Philosophy Now Forum

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 9:15 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2023 10:10 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2023 10:02 pm You seem remarkably comfortable with a God who is more offended by people who don't believe in Him, than people who abuse children. I would find that very difficult to reconcile. How do you manage?

I don't think these things "trade off" the way you describe. One who harms children is certainly under the judgment of God. But so too is the one who refused to honour God as God. (Romans 1)

How far can one stray from the way you honour God as God before they are the moral equivalent of a child abuser?

Well, it seems that sins are not "equivalent," Will. They don't each get a severity-number that can be traded off or marked as "equal" with others, so far as I can tell. All are bad, but some are worse than others, and there are apparently degrees of punishment. The Bible speaks of those who get "a greater condemnation," given what they do. And as for those who stumble a child, Jesus said, it would be "better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and be cast into the depths of the sea," than to be found by God guilty of that. That word "better" says a lot.

Immanuel Cant wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 10:18 pm The Bible speaks of those who get "a greater condemnation," given what they do. And as for those who stumble a child, Jesus said, it would be "better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and be cast into the depths of the sea," than to be found by God guilty of that. That word "better" says a lot.

"What does it mean to cause a child to stumble?

The Greek word translated as stumble is “skandalizo.” From it we get the English word “scandalize.” In this context it means putting an obstacle in someone's path that hinders them from proceeding. In other words, Jesus likely means whoever hinders these little ones from following Me is in danger of God's wrath." the biblesays.com

This from the God/Son of God who does nothing at all to prevent those 2,000,000 still births and 23,000,000 miscarriages around the globe from devasting Moms and Dads each and every year.

Not to mentions all of the babies and infants and children slaughtered year in and year out in one or another of His "acts of God".





Just out of curiosity, what possible reason do you suppose He might offer given His "Mysterious Ways"?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 10:10 pm Ah, I see the conversation has turned to Nietzsche. Yer have to put him in context. Nietzsche was a teenager when Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The theory of evolution by natural selection was, to put it mildly, a challenge to any theory that man was created in the image of a divine being. Hence God is dead.

Well, the Origin of Species has been found, of course, to be quite inadequate in various ways, even by modern Evolutionists. But you're right that when it appeared it was a big deal...however, it was not instantly received as necessarily entailing that there was no God. A lot of people were more inclined to say that maybe evolution was the means, but God the Agent nonetheless. It wasn't going to be until much later that things like the Scopes Trial were going to happen. And it was not until WWII that the idea of human eugenics was going to receive its major black eye.

People who don't understand evolution sometimes believe that it implies we will evolve into a superior being, the Ubermensch. We, as common or garden homo sapiens, will be as subservient to them as dogs are to us.

It's a natural deduction. If we were once random atoms, then some rudimentary organism in pond scum, then some kind of fish, then some kind of amphibian, and so on, then evolutionism would seem to suggest that being what we are is, in some important sense, "higher" than that. But then the deduction comes: if the process of evolution got us this far, what's the evidence it won't get us farther? Who's to say that you and I are the most highly-evolved version of the human creature? Who's to say that in another billion years, human beings won't be much more "high" than we are now?

Then comes the further deduction: why would evolution proceed at exactly the same pace for all instances of a "species"? Wouldn't it be logical that if something like "survival of the fittest" were the mechanism, then there would always be around a great many specimens of each "species" that were less-than-survival-apt? And so the next deduction follows: what, then, if, say Aryans are the highest current evolved form of mankind, and blacks, Jews, slavs, and other dusky folks are the less-evolved entities that deserve to lose out to the Aryans and die out by survival-of-the-fittest? And if we've done great work selectively breeding things like dogs and cats, why not selectively breed the human race in order to accelerate evolution toward desirable goals? In this way, they convince themselves that not only is racism okay, it's actually wise and scientific; and not only does it benefit the "master race" or the "ubermenschen," but ultimately it advances the human race itself towards its higher and more glorious destiny...Aryanism, and beyond...

There's a logic to it, and all sorts of slobs have persuaded themselves that they are an example of the Ubermensch, but it's a load of bollocks.

That's the kind of logic that goes there. But you can see it comes as a product of Evolutionism itself. Hitler's preoccupation with breeding and genetics was not at all accidental; he knew what project he was on, and why the death camps were worth expending tremendous quantities of men and resources he actually desperately needed for places like the Eastern Front. His was a utopian, evolutionary, genetic-engineering project, in which he saw himself as the saviour of the human race. And, of course, you see that preoccupation in people like Josef Mengele, as well, whose ghastly experiments often aimed at the same "race affirming" goals.

Ironically, we're presently turning back to that kind of thinking. Not only are people becoming more racist again, as as result of the aggitations of the Left, which is incessantly preoccupied with blaming particular "races" and valourizing others, rather than regarding all humans as equal in value, but are also turning to utopian visions of the fusion of biological humanity with technology...still with a view to seizing the alleged evolutionary process and accelerating it toward desired human goals. In fact, the WEF has a whole program for this, which they call "The Fourth Industrial Revolution."

One would think we should have learned our lesson. But apparently, we have not.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 10:37 pmA lot of people were more inclined to say that maybe evolution was the means, but God the Agent nonetheless.

What interests me is something that, years back, Will pointed out: that in the course of time "God" can only be presented as *real* the more that those who defend him describe him as operating in the *gaps*. When once God was described as operative everywhere, bit by painful bit his defenders retreated from position after position until finally -- and this I think where IC finds himself -- they can only describe God as an abstract 'agent' who set everything in motion. But if you ask the question: "OK, but where can you show that God actually and demonstrably operates (or intrudes, or intervenes) in our world?" they cannot answer, except perhaps by referring to some person, perhaps themselves, who feels or believes that God has intervened in their own life. And to understand this one must read their accounts: those that believers describe as their 'saving moment' when they found themselves at the bottom of a personal crisis and experienced God's intervention in their life and the beginning of a restructuring of that life.

The very essence of enthusiastic religion and, naturally, the 'engine' that motivates Protestant Evangelicalism.

I must say a couple of things since, as it happens, my own position is to some degree *in the gaps* as I attempt to contemplate what "God" actually is. The fact is that the entire designation, and God in a cultural sense is really a set of propositions that hinge into moral and ethical imperatives, has been rendered incomprehensible. To refer to God explains nothing. And we all have more or less direct understanding of this: every culture references *God* in one way or another. And god-concepts compete in an abstract realm that has very little solidity. A reference to God is meaningless therefore but god-believers and their beliefs are nevertheless extremely consequential. One quickly sees that, on one hand, religiousness is a way for people to orient themselves ethically and much of religion is bound up in social rules and ethical precepts; but on the other a quick and easy way for them to *explain* existence in a world that is beyond the reach of any explanation.

Immanuel Can has been very interesting to me, and I might even say important to me, because I generally find that every single positive declaration that he makes -- each and every declaration about what is true and what is false, or what is real and what is unreal, and even at times what is moral and what is immoral -- provides me with a suspicious clue: it is quite likely that what he is saying is completely false. How odd really! That the man who desires to be a competent and effective (Christian) apologist consistently achieves the precise opposite. He wants to demonstrate that the Christian religion is *true* but ends up giving clear instructions about why it is not.

If one thinks of the image of a cat hanging by its claws but in danger of falling, Immanuel Can demonstrates how his cat-arms have turned into powerful grapnels which fuse to the theological construct through an extraordinary will. He will never dislodge himself. Each *pillar of phantasy* can be knocked down and yet *belief* still remains. From where I sit this is something extraordinary.

Those scientists and philosophers who muse on the miraculousness of biological life, and say that it is 'mathematically impossible" that the cell structure could have evolved spontaneously, seem only to be able to propose with a circular reasoning, that it is impossible, therefore *something like God* must be proposed. But they really only remain at the basic point of their amazed perception: it is impossible to explain the origin of life. Some of them are religious men. And one I am aware of is a Christian. But they offer no explanatory connection between the realization (according to them) that life requires a divine agent -- and their conclusion that therefore the Christian God was the creator of everything. Really, it does not follow.

So what I have stated -- it is not a conclusion but more a necessary statement -- is that whatever god is thought of as creating everything, in no sense is that god the Christian God. No matter where you turn, if your eyes are focused on natural phenomena, and if that world reflects God or God's mind, then the image of God is nothing at all like that one pictured in Christianity, in Judaism, nor in any religion I am aware of. What would one say about the 'god of reality' therefore? And what would it mean to say that one should *know god* or even become a disciple of god?

So what happens -- in any case this happens to me -- is that one is left no alternative except to *turn inward*. And that can only mean resolving to deal with subjectivity precisely understood. The reason is clear: the outer world offers only a picture of god that is wondrous but utterly terrifying (as terrifying and wondrous as an exploding universe or every aspect of ecological relationship) and there is nothing 'calming' or 'peaceful' or 'reasonable' in the god pictured in nature. But one can certainly interact with and explore one's own self (and I allude naturally to Self in a mystical sense).

How odd it is that with the passing of the ages, and with man's attempt to give a definite face and also body to God -- an ultimate, defining picture that can be proved to be the true one -- that any face and body dissolves. The closer one might wish to get, the farther away one actually gets. You might then be forced to say that God is therefore the ultimate trickster insofar as he, or it, remains forever undefinable, un-picturable, un-encapsulable.

Yet that does not mean -- and again I refer to the subjective domain of our own inner world -- that god is either non-existent or unknowable. There are far too many accounts by mystically-inclined people (I know no other suitable word but 'mystic' to define what I mean) who reveal subjective realization. The world does not change; the world remains the world; but something occurs inside of them.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 4:18 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 10:37 pmA lot of people were more inclined to say that maybe evolution was the means, but God the Agent nonetheless.

this I think where IC finds himself -- they can only describe God as an abstract 'agent'

You never really read anything anybody says, do you? You just "riff" off your own imagination?

I was describing what some people did. I never said it was anything like what I believe.

Oy vey.

Will writes: People who don't understand evolution sometimes believe that it implies we will evolve into a superior being, the Ubermensch. We, as common or garden homo sapiens, will be as subservient to them as dogs are to us.

IC writes: It's a natural deduction. If we were once random atoms, then some rudimentary organism in pond scum, then some kind of fish, then some kind of amphibian, and so on, then evolutionism would seem to suggest that being what we are is, in some important sense, "higher" than that. But then the deduction comes: if the process of evolution got us this far, what's the evidence it won't get us farther? Who's to say that you and I are the most highly-evolved version of the human creature? Who's to say that in another billion years, human beings won't be much more "high" than we are now?

It is somewhat difficult, at least as I understand Nietzsche, to say with precision what he meant by Übermensch. Maybe this is all clear to some other reader but it never became clear to me. Is Nietzsche the originator of the Germanic will to achieve universal power? That much is certainly false: the English -- as Ur-European man -- demonstrated a political and military Übermensch on the world stage. In a sense the German version was a bad imitation. It occurs to me to refer to Hereclitus:

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
"Character is destiny."

Variant translations:

Character is fate.
Man's character is his fate.
A man's character is his fate.
A man's character is his guardian divinity.
One's bearing shapes one's fate.

There is or there was something in the German character that made its imperial project impossible. But is there really a substantial difference between the German imperial will, the French imperial will, and the English imperial will? To be truthful they all come from the same stock, both in the sense of racial stock but also general anthropology and cultural ideology.

But here is a curious thing: Robinson Jeffers (described as being a Nietzschean and certainly not a Christian) wrote in a short poem that I can no longer locate, lamented that in the aftermath of the world wars that Europe, *the Jewel of the world*, had been reduced to rubble and to the status of a beggar. "Where did you fly off to, Herr Übermensch? You finished your work, and what have you left us with?" Has there ever been as destructive a suicide as what Europe did to itself in the early 20th century?

Yet here is a curious thing, make of it what you will. If Europe had a direction, and a directive, and a power that could in any sense be connected to the notion of Übermensch (like the Confucian 'superior man'), it all seemed to have come to a tragic end when the last war ended. The jewel, no longer a jewel, was a blister and a stain. In this sense Europe *lost its will*.

The notion of *powerful, determining, directing man* came to an end.

It is interesting to think about Richard Weaver's view that at the end of WW2 and with the American victory what resulted was, in a general sense, perhaps not really understood, a triumph of spiritual nihilism. It was a military win, but it heralded a much larger loss. Julius Evola employed the metaphor of 'men among the ruins' -- naturally from an ultra-conservative traditionalist perspective that had become utterly foreign to Europe's now castrated.

I don't know how to think about it really, and less how to express it, but I do have the sense that with every passing year and decade the *disease* only gets worse. It is therefore odd to notice that there is a longing for *renewal* or for the recovery of strength and power, but that all of this now stands under a harsh moralizing lamp and any move toward self-recovery is met with moral blame and the force of European man's now internalized grammar of self-intolerance.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 5:17 pm I was describing what some people did. I never said it was anything like what I believe.

You fool. Of course I know what you believe. But what I say is that the god you define can only be discovered on an internal plane, subjectively. There is no way for you, or any Christian, or really any god-believer, to demonstrate god. But the abstract wished-inferences abound.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 10:37 pm Wouldn't it be logical that if something like "survival of the fittest" were the mechanism, then there would always be around a great many specimens of each "species" that were less-than-survival-apt? And so the next deduction follows: what, then, if, say Aryans are the highest current evolved form of mankind, and blacks, Jews, slavs, and other dusky folks are the less-evolved entities that deserve to lose out to the Aryans and die out by survival-of-the-fittest? And if we've done great work selectively breeding things like dogs and cats, why not selectively breed the human race in order to accelerate evolution toward desirable goals? In this way, they convince themselves that not only is racism okay, it's actually wise and scientific; and not only does it benefit the "master race" or the "ubermenschen," but ultimately it advances the human race itself towards its higher and more glorious destiny...Aryanism, and beyond...

This paragraph interests me because here he lists specific areas of forbidden thought and certainly forbidden actions. I will try to explain or at least allude to what I mean.

In Immanuel Can's world the supreme manly act is to surrender to what he calls HaShem. He uses the Hebrew term, a substitute really, since God in traditional Judaism cannot be named and HaShem means 'the word' (that cannot be pronounced). I find it useful and also somewhat fun, to dismantle Immanuel's statements, so to try to expose what is really inside of them. My view is that what he is really talking about is a surrender of man's vital, self-determining will. Yet it is that will through which Europe was created. If there was a "jewel of the world' it may have been many different things all seen together, but all of these depended on a self-defining and functional will.

I see Immanuel's Christianity -- certainly his odd brand of it -- as a philosophy of submission. Christian Zionism is a surrender of the will to projects and purposes that are not European but rather Judaic. And all of this, it seems, is an outcome of the European calamities of the 20th century. But I also see that Immanuel's philosophy, or ideology, is more or less the same as that of modern political and social liberalism. It is the same philosophy that culminates in 'wokism'. And by that I mean that which has informed all of us who write on this forum. We embody these views. Any alternative, or competing, or contradicting view, we actually ourselves see as evil. We embody a European grammar of self-intolerance.

What I discover that Immanuel does not know is that it is Judaism that is the model for National Socialist racism. Judaism is completely and totally racist in the sense that God's chosen in its own internal philosophy and metaphysics represent the apex of evolution in the godly Jew. The Gentiles, the Goyim, are defined as lesser beings, thoroughly inferior to the Jew who has been infused with God's righteousness and determining power.

So with this in mind it is interesting to try to see in that light the European attempt to define an Indo-European alternative to Jewish supremacism. But we must note that reference to *Aryanism* is a reference to an evil ideology or self-definition. The important factor is that all self-definitions based on realization of power, or recovery of power, are defined as acts of evil.

But there is something important to note here: Christianity inherited from Judaism what amounts to a modification of the base Jewish metaphysical assumption about inherent racial and spiritual superiority. Yes, Judaism is truly racialist: to be a Jew depends on race not on choice or moral commitment, and the preservation of Judaism depends on racial exclusivity. It is Judaism that defines itself as the highest level of human expression and all beneath it are 'cattle'. In fact it is Judaism that has always defined a racialist program and a practical eugenics.

What interests me, as I have expressed just recently, is the loss of European nerve and what results from the loss of it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 6:11 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 5:17 pm I was describing what some people did. I never said it was anything like what I believe.

Of course I know what you believe.

I can see you don't. But it won't stop you talking. Nothing ever does...especially being wrong.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 6:53 pm I see Immanuel's Christianity -- certainly his odd brand of it -- as a philosophy of submission.

That's Islam. Islam actually means, "submission."

It is the same philosophy that culminates in 'wokism'.

Oh, my gosh! How off-base can one guy be! I'm so amused.

Well, there's the proof: you not only don't know what you're talking about, you actually think the dead opposite of the facts. Wokism is Neo-Marxism, Chuckles.

What I discover that Immanuel does not know is that it is Judaism that is the model for National Socialist racism.

I'm sure the Jews will be equally amused to be "informed" of that.

Just when I think you couldn't be more proudly wrong, you outdo yourself. No wonder you have to rattle off those long, rambling monologues: nobody is applying to you for wisdom, and nobody really wants to discuss your ideas because they're so wildly off-base.

However, carry on: I'm certain you will.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 7:22 pm I'm sure the Jews will be equally amused to be "informed" of that.

Would you like me to offer some proof?

In my experience -- growing up as I say *on the fringes of Reform Judaism in California* -- most Jews, and all that I have known, including in my own family, do not have a real understanding of what Judaism actually is. You have to go to real Orthodox sources to get that, and most Jews are post-Jews or *culturally Jewish* (which means nothing).

It is pretty obvious to me that you have never studied Judaism and know very little about it.

Just when I think you couldn't be more proudly wrong, you outdo yourself. No wonder you have to rattle off those long, rambling monologues: nobody is applying to you for wisdom, and nobody really wants to discuss your ideas because they're so wildly off-base.

You are useful to me because you don't have any idea what *on-base* is.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 7:25 pm In my experience -- growing up as I say *on the fringes of Reform Judaism in California* -- most Jews, and all that I have known, including in my own family, do not have a real understanding of what Judaism actually is. You have to go to real Orthodox sources to get that, and most Jews are post-Jews or *culturally Jewish* (which means nothing).

Hey, that's the first thing about that I've heard you say that is actually true. Good for you.

It is pretty obvious to me that you have never studied Judaism and know very little about it.

Actually, I have; and when the occasion presents itself, my Jewish associates are quite surprised by how much I know. Of course, much of it is derived from ancient, Biblical Judaism, but in many cases, I know more about their traditions and history even than modern Jews know, and they marvel that a goy has any interest in such things.

But what of that?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 8:04 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 7:25 pm It is pretty obvious to me that you have never studied Judaism and know very little about it.

Actually, I have;

I sometimes wish I had led a fuller life.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 8:04 pm But what of that?

A clarification, a ray of light shining in to provide some illumination so to better to understand things. All of this is tied to my larger purposes.

AJ wrote: What I discover that Immanuel does not know is that it is Judaism that is the model for National Socialist racism.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 7:22 pm I'm sure the Jews will be equally amused to be "informed" of that.

I asked if you would you like me to offer some proof. Here are just a couple:

The Zionist Federation of Germany addressed a memorandum to "the New German State” (June 21,1933) condemning the boycott [a worldwide boycott of Germany], and expressed sympathy for the Nazi ideology:

"Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain.” “The realization of Zionism could onl be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German devclopment. Boycott propaganda-such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways-is in essence un-Zionist.'

A prominent leader of German Jewry, Joachim Prinz, future president of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in his book Wir Juden (“We the Jews”) published in Berlin in 1934:

“We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind."

This was not just opportunism. There had always been sympathy between Jewish and German brands of racialism, to the point that one Rabbi Waton claimed that, "Nazism is an imitation of Judaism." It was not Hitler, but Zeev Jabotinsky who wrote in his Letter on Autonomy, some twenty years before Mein Kampf:

“A Jew brought up among Germans may assume German custom, German words. He may be wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish, because his blood, his body, his physical-racial type are Jewish.[...] A preservation of national integrity is impossible except by a preservation of racial purity.”

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 8:04 pm Actually, I have; and when the occasion presents itself, my Jewish associates are quite surprised by how much I know. Of course, much of it is derived from ancient, Biblical Judaism, but in many cases, I know more about their traditions and history even than modern Jews know, and they marvel that a goy has any interest in such things.

Well that is fine, I guess, except that it is likely that those you associate with are more-or-less Post-Jews in any traditional and let's say genuine sense. I doubt they are Orthodox and I suppose they are either Reform or Conservative Jews. As I have said I grew up around a diluted version of Reform and now, for various reasons, I am examining the cores in traditional Judaism.

I do this because the cores that you have built your little edifice on derive from those of Judaism.

You declare yourself a Christian. But when one examines your Christian framework one discovers that you are really more a wannabe Jew. Your Jewish associates may marvel at your interest in *such things*, but from where I sit, you demean yourself. You are best defined as a Christian Zionist. The definition links you to the present and to things occurring now.

My overall interest here is not in these details, though they have some importance, but rather in Europe's loss of nerve, which I began writing about here.

As per normal you respond to a small part because you are intellectually incapable of responding to the expressed whole. It falls so far off your radar that it is incomprehensible to you.