> On Sun, 14 Sep 1997, Nathaniel Hall wrote:
>
> > 1)Contradictions cannot exist.
>
> Why is this so very important, Nateman?
>
> What if they can exist, but only in a limited number of areas? Would
> it
> be worthwhile to explore those areas and find their limits?
>
> -Prof. Tim
Philosophy far from the idle pursuit of mental manstrubation in ivory
towers is the most important thing a person can have. Your beliefs
determine what you think is right and wrong, what laws you strive to see
pass or simply ignore. It decides even what you are willing to fight and
die for or even if you should fight and die. It is the prime mover of
history and the philosophers far from being the boring know-it-alls who
live poorly in some forgot place of the world are truely the soldiers on
the front line of battle. From thier ivory tower desend the beliefs and
values that reach the ears of the people in power and those who can put
them there. It is those values which can lead to peace or war, freedom
or slavery, truth or Bill Clinton. Our battles fought out here will lead
someday perhaps to brave young men dieing in battle. It won't happen
tommorow, it won't happen next year but if the ideas have a powerful
enough influence it will happen! Chirstianity took centuries to take
root but once it became firmly in place it caused a dark cloud to desend
on the face of Europe that held back civilization for a thousand years.
That is why it is so Important Proffesor. That is why I fight. I fight
for the mind, for the right to think and I will take on anything that I
honestly believe is a threat to that. Such as making room for
"contradiction in a limited amount of areas". To me that is the
equivilent of saying "why not make room for a limited amount of poison?"
I suspect Tim that you think of this as more of an intellectual game
than as something of importance. Sometimes I play too. But for today at
least I'm not.
The Nateman