Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Pistolero]

I already have, Mickey, in regards to free-will.

Look at your mind at work...

Justice is the alignment of actions and consequences within a system of fairness.

You use justice and then fairness to define it.
What a mind you have.
A synonym. Circular reasoning. It explains a lot about you.
Define it Mickey as in what activities would make justice plausible. What are the expected outcomes?
Parity - equity, right?
Mickey....justice is a human contrivance......it does not exist anywhere but in human minds.
Is nature just and fair?
Nope.
Does nature care?
Nope.

Like defining 'freedom' as 'independence'.....
How pathetic are you?

Then you proceed to your activism.

Under determinism, justice shifts from retribution to causal accountability. Not “you deserve this because you chose it,” but “this is the outcome of what caused you, and here is how society must respond to protect itself or rehabilitate you.”

And the causes go how far back, Mickey?
How much causality can you endure...I wonder.
I bet your causality begins and ends when humans established societies, right?
You choose to stop there because you NEED to blame all human disparities on human choices, which you then deny are free.

You refuse to accept causality that preceded the emergence of human societies.
Why?
Because now determinism gets into dangerous ground, doesn't it Mickey?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom does not require the absence of mediation, or causes.
It only requires the presence of accessible and attainable options.
Strength does not require omnipotence....
Life does not require immortality....
Knowledge does not require omniscience...

Only freedom is measured with such unattainable standards....
Why?
The motives, Mickey....YOUR motives.
You need to absolve your victims of all culpability, whist still blaming men for being the cause of their suffering.

[BigMike]

All right, Pistolero. We’re going to keep walking this line together, steadily and cleanly. No stumbles. No swerves. You’ve brought a mix of legitimate challenge, biting tone, and a few landmines that need to be stepped on deliberately. So let’s go—step by step.

I already have, Mickey, in regards to free-will.

You’ve gestured toward it, yes—but not with the clarity required to pin down the claim. If your account of free will is that it arises from physical processes, then you’re not really disagreeing with determinism—you’re agreeing with it but still calling it “free will” out of familiarity. If your definition involves uncaused initiation—an agent stepping outside cause and effect—then that is metaphysical, whether you admit it or not. That’s what still needs clean articulation.

Look at your mind at work...

Justice is the alignment of actions and consequences within a system of fairness.

Yes. I’ll stand by that. But let’s pull it apart like you want.

“Justice” is a framework. It’s not a natural object you can dig out of the ground. It’s a human concept, like language or money, created to solve specific coordination problems. What makes justice plausible—as you asked—isn’t its presence in nature. It’s the ability of a justice system to manage behavior in a society in a way that reduces suffering and conflict. That’s the grounding function.

When I say “fairness,” I’m not being circular. I mean proportionate treatment based on what caused the behavior and what consequences follow. Not moral desert, but practical calibration. You can call it a synonym, but that’s not a failing. That’s linguistic precision.

Define it Mickey as in what activities would make justice plausible.

Okay, let’s go pragmatic.

Justice becomes plausible when:

• Systems are designed to reduce harm, not inflict retribution.
• Accountability is aimed at protecting others, not at assigning guilt for unchosen traits or histories.
• Rehabilitation is prioritized where possible, and containment where necessary.
• Causes are addressed—not just symptoms. Poverty, trauma, mental illness—all of these factor into deterministic models of justice.

There. Those are activities that make justice a functional, not metaphysical, concept.

Mickey....justice is a human contrivance......it does not exist anywhere but in human minds.

Yes. Precisely. That’s not a refutation. That’s a restatement of the deterministic view. Justice, like laws, art, ethics, mathematics—they’re emergent properties of minds trying to live together without imploding. We don’t pretend they’re floating in the sky like divine tablets. We create systems because we are caused to do so by our conditions, needs, and cognition.

Is nature just and fair?
Nope.

Exactly. And that’s the whole point. Nature doesn’t care. Gravity doesn’t care. Evolution doesn’t care. That’s why we—who do care—have a responsibility to construct humane systems in the absence of cosmic justice. Not because we’re above nature, but because our brains, shaped by it, have developed the capacity to simulate alternatives to needless harm.

Like defining 'freedom' as 'independence'.....
How pathetic are you?

Skip the insult—let’s focus on content. You want freedom defined empirically. Fine.

Freedom, in the deterministic model, is relative behavioral latitude within a given causal structure. You are “more free” when fewer external constraints limit your range of action. But every action is still caused. Freedom is not the absence of causality—it’s the presence of uncoerced complexity in that causality.

This is not an emotional definition. It’s operational. I’m not playing word games. I’m telling you that “freedom” can exist within determinism once you stop pretending it means uncaused agency.

Then you proceed to your activism.

Under determinism, justice shifts from retribution to causal accountability. Not “you deserve this because you chose it,” but “this is the outcome of what caused you, and here is how society must respond to protect itself or rehabilitate you.”

And the causes go how far back, Mickey?

As far back as the beginning. The Big Bang. Star formation. Supernovae that made the iron in your blood. The selective pressures that formed your ancestors’ nervous systems. The culture you were born into. The prenatal environment in the womb. The language you first heard. The facial expressions you copied. The way someone treated you when you were four and you didn’t even know it shaped your emotional baseline.

That’s how far.

There is no cause “cut-off.” That’s the entire foundation of determinism.

How much causality can you endure...I wonder.

All of it. I don’t flinch at it. I lean into it. I believe we are kinder, wiser, and more effective when we face it directly. When we stop asking, “Who’s to blame?” and start asking, “What caused this?”—then we start solving problems. Not just condemning people. You think that’s weakness? No. That’s strength. Because it refuses to lie just to feel morally superior.

I bet your causality begins and ends when humans established societies, right?

Absolutely not. That would be absurd. Society is just one chapter in a cosmic book of causes that spans 13.8 billion years. But society is the realm in which we construct systems like justice, accountability, and fairness. So yes, I focus on society—because that’s where we live. That’s where the consequences of our ideas show up. That’s where reform is possible.

You choose to stop there because you NEED to blame all human disparities on human choices, which you then deny are free.

No. I don’t blame. That’s your projection. I explain. And I say disparities are caused by systems—not by individual failings. Poverty, crime, violence—these aren’t moral flaws. They are outcomes of material, psychological, and social inputs. I don’t stop causality at society—I just apply policy-level focus there, because that’s where we can actually change the system.

You refuse to accept causality that preceded the emergence of human societies.

Not only do I accept it—I emphasize it. That’s why I say we must abandon blame and moralism. Because our very minds are products of forces that precede choice: biology, culture, evolution, geology, physics.

Because now determinism gets into dangerous ground, doesn't it Mickey?

No, it gets into honest ground. And that’s where real progress begins. You want to hold onto a moral world where people “deserve” everything they get. I want to move into a world where we understand people as they are, not as fictions of autonomy.

Yes, it’s dangerous—to illusions. But not to truth. Not to reason. Not to the possibility of a better world built on understanding rather than judgment.

So let’s go as far back as we need, Pistolero. I’m not the one afraid of what we’ll find.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Pistolero: So Will exists, and it requires no metaphysics...and no explanation. Freedom exists, as strength, because it is nothing more than a qualifier.

My definition of what is metaphysical is, simply put, that the Universe takes shape; that out of chaos world’s form. There is something — I honestly don’t think it is reducible to a linguistic explanation — that (for want of a better description) allows thing to flow into their forms. The great design.

Similarly, and in the human world, we “realize” certain things — all those things that are not part of the natural world. Ideas, concepts, values that are ideals and that are idealized. In this sense man is a receptor or a filter (as I once suggested and as some post-physicists or “spiritually-oriented physicists” suggest (as they make efforts to bridge the former religious metaphysics with modern physicalist descriptions and “facts”).

I am aware as well, because it has been proven to me and is part of my knowledge — and I mentioned this previously — that I do perceive the existence of an acausal connecting principle. That is, something (I do not think it is amenable to verbal reduction) that connects levels of experience; and even that operates like Providence was previously understood to operate. I do not know how else to put it except to say it can be “beckoned to”. There is a sort of magic (again for want of a better word) that our awareness and consciousness employs. The connecting principle is also a guiding principle. The one on this forum with what I perceive is the greatest comprehension of this is Seeds. It is the basis of his kerygma.

Frankly, these ideas, this knowledge if you will, would have to be classified under the term mysticism. I don’t particularly like that term, and it hardly has a place in contemporary philosophy, and I do not know of any 1) verbal proof or 2) practical method whereby I could “demonstrate” as in science experimentation, the realness of what I refer to.

So I as well resort to linguistic formulations: allusions, poetic utterances, to express what I have been made to understand.

Spiritual will, or spiritualized will, is therefore what holds my attention. Simply put it is that my being, my will, affects this world. You (BigMike) ask me to “prove” a mechanism and it is obvious that it cannot be proved, not in the way that water’s boil point can be proved.

It is another order of knowledge, apparently. What more can be said?

So, my notion of the metaphysical is dual. On one hand the realization that is possible for conscious man: i.e. knowledge and understanding gleaned out of the Cosmos by a filtering apparatus: the self. The other aspect is perhsps more genuinely meta-physical to phusis. It is something operable by man.

There you have it.

[Pistolero]

You’ve gestured toward it, yes—but not with the clarity required to pin down the claim. If your account of free will is that it arises from physical processes, then you’re not really disagreeing with determinism—you’re agreeing with it but still calling it “free will” out of familiarity. If your definition involves uncaused initiation—an agent stepping outside cause and effect—then that is metaphysical, whether you admit it or not. That’s what still needs clean articulation.

You want me to repeat what I've said?
How many times, until you get it?

Yes. I’ll stand by that. But let’s pull it apart like you want.

“Justice” is a framework. It’s not a natural object you can dig out of the ground. It’s a human concept, like language or money, created to solve specific coordination problems. What makes justice plausible—as you asked—isn’t its presence in nature. It’s the ability of a justice system to manage behavior in a society in a way that reduces suffering and conflict. That’s the grounding function.

So it's motive, its objective is what, Mickey?
The stability of human systems, right?
Would this necessitate the propagation of lies? I say it does.

When I say “fairness,” I’m not being circular. I mean proportionate treatment based on what caused the behavior and what consequences follow. Not moral desert, but practical calibration. You can call it a synonym, but that’s not a failing. That’s linguistic precision.

So an accurate understanding of causes, is essential.
and an adequate understanding of the limits of justice is also necessary.
One man's justice is another's injustice.
Who is the arbiter?
Representing what, Mickey?
I say all institutionalized authorities are sanctioned to preserve the welfare of a collective....relative to a particular ideology, i.e., objective.

A Christian collective would define justice differently from an ancient Spartan....or a Modern Muslim.
Justice is relative to a collective's ideals. Its intentions ....Will Mickey....
Your objectives are distinctly tainted by Christianity.

Justice becomes plausible when:
[*]Systems are designed to reduce harm, not inflict retribution.

Wrong....this propagates injustices.
If you shelter a population what happens to it, Mickey?
Does it grow stronger, healthier?
No.

Retribution is denied to the individual, and becomes the domain of the collective, represented by its authorities.

[*]Accountability is aimed at protecting others, not at assigning guilt for unchosen traits or histories.

But accountability is ascribing guilt mickey.
You are using synonyms again, unable to see how words can have the same meaning, with slight nuanced modification.

When I say a man is guilty of burning down a forest, even fi my accident, i am holding him accountable for what caused a negative, for me, effect.

[*]Rehabilitation is prioritized where possible, and containment where necessary.

Rehabilitation implies the guilty party is capable of self-control, because you cannot change the impulses that drove him to behave in the way he did.

[*]Causes are addressed—not just symptoms. Poverty, trauma, mental illness—all of these factor into deterministic models of justice.

And....and mickey....race, upbringing, sex....
All participating in the causes.
Nurture is environmental
Nature is the sum of all past nurturing.
So, I inherit how tall I can become - the range fo probabilities - and nurture, determines where within this range I will fall.

Yes. Precisely. That’s not a refutation. That’s a restatement of the deterministic view. Justice, like laws, art, ethics, mathematics—they’re emergent properties of minds trying to live together without imploding. We don’t pretend they’re floating in the sky like divine tablets. We create systems because we are caused to do so by our conditions, needs, and cognition.

Math has nothing to do with living together, Mickey.

I would include the Abahamic version of God.
So all these manmade concepts are human contrivances.
Their objectives are not truth....but social stability - the group's welfare.
If lies facilitate this, then lies are propagated among the masses.
Punishment is a form of disciplining the human animal to these manamde rules.
Cultivation is a form of social engineering.
Natural selection becomes social selection, mostly through the mediation of female sexual agency.
This is why Paternalism had to limit male and primarily female promiscuity.

Exactly. And that’s the whole point. Nature doesn’t care. Gravity doesn’t care. Evolution doesn’t care. That’s why we—who do care—have a responsibility to construct humane systems in the absence of cosmic justice. Not because we’re above nature, but because our brains, shaped by it, have developed the capacity to simulate alternatives to needless harm.

And now we are getting to the important stuff....like human ideologies and dogmas.
your ideology determines how you view existence, and how you define concepts - and the words used to represent them.
This is not the only way.
Your liberal modernism, is not a universal truth, Mickey.

Every ideology, has its own standards....determining out evaluations - our value-judgments....AND, Mickey, all ideologies have a version of what is an ideal man.
What determines which one will be more successful or will produce the healthiest man, relative to nature, not itself....not within its protective regimented ordered systems, but outside them.

Freedom, in the deterministic model, is relative behavioral latitude within a given causal structure. You are “more free” when fewer external constraints limit your range of action. But every action is still caused. Freedom is not the absence of causality—it’s the presence of uncoerced complexity in that causality.

Exactly little Mickey...so man is relatively free...not absolutely un-free.
His will is free, relative to his power.
How do we measure this freedom empirically, by counting his options.

This is not an emotional definition. It’s operational. I’m not playing word games. I’m telling you that “freedom” can exist within determinism once you stop pretending it means uncaused agency.

No, your word games begin when you define freedom, as you did, and then deny its existence relative to will
I never d fined it as 'uncaused' or lacking mediation....I gave you a precise, verifiable definition of freedom, Mickey...and you CHOSE to ignore it and insult me by lumping me in with your preferred adversaries.
I am saying something much more radical about how humans choose to define words, representing concepts.

As far back as the beginning. The Big Bang. Star formation. Supernovae that made the iron in your blood. The selective pressures that formed your ancestors’ nervous systems. The culture you were born into. The prenatal environment in the womb. The language you first heard. The facial expressions you copied. The way someone treated you when you were four and you didn’t even know it shaped your emotional baseline.

That’s how far.

Exactly.....
Let's make a mathematical assessment now.
4-6 000 years of human societies.....70 000 of naturally selected psychosomatic traits.
Which one determines the nature of men, the most?

What goes into those 70 000+ years of natural selection.
Isolation....right.
Adversity - environmental challenges, right.
Unforeseen events - causing genetic shift... like mass exterminations, right Mickey.
Random mutations, caused by cosmic and planetary circumstances - like cosmic particles, magnetic fields etc.

So, what participates in determining a man's fate?
All those immeasurable causes manifesting what, Mickey?
an individual
Past is made present....and this presence is interpreted, a priorily as appearance.
So appearance is the sum total of all that...plush chaotic factors.
Appearance is not arbitrary...and so it is not irreverent...not superficial.
A man's appearance is an interpretation of his past, as this manifests his presence.
To put it in a way you will udnerstand...DNA carries all the environmental effects on the parents, transmitted to the offspring, determining the range of all his inherited traits....from his height to his IQ.

And all that participates in determining his behavior...his adaptability, his self-control, the power if his will....his social status, his poverty...etc.

[BigMike]

Okay, so right from the start, this isn’t about evaluating the truth-value of a claim I’ve made. It’s about identifying a rhetorical or psychological pattern—what I do—as if the structure of my communication somehow reveals something covert about my intentions, rather than the content itself being evaluated on its own terms.

No, that is not a fair assessment. My focus on man’s psychology — and not just yours — is a large part of (let’s say) my backgrounding in my intellectual life.

Fair. I’ll take that seriously. If your focus is genuinely on the psychological dimension—not as a deflection from argument, but as a lens to deepen your understanding of human conviction—then yes, you’re working from a tradition. And that tradition, stretching from Jung back to Heraclitus and forward through existentialism, is rich with insight into why people think and feel as they do.

But here's the catch: understanding motive doesn’t negate content. If I say gravity pulls objects toward a mass and someone says, “Well, you just want the universe to be predictable,” that may be true psychologically—but it doesn’t touch the validity of the law. So: yes, explore motives. Absolutely. But do not let that become a replacement for assessing evidence, logic, and explanatory coherence. Otherwise, psychology becomes an escape hatch.

For example I have over the course of my time on this forum referred to two essays by CG Jung — Wotan and After the Catastrophe as a means to make reference to psychic upheaval in what seems to be an invisible in man: his psyche. Woton was written prior to the last war; After the Catastrophe after the European devastation.

I know the pieces. And I understand the reference. Jung’s work on archetypes, collective psyche, and the eruptions of unconscious forces—especially in times of cultural collapse—is undeniably potent. “Wotan” was a warning, not just about fascism but about myth reasserting itself when rationality fails to fill the void. And After the Catastrophe is Jung reckoning with what happens when that eruption has run its course.

But what does that imply about me? That my view—one grounded in physics and cause—is an unconscious eruption? A stand-in myth? A rationalized trauma? That’s a heavy charge. And it begs the question: is every worldview an eruption of the psyche? Or just the ones that threaten older frameworks?

The present conversation, and everything occurring on this forum and the conflicts clearly visible — tremendous and consequential divisions between people and perspectives — I see within a larger context: a breakdown in a sense of order; or perhaps simply “the loss of horizon” Nietzsche referred to.

Yes. That’s the terrain. Nietzsche saw the death of God not as liberation but as vertigo. He feared that the destruction of metaphysical foundations would leave people spiritually disoriented—and that they’d retreat into nihilism or, worse, destructive mythologies to fill the void.

But here’s the distinction: I’m not advocating for void. I’m advocating for clarity. For a system grounded not in unprovable metaphysics, but in observable causality. You might say that’s a “new metaphysics,” but I would say: no, it’s the move away from metaphysics. It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

I see you within this context. As Hamlet describes the Actors: “...the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.” You are enunciating, concretizing — quite literally — what you understand to be a New Anthropology.

Yes, in that sense I agree. I am articulating a New Anthropology. But not in a utopian or ideological sense. It’s not built on an emotional rebellion against the past. It’s built on what science—across neuroscience, psychology, physics, evolutionary biology—has uncovered about human behavior and motivation. And it does replace something. But what it replaces is illusion. Not meaning. Not beauty. Not responsibility. Just illusion—specifically, the illusion of uncaused will.

You can call that totalizing if you like, but I call it consistency. And consistency, when applied with humility, is not tyranny. It’s a framework for compassion.

A supposedly non-metaphysics metaphysics which replaces a former metaphysics. It is a totalizing, absolutist perspective, plainly and simply.

Let’s unpack this carefully. If by “totalizing,” you mean that determinism applies universally, then yes—guilty. But that’s not ideology. That’s physics. Cause and effect are totalizing not because I impose them, but because they are observed to be universal. Conservation laws aren’t dogma. They’re description.

What’s being challenged here isn’t the idea that my worldview is too rigid. What’s really happening is this: it refuses to leave room for comforting myths. And that’s where people flinch. Because once you accept a fully caused world, the scaffolding of blame, of moral superiority, of entitlement—it all begins to dissolve.

This is my view, BigMike, and this is why you are regarded as dangerous.

Good. Because dangerous to what? To what used to pass as insight? To narratives that allowed people to dismiss others as evil or weak rather than understand what shaped them? Yes. That kind of danger is not harm—it’s correction. It's the danger that Galileo posed. That Darwin posed. That Freud posed, even if he got things wildly wrong—because each one said: “What you thought was chosen… was caused.”

If that’s dangerous, then let’s have the courage to face the danger head-on, not paint it as pathology.

the structure of my communication somehow reveals something covert about my intentions

I suspect that what you call “my intentions” preceded what I call “the concoction”.

That’s a fair point. Maybe the psychology preceded the framework. But here’s the question: does it matter if the result is accurate?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that my framework emerged because I was disillusioned with religious moralism or traumatized by the failures of idealistic systems. Even if true—so what? The psychology might explain the motive, but it doesn’t determine the truth-value of the claims. We still have to ask: is the logic sound? Are the observations reproducible? Do the explanations align with evidence?

That is where the psychological factor plays its part. Your larger aims and objectives are what really motivates you (this is my impression).

Sure. And I’ll be transparent about this: my objective is to help dismantle systems of cruelty built on the illusion of blame. To advocate for policy rooted in causality. To replace moralism with mechanism—not to excuse harm, but to prevent it.

If that’s a psychological motive, then fine. I’ll own it. But I’m not smuggling it in. I’m saying it out loud. And I’m backing it with a framework that doesn’t rest on faith or intuition—but on evidence and coherence.

So here's the conclusion, Alexis:

You’re not wrong to examine motive. But motive is not verdict. If you think the framework is wrong—show where it breaks. If you think it’s dangerous—define what it endangers. But don’t stop at the psyche. Let’s walk together past the shadow of man, and into the architecture of nature itself.

And then ask: is it myth? Or is it mechanism?

And if it's the latter... are you ready to live by it?

[BigMike]

You’ve gestured toward it, yes—but not with the clarity required to pin down the claim. If your account of free will is that it arises from physical processes, then you’re not really disagreeing with determinism—you’re agreeing with it but still calling it “free will” out of familiarity. If your definition involves uncaused initiation—an agent stepping outside cause and effect—then that is metaphysical, whether you admit it or not. That’s what still needs clean articulation.

You want me to repeat what I've said?
How many times, until you get it?

Yes. I’ll stand by that. But let’s pull it apart like you want.

“Justice” is a framework. It’s not a natural object you can dig out of the ground. It’s a human concept, like language or money, created to solve specific coordination problems. What makes justice plausible—as you asked—isn’t its presence in nature. It’s the ability of a justice system to manage behavior in a society in a way that reduces suffering and conflict. That’s the grounding function.

So it's motive, its objective is what, Mickey?
The stability of human systems, right?
Would this necessitate the propagation of lies? I say it does.

When I say “fairness,” I’m not being circular. I mean proportionate treatment based on what caused the behavior and what consequences follow. Not moral desert, but practical calibration. You can call it a synonym, but that’s not a failing. That’s linguistic precision.

So an accurate understanding of causes, is essential.
and an adequate understanding of the limits of justice is also necessary.
One man's justice is another's injustice.
Who is the arbiter?
Representing what, Mickey?
I say all institutionalized authorities are sanctioned to preserve the welfare of a collective....relative to a particular ideology, i.e., objective.

A Christian collective would define justice differently from an ancient Spartan....or a Modern Muslim.
Justice is relative to a collective's ideals. Its intentions ....Will Mickey....
Your objectives are distinctly tainted by Christianity.

Justice becomes plausible when:
[*]Systems are designed to reduce harm, not inflict retribution.

Wrong....this propagates injustices.
If you shelter a population what happens to it, Mickey?
Does it grow stronger, healthier?
No.

Retribution is denied to the individual, and becomes the domain of the collective, represented by its authorities.

[*]Accountability is aimed at protecting others, not at assigning guilt for unchosen traits or histories.

But accountability is ascribing guilt mickey.
You are using synonyms again, unable to see how words can have the same meaning, with slight nuanced modification.

When I say a man is guilty of burning down a forest, even fi my accident, i am holding him accountable for what caused a negative, for me, effect.

[*]Rehabilitation is prioritized where possible, and containment where necessary.

Rehabilitation implies the guilty party is capable of self-control, because you cannot change the impulses that drove him to behave in the way he did.

[*]Causes are addressed—not just symptoms. Poverty, trauma, mental illness—all of these factor into deterministic models of justice.

And....and mickey....race, upbringing, sex....
All participating in the causes.
Nurture is environmental
Nature is the sum of all past nurturing.
So, I inherit how tall I can become - the range fo probabilities - and nurture, determines where within this range I will fall.

Yes. Precisely. That’s not a refutation. That’s a restatement of the deterministic view. Justice, like laws, art, ethics, mathematics—they’re emergent properties of minds trying to live together without imploding. We don’t pretend they’re floating in the sky like divine tablets. We create systems because we are caused to do so by our conditions, needs, and cognition.

Math has nothing to do with living together, Mickey.

I would include the Abahamic version of God.
So all these manmade concepts are human contrivances.
Their objectives are not truth....but social stability - the group's welfare.
If lies facilitate this, then lies are propagated among the masses.
Punishment is a form of disciplining the human animal to these manamde rules.
Cultivation is a form of social engineering.
Natural selection becomes social selection, mostly through the mediation of female sexual agency.
This is why Paternalism had to limit male and primarily female promiscuity.

Exactly. And that’s the whole point. Nature doesn’t care. Gravity doesn’t care. Evolution doesn’t care. That’s why we—who do care—have a responsibility to construct humane systems in the absence of cosmic justice. Not because we’re above nature, but because our brains, shaped by it, have developed the capacity to simulate alternatives to needless harm.

And now we are getting to the important stuff....like human ideologies and dogmas.
your ideology determines how you view existence, and how you define concepts - and the words used to represent them.
This is not the only way.
Your liberal modernism, is not a universal truth, Mickey.

Every ideology, has its own standards....determining out evaluations - our value-judgments....AND, Mickey, all ideologies have a version of what is an ideal man.
What determines which one will be more successful or will produce the healthiest man, relative to nature, not itself....not within its protective regimented ordered systems, but outside them.

Freedom, in the deterministic model, is relative behavioral latitude within a given causal structure. You are “more free” when fewer external constraints limit your range of action. But every action is still caused. Freedom is not the absence of causality—it’s the presence of uncoerced complexity in that causality.

Exactly little Mickey...so man is relatively free...not absolutely un-free.
His will is free, relative to his power.
How do we measure this freedom empirically, by counting his options.

This is not an emotional definition. It’s operational. I’m not playing word games. I’m telling you that “freedom” can exist within determinism once you stop pretending it means uncaused agency.

No, your word games begin when you define freedom, as you did, and then deny its existence relative to will
I never d fined it as 'uncaused' or lacking mediation....I gave you a precise, verifiable definition of freedom, Mickey...and you CHOSE to ignore it and insult me by lumping me in with your preferred adversaries.
I am saying something much more radical about how humans choose to define words, representing concepts.

As far back as the beginning. The Big Bang. Star formation. Supernovae that made the iron in your blood. The selective pressures that formed your ancestors’ nervous systems. The culture you were born into. The prenatal environment in the womb. The language you first heard. The facial expressions you copied. The way someone treated you when you were four and you didn’t even know it shaped your emotional baseline.

That’s how far.

Exactly.....
Let's make a mathematical assessment now.
4-6 000 years of human societies.....70 000 of naturally selected psychosomatic traits.
Which one determines the nature of men, the most?

What goes into those 70 000+ years of natural selection.
Isolation....right.
Adversity - environmental challenges, right.
Unforeseen events - causing genetic shift... like mass exterminations, right Mickey.
Random mutations, caused by cosmic and planetary circumstances - like cosmic particles, magnetic fields etc.

So, what participates in determining a man's fate?
All those immeasurable causes manifesting what, Mickey?
an individual
Past is made present....and this presence is interpreted, a priorily as appearance.
So appearance is the sum total of all that...plush chaotic factors.
Appearance is not arbitrary...and so it is not irreverent...not superficial.
A man's appearance is an interpretation of his past, as this manifests his presence.
To put it in a way you will udnerstand...DNA carries all the environmental effects on the parents, transmitted to the offspring, determining the range of all his inherited traits....from his height to his IQ.

And all that participates in determining his behavior...his adaptability, his self-control, the power if his will....his social status, his poverty...etc.

You’ve described causality beautifully—yes, every aspect of a person, from biology to behavior, is shaped by vast chains of cause: evolution, environment, randomness, trauma, culture. That’s determinism. We agree.

But here’s the tension: you affirm that all behavior is caused, then still call the outcome “free will.” That’s not radical clarity—it’s contradiction. If will is entirely shaped, it isn’t free in the way the term implies. It’s conditioned. Powerful? Maybe. But not uncaused, and not self-originating. That’s the only line I’m holding: consistency. Strip the mythology from the language.

If we do that, we’re not adversaries—we’re aligned.

[Pistolero]

Pistolero: So Will exists, and it requires no metaphysics...and no explanation. Freedom exists, as strength, because it is nothing more than a qualifier.

My definition of what is metaphysical is, simply put, that the Universe takes shape; that out of chaos world’s form. There is something — I honestly don’t think it is reducible to a linguistic explanation — that (for want of a better description) allows thing to flow into their forms. The great design.

Yes, but when dealing with people like Mickey, we can only begin with the physical, and then proceed to the metaphysical.
He cannot even understand how freedom and independence are the same cocnept.

I am aware as well, because it has been proven to me and is part of my knowledge — and I mentioned this previously — that I do perceive the existence of an acausal connecting principle. That is, something (I do not think it is amenable to verbal reduction) that connects levels of experience; and even that operates like Providence was previously understood to operate. I do not know how else to put it except to say it can be “beckoned to”. There is a sort of magic (again for want of a better word) that our awareness and consciousness employs. The connecting principle is also a guiding principle. The one on this forum with what I perceive is the greatest comprehension of this is Seeds. It is the basis of his kerygma.

I call it Energy, taking the Greek definition.
Ενεργεια.
At work....a state of agitation. In the process of...
No magic.
All can be explained from within the known.
Chaos is the difficult part, as it describes the incomprehensible, the imperceptible...energy with no pattern.
Order = patterned energies
Chaos = non-patterned energies.
The mind interprets chaos and complexity as nothingness....and assumes that all is ordered - knowable - because all is ordered.
This is where god is renamed Order.
Chaos, in fact, refers to what lacks order, and so is eternally incomprehensible.
Pattern = consistent, repeating, predictable sequence of inter-acitivty
no-pattern = inconsistent, unpredictable, inter-acitivty.
InterActivity = attraction, repulsion - causality.

Frankly, these ideas, this knowledge if you will, would have to be classified under the term mysticism. I don’t particularly like that term, and it hardly has a place in contemporary philosophy, and I do not know of any 1) verbal proof or 2) practical method whereby I could “demonstrate” as in science experimentation, the realness of what I refer to.

Mysticism refers to ll that man cannot comprehend nor perceive, but still affects him.
This effect can be psychological...so e must be careful here.
Men are affected by their own convictions. If a man believes in ghosts, he will experience paranormal activity.

So I as well resort to linguistic formulations: allusions, poetic utterances, to express what I have been made to understand.

allegories can be useful....when referring to the incomprehensible.

Spiritual will, or spiritualized will, is therefore what holds my attention. Simply put it is that my being, my will, affects this world. You (BigMike) ask me to “prove” a mechanism and it is obvious that it cannot be proved, not in the way that water’s boil point can be proved.

for me, 'spirit' is the synthesis of mind/body.
Sources of input into the brain, come form without and form within an organism
These are synthesized in the brain.
Which data source dominate, determines the way the mind experiences this input.
during sleep, for example the external input is minimal, allowing internal sources to take over.

Nihilism prefers the internal - calling it esoteric.
This is where you ill find the god of Abraham.
The Platonic cave is the human skull.

Here we see the use of language in action.
Does a man use language to refer to external sources of data, or to internal sources?
This make all the difference.
Moderns, as inheritors of over 2 000 years of Abrahamic indoctrination. are infected by this paradigm.
American being the dominant representative of Modernism - the Enlightenment.
When I say Abrahamism I mean Judaism....with its two outcrops, Christianity an Islam.
Modern Americans think and judge according to Mosaic Ethics.

Judaism itself, is an amalgamation of various influences, starting with ancient-Egyptian occultism and then ending with Hellenic occultism, Orphism.
Gnosticism being another offshoot.

So, my notion of the metaphysical is dual. On one hand the realization that is possible for conscious man: i.e. knowledge and understanding gleaned out of the Cosmos by a filtering apparatus: the self. The other aspect is perhsps more genuinely meta-physical to phusis. It is something operable by man.

There you have it.

For me, metaphysics must be grounded in physis, nature.
Metaphysics - meta-nature, otherwise we risk being swept away by our imagination...as did the Jews.
Essentially they abstracted themselves, as a collective and claimed that they were chosen - because every nation they cam in contact with rejected them...because of their survival tactics.
When we worship the Christian god we worship the Jews, as an abstracted collective.

Their prophesies are indicative of how they can now predict what will happen, because they will not change their ways.
Self-fulfilling....
Armageddon is part of their prophesies....because they know that their dogma will create an equal and opposite reaction.
For them, if they cannot dominate the entire world, they would rather destroy it, and claim it was part of their god's plan. God, is their scapegoat....their invention.
So modern Americanized men, need scapegoats.

[Pistolero]

You’ve described causality beautifully—yes, every aspect of a person, from biology to behavior, is shaped by vast chains of cause: evolution, environment, randomness, trauma, culture. That’s determinism. We agree.

But here’s the tension: you affirm that all behavior is caused, then still call the outcome “free will.” That’s not radical clarity—it’s contradiction. If will is entirely shaped, it isn’t free in the way the term implies. It’s conditioned. Powerful? Maybe. But not uncaused, and not self-originating. That’s the only line I’m holding: consistency. Strip the mythology from the language.

What we inherit are the choices of our ancestors. We are the benefactors of good judgements, expressed as effective choices.
Otherwise how would big brains offer an advatage?

Choices between many options....
The quantity of choice, determined by the will's power.....the consequences, evaluated relative to expectations.

You were indoctrinated into being triggered by certain words....like choice or 'free-will....or race.....or gender....
That's your problem.

If clarity is truly your objective, then all thee terms must be reaffirmed by being properly defined and understood.
Beginning with the apparent....the phenomenon.
If something looks different, it cannot be an illusion....it is different.
If we can perceive choice , it cannot be an illusion, but a fact.

[Pistolero]

Pistolero: So Will exists, and it requires no metaphysics...and no explanation. Freedom exists, as strength, because it is nothing more than a qualifier.

My definition of what is metaphysical is, simply put, that the Universe takes shape; that out of chaos world’s form. There is something — I honestly don’t think it is reducible to a linguistic explanation — that (for want of a better description) allows thing to flow into their forms. The great design.

Yes, but when dealing with people like Mickey, we can only begin with the physical, and then proceed to the metaphysical.
He cannot even understand how freedom and independence are the same cocnept.

I am aware as well, because it has been proven to me and is part of my knowledge — and I mentioned this previously — that I do perceive the existence of an acausal connecting principle. That is, something (I do not think it is amenable to verbal reduction) that connects levels of experience; and even that operates like Providence was previously understood to operate. I do not know how else to put it except to say it can be “beckoned to”. There is a sort of magic (again for want of a better word) that our awareness and consciousness employs. The connecting principle is also a guiding principle. The one on this forum with what I perceive is the greatest comprehension of this is Seeds. It is the basis of his kerygma.

I call it Energy. The Greek definition of Ενεργεια.
At work....a state of agitation. In the process of...
No magic.
All can be explained from within the existent.
Chaos is the difficult part, as it describes the incomprehensible, the imperceptible...energy with no pattern.
Order = patterned energies
Chaos = non-patterned energies.
The mind interprets chaos and complexity as nothingness....and assumes that all is ordered - knowable - because all is ordered.
This is where god is renamed Order.
Chaos, in fact, refers to what lacks order, and so is eternally incomprehensible.
Pattern = consistent, repeating, predictable sequence of inter-acitivty
no-pattern = inconsistent, unpredictable, inter-acitivty.
InterActivity = attraction, repulsion - causality.

Frankly, these ideas, this knowledge if you will, would have to be classified under the term mysticism. I don’t particularly like that term, and it hardly has a place in contemporary philosophy, and I do not know of any 1) verbal proof or 2) practical method whereby I could “demonstrate” as in science experimentation, the realness of what I refer to.

Mysticism refers to all that man cannot comprehend nor perceive, but still affects him.
This effect can be psychological...so we must be careful here.
Men are affected by their own convictions. If a man believes in ghosts, he will experience paranormal activity.

So I as well resort to linguistic formulations: allusions, poetic utterances, to express what I have been made to understand.

allegories can be useful....when referring to the incomprehensible.

Spiritual will, or spiritualized will, is therefore what holds my attention. Simply put it is that my being, my will, affects this world. You (BigMike) ask me to “prove” a mechanism and it is obvious that it cannot be proved, not in the way that water’s boil point can be proved.

For me, 'spirit' is the synthesis of mind/body.
Sources of input into the brain, come from without and from within an organism.
These are synthesized in the brain.
Depending on which data source dominates determines the way the mind experiences this input.
During sleep, for example, external input is minimal, allowing internal sources to take over.

Nihilism prefers the internal - calling it 'esoteric.'
This is where you will find the god of Abraham.
The Platonic Cave is the human skull.
Abrahamism was greatly affected by Plato.

Here we see the use of language in action.
Does a man use language to refer to external sources of data, or to internal sources?
This makes all the difference.
Moderns, as inheritors of over 2 000 years of Abrahamic indoctrination. are infected by this paradigm.
American being the dominant representative of Modernism - the Enlightenment.
When I say Abrahamism I mean Judaism....with its two outcrops, Christianity and Islam.
Modern Americans think and judge according to Mosaic Ethics.

Judaism itself, is an amalgamation of various influences, starting with ancient-Egyptian occultism and then ending with Hellenic occultism, Orphism.
Gnosticism being another offshoot.

So, my notion of the metaphysical is dual. On one hand the realization that is possible for conscious man: i.e. knowledge and understanding gleaned out of the Cosmos by a filtering apparatus: the self. The other aspect is perhsps more genuinely meta-physical to phusis. It is something operable by man.

There you have it.

For me, metaphysics must be grounded in physis, nature.
Metaphysics - meta-nature, otherwise we risk being swept away by our imagination...as did the Jews.
Essentially they abstracted themselves, as a collective and claimed that they were chosen - because every nation they cam in contact with rejected them...because of their survival tactics.
When we worship the Christian god we worship the Jews, as an abstracted collective.

Their prophesies are indicative of how they can now predict what will happen, because they will not change their ways.
Self-fulfilling....
Armageddon is part of their prophesies....because they know that their dogma will create an equal and opposite reaction.
For them, if they cannot dominate the entire world, they would rather destroy it, and claim it was part of their god's plan. God, is their scapegoat....their invention.
So modern Americanized men, need scapegoats.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I will respond to parts, and in other posts, other parts.

Fair. I’ll take that seriously. If your focus is genuinely on the psychological dimension—not as a deflection from argument, but as a lens to deepen your understanding of human conviction—then yes, you’re working from a tradition. And that tradition, stretching from Jung back to Heraclitus and forward through existentialism, is rich with insight into why people think and feel as they do.

But here's the catch: understanding motive doesn’t negate content. If I say gravity pulls objects toward a mass and someone says, “Well, you just want the universe to be predictable,” that may be true psychologically—but it doesn’t touch the validity of the law. So: yes, explore motives. Absolutely. But do not let that become a replacement for assessing evidence, logic, and explanatory coherence. Otherwise, psychology becomes an escape hatch.

“Deflection from argument” is a trap-phrase. Everything that does not jibe with your (absolutist, totalizing) ideology is deflection by definition. You believe everything I do in this conversation is deflection.

What is “genuine reflection” on the psychological dimension, for you, is likely not what genuine is for me.

So: yes, explore motives. Absolutely. But do not let that become a replacement for assessing evidence, logic, and explanatory coherence. Otherwise, psychology becomes an escape hatch.

I explore a motive in regard to you. And I find an ideology like unto that of a True Believer. Does this mean that I deny “physics”? No. It means just what I have said: you seem to me captured by a totalizing perspective.

Your ideology reduces man — me and you — to “rolling rocks” or “water molecules” being hurled along by the shapes of underwater topography. You don’t recognize volition. You have elaborate means to do away with it, while yet you employ volition.

It’s nutzo in my opinion. Crazy-making. Bad philosophy. Bad ideation. Dysfunctional reasoning. It is a defective existential stance. And it is (perhaps?) borne out of a defective psychological stance.

The psychological analysis that interests me or that I attempt, is merely probing.

You are never going to accept what I am pointing to as having validity — because (I do not think) you are interested in the self-examination necessary.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I know the pieces. And I understand the reference. Jung’s work on archetypes, collective psyche, and the eruptions of unconscious forces—especially in times of cultural collapse—is undeniably potent. “Wotan” was a warning, not just about fascism but about myth reasserting itself when rationality fails to fill the void. And After the Catastrophe is Jung reckoning with what happens when that eruption has run its course.

But what does that imply about me? That my view—one grounded in physics and cause—is an unconscious eruption? A stand-in myth? A rationalized trauma? That’s a heavy charge. And it begs the question: is every worldview an eruption of the psyche? Or just the ones that threaten older frameworks?

It’s all a bit — maybe a lot — more complex. First, Jung was a pagan par excellence. And Jung explored (actually far more) the pagan “soul” and Northern European being in a very intense way. He was as much a part of the “Aryan” Germanic movement as were many people in the post-Nietzschean era. And Jung could fairly be said to have been anti-Christian too.

He might also be described as a Wotanist (if such a thing is allowed).

I am uncertain if Wotanism = Fascism. Nor if anti-Christianism is necessarily fascistic. I tend to agree with some of Pistolero’s allusions to Abrahamism as being worthy of resisting. Confronting and resisting. Judaism, at its root, has numerous compelling but poisonous facets. It is the ultimate supremacism. (I avoid these topics because they open into extremely contentious issues).

I think that Jung is a complex man who kept a great deal about himself hidden. He is also a man with sophisticated image-management skills. And he was a classic materialistic Swissman (!) (Just had to throw that in).

about myth reasserting itself when rationality fails to fill the void

Well, such would be your interpretation, naturally, as a pretended hyper-rationalist. But it is possible that in your case you make a Jungian mistake: suppression of your own myth-structure and an over-charged rational function.

Are you sure that you “understand the reference”?

[BigMike]

Let’s take this carefully—thoughtfully, evenly. There’s weight in what you’re saying. There’s sincerity. And there’s also a sharpening of language that risks veering from critique into dismissal. So we’ll steady that line and walk through this, piece by piece, without flinching.

I will respond to parts, and in other posts, other parts.

Fair. I’ll take that seriously. If your focus is genuinely on the psychological dimension—not as a deflection from argument, but as a lens to deepen your understanding of human conviction—then yes, you’re working from a tradition. And that tradition, stretching from Jung back to Heraclitus and forward through existentialism, is rich with insight into why people think and feel as they do.

But here's the catch: understanding motive doesn’t negate content. If I say gravity pulls objects toward a mass and someone says, “Well, you just want the universe to be predictable,” that may be true psychologically—but it doesn’t touch the validity of the law. So: yes, explore motives. Absolutely. But do not let that become a replacement for assessing evidence, logic, and explanatory coherence. Otherwise, psychology becomes an escape hatch.

“Deflection from argument” is a trap-phrase. Everything that does not jibe with your (absolutist, totalizing) ideology is deflection by definition. You believe everything I do in this conversation is deflection.

I don’t. And that matters.

When I call something deflection, I’m not saying, “You disagree with me, therefore you’re dodging.” I’m saying: when a claim is made, and instead of addressing that claim’s logic or evidence, the response shifts to a narrative about the speaker—that’s a deflection. It’s not a cheap move; it’s a recognizable rhetorical pivot. If I say, “The self is caused,” and the response is, “You’re just a damaged person trying to rationalize your trauma,” we’ve stepped off the playing field.

But I don’t say you’re always deflecting. In fact, I’ve affirmed that your broader frame—your invocation of Jung, Nietzsche, even your worry about modern metaphysics—is part of a legitimate intellectual tradition. I’m not accusing you of ignorance. I’m pointing out where the conversation leaves the claim and enters the psyche, sometimes prematurely.

What is “genuine reflection” on the psychological dimension, for you, is likely not what genuine is for me.

That’s fair. And that’s where language gets slippery—because “genuine” isn’t just a word about effort. It’s a word about orientation. I’m asking that psychological inquiry not be used as a veto on content. And I think you’re asking for the freedom to say: sometimes content is shaped—and maybe even corrupted—by motive. That’s true.

But the standard still applies both ways. If your lens is psychological, then we also have to ask: what psychological needs are being met by preserving the idea of uncaused will? What existential comfort is gained by believing we’re agents rather than outputs? These questions cut in both directions.

So: yes, explore motives. Absolutely. But do not let that become a replacement for assessing evidence, logic, and explanatory coherence. Otherwise, psychology becomes an escape hatch.

I explore a motive in regard to you. And I find an ideology like unto that of a True Believer. Does this mean that I deny “physics”? No. It means just what I have said: you seem to me captured by a totalizing perspective.

Understood. You’re not denying physical law—you’re questioning the human consequences of treating it as exhaustive. You're asking, "What happens to meaning, to dignity, to agency, when everything is reduced to mechanics?" That’s not a dumb question. That’s the essential human question.

But my argument isn’t that we are just rocks. It’s that human thought and feeling and striving are not exceptions to the laws that govern the rock. They are elaborations of it. The same physics that rolls the stone also powers the neuron. Recognizing that doesn’t diminish us. It brings us into continuity with the cosmos.

So if the framework feels totalizing, it’s only because it leaves nothing out. But it doesn’t flatten everything into sameness. It explains difference through complexity—not metaphysical escape hatches.

Your ideology reduces man — me and you — to “rolling rocks” or “water molecules” being hurled along by the shapes of underwater topography. You don’t recognize volition. You have elaborate means to do away with it, while yet you employ volition.

This is the heart of the conflict. You see my act of arguing—of constructing, responding, deciding—as proof of volition. But I see it as the expression of causal processes. Volition, in the traditional sense—uncaused choosing—is what I deny. But behavior, intention, goal-seeking, reasoning—these all exist. They just exist within causal frameworks. I’m not eliminating agency. I’m explaining it without mysticism.

So when I write this, I don’t deny that it feels like I’m choosing. I acknowledge that feeling. But I insist it is the product of causes, not the interruption of them. And if that feels “elaborate,” it’s only because the illusion of freedom runs so deep.

It’s nutzo in my opinion. Crazy-making. Bad philosophy. Bad ideation. Dysfunctional reasoning. It is a defective existential stance.

You’re allowed to find it deeply unsettling. Even repellent. Many have. But let’s slow down on “bad philosophy.” If you can show that the model contradicts observable reality, or that its logic is internally incoherent, then yes—it’s bad philosophy.

But if it’s emotionally difficult, or if it contradicts long-held cultural intuitions, that doesn’t make it bad. It makes it challenging. And sometimes, that challenge is the point.

You say it’s a “defective existential stance.” Maybe. But ask: defective for whom? It strips away the myth of moral high ground. It rejects vengeance. It undermines superiority. It softens judgment. It invites empathy by replacing “he chose to hurt me” with “what caused him to become the kind of person who could do that?” If that’s a defect, I’ll own it. But I don’t believe it is.

And it is (perhaps?) borne out of a defective psychological stance.

And here we loop again. You’ve said “defective” twice—once for the worldview, once for the psychology behind it. But that’s not argument, Alexis. That’s inference. It’s speculation. It may be astute. It may be poetic. But it’s still an attempt to bypass the claim by medicalizing the claimant.

And I get it. The deterministic worldview erodes a kind of sacred ground. That can feel like psychological instability from the outside. But maybe it’s just stability without illusions.

The psychological analysis that interests me or that I attempt, is merely probing.

Then let it probe genuinely. Not with the presumption that “this must be a pathology.” You’re capable of that subtlety. And when you bring Jung or Nietzsche into the room, you’re invoking traditions that warn not to too-quickly call the abyss “madness.” Sometimes the abyss is just what we refused to name before.

You are never going to accept what I am pointing to as having validity — because (I do not think) you are interested in the self-examination necessary.

That may be your impression, and I respect that. But here’s the counteroffer:

Maybe I have done the self-examination. Maybe I kept going when I wanted to stop. When I wanted to believe in autonomy, in “I could’ve done otherwise,” in personal pride or moral condemnation. Maybe I gave all that up because the evidence didn’t let me keep it. And maybe what looks to you like avoidance is, in fact, having passed through the tunnel you’re standing at the mouth of.

So let’s keep walking.

Not to score points. Not to win. But to test which ideas can carry their weight without myth. If you think I’m trapped in an ideology, show where the trap snaps shut. But don’t just look at my footprints and say, “He must’ve come from madness.”

Ask instead: what drove him to this clarity?

Because the answer, if you’re honest, might be closer to home than you think.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes. That’s the terrain. Nietzsche saw the death of God not as liberation but as vertigo. He feared that the destruction of metaphysical foundations would leave people spiritually disoriented—and that they’d retreat into nihilism or, worse, destructive mythologies to fill the void.

But here’s the distinction: I’m not advocating for void. I’m advocating for clarity. For a system grounded not in unprovable metaphysics, but in observable causality. You might say that’s a “new metaphysics,” but I would say: no, it’s the move away from metaphysics. It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

You are half-mad and very obsessed. You are going to have to get clear about this!

I understand the tid-bit you are offering — a general view — of Nietzsche.

A good deal of your ideology seems nihilistic reaction. It is its lopsidedness that gives it away (sends up a flag).

but in observable causality. You might say that’s a “new metaphysics,” but I would say: no, it’s the move away from metaphysics. It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

I say it sets itself up as metaphysical mimicry. A simulacra of a metaphysics.

It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

But you don’t have the foggiest idea what “the universe as it is” is.

But I definitely believe physicists and material scientists have amazing knowledge about its composition and what can be done with its composition.

[BigMike]

I know the pieces. And I understand the reference. Jung’s work on archetypes, collective psyche, and the eruptions of unconscious forces—especially in times of cultural collapse—is undeniably potent. “Wotan” was a warning, not just about fascism but about myth reasserting itself when rationality fails to fill the void. And After the Catastrophe is Jung reckoning with what happens when that eruption has run its course.

But what does that imply about me? That my view—one grounded in physics and cause—is an unconscious eruption? A stand-in myth? A rationalized trauma? That’s a heavy charge. And it begs the question: is every worldview an eruption of the psyche? Or just the ones that threaten older frameworks?

It’s all a bit — maybe a lot — more complex.

Yes, complexity is the right word. But it’s not the same as mystery. A deterministic framework doesn’t deny complexity. It insists on it. All systems—whether biological, psychological, or cultural—emerge from layers of prior conditions. What it denies is exception. Not richness. So when you say, “It’s more complex,” I say: of course it is. But it is not beyond causal mapping. Just beyond our current level of modeling.

First, Jung was a pagan par excellence. And Jung explored (actually far more) the pagan “soul” and Northern European being in a very intense way.

Yes. Jung explored the symbolic understructure of cultures—particularly the Germanic, archetypal, mythic psyche. But what is that, in deterministic terms? It’s an expression of inherited cognitive architecture shaped by culture, geography, and historical contingency. Jung’s “paganism” wasn’t a metaphysical claim. It was a description of psychic energies—themselves expressions of deeper, biologically-rooted drives. Jung’s insights into myth are best understood as explorations of human neural wiring manifesting symbolically under stress.

He was as much a part of the “Aryan” Germanic movement as were many people in the post-Nietzschean era.

Yes, and this is where it gets charged. Historically charged. But if we keep it clean: these affiliations, these identifications with racial or cultural “essences,” are understandable within a deterministic context as the result of inherited identity pressures, postwar trauma, and the yearning for rootedness amid chaos. None of it requires positing anything beyond physical and psychological causes. Even mythic structures are outputs of specific historical conditioning.

He might also be described as a Wotanist (if such a thing is allowed).

Yes, and why might that be allowed? Because people often revert to older symbolic frameworks when new ones fail to provide grounding. From a deterministic view, this is not mysticism—it’s reflex. Culturally embedded meaning-structures—like Wotan or Yahweh or the Self—are narrative stabilizers for systems under existential stress. They emerge because they serve a function: cohesion, identity, continuity. That doesn’t make them true in the metaphysical sense. It makes them functionally explicable.

I am uncertain if Wotanism = Fascism.

Good. Because they’re not synonymous. But again, deterministically: fascism didn’t erupt from nowhere. It arose from sociopolitical conditions—economic trauma, perceived loss of status, national humiliation, ideological vacuum. The myth of Wotan didn’t cause fascism, but it fit into a larger causal ecosystem that made fascism psychologically resonant. The myth returned because the conditions called for it. Myth is never free-floating. It’s context-driven and emotionally opportunistic.

Nor if anti-Christianism is necessarily fascistic.

Agreed. Anti-Christian sentiments have many causes, some reactive, some philosophical. But again: nothing metaphysical needs to be smuggled in. Whether it’s Nietzsche’s slave morality critique or Jung’s deeper pagan pull, all of it is part of a landscape of cultural neuropsychology. These are reactions to specific historical institutions and dogmas. From a deterministic lens, they are not expressions of transcendent will—they are outputs of historical inputs.

Judaism, at its root, has numerous compelling but poisonous facets. It is the ultimate supremacism.

Let’s stop and address this with full clarity and care. That’s a heavy assertion. And if we’re staying rooted in determinism, then even religion—yes, including Judaism—is not a metaphysical project of supremacy. It is a survival technology forged in a specific historical context: exile, persecution, tribal cohesion. The “chosen people” narrative is not different in kind from any in-group/out-group schema found throughout evolutionary history.

That doesn’t excuse toxic effects. It explains them. Supremacist ideas—whether religious, national, or racial—are not mystical. They are deterministic expressions of the tribal survival impulse under pressure.

So yes, confront the consequences of religious identity claims. But do it as a causally-aware analyst, not as someone implying intrinsic essence or moral pathology. Determinism demands empathy even in critique—because every idea came from somewhere. Including your own.

I think that Jung is a complex man who kept a great deal about himself hidden. He is also a man with sophisticated image-management skills. And he was a classic materialistic Swissman (!)

Sure. But that’s all causally consistent. People conceal, protect, edit, and manage how they are seen because the social brain requires it. Image-management is part of evolved human cognition. It’s not duplicity—it’s adaptation. And yes, Jung was complex. But that complexity is explainable, not mystical. He was a product of his time, his traumas, his interests, and his surroundings.

about myth reasserting itself when rationality fails to fill the void

Well, such would be your interpretation, naturally, as a pretended hyper-rationalist.

Let’s pause right there. There’s a tone shift here—a sideways accusation. "Pretended" hyper-rationalist. You’re implying a mask. But let’s be clear: I’m not pretending. I believe that rational inquiry—when built on causality—is the best tool we have to escape delusion. I’m not against myth because I think it’s silly. I’m against myth because it misleads us about cause and consequence.

That’s not affectation. That’s position. And it’s one I hold because it works. It explains behavior, builds predictive models, and dismantles systems of punishment and blame that have cost humanity millions of lives.

But it is possible that in your case you make a Jungian mistake: suppression of your own myth-structure and an over-charged rational function.

Maybe. But again: what does that imply? That the rational stance is invalid because it lacks myth? Or because it isn’t emotionally gratifying? That’s not a critique of truth. It’s a critique of emotional resonance. And while I understand that need, I don’t think we’re helped by bending reality to make it feel more poetic.

I don’t deny that the brain craves narrative. I just refuse to treat that craving as justification for denying how cause works. If my “myth” is simply the story that all things are caused, then fine—call it a myth. But it’s one that bends toward understanding, not illusion.

Are you sure that you “understand the reference”?

As sure as one can be—within the limits of cause. I understand that you’re pulling from deep wells. You’re gesturing toward something ineffable: the soul's search for orientation in a disenchanted world. But my response isn’t to mock that search. It’s to say: the answer is not behind us, in old myths or sacred archetypes.

It’s ahead of us, in the hard, clear view of what made us—and what still moves us.

So yes, Alexis. I understand the reference. And I understand the need beneath the reference. But I won’t trade the truth of causality for the comfort of mythology. Even if that makes me, in your eyes, the last man in Nietzsche’s warning.

Because I’d rather be aware in the cold than asleep in the warmth of stories that were never ours to begin with.

[BigMike]

All right, Alexis. No dodging. No evasion. You’ve got the tone dialed up now—half-mad and very obsessed, you say—but I’ll take even that in stride. Let’s walk through it carefully, deterministically, and without flinching. I’ll meet every word, not as insult but as data. Let’s begin.

Yes. That’s the terrain. Nietzsche saw the death of God not as liberation but as vertigo. He feared that the destruction of metaphysical foundations would leave people spiritually disoriented—and that they’d retreat into nihilism or, worse, destructive mythologies to fill the void.

But here’s the distinction: I’m not advocating for void. I’m advocating for clarity. For a system grounded not in unprovable metaphysics, but in observable causality. You might say that’s a “new metaphysics,” but I would say: no, it’s the move away from metaphysics. It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

You are half-mad and very obsessed. You are going to have to get clear about this!

Well—here we are, then. You’ve dropped the gloves. And that’s fine, because this isn’t a contest of civility, it’s a test of coherence.

So let’s translate that deterministicly. If I appear obsessed, that’s a function of inputs: a sustained pattern of attention shaped by a convergence of environmental cues, cognitive wiring, and intellectual conviction. What looks like madness to you might just be consistency carried to its logical conclusion—a conclusion that feels alien or threatening because it strips the world of its psychological comfort structures.

Obsessed? Maybe. But obsessed with cause. Obsessed with consistency. And if obsession with truth is madness in this moment—then so be it. But we still have to ask: is it true?

I understand the tid-bit you are offering — a general view — of Nietzsche.

Fair. I wouldn’t pretend to offer a dissertation on Nietzsche here. But that specific "tid-bit"—that the death of God leads to existential vertigo, and possibly to mythic re-inflation—is central to our exchange. You’re trying to position me as someone who has responded to that void with a sterile rational absolutism. But my argument isn’t built from reaction. It’s built from evidence.

If Nietzsche said, “When old gods die, new ones sneak in through the back door,” then I am the one blocking that door, saying: no, not again. No more metaphysical placeholders. Let’s follow causality all the way down and stop inserting myth where explanation belongs.

A good deal of your ideology seems nihilistic reaction. It is its lopsidedness that gives it away (sends up a flag).

Nihilism implies the absence of meaning. But determinism doesn’t deny meaning—it redefines it. Meaning becomes emergent, not imposed. It arises from patterns, from coherence, from survival, from interconnected systems. It’s not “nothing matters.” It’s “everything matters, because everything is caused.”

You see lopsidedness. I see correction. A rejection of the idea that humans are unbound agents. That we deserve punishment. That we own success. That we rise or fall based solely on volition. That’s not nihilism. That’s ethical realism.

but in observable causality. You might say that’s a “new metaphysics,” but I would say: no, it’s the move away from metaphysics. It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

I say it sets itself up as metaphysical mimicry. A simulacra of a metaphysics.

Let’s slow this down. If by “metaphysical mimicry” you mean: it’s a worldview that attempts to explain everything—then yes. Determinism does that. But it does it without asserting untestable causes. It doesn’t invoke intention, or soul, or transcendence. It just traces the line of cause, step by step.

A metaphysics says: “This is beyond the world, but explains the world.”
Determinism says: “There is nothing beyond the world. The explanation is the world.”

That’s not a simulacra. That’s a shift. That’s standing where people used to place gods and refusing to invent a new one.

It’s the commitment to describing the universe as it is—not as we wish it to be.

But you don’t have the foggiest idea what “the universe as it is” is.

Exactly. That’s why I don’t pretend to know its ultimate nature. I observe what can be tested, predicted, and falsified. I accept that mystery remains. But I do not build worldviews on what could be. I build them on what has been demonstrated. When I say, “describe the universe as it is,” I mean: as far as we know, based on reproducible evidence, governed by consistent laws.

Your point seems to be: “But there’s more!” And yes—there always is. But that’s not license to insert speculation in place of evidence. That’s a call for humility, not mysticism.

But I definitely believe physicists and material scientists have amazing knowledge about its composition and what can be done with its composition.

Exactly. And that’s all I’m saying. That composition is where the real story is—not myth, not metaphysics, not symbolic stand-ins. Behavior, choice, history, belief—all of it is shaped by that underlying material reality. That doesn’t diminish the human experience. It roots it.

You don’t have to romanticize atoms to respect them. You don’t have to adore determinism. But if it’s true—then it’s the ground. And anything that ignores the ground is floating.

So, Alexis:

If I’m obsessed, it’s because the illusion of uncaused will is the axis on which so much cruelty, judgment, and delusion turns.

If I’m lopsided, it’s because we’ve been tilted the other way for millennia—toward myth, toward blame, toward the idea that humans are little gods making sovereign choices.

If I’m mistaken—then show where causality fails.

Until then, I’ll keep following the path of cause and consequence wherever it leads—even if it leads me away from every myth we once found beautiful.