Yesterday I mentioned the primer, “Community: Your Pathway to Progress” and I gave you a small preamble (thanks, John Immel) to my examination and criticism of this gem of Christianity-as-channeling-Karl Marx, which essentially preaches the gospel of collectivism both forthrightly and with child-like giddiness.  Today I will begin my formal critique of said primer, offering my thoughts as to the underlying metaphysical and epistemological contradictions, deceptions, and outright lies which form the offensive thrust of the nefarious objective:  to control individuals for the purpose of acquiring power.  Which is really nothing more than the right to destroy anyone and anything in the interest of pursuing an entirely false, irrational, and impossible standard of “truth” and “morality”.  A utopia which, being wholly without reason and demanding the wholesale removal of LIFE in order to be realized, is actually nothing at all.

However, before I do that I would like to comment on a little remark by someone down in North Carolina this week as we were discussing the collectivist particulars of a certain paragraph in “Community”.  She said, “I don’t care about that.”  And went on to explain that if she finds the doctrine at her church odious or irrational she simply ignores it, and goes about the business of church presumably as if nothing disagreeable were really taught from the pulpit at all.

My opinion is that this is a very dangerous approach to church at worst, and renders the “church-going experience” utterly irrelevant at best.  If you find yourself in disagreement with the doctrinal ideology of the church “body”, why on earth remain?  You are setting yourself up for inevitable failure in more ways than one by tacitly affirming the beliefs by your participation and yet functionally rejecting them.  Believe me, the “church” makes it a point to discover those who approach the doctrine this way.  They do not consider such members friends, nor people to be trusted with any modicum of responsibility.  They may suffer your presence while the tithing remains consistent and/or you aren’t causing any problems (that is, challenging their “authority”), but you will never experience the kind of spiritual growth, friendship, and support one would presume is the only real benefit of such a collaboration.

But even if they don’t find out…and even if you don’t care that they will never consider you a fit nor moral servant of Christ, and one whose salvation is likely dubious at best, you will still do more damage to your life and your family than benefit.

You may acquire some friends, even some who are doctrinally like-minded as you and reject the theological interpretations of the “elders”, and you may experience some tangible benefits such as a place to harbor your kids for an hour and a half every week or some valuable home-schooling connections or a golfing buddy or two.  But these benefits will only come at the cost of how you define reality.  That is, they will occur only in spite of who you really are.  And that is no kind of life.  I submit that there can be no true friendships, no truly edifying experiences or tangible benefits which come from mixing mutually exclusive assumptions about the worth of your life.  Your social life and your spiritual live with be a farce…a mere illusion of what you really think is going on.  Attending a church wherein the leadership presumes that you are not really yourself, and therefore have no value as an individual human being, and thus have no right by metaphysical definition to your own body or property can only end one way, sooner or later:  disaster.

And the irony is that the person of which I speak once attended Sovereign Grace Ministries for many years, and left only relatively recently amongst the morbid and fetid chaos, hypocrisy, and abuse.  And having been a fifteen-year member of Sovereign Grace Ministries myself I can say this:  Doing what this person is doing…the willingness to sweep the doctrinal disagreements under the rug did absolutely nothing to benefit that institution, its pastors, or laity.  It merely prolonged the suffering and human destruction, and promoted the full-on illusion for years and years past the point where it stopped being fun.

In short, if the church you are attending does not have a working definition of YOU, it means that they cannot possibly have a working definition of God.  So what exactly are you expecting to get out of it?  If you say relationships, I say they are based on lie.  If you say tangible benefits, I say they cost your soul.  You must continue to deceive both yourself and all with whom you share the sanctuary every Sunday morning, not to mention your children, who are presented, at best, with the strange and irrational and confusing dichotomy of a mommy and daddy who tell them not to believe the doctrines they are taught, and yet continue to willfully place them in classrooms with teachers who possess many kinds of authority, spiritual and educational and corporeal, who teach those very doctrines as being from God.  Think twice about “not caring” about the forcing of collectivist ideology down the throats of unsuspecting Christians, as rankly observed in this little primer I have next to me in this chair.  It will inevitably return to reap anguish upon your head, just as it has in the past.

Even now I could say to this person that we will never be close friends.  Because I utterly reject the metaphysical premises you either explicitly or implicitly concede by assuming that the church you are attending is just a fine place to hear about God and Man.  It isn’t a matter of getting along.  It is a matter of being able to define just who it is that we are supposed to be getting along with, and in the interest of just what we are supposed to define as God.  I cannot get along with someone who does not concede that they actually matter.  Because that person cannot by logical extension assume that I matter.  And if neither of us matter according to this person’s metaphysical assumptions, then there is no point in being friends because there is no friendship, period.  For friendship is moot.  Friendship based on absolute existential meaninglessness is not a friendship by definition.  And this is why, as much as it pains me to say it, I simply cannot stand being around Christians anymore…well, certain kinds of Christians.  Those who have to pray every meal and those who never miss church and those who have daily “devotionals” and those who evangelize their faith to the checkout girl or the waiter and have fish on their cars.  I just can’t do it anymore, because those are the people who always tow the reformed doctrinal line.  And my root metaphysic according to these church-going Christians is that I am a piece of shit.  And I refuse to associate myself with people who think that my absolute essence as a human being is shit.  And who think that they are shit, too.  We are all a big collective of shit going to hell “but for the grace of God” and the kindly ecclesiastical taskmasters He gives us to prod our blind asses along the narrow road.

Over. It.

*

“This study has been designed as an introduction to community.  As such, the focus of the first part of the study will be on getting to know everyone in the group.  Then you’ll spend some time discussing the importance of community itself.” (p.9)

So goes the first paragraph.  Sounds nice, right?  Benign.  Gentle.  Innocuous at worst.  Sure, everyone gets to know each other.  That’s nice.  Everyone matters.  Everyone is special.  Everyone is important.

Uh…but wait.  Are they?  This paragraph…indeed, the entire primer never mentions anything about the importance of the individual to the group.  Never mentions the fact that “group” is really nothing but a concept; a figment of man’s impressive imagination, but not actually existing…and thus, requiring the life of the single human being in order to possess any relevancy at all as a concept.

According to this introductory paragraph, the only thing with any explicit or implicit importance is “the community itself.”  In this short blurb the individual–the only thing which actually exists at all in this entire opening salvo–has been subordinated to the community, which exists as a SELF of its own.  You see, YOU are only important within the context of the group; and by this they mean…well, what kind of important do they mean?

Right.  Spiritually important.  Which means important to whom?  To God.  Which means that spiritually important is the only relevant kind of important.  And since this is a direct function of the group, God can only see the group, never YOU, individually.  For God is a rational God, you understand.  He wastes no time on the pointless–on the functionally non-existent–when He has the group by which is Will and Desire is rendered upon the Earth.

This is merely the initial introduction…the tip of the spear of the group metaphysic I mentioned in part one of this article.  You do not exist.  Only the group exists. You alone are nothing.  Thus, you must sacrifice (murder, destroy, erase, consider infinite nothingness) your SELF and relinquish the sum and substance of your body, mind, and possessions to the collective, which, as I explained in part one, is really the relinquishing of all these things to they who claim the right to rule the group by divine mandate, as the chosen representatives of the Primary Consciousness.  For you protestant Christians, particularly my reformed friends, this means that your pastor or pastors are God as far as you are concerned.  They are the bridge between your metaphysical depravity and God’s metaphysical perfection, which would normally be mutually exclusive.  Without them declaring the standard of truth which is also the moral ideal, to which ALL humanity must integrate itself (the root premise of the group metaphysic), you would be lost forever.  Adrift in a sea of absolute evil.

Still not convinced, huh?  Still think I’m taking this way too seriously?  Still think I should approach this primer like the person in North Carolina and simply care less?  Take a break?  Get a job?  Got too much time on my hands?  It’s all just a mystery anyway so let go and let God; for to be concerned with such things is for the lofty professor, and patriarchs of philosophy’s past who argued over such things and yet never arrived at anything other than paradox, and the ivory tower intellectual who gets paid to write about things that have so little relevance to rote humans living out their boring little lives…articles by the score which almost never see the light of day by any but a very few and very strange people with serious affect problems and no social acumen?  Still think this is little more than hyperbole?

We shall see.

Stay tuned for part three.

This weekend my family and I made our annual week-long trip to North Carolina to visit some friends…a couple and their three children.  Since this vacation is primarily about my wife and daughters getting some time with Mrs. X and her three children, I had a significant amount of time, being relieved of the normal duties of home, to putter around and sort of simply exist (Mr. X works the entire week we are there, and as he and I share very little in common, this is an understandable and acceptable arrangement…so, what I mean to say is that there really isn’t anyone in particular with whom I am expected to interact).  When this kind of situation occurs I find myself slipping happily into hours and hours of thought, staring out into space, twirling my glasses and occasionally closing my eyes.  But this time I was fortunate to be confronted with a specific task, and it manifested itself in the form of a little…well, I’d call it a primer (much larger than a pamphlet but much smaller than a book), which I found in the freebie bin outside a small Christian book store my wife and her friend like to frequent when we come for a visit.  This primer is titled, “Community: Your Pathway to Progress”, and it is published by an organization called North Point Ministries (here).  This primer was published in 2008, so keep in mind that it is a fairly recent periodical, not some throwback from decades ago and thus no longer relevant as indicative of the current American Christian psyche.

As I am always on the lookout for collectivist ideology inserting itself, as it is so often wont, into many organizations and schools of thought, but particularly into today’s evangelical Christian “orthodox” theology, which thanks to the Protestant Reformation provides the perfect host body for such evil, I was immediately intrigued by the title.  Back at our friends’ house I wasted no time in cracking the cover of this little virulent critter and was, to my delight, greeted with what can only be described as a perfect and perfectly concise exercise in modern evangelicalism laundering the ideas of Karl Marx…collectivist philosophy fully committed to what I call the Group Metaphysic.

What this means is simply that the root of human existential essence is not found in the individual person, but is purely a function of the group–the collective–into which a given person happens to find him or herself absorbed.  In this case, it is “the church”, but it can just as easily be the Party, the Tribe, the State, the People, the Masses, the Workers or other Social Classes, the Race, the Culture, the Movement, etc., etc.

Now, this of course is nothing new to Christianity.  Christianity since the days of Augustine has always been wholly devoted to the idea of the absolute denial and destruction of the individual in favor of the group metaphysic.  It is precisely how power over the masses can reside in the hands of either a resident autocrat or an oligarchy:  you tell people that they are literally non-existent without the group and then proceed to serve as the functional head of the group, privy to the ideals and doctrines and ways of the group as prescribed by the Primary Consciousness, having a special relationship with it that the individual members of the group cannot have, by metaphysical definition.  The Primary Consciousness can be, and usually is, or at the very least represents, god…meaning the Divine Will.  Now, in Christianity, God, naturally, serves as this Primary Consciousness.  In Marxism the Primary Consciousness is the “Workers Utopia”; in National Socialism it is the Racial Ideal manifest via the Aryan State; in the modern American Liberal Progressive Movement it is the “Common Good”; in the modern American Conservative movement it is “American Exceptionalism” which is always fused with an implied and impossible moral standard by which human beings are judged good or evil according to how well they adhere to said standard.  For example, homosexuality and homosexual marriage do not fit the moral standard and therefore are antithetical and even harmful to America.  In all of these examples, humanity gets is collective worth–which means its actual worth–from its integration into the ways and means and beliefs of the Primary Consciousness as dictated (forced upon them) by the “divinely” enlightened and appointed leadership (which is somehow in a unique metaphysical position to interpret the Will of the Primary Consciousness…and they never have a rational explanation for just how this is possible).  And naturally this always involves group integration.  Since the Standard of Truth, which is simultaneously the Moral Ideal, is a direct function of the Primary Consciousness and is thus outside of you, the individual, it is impossible for YOU, alone, as an autonomous SELF, to be reconciled to the Standard.  YOU as an individual must be discarded, denied, sacrificed (preferably figurative, but literally just as well), and you must join your fellow man in group integration for the sole purpose of affirming and promoting and propagating the Will of the Primary Consciousness, which is, ipso facto, the Collective Will. Never the individual will.  Never your will.  Never your SELF.  You, as an individual are, frankly, a cosmic farce.  An existential illusion.  A lie.

So like I was saying this is nothing new to Christianity, which has been responsible for countless murders, wars, oppressions, theft and torture in service to this evil philosophy.  However, it seemed to me a rare and fortunate find to stumble upon such a concise Christian primer on the subject that is so gleefully committed to and so flippantly expressive of the utter destruction and pillaging of the very thing Christ came to save:  individual human beings.  Keep in mind that the producers of this primer are self-admitted emissaries of the Gospel.  That is, they are a church of self-described Christians.

Take for example this quote:

“Although a community group is not intended to be a support group, a Bible study group, a spiritual book club, or a social fellowship group, there are elements of each in every healthy group. The fundamental purpose of a community group, however, is for members to intentionally connect with each other so that they’re “doing life together” and growing spiritually.  (p. 65)

So, what does this mean, exactly?  Well, it’s not really that difficult to interpret, so you likely already have it.  Simply put, it means that these Christians are specifically NOT meeting in order to discuss problems, or to learn the Bible, or to share resources, all of which are I submit fundamental components of “spiritual growth”, (in contradiction to this quote’s very last assertion), but to learn how to “do life together”.  This is a rank nod to the group metaphysic…the idea that the collective alone actually exists, and therefore must fundamentally replace YOUR individual life.  “Doing life together” then really means the rejection of life in service to the group, which by “God’s Will” possesses the only just authority over and ownership of you and all you are and all you own.  The author or authors of this primer are openly declaring that the purpose of their groups is not to grow as Christians, and/or to evangelize the world so that individuals become Christians, but rather to become collectivists. To fully embrace the group metaphysic.

In short, it’s not about Christ, it’s about control.  Because control over people and their property is the ONLY real and rational motivation for promoting and securing the mass consumption of collectivist ideology.  And the only reason for control is power.  And the inevitable outcome of this kind of power is the death of man.  And so this ideology is not only not Christian but is, I submit, utterly Satanic.

Stay tuned for part two.

The thing I most enjoy about being involved in the effort to deconstruct abusive philosophies (like reformed theology) is using reason as a weapon. Once we have successfully debunked all the equivocations the emissaries of the neo-Reformed movement employ in the service of peddling their false ideology, we reveal it for the rank mysticism it is.

On SpirituallyTyranny I successfully backed Tom into a logical corner whereby he was forced to admit that he had no rational counter-argument (here). The only place left for him to go was A. The admission that “faith” precluded reason (I COULDN’T be right, because who the hell am I to demand that Christians actually have a BETTER explanation for their beliefs than your run-of-the-mill witch doctor?), and/or B. More equivocation…which he proceeded to do in his last comment to me. Which really pissed me off but I’m through arguing with someone who considers “truth’ a fickle target…they can never be wrong because they merely change the definition to suit their argumentative whims at any given moment. For example:

Tom: Argo, you are dead to me

Argo: Tom believes he is morally pure as a “Christian” in his hatred of me; because according to his doctrine I am sub-human. I am controlled by satan…I AM depravity incarnate.

Tom: My attitude never approached the level of hate you attribute to me.

Argo: And I quote: “Argo, you are dead to me.”

And the rest of his comment was equally as nebulous in its logic.

The reason I harp on this kind of thing–aside from the fact that it is impossibly exasperating arguing with a demagogue (it’s a waste of time) because they are irrational by definition…reason is an insufficient vehicle for truth–is because our purpose should not necessarily be to convince these true believers of their rational folly (again, won’t happen because truth is bestowed by God, never learned), but instead to prove that what they peddle isn’t the “way” or the “truth” or the “life” AT ALL. Indeed…absent any reasonable definition, these terms cannot have ANY relevant meaning to man’s life. So while Wade, for example in his above comment, attempts to use them as a form of compassionate persuasion, he can’t really define them. As such, they peddle, again, mysticism. Or the idea that all truth and all determinative power which causes all things including man’s thoughts and ways is OUTSIDE of human epistemology. Humans are, in fact, non-existent as such. And therefore, are disregarded as stumbling blocks to God’s will…and abused and exploited accordingly.

This makes Christianity “proper”, as it were, NO different than any other religion on the planet. The fact is that though I am often accused of being a universalist (which is a riot, because I submit there will be fare FEWER people saved than most Christians believe…and I can tell you that reformation teachers should be very worried about their souls; for they cannot define man or God in their doctrine, and that is NOT going to be a good thing for them on the last day), the real universalists are the the “orthodox” Christians. Because they have no reasonable argument to offer for what they believe, and as such they offer no different “way” or “truth” or “life” in their message. People can go to any one of a hundred religions and be presented with the exact same metaphysical and epistemological assumptions regarding man. These “orthodox” Christians think they are saved because they merely use different names for their gods; they use different, perhaps more cerebral, equivocations to defend their ideas; they have different semantics by which the “explain” their faith.

It isn’t a better message because “better” to them has no rational explanation. What is better about being a Christian? Well, if you concede the same metaphysical and epistemological assumptions as every other two bit shaman or Islamist terrorist shithead or atheist communist party dictator, then…well, there is nothing better about being a Christian. By definition.

That is why it behooves us to do two things: Possess a thoroughly rational explanation for our beliefs; and make human life the objective plumb line for truth.

If TRUTH (the universal composition of all that man declares true) does not require my existence in order to be true, then it is quite impossible for me to declare that it is true at all.  My observations; my thoughts concerning it; my concession of its axiom…all of these things are entirely irrelevant.  Thus, if my existence presents an absolutely irrelevant component to the reality of truth…that is, it is true regardless of whether I am around to observe it or not, then I am always and perpetually operating from a place of irrelevance with respect to the truth.  There is literally and absolutely nothing which is an extension of me which offers anything of any meaning or worth to truth.  Which  makes it impossible for me, being inexorably me, absolutely outside of truth, to even acknowledge that truth is true at all.  It is beyond my observation because the sum total of my observation, being a direct function of ME, which is absolutely outside of truth, is irrelevance.  Period.

I, in other words, due to my abject and utter irrelevance, am antithetical to truth.  Perpetually and wholly outside of it, I represent nothing less than a categorical affront to the truth, which not only does not need me to be true, but finds that my existence poses a contradiction…an insufferable limitation to its absolute-ness and its absolutely true existence.

Further, if we say that truth is absolutely true regardless of whether I exist or not–which is what absolutely true means–then we have in fact posited a contradiction in terms.  If concede that  I do exist, and if I concede that truth is absolutely true outside of me, then my existence is NOT actually irrelevant.  My existence, again conceding that I DO in fact exist, must represent a limitation to the absolute true-ness of the truth.  And thus, with my existence established, the truth can no longer be absolutely true, it is only relatively true.  Relative to what?  Relative to its position with respect to ME.  Which makes my existence an integral and utterly defining component of truth.  Instead of being absolutely true without me, it’s true-ness depends on my existence to give it meaning at any given moment….it cannot and does not operate in a vacuum.  I exist, and therefore I am a boundary to its truth; a boundary it must include and reconcile when defining the terms of its truth.  And since, between truth and myself, I am the only one who is consciously aware of truth (for truth is not a self-aware agent, but purely a concept in this paradigm), the responsibility falls to me to utilize truth, to declare it, in service to the only frame of reference I have for truth:  my own existence.  For man and truth cannot exist in tension as absolute forms in and of themselves.  One MUST subjugate the other to its singular frame of reference, its SELF.  Otherwise an insurmountable and perpetual contradiction arises whereby man and truth are constantly at war with each other.  As soon as man declares the truth true outside of his SELF, then that truth demands his submission leading to non-existence as the logical conclusion of that which hinders the absolute truth from being, in fact, absolutely true:  man’s life.  But if man declares himself the categorical reference point of truth–the standard of truth, which I wholly affirm he is, as the only rational conclusion–then truth must be completely submitted to him; to his life, and must itself instead be rendered non-existent.  Not that I am proclaiming that the existence of man means the death of truth.  On the contrary, I proclaim that truth is a concept derived from man’s brain…it is not actual (thus it never actually existed as such in the first place) but it is a cognitive invention of man’s astonishing brain, rooted in his ability to simultaneously observe SELF juxtaposed to what is NOT SELF.  This is the power of his unique consciousness combined with his senses.  Truth doesn’t die in service to man, as though man’s existence destroys truth and thus man represents an inexorable and subversive (read “totally depraved”) presence to all that is true and by extension good.  Rather truth never actually exists at all, in so many words, as though it were some kind of objective force beyond man’s mind and singularity of SELF.  Not in the least.  This is the perspective of the demonstrably wicked and destructive collectivist ideologies (Calvinism, Islamic terrorist shitheadism , Marxism/Socialism/Fascism, neo-Reformation protestantism, Catholicism), and their oceans of blood upon which the history of the world has sailed since practically the beginning of time.  I am arguing that truth doesn’t exist outside of man, but rather that man’s life is the source and standard of it.

In short, without man’s life, the truth does not get to be true.

And thus, by logical extrapolation, if the truth is declared true outside of man, absolutely, then man never gets to be man.  And thus, if we declare man wholly irrelevant to truth, meaning that truth exists absolutely in spite of his life, then what we are really saying is that man must be dead…must be non–actual for the truth to be absolutely true in order that its infinite boundaries are not limited by man’s existence.  Thus, in order for truth to be true outside of man it cannot be conceded that man gets to exist at all, so that he cannot present an affront to absolute truth. And if you don’t exist, then you don’t get to affirm that truth is actually true.  In other words, either man’s life MUST be the standard of truth–that which defines what things are true and what things are a lie; which things are good and which things are evil–or man is dead.  Though he wakes, he is death walking.  He is non-existence incarnate.  Thus, it isn’t that the plague of collectivist ideologies like Calvinism/neo-Reformation theology murder and exploit the living…it is that they do not recognize that the living are in fact alive at all.  You are an extension of the truth outside of you.  Thus, whatever happens to you, be it your death or suffering or injustice or abuse or the theft of your property, it  is ALWAYS in service to truth.  You may claim no ownership of your life because your life is a figment of fantasy.  It is the great lie of Satan:  that YOU are actually ALIVE, and therefore, entitled to justice and consideration commensurate to your status as an absolute, sentient child of God.  Your belief in yourself as actual is the singular source of all the evil which exists in the world.  And indeed, spend a couple of Sundays in a Sovereign Grace Ministries church (a cauldron of pure Calvinist death-worship), and you will observe this message first hand.  And it will be couched in the most sanctimonious, sage, pensive, and reverent of terms.  But once you train your vision to observe beyond the propaganda, you can clearly see; and clearly see that the terror you feel is entirely appropriate; that message is nothing more than: God hates people. And people will be sacrificed into submission by His ecclesiastical proxies or burned alive for eternity in a lake of fire for being born.

*

The truth which is outside of us and doesn’t require our existence or the context of our SELVES, which is our perpetual reference point, indeed cannot recognize us, and neither can we recognize it.  And if we pretend that it can and it does, then affirming that it indeed is absolutely true outside of us demands our removal from reality.  It demands our death; the eradication of that which sabotages its truth, and we are obligated to acquiesce to this demand.  We have agreed that the truth is true regardless of our existence, and thus we have tacitly agreed that we offer it nothing except an unacceptable boundary to its perfect truthfulness outside of ourselves.  Our existence trespasses upon its domain, which, being absolutely true, is everything.  If everything which is said to exist, exists in the presence of an absolute truth, then it follows that everything is a direct extension of–a functional and utter part of–absolute truth, and therefore we meddling humans must forfeit any claim to SELF we might like to believe exists autonomously.  To assume that we ARE…that man IS, and therefore has his own SELF, is to blaspheme truth, which does not need us; and indeed, must obliterate us if it is to indeed be an absolute, unlimited, categorically objective truth (that is, a non-relative, objective truth).

Of course the problem this poses for truth and those who proclaim truth outside of man (those who peddle the wares of determinist and causal “natural law”, be it the mystics of today’s “orthodox” Christianity, or the many purveyors of the causal power of science’s laws of the universe which “govern” and determine) is the immutability of consciousness.  You are perpetually YOU.  YOU are the objective prerequisite of the existence of anything else NOT you…for if something cannot be observed by YOU to exist TO YOU (that is, relevant to YOU; meaning, providing the environment necessary for you to know the difference between what is you and what is not you) then YOU cannot argue for its existence at all.  In order for you to concede that there are things–a world, a universe, a God–which exist, you must BE you.  You must possess an infinite and absolute SELF of your own…a consistent and singular frame of reference by which you can know that the truth is actually true.  Which means it can only be true, again, if it is true TO you.  And therefore the absolute reference point of your SELF, whether you find this consistent with your beliefs or not, must become the standard…the yardstick by which anything you observe can be declared as true.  You, in other words, are are absolutely you, which means that truth cannot be absolutely true, it can only be relatively true insofar as it affirms the standard of truth, which again is YOU; your life; your SELF, and that of others who can be observed to demonstrably exist as metaphysical and epistemological equals (man and God).  The frame of reference of SELF is the only absolute standard of TRUTH, which makes human life the only absolute truth, beyond which nothing man observes can have any relevant meaning or practical, sensible definitions…things cannot even be declared as existing at all absent the conscious observation of man from the inexorable and infinite vantage point of SELF.  Thus, and again, the movement of things you observe and the subsequent concepts you (or we, as a human race, cooperatively) create in order to categorize and organize this movement are only relatively true depending on how they agree with and affirm the standard of YOU, which is the truth at any and every given moment.

*

The notion of absolute truth outside of absolute man presents us with an immovable impasse.  How can two absolute truths co-exist?  Man concedes the absolute truth exists outside of him, thus he necessarily makes his own SELF totally besides the point when it comes to truth.  You see, since man always functions from a place of absolute SELF (your essence of YOU; your metaphysical SELF is indivisible and perpetual) but then turns and declares himself to be absolutely irrelevant to truth, man cannot in actuality claim any truth outside himself because his observation, being a direct function of his immutable SELF, is wholly unable to perceive this truth which is absolutely outside of the absolute frame of reference of his SELF.  Thus, he concedes the un-actuality of SELF when confronted with the “objective” truth.  Man dies. And if not, the emissaries of “objective” truth tell us, the truth dies.  And then its all just an orgy of sin and chaos, and God or nature or both will have to blow up everything and start over.

Well, the solution to this impasse would seem obvious after considering the aforementioned facts:  There is no such thing as man conceding any absolute truth (any external standard of truth) because his observation is always tied to the infinite reference point of his SELF; their is no absolute external place beyond himself by which he can observe and know truth to be utterly true, by definition.  It is mutually exclusive to him, because it, also being “absolute”, cannot include man’s external observation in the realm of its own absolute existence.  There is no other point outside the SELF of man’s observation which man can declare is the reference point of truth.  He alone is the reference point.  And since man IS, the reference point of SELF likewise IS, to the utter exclusion of all other reference points.

This makes all “external” truths purely conceptual; purely abstract; purely a function of man’s mind, and not some absolute force outside of him, which therefore must, being absolute, determine all things, including man and his mind, his thoughts, and the knowledge of his SELF, effectively removing man form existence altogether, making man a lie, as he must be nothing but a direct manifestation of the absolute and absolutely determining truth outside of him.  Thus, you, insofar as you are aware of YOU, if you concede this, are obligated to deny this errant sense of yourself, and allow yourself (not “choose”; for you can do nothing of your own volition, as you don’t exist) to be sacrificed to the absolute truth outside of you, because it IS you, being absolutely absolute, and it therefore owns you, lest you present yourself as an immoral boundary to this infinite truth; which again claims an inherent right to your life as its own, to the utter denial of YOU in totality, which finds perfect moral fruition in your literal death.  For death is the ultimate and most assured way to eradicate your conscience, which can only ever serve to condemn you, but more importantly, condemn the truth, as it constantly lies to you, and proclaims immorally and relentlessly the existence of the autonomous SELF of YOU, which deceptively believes itself to lay somewhere beyond the infinite boundaries of absolute truth, which is impossible.  And thus this rebellion of your mind…your awareness, represents the greatest evil of all, and is the father of lies, making human consciousness THE paramount violation of GOOD…of TRUTH…

…of God.

And this is the philosophy of Calvinism, Reformation protestantism, and all other collectivist ideologies, stripped bare and to the bone.

The second half of this post is comprised of a comment of mine taken from spiritualtyranny.com, where we are discussing this issue, along with others, in the comments thread of John Immel’s latest post.  You can view it here.

Another commenter there posited the notion that utter self-sacrifice is the absolute standard of moral good; and that God alone possesses the ability to achieve it.  The example he used was Christ on the cross, which John summarily dismantled.  I likewise inserted my disagreement with this perspective, which presumes that Christ profited nothing in sacrificing Himself for mankind; that His sacrifice was of no actual value or benefit to Him, and therefore qualified as meeting the requirements of the moral benchmark.  I thought this a massive stretch of logic, to the point of breaking it altogether. I went on to explain why this assumption is not only wrong but impossible by pointing out that since existence is absolute– you ARE, and thus you cannot be what you are NOT; and you possess no inherent ability to be what you are NOT whilst being what you ARE…for this is a contradiction in terms–yes, since existence is absolute, one cannot sacrifice himself to the point of NON-existence–of literally NOTHING–which is the rank opposite of absolute existence, and which, by definition, cannot exist.  That nothing cannot actually exist is axiomatic.  For if it existed, it would be something.  Which…no.

In other words, Christ cannot sacrifice himself into non-being, which is precisely what absolute altruism demands.  Christ’s sacrifice is a categorical extension of His SELF, not a denial of it.  Further, it was a choice, which means he must have had a reason for doing it, and that reason is inexorably a part of the object of His sacrifice:  man.  Which means that humanity cannot possess zero value to Him; for it is the existence of humanity which is the necessary cause of Christ’s having a reason for sacrificing Himself.  Meaning, without man, the sacrifice is irrelevant and pointless…utterly devoid of any definition at all.  Man is the root purpose of the sacrifice.  It was for man, and thus man must possess not only some value to Christ, but ALL the relevant value by which the sacrifice has any meaning.  And this must then mean that the benefit to Christ personally is utterly apparent…for if there is no benefit to Christ for sacrificing Himself for man, then there is no reason, which  makes the sacrifice irrelevant and meaningless.  Where there is value, there MUST be benefit.

I then extrapolated this idea to the false assumption that God does not “need” man; that God’s creative process was of ZERO value to Himself, of ZERO benefit, and therefore constitutes an act of perfect altruism, of absolute self-sacrifice.  Benefiting Him nothing, it was a total denial of Himself.

This is categorically impossible, and this is how I explained it:

*

The idea of exclusive external-to-man absolute forces RULING him at any given moment is the Achilles heal of all determinists philosophies. Be it one force (the Standard Model of Physics which reveals a “nature” which “governs”) or several of them (depravity, grace, God’s will), either all at once (Christians are both “sinners” and “righteous), or temporally (depravity morphing into righteousness).

Finally, God’s altruism.

Why would God create anything in the first place if He gets no benefit from it? This would make creation the single greatest act of irrelevancy ever perpetrated. If God derives NO benefit from His work then there can be no point to the creative process whatsoever. Which makes God the author of nonsense. If Creation is absolutely irrelevant TO the Maker, then Creation is itself, irrelevant TO ANYTHING, including itself. It is purposefully designed to be irrelevant…meaningless, useless.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this means that Creation cannot even be defined as existing; for “to be itself” indicates a purpose…a purpose which is precluded if we assume that it is of ZERO benefit or value to God; God possessing no reason to create it. If God has no reason for it to BE, then its creation is predicated on NO meaning nor purpose,not even “to be itself”, which equals nothing.

But if we concede that we do exist we must ask why. But more than that we must ask: who gets to decide why? God does…which means God’s creation of man cannot be utterly altruistic. Man must pose some objective, legitimate value to God in order for man’s existence to have been manifest in the first place.

Some may argue: okay, man exists to be absolutely altruistic, for this is the moral benchmark…to utterly sacrifice himself to God, because God is the greatest GOOD (making everything else ipso facto “less good”, which demands either an impossible value hierarchy to the absolute of GOOD (moral relativism), or making everything else patently evil, which makes God the creator of evil). To sacrifice not only what he has but what he is to God is man’s purpose. But this is nothing more than the same argument worded a different way. This argument simply says that man was created in order to NOT be himself. He was created as himself, so that he could utterly deny himself for God’s glory. On its face, ridiculous!

Why create man in the first place? If man’s greatest moral good is to fully deny himself–to be NOT himself–then why even bother with him at all? It is an act of utter divine insanity. No…if man exists as himself then he is divinely intended to BE HIMSELF. And no one and nothing else. His metaphysical singularity is SELF, and as an absolute, the point of the SELF is: to be.

And who gets to decide what that looks like? Man does. Because ACTION is a direct function of the absolute of his BEING, which is the root source and purpose of man. Anything else is mysticism…and impossible to argue rationally.