Philosophy Now Forum

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:53 pm

... a rather bold set of ideas an concerns, expressed in a relatively short video presentation, that I find useful for breaking the ice about those 'important things' that must be defined and thought about?

So how do you propose to deal with the issues presented in the video?

It’s really too open-ended a question. What are the issues in the video that demand a ‘fix’? Essentially, what is Bowden professing in your view?

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

Unfree and Coerced?

Doesn’t Calvin’s argument imply that man is coerced? Not at all, Calvin replies. Man sins willingly. Yes, it is out of necessity, but not out of compulsion. Such a distinction is one of Calvin’s chief points in his treatise against Pighius, who argues that necessitas (necessity) implies coactio (coercion).

Again, let's acknowledge that Calvin's speculations here are not derived from actual transcripts he provides of conversations he had with the Christian God. No, instead, like all of those who have a very different take on Him, they are derived solely from how he himself interpreted the Bible and the historical accounts of Christianity. None of what he claims goes much beyond that.

Well, unless, of course, someone here can provide us with more definitive evidence regarding Calvin and the Christian God.

Then that truly convoluted distinction between doing something out of necessity willingly but not being compelled to. Now, sure, if all one need do here is to make that distinction "in their head", I can imagine any number of arguments that revolve entirely around a "world of words".

But if one is asked to demonstrate how "for all practical purposes" he or she chooses particular behaviors out of necessity willingly but is not compelled to...?

How exactly does that work? Especially given the added conundrum that revolves around reconciling an omniscient Christian God with human autonomy. God know everything you will ever do but you are still doing it of your own volition.

Then, of course, way, way, way up into the intellectual clouds we go:

However, as Paul Helm explains, for Calvin “it does not follow from the denial of free will that what a person chooses is the result of coercion.” Coercion negates responsibility, but necessity is “consistent with being held responsible for the action, and being praised or blamed for it.” Therefore, Calvin can affirm that man “acts wickedly by will, not by compulsion.”

How is this sort of spiritual/philosophical/intellectual assessment not utterly dependent on how one defines the meaning of words used to define the meaning of yet more words still placed in a particular order.

How do you connect the dots between acting wickedly by will but not out of compulsion given that the Christian God is said to be "all-knowing"?

And please try to explain it us in such a way that it involves more than just your own "spiritual/philosophical/intellectual" world of words assessment.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 8:32 pm Well, the heart of the issue seems rather obvious. Human beings interact socially. Human beings die. So, religions are born in order to provide mere mortals with a set of commandments to follow on this side of the grave in order to acquire immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave. God in a nutshell, right?

A reductionist assertion as this is can only be useful in an inverse proportion to the reduction itself, if you get what I mean. I take this to mean that this is your nutshell version of religion and its functions. Mine might include your core reference but would include much more.

How is religion not fundamentally reduced down to...

Human beings interact socially. Human beings die. So, religions are born in order to provide mere mortals with a set of commandments to follow on this side of the grave in order to acquire immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave.

Aside, of course, from the manner in which those like Marx reminded us of how religion is used by the powers that be -- the ruling class -- to sustain their own interests.

AJ: There will never, ever appear the *proof* you ask for. All god-concepts are just that: god-concepts. There will not ever be a way to encapsulate the totality of existence -- what it is, how it came to be, and our appearance in it -- in any satisfactory form. A god-concept appears to be a sort of abbreviation for a sense of miraculous wonder. And then social rules & regulations, a way of explaining the world, etc. So what you are really asking about is how it has come about that people, mostly in the past I think, developed these sorts of conceptual-pictures.

Iambiguous: Let me guess: you know this as an indisputable fact going back to what you know indisputably about the existence of existence itself.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmNo, but certainly going back to what is possible within constructed arguments that are sent up in attempts to *prove* that god exists. Within that realm -- argument through verbal constructs and verbal mathematics -- I do have a very strong feeling that those who have not accepted the existence of god, having arrived at that belief through various means (desperation, willed choice, 'leap of faith', etc.) will never be convinced by a verbal proof. In that sense "There will never, ever appear the *proof* you ask for." Yet you keep asking for it! And you keep not getting it.

Again, the gap between this and all that we do not know about the existence of existence itself. And while I have no respect whatsoever for the arguments given by those here that [to me] seem clearly to be propelled by one or another mental "condition", I have known many religious folks over the years that I did have respect for. Very intelligent and deeply introspective men and women who were able to take the equivalent of that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God. Especially among the Unitarians that I interacted with here in Baltimore.

Right. The history of religion. Of Christianity. And, no, I don't really care about it. I care about morality and immortality and salvation. I'll leave all the rest of it to pedants like you. You know, if you are a pedant. And I certainly think that you are. Well, in a "subjective, rooted existentially in dasein" sort of way.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pm"Fortunately, in a free will world" you can choose to focus or not to focus as you desire. I think I am gaining a sense of the purpose of your use of the term 'pedant' and 'pedantic' but I can't go along with it.

Sure, my own reaction to you is just another subjective "personal opinion rooted existentially in dasein". But that's how you come off to me. As someone who imagines others reading their posts and marveling at their intellect and their capacity to articulate it. "Now that is a philosopher!"

On the other hand, perhaps it's just the polemicist in me who thrives on provocative exchanges revolving around what I still don't really understand about myself in this:

"He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest." John Fowles from The Magus

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmWhat you seem to be trying to say is that you believe you can do away with all the background to Christianity and Christian belief and can simply take up the questions for consideration in the present without the benefit of that backgrounding? As you might guess I disagree strongly.

The background is important to me only to the extent it eventually gets around to morality on this side of the grave, immortality and salvation on the other side of it. The heart and soul of religion "for all practical purposes" as far as I am concerned. Same with the "philosophy of religion". Let others bring their conclusions down out of the clouds and address my own entirely more existential interests or, sure, move on to others.

From my frame of mind, once one concludes that there is no God, it is not unreasonable to conclude further that one's life is essentially meaningless and purposeless, that secular moral fonts have resolved absolutely nothing and that death = oblivion.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmIt seems that you might come out and say that 'pedantry' is a depth education in these areas, or something like this. In my view that *fits* in with a tradition of American anti-intellectualism. That can be explored reading Tocqueville. In the *free world* you define you can of course make any choice you wish but those choices can be discussed within a philosophical environment.

No, it's not "anti-intellectualism", it's bringing technical philosophy -- logic, epistemology -- down out of the didactic, academic stratosphere and noting its relevance in regard to conflicting goods out in a particular world that for each community and individual is bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.

The sort of things discussed by Bruce Wilshire in Fashionable Nihilism : A Critique of Analytic Philosophy

Though, by all means, if that is not what others are interested in discussing, they can simply skip my posts. I can respect that.

And my interest in Heidegger revolves only around the extent to which his Dasein is taken down out of the ponderous philosophical clouds and made applicable to actual flesh and blood human interactions.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmYou might not like this but my sense of your use of the term dasein seems less useful than it could be without references to Heidegger. Or in any case to people who have developed Heidegger's ideas. I am not fully sure about this though. But I do not get much more sense from the use of the word than that each person, and any people, in different places and times, arrive at subjective existential positions.

All I can do here is to note what I did to Sculptor on my Dasein/dasein thread:

My point [my challenge] revolves around finding someone here convinced that they do grasp the meaning of Dasein from Being and Time...and bringing their understanding of it down out of the philosophical clouds and, given a particular context, comparing and contrasting it with my own understanding of dasein from these threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Of course they don't. After all, what's the alternative? If there is no God, no immortality and no salvation, you're left with just accepting that all the terrible pain and suffering in the world [especially your own] is just embedded in the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence that you endure for 70 odd years and then tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmHere, in my view, you skip over the same track (if you'll pardon my metaphor). What you seem to be saying is there is no god, no immortality, no salvation, and thus there is no alternative for you. You seem stuck on this point.

I'm stuck only until 1] someone does demonstrate to me that a God, the God, their God does in fact exist or 2] an argument from a No God secularist convinces me that in a No God world, mere mortals can arrive [philosophically, deontologically or otherwise] at an ethical conclusion such that given a particular context all rational men and women are indeed obligated categorically and imperatively to behave in particular ways. Universally or context by context.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmThere are a range of alternatives however. In my own view, and I cannot of course be completely certain (it is hard to really know another person's thought in this medium) you are stuck in a post-Christian postmodern position. Since you can see no alternative, the situation you are in is presented as totalized and totalizing.

Okay, given a specific set of circumstances that most here will be familiar with...circumstances that precipitate "conflicting goods"...how might we whittle this "range of alternatives" down to the optimal behavior. Given a No God world.

AJ: Again you miss the opportunity to link this observation/question to the events of the day. I get the impression that you do not pay much attention to the news, to contemporary discourse, to social conflict, to the deep divisions that widen at every moment. Do you read books and articles that deal on these issues and problems? I'd have to say "no" from what you write.

Iambiguous: Huh? What am I supposed to do, note things like the war in Ukraine, the covid pandemic, the latest mass shooting, the latest natural disaster, the countless contexts in which human beings suffer terribly and come here and ask, "hey, what about God here all you True Believers!"

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmOh, I am making references to the very strange reemergence of a fighting Christian spirit that is occurring right now, today. The establishment of a view that the corruption has contaminated the very heart of America and that Christian believer need to come out of the closet and onto the ramparts of a fight to 'reclaim' America and redefine its destiny.

Again: given what particular context? And the Christian God, said to be both omniscient and omnipotent, where the hell is He when the truly innocent suffer terribly? Children for example.

"Each day, 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes. Some 854 million people worldwide are estimated to be undernourished, and high food prices may drive another 100 million into poverty and hunger." United Nations

It's often just plain laughable encountering the excuses some Christians will give to explain things like this away. Given that they insist in turn that this omniscient and omnipotent Christian God is also "loving just and merciful"!

And my own "radical liberal" value judgments are no less political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. I have no illusions that they are inherently or necessarily any more rational than the value judgments of the "radical conservatives" here among us.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmYou quoted Will Durant:

"In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company...he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him...He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist."

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmOK, so I do grasp better what you are trying to say by *pedant* and *pedantry*. I think though I can fairly say I am not 'dishonest' nor stuck in "sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation". In fact it is really quite the opposite. I have investigated all sorts of different views and perspectives, all of them very contemporary and each having immediate relevance and applicability to 'our present'.

All I can do here is to react to you openly and honestly as I do. But in no way, shape or form am I attempting to suggest that others ought to react to you in the same way. I truly don't see you bringing those like IC down out of the clouds [or out of the Bible] as I do. But, yeah, that might just be me.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmWhat is odd from my view is I cannot see how you are genuinely responding to Durant's challenge. But allow me to ask you -- and I assure you it is a serious and sincere question -- to please outline for me what you think the major concerns for any one of us should be. I am not asking an abstract question for all of the denizens of the Earth but about you and about us within the present American context. Or where else should be our point of departure?

All I can do is to note yet again what my own interests are here: connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality and salvation there and then. Connecting the dots existentially between what someone thinks or believes about Christianity and what they are actually able to demonstrate that all other reasonable men and women ought to think and believe.

Or, sure, those who are not able to but never really see their relationship with the Christian God as anything other than an introspective/existential leap of faith.

I'm not like Sculptor and others here here who, in my view, embrace a declamatory No God religion

"How ought one to behave morally in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency chance and change?"

Given a particular context.

Go ahead, pick one yourself and let's have a go at it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:20 pmI think I just did. Will you accept a rather bold set of ideas an concerns, expressed in a relatively short video presentation, that I find useful for breaking the ice about those 'important things' that must be defined and thought about? (I have posted this link numbers of times in the course of my writing -- it abbreviates areas that are of personal interest). I definitely am developing an anti-egalitarian and a liberalism-critical outlook and philosophy so it is good to make it plain.

Okay, I'll watch it and get back to you.

Iambiguous: But that's how you come off to me. As someone who imagines others reading their posts and marveling at their intellect and their capacity to articulate it. "Now that is a philosopher!"

Generally, I never argue against these types of forum assessments. It is pointless really to either agree or disagree. I do acknowledge your assessment in any case.

I’ll have comments tomorrow I hope on the rest of your post.

And my own "radical liberal" value judgments are no less political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. I have no illusions that they are inherently or necessarily any more rational than the value judgments of the "radical conservatives" here among us.

Then you really have no ground at all to justify or to believe your own sense of things. Whatever philosophy you have is one of a no-man’s land. It is a curious stance to have.

Finally: there is not one ‘radical conservative’ here. Not one that comes even close.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:46 am How is religion not fundamentally reduced down to...

Human beings interact socially. Human beings die. So, religions are born in order to provide mere mortals with a set of commandments to follow on this side of the grave in order to acquire immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave.

Aside, of course, from the manner in which those like Marx reminded us of how religion is used by the powers that be -- the ruling class -- to sustain their own interests.

What you suppose -- presuppose really -- is that you can reduce religion down to fundamentals that you can explain. Applied reductionism really. If the quoted portion is seen in that way then a means opens up to present a fuller explanation. I did not say that you view was not part of the picture, but I did say that it is not the whole picture. And I also said (in any case I implied) that you cannot understand Christianity today, and even your rejection of it, without understanding the full trajectory of it through taking a disciplined and careful approach. I ventured to suggest that that way of going about things might by you be described as 'pedantry'.

So I repeat again: your view does contain an aspect of truth, and I do not deny that aspect, but it is tremendously incomplete. I will venture to guess that were we to delve into the internal mechanics of your specific and personal belief-system that we would find, more than anything else or any other influence or structure, one that is Marxist or neo-Marxist. This position is one in fact that nearly all of us have whether we can discern it or not. And therefore (and again) it is crucial to trace out the trajectory of those who did *believe* through those periods when belief was challenged and then on to our present time when belief is rather impossible.

But I think we'd have to back up and ask a question about the purpose or function of a religious view. I use a word that Immanuel certainly does not like: function. I apologize. But my present view is that a 'religion' and a 'religious view' is really at its core a set of explanations about what life is. Now if I asked you, let's say, to tell me What Life Is I have a strong feeling that you would not be able to say a great deal. Your explanation would (and here I guess so please excuse me) take the form of your General Explanation that tends to constantly refer to Dasein as if this has any explanatory value at all. It doesn't in fact but that is of course just my opinion at the present moment. So it seems to me that your Dasein explanation is really a non-explanation or something like an admittance that you cannot explain ... anything at all. (You offer a sort-of explanation "rooted in Dasein" with one hand, but then swipe it entirely away with the other by making the same declaration in contradiction. It is a belief system of nullification or so it seems to me).

Now, I tend to believe (I tend to hold the perception) that now, in this present, no one has a sufficient explanation. Or to put it another way all explanation and explaining are in a state of chaos: Middle English, formless primordial space, from Latin, from Greek khaos. What stands in contrast to chaos? Cosmos: Middle English, from Greek kosmos, order. So when I read on this forum and indeed in many different places where existential questions are examined that is what I notice the most. It stands out blatantly.

So if we back up just a few hundred years we will notice that not so long ago Christian belief was a belief-system well grounded in an explanatory ontology. The world was a cosmos not a chaos. And from top to bottom an Order that was understood at a foundational level to exist and to be real, was literally understood to exist and to be real. And Christianity was ensconced within that wide and general understanding -- a bona fide platform. Everything that happened in the world happened for intelligible reasons. Because a 'cosmos' was recognized and felt to be real & true.

So then, a religion when broken down to those fundamentals you mention rather glibly, it can be said that religion arises out of a truly fundamental act of interpretation of the world, of existence really, of being. So my view is now that if you cannot explain the world, and your world, you are by definition lost in something which you do not understand and likely believe that you cannot understand.

So with this said I cannot go along with your too drastic reduction.

Let's try to reduce Christianity to a set of ethical propositions. I think the following sum it up succinctly: Christianity asks for (or requires?) repentance, love, purity, selflessness, mercy and humility. And these together in an appeal for redemption against the fundamental understanding that grace provides it. It seems to me fair to offer this reduced set of ethical precepts that can be useful to understand the *function* of Christianity throughout its history. But in that long historical trajectory the way & means by which The World (existence, this reality, this planet, and ourselves) has gone through successive permutations and revisions. Nearly ever part of element in traditional Christian belief has fallen away but what does remain is, I would say, a crucial core: that god exists (somehow), that god interacted with the world in a dramatic manner, that there is life beyond temporal and contingent life, and that what a given person does or does not do is of real consequence. But it does resolve down to:

repentance, love, purity, selflessness, mercy and humility -- and these together in an appeal for redemption that is given through grace

Yet still it seems to me that underneath all of this, under these suppositions, there is something more fundamental and this has to do with an Explanation about what life is and why we are here in it.

So your view...

Human beings interact socially. Human beings die. So, religions are born in order to provide mere mortals with a set of commandments to follow on this side of the grave in order to acquire immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave.

...would seem to fit in at least partially but I think you'd still have a great deal more to explain about the *function* of religion and religious view in a fuller sense.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:46 am

AJ wrote: No, but certainly going back to what is possible within constructed arguments that are sent up in attempts to *prove* that god exists. Within that realm -- argument through verbal constructs and verbal mathematics -- I do have a very strong feeling that those who have not accepted the existence of god, having arrived at that belief through various means (desperation, willed choice, 'leap of faith', etc.) will never be convinced by a verbal proof. In that sense "There will never, ever appear the *proof* you ask for." Yet you keep asking for it! And you keep not getting it.

Again, the gap between this and all that we do not know about the existence of existence itself. And while I have no respect whatsoever for the arguments given by those here that [to me] seem clearly to be propelled by one or another mental "condition", I have known many religious folks over the years that I did have respect for. Very intelligent and deeply introspective men and women who were able to take the equivalent of that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God. Especially among the Unitarians that I interacted with here in Baltimore.

So then if I understand you correctly you could respect and interact in a different way if, let's say, here on this forum there were Christian Unitarians talking about their religious conversions and their faith-convictions? But that there is something, something specific, in Immanuel Can that rubs you the wrong way?

Again, the gap between this and all that we do not know about the existence of existence itself.

It would seem that you leave a door open, at least. I do not presume to say to what.

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

My own view is that the general picture provided by Christianity, which had so completely collapsed and fallen into a pile of rubble, can only be resurrected when the picture is superseded by a picture that is no longer a picture. If I cannot *resort* as I might say to metaphysics, and a sort of ur-metaphysics, I will never be able to explain anything except through scientific or materialistic explanation -- which are really no explanations at all. They represent the end of explanation or the destruction of explanation in a cosmic sense.

Now why then do I have and why must I have so much objection to Immanuel Can? This is what I have been forced to explore in depth over the course of months.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:46 amAgain: given what particular context? And the Christian God, said to be both omniscient and omnipotent, where the hell is He when the truly innocent suffer terribly? Children for example.

All that I can say is that I am not a person who'd describe himself as 'atheist' in the sense of rejecting the notion of divinity or a supreme originator, but I most certainly do not, and cannot accept, the Christian picture. So I am forced to do something that I do not particularly relish: undermine that god-picture. The reason this makes me uncomfortable is because I know that people require a 'structure' through which to live. If they have it, why should I take action to take it from them?

As to your particular problem, which seems to arise in reaction to a false-picture about god -- shown to be false by the simple fact that god refuses to act in a Christian manner! -- I can only say that I never had this problem to deal with, because I never had that particular god-picture installed in me.

So I have always had a very different definition of what *divinity* is and especially where it is or (sorry IC!) what its function is. These presuppositions involve me in a very different definition of god and one very different from the Christian god-concept.

Therefore I tend to think that the *idea of god* is being revised. Either it is rejected entirely or, it seems to me, it is redefined. And those who have ventured forth on the path of redefinition have been forced to explore somewhat 'forbidden' areas.

So when I said earlier that there are *alternatives* to what I understand as your own expressed despondency (in the sense of loss of confidence) in the Christian picture of god, there are definitely others who have explored other territories. But they are not easy-of-access intellectually.

There is another part of this as well. I think it fair to say that Christianity in our modernity has been, perhaps, coopted into a general progressivism and certainly an ideology of egalitarianism. Even you when you refer (essentially) to god's 'cold heart' in the face of child suffering seem invested in this idea of god as some sort of sentimental entity who must have *concern* for created beings and must show remorse for the cruel things he has allowed to occur in this bizarre world.

But what if that entire idea is done away with?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 3:45 pm
My own view is that the general picture provided by Christianity, which had so completely collapsed and fallen into a pile of rubble, can only be resurrected when the picture is superseded by a picture that is no longer a picture.

So you will be searching through rubble looking for a picture that isn't even a picture? My tip would be to look for something that doesn't look like a picture.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:07 pm So I am forced to do something that I do not particularly relish: undermine that god-picture. The reason this makes me uncomfortable is because I know that people require a 'structure' through which to live. If they have it, why should I take action to take it from them?

I think it's because you have an over blown sense of your own significance.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:19 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 3:45 pm My own view is that the general picture provided by Christianity, which had so completely collapsed and fallen into a pile of rubble, can only be resurrected when the picture is superseded by a picture that is no longer a picture.

So you will be searching through rubble looking for a picture that isn't even a picture? My tip would be to look for something that doesn't look like a picture.

There is an interesting, though a difficult, book written by Julius Evola called Men Among The Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist. There is another by René Guénon titled Crisis of the Modern World. For those inclined to consider this *traditionalism* as holding validity metaphysics is perhaps the only means or vehicle for recovery. I think I already had come to this view and understanding before investigating Evola or Guénon but they both certainly develop the idea of decadence, decay, falling away from, falling down into what is meant by the term *ruin*.

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

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

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

All of this flies over your head. You have no way at all to make any sense of it at all. The Christian god loves you to pieces however. (And I hope your mother does too.) But the god I define must despise you. But don't misinterpret what that implies.

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

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:25 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:07 pm So I am forced to do something that I do not particularly relish: undermine that god-picture. The reason this makes me uncomfortable is because I know that people require a 'structure' through which to live. If they have it, why should I take action to take it from them?

I think it's because you have an over blown sense of your own significance.

Can you explain more of what you mean?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:45 pm [quote=Harbal post_id=614461 time=1671463199
So let's invoke a god capable of focused contempt! In the end we'll be better people if we do so.

Sounds like there may be a pagan deity under the rubble!

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:55 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:45 pm [quote=Harbal post_id=614461 time=1671463199
So let's invoke a god capable of focused contempt! In the end we'll be better people if we do so.

Sounds like there may be a pagan deity under the rubble!

Though it might be Alfred E Newman with an exotic mask . . .

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 5:14 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:55 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:45 pm [quote=Harbal post_id=614461 time=1671463199
So let's invoke a god capable of focused contempt! In the end we'll be better people if we do so.

Sounds like there may be a pagan deity under the rubble!

Though it might be Alfred E Newman with an exotic mask . . .

I see those people mostly in the malls waiting for emergency services.
But there are many decadencies. I certainly don't want what is considered decadent to be decided by Christians. Not that I have good group in mind for the panel, but certain kinds of pagan animists might pass muster for me.

And certain things did need to decline. The race is very hard to judge these days, however.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 5:19 pmBut there are many decadencies. I certainly don't want what is considered decadent to be decided by Christians. Not that I have good group in mind for the panel, but certain kinds of pagan animists might pass muster for me.

I take parts of older school Christian critiques of decadency seriously. Actually many people from varying backgrounds take a stab at an answer. All of them have a perspective and a point.