Aphilosophy, Convention, Faith and God.

They have sat down for dinner. The philosophers are at the first table, the conventional methodogists at another. The philosophers are having bread and water that are hardly distinguishable from prime rib and Cabernet Sauvignon, and they are having a wonderful time. The methodologists have the best of the house and their conversation revolves up and down and meanders around the length of their noses, so fond they are of humbling themselves before the lack of their banquet. Now, all ears have turned to the host. We have joined the party.

…“Let us begin,” a voice rises from the din, “this episode with a philosophical proposition, and see what unfolds.”

– 2: “Ah, but it was you who mentioned God – but we’re game, though I think it derailing to the instigating statement; but say when I refer to God, I’m referring to the God of The Bible.”

A philosopher shoots the tube and scoops up the strayed attentions.

“I understand that we are having a little sub-conversation in these messages, and much of how I would respond to your line of questioning is already addressed, is being addressed, and will be addressed in my Constructive Undoing. I also know that there are those who akin themselves to philosophy and have a certain grasp on the methods involved, of logical argument and the like, as well as the arguments upon ideas great and small as put forth by thinkers of history. But I submit, unfortunately for some, such methods do indeed lack but only so much as they are caught and founded in a limited and rather planar way of thinking upon such things. It is a basis of resistance against being presented with instead of to. So, its a little trying for me, because I feel we might communicate better if you had been listening to and partaking in the movement of my letter; Mozart can not be underestimated, nor Morrison, even Mr. Cave and many others. But, in so much as I have been accused by other people of the same thing I am accusing you of, I will try a short version here.

When we speak of truth, we can no longer, in good faith, speak about the true object, but the effects of truth, for it is the effect by which we might succumb. Besides, the project of revealing the true object and the attempt to assert or explain its re-appropriation has, as we speak, for history’s sake, already failed, except as one may have faith, and the hope of faith, as well as maybe lately in as much as, at least, post-modernists were merely describing rather than prescribing a motion that was already occurring – these are the possibility presented us as it is re-presented. Having purportedly entered into multiplicity, complexity, the fractalized ontological view, if you will, the true object is already seen for what it is, or was, but the intensity or saliency of its meaning has merely been added to or allowed for the ‘new’ matrix of objects; to be blunt, the faithful have usurped the meaning of the decentralized, diversified, or multiplicated object and invested it into another object – the centralized object called decentralization, the equivocal object called multiplicity – that remains just as true as the old one, just as real. The linguistic turn of pre-twenty-first century thinkers was just as insufficient for its purpose as any other moment, however it may be adequate, but at least necessary for presentation. It is the Idea re-presented that lay at the heart of the issue; the capitalization upon it has failed where the history of ideas is tagged as a substrative, progressive analysis. The re-presentations that exemplify the new succeed only where they are presented simultaneously, hence the issue also concerns this progress in difference. If we are to get anywhere must speak of truth as effect.

Another angle is required; this is the aphilosophical approach. This manner places the justification of reality firmly in faith, and by this situation is able to speak of effects of truth, rather than further attempting to justify a true object that perpetually eludes grasps even as it has been presented sufficiently, or rather, is perpetually announced as gained and overcomed (?) somehow in the abandonment of monolinguistic, modern-ideological proclamations, through advocating spiritual remedies and or activating activist political approaches for ‘better’, ‘neo-modernist’, more freedom supporting, agendas. If re-presentation is routinely mistaken for presentation, then we need also at some point to address this apparent marriage of philosophy and ideology, and how his might constitute a religious basis of reality, for it seems the only thing we can really speak of anymore is how an idea can be used to socially activate. So, admitting this imperative, aphilosophy presents in irony, again a retreat from this ‘neo-modernist-post-modernist’ repetition; irony, which is, in the last, the eternal repetition that admits while it avoids.

My notion of ‘faith’ can be situated by the result that occurs within the statement of the question and the answer: What do you mean by God ~ I am referring to the God of the Bible. Though it would not have mattered what I had said to be accountable to; the result would be the same: Either, I have not specified sufficiently what I mean by the question, and you have not answered my question, or, you have not answered sufficiently the question I posed; no communication has occurred. Only if we had a reasonable symmetry between our meanings of the term in question, in this case God, would the possibility of communication take place. Symmetry is present when the same outcome is supposed as a basis of the discussion; for example, that there is a real possibility involved with God that reduces to yes or no. When the situation that allows for the possibility is itself questioned, that is, when one party is playing the either-or game and the other is not, which is to say here that the answer does not lay in affirming or denying God, the discussion may be said to be asymmetrical. There being no such symmetry evidenced in our situation by the simple fact that I may question your answer without offering a replacement suitable to your reply, i.e. a rebut upon the veracity of the Bible, and if I am merely being obstinate then it is all the more asymmetrical, so then I could ask: What is ‘the God of the Bible’? Here, the question concerns not whether God exists, nor whether the Bible is a credible or suitable criterion. Based in the assumption of symmetry, in the same way God responded to Moses when he asked what he is to say to the people when they will ask ‘what is his name’, such as Exodus 3:14-15, “I am that I am” would be quickly referred to the objective qualifier and you might respond: “The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham…Issac…Jacob…”. Still, I do not know what God is but a sort of belief that some ancestors had, that you have. You could go on; you could tell me some things from the Old Testament and the New, and you could tell me about Jesus. In fact, you could tell me a bunch of stuff, and still I would be able only to think of some object of belief that is the center of an ethics. You might direct me to some ‘inner’ thing of my own feelings, but while I could identify with such ideas, I would have no need to refer them to any relation as ‘of, relating to or otherwise indicating God’. Synchronicity, déjà vu, dreams, coincidences in life, seemingly miraculous bennefactuous happenings, healings, ‘spiritual’ experiences – to none of these things referred would answer my question sufficiently, nor necessarily cause me to have to relate them to God. Your answer to my question ultimately relies upon not only your faith in some common aspect of humanity, but your faith that I will be able, through considering such avenues of thought and feeling and experience and ideas, to have the faith that you do – probably, likewise does it not take into account the possibility that I have indeed encountered or experienced such happenings with reference to ‘God’, and still am able to speak as if I may have not. Such a faith completely assumes a unilaterally correspondent meaning to dishonesty due to its basis upon a real true object, namely, God.

To elaborate; in this event described above, God, which can only be considered by and is thus limited in the term ‘God’, if I may take your answer as an indication of belief, your position upon things, has only been investigated partially, and then ended with faith. Now, I am not saying that there is no God of your belief. I am saying that when you go to communicate it to me, you are relying upon a truth granted by the faith that partials out meaning to subsequent categories as if these categories were substantial, basic, or otherwise referring to absolute true objects between us; for example, your faith tells you that I have the same quality of ‘self’, Being, or maybe consciousness, as you do, the same capacity, and or, the same basic foundation of being human. Your faith negates the possibility that my ‘faith’ may be true – and more, because I may use different terms for its expression. As I have said recently, the issue is the term, which is, the terming of such categories.

Hence, I do not say that I believe in God. The term God is or has become nearly a useless idiom, that is, unless I seek only to justify myself against or by another, and by extrapolative inclusion, the world; if i seek to justify another, then i must speak very, very carefully and completely reject myself in the face of that other by a move of infinite compassion, if such a move is indeed possible. Yet, if I am looking for truth that includes every possibility that can be presented within my interaction with the world, concordant with what I have already just pondered, the term God is an ambiguous determination to say the least. Accordingly, admitting that I may appear to contradict myself, I say that God does not exist, but may be real; and this is to say that reality is exactly of faith. In this way, the operation of faith makes true reality, by stopping investigation at certain limits or parameters of consideration. From these limits, of faith, are construed individuals who rest at their limitation for personal identity.

Likewise it is the faith that communication takes place and that individuals may be convinced of universal truths based in a negotiation of definitions, aka. conventional discussion, that establishes what is real: reality. In certain avenues of conventional reality, God does not exist: atheism; in others, God does exist: theism. And we should see that these real truths function or have the effect of being true for the believer, but such that their belief resides in convention they are thus compelled to argue their validation, sometimes at the risk of conversion of their own belief. In theism, various discussions ensue about what God’s role is, what and how truth is ordered, how people are supposed to behave and live, etcetera. Within atheism, there are discussions about the same ideas, i.e. what the role of humanity is in the universe, what or how the universe is ordered and how people should behave and live, etc. Between theism and atheism there are discussions that basically attempt to disprove the other, but they are really a power play of what one can easily say are religious ideologies. Agnosticism also involves these discussions. In fact, every aspect of reality comes into play along various lines, at certain points, in the real discussion. But none reveal any truth except that there is a negotiation of reality, and a faith that through the negotiation truth will be found. The negotiation, the ‘rules’ by which it may develop and or proceed, amounts thus to a proper method for the discernment of true things, a conventional method. The particulars are only localized at particular places, at particular times; the discussion gets nowhere beyond a justification of the particular event occurring at the time of the discussion. The progress imbued in the situation is real; the justification only working to place the individual, ironic.

Further; reality denoting a progressive stature or motion is due to the ‘infinity’ that lay beyond the limits of investigation, the terms of faith, to coin a phrase, the infinity behind which faith establishes or knows of … God, or whatever object of faith is placed in the ‘un-investigated beyond the limit’, such as, the ‘physical universe’ for science. Progress is thus the real movement of existence as purpose. Thus in every conventional arena progress is understood to be made, or not being made as a ‘progress’ that ‘retreats’ or works against the ‘preferred’ progress that lay at the base of the particular discussion, the particular object, or subject-object, as the case may be.”

…Unsettled mumbling can be heard from the conventionalists’ table. “Yes, yes,” a self appointed spokesperson of the conventionalists speaks up, “but the initial statement mentioned being accountable; to what or whom then are we accountable, and for what? Sounds like you are splitting hairs; what conscientious citizen of the world would say that we must not be accountable to each other, and by extension, a larger group of humanity? And just as well, one must be accountable for or to themselves at minimum to be accountable for or to others. Is it so terrible if we hold our actions and beliefs in these regards accountable to a power higher or greater than our admittedly lacking knowledge? Is it so unreasonable? May not we designate this idea and call it ‘God’? Yours sounds like so much atheism, and pompous.” The timbre from the table of methodologists resonates the point scored.

Undaunted, the philosopher takes a long relishing draft of his water, and rejoins.

“Conventional reality gains credence against the limit of faith when that limit is denied, whether as itself, the veracity of the limit, or as a marker of faith, to denote that there is no limit, basically to establish that reality is just reality, regardless of labels, conventional or otherwise, and that there is nothing other than reality. But this, as I have said, is to assert a ‘proper’ or absolutely true reality, one that finds itself in relativity, in negotiation. This is why people can equate ‘faith’ with ‘belief’: Because we can talk about them as a negotiation of ideas. Such denial allows such a statement “I believe in God” to be of equal stature or real quality as the statement “I believe that chairs have legs”: both can be debated – and likewise the statement that equates them can be debated. Kant dealt with such discursive features with his analytical and synthetical, and his imperatives, but here I am indicating what he called a neumena, which is what I call a ‘true object’, but should just as easily be called an ‘absolutely true object’ because the effect of terms, or role of terms, in a conventional discussion is to indicate a fixed element. If I say, ‘the tree is green’, I am indicating an absolutely true object, a tree, relating it to another true object, green, and implicating a particular position that is also an absolutely true thing, a point in time, the absolutely true object called eternity, as well as the place in the world, there across the yard, by the fence, as well as indicating the truth of the situation we are about to discuss, the true thing that is the assumption or presumption of our common human understanding. These features can be framed as: the addressor, the addressee, the referent, and the sense, where the addressor and addressee is implicated as you there, the tree is green, I say; or more simply: I say,the tree is green, to you. I will not continue along this expository here, one that will concern a differend of dialectics, but for preliminary orientation, I merely point to their function and effect in communication as true objects. Nevertheless, all of these elements of discussion cannot be defined absolutely at one instance in a discussion; and this means that in order for there to be a series of true objects in relation, at least one of the elements must remain transcendent to the object of the discussion for the discussion to operate, at least one term must remove or loosen itself from its definitional baring, and that this must be ignored. This situation is ironic, through the question which element? The answer then further emphasizes the situation we are treating here of the initial statement.

Memory, in this respect, is not sufficient, for the term would have to be privy to a true object for the mind to have reference to; this is of course to say that the object to which memory holds is a conventional object. Beyond convention we are incapable of saying anything about memory itself for likewise memory becomes a true object capable of attaining or detaining absolutely true, fixed ideas; this is not the memory of psychology or neuroscience. As to our example: If we were to argue of its color, the fact of the tree being a tree is left alone; the argument proceeds upon if that tree is green. We thus discuss the green-ness in relation to the tree being green, as the tree becomes a given – never minding the green-of-the-tree also being given – an object of faith for the discussion. It is impossible to fully and simultaneously explore and be presented with each object in the discussion. As one object is explored, discussed or considered, that object relies upon the given contextual relation of terms that have been effectively left behind in a transcendental state for knowing; it has been re-presented not as an elaboration or deconstruction of itself, but as an object of different meaningful contextual relations of terms. The overcoming of this transcendency is achieved through faith.

This is to say that it is the conventional orientation upon reality that equivocates the objective quality of terms throughout the discussion to justify progress; conventional reality relies upon true objects. The discussion begins upon common true bases or a state of knowing, and proceeds along lines that build meaning as if such subsequent meanings, stages in the discussion, have now been revealed as reflecting a progressed state of knowing. Only if none of the terms ‘leave’ the conventional reality can such a progress occur. But it has been shown by other philosophers that in the assumption of a progressing communication at least one term in every phrase must occupy a placement of meaning that behaves or acts as a given that is unknown, undefined; every phrase. If one wishes to place God in that transcendent position, as if to say there is where God acts, so be it, but the effect is the same that perpetuates and is perpetuating in that very moment the motion and situation of the discussion as we have come upon it here. God may be said to be of that ‘passive’ or what I have said, given moment or element of the discussion, the object as might be to memory, an effective transcendent element, or, God might be said to be involved with the ‘active’ moment, and thereby acts as an immanent catalyst for the conversation, if you will. Similarly one could treat the passive moment as immanent, as objects are held in place, so to speak, and the transcendent as that which compels, impels or otherwise motivates the discussion as the object towards which the discussion moves. But these moments are not to be compartementalized to their situations prior or posterior to analytical or synthetical consequences. Such an analysis is enacted when the point of contention is misunderstood, and the truth of reality is thus sought in an extrapolating of meaningful repercussions of each moment that, when delineated and compared, is supposed to reveal which is actually true. Such route reifies the conventional method as a means to escape or redirect reality, but ironically, the result reveals the repetition inherent of reality: the mistake inherent to faith in the true object.

Hence I have explained faith and its relationship to God. The term functions for conventional reality through an incomplete investigation that denies the ‘remainder of the term’, which is that which eternally links with it ad infinitum stopped in faith so as to ‘produce’ the remainder, and stakes its reality upon a transcendent aspect, be it called ‘God’ or ‘physical universe’, for the purpose of allowing for and establishing a truth, which is in effect the justification of the individual, subject-object, in the world. And, within the functioning of the phrase in discussion, at least one term must become transcendent in meaning. What is immanent is thus that which brings symmetry in the discussion. Together, faith is relied upon and required for the purposes of the real individual in the world. In other words, when the quality of discursive features are denied of their inherent quality as existent, that is, when the otherwise transcending and immanent operation of terms is mitigated and equivocalized into a negotiated reality, the effect for consciousness is a true object. A true object is that which is displaced from the human being of knowledge to account for or justify the individual in reality; hence, conventional reality, conventional truth, conventional faith, etcetera. The individual thus is accountable to and for whatever true object(s) is situated to justify the individual, i.e. God, the world, the government, my son, my school, my church, community, country, nation, humanity, that song, that signal, that satellite, NASA, science, the universe, my self, my interests, my mind, his or her whims, their motives, her or his dictates, etc. The individual exists for reality through a scheme of meaning that relates true objects; thus, I may be accountable to my boss, but I am accountable for my work, or, I may be accountable to God, and accountable for spreading His message.

Yet, when discourse is included as existent, existence being the only knowable thing that may account for all reality as it is presented, then one can begin to see that such true objects are merely ‘aspects’ or ‘elements’, ‘features’ of existence appearing and or presenting to me in the only manner through which I likewise can exist: I am accountable to my knowledge as existent, and I am accountable for my self as I am constituted in reality through a situation of terms, and vice-versa. Such real true objects are, in effect, thus me in existence. Here then we can describe the conventional world as universal as ethical, for our existent situation does not prescribe an ethical Law, but the only reasonable course a person can take being one who has accepted every possible ramification of knowing through doubting, who accepts his or her existence and thus cannot any longer live for dying in fear, so to speak: That as I move to proclaim a truth of a true object I only do so against another object’s failure, and in so doing I only damage myself and maintain and establish the problems of reality I see around me in the world. But also that I cannot overestimate this knowing due to the same situation; the only possibility that results is an ironic one: that I am that I am, and can only do what I do in existence.

Thereby again duality speaks of the conventional orientation that presents reality as a problem to be overcome.”

The silence that marked the end to the talk deepened in the awareness of table two. A glass was set down, a cough, a fork clinked on a plate, a hiccup, a smile, some looks, a voice from a philosopher “well, that went well…” a relieving reply, a reconciling sit, clearing throats, a sipping, a couple chairs slide back from the table, some napkins on plates, a slurry of a glass filling, the smoke of a cigarette, of a cigar, a pipe, the scent of medicine, and the table conversation churned up the motors of company again. We were all glad you are here.

Overheard from the conventionalists’ table: