How was Atheism Created, Ter, on Quora

Q

How was atheism created?
https://www.quora.com/How-was-atheism-created

[another one of the answers]

Toby Wilson

Ex-theist, an atheist.

Answered Thu

How was atheism created?

A word was needed to describe a person who lacks belief in gods, so an “a” was tacked onto the word “theism”, a word that describes the belief in at least one god, but which can apply to people who believe in multiple gods.

Generally speaking, when an “a” is put at the beginning of a word, like symmetry, in the English language, it indicates an absence of something.

So, putting an “a” on the beginning of “symmetry” produces “asymmetry”, the absence of symmetry.

This is what so many theists want to avoid understanding, because they cannot conceive of a person who has no belief in something they cherish so dearly, namely gods.

My belief was shattered when I realised that the evidence for the gods I accepted, would work just as well in favour of the ones I rejected, as well as fairies, bogarts and Smurfs.

Like it or not, some people do not accept the god claim, atheism was not created, only the word that describes the lack of belief in gods was created, and as far as we can tell with the evidence to hand, namely nothing at all, gods were invented too.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Thu

"My belief was shattered when I realised that the evidence for the gods I accepted, would work just as well in favour of the ones I rejected"

Sure you should have rejected their even human existence?

"as well as fairies, bogarts and Smurfs."

Smurfs is overdoing it. Peyó was known to make works of fiction for purposes of entertainment.

I would not reject phenomenal existence of fairies, whatever would be their theological assessment.

Toby Wilson

Fri

“Sure you should have rejected their even human existence?”

I’m not sure what that sentence means, it makes no grammatical sense whatsoever.

I don’t reject the fact that people believe in gods, and that they have believed in numerous gods for a long time.

I do however reject their beliefs for one very simple reason, they lack any corroborating evidence.

If you want to accept that fairies might exist, have at it, but you’re going to have to demonstrate that they’re more real than Smurfs, Peyo might have been writing a documentary about real Smurfs he discovered, you can’t prove that he wasn’t.

If you’re going to accept fairies and ghosts and gods, you’re going to need evidence of any of them before you’ll convince a sceptic.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sat

"I’m not sure what that sentence means, it makes no grammatical sense whatsoever."

It does.

I reject the divinity of Hercules and Romulus and Krishna and Odin, but I do not reject their human existence.

Odin was a man who fraudulently posed as a god, the other three men who were at least passively taken for gods, and in Krishna's case, if Bhagavadgita is historical about his pep talk to Arjuna, he too used fraudulent means to be taken for a god.

"I don’t reject the fact that people believe in gods, and that they have believed in numerous gods for a long time."

No one does, I think.

"I do however reject their beliefs for one very simple reason, they lack any corroborating evidence."

I would say, giving Arjuna an extatic experience with perhaps hypnotic enhancement is inadequate proof of Krishna being a god.

However, driving Arjuna's chariot is adequate evidence for Krishna having lived as a man.

"If you want to accept that fairies might exist, have at it, but you’re going to have to demonstrate that they’re more real than Smurfs, Peyo might have been writing a documentary about real Smurfs he discovered, you can’t prove that he wasn’t."

Peyó was presenting this to the world as entertainment. Stories about fairies, like the white lady of Rosental ...

DIE SALIGE FRAU IM ROSENTAL
http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/kaernten/allgemein/rosental.html

... seem to have more reality to them.

"If you’re going to accept fairies and ghosts and gods, you’re going to need evidence of any of them before you’ll convince a sceptic."

People transmit stories that do not seem to be invented for entertainment. Not sure if it convinces a sceptic, but it does convince most normal men.

Last Month This Blog ...

was the one blog of mine most read in France.

Of all my blogs, I had about 115-116 visitors from France each day, and 70.6 of them on this one - despite its being in English.

I wonder why./HGL

Other curiosity : exactly ten views have been made for exactly three of the four posts from yesterday. For the first one, eleven.



If they are all viewed independently, how come they show so similar stats?

Perhaps they are viewed by some kind of "club" who decide what to view and to view it together?/HGL, next day.

PS Those 10 or 30 or 11 or 41 views are not the only ones from yesterday to today:

France 91
United States 40
Ukraine 16
Spain 5
Greece 4
Brazil 2
China 1
United Kingdom 1
Netherlands 1
Poland 1

Of course, it could be ten people or 11 people having subscribed to my blog. What it cannot be, is, "no body cares what I write"./HGL

Editors and Correctness (Quora)

Q

What does an editor really look out for, to be corrected* in a book or an article?
https://www.quora.com/What-does-an-editor-really-look-out-for-to-be-corrected-in-a-book-or-an-article/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Writing? I've been doing that for some time.

Answered 1h ago

I would consider it depends on the editor.

One thing is of course spelling, and as I spell British (with some creativity), I could be rejected by an US American editor who thinks everything is to be spelled in US American spelling reform.

Some editors would consider deviation from main stream positions to be a huge nono, other ones would even appreciate a very provocative deviation from main stream positions, as soon as they know - it shows - the author had done some “homework”.

Some editors would be joining Big Academia in banning wikipedia as a reference, others would not be doing so.

It would depend very much on the editor in any free country, where editors are not required to follow a government given policy.

* I had read "to be correct". Not "to be corrected".

Origin of Latin : Disputed (Quora)

Q

If the origin of most languages is Latin, what is the origin of Latin?
https://www.quora.com/If-the-origin-of-most-languages-is-Latin-what-is-the-origin-of-Latin/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer requested

by Guy Frémont

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I speak two langs, Latin and Germanic. In a few dialects.

Answered 51m ago

“If the origin of most languages is Latin, what is the origin of Latin?”

If the origin of all Romance languages (and these being a majority of the Big Ten, I think? - but a clear minority of all 6000 languages!) is Latin, well, the origin of Latin as such is unknown.

It is unknown in the sense of undocumented.

600 BC you find a fibula with very archaic Latin, unless the fibula is a forgery.

“Manios med fhefhaked.”

In Classic Latin, it is Manius me fecit. Those arguing the fibula is a forgery argue on linguistic grounds, it would instead have been “Manios med fheked”. This is to Latin, what 1st C. Proto-Nordic (“ek hlewagastiz holtingaz horna tawido”) is to Medieval Old Norse. But it counts as very old Latin.

Before the “Manios med fhefhaked/fheked” type of language, which is hard to understand if you only know Classical Latin, and which is a reason why “Carmen Saliare” in Classical times was no longer understood, there is no firm documented knowledge.

In Antiquity, one thought Latin was a branch of the Aeolic dialect of Greek. Partly because of similarities (Latin is more similar on comparative items to Aeolic than to Attic, for instance), partly for expedience, so Romans would not count as Barbarians (an expedience earlier shown to Macedonian).

Last two centuries, the majority opinion has been, Latin and Greek both descend from an earlier language, spoken thousands of years before the “Manios med fhefhaked” or “Manios med fheked” type of Latin. It is called proto-Indo-European. It has been variously constructed, and has been called the “fastest changing language of the 1860’s” or “of the 1870’s”.

Schleicher’s famous fable has been given in each of them, I think. The earliest version was very close to Sanskrit. The latest version, by a Finnish University doctor, is very close to Hittite. Between them, there has been a version which owed most of itself to “what would the proto-form leading to Homeric Greek and to Lithuanian look like?” It is not yet dead.

Yet another option is, diverse branches of Indo-European were not really descended from a same language, but from their earlier forms being more distinct, and from a Sprachbund leading to emerging similarities - a phenomenon seen in the Balkan area. That is my own version.

Since then, Mycenean Greek has been found. Since it still has a Q-series of consonants, it is less far from Latin than Classic Greek is. The Classic idea is not totally to be excluded.

For my own part, I think earliest IE languages functioning as such were spoken around Aegean, across Balkan to the West and to Syrian border and Crete and Cyprus in the East, and the Sprachbund emerging between them would have been very influenced by Hittite. Sanskrit would have come from a language on Crete, if a certain French linguist is correct about Linear A, and so would Avestic Persian have. Celtic would have come by a later Sprachbund - perhaps also involving Italic (Latin with relatives) which would owe something to Hittite and very early Greek.

That Celtic started out as a Sprachbund, rather than a simple monophyletic development from PIE has been suggested by the more mainstream scholar Barry Cunliffe. As far as I know, he has not tried to apply same idea to IE language community. Trubetskoy, the founder of Balkan linguistics, has.

Is Eternal Universe Possible? No. (Quora)

Q

Is creationism really different from big bang assumption? Why our mind needs a "beginning"?
https://www.quora.com/Is-creationism-really-different-from-big-bang-assumption-Why-our-mind-needs-a-beginning/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer requested

by Michele De Solda

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Thomist after starting with CSLewis

Answered 23h ago

Epicure and Aristotle believed in an eternal universe.

There are two major problems with this approach.

• Human history does not reach back to a past eternity. Epicure suggested periodic disasters (he would have loved the story of Noah’s Ark … or for certain reasons not) which wipe out human achievements and this would include the predisaster history, forcing us to begin all over again. I take a less bleak view on mankind’s capacity on recording a disaster and what went on before it and handing it down to future generations - even if Genesis 2 - 7 is fairly sketchy as historiography goes (I think Mahabharata gives more detail on the Cainite side).
  
  
• Some processes have been discovered to go on in one direction. A process like the water cycle is no problem for Aristotle (who had somewhat incorrect views on water cycle, partly due to his sources for geography not being as reliable as he) or for Epicure, but Helium being produced from Hydrogen + Hydrogen and this never reversing, well, this is a problem for a steady state eternal universe.

Michele De Solda

23h ago

Thanks Hans, a couple of cool reference. I have to check the helium one and I had sooner or later study seriously Aristotle’s metaphysics. What you mean with “steady universe”? Infinite in time, no beginning and no end?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Exact, infinite in time, no beginning, no end, and no major diversification between its qualities, only minor vaccillations, mostly on a local level (like the world wide disasters or culture wide disasters would be).

Answers to Brother Karaviro on Taking the Bible Literally

This one, however, does belong to this blog. I commented under a youtube along it, and one of the comments sparked a short debate (if it lengthens, I'll be happy to update, perhaps even to make a new post). Here:

Taking the Bible literally is disrespecting Christianity
Brother Karaviro | added 10th Dec. 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMnajEe4p3E

I

You should not thank God for living in a country where the Bible is not taken literally.

It should be.

II

What exact Scriptural text is not fundamental for your faith?

The one you have not read.

The Church is fundamental, and it has pronounced Scriptures, all 73 books, as true.

This means, whatever part of it I read, whatever part of it I even don't understand, I still must accept it is true. Once I read it, it becomes part of the ecclesiastic fundament of faith, as per Trent.

III

While the Scriptures can lead YOU to encounter God, they do so on condition you believe as the Church does.

Their literal meaning is how OTHERS, way before you, did in fact encounter God, like Adam and Eve in perfect harmony, and then, after the forbidden fruit, in disharmony, meeting Hid anger.

No, the foundation of faith is not personal experience, of each believer, the foundation is and remains the teaching of the Church, which includes the Bible, and which tells you how to differentiate good from bad in personal experiences.

Suppose you had gone into a hypnotic state and personally experienced a "previous life" - would you accept you are reincarnated because of that? No.

I might not care as much about "spirituality" as about faith, about orthodoxy.

No, spirituality is not a requirement for religion. Some things which normally should help you to have one, like praying the rosary or fasting or at least abstaining on fridays, are requirements or recommendations of religion, but "be spiritual" is not, per se.

IV

Look here, God is certainly more than human, but not, unlike the Stoics, less than fully human.

Jealous is a bad description from some viewpoints, not from others, if it had been, it would not have been there.

V

Zen masters are not as such very spiritual. Not in the right way : they are not orthodox.

VI

Different kind of language, well, sentences are short, probably so the chapters could, one after another be learned by heart and transmitted from Adam, or from Seth or Cain, or Lamech or Noah to Moses who wrote them down, until we get to an environment in which chapters could be written. And writings preserved.

But that the story is "larger than life" does not mean it is not literally true.

Several stories we know are real life, whether World War II or Kon Tiki, are "larger than life".

I would rather you consider me blind than God consider me a heretic.

VII

"Historical critical" is unhistorical, since antitraditional.

Pretending Genesis is a novel is as unhistorical as pretending Silmarillion is a documentary.

VIII

Hans Georg Lundahl

No, some possibilities of language do not apply to the Bible.

Silmarillion is a novel. How do we know? Because Tolkien wrote it as a novel.

Genesis is a documentary, and we know that because Moses wrote it as documentary.

We know the intention of Tolkien (as well as his authorship) from tradition, we also know the intention of Moses (as well as authorship) from tradition.

Brother Karaviro

No Genesis is not writen by Moses, you are a kid right? With all respect, I hope you will visit some classes in Theology at a State University. What possibliities of language do not apply to the Bible? :)

Hans Georg Lundahl

"No Genesis is not writen by Moses,"

Pope St Pius X's Bible commission condemned this one. In 1905 even the version saying Moses inerrantly collected stories that were not inerrant in themselves.

On another occasion, the ideas "Pentateuch is not at least substantially by Moses" (in Genesis he is arguably a collector of earlier material, and last chapter of Deuteronomy was written by Joshua after his death).

But for this one, I am not sure what year, and the other idea was "Psalms are not by King David, even if it mentions 'a Psalm by David'."

"you are a kid right?"

I have a blog called

New blog on the kid
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/

But apart from that, I am 49.

"With all respect, I hope you will visit some classes in Theology at a State University."

I did, along with ma, at age 13, she took me out of school one day.

I heard a professor, otherwise apparently sane, defend the Bibel-Babel idiocy by Delitzsch or some other Prussian.

"What possibliities of language do not apply to the Bible?"

Those that are contrary to known fact. For instance, being originally written in English is a possibility of language, it applies for instance to Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion, but not to one single book of the Bible.

Being a novel is also a possibility of language which does not apply very much in the Bible.

The Prodigal Son (in German that would be "der verschwänderische Sohn", but it is usually "der verlorene Sohn") can well be a novel.

Because Jesus used it to make a point, like novelists often do (Momo makes a certain point about men always looking at the wristwatch, as Michael Ende intended it to do, and the Prodigal Son also brings home a point about God's love).

But being a novel is not a possibility which applies to Genesis. One could imagine a parellel universe in which Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings were old books dating from the events and in which Genesis was a novel by Tolkien.

But in our universe, Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion are novels by Tolkien, and Genesis is an old book, dating back (in its parts) to the events. Ergo, in our universe, the possibility of being a novel does not apply to Genesis.

Brother Karaviro

Sorry for the wrong assumption on your age, chap.

First of all, english isnt my mother language, so sorry for upcoming inconvenients.

Going once with your ma, is not thinking through a biblical class on a State University.

The word inerrant is obsolete, because language itself can not carry absolute truth, especially not divine truth.

The translation errors that occur, are of corse applicable on the Bible. The word is dead, through the spirit it gets alive.

Genesis is not just a novel, those literature concepts are not applicable to old writings. It is cultural heritage from a specific time and region, with a monotheistic culture. Everywhere the divine is shining through, so also in some bad stories from the Pentateuch.

Your derivation about novels and reality is very weak and makes not much sense.

Listen, you are disrespecting Christianity and betraying Jesus and God if you take the Bible literally.

Hans Georg Lundahl

"Going once with your ma, is not thinking through a biblical class on a State University."

Nope, but she did and she shared my view on Bibel-Babel thesis.

"The word inerrant is obsolete, because language itself can not carry absolute truth, especially not divine truth."

That is false.

"The translation errors that occur, are of corse applicable on the Bible. The word is dead, through the spirit it gets alive."

A translation error or copyist error is of course a possible exception from inerrancy.

I know, as a Latinist (at a State university, though without any final exams, just intermediate ones), fairly much about translations. It is for instance NOT possible that a translation error somewhere in Genesis changed the genre from novel writing to history.

"Genesis is not just a novel, those literature concepts are not applicable to old writings."

As far as I know the meaning of the word novelist (and as an aspiring novelist I know fairly much of it) the word "novel" is unspecific enough to be applicable to any prose narrative that is fiction. For instance, the one definitional obstacle to calling the Prodigal Son a novel is, it is not long enough. It therefore is a micro-novel - supposing Our Lord just made it up, rather than take an example He, as Omniscient God, knew from everyday life somewhere on Earth. Or even perhaps an example from a live story known to the people back there. But a novel (or micro-novel) is a fair guess.

"It is cultural heritage"

Culturally inherited narratives come in two main branches : fiction (i e novels) and history. There is of course also docufiction : this means a documentary would be either too short or too disclosing of vulnerable people, and therefore a fictional fleshing out of detail is preferred over a fully factual one, while story as such is factual.

Genesis stories are simply too short to be docufictions, there is not enough fleshing out. Everything which involves discretion (like saying [5] And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, rather than recite the whole Mahabharata) or being content with bare genealogies where many of the biographies are lost, that is too short for docufiction.

So, we have the two major branches of culturally inherited narrative : novels, or Märchen, and history, or Sagen. Genesis is either "eine Sage" like Richard Lionheart at Dürnstein (I think it was, if I did not remember wrong what place in Nether Austria) or it is "ein Märchen" like Hänsel und Gretel.

For the choice, we can depend on what those transmitting it have said : it is history.

"from a specific time and region, with a monotheistic culture."

Every historic narrative is from a specific time and region, and has a specific culture. Trojan war is narrated by Homer at a time when Hittites were forgot or one was trying to forget them. He was perhaps even the ideal poet for the transmission, because he was blind and could not see the obvious difference in Hittite hieroglyphs when visiting certain places. Therefore not ask who made that, therefore very honestly never hear about Hittites.

A Communist narrative about Stalingrad is also this, it is for instance formulated in an atheistic culture. And a very anti-German one too. The same Commies who celebrate the "heroic resistance at Teruel" are also considering the "heroic resitance at Stalingrad" as folly - even if getting out of the way at Teruel was easier for the reds and capitulation was more likely to result in spared life in captivity.

"Everywhere the divine is shining through, so also in some bad stories from the Pentateuch."

Everywhere in any false religion some truth or some divine is shining through in some way. This does not make them true religions, therefore giving this to the Bible is not being a Christian.

"Your derivation about novels and reality is very weak and makes not much sense."

I hope my answer has made it clearer.

"Listen, you are disrespecting Christianity and betraying Jesus and God if you take the Bible literally."

No, I am not "listening" to you as to a Guru, and I do not believe what you are saying. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself took Genesis literally, in Mark 10:6, for instance.

Brother Karaviro

"The word inerrant is obsolete, because language itself can not carry absolute truth, especially not divine truth."

That is true. [In other words, he contradicts my "that is false"]

Thank you for your distinguished insights, we are totally not on the same page :).

With "listen" i didn't wante to implicate some status of mine, we are writing to each other on the same eye height hopefully.

I hope at least we can be on the same page for the following:
I wish us, you and me, in the name of Jesus, Gods blessing, and may his healing lifeforce shine through us and heal us and our surroundings. At the end what counts is the love we live towards our Sisters and Brothers and not how good we write words.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

In some ways yes, but when it comes to writing about this subject, writing well or ill does matter for the welfare of brothers and sisters.

Time for a Good Old Mark Shea Rant!

Mark Shea occasionally is very coherent and clear and all, he occasionally is spot on, but today is not that day ...

By the way, as to coherent, I feel a need for coffee, this post should have been on my main blog .... OK, back after coffee. Two things. The posts of Mark Shea are from yesterday's date, I seriously have no idea (as yet) what he is signing for December 1st. And, second thing, if one of his posts was bad, at the intro, the one I am ranting about, another one in fact is spot on, at least in a spot. Let's take a good paragraph first, shall we?

That is what Christianists are now reduced to fighting for: class warfare by the rich against the poor. But then, Christianism is about nothing other than the idols of money, pleasure, power, and honor (and blood and soil in their Alt Right manifestations).

Spot on. Except that in same essay, Mark Shea also called Roy Moore a child molester, which on a sane Catholic view he is not. Age of consent may be 16 in Alabama as of present, I hope it was lower before. I am sure Clinton was into raising it in the 1990's - at least marital age in South Carolina was raised from 12 (as it was when a Swedish girl mag ran a story in 1995) to 16 (as it was when I checked if it was possible to marry - at US Embassy in Paris - a then 16 year old very pretty girl from South Carolina).

Btw, pursuing power is a thing Christianists are doing among other things by calling the behaviour of Moore child molestation. If Corfmann's story is true, act one of the tragedy is, she was not in a position to marry a gentleman before meeting Mr Moore. Act two is meeting him, in circumstances inappropriately close to babysitting. Only act three (with two scenes) gets saucy. Act four is Corfmann (with mother) not forgiving him and therefore not marrying him (a moral tragedy for him, if not for her) and act five is his becoming adulterer. Moore's "wife" was a divorced mother, I don't think he ever denied Kisor was a "divorced mother" in 1985. Hope Leigh Corfmann has lived a better life than he, since then! That includes, obviously, hope she did not make the story up. I could, alas, relate to someone denying it, if true.

And now for a more questionable series of quotes:

During World War II, Hermann Goering had some project he needed done and he procured some Jewish prisoners to do it. Somebody asked why he was using the unclean hands of Jews for the work instead of using German labor. Goering’s reply: “I decide who is a Jew.”

My grandfather had a right to Aliya. He refrained after a visit to the Holy Land. Perhaps because the hot climate was not good for grannie's heart. Perhaps because of Palestinians having lost land in the process. Perhaps because he realised that to Zionism, Herod is a national hero.

Anyway, one of the people he met was a family who had been friends with Goering. Grandma, up to her death, would impersonate their impersonation of Goering. The words were exactly "hier bestimme ich wer Jude ist" - "here it is I who decide who is a Jew".

Why would that family like to impersonate their friend Goering saying those words? Well, because they saved their lives. He banked his fist on the table and said them to an underling who was going to arrest the family whom, as then not arrested, was living in Holy Land and enjoying the company of my grandparents.

Goering's daughter liked to mention that, in the "Entnazifizierungsprozess" by German authorities, her mother could benefit from a lawyer who could get in witnesses saying, for instance, that she had helped this or that or sundry family in the theatre business. Who would otherwise have been arrrested for being Jewish. She got away with a few months. Hermann, however, had another type of trial, where friendly witnesses were not invited and he could expect a harsher trial.

My analysis of why Goering needed the Jews was, he was doing (or trying) a Schindler move. Here is, however, Mark Shea's:

He literally arrogated to himself the claim that he could dictate the nature of reality itself.

Actually, being Jewish, unlike being for instance "between 186 and 187 cm", is not a univocal thing. In Germany, then, "Jewish" had an administrative meaning, to which not each and every Jewish connection would be applicable. For instance, Hitler was himself entitled only to Kleines Goj-Ausweiß (as Jews like to jokingly call it), nevertheless, no one would for administrative purposes have considered him a Jew.

In Austria, the administrative purpose of designation Jew, under Austrofascism, had been simply to remove the person from positions in administration. Not to place them in any camps, not to deprive them of private property, just to get them out of administration. They made - in a not too big administration - some 620 sth case by case exceptions. I e, people who were Jewish, but not so in the eyes of the administration (or whose Jewishness was no obstacle to their being in the administration). Dollfuß too, probably, might have had trouble to get honestly a Großes Goj-Ausweiß - I knew a greatgranddaughter of his, who voted Tsipi Livni in her latest election I knew of in the non-Austrian other citizenship. I suppose this is part of why Hitler considered him a traitor and decorated his murderer : he was anti-Jewish only on a Nixon level, like after the weasels, but not after the squirrels. He did not believe in any Jewish gene that the society would be better off without, in future evolutions of it. He did believe, and so do I, in some Jews being dishonest in business to Gojim.

So, claiming to decide who was Jewish was, in context, simply to claim being an administrator of higher rank than the administrators he was talking to.

As to the tone, well, I have met that tone with a Marxist (probably) editor of a magazine for the homeless, in Berlin - motz, it was. I had, as a homeless, been staying two nights or three in the homeless shelter tied to the magazine and its salesmen.

On Sunday morning, I wanted to go to the Church of FSSPX, St Peter's near Breitenbachplatz. I was not sure they had any evening Mass on Sunday evening, I rather think they did not (only two priests, and two Masses Sunday morning). The editor, who was fairly certainly not Fascist, who was fairly certainly Marxist, told me I couldn't go, since "hier bin ICH Gott". It literally means "here it's I who am God". I did not hit him on the face, but I left, never came back, never sold another motz.

Now, unlike Jew, God actually is NOT merely sth which the administration can define. God actually IS involved in the nature of reality itself. That probable Marxist really was arrogating to himself the claim to dictate the nature of reality itself.

Much the same thing was on display with Stalin in the 30s during the execution of the Five Year Plans. Stalin’s agricultural reforms dictated to the universe that the weather had to behave according to his godlike will. Accordingly, he actually had meteorologists shot for “counter-revolutionary weather forecasting.”

Unlike Dollfuß, even unlike Hitler, Stalin does not count as Fascist. He does count as Marxist. But perhaps Mark Shea finds "Fascist" a fluent description (as I suppose Goering did with "Jew"), or perhaps he is here arrogating to himself the right to dictate the very nature of reality?

And, of course, at the end of the war, we see Hitler moving around non-existent armies and commanding dead and deserted troops

Can you document it, Shea? I started reading Hitler and His generals - an English higher officer had interviewed a Wehrmacht officer. I did not get to WW-II. I don't know what the book says about this subject.

If it is true, obviously I'd put it down to generals "managing" him - not daring to tell him the truth. There was bad blood between them on both sides.

I just saw on quora someone defend Hitler's decision to order his soldiers to fight to the last in Stalingrad (a decision very much less appreciated than the similar one from Red side in the Teruel battle) and that on two grounds : Commies were not giving quarter, other armies needed to draw back and keeping Red Army busy at Stalingrad gave the other armies a chance which 6th German had anyway no longer. Sounds like he had some sound sense of strategy and military honour, even if he had done better to remain a painter.

and Goebbels using horoscopes and hocus pocus as the basis of lies to will unbelieving Germans into the unreality that victory was just around the corner.

As it happens, Goebbels was a few things other than just Fascist. For one thing, both Alessandro and Benito were Fascists. Benito as an unbeliever, like their dad, Alessandro as a faithful Catholic (who arguably wouldn't touch a horoscope), like their mum. Similarily, both Dollfuß and Hitler were Fascists - Dollfuß in deference to Quadragesimo Anno (a deference which Pope Pius XI did not call hypocritical) and profiting from the thaw weather between Mussolini and Pius XI to be friends with the former (as he was sickly, he needed the Italian baths he was invited to, as well as finding it practical to have Mussolini at the Brenner Pass to avoid an Anschluß). In other words, "Fascist" is not a description which narrows down to all and everything Goebbels did.

It may interest you, of the 20-30's Fascisms I know, of the ones which became ruling ideologies in any state, National Socialism was the one which engaged in occultistic research. Franco and Salazar, Dollfuß and Schuschnigg, Horthy and as far as I know Szalaszy, AND Corneliu Codreanu were all free from this.

Marxism, on the other hand - guess which country you can study parapsychology at state sponsored Universities? As far as I know, you could under Brezhnev, and you can under Putin. You certainly could, as I found, under Khrushchev - supposing this is not incorrect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Vasiliev

Also, you can do it in some English speaking countries:

Two universities in the United States currently have academic parapsychology laboratories. The Division of Perceptual Studies, a unit at the University of Virginia's Department of Psychiatric Medicine, studies the possibility of survival of consciousness after bodily death, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences.[67] Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona's Veritas Laboratory conducted laboratory investigations of mediums, criticized by scientific skeptics. Several private institutions, including the Institute of Noetic Sciences, conduct and promote parapsychological research.[66]

...

As of 2007, parapsychology research is represented in some 30 different countries[68] and a number of universities worldwide continue academic parapsychology programs. Among these are the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh;[69] the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University (this closed in April 2011);[70][71] the SOPHIA Project at the University of Arizona;[72] the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University;[73] the Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton;[74] and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London.[75]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology

Presumably, neither US nor UK count as Fascist doctatorships.

So, yes Goebbels was an occultist, and that would involve not just "magical thinking" (whatever that means in psychologic gobbledygook) but outright heresies or at least sins against the faith (see Summa Theologica, II-II, Q 92). He was also married to a secularised Jewess, who endorsed her own father being put into a camp, where he died, when he was impoverished, and the end of the Goebbels family rings so Masada to me. Masada - perhaps another reason why gramp was not doing Aliya. While an Evolution believing Agnostic, he had traditional Swedish sensibilities, not National Socialist or Zionist ones, on such things.

But why would Goebbels being an occultist in any way stamp decent Catholic (or Orthodox) fascists as occultists?* Why would defending Spain against the Reds, why would defending Portugal against the Lodge be in any way shape or form an occultistic project?

Reds were a menace in Spain, 1934 one was not just "reading it in cards", one was reading it in news - until elected President Gil Robles sent Franco to Asturias** In 36, it was there again, while Azaña was not technically a Red, he was certainly not very apt for putting to justice the Reds who assassinated Calvo Sotelo or "executed" José Antonio Primo de Rivera***

Freemasons were a menace in Portugal. Read the story of the Fatima seers, and see how they were treated in 1917, not in an overtly Marxist dictatorship, but in a supposedly free country.

Salazar was not dreaming like Cayce, when he saw Freemasons as a menace to Portugal. (If there is anything slightly occult, he may have had too Rosicrucian an idea of the Middle Ages, as an idealistic time when egoism was not running anything except the hearts of the most vile, but I think in 19th C when he was born, this was so widely disseminated outside Rosicrucians, this cannot stamp him as one of theirs.) Franco in his turn was not asking Gypsy women about Crystal balls, when it came to Commies being a menace. Salazar and Franco certainly count as being quite as Fascist as Goebbels, and they count as being way more Catholic too.

The essence of fascistic thinking is the belief that we, not God, create reality by the Power of the Word. It is a kind of blasphemous magical thinking that believes black can be made white and turned again as the Dear Leader dictates. Such blasphemy exacts a terrible price if it is not repented.

I do very much not see how this is fascistic as such. I also thought the adjective in English was equal to the noun, Fascist. And as a proper name, referring to Fasci di Combattimento, 1919, capitalised. Perhaps you are thinking of Giovanni Gentile.

The self-styled "philosopher of Fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for Italian Fascist thought, and ghostwrote part of The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) with Benito Mussolini.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile

Grazie for "selfstyled"! I am sure Dollfuß largely preferred a certain Jesuit father, namely Ignaz Seipel, and his "Wirtschaftsethische Lehre der Kirchenväter" (meaning economical-ethic doctrine of the Church Fathers, not sure if there is an English title or translation) over any work by Gentile. I am sure Franco preferred what he had learned at military school in Salamanca (including when he stopped hazing° while running it) over anything anyone could read in Gentile. And Salazar probably preferred both Seminar (like Stalin he was an ex-Seminarist, unlike him not an ex-Christian) and university courses in political economy (he started out as minister of finance) over anything he could have read in Gentile. I even suspect neither of them ever opened a page of Gentile.

And anonymous wikipedians gratify my sense of English by referring to "Fascist thought" not "fascistic" one.

Not unrelatedly, our Dear Leader, having lied for years about Birther crap, finally renounced that lie a year ago (and lyingly took credit for dispelling the lie that he had fostered).

But yesterday, in a feat of reverse magical thinking, he chose to revive the stupid lie that Obama is not an American citizen. ... The People of the Lie who now constitute the backbone of the Party of Trump will eat it all up. They don’t care that its all lies. They only care that it tells them what their itching ears want to hear.

Oh, the diatribe against Fascism was just a captatio benevolentiae before a diatribe really against Trump and "Trumpkins" (not quite same meaning as DLF in Prince Caspian, perhaps). What a surprise ... I am actually not catching him red handed in double standards, if he calls Trump a liar, he called Obama a murderer back in 2014.

Since - also from december 2014 - he is a Tolkien fan, I suggest Mark Shea reread that letter about the Spanish War which Tolkien wrote after he and C. S. L. had had very different attitudes to Roy Campbell ...

OK, let's make attributions. All quotes from wiki were from articles linked to just below quote, first quote from Mark is from People of the Lie, Part Deux and the rest are from Magical Fascistic Thinking, that's it. Even while needing another cup of coffee, I'll sign, and just under it link to the blog I would normally have posted this article on, that one being my main blog and containing several rants°° in response to Mark Shea.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Day after St Andrew
1.XII.2017

* Please, Serbs, when I say "decent Catholic Fascists", I am not referring to Ustashi! Also, Stepinac was not an Ustashi and did not promote the killings at Jasenovac, I know he told Nikolai Velimirovic - the Orthodox Jacobus de Voragine for those who don't know, his newer Legenda Aurea being called Prologue from Ohrid - he should leave, but he could have been trying to save Nicolai's life, you know! And it seems Dachau was safer for Nikolai Velimirovic than Jasenovac would have been.

** And please note, in the war of 36-39, Franco was never involved in so bloody a thing to civilians as part of what he had done in Asturias had been!

*** A man not quite unlike Codreanu. A man whom now even some Red historians think could have saved Spain a war and made a decent deal, if he had lived.

° Le temps de Franco, by a non-Fascist, indeed Leftist writer, termed it "bizutage", in US that seems to be "hazing", in UK "initiation ceremonies".

°° Here is the label "de marco shea" on my main blog, that being:

New blog on the kid
(a k a nov⁹ blogg⁹, hence url:
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com