Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 2:06 pmTo anyone able to generalise the meaning of faith, and apply it outside of religion, as well as inside, it is clear that faith is pretty much universal, however much we might prefer certainty instead. The world is uncertain, to us humans, and nearly every idea we have about it is
based on/in faith.
The acceptance of the word of another, trusting that one knows what the other is saying and is honest in telling the truth. The basic motive of all faith is the authority (or right to be believed) of someone who is speaking. This authority is an adequate knowledge of what he or she is talking about, and integrity in not wanting to deceive. It is called divine faith when the one believed is God, and human faith when the persons believed are human beings. (Etym. Latin fides, belief; habit of faith; object of faith.)
The (much)
longer definition of the term
pistis/fides from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
If my aggressive assault, apparently directed against Immanuel Can, is not seen as an effort to examine and challenge what I have named Hebrew Idea Imperialism, the bulk of my efforts will not be understood. It is absurd to have a personal issue with a person when, in fact, it is only the larger ideas that should be of concern to us.
If I say that the confrontation with the nexus of ideas that inform standard American Evangelism -- a perverse movement that has literally, in its Pentecostal form, spread over the entire Earth -- is just the beginning of the dismantling needed, then the next step will be, must be, in explaining what these steps must be. And yet I cannot. Simply because I am not there yet.
Hebrew Idea Imperialism is a mood or an attitude expressed as an absolutely 'jealous' and absolutely intolerant tribal god that originated in a specific people. The nature of that mood, the nature of the assertions of the god, must be examined from a distance and with a critical frame of mind. The God of Israel is an emblem of absolute and sheer intolerance of any other conception of god and has as its stated objective the sheer and absolute destruction of any other idea about god. Although Christianity began as a rebellion against a corrupt theocracy, nevertheless it carried over, as an essential tenet, the imperious notion that the god that it defines is real but that all other god-concepts are not real. The reason I mention this here in this context is quite simply because the *argument* of Immanuel Can runs in exactly the same line:
"When I speak I do not speak as Immanuel Can, I simply mouth what is stated in Biblical texts as being 'absolutely true'. You do not believe me? Well, that means that you do not believe God. And there will be a punishment for you because you did not believe God. In just a few short years you will be in Hell."
Now, all of us know that it is this idea-construct that runs through all the various forms of Christianity. And we also all know that Northern Europe was conquered and civilized by a Mediterranean-Catholic political power. We owe our being to that conquest. And there will never be any way that we could escape from (i.e. deny) our own origins. One of the problems of our own day is that (what I would call) ignorant people, blunt, unsophisticated and rebellious people, are using forms of crude will in their efforts to undermine hierarchies of meaning & value. Does this have to be explained in detail? Isn't this obvious?
How then shall what is of value, what is important, and what is foundational to the strength and power and cohesion of our own cultures and indeed *our civilization* (as well as our own selves, our own persons) be protected from destructive undermining? But even to see things as being in a state of decadence and dissolution requires a good deal of preparation. It does not seem to be immediately recognized.
It has come about -- and this certainly means that I am not the author of this nor are any of us -- that what we refer to with the term 'Christianity' has, in Europe predominantly, been more or less
seen through. That is, seen as a type of false, though perhaps at one time necessary and efficacious, structure which no longer functions as metaphysical glue, nor social and political glue. Why has this come about? Who
did it? To answer that question requires a great deal of explanation. Some of this we have covered in this thread.
But I say that the American Evangelical form, born out of American innovation, is a strange and also a dangerous restructuring of some of the worst aspects of Hebrew Idea Imperialism into a mass religious form with very real and very consequential effects in our present. This entire conversation is
meaningless unless it is linked to an analysis of contemporary events. Or I will say that a general conversation on Christian principles or Christian metaphysics, though certainly interesting and valuable in se, cannot sufficiently address the contemporary age nor ourselves in it.
It is not that I do not understand what *faith* is, and it is true that anyone with some good resources can easily access complete definitions of what *faith* is said to mean in a Christian context. Duh! But this is not what the issue really is. Not as it pertains to our present.
To have *faith* in corrupted institutions and structures and in existential perspectives that are profoundly interpretive (in the sense of Bible prophecy and the present hysteria that possesses many people and many religious people) is no sort of faith I wish to have.
To converse with Immanuel Can -- an Evangelical *believer* deeply invested in these perverse interpretations and deeply opposed to interrogating them and employing good reasoning methods -- is to encounter a man who has so intensely invested in notions that are false and destructive and which are yet said to be *absolutely true* and *absolutely good*, leads into a task of dismantling of the false ideas. This means, in fact, turning back into a research project to examine and understand deviant American religious-political forms. These are rather recent developments though. But
Hebrew Idea Imperialism (if you accept this term and understand it) has far older origins.
I would not say however that this means a sheer dismantling of certain important metaphysical notions that stand behind Christian ideas (existential interpretive views). No, that would be a mistake.
