Re: mapping religious thought space

From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 21:58:03 MST


In a message dated 1/23/00 16:31:02, robert owen wrote:

>Perhaps you mistakenly took as the referent for the pronoun
>"it" in "it is essentially" "Atheism", and there is perhaps some
>referential ambiguity here. If so, I apologize and revise:
>
> "[nihilism] is essentially an anti-monarchical/
> anti-christian term adopted by Marx....."

Correct; I had read the sentence as "[atheism] is essentially,
etc."

>This sentence is true in fact and not true by definition.

I'll take your word for that, although that's not a connection
that pops up in may mind.

However, I still question why you would place nihilism and
atheism closely together. The sentence above is the evidence
you provide for this assertion. So a discredited, now-unpopular
movement was both nihilistic and atheistic. So? You can
find *some* marginal movement combining almost any two concepts.
The Communist movement defined neither atheism nor nihilism,
and now that it's basically on the ash heap of history, I
don't think it's redefinition attempts are relevant.



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