Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Belinda]

You're far too impressed with somebody who clearly has no power, no theology and a huge desire to grandstand in order to appear virtuous. She's all that's wrong with "Christendom" writ large.

Mariann Budde improves the public image of the Episcopalian Church.

Heh. Almost anything might improve that image.

The problem with the Episcopalian Church is that long ago it abandoned theology in favour of currying favour with whatever zeitgeist was available to it. There's a reasons its congregations, and others of the Leftist preference, are plunging like a stone: people don't go to church to be told that God doesn't matter and theology isn't useful, or to watch poser clergy virtue signal their wonderfulness to the world.

A few years, and that sad little organization will disappear...either dead from its own self-chosen irrelevance, or absorbed into some much bigger apostate religious body. And Budde is an exemplar of all that: a woman who waits for the cameras, and then seized the opportunity to self-present as champion of the "oppressed" -- ignoring the cartels, the rapists, the drug lords, the child traffickers and the murderers, and pretending -- before she could possibly even know -- that Trump is planning to deports refugee women and children, instead.

Did you buy her show? Did you think she didn't know about the cameras? Did you think she was standing up for refugees? Well, did you forget about the two and a half million illegals who paid more money than they had to, so that they could evade America's cameras and checks? You should ask yourself: why would somebody pay much more than they had to, and risk a very dangerous entry, simply in order to get in off the record, when they could have had shelter, food and a free flight to a sanctuary city instead, under Biden? What do you suppose they were doing?

I think you know. We've seen it in evey major city in which illegals have arrived. Fortunately, they're getting rounded up and shipped back now.

I have respected your knowledge of scripture. I suppose a man may be good at scripture and useless at political solutions.

[Belinda]

Mariann Budde improves the public image of the Episcopalian Church. The Church must stand for human rights as did Jesus. The power of Mariann Budde is spiritual and moral.

She is a rallying point not only for Americans but also for those of us who seek a reasonable religion.

If the Church stood for *human rights* it would long ago have taken a position against open advocacy of the policy that convinced millions and millions of illegals to cross the border and in the act commit a crime. You see? The actual *crime* falls on those who encouraged this.

True, this problem of encouraging open borders is actually a Republican platform (the Wall Street Journal business class) because they love to dilute the value of labor. So, how shall the core crime be assessed? Who will do it? Who has the authority?

Budde is an extremely superficial exponent of an extremely weak Christian position. It is devoid of a sound and rigorous base in either theology or ethics. But you know nothing about any of that because, as I recently said, you are *about as Christian as a plate of French toast*.

Actual Christian ethics has a great deal to offer when it comes to examining the current economic and political structures. It also has something to say about the preservations of borders, of established communities, and a great deal else.

Rounding them up, putting them on busses and planes, and returning them to their homelands could very easily be defended as a real act of *justice* totally in conformity with Christian-based ethical concepts.

You have a twisted sense of those ethics, and you are similarly screwed up as is Bishop Budd. (I mean this only in relation to the concepts I just mentioned.)

Don’t take this personally. You are one among millions and millions with a similar frame of mind.

I don't deserve your praise "similarly screwed up as is Bishop Budd(sic"). I have neither her opportunity to insult Trump and Co to their faces nor her opportunity to show the Episcopal Church the way, the truth, and the life

[Immanuel Can]

I have respected your knowledge of scripture. I suppose a man may be good at scripture and useless at political solutions.

A Christian knows there AREN'T any "political solutions." Politics does not cure what's wrong with this world. In many ways, politics IS what's wrong with this world.

Guess who else knows it? That august theologian called "Sting":

"There are no political solutions
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitutions
There is no bloody revolution
We are spirits in the material world."

[Belinda]

I have respected your knowledge of scripture. I suppose a man may be good at scripture and useless at political solutions.

A Christian knows there AREN'T any "political solutions." Politics does not cure what's wrong with this world. In many ways, politics IS what's wrong with this world.

Guess who else knows it? That august theologian called "Sting":

"There are no political solutions
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitutions
There is no bloody revolution
We are spirits in the material world."

In many ways politics is what's wrong with the world. Surely then each man ought to take up his cross of service within this terrible world.

[Immanuel Can]

Budde is an extremely superficial exponent of an extremely weak Christian position.

Sort of a "Budde Lite"?

[Immanuel Can]

Surely then each man ought to take up his cross of service within this terrible world.

One had better serve in such a way as to help not hurt. Budde understands "serve" to mean, "allow drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters to run free."

I don't think we should serve the interests of the cartels, do you?

But why are there drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters in this world? What's to be done about them, too? That's the more important question. And Budde Lite has no answer for that. All she has is empty, virtue-signaling gestures. We've had more than enough of those lately.

[Belinda]

Surely then each man ought to take up his cross of service within this terrible world.

One had better serve in such a way as to help not hurt. Budde understands "serve" to mean, "allow drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters to run free."

I don't think we should serve the interests of the cartels, do you?

But why are there drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters in this world? What's to be done about them, too? That's the more important question. And Budde Lite has no answer for that. All she has is empty, virtue-signaling gestures. We've had more than enough of those lately.

What rubbish! Now you really are scraping the bottom of your barrel.

[Immanuel Can]

Surely then each man ought to take up his cross of service within this terrible world.

One had better serve in such a way as to help not hurt. Budde understands "serve" to mean, "allow drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters to run free."

I don't think we should serve the interests of the cartels, do you?

But why are there drug-lords, thugs, sex-traffickers and child molesters in this world? What's to be done about them, too? That's the more important question. And Budde Lite has no answer for that. All she has is empty, virtue-signaling gestures. We've had more than enough of those lately.

What rubbish! Now you really are scraping the bottom of your barrel.

You're out of answers. And you know I'm right, too.

[Atla]

Are you training to become a cult leader? In order to be a successful cult leader, maybe you could be more explicit about these higher realms of thought and knowledge.

Training?!? I run a very successful cult I’ll have you know. I’ve perfected my mind control techniques and everything.

As expected from the late incarnation of the Hyperborean Apollo. Keep up the good work. I wish I was a Hyperborean. You still wonder sometimes whether all the stuff you keep telling us is just bollocks and you're a parody of yourself, or whether all you say is true. But one day all the doubt will be gone and you will be a true cult leader.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What specifically seems like “bollocks”?

If you specify what you wish clarified, I will break off from group sex with my teen posse and try, very seriously to answer you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

René Guénon from Crisis of the Modern World

The acceptance of individualism necessarily implies a refusal to admit any authority higher than the individual, as well as any faculty of knowledge superior to individual reason; the two things are inseparable from one another. As a consequence the modern outlook was bound to reject all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word, authority originating that is to say in the supra-human order, as well as any traditional organization based essentially upon such authority, no matter what form that organization might take, the form varying naturally from one civilization to another.

This was what in fact occurred: as a substitute for the organization qualified to interpret legitimately the religious tradition of the West, Protestantism claimed to set up what it called“freedom of enquiry”, that is to say, interpretation left to the private judgment of individuals, even of the ignorant and the incompetent, and based solely upon the exercise of human reason. It thus represented the analogy, in the religious sphere, of what was to happen in philosophy with the introduction of “rationalism”; the door was thrown open to discussions, divergences and deviations of every sort; and the result was what was to be expected: dispersion in an ever-increasing number of sects, each one standing for no more than the private opinions of a few individuals. As it was impossible, under such conditions, to reach agreement upon doctrine that subject rapidly passed into the background, and it was the secondary aspect of religion, that is to say morals, which came to occupy first place: hence that degeneration into “moralism”, which is so conspicuous a feature of present-day Protestantism.

A phenomenon arose in religion parallel to what we have already alluded to in philosophy; doctrinal dissolution, the disappearance of the intellectual elements of religion, brought about its inevitable consequences: starting from rationalism a decline into sentimentalism was bound to follow, and it is in the Anglo-Saxon countries that the most striking examples of this particular decline are to be observed. Once that stage has been reached there can no longer be any question of religion, even impoverished or deformed, but only of “religiosity”, vague sentimental aspirations that is to say, unsanctioned by any real knowledge; and to this final phase correspond theories such as William James “religious experience”, which goes so far as to see in the “subconscious" the means of entering into communion with the divine. At this point the final products of religious decadence fuse with those of the philosophical decline:“religious experience" merges into “pragmatism”,in the name of which the notion of a limited God is stipulated as being more “advantageous” than that of an infinite God, because it is possible to feel sentiments for him comparable to those which can be felt for a superior man; and at the same time through the appeal to the subconscious a link is established with spiritualism and all the pseudo-religions which are so characteristic of our time, and which we have examined in other writings.

In another direction Protestant morality, dispensing more and more with any doctrinal basis, ends by degenerating into what may be called “lay morality”, which numbers among its partisans the representatives of all shades of “liberal Protestantism” as well as the declared adversaries of every sort of religious idea; fundamentally both groups are dominated by the same tendencies, the only difference being that everybody does not go so far in the logical development of all that these tendencies imply

Actually, religion being essentially a form of tradition, the anti-traditional spirit cannot help being anti-religious; it begins by denaturing religion and ends by suppressing it altogether, wherever it is able to do so. Protestantism is illogical from the fact that, while doing its utmost to “humanize” religion, it nevertheless permits the survival, at least theoretically,of a supra-human element, namely revelation; it hesitates to drive negation to its logical conclusion, but, by exposing revelation to all the discussions which follow in the wake of purely human interpretations, it does in fact reduce it practically to nothing; and when one knows that there are some who, while continuing to call themselves “Christians”, no longer even admit the divinity of Christ, it is permissible to suppose that such people, perhaps without being aware of it, stand much closer to complete negation than to genuine Christianity.

Such contradictions, moreover, should not cause undue surprise since, in whatever sphere they may occur, they are a symptom of the disorder and confusion of our times, just as the incessant subdivision of Protestantism is but one of the numerous instances of that dispersion into multiplicity which, as we have observed, is to be met with everywhere in modern life and modern science. Furthermore, it is natural that Protestantism, animated as it is by a spirit of negation, should have given birth to that dissolving “criticism” which, in the hands of the so-called “historians of religion”, has become a weapon of offense against all religion; in this way, while affecting not to recognize any authority except that of the Scriptures, it has itself contributed in large measure to the destruction of that very same authority, of the minimum of tradition, that is to say, which it still affected to retain; once launched, the revolt against the traditional outlook could not be arrested in mid-course.

An objection might be raised at this point: even though it broke away from the Catholic organization, might not Protestantism, from the fact that it none the less admitted the Scriptures, have preserved the traditional doctrine which they contain? It is the introduction of "free criticism" which invalidates any such hypothesis, since it opens the door to every sort of individual fantasy; the conservation of the doctrine, moreover, presupposes an organized traditional teaching, whereby the orthodox interpretation is maintained, and in point of fact this teaching has been identified, in the West, with the Catholic Church.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I suspect that what I have just included here will amount to a tl;dr for most who participate here. No matter. I have resolved that largely I am not so much in a conversation with the ideologues and fanatics, the fractured and dissolving people who participate here, but that rather I am in a conversation with theorists who have involved themselves in a depth-consideration of just this: the crisis of the modern world.

I know, I know, BigMike interprets my attitude as “condescension” and, additionally (importantly and fundamentally) cannot in any sense understand the range of concerns that animate me. But here is the other important thing: nor can Immanuel Can. This is not really meant as some sort of challenge or ‘call out’ to try to get Immanuel to engage, but is simply me working out my ideas in a public space and mostly for my own benefit.

AJ: You are involved in a strange, rather late, bastardized version of Christianity.

Immanuel: Actually, it's the original form of Christianity.

Here is, I think, the best way to illustrate why I believe it is metaphysics that must be of primary concern, and not historical specificity, as one tries to arrive at a *core* within one’s religious life that can stand up to the imprecations of *modernity* (as emblemized, and very nicely, by BigMike): We live in a vast Cosmos and surely there are other planets and other intelligences similar to our own. Let’s accept that as a fact. How would we communicate with such intelligences if we tried to communicate what is of essential value within this tradition known as Christianity? Obviously, our Earth-based story and all the Earth-bound history which comprises the Tale would not have effect. Carry this idea further and I think it is clear that standing behind The Story of Christianity (and any religion) is content that can only be understood intellectually. In this sense it is Logos that is the topic.

My assertion is the following: Immanuel is a representative of that destructive Protestantism which, progressively and inevitably, undermines the very foundations of the System (which seeks to express metaphysical and if you will *supernatural* truths through highly potent symbols. Symbols charged with metaphorical content. And symbols that must be penetrated and their meaning extracted.

I draw a comparison between Immanuel Can who destroys the possibility for any modern to appreciate what is vital and important in the Christian tradition, and BigMike who shows you exactly where the turning away leads: to a pure, an absolute, a rigorous and a determined rejection of everything that I refer to by reference to *higher knowledge* *metaphysics* and all that supposes a quote/unquote divine order that can be realized through internal, intuitive, intellectual processes.

[Alexis Jacobi]

When Guénon speaks deprecatingly of a modern form of *individualism* (with a root in the Protestant rebellion), he refers really to all of us who, as I suggest, are fractured particles in an intellectual and mental and psychological present where we cannot agree and we do not agree on any level. I obviously use the word *agreement* in a far larger sense than merely coinciding opinions on topical matters. We do not agree, and we cannot agree, as to what sort of world we live in! In fact we describe *the world* in very very different terms. Compare for example BigMike’s ultra-reductionism to sheer physicalism with Immanuel Can’s toddler-level theological concepts of Adam & Eve (oops, sorry: I mean The Original Mating Pair) and every other *pillar* of his “belief-system”. It is all fantastic story. But here’s the thing: Just as BigMike tells us that his view of physics is *absolutely and undeniably true*, and cannot be argued against, Immanuel Can does performs a corresponding manoeuvre when he presents his elaborate religious narrative, and then — and this is important — tells those who listen that they must get down on their knees before this Imago (whatever he means by the spirit of Jesus Christ and of God) and if we do not then, sorry Charlie! we will soon by frying in those dread nether-regions where the Truly Evil wind up.

These Systems actually correspond to each other. And note: You heard it here first folks and from the cooly refreshing orifice of The Hyperboean Apollo where marvelously frosty breezes of truth enter your intellectual world and plant seeds of New Awareness!

[Alexis Jacobi]

The issue is Spiritual Authority and, naturally insofar as BigMike is an emblem, the notion of Authority in all possible senses. Note that BigMike in very clear terms presents himself as not merely an opiner and a potential authority but as the mouthpiece of True Authority which emerged (from the brain and presumably epiphenomenal emergence) to show the way for humanity to ascend to new levels. His mission (obviously!) corresponds to that of any garden-level religious evangelist. It is all so transparent and yet it likely fools people who have been primed to receive such reductionist perversions of intellectualism.

So let’s face it: What we are really talking about here is that of Authority. What is is or should be; how it comes into our world; from what and then also why, to what ends. The CORE of the Questions are here.

Yes, yes, Immanuel, I certainly look forward to you tossing up a few color-coded quotes from Scripture — right from the moth of Jesus! — to protect your sense that you are right; that you have got the true Message; and everything else. You see, if your sense of Authority is punctured (in the eyes of your peers) you cannot carry on in quite the same way. Thus it is crucial to keep building it up from time to time.

And it goes without saying that BigMike also has his Physicalist Gospel that he cuts-n-pastes regularly ….

[Alexis Jacobi]

This paragraph is especially interesting:

A phenomenon arose in religion parallel to what we have already alluded to in philosophy; doctrinal dissolution, the disappearance of the intellectual elements of religion, brought about its inevitable consequences: starting from rationalism a decline into sentimentalism was bound to follow, and it is in the Anglo-Saxon countries that the most striking examples of this particular decline are to be observed. Once that stage has been reached there can no longer be any question of religion, even impoverished or deformed, but only of “religiosity”, vague sentimental aspirations that is to say, unsanctioned by any real knowledge; and to this final phase correspond theories such as William James “religious experience”, which goes so far as to see in the “subconscious" the means of entering into communion with the divine. At this point the final products of religious decadence fuse with those of the philosophical decline:“religious experience" merges into “pragmatism”,in the name of which the notion of a limited God is stipulated as being more “advantageous” than that of an infinite God, because it is possible to feel sentiments for him comparable to those which can be felt for a superior man; and at the same time through the appeal to the subconscious a link is established with spiritualism and all the pseudo-religions which are so characteristic of our time, and which we have examined in other writings.

As in Immanuel Can’s case and because what supports his belief is a set of toddler tales that he cannot break away from (or the entire system collapses), it is effectively impossible to take the religious model seriously, and it collapses. But the individual, psychologically, cannot do without all that which apparently upholds the Belief System, so it is grappled with even more ferocity.

It becomes a strange demented *rationalism* that nevertheless cannt really be understood to *stand on its own two feet* in a viable sense, and so — check this — it must fall into that sentimentalism that Guénon refers to. Now, examine the actual motivational stance of nearly everyone who writes on this forum: it is mostly just that: Sentimentalism. Feelings. Gripings. Emotional flare-ups. Bickering. Outbursts of partial intellectualism that drools out of the sides of childish mouths!

The Hyperborean Apollo comes to rescue you-all from your various prisons! See! I have unlocked the locks. You did not notice, did you? There is nothing keeping you in those dirty cages filled with years & years of your own bodily waste!

The Hyperborean Prophet: Arise! Arise, I say! Come out into the Light of Day!