Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

“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).

Actually, no. There may be some sect that says something like that, I guess...but if there is, I don't know of them.

To the contrary, the veil was not between Judaism and Christianity, but between the place where God dwells and the place where human beings dwell. You can see this, since even Jews were not permitted into that sacred space, except for one person -- the High Priest -- and only once a year, and only if he brought with him a pure sacrifice. Nobody, but nobody...Jew or Gentile...was able to inhabit that space or to enter it without being judged, prior to the death of Christ.

If you read the book of Hebrews, it makes this point quite clear: there's no theology to back the other interpretation.

The entire idea of The Frankfurt School is a reference and a term that has many many different levels of meaning.

No it doesn't. It's actually very straightforward.

It's a group of failed Communists, who tried, folllowing the disasters of WW 2 and the Soviet Union, to keep Marxism alive in some form, even though all the fact showed his theory was nonsense. And we know the names of these failed Communists -- people like Adorno, Gramsci and Marcuse -- so there's no fuzziness at all to this term.

So the term 'desperation' is not a bad one to use

I think it is. It assumes that anybody who opposes Globalism is not acting on wisdom or truth, but rather on fear and desire for some mythical ideal of ethnic purity. And that's obviously just partisan slander. It's not remotely true. Globalism has many intelligent opponents, who resist it on principle and for ethical reasons.

Really...you can't be serious. They are not "desperate": a great many are just smart people with a strong sense of who they are, what they want and don't want, a respect for diversity of culture and opinion, and an urge to be free rather than to be subject to a monolythic global State run by elitist tyrants.

Globalism is a fool's project...well, and a totalitarian's dream.

[Nick_A]

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.

I agree. Humanity as a whole is the Great Beast described by Plato. From book V1 of the Republic:

I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes...

All beasts lack consciousness and respond as creatures of reaction. Their purpose on earth is to serve the earth through the energies of its life processes. As creatures of reaction Man cannot be other than what it is. No amount of BS and platitudes can change it. Rather than changing the Beast, humanity needs more individuals within the beast capable of conscious action. They indicate the potential future for conscious man

[henry quirk]

So the term 'desperation' is not a bad one to use

They are not "desperate": a great many are just smart people with a strong sense of who they are, what they want and don't want, a respect for diversity of culture and opinion, and *an urge to be free rather than to be subject to a monolythic global State run by elitist tyrants.

*Yep. Though it's not the urge to be free; it's the resolve to remain free. And we're not fond of the local variety of The State either.

[promethean75]

"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."

I got this one, Biggs. He's trying to trick you, and not even intentionally. It's built into his nature as a terminally confused philosopher.

It is not the disease, famine and natural disaster that is 'evil'. These things are just physical phenomena. But we need not call them 'evil" to agree that they suck, that they produce unwanted pain and suffering. We call such stuff 'bad', but not 'evil'. And this kind of bad is universal; everybody agrees that these things suck, objectively.

What one can ax of a 'god' - presumably one that is omnipotent - however, is 'why would you design and create a world that involves these things if you had the option to do otherwise?'

Now I'm not soliciting all the ridiculous explanations theologians offer that always follow this question because I've heard em all before. All's I'm doing is showing you there is no contradiction in Biggses position, and yer not gonna get him trapped up in that 'well if good and bad don't objectively exist, how can you lodge a complaint against god for creating such things as disease, famine and natural disaster' nonsense.

[henry quirk]

What one can ax of a 'god' - presumably one that is omnipotent - however, is 'why would you design and create a world that involves these things if you had the option to do otherwise?'

Cuz, mebbe, He didn't have another option, not if He wanted a specific kind of Reality.

warning: I'm a deist, not theist...my notions about God aren't the same as Mannie's

[Alexis Jacobi]

To the contrary, the veil was not between Judaism and Christianity, but between the place where God dwells and the place where human beings dwell. You can see this, since even Jews were not permitted into that sacred space, except for one person -- the High Priest -- and only once a year, and only if he brought with him a pure sacrifice. Nobody, but nobody...Jew or Gentile...was able to inhabit that space or to enter it without being judged, prior to the death of Christ.

If you read the book of Hebrews, it makes this point quite clear: there's no theology to back the other interpretation.

What parts of Hebrews would you submit as supporting that view?

OTOH, and despite any particular Gospel or Epistle, I think the *meaning*, if it can be known, is more in line with what I presented. Within the story-line of the Gospel narrative, and the Christian narrative, the murder-of-God action by the reigning power in Judea literally brought an end to the nexus which was Judea. And if I am right it ripped the dispensation out of their hands. How could it be otherwise? In Christian eyes and Christian terms -- which is also to say in Jewish-Christian terms -- something radical and incontrovertible occurred with the cited event of this rent. In just a few years more the Exile began which, if only in Christian terms, was understood to be 'God's retaliation'. You don't murder the Son of God and just get off the hook. Again, this is Christian logic.

It seems to me that your interpretation has no specific and tangible relationship to the context. I am aware that the standard interpretation is that

"When Jesus died, the veil was torn, and God moved out of that place never again to dwell in a temple made with human hands (Acts 17:24). God was through with that temple and its religious system, and the temple and Jerusalem were left “desolate” (destroyed by the Romans) in A.D. 70, just as Jesus prophesied in Luke 13:35. As long as the temple stood, it signified the continuation of the Old Covenant. Hebrews 9:8-9 refers to the age that was passing away as the new covenant was being established (Hebrews 8:13).

So in fact I would say that my interpretation is pretty close to the standard one. And what I said makes more sense -- and I mean this in a Christian hermeneutical sense. The murder of Jesus Christ had severe implications for the Jews and Judaism. This is all *part of the story* of the European diaspora. Endless and extraordinary suffering by the hand of the goyim.

there's no theology to back the other interpretation.

I am unsure what you mean since -- and this seems pretty clear within Christian documents and hermeneutics -- that the theology in facts supports what I propose. It is *standard material*.

AJ: The entire idea of The Frankfurt School is a reference and a term that has many many different levels of meaning.

IC: No it doesn't. It's actually very straightforward.

It is possible to say that the varied positions and assertions of those of The Frankfurt School had strong and definite relations to Marxism and post-Marxism, but there really is a whole other dimension: an attempt by those theorists to find a way to undermine the 'fascist' and in their eyes anti-Jewish tendency they clearly noticed as latent in America (the place where they landed and established a base). So when you (when one) reads their writing, for example The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno, you notice a strong, in fact an intense, effort to discover a means to undermine whatever it is that they (he, his school of thought) fears. It is in this sense that The Frankfurt School, the term, the use of the term in discourse today, has numerous levels of meaning.

If you refer to almost any Right-leaning source, and certainly many radical Right sources, to be given interpretation of what The Frankfurt School means, it will give an interpretation that is decidedly more nefarious.

And for this reason I would contradict the 'straightforwardness' you indicate.

I think it is. It assumes that anybody who opposes Globalism is not acting on wisdom or truth, but rather on fear and desire for some mythical ideal of ethnic purity. And that's obviously just partisan slander. It's not remotely true. Globalism has many intelligent opponents, who resist it on principle and for ethical reasons.

But that is not at all what I would say, and it is not what I meant when I used the term 'desperation'. The notion of despair:

[Middle English despeiren, from Old French desperer, from Latin dēspērāre : dē-, de- + spērāre, to hope; see spē- in Indo-European roots. N., from Middle English despeir, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French desperer, to despair.]

I do not say that opposing the machinations of globalism and the doing of 'the global elite' is a bad or unnecessary thing, by no means would I assert that, but what I do assert is the mood of despair and desperation that leads people to grasp wildly at straws (interpretations) that help them resolve their angst and confusion. So there are many many levels of extreme conspiratorial thinking, as it is called, among those who don't have enough realistic information to interpret their world and tend to wild interpretations. I can support all that I assert here.

Since I do not regard the desire for 'ethnic purity', mythical or real, as being necessarily wrong or immoral (I would say that a specific nation of people has, in fact, a right and even a moral imperative to preserve themselves at this level among numerous levels) I cannot respond to your assertion about "some mythical ideal of ethnic purity". There are no people that I am aware of who do not naturally and innately feel some need or desire to preserve themselves at an 'ethnic' level. So I see it is non-bad. It is certainly not evil.

Do you see it differently?

Really...you can't be serious. They are not "desperate": a great many are just smart people with a strong sense of who they are, what they want and don't want, a respect for diversity of culture and opinion, and an urge to be free rather than to be subject to a monolithic global State run by elitist tyrants.

I think you are getting too hung up on that one word. I have tried to define what I mean by desparate and also despair. I see despair as being a prime motivator in today's political and social climate. And I do not mean it as a way to denigrate those who oppose globalism and a host of other things as well.

There are some 'smart people', I certainly agree, and there are also many who are not smart at all and who clutch after 'desperate interpretations' as a way to attain psychological relief. Here I refer, for example, to the so-called Q-anon movement, which is filled to the brim with people who are attempting the sort of 'interpretation' I speak of.

Globalism is a fool's project...well, and a totalitarian's dream.

That may be true, ultimately, but a globalized and let's say universalist humanity-uniting project is one outcome of Christian ideology, it seems to me. Or do you think I have got this wrong?

[promethean75]

"there are also many who are not smart at all and who clutch after 'desperate interpretations' as a way to attain psychological relief. Here I refer, for example, to the so-called Q-anon movement, which is filled to the brim with people who are attempting the sort of 'interpretation' I speak of."

Ya know, regarding the quality of mind and nature of beliefs, Christianity and Q-anon are not so terribly different. Just sayin.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Ya know, regarding the quality of mind and nature of beliefs, Christianity and Q-anon are not so terribly different. Just sayin.

I appreciate in dome sense at least your opportunistic swipe at “Christianity” — this is a major object for you and others — but I can report, honestly and with integrity, that you are flatly wrong.

But I will agree with you that there is a low-denomination sort-of Christian whose capacities of understanding incline them to Q-anon like interpretations. There are such high and low levels in all domains it seems to me.

[RCSaunders]

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.

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.

I am totally lost by you emphasis on, "agreement." It almost doesn't matter at all. Nothing is true, right, or good because of any agreement about it. Truth is not determined by consensus. Every truth ever discovered in history was resisted and fought against by the opinion of society--from the facts of astronomy to the principles of medicine, nothing was ever established by agreement. It has always been those who disagree with all prevailing beliefs and practices that have made all modern science, technology, medicine, agriculture, chemistry, human flight, electricity, abundant food, water, and energy possible.

You seem to regard agreement as some social thing (I'm not sure what) that has some cultural significance. (Is that right?) Unless you expect nothing to ever change (which would require everyone to always agree and be satisfied with the current state of affairs), all new and good discoveries and developments require some individuals to think and do things that no one else is thinking and doing, that is, disagreeing with the way everyone else currently thinks and behaves. Your idea of agreement sounds suspiciously like fear of change.

What you seem to be describing as, "shared cultural social projects," [perhaps the most successful one, at least the most effective ever is called the holocaust] are some kind of contrived collective efforts, like those of governments, [think the pyramids of Egypt and Great Wall of China] which were certainly great social efforts, though certainly not voluntary, produced by those who, "agreed," (rather then be executed). As far as I'm concerned, the world would be better off without the product of any so-call, "shared cultural or social projects," which always turn out to mean the oppression of some individuals for the sake of others to achieve something no one's voluntary effort would ever produce.

There will never be a problem getting people to voluntarily participate and cooperate in any effort to produce or accomplish anything which is truly in their interest and to their benefit. No agency of force is required to make people cooperate for their own good. Any supposed organization that must be imposed on people against their will is wrong and the resulting seeming. "agreement," is simply out of fear or complicity in their own enslavement and destruction.

It is the very collective view that you think is the solution that produced the so-called cultural revolution of the 60's. I was born in 1940 and experienced every bit of that so-called cultural change and it was intentionally produced by the dual efforts of the cultrual Marxists of the Frankfurt School infecting the universities with their, "critical theory," and the efforts of post modernists confused ideas of logical positivism that formed the ideological foundation of that cultural revolution. The whole view of life residing in individuals that they were individually responsible for their own life and actions, their success or failure determine by their own efforts and industry was exchanged for the view that it was society that mattered and that the whole purpose life became to make society the kind that the idealists envisioned where success and happiness were provided by the state. It was a transition from individualist thinking to collective thinking, which totally dominates the views of almost everyone today.

Every time you write (or think) "we now live in a world in which we do not," or, "we live in a world that has been set up for us," or "we are not unified. So here we can think about ...," you are expressing the collectivist post-modern cultural Marxist view of all purpose and value residing in some collective, "we," or, "us" on which the entire so-called cultural revolution was justified. "Whatever makes the most people happy," became the guiding principle and everyone came to believe their only value or purpose in life was determined by some collective they belonged to, and it was up to "society," to ensure they got their, "rights"

We're not going to agree, and I'm not interested in changing your views. You at least can know your views are popularly shared by a great many people and that should please you (because they agree with you). Almost no one agrees with my views, which does not at all surprise me. My views are dangerous, demanding, and risky and offer no easy solutions, forgiveness, or the comfort of belonging to something. Most people are terrified of being entirely on their own and entirely responsible for every aspect of their own life. I never expect agreement, but am often delightfully surprised when I do.

[promethean75]

"But I will agree with you that there is a low-denomination sort-of Christian whose capacities of understanding incline them to Q-anon like interpretations."

Nope. Even an Aquinas and an Augustine are not so far removed from the typical Q-anonist. It's the very basis of christian belief that is ridiculous. Duddint matter how great a logician you are if you sincerely believe in talking snakes, trees of knowledge, walking on water and immaculate conceptions. Add to this being incredibly naive if you believe some guy who says he's the 'son' of god and that he rose from the dead. When one takes a closer look at the foundations of christian belief, the ridiculousness of it becomes exponentially worser. Q-anon believers exercise about the same level and sophistication of reasoning.

[Immanuel Can]

I got this one, Biggs.

You're so funny! I've never seen somebody so overconfident with so little warrant. You've got this one, do you? Well, it'll be the first.

It is not the disease, famine and natural disaster that is 'evil'. These things are just physical phenomena.

Well, that's what Atheism has to say.

But we need not call them 'evil" to agree that they suck, that they produce unwanted pain and suffering. We call such stuff 'bad', but not 'evil'. And this kind of bad is universal; everybody agrees that these things suck, objectively.

You mean, "People don't like bad."

I have to ask, "So what?" The mere fact that people like or donn't like something doesn't make it objectively "bad," just unpopular. The way Atheism tells the story, there have to be a lot of things that people don't like, but that are nevertheless their lot in life. Aging and dying is an obvious one: nobody likes it, but we all get it.

'why would you design and create a world that involves these things if you had the option to do otherwise?'

There would have to be a sufficient reason, of course. Are you confident that there can be no sufficient reason for God to allow evil in the world? Theodicists suggest you're wrong if you think so.

[Immanuel Can]

To the contrary, the veil was not between Judaism and Christianity, but between the place where God dwells and the place where human beings dwell. You can see this, since even Jews were not permitted into that sacred space, except for one person -- the High Priest -- and only once a year, and only if he brought with him a pure sacrifice. Nobody, but nobody...Jew or Gentile...was able to inhabit that space or to enter it without being judged, prior to the death of Christ.

If you read the book of Hebrews, it makes this point quite clear: there's no theology to back the other interpretation.

What parts of Hebrews would you submit as supporting that view?

Hebrews 9. It's quite explicit.

Again, this is Christian logic.

No, it isn't. We don't think that, and the patters of "logic" you've laid down are based on premises we don't take. What you think we ought to think, and what we do think are rather different, it appears.

there's no theology to back the other interpretation.

I am unsure what you mean since -- and this seems pretty clear within Christian documents and hermeneutics -- that the theology in facts supports what I propose. It is *standard material*. [/quote]
No, I'm sorry, it's not. i have no idea where you're pulling it from. No Christian I've known...and I've known a lot...ever says anything like it.

The Frankfurt School had strong and definite relations to Marxism and post-Marxism, but there really is a whole other dimension: an attempt by those theorists to find a way to undermine the 'fascist' and in their eyes anti-Jewish tendency they clearly noticed as latent in America (the place where they landed and established a base).

They were ideologues and idiots. Sure, they didn't like Nazism. But they were far more "fascistic" (i.e. totalitarian and collectivist) in their Marxism that the Americans they claimed to be criticizing ever were.

For example, go and read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" essay (available online) and you'll see. They were loons of the first order.

Really...you can't be serious. They are not "desperate": a great many are just smart people with a strong sense of who they are, what they want and don't want, a respect for diversity of culture and opinion, and an urge to be free rather than to be subject to a monolithic global State run by elitist tyrants.

I think you are getting too hung up on that one word. I have tried to define what I mean by desparate and also despair. I see despair as being a prime motivator in today's political and social climate. And I do not mean it as a way to denigrate those who oppose globalism and a host of other things as well.

Well, I think it's a very poorly chosen word. There are plenty who are not at all in despair, and have plenty of pepper left in them.

Here I refer, for example, to the so-called Q-anon movement,

A poor example, I would say. They do exist, but nobody really takes them seriously, and they have no significant public presence at all. Like "white supremacy," they're pretty much just another Leftist bogeyman, just an excuse for extending their totalitarian impulse.

...a globalized and let's say universalist humanity-uniting project is one outcome of Christian ideology, it seems to me. Or do you think I have got this wrong?

Absolutely. The "globalist" project first appears in Genesis 11, in a place called "Babel"; and it's roundly deplored in Jewish and Christian theologies. After that, you'll find that there is absolutely no call at all for efforts to "universalize" or "humanity-unite"; to imagine that such a thing would even be possible without the personal intervention of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace would be totally contrary to Scripture.

I'm afraid you really don't know what Christians believe at all. I have to say that, because you're so often wrong when you declare what they "must" think, and I know very well they don't.

[Nick_A]

What one can ax of a 'god' - presumably one that is omnipotent - however, is 'why would you design and create a world that involves these things if you had the option to do otherwise?'

Cuz, mebbe, He didn't have another option, not if He wanted a specific kind of Reality.

warning: I'm a deist, not theist...my notions about God aren't the same as Mannie's

Very true. If the universe is a necessity, what we subjectively define as evil must manifest within it as well. Does objective evil exist for a deist even though Man subjectively defines it?

[promethean75]

If all the details of the universe are 'necessary' (including the disease and famine and natural disaster), then you gain nothing by introducing 'god' as an intermediary, since he too is subject to the necessary, natural laws that govern the physical, chemical and biological universe.

On the other hand, if such details are not necessary - say a world could exist without ebola, cancer, and rap music - then a god that decided to include rather than exclude such details would take full responsibility for them.

[promethean75]

"After that, you'll find that there is absolutely no call at all for efforts to "universalize" or "humanity-unite"

This may have something to do with the fact that the semi-literate bronze-age desert tribesmen that wrote the content and/or told the stories included in the Bible had no idea whether or not anyone existed outside of the small region in the middle east they knew.

Believe me, if they did, they'd be trying to indoctrinate them niggas too, just like your homeboy Paul did.