Catching up with my reading I note Christopher Hitchens had a piece in the Weekend Australian just gone. He begins by saying:
"The proper task of the 'public intellectual' might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem".

..I felt heartened reading it after the goings on here!

But then Hitchens goes on to argue quite the opposite in the context of 9/11, indeed to condemn an intellectual propensity to complicate some issues that are "simple really", 9/11 being his case in point.
And indeed he makes a lot of sense, calling the events of that day a "totalitarian outrage" and condemning those various pusillanimous voices that have implicitly sought to defend or mitigate the outrage.
Hitchens is a persuasive polemicist and as so often in my experience, I was initially inclined to agree, but having mulled it over I don't, and not because everything is finally equivocal, but because it's the terms of his condemnation that allows him to harangue "large numbers of the intellectual class". That position was bald outrage at the events of 9/11, which nothing could excuse. Yet it's only a fixed-perspective that "seems" to eliminate equivocation in anything--even looking in a microscope--that "corrects" the wonted parallax and makes matters seem simple. Hitchens characteristically goes on to reduce the events, ten years on, to the simplest possible binary terms, us against them; Bin Laden's termination and the probable collapse of al-Qa'ida being "part vindication of the superiority of 'our' civilization", in as much as it is not "a prisoner of 'faith'".
In the next breath Hitchens talks of the "battle against casuistry and bad faith”—bad faith being a denial of the existential notion that we always have the freedom to choose--even negative choices like suicide, or the classic one, to starve in the streets.And here we have the ultimate libertarian rationale (liberal rationalism) (ironically derived from Sartre!)
cont.

cont..
for Western inequities and, ergo, the status quo: a system that promotes individuality has no time for collectivisms like theocracy, which is the ultimate in bad faith and leads to totalitarianism.
One has to admire the rudimentary logic in what, however, I take to be Hitchens’s conservatism; an impromptu “philosophy” of neoliberalism, an ingenious rationale that cuts through equivocation as readily as a butcher’s knife cuts through flesh. Yet even a “totalitarian outrage” like 9/11 can only be seen as such in geopolitical isolation, as Hitchens sees it, which is most certainly not the perspective of those intellectuals he condemns, whose perspectives, ideally, strive to be omniscient.
There’s no doubt that the left is predisposed to blame the US, but it’s simplistic to reduce complexities to such binaries and it’s as much the (albeit incongruous) responsibility of the right to consider the other point of view as it is the left’s. In any case it’s nonsense to call it totalitarianism when the West is proportionately as religious, and diverse, as Muslim countries, and just as prone to bad faith: self-denying adherence to an ideology, even when it’s one that claims to “be” individualistic. Bad faith can only be consciously indulged. Nothing is simple, but has to be seen as part of the big picture, not as a defence, but in an effort to understand complex dynamics and grow. And that’s the trouble with Ditchkins, they’re so busy being objective, myopic, that they’ve forgotten how to be self-reflexive and assess their own ideology critically--to eliminate themselves from the analysis like scientists.
Which is not to condone 9/11; I agree with Hitchens that it can only be seen as an outrage; but not as some random act of totalitarianism, akin to an act of God. That it was an outrage doesn't mean it was unprovoked or that the US was blameless. Hitchens seems to think it does; that it’s not complicated at all, and on par with the Holocaust.
Anyway, after reading Hitchens I feel vindicated, indeed prescient, in my stance above. I at least am not guilty of bad faith.

Hey! don't mind me....Iam just throwing some wood on the fire....its a bit cold tonight:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEt20PgKmcU&feature=related

cactus

cactus../my server dont allow for youtube uploads
so if you could relate generally a clue as to where the twormhole[tube] takes the thread it would help

anyhow...im up tonight as well
re reading..'the jesus report''

i like to take notes...and in the 1st chapter
he desribes jesus[according to roman oficial 'lentulus']

generally a 5 foot tall palestinian..with nut brown hair
blue grey eyes..''he is cheerfull and in seriousness;...sometimes he weeps..but no one has seen him smile'

but that wasnt the main point..he makes it that those not jew
will miss much of what he said..[and this is the source of much iof that we call creed

johannes lehman..further reveals..some other clues
[using his parrable]..

quoting the sower parrable..'when one heareth[readeth]..the word of the kingdom..[spirit/heaven]..[of god]..and understandeth IT not..!

and then...when his deciples asked why he speaks in parrable
he replied..''because its given to you to know....the mysteries of heaven...'

''

for whosoever so hath
to him shall be given
and he shall have abundance''

''because they in seeing it not''
[athiest's..and materialists/literalists]
''heaer it not,,neither do 'they',,understand''

this brings me to the wedding of canna
that egsemplifies the miss comprehentions
that begins with the words..'on the 3rd day'

which is as jahannes explains simply
means on the 3rd day..following the sabbath..[wed]
virginal weddings were done on tuesday..but farmers often used wedingsday[wed]

anyhow my point was leading to the handwash jars
a ritual in those days...most essential to cleanlyness
that involved up to 7 jars...especially prior to eating

note that feeding 4000/5000
is easy to give them..[all they wished to eat]
if you got no handwash jars on the mount...

this also explains
why the extra food..

[that others were willing to share..but couldnt 'eat'..
with unclean hands..and a VERY clever seating arrangement..;oppisite each other..[some might have feared..their brother..telling the rabbi]

[that parrable is re the ability of faith/ritual
to overrule..*everything else..[to wit..creed/rules..lol]

anyhow thats enough pearl before swine
who will only trample it..not seeing it has value

let the blind dorkins
lead the blinded flock

[athiest rule
number too]

Imagine the state of affairs in Australia if we allow all the religious crack pot believers free to impose their laws and beliefs on all of us. The fundamentalist bible bashers would throw out the text books and the new school science course would include zoology based on Noah and his ark, biology from Adam and Eve. Australia would attack the Nation of Niue (population 1400) on the grounds they are developing coconuts of mass destruction , all justified on the basis of the Augustine creed of just war. The legal system would be replaced with Sharia law and instead of a $200 fine and the loss of 3 points for speed in your horse and cart (the Amish got rid of the cars) the council ranger will cut off your feet so they can’t reach the carts accelerator any more. On every street corner there would be prophets delivering the pope’s message of “stop it or you’ll all go bind!” the new Big Mac, which you obtain from the Temple of Mac, will no longer consist of “ Two all beef patties, special sauce, etc!” The Hindus got rid of the beef patties and made us all dust ourselves with bright pink powder in reverence to the gods, and don’t we have lots and lots of them these days. TV ads for the flab buster will be banned by the Reverend Fred Nile (Our new State Minister for Morality) as they show decadent women exposing their mid bits and replaced with adds from the Reverend Benny Hinn extolling the virtues and divine healing properties of his glow in the dark Jesus figurines which can be obtained from the Benny Hinn Ministries for just 10 easy payments of $49.95 plus postage and handling, call within the next 15 minutes and receive a Saint Peter doll absolutely free. Oh what a wonderful World it would be, I can’t wait.

Paul1405,
You are the true crackpot atheist extremist. Typical irrational presentation of others truth. Similarly with David who assumes he has all the answers to the universe and any belief of a intelligent mind behind the universe is just as relative to fairy stories. Self delusional crackpots deriding with childish misinformtion others opinions.