Help Remaking America by George Shollenberger, Idea 100 + XXX (Intelligent Design, XIII)

In this blog, I discuss Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945 ) and his contribution to man’s knowledge of God’s Intelligence Design. Cassirer's pic is on the right.

As a historian, Cassirer has many contributions in his defense of God. But his greatest contribution will be found in a 3-volume book on "The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms." These three books focus on (1) language, (2) myth, and (3) knowledge. These books appeared first in Germany in 1929. As a Jew, the Nazis forced him and his family to leave Germany. This was a great gain for the USA. Yale University lured him to America in 1941. There, in two years, he translates these three books into English. He made this translation but died in 1945.

The importance of Cassirer’s three books was expressed by Susanne Langer when she dedicated her 1953 book on "Feeling and Form" to Cassirer. She also cited Cassirer among the 1920 linguists who discovered that our sense-data are primarily symbols on page 21 of her book on "Philosophy in a New Key."

Unfortunately, U.S. scientists were still debating the general meaning of a sign (or signal) and a symbol in 1952 at the Thirteenth Symposium of the Conference of Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Columbia University. Fortunately, in 1975, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) was founded. Initially, SSSI studies used symbols to explain the social relations between humans and animals. Today, SSSI studies use symbols to explain physical relations between humans and animals.

At this 1952 conference and in the SSSI, the philosophy of symbolism seems to be losing some of its spiritual power against atheism and materialism. If atheism and materialism win the debate over the meanings of signs and symbols, then human beings would be viewed as animals and Darwin’s evolutionary theory would destroy God.

Thus, it is time for defenders of God to study the books of Langer and Cassirer. In the books by them, the purpose of symbols is not to explain the physical relations among humans. In their books, the purpose of symbols is to perfect the morality of humans against evilness. With their books, symbols are applied only to human life and signs (or signals) are applied to both humans and animals. Unless the defenders of God begin to act at the level of government, the U.S. government could become very evil.