In A Letter To His Sister

To strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one's feelings and even one's conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but always with the eternal goal of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Nietzsche

Secret Goober Mentals

One of our best defenses against the national security state is the perennial proclivity of clandestine organizations to piss off their own employees.

Orlin Grabbe

Freud Turns On Himself

Was the concept of God that Freud rejected determined by his relation to his father?

And was Freud's atheism also determined by that relationship, instead of his alleged universalities of human nature?

After all, Freud himself said that his views applied to all human theorizing.

Material Needs Determine Materialism

MARX: Every aspect and thought is determined by social and economic factors. Material needs determine everything. Ideas and values are determined by the material realities of life. Material reality is the foundation on which the superstructure of ideas is erected. Hence, people's social and economics conditions determine what they think.

ME: What material needs and realities determined that theory itself?

Changing Minds

Minds are changed temporarily by force, but permanently by argument.

Heresy

Heresy is just the truth spoken prematurely.

The Rise of Atheism

Strangely enough, it was the rise of Protestantism that laid the foundation for the later emergence of atheism in the twentieth century. It was believed by some that the only way to liberate humanity from its bondage to the past was to attack this oppression's ultimate cause---the church.

But since not everyone could defeat the church militarily or politically, some developed the strategy of attacking its ideas, thereby undermining the credibility of its teachings. Atheism was seen as able to weaken and destroy the church, as well as to liberate from its repression.

Atheism merely extended Protestantism's criticism of the Catholic Church, without any need to promote the attractions of a godless world.

But it developed a sophistication as a world view in its own right. Now it was much more than merely a newfound intellectual freedom. A brave new world lay ahead...

Alistair McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism