Category: religion

Reposting FREE E-BOOK: I AM, therefore I think

Here’s an opportunity to get a free E-book on the topic of Presuppositional Apologetics! This is an e-book by Daniel Akande of Pushing the Antithesis…

FREE E-BOOK: I AM, therefore I think

— For those philosophers who Read my blog who might also enjoy momentarily checking out another choir to sing to.

sometimes I feel that we should entertain discussions that don’t agree with our particular philosophical contexts.

I am not Christian; neither do I argue any point about the existence of God, but here is a post with a link to an e-book by an author who appears to discuss a philosophy about “I am” having to do with God and or being.

A nice occasion, this post also allows me an opportunity to promote A philosophical book that also ponders the biblical “I am”.

The Moment of Decisive Significance

Christian Apologetics and Predication

pushingtheantithesis.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-final-reference-point-of-all.html

I enjoyed this essay of Christian apologetics. It makes a good point as to predication. In short, what he means by predication is that which enjoins reason to reality.  He is making the argument that one either predicates this end situation upon man himself or God.

Aside from the strictly Christian terms, I think this is really the case at hand. However, the issue that I have with this Christian apologetic is in using no different means than that of any other argument. I disagree with his sentiment and his strict argument. The reason why it falls into the category of Christian apologetics is because ultimately he is making the argument that all predication has to be founded in God and not in human beings.

My point is that I could just as easily make an argument why it should be founded in human beings themselves.

So really we’ve just come to a stalemate. Because, what we are really dealing with here is the power of argument to convince or persuade, and then ultimately a decision upon what one wants to believe. In short the Christian apologetics really come down to whether or not one believes in God as the end of predication, or whether one believes that human beings are.

Decision and Denial

The significant feature of predication should be understood as involved with the intention through which the content of discourses manifest.

I will go out on a limb here To say that the issue of predication necessarily reduces to two Possibilities. The issue around significance has to do not only with what we are predicating the idea of reason and reality upon, but indeed upon the predication by which we come to the conclusion that it must be of man or God. 

For The significance of which I speak Is that such a choice is already predicated upon man. And this is to say that “Man or a God” is predicated upon reason, and that’s what we are really asking into philosophically but also apologetically with reference to religion: from where does reason find itself.

Reason is left exempt from the problem because it is assumed.

It is the predicate upon which not only the posing of the question but the possibility of choices to answer the question reside. Reason itself is never in question; rather, it assumes that reason is a ‘one thing’ that itself addresses, but as well, that which is left out if the debate.

Reason must be established either through Mans ability or through God. In other words, the question itself is redundant. In short it merely says that reason posits choice, that ultimately we only have two choices — and you better make the right one!

God and Truth

I am going to go out on another limb here. I’m going to assume that what is intended in the argument for predication upon God, is in actuality something which is “not God”. What I mean by this is that ultimately if I say or argue that the end of predication is God, I have asked another question implicitly about the end of predication that is God. In other words, what is God predicated upon?

So my answer must be that there is no difference between the Christian apologist and what I call the conventional Philosopher. Both are ultimately assuming that reason can find itself as a predicate, and this is exactly Kant’s idealism, exactly his point of the synthetical a priori.

In a very Lyotardian manner, The terms that we are using to set up reasonable arguments to find some ultimate end of predication, to come to some sort of conclusion about reality and about our existence, this particular manner that supposes to reduce to something that falls out of predication or somehow find some term that identifies that which is not predicated, which is to say, not defined, is ultimately a contradiction in terms.

Orientation 

The question of orientation upon things thus falls to our orientation upon the terms themselves, that is, The truth that is supposed to be indicated by the terms that is never found in the content of definition nor the intension inherent the argument.

Yet where philosophy or Christian apologetics find this rhetoric to be indicating nothing, (Reason or God) thereby have we found a particular orientation upon things. It is not that we have found something absolutely positive against a defined negativity, a defined absence. Rather, it is that we have found where one particular method of organizing, discussing, and presenting Reality has failed…

…yet where reason yet endures and persists, albeit in truth. Truth thus can be spoken about, defined, delineated and yet not be required to answer to conventional philosophies reliance upon a singular definitional Foundation for everything that can exist rationally, which is to say, that singular epistemological universe where we have a choice upon what we want to believe. 

x

The Moment of Decisive Significance: Enlightenment and the Christ Moment

The moment of enlightenment is only initially an awareness of being. After that moment it is an awareness of how so few are aware. The real issue of enlightenment has to do with what comes after.

When we understand Christ in its proper scope, we see that ‘enlightenment’ is the attempt by the individual to uphold and maintain It as a prolonged state of being. The way it is maintained Is through the justification of the offense.

The Christ moment, and the ideal of enlightenment, is a moment of being conscious that when come upon represents a moment of decisive significance.

In this moment, the awesomeness and apprehensive feeling of dread might bring the individual to fall back into its history to thereby join and retain the consistency of what they know and knew to that state of fear and trembling. The coupling of the Christ moment with the fall back (revolt) into the fear of the awesomeness of the tremendous mystery that is come upon in that moment, yields righteousness, what some could call “ego inflation”. Enlightenment is the form of consciousness understanding itself and its view as something that everyone else is supposed to likewise know.

On The other hand, when the Christ moment, it’s awesomeness and the accompanying state of fear and trembling, is come upon in curiosity, then the motion is one of compassion instead of righteousness. For the self, it continues the motion of curiosity and acceptance, but this self is not the primary aim. The motion is into otherness. Difference.

For, instead of understanding how intellectually or ethically wrong and spiritually poor everyone is around, such that they need to be educated into the righteousness of proper knowledge, The Christ moment fades into just one moment in the potential of human consciousness. Enlightenment disappears as some thing that was never to be found. The meaning of awareness changes.

The awareness that remains is not enlightened awareness, neither is it Christ being; rather it is a true human compassion for those people Who have come upon and yet not followed through such a moment.

It is a true understanding of what it is to be human.

Read The Moment of Decisive Significance: A Heresy

…and much more affordable paperback!.

An object oriented journey through the Gospels.

Amalgamated Religion

I was just listening to a story about Covid and religious practice where they talked about Jerusalem and how the three Faith’s all believe that something holy happened in the same place, each to their particular religious history.

This got me thinking: I wonder if the three religious groups, leader ship perhaps of each, could get together and compare each of their theology’s together and find out what is common between them, particularly. And perhaps they could take the word of each of their law, and compare it to the other two and see where it is only the words that are keeping them apart, whereas the spirit of the words is actually the same.

The New Christianity: Theological “Strawmen” and The deeper look into the Psychologist who shall not be named.

I think this will be the last energy I spend on JP. The less energy given toward his name the better, I think. But one last thing…

I think we can have little more doubt that JP is supplying a new philosophical ground for Christianity; indeed, I might say that he is a theological philosopher. And in an even more honest light, that he is the example of what I call the Postmodern Religion: the manner that religion appears today, the way it behaves for the modern state.

Peterson at Liberty University  and by the way, Liberty University is one of the largest Evangelical Christian Universities in the world (thats what the Wiki says).

black-face

We might wish to be carefully observant.

Peterson is not really understanding the philosophy that he sounds like he is. In particular, from what I’ve listened to of him, (which is about 4 hours all together) he is not really understanding the philosophy is poses to be, despite all his rhetoric, and in particular, the main antagonist of his position,  Postmodernism. Specifically, he is taking general ideas of the subsequent postmodern distortions and stretched application and further misapplying them as he is indeed misunderstanding them. Yet, I am imagining that because he has a PhD and a nice suit, and can put sentences together about various abstract ideas to a certain sensibility, he then appears as though he is making sound judgements and assertions. In truth, though, it appears that he is overstepping his academic license in the name of the Postmodern privilege of subjective dishonesty, which he projects upon a straw man that he calls ‘Postmodernism’. He in indeed utilizing  Postmodern methods of appropriating discourse for his own agenda, the exact theoretical method that he decries as belonging to his straw man Postmodernism. He is capitalizing upon his alienation from a theoretical space, and then using a rather “sewn-together” version of half-cognized meanings to assert the truth of his subjective power (white male) as though they indeed have valid theoretical bearings. As I said in my last post, this is a particularly postmodern (in the diminished sense that he uses and understands) maneuver.

This is why I am and have been beginning to elaborate upon the a kind of philosophical orientation which recognizes various types of philosophy. Peterson’s “type” of philosophy is one which demands that all conceptual paradigms must be able to be conceived by everyone who has a certain level of education. This coincides with his “absolutism” that seems to rise into everything he has to say; biological essentialism, nationalism,  civilization, history –everything to him has an essential and eternal basis. I question this maxim for the exact reason that I am indicating here with Peterson: It is his inability and indeed insecurity around being an academic which does not allow him to admit nor even see that he is simply not comprehending the theoretical arena that he appropriates. Again; this is exactly the situation that the Postmodern authors warned us about; in particular, Jean-Francois Lyotard, who basically gave us the term postmodern, tells us that knowledge is no longer something that raises or falls upon its own merit, but indeed, knowledge is something that the experts prop up. Implicit in this description of our situation is that experts thus demand an equivocation of knowledge to the standards defined by the experts.  Peterson, someone who has achieved the title of expert (PhD) does not have the (what one would figure accompanies advanced education, as much as it obviously does not) humility to view something he desires as outside of his conceptual register, because of the systemization of knowledge (technology).

We might look at who supports what he has to say. It appears that Nationalists, racists, white people, and hetero-normaitive Christians form the bulk of his supporters. If he is so concerned with people’s well-being, why does he decry government support for LBGTQ+ politically valid designations? Might we do well to look at what he considers “mental health” also? Reality and truth that he appears to promote likewise has little philosophical support beyond some sort of assumption of a common human who is civilized. And what history exactly is he drawing from to come to his conclusions about society and the human psyche? To me, it appears rather arbitrary and, to be frank, quite similar to the artistic latitude that Freud used for his speculations about the structure and history of the psyche, such as his infamous story of the progenitor.  Also, I think it is kind of strange, like a psychoanalytical flashback to not-so-long-ago when homosexuality was officially listed in the DSM as a mental dysfunction., that Peterson advocates so liberally for the democratic tenet of free-speech, yet while also advocating that people have “responsibility” for their lives. It seems to me there is a therapeutic inconsistency somewhere in there. Let him be so free about the possibility that what he knows so surely could be wrong; let him take responsibility for the world and not just his world. hmm? Perhaps have some therapeutic care as a psychologist? Indeed, in my profession’s code of ethics as a counselor, and probably his as a psychologist, (maybe thats why I am not a psychologist: their ethics are a bit out dated maybe, but maybe not) it says that the psychologist shall not impose his or her biases upon the client. In my profession, I am not ethically nor legally allowed to impose my religious beliefs upon the client. If I do, I can lose my license. Likewise, if I am an atheist counseling a Christian, I must not treat the client as though they are stupid or something.  And, if someone is Gay, trans or whatever, I am not to impose my sense of personal correctness, as Peterson’s “natural honesty for identity” which says that such people are being dishonest with themselves. If I do, then I can be sued and lose my license. Wow.

There are no free rides, nor simple ideological solutions — he even argues this himself !! (watch the video a few posts ago).  It appears that he is advocating the very thing he argues against.

I think his intensions are in the spirit of helping people, which is good. But, when we notice how he draws from history to construct a sensible history — which, upon scrutiny, is filled with many philosophically inconsistent holes –we might want to reference a history somewhat recent to our knowledge, that of Nazi Germany.

Now, I do not mean to be alarmist. But it is well known that Hitler and his propaganda machine drew upon a distorted version of idealist philosophers such as Hegel and Nietzsche, and used this misappropriation of ideas with a particular analysis of history which might have made sense to many people of Northern Europe who were looking for some respite from the depression of the defeat from the First World War. Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels contrived a mash-up of Aryan, Nordic, and Christian myth, which served to unite the people of Germany under a kind of mass hysteria of national pride, all the while propping up straw men under pseudo-scientific “truth” who were identified responsible for the decline of the German Nation. Jews were made to be responsible mostly, along with their “degenerative democratic” news reporting, but all sorts of people who did not fit into the propped-up mythic ideal were seen to be less than human.

Now, of course, in the small of it, this is just another philosopher speaking his philosophical wares, so hey…

But we might want to learn from the past: so many people were taken for a ride and then found themselves in a terrible space of problem that they did not even know they were supporting.

Just be aware.

*

That said :

Part of the Two Routes is a suggestion that we admit that there is no common humanity, but that there is a humanity that needs such an ideal. I think perhaps Peterson is playing to this crowd. The issue , though, is to develop a philosophical understanding that understands this role, the responsibility Philosophy has to the actual truth of what humanity is by what it does: People need religion. And so the responsible thing seems to be to give it to them, but also to recognize that the religious ideas of “partial reasonings” are in the service of compassion for the common good, and less “true” about what is actually occurring. Less a patronizing, and more a recognition: most people simply do not wish to know, and to give them all the information sometimes just confuses people and makes life more difficult. I think it is possible Peterson is doing this, trying to supply a meaningful world to those who don’t want to really know, but without the awareness that this is what he is doing. We need people who are aware, not just in a power struggle for righteousness.

 

Climate Change and Pascal’s Wager.

In this Era of Prehistory, everything gets turned on its head, just like in the Pirate’s of the Caribbean movie…

As I have put forth in various places a “turned on its head” version of faith in the spirit of Kierkegaard (somewhere in my posts Im sure Ive spelled it out, but I surely address it in my book The Moment of Decisive Significance); I am applying Pascals Wager to the issue of climate change.

The deep adaptation that I have a link to in my previous posts signals more than drastic political and financial maneuvers, and more than ideological change; maybe I’ll write about that kind of depth in a post to come.

For right now, perhaps as a way to begin to chart the depths we can meet at the crossroads of the wager.

In the original wager, Pascal places what what can occur against what will occur. For example, what can occur is God’s existence, and our ability to believe, and what will occur is ‘nothing’. This is to say that the Wager is balanced upon what is removed from the possibility of it being removed., that if God does not exist, what will occur no matter what we believe is nothing. Yet, what can occur if God exists against our belief is that either we will be eternally damned or we will be saved.

So the turning on it head of climate change in this regard is placed in this framework:

What can occur:

  • the world only changes a little bit, not drastically different than any other change, big or little, in respect to our ability to live through it and adapt: This is to say, the world keeps changing.
  • Humans still exist and deal with the universe.

What will occur:

  • nothing.
  • The world’s end.

My point is that if the world as we know it ends, then there is no amount of believing or behaving that will have had any effect. So, it is better to keep on as we have, as though the world, ourselves, and the climate is changing.

Extension, and perhaps a little more philosophical:

The idea that we will have to adapt deeply regardless of what happens with the climate, coincides with the climate despite what activity we will write papers about or the scientific studies about the Earth. The basic question which stabs at the heart of this whole issue is that if indeed the world beyond a doubt, scientifically, will end, then why are we still arguing about it? Why, if it so certain, must we still try and effect some sort of human business in any way?

I submit, it is because all of it is a human organization. Not an overdetermined basis of utopian solution, not an underdetermined basis of nihilism (or a overdetermined nihilism or underdetermined utopia).

My wager is that the Earth’s climate is changing, but human Beings (as a generality to indicate what ideological Being is) want desperately to keep the climate of knowledge the same even as they might argue drastic change is needed; as Zizek has formulated, their argument is to enact drastic change within the normalized field wherein change is able to be reckoned as change (Postmodern expertise). In other words, keep the basis of knowing of such thing, how the human Being shows up the its world, the same, without the human Being actually having understand it self and the universe in a different manner, which is to say, in the actual manner. My wager is that human Beings will indeed survive to thrive, that the climate will change and will continue to change with human Beings involved with it.

And I argue that this ‘same way’ is Enlightened Reason: The special universal case of the modern manner through which human Beings shows up in the world.

#theactualendoftheworld

#prehistory

The Non-Philosophy of Francois Laruelle.

matrix-pod
From the Philosophical Hack (out soon):

Laruelle’s is the ‘best’ conventional proof of what cannot be proven through the conventional method. I have already spoken about the distinction between Laruelle’s and my terms. Laruelle distinguishes his project by asserting a positive withdraw in reference to the real common occurrence of philosophy, to call his Non-philosophy a state that purports to communicate this alternate unity (that he calls “real”) must be more real, yet in terms by which its placement is ultimately a contradiction of the ‘philosophical’ terms; whereas mine remains in the positive stance to indicate philosophy as the proper domain of the issue, I then refer to the common occurrence of philosophy as conventional. He likewise implicitly, if not explicitly, asserts that his Nonphilosophy is a better or ‘more true’ statement of what is actually real, where as I simply place reality with what is common,. What is not common, in my view, thus, in reference to this common state, not real. The true issue with Laruelle’s Non-philosophy is it falls into so many contradictory and accusatory pitfalls that it is basically and ironically non-productive to discuss what he could possibly mean as a philosophical position (ironically, it is called non-philosophy); but his point is aptly illustrated despite the easily discerned conventional problems. The most overt of these problems is that in order to agree with his proposal to be able to argue from it, in most conventional cases, one must inevitably and ultimately end up using exactly his phrasings; this is to say that regardless of what anyone want to argue about the veracity of his proposals, an extended rebuttal of his ideas will bring the proponent to have to quote him exactly as a responsive defense. This facet brings accusations of the religious quality of his (non-)philosophy; because the only way to argue with his proposals is to use his exact definitions, which then denies that the rebuttal has any grip on what could be an effective argument to the contrary. The end result is that one merely understands what Laruelle is saying, but really there in no point in arguing his points (as a proponent of them), except that the proponent might then be less a philosopher than a religious convert. The ultimate point of his (non) philosophy thereby can argue the religiousness of conventional philosophy as a whole, because often enough, the same will apply by extension. Thus, we can safely say that to argue his (non-)philosophy without quoting him exactly or using his exactly phrasing or having a firm working knowledge of his definitional lexicon is to misunderstand what he is saying, which begs the question if indeed he is living in his own personal and isolated reality –for how are we able to ground his assertions in any experience but his own except to admit he is a kind of prophet? Thus his position, though valid, represents a condition of philosophy itself that is best “passed over in silence”.

The point of this explanation is to indicate the ridiculousness of taking what can be seen as the most rigorous presentation of non–philosophy as if it is indeed a philosophy.

Also, it shows in relief how my explanation will be said to not understand what Laurel is saying, for various philosophical reasons. Then, ultimately, we will find that there is nothing one can say to the people who consider themselves “non philosophers” to tell them anything about how they might be a little off in their reckoning, so it is best just to let them be on their own, Being, as they are, so correct in their ideals.

The Fallacy of Belief: modernity and its tells.

This guys seems to do a pretty good job of laying out some flaws in Christian thinking.

via The Ridiculousness of some Christian Arguments — Christianity Simplified

Comment:

Notice that his argument is being made against claims of another theorist in the debate.

One should ask how it is possible that he can move from the specific theoretical claim made by another person to the actualities of occurrence in the world.

This should really be the debate.

I have to laugh at his arguments because they are so good and so true; I am not denying his rebuttal for Christianity. I wish I could have heard the other guys too though.

The real issue, or the issue of the real, doesn’t have anything to do with who made the stronger points. As I have said elsewhere, there is no argument that can change what I believe about God because I have no belief. And those, including this dude we hear, who is placing his whole being upon his ability to make claims about what people believe, is himself a believer, and can just as well have his beliefs changed upon a good argument. As well as all those others who believe in the power of human thought as a divinely inspired tool.

The plain fact is that millions of children will die every day regardless of what anyone believes. This is a fact. It has only to do with belief in as much as people have beliefs that frame how the world is supposed to be. Just like Doctor Coolness Smooth Sam in the video. Can he offer a different belief that does not consider why or how these children die that prevents them from dying? Science? Rationality?Lets hear some moral arguments about these beliefs, huh?

Is it any less moral for him to participate in this debate while a 17 year old junkie just overdosed and died 3 blocks away because of such arguments against Christianity (such as Sam’s) that told him not to do into the church that day because Christianity is a stupid superstition, than it is that people buried children in post holes? Is Sam any less responsible than the post-hole diggers?

Oh yeah; for the debate he is. This is an entirely different situation…

Lets get a little real here. OK Sam.

And lets put the most significant feature of his oh so great anti-Christian argument: Shall we mention that this debate, is taking place in a Christian institution, that the manner by which he is making his name, his holier-then-thou white guy suave, is through the idea of Christianity? By virtue of Christianity he gets to make a living (in this moment at least) Shall we ask where  and how his clothes were made, how much money he spent in it?

I am fairly confident that if he was so offended by the beliefs and activities of Christians that he could make a better moral statement by not having theoretical discussion in an institution that makes claim to The Mother of God in its namesake, Notre Dame.

Lets face it: His corcern and passion for morality is an act. It is a strict performance that argues itself as substantial through its own implicit assertion of power: We call this privilege. He doesn’t have anymore concern for the millions of children dying in the name of Christianity than he does for the lint in his pocket. He whole purpose is to make name for himself on the substance of substance-less claims. Despite Christianity being a narcissistic belief, he should more look at himself and his own mode of operation.

Hes a sham. The debate is a sham. Sam Harris does not care about the children; he cares about the debate. Thats all. He is arguing for his own religious belief that is supposedly more moral than that of the “superstition” of Christianity.

It was a debate that has no more substance than the one I have in my head over what shampoo I should use today.

Should I wear my $24 socks that have a picture of Einstein on them, or my $15 socks that absorb moisture so well?

Maybe its Einstein today. Im feeling on top of the world.

Ah modernity. The perfect world.

Oh. Not also to mention that people do not hold beliefs based in what arguments can be made. The whole methodology that sees itself in a unitive category is itself is based in a type of thinking that at best we should call disorganized and at least largely unreflective.

—

In short, I think the discussion about the existence of God and various theological justifications, in as much as there are indeed people who feel that such discussions are important, nevertheless, are evidence or part of a kind of thinking that upholds qualifiers for existence that are of a different kind or of a different order than thinking that considers what is true.

Here is an example of how we could begin to distinguish types of philosophy. And which types are good for which areas of problem.

Here we thus have the need to make notice of offence, accept it not as a negation of it, to thereby be able to discuss true aspects of what humanity does. Not what is ‘more true’ to thereby propose to eliminate it as an incorrect appropriation of what is effectively transcendent knowledge, but an approach to truth that takes examples of belief as true situations not to be discounted, but only left to those who see it as important. To hence locate facts of humanity. Not so much as an ironic analysis of primitive belief, but merely ‘belief’ as a religious term, the use of which located an effective religious structure.

Religion: that state characterized by a supported organization that does not reflect upon itself, except through diversionary tactics which avoid its own inherent disorganized conceptual foundations.