking 352). The latter demand suggests that we may safeguard each other as mortals by integrating a non-evasive attitude to death (see above) into the cultural structures (e.g., the death-related customs and ceremonies) of the community. But now what about the third dimension of safeguarding? What does it mean to await the divinities as divinities?

    Let's again approach our question via a potential problem with Heidegger's account. Echoing a worry that attaches to the concept of heritage in Being and Time, it may seem that the notion of destining, especially in its more specific manifestation as enframing, involves a kind of fatalism. Despite some apparent rhetoric to the contrary, however, Heidegger's considered view is that destining is ultimately not a “fate that compels” (Question Concerning Technology 330). We have been granted the saving power to transform our predicament. Moreover, the fact that we are at a point of danger—a point at which the grip of technological thinking has all but squeezed out access to the poetic and the mystical—will have the effect of thrusting this saving power to the fore. This is the good news. The bad news is that:

    philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering [Untergang]; for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. (Only a God can Save Us 107)

    That is what it means to await the divinities as divinities.

    3.5 Only a God can Save Us

    Heidegger sometimes uses the term ‘god’ to mean the secularized notion of the sacred already indicated, such that to embrace a god would be to maintain due sensitivity to the thought that beings are granted to us in the essential unfolding of Being. When, in the Contributions, Heidegger writes of the last or ultimate god of the other beginning (where ‘other’ is in relation to the ‘first beginning’ of Western thought in ancient Greece—the beginning of metaphysics), it often seems to be this secularized sacredness that he has in mind (cf. Thomson 2003; see Crownfield 2001for an alternative reading of the last god that maintains a more robust theological dimension, although one which is concrete and historicized). However, Heidegger sometimes seems to use the term ‘god’ or ‘divinity’ to refer to a heroic figure (a cultural template) who may initiate (or help to initiate) a transformational event in the history of Being by opening up an alternative clearing (for this interpretation, see e.g., Young 2002, 98). These heroic figures are the grounders of the abyss, the restorers of sacredness (Contributions 2: 6, see Sallis 2001 for analysis and discussion). It might even be consistent with Heidegger's view to relax the requirement that the divine catalyst must be an individual being, and thus to conceive of certain transformational cultural events or forces themselves as divinities (Dreyfus 2003). In any case, Heidegger argues that, in the present crisis, we are waiting for a god who will reawaken us to the poetic, and thereby enable us to dwell in the fourfold. This task certainly seems to be a noble one. Unfortunately, however, it plunges us into the murkiest and most controversial region of the Heideggerian intellectual landscape, his infamous involvement with Nazism.

    Here is not the place to enter into the historical debate over exactly what Heidegger did and when he did it. However, given his deliberate, albeit arguably short-lived, integration of Nazi ideology with the philosophy of Being (see above), a few all-too-brief comments on the relationship between Heidegger's politics and his philosophical thought are necessary. (For more detailed evidence and discussion, as well as a range of positions on how we should interpret and respond to this relationship, see e.g., Farias 1989; Neske and Kettering 1990; Ott 1993; Pattison 2000; Polt 1999; Rockmore 1992; Sluga, 1993; Wolin 1990, 1993; Young 1997). There is no doubt that Heidegger's Nazi sympathies, however long they lasted, have a more intimate relationship with his philosophical thought than might be suggested by apologist claims that he was a victim of his time (in 1933, lots of intelligent people backed Hitler without thereby supporting the Holocaust that was to come) or that what we have here is ‘merely’ a case of bad political judgment, deserving of censure but with no implications for the essentially independent philosophical programme. Why does the explanation run deeper? The answer is that Heidegger believed (indeed continued to believe until he died) that the German people were destined to carry out a monumental spiritual mission. That mission was nothing less than to be at the helm of the aforementioned transformation of Being in the West, from one of instrumental technology to one of poetic dwelling. In mounting this transformation the German people would be acting not imperialistically, but for all nations in the encounter with modern technology. Of course destining is not a fate that compels, so some divine catalyst would be needed to awake the German nation to its historic mission, a catalyst provided by the spiritual leaders of the Nazi Party.

    Why did Heidegger believe that the German people enjoyed this position of world-historical significance? In the later writings Heidegger argues explicitly that “[t]hinking itself can be transformed only by a thinking which has the same origin and calling”, so the technological mode of Being must be transcended through a new appropriation of the European tradition. Within this process the German people have a special place, because of the “inner relationship of the German language with the language of the Greeks and with their thought”. (Quotations from Only a God can Save Us 113.) Thus it is the German language that links the German people in a privileged way to, as Heidegger sees it, the genesis of European thought and to a pre-technological world-view in which bringing-forth as poiesis is dominant. This illustrates the general point that, for Heidegger, Being is intimately related to language. Language is, as he famously put it in the Letter on Humanism (217), the “house of Being”. So it is via language that Being is linked to particular peoples.

    Even if Heidegger had some sort of argument for the world-historical destiny of the German people, why on earth did he believe that the Nazi Party, of all things, harboured the divine catalyst? Part of the reason seems to have been the seductive effect of a resonance that exists between (a) Heidegger's understanding of traditional German rural life as realizing values and meanings that may counteract the insidious effects of contemporary technology, and (b) the Nazi image of rustic German communities, rooted in German soil, providing a bulwark against foreign contamination. Heidegger certainly exploits this resonance in his pro-Nazi writings. That said there is an important point of disagreement here, one that Heidegger himself drew out. And once again the role of language in Being is at the heart of the issue. Heidegger steadfastly refused to countenance any biologistic underpinning to his views. In 1945 he wrote that, in his 1934 lectures on logic, he “sought to show that language was not the biological-racial essence of man, but conversely, that the essence of man was based on language as a basic reality of spirit” (Letter to the Rector of Freiburg University, November 4, 1945, 64). In words that we have just met, it is language and not biology that, for Heidegger, constitutes the house of Being. So the German Volk are a linguistic-historical, rather than a biological, phenomenon, which explains why Heidegger officially rejected one of the keystones of Nazism, namely its biologically grounded racism. Perhaps Heidegger deserves some credit here, although regrettably the aforementioned lectures on logic also contain evidence of a kind of historically driven ‘racism’. Heidegger suggests that while Africans (along with plants and animals) have no history (in a technical sense understood in terms of heritage), the event of an airplane carrying Hitler to Mussolini is genuinely part of history (see Polt 1999, 155).

    Heidegger was soon disappointed by his ‘divinities’. In a 1935 lecture he remarks that the

    works that are being peddled (about) nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism, but have nothing whatever to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely, the encounter between global technology and contemporary man), have all been written by men fishing the troubled waters of values and totalities. (An Introduction to Metaphysics 166)

    So Heidegger came to believe that the spiritual leaders of the Nazi party were false gods. They were ultimately agents of technological thought and thus incapable of completing the historic mission of the German people to transcend global technology. Nonetheless, one way of hearing the 1935 remark is that Heidegger continued to believe in the existence of, and the philosophical motivation for, that mission, a view that Rockmore (1992, 123–4) calls “an ideal form of Nazism”. This interpretation has some force. But perhaps we can at least make room for the thought that Heidegger's repudiation of Nazism goes further than talk of an ideal Nazism allows. For example, responding to the fact that Heidegger drew a parallel between modern agriculture (as a motorized food-industry) and “the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps”, Young (1997) argues that this would count as a devaluing of the Holocaust only on a superficial reading. According to Young, Heidegger's point is that both modern agriculture and the Final Solution are workings-out of the technological mode of Being, which does not entail that they should be treated as morally equivalent. (Heidegger draws the parallel in a lecture called The Enframing given in 1949. The quotation is taken from Young 1997, 172. For further discussion, see Pattison 2000).

    Heidegger's involvement with Nazism casts a shadow over his life. Whether, and if so to what extent, it casts a more concentrated shadow over at least some of his philosophical work is a more difficult issue. It would be irresponsible to ignore the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics. But it is surely possible to be critically engaged in a deep and intellectually stimulating way with his sustained investigation into Being, to find much of value in his capacity to think deeply about human life, to struggle fruitfully with what he says about our loss of dwelling, and to appreciate his massive and still unfolding contribution to thought and to thinking, without looking for evidence of Nazism in every twist and turn of the philosophical path he lays down.

    Bibliography

    Primary Literature

    The Gesamtausgabe (Heidegger's collected works in German) are published by Vittorio Klostermann. The process of publication started during Heidegger's lifetime but has not yet been completed. The publication details are available at the Gesamtausgabe Plan page.
    An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by R. Manheim, New York: Doubleday, 1961.
    Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, T. Kisiel and T. Sheehan (eds.), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007. A collection of English translations of the most philosophical of Heidegger's earliest occasional writings.
    Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962 (first published in 1927).
    [NB: Page numbers in the article refer to the Macquarrie and Robinson translation. A more recent translation of Being and Time exists: Being and Time, translated by J. Stambaugh. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. The Stambaugh translation has many virtues, and is certainly more user-friendly for the Heidegger-novice, but it is arguable that the Macquarrie and Robinson translation remains the first choice of most Heidegger scholars.]
    “Building Dwelling Thinking”, translated by A. Hofstadter, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 217–65.
    Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), translated by P. Emad and K. Maly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
    History of the Concept of Time, translated by T. Kisiel, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
    Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated by R. Taft, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1929/1997
    “Letter on Humanism”, translated by F. A Capuzzi and J. Glenn Gray, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 217–65.
    “Seminar in Le Thor 1968”, translated by A. Mitchell and F. Raffoul, in Four Seminars, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
    “Letter to the Rector of Freiburg University, November 4, 1945”, may be found in K. A. Moehling, Martin Heidegger and the Nazi Party: An Examination, Ph.D. Dissertation, Northern Illinois University, 1972. Translated by R. Wolin and reprinted in R. Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 61–66.
    “On the Essence of Truth”, translated by John Sallis, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 115–38.
    “?‘Only a God can Save Us’: Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger”, Der Spiegel, May 31st, 1976. Translated by M. O. Alter and J. D. Caputo and published in Philosophy Today XX(4/4): 267–285. Translation reprinted in R. Wolin (ed.), in The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 91–116.
    The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translated by A. Hofstadter, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
    “The Origin of the Work of Art”, translated by A. Hofstadter with minor changes by D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 143–212.
    “The Question Concerning Technology”, translated by W. Lovitt with revisions by D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 311–41.
    “The Self-Assertion of the German University”, translated by W. S. Lewis, in R. Wolin (ed.), in The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 29–39.
    “The Thing”, translated by A. Hofstadter, in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
    What is Called Thinking?, translated by F. D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Excerpt published under the title “What Calls for Thinking?” in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 369–91, from which the page number of the passage reproduced above is taken.
    “What is Metaphysics?”, translated by D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 93–110.
    Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters, translated by F. Mayr, Northwestern University Press, Illinois: Evanston, 2001.

    Other Cited Words

    Adorno, T., 1964, The Jargon of Authenticity, London: Routledge, 2002.
    Binswanger, L., 1943, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (The Foundations and Cognition of Human Existence), untranslated, Munich: Ernst Reinhart Verlag, 1964.
    Brandom, R., 1983, “Heidegger's Categories in Being and Time”, The Monist, 66(3): 387–409.
    –––, 2002, Tales of the Mighty Dead. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    Cappuccio, M. and Wheeler, M., 2010, “When the Twain Meet: Could the Study of Mind be a Meeting of Minds?”, in J. Chase, E. Mares, J. Reynolds and J. Williams (eds.), On the Futures of Philosophy: Post-Analytic and Meta-Continental Thinking, London: Continuum.
    Caputo, J., 1984, “Husserl, Heidegger and the Question of a ‘Hermeneutic’ Phenomenology”, Husserl Studies, 1: 157–178.
    –––, 1993, “Heidegger and Theology”, in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 270–88.
    Carel, H., 2006, Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger, New York & Amsterdam: Rodopi.
    Carman, T., 2002, “Review of Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology”. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2002.02.03. URL=http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1248
    Carnap, R., 1932, “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”, in A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, Glencoe, Scotland: Free Press, 1959.
    Christensen, C. B., 1997, “Heidegger's Representationalism”, The Review of Metaphysics 51(1): 77–103.
    –––, 1998, “Getting Heidegger Off the West Coast”, Inquiry 41(1): 65–87.
    Critchley, S., 2001, Continental Philosophy: a Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Crowell, S. Galt, 2001, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
    –––, 2005, “Heidegger and Husserl: The Matter and Method of Philosophy”, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds.) A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 49–64.
    Crowell, S. Galt. and Malpas, J. (eds.), 2007, Transcendental Heidegger, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
    Crownfield, D., 2001, “The Last God”, in Scott et al., pp. 213–228.
    Dahlstrom, D.O., 1994, “Heidegger's Critique of Husserl”. In T. Kisiel and J. van Buren (eds.) Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press.
    –––, 2001, Heidegger's Concept of Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Dostal, R. J., 1993, “Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger”, in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 141–169.
    Dreyfus, H. L., 1990, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    –––, 1992, What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    –––, 1993, “Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology and Politics”, in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 289–316.
    –––, 2008, “Why Heideggerian AI Failed and How Fixing It Would Require Making It More Heideggerian”, in P. Husbands, O. Holland, and M. Wheeler (eds.), The Mechanical Mind in History, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 331–71. (A shortened version of this paper appears in under the same title in Philosophical Psychology 20/2: 247–268, 2007. Another version appears under the same title in Artificial Intelligence, 171: 1137–1160, 2007.)
    Edwards, P., 1975, “Heidegger and Death as a ‘Possibility’?”, Mind 84(1): 546–66.
    –––, 1976, “Heidegger and Death: a Deflationary Critique”, The Monist 59(1):161–86.
    –––, 2004, Heidegger's Confusions, New York: Prometheus.
    Farias, V., 1989, Heidegger and Nazism, Temple University Press.
    Gallagher, S., and Jacobson, R.S., forthcoming, “Heidegger and Social Cognition”, in J. Kiverstein and M. Wheeler (eds.), Heidegger and Cognitive Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    Gelven, M., 1989, A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Revised Edition, De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
    Guignon, C., 1993, “Authenticity, Moral Values, and Psychotherapy”, in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 215–39.
    Haugeland, J., 2007, “Letting Be”, in Crowell and Malpas 2007.
    –––, 2005, “Reading Brandom Reading Heidegger”, European Journal of Philosophy 13(3): 421–28.
    Hinman, L., 1978, “Heidegger, Edwards, and Being-toward-Death”, Southern Journal of Philosophy XVI(3): 193–212.
    Husserl, E., 1900, Logical Investigations, translated by A.J. Findlay, London: Routledge, 1973.
    –––, 1913, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology Book 1, translated by F. Kersten, Berlin: Springer, 1983.
    Kant, I., 1781, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by P. Guyer and A. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
    Kisiel, T., 1993, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, Berkeley: University of California Press.
    –––, 2002, Heidegger's Way of Thought: Critical and Interpretive Signposts, A. Denker and M. Heinz (eds.), London: Continuum.
    Kisiel, T. and van Buren, J. (eds.), 1994, Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press.
    Kiverstein, J. and Wheeler. M. (eds.), forthcoming, Heidegger and Cognitive Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    Löwith, K., 1928, Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen, in K. Stichweh (ed.), Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 1. (9–197), untranslated, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1981.
    Malpas, J., 2006, Heidegger's Topology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    –––, forthcoming, “Heidegger, Space, and World”, in J. Kiverstein and M. Wheeler (eds.), Heidegger and Cognitive Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    Mitchell, A. J., 2010, “The Fourfold”, in B. W. Davis (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, Durham: Acumen, pp. 208–18
    Mulhall, S., 2005, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and ‘Being and Time‘, (second edition), London: Routledge.
    Murray, M. (ed.), 1978, Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
    Neske, G. and Kettering, E., 1990, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers, translated by Lisa Harries, New York: Paragon House.
    Olafson, F., 1987, Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind, New Haven: Yale University Press.
    O'Neill, J., 1993, Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-Being and the Natural World, New York: Routledge.
    Okrent, S., 1988, Heidegger's Pragmatism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
    Ott, H., 1993, Martin Heidegger: a Political Life, London: Harper Collins.
    Overgaard, S., 2002, “Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited”, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 3(2): 73–90.
    –––, 2003, “Heidegger's Early Critique of Husserl”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 11(2): 157–175.
    Pattison, G., 2000, The Later Heidegger, London: Routledge.
    Pöggeler, O., 1963, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking, translated by D. Magurshak and S. Barber, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1987.
    Polt, R., 1999, Heidegger: an Introduction, London: Routledge.
    Ratcliffe, M., 2008, Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Richardson, W. J., 1963, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishing.
    Ricoeur, P., 1992, Oneself as Another, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Rockmore, T., 1992, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy, London: Wheatsheaf.
    Rorty, R., 1991a, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Philosophical Papers, Volume 2), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    –––, 1991b, “Heidegger, Contingency, and Pragmatism”, in his Essays on Heidegger and Others (Philosophical Papers, Volume 2), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 27–49. Also in H. L. Dreyfus and H. Hall (eds.), Heidegger: a Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, and H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds.) A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp. 511–32.
    Sallis, J., 2001, “Grounders of the Abyss”, in Scott et al., 2001, pp. 181–97.
    Sartre, J.-P., 1956, Being and Nothingness, New York: Philosophical Library.
    Schoenbohm, S. M., 2001, “Reading Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: an Orienation”, in Scott et al., 2001, pp. 15–31
    Schurmann, R., 1992, “Riveted to a Monstrous Site: on Heidegger's Beitrage zur Philosophie”, in T. Rockmore and J. Margolis (eds.) The Heidegger Case: on Philosophy and Politics, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
    Scott, C. E., Schoenbohm, S. M. Vallega-Neu, D. and Vallega, A. (eds.), 2001, Companion to Heidegger's, Contributions to Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
    Sharr, A., 2007, Heidegger for Architects, London: Routledge.
    Sheehan, T., 1975, “Heidegger, Aristotle and Phenomenology”, Philosophy Today, XIX(Summer): 87–94.
    –––, 2001, “A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research”, Continental Philosophy Review, 32(2): 1–20.
    –––, 2010, “The Turn’, in B. W. Davis (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, Durham: Acumen, pp. 82–101.
    Sluga, H., 1993, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    Stiegler, B., 1996, Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation, translated by Stephen Barker, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003.
    Thomson, I., 2003, “The Philosophical Fugue: Understanding the Structure and Goal of Heidegger's Beiträge”, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 34(1): 57–73.
    Tugendhat, E., 1967, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (The Concept of truth in Husserl and Heidegger), untranslated, Berlin: de Gruyter.
    Vallega, A., 2001, “?‘Beyng-Historical Thinking’ in Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy”, in Scott et al., 2001, pp. 48–65
    Vallega-Neu, D., 2003, Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: an Introduction, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
    –––, 2010, “Ereignis: the Event of Appropriation”, in B. W. Davis (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, Durham: Acumen,pp. 140–54
    van Buren, J., 1994, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
    –––, 2005, “The Earliest Heidegger: a New Field of Research”, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds.) A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 19–31.
    von Herrmann, F.-W., 2001, “Contributions to Philosophy and Enowning-Historical Thinking”, in Scott et al. 2001, pp. 105–26
    Wheeler, M., 2005, Reconstructing the Cognitive World: the Next Step, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    Wolin, R., 1990, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    –––, 1993, The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    Young, J., 1997, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    –––, 2002, Heidegger's Later Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Ziarek, K., 1989, “The Reception of Heidegger's Thought in American Literary Criticism”, Diacritics, 19(3/4): 114–26.
    Zimmerman, M. E., 1983, “Toward a Heideggerean Ethos for Radical Environmentalism”, Environmental Ethics, 5(3): 99–131.
    –––, 1993, “Rethinking the Heidegger—Deep Ecology Relationship”, Environmental Ethics, 15(3): 195–224.
    –––, 2002, “Heidegger's Phenomenology and Contemporary Environmentalism”, in T. Toadvine (ed.), Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 73–101.

    Additional Reading

    Carman, T., 2003, Heidegger's Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in ‘Being and Time’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Clark, T., 2001, Routledge Critical Thinkers: Martin Heidegger, London: Routledge.
    Dreyfus, H.L. and Hall, H. (eds.), 1992, Heidegger: a Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
    Dreyfus, H.L. and Wrathall, M. (eds.), 2002, Heidegger Reexamined (4 Volumes), London: Routledge.
    Gorner, P., 2007, Heidegger's Being and Time: an Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Guignon, C., 1983, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Indiana: Hackett.
    –––, (ed.), 1993, The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Macann, C. (ed.), 1992, Heidegger: Critical Assessments (4 Volumes), London: Routledge.
    –––. (ed.), 1996, Critical Heidegger, London: Routledge.
    Marx. W., 1970, Heidegger and the Tradition, translated by T. Kisiel and M. Greene, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
    Wrathall, M., 2003, How to Read Heidegger, London: Granta.
    Wrathall, M. and Malpas, J. (eds.), 2000, Heidegger, Authenticity and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    –––, (eds.), 2000, Heidegger, Coping and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 2, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Heidegger6
    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


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    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:10 am

    If I fail to save the solar system -- perhaps I can save Madagascar!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar (Malagasy: Repoblikan'i Madagasikara [republi'k?an madagas'k?ar??]; French: République de Madagascar) and previously known as the Malagasy Republic, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Southeast Africa. The nation comprises the island of Madagascar (the fourth-largest island in the world), as well as numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from India around 88 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; over 90 percent of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth. The island's diverse ecosystems and unique wildlife are threatened by the encroachment of the rapidly growing human population and other environmental threats.

    Initial human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BC and AD 550 by Austronesian peoples arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo. These were joined around AD 1000 by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. The Malagasy ethnic group is often divided into eighteen or more sub-groups of which the largest are the Merina of the central highlands.

    Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting socio-political alliances. Beginning in the early 19th century, most of the island was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles. The monarchy collapsed in 1897 when the island was absorbed into the French colonial empire, from which the island gained independence in 1960. The autonomous state of Madagascar has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed Republics. Since 1992 the nation has officially been governed as a constitutional democracy from its capital at Antananarivo. However, in a popular uprising in 2009 president Marc Ravalomanana was made to resign and presidential power was transferred in March 2009 to Andry Rajoelina in a move widely viewed by the international community as a coup d'état. Constitutional governance was restored in January 2014 when Hery Rajaonarimampianina was named president following a 2013 election deemed fair and transparent by the international community.

    In 2012, the population of Madagascar was estimated at just over 22 million, 90 percent of whom live on less than two dollars per day. Malagasy and French are both official languages of the state. The majority of the population adheres to traditional beliefs, Christianity, or an amalgamation of both. Ecotourism and agriculture, paired with greater investments in education, health and private enterprise, are key elements of Madagascar's development strategy. Under Ravalomanana these investments produced substantial economic growth but the benefits were not evenly spread throughout the population, producing tensions over the increasing cost of living and declining living standards among the poor and some segments of the middle class. As of 2014, the economy has been weakened by the recently concluded political crisis and quality of life remains low for the majority of the Malagasy population.

    In the Malagasy language, the island of Madagascar is called Madagasikara [madagas?'k?ar??] and its people are referred to as Malagasy.[3] The island's appellation "Madagascar" is not of local origin but rather was popularized in the Middle Ages by Europeans.[10] The name Madageiscar was first recorded in the memoirs of 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo as a corrupted transliteration of the name Mogadishu, the Somali port with which Polo had confused the island. On St. Laurence's Day in 1500, Portuguese explorer Diogo Dias landed on the island and christened it São Lourenço, but Polo's name was preferred and popularized on Renaissance maps. No single Malagasy-language name predating Madagasikara appears to have been used by the local population to refer to the island, although some communities had their own name for part or all of the land they inhabited.[11]

    At 592,800 square kilometres (228,900 sq mi),[12] Madagascar is the world's 47th largest country[5] and the fourth-largest island.[12] The country lies mostly between latitudes 12°S and 26°S, and longitudes 43°E and 51°E.[13] Neighboring islands include the French territory of Réunion and the country of Mauritius to the east, as well as the state of Comoros and the French territory of Mayotte to the north west. The nearest mainland state is Mozambique, located to the west.

    The prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana separated the Madagascar-Antarctica-India landmass from the Africa-South America landmass around 135 million years ago. Madagascar later split from India about 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in relative isolation.[14] Along the length of the eastern coast runs a narrow and steep escarpment containing much of the island's remaining tropical lowland forest.

    To the west of this ridge lies a plateau in the center of the island ranging in altitude from 750 to 1,500 m (2,460 to 4,920 ft) above sea level. These central highlands, traditionally the homeland of the Merina people and the location of their historic capital at Antananarivo, are the most densely populated part of the island and are characterized by terraced, rice-growing valleys lying between grassy hills and patches of the subhumid forests that formerly covered the highland region. To the west of the highlands, the increasingly arid terrain gradually slopes down to the Mozambique Channel and mangrove swamps along the coast.[15]

    Madagascar's highest peaks rise from three prominent highland massifs: Maromokotro 2,876 m (9,436 ft) in the Tsaratanana Massif is the island's highest point, followed by Boby Peak 2,658 m (8,720 ft) in the Andringitra Massif, and Tsiafajavona 2,643 m (8,671 ft) in the Ankaratra Massif. To the east, the Canal des Pangalanes is a chain of man-made and natural lakes connected by canals built by the French just inland from the east coast and running parallel to it for some 600 km (370 mi). The western and southern sides, which lie in the rain shadow of the central highlands, are home to dry deciduous forests, spiny forests, and deserts and xeric shrublands. Due to their lower population densities, Madagascar's dry deciduous forests have been better preserved than the eastern rain forests or the original woodlands of the central plateau. The western coast features many protected harbors, but silting is a major problem caused by sediment from the high levels of inland erosion carried by rivers crossing the broad western plains.[16]

    The combination of southeastern trade winds and northwestern monsoons produces a hot rainy season (November–April) with frequently destructive cyclones, and a relatively cooler dry season (May–October). Rain clouds originating over the Indian Ocean discharge much of their moisture over the island's eastern coast; the heavy precipitation supports the area's rain forest ecosystem. The central highlands are both drier and cooler while the west is drier still, and a semi-arid climate prevails in the southwest and southern interior of the island.[15] Tropical cyclones annually cause damage to infrastructure and local economies as well as loss of life.[17] In 2004 Cyclone Gafilo became the strongest cyclone ever recorded to hit Madagascar. The storm killed 172 people, left 214,260 homeless[18] and caused more than US$250 million in damage.[19]

    As a result of the island's long isolation from neighboring continents, Madagascar is home to an abundance of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.[20][21] Approximately 90 percent of all plant and animal species found in Madagascar are endemic,[22] including the lemurs (a type of prosimian primate), the carnivorous fossa and many birds. This distinctive ecology has led some ecologists to refer to Madagascar as the "eighth continent",[23] and the island has been classified by Conservation International as a biodiversity hotspot.[20]

    More than 80 percent of Madagascar's 14,883 plant species are found nowhere else in the world, including five plant families.[24] The family Didiereaceae, composed of four genera and 11 species, is limited to the spiny forests of southwestern Madagascar.[15] Four-fifths of the world's Pachypodium species are endemic to the island.[25] Three-fourths[26] of Madagascar's 860[24] orchid species are found here alone, as are six of the world's eight baobab species.[27] The island is home to around 170 palm species, three times as many as on all of mainland Africa; 165 of them are endemic.[26] Many native plant species are used as herbal remedies for a variety of afflictions. The drugs vinblastine and vincristine, used to treat Hodgkin's disease, leukemia and other cancers, were derived from the Madagascar periwinkle.[28] The traveler's palm, known locally as ravinala[29] and endemic to the eastern rain forests,[30] is highly iconic of Madagascar and is featured in the national emblem as well as the Air Madagascar logo.[31]

    Like its flora, Madagascar's fauna is diverse and exhibits a high rate of endemism. Lemurs have been characterized as "Madagascar's flagship mammal species" by Conservation International.[20] In the absence of monkeys and other competitors, these primates have adapted to a wide range of habitats and diversified into numerous species. As of 2012, there were officially 103 species and subspecies of lemur,[33] 39 of which were described by zoologists between 2000 and 2008.[34] They are almost all classified as rare, vulnerable, or endangered. At least 17 species of lemur have become extinct since man arrived on Madagascar, all of which were larger than the surviving lemur species.[35] A number of other mammals, including the cat-like fossa, are endemic to Madagascar. Over 300 species of birds have been recorded on the island, of which over 60 percent (including four families and 42 genera) are endemic.[20] The few families and genera of reptile that have reached Madagascar have diversified into more than 260 species, with over 90 percent of these being endemic[36] (including one endemic family).[20] The island is home to two-thirds of the world's chameleon species,[36] including the smallest known,[37] and researchers have proposed that Madagascar may be the origin of all chameleons. Endemic fish of Madagascar include two families, 15 genera and over 100 species, primarily inhabiting the island's freshwater lakes and rivers. Although invertebrates remain poorly studied on Madagascar, researchers have found high rates of endemism among the known species. All 651 species of terrestrial snail are endemic, as are a majority of the island's butterflies, scarab beetles, lacewings, spiders and dragonflies.[20]

    Madagascar's varied fauna and flora are endangered by human activity.[38] Since the arrival of humans around 2,350 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90 percent of its original forest.[39] This forest loss is largely fueled by tavy ("fat"), a traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practice imported to Madagascar by the earliest settlers.[40] Malagasy farmers embrace and perpetuate the practice not only for its practical benefits as an agricultural technique, but for its cultural associations with prosperity, health and venerated ancestral custom (fomba malagasy).[41] As human population density rose on the island, deforestation accelerated beginning around 1400 years ago.[42] By the 16th century, the central highlands had been largely cleared of their original forests.[40] More recent contributors to the loss of forest cover include the growth in cattle herd size since their introduction around 1000 years ago, a continued reliance on charcoal as a fuel for cooking, and the increased prominence of coffee as a cash crop over the past century.[43] According to a conservative estimate, about 40 percent of the island's original forest cover was lost from the 1950s to 2000, with a thinning of remaining forest areas by 80 percent.[44] In addition to traditional agricultural practice, wildlife conservation is challenged by the illicit harvesting of protected forests, as well as the state-sanctioned harvesting of precious woods within national parks. Although banned by then-President Marc Ravalomanana from 2000 to 2009, the collection of small quantities of precious timber from national parks was re-authorized in January 2009 and has dramatically intensified under the administration of current head of state Andry Rajoelina as a key source of state revenues to offset cuts in donor support following Ravalomanana's ouster.[45] It is anticipated that all the island's rainforests, excluding those in protected areas and the steepest eastern mountain slopes, will have been deforested by 2025.[46] Invasive species have likewise been introduced by human populations. Following the 2014 discovery in Madagascar of the Asian common toad, a relative of a toad species that has severely harmed wildlife in Australia since the 1930s, researchers warned the toad could "wreak havoc on the country's unique fauna."[47]

    Habitat destruction and hunting have threatened many of Madagascar's endemic species or driven them to extinction. The island's elephant birds, a family of endemic giant ratites, went extinct in 17th century or earlier, most probably due to human hunting of adult birds and poaching of their large eggs for food.[48] Numerous giant lemur species vanished with the arrival of human settlers to the island, while others became extinct over the course of the centuries as a growing human population put greater pressures on lemur habitats and, among some populations, increased the rate of lemur hunting for food.[49] A July 2012 assessment found that the exploitation of natural resources since the 2009 coup has had dire consequences for the island's wildlife: 90 percent of lemur species were found to be threatened with extinction, the highest proportion of any mammalian group. Of these, 23 species were classified as critically endangered. By contrast, a previous study in 2008 had found only 38 percent of lemur species were at risk of extinction.[33]

    In 2003 Ravalomanana announced the Durban Vision, an initiative to more than triple the island's protected natural areas to over 60,000 km2 (23,000 sq mi) or 10 percent of Madagascar's land surface. As of 2011, areas protected by the state included five Strict Nature Reserves (Réserves Naturelles Intégrales), 21 Wildlife Reserves (Réserves Spéciales) and 21 National Parks (Parcs Nationaux).[50] In 2007 six of the national parks were declared a joint World Heritage Site under the name Rainforests of the Atsinanana. These parks are Marojejy, Masoala, Ranomafana, Zahamena, Andohahela and Andringitra.[51] Local timber merchants are harvesting scarce species of rosewood trees from protected rainforests within Marojejy National Park and exporting the wood to China for the production of luxury furniture and musical instruments.[52] To raise public awareness of Madagascar's environmental challenges, the Wildlife Conservation Society opened an exhibit entitled "Madagascar!" in June 2008 at the Bronx Zoo in New York.[53]

    The settlement of Madagascar is a subject of ongoing research and debate. Most archaeologists estimate that the earliest settlers arrived in successive waves throughout the period between 350 BC and 550 AD, while others are cautious about dates earlier than 250 AD. In either case, these dates make Madagascar one of the last major landmasses on Earth to be settled by humans.[54] Early settlers arrived in outrigger canoes from southern Borneo. Upon arrival, early settlers practiced slash-and-burn agriculture to clear the coastal rainforests for cultivation. The first settlers encountered Madagascar's abundance of megafauna, including giant lemurs, elephant birds, giant fossa and the Malagasy hippopotamus, which have since become extinct due to hunting and habitat destruction.[55] By 600 AD groups of these early settlers had begun clearing the forests of the central highlands.[56] Arab traders first reached the island between the seventh and ninth centuries.[57] A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa arrived around 1000 AD. They introduced the zebu, a type of long-horned humped cattle, which they kept in large herds.[40]

    By 1600, irrigated paddy fields were developed in the central highland Betsileo Kingdom, and were extended with terraced paddies throughout the neighboring Kingdom of Imerina a century later.[56] The rising intensity of land cultivation and the ever-increasing demand for zebu pasturage had largely transformed the central highlands from a forest ecosystem to grassland by the 17th century.[40] The oral histories of the Merina people, who may have arrived in the central highlands between 600 and 1000 years ago, describe encountering an established population they called the Vazimba. Probably the descendants of an earlier and less technologically advanced Austronesian settlement wave, the Vazimba were assimilated or expelled from the highlands by the Merina kings Andriamanelo, Ralambo and Andrianjaka in the 16th and early 17th centuries.[58] Today, the spirits of the Vazimba are revered as tompontany (ancestral masters of the land) by many traditional Malagasy communities.[59]

    Madagascar was an important transoceanic trading hub connecting ports of the Indian Ocean in the early centuries following human settlement. The written history of Madagascar began with the Arabs, who established trading posts along the northwest coast by at least the 10th century and introduced Islam, the Arabic script (used to transcribe the Malagasy language in a form of writing known as sorabe), Arab astrology and other cultural elements.[17] European contact began in 1500, when the Portuguese sea captain Diogo Dias sighted the island.[12] The French established trading posts along the east coast in the late 17th century.[17]

    From about 1774 to 1824, Madagascar gained prominence among pirates and European traders, particularly those involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The small island of Nosy Boroha off the northeastern coast of Madagascar has been proposed by some historians as the site of the legendary pirate utopia of Libertalia.[60] Many European sailors were shipwrecked on the coasts of the island, among them Robert Drury, whose journal is one of the few written depictions of life in southern Madagascar during the 18th century.[61] The wealth generated by maritime trade spurred the rise of organized kingdoms on the island, some of which had grown quite powerful by the 17th century.[62] Among these were the Betsimisaraka alliance of the eastern coast and the Sakalava chiefdoms of Menabe and Boina on the west coast. The Kingdom of Imerina, located in the central highlands with its capital at the royal palace of Antananarivo, emerged at around the same time under the leadership of King Andriamanelo.[63]

    Upon its emergence in the early 17th century, the highland kingdom of Imerina was initially a minor power relative to the larger coastal kingdoms[63] and grew even weaker in the early 18th century when King Andriamasinavalona divided it among his four sons. Following a century of warring and famine, Imerina was reunited in 1793 by King Andrianampoinimerina (1787–1810).[64] From his initial capital Ambohimanga,[65] and later from the Rova of Antananarivo, this Merina king rapidly expanded his rule over neighboring principalities. His ambition to bring the entire island under his control was largely achieved by his son and successor, King Radama I (1810–28), who was recognized by the British government as King of Madagascar. Radama concluded a treaty in 1817 with the British governor of Mauritius to abolish the lucrative slave trade in return for British military and financial assistance. Artisan missionary envoys from the London Missionary Society began arriving in 1818 and included such key figures as James Cameron, David Jones and David Griffiths, who established schools, transcribed the Malagasy language using the Roman alphabet, translated the Bible, and introduced a variety of new technologies to the island.[66]

    Radama's successor, Queen Ranavalona I (1828–61), responded to increasing political and cultural encroachment on the part of Britain and France by issuing a royal edict prohibiting the practice of Christianity in Madagascar and pressuring most foreigners to leave the territory. Among those who continued to reside in Imerina were Jean Laborde, an entrepreneur who developed munitions and other industries on behalf of the monarchy, and Joseph-François Lambert, a French adventurer and slave trader, with whom then-Prince Radama II signed a controversial trade agreement termed the Lambert Charter. Succeeding his mother, Radama II (1861–63) attempted to relax the queen's stringent policies, but was overthrown two years later by Prime Minister Rainivoninahitriniony (1852–1865) and an alliance of Andriana (noble) and Hova (commoner) courtiers, who sought to end the absolute power of the monarch.[17] Following the coup, the courtiers offered Radama's queen Rasoherina (1863–68) the opportunity to rule, if she would accept a power sharing arrangement with the Prime Minister—a new social contract that would be sealed by a political marriage between them.[67] Queen Rasoherina accepted, first wedding Rainivoninahitriniony, then later deposing him and wedding his brother, Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony (1864–95), who would go on to marry Queen Ranavalona II (1868–83) and Queen Ranavalona III (1883–97) in succession.[68]

    Over the course of Rainilaiarivony's 31-year tenure as prime minister, numerous policies were adopted to modernize and consolidate the power of the central government.[69] Schools were constructed throughout the island and attendance was made mandatory. Army organization was improved, and British consultants were employed to train and professionalize soldiers.[70] Polygamy was outlawed and Christianity, declared the official religion of the court in 1869, was adopted alongside traditional beliefs among a growing portion of the populace.[69] Legal codes were reformed on the basis of British common law and three European-style courts were established in the capital city.[70] In his joint role as Commander-in-Chief, Rainilaiarivony also successfully ensured the defense of Madagascar against several French colonial incursions.[70]

    Primarily on the basis that the Lambert Charter had not been respected, France invaded Madagascar in 1883 in what became known as the first Franco-Hova War.[71] At the end of the war, Madagascar ceded the northern port town of Antsiranana (Diego Suarez) to France and paid 560,000 francs to Lambert's heirs.[72] In 1890, the British accepted the full formal imposition of a French protectorate on the island, but French authority was not acknowledged by the government of Madagascar. To force capitulation, the French bombarded and occupied the harbor of Toamasina on the east coast, and Mahajanga on the west coast, in December 1894 and January 1895 respectively.[73] A French military flying column then marched toward Antananarivo, losing many men to malaria and other diseases. Reinforcements came from Algeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. Upon reaching the city in September 1895, the column bombarded the royal palace with heavy artillery, causing heavy casualties and leading Queen Ranavalona III to surrender.[74] France annexed Madagascar in 1896 and declared the island a colony the following year, dissolving the Merina monarchy and sending the royal family into exile on Réunion Island and to Algeria. A two-year resistance movement organized in response to the French capture of the royal palace was effectively put down at the end of 1897.[75]

    Under colonial rule, plantations were established for the production of a variety of export crops.[76] Slavery was abolished in 1896 and approximately 500,000 slaves were freed; many remained in their former masters' homes as servants.[77] Wide paved boulevards and gathering places were constructed in the capital city of Antananarivo[78] and the Rova palace compound was turned into a museum.[79] Additional schools were built, particularly in rural and coastal areas where the schools of the Merina had not reached. Education became mandatory between the ages of 6 to 13 and focused primarily on French language and practical skills.[80] The Merina royal tradition of taxes paid in the form of labor was continued under the French and used to construct a railway and roads linking key coastal cities to Antananarivo.[81] Malagasy troops fought for France in World War I.[12] In the 1930s, Nazi political thinkers developed the Madagascar plan on the basis of earlier proposals from Poland and elsewhere in Europe that had identified the island as a potential site for the deportation of Europe's Jews.[82] During the Second World War, the island was the site of the Battle of Madagascar between the Vichy government and the British.[83] The occupation of France during the Second World War tarnished the prestige of the colonial administration in Madagascar and galvanized the growing independence movement, leading to the Malagasy Uprising of 1947.[84] This movement led the French to establish reformed institutions in 1956 under the Loi Cadre (Overseas Reform Act), and Madagascar moved peacefully towards independence.[85] The Malagasy Republic was proclaimed on 14 October 1958, as an autonomous state within the French Community. A period of provisional government ended with the adoption of a constitution in 1959 and full independence on 26 June 1960.[86]

    Since regaining independence, Madagascar has transitioned through four republics with corresponding revisions to its constitution. The First Republic (1960–72), under the leadership of French-appointed President Philibert Tsiranana, was characterized by a continuation of strong economic and political ties to France. Many high-level technical positions were filled by French expatriates, and French teachers, textbooks and curricula continued to be used in schools around the country. Popular resentment over Tsiranana's tolerance for this "neo-colonial" arrangement inspired a series of farmer and student protests that overturned his administration in 1972.[17]

    Gabriel Ramanantsoa, a Major General in the army, was appointed interim President and Prime Minister that same year, but low public approval forced him to step down in 1975. Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava, appointed to succeed him, was assassinated six days into his tenure. General Gilles Andriamahazo ruled after Ratsimandrava for four months before being replaced by another military appointee: Vice Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, who ushered in the socialist-Marxist Second Republic that ran under his tenure from 1975 to 1993. This period saw a political alignment with the Eastern Bloc countries and a shift toward economic insularity. These policies, coupled with economic pressures stemming from the 1973 oil crisis, resulted in the rapid collapse of Madagascar's economy and a sharp decline in living standards,[17] and the country had become completely bankrupt by 1979. The Ratsiraka administration accepted the conditions of transparency, anti-corruption measures and free market policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and various bilateral donors in exchange for their bailout of the nation's broken economy.[87]

    Ratsiraka's dwindling popularity in the late 1980s reached a critical point in 1991 when presidential guards opened fire on unarmed protesters during a rally. Within two months, a transitional government had been established under the leadership of Albert Zafy (1993–96), who went on to win the 1992 presidential elections and inaugurate the Third Republic (1992–2010).[88] The new Madagascar constitution established a multi-party democracy and a separation of powers that placed significant control in the hands of the National Assembly. The new constitution also emphasized human rights, social and political freedoms, and free trade.[17] Zafy's term, however, was marred by economic decline, allegations of corruption, and his introduction of legislation to give himself greater powers. He was consequently impeached in 1996, and an interim president, Norbert Ratsirahonana, was appointed for the three months prior to the next presidential election. Ratsiraka was then voted back into power on a platform of decentralization and economic reforms for a second term which lasted from 1996 to 2001.[87]

    The contested 2001 presidential elections in which then-mayor of Antananarivo, Marc Ravalomanana, eventually emerged victorious, caused a seven-month standoff in 2002 between supporters of Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka. The negative economic impact of the political crisis was gradually overcome by Ravalomanana's progressive economic and political policies, which encouraged investments in education and ecotourism, facilitated foreign direct investment, and cultivated trading partnerships both regionally and internationally. National GDP grew at an average rate of 7 percent per year under his administration. In the later half of his second term, Ravalomanana was criticised by domestic and international observers who accused him of increasing authoritarianism and corruption.[87]

    Opposition leader and then-mayor of Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, led a movement in early 2009 in which Ravalomanana was pushed from power in an unconstitutional process widely condemned as a coup d'état. In March 2009, Rajoelina was declared by the Supreme Court as the President of the High Transitional Authority, an interim governing body responsible for moving the country toward presidential elections. In 2010, a new constitution was adopted by referendum, establishing a Fourth Republic, which sustained the democratic, multi-party structure established in the previous constitution.[88] Hery Rajaonarimampianina was declared the winner of the 2013 presidential election, which the international community deemed fair and transparent.[89]

    Madagascar is a semi-presidential representative democratic multi-party republic, wherein the popularly elected president is the head of state and selects a prime minister, who recommends candidates to the president to form his cabinet of ministers. According to the constitution, executive power is exercised by the government while legislative power is vested in the ministerial cabinet, the Senate and the National Assembly, although in reality these two latter bodies have very little power or legislative role. The constitution establishes independent executive, legislative and judicial branches and mandates a popularly elected president limited to three five-year terms.[12]

    Constitutional governance was restored in January 2014 when Hery Rajaonarimampianina was named president following a 2013 election deemed fair and transparent by the international community.

    The previous presidential election was held on 3 December 2006 and resulted in the re-election of Marc Ravalomanana, from whom executive power was unconstitutionally transferred to Andry Rajoelina in March 2009. The public also elects the 127 members of the National Assembly to five-year terms. The last National Assembly election was held on 23 September 2007. All 33 members of the Senate serve six-year terms, with 22 senators elected by local officials and 11 appointed by the president. After taking power, Rajoelina dissolved both the National Assembly and the Senate, leaving the nation without a constitutional legislative body.[12] At the local level, the island's 22 provinces are administered by a governor and provincial council. Provinces are further sub-divided into regions and communes. The judiciary is modeled on the French system, with a High Constitutional Court, High Court of Justice, Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, criminal tribunals, and tribunals of first instance.[90] The courts, which adhere to civil law, lack the capacity to quickly and transparently try the cases in the judicial system, often forcing defendants to pass lengthy pretrial detentions in unsanitary and overcrowded prisons.[91]

    Antananarivo is the administrative capital and largest city of Madagascar.[12] It is located in the highlands region, near the geographic center of the island. King Andrianjaka founded Antananarivo as the capital of his Imerina Kingdom around 1610 or 1625 upon the site of a captured Vazimba capital on the hilltop of Analamanga.[58] As Merina dominance expanded over neighboring Malagasy peoples in the early 19th century to establish the Kingdom of Madagascar, Antananarivo became the center of administration for virtually the entire island. In 1896 the French colonizers of Madagascar adopted the Merina capital as their center of colonial administration. The city remained the capital of Madagascar after regaining independence in 1960. In 2011, the capital's population was estimated at 1,300,000 inhabitants. The next largest cities are Antsirabe (500,000), Toamasina (450,000) and Mahajanga (400,000).[12]

    As part of an effort to decentralize administration, Madagascar's six administrative provinces (faritany mizakatena), established under the French colonial authority in 1946,[92] were subdivided into 22 regions (faritra) in 2004. The regions became the highest subdivision level when the provinces were dissolved in accordance with the results of the 2007 referendum.[12] The regions are further subdivided into 119 districts, 1,579 communes, and 17,485 fokontany.[93]

    Population 2004 estimate

    Diana (1), Sava (2) Antsiranana 1,291,100
    Itasy (3), Analamanga (4), Vakinankaratra (5), Bongolava (6) Antananarivo 5,370,900
    Sofia (7), Boeny (Cool, Betsiboka (9), Melaky (10) Mahajanga 1,896,000
    Alaotra Mangoro (11), Atsinanana (12), Analanjirofo (13) Toamasina 2,855,600
    Amoron'i Mania (14), Haute-Matsiatra (15), Vatovavy-Fitovinany (16), Atsimo-Atsinanana (17), Ihorombe (18) Fianarantsoa 3,730,200
    Menabe (19), Atsimo-Andrefana (20), Androy (21), Anosy (22) Toliara 2,430,100

    Since Madagascar gained independence from France in 1960, the island's political transitions have been marked by numerous popular protests, several disputed elections, an impeachment, two military coups and one assassination. The island's recurrent political crises are often prolonged, with detrimental effects on the local economy, international relations and Malagasy living standards. The eight-month standoff between incumbent Ratsiraka and challenger Marc Ravalomanana, following the 2001 presidential elections, cost Madagascar millions of dollars in lost tourism and trade revenue as well as damage to infrastructure, such as bombed bridges and buildings damaged by arson.[95] A series of protests led by Andry Rajoelina against Ravalomanana in early 2009 became violent, with more than 170 people killed.[96] The installation of Rajoelina's transitional regime has, since March 2009, caused many bilateral donors and intergovernmental organizations to freeze aid and suspend regular diplomatic relations with Madagascar, causing economic development to stagnate and reversing many of the gains achieved under the previous administration. In addition, modern politics in Madagascar are colored by the history of Merina subjugation of coastal communities under their rule in the 19th century. The consequent tension between the highland and coastal populations has periodically flared up into isolated events of violence.[97]

    Madagascar has historically been perceived as being on the margin of mainstream African affairs despite being a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, which was established in 1963 and dissolved in 2002 to be replaced by the African Union. Madagascar was not permitted to attend the first African Union summit because of a dispute over the results of the 2001 presidential election, but rejoined the African Union in July 2003 after a 14-month hiatus. However, Madagascar was again suspended by the African Union in March 2009 following the unconstitutional transfer of executive power to Rajoelina.[98] Madagascar is a member of the International Criminal Court with a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of protection for the United States military.[12] Eleven countries have established embassies in Madagascar, including France, the United Kingdom, the United States, China and India.[99]

    Human rights in Madagascar are protected under the constitution and the state is a signatory to numerous international agreements including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[100] Religious, ethnic and sexual minorities are protected under the law. Freedom of association and assembly are also guaranteed under the law, although in practice the denial of permits for public assembly has occasionally been used to impede political demonstrations.[45][100] Torture by security forces is rare and state repression is low relative to other countries with comparably few legal safeguards, although arbitrary arrests and the corruption of military and police officers remain problems. Ravalomanana's 2004 creation of BIANCO, an anti-corruption bureau, resulted in reduced corruption among Antananarivo's lower-level bureaucrats in particular, although high-level officials have not been prosecuted by the bureau.[45]

    The rise of centralized kingdoms among the Sakalava, Merina and other ethnic groups produced the island's first standing armies by the 16th century, initially equipped with spears but later with muskets, cannons and other firearms.[101] By the early 19th century, the Merina sovereigns of the Kingdom of Madagascar had brought much of the island under their control by mobilizing an army of trained and armed soldiers numbering as high as 30,000.[102] French attacks on coastal towns in the later part of the century prompted then-Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony to solicit British assistance to provide training to the Merina monarchy's army. Despite the training and leadership provided by British military advisers, the Malagasy army was unable to withstand French weaponry and was forced to surrender following an attack on the royal palace at Antananarivo. Madagascar was declared a colony of France in 1897.[103]

    The political independence and sovereignty of the Malagasy armed forces, which comprises an army, navy and air force, was restored with independence from France in 1960.[104] Since this time the Malagasy military has never engaged in armed conflict with another state or within its own borders, but has occasionally intervened to restore order during periods of political unrest. Under the socialist Second Republic, Admiral Didier Ratsiraka instated mandatory national armed or civil service for all young citizens regardless of gender, a policy that remained in effect from 1976 to 1991.[105][106] The armed forces are under the direction of the Minister of the Interior[90] and have remained largely neutral during times of political crisis, as during the protracted standoff between incumbent Ratsiraka and challenger Marc Ravalomanana in the disputed 2001 presidential elections, when the military refused to intervene in favor of either candidate. This tradition was broken in 2009, when a segment of the army defected to the side of Andry Rajoelina, then-mayor of Antananarivo, in support of his attempt to force President Ravalomanana from power.[45]

    The Minister of the Interior is responsible for the national police force, paramilitary force (gendarmerie) and the secret police.[90] The police and gendarmerie are stationed and administered at the local level. However, in 2009 fewer than a third of all communes had access to the services of these security forces, with most lacking local-level headquarters for either corps.[93] Traditional community tribunals, called dina, are presided over by elders and other respected figures and remain a key means by which justice is served in rural areas where state presence is weak. Historically, security has been relatively high across the island.[45] Violent crime rates are low, and criminal activities are predominantly crimes of opportunity such as pickpocketing and petty theft, although child prostitution, human trafficking and the production and sale of marijuana and other illegal drugs are increasing.[90] Budget cuts since 2009 have severely impacted the national police force, producing a steep increase in criminal activity in recent years.[45]

    During Madagascar's First Republic, France heavily influenced Madagascar's economic planning and policy and served as its key trading partner. Key products were cultivated and distributed nationally through producers' and consumers' cooperatives. Government initiatives such as a rural development program and state farms were established to boost production of commodities such as rice, coffee, cattle, silk and palm oil. Popular dissatisfaction over these policies was a key factor in launching the socialist-Marxist Second Republic, in which the formerly private bank and insurance industries were nationalized; state monopolies were established for such industries as textiles, cotton and power; and import–export trade and shipping were brought under state control. Madagascar's economy quickly deteriorated as exports fell, industrial production dropped by 75 percent, inflation spiked and government debt increased; the rural population was soon reduced to living at subsistence levels. Over 50 percent of the nation's export revenue was spent on debt servicing.[16]

    The IMF forced Madagascar's government to accept structural adjustment policies and liberalization of the economy when the state became bankrupt in 1982 and state-controlled industries were gradually privatized over the course of the 1980s. The political crisis of 1991 led to the suspension of IMF and World Bank assistance. Conditions for the resumption of aid were not met under Zafy, who tried unsuccessfully to attract other forms of revenue for the State before aid was once again resumed under the interim government established upon Zafy's impeachment. The IMF agreed to write off half Madagascar's debt in 2004 under the Ravalomanana administration. Having met a set of stringent economic, governance and human rights criteria, Madagascar became the first country to benefit from the Millennium Challenge Account in 2005.[12]

    Madagascar's GDP in 2009 was estimated at 8.6 billion USD, with a per capita GDP of $438.[12] Approximately 69 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line threshold of one dollar per day.[107] The agriculture sector constituted 29 percent of Malagasy GDP in 2011, while manufacturing formed 15 percent of GDP. Madagascar's sources of growth are tourism, agriculture and the extractive industries.[108] Tourism focuses on the niche eco-tourism market, capitalizing on Madagascar's unique biodiversity, unspoiled natural habitats, national parks and lemur species.[109] An estimated 365,000 tourists visited Madagascar in 2008, but the sector has declined as a result of the political crisis with 180,000 tourists visiting in 2010.[108]

    Madagascar's natural resources include a variety of unprocessed agricultural and mineral resources. Agriculture, including raffia, fishing and forestry, is a mainstay of the economy. Madagascar is the world's principal supplier of vanilla, cloves[111] and ylang-ylang.[18] Other key agricultural resources include coffee, lychees and shrimp. Key mineral resources include various types of precious and semi-precious stones, and Madagascar currently provides half of the world's supply of sapphires, which were discovered near Ilakaka in the late 1990s.[112] The island also holds one of the world's largest reserves of ilmenite (titanium ore), as well as important reserves of chromite, coal, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel.[16] Several major projects are underway in the mining, oil and gas sectors that are anticipated to give a significant boost to the Malagasy economy. These include such projects as ilmenite and zircon mining from heavy mineral sands near Tôlanaro by Rio Tinto,[113] extraction of nickel near Moramanga and its processing near Toamasina by Sherritt International,[114] and the development of the giant onshore heavy oil deposits at Tsimiroro and Bemolanga by Madagascar Oil.[115]

    Exports formed 28 percent of GDP in 2009.[12] Most of the country's export revenue is derived from the textiles industry, fish and shellfish, vanilla, cloves and other foodstuffs.[108] France is Madagascar's main trading partner, although the United States, Japan and Germany also have strong economic ties to the country.[16] The Madagascar-U.S. Business Council was formed in May 2003, as a collaboration between USAID and Malagasy artisan producers to support the export of local handicrafts to foreign markets.[116] Imports of such items as foodstuffs, fuel, capital goods, vehicles, consumer goods and electronics consume an estimated 52 percent of GDP. The main sources of Madagascar's imports include France, China, Iran, Mauritius and Hong Kong.[12]

    In 2010, Madagascar had approximately 7,617 km (4,730 mi) of paved roads, 854 km (530 mi) of railways and 432 km (270 mi) of navigable waterways.[9] The majority of roads in Madagascar are unpaved, with many becoming impassable in the rainy season. Largely paved national routes connect the six largest regional towns to Antananarivo, with minor paved and unpaved routes providing access to other population centers in each district. There are several rail lines on the island. Antananarivo is connected to Toamasina, Ambatondrazaka and Antsirabe by rail, and another rail line connects Fianarantsoa to Manakara. The most important seaport in Madagascar is located on the east coast at Toamasina. Ports at Mahajanga and Antsiranana are significantly less used due to their remoteness.[17] The island's newest port at Ehoala, constructed in 2008 and privately managed by Rio Tinto, will come under state control upon completion of the company's mining project near Tôlanaro around 2038.[113] Air Madagascar services the island's many small regional airports, which offer the only practical means of access to many of the more remote regions during rainy season road washouts.[17]

    Running water and electricity are supplied at the national level by a government service provider, Jirama, which is unable to service the entire population. As of 2009, only 6.8 percent of Madagascar's fokontany had access to water provided by Jirama, while 9.5 percent had access to its electricity services.[93] 56% of Madagascar's power is provided by hydroelectric power plants with the remaining 44% provided by diesel engine generators.[117] Mobile telephone and internet access are widespread in urban areas but remain limited in rural parts of the island. Approximately 30 percent of the districts are able to access the nations' several private telecommunications networks via mobile telephones or land lines.[93]

    Radio broadcasts remain the principal means by which the Malagasy population access international, national and local news. Only state radio broadcasts are transmitted across the entire island. Hundreds of public and private stations with local or regional range provide alternatives to state broadcasting.[91] In addition to the state television channel, a variety of privately owned television stations broadcast local and international programming throughout Madagascar. Several media outlets are owned by political partisans or politicians themselves, including the media groups MBS (owned by Ravalomanana) and Viva (owned by Rajoelina),[45] contributing to political polarization in reporting. The media has historically come under varying degrees of pressure over time to censor their criticism of the government. Reporters are occasionally threatened or harassed and media outlets are periodically forced to close.[91] Accusations of media censorship have increased since 2009 due to the alleged intensification of restrictions on political criticism.[100] Access to the internet has grown dramatically over the past decade, with an estimated 352,000 residents of Madagascar accessing the internet from home or in one of the nation's many internet cafes in December 2011.[91]

    Medical centers, dispensaries and hospitals are found throughout the island, although they are concentrated in urban areas and particularly in Antananarivo. Access to medical care remains beyond the reach of many Malagasy. In addition to the high expense of medical care relative to the average Malagasy income, the prevalence of trained medical professionals remains extremely low. In 2010 Madagascar had an average of three hospital beds per 10,000 people and a total of 3,150 doctors, 5,661 nurses, 385 community health workers, 175 pharmacists and 57 dentists for a population of 22 million. 14.6 percent of government spending in 2008 was directed toward the health sector. Approximately 70 percent of spending on health was contributed by the government, while 30 percent originated with international donors and other private sources.[118] The government provides at least one basic health center per commune. Private health centers are concentrated within urban areas and particularly those of the central highlands.[93]

    Despite these barriers to access, health services have shown a trend toward improvement over the past twenty years. Child immunizations against such diseases as hepatitis B, diphtheria and measles increased an average of 60 percent in this period, indicating low but increasing availability of basic medical services and treatments. The Malagasy fertility rate in 2009 was 4.6 children per woman, declining from 6.3 in 1990. Teen pregnancy rates of 14.8 percent in 2011, much higher than the African average, are a contributing factor to rapid population growth.[118] In 2010 the maternal mortality rate was 440 per 100,000 births, compared to 373.1 in 2008 and 484.4 in 1990, indicating a decline in perinatal care following the 2009 coup. The infant mortality rate in 2011 was 41 per 1,000 births,[12] with an under-five mortality rate at 61 per 1,000 births.[119] Schistosomiasis, malaria and sexually transmitted diseases are common in Madagascar, although infection rates of AIDS remain low relative to many countries in mainland Africa, at only 0.2 percent of the adult population. The malaria mortality rate is also among the lowest in Africa at 8.5 deaths per 100,000 people, in part due to the highest frequency use of insecticide treated nets in Africa.[118] Adult life expectancy in 2009 was 63 years for men and 67 years for women.[118]

    Prior to the 19th century, all education in Madagascar was informal and typically served to teach practical skills as well as social and cultural values, including respect for ancestors and elders.[17] The first formal European-style school was established in 1818 at Toamasina by members of the London Missionary Society (LMS). The LMS was invited by King Radama I (1810–28) to expand its schools throughout Imerina to teach basic literacy and numeracy to aristocratic children. The schools were closed by Ranavalona I in 1835[120] but reopened and expanded in the decades after her death. By the end of the 19th century Madagascar had the most developed and modern school system in pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. Access to schooling was expanded in coastal areas during the colonial period, with French language and basic work skills becoming the focus of the curriculum. During the post-colonial First Republic, a continued reliance on French nationals as teachers, and French as the language of instruction, displeased those desiring a complete separation from the former colonial power.[17] Consequently, under the socialist Second Republic, French instructors and other nationals were expelled, Malagasy was declared the language of instruction and a large cadre of young Malagasy were rapidly trained to teach at remote rural schools under the mandatory two-year national service policy.[121] This policy, known as malgachization, coincided with a severe economic downturn and a dramatic decline in the quality of education. Those schooled during this period generally failed to master the French language or many other subjects and struggled to find employment, forcing many to take low-paying jobs in the informal or black market that mired them in deepening poverty. Excepting the brief presidency of Albert Zafy, from 1992 to 1996, Ratsiraka remained in power from 1975 to 2001 and failed to achieve significant improvements in education throughout his tenure.[122]

    Education was prioritized under the Ravalomanana administration (2002–09), and is currently free and compulsory from ages 6 to 13.[123] The primary schooling cycle is five years, followed by four years at the lower secondary level and three years at the upper secondary level.[17] During Ravalomanana's first term, thousands of new primary schools and additional classrooms were constructed, older buildings were renovated, and tens of thousands of new primary teachers were recruited and trained. Primary school fees were eliminated and kits containing basic school supplies were distributed to primary students.[123] Government school construction initiatives have ensured at least one primary school per fokontany and one lower secondary school within each commune. At least one upper secondary school is located in each of the larger urban centers.[93] The three branches of the national public university are located at Antananarivo (founded in 1961), Mahajanga (1977) and Fianarantsoa (1988). These are complemented by public teacher-training colleges and several private universities and technical colleges.[17]

    As a result of increased educational access, enrollment rates more than doubled between 1996 and 2006. However, education quality is weak, producing high rates of grade repetition and dropout.[123] Education policy in Ravalomanana's second term focused on quality issues, including an increase in minimum education standards for the recruitment of primary teachers from a middle school leaving certificate (BEPC) to a high school leaving certificate (BAC), and a reformed teacher training program to support the transition from traditional didactic instruction to student-centered teaching methods to boost student learning and participation in the classroom.[124] Public expenditure on education was 13.4 percent of total government expenditure and 2.9 percent of GDP in 2008. Primary classrooms are crowded, with average pupil to teacher ratios of 47:1 in 2008.[125]

    In 2012, the population of Madagascar was estimated at 22 million.[5] The Malagasy ethnic group forms over 90 percent of Madagascar's population and is typically divided into eighteen ethnic sub-groups.[12] Recent DNA research revealed that the genetic makeup of the average Malagasy person constitutes an approximately equal blend of Southeast Asian and East African genes,[126][127] although the genetics of some communities show a predominance of Southeast Asian or East African origins or some Arab, Indian or European ancestry.[128] Southeast Asian origins - specifically from the southern part of Borneo - are most predominant among the Merina of the central highlands,[97] who form the largest Malagasy ethnic sub-group at approximately 26 percent of the population, while certain communities among the coastal peoples (collectively called côtiers) have relatively stronger East African origins. The largest coastal ethnic sub-groups are the Betsimisaraka (14.9 percent) and the Tsimihety and Sakalava (6 percent each).[17]

    Chinese, Indian and Comorian minorities are present in Madagascar, as well as a small European (primarily French) populace. Emigration in the late 20th century has reduced these minority populations, occasionally in abrupt waves, such as the exodus of Comorans in 1976, following anti-Comoran riots in Mahajanga.[17] By comparison, there has been no significant emigration of Malagasy peoples.[16] The number of Europeans has declined since independence, reduced from 68,430 in 1958[85] to 17,000 three decades later. There were an estimated 25,000 Comorans, 18,000 Indians, and 9,000 Chinese living in Madagascar in the mid-1980s.[17]

    The annual population growth rate in Madagascar was approximately 2.9 percent in 2009.[12] The population grew from 2.2 million in 1900[17] to an estimated 22 million in 2012.[5] Approximately 42.5 percent of the population is younger than 15 years of age, while 54.5 percent are between the ages of 15 and 64. Those aged 65 and older form three percent of the total population.[108] Only two general censuses, in 1975 and 1993, have been carried out after independence. The most densely populated regions of the island are the eastern highlands and the eastern coast, contrasting most dramatically with the sparsely populated western plains.[17]

    Approximately half of the country's population practice traditional religion,[12] which tends to emphasize links between the living and the razana (ancestors). The veneration of ancestors has led to the widespread tradition of tomb building, as well as the highlands practice of the famadihana, whereby a deceased family member's remains may be exhumed to be periodically re-wrapped in fresh silk shrouds before being replaced in the tomb. The famadihana is an occasion to celebrate the beloved ancestor's memory, reunite with family and community, and enjoy a festive atmosphere. Residents of surrounding villages are often invited to attend the party, where food and rum are typically served and a hiragasy troupe or other musical entertainment is commonly present.[132] Consideration for ancestors is also demonstrated through adherence to fady, taboos that are respected during and after the lifetime of the person who establishes them. It is widely believed that by showing respect for ancestors in these ways, they may intervene on behalf of the living. Conversely, misfortunes are often attributed to ancestors whose memory or wishes have been neglected. The sacrifice of zebu is a traditional method used to appease or honor the ancestors. In addition, the Malagasy traditionally believe in a creator god, called Zanahary or Andriamanitra.[133]

    Almost half the Malagasy are Christian, with practitioners of Protestantism slightly outnumbering adherents to Roman Catholicism.[12] In 1818 the London Missionary Society sent the first Christian missionaries to the island, where they built churches, translated the Bible into the Malagasy language and began to gain converts. Beginning in 1835 Queen Ranavalona I persecuted these converts as part of an attempt to halt European cultural and political influence on the island. In 1869 a successor, Queen Ranavalona II, converted the court to Christianity and encouraged Christian missionary activity, burning the sampy (royal idols) in a symbolic break with traditional beliefs.[134]

    Today, many Christians integrate their religious beliefs with traditional ones related to honoring the ancestors. For instance, they may bless their dead at church before proceeding with traditional burial rites or invite a Christian minister to consecrate a famadihana reburial.[132] The Malagasy Council of Churches comprises the four oldest and most prominent Christian denominations (Roman Catholic, Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, Lutheran, and Anglican) and has been an influential force in Malagasy politics.[135]

    Islam is also practiced on the island. Islam was first brought to the island in the Middle Ages by Arab and Somali Muslim traders, who established several Islamic schools along the eastern coast. While the use of Arabic script and loan words and the adoption of Islamic astrology would spread across the island, the Islamic religion failed to take hold in all but a handful of southeastern coastal communities. Today, Muslims constitute 7 percent of the population of Madagascar and are largely concentrated in the northwestern provinces of Mahajanga and Antsiranana. The vast majority of Muslims are Sunni. Muslims are divided between those of Malagasy ethnicity, Indians, Pakistanis and Comorians. More recently, Hinduism was introduced to Madagascar through Gujarati people immigrating from the Saurashtra region of India in the late 19th century. Most Hindus in Madagascar speak Gujarati or Hindi at home.[136]

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    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:28 am

    I think I've really screwed myself by creating this thread. I presently feel as if there is absolutely no hope for myself (because of various and sundry sins of commission and omission -- past, present, and future). I'm just going through the motions as a Dead Fool Walking. But hopefully someone will learn something of significance from my Descent Into Who Knows What. Someone recently suggested that I was being allowed some limited success -- that I was being used -- and that this Tempest in a Teapot will come crashing down in the near-future. I often wish I'd never been born. There must be some mistake. As far as I'm concerned -- the end can't come too soon.

    Consider combining Constantine, The Prophecy, and Day the Earth Stood Still -- into one big Apocalyptic Motion Picture!! Then, consider watching the first four episodes of the 2009 version of 'V' -- immediately followed by Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Finally, consider all of the above as somehow being One Big Movie!! But please think of all of the above in relation to this thread!! I've thought about writing a book -- but I could communicate with a book what I'm able to say with this thread -- if and only if you study it on an ongoing basis, and consider all of the links and references. This project isn't for the intellectually-lazy or the feeble-minded!! I wonder if even ONE individual (Human or Otherwise) have done what I've suggested for months at a time??!! I tend to doubt it. This whole thing might very well end up being my personal study-guide -- For My Eyes Only!! Perhaps that's just as well. I wasn't kidding when I spoke of a change of heart. I think I see how this thing works -- and I'm changing my thinking and plans accordingly. Imagine a discussion-debate between Gabriel-Anna, Michael-Anna, and Lucifer-Anna (with the characteristics and biases I've imagined). Once again, is it not important to think the most important topics through from every conceivable angle -- especially the most troubling possibilities?? Once again, I'm NOT trying to win a popularity-contest. I'm NOT running for anything. I simply wish for everything to work out as well as can be expected for all-concerned. I don't need to follow -- and I don't need to lead. I simply wish to be of the most benefit possible for all-concerned. That's all I'm gonna say.

    More Sherry Shriner. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sherrytalkradio/2012/10/23/monday-night-with-sherry-shriner Once again, I am not a true-believer -- but this show is sort of a 'Galactic Enquirer' -- which adds another dimension to this thread. Perhaps it is more constructive to study the history of conspiracy-theories -- rather than hanging on the every word of the latest conspiracy-theorist. Just 'cause someone is a nut-case -- doesn't mean they're wrong. Just 'cause you're paranoid -- doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Some People Say I'm a Completely Ignorant Fool. Fool Rule. Beware of Sleeper-Cells of Completely Ignorant Fools. See Something?? Say Something!! The Corrupt Rule the Stupid. Those with the Gold -- Make the Rules. Those with the Gold -- RULE. It's a Rat-Race -- and the Rats are Winning. I have been reduced to modeling idealistic political and theological modalities. Now I'm going to watch Stargate SG-1 "The Powers That Be". It's a classic. Please continue to treat this thread as Political and Theological Science-Fiction -- which might contain some truth -- especially if one takes the thread as a whole -- rather than as a truncated cone. I'm not a scholar of my own thread -- but I wish that I were -- and I will attempt to become such a soul -- rather than merely existing as a completely ignorant fool.

    I continue to recommend studying this thread in the context of the original Project Avalon -- and the current Mists of Avalon. I still need to study all of Brook's threads -- as well as reading all of 'The Holy Tablets'. I just noticed that most of Brook's posts have been deleted. Why??? Hopefully they have been saved. Will they reappear at some point in the future??? I would love to see a book by Brook. Does one already exist??? I still seem to have a mental and spiritual block regarding this heavy Egyptology -- but I continue to pick away at it -- slowly and uncertainly. I keep getting the sinking-feeling that I have a nasty reincarnation-history connected with Ancient Egypt -- and I am extremely apprehensive regarding potentially opening some sort of a Pandora's Box. I enjoy this site -- and all of the members -- yet I don't seem to gel very well. I doubt there is ANY web-site were I might 'fit-in'. Again -- I have no idea what constitutes Absolute Truth -- and I trust No One -- Human or Otherwise. I guess I'm attempting to consider as many possibilities as possible regarding the State of the Solar System. The more I think about it -- the less I wish to talk about it. I hint at a lot of things -- and then just leave it at that. I am most open on this thread. I don't talk about this madness in 'real-life' -- yet I know that a lot goes on behind my back 'in real-life'. This should never have happened. What happens in 'The Mists of Avalon' should stay in 'The Mists of Avalon'. Check this out! Thanks to Carol for bringing this to our attention. Remember what I previously suggested regarding the Outer Limits of the United States of the Solar System??



    Consider Ma'el in the description below the listed links. Is Ma'el a type of Christ?? Is Ma'el the equivalent of the Archangel Michael (on a soul-level)?? What if Da'an is the reincarnated Ma'el?? Vala Ma'el Da'an?? What is the relationship between Osiris, Isis, Ra, Horus, Set, Ma'el, Zo'or, Da'an, Gabriel, Michael, Lucifer, Serqet, Dogma, Legion, Contact, "V", Orthodoxymoron, Liam Kincaid, the Trinity, Archangelic Queens of Heaven, and the United States of the Solar System?? You might be surprised. The Power Vacuum was specifically designed to clean-up a mess. Well, I've collected a lot of dirt, and I think I might need to clean-house and take-out the trash. The whole thing stinks to high-heaven. I played a dirty trick. Sorry about that. "Unto 2300 Days, then shall the Sanctuary be cleansed" (restored to it's rightful state). See Daniel Chapter 8. Has the Last-Chance passed?? Shall the filthy remain filthy?? Do you feel dirty?? Do you feel lucky?? I continue to be haunted by a conversation I had with someone, a couple of days before the Fukushima disaster, when they said they were sorry we couldn't work together, because too much water had gone under the bridge. My response was 'Oh well'. I think about that encounter nearly every day. One final warning to NOT pave the road to hell with my good intentions.

    I think I might like to live in the equivalent of Augur's underground home (complete with the church and computers) and travel throughout the solar system in a Sport Model UFO (complete with an Unlimited-Access Badge)!! UFO2 BTW, have I met at least a couple of Beautiful Young Pleiadian Women (BYPW) recently?? Is something a brewing?? Cup o Hmmmmmm. What Would Tone3Jaguar Say?? Siriusly, a small room in a base (with a Cray) and and an Unlimited-Access Badge would be plenty. I can bum rides on UFOs and Mag-Lev Trains -- eat in Military Cafeterias (like Vala Mal Doran) -- and schedule practice-time on pipe-organs!! I'd simply like to be some sort of a Behind the Scenes Observer (who writes reports which are taken seriously). I'm not into chasing, fighting, manipulation, and corruption. I like to watch. Please, please, please study this thread from beginning to end. I intend to -- repeatedly. Namaste and Godspeed.

    1. http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/serqet.html
    2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth:_Final_Conflict
    3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma_(film)
    4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(2010_film)
    5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(film)
    6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mists_of_Avalon_(TV_miniseries)
    7. http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Taelon (note: I minimally edited the following excerpt for clarity)

    Around two million years ago, the Taelons arrived within the solar system, where they pulverised the moons surrounding Saturn, and thus created the rings. This was done in order to hide Taelon probes. This was done with the intention of observing the human race developing on Earth. This served as an excellent hiding place for the Companions. (Episode: Summit) The Taelons were more evolved 20,000 years ago than in their modern incarnation. (Episode: Keys to the Kingdom)

    Two-thousand years ago they secretly dispatched one of their most distinguished members known as Ma'el to Earth. Ma'el altered the path of Human evolution dramatically. (Episode: Dimensions) This event occured during the first star flight by the Taelons. Ma'el's mission was a one way journey, and he was tasked with determining if an encounter between the Taelons and Humanity was potentially mutually beneficial. This was one of the reasons why the Companions later embarked on the journey to Earth. If Ma'els findings were negative, the Taelons would depart Earth. Unknown to them, Ma'el had grown attached to Humanity, and believed that his fellow Taelons would exploit the species, and thus he told them not to come to Earth under any circumstances. However, if they chose to come anyway, his message was to treat Humanity as equals, in the hope that Humans would become true equals to the Companions. (Episode: The Secret of One Strand Hill) He also helped engineer Humans to become a psychic race, in order for them to tap into the Commonality, and allow the Taelons to better accept them. (Episode: If You Could Read My Mind)

    Ma'el left his starship hidden off the coast of Peru, located 150 feet beneath the Pacific ocean. During that time, Ma'el formed relations with the Inca people, and instituted counter measures to prevent the Taelons from finding his starship. (Episode: The Once and Future World) As he was dying, Ma'el took a young Roman Senator known as Salvius Julianus and made him into a surrogate to serve his needs. After hiding his vessel, Ma'el allowed Julianus access to its systems so he could determine the Taelons motives when they arrived on Earth. If they were hostile, the Roman was charged with destroying them, in order to ensure that mankind would develop unchallenged. (Episode: Timebomb) Ma'el's final act was to encode his research into a relic that required the presence of both a Taelon and a Human to activate it -- revealing that mankind was the missing evolutionary link between the Companions and the Jaridians. Thus, without humanity, both species would be doomed to extinction. (Episode: Abduction)

    The Taelons secretly monitored Earth, in order to determine when to contact the Human Race. (Episode: Scorched Earth) This program began at least one year before official contact, and involved the secret abduction of at least 50 humans for experimentation. (Episode: First Breath) At the time, Humanity was engaged in the SI War which ended when a mysterious Quantum Vortex was detonated, which killed 100,000 people. The Taelon Synod ordered the unleashing of this weapon to prevent nuclear holocaust, yet still keep Humanity in a state of war, so the Taelons could play saviors. They adjudicated the Sino-Indian Peace Accords, in order to bring a lasting peace in Asia. (Episode: Scorched Earth) They used their advanced technology to aid in combating world hunger and curing hundreds of diseases. (Episode: Decision) The Taelons were divided on the issue of Humanity, and how to combat the threat posed by the Jaridians. Some Taelons were of the opinion that mankind needed to be turned into a weapon against the Jaridians, while others believed that a joining of the species was needed in order to reclaim an important genetic link that had been lost in their search for perfection. (Episode: The First of its Kind) Humanity was at a crossroads in their evolution, which the Taelons intended to observe and supervise. (Episode: Decision)


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    Just for a change of pace, I thought that I'd take a look at the C.B. Fisk pipe-organ company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._B._Fisk

    C.B. Fisk, Inc. is a company in Gloucester, Massachusetts that designs and builds mechanical action pipe organs. It was founded in 1961 by Charles Brenton Fisk (1925-1983), the first American organ builder to build significant tracker organs in the 20th century. His study of early American and European instruments led him to return to mechanical action and to set a new course for American organ building. He modeled his shop on collaborative enterprise, launching the careers of four other North American organ builders and providing the foundation for those who carry on the company he founded. http://cbfisk.com/

    Born in Cambridge Mass, Fisk loved music and grew up tinkering with hi-fi equipment. He was a chorister at Christ Church on Cambridge Common where E. Power Biggs was Choirmaster. Charles showed such intelligence as a young man that when he was drafted during WWII, he was sent to Los Alamos where he worked for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project. He was 18 years old. After the war he attended Harvard and Stanford, majoring in Nuclear Physics, and worked briefly at Brookhaven National Laboratories, but during his Stanford years decided to pursue a career in organbuilding.

    He apprenticed himself first with John Swinford in Redwood City, California, and then with Walter Holtkamp, Sr. in Cleveland, Ohio, who was at the time the most avant garde of American organbuilders. He went on to become a partner and later sole owner of the Andover Organ Company. In 1961 he established C. B. Fisk near his childhood summer home on Cape Ann in Massachusetts.

    Charles Fisk's style of leadership, modeled after the team of scientists he worked with on the Manhattan Project, involved his co-workers in the day-to-day decisions about the concepts and construction of the instruments. The same people who were drawn by Charles Fisk's ideas carry on his work and share their insight and experience with another generation of organbuilders after his death in 1983.

    Just two years following the installation of a major pipe organ in Auer Hall on Indiana University's Bloomington campus, the Jacobs School of Music has announced the acquisition of a second major instrument built by C.B. Fisk, America's leading organ builder. The acquisition will soon make the Jacobs School of Music home to three Fisk organs, the largest number of instruments by the builder in any one location in the world. The third, known as Opus 142, is a three-manual, six-stop, practice organ that will be installed in May in the Music Addition practice facilities. http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/21762.html

    The workshop attracted young co-workers who combined their talents in music, art, engineering, and cabinet making to build organs that redefined modern American organbuilding. Always experimenting, C. B. Fisk was the first modern American organbuilder to abandon the electro-pneumatic action of the early twentieth century and return to the mechanical (tracker) key and stop action of historical European and early American instruments. The Fisk firm went on to construct what were at the time the largest four-manual mechanical action instruments built in America in the 20th century, first at Harvard University's church in 1967 (awaiting installation at a Presbyterian church in Austin, Texas[1]), then again at House of Hope Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1979.

    The company has also built a number of instruments based on historical organs, among them one at Wellesley College patterned after North German organs of the early 17th century, one at the University of Michigan in the manner of the Saxon builder Gottfried Silbermann, and a three-manual instrument at Rice University modeled on the work of the 19th century French master builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. The large four-manual dual-temperament instrument at Stanford University's Memorial Church uses modern technology to combine many different aspects of historical organ styles. The firm built concert hall organs for the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Minato Mirai Concert Hall in Yokohama, and Benaroya Hall in Seattle. In 2003 C. B. Fisk built a five-manual organ for the Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland, the first American organ to be made for a European cathedral. In its fifty years C.B. Fisk, Inc. has completed over 90 instruments in 23 U.S. states, Switzerland, Japan, and South Korea. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/10/what-a-set-of-pipes/

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmuwTAG2wzM
    2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t38aWitpVXQ
    3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjDwiRW3GU
    4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzmgql32bpc&feature=related
    5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owg1Vv0pB7g&feature=related
    6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQOxijWkVys&feature=related
    7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtIFTVUbzp4&feature=related
    8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqmB1lm80JE&feature=relmfu
    9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeje1G4WLn0&feature=related
    10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ev6DcYdmZ0&feature=relmfu
    11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4sts33wU1M&feature=relmfu
    12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLXvbIKYr8&feature=relmfu
    13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsWei8uCuRU
    14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSnZ0RYp0A&feature=relmfu
    15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni-pYIerwg0&feature=related
    16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gWPl-kMMJs&feature=related
    17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-RWa4UXgXI&feature=relmfu
    18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VljA5wzuEds&feature=g-vrec
    19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcJ612aPEQQ&feature=fvwp&NR=1
    (I used to be able to play this one (BWV 565) perfectly by memory. There's nothing like playing it on the 55 foot-tall organ (shown in the first image below) late at night!! Once, when I was doing this, my organ-teacher entered the church, asking "Who's Here -- and Why??" in a most peculiar way!!)


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    On the Feast of the Assumption...the afternoon service in Saint-Sulpice ended with a Laudate Dominum by Gounod. When the last echo of the chancel organ had died away Widor took six notes from the final line of the Gounod music and announced them boldly in octaves with full organ, both manual and pedal, and then followed such improvisation as I had never heard before and have seldom heard since, not even by himself. Those who know him only by his symphonies, brilliant as they are, can form no idea of the wonderful force, brilliancy, and spontaneity of his improvisations. One day a pupil of his who did not speak much French requested me to ask him how he had learned to improvise so wonderfully. Widor promptly replied: "By writing. When I stop writing I cease to be able to extemporize well." -- S. Wesley Sears. August 15, 1904

    The only extended form of improvising I heard him do was the toccata form--something like his famous Toccata in F. He always brought the music to two climaxes of power during the piece, and I could never describe to you the thrill of those mixtures and the smooth 32' Pedal Reed--and he ended softly. He usually employed a Gregorian theme from the liturgy of the Mass. -- Edward Shippen Barnes, 1921

    He was in great form...improvising on the Gregorian tones of the Mass being sung at the other end of the church, playing a Bach fugue at the offertory, and finally at the close of the service turning the full power of the organ loose in a brilliant toccata improvised on the phrases which we had just heard from the choir. I had never before heard a master improvise. It seemed incredible at the time, and although I soon learned that improvisation had reached a high plane among French organists, Widor's feats, even now, still seem incredible, not because they were spectacular, but because they were such profoundly good music. -- Alexander Russell, 1907

    The postlude at the close of the service was generally an improvisation on one of the plainsong themes of the day. Widor was one of the greatest of improvisers, and on several occasions I have heard him improvise movements of such splendor as to rival the greatest movements of his symphonies. -- A.M. Henderson, 1937

    He played...one of his nine symphonies. It was gloriously beautiful. The organ is the largest in Paris, with five keyboards, and in the chancel there was a choir of two hundred men. The music is still throbbing in my head and vibrating all through me--the long swelling chords, the low deep tones, the blending voices, the chanting priests, the incense, the light, the holiness of it all! The Catholic service without music is nothing; with music it is everything. I shall remember this morning always. -- Florence Adele Sloan, Sunday, May 13, 1894

    The choir and gorgeously robed priests were filing in...and the small organ in the choir already in full blast. Then a priest intoned a few words, and suddenly the great instrument all about us crashed and thundered, lifting one clear off one's feet and removing all sense of gravity. Then the organ down in the choir answered, and again Widor pressed down the five banks of keys and we were riven with vast peals of sound. The ritual proceeded at the altar, while organ answered to organ, rumbling and rolling through the long nave and wafting up into the one hundred and eight foot arches of the clerestory. The music was all Gregorian, upon the tones of which Widor harmonized freely.

    The Mass ended, the priests and choir formed a sort of recessional, a sortie it is called, and Widor began...a canon or plainsong moving along in the midst of swirling arpeggios of left and right hands alternately. I looked at the pedals, for the air moved along as majestically as if double octaves were being played; but no, the pedal was occupied solely with foundation work. I looked again at his hands in amazement, for the rippling fingers were carrying four-octave arpeggios and that powerful air must come from somewhere! And then I saw that the wonderful hands were not only carrying the whirling arpeggios but also supporting one another in giving out the legato theme of the piece. Always the right or left thumb or forefinger would pass along the note amid the rush of the figuration. And then the sonorous pedal trumpets took it up, but the hands merely added a counterpoint besides the rollicking arpeggios rolling up from the bass, six notes to the beat! And all this was a mere improvisation--harmony and all. I looked at the author of it expecting to see Promethean fire starting from his brows. He was simply calm and earnest about it, and now and then found time to drop a word to a friend seated at his side. -- Warren H. Miller, 1910

    I was moved to tears by the Above Quotations. I believe there is a profound unity in the French Romantic toccata and French Romantic organs, combined with hymn improvisation, and perhaps some German Baroque Bach-style counterpoint! I wonder how Bach would have performed his 'Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor' if he had been at Saint-Sulpice rather than at St. Thomas?! He might even have used the swell pedal! Perhaps he would have treated his listeners to an improvisation in the final measures of the fugue, which would have revealed all of heaven to mere mortals!! With reverence and awe, -- orthodoxymoron, 2012


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    orthodoxymoron
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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 12:16 pm

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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Eb031db9d8440202eada5a40d9edaa0e
    Please consider a deep and ongoing study of:
    1. International Law. 2. Interplanetary Law. 3. Intergalactic Law.
    This might be the most significant study imaginable.

    I think I deluded and flattered myself into thinking this thread was actually making a difference, and changing things for the better -- but I should've known better. This world seems to be following a script -- which nothing or no-one will be allowed to significantly interfere with. Perhaps the best I can do is carefully watch things play-out -- which might include humanity bleeding-out. I certainly hope not -- but there seems to be a Brutal Gang of Facts and Dracs on a collision-course with the Human Race. Perhaps I should stock-up on pop-corn, as I prepare to view Earth: Theater of the Universe. Rated "R" for Ridiculous.

    I tend to think that we do not require evil in order to achieve a balance. The presence of evil is indicative of imbalance -- and it is not necessary for the beings of the universe to experience evil -- in all of its ugliness and horror -- in order to properly understand and cherish righteousness, purity, and goodness. I sometimes wonder if humanity is a renegade race and an illegal creation -- which is deeply offensive to its Parent Race and Galactic Powers That Be. If the God of this Parent Race declared war on Humanity -- they might seem to be a Satan from the perspective of Human Beings. The Creator and Leader of the New Human Race might be viewed as being a traitor or Luficer from the perspective of the Parent Race. Human Beings might view this being as being their God or Christ. What if the Crucifixion of Christ represents the punishment of Humanity by the Parent Race?? I have no idea if this is the way things are -- but I am modeling this sort of thing -- so as to consider the Human predicament from as many angles as possible. But really, this makes me a heretic of sorts -- even though I mean no hostility or harm toward anyone. Please watch 'Earth: Final Conflict' for clues regarding conflicting races and agendas. I think of the Taelons as being Greys. I think of the Jaridians as being Reptilians. I guess I think of the Atavus as being Annunaki. According to the series, Humans are related to both the Taelons and Jaridians. I have speculated repeatedly that Humans might be related to the Greys and Reptilians -- even though I don't absolutely know that the Greys and Reptilians exist. I am VERY tentative and hesitant in my research and speculation. I presently seem to be on the side of humanity -- but who knows what my editorial slant has been in previous incarnations?? What if:

    Father = Prime Representative of Other-Than-Human Humanoid-Physicality??
    Son = Prime Representative of Human Physicality??
    Holy Spirit = The Souls Animating Human Physicality and Other-Than-Human Humanoid-Physicality??

    I continue to hypothesize that Human Physicality is a Recent Renegade Development in an Ancient Other Than Human Universe -- and that the Universal Immune System is determined to eliminate Human Physicality -- so as to Purify the Universe. I so hope that I'm wrong. What are the implications and ramifications of 'Namaste'??? I think that people should study Religion, Theology, and Sacred-Texts -- but I can understand why many people reject Religion, Theology, and Sacred-Texts. I think we have a HUGE Religion, Theology, and Sacred-Text PROBLEM on our hands -- and we had better solve it with all deliberate speed. Imagine Zo'or and Da'an arguing about theology and religion!! What do you think about this??!!





    I grew up attending the SDA Church -- but it seemed to me that it had been compromised, infiltrated, and subverted -- like I suspect most churches have been -- so I eventually stopped attending church -- even though I continued to be very interested in theology. Is there a good-side to the British-Israel thing (with German and Roman connections)?? I think there is a good-side and a bad-side to just about everyone and everything. Here is some SDA theological controversy for you!! I don't just bash the Jesuits!! The following is taken from pages 393-399 of "Daniel 8:14, the Day of Atonement, and the Investigative Judgment" by Dr. Desmond Ford. Imagine discussing all of these comments and questions with the Queen of Heaven, the Prince of Sirius, and a Sirian King -- in a palace, cathedral, or queen-ship!!

    "A. For those who wish to give Ellen G. White greater authority than Scripture.

    A very natural reaction to this manuscript would be to "sit" on certain Spirit of Prophecy statements regarding the sanctuary and to affirm in essence, "Here I stand. I can do no other."

    I wish to suggest that such an attitude requires more than "standing" to validate it. It will indeed be necessary to do much "other," including the following:

    1. Demonstrate that where Ellen G. White and Scripture appear to conflict, veto power must always be given to Ellen G. White rather than vice versa.

    2. Reject such clear Scriptures as Hebrews 6:19,20; 9:8, 12, 24-25; 10:19-20, etc., which plainly teach that Christ entered the Most Holy Place at His ascension.

    3. Provide clear didactic Scriptures for the doctrine of the investigative judgment. Typological evidence as a basis for doctrine has never been valid -- only typological illustration of doctrine otherwise proved.

    4. Explain how it could be that Ellen G. White could sometimes misinterpret her own visions. For example, she understood her first vision to endorse the shut door doctrine -- that probation had closed for the churches and the wicked world. "I saw" often signifies a personal conviction -- not a divine revelation. See its repeated use in the report of the Camden vision.

    5.Explain how it could be that Ellen G. White could teach one thing one time, and yet change that view another time -- e.g. her position on the law in Galatians, the covenants, time to close the Sabbath, etc.

    6. Explain the several crystal clear Ellen G. White statements which speak of His entering within the veil at His ascension. See, for example, April 19, 1905, Signs of the Times; Desire of Ages, pg. 757.

    7. Explain how Great Controversy can be demonstrably wrong in certain exegetical positions and yet correct on the investigative judgment, when this is not demonstrably provable from Scripture, e.g. Ellen White's understanding of the sixth and seventh trumpet. She endorsed the Litch position, which is untenable exegetically and historically. For the revision in 1911 she changed her mind about Litch having given the "exact day" of the prophetic fulfillment.

    As regards the seventh trumpet, in later works she placed its fulfillment as in the future, though Great Controversy applies it to the past.

    The exposition of Revelation 11 regarding the French Revolution is not accurate exegetically or historically. There never was in France a three-and-a-half year period when the Bible was banned. Hundreds of hours of research by Ellen G. White apologists have failed to find any such thing. The opposite has been found.

    Ellen G. White's endorsement of the Miller exposition of Matthew 25: 1-13 is quite indefensible. The passage is not talking of 1844, but of the end of the world. The introductory word "Then" seen in the context of the preceding as well as the following verses, makes this quite plain.

    8. Explain how Ellen G. White can use many Scriptural concepts which belong to the last things and apply them both to 1844 and thereabouts, as well as to the end of the world, e.g. the sealing, the shaking, the covering, the fall of Babylon, the cleansing of the sanctuary.

    9. Explain Ellen G. White's statements: "The Bible and the Bible only is the source of doctrine," and that "never should the testimonies be carried to the front." "Let all prove every point of doctrine from the Scriptures." It is quite impossible to prove from Daniel, Hebrews, Revelation, or elsewhere that a judgment upon believers began as a result of a change of heavenly ministry in 1844.

    10. Provide an apologetic whereby Adventists may go to the world and say: "We have a grand and important truth for you -- a worldwide judgment session is now in process. We cannot show it to you from Scriptures, but we can show it to you from writings of one concerning whom you have never before heard. True, that writer said we should prove all doctrine from Scripture and not from her writings -- but here is an exception -- this basic distinguishing truth we cannot prove from Scripture but it is clear in the writings of Ellen G. White."

    When these things have been done in a convincing way, then such exponents can on the basis of the Ellen G. White writings alone, and in opposition to Scripture, say "Here I stand. I can do no other." It may also be helpful at such a time to remember significant Ellen G. White affirmations.

    "The Spirit was not given -- nor can it ever be bestowed -- to supersede the Bible, for the Scriptures explicitly state that the word of God is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested...Isaiah declares. To the law and to the testimony; 'if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.'(Isaiah 8:20)" -- Great Controversy pg. 9. "But God will have a people upon the earth to maintain the Bible and the Bible only as the standard of all doctrines and the basis of all reforms." -- Great Controversy pg. 595.

    Inasmuch as Ellen G. White never originated a single doctrine, but only took her stand after others found such doctrines in Scripture (e.g. the Sabbath, health reform, righteousness by faith at Minneapolis, the "daily," etc.), and inasmuch as she refused to permit her writings to decide doctrinal issues, but rather referred inquirers to Scripture (1 Selected Messages 164, 416), we can only say to those who still wish to re-echo Luther's declaration at Worms that his closing prayer is also appropriate for them -- "God help me."

    These points are a protest, not against the reality of the gift of prophecy in Ellen G. White, but against undoing the utility of that gift by overdoing our claims for it through affirming the writings as inerrant, or as a basis for doctrine -- even having prior place to Scripture. We would like to remind group A that Luther's prayer was uttered after his affirmation of 'Sola Scriptura'.

    B. For those who wish to reject Ellen G. White.

    Briefly, I wish to address another group who, to my mind, fall off the straight path into an abyss on the opposite side to that dealt with above. I have friends who, perceiving that Ellen White's comments on the investigative judgment do not parallel Scripture, and learning of her wide use of sources, decide therefore that Ellen G. White must be dropped forthwith, and likewise any belief in her prophetic mission. This seems to them consistent and logical, but so does much other reasoning which ultimately proves unreliable. My friends who pursue such reasoning are distressed that I refuse to join them in their conclusion and therefore I have for them, as well as the group addressed above, some questions.

    1. Do they owe nothing of value to Ellen G. White? Would they be Seventh-day Adventists today had there been no Ellen G. White?

    2. Would Seventh-day Adventism have survived such crises as that of the first decade of this century when Kellog numbered among his followers a large proportion of our leaders, including Jones, Waggoner, Sutherland, Magan, Paulson, etc., had Ellen G. White not intervened?

    3. Suppose there had been no Ellen White at the Minneapolis conference of 1888, would the teachings of Waggoner and Jones on righteousness by faith have ever reached our constituency and paved the way for that proclamation which being the third angel's message in verity is ultimately to lighten the earth with its glory?

    4. Going back further still, when in the 1840's many of our forefathers were on the verge of surrendering their faith in the 1844 movement, would this church ever have emerged and consolidated but for the influence of Ellen G. White?

    5. Our work is characterized by evangelistic, publishing, colporteur, educational, and health emphases. Which of these would have assumed its present shape and prominence without Ellen G. White?

    6. Is it likely that God would have intertwined with our history for its first seventy years the work of one ultimately to be revealed as a fraud? Does God work in harmony with Satan? How likely is it that a person knowing her own hypocrisy could keep up her pretense for seventy years amid crises and gargantuan labors?

    7. How much of your rejection of Ellen G. White grows out of a studied understanding of the Biblical teachings on revelation and inspiration?

    8. For example, what do you understand the difference to be between these terms -- revelation and inspiration? And what difference is there between them individually and illumination?

    9. Has the church universal ever been agreed on the exact nature of inspiration? Do we find that creeds usually define it? Does the modern evangelical scene display unity on the matter?

    10. Is the Bible written as we might have expected it to be? Does its content of history, poetry, and outdated legislature comply with our sense of fitness? Does its lack of creedal statements surprise us? Has God so written the Word that doctrinal issues are made crystal clear, and that unbelievers are quickly silenced?

    11. Or to say the same thing another way: Is the Bible primarly given to convey information so as to satisfy the mind, or is it a specific moral test? That is to say, has God been content with a weight of evidence for the honest, or has He guaranteed that even the dishonest can be left without excuse?

    12. Is there a parallel between the written Word and the Living Word? Did Jesus Christ also evidence some of the surprising features we find in Scripture? That is, did He come as we might have expected? Did He overwhelm all with the evidence that He was what He claimed? Were His statements unequivocal in meaning or sometimes ambivalent? Was He, too, a moral test for His hearers, rather than a great teacher chiefly?

    13. Was Jesus both human and divine? And if so, might that also be the obvious nature of Scripture? Did Jesus possess human liabilities and weaknesses such as dependence on creaturely elements such as food, and drink, and rest? Did He ever need to ask questions to secure information? Were His 200 plus inquiries just a front?

    14. Did Jesus work as we might expect a celestial visitor to work, or did He also confine Himself in some areas at least to cultural restrictions and limitations? Did He come speaking the language of heaven, or the language of Palestine? Was He dressed as a messenger of light, or as a Galilean peasant?

    15. Did Jesus, in some of His expressions, fall short of technical precision, as when He declared the mustard seed to be the least of all seeds?

    16. Was Jesus absolutely original in His oral presentations, or is it true, as one scholar has affirmed, that there is not a paragraph from His addresses which does not have its roots in the Old Testament? Is it true, for example, that every phrase of the Lord's Prayer is to be found in previous Scripture?

    17. Do Christ's parables contain no difficulties? Are we fully comfortable with His use of hell-fire in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus? Do we feel quite content with His commendation of the rascally steward?

    18. How is it that the first three gospels differ so much from the fourth? How is it that they cover very similar ground for much of His ministry, and omit the different materials found in John's gospel covering the same time?

    19. Can we explain how it is that the first three gospels not only have broad similarity, but even at times use exactly the same blocks of material, same phraseology, same words -- even the same hiatuses?

    20. Can any of us tell where the words of John break off and those of Jesus begin, and vice versa, throughout the fourth gospel? For example, in chapter three, which verse marks the close of Jesus's words to Nicodemus? Did Christ utter the famous John 3:16?

    21. Why is it that the style of Christ's speeches in John is so far removed from His style as recorded in the other three gospels? Why is that style either identical or almost so with John's own style?

    22. What was said at Christ's baptism: "Thou art my beloved Son" or "This is my beloved Son'? Or were both said?

    23. Did the healing of the first leper take place before the Sermon on the Mount (Luke), or after (Matthew)?

    24. Were there two Gadarene demoniacs (Matthew 8:28) healed, or one (Mark 5:2 and Luke 8:27)?

    25. Was the healing of Bartimaeus before Christ reached Jericho (Luke 18:35), or after (Mark 10:46)?

    26. Was Luke given by vision the names of the intertestamental ancestors of Christ, as recorded in Luke 3, or did he derive them from sources such as Luke 1:1-4 might indicate?

    27. Where did Luke get his second Cainan from his genealogy of Christ? See Luke 3:36,37 and compare Genesis 10.

    28. Was Stephen's speech (Acts 7) inspired? If so, does it agree exactly with the Genesis account of the historical events he referred to?

    29. Why was the inspired apostle Paul dependent upon news from Chloe for his information about the situation in Corinth? Why did God give it to him by vision?

    30. What evidence is there in the cream of the New Testament -- the epistles -- that visions were given to facilitate their writing?

    31. Were visions necessary for the writer of Proverbs as he conveyed some platitudes known and recognized from the foundation of the world -- such platitudes as: the lazy man shall suffer want, a nagging woman is as unpleasant as continual rain, good news makes a person cheerful, bad emotions cause poor health, to have money is to have many "friends"?

    32. Similarly, did the Psalmist need visions in order to exhort us to "Come, worship, and bow down," and to comfort us by the reminder that "all the wicked shall God destroy"?

    33. Were visions necessary for the chronicling of the well-known historical events in the ministry of Christ? or for most of the annals of Judah and Israel? How many of the historical authors of Old Testament books ever hint that they received visions in order to make possible their writings? Why was a Paul chosen to set forth the theology of the New Testament? Would not a school boy or a fisherman have done as well under inspiration?

    34. Is inspiration "docetic" in its operation? Or is it true of the written Word, as of the living Word that it is just as much human as though not at all "divine"?

    35. Does inspiration guarantee equal value for all inspired documents? That is, would we miss the genealogies as much as the Sermon on the Mount? Does Scripture like a living body contain a heart, form, and limbs, so to speak, with some members more essential than others?

    36. Is there an economy of miracle in the writing of Scripture? Does God ever do supernaturally what can be done naturally? Why did Christ have others fill the water pots with water, and roll away the stone of Lazarus' tomb?

    37. Are the prophecies of Scripture completely unambiguous? Are they so plain that a child may understand them? Have all the details of Biblical prophecies been fulfilled? Are some of them conditional?

    38. Is our real problem with Scripture what we don't understand or what we do?

    39. When Jesus told His disciples that the real truth about Himself couldn't come from flesh and blood but was a divine gift, is this true also of Scripture, and other agencies of God? Do reason and human expectation have priority in determining what is a revelation from God? Can something be supra-rational without being irrational?

    40. Does God usually bestow upon separate items just that attention which is proportionate to their importance in the scale of being? Is His work always complete in every way, or just adequate? Does the human organism demonstrate absolute perfection in its formation, or chiefly adequacy? Is the eye a perfect optical instrument? Does the memory function perfectly? Is the human mind infallible in its reasoning process? Has reason itself suffered from the Fall?

    41. Can we explain any of the mighty works of God -- creation, providence, miracle, regeneration, sanctification, atonement? If not, should we expect to have a thorough understanding of inspiration and revelation? If the Fall came through a lusting after forbidden knowledge, could it be that man's restoration involves repentance about such lusting, and the substituting of trust?

    42. Is "ye shall know them by their fruits" a simple practical rule that even the uneducated and immature can usually apply with success if honestly desiring to know the truth?

    43. What did Jesus mean when He said, "If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine"? Was He saying that it is the heart and not the head, which to the highest doth attain?

    44. Is it true that two-thirds of life is conduct, and that God might not be so concerned about some theoretical issues as we are?

    45. Is it true that Christ held in His hand the whole map of explored truth but only revealed enough for practical purposes?

    46. Was Christ Himself a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense? And if so, could this be true also of some genuine forms of revelation besides Him?

    47. Are apocalyptic visions such as those of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation typical of Scripture or exceptional?

    48. How much evidence is there in reading the Gospels or the epistles that the writers felt they had divine control and minute heavenly guidance?

    49. How much of Ellen G. White advocates behavior contrary to Scriptural standards? What sort of persons would we be if striving to live up to the standards of Ellen G. White? Is it possible that even the sections of Ellen G. White some of us find so taxing would be clarified if we understood the difference between law and gospel, and between law as a standard and law as a method?

    50. If Scripture itself has been terribly abused, even employed for the purpose of murdering innocent millions, should it be surprising if illegitimate use be made of other of God's instruments of revelation?

    51. How much danger would there be in advocating that God had used Ellen G. White as a messenger if we followed her own admonition to base all doctrine upon the Bible and the Bible only?

    52. How much risk would there be in advocating that God has used Ellen G. White as a special messenger if we simultaneously confessed, as she did, that "God and heaven alone are infallible"?

    53. How is it that when Ellen G. White chose a source which best expressed her views of inspiration she chose one which was at odds with the fundamentalist churches of the day -- one which advocated that the writers of Scripture were God's penmen, not His pen, and that in their use of rhetoric and logic God was not represented?

    54. Is it possible that many who wish to reject Ellen G. White do so on the same basis that King Ahab rejected the prophet of his day -- "I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil" -- 1 Kings 22:8? And is it possible that others reject her because of a legalistic upbringing which misused Ellen G. White in advocating law without gospel?

    55. If Christ came to comfort the afflicted but also to afflict the comfortable, and if John, His predecessor, likewise rebuked hypocrisy and evil in the religious, and if both, like all other prophets, called for repentance, could it be that some who reject Ellen G. White's prophetic role do so on the basis that she makes them uncomfortable by her demand for repentance in specific areas?

    56. If you were choosing a surgeon, or a real estate agent, or a banker, would you feel most comfortable with one who valued the writings of Ellen G. White, or one who rejected them?

    57. Do you know the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew views of knowledge? Which one held that the ideal was to gather as much conceptual truth as possible about everything in order that we might be little gods in knowledge? Which one believed that knowledge was worthless unless practical, and doubly worthless unless related to piety? What is meant by "wisdom" in the book of Proverbs? Does that book mean by "fool" one with little intelligence? And is the "wise" man of Proverbs and elsewhere in Scripture someone with great intellect and powers of perception, or someone who reverences God and acts accordingly? When Ellen G. White says of Christ that He held in His hand the great map of unexplored truth but only disclosed that which had practical value, is she following the Greek or Hebrew view of knowledge? Is there a relationship between these concepts and the apparent carelessness of Scripture about some details of fact, for example, its use of round numbers (e.g. "Seventy sevens" -- Daniel 9:25; Matthew 18:22; "fourteen" -- Matthew 1:17; "480" -- 1 Kings 6:1; "ten" -- Daniel 1:20; 7:24; "forty" -- etc.)?

    58. Does the Scriptural use of figures of speech such as hyperbole teach us anything about the nature of inspiration? For example, is it literally true that if all Christ had done had been recorded, the world itself could not contain the books that would need to be written? Had the gospel been preached to every creature under heaven in Paul's day, and if so, why was he still planning to go to such places as Spain, and why does Revelation 14:6 picture a message yet to go to every nation?

    59. Are you, as a Westerner, completely happy with all of Paul's arguments? For example, see Galatians 3:16, where he plays on the plural and singular meanings of "seed"? Does his use of Hosea in Romans 9:25f actually reflect what Hosea intended? Was Hosea forecasting the coming in of the Gentiles or the re-acceptance of forsaken Israelites? Do 2 Corinthians 3 and the Old Testament source of the veil incident agree? Do you think that the law about not muzzling the ox was only written for our sakes, and not at all for the oxen? See 1 Corinthians 9:8-10. How is it that Paul under inspiration gives a wrong account of his baptized converts in one place, and then remembers more a little later? 1 Corinthians 1:14-16. And why does the Greek original of Galatians show that some of Paul's sentences were never completed?

    60. What is "the bottom line" of inspiration? Is it abstract or practical in intent? Did Jesus on earth ever work unnecessary miracles, or did all His mighty works contribute to the meaning of salvation? Has God been content to be misunderstood in some things when a little more effort on His part could have prevented such a thing? Has God really done everything He could to prevent unbelief or has He only done sufficient for those prepared to be honest? If we are all dying people, with but a remnant of time left, what do we need most from God? Has He provided it? 2 Timothy 3:16; John 17:3; 20:31.

    These are some of the questions which could be considered by those who urge me to join them in their rejection of the ministry of Ellen G. White. As for me, I must make Scripture the sole basis of doctrine. But for that very reason, I must also be open to any manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit promised therein, including the gift of prophecy. If I find, as is the case with Ellen G. White, one who leads me to Christ and His Word as supreme in all things, and who exhorts to holiness, I should accept the messenger, but without surrendering the right to exercise the canonical test of Scripture. Believing in the priesthood of all believers as well as 'Sola Scriptura' I will remember that "The doctrine that God has committed to the church, the right to control the conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors" (Great Controversy page 293), and that no ecclesiastical creedal statement shall move me one whit if obviously contrary to the plain testimony of the Word of God. We can do no other."


    Someone might find this book on Revelation to be somewhat interesting. It was published in 2012 by one of my teachers (Dr. Erwin R. Gane). http://www.amazon.com/Trumpet-After-Revelations-Trumpets-Sound/dp/B009JSJVMC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356124171&sr=8-1&keywords=erwin+gane He didn't see eye to eye with Dr. Desmond Ford (to say the least)! I am not telling anyone to join the SDA church -- but books by some of the more prominent SDA theologians are most interesting. Please do not neglect Biblical and Theological Studies as you grapple with the New Age Mumbo Jumbo!! I tend to think that most of us are going to get blindsided by what's really coming. I have no idea if struggling with this madness will help us when the excrement contacts the refrigeration system. I just re-read 'The Shaking of Adventism' by Geoffery Paxton -- and some of you might find this book to be an interesting read. It is a review (by an Australian Anglican) of the battle over Righteousness by Faith in the SDA church -- up to 1977. I was in the middle of some of this drama -- which is probably one reason why I no longer attend church -- and why I am a Completely Ignorant Fool. Or am I a Pious Zombie?? I'm easily confused as I continue to beat against the rocks of infidelity. Is the SDA church a British-Israel Cult controlled by Jesuits and Alphabet Agents?? Oh Boy!! I need to think about something else. I bought that Dr. Erwin Gane book on Revelation -- and Dr. Desmond Ford's book on Daniel (1978) complete with a forward by F. F. Bruce, and a very interesting introduction. Why do I do this to myself? I know not what I do.

    I just finished reading Dr. Gane's book -- and I found it deeply troubling. It contained nothing new -- but it summarized the historical Adventist prophetic viewpoint with surgical precision and nerves of steel. It is a very violent book -- but we seem to live in a violent universe -- ruled by a violent God. Perhaps things have always been that way. Perhaps things will always be that way. Perhaps things have to be that way. I get the feeling that this world, and the human-race, were an experiment -- to attempt to make things better for everyone -- but that things went very wrong -- and might've made things worse -- with a helluva lot of hard-feelings. Gane's book almost seems to be a verdict against humanity (as sinners in the hands of an angry God). I am presently very troubled regarding humanity -- and with the management of humanity. Keep studying the Bible -- from Genesis to Revelation -- but don't expect it to make you happy. Try to get in-tune with whoever wrote the Bible -- and then apply this level of spirituality to a multidisciplinary study of life, the universe, and everything. Now I'm going to finish Dr. Ford's book. We really need to deal with this sort of thing -- whether we like it, or not -- whether we believe in God, or not. God might not believe in us -- and perhaps with some justification. Considering the possibilities has literally ruined my life. BTW -- consider reading 'The Openness of God' by Dr. Richard Rice -- regarding Prophecy, Foreknowledge, and Freedom.


    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 0816326223
    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 ErwinGane

    A Reading From the Fourth Chapter of Galatians (KJV):

    Now I say , That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fulness of the time was come , God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.8Howbeit then , when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected ; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record , that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written , that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written , Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

    What if we are dealing with an Ultimate Deity -- and with Two Rival Mother-Son Teams?? Just for illustrative purposes -- think of a Jaridian Ultimate Deity -- with Zo'or--Sandoval v Da'an--Kincaid. What if Liam Kincaid jumped ship -- and joined the Zo'or--Sandoval Team -- under the ultimate direction of the Ultimate Deity?? What if Da'an got demoted -- and was left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind?? I mean NO disrespect with any of my speculations. I'm simply attempting to get at the Explosive-Truth -- and defuse a Prophecy-Bomb. Some of you understand what I'm talking about. What if Josephus was Peter, John the Baptist, John the Revelator, Saul, Paul, and Jesus?? Or, at least, did the research and writing -- and the directing of several actors on a stage??!! What if Josephus was responsible for most of the final-draft Bible writing?? This was just an off the wall thought -- but try extrapolating from the work of people like Ralph Ellis and Jordan Maxwell. I'm simply wondering about a Biblical Mastermind. What if the 'Real Jesus' was exiled somewhere in the Far East?? What if Isis and Cleopatra are more important than we think?? What if the REAL Bible Story is more ugly and complex than we can possibly imagine?? I truly tremble when I think about what reincarnational roles I might've played in Ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome -- just for starters. I keep worrying that I was some sort of a World War Two Bad@ss. Get ready for a VERY Wild Disclosure Ride -- and believe 5% of what you read, see, and hear. I believe that a very real theological story and reality exists -- but I suspect that we know less than 5% of the absolute theological truth. I continue to be VERY frustrated with having to Fly-Blind. I feel as if I am being taken advantage of -- and laughed at -- each and every day. But will I have the last laugh?? I doubt that the Real Truth is any laughing matter. I suspect that it is VERY sad -- and I don't expect to EVER be happy again. Here is something written by Brook (on part 1 of the 'Red Pill' thread), which might be relevant to what I just wrote:

    "Now if you were to look at the directions that history has led us you would surly believe that Sekhmet and Isis were deeply involved with these Annunaki creeps. But if you have actually read this thread I spelled it out for you what I have seen. She deeply loved Osiris? She could not stand to be in the same room with him! it was no accident his phallus came up missing! And with it came validations that were astounding. for example Isis lost her life at the hands of Ptah for not cooperating with this evil agenda to enslave and mutate and manipulate. All evidence of what was really the truth went down with Atlantis. And after that, all you have been presented was what THEY want for you to see. So be it."

    orthodoxymoron comments: "I've been neglecting this thread - but now I'm going to dig into it with enthusiasm. I know that Lucifer is supposed to be deceased - but I will continue to speculate about the past, present, and future of Lucifer. I'm finding it helpful to think of a Male Nine-Foot Tall Draconian Reptilian God/Satan Pimp of This World - a Female (or hermaphroditic) Human/Reptile Hybrid Mediatrix Lucifer/Lilith/Hathor/Isis/Mary/Anna ("V") Whore of Babylon - and a Sensitive Male Fully Human Jesus (who is very good, yet lacks the nasty, cunning firepower of the other two - and who most people won't give the time of day to). Gabriel, Lucifer, Michael? Mason, Nazi, Magician? The three primary faction leaders in this solar system? Sirius A, Sirius B, Andromeda? Thank-you BROOK for forcing me to deal with the details of Egyptology. Thank-you Lionhawk for providing your 'from the inside' insights into the hidden realms. I'm not a scholar or an experiencer. I'm a neurotic speculator. It takes all kinds - but sometimes I wonder why?"

    Brook responds: "Isis was not the whore of Babylon by a long shot ODM......you are falling into the lies of the century to even consider such. This is the leanings of the nature of use of the energy that is the Story of her.

    Hathor was an all together different faction involved with Egypt......the Hathors invited themselves to join a party... in alignment with the reptilian signature.

    Lucifer had and all together different signature then the reptilians.......of the Angelic realm. A separate yet just as evil agenda...and not necessarily set out that way..it just ended that way.
    Remember ODM....Isis was killed at the hands of a slimy reptilian! Ptah.....who threw her in a snake pit...while her trusting friend who was with her to watch over her.....Aritmus..... stood there in horror, and could not save her. While Ptah shouted in anger......because she had not cooperated...shouting at her, as she lay dying ....saying "she could have had the world! "

    She chose death over his evil, because this is not what source intended.....not the God she knew.

    Tacodog comments:

    Brook: You definitely have my ears (eyes).
    Just want to make sure I get this straight.
    Ra (Sun)/Sekhemt(feline) united and created Isis (feline/Sun), watcher for Ra. Isis took on Nephthys as her sister. Nephthys is hybrid? Feline bloodline?
    Ptah/Thoth (brothers) are Annunaki
    Osiris/Set (Annunaki/feline) (sons of Thoth or Ptah?)
    Osiris/Isis marry and had Horas. Set eliminates Osiris
    Ptah eliminates Isis
    Jesus came into being through Mary’s bloodline (Which is Sirian? Same as Ra?) to do what Horus failed at doing. Was Horus eliminated and by whom?
    Hathor – another bloodline? Allied with reptilians
    Lucifer – Angelic realm – turned evil
    The “Royal Bloodline” is Annunaki and Feline? “The Royal Bloodline are the Royals we speak of today? The ordinary human bloodline – all of the above possibly? Did RA seed earth with “hybrids” and human’s DNA is a variety of bloodlines mentioned above? Where is RA while Thoth is running havoc? Is Ra the “God” in this case? Is he the good guy? Does he not know what is going on down here? Hathor/Lucifer also entities causing havoc, and their “bosses” are unable to control them as well? Doesn’t Universe care about all this running amok?

    Once again: Great thread!

    If I can throw another log on this fire...............

    I am going to pull an ODM approach here, which is a good thing, I hope. Let's just say that the Creator has a real warm fuzzy spot for this Planet. A real jewel in his/her eyes. Is it so hard to fathom the reasons why? If you look upon this Planet you will see a reflection of the Universe by the extremes she provides. From beautiful to ugly, and every other extreme polarities imaginable. It is that bandwidth of polarity that makes a perfect environment for experiencing. Throw free agency in as a gift and look at all the experience that can be created. Throw a few Angels, a few Aliens, demi Gods, some down right evil bastards, and some of Earth's daughters and sons created with alien bloodlines, and you have a block buster!

    So everything is going just fine. Earth is on a time line that is in alignment with her own growth. Here come some players that just make a bad choice forcing other players to unplug because now Earth has been side stepped to another time line. Now here is my ODM question of the day.... Do you really think that this ascension business of the Planet is about ascension or do you think it might be about side stepping back to the original time line that the Creator had intended in the first place?

    My point being is that this altercation of the time line happened during the Egyptian age. How do we go about fixing that?

    Brook responds:

    Tacodog....you're close..but before I attempt to answer all of theses questions, I must wake up.
    For the moment think of this.....the density to be able to travel into the sun must be very light....
    The density of a reptilian is very heavy....this is why they prefer the the inner earth in parts...the hydrogen components of their being is very dense. To stay here on the surface of earth for any given time, you need the genetic coding of this planet. To do so, you need a source "frequency" to regulate and adjust. A tool to help one survive and adjust those frequencies.....a tool such as the discs....the properties to maintain a frequency to sustain your own frequency if you are from off planet.......remember the pyramids contain a "frequency" chamber......
    I'll be back to help you with the players and their roles."

    "Okay Tacodog....to the best of my knowledge....

    Ra (Sun)/Sekhemt(feline) united and created Isis (feline/Sun), watcher for Ra. Isis took on Nephthys as her sister. Nephthys is hybrid? Feline bloodline?

    Sekhmet is the mother of Isis....Father unknown at this time...however it would not surprise me if it was Ra.

    Ra and Skehmet are the parents of Horus.... Isis is surrogate for Horus.

    Nephthys was the mistress of the house of Osiris and Isis....became a full fledged partner of Osiris. Se was most likely a feline hybred...but not the sister of Isis.

    Ptah/Thoth (brothers) are Annunaki

    Ptah and Thoth were not brothers.....they were Annunaki, Ptah being in charge of Operations, and Thoth, a close confident and scribe....discovered the properties of the discs...and helped Ptah to produce the "duplicate discs"...and was creator of the Emerald Tablets. Thoth moved up in rank, and was eventually ousted from Egypt, as "ambitious", and carried on his work with the discs as a "God" in the South American region.

    Osiris/Set (Annunaki/feline) (sons of Thoth or Ptah)?

    Osiris and Set are both Annunaki/ Feline...earth based.....and of "royal bloodline...however, at this time I'm not sure who's bloodline it is. I know it is not Sekhmet.

    Osiris/Isis marry and had Horus. Set eliminates Osiris. Ptah eliminates Isis.

    Osiris and Isis are married for royal lineage..however they do not have a child together. The child of Isis was the surrogate son of Ra, and Sekhmet.....done in the tomb of Osiris to convince Ptah that the work done was to create a child of the Annunaki /feline royal lineage....when in fact it was that of Feline/Sun and earth based lineage. No Annunaki...no reptilian ...and when it was found that there was not reptilian bloodline....Set again went forward to take authority over the "throne"...which was taken from Isis in the first place. And handed over to Osiris, and Ptah..used by Thoth...remember there is a connection to the Throne and the discs...it's more than just a "chair"...it operated in conjunction with the discs...and it belonged to Isis....this is why they needed her in the first place....she had the genetic coding to the chair and the discs.

    Jesus came into being through Mary’s bloodline (Which is Sirian? Sameas Ra?) to do what Horus failed at doing. Was Horus eliminated and by whom?

    Jesus is not Sirian same as Ra.....They are just another spiritual faction that felt the calling to wake those who would listen, be able to discern the truth of who they are...remember Jesus said..."He who knows everything, but fails to know himself, misses the knowledge of everything"...they brought him here to bring some truth...but even his truth got turned into a ritual of "religion"....just like the words of Thoth...in a different fashion...but followed...and now is even popping into the "new age" movement with his words of "wisdom"....words of wisdom.....used to manipulate and put you in essence back to sleep if you let it.

    Horus was intended to carry on the feline lineage...and to an extent he did..however he got trapped, and Set could not foot the bill..so Thoth....after much torture, and pain....turned Horus into a slave to do their bidding. But he did not last long...and was quite fragmented.....after the fight from Set to gain control of the throne....Horus was just a "figure head'..the real leader was Ptah....with Thoth at the reins...but it was soon after that that Thoth got ousted....he was too power hungry...and it did not suite Ptah.

    Hathor – another bloodline? Allied with reptilians

    Lucifer – Angelic realm – turned evil Correct on Hathor and Lucifer The “Royal Bloodline” is Annunaki and Feline? “The Royal Bloodline are the Royals we speak of today?

    This is a very important answer....The "Royal bloodline" was that of the "Throne"...that of Isis....that of Sekhmet. It was stolen...and the symbolism of the "Throne" is used today with every so called "royal bloodline" since.....the only thing that made it "royal" in the first place was the "throne"...and it contained great power...and in the wrong hands...it created, an ever turning series of false royal lineage.....claiming that power of a "throne" that is in control of the frequencies of the discs.....that hide the truth. Today the throne is a symbol...but ask your self of what.....then look at these "royal thrones...and check out the composite make up of the jewels that surround it...and ask your self of the "crystalline" properties and power of these jewels and what they might actually be used for. Sounds crazy, I know...but together with the piezoelectric properties of the discs, and the chair to control it....you have an unlimited power source. And this "throne" and Isis were both based in Atlantis prior to the coming of the Annunaki. Most thrones you see used in a public arena are simply symbols..the real ones have been replaced by technology now.

    The ordinary human bloodline – all of the above possibly? Did RA seed earth with “hybrids” and human’s DNA is a variety of bloodlines mentioned above?

    Where is RA while Thoth is running havoc? Is Ra the “God” in this case? Is he the good guy? Does he not know what is going on down here? Hathor/Lucifer also entities causing havoc, andtheir “bosses” are unable to control them as well? Doesn’t Universe care about all this running amok?

    Ra was not around when these guys were tampering with the goods.....and in the process destroyed Atlantis. Ra came to Egypt after the fact...and that is when things got hot for Ptah...and Ra decided to try to gain back some control...but remember....by this time there were many lives at stake here on earth...Ra was not a "god"...he was simply in charge of a mission...and tried to correct things...the most important thing Ra and Sekhmet did, was to Remove the real discs, because Isis pleaded with them to stop the madness. They were creating some very painful expermints besides what you have heard of here so far....what I would term..."abominations."

    Ra was simply in charge of a mission to assist life here on earth through frequencies. Give the planet what it needed to create it's own species...us...the human bloodline..fit for the frequencies here...and basically create a new civilization. the seeding of "lightbody" technology has been used since anciet times...and the ones in charge of that were the felines..but that was not the only group here. We were then, and still are a very diverse culture of beings here. It would depend where you came from to determine that. And remember most of the records of that have been erased with the sinking of Atlantis. For example...Lumarians are Pleadian hybrids. Isis traveled extensively all over using this technology in conjunction with the core disc in the earth to bring the lightbody to the frequency of the earth. After the initial use..all that was needes was to produce an offspring...and away you go. Now...the key here is the fragmenting and tampering of Thoth and Ptah to infiltrate, and create a slave race of humans that don't remember who they are. Instead of remembering one life stream. An altering of the DNA with frequency. The so called "matrix" that David Icke speaks of.....set up with a frequency pattern.

    The good news is.....the earths frequencies are changing..and so are ours. this is why they have been scrambling to figure a way to control the frequencies. They are in great fear of a grid collapse....now tell me....how bad would that actually be? Worst case scenearo....repair it in a years time.....the fear is...they will be uncovered. The truth will come out...and people will start truly remembering....which will cause a chaos at first..then a rebellion....against who? The very ones in control of those frequencies. Even the armies of troops will start to realize who thay have been working for.....it will not be pretty for sure. But the truth sometimes never is."


    Archangel Michael = Isis = Cleopatra = Good Anna??!! Teachings of Isis = Teachings of Jesus??!! Did someone incarnate 2000 Years ago to bring the Creator's Message to the People? Were they exiled to the far east? Was Jesus Cesarian a usurper who corrupted this message? Did Constantine and the Council of Nicea further dilute and corrupt this message? Were nearly 40 books reduced to 5 books? Was this corrupted version of Christianity forced upon humanity for 1700 years? Are the True Teachings secretly held in the Vatican Archives? Do we need men and buildings to reach the Creator? Did the True Teachings tell people to seek enlightenment within themselves? Please watch the 1963 movie 'Cleopatra' over and over while studying this thread. Remember -- I am representing this thread as being a study-guide -- and NOT as being 'The Answer'. You will need to spend a helluva lot of time and energy with this madness to really 'get it'. I still don't really 'get it' -- even though this is 'my' thread. As I previously mentioned -- one dark night, someone looked me in the eye, and said "I am Ra". They later called me 'Michael', and asked me if I thought I might be the one hanging on the cross?? I didn't think so -- and I don't think so. What if Ra and Sekhmet were the parents of Isis and Jesus?? Think of this question in terms of a reincarnational soul basis. What if the REAL 'Jesus Story' is centered in Ancient Egypt?? Nuff Said. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sherrytalkradio/2012/12/18/monday-night-with-sherry-shriner


    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 AutoFlores
    devakas wrote:
    magamud wrote:The idea of the cross is it is two paths, as in two masters.  

    There is a binary relationship that springs forth from creation.  God and the Devil.

    Its the fountain...

    Without knowing satans whole, how could you reflect Gods whole?

    Entertainment was designed to capture the imagination.  Imagination is needed to vibrate love.

    Both paths are interwoven like a fabric. this is your pov

    Like clothes...
    which church did tell you that?  Can you explain what is love?  Can you explain what is 'fabric'? Can you explain a binary thing?
     No
    this way of thinking and believing would never completely satisfy the Self

    sunny
    Aquaries1111 wrote:Do you really believe those debunking videos Magamud? Actually, the debunking videos make me want to watch the videos of the subject because basically, we are being advised "don't waste your time believing" and it's those types of videos I always watch because others don't want us to give any credence to..

    Now I will admit, I have not been a big Icke Fan, however, this does not mean (amen!) I am a disbeliever!  Nothing is absolute except for existence and Icke breathes and lives.. That is all!

    Awareness Loves Life!


    Jenneta  Jenneta  Jenneta  Jenneta  Jenneta

    Carol wrote:I remember a few years back about some data suggesting an imminent pole shift. And before that was Nancy Lieder insisted the information the ETs gave her about a pole shift happening about 5 years back as well. Then another ET group stepped forth and informed another contactee I know that the pole shift is not on our timeline. I've come to the conclusion that it isn't worth worrying about. Whether a pole shift happens in our life span or not is something we have control over or even credible foreknowledge because the one thing I do know is that timelines change. Mercuriel and I were just talking earlier about how this one actor had died 3 times that we were aware of. The first from lung cancer because he smoked like a chimney. We look around and see evidence of weird goings on almost daily and can't even keep up with all the various news sources.

    This I do know. An inbound planet is not to far away. It is populated by the Annunaki. When it gets to 1 au from earth there will be some major earth changes and possible a pole shift. We still have to wait to see what will happen. Meanwhile, earth changes that were suppose to happen have been mitigated and appear to be unfolding at a more measured pace - as compared to abrupt, intense, one after another cataclysmic event. Some cataclysmic events we just won't know until they are upon us. But this I also know. The mind is non-local and also connected to universal cosmic consciousness. It is holographic in nature and each of us is a fractal, a part of the whole. Our awareness, our existance as a point of light affects the whole. There is no point in investing any of our personal energy in fear. Instead, our job, humble as it is - is to maintain balance and hold an image in our hearts of heaven on earth. That's it. Each being has the opportunity be participate as a conduit between the energies in the heavenly dimensional realm and this dimension. The more we can open up out hearts to this divine energy and pump it down into this dimension - the better outcome for humanity and our planet.
    I think I'd still like to do an interview-show from this incoming planet -- and I think I'd like to call it 'The Regressive Perspective'. Just Kidding! Siriusly, a while back, I suggested that they might take up a relatively circular orbit, safely beyond the orbit of Pluto, and become part of the new United States of the Solar System. According to what you are saying, Carol, this isn't happening -- but why do they have to get so close?! We don't even know them!! Are they essentially Black-Giants?? If so, would this necessarily be a bad thing?? I recently asked if we might basically be dealing with White-Nazis v Black-Giants?! I mean no racism or favoritism here. I simply don't know what the nasty issues and conflicts have been over the past ten-thousand years, or so. I've been trying to think in terms of one, big happy solar system family -- but I know not of what I speak. I have no idea regarding what races, beings, and agendas we might be dealing with. I just get the feeling that the Galactic Powers That Be are REALLY pissed-off...
    Carol wrote:The Annunaki's civilization is far more advanced then human-kind and they've swung by before. Is it once every 3,600 years in an elliptical orbit? I remember HD telling me the Annunaki wanted to control over human-kind. I wonder whose currently in control because if they already had control why would they want it now? And those who do know (ET negotiators within the Secret Government) what's going on aren't talking. We have leaked information, deliberate disinformation and speculation. What good is any of it? How can one prepare oneself of family against possible or even probable events unless they are in the know (go off-world into the future or the past; travel to one of the other off-world bases or another planet for that matter; or hang out in one of the underground cities or personal bunkers). Everyone else is just going to have to hope or pray for divine intervention. Some folks may be taken by ETs just prior to a cataclysmic event like in that movie "The Knowing." Somehow I don't think I'll be one of those folks. Even when offered the opportunity - it didn't seem my cup of tea as I wasn't inclined to have my consciousness put into a cloned body.

    In some respects I do envy some of those who get to have fun in the Space Command. And SG1 was always a personal favorite when it came to adventure and SciFy. It's comforting to think perhaps there is much more to it then just make believe.

    I still haven't figured out if I even want to reincarnate into a human form again. That's why it's so important to enjoy each precious moment here in the now - least there is regret of a life not fully lived later. I say this because of what my mother said a few days before she passed over. It took her whole life to pass by before she realized she had wasted it. I just found that very sad. So now, each night before dropping off to sleep I just pray that I stay in alignment with my pre-birth agreements and live life fully enjoying the beauty of nature (earth, mountains, deserts, valleys, canyons, foothills, plains/sky, colors, clouds/starry heavens/water - oceans, streams, ponds, lakes, rivers, rain), fish, all bird life, animals, children and family. I even enjoy most other races/cultures and am continually in awe by their human spirit. There is much to be grateful about every single day. So by being grateful one also is able to maintain a state of grace and harmony with what IS. Quiet the monkey mind, seek inner silence and listen to the music of the spheres. Pretty cool. However, I do need to add that even paradise has mosquitos (annoying distractions) from time-to-time. Fortunately the effects are fleeting and not worth giving too much attention to.
    Well said, Carol. I keep getting the feeling that what happens in this world is mostly the will of the gods and goddesses. Something seems to be playing-out on this seemingly god-forsaken planet which isn't nice. The more I try to think about the way things really are -- and the more I try to contemplate Heaven on Earth -- the more miserable and attacked I feel. Perhaps this is just my imagination and insanity -- but that's what it feels like. I'm almost to the point of just settling into conceptualizing a United States of the Solar System as a Big-Business where Appearances are Everything and the Bottom-Line is the Bottom-Line -- but in a highly transparent and ethical manner -- if you know what I mean. Perhaps we should assume that everything we say and do is somehow being viewed and recorded (electronically and/or supernaturally). I grew-up being told about Guardian-Angels and Recording-Angels so this wouldn't be anything new to me -- but I still think there is something fundamentally wrong about someone watching me in the bathroom -- and listening to me swear at interdimensional-reptilian intelligence-agents!! I think I'm just going to lay-low and study the 1898 Desire of Ages by Ellen White -- the 1928 Book of Common Prayer -- and the 1958 Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen -- and stay mostly non-controversial and under the radar. It's easier that way...

    Perhaps we're dealing with the Incoming Orion-Group in conflict with the Local Orion-Group. I keep thinking of Earth as being a Prison-Planet in Rebellion. I don't necessarily like the Traditions OR the Rebellions -- if you know what I mean. I keep trying to conceptualize Heaven on Earth in the form of a Hypothetical United States of the Solar System -- just to try to understand the madness. I'm presently quite interested in Supreme Courts (Worldwide). I'm interested in a rational, reasonable, and simple Interplanetary System of Rewards and Punishments. I'm interested in the Sovereignty of God relative to Human Responsible Freedom. Imagine Washington D.C., the United Nations, the City of London, and the Dark-Side of the Moon -- all in the Royal-Model Context of Vatican City!! I just said that I was going to lay-low -- and now look at me!! I'll eventually get around to finishing and refining this thread -- but this will probably take several months. I'll try to become neat, clean, retentive, polite, proper, respectable, marketable, etc, etc, etc. Again, I apologize for being a Completely Ignorant Fool. But Siriusly, take a long, hard look at yourselves and your leaders. You might need to do some changing, apologizing, and repenting. All of us might have very red faces before this madness ends -- if it ends...

    Is this thread a "Red-Herring" or is it the "Real-Deal"?? I think it might be a little bit of both. Just keep Ethics and Law in the Context of the Supreme Court of the United States of the Solar System at the center of your Solar System Studies, and I don't think you'll go too far wrong. I don't know what's going to happen -- and not happen. I don't know what's going to become of me. I really don't. I'm somewhat deep in despair -- and I don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm expecting more of the same -- only different. I hate to say it -- but there's always something "just around the corner" -- the Second-Coming of Christ -- the End of the World -- a Pole-Shift -- Earth-Changes -- Financial-Collapse -- the Third World War -- a Zombie-Epidemic -- an Asteroid-Attack -- and Alien-Invasion -- a Mac-Attack -- a Drac-Attack -- a Pain in Uranus -- etc. It never ends.


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    orthodoxymoron
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    Post  orthodoxymoron Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:54 pm

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    I think I might be irreversibly-lost in more ways than I can imagine, and I don't know how this happened. Everyone has a different version of the problems and the solutions. Let me simply suggest (and even plead) that some of us read the following three groups of Scripture (side by side, straight-through, over and over): 1. Job through Isaiah. 2. Jeremiah through Daniel. 3. Luke through Jude. Compare this study with reading the following three groups of Scripture (side by side, straight-through, over and over): 1. Genesis through Esther. 2. Job through Malachi. 3. Matthew through Revelation. What Would Emilio Knechtle Say?? What Would Billy Graham Say?? What Would Jesus Christ Say?? What Would the Apostle Paul Say?? What Would the Jesus Seminar Say?? What Would Desmond Ford Say?? What Would Fulton Sheen Say?? What Would John Dominic Crossan Say?? What Would Richard Carrier Say?? What Would Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer Say?? What Would Our Father Who Art in Heaven Say?? What Would the Beast Supercomputer Say?? What Would David Bowman Say?? What Would Peter Venkman Say?? What Would the Masons Say?? What Would the Nazis Say?? What Would the Jesuits Say?? What Would Donald Trump Say?? What Would Vladimir Putin Say??

    I recently encountered a Sweet and Sexy Russian-Lady Wearing a Crucifix-Necklace, and I wondered who she might be, and what she might be all about?! Who is REALLY Right?? Who is REALLY Wrong?? I think I might be irreversibly and simultaneously right and wrong in more ways than I can imagine, and I don't know how this happened. Everyone has a different version of right and wrong, problems and solutions. Is '42' really the answer to life, the universe, and everything?? This post makes me VERY SAD. Honesty Does NOT Necessarily Promote Spirituality. What is the Relationship Between Faith and Honesty?? Are They Complementary or Contradictory?? Should One Simply Have Simple Faith In What the Church-Leaders Preach?? Is Theological-Research of the Devil?? Think Long and Hard About What I Just Said. No one usually responds to my posts on various threads, but I've gotten used to that, and I'm OK with talking to myself (online and in real-life)!! It's easier that way!!

    As an alternative to reading the Bible straight-through, over and over OR reading Proof-Passages (here a little, there a little), consider reading Job through Daniel side by side with Luke through Jude -- straight-through, over and over. This reflects my biases regarding theological and devotional importance, which might be flawed, yet I still think this approach is somewhat legitimate, especially if each group is used to interpret itself, rather than being interpreted or vetoed by 'outsiders'!! I'm not sure the Bible really teaches what the teachers and preachers teach and preach!! The Bible can be made to say just about anything!! Each church picks and chooses certain passages to make their case for a doctrinal-statement, which then becomes the gold-standard for their particular organization. This is probably organizationally-expedient, yet the real-truth probably gets crucified in the process. A proper commentary covering the two groups mentioned would be necessary to provide a proper context, yet most commentaries use other portions of scripture to interpret and apply the content of each group.

    Each church has a 'System'. I keep wondering why the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of ALL Christian Churches aren't the 28 Fundamental Teachings of Jesus?? I include the following because of my background -- and because it is representative of Reformed Protestant Beliefs (although many Protestants might protest this assertion). This is intended to make us think. But really, most believers don't wish to have anyone meddle with their faith -- and most unbelievers don't wish to discuss beliefs. Period. Where are the objective, open, fair, and honest researchers?????? Notice Belief 16 ('The Lord's Supper') where there seems to be 'Real-Presence' language!! 'Heirs of the Reformation'?? Really?? What Would Luther Say?? I have repeatedly hinted that ALL Churches have-been (and are) run by the same Hidden-PTB ('The Spirit Behind the Church'??) -- and that each church is sort of like a 'Franchise' under 'Umbrella-Ownership'!! If so -- perhaps things must be this way -- so as to effectively manage the insanity of humanity. Who Knows?? Damned If I Know. That's Why I Whisper, Rather Than Shout...

    Are the Teachings of Jesus exclusively the Red-Letters found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?? Are the Teachings of Jesus the Genuine Pauline-Epistles?? Are the Teachings of Jesus the Red-Letters (including the first chapters of Revelation) plus the Genuine Pauline-Epistles?? Are the Teachings of Jesus the Entire New-Testament?? I've suggested the possibility that reading Job through Daniel (straight-through, over and over) might be necessary to properly understand the Whole-Bible. There's no book of the Bible titled 'The 28 Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists'. Where are the 'Latin Mass' and the 'Novus Ordo Mass' found in the Whole-Bible?? Why didn't the Historical Jesus write the New Testament?? Why isn't the New Testament a Positively-Reinforcing Old-Testament Commentary?? What Was the Perfect Law of the Lord prior to the Garden of Eden and the Book of Genesis?? I've suggested the possibility that Science-Fictional Possibility-Thinking must mate with Scholarly-Theology, especially regarding the Origin and Possible-Termination of Humanity As We Know It. This is Nasty-Territory. Researchers Beware!!


    28 Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists
    http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/fundamental/index.html

    Seventh-day Adventists accept the Bible as their only creed and hold certain fundamental beliefs to be the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. These beliefs, as set forth here, constitute the church's understanding and expression of the teaching of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God's Holy Word.

    1. Holy Scriptures:

    The Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration through holy men of God who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. In this Word, God has committed to man the knowledge necessary for salvation. The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God's acts in history. (2 Peter 1:20, 21; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17; Ps. 119:105; Prov. 30:5, 6; Isa. 8:20; John 17:17; 1 Thess. 2:13; Heb. 4:12.)

    2. Trinity:

    There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. He is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation. (Deut. 6:4; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 14:7.)


    3. Father:

    God the eternal Father is the Creator, Source, Sustainer, and Sovereign of all creation. He is just and holy, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The qualities and powers exhibited in the Son and the Holy Spirit are also revelations of the Father. (Gen. 1:1; Rev. 4:11; 1 Cor. 15:28; John 3:16; 1 John 4:8; 1 Tim. 1:17; Ex. 34:6, 7; John 14:9.)

    4. Son:

    God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were created, the character of God is revealed, the salvation of humanity is accomplished, and the world is judged. Forever truly God, He became also truly man, Jesus the Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God. By His miracles He manifested God's power and was attested as God's promised Messiah. He suffered and died voluntarily on the cross for our sins and in our place, was raised from the dead, and ascended to minister in the heavenly sanctuary in our behalf. He will come again in glory for the final deliverance of His people and the restoration of all things. (John 1:1-3, 14; Col. 1:15-19; John 10:30; 14:9; Rom. 6:23; 2 Cor. 5:17-19; John 5:22; Luke 1:35; Phil. 2:5-11; Heb. 2:9-18; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; Heb. 8:1, 2; John 14:1-3.)

    5. Holy Spirit:

    God the eternal Spirit was active with the Father and the Son in Creation, incarnation, and redemption. He inspired the writers of Scripture. He filled Christ's life with power. He draws and convicts human beings; and those who respond He renews and transforms into the image of God. Sent by the Father and the Son to be always with His children, He extends spiritual gifts to the church, empowers it to bear witness to Christ, and in harmony with the Scriptures leads it into all truth. (Gen. 1:1, 2; Luke 1:35; 4:18; Acts 10:38; 2 Peter 1:21; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 4:11, 12; Acts 1:8; John 14:16-18, 26; 15:26, 27; 16:7-13.)

    6. Creation:

    God is Creator of all things, and has revealed in Scripture the authentic account of His creative activity. In six days the Lord made "the heaven and the earth" and all living things upon the earth, and rested on the seventh day of that first week. Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of His completed creative work. The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation, given dominion over the world, and charged with responsibility to care for it. When the world was finished it was ``very good,'' declaring the glory of God. (Gen. 1; 2; Ex. 20:8-11; Ps. 19:1-6; 33:6, 9; 104; Heb. 11:3.)

    7. Nature of Man:

    Man and woman were made in the image of God with individuality, the power and freedom to think and to do. Though created free beings, each is an indivisible unity of body, mind, and spirit, dependent upon God for life and breath and all else. When our first parents disobeyed God, they denied their dependence upon Him and fell from their high position under God. The image of God in them was marred and they became subject to death. Their descendants share this fallen nature and its consequences. They are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. But God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself and by His Spirit restores in penitent mortals the image of their Maker. Created for the glory of God, they are called to love Him and one another, and to care for their environment. (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:7; Ps. 8:4-8; Acts 17:24-28; Gen. 3; Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12-17; 2 Cor. 5:19, 20; Ps. 51:10; 1 John 4:7, 8, 11, 20; Gen. 2:15.)

    8. Great Controversy:

    All humanity is now involved in a great controversy between Christ and Satan regarding the character of God, His law, and His sovereignty over the universe. This conflict originated in heaven when a created being, endowed with freedom of choice, in self-exaltation became Satan, God's adversary, and led into rebellion a portion of the angels. He introduced the spirit of rebellion into this world when he led Adam and Eve into sin. This human sin resulted in the distortion of the image of God in humanity, the disordering of the created world, and its eventual devastation at the time of the worldwide flood. Observed by the whole creation, this world became the arena of the universal conflict, out of which the God of love will ultimately be vindicated. To assist His people in this controversy, Christ sends the Holy Spirit and the loyal angels to guide, protect, and sustain them in the way of salvation. (Rev. 12:4-9; Isa. 14:12-14; Eze. 28:12-18; Gen. 3; Rom. 1:19-32; 5:12-21; 8:19-22; Gen. 6-8; 2 Peter 3:6; 1 Cor. 4:9; Heb. 1:14.)

    9. Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ:

    In Christ's life of perfect obedience to God's will, His suffering, death, and resurrection, God provided the only means of atonement for human sin, so that those who by faith accept this atonement may have eternal life, and the whole creation may better understand the infinite and holy love of the Creator. This perfect atonement vindicates the righteousness of God's law and the graciousness of His character; for it both condemns our sin and provides for our forgiveness. The death of Christ is substitutionary and expiatory, reconciling and transforming. The resurrection of Christ proclaims God's triumph over the forces of evil, and for those who accept the atonement assures their final victory over sin and death. It declares the Lordship of Jesus Christ, before whom every knee in heaven and on earth will bow. (John 3:16; Isa. 53; 1 Peter 2:21, 22; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4, 20-22; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15, 19-21; Rom. 1:4; 3:25; 4:25; 8:3, 4; 1 John 2:2; 4:10; Col. 2:15; Phil. 2:6-11.)

    10. Experience of Salvation:

    In infinite love and mercy God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might be made the righteousness of God. Led by the Holy Spirit we sense our need, acknowledge our sinfulness, repent of our transgressions, and exercise faith in Jesus as Lord and Christ, as Substitute and Example. This faith which receives salvation comes through the divine power of the Word and is the gift of God's grace. Through Christ we are justified, adopted as God's sons and daughters, and delivered from the lordship of sin. Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God's law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life. Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment. (2 Cor. 5:17-21; John 3:16; Gal. 1:4; 4:4-7; Titus 3:3-7; John 16:8; Gal. 3:13, 14; 1 Peter 2:21, 22; Rom. 10:17; Luke 17:5; Mark 9:23, 24; Eph. 2:5-10; Rom. 3:21-26; Col. 1:13, 14; Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 3:26; John 3:3-8; 1 Peter 1:23; Rom. 12:2; Heb. 8:7-12; Eze. 36:25-27; 2 Peter 1:3, 4; Rom. 8:1-4; 5:6-10.)

    11. Growing in Christ:

    By His death on the cross Jesus triumphed over the forces of evil. He who subjugated the demonic spirits during His earthly ministry has broken their power and made certain their ultimate doom. Jesus' victory gives us victory over the evil forces that still seek to control us, as we walk with Him in peace, joy, and assurance of His love. Now the Holy Spirit dwells within us and empowers us. Continually committed to Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, we are set free from the burden of our past deeds. No longer do we live in the darkness, fear of evil powers, ignorance, and meaninglessness of our former way of life. In this new freedom in Jesus, we are called to grow into the likeness of His character, communing with Him daily in prayer, feeding on His Word, meditating on it and on His providence, singing His praises, gathering together for worship, and participating in the mission of the Church. As we give ourselves in loving service to those around us and in witnessing to His salvation, His constant presence with us through the Spirit transforms every moment and every task into a spiritual experience. (Ps 1:1, 2; 23:4; 77:11, 12; Col 1:13, 14; 2:6, 14, 15; Luke 10:17-20; Eph 5:19, 20; 6:12-18; 1 Thess 5:23; 2 Peter 2:9; 3:18; 2 Cor. 3:17, 18; Phil 3:7-14; 1 Thess 5:16-18; Matt 20:25-28; John 20:21; Gal 5:22-25; Rom 8:38, 39; 1 John 4:4; Heb 10:25.)

    12. Church:

    The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. In continuity with the people of God in Old Testament times, we are called out from the world; and we join together for worship, for fellowship, for instruction in the Word, for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, for service to all mankind, and for the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church derives its authority from Christ, who is the incarnate Word, and from the Scriptures, which are the written Word. The church is God's family; adopted by Him as children, its members live on the basis of the new covenant. The church is the body of Christ, a community of faith of which Christ Himself is the Head. The church is the bride for whom Christ died that He might sanctify and cleanse her. At His return in triumph, He will present her to Himself a glorious church, the faithful of all the ages, the purchase of His blood, not having spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish. (Gen. 12:3; Acts 7:38; Eph. 4:11-15; 3:8-11; Matt. 28:19, 20; 16:13-20; 18:18; Eph. 2:19-22; 1:22, 23; 5:23-27; Col. 1:17, 18.)

    13. Remnant and Its Mission:

    The universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ, but in the last days, a time of widespread apostasy, a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. This remnant announces the arrival of the judgment hour, proclaims salvation through Christ, and heralds the approach of His second advent. This proclamation is symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14; it coincides with the work of judgment in heaven and results in a work of repentance and reform on earth. Every believer is called to have a personal part in this worldwide witness. (Rev. 12:17; 14:6-12; 18:1-4; 2 Cor. 5:10; Jude 3, 14; 1 Peter 1:16-19; 2 Peter 3:10-14; Rev. 21:1-14.)

    14. Unity in the Body of Christ:

    The church is one body with many members, called from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. In Christ we are a new creation; distinctions of race, culture, learning, and nationality, and differences between high and low, rich and poor, male and female, must not be divisive among us. We are all equal in Christ, who by one Spirit has bonded us into one fellowship with Him and with one another; we are to serve and be served without partiality or reservation. Through the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures we share the same faith and hope, and reach out in one witness to all. This unity has its source in the oneness of the triune God, who has adopted us as His children. (Rom. 12:4, 5; 1 Cor. 12:12-14; Matt. 28:19, 20; Ps. 133:1; 2 Cor. 5:16, 17; Acts 17:26, 27; Gal. 3:27, 29; Col. 3:10-15; Eph. 4:14-16; 4:1-6; John 17:20-23.)

    15. Baptism:

    By baptism we confess our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and testify of our death to sin and of our purpose to walk in newness of life. Thus we acknowledge Christ as Lord and Saviour, become His people, and are received as members by His church. Baptism is a symbol of our union with Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, and our reception of the Holy Spirit. It is by immersion in water and is contingent on an affirmation of faith in Jesus and evidence of repentance of sin. It follows instruction in the Holy Scriptures and acceptance of their teachings. (Rom. 6:1-6; Col. 2:12, 13; Acts 16:30-33; 22:16; 2:38; Matt. 28:19, 20.)

    16. Lord's Supper:

    The Lord's Supper is a participation in the emblems of the body and blood of Jesus as an expression of faith in Him, our Lord and Saviour. In this experience of communion Christ is present to meet and strengthen His people. As we partake, we joyfully proclaim the Lord's death until He comes again. Preparation for the Supper includes self-examination, repentance, and confession. The Master ordained the service of foot washing to signify renewed cleansing, to express a willingness to serve one another in Christlike humility, and to unite our hearts in love. The communion service is open to all believing Christians. (1 Cor. 10:16, 17; 11:23-30; Matt. 26:17-30; Rev. 3:20; John 6:48-63; 13:1-17.)

    17. Spiritual Gifts and Ministries:

    God bestows upon all members of His church in every age spiritual gifts which each member is to employ in loving ministry for the common good of the church and of humanity. Given by the agency of the Holy Spirit, who apportions to each member as He wills, the gifts provide all abilities and ministries needed by the church to fulfill its divinely ordained functions. According to the Scriptures, these gifts include such ministries as faith, healing, prophecy, proclamation, teaching, administration, reconciliation, compassion, and self-sacrificing service and charity for the help and encouragement of people. Some members are called of God and endowed by the Spirit for functions recognized by the church in pastoral, evangelistic, apostolic, and teaching ministries particularly needed to equip the members for service, to build up the church to spiritual maturity, and to foster unity of the faith and knowledge of God. When members employ these spiritual gifts as faithful stewards of God's varied grace, the church is protected from the destructive influence of false doctrine, grows with a growth that is from God, and is built up in faith and love. (Rom. 12:4-8; 1 Cor. 12:9-11, 27, 28; Eph. 4:8, 11-16; Acts 6:1-7; 1 Tim. 3:1-13; 1 Peter 4:10, 11.)

    18. The Gift of Prophecy:

    One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is prophecy. This gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church and was manifested in the ministry of Ellen. G. White . As the Lord's messenger, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction. They also make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested. (Joel 2:28, 29; Acts 2:14-21; Heb. 1:1-3; Rev. 12:17; 19:10.)

    19. Law of God:

    The great principles of God's law are embodied in the Ten Commandments and exemplified in the life of Christ. They express God's love, will, and purposes concerning human conduct and relationships and are binding upon all people in every age. These precepts are the basis of God's covenant with His people and the standard in God's judgment. Through the agency of the Holy Spirit they point out sin and awaken a sense of need for a Saviour. Salvation is all of grace and not of works, but its fruitage is obedience to the Commandments. This obedience develops Christian character and results in a sense of well-being. It is an evidence of our love for the Lord and our concern for our fellow men. The obedience of faith demonstrates the power of Christ to transform lives, and therefore strengthens Christian witness. (Ex. 20:1-17; Ps. 40:7, 8; Matt. 22:36-40; Deut. 28:1-14; Matt. 5:17-20; Heb. 8:8-10; John 15:7-10; Eph. 2:8-10; 1 John 5:3; Rom. 8:3, 4; Ps. 19:7-14.)

    20. Sabbath:

    The beneficent Creator, after the six days of Creation, rested on the seventh day and instituted the Sabbath for all people as a memorial of Creation. The fourth commandment of God's unchangeable law requires the observance of this seventh-day Sabbath as the day of rest, worship, and ministry in harmony with the teaching and practice of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of delightful communion with God and one another. It is a symbol of our redemption in Christ, a sign of our sanctification, a token of our allegiance, and a foretaste of our eternal future in God's kingdom. The Sabbath is God's perpetual sign of His eternal covenant between Him and His people. Joyful observance of this holy time from evening to evening, sunset to sunset, is a celebration of God's creative and redemptive acts. (Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:8-11; Luke 4:16; Isa. 56:5, 6; 58:13, 14; Matt. 12:1-12; Ex. 31:13-17; Eze. 20:12, 20; Deut. 5:12-15; Heb. 4:1-11; Lev. 23:32; Mark 1:32.)

    21. Stewardship:

    We are God's stewards, entrusted by Him with time and opportunities, abilities and possessions, and the blessings of the earth and its resources. We are responsible to Him for their proper use. We acknowledge God's ownership by faithful service to Him and our fellow men, and by returning tithes and giving offerings for the proclamation of His gospel and the support and growth of His church. Stewardship is a privilege given to us by God for nurture in love and the victory over selfishness and covetousness. The steward rejoices in the blessings that come to others as a result of his faithfulness. (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:15; 1 Chron. 29:14; Haggai 1:3-11; Mal. 3:8-12; 1 Cor. 9:9-14; Matt. 23:23; 2 Cor. 8:1-15; Rom. 15:26, 27.)

    22. Christian Behavior:

    We are called to be a godly people who think, feel, and act in harmony with the principles of heaven. For the Spirit to recreate in us the character of our Lord we involve ourselves only in those things which will produce Christlike purity, health, and joy in our lives. This means that our amusement and entertainment should meet the highest standards of Christian taste and beauty. While recognizing cultural differences, our dress is to be simple, modest, and neat, befitting those whose true beauty does not consist of outward adornment but in the imperishable ornament of a gentle and quiet spirit. It also means that because our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, we are to care for them intelligently. Along with adequate exercise and rest, we are to adopt the most healthful diet possible and abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures. Since alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and the irresponsible use of drugs and narcotics are harmful to our bodies, we are to abstain from them as well. Instead, we are to engage in whatever brings our thoughts and bodies into the discipline of Christ, who desires our wholesomeness, joy, and goodness. (Rom. 12:1, 2; 1 John 2:6; Eph. 5:1-21; Phil. 4:8; 2 Cor. 10:5; 6:14-7:1; 1 Peter 3:1-4; 1 Cor. 6:19, 20; 10:31; Lev. 11:1-47; 3 John 2.)

    23. Marriage and the Family:

    Marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in loving companionship. For the Christian a marriage commitment is to God as well as to the spouse, and should be entered into only between partners who share a common faith. Mutual love, honor, respect, and responsibility are the fabric of this relationship, which is to reflect the love, sanctity, closeness, and permanence of the relationship between Christ and His church. Regarding divorce, Jesus taught that the person who divorces a spouse, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery. Although some family relationships may fall short of the ideal, marriage partners who fully commit themselves to each other in Christ may achieve loving unity through the guidance of the Spirit and the nurture of the church. God blesses the family and intends that its members shall assist each other toward complete maturity. Parents are to bring up their children to love and obey the Lord. By their example and their words they are to teach them that Christ is a loving disciplinarian, ever tender and caring, who wants them to become members of His body, the family of God. Increasing family closeness is one of the earmarks of the final gospel message. (Gen. 2:18-25; Matt. 19:3-9; John 2:1-11; 2 Cor. 6:14; Eph. 5:21-33; Matt. 5:31, 32; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18; 1 Cor. 7:10, 11; Ex. 20:12; Eph. 6:1-4; Deut. 6:5-9; Prov. 22:6; Mal. 4:5, 6.)

    24. Christ's Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary:

    There is a sanctuary in heaven, the true tabernacle which the Lord set up and not man. In it Christ ministers on our behalf, making available to believers the benefits of His atoning sacrifice offered once for all on the cross. He was inaugurated as our great High Priest and began His intercessory ministry at the time of His ascension. In 1844, at the end of the prophetic period of 2300 days, He entered the second and last phase of His atoning ministry. It is a work of investigative judgment which is part of the ultimate disposition of all sin, typified by the cleansing of the ancient Hebrew sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. In that typical service the sanctuary was cleansed with the blood of animal sacrifices, but the heavenly things are purified with the perfect sacrifice of the blood of Jesus. The investigative judgment reveals to heavenly intelligences who among the dead are asleep in Christ and therefore, in Him, are deemed worthy to have part in the first resurrection. It also makes manifest who among the living are abiding in Christ, keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, and in Him, therefore, are ready for translation into His everlasting kingdom. This judgment vindicates the justice of God in saving those who believe in Jesus. It declares that those who have remained loyal to God shall receive the kingdom. The completion of this ministry of Christ will mark the close of human probation before the Second Advent. (Heb. 8:1-5; 4:14-16; 9:11-28; 10:19-22; 1:3; 2:16, 17; Dan. 7:9-27; 8:13, 14; 9:24-27; Num. 14:34; Eze. 4:6; Lev. 16; Rev. 14:6, 7; 20:12; 14:12; 22:12.)

    25. Second Coming of Christ:

    The second coming of Christ is the blessed hope of the church, the grand climax of the gospel. The Saviour's coming will be literal, personal, visible, and worldwide. When He returns, the righteous dead will be resurrected, and together with the righteous living will be glorified and taken to heaven, but the unrighteous will die. The almost complete fulfillment of most lines of prophecy, together with the present condition of the world, indicates that Christ's coming is imminent. The time of that event has not been revealed, and we are therefore exhorted to be ready at all times. (Titus 2:13; Heb. 9:28; John 14:1-3; Acts 1:9-11; Matt. 24:14; Rev. 1:7; Matt. 24:43, 44; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15:51-54; 2 Thess. 1:7-10; 2:8; Rev. 14:14-20; 19:11-21; Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; 2 Tim. 3:1-5; 1 Thess. 5:1-6.)

    26. Death and Resurrection:

    The wages of sin is death. But God, who alone is immortal, will grant eternal life to His redeemed. Until that day death is an unconscious state for all people. When Christ, who is our life, appears, the resurrected righteous and the living righteous will be glorified and caught up to meet their Lord. The second resurrection, the resurrection of the unrighteous, will take place a thousand years later. (Rom. 6:23; 1 Tim. 6:15, 16; Eccl. 9:5, 6; Ps. 146:3, 4; John 11:11-14; Col. 3:4; 1 Cor. 15:51-54; 1 Thess. 4:13-17; John 5:28, 29; Rev. 20:1-10.)

    27. Millennium and the End of Sin:

    The millennium is the thousand-year reign of Christ with His saints in heaven between the first and second resurrections. During this time the wicked dead will be judged; the earth will be utterly desolate, without living human inhabitants, but occupied by Satan and his angels. At its close Christ with His saints and the Holy City will descend from heaven to earth. The unrighteous dead will then be resurrected, and with Satan and his angels will surround the city; but fire from God will consume them and cleanse the earth. The universe will thus be freed of sin and sinners forever. (Rev. 20; 1 Cor. 6:2, 3; Jer. 4:23-26; Rev. 21:1-5; Mal. 4:1; Eze. 28:18, 19.)

    28. New Earth:

    On the new earth, in which righteousness dwells, God will provide an eternal home for the redeemed and a perfect environment for everlasting life, love, joy, and learning in His presence. For here God Himself will dwell with His people, and suffering and death will have passed away. The great controversy will be ended, and sin will be no more. All things, animate and inanimate, will declare that God is love; and He shall reign forever. Amen. (2 Peter 3:13; Isa. 35; 65:17-25; Matt. 5:5; Rev. 21:1-7; 22:1-5; 11:15.) Seventh-day Adventists accept the Bible as their only creed and hold certain fundamental beliefs to be the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. These beliefs, as set forth here, constitute the church's understanding and expression of the teaching of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God's Holy Word.




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    This SDA Church is on Hollywood Boulevard (at the Hollywood Freeway)!!
    I Grew Up Attending This Church!! We Called it "Noah's Ark"!!

    I grew-up attending this church, and I sang in the choir when we had a professional-level organist, pianist, choir-director, and soloists. We mostly performed Sacred Classical Music. Once, we participated in the wedding of a high-born non-SDA African couple, and attended the reception, which was really quite-wild by SDA standards (at that time)!! They had booze, a rock-group, and dancing rich-people!! Below is a short-video of this church a couple of years ago. Notice the people coming-forward to take communion. This is NOT Traditional SDA practice!! This is more Anglican or Catholic!! There's another video with the congregation singing 'Kyrie Eleison'!! We were much more classical-music oriented than the music in the video below!! Once, during communion, a visitor got-up and walked-out, shouting "You're Just a Bunch of Catholics!!" And that's when we did NOT come forward for communion!! Imagine what that guy would say today!! Another time, a lady got mad at the church, and was shouting "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell??!!" One of the most significant services was the hosting of the guest-speaker Emilio Knechtle. I sang in the choir. The church was packed. PLEASE Listen to the Emilio Knechtle videos below!! He's a VERY Dynamic and Forceful Speaker!! I Find His Presentations Irresistible!! I met him after one of his sermons.

    As an Early-Teen, in the basement of this church, an Individual of Interest (who I never saw before or after) told me "Gee, You're Gullible!!" I told 'RA' about this, and he smirked. C. Lloyd Wyman was the pastor when the church was built, and I went to school with his son, Scott. Jack LaLanne's mother attended this church, and she knew the answers to all the questions in Sabbath-School!! Jack didn't attend, but he dropped-off and picked-up his mother. As a teen-ager, a group of us from the church (including the pastor, Thomas Stafford) picketed a Hollywood Pornography Establishment!! We Were Shown on the Evening Television-News in Los Angeles!! When I was a very-young child, while sitting with my mother in this church, a couple of elderly-ladies thought I was cute, and they were smiling at me, and talking to me, but I thought they were making fun of me, and I said "Shut-Up!!" My mother was horrified, and marched me out of the sanctuary, and gave me a paddling (when that sort of thing was NOT forbidden by the 'do-gooders')!! I had to apologize to the ladies following the service!! What Would Dr. Spock Say?? We drove our 1959 'Ghostbuster' Cadillac (with CBS plates) to this church each Sabbath (when I was a young child). What Would Dr. Peter Venkman Say?? Later, I sometimes drove our Blue AMC Pacer to this church (around the same time 'Oh, God' was being produced, a few miles away)!! What Would John Denver and George Burns Say?? What Would a Completely Ignorant Fool Say?? That's All I'm Going to Say!!

    Here's an article about a former pastor of the Hollywood SDA Church who became an atheist. I'm not the only renegade former member!! We should start a support-group!! https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2015/01/04/end-his-year-without-god-ryan-bell-speaks-out I don't think a lot of atheists are really atheists. I think most of them are simply disillusioned by the realities of life as we know it. There was a lot of fighting at this church when I was there, and from what I've heard, it only got worse after I moved. The fighting I experienced was mostly theological (surprise, surprise), but people also got in each others way. We all have our agendas, don't we?? What Would Patrick Lobo Say?? What Would Paul Hart Do?? What Would Charles and Marian Haluska Say and Do?? As some of you know, my current SDA idealism seems to revolve around the 'Conflict of the Ages Series' (by Ellen White) and the 'SDA Bible Commentary' combined with Science-Fiction and Sacred Classical Music in the Context of Nature. This might-not involve church-membership (or even non-committal church-attendance). People who have left the SDA church for greener-pastures quickly found-out that the pastures weren't as green as they thought they were going to be. Life on Earth is Hazardous-Duty, and most of us get our fingers burned (right up to our armpits) at some point. I have high-hopes for Church-Related Education and Employment, but Church On Earth (as fortress against the world) might be on its way out. Church In Heaven might be a completely different story. I think we all have fleeting memories of what that was like (back in the good-old days) but creating Heaven On Earth seems to be an Impossible Dream (for now). Namaste and Godspeed.



    Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD. Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. They do no wrong but follow his ways. You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed. Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands. I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me. How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, LORD; teach me your decrees. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word. Be good to your servant while I live, that I may obey your word. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. I am a stranger on earth; do not hide your commands from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times. You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed, those who stray from your commands. Remove from me their scorn and contempt, for I keep your statutes. Though rulers sit together and slander me, your servant will meditate on your decrees. Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors. I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word. I gave an account of my ways and you answered me; teach me your decrees. Cause me to understand the way of your precepts, that I may meditate on your wonderful deeds. My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me and teach me your law. I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I have set my heart on your laws. I hold fast to your statutes, LORD; do not let me be put to shame. I run in the path of your commands, for you have broadened my understanding. Teach me, LORD, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end. Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared.

    Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good. How I long for your precepts! In your righteousness preserve my life. May your unfailing love come to me, LORD, your salvation, according to your promise; then I can answer anyone who taunts me, for I trust in your word. Never take your word of truth from my mouth, for I have put my hope in your laws. I will always obey your law, for ever and ever. I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame, for I delight in your commands because I love them. I reach out for your commands, which I love, that I may meditate on your decrees. Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope. My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. The arrogant mock me unmercifully, but I do not turn from your law. I remember, LORD, your ancient laws, and I find comfort in them. Indignation grips me because of the wicked, who have forsaken your law. Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge. In the night, LORD, I remember your name, that I may keep your law. This has been my practice: I obey your precepts. You are my portion, LORD; I have promised to obey your words. I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise. I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to your statutes. I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands. Though the wicked bind me with ropes, I will not forget your law. At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws. I am a friend to all who fear you, to all who follow your precepts. The earth is filled with your love, LORD; teach me your decrees. Do good to your servant according to your word, LORD. Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word. You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees. Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in your law. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands. May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word. I know, LORD, that your laws are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

    May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause; but I will meditate on your precepts. May those who fear you turn to me, those who understand your statutes. May I wholeheartedly follow your decrees, that I may not be put to shame. My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. My eyes fail, looking for your promise; I say, “When will you comfort me?” Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke, I do not forget your decrees. How long must your servant wait? When will you punish my persecutors? The arrogant dig pits to trap me, contrary to your law. All your commands are trustworthy; help me, for I am being persecuted without cause. They almost wiped me from the earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. In your unfailing love preserve my life, that I may obey the statutes of your mouth. Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures. Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life. Save me, for I am yours; I have sought out your precepts. The wicked are waiting to destroy me, but I will ponder your statutes. To all perfection I see a limit, but your commands are boundless. Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much; preserve my life, LORD, according to your word. Accept, LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws. Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law. The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts. Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart. My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.

    I hate double-minded people, but I love your law. You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word. Away from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commands of my God! Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed. Uphold me, and I will be delivered; I will always have regard for your decrees. You reject all who stray from your decrees, for their delusions come to nothing. All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross; therefore I love your statutes. My flesh trembles in fear of you; I stand in awe of your laws. I have done what is righteous and just; do not leave me to my oppressors. Ensure your servant’s well-being; do not let the arrogant oppress me. My eyes fail, looking for your salvation, looking for your righteous promise. Deal with your servant according to your love and teach me your decrees. I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes. It is time for you to act, LORD; your law is being broken. Because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold, and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path. Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them. The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands. Turn to me and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name. Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me. Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts. Make your face shine on your servant and teach me your decrees. Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed. You are righteous, LORD, and your laws are right. The statutes you have laid down are righteous; they are fully trustworthy. My zeal wears me out, for my enemies ignore your words. Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them. Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts. Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true. Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands give me delight. Your statutes are always righteous; give me understanding that I may live. I call with all my heart; answer me, LORD, and I will obey your decrees. I call out to you; save me and I will keep your statutes. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. Hear my voice in accordance with your love; preserve my life, LORD, according to your laws.

    Those who devise wicked schemes are near, but they are far from your law. Yet you are near, LORD, and all your commands are true. Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever. Look on my suffering and deliver me, for I have not forgotten your law. Defend my cause and redeem me; preserve my life according to your promise. Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek out your decrees. Your compassion, LORD, is great; preserve my life according to your laws. Many are the foes who persecute me, but I have not turned from your statutes. I look on the faithless with loathing, for they do not obey your word. See how I love your precepts; preserve my life, LORD, in accordance with your love. All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal. Rulers persecute me without cause, but my heart trembles at your word. I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil. I hate and detest falsehood but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws. Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. I wait for your salvation, LORD, and I follow your commands. I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly. I obey your precepts and your statutes, for all my ways are known to you. May my cry come before you, LORD; give me understanding according to your word. May my supplication come before you; deliver me according to your promise. May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. May my tongue sing of your word, for all your commands are righteous. May your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, LORD, and your law gives me delight. Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me. I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands.  


    "The Seventh-Day is the Sabbath!!"
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    orthodoxymoron
    orthodoxymoron


    Posts : 13316
    Join date : 2010-09-28
    Location : The Matrix

    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:22 am

    Once again, at this late date, I just wish to repeat that I don't know who's who -- what's what -- or which way to jump. I continue to think this thread is an excellent starting-point and study-guide -- but don't look to this thread, or to me, as being "the answer" in any way, shape, or form -- regardless of who I might've been (or might not have been) in previous incarnations. I really and truly am a Completely Ignorant Fool -- and I'm NOT proud of this inconvenient truth. But, in spite of everything, I will continue this seeming exercise in futility -- because I can -- at least for now. Consider Ancient Theories of the Soul. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/

    Ancient Theories of Soul

    First published Thu Oct 23, 2003; substantive revision Wed Apr 22, 2009

    Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul [psuchê] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical. We therefore begin with what the word ‘soul’ meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic thinkers, and to the philosophical theories that are our primary concern, those of Plato (first in the Phaedo, then in the Republic), Aristotle (in the De Anima or On the Soul), Epicurus, and the Stoics. These are by far the most carefully worked out theories of soul in ancient philosophy. Later theoretical developments — for instance, in the writings of Plotinus and other Platonists, as well as the Church Fathers — are best studied against the background of the classical theories, from which, in large part, they derive.

    Adopting a bird's-eye view of the terrain that we will be covering, and setting many details aside for the moment, we can describe it as follows. From comparatively humble Homeric beginnings, the word ‘soul’ undergoes quite remarkable semantic expansion in sixth and fifth century usage. By the end of the fifth century — the time of Socrates' death — soul is standardly thought and spoken of, for instance, as the distinguishing mark of living things, as something that is the subject of emotional states and that is responsible for planning and practical thinking, and also as the bearer of such virtues as courage and justice. Coming to philosophical theory, we first trace a development towards comprehensive articulation of a very broad conception of soul, according to which the soul is not only responsible for mental or psychological functions like thought, perception and desire, and is the bearer of moral qualities, but in some way or other accounts for all the vital functions that any living organism performs. This broad conception, which is clearly in close contact with ordinary Greek usage by that time, finds its fullest articulation in Aristotle's theory. The theories of the Hellenistic period, by contrast, are interested more narrowly in the soul as something that is responsible specifically for mental or psychological functions. They either de-emphasize or sever the ordinary-language connection between soul and life in all its functions and aspects.
    •1. The Greek Notion of Soul?Supplement: Burnet on the Greek Notion of Soul

    •2. Presocratic Thinking about the Soul
    •3. Plato's Theories of Soul?3.1 The Phaedo's Theory of Soul
    ?3.2 The Republic's Theory of Soul

    •4. Aristotle's Theory of Soul
    •5. Hellenistic Theories of Soul?5.1 Epicurus' Theory of Soul
    ?5.2 The Stoic Theory of Soul

    •6. Conclusion
    •Bibliography
    •Other Internet Resources
    •Related Entries

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    1. The Greek Notion of Soul

    The Homeric poems, with which most ancient writers can safely be assumed to be intimately familiar, use the word ‘soul’ in two distinguishable, probably related, ways. The soul is, on the one hand, something that a human being risks in battle and loses in death. On the other hand, it is what at the time of death departs from the person's limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a more or less pitiful afterlife as a shade or image of the deceased person. It has been suggested (for instance, by Snell 1975, 19) that what is referred to as soul in either case is in fact thought of as one and the same thing, something that a person can risk and lose and that, after death, endures as a shade in the underworld. The suggestion is plausible, but cannot be verified. In any case, once a person's soul has departed for good, the person is dead. The presence of soul therefore distinguishes a living human body from a corpse. However, this is plainly not to say that the soul is thought of as what accounts for, or is responsible for, the activities, responses, operations and the like that constitute a person's life. Homer never says that anyone does anything in virtue of, or with, their soul, nor does he attribute any activity to the soul of a living person. Thus, though the presence or absence of soul marks out a person's life, it is not otherwise associated with that life. Moreover, it is a striking feature of Homeric usage that, in Furley's words (Furley 1956, 4), to mention soul is to suggest death: someone's soul comes to mind only when their life is thought, by themselves or others, to be at risk. Thus Achilles says that he is continuously risking his soul (Iliad 9.322), and Agenor reflects on the fact that even Achilles has just one soul (Iliad 11.569). It should also be pointed out that in the Homeric poems, only human beings are said to have (and to lose) souls. Correspondingly, Homer never envisages shades or images of non-human creatures in the underworld. These two facts taken together suggest that in whatever precise way the soul is conceived of as associated with life, it is in any case thought to be connected not with life in general, or life in all its forms, but rather, more specifically, with the life of a human being.

    Several significant developments occurred in the ways Greeks thought and spoke about the soul in the sixth and fifth centuries. The questions about the soul that are formulated and discussed in the writings of Plato and Aristotle to some extent arise from, and need to be interpreted against the background of, these sixth and fifth century developments. One factor that is of central importance is the gradual loss of the Homeric connection between mentioning a person's soul and the thought that their life is vulnerable or at risk (contra Burnet 1916, 253). In ordinary fifth century Greek, having soul is simply being alive; hence the emergence, at about this time, of the adjective ‘ensouled’ [empsuchos] as the standard word meaning “alive”, which was applied not just to human beings, but to other living things as well. There is some reason to think that the word ‘soul’ was used in this straightforwardly positive way already in the sixth century. Thales of Miletus, who is credited with successfully predicting a solar eclipse occurring in 585, reportedly attributed soul to magnets, on the grounds that magnets are capable of moving iron (Aristotle, De Anima 1.2, 405a19-21). Thales' thought was presumably that since it is distinctive of living things to be able to initiate movement, magnets must in fact be alive or, in other words, ensouled. Thus, while Homer spoke of soul only in the case of human beings, in sixth and fifth century usage soul is attributed to every kind of living thing. What is in place, then, at this time is the notion that soul is what distinguishes that which is alive from that which is not.

    However, it is not just that soul is said to be present in every living thing. It is also the case that an increasingly broad range of ways of acting and being acted on is attributed to the soul. Thus it has come to be natural, by the end of the fifth century, to refer pleasure taken in food and drink, as well as sexual desire, to the soul. (For detailed discussion, see Claus 1981, 73-85.) People are said, for example, to satisfy their souls with rich food (Euripides, Ion 1170), and the souls of gods and men are claimed to be subject to sexual desire (fragment assigned by Nauck to Euripides' first Hippolytus). In contexts of intense emotion or crisis, feelings like love and hate, joy and grief, anger and shame are associated with the soul. “Nothing bites the soul of a man more than dishonor”, says Ajax in a fragment from a tragedy of unknown authorship, just before he commits suicide (Nauck, TGF, Adesp. fr. 110). Oedipus says that his soul laments the misery of his city and its inhabitants (Oedipus Tyrannus 64). Moreover, the soul is also importantly connected with boldness and courage, especially in battle. Courageous people are said, for instance in Herodotus and Thucydides, to have enduring or strong souls (cf. Laches' second definition of the virtue that is courage, in Plato's Laches 192c, as “strength of the soul”; also relevant is Pindar, Pythian 1.47-8, “standing in battle with an enduring soul”). In the Hippocratic text Airs, Waters, Places, the soul is thought of as the place of courage or, as the case may be, its opposite: in the case of lowland inhabitants, courage and endurance are not in their souls by nature, but must be instilled by law (ch. 23); similarly in benign climates, men are fleshy, ill-jointed, moist, without endurance and weak in soul (ch. 24).

    The connection between the soul and characteristics like boldness and courage in battle is plainly an aspect of the noteworthy fifth century development whereby the soul comes to be thought of as the source or bearer of moral qualities such as, for instance, temperance and justice. In Pericles' funeral oration that Thucydides includes in his account of the Peloponnesian War, he says that those who know most clearly the sweet and the terrible, and yet do not as a result turn away from danger, are rightly judged “strongest with regard to soul” (2.40.3). This text, and others like it (cf. also Herodotus 7.153), indicate a semantic extension whereby ‘soul’ comes to denote a person's moral character, often, but not always, with special regard to qualities such as endurance and courage. While the connection with courage is obvious in a number of texts, there are other texts in which the soul is the bearer of other admirable qualities, such as a Euripidean fragment that speaks of the desire characteristic of a soul that is just, temperate and good (fr. 388). Hippolytus, in Euripides' play named after him, describes himself as having a “virgin soul” (Hippolytus 1006), obviously to evoke his abstinence from sex. In Pindar's second Olympian, salvation is promised to those who “keep their souls from unjust acts” (2.68-70). The last two texts mentioned may well be influenced by Orphic and Pythagorean beliefs about the nature and immortality of the soul, to which we will turn in due course. But it would be a mistake to think that the moralization of the soul (i.e. its association with moral characteristics) wholly depended on Orphic and Pythagorean speculation. It would, at the very least, be to disregard the soul's connection with courage in poetry, the historians and in Hippocratic writings.

    To educated fifth century speakers of Greek, it would have been natural to think of qualities of soul as accounting for, and being manifested in, a person's morally significant behavior. Pericles acts courageously, and Hippolytus temperately (or chastely), because of the qualities of their souls from which such actions have a strong tendency to flow, and their actions express and make evident the courage, temperance and the like that characterize their souls. Once we are in a position properly to appreciate the connection between soul and moral character that must already have been felt to be natural at this stage, it should come as no surprise that the soul is also taken to be something that engages in activities like thinking and planning. If the soul is, in some sense, responsible for courageous acts, for instance, it is only to be expected that the soul also grasps what, in the circumstances, courage calls for, and how, at some suitable level of detail, the courageous act must be performed. Thus in a speech of Antiphon, the jury is urged to “take away from the accused the soul that planned the crime”, in striking juxtaposition of the ideas of life-soul (as in Homer) and of soul as responsible for practical thought. Somewhat similarly, in a Sophoclean fragment (fr. 97) someone says that “a kindly soul with just thoughts is a better inventor than any sophist” (cf. also Euripides, Orestes 1180). Moreover, it is easy to see that there are connections between familiar uses of ‘soul’ in emotional contexts and attributions to the soul of cognitive and intellectual activities and achievements. There is, after all, no clear-cut and manifest difference between, say, being in the emotional state of fear and having a terrifying thought or perception. When Oedipus' soul laments, or Ajax's soul is bitten by dishonor, emotion obviously goes hand in hand with cognition, and if it is natural to refer the one to the soul, there should be nothing puzzling about attributions to it of the other. Thus in non-philosophical Greek of the fifth century the soul is treated as the bearer of moral qualities, and also as responsible for practical thought and cognition. For further discussion, see this supplement on the contrary claims of Burnet 1916:

    Burnet on the Greek Notion of Soul

    From Homer to the end of the fifth century, the word ‘soul’ undergoes remarkable semantic expansion, in the course of which it comes to be natural not only to speak of soul as what distinguishes the living from the dead and (not the same distinction) the animate from the inanimate, but also to attribute to the soul a wide variety of activities and responses, cognitive as well as emotional, and to think of it as the bearer of such virtues as courage, temperance and justice. As a result of these developments, the language made available something that Homeric Greek lacked, a distinction between body and soul. Thus the Hippocratic author of Airs, Waters, Places writes of “endurance in body and soul” (ch. 23). Antiphon says of a defendant who is sure of his innocence that though his body may surrender, his soul saves him by its willingness to struggle, through knowledge of its innocence. For the guilty, on the other hand, even a strong body is to no avail, since his soul fails him, “believing the vengeance coming to him is for his impieties” (Antiphon 5). Homer, by contrast, knows and speaks of a whole lot of different sources and bearers of psychological predicates, but lacks a word to pick out the soul as a single item to which the predicates in question can, in some way or other, be referred and which can be distinguished from, and in suitable contexts contrasted with, the body (cf. Snell 1975, 18-25).

    2. Presocratic Thinking about the Soul

    The semantic expansion of ‘soul’ in the sixth and fifth centuries is reflected in the philosophical writings of the period. For instance, once it becomes natural to speak of soul as what distinguishes the animate from the inanimate, rather than as something that is restricted to humans, it becomes clear that the domain of ensouled things is not limited to animals, but includes plants as well. Empedocles and, apparently, Pythagoras (cf. Bremmer 1983, 125) thought that plants have souls, and that human souls, for instance, can come to animate plants. (Note, though, that Empedocles, in extant fragments, rarely uses the word ‘soul’, preferring the word daimôn.) Empedocles in fact claimed to have been a bush in a previous incarnation, as well as, among other things, a bird and a fish (fr. 117, Kirk, Raven & Schofield 1983 [in what follows KR&S], 417). Incidentally, Empedocles, like Anaxagoras and Democritus, referred to plants as animals, presumably precisely because they are alive (zên, from which the word for animal, zôon, derives) (for details, cf. Skemp 1947, 56). In this he was followed by Plato (Timaeus 77b), but emphatically not by Aristotle (De Anima 2.2, 413b1f).

    There is, moreover, some reason to think that philosophical activity, notably Pythagorean speculation (beginning around mid-sixth century), contributed to the semantic expansion of ‘soul’. As we have seen, at least some of the earliest extant texts that associate with the soul moral virtues other than courage suggest Pythagorean influence. It is, in fact, not difficult to see how Pythagoreanism may have furthered the expansion of ‘soul’. Pythagoreanism was concerned with, among other things, the continued existence of the person (or something suitably person-like) after death. It is obvious that against the Homeric background, ‘soul’ was an eminently appropriate word to use so as to denote the person, or quasi-person, that continued to exist after death; there was, after all, the familiar Homeric use of ‘soul’ as that which endures in the underworld after a person's death. To make the continued existence of this soul significant as the continued existence of the person in question, at least some of the states, activities, operations and the like that seemed crucial to the identity of the person had to be attributed to the soul (following Furley 1956, 11, who goes further than that, writing of the need for the soul “to include all the functions of personality”; cf. Barnes 1982, 103-6; Huffman forthcoming). This tendency is well illustrated by a story about Pythagoras, reported by Xenophanes (fr. 7, KR&S 260): “Once, they say, he was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said: ‘Stop, do not beat it; it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard its [i.e., the soul's!] voice.’” It is not just that the soul of Pythagoras' friend accounts for the character of the yelping (or whatever). Pythagoras is in fact quoted as saying that it is his friend's soul that is doing the yelping!

    Heraclitus (fl. around 500 BC), who repeatedly mentions Pythagoras, attributes wisdom to the soul provided that it is in the right state or condition: “a dry soul”, he claims, “is wisest and best” (fr. 118, KR&S 230). He may have been the first thinker to articulate a connection between soul and motor functions. “A man when he is drunk”, Heraclitus remarks, “is led by an unfledged boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, having his soul moist” (fr. 117, KR&S 231). On the most plausible construal of Heraclitus' sentence, he is saying that the drunken person stumbles because his perceptual abilities have been impaired, and this impairment is due to moistness of soul (Schofield 1991, 22). Like many (or indeed all) sixth and fifth century thinkers who expressed views on the nature or constitution of the soul, Heraclitus thought that the soul was bodily, but composed of an unusually fine or rare kind of matter, e.g. air or fire. (A possible exception is the Pythagorean Philolaus, who may have held that the soul is an ‘attunement’ of the body; cf. Barnes 1982, 488-95, and Huffman.) The prevalence of the idea that the soul is bodily explains the absence of problems about the relation between soul and body. Soul and body were not thought to be radically different in kind; their difference seemed just to consist in a difference in degree of properties such as fineness and mobility.

    3. Plato's Theories of Soul

    The various developments that occurred in the sixth and fifth centuries in how Greeks thought and spoke of the soul resulted in a very complex notion that strikes one as remarkably close to conceptions of the soul that we find in fourth century philosophical theories, notably Plato's. There is thus some reason to think that the philosophical theories in question are best interpreted as working with, and on, the relatively non-theoretical notion of the soul that by the end of the fifth century has come to be embedded in ordinary language. In what follows our main concern will be to characterize some of the theories in question. But we should also attend, wherever this seems appropriate and helpful, to ways in which familiarity with the ordinary notion of the soul might enable us better to understand why a theory or an argument proceeds the way it does. In addition, we should note ways in which philosophical theories might seem to clarify and further articulate the ordinary notion. We begin with Plato, and with a question that is intimately tied up with the ordinary notion of the soul as it developed from the Homeric poems onwards, namely whether a person's soul does indeed survive the person's death.

    3.1 The Phaedo's Theory of Soul

    It is probably true that in mainstream fifth century Greek culture, belief in an afterlife of the soul was weak and unclear (Claus 1981, 68; Burnet 1916, 248-9). If so, it is fitting that Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul, most prominently in the Phaedo, are offered to interlocutors who, at the outset of the discussion, are by no means convinced of the idea. (In fact, in the Apology, 40c, Socrates himself is presented as being noncommittal about what happens to the soul at death, and even about whether it survives at all.) “Men find it very hard to believe”, Cebes says at Phaedo 70a, “what you said about the soul. They think that after it has left the body it no longer exists anywhere, but that it is destroyed and dissolved on the day the man dies.” This view is restated by Simmias (at 77b) as the opinion of the majority (cf. 80d); note that the view includes the idea that the soul is a material thing, and is destroyed by being dispersed, “like breath or smoke” (70a). Glaucon, in the last book of the Republic (608d), is taken aback by Socrates' question,

    “Haven't you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?”
    He looked at me with wonder and said: “No, by god, I haven't. Are you really in a position to assert that?”

    Moreover, apart from the question of immortality or otherwise, there is the further question whether the soul, if it does have some form of existence after the person has died, “still possesses some power and wisdom” (Phaedo, 70b; cf. 76c). Answering both questions, Socrates says not only that the soul is immortal, but also that it contemplates truths after its separation from the body at the time of death. Needless to say, none of the four main lines of argument that Socrates avails himself of succeeds in establishing the immortality of the soul, or in demonstrating that disembodied souls enjoy lives of thought and intelligence. The arguments have been discussed in some detail, for instance in Bostock 1986, and for our purposes there is no need to state and analyze them systematically. It will suffice to comment selectively on aspects of the arguments that bear directly on Plato's conception of the soul. The argument that sheds most light on what Plato takes the nature of the soul to be is the affinity argument (78b-80b). This argument confronts head-on the widespread worry that the soul, at or soon after death, is destroyed by being dispersed. It begins by distinguishing between two kinds of things: on the one hand, things that are perceptible, composed of parts, and subject to dissolution and destruction; on the other hand, things that are not perceptible, but intelligible (grasped by thought), not composed of parts, and exempt from dissolution and destruction. These two categories are obviously mutually exclusive. It is not clear whether or not they are meant to be exhaustive. Moreover, the category of imperishable, intelligible being is exemplified, but not, it seems, exhausted, by Platonic forms such as equality, beauty and the like (contra Bostock 1986, 118). Intelligible being evidently includes what Socrates calls the divine, whose nature it is to rule and to lead (80a), and there is no indication that the forms exhaust the divine, or even include the divine, so understood. Thus the argument leaves room for the idea that souls are not forms, but are nevertheless intelligible, partless and imperishable (contra Robinson 1995, 29). In fact, in framing the argument in the way he does Plato furnishes the conceptual framework needed for saying that body and soul differ in kind, the one being perceptible and perishable, the other being intelligible and exempt from destruction. However, the argument does not support such a strong conclusion, and Socrates is aware of this.

    What he does, in fact, conclude is that the soul is most like, and most akin to, intelligible being, and that the body is most like perceptible and perishable being. To say this is plainly neither to assert nor to imply (as Robinson 1995, 30, appears to think) that soul in some way or other falls short of intelligible, imperishable being, any more than it is to assert or imply that body in some way or other falls short of, or rather rises above, perceptible, perishable being. The argument leaves it open whether soul is a perfectly respectable member of intelligible reality, the way human bodies are perfectly respectable members of perceptible reality, or whether, alternatively, soul has some intermediate status in between intelligible and perceptible being, rising above the latter, but merely approximating to the former. Socrates does seem to take his conclusion to imply, or at least strongly suggest, that it is natural for the soul either “to be altogether indissoluble, or nearly so”, but, in any case, that the soul is less subject to dissolution and destruction than the body, rather than, as the popular view has it, more so. If this position can be established, Socrates is in a position to refute the popular view that the soul, being composed of ethereal stuff, is more liable to dispersion and destruction than the body. However, as Cebes points out (88b), unless Socrates can establish that the soul is altogether exempt from destruction, confidence of survival in the face of death is misplaced. Socrates' soul may be a great deal more durable than his body, but as long as it is not truly imperishable, there can be no guarantee that it will survive Socrates' impending death. For it might have experienced any number of incarnations already, and the current one might be its last. So Socrates launches his most elaborate and final argument for the immortality of the soul, which concludes that since life belongs to soul essentially, the soul must be deathless — that is, immortal.

    The affinity argument is supposed to show not only that the soul is most like intelligible, imperishable being, but also that it is most akin to it. Socrates argues that the soul is like intelligible being on the grounds that it is not visible and, in general, not perceptible (anyhow to humans, as Cebes adds at 79b), and that it shares its natural function with the divine, namely to rule and lead (the body in the one case, mortals in the other). There is a separate argument for the kinship of the soul with intelligible being. When the soul makes use of the senses and attends to perceptibles, “it strays and is confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk” (79c). By contrast, when it remains “itself by itself” and investigates intelligibles, its straying comes to an end, and it achieves stability and wisdom. It is not just that the soul is in one state or another depending on which kind of object it is attending to, in such a way that its state somehow corresponds to the character of the object attended to. That would not by itself show that the soul is more akin to the one domain rather than the other (this is the point of Bostock's criticism, Bostock 1986, 119). To understand the argument properly, it is crucial to note that when the soul attends to perceptibles, it is negatively affected in such a way that its functioning is at least temporarily reduced or impaired (“dizzy, as if drunk”), whereas there is no such interference when it attends to intelligibles (cf. Socrates' fear, at 99e, that by studying things by way of the senses he might blind his soul). The claim that the soul is akin to intelligible reality thus rests, at least in part, on the view that intelligible reality is especially suited to the soul, as providing it with a domain of objects in relation to which, and only in relation to which, it can function without inhibition and interference and fully in accordance with its own nature, so as to achieve its most completely developed and optimal state, wisdom.

    It hardly needs pointing out, then, that the soul, as Plato conceives of it in the Phaedo, is crucially characterized by cognitive and intellectual features: it is something that reasons, more or less well depending on the extent to which it is disturbed or distracted by the body and the senses; something that regulates and controls the body and its desires and affections, “especially if it is a wise soul” (94b), presumably in a way that involves, and renders effective, judgments about what it is best to do, and how it is best to behave; and something that has, as the kind of adornment that is truly appropriate to it, virtues such as temperance, justice and courage (114e f.). However, it should be clear that the soul, as it is conceived of here, is not simply the mind, as we conceive of it. It is both broader and narrower than that. It is broader in that Plato evidently retains the traditional idea of soul as distinguishing the animate from the inanimate. Two of the four main lines of argument for the immortality of the soul rely not on cognitive or indeed specifically psychological features of the soul, but simply on the familiar connection between soul and life. According to the cyclical argument (70c-72d), being alive in general is preceded by, just as it precedes, being dead. Socrates takes this to show that a creature's death involves the continued existence of the soul in question, which persists through a period of separation from body, and then returns to animate another body in a change which is the counterpart of the previous change, dying. According to the last line of argument that Socrates offers in the Phaedo, the soul is immortal because it has life essentially, the way fire has heat essentially. It is plain that both of these arguments apply to the souls of all living things, including plants (cf. 70d, 71d). And in the final argument, Socrates explicitly appeals to the idea that it is the soul that animates the body of a living thing (105c):

    What is it that, when present in a body, makes it living? — A soul.

    Now, as we have seen in some detail, the Greek notion of soul included the idea of soul as animating body probably as early as the sixth century, when Thales attributed soul to magnets. Connections between the soul and morally significant characteristics such as courage, temperance and justice, and with cognitive and intellectual functions, notably with planning and practical thought, are firmly established in fifth century Greek usage. But it is obviously far from clear whether the ordinary notion of soul, as it develops from the Homeric poems down to the end of the fifth century, is a well-formed, coherent notion, one that can suitably support the very prominent role that Plato assigns to the soul, in the Phaedo as well as in other dialogues. Perhaps most pressingly, it is far from clear whether what distinguishes the animate from the inanimate is the very thing that, in the case of some animate organisms, is responsible for cognitive functions such as sense-perception and thought, and that, specifically in the case of human beings, is the bearer of moral qualities such as justice, courage and the like. The question is neither explicitly raised nor, of course, resolved in the Phaedo; but a passage in the Republic (352d-354a), with which we will be concerned in section 3.2, suggests that Plato took the ordinary notion of soul, in all its richness and bewildering complexity, to be well-formed and coherent, and to be capable of supporting the requirements of his own theory.

    Given the idea that soul is the distinguishing mark of all living things, including plants, the Greek notion of soul is, as we have seen already, broader than our concept of mind. For it is at least conceivable, and probably true as a matter of fact, that there are living (hence ensouled) organisms without minds, without, that is to say, desire and cognition by sense or intellect. (Plato appears to think that plants do have minds in this sense, because he takes them to exhibit desire and sense-perception (Timaeus 77b), but that is presumably supposed to be a matter of empirical fact or inference, rather than simply a consequence of the fact that plants have souls.)

    In another way, the conception of soul that is in evidence in the Phaedo is significantly narrower than our concept of mind, in that the soul, as conceived of in this particular dialogue, is not, in fact, responsible, or directly responsible, for all of a person's mental or psychological activities and responses, but only for a rather severely limited subset of them. Socrates attributes a large variety of mental states (etc.) not to the soul, but to the (animate) body, such as, for instance, beliefs and pleasures (83d), and desires and fears (94d). At the same time, the soul is not narrowly intellectual: it too has desires (81d), even passionate ones (such as the nonphilosophical soul's love [erôs] of the corporeal, 80b), and pleasures as well, such as the pleasures of learning (114e). Moreover, the soul's functions are, as we have seen already, not restricted to grasping and appreciating truth, but prominently include regulating and controlling the body and its affections (such as beliefs and pleasures, desires and fears), no doubt in light of suitable judgments, arrived at, or anyhow supported and controlled, by reasoning. The soul of the Phaedo in fact seems to be precisely what in Republic 4 is identified as just one part of the soul, namely reason, whereas the functions of the lower parts, appetite and spirit, are assigned, in the psychological framework of the Phaedo, to the animate body. And just as the functions of reason (in the Republic) and of the soul (in the Phaedo) are not restricted to cognition, but include desire and emotion, such as desire for and pleasure in learning, so the functions of non-rational soul (in the Republic) and of the body (in the Phaedo) are not restricted to desire and emotion, but include cognition, such as beliefs (presumably) about objects of desire, ‘descriptive’ or (rather) non-evaluative (“there's food over there”) as well as (contra Lovibond 1991, 49) evaluative (“this drink is delightful”) (cf. Phaedo 83d).

    One somewhat surprising, and perhaps puzzling, feature of the Phaedo framework is this. On the one hand, Socrates evidently takes the soul to be in some way responsible for the life of any living organism, and hence presumably for all the various activities (etc.) that constitute, or are crucially involved in, any organism's life. On the other hand, he also takes it that there is a restricted class of activities that the soul is responsible for in some special way, such that it is not actually the case that the soul is responsible in this special way for all of the relevant activities that living organisms engage in. Thus, given the idea that the soul is responsible, in some way or other, for all the life of any living organism, one would certainly expect it to be responsible, in some way or other, for (say) the desires, emotions and beliefs of organisms whose lives include such psychological states — and not just for some restricted subset of these desires, emotions and beliefs, but in fact for all of them. However, Socrates' attribution to the soul of all and only desires, emotions and beliefs of reason (to use the Republic framework) is actually quite compatible with the view that the soul is responsible for all the life-activities organisms engage in, including, of course, the desires (etc.) of what in the Republic framework is the non-rational soul. What Socrates needs is something that can certainly be supplied, some suitable articulation of the different ways in which the soul can be said to be responsible for relevant activities of a living organism. One such way is that to be capable of engaging in the activity in question at all, an organism has to be ensouled, perhaps ensouled in a certain way (for instance, in the way animals are rather than in the way plants are). Another (stronger) way in which the soul can be responsible for an activity is directly: rather than being the thing in virtue of which the organism can do or undergo something or other (for instance, becoming thirsty and forming the desire to drink on that basis), the soul can also perform activities in its own right (for instance, contemplating mathematical truths). So, to restate somewhat more clearly: the Phaedo's conception of soul is narrower than our concept of mind in the following way. The range of activities (etc.) that the soul is directly responsible for, and which may be described as activities of the soul strictly speaking, is significantly narrower than the range of mental activities. It does not include all of a person's desires, nor need it include all emotional responses, or even all beliefs. One plainly could not have (for instance) ‘bodily’ desires such as hunger and thirst without being ensouled, but that does not mean that it must be the soul itself that forms or sustains such desires.

    Once we properly understand the Phaedo's theory of soul, then, we are in a position to see that it offers a psychological framework that is coherent, though far from fully articulated. But we should also note that the theory is somewhat unsatisfactory, in that it appears rather strikingly to fail to do justice to the unity of the mind. The various activities (etc.) that we characterize as mental or psychological, such as (most importantly) desire and cognition, seem to be, or manifest themselves to us as being, the activities of a single integrated subject; they do not (ordinarily) appear to belong to a plurality of distinct items that operate more or less separately from one another. When Socrates' contemplation of mathematical truths is disrupted by an intense desire for food, it does not seem to be the case that it is one thing (say, his soul) that has been doing the contemplating and another thing (say, his body) that now wants to get something to eat. It is rather that both contemplation and desire to eat seem to belong to one integrated subject, regardless of whether we wish to say that the subject in question is Socrates' mind, or whether we prefer to say that it is Socrates insofar as he has a mind (or something like that). As things are, the psychological theory of the Phaedo assigns Socrates' contemplation directly to his soul, but leaves his desire for food curiously remote from it, apparently taking ‘bodily’ desire (for instance) to be related to the soul in much the same way in which the operations involved in (say) metabolism and growth are so related. (Those too take place only because his body is ensouled.) It is plausible, though not certain, that Plato felt the force of this problem. It is, in any case, resolved by the new theory of soul that the Republic presents.


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    United States AI Solar System (4) - Page 13 Empty Re: United States AI Solar System (4)

    Post  orthodoxymoron Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:29 am

    Perhaps an integration of science-fiction -- conspiracy-theories -- mainstream-science -- and theology -- will be necessary to grasp what's been going-on -- and what is going-on. On the other hand -- perhaps ignorance is bliss -- and perhaps waking everyone up might be the beginning of the end. If we are ruled by Moon-Aliens -- they probably won't just leave if we expose them. They might get really nasty at that point. I've suggested some possibilities regarding "God" which are anything but flattering -- but what if the real God wouldn't make anyone happy?? I'm not hostile toward God -- regardless of their greatness and/or strangeness. I just think we've been brainwashed -- and reality might make most of us sick for a while. I think I'm sick -- and I'm prepared to start-over with a clean conceptual sheet of stone. Ancient Theories of the Soul continued. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/

    3.2 The Republic's Theory of Soul

    The Phaedo was also known to ancient readers as Plato's On the Soul, whereas the Republic has On Justice as an alternative ancient title. Plato, however, conceives of justice as the excellent state of the soul, and so it is not surprising that the Republic sheds a great deal of light on Plato's conception of the soul. One way in which it does so is by explicitly integrating a number of central features of the ordinary notion of soul, features which, in the Phaedo, coexist somewhat uneasily: namely, responsibility for the life of an organism (that is, in the human case, responsibility for its being and remaining alive as a human being), for cognitive and (especially) intellectual functions, and for moral virtues such as courage and justice. Towards the end of Republic 1, Socrates offers Thrasymachus an elaborate argument to the conclusion that “injustice is never more profitable than justice” (354a). If we set aside, as irrelevant to the dialectical context, the possibility that injustice and justice are equally profitable, it is clear that the conclusion here is equivalent to the position that the Republic is designed to establish, in response to Glaucon's request, at the beginning of Book 2, to be convinced by Socrates “that it is better in every way to be just than to be unjust” (357a). The argument at the end of Book 1 proceeds by attempting to prove an interim conclusion that is unnecessarily strong, namely that the just person is happy, whereas the unjust person is wretched. To establish the desired conclusion, it is enough to prove that the just person is always happier than the unjust person, which, unlike the unnecessarily strong interim conclusion, is compatible with the view that justice is not sufficient for (fully completed) happiness, since that requires suitable external circumstances in addition to justice. Nothing in Socrates' long answer to Glaucon (and Adeimantus) commits him to the view that justice is sufficient for (complete) happiness (cf. Irwin 1999). However, that view is not implied by the conception of the soul that Socrates relies on in this (Book 1) argument. Moreover, nothing in the Republic contradicts or modifies this conception of the soul (on the contrary: cf. 445a9f., 609b f.), and so there is no reason not to take it seriously as a contribution to Plato's on-going reflection on the soul, even though the argument that surrounds it is designed to support a conclusion that Socrates subsequently succeeds in avoiding.

    The argument begins with the premise that things perform their function well if they have the virtue appropriate to them, and badly if they have the relevant vice (353c). It then attributes to the soul the function of “caring for things, ruling and deliberating (and all the things of this kind)”, and adds that living is also part of the function of soul (353d). This yields an interim conclusion, that a good soul cares, rules, deliberates (etc.) and lives well, whereas a bad soul does these things badly. A third premise is that justice is the virtue appropriate to the soul, injustice being its vice. Hence another interim conclusion: a just soul lives well; an unjust one, badly. But living well, says the next premise, is being happy (and living badly is being wretched). And so Socrates can draw the interim conclusion that we have encountered already, which is that the just person (the person, that is, whose soul is just) is happy, whereas the person whose soul is unjust is wretched.

    We make nonsense of the argument if we suppose (with Robinson 1995, 36) that when Socrates introduces living as part of the function of soul, he has being alive in mind. The idea of being good (or bad) at being alive is, obviously, very odd, as is the idea of being alive well or badly. But there is no need to suppose that such ideas are involved here, or that Socrates passes from one sense of ‘living’ [to zên] to another. It is, after all, open to us to interpret what Socrates is saying in terms of a conception that integrates the things that Socrates attributes to the soul as functions, or as parts or aspects of its function, namely in terms of the conception of living a life, and not just any kind of life, but a distinctively human one. Caring for the right sorts of things in the right way, ruling or regulating oneself and (when appropriate) others, and deliberating about how to act are not just necessary, but central aspects of living a human life, and all of these things can be done well or badly. Depending on the condition of their soul, a person can be better or worse at doing these things. The just person, whose soul is in the best condition, is truly excellent at living a human life, in that they are excellent at doing the various things that are importantly involved in leading a distinctively human life. If this is along the right lines, we might be in a position to see Plato's answer to the question how it can be that one thing, the soul, accounts for the life of an organism as well as for its cognitive and intellectual functions, and is also the bearer of virtues or excellences. The answer suggested by the Book 1 argument is this. The way in which the human soul accounts for the life of a human organism is by accounting for the distinctively human life that the individual in question leads. But to account for such a life, it must also account for the cognitive and intellectual functions which guide and shape such a life. Moreover, the dramatic differences in how good people are at leading lives, and relatedly the dramatic differences in how well they exercise their cognitive and intellectual functions, are due to differences in the conditions of their souls, namely the presence or absence of the virtues of justice, wisdom, courage and temperance. This answer significantly clarifies (the relevant aspects of) the ordinary Greek notion of soul (see section 1).

    The Republic also puts forward a new theory of soul, which involves the claim that the embodied human soul has (at least) three parts or aspects, namely reason, spirit and appetite. The argument for this claim is presented in Book 4, and proceeds in roughly the following way. Socrates begins by enunciating a principle to the effect that opposite actions, affections and states cannot be assigned to one thing in respect of the same part of it, in relation to the same object and at the same time. It is then agreed that desiring and being averse are opposites, and hence that desiring to do something and being averse to doing that same thing are opposites in relation to the same object. But it does frequently happen, Socrates points out and Glaucon agrees, that the soul desires to do something and at the same time is averse to doing that same thing. This happens, for instance, when a person is thirsty and on that basis wants to drink, but at the same time wishes not to drink, on the basis of some calculation or deliberation, and in fact succeeds in refraining from drinking, thirsty though they are. It follows from the premises stated that the human soul includes at least two distinct subjects, so that one opposite (the desire to drink) can be assigned to one of them and the other (the aversion to drinking) can be assigned to the other. Taking himself to have identified reason and appetite as distinct parts of the soul, Socrates draws attention to other kinds of conflict between desires, which are meant to bring to light spirit, the third part of the soul.

    The Republic contains a great deal of information that we can rely on in characterizing the three parts of the soul that Socrates introduces, information that can be found not only in Book 4 itself, but also (among other places) in the catalogue of corrupt forms of city and soul in Books 8 and 9. Here is an outline of what emerges. Reason is the part of the soul that is, of its own nature, attached to knowledge and truth. It is also, however, concerned to guide and regulate the life that it is, or anyhow should be, in charge of, ideally in a way that is informed by wisdom and that takes into consideration the concerns both of each of the three parts separately and of the soul as a whole (442c); these concerns must be supposed to include a person's bodily needs, presumably via the concerns of appetite. The natural attachment of spirit is to honor and, more generally, to recognition and esteem by others (581a). As a motivating force it generally accounts for self-assertion and ambition. When its desires are frustrated, it gives rise to emotional responses such as anger and indignation, and to behavior that expresses and naturally flows from such responses. Socrates takes spirit to be a natural ally of reason, at least part of its function being to support reason in such conflicts as may arise between it and appetite (440ef, 442ab). To assign it this function is neither to say nor to imply that spirit cannot, in the case of a corrupt and de-natured soul, turn against reason, even if well brought-up individuals like Glaucon are not familiar with such corruption either in their own case or in the case of others (440b). (Pace Robinson 1995, 45, who thinks Socrates is contradicting himself here.) Appetite is primarily concerned with food, drink and sex (439d, 580e). It gives rise to desires for these and other such things which in each case are based, simply and immediately, on the thought that obtaining the relevant object of desire is, or would be, pleasant. Socrates also calls appetite the money-loving part, because, in the case of mature human beings at least, appetite also tends to be strongly attached to money, given that it is most of all by means of money that its primary desires are fulfilled (580e-581a). The idea must be that given suitable habituation and acculturation in the context of a life lived in human society, appetite tends to become attached to money in such a way that it begins to give rise to desires for money which in each case are based, simply and immediately, on the thought that obtaining money is, or would be, pleasant; and this idea is natural and plausible enough. (Irwin 1995 & Price 1995, 57-67, offer an alternative and incompatible interpretation.)

    Viewed from the perspective of the theory of soul presented in the Phaedo, the Republic theory involves not so much a division of soul as an integration into soul of mental or psychological functions that had been assigned, somewhat problematically, to the body. In both dialogues, Socrates appeals to the same Odyssey passage (Od. 20.17-18 at Phaedo 94d, Od. 20.17 at Republic 4, 441b), in which Odysseus prevails over his own anger: in the Phaedo, to exemplify a conflict between soul and body; in the Republic, to exemplify a conflict between two parts or aspects of the soul, reason and spirit. What the Republic offers is a theory of soul which, among other things, allows attribution of (in principle) all mental or psychological functions to a single subject, the soul. The theory thus respects the unity of the mind, in a way that the Phaedo theory does not. Moreover, the Republic theory also offers an attractive and well-supported articulation of desire into different kinds, which has profound implications both for what it is to have one's soul (or mind) in optimal condition and for how it is that this condition is best brought about. (To see that Plato is acutely aware of these implications, one only needs to look at what the Republic has to say about virtue and education.) However, it may be worth insisting once more that we should not disregard the fact that the conception of the soul that features in the Republic is broader than our concept of mind, in that it continues to be part of this conception that it is soul that accounts for the life of the relevant ensouled organism. But if it is soul that accounts for the life of, say, human organisms, there must be some sense in which the human soul accounts not only for mental functions like thought and desire, but also for other vital functions such as the activities and operations of the nutritive and reproductive systems. To the extent that it leaves unclear how exactly it is that the soul is related to a broad range of activities (etc.) that are crucially involved in the lives of ensouled organisms, Plato's theory of the soul, in the Republic and beyond, remains incompletely developed. It is, of course, not surprising that the Republic does not confront the question how it is that the soul is related to life-functions that, as Aristotle recognizes (Nicomachean Ethics 1.13, 1102b11-2), are irrelevant to the ethical and political concerns of the Republic. However, context and subject matter impose no such constraints on the ‘plausible myth’ of the Timaeus, and also that dialogue, in presenting a somewhat revised version of the Republic's account (Tim. 69c ff.), fails to address the question how the soul is related to non-mental vital functions.

    4. Aristotle's Theory of Soul

    Aristotle's theory, as it is presented primarily in the De Anima (for a complete account, see Aristotle's Psychology), comes very close to providing a comprehensive, fully developed account of the soul in all its aspects and functions, an account that articulates the ways in which all of the vital functions of all animate organisms are related to the soul. In doing so, the theory comes very close to offering a comprehensive answer to a question that arises from the ordinary Greek notion of soul, namely how precisely it is that the soul, which is agreed to be in some way or other responsible for a variety of things living creatures (especially humans) do and experience, also is the distinguishing mark of the animate. According to Aristotle's theory, a soul is a particular kind of nature, a principle that accounts for change and rest in the particular case of living bodies, i.e. plants, nonhuman animals and human beings. The relation between soul and body, on Aristotle's view, is also an instance of the more general relation between form and matter: thus an ensouled, living body is a particular kind of in-formed matter. Slightly simplifying things by limiting ourselves to the sublunary world (cf. De Anima 2.2, 413a32; 2.3, 415a9), we can describe the theory as furnishing a unified explanatory framework within which all vital functions alike, from metabolism to reasoning, are treated as functions performed by natural organisms of suitable structure and complexity. The soul of an animate organism, in this framework, is nothing other than its system of active abilities to perform the vital functions that organisms of its kind naturally perform, so that when an organism engages in the relevant activities (e.g., nutrition, movement or thought) it does so in virtue of the system of abilities that is its soul.

    Given that the soul is, according to Aristotle's theory, a system of abilities possessed and manifested by animate bodies of suitable structure, it is clear that the soul is, according to Aristotle, not itself a body or a corporeal thing. Thus Aristotle agrees with the Phaedo's claim that souls are very different from bodies. Moreover, Aristotle seems to think that all the abilities that are constitutive of the souls of plants, beasts and humans are such that their exercise involves and requires bodily parts and organs. This is obviously so with, for instance, the abilities for movement in respect of place (e.g., by walking or flying), and for sense-perception, which requires sense-organs. Aristotle does not, however, think that there is an organ of thought, and so he also does not think that the exercise of the ability to think involves the use of a bodily part or organ that exists specifically for this use. Nevertheless, he does seem to take the view that the activity of the human intellect always involves some activity of the perceptual apparatus, and hence requires the presence, and proper arrangement, of suitable bodily parts and organs; for he seems to think that sensory impressions [phantasmata] are somehow involved in every occurrent act of thought, at least as far as human beings are concerned (De Anima 3.7, 431a14-7; 3.8, 432a7-10; cf. De Memoria 1, 449b31ff.). If so, Aristotle in fact seems to be committed to the view that, contrary to the Platonic position, even human souls are not capable of existence and (perhaps as importantly) activity apart from the body (cf. De Anima 1.1, 403a3-25, esp. 5-16).

    It is noteworthy that Aristotle's theory does not mark off those vital functions that are mental by relating them to the soul in some special way that differs from and goes beyond the way in which vital functions in general are so related. It is certainly not part of Aristotle's theory that the soul is specially and directly responsible for mental functions by performing them on its own, whereas it is less directly responsible for the performance by the living organism of other vital functions such as growth. As this aspect of his theory suggests, Aristotle is confident that once one has a proper understanding of how to explain natural phenomena in general, there is no reason to suppose that mental functions like perception, desire and at least some forms of thinking cannot be explained simply by appealing to the principles in terms of which natural phenomena in general are properly understood and explained (cf. Frede 1992, 97).

    It might be thought that since Aristotle's theory treats mental functions and other vital functions exactly alike, it obscures a crucial distinction. This worry, however, turns out to be unjustified. The theory treats mental and other vital functions alike only in that it views both kinds of functions as performed by natural organisms of the right kind of structure and complexity. Viewing mental and other vital functions in this way is perfectly compatible with introducing a distinction between mental and other functions if concerns of some kind or other call for such a distinction. Aristotle is perfectly capable, for instance, of setting aside non-mental vital functions as irrelevant for the purposes of practical philosophy (NE 1.13, 1102b11-12).

    5. Hellenistic Theories of Soul

    Coming from the theories of Plato and Aristotle, the first thing that might strike us about the theories of soul adopted by the two dominant Hellenistic schools, Epicurus' Garden and the Stoa, is the doctrine, shared by both, that the soul is corporeal. A number of Stoic arguments for the claim that the soul is a body have come down to us (see Annas 1992, 39-41). The best one of these is that the soul is a body because (roughly) only bodies affect one another, and soul and body do affect one another, for instance in cases of bodily damage and emotion. Epicurus employs the same argument in his Letter to Herodotus, which provides an outline of his physical doctrines (Long & Sedley 1987 [in what follows L&S] 14A7). In a way that reminds one of Presocratic theories, both Epicurus and the Stoics hold that the soul is a particularly fine kind of body, diffused all the way through the perceptible (flesh-and-blood) body of the animate organism. As if echoing the view of the soul that Simmias in the Phaedo presents as the majority view, Epicurus thinks that the soul is dispersed at death along with its constituent atoms, losing the powers that it has while it is contained by the body of the organism that it ensouls (L&S 14A6). The Stoics agree that the human soul is mortal, but they also take it that it can and does survive the person's death — that is, its separation from the perceptible body. Chrysippus apparently thought that the souls of wise persons persist (as fine, imperceptible corporeal structures) all the way to the next conflagration in the cosmic cycle, whereas the souls of other people last for some time, and then get dispersed (Diogenes Laertius 7.157; cf. L&S 53W). Thus Chrysippus can accept, at least for the souls of the wise, Socrates' claim in the Phaedo that the soul is “altogether indissoluble, or nearly so” (Phaedo 80b), even though he plainly cannot accept all of Socrates' argument for this claim.

    5.1 Epicurus' Theory of Soul

    Epicurus is an atomist, and in accordance with his atomism he takes the soul, like everything else that there is except for the void, to be ultimately composed of atoms. Our sources are somewhat unclear as to exactly which kinds of materials he took to be involved in the composition of soul. It is very probable, though, that in addition to some relatively familiar materials — such as fire-like and wind-like stuffs, or rather the atoms making up such stuffs — the soul, on Epicurus' view, also includes, in fact as a key ingredient, atoms of a nameless kind of substance, which is responsible for sense-perception. Thus it seems that while he thought he could explain phenomena such as the heat or warmth of a living organism, as well as its movement and rest, by appealing to relatively familiar materials and their relatively familiar properties, he did feel the need to introduce a mysterious additional kind of substance so as to be able to explain sense-perception, apparently on the grounds that “sense-perception is found in none of the named elements” (L&S 14C). It is worth noting that it is specifically with regard to sense-perception that Epicurus thinks the introduction of a further, nameless kind of substance is called for, rather than, for instance, with regard to intellectual cognition. What this suggests, and what in fact we have independent reason to think, is that on Epicurus' view, once one is in a position adequately to explain sense-perception, one will then also be in a position to work out an explanation of intellectual cognition, by appropriately extending the explanation of sense-perception. Let us consider briefly how such extension might work.

    Perceptual beliefs, like the belief that ‘there is a horse over there’, will be explained, in Epicurus' theory, in terms of sense-impressions and the application of concepts (‘preconceptions’; for discussion cf. Asmis 1999, 276-83), and concept-formation is in turn explained in terms of sense-impression and memory. According to Diogenes Laertius' summary (L&S 17E1-2), the Epicureans say that

    preconception is, as it were, cognition or correct belief or conception or universal ‘stored notion’ (i.e. memory), of that which has frequently become evident externally: e.g. ‘such-and-such a kind of thing is a man’. For as soon as the word ‘man’ is uttered, immediately its impression also comes to mind by means of preconception, as a result of antecedent sense-perceptions.

    Moreover, sense-impressions, interpreted and articulated in terms of concepts or preconceptions, yield experience concerning evident matters, which in turn forms the basis for conclusions about non-evident matters. For example, extensive experience can make clear to one not only that the human beings one has interacted with have a certain feature (say, rationality), but also (later Epicureans will say, probably somewhat developing Epicurus' position) that it is inconceivable that any human being could fail to have that feature (cf. L&S 18F4-5). And so, experience will not only make one expect, with a very great deal of confidence, that any human being one will ever encounter anywhere will be rational. Experience also, according to the Epicureans, supports the inference to, and hence justifies one in accepting, the (non-evident) conclusion that all human beings, everywhere and at all times, are rational (for detailed discussion, cf. Allen 2001, 194-241). This obviously is an extremely generous view of what experience, and ultimately sense-perception, can do! Once we recognize the enormously powerful and fundamental role Epicurus and his followers assign to sense-perception, we will not be surprised to see that they feel the need to include in the composition of the soul a very special kind of material that accounts specifically for sense-perception, but apparently do not think that, in addition to that, some further special material is needed to enable intellectual or rational activity.

    In the Epicurean tradition the word ‘soul’ is sometimes used in the broad traditional way, as what animates living things (e.g., Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 37 Smith), but the focus of interest, so far as the soul is concerned, is very much on the mental functions of cognition, emotion and desire. A view that is common in the tradition and that very probably goes back to the founder is that the soul is a composite of two parts, one rational, the other nonrational. The rational part, which Lucretius calls mind [animus], is the origin of emotion and impulse, and it is also where (no doubt among other operations) concepts are applied and beliefs formed, and where evidence is assessed and inferences are made. The nonrational part of the soul, which in Lucretius is somewhat confusingly called soul [anima], is responsible for receiving sense-impressions, all of which are true according to Epicurus. Error arises at a later stage, when sense-impressions are interpreted by the rational part of the soul, in a way that, as we have seen, crucially involves memory. Sense-perception, conceived of simply as the reception of sense-impressions by the nonrational soul, does not involve memory (cf. L&S 16B1). Since the formation and application of concepts requires memory, sense-perception, so conceived of, does not involve conceptualization, either. The nonrational part is also responsible for transmitting impulses originating from the rational part, as well as (presumably) for a wide variety of other vital functions. (When Epicurus distinguishes between pleasures and pains of the soul and those of the body, incidentally, the distinction he has in mind must be between the rational part of the soul on the one hand and the body animated by nonrational soul, on the other.)

    5.2 The Stoic Theory of Soul

    Stoic physics allows for three different kinds of pneuma (lit. ‘breath’), a breath-like material compound of two of the four Stoic elements, fire and air. The kinds of pneuma differ both in degree of tension that results from the expanding and contracting effects, respectively, of its two constituents, and in their consequent functionality. The lowest kind accounts for the cohesion and character of inanimate bodies (e.g., rocks); the intermediate kind, called natural pneuma, accounts for the vital functions characteristic of plant life; and the third kind is soul, which accounts for the reception and use of impressions (or representations) (phantasiai) and impulse (hormê: that which generates animal movement) or, to use alternative terminology, cognition and desire. Our evidence, which unfortunately is fragmentary and often unclear, suggests strongly that according to the Stoic theory, the body of an animal (human or non-human) contains pneuma of all the three kinds, with the lowest kind responsible for the cohesion and character of parts like teeth and bones, natural pneuma in charge of metabolism, growth and the like, and finally soul accounting for distinctively mental or psychological functions, crucially cognition, by sense and (in the case of humans) intellect, and desire (cf. Long 1999, 564, for discussion and references). If this is indeed the picture that the theory presents, the soul is no longer responsible for all vital functions, and for all aspects of life, but only for specifically mental or psychological functions. (Accordingly, the Stoics depart from the Platonic and Aristotelian view that plants are ensouled organisms.) At the same time, the Stoic theory does attempt to explain non-mental vital functions as well, in terms of the activity of ‘nature’, the intermediate kind of pneuma. In severing the deeply entrenched, Greek ordinary-language connection between soul and life in all its forms, the Stoic theory is taking an enormously momentous step, one that obviously restricts rather dramatically the proper subject matter of a theory of soul. In fact it is arguable that the Stoics, in limiting the functions of soul in the way they did, played an important role in a complicated history that resulted in the Cartesian conception of mind, according to which the mind plainly is not something that animates living bodies. This narrowing of the conception of soul is one of two aspects of the Stoic theory that, for our purposes, deserve particular notice.

    The second noteworthy aspect is the insistence of the Stoic theory that the mind of an adult human being is a single, partless item that is rational all the way down. According to the Stoic theory, there are eight parts of the soul, the ‘commanding faculty’ [hêgemonikon] or mind, the five senses, voice and (certain aspects of) reproduction. The mind, which is located at the heart, is a center that controls the other soul-parts as well as the body, and that receives and processes information supplied by the subordinate parts. The minds of non-human animals and of non-adult humans have faculties only of impression and impulse. Achieving adulthood, for humans, involves gaining assent and reason. Reason (it would seem) makes assent possible, in that it enables the subject to assent to or withhold assent from impressions, and it transforms mere impressions and mere impulses, such as other animals experience, into rational impressions and rational impulses. The rationality of an impression (for example, of a tree one sees before oneself) consists in its being articulated in terms of concepts, possession of which is constitutive of having reason; the rationality of an impulse consists in the fact that it is generated or constituted by a voluntary act of assent of the mind to a suitable practical (‘impulsive’) impression — the impression, for instance, that something within view would be nice to eat. Thus, depending on the type of impression assented to, assent generates or constitutes belief (or knowledge) concerning some matter of fact, or an impulse to act in some way or other.

    It is crucially important not to misunderstand these various faculties as parts or aspects of the mind, items that operate with some degree of autonomy from one another and can therefore conflict. On the Stoic theory, the faculties of the mind are simply things the mind can do. Moreover, it is a central part of the theory that, in the case of an adult human being, there is no such thing as an impulse without an act of assent of the mind to a corresponding practical impression. In a rational subject, the faculty of impulse depends on the faculty of assent, which, like all faculties of such a subject, is a rational faculty. This theory leaves no room for the Platonic conception that the souls of adult human beings contain non-rational parts which can, and frequently do, generate impulse and behavior independently of, and even contrary to, the designs and purposes of reason. Nor, relatedly, does it leave room for the shared Platonic and Aristotelian view that desire, even in the case of adult humans, comes in three forms, two of which are such that desires of these forms do not arise from, or depend on, activities of reason. The Stoic theory has the attractive consequence that each adult person is, through their own reasoned assent, unambiguously and equally responsible for all their voluntary behavior: there are no Platonic nonrational parts, or Platonic-Aristotelian nonrational desires, that could produce actions against one's own reason's helpless protestations. However, the theory needed to be defended both against rival philosophical theories and against pre-theoretical intuitions that militate in favor of these theories. One such intuition is that passion can, and frequently does, conflict with reason. To judge from a report by Plutarch, it appears that the Stoics were able to explain away this particular intuition, and also to disarm the argument for tripartition of the soul in Republic 4, which depends on the simultaneity of a desire for and an aversion to one and the same thing. According to Plutarch (L&S 65G1),

    Some people [the Stoics] say that passion is no different from reason, and that there is no dissension and conflict between the two, but a turning of the single reason in both directions, which we do not notice owing to the sharpness and speed of the change.

    Introducing the idea of unnoticed oscillation of a single, partless mind is highly ingenious and must have been dialectically effective at least to some extent. However, the theory of the soul that we find in classical Stoicism appears to be committed to the view that in the case of adult humans, there simply are no motivational factors that do not depend on reason and that can significantly affect, often for the worse, how a person behaves and how their life goes. It must have been difficult to defend this view against the Platonic-Aristotelian position. And so it is not surprising that in an environment in which interest in Plato's and Aristotle's writings was on the rise again, at least one prominent Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (first century B.C.), apparently gave up at least part of the classical Stoic theory. The evidence that we have is not easy to interpret, but it very much appears that Posidonius introduced into a basically Stoic psychological framework the idea that even the minds of adult humans include, to put things cautiously, motivationally relevant forces (of two kinds) that do not depend on assent or reason at all and that are not fully subject to rational control. (For detailed discussion, cf. Cooper 1998, 77-111.)

    6. Conclusion

    Ancient philosophy did not, of course, end with classical Stoicism, or indeed with the Hellenistic period, and neither did ancient theorizing about the soul. The revival of interest in the works of both Plato and Aristotle beginning in the second half of the second century B.C. prominently included renewed interest in Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of the soul, sparking novel theoretical developments, such as, for instance, Plotinus' argument (directed in particular against the Stoics) that the soul could not be spatially extended, since no spatially extended item could account for the unity of the subject of sense-perception (see Emilsson 1991). Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa were heavily indebted to philosophical theories of soul, especially Platonic ones, but also introduced new concerns and interests of their own. Nevertheless, these and other post-classical developments in every case need to be interpreted within the framework and context furnished by the classical theories that we have been considering in some detail.

    Bibliography

    A. Ancient Texts
    •Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven & M. Schofield, (eds.), 1983, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [=KR&S]
    •Cooper, J. M. & D. S. Hutchinson, (eds.), 1997, Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett.
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    B. Ancient Theories of Soul (General)
    •Algra, K., J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld & M. Schofield, (eds.), 1999, The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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    •Price, A. W., 1995, Mental Conflict, London: Routledge.

    C. The Greek Notion of Soul
    •Bremmer, J., 1983, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    •Burnet, J., 1916, “The Socratic doctrine of the soul”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 7: 235–59.
    •Claus, D., 1981, Toward the Soul, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
    •Dodds, E. R., 1951, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley: University of California Press.
    •Furley, D., 1956, “The early history of the concept of soul”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, No. 3: 1–18.
    •Snell, B., 1975, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht; translated as The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, Oxford: Blackwell.
    •Solmsen, F., 1955, “Antecedents of Aristotle's Psychology and the Scale of Beings”, American Journal of Philology, 76: 148–64.
    •Sullivan, S. D., 1988, Psychological Activity in Homer, Ottawa: Carleton University Press.

    D. Presocratic Thinking about the Soul
    •Barnes, J., 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers, London: Routledge.
    •Huffman, C. A., 1999, “The Pythagorean Tradition”, in Long 1999: 66–87.
    •–––, forthcoming, “The Pythagorean Conception of the Soul from Pythagoras to Philoloaus”, in Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy, D. Frede and B. Reis (eds.), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
    •Hussey, E., “Heraclitus”, in Long 1999: 88–112.
    •Kahn, C. H., 1979, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    •Laks, A., 1999, “Soul, sensation, and thought”, in Long 1999: 250–70.
    •Long, A. A., (ed.), 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    •Schofield, M., 1991, “Heraclitus’ theory of soul and its antecedents”, in Everson 1991 (Bibliography/Section B): 13–34.
    •Skemp, J. B., 1947, “Plants in Plato's Timaeus”, Classical Quarterly, 41: 53–60.

    E. Plato's Theories of Soul
    •Bobonich, C., 2002, Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    •Bostock, D., 1986, Plato's Phaedo, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    •Cooper, J. M., 1984, “Plato's Theory of Human Motivation”, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 1: 3–21, also in Cooper 1999 (Bibliography/Section B): 118–37.
    •Gill, C., 1985, “Plato and the Education of Character”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 67: 1–26.
    •Irwin, T. H., 1995, Plato's Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    •–––, 1999, “Republic 2: Questions about Justice” in Plato 2, G. Fine (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    •Lorenz, H., 2008, “Plato on the Soul”, in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, G. Fine (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    •Lovibond, S., 1991, “Plato's theory of mind”, in Everson 1991 (Bibliography/Section B): 35–55.
    •Robinson, T. M., 1995, Plato's Psychology, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
    •Woods, M., 1987, “Plato's Division of the Soul”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 73: 23–47.

    F. Aristotle's Theory of Soul

    (cf. bibliography included in Christopher Shields's article on Aristotle's psychology)
    •Frede, M., 1992, “On Aristotle's Conception of the Soul”, in Nussbaum & Rorty 1992: 93–107.
    •Nussbaum, M. C. & A. O. Rorty, (eds.), 1992, Essays on Aristotle's De Anima, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    G. Epicurus' Theory of Soul
    •Allen, J., 2001, Inference from Signs, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    •Annas, J., 1991, “Epicurus’ philosophy of mind”, in Everson 1991 (Bibliography/Section B): 84–101.
    •–––, 1992, “The Epicureans”, in Annas 1992 (Bibliography/Section B): 123–99.
    •Asmis, E., 1999, “Epicurean Epistemology”, in Algra, Barnes, Mansfeld & Schofield 1999 (Bibliography/Section B): 260–94.
    •Everson, S., 1999, “Epicurus' psychology”, in Algra, Barnes, Mansfeld & Schofield 1999 (Bibliography/Section B): 542–59.
    •Kerferd, G., 1971, “Epicurus' doctrine of the soul”, Phronesis, 16: 80–96.
    •Konstan, D., 1973, Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology, Leiden: Brill.
    •Sedley, D. N., 1998, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    H. The Stoic Theory of Soul
    •Annas, J., 1992, “The Stoics”, in Annas 1992 (Bibliography/Section B): 37–120.
    •Cooper, J. M., 1998, “Posidonius on Emotions”, in The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Engberg-Pedersen, T. & J. Sihvola, (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, also in Cooper 1999 (Bibliography/Section B): 449–84.
    •Long, A. A., 1999, “Stoic Psychology”, in K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld & M. Schofield 1999 (Bibliography/Section B) Cambridge: 560–84.

    I. Other Ancient Theories of Soul

    (cf. bibliography included in Lloyd Gerson's article on Plotinus)
    •Armstrong, A. H., (ed.), 1967, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    •Emilsson, E. K., 1991, “Plotinus and soul-body dualism”, in Everson 1991 (Bibliography/Section 7.2): 148–65.
    •–––, 2007, Plotinus on Intellect, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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