Iambiguous quotes someone, somewhere: So how can a thoughtful person believe in Christianity, since its basis is so 'irrational'?
iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 2:13 pmOn the other hand, as a child it's not like you are going to believe that what Mom and Pop are telling you about the world you live in is irrational. No, for literally thousands of days as "a kid", you are going to be bombarded with information about the world that of
course you accept as entirely true. And that certainly includes what you are told about Christianity. Let's face it, if you had literally thousands of days to indoctrinate an impressionable mind, how deep down do you suppose you could instill a faith in a God, the God, your God?
First, one thing we must acknowledge is that those of us here on this thread, we are no longer capable of following, understanding, and believing in the Story that was once, and for many still is, sufficient enough and upon which a genuine, operational religious faith can be constructed.
For us, at least on one hand, part of our problem is that we cannot explain those believers. In fact (and I refer to Grump #5 our own Dubious as an example) those who *believe* in what he is incapable of believing are derided as imbeciles of the very first order.
Extreme Neurotic #28, our own Iambiguous, is a case worthy of study because, once upon a time he was an American Nazi Racist Christian, but was purified in the fires of war (among other things) and then went through various phases and from one chrysalis to another and then, finally, was extruded out as a bona fide intellectual neurotic as a Moral Nihilist. However! he still wishes to recover his former beliefs if only someone could come along and weave him a convincing enough tale to which he could attach himself in genuine & authentic belief.
Meantime he has
a lot of links that you are going to have to answer for!
I think then that we can actually locate the *source*, shall we say, of
the problem we confront, and which we cannot surmount, when faced with the issue of religious story and religious mythology. Simply put when we deal in religious terms we are dealing in those terms Richard Weaver described as "our metaphysical dream of the world". We know, or we believe we know, and are certain, that because there are different dream-versions, that no one of them is precise and accurate as a world-description.
But here we confront another issue: the intrusion of science-based truth into our way of conceiving and perceiving what is real and fact of this sort as the only *real facts* that we believe to have validity.
What we do not seem to realize fully is that the science-based perceptual system actually undermines
everything that we have determined, in the most *human* sense imaginable, to have *value* and *meaning* in our world. The science-based perception-system thus acts as a terrible (and I would also say terrifying)
reductive system of perception. Name one thing of value -- truth, justice, higher meanings, love -- and the science-view reduces these to mechanics. And when reduced to mechanics they are made to seem valueless in any former sense.
We fail, in fact, to take the science-material view to its absolute conclusion, and most of us remain in a sort of nether-world or a shadow-world where the old sustaining meanings still hover over us like ghostly presences, but with a mere whiff blow away into the
irreal and the insubstantial.
For this reason, now, we are right on the verge of the consequences of our new perceptual order, and the mechanics that rise from it, of becoming more powerful than we have even been, and of asserting themselves over and against that fragile human creature who is fading away. Man-invented mechanical systems are predicted to become the new Lords of Non-meaning and all that is *human* will come under the control of mechanical-computer agency.
A
new diabolism has been born and it does far more than shuffle along. It organizes itself into acute systems of management and control. By diabolic I mean not so much something deliberately geared to choose *evil* out of the sort of joy that Iago felt, but simply what results from mechanism having been created and set in motion.
Now, where does the *thoughtful person* stand when and if he can actually begin to see what is taking shape? Man is being reconfigured, that much is plain, but perhaps we have doubts about this or see it in a *positive* light? But the question, then, is actually Why is it that some do not see this in a *positive light*? Why the dystopian dreams which seemed to have mirrored the prophetic method of anticipating what comes next?
With what and through what -- again let me mention metaphysical dream -- will the
thinking man construct protections? How can the human, in that sense of achieved meaning and value, fare against an exponentially powerful machinery of the sort I allude to and say is forming? Remember, that machine operates on the real plane of physical control, but man's domain is, overall, one that encompasses and proceeds out of the metaphysical.
Now, to *believe in* a source that one indeed believes to be Real and to be ultimately Determinant, is actually not a stupid idea by any means. It is not a stupid activity (for a man) either. It is however one laded with myriad
problems.
The
picture of religion, the child's picture that Iambiguous makes reference to, has collapsed. How can we not face this? But what is
alluded to in all of that -- none of that has been wiped away nor will it ever be wiped away as long as the human exists
qua human. Because it seems to me that as mechanical contraptions intrude more and more deeply and include what seems to be a merger of machine with man, we will in fact have no alternative refuge except in the realm of high metaphysics.
One other thing. If there is a high metaphysics there is also a low metaphysics. And the fact is that the lower metaphysics I define is composed of those detestable believers we hold in such contempt. Note here Dubious' own burning and acidic contempt for such an idiot who sees, and understands, that what makes man man is Logos and that if God is anything at all it is the origin-point of Logos.
