Christianity

[Lacewing]

Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time
Insane teacher be there reminded of the rhyme
There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify
Political ends, as sad remains, will die
Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you

Ooh, ooh

I listened hard but could not see
Life tempo change out and inside me
The preacher trained in all to lose his name
The teacher travels, asking to be shown the same
In the end, we'll agree, we'll accept, we'll immortalize
That the truth of the man maturing in his eyes
All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you

(Lyrics by YES)

[Alexis Jacobi]

Not a stunning intellectual discovery on your part...

Retort

[Gary Childress]

Knowledge of what something is not, counts as knowledge of that something in question.

It doesn't really. It gives, at most, "silhouette" type knowledge, a rough outline. You get what the space not occupied by the thing in question, but the center is all black. It's devoid of details.

So now you're going to invent a new term, "silhouette knowledge" which is what--different from having any kind of knowledge at all of something--just to make your original statement (below) true?

That, by itself, leaves one with no knowledge of God at all.

[Immanuel Can]

Knowledge of what something is not, counts as knowledge of that something in question.

It doesn't really. It gives, at most, "silhouette" type knowledge, a rough outline. You get what the space not occupied by the thing in question, but the center is all black. It's devoid of details.

So now you're going to invent a new term, "silhouette knowledge"...

It's just a metaphor, Gary. And you can understand what it means.

It means that negation only allows a person to describe the outline: nothing inside the lines, nothing positive or definite, can be known at all. It turns the idea of God into a giant, cosmic black hole...utterly unknowable in-itself, and known only by the things that are not it.

[Gary Childress]

It doesn't really. It gives, at most, "silhouette" type knowledge, a rough outline. You get what the space not occupied by the thing in question, but the center is all black. It's devoid of details.

So now you're going to invent a new term, "silhouette knowledge"...

It's just a metaphor, Gary. And you can understand what it means.

It means that negation only allows a person to describe the outline: nothing inside the lines, nothing positive or definite, can be known at all. It turns the idea of God into a giant, cosmic black hole...utterly unknowable in-itself, and known only by the things that are not it.

And you on the other hand claim to know God. I mean, I don't think any God I can imagine would want to be anyone's loyal pet. I imagine God ought to be as much an enigma to you as he is to any of the rest of us.

[Immanuel Can]

So now you're going to invent a new term, "silhouette knowledge"...

It's just a metaphor, Gary. And you can understand what it means.

It means that negation only allows a person to describe the outline: nothing inside the lines, nothing positive or definite, can be known at all. It turns the idea of God into a giant, cosmic black hole...utterly unknowable in-itself, and known only by the things that are not it.

And you on the other hand claim to know God.

Well, I don't believe that we can't know anything about God, or that we can only make statements about God based on negation, on what-is-not-Him. That's the view I'm criticizing.

While it's true that if we were all left to our own ingenuity none of us would know anything at all about God, the important question is this: can knowledge flow the other way? That is, it may be impossible for human beings to know what to say about God; but is it impossible for God to know what to say about Himself?

Obviously not. You and I can speak to each other. (God gave us that capability, in fact.) But if we can do it, and do it so easily, on what basis would we think that God cannot speak? Can the Supreme Being fail to be able to do something so easy to humans?

Hence, the necessity of revelation. If God does not "speak," in some form, we will know nothing about God. The truth about Who or What He is must come from Him. It can come no other way. In a billion years, we, left to ourselves, would never figure it out.

So then we have to ask, "Has God spoken?" If the answer is "No," then all discussion about God is futile and wildly speculative...and this is why people sometimes imagine we can only talk about God by pointing out what-He-is-not, or what-is-not-Him, the negative. Their knowledge of God is a giant blank, this black hole I was speaking about.

But if the answer to that question is "Yes," then the next question, obviously, is, "If God has spoken, where?"

[Dubious]

Nevertheless the worldview of the Medieval Christian, and the most relevant period of Christian history (a 1,000 year period), is totally bound up in metaphysical conceptions.

Yes, it consisted of heaped layers of metaphysical conceptions, only in those times for the Medieval Christian what you claim as metaphysical was reified into reality. For them there was very little to nothing that was metaphysical or philosophical about it. Life for them was completely contextualized by the metaphysical if by that is meant what was unquestionable reality for them, that being the life to come. In that sense, the Medieval Christian would have regarded metaphysics as a lie.

(I am less certain that Judaism was such a metaphysical religion. But I am aware that it became more so because of the influence of Christian metaphysics.)

Judaism as exemplified in the OT barely had any metaphysical connotations at all, unless one accepts the idea that a barbarian god could be an instance of it. The OT is a saga of nation building in the midst of superpowers that had many gods, in which, as inferred by history, the Canaanites chose themselves as the Chosen People in the process of separating themselves as Jews. To accomplish that, the first commandment was essential...you shall have no other gods before me. This idea in the collective was reassigned to the personal when Jesus proclaimed you must believe in him to be saved. They both mandate belief in god, though it makes much more sense in the OT for there can be no Chosen People without belief in Yahweh and no state called Israel to be their home. Of course, later, only the belief was necessary since their home and temple were gone.

From Immanuel's perspective, as you surely note, the metaphysical structure in the belief that one must perform a specific sort of action in the face of Jesus of Nazareth can be talked about. I find the Evangelical Christian position, or the practice, to be not a little strange. Could one, in a monotone and without any emotion at all, that is spoken like a robot, say: "Jesus, I request that You bring about the promised salvation in me now please". Would that be sufficient? Or, would one have to make the same statement with great drama and conviction, as if the drama and conviction proves that one really & truly means it? Clearly, you have to become *broken* as the Evangelicals say which means, literally, that your will (to rebel) breaks finally and you then submit (to discipleship).

I don't think it's particularly difficult to scare the gullible and weak-minded into conformity with the powers that be, however long it may take. The OT itself is a prime example of god's wrath upon a people yet untamed, meaning those a bit too independent of his will. Within the political domain, it's the intelligentsia who are the first victims.

But that action, within the Christian scheme, is certainly metaphysical, don't you think? It implies joining oneself to a current that takes one out of this world. And that notion, that hope, is also based in a metaphysics that 1) the earth is a lower domain, or prison-punishment and must be, or can be, transcended, and 2) that there is a higher dimension that, through a mysterious action, can instantly be attained.

Yes, but to reiterate, those you refer to would not have acknowledged it as metaphysics at any level for to them it would have seemed more philosophy than reality.

Personally, I think there is a definite logic in the Christian view and the view is entirely metaphysical.

If the structure is logical - the scholastics were no fools when it came to logic - then there is indeed a definite logic to the Christian view. It was the kind of metaphysic which attempted to justify the ways of god to man. To me, it resembled a type Glass Bead Game restricted to the dialectic of Justification.

The alternative, which has been proposed as viable, is to deliberately exclude or transform the metaphysical upper and the metaphysical lower (worlds) into earth-bound metaphors.

...and what would be so terribly wrong with that?

The critical pedagogy of Paolo Friere can be understood as a rejection of the metaphysical project and the admonitions of metaphysically liberatory Christianity and the re-grounding of that religious modality strictly into social, economic, educational and cultural politics.

I like and agree with the two quotes submitted...though I would have expressed it little bit differently. There is nothing more I can say without knowing more about Paolo Friere.

[Dubious]

But I also have become aware that you have carved out for yourself, and I could also say through discordant & dubious means, a platform of understanding (of things, of life) that pushes out of the picture all metaphysical ideas.

How was I discordant? Must I agree with you to be concordant? We see things from different perspectives, is all. Though there is a degree of agreement (I think!) we mostly disagree. It's all a game, nothing more. Why so serious? Actually, metaphysical ideas can be fascinating in the sense that some fictions are greater than other fictions. Metaphysical ideas are novels of philosophy.

If I understand you correctly you are therefore saying that I seem to demonstrate that the Christian metaphysic is 'obsolete' and though I am tilting against the Christian construct like Don Quixote tilted against windmills, I am still, myself, wedded to a metaphysical explanatory structure?

Reading what I wrote, it sounds somewhat convoluted and unclear. It looked to me as if your acceptance of Christianity depends on it being subservient to your distinct type of metaphysic...which I'm still not sure of. Recall your words...Personally, I think there is a definite logic in the Christian view and the view is entirely metaphysical. I think you put too much emphasis on it as being necessary for our existence but never would I think of you as a deranged fundamentalist on any level. That part was in reference to IC.

If I have got any of this right I would say that, yes, I regard Christian metaphysics as in many ways a sort of reduced form, a crude form, of far more thorough metaphysical explanations about earth and life. I find the better metaphysical descriptions in Vedanta and the Vedic-derived philosophies.

On that we're in complete accord. The Bhagavadgita as one of the main Vedanta texts far exceeds in vision anything in the NT...but that's another subject.

BTW, I like the picture. I plan to use it for a CD cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPuR1FtoJQU

[Belinda]

Criteria for dogs, cats,coffee, angels, souls, soup, and so forth pertain to persons.

No, actually: many don't.

Hierarchies remain hierarchies even when the jumps in rank are undetected or undetectable.

Hierarchies often good, and always inescapable. They're not bad for being hierarchies.

A "hierarchy" happens whenever a criterion is applied to anything. You are "more feminine" than I am: that's hierarchy. Does that make you an elitist? Are you oppressing me? Have you done me an injustice? Do you owe me reparations? I am taller than you are (I can safely assume). Does that mean I'm "oppressing" you? Am I an elitist, now? But maybe you're more intelligent, creative, wise or sensitive than I. That makes you the elitist, the oppressor, since I am not equal with you in those criteria: should I pull you down to my level, then? Do you owe me to suppress what you are, in order to make me feel "equal"?

Moreover, there is absolutely no way for you and I to remain the unique people we are without hierarchy appearing between us. For every feature you have, or I have, one is above the other in hierarchy. In fact, it is utterly impossible to conceive of any two people who have ever existed who do not exist in a hierarchical order of some kind.

There is always an elite group or individual at the top of a social hierarchy.

A "social" one? You mean like a government, or an institution? Sure. That's always going to be the case. But it's not necessarily evil.

I said God is defined by one function i.e. organiser and sustainer of all.

Not Biblically, He's not. But maybe yours is a diffferent "god."

Because evil is absence of good it's impossible to define God as absence of good, absence of justice, or absence of the crocodile species respectively.

Non-sequitur.

If evil is the absence of good, it does not follow it's impossible to define God...in any terms.

True as you say,"that leaves one with no knowledge of God at all". it does not follow that, in the absence of a full knowledge of God,

Here you shift terms illegitimately.

I said, "no knowledge of God at all." You said, "true," but then "absence of full knowledge of God." The right response is, "We have NO knowlege of God that is not silhouette, external stuff: God himself would then be a huge cosmic blank in the middle of all our negations.

The gaps in knowledge are filled by creative imagination...

You mean, by making stuff up.

If we have no knowledge, we don't have "gaps." We don't have anything. And then, we just imagine nonsense.

Hierarchies are evaluations. Placing males and females in categories is not necessarily to evaluate them. Males and females, and dogs and cats are not defined hierarchically: the top of a social hierarchy is definitive of social elites. E.g. If your sort of Christianity were the ideology of the elite group in your society then your sort of Christianity would be received as the right way to believe and may even be established by law.

If imagination is creative it's not nonsense.
"Silhouette" is apt. A silhouette exists. In the absence of photography silhouettes were a feasible means of taking images. Nobody will ever photograph God images. And even if they could you bet they'd be photoshopped.

[Immanuel Can]

Hierarchies are evaluations.

In what sense?

I mean, it's true that they evaluate. But they evaluate by criteria. They put anything which has "the most" of a criterion "on the top," and anything that has less of it below. But hierarchy itself doesn't tell you what your criteria have to be. You pick those based on the feature of reality that concerns you at a given time.

Placing males and females in categories is not necessarily to evaluate them.

That depends.

If you are in a situation that demands strength, then males are above females. If you are in a situation that demands agreeableness, then females are above males. If you are in a situation in which you are concerned about longevity, then females are above males. If your situation requires you to value size, then males are above females.

It's your criterion that determines which way they are ordered. But hierarchy is automatic, whenever you value anything.

...the top of a social hierarchy is definitive of social elites.

What's your criterion for saying this? Sincere question...I can't tell.

Do you mean, the rich have more than the poor? Obviously. Do you mean the powerful have more power than the weak? Yes. Do you mean the famous and celebrated have more influence than the obscure and unnoticed? Sure. And each is a "social elite."

It's not clear, though, what you want to make of that. It seems to me you're trying to say something further...I just can't tell what it is.

[Alexis Jacobi]

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

HAD I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

WB Yeats

[Belinda]

Hierarchies are evaluations.

In what sense?

I mean, it's true that they evaluate. But they evaluate by criteria. They put anything which has "the most" of a criterion "on the top," and anything that has less of it below. But hierarchy itself doesn't tell you what your criteria have to be. You pick those based on the feature of reality that concerns you at a given time.

Placing males and females in categories is not necessarily to evaluate them.

That depends.

If you are in a situation that demands strength, then males are above females. If you are in a situation that demands agreeableness, then females are above males. If you are in a situation in which you are concerned about longevity, then females are above males. If your situation requires you to value size, then males are above females.

It's your criterion that determines which way they are ordered. But hierarchy is automatic, whenever you value anything.

...the top of a social hierarchy is definitive of social elites.

What's your criterion for saying this? Sincere question...I can't tell.

Do you mean, the rich have more than the poor? Obviously. Do you mean the powerful have more power than the weak? Yes. Do you mean the famous and celebrated have more influence than the obscure and unnoticed? Sure. And each is a "social elite."

It's not clear, though, what you want to make of that. It seems to me you're trying to say something further...I just can't tell what it is.

A social elite is made up of the most powerful in a society. The most powerful in a society get to tell others how they must behave, pay taxes, have sex, wear clothes, spend their money, fight the elite's battles, and police themselves. Elites also to the extent they can do propaganda also tell lower status people what to believe.

A hierarchy is an arrangement of a group by which some members of the group are more powerful (for whatever reason) than the others who are often divided into social classes by their relative power status.

People are caused to judge as they judge, and these subjective judgements are insidiously or blatantly, as the case may be, influenced to more or less an extent by the ruling elite class. The only defence the low status individual has against thought control is reason. You will find that when there is an authoritarian regime education of the young is limited as to financing and curriculum.

[Immanuel Can]

A social elite is made up of the most powerful in a society. The most powerful in a society get to tell others how they must behave, pay taxes, have sex, wear clothes, spend their money, fight the elite's battles, and police themselves. Elites also to the extent they can do propaganda also tell lower status people what to believe.

Democrats, you mean? Yes, they want to do all of that, it seems. They have political correctness, tax everything, advocate promiscuity of all kinds, regulate all forms of consumption, start wars, and want private policing. A "check" in every category you list.

A hierarchy is an arrangement of a group by which some members of the group are more powerful (for whatever reason) than the others who are often divided into social classes by their relative power status.

That's only one kind of hierarchy. There are many, many more. Innumerably more.

But it seems you're concerned about political hierarchies, not other kinds. So let's leave all the other kinds of hierarchy alone, because they're all unavoidable, and not at all bad. But political hierarchy can be, as you claim, a tyranny. So what do you want to say about tyranny?

People are caused to judge as they judge, and these subjective judgements are insidiously or blatantly, as the case may be, influenced to more or less an extent by the ruling elite class.

Oh, you mean the way the Democrats now control the legacy media? Yes, they do that. It's why they're so unhappy about things like an unregulated internet, or Musk's new Twitter, or independent news stations. All these things undermined their ability to control public judgment.

The only defence the low status individual has against thought control is reason.

Not "the only," but an important one, I grant you.

You will find that when there is an authoritarian regime education of the young is limited as to financing and curriculum

.
On the contrary: authoritarian regimes LOVE education. Not open, free-inquiry or unregulated education, of course, but propagandization of the young through control of financing, curricula, etc., and also through the managing of public "education" through a corrupted mass media.

Why do you think the Chinese have "re-education camps"? That regime doesn't hate education. They love it...when they control it.

[Belinda]

A social elite is made up of the most powerful in a society. The most powerful in a society get to tell others how they must behave, pay taxes, have sex, wear clothes, spend their money, fight the elite's battles, and police themselves. Elites also to the extent they can do propaganda also tell lower status people what to believe.

Democrats, you mean? Yes, they want to do all of that, it seems. They have political correctness, tax everything, advocate promiscuity of all kinds, regulate all forms of consumption, start wars, and want private policing. A "check" in every category you list.

A hierarchy is an arrangement of a group by which some members of the group are more powerful (for whatever reason) than the others who are often divided into social classes by their relative power status.

That's only one kind of hierarchy. There are many, many more. Innumerably more.

But it seems you're concerned about political hierarchies, not other kinds. So let's leave all the other kinds of hierarchy alone, because they're all unavoidable, and not at all bad. But political hierarchy can be, as you claim, a tyranny. So what do you want to say about tyranny?

People are caused to judge as they judge, and these subjective judgements are insidiously or blatantly, as the case may be, influenced to more or less an extent by the ruling elite class.

Oh, you mean the way the Democrats now control the legacy media? Yes, they do that. It's why they're so unhappy about things like an unregulated internet, or Musk's new Twitter, or independent news stations. All these things undermined their ability to control public judgment.

The only defence the low status individual has against thought control is reason.

Not "the only," but an important one, I grant you.

You will find that when there is an authoritarian regime education of the young is limited as to financing and curriculum

.
On the contrary: authoritarian regimes LOVE education. Not open, free-inquiry or unregulated education, of course, but propagandization of the young through control of financing, curricula, etc., and also through the managing of public "education" through a corrupted mass media.

Why do you think the Chinese have "re-education camps"? That regime doesn't hate education. They love it...when they control it.

Democracy is a guard against elite excesses. I don't know what has happened to democracy in America but I fear.

I have told you before that indoctrination is not education. Indoctrination and education are mutually exclusive.

[Immanuel Can]

Democracy is a guard against elite excesses. I don't know what has happened to democracy in America but I fear.

I quite agree.

It seems that not only the mechanisms of elections but also the very understanding of what a democracy is and how it works has been undermined by thirty years of miseducation in the public schools and media. Democracy is in huge danger today, mostly from what the Left is deceptively terming, "Democratic Socialism," which is really nothing but elitist authoritarianism, a coming together of the radical Left with big business, the legacy media, and global power-brokers to undermine the interests of the ordinary citizen and to diminish his freedoms.