Monthly Archives: August 2013
(“Authority is FORCE”-John Immel) Authority = GOOD = TRUTH: The singular root equation of ALL Reformation theology (pastoral kindness as FORCE)
This was originally a comment in response to James on the comment thread under the last article…which, as is often the case, became so long that I realized I had my next article about halfway into it.
The first part concerns James’ point that many neo-reformed agnostics (I can no longer in my rational consciousness declare them Christians…this is not me being passive aggressive; it is me taking a simple and cursory glance at the way Jesus Christ interacted with human beings as if THEY ACTUALLY EXISTED; something those who hold to Calvinism/neo-reformation theology simply cannot do, as human beings have NO living quarters in the mega-church sized mansions of their “sound doctrine”)…yes, James’ point that many neo-reformed agnostics “bludgeon” the laity with notions of “mystery”, even though, as James rightly points out, any true “mystery” to man is also utterly irrelevant to his existence, and thus should form no part of any comprehensive doctrine or theology. Mystery is nothing more than existential pointlessness, and is best forgotten…which James points out is precisely Moses’s point.
Here is my response. Oh…I have been giving a lot of thought to the presence of Wade Burelson on this blog, and our short conversations. This post looks, in part, at my conclusions regarding Wade’s contributions here last week.
James,
I agree that anything which is truly a “mystery” is wholly irrelevant to man. Man functions according to reason and truth, not mystery. This is precisely why I refuse to concede that there is any such thing as soteriological paradox; why I do not concede foreknowledge nor predestination nor election as historical orthodoxy has taught it (and even perhaps as the Apostle Paul taught it…[and all cry HERETIC!]). It really only ends in contradiction…which they sweep under the metaphysical rug by using a big and heady word like “paradox”.
But paradox in this case is totally unacceptable, as the idea of “action before existence” is purely contradictory, not paradoxical according to a legitimate use of the term. In short, they bastardize the idea of paradox in order to reconcile their doctrine. Paradox is just one of a long line of illegitimate theological children belonging to the redemptive historical hermeneutic crowd.
Incidentally, the wave/particle duality of light is an example a true paradox, explained by a deep and careful examination of the existential nature of a dimensionless particle (mass-less or near mass-less) like the photon and electron which though unobservable (meaning, one cannot view the particle as BOTH functioning like a wave AND a particle at the same moment, even though they very well may BE) is still rationally and logically explainable. This is the true definition of paradox: that which on a certain level seems contradictory, but after further study reveals itself to be reasonable and logically consistent. This is NEVER where “election” in the hands of the neo-reformed agnostics/dualists winds up. It lives in the cul de sac of impossible ideas.
But this is where they have their REAL problem with those of us who categorically reject “mystery” as a foundational tenet of Christian metaphysics. According to their doctrine, man cannot possibly function according to anything BUT mystery, because all of reality is utterly UNKNOWABLE to man. There aren’t SOME things which are mysteries…but EVERYTHING is a mystery. The problem they have then is man claiming that he can know anything at all outside of any special divine revelation, given by God to the gnostic philosopher kings, and, to a lesser extent, the followers of Calvinist gnosticism in general. It is precisely their belief in the idea that THEY as mere men and women have NO agency nor faculty which can grasp truth and therefor morality (good and evil) which ironically makes them the chosen few “good”. See, by definition, if morality is outside of us, then value is outside of us, and if value is outside of us, then knowledge MUST be outside of us. It is impossible to separate knowledge from VALUE, and VALUE from MORALITY. All three are inexorably bound into one epistemological cord of three unbreakable strands.
And this was, incidentally, where my entire argument with Randy was rooted (see the post where “Randy loses an argument”). Randy hypocritically declares that reason is inferior to revelation in spite of the fact that it is patently AXIOMATIC that ALL men use REASON in order to decided which ideas they will choose to believe or not believe. God can provide revelation until the cows come home, but unless man can reason man can never DECIDE to agree that it is rational in any way to accord himself with the revelation.
But still they insist that this must be the case because man–in order that their utter and categorical lie of total depravity might continue to gang-press unsuspecting victims into service to their own will to power–can NEVER be said to NEED to accord God’s revelation with his own existence. Because man’s existence is utterly besides the point…and how DARE man expect God’s revelation to validate man’s SELF, as if man has any right to expect that His Creator actually affirm and promote his life. How DARE man demand that anything which passes as “revelation” or “truth” from God first be vetted and confirmed by reason, the very faculty man MUST employ in order to perpetuate and preserve his life.
Remember my equation: authority = GOOD= TRUTH; and remember, as John Immel so perfectly and succinctly states, authority is FORCE, period! Authority is nothing more than the man with the bigger GUN, figuratively or literally speaking. And since God is the ultimate authority, then to HIM alone is all good and truth according to the standard operating orthodoxy…it is forever OUTSIDE of man, so man can NEVER be in a position or possess ANY faculty or agency capable of grasping truth; so man cannot, by Randy’s and every other Calvinist despot’s definition, ever REALLY receive God’s revelation.
So, that being the case, whoever receives God’s revelation and declares it is, in fact, God’s proxy here on Earth, bringing TRUTH…or rather, FORCING truth, on all of us blind, drooling slobs, scarcely better than filthy animals. Which is why Wade and Randy and any other neo-reformed proselyte NEVER have to concede any argument, and certainly not arguments based on REASON, because in their philosophical/theological/epistemological construct, reason simply CANNOT exist. Wade Burleson can talk in metaphysical orbits all day long, up one side of the rational fence and down the other and under the belly of madness and through the stem of irrelevancy and into the sea of lunacy and up to the stratosphere of magic and mayhem and mysticism and he can never actually be wrong, because the ONLY truth is GOD, and HE, as one of the enlightened “chosen” has TRUTH by proxy, full stop. Which means anyone NOT chosen as he, regardless of how much reason they have, or how they run circles around Wade and the insanity of reformed theology, still can never possibly be right. Period. The plumb line for TRUTH is simple: agreement with Wade. Or agreement with Randy; or agreeing with CJ Mahaney; or agreeing with Brent Detwiler, or any other neo-reformed bobblehead with the eyes popped out.
The formula NEVER fails to explain where they come from: authority = good = truth. It is a formula that has terrorized and devoured human kind for centuries, and it will continue to do so.
The PROOF you are wrong is merely that you disagree with THEM. That is all the proof they need. They are never in the position of having to defend their arguments because they have the heavenly mandate to FORCE those whom God has not chosen to reveal the “truth to”; to force them either INTO the thinking of God, or out of the way entirely (by torture or excommunication or death, as the history of the protestant church bears out in all its infamous glory for those with access to Google to see) By definition, God does not and cannot possibly CARE about the ones He has not chosen. And if God doesn’t care about them, there is little point in trying to “tell” them about a truth they cannot receive anyway. That’s why authority, why FORCE, is so fucking important to the power and leadership structures of Calvinist churches in America.
Now this next part will sound horrible and mean, and I apologize, but in light of what I know about what Wade believes, I must submit my opinion to this article.
I believe that Wade’s choice of force is his congenial personality, his boldness in coming onto discernment blogs and engaging them in a friendly way…but notice how he NEVER concedes ANY argument EVER. He always has an answer, even though he fully concedes “it may not make sense to you” (it doesn’t HAVE to make sense; it CAN’T make sense, apart from God knowing it for you). It is because he understands that his job is NOT to learn or to have his mind changed, but to bring TRUTH to the unenlightened barbarian masses like you and me…it’s not stressful for him to defend his ideas because by definition, he CANNOT defend them because only GOD can make someone understand TRUTH. For no agency of man can get it. If God doesn’t will it, Argo will never understand Wade’s truth; if God wills it, Argo cannot HELP but understand Wade’s truth. Wade knows that he really has nothing to do with it, which is why he has no problem coming onto the turf of those who deny his doctrine and approaching them with all the genuine kindness and warmth of his personality. His tool, or his “gift” as I’m sure he sees it, is his inherent kindness. And no, I do NOT think he is faking it…I DO think Wade is genuinely a very, very kind person…but that doesn’t make what he is DOING any less despotic than any other reformed “authority” because it is HOW he is using it…it is what he uses it in SERVICE to. It is what DRIVES his actions: his assumption that he CANNOT be wrong because HE has a monopoly on “truth”, and that at the end of the day he is never on the hook to defend his ideas, because God’s revelation and calling to him is proof of his authority, and as you well know by now: AUTHORITY = GOOD = TRUTH.
One has to wonder if Wade sees the explicit futility and irrelevance of engaging anyone at all with ideas that by definition he doesn’t have to defend because any defense of his can avail nothing (doctrinally speaking, even he cannot really understand the “revelation” God has given him, though he says it “makes sense”; but that is a mere twisting of semantics)…for MAN, again, has NOTHING to do with his own existential reality. This is the assumption behind “sovereign grace”. It’s AAAAALLLLL God.
Notice what Wade said to me in one of his comments: “It may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me.” This is PRECISELY the cornerstone of his doctrinal stance, and why he likely feels NO pressure to convince anyone here on this blog of the truth of his ideas (he is not here to “impress” my readers, remember…another translation of this is “convince you of the rationality and logical consistency of his “sound doctrine”). You see, ANYTHING I don’t agree with has nothing to do with it being inherently unreasonable, but EVERYTHING to do with the fact that God has not given me “grace to perceive” (thanks, Ceeej!).
Wade can change words, meanings, ideas, rationale, say one thing and then say another, say one thing and do another, and vice versa, LITERALLY moment by moment and still, he gets to win every debate; he gets to decide every disagreement; he gets to skip and hop from one existential, theoretical, doctrinal, and metaphysical bench mark to another on a whim, and he is never culpable for failures of reason because reason is a function of man’s “un-chosen” and un-enlightened mind, and what seems reasonable to man MUST be false because again man, by reformed definition, possesses no ability or faculty in himself to apprehend truth, full stop. And this is really nothing more than declaring that man doesn’t actually exist. Which is the whole flaccid contradiction the entire theology is built on.
So whether “kindness” or “cruelty” or “violence” or “death” or “culling” or “dazzling” or “brainwashing”, it doesn’t matter. It is all part of a mandate to use authority to FORCE others into right thinking, as the “man of God in the stead of God” (the MOG-SOG)…as an extension of God himself. It is all in service to the idea that FORCE is Authority, and authority is GOOD and GOOD is TRUTH. There is no room for man’s volition, or reason, or SELF at all. Man is nothing more than the collective the gnostic “authority” has been given to possess “for God’s use”. Which, as they are the ONLY real and actual manifestation of God here on earth or anywhere according to their philosophy, they OWN YOUR ASS.
Full stop.
The Future and God’s Surprise?: A misunderstanding/misrepresentation of my perspective of God and “future”…to Pastor Wade Burelson
Wade, you said:
“Argo believes God did not know it would occur, and as such, is as surprised by it as you were.”
This was Wade Burleson’s response to a commenter regarding God’s foreknowledge of the “future”, and in particular some abusive actions perpetrated upon the commenter by I believe a church (NOT WADE’S!!) and what Wade incorrectly assumes about my perspective on this issue. My response is below.
Oh…one more thing.
I want to thank Wade for showing courage and integrity by coming on the little unimpressive blog of an utter, rank nobody and discoursing and debating with this nobody (me) on his own turf. Regardless of my disdain for reformation theology, and likely most of the doctrines to which Wade subscribes, I affirm his charity and I affirm his human SELF.
I also understand that it is difficult if not impossible to rationally separate ideas from men/women and actions. But in as much as it is possible for me to do that here without contradicting my own philosophy, I appreciate Wade for NOT acting consistently with what I understand his views to be. This shows an acknowledgment of the worth of humanity…and that is coming FROM WADE. Like the things we hate, the things we love come from the same person, and as such, we must and can only concede that the SOURCE of the things we love, the human being, is truly the source of them as much as they may be the source of the ideas we despise. It is a tricky metaphysical position, but I feel that it points to my idea that all human beings are good human beings at the core of their very existence. Because of this, Wade deserves thanks and affirmation of his SELF, once again.
Anyway…as I was saying, my response to Wade is below:
In the coming days I plan on doing a longer post on this issue, because the false interpretation of “predestination” and “foreknowledge” are the twin pillars of the destruction of the entire concepts of man and God. They are not only rationally irreconcilable, but they blaspheme God at His root, for the very reasons I mentioned in my latest post. If you haven’t read it, I strongly encourage you to, and please rebut it if you can.
Your inference that I am saying God is “surprised” by events is incorrect. The reason this concerns me is that it misrepresents my point entirely, and distorts the situation (and, to me, passive aggressively suggests the OPPOSITE: that God knows abuse is evil, saw it happen before it happened, and did nothing to prevent it, thus making God entirely culpable for the tragedy…and this should concern you; God is NOT pleased with your concessions on this matter, no matter how hard you try to nuance them or contort your beliefs or chalk it up to “mystery”), for several reasons, the most egregious of which is that it speaks to the fact that you are not understanding my premise at all.
I make no claim to know how God or anyone else reacts to events. “Surprise” is an emotion, and as such, people will react with “surprise” (or any other emotion on the huge human spectrum) to different events. You might be surprised if your wife brought you a chicken with peanut butter sandwich; I would not be surprised at all. How God reacts to abuse I cannot say…perhaps surprise, but given the tendency of men to inflict pain and torment and despotism and obliteration and oppression and burning and banishing upon one another with impunity, often in His own name–as I can show you by an elementary logical examination of every single point in the TULIP construct–I would hardly expect God to be surprised at abuse.
But perhaps. Who knows? I don’t. So your statement is false.
But this idea of assuming that my doctrine leads one to assume God is “surprised” at how man acts is indicative of your lack of understanding of the whole concept of what the “future” actually is, in my opinion.
Surprise is a REACTION to events…and as such, by definition, one cannot be surprised, or have any only kind of emotional response, until AFTER an event occurs. What this means is that surprise or any other emotion is not inexorably tied to an occurrence…which is what you seem to suggest: that if you don’t KNOW what is going to happen then you NECESSARILY will be surprised by it.
This is a false linking of two separate concepts…action and emotion.
This is not my point at all. What is my point is quite simple. By definition, the future is that which has NOT HAPPENED yet. Another way of saying this is the future is what is NOT. Meaning, that for the future to actually be the FUTURE and not the PRESENT (having already come to pass; being inevitable, being IS in categorical essence) then it cannot possibly EXIST. And the logical point I am making is simply that that which does not exist can ONLY be, by definition, NOTHING. It cannot be known because that which is NOTHING cannot have any attributes to KNOW.
Therefore, not even God can know the future UNLESS He UTTERLY determines it (in which case, it isn’t the future, but IS the IS…the NOW, in essence, being inevitable) because there is NOTHING to know. God cannot know how you WILL act because if you WILL act it means that you have CANNOT have YET acted…and as such the actions which you WILL do cannot be known because future actions are what? They are nothing! They don’t exist.
Wade…with respect, you cannot get around this. You cannot make nothing become something without declaring utter fatalistic determinism. And this is the crux of where your doctrine goes seriously wrong. To declare God knows the future is to make Him the author of it…it is the only way to explain how a future can BE before it IS. This MUST make God responsible for every evil act. That is rank blasphemy! Why are people not terrified by this? They just shrug and say “mystery”…God is not amused.
Please explain to me…you, or ANYONE, I am begging you; any physicists, mathematicians…anyone, please explain to me how you can know that which is nothing?
Wade, how does God know what does not exist? And if He sees it then it must exist, right? It can only be seen if it is THERE…if it isn’t THERE, how can God know it/see it? How can the future exist BEFORE it exists so that it can be known?
If you have no answer for this, you must concede you lose this debate. God cannot KNOW the future because the future, quite simply, isn’t REAL. It is nothing more than a abstraction.
To further hammer the point:
And if it is real, then how did it get there to be known? You and I didn’t do it, we didn’t put the future there…we aren’t in the future! That’s just axiomatic. So…who put the future in place, then?
According to your definition of God’s sovereignty? Who must have put the future there so it can be known?
Who orchestrates the future so that it is there so that He can know it. Obviously man cannot have put the future there, so…..that leaves. Er…who, Wade?
Who then must have made the FUTURE ABUSE, Wade, if not man? Who must have put the abuse THERE so that He could know it and see it BEFORE Oasis did?
God Knowing the Future is God’s Abdicating Himself: The blasphemous notion of God’s absolute knowledge of the purely abstract notion of time
I commented on SpiritualSoundingBoard.com today, and it was so long and I enjoyed it so much that I thought it prudent to post it as a new article. It concerns one of my all time favorite topics, which is “time”; more precisely, expressing rationally why time is nothing more than a human abstraction used to organize his environment. This is important, because as soon as we elevate abstract concepts to the place of existential reality, and even worse, causal power, we have destroyed the very self of man and God. Existence becomes an illusion, and understanding impossible. There can be no God or man or Jesus or salvation unless we determine that only what physically IS can ACTUALLY exist, and drive action.
Here is my post:
“Lydia – I do not believe that God forced Adam and Eve to sin. You admit that the fallen world was not a surprise to him. So He knew about it in advance, right? Could He have decided, then, to not create the world? I think the answer is yes. But He created it anyway, knowing about the fall. Forget for the moment about whether or not He ordained it. He had the knowledge that it would happen. Wouldn’t you say then that he was cruel to have created it? I think that if you are consistent, you would have to say yes. The bottom line is that a world was created that would undergo a fall, and that God knew it would happen.”
Jeff Brown said this to Lydia…and, you see, this is another one of those ideas that somehow we get about God and it never seems to shake loose, even though the idea changes the entire nature of God and man, even contrary to the biblical notion of God and man in a relationship.
Where do we get the idea, and why do we assume that God, in order to be a perfect God, must someone “know the future”? Jeff’s very comment illustrates the rational force fields which prevent forming a coherent understanding between God’s knowledge of things, His ordaining of things, and thus His moral culpability in such things. There is no way God cannot ultimately be responsible for “evil” that He knows before it happens but does nothing to prevent. Impossible. This is directly because we have a false understanding of time, and we make the false assumption that God functions in a way in which He always understands what “will happen” to some kind of infinite point.
Where in the bible, or in even common sense is this idea manifest as an absolute truth? Not only is God’s perfect wisdom and knowledge NOT predicated on any sort of absolute knowledge of the future, it is a rank logical fallacy to accept this. It destroys the concept of BOTH man and God as any sort of definable “selves” completely.
Listen, if God knows the future, and His knowledge is perfect, then everything that happens MUST be determined. Everything you do now is nothing more than an act that was already “seen” by God BEFORE it happened (and here is that logical fallacy again says that something can exists before it exists). And since God is the Creator of everything, then He must be directly responsible for whatever acts He sees you doing in the future, which you have not yet done. And if His knowledge is perfect and He sees you acting in the future, then you MUST act in the way God sees. Your actions are determined. Morality cannot exist. There can be no just reward and no just condemnation. Morality is a lie.
But worse than that is the blasphemy inherent in this idea of God absolutely knowing the future.
God cannot act FREELY in a future He already knows. This means that if He sees the future, and the future must include Him, then whatever actions He sees HIMSELF doing in the future are determined. God not only sees man absolutely in the future, but He also sees Himself, too. God, Himself, is determined.
But what determines God? It is a logical impossibility to say that God freely determines Himself. That makes no sense. Free will cannot choose to determine itself at the EXPENSE of that will. If you freely decided to determine your actions, you have utterly destroyed YOURSELF. If God determines Himself, then it is no longer He who is in control of His actions, but DETERMINISM. And God cannot cannot abdicate Himself in favor of another force. That is blasphemous.
Determinism is an absolute, period. It has no end to it. If man’s future is known then God’s must be, too. Both man and God exist at the mercy of actions that they both must inexorably must engage apart from any self volition. So, the problem with God knowing the future is that He condemns Himself to the same determined action man is condemned to. If God is said to have His own will, then He cannot know the future, cannot know what “will happen”, because what will happen must inexorably include His own actions.
So, no…God did not know the fall and yet create anyway. That is not rationally possible. The fall was NOT supposed to happen according to God’s purpose. It happened because individuals, act always in accordance with their own free and unfettered WILL.
Remember, if God knows the future, He is in no more control of His actions than man is of man’s actions. And this is why this concept is an insult to God’s very self. We MUST be more careful before ascribing what WE assume to be “perfection”. We are blaspheming God in doing this.
Truth as Purely a Function of Morality, With Morality Being Exclusive of Reason: The “soft” Gnosticism of Wade Burelson and The Wartburg Watch’s new false moral benchmark
Well, the disturbing trend continues over at that once shining virtual city on a hill, The Wartburg Watch. Ever since the gnosticism of Wade Burleson became focus prime over there, this once great site where ideas and doctrines were vetted for clarity and held up to the scope of rational ideas with an end towards (at least in part) eliminating abuse in the modern American Christian church has now become a haven for hypocrites…for those who declare that the new moral standard which most exemplifies the “truth” of Christ is the tolerance of ideas…those doctrines, interpretations, opinions etc. which regard the wherefores and whys of biblical commands and theologies.
Except, as is common in these types of communes, the one idea they will absolutely not tolerate is the one which says that since ideas inevitably lead to action, only the idea which actually affirms and protects human individual life is worth staking your moral claim to and eternal peace upon as a blog site or as any entity, really. Rejecting the evil ideas as those which destroy life is the real benchmark of Christian truth. But not over there are Wartburg. No…getting along, even at the expense of reason, is the new morality.
Oh…why yes, of course they still presume that once ideas, though wholly acceptable as ideas in man’s brain frame, manifest into destructive behavior then the behavior should be condemned. And though this is all fine, and evil behavior should be condemned, the real question is what is the ACTUAL problem…the problem of all problems. Is it that people act in service to ideas, or is it the ideas? Put more simply, is it the behavior or the ideas that cause the behavior? Which one is the head that most pressingly needs cutting off?
Now…I don’t want to be misunderstood. Wartburg Watch does not tolerate ALL ideas…as I’ve already said, they won’t tolerate mine, for a start. So right there is the exception that proves the rule. I am the trouble maker because I DENY that Wade Burelson, for example, can hold to the doctrine he does and still be a good, life-affirming pastor. There is no way I can accept that because my acceptance can only be engaged if I assume that Wade, though staunch and robust and relentless in support of his own ideas, will somehow refrain at all the right times from acting in service to their destructive logical conclusions. Take, for example, his doctrine of “election”, which is utterly deterministic according to his own explanation of it (once you get past the contradictions and double speak, that is). Wade concedes that men and women are “dazzled” and “spellbound” into acceptance of Christ, as a function of God’s election. The implication being that God decides who He wants around in the New Heaven and then proceeds to bewitch them into some kind of gospel trance. Which, by definition makes man’s free will utterly moot and thus not free at all, because you cannot describe that which cannot be shown to exist anywhere in the existence equation as being “free”. And yet, Wade still proclaims, as if we are all idiots and the kind of third rate thinkers the neo-reformed seminaries are churning out these days, that we still have “the power” to resist Christ.
Here is Wade’s direct quote:
“God makes His love for us so captivating, so alluring, so charming, so dazzling, so enthralling, so mesmerizing, so spellbinding (gospel comes from “good spell”), so magnetizing, so enrapturing, so gripping, so compelling, so hypnotizing, and so absolutely “sweep me off my feet” enamoring that I cannot, I must not, and I will not refuse, though I have the power to do so.”
You can access the entire comments thread here: http://thewartburgwatch.com/2013/08/16/a-tale-of-two-abusers/#comment-110775
I could go into a long description of the gruesome murder of logic which Wade perpetrates in this declaration, but it wouldn’t be anything you, my wise and handsome readers, can’t already see clearly for yourselves. And…let’s be honest. A blind road lizard can see the monumental contradiction in declaring a person who has been put under a “spell” and “dazzled” and who “cannot” resist as one who still retains the power to freely choose.
And besides that, Paul Dohse did a wonderful article on the egregious assumptions and twisted semantics of Wade’s idea already over on his site, paulspassingthoughts.com. I invite you to check it out. It’s very good.
But let’s get back to the new moral plumb line we are seeing over at the Wartburg Watch. And really, truth be told, it is nothing more than a very old, very familiar, very Marxist moral plumb line known as: keeping the “collective” cohesive. It is the presumption that the greatest moral good is found in maintaining the integrity, not of individual human life, but of the group (because in Platonism and Katianims, there is no such thing as an individual…the collective is absolute, and thus, you are only YOU if you are “part” of the collective).
Now, the group in this case is Dee and Deb’s very idea-xenophobic blog site. They are the mama bears and they will protect to the death their subjects and their philosopher King(Wade), even though they have openly said that “God can shut down the site anytime He likes”…but God isn’t in the business of shutting down sites, Dee and Deb. God is in the business of loving human beings and affirming and pursuing ideas that lead to loving actions and outcomes. Whether you choose to run a blog site towards those ends is YOUR CHOICE, not God’s. Don’t assume that the “success” of your site equals God’s affirmation of its assumptions. That is extremely presumptuous on its face.
The sad thing is that Dee and Deb actually think that the “collective” at Wartburg Watch which they work so hard to maintain (yes THEY, not God) is real Christianity in general. Why? Because they think that this is the practical result of declaring that the greatest moral benchmark is found in accepting ALL ideas as “good” in service to maintaining the “peace” and “love” of “Christian” groups…the primary one in question being of course that which they have created at Wartburg Watch. And as such, as a collective, they believe that they have the monopoly on Christian charity.
This could not be further from the truth. When you declare that the greatest moral benchmark is the active acceptance of ideas which are utterly destructive to humanity, you share the guilt in the violent consequences. It is that simple. To attempt to disassociate the evil behavior from the evil ideas you DEMAND people accept as PROOF of their Christian charity is a murder of reason which does not go unnoticed by God nor those who are curious as to whether or not Christians really have something good and true to offer, or are merely just another bunch of irrational fanatics who worship books and make up their definitions as they go along.
So, again, only the acceptance of ideas is allowed (well, those ideas Dee and Deb have arbitrarily decided are “disputable” enough to maintain the peace and integrity of the Wartburg collective); and no deviation from their subjective assumption of moral purity will be tolerated. Certainly, they rightly reject any obviously destructive ideas…but keep in mind, in keeping with full-on Marxist politics, it is the GROUP there that has the monopoly on truth. And Dee and Deb and Wade, as the “authority” of the group…well, THEY will decide which people meet or exceed the benchmark of tolerance or not. The ideas they reject do not have to be blatantly and frankly vile, they merely have to deny the right of the Marxist authority to declare what is “good” and what is “evil” absent a RATIONAL argument. Which is why I am moderated into oblivion without the slightest sense of shame.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Once again, to declare that you care about the victims of abuse while ceding that the greatest moral good is found in the abject tolerance of the kind of fatalistic determinism Wade Burleson believes and TEACHES there…a doctrine which declares that human beings have NO right to EVER claim victim status because at the root of the doctrine is an utter denial of human existential integrity (i.e. YOU are not YOU at all) goes to the very core of why Christianity is dying and will soon be dead in this country (and, honestly, a good part of me believes that we have already passed the point of no return…I don’t think honest Christianity frankly exists in America in a pure form). Wartburg Watch is a once great shining blog of hope now turned ugly hypocrite.
I don’t relish this, I weep over it. I weep over the continuing slide of Wartburg Watch into moral relativism, all in service to the idea that morality is not a function of reason, but of blind tolerance. But even worse than that is the altruistic and charitable charade which plays out like some macabre carnival where all the children are turned into meat patties on the way out. It is a logic defying act of straddling the fence between ideas and behavior, as if there is some kind of stark delineation between them. ALL ideas which do not upset the “peace” and “love” of the collective are acceptable, and yet the destructive behavior of these very same ideas is NOT tolerated .
The greatest moral action is cognitive moral relativism within the framework of “Christian charity” (as they define it)…to accept that everyone has a right to the ideas which they hold; and that the greatest moral affront is to deny that this is right. But, again, they all want to draw the line at actions.
Okay, I get it that Ideas which fit your collectivist paradigm are fine, but when they manifest themselves into action that you somehow will denounce with a straight face and a firm, punitive resolution–without the slightest hint of irony–well, what kind of “reason”, pray tell, are you planning to have on hand to bulwark your accusations? The kind that SGM churches who have left the corporation use? The kind Brent Detwiler uses? Deciding that the ideas are fine until someone gets hurt (and the someone is usually themselves, personally…which is oh so telling). You are going to stand there with a straight face and an aura of arrogant moral superiority and decry the abuse despite your inexorable culpability? Despite the rabid fact that though you are on the hook for never challenging the implicit (or even explicit) physical abuse which flies from every doctrinal proclamation of “election”, “depravity”, the “dazzling” and “spellbinding” gospel, “limited atonement”–ideas which deny the very SELF of human beings–because your moral plumb line is the tolerance of ideas YOU declare are acceptable so that your greatest moral action is found and maintained in defending the subjective integrity of the Wartburg Watch collective at all costs?
So again, what will be the counter argument when people like me call you a hypocrite for decrying the abuse but affirming the idea?
Here is the answer: there can be none. Your belief in the supremacy of tolerance will wash nothing at all in any whiteness of Christ’s righteousness when the innocent victims of the very doctrines you never challenge are piling up in ditches. And it will certainly wash noting when you throw people off your site for challenging these doctrines because they always result in burning people alive, excommunicating God’s saints, and covering up the sexual abuse of children, and worse.
And this is precisely why a Calvinism resurgence in the world is seen again and again and again, and the abuse is seen again and again and again. It is the Platonist and Marxist idea that somehow the ideas of the collective can protect and fit the paradigm of the individual human being. Christianity is no longer about individuals being saved, loved, cared for. Christianity is a collective. And this collective is materialized in churches, communities, and now, blog sites. And when moral truth becomes that which is utterly in service to protecting the peace and safety of the collective, people get hurt. People get thrown out to the dogs. People get murdered in the streets like Stephen.
Then people wake up for a brief moment, see the horror, and say they need to change. And they do, for a while…but they never quite cross the rational line which demands that ideas and actions go together. That what drives horror is the DOCTRINE. No, somehow, the doctrine is NEVER wrong. They change a few people, some churches separate, there is love, love, love and acceptance all around. Tolerance becomes the moral standard of the day…and that is when the hoards of reformation despotism come marching right back in, and we like idiots hold the door open for them. You see, they understand fully well that tolerance as the moral plumb line means that they can continue to preach “sound doctrine” until the cows come home, and they will never be challenged because that? Would just not be loving. It wouldn’t be kind. Why, after all, it’s that kind of rigid demagoguery we have fled from in the first place, no?
So back in come the Calvinist shills, proclaiming their “confessions”, and their “orthodoxy”, and their “inerrancy”, and if it weren’t for these dastardly human beings fucking everything up then we’d all be just fine. We just need to get back to sound doctrine. Oh…of course authoritarianism is wrong. We shouldn’t have to COMPEL you to the “obvious” right-ness of our traditions, should we? No, of course not. If you are a REAL Christian, you will be dazzled and spellbound in to right understanding. And, really, you should understand that my divine authority is not authoritarianism. It is only that if you show yourself un-dazzled. Then my mandate is to “protect” the church (read: collective).
So, Calvinism comes in once again, perhaps a “soft” version, like Wade Burelson’s. The ideas are accepted (they sound good…they aren’t overtly “evil” or “abusive”, there is a lot of grace talk, and after all, no one would actually TREAT another human being as if who they were and what they do don’t actually matter to a “sovereign” God)…and sooner or later, uh oh…someone decides that they must be “on fire” for God, and this inevitably means they must put their money where their mouth is. They MUST stop just talking and ACT in service to the doctrine by openly engaging in–as a matter of pure got-me-love-for-Jesus faith; to prove their election–the logical destructive behavior.
So then what happens is people like Dee and Deb and Wade and Brent Detwiler rush in to decry the abuse. They proclaim love for fellow man. This leads to the formation of new collectives around which this love is defined as “tolerance”. This tolerance becomes the new moral benchmark, the “authorities” of the collective rush in at every turn to now protect the group in service to the the new and improved moral plumb line of tolerance. Human beings then by necessity become secondary to the collective, which means they are secondary to the new abstract moral plumb line of “tolerance”. Intolerance, then, towards persons deemed subversive is meted out in a tribal manner, meaning, reason is now no longer and nevermore the guide, but anything considered an affront to the “moral purity” of the collective is run out of town on a rail. Eventually (which I submit is the stage we are at on Wartburg Watch) people who rule the new collectives finally realize that individuals are really the problem, and that if people just sacrificed themselves to the good of the group, all would be well. Then these rulers finally realize that this fits the Calvinist/neo-reformed theological construct perfectly, and eventually the destruction and merciless abuse is doled out liberally and enthusiastically in defense of the reformed doctrinal ideas…
…and so it goes again and again and again and again.
All because people like Dee and Deb, in the presumption of their own moral perfection of “tolerance” decide that ideas cannot possibly drive action.
And in this sense, the pagan Platonism shows its face once more as the Wizard behind the curtain. Men do not exist, but only the “forms”…the source of the ideas, of the “truth”, which is the Primary Consciousness that only the gnostic overlords are privy to. Therefore, there are no real “actions” of men; for men are nothing more than an extension of the absolute consciousness which controls and owns them, through the gnostic proxies. The Pastors and Priests.
And humanity is once again nothing more than the universal pawn and scapegoat in a cosmic war of attrition between morally relative primary consciousnesses.
I ask, how is there anything of Christ in any of this?
This is now where Wartburg Watch stands.
Now, finally, to what I consider to be the soft tyranny of Wade Burelson, which is the exact same kind of tyranny found in the idea that morality can exist exclusive of and outside the individual human being. That is, morality does not actually have to be premised on what physically IS, objectively, like individual people, but on what is wholly abstract, like tolerance, or collective, or in this example, whatever Wade decides it is going to be at the moment. It is the idea that somehow, you, as the established “authority” (and in Wade’s case, I can only assume it is his role as resident Pastor over at the Wartburg Watch collective) get to declare just what is the benchmark for moral truth at any given moment, and thus force your opponent into submission by virtue of nothing other than your gnostic mandate to interpret reality anywhere and at any time for any reason.
And Wade swears he isn’t a Calvinist. That is just rich. This is precisely Calvin’s point. The laity cannot be in a position to know anything, so it falls to the divinely chosen ecclesiastical “authority” to TELL them what to think.
The exchange took place on the same thread where Wade committed his rational larceny by declaring that God “dazzles” you into accepting Jesus Christ. The topic of the debate is immaterial to my point, but you can access it at the link to the Wartburg Watch comments thread I provided above.
The recipient of Wade’s presumptuous moral superiority was a commenter who calls himself “Gene”. This was Wade’s comment to him. Please note that I have edited the comment so that only the relevant portions (to my point) are reproduced:
“I appreciate your comments and the spirit of interaction with those who have responded to your statements. I have been on the Internet for over eight years, writing blog posts, answering questions, and trying, in general, to help people…”
This is Wade setting the stage for his upcoming, but subtle, declaration that morality has nothing really to do with facts and reason, outcomes and observable issues, but with HIMSELF…that is, he starts by defining himself as the moral plumb line in the debate. The ideas being debated are besides the point. Wade is setting the stage for his “truth” fiat by letting Gene know that HE is the “good” one here. HE has eight years blogging, answering questions, blah, blah, blah. And, best of all, his motives have been to “help people”. Well, this is all fine and good, but since when does any of this have to do with the discussion at hand? The answer is, if you read the thread, it doesn’t. It is a manipulation tactic. It is Wade seizing the high moral ground simply because he is Wade. And you must understand that in the neo-reformed construct, morality has absolutely nothing to do with reason. Moral “good” is never a function of rational beliefs or logical cause and effect observations. No, morality is purely a function of AUTHORITY, of FORCE, of GOVERNMENT. This is why God, in reformation protestantism, can consign people to hell for nothing but arbitrary reasons, and can remain culpable for sin via the fatalistic determination which under girds the theology and yet still remain morally GOOD and categorically just and innocent. His “authority” is proof of his goodness, period. God is “good” simply because of who He is–as the supreme GOVERNOR–and not because He actually affirms life and ordains justice in accordance with objective reason which man can grasp via his own human context and observation. And in this way, you cannot separate then moral truth from “truth” period. They are one in the same. He who gets to be GOOD is he who gets to be RIGHT. And who is it that gets to be good and right, based on his divine authority in this debate, over at the Wartburg Watch?
Right. Wade does.
The equation is simple. Wade = authority = good = truth.
Wade starts off giving an ostensibly irrelevant and innocuous personal history of his life on the internet. But it is relevant in this sense…that what Wade is doing is saying: the plumb line for GOOD is ME, and since GOOD equals TRUTH in my “Christian” world view, then I, as the divinely chosen “authority” here on Wartburg Watch, get to be right, even before we start the discussion.
Yes, this is precisely how they always win these arguments. They subtly proclaim their right to declare TRUTH for everyone else, and no one ever…and I mean EVER challenges them on this. It is one of the primary reasons the Calvinist leadership is so damn resilient.
But the most offensive part of Wade’s e-mail is much, much worse. Take a gander at what follows. It is nothing short of a flagrant appeal to a categorically and ridiculously irrelevant idea as the sum and source of the moral truth in the whole thread and discussion. But this is why these neo-reformed pastors are so terrifying. The actually think that they speak divine TRUTH. They actually believe that they just sort of get to declare that anything that catches their fancy in the moment absolutely forms the crux of divine moral and epistemological inerrancy. Please note that I have put the most relevant parts in bold print:
“(a). You let us know that Dr. Patterson’s degree is from New Orleans, and then later you write, “I don’t care about the SBC or the politics of it.” In my experience, only those who truly care about the SBC and the politics of it would know where Dr. Patterson received his doctorate. Identifying yourself would help me know I am mistaken about you. And second,
(b). You write ” I don’t often read Wade because I don’t care about the SBC or the politics of it, but it seems that every time I see Burleson’s name come up, it is about his comment about politics in the SBC.” Shakespeare nailed it when he said, “Thou dost protest too much.” If you identified yourself, it would help us know that your statement about “not caring about politics” is truthful and will give us confidence to trust other statements you make.
I think asking you to identify yourself is fair. You know my background. My life is on display. However, you are anonymous. In my experience on the Internet, anonymous people on the Internet who make general assessments of someone else’s motives, are usually full of motive themselves. I could be wrong about you, but identifying yourself would help me clear up my misperceptions.”
Now, the utterly egregiousness of this comment should cause anyone who reads Wade, or listens to Wade, or has Wade on their blog site as the resident e-Pastor for the e-church, to feel a sour pang of uneasiness at the very least in the pit of their stomach. Regardless of what Wade might think or say, I believe this to be nothing more than a rank tactic of despots.
What Wade essentially does is declare Gene to be a liar merely because Gene is uncomfortable revealing his true identity, as if knowing who Gene really is somehow relevant to a discussion that doesn’t actually involve Gene personally at all. And, as an aside, with people like Wade Burelson in positions of authority, I’m not sure how anyone can possibly be comfortable giving out their real name. I mean, do you hold out your hand to a hissing snake just because you think it makes you morally pure? It makes you somehow good, perhaps brave, to do something kind of stupid?
Wade equates anonymity with moral depravity, pure and simple. Wade does not believe the best, as is commanded by scripture. On the contrary! He clearly lets it be known that he CANNOT assume Gene is being truthful unless Gene stops being anonymous! As far as Wade is concerned, everything Gene says must be considered a lie because Gene has violated Wade’s arbitrary moral plumb line: Thou shalt not post comments on the internet anonymously.
Read what Wade wrote one more time:
“If you identified yourself, it would help us know that your statement about “not caring about politics” is truthful and will give us confidence to trust other statements you make.”
Again, what is TRUTH, according to Wade? Wade is TRUTH, and Wade has made it a fact that by using his real name, He meets and exceeds the standard of moral perfection in this debate. How convenient! You see, Gene’s anonymity is proof of Gene’s depravity…his ethical wanting in comparison to the blinding righteousness of Wade. It doesn’t matter WHAT Gene says, Wade gets to be right because Wade is NOT anonymous. Anonymity is EVIL, and evil cannot ever be right, because what is right or wrong is a function not of facts and reason, but of who gets to be the morally good side of the dualistic, relativistic gnostic coin. Wade, as the authority-in-the-stead, gets to decide this.
And what about: “You know my background. My life is on display. However, you are anonymous.”
Once again, what is Wade doing here? Declaring the plumb line for moral perfection, which is commensurate with TRUTH, and then declares that His dart lands squarely (by God’s divine anointing, of course) in the middle of the moral bulls eye.
And Gene responded…kindly.
Sigh.
I was aghast. Here was a perfect opportunity to demand Wade answer for his moral relativism, his rape of logic, his authoritarianism, and his hypocrisy, and Gene merely gave a milquetoast, tepid response, answering Wade’s egregious and logically insane accusations without batting an eye.
This is the problem, people. You have got to stop conceding what Wade thinks: that HE is the divine authority who gets to demand that you defend your ideas against his moving-target of capricious morality and vapid, nebulous “wisdom”.
Instead, Gene played nicey-nice, and Dee (or Deb) predictably gave Wade a big old virtual smooch on the cheek for being oh so graaaaacious to actually come on the blog and hold a discussion with the depraved idiots who are tripping over themselves not to offend the sensibilities of the supreme PASTOR or the peace and security of the Marxist blog collective.
Here is my response to Gene, which saw the light of day over on the Wartburg Watch sometime after eight o’clock this morning, hours and hours and hours after I originally posted it last night:
“Gene,
Wade’s questions were egregious. You were under no obligation to answer them.
Notice the implicit equation in Wade’s comment: anonymity=deception and false witness. Basically, he called you a liar just because you don’t use your real name. How convenient. His assumption is that your hiding your identity can only mean that you must be morally corrupt.
You should have ignored his questions and demanded he defend his irrational accusations.
I believe that his entire message to you was a not-so-subtle way of declaring that since you are anonymous and he is not then he gets to assume the moral high ground. And since moral authority equals “truth”-as opposed to actually having a rational argument-in Wade’s construct it seems, he gets to declare your ideas false without ever actually having to defend his own according to logical premises and the facts at hand.”
The Infinite Number of an Infinite Singularity: Why “other” and “self” are the only actual objects which can be said to “exist”
Friends and Readers and Members of the CAMP (Calvin, Augustine, Marx, Plato) Resistance…lend me your brains,
Get your coffee. Extra strong. You will need your brain lubed up good for this one. Don’t skimp…get the good stuff. This is Sanka level thinking.
To continue my foray into the world of theoretical physics…uh, minus the math of course. Dot, dot, dot. For the math is only useful insofar as one needs to quantify in a consistent theory the repeatable observational evidence with respect to a theoretical idea. That is, mathematics enables us to compartmentalize natural phenomena into a cannon of theoretical “truths” which can be accessed and built upon later, to form a theoretical “superstructure” as it were, of the workings of the natural universe as a whole. It is a clinical approach to observation…life without meaning, value, or feelings. It is a cold place of gleaming hospital corners and dust free annexes in buildings where the practical application of the laws of nature are transferred to the users in the matrix.
Theoretical physics is what I am into, but without the pesky mathematical hubbub of what is actually NOT existent (like numbers)…I thoroughly enjoy getting to the heart of what it actually IS that we are dealing with here, and letting the mathematical abstraction-ists sort out the x’s and the y’s and the Planck’s and so forth. They are welcome to do that…for in compartmentalizing the relative movement of actual objects in the universe, they must first build the compartment, and to do that takes just waaaaay to much paradoxical assumption for my liking, practicality in application or not; good morality cannot stem from Platonist assumptions, is my point, regardless of how advanced the technology.
For example, the assumption that space and time and energy and gravity are actually “things” when the whole of physics, except for IN the math, screams that this cannot possibly be true otherwise the entire universe would come to a screeching halt in the cul-de-sac of existential contradiction. Like, if “space” is a thing, it would be by necessity impossible for another thing to “occupy” it. For space, in order to be space, must only be itself, and must completely occupy itself (for even in water, you are not really “in” water…the water is in itself, and you are in yourself, by definition…you are once again merely speaking of relative movement (relationship) between you and the water, but “in” is the abstraction which signifies “immersion”, as opposed to “walking on”), and the usurpation of space in order for another body to exist “in” it would deny space its existential equality; it is tantamount to a metaphysical alteration where object and space become “one”, which is an impossible metaphysical and physical contradiction.
But say we concede that space is “displaced” around us (for those of you who ascribe to the notion of the physical “bending” of space time around super massive objects). Okay, but if you exist “in” space, then in what does space exist? If we say it exists in space, we have contradicted it–it exists in itself? Impossible. That is redundancy, not an explanation (John Immel exists in John Immel is merely another way of simply saying: John Immel is John Immel…and, duh, we already knew that; and by the way, thank goodness there is only one, LOL…TWO John Immels would make my head explode!).
If we say space exists in “nothing”, we have two options: the first is to declare that nothing is something, and we have contradicted the notion of nothing…and we say okay, nothing is something so what does the something exist in, and this goes on infinitely…it is like tic-tac-toe: a pointless enterprise. But if we say that nothing is truly nothing, then space is by definition infinite, without boundary, which means it can never be valued, and as such, there is absolutely no way to know whether an object exists IN it or next to it or what the relationship is, or whether space actually exists at all because there is no way to tell what IT actually is…it is “space”, and that’s about all you can say.
Interestingly enough, this is also true of God; for He also is I AM; and so where do we stand then with that? The only way we can possibly know Him then is to judge by the relativity of His movement towards us; or rather, our movement relative to Him. All of God’s truth must be revealed through the context of individual man because this is the only way He can be known. To say of God “He IS” is to say nothing of any practical consequence at all to humanity; this is merely the empirical notion of a mutually exclusive existential reality. God does not move in Himself, but we do…or rather, our being is observable finite (though actually infinite), where God’s is NOT. Therefore, God must move as a singular and relatively finite being with respect to us so that we can observe Him…in other words, He moves around us, or we around Him, so that observation of Him is possible. That is, God can appear as a singularity which is separated from us by “space”, which is, again, the observation of relative movement. But what the scientists want to do is say that that “space”, that observable difference between two objects, two “selves”, is actually another infinite self, but which cannot, without contradicting itself, ever move, because the nature of space is that it is the infinite constant in which everything–even God–exists. But this unmoving (relatively) object like space can never be observed; and thus it can never be said to actually exist.
You see, space does not move as a singular and relatively finite being by definition. WE move and exist in IT, according to science. And as such, it can never be said, itself, to move because an infinite thing cannot “go” anywhere other than itself, which is why the whole “bending” of spacetime by super massive objects makes no sense (more on this in a moment). It bends, so Einstein’s Relativity says…okay, be where does it bend TO? It bends to ITSELF, is all that can be said. But how can you observe something move when the movement is by definition of no difference whatsoever then to the original position of the infinite object..that is, the before position is of equal measurable value to the AFTER position? If the object is static and infinite, then there can be no functional or measurable or observable movement of any kind, is the whole point! Thus, the idea of space “bending” is a logical contradiction. A dead-end of reason. It makes no sense. Objects alone exist…any “bending” then is done by the OBJECTS which move relative to one another; and they are PHYSICAL objects which equally exist! Space cannot equally exist with the physical objects in it—it cannot ever be observed to be RELATIVELY finite; which means that it cannot ever be observed, period. And if it cannot ever be observed, it cannot ever be KNOWN.
So, to reiterate: space becomes an infinite entity that cannot even co-exist relatively with any object in it because it is impossible to observe. It cannot move…for as I explained, every movement is a redundant movement of itself into itself. And if space cannot move, it is impossible to say if we exist in it, because to declare this we need to be able to observe a commensurate reaction of the space around us. Without this ability to observe it, we cannot ever declare that it actually exists. And we certainly cannot give it a value. Which is precisely my point…but then, I deny that space is actual; for I declare it to be nothing more than the observational effect of relative movement between two or more physical entities. And I will debate anyone on this…and I mean anyone. There is no rational way to declare the actual existence of “space”. Space is nothing more than a mathematical construct used to reconcile the theoretical paradigm. Which is fine, but don’t turn your proofs into a primary consciousness. Once we become a function of “space”, then man is left to defend his finite being against the juggernaut of infinite, un-reproachable, all-consuming, other-worldly FORCE, against which he has not the tools to defend his own life; and he will be expected to submit.
And this is precisely why I go after physics so doggone much. Behind the blackboard is nothing more that another Wizard of Oz pulling the levers of politics and propaganda to compel the masses into the auspices of the self-sucking, humanity raping, bloated and gluttonous “collective”. You are nothing more than an extension of the invincible and irresistible force (or “grace”, if you are a reformation protestant) of those infinite and untouchable entities which determine everything.
But what about the “bending” of space (I mentioned this up top)…is this not considered proven via the observation of gravitational lensing. Is this not declared to be proof of the “bending of space time”? Truly, they pat themselves on the backs in many physics labs and declare that it most certainly is.
My question: what exactly are we seeing bend? Space, or the light?
The answer is the light. The light is OBSERVED to bend, not the space. It is a curious (but not when you realize they are fundamentally Platonist in their thinking) thing to me that physicists would immediately jump to the conclusion that that which cannot either be observed directly nor valued because it must be infinite by definition—that is “spacetime”–is the thing which is actually acting; instead of assuming the more logical conclusion: that the bending of light is merely an observational effect of the relative movement between to objects. But again, I have accused them repeatedly of being Platonist in their thinking, and this is merely another indication of that. For them, there is no question that what is beyond MAN’S ability to perceive–to know, apprehend, touch, or exist inclusively and conclusively with–MUST be that which really makes the whole damn thing work. Of COURSE they are going to assume that the force which controls is something that is beyond the scope of the barbarian masses to ascertain and to organize. Of course THEIR divine inspired gnosis is the plumb line for all reality. Of course, of course, of course. No…it couldn’t be that what is really acting is what any old slob can observe.
No…that would place existence in the hands of the mere laity. And that just can’t be acceptable. It would be an orgy of chaos and laissez-faire capitalism should the gods decide that just any old brute gets to apprehend the TRUTH of their own existence! We can’t have people owning the sum and substance of their own lives, can we? That wouldn’t be good for the world. People need to be FORCED into right thinking, after all. The god’s have decreed through the language of the universe (mathematics) that only a very few, very silly nerds get to describe reality and the meaning of life for the rest of us dolts.
But I digress.
As usual.
So, Argo (he asks for you…LOL, well, if the Calvinist overlords can speak for you, why can’t I? Oh…yeah, right…that’s why: because I am not a Marxist)…so, Argo, what does any of this have to do with defeating and dismantling the tyrannical notions and flesh-eating, chattel slavery loving doctrines of reformation Christianity?
That is a very good question…and by the way, I really appreciate you bearing with me on all this stuff. I understand that this is tedious, but it really is all in service to rolling back existential/metaphysical reality to its lowest common denominator, and then building from there. For the neo-Calvinist despots, this root denominator is God’s “sovereign grace”, which is simply an altruistic euphemism for fatalistic (the WORST form of fatalism: divine) determinism. Nothing more. Sovereign grace is the presumption that YOU don’t actually exist…that you are merely the extension of some kind of dualistic moral force (which is a contradiction, of course). Perhaps you are “elect” to be a functional metaphysical extension of God, or the GOOD; or perhaps you are “elect” to be a functional extension of Sin Nature/Satan/Flesh (pick your flavor of gnostic bad-guy), or the EVIL. In either case, YOU have nothing whatsoever to do with the equation. YOU are not you, proper. You are an illusion; a farce. A pawn in a cosmic chess match of dualistic moral relativism, where the outcome is by definition meaningless. The totality of the EVIL equals the totality of the GOOD in a moral dichotomy, like gnostic dualism, which is precisely what Calvinism is. And this is THE root presumption in reformation theology. Man is nothing more than whatever primary consciousness has claimed him from the beginning of time. It is a game of chance for your body, mind and soul…except that chance never had anything to do with it. YOU never had a chance because YOU don’t really exist. “God” is the GOOD side of the dualistic moral coin, where flesh/man/sin nature/the devil is the EVIL side. The same coin, the same worth and value with no actual nor functional/practical difference between them; but endless death and war, with the consequences signifying nothing at all.
There is your Calvinism.
For me, however, I reject this idea entirely for the nonsense that it is. I seek to find that singularity which MUST exist; which must be physical, and thus must be the ONLY thing of a truly objective moral value. What is IT. Where is IT? That is the question. And once we can answer that…once we can get to the root of what actually is SELF, then we can proceed to move forward, to build our metaphysics in a rational way; to show how IT…how SELF interacts with OTHER. The other being God and other SELVES.
And that is where I find myself. Submitting that SELF and OTHER are ultimately infinite, physical singularities of equal worth; the only difference is two-fold (so far): The ability to OBSERVE “other”, and the ensuing and inexorable/inevitable relative movement which MUST occur for self and other to actually recognize each other; for the existential equation to be a perfect and utterly equal one-to-one ratio: for this is the answer to everything: everything EQUALLY IS. For self to recognize other, they must be existentially the SAME; utterly identical in existential WORTH and BEING. Everything that exists, exists equally. Period. THAT is the only truly objective moral statement.
And from here, we move forward. But again, we must go back initially. We must identify what is the infinite singularity of SELF, so that we can observe OTHER (or vice versa…for I submit that SELF is only recognized by observing OTHER first). And what do we mean by infinite? What does this mean in terms of abstractions such as “number”, or “how many”?
Okay…so let’s leap.
It’s a big jump. But remember, the movement and the space are only relative.
And, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your particular level of interest, we must start in the cosmic ocean of particle physics. Of subatomic objects. Those physical little bits which are dimensionless, infinite, and utterly THEMSELVES, without any other qualifier which isn’t purely relative. Existing, but having no space or time or energy or mass. Just being “it”.
And it is here where we find the existential equality (yes, even with God) of the infinite particle “I AM”. These particles “are”, period. But what makes them, them, and God, Him? Hmm…what is God so that self can be self? And how many particles? And does it matter…does it mean anything. What is “one” infinite particle versus an infinite number of infinite particles, or several infinite particles? Is there any real difference. Are there more than one kind of particle? And if so, does THAT, does “kind” have a number, and does it matter? And where does God come in? Is HE a particle, too? Is the “god particle” really the God particle?
I submit that it is here we must start. For the dimensionless particles are the infinite singularities were self begins. And as such they are the utter core of objective moral value.
Leaping Both Old-Earth and Young-Earth Arguments in a Single Bound: The fallacy is rooted (as always) in the false presumptions
Here is the comment I left at Wartburg Watch, which went unanswered.
“If time and space were created at the Big Bang, then it would be impossible to assign a “where” and a “when” to that event, right? Therefore, how do you define its beginning? You can’t really say it happened however many billions of years ago, because, by definition there can be no WHEN (and by extension no WHERE) to its “beginning” since time and space didn’t exist until AFTER the big bang. And so, it is impossible to tell ultimately then how old the universe is…indeed, you cannot even say it had a beginning, because something that is absent a time or place cannot be said to have a beginning.”
I suspect it won’t be the last time this question will go unanswered. Physicists are extremely reticent to admit the Platonism inherent in their science; because at the end of it all is a great big fat shrug. At the core of science, I have come to realize–at least as it pertains to the foundational mathematics–is nothing more than Gnosticism in quantifiable form. And this is to say that this is the scientific definition of TRUTH: that what cannot be proven, because it cannot be shown to be actual (like numbers and constants and “laws” which govern), because it cannot be observed, is really the cause of all which exists.
And for the experimental physicists this must be doubly frustrating. I mean, as those who claim that empirical evidence is THE evidence of choice for TRUTH, it must be awfully hard to acknowledge that at the root of the presumption is that what cannot be actually observed is the “objective” standard for how we gauge the veracity our empirical–that is observed–evidence. In other words, we prove observational evidence as a direct function what cannot at all be observed, which is of course how the math reconciles.
Math is nothing more than the abstract quantification of the action of an object (or objects) after it has already happened. Seems a little too convenient to me to be the gold standard for TRUTH. You set your constants by the actions of objects you can only observe after the fact, and then you claim laws which govern…which implies, coming BEFORE. And so you what you are trying to get past the logical smell test is to declare that all which is said to govern is a direct function of purely object-derived actions which I submit can never be rationally proven to have been caused by these laws at all because you can never observe a law before it acts upon an object. Which means that all you can possibly know unless you are declaring some kind of mystic “revelation” or “divine insight” is that objects act FIRST; which means all actions are a direct function of the object’s ability to act; which means that the object, not the math or the “law” is the source of its being.
Does this not raise the eyebrows of a single rational soul? How can we claim truth when by our very standards we can never actually SEE it.
Hmmm…I see a contradiction in terms on the road ahead.
It isn’t then curious why the experimental physicist on the Wartburg Watch, Old John J saw the road..and turned around.
So then, having said all of that, it seems to me that the problem with Young Earth Creationism as touted by the gnostic mystics of pseudo-Christianity and Old Earth Creationism as touted by the gnostic mystics of pseudo-empiricist standards is the exact same problem: the impossibility of actually defining the terms “old” and “young”. For if time is purely relative (and it is) and is nothing more than an abstraction which is derivative of a man’s ability to cognitively abstract (which it is), then it is impossible to declare that old is actually old or that young is actually young because there is no actual reference point. For by definition time is nothing more than a qualification/quantification of the relative movement between two (or more objects)…a different conceptual idea of movement, as opposed to “distance”, or “length”, or even “gravity”.
So the problem then is that there is no other ACTUAL reference (but only a man-contrived abstract reference) by which to gauge the “time” of the universe in order that the universe may be determined to be either young or old. Since the “beginning” of Creation is a singularity, then what is the other reference point by which we measure its time? There is no Y to Creation’s X; no B to Creation’s A. How do you have a measurement of any temporal kind unless you can know the start TIME…that is, you cannot have an AGE unless you know WHEN whatever it is you are temporally defining BEGAN. If there is no WHEN to its beginning, then it cannot have an AGE. And what I am submitting is that since Creation had a beginning literally in a vacuum according to both young and old earthers, as well as agnostic or atheist scientists, it is categorically impossible to declare when Creation began. And if you cannot know when Creation began (further compounded by the fact that it is often said-without any sense of irony by either the Young Earth or Old Earth advocates-that space and time were likewise Created in the beginning…which has a temporal value of ZERO, making time a direct function of NO TIME )…so, again, if you cannot know when Creation began then it is by definition impossible to say just how old or young Creation actually is.
And further, how do you have a beginning from NOTHING at all? How does NOTHING (because both camps assume that God made Creation from nothing) spawn a thing which does not exist? What value can be given to Creation if the material from which it sprang forth is zero? Anything derived from zero is zero…even the mathematicians have to give me that one. That’s just common mathematical sense. A four year old knows that if you start with zero bananas and add a banana you haven’t added ONE banana to zero, you have merely replaced the empty spot on the table with a banana. You can add another banana to get two bananas, but you can’t add one of anything to nothing-to NO banana; to the absence of banana–to make that nothing become ONE banana. Because the absence of banana is understandably infinite. The absence of banana cannot become, by definition, banana.
And the same is true for the universe. The absence of anything cannot produce something by definition because then it becomes a contradiction in terms. The absence of universe cannot ever be created into “universe” without utterly destroying the concept of “nothing”. And if that is destroyed, then so is the idea that God is “first cause”. Because God could not have created something from nothing if nothing did not exist. Except that in order for nothing to exist; for nothing to remain truly nothing, then something by definition could never have been derived from it.
It is a logical sinkhole from which there is no escape no matter how hard one tries. It is not possible. James Jordan tried in the comments thread of the previous post on this topic and failed to bridge the gap of the bottomless, gaping chasm of logical madness. In the end, if you concede NOTHING then you cannot claim that anything can be created out of it. It just doesn’t work. At. All.
But getting back to the notion of time.
As I was saying, you simply cannot determine old or young if you cannot define the “when” of Creation’s start. And it doesn’t matter that the physicists or Old Earth creationists speak of events happening “ten seconds after the big bang” or “one minute after the big bang”. If you cannot say WHEN the big bang was (or WHERE, by extension) then you cannot define what in the hell ten seconds or one minute actually is.
Ten seconds from what? Is my wholly rational question.
Ten seconds after the big bang.
Yes, but when was the big bang?
We cannot say, because our reference time and place for the big bang is “nothing’; or at best is merely “the big bang”. The big bang IS the beginning.
Then how do you know ten seconds passed if there is no start time? If the start time is the big bang…well, that’s not a time. Ten seconds then is merely arbitrary. There is no way to prove that ten seconds is actually ten seconds.
The big bang didn’t have a time, it was “beginning”.
Yes, but how do you define beginning?
Big bang.
How do you define time?
Big bang.
What is ten seconds?
Big bang.
Then how can we know that ten seconds is ten seconds if it impossible to make a distinction between the passage of “time” and the thing from which it sprang?
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I tell you readers…this is Looney Tunes.
Aaaaaaand the same argument can be used on the intelligent design folks.
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God created the heavens and the earth in six days.
Six days from when?
From when He started.
Yes, but when was that…what time did He start?
When He did. He didn’t start at a time; He created time.
So time had a beginning AFTER God BEGAN to create. Okay…I’ll make it easy on you: Just tell me then when God created time (because, it doesn’t say in the Bible that God created time); that is, how soon after he began to create did He make time? Was it a minute after He began creating? An hour after He began creating?
He began it when He began it.
So the “time” he created time is indefinite?
Yes. Because He just did.
Okay…when was it finished being created? How long did it take God to create time.
I’m not sure…let’s say, an hour after.
So an hour beginning at indefinite time?
Sure.
Do you not see how that is completely contradictory and logically insane? How can you start to count sixty minutes beginning with an indefinite “moment”? If the beginning moment itself is completely excluded from the time construct, how can it possibly the be the beginning of a sixty-minute cycle of time?
Because I can make the time anything I wa…er, it is a matter of Biblical truth. Time is real, because it’s in the Bible.
No, the Bible says nothing about God creating time. Because that would not make a damn bit of sense.
Next question.
So let me get this straight. Time has no “time” of its beginning. And therefore Creation itself has no “time” of its beginning. Then how can you show that six days is actually six days? If a day has no beginning (because beginning must be a function of time) then how can you measure it out so that a day is shown to be an actual day. Twenty-four hours from NO TIME cannot possibly be shown to be twenty four hours. Unless you concede that time is merely an arbitrary abstraction devised by man as a means of organizing his observable environment. Do you concede?
No, because “six days” is in the Bible. And the Bible is infallible.
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Yes, readers…feel free to scream now. I know I want to.
And so this is the insurmountable problem. “Young” and “Old” are predicated on the idea of a beginning TIME which cannot ever be provided. Since time was either created with the rest of Creation, or it was Created out of nothing, giving the start time as ZERO–as nothing–then there can be, by definition, no actual beginning to Creation.
And if you can’t say WHEN it began, it is impossible to declare how old, or young, the universe is.
Reformed Blogger and Commenter, the Famous Randy, Loses an Argument by the Sword of Reason: An ode to my “mind numbing arrogance”, LOL
Today, Randy posted a comment under the thread of the last post. You can read his entire comment there. This was my response. I add it as a new post for instructive purposes. It is an abject lesson on destroying despotic neo-Calvinist in a single stroke of HUMAN reason:
Randy,
“After all, reason, so-called, trumps revelation every time.”
Reading the sarcasm in there, I must say I had a guffawing laugh over that one. Oh yes…as if revelation cannot POSSIBLY be vetted by human reason. Reason and revelation are ultimately exclusive…and this is why you and your ilk terrify me. At the end of the day, you NEVER have to prove WHY your ideas are better. They are just better because you say they are. Because, by some mystic divine enlightenment, you somehow, hypocritically beyond your own self-confessed sin-nature, get to define truth for the rest of humanity without ever having to defend it.
I appeal to reason because reason is the only way man can ever know TRUTH. If revelation falls outside of reason, then revelation has nothing to do with man. In which case, it is impossible for you to accede it or not.
But here is where you entire argument with me comes crashing to the floor in the face of my “mind numbing” arrogance…which, arrogance is irrelevant. My idea crushes yours because you cannot even RESPOND to it without conceding that I am right.
You ready to lose? Here you go:
The wickedly ironic thing is that REASON is the ONLY way you yourself can claim to believe anything. Why do you believe revelation, even if it isn’t reasonable (logically reconcilable)? Because you REASONABLY assume that God has truth and you don’t. But your acceptance of that fact is wholly rooted in this: it makes SENSE to you to believe that. Meaning, you still use YOU OWN version of reason to decide whether this thing (be it “revelation” or whatever thing you accept or reject) is true or not. You can never appeal to some greater “understanding”; reason is the very way you vet ALL you believe. If you appeal to some kind of “divine enlightenment”, it is still axiomatic that you must DECIDE to agree. And if it is YOU deciding, then YOU must have a plumb line for measuring it veracity. So you are not really arguing that “revelation” supersedes reason. No, you are saying that YOUR reason is better than mine. Nothing more. And you are demanding that I accept that YOUR reason is better than mine.
That won’t happen, Randy. Because your reason is rooted in insane ideas. What you accept as reasonable is the ANTITHESIS of human life. Your reason despises humanity and will go to destructive ends to compel it to your insanity. And I as a Christian will never yoke myself to such darkness.
But even worse for you, is that to answer my argument you must, again concede I AM RIGHT. Because by responding, you must FIRST concede that YOU get to decide on what basis…by what REASON you will agree or disagree.
And this is why you are a hypocrite and you will have much to answer to God for. You are a hypocrite who capriciously and viciously condemns others for doing that which YOU yourself do. And even in the face of my utterly logical argument you will reject the idea that human reason is the ONLY source of truth for ANYONE, Christian or not, which is precisely why all revelation must be REASONABLE revelation.
You will reject it because that is your heart…the heart of a Pharisee.
A Prescription for Reason: Complete cure of the affliction of “biblical inerrancy” in a single dose
Unfortunately, there are still many out there–even among those who agree that the tyranny of Calvinism creeps on the horizon like armies of Mordor, seeking to replace truth and light with a love of death and the bloodletting of moral relativism and lawlessness (antinomian-ism)–yes, still among these there are many out there who won’t concede that reason alone should be the death of Platonist insanity; of paradoxical notions of “truth”; of irreconcilable metaphysical matters; of spiritually nebulous matters.
And as this blog trudges on, I realize that the majority of my time is spent defending my ideas to my philosophical compadres, ironically, who understandably believe on some level that you can only fight fire with fire…that the mysticism of Baal can only be destroyed with a “Christian” mysticism (of sorts) of their own.
I don’t fault them for this. It is perfectly understandable. After all, we are speaking of spiritual things–of METAphysical things. And it has been common knowledge since the Pythagoreans laid down the twin tablets of philosophy and mathematics, that existential truth must of course be beyond a reasonable explanation of events and ideas that the senses observe and vet.
And one paradox deserves another. An eye-for-eye and a tooth-for-tooth; an anthropomorphic abstraction for an anthropomorphic abstraction.
This has always been the way, after all, among good Christian philosophers. Our God is a mystery…o man, who can know His ways? Truly, Argo, you are a fool to think you can ever get to the bottom of truth using nothing but ideas which do not wind up in the painted corner of paradox.
Well, truth be told…I abandoned spiritual-ism almost immediately after realizing that the problem with Sovereign Grace Ministries was not the dudes running the metaphysical fun-house, but the doctrine. I realized that the destruction of humanity in favor of ideas which at their root are contradictory (whether you want to call this contradiction “paradox” or not, it still means one thing: [shrug] Who can say?) is the real source of the violence. I realized that it didn’t matter how altruistic it all sounded, or if a nice guy like Wade Burelson was preaching the insanity or if a duplicitous shaman like CJ Mahaney was doing it, it all boiled down to the exact same presumption:
Man cannot know truth.
And therefore:
Man cannot define “self”.
And therefore:
Man cannot OWN self.
And therefore:
Someone else must define and own him FOR him.
If man cannot reconcile the very root of HOW and WHY he is here, then quite simply, man is not man. For man can know NO truth because the reference point–the singularity/the point locale–for all knowledge is a giant black hole where reason and consistency of ideas is smashed into a dark oblivion where only “God” resides.
And from then on, it is only a matter of who is willing to be the bigger asshole. Who is wiling to take the idea of “man is not really man” to the logical conclusion. Who is willing to do the most violence to compel human beings to “truth”, to the real paradox? Who is willing to send the greatest number of children through the fires of Moloch in service to worshiping the real Primary Consciousness.
It took me almost no time at all between being in Sovereign Grace Ministries and leaving to understand that all appeals to paradoxical versions of truth was mysticism, period. That there is only one kind of TRUTH: Reasonable. Truth which resides in a place that man is fully capable of grasping and reconciling based on what he observes with his senses. Beyond that, there is no truth. There is not even “faith”, because faith based on ideas that cannot be known as true is not faith, it is madness. I submit that NO person in the Bible ever believed God on paradoxical “faith”. The “doctrine of paradox” like the “doctrine of the Trinity”, the “doctrine of Original Sin”, the “doctrine of Church Discipline”, the “doctrine of Complimentariansm”, does not exist in the Bible. There is no rational reason to decide that faith must equal paradox. God never demands faith based on contradictory ideas. And God, Himself never declares that the key to understanding the “mystery of God” is to declare that you cannot understand. No…what does God ask? That we continue to seek, to knock, and to look for WISDOM.
So I ask you, would God offer us the well of wisdom if he knew that at the bottom was the spiritual poison of “paradox”? Would God promise the good gift of wisdom to His children if He understood that beyond the frilly wrapper and bow was emptiness? Was a “truth” that at best could only slip through man’s fingers?
Paradox.
The word doesn’t exist in scripture. But like good little Platonists we continue to return to the well of wisdom which is perpetually dry. So we simply imagine the water and call it truth.
People, this is insane.
Come…says the man of God. Let us REASON together.
So, we are going to do that now. We are going to dismantle the false and irrelevant idea of “biblical inerrancy”, not by some vast appeal to this book of the Bible or that, or this verse, or our mysticism as being more “rational” than their mysticism. We are not going to appeal to the Greek, or the Hebrew, or the Early Church writings, or the Heidelberg Catechism; nor are we going to point to historical applications of tyranny and violence and death as proof that false ideas meant to solidify the power of a Kantian authority, like biblical inerrancy, prove that these ideas are decidedly NOT in keeping with Christ’s command to love. We won’t use our personal experience with a reformed/Calvinist despot who cared more for his ability to compel and control and take, take, take for the sake of “sound doctrine” than for actually saving souls. If you want that, there are about fifty blog sites I can give you a road map to that specialize in that brand of resistance.
I don’t and won’t take this tactic on this blog. This blog uses a different tool: reason. Logic. We destroy destructive ideas by showing that at the heart of them ALL is contradiction, by one label or another. That at the singularity of them all is the fact that they cannot, nor ever will be found to actually appeal to LOGIC as the source of their truth. That what they only ever do at the end of the day is appeal to the idea of “man cannot understand” as the root of understanding.
The Achilles heal of all destructive and evil doctrines is NOT the Bible, as so many “biblicists” are fond of saying ( hey…I have a great idea: let’s fight one subjective interpretation of the scriptures with another subjective interpretation of the scriptures…and it never occurs to them that they concede the whole damn argument before they even wake up in the morning; it is maddening). No, it is logic and reason.
All ideas are found having or wanting for truth based on reason alone, even “Christian” ones.
So let’s take a minute to look at “inerrancy”; that king gremlin of all nonsensical “Christian” platitudes. That secret weapon of despotism: the idea that if WE are those “gifted” to know truth, and WE can say the bible is indeed “inerrant”, then our power is by definition unlimited. WE have the keys to hermetical TRUTH, which is beyond you, mere man. We (or I) get to define it; and once defined, it must be followed, and we have a mandate to FORCE you to follow it by any means necessary. Why? Because the Bible says it (what we/I decide “it” is), and so it is inerrant. Fall on your knees, lay person. Fall on your needs or eat the fire of the Righteous Burning Stake of Purification.
Oh…yes, Is it any WONDER why so many Protestants have spent so many years hammering the idea of “inerrancy”? Think of the power! There is none greater than that of he who gets not only to define TRUTH but to declare it unassailable by any means in the universe.
You can go take a moment to go throw up. I’ll wait.
Hummm….deee……hummm…..(smoke break)…..hummm deee….(oh look, another web site about abuse in the church; and what’s this…oh, yes, the doctrine is still just fine)….hummmm…deee…oh my, is Oprah gaining?
Are you back? Good. Hope you feel better.
I’ve got something for your sickness. A dose of reason. Take this, and you are cured for life. It’s easy. One little spoonful, as sweet as honey. Drink it in and know the freedom of reason. Because the freedom of reason is the ability to LOVE. It is the antidote for hate and death and and bloodshed and tyranny. Here’s a bottle. Use as needed. Use liberally.
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Those of you who read here regularly I think will have heard this argument against biblical inerrancy before, but nonetheless it bears repeating.
“Inerrancy” as you will notice, or “infallibility” is NEVER qualified when it is presented as the bedrock for scriptural integrity. There is a good reason for this. Do you know what it is? It’s not hard to spot if you just think about it.
Right. You have it.
“Inerrancy/infallibility” is an absolute. It is infinite in its implication. It can have no qualification because a qualification imposes a limitation upon inerrancy. And limited inerrancy by definition is not inerrant.
Once limited, inerrancy becomes a contradiction in terms. Inerrancy cannot be contextualized without destroying the very concept itself. As soon as you say inerrancy is only inerrant within a certain limited frame of reference, inerrancy stops being a rational concept all together. It is, then, by definition, no longer inerrant. Because inerrancy cannot be BOTH inerrant and errant at the SAME time. It cannot be logically said to ONLY apply here, but not here. For this makes inerrancy a dimensional construct; and this implies limitations. If inerrancy is bound at the corners by its own existential limitations, then it is not by definition inerrant. It is wholly errant IN ANY OUTSIDE-OF-ITSELF CONTEXT. Out of the context of itself, it cannot possibly be inerrant.
But since we have (and MUST) as human beings, in order to practically apply a concept, anthropomorphized the inerrancy idea (like we do with any abstraction…and this is the foundation of why it is so hard for people to separate what is abstract from what is actual, and why so many people disagree with me, LOL), it can be observed in only context. But the problem is that in context, it cannot be inerrant. And more than that, it can ONLY be errant. An idea which is given life as a “thing”, can only be revealed in context…but since in order for it to be wholly what it proclaims to be, it must be INFINITE…and thus, in context, it cannot be integrally itself (what it takes for it to be infinite), and so it cannot possibly be true in context, because in a context, again, it is not, by definition, infinite. It is bound by the limitations of the context. Therefore, in context, which again is where it must be revealed for man to observe it, it cannot be itself. And if it cannot be itself, then man can never say that it actually is the infinite concept he declares it is.
Confused? Yeah…I never said it was easy.
Inerrancy, like time and space, can only make sense as an absolute truth if it is seen as an infinite abstraction (note: “infinite abstraction” is redundant; for all abstractions are infinite by definition)…utterly removed from the context of the physical reality of those things where it is applied. But, apart from those things–apart from context–it can have no relevant meaning at all. In other words, the idea of inerrancy must be completely removed from the context of any THING else in order for it to be, in fact, inerrancy. Once contextualized, it is limited, but inerrancy cannot by definition be limited. Because what is limited inerrancy? The very concept has no meaning. Limited inerrancy? It is a complete contradiction in terms.
So, if you say the BIBLE is inerrant, you have contextualized “inerrancy”. You have limited an infinite abstract concept to a THING, and therefore, you have qualified what inerrancy means,and thus destroyed the concept utterly. “Impossible to err” cannot actually be qualified because what you are saying via the qualification is that in this context it cannot err, but in another it CAN err. And an inerrancy which can be said to be capable of erring is not, by definition, inerrancy.
But some will say…Argo, this is confusing. It is real simple. Inerrancy is not inerrant, the bible is inerrant.
No, no, no! If I were to take my bible to a construction site, and no other tools, and attempt to build an ice skating rink with nothing but my bible, how would that work out?
It wouldn’t. Why? Because in that context, the bible is ERRANT. It is wanting. It offers no help. It cannot be used to hammer nails, or to install drywall, or to lay ice. So, how, pray tell, can the bible be both inerrant and errant at the same time?
The answer is: it cannot.
It can only be “inerrant” in a certain context. But…that won’t work, because as soon as you qualify “inerrancy” it is no longer inerrant by definition. You have “limited inerrancy”.
And what is “limited inerrancy”? It is nothing more than “errancy”. An inerrant bible is fully capable of erring in a certain context. Therefore, it cannot possibly be inerrant.
The reality is that the bible’s truth can only be revealed contextually. Take it out of context, and it is no longer “true”. This is why IT cannot be ITSELF inerrant, but the bible’s efficacious application can only be observed IN CONTEXT.
What context?
MAN’S context.
MAN is the plumb line for how errant or inerrant the bible is. The bible cannot possibly be its OWN plumb line, because, as I said, in a certain context, such as at the construction site, it will FAIL in its efficacy.
That is those who claim “biblical inerrancy” never qualify that statement. Because they cannot. It is why the bible , to them, is “inerrant”, period. Now some will say, “inerrant in the original writings”, but that scarcely matters. That is not really a qualification of inerrancy, it is a lame attempt to add an air of rationality to what is a wholly ridiculous idea, nothing more.
The truth is that only man can be the plumb line for what is true. Not even God can be “inerrant” because how God is applied in man’s context will reveal to man how “inerrant” He is. God can only be revealed as true if man can observe this truth as being, actually, efficacious to the only thing which can have real, objective value: man’s SELF.
This is exactly why “inerrancy” never appears in scripture. It is a totally irrelevant concept, indefatigably meaningless. Glittering in its ridiculousness. The reason I decry ANY “truth” which man cannot reconcile is because anything that is TRUE outside of MAN’S context cannot really be true because there is no way to observe its truth. And if we cannot observe it is true, then there is no way to acknowledge if it is true or not. And further and again, truth must be measured against what is the only thing of objective value, which is : man. Man’s physical SELF is the root of truth. Any idea which does not reconcile to the context of man’s life, then, cannot possibly be true.
The bible’s truth is revealed in MAN. It does not get to be inerrant apart from this context. And because the bible must be contextualized in order to be true, it cannot possibly be inerrant.
It Wasn’t “Tone”, It Was Words: An apology for not affirming a human being
In the last Post thread James and I have been disagreeing pretty heavily over the existential nature of our universe, that is…was it “first cause/first principle” which “began” creation, or was it, as I suggest, God facilitating the SELF-creative process of the infinite fundamental and physical building blocks of what is “creation”–which I refer to as everything NOT God–in order that they may be the sole source of their own ability to be and exist and therefore act, and thus, not inexorably tying God Himself directly to Creation and its actions; which has massive and not good (for God, particularly, because it makes him a hypocrite, a worker of impeccable redundancy, and wholly unknowable by the very creation He seeks to rule) implications, not the least of which being that there can be no rational distinction between what is God and what is NOT God. In this instance, metaphysical truth is quite impossible to discern. In fact truth of any sort is quite perpetually elusive, it being a function of an existential reality wholly separate from what we as humans can know. For if ALL proceeds directly from God (the only other alternative being that it proceeded from “nothing”, which I argue and have argued is literally impossible in every single way: physical, metaphysical, theoretical, and logical) then there can be NO distinction between what is God and what is NOT God. Because God, being absolute, is boundless, and beyond abstraction or distinction of ANY sort on His own, and so whatever proceeds from THAT frame of reference can only be the exact SAME thing.
But I digress…as usual.
Anyway, in the course of our disagreement I referred to James as a “mystic”. I apologized on the thread, but I wanted to apologize to James again in a formal post. I let my emotions get the better of me, and I lobbed an unwarranted insult. Regardless of the differences James and I hold on these subjects, nor my opinions as to the nature of his ideas, I know that in his heart, based on all his comments and the things I’ve read of his, he is by no means a mystic. I may concede he has some mystic-like tendencies in the self-admitted paradoxical foundations of his assumptions…but that is MY opinion, and calling him a mystic proper implies that he acts in accordance with mystic ideas.
For the record, I don’t believe this for a second.
It was wrong of me to use my words and my site to insult him.
Now, I will often insult in a satirical way, such as when I skewer Dee and Deb over at Wartburg Watch for their hypocritical treatment of me, and Wade Burleson for his irrational doctrine, but this is meant as a communication tool; a literary technique to convey information in an entertaining way (and to vent without resorting to flagrant baseness). I love to write like this.
But this is not what I did with James. Calling him a mystic was a rank insult, and it was wrong. It was not a literary technique, and it was not productive to the conversation. It was an evil jab, sprung from an undisciplined “tongue”, and I regret it deeply.
Saying things like that is not what this site is about, and it helps absolutely NO one. And that is not what I’m about. I want to affirm people, not insult them. I love human beings, I don’t use them as a “thing” upon which I may vent frustration or exasperation; they are not a narcissistic extension of my own self-loathing (oh yes…I’ve known people like this). Sure, if I disagree with you, I have no compunction about telling you and telling you strongly; and you shall do the same to me. If that (having to defend our ideas in the face of strong disagreement) makes either one of us cry and get offended and soil our big boy/big girl pants, it’s time to quite the arena and go watch TV.
This is the real world of ideas, and passionately and vehemently is how adults speak. So, what I mean to say is that I don’t care about tone. But I DO so very much care about words; and my words were stray and stupid, and insults do not in ANY way comprise ANY part of my philosophical approach to life and ideas.
Idiots who have no argument insult. And I WAS the idiot.
I played the part rather well, didn’t I?
Sigh.
Sorry, James.
P.S. In light of my sin and mistake I have added a whole new category to this blog entitled: Apologies
For something tells me this will not be the last time I will have to do this.
This is a topic that is not new to my brain, but it isn’t that old, either. I suppose you could say that for…hmmm, maybe just the past several months I have been wrestling with the idea of existence, and just how we should define it. I have concluded that existence is more than simply what IS; for I submit that you cannot have an IS without that IS being qualified as actually existing. And so again, the question is: what is existence. How is it qualified or quantified…by what standard?
Now, what IS, in the traditional metaphysical explanation (if I have correctly understood it) is concluded by comparing the thing that IS to what IS NOT. However, by definition what is not is, well…nothing at all. Meaning that the line between self and “nothing” is the definition of existence. For example, you are here, and before you were born, you were not here…so your being here is a direct function of nothing. But this is impossible because nothing cannot actually have a presence. So then it is quite impossible to compare what IS to what IS NOT, because you cannot make any comparison at all, by definition, if you are comparing one thing to NO thing (or nothing).
So, again, how do you know what IS? You cannot see where it is and where it is not, because where it is not doesn’t EXIST, by definition…because NOwhere is the same thing as NOthing. In other words, existence cannot logically be defined by NEGATIVE existence. Existence, like so many things we assume are NOT, is in fact its own abstraction; and here is Argo’s Universal Truth Number Ten (I think…I’ve lost count; but I don’t believe in numbers anyway, 😉 LOL): Any abstraction is infinite.
So existence, being an infinite concept, cannot then be defined by a limitation. Another way of saying this is that existence cannot be a function of NO existence. It is the same argument against the notion of a non-abstract/non-theoretical actuality of space and time. Space cannot be a function of NO space, by definition; and time cannot be a function of NO time, by definition.
Existence, like space, actually, is merely the “place” where an object “is”. But the PLACE where the object is “not” is not NON existence, it is merely NOT the object. Same with space. Space is merely the “place” where an object is not observed. Space is a metaphysical placeholder, like zero is a mathematical one…and this is a truth in spite of all the crying and whining about how metaphysics has no place in physics). But that doesn’t make space a thing, it is merely the observation of NOT the object.
The object is either observed, or it is NOT. But NOT observing an object does not then create an object that you can call the “object of NOT the object”, thus turning nothing (the “place” where the object is not) into something. Any given object is in the location of ITSELF. If we observe a place where it is NOT, our observation of a LACK of the object, does not create an actuality of “space”. That is, observing where an object is NOT, does not make space, which is nothing by definition, into something.
The same is said of existence. Simply observing where an object is not, doesn’t create NON-existence, because non-existence is simply like the abstraction of “space”…it is nothing, by definition. Observing nothing does not make nothing, something.
And incidentally, this is a huge logical fallacy in the science of theoretical physics (and why I have a huge distrust of science and math, and consider them forms of “useful” Platonism; I’m not sure which is worse, the hypocrisy or the logical contradictions), and why they will never, ever discover the “answer to everything” using the special, general, and quantum theories they currently employ (why have we heard so little about the “God particle” that was recently discovered? It is because, I submit, that they don’t have the first clue as to what the fuck they are really dealing with). ALL of these theories are rooted in the very Platonist assumption that nothing can be something. Which is of course complete nonsense. Still, Nobel prize winning scientists concede it as axiomatic. These are the best and brightest at the moment, so…upon the rabbit trail of intellectual recalcitrance we continue for the time being.
And so the point is simply this: that the IS, if it cannot be confirmed as being as opposed to something ELSE that is also being–the operative word being BEING –then there is no way to recognize the thing that IS is actually an IS at all. For an IS can only be known according to what it is as opposed to what something else IS, and not the idea that IS is defined by the “space” around it…where it is NOT, because non-existence is not a place; is not real any more than nothing (space) is not real. The point I am trying to arrive at is this: that if there is only one “thing” (like God, for instance) which IS (the accepted Christian presumption being, I think–at least according to most ALL orthodox ideologies), then by what tool of logic or reason can you declare that God exists? If God is all there is before Creation–a singularity; a “vacuum of self”, then there is no real way to define Him as God. He is what He is.
Existence is a relative term which MUST assume a location of two or more actual selves, so that what one IS can clearly be observed via what (not where) one is NOT. If there is no other object occupying a place (of SELF), juxtaposed to God, then how is God able to define Himself as God, exactly? What can He see to know that He is God? There is, by definition, NOTHING for Him to observe. As such, He cannot possibly abstract–be aware of–even His own existence. For He, I submit, can no more know He exists as God than a human being without a single solitary sense can know that he/she exists. Put simply: existence without a “sense” (observation) of an OTHER, is impossible.
What I am trying to say is that existence, as an abstraction and as a logical concept, cannot function in a vacuum…and that is precisely what sole, lone SELF, is. A singular self is not existence, a self in a vacuum is not a self…a singular self is the very definition of the abstraction of NON existence. A singular self cannot possibly BE, because a singular self can exist NO where, and NO when, and have NO parts, and thus cannot be said to be all powerful, because how in the hell do you define what “all powerful” even means? All powerful to do what? There is nothing to do if YOU is all that IS. All powerful to create? Create what? There is nothing to create because YOU is the only thing that is. Create out of what? Yourself. Then you can only get yourself. And you can’t even BE if you is all there is, because YOU cannot be defined at all.
A singular self becomes a circular concept of redundancy and irrelevancy. God, as a singular self, existing alone, is redundant, and irrelevant, and there is no way to qualify or quantify His existence, period. How can God say He exists, and is all powerful, if there is literally nothing but him. Beyond Him, the utter void of dark nothingness, which isn’t even real. And besides, when we declare that beyond the infinite self is nothing, well…how can an infinite SELF be a function of NOT self? It is again, impossible. How can a singular, infinite, solitary self exist in “nothing”? How can it exist in a vacuum? Impossible.
And here we get down to the final abstraction: self. And this is the axiom of all axioms. Self does not exist if self is all there is. Sounds like a contradiction, but no. Ladies and gents, welcome to the true paradox of the universe. Because “self” cannot be a function of NOT self, it can only be a function of ANOTHER self. Self, then, is an abstraction which can never actually be realized because the existence of such a thing, a lone, singular “self”, is impossible to observe, even by that very SELF. Self is infinite, all alone…and as such, it is VALUELESS. Meaning, it can have NO attribute whatsoever by which it can be known or observed…not even by itself.
And so I tell you again, God is NOT God without Creation. Which means that God has NEVER existed alone. In order for God to truly be God, there must be a perpetual material which has existed for eternity, juxtaposed to God, so that He may be known as God, via the direct observation of what is NOT God, which again, cannot be empty space…because empty space does not exist.
And this may indeed sounds like apostasy…but I assure you it is not. You must understand that this is precisely what we must accept if we believe that God is actually God. It is the ONLY way to declare that God is actually the Creator and Sustainer of our existence…because to create and sustain, He needs to have someTHING by which to act UPON in order that He is truly creating and truly sustaining, something, as opposed to nothing. For this is the only rational metaphysic…that God creates and sustains out of something; and this something then must be existentially infinite, but relatively finite. Meaning, that it must co-exist with another SELF (the other self, being God and other selves as well). God, by bringing together this infinite material in a mutual but relative and relatively finite relationship, can be said then to TRULY create. Can be said to truly sustain. For there is no creation of anything out of nothing, but since creation and existence logically MUST be predicated on the perpetual and eternal and infinite relative relationship between two or more observable selves, we declare that God is the essence by which SELVES (objects) which are singularly infinite and dimensionless can interact so that they are relatively–to one another–finite (via movement). From this we shall have TRUE creation and TRUE existence. We have the axiom that existence MUST involve the relationship between observable selves.
So, self, as a singularity is infinite–and this is true–however, because it observes and thus relates to OTHERS, it CAN exist because it can be relatively finite. It can be a knowable, observable SELF…it can exist, because it can clearly be discerned from itself not by “space” or “non-existence”, but by another SELF.
And this is, incidentally, precisely why I believe that the God particle (the particle which gives mass) is truly the GOD particle. This particle fits all the criteria for the actuality of REAL God. It is infinite. It is dimensionless. It can only (like all infinite particles) be defined as ITSELF, and it is said to give “mass”, which is nothing more than the observable relative relationship between two infinite objects. And frankly, God MUST show up somewhere in the quantum paradigm, because it is full of infinite particles which have no “sides”, no “parts”, and if this is true, then relationship between such particles is quite impossible aside from some other thing which allows the breach of existential infinity and give it a value. An infinite particle, which is only itself, cannot possibly co-exist without someTHING, some other self, making it possible for this massless, dimensionless, infinite particle (called “bosons”, I think) to observe another infinite particle and thus become an observable SELF, juxtaposed to another SELF, and then interact with this other infinite particle…which has now, thanks to God (I submit) become relatively finite. Relationship is predicated upon the idea of FINITE existence, which can only be relative, and must somehow be provided.
Enter the particle of…well, “observation”. Enter the God particle. Enter God.
I suppose it would be beneficial for me to define just exactly what I mean by “observation”, for I do not mean observation, as in sight, as in “seeing”. That would obviously be much too narrow a definition for the kinds of particle phenomenon I am talking about.
No, what I mean by “observation”, is the ability of a given object to be in some manner effected (effected upon) by another object without the violation of the existential integrity of the object itself. Put simply, observation is interaction of some kind while retaining the whole of the SELF. For this is really all “sense” is…the affecting of a self by an other. This can more broadly be defined as any interaction which results in a change in the self which directly stems from the equal existence of an other. This change can be physical, as in a physical interaction (an exchange of the abstraction of “energy”, for example), or it can be metaphysical…the mere change in the status of a self from infinite, to relatively finite, due merely to the presence (again assume existential equality) of an other.
And this is where I propose the God “particle” enters the metaphysical picture. The God particle is He which gives a VALUE to SELF, by allowing an infinite self to interact relatively finitely with respect to another self. God takes the functional value of “infinite” (or “no definable value”), which the self amounts to in its singular state, and changes that value to ONE, by allowing the observation (as defined above) of other, thus creating the existential equality necessary in order for “mass” (in the physical sense”) to accumulate (electromagnetic relationship), and “self” (in the metaphysical sense) to become actual.
So, in this sense, God is in fact He which “creates”…meaning, He is what allows for the actual existence of self; an existence which can be qualified because SELF can now be defined because OTHER can be observed. Existence, then does not occur without God, even though the material of Creation, the infinite particles which are merely infinite, and thus valueless entities preceding the application of the God particle, are infinite, and thus have always BEEN. In a sense, they are uncreated at their root, they are merely IS. God takes a valueless IS and makes it a SELF, with a value of ONE. This has the immense benefit of maintaining a stark and and frank metaphysical and existential line between God and Creation, which must exist for God to not contradict Himself, and allows for the necessity then of utter free volition of all that is NOT God, with all actions being totally rooted in the object which acts at the very core; and yet still pronounces God the right and and appropriate Creator, without conceding that He is an absolute which cannot then, by definition, create anything but Himself (Argo’s Universal Rule Number Seven: Anything proceeding directly from an absolute IS the absolute).
Thus, it is God’s existence, equally with other infinite IS’s, which “creates”. And this is not God “allowing” creation to occur…for if it is said to be an allowing, then God ultimately is culpable for ALL actions of Creation, which leads us straight back to the contradictions of reformed theology. It is God’s root infinite Self…His existence, for lack of a better word, which enables Creation to engage itself, of its OWN ability. This is not allowing, because God cannot “allow” or “not allow” his own existence, which is the catalyst for the integration of the infinite particles of creation into measurable selves. A singular self, like God, cannot be held culpable for its own being as a CAUSE which makes everything a direct function of it. God cannot help but to exist as GOD any more than YOU can help to exist as YOU. Because the only alternative to God is to replace Him with “nothing”, which is impossible. God cannot replace Himself with nothing because He is infinite and nothing is not actually real. “Nothing” is a metaphysical place holder; like zero is a mathematical placeholder.
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Now, this entire post may look like a digression from the philosophical pilgrimage to destroy neo-reformed/Calvinist blunt-force dogma, but I submit it is extremely relevant. All the articles I write whereupon I get, like, zero comments and the stats drop to something approximating negative integers, are perhaps the most important ones to understanding the logical TRUTH behind all metaphysics, and really do provide the object-based (and thus REASON-based…and thus provable) rebuttal to Calvinist fatalistic determinism, which is fundamentally irrational at its root, and thus cannot compete with an argument which finds itself rooted in the axiom of actual, physical, human-being contextual existence. And so these long and confusing and tedious posts on reconciling the science of physics with NON-contradictory philosophical notions rooted in logic are the key, I propose, to developing a sound and reason-based metaphysical construct, which no longer relies on the idea that existence is somehow a function of some Platonic “form”; some external “law” of nature, or some other force beyond the scope of man’s cognitive and sensory apprehension. Indeed, my metaphysic is a complete 180 turn of phase from this Greek farce. My idea is rooted in the utterly logical and rational notion that existence itself is dependent on actual existential (and thus objective MORAL value) equality between everything that can be said to exist, including God. Meaning that man and God are of the exact same moral value…life is equal to life.
And this, you MUST understand is huge, because it is exactly what every Calvinist–indeed, every protestant, I submit–concedes as utterly beyond the scope of Christianity; is a flat out, rank heresy. To declare man as of equal worth as God is to, as Wade Burleson puts it, “elevate man to the level of God”.
And…well, yes, in some sense it truly does. It elevates the worth of man’s life and man’s SELF to that of his Creator, and indeed declares that at the root of man is in the singularity of infinite particle material which was NOT created by God, but has, instead, at its root, an UNCREATED self of its very own, and as such, cannot be declared of inferior material, because it is material that, like God, cannot be destroyed. This does not elevate it to the nature of God’s Self…meaning, it does not claim that it has the same “power” to act as God does, for indeed, God’s power is wholly different and a function of His unique SELF, just like Creation’s power is a function of its unique self.
But understand that this is the only logical explanation, if nothing else because someone HAS to at some point attempt to reconcile God as Creator with the fact that, a.) you cannot create something out of nothing; so in order for God to create, there must have been something there to create from; and b.) if God truly is the direct Creator of all that is; then man and the universe must have come from the “material” of Himself, and thus BE God, then, in accordance with my universal truth: anything which proceeds directly from an absolute IS the absolute. Which makes all of Creation, God. Which…is quite silly a notion, for this, again, makes God merely a cycle of irrelevancy. Not to mention it utterly destroys any concept whatsoever, not to mention morality itself.
By my perspective rips the assumptions from the tyrannical grip of the cold, dead-eyed, spiritualists and mystics who propagate this moral relativism by denying their authority structures in favor of knowable, provable, rational, observable, and physical TRUTH. It destroys their despotic leadership model of AUTHORITY = GOOD = TRUTH by relegating the notion of “authority” back to the ethereal fish bowl of abstractions where it belongs. Authority is no longer someTHING–like the “church” or the “pastor” or even “God”–or some other physical “entity” (and all of these, including God, are really abstractions if looked at literally…but that is fine; abstractions are not BAD…they are only bad when they replace the value of the individual SELF), but authority is rooted in that which can be said to have objective moral value. That is, the individual SELF. The SELF is the primary authority, and the only objective outworking of the abstraction. Which means it is the only legitimate outworking of “authority”, which means it is the only truly knowable/observable outworking of “authority”, which means it is the only morally GOOD outworking of the notion of “authority”. This means that SELF (not only YOURself, but other SELVES) are the root of objective moral good. Therefore, ANY one or anything which sets itself up against the individual SELF is a false authority; a liar, and a tyrant. There can be no real or valid authority claimed in service to anything other than the affirmation of the individual self to (and here it is) to OWN itself. The SELF, belongs first and foremost to ITSELF, and not to another. Any OTHER which claims ownership of the individual self sets itself up against the only thing which can be said to be objectively morally GOOD. And as such, this “authority” should be rejected.
And without their authority, the Calvinists are nothing more than troublemakers; outcast adolescents crying and throwing a tantrum because they can no longer compel people into the fires of their false gods. Without authority, they have nothing except their obvious lies, their unavoidable false doctrine, and their inexorable metaphysical madness.
IF life is truly GOOD, in other words, the Calvinists slip away into the quicksand of their “mystery”. This is why every doctrine…and I mean every doctrine of every neo-reformed/Calvinist manifesto is utterly designed to remove humanity from ITSELF. To declare humanity depraved and lost and wicked beyond recognition…beyond salvation, so that the ONLY salvation for the barbarian masses is the divinely called AUTHORITY of ecclesiastical hypertrophy mandated to headlock and burn and prod and cajole and bewitch all the laity into proper thought and behavior. This is why in the eyes of Calvinists, the only good human being is a dead human being. Preferably one who is only psychologically/spiritually dead, in order that he or she may be consistently fleeced in service to the body of Christ “collective”; but physically dead? If necessary. Death is the consciousness prime which rules the day, and any form of this divine Force will work for them if it means keeping the extremely lucrative “authority” business booming.
If God is existentially “better” than man, then the caste system rules the day. Pastoral authority is nothing more than a declaration that THEY are of greater value than you; they have a greater inherent right to EXIST than you do. You exist in service to THEM, because SOVEREIGNTY = ELECTION = CALLING = AUTHORITY (force) = GOOD = TRUTH. If they rule, then YOU die first when the dystopian society of their own making inevitably begins to crumble.
So, to be frankly base about it: spiritual “authority” is tied to being BETTER than you. Authority is nothing more than a claim to a greater right to EXIST, than you; of a greater and categorically higher moral WORTH than laity. God loves them more than he loves you because there is MORE of THEM to love…they have a greater cosmic/spiritual “footprint” than the laity. Since God by definition regards them more, then it is only logical to assume that there is more of them to regard. God “sees” them more than He sees you.
The right of authority is the right of OWNERSHIP rooted in the idea of caste; that Pastors are of a greater moral worth than laity. As such, they get to claim divine authority–which is absolute authority–over you.
My philosophy of the equality of existence rooted in the concept of the observation of OTHER in order that SELF can exist–and this axiom extended likewise to God Himself–denies any access to such tyrannical and evil doctrine. But…I cannot prove my philosophy rationally without engaging in the tedious work of dissecting the theories and assumptions of subatomic particle physics. Any truly moral philosophy which destroys the mystic caste systems of false and idolatrous religions must take into account the nature and movement of matter, of substance, of object physical existence. It is unavoidable. Any good and true metaphysic must start with an understanding of the nature of the physical…what is the root of what IS, and only from there can existence of anything, including and especially God and our relationship to Him, be properly understood.