Christianity

[uwot]

...whilst you are BELIEVING that I am a piece of mouldy cheese, then you are OBVIOUSLY NOT OPEN to SEEING NOR HEARING what thee ACTUAL Truth of things is here.

Well MC Age, that's just what a piece of mouldy cheese would say.

Furthermore, it is an irrefutable fact that you referring to others as 'you human beings' is evidence that you are in fact a piece of mouldy cheese.

So, you want to CLAIM here that you can express an 'irrefutable fact' while also CLAIMING that I NEVER could. Seems VERY CONTRADICTORY, and VERY HYPOCRITICAL as well.

That's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.

Also, if you REALLY want to CLAIM an irrefutable fact in regards to what "another" says and/or writes, then I suggest that from now on you mix frogspawn with your marmalade. Otherwise, you could be PROVED Wrong, ONCE AGAIN.

Sound advice MC Age.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Right now, I'm reading J.P. Diggins on American Pragmatism. And he has a very interesting perspective. He claims, and I think with some justice, that justs as Toqueville had guessed would be the case, American social life has been actually more guided by pragmatics than by principle.

Pragmatism, you probably well know, is the belief that things like truth, ethics, value and so on are to be discovered not in looking back to some overarching principle, tradition, framework or other pre-existing structure, but are rather uncovered in the dynamic process of action, of "going forward," of experiencing not past experience (Dewey). And that makes some sense: America was, even before the Revolution, a project of leaving the ancient traditions of Europe and launching out into experiment, into innovation, exploration, something different. Why then would the American soul be drawn back to admiration of the moribund ways of Europe, it's traditions and institutions, it's ways of thinking and so on? What was the past, but a thing to be overcome and left behind? What way was there but forward, practically, looking to the future not the past?

America is, at a deep level, pragmatic. But Pragmatism has a dark side, as well. It tends to put action ahead of principle. And that means that pragmatic decisions tend to be less disciplined by moral qualms or a conservative caution about what is being lost, and instead governed by a forward-looking enthusiasm for what is yet-to-be-generated. However, in this bargain, telos is lost. Pragamatism can't really tell us what a human being is, what he/she is for, or what the ultimate meaning of his/her existence is. All that is supposed to be revealed by continued "experiencing"...

But it is not. And so Pragmatism launches people out into a speculative project of self-making, but without specifying any goal, purpose or rules beforehand. Absent any telos, any ultimate view of the good in advance, American social life offers goals instead like survival, acquisition, consumerism, comfort, expansion, and so on. Unfortunately for America, such proximal goals are far too tawrdry to fill the human soul: why should we go on -- for another day of life? for more possessions? for another meal? for 'bigger' everything? for yet another trip to the mall?

But the human soul is hungry and lonely. It deeply wants a worthy goal to pursue, and needs one in order to know how to organize itself, how to mark its progress and achievements, and to reassure itself of a meaningful and hopeful trajectory in life. Pragmatism cannot help with that: it denies, before it even starts, that such things are even available, and thus sets off in a random direction, dependent on shallow proximal "goods" and devoid of long vision.

When we consider things this way, we see that American conservatism actually laid the groundwork for American Leftism and radicalism to rise. Why? Because the Pragmatism underlying American social life left too many souls empty and hungry, and devoid of a meaningful telos. Absent a set of guiding principles from which to generate meaning, the Left has simply taken up Neo-Marxism, "social justice," BLM, CRT, and that whole package of ideological toxins -- because people must make their lives about something important, and Pragmatism just has nothing to offer in that regard.

In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility. I feel that I dealt with this issue and problem quite some time ago and, I must say, it surprises me that others -- you perhaps -- do not seem to grasp why this is so.

Perhaps you will correct me but I think that we must face the fact that a state, a nation, a larger conglomeration of persons and *interests*, will generally speaking only be able to act in the Nietzschean manner; that is, motivated by 'the will to power'. I suppose this is both the lesson of Nietzsche and, formerly, the lesson of Machiavelli. A state cannot ever be Christian. But within that state there can certainly be both Christian and christianesque individuals. In my own case, having completed a somewhat depth-reading of Nietzsche (predominantly Genealogy of Morals), I felt I worked through the idea sufficiently.

So I further verified my sense of things by reference to far older philosophical and existential musings from the Indian Subcontinent. They worked out this problem in what I thought was the only way it could be worked out. I will outline it briefly. The nature of a large mass of people -- a state -- is that of an organism that must survive. It requires classes of people who function to create the state (which involves necessary violence), to defend the state, to protect its borders, and also to expand the perimeters of the state when this is necessary. All of these activities involve moral, ethical and (in the Indian sense) karmic cost. All of these actions, from the Indian (Vedic) perspective, involve the ones who engage with them in 'karmic debt' which, for us, might be described as 'the wages of sin'. Yet, it was recognized, there is no way around these actions. Why? Because it is the very nature of the world to be one that is defined by 'the law of the fishes' (which is the metaphor corresponding to our expression '*dog-eat-dog*).

This view directly corresponds to Nietzsche's notion -- quite intuitive really, quite factual and thus true -- of the operations of 'the will to power'. So, these philosophers employed the metaphor of the ecological systems operative in the sea as a comparative to human life.

But then they proposed an interesting manoeuvre. They defined an inner life for society and an outer life. Those on the inner level could indeed, within certain constraints, practice those values that we would define as 'moral' and 'ethical' (corresponding to Christian ethics). But the outer world, and the perimeters of that world, were attained for them by members of the society that broke the recognized moral and ethical laws. The value-system recognized that at the inner level, within the society, the higher ethics must pertain and thus they were 'social values' that when broken were shamed and disproved of. Yet, this inner world was secured for them by those who created, protected and maintained the state.

Therefore, special rites of absolution had to be performed for those who had that protective and maintaining role. Literally rituals of absolution through which they were ritually cleaned of the 'karmic debt' they incurred.

It is interesting that you are reading JP Diggins (I don't know him). Yesterday, in the NYTs, the book Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth Samet was reviewed. I was drawn to the thesis because it expanded on what Richard Weaver noticed about the Second World War which was the advent of strains of nihilism.

And “careful reading,” as Samet provocatively (and persuasively) argues, can in fact be a matter of life or death. Glib treatments of World War II have done real harm, she says, distorting our understanding of the past and consequently shaping how we approach the future. As “the last American military action about which there is anything like a positive consensus,” World War II is “the good war that served as prologue to three-quarters of a century of misbegotten ones.”

Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”

I read the introduction and the first chapter and thought it very interesting and helpful to my own analysis. She references Tocqueville a good deal as well.

Now some portentous statements:

You cannot create an empire -- and the US has and manages an empire and a military power to defend (and expand) it -- in any sense that could be defined or defended in a Christian sense. If you (if one) tried to do that you would wind up in the most convoluted sophistries. You would have to become the excellent Machiavellian liar.

Yet it is the efforts of the military and industrial elite which in a pure 'will-to-power' sense saw the advantage of entering WW2 and, winning, set the stage for the enormous prosperity of the Liberal Order through which so many things we value and honor came to be as possibilities and realities.

And this reality will never change -- as long as the Earth remains the Earth and as long as the ecological laws that define the Earth still operate.

Christian ethics is an *imposition* into this brutal world (the real world) of an idealism that seems to come from *a world beyond*. And that is why what a Christian does, or the way a Christian faces reality, is always portrayed as a 'battle'. The Devil's Kingdom is ecological life itself, which is non-moral and non-ethical in the Christian sense. Life feeds on life, and life feeds on the death of life, which the successful assimilate into themselves.

So with all this said -- obviously completely irrefutable! -- the life of a Christian is the life of one who lives in accord with impossible values, despite what that Christian thinks. That Christian requires a warrior class (to put it bluntly) to secure the perimeters, to conquer the territory, to define it and to defend it. And in this sense every Christian is complicit in these *crimes* (and sins).

It is a very peculiar and a strangely untenable situation. Especially when and if one has some role in the world and attempts to construct something. Because all construction involves, in one degree or another, a will-to-power application of life-force.

A pertinent reference to Weaver's thought:

As Weaver’s friend Eliseo Vivas, a professor of philosophy, noted, Weaver’s defining intellectual trait was “audacity of mind.” It was audacity of a decidedly contrarian stamp. In the mid-1940s, when Weaver was writing Ideas Have Consequences, America was blooming with post-war prosperity. The ideology of progress was underwritten by the joy of victory and the extraordinary dynamo of capitalism suddenly unburdened by the demands of war. Material abundance was rendered even more seductive by a burgeoning technological revolution: cars, radios, gadgets galore. Easier. Faster. Louder. More—above all, more.

Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sadly not, Gus. The original sample was eaten by a PhD candidate after a particularly exuberant pub crawl several years back. He now speaks four languages he was previously unfamiliar with.

I've been mulling-moulding over (I may even have dreamt about) this issue of the provenance of that cheese-culture. I wonder if the language hint you provided may help? For this reason I am now researching cheese production at the Quadripoints -- and there are more of them than I'd have thought!

[Immanuel Can]

Well, well...so much to think about.

Before I say anything else, let me reassure you that I find you a very engaging, interesting and thoughtful interlocutor. And it seems to me that we have far more in common, particularly in our social concerns, then we have basis for disagreement...though some fundamental differences do remain, of course. But I think we have a fair degree of sympathy in our interests, and in the reading we're doing as well. We certainly share an admiration of Weaver, among others.

Please be reassured, therefore, that if, in the process of making distinctions between my view and yours, it ever appears as though I mean to misrepresent, insult or otherwise mistreat you here, that is simply not the case. I accept in advance that a particular statement is more likely than not to be a product of my own lack of tact or understanding, not of deliberate unkindness.

That being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.

Fair enough?

In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.

This may surprise you, but so is mine.

I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now. It's actually an absurd expression. The term "Christian nation" makes as much sense as (to borrow a quip from EC) "accountancy dancing." So one thing for sure: I'm not arguing in favour of such a ridiculous and contradictory idea...never mind that the means to bring it about would be likely to be authoritarian. No part of that appeals to me as "Christian."

But the difference between your current thinking and mine, it seems to me, keys on whether a nominal or pseudo-Christian cultural renassiance is a viable alternative, and can be looked to to save the culture. It appears to me you think it might be; but I think that's an utterly doomed hope.

Who, today, especially in our secular age, wants to be a "pseudo-Christian?" Christians don't want to be that. The Atheists and agnostics certainly don't aspire to be that. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, the Sikhs...and so on, none of them have any reason to want to be pseudo-Christian. So what is their motive to take on "Christian" morality and "save" the culture? Who would now willingly be "christianesque"?

Perhaps you will correct me but I think that we must face the fact that a state, a nation, a larger conglomeration of persons and *interests*, will generally speaking only be able to act in the Nietzschean manner; that is, motivated by 'the will to power'.

Well, that's because all the above are mere collectives. It's only the individual who has a soul, or who can respond to moral imperatives, or to any vision of things as they do not now exist. Institutions, nations and states, along with "conglomerations" are not personal agents, and have no eyes, ears or consciences of their own at all. They are pushed around by "powers," but the forces of circumstance, or finances, or contingencies...with no ability, as collectives, to do anything at all about that.

I suppose this is both the lesson of Nietzsche and, formerly, the lesson of Machiavelli. A state cannot ever be Christian.

Absolutely right. There's no such thing. Never has been.

But within that state there can certainly be both Christian and christianesque individuals.

Of course. But here, you and I see the situation a little differently again. I think that if there's to be any moral input, any "leavening influence," if you will, in the larger culture, it will come solely the way it has always come -- namely, entirely dependent on the number and devotedness of actual people who are actual Christians. It will come indirectly, without political fiat or fanfare, and no embodied in any regime at all. It will come chemically or oganically, percolating up from the private obedience of individual Christians. And it will come that way, or it will not come at all.

In contrast, if I may suppose, I think you're putting a rather strong emphasis on things like the power of nominal "Christians," pseudo-Christians, "christianesque" individuals, and so on, to contribute to the situation. And yes, there have been a lot of them around throughout what we call "Christian-civilizational history" (which is itself another fiction, really). But they are the most useless of all human beings, in truth; and were always more of a problem to real Christianity than any kind of asset. They have always been, themselves, only moral and good according to the measure by which they have sometimes being absorbing the influence coming from genuine Christianity. Take that genuine Christianity out of the culture, and the pseudos and nominalists will be the most useless, uninfluential citizens you could possibly have, since they have no real or durable commitment to any principles at all.

May I submit to you, then, that trusting those folks as contributors to culture is leaning on a staff that will bend and splinter at the first sign of stress. And realistically, I cannot even imagine what inducements you would be able to offer the larger populace to make them want to join the ranks of the "christianesque" now.

The nature of a large mass of people -- a state -- is that of an organism that must survive.

Ugh. No. Absolutely not.

There's nothing "organic" about a "state." It's an abstraction, a collective, impersonal. We must not draw a false analogy between the state and the "imperative" of an organism for survival. States come and states go.

It requires classes of people who function to create the state (which involves necessary violence), to defend the state, to protect its borders, and also to expand the perimeters of the state when this is necessary.

No "it" doesn't "require" anything. It's not capable of such an action. I think what you mean to say is more in the order of, "The people within the state decide they want to defend it, that (for some reason they have) it's a state worth defending, and so they do." Go on.

All of these activities involve moral, ethical and (in the Indian sense) karmic cost.

Karma is a problematic idea. Let's not invoke it here. It requires us to believe that the indifferent universe has some interest in balancing scales throughout reincarnation cycles. That's too much nonsense to swallow, I think.

This view directly corresponds to Nietzsche's notion -- quite intuitive really, quite factual and thus true -- of the operations of 'the will to power'.

Don't forget Nietzsche's first and most famous axiom, though: "God is dead." This is an axiom Nietzsche neither proved nor even bothered to try to prove; he just claimed everybody already knew it or should know it, and moved on.

But you're right in this much: IF God is dead, and only IF He were, then it would be quite true that all relations are nothing but relations of power. And yes, that would then be not just "intuitive" but "factual" and "true" as well -- but only IF his first axiom is also true and factual, and not merely a product of Nietzsche's, or somebody else's "Intuition."

Can we show that it was? Nietzsche couldn't.

But then they proposed an interesting manoeuvre. They defined an inner life for society and an outer life. Those on the inner level could indeed, within certain constraints, practice those values that we would define as 'moral' and 'ethical' (corresponding to Christian ethics). But the outer world, and the perimeters of that world, were attained for them by members of the society that broke the recognized moral and ethical laws.

This phenomenon goes under various names. We might call it "the privatization of faith." That's one name it gets. Another is "pragmatism above principle." There's another. "Bifurcation" is a third, though less precise.

But we could better call it by its more common name: hypocrisy. Or perhaps "cowardice," or "selling-out," or "amorality."

Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”

"Neccesary" is what drives Pragmatism. "Good" is what orients morality. This is what Diggins was pointing to.

I've thought about this idea a lot. It's always only when the "necessities" of a situation, as it presents itself before us, require of us the compromising of our morality that we discover if we are really moral people at all. So long as the "necessities" happily line up with what we regard as "moral" there is actually no moral angst or struggle at all...we simply do the expedient thing, and it turns out to be the good thing at the same time. But when what looks "necessary" savagely conflicts with what we know is moral, that's when we find out what, morally, we are made of.

Now some portentous statements:

You cannot create an empire -- and the US has and manages an empire and a military power to defend (and expand) it -- in any sense that could be defined or defended in a Christian sense. If you (if one) tried to do that you would wind up in the most convoluted sophistries. You would have to become the excellent Machiavellian liar.

Right. No wonder, then, that Christ insisted, "My kingdom is not of this world."

Yet it is the efforts of the military and industrial elite which in a pure 'will-to-power' sense saw the advantage of entering WW2 and, winning, set the stage for the enormous prosperity of the Liberal Order through which so many things we value and honor came to be as possibilities and realities.

Yes and no. War always produces both huge losses and significant gains. For example, it kills millions, perhaps, but causes the economy to be run very austerely and stingily, and thus often produces a post-war economic "boom."

But "liberal" order...if that was a product of the war, how come the Soviet bloc missed it entirely? Or how did it play out in post-war China? No, I don't think that thesis is at all tenable. Wars have variable consequences.

Christian ethics is an *imposition* into this brutal world (the real world) of an idealism that seems to come from *a world beyond*. And that is why what a Christian does, or the way a Christian faces reality, is always portrayed as a 'battle'.

Yes, it is: but not onto the natural world, or the "ecological," to use your term, but onto the purely pragmatic orientation of social things in worldly affairs. To the non-Christian, it always comes as an unwelcome voice of conscience, limiting the options one might, for pragmatic or even hedonistic reasons, wish to seize. It counsels restraint and decency where methods of efficacy are more revered. It calls with the voice of the good over and against the voice of power. And that it why it is generally unwelcome.

That Christian requires a warrior class...

No, definitely not. Such a thing might be alleged of the "christianesque" or the "culturally and morally Christinish," but never of a real Christian. As we see if we complete Christ's injunction: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:36)

You quote on Weaver, as follows:

Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.

Let us look carefully at a couple of claims here.

"The world has lost its center," says Weaver. And how has this happened? He "traced back that loss to the rise of nominalism..."

What is "nominalism"? It is the belief that general ideas and abstractions are merely labels without corresponding realities. That's it in a nutshell. And though it's a more elaborate position (full Occamism, if you will) I think that perhaps we could not make a more concise summary of the distinction between the "Christanity" in which I believe and the "christianesque" in which you seem to be most interested at present.

For me, "Christian" is a particular noun, with definite corresponding realities. And because it has definite corresponding realities, it is both real and locatable. I know what it is, and can find it wherever I need to. But for you, (and here I must risk offence) there is only the abstractions, the general ideas of "Christian culture" or "christianesqueness" that you are working to pin down. Does that seem fair?

Well, of course, I'm against "nominal" Christianity. However, to me it seems you still tend to attribute to that orientation some virtues I simply think it does not possess and never did. One such virtue is the virtue of purifying or sustaining a culture. I would again submit to you that that is a thing nominal Christianity has never been able to do. Such sustenance and purity has come solely from the ground level, from the real and practical Christianity of a large number of indvidual Christians. And that nominalism, far from being even a contributor to that, is entirely unhelpful, and always has been.

But such is the difficulty of dividing between what, in secular historiography, has been called "Christian" from what genuinely is. Yet that distinction is the most important one, I suggest, a person can make, if he/she ever wishes to make any accurate claim about "Christianity." The false "christianesque" simply cannot be justifiably melded into the genuinely "Christian." I think the facts won't bear out any such nominating.

[Age]

...whilst you are BELIEVING that I am a piece of mouldy cheese, then you are OBVIOUSLY NOT OPEN to SEEING NOR HEARING what thee ACTUAL Truth of things is here.

Well MC Age, that's just what a piece of mouldy cheese would say.

And, EXACTLY as I SAID and POINTED OUT, in the quote words of mine you copied here, you are PROVING my words absolutely and IRREFUTABLY True, AGAIN.

What this means is that not only do I provide Facts in some of the posts I write here, which makes YOUR PREVIOUS CLAIM False and Wrong, but it is 'you', "uwot" who is helping me out tremendously by PROVING some of words IRREFUTABLY True. So, thank you.

Furthermore, it is an irrefutable fact that you referring to others as 'you human beings' is evidence that you are in fact a piece of mouldy cheese.

So, you want to CLAIM here that you can express an 'irrefutable fact' while also CLAIMING that I NEVER could. Seems VERY CONTRADICTORY, and VERY HYPOCRITICAL as well.

That's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.

Besides this just being ANOTHER DETRACTION from the IRREFUTABLE Fact and thus PROOF of the Wrong you did here, this is just ANOTHER EXAMPLE of where you make ASSUMPTIONS, and JUMP to conclusions, BEFORE you even try to begin to GAIN CLARIFICATION. And, it is for this very reason WHY you are SO Wrong, SO OFTEN, here in this forum. As evidenced and PROVED True, once more, from your writings here.

Either way if I do or do NOT understand what 'analytical truth is', then this has absolutely NO bearing whatsoever anyway on the IRREFUTABLE Fact that you CLAIMED that in absolutely "NONE of my nearly 9000 posts include an irrefutable fact". Which WAS OBVIOUSLY False, Wrong, AND Incorrect, and just MORE of your Inaccurate CLAIMS here. Even your CLAIM that you had "asserted this", previously, was False, Wrong, AND Incorrect.

Look, a LOT of what you say and write here, in this forum, and in your little cartoon books is False, Wrong, and/or Incorrect. But you just do NOT like to DELVE into and LOOK AT this Fact. You, obviously, MUCH PREFER to just REMAIN with your CURRENT BELIEFS than to LOOK AT them Honestly, and correct them. Which, by the way, you are absolutely FREE to choose to do.

Also, and by the way, you are PROVIDING here a GREAT EXAMPLE of EXACTLY what happens to, 'you', human beings, when 'you' are under the spell of False Wrong, and Incorrect BELIEFS. For example your CLAIM here that this is an "unfalsifiable premise", which is the BELIEF you are obviously MAINTAINING and HOLDING ONTO here, which came about because of your OTHER BELIEF, which are what is leading further and further to your downfall.

SEE, what you are ACTUALLY DOING HERE NOW is PROVING my CLAIM/S MORE and MORE IRREFUTABLY True. Again, thank 'you', "uwot".

Also, if you REALLY want to CLAIM an irrefutable fact in regards to what "another" says and/or writes, then I suggest that from now on you mix frogspawn with your marmalade. Otherwise, you could be PROVED Wrong, ONCE AGAIN.

Sound advice MC Age.

Besides another IRREFUTABLE Fact that 'you', "uwot" have been attempting to be deceptive and misleading by NOT quoting me EXACTLY, previously, AND by only copying and pasting some my words mid sentence, and replying to those ones only, without adding the rest of my words, you ALSO do NOT answer my CLARIFYING questions posed to you, for fear of CONTRADICTING "yourself" or for some other reason, like you are completely UNABLE TO, which is just DISHONEST in itself, what is ACTUALLY WORSE is that you are becoming SO DECEPTIVE and MISLEADING that you are now ACTUALLY adding your OWN WORDS, with MINE, and THEN 'trying to' PASS them off as though it was ME who wrote them. Could you even get MORE deceptive?

Anyway, this is just MORE IRREFUTABLE PROOF of some of the ATTEMPTS people, in the days when this was being written, would go to to 'try to' make their OWN BELIEFS "justifiable", in some way, as well as attempting to make their OWN BELIEFS fit in with what thee ACTUAL Truth IS, somehow. But all to NO success at all, I will add.

What can be CLEARLY SEEN here is that those words are NOT all of my words, and this is another GREAT EXAMPLE of how some people will say just about ANY thing to 'try to' make their OWN BELIEFS sound somewhat sensible and reasonable. But OBVIOUSLY without ANY luck AT ALL, as PROVEN here by "uwot's" words.

Also, besides the Fact that what can be CLEARLY SEEN here is you ATTEMPTING to DEFLECT from the Fact that you had NOT copied and pasted me verbatim, thus correctly, PREVIOUSLY, and so you were 'trying to' MISLEAD the READERS here BEFORE, you have CERTAINLY gone out of your way NOW to 'try to' DECEIVE and MISLEAD the READERS this time. So, AGAIN, I will REPEAT:

if you REALLY want to CLAIM an irrefutable fact in regards to what "another" says and/or writes, then I suggest that from now on you copy them verbatim. Otherwise, you could be PROVED Wrong, ONCE AGAIN.

[Age]

Well, well...so much to think about.

Before I say anything else, let me reassure you that I find you a very engaging, interesting and thoughtful interlocutor. And it seems to me that we have far more in common, particularly in our social concerns, then we have basis for disagreement...though some fundamental differences do remain, of course. But I think we have a fair degree of sympathy in our interests, and in the reading we're doing as well. We certainly share an admiration of Weaver, among others.

Please be reassured, therefore, that if, in the process of making distinctions between my view and yours, it ever appears as though I mean to misrepresent, insult or otherwise mistreat you here, that is simply not the case. I accept in advance that a particular statement is more likely than not to be a product of my own lack of tact or understanding, not of deliberate unkindness.

That being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.

Fair enough?

In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.

This may surprise you, but so is mine.

I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now.

In the days when this was being written 'you', adult human beings, could NOT even come to an agreement NOR acceptance of what just the word 'christian' meant or referred to, EXACTLY. So, ANY thought about coming to a "christian nation" would just be ABSURD in and of itself. And, to PROVE my CLAIM here is True, all I would have to do is ask 'you', adult human beings, to provide your OWN definition/s for the word 'christian', and then ask 'you' to come up with just one definition, which 'you' ALL agree with AND accept.

For, OBVIOUSLY, SURELY BEFORE ANY sort of "christian nation" could even come about 'you' ALL would have to KNOW what "being a christian" even ACTUALLY was and meant.

So, to even just imagine a "christian nation", as though it was some real thing, is ABSURDITY and RIDICULOUSNESS, to some degree, let alone to talk out loud and to "others" about a "christian nation", again as though it was some real thing, could be SEEN as being MORE ABSURD and RIDICULOUS, but to then openly talk about this, IN PUBLIC and in front of "other people", it could be SEEN as ABSURDITY and RIDICULOUSNESS, to the highest degree. But, again, each to their own.

It's actually an absurd expression. The term "Christian nation" makes as much sense as (to borrow a quip from EC, "accountancy dancing.") So one thing for sure: I'm not arguing in favour of such a ridiculous and contradictory idea...never mind that the means to bring it about would be likely to be authoritarian. No part of that appeals to me as "Christian."

Great, here is some semblance of sanity. But, what is a "christian", to you, EXACTLY?

But the difference between your current thinking and mine, it seems to me, keys on whether a nominal or pseudo-Christian cultural renassiance is a viable alternative, and can be looked to to save the culture. It appears to me you think it might be; but I think that's an utterly doomed hope.

Well considering ALL of the 'greedy' and 'judgmental' attitudes expressed and followed within "christian" teachings, then, for the sake of 'this world', let us ALL hope this part of "christianity" is utterly doomed, and VERY SOON.

Who, today, especially in our secular age, wants to be a "pseudo-Christian?" Christians don't want to be that.

To ask and say this is ANOTHER GREAT EXAMPLE of ABSURDITY, at its best.

And, who would want to be a 'greedy', 'selfish', and/or 'judgmental' person, like so-called "christians" are anyway? Let alone who would want to be a "fake-christian", whatever that is.

The Atheists and agnostics certainly don't aspire to be that. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, the Sikhs...and so on, none of them have any reason to want to be pseudo-Christian. So what is their motive to take on "Christian" morality and "save" the culture?

The reason WHY so MANY human beings grow up NOT wanting to be a "christian" is because of the Falsehoods "christian" follow and because of the Wrong "christians" do.

Who would now willingly be "christianesque"?

Perhaps you will correct me but I think that we must face the fact that a state, a nation, a larger conglomeration of persons and *interests*, will generally speaking only be able to act in the Nietzschean manner; that is, motivated by 'the will to power'.

Well, that's because all the above are mere collectives. It's only the individual who has a soul, or who can respond to moral imperatives, or to any vision of things as they do not now exist. Institutions, nations and states, along with "conglomerations" are not personal agents, and have no eyes, ears or consciences of their own at all. They are pushed around by "powers," but the forces of circumstance, or finances, or contingencies...with no ability, as collectives, to do anything at all about that.

I suppose this is both the lesson of Nietzsche and, formerly, the lesson of Machiavelli. A state cannot ever be Christian.

Absolutely right. There's no such thing. Never has been.

But within that state there can certainly be both Christian and christianesque individuals.

Of course. But here, you and I see the situation a little differently again. I think that if there's to be any moral input, any "leavening influence," if you will, in the larger culture, it will come solely the way it has always come -- namely, entirely dependent on the number and devotedness of actual people who are actual Christians. It will come indirectly, without political fiat or fanfare, and no embodied in any regime at all. It will come chemically or oganically, percolating up from the private obedience of individual Christians. And it will come that way, or it will not come at all.

In contrast, if I may suppose, I think you're putting a rather strong emphasis on things like the power of nominal "Christians," pseudo-Christians, "christianesque" individuals, and so on, to contribute to the situation. And yes, there have been a lot of them around throughout what we call "Christian-civilizational history" (which is itself another fiction, really). But they are the most useless of all human beings, in truth; and were always more of a problem to real Christianity than any kind of asset. They have always been, themselves, only moral and good according to the measure by which they have sometimes being absorbing the influence coming from genuine Christianity. Take that genuine Christianity out of the culture, and the pseudos and nominalists will be the most useless, uninfluential citizens you could possibly have, since they have no real or durable commitment to any principles at all.

May I submit to you, then, that trusting those folks as contributors to culture is leaning on a staff that will bend and splinter at the first sign of stress. And realistically, I cannot even imagine what inducements you would be able to offer the larger populace to make them want to join the ranks of the "christianesque" now.

The nature of a large mass of people -- a state -- is that of an organism that must survive.

Ugh. No. Absolutely not.

There's nothing "organic" about a "state." It's an abstraction, a collective, impersonal. We must not draw a false analogy between the state and the "imperative" of an organism for survival. States come and states go.

It requires classes of people who function to create the state (which involves necessary violence), to defend the state, to protect its borders, and also to expand the perimeters of the state when this is necessary.

No "it" doesn't "require" anything. It's not capable of such an action. I think what you mean to say is more in the order of, "The people within the state decide they want to defend it, that (for some reason they have) it's a state worth defending, and so they do." Go on.

All of these activities involve moral, ethical and (in the Indian sense) karmic cost.

Karma is a problematic idea. Let's not invoke it here. It requires us to believe that the indifferent universe has some interest in balancing scales throughout reincarnation cycles. That's too much nonsense to swallow, I think.

This view directly corresponds to Nietzsche's notion -- quite intuitive really, quite factual and thus true -- of the operations of 'the will to power'.

Don't forget Nietzsche's first and most famous axiom, though: "God is dead." This is an axiom Nietzsche neither proved nor even bothered to try to prove; he just claimed everybody already knew it or should know it, and moved on.

But you're right in this much: IF God is dead, and only IF He were, then it would be quite true that all relations are nothing but relations of power. And yes, that would then be not just "intuitive" but "factual" and "true" as well -- but only IF his first axiom is also true and factual, and not merely a product of Nietzsche's, or somebody else's "Intuition."

Can we show that it was? Nietzsche couldn't.

But then they proposed an interesting manoeuvre. They defined an inner life for society and an outer life. Those on the inner level could indeed, within certain constraints, practice those values that we would define as 'moral' and 'ethical' (corresponding to Christian ethics). But the outer world, and the perimeters of that world, were attained for them by members of the society that broke the recognized moral and ethical laws.

This phenomenon goes under various names. We might call it "the privatization of faith." That's one name it gets. Another is "pragmatism above principle." There's another. "Bifurcation" is a third, though less precise.

But we could better call it by its more common name: hypocrisy. Or perhaps "cowardice," or "selling-out," or "amorality."

Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”

"Neccesary" is what drives Pragmatism. "Good" is what orients morality. This is what Diggins was pointing to.

I've thought about this idea a lot. It's always only when the "necessities" of a situation, as it presents itself before us, require of us the compromising of our morality that we discover if we are really moral people at all. So long as the "necessities" happily line up with what we regard as "moral" there is actually no moral angst or struggle at all...we simply do the expedient thing, and it turns out to be the good thing at the same time. But when what looks "necessary" savagely conflicts with what we know is moral, that's when we find out what, morally, we are made of.

Now some portentous statements:

You cannot create an empire -- and the US has and manages an empire and a military power to defend (and expand) it -- in any sense that could be defined or defended in a Christian sense. If you (if one) tried to do that you would wind up in the most convoluted sophistries. You would have to become the excellent Machiavellian liar.

Right. No wonder, then, that Christ insisted, "My kingdom is not of this world."

Yet it is the efforts of the military and industrial elite which in a pure 'will-to-power' sense saw the advantage of entering WW2 and, winning, set the stage for the enormous prosperity of the Liberal Order through which so many things we value and honor came to be as possibilities and realities.

Yes and no. War always produces both huge losses and significant gains. For example, it kills millions, perhaps, but causes the economy to be run very austerely and stingily, and thus often produces a post-war economic "boom."

But "liberal" order...if that was a product of the war, how come the Soviet bloc missed it entirely? Or how did it play out in post-war China? No, I don't think that thesis is at all tenable. Wars have variable consequences.

Christian ethics is an *imposition* into this brutal world (the real world) of an idealism that seems to come from *a world beyond*. And that is why what a Christian does, or the way a Christian faces reality, is always portrayed as a 'battle'.

Yes, it is: but not onto the natural world, or the "ecological," to use your term, but onto the purely pragmatic orientation of social things in worldly affairs. To the non-Christian, it always comes as an unwelcome voice of conscience, limiting the options one might, for pragmatic or even hedonistic reasons, wish to seize. It counsels restraint and decency where methods of efficacy are more revered. It calls with the voice of the good over and against the voice of power. And that it why it is generally unwelcome.

That Christian requires a warrior class...

No, definitely not. Such a thing might be alleged of the "christianesque" or the "culturally and morally Christinish," but never of a real Christian. As we see if we complete Christ's injunction: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:36)

You quote on Weaver, as follows:

Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.

Let us look carefully at a couple of claims here.

"The world has lost its center," says Weaver. And how has this happened? He "traced back that loss to the rise of nominalism..."

What is "nominalism"? It is the belief that general ideas and abstractions are merely labels without corresponding realities. That's it in a nutshell. And though it's a more elaborate position (full Occamism, if you will) I think that perhaps we could not make a more concise summary of the distinction between the "Christanity" in which I believe and the "christianesque" in which you seem to be most interested at present.

For me, "Christian" is a particular noun, with definite corresponding realities. And because it has definite corresponding realities, it is both real and locatable. I know what it is, and can find it wherever I need to. But for you, (and here I must risk offence) there is only the abstractions, the general ideas of "Christian culture" or "christianesqueness" that you are working to pin down. Does that seem fair?

Well, of course, I'm against "nominal" Christianity. However, to me it seems you still tend to attribute to that orientation some virtues I simply think it does not possess and never did. One such virtue is the virtue of purifying or sustaining a culture. I would again submit to you that that is a thing nominal Christianity has never been able to do. Such sustenance and purity has come solely from the ground level, from the real and practical Christianity of a large number of indvidual Christians. And that nominalism, far from being even a contributor to that, is entirely unhelpful, and always has been.

But such is the difficulty of dividing between what, in secular historiography, has been called "Christian" from what genuinely is. Yet that distinction is the most important one, I suggest, a person can make, if he/she ever wishes to make any accurate claim about "Christianity." The false "christianesque" simply cannot be justifiably melded into the genuinely "Christian." I think the facts won't bear out any such nominating.

[Janoah]

, which is whether the universe had to come from an uncaused cause, or an infinite regression of a chain of causes.

The latter's impossible. So that means we have to opt for the uncaused cause explanation.

You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.
At this stage, scientists cannot prove it unequivocally, but they cannot refute it unequivocally either.

And there is the uncaused cause, and I constantly call it - the law of nature.
And the First reason, the regularity of nature, exists simultaneously with the changeable matter that obeys it.
Therefore, the words of the Bible "in the beginning", can be understood not in the beginning according to the temporal scheme, but just like "the heart is in the beginning of the organism" (Rambam speaks about this).
That is, the substantial form is the First cause of the world, the regularity of nature simultaneously with matter.

For example, the Earth and the moon are attracted not along a timing chain, but simultaneously with the law of nature.

Try to understand my words before you answer.

And by the way, mathematics does not take into account time at all, it cannot adequately describe nature on its own, like physics. That is, mathematics is just an auxiliary computing device that is used in physics to describe nature.

[uwot]

That's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.

Besides this just being ANOTHER DETRACTION from the IRREFUTABLE Fact and thus PROOF of the Wrong you did here, this is just ANOTHER EXAMPLE of where you make ASSUMPTIONS, and JUMP to conclusions, BEFORE you even try to begin to GAIN CLARIFICATION.

Fair enough, Cheesy. So what is analytical truth?

...the IRREFUTABLE Fact that you CLAIMED that in absolutely "NONE of my nearly 9000 posts include an irrefutable fact". Which WAS OBVIOUSLY False, Wrong, AND Incorrect, and just MORE of your Inaccurate CLAIMS here. Even your CLAIM that you had "asserted this", previously, was False, Wrong, AND Incorrect.

Well that's just typical of mouldy cheese: yer put something I never said in quotation marks and then have the cheese balls to say:

if you REALLY want to CLAIM an irrefutable fact in regards to what "another" says and/or writes, then I suggest that from now on you copy them verbatim. Otherwise, you could be PROVED Wrong, ONCE AGAIN.

You're very much a 'do as I say, not as I do' sort of mould, aren't you?

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:35 pm
In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.

This may surprise you, but so is mine.

I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now.

There was a very close unity between Christianity and secular power in the late middle ages in Europe west of Constantinople. Theocracy i.e. unity between religion and secular power is not unusual and characterises regimes where social control is based on the punishment and reward aspect of religion .

The papacy once controlled much of the social order of medieval Christendom including its economy and its colonial expansionism.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do you only see a certain element -- liberal or conservative -- as doing this? Or is it simply that liberals are turning against some types of order, while conservatives are turning against other types of order?

Which order is correct for all ... and how is it accomplished in a way that satisfies different perspectives? What kind of progress is right for all, especially when some don't see it as progress and don't want it? What kind of conventions are right for all, especially when some see them as restrictive and backward?

It seems clear that your essential question (questions) revolve around this core concern -- Why one thing and not another? Why this assertion of value and not another?

All that I can say is that communities develop around sets of defined values. A set of defined values is, by its nature, a selection, a focus, a series of choices. I often use the term paideia which I take at more or less face-value: What we teach our children. It is at the point of having to announce to your child (not an abstract child mind you) what you believe to be true, right, good and necessary, that we are forced to make the choice. To make a choice implies discernment, and discernment implies having considered the issue, though it is also possible that what one discerned to be true and right was not determined by personal involvement in decision-making but in receiving conventions.

However with all that said (and much more could be said) in my own case I can only focus on 'the nature of the time we are in'. It is especially evident as we observe, with a certain horror and apprehension, that the 'agreements' that were part-and-parcel of an ideological framework for our culture, our society and perhaps our civilization, come apart at the seams. We no longer agree. And 'agreement' is here the glue that holds a society together. If we no longer agree, we will not be able to work together voluntarily. And I suppose that what this portends is the 'breakdown' that we clearly notice.

Now, if this is true, and I think it is, I think that what we have to pay attention to is the strong possibility that the State will have to intervene. It is intervening in fact. I mean by this that the State will have to enter in in such a way to enforce a sort of agreement, or conditions in which society and economy can continue to function even when those who comprise the society do not share common interests.

At that point (if I am right) all statements, all viewpoints, all opinions, which appear to question the State's authority in its effort to maintain peace, will be made to seem 'bad' if not also 'evil'.

You might think I am going a bit over the top here but I present this picture because I think it is already taking shape. It will not be possible to enforce it (absolutely), obviously, and this portends some sort of political decision to separate. This seems to be what is in the works, and the State cannot tolerate that. A great deal of this was predicted decades back I should point out in books and essays that outlined the regional differences developing (speaking of the US).

If you were to ask me why all this is coming to pass, my answer would be to seek to understand better the Civil War era and the rise of the US federal power at which time a new definition of what America is came to be imposed. Not chosen organically but imposed.

Now, at this time, these *impositions* are unraveling. On one hand the very justification of the country's existence is being strongly questioned. To see America in that way -- as justified, as righteous, as necessary, as an evolution of political forms portending a New Possibility for mankind -- as indeed America was described as being, involves an application of a mythic viewpoint. This goes to the heart of America's 'civil religion'.

But as we all clearly notice this is coming undone which means that it is being consciously unraveled. Consciously undermined. And those who undermine seek to rewrite, reform, re-envision and re-describe *what America is*.

Within this radical context, naturally, and in America's *fly-over regions*, those who desire to hold to the former mythos do all that is in their power to create counter-mythic stories in order to ideological combat the radical forces with which the State or some factions within the State are aligned. Business seems to side with whatever rising power will likely gain control -- as business is always pragmatically inclined.

Excuse the musings. These are some of the things that I have been thinking about as I watch the ball of yarn unravel.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.

Nothing to worry about here. The object is to create an interesting conversation where the different viewpoints are brought out and articulated as clearly as possible.

[Lacewing]

Do you only see a certain element -- liberal or conservative -- as doing this? Or is it simply that liberals are turning against some types of order, while conservatives are turning against other types of order?

Which order is correct for all ... and how is it accomplished in a way that satisfies different perspectives? What kind of progress is right for all, especially when some don't see it as progress and don't want it? What kind of conventions are right for all, especially when some see them as restrictive and backward?

It seems clear that your essential question (questions) revolve around this core concern -- Why one thing and not another? Why this assertion of value and not another?

That's not the way I'm thinking about it, no... nor is it a question I'm asking... but it's interesting that's how you frame it.

I'm thinking that we need to consider broader views when we make our choices. It doesn't seem it should be that hard if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved, and the evolved awareness of the time we live in. Again, I think there's value in looking behind the scenes of why we cling to smaller and more limited ideas. How long are we supposed to continue in that way? Do we typically think that the choices we culturally made in our past will apply and serve us forever? We need frameworks that can expand along with us.

I am interested as to whether you see 'liberals' as being the 'primary dismantlers' in the unravelling you speak of? This is important, because if that is your focus, then you probably are not seeing/recognizing the limited and destructive nature of conservative ideas. Similar to how you don't appear to see what I've said in the light that it's presented? Possibly meaning that your conclusions are overruling... and cannot even reasonably consider that there's anything else to consider? Logic tells me: any polarized view is false (as it is based on limited and skewed information), and it fiercely protects something that's apparently more important than logic or reason. Why aren't we asking questions about that?

I see the truth of much of what you've carefully (and artfully) said. And I see more than that, which is what I've tried to communicate. So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see? I think it's reasonable to consider broader causes that contribute to cultural unravellings, rather than trying to conclude anything from a polarized position as so many people seem intent on doing. From my perspective, polarization is one of the thickest roots of the problem. Isn't it possible to function effectively without that? Or must we always be embroiled in battle with a perceived opposition?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm thinking that we need to consider broader views when we make our choices. It doesn't seem it should be that hard if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved, and the evolved awareness of the time we live in. Again, I think there's value in looking behind the scenes of why we cling to smaller and more limited ideas. How long are we supposed to continue in that way? Do we typically think that the choices we culturally made in our past will apply and serve us forever? We need frameworks that can expand along with us.

I am interested as to whether you see 'liberals' as being the 'primary dismantlers' in the unravelling you speak of? This is important, because if that is your focus, then you probably are not seeing/recognizing the limited and destructive nature of conservative ideas. Similar to how you don't appear to see what I've said in the light that it's presented? Possibly meaning that your conclusions are overruling... and cannot even reasonably consider that there's anything else to consider? Logic tells me: any polarized view is false (as it is based on limited and skewed information), and it fiercely protects something that's apparently more important than logic or reason. Why aren't we asking questions about that?

None of the terms we use -- Liberal, Conservative (and a wide additional array) -- seem to function for us anymore. They are non-useful.

I do not know how to describe 'radical activists in our present', except to note that they exist. Though you might expect that I will assign a label of 'bad' to those I identify as activists, I am unsure if philosophically I can do this with justification. These people exist, they are active today -- that is all I know.

I am uncertain how to categorize those people who seem to struggle to defend the categories of concern through which they identify themselves, what they value, and what they fight for.

I see the truth of much of what you've carefully (and artfully) said. And I see more than that, which is what I've tried to communicate. So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see? I think it's reasonable to consider broader causes that contribute to cultural unravellings, rather than trying to conclude anything from a polarized position as so many people seem intent on doing. From my perspective, polarization is one of the thickest roots of the problem. Isn't it possible to function effectively without that? Or must we always be embroiled in battle with a perceived opposition?

This is not a problem but I notice (or believe that I notice) that you often ask the same question, with different inflections. For example:

So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see?

My response is: How can I answer the question if I am uncertain what (loosely or precisely) you are referring to?

When you say: "if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved" I would suggest that you are suggesting a line of action, and that you are expressing a value-assessment of your own. So I would point out that you are, to use a term that I use, *inserting* a value-recommendation about right and good ethical actions. By no means am I criticizing if indeed you are doing that. I simply think that we all do it. And there is no way around it.

I do not know if I would say that Liberal-minded people are 'bad' or 'wrong', nor would I say the same about Conservative-minded people. It seems to be a question of disposition and also of intention. That is how I look at things: What is likely to result from the value-assertions that we hold and subscribe to when they are applied (through paideia) to the world-at-large.

Where do you stand in relation to those questions?

[Immanuel Can]

You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.
At this stage, scientists cannot prove it unequivocally, but they cannot refute it unequivocally either.

Actually, in various ways, they can, in fact, "refute" it.

The red shift effect shows the universe began from a singular event, not a cycle. There simply isn't enough density of mass in the entire universe for anything to reverse the process again. So we can see it with our own eyes: the universe is not going back to what it was: it's linear in time. Entropy demonstrates that the universe is moving from a state of higher order to one of lower order, not self-assembling into higher-order states. But even if they didn't have that empirical proof there's the mathematical impossibility of an infinite regress of prerequisities (causes).

I would say it's pretty much a closed case. I honestly don't know what you would be able to point to in order to contest it.

[Immanuel Can]

That being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.

Nothing to worry about here. The object is to create an interesting conversation where the different viewpoints are brought out and articulated as clearly as possible.

Great.

Yes, I think so, too.