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quotes. reading _Jamaica Farewell_
quotes from Jamaica Farewell by Morris Cargill
It seems to have become fashionable to deny the existence of any value system or Natural Law which stands on its own over and above anyone's subjective wishes. But the trouble is that if the concept of Natural Law is to be logically defended, it can be defended positively only on the basis of theism, which sets a lot of problems.
One rather negative way of defending Natural Law is to take a look at the consequences of opposing it. If we take seriously the views of those who deny the existence of Natural Law, then there is no logical reason for saying life is anything but the accidental result of the random movement of particles; as if some ape, hammering away long enough at the keyboard of a typewriter, will not only write all the works of Shakespeare but will invent the universe. Nor would there be any logical reason for denying that man's mind is but a brief interlude of consciousness in a universal process of entropy. If thinking is only a biochemical effect, then our thoughts have nothing but biochemical significance.
I have a habit of writing down odd bits and pieces of things that appeal to me, and I go to my notebook and find a paragraph I copied from C.S. Lewis. He wrote, "Every particular thought (whether it is a judgement of fact or a judgement of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained without remainder as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know that what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true, then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. If it is true, we can know no truth; it cuts its own throat."
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There are certain things which are not fashionable to mention nowadays in spite of the fact that we pride ourselves that there is nothing we cannot say. We feel that we have put religion and sex in their proper places; chiefly, I suspect, by diminishing one and exaggerating the other. We place great score upon our scientific approach, but in the process of debunking our orthodoxies, we create new taboos.
It is not, for example, intellectually respectable to admit to a happy childhood. One is supposed, nowadays, to emerge from childhood a bleeding mass of psychological scar tissue caused by parental villains who stand condemned whichever way they plead--either for selfish overprotection or insensitive neglect. Since we are no longer allowed to blame our sins upon the Devil, we blame them upon our parents or upon our environment because, of course, it would be quite intolerable to blame them upon ourselves.
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It has been said a thousand times that the only creative endeavor over which any of us have full control is the living of our own lives.
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Only the second-rate are vain, pretentious, and difficult.
It seems to have become fashionable to deny the existence of any value system or Natural Law which stands on its own over and above anyone's subjective wishes. But the trouble is that if the concept of Natural Law is to be logically defended, it can be defended positively only on the basis of theism, which sets a lot of problems.
One rather negative way of defending Natural Law is to take a look at the consequences of opposing it. If we take seriously the views of those who deny the existence of Natural Law, then there is no logical reason for saying life is anything but the accidental result of the random movement of particles; as if some ape, hammering away long enough at the keyboard of a typewriter, will not only write all the works of Shakespeare but will invent the universe. Nor would there be any logical reason for denying that man's mind is but a brief interlude of consciousness in a universal process of entropy. If thinking is only a biochemical effect, then our thoughts have nothing but biochemical significance.
I have a habit of writing down odd bits and pieces of things that appeal to me, and I go to my notebook and find a paragraph I copied from C.S. Lewis. He wrote, "Every particular thought (whether it is a judgement of fact or a judgement of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained without remainder as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know that what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true, then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. If it is true, we can know no truth; it cuts its own throat."
===============
There are certain things which are not fashionable to mention nowadays in spite of the fact that we pride ourselves that there is nothing we cannot say. We feel that we have put religion and sex in their proper places; chiefly, I suspect, by diminishing one and exaggerating the other. We place great score upon our scientific approach, but in the process of debunking our orthodoxies, we create new taboos.
It is not, for example, intellectually respectable to admit to a happy childhood. One is supposed, nowadays, to emerge from childhood a bleeding mass of psychological scar tissue caused by parental villains who stand condemned whichever way they plead--either for selfish overprotection or insensitive neglect. Since we are no longer allowed to blame our sins upon the Devil, we blame them upon our parents or upon our environment because, of course, it would be quite intolerable to blame them upon ourselves.
===============
It has been said a thousand times that the only creative endeavor over which any of us have full control is the living of our own lives.
===============
Only the second-rate are vain, pretentious, and difficult.