Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:02 pm
Unfortunately, when Immanuel jumps back into his own Evangelical fervor, and presents to the Forum his topical and superficial interpretation of Scripture, it throws the entire forum into a hissyfit. Simply put, no one today, except one with a fanatical mind that is capable of forcing itself to *see* and believe what cannot be believed and what is impossible to believe, can agree that the Adam & Eve story is actual history.
But here is the oddest of all odd things: Immanuel who is
capable of clear-headed exposition on many topical themes, who shows he has a rationally-oriented mind and a large degree of background on many contemporary topics (and forgive me here Immanuel), when he waxes fanatical he transforms himself into a fanatical religious zealot when he tries to convince others that his Bible realism should be taken seriously, and naturally (and rightly) this provokes the Standard Reactions. Dubious jumps back in and repeats all over again what has been said a hundred times already. In this Dubious shows where his *delight* is found: going round and round in circles in an epic battle against Bible Realism.
Let’s face it: on the whole this type of Bible-grounded Evangelism is an American thing. I think this is a solid fact. Over the least 40-50 years an entire zealous American Evangelical establishment has evangelized the entire world with this particular literalist interpretation of the Bible and especially
Bible prophecy.
A few things must be said here. One is that if we are not aware of what the religious Right is thinking and *seeing*, and if one is not aware that the religious Zionist Right (I mean the Jewish and Israeli radicals who have gained substantial control over the Israeli state) are not attempting to direct events in specific ways, if one remains outside of this comprehension one cannot, in my view, understand at all well what is going on today. I will certainly bring into this the election of Donald Trump and make reference to the extreme zealotry of many now forming his cabinet.
So here is the thing I really want to bring to your attention though I suppose it will be misinterpreted. We have to see and we have to accept that according to a predominant perceptual stance that is held in the minds and in the psychic structure of powerful figures, that we are (and I will resort to their symbols and their terms) in a time of the advent of the Anti-Christ. I do not actually have to *believe in* an Anti-Christ as a real figure who appears on the world-stage, I only need refer to what they are thinking, imagining, longing for and importantly constructing as they project deeply symbolic material onto the world and the world’s events.
To the degree that one is *captured* by Christian symbols and interprets them through Bible realism, is the degree to which one deviates from the *real meaning* within the symbols. I know, that is a weird thing to say. Traditional Christianity, taken at the level of symbolism, has many sound elements because what is connoted by the general Christian picture is sound because the metaphysics described in the symbols are sound. And it is when one can see and understand
intellectually what the metaphysical ideas actually are (and why they are important) that one can sift out in other traditions and religious stories what is also metaphysically valid as well as *true*. The principles are metaphysical principles and they are apprehended on the
intellectual plane. Belinda says it is about *love* but that is a mushy picture. It is (IMO) actually about a very concrete and very serious set of intellectual precepts that are at the base of (permit me) *genuine metaphysics*.
Immanuel, as a true Evangelical zealot! must always bust forth and declare from time to time:
“You are all going to Hell unless you bend a knee before Jesus and declare your allegiance!” Similarly, today, and appearing on TV and even interwoven in the rehearsals around the installation of the new President, is all this fervent religious-Christian Evangelical content. They are trying to *awaken* the nation, and possibly the world, to the need to return to Christian religious roots, but they are definitely unaware that on the level of metaphysical principles what they hope for (a neoconservative, market-grounded, tech administered, AI infused, militarism and neo-Imperialism infused national ideology, might have some initial successes, but in the end it will bring the nation, and then the world, toward that
disaster which all feel is imminent.
What I have taken away from these conversation — and specifically I refer to Big Mike who began this and a series of threads with very specific intentions in mind and attempting to bring out extremely specific views that he attempts to *sell* — is just how utterly confused (and here please forgive me!) all of you really are. You-plural always end up as gibbering incoherent idiots, bickering over what is utterly inane.
No matter what, you cannot seem to arrive at any level of clarity. So all that you have is some tendentious position that you have carved out for yourself, to which you are zealously wedded, but which is absolutely idiosyncratic just to you! No one agrees with you. You are *lone voices* crying in a wilderness of subjective impression. In this sense there is no *metaphysical understanding* and because there is no metaphysical agreement possible, all the ideas are just jumbles underpinned by unsettled and overheated emotions.
There's another person who thinks he has an alternate story. Wonderful. Join the party, Alexis: tell us what story of human origins doesn't involve any original mating pair.