Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Felasco]

Felasco. Hmm. I thought I brought something new to the table, which I had hoped addressed the various points you have been repeating, so for you to respond to a large extent by simply repeating those same points again is... kind of frustrating.

My apologies that I can't find an infinite number of different ways to say this, but it's really pretty simple, so a few ways should be sufficient.

Thought is a medium. That medium has properties. Those properties influence the content of thought.

In any case, let me cut to the chase: the difference between us is that you say that philosophy/theology/etc are "futile", whereas I say they are "unavoidable".

Pretending that we know things we couldn't possibly know is not unavoidable.

How is it possible to go about one's life without any beliefs about the world that might fit into the category of "philosophical"?

The problem here is that you are not actually reading my posts. I never suggested such a thing.

Isn't that what you're suggesting we do, implicitly if not explicitly?

Have you noticed that my 12 billion posts in this thread are riddled with philosophy through and through? You just don't like my conclusions, that's all, which is fair enough.

But even you don't do this! Your philosophy is one of love. You complain at my pointing this out to you that it is "wrong" to philosophise about love, but nevertheless it IS your philosophy, and you DO promote it as such - in thoughtful words, no less.

I've explained this a hundred times above. Out of respect for your comment above, I won't repeat it yet again.

You point out that atheists and theists are at one another's throats, but what is the alternative?

Understanding that theism and atheism are essentially the same thing, a fantasy knowing. The alternative is to drop the fantasy.

Some people have had spiritual encounters with divinity - should they pretend that they haven't, and ignore their own formative experiences?

I'm not disputing that they have had experiences that are important to them. I'm disputing that any of us are in a position to know whether these are experiences of the divine, or not of the divine.

It's possible to embrace an experience without rushing to interpret it. Why not let the experience be enough in itself?

I would argue that if one's mind is not crammed with interpretations, a quietness is established, which makes it more likely one may hear the next experience. As it stands, we are internally blabbing interpretations and such all day long, and if God were to sneak up and bite us on the ass, we probably wouldn't even notice, distracted as we are by the sound of our own noises.

If you had a spiritual encounter with divinity, I am very sure it would affect your philosophical/theological beliefs too, as well as the way you approached your life - as it very well should! In no sense would those beliefs be "futile".

You've read many of my posts now, for which I thank you. Do I strike you as being so incredibly brilliant as to be able to determine what is divine and what is not? FYI, the Sri Baba Bozo thing is just a joke.

I would argue that any such experience has value in itself, and is not dependent on how we label or interpret it. As example, the plate of rice I will soon eat will satisfy my hunger whether I call it "rice", "chow", "grub" or "eats". l could call it a 57 Chevy convertible, and it wouldn't matter, I'd still have a full belly.

If you are a person of faith, why not have enough faith to accept that any interpretations our tiny human minds might cook up are not needed by Whoever you think is providing the experience? If you feel God is saying hello to you, why not shut up and let Him talk? Surely whatever He has to say would be more important than whatever you might say, no disrespect to you personally intended.

The peculiar thing to me is that you are engaged in the very thing you object to: philosophising, and "dividing off" that philosophy -

Again, explained 100 times above...

"Love is all we need. We all know how to love without having to think about it, but this doesn't make it easy to love.

I am not a Christian myself, and am not proposing Christian love as the ONLY solution. I am only remarking it is the path generally chosen by Western culture, in the form of Christianity.

Imho, addressing the problem at it's source is a more Eastern approach, which I am personally more inclined to, but I don't suggest this as the ONLY or the BEST solution either. What works is what's best, whatever that might be for an individual.

Thinking about anything other than practical and scientific matters is futile.

This may help. My wife is intelligent, and wiser than I (nothing to brag about there) but is perhaps the least philosophical / ideological person I've ever met. This doesn't prevent her from wildlife rehabbing 99 hours a day for free. Thus, I see no reason why philosophy is required for love.

Thinking divides us from nature,

Thinking is symbolic, nature is real. To the degree we are thinking, we are not paying attention to the real.

This is actually very simple Harry, if you will allow it to be.

The central question of western religion is, is there a God in the real world. Ok so far?

If one wishes to address that question, it follows by the simplest of logic that the place to look would be..... in the real world.

The real world, not the symbolic world. Everybody already knows and agrees that God exists in the symbolic world, so no investigation is required on that question.

If a serious and practical person wishes to investigate this question, they will ask, how to look in the real world?

which is a form of sickness, which we can heal by spending time in nature having mystical unifying experiences". OK, great, so now you have a philosophy... but, sadly, it is not universally agreed upon - Gustav for one challenges you on it. Oh dear. Since it's not universally agreed upon, then, according to your reasoning, it must be futile. Uh oh! Paradox alert!

My philosophy is fundamentally no different than any other philosophy, as it is made of thought, just like all the others. I would encourage you to dismiss, disregard, and dispose of my philosophy at the earliest moment, and turn to the real world.

Where do you go from here?!

You stop talking about it, and do it.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Thank you, Gustav, that was a helpful post. I think I get a better sense of what you value in the Western traditions now: I think what you value particularly is the *systematic approach to thinking* - systematic in the sense of analytical, logical and rational - and the commitment to applying this systematic approach to all areas of life and knowledge. Perhaps the existence of this mode of thinking in the West might after all be an argument as to why the West was uniquely qualified to develop the modern scientific approach.

A small clarification: I would not myself have selected the phrase 'systematic approach to thinking', and I am not sure this is the most important thing though it surely must have a great deal of importance. I used the words 'breadth and depth' and, if you will allow it, I would prefer to say that what I appreciate in that source is 'breadth and depth' which, in the comparisons I have made with other systems of thought, is unmatched. Vedic (Sanskrit) thought is highly analytical and 'systematic', even at times (in what I have exposed myself to) exceeding Greek systematic rationalism (or however it would be described). So it does not seem to be 'systematic in the sense of analytical, logical and rational' nor 'applying this systematic approach to all areas of life and knowledge', but rather an uncovering of dimensions of thinking with such profound depth that what was uncovered still remains relevant. Or, the explorative impulse, so intense and pointed, continues its work of cutting and incision, which metaphor has two obvious sides. Perhaps it could be said that there is a sort of mercurial restlessness in Greek thinking, an unstoppable curiosity? And this too is a two-bladed sword.

As to what led to developing/discovering the 'scientific approach' that allowed for the material sciences to develop, I haven't studied the question in any depth. But the Greek energy and volition seems to be some large part of it. Yet there were a group of things as I understand it. Opportune moments. Fortuitousness.

I hope this present post is even more helpful than the last.

[Harry Baird]

Have you noticed that my 12 billion posts in this thread are riddled with philosophy through and through?

This is very peculiar, because you seem then to acknowledge that you are blatantly contradicting yourself, yet you don't seem to feel any discomfort over that fact. I'm not really sure where to go from here. "Philosophy is futile, and that's my philosophy". What?

You just don't like my conclusions, that's all, which is fair enough.

It's not so much that I don't like them as that they are self-contradictory. "Philosophically, I have determined that philosophy is futile". How can your conclusion be trusted if the means by which you reached it is (by its own admission) "futile"?

From earlier in your post:

Pretending that we know things we couldn't possibly know is not unavoidable.

Don't you think this is a little presumptuous of you? Let's say you had a near-death experience during terminal-stage cancer, in which you encountered angelic presences who assured you that within a few days after your returning to your body, your cancer would completely reverse itself, and, when you awoke, this is exactly what happened. Would your knowledge that there is a spiritual realm of existence beyond the physical populated by heavenly beings who can perform miracles be a "pretence"? (This has actually happened to people).

I would encourage you to dismiss, disregard, and dispose of my philosophy at the earliest moment, and turn to the real world.

How could I turn to the real world if I "dismissed" your philosophy? It is your philosophy that we *should* return to the real world, so to dismiss it would be to adopt an alternative philosophy in which we were *not* to turn to the real world.

Gustav,

I hope this present post is even more helpful than the last.

Well, kind of, but it actually raises more questions than it answers. In particular, if it is not so much the method of thinking that you admire as the "breadth and depth" of the thinking, then what *is* that breadth and depth? Presumably, it is not *solely* breadth and depth that you admire, because that alone doesn't entail any level of quality of thought, so as well as breadth and depth there must be something admirable about the quality of the thought itself. "What is its breadth and depth (especially in comparison to other systems of thought), and what quality (again, especially comparatively) does it have, then?" would, I think, be the next logical question.

[Felasco]

This is very peculiar, because you seem then to acknowledge that you are blatantly contradicting yourself, yet you don't seem to feel any discomfort over that fact. I'm not really sure where to go from here. "Philosophy is futile, and that's my philosophy". What?

As I've explained repeatedly, it's my belief that reason can see the limits of reason. As example, we can use reason to understand that one can not use reason alone to fall in love. See? Simple.

This is a philosophy forum. I am doing philosophy obviously. The problem is that you guys don't like the conclusions I am reaching, which is of course your right, and makes for a good conversation.

It's not so much that I don't like them as that they are self-contradictory. "Philosophically, I have determined that philosophy is futile". How can your conclusion be trusted if the means by which you reached it is (by its own admission) "futile"?

I won't keep repeating myself if you would care to read it the first time. Again, I've explained this many times now, and there is nothing complicated about it. See above.

Don't you think this is a little presumptuous of you? Let's say you had a near-death experience during terminal-stage cancer, in which you encountered angelic presences who assured you that within a few days after your returning to your body, your cancer would completely reverse itself, and, when you awoke, this is exactly what happened. Would your knowledge that there is a spiritual realm of existence beyond the physical populated by heavenly beings who can perform miracles be a "pretence"? (This has actually happened to people).

It's not my intention to argue the existence or non-existence of the supernatural, nor is it to take away such beliefs from those who cherish them. I'm not in a position to know whether such things exist or not.

I am of the belief that the evidence leans in favor of everybody being in that same position of ignorance, theists and atheists alike. This belief of mine, like the beliefs of others, can be neither proven or disproven, so from my point of view, we are all in the same little ignorant boat together.

And so I turn my attention to practical things I can actually do something about. Such as...

I can celebrate the fact that we are ignorant about such things, and stop resisting that which I have no power to change. I can be practical and serious, and roll up my sleeves and get down to work making what I do have, my ignorance, a valuable ally in this inquiry.

I can explore beyond the assumption that knowing must be the goal of the inquiry. I can be flexible and stop assuming or demanding that observation must always be a mean to another end, conclusions, and learn to value observation for itself.

If all of this seems too bizarre, contradictory, esoteric etc then I could turn to the genius of Christianity, and focus on learning how to love, a process which requires no intellectual skills.

Point being, if I were to emerge from the fantasy that I as a mere human being can know things about the ultimate nature of everything everywhere (a proposal which should make a sane person laugh out loud), there are plenty of productive things I can turn my attention towards to continue the inquiry.

How could I turn to the real world if I "dismissed" your philosophy?

Be simple, be practical, be serious. Dismiss my philosophy and all the others for a few minutes a day as best you can, and then explore from there as it interests you. If it doesn't interest you at all, then never mind, and forget the whole thing.

Again, if you are interested in the question of whether God exists in the real world, the real world would be the place to conduct your inquiry. It's the simplest most obvious thing. There's no point in exploring books to see if God exists there, because everybody already knows that he does.

It is your philosophy that we *should* return to the real world, so to dismiss it would be to adopt an alternative philosophy in which we were *not* to turn to the real world.

Dismissing my philosophy does not require one to then adopt another philosophy. Dismissing all philosophy for ten minutes does not require one to dismiss all philosophy for all time.

There are two ways one might proceed.

One way is very very common, complex and endlessly perplexing. One can analyze analyze analyze all this for decades until one's head is spinning spinning spinning and one gets dizzy dizzy dizzy and falls down or throws up.

Another way is to just set it all aside, and let it go.

[Felasco]

Harry,

I really don't mean to push this on you, and I hope you will understand that much of what inspires me to be here is that I enjoy the writing challenge. In that spirit, here's another try...

You believe in God, right? Ok, we won't tinker with that in any way.

Presumably you would welcome communication with God.

To assist that project, we can look at this in a very simple practical manner by trying to identify what might be obstructing that communication, and then try to remove or at least lessen the obstruction. Ok?

Let's use a real world example we are all familiar with. Let's say we are sitting on the couch talking with a friend. What is it that obstructs us from really listening to and hearing our friend?

For me, and I suspect most, it is the conversation I am having with myself inside my own mind. Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah inside my mind all the day long and half the night too.

I am interested in what my friend has to say, but a bit more interested in what I have to say, and so my focus is distracted, divided, and my friend doesn't get my full attention. We've all been there a million times, right?

So, if the friend sitting across from us on the couch happens to be somebody as interesting as God, the first thing we might wish to do is shut the fuck up so that all of our attention is available to hear what God is saying.

See? There's nothing esoteric, complicated, contradictory or bizarre here at all. It's just simple practical common sense deployed by someone who is serious about hearing what the other fellow is saying.

I hope this is better, and serves as an alternative to my previous bloviations on the topic.

[Felasco]

And so if one adopts "listening to God" or "listening to reality" or "just listening" as one's method of investigation, this can put theology in a new light.

We're walking down the street trying to listen, and our political opinions start going round in our mind. So we turn to our political opinions and say, "Hey, shut up, I'm trying to listen here."

We're walking down the street trying to listen, and some melodrama story from our job or personal life starts jabbering away inside our mind. So we turn to the melodrama memory and say, "Hey, shut up, I'm trying to listen here."

We're walking down the street trying to listen, and some theological theory or another comes up on our mental radio station. So we turn to the theological theory and say, "Hey, shut up, I'm trying to listen here."

Seen this way, from this perspective, the job is not to build an ever more sophisticated, complex, "new and improved" philosophy or theology. The job is not to adopt an ancient theology and try to prove it to oneself or others.

For the listener, the job is to let all that go, so that it doesn't intrude upon the listening.

I'm about to head out in to the woods on the kind of cold Florida winter morning that I cherish. When I get there the job will be to let go of Felasco's grand theories, shut the fuck up, and listen.

When I arrive at first light I'll start walking down the trail like I'm late for an appointment, my mind still buzzing, buzzing, buzzing from my addiction to this idiot box, and I will gently curse you guys for being so interesting.

After all, I've got to blame it on somebody, it couldn't possibly be my fault.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

If we were to consider the term 'Tool Bias' and twist it to 'Application Requirement', and then consider the content of each of our general presentations, we would have a way of understanding each other's perspective, but also that at different times, different skills and tactics are needed. In simple (simplistic) summary, I discover after this last group of Felasco's posts, the articulation of a very personal modality, or to put it another way 'spiritual practice'. Since he is aware of his own hyperactive mind, and perhaps this has a relationship to his profession of programming (sort of maddening I imagine? or is it 'relaxing' and enjoyable?), and also being in a certain stage of life, he choses the best, most refreshing, most peaceful, most rewarding activity for himself. And part of that choice is letting go of any necessarily pointed thoughts, system of thoughts, social concerns, problems. It is essentially a therapeutic choice. The 'error' in Felasco's presentation on a philosophy forum, is to present it as a 'solution', or to conceive of it as a solution for 'mankind's problems', which is to idealize it. It does seem true that every person, any person, could benefit from ten minutes of silence. As simple as a moment of meditation, deep breathing, prayer, silent contemplation, mantra meditation, etc.

Another part of possible 'error' is to privilege them, or possibly the results of them, as-against 'philosophy', 'theology' and essentially the entire world of 'thinking' or analysis. Unless I am reading wrong, the therapeutic technique is represented as something like an entire mode for living life. However, I could see this as an outcome of conversation on a forum where opinions and viewpoints become polarized as one works to assert and to define one's own.

My position in relation to 'all this' is nearly totally different, and so again I will mention the concept of 'Application Requirement'. Why would I bother to make such a 'case' as if 'against' a group of therapeutic choices as are Felasco's? The reason is because Felasco's group of ideas, when applied universally, or when suggested as universal principals (a strong note in his discourse), is insufficient. I will go further and say 'deficient'. And even further than that I will say that aspects of this outlook, which have their roots in certain Sixties attitudes and assumptions, have filtered in to our general mental world and function, at times, as 'subtle axioms'. To speak about this requires a sort of riffing, a way of suggesting without being thoroughly definite: A possible attitude or sense that 'no specific preparation is required in life'. Or one that shies away from, or balks in the face of the need for strong, clear and defined ethical structures and limits. An attitude that claims that 'all religions are the same, in essence' and which then goes on to define that sameness, which ends up diluting and in a sense 'undermining' the specifics of certain philosophical positions, or really strong ideas as they appear in any arena, including politics and religion. I would focus on the notion of 'attitude' in Felasco's discourse, and would remark that there is nothing at all wrong (how could there possible be?) with a given man opting to disconnect from philosophy, technology, strife, and any given existent 'thing' and to choose to walk in the woods in silence. It is as if a given man says:

• I am done with all the philosophical chatter, which has never helped me to recover inner peace and which seems like various levels of noise. I have all that I need to live. I am sufficiently prosperous and have a means to earn my living. I have a relationship and what seems most needed in that relationship is not 'intellect', or triple backward flips of clever analysis, or any sort of cultural achievement such as the literary, the scientific, the philosophical, the theological---none of that. I just need to allow myself to love.

There is no need to 'argue' against these choices. And in any given moment any one of us, though in different circumstances, can and do avail ourselves of them.

But the world I gaze out upon is distinctly different. Felasco's world is a sort of classical post-bourgeois, post-Middle Class, postindustrial prosperity reality. Distinctly American (though it does seem true that this epoch of a general social prosperity is coming to a close) and also possibly European, Asian at least in some areas. And a good deal of this 'attitude' naturally was prevalent in the various Sixties movements. But in the reality that I live in, there is none of this. And the social reality is distinct. Here, everyone struggles to attain. And when I say attain I mean on all levels, not only economically. The issue is 'impoverishment' and that impoverishment operates, or seeps, into all areas. External impoverishment reduces and starves: emotionally, intellectually, economically obviously. It effects relationships, marriages, unions. It can separate the unity possible between parent and child. It tends to cause people to have to place inordinate personal resources into subsistence and so everything else is placed on lower tiers. For me, in my life, and over a long period of time since I have lived in the so-called Third World or the Underprivelaged World, it has become a 'philosophical necessity' to come to understand certain basic questions: What is poverty? What does it mean to 'be impoverished'? (Not at all a simple question, and to answer it, I assert, the PC litany must be dragged out of its bed and shot at dawn, as with Skip's horseshit). How might one compare my circumstances and orientation and 'privilege' (I personally detest that term but it is intelligible) to that of a person who has had none of it and who cannot conceive of the world that I know, that I live in (and I do not mean 'physical circumstance' I mean weltanschauung, I mean a whole way of conceiving life and its possibilities). And then: What skills, aptitudes and attitudes shall be required to come out of that state, like the Hebrews were called out of 'slavery in Egypt', and into a different world? And what sort of 'world' shall that be?

I wish to assert, in the strongest terms possible, that going for a walk in the woods and 'shutting off the mind', going home and giving the old lady a hug after pulling some funds out of the ATM, doing a little shopping, cooking a lovely dinner with the best-of-the-best products produced in the world from the Whole Foods market down the street, and then kicking it calmly on the back porch while drinking white wine, is in no sense a 'solution', nor obviously a possibility, for people who are required to work like devils on all levels to rise out of impoverishment and to then enjoy a little time in the sun, or in the moonlight as the case may be.

What I further wish to assert has specifically to do with strict and certain, knowable and definable, ethical behaviors, educational requirements and sacrifices, postponings of pleasure and enjoyment so that resources can be amassed and focused. It has to do with what might be called a stoical attitude toward the self; the sweeping out of lazy, post-hippy, 'entitled' notions that have, as I say, infected culture, and replacing them with tightened-up, even somewhat ruthless, strictly enforced attitudes and ethics of the sort that one teaches to children when you desire them to grow up strong, self-sufficient, ethical, honest and ordered. I assert, adamantinely, that one does not abandon specific philosophical or ethical or spiritual ideas, but one identifies and selects them, cultivates them, and inculcates them.

The difference here is real. As real as the Real World. And within the contrast presented, I further assert, we can see that in this life, in any station in life, in any social position and in any culture, anywhere, one needs and requires very specific ethical, philosophical, moral, social and religious codes. They HAVE to be present in the circumstance of raising children. And here the 'rubber hits the road'. In truth it is very much the opposite of what Felasco has universalized, which is perfect for himself and his situation (but does have a slight narcissistic feel to it, as does aspects of Sixties philosophy), which allows for and tends toward relativizing. Leveling. Abandoning the field. Retreating.

I bring this back to the topic of this thread then. I think that the issue has not at all been avoided nor is it inappropriate to have couched the conversation in this way. I can't remember how you, Harry 2.2.1 Baird stated it, that I have not been living up to the demand broached by the thread? That I must thoroughly articulate, to those who have no interest at all, where 'value' must be found, or why I find it in certain things? It is important to note, I think, that Felasco (I say this in complete friendliness because I like him and his approach) is thoroughly uninterested in the topic of Christianity in the wider cultural sense of What has made us, us. You could almost imagine that he could be talking about spliff.

And I think it could also be said that you too, in a different way, are thoroughly uninterested in this topic and in so many other related topics. You are capable of astoundingly detailed 'engineered' posts, constructed girder by girder with what you have exposed yourself to, and yet you too are fundamentally uneducated and, please forgive me, illiterate in other senses. And in this sense incapable of participation in 'it'.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Howdy, Harry. I referred to Aristotle and his ideas about the 'natural slave'. You wrote in response:

It's the "conservative" in you, the part that sees hierarchies as both inevitable and desirable a la Richard Weaver. I have a much more socialist outlook. I suppose my views are driven by the notion of free will and freedom in general. Even if one person is less gifted than another, I don't think that the former ought to be forced into subservience. I think people generally recognise when others have such greater gifts that they deserve leadership positions, and, if they don't recognise as much, then it probably means that the potential leader is not qualified to lead anyway - I don't think one can legitimately lead without the will and consent of those being led.

I see that you put conservative in quotes, which renders your meaning ambivalent, but I think it should be said that, perhaps even in major ways, socialist and communist systems use and operate a system of *slavery* in the quite looser sense in which I have used it (as in 'American Consumer Slave', 'Wage-Slave Incapable of Free Thought' and all manner of derivatives). But socialized systems operate their hierarchizations in more 'civil' ways. I think it quite possible, in your specific case, to propose and consider that your economic situation of near-total dependence, cannot really be spoken of in terms of 'freedom' (as traditionally understood), and the concept of 'free-will' in such a situation, at least from where I sit, seems suspect and questionable. It is possible to propose that you, perhaps especially you, are thoroughly un-free and quite literally* 'a slave'. As in The Matrix! They are 'growing you' and you are 'attached' with all manner of strange hoses pumping liquids and on the screen of your consciousness you see flashing the image of Freedom!

True too that you would not budge out of your *comfortable slavery* unless someone forced you to chose between the blue and the red pill, but can you really consider yourself free? And what if it were demonstrated that you are not?

This is not exactly my point though since we all are members of various economic orders and are 'unfree' in some sense.

It is a mistake for you to seek a label as either 'conservative' of 'Christian'. I am swayed by the Aristotelian argument only in a very general way. I take the idea 'metaphysically' perhaps as applicable to 'the reality of terrestrial existence'. In one way or another, in one form or another, hierarchies have been established and will likely continue to be established. Even in the most socialized states, and especially in the totalitarian communist states. In those states the notion of 'slavery' becomes acute all over again, doesn't it? And in the ideational and not the practical realm (of social and economic reality) I would I think start with the abstract notion of the 'free man'. Who is he? What is he? Can he, does he, exist? What does this mean? What makes a man 'free'? What quality, independent of wealth and power, makes a man a 'ruler'? Or merely 'a powerful person' in his milieu? But mostly what interests me is what sort of inner (intellectual, spiritual, literary) formation creates, or tends to create, a 'free man'. It is true indeed that I would veer away from Rousseauesque illusions about man's freedom and turn back toward 'harder' definitions, and perhaps there is no other language except 'conservative' to describe it (as opposed to what? Liberal?).

My thought on this is that there is a reality that sub-sits either a leftist or a rightist political philosophy. I think what Aristotle points to is neither one nor the other and in fact he is speaking to something different and, apparently, universal.

Also, I would say hierarchies are 'inevitable', and also that they seem 'necessary', but I am not sure where 'desirable' fits in there. I would note that to 'desire' a perhaps 'romantic' vision (Rousseau?) and to 'impose' it on reality might be seen as an application of a 'desire'. I suppose too that another faction, say socialistic-fascistic or 'Traditionalist' might 'desire' a more traditional structure, but I think the underlying question must speak to more fundamental things. I think that has to do with what at the very core of 'life' on has decided to value or been induced/convinced to value, and also how one's values reflect and embody one's sense of 'duty' (toward 'metaphysical' realities, real or imagined).

*literally: i.e figuratively!

[Felasco]

Hi Gustav,

While your typoholic response to my typoholic barrage is as is usual for you very intelligent and articulate, and thanks for the kind words, it fails to address the essence of my argument, preferring instead to frame everything I said as just a personal story.

I blame myself in part, because like you I type a ton of talk, and readers can be forgiven if they can't find the essence of my argument in the pile. Let's try the condensed version....

-----------------

1) This thread is about religion in general, Christianity in particular.

2) The central assertion of Christianity (and other Western religions) is that there is a God in the real world.

3) I've suggested that those interested in this assertion can best pursue that inquiry by looking for God where Christianity says that God is, in the real world.

-----------------

I'm sorry, but I decline to agree that "looking in the real world" is just a bunch of feminine PC sixties hippy therapy which can be dismissed with a wave of the intellectual's hand etc etc.

I propose instead that a focus on looking in the real world is the appropriate response for anyone interested in investigating the core assertion of Christianity and the other major Western religions.

They say God is in the real world. So why not look in the real world? Simple, eh?

How interested is someone in understanding Christianity if they want to look everywhere but the real world?

[Felasco]

I assert, adamantinely, that one does not abandon specific philosophical or ethical or spiritual ideas, but one identifies and selects them, cultivates them, and inculcates them.

We might recall here that the Catholic Church utterly dominated Western culture for a thousand years, and attempted just what you suggest. The end result seems to be that the influence of the Church has largely collapsed in it's European heartland.

We might recall that the Catholic Church has long dominated Latin culture as well, and has solved few if any of the problems you reference.

While we might blame this on Catholic ideology, that ideology does enthusiastically support many of the values you seem to feel are necessary. I think the problem is deeper.

I was raised Catholic, and come from endless generations of Catholics, and so can speak to this at least to a limited anecdotal degree.

Why have so many Catholics wandered off as I did? Why do so many Catholics who stay in the Church not really take the teachings or authorities that seriously, and feel free to be "cafeteria Catholics" and pick and choose what to believe? Why has being Catholic become merely ritual and habit for so many?

Imho, the Church has lost a great deal of it's credibility, authority and influence (it's ability to do what you suggest) because it largely lost it's connection to the real, and became mostly just a big pile of words, symbols, theologies. The Church became an empty suit, and even those who can't articulate it can feel it.

What we've been calling "mysticism" is the well spring from which the life blood of religion flows. At the moment when a personal or organized religious experience loses that mystical connection to the real, it begins to die. It becomes like a hungry person reduced to eating cook books.

Take out your photo album and look at the photos. What gives those photos their power? The actual living experience you have had with those real people.

Now look at photos of some strangers in a magazine. What's the feeling now? There may be a bit of curiosity or academic interest, but the emotional connection is mostly gone. Those symbols have little power for you, because for you they are not connected to the real.

This is what happens to theology when it becomes academic, intellectual, symbolic, disconnected from the real, it loses it's power, and starts to become irrelevant to people's lives.

I'm resisting theology because I know how easy it is for us to confuse symbols with the real things they point to, and without the real thing, the game is largely over.

What we've been calling "mysticism" is not an optional sideline little thing that some monks or crazy old hippies might selfishly indulge in etc. What we've been calling "mysticism" is the source of religion, everything we've been discussing.

Does anybody know where I might find a Typoholic Anonymous meeting???

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

'We teach the same as the Greeks', says Justin again, 'though we alone are hated for what we teach'. 'Some among us', says Tertullian, 'who are versed in ancient literature, have written books to prove that we have embraced no tenets for which we have not the support of common and public literature'. 'The teachings of Plato', says Justin again, 'are not alien to those of Christ; and the same is true of the Stoics'. 'Herecleitus and Socrates lived in accordance with the divine Logos', and should be reckoned as Christians. Clement says that Plato wrote 'by inspiration of God'. Augustine, much later, finds that 'only a few words and phrases' need be changed to bring Platonism into complete concord with Christianity. The ethics of contemporary paganism, as Harnack shows, with special reference to Porphyry, are almost identical with those of the Christians of his day. They differ in many points from the standards of 500 years earlier and from those of 1,500 later, but the divergences are neither racial nor credal. Catholic Christianity is historically continuous with the old civilization, which indeed continued to live in this region after its other traditions and customs had been shattered. There are few other examples in history of so great a difference between appearance and reality. Outwardly, the continuity with Judaism seems to be unbroken, that with paganism broken. In reality, the opposite is the fact'.

---W.R. Inge

In my previous post I made no specific mention of Catholicism. I made more general statements about the importance of strength of concrete values, definitions, rigor, the necessity of focused and value-rich education, and more. Still, I am thoroughly of the opinion that 'an intelligent and thoughtful person' with at least some base in literacy as I am defining it, would understand that 'our traditions' and as I say the origination of our very selves is bound up with a total history no part of which can nor should be dismissed or discarded. It is that which makes us us.

Also, even for us now, and even if we are far outside of the reach and influence of any specific institutional structure, we have been formed in fundamental ways through those institutional and cultural forms. An intelligent person, and one holding to literacy as I define it, would not lose sight of this fact. However, it is true that 'we' are indeed losing sight of that fact and 'that fact' is being over-swamped by a group of other messages and influences. Wise not to lose one's connection with important things.

Mysticism, or revelation, or psychedelic experience, or a fat spliff in the cool morning air, have relevancy and value and I have made no case against them per se. And it is also true that words and rituals and statues and vestments and dreary intonations and transvestite priests with their sacerdotal sorcery, when they devolve into empty form, seem to become imprisoning shells; and though it may indeed be true and necessary for a man to step well away from those constructive forms to rediscover 'living currents' inside himself and outside himself (as many of us have done and especially those of the post-Sixties era), in no sense at all does this diminish the power or relevancy of 'all that has gone before', but specifically as it pertains to Ideas (as distinct from less concrete mystical revelations), ethics, discipline, moral guidelines, etc. and to a wide group of substantial ideas that come to us through the word, that is literature, literacy, thought, discourse.

A mythical experience, either as a lone event or as an attitude of living, should not sever one away from 'one's own traditions' but should---or could---reconnect one to them in more vivacious ways. If a mysticism breaks one's continuity to one whole aspect of cultural and civil life, if it sheers one away from it, I am not sure how 'it' could be defended.

This is what happens to theology when it becomes academic, intellectual, symbolic, disconnected from the real, it loses it's power, and starts to become irrelevant to people's lives.

There is truth in what you write, and in another sense there are mistakes and 'untruths'. If a culture begins to become dominated by children and women, and by that I mean persons who seem more inclined to respond to sensation and titillation and showy external stimulus, and who also are edged away from accepting discipline as good and necessary, and who come under the influence of other forces and stimuli, then yes, what is 'academic' and 'intellectual', what is encoded in symbols that require intellect and 'academics' to understand, there will inevitably occur a disconnecting process. And when that happens, especially among populations which do not have the intellectual and academic power to have created strong ideational walls and protections, what rushes in to fill the vacuum are essentially chaotic forms and influences.

Ideally of course (recognizing the real problems of an institutional Church), in any given person or family there *should be* a strong, guiding and determining personality who insists on discipline, rigor, responsibility, careful development of self, cultivation of values and ethics, and all the positive ethics that we know and understand as being valuable. The person capable of that will have submitted himself to that *training*, will have installed it in himself, and therefor will be capable of functioning as an example of it. OTOH, if a person or a family (or a neighborhood, town, city, nation) is lacking such a figure, and cannot act responsibly, rigorously, and ethically, then it is quite easy to predict what will come about.

You cannot ask a child to be a mystic! But you certainly can create a familial circumstance where essences (such as 'love', respect, self-respect, tolerance, charity, structure, discipline, order, and everything else that you and I could name as valuable---as necessary) are present. I guarantee you the following: the former house will be filled with a 'mystic' energy, healthy currents, healthy emotions, and children in that family will thrive. In a family where those structures and values are absent, I assert that all opposite traits will appear, as consequences.

[marjoramblues]

[Felasco]

In my previous post I made no specific mention of Catholicism. I made more general statements about the importance of strength of concrete values, definitions, rigor, the necessity of focused and value-rich education, and more.

Yes, I understand. I brought up the Catholics, only because they are the ones with the most experience at doing generally what you suggest.

Still, I am thoroughly of the opinion that 'an intelligent and thoughtful person' with at least some base in literacy as I am defining it, would understand that 'our traditions' and as I say the origination of our very selves is bound up with a total history no part of which can nor should be dismissed or discarded. It is that which makes us us.

Yes, us, the people with thousands of nuclear missiles aimed down our own throats, the people destroying the environment as fast as we can. These facts, acts of suicide in progress, argue for a fundamental review of "our traditions".

A mythical experience, either as a lone event or as an attitude of living, should not sever one away from 'one's own traditions' but should---or could---reconnect one to them in more vivacious ways.

Yes, this is similar to what I said above. I would vote for the could over the should. If you feel you can agree that it is the mystical that keeps the theological alive and healthy, then we are inching our way towards an agreement of sorts.

Here's an example.

Let's imagine the person with a strong mystical connection, who converts from one theology to another. Their spirituality is grounded in experience, but they now have another story line with which to describe that experience. I'm guessing this person is in good shape, spiritually speaking.

Now let's imagine the person who has been lifelong loyal to a theology held by generations of ancestors etc, but they experience that theology as being only words and beliefs etc. This person is clinging to a dead body, imho. Even if the theology is perfectly true in every regard, they won't feel it, breathe it, live it, they'll just go through the routine of repeating the memorized words.

To the degree I understand it, this seems to be essentially what happened to Christianity in Europe. This is an outcome one hopes to avoid by promoting the mystical.

Seen this way, we might be on the same team, if you should come to agree that the traditions you so value will gradually die unless they are regularly infused with the mystical.

If a culture begins to become dominated by children and women, and by that I mean persons who seem more inclined to respond to sensation and titillation and showy external stimulus, and who also are edged away from accepting discipline as good and necessary, and who come under the influence of other forces and stimuli, then yes, what is 'academic' and 'intellectual', what is encoded in symbols that require intellect and 'academics' to understand, there will inevitably occur a disconnecting process.

This is perhaps off topic, but are you aware that women are out performing men in the universities? My theory is that women are smarter than men, for the simple reason that they've long had to be, given their weaker physical stature. Now that physical stature is no longer very important, it's no surprise who is rising to the top. Your girlfriend is in law school, yes? I'm wondering if you and I could get in to, or through law school. Hmmmm......

And when that happens, especially among populations which do not have the intellectual and academic power to have created strong ideational walls and protections, what rushes in to fill the vacuum are essentially chaotic forms and influences.

Well, we do live in revolutionary times, which normally smell rather like chaos. I'm sure some of the experiments will be crap, but some new understandings of value are going to have to arise as well, because the course we're currently on is very dangerous to all that both of us value.

Ideally of course (recognizing the real problems of an institutional Church), in any given person or family there *should be* a strong, guiding and determining personality who insists on discipline, rigor, responsibility, careful development of self, cultivation of values and ethics, and all the positive ethics that we know and understand as being valuable.

Let me guess, this person must also have testicles. Did I get it right?

What you're up against here is that male domination has already been tried for centuries, and it came with a long list of horrors. I'm not arguing against the values you are celebrating, if we can agree they are human values, not masculine values exclusively.

By the way, how long have you been living in Latin culture? Is that what's going on here, the machismo ethic?

You cannot ask a child to be a mystic!

Children are natural mystics. It's all the rigid structures you are promoting that squeezes it out of them.

But you certainly can create a familial circumstance where essences (such as 'love', respect, self-respect, tolerance, charity, structure, discipline, order, and everything else that you and I could name as valuable---as necessary) are present. I guarantee you the following: the former house will be filled with a 'mystic' energy, healthy currents, healthy emotions, and children in that family will thrive. In a family where those structures and values are absent, I assert that all opposite traits will appear, as consequences.

The inconvenient evidence you've never quite been willing to address are all those people who have excellent ethics, without the theology and traditions.

My wife grew up with two sets of gay parents at the same time, pretty untraditional for the fifties, and she has no theology or explicit philosophy beyond "try to be a nice person". And while you and I are blowharding in the abstract about values and such, she's actually serving others, pretty much around the clock.

I do see how theology is helpful to many, but it seems going too far to label it essential.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Esteemed Falasco. I don't think it is necessary or desirable that we 'be on each other's team'. Based on what I have read so far of your views I think I would opt off, that is if you don't mind. (I'll return the mini skirt and pom-pons in next morning's mail). Labels are inconvenient and often using them we get things wrong, but so far I link you with a general 'Sixties' mental and intellectual orientation. It is not material (or attitudes, or praxis) without value, and some aspects of it have a great deal of value, but a good percentage of it as I have found leads toward different forms of dissolution. You seem to me in parts to be 'walking and talking evidence of that'. But in no sense is all of that 'bad'. Conversation has to remain subtle and flexible. Sifting through things is fraught and demanding.

This is perhaps off topic, but are you aware that women are out performing men in the universities? My theory is that women are smarter than men, for the simple reason that they've long had to be, given their weaker physical stature.

To 'perform' at university can often mean simply to attend, to complete the assignments, to go through with it. I have no doubt whatever that women can be and are being brought into what is essentially 'a man's world' (a world defined, invented, filled out by men). The difference between 'masculine' and 'feminine' consciousness, as I understand it (and it is not absolutely fixed but is evolving as is, I hope, all my thoughts) does not have to do with grey matter: brain size nor even intelligence. The brains are the same. I have no doubt at all that women can be trained to do everything that men can do, and it would not be impossible to imagine a world in which women take over management and professional positions. The differences between 'masculine consciousness' and 'feminine consciousness' are I think to be found in other areas, or that each distinct consciousness is modified by other factors.

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

This is one of my favorite, if provocative, quotes by Paglia and it is useful when conversations turn in this direction (men who choose to serve women's goals, aspirations and their rise). One 'essence' to which I often refer, that distinguished women from men---and again this is not intellectual as such nor anatomical or about the brain-material---is that women are evolutionarily geared to make safe choices. In comparison, men, who do not have linked so closely to them infants, children, their care, the need to protect them as 'extensions of the female body', are freer to make more radical, and dangerous, choices. Obviously, as world culture moves into a fairly radical new phase: a New World Order of manufacture and distribution systems with no other function (if you really examine it) but to produce and purvey goods to the billions of specific entities, it becomes necessary to re-engineer the male, which is to say to engineer him more toward a 'feminized' sort of being: docile (or more docile), obedient, 'soft', and who will serve both his female and his feminized culture.

I only present this as a way to visualize 'a problem'. I think it (all) has certain 'positive' up-sides which are fairly evident, but I also think that it has 'negative' down-sides which can also be examined.

I admit to being very suspect of your choices/attitudes in respect to this question and yet they are not unfamiliar to me by any means. It is a big part of Sixties and post-Sixties radicalism for men to 'support' reflexively so-called feminist positions. I have deep reservations about the doctrines of feminism, especially second- and third-wave feminism and I largely reject Marxian modes of analysis (for various reasons).

I am not interested in defining, as you seem to be, mass-ethics, total 'solutions', or what general attitude to take in regard to a world-system. It is quite the opposite. If I define and defend 'masculinity' as-against 'femininity' it is not precisely grounded in sexist discourse, although I do at this moment have a strong hunch that it is necessary for women (Woman if you wish) to fulfill a duty at the core of the family, i.e. in motherhood. But I would define a differently oriented sort of civilization generally, and too I am defining positions that devalue some of the specifics of 'modernity' that we have come to accept as natural, inevitable, and also 'progressive'. I am not at all convinced that modern trends (in gender definitions, for example) are really 'progressive', and I think the notion of 'progress' can be carefully (re-) examined.

Not only do you seem to define yourself as a sort of 'appendage' to your woman, and represent yourself as a happy-go-lucky clown-figure who should not be taken seriously, you state outrightly that she is superior to you and that you accept your subservience. I thoroughly reject such a position (for explainable reasons) and want no part of it. I know that jangles in the ears but that is the way it is!

If men, or a man, cannot define themselves, or himself, and themselves in their world, it is true indeed that someone or something else will come along and do it for them. I opt for the obvious alternative!

My wife grew up with two sets of gay parents at the same time, pretty untraditional for the fifties, and she has no theology or explicit philosophy beyond "try to be a nice person". And while you and I are blowharding in the abstract about values and such, she's actually serving others, pretty much around the clock.

I get the impression that you don't think things through very well. One 'absorbs' from the culture in myriad ways one's values and attitudes. If your wife had been a feral child raised by wolves do you suppose she would have turned out the same? Certainly some aspect of ourself comes through the body, or solely the body, but I note that you have 'afflicted comprehension' of the degree to which we are 'informed' by culture. That we are 'products' and 'outcomes'.

:::Shrugs:::

"The sun's light when he unfolds it,
Depends on the organ that beholds it."

[Harry Baird]

it's my belief that reason can see the limits of reason.

So, in your view, the only use for philosophy is to determine not to do any further philosophy beyond that determination. I think Gustav has it right, and it's interesting that he raised this point because I had been planning on raising it in my next post anyway: that you are mistakenly promoting a personally sound philosophy as a universally sound one. The mistake is that a personal philosophy just has to "work" for you, and you are free to define what that means for yourself, but when you extend it universally, you have to have good *reasons* for that, and yours, frankly, aren't (good). I've explained why: it is, in my view, impossible to live without having philosophical/theological/spiritual beliefs of *some* sort - some sort of "worldview" - and, because different people have different experiences, and different access to different evidence about different spiritual facts, not everybody is going to come to the same philosophical/theological/spiritual conclusions as you.

I gave you an example of someone's near-death experience, and I find it interesting that you refused to acknowledge that indeed this would put that person in a position of knowing - knowing things of a spiritual/theological nature. Is this not a good (partial) explanation of why differences of opinion on these matters does not mean that genuine knowledge is impossible? It sometimes is simply the case that some people know and some people don't.

That said, I am not at all in violent disagreement with your personal philosophy. Whereas yours can be summed up in a few simple words like "love" and "union", mine can be summed up with "respect" - a very similar concept to "love", but without the mushy sentimentality that bugs Gustav so much.

As far as your later posts go: of course, if God is speaking to me, and I am not listening, then this is a problem. But why should this mean that philosophical and theological thought are useless? If God is speaking to me, I am going to be wondering what type of God He is, what He requires of me, and what His plans are - I might even ask Him if I have the opportunity - and if I find out, I might very well want to tell other people what I have discovered: all of that is very much the domain of theology.

I see that you put conservative in quotes, which renders your meaning ambivalent

I did that because you have explained that you are not conservative in the political sense, which is the most common sense, so it's not entirely clear what the word refers to in your case.

I think it quite possible, in your specific case, to propose and consider that your economic situation of near-total dependence, cannot really be spoken of in terms of 'freedom'

This seems quite an odd proposal to me! I am free from the restrictions of the working world - that's a significant freedom. Sure, money grants one freedom too, so to work and earn more would in some sense also give me freedom, but I do not particularly miss that type of freedom. I have simple needs, and the income I receive is more than enough to satisfy them.

I would agree that communist states have been progenitors of a type of slavery, but that is not what I mean by socialism. I mean something more like what the Scandinavian countries have been developing, but even beyond that, where the means of production are democratically controlled, where wage slavery transmutes into shared ownership, and where people choose their own leaders, rather than having leaders imposed upon them by "the higher ups". Is hierarchy necessary? I would say that it probably is, but there are more and less inclusive ways of running hierarchical systems. I advocate for the most inclusive ways.