“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”
—
G.K. Chesterton in Heretics
A Service of
(via
gkchestertonquote)
quote
G.K. Chesterton
3:07 pm |
June 18 2013
| 21 notes
“Among the problems with such claims is that on any construal of what a “law of nature” is, the laws of physics simply could not be an ultimate explanation. If “laws” are what Newton and Descartes thought they were — divine decrees about how otherwise inert matter will operate — then the ultimate explanation lies in the divine decrees themselves, not in the laws. If “laws” are something like Platonic entities in which the material world participates, then we need an explanation of how the world comes to participate in the laws, and why these laws rather than some alternative. If “laws” are mere descriptions of regularities, then they merely re-describe what is to be explained rather than actually explaining what needs to be explained. If “laws” are a shorthand description of the way material substances will tend to operate given their natures (the correct account of laws, in my view) then the existence of laws presupposes the existence of the material world and thus cannot explain the existence of the material world.”
— Edward Feser, “Naturalism in the News.”
Edward Feser
quote
science
philosophy
1:19 pm |
June 15 2013
| 1 note
“But it seems to me that there can be no faithful and firm cohesion where there is not an enduring union of wills and as it were a cementing together of souls. If this is lacking, it is in vain that the works of men are in harmony, since hollow pretense will develop into open injury, unless the real spirit of helpfulness is present.”
— John of Salisbury, Policraticus, bk. V, chapter 7, tr. John Dickinson, (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), pg. 95.
quote
literature
Policraticus
John of Salisbury
medieval
philosophy
politics
history
12th century
7:15 pm |
June 11 2013
nomopoetry:
properattribution:
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.”
- H. P. Lovecraft
Suddenly hate these words less.
Ahahahahahaha
5:12 pm |
June 10 2013
| 13 notes
kutxx:
1.
John Henry Fuseli
Silence
1799-1801, oil on canvas, Kunsthaus, Zurich
John Henry Fuseli
art
painting
19th Century
2:49 am |
June 3 2013
| 7 notes
