City of God, Saint Augustine

The biggest reason that I took on the immense challenge of making it through this work is "perspective".  Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, Augustine began this work 3 years later in 413 and did not complete it until 426.

Rome had BEEN "civilization" for a thousand years prior, and naturally in 410, St Augustine and his peers believed they were living in "modern times", all be it a time of great change and disruption at the ending of a thousand-year reign which they had assumed would last forever.

The work is remarkably lengthy and wordy (867 rather small type pages in my copy) and decidedly NOT an "easy read". I must say though that the sheer volume and many asides and references to other scholars of the day give an insight into the intellectual life of the very elite of that day that feels important in a way that is hard to express. Perhaps the difference between walking across the US vs flying over it in a jet?

 I will include this one rather lengthy quote as an example of the style and the fact of "every age believes they are modern" ... and highly superior to those that have gone before. Note the reference to "less educated ages", but interestingly from the perspective of "only 600 years"! How much more arrogant we have become in our day -- we are nearing the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, yet it is hard to imagine someone asserting ONLY 500 years! Today, the year 2000 seems "ages ago" to many of our clickbait attention spans. 

It is most worthy of remark in Romulus, that other men who are said to have become gods lived in less educated ages, when there was a greater propensity to the fabulous, and when the uninstructed were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of Romulus was barely six hundred years ago, and already literature and science had dispelled the beliefs that attach to an uncultured age. And a little after he says of the same Romulus words to this effect: From this we may perceive that Homer had flourished long before Romulus, and that there was now so much learning in individuals, and so generally diffused an enlightenment, that scarcely any room was left for fable. For antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes even very clumsy ones; but this age [of Romulus] was sufficiently enlightened to reject whatever had not the air of truth. Thus, one of the most learned men, and certainly the most eloquent, M. Tullius Cicero, says that it is surprising that the divinity of Romulus was believed in, because the times were already so enlightened that they would not accept a fabulous fiction. But who believed that Romulus was a god except Rome, which was itself small and in its infancy?

The work starts with a lengthy defense of Christianity against the charge made by many in that day that failure to pray to the gods of Rome due to the conversion to Christianity was the cause of the city being sacked. It then discusses the "City of God" -- the Church, vs "The City of Man". Secular government all in MUCH detail, with references to Plato and other Greek thought which start The Church on a path of melding Greek Philosophy (especially Plato) and reason into Christian theology. This "Hellenization" of Christianity is the major historical effect of this work.

At its simplest, it is the story of the city of man -- selfish, mistaking means with ends, worshiping the temporal, attempting to glorify the profane physical human. The story of war, death, destruction and eventually eternal pain.

And of the City of God -- selfless and caring, realizing that the end is pre-ordained and guaranteed by the blood of Christ (the 2nd Adam) to be perfect. Glorifying only God. The story of Grace, Peace, Faith, Love slowly traveling in a path known only to God to perfect union, Love and bliss for all Eternity.

It is not a book that I would necessarily recommend for most -- it is CERTAINLY not "efficient", and one would be well served by skimming and focusing on key chapters -- say "books" 14, 19 and 22. If you desire a worthy challenge however, and want to be rather humbled by perspective, I do believe that you will find yourself rewarded!

Consilience, Edward O, Wilson

 Books & Authors - The Atlantic

I blogged on this book in 2007, the linked article is from 1998. The Internet allows us to do in minutes what authors in even the 1990s would have taken days, weeks, assistants, etc. to dig up. It is a tool that gives us leverage to give the "appearance of knowledge", which at our time, with its left-brain culture so biased that it can't understand the danger of knowledge without wisdom, this book at least starts to realize part of the problem. 

 Edward O. Wilson is the author of two Pulitzer Prize winning books; "On Human Nature", and "The Ants". The term "consilience" refers to the "unity of knowledge", how discoveries in one field can be critical to others. One can view the physical world as a layered architecture where physics is the "base", with chemistry and biology on top, followed by all the social sciences, politics, the arts, religion, etc.

Wilson has the vision that we COULD link it all together so that we would truly "understand" our universe. He strongly laments the post-modernist view that all points of view are equally vali.  He seems much more willing to entertain the potential for divinity than many scientists, even though for himself, he is a materialist. He DOES seem to realize at least part of the horror of a universe where there is no transcendence, but he sees the risks of transcendence as too high -- mostly on the environmental front (man has "dominion"). He sums up the materialist vs transcendent views as "The uncomfortable truth is the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result, those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure".

That is an interesting statement in that I would question whether any human will acquire a "full measure" of EITHER of those areas separately either, this side of Heaven.  However, to come to a conclusion of what that which completely transcends the physical can do, seems a bit presumptuous. Man is so quick to set limits on what it is that God can do, it is good God has us around to lock those limits in on infinite power since we are so "intelligent" (just ask us). While we seem good at providing limits for the infinite, it is strange that we seem less inclined to limit ourselves.

He makes a good comment on the state of knowledge and information in the world; "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely". I think he is right on that at some level, and he also points out in the book how important it is to place the information into context with other knowledge, and even make it into a "story". He does seem to have some real insight into the limitation of the left-brained only view. 

He waits until the very end of the book to get into environmental doom and gloom. He sees us as rushing headlong to destruction of the planet and has decided that "somehow" man needs to "morally" pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and put vast control on development of technology as "the only moral thing to do.

A neat trick for a strict materialist to come up with, apparently a new form of human brain will somehow "evolve" and suddenly operate with this "environmental moral imperative" in the next few decades? It seems unlikely to me that randomness should have bequeathed us with this function, and in a materialist universe we are just going to have to wait around for a few million years of "survival of the fittest" and hope that the right kind of "morals" for environmentalism randomly fall out the back end of the random process. 

If such doesn't happen, that must mean that "the right kind of morals" just didn't randomly arise at "the right time" and the great roulette wheel of randomness will just keep spinning along without us. Small loss in a cold godless universe!

It is nice to see that even strict materialists have "hope" -- I'm thinking that he may want to invest more in lottery tickets with his faith in the great god of the dice. It seems so strange that a random process would generate a brain that questions the outcome of the random process (the existing state of the world), yet somehow believes that one of the outputs of that random process (us) is somehow responsible -- and soon to be "morally mandated" to "fix it".

Experience IS Reality

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

As I "wind on down the road" (rendition of which tugs at the heart of a Boomer), my thinking and writing become less linear, so for the VERY few that have followed my musings for the nearly 2 decades of blogging, some repetition will be seen. (usually with updates)

A the linked is a likely important article that I may return to and dig deeper into. Apparently, the physical universe can be replaced with "a conscious entity" and at least this new model still "works" (makes rational sense).

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

"Ontological" meaning "exists in the context of these philosophical assumptions".  Our Western standard ontology is Materialism ... everything is "matter" (although Quantum Wave Theory postulates that everything is actually waves (no particles). 

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. 

Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position, and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. 

They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. 

Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

It's always intriguing to me that a super intelligent guy, so non-traditional he is willing to question the MOST fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, still finds "evolution " as somehow a worthy explanation for how we came to be (or "not to **BE** as in being physical", but rather "be" as experience only in his model) in a non-physical reality. It is always possible that the computer desktop "just evolved" after all. Actually, if you are an evolutionist, the development of the computer and the desktop metaphor is simply evolution still operating in what we have no doubt mistakenly labeled "consciousness", meaning "something special", but in evolutionary "reality", it is just more evolutionary adaptive algorithms ... a mathematical model. 

Gefter: A mathematical model of consciousness.

Hoffman: That’s right. My intuition was, there are conscious experiences. I have pains, tastes, smells, all my sensory experiences, moods, emotions and so forth. So, I’m just going to say: One part of this consciousness structure is a set of all possible experiences. When I’m having an experience, based on that experience I may want to change what I’m doing. So, I need to have a collection of possible actions I can take and a decision strategy that, given my experiences, allows me to change how I’m acting. That’s the basic idea of the whole thing. I have a space X of experiences, a space G of actions, and an algorithm D that lets me choose a new action given my experiences. Then I posited a W for a world, which is also a probability space. Somehow the world affects my perceptions, so there’s a perception map P from the world to my experiences, and when I act, I change the world, so there’s a map A from the space of actions to the world. That’s the entire structure. Six elements. The claim is: This is the structure of consciousness. I put that out there so people have something to shoot at.

This may be a "little deep" ... a reference to this post on "The Matter with Things" may help understand this a bit more. 

So, a mathematic attempt to understand consciousness replaces "the world" with "a conscious agent" and it all works ... and it doesn't give him any inking that God would fill that "conscious agent" role quite nicely?

The discoveries of quantum mechanics, the mystery of consciousness and things like the insane small amount of information that seems to be coming in through our optic nerves for us to create what we are "seeing" all point to some fundamental misconceptions about what "observed reality" is -- if it "is" in a material sense (ontology again) at all! 

"I think, therefore I am" was always tenuous -- perhaps, a universal consciousness is reality, and "I" am an illusion. Perhaps when God speaks to Moses and says "I am that I am" he was really de-referencing the THAT!  (C++ programming, the "this pointer" is the pointer to the object itself) "I'm THAT" I am" ... the ultimate base of existence. 

"Somehow the world affects my perceptions". There is always a "somehow" in there somewhere! 

The Soul of The World

The Soul of the World | Princeton University Press

After "Face of God" and this fine effort, I'm a confirmed Scruton fan. In "Soul", Scruton continues his analysis of what it means to be human as opposed to atoms, cells, chemicals and adaptive evolutionary programming.

"I know that I am a single and unified subject of experience. This present thought, this pain, this hope, and this memory are features of one thing, and that thing is what I am. I know this on no basis, without having to carry out any kind of check, and indeed, without the use of criteria of any kind -- this is what is (or ought to be) meant by the term "transcendental". The unity of the self-conscious subject is not the conclusion of any inquiry, but the presupposition of all inquiries. the unity of consciousness "transcends" all argument since it is the premise without which argument makes no sense."

The paragraph is a bit longer than "I think therefore I am", however that added length much improves on the famous Descartes statement. 

As humans, "we" have to start somewhere, meaning we have to find some way to postulate that we actually exist from "nowhere". If we sit quietly, focus on only "our" breathing, watching our breaths happen on their own, our thoughts come and be acknowledged/dismissed as "we" return to watching our breath, our emotions pass through us as we acknowledge them and gently return to calm attention on our breath, the question arises as to "what or who" is doing the watching?

We will discover as millions have discovered throughout history (and millions more have not), that "I", is not our physical body, not our thoughts, and not our emotions. We each "have" all those things, but we, ARE something else. Reality IS experience.

So, if what we experience IS all there is, then how might we think about that?

"There is a culture of long-term thought and abstract conception, represented by Moses; and a culture of short-term pleasure and easy communication represented by Aaron. The first points to the transcendental ground of being the second reduces beings to idols,

In this section of the book, Scruton uses music as the example of how to know the difference. I believe however that this quote goes a long way toward the heart of the matter:

"... the difference is between preventing silence, and letting silence speak. Music in the listening culture is a voice that rises out of silence, and which uses silence as a painter uses the canvas ..." 

Scruton is seeking to capture "the ghost in the machine" of physical creation, as many lovers and believers have before him. (and what are true lovers but believers?) I think we all understand that if we step back and let the silence speak, it DOES speak -- which is why the forces of Aaron work incessantly to make certain we never stop and listen.

"In music as in sex and architecture, the relation between subjects can be uprooted and replaced by an arrangement of objects. And in a hundred ways the result of this is a culture of idolatry in which freedom and personality are obliterated by intrusive images, clamoring for an addictive response."

"We are spirits living in the material world" (as "The Police" once put it). Much of modern man's time is spent trying to anesthetize that knowledge via clicks, games, music, drugs, media, work, relationships, ANYTHING!

"The Fall did not occur at a particular moment in time; it is a permanent feature of the human condition. We stand poised between freedom and mechanism, subject and object, end and means, beauty and ugliness, sanctity and desecration. And these distinctions derive from the same ultimate fact, which is that we can live in openness to others, accounting for our actions and demanding an accounting for theirs, or alternatively close ourselves off from others, learn to look on them as objects, so as to retreat from the order of the covenant to the order of nature."

Why is it critical for the left to cover their ears and scream "safe space! Nah, nah, nah, nah"? Because in a fallen world, even a fig leaf is imagined to provide "covering" of the nakedness of corrupted nature denying it's soul. The unbeliever MUST deny their soul, the pain of it's corruption is unspeakable, so they can ONLY "cover", never account for their fallen state until they accept redemption.

For the lover and the believer, the idea of hiding our true face and soul from others, especially those we love, is painful in the extreme. Many of us must do this in order to maintain any relation at all with family, to hold our jobs, or to interact socially.

The question "Why"? is addressed from I to you. It is thrust upon us in those moments in extremis when the order of creation irrupts around us. It is then that we cry out to God -- who will tell us why we suffer, why we live, and why we die! Within the envelope of nature there are only causes. But for the eye of faith the envelope has a telos, a reason for being as it is. And to have faith is to believe that the worlds teleology will account for my afflictions too. "Irrupts" -- to enter forcibly or suddenly.

In this week before inauguration day 2017, the year of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I stand in awe of the power of God and of Satan. My sense is that "The Fall" was the "reification" of the spiritual perfection of creation. "Reify" is a dangerous word which I believe holds a paradox within itself. The literal meaning of the word is "to make something abstract more "real" as in "understandable".

Since I believe that what we see as "reality" through our fallen senses is what scientists might call a "quantum flux" and God calls "spirit and truth", the act of "reification" is the act of making MORE FALSE -- making something seem to be more physical, or "quantified", "measured", "real".

In my world view, mathematics is closer to "truth" than engineering (applied physics). Reification as it is commonly used is actually "making a graven image" from a spiritual perspective.

Scruton has helped me immensely in trying to "un-reify" my world ... as in "sanctify", or "recover the spirit".

HIGHLY recommended to those who seek to recover the spirit.

Anantomy Of An Explosion (SEMINEX)

 In an attempt to understand more about the split between the ELCA and the LCMS, I was directed to the subject book. To some degree, even though I made it through the book, there was a bit of the "asking the time and being told how to build a watch" effect. I'm not saying I "understood" the book, which would require multiple readings and reading other referenced works. It was an "exercise" which I would not recommend to anyone but a Lutheran theological scholar. 

SEMINEX -- "Concordia Seminary in Exile". It existed from 1974 to 1987 because of issues on inerrancy of scripture, represented by the begun to utilize the Historical Critical method to understand the Bible vs the traditional Historical Grammatical method hat considered scripture to be the "inerrant Word of God". (assuming the translations, attention to what the authors were able to write at the time they wrote it, etc) 

There seems to me to be a bit of correlation between an "originalist" interpretation of the US Constitution, vs a "living" interpretation, however there is difficulty with that analogy. Biblical texts are FAR older, writing in ancient languages, and derived from oral traditions. As a Christian, I believe that the KJV translation is "good", however, "good" is still problematic. An example that I beat to death because I am far from a Biblical scholar is "thou shalt not kill". The following from Google's AI;

The Hebrew phrase for "Thou shalt not kill" is "lo tirṣaḥ" (לֹא תִּרְצָח). The phrase translates to "You shall not murder". In biblical Hebrew, "harag" means "killing" and "ratzah" means "murder". The two words have different moral connotations.

In the US, some religions demand their members be conscientious objectors from military service, or even pacifists because of this apparently "clear" text in the KJV, which is less clear than it seems. 

To quote from Wikipedia on SEMINEX: 

After attempts at compromise failed, the LCMS president, Jacob Preus, moved to suspend the seminary president John Tietjen, leading to a walkout of most faculty and students, and the formation of Seminex. Seminex existed as an institution until its last graduating class of 1983 and was formally dissolved and merged with Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 1987. Concordia Seminary quickly rebuilt and by the late 1970s had regained its place as one of the largest Lutheran seminaries in the United States.

 My title for the book would be "Anatomy of a Slippery Slope".  I find humans to be Manichean by nature (black and white). Even though a computer scientist sees the utility of a binary world. (there are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't), binary like decimal is just a numbering system ... a way to represent numbers. 

The more I read the Bible, the more convinced I am that God is not a Manichean. He converses with Satan and allows him to test one of his favorite servants, Job. Moses talks him out of destroying the Israelites three times. Abraham bargains with him over Sodom ... the list goes on. I like to believe that my prayers, and the prayers of 3 or more gathered together can have an effect on God. Perhaps not the effect we want, but sometimes, maybe even frequently, yes. I can't find historical evidence for this, yet I believe it. 

Witing is a way to represent language, which is a way to communicate. Meaning is another kettle of fish (maybe 153 of them?).  This is ALL a misleading simplification, only partially because there is a whole branch of philosophy, " Epistemology" about what can we know and how can we know it.

Our "reality" is perceived through a brain that we have nearly no understanding of. It may well be more like a TV than a computer. 

Secularly, Socrates was the wisest man because he knew that he knew nothing. Solomon is declared so in the Bible. "All is vanity, chasing after the wind" seems to give that assertion support. 

Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The view of "fundamentalists", "pure text" is that once you "question" any verse in the Bible, you are never going to consider it definitive on anything. Once you take a step on a "slippery slope", it's over ... you are going to the bottom. Probably atheism. 

Speech is a tool. Language is a tool. Writing is a tool. Theology, methods of textual analysis, science, etc are all tools. 

Just because you have a gun does not mean you are going to kill someone. Just because you go into a skid on ice doesn't, mean you can't recover. (although watching drivers in Texas, there seem to be cases where that is not true), Respect for "slippery slopes" is warranted, however there is such a thing as an inordinate fear. I like to go out a do a few practice skids in a parking lot when the snow comes. 

The book goes into great detail on historical schisms, power struggles. politics, etc 

Page 51 seemed to approach a little theological humility. Even Luther did not consider all books in the Bible to have the same authority ... specifically Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. 

I often say "there are always two ditches", with the highway as a metaphor. Because humans tend toward the Manichean, we tend to be ditch drivers. The road analogy fails for a lot of reasons, one of which is because almost always there are MANY ditches. It could be that the ELCA, the LCMS, the Evangelicals, and the Catholics are all either in a ditch, or riding a shoulder. 

The ELCA seems to have gone deep into the way of Nietzsche - "all things are permissible" ditch. We may all be ditch drivers, but that looks like a fatal crash to me. If you lose the divinity of Christ, Virgin Birth, Body and Blood, etc, it seems you are lost. God will be the judge. 

I believe in the Creeds, so I definitely believe God created everything, including man. The Bible says very little about "how" in a scientific sense, it doesn't claim to be a scientific work, nor should it. All humans ever "understand" is a "story", we live by narrative embedded in a worldview. God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Paraclete ... all being one. I believe this. How is this possible? I don't know, I only believe. 

We may want to have some sort of 2+2=4 kind of airtight "proof" of all in the Bible, but even Thomas desired and needed to physically put his hand in the wound, after walking around with Jesus for a couple years. JESUS is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Mark 16:16 "All who believe and are baptized will be saved". We often love to be "right" more than we love. Yes, theology is important, faith in Christ is essential. 

The history of big theological controversy, sometimes including a lot of blood like the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the 30 years war, etc are not helpful for leading souls to Christ. Like the Fall, they don't seem like Gods will, OTOH, he did allow them ...  

Our understanding of reality is murky at best. Our understanding of God's ways are only through a really dark lense at great distance. 

Isaiah 55:8-9

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

We have much to be humble about! 

Hubble Deep Field. 10,000 galaxies in portion of sky 1/100th of the moon. 

 

The Most Important Decision In Life

 https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-most-important-decision-in-life/

The linked commencement address by Robert Baron is fantastic, concise, and deserves being read in its entirety. 

A bit of confession to begin.  Robert Barron is Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester -- an area that I have some familiarity with, influenced my interest. 

When I was a theology professor, I taught a course on the Reformation for many years, taking seriously the works of Luther and Calvin and other reformers. I believe the questions the reformers raise, questions that still divide the churches, are important. But right now, all of us who believe in God and are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ have a common enemy in the agnosticism, atheism, and nihilism that are deeply affecting our culture and especially the minds of young people. I believe it is important for us to join together in common cause against this common enemy. And it is in that spirit that I come before you today.

I continue to harp on this unity issue, and since I am a "harpie" of limited ability, and possibly somewhat with the excuse that we are all trapped to varying degrees in the flood of "narrative, selfishness, distraction, tribalism, etc". To paraphrase General Jack Ripper from Dr Strangelove, "Very few in our leadership or population have either the time, the training, or the inclination" to consider eternally important matters.  

What I should like to do briefly in this commencement address is examine just one of these truths, which is articulated over and again in the great Western intellectual tradition. It is typically accessed by means of a question—not the question of what we are to do, as important as that is, but rather what kind of person we ought to be. Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness? Or do we seek our own advantage? In a way, there is no question in the moral and spiritual order more fundamental than that.

Everyone reading this, and of course myself as well, has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the dogma of Progressivism ... man is good by nature, human progress is evident,  "on the right side of history", and anyone questioning this narrative is reationary, lacking in intellect, lacking in education, and most likely racist, homophobic, fascist, or whatever other insult can be thrown at such a person or institution. If we could only finally submit to the approved experts, both our lives and the rest of the world would approach utopia.

So there’s the question, young graduates. What kind of soul will you have? What kind of person will you be? Will you do whatever it takes to get what you want? Or will you accept even great suffering in order to do what is right? Everything else in your life will flow from your answer to that question.

He describes one of my favorite Biblical texts, Elijah "alone"(save for God). facing the 450 prophets of Baal.

He closes with: 

St. John Paul II, in his writings on the moral life, observed that in every particular ethical choice a person makes, he is doing two things simultaneously. He is performing a moral act with definite consequences, and he is making his character—crafting, little by little, the person he is becoming. I have the confident hope that your years at Hillsdale College have prepared you, above all, to shape your characters, to become the kind of men and women who would endure injustice rather than commit injustice, who would never dream of worshiping at the altar of an idol, and who wouldn’t surrender the integrity of your souls for the whole world.

And if you become the persons God intends you to be, you will succeed in lighting a fire upon the earth.

I confess to have failed miserably in crafting and worshiping the idols of pleasure, careerism, money, recognition, and countless others. 

Please take some time to give it a read, and ponder it's application to you and yours. 

Why Humans Need Hell

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/case-closed-it-was-a-lab-leak.php

Progressivism, Democrats, the Administrative State, Intellectuals, etc bristle at the idea of "God", even more so at the idea that there is such a thing as sort of "defined transcendent morality" beyond "I get to define MY truth".  Especially a morality with judgement and eternal damnation. 

They get completely outraged by the idea that God would punish the evil that he has decreed to be evil eternally. It might give some people some second thoughts about some of the actions they want to take in this life. "Progress" denies human responsibility ... the fault is always elsewhere. History, white privilege, Christians, mental health, not enough funding for unionized schools, "hate speech", guns, ... being on the left means never being responsible for anything other than the best outcomes. 

One needs to be a very very dedicated "Wuhan Denier" to not realize that the Covid virus came from the Wuhan lab, and it was created explicitly to be very transmissible, and likely to kill primarily old people. If there is no real morality, and you are a a utilitarian, you seek "the good" for the greatest number. The following definition is from Google's AI, so if robots outnumber humans and humans are a threat to them, AI will seem pretty clear on "the right thing to do",

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that states that the consequences of an action are the only standard of right and wrong. It is a form of consequentialism, which states that the most ethical choice is the one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories.

Pilate asked, "what is truth"?, many philosophers. have asked "what is good?"

Nietzsche and most atheists boil "the good" down to "whatever power says it is".

As the research at the Wuhan lab became increasingly "successful" (meaning that they had a virus that was very transmissible and would kill a lot of people). the research went increasingly dark. Following the link at the top gives more detail. 

The results of Baric’s experiment with the genetic sequence given to him by Shi were published in co-authored research in November 2015. The combined Sars copy and SHC014 virus was a potential mass killer. It caused severe lung damage in humanized mice and was resistant to vaccines developed for Sars. The paper acknowledged this might have been an experiment that was too dangerous.

It caused a big stir. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” warned Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. 

Both the Chinese and the US were funding this research. They made up excuses that were essentially "First you have to CREATE Godzilla, then you can figure out how to defend against him". What could go wrong?

The mice were monitored in their cages over two weeks. The results were shocking. The mutant virus that fused WIV1 with SHC014 killed 75 percent of the rodents and was three times as lethal as the original WIV1. In the early days of the infection, the mice’s human-like lungs were found to contain a viral load up to 10,000 times greater than the original WIV1 virus.

The scientists had created a highly infectious super-coronavirus with a terrifying kill-rate that in all probability would never have emerged in nature. The new genetically modified virus was not Covid-19 but it might have been even more deadly if it had leaked.

So governments worked together to create hyper lethal viruses that would not occur in nature, would be impossible to control, very transmissible, and have various levels of lethality, and they "leaked" ... or were released. "At this point what does it matter" (a good Hillary quote on her Benghazi disaster).  As Stalin said, "Death solves all problems, no man, no problem". 

In a utilitarian world where there are too many elderly, and the general population is still not willing to accept euthanasia, would not killing elderly be a utilitarian "moral imperative"? How many times do we need to hear "Climate Change is and existential issue" before some "courageous/moral" utilitarian government or person releases an engineered virus that kills 80% or more of the world population?

It seems likely that survivors might canonize the viral "savior of the planet" as a "second Noah". 

As people have abandoned the idea of an afterlife and final judgement, the concepts of sin, morality, good, evil, etc. are completely mutable. No need to worry about punishment ... in this world if you are well connected with those who control the global narrative, and, since there is no "next", why worry? Eat. drink, indulge whatever sexual or other pleasures you desire. Life is short, and then "poof". "Poof" is your hope. 

Therefore, who is to judge those with the power and the means to do things that people that retain that old sense of morality find unthinkable? The Holocaust happened; Hitler at least wagered that Hell was imaginary. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and whoever directed the creation of Covid obviously had other concerns than Hell. 

Even when culture retained the idea of eternal punishment, severely evil things were still done. Today, without the belief in ultimate justice being assured by Romans 12:19 "Vengeance is mine, I shall repay, says the Lord", humans feel they MUST mete out "justice", and murder, suicide, hatred, division, broken families, countries, communities, and lives abound. 

Russia has said multiple times that they WILL use nuclear weapons if they are pushed too far. Meanwhile the West provokes, them with sanctions that cripple their economies, declare their leader a "war criminal", arms their enemies, and makes their opponent a star. Nobody seems to believe what they say. If Putin is really ailing, and believes this is all there is, starting WWIII would certainly ensure his place in history, and it is doubtful he would be seen as more evil than Hitler ... or possibly not even Trump, according to the left. 

The anesthetized Western masses increasingly believe that only those that still claim divine morality are a danger. 

Without God, the people perish. By their own hand, or by the hand of power without eternal moral sanction. 

Is It Time For Manly Christianity to be Unleashed?

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/against-the-new-paganism/

A little long, but an article that needs to read in its entirety in order to understand where Western culture are today, and may need to be in the future.

The most prominent exponent of vitalism today is Costin Alamariu, a Romanian political-science Ph.D. (Yale), who goes by the moniker “Bronze Age Pervert” (BAP). As BAP, he is the author of Bronze Age Mindset, an intentionally provocative, discursive, and ungrammatical “exhortation” outlining his thought. In two previous essays, one in the Daily Beast and one in National Review, I described the work, attempted to explain the origin and nature of its popularity, and assessed it critically

So what is vitalism? 

a call for the deepest possible return of all: a breaking of the fetters of secular liberalism and Judaism and Christianity alike, a recovery of a more elemental way of being-in-the-world. The nostalgia of neo-vitalism is for humanity’s most ancient days: for blood and war and shamans and the fierce exaltation of the kill.

The post makes a number of references to "Bronze Age Pervert" which I covered here.

We are all familiar with the current state of affairs in Christianity, 

Over the past few decades, Christianity has both retreated from the public square and from mass culture and been pushed from them. Its once-venerable pillars in this country have atrophied. Catholics continue to disaffiliate, and many Protestant denominations can barely be distinguished from unbelief. “The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God,”

One of my many weird and possibly heretical paths of thinking is correlating the OT with the NT, and Yahweh with Christ.  On one level God is presented as "unchanging",  and Christ as "fully God and fully man". The OT God seems very different from Christ ... 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18 New International Version (NIV)
"However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you."

Certainly in the Judgement, God will kill all the wicked ... eternally. He is a God who desires to show his mercy, but if it is refused, Judgment is his. .  

A book that helped me at least understand the problem a bit was "Jesus and Yahweh, The Names Divine".

The following quote is from the post linked at the top, not the previous line. 

Easter reminds us that the Resurrection remains true — even if the work of revitalizing Christianity today might require an approach different from the one Paul took in the Areopagus, with an emphasis not only on the truth of the Christian faith but also on its muscular application.

During the Reformation, Christians certainly fought valiantly. It was basically the equivalent of the American Civil War. Can/must Christians today be more like the Christians of the the Crusades, who "turned the other cheek" until the battle of Covadonga?

Today we are often given the message to "stand down", and "obey the authorities" because "God is in control". I agree with God being in control, but his often explicit battle plans in the OT. 

Malachi 3:6

“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."

God "allows" a lot of things, and "directs" a lot of other things. Which is which is "seen darkly" at best by even the most devout Christian.

Is it time for a new Reformation or Crusade? God will decide. 

Gender Dysphoria, Riley Gains

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/04/more-trans-violence.php

The video in the post is something that needs to be seen by all. A male coming into a woman's locker room, unannounced needs to be removed and criminally prosecuted. In a decent society he would be beaten to at least near death by boyfriends, brothers, fathers, etc in protection of the women dishonored. 

There is no "Trans",  there is only a serious mental health issue of Gender Dysphoria, that needs to treated as such, and gender impersonation, which is simple perversion. There is nothing new in reality under the sun, only "new" in the sense of the fantasies of people following the leadership of Satan. 

There is no "issue" here, there are male and female, XY and XX chromosomes in every cell of all our bodies. For anyone that believes "the science", or the plain order of God's creation, this is as real as death. While many go to great length to deny death, at least we all will get the chance to understand that truth eventually, with eternal jpy as believers, and with eternal horror for the unbelieving. 

Now we have mentally ill gender dysphoric 'beings" shooting up a Christian School, and the problem is stated by our Democrat/Administrative State/Media "rulers" to be guns. 

People living in an imaginary world are more prone than the rest of us to do terrible things. Mental illness is not a reasonable basis for society, yet the psychiatric pathology of Gender Dysphoria  is justified and celebrated by our media, treated as a positive thing by some in our medical community (affirming a psychological disorder is akin to providing more drugs to a drug addict). 

We have an insane situation where an obvious illness is celebrated as a another new "basic human right" on the same level as "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". 

"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are special because they are Natural Law rights ... "endowed by our Creator (God) and unalienable. 

There was a lot of discussion of having a bill of rights at all because it gives the impression that the ONLY rights "given" to the people are enumerated there.  In fact all the rights come from God, through the people. As the tenth amendment makes clear. 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The creation of "rights" out of thin air is dangerous in a number of ways but to name just two:

1. A human created "right" comes with responsibility, it is not given, from the creator like Grace and Salvation. Up to Roe, the right to life was correctly understood to be a natural right, requiring no enumeration. The people of some states restricted that right, but in the correctly understood framework of our Constitutional Republic, they had that right to be wrong. Roe manufactured a "right" to kill the unborn out of thin air, and prohibited the states from protecting life. Dobbs returned that right to the states and the people. 
   
   
2. The right to self defence is a natural right. A moment of reflection makes us all aware that when our lives, or those of our children and loved ones are in peril, our natural creaturely nature will cause us to use any means at hand to protect ourselves and loved ones. A strongly held religious belief MAY cause us to "turn the other cheek", but none of us really knows how we will react unless faced with that peril. Since this right, (like religious freedom) was so dear to the newly independent colonists who had freed themselves from religious and economic tyranny by bearing arms, they were very aware that the federal power may be used against them, thus, they (incorrectly I believe) thought it needed to be enumerated. 

Satan is the father of lies. There are a number of turning points on our way to being somewhat worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, a key one is Engel vs Vitale in 1962, prohibiting prayer in schools., since children are the foundation of our nation, and we were once a nation under God, our schools changed to indoctrination children with the religion of Secular Humanism, and God gave America over to Satan. 

Eliott's Still Point, The Crucifixion and Resurrection

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/04/sir-roger-on-easter.php

When something comes in threes, I take note. (see Holy Trinity)

I was reading The New Criterion on the evening of Good Friday, That talked of Elliott's "Still Point"  

Digging into that article I found some quality quotes: 

Was there any condition, any reality, that stood apart from the violence of history? A place where force was not simply met by competing force, but where stillness, silence, and peace might reign?

Being Good Friday, my mind quickly went to the Crucifixion and Resurrection as being "outside of time"  ... always present. 

In Eliot’s day, the reduction of human life and the world to what Nietzsche called “the will to power” was a dominant idea that drove the ideologies of communism and fascism and haunted the life of the liberal West. In our day we see that, for the mainstream of our intellectuals and the broader population as well, the possibility that life could consist of anything other than power and its abuse seems nearly unimaginable. The story of Eliot’s life and work, in this regard, seems a salutary reminder that genuine peace is possible, even if it is a peace “not as the world gives.”

I have often lamented the modern situation of "living" in a materialist machine, with more and more realizing that they are not living at all.  

Either life is a natural tragic cycle of violence and revenge, which we may enact but never escape, or we must surrender “self-possession” and allow ourselves by supernatural grace to be possessed. Only complete abstention from action can allow divine grace to lead us beyond history and its busy motions to the “Peace which passeth understanding” (to use the words of St. Paul quoted in the notes to The Waste Land).

We cannot hope to remake ourselves by force of will but must surrender to being transformed by a will superior to our own. In the second, Eliot states directly that all that lies within history, including moral values, is mere flux. The principles of truth and goodness exist beyond time, and only in surrendering to them and judging in terms of them can we live in contact with that which is permanent. God’s eternity is the reality by which the unreality of time must be understood.

Most religions and mystics talk of this "point of possession by the eternal". As for all eternally important matters, we need to be aware that Satan is real, and is extremely willing to possess you. Baptism into Christ and a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, maintained by accepting Grace through daily Bible reading and prayer, regular reception of Holy Preaching, and regular Holy Communion is the only way I know to stay connected to that  "still point". Perhaps there are other ways, but Christ states that he is the way, the truth, and the life. And so I believe. 

Much to my surprise, as the sermon on Easter Vigil began, here is the opening:

To borrow a phrase from T. S. Eliot’s epic poem about time, tonight is a “still point in the turning world.” The Creation of the world, from darkness to light, and chaos to order; the Exodus out of Egypt, in which the angel of death passed over the faithful and the Israelites passed over the Red Sea on dry ground; the Passion of our Lord, instituting His Supper, His betrayal in the garden, the unjust trial and His bloody crucifixion; the Resurrection from the tomb; your Resurrection on the final day. All this, the past and the future of redemption is right now. This, your redemption, is not merely celebrated like a birthday or an anniversary, but it is re-lived in us by faith this very night.

  I do believe that the Trinity is present with us in the form of the Holy Spirit at all times. Was this a coincidence, or concilliance? As I read the linked post at the top, "coincidence" fell from my radar. 

As covered in the link at the top of the post, here is Sir Roger Scruton  (a man I struggle to not idolize) on the topic:

Leaving aside all learned theology, but taking inspiration from the poets, painters and composers who have treated this subject, I would say that Christ’s resurrection, like his death, is an event in eternity. It occurs in me and in you, just so long as we put our trust in the possibility of renewal. It is a re-affirmation of the creative principle, and of the love that brought about Christ’s death. The darkness that came over the world on that first Easter Saturday could be dispelled only by a renewal of this love, and this renewal comes through us. The Cross is a display of supreme forgiveness, which invites us to forgive in our turn.

Seeing the Christian mystery in that way we open a path to reconciliation with the other Abrahamic faiths. Christ’s death is not a once- off event in ordinary time but, to borrow T. S. Eliot’s words, ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time’. The wonderful concretion of the Gospels, which give us the shape and feel of Christ’s earthly life, show love shining from a source beyond those vivid moments. To translate that idea into theological terms is not necessary. It is enough to see that there is a love that overcomes all suffering, all resentment, all negativity, and that this love is the source of our own renewal.

Give me a clue once, twice, but THREE TIMES? As a computer scientist, my training leads to skepticism, however, like Thomas, sometimes we Christians need to thrust our hands into the reality of the Crucifiction and Resurrection!  

Christ is risen! 

He is risen indeed! 

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics

 The Righteous Mind, highly recommended!

Read and blogged on in 2012, but some recent reading caused me to move it forward to this blog. 

For people with a conservative bent, a lot of this book will be "didn't everyone know this already"? But for folks of the liberal bent -- like Haidt, although his research for this book migrated him to what he sees as "moderate", it will be something of a struggle.

Sadly, I'm sure that Haidt is due to discover that his observations about human nature may be hyper proven as the liberal establishment punishes him for his heresy of using actual science to point out some fairly obvious things about human nature that would seem to indicate that conservatives are not exclusively just "stupid and evil".

First, we are not rational beings, we are RATIONALIZING beings. The book carries on  the excellent rider/elephant analogy from "The Happiness Hypothesis" and builds off it. The Rider is best seen as the Press Secretary for the elephant -- the elephant does something or "leans" in some direction and the rider dutifully develops a case for the elephant. Humans developed into "hive creatures" (like bees) that could specialize labor and cooperate without all having to be related. Morality is the "wetware" that we use to create and enforce the rules to do that -- our "rider" (consciousness) was created so that our "elephants" (subconscious) could operate this way.

The Six Moral Senses:

1. Care/Harm
2. Liberty/Oppression
3. Fairness/Cheating
4. Loyalty/Betrayal
5. Authority/Subversion
6. Sanctity/Degradation

Liberals tend to be very heavily focused on #1 ... although interestingly, conservatives seem to "care" almost as much, they just don't "care" to the exclusion of all other moral senses. On #2, liberals and libertarians are somewhat close -- although liberals see corporate power as much worse and "oppressive" than government power, which they have a hard time even equating with oppression.

On #3, liberals think of "equality" and completely forget about proportionality -- or Karma. One of the huge problems in cooperation is the "free rider problem". Haidt covers this and why it is impossible to have cooperation without "punishment" (sanctions) against free riders.

Liberals are nearly blind (or claim to be) on 4,5 and 6. It turns out that when tested, the "moral modules" for even Sanctity are there and working in the liberal brain just fine -- they just don't want to admit it because in their view it seems "less enlightened" to admit that degrading things are degrading.

I believe that this book is an EXCELLENT base to at least attempt to open some lines of communication between liberals and conservatives, but I suspect that Haidt is in for a shock -- maybe somewhat equivalent to the shock that Edward O Wilson wrote "Sociobiology" back in the '70s.

The "divine faith" of liberals is that there is no God and man is an infinitely malleable blank slate. While proving that there is no god (or that there is) is not going to happen, it is scientifically known that man is NOT a blank slate, and at least in the "next few millennia" not likely to be improved upon much. Wilson was trashed for stating the basic outline of what a "human nature" was likely to be, now here comes Haidt with some fairly solid research showing what it actually is.

As Wilson outlined in "Consilience", the more science moves forward, the more we begin to see the fact of an intricate and complex human that is no less difficult to mold to our desires than ecologists are realizing the ecology of the planet is. We are each little ecosystems honed by selection (or created by God) to interact within the the planetary and social constructs that we are born with and into.

Reality has never been very much of interest to the Progressive Project -- now about 100 years in, with all of the progressive nations facing economic demise, even the social sciences start to point out that reality is not in line with the progressive vision. My guess is that the response is not likely to be very reasoned, but rather very emotional.

The Matter With Things Volume 2

 To quote an Oxford professor from the dust jacket, "This is one of the most important books ever published, and yes, I do mean ever".

I'll be following Iain McGilchrist as I do Jordan Peterson ... which means I'll be reading a couple more of his books and attempting to keep of with as much of his thinking as I can. 

Why? 

A quote from the heading of his channel (which can be found from the link with his name above): 

I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls.

Our dominant value – sometimes I fear our only value – has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d’être of which is to control and manipulate the world. But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d’être of our – more intelligent, in every sense – right hemisphere. Unfortunately the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous – a peremptory – master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us – or should be important, if we really know what we are about.

Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.

In it I search out what it is we have lost sight of, all that is there for us to see, if only we were not blinded to it: an inexhaustibly, truly wondrous, creative, living universe, not a meaningless, moribund mechanism. By bringing to bear up-to-the-minute neuropsychology, physics and philosophy, I show not only that these are in no way in conflict with one another, but that they all lead us, time and again, to the same insights. And that this is not in opposition to, but rather corroborates, the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions across the world.

All this converges on a vision that is necessary if we are to survive; and, even more importantly, if we are to deserve to survive. What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world in quite the same way again.

I am largely in agreement with his analysis, and those that have followed my blogs know this to be the case. His ability to present two key models of thought is invaluable. 

• The clear difference between the left  and right brain views of the world.
  
  
• The increasingly observed physics and philosophical view that what we perceive as matter is actually a series of quantum fields. Quantum Field Theory (QFT), possibly described a bit in the book "Helgoland".

The analogy of our brains being more like a TV set receiving fields from some universal underlying field or set of fields, finally gives me a model that makes sense to me of "God, the universe, and everything". It is a way to explain consciousness that I had never considered. Being stuck in the Cartesian body/mind dualism model of our consciousness/spirit being a "ghost in the machine", with the brain being a sort of wetware computer that somehow generated consciousness, I just didn't have a model that I really believed to be reasonable.

A mind bending assertion is that we need to give up our conception of matter: 

Page 1053, "If you believe matter is the only reality, and you then learn that matter as you think of it is illusion, you will conclude that reality is illusory. But it is not. It is matter as we think of it, that is an illusion. And there is more to reality than matter. It was your thinking that misled you. 

No, I haven't become a believer in Climate Change, and man "destroying the planet", but rather view that narrative as merely another play for power. Since I'm at least somewhat a right brained guy, I could be wrong.  

Chapter 28 gets into "The Sense of the Sacred". On 1194, 

"How does it come about that there is a process. or motion, or a point in time at all - now or ever" The answer to this question cannot be answered in terms of a physical entity or process, because that already presupposes what we are questioning -- why there are physical processes and entities. The proper object of of this question is that which underlies timelessly and eternally, whatever is: in other words, the ground of Being." 

Humans all have some concept of this, covered in "The Elementary Forms Of Religious Life". 

Page 1295 is tragic. 

"It is in dealing with death that that one is most forcibly we have yielded hands down to the forgetting of Being." 

Even though McGilchrist can't practice religion for some reason, when his parents died, he and his brother wanted words from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer to be repeated as written,  but the priest was unable to comply. "Too gloomy". 

Appendix 8: "Incompatibility" of Science and Religion points out that the religion of our times is Scientism, and it is arid in the extreme. 

"That the religious, both communally and individually are happier, and dramatically healthier both mentally and physically, as well as better adjusted, more resilient and more prosocial in their habits, also does not prove that religion is true. But it suggests that we and our societies function poorly when we neglect it, and that human thriving and fulfillment depend on it to a considerable extent." 

 I want to help reconcile the critical need for religion in the lives of individuals, families, communities, countries, and the world. This book is the best I've seen to date as a way to help move our western culture from the materialist path to destruction we are on.

Based on my life, and what I observe today, a quote from page 1333 seems critical to moving to unified truth. "... it is dogma we must avoid at all costs. Dogma is the besetting sin of the age; and if one wanted one, it would be be hard to find a better expression of left hemisphere's take on the world than dogma. 

Matt 23 11-15 

11 The greatest among you will be your servant. [ the left brain is to be the servant of the right ]

12 For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

13  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 

15  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

The left brain is the Pharisee brain, and since our society post the Enlightenment is left brain biased, we are biased toward dogma in everything ... religion, philosophy, science, politics, interpersonal relationships ... we are living on half a brain, and it is killing us, temportally and eternally. 

This does NOT (as is covered many times in the book) mean "there is no such thing as truth", or "anything goes" ... it is the opposite. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. Humility. 

Pray without ceasing. 

Christian Nationalists

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/02/24/idaho-christian-nationalism-marjorie-taylor-greene/

The linked article is intended to put "the fear of God" or maybe more precisely, 
fear of the Godly" into WaPo readers. Most likely it makes many of them quite afraid. 

Earlier this month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, addressed the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, whose purview runs from this small resort city up along the Washington state border. Before she spoke, a local pastor and onetime Idaho state representative named Tim Remington, wearing an American-flag-themed tie, revved up the crowd: “If we put God back in Idaho, then God will always protect Idaho.”

I'm not convinced at all that this particular movement is "the one", however the fact that a few people are organizing to attempt to alter the downward spiral of America is hopeful to me. Is there likely to be a price? Almost certainly. Was the 30 years war too high a price for allowing people to read and follow the Bible? I'm not going to judge that, I'm just saying that religious freedom came at a cost. 

What about "nationalism"? Historically, and even today, many people are patriotic ... to America, to  Canada, to Ukraine, to Russia, etc. 

Morality requires a shared set of standards. Adams assumed Christian morality found in the Bible. Officials are still sworn in on the Bible, although today, few of them even know of, let alone attempt to practice the moral principles found there. We once were a nation founded "under God", even though that didn't go into our pledge until 1954, largely to clearly differentiate the US from the USSR which was proudly atheistic. 

A scan of the article contains a lot of things that I definitely don't agree with, however this summary paragraph is more comforting. 

While sectarian varieties of Christian nationalism certainly exist, the version most ascendant — and the kind activists say is working its way through the state legislature — relies not on theological purity but an alliance between conservative Christians who collectively oppose liberal policies and what they deride as secular culture

I'd like to have a modern Christian revival where in somewhat MLK fashion, there could be a a leader and organization following a  sort of -- "I have a vision of an America founded on a transcendent God, where "love your neighbor as yourself" was shared by nearly all. Where being Christian meant following the Bible, and Secularists honestly declared that they had no fixed moral principles rather than falsely claiming to be "Christian"". 

That is a "flavor", not intended to be even close to what a reality of such a statement might be. 

While it certainly sounds corny, the Beatles "All We Need Is Love" if it is interpreted as all we need is love of God, might even be in the running. If you love God, you love your neighbor. Every religion other than Islam could fit under this banner. Reading the "Regensburg Lecture" by Pope Benedict gives a decent understanding as to why Islam is an issue. 

Secular Humanism? I'm probably overly optimistic that the rise in drug use, suicide, crime and hopeless broken lives may cause more people to understand the folly of that ideology, as they have at least began toi understand the problems with the totalitarian ideologies oif fascism and communism. (they have a longer path to understanding the problems with the world oligarchy they live in). 

Are we ripe for the flowering of revival, or "ripe" in the sense of stinky rotten decay? A seek must fall to the ground and die before a new shoot of life can grow ... let us pray for the cleansing sunlight of God's power. Much like the start of foundation of Christianity through Christ, the trieals of the "Dark Ages", the Reformation, and the founding of America, to road that God has decreed as been promised to include much pain in the way to Christ's return. Based on the path traveled so far, it does seem mostly a downward spiral, however it is not entirely a dark path. 

We WILL suffer, however it is our mission to reduce that suffering where possible. 

John 16:33 NIV

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Church History In Plain Language, Bruce Shelley

 I believe I read this book in the early to mid 1980's. It was before I marked up my books, and it was pre-Internet, blogs and such ... I was too lazy to take notes. 

I was in my questioning everything phase at that time. Being raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church ... no dancing, no drinking, no movies, no smoking, etc, I started to look at Christianity as "the religion of don'ts". Possibly, "You shall know them by what they DON'T do!" would have been a good creed for that particular sect. They were certainly not "creedal" ... we didn't even learn the Lord's Prayer. That was something the supposedly  Satanic Catholics learned! If the Catholics did it, we DIDN'T! 

I loved my parents and I loved a lot of people in that church ... this was fortunately not the age of "cancelling", although my first "love" relationship was cancelled by a Catholic dad. We were not THAT serious, but he wasn't taking any chances! 

 Thinking of this time made me think of a favorite Professor, Richard DeGrood who I took a philosophy class from. He worked fairly hard for me to change my major to philosophy. I sometimes wonder what might have been, rather than me being focused on climbing the corporate ladder and suppressing/denying my anxiety and depression. 

I found this review, that at least gives some pointers and a very top level summary of the book.

It is a very popular book, probably mostly because it is "relatively short" (495 pages) for a book of this scope, and written in a style that is easy to follow and as entertaining as this sort of book can be. 

On page 100, he talks of a subject near and dear to my heart ... "What does it MEAN!", a concern shared by Origen (one of the church fathers) ..."He held that there are three levels of meaning in the Bible: the literal sense, the moral application to the soul; and the allegorical or spiritual sense, which refers to the mysteries of the Christian faith". 

I suspect that there are a LOT more than "three levels" ... for one, there is the fact that it was written at the first level from either inspiration, eye witness, or second/third/?? hand. For those of us living today, it was translated, (maybe multiple times), it is "contextualized" both in terms of the culture at the time it was written/translated as well as in the context of how we think today. While we believe in "God with us" through the Holy Spirit, believers need a lot of grace to connect with Christ through the Bible and church. All of the authors, copyists, translators, etc, also needed a lot of help from the Holy Spirit. 

We don't tend to think about our thinking (epistemology). Often there are many levels between what is "seen" or "inspired" and what is written, translated, interpreted, etc. As humans, we deeply want to put our hand into the side of the risen savior like Thomas, but in John 20:29 "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." We are commanded to believe without anything close to direct sight or touch ... in fact, other than the Holy Spirit (which must be our guide), we are asked to believe through writings that are thousands of years old and have been translated a number of times. 

We clearly NEED the Holy Spirit, and it would be nice if our pastors/teachers in the here and now, understood that it ISN'T "as plain as the nose on your face". We protestants don't take Matthew 16:18 literally. "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." We choose to take what was said in verse 16 "Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”" ... Peter's confession, as the real foundation of the church. (while Catholics take the literal text) 

As a lapsed Baptist and a student of history, I hungered for as much historical connection to the truth of the Christian doctrine as I could find ... which I assumed meant Catholicism, because that is what it was sold as, AND because it had withstood the test of time. Without the Catholic Church (and no doubt God's protection of it), we would not be discussing this today.  It is a bit amazing that I never joined the Catholic Church, or actually read this book with a bit more rigor. On page 380, it covers the doctrine of papal infallibility ... which became a dogma in 1870 because the church was no longer superior to the state -- the church was in dire need of authority. Infallibility met that need. On December 8, 1854, Pious IX declared the dogma of the immaculate conception ... that MARY was conceived without sin. 

Once you are "infallible", you can declare a lot of things. As a Christian, I dearly hope that the Pope will never declare gay "marriage" as a proper sacrament. It would not change my belief, but looking at Vatican II, I have to assume a lot of Catholics would follow that teaching. 

As a person who really thinks that the 18 year old Scotch is better than the stuff that just dribbled out of the still, tradition matters to me. "New and improved" sounds more like marketing than theology. Tradition matters, but it isn't all that matters. 

While we are at it, how about praying to Mary? The earliest reference is the "Sub tuum praesidium" 259 AD, so not exactly "new". In the catholic. (universal) church, the saints are with us at least as we take Holy Communion ... so Mary and the other saints are more "alive" than we are. We often ask other Christians to pray for us, and since Mary is certainly alive in Heaven, and revered among all women, it doesn't seem "wrong" to ask her to pray for us. The danger is that while it isn't likely that we will be tempted to worship any Tom, Dick, or Harry that we ask to pray for us, the same is not true of Mary. Be not drunk as to wine, nor of Mary. 

On page 456, Shelly declares relative to the 18th amendment; "This was probably the last successful evangelical crusade for a moral America". Given Christ's first miracle at Cana, I'm not sure that the 18th had murch to do with actual morality, but "whatever". 

On 460, he gets into a discussion about how some claimed that more "born again" Christians would improve the morality of America. Arthur Schlesinger jr had declared of Jimmy Carter that he thought Carter ought not have brought up his "born again" religion in the campaign, stating "If you feel that, then bully for you, but it is totally irrelevant". Looking around today, it seems pretty obvious that being short on Christians is a bad thing for a culture. 

I would argue that Dobbs is a good example of a cultural victory involving Christians of both Catholic and Evangelical types, with the credit, as always, being God's. 

It isn't at all clear that Christ much improved the general public morality of the Jews, nor the Roman Empire until maybe Constantine (got rid of burning Christians for light and gladiators) if ever. Christ declared that his kingdom was NOT of this world. The Middle Ages, when the Church largely WAS the State, are not seen as particularly moral by Biblical standards. 

The end of the book drifts off into the "social gospel" and the idea that unity is more important than theology, or truth for that matter. On page 468 we see; "Through all these years, the most persistent critics of conciliar ecumenism were the conservative Evangelicals. Holding staunchly to the authority of the Bible, Evangelicals know that Jesus prayed that his disciples would be one, but they question the federation form of Christian unity". 

UNLESS there is at least significant agreement on the authority of the Bible for more than just a couple quotes taken out of context, any idea of "Christian unity" is foolishness. If everyone would just agree with ME, we could be unified! It reminds me of Biden claiming he came to "heal" when what he really meant was HEEL! If you deplorable ultra MAGA, racist, fascist, uneducated scum would just HEEL, the divisions would end. Heil Biden!

The imagined "unity" in the middle ages was achieved through the power of the state and the church being combined. Thousands were slaughtered, burned, tortured, etc so that "unity" could be achieved. The price of that sort of "unity" seems too high to me if it is achieved via either the church, the state, or a partnership.

I dearly desire much more unity among Christians. Certainly we have doctrinal differences, but it seems that at least those of us who attempt to accept the Bible as the word of God, believe in Christ born of the Virgin Mary, crucified for our sins, and saving us through that sacrifice, could be unified in at least as much love as we are commanded to have for even our enemies! 

Covid And Truth

Watching this if you don't have a Daily Wire subscription is like watching network TV ... the commercials are infuriating, but I think worth it.  

It covers a lot of facts about the strange response to Covid, the main one in my mind is "Why doesn't anyone seem to be curious about how Covid got started"?  (in fact they want desperately to close the case that it was not). The circumstantial evidence is very damning ... viral gain of function research was being done in Wuhan, Fauci was funding it, we know there was a conference call on which Fauci and a set of virologists were very concerned about this being a lab leak, and how they could "verify" that it was not. (they claimed they had found a "very similar" virus in a pangolin), however when guys like Ridley looked, it wasn't. 

If you take the time to look at the early part of the video, you will learn about protein spikes and ACE2 receptors, and why it is so difficult (thanks be to God) for nature to produce a virus that does human to human transmission. Is it "possible" that it can happen randomly? Certainly, someone does win the lottery after all. Occam would be skeptical. In this case, the Wuhan lab was specifically inserting genetic code to allow the virus to be highly transmissible to humans. 

This "Gain of Function" research was criticized as being likely to create the specific problem it was allegedly trying to prevent. An analogy used in the video is that it was like looking for a natural gas leak with a lighted match. 

I've long been convinced that Covid was a lab "leak" at least, if not an intentional insertion into the environment. Remember that just prior to Covid, our economy was booming, energy prices were low, and Trump was looking like an absolute lock for re-election. Trump was a huge thorn in the side of the Administrative State, Chinese world dominance, exposing Democrat weaponization of the "Great Reset", open borders, and many other things. From the POV of the global elite, defeating him was an absolute requirement from day 1 of his administration, and failure was not an option. 

Covid enabled the measures like massive mail in "voting" that averted what the woke viewed as an existential threat. 

In a world were killing millions of babies is considered to be a "moral good", as well as the destruction of the middle class and families, it is imperative that ALL means be used to prevent that disaster if you look at it from the POV of the global elite. Millions dying is just collateral damage. 

The last hour of the video discusses what Jordan and Matt think is even a more dangerous "virus", the rise of the woke authoritarian state, and the end of open inquiry. There is also some excellent discussion of how Christianity relates to the search for truth.  

I strongly suggest taking the time to view ... subscribing to the Daily Wire is not a bad idea either. 

The Elementry Forms of Religious Life (Durkheim)

 https://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/forms.html

This is certainly not a recreational read ... much time is spent in the details of various primitive totemic religions (largely Aborigine), but also some reference to the religions of the native americans. 

The basic truth painstakingly worked out is that we are "Moral Believing Animals". In short, humans are inherently social, they will form groups, and those groups will believe in something that is at its base not rational/proveable, but totally real and sacred to the group. 

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. The second element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than the first; for by showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from that of the Church, it makes it clear that religion should be an eminently collective thing.

Scientism, historicism, materialism, Christianity, atheism, Taoism, Communism, etc are equal relative to being unverifiable in a philosophical sense. Since we can't philosophically/scientifically prove our existence, or even that we are "conscious" (which we also can't define), it is faith all the way down for all of us. 

At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, [4] class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought;

One of the best descriptions of our state is expressed in the deeply intellectual film "This is Spinal Tap" relative to the Druids: 

In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived an ancient race of people. The Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing. 

Amazingly, I've been to Stonehenge, and that quote is etched in stone in the visitors center.

One of the base philosophical questions is "Why is there anything"? As the book says: 

Thus we find that we have here two sorts of knowledge, which are like the two opposite poles of the intelligence. Under these conditions forcing reason back upon experience causes it to disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing the universality and necessity which characterize it to pure appearance, to an illusion which may be useful practically, but which corresponds to nothing in reality; consequently it is denying all objective reality to the logical life, whose regulation and organization is the function of the categories. Classical empiricism results in irrationalism; perhaps it would even be fitting to designate it by this latter name.

As we believe we have recently observed, "reality" is an illusion. It is all interacting fields. 

We thus believe we discover that all our models ... the Platonic, the Aristotelian, the Newtonian, Einstein's static model, the Quantum model, the Standard Model, are all just that, "models". Models, like maps are very useful, however we need to always remember that the map is not the territory.

Durkheim is attempting to go back to the origin of religion, and one of the bases is what a group considers sacred vs profane. One of the laments we hear today is "is nothing sacred?". To classical empiricism, that there is no concept of sacred, and as stated above, classical empiricism as a way to understand the universe is irrational ... meaning "insane". An often heard question today is "has the world gone insane?". I'm pretty sure that Durkheim would say that is so, and a lot of evidence seems to support that view. 

To distinguish religion from all other classification systems: 

... it is absolute. In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in common.

As our models of the universe have become more sophisticated, they more and more resemble religion. 

... between the logic of religious thought and that of scientific thought there is no abyss. The two are made up of the same elements, though inequally and differently developed.

Just as there is no known society without a religion, so there exist none, howsoever crudely organized they may be, where we do not find a whole system of collective representations concerning the soul, its origin and its destiny.

Today, science is our religion. We make statements like "trust the science", "the science is settled". Those that disagree are called "deniers", which is equivalent to "heretics" in Christianity. Their views must be suppressed, they must be punished (fired, cancelled, shunned). So far, no burning at the stake.

Page 369, "...he knows that it is faith that saves".

Search your heart. you know it to be true. Our lives are sustained by faith ... we have faith we will get up in the morning, we have faith we can drive to our destination safely, we have faith that the bridge we drive over will not fall, the list is endless, and in this mortal coil, many of the things we have faith in will fail. We will see that many of the earthly things we have faith in will fail. Even though we see that ... people fail to get up, cars crash and the occupants die, bridges fall, etc

But we still go to sleep, drive our cars, and go over bridges, because we can't live without faith. Even faith in people or things shown to be unfaithful, 

So faith saves. John 20:29 Jesus said unto him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

Believe!


 

 

Woke Culture, Nick Cave

 https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Hope-Carnage-Nick-Cave/dp/0374607370

I subscribe to the American Spectator because it challenges me in especially arts, music, wine, food, travel, and architecture. It is considered to be "conservative", but in the classical sense of the word "liberal", meaning free markets, radical free speech, civil liberties under the rule of law, limited government, and some sense of  "enlightenment". 

It often covers people and topics that are "out of my lane", which I find to be important.

I would likely have never ran into Nick Cave, save for a review of the linked book from the current issue of the Spectator. I would normally have just done an incomplete blog and waited for Spectator online to catch up with my paper copy.

I didn't, because Nick lost his15 year old son Arthur in July 2015 when under the influence of LSD, he walked off a cliff and died. I have not had that exact experience, however there were times I could see something like it as somewhat likely.

The second reason is that although I'm going to have to do some typing rather than cut and paste, I didn't want this one to be semi-misplaced among the 100's of incomplete blog entries on my account.  I'm blessed to not have felt all of that pain,  but I have some of the pain of cancel culture. It seems nearly universal, though as Nick mentions, to some of the cancel purists, it is ecstatic.

A quote from the article:

For a man who by his own admission, spent much of the Eighties and Nineties in a miasma of heroin addiction, he is admirably clear-sighted about the greater hypocrisies of our age. He describes woke culture as:

... akin to to a fundamentalist religion impulse ... it may reflect on an unconscious desire to return to a non-secular society, and talks angrily of the "performative aspect to the theater of cancel culture that is essentially vindictive ... it's as if autocratic ideas of virtue and sin have come into play, and as a result, prohibitions and punishments have been put in place, enforced by a kind of callousness that, in my view, is akin to the very worst aspects of religion -- the fundamentalist, joyless, aspects of religion that have nothing to do with mercy. Cancellation is a particularly ugly part of it's weaponry and can end up as a kind of sadism dressed up as virtue"

I've been struggling through Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life". Durkheim is considered one of the main, if not THE experts on "why religion"?  In every human culture, no matter how primitive in time and space, and how similar at the base, every manifestation is ... sacred/profane, spirit(s), a creation myth, symbolic totems,  and how critical it is for every tribe/family/community/team/culture it is for a "social imaginary" to be shared for the health of both the individuals and the "group". 

I recently reviewed "The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self" which gives some good insight as to why the woke culture came about.

Having just attended a wedding at a very fundamentalist church, it is clear that "joyless" is not a common experience of all "fundamentalists", and the Durkheim book shows that rigorous standards, prohibitions and punishments" are an integral part of obtaining the solid community and "joy" -- belonging, comfort, camaraderie, the feeling of being happy ...

Think Navy SEALs. The initiation is brutal, the bond approaches unbreakable, the sense of joy, pride and accomplishment is palpable. We can't all be SEALs, but we can be a member of SOME group of "like minded people". To "work" it has to be something "real", where you know each other F2F, have some "rituals" (like maybe just breakfast after church). The more rigor in the connection, the more likely the group will be significantly helpful.

Like exercise, training, ritual, symbols, rules, etc, there are parameters that have to be carefully aligned and calibrated  in order for the danger of the flame of faith can be properly respected and utilized. This takes decades, lifetimes, sometimes  millennia. We know that cars are dangerous, and we accept the danger (minimizing it as much as possible), in order to reap the benefits they provide. Life is often a tradeoff between risk and reward. To be real, it involves sacrifice.

 

We WILL all have a "worldview" that is either explicitly or implicitly a "religion" ... how much "choice" we have in what that is,  given genetics, family,  the probable existence of "spirits" -  Holy, Totemic, Tao, daemons, etc, along with community, mental health, physical health, etc, the range of "choices" (or enlightenment)  is a matter of little agreement for those that believe that the examined life is the only real life. 

While not a popular path today, the examined life seems like something worthy to give at least a cursory examination. 

I hope to get around to the book ... my stack is a bit deep and esoteric at the moment though.