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Free excerpts from Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo

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Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning Here are some excerpts from Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo, and some articles, not for the faint of heart.

For example,

Secularism has crippled America’s ability to respond effectively to such threats, because it reduces morality to the subjective level—to personal feelings or ethnic tradition. These are things that cannot be rationally debated.Persuasion gives way to emotional manipulation and personal attacks. “Racist!” “Hater!” “Intolerant!” “Islamophobe!”

The word tolerance once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.

Canadian free speechers, alas, wrote the book on that.

Comments
News: Re: Secularism has crippled America’s ability to respond effectively to such threats, because it reduces morality to the subjective level—to personal feelings or ethnic tradition. These are things that cannot be rationally debated.Persuasion gives way to emotional manipulation and personal attacks . . . Plato explained why 2,350 years ago in his The Laws, Bk X: ______________ >> [[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne], which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . They say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . . [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . . >> [follow the link above to see the inner links] _______________ Ever wondered why this text is not cited and taught in every upper level High School and Lower Division College gen ed programme? No prizes for guessing why. No prizes, too, for guessing why secular humanist evolutionary materialist advocates who come here to UD consistently duck this text and its implications. As to the uncivil rhetorical trifecta fallacy tactics of distraction caricature and abusive attack you describe, here is their modern root, in Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. (As in, guess who founded the Chicago school of "community organizers.") And, I found considerable evidence that THIS book is taught in College courses, especially Education programmes. Indeed, it is actually celebrated as a handbook for change agents. An absolutely telling indictment of our times. And of course this is exactly the climate that we face when we raise the question of the scientific merits of the inference to design. If we are going to get rid of the weeds, we have to uproot them, so we have to dig for the roots. If we are concerned about spreading clouds and swarms of mosquitoes, we need to trace them to their source in the fever swamps. And so on. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
April 17, 2011
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