Christianity

[promethean75]

"Her progressive socialist-Marxist commitments seem to subordinate here Christianesque sense"

Because Belinda's in the know. Jesus was a goddamn marxist historical materialist if there ever wuz one. But the bourgeoisie from Rome onward have had an ideological hegemony on the development of the religion... and have distorted it almost beyond recognition. This is joke #137 of western civilization.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I admire a man who uses YouTube didactically. It is an underdeveloped art-form.

[Alexis Jacobi]

From Aldous Huxley's Sermon In Cats:

The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. This mournful truth was overwhelmingly borne in on me as I watched the abandoned and love-sick cat as she walked unhappily round my room. “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici,” she kept mewing, “je ne suis pas heureuse ici.” And her expressive black tail would lash the air in a tragical gesture of despair. But each time it twitched, hop-la! from under the armchair, from behind the book-case, wherever he happened to be hiding at the moment, out jumped her only son (the only one, that is, we had not given away), jumped like a ludicrous toy tiger, all claws out, on to the moving tail. Sometimes he would miss, sometimes he caught it, and getting the tip between his teeth would pretend to worry it, absurdly ferocious. His mother would have to jerk it violently to get it out of his mouth. Then, he would go back under his armchair again and, crouching down, his hindquarters trembling, would prepare once more to spring. The tail, the tragical, despairingly gesticulating tail, was for him the most irresistible of playthings. The patience of the mother was angelical. There was never a rebuke or a punitive reprisal; when the child became too intolerable, she just moved away; that was all. And meanwhile, all the time, she went on mewing, plaintively, despairingly. “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici, je ne suis pas heureuse ici.” It was heartbreaking. The more so as the antics of the kitten were so extraordinarily ludicrous. It was as though a slap-stick comedian had broken in on the lamentations of Mélisande -- not mischievously, not wittingly, for there was not the smallest intention to hurt in the little cat’s performance, but simply from lack of comprehension. Each was alone serving his life-sentence of solitary confinement. There was no communication from cell to cell. Absolutely no communication. These sermons in cats can be exceedingly depressing.

[Dubious]

For reasons I cannot understand you seem not to see the larger picture.

No! I just can't see your picture in spite of all your very long posts. As far as I can tell they reside in some kind of metaphysical fog you ascribe both truth and logic to. Not my cup o' tea in determining anything of validity.

Clearly, you see yourself as clarity incarnate.

Clearly you don't see very clearly! This kind of prejudice or prejudgement as I would call it, fits the likes of IC much more than me who is much less certain considering most things than he is regarding the bibles reality or should that be hyper-reality. Strange you never seem to notice that but have in almost all your posts, without knowing enough about me, presumed to know, what seems to you defective.

Fine by me! If you're already so certain, why communicate. There's no reason for it to continue. Your tete-a-tete with IC has more consanguinity of outlook than anything you can hope from me. I also don't appreciate your somewhat courtly sub-rosa innuendoes when someone has a different perspective from yours.

It can also be said that in order to keep unmuddlement to a minuscule, never seek to muddle yourself up by scrutinizing the subject.

Can you explain more?

Isn't it clear enough? If not, subsume it under the heading that ignorance is bliss and not to be disturbed by digging.

[henry quirk]

Alexis,

I asked for that metaphysical logic...

It is a question of choices: you either choose to align yourself with 'angelic' entity or, by default if you wish, one aligns oneself with nothing-in-particular, or with the demonic appetite of man (which I believe must be considered very real by all persons with two eyes in their head), which will, according to metaphysical logic, result on becoming more and more bound into these very possessive forces.

The object therefore is ascent. And we have an infinite array of sources and examples through which we can define ascent. In spiritual literature, in monastic literature, in the best of our common literature, in religious and ethical philosophy, in art, and simply what any one of us recognizes as 'the higher portion'.

But let's be truthful and also realistic: if you (if one) wants to do down there are an unlimited array of escalators one can jump on. They are closer than your own breath!

in other words: climb or fall, your choice; to climb is to apprehend and make use of a certain, single, way; to fall is simply to give way to gravity (or, more decisively, to jump into the void)

how far off target am I?

you have a position which I must say I do not understand very well at all. It does not seem to be one of 'definition' and 'exactitude'.

if you have an interest: I can explain myself; if you have no interest: no worries

[henry quirk]

Hey Henry! I trust AJ's short explanation of unmuddlement should now unmuddle you!

not really, no: he mebbe pokes at the steak but he's still havin' too much fun fiddlin' with his silverware

[Alexis Jacobi]

As far as I can tell they reside in some kind of metaphysical fog you ascribe both truth and logic to. Not my cup o' tea in determining anything of validity.

Nice one! Metaphysical fog. Maybe that where Hamlet's father "Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night" had his bachelor's pad!

It is not quite true though. Or not true enough to stick. I admire the attempt though. It is a question of what has validity and what is valuable. But why get your knickers in a bundle? This is what we are trying to work out. At least to be able to see each other's position in a clearer light. To understand why we have the ideas we do have.

Clearly you don't see very clearly!

So let me get this straight. You do not see yourself as having and offering (to IC here lately) a clarifying perspective to cure him of what you state, with absolute certainty, to be false-view?

I am not making a prejudicial statement. I am merely restating the essential message in what in fact you say.

Strange you never seem to notice that but have in almost all your posts, without knowing enough about me, presumed to know, what seems to you defective.

This is true in a way. Because I deal in generalities. Social attitudes. What is *going on today*. The undermining of structural beliefs. The political, social and intellectual reasons why this is going on.

So yes, I do see you as an *exponent* of a developing and I think a powerful ideology.

[Alexis Jacobi]

To climb is to apprehend and make use of a certain, single, way; to fall is simply to give way to gravity (or, more decisively, to jump into the void)

How far off target am I?

Instead of *one way* I would say *certain principles*. But I can work with your paraphrase.

If one wants to understand, say, Christian philosophy, one can extract out of it certain essential concepts and admonitions.

But if one has not ever really been able to *see* it, and if one misunderstands it, one might need to try to see it better. And one way that could potentially help is to compare it with another, similar, religious and ethical program. That is why I mentioned the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of the Division Between the Divine and the Demoniacal Traits. Once one grasp the division, and isolates the principles, one is in a better position of understanding what is being talked about.

It presents a dualistic model that I think clarifies and in some senses explains what is being described by Christian metaphysical doctrines.

That is my approach anyway.

If you have an interest: I can explain myself; if you have no interest: no worries.

Of course I am interested. And I assume that you fill out your views and understandings as you go along, no?

[henry quirk]

the muddle, or lack of agreement, is not complex

a man is his own, is sumthin' other than or sumthin' more than an animal

...or...

a man has no natural claim to himself and is nuthin' but a clever ape-variant

the former acknowledges a moral reality; the latter is vacant of moral substance

a moral reality, at the least, hints at a cause, a first principle, an undergirding; a moral vacuum is just empty

the muddle, the disagreement, the war, is between, if I may, free men and slavers, between those who intuit or reason they are their own and are so becuz there is Purpose and those who see nuthin' but material, feel nuthin' but appetite

same as it's always been

[henry quirk]

Alexis,

If one wants to understand, say, Christian philosophy, one can extract out of it certain essential concepts and admonitions.

please, do


I assume that you fill out your views and understandings as you go along, no?[/b]

no...my view is particular, mebbe peculiar, mebbe has gaps, but is substantive...it has a spine

[Alexis Jacobi]

Henry, I meant that you reveal it as you proceed, not that you develop it as you go along!

[henry quirk]

Henry, I meant that you reveal it as you proceed, not that you develop it as you go along!

ah...got it...yes, exactly

[Dubious]

As far as I can tell they reside in some kind of metaphysical fog you ascribe both truth and logic to. Not my cup o' tea in determining anything of validity.

Nice one! Metaphysical fog. Maybe that where Hamlet's father "Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night" had his bachelor's pad!

But why get your knickers in a bundle?

The only time I get my knickers in a bundle is when I buy them. That way I get a discount for volume with more time between washing available. When all used up they'll be ready for laundry in the same bundle I bought them in. That's the reason I have two bundles to my name...to insure continuity. Being knickerless gives me nightmares! I only write this to assure you you need not be concerned about my knickers.

Sorry if I can't offer a more precise synopsis of knickerology without going metaphysical.

[Dubious]

I love it when people trot this old saw out.
What's so funny about it is that they stopped reading too soon. Go back, and read the very next verse in the Bible, and then come and tell me that the disciples never got to see what it would be like when the Kingdom of God would come.
What's the next passage? The Transfiguration. Get it now?

I would never have believed that what Jesus reportedly said in the bible you would refer to as an "old saw"! In any event that's what he said according to the oldest gospel in the book.

What does that trans-figurative preview, shown only to three of his most trusted disciples, have to do with the promise of his eventual return! When they came down the mountain all was as it was before, living or dead...the promise still outstanding! How and why it changed - a necessary amendment under the circumstances - is presented in Luke.

The upshot is, the bible remains a matter of interpretation (except for zealots who fanatically believe) when there are no actual facts or anything which yields a high probability of it being true available. To consider the bible as a source of divine truth beyond anything actually known and understood, I would call a classic Don Quixote complex who was as much brainwashed by tales of Chivalry as you are by the bible. There is no way he could be persuaded that a distant windmill wasn't a giant!

What remains true of Christianity is exactly that which negates the validity of the story which establishes it, namely its history...not to mention the core of it being pilfered from the millennial old Osiris myth against which the early Christians had to compete...Osiris much resembling Jesus as depicted in the Nicene Creed. Ergo, all the various gospels, letters and epistles to gain converts or hold the flock together against adversaries which, in principle, had the same message to convey as Jesus and all his spokesman.

If god is anything it's a singularity that "speaks" for itself; not a project of many, spoken for and affirmed by others! By that deficiency alone, among many, the entire bible reeks of Human-All-Too-Human.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sorry if I can't offer a more precise synopsis of knickerology without going metaphysical.

You did fine! It is not an easy topic . . .