Re: Will I go to Hell for this?

On May 20, 9:10 pm, Larry Deack <c...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jez wrote:
But, as an Atheist, I'd like to say,
as far as I can tell, there are people
around who believe in 'Gods'.

I try to avoid them.

Do they have cooties?

This quote was a direct reference to how Einstein felt about how
most people read the quote about religion and science.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it."

This kind of distortion seems to be common and not just with
Einstein. It's obvious from this quote how the word "religion" was
understood "those of faith" as something other than what Einstein meant.

Language is a funny thing.

Laughing can be a funny thing too, Larry. I just read an article
which described Nieztsche as a *syphlitic, melancholic purveyor of
doom*. Reading Nietszche without a sense of irony is a misreading;
like for many people these symbols just go right over their heads and
they go on spreading more misinformation about author-ity. We spend
so much of our time and energy fixing these mis-apprehensions that it
truly is a war of attrition, that is, the war if there is one for the
truth about things. Whereas I may not be able to claim that Nieztsche
did not misapprehend some things, any honest reading can tell you what
he "truthfully" misapprehended. So identifying the distortions is
only the first step; explaining them is a different matter.

While we're on the subject about misinformation and distortion: Scott
Tenant was just here, and he gave a little spiel before he played
Leyenda. He described the meaning of the word *legend* and how it
applies to the piece. What he never said was that it was Segovia's
title for his own arrangment of Albeniz's Asturias, the actual source
of the piece and the actual source of the title. Those kinds of
little oversights, while not mean-spirited in the least re-
territorialize a lot of things and start polemics about things (for
instance with hero-worshiping students) that undermine the whole
geneology that's involved. Maybe Pepe told him never to mention
Segovia. Who knows?

David

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