FM> I sense that you take the position more often than not that YOU are
 FM> carefully analyzing matters while the other party is merely following
 FM> some favorite and nice-sounding feelings. If that is more comforting for
 FM> you then you should declare that up front and at the beginning, David,
 FM> so that the other person in the dialogue will know what to expect and
 FM> that her/his/its thought is not going to be measured very carefully or
 FM> analyzed very much in detail but is going to be more or less shrugged
 FM> off with a few well chosen phrases.
 DM> Yes! "up,front" I read and reason what you say as best I can, in hope my
 DM> responses are returned in kind.  Perhaps!!!  you expect more from me
 DM> than I am. You are much further along an academic learning curve that at
 DM> my age, I'll never reach. You have already forgotten what I have yet to
 DM> read.  If ??? I can achieve some "well chosen phrases", I am most most
 DM> happy for that ........!
   I didn't really mean to be overly harsh and certainly not to offer any
academic credentials as a stand-in for the way I view the world.  My wife 
ill
be glad to certify to you quite fully ALL of my imperfections and 
nadequacies
(grin).  Like my mother, her decided "feeling" is that although THIS Cassius
certainly doesn't have a "lean and hungry look" he is often deemed to "think
too much..." but he doesn't think HE is dangerous - just that that which
occupies is thoughts contain some of the deadliness that surrounds us as you
will see in another post I made today.  
   You mention that you were raised a Catholic and I assume you mean a Roman
Catholic.  I think many of us emerge into adult life from some type of early
religious training.  I know it is difficult to explain the necessity to come
to some kind of firmer ground in the approach to life after viewing the
obvious inconsistencies and hypocrisies of institutions which must always 
eal
with the herd.   It really is NOT, I think, a matter of education in the
typical sense of that word.  I think I give a bit more credence to that
"desire to know" that is quite real as an impulse than you are willing to
give.  Relativism isn't attractive to me.  I'd really prefer the attachment 
o
either "theism" or "atheism" to some anomalous brand of relativism which
judges all winds to blow the same kind of weather.  I would surely not trust
"feeling," but psychologically I surely know myself to have a lot of that as
it shows up in many ways all of the time.  
   I try to make certain that what I experience of the universe is solidly
that which thinking and spiritually sensitive human beings have experienced
and chronicaled throughout that "history" that gives meaning to the term
"man."  
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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