Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

A position that is free of metaphysics is a position that uses metaphysics heuristically. Pragmatic people choose the metaphysical stance that most helps us to lead good lives.
Like AI, metaphysics is a tool not a master.
True, epistemology is aided by neuroscience and psychology. Also true, ontology is aided by physics. What remains of epistemology and ontology after the best of science has been applied, is best dealt with pragmatically and with imagination applied to contemporary perils.

You have simply outlined, and expressed something about your own intellectual nature, a metaphysical project. You are, in your way, a post-Christian re-visionist. Your vantage is simply put one constructed on post-Christian predicates (be these what they are in our present).

I do not have much reason to “argue against” as many good reasons (metaphysical ones!) to ally with you.

That is, naturally, why I do not careen into anti-Christian tirades and get stuck in the rut of IC condemnation. (As so many do). There is so much extremely elevated material within Christian thought. It is FOUNDATIONAL to our very selves.

To those I intone the following mantric message:

Far better to understand this and work with it. It is there and will remain there though you tear your eyes, hair and ears from your own head.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Yep. Every thought is metaphysical. Some are poncier than others. Ment'ul ennit?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Just as Fearless Leader, empowered by concepts of Order and Law, is bringing Corrective Force into our nation’s glorious Capital, so too, but at a far higher level, do I the Apollonian Wonder, chase delinquent thoughts from your child-minds; castigate the barbarous Christian Sadist, and begin to line the streets of your minds with gold and golden rays from the true Medicinal Sun.

What little thanks I get! But such is my serviceful attitude however. I am your Ever Well-Wisher!

[Atla]

Doing more drugs could intesify the psychosis, you could reach even greater heights with them.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Just as Fearless Leader, empowered by concepts of Order and Law, is bringing Corrective Force into our nation’s glorious Capital, so too, but at a far higher level, do I the Apollonian Wonder, chase delinquent thoughts from your child-minds; castigate the barbarous Christian Sadist, and begin to line the streets of your minds with gold and golden rays from the true Medicinal Sun.

What little thanks I get! But such is my serviceful attitude however. I am your Ever Well-Wisher!

Yeah. You can poncify absolutely anything.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It’s really true!

[Martin Peter Clarke]

A position that is free of metaphysics is a position that uses metaphysics heuristically. Pragmatic people choose the metaphysical stance that most helps us to lead good lives.
Like AI, metaphysics is a tool not a master.
True, epistemology is aided by neuroscience and psychology. Also true, ontology is aided by physics. What remains of epistemology and ontology after the best of science has been applied, is best dealt with pragmatically and with imagination applied to contemporary perils.

You have simply outlined, and expressed something about your own intellectual nature, a metaphysical project. You are, in your way, a post-Christian re-visionist. Your vantage is simply put one constructed on post-Christian predicates (be these what they are in our present).

I do not have much reason to “argue against” as many good reasons (metaphysical ones!) to ally with you.

That is, naturally, why I do not careen into anti-Christian tirades and get stuck in the rut of IC condemnation. (As so many do). There is so much extremely elevated material within Christian thought. It is FOUNDATIONAL to our very selves.

To those I intone the following mantric message:

Far better to understand this and work with it. It is there and will remain there though you tear your eyes, hair and ears from your own head.

Yeahhhh. For 1600 years, almost without question, Christian thought, extremely elevated and extremely debased, became foundational in Eurasia and its colonies from Ireland to Vladivostok, Bergen to Cape Town. Boston to Anchorage. Canada to Tierra del Fuego. Perth to Auckland.

Like metaphysics. It covers ground to the point of uselessness.

Elevation goes way beyond it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Like metaphysics. It covers all ground to the point of uselessness.

While I definitely understand your opinion, and can say that I respect it, I definitely do not agree with what you seem to take away from the consideration of the issue, nor especially about what is actually and really "there": it is a wide, a very wide, assortment of ideas that transcend the specificity of NT Gospel Christianity.

I think it unproductive, non-constructive and plainly silly to take the attitude that you do: "It covers all ground to the point of uselessness".

I think you are talking about something quite different from what I attempt to bring out. You seem in a mode of rejection and resistance. I work in a very different mode.

You added:

Elevation goes way beyond it.

Talk more about this, if you would be so kind.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Like metaphysics. It covers all ground to the point of uselessness.

While I definitely understand your opinion, and can say that I respect it, I definitely do not agree with what you seem to take away from the consideration of the issue, nor especially about what is actually and really "there": it is a wide, a very wide, assortment of ideas that transcend the specificity of NT Gospel Christianity.

I think it unproductive, non-constructive and plainly silly to take the attitude that you do: "It covers all ground to the point of uselessness".

I think you are talking about something quite different from what I attempt to bring out. You seem in a mode of rejection and resistance. I work in a very different mode.

You added:

Elevation goes way beyond it.

Talk more about this, if you would be so kind.

One man's silliness is another man's silliness...

Yep, the history of post-apostolic Christianity covers a vast assortment of ideas. As does the NT, starting with Paul's which prefigure the gospels by a generation. There are some very weird ideas.

There have always been decent, big minded Christians, from the man himself. Universalism can be isolated in, purified from Jesus, is more obvious in Paul. And has always been a thread weaving in the Church, especially in the East. Church Father Gregory of Nyssa especially. Taken up by George MacDonald, an influence on Lewis, one and a half thousand years later. Because it was always there. It's there in Barth, hiding in plain sight, and beyond him in the emergents. Pope George obviously believed it. I bet you Pope Bob does.

I reject and resist Christianity mired in lovelessness. Which, orthodoxly, scripturally, no matter how liberally orthodox (as opposed to liberally heterodox, which is a waste of time, turns wine in to water), is all of it. Intentional transcendent Love would not invent sin, blame us, damn us, require a conditional human sacrifice by suicide. It would be obvious. As I keep saying. Hadn't you noticed?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I reject and resist Christianity mired in lovelessness. Which, orthodoxly, scripturally, no matter how liberally orthodox (as opposed to liberally heterodox, which is a waste of time, turns wine in to water), is all of it. Intentional transcendent Love would not invent sin, blame us, damn us, require a conditional human sacrifice by suicide. It would be obvious. As I keep saying. Hadn't you noticed?

Your mistake is to fail to understand that I have registered your set of issues, and your primary issue. Would you like something signed with an apostille?

It does not matter however, in the larger contexts, what you personally reject.

Further “sin” is perhaps one of the essential metaphysical categories. Does sin exist in nature? No. But is it “invented”? If you said Yes, and all those who take a supposed anti-metaphysical stance do seem to believe that “it is all invented”, I believe you would involve yourself in a big contradiction. Theoretically, you could assert it. But practically? No way!

Anyways, what “sin” is, is understood in varying ways in other traditions. And it is not an invalid term or category — for metaphysical man. So please, stop the pretending. You likely object to some specific Christian categories of what is sinful.

(I do deal on this in my didactic essay White Slaves of Lesbo Island.)

But the real issue is “metaphysical categories” in the widest sense. Or perhaps in an absolutist sense. That conversations transcends Christian specificity.

Intentional transcendent Love would not invent sin, blame us, damn us, require a conditional human sacrifice by suicide. It would be obvious.

I suggest you squint and peer through the fog of symbols. In any case: that is what I (attempt to) do.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

The mistake is entirely yours. 'Sin' is a made up excuse for God. Its best deconstruction is abuse of power. God's the ultimate sinner.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

And how does metaphysics help? How do categories, universals. particulars and all that bollocks help? How does it help ordinary people in need of social justice that is conceptually denied them?

[Alexis Jacobi]

You know I could work through this argument and it would be very easy (at least I believe so) to show your own contradiction, right?

Sin is a made up excuse for God? Your a priori shines through. You have not proven that God is real. I.e. internally.

Whatever “God” is is defined in many different ways by many different people and peoples in historical contexts. It just so happens that in yours you have made that decision, or concluded it.

I am not too much interested in changing your mind. According to you your realization was hard won.

I am not making a mistake in accurately representing your belief. I think I am stating it pretty accurately.

But still it seems to me you have it backwards: people discovered (or discover, present tense) that God is real. It is actual knowledge for them. And what “sin” is, is defined in relation to that necessarily larger metaphysical picture.

Its best deconstruction is abuse of power.

I do not understand this sentence. It seems to me that what you wish to say is that it is best to deconstruct the ‘abuse of power’ which, in your view, is the invented notion of God.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And how does metaphysics help? How do categories, universals. particulars and all that bollocks help? How does it help ordinary people in need of social justice that is conceptually denied them?

These are two distinct questions.

Though “metaphysical categories” certainly operate behind each of them.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I'm sure they do mate. And? So? They operate behind everything. Stoop to conquer will you. What am I, the clod on the bus, missing? Or if I need it explaining, it can't be. I either Thomistically, Junglianly, intuitively know, or I can not. I'm hard wired invincibly ignorant.

What do you know that I can not?