The more pitiful theist

Originally posted by no1marauder
I've never actually seen you point out any facts. You parrot RCC propaganda lines and eventually these are revealed to be pathetic lies. Like the Inquistion legal procedures being an improvement over existing ones. Like Galileo having pamphlets handed out in Churches throughout Europe. Now it's Bruno was merely a magician. What will your Church come up with next?

Isn't life great? You were born at the pinnacle of time, the absolute apex which confers the highest degree of advantage of perspective for everything that came before now.

Get real, ya lousy excuse for an historical analyzer: you're nothing more than a Monday morning quarterback, and there's a game again this weekend that you won't be in, either.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Here's some magic for ya:

In The Ash Wednesday Supper Bruno was one of the first to argue for the existence of an infinite universe, which contained an infinite number of worlds similar to the Earth. In doing so, he rejected the limits of the Copernican system, which posited a finite universe limited by a fixed sphere of stars just beyond the s ...[text shortened]... ww.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/brun-f16.shtml

Sounds pretty "visionary" to me.

Cassirer is partially correct - except that Bruno wasn't speaking about human reason (as we understand the term) - but about gnosis or mystical knowledge (Trapp & Yates, p.271):

As to the immediate source of the new vision there can be no doubt. Bruno found the conceptions of infinite space and innumerable worlds, inhabited like our own, in Lucretius' De natura rerum from which he frequently quotes on these points in the De l'infinito universo e mondi and elsewhere. But he absolutely transforms the Lucretian notions (themselves derived, of course, from the Epicurean philosophy) by imparting to the innumerable worlds magical animation, totally absent from Lucretius' cold universe, and to the infinite and its contents the function of being an image of the infinite divinity-again a notion totally foreign to the agnosticism of Lucretius. Thus the godless universe of Lucretius, in which that pessimistic man took refuge from the terrors of religion, is transformed by Bruno into a vast extension of Hermetic gnosis, a new revelation of God as magician, informing innumerable worlds with magical animation, a vision to receive which that great miracle, the Magus man, must expand himself to an infinite extent so that he may reflect it within.

At the beginning of this chapter, I quoted a genealogy of wisdom expounded by Bruno in a speech at Wittenberg to show the sequence of prisca magia, or occultism, within which he placed Copernicus. It is highly significant that Lucretius also comes into that genealogy...

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Isn't life great? You were born at the pinnacle of time, the absolute apex which confers the highest degree of advantage of perspective for everything that came before now.

Get real, ya lousy excuse for an historical analyzer: you're nothing more than a Monday morning quarterback, and there's a game again this weekend that you won't be in, either.

You're obviously trying to get yourself back in the running. Somehow I think there were a few people around 1600 who thought burning a guy at the stake for thinking was a tad overboard.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Cassirer is partially correct - except that Bruno wasn't speaking about human reason (as we understand the term) - but about gnosis or mystical knowledge (Trapp & Yates, p.271):

As to the immediate source of the new vision there can be no doubt. Bruno found the conceptions of infinite space and innumerable worlds, inhabited like opernicus. It is highly significant that Lucretius also comes into that genealogy...

So what? He was a theist who believed that God created the universe and imbued it with life. I can see why your pals killed him for THAT.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Cassirer is partially correct - except that Bruno wasn't speaking about human reason (as we understand the term) - but about gnosis or mystical knowledge (Trapp & Yates, p.271):

As to the immediate source of the new vision there can be no doubt. Bruno found the conceptions of infinite space and innumerable worlds, inhabited like ...[text shortened]... opernicus. It is highly significant that Lucretius also comes into that genealogy...

There's a big difference between posting what people write about someone elses writing, as you are doing, and posting the person's writing itself. You ought to know that.

Originally posted by frogstomp
There's a big difference between posting what people write about someone elses writing, as you are doing, and posting the person's writing itself. You ought to know that.

He's not allowed to read Bruno, so he has no choice.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Unsurprising that a stooge like LH would have contempt for a man who wrote these words:

He who desires to philosophise must first of all doubt all things. He must not assume a position in a debate before he has listened to the various opinions, and considered and compared the reasons for and against. He must never judge or take up a position ...[text shortened]... ne which adheres to real things, and to a truth that can be understood by the light of reason."

Wow! Just because I point out (as modern Bruno-historians will, if you ask them) that Bruno wasn't really a scientist or mathematician, and that he was a mystic whose cosmology was based on traditional Gnostic philosophy, that makes it "contempt"?

As for the "man who wrote these words", he writes (in the very same work):

… they (the Egyptians) conceive that the life, which informs things according to two principal reasons, is owing to the two principal bodies which are next to our globe and maternal deity; that is, the sun and moon. Then they conceive life according to seven other reasons, derived from the seven wandering stars (LH: i.e. planets)... Wherefore in this is required that wisdom and judgement, that art industry and use of the intellectual light, which is sometimes less, and sometimes in greater abundance revealed to us by the intelligible sun, which habit is called magic….

… the stupid and senseless idolaters had no reason to laugh at the magical and divine worship of the Egyptians, who contemplated the divinity in all things … and knew, by means of the species in the womb of nature, how to receive those benefits which they desired of her … which (species) like diverse ideas, were diverse divinities in nature, who all centered at last in one Deity of deities, and fountain of ideas above nature.

From hence I believe is derived that Cabala of the Jews, the wisdom of which (of whatsoever kind it be) hath proceeded from the Egyptians, among whom Moses was educated.

EDIT: I wonder what the Enlightenment makes of Bruno calling those who question Egyptian magic "stupid and senseless idolaters".

Originally posted by no1marauder
Your source on the Galileo having pamphlets handed out in Churches throughout Europe was not a historian, but someone writing in a RCC rag. You could find no historian to substantiate that claim and withdrew it. Now it's back again.

Perhaps you should read some Bruno. Are you allowed to or are his works still on the RCC's banned list?

I withdrew it because of a lack of sufficient evidence on the Internet - not because you showed it to be false. There's a difference.

As to your whole "banned list" comment - as I said before, have the confidence in the correctness of your arguments to let them stand on their own without juvenile barbs.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I withdrew it because of a lack of sufficient evidence on the Internet - not because you showed it to be false. There's a difference.

As to your whole "banned list" comment - as I said before, have the confidence in the correctness of your arguments to let them stand on their own without juvenile barbs.

There's no proof on the internet or anywhere else. I don't have to disprove such a ridiculous assertion; it was your burden to show that such a statement was true. You failed, but that doesn't stop you from pretending that it MAY be true. Intellectual dishonesty at its finest.

Answer the question: are Bruno's books still on the RCC's banned list? Are you allowed to read them?

Originally posted by no1marauder
He's not allowed to read Bruno, so he has no choice.

LMFAO

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Wow! Just because I point out (as modern Bruno-historians will, if you ask them) that Bruno wasn't really a scientist or mathematician, and that he was a mystic whose cosmology was based on traditional Gnostic philosophy, that makes it "contempt"?

As for the "man who wrote these words", he writes (in the very same work):
[quote]… they (the Egyptia ...[text shortened]... akes of Bruno calling those who question Egyptian magic "stupid and senseless idolaters".

I suggest you actually try to understand it; your reading comprehension sucks. What Bruno is saying makes perfect sense and is a core belief of many philosophical systems.

Originally posted by no1marauder
So what? He was a theist who believed that God created the universe and imbued it with life. I can see why your pals killed him for THAT.

You're proving my point - but for his being put to death by the Inquisition, Bruno would've been a footnote in post-graduate textbooks on mediaeval esoteria long ago. A good comparison is Galileo - whose scientific contributions were significant enough that he would've been remembered even if his run-in with the Inquisition hadn't happened.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Wow! Just because I point out (as modern Bruno-historians will, if you ask them) that Bruno wasn't really a scientist or mathematician, and that he was a mystic whose cosmology was based on traditional Gnostic philosophy, that makes it "contempt"?

As for the "man who wrote these words", he writes (in the very same work):
[quote]… they (the Egyptia ...[text shortened]... akes of Bruno calling those who question Egyptian magic "stupid and senseless idolaters".

Unless you are just going to defend the stupid idolaters you ought to try and discern Bruno's meaning and maybe learn something that might free you of your chains.

Originally posted by no1marauder
There's no proof on the internet or anywhere else. I don't have to disprove such a ridiculous assertion; it was your burden to show that such a statement was true. You failed, but that doesn't stop you from pretending that it MAY be true. Intellectual dishonesty at its finest.

Answer the question: are Bruno's books still on the RCC's banned list? Are you allowed to read them?

I failed to find a source other than Johnston - but I have no reason to believe Johnston got a basic historical fact wrong. In fact, as I pointed out in that thread, an examination of the style of Galileo's letters and an understanding of the conventions of the time strongly suggest that Johnston was indeed right. Withdrawing an argument for the sake of expediency does not make it "intellectual dishonesty".

Answer the question: are Bruno's books still on the RCC's banned list? Are you allowed to read them?

How is this relevant to the discussion? Why can't you simply evaluate Bruno's philosophy without bringing the RCC into it? If you can't, then you're proving my point - Bruno is remembered simply as a stick to beat the RCC with, a poster-boy for the Enlightenment - not for his contributions to science or philosophy.

As for your question, IIRC the RCC hasn't had a "banned list" for nearly a century.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I failed to find a source other than Johnston - but I have no reason to believe Johnston got a basic historical fact wrong. In fact, as I pointed out in that thread, an examination of the style of Galileo's letters and an understanding of the conventions of the time strongly suggest that Johnston was indeed right. Withdrawing an argument for the sake ...[text shortened]...
As for your question, IIRC the RCC hasn't had a "banned list" for nearly a century.

"Who so itcheth to Philosophy must set to work by putting all things to the doubt."