Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

If God is wholly and solely immanent then the God idea is freed from the accusation of telos as if He were a huge big imitation life form.
The facility of seeing a human form where none exists is not unusual. Lots of people see spectres.

Life forms such such as us, trees, sheep, canis lupus, neanderthals, and so forth---how can God be another such life form like me or you which purposes to make sense of possibilities, only much bigger and stronger?

The ideas and notions that are discussed here, and here I refer to yours, have been developed out of a lifetime of experience and thought. Your thought is often rather opaque to me and I assume it obvious: your basic predicates are different (and invisible to me).

The way I look now at The God Question is first that “the idea of God” is entirely separate from “the world” as it is. You cannot find for example the God of Jesus (the Divine Spirit, the Paraclete) in Nature. It is entirely a phenomenon of our awareness and consciousness.

There is no theological tool that will help in the process of understanding (as primary example) the sun and its processes and functions which bring Life to our world as a rain of photons. The sun is far more “god” of life than is the supposed God of Life.

But in our system, fortunately or unfortunately, there is a total disconnection between the world of Nature and an entire subjective edifice of ideas (senses, intuitions, practical applications) that pertain to the Christian worldview. We have no unified physics/metaphysics. We have disjointedness.

I think this explains our hobbled conversations on these topics. Ever-lame and always undergirded in philosophical and subjective pain. It is, in our Occidental situation in which we are outcomes of dismemberment, like a wound that cannot ever heal.

On one hand, a purely physicalist outlook is entirely destructive to everything human; but on the other hand our metaphysics are ghostly — shadowy and spectral. And doesn’t it seem to be true that people will cling to an insubstantial metaphysical notion that enables humanness, rather than submit to a purely physicalist notion that destroys their ability to live out of metaphysical dimension?

Poetry, the hand that wrings,
Bruised albeit at the strings,
Music from the soul of things . . .

[Alexis Jacobi]

There are two principle factors or areas of concern that have not been clearly outlined in these conversations.

1) The moral and ethical dimension of which Christianity is a vehicle and container. “God” asks for extremely definite and also extraordinarily demanding things from men. It is impossible to weasel out of this entire area of demand and imperative.

2) Another large area has to do with what people (everywhere and always) believe and sense occurs in their relationship with God or divinity (gods, Providence). That is to say that they are aware (they know) that what they understand as “God” (or spirits, guides, angels, psychic helpers) act on their behalf and ‘manifest’ in all kinds of ways.

Providence, lucky meetings, opportunities and good fortune — these are one aspect. But another is therapeutic. Take the entire life-work of CG Jung. He once said “I do not believe in God, I know that God exists”. But as a trained scientist he had no way to describe “it”. It was therefore poetico-therapeutically “the Self” or something both entirely present but incomprehensible that engineered “synchronicity”. He could only refer to an “acausal connecting principle” in a rather abstract sense.

You engaged with “God” through entirely subjective endeavors and activities. But somehow this “God” that manifest always came in costume: hidden in events or seen and felt in psychically active symbol-containers.

In Jung, as in many after the Death of God, God resurrected in all sorts of strange, unlikely ways. In fact God manifested for more really and far more consequentially in psychology (therapeutics) in art, literature, poetry as well as socially. That is, if God is understood numinously.

In some senses (in many senses) the new religious manifestation was more alive and active in sub-currents than among the carriers of orthodox theology.

This sort of practice of employing God’s presence (or power) can also be and indeed is a type of “spiritual magic”. The supplication of “God” on those inner, therapeutic levels is still a very big deal today. But there is also a more practical application: spiritual pragmatics. The art of “manifesting” what one wants or desires through engagement with inner and outer forces.

[Belinda]

I been thinking about your baby in the womb image. Strictly speaking it's a simile not a metaphor. But no matter, the image serves.

Perhaps "analogy" might also be fitting.

All that matters is that all parties understand the actual point being made.

Science has the best explanation about how God-or-Nature made everything .

No way.

Science (materialism), which relies on the "chance hypothesis," is total crap when it comes to explaining how the unfathomable order of the universe came about.

Is immortal soul the same substance as mind?

The mind is the living spatial "arena" in which the immortal soul's (the I Am-ness's") personal mental phenomena is created, staged, and developed.

As you stand on the earth and look out into the universe, you are witnessing - (from a "fetal-like" perspective) - the fully-fruitioned, fully-developed, fully-matured (adult) version of a mind just like our own mind.

Indeed, if you click on the following link,...

https://youtu.be/bVbpHy4nncA

...it will take you to a clip of me on YouTube where I attempt to offer some scientific support of my theory of how our minds are literally encapsulated within the mental fabric of the fully-evolved higher mind mentioned above. The video clip is a brief excerpt taken from one of the episodes of my public access television lecture series that aired for 7 years in Grand Rapids, Michigan back in the 90s.

Anyway, getting back to your question,...

"...Is immortal soul the same substance as mind?..."

...I suggest that it's more metaphysically logical to think of the two (mind and the owner of the mind) as being comprised of something that is more akin to Spinoza's "oneness" substance, which is a substance that represents the singular foundational essence from which all of reality is created.

Is the immortal soul a self?...

Yes!

...If so is God composed of Himself plus a lot of ex-human selves?

Is your mother literally composed of you and (assuming you have some) your siblings?

Come on, Belinda, when it comes to the "organic (mammalian-like) naturalness" of our familial relationship to God, try to fathom the true meaning of the Hermetic axiom:

"As Below, So Above."

In other words (and with a few minor differences), even in the highest context of reality, members of the highest species of being in all of existence replicate themselves (give birth to their own offspring) similar to how it is done in this lower context of reality.

Is the immortal soul an anatomical or physiological entity?

Needless to say, this is all just speculation,...

...but, yes, it stands to reason that the immortal soul possesses some sort of inexplicable anatomy and physiology (inexplicable from our present perspective) that has its being (its form and functionality) in a higher context of reality that somehow renders it capable of lasting forever.

If the immortal soul is a mental entity how do we know it exists?

Clearly, we won't know for certain until it is revealed to us after crossing the threshold of death.

However, and at the risk of sounding like a lunatic,...

(though I'm pretty sure that that ship has already sailed a long time ago )

...I personally have already been shown that God exists and is indeed a "mental" (incorporeal) entity as was chronicled in the thread at this link:

viewtopic.php?p=685773#p685773
.

Is the immortal soul an emotional entity that feels and desires?

As opposed to what?

Imagine having eternal life without being able to feel anything such as joy, or happiness, or bliss.

Sounds like some kind of hell to me.

Plato's notion of soul is that soul i.e. reason is eternal.

Show me a quote where Plato referred to the eternal soul as being nothing more than "reason."

What does that even mean?

Eternal is not the same as immortal.Eternity coexists with temporality. whereas immortality exists after the mortal life is ended.

"Eternal" in the context we are discussing is just a reference to the immortal soul's infinitely long (never-ending) existence - as in forever alive, and conscious, and forever evolving.

The theory that experience survives death of the individual depends on the death of the individual ego self . The ego self dies; but experience, which had necessarily happened as it did , continues necessary and so cannot become nothing .

I'm sorry, Belinda, but this line,...

"...The ego self dies; but experience, which had necessarily happened as it did, continues necessary and so cannot become nothing..."

...makes absolutely no sense to me.

What panentheism means to you is the same as it means to me. If I could draw a online diagram of what panentheism means to me I think you would agree it's the same for you.

Well, seeing how you've already made it clear to me that you think my diagrams are horrible, I wouldn't dream of asking you to view the one that resides in the link I provided above, even though I personally think it is an almost perfect depiction of the concept of panentheism.

Indeed, it is the first image you see on my website at this link:

http://www.theultimateseeds.com/

However, with that being said, I would love for you to at least describe for me what your "diagram" of panentheism would look like.

I think that panentheism is where we agree except the 'mother' in your pregnant woman image for you is God , and for me she is Being.

Fair enough.

Now, if you just explain to me how this abstract notion of "Being" managed to create the unfathomable order of the universe, then we'll see if it makes any sense.
_______

Seeds wrote(excerpt from larger post):

The mind is the living spatial "arena" in which the immortal soul's (the I Am-ness's") personal mental phenomena is created, staged, and developed.

But mind is not spatial; mind can't be measured in spatial terms such as square miles, or cubic centimetres. Also, mental phenomena are no more no less than mind, "mental phenomena "are what mind is defined as.
The I Am-ness, the feeling of being a self, does not survive death. This we know because the feeling of being a self is a feeling no individual can live without unless she is economically and materially supported by others for instance in intensive care in a hospital.Or indeed as a foetus or a newborn entirely supported by her mother.

I had a look at your diagram of panentheism. Your diagram goes beyond panentheism as the eye within the circumference seems to me to stand for the creation's becoming able to reflect nature.

There's a great deal more worth thinking about in your post but this is enough for me at a go.

[Dubious]

There are many brilliant theists.

Very true. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard among them. But they are usually of a kind who don't force you to succumb to some dogma. Their relationship to the so-called Divine is both religious, philosophical and deeply personal, meaning one whose psyche is not solely preconditioned or predetermined by the book-ends of some sacred text.

The writers of the Bible. Many of its characters.

Again, mostly true! Being of thoroughly human construct, how does that differ from any other major historical or fictional writing except for it being far more ancient and subject to those times in terms of belief?

The ultimate being Paul and Jesus respectively.

I don't think so. Least of all Jesus, of whom we know absolutely nothing or whether he actually existed. Paul himself was not in any way interested in his true and actual manifestation as a living person, but only in his resurrection. On that level, any well-known preacher who was rumoured to having resurrected after being put to death could have sufficed as subject for Paul's future ministry. It was the subsequent Gospels, the propagandistic Watchtower of their day, who carried Paul's mission forward by giving Jesus a sort of biography making him amenable as a true saviour to both Jews and Gentiles alike.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

There are many brilliant theists.

Very true. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard among them. But they are usually of a kind who don't force you to succumb to some dogma. Their relationship to the so-called Divine is both religious, philosophical and deeply personal, meaning one whose psyche is not solely preconditioned or predetermined by the book-ends of some sacred text.

The writers of the Bible. Many of its characters.

Again, mostly true! Being of thoroughly human construct, how does that differ from any other major historical or fictional writing except for it being far more ancient and subject to those times in terms of belief?

The ultimate being Paul and Jesus respectively.

I don't think so. Least of all Jesus, of whom we know absolutely nothing or whether he actually existed. Paul himself was not in any way interested in his true and actual manifestation as a living person, but only in his resurrection. On that level, any well-known preacher who was rumoured to having resurrected after being put to death could have sufficed as subject for Paul's future ministry. It was the subsequent Gospels, the propagandistic Watchtower of their day, who carried Paul's mission forward by giving Jesus a sort of biography making him amenable as a true saviour to both Jews and Gentiles alike.

At the end of the day, for myself, I'm as brutally forensic as Bart D. Ehrman, all ways; I've found even he to be, how can one put it, carried away to bias. But otherwise, publicly and to the faithful, Devil's advocate, I give the maximum possible good will to the person, the character, the story of Jesus, shorn of any supernatural claim in the gospels, written 30-60 years after the consensual letters of Paul were started and the existence of the thriving Church. Although I like your point that any messiah myth would have done for Paul, except for the fact that he was repentant Gestapo, hysterically blinded by guilt, from his sanctioning the murder of Stephen onwards. I easily find the historically possible Jesus perfectly credible. These were two remarkable men. But only Jesus had mother Mary and her mystical messianic extended family. Jesus believed. The Church didn't need the gospels for over 30 years. But yes, then it did, to carry forward the Church's new religion from martyred Paul. Never Peter beyond Acts.

[Dubious]

At the end of the day, for myself, I'm as brutally forensic as Bart D. Ehrman, all ways; I've found even he to be, how can one put it, carried away to bias. But otherwise, publicly and to the faithful, Devil's advocate, I give the maximum possible good will to the person, the character, the story of Jesus, shorn of any supernatural claim in the gospels, written 30-60 years after the consensual letters of Paul and the existence of the thriving Church. Although I like your point that any messiah myth would have done for Paul, except for the fact that he was repentant Gestapo, hysterically blinded by guilt, from his sanctioning the murder of Stephen onwards. I easily find the historically possible Jesus perfectly credible. These were two remarkable men. But only Jesus had mother Mary and her mystical messianic extended family. Jesus believed. The Church didn't need the gospels for over 30 years. But yes, then it did, to carry forward the Church's new religion from martyred Paul. Never Peter beyond Acts.

It’s hard to know what caused the transformation of Paul into being the first ecumenical Christian, the one who caused the true resurrection of Jesus. Of course, nearly everyone has his own version of the story. Mine, clearly, is not yours. I won’t gratuitously apply virtues to anyone who remains virtually unknown. Jesus is presented as someone working for his own people, that much is clear. Even in the gospels he doesn’t always come out shining.

It’s fair to ask, what did Jesus really offer the human race. Promises of salvation for all who believed in him! How pathetic! Some god!

There isn’t a single creator who made, to whatever degree, some solid contribution to the human race who isn’t worth a multiplicity of Christs. If I yearn to approach the numinous neutrality of the divine then it can only begin at the altars of our own creativity even if that creativity emanates from the belief in a Christian god or any god...as in the following...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW5L5fv ... rt_radio=1

Just one example, but among the greatest, which, by the comments posted, isn't only my opinion.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

At the end of the day, for myself, I'm as brutally forensic as Bart D. Ehrman, all ways; I've found even he to be, how can one put it, carried away to bias. But otherwise, publicly and to the faithful, Devil's advocate, I give the maximum possible good will to the person, the character, the story of Jesus, shorn of any supernatural claim in the gospels, written 30-60 years after the consensual letters of Paul and the existence of the thriving Church. Although I like your point that any messiah myth would have done for Paul, except for the fact that he was repentant Gestapo, hysterically blinded by guilt, from his sanctioning the murder of Stephen onwards. I easily find the historically possible Jesus perfectly credible. These were two remarkable men. But only Jesus had mother Mary and her mystical messianic extended family. Jesus believed. The Church didn't need the gospels for over 30 years. But yes, then it did, to carry forward the Church's new religion from martyred Paul. Never Peter beyond Acts.

It’s hard to know what caused the transformation of Paul into being the first ecumenical Christian, the one who caused the true resurrection of Jesus. Of course, nearly everyone has his own version of the story. Mine, clearly, is not yours. I won’t gratuitously apply virtues to anyone who remains virtually unknown. Jesus is presented as someone working for his own people, that much is clear. Even in the gospels he doesn’t always come out shining.

It’s fair to ask, what did Jesus really offer the human race. Promises of salvation for all who believed in him! How pathetic! Some god!

There isn’t a single creator who made, to whatever degree, some solid contribution to the human race who isn’t worth a multiplicity of Christs. If I yearn to approach the numinous neutrality of the divine then it can only begin at the altars of our own creativity even if that creativity emanates from the belief in a Christian god or any god...as in the following...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW5L5fv ... rt_radio=1

Just one example, but among the greatest, which, by the comments posted, isn't only my opinion.

I'm a simple man, so combining Acts, with Paul's writings at least 20 years after they ended, and arguably relatively congruent with them, works in court for me. A brilliant, fanatic, murderous Jewish heresy hunter has a psychotic break [cognitive dissonance or what!] and picks up the baton of Christianity and re-forges it evangelically.

I don't ascribe special virtues to my historically possible Jesus, just [extend] good will. Which is why I utterly discount the most profound, moving account, shoe horned, polished, into John after centuries, the peerlessly emotionally intelligent Pericope Adulterae.

And no, he doesn't come out shining to us soft moderns, with his hard sayings; his damnationism, his misanthropy, his racism, his grandiosity, his conditional particularity, in the gospels. But he was a man of the people for the people as never before.

Yours is an anachronistic question. A hindsight critique. History works forwards. And I agree with you. In hindsight, including the explicit C21st perspective that God is not love. The best case of transcendent Love being the intentional ground of being cannot be made orthodoxly in the text. Like all incoherent, unwarranted, unjustified, untrue beliefs, it has to be believed first. Out of desire alone.

Love the Wagner.

[Belinda]

If God is wholly and solely immanent then the God idea is freed from the accusation of telos as if He were a huge big imitation life form.
The facility of seeing a human form where none exists is not unusual. Lots of people see spectres.

Life forms such such as us, trees, sheep, canis lupus, neanderthals, and so forth---how can God be another such life form like me or you which purposes to make sense of possibilities, only much bigger and stronger?

The ideas and notions that are discussed here, and here I refer to yours, have been developed out of a lifetime of experience and thought. Your thought is often rather opaque to me and I assume it obvious: your basic predicates are different (and invisible to me).

The way I look now at The God Question is first that “the idea of God” is entirely separate from “the world” as it is. You cannot find for example the God of Jesus (the Divine Spirit, the Paraclete) in Nature. It is entirely a phenomenon of our awareness and consciousness.

There is no theological tool that will help in the process of understanding (as primary example) the sun and its processes and functions which bring Life to our world as a rain of photons. The sun is far more “god” of life than is the supposed God of Life.

But in our system, fortunately or unfortunately, there is a total disconnection between the world of Nature and an entire subjective edifice of ideas (senses, intuitions, practical applications) that pertain to the Christian worldview. We have no unified physics/metaphysics. We have disjointedness.

I think this explains our hobbled conversations on these topics. Ever-lame and always undergirded in philosophical and subjective pain. It is, in our Occidental situation in which we are outcomes of dismemberment, like a wound that cannot ever heal.

On one hand, a purely physicalist outlook is entirely destructive to everything human; but on the other hand our metaphysics are ghostly — shadowy and spectral. And doesn’t it seem to be true that people will cling to an insubstantial metaphysical notion that enables humanness, rather than submit to a purely physicalist notion that destroys their ability to live out of metaphysical dimension?

Poetry, the hand that wrings,
Bruised albeit at the strings,
Music from the soul of things . . .

I predicate of Christianity:

*it is best when liberal, not punitive

* It is best when existential

* Immanent God is better than transcendent God

*Jesus was a very good man not a supernatural being

*it is the best religion because it holds that Jesus Christ is both man and God i.e the immanence of God is in the humanity of Jesus. No other religion has a human being for pancreator.

___------------------------------------------

But in our system, fortunately or unfortunately, there is a total disconnection between the world of Nature and an entire subjective edifice of ideas (senses, intuitions, practical applications) that pertain to the Christian worldview. We have no unified physics/metaphysics. We have disjointedness.

Disjointedness is caused by being as transcending nature as well as immanent in nature. Panentheism gets rid of the disjointedness.

[Will Bouwman]

I see your axiom or conclusion if you wish as fundamentally shallow. And therefore I question your aesthetic sense.

Well Gus, as a man of your wit would surely have predicted, that is because it pleases you to do so.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

—Elie Wiesel, from Night.

Theodicize that.

[Immanuel Can]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

—Elie Wiesel, from Night.

Theodicize that.

Done by man. His name was Hitler, but he did not do it alone. Other men made it possible, and they were ordinary men, too. Had circumstances been different, they might well have been any men, just as today, men in what they consider “progressive” societies execute the elderly and murder babies in the name of their “freedom.” Explain away that.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Don't they get to burn twice IC? By Divine Command? But the second time conscious, forever and ever. Amen. The Nazis were nothing.

[Dubious]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

—Elie Wiesel, from Night.

Theodicize that.

Done by man. His name was Hitler, but he did not do it alone. Other men made it possible, and they were ordinary men, too. Had circumstances been different, they might well have been any men, just as today, men in what they consider “progressive” societies execute the elderly and murder babies in the name of their “freedom.” Explain away that.

If men, god's creation, can commit the most disgusting and heinous crimes imaginable, as they've always done, and god does absolutely nothing, then what good is god, any god? If god exists it becomes complicit by silence presumably procrastinating justice to a later date...that being the highly dubious theory of god's justice of non-intervention.

But all of that is by no means certain being nothing more than a long-held belief. What is certain are the crimes and atrocities committed for the entire time of human history. What is obvious is that the absolute indifference of nature is equal the absolute indifference of god, especially one declared as a loving god.

So, if god exists, where lies the difference between the two, that being a non-sequitur question since only nature, meaning existence at its most fundamental, has no care for whatever it creates or accountability for any of it.

Explain that away!

Of course, if you reply it will be based on the one or two sentences you feel you can best reply to...as always.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

—Elie Wiesel, from Night.

Theodicize that.

Done by man. His name was Hitler, but he did not do it alone. Other men made it possible, and they were ordinary men, too. Had circumstances been different, they might well have been any men, just as today, men in what they consider “progressive” societies execute the elderly and murder babies in the name of their “freedom.” Explain away that.

If men, god's creation, can commit the most disgusting and heinous crimes imaginable, as they've always done, and god does absolutely nothing, then what good is god, any god? If god exists it becomes complicit by silence presumably procrastinating justice to a later date...that being the highly dubious theory of god's justice of non-intervention.

But all of that is by no means certain being nothing more than a long-held belief. What is certain are the crimes and atrocities committed for the entire time of human history. What is obvious is that the absolute indifference of nature is equal the absolute indifference of god, especially one declared as a loving god.

So, if god exists, where lies the difference between the two, that being a non-sequitur question since only nature, meaning existence at its most fundamental, has no care for whatever it creates or accountability for any of it.

Explain that away!

Of course, if you reply it will be based on the one or two sentences you feel you can best reply to...as always.

And the Nazis were infinitely merciful compared with God.

I wonder that the Christian to a man good ole boys of Waco, who committed the worst lynching in American history, are once saved always saved, and can watch the Jew boys of Auschwitz resurrected to burn in Hell.

You do know all about that don't you IC? If not, why not? You do know the victim's name? Surely? I'm loth to post the link, as only you should follow it if you don't know. But you do, don't do?

And how Columbus celebrated Easter?

And the good Christian men of Kaunas, Lithuania, how they celebrated their deliverance from the Soviet Jewry.

How could good Christian men, and it's always men, get God's will so wrong. all the time, everywhere in Christendom?

[And any of that that compares with abortion and euthanasia how? On which spectrum? They are certainly moral actions, concerned with utilitarian quality of life. To make life more sacred at its ends than everything in between is fanatically deranged.

Back to you, Dubious. I completely resonate. Furthermore, the natural, inherent evils of Christianity as instituted in Christendom, Christian civilization, Christian institutions, in human nature, in the mob, brings out the worst demons of our nature. The spectrum is of the evil commanded by men's projected Loveless God and men's, politicians', lack of virtue ethics. There is vastly more hope in the latter]

[Alexis Jacobi]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

—Elie Wiesel, from Night.

Theodicize that.

This excerpt is, I hope you realize, a fictionalized representation. A simple examination of the structure makes it (suggestibly) certain.

There are an endless supply of tales of horror from humanity’s terrible history, and from either the 1st or 2nd wars, and it certainly takes a sensitive and talented artist to create literary visions of that horror so that men can recoil from them (they also fascinate, but that is another psychological zone). But like Jerzy Kosinski’s accounts in The Painted Bird, Wiesel’s Night has some issues the accounts of which are floating around.

However, what IC fails to grasp is that all the tortures that a specific people suffered, in Europe, were outlined as the type of punishment errant Jews were destined to receive through God’s vehicle, the goyim.

Disobedience is very very costly (if one accepts the prophetic narrative as being “real”).

It is a very very complex narrative within Jewish perception.

Even strict Orthodox Rabbis regularly point out that Jewish suffering comes about when Jews apostatize through integration.