Well, what a strange impasse. I will try to recapitulate what has happened here, what seems to have been exposed. I cannot say with honestly that I wanted it to turn out like this however. But the facts seem to be as follow:
We must start at the beginning. The Christian system, built on the framework of the Hebrew system, is an absolutist religious, fundamentalist and an absolutist belief-system. What does this mean? It means that the idea of god, the ideas about god, are 'spun' by a priest-class into a absolutist psychological weapon (I do not know what other word to use though *weapon* is a bit strong) based in and out of an ethnic identity. Yahweh as the personal god of the Hebrews or the Hebrews as having concocted Yahweh to be their weapon in a war (an extension of social, cultural and political war) which essentially revolves around idea-domination or
Hebrew idea-imperialism. The domination fo the entire 'ground of truth'
and what can be true. Heavy stuff! The god that is visualized is a human creation though it is painted as coming through revelation. As if god himself appeared, spoke, made his will manifest.
I think that once one sees this *essential fact*
one cannot un-see it. However, this does not mean that everything or all things that have come through this specific cultural matrix are *wrong* or *false*. Nevertheless the god that is pictured is a
demiurge.
dem·i·urge (dĕm′ē-ûrj′)
n.
1. A powerful creative force or personality.
2. A public magistrate in some ancient Greek states.
3. Demiurge A deity in Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and other religions who creates the material world and is often viewed as the originator of evil.
4. Demiurge A Platonic deity who orders or fashions the material world out of chaos.
[Late Latin dēmiurgus, from Greek dēmiourgos, artisan : dēmios, public (from dēmos, people; see dā- in Indo-European roots) + ergos, worker (from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots).]
Seen in this light, which requires seeing it (the religion, the structural belief-system) from a place outside of it, from above it if you will, all such religious structures are the same. They are 'concoctions'. They are arbitrary. They have a range of functions which are in a sense hidden. The
function though is the part that needs to be examined more closely. They can be said to be *invented* since they arise in human communities and, naturally, serve a wide range of functions there.
Immanuel Can serves the rôle here of 'absolute believer' or 'true believer'. He demonstrates how it happens that a man becomes wedded at a core personality and core psychological level to a 'concocted picture' or to a concretization of a religious ideology. It is not pictured as a simile or a metaphor or a likeness or an allusion. It is pictured as 'absolute truth'. Obviously, as we all have seen, any deviation from an descriptive recipe that sees in non-absolutist terms (metaphor, likeness, allusion) is resisted tooth and claw -- because it is recognized (consciously but also unconsciously) as a significant threat to the person who is wedded to the belief.
To
believe one must either negate the entire critical realm of intellectual thought -- one cannot allow it in -- or one must never develop those skills and aptitudes that we label "intellectuality" and also "philosophy". Belief, then, is anti- or counter-intellectual. Yet I could never say that belief does not have a function, or a benefit is the word I am seeking, nor that it is possible not to *believe* (as IC himself has pointed out). You have to have some structure of belief, some way of stating what are your interpretations of what life here is and what it requires.
It is not possible to have no *belief*.
We are within a cycle of time, a juncture perhaps, where the view that I am expressing is viable and to a degree powerful. The world religions are tied to
Medieval systems of description and interpretation of life and 'the world' (the universe, its meaning, etc.) They are fading out as viable pictures. But 'ghosts' remain. These are the *old patterns* or the *old structures* which, indeed, offered a thorough and incontrovertible description and explanation of the world (the cosmos). So the old structures fade away, yet they are held together by a spirit of vehemence such as that which Immanuel expresses. That is his rôle in this drama. He thus represents a huge class of people who have (say) invested in all that he has invested in.
We are in an environment where *philosophy* is performed. Philosophy, then, has the power to undermine just as I seem to have undermined faith and, also, a specified description of truth or a truth-revelation system. Sorry! Yet this route is not for everyone nor do I think should it be.
The Christian religious system is also a compendium of ethical strictures. The most thorough expression of this is, in my opinion, Catholic social doctrine or social teaching. It is a combination or a marriage perhaps between Hebrew prophetic value-assertion and Greek philosophical rationalism. What happens when the religious picture, as I call it, is deflated and a person
cannot believe in the pure, unadulterated, innocent and childlike way that was formerly possible? One ends up in an uncertain *space*. But the ethical principles may yet still remain. No, it was not 'handed down' by the all-powerful father-god -- this view is a child's view (though still a very potent one). Does this mean that *god*
does not exist? I am not sure that statement could be made. The demiurge
exists, in effect, as a real force, but does it *really exist* as a separate entity out there or 'over there' or *up there*?
But what is 'god' and what in truth does this really mean? It no longer means (this is my view) what it had been
purported to mean. God has receded then far out of the picture. I think this is indicates the
manoeuvre that Henry has undertaken: Sure, god exists, he must have existed, but he is ultimately removed and, perhaps, silent. Or one has to resort to more abstract and spiritualized versions or descriptions of god. It is really a puzzle.
Politically and socially and culturally the battle rages. What we have been conversing here, and extremely superficially (and you should all hold yourselves accountable for this superficiality, IMO) is playing out on the world-stage. Both 'god' and 'the antichrist' are players in this drama. This is to say that the 'believers' are playing, as it were, with heavy-duty forces in the sense of powerful and determining
concepts. But then the non-believers are not outside of the game, as no one of us is outside of the game. We are forced to play even if we do not wish to.
Does this mean that I am now an 'unbeliever'?
