Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

I have my eyes open in this world and I am not inspired by what I notice around me.

We have at least that in common.

Would you kindly talk more about this? You mean a) you have your eyes open and b) you are not inspired.

Just one or both? What do you see?

[Dubious]

I have my eyes open in this world and I am not inspired by what I notice around me.

We have at least that in common. But nevertheless it's true that too much reading can be toxic to one's mental faculties.

No, we have an opinion expressed by a man of renown who makes that case for his own reasons. “Can be toxic” is hypothetical.

He is speaking to a class of intellectuals for whom he feels embitterment. And you piggy-back on his argument for your own purposes.

I can attempt to guess about the nature of those purposes but will leave it to you. What are you trying to get at?

It is imperative to read widely. Not to do so, dereliction of intellectual and moral duty.

I read it as written and agree with just about all of it. It's not a matter of reading widely; it's one of reading slowly, attentively which should be the purpose of reading if one is to challenge one's own thinking.

Also, how do you know Schopenhauer is speaking to a class of intellectuals for whom he feels embitterment? What embitterment are you talking about? From what I read there seems to be nothing of the kind.

Speaking of slow reading, here's one by Nietzsche...

Nietzsche: How to read well
Quote
Posted on June 27, 2019

“Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it slowly…. This preface comes late, but not too late: what, after all, do five or six years matter? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is “in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of “work”: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon “getting things done” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not “get things done” so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day. (trans. John McFarland Kennedy)

...I wonder what his purpose could have been!

[Dubious]

I have my eyes open in this world and I am not inspired by what I notice around me.

We have at least that in common.

Would you kindly talk more about this? You mean a) you have your eyes open and b) you are not inspired.

Just one or both? What do you see?

All the shallow and saccharine laminations meant to entice oneself into a non-reality which has zero effect on any reality one encounters. The total failure of any first principles being nothing more than a perennial variable never to be resolved. Whatever is so assumed never fails to render itself dissolved in the acidity which created it...that which we call time and entropy.

[Harry Baird]

Harry, is Christianity logical?

No. Not when you zoom out and take a big-picture look at the Story.

From John 1:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.

What is the word? How can it both be God and be with God? If we don't understand but it is logical, why don't we understand?

I think that there are far bigger logical problems with Christianity than in this passage, although you ask good and relevant questions.

I'm comfortable enough (although it is not entirely satisfactory) with an answer something like this: "The Word represents Divine creative agency in the form of Jesus Christ, who is understood in a paradoxical and transcendent sense to also be God."

In many other parts of the Story, though, I can't find even that degree of comforting reasonableness.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I read it as written and agree with just about all of it. It's not a matter of reading widely; it's one of reading slowly, attentively which should be the purpose of reading if one is to challenge one's own thinking.

Then what have you really gained here? Your message is that one should read slowly, carefully, and challenge one’s own fixed ideas. These are wise recommendations.

Who could disagree? And if they disagreed on what basis would they construct that argument.

[Alexis Jacobi]

All the shallow and saccharine laminations meant to entice oneself into a non-reality which has zero effect on any reality one encounters. The total failure of any first principles being nothing more than a perennial variable never to be resolved. Whatever is so assumed never fails to render itself dissolved in the acidity which created it...that which we call time and entropy.

Is this actually and more precisely what you mean to say?

These are all declarative statements and they are in keeping with your regularly expressed opinions.

Can you bring out more? These are unsupported opinions.

Shallow and saccharine lamentations? Whose?

Enticements into non-reality? To imply therefore real reality?

The total failure of first principles? What first principles are those?

Again, these are nothing more than strongly expressed opinions.

[Alexis Jacobi]

. ..I wonder what his purpose could have been!

From the look of it … a sparkling preface to the deliberate and trenchant discourse of Herr Dubious.

[Harry Baird]

AJ, a combined response.

Yes, I am of course aware of your anomalous experiences, including from your recounting of them to me to some extent in personal correspondence. That's what makes it so odd to me that you'd declare (in my understanding, which might be misplaced) that the Story can no longer be believed in because modernity has invalidated it. How has modernity done this though? If "weird stuff" still happens in modernity, then how is the "weird stuff" at the heart of the Story invalidated by modernity? I'm genuinely curious and would like to see you spell this out. Am I misunderstanding the nature of what you claim to be the invalidation?

You go on to write in relation to this theme:

The very idea of a divine avatar that manifests in this or any world is an idea that became impossible to believe in and to square such a view with *the way things are*.

Oh? Why? And in what sense?

I also think you are substantially wrong when you make reference to the beliefs of the Medieval and the ancient world.

[...]

The issue of incoherence, I can assure you, was not for them a problem.

You miss the point, and probably didn't even watch the video I shared, via which you would have understood that the incoherence of the Christian Story is to a large extent absolute, and independent of one's other beliefs. The Story is in and of itself incoherent.

The way that I'd respond to the last part of the second paragraph is to refer back to your admission (or perception) that Weaver did not speak concretely to first principles in his book. I responded by saying that every truthful statement he made, and all true statements that can be made, have to be predicated on first principles even if they are not stated (as bullet points).

Name them. Go on. I'm deadly serious. Name each and every one of the first principles upon which (you contend) Weaver predicates "every truthful statement he made". For bonus points: demonstrate in at least one or two cases how one of his "truthful statements" is predicated on one or more of those first principles.

Can there not be a meaningful middle ground between "Oh boy, you guys should get a load of this great stuff in our Christian heritage *waving hands around vaguely and repeating the same general affirmation in hundreds of posts*" and the admonishment to an extensive, decades-long reading programme?

Here, you simply say "I have no energy! It is too difficult! I cannot do that!"

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't have the same expectations that you have, and that I have determined to spend my time in other ways. So, if you want guys (and gals) like me to understand the great value that you think you've come upon, then you need to elaborate on it in quite a bit more detail than you actually do, as opposed to endlessly cheerleading for it in the vaguest of terms. However, if you don't care whether or not guys (and gals) like me understand what you value and why, then, by all means, carry on as you are.

[Harry Baird]

The Church of No One Truth (NOT): A Cautionary Tale

A Play of Three Acts of Three Scenes Each

<< Act three, scene two | Act three, scene three (ALTERNATIVE VERSION) >>

Act three, scene three

Characters:

Bjorn aGus

Can Man

Setting:

Outside the Church of No One Truth (NOT)

Can Man: Hey, Bjorn aGus. Good to see you again. Have you made peace with the eternal truth yet?

Bjorn aGus: (With a blank look on his face) No truth. No truth. No. No. No truth.

Can Man: (With a look of concern) Hey. Man. What's going on with you? Look at me. What is it? What's got you talking like that?

Bjorn aGus: No truth. Not true. No. No. No truth. No truth.

Can Man: Wow. Somebody really got to you, huh?

Bjorn aGus: She... she... uh... she SHOWED me. She... oh God!

Can Man: Who? Who showed you what?

Bjorn aGus: No truth. No. No. No truth.

Can Man: What is it, man? Tell me straight!

Bjorn aGus: (Wild-eyed) The horror. The horror.

Finis

<< Act three, scene two | Act three, scene three (ALTERNATIVE VERSION) >>

[Harry Baird]

That, folks, was the final scene in the script, but STAY TUNED, because coming up is a special BONUS: an ALTERNATIVE final scene in which - although the overall import and even final words uttered are the same - our protagonist, rather than being humbled, prevails. It is sure to be a crowd-pleaser with at least one participant in this thread, so keep an eye out for it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Name them. Go on. I'm deadly serious. Name each and every one of the first principles upon which (you contend) Weaver predicates "every truthful statement he made". For bonus points: demonstrate in at least one or two cases how one of his "truthful statements" is predicated on one or more of those first principles.

I already touched upon that and just recently. Weaver begins his series of essays (in Ideas Have Consequences) by quoting Carlyle and elaborating on the core idea presented. That opening idea, and the idea that runs through (predicates let's say) nearly the entirety of these essays and a great deal of his other writing, is that man operates with, and cannot operate without, what Weaver designates as 'a metaphysical dream of the world'.

I would suggest that this statement encapsulates or is founded on a 'first principle' that, I can only suppose and also suppose others can do nothing else but to recognize it as an irreducible statement, defines human being. We are human beings because we have, and indeed must have and cannot not have, a 'metaphysical dream'. If the definition of a 'first principle' is an idea or assertion that is irreducible, this has seemed to me like a good example.

Do you think I need to elaborate this more? I could mention that even when a major and defining metaphysical dream (such as the huge metaphysical dream of the world known as The Great Chain of Being) collapses (obviously this is one of my own cherished terms, collapse), that it does not simply evaporate and thus have no 'reality'. Rather it is like an entire cloth that becomes frayed in parts, then torn, and then requires 'patching up'. At some point anyone looking at it (the structure which I have metaphored into a 'cloth') can only be seen as an 'absurd pastiche'.

But there is another principle point and it, too, as a declaration, is bound up in the recognition of a irreducible first principle. Even if one could, if an individual could, dissolve absolutely the essential and primary terms of perception of that system which is described as The Great Chain of Being (upon which our Occidental civilization was built), it is not possible to do without an interpretive model. Interpretive model is synonymous with metaphysical dream. But what does 'metaphysical' mean here? Well it is as I believe I have expressed it over time in these pages: It involves an idea and concept interposition onto the world. But then what is 'the world' I refer to? The answer is just exactly the material and biological world that goes on all around us and into which we are subsumed. Or out of which we rise up out of.

So there are no human beings, and there is no human being, that can ever do away with an interpositioned perceptual model of what the world is. So I would suggest to you, dear 'deadly serious' Harry, that you demonstrate that what Weaver has proposed here, and which I have attempted to elaborate on myself, is not an evidence of a first principle. That is, a central, irreducible, core idea or perception. My supposition is that such an idea as this contains an (essential) first principle.

There is another important part -- indeed it is primary -- to Weaver's discourse on this theme. And that is that he suggests that there is a specific point where an original metaphysical dream, and one that he defines as vitally important, was altered. So I am supposing that he is suggesting that a declared first principle which he defines as a 'transcendental' was modified or altered, that this if it is seen and is understood demonstrates and explains a deviation that had (again in Weaver's view) supremely affecting consequences. In another shorter essay he explains it like this:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

Now, in my own case the consideration of this central idea, an idea bound up in a first principle, and the mulling over of it, has been at the core of all of my endeavors since I encountered it in Weaver.

I do want to very briefly comment on the insolence in your demands that I do this and do that in order to satisfy your lack of capability to understand, yourself, those first principles that Weaver works with. I am interested in you (and I have known you through the written medium for a long time) because I see you as a 'frayed individual'. If I refer to you in any way and with any encapsulating statement like this, I am not in fact referring to you personally. I am referring to a condition in which we all subsist! Does this make sense?

So instead of making an imperious 'demand' similar to the one you have made to me, I would suggest that you examine your own 'metaphysical dream'. Examine it as the 'cloth' I have employed as a metaphor. What you will find is a strangely tattered pastiche of confused ideas about 'the world'. You will find a metaphysical dream in a state of strange disarray.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes, I am of course aware of your anomalous experiences, including from your recounting of them to me to some extent in personal correspondence. That's what makes it so odd to me that you'd declare (in my understanding, which might be misplaced) that the Story can no longer be believed in because modernity has invalidated it. How has modernity done this though? If "weird stuff" still happens in modernity, then how is the "weird stuff" at the heart of the Story invalidated by modernity? I'm genuinely curious and would like to see you spell this out. Am I misunderstanding the nature of what you claim to be the invalidation?

The question you ask here, which I can only take as a sincere one, reveals in my view the tatteredness I referred to just above. You have to ask me to explain, in apparent seriousness, why and how it is that the modern perspective, the modern description of the material and biological world, must and does rule out the notion a God operating as Head Architect and Chief Engineer as well as the Ultimate Arbiter in human affairs and Sovereign of All Souls?

Are you for real here?

You seem to have, that is it seems that in you there is a sort of metaphysical trace or a shadowy figment, of an 'avatar' who you imagine did or could (or might?) appear in our world. In what 'sphere' of your imagination does this idea live? You refer to the idea as if, on one hand, you believe it, but then in other moments you seem to reveal that you cannot seriously entertain the idea.

But you do not seem to have much clarity, or an 'intellectual outline', of when and how it came about that one descriptive system supplanted the former and reigning one. Also, I do not get the sense that you have much self-conscious clarity about the queer situation in which two radically different, and opposed, epistemes operate together in some people simultaneously.

I certainly did watch the video that you posted. I examine everything that people post here and read each and every post. Do you think that I am unaware of the incommensurability of the Christian story with our modern frame of mind?

[Alexis Jacobi]

That's not what I'm saying. ["I have no energy! It is too difficult! I cannot do that!"] I'm saying that I don't have the same expectations that you have, and that I have determined to spend my time in other ways. So, if you want guys (and gals) like me to understand the great value that you think you've come upon, then you need to elaborate on it in quite a bit more detail than you actually do, as opposed to endlessly cheerleading for it in the vaguest of terms. However, if you don't care whether or not guys (and gals) like me understand what you value and why, then, by all means, carry on as you are.

First, I acknowledge the mocking tone and, of course, I am not much bothered by it. I do not think it is very effective though.

As I said the elimination of a more or less classical liberal arts education at a grammar school level resulted in dire consequences in our societies. This is for me a core observation and understanding, a first principle if you will of my sociological perspective. I presented to you a video of a talk by James Linsday which, at the very least, set the stage for a rational examination of what has happened in our educational system and why. As far as I remember I do not think you commented on it. Why is that?

I do not have to elaborate, necessarily, on anything. If the reference is sound, it operates like an admonition. In many instances over the course of time on message boards like this people have referred to articles posted or intellectuals to sources for gaining better understanding in certain areas. These I have always welcomed. And certain references made have, indeed, impelled me to gain understanding about things I was ignorant.

So in my view the real question is what is your attitude toward the admonitions you receive from other people or the intellectuals they refer to? To what degree are you willing to pursue on your own the suggestions you receive from others?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Harry, I wonder if you are open to comments about your play? Would you like to hear my assessment?

And what is your own assessment? What do you see as its central purpose? Or what should be taken away from it?

[henry quirk]

Harry, I wonder if you are open to comments about your play? Would you like to hear my assessment?

And what is your own assessment? What do you see as its central purpose? Or what should be taken away from it?

Let's wait till he offers his alternate endng.