Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Losing ourselves in your insane metaphysical crap is the last thing humanity needs when we are facing very real dangers in the real world that threaten our continued existence, obviously. We can't afford to move towards more delusion.

List these very real dangers.

[Belinda]

I think, Immanuel, that Constantine saw that Judeo Christianity contained a myth of Christ that would serve to bind together Constantine's empire.

He was an opportunist, you mean? Yes, some historians say that, and I think it's likely true. There's evidence he never had any great affection for Christianity at all, but rather did it as a cynical strategy to unify his forces...not an auspicious beginning to any "religious" project, I think you and I would agree.

But he still had a problem to overcome: and that was the irreconcilable tension between monotheism and polytheism. If he asked the pagans to give up their many gods, they would not, anymore than the Christians would denounce their allegiance to the one God; and he would simply have renewed tensions over the differences. But Constantine had a strategy: blend the two, or syncretize both religions...parallel both religions through the use of saints and Biblical figures converted into the pagan mythos of the Roman tradition, and sell everybody on the idea that no great changes were needed in order to merge.

This was done in stages, by converting Roman gods to "Christian saints" that could occupy the same affections in both the hearts of pagans and the allegiances of at least nominal "Christians." That sort of syncretistic activity was to become typical of the Catholics...as you see illustrated by their many and various "saints" declared in various cultures around the world, each intended to placate locals that their "gods" were being integrated into Catholicism. One might think of "Santa Muerte" or the various black madonnas of South and Central America, or the crazy French and aboriginal "saints" like Anne de Beaupre and Kateri Tekakwitha in Catholic Canada.

Theyr'e still doing it. They're not being Christian. They're being Christo-pagan. And such compromises simply cannot be made.

I agree with all the above.
I also appreciate that you explain your stance but you should explain that it's largely Calvinist. If you name ideas it helps others to understand how ideas compare, overlap, and contrast.

[Belinda]

A "master metaphysician" will understand that there were 10000 gods and they all gave people different impressions. So we can confidently start with throwing out all religious, divine subjective impressions and just look at the (beyond reasonable doubt) objective. You won't get far by simply trying to intuit the higher senses using wishful thinking, instead it's about trying to compare the mathemathical likelihoods of all possible realities that you can think of, comparing them using some system, and trying to find the most likely realities and then looking at what those could possibly mean to us. Well I did the above and I have bad news for you guys. Actually I would now advise people to stop looking for the truth.

If the topic is “What would a master metaphysician say about man’s life and awareness; about meaning & value; and about the essence of religion (in its better aspect)”, I am uncertain if your extremely limited and limiting view of what is at stake would have predominance.

This is where my critique of that position most notable among those who write here (anti-Christian, anti-religious, anti-metaphysical, to describe it generally) has its starting point. I very much agree that the topic of metaphysics is a fraught one, and the consideration of supernaturalism is an almost impossible thought to entertain given the power of a dominant reign of thought and perspective, and yet it is metaphysical ideas that make man man.

One idea that I found valuable and illustrative is what Richard Weaver wrote:

Witches on the Heath: Abandoning the Transcendentals

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

One may be accused here of oversimplifying the historical process, but I take the view that the conscious policies of men and governments are not mere rationalizations of what has been brought about by unaccountable forces. They are rather deductions from our most basic ideas of human destiny, and they have a great, though not unobstructed, power to determine our course.

For this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s conception of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.

It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this. The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably—though ways are found to hedge on this—the denial of truth.

With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of “man the measure of all things.” The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actually initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the “abomination of desolation” appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth.

My view is that what is seen with the eye is what the ‘senses’ alone perceive as real. But what is seen through the eye is (as I endlessly repeat) everything touching on value & meaning.

Therefore I conclude: there is something defective in the way you see. Certain ideas have got their hold on you and they limit what can enter your consciousness through ‘the doors of perception’. Taken to the final end, predicated from the beginning, you destroy the intelligible. You cut off ‘the conceptual pathway’ to a realm of the real which in non-sensual. The mere “eye” cannot see it. Only the intellect (as intellectus) can and does.

Nevertheless I agree with you: the zone of what is intelligible in man — in you and me and more especially in you (who have no natural saintedness as does Alexis Jacobi in his manifestation as The Hyperborean Apollo) — has become a confusing zone of pollution of influences and distorted symbols.

This in my view turns back to an important idea about man’s imagination and that interior screen where his sense of reality is “played”.

So the ‘recovery’ of man, a man’s recovery of his own self, and the purification of perception, obviously become crucial.

None of this has or can have any meaning for you Atla and I know this. It is simply put non-intelligible to you.

"Real existence" says Alexis.

Universals exist as human concepts; nature 'natures'(verb) human constructs.

Nature is the common cause of universals and all other human constructs.
There is no final cause in nature, as final cause pertains solely to beings that are bodies incorporating a special sort of brainmind that can abstract attributes from concepts. You are a Thomist and you should say honestly what you are in simple language.
History of ideas has progressed since the more primitive science of Aristotle. To revert to final cause as a remedy for the world's ills is like trying to stuff a spirit back in the bottle of history.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Theyr'e still doing it. They're not being Christian. They're being Christo-pagan. And such compromises simply cannot be made.

That is true insofar as there is in all manifestations of Christianity an undergirding contempt and intolerance for ‘the pagan’. One notices an extremely dominating spirit that requires the destruction of any and all means of approaching Divinity that it does not control. Again, this is based in the belief that “the gods of the Pagans are devils”.

I pointed out long ago that one finds in Catholic-Pagan religion a reanimation of a far older mythic ‘picture’ — that of Osiris and Isis. It is certainly true that Protestants recoil from the very notion if a semi-divinized feminine figure — the mother of Christ, the vehicle by which he entered the world — but in the background is the notion of a divine feminine that collects together the dismembered and scattered parts of the masculine figure Osiris and is a restorative force or possibility. It should be obvious that in the language of symbols and myth that only a myth with a viable feminine figure allows a new being (Horus) to be born. It is not hard to understand the “murder of God” and Isis’s efforts to recover the dismembered body and restore it, as a prelude to the birth of of a new child — a new psychic possibility.

The figure of Seth (who slew Osiris and scattered his body parts) is a symbol of a divisive, destructive, undermining agent and at least from one perspective (mythic-psychological) is more intelligible than is the figure of Satan.

My point is not to defend Catholic syncretism, and is more directed to a critique of the imperious psychological-spiritual thrust in Jewish Christianity. That imperiousness starts in Hebrew-Jewish ideology that literally describes the Gentiles and their gods as being captured by demoniac powers. They must be converted and tamed: brought under the yoke of a centralized ‘spiritual’ authority.

It is obvious that IC is not so much aligned with a coherent religious ideology as he is aligned with a possessive, imperious religious sect that demands total subservience to a figure of absolute authority.

Curiously, the Protestant ‘spirit’ encourages a radical intolerance of any mode of seeing and understanding that does not accord with its specific demands.

Again, my view is that all of this, all mythical stories, are “packages” and means by which ideas and ways of seeing and being are conveyed. They cannot be taken “absolutely seriously” and (for us today certainly) they must be unpacked and understood.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You are a Thomist and you should say honestly what you are in simple language.

So you say. I am uncertain “what I am” yet what I do defend is the notion transcendent value and obviously the realm of the metaphysically intelligible. My views are likely far more synthetic and ‘bridging’ than you can conceive.

[Alexis Jacobi]

"Real existence" says Alexis.

Yes Belinda, I do put emphasis on the conflict between ‘science realism’ and what I understand as a thoroughly valid psychic and spiritual, and metaphysical, realism. What is ultimately meaningful and valuable is, in my view, what is ultimately “real”.

Nature is the common cause of universals and all other human constructs.

I understand this view. I understand how it ‘makes sense’. But I do not see Nature as having any designs at all, except in an ecological-biological sense.

Man in my view is a vehicle by which transcendentals are brought into our world. And these “universals” are not found in Nature. They are perceived through the relationship to intelligence (the intelligible, intellectus).

[Belinda]

Theyr'e still doing it. They're not being Christian. They're being Christo-pagan. And such compromises simply cannot be made.

That is true insofar as there is in all manifestations of Christianity an undergirding contempt and intolerance for ‘the pagan’. One notices an extremely dominating spirit that requires the destruction of any and all means of approaching Divinity that it does not control. Again, this is based in the belief that “the gods of the Pagans are devils”.

I pointed out long ago that one finds in Catholic-Pagan religion a reanimation of a far older mythic ‘picture’ — that of Osiris and Isis. It is certainly true that Protestants recoil from the very notion if a semi-divinized feminine figure — the mother of Christ, the vehicle by which he entered the world — but in the background is the notion of a divine feminine that collects together the dismembered and scattered parts of the masculine figure Osiris and is a restorative force or possibility. It should be obvious that in the language of symbols and myth that only a myth with a viable feminine figure allows a new being (Horus) to be born. It is not hard to understand the “murder of God” and Isis’s efforts to recover the dismembered body and restore it, as a prelude to the birth of of a new child — a new psychic possibility.

The figure of Seth (who slew Osiris and scattered his body parts) is a symbol of a divisive, destructive, undermining agent and at least from one perspective (mythic-psychological) is more intelligible than is the figure of Satan.

My point is not to defend Catholic syncretism, and is more directed to a critique of the imperious psychological-spiritual thrust in Jewish Christianity. That imperiousness starts in Hebrew-Jewish ideology that literally describes the Gentiles and their gods as being captured by demoniac powers. They must be converted and tamed: brought under the yoke of a centralized ‘spiritual’ authority.

It is obvious that IC is not so much aligned with a coherent religious ideology as he is aligned with a possessive, imperious religious sect that demands total subservience to a figure of absolute authority.

Curiously, the Protestant ‘spirit’ encourages a radical intolerance of any mode of seeing and understanding that does not accord with its specific demands.

Again, my view is that all of this, all mythical stories, are “packages” and means by which ideas and ways of seeing and being are conveyed. They cannot be taken “absolutely seriously” and (for us today certainly) they must be unpacked and understood.

The vehicle of "the Protestant ‘spirit’ encourages a radical intolerance of any mode of seeing and understanding that does not accord with its specific demands. " has shifted your prose into lucidity. Good!

I agree that the feminine as I comprehend it in mostly in terms of Yin and Yang must be in place before any idea of process and progress can happen.

There are many liberal Protestants who not only glorify the Mother of God but who also, if they were philosophers, would be more interested in the immanent (feminine) than in the transcendent(masculine) view of God. Yin (feminine) is also the default mode which Yang (masculine and Abrahamic) has fertilised .The feminine , as portrayed in so much literature as soft and yielding , is the eternal which too many deities have raped.

We should accord to the Protestant Reformation its due which is that it allowed Christianity to be democratic.

[Alexis Jacobi]

…has shifted your prose into lucidity. Good!

Allow me please to amend this: What you struggle to understand is described as “turgid prose” that frustrates you. But when you do succeed in understanding the ideas expressed it becomes “lucid prose”.

Good indeed!

[Immanuel Can]

I think, Immanuel, that Constantine saw that Judeo Christianity contained a myth of Christ that would serve to bind together Constantine's empire.

He was an opportunist, you mean? Yes, some historians say that, and I think it's likely true. There's evidence he never had any great affection for Christianity at all, but rather did it as a cynical strategy to unify his forces...not an auspicious beginning to any "religious" project, I think you and I would agree.

But he still had a problem to overcome: and that was the irreconcilable tension between monotheism and polytheism. If he asked the pagans to give up their many gods, they would not, anymore than the Christians would denounce their allegiance to the one God; and he would simply have renewed tensions over the differences. But Constantine had a strategy: blend the two, or syncretize both religions...parallel both religions through the use of saints and Biblical figures converted into the pagan mythos of the Roman tradition, and sell everybody on the idea that no great changes were needed in order to merge.

This was done in stages, by converting Roman gods to "Christian saints" that could occupy the same affections in both the hearts of pagans and the allegiances of at least nominal "Christians." That sort of syncretistic activity was to become typical of the Catholics...as you see illustrated by their many and various "saints" declared in various cultures around the world, each intended to placate locals that their "gods" were being integrated into Catholicism. One might think of "Santa Muerte" or the various black madonnas of South and Central America, or the crazy French and aboriginal "saints" like Anne de Beaupre and Kateri Tekakwitha in Catholic Canada.

Theyr'e still doing it. They're not being Christian. They're being Christo-pagan. And such compromises simply cannot be made.

I agree with all the above.
I also appreciate that you explain your stance but you should explain that it's largely Calvinist.

That's hilarious, B. I'm not even one bit Calvinist, nor do I admire Calvinism. In fact, I dispute against Calvinists. Calvinists, if you know their ideology, are Determinists. I regard Determinism as intellectually incoherent and utterly impractical, as well. But I think you could already detect that from things I've said before.

But let's suppose it was, X, or Y, or Z. What has that got to do with the truth-value of what is being said?

[Immanuel Can]

...“the gods of the Pagans are devils”.

Not necessarily. Many are just fictions. People make up all kinds of things.

It is obvious that IC is not so much aligned with a coherent religious ideology as he is aligned with a possessive, imperious religious sect that demands total subservience to a figure of absolute authority.

That's very funny, coming from a guy trying to defend Catholicism, the most "possessive, imperious religious sect," one that claims "infallibility" for a guy in velvet slippers and a funny hat.

[Fairy]

People make up all kinds of things.

God makes up people that make up all kinds of other things.

Santa’s little helper eh.

[Alexis Jacobi]

...“the gods of the Pagans are devils”.

Not necessarily. Many are just fictions. People make up all kinds of things.

It is obvious that IC is not so much aligned with a coherent religious ideology as he is aligned with a possessive, imperious religious sect that demands total subservience to a figure of absolute authority.

That's very funny, coming from a guy trying to defend Catholicism, the most "possessive, imperious religious sect," one that claims "infallibility" for a guy in velvet slippers and a funny hat.

I do not have to “try to defend it” simply because it, like your brand of zealotry-driven Evangelical Protestantism is just as much bound up in absurdities.

What I recommend, and what you cannot understand nor ever accept and reason through, is the need to take steps backward so that the entire construct can be better seen.

Once again: your apologetics never achieves what you profess you desire to achieve. You achieve the opposite, consistently. Yet you drone on, completely impervious to criticism.

The only way that any of this can be made sense of is through definitions of what it is necessary to achieve in human life, for us now at this juncture. That is, in the broadest and most important sense (and senses).

You also — once again — avoided recognition of a primary point: the belief that “the gods of the Pagans are devils”. You avoid the most crucial fact: that you qua Christian regard any concept of the divine that is not precisely yours as a satanic error in understanding. You avoid critical examination of this predicate because it is essential to your system of belief. My view is that your view — this imperiousness — is itself an error. And not an insignificant one. But you will never deal head-on with the critique.

[Immanuel Can]

...“the gods of the Pagans are devils”.

Not necessarily. Many are just fictions. People make up all kinds of things.

It is obvious that IC is not so much aligned with a coherent religious ideology as he is aligned with a possessive, imperious religious sect that demands total subservience to a figure of absolute authority.

That's very funny, coming from a guy trying to defend Catholicism, the most "possessive, imperious religious sect," one that claims "infallibility" for a guy in velvet slippers and a funny hat.

I do not have to “try to defend it”

Then don't. It's indefensible, anyway.

But you will never deal head-on with the critique.

Raise one that's close to right, and I will.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Then don't. It's indefensible, anyway.

No, fool, it is a container of a tremendous quantity and quality of material vitally relevant to Occidental man. And that ‘stuff’ is part-and-parcel of the foundations of our culture and our own selves.

Your ignorance is exasperating.

[Immanuel Can]

Then don't. It's indefensible, anyway.

No, fool, it is a container of a tremendous quantity and quality of material vitally relevant to Occidental man. And that ‘stuff’ is part-and-parcel of the foundations of our culture and our own selves.

All lies are mixed bags. Without some element of truth, they become too transparent. People are not fooled by them. So the deception always needs some "good," some "truth," some "value" it can offer the world, to work as carrier for its deception. So of course some good things came out of the Catholic apostasy. It wouldn't have worked at all, if it had none.

One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch; but one poisoned apple does. You can praise Catholicism for some of its art, its learning, its contributions to philosophy, education and science, and even some (but not most) of its political reforms. But the poisoned apples are also there.

Poison kills. So eat carefully.