Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 11:40 pm
Logically, you mean? Yes, thank you. I'll stay with Aristotle on that.
You are now playing your typical childish games. You deliberately miss the points I raised. Strict binary divisions do not work in many situations.
For the Bible, one is saved or one is not.
The entire idea of 'salvation' -- in exactly the sense that I bring the question to your attention -- no longer makes sense. Salvation from what? To what? The idea of a 'world beyond' that is better and more real than this world, became untenable and indeed an
unhealthy idea to hold to. When this was realized, people consciously or semi-consciously, opted for terrestrial life. Therefore, new avenues within terrestrial life had to be created, established, forged.
This goes
completely over your head.
Whether or not I think it will change nothing. It will still be the same, either way.
Yes, I do understand how binary thought-systems function. I do understand that changing how you see things is
inconceivable. To think different would shatter you. But I am trying to draw to your attention *what happened*. What this means and what it portends -- that is another topic (and not an easy one).
For the Bible, one is saved or one is not.
Yes, but there are no other options available to you, so thought within the established parameters is your only option.
AJ: That is of course understood. I am not so much interested in denying that there is a 'logic' in your strict definition as I am in pointing out why it has come about that in many areas, and for many different reasons, this strict system has necessitated being modified and for some abandoned.
IC: You'll have to say who you're talking about. I'm unfamiliar with the case you seem to have in mind.
An entire wave that moved through Europe between approximately 1880 and 1930 (to choose general dates).
AJ: That is one aspect. But there is another and I think it has to do with what became necessary, within a post-Christian culture, for people interested in 'knowing themselves'.
IC: That's very easy to answer: they won't.
IC: To the degree that one loses association with God, one loses also awareness of oneself. And you can read about this in the current range of sociologists and psychologists who have remaked on the way the postmodern self is dissolving...from Walter Truett Anderson, to Anthony Giddens, to Zygmunt Bauman, to Kenneth Gergen, to Christopher Lasch, to Roger Lundin...they're all seeing the same thing: the secular self, long shored up on a sort of Cartesian view of the self, is now in rapid dissolution to what they call "the Protean self," which like the mythical character Proteus, assumes many forms and has none as its essential form.
they're all seeing the same thing: the secular self
I am not advocating for a 'secular self'. I am speaking of the ways that the concept of divinity changed.
When
you use this term "God" you are referring to an abstraction. A grand moralizing abstraction that you can color-code in red or blue. And that abstraction is encased in amber. This is exactly what I mean. You have never, to my knowledge, given any indication of what God even means to you in any but the most remote sense.
But I can assure you that many people have looked into the issue with a degree of seriousness outside of which you stand, embalmed as it were, intellectually dead yet filled with your own measure of 'passionate intensity'.
And you also think that turning inward, and discovering the intimation of divinity on an inner plane, has no relationship with a personal revelation of God. For you, in your enclosed description, God is like a server in the sky, somewhere out there, and when you connect with God God then beams down to you whatever is godliness in your eyes. I say that this notion is false. What God is, what divinity is, is always encountered on an inner plane and it is always spoken of in those personal terms. Again, God is forver an abstraction for you. And the God you describe is unreal. Un-transformative.
People veered away from those closed concepts for a fuller, and in any case a different, sense of what God is. I say that this process is part-and-parcel of the post-Nietzschean world. The problem is that it also opens up into zones of chaos because when veering away from external authority (so conceived) one can only rely on an internal authority -- the place where God is conceived.
For some, a road unbounded by strict authority is dangerous and finally impossible. They cannot manage it. But there are some who can and do manage it.
Fact.
People no longer know who they are. Why else are people looking to cosplay, or transgenderism, or even transpeciesism, to find some self they can believe in?
I would never have said that people, many people, do not get terribly lost when they encounter what 'personal freedom' really entails. When kids raised in strict Christian homes (I have known a few) break out of those constraints they often go ape-shit and wind up in bad places. But some find other paths. Again I have known a few and I have observed their processes. But here I am speaking of very strict Catholic and Protestant families with extremely regulated social circumstances. It almost requires being broken out of -- to then explore what freedom (and free-choice) actually entail.
Responsibility.
The people you describe cannot handle freedom, it would seem. It seems therefore that they need strict limitations where their 'possibilities' are controlled. But there is another side as well: if the paths they choose are absurd and destructive what then happens? They crash and burn. And when they recover the pieces, they also grow and learn. The *God* that stands behind
those processes needs to be better understood.
AJ: The figure of Jesus Christ seems to me to represent a figure encased in amber. It could not move, and it could not evolve.
IC: Well, things "evolve" when they're flawed. That's in the definition of "evolving." Otherwise, it's called "devolving," which is more like what we're doing now.
It does not surprise me that you miss the point! It flies over your head.
It is true that when people are stuck, psychically say, or personally, that they need to grow and evolve. When people opt for this surprising things result. And their realizations are surprising. What *God* or what divinity stands behind that? If I say that the *figure of Jesus* seems *encased in amber* it is not that
image that will serve. Another concept is required. And that is my point: this is what happened in the time-period I referred to -- it is hard to assess rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness. Like so much in life it was and is dual.
AJ: So what happened is that through an abandonment of the Image, and the exploration on new roads and new avenues, which required a very different sort of God-figure.
IC: That's such an odd line.
Describe it as you wish to. I am here to inform you that there is a reason why the notion of God changed and why a God that was not binarily divided became a necessity. I am describing what happened so it can be seen. When people opted to exist in THIS WORLD they needed to leave the imagined OTHER WORLD to the side. And to live here, on this plane, honestly and with integrity, requires a non-dual God-figure.
If the object is to live
authentically in this world, it would obviously mean that so much would have to be reassessed. And that is what I am talking about:
what happened and
why it happened.
Actually, it's even funnier than that...it's like saying, "The world requires a very different law of gravity..." Good luck calling for one. If we're talking about a reality, then you're going to get what's really there...not what you imagine you'd like in its place.
The reason you can make this ultra-silly statement is because you are trapped within your structured God-concept. What I am trying to point out to you is that many people needed to break out of that concept. In this sense they revisualized divinity. The old image, frozen in amber, could no longer work for them. They needed something else.
Thus I am not noting anything as absurd as an assertion that 'the law of gravity' could be changed by how it is conceived. But certainly how God is conceived, now that is completely reasonable. Does God support your terrestrial existence? Does God support all your creative efforts on this plane? Does God recognize the absurdity of devaluing this plane of life and existence for an abstract, imagined 'otherworld'?
So yes, the God-concept would have to modify. And that is largely what happened.
I do not deny (based on my observations) that one could return to the former concept. It could very well be the best choice for a soul who cannot handle freedom. We see this often I think. But I think there are some honest souls who can handle freedom. They are mature enough for it.
What then is 'reliance on God' if God (divinity, awareness, consciousness) stands behind that choice and that path?