Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 00:10:43 +0100
From: hariette spierings <hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Jesus , Engels and Herr Karl Duhring


>THIS IS A HERR KARL DUHRING MESSAGE 
>
>
>
>
>KARL CARLILE:Your references to Engels are ironical in the light of the fact
>that Engles believed in god.
>
>
>HUGH RODWELL: Substantiate!
>
>KARL: Engels was a pioneer of dialectical materialism. He believed 
>that a small number of dialectical laws manifested themselves in the 
>form of the cosmos, nature, pre-history, history and society. He 
>believed that there did not obtain a qualitative distinction between 
>nature and society. Both were, in linear continuity, manifestions of 
>the same group of dialectical laws and formed part of the one long 
>story. Since these laws transcend history they are transcendental in 
>character.
>

Transcending history, which is but a short span of material time does not in
any way mean trancending the material world, Mr. Carlile!  Fundamental to
dialectical materialism is the concept of matter as the only reality and
that nothing can or does exist outside material existance - ergo, no god,
gods, or leprechauns either, Irish, or otherwise!  


The rest of what you babble is so ridiculous that deserves no answer other
than a shrug of the shoulders!  The basic laws of dialectics are not "taken
>from Hegel" since they were probably first postulated by Heraclitus from
observation of the world as it is.  

Speaking of the materialist views of the ancient philosopher Heraclitus, who
held that "the world, the all in one, was NOT created by any god or man, but
was, is AND EVER WILL BE A LIVING FLAME, sytematically flaring up and
systematically dying down", Lenin comments:  "A very god exposition of the
rudiments of DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM" - So, it was not "from Hegel" but from
the same source as Heraclitus:

"The materialist world outlook is simply the conception of nature as it is,
without ANY RESERVATIONS"  (Frederic Engels, MS of Ludwig Feuerbach) 


Nor are these principles - because that is what the "rudiments of
dialectical materialism" are in essence, taken "on faith" since their
truthfulness is proven everyday by the mere fact of material existance.  

What an absolute reedition of "Herr Duhring" you are my dear fellow!

>This theory is not supported by evidence. It is simply a hypothesis
>postulated by Engels under the influence of Hegel. Since there has
>never been any evidence to support its foundation it can only be based
>on faith. Belief in the existence of these transcendental laws plays
>an identical role to belief in god. Dialectical materialism and god
>are just different names for the same transcendental notion.
>
>Interestingly Engels in his younger days had more of a problem with
>religion than did Marx. 
>
>
>                                                          Karl Carlile
>


The problem with religion that YOU have is like the most impressive
stigmata, Carlile:  Just a material manifestation of your own clerical
"soul" and its trivial and superficial conclusions supported by nothing but
gas!.

Engels said: "The most telling refutation of this as of all other
philosofical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry.  If we are
able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by
making it oursekves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using
it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is the end of the
Kantian "thing-in-itself" (Karl Marx, Selected Works, Vol I, pp 432-33, Eng Ed).

And that is because Marxists, contrary to the fideist Karlile, who "denies
the possibility of knowing the world and its laws, which does not believe in
the authenticity of our knowledge, and holds that the world is full of
"things-in themselves" that can never be known to science" assert their
philosophical materialism which holds that "the world and its laws are fully
knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and
practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and
that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but ONLY things
which are still not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the
efforts of science and practice".  

And finally, all your tripe is old fideism with a modern revisionist veneer.
This how Lenin long ago disposed of your brand of "god building":

"Contemporary fideism does not at all reject science; all it rejects is the
"exaggerated claims" of science, to wit, its claim to objective truth.  If
objective truth exists (as the materialists think), if natural science,
refelecting the OUTER WORLD IN HUMAN "EXPERIENCE", is alone capable of
giving us OBJECTIVE TRUTH, then ALL fideim is refuted"  (V. I. Lenin,
Selected Works, Eng ed., Vol XI, p. 188).

And trying to set Marx against Engels, or Lenin, or Mao on this account will
not work either:

"The material, sensously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong IS
THE ONLY REALITY......  Our consciousness and thinking, however
supra-sensous they may seem, are the product OF A MATERIAL, bodily organ,
the brain.  Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the
highest product of nature" - Frederic Engels (Karl Marx, Selected Works,
Eng. ed., Vol I pp 430-31).

And Karl Marx himself:
"It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks" (Ibid, p. 435).

And Lenin: 

"Materialism in general recognises OBJECTIVELY REAL BEING (MATTER) as
independent of consciousness, sensation, experience...... Consciousness is
only the reflection of being, at best, an approximately true (adequate,
ideally exact) reflection of it".  (Lenin, Selected Works, Eng ed., Vol XI,
p. 377).


Adolfo
    



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