BTW, "egotist" that I am, I post in more than one forum. I have noticed that in every forum where I post my views and opinions they always attract some strong detractors who often express their outrage. I love it, when this happens. Doesn't every writer?
Yes those that need something from others feed off of the attention.
The following is one small example. It is found in the topic, started by another poster, Tim, who starts a lot a topics and then says nothing. Interesting. The title is "Evidence for God"
After I made my usual appeal for people to be open to new words and ideas and the value of open-ended dialogue, this is what followed, from a poster with the appropriate initials DAM.
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Revlgk troll wrote:
"I am a great believer in the art of dialoguing" [quoting me]
Dialoguing is NOT a word. It is just more new-age woo-woo imbecility. And what you are posting is not science. [without one shred of evidence]
Rose ... please kill this thread ... all of it ... without mercy. This isn't science. This isn't even "not-quite science." This is a malignant troll.
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[And there was much more. However, this popular thread, with a large and growing number of clicks, is still there. I look forward to getting DAMed, often. My suggestion is--unless there is real substance--keep it brief, and impersonal--focuss on what I write, not on me.
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Recently, to make the point that even scientists are interested in spirituality, and in talking how science and religion can work together, I wrote as follows:
THE GREAT INVENTOR AND GENIUS, NICOLA TESLA
I forgot to mention the work of Nicola Tesla--the son of a Serbian Christian Orthodox priest.
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_TeslaHe was a highly spiritual person, but not being a narrow Orthodox Christian, he struggled with the rather narrow idea of God as taught by his religion.
Keep in mind that polytheism, and later, monotheism, came about when even the wisest people believed the earth was a flat disc with heaven above and hell below. We need not blame them for this, if they really believed in a flat earth, but surely when the Christian monk, Copernicus brought new knowledge to the west he should have been honored, not censored and threatened with death by the knowledge Luddites? For over a hundred years knowledge was held back by the obscurants.
OBSCURANTISM
Ignorance is one thing, but willful ignorance, obscurantism--the active opposition to progress and and the spread of knowledge, is something else. It is, IMHO, a great evil.
COSMOTHEISM
Back to Tesla, interestingly, he finally came to the conclusion that what is needed is a combination of Christianity and Buddhism. Interestingly, Buddhists are non-theists. I think of them as cosmotheists. Yes, new ideas need new words.
BTW, Christianity is already a mixture of Judaism and Christianity. I would even add the positive forms of Islam, Sikhism and Brahmanism to the mix. IMHO, in all this orthopraxy is more important than orthodoxy.
JESUS ADVOCATED ORTHOPRAXY. That is he called us to loving actions, deeds not just creeds--follow me, he said. Perhaps this is why he never wrote a book. Books tend to make us fixed-position thinkers--" IT'S IN THE BOOK!!!! (BTW, I am not opposed to felxible creeds, nor books.)
He told stories, or parables, which are stories of actions. His parable of the Good Samaritan--who, BTW, was not a Jew--in Luke 10 is about orthopraxy. I love the last sentence of his teaching: "GO then, and DO the same!"
THAT ALL MAY BE ONE
The same kind of teaching is found in John 10 and 17:20-26. His basic prayer is that "all may be one"--he called on all humanity to act as one.
The over-all philosophical term for this approach is, pragmatism--the doing of that which is morally valuable and good--the kind that was advocated by the great Christian philosopher/psychologist William James, of Harvard.
One final thought: "The secret of true unity is the love of variety." Does anyone know who said it?
I am waiting for some DAM comments.
. The egoist needs validation from the outside and feeds off of attention.
He is Greatest Democrat ever known, he is not so Almighty as some try to present him (in a way many common people understand that), thus making him responsible for any crime and unjustice in this world. 