it's probably their best release

Album Rating: 4.0

easily top 3

Album Rating: 4.0

I might buy the CD when it comes out

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

"the biblical references on this album are off the charts" Wel they aren't to apparent (Except maybe words in the water) to someone who ain't a believer, which is a good thing in my mind. I'm only slight annoyed with the comments Dustin made in the liner notes about a naturalistic worldview and the implications of it which I disagree with. The song is still pretty awesome though.



Felix, what did he say exactly in the liner notes? I'm very much like you in this regard: I'm completely secular/naturalistic. Yet, I love this band and their religious/philosophical themes, so long as they remain searching and open-ended, not heavy-handed, didactic, or preachy. Dustin often keeps the lyrics ambiguous enough for a non-religious reading, so I'm pretty curious as to what he had to say about Major/Minor.

Album Rating: 5.0

Well to quote " [Talking about a naturalistic worldview] The world is meaningless and beauty, truth

and love are just illusions." I find this statement to be true in a sense (Love, beauty and truth

aren't necessarily illusions in my book), but he makes it sound like those are negatives things and

that because of that they don't have any meaning and you might as well not care anymore and be

nihilistic instead. I mean just because love is created by chemicals in our body doesn't take away

the fact that we can care and love someone or feel as passionate about something as a believer in

God and the soul.



He also talk about Bertrand Russel who has an

argument on the implications of the worldview which the song is sorta built

upon.



Dustin basically finds it easier "to swallow" a worldview were love, beauty and truth are real " and

there must be a reason why evil and darkness exists that we cannot fully comprehend." And this is

what Treading Paper is all about :]

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Yeah, I'm an atheist, completely secular, but I'm also a humanist. I intensely dislike the argument that human beings cannot have a set of morals in the absence of the existence of a deity; it's simply poor logic, and wishful, apologetic thinking. As Camus so eloquently put it, "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." So long as we realize the fragility and impermenance of our lives, we may live them wonderfully, richly, and with much love, beauty, and truth in our hearts... even if they are only "illusions."



I have a first edition copy of "Bertand Russel Speaks His Mind" sitting right in front of me, and I find it fascinating that Dustin reads/has read him and is at least thoughtful enough to consider the stance of an ardent agnostic. Thanks for the reply, man.

Album Rating: 5.0

No probs. Find these kind of arguments interesting. Reading trough my copy of Greg graffins Anarchy Evolution currently and he talks about some interesting stuff, I'd recommend even if you aren't a fan of him or Bad religion. I also have his book Evolution and Religion which is about the questioning the beliefs of the world eminent evolutionist's which I have not gotten into yet.

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

God is dead, and Christians have been grieving ever since. And the first stage of grief is denial, is it not? "Of course love, beauty, and truth are real! If they weren't, why would anyone want to live? If life is, at its core, essentially meaningless, why shouldn't we all just commit suicide?"



I've heard the same argument so many times, and it never ceases to amaze me that people fail to see the flaw in their logic when they argue that way. The consequences of accepting a theory as true should have no bearing upon its veracity. In other words, just because the truth dictates something horrible, does not mean that it ceases to be the truth.



By the way, the album has grown on my quite a bit. Thanks for the debate everyone; it was exactly what I needed.

Album Rating: 4.0

once you have reached the end of your life, and if there is no afterlife, what was the point in living if all the happiness that came from it is now in the past and useless?

Album Rating: 5.0

Well you wouldn't really care about that since you're dead... Can't you be happy with living. And you

have lived a whole life, you have memories. And people have memories of you. There not useless. Why

would they be?

Album Rating: 4.0

"And people have memories of you. There not useless."

they are to the person in question



and those people die too

Album Rating: 5.0

"they are to the person in question" I don't think a lot people on their deathbed look back at their life and think how useless it was. You don't really seem to be able to accept that what you do now has meaning even though you don't "live" after death. And if you believe in a hell go read the lyrics to "How can hell be any worse" by Bad religion.



"and those people die too" I know, same thing applies to them.

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; . . . that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built." That's what Bertrand Russel had to say about that. It bares repeating.

Album Rating: 3.0

Berty was a great mathematician, a respected philosopher and a huge logician



he misses the point sometimes though

Album Rating: 4.0

you never experience it though. for you, experience, consciousness, is over



wow I'm such a nihilist

Album Rating: 3.0

take some lsd and you may be proven wrong

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Scissorlocked, I agree that Russel missed the point on occasion. I'm a much bigger fan of Nietzsche (though the same accusation could be lobbied at him) and especially Albert Camus. I think he's probably the most relevant philosopher of the 20th century.



"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” -Camus- Ahhhh. It's like a fine wine; it only gets better with age.

Album Rating: 5.0

""For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” -Camus- Ahhhh. It's like a fine wine; it only gets better with age."



Hehe. Can't say I know much about the people you talk about but I guess I will learn of them somehow later in my studies. Although I usually think philosophers are quite unsatisfying, I tend to like the more scientific "answers" to the questions in life.

Well they aren't to apparent (Except maybe words in the water) to someone who ain't a believer, which is a good thing in my mind. I'm only slight annoyed with the comments Dustin made in the liner notes about a naturalistic worldview and the implications of it which I disagree with. The song is still pretty awesome though.

Album Rating: 4.0

I really don't mind the religious themes unless they go all preachy like Underoath