All posts by Argo

Forgiveness is Good, But Not Having to Forgive is Better: Response to Oasis

Calvinism/Philosophy, Metaphysics

Oasis, a well-respected and well-liked commenter here posted a heartbreaking comment in the thread of the last post.  I have much to say about the things he/she shares with us, much more than appropriate for a mere comment.  Hence this article which includes my direct response to Oasis and also discusses in detail the philosophical reasons why neo-Calvinism, which is raging through the American church like an epidemic of Spanish flu, do not believe that abuse is real; why they do not concede that suffering of humanity ever, for any reason, is unwarranted, and thus deny that anyone can justly or reasonably claim to be a victim.

This outright denial of abuse and the legitimacy of claims thereof by its victims, in service to the “church” (the theo-marxist collective), is rooted in the  Reformed definition of the SELF of man…that is, how they define man metaphysically.  In short, they categorically despise human beings as individuals and declare that existence is the apogee of man’s “sin problem”.

The fact that you were born is the reason for your suffering…indeed, this is the root belief which under-girds their interpretation of abuse in the church.  Again, and in a nutshell, they basically deny it entirely.  There’s is no such thing.

Here’s why:

For one, the individual person, who is perennially and perpetually depraved, can only ever deserve suffering and torment, and that suffering is thus defined by the neo-Calvinist monster as JUSTICE…specifically, GOD’S justice, not abuse.  Similarly, because the human being is utterly depraved at the root metaphysic of SELF, abusive behavior is not a choice, but merely an extension of the evil which is human existence.  Therefore, an abuser cannot help his actions, because choice eludes him…for he is merely a “sinner saved (elected) by grace”; or, conversely, a sinner NOT saved (elected) by grace, which puts the “unsaved” (un-elected) child rapist abuser in the exact same moral category as the “unsaved” (un-elected) NON-rapist.  Good, and Sin and evil are purely a function of whether or not you win God’s arbitrary (and it MUST be arbitrary) election lottery, not a function of belief, choice, and action (the trifecta of human material existence…which they deny).  And so an abuser, saved or unsaved, cannot be “guilty” of sinning…or at least, not guilty in a way that demands justice, because he lacks choice.  And thus there is no moral culpability for his actions.  His morality is nothing more than a direct function his “election” status.

The point is that if they, that is, the church’s “authority”  think the fucking animal is “saved”, then he MUST be forgiven, even though his evil behavior may not change, because the sum and substance of his moral character is purely a function of his “election”, which remember, has nothing whatsoever to do with him actually being a good person or doing good things or making good choices….it is merely the arbitrary decision of a “sovereign” God.  Thus, because the abuser in the church is “good” by virtue of his “election” he cannot be judged for his sin, which Jesus came to wash away (which neo-Calvinist theology  makes nothing more than a euphemism for “excuse” and “ignore”, and this is entirely unforgivable) the abuser cannot be accused or “judged”.

And because the abused are at their metaphysical root evil incarnate (totally depraved), even if they are saved (because in Reformed theology man’s existential essence, his depravity, never changes)  they have no right to remonstrance or relief or justice; for there is no such thing as justice for those whose suffering can only result in a fuller understanding of just how fucking awful they are and how much God fucking hates their ever-loving guts.  Therefore, their suffering, which is ultimately at the hands of a “sovereign God”, because He is ultimately in control of all things, is always “good”, and never bad.  Which means that the vehicle by which that suffering is manifest can never be criticized or denounced as immoral, even if it happens to be in the form of child-rapist.  The vehicle for human suffering in whatever form it may take is merely God’s chosen means of destroying the SELF in service to His “truth”, which you will notice is always a direct function of some fucking collective.  In this case, the church.  (But it just as easily can be the “State”, or whatever.)  The abused must shut the hell up and accept the abuse, for to do otherwise constitutes an unjust attack upon God’s chosen earthly vessel for His “will”, and “truth”, and, most importantly, “authority”:  the Church.  Which owns you, because it is God to you, and thus will do with you what it wants, and you must remember that you are not you anyway, and so YOU have no moral grounds to resist the violation of your body, mind, or property.

Here is what Oasis wrote:

This abuser is someone who abused me when I was very young, and by the time I was ready to report him, the statute of limitations was on his side. There is nothing I can do now except warn others about him. One of the problems is, everyone who knows what he did is convinced that he’s no longer a danger. That is, everyone except me.

The things you describe in your numbered list are EXACTLY what is going on right now, storeinacooldryplace. But the abuser is not a member of the church (neither am I, anymore), which is an SBC church…nor is he even a professing Christian anymore. Not sure what the church has become on the inside. I am really confused about this whole thing and having a hard time concentrating.

Thank you for what you said, storeinacooldryplace. Sorry to be vague, but I still fear that when I speak, either people will not believe me, or they will not take me seriously. Which is what keeps happening.

By the way, I am with you about church, Lydia. If I ever step a foot inside another church building, my foot will burn right off.

Here is my response:

Oasis,

I agree completely with SCDP; and I echo Jason’s sentiments in his last comment.

And I also understand your desire to be vague. I don’t think you or anyone else would be surprised to know that those who take our concerns and our doctrinal challenges seriously are pretty much restricted to the faceless names we see on these blogs; the number of “Christians” I’ve run into in person who don’t think I’m full of shit I could count on the hand of the guy who had an accident with a lawnmower. That is the measure of the difficulty we face in confronting the deathly irrational assumptions which literally form the very foundation of the church. And the scary part is that when you confront people who lack a definition of humanity except “depravity’, you can never be completely sure that they will respect the sanctity of your person and property. Once humanity has be relegated by the operative philosophy to a place of blind worthlessness which must be compelled by force because it has no inherent line to truth…well, we are all expendable. Death is our greatest moral good, so…even the least imaginative among us can guess what happens to people when they fuck with those whose job (from God) it is to make sure you do what your told.

It took me three years before I would share my real name online because of the great evil I understood that an entity like Sovereign Grace Ministries can inflict upon its detractors. And will, and has, and does. They are no respecter of God’s children…and that is a scary thing indeed. For you are not crazy. Evil is terrifying because evil seeks only one thing: the death of men. All evil is rooted in the notion that SELF (the existential root of all people and God) is a lie. And you certainly understand how notice this notion forms the root of Calvinism and Protestantism in general..

But understand, when you rightly acknowledge your inherent moral worth and the categorical legitimacy of your SELF as God’s creation, entitled to moral and existential equivalency with both God (as His child) and man then you will be surprised at the floodgates of blessings you are entitled to and will receive when you ask God for them from this perspective. God WANTS you to be YOU, and YOU is supposed to be fun, and comfortable, and joyous; a life of pursuing SELF as GOOD, which means never apologizing or feeling guilty for pursuing your pleasures, your interests, without acquiescing to the lie that the collective (be it the state or the church or the authority-in-the-stead) has some inherent “god-given” right to be the benefactor of all your choices (I have an article on this very topic in the hopper as we speak.)

You don’t need to worry that pursuing SELF (which you MUST do anyway, when you logically examine the metaphysics) constitutes some kind of destructive or anti-other behavior. For when you function from the idea that man is GOOD, then you will automatically understand that pursuing your SELF in the interest of your life cannot constitute the violation of another human being. Indeed, it is the very fact that you understand and confess that your life is GOOD which is the source of your acceptance of the root good of others, and why they, like you, are legitimate SELVES, and entitled to unfettered pursuit of those SELVES.

Your life was meant to be a gift…and that has never changed. YOU are supposed to be YOU, forever, and being YOU should FEEL like a gift from God…a blessing. And when you acknowledge the perfect goodness of YOU AS YOU, as God has always intended, and has proclaimed in both the law and then again, definitively, in the human God, Jesus, then you understand that confronting abuse and restraining its perpetrators trumps forgiveness every time.

Forgiveness is good, but never having to forgive is even better. For when there is no violation of humanity, then there is no need for forgiveness.

Defusing Step Three of Rick Warren’s “Christian Recovery” Landmines

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics

Continuing where we left off in the last article on this subject, ‘The Eight ‘Christian Steps to Psychological Recovery…’, here we will take a brief look at step three of this metaphysical atrocity:

3.  Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.  “Happy are the meek” Matthew 5:5

Okay, let’s play a game…a variation of something I, and you, probably, played in the car as a child on the long drive to grandmother’s house.  The game was called “I spy”.

In this case, we will play “I spy the contradiction”.

Ready?

Go.

Too slow.  I’ve already got it. But of course you are at a distinct disadvantage.  I have in front of me all eight of Rick Warren’s disastrous steps to “recovery”, and, alas, all I have given you in this article is one.  No matter…I still will concede that your epistemology is far more relevant and efficacious than Rick Warren does, I’ll bet.

So after reading this point my  mind immediately protested.  I’m looking at step number one, which reads, in part:  “I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing.”  Now, juxtapose that thought, which I criticized in detail in my last post on this subject, with point number three, again:  “Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s control…” 

Now, here’s the problem.  If man is, by his very sinful nature (his categorical existential failure) unable to control his “tendency” (a bullshit term…again, if humanity cannot control a tendency then it isn’t a tendency it is an innate characteristic), then man has no appreciable “will”to commit to Christ.

Rick’s first point makes clear that it is impossible for you or me to commit our will to Christ because it explicitly describes humanity as utterly unable to act in service to the right/good thing, which naturally must include committing our lives and will to Christ.  That’s the whole fucking point of step one, right? You have no will of your own.  All your will is subjugated to your “tendency” to do the wrong thing.

You cannot control your tendency to do the wrong thing, therefore in every choice you make, you always choose evil, which again makes “tendency” a deceptive euphemism for never doing ANYTHING good at all, ever.  Thus, you cannot commit your life and will to Christ because this presupposes that you are able to choose freely (and adding the word “free” to either “will” or “choice” is a proper redundancy…for there is no such thing as will or choice which is not free) to do the right thing on your own, which point one clearly explains you are not.  Thus, how on earth can you choose to do the right thing and commit your life and will to Christ when choice is precluded by your infinitely sinful nature, which completely holds captive any “will” to do anything good at all, to the point where the “will” of man is an utterly irrational notion in the first place?  Man has no will to do good, which means he has no will at all, but is a slave to the absolute determining force of his metaphysical essence of depravity…yes, THAT is the whole motherfucking point.  Man’s “will” is always in service to sin.

This means that choice is an illusion…and if choice is an illusion then so is volition. For the volition of man cannot exist if it is bound to a metaphysical absolute of:  EVIL.  Man IS evil is the underlying assumption of all eight points of this list and likely of Rick Warren’s entire theology.  Since man is evil, everything man does or what he thinks, no matter what it may look like to us or how we may define it, IS evil.  Which makes the idea of man possessing an ability to choose between a good action, like committing one’s life to Christ, and an evil action, like rejecting Christ, completely false.

Thus, the poor victims of this kind of “counseling” are left to wallow in the metaphysical and epistemological wasteland, hemmed in on all sides by Rick Warren’s commands and counsel, and yet they are utterly unable to capitulate.  They understand that since they are the root of all evil, being evil itself incarnate, they can no more hope to employ Rick’s counseling tips than they can hope to cook their own head and then eat it for dinner.

Thus, the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions which are at the heart of this evil theology create in man a passive acceptance of the totality of his own utter moral AND existential failure.  Or better said:  creates in man an acceptance of the totality of his own utter moral failure because there is no distinction between his moral failure and his metaphysical (existential) failure.

Man’s only hope is for God’s mercy…for there is literally nothing he  can do to assuage his torment.  It is as a result of his root existence, and thus, he is helpless against the tide of destructive consequences which God and the universe afflict upon him as punishment for his very birth.  And since, again, it is God who is sovereign and thus God who is “justly” punishing him for his own immoral existence, how much mercy can the defunct currency of his hope buy him?

The answer is:  probably none at all.

Which is why teaching Christians that there is no such thing as anyone committing any injustice against them, no matter how seriously or completely they are physically and/or psychologically abused, tortured and exploited, because they are so evil and thus whatever suffering and abuse they endure is par for their existential course as well as the well-deserved punishment for having the motherfucking audacity to be born at all, is the most popular means of curtailing any resistance amongst the laity in today’s Christian church, and of building a following of completely complicit and self-surrendering financiers and laborers.

What the church almost without exception STILL teaches today is that man’s only hope of any kind of remediation for the abomination of his own individual existence is through integration into the mystic body collective, which derives all its value and worth from the proxies of the Divine, the ecclesiastical leadership, who represent God in all His relevant forms to the unwashed and unenlightened masses whom God has given these pastors and priests, who are “standing in God’s stead”, to “shepherd”.  And their reward for obeying God’s calling is all the fucking mutton they can eat.

And thus we arrive at the most ironical of terms found in Rick’s stupid list:  “consciously”.  “Consciously choose” he counsels us…and likely without the slightest awareness of just what a colossal boob he sounds like.  And probably nary a blush of shame at his irrational imperative.  Since man is unable to control his sin, because “sinful” is the moral absolute which defines ALL of man’s thoughts and actions (what Rick cutely calls the “tendency” to do the wrong thing), thus creating the absolute objective of man’s life:  to be evil, there is no such thing as choice, as I explained.

Aaaaaand the logical extension of this idea is that there can be no such thing as consciousness.  Man’s consciousness is rooted in his awareness of himSELF, as a distinct object from the rest of his material universe.  Thus, the fact that man can refer to himself as SELF, implies that man is able to make such a distinction in the first place, and the ability to make this distinction in TRUTH…that is, as a direct observation of his tangible, material, actual existence, is a function of that efficacious (right, proper, truthful) observation.

But for man’s observations to be efficacious requires man’s rational epistemology…that is, he must be able to truthfully know what he IS from what he IS NOT.  This is rooted in the ability to make an observable distinction in objects, including himself, which are a function of material reality, not “moral” reality, which isn’t “reality” at all, it is purely conceptual…a direct function of man’s cognition.  For material reality is morally neutral, which makes “good and evil” thus a conceptual duality which proceeds from man’s ability to see what he materially is, and to declare it actual and efficacious and truthful and relevant, and then cognitively generate a  moral paradigm designed to promote himself (his life) as an actual object which is rooted observable material existence.  This ability is the root of man’s consciousness.

Man’s consciousness thus is founded upon and is a direct function of  his morally innocent material SELF.  But the notion that man’s material reality is a slave and utterly subservient to his moral proclivity (his “evil nature”) means that man’s ability to perceive himself as a material actuality (a SELF) is compromised by his abstract, conceptual moral failure.  Therefore, what man observes is no longer a function of a material context (flesh and blood life) but is a function instead of moral insufficiency.  That is to say, of the conceptual abstraction:  evil.

And if man cannot observe himself as a material SELF, but instead he observes himself from a place of absolute evil…then what we are arguing is that the moral paradigm (somehow, and irrationally) precedes the material SELF of man.  The absolute of evil is the place from which the material man, himSELF, is derived. Which makes, by definition, the idea of an actual, material SELF a total lie, being nothing but a direct function of man’s absolute evil nature, which therefore taints his entire epistemology.  His epistemology can never lead him to a place where he is able to recognize himself as an agent/object distinct from “others” because his epistemology is utterly bound in the moral concept of EVIL.  And if man’s entire concept of SELF is nothing more than a direct function of his absolute evil existential essence, then he can possess no efficacious (practical or functional or relevant) consciousness.  Consciousness itself is not a function of “man” as a flesh and blood agent, but is a direct function of his absolute evil; his moral failure, which again must precede material existence.  Thus, no matter what man thinks or believes, it is always and automatically evil.  Which means that man’s “consciousness” lacks any rational definition.  Consciousness itself is merely a direct function of man’s evil essence.  Consciousness, like body, and spirit, and mind and heart and choice and desire and belief etc., etc. is simply:  evil.  Period.

Which means that man cannot “consciously choose” to do anything.  Man can only act as a direct function of his absolute and inexorable sin nature, which can observe NOTHING outside itself, because it is absolute, and never mitigated by a rational and efficacious ability to observe any material SELF from NOT SELF, thus making consciousness impossible.

Therefore, point number three of Rick Warren’s steps to “recovery” is nothing more than a self-contradicting, impossible travesty of evil thinking and madness under the guise of compassion and rational consistency.  It is logic being burned at the stake of mystic tyranny.

 

Obeying the Bible or the Law is a Meaningless Objective…Being a Human Being Automatically Accomplishes It

Calvinism/Philosophy

“‘”The Bible gets to be true, and specially so, because it utterly affirms the ultimate standard of TRUTH, recognizing it absolutely, beyond any other work ever written. And that standard, again, is man’s LIFE. YOU are the reason for the Bible, which means that it serves YOU, YOU do not serve it.” From Argo’s last post.

Argo, how/when did you realize this? If you wrote about it already, sorry, I forgot or missed it. It is a huge shift, break-away. What’s first required is not a knowledge of Greek or Hebrew but a knowledge of what love is.'”

A Mom,

It takes nothing but pure reason, to be honest. Without man, of what relevance is the Bible? None. Without man’s life, of what efficacious meaning is the Bible? None. Without man, can the Bible even exist at all as a philosophical statement given TO man? No.

By the way, in my debate with Paul and Alex over on http://www.paulspassingthoughts, in the comments thread of the article in linked to in my post two back, neither one of them answered these questions.  I offered the contradictory thinking in their argument to them for review, expecting an answer, for I consider them noble men:

If man’s life is the necessary prerequisite for the Bible having any relevant meaning (or existing at all), how can it be the standard of truth for man?  Would it not seem that man is the standard of its truth, since it is only true within the context of man?

Again, they never directly addressed the blazing contradiction.  Thus the subsequent frustrated tone of my last few posts here on this blog. It takes dialog to change minds, but some people would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than see it to its destination.  And how can there be any confronting of tyranny when we will not allow reason to guide us safely to the landing strip?  It makes everything a colossal waste of time.

The reason they did not answer seems obvious, and the fact that it seems so obvious is mostly why it is so depressing and disappointing:  The questions and answers completely dismantle their assertion that the Bible is the standard of truth.  But they would not answer, I suspect, because to answer would equal a concession.  Thus, it seems to me as though everyone wants to run away in the face of a rational argument that they cannot answer because they think it is more noble to not lose a debate than to concede a rational philosophy that won’t ultimately dissolve into tyranny.

And why shouldn’t this demoralize all of us?  Holding to ideas that WILL destroy human life is preferred to losing a short war of words? I…just don’t understand this.

And if I sound bitter, I am.  Why debate at all if you are unwilling to capitulate when confronted with a better argument?  If you aren’t willing to change your mind in the face of rational ideas, then you are an ideologue, not a thinker or a seeker of truth.  And we already have a shitload of ideologues running things.  We do not need any more.

Anyway..

The Bible is only true after man’s context–after his LIFE–is already established. This means that the Bible simply cannot be the standard of truth; man’s life must be the standard. The Bible serves man, not the other way around.  Anyone who disagrees with this is forced to explain how the frame of reference by which anything can be called true is not, in fact, necessary to the establishing of truth.

I assure you, this cannot be done.

The same argument can be used for the Law.  Without man’s life, establishing the standard of GOOD (morality)…that is, the Law, is impossible.  Like the Bible, without man’s life, the Law is meaningless, irrelevant, and non-existent. Therefore, the Law serves man, not the other way around. The Law is only efficacious when it is condemning action by its declaration of the moral and truthful integrity of man’s life.  That is, it can only condemn those who deny that mans life is the standard of GOOD…and actually, it is not really the law which condemns, it is…well, we’ll get to that.

The Law cannot provide righteousness to human beings who already possess it by nature of their very existence, and are “walking it out” in an efficacious way by believing that they are, in fact, legitimate self-aware agents with a legitimate epistemology operating thus according to legitimate and causal volition (choices which actually pursue and affirm the SELF).

To say that we have to keep the Law in order to be good is not only a false gospel (as Paul Dohse rightfully declares…and this should lead him to the logical conclusion that keeping the Bible then is likewise a false gospel), but it is a totally irrational claim. Obedience to the Law is irrelevant to either morality or truth. Obedience to the law can have no efficacious and thus no rationally definable purpose…thus, it cannot be a moral objective at all.  The only time the Law is relevant and efficacious is when people are disobedient to it…because disobedience signifies that they are acting upon the false assumption that the standard of good is in fact something else outside of man’s life.  And thus it isn’t the Law which ultimately condemns them, but the disregard for the standard of good (and truth) which condemns them; and a disregard for the standard which declares what is good and therefore what is not means that man must operate from a place irrelevance…which is functionally NOTHING.  (More on this later.)

Obedience to a Law that is given to simply affirm that man gets to BE himself makes obedience to the Law, itself, superfluous.  Being alive as an individual SELF is the sum and substance of “obeying” the law (which is why humanity was never supposed to have a Law in the first place). Which means as long as you accept and believe that YOU are the standard of GOOD and TRUTH, that YOU get to be YOU, always and eternally, and that YOU then is GOOD and TRUE, and thus understand that the only immoral act is the denial and violation of SELF, which by logical extension must include all OTHER selves we observe to be our moral and truthful equals (other people and God), then you are perfect and perfectly true and perfectly good. There is no other thing or rule or tradition or habit or “way of life” you need to be absorbed by in order to be perfect before God.

There is no flag you must salute, no “body” or collective into which you must integrate…no hair style you must keep, style of dress you must wrap yourself in, job you must have, income you must make, “bad words” you must not use, Bible studies you must attend, pastors you must obey, ways you must spend your time or your money.  All of those things serve your inherent right to be YOU, YOU do not serve them.

Therefore, obeying the law means nothing except if we decide that the law is the standard of good outside of us, and in that case what obeying the law means is something very bad and very destructive. Because if that’s what we think, then good is good regardless of man’s life…whether he is or not.  Which makes man’s life irrelevant if we decide that man is not good or truth’s standard. And if man’s life is irrelevant then it lacks a rational definition.  Which makes man’s life equal to zero…or, speaking metaphysically, nothing.  Thus, making life’s objective that of law-keeping (obedience to the law), or Bible-keeping (obedience to the truth) MUST demand man’s death.  For the absence of man is the most rational conclusion of conceding that good and truth is  OUTSIDE of man’s life.  If man’s life is functionally nothing, then death is the most logical and legitimate form obedience to standards of truth and good outside of it.

Finally, I submit that God’s truth never ultimately depends on blind faith or mysticism, but it can be discerned by pure reason.

If Man is not the Standard of Truth, Then He NEVER Gets to Say What’s True: Response to Commenter Lydia

Calvinism/Philosophy

I got a comment from astute commenter Lydia this morning on the thread of the last post: “No! The Bible is Not the Standard of Truth”

She wrote:

I am just not up to a logical or philosophical discussion on the bible as the basis for truth. One reason is because I have been reading the court filing on the Doug Phillips lawsuit. The bible was Doug’s standard for truth. It is John Piper’s standard for truth. It was Calvin’s standard for truth…….and so on.

What is wrong with this picture?

Let’s pretend we grew up in an Orwellian society where the bible did not exist. It was out of print and there are never going to be more copies. How would anyone in that society know truth?

Let’s start there for a change…..

And this from someone who has tremendous respect for the bible. I just view it differently. If we make it the standard for truth then it simply becomes a fight concerning interpretation.

But what if we do not start there?

 

Please examine Lydia’s first paragraph. She makes an excellent, excellent point.

I responded to this statement in particular: (DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting that Lydia necessarily agrees with my response, or has drawn the same conclusion as I have.)

“If we make it the standard for truth then it simply becomes a fight concerning interpretation.”

And of course this is exactly right. But they do not see it that way. They are convinced that there is some kind of absolute interpretation that simply has to be discovered. It’s like the laws of physics…they are not constructs from man’s mind, they are actual entities that man searches for and finds.

But this presents another logical contradiction for them, on top of two insurmountable ones already. It is this: If man discovers the standard of absolute truth OUTSIDE himself (be it the “true” biblical interpretation, or the “natural laws which govern”) then he must concede that HE and his own conscious frame of reference is wholly irrelevant to truth.

And this is where I usually loose them.

IF man’s conscious context of conscious SELF is irrelevant to truth, then how can man claim to know truth? Man’s conscious observations of himself and his environment have nothing to do with declaring or understanding truth whatsoever…because HE is not the standard of truth, something NOT HIM is the standard. So man can never be sure that he possesses or apprehends truth because everything about him, including his mind and thoughts, is wholly irrelevant to truth…again because the standard of truth–that which decides what is true or not, good or not–is NOT him. So man NEVER gets to say what truth is or is not because HE is not the standard. It’s neither his fucking job nor his prerogative.

The standard tells HIM what is truth or not, good or not, but man can make no claim to even apprehend what the standard tells him because HE does not get to decide because his decision making process, which is inexorably tied to his own “rational” interpretation, NOT the standard, therefore possesses no rational means to either agree or disagree with the standard. It is absolutely irrelevant, and thus useless. The standard gets to decide. Not him. So it doesn’t matter whether man agrees with what he thinks the standard says is true or not…what his mind and senses and consciousness tell him is again, irrelevant. HIS MIND is not able to claim truth because his mind is NOT THE STANDARD.

I don’t know why it is so hard to get this across to people…people simply have denied that their conscious observations are efficacious at all. They are convinced that something “greater” than them must BE them for them. Not simply inform them (because to be informed means that you possess an efficacious epistemology

And while I love Paul, and admire him, Biblicists like him are determinists at their root. And they do not see it. They think they have the “right” interpretation…all while declaring that man cannot possess the efficacious ability to even declare truth in the first place because man, not being the standard of truth, doesn’t EVER get to say (again, not his fucking job). The standard ALWAYS says what truth is, and man, if he is not the standard, does not get to say it. He can try, but if someone comes along who disagrees with him, he has no rational or objective means to deny their assertions because he has conceded the exact same premise: whatever man says or doesn’t say is irrelevant. Truth is determined as true OUTSIDE of him and his mind. Thus, it really will revert back to the same old method of compelling human outcomes: violence.

It boils down to mysticism and contradictory thinking again and again and again.

And that is why I have forsaken the TTANC conference this year…you’ll have a plethora of teachers…all of them, who have decided that man’s conscious existence is not necessary to truth.

Which makes truth a function of something…unconscious. And how is that perspective rationally defensible?

It isn’t.

No! The Bible is NOT the Standard of Truth: A response to Paul Dohse

Calvinism/Philosophy

Yesterday I was reading Paul Dohse’s article on his blog entitled “Romans Series Interlude:  Predestination, a Potters House Journey:  Part 2“.  In that article he made this very startling statement:

“The Scriptures are the standard of truth taught by teachers and confirmed by the saints…”

Now, I say “startling” because the theological/philosophical implications of such a declaration are so massive that if Paul means this as strictly and literally as it sounds,  then he has made his entire anti-Calvinist argument moot.  And that means that everything he writes and everything he thinks and everything he believes with respect to Calvinism being a false gospel is irrelevant. If he truly believes that the standard of Truth is an edict outside of man’s life then he has ceded the entire Calvinist argument, replacing one false gospel with another.

The truth is there is absolutely no rational argument for any standard of Truth outside of man’s life. Period.  Full stop.  There is no logical defense…such a notion is pure mysticism, and demands that man sacrifice what he IS (his life and the context of his SELF) for that which he is NOT (i.e. a standard of Truth OUTSIDE of his life).  This is the singular premise which forms the foundation of every cult of death, be it Communism (or other sundry forms of economic collectivism), Calvinism, monarchism, tribalism, racism, etc., etc.

This is why I am concerned that Paul would make such an egregious statement.  Indeed, if Paul really believes that the efficacious existence (truth) of ALL things must be vetted by the Bible, then all he has done is replaced “law” with “Bible”.  He rails against the Calvinists for demanding that the keeping of the law is the means of justification, while at the same time ceding the philosophical assumption which under-girds such an idea:  Truth is outside of man.  He replaces “law” with “Bible”.  How do you know if you are TRUE?  (And the flip side of that is GOOD.)  Your truth and good are a direct function of you integrating yourself into the commands of the “standard of Truth”, the Bible.

Bible-keeping is Paul’s law-keeping.  And the rest of his argument is meaningless.

The Calvinists win.

And this is why Calvinism lives on like so many cockroaches no matter how much ordinance is thrown at it.  Because the critics always start with the same fucking assumptions.  And when you concede their fundamental assumptions, it is impossible to deny their right to proclaim God’s will.  The argument dissolves as it always does, over and over again, into a fight about which external standard (that does not include man) is the right one, and who gets to say?

The most functional component of that fight  being the “who gets to say?”.  Paul’s argument that the Bible is the standard of truth becomes, no matter how he may try to deny it, merely the shifting of absolute power (over the masses) from one philosopher king to the next.  Whoever claims to have the sage wisdom and divine understanding of the “standard of truth” outside of man gets to rule.  Paul declares the standard of truth is the Bible, and he is its priest.  The Calvinists declare the exact same thing, except they argue that all that is required is law keeping while Paul seems to think that Bible-keeping is necessary.

Who is right?

Scoff!  Like it matters!  The point is that YOU, and YOUR LIFE, is NOT the standard!  So who gives a fuck what the standard is?  It all means the same thing:  man’s DEATH is is required in order for him to be GOOD and TRUE.  Because GOOD and TRUTH as a matter of his root existential being are outside of him.  The only way he can make himself good and true is to sacrifice himself in service to that truth which does not naturally involve or include him. So whether your sacrifice comes in the form of being lined up against a wall and machine gunned, or denying your rational brain in order to have “faith” in and utterly obey the “party”, or the “body of believers”, or the “bible”, or the “authorities”, or the “state”, or “tribe”, or “nation”, or whatever, it’s all the same:  the more you are dead, either literally or figurative (literally, however, is always the logical conclusion…hence the notion of hell.  If you have no rational definition of YOU, then YOU cannot be saved.  You have condemned yourself by your irrational beliefs)…the more you are dead, the more “truth” abounds in the world.

That’s what Paul is arguing, whether he knows it or not.

*

Thus, your metaphysic is that of UNTRUTH, which means that you lack the epistemological means to apprehend what is true.  And viola!!  Meet the new Priest, who’s mandate it is to force you into right thinking and behavior, in sacrificial service to the standard of Truth.  This means that the point of your life is DEATH.  YOU are not the standard of truth.  Therefore, truth is a function of how fully you integrate yourself into the standard which is outside of you.  The logical conclusion of this thinking is obvious:  the elimination of you in service to the absolute truth of the standard is the very POINT of your existence.  The absence of YOU in sacrifice to the external standard is the only purpose of your LIFE.  The less of you there is, the more the standard is proved to be, in fact, the absolute standard.  Therefore, your DEATH, the death of the individual SELF, is the greatest moral good.

One question I have for Paul:  How exactly can the Bible be true without man?  Meaning, without man’s life, the Bible is utterly irrelevant.  Therefore, man’s life, it would seem, is the source of the Bible’s truth, not the other way around.  How is it that that which cannot be true at all, nor even exist, without FIRST man’s life to give it any relevant meaning all of a sudden gets to be the standard of Truth for man?

That is as backwards and contradictory an idea as any I’ve heard since I started my crusade against false and evil ideologies which seek to proclaim that the death of man is the point of his life…a wholly irrational and contradictory notion.  Utter bullshit from back to front.

This is a comment I left for Paul on that post of his:

“Without man’s life, the Bible does not exist, and it certainly does not have any relevance.  So how on earth can it be the standard of Truth?

Man’s life is the prerequisite for the bible being true.  That makes man’s life the standard, not the Bible.  You cannot say that the bible needs man to be true (not the other way around) and then say the Bible is the standard of Truth.  That’s a tremendous contradiction.

If you make the bible the standard of truth then all you’ve done is replaced “law” with “bible”.  Bible-keeping, like law-keeping, is the means of justification.

Seems like a lateral move.”

Paul replied to me:

“Argo,

Justification has no law.  The Bible informs us of that.  If not for the Bible, we wouldn’t know that there is no law in justification.  So, following the Bible instruction in sanctification cannot be a lateral move back to justification”

To which I replied:

“Paul,

It is a lateral move if we follow the Bible instruction because it is the standard of truth.  We do not follow the Bible because it affirms the right of man to his own existence, but merely because it says so.  That is what is meant when you say the bible is the standard of truth:  nothing is true OR good unless the bible says so.  That puts truth outside of man, and that is the same thing as law-keeping.

But you still did not answer my question.  How can the Bible be the standard of truth when it needs man’s life to be true (and even to exist in the first place)?

Your answer has profound implications.  If you don’t carefully think about what you are saying, you will have ceded your argument to the very people you claim preach a false gospel.  And thus you will have destroyed all your work.  It will have been for nothing.”

Now, Paul’s response is telling, and gives me hope that he doesn’t really understand what he is saying when he declares that the Bible is the standard of truth…that is, he doesn’t understand the massive implications such a statement has.  He is arguing that because the Bible happens to be true (for the sake of argument…understanding that it is possible that it is not always true, because it doesn’t have to be), it is the STANDARD of truth.  But being true doesn’t make something a STANDARD.  A cookbook is true.  Meaning that if it is followed correctly, you’ll get a lemon sponge cake instead of a coffee table.  That doesn’t make a cookbook the standard of truth, it just means that if you follow it properly you will realize your objective:  getting a cake instead of a coffee table.

Why is this good?

Because YOU WANT a cake, not a coffee table.  YOUR life…your desires, your existence has dictated the truth of the cookbook.  If YOU want a coffee table, you understand correctly that the cookbook is no longer true; because it can’t give YOU what YOU want.  The cookbook doesn’t get to call you evil because you want a coffee table; it doesn’t get to say you are wrong because you aren’t interested in the cake.  The cookbook does not tell you what you want or what you are.  The cookbook does not give you meaning, you, YOUR life, gives IT meaning.  The cookbook is created in order to serve what you want and are, which exists already…as a prerequisite for it being true.  That means YOUR LIFE is the standard of the cookbook’s truth.

The same is true for the bible, but with a different focus:  philosophy for living; for existence.  If you follow the bible, which is given for you, in YOUR context (LIFE), then you will get what you want and should want, efficaciously and rationally speaking, above all else:  your LIFE; ownership of your SELF, your existence.  The Bible doesn’t get to give man meaning…man gives IT meaning.  Man’s life is the only context wherein the Bible has any relevance whatsoever.  That makes the Bible a servant of man’s LIFE, not the other way around.  Man’s life makes it true, and not the other way around.  Man’s life then is the Standard of Truth, NOT the Bible.

The bible was given for man to serve his life…to serve what he wants and desire and IS, which existed already, before the bible could be given, could be created, and could be proclaimed as true, before even Christ existed.  That means man’s LIFE is the standard of the Bible’s truth; man’s life, and get ready to cry heretic, is the standard of Christ’s Truth.  Man gives meaning and relevancy to the Christ, not the other way around.  As we affirm Christ, we uttery affirm ourSELVES, and that is the point of the gospel.  Jesus came to show, as God in human flesh, the ultimate source of TRUTH was not the law, but human LIFE.  That LIFE was the context by which anything had any meaning at all, even God has no meaning outside of the context of man’s life.  Man’s life is more important that law-keeping.  That was the message.  The only law then, is the law of love. The love of Self which logically demands the love of God and Others.  

The Bible gets to be true, and specially so, because it utterly affirms the ultimate standard of TRUTH, recognizing it absolutely, beyond any other work ever written.  And that standard, again, is man’s LIFE.  YOU are the reason for the Bible, which means that it serves YOU, YOU do not serve it.  

You always get to be you…eternally, and forever, affirming, promoting and perpetuating your SELF, and your comfort, peace, prosperity, whims, fancies, work, etc., etc.  The only law, again, is the law of love, which says that LIFE is the standard of truth.  The only immoral act then is violating LIFE.  There is no standard of truth found in the Bible.  The Bible does not enslave men to an edict outside of him, like every other evil and despotic ideology.  The Bible is meant to proclaim the right of man to own himSELF, because SELF is the inexorable root of everything in the universe.

The Eight “Christian” Steps to Psychological Recovery are Landmines Best Sidestepped

Calvinism/Philosophy, Metaphysics

In this post I will offer a critique of Rick Warren’s “8 Steps to Recovery”, which I mentioned in my last post.  As I stated, these steps were part of a brochure I stumbled upon the other day concerning a program being offered at a local Methodist church where people of the community are invited to attend group “therapy” sessions, courtesy of some truly abominable theological/philosophical assumptions.  Assumptions which, rather than offering the freedom which Jesus spoke of, which is “free(dom) indeed”, would see men and women inexorably bound to their struggles, without hope or light or help, relying only upon the plethora of logical dilemmas of wholly destructive ideas which ultimately serve nothing more than the collectivist power structure of pretty much ALL of “orthodox” Protestantism.  Which, incidentally, inherited its wicked Platonist philosophy from its Catholic parents.  Which means that the apple indeed did not fall far from the tree.  Truth be told, the apple never fell off the tree at all.  For all of the whole bloody spectacle, the Reformation did nothing to offer any markedly different interpretive approach to Christianity and life in general than did the Catholic heresy.  Both operate under the root doctrinal assumption that the DEATH of man, and the notion of a SELF which is NOT (meaning, you must sacrifice to God the idea that you even exist at all, but are nothing more than some functional extension of God’s all-determining power) is the key to holy living and “righteousness”.

Well, sure.  If man is destroyed, then he can’t do anything wrong.  Makes pretty good fucking sense to me.

Anyway, this impossible notion, unfounded and wholly indefensible (which is why faith is utterly blind in Christianity today…there is no one there to see anything, by doctrinal definition), is also the key to “recovery”, as expressed by Rick Warren’s eight step program.

Keeping this in mind–that is, the idea that YOU never get to be YOU according to the theology–here are the eight steps stripped bare of their frilly dress and farcical compassion:

(NOTE:  As requested by commenter Bridget, I have included the meaningless scripture verses (no disrespect to Bridget).  However, I will not comment upon them in the post…the ploy of the proof-text being far too obvious to warrant any criticism except to say what I’ve already said:  they do nothing to support the point in question, but are pure deception, being wholly without context because they have been stripped from the overall body of work as a limb is torn from the tortured by the torturer.  As always, feel free to discuss them in the comments section.  I appreciate the commentary from and perspectives of my readers immensely!)

*

*  REALIZE I’m not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.
“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.” Matthew 5:3

“Realize I’m not God.” 

The implicit assumption is that because you are not God, you have no power to do…well, anything at all.  Since God is wholly in control of every event, thought, and action, man’s existence is irrelevant.  This is why, if you are Reformed, even being a “believer” is an exercise in futility.  YOU cannot be saved because YOU don’t even have the power to freely choose to accept Christ.  YOU are an extension of God’s sovereign will, nothing more.  Ultimately then, whether you do good or evil is of no matter at all, for the notions of “evil” and “good” are well beyond your pay grade, and are qualifications reserved only for God, which your total depravity qua your existence separates you from completely.  Indeed, the practical intellectual application of Reformed theology is nothing more than constantly inventing new and creative ways to equivocate the massive logical fallacies involved in the contradictions of a sovereign God who is also somehow absolved from sin; and man who exists, but in light of God’s absolute sovereignty, cannot think or act autonomously and thus has no rational definition of SELF.

The reason Reformed/neo-Calvinist churches are so creative in their deception and propaganda, and rely more upon histrionics and the seasoned lure and saturating bias  of “traditional values”, is because their theology runs headlong into God’s determinism at every doctrinal turn; it is why the objective of these messages is emotionalism and subjective “spiritual” experience.   It is also why Christianity always, as even a cursory glance at history reveals, dissolves into disputes over who has the right to own man; that is, who has the right to rule absolutely the collective which exists to serve its very human authorities.  Since humanity lacks any efficacious definition of SELF, and since whatever happens, according to the doctrine of the preeminence of absolute divine Will, MUST be what God wanted to happen, human beings are little more than a means to an end.  That end, of course, being the appetite of the ruling ecclesiastical class.  Nowhere is this seen to a greater extent than in the current American neo-Calvinist movement, where stories of abuse, blackmail, oppression, threatening, stalking, violence, discrimination and vitriolic bigotry seem to empty the spools of ticker tape.  Even worse, there are now on most Sundays, almost ubiquitously heard, outright and blatant demands that congregations and even the culture at large submit to the “authority” of those “leaders” whom God has “called”.

This is nothing more than the message of theo-marxism, where all individual value is a direct function of the integration into the collective, which is controlled absolutely by the senior pastor.  That is, HE is your proxy before God, and he is God’s proxy before you.

“I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.”

Sigh.  The intellectual sloth which passes for heavenly “wisdom” in the Reformed church is downright embarrassing.  I am actually ashamed of my race (human) when I see rank nonsense like this passed off without a blush of shame.

By definition, if one is UNABLE to control a specific behavior, then it isn’t a “tendency”.  It is either a product of instinctive nature, or it is a physiological process which is exclusive of cognition altogether, like growing hair or digesting food.  Further, if, as the Reformists would have you believe, everyone has an equal “tendency to do the wrong thing”, then you cannot possibly define that rationally as a “tendency”.

It isn’t tendency, it is a behavioral reference point.  “Tendency” would be a deviation in one direction or the other from the median reference.  Using “tendency” in this way is like saying that people with working eyeballs have a tendency to see, while people who are blind have a tendency not to see (where the proper use of the word “tendency” in this example would read:  Bob has a tendency not to see red lights, which is why the flaky git no longer has a license).

Individuals have tendencies.  The human race has characteristics.  And make no mistake, Reformed theology and neo-Calvinism do not recognize the legitimacy of individual existence.  When they speak of “sinful tendencies” they are speaking of the human race as a whole; which means depravity is not a tendency, it is an inexorable characteristic of ALL mankind.

So what does “I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable” even mean?

It means nothing.

It is assholery couched in euphemistic terms in order to compel agreement and behavior via deception.   Warren’s declaration that we “cannot help our tendency to do the wrong thing” is an appeal to the lie of Total Depravity.  The reason you cannot help your “tendency” to do the wrong thing is because you have no control because YOU are an illusion (again, you are either a function of your absolute depravity or you are a function of God’s sovereign Will…both of which are a function of God’s divine determinism).  Thus, your situation isn’t a choice, or due to any specific cognition or behavior that YOU engaged in, because YOU don’t actually exist as a volitional agent.  If you are in your struggles as merely a matter of determinist course, then obviously your “life” is unmanageable.  There isn’t fuck all you can do to change your circumstance because there is NO YOU; and thus, no possible way for you to manage anything.

And this disaster of a point of “recovery” is the cornerstone of the rest of the list.  And it motherfucking shows.  The salient meaning of what follows this first point is:  cross your fingers and hope God heals you; but if you hope for healing, then you have denied the “indisputable truth” that God is “in control” of all things and uses them for good.

Of course what they never mention is that that this “good” in no way involves you.  Your misery is the vehicle for the “good”, and thus, to hope for healing makes you a usurper of God’s perfect will.

Get behind the fucking “recovery” list, Satan.  That’s the message.

*

*  EARNESTLY believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.
“Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

“EARNESTLY believe that God exists, that I matter to Him…”

The Reformed/Calvinist theology upon which this list is based utterly refutes these two claims.  Man has no efficacious/rational definition of himSELF, therefore he cannot possibly have one for God.  Man’s mind is utterly captive to the determinist forces of either depravity or God’s will, and so man’s assumption that he is somehow an autonomous agent capable of having distinctive thoughts, beliefs, opinions, ideas, etc. is total bullshit.  There is NO such thing as choice, is the real message, and this is due to man’s epistemological failure as a direct extension of his nebulous metaphysic.   Indeed, this is the foundational epistemological premise–that man cannot know anything because he is nothing–which under-girds ALL of Protestant orthodoxy.  And this being the case, man cannot believe God exists, nor that he matters to Him.  Further, the third claim, that “God has the power to heal me”, also cannot be known with any degree of certainty.  Man’s mind is as totally depraved/enslaved to God’s will as his body, so he cannot know anything, by definition.  There is no HE to know, because man has no rational metaphysic.

“…and that He has the power to help me recover.”

Note the implicit assumption:  God CAN heal, but there is no guarantee He will.  And the reason there is no guarantee he will is due to the fact that Reformed/Calvinist theology cannot rationally claim that human suffering is a BAD thing, and this is because human life–human existence–is decidedly evil.  Understand, saved or unsaved, according to the theology, man is a total metaphysical disgrace.  ANY good God does for you or through you is always and ever in SPITE of you, never because you. Thus, and again, any suffering or torment or misery you endure is by default deserved; so there is little if any reason to hope God will heal you.  For to heal you, as I said in my last post, makes God a hypocrite.  Since there is no such thing as any suffering of man which is not a direct result of the sin of his categorical existence (“original sin”, “fall of man”, neither phrase of which exists in the Bible, by the way), God healing you in order to make you comfortable and happy presents Him with an insurmountable moral dilemma.  Your suffering is the natural, divinely ordained consequence of your inevitable sin.  If God heals you, then He confesses that he is NOT going to judge your sin as His righteousness demands (He will contradict His own goodness in order to give you comfort and healing as a direct consequence of your absolute depravity, which is the source of your misery); in fact, He will reward your sin with comfort.

Now, somehow this is fine for “salvation”…that is, if you are Reformed, you are forced to concede, no matter how you try to get around this, that your salvation is a direct response by God to your infinite and absolute depraved nature, thus actively and purposely rewarding sin with eternal blessing.  No commitment to change is required by man because, again, man, being totally depraved, cannot change.  So man is as depraved as a Christian as he was as an “unregenerate” person.  This means that Christ died to excuse your sin, not to “take away your sin”, which is impossible because according to Reformed theology you ARE sin at your existential root, nor enlighten you as to how to believe in such a way that you no longer ACT in service to sin (because your flawed epistemology is a direct consequence of your failed metaphysic).  Which was Jesus’s real purpose:  to change people not at the level of the absolute SELF, which is impossible, but to change how people THINK.  Because thinking drives behavior, and behavior either applies LIFE to man or denies it.

But according to Reformed theology/Calvinism, when it comes to asking for healing from suffering, or expecting God to grant you peace and comfort and abundant life…well, you are an asshole to ask for such a thing; and your prideful desire to be relieved of your pain when you cannot help but deserve it is more proof of your pervasive evil.  Don’t you realize that your suffering is something God WANTS?!  Your suffering reminds you of what a terrible reprobate you are!  And telling man that he is utterly BAD is always GOOD, hence the ubiquity of the Total Depravity doctrine in every facet of Reformed theology.  So, the real message is that God can heal you, but do not be surprised if He doesn’t.

Points three and four coming next.

 

Hating Yourself to a Better You: Helplessness as a guide to “Christian” counseling

Calvinism/Philosophy

The following abomination comes courtesy of a local Methodist church in my area.  It is the salient components of a brochure inviting those who struggle with psychological distress in the form of addiction to attend weekly sessions where they will, so it seems, be asked to engage in group-therapy centered upon the idea that, according to the Bible and to God, there is really no hope at all.

Which of course makes the entire thing somewhat superfluous I would think.

But apparently in the hurricane of cognitive dissonance and vexing logical dilemmas the idea that there is nothing practical anyone can do, because they are metaphysically inadequate to deal with the problems which plague them, gets lost in all the “grace” of God.  That is, God will heal you instead of YOU actually having to do anything, is the message.

Except…no, that’s not really the message at all.  The message is more like:  God “is able” to heal you.  But of course, since the root of what you struggle with is your inexorable and all-pervasive sin nature, there is really no good argument for WHY God would want to heal you.  From what I gather, the gist is that you are expected to confess to your categorical assholery, realize that you cannot heal yourself, which is probably an okay thing because, being a total asshole you don’t deserve healing, and then you cross your fingers and hope manna falls from the sky.  Hope against hope that some sign will be sent from God that he will “use” your torment for better things, or, preferably, you will be healed.

Of course, implicit in the entire doctrine is the fact that if you prefer to be healed instead of wanting God to “use” your pain for “good”–a good that still involves your pain, that is, so healing seems to be out of the question; for if God is “using” your pain for good then why on earth would He want to end the pain?–…

Where was I?

Oh yes.  Implicit in the doctrine is the idea that if you prefer to be healed instead of being used then you are a selfish reprobate who desires to grant a sop to God instead of accepting His divine Will.  Incidentally the doctrine of “existing to be categorically used by God who controls everything” is at the root of the fundamental theological contradiction:  you exist, but don’t exist at the same time.  You are you, but are not really you.  You exist to be you, so that God can use you in such a way (absolutely determine you) that no actual or relevant definition of YOU, as far as “your” existence is concerned, can be applied.

So, you come away with this…this…well, it can only be describe as wholly destructive advice from these “compassionate” Christians:

(NOTE: This is my translation of the “steps to recovery”, which I will post following)

*Your problems are the rightful consequence of your utter wickedness.

*You are wicked because you cannot help it; and yet it is still defined as “wicked”, despite the obvious fact that if one does not and cannot CHOOSE to act a certain way then there can be no rational moral qualification applied.  That is like saying you are “good” for growing hair or making body odor.  (Or you are “bad”…no matter.  But see how subjective Reformation theology is?  It would be funny as hell if it…weren’t.  These fuckers are serious.).

Which leads us into our next…

*Just because you cannot help it doesn’t mean it isn’t your fault.  It damn sure is, and don’t you forget it.  Asshole.

*God would be right to let you suffer these things and even more for the sin which you cannot help but which is still all your fault…somehow.

*If God heals you then He is a hypocrite because if He is just then He must punish sin; and your misery is obviously because of your sin, because that is the ONLY reason for suffering and pain.  Ever.  There are no accidents or mere unfortunate circumstances with a God who controls every molecule in the universe, including, by logical extension, those molecules which are responsible for sin.  But shhhhhhhhhhh!  we don’t talk about that because the very fact that you thought about this is evidence that you really understand fuck all about God’s great absolute sovereignty which is responsible for sin, but also isn’t.

*God hates you.

*So…

*You might get healed. 

*But probably not.

Are you comforted yet by this?  Well, for my part, I sleep well at night knowing that this kind of “compassion” is so ready and willing to give freely and sacrificially of itself in the interest of…uh…helping?

Now, before we begin our critique, here’s an obvious hint for all of you suffering from any kind of affliction, addiction, or whatnot:  for healing, it is best not to appeal to organizations which hate people, and which have an entire systematized philosophy as to WHY people should be hated, which is rooted in the assumption that the answer to that question is a simple “because human beings blow as a matter of existential course”.

*

Here are the relevant ideas of this brochure, in two parts.  In later posts I hope to examine briefly the stark fallacies and rational insanity of each point.  In the meantime, please feel free to engage in savage criticism and raucous mockery of this evil excuse for “recovery”.

The fist section is called “The Road to Recovery:  Eight Principles Based On the Beatitudes”  by Pastor Rick Warren

(NOTE:  With each numbered idea there is an irrelevant Bible verse attached.  I say “irrelevant” because, as is the usual case with Reformed proof-texts, which are by definition taken out of context and bastardized to fit the subjective intention and interpretations of the person making the list, they have literally nothing to do with the point being made.  This means that the inclusion of scripture within these lists is for the purpose of deception only.  As such, I will not include them in this post.  They are stupid.)

1.  Realize I’m not God.  I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.

2.  Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him and that He has the power to help me recover.

3.  Consciously choose to commit my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

4.  Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, God and someone I trust.

5.  Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.

6.  Evaluate all my relationships.  Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I have done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.

7.  Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and gain the power to follow his will.

8.  Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words.

 

The second section is called “The 12 Steps to Recovery”, and I presume that this was developed by the Methodist church hosting the self-hatred navel gazing…er, I mean, counseling, sessions.  They are basically an answer to Rick’s stupid list.

As with the above list, the totally irrelevant and completely unrelated Bible verses have been omitted.

1.  We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors.

2.  We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.  We decided to turn our life and will over to the care of God.

4.  We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.  We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.  We were entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character.

7.  We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.

8.  We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9.  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10.  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11.  We sought, through prayer and meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.

12.  Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we pledged to carry this message to others, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

 

 

Are Two Commandments Really Better Than One?: Examining the nature of the “two greatest commandments”

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics

A while back, a commenter here, Bridget, asked me for an opinion on something said by a commenter over at Paul Dohse’s blog, paulspassingthoughts.com.  This person had taken to task the Apostle Paul for the (apparent) fusing of the two greatest commandments, as proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Jesus said to him [a Pharisee, who was asking], ‘ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ‘”

In ostensible contrast to the…er, Doctrine of the Two-Not-Just-One Commandments, I suppose we’ll call it (hey, everything else is a doctrine, why not this?), Paul, in Galatians, is quoted as saying:

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Bridget asked this:

Yes, Argo, wondering about your thoughts on the distinction between the two commandments as well as the commenters opinion that Paul actually changed what Jesus had said. I had never seen that distinction before.

The questions which are the crux of the issue with respect to the comment from the person over at paulspassingthoughts.com  is:  Are there two commandments, or just one?  Is Paul a deceiver?  I liar?  A false prophet because he said that all the law is summed up by only ONE commandment, and Jesus clearly implies that all the law is not best summarized by merely one commandment, but TWO?  And is that really what Jesus is saying, or is He saying something entirely different?

The conclusion upon which this person arrived was that clearly Paul deceived his flock by presumptuously asserting that there was only one great commandment instead of two, as Jesus clearly taught.  Summary?  Paul should be ignored because he is little more than a rank liar.

Okay…couple of problems.

First, I have a problem with the “by golly by gosh oh gee there must, must , must be TWO separate, distinct, mutually exclusive, never-the-two-shall-meet-because-that-would-be-like-crossing-proton-streams, commandments” because, well…really?  Is this where our insane interpretation leading to irrational hatred of Paul has taken us?  Down very narrow roads where whole philosophical concepts and epistemological categories are now organized according to the fucking Dewy decimal system?  Where if the ideas aren’t numbered and dotted and labeled precisely, codified and reconciled to some exacting equation which demands a specific product according to a rigorous abstract mathematical construct then we froth at the mouth and cry heretic and take a scythe to the Pauline epistles and organize a mob to burn the books and drown his proselytes?

Come oooooooon, people.  Why is this even an issue?  Whatever happened to assuming that something must actually make some kind of sense in order to be morally compelling and intellectually honest?

Is this what we think theology is?  Is this why there are entire institutions devoted to parsing the difference between “scroll”, and “loaves” in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew?  Is this why there are a thousand different denominations all hating one another and demanding their excommunication from heaven and earth, all the while conceding the exact same philosophical premises which say that reason is the devil’s plaything and that the human mind is the cauldron for the witches brew of apostatized assholery?

Has it really gotten to the point where we are going to pit Paul against Christ because Paul makes one point and Jesus makes the exact same point but uses a different number of abstract ideas to make it; and therefore, it cannot possibly be the same point at all, because the numbers, being numbers, demand that one is infinitely separated by a chasm of absolute value from two; and the numbers, as we all know, get to make the rules about what is and what is not as far as human beings are concerned?

Why, yes.  Yes it has.  This is exactly what it has come to.

Instead of giving Paul the benefit of the doubt and thinking that maybe the peddlers of a false gospel, the Reformers, and their evil spawn, the Calvinists, who manage to fuck up the message and intent of every other single relevant figure in the Bible might actually have fucked up Paul’s as well?  And the one’s they can’t completely fuck up they pretty much ignore all together…like Jesus.

But we live in an age of cynicism, and truly, I am not one to talk…this, I admit.  Still, I think it is worth pointing out that the overestimation of our western Platonist philosophy has made us arrogant, and poor judges of our ability to truly understand perspectives that differ from our own.  Instead of assuming that our initial opinions might possibly be incorrect which might possibly lead us to spend some very helpful time employing our minds in the act of thinking about whether or not we have drawn the right conclusions, we simply assume that we are right, and either accept or deny ideas based upon whether they have found favor with our understanding (which must of course be full on immaculate) and not necessarily upon TRUTH, as rooted in reason.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that poor Paul, especially in this example, has fallen victim to.  “The numbers don’t lie”, goes the old adage, and yet the salesmen of numbers lie all the time, which is the only salient point.  In fact, since numbers are not actual and thus are not causal, they work for MAN, and not the other way around.  And the fact that they work for man, and yet are generally accepted to categorically “speak truth” (i.e. not lie), has allowed many to be deceived by them; and allowed many despotic governments to rise to power and many false philosophies to rule the crimson day.

Because in the end, numbers and what they say don’t matter.  It is what people believe that truly matters.  And that is a fact I’ll argue for with anyone, anywhere.  Show me a number that needs no human agent to be efficacious and I’ll show you that I’m actually an eight foot tall black man who plays center or the Lakers, has his daddy’s last name, “Jordan”, and is worth millions of dollars and gold bullion (my fantasy life, by the way).  If the government says seven million have signed up for healthcare, then it’s seven million.  A credible source is not required because the numbers, considered to be actual and causal themselves, ARE the source.  And if the earth is going to heat up by a million degrees in ten years, killing us all unless we categorically surrender our right to a free market society, then the earth is going to heat up.  Period.  And if it turns out that it doesn’t happen, it is our senses which are flawed.  It is our  innate human ignorance rooted in our contradictory metaphysics…our “depravity”; our “tendency” to be lazy, stupid, worthless, evil, racist, hateful, careless, arrogant and God-hating which has misled us.  Not the numbers.

The numbers don’t lie.

The numbers are never wrong, and therefore neither are their priests.  If the earth’s temperature doesn’t rise or there are not really seven actual million who sign up then the priests of the abstractions do not confess to error.  They merely re-categorize and re-define the message.  The numbers haven’t lied, and how dare you question them based on what you think you see, as if you are able to see anything at all in your inherent existential failure.  And if seventeen trillion dollars in debt seems high, trust them…the numbers don’t lie, and they are saying that it isn’t really that high at all, because what you think is high is merely what you think is high,and therefore, is of no material relevance.

The numbers don’t lie?

Hmm…perhaps.  But certain men lie all the time.  And these men fancy themselves as the inexorable proxies for the abstractions which they say control us.  This absolves them from their mistakes because it makes us unable to see any mistakes in the first place.

Numbers, like any other conceptual abstraction, can form very strong and, frankly, exasperatingly stubborn beliefs by giving humanity a false sense of intellectual and philosophical security.  And this is why it is so easy for someone, like the person on Paul Dohse’s blog, to reject the Apostle Paul and his message just because it doesn’t happen to agree with his presumed-superior apprehension of the way the universe actually works:  numerically.

But Jesus got it.  Oh yes, Jesus always agrees with the critics of Paul, but never Paul, himself.

So what was the problem again?

Oh, yeah.  Paul said one, and Jesus said two.  Ergo, Paul is a despicable heretic who should be run out of Jerusalem on a fucking rail.

Here’s the thing.  First, let’s start with the obvious.  Jesus did not say that all the law hangs on the two commandments.  He said that there was a greatest commandment, and a second commandment which is like it.  And his use of the word “like” is telling.  It implies a reciprocal relationship; one of equality, not of hierarchy.  But of course, Christianity, and protestantism specifically, is positively obsessed with with “proper roles” and “submission” and “authority”.  Everyone and everything must know their place because all of Christianity is a message of authoritarian “organization”, where life is supposed to be all neat and tidy like; and of course if we have a bunch of individuals running around thinking that they are each just as valuable and as equal and as loved by God as the next Tom, Dick, or Harriet, well obviously the inevitable orgy of sin which follows such wicked, wicked thinking will be enough to engulf the whole world in mass spiritual suicide and send us all careening at breakneck speed straight to hell.  Where YOU belong, by the way, and are almost certainly headed by hook or crook because God fucking hates you…but THEY, you see, as the elect…well, they want to go to heaven, mind you.  And that will only happen if they bust asses and crack skulls and burn some bitches in the name of authority and submission, roles and places, leaders and followers, the called and those who exist to serve them.  So they want things tidy, and they don’t need your assertions of moral and existential equality fucking it all up and disheveling their neat and organized little polity.

So, to them, when Jesus says “greatest” commandment, it must mean that the first commandment has supreme authority over the second command which is merely “like” it.  This means that the greatest commandment subjugates the one that is like it.  Because in our western thinking “second” obviously means inferior.  And inferior implies an authority structure.  Because Jesus used two and not one, He couldn’t possibly have meant that there is a single idea:  love.  And that it is LOVE which is the root of the entire law.  Love for neighbors, which obviously includes God, because God is a person.  And a human being (gasp!) at that, in Christ.

Of course, this is in fact Paul’s point.  Love is the sum and substance of the law.  Perhaps HOW love is shown to God may differ by metaphysical necessity (God being God,the Creator, who is distinct from man), but the idea of loving God and loving people is utterly identical.  You love them both in the same way:  you affirm their right to exist as individuals, not judging them according to false ideas of conceptually abstract ideas and constructs, not stealing from them or lying to them or burning them alive if they disagree with you, and lauding their merits and accomplishments and successes and power when appropriate, revering them and their positions when they’ve earned it righteously, and being “patient, kind, slow to anger”…etc., etc.

And Paul is absolutely right.  Love is the singular idea.  But not love in a vacuum.  A love which has its meaning rooted in the standard of TRUTH:  the life of the individual.  Which includes God.  So, yes, loving your neighbor as yourself includes God.  God is an individual just as is anyone else.  When you love your neighbors, God is ipso facto included.

Paul said it perfectly.  All the law hangs on this:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

But see, the Reformed and the Calvinists just absolutely fucking hate that.   How dare we lump God in with the fleshly creatures who inhabit weak and sickly bodies of sin and disease.  Just who in the hell do you think you are?  God isn’t your neighbor! they shriek.  You blasphemous whore!  You are the fleshly incarnation of everything God despises, and and so is your neighbor!

So, in their minds, there is NO moral or existential equivalency between God and man, which is why their must be an implicit authority structure (a “more worthy” and a “less worthy” commandment) in Jesus’s declaration that there is a greatest and second greatest commandment.  Of course, Jesus’s entire ministry, message, and the fact that He was a fleshly human being who was God utterly undercuts their false theology, which is all predicated upon the categorically evil, God-despising and God-mocking doctrine of Total Depravity.

They categorically reject man as having any good at all, implicit or explicit.  Inherent or acquired.  Their entire theology and philosophy can be rooted in a single thought:  Man’s very existence is the crux of his sin problem.

Because you ARE is why you do evil.  Period.  Thus, the solution to your evil-saturated metaphysic is to be removed from yourself.  And this is the core of every Reformed and neo-Calvinist doctrine:  YOU never get to be you.  The only way to be saved is for you to confess that YOU are not you; were never really you; and that any YOU there was or will be is totally vile, totally ignorant, and totally corrupt.  God has and wants nothing to do with YOU.

That is their message, and once you understand the message it is as easy to spot in their sermons and statements of faith and catechisms and creeds as Freddy Krueger at a birthday party.

So you see, they cannot possibly concede that Paul’s take on the “two greatest commandments”, if you want to call his Galatians commentary that, was, in fact, true. They cannot possibly concede that Jesus was NOT, in fact, intending to imply the lack of any moral equivalency between the two commandments, and was making the statement from a position where moral and existential equivalency are assumed, with this equivalency being rooted in a singular metaphysical TRUTH: that both man and God ARE, and thus are equal in truth and morality, and thus are both deserving of the exact same thing: love, though perhaps in different manners of expression, one of worship and the other of idealization and unfettered affirmation, because to be alive as YOU is infinitely GOOD.

No, their entire theology ultimately understands nothing but FORCE (as John Immel always aptly explains) as a means to compel moral behavior, right thinking and actions, and to gain “followers of Christ”…for their own good, of course.  And that is precisely why their interpretation of the functional distinction between Jesus’s “two greatest commandments” commentary is as follows:

Yes, we shall love our neighbors, but when push comes to shove, we reserve the categorical right and divine mandate to torture and murder those neighbors should they question our “calling”, our interpretive assumptions, or our authority as God’s proxy here on earth.  Loving neighbors is a different kind of love.  It is a love that is utterly conditional on you doing whatever the fuck you we tell you to do, because we are God to you.  The second commandment is inexorably subjugated to the first, and so also is humanity subjugated to the “will of God” as has been divinely and specially revealed to us, and not to you or the rest of the slobbering, brainless, dickless masses at whom God is constantly offended and embarrassed.

And that’s why they assume that not only are there practical and functional distinctions between the two commandments, but philosophical/interpretive ones as well.  Loving your neighbor is NOT the same thing as loving God because your neighbor is of infinitely lesser worth than God.  Your neighbor, saved or not, is a finite, yet infinitely and perpetually depraved mongoloid whom God barely tolerates at best.  While God, on the other hand, is He who has granted to those He has called to rule and lead and “shepherd” a complete ownership of the masses, and is infinitely beyond the scope and worth and goodness and purpose and understanding of any (other) human, who is filth by comparison.

And this kind of thinking will always see false distinctions in absolutes…like love.

The Shortest Duration of Time is Infinity: The case for consciousness, part two

Physics and Metaphysics

In part one of this series we were looking at a couple of Zeno’s paradoxes–a temporal dichotomy paradox and a distance paradox–and I was applying Einstein’s coupling of space and time (each as a function of the other) to dismantle the apparent contradictions.  As you may also recall, the explanations were loquacious and gratuitous, and you may or may not have gathered exactly how I arrive at my overall point:  location is not a function of distance traveled, but is a relative function of the amount of existence  of one object or agent compared to another, and this is accomplished because increased speed results in decreased time, or “age”; that is, the paradoxes were resolved by explaining that the object which is in motion ages less relative to the object which is static; or the faster object ages less relative to the slower object, depending on which paradox is in question.  This means that it is possible for the “paradoxes” to be resolved (for there is no “infinite distance”; nor is there any “infinite time”)  by the object which is moving or moving faster.

In other words, since time isn’t the same for the two objects being compared in either paradox, there is, in fact, no paradox at all.

See what I mean?

Long-winded and not a little confusing.

Thankfully, we don’t need to rely upon Einstein to resolve these interesting, though ultimately false, Greek paradoxes.  Why?  Because we have reason here.  And truth is never rooted in abstract theories like Relativity, which in fact irrationally confirms the existence and causal power of what are wholly abstract concepts (like space, time, distance, acceleration, etc.); rather, truth is always rooted in consistent philosophical premises which are inexorably tied to a rationally explained, consciously observed and OBJECTIVE standard of TRUTH.  That standard is, of course, individual human life.  Any other standard must be false by definition, because existence of the individual SELF is the absolute and inexorable and infinite prerequisite for anything being being understood, observed, believed, thought or conceded (or the opposite of those)…anything by anyone.

So, for the purposes of metaphysical and epistemological truth– which unlike physics and mathematics is of the non-abstract variety–we can toss Einstein’s theory of Relativity and its requisite calculus out the proverbial window.  I merely used those two paradoxes in the first installment of this series as examples of ideas which on the surface may seem legitimately to be at inexplicable odds, but when we apply the TRUTH of individual existence, which is infinite (the infinite IS, the SELF) and therefore is a real but relative existence, we can more easily see how the paradoxes vanish like so much morning mist.

And here Einstein, while his theory fails to arrive at the logical conclusion of his assumptions, at least begins to set the legitimate stage for the reality of all material objects.  He correctly observes that “location” is relative from one object (or objects) to the next as a function of location (space) and time.  However, he fails to declare that all of those ways we qualify the movement–speed, acceleration, distance, time–are not ACTUAL, and thus possess no efficacious control over objects, and his correct grasp on relativity should make this obvious.  But I suppose that if math is how you explain why reality does what it does, and that is your singular belief, then it will naturally be quite impossible to concede this, even if it means the difference between contradicting your own theory of the relativity of movement and being consistent with it.

At any rate, the point I am trying to make is that once we understand and accept that the existence between material objects/agents is in fact relative, we can easily arrive at the logical conclusion that the existence of objects and agents is rooted in infinity.  Meaning there is something inherent to the material object which IS, and IS absolute; and therefore, its ability to interact with OTHER must in fact be purely rooted in relative movement.

This of course begs the question, how can what is infinite and absolute be mitigated in the first place, in order that it can have  relative existence with other objects which can be qualified and quantified via a system of conceptual abstractions generated by man’s consciousness?

The answer to this involves the one thing which represents intellectual kryptonite to many (if not most) physicists and other scientists the world over…something that they avoid discussing at all costs, which is precisely why they are no closer to discovering any type of existential (and thus actual) truth than since the discipline was first unleashed upon the Earth.  And that thing is:  consciousness.

And consciousness means God.

And that of course [sarcasm inserted here] is a completely separate issue from the “hard evidence”, and quantifiable “laws which govern”, of science, which arrogantly sees philosophy as a little more than a punchline, never once realizing that it was philosophers who first substituted X and Y for the apple and the moon, and then multiplied them together in order to explain a “natural law”.

And God is not physics, but metaphysics.  Which must certainly make God a fake, and metaphysics mysticism.

Of course this could not be further from the truth.  When human consciousness is no longer required to know that m(a) = F, and therefore is not required for it to be true, then I will concede that physics is FIRST in the existential chain, not metaphysics.  But since this cannot happen without the person proclaiming thus contradicting their own argument at first utterance, I will rest comfortable in the knowledge that I am absolutely right about this.

But the irony of the whole physicist versus philosopher thing is this, and its actually pretty funny when you think about it:  Despite his best efforts, and those of subsequent priests of the abstract cosmos, Einstein, as I said, and as I illustrated in the previous post in this series, actually comes closer to getting the metaphysics right (existence of bodies being relative with respect to each other) than the Greek philosophers who posited the previously mentioned paradoxes as proof that movement is illusion…yes, it turns out that those sage old men who ostensibly made getting the metaphysics right the sum and substance of their legacy, seem to have decided, in the interest of maintaining the observable irrationality of the paradoxes, that the concepts of time and distance and speed are decidedly NOT relative, but actual and causal.  And if speed and distance and time can only be declared paradoxical with respect to the context of man if they are assumed to be actual, then the invariable nature of their paradoxical existence to man which led Zeno and Parmenides to deny the reality of movement should lead us to do the same.  And further, we should understand that if movement is an illusion than so is humanity and its consciousness as well.

But when we think about this long enough, and assume that material reality is rooted in infinity (meaning that there is no singular “part”, or “particle” which is the root of all matter, and is self-contained and surrounded by space, and yet possesses no dimensions…I have an entire article on this topic alone), then we are forced to admit, I submit, that not only is movement NOT an illusion but it is impossible to concede that anything exists at all, including consciousness, unless we first concede that movement is actual and causal.  Therefore movement may be rooted in the infinity of the material SELF of objects or agents, and thus is relative, but this does not make it illusory.  It is not an abstraction, nor it is a mere concept which is a product of man’s mind.  If movement does not actually exist, then man cannot either.

The only way for what I call the infinite universal material (IUM) which comprises all that actually exists to become object, agent, and consciousness (the prime example being man), then it must move relative to itself.  It must possess “parts” of itself which exist as a function of separate and distinct being.  And if all objects which are ARE, then all distinct objects are equally infinite.  Which makes existence relative…and yet does not render it false.  Because if I am here, and I am infinite at my root as a distinct object/agent from you, who is infinite and who is there, and our existence is thus equal (infinite) then how I got here and you got there can only be explained by movement.  That is, our separate existences are both infinite and yet they are observably distinct (we observe the “space” between us).  I must have arrived here to be me, infinitely, as the absolute context of my SELF, while you arrived there to be you, infinitely, as the absolute context context your SELF.  In both cases, granted, the frame of reference, SELF, does not in fact move with respect to that same SELF, so I can see how anyone who follows the logic to this conclusion might decide that movement is an illusion.  But in order to arrive here versus there from an indistinct initial infinite state (the IUM), I and you must have been placed here and NOT there, which implies movement.  Therefore, the observable fact still remains that in order for me to have a consciousness to observe YOU and ME as distinct and separate, MY infinite non-moving context cannot apply to YOU.  From my frame of reference, I do not move, yes, but you MUST, in order to always be THERE, because you cannot by definition be HERE, because here is the infinite me.  And the converse is true.  I move as a function of YOUR infinite unmoving context, and you move as a function of MY infinite unmoving context.  So, again, it isn’t that movement is an illusion…on the contrary it must be real.  Again, if I am infinitely here, then you must ALWAYS and infinitely move relative to me.  And vice versa.  Thus, and again, this makes movement indeed relative, but not a lie. Movement MUST exist, relatively, when two or more infinite “parts” come into being.

But we must not assume that ALL movement is linear.  In fact, movement is at its root not linear, but existential.  Infinite parts of an infinite source arrive at their particular location–that is, they MOVE there–when the infinite source is observed.

Therefore, I proclaim as axiomatic this: movement  MUST exist when what is infinite is observed.  

And this is where God comes in.  But more on that later.

*

Existence as movement

Like I said, I believe, as a foundational tenet of my philosophy, that movement is not merely linear (directional), but is existential.  That is, the “parts” of the IUM must move in the direction of their own distinct existence first, before any subsequent linear movement and thus interaction can occur.  I would argue that not only is movement not an illusion, but that existence is movement.  It is the movement of the SELF of all material objects, by which they posses the inherent capacity to cause and be caused upon in relative relationships with other parts.  And, as the parts are infinite, the relative movement and combinations of these parts of the IUM are likewise infinite.  An infinite number of infinite selves moving and interacting in an infinite number of ways.  And from this we get the consciousness of man’s mind and the existence of everything in the cosmos.  For that which is said to exist must be KNOWN and observed to exist first; thus, consciousness is required for the IUM to be qualified as existing.

This being the case, I admit that I am arguing that man is as necessary to the existence of what he observes and conceptually qualifies as existing as God is.  Meaning that without the creation of conscious man, the creation of the rest of Creation, which is unconscious, is irrelevant.  And as I have argued many times previously, that which is irrelevant cannot be defined as true; and what cannot be defined as true cannot be defined as anything at all.  Therefore, the creation of the irrelevant is functionally equal to the creation of NOTHING at all.  So, in order for God to have created something that can be relevantly qualified as SOMETHING, conscious and self-aware man is an absolutely necessary part of the creation equation, not merely a superfluous (or totally depraved) component.

Now, some may argue that I am trying to usurp God as the sole Creator, as the necessary “first” cause to all that proceeds into Creation.  But understand that when I proclaim God the Creator, my understanding of how God does this has nothing whatsoever to do with the typically conceded doctrine of “ex nihilo”…that is, the idea that God created Creation out of “nothing”.  This is an impossible contradiction in terms, and there is no way to rationally argue it.  When one concedes ex nihilo, one concedes that all of Creation rests on an impossible contradiction, thus making Creation itself irrational and without any reasonable defense for its existence.  This is the very definition of insanity, and is wholly untenable, and therefore it must be denied; and deny it I most vociferously do.

But contrary to this, I argue that all which exists is a function of what I have called the Infinite Universal Material (again, IUM), which moves into an infinite number of infinite parts which are moving infinitely in relative relationships with each other upon conscious observation.  And this observation is demanded, for otherwise there can be no “creation” of that which is infinitely itself, and beyond that has no other definition.  For that which is infinitely itself precludes all rational or relevant definitions, qualifications, or quantifications, even “existence”.  And again, that which is utterly undefinable and irrelevant cannot possibly be efficacious for anything.  Therefore, its functional meaning and purpose is zero; and its existential essence can only be rationally defined as nothing.

However, when what is infinite is observed (and in this case I argue, by God), then it is no longer infinite, by definition.  It is relatively finite, which means that it now has an actual definition:  that which is NOT God.  This is an excellent start for everything (as well as the only start).  You have the explosive combination which must result in inexorable creation:  The Creator, and that which is able to be Created.  Because God did not create out of nothing. He possesses the infinite ability to create, and the IUM is that which possesses the infinite ability to be caused upon by God’s ability to create.  This innate ability to be caused upon is the root of the existence of every material thing which is.  It is the infinite SELF of all objects.  For example, before the apple can fall from the tree, it must possess the inherent ability to be caused upon by the gravity of the Earth FIRST.  See?  There is a SELF which must be an IS in order that it can infinitely and perpetually be caused upon by whatever else it is observed to interact with.  Before I can see you, you must possess the inherent ability to be seen by me.  And vice versa.  And this innate ability to be caused upon (which results in the ability to “cause” effects in other objects, which are conceptual abstractions at their root…for in actuality, effect always precedes cause, making “cause and effect” purely a conceptual abstraction; or better said, the ability to be effected is the “cause” of everything which exists and their relative interactions)…yes, this infinite ability to be caused upon is the metaphysically absolute essence of everything.

But “NOT God” is not, alone, relevant.  It has a definitive property/definition, but it is not efficacious TO any purpose.  What is required for that is that what is created must A. be consciously aware that it is an existent SELF, which is NOT God, and B. that God is God; that is, God is He who has the power of creation.  And this is done via the ability of the conscious created agent to conceptualize SELF as juxtaposed to what is NOT self.

Enter man.

But it is man who gets to, and MUST, be the one who conceptualizes and thus qualifies Creation’s relevant, functional, efficacious existence, which makes MAN the objective standard of all morality and truth, not God.  Meaning creation was FOR man that man may recognize it and give it its purpose, meaning, and relevancy.  For he is of Creation, and he is also the infinite and singular context of its ability to KNOW SELF, and therefore to BE, which is that from which all TRUTH is a direct derivation.  For without man, creation could not have been made by God; for it would have been a wholly irrelevant act, with no purpose.  And he who can argue that God is the creator of the irrelevant is he who can argue that God is the Creator of NOTHING.  And if God is in fact the Creator of nothing, then by definition He is not the Creator at all.

That’s enough for now…a lot to digest and to ponder, I know.  Undoubtedly I’ve not convinced all of you (possibly not even any of you) that my rationale behind the infinite nature versus relative existence is true.  But this is something I must explain, as much for myself as anyone else.  I am looking for a rational explanation of existence, and this will not happen if conceptual abstractions, like the “laws of physics/nature” or any other determinist philosophy, continue to be the causal power behind what we observe to be real, which must include humanity itself.  If this is true, then so are Zeno’s paradoxes, and the slower runner overtaking the faster one or your arriving at the bus stop on time is purely a lie; an illusion.  We never pass the slow, and we never arrive where we want to go.  The logical conclusion of this is that we never are who we think we are.

Which makes us…nothing.

In our next installment, we’ll examine the rationale behind “elementary particles”.

 

 

An Infallible Interpretation Must Always PRECEDE an Infallible Bible

Biblical Inerrancy

Since I no longer actually hear any of the sermons in person at the church I attended until recently, I usually listen to them online after the fact.  Though I cannot in good conscience sit my bottom down in the pew and subject myself to the nonsense from the pulpit attempting to pass as truth, I still believe that there is a wealth of inspiration and information for a blog such as this one to be found in the teachings of the new and wholly Reformed pastor.  And as this church is rapidly (and I mean rapidly) free-falling into the confused and blank-minded hell of full-on neo-Calvinist doctrine, watching the evolution of destructive thought via the onslaught of the pastor’s contradictory propaganda is intriguing to say the least, not to mention educational.

Last week found Pastor X imploring the congregation to approach the Bible as Bereans, which are described as follows in the book of Acts:

“Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

This is an old saw of the neo-Calvinst bent, and I heard the same urging from the despotic elders over at Sovereign Grace Ministries.  This pastor doesn’t mean what you think he means.  Meaning, his imploring you to study the Bible as the Bereans did by no means gives you permission to actually interpret the Bible for yourself.  Of course, if you apply reason to the scripture verse, we should invariably believe that this is exactly what it means…that from the scriptures, all teachings can be vetted for truth, implying that those who happen to be literate are, by virtue of that literacy, in a position to discern a liar from an honest man.  The implication being that there is in fact a legitimate standard of truth that all men can know and that those men who can read and reason can also judge the scriptures by that standard (which means the Bible is not, itself, the standard…gasp!  cry heretic!).  As opposed to the scriptures judging themselves, which makes the Bible an exercise in circular logic, wholly irrelevant to man’s life, which is, in fact, the precise the argument of the biblical infallibility crowd.

As usual, I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Anyway, as soon as Pastor X began to implore the congregation to go to the “Word” to verify and hold accountable the teachings of the elders, using himself (in a sickening spectacle of faux humility) as an example, in order to verify that they were not being led astray by wolves in sheep’s clothing with their clanking and clattering traps of false doctrine…yes, as soon as he uttered these words I knew what was coming next.  As I said, I have been down this road before.  Now, I don’t believe in the future, so I don’t believe that it can be seen, but if I did…well, let’s just say that I saw his next thought and could have probably spoken it verbatim.

“This doesn’t mean you don’t trust your pastors and elders.”

Or, something to that effect.  And even worse, he openly admitted that his subsequent ideas with respect to “being Berean” were in direct contradiction to his previous statements about the congregation searching the scriptures for themselves.

His point was this:  Just because the Bible says that you are to search the scriptures to see if what we, the leadership, say is true, doesn’t mean that you are free to come to a different interpretive conclusion than we do.

And therein lies the problem and the hypocrisy.  You can go to the scriptures all day long and search out the “truth” for yourself.  But you must only approach it via the particular Reformed lens of “sound doctrine”, and only interpret it with the goal of reinforcing their Reformed/Calvinist assumptions.  Which implies that you must hold these assumptions before you begin to read the Bible in the first place.

And this, among other reasons, is why I categorically deny the doctrine of Biblical Inerracy.  It is nothing more than a hedge against the criticism of specific interpretive assumptions which are held to be a prerequisite for the Bible’s infallible truth; an excuse to push a specific theology as merely “teaching what the bible plainly says”, thus making any rejection of the doctrinal syllabus a direct rejection of the Bible, which, as it is “God’s Word” (it’s not, but that claim is yet another vehicle for their manipulation), is a full-on rejection of God, Himself.

Again, notice what Pastor X is saying:  The only way to read the Bible is to read it through a lens of interpretive truth that is first provided by the authority of the ecclesiastical eldership.  This, of course, ultimately makes the Bible as the source of truth irrelevant.  The source of truth is really whatever the pastor says the Bible means…the Reformed protestant philosophical paradigm through which all of reality, including the Bible and its message, is interpreted.  This is why they can stand up there with a straight face and nary a blush of shame and explain how it is perfectly within your right to judge them by the scriptures and then in the very next breath declare that they are the authority in God’s stead whose doctrines and ideas and interpretations and opinions and demands and orders are never to be questioned but only categorically trusted by you and the rest of the dog-faced slobbering masses in the pews. They know that the seed of WHAT you see in the scripture is present and granted to you ALREADY as a direct function of their ideas.

The “infallible” bible becomes secondary in the process.  Which is thus to say that the Bible isn’t infallible at all.  The neo-Calvinist interpretive lens, which is the very reason that the Bible says what it says in the first place, is what is actually infallible.

Let me say that again.  The only reason the Bible says what it says and is thus “infallible” is because their Reformed protestant doctrine already directly informs it.  This means that Biblical infallibility is at its root a lie.  What they call “biblical infallibility” is really doctrinal infallibility.  The Bible says what the doctrine declares.  Of course they will try to equivocate on this truth by arguing that they are, in fact, teaching and believe the opposite.  But that is more of their inherent deception.

The way you know this is deception is because, again, you are never allowed disagree with the leadership.  If the Bible itself was really the source of the truth of the doctrine then they could not stand up there and encourage the laity to “search the scriptures like Bereans, and hold us accountable for what we teach” and then declare the exact opposite of that thought; namely that you can NEVER hold them accountable for wrong teaching because THEY, not you, are the one’s to whom God has divinely chosen to reveal His “mysterious” truth, in order that they may lead (force, compel, threaten, intimidate, torment, abuse) you in His righteous ways.  Yes, they could never encourage you to search the scriptures as though the scriptures were the source of truth and yet still remain consistent with their theology which declares all men utterly insufficient for grasping truth because of their rank metaphysical failure.

What I mean is that the reason you can NEVER disagree with them and come to a different conclusion about what the Bible means and teaches is because, according to the Reformed/neo-Calvinist construct, truth is not learned, it is “revealed/bestowed” upon those “called by God to lead” as a matter of, not reason, but pure revelation.  This means that man’s own epistemology (his ability to know what he knows) is wholly insufficient for apprehending truth, stemming from his essential metaphysical total depravity/categorical corruption/sin nature.

This, again, makes the Bible itself totally superfluous as a function of how YOU, the unwashed, ignorant and feral-minded acquire truth.  Oh sure, they may claim that the Bible is the source of all truth, but as this truth is never available to you, because you aren’t “called to stand in the stead of God” (direct quote from SGM pastors), how the fuck could you know?  You can’t know that the Bible is the source of truth because you aren’t innately capable of knowing what it means.  They provide you with the systematic reformed interpretive construct, and then you simply plug in what you read in the bible, whether you think it fits or not.  And viola! Biblical infallibility!

Which makes daily Bible reading nothing more than a private, self-administered propaganda session, courtesy of your “local church”.  Every time you read the Bible, you are fostering the pastor’s right to own you, your mind, your property and your labor.  You learn nothing from the Bible except what the Pastor has already told you you must accept.  Thus, reading the Bible merely reinforces his authority. True biblical meditation then is replaced with self-imposed and self-perpetuating Reformed psychological manipulation; manipulation of your mind to bring you to a that blissful and empty theological climax, good for nothing except the pleasure of divorcing yourself from yourself in service to that deterministic theology which denies your very existence at its root, and thus, denies your culpability in anything at all.

This is hardly a rejection of sin, no matter what the Reformed/neo-Calvinists teach. On the contrary, sin is utterly embraced by those who would say that it is impossible for mere humans to know truth, so what you do and why you do it is always a function of someone else’s authority to stand before God on your behalf (give an account for you..which is a false interpretation of Paul’s statement to that effect, but what the fuck else is new?) and their ability to stand before you on God’s behalf.  And truly, punting your life into the great cosmic abyss is certainly harder than living it.

Incidentally, this is exactly why the self-appointed president and titular head of the Brent Detwiler Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastoral Pariah Club, which is of course Brent Detwiler, is losing his house and his life in general seems to be crashing down around him in a depressing, fiery wreckage. He basks in the glory of being the “suffering saint” because he thinks its “God’s will”.  Because, as John Immel pointed out on a recent comment on his blog, thinking its God’s will is a lot more gratifying than getting a job where he might have to ask people if they want their milk in a bag, or if they want to supersize their order for a dollar more.  And it sure sounds better, too, doesn’t it?  Much more prestigous and fitting for the “man of God” to cry “Oh, poor suffering and holy me!” than to utter “Welcome to Lowes, thanks for shopping with us today”.  But the reality is that to anyone with a rational brain cell, Brent looks ridiculous.  Whiny, and complaining about his situation to every willing ear without ever conceding that it is his very own beliefs…his infinite hypocrisy in having the nerve to contradict his own theology and question his spiritual “authority”, CJ Mahaney; a practice that Brent himself, from what I understand, NEVER tolerated.

But when truth is revealed, not learned, what the fuck can you tell someone like him?  You can’t possibly know.  HE, as a pastor, has been given the divine gnosis, not you.  So, no matter how silly Brent looks to the rest of us, nor how hopeless his situation, our eyes perpetually deceive us, because the doctrine says so.

Are you sobered-up yet?  Are you off of your neo-Reformed high?  Have you come down from the cloud says all Christianity is merely psychological hedonism; a forfeiture of SELF in service to the conceptual abstraction of “pure joy” (there is no such thing)?

But even if the pastors claim that they get their truth from their “infallible” Bibles; and even if you think you can accept this because how in the hell would you, the one to whom the Bible’s truths haven’t been divinely revealed, know?  Yes, they can claim it is their source of truth all day long, but the fact is that when you parse the logic out to its logical conclusion, the only reason they can claim they know the Bible is true is because God has specially revealed to them FIRST what it means.  The Bible cannot be true first, and its infallible meaning pulled from it; no, for that suggests that truth is learned.  But in the Reformed construct, it is not, it is revealed… ALL truth is a direct revelation from God, not the Bible (unless you think the Bible is God, which they do when you examine all of the facets of “Biblical Inerrancy”, which simply reinforces my entire argument that no truth is learned, but revealed).  The Bible’s meaning is revealed first, then come the words of the Bible, which can be “properly” understood.  Truth doesn’t come from the Bible, truth is a byproduct of having been given the “grace to perceive” (another direct quote) what the Bible MUST mean already.  Which means that the Bible is as much on the hook for agreeing with their interpretive assumptions as you or I.

Ouch.  So much for holding the Bible up as the paragon of truth.

And this is why, for all of the Biblical Infallibility being applied in the churches today, modern Christianity is doing a flawless job of continuing the despotic and abusive traditions of “orthodox” Christianity.

The only way to save “sound doctrine” is to reject it.  The only way to declare the Bible is true is to declare that it is NOT infallible.  For infallibility and truth are mutually exclusive within the context of human life.