Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Obedient faith has diminished, and resultant existential anxiety among free thinkers is a sign of fertility.

It can be. It's not necessarily so.

But I'm curious: what evidence of "fertility" do you perceive to be coming out of "existential anxiety among free thinkers" now?

[Belinda]

Obedient faith has diminished, and resultant existential anxiety among free thinkers is a sign of fertility.

It can be. It's not necessarily so.

But I'm curious: what evidence of "fertility" do you perceive to be coming out of "existential anxiety among free thinkers" now?

That was a quick idea on my part, Immanuel. I immediately thought of
The Handmaid's Tale and His Dark Materials that I enjoyed last night on television. Then I thought of the Sea of Faith movement , and The Jesus Seminar, and popular culture once you get past the moaning and groaning about sexual frustration.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Here, here is one idea we might toss into the mix. I wish to do no harm to any man . . . but eliminate whole swaths of them . . .

[Belinda]

Here, here is one idea we might toss into the mix. I wish to do no harm to any man . . . but eliminate whole swaths of them . . .

Sorry to trouble you but have you a transcript, in English ?

[Immanuel Can]

Obedient faith has diminished, and resultant existential anxiety among free thinkers is a sign of fertility.

It can be. It's not necessarily so.

But I'm curious: what evidence of "fertility" do you perceive to be coming out of "existential anxiety among free thinkers" now?

That was a quick idea on my part, Immanuel. I immediately thought of
The Handmaid's Tale and His Dark Materials that I enjoyed last night on television. Then I thought of the Sea of Faith movement , and The Jesus Seminar, and popular culture once you get past the moaning and groaning about sexual frustration.

Hmmm...

That's a bit like saying, "Y'know, since Herr Hitler took over, we've had the most wonderful cartoons showing big-nosed Jews stealing money and big-lipped people of colour saying foolish, semi-articulate things; it's been a real art renaissance."

I'm sure things looked different if you were a Jewish person or from a visible minority yourself.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Here, here is one idea we might toss into the mix. I wish to do no harm to any man . . . but eliminate whole swaths of them . . .

Sorry to trouble you but have you a transcript, in English ?

I was rereading the introduction to the RW Inge essays I'd posted earlier and in it he mentions the figure Henry Straker from Man and Superman. I was searching around for more information on that personage and came across that excerpt on YouTube by accident.

I do not know for what reason he was filmed, nor when, nor how to find a transcript.

In the commentary under that YouTube video the introduction to the The Simpletons is mentioned as indicating his real views:

Shaw was not being sarcastic, he was dead serious. From the preface to his play The Simpleton of Unexpected Isles: "we need a greatly increased intolerance of socially injurious conduct and an uncompromising abandonment of punishment and its cruelties, together with a sufficient school inculcation of social responsibility to make every citizen conscious that if his life costs more than it is worth to the community the community may painlessly extinguish it....Any intelligent and experienced administrator of the criminal law will tell you that there are people who come up for punishment again and again for the same offence, and that punishing them is a cruel waste of time. There should be an Inquisition always available to consider whether these human nuisances should not be put out of their pain, or out of their joy as the case may be."

All that I know of Shaw is the play-movie Major Barbara which seems filled to the brim with irony and sarcasm.

[tillingborn]

By 'we' you mean you and others in thrall to the various 'species' of Christianity,

No, I mean scientists. There just isn't the data to justify your assertion.

There is no shortage of data:

...there really are 15 000 species of butterfly currently identified, ten times as many moths as well as thousands of flies, fish, birds, bats, not to mention flowers, trees and mushrooms. Everything that lives is an argument for evolution.

Some people are content to interpret the mythology of the Old Testament in ways that are consistent with demonstrable facts, while retaining what they see as the truth and beauty of the Christian message. For some others to whom the hope of a loving God, divine justice and eternal bliss, gives meaning, comfort and joy, there will never be enough data for any idea they fear undermines their desire. And then there are those who have to make up nonsense to protect a literal interpretation of what is quite clearly ancient mythology. This for instance:

I'm referring to the billions of "false starts" and "transitional forms" that an evolutionary process operating by pure time-plus-chance would necessarily produce...if things had actually happened that way.

There's a bit more to evolution than "pure time-plus-chance". Evolution happens because organisms with genetic structures that result in successful breeding will thrive, and pass their genes onto any offspring. Any that just splice DNA in a completely random way is unlikely to produce viable progeny. Even organisms that reproduce their genetic structure well, don't do so perfectly. Sometimes the difference imparts a small advantage, often it makes no difference and frequently can be deleterious, but your hypothesis that human evolution should produce vastly more monsters than people is not proof that evolution doesn't happen, it simply proves you don't understand it.

[Immanuel Can]

By 'we' you mean you and others in thrall to the various 'species' of Christianity,

No, I mean scientists. There just isn't the data to justify your assertion.

There is no shortage of data

Yeah, there is. There are nowhere near the transitional forms we ought to expect, nor is there any way at all to describe how things like complex, multi-species symbiosis can develop by progressively. And that's just a start.

But as I say, there's no payoff in that argument, anyway. It has very little if any significance for theology.

[Harbal]

There is an interesting, though a difficult, book written by Julius Evola called Men Among The Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist. There is another by René Guénon titled Crisis of the Modern World. For those inclined to consider this *traditionalism* as holding validity metaphysics is perhaps the only means or vehicle for recovery.

Traditionalism for it's own sake doesn't appeal to me, and neither do the books you mention.

I do not think you've sufficiently realized that my critique of you as a decadent and as someone who corresponds to Alfred E. Newman (stoned nescience or something similar) though not by your own choice but because you are an outcome of long processes of degeneration that have beset us all, in one way or another, is really not a personally-directed criticism. Yet I do see you as a man among the ruins.

The nature of your "critique" doesn't bother me; but the fact that you have presented it to me with the attitude that I should be interested in it, and even worse, that I should do something about it, makes me wonder who you think you are.

English culture was held up by its Christian pillars. And those pillars have substantially collapsed. And along with that internal collapse your civilization has, rather literally, collapsed. And there you are smiling numbly but totally impotent. This is why I see you as 'emblematic'.

That's all very well, but why do you think I might be interested in what you see me as?

To search in rubble means that somewhere down there in that rubble there are fragments of true things. Either they are buried, covered over and forgotten by men with no memory, or they are carefully recovered and preserved so that some sense might be made of them.

I don't have a problem with your searching through rubble, but I have no wish to join you, I doubt if we would be looking for the same things.

All of this flies over your head. You have no way at all to make any sense of it at all.

I think I grasp the situation more firmly than you think. You are trying to influence, and I have no intention of being influenced. Why you think that your disapproval of what you perceive to be my attitude will motivate me to reassess it I cannot imagine.

But the god I define must despise you. But don't misinterpret what that implies.

I don't care what it implies, and I haven't made an interpretation.

So let's invoke a god capable of focused contempt! In the end we'll be better people if we do so.

I’ll just stick to focussing my own contempt on those who want to impose any kind of god onto me.

[Lacewing]

...

Harbal, you are brilliant and an inspiration!

[Harbal]

Can you explain more of what you mean?

I daresay I'll be tempted to expand on it at some point.

[Harbal]

After all, lies can be told impulsively, and theft committed with as little forethought; but abduction and murder take planning, strategy and time. This implies that somebody who commits such a crime isn't really acting on "impulse," but by intention.

And intending, scheming, strategizing, planning and executing evil is quite another level than merely doing evil impulsively.

Most of us would never have any desire to abduct and murder a child, and so never have to exercise our free will in favour of refraining from doing it. Those who do have the desire may or may not be able to resist acting upon it, but they don't have the free will not to experience it.

I would start with the kind of distinction made by philosophers such as Susan Neiman:

1. Natural Evils -- Things like earthquakes, plagues, floods, hurricanes, accidents, and so on, in which no evident conscious agency is responsible for the fact that they occur.

2. Human Evils -- Things like rapes, murders, gossip, theft, cruelty, slander and so on, in which human agents are identifiable as the main cause.

I think most people who debate the question of why evil exists are inevitably going to have to deal with both types, at some point.

I find the term "natural evil" inexplicable. Why do we need to call, or think of, floods and earthquakes as anything other than natural disasters? I'm not sure what you're getting at when you suggest that people need an explanation for such things, unless you mean they want a scientific explanation in order to satisfy their curiosity, but I don't think you do mean that.

You have given examples of what you call Human Evils, but not a definition. What is the difference between something that is bad, and something that is evil?

Since you have "malice" as central to your definition, I would assume you might be more inclined to be worried about human evils than natural ones. Nature is not "malicious" in any way, of course. So are we on the same page, now?

In giving a definition, I am only defining what I mean when I use the word "evil". Malice is central to my definition, and if we think of maliciousness as a scale, evil would simply be the point at the extreme end of it. I do not sense that is your conception of what evil is.

[Harbal]

Harbal, you are brilliant and an inspiration!

If that means you see the situation as I do, I'm glad to hear it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Traditionalism for it's own sake doesn't appeal to me, and neither do the books you mention.

Harbal, dear one, this is going to be really hard for you but you are totally irrelevant to every idea that is discussed in this thread. You have no relationship at all to any of these ideas or concerns. You share precisely none of them. By your own confession. You are a man unmoved and unmovable by any idea. Who cares what you appeals to you or not? You might as well write about breakfast cereals or your preferred lightbulbs.

You are interesting to me because of this vacuousness. And I am quite certain that you are part of a multitude. Though I tell you that you must not take it at all personally, and you affirm that you don't, you do not need to respond to anything I say. Essentially for the reasons I mention.

If it seems like I am speaking to you divest yourself of the idea. I speak in reference to you.

Now . . . what to do about Lacewing. Hmmmmm. Thinking thinking! . . .

[Alexis Jacobi]

Harbal, you are brilliant and an inspiration!

If that means you see the situation as I do, I'm glad to hear it.

Don't let it go to your head. There's so much space up there it might go missing ...