Religion and the Armenian Genocide

[Nick_A]

Gavur

So why label a fellow questioner a crackpot ? little I read of her today indicates to me she died for her ideal's and she fought with her pen mostly.

Actually she was hated by authorities because she would organize marches for unemployed workers and was so intelligent that she could do it effectively. She would put many protesting Armenians to shame. She was in the field.

She didn't write books. She wrote essays and letters. Her one book, The Need for Roots" was written while she was dying of TB. It was her suggestions on how France should be rebuilt after Hitler's devastation.

She keep note books and many books coming out now are just recent translations. It is more a work of love than for money since how many can understand these things?

She was not your typical philosopher that hid from the world. She participated in it with more guts than I am capable of..

[Gavur]

A true liberal!

[1.5 million]

Regardless of Weils intelligence and insights and dedication to just causes - her reliance on God for her answers reveals a fatal flaw in her reasoning - in her conclusions - what can I say? - ultimatly she is/was wrong in a very fundemental way and I find her conclusions and others who feel the need to invoke the supernatural for answers to real world problems as quite dangerous. And to not deal with the issues of the world - and instead give people false hope that their salvation lies in some next life - well - this to me is not only a major cop out but does an incredible diservice (perhaps even can be categorized as evil). At least it seems she attempted to help people and do some good otherwise - though it is clear that she had her issues...but then again no one is perfect. And don't think that I lack the capacity to understand her thoughts - like her and her brother I too was a bit of a child prodigy. I too studied greek philosophy (and the like) in my (pre) teens and attended Johns Hopkins University beginning at the age of 14. By 18 I had graduated with multiple degrees. Sure I can't spell...but nobody is perfect. And while perhaps I'm not nearly as smart as I once was (perhaps its the wine eh?) I still manage...

[1.5 million]

I admire the Armenian soul since it is a part of me. I will not stand by innocently and watch it sacrificed for the delights of Burger King.

OK so you pray...I buy organic...

Did you ever stop to consider that inwardly nurtured and nourished souls could never band together and create a holocaust. Our inner morality would not allow it.

If the soul is you term for the electrical energy our body produces to give it life then I can agree that there is such an incorporal thing that is part of us. Likewise the electrical fields specifically generated in the brain allow for intelligence. Avoiding supersticion and basing our thoughts on the factual and real makes us rational. I don't think that rational people could ever band together and create a holocaust...too me to do such a thing would require fanatical belief. BTW I nourish my soul with fine Bordeaux and I have no thoughts of killing anyone at the moment.

But since we are as we are life is as it is and we are governed by force and "prestige." There is no way for starving souls to get beyond it. You don't want to see it which is OK. I prefer to recognize it for what it is.

There you (religious beliver types) go again making pronouncements about others based upon artificial and imagined constructs....naughty of you - but i should be used to already...still it pisses me off. Anyway I find some merit in this force/prestige argument...for some - but not as the do all answer for everything - it is way too simple and one dimensional. It is clear that she lacks some cross cultural (non western/non-modern) understandings as well - a shortfall that becomes obvious to those who know and understand some things better. And I've had these same sort of observations regarding some of Jarrad Diamond's work that certain friends of mine really adore. Like Weil he has his points (and actually has some very useful insights) - but also liek Weil his explanations are often too simplisitc and are stuck in a Western world view.

You think Simone is crazy and I know she is beautiful on the inside. She feels with the heart that only certain special women can have. The hungry soul exists in Armenia and I will help to acknowledge it regardless of how old fashioned it seems.

She might be a beautiful person with a great heart - I'm sure - but she still ultimatly is/was a crazy person - like Mother Teresa eh? Familiar with her. She has done some incredible good - but she is loony toons big time - and would be quite dangerous if folks actually listend too her and acted on her suggestions. As for the hungry Armenian soul...well...I'm not sure you really understand Armenians....deep down we are a very practical people....worldly...and yes materialistic...and we are survivors...we adapt...we are not static...and we normally don't get overly caught up in the sort of (for the most part practically useless) mumbo jumbo like where you are headed...

[Nick_A]

1.5

IMO you are making a mistake in believing that the religious and practical approaches by definition are mutually exclusive. I don't believe so.

The Bible explains it in Matthew 8:

5When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6"Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering."
7Jesus said to him, "I will go and heal him."

8The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."

10When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

13Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! It will be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour.

This passage is replete with meaning but what stands out for me is that what made the Centurion's faith special is that he understood different levels of existence. The centurion was an important man and had many under his command. He was top dog at his level yet powerless at the next but was not upset by this but understood the practicality of it.

The essence of religion doesn't deny the necessity to fix earthly problems but only adds the additional dimension of "perspective" which clarifies the understanding of "problems"

I believe that one identical thought is to be found--expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality-- in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil....Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

This idea is obvious yet virtually unknown. Science is a tool and it should serve objective human understanding and need. But as we are, science is creating artificial needs and feeding exactly the same kind of egotism that leads to further conflict. It is our task to become more aware of the essential message at the source of these great traditions so science can serve Man rather than define him.

Jacob Needleman describes it such later in the previously mentioned preface to his "Lost Christianity:

"But this is not an either/or. The premise --or rather, the proposal -- of this book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists, and has always existed, just such a vision of God and Man. I call it "Lost Christianity," not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources. It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all to easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear, and hatred. What is lost is the experience of oneself -- myself, the personal being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting ones existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however tentatively, of a higher current of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness between what we are meant to be and what we actually are. it is perhaps the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past toward the human future."

So there it is in a nutshell. Since we don't "Know Thyself" or even know what it means anymore, we can be simultaneously capable of the greatest good and the greatest horrors.


This does not deny practicality but just adds an additional dimension on to the practical.


Science is true. The essence of religion is true. If they are both true and we don't see it, perhaps the fault is within us. Maybe if we did know ourselves "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," this idea of establishing a connection between these two levels of existence within ourselves, would be more than words but just common sense and practicality taken to the next level.




Armenian practicality doesn't deny the need for spirituality. Granted people differ and with all races there are differing degrees of a calling for higher understanding. I do submit though that the genuine, non escapist, religious feel is alive and well with Armenians.

Take for example the seminary near me http://www.stnersess.edu/index.php

Click on "youth programs" Do these kids look as though they are abused?

If practicality denied the spiritual, could Rudolph Khachatrian have experienced this:

http://www.armsite.com/painters/khachatrian/

Roudolf Khachatrian started to paint at the age of three. But when he met with Kochar, something extraordinary had already happened with him: he had seen the God.

His parents' flat was so close to the ground, that they were keeping the curtains closed all the time to avoid the strangers' stares from the street. So Roudolf's eyes were adapted to such constant semi-darkness. One night, when the boy was laying on the bed and thinking, a strong light shine appeared just in front of him. And a kind face was outlined in this light; a very kind one. The boy was afraid and closed his eyes for some moments. When he reopened his eyes, the face was still there. The boy was so afraid, that he cried. When his mother came, he did not tell her what had happened. However in the morning he said: “Mom, I saw God. That's why I cried at night”. Once, after many years, he said: "For the first time we cry, when we are born. For the second time I was crying, when I was born as a human".

You can see by his awareness of detail and perspective in his paintings that he is not painting new age escapism. What happened to him that changed him on the inside for the rest of his life? Can you disprove the presence of higher consciousness being attracted to such a talent?

So we try to become open, to ponder, to "Know Thyself."

[1.5 million]

1.5

IMO you are making a mistake in believing that the religious and practical approaches by definition are mutually exclusive. I don't believe so.

Well again you are mistaken - they are purely diametrically opposed concepts. Religion and religious "reasoning" are the antithesis of scientific thought. Religion - based upon beliefs based in faith that are entirely unverifiable and unfalsifiable - have no possibility of any congruence with scientic thought. And when religion held total sway (and where in the world it still does) scientific beliefs have been/are considewred heretical and have been/are (and would be) stamped out and those professing such tormented and killed for their beliefs. This is what religion does - as has been evidenced in history - as we can clearly see in societies where religion still holds dominant sway and this is clearly what the religious believers will enact again given the power - even here in the west - and this is an aspect of its danger to us.

The essence of religion doesn't deny the necessity to fix earthly problems but only adds the additional dimension of "perspective" which clarifies the understanding of "problems"

Reading this I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry. Yeah the Koran provides us some great "perspective" on our worldly problems eh? Can't you see what it is you are advocating here? I don't really feel i need to say more.

This idea is obvious yet virtually unknown. Science is a tool and it should serve objective human understanding and need. But as we are, science is creating artificial needs and feeding exactly the same kind of egotism that leads to further conflict. It is our task to become more aware of the essential message at the source of these great traditions so science can serve Man rather than define him.

We need peopel who think rationally about the human condition and our problems and who can look forward to where we are going to help "guide" science/scientific inquiry as best as we can. And this needs to be done in a systematic way - not just by consulting ancinet texts or inner voices (I mean what if you are channeling Hitler eh?). Still, even then, it is likely a great mistake to assume we can socialize science and direct it as easily as we send a mouse through a maze. To think such is to demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the nature of science/scientific inquiry and scientific discovery - and the role of chance/chaos (Kismet if you will) and just blind luck and serependipity in making useuful discoveries. Also the process of science is both incremental and based on paradigm shifting discoveries. If we knew where eaither would lead us in advance...well...that would certainly be something now wouldn't it?

Jacob Needleman describes it such later in the previously mentioned preface to his "Lost Christianity:

So there it is in a nutshell. Since we don't "Know Thyself" or even know what it means anymore, we can be simultaneously capable of the greatest good and the greatest horrors.

Yes with religion this is true - though it ussually is/has been the latter (this lesson should be most clear from the historical record and if you understand anything at all...)


...

Science is true. The essence of religion is true. If they are both true and we don't see it, perhaps the fault is within us.

They both are absolutly not true (only Science is - and for what it is - and BTW it admits to/understands its [temporal] limitations) - it is an entirely false assumption to claim that religion (any religion and/or the concept of religion in general) is true. If religion is true that it can be proven to be true no? Or it should be proven that non-religion is false (you can at least prove that can't you?) - actually no you cannot. You cannot prove religion to be true - neither can you prove non-religion to be false. So you cannot - in any way shape or form - establish religion (or any religion as true) - no more then one can prove (or disprove) the Invisible Pink Pony. So when we start basing philosopies and "truths" based on such - well you can see where that leaves us. Have I lost you yet? (basically you and all these other religios nutjobs lose the argument - right here and right now).

Maybe if we did know ourselves "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," this idea of establishing a connection between these two levels of existence within ourselves, would be more than words but just common sense and practicality taken to the next level.

What is this other level of existance. Describe it for us. WHat are its properties. On what basis do you make these claims? You can't - not in any real sense. Thus when you take it to the "next level" - YOU ARE JUST MAKING SH*T UP!

Armenian practicality doesn't deny the need for spirituality. Granted people differ and with all races there are differing degrees of a calling for higher understanding. I do submit though that the genuine, non escapist, religious feel is alive and well with Armenians.

OK lets call it "tradition" (much based on pre-christian traditions and ways that have survived I should add) - but this says nothing about the truth of supernatural belief does it? No - it is quite malable as we have seen. And its entirely possible to be "spiritual" about life - the universe - our world - our families and our people - without once needing to call upon or believe in made up myths and fairtales about supreme beings and other highly unlikely scenarious...etc

Take for example the seminary near me http://www.stnersess.edu/index.php

Click on "youth programs" Do these kids look as though they are abused?

Should I link to you a picture of Hitler Youth from the 1940s and ask you the same? And this proves...? Yes, whjat exactly does it prove? I can al;so just as well link you to a picture of folks lying on a sidewalk in Heroin induced bliss...(yes - I want it!)

If practicality denied the spiritual, could Rudolph Khachatrian have experienced this:

http://www.armsite.com/painters/khachatrian/

You can see by his awareness of detail and perspective in his paintings that he is not painting new age escapism. What happened to him that changed him on the inside for the rest of his life? Can you disprove the presence of higher consciousness being attracted to such a talent?

So we try to become open, to ponder, to "Know Thyself."

It is not for me to disprove "Higher conciencness" - it is for you to prove it - or more accuractly to prove that it comes from "God" - you can't really do either per se. BTW - we have plenty of avenues to attain "higher conciesness" or altered states - lots of ways of manipulating or altering brain functions with quite astonishing results...etc

BTW - one last word on Weil. You know that she was a self hating Jew. one who basically denied the horrors of the Holocaust (I guess thats where you get your essential denial of the horrors of the Armenian Genocide). Yes indeed - she apologized for Hitler - said he was basically no worse then any other political leader. etc Yeah - she, like Mother Teresa, for all the good that they perhaps did (more questionable in regards to Weil who at best was more of a Don Quiote), well yes - both religious nutcases of the first order.

This from a 1963 NYTimes book review written by Susan Sontag:

"This new volume of translations from Simone Weil's work, Selected Essays 1934-43, displays her somewhat marginally...The longest argument of the book, spanning several essays, develops the parallel between Rome (and the ancient Hebrew theocracy!) and Nazi Germany. According to Simone Weil, who displays an unpleasant silence on the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Hitler is no worse than Napoleon, than Richelieu, than Caesar. Hitler's racialism, she says, is nothing more than "a rather more romantic name for nationalism." Her fascination with the psychological effects of wielding power and submitting to coercion, combined with her strict denial of any idea of historical progress, led her to equate all forms of state authority as manifestations of what she calls "the great beast."

Readers of Simone Weil's Notebooks (two volumes, published in 1959) and her Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks (1958) will be familiar with her attempt to derive everything distinctively Christian from Greek spirituality as well as to deny entirely Chrisianity's Hebraic origins. This fundamental argument—along with her admiration for Provençal civilization, for the Manichean and Catharist heresies—colors all her historical essays. I cannot accept Simone Weil's gnostic reading of Christianity as historically sound (its religious truth is another matter); nor can I fail to be offended by the vindictive parallels she draws between Nazism, Rome, and Israel. Impartiality, no more than a sense of humor, is not the virtue of a writer like Simone Weil. Like Gibbon (whose view of the Roman Empire she absolutely contradicts), Simone Weil as a historical writer is tendentious, exhaustive, and infuriatingly certain. As a historian she is simply not at her best; no one who disbelieves so fundamentally in the phenomena of historical change and innovation can be wholly satisfying as a historian. "

In the same review Sontag further describes (your heroine) Weil:

"Some lives are exemplary, others not; and of exemplary lives, there are those which invite us to imitate them, and those which we regard from a distance with a mixture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It is, roughly, the difference between the hero and the saint (if one may use the latter term in an aesthetic, rather than a religious sense). Such a life, absurd in its exaggerations and degree of self-mutilation—like Kleist's, like Kierkegaard's—was Simone Weil's. I am thinking of the fanatical asceticism of Simone Weil's life, her contempt for pleasure and for happiness, her noble and ridiculous political gestures, her elaborate self-denials, her tireless courting of affliction; and I do not exclude her homeliness, her physical clumsiness, her migraines, her tuberculosis. No one who loves life would wish to imitate her dedication to martyrdom nor would wish it for his children nor for anyone else whom he loves."

And this is someone whose ideas you cherish? While a few insights she might have - I'd be very leary of following the ravings of such a person as this who purports to have some true overall insight as to how things workl in the world and how we should live in it.

[Nick_A]

An interesting exchange 1.5 and I appreciate it

Well again you are mistaken - they are purely diametrically opposed concepts. Religion and religious "reasoning" are the antithesis of scientific thought. Religion - based upon beliefs based in faith that are entirely unverifiable and unfalsifiable - have no possibility of any congruence with scientic thought.

Now remember when I say the essence of religion, I do not mean its secularized version. When I speak of Christianity, I am not referring to Christendom.

It would take me a lot of posts to explain to you why the essence of religion and science are not mutually exclusive. But if it interests you, and you are willing, read chapter one of Jacob Needleman's "Sense of the Cosmos" The Universe, found here: http://www.rawpaint.com/library/intro.html

Cosmolgy is the appreciation of "levels of reality" It is primarily the domain of inner verification though quantum physics is becoming more aware of it,

The Armenian artist Aivazovsky painted a beautiful depiction of levels of reality in this work called "Chaos" (The Creation) 1841

http://www.armsite.com/painters/aivazovsky/pshow.phtml?painter=Aivazovsky&slide=10

Reading this I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry. Yeah the Koran provides us some great "perspective" on our worldly problems eh? Can't you see what it is you are advocating here? I don't really feel i need to say more.

True, that of course is the danger. This is why the true teachings always begin with bringing the student to appreciate their "nothingness" in the sense that the Centurion understood it. Of course when secularized it becomes adapted to the cause of prestige. We need a clean slate or what is built is built of a faulty foundation which only strengthens egotism and leads to the disasters we are all aware of.

We need peopel who think rationally about the human condition and our problems and who can look forward to where we are going to help "guide" science/scientific inquiry as best as we can. And this needs to be done in a systematic way - not just by consulting ancinet texts or inner voices (I mean what if you are channeling Hitler eh?).

You don't seem to want to consider that there are those that do not use the essence of religion to strengthen their egos with this channeling bit but to see it for what it is. When exposed to the light it loses its hold. I agree with you as far as the abuse of religion. My concern is for the value of the essence of religion that allows man to become himself.

What is this other level of existance. Describe it for us. WHat are its properties. On what basis do you make these claims? You can't - not in any real sense. Thus when you take it to the "next level" - YOU ARE JUST MAKING SH*T UP!

Just read the first chapter of "Sense of the Cosmos" linked to above as an introduction.

It is not for me to disprove "Higher conciencness" - it is for you to prove it - or more accuractly to prove that it comes from "God" - you can't really do either per se. BTW - we have plenty of avenues to attain "higher conciesness" or altered states - lots of ways of manipulating or altering brain functions with quite astonishing results...etc

Why put a label to higher consciousness if it is a turn off. Man has the potential for self consciousness. Normally he is in "sleep" as the ancient traditions suggest and needs to awaken and Man can awaken. It is logical then that there are higher and higher gradations of consciousness within our great universe and we can become more conscious if we worked on it. We don't and prefer to argue about shadows in Plato's cave.

God is "meaning" The highest meaning is an attribute of God. Can you be repulsed at the word "meaning?"

"Pity them my children, they are far from home and no one know them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the same light shines" Meister Eckhart

Simone is one of the few that I dedicate this quote to.

Simone Weil is beyond classification. You could put a Christian, an Atheist, a feminist, a communist, and a witch in the same room that normally would never be together and the one thing they would have in common is an appreciation for Simone Weil.

Terms like "Self hating Jew" do not make sense with her since she was global in perspective. The kind of self hate she felt is this awareness of being what Paul described as "The Wretcheed man."

I don't see where you get this idea that I deny the Armenian holocaust? Of course that horror occurred. Those like Simone and me to a lesser extent have come to see that holocausts are as a result of the human condition or as Paul said: the Wretched man." They are objective abnormalities. The task is how enough people can come to see them as such so as to make a difference. The past is the past. What do we need to make the future diferent from the past? Simone knew. Prof Needleman knows as do others. It begins with the the willingness to become open to the Socratic axiom to "Know Thyself."

Jesus said the world hates the message. Of course it is true which explains partially what is responsible for the Armenian holocaust. None of this is conscious. these are all unconscious reactions. This is why the world needs the authentic essence of religion to serve as a counter influence.

Simone had a profound love for God matched by her moral outrage
at man's humanity towards man. Simone had left Judaism and couldn't condemn the holocaust as a Jew but only as a human being.

Suzan Sontag is an earthy feminist and Simone's transcendence is a threat to this feminism. Here is an excerpt from The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil by Stephanie Strickland which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry to give another female perspective.

"Weil came to her philosophical and religious ideas by a path that included elite university training, factory work, potato digging, harvest in the vineyards, teaching philosophy to adolescent women, partisanship in trade unions, anarchistic Socialism, pacifism, rejection of pacifism, a conversion experience that did not lead her to joining ... a religion, exile in New York City, and employment by De Gaulle's government-in-exile in London.

Weil used her body as a tool as well as a weapon. She threw herself under the wheels of the same issues women are starving for answers to today: issues of hunger, violence, exclusion, betrayal of the body, inability to be heard, and self-hate. ...

"Weil, our shrewdest political observer since Machiavelli, was never deceived by the glamor of power, and she committed herself to resisting force in whatever guise. More 'prophet' than 'saint,' more 'wise woman' than either, she bore a particular kind of bodily knowledge that the Western tradition cannot absorb. Simone Weil belongs to a world culture, still to be formed, where the voices of multiple classes, castes, races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, can be respected. To achieve this culture is an impossible task, but, as Weil would remind us, not on that account to be forsaken.

Today we look to Weil for hope, for meditation, for the bridge a body makes. She knew that the truth had been 'taken captive,' and that we must 'seek at greater depth our own source,' because power destroys the past, the past with its treasures of alternative ideals that stand in judgment on the present."

As far as Simone's capacity for this simultaneous global love and love of God, it is also something beyond us.

http://www.integralscience.org/loveknowledge.html

Only a relative few are capable of achieving what I believe she did. But their influence is a deeply religious influence that is inspiring and gives us an indication of man's potential. Frankly, if these influences were to leave the world, I believe it would be doomed. As Simone suggests we do need the help of Grace.

[SoSarkissian]

I think we should rename this thread into ... hmmm ...
Nick_A Vs. 1.5 million ?

[Nick_A]

SoS, you make me feel outnumbered.

Pssst, where's your two cents, I need help.

[SoSarkissian]

SoS, you make me feel outnumbered.

Pssst, where's your two cents, I need help.

lol, I always try to avoid religious debates. I've said my opinion couple of times in different threads, and I can say one thing from reading your and 1.5 million's posts ...

the scale of logic in aligned in perfect center between both of you, no one can say one side has more logic than the other + I personally learned couple of thing from reading you two and I'm sure the rest should've also picked up some bits from here and there.

Hope you (both) can start thinking of saving some energy and try using it in other threads and topics ...

Just a thought tho