Christianity

[Nick_A]

It's odd actually, that it is Christians who do not understand Christianity. Just like those Melanesia Cargo Cults, the only ones who believe in them are those who do hot understand they are just empty superstitions that accomplish nothing, just Christianity, which is a bit more sophisticated, but every bit as absurd.

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The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting]rom the inception if the human race until the coming if Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion which was already in existence began to be called Christian. -ST. AUGUSTINE, Retractiones

There is one Christianity. What you see in the world is just devolutions of Christianity into man made interpretations known as Christendom. There are many paths of Christendom but just one Christianity.

As for believing, "everything in the universe vibrates," it's just empty words. What does, "vibrate," mean? Vibration is always the consequence of some set of forces--it doesn't just happen. Actually nothing in the universe vibrates except under unique conditions and unless the force that generates the vibration continues, all vibrations are self-damping. You are right, somebody really does hot understand vibrations.

You have already made up your mind. You wrote nothing in the universe vibrates. I said all matter vibrates. For people to communicate they must open their mind to what another is saying. But we cannot do this and prefer to condemn it without even understanding the depth of an idea.

The great Third Hermetic Principle--the Principle of Vibration--embodies the truth that Motion is manifest in everything in the Universe--that nothing is at rest--that everything moves, vibrates, and circles. This Hermetic Principle was recognized by some of the early Greek philosophers who embodied it in their systems. But, then, for centuries it was lost sight of by the thinkers outside of the Hermetic ranks. But in the Nineteenth Century physical science re-discovered the truth and the Twentieth Century scientific discoveries have added additional proof of the correctness and truth of this centuries-old Hermetic doctrine.

It is easy to ridicule what we don't understand. Some others prefer the joy of contemplation which leads to understanding the deeper idea of Christianity.

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.” Soren Kierkegaard

Believe what you like, especially if you are truly happy with your life. I have no interest in changing your views. Are you totally satisfied with your life, without any regret, dispair, or guilt? If so, good for you. If your life is not complete, if you are dissatsified with any aspect of it, perhaps you need to change some of your thinking, but that's entirely your concern, not mine.

I have always had this need for meaning which made me "different." At one point in my life I had an experience which made the following clear to me

1. The purpose of our universe

2. the purpose of life within it including human life.

3. Why I am the wretched man described by St. Paul.

4. leaving Plato's Cave

Of course I am dissatisfied with my life but now at least I know why. knowing the vertical inner direction to becoming human often provides the inner direction to gradually escape the prison of Plato's Cave serving a universal human purpose rather then just an animal purpose.

[RCSaunders]

Of course I am dissatisfied with my life but now at least I know why.

That's a beginning, but I do not think you really know why.

... knowing the vertical inner direction to becoming human often provides the inner direction to gradually escape the prison of Plato's Cave ....

The real reason for you discontent is allowing someone else's teaching to determine what you think. You were not born believing the world of direct experience was an illusion. Some deceitful teacher somewhere had to convince you of that sophic lie (perpetuated by every philosopher from Plato to Kant and every religious teacher) to put over a belief in some mystic reality that no one can be diretly conscious of or ever truly know. And most people settle for that view and wonder why they are dissatisfied with life.

But a fully satisfying life of achievement and success is available to anyone who will not settle for someone else's teaching and chooses to use their own mind to discover what is true, but it's a very difficult life that is demanding and dangerous, and most people are afraid of it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The real reason for you discontent is allowing someone else's teaching to determine what you think. You were not born believing the world of direct experience was an illusion. Some deceitful teacher somewhere had to convince you of that sophic lie (perpetuated by every philosopher from Plato to Kant and every religious teacher) to put over a belief in some mystic reality that no one can be diretly conscious of or ever truly know. And most people settle for that view and wonder why they are dissatisfied with life.

It is an interesting assertion, certainly, and a very broad one. To have this position, to think as you do, gives you a Cat Bird's Seat out of which entire realms of thought and ideation have come. From that seat you can reject all of it. And I suppose that this is what you are really on about -- defining a will-to-reject (to use a quirky turn of phrase). I suggest that your inclination would need to be closely examined, not simply accepted.

According to you it is all therefore 'deceit' and leads, according to what you propose, to 'dissatisfaction'. So the source of dissatisfaction is in having the wrong way of thinking about things. The cure? To start thinking in some other way which, of course, you suppose (because this is your core assertion) that you can successfully explain. You think thusly and you are then free of 'dissatisfaction' (whatever this means for you).

But a fully satisfying life of achievement and success is available to anyone who will not settle for someone else's teaching and chooses to use their own mind to discover what is true, but it's a very difficult life that is demanding and dangerous, and most people are afraid of it.

There is of course an element of truth in this: some people do live solely, and without even a will to examine more closely, the inherited and unquestioned structures that determine how they see and perceive.

To say 'use one's own mind' is a tricky statement. You evidently have 'used your own mind' in such a way that you wind up in reductions of vast scale. In your own mind you can reject it all. But is that a positive result? I am not convinced. But perhaps if you reveal more it will be made more clear and I might go along with you.

[Nick_A]

Of course I am dissatisfied with my life but now at least I know why.

That's a beginning, but I do not think you really know why.

... knowing the vertical inner direction to becoming human often provides the inner direction to gradually escape the prison of Plato's Cave ....

The real reason for you discontent is allowing someone else's teaching to determine what you think. You were not born believing the world of direct experience was an illusion. Some deceitful teacher somewhere had to convince you of that sophic lie (perpetuated by every philosopher from Plato to Kant and every religious teacher) to put over a belief in some mystic reality that no one can be diretly conscious of or ever truly know. And most people settle for that view and wonder why they are dissatisfied with life.

But a fully satisfying life of achievement and success is available to anyone who will not settle for someone else's teaching and chooses to use their own mind to discover what is true, but it's a very difficult life that is demanding and dangerous, and most people are afraid of it.

A satisfying life by worldly standards does not realize they are the wretched Man Romans 7:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.

I have verified through efforts to know thyself that I am dual natured. My lower parts are slave to the earth while my higher parts are slave to universal laws. This isn't blind belief but rather the verification of the duality of what I Am and the quality of inner help necessary to reconcile it.

It is a different quality of a satisfying life

[Dubious]

As for believing, "everything in the universe vibrates," it's just empty words. What does, "vibrate," mean? Vibration is always the consequence of some set of forces--it doesn't just happen. Actually nothing in the universe vibrates except under unique conditions and unless the force that generates the vibration continues, all vibrations are self-damping. You are right, somebody really does hot understand vibrations.

According to string theory everything in the universe does vibrate. The question emerges is ST a viable theory as many physicists believe it is. So far, it's the only one that successfully combines the General Theory with Quantum Theory, or at least gives is a high probability. As far as I understand ST, it requires the existence of a multiverse which is extremely hard to prove. At this time ST defaults to a kind of paradox being able to resolve certain long-standing issues without, so far, having been provable on its own.

If a prototypical form of vibration were acknowledged as the most fundamental particle of all, in a manner of speaking, it would continue to vibrate without other forces applied since there aren't any other forces available, IT being the very foundation of creation.

Sometimes even an ancient metaphor can turn out to be a reality.

[RCSaunders]

A satisfying life by worldly standards does not realize they are the wretched Man

Oh, I agree. Since most of the world embraces some religion or ideology, and all ideologies are in defiance of reality, the religious standards (which are the world's standards) can only lead to a life that is ultimately self-destructive resulting in disappointment and despair.

[Nick_A]

A satisfying life by worldly standards does not realize they are the wretched Man

Oh, I agree. Since most of the world embraces some religion or ideology, and all ideologies are in defiance of reality, the religious standards (which are the world's standards) can only lead to a life that is ultimately self-destructive resulting in disappointment and despair.

Actually it is the opposite. You are referring to secularized religion and politics which by definition is secular. Some can awaken to the fact that their lives are governed by force. Life is a reaction to force. Yet some can gradually CONSCIOUSLY see it for what it is and as they do become aware of the way out.

For most, participating in the dualistic ritual of force offers secular meaning. Yet some may read even this segment of Simone Weil's poem on the Iliad and momentarily become aware of the way out of Plato's cave.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... -the-iliad

The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. For those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, the Iliad could appear as an historical document; for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the purest and the loveliest of mirrors.

To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us:

... the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground Lay,
dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
The hero becomes a thing dragged behind a chariot in the dust:

I've been trying to understand the power of force. War is a good example. Both sides need to win as a blind reaction to force. But in reality, only force wins as the continuation of a worldly process. If Man is a creature of blind reaction to force some may appear to win today and lose tomorrow. It is the way of force as expressed in the laws of nature.

Christianity for me offers the path to freedom from blind force. Humanity can evolve from reactions to blind force into the inner direction offering freedom into human meaning and purpose. Some understand it and some don't. I like to learn from those who do.

[RCSaunders]

A satisfying life by worldly standards does not realize they are the wretched Man

Oh, I agree. Since most of the world embraces some religion or ideology, and all ideologies are in defiance of reality, the religious standards (which are the world's standards) can only lead to a life that is ultimately self-destructive resulting in disappointment and despair.

Actually it is the opposite. You are referring to secularized religion

No, I'm talking about all religion. Every religion thinks all the others are secularized versions. I don't know what your religion is, if you have one, but I assure you, all other religious people regard your religion as a perversion or secularization of the true religion. I regard them all as the primary sources of superstition, ignorance, political, oppression, racism, and war.

'With the possible exception of Islam, no religion glorifies political power, war, and ethnicity more than Christianity.

... Simone Weil's poem on the Iliad and momentarily become aware of the way out of Plato's cave.

Yes, that Marxist mystic pal of Lenin is a good example of all that's wrong with Christianity.

Christianity for me offers the path to freedom from blind force. ...

Then it's your own version of Christianity. The one based on the Bible is dripping with the blood of war and persecution putting the Iliad to shame, and ends in the execution of absolute force destroying the world.

[Nick_A]

RC

Then it's your own version of Christianity. The one based on the Bible is dripping with the blood of war and persecution putting the Iliad to shame, and ends in the execution of absolute force destroying the world.

Are all women the same and only concerned with abortions, gender rights, and conquests over men? If they are not all the same maybe there are those who have essentially feminine qualities not understood

You are judging Christianity by what certain people have done in Plato's cave. This is like judging all women by what certain women have done in Plato's cave.

Islam believes by indoctrination. A Christian, rather then an advocate of some form of Christendom, has experienced rebirth and the inner path to freedom. Until then they are pre-Christian with the potential to become Christian.

Christianity has three stages. The first is the desire to become Christian. The second is to become able to be a Christian or follow in the precepts of Christ. The third is actually becoming Christian.

I don't think you know what rebirth is so limit yourself to arguing certain manifestations of secular man made Christendom. I am more concerned with finding those in real life who have become Christian or esoteric Christianity to experience it rather than being indoctrinated.

[RCSaunders]

The real reason for you discontent is allowing someone else's teaching to determine what you think. You were not born believing the world of direct experience was an illusion. Some deceitful teacher somewhere had to convince you of that sophic lie (perpetuated by every philosopher from Plato to Kant and every religious teacher) to put over a belief in some mystic reality that no one can be diretly conscious of or ever truly know. And most people settle for that view and wonder why they are dissatisfied with life.

It is an interesting assertion, certainly, and a very broad one. To have this position, to think as you do, gives you a Cat Bird's Seat out of which entire realms of thought and ideation have come. From that seat you can reject all of it. And I suppose that this is what you are really on about -- defining a will-to-reject (to use a quirky turn of phrase). I suggest that your inclination would need to be closely examined, not simply accepted.

It is all therefore 'deceit' and leads, according to what you propose, to 'dissatisfaction'. So the source of dissatisfaction is in having the wrong way of thinking about this. The cure? To start thinking in some other way which, of course, you suppose (because this is your core assertion) that you can successfully explain.

But a fully satisfying life of achievement and success is available to anyone who will not settle for someone else's teaching and chooses to use their own mind to discover what is true, but it's a very difficult life that is demanding and dangerous, and most people are afraid of it.

There is of course an element of truth in this: some people do live solely, and without even a will to examine more closely, the structures that determine how they see.

To say 'use one's own mind' is a tricky statement. You evidently have 'used your own mind' in such a way that you wind up in reductions of vast scale. In your own mind you can reject it all. But is that a positive result? I am not convinced. But perhaps if you reveal more it will be made more clear and I might go along with you.

Now you have raised for me a personal dilemma. On the one hand, I'm always delighted by other's interest in the ideas I embrace, and, because I really do enjoy others and intercourse with them, I am always willing to explain my views. But I have no interest in convincing anyone else to agree with or adopt my views, because I know everyone is different and has their own mind which they must use to the best of their ability to understand the truth.

So long as you understand, I'm only explaining my views, not evangelizing, I'll try to explain what is, in fact quite simple, not at all, "tricky," but certainly not easy.

Using one's own mind simply means never accepting the teaching of any supposed authority, expert, or academic without understanding how or why that teaching is true. One can certainly learn from others and is how most of what we know is learned, but learning is not simply accepting what is taught, it requires one to use their own mind and ability to reason to know why what they are taught is correct or true.

But, as I said, it is not easy, because thinking is hard work. It means being ruthlessly careful not to allow any feelings, desires, impulses, or irrational fears to affect one's reason. It means learning all one can about as many things as one possibly can. It means never evading any evidence of any kind and never allowing any idea that contradicts evidence to stand. It means never allowing any contradictions in one's thinking or beliefs. It means one must be an autodidact, polymath, and frequently a polyglot as well. It usually means one will end knowing things and believing things few others do and may very well be resented for it.

But thinking for oneself does not mean rejecting anything out of hand. It only means not committing to any view until one's best reason, based on available evidence, has convinced them it is true. Most of the things I identify as untrue are based on what I've studied--every major Western philosopher, most Eastern religions, all the Christian theologians, the physical sciences, most economic and political theories, etc. etc. [I've had over 80 years to do it. My wife and I read over 200 books a year. We consider that average and we know others who put that number to shame.] I do not come to my views lightly.

I have learned that most of what most people believe is simply not true and often plainly false. When I began to examine why most of humanity embraces beliefs that are neither logically nor evidentially possible I discovered most human beings do not really want to know the truth, because the truth describes a reality they do not like.

Here, I'm beginning to sound like I am promoting my views. I'm really not, just trying to explain what they are. To that end, and only if your interested I add the following:

"Ideology: Hatred Of Reality", an article describing why most people hate reality so embrace some ideology.

To illustrate that thinking for oneself is not unique in the world, but very rare, here are some, offhand, I regard as truly original thinkers: Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Abelard, Voltaire, Emilie du Chatelet (Voltaire's mistress and mathematic genius who translated Newton and corrected his works), Robert Heinlein, H.L. Mencken, Ayn Rand, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Edison, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ray Bradbury, Marie Curie, Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), Dorothy Thompson, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, Oriana Fallaci, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, as well as all those individualists I've listed in my old article: "Only Individuals" (2016)

That's enough. Ignore what does not interest you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Using one's own mind simply means never accepting the teaching of any supposed authority, expert, or academic without understanding how or why that teaching is true. One can certainly learn from others and is how most of what we know is learned, but learning is not simply accepting what is taught, it requires one to use their own mind and ability to reason to know why what they are taught is correct or true.

My attention has been pulled away to other things lately — yet I read your post with interest. I have a better sense of where you are coming from. I find I am highly in sympathy with the gist of your message. I hope soon to come back to make a few other comments when time allows.

[RCSaunders]

Using one's own mind simply means never accepting the teaching of any supposed authority, expert, or academic without understanding how or why that teaching is true. One can certainly learn from others and is how most of what we know is learned, but learning is not simply accepting what is taught, it requires one to use their own mind and ability to reason to know why what they are taught is correct or true.

My attention has been pulled away to other things lately — yet I read your post with interest. I have a better sense of where you are coming from. I find I am highly in sympathy with the gist of your message. I hope soon to come back to make a few other comments when time allows.

No hurry. I look forward to your comments.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So long as the idea of, "truth," is not misconstrued as having some kind of mystic existence independent of human minds.

Truth is not a, "thing." Truth, like, "importance," or, "significance," only has meaning relative to conscious propositions. Only some statement about some aspect of reality can be true or false. It is reality that determines whether a statement is true or not, but truth itself, sans statements, does not exist.

So, this quote is from the thread you linked to in the first article Hatred of Reality.

I guess you will see this as obvious, given my orientations, but I definitely suspect, and it seems logical and also coherent to me, that truth has an independent existence from our own mind. Note that when you say 'mind' you mean 'brain'. And your assertion -- I reckon it to be your starting-point -- is that all ideas that we'd say are truthful are simply and uniquely ideas that have been contrived by our brain. While I (certainly) understand why someone would believe such a thing I find this belief problematic. And yes the reason is because I can only assume that before our creation became manifest that everything that we now are and of course think -- all our discoveries, say, all our sussing out of relationships as for example through math-concepts -- all of this was 'latent' within what had not yet been created.

So at one point everything was latent and nothing was manifest. And here I mean everything, from the world of geological and biological forms, into and including, naturally, all the epiphenomena we describe as thought and idea.

So it seems to me logical and also necessary to say that -- especially what we think in the sense of higher conception and idea -- has an independent existence from us. It existed prior to us and, I assume, had to have that latent existence. I suppose that you would have to say "This is right where mystical thinking begins, in this error".

And unless I am very wrong you certainly recognize 'truth' yet within specific domains -- such I assume as in mathematics or geometry and what is referred to generally as 'science' and material science. Or, am I to assume that you also regard any truth-definitions, or definition of 'fact' as being arbitrary as well?

It is true that "truth is not a thing". And it is also true that truth is relative in the sense that each being that conceives it stands in a relative relationship to any other being. Yet in so many areas (concrete science, measurement, maths) we define truths that are real and constant. And though it is true that it -- truth -- cannot be described as a thing it is related to things. And thus, on a more intangible level, the notion of truth and also Truth does indeed *exist* insofar as it is part-and-parcel of everything.

To say "It is reality that determines whether a statement is true or not" is a true statement! So here you are certainly engaged with truth declaration.

If I have read what you write correctly it is in higher, or perhaps the right word is in 'intangible' zones of thought, idea and concept that you have discovered false-declarations. You seem to say that man believes false-declarations (misperceptions that are willed into existence) because he cannot stand Reality and so must lie to himself to soften the hard edge of reality. I do not think I could or would disagree with this statement if it were made cautiously and with circumspection.

But I obviously extend the notion of what 'reality' is farther than you will allow. I think that that are an infinite number of false ideas that arise out of this intangible zone, but I could not say that all the perception of this sort, and coming out of this zone, is therefore either false or 'invented' in the way that the term 'invented' is used often these days (as in 'completely made up' and therefore essentially unreal).

I am also very concerned for the effort -- I believe I sense it in your essays -- to propose the undermining of all metaphysics. To me, this idea seems absurd given that nearly all that we do, that we humans do, is so bound up in metaphysics.

So the way I think of it metaphysics, if this is possible, needs to be clarified and if you will purified. And this is a terribly problematic arena.

[Belinda]

RCSaunders, if there were a good God then He would have put in place that all men are subject to their own perspectives. Only if all men are subject to their own perspectives can men learn from each others' experiences and thereby stand a chance of approaching closer to either ultimate reality or a workable consensus.

[Jacobsladder]

When Fr. Nietzsche said "Mutter ich bin dumm" what was he referring to, eh?

The universe sighs and scratches each time someone "quotes" this, mostly in movies, and some corrector rushes in, well, with some delay!

This enlightening blog details the interesting point of that there might not have been a horse or that at least it might not have started any episode. Nice references to Dostoevsky included!

A better Nietzsche quote from that article, for the occasion:

“Can an ass be tragic? — Perishing under a load you can neither bear nor shed?…The case of the philosopher.” The ass and the philosopher, united in their failure to bear a load — the unbearable heaviness of being.

Apologies for posting this somewhat irrelevant to the larger topic of Christianity. Although what is really?