Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 3:40 pm
'That's very silly of them, then.
Our entire moral and legal tradition, to say nothing of the educational system, the medical system, our human rights, and all sorts of things normally taken to be "right-spectrum" causes are deeply indebted to what has been called "the Judeo-Christian tradition." They're like an idiot sitting on a tree branch, and trying to saw it off between them and the trunk. If they succeed, then they fail.
Having myself studied Christian philosophy somewhat closely, and from an open-minded perspective, I am certain that Christian motive (if I can call it that) has achieved many important things. I make an effort to say this all the time. It is unwise to dismiss Christian achievement throughout European history.
However, and even though this is true, it does not in my view protect the Christian religion, or the Christian world-picture, or the darker side of Christianity (which certainly does exist) from a critical posture. The problem, or one notable problem, is that Christianity sets itself up as indispensable in the same sense that Judaism describes itself as *the only route* that can be taken. Judaism certainly makes this claim and could never be ecumenical -- but here I refer to hardcore Judaism of the Orthodox sort. Reform Judaism decoupled itself from the Jewish historical mission and became Judaism-lite (I assume you know this but most reading here have no idea, at any level, what Judaism is or
any aspect of its history). To understand Jewish Mission you have to return to the bona fide sources. Therefore, I find Adam Green's videos that show rabbis talking, intimately, about *real Jewish belief* to be particularly revealing.
It is a destructive, exclusive, intolerant religious modality. It could have a hundred or a thousand positive elements but in this sense, the sense of absolute and sheer intolerance, combined with a will to do away and destroy that which opposes Judaism and the Jewish historical mission, this religious ideology can be, and should be, examined closely and critically. However and with that said, I know that you are fundamentally a believer of this sort. Effectively a neo-Jewish Christianesque operative. You describe yourself as Judaism's junior helper. You actually believe that *helping the Jews (even when they are anti- and non-Christian) wins you succor and favor from what you term HaShem (the Jewish term meaning "the Word that cannot be pronounced"). My efforts? Only to a) expose you to yourself and b) to others as well.
But you are only interesting to me because you illustrate the larger picture of what these Jewish and Christian belief-systems do through their belief. I regard it -- please excuse me -- as a form of madness. But that does not mean that I dismiss what is valid, relevant and important in Christian (or Jewish) philosophy. So in this sense I am in a strange and somewhat torturous position. I do not desire to make a mistake of acute rejection (of what is valuable) but I have no choice except to see the belief-system (and you illustrate this perfectly and to a *t*) as based in sheer lunacy! And I say this not because I am challenging you to retort but because, after more than a year, I have concluded that your belief-system is based out of lunacy.
And insofar as it connects, as indeed it does, to the central root of strict Judaic orthodoxy and Judaic intolerance, I must regard it and its pathological elements as something I must comment on.
They're like an idiot sitting on a tree branch, and trying to saw it off between them and the trunk. If they succeed, then they fail.
The wisest approach, even in a critical project, is one that is genuine, circumspect, as thoughtful as possible, as encompassing as possible, and yet also that remains trenchant. As a bona fide junion partner to the Jewish historical project (I hope you won't mind this label) I could not expect you to have any attitude except that of a *true-believer*. I do not wish to modify your beliefs. What I desire to do is to forumate them accurately, to paraphrase them responsibly.
I believe that the metaphor of *sawing the branch you are suspended on* is one that must be thought through. But since I also believe that the Christian *picture* is essentially false and cannot be sustained, that it must be modified. But how? You cannot modify it without, in a sense corresponding to your metaphor, cutting into the very core of it and rendering it impossible.
You of all people know this! You will not allow
one iota of ultra-traditional belief to be modified. You recognize, more than most, that doing this puts the entire belief-system in danger. So you force yourself to belief what cannot be believed in order to protect the edifice. This is what I learned from you. You are a great teacher for this reason (though you do not achieve what you desire to: conversion).
In this sense. and for these reasons, we do not have any choice except to *cut the branch*. What then?
We land on the ground. And from a position, now grounded in reality, we then make decisions.
You see? Each encounter with you
induces the sort of clarifying statements that I make. You
evoke these.
But must failure result? According to you failure is condemnation to the hell-realm you speak of. Thagt, according to you, is the ultimate and the most substantial 'loss'. That is failure. But since I cannot regard your puritanical belief as being real, and because I have no choice but to be on the ground, I have to look at these questions differently.
And in this sense I could be said to illustrate similar through-processes by those on the Dissident Right. Though it must be remarked that there is a very strong Dissident Right Christian faction that I have not mentioned (take E Michael Jones as an example).
No wonder I haven't heard of your guys. Clearly, they aren't very bright. They don't seem to have any sense at all of the derivation of their own civilization. But not being bright hasn't stopped the Left from gaining a large audience, so the question returns again: why can the Left spout rubbish and have media, education, politics and so on boom their message and get their political pollicies adopted on a widespread basis, while the pack of renegades you mention remain practically invisible to the world?
They still don't sound like a "dangerous" bunch. They just sound prejudiced and ill-informed.
Actually some of them are very bright indeed. But I do register the only opinion you could have of someone who does not accept the inner structure of your essentially intolerant religious belief-system. Not only are the not *bright* they must, when rejecting Christianity and the Judaic assertions and assumptions that empower and propel it, be aligned with *Satanic* power, or in Jewish terms with *Amalek*: the perpetual enemy and opponent of the Jews and the Jewish project.
I do not know exactly how to respond to the work *prejudiced*. You gather I assume that I try to explain things in a *balanced* way, not taking one side or the other necessarily. Sometimes I do agree that they are ill-informed, but then I also note that they are differently-informed, or critically-informed, and in comparison (for example) you and people like you -- informed by religious commitment -- can be descibed as not sufficiently informed.