Number 94 : November 1998 |
Thank you for C93. I am sorry that Norman Mackie is leaving us and greateful for his blessings. When I was unemployed and monetarily challenged, I got my Mensa membership cheap. Don’t the Powers that Are make arrangements like this any more ?
I don’t mind if you leave Mrs. Babcock alone, Theo (C93/14). All this pulpit stuff came about when I said that ‘The Crucifixion, or How to accept defeat gracefully’ didn’t offend everyone. I wasn’t offended and said Mrs. Babcock’s pamphlet showed J.C. was an anti-messiah. You wondered how a tract could show anything so revolutionary (C92/17 : ‘Argue’ maybe .... but ‘show’ never.’).
Well, I looked up ‘Grace’ in the dictionary, and according to the dear old Tractatus, ‘a name stands for the simple object’. There’s nothing to argue about there.
I think my ‘pulpit stuff’ is a collection of elementary propositions whose sense agrees with reality, and is shown to be true.
I hope I’ve shown how my comments in C93 connect with previous discussions. I hope I haven’t lost you any more.
It was good to read Peter Conway’s question ‘Did our creator imply that there are indeed circumstances where the taking of life would be permissible ?’ and (my ? Ed) erudite answer (C93/6). I enjoy Exodus as you do, Theo, especially Chapter 12 where God struck down all the first born in the land of Egypt except for those who marked their door-posts and lintels. These he passed over; and this episode is remembered every year as Easter is. We can conclude from this that killing people and animals is OK, sometimes, if you’re God.
If anyone is going to argue about this, one has to start somewhere. There has to be a base that is agreed on before the argument begins. As you know, Theo, Geometers have, for millennia, been drawing little diagrams in the ground, on blackboards, or whatever, trying to show that Euclid’s 5th postulate is or is not something that can be argued about. Aristotle, before Euclid wasn’t arguing about it, said ‘If the line is what we recognise it to be from our visual intuition, then the angle sum of a triangle is two right angles’. Well, we don’t believe that the 5th Postulate is Gospel truth any more. My point is this; for centuries scholars have been happy to base their arguments on what they believe has been shown; (wrongly), that is, related to visual intuition. They had to start somewhere.
Valerie Ransford