Christianity

[RCSaunders]

I readily admit what I declare and explain is what I'm certain of. There is a great deal I do not know, and more that I know somethings about or am reasonably convinced is true, but not certain is true, but about all fundamentals, I am certain, and certain of a great many other things as well. It is not possible for a human being to live without knowledge, a great deal of knowledge, and even those who are the most cynical about knowledge and certainly still have to live as though their knowledge was certain.

Well, if you weren't *certain* you'd be in a position of cognitive dissonance to be declaring so much -- including that certain people should not be in positions of influencing children! -- if you were not 'certain'.

But I will suggest, as politely as I can, that to all appearances there are some holes and gaps in your cognitive and also epistemological system. These are not insignificant.

However, I do agree with each and every item on your list.

I would be very much interested in what you have found wrong in my epistemology. Very few people actually ever seriously attempt to understand the nature of knowledge and concepts and I would delighted with an opportunity to improve my own views if they are mistaken. If you can identify specific mistakes or gaps I would really appreciate it.

[Dubious]

As metaphor, I’d describe the language as programmatic in creating a hologram of processes which manifest the cosmos as it seems to us. Language as monologue, invariably and exclusively subject to its own grammar.

I am curious to understand what you’d consider to be the effect, in a person, or in a culture, if this notion you present became common? Would this not imply that someone would feel inclined to *break free of their grammar*? How could that be done? Immersing oneself in another language built very differently? (Should I begin to learn Algonquin? Or perhaps some Malayo-Polynesian tongue?) Or doing away entirely with any language? Some type of direct receptivity of *what is* without the holographic mediator?

If you understood what was implied pertaining to the cosmos, as stated, you would realize it changes nothing in human terms. It’s only a metaphor!

So, when once some people — for example the Greeks — imagined they were closing in on some bedrock: the idea of a universal Logos (intelligibility running though all levels of creation and manifestation) they were in fact imposing an order that does not, really, exist?

Of course it exists. No matter how ancient, a logos was clearly evident in the processes of nature. Existence depended on that being true; true it was, true it remains. If permitted, for me logos is the universal grammar which maintains that position. The underpinnings of that model denotes an organizing intelligence but not one predetermined or aware – as if Purpose were included in its incipience. In that respect, it’s not incorrect to think of logos as a universal constant.

The important questions hardly ever get resolved which is the reason they consistently reappear whenever any provisional acceptance once again begins to question itself. The most iconic questions are the looped ones.

Hardly ever? So they do get resolved every once in a while? So some *certainty* can be got about some things?

Okay then, never! I feel uncomfortable stating anything as absolute. Until that last minuscule section of arc on a download completes, the certainty aspect is vulnerable – even if its virtually certain.

I think I may see *Nietzsche* (here with emphasis to indicate a phenomenon) in a somewhat different light.

If you need to rethink him regarding Christianity, that is your choice. He made his position vis-a-vis the establishment clear in many aphorisms. Most reinterpretations usually lead to the wrong conclusion.

Eventually, this led to a cultural necessity of *throwing off the yoke* that was laid on. It is possible to suggest that Protestantism (Martin Luther et al) is that manifestation. Squirming out from under an entire, really a vast and complex, imposition. It had, let’s say, a beginning point but to what did it eventually progress? I would suggest that it culminated in *Nietzsche* — that is in a total and thorough *casting off* the yoke.

Protestantism, per Luther, was to operate as an intensification of belief by excluding the middleman. So, no! What culminated in Nietzsche was the slow erosion of belief which started with the enlightenment. What was unique were all the additional factors brought forward, psychological, historical, moral, ethical, denouncing Christian belief. Of course, what was once accepted so vehemently and for so long, cannot be amputated without a lot of spiritual blood-letting.

It has always seemed to me that Nietzsche the man was ripped apart by psychological forces. He lived and embodied the *torture* of dealing with a vast cultural and sociological and existential battle. I would not say this was the source of his madness, but in any case it is *madness* that becomes the result of the struggle.

I don’t see any evidence for that. Nietzsche clearly enjoyed expressing his psychological insights and critiques and never expected unanimous agreement. He wanted good readers to rethink what he thought. What he was mostly tortured by was his own body. It wasn’t any struggle that made him mad. It was, most likely, brain cancer which his father died from at an early age. With early symptoms showing up, he thought he may have inherited that condition.

While I do not think Nietzsche was an anti-Semite in a personal sense it is pretty clear that he was indeed an anti-Semite at a — what would I call it? — an idea-level, or perhaps even somatic level. In any case at some thoroughly fundamental level.

Don’t know how the word “somatic” contextually applies here. It seems you’re purposely trying to book-end him into some anti-Semitic stance as a closet anti-Semite. But these only amount to your personal speculations.

That he could on occasion be rudely critical of Jews or Judaism is nothing new and proves nothing. He could be that way regarding anything or any person. His criticisms of the Jews are love letters compared to what he wrote of the Germans. Hitler, himself was very cognizant of the fact there was almost nothing in Nietzsche, aside from a few cliches, that would justify the Nazi philosophy and admitted as much.

To me the sacred is that which has long been sanctioned as most valuable, most indispensable to an individual or, most importantly, to a society; a traditional inflection which claims some element of its existence as sacrosanct. An over-awe never lasts long enough to fully claim the title.

I guess this would fit into your general picture, right? It could not be an *essence* external to man but moreover a choice or an emphasis of certain men, at certain moments.

Not quite as expressed! But more to the point, those manifested by societies in alignment with their conceptions of the sacred...usually in operation for a very long time.

In effect, the essence external to man is one chosen by him. It doesn’t come as a Holy Grail vision out of the deep blue sky! If it did, this is what it would sound like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srbbm9688KQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DzTevEaWKQ[

[Immanuel Can]

...why can't that eternally existing uncaused thing that never began to exist, be the universe itself?

Because it's scientifically demonstrable now that the universe is not eternal. The discovery of the red shift effect was one thing that ended that idea. Another is the mathematical impossiblity of an infinite regress of causes.

So there's no doubt at all about that. If anything is uncaused, it's not the universe.

Why the unnecessary and theoretically extravagant idea of a 'god' as an explanation?

Because it's necessary and not extravagant.

If one is trying to explain the existence of the universe, one must do it in terms of a cause sufficient to the specified effect. So you need an explanation elaborate enough to account for an entire universe. So it's not extravagant. And because we know the universe must have had a first cause, it's also absolutely necessary...assuming we are hopeful of having any explanation at all.

[Dontaskme]

...why can't that eternally existing uncaused thing that never began to exist, be the universe itself?

Because it's scientifically demonstrable now that the universe is not eternal. The discovery of the red shift effect was one thing that ended that idea. Another is the mathematical impossiblity of an infinite regress of causes.

So there's no doubt at all about that. If anything is uncaused, it's not the universe.

There's no such thing as a KNOWN 'first cause' The very idea is both a temporal and empty mental conceptual contruction. Concepts refer to the past, which is not reality here and now, reality is always this immediate unknown present.

That which is already here now presently has no knowledge or awareness of itself. That which appears to know itself does not exist except as a reflexive hallucination of the brain, where you hear, see, smell, taste or feel things that appear to be real but only exist in your mind...another illusion. 'You' being another illusion.

Why the unnecessary and theoretically extravagant idea of a 'god' as an explanation?

Because it's necessary and not extravagant.

If one is trying to explain the existence of the universe, one must do it in terms of a cause sufficient to the specified effect. So you need an explanation elaborate enough to account for an entire universe. So it's not extravagant. And because we know the universe must have had a first cause, it's also absolutely necessary...assuming we are hopeful of having any explanation at all.

Which are more temporal and empty mental conceptual constructions of SOUND....aka Hallucinations, where you hear, see, smell, taste or feel things that appear to be real but only exist in your mind...another illusion.

A KNOWN 'first cause' is impossible to know, because a 'first cause' would be seen as a reflexive effect which is NOT a 'first cause'.

There simply is no such thing as a KNOWN 'first cause' ..IT's a mental idea as a responsive reflex. The construction of SOUND is a mysterious illusory audible effect of brain function appearing as a conceptual story.

From inside a brain, it's hard to get a handle on what's going on...except what can only be imagined. And that's the job of the mind, to make illusions seem real.

Religious stories are constructed of SOUND appearing as allegorical and archetypal fictional characters imagined to be real. And used as a tool by the human brain to make rational sense of a reality it can NEVER know, control or experience.

Religious stories, or any story for that matter is an ARTificially constructed Psychological operation used as a control mechanism.

ART is natural, of which it's nature is artificial.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I would be very much interested in what you have found wrong in my epistemology.

Take epistemology for knowledge base, for what you know about, what you will allow and what you will not allow into your system, and then also what you adamantly reject with emphasis on 'adamancy'; and also combine an epistemological platform with a certain adamant aggression against those who (and here I insert a word I use somewhat often) operate in a different episteme:

Episteme (Ancient Greek: ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē, 'science' or 'knowledge'; French: épistémè) is a philosophical term that refers to a principle system of understanding; scientific knowledge or proven knowledge. The term comes from the Ancient-Greek verb epístamai (ἐπῐ́στᾰμαι), meaning 'to know, to understand, to be acquainted with'. The term epistemology is derived from episteme.

Plato contrasts episteme with doxa: common belief or opinion. The term episteme is also distinguished from techne: a craft or applied practice. Socrates noted that nous and episteme is requisite for prudence (phronesis).

I am not sure I would say I have 'found something wrong' in your epistemology. What I would suggest is that you are working very hard to flesh out, bolster, in a sense perfect the discourse around this specific argument of yours. You are one fighter among many fighters fighting the Epic Battles of our day. You find yourself I notice in a *locked-horns* position with IC and you recently expressed your horror if he were to be in a position of 'influencing children'. You view your *truth* as radically valid and you make efforts to communicate it for those purposes.

And what I have tried to point out to you is that all speech is sermonic, and certainly this sort of definitional speech about *what is* and *what is not* is the stuff through which a paideia (that which we teach to our children) is developed. I take what is in a *sermon* to be knowledge of the most essential and necessary sort: the stuff needed to navigate life successfully and in the best of cases the creme de la creme of vital things.

I would say that your knowledge-base is incomplete. The long list that you linked me to does not deal, at any level, on all the things that can be known, which are strictly within the human domain. I refer to this as 'the metaphysical' side of man. You say we know what clothes are; what making a sandwich is; what eyes ears and mouth or for (etc.) but all you have done is make a list of quotidian objects and our relationship to our handling of them. Who could not and who would not accept the didactic lesson you intended in creating that list?

But when it comes to higher dimensions of knowledge (quote/unquote) -- the stuff that deals on God, God's revelation, and many thousands of years among millions of people who have devoted themselves to spiritual life, lived it, wrote about it, and certainly taught about *it* -- I would say that you (seem to) lack any appreciation of what I have referred to as an 'episteme' which, in my own view, cannot be put to the side and disregarded. Yet you definitely have.

So when previously I used the question What are you up to (it is a rhetorical question and also more a statement) I see your endeavor differently from how you see and describe your endeavor. Your endeavor has to do with blotting out what you can't or won't understand with, let's say, greater sensitivity and an 'open mind', and bolstering and strengthening another sort of mind-set which, as you indicate, is the one you believe should be taught to children. This is a *cultural project* or a *social project*.

I spoke about an aspect of my relationship to these questions and problems. What I noticed is that you acknowledged reading it I nevertheless assume it is gobbledeegood and effectivey nonsense from your perspective and in relation to your project. It simply does not fit into your epistemology. This doesn't bother me in any sense. For what interests me is to examine how it is that people with such different orientations simply have no platform for conversation. And this problem interests me because all around us the battle-lines are being drawn out. This is happening at a macro-level as well as a micro-level.

[Immanuel Can]

...why can't that eternally existing uncaused thing that never began to exist, be the universe itself?

Because it's scientifically demonstrable now that the universe is not eternal. The discovery of the red shift effect was one thing that ended that idea. Another is the mathematical impossiblity of an infinite regress of causes.

So there's no doubt at all about that. If anything is uncaused, it's not the universe.

There's no such thing as a KNOWN 'first cause'

What is known, and for certain, is that there must BE a First Cause in any causal chain. That's not even possible to doubt, rationally speaking.

What can be discussed is only what sort of First Cause could exist, what sort would be commensurate with the effect we are attempting to explain.

The effect we're trying to explain is the existence of a law-governed, highly complex, interrelated universe. So we need a proposal for a cause big enough and complex enough to account for that result.

What do you regard as a sufficient First Cause for that?

[promethean75]

"Because it's scientifically demonstrable now that the universe is not eternal. The discovery of the red shift effect was one thing that ended that idea. Another is the mathematical impossiblity of an infinite regress of causes."

Well it isn't 'scientifically demonstrable' at all because we can't go back in time and observe the big bang event. All we have is theory, theory which best explains said phenomena (the red shift and the Doppler effect) that are 'scientifically demonstrable'. However, it is possible that there is a different theory that would explain said phenomena in such a way that it no longer counted as theoretical evidence for a 'beginning' of space/time.

The acquisition of new information could at any time radically change the consensus among cosmologists and physicists regarding the history of the known universe.

On that matter of infinity tho. It is true that an actual Infinity cannot be observed. Only a potential infinity can exist as a mathematical idea and/or construct. It's like what W called the extension of a rule in our mathematic language, not an actual mathematical concept. Or something like that.

So all this suggests to the theist that since there has to be a finite amount of energy in existence, and all known systems tend toward maximum entropy, the universe will have an end - and probably had a beginning - and this is a fact that has to be accounted for conceptually; the finite universe can't be the foundation of existence, they think. What was before it existed and will remain after it is gone, is some transcendent thing that necessarily exists and exists independently of the space and time in which the universe exists... independently of the universe itself.

But none of this is necessary because the fact of the impossibility of actual infinites and the evidence of entropy, doesn't demand, yet, a theory such as a transcendent 'god' to explain anything. Again, we may have only skimmed the surface of the way matter and energy works, and the little things we call evidence for 'god', like the big bang event, could end up being only mundane features of a much larger system. Think string theory and branes.

The point is cosmologists are careless when they turn their problems over to metaphyscists, theologians and philosophers.

And i'ont think you r hearing me when I try to articulate the folly of theologians in promethean75's razor. I say again, if you are positing a theory of 'god' to account for and explain phenomena about which you are axing; where did it come from, what is it, how does it work, what can be known about it, etc., then rather than satisfying the reason why you posit the theory, you instead create another thing about which such questions will, must, be axed, and are no closer to your objective than you were before you did so.

'god', especially the abrahamic and polytheistic concepts of such, are anything but solutions. If anything they are rather excessive and luxuriant overcomplications of theory.

I stand by the spinozean ontology of the immanence of 'god', identified with nature itself, not standing above or beyond it like some omnipotent aristocratic puppet master, but the very body of the universe itself. Yea. Nature naturing.

Anthropomorphisists think this way tho; because one particular thing in the universe, the human being, is not only so incredibly complex, but also aware of this incredible complexity, it follows that whatever created it would have to be aware of complexity and self-awarness as well, and to be so would be like being human.

But does this mean that 'god' would have 'feelings', that 'god' would be capable of experiencing anger, jealousy, satisfaction, joy, that 'god' would have a personal relationship with everyone? That 'god' would create a thing and rule over it? That 'god' might visit suffering upon people as punishment for worshipping false idols?

From where do these assumptions about the nature of 'god', come? Well they follow necessarily when we monkeys project our own nature upon 'god'. Spinz said it best. If you axed a triangle what it thought was the nature of 'god', it would reply 'god's nature is infinitely triangular'.

[RCSaunders]

I am not sure I would say I have 'found something wrong' in your epistemology.

Oh.

What I would suggest is that you are working very hard to flesh out, bolster, in a sense perfect the discourse around this specific argument of yours. You are one fighter among many fighters fighting the Epic Battles of our day.

Good grief. You really don't understand my position at all. I'm not fighting anyone, not promoting any view (only expressing what mine is with every expectation that very few will understand it, and even fewer will agree with it). I don't want to change anything except those very few things which are my own, and I certainly do not want to change what anyone else chooses to think or believe.

No one wants more for every individual to live, learn, and choose to believe whatever their best reason convinces them is true, and to live their lives as they choose. I am like Mencken, who said, "I believe in one thing, freedom, but I do not believe in it enough to want to force it on anyone."

You find yourself I notice in a *locked-horns* position with IC and you recently expressed your horror if he were to be in a position of 'influencing children'. You view your *truth* as radically valid and you make efforts to communicate it for those purposes.

My, "locked-horns," position is not with IC, but with the terrible ideas he promotes that corrupt knowledge. If those ideas infect the mind of a child, they are just as destructive as teaching a child any lie that once embraced makes further reason impossible. Do you want to see a child intentionally damaged? How is pointing out what I regard as child-abuse radical?

And what I have tried to point out to you is that all speech is sermonic, and certainly this sort of definitional speech about *what is* and *what is not ...*
A lot of people are going to be surprised to learn that. Have you ever read a physics or chemistry book? They are positively dripping with, "what is," and, "what is not," statements, but I hardly believe they would be classified as sermons. When I was a technical writer and managed the writing and production of technical manuals, those manuals were mostly explanations of, "what is," and, "what is not," even a 50 thousand page digital switch technical manual. There was not a sermon in it.

Even if all you said were true, if my style seems preachy or didactic, so what? Style does not change the validity of what is being explained or said, does it. Your criticism is not of what I say, but how I say it, and how you interpret my style, like a good post-modernist, "critical," theory analysis.

I'm sorry you don't like my rhetoric. I've been a professional writer for over 50 years, and I'm unlikely to be changing my style at this late date. Perhaps you could learn to ignore the style, and only attend to the substance, or you can just ignore what I write.

[Belinda]

RCSaunders wrote:

I don't think you and IC are even talking about the same concept. I'm not quite sure what you mean by cause, but what IC means is some mystical thing that is a motivating force or agency that makes something happen or exist which is external to and separate form the entities and events that agency is responsible for.

Immanuel believes in Free Will, and Free Will is (I quote you)"some mystical thing that is a motivating force or agency that makes something happen or exist which is external to and separate form the entities and events that agency is responsible for."
Apart from the ghostly Free Will thingy Immanuel's notion of determinism is of a very closed system where only one of two events can occur at one time :e.g. either ball A is caused to hit ball B or ball A is caused to not hit ball B.

RCS wrote:

What you seem to mean by cause is that which explains or is the reason why something happens or exists and is simply what it is. If that is what you mean and regard cause as is an integral aspect of things being and doing what they do (not something imposed them externally), I think that is the right view.

Yes that is the direction of a much wider idea of the scope of determinism. The ultimate determinism is every event is a necessary event. Immanuel has often objected in a deterministic universe there is no scope for freedom, and he fails to understand my rebuttal that in a deterministic universe we can't see the future and so we have freedom to choose. Nit the sort of freedom that originates with what you call "some mystical thing---" but the freedom that comes from the exercise of reason. and knowledge.

Determinism does not imply prediction.

RCS wrote:

The problem with ICs view, beyond the fact he has no idea what entropy is (which only pertains to closed systems) while he regards cause as an explanation, he ignores the fact, there is no explanation for why there should be such a mystic cause (which can never actually be explained or identified beyond, "well there just just be.")

Entropy as a function of what you name closed systems I was naming "cyclical". I prefer 'closed systems'.

RCS wrote:

In the entire universe they only events or entities that can be explained by the creation or work of any agency external to those entities are those physical artifacts produced by living organisms. Nothing else in the universe requires any kind of causative agency to exist of be what it is.

That seems to me to be a good enough explanation for any physicalist (materialist). I must suppose Immanuel believes in Cartesianism. I believe in idealism (immaterialism). An idealist and a materialist concur , in a solely material universe of discourse.

[RCSaunders]

The point is cosmologists are careless when they turn their problems over to metaphyscists, theologians and philosophers.

Oh yes!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Good grief. You really don't understand my position at all. I'm not fighting anyone, not promoting any view (only expressing what mine is with every expectation that very few will understand it, and even fewer will agree with it). I don't want to change anything except those very few things which are my own, and I certainly do not want to change what anyone else chooses to think or believe.

You take 'fight' in a wrong way. In my lexicon I link fighting over all these definitions to be significantly pertinent to *the culture wars*. Those wars have to do with fundamental definitions about what is and what is not (etc.) I fully understand your position. You position in this sense and in regard to cultural social and philosophical questions, is largely quite clear. It has no substantial moving parts.

Anytime you express you view you *sermonize* according to Weaver's use of the term. While the technical writing in a manual is at the lowest possible level of 'sermonic speech', a TV commercial, a music video, an essay on a philosophy forum, and many other forms of communication, are filled to the brim with sermonizing speech.

Here I submit one of my favorite examples because it is so easy to see what she, and her sermonizing rehearsal, is about. I think an important fact to bring out here is that it is this sort of sermonizing (rhetoric-laden) communication that most people actually construct their *views* and *attitudes* with and from.

This is why I focus on sermonizing speech (the use of our communication to convince, impress, draw over to our view, etc.) and also why I contrast that with what I call sacred communication: communication that deals on *high topics* that I see as pertaining to metaphysical and transcendental questions. You pretend that you are outside of this but I say you are not. No one of us is.

not promoting any view (only expressing what mine is with every expectation that very few will understand it, and even fewer will agree with it

Well as I said I certainly agree that a window is a window; a ham'n'cheese sandwich is a ham'n'cheese sandwich; that the garden is watered with a water hose, and all the rest. I could add a few of my own! And in fact I completely agree with you! So I am your first success!

No one wants more for every individual to live, learn, and choose to believe whatever their best reason convinces them is true, and to live their lives as they choose. I am like Mencken, who said, "I believe in one thing, freedom, but I do not believe in it enough to want to force it on anyone."

Yeah well if you are 'like Mencken' that is not to your advantage! I have read enough of Mencken to get what he is about and, similarly to you, he has an enormous blind-spot. He also has an extremely defined and determined social and ideological program, which you seem also to share.

Actually, the social force and impetous of Mencken and people like him, who think and see like him, reveal their activism in our present just as they did back then. There are lines of connection and since this pertains to the culture wars in American culture, and they have in no sense ended, we can find Mencken's acolytes among many 'progressive' types in our present. Same bull-headed adamancy, same lecturing tendencies, but also capable of using their power in more aggressive ways.

So these are the things I notice, that interest me, and that I like to talk about.

[RCSaunders]

Good grief. You really don't understand my position at all. I'm not fighting anyone, not promoting any view (only expressing what mine is with every expectation that very few will understand it, and even fewer will agree with it). I don't want to change anything except those very few things which are my own, and I certainly do not want to change what anyone else chooses to think or believe.

You take 'fight' in a wrong way. In my lexicon I link fighting over all these definitions to be significantly pertinent to *the culture wars*. Those wars have to do with fundamental definitions about what is and what is not (etc.) I fully understand your position. You position in this sense and in regard to cultural social and philosophical questions, is largely quite clear. It has no substantial moving parts.

Anytime you express you view you *sermonize* according to Weaver's use of the term. While the technical writing in a manual is at the lowest possible level of 'sermonic speech', a TV commercial, a music video, an essay on a philosophy forum, and many other forms of communication, are filled to the brim with sermonizing speech.

Here I submit one of my favorite examples because it is so easy to see what she, and her sermonizing rehearsal, is about. I think an important fact to bring out here is that it is this sort of sermonizing (rhetoric-laden) communication that most people actually construct their *views* and *attitudes* with and from.

This is why I focus on sermonizing speech (the use of our communication to convince, impress, draw over to our view, etc.) and also why I contrast that with what I call sacred communication: communication that deals on *high topics* that I see as pertaining to metaphysical and transcendental questions. You pretend that you are outside of this but I say you are not. No one of us is.

not promoting any view (only expressing what mine is with every expectation that very few will understand it, and even fewer will agree with it

Well as I said I certainly agree that a window is a window; a ham'n'cheese sandwich is a ham'n'cheese sandwich; that the garden is watered with a water hose, and all the rest. I could add a few of my own! And in fact I completely agree with you! So I am your first success!

No one wants more for every individual to live, learn, and choose to believe whatever their best reason convinces them is true, and to live their lives as they choose. I am like Mencken, who said, "I believe in one thing, freedom, but I do not believe in it enough to want to force it on anyone."

Yeah well if you are 'like Mencken' that is not to your advantage! I have read enough of Mencken to get what he is about and, similarly to you, he has an enormous blind-spot. He also has an extremely defined and determined social and ideological program, which you seem also to share.

Actually, the social force and impetous of Mencken and people like him, who think and see like him, reveal their activism in our present just as they did back then. There are lines of connection and since this pertains to the culture wars in American culture, and they have in no sense ended, we can find Mencken's acolytes among many 'progressive' types in our present. Same bull-headed adamancy, same lecturing tendencies, but also capable of using their power in more aggressive ways.

So these are the things I notice, that interest me, and that I like to talk about.

If you don't like Mencken, you'll hate me, which suits me just fine, since I've discovered those who dislike Mencken have one purpose in life: attempting to control how others live theirs. Mencken called them Puritans, meaning the religious and ideologists of the world who, "are terrified someone, somewhere, might actually be enjoying their life."

By the way, I doubt very much that you have actually read Mencken. Perhaps you've read some misplace excerpts or quotes, but Mencken requires a certain intellectual effort to read and understand I doubt you would have been willing to expend.

That's not meant as a criticism. Very few people read Mencken any longer just because he is too difficult.

[Alexis Jacobi]

By the way, I doubt very much that you have actually read Mencken. Perhaps you've read some misplace excerpts or quotes, but Mencken requires a certain intellectual effort to read and understand I doubt you would have been willing to expend.

That's not meant as a criticism. Very few people read Mencken any longer just because he is too difficult.

I did not say I dislike Mencken, thus I cannot hate you.

What I said was:

Yeah well if you are 'like Mencken' that is not to your advantage! I have read enough of Mencken to get what he is about and, similarly to you, he has an enormous blind-spot. He also has an extremely defined and determined social and ideological program, which you seem also to share.

A complete thought, not a reductionist henid. [Like "are terrified someone, somewhere, might actually be enjoying their life."]

Mencken definitely has his place and a place.

“As he grew older, he grew worse”, he said of himself.

I’ve read enough of his essays straight through to understand his value.

Pretty much all I do is ‘expend energy’ reading all sorts of things.

Your not-criticism therefore has no not-critical value. ::: sad face :::

For fun would you be willing to exchange lists of what titles you have on your desk right now?

At least we could make this entertaining!

You did say:

"If you don't like Mencken, you'll hate me, which suits me just fine, since I've discovered those who dislike Mencken have one purpose in life: attempting to control how others live theirs. Mencken called them Puritans, meaning the religious and ideologists of the world who, "are terrified someone, somewhere, might actually be enjoying their life."

One purpose only? Not, say, two or even three?

"Where learned you this?"

The bolded part interests me. Here is what I think: all cultures, and generally civilizations that have been successful and creative, tend to agree in basic areas. Here I mention *agreement* again which I think you may have misunderstood the last go-round.

The agreements I refer to are fundamental. They take some energy to extract them out so they can be looked at. Most cannot see them because they only examine surface.

The Culture Wars in America revolve around differences of opinion about what is 'really important' and whole arrays of difference of opinion. Exacerbating to the point that people are beginning, realistically, to speak about 'civil conflict' and 'civil war'. This comes about because of contrasting, incompatible value-systems.

Mencken had extremely progressive and radical ideas, and all the force of a bull to try to 'clobber' people with his polemics and diatribes. Similarly today, we can point out those who carry his 'project' forward. They seem cut from the same cloth. It's an American tradition . . .

Have you read The Paranoid Style in American Politics? (Richard Hofstadter).

So what I say is this, all this, can be brought out in the open and talked about. Just getting to that is a great deal!

[Nick_A]

Alexis

I spoke about an aspect of my relationship to these questions and problems. What I noticed is that you acknowledged reading it I nevertheless assume it is gobbledeegood and effectivey nonsense from your perspective and in relation to your project. It simply does not fit into your epistemology. This doesn't bother me in any sense. For what interests me is to examine how it is that people with such different orientations simply have no platform for conversation. And this problem interests me because all around us the battle-lines are being drawn out. This is happening at a macro-level as well as a micro-level.

I agree. Perceiving the necessity of a source for existence requires freedom from reliance on the secular. Is the concept of God a creation of our fears, the demands of a personal God and its creation we view as morality, or the ineffable conscious source responsible for the necessity of our universe?

Einstein summed up how humanity can advance in appreciation of a source beyond secularism. In this way Man serves the necessary purpose of our universe rather then the universe serving the desires of Man. Imagine what it would mean for our species if it allowed our potential for noesis to experience objective human purpose.

The development from a religion of fear to a moral religion is a great step in peoples lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based purely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on guard. the truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.

Common to all types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he want to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

-- Albert Einstein, Science and Religion, NY Times, November 9, 1930.

The "Cosmic Religious Feeling" The feeling of becoming aware of the ineffable source not originating in the world but far beyond it responsible for the living machine we call universe we have our being within? Einstein wrote:

Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

What ineffable source created the universal laws which enables the universe to function and what is Man's relation to it? We don't know but can come to admit it is beyond the limitations of the dualistic mind. We can "feel" its reality through the cosmic religious feelings available to us though noesis. But such individuals are few and far between being content to argue opinions. Most are content to argue what Dostoyevsky defined as "Pouring from the empty into the void."

[Alexis Jacobi]

What ineffable source created the universal laws which enables the universe to function and what is Man's relation to it? We don't know but can come to admit it is beyond the limitations of the dualistic mind. We can "feel" its reality through the cosmic religious feelings available to us though noesis. But such individuals are few and far between being content to argue opinions. Most are content to argue what Dostoyevsky defined as "Pouring from the empty into the void."

Nicely put . . .