Its most appreciated! I also note U & Ur efforts have brought Ff Life to a
higher plain in conversations with far less rancor than in Yrs past. Its well a
continuing learning experience not just 4 me as I have expressed but made 4 a
deeper & better understanding of much. It has also well enriched my TM
experience as well & I have often shared thought read here by U & others who
are not currently living in hte FF area. I visit the dome usually ever other
year & enjoy the enrichment from the MUM faculty classes I have been allowed to
attend 4 a few days or 2 or 3. I I rejoice in my having been so fortunate to
have visited U & Ur excellent wife at hte farm.Again in respect my thanks &
that of others who have read & learned from Ur knowledge shared often here.I
am, saving this post as well 4 many re reads & to better soak in this knowledge
& learn from it to help my & others inner lights.
Next time to FF IA I desire to have one of my wards a TM mediator now 21 Yrs
but an old soul meet Ur light & that of Ur wife as well, Doug again as
expressed by many friends thus, OUR, Thanks in respect.
-----Original Message-----
From: dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: FairfieldLife <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Jan 1, 2019 4:48 pm
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Freethinking
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Dear Col. Leed, Thanks for this appreciation.I particularly enjoy the link
below to the published paper that is written as a 'tongue in cheek' orthodox
indictment of free thinking. The particular names of free thinkers given in its
text are interesting to follow up on in context.
These links could also go along with this exploration of Free Thinkers and
Orthodoxy..
Separatists, In Quiet, European ancestral genealogy of transcendentalism
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/438032
Transcendentalist Fairfield
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/160262
Reference.Importing Transcendentalism (German) to America HISTORICAL NOTE
German ‘Free Thinkers’Turnvereins, American Turner Movement
Records,http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/collections/german-american/mss030
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought
William Leed writes:THANKS Doug !!! WOW! a real post TO, save , Learned
insightful & a joy to learn from & grow in SPIRIT from as well!! WOW! & for me
& now many others!
Again in great respect! THANKS!!
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote :
Freethinking and Orthodoxy..
Fundamentalism..
“We have to remember that fundamentalism is . . . a reaction to the natural
progress of society. And so when I see fundamentalism surge, I know that what
is really happening is that the natural progress of society is surging. And
fundamentalism is reacting to it. I choose to focus on the progress, not the
reaction.” Reza Aslan
A great ‘freethought’ listen, on your cell phone or computer.. Manley P. Hall,
an interesting 20th Century mystic freethinker. A lifelong lecturer he gave a
biographical lecture presentation on 17th Century William Penn’s free thought
‘Holy Experiment’. Penn’s freethinking venture became an early founding of
constitutional government and subsequently the State of Pennsylvania.
Manly P. Hall - William Penn, the Quaker, and His Holy Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuRD0-tTbr8
.. .
An Orthodox Indictment of L. Mott
This gives very interesting insight. A fun read as written in a voice of
'tongue in cheek'.
Reguler, The Orthodox indictment of spiritual regeneration movement: The case
of L Mott.
http://quakertheology.org/issue-10-mott-CEF-01.htm
.. .
Whitman
"Whitman believed in the Inner Light. In 1890, he told Horace Traubel, who
recorded Whitman's conversations from 1888 until the poet's death, that he
subscribed to Hicks's views of spirituality."
Anecdotes about Elias Hicks by Walt Whitman November Boughs essay "Elias
Hicks" 1888https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anecdotes_about_Elias_Hicks
Elias Hicks:
He preached that people could experience salvation without the aid of ordained
clergy. God dwells within every person, he explained, and reveals truths to
each one by means of the Inner Light. Employing their free will, people could
choose salvation by submitting to the will of God revealed to them, or they
could choose sin by rejecting God's will to follow their "independent will"
(Hicks 336).
>From 1779 through 1829, the Quaker minister journeyed more than forty thousand
>miles to locations primarily in the Northeast; but he also made trips to
>Virginia (1797, 1801, 1819, 1828), to the northern shore of Lake Ontario,
>Canada (1803, 1810), and to Richmond, Indiana (1828).
>https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_192.html
... ..
“And this power flowed through him -- he became its agent -- whenever he put
himself in a position to receive it. It had drawn him also to the Quakers of
New Bedford, who were having a schism and revival in 1828. He visited them
often, especially Mary Rotch. “What is this Inner Light?” he asked her. “It is
not a thing to be talked about,” she replied. But he drew her out, and she said
she had been driven inward, in these years of the Quaker Schism,” The Life of
Emerson, Brooks.
... ..
Creeds
Creed..a set of beliefs or aims that guide someone's actions,a brief
authoritative formula of religious belief.a creed is a set of beliefs,
principles, or opinions that strongly influence the way people live or work
creed is a religion.
any system, doctrine, or formula of religious belief, as of a denomination. any
system or codification of belief or of opinion. an authoritative, formulated
statement of the chief articles of belief, as the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene
Creed, or the Athanasian Creed.
.. . /
“In the 18th and 19th century, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were
deists, arguing that the nature of God can only be known from a study of nature
rather than from religious ‘revelation’. In the 18th century, "deism" was as
much of a 'dirty word' as "atheism", and deists were often stigmatized as
either atheists or at least as freethinkers by their Christian
opponents.[13][14] Deists today regard themselves as freethinkers, but are now
arguably less prominent in the freethought movement than atheists.”
.. .
W. E. Channing,
in Channing’s sequence of time in the coming on of Emerson and others, bringing
a closure to Puritanism in New England..
“The divine attributes,” Channing writes, “are first developed in ourselves and
hence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is,
is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity.”
“When Channing whistled, if his friends had only known it, that was the end of
Calvinism for Boston.” The Life of Emerson, Brooks.
.. . Freethought is the philosophy that man rules his own destiny, rejecting
the notion that there is any kind of divine intervention in life. Belief
centers on the idea that nature and Natural Law guide mankind and that the use
of reason, epistemology, and science are the means by which life is validated.
Freethought came to Wisconsin with the massive influx of German immigrants in
the 1850s, particularly those known as "Forty-eighters" who had fled autocratic
German states after the failed revolts of
1848.https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS1926
1850’s.. Freethinkers refused to accept political absolutism and the authority
of a church, religion, or its supposedly inspired scripture. They insisted on
the freedom to form religious opinions on the basis of intellectual reasoning
powers and not on blind, unquestioned faith. Freethinking became fashionable in
the German state of Prussia during the reign of Frederick the Great, who ruled
from 1740-53, within a period known as the "Age of Reason." "Freethinkers" Of
the Early Texas.. https://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/1998/april98/scharf.html
Freethought, Vs. the true believer..
true believer. noun. One who is deeply, sometimes fanatically devoted to a
cause, organization, or person: “a band of true believers bonded together
against all those who did not agree with them” ( Theodore Draper )
: a person who professes absolute belief in something: a zealous supporter of a
particular cause
...true believers who fought the good fight even when it was out of fashion.
..it's impossible to argue with those true believers, as they think any
counterevidence, is proof of an evil conspiracy.
True-believershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
.. .
“On the other hand, according to Bertrand Russell, atheists and/or agnostics
are not necessarily freethinkers. As an example, he mentions Stalin, whom he
compares to a "pope": what I am concerned with is the doctrine of the modern
Communistic Party, and of the Russian Government to which it owes allegiance.
According to this doctrine, the world develops on the lines of a Plan called
Dialectical Materialism, first discovered by Karl Marx, embodied in the
practice of a great state by Lenin, and now expounded from day to day by a
Church of which Stalin is the Pope. […] Free discussion is to be prevented
wherever the power to do so exists; […] If this doctrine and this organization
prevail, free inquiry will become as impossible as it was in the middle ages,
and the world will relapse into bigotry and obscurantism.”— Bertrand Russell,
The Value of Free Thought. How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of
Mental Slavery
The “kidnapped” monument to German freethinkers in the Texas hill country
https://medium.com/k%C3%BChner-kommentar/the-kidnapped-monument-to-german-freethinkers-in-the-texas-hill-country-4aee0c1f518c
.. .
"What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds
them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was
young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his
thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he
finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however
odd his conclusions may seem.".."The person who is free in any respect is free
from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name,
he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his
own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a
man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker."— Bertrand Russell,
The Value of Free Thought. How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of
Mental Slavery, from the first paragraph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought
