Christianity

[Belinda]

"kick against the pricks."

Misplaced metaphor.

To "kick against the pricks" is an antiquated expression from the KJV. It means "to resist the goads used to herd animals into position," and is ordinarily understood to mean "to resist the pangs of one's conscience or sense of guilt," as the context suggests. You would be implying that Socrates or Jesus had a bad conscience, then.

I think you mean that Socrates and Jesus would have had no reason to contradict the trends of their day, or something closer to that, don't you?

Yes, I do mean what you say. My bad.

[Immanuel Can]

"kick against the pricks."

Misplaced metaphor.

To "kick against the pricks" is an antiquated expression from the KJV. It means "to resist the goads used to herd animals into position," and is ordinarily understood to mean "to resist the pangs of one's conscience or sense of guilt," as the context suggests. You would be implying that Socrates or Jesus had a bad conscience, then.

I think you mean that Socrates and Jesus would have had no reason to contradict the trends of their day, or something closer to that, don't you?

Yes, I do mean what you say. My bad.

No worries. I just didn't want to misunderstand your point.

[RCSaunders]

I find this statement odd and problematic:

It places the purpose of an individual's existence in something else, such as God, society, the future of mankind, nature, or some mystical manifest destiny, but there are no purposes, values, or meaning except those those conceived by individual human beings.

You are saying that an individual's purpose when focused in these areas or toward these things, as objects, results in a 'fundamental mistake'. But you will have to state just what you imagine, or believe to be, the right and proper use of one's self.

That's not quite what I'm saying. Nothing preceding or outside an individual's own consciousness determines any value, purpose, or meaning for that individual. It is one's own nature as a rational volitional being that determines which behavior will succceed or fail to achieve any chosen objective or purpose and if one chooses to live successfully as a human being they must use their mind to learn all they possibly can, to think as well as they can to make the right choices to achieve their own chosen objectives and purposes, but nothing dictates what they must pursue in there life. Since every human being is a unique individual what will fulfill the life of any individual will be different for everyone. There is no one, "right and proper," use of one's self, there are only principles which describe human nature and its requirements that must be conformed to in order to achieve and be whatever one chooses.

You then say:

Sans individual human beings, there are no purposes, values, or meaning. It is one's own life and the successful pursuit of it as a human being that is the purpose of one's life and key to all that is worth living for.

You are making an overtly ideological statement here.

Not at all. An ideology always tells one what to pursue. I'm only describing what the consequence will be if one does not seek to be and achieve all they can as human being. No one has to do it (and most don't).

With "It is one's own life and the successful pursuit of it as a human being that is the purpose of one's life and key to all that is worth living for" you remind me of some of Mark Twain's essays! These kinds of statement are important because they are true, but they are not the full picture.

You are certainly welcome to provide whatever you think is left out of that picture. I, myself, do not think it is the full picture, only the foundation for it. I have provided much fuller picture in other places but such is impossible in just a few paragraphs.

To be compared to Mr. Clemens in any way is perhaps one of the finest complements I've ever received.

I believe I've read everything Twain ever wrote, both published and some other available material. I don't think he ever published any monographs or essays as essays, although some of the material in, Letter From The Earth, might be considered essays. I believe Twain considered them all stories. I just finished rereading Joan of Arc, which was his own personal favorite. My favorite has always been Pudd'n Head Wilson--though for humor nothing beats, "Adam's Diary."

[Alexis Jacobi]

Twain’s essays.

What Is Man is one that I was reminded of in some of what you wrote. There are others but I cannot remember the titles.

[RCSaunders]

Twain’s essays.

What Is Man is one that I was reminded of in some of what you wrote. There are others but I cannot remember the titles.

I just looked at the first book of Twain's work my father gave me when i was twelve years old. (almost exactly 70 years ago). It is titled, The Complete Short Stories and Famous Essays by Mark Twain, so you are quite right. Of course I've read that poor old book, which is falling apart, cover to cover many times, obviously including all those works called essays. Nevertheless, what makes them so readable is Twain's style, because it is like reading fiction. I just never thought of them as essays. Even, "What Is Man?" is written as a conversation between and old and young man--not at all like an essay.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I have never understood why people think disagreement is a problem or why they think there is any difficulty in individuals finding agreement. On most things that are important to human intercourse there is enormous agreement. Everyone who uses the same language, buys and sells using the same currency, shops for clothing and goods at a mall, or does almost an job for which others pay them do all those thing with tacit agreement in endless areas.

It seems to me, disagreement which does not involve any kind of aggression or uninvited interference in anyone else's life is never a problem.

I can see no problem of agreement. I see a huge problem in those who believe that anything justifies forcing others who happen not to agree with them to behave in a way they would like. It is that belief that is the cause of all government oppression.

Everyone has an angle by which and through which they enter into these discussions — for example the present one. There more that we reveal of our basic motivations in respect to defending our primary assertions the easier it is for other people to grasp our position. In my own case what brings me here (to all of the issues we discuss) is both very personal and also cultural in the sense of The Culture Wars. I guess I would say that at a certain point I realized the degree to which I was infected with various manifestations of *rot* of the sort linked generally to ‘cultural decadence’ that gained thrust in the post-Sixties. So then the issue — the personal issue — was to first see and recognize what I describe as ‘rot’ and then to begin to counter it. As I have said a few times one of the main influences that helped turn me around as Robert Bork’s book Slouching Toward Gomorrah. It became for me a far larger project of aligning myself with a counter-current that operates against the flow of time that has become so evident (to those with the inclination to see in this way) in our present.

So one of the statements that I make is that in our present, speaking generally, agreements have broken down, are breaking down, on so many levels that it is not only unavoidably obvious but also extremely dangerous. Consider that *we* — we who are Americans but the fact is that everyone across the world thinks about and debates what is going on in America today — can no longer agree as to what *America* is anymore. If there ever was a ‘glue’ that bound the sense of the nation together that glue is unbinding. Try to find me a person, some analyst, who can accurately, fairly and also completely tell me what precisely is happening — you will not be able to. You will find people who have very nicely developed ideas and perspectives who yet contradict others who have similarly developed and coherent ideas but who disagree on fundamental points.

It is in this sense that I refer to *lack of agreement’. The issue is far wider than the American cultural scene, of course, and various types of unbinding (breakdown in agreements) are exposing themselves all over the world. Is it the breakdown of the so-called Postwar Liberal Order? One could begin to pile up the questions . . . for which there are all manner of tendentious answers. But who has definitive answers?

Agreements of the sort that I am talking about are necessary for shared cultural and social projects. And I am not talking about agreements about behavior in traffic or at the shopping mall or in regard to those things you mention. I would say that we now live in a world in which we do not *agree* at very important and crucial levels yet we live in a world that has been set up for us to function in despite the fact that in the most important areas, the areas that matter, we are not unified. So here we can think about what people often say today about ‘tribalism’ and people retreating into those fortifications around their identity-postures. It is an act of a certain desperation, isn’t it? The world around them does not feel like one where true and binding agreements function, so people retreat back into identity-postures that make sense to them. They seek agreements within ‘echo-chambers’ and among those who look, act and think like them. And within those postures they carve out their various plans for what they imagine ‘advance’ and ‘progress’ to be.

Enormous agreement, you say? Sure, in respect to some areas, obviously. But a more realistic view is to notice and to be able to talk coherently about the widening divisions that make themselves plain.

Allow me to say a few more things that have been on my mind. I cannot deny the degree to which I have been influenced by Nietzsche’s observations which have fundamentally and crucially to do with *the breakdown of agreements*. If Nietzsche was ‘dynamite’ it is not so much that he, himself, set detonation devices that exploded agreement, but more that he was “the abstract and brief chronicle of [his] time” and saw, very clearly, the degree to which the possibility of agreeing had broken down. It is therefore an issue of a slow, painful death is it not? Yet as must be surmised, if the logic of Nietzsche’s predictions are sound, that there must occur at some point a ‘resurrection’.

So after the time when all agreements come undone, and the chaos-processes have completed themselves, some new patterns to agreement will have to be found. That is the essential message of Nietzsche as *prophet* if I have read him right.

The curious thing is to apply this description of *our situation* to what goes on in this thread. Are these rehearsals of life in the sense of idea-medicine that leads to internal cure, personal empowerment, a fuller relation with life and the construction of sound agreements upon which things can be built, or are they more more like the rehearsal of a dirge? with the inevitable realization that everyone is acting out their private drama in what surely appears to be a form of idea-isolation in a process of continued break-down?

It is not possible to feign the sort of fundamental (metaphysical) agreements which I refer to as possibilities when in truth the larger process is one of dissolution.

[henry quirk]

It is an act of a certain desperation, isn’t it?

Or defiance.

[Immanuel Can]

It is an act of a certain desperation, isn’t it?

Or defiance.

Of defiance of a doomed ideology...yes.

The Globalist dreams of the ideologues are simply not rational or possible to achieve. And if they were achieved, all we would get would be worldwide totalitarianism -- the world under the total control of one authority, with no further concession to difference, to cultural specificity, or even to individual identity. It's an Orwellian nightmare, now being sold as the dream of Babel. And any refusal to go along with it and to insist on the preservation or celebration of difference, recognition, voice, individuality, culture or faith is condemned as "tribalism" or even "racism/sexism/whitism/nationalism," whatever.

The Globalist message is: "One world, one ideology, one peoples ruled by one government -- Get on our bus, or we'll run you over."

So defiance is the rational response to such despotism and tyranny. In fact, it's the only moral response available.

Hardly desperation: more like an action of moral integrity and principle, a courageous action, a multicultural action (rather than one of universal cultural liquidation), a natural and proper assertion of the value of each culture and each person's unique identity, and of our basic right to choose our own course and have input in deciding our own destination.

These things become impossible where Globalism exists. For in the interests of centralized control, it must eventually make all things into mere indifferent "counters" to be moved around at its pleasure. It has no tolerance for identity, uniqueness, or even personhood.

For the one thing Globalism hates above all is...individuality.

[iambiguous]

What joy does either alternative give you, as you contemplate it?

So, is that the point of exploring God and religion in a philosophy venue: To being one joy?

No, but I am trying to figure out what you find attractive in the view. For people do not usually choose to believe things unless they are so verifiable as to be incapable of question at all, or unless they have some personal interest in doing so.

Well, something is "attractive" in regard to God and religion if it seems reasonable to me given the gap between what I believe about Christianity and theodicy, and what I am able to demonstrate that all other rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn. And, as with you, I suspect, it's not much. Either by way of verification or falsification.

Though I suspect in turn that any number of Christians sustain something in the way of comfort and consolation in being able to convince themselves that the terrible suffering of innocent children is perfectly compatible with God's "mysterious ways".

I think we can rule out the suggestion that the answer to the theodicy problem is simply obvious and indisputable, can't we? So that leaves us with my question: what would be your motivation in choosing that explanation?

Well, I'd say that given this -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _disorders -- many might find it hard to even imagine what an omniscient and omnipotent Christian God was thinking when He brought it all about. On the other hand, a God that was not omniscient and/or omnipotent? Yeah, that might explain it. As would a God that is clearly a sadistic monster.

Some evil?

Yes, "some." For you and I surely agree that if this place isn't Heaven, it sure isn't Hell either. So here we have a mixture of the good and bad. If we can answer the primary question, that is, why is there any evil at all, I think we can go right on to discussing proportionality. But I don't think we've yet resolved the primary question, have we?

Again, if you are able to rationalize the terrible pain and suffering endured by the innocent children around the globe -- "Approximately 3.1 million children die from undernutrition each year (UNICEF]" -- as an example of "some" evil sustained year in and year out by an alleged omniscient and omnipotent Christian God, this just indicates to me the extent which the flocks will go in order to explain away the brutal reality of the world we live in.

On the other hand, sure, what else is there? In a No God world this terrible, terrible tragedy becomes but a part of the "brute facticity" that is the human condition itself. What I wouldn't give myself to be able to "think myself" into giving God a pass by sweeping it all under the "mysterious ways" rug.

For me though the prolonged suffering of even a single child would be "too much" if it was within my power to end it. How about you? What might you suppose a good reason might be for you to allow the suffering to continue?

Nature itself is nothing less than a horrific slaughterhouse of predators and prey.

Yes and no.

Of course, nature is also beautiful and intricate and delicate and wild and majestic...and all that. We all know that. There are both. But we're not onto the proportionality issue yet, so let's hold onto that thought for when we've made some headway with the "Why is there any evil at all" question, shall we?

Okay, the beauty of nature works for you in putting the ghastly slaughterhouse component into perspective. And it doesn't work for me. Back again to dasein.

Me, I'd be more inclined to tap the Christian God on the shoulder, remind Him of this -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering -- and ask "Why?"

What possible answer could He give?!! Not to mention the extinction events that wipe out large percentages of all animal life. And it's only a matter of time before we are included the next one.

But here's something you'll never have thought about yet, I suspect. There is an argument against Atheism FROM the same observation you make above.

It goes like this:

If Atheism is true, there is no objective truth to perceptions of good and evil.
But there is objective truth to the existence of evil (or good).
Therefore, Atheism cannot be true.

That's ridiculous. Or, rather, to me anyway. Here, from my perspective, you are like skepdick claiming objective morality must exist because people in any given community call the "rules of behavior" they live by objective morality. As though the perceptions of Christians regarding evil behavior makes the behaviors evil.

Around and around the Christians go:

The Ten Commandments are an example of objective morality because they are in the Bible. And they are in the Bible because the Bible is the word of God.

Let's start with this: you say that evil exists. (I must assume you do, because if you don't believe in objective evil, then what can your theodicy objection possibly be?) But you do not believe in God, correct? I want to understand your claim, therefore.

Can you explain what you mean by "evil"?

On the contrary, from my frame of mind, "evil" is an intersubjective and inherently problematic perspective rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts.

Then for each of us as individuals rooted existentially in dasein. Given the manner in which I broached my own value judgments re the OP of this thread: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

From my frame of mind, theodicy revolves around behaviors that if pursued or permitted by mere mortals would be called "evil" by many of those who call themselves Christians.

How on Earth can God be "vindicated" given the world as he created it, the human body as He created it, other than by way of subsuming all of the simply mind-boggling pain and suffering endured by us [especially by children] in His "mysterious ways".

The "problem of evil" is "solved" through more or less blind faith. As is so much else in regard to God.

[henry quirk]

So one of the statements that I make is that in our present, speaking generally, agreements have broken down, are breaking down, on so many levels that it is not only unavoidably obvious but also extremely dangerous. Consider that *we* — we who are Americans but the fact is that everyone across the world thinks about and debates what is going on in America today — can no longer agree as to what *America* is anymore.

Since you raised agreement (so many pages back) I've -- on and off -- thought on it. Seems to me there never was much agreement about anything. What's tested or worn thin today is toleration. Americans, generally, had thicker skins. I think most still do. They aren't the ones in the spotlight. No, the raw nerves own the stage. I'm not talkin' about the prickly, like me, who will condemn and dismiss and move on, but the outraged who can't move on till -- by hook or crook -- they've gotten your approval and compliance.

The most basic agreement -- to agree to disagree -- is gone (in the public square).

I blame the internet...

[Alexis Jacobi]

Hardly desperation: more like an action of moral integrity and principle, a courageous action, a multicultural action (rather than one of universal cultural liquidation), a natural and proper assertion of the value of each culture and each person's unique identity, and of our basic right to choose our own course and have input in deciding our own destination.

These things become impossible where Globalism exists. For in the interests of centralized control, it must eventually make all things into mere indifferent "counters" to be moved around at its pleasure. It has no tolerance for identity, uniqueness, or even personhood.

For the one thing Globalism hates above all is...individuality.

Since 'desperation' was the word I chose (there are other possible words, and a group of words, to describe better what I meant) I will make an effort to defend my use of it.

But first I have to explain that I have been reading Susannah Heschel's book The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. The reason I desire to research in this area is logical and coherent (to me) and also odd and I must say also questionable. It is a very strange and difficult area to research but I would also have to say that this is so because the shadow of Nazism, and the projection of the worst form of evil onto the Nazis, is so predominant today because all the same issues are just as present as they were in the Interwar years. A very strange circle has been completed. Or a whole range of currents has circled back around.

If you (I mean if anyone) pays attention to the rising Right-leaning dissident movement that is active today you will not be able to avoid noticing that there, on the fringe but very close indeed, are people who are adamant in their concerns about rising social decadence and the destruction of religious identification that they see as upholding time-honored social and cultural values, but whose ideas and language have very strong relationships to all that formerly concerned radical Right factions as well as fascists. The Interwar period in Europe is where all the same prevailing discourses and arguments can be found (1920s and 1930s more or less).

Within this context, and this was certainly true in Germany (and I suppose in Italy and other countries too), it became a matter of real concern how to define Christianity. In this sense Christianity served the function or had ties to a universalism that corresponds to the communicated meaning in the term 'globalism' today. I do not necessarily mean what I understand Christianity to really be, but something far more general: a general set of assumptions, perhaps even badly conceived. There is no way that I can see not to pick apart and closely analyze the term 'globalism' because it is laden with all sorts of different, and I think often obscured and clandestine, meaning.

In Germany -- and I mean in the broader Germanic world of Northern Europe -- some things need to be understood. One is that Protestantism arose in a mood, if I can use that word, deeply oppositional to what was perceived as Catholic but also Jewish influence. Germanic Christianity, and Germanic Protestantism, is a rebellion against a certain 'imposition' on the cultural and also the psychic world of Northern Europe -- and it became apparent that this had to be thrown off. This reaction-process' can be examined. Northern European and Germanic Christianity (Germanic in the widest sense), according to one interpretation, received Christianity but modified it:

This inquiry [The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell] seeks to apply insights from the behavioral sciences and from the history of religions to the pivotal religio-cultural transformation which occurred as a result of the encounter of Christianity with the Germanic peoples. It is proposed herein that Christianization efforts among the Germanic peoples resulted in a substantial Germanization of Christianity. The fundamental distinction which became apparent from this approach was that the Germanic world-view was essentially folk-centered and "world-accepting," while the Early Christian world-view was essentially soteriological and "world-rejecting."

So in this sense the Germanic world, through Protestantism, undertook to throw off the influence and the yoke of a Universalizing Roman Church and to assert itself in a range of ways in direct opposition. True, some part of this was 'reasoned' and 'logical' but on another level it was deeply psychological and reactive.

It is very curious to see and understand how important it was, and it still may be of course, to separate Christianity from Judaism. There are two strains of this, or two poles, that can easily be discerned in our modern today. One is the side that aligns itself with Judaism and Israel, and seems to define Christianity as a branch of Judaism; and the other which sees Christianity, and indeed the God that Christianity defines, as uniquely distinct from 'Yahweh' and the Judaic God that Jesus opposed. It is a very curious problem and it is completely central to Christianity: Jesus's direct opposition to Judaism and to a 'structure' which he opposed. But to say 'he' must mean to say, quite literally, what God opposed. Whatever that was -- it is very hard to define because Christianity is so bound up in mythic notions -- was toppled, again by God's will. The Jewish diaspora, according to Christian view, was a result of that toppling.

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.”

What happened here? It was, according to Christian definition, the end of one thing (Judaism) and the beginning of another (Christianity).

These are the fundamental ideas that have always operated in Christianity . . . up to fairly recently when another interpretive version was proposed (the dual-dispensation theory). The idea of Antisemtism -- opposition to Jews and Jewish machination -- had been the core idea that ran through all of post-Exile history and certainly of the Jewish diaspora in Europe. There is, that I can see, no way around this.

So as I have examined the movements that define themselves as 'anti-globalist' I have no choice but to say that there are all manner of strange strains of idea that one encounters in those who embrace this posture. And there is no way not to see, and therefore not to talk about, a mood that I named 'desperation' where people who do not seem to have very clear and coherent ideas about the world, or who see it through a limited and reduced framework, try in intellectual, psychological and personal desperation to make sense of what is going on around them, and which determines them, by undertaking a forced and desperate interpretation. So interpretation, and the wielding of interpretation, become weapons of offense and defense. If I say it is a desperate effort I do not mean that it may not be necessary and even moral. I mean that it is undertaken in a certain desperation and internal conflict.

For all that I have many different sympathies, let's say, with the populist Trump movement, it is not at all hard for me to see that Trump as a demagogic populist is obviously working angles in his stimulation of reaction that has ties, ties that can be described, to fascist incitement. Now, the people who notice this -- the NY Intellectual Establishment -- are those with a decided 'historical perspective' and by that I mean that they are aware of what happened just a few decades back in Europe (and from which many escaped).

The entire idea of The Frankfurt School is a reference and a term that has many many different levels of meaning. And what I refer to is a movement that seeks to, what is the right way to put it, undermine or render impossible a fascistic reaction in common people who react, without perhaps knowing fully why, against forces, factions and powers that control and determine them. And here I will reintroduce the term 'globalism'. Populism, in America, is reactive and also 'desperate'. It seeks to locate the enemy and to define the enemy, and then to discover a way to oppose the defined enemy.

If I use the term 'desperation' I do not mean in any sense to imply that I do not think returning to and rediscovering *Identity* in cultural and also, problematically, in racial and ethnic identification is a 'bad thing'. In fact it has seemed to me something necessary and perhaps also inevitable. But if this is so then America's multi-culturalism project must be and perhaps will be undone and dismantled because it is an improper imposition.

So here again I refer to the undoing of various sorts of 'glue' that held the Republic together which, from where I sit, sure look like it is unbinding.

So the term 'desperation' is not a bad one to use in a time in which people have become, or seem to become, disassociated from themselves as their former identifications are coming unglued.

However, the term 'defiance' of impositions -- such as is multi-culturalism -- I would also say is valid. But the undoing of the systems that have been created, as we all notice, will be anything but easy.

(I could edit this better and add more to it but it would take more time than I have. We are discussing Christianity here, and I am very interested in Christianity in a modern cultural context, so all that I bring up interests me and seems relevant indeed).

[Nick_A]

Alexis

It is not possible to feign the sort of fundamental (metaphysical) agreements which I refer to as possibilities when in truth the larger process is one of dissolution.

There is a necessary first step to acquire human understanding. This first step requires admitting that we do not know ourselves. Jacob Needleman describes our situation in the preface to his book "Lost Christianity." The cultural rot you wrote of is the natural progression of the need to imagine ourselves as we abandon the deeper objective need to "Know Thyself.

https://tiferetjournal.com/lost-christianity/

.................What is needed is a either a new understanding of God or a new understanding
of Man: an understanding of God that does not insult the scientific
mind, while offering bread, not a stone, to the deepest hunger of the
heart; or an understanding of Man that squarely faces the criminal
weakness of our moral will while holding out to us the knowledge of how we can strive within ourselves to become the fully human being we are meant to be– both for ourselves and as instruments of a higher purpose.

But, this is not an either/or. The premise –or, rather, the proposal—of this
book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists and
has always existed just such a vision of both God and Man. I call it
“lost Christianity” not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts
that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of
spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources.
It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern
life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without
which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all too
easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear and hatred. What
is lost is the experience of oneself, just oneself—myself, the personal
being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for
goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting one’s own
existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however
tentatively, of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from
within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in
the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness
between what we are meant to be and what we actually are.
It is, perhaps, the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past
toward the human future.

In the writings and utterances of the great teachers of Christianity over
the centuries one may begin to discern, like a photographic image
gradually developing before one’s eyes, the outlines of this vision of
what is called in this book “intermediate Christianity.” But modern man can no longer perceive that vision or hear the language that has been associated with it.. Words like “humility,” “purity
of heart,” “contrition,” are no longer understood to require the
individual, existential struggle for what the early Fathers called
“attention in oneself.” On the contrary, it is assumed that such qualities of character can be ours in
the distracted and dispersed state of being that is more and more
characteristic of life in the contemporary world. The result is
self-deception which masks and perhaps even intensifies our
weaknesses and which inevitably leads to the disillusionment with
religious ideals that has been one of the hallmarks of the modern,
secular world-view. Of course, the modernist attempt to establish
ethical life without religion, itself ignores the same lost
element in human life that has been forgotten in the conventional
understanding of religion. The result is often a sad ineffectuality under
the name of rousing moral formulae—or, ironically, the decay of what
began in opposition to perceived religious tyranny into its own brand of
quasi-religious dogmatism and violence—as witnessed in the fate of
communist ideology.

Whether it is conventional religion or secular humanism,or any other modern
program of morality and inner human betterment, the question remains:
can there be any hope of our becoming what we are meant to be without
first becoming fully and deeply aware of what we in fact are, now, here,
in just this moment of our lives? Whether religious or not, is there
any hope for man who has lost the capacity or forgotten the need to know himself and to be alive and present in himself?

The great ideas and ideals of Christianity continue to offer hope and
comfort to the world, as do the ideals of Judaism and Islam—and of all
the world’s great religions. And as do the ideals of humanistic morality
with its passionate commitment to justice and human rights. Yet we see,
we see, we cannot help but see that now, as ever, something is missing,
something has been forgotten about ourselves and in ourselves. Our
children see it as clearly as we sometimes do; more clearly! The words of St. Paul never sounded more distinctly as they do now in the lengthening shadows of our civilization:

For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do…who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Romans: 7

Is anything possible other than cultural rot when the fight for self esteem replaces the benefits of becoming able to "Know Thyself" and open to inwardly receive the help of higher values?

[Nick_A]

Alexis

If once humanity as a whole were able to make the efforts in humility to harmonize the soul as Plato described, it would be possible to acquire the conscious attention necessary to admit what we are and receive help from above for the purpose of human understanding as opposed to the attractions of the secular will to power.

The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also. ~ Simone Weil

[Alexis Jacobi]

If once humanity as a whole were able to make the efforts in humility to harmonize the soul as Plato described, it would be possible to acquire the conscious attention necessary to admit what we are and receive help from above for the purpose of human understanding as opposed to the attractions of the secular will to power.

Humanity as a whole will not ever make that effort. What you recommend — and I agree conceptually with it — is for a private person and possibly a small group to undertake.

Though at times — in moments of history — it seems possible that more of those in a given society were ruled by higher forces and ideals.

Or perhaps not . . .

It seems to me *we* in the larger cultural sense are in a declining cycle (in specific areas) and there is nothing to do but turn inward in the manner indicated by what you post.

As to my fascination, or fixation, on topical social issues that may never be resolved in any adequate way, I am not sure why.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, I'd say that given this -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _disorders -- many might find it hard to even imagine what an omniscient and omnipotent Christian God was thinking when He brought it all about.

Wait.

Before we deal with your allegation against God, we must understand what you mean by it. You mean that childhood diseases are "evil," or "bad," presumably. As a Theist, I would agree they are...but I say that as a Theist, of course, so in accordance with the standards of "good" and "evil" that Scripture provides.

But what I can't understand is how you mount that allegation from an Atheistic point of view: for it must surely be quite obvious that the Atheist cannot be referring to Scripture when he calls childhood diseases "evil," or "bad."

To what standard can he be referring?

But you give me something to work with, for you say:

...from my frame of mind, "evil" is an intersubjective and inherently problematic perspective rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts.

So you mean that childhood diseases are "intersubjectively" a problem...? I'm not sure what that means, but perhaps you'll explain. You say that your assessment would be "rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts." So you must mean, I assume, that childhood diseases are only "evil" is one is raised in the historical, cultural and interpersonal context" where people believe they are evil.

But the problem is that that "historical, cultural and interpersonal context" is clearly not Atheism itself. For it is clear that in Atheism, what IS, simply IS. There is no objective fact of "evil," and none of "good" either; these have to be mere illusions, maybe feelings people happen to have in some contexts, but which absolutely cannot possibly refer to any objective truth.

So childhood diseases, Atheistically considered, are not "evil." So your accusation boils down to this:

You accuse the God you don't believe exists of allowing things you don't have any basis to regard as evil.

If you'll forgive me, I don't see how that presents much of theodicy problem. It looks to me that accusing somebody -- especially somebody non-existent, of allowing something not objectively evil doesn't amount even to something that requires an answer...even if the thought behind it could be rendered coherent; but at the moment, I can't see that it can.

From my frame of mind, theodicy revolves around behaviors that if pursued or permitted by mere mortals would be called "evil" by many of those who call themselves Christians.

Well, I can see how that can be something that Christians should be concerned about in their conversations with each other. And good thing that they have been and they have good ways of addressing that question -- for their own sake, of course. But an Atheist still surely lacks and "entry card" into that debate, since the Atheist does not believe in either God or evil...at least, not as objective and real.

So I don't want to avoid the question, because I think excellent answers exist. But I don't see that the Atheist has any account of evil from which to mount any accusation. If there's no "evil," objectively, then there's objectively no problem either.

Do you at least believe that childhood diseases are actually, objectively "evil"? If you do, how do you, as an Atheist, justify that value claim? And if you don't, then how can you expect to be understood if you ask a question the basic terms of which you believe are entirely fictive?