The Meddlesome Priest :

    Google 'ideas of absolute beauty' and the most depressing array of images pop up. Most of them are images of scantily clad women. Going much deeper into the search produces images of naked men starting with  Michelangelo's  David. The modern world or at least the modern digital world seems incapable of imagining ideas of absolute beauty. It's depressing because whole generations that derive their 'knowledge' solely from the internet are ignorant of the very idea that connects Reality, Truth, and Goodness.  It's called Absolute Beauty. Here's how.    For the past 48 years, term after term, I've been the lucky recipient of student papers on the subject of human abortion. Comparing the popular perception of human abortion at the beginning of my academic career with what it is today can be traced through those student term papers over the years. In 1966, when I began to teach philosophy at Westfield State College (now a University), the beauty of ...

    MINDS THAT MATTER TOP 50 SHOWS: THE VIRTUAL STATE AND THE FALL OF EMPIRES author  Mychilo Cline  with Vanessa Patterson, Dr. Paul Bishop, Dean Doug Hersh, and co-host  Neil Kreisel Neil Kriese l Listen and Enjoy! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79076060/082813minds.mp3 --- Cordially Professor Mark McIntire

phobia (n):  "irrational fear, horror, aversion," 1786, perhaps on model of similar use in French, abstracted from compounds in  -phobia , from Greek  -phobia , from  phobos  "fear, panic fear, terror, outward show of fear; object of fear or terror," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer)      J ust because I don't like onions doesn't mean I have an onion-phobia. I just don't like onions. I don't like anything about them; their taste, texture or the fact that, to me, they overpower the flavor of all they contact. Though I just don't like onions it would be silly to say I was afraid of the onion, no? Same with rap music. Do I have rap-phobia because I just don't like rap music? Am I unjustly discriminating against the onion or rap music because I don't care for either? Apparently, according to one modern reasoning mistake the answer is 'yes'. I'm a mean, nasty and psychologically disturbed individu...

   Reaction to our former post, Absolute Evil Exists , has been swift and robust. Many deny the post's affirmative argument. Only about 38% of comments and emails agreed. One reader said, "Well I don't know about 'absolute' but evil certainly does exist." A few other respondents complained that if the case was made for the existence of Absolute Evil, then this implied an equally strong case for the existence of Absolute Good can also be made. Absolutely! Let's examine that case.    In Paris recently, a young Muslim man, an immigrant to France from the nation of Mali, showed the world that Absolute Good abounds all around us even in midst of a destitute instance of Absolute Evil by others. Without a thought to his own life, he hid shoppers in a Jewish deli out of the way from the follow-on assassin to the Charlie Hebdo assassinations earlier on that day. Even a fter the gunman had already killed people during the hostage taking in the kosher deli that m...

   Between 2011 and 2014 MINDS THAT MATTER broadcast over 152 radio interviews on AM 1290 Santa Barbara with Writers, Artists, College Presidents, Middle East Scholars, Honors Students, Non-Profit Foundation Leaders, and World Visionaries in Virtual Reality, Politics, Art and Science It was my pleasure to host all of these shows and add to my life of ideas. I'd like to share these interviews with you here on my blog,  The Meddlesome Priest.  Each week I will post a link to one of our top 50 shows for your entertainment, and enlightenment. Hopefully, we can solicit your commentary and provoke your ideas you can share with the rest of us.  We begin with my September 8, 21010 interview of Dr. Gayle Beebe, President of Westmont College in Montecito, California, one of the top 100 small Liberal Arts College in the United States. Our topic:   Making of the Liberal Arts Mind Click to Enjoy: Dr. Gayle Beebe interview by Mark McIntire Website: http:...

    Were the assassinations of Charlie Hebdo et al immoral? Absolutely. Is it immoral to conspire to lure, rape, torture and murder children? Absolutely.  My Liberal academic, atheist, cultural relativist friends often mock my advocacy of moral absolute good/evil and tease me for examples. Well, two examples have presented themselves recently. One example is a US Government cybersecurity official who conspired to sexually torture and murder children. The second is the group of French Jihadist who claims their god is the ringleader of assassins that orders the death of anyone who does not worship him. First, we have the example of one Timothy DeFoggi who conspired with others to rape, torture and kill children to fulfill his fantasies. This is, in my opinion, an example of absolute evil without any logical possibility of justification with or without mental competence factored in. Timothy DeFoggi, 56, formerly of Germantown, Maryland, was convicted on Aug. 26, 2014 of...

  Pretty  scary  stuff don't you suppose? Scientists are putting up posters announcing that the scientific debate is over. What could possibly be more unscientific than making such a claim? And the 'climate change'  controversy  is not the only arena of ideas where otherwise rational people demand an end to debate so we can 'move on'.  Distribution of wealth, homosexual marriage,  Sharia Law, abortion, death penalty, marijuana, and illegal immigrants all have their vociferous advocates, mostly from the political left, who actively try to suppress real debate on these opinion laden issues. How did a nation that once prided itself on a robust life of ideas expressed in the market-place devolve into a Tower of Babel?    Each semester when treating ethical and moral arguments in my  Critical  Thinking class there arises a perennial chorus of students who chant ‘Well…who’s to say what’s right and wrong.” ...