“I believe God gave Israel the Law to magnify the heinous nature of sin.”

Those words were written by commenter Jon (who I think is actually the infamous Randy) in the comments thread of the article “Calvin’s False Gospel:  On the wrong side of the Law, Galatians 3:15-25”, which can be found at paulspassingthoughts.com.  Jon is a quintessential Reformed protestant, and you can tell by the massive amount of equivocation he uses, and the incessant way he states the same contradiction exactly one million different ways hoping that by shear exhaustion his opponents will concede that yes, black can also be white and baseball can also be football and water is dry.  My friends, colleagues and countrymen, this is known as the deceptive bludgeoning of the contrary perspective.  It has served despotic philosophies well for thousands of years.  Why should Jon stop now?

Because the premises are full of shit.  That’s why.

But that’s the point, isn’t it?  They serve shit and when the great unwashed masses protest and say, “Wait a minute, this tastes depressingly like shit”, they respond, “Really?  I don’t see it like that.”  And they say, “There is only one way to see it!  As shit!”  And they say, “Not if you have been given the divine grace to perceive.  And for your tithe, I’ll give you a second helping.”

Now, instead of terminating the thought and the theology where Jon does, which is far, far away from the root of the issue (a nasty habit of the Reformed), we need to take it to the next logical step and ask:  Okay…sure, God gave the Law to point out the heinousness of sin, but what is the point of that, exactly?  What was the purpose of God deciding that man needed to become acutely aware of this heinous nature?  Was it to teach man how to stop sinning, or to announce that man couldn’t stop sinning?  And if it was to inform man that he couldn’t stop sinning then what was the point of that?  For to tell man that he is caught in the endless and hopeless cul-de-sac of his metaphysical essence (which is precisely the message of reformed theology) and which is beyond his ability to control since it IS a product of the endless and hopeless cul-de-sac of his metaphysical essence, and not a function or choice…well, I must admit that to declare this seems quite an irrelevant move on God’s part.  I mean, if man cannot do anything about it, then what is the use in him knowing?

There is no use.  There is no point.  The message that “sin is heinous” when followed by “and there is fuck all you can do about it because it is a function of your rote existence” is entirely superfluous.

Furthermore, I question the ability of man to even apprehend such a revelation in the first place.  Man’s metaphysical essence–the very root of his being–is absolute.  And as an absolute it is an infinite singularity…a completely autonomous and non-relative SELF.  It has no parts as such that can be distinctive or distinguished except in a purely conceptual/abstract sense.  Man’s singular metaphysical essence cannot be literally parsed into “knowing” and “doing”, as though these actions are manifestations of a different, but singular, root being.  The very notion is a contradiction in terms.  “Knowing” and “doing” are both a function of the exact same metaphysical core, which is, again, absolute and singular.  And further, actions and assumptions do not exist in a conceptual vacuum.  They are only “real” insofar as they are a manifestation of the SELF of the individual human being as he or she interacts in relative relationships with other agents and objects.

Being is an IS.  And it is ONE.  This is the metaphysical truth behind every self-aware agent, man and God both.  Everything man thinks (believes, understands) and everything man does is inexorably tied–and directly tied–to his uniform and infinite being.  Therefore, if man is flawed to the point of unavoidable, inevitable, automatic and irresistible sin, then this must also affect his ability to cognitively/intellectually apprehend anything righteous, anything GOOD, be it an object, an action, instruction, or revelation.  His irresistible sinfulness must inform his mind as well as his body, as the mind and the body are both components of the the same metaphysical singularity of SELF.  Man can no more cognitively/intellectually grasp the concept of not sinning than he can avoid committing sin through action.  Why?  Because thinking (which includes believing), strictly and literally speaking, is an action.  It is a work, in that both thinking and acting (in the visceral/”physical” sense) require volition and thus volitional movement via the consciousness of the human agent in service to an observable objective or standard.

(Note:  Please spare me the Pauline proof-texts; I already know them.)

In other words, thinking is a behavior tied to the singular essence of being.  Therefore, if we sin as a matter of our “nature”, then the sin, again, must wholly inform our thinking, which will affect our apprehension of the message:  sin is heinous.  Our “sinful nature” must affect the mind, and therefor our ability to grasp a clear and rational understanding of “good” and “truth” in any form, even, as I said, in the form of a heavenly message.  So Jesus, God, and Jon (let’s hope he makes a distinction between the three…but you never know with the reformed types) can declare the horrors of sin until they are blue in the face, and about our need for a Savior due to the absolute inability of man to resist sin because man is totally (metaphysically) depraved, but man, by this very definition cannot possibly apprehend this, and cannot possibly understand its implications and how it can be remediated…no, not in a million fucking years.  Man is a sinner because the doctrine demands that man IS sin.  And sin, being itself an absolute, because it is an abstract concept, beyond and out of reach of anything in the material universe which man occupies (ostensibly) in his “flesh”…yes, sin being thus an absolute cannot in any way be efficaciously or logically coupled to GOOD, or RIGHTEOUSNESS, even the GOOD of the message, “sin is heinous”, because it is entirely exclusive of it.  Sin incarnate as man cannot and shall not ever recognize the message from God, otherwise it must be said that it possesses the ability to concede the message is good.  And this ability will completely contradict the singular essence of man’s metaphysical depravity.

Thus, what man requires is a complete change of metaphysical essence, and it obviously cannot come from his totally depraved and wholly insufficient SELF.  It must come from outside himself.

But for those who are now tempted to get on bended knee and cry, “It is Christ who shall save me from this body of death!”…not so fast.  There are two insurmountable problems.  The first is that since man’s metaphysical essence is absolute, there can be no change to it, by definition.  It is the utterly complete and self-contained meaning and sum and substance of itself.

And thus the second problem: there can be no other besides it (that isn’t defined purely in terms of conceptual/relative relationship).  And this being the case, there can be no solution for man’s absolute metaphysical problem from outside himself because there is no outside himself.  Man as sin = an infinite essence which cannot be breached by “other” because it cannot co-exist in any literal sense with any other, including God.

*

(Part two next)

(Part One)

The completely subjective abstract value hierarchy under consideration in this series is the following:

1. God

2. Family

3. Church

4. Work

Or, as we are already starting to see in the orientation schools of spiritual and state tyranny, the neo-Calvinist/Reformed “local churches”, it may be expressed something like:

1. God/Church

2. Family

3. Work

What this adjustment to the hierarchy means is that not even the lip service paid previously will be given to any distinction between God and the Church.  Remember, in any entity which roots itself in Marxist philosophy–which is rooted in Augustinian/Luther/Calvinist theology, which is rooted in Greek gnosticism, which is mysticism–the assumption is that the depraved, unwashed, unenlightened, uninformed, or socially “disadvantage” masses are existentially unable to apprehend TRUTH.  And TRUTH is a direct function of “god”, in whatever form the philosophy happens to acknowledge him/it.  This puts the masses inexorably outside of the absolute WILL of the One who demands that all people and all things conform to a particular Standard of existence; some “law” of reality, if you will.  Therefore, in order to compel the masses into right behavior and thinking someONE must “stand in the stead” as “god’s”  proxy to compel.  The means of compelling the ignorant masses is always–by virtue of the metaphysical assumptions the philosophy makes about man–through violence, but the violence is not always blatantly physical.  Often “lesser” forms of destruction are used, such as indoctrination, propaganda, subterfuge, conflation, subliminal messaging, persistent monitoring (i.e. the destruction of privacy), blackmail, intimidation and fear-mongering, and so on.  All of this is in service to ushering in the only model of civilization that “god” will accept: “Salvation/Eden/Heaven”, the “utopia/workers paradise”, the “categorically fair and socially just society”, the “divine destiny of the Nation/State”, the “promulgation of the Race”, the “New World Order”, etc., etc..  Now, these ideas are merely euphemisms, employed as vessels of indoctrination, for the utter benefit of the ruling autocrat who becomes the very root and source of all reality, and thus, is the only one metaphysically and epistemologically capable actually receiving “good things”, because only he is able to truly apprehend them, because only he possesses the pure and divine Gnosis, or “special knowledge”.

In other words, the autocrat is “god” for rest of the world.  And as “god’s” incarnate proxy, he is the only one with the proper frame of reference by which to truly understand the benefits of the pure utopian society.  Therefore, the overwhelming lion’s share of spoil goes to him.  The rest get what he decides to give them, and they are expected to be content with that.  Any discontent is seen as pridefully asserting the lie that the dissenter is capable of apprehending TRUTH on his or her own, apart from the “grace” of the leader who represents God to them.  This naturally is met with swift punishment, which can be and often is exceptionally violent.  You must understand that once you deviate from the collective, your value as a “life” is nullified (and I put “life” in quotation marks because the philosophy does not permit the existence of anything which can rationally be defined as “life”).  The only way to deal with you is to either force you back into the collective or to eliminate you in service to the collective’s absolute TRUTH; which I have already explained is represented by the autocrat as its incarnate form.

From this vantage point, I think you will notice, or have begun to catch at least a glimpse of, the extremely interesting position this places the autocrat in.  He is no longer merely the incarnation of “god” to the masses, but also represents the incarnate singular form of the masses as they are presented perpetually before “god”.  In this position, the autocrat has truly become “all in all”.  He is both God and the Group, the Primary Consciousness and the Collective, the Nation and the People.  He is the absolute and infinite SELF of ALL Creation as well as (and as inexorably integrated into) the absolute and infinite SELF of the Creator.  Indeed, I am sure those of you with any significant experience with neo-Calvinist/Reformed churches have heard the Pastors explain how they will have to “give an account” for you before God on the day of judgement, and this is why you should submit to them and make their calling a “joy”, not a burden.  They have been called to care for you and your souls, because they are ultimately the ones responsible for them before God.  This plea for obedience because it is they, not you, who will give an account for you at the final calling is precisely what this means:  they are the singular, incarnate form of the church collective before God.  They are YOU to God as much as they are GOD to you.  To the sane among us, the level of presumption and conceit it takes for a Pastor (or any priest of the Primary Consciousness) to actually believe this is utterly beyond words, and is awesome in its evil.

This is a very interesting metaphysical position indeed.  And one that is rationally impossible and self-defeating at its core.  And is why collectivist societies in any form always wind up in tyranny, with the death of the individual touted as the greatest moral good.

The sad and terrifying irony of this is that since the autocrat assumes the identity of both Creator and Creation, he has lost his ability to define himself, since there is no such thing as any efficacious, rational, practical or relevant definition of what he IS without the ability to make the observable distinction of what he IS NOT (an issue I covered in my Borg post).  This makes him a man without any identity and without any rationally grounded, objective understanding.  The moral equivalence of all things, ideas, and actions is the inexorable and inevitable outcome of this psyche.  And though I have discussed this before, it bears a review.

What is moral equivalence?  Moral equivalence is the final, destructive outcome of the more commonly heard phrase “moral relativism”.  It is not the idea that there are dichotomies of good and evil, and that these dichotomies are relative as a function of specific and quite possibly mutually exclusive contexts, as we find in relativism;  rather, It is the idea that there is no such thing as good and evil at all.  That all actions are morally identical…that they are morally inert.  Thus, and by definition, the rape and murder of a twelve year-old child is the moral equivalent of Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand. Mother Theresa the moral equivalent of Genghis Khan.

This thinking inevitably turns individual human beings into playthings which exist for the sole purpose of satisfying the whims and insatiable appetite of the autocrat, who will exploit living and breathing souls as though they were so much pocket change dumped into the slot machines at Caesar’s Palace, or dollar bills stuffed into the crotch of some Chippendale’ s thong.  He will do favors for his friends, and commit genocide to eliminate his detractors.  He will lie and cheat and steal and deceive and there can be no one in the position to question his actions because no one else actually exists.  And this is precisely how wind up with…North Korea.  And Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  Stalin’s Russia.  Hitler’s Germany.  Communist Cuba.  The Weather Underground, the IRA, the UDA/UFF, and various sundry Islamic baby killer clubs.  They are all of like mind.  The Primary Consciousness is the cause, the Collective is the outcome, and the autocrat is the incarnation of BOTH.

Welcome to the jungle; come, all you children of the Beast.

*

(Part Two, Redux)

The specific “Christian” abstract value hierarchy we are examining is generally considered to be a product of puritanical influences, which find a contemporary voice most vociferously within the Protestant church, predominantly those which espouse an adherence to “Reformed” orthodoxy.  These churches often advertise themselves as being “Bible believing”, and practicing “sound doctrine”, which is based “only upon the “Word of God”.

Do not be fooled by such deceptively innocuous and benign terminology.  What they mean by “solely appealing to the God’s Word” is anything but.  Rather, their doctrine is rooted very much in Greek mysticism, most notably Plato’s theory of Forms, from which almost all totalitarian states derive their ideological foundations.  This mystic tyranny is codified and systematized and stamped “Christian orthodoxy” most cohesively in John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion”, which for all of its loquacious and academic ramblings is little more than a primer on how to subvert the individual and press them into the service of the State.

Modern day Protestantism in general I submit is, by virtue of its shared roots in Greek mysticism/Platonism/gnosticism, inextricably linked to Marxist totalitarian philosophy, wherein we find that the sum and substance of man’s material and “spiritual” being is found only via the complete integration of the individual SELF into the collective which–and this is important because it underscores the hypocrisy inherent in the philosophy– is governed by a central autocracy, which must always terminate at a single person, who proclaims himself the full-on, indivisible, incarnation of the Primary Consciousness (that “essence”, always metaphysically unobservable, outside of humanity, existing in a sphere of being which is mutually exclusive to the senses and thus the epistemology of the “masses”).  In communism, fascism, or socialism, the Primary Consciousness is simply known as the State; in Monarchism it is the King or Queen; in Tribalism it is the Tribe; and in the “melting pot” of America’s societal subcultures it is the Race.  And in the virulent strain of neo-Calvinist/Reformed “Christianity”, it is the Church, or the Body.

In all of these we need to recognize that the root of belonging to the collective has absolutely nothing to do with the individual person him or herself.  Literally nothing at all.  You are a direct function of the group or your do not exist at all; there is no distinction between the individual SELF and the group COLLECTIVE, which is, of course, purely a conceptual abstraction and as such is completely beyond the scope of man’s senses and therefore his understanding.  Thus, there is no answer to the question “What is man?”in neo-Calvinist/Reformed theology because no MAN exists.  “Man” is the collective, and the collective is man.  Man becomes the concept of “many”, which, because the “many” is a totally absolute collective has no quantifiable, relevant, or efficacious parts.  The collective IS, period.  Which means man as a SELF can only be metaphysically defined as IS NOT.

With that in mind, let us turn our attention once again to the abstract value hierarchy in question:

1. God

2. Church

3.  Family

4.  Work

The church loves to use this scale ostensibly because it is a reasonable way to organize the most prominent spheres of one’s life.  As always, the church must play the role of the benign altruist.  It is a role they play well, thanks to two thousand years of practice on live subjects.  The ostensible argument for such a hierarchy is this:  if we can effectively organize these integral components of life into their respective levels of importance, surely we will be much better able to prioritize our time and our money, no?  We will be in a much better position to pursue the most important goals according to their relative value to the grand objective of “glorifying God”, and therefore we shall be in a much better position to effectively live up to our Christian calling and our personal responsibilities before our heavenly Father, right?

Of course the one glaring problem with this false hierarchy is that nowhere within it do we find what should logically be affirmed to be the prerequisite for the existence of such a value hierarchy in the first place:  the SELF of the individual…or, YOU.  YOU are nowhere to be found.  Look around.  Call your name.  Do you come?  Do you peek out from behind “family” and wave?  Do you give a thumbs-up from behind “church” and call out cheerfully, “Hear I am! I’m okay!”?

Not at all.

This is by design.  For any mention of YOU automatically makes a distinction between the individual SELF and the abstract concepts within the value hierarchy.  And this cannot be suffered in collectivist ideologies.  The inclusion of YOU simply confuses the issue.   In a sense, “you” are I suppose somewhat of a given, as it were; as the ipso facto bystander who is somehow there, but indefinable.  Pointless.  The irrelevant “external” observer to the abstract ideas which claim sole ownership over your life…your SELF.  This is why human beings individually are never actually defined or formally recognized in the creeds and catechisms and statements of faith of Reformation theology, either official or unofficial.  In these articles, the individual becomes merely a cosmic apology; the scapegoat which makes all of the control and violence necessary in order to satisfy the wrath of God.  The problem of evil is the existence of the individual.  And the solution is to remove him or her from the equation, which is precisely why YOU are nowhere to be found in the abstract value hierarchy.  The point is to erase you from your own existence.  And this is done via the exchanging of the SELF for abstract ideas, notions ,and concepts like hierarchies, caste systems, church membership agreements, systematic theologies, statements of faith, creeds, laws, rules, home groups, care groups, youth groups, committees, church bodies, ecclesiastical offices, etc., etc..  Yes, these are all instituted to function as a metaphysical replacement for the great cosmic offense of the SELF.

YOU are photo-shopped out of existence, like Marty McFly’s dog-eared photograph of he and his siblings in “Back to the Future”.  Wiped clean…the stain of YOU removed from before God’s eyes, replaced with God and Church and Family and Work.  And even these are indistinguishable from each other.  Even these are simply ONE when the assumptions which produced the hierarchy are taken to their logical conclusions.  All of these are merely direct extensions of the collective, which is the Church, which is the Senior Pastor, the Omnipotent Autocrat who stands in the stead of God to you, and in the stead of you to God.

YOU never get a place on the mystic totem pole of abstract value hierarchies; in the caste system of “special revelation”; in the “authority” demarcations of the collective.  Thus, the individual can be given no relevant value.  As such, as I have said, the individual does not actually exist.  You are a shadow, nothing more, having causal power like a shadow causes the doorknob to turn or the gate to move.  Therefore, the individual is afforded no dignity within the collective…and those of you with any measure of experience with neo-Calvinism are likely familiar with this truth.  You recall how often you heard the woes of church financial difficulties, or the lack of adequate volunteers on the Urinal Cake Cleaning Committee, or the conflicts amongst the leadership or laity…yes, you recall how the convenient scapegoat for these difficulties was always the desire of people to “do their own thing” (i.e. own themselves), instead of listening to the counsel of the Church.

Why is that?

Because proclaiming the right of autonomous SELF is akin to the worst kind of apostasy in neo-Calvinism and Reformation doctrine (or any collectivist ideology), and is the root of all evil.  The individual is the devil incarnate, and is rebuked with substantial vitriol.  Church troubles always boil down the dickheads who have the audacity to think that they can exist in any relevant or righteous sense outside of the collective group think…as if God recognizes anyone apart from their proper “role” in the church.  The nerve.  Any assertion of YOU is selfish by definition.  Your resistance to the all-consuming push of the collective is an affront to the absolute truth of its existence.  You are not allowed to say no.  You are not allowed to refuse.  For any self-promotion is precisely why God hates people, and why so many are going to roast and hell, and why so few (sniffle, sniffle, and down roll the crocodile tears) find their way to the narrow road which leadeth unto heaven.

Most of you are familiar with this abstract  value hierarchy, or some variation of it:

1. God

2. Family

3. Work

With the meteoric resurgence of Calvinism in our churches today we find that the abstract value hierarchy has been expanded as:

1. God

2. Family

3. Church

4. Work

And at the neo-Calvinist church I  attended until recently, I noticed that the abstract value hierarchy had been, not expanded, but significantly altered to become thus:

1. God

2. Church

3. Family

4. Work

Notice the change?  Of course you do.  You notice how the “church” has risen up the ranks, promoted to its new office by those who have conceded that the “group”, which in this case is the “church”, is that which defines the life of the individual in all its aspects.  That is, the “church” is the Christian version of the Marxist collective from which individual man derives all of his mortal AND spiritual value.

Which is what makes the church collective among the most dangerous kinds, and why it is that when we hear the word “cult” we immediately think of mysticism.  As opposed to, say, the “cult” of Nazism or the “cult” of tribalism.  “Cult” has specific spiritual connotations, and they all lead squarely back to the implicit collectivism found in religion.  Even and especially Christianity, which forsook its Jewish philosophical traditions to play the harlot with Greek gnosticism starting most prominently and significantly with Augustine.  Who was, as you well know, NOT a protestant, but a Catholic.

Interesting, no?

What this means is quite simple and obvious.  In terms of philosophical roots, there is no practical distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism.  What Luther’s reformation was all about was merely a fight over who had the right to own everybody else; it had nothing to do with the altruism of freedom from tyranny.  Nothing whatsoever.  Luther had was under no illusion that mere man possessed any kind of inherent worth or ability to apprehend truth on his own, apart from a duly and divinely appointed ruler.  Luther simply thought that a different philosopher king was needed, instead of the Pope.  Why?  Well, from what I can tell, for no other reason than because HE decided, in contradiction to his own theological assumptions, that HE just didn’t happen to agree with the Pope.  Which is an act of pure arrogance even by his own doctrinal standards.

But notice that the metaphysical assumption remained unchanged:  man still needed a philosopher king.  Man still needed someone to force him into right thinking and behavior through violence mandated by God.   He just thought it shouldn’t be the Pope any more.  Of course, one can easily discern that once the need of a ruler who must inevitably resort to violence to compel the depraved and unwashed masses into “holy” compliance is conceded, further arguments concerning who gets to be ruler are merely superfluous.   The “who” doesn’t really matter.  It becomes nothing more than a pissing contest amongst tyrants.  But practically speaking it spells the same thing when all is said and done:

The masses are fucked.

*

Now, in my last post on the topic of abstract value hierarchies (and, as a side note, when I use the word “abstract”, know that “subjective” is also assumed concomitantly) I spent a goodly amount of time discussing the first reason for this, which is the natural and inevitable fusing of the Church with God, Himself.  (The second reason will come in my next post, where I will examine the Marxist assumptions in the hierarchy).  This is a perfunctory evolution.  Quite predictable, really.  Anytime man is told that he is fundamentally flawed at the root of his existence (the neo-Calvinists/Reformed call this Total or Pervasive Depravity) the inexorable assumption must be that he is also epistemologically flawed.  Epistemology deals with how man knows what he knows.  Epistemological failure thus means that man is utterly incapable of knowing TRUTH, and as such, he is incapable of any moral behavior, because he is by extension incapable of knowing GOOD.  In this sense, man cannot possibly be in any position to have any sort of efficacious or relevant relationship with God as an individual.  Thus, the Church then (which is the leadership…there are MEN who must proclaim themselves the incarnation of the collective) has no choice but to step in as God’s proxy…as “standing in the stead of God”…which is an egregious statement, granted, but I assure you is not unheard of in today’s Protestant churches, and indeed is utterly assumed by those who concede Reformation theology.  And thus, to the laity, there is no distinction to be made between the Church (i.e. the human leadership, culminating in the Senior Pastor) and God, Himself.  And if this is taken to its logical conclusion…well, it’s not hard to see how this fares for your run-of-the-mill pedestrian in society.  If you are not “called” to lead, you are “called” to follow.  And this is merely a euphemism for “owned”.  The Church owns you as far as God is concerned.  Which means that the cover charge for entry into the only place salvation is offered is, by definition, the DEATH of the SELF.  Which…it seems odd that DEATH and Salvation, literal opposites, can be part of the same existential equation, but there you go.  Welcome to today’s Protestant church.  It is a dreadfully dangerous place.

And as far as civil authority goes?  The church wants it, and wants it bad.  Mark my words.  The next evolution in the abstract value hierarchy is indubitably:

1. God

2. Church

3. State

4. Family

5. Work

And God/Church/State should be assumed to comprise one big, indivisible juggernaut of AUTHORITY, which is force, which is violence.  There can be and will be NO distinction made between these three spheres.  And this, incidentally, can be assumed for any totalitarian form of government.  Fascist, socialist, or communist.  Once the state assumes “divine” (absolute) authority, it IS God.  It is the singular author of all truth and all creation.  This is why religion is outlawed in communist regimes.  The State is God and the Church. They  just don’t make the hypocritical distinctions in their abstract value hierarchies like the Reformed Christian church does.   In this sense, they are much more honest; once again proving the curious irony that the secular despot has more scruples than the mystic one.  But, the point is that there is little and will be little difference between any Christian theocracy (theo-marxist entity) and a rank communist republic.

*

The natural assumption of any leader who assumes it is their divine right to compel by mandated violence the thinking and behavior of everyone else–to God’s glory, of course; and can there be a more noble goal?– is the right of absolute civil authority.  After all, this is the very reason they love to quote the Apostle Paul in the Bible as declaring that civil government has been instituted by God to wield the sword of justice and righteousness; to bring all evildoers to the reckoning.  And who better to do that than those called by God to stand in His stead?

Answer?

No one.

Thus, be very wary of anyone running for office on the platform of his or her “good Christian values”.  That person is quite possibly the Grim Reaper…the devil in disguise.

In fact, it is a good rule of thumb to be wary of any man or woman in any context who puts God or Church or Work or Family or State or anything else before individual SELF.  That man or woman is a full on collectivist (Marxist), and what they are really proclaiming is that the death of the SELF is the key to TRUTH.  And thus is the key to GOOD, which means it is the key to LIFE.  And the concession of this impossible contradiction in terms is inevitable despotism and destruction.  They are proclaiming that you are not really YOU.  And as such, you cannot possibly exist to YOURSELF; for YOU are an illusion.  The SELF, which no matter how we try to deny it…no matter how we “if”, “and”, or “but” our way around it, no matter how egregious an affront it might be to our “good Christian” humility or our “social justice” or our “sound doctrine” or the “loving of our neighbors”…yes, the SELF is the inexorable, infinite and singular source of anything that exist to you, meaning that YOU, YOURSELF is the absolute prerequisite to ANYTHING which exists, to anything which you proclaim is  good or bad or right or wrong or falsehood or lie or up or down or this or that.  Unless YOU are YOU first, then nothing can exist to you.  Which means, practically and relevantly speaking, nothing can exist period.  Thus, to proclaim that YOU are a direct product or function of something NOT you is in fact the categorical proclamation of your death (i.e. NOT you) as the root of being.

It is the single greatest contradiction in terms and full on rejection of the Creator to proclaim that TRUTH is a function of that which is wholly outside yourself, be it God, or Church, or any collective or group or ideal or abstraction of any kind.  For the denial of SELF in the metaphysical, epistemological, and moral sense in service to that of any  “other” is a full on denial of your Creation.  And if you were not created you could not have had a Creator.  You cannot know God because you are an illusion.

Thus, you have rejected God and have supplanted Him with a transient impostor.  A liar.  A charlatan who has seized God’s place by lies and fiat.  And how do you intended to answer for this crime of existence before the judgement throne?  Hm?  How are you going to mount a defense or appeal to your “Savior” as dying on a cross for you when you have categorically rejected your own existence…when you have no answer for God when He asks you simply, “Who are you?”.   If by your philosophy you have rejected your SELF, I ask you…who in the fuck is God supposed to save?  There is no YOU standing before Him, by your own admission!  All of your hope rests in the notion that if you deny your creation you can somehow receive God’ salvation.  But does that make any sense?  Will it make sense to God?  Of course not.  Because God is not an idiot.  And He certainly is no liar.  When He calls Himself the Creator of you, that means He created…YOU!  

 And thus you shall suffer the same fate as whatever collective to which you have sacrificed yourself.  You will  suffer the same fate as anyone who cannot answer the question “What is man?”  Or worse, anyone who answers the question with full on hypocrisy and in blasphemous prose,  “Man is nothing.”

Fine.

If you are nothing, then nothing is what you shall get from God.

Commenter Greg (welcome!) reminded me of something I think that bears revisiting.   In a comment posted recently, he mentioned the philosophical similarities between Calvinism (and Reformed theology in general) and atheism.  This is completely true, and it is something I have addressed in detail in the past.  But as we all understand, Reformed theology is like hemorrhoids.  It may subside a little, but eventually you must run back to the ointment.

So, let this little post be the anointment which pushes back, yet again, against the raging rash of Reformed orthodoxy which exists to eventually make its way  up everyone’s ass, and to stay there forever.  You are the puppet, they are the hand…in your pockets and in your bottom.

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Here is what I wrote in response to Greg’s comment:

They [atheism and Calvinism] really do [share the same philosophical presumptions]. Both suffer from the root assumption that human consciousness is purely an illusion. The Calvinsts maintain (no matter how they try to equivocate out of it) that you are ALWAYS a direct function of some determining force.  This force is “total depravity” prior to what they call “salvation” (which is not really salvation…for if there is no YOU in the salvation equation, then YOU cannot be saved, by definition; and remember, you cannot choose salvation, it must be imputed to you in spite of you, and that is their whoooooole fucking theological point at the end of the day).,..so, yes, it is “total depravity” prior to “salvation” and God’s “sovereign grace” after it.

Notice how the volitional SELF of man is irrelevant…and they do not concede that man is volitional at all, by the way.  No matter what they say.  Your “choices” are a function of your metaphysical failure, which is absolute, and thus all choices are irrelevant because the root of each choice is your categorically evil metaphysic.  So whether you choose left or right or up or down or beach or mountains or the red pill or the blue pill, all roads lead straight to hell.  The ONLY salvation then comes in the form of God’s arbitrary election, which is in SPITE of any choice you might make.  You cannot choose Christ since all your choices, no matter what they are, ARE ABSOLUTE evil.  Even if you choose Christ, it is still an evil choice because YOU are the one making it.  Christ must choose you for you; which, again, means in spite of you.

According to Reformed foundational tenets, your existence is why you are evil.  This means that before you can be saved, YOU at your root must be made irrelevant.  You must be declared non-existent in order to be saved.  And this is easy once “total depravity” is conceded.  If man is wholly determined by his depraved nature, then man isn’t really man at all; that is, ALL of him, right down to the thoughts in his head, are purely a direct function of the all-determining force of depravity, which is the entire sum and substance of his existential BEING.  This makes choice irrelevant since the choice, whatever it is, is a direct function of absolute depravity.  Voila!  Man is saved by “faith alone”, and this faith is “not of himself” (a doctrine the Reformed Christian completely bungles and bastardizes).  It cannot be from himself because man has NO SELF, for the reasons I already mentioned aaaaaaaaaand because man is not, of course, and cannot actually be, self-aware.  Your “awareness” is a product of depravity, which is your absolute metaphysic.  Thus, your awareness is an illusion.

So, what does Reformed theology (and atheism) then ultimately deny?  If it denies SELF, it must logically deny that man can be self-aware, since there is no actual self to be aware of in the first place.  So again, what is the ultimate lie of man’s existence?

Consciousness, of course.  Like I mentioned briefly above.

This is a full on denial of consciousness at the core.  And if you aren’t conscious, then you don’t really exist, because you are not able to define SELF unless you are able to make an actual and efficacious distinction between what is YOU, your SELF, and what is NOT you (and this is where choice comes in…it is a function of an epistemology rooted in the actual material existence of individual human beings).  And this distinction can only occur in the case of the fully conscious agent.  If man is unconscious, then there is no actual distinction which can be made between what he is and what he is not.  And if he cannot make this distinction, then he cannot qualify himself as existing.  You cannot be aware of what you are unless you can also observe what you are NOT.  If you are “depravity” then you are an external determining force which is absolute and therefore infinite.  And what is absolute cannot be paired with something it is NOT by definition because the only logical definition of an infinite absolute is that it IS.  There is no IS NOT which can be juxtaposed to it.  It is all you, as far as eternity goes.

There can be no qualification of SELF then which is at all relevant; which can have any actual value.  The statement “is, is is, is is” is meaningless.  “Self is self is self” is a circular definition which cannot go anywhere.  You cannot qualify or quantify or value or “know” what just IS.  A denial of consciousness then is a complete denial of human value.  It takes man’s worth and imputes to it the functional sum of zero.

How this does not result in tyranny is an argument which is impossible to make.  Once individual man has been relegated to ZERO existential value he will be utilized and terrorized and vaporized in service to whatever primary consciousness the tyrant invents to “explain” man’s “purpose”.  And this primary consciousness always boils down to  someONE’s will to power.  Since the primary consciousness cannot by definition be apprehended by man, some “priest” must compel man by force to right behavior.  Thus, the only arbiter of “God’s power” is violence, mandated by God and wholly given to those who somehow rise above their absolute metaphysical condition in order to rule the unwashed masses in God’s stead.

This.  Is.  Calvinism.

If man is absolute depravity, then man cannot be qualified as existing.  Everything about you is a full on figment of the pointless, universal ether.

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The atheists do the exact same thing. You came from a bunch of unconscious “particles” which form together according to invisible “laws of nature” which “govern”. These laws of nature include wholly unobservable and logically-contradictory forces of “space” and “time” which serve as the determining context for all the material objects in the universe, including man. Notice how material reality is rooted in unobservable forces which govern. This too denies consciousness as an illusion. You come from unconscious particles governed by unseen forces and then you eventually dissipate back into them. Life becomes a mirage; YOU don’t really exist. What you think of “you”, or “yourself”, is merely a conglomerate of all-determining forces OUTSIDE of you.  Only the mystic priests which have been given the powers of perception, the “grace to perceive–in this case, the physicists and mathematicians–are able to truly understand the nature of reality and how you “exist”.  Even though they wholly concede determining forces which destroy their ability to claim that “they” “know” anything at all, they will still address you and look you in the eye with that fucking smug tone and fucking smug look that only a numbers wizard can properly manage and declare that you aren’t really you at all.  And what’s more, they have the math to prove it.

The math?  The fucking math?! Absent the direct source of the material universe where in the hell can I observe math, exactly?  And if it IS a direct function of the material universe then what does that tell you about math’s existence?  It is totally conceptual!  It is not actual!  It is not causal!  Material objects cause themselves; mathematics is a direct function of man’s conscious observation of their relative movement, nothing more.

But if you as the “genius”:  where does math exist? He or she will essentially tell you that it is “out there” somewhere, in the unseen cosmic abyss, governing absolutely, from a place where the universal consciousness bestows it upon them because they were born special.

Does this ring a bell?  Sounds a LOT like the teaching at the corner Reformed sausage-maker.  And atheists and Christians think they are of diametrically opposed world views.  How cute they are.

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Of course, in both of these philosophies human epistemology is a total farce.  And the claims to that there exists someONE to actually concede these beliefs about human existence and the nature of reality become outright laughable. For if YOU don’t really exist, as your consciousness is an illusion, then by definition you can’t KNOW anything.  Who the fuck knows anything if there is no such thing as WHO in the first place?

It is outright ridiculous when you think about it.

Argo’s Universal Truth Number Two is worth pondering:  What IS cannot be a direct function of what is NOT.

Which goes hand in hand with Argo’s Universal Truth Number One:  Whatever is a direct function of something IS that something; there can be no rational or efficacious distinction.

If man is a direct function of absolute determining forces then man is NOT man.  “Man is a direct function of governing forces, but is not actually those governing forces” is a contradiction in terms. Man can cannot be a function of what he is not.  If man is man, then he is not subject to “laws which govern”.  And if man is subject to laws which govern then man does not really exist.

The doctrine of ex nihilo–creation from nothing; God spoke, and the universe just “was”, from “nowhere” by “nothing”–is full on gnostic determinism.  There is no way to argue sensibly this idea; and I apologize if this offends some of my readers.  If you know anything about me by now, it is that I deny, from the utter depths of my soul, that the root of the existence of man and the universe is founded upon irreconcilable ideas.  Indeed, insanity is the only legitimate definition of a world view that posits existence from presumptions which make existence impossible.

I hold that if there is a Creator and a Creation, then the understanding of how this Creation was built must be based upon ideas that do not contradict everything man observes MUST be true for him to BE himself.  And if man’s existence depends upon an understanding of reality that is not epistemologically or metaphysically self-destructive, then so does God’s.  Meaning that if man cannot argue rationally for his own existence, he cannot pretend to argue that there is a GOD by which he was created.

The very attempt to reconcile a REAL God with an ILLUSORY man (man that has no reasonable foundation by which he can even accept the actual IS of his own SELF) is laughable.  And if it were not for the ongoing “orthodoxy” of gnostic-rooted Christianity, which even the best and brightest are unwilling to shrug off, hoping against hope that they can have their metaphysical cake and eat it too, because they can think of no other rational explanation for how all this shit got here (I call this “shrug” theology; as in, “fuck it…we’ve got nothing else, so this must be true”)…yes, if it were not for 2000 years of culturally de facto Platonism which is the very bedrock of Western civilization, it wouldn’t be so ever-loving hard and ever-loving frustrating (as the comments thread of my last article can attest to) to try to convince people of what should be, frankly, obvious to anyone who’s awake.  And what is the obvious thing?  It is, again, this axiom:  “Nothing” cannot, by definition, give rise to “something”, because if nothing begets something, then nothing is NOT nothing, by definition.  Instead of being a metaphysical placeholder to conceptualize the relative NOT of objects so that they can be quantified/qualified as separate from other objects man observes, nothing becomes an actual “thing” from which something else can spring.  This is total contradictory thinking!  Nothing cannot be an IS.  It can be given no boundaries, no value, no location.  Period…full stop.  The universe could not be “not” and then “is”, because IS cannot be a direct function of NOT.  These two concepts “being” and “not being” are entirely exclusive of one another.  They cannot be reconciled at all in the literal/material/actual sense!  Only in the conceptual sense…and conceptual reality is entirely a product of man’s mind; it does NOT materially exist to create something material which man can then observe as actual and label, “nothing”, as if nothing can be given a distinct, practical, material value.  The whole notion is patently ludicrous.  

In the comments thread of the last article, commenter David said this:

“Out of nothing simply means that there was nothing and then God created something.”

I quickly pointed out that there is no significant difference between that explanation and the idea that God created the universe out of nothing.  In fact, both ideas say precisely the same thing:  Out of NOWHERE, which is NOTHING, there was something.  This is impossible for all the reasons I have described…beating the dead horse even more now with the idea that NOWHERE is not a place; it is not a location, by definition.  Therefore, it is impossible for anything to come from there, because “there”, in this case NOWHERE, doesn’t actually exist.  It is a conceptual placeholder, nothing more.

Like wise, look at David’s explicit contradiction as he attempts to defend ex nihilo.  He says:  “there was nothing”.

“There was nothing” is a complete contradiction in terms.  “Was” and “nothing” are mutually exclusive.  What was, was once an IS.  And what was once an IS, could not, of course, be NOTHING.  The only time you can use the phrase “was nothing” is when you are speaking purely conceptually.  For example:  “There was nothing going on at the party, so I left”.  Obviously nothing doesn’t actually exist, so the “nothing” referred to is understood not to mean the thing of NOTHING was happening at the party (that would never cross anyone’s mind, but ex nihilo makes perfect fucking sense), but that the person found the party uninteresting and bailed.

What David means, I submit, is that there was God and then Creation joined him.  There was not nothing, again, because God is SOMETHING.  There was God, and then there was Creation.  But that is NOT ex nihilo.  But–and this is important–this is precisely what they call ex nihilo.  Why?  Because they haven’t yet discovered a rational explanation for creation’s manifestation (but take heart, Christians, because the scientists don’t have one either).  So they take this relationship, God = God + Creation, and–in order to avoid the obviously false idea that Creation is a direct function (extension) of God, making Creation God, Himself, and thus denying Creation–they twist this false theory of how the universe came to be and call it ex nihilo.  Or, Creation out of nothing.  But it isn’t.  Because God = God + Creation leaves no room for a value of ZERO, or NOTHING.  There is no NOTHING in that equation.  So ex nihilo is a patently irrational, and therefore a false, interpretation of the idea of God existing before Creation came to be.

And to call that scenario the “true” version of ex nihilo is a complete distortion of the creation event.  There was not “nothing” before Creation, there was God.  So, the question remains:  Where did Creation come from if there was only God before it?  The only answer they think is “ex nihilo”.  But that is not an answer, that is madness.  It is not reason, it is insanity.  It is not even mystery.  The real problem is that the fundamental premise, the idea that there was God, and then God (somehow) became God+Creation, with Creation being a completely physically and metaphysically distinct entity from God, is fatally flawed.  The idea is wrong.  The root biblical interpretation that is almost universally assumed is an impossible lie.  And just because you have not yet been able to formulate a rational explanation for how the universe began does not give you license to declare impossible and mutually exclusive ideas the “truth”, when, in fact, mutually exclusive ideas violate the “truth” at its very root.

The best anyone can come up with is an appeal to “God’s mystery”; and then claim that I’m trying to “explain” God.  First of all, so fucking what if I am?  Is that a mortal sin now?  Oh…here we go; one more thing the lightning bolts home in on.  “Figuring out God” is grounds for divine punishment.  KNOWLEDGE = SIN is the tyrannical equation.  Well, there are only two kinds of knowledge in existence, and mystery is not one of them…I hate to break it to you.  There is only rational truth and propaganda.  There is no neutral zone.

Would a father smack the hand of his child for trying to learn what dad’s job is and how he does it?  Why is not our first response towards someone who is interested in how his heavenly Father orchestrates life and the universe:  “I admire your motivation; I admire your ambition”.  Why should we not assume that God might be gratified at the interest taken in Him?  Even Paul Dohse scolded me for attempting to strip all the “mystery” from God.  But his accusation is flawed.  It is not mystery I am interested in unraveling, for any mystery as a mystic defines it is irrelevant.  (I’m not accusing Paul of being a mystic, btw…but he has tendencies).  If we can’t understand something because our very existential nature inexorably prohibits it, then it is pointless information.  It is not mystery, it is, as John Immel might say, metaphysical madness.

Second, let me say that appealing to God’s mystery has gotten us into nothing but bloody trouble ever since the very first threat of punishment was issued by the Roman civil authorities to anyone not bowing to the name of Christ.  And neo-Reformed/Calvinist hoards naively applaud and dance in the streets at government exercising the moral “absolute” with such razor sharp force; and they pray and wail and gnash teeth, wishing that the government would turn statist proclivities upon the flag burners and the homosexuals and the atheists and the female pastors, never once understanding that we have had governments many times over in the history of the world do this very thing!  And guess what?  There was no thousand year reign of peace and love and acceptance and Christian collectivism where all the roses bloomed in perpetuity and everyone had according to his “need” (who gets to say what is needed for someone else, is my knee-jerk question) and everyone extended a hand and a kiss of friendship and bid each other blessings from above and  harmony was threaded through the fiber of all living things and the lambs and the lions laid down together, and both boys and girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice.

No.  There was none of that.

What was there?

There was bloodshed.  Bloodshed and piles of limbs and torture and oppression and caste systems and the divine rights of kings…kings who used their power to single-handedly lead legions of slavish  young men into bloody death to extend the reign of their power and influence…all in accordance with God’s will, of course.

I have a question.

Have you ever actually seen a real iron maiden?  Have you ever laid eyes upon this appalling instrument of human torment?  It is truly a terrifying sight.  Even the strongest of men will likely recoil as he lays a finger upon one of the dozens of spikes which line the inside of the sepulcher; spikes which are filed to dagger-like points.  The iron maiden is, of course, made of very thick iron, and it is shaped and molded into the image of a large, grotesque woman…hence the “maiden”.  It is about coffin sized, and is placed upright, and the front of it opens on hinges.  There is no opening in the device save for a small hole about eye level, where the poor slob can look out and be tormented by the mocking open spaces where he used to roam.  Both the front and back of the metal box are lined, as I said, with dozens and dozens of sharp spikes, and the idea is that the victim is locked inside the maiden, standing up, with barely a centimeter separating his body from the spikes.

I hope he or she isn’t too claustrophobic.  Because they are going to be in there for a while.

Now, this is where the fun really gets going.  The marvelously malevolent and cruel idea is that as the victim tires his body will wax and wane inside the metal coffin.  As he moves, and his body becomes slack with weariness, he will begin to impale himself more and more upon the spikes which are all too willing to bear the weight of his soft flesh for him.  Over time, the puncture wounds get deeper and deeper, and ever more painful, until eventually he either bleeds to death or pierces a vital organ.

Obviously, the amount of suffering, both physical and psychological, cannot be overstated.

And now,all of you who long for a return to a time when “good” Christian men held the monopoly on civil authority, tasked with the divine mandate to rule society for the production of a “godly” citizenry…yes, all of you who long for such a time, and praise the stalwart and uncompromising ways in which the theocracies of the past and present dictate morality with the righteous fist of God’s perfect will…all of you must look at that iron maiden–that symbol of man’s irrational worship of human death in the name of “godly” life–and ask yourselves how many times that fucking thing was used on “heretics”.

Oh…woe to us should the “elect of God” rule the land!  We should all flee for our lives in such an instance!

But, Argo, you will ask…of what relevance is the iron maiden and the state-sanctioning of  torture to the doctrine of ex-nihilo?

The answer is quite simple:

It is a short distance between a philosophy founded upon premises which are irreconcilable and therefore deny the actuality of humanity, and the gas chamber.  It is but a short hop between a philosophically and ideologically broken moral standard and the mass destruction of humanity in service to that standard.

All awareness and knowledge, revelation and enlightenment, demands a distinct and fully autonomous human SELF from which to extend; that is, the ability to KNOW is a direct function of the singularity of the HUMAN SELF.  That ability cannot be the direct function of what is not man…because if man’s ability to ascertain TRUTH is not of himself, then man’s understanding of everything is always OUTSIDE of him.  Which means that man has no frame of reference for himSELF.  And without that distinct and fully autonomous reference point, it is impossible for man to define anything else, including and especially God.  And it is this ability–the ability to BE an autonomous SELF–which is the very seed of man’s knowledge.  So that when understanding is reached, man can claim the knowledge as a direct function of his own ability to possess it; which makes HIM the source of that knowledge.  For without man and his innate ability to understand, which is of himself alone, then their can be no knowledge claimed.  For without a proper repository for knowledge–an agent which can manifest that knowledge into action which ultimately serves a singular and infinite standard of TRUTH (that standard which all ideas are measured against to determine their veracity; which I submit is man’s LIFE)–then knowledge is irrelevant.  And knowledge which is irrelevant isn’t knowledge, by definition.  For ANY notion, idea, construct, or concept without an agent capable of defining it thus, in accordance with a standard of TRUTH, is utterly meaningless.  Without man, knowledge has no purpose.  And what is knowledge without purpose…what is knowledge without an objective (man’s life) which it can serve in order to prove itself true and effective?  It is nothing at all.

The point is that man–his LIFE; his SELF–is the beginning of knowledge and understanding, and, as it is the very singular purpose of knowledge and understanding, it is not merely a stepping stone along the philosophical trail, it is the entirety of the trail itself.  Nothing is true and nothing is real absent the SELF, the LIFE, of humanity.

And that just doesn’t sit well with most Christians.  Because Christians are arguably the greatest proponents of Platonist “primacy of consciousness” philosophy the world has ever seen, and that is exactly why Christian interpretive assumptions beginning with Augustinian thought and metastasizing into various creeds of orthodox Protestant and Catholic theology have been the catalyst for almost every single war, revolution, uprising, human purging, brutal oppression, terrorist act, and mass slaughter of innocents in the entire Western world.  Perhaps only a handful of conflicts have ever been spawned for “righteous” (i.e. reasonable) reasons .  If you ever want to see just what the death of reason looks like, and the concession that ALL truth and ALL understanding lie inexorably (and impossibly) outside of human existence, go to Church.  Any church.  They all concede the same Augustinian root assumption:  you are not yourself.  YOU are but an extension of a determining force.  They call this force God; but that name is derived only by tradition.  It has actually nothing to do with God, as He is actually presented in Jewish canon.

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A SELF, in order to be a SELF–that is, understood as a distinct agent from whatever it is NOT (its environment)–must obviously be self-aware.  That this is axiomatic should not require any explanation.  If you are not aware of YOU as YOU, then you cannot be in a position to declare that YOU exist at all.

You must be YOU in order to truly be a SELF which can relate to God (i.e. exchange value), and to know Him.  And if YOU are YOU, then God is by definition NOT you, and thus God cannot rationally be declared omnipotent or omniscient.  Why?  Again, because God cannot be YOU.  And further, God cannot be anything He is NOT.  If there is a God and there is a Creation then one thing is an absolute certainty:  there is an infinite and absolute distinction between the two.  Creation is NOT God and God is not Creation.  Period.  Full stop.  And neither possesses the ability to be the other because to BE what one is NOT completely contradicts the agent in question.  If God can BE Creation, then in that circumstance He cannot be declared God; because an absolute cannot be parsed into two mutually exclusive agencies….it cannot be what it is and what it is NOT at the same time.  This is an obvious contradiction that not even God can suffer.  And if God cannot be you then God cannot be omnipotent.  He cannot be all powerful because all is no longer “all”, it is only part.  His power is reserved for Himself, which means that it is constrained by His own particular frame of reference.

And if His particular frame of reference is limited to Himself, then He cannot be omniscient because what He knows is always going to be an inexorable function of His own particular frame of reference: Himself.  He cannot know what is NOT Him knows because knowledge is always a direct function of the absolute of the individual agent which possesses the “knowing”.

You can never know absolutely what I know, and vice versa, because knowledge is exclusive to our own infinite frame of reference, which is our unique SELF.  So HOW one knows what he or she knows comes directly from BEING themselves.  Not from being anyone else, which is of course impossible.  No two self-aware agents possess the same knowledge because the infinity of the SELF’s frame of reference cannot, by definition, be breached by anything or anyone outside of it.  YOU are YOU infinitely, and so YOU cannot ever be in a position to see things as I see them.  And the converse is also true.  Thus, your knowledge is limited according to the infinite SELF of your own existence.

The same holds true for God.  While God can affirm the same IDEAS as man does, and can reveal to man wisdom and truth (properly defined, that is, not defined as the Platonists do), this does not translate into “omniscience”.  This does not translate into God’s ability to become what He is not and to act from it (do anything) and to realize from it (know anything).

So once again the same axiom dismantles yet more tools of the mystic tyrant.  Omnipotence and omniscience are rendered false by the very existence of the autonomous, individual human SELF.  The fact that YOU are YOU means that God is NOT.  Which means that you, as yourself, individually, are able to act and do and be and think and know and learn and produce and earn and deserve and will and act in service to morality and to TRUTH; and you can know that the fruit of your existence and consciousness is real and valuable and worthwhile and represents everyday something new and fresh and beautiful; that is, it represents the manifestation of your life and your pursuit of it thus, to your comfort and pleasure, which is the very purpose of BEING, and why life is such a blessing from God.

And the existence of SELF is a very, very good thing.  It means that real relationship can occur with the Creator.  Real value exchange can be manifest.  Real salvation can present itself.  Real Divine help can be offered to those who suffer.  Real joy can be felt by those who do not.  And it can be stated unequivocally that suffering is NOT the purpose of life; for this is the fruit of a life lived for DEATH’S sake.  And this is wholly contradictory to God’s purpose for his Creation.  Being should be joyful…it should be a blessing; and you have the sole right to determine how “joyful” and “blessing” are manifest in your own life.  And God is here to help you to that end, and to help others as well.