Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	11-Oct-05/6:18 AM
Oddly, that's a perfectly coherent argument. Dovina could have said that a week ago and saved us all boredom-related impotences.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	11-Oct-05/6:17 AM
You disregard my arguments because you think I "can't understand the wording". What you've failed to realize after all our poemranker debates (all of them essentially about this same thing) is that wording has a big effect on the meaning you convey. What you mean to say is you wish I understood your thoughts instead of the words you use to express them. I CANNOT believe that in some poorly ventilated back corner of your mind you're not clinging to some inexpressible ill-formed notion that evolution is a coherent process with (to exaggerate just a little) a goal of producing creatures with certain characteristics, such as continuing their species better and formulating complex philosophical muckamuck. That's because aside from constantly saying "Don't believe that", you've given me no reason not to. If you really did think evolution was essentially a theory for rationalizing chance phenomena, then you would have realized along time ago that it's utterly pointless to add "we have faith because evolution made us that way" to every conversation you've ever been involved in.
Re: a comment on 10/8 by cronus	11-Oct-05/6:08 AM
The line should have read, "Not that different from some of David's poems," AND HE'S DEAD. I considered changing it, but I'd already clogged your email with slight revisions and, appearances aside, I actually do love you better than that.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/5:47 AM
PS-It may be possible to say instead "phenomena made us, but to no purpose". But what's the point?
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/5:44 AM
I've gotta run, so I'll sum up. DOVINA: Evolution isn't sentient. It made us. ZODIAC: Evolution isn't a thing capable of making. It's a theory, a way of rationalizing phenomena. You're like saying the metric system made centimeters (or, better, it made distance). DOVINA: Evolution isn't sentient. It made us. ZODIAC: Urggh.
Re: 10/8 by cronus	10-Oct-05/5:40 AM
Suggestion: Start sacrificing things you don't love. It's a long shot, but sacrificing what you love doesn't seem to have worked anyway, and what've you really got to lose?
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/5:31 AM
'Built' implies builder. 'Made' implies maker. No difference if there's purpose or not. If you're going to argue with anything, argue with that. But I wouldn't recommend it.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/5:28 AM
Yes, but I haven't claimed to define philosophy or philsophers (not on this poem, at least.) I said 'A philosopher says X, a religious says Y', only. You can argue I've said "A person who says 'I believe X' is a philsopher", but even that's not much of a leg to stand on. And for that, it works. A philosopher does say, I believe X. So does a religious sometime. But a religious also says, I believe in a philosophy (and, NEW ADDENDUM) a philosopher doesn't. I retract my first addendum and all your argument from the beginning is moot.
Re: The Enigmatic Pentagram by ObsequiousGem	10-Oct-05/5:17 AM
I thought this poem was going to be about how a pentigram is enigmatic. I see you've kept clear of that. And everything else enigmatic, apparently.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/5:14 AM
Yes, it does. And the way you say it does, too. For the last time, evolution didn't build us. Evolution didn't have us in mind when it started. Evolution is not a sentient being or a process capable of predicting itself the way, say, scientists sometimes predict it. Scientists did not build us. Scientists did not create evolution. Scientists have had no control over evolution to date, and have very little now. Speaking of any process by which humans are "built" (excluding the process of God or gods creating the earth) is about equivalent to saying, I don't know, the universe or undersea ridges are "built". If you persist in using the term "built" for things which don't (according to me) involve a sentient builder, I must persist in considering you a religious and, consequently, ignoring you. If you've got to say something about the matter, try something like this: A set of myriad circumstances has resulted (meaning, at the present moment) in the so-called dominant species on Earth having a tendency to develop faiths and to afterwards wonder about such matters as whether it was built to develop faith.
Re: a comment on dictates of whose travel agency? by A. Nomaly	10-Oct-05/4:31 AM
Heh, heh. Wide open.
Re: a comment on Escape by Heather Dee	10-Oct-05/4:30 AM
Just to song-comprehension. I'm pretty sure he's saying something specific. Okay, 70% sure.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/4:27 AM
I think the point is, any set of beliefs/truths written by someone else is bound to have things you don't entirely accept as true - or, at the very least, aren't expressed exactly the way you'd express them. Religions like Christianity and Egoism have tons of these, of course, and people who claim that Christianity/Egoism perfectly express their set of accepted truths are entirely full of shit. You accept some of what the Summa said as true, but why say "I hold with Summa philosophy" or "I believe in the Summa philosophy"? (note: I know you haven't.) Why bring in the Summas at all, instead of just saying, um, "I accept that nothingness is governed by some law, and you can create nothingness by uniting matter with anti-matter, and matter comes from the potential of something somehow getting an edge over the potential of nothing"? Same goes for Nietzsche. It strikes me that the only advantages of claiming adherence to some preexisting-but-flawed philosophy rather than simply expressing what you hold to be true (barring the actual existence of a God who can put hot coals on your feet) are: 1) it saves time, and 2) you think it lends some credibility to what you believe, so your not just a wacky guy who believes wacky things, but a follower of Summa. That's all fine, but REALLY? I mean 1) the time you save is bound to be re-lost explaining or justifying all the things you don't accept in your claimed preexisting philosophy, and 2) if you need to give yourself credibility you're not such an ace believer, are you? Secondly, the rest of your comment shows you make what we'll call THE POETE'S DISTINCTION between things making sense and things feeling right (or being a "personal preference"). I believe a reasoning person would say "things that make sense feel right and things that don't make sense don't feel right." Only an unreasoning (and therefore, dupish) person would say "things that make sense don't feel right, and things that feel right often don't make sense." These are people constantly on their guard for scientists and Democrats trying to trick them into committing evil with their everpresent 'facts and figures'. Balls to them, I say. Balls, balls, balls. Thirdly: I doubt if Socrates would have said he was Socratic. Plato would, though. Jesus probably thought he was a Jew.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/4:08 AM
By whom are people built to have faith? You're doing the "purpose of species" thing again. People have faith because of the following: BIFF: Why does the sun go up and down? CLARK: I dunno. BIFF: Maybe somebody's making it move? CLARK: Sure, but who? BIFF: I dunno. Big guy, I guess. Invisible. CLARK: Man, I'd hate to piss him off. Probably drop the sun on my head if I did. BIFF: That reminds me of when my mom got a mammoth dropped on her head. Dang, I wish death didn't suck so bad! CLARK: Yeah, but it does, though, doesn't it? BIFF [musingly]: But maybe not... I bet if anyone could improve death, the Big Sun Guy could! CLARK: Yeah, but your mom's dead. We ate her. BIFF: Not if she had some invisible lifeforce that superexisted her body! Like, I dunno, a soul, I guess. CLARK: What the fuck are you talking about? BIFF: The soul. The source of your morality, stupid! CLARK [clubbing Biff to death]: What morality? [Then,] Oh crap! Biff's dad's gonna kill me to protect his family interests! What the fuck? BIFF'S DAD: Big Sun Guy's gonna kill your ass! CLARK: No, no! Wait! Big Sun Guy teaches tolerance and forgiveness of sins! BIFF'S DAD: Really? Isn't that kind of pussy-like? CLARK: You can't call Big Sun Guy pussy-like, he'll kill your ass. BIFF'S DAD: Oh, right. My bad. [And so on. Ad infinitum, amen.]
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/3:53 AM
Fine. ADDENDUM: *For all X excluding "in a philosophy" and its synonyms.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	10-Oct-05/3:51 AM
X would have to be in a philosophy. That quibble aside, the glaring contradiction was obvious to me from the beginning. I let it slide, rightly imagining that anyone who bothered to complain about it was a religious, and therefore not worth my attention.
Re: a comment on 10/8 by cronus	10-Oct-05/3:45 AM
And he's dead.
Re: a comment on Sex Object by Dovina	8-Oct-05/4:38 AM
Titling is the work of writers. If you don't believe so, you'll either write poems like you do or write poems like everyone else and think you're doing something different. I wouldn't wish either on my worst enemy.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	8-Oct-05/4:34 AM
I hate that quote. If it never appears on poemranker again, it will be too much. And what the hell does it MEAN??! Faith isn't even substance, so how can it be "the substance" of anything??! And who the hell hopes that, for example, "the men put worn and patched sandals on their feet and wore old clothes... All the bread of their food supply was dry and moldy"?
Re: incomplete by Prince of Void	8-Oct-05/3:57 AM
Isn't "incomplete" another word for "with a void"?