Christianity

[uwot]

Has the Virgin birth been proven wrong?

No.

If not we know of two options to analyze it: blind belief and bind denial. Is there another option?

Only everything in between.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The story is that someone else being tortured and murdered absolves me of any crime, if only I believe it. What do you imagine would be the ramifications of telling people that they are responsible for their own actions?

It seems to me that if you were not, as I believe and as I say, a philosopher's popinjay -- a sort of philosophy-simulacrum or a set of chattering philosopher's teeth (?) -- that you would have a better, a more ample, understanding of what the story we refer to here actually means.

But there, of course, we would delve into the issue of meaning and this is not an easy topic (as I see things) and especially in people in whom the perception of meaning comes very hard. For a minute (actually somewhat less) I began to feel inclined to try to present to you a few ways that you could understand the implication in the story but then I realized that you are, I gather from what you say and the way you say it, completely closed to any sort of expanding awareness or greater comprehension.

Your function then? To block those things. This is why I say that it is useful to stop and try to discern *what a person is up to* and what their real intentions are. Do you have any sense of what yours are? Any conversation with you, except in some superficial banter, is really pseudo-conversation and ipso facto absurd. So the thought that I am left with (to state it again) has more to do with noting the profound division that exists between people generally and how and why it happens that people build fortifications and hunker down in them and refuse, in so many ways, to build bridges.

[uwot]

It seems to me that if you were not, as I believe and as I say, a philosopher's popinjay -- a sort of philosophy-simulacrum or a set of chattering philosopher's teeth (?) -- that you would have a better, a more ample, understanding of what the story we refer to here actually means.

Could you direct me to the christian who agrees with you what the story we refer to here actually means?

But there, of course, we would delve into the issue of meaning and this is not an easy topic (as I see things)...

How very perspicacious of you. Indeed, all attempts to establish objective meaning have so far failed. There are those who remain convinced that such a project might yet prove fruitful. They are contrasted with those such as myself who would be very surprised if after 2500 years of recorded philosophy, that has utterly failed to reach any consensus, anyone should achieve it. But you never know Gus, it could be you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If Nietzsche is right, the universe and Man within it is a machine. The meaning for a machine is revealed by what it serves. He can wipe away the horizon, but is there anything within the machine that can consciously evolve as suggested in the GCoB and did the Christ and his sacrifice bring the Spirit necessary to make it happen? If Man is dual natured, it is only the higher part originating from beyond the world that can return to its source. The animal or lower part can only serve the needs of the earth.

I did make an effort to get through the rather long essay you submitted. I think I have a sense of what it wants to propose. I can understand the idea of the 'included middle' as an alternative, of sorts, to a hard dichotomy. Interesting, in Jain philosophy, they have the Seven-Valued Logic (seven predicates that expand as it were the Aristotelian A=A that excludes a middle).

Is it really a question of whether Nietzsche was *right* or *non-right*? It seems to me that our perspectives have a somewhat contrived aspect. We align ourselves with one view but we are aware that other views or stances are possible (here I invoke Lacewing!) So the view that Nietzsche expressed in that dynamic paragraph is, as far as it goes, true for anyone who reads it, wouldn't you say? It surely does not express a lie or a deception. It definitely expresses a (Heraclitesque I gather) view of 'reality' which is really quite compelling, it seems to me.

The way that I understand Nietzsche (to the degree that I do understand him) is of a man torn between very powerful perspectives. This is likely my own emphasis and why I focus, I hope not too reductively, on the sense that what we are dealing with, really, and what also tears at us, is the contrast and incommensurability between the Old Metaphysics and the New Metaphysics. As Basil Willey stated, and I thought quite poignantly, in order to make sense of what is going on in us, and thus around us, we need a 'master metaphysician' to explain it. We cannot very well see our situation.

I am interested in what you are trying to present but I cannot say that I grasp it. I mean in respect to the rather long, and rather dense, essay you submitted which I did read through rather quickly (at 5:00 AM). I cannot say that I understand what he or they are doing with these ideas. But if I bring up the words *do* and *use* I refer to *the function of ideas* that we hold. There always seems to be a reason and a purpose.

So if yours, for example, is to define the possibility of a 'will' that can and does grow and evolve and can also self-direct I don't think I would attempt to oppose your sense of will (though I am pretty sure that IC, for example, has deep suspicion of man's will if it is not somehow operating under the aegis of surrender to God).

But you would have to understand that in my own case *spirituality* had for me, and from the early days, a peculiar function. It was extremely personal and had most to do with making my own way through the world. I would describe it as a sort of 'magical religiousness'. It was not Christian. And it also was influenced a great deal by authors such as Carlos Castaneda among numerous others (I am a product of California!) So when I think back to those years in the 80s and 90s when I and my friends were forging our *spiritual* paths I do not in any sense condemn us for what we were attempting -- and this might be supposed if I am not seen as some hyper-conservative defender of Christianity (as I suppose Lacewing perceives me) -- and in fact I have a good deal of admiration for the sincerity and integrity that we held to.

So really we were 'post-Christian' and really pretty deeply involved in and also extending pre-existent American traditions (this would all require a good deal of explanation but I can say that even, and especially, an event like the famous Woodstock of my parent's generation, was in its way an octave of a previously defining event: the Great Awakening. It was Harold Bloom in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation who helped me to understand the historical line, which I certainly did not prior to reading him).

You ask: "He can wipe away the horizon, but is there anything within the machine that can consciously evolve as suggested in the GCoB and did the Christ and his sacrifice bring the Spirit necessary to make it happen?"

Have you ever read Ulysses *degree speech* in Troilus and Cressida? In it is expressed the Elizabethan worldview or *world-picture*. It is interesting to understand this view and compare it, say, to Richard Weaver's ideas about our metaphysical dream of the world.

In this *picture* it is the 'glorious planet Sol' and its 'medicinable eye' that corresponds to Christ.

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.

Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

In musing on the soul, Sir John Davies wrote:

This substance, and this spirit of God's owne making,
Is in the body plact, and planted heere,
That both of God, and of the world partaking,
Of all that is, Man might the image beare.

God first made angels bodilesse, pure minds,
Then other things, which mindlesse bodies be;
Last, He made Man, th' horizon 'twixt both kinds,
In whom we doe the World's abridgement see.

So I think the answer to your question (which I realize is not so much related to the Great Chain of Being as it was formerly conceived, but rather to the possibilities you understand to be under exploration, for example in the essay you submitted) the answer to your question as to whether in the machine there is something that 'can consciously evolve' and was Christ understood to be that force or *quickening* power -- the answer is definitely yes. What can evolve is just that aspect of God that is expressed in the soul. It is there.

And I will also point out that the 'included center' is sort of expressed in "Man, th' horizon 'twixt both kinds, / In whom we doe the World's abridgement see." (The bridge between two 'realities').

This is one of the reasons why I say that to understand Christianity -- which is a religious form developed over 1,000 years in a specific time-period in Europe, one must have a general sense of how the metaphysical system was understood.

Then, it seems to me, we can better understand that this *system* still operates today and yet all around it, and fencing it in, and 'denying' it, another metaphysics has arisen. They are in absurd competition and conflict (and here I mean absurd in the postmodern sense).

[Alexis Jacobi]

Could you direct me to the christian who agrees with you what the story we refer to here actually means?

I am willing to take you, provisionally, as a disciple, but you will have to sign up for the 10 month course.

My assistant, pictured here, will guide you through the sign-up process and, of course, the initial payment must be received before we begin.

Expect a New Popinjay to arise from out of the sootiness!

[uwot]

Could you direct me to the christian who agrees with you what the story we refer to here actually means?

I am willing to take you, provisionally, as a disciple, but you will have to sign up for the 10 month course.

That's a no then. Even the people you wish to find common ground with don't agree with you. It's almost as if people have their own aesthetic reasons for epistemological choices.

[henry quirk]

The *battle*, as it were, is really & truly between two different and to a degree incommensurate metaphysical systems-of-view, explanation and interpretation.

The *current of the night* surrounds us all and it is a question of defining our relationship to that *night*. Thus in one way or the other it seems to be a question of reacting to the encroaching power of that night.

...how do know we have a right to make "the right values" stick, when people choose other values?

This is the struggle for the being of Man.

Even the people you wish to find common ground with don't agree with you.

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[Alexis Jacobi]

That's a no then. Even the people you wish to find common ground with don't agree with you. It's almost as if people have their own aesthetic reasons for epistemological choices.

You are saying really un-smart things. All your comments, and most of your thoughts, are extremely superficial. Take my course! It will brighten your feathers!

[Nick_A]

Alexis

Sorry that the article was a bit long but the logic of the INCLUDED middle needs some explanation. Science has always been guided by the law of the EXCLUDED middle: There exists no third term T which is at the same time A and non-A.

This is basic duality or horizontal logic. The extremes of light and dark for example or hot and cold has no middle. For our sensory experiences it is a little less dark or a little lighter and we call it hot or cold.

Now Dr. Nicolescu explains the vertical law of the INCLUDED middle. He begins with an explanation of vertical levels of reality you know from the GCoB

Our understanding of the axiom of the included middle -- there exists a third term T which is at the same time A and non-A -- is completely clarified once the notion of "levels of Reality" is introduced.

In order to obtain a clear image of the meaning of the included middle, we can represent the three terms of the new logic -- A, non-A, and T -- and the dynamics associated with them by a triangle in which one of the vertices is situated at one level of Reality and the two other vertices at another level of Reality. If one remains at a single level of Reality, all manifestation appears as a struggle between two contradictory elements (example: wave A and corpuscle non-A). The third dynamic, that of the T-state, is exercised at another level of Reality, where that which appears to be disunited (wave or corpuscle) is in fact united (quanton), and that which appears contradictory is perceived as non-contradictory.

T then represents the vertical level of reality that reconciles horizontal dualism represented by A and not A at a higher level of reality represented by the triangle. We are so used to the logic of the excluded middle and living by duality, how many can open their minds to the reality of this third force of reconciliation from a higher level of reality?

This is why Christianity is rejected. It isn't understood. It is opposed by duality while remaining oblivious to the awakening third force which brings meaning to meaninglessness under the sun

[uwot]

That's a no then. Even the people you wish to find common ground with don't agree with you. It's almost as if people have their own aesthetic reasons for epistemological choices.

You are saying really un-smart things.

What criteria are you applying Gus? How does that quote illustrate your point eh?

[Alexis Jacobi]

What criteria are you applying Gus? How does that quote illustrate your point eh?

When Fr. Nietzsche said "Mutter ich bin dumm" what was he referring to, eh?

[uwot]

What criteria are you applying Gus? How does that quote illustrate your point eh?

When Fr. Nietzsche said "Mutter ich bin dumm" what was he referring to, eh?

What criteria are you applying Gus? How does that quote illustrate your point eh?

[Alexis Jacobi]

How does that quote illustrate your point eh?

Study package No 1 while I muse on an important answer . . . Bear with me.

[RCSaunders]

That's a no then. Even the people you wish to find common ground with don't agree with you. It's almost as if people have their own aesthetic reasons for epistemological choices.

You are saying really un-smart things. All your comments, and most of your thoughts, are extremely superficial. Take my course! It will brighten your feathers!

This entire thread, and expecially all you have said, are the proof of what H.L. Mencken said:

The costliest of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. --H.L. Mencken

It is called, "faith." One, "Christian," explained how it was by faith one knew what they believed, stating, "Faith is simple." When I asked for an explanation of what that meant the answer was, "It's believing what God has said..."

The problem with that answer is it does not specify which God. Over time and today there are thousands of them and they have all said different and contradictory things. Of course nothing is true, just because someone, man or God, said it. As far as I know nothing prevents God's from lying. Most Greek and Roman Gods lied all the time, and, according to the record, the God of the Bible lied numerous times.

After 188 pages of posts, I am convinced what I wrote on the second page of this thread is undeniably true and that everyone who has posted a defense or apology for Christianity is a mark that has been taken in by one of the greatest scams in history:

The ultimate scam. Every con man knows the best hook is the promise of what cannot be checked out. It is the basis of most religious frauds. Just, "accept this doctrine," "follow this formula," or, "buy into this belief," no matter what it costs in this world, and, "you will have paradise in the next world." It's the perfect hoax, because those taken in by it cannot come back to sue, and there is no way to check out the promised eternal vacation paradise before hand.

Even better is the, "fake evidence," that no one can actually check out. First you have to convince people that what someone has written or described is actually evidence, but must people are gullible enough to believe that. Then you use something written that says: "see there was once this man, or miracle, or god-man, or man-god, or divine teacher, or ... well just anything really," and since there is no way to actually check that phony evidence no one can prove the fraud, and non of the suckers will ever be the wiser.

Most of those who have been taken in will become the unwitting accomplices of the con man, spreading the scam. It's called evangelism. They are driven by their ignorance and the uncomfortable feeling there might be something wrong which can only be assuaged by finding and convincing lots of other suckers to fall for the same scam.

And there is never a shortage of gullible idiots who are ready and eager to believe anything that promises them supernatural blessing and unearned virtue based on nothing but having the, "right feelings"--evidence be damned.

[henry quirk]

supernatural blessing and unearned virtue

I feel cheated: where's my supernatural blessings, my unearned virtue?

I keep leafin' thru The Big Book of Deism and only find blank pages.