Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:39 pm**

"Point being, where ever we might draw the dividing line between "you" and "not you" that boundary is a conceptual invention of the human mind". --Felasco

Sorry, but this type of thinking really annoys me. I have been around others who say exactly the same thing, and it is in my eyes utterly wrong. We might argue over whether the appropriate place to draw the boundary between ourselves and the air is our nose, lungs, or cell membranes, but we would *not* argue that it is the moon. There are obvious *sane* limitations to the extent to which boundaries are "arbitrary", and it is thus totally irrational to claim that boundaries are entirely arbitrary.

As I pointed out in my original post, you and I are separated at least in that we do not have access to one another's thoughts (at least, I speak for myself; I do not know what access you have to my own thoughts); to say then that the boundary between the two of us is an entirely "conceptual invention of the human mind" is just nonsense.

Posted: **Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:49 pm**

We might argue over whether the appropriate place to draw the boundary between ourselves and the air is our nose, lungs, or cell membranes, but we would *not* argue that it is the moon.

Um, you are literally made of the by-products of supernova explosions.

As I pointed out in my original post, you and I are separated at least in that we do not have access to one another's thoughts (at least, I speak for myself; I do not know what access you have to my own thoughts); to say then that the boundary between the two of us is an entirely "conceptual invention of the human mind" is just nonsense.

Ok, no problem. There is surely no law against relentlessly ignoring the distortion introduced by the medium you are using to make your observations.

Posted: **Wed Nov 27, 2013 6:17 pm**

Harry wrote:This is, in my own view, a revealing quote - not that you are trying to hide anything. To invalidate another's position, this is a "bold" step to take, and you invalidate mine in more ways than one - from my view in a living, revelatory Christ experienced by others, to my belief in the reality of separate spirit entities, to my overall theological views. Fine, invalidate away, Gustav, but in that you only alienate us (you from me), because my views are backed (variously) by experience, evidence and reasoning, and I will not give them up lightly. You fail to address that experience, evidence and reasoning, preferring (as is your wont) to speak in generalities, so I'm not sure what effect you could possibly hope to have upon me.

'Effect' is a curious concept. I have been thinking over the last few days about the notion of kerygma vs. dike (in the sense of norms and conventions; teaching). I have also been musing over this terribly interesting question of 'the Trickster', which is really to say Hermes, which is also to say 'logos' and which too is also to make a reference to 'Christos', and to the notion, ancient indeed, of messages and what the Messenger brings. It is my contention that all these *things* are---I will avoid using the word 'complex'---intricate and fraught and not at all easy to get to the center of. And though it is easy to push them all aside and to focus life into the very very strict facts of Modern life and View (supply and distribution) still, I believe, the Great Questions still function even if we are deaf to them.

What I notice is that the words when used in vain and abstract conversations simply do not have any power in them. The meaning and the power have gone out of the words. But really what this means, to me, is that meaning and power have gone out of persons. You ask an interesting question about 'what effect I could possibly hope to have' and I find this so curious because:

'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving'.

---Isaiah 6:9

Or the following, with a sort of Promethean breaking of the rule:

I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

---Robert Frost from the poem Directive

I have so many different thoughts going through my head resulting from the stimulation of this topic generally and then also that of your theological conversation with Emmanuel that it will be hard to be at this moment as cogent as I wish. Yet when a topic of theology (or philosophy) remains always abstract and removed from the person, that conversation remains 'safe'. Safe but also (in my view) enfeebled. Everything that I write and think, and desire to write and think, will always have as its focus an attempt to bring abstract thought down into the body of the life we live. In this sense, and in relation to your complaint (about my directness and 'invalidation') I really have nothing to say. You suppose that I am trying to influence you? But what if I am actually trying to fuck you up? If someone declares to you that they don't and won't play by any sort of conventional standards I think you should do some serious thinking, even paranoid thinking! about what they are up to!

I don't see, then, what's invalid about my position.

The ideas you hold, and the way you hold them, are killing you. But again you are not alone. The essential meaning we are dealing on here, as I see it, is exactly what ideas, activities, interpretations, etc., conduce to 'life' and which ideas conduce to 'death'. We are in a literally terrible position because we do not seem to have a clue as to what 'life' really is, or these ideas are changing, and we also (again in my view) do not even recognize how 'dead' we are.

How could you understand my critique then?

I have not had a personal experience of Christ myself, it is true. Nor have you had...

And what have you had the most experience with? Be honest…

This is where the conversation, in my understanding, has the potential to get interesting. It gets interesting because it gets *real*. We also confront an issue of nomenclature. It is I think true and necessary that conversations on Internet forums refrain from getting too specific and too personal, but I would like to say the following: What I have done, even if it has been limited and fractional, is to engage with the 'totality of my being' with spiritual life. Because of your over-rational (mathematical) nature you would I think describe 'Christ' as one specifically defined thing, a thing that you control, effectively. And yet it is a thing that you admit to knowing nothing about. I resist all the limitations of nomenclature and simply cannot take the term 'Jesus Christ' seriously. Why? Because it is made into a meaningless and vain term! If a person is connecting with living currents of life in all departments of their life, then that person is connecting with what 'Jesus Christ' means, as a symbol. It is the blood and the bread of life, the essence or quintessence of life that is expressed in the idea-fact of a summer ripened grape that is squeezed and tasted. And it is in this tasting that it becomes real.

And I would counter that the notion that all of the various spiritual entities are "a part of us" is an egotism, a vanity, and, depending on what you mean, incoherent: how could God, in particular, be wholly contained "within" each one of us; would this not mean that there are multiple Gods?

Actually, and again, it is a question of nomenclature. I am not going to be very effective in expressing myself though because it is only recently that certain ideas are becoming more concrete to me.

My understanding is as follows: we live in a polytheistic world. We have little means to understand what poly-theistic means because we have been so severely indoctrinated by monotheistic doctrines and also thinking patterns. It is though quite intuitively obvious that we live in a world of competing gods. The gods are essentially the various powers and potencies that surround us and they are not One but are Many.

This could begin to be understood by juxtaposing day to night and dawn. Or storm to clear skies or drab grey days. The mysteries of high mountains, or low-land fields, or ponds and streams, and then deserts and wastelands. Tropical spaces filled with abundant life and the cold side of a mountain where there are only rocks and a restless and even violent wind. These are the gods of the terrestrial realm. Those same forces have correspondences in relationships. Consider the image of a storm that has passed overhead with torrential rains and lightening still striking. But then out of the West where the sun is setting there is the last burst of orange-amber light under the clouds that illuminates the whole scene, raking over the ground and making the contours stand out, lighting your face, warming your face. But still some big cold drops of rain are falling and you hear the rather terrifying rumble of thunder overhead in clouds leaden and dark. That is just an image of a reality that also corresponds to an inner, psychic reality. And there are hundreds and tens of hundreds and thousands of similar, but always unique, circumstances. Our 'soul' is a terrestrial creature in reality. But certain monotheistic idea-patterns have fucked us out of immediate understanding of exactly what we are and where we are. And we burned-out under the influence of repressive, restrictive theological dictates and all the gods and goddesses in us demanded a revision. So, when you apply your ready-to-hand (but death-producung) 'logics'…the whole universe really laughs! But you are very definitely not alone in any of this.

So we, Modern Men, live in a world in which we no longer in fact are. If our theology is not connecting to our existence, to the land and the elements, to our bodies and our emotions, can it be described as less than a symptom of malaise? The 'new' currents in theology are those that seek to go back down and into. What you seem to desire is that someone come along and spell this out to you, to engage in the same abstract 'logics' that is, really, the bars of the cage that holds you. But what you don't, and we don't, seem to grasp is how many times it has been if not explained but presented to us. It is that Cup that we've been given that we won't drink from. But you are not alone either in this. My impression is that multitudes of people are genuinely lost and can't find their way home. But I also understand this too since, truthfully, all the Symbols that contain the essence that have power, are in the hands of idiots who do not and perhaps cannot understand. So, meaning becomes (yet again) the issue: Who can define the medicine that we need to come to life? We seem to want life and yet we often choose death.

Where are you going to be in five years time, Harry? In ten? In twenty?

Despite its many imperfections, the Traditions and Rituals of Christianity were understood as the Cure and the Cure of Souls. What 'the Cure' is, just where underground it has gone and how to recover it, seem to me totally relevant questions.

Having said all of that: Gustav, I'm not sure whether I have the stamina to continue this exchange. In conversations, I am a sprinter, not a marathon runner. I hope you pardon me if I refrain from further comment.

I was thinking that you could use a code that you could put in the top left of each post to describe the 'state' you are writing from:

NC: normal consciousness
HOC: high on caffeine
HOA: high on alcohol
SWM: struggling with motivation

Posted: **Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:32 pm**

This is where the conversation, in my understanding, has the potential to get interesting. It gets interesting because it gets *real*.

Imagine the three of us sitting around one of our living rooms and instead of having conversation, saying nothing, and just looking at each other, and being together for the evening. That's real.

Conversation is typically the place we go to hide from being real, the shield we use to protect ourselves. My talk, your talk, serves as our public relations front man that the real us sends out to deal with the world. It's so utterly normal that by the time we're adults the operation is on auto-pilot, and we probably don't even realize we're doing it.

Gustav, the real you, me and Harry don't know shit from shinola about any of these big topics, we've just learned how to dance the dance and talk the talk, and have convinced ourselves that the show we're putting on is real, actors caught up in the parts we're playing. You have the knack for talking the talk for sure, but you're not really fooling anybody, except maybe yourself, just so you know. It's the same for me.

And anyway, as discussed adnaseum above, conversation is not really real, it's just symbology.

Real enough for ya?

Posted: **Wed Nov 27, 2013 9:56 pm**

I can respect your position, certainly, but I don't agree with you. It is true indeed that this is a word-medium and is in that sense 'unreal'. But unlike you I do not see words as being either empty or without potency.

Conversation can be a place to escape, but discourse can also be a place for kerygma. I remember very well people who had the courage to say truthful things to me and those things, received in the correct moment, changed the direction of my life. This goes back to the possibilities and the profundities of 'the word', the possibility of organizing words in such a way that they hold, have and express power ('scripture'). I certainly respect that you don't see that as possible nor 'the real' but we differ on this point. We live certainly in a symbolic world and that may and can mean 'insulated' but I have no doubts that symbols and metaphors can contain power-energy and can have effect.

Felasco wrote:Gustav, the real you, me and Harry don't know shit from shinola about any of these big topics, we've just learned how to dance the dance and talk the talk, and have convinced ourselves that the show we're putting on is real, actors caught up in the parts we're playing. You have the knack for talking the talk for sure, but you're not really fooling anybody, except maybe yourself, just so you know. It's the same for me.

This is the sort of statement that is set up so that you cannot---in humility---respond. A perfect set up for me to respond freely! I have so little 'humility' (and don't want it). Again, I see things differently. A person 'knows what they know', and they use their knowledge in different ways. I think your words should be limited to self-description, if indeed you feel they fit you.

Myself, I find all sorts of 'utterance' in all sorts of places that either point fairly directly to 'truths' or at least point in the right direction. In any case and with certain limits it is worth a shot. I would rather be over-bold and over-step proper bounds than timid.

...conversation is not really real, it's just symbology.

Fundamental disagreement. The power in Word and Vocalization can move worlds. I would challenge you not to lose sight of that possibility. As it is, and with all your *words* so far, you have undermined and invalidated your *intentions*.

Is it possible you are basically uncertain what intentions to have? Or which intentions do have power?

Real enough for ya?

Not even close. Hippy-dippy truth. Mutterings before sleep. Etc.

Posted: **Tue Dec 03, 2013 6:57 pm**

Any argument, even possibly any conversation, that sets itself up in an attempt to 'prove the existence of god', is an exercise in futility. In actual point of fact, from the standpoint of reason and certainly from a scientific and materialist viewpoint (i.e. from the 'situation within the existence that surrounds us'), the only cogent argument is toward an atheism. But not really 'atheism', since atheism is a negation of theism which places said atheism within the theist's domain from the start. The closer truth is that whatever non-theistic viewpoint is being developed and forwarded is something radical and new---new enough that it is still 'bound' to all the argumentation that is fully dominated by theism. It seems then that what this 'atheism' is really doing is defining a whole other platform of outlook that can have, or that seeks not to have, any link with the foundational theistic views (foundational to all times and periods of human history).
Many believe that to 'progress' we have to define a thorough 'atheistic' platform. To these people this is as obvious as simple math.
To hold to notions of 'theism', today, is in a substantial sense an act of madness. But on another extreme it might also be an act of inspiration. It is madness when it is forced to couch itself in various dying and severely damaged theological systems. It is as if the rug had been pulled out from under these theological systems (Catholicism for example) and the entire edifice, with nothing substantial to uphold it, is held in the air not by real and concrete belief-knowledge, but through a sort of 'love' for the gloriousness of the structure. But the structure, in truth, is just a simulacra of what it once was. In this sense you have to be a 'madman' and one capable of holding a hallucination in your imagination to 'believe' it.
There is another alternative. I think it is the only one available, in truth. It is a solution that posits an absolutely unprovable and 'hyperbiological' (and of course hyperbiological and metaphysical) other that is the source of all possibilities of 'becoming', and of course existence itself. It is defined as a realm of Being. It is of course an Ideal world. You can only hold to it insofar as you can hold to the Ideal of it. It can only be an 'imagined world'. To 'believe in' such a 'world of being' is a radical act but largely because it is a refutation of the platform of scientific and materialism as it is coming into focus in our present. Because it is utterly untenable, it is utterly radical. Now, the curious thing is that below and behind any 'theism' today (any of the failing and collapsing systems which are indeed untenable, so untenable that only a nut still believes in them and locates his faith there), there MUST exist precisely this 'absolute other', this hyperbiological notion of a world of being which is distinct from the world in which we live (and die): the temporal 'world of becoming' (that never arrives)(at being). It seems to me that you have to push on the theological systems and force them to this essential and basic untenable position, and indeed if one holds a theistic position, one must of his own will take his belief to this untenable position. Curiously, that is the only position of strength available. It is almost as if one will say: 'I am aware that there is no evidence known or possible to prove the existence of an Ideal Hyperbiological World, and yet I CHOOSE to believe in it. And I choose to allow all fabricated, collapsing, 'simulacra'-visions and representations, to return into the dust from which they arose because it is not the terrestrial form but the supra-physical Ideal which matters and has 'puissance'.
It is as if one remains in allegiance to a King (if you will and I do not in any sense mean 'Christ the King' though it is the same core notion), a King that exists outside of the present and of temporality and is really the promise of a King (and is yet metaphysically real).
In relation to 'that' one holds to idea-values that, on the materialistic plane which becomes and is reduced to a 'production and distribution chain', are seen as outmoded or stupid or unnecessary or as functioning against 'temporal enjoyment'. And it is essentially in that that one holds to a system that has power. Because in this sense the unseen, the invisible, the unknowable, and the hyper-ideal, connects one to a set of ideals toward which to strive. It is in a very real sense a stronger position to take in life.
But one has to be willing to carry it through to its furthest point, and has to be willing to allow everything that is not it (and nothing except the Ideal can be 'it') to dissolve out of one's hands. One will have nothing to 'hold to'.
Now, the problem becomes discovering just what are the tenets demanded by that Ideal and how does a man strive toward it and conform to it?

Posted: **Sat Dec 07, 2013 4:45 pm**

Recently, between some prolific contributors (A and B), an interesting ritual has been rehearsed at extraordinary length on these various pages. A ritual whereby 'rational' brain skills---indeed a particular form and a 'game' of technical or terminological thinking---is brought into service of outrightly obscurantist ideas, which is to imply they arise from 'the graveyard of meaning' and from the ruins of a collapsed theological system. From my perspective it is a most perverse use of the mind, harsh as that sounds, and in reality does harm to a progressive theology. (But when I say 'progressive' I do not mean one that follows Marxian trends, populist trends, or democratic trends. I mean a theology that progresses through modernity and toward a noble and an aristocratic Ideal and toward a demanding and 'noble' personal position).

These recent reams of verbiage (which if they were to be put in a book might be capable of bringing the life of a body to a quick and final end in one fell swoop), is an example of 'dead Christianity', and I wonder if it has a relationship (again in a perverse sense) to the literal worship of the spirits of the dead? Like in some weird Mexican-Aztec Day of the [Theological] Dead? Little pujas with white candles and food offerings before the ancient relic of a Church. Nietzsche wrote something to the effect that the god who had died, that is the description of god that could no longer be seen as functioning really, would continue for some time after said death to appear as a terrifying phantom---perhaps like the spirit of Hamlet's father---demanding things of the living, perplexing them, causing people to get down on their knees in terror and to genuflect before an impossible and fantastic imago.

(Come now, lads, this is not the way to proceed!)

The interesting thing is that the Opponents (and my heavens they are an intimidating lot! one shivers in one's boots as they stroll onto the stage of conversation, swords flashing!)(which is to say limp dicks drooping) are duty-bound to confront the obscurantist goop. Essentially, this is the 'battle' that is being waged in our present! It is a battle among men who have utterly lost their way, in my humble view. On the one side a group of people who seem wedded, not really through anything that could be considered 'reasonable', but through a form of thrall to certain theological edifices, to thanatos-theology, and who are actually articulating a regressive and outrightly obscurantist religious position (that is dying and in the process of leaving the Earth for celestial regions, perhaps similar to The Hunter Gracchus in Kafka's story) but embellished by modernistic discourse; chirpy, confident and over-friendly).

(Wow! When you put a label on it you actually see it for what it is. And this is liberating).

But those who come forward to battle the obvious obscurantism are not really in any better condition. They have two or three 'mechanical'---if 'Medieval' and blunt---intellectual tools that they haul out to attack the approaching Deep-Religionist as he rolls forward in his silver armor with a red cross on a white field. The image that came to mind is a net or a sort of bolo---what are they called?---and that if used artfully against the opponent causes the top-heavy Theologist to topple over from the sheer weight of his theological armory which he carries about as a hermit crab carries his shelled mobile-home. It all looks like a perverse if ineffective game of jousting that, I would suggest, misses all the important points.

(But now, defining those important points, indeed those utterly crucial points, becomes more difficult indeed.)

The 'anti-religionist' has had the conceptual pathways to the possibility of a 'spiritual' conception either utterly destroyed or largely destroyed by modern materialistic and Marxian-materialist concepts. He cannot, it would seem, even conceive of an 'invisible spiritual world' which represents an Ideal to which a man should strive, and so this rather fallen, and tremendously weakened man, has no alternative but to take up residence in and even to 'defend' a weakening and collapsing present that is non-virile and certainly non-heroic.

Similar perhaps to Felasco (who by now has merged completely with Nature and reverted back) this man has no alternative but to become essentially female, one of the earth-bound, one of an ever-expanding multitude. But he has no conceptual tools to define 'true nobility' nor a Higher Metaphysic that he serves. All that has been taken away from him and what he has been left with are pathetic substitutes: simulacra. The only domain that he could really advance in are strictly speaking sheerly material domains. Self-education becomes, again, merely materialistic since there is no longer a conceived metaphysical toward which to strive. I think this is one of the reasons I often sense a 'smallness' in the so-called atheistic position, and also something like 'bitterness'. They despise---and rightfully so---the failed obscurantist theologian and condemn him---also rightfully so---at every turn and with a certain bile too, but they also lack a philosophy that would give them as it were 'wings to soar'. They are 'earth-bound' and locked into purely mechanistic systems.

A present, defined in these terms and having these limited parameters, will reduce you to being little more than a mechanical, social robot. You will move along established rails of thought and always contained by extremely limiting boundaries. Those boundaries will enclose you more and more and you will deeply feel that limitation and resent your reduced status and your ineffectiveness, the robbing of your masculinity, the destruction of the possibility of higher ideals. And because you have no conceptual pathway to anything different (and better) you will be forced to love your reduced status and to defend it like a junkyard dog!

The Theologian goes backward, skippingly. The Opponent gets hopelessly mired in a static present.

Posted: **Sat Dec 07, 2013 8:47 pm**

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:The Theologian goes backward, skippingly. The Opponent gets hopelessly mired in a static present.

You miss the point. The opponent is free to explore any metaphysics. What some of us oppose, limp dicks and all, is any unpalatable ought from is.

Posted: **Sat Dec 07, 2013 10:03 pm**

I seem to recall that that is one of your main points and the thing that most ires you: that someone shall tell you what is right or wrong to do. And by so doing, that someone will limit your fun or put a damper on your activities. There was a post, some pages back on this thread, where you expressed it. I looked for it but didn't find it. Skip too, his principal beef that up in his neck of the woods, filled to the brim from the sound of it by puritanical evangelical sorts, he is surrounded by folks who arrogantly assume that their ethic is the right one, and by God...

There are a number of different issues here and they have to be put on the table. One is that, in Traditionalist spirituality, an implacable spiritual ('higher metaphysical') force and potency is defined. It is understood as an 'is' and not as the subject of debate, or a democratic vote, or group opinion, or today's mood or fashion, or someone's sentimentality. It is understood as being a kind of bedrock of existence, something that underpins existence. Suffice to say that this 'force' is abstract and unrepresentable. Meaning, it cannot be imaged. It is in that sense beyond and outside of conceptualization. And yet (according to this view) it exists. It is seen as eternal and also, I think, constant. I don't know if it can be said that 'it makes demands on man', it is possible that, in truth, man is totally irrelevant to 'it'. But man forges a 'relationship' (bad word in fact) to it, and out of this comes rigorous ethics. In a masculine sense these are the ethics of the warrior, the father, the protector, but essentially one who subjects himself in service to 'it' which is an ideal. Unless I am mistaken, it is in these definitions in relation to an Ideal that, historically, there is the most agreement among various traditions, and by that I mean the old ones, the original ones, the 'pure' ones perhaps.

This sort of definition, and the ethic that arises out of it, is rigorous and demanding. But it is from that 'realm' that all of the ethics we are aware of have come. We live then in degeneration (if one sees it as degeneration and decadence) of certain prime values, certain notions about man, about honor, about correct activity, about ritualism, about spirituality.

In this sense, if degeneration is understood as a real thing, one might look at the present generally with a jaundiced and critical eye. The notion of 'freedom' and the doctrines of liberalism, when taken to their extremes, and when their effects are seen, seem to lead to degeneration. This is certainly my interpretation of the present and very definitely this is the domain (of definition and of understanding) that I struggle in and with. If one 'gives oneself' to the present, one essentially loses oneself in a vital and virile sense. To become strong and to plug up the 'leaks' as it were produced by modernity and encouraged by modernity, one must forge an inner path, and likely too an outer path, that functions against the present. In this sense I have spoken contemptuously of 'the masses', their appetites, their lack of vision, their restlessness and also 'promiscuousness'. (They move instinctively toward those things that provide 'pleasure' and are highly seducible).

When one seeks to move back toward 'original values' and strengthening values, one is in a bit of a bind. One cannot (in my view) embrace what can be called 'common or popular Christianity' and likely no specific religious tradition simply because they are corrupted and contaminated by 'inferior strains' of person (that is a rather harsh way to put it but it is not untrue), and certainly inferior attitudes. If one were to speak strictly of Christianity and not to consider other traditions, one would I think have to make a distinction between a popular and a lower Christianity and a far more demanding and exclusive higher Christianity. Because the relationship that is cultivated, and the patterns that define that relationship, are not at all of the same order. I would actually submit that 'Jesus Christ' is not and never really was a person (even if such a Yeshua did indeed exist at some point in time and even if elements of his personality shine through, as they seem to, the Gospel accounts), but that 'Jesus Christ' is a thought-form, and that Christianity, popularly understood, is a 'thought-form religion' in advanced degeneracy.

But this does not in any sense mean that certain aspects and parts of the Ethics of Christianity no longer have meaning and are now 'invalid'. And you could cut right to the chase with this and speak of the most difficult point: sexual purity and chastity. Even in your case it seems to be one of the big ones, and for you (unless you were being ironic) 'sex, drugs and rock and roll' comprise the best part of life and living. Even if this is not true for you, the fact is that culture generally has degenerated in astounding ways and 'pleasure and the pursuit of pleasure' is established as a primary goal of life and living. I think it can be safely said, and truly said, that this represents veritable perversion of what *should be* the higher ideals of a man, of men, of people, and of civilization. But at this point just try to *sell* that value/those values popularly and they will indeed hang your ass up on a tree!

In my view there is no alternative to the present. What has been set in motion is too huge, too powerful, too established, too popular, to be reversed. Actually what it begins to look like, to me, is that populations need to be mollycoddled in the extreme. The basic organization of society and of civilization is progressively being converted into a sort of 'pleasure center' for the common man. I am not making this up. When once there may have functioned more rigorous ideals at the base of civilization, this is now dramatically shifting. I think anyone who sees TV from time to time, goes to a Mall, or just walks out on the street can see what is emerging. And there is nothing one can do about it except perhaps stand aside (and await the various disasters predicted, depending on one's aesthetic and what aspect of the present one holds in contempt!)

But, the fact remains: higher ideals have been established for (and pardon me, I don't think you like this way of talking) higher men. To be a higher man is a life-work and to be such a man, as I said, one must almost literally go against the grain of the present. The life of such a Higher Man is one of defining and living in 'oughts'. And by living in said 'oughts' one begins to disappear substantially off the radar of the common man's sense of relevancy. Those definitions, those paths, those activities, those requirements, are unintelligible to 'him'.

uwot wrote:You miss the point. The opponent is free to explore any metaphysics. What some of us oppose, limp dicks and all, is any unpalatable ought from is.

So, with all that said, I would suggest that I did not 'miss the point' and would say that it seems to me you, uwot, are quite possibly not too sure of your point, nor do you seem to understand what the greater point(s) within this Conversation are. The anti-religious position, or the atheistic position, is cogent insofar as it holds up 'reality' to an obscurantist religionist who has deceived himself and believes he can live within imperfect and collapsing descriptions. He will not accept that they have collapsed and may not even be able to see how. If only he would admit that they are failed and collapsed! Because then he could assert:

I don't CARE if they are failed and no longer function! The visualized container of thought-form religion is not now and never was the real issue! It is the Principals that stand behind religious expression, and all higher religious expression, in this world and in all worlds, which must be understood, and it is that that has relevancy and potency and meaning. I don't really know now exactly what all that is but I may be able to begin to find out.

How a man places himself in relation to that is the question. It was then, it is now, and it will always be.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:28 am**

This is I think a better---certainly more 'manly'---way of conceiving what is required of us. Let us conceive of a god who 'says':

A Hypothetical God wrote:"I will give you one chance and one chance alone to arrive at understanding. You will be tossed into a confusing tumult and all you will have is signs and guiding lights placed within your own person. Metaphors exist and swarm within and without you and so you must be sharp and clear and must figure it all out. Your sincerity in relation to the issues you face is all that is required. You were born with it and no matter what you must increase your 'talent'. And you must capitalize on every gain and advance you make. If you succeed in augmenting consciousness and in participating in and contributing to the establishment of Divine Order in the Earth, inside yourself and outside, I will preserve your life and I will regenerate you again in the world to come. But if you squander your existence, if you remain deaf to the omens and signs and charged metaphors, there will be little mercy. And if you work AGAINST the processes of consciousness, order, intelligence and harmony, I will see to it that your name is erased from the Book of Life; that your existence is nullified; that in Existence you cease to exist. This is not a game and it is not a joke. I advise you to wake up now and order yourself accordingly…"

Oooooh. I like it!

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2013 3:10 am**

He taught the people for only three plus years and yet in one generation, transformed the world and affected history like no other has. A couple of thousand years later his followers number in the billions yet, the practice of Christianity today, hardly resembles the early teachings and what is interesting is, this was foretold would happen. Revelation 13, NKJV

As a struggling small minority, Christianity had no status in the Roman empire. People of this faith were considered scapegoats and punishment could very easily mean death. It was widely spoken of as undermining the Roman empire and we read in history how the Christians were fed to the lions, pitch poured on them and set alight and still the early Church survived.

In AD 306 a new Roman Emperor came to power. This was Constantine the Great, a shrewd politician and a powerful leader, who won battle after battle. During his reign the national sentiment against Christianity began to reverse and went from being a persecuted sect, to openly holding positions in courts and governments. If you wanted to advance in the military it was simpler to become Christian, as all of the hierarchy in the military were Christian. Of course the converts of the Roman Empire brought with them many of their former pagan beliefs and practices.

That is the real change. That is when the Christianity really becomes the Christianity that it is today. The people who are running the show are not Christian. Over time church leaders embraced the beliefs of flamboyant ceremonies, part of the pagan religions and introduced and taught superstitions and man made traditions, none of which are the simple commands of God.

So coming out in the fourth century the church is now unrecognisable as is the church of today.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:22 am**

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:I seem to recall that that is one of your main points and the thing that most ires you: that someone shall tell you what is right or wrong to do.

That’s not the point either. I’m quite capable of telling people to go fuck themselves and fortunate to live in a time and place where doing so is fairly low risk. What most ires me is the misery heaped upon generations of innocent men, women and children by self-righteous busybodies and bullies, who believe, as you do, that there is “an Ideal” (What is it with you religious nuts and capitalisation?) that everyone would be better off, if they were forced to subscribe to.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:And by so doing, that someone will limit your fun or put a damper on your activities. There was a post, some pages back on this thread, where you expressed it. I looked for it but didn't find it. Skip too, his principal beef that up in his neck of the woods, filled to the brim from the sound of it by puritanical evangelical sorts, he is surrounded by folks who arrogantly assume that their ethic is the right one, and by God...

Quite. So what’s different about your Ideal? As far as I can tell, it’s the usual back to basics, golden age fantasy. It’s all about the fall and your contempt for people who don’t share your highfalutin values. Nice religious nutters at least feel pity or woe for the unfortunate souls who are enjoying life.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:This is I think a better---certainly more 'manly'---way of conceiving what is required of us. Let us conceive of a god who 'says':

A Hypothetical God wrote:"I will give you one chance and one chance alone to arrive at understanding. You will be tossed into a confusing tumult and all you will have is signs and guiding lights placed within your own person. Metaphors exist and swarm within and without you and so you must be sharp and clear and must figure it all out. Your sincerity in relation to the issues you face is all that is required. You were born with it and no matter what you must increase your 'talent'. And you must capitalize on every gain and advance you make. If you succeed in augmenting consciousness and in participating in and contributing to the establishment of Divine Order in the Earth, inside yourself and outside, I will preserve your life and I will regenerate you again in the world to come. But if you squander your existence, if you remain deaf to the omens and signs and charged metaphors, there will be little mercy. And if you work AGAINST the processes of consciousness, order, intelligence and harmony, I will see to it that your name is erased from the Book of Life; that your existence is nullified; that in Existence you cease to exist. This is not a game and it is not a joke. I advise you to wake up now and order yourself accordingly…"
Oooooh. I like it!

You're welcome to it.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2013 3:03 pm**

uwot wrote:Quite. So what’s different about your Ideal? As far as I can tell, it’s the usual back to basics, golden age fantasy. It’s all about the fall and your contempt for people who don’t share your highfalutin values. Nice religious nutters at least feel pity or woe for the unfortunate souls who are enjoying life.

One difference is that I conceive of the need to define an ethic that is exclusively for myself. That is one of the reasons I went through the trouble of making some clarifying statements about 'the present'. The trends that direct the present are simply too powerful. So, the only position open to one is to define the values that one understands as being ultimately relevant and necessary and to do one's best to live them.

You mention 'golden age' and 'back-to-basics' and describe it as a fantasy, and this is interesting. On one hand it is true, I mean as a 'fantasy'. But that is one of my points: in one way or another you and I and everyone live in our 'imagined world' and it is quite literally 'a fantasy'. Based on limited conversation with you, and in truth your conversation is so very limited despite your reading of 'a whole stack of books', unfortunately, it would I think help you to understand that it is the low-level 'fantasy' of low-level men that is getting installed within the consciousness, not just of a man or some men but quite literally 'the whole world', which is producing the present, defined both positively and negatively (but more negatively in the present conversation). Now, you are quite free to define that as 'progress' and as the best of all possible worlds and at least in some ways I would agree with you. The present has opened up extraordinary opportunities to huge groups of people such as has never occurred in Earth's history. But if that opportunity is simply and only to create a walking and talking appetite who uses such freedom only to be squandered in (as I say) pleasures like cinema or sports or what-have-you, I think that this can be at the very least spoken about, critiqued. You may feel no compulsion to critique it and you have no obligation to do so. But there is a higher-level argument that does and it is by no means exclusively *religious*.

But the issue is really different. The more that one looks into and reads the old sources: the origins of Greek religion and culture, the origins of Hindu religion and culture, Persian culture, etc., one comes across material which points to certain essences in the valuation of life itself. In this sense it has already all been done and even thought. It seems to become a matter of gleaning out of existent material and ideas the conceptions and values that one recognizes as important and valid and then finding a way to institute it in one's own life.

The question Why would a person do that? seems to me pretty unintelligent but I will make an effort to spell it out. Every and any achievement that you could name requires a focus and also a sacrifice. A man who achieves something extraordinary in, say, microbiology, will have sacrificed his life-energy in a significant sense to his achievement. No pain, no gain. Do I really have to spell this out to you, uwot? To become a successful athlete, the same. There is no value and no achievement that you could name that would not require sacrifice and focus. So, encouraging such focus and sacrifice has been, is now, and will always be a part of this life's tasks. (Perhaps except for someone like you, at least according to the impression of you from what you write).

Now, I have only mentioned concrete and 'material' tasks and foci. There is of course a whole other level that has to do with the moral, ethical and spiritual person. It has to do with the entire way that a man organizes his life. 'Religion' in this sense is comprised of attitudes and activities that encompass all that one does 24/7/365. So, a man choses to surround himself with activities of discipline, with limits, and also within choices whereby his energy is focussed. You can find this sort of ethic in all cultures, everywhere, but especially perhaps in the older ones: Chinese, Hindu, Persian, Japanese, etc. Yet for someone who has read so many stacks of books as your fine self I obviously don't need to point this out (and do it for the benefit of other readers).

What we might compare this to would be to the attitudes of average men in the present. And we might also examine how they receive information, ideas, attitudes, and we might notice how this translates into a sort of 'common attitude' toward existence and determines how life is understood and lived. And doing so we might come away a little disturbed. We might say 'I desire to achieve something better and higher' and 'I desire to teach my children to valuate something better and higher', and then you would be right in the midst of the problem. You would have to take decisions. You would have to establish limits and boundaries. You do this of course but in a sloppy and unthinking way. That is your choice of course. And it is also the outcome in which you live now and will live. You have that right! That is the beauty of the present. Its liberalism offers to you the right to squander your time or to intensely focus it and no one can stop you.

I’m quite capable of telling people to go fuck themselves and fortunate to live in a time and place where doing so is fairly low risk. What most ires me is the misery heaped upon generations of innocent men, women and children by self-righteous busybodies and bullies, who believe, as you do, that there is “an Ideal” (What is it with you religious nuts and capitalisation?) that everyone would be better off, if they were forced to subscribe to.

From what I have read so far, basically, all that you do is the former. You are capable, inelegantly I would add, of telling people to 'fuck off' without really describing your own values and focus. You have gone so far as to speak about your politics as 'slightly left of center' as if this means anything at all. It is quite possible, probable indeed, that you have really not taken the time to think certain things through. I would say that based on the very little that you reveal.

Your issue with 'ideals' (capitalized or no) is I think part of 'your problem' but is certainly 'a problem' in our present. I am cognizant that people need, in truth, to completely sever their relationship with their church and those institutions that mould cultural and social life. To be free really means to be able to act freely even if misguidedly. To take freedom to its farthest conclusion and possibility. If you offer freedom to people or tell them they are free but then constrain them constantly, innerly or outerly, you have really thwarted that notion (ideal!) of freedom. So, 'our present' allows people to live unconstrainedly. Or apparently so. All the old constraints, or most of them, are falling away. In the present production and distribution system all that matters and will matter is that you don't cut in line, or steal someone else's popcorn, or fail to file your tax forms. I know a wise and educated man as yourself really does not need for me to spell this out and I hope that you will indulge me…

And what will arise in our present, and what is arising, is a huge population of people who are raised up without inner constraint and also without ideals. (I fully understand that you, uwot, desire none and I affirm that this is your right and anyone who attempts to inculcate you will receive your hearty 'Fuck off!' I am just trying to describe the present accurately and then describe possible attitudes in relation to it, or 'against it' as it were.) This is classical 'consumer culture', or TV culture, and represents people who can read but who cannot think, not really. For those vast populations the modern shopping mall has been constructed, the cinema, the content of their TVs, etc. A whole World for them to move about in, to get, to enjoy! But those people who cannot really think for themselves, as you know or should know, will live in an apparent but not a real freedom. (And you and I have a link to them and to that, too). I actually think that a very strong authoritarianism will inevitably arise around them because they need and require it, but that is another issue. In our present we give ourselves over to reining powers and we are significantly 'owned' by them. If that represents 'progress' for you then who am I to judge you?

But none of this changes the potential of conceiving of and holding to defined values and ideals. You can call it religious nuttery if that blows your dress up and you can opt out of that conversation, as you do essentially. But there IS a discussion possible, and it is also inevitable, about what group of values may exist in relation to which a man's life becomes strong (if he desires that). It also becomes a question of 'birds of a feather' too. I feel quite lucky that my GF at present already had a certain 'traditional' platform built inside of her. Now, she is gaining the intellectual support to strengthen and articulate that traditionalism (as it might be called). The sources of that are of course the classic ones: Plato, Aristotle, the pre-Socratics, and people like Richard Weaver (Ideas Have Consequences), René Guénon, and numerous others. There is a really a whole outlook that one can access in order to confront the 'encroaching present'. As I have said before, here in the world I live in the consequences and the result of modernity are oddly more visible. You see the consequences more readily. Knowledge IS power. A squandered opportunity is a real loss and one that cannot be made up. The State is very weak and so everything depends on the individual. In this type of context one senses the need for discipline and order and looks for ways to gain it and implement it.

I will wait patiently for you to come back with one or two inane and irrelevant comments, your style really…

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:06 pm**

Emmanuel Can (in the 'Calvin on the Sensus Divinitatis thread') wrote:From a Theistic perspective, there is really only one important moral question, and that is, "What is the relationship between this person, action, character, inclination or impulse (on the one hand), and God (on the other)?" That which is conformable to the character of God and stands in a correct relationship to Him is "good": that which departs from His character, denies His nature, departs from right relationship to Him and asserts autonomy from the Supreme Being is all "bad," regardless of the human inclination to treat some of this badness or goodness as merely "neutral." Anything which distracts, detracts or diminishes the supreme value in the universe -- relatedness to God -- is evil.

Since I too am attempting to work in an area of defining 'eternal values' that man can chose to live by---or not---I am interested in making a comment or two here. Please don't feel obliged to respond. I resolve to stay on one thread only for the duration of my time in this forum but read the other active threads. It is not exactly 'rude' to cop something from another thread but it is a little 'improper'. (Also, I tend to say sharp things from time to time but I mean you and no one else any malice. Zero. Everything I write always has some humor in it).

I think that one can actually do away with, and indeed we may have to do away with, a definition of god as 'good'. It seems to me a silly predicate. That humans could make judgments about the author of this reality and designate god one way or the other. And in the same manoeuvre one would by extension eliminate the need to define and even to produce such a 'good' man. It seems simply intuitively obvious that there has not ever been, is not now, nor will there ever be a fully 'good' man. It seems to me therefor that a more intelligent and realistic place place to start would be in defining and describing a group of appreciated or valuable characteristics and traits---nobility, graciousness, intelligence, wisdom, sensibility (etc.)---and all this in a context (this life, this world) where no specific absolute can really function as there will always be admixtures.

With a different group of aspirations and valuations---but where the classical notion of 'good' which is a uniquely Christian construct and has no counterpart in other religious formulations (that I am aware of) is modified and even excluded---one could work more realistically with the reality where we all appear and live.

This would enable one to establish and define 'eternal values' and to speak about them and teach them without establishing an impossible ideal ('goodness') that cannot ever be achieved, not really. It would also enable the necessary division of society into different layers and levels with differing requirements for different sorts of men. It may be that with such a platform that one could establish a more sensible and certainly practicable relationship with 'god'. It would of course be necessary to depersonalize god to a significant sense though. One can have and hold to a personal and inner relationship, certainly, but one cannot I don't think 'represent god' personally. It is very problematic to do so.

What would be 'bad' then is not life itself, Nature, or man in the world, but men who do not make a sincere effort to live in accord with a group of demanding principals.

In my readings of the history of religion in India (for example), where a wide-ranging social and civil system was developed, it was understood that the nature of reality itself (existence) was 'contaminating' or perhaps compromising is the word to man's 'purity'. But that dharma (performing one's duty within the surrounding constraints) was the necessary attitude to take. This makes a great deal of sense to me.

My sense so far of the Christian sense of 'relationship' is not altogether clear. It is not at all easy to get to the bottom of it. I think it is generally understood that evangelical Christianity describes a relationship determined by an 'inner decision' supported by grace ('to give one's life to Jesus Christ'). Then, that person just seems to go on living more or less (and sometimes less!) than other people. Even in the Epistles there is a definite lack of definition of 'the correct way to live'. Also, there are so few indications in the Gospels (in Jesus's own words) about how to carry on with life in this world. His whole program is one of absolute resistance to 'the world' and contempt of civilized forms (Rome). And indeed he himself had the luxury of checking out altogether so never had to face really dealing with life.

Posted: **Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:24 pm**

Harry wrote:Moreover, consider a very simple probabilistic analysis of the Garden scenario. There is some probability, p (recall that probabilities range from 0 to 1), that, within a finite period of time, t, Adam and Eve will disobey God. Now, for one period of time, t, the probability that Adam and Eve will *not* disobey is (1-p). For two periods of time, the probability that Adam and Eve will *not* disobey is (1-p)^2, where ^ represents "to the power of". In general, for n periods of time, the probability that Adam and Eve will *not* disobey during those n periods is (1-p)^n. Now, as n approaches infinity (I'm assuming the garden could potentially have lasted indefinitely), this formula approaches zero, no matter *what* p is - unless p is exactly 0. In other words, probabilistically, Adam and Eve had effectively no chance of avoiding succumbing to temptation *eventually*, unless they were wholly purified from evil to start with. Again, this hardly seems like a "genuine" choice - the odds are stacked horrendously against the original humans.

Hmmmm. [Scratches head, fiddles with pencil, frowns]. I'm betting 'HOC'.

Philosophy Now Forum

Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Some down-and-dirty initial notes

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

This occurs to me as a better, more virile, initial ethic:

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian

Re: Christian apology by a non-Christian