tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19678732.post116187648839805569..comments2023-07-31T10:39:53.182-05:00Comments on The Blog of the American Chesterton Society: Paper and Pringles and Balls... and Saints!Nancy C. Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169395014931291729noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19678732.post-1162260752737859392006-10-30T20:12:00.000-06:002006-10-30T20:12:00.000-06:00Chesterton on elementary math and then some (two a...Chesterton on elementary math and then some (two and two make four):<BR/><BR/>Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.Kevin O'Brienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12239185608038738884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19678732.post-1162212399881442302006-10-30T06:46:00.000-06:002006-10-30T06:46:00.000-06:00Tom, just off the top of my head: "You cannot evad...Tom, just off the top of my head: "You cannot evade the issue of God; whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him." (Chesterton, Daily News Dec 12 1903)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19678732.post-1162167776859740062006-10-29T18:22:00.000-06:002006-10-29T18:22:00.000-06:00A GKC blog! A post that combines math and spiritua...A GKC blog! A post that combines math and spirituality. What one doesn't stumble across on the internet!<BR/><BR/>Other than some Father Brown stories, and a few posts that I've read here, I don't know much of GKC. <BR/><BR/>Word search for Euclid led me here. Math combined with spiritual things make is site irresistable.<BR/><BR/>Galileo's words: "God wrote the universe and the language that he used was mathematics.” <BR/><BR/>Any comment from GKC?tom sheepandgoatshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03519896568648043000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19678732.post-1161881087569397442006-10-26T11:44:00.000-05:002006-10-26T11:44:00.000-05:00Re: "Paradiso" of Dante's Divine Comedy, where (by...Re: "Paradiso" of Dante's Divine Comedy, where (by the "math" of St. Thomas Aquinas) he arranges the Choirs of Saints into orders by virtue. (For the life of me, I can never understand why people seem to be so much more interested in the orders of punishment in "Inferno" or of correction in "Purgatorio".<BR/><BR/>Perhaps because we are all sinners, and most of us realize this fact when we see all the evil inside of us and in the outside world. We know about heaven, but as St. Paul said about the person who claimed he had seen heaven, most of us have no idea what heaven will be like. And did St. Paul really care about the mathematical order of heaven other than knowing that only the pure and the virtuous are allowed to enter? And to what level of virtue in heaven should we aspire? (Couldn’t such an aspiration be considered as sin?)<BR/><BR/>The pessimists (like Calvinists and Puritans) delve on the punishment aspect. The Optimists, (like Mormons, who think everybody will get to some level of heaven, including the unbaptized who are in some “holding area” at the gates of heaven), ignore hell and deal with their mathematical order of heaven (I heard 3 or 7 levels of heaven for Mormons, not sure which). <BR/><BR/>On the other hand, most of us Realists, who know and care about heaven and hell, know that there is a real (and we hope small) chance we may end up in hell, and that most of us will very likely end up in Purgatory, if we don’t mess up too badly. (Isn’t that a truly scientific approach to heaven-seeking to consider these events as “probabilities”? :-) <BR/><BR/><BR/>Wild Goose.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com