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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (23320)	4/7/2006 4:38:29 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 28931

utm.edu One sees many future religions in the wisdom of Empedocles. Much of Zarathustra reminds of his love versus strife (good/evil). Also, Jainism seems to take much from him. Indeed, the entire Aryan Vegas found expression throughout the known world. So we have the religions of eternal cycling and the goal to get out of those damn rebirths!...and the opposite religious goals of never truly dying but eating apples with deer and drinking fresh water and wine without alcohol... Anyway, Mathew Arnold wrote a beautiful dramatic poem about Empedocles--something to be read over days rather than minutes. Here is a wonderful quote: "Is it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes; That we must feign a bliss Of doubtful future date, And, while we dream on this, Lose all our present state, And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? Not much, I know, you prize What pleasures may be had, Who look on life with eyes Estrang’d, like mine, and sad; And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you, Who’s loath to leave this life Which to him little yields; His hard-task’d sunburnt wife, His often-labour’d fields, The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew. But thou, because thou hear’st Men scoff at Heaven and Fate, Because the Gods thou fear’st Fail to make blest thy state, Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are. I say: Fear not! Life still Leaves human effort scope. But, since life teems with ill, Nurse no extravagant hope; Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair!"