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e-mail: jordantheistDELETETHIS@bellsouth.net
Meet Mikko
Mikko, I've inserted comments into the body of your e-mail using brackets
[].
"
http://www.theism.net/authors/zjordan
-----Original
Message-----
From: Mikko Tanni [mt63532_DELETEtHIS(at)uta.fi]
Sent:
To: Jordan
Subject:
Humanists
Hello,
Thank you for
the interesting web site of yours; there are a lot of [conversion] testimonies
on the Net, but I find only a few of them really interesting, however yours
make an exception. This is not to say that the experiences are not valuable,
they certainly are but often they are not very useful in apologetic debates.
[I understand. I
praise God for tailoring me as He did.]
Anyways, I'd
like to bother you with several questions, concerning mostly social issues, but
because I am not sure if you're interested, I thought I'd better ask permission
first.
[I am interested
and appreciate your considerate approach.]
For example, at
the moment I am interested in how secular humanists, from your experience, feel
about TV-/movie violence? Do they deny the connection between TV and violent
behavior?
[From my experience, yes, they deny it. To them, it is
merely reality; Christians (often according to many Humanists) just cannot deal
with reality. The Bible warns us that man will turn from God and pursue earthly
drives and pleasures. We are, indeed, "Oddballs" by the world's
standards. Nonetheless, we as Christians are no longer of the world.
Humankind's shift toward humanism, to me, is merely a sign of the biblical end
times.
I highly recommend (if you have access to it) a book I
referenced in my testimony by author Tim LaHaye
titled
If you wonder
why I'd ask something like that it's because I am a student of social sciences;
communication sciences and audiovisual media culture are one of my subjects.
However, the question is not related to my studies. :-)
[Nonetheless, it
is a GOOD question either way!]
Yours,
[Yours,
as well. I remain at your service if I can be of further assistance or have
failed at satisfying your inquiry. By the way, may I include this
correspondence in my new E-Mail Mail Bag page (http://www.theism.net/authors/zjordan/emailbag_files/emailbag.htm)?]
In Him,
"
-----Original
Message-----
From: Mikko Tanni [mt63532_DELETEtHIS(at)uta.fi]
Sent:
To: G. Zeineldé
Jordan
Subject: RE:
Humanists
Hello there, and thank you for the answer.
For example, at the moment I am interested in how secular
humanists, from your experience, feel about TV-/movie violence? Do they deny
the connection between TV and violent behavior?
[From my experience, yes, they deny it. To them, it is merely reality; Christians (often according to many Humanists) just cannot deal with reality. The Bible warns us that man will turn from God and pursue earthly ...]
This doesn't
surprise me at all, least because I have come to that conclusion, too, but
because humanists HAVE to deny the media influence. Humanist prefer so see
subjects/individuals as a _source_ of the meanings that shape them, where as
postmodernists see subjects/individuals as an _effect_
of the meanings they have been imposed to. That is, an individual doesn't have
sense of morals because he is a "moral being", but rather because
he/she has been "programmed" to think he/she is such.
Obviously, direct
effects are unusual, but it is a straw man to claim that media doesn't have
_any_ influence on its audiences, just because the effects are not direct. The
reason, why we don't see (more) people killing each other once watching an
action movie, is because they might not have a good reason for it; but if they
did, let's say in a conflict situation, the subconscious effects might trigger
violence.
So, having no
direct influence doesn't mean that the movie didn't have any influence; in
fact, there's body of evidence and arguments for psychological (subconscious)
and cognitive (changes in knowledge) effects. There is also influence in a
semiotic sense, as a change in our system of signs (representations of the
world). I find the latter the most interesting, as it makes many of the
anti-Christian attitudes possible.
>...drives and pleasures. We are, indeed, "Oddballs" by the world's standards. Nonetheless, we as Christians are no longer of the world. Humankind's shift toward humanism, to me, is merely a sign of the biblical end times.
A first sign,
maybe. IMHO humanism is no longer a real philosophy, but rather a weak
practice; in many ways it is just a form of atheist apology, a way of keeping
people out of theism.
>I highly recommend (if you have
access to it) a book I referenced in my testimony by author Tim LaHaye titled
It sounds
interesting, although I don't doubt at all that a battle exists. In fact, from
reading academic literature, it's obvious that a (post) modern society is
incredibly political. I read Orwell's "1984" as a freshman in the
university, and that was a huge turning point for me; I think that it, some way
or other, started my dissent from humanism (although it might have started
before).
>...my thinking which ultimately led to my openness in revisiting Christ's resurrection. I am guessing by your e-mail address that you are foreign. If...
Shouldn't it
have been obvious from my English? ;-) Yes, I am a Finn.
>...so, acquiring an
out-of-print
I appreciate
it, and obviously I am interested in the book, but there might be others who
actually need it more. :-)
>...a few friends who might have a Web link that may serve you just as well. I also copied J.P.Holding who has a fulltime ministry.
I know J.P.H.
quite well. I've been in contact with him for some two years.
>[Yours, as well. I remain at your
service if I can be of further assistance or have failed at satisfying your
inquiry. By the way, may I include this correspondence in my new E-Mail Mail
Bag page (http://www.theism.net/authors/zjordan/emailbag_files/emailbag.htm)?]
Yes you may,
but I'd like to see my email-address hidden from the Spam-robots; like this:
"mt63532_DELETEtHIS(at)uta.fi". A human
reader is able to figure out the real address fairly easy.
Now, I'd have
an additional question of the title:
Apparently, a
favorite topic among the freethinkers, in those organizations where you
belonged to, was debating about the evils of Christianity and theism; is that
correct? Nevertheless, did you ever hear anyone talking about the postmodern
threat (to humanism) - I'd except that most of the freethinkers you knew,
called themselves humanists? Would any of them recognize names like Althusser, Foucault or Derrida? What I am after is: do
humanists recognize the contradiction between their ideology and the
contemporary philosophy? For instance, humanists, even today, call man a
measure of everything, while Foucault proclaimed:
"As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date, and one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared ... then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea."
Anyways, that's
it for this time, thank you for the answer (once more). (Just let me know, if I
am asking questions you don't find interesting.)
Yours,
Mikko Tanni:
http://www.uta.fi/~mt63532/
If necessary, remove "_RemoveMe" and ".invalid" to reply.
"Only Amigans
could argue about the AmigaTwo before anybody has
even got their hands on an AmigaOne." - comp.sys.amiga.misc
e-mail:
jordantheistDELETETHIS@bellsouth.net
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