Into the Wardrobe

I'm not religious... I am happy and content with not blindly following incomplete scriptures. If there is paradise in the end HOORAY for those of you that get there. I'm ok with the option of lights out, that's it at the end, or being reborn (whatever happens, happens).

I do not have to be religious to love Lewis's work.

I appreciate religions and I am fascinated by the whole worshipping thing. I refuse, however, to partake in the glaring hypocrisies, narrow mindedness and general ignorance (blindness) I have found various (typically Christian based) religions offer.

If anything we should be grateful for the open-world we now live, who wants to go back to the dark ages? Not me, I enjoy learning, reading, artwork and discovering things for myself, not having everything dictated to me.

I think someone wisely said, "I would rather live my life believing there was a God and have it turn out that there wasn't, than not believe and find out that there is."

Once again I see the curious idea that we are somehow 'more progressive' and 'more enlightened' than those in the Middle Ages.

If you like Lewis, you should LOVE Chesterton. Try 'The Everlasting Man', or 'Orthodoxy', or 'Heretics'.

Oh, and I quite agree on not bindly following incomplete Scripture.

A small excerpt from Chesterton's Orthodoxy, on narrow-mindedness and being free to believe in anything at all (and while the materialist is particularly addressed here, it can also be applicable to those that believe in anything or nothing at all):

In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
....
It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their law the "chain" of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to praise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank you" for the mustard.

If they were peanut butter cookies... (I miss PB more than any yummy stuff on the planet)

'Spasibo' for the Romans reference!

Inariae attempts to e-mail rusmeister peanut butter cookies and an additional years supply of his favorite brand of peanut butter. After failing miserably, she glares at her computer and bursts into tears...stupid technology.

Sorry...I'd try airmail, but I did that from England once and it was really painfully expensive.

There's no PB in Russia :shocked: ...!...!

I guess I'm not really justified in saying pazhaluista since I gave you no real cookies. But here's an e-hug of commiseration...

HUG!

Actually, it can occasionally be found in Moscow. But would you want to spend a day (2 hrs avg one way) traveling to a (major) city (like New York) and go looking in the major supermarkets hoping to get lucky and find a few 12-oz jars for $5 a whack? Oh and then it'seither public transport (exhausting) or driving and parking (risky) Then there are all of the traffic police that can stop you and take cash fines on the spot for any offense, real or imagined.

If I want it THAT bad, then I can occasionally have a little.