Christianity

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Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Thank you for your direct responses to my question. Emphasis added:
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:23 pm
Given that you also recognise the design in nature, then my second sincere, direct question (riffing off yours above) is: Who or what (if not an objectively-existing God) stands behind the design of this world?
Well, I can do little else but *recognize* the design in nature. The more that it is examined, the more strange, unlikely and *impossible* it seems. Yet who dreamed it up? I cannot make sense out of it.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:23 pm
Who or what (if not an objectively-existing God) stands behind the design of this world?
I am just as unable to answer this question as you are.
You affirm, then, your fundamental metaphysical ignorance. You have previously in various posts to this thread also affirmed your rejection of (in my assessment) every significant element of Christian metaphysics.

Here's a peculiar thing: at the same time, you bemoan our having fallen away from metaphysical understanding. It is unclear to me why you would bemoan our having fallen away from a metaphysical understanding whose every significant element you reject, whilst lacking any understanding of your own. What, exactly, is the (correct) metaphysical understanding that (you propose) once was common knowledge but now has mostly been forgotten?

Here's another peculiar thing: you bemoan the disinterest of others (including participants in this thread) in metaphysics, but how do you expect to interest them when the example you offer is that after having spent years and years reading book after book on metaphysics and related matters - and presumably undertaking your own independent thinking and reasoning - the position you have arrived at (or, more likely, never left) is... rejection, uncertainty, ignorance, doubt, and inability to answer the most basic of questions or even to make sense of that upon which those most basic of questions is predicated?

Note: I'm not criticising your ignorance per se; I am also ignorant in this respect.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:23 pm And as you know -- I think it is plain and undeniable -- our world, the planetary world, the world of biology, is utterly cruel and simply without care or concern.
As I've pointed out to you in the past, this is an incomplete oversimplification. It is true in part, but there is also much in nature that is cooperative and kind rather than cruel and uncaring.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:23 pm The way things are [...] cannot change in a way given that the nature of the world is as it is.
This is really bad, fallacious reasoning, (potentially) unless you mean that there is something about the specific nature of the world that entails its immutability, in which case, what is that specific nature and how does it entail immutability?
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:23 pm The moral system, and the sense of moral guilt men feel -- that sense that everything man does is wrong and that something in man is dreadfully wrong -- is something I question in itself.
That's a great example of (yet) a(nother) core Christian metaphysical tenet that you at least question if not outright reject. There's really nothing essential - that you'd endorse - left; nothing to which we might recur.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:36 pm But the politics of the South, the destructiveness of the Civil War, the destruction of the South and southern traditions (of all sorts), and the North's imposition on the South through an occupying military force, all that is a very very complex set of issues, questions and problems.
"It's not racist; it's complex" - the resort of the scoundrel. I well remember, too, how badly you got your rear end handed to you when you tried to present your "complex" reading of the Civil War on a board of subject matter experts dedicated to its discussion.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:04 am
Belinda wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:04 pmIt's reasonable to view reality as an ordered affair like as if some super-intelligence/super-goodness had created nature and all its laws That is to say "God the Creator" is a reasonable belief.

But it's not reasonable to conclude that God the Creator intervenes to change His own laws of nature that He Himself set in place.
Very interesting statement and observation. Much to think about there.
There's not really that much thinking necessary to realise that the statement is wrong - or, at least, conditional on the qualities and properties that one ascribes to God.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:47 pm
Harry Baird wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:39 pmFirst: is there a need to make a distinction? Intervention is intervention, whether it occurs within your consciousness or outside of it.
Yet there is a significant difference in one view and the other. So there is a need to explain the distinction it seems to me.
If an entity other than you is able to intervene in your mind, then it is hardly a stretch to expect it to be capable of intervention into the outside world - after all, even we everyday humans intervene in that outside world, with our every act.
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Harbal
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Re: Christianity

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Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:47 am
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:04 am
Belinda wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:04 pmIt's reasonable to view reality as an ordered affair like as if some super-intelligence/super-goodness had created nature and all its laws That is to say "God the Creator" is a reasonable belief.

But it's not reasonable to conclude that God the Creator intervenes to change His own laws of nature that He Himself set in place.
Very interesting statement and observation. Much to think about there.
There's not really that much thinking necessary to realise that the statement is wrong - or, at least, conditional on the qualities and properties that one ascribes to God.
The qualities and properties of God vary according to what particular argument against his existence or behaviour needs to be invalidated. :roll:
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Harbal wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:42 pm The qualities and properties of God vary according to what particular argument against his existence or behaviour needs to be invalidated. :roll:
Clever, and rhetorically effective - but too one-sided, as though there are no good arguments for the existence of a God of some description.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Belinda wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:35 am
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:04 am
Belinda wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:04 pmBut it's not reasonable to conclude that God the Creator intervenes to change His own laws of nature that He Himself set in place.
Very interesting statement and observation. Much to think about there.
I can hardly believe you are not already familiar with the deist stance.
Frankly I am not that familiar with the logic of deism (though I suppose it must have a full philosophy attached to it). And I'd not have immediately thought that deism assumes that 'god' cannot intervene in a miraculous way. But thinking about it that would make sense.

I am more interested in those experiences, of which I've had a few, where outer experience coincides with inner experience in ways that make one think that there is some spiritual entity that acts in this immutable, determined reality.

It is certainly unreasonable to our reasonable minds that it would be possible for 'god' to violate the order of things. But perhaps that only means that 'reasonableness' has to be examined?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:45 am You affirm, then, your fundamental metaphysical ignorance. You have previously in various posts to this thread also affirmed your rejection of (in my assessment) every significant element of Christian metaphysics.
As far as I am aware, I could only have real metaphysical knowledge (the opposite of metaphysical ignorance) if I were a metaphysical magician. Now, this brings up an interesting question: the operations of magic. We are discussing theology here. But there is a whole school that proposes that it is possible to influence the scheme of things and 'evoke' circumstances. The traditions of mystical magic are just as much a part of those ancient Medieval and pre-Medieval traditions of the Occident as is simple Christian piety.

It must have been a mistake of your understanding if you now say that I reject every significant element of Christian metaphysics. I would never say such a thing. What I do say, and have said, is that European Christianity has to be seen as a confluence of all sorts of different traditions which melded together in the Alexandrian cauldron. To understand ourselves -- the way we think -- we have to take into account Greece, Judea, Rome and then Alexandria. Things are clarified there and things are also confused.
Here's a peculiar thing: at the same time, you bemoan our having fallen away from metaphysical understanding. It is unclear to me why you would bemoan our having fallen away from a metaphysical understanding whose every significant element you reject, whilst lacking any understanding of your own. What, exactly, is the (correct) metaphysical understanding that (you propose) once was common knowledge but now has mostly been forgotten?
I begin to understand your quandary. I would refer you to both René Guénon and Julius Evola for more complete definitions of 'metaphysics'. Guénon asserts that pure metaphysics has been overshadowed by the impure (if you will). My idea that, say, Christianity is a 'Story' is not to state that every element in it is false. On the contrary. One must see through the story to be able to identify the metaphysical principle. And metaphysical principles are acutely intellectual. They are non-material.

René Guénon did point out that in Catholicism especially there were still strong strains of sound metaphysical ideas. And the snippet I included above on *intellectus* demonstrates that quite nicely. It takes an advanced or at least a *prepared* mind to grasp such principles. And one can avoid getting hung up in all the imagery which religions accrete around them. The *reading* of symbols is thus implied. A *symbol* is an allusion is it not?

It is true that I tend to agree with the Evolas and the Guénons, and I do try to distill an operational metaphysics for myself. But my real issue is that I cannot say any longer what the function of religiousness is or should be. What am I trying to achieve for myself through some devotional religious practice? Escape for this world at some future point? Or power and attainment in this world?
Here's another peculiar thing: you bemoan the disinterest of others (including participants in this thread) in metaphysics, but how do you expect to interest them when the example you offer is that after having spent years and years reading book after book on metaphysics and related matters - and presumably undertaking your own independent thinking and reasoning - the position you have arrived at (or, more likely, never left) is... rejection, uncertainty, ignorance, doubt, and inability to answer the most basic of questions or even to make sense of that upon which those most basic of questions is predicated?
I am not sure who you are referring to. And I doubt that you could crowd everyone together. Each person writing here comes from a unique *fragmented* position. Unfortunatley, there is no metaphysics that are recognized and agreed upon. That is why I notice disunity, discord, the impossibility of agreement, and the result as bickering.
having spent years and years reading book after book on metaphysics and related matters
In my view, and when one considers one's 'incarnation' (the time one has here) it tends to be true that a given person is working on, perhaps, one general and important question or issue. It is as though a lifetime is devoted to learning in one particular area. And we are slow learners. We have to repeat & repeat & repeat lessons until -- one hopes -- one gets it.

So, you are taking me to task because I am an unusually slow learner?
but how do you expect to interest them
Interest them? I am unsure if that is in any sense my objective. I think we are all far more interested in convincing ourselves when we *argue our points*.
rejection, uncertainty, ignorance, doubt, and inability to answer the most basic of questions or even to make sense of that upon which those most basic of questions is predicated
You are looking superficially at a position (my own) which I think you do not understand sufficiently. If you understood it better I do not think you would say what you have said.
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Harbal
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Re: Christianity

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Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:58 pm
Harbal wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:42 pm The qualities and properties of God vary according to what particular argument against his existence or behaviour needs to be invalidated. :roll:
Clever, and rhetorically effective - but too one-sided, as though there are no good arguments for the existence of a God of some description.
I'm not saying there are no good arguments for God; there may well be, it's just that the arguments for and against rarely seem to compete on a level playing field. There was a discussion about evolution on this thread a while ago, and certain claims were made about some aspects of living organisms that could not be accounted for by natural selection. I think it was said that there were features of DNA that could not possibly have come about naturally, or without some sort of purposeful intervention. The implication being that, whenever science can't explain something, God is the logical alternative. The burden of explanation always seems to be put on science, but no one ever seems to feel it necessary to explain exactly how God does what he does. :?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

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Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:45 am As I've pointed out to you in the past, this is an incomplete oversimplification. It is true in part, but there is also much in nature that is cooperative and kind rather than cruel and uncaring.
Perhaps if you describe what you are referring to I will better be able to understand. Where is the 'kindness' and where the 'cooperation'?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

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Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:45 am This is really bad, fallacious reasoning, (potentially) unless you mean that there is something about the specific nature of the world that entails its immutability, in which case, what is that specific nature and how does it entail immutability?
I refer to the natural and the biological world perhaps best visualized without men. That world can do nothing else but carry on as it has for millions and billions of years. What has defined life on this planet for billions of years prior, is what can be expected for billions of years going forward.

Are we talking about the same thing Harry?

The world of man is different.
The way things are [...] cannot change in a way given that the nature of the world is as it is.
The world, absent man, must go on as it has.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

AJ: The moral system, and the sense of moral guilt men feel -- that sense that everything man does is wrong and that something in man is dreadfully wrong -- is something I question in itself.
HB: That's a great example of (yet) a(nother) core Christian metaphysical tenet that you at least question if not outright reject. There's really nothing essential - that you'd endorse - left; nothing to which we might recur.
Let me say that I am uncertain, and also *confused*, about what proper morality is and what it should be. I am aware that we have developed moral systems, and that our Liberalism is dripping with all sorts of predicates and suppositions and a great deal of it of a sentimental sort. But there are times when I am not sure if these are, say, absolute or even if they are the right ones.

I think you have some pieces missing since I am not sure you have had much of an encounter with F, Nietzsche. His realizations about 'moral decadence' are not without some sense.

In my sentence quoted above I allude to another perspective. One that is much 'harder' let's say.

I had just been reading Cymbeline:
Plenty and peace breeds cowards; hardness ever
Of hardiness is mother.
Naturally, these are difficult topics. But they are part of the unraveling and the uncovering and the defining that we are engaged in here.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Harry Baird wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:58 amIf an entity other than you is able to intervene in your mind, then it is hardly a stretch to expect it to be capable of intervention into the outside world - after all, even we everyday humans intervene in that outside world, with our every act.
It all seems to depend on what sort of *picture* we are referring to when we visualize our being as well as Being (in an ontological sense). The logic of your emphatic statement is, I think, your attempt to convince yourself that it is true.

If it is true then *work* it. You are right on the brink of metaphysical magic!

The only statement that I can make, myself, is that something arises in the inner realm. I call that intellectus. Awareness, awakening, dawning, a spark that once lit continues self-igniting if attended to, or extinguishing if not.
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Harbal
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harbal »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:55 pm I had just been reading Cymbeline:
:roll:
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

This could be you, Harbal:

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