Category Archives: Determinism

The “New Normal” is a Euphemism for Indefinite Lockdown: Why the lockdown will never end

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If you have spent any time reading this blog, it is likely that you have an understanding of the nature of government, and by that I mean: the metaphysical foundations upon which government is built. If you are new to this blog, you may not yet grasp these foundations, so I will summarize them for you now. This will not be a detailed examination of the metaphysics of the State, but for the purposes of this post, it will give you a basic framework as context:

There are basically two kinds of metaphysical archetypes, Individualist and Collectivist. Individualist metaphysics allow for few if any variations of political iterations beyond the type which is pretty well obviously implied by the archetype itself. Almost exclusively Individualist metaphysics imply categorical voluntarism as the political iteration. Individualist metaphysics presume that man is ultimately a function of Himself…that is, His own ability to exist as Self, which implies Self-ownership (one’s body is owned by one’s Self, and therefore so is one’s labor), thus individualist metaphysics simply do not and cannot accommodate the existence of Coercive Authority as a means to organize humanity sociopolitically. There is no such thing as Government or the State within the politics which proceed from individualist metaphysics. All interaction and all value exchange are done ONLY at the level of the individual, and thus categorically voluntary value exchange is the only possible means of ANY value exchange of ANY kind whatsoever. The use of coercive violence to compel behavior does not exist in Individualist philosophy…at least, not a rationally consistent individualist philosophy. Coercive violence IS permitted in the case of preventing or mediating direct violations of individuals, but due to the nature of individualist ethics, this does not constitute a violation of the Self of the one violating his fellow man, and thus it is not a violation of voluntarism. I will not describe the full complexities of individualist ethics here, for obvious reasons.

Collectivist metaphysics on the other hand not only allow for the existence of governments and states but necessitate them, because the politics implied by collectivist metaphysics are rooted in violence (force) in order to compel behavior. In collectivist metaphysics a human being is not a function of himself—his own ability to exist as Self—but is instead a function of some essentially ethereal, fundamentally indescribable, inscrutable determinative force, which ultimately defies human understanding, because its infinite nature is is perfect and absolute whilst man’s is vulgar in comparison…graceless, rudimentary, and starkly finite. This determinative force can come in many iterations, an almost infinite variety or combination of them, really, from a deity, to deities, to mathematical or natural law, to evolutionary forces, biological forces, cosmological forces, ideals based on race, or culture, or national identity, tribalism, social class, economic class, mystical caste systems, etc., etc. It can even come in the guise of individualism, such as the Ideal of The People we see in the United States, where “People” is ostensibly meant to be the collection of INDIVIDUAL citizens, but, due to the a-priori presence of the State, really amounts to nothing more than another collective ideal into which individuals must be compelled by State violence.

Collectivist metaphysics, because they reject the efficacious existence of the individual, necessarily reject the efficacious existence of individual consciousness, and thus they reject the idea that the individual is fundamentally capable of making efficacious use of his volition and choice. Therefore has no ability to behave ethically as ethics are defined according to collectivist metaphysics, and thus he must be compelled by law—where the law is merely the sublimation of State violence…that is, the law gives ethical legitimacy to the State as it commits violations of individuals in the interest of the collective Ideal. Now, in the same way, the collective Ideal is the sublimation of the State, meaning that the Ideal, such as “The People” here in the U.S., doesn’t exist in any real way except as manifest by the State, itself. So the State IS the very tangible existence of the Ideal on earth. Thus, politically, the real point is to SACRIFICE the individual to the State, in service to the collective Ideal (the ideal being the determinative force which created all people and all things in the first place). And this is NEVER seen as some kind of ethical violation on the part of the State against the individual because in collectivist metaphysics, the individual doesn’t actually exist at all, remember? Consciousness, the Self, Will, Choice…these are all illusions at best, products of the unenlightened barbarian who is simply unable to grasp the truth that he is not actually HIMSELF at all. The “sinful nature” of the individual which is his fundamental existential core is his insistence that he EXISTS. Law and the State violence which accompanies and is corollary to Law is used as a means to ultimately eradicate the Self and bring the physical body into line with the Truth, which is the collective Ideal. Once a State is established, the State is all that matters because, metaphysically, the State is all that can be said to actually MEAN anything, BE anything, or DO anything of any practical value because the State is the ONLY legitimate incarnation/representation of the collective Ideal which is a function of the Determinative Force which created everything in the first place.

So what in the hell does any of this have to do with the current lockdown?

I’m glad you asked.

First, let me say that the reason I expend so much blog real estate on discussing the metaphysical roots of the State—the nature of the State—when discussing the coronavirus situation and the lockdown is that these roots of the State are where one shall find a truly meaningful explanation for what is going on in this ostensibly irrational lockdown situation. IF you understand the philosophical fundamentals upon which the State is established, then you can see that what is happening is not merely insanity run amok, or western narcissism and societal fracturing manifesting itself in response to some perceived global existential threat, or even simple political corruption perpetrated by the large number of “bad seeds” we’ve unfortunately elected to represent us. In short, if you understand the true and irreducible WHY, which is the philosophical WHY, then you can truly understand not merely what is happening now, but what will happen next—at least generally. Though what specifically will come next may reveal itself in an unforeseen way, you will readily perceive it as a necessary effect of what came before. And furthermore you will understand what is happening now in the overall context of not only the existence of the State under whose authority you find yourself at present, but the existence of the State since its inception, and indeed, the existence of ALL States. You may not be happy with what is happening, but at least you need not be confounded and frustrated at what seems like rank madness. You will see that all the “madness” actually makes sense, and you will understand that what is happening is really the only thing that could have ever happened.

Now, referring back to the metaphysical roots of government, we now know that based upon how the State defines individuals (as not fundamentally being themSelves and having no legitimate individual existence), that the State cannot actually do anything FOR people, but only TO them. The purpose of the People—the individual people that make up a given nation’s citizenry—is to be subordinated to the collective Ideal, and this means, in practicality, to the State. This is the whole point of law. Individual choice and volition is bypassed and obedience instead is the means by which the ethics of society shall be ultimately realized. What you want is irrelevant; that you OBEY is what matters to government. We can distract ourselves from the truth of our place and purpose with the bromide of rights and liberty and representative government and free elections, but since an option in any election is NEVER “no government”, then all elections are merely a reinforcement of the right of the State to exist. And the right of the State to exist implies the right of the State to pursue its purpose. And its purpose is to COMPEL individual behavior into collective action by force. Period. As a philosopher named John Immel once put it, “government is force”, and that is all you really need to know to understand government in its entirety. Thus, the only thing we are ever really voting for is the right of the State to rule us. Which makes voting itself an arrant rejection of our own volition and the efficacy of our own choices, and thus our own existence, making voting an exercise in abject Self-nullification. And we wonder why we have a deep State. Voting, ironically, implies the existence of a deep state (an unelected group of rulers who govern absolutely and indefinitely). The deep state does not exist to subvert voting; it exists as voting’s most perfect and rational conclusion.

This brings us to the salient question of this article: Why will the lockdown never end?

At this point, I’m sure you, being astute, have already discovered the answer, but I will give it here in the interest of rounding out my thoughts. The lockdown was instituted in service to the one thing that ultimately matters to the State, and represents its most basic and salient purpose:

Control.

The lockdown was applied as a means to exercise State control over the masses, which makes the fundamental reason for it the same as the reason for every other regulation. Control. Certainly the ostensible rationale was to protect public health, but this is merely a superficial apologetic for the underlying tyrannical interests of government. All State regulations have a veneer of “public interest” which is meant to imply that they are FOR the citizen, but when we remember that the term “public” is always in reference to the collective Ideal and that the State IS that Ideal incarnate, whatever is done for the public is really done FOR the State, and thus is done TO the citizen…that is, at the citizen’s expense.

Why could citizens not be left alone to deal with pandemic in their own way? Why was it assumed that the State MUST intervene with rule, regulation, and decree? Well, the reason is fundamentally found in the metaphysics. The reason man NEEDS government in the first place is that he is entirely insufficient to his own existence. The individual functions from a frame of reference of Self, of I, and instantiates this via volition and choice. But the Self is an imposter to reality according to collectivist metaphysics. Choice and Will and Self are sinful and wrong in that they contradict the State, and the State is rooted in the collective Ideal, and the collective Ideal is the Determinative Force, and THAT is what is the essence of reality is. Not the Self…not the individual. The citizens, left to themselves, will always fail, because they cannot understand reality, because they see if from an infinitely flawed frame of reference.

The reason for the lockdown, again, is control, as control is the reason for everything the State does TO the people it rules. Thus, if we ask the question “When will the lockdown end”, the answer is that it will only end when the end represents a greater measure of control. The government cannot relinquish control any more than the viper can stop slithering on the ground and begin to fly. It simply isn’t its nature. You will notice that every seeming compromise of the State with the people is merely an expression of government power…it is in the interest of power that the State makes any concessions, which makes “concession” merely a manifestation of power. Whenever the State relents here, it inevitably doubles down over there. The State never relinquishes control because control is what it IS, and it cannot BY itself DENY itself. Even if the lockdown were to be ended, what has happened? Wrecked economy, shattered societal cohesion, health crisis in every medical arena in addition to the coronavirus, explosions of alcoholism, drug use, suicide, domestic abuse, gutted lower classes, atomized populace, inner city chaos, all of which the government will predictably move in to manage, thus exponentially raising the level of State control to atmospheric heights. Add to that, we have set an irreversible precedent of plenary government control of everything and everyone in response to a crisis, which will be defined by the State, of course. Our government, in response to situations IT decides are sufficiently threatening, now openly presumes the right to dictate religion, social interaction, association, travel, commerce, business, and property ownership.

So when will the lockdown end?

At this point we can see that this question is entirely meaningless, and was always going to be meaningless. We could answer “never”, but that simply doesn’t do the profound backdrop of such a question any justice. It’s a facile answer…it’s dust. The lockdown is control, and control is the State. The lockdown is simply a necessary manifestation of existence as it is defined by collectivist metaphysics.

In other words, lockdown isn’t a lockdown, per se…

The lockdown simply is.

END

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Two)

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Death is an action without a consequence; birth is a consequence without an action. What I mean by this is that in both cases, birth and death, the relationship between cause and effect is irrationally severed. It is said that you are born, but if we define the birth of you as your “coming into being”, then the question is how can one be born if one does not exist in the first place? How can you experience birth if birth is the fundamental beginning? There is no YOU to be born prior to your birth, and so the consequence is birth but there is no action which involves you at all. The action which is entirely mutually exclusive of you somehow concludes with you. Frankly, this makes no sense at all. I don’t care how you twist it or what mathematical, evolutionary, determinist magic you try to invoke to square the infinite circle.

And death is like birth except that in this case, the action is of you but the conclusion is entirely absent you. You die, but since death represents the oblivion of you—the complete absence of you—then the consequence of dying has absolutely nothing to do with you at all. You could not have experienced your death, since to experience something you must exist—existence is a prerequisite to experience. This is axiomatic. Further, how do we make any claims about you once you have died? If we define death as the categorical absence of you, or the non-existence of you, then who exactly are we talking about when we speak the life one lived prior to death? If death represents the utter non-existence of one who once lived, then there is no longer any ONE upon which to hang the life which is said to have been lived. We cannot speak of so and so doing this, or so and so doing that if, so and so is entirely non–existent. But if we insist that so and so did actually do this or that even though so and so doesn’t exist, then we concede implicitly that existence itself is transitory. Existence is not fundamental, but is itself, merely a mist which fades. Existence then cannot be trusted to be objective, and thus any arguments to the objective and empirical nature of reality and truth collapse.

There are a few ways that reconciliation of these contradictions is attempted, and all of them fail the test of rational consistency. One is to deny the existence of YOU qua YOU entirely…to insist that the Conscious Self is purely illusory; a hiccup of the otherwise perfect and perfectly determined mathematical, perpetual cosmic evolution. This rank nonsense was debunked in part one of this article series.

Another explanation is that death is in fact an illusion; that you transition to an after life, as the Christians or Jews or Muslims claim. The problem here is that Christianity makes no such claim about birth, and as far as I know neither does Judaism or Islam. Yet we cannot claim that death is merely a transition but birth is absolute, for both are the exact same relationship between being and non-being. You see, if death is merely a transition into an alternate state of existence, then so must be birth. For going from nothing to something is no more rational than going from something to nothing. In other words, if man does not go from absolute being (life) to absolute non-being (death) then he likewise does not go from absolute non-being to absolute being. If there is a life after death then there must concordantly be a life before birth.

The reality is that only when we accept that the Conscious Self is a constant—that the position of the Observer is to be the reference for an otherwise infinitely relative reality—does one’s existence as a conscious being begin to make sense. It is a hard truth to swallow, for it runs contrary to all popular religion and philosophy, which accept either death, or both death and life, as infinite and absolute bookends to a purely transitory existence as One who is utterly aware of himself, his environment, and possesses the capacity to conceptualize both, as well as the relationship between them, and from that prescribe definitions, and from these meaning, and from meaning, truth, and from truth, morality. But One who is so absolute as this cannot also be rendered subjective and finite via birth and death as they are commonly understood.

END Part TWO

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part One)

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The idea of death is something I have rejected from a philosophical perspective…that is, from a perspective of capital-T Truth. I am okay with death form the purely emprical side of things…that eventually our bodies give out for whatever reason and we are returned to the dust from whence we sprung. But from a rational position, one where fundamental epistemological conceptual consistency is the only real basis for knowing anything at all (which is true), nothing about death makes sense. And birth, being death’s corollary in this regard, is in the same position. You see, if we only accept truth based upon empirical “evidence” then we can never arrive at a rational, relevant, and meaningful answer to the question “what is man?”. For man is more than his senses; more than just his body. If he were not, then consciousness would be impossible. The Singularity of the Self…that is, the constancy which is necessary for consciousness, and from consciousness, observation, and from observation, conceptualization, and from conceptualization, meaning, and from meaning Truth, is utterly denied when we accept that man is merely a transient phenomenon; that there is nothing constant and absolute about his Self; that consciousness is entirely finite; it begins with blankness, and returns to blankness, which fundamentally nullifies all which it had learned and spoken in the meantime.

Consciousness is where the empiricists and determinists and objectivists completely fail in their philosophy, which is why they relegate it to mere epiphenomenon—an illusion, with a purely subjective ontology. Consciousness, by their standards, remains “inside”, whilst “objective truth” is that which is found on the “outside”. That this renders consciousness mutually exclusive from objective existence, and thus makes conscious understanding impossible, and thus any claims about what constitutes objective existence and truth likewise impossible, which voids their entire philosophy…well, that never seems to come up much. But we cannot have our cake and eat it, too. Consciousness cannot spring from the abyss of absolute unconsciousness (pre-birth) flourish for a while to grasp all manner of empirical and objective truth, and then return to the abyss (post death). The 1 of consciousness cannot be born from and then die to the 0 of oblivion. Consciousness, whether we want to accept it or not, is a Singularity; it is Absolute. The existence of You is predicated on You being a constant. If there is no constant/absolute frame of reference for You, then You is impossible.

You cannot be a function of that which is outside of you, because then You are not actually You. And You cannot be merely relative to that which is outside of You because then there is no fundamental constancy to You, in which case you have no grounded frame of reference by which to define “You” in the first place. And You, and by that I mean Your Self, and by that I mean your Conscious Awareness of Self, cannot merely be some (perhaps complicated or mysterious) kind of cosmic or evolutionary illusion because that begs the question: “An illusion of what?” And that question has no answer because the “what” is that which the proposition (that consciousness is purely an illusion) denies can even exist in the first place. And consciousness cannot likewise be a non-illusory product of some unconscious biological/evolutionary determinative process because that creates the self-defeating assertion that consciousness is direct function of unconsciousness….that somehow consciousness can step out of the absolutely unconscious processes from which it directly springs, observe these processes from a specific and distinct frame of reference, and proceed to make claims about the “objectivity” of the utterly unconscious determinative nature of consciousness.

The only options we have are: 1. That Consciousness IS, and is Singluar, and thus does not come from the Nothing which precedes birth and return to the Nothing which follows death; or 2. That it is a function of either a purely relative existence, unconscious biological/evolutionary determinative processes, or is an illusion. In other words, that consciousness is in fact entirely unconscious.

And only one of thes two options makes consciousness actually possible.

You ARE; and You are Constant. I don’t really care what objectivists, empiricists, scientific pseudo-philosophers, or other nihilistic determinists think—I have listened to their positions on this for years and years and it never changes and never manages to wiggle its way out from under the rock of self-defeating contradiction which crushes it to dust. I have heard everything, from appeals to quantum physics to cosmic evolution to taxicab geometry (where apparently squares are also circles…which, no; this is verifiably false all day long). Any and all attempts to negate consciousness as being what it self-evidently IS fail, always fail, and will fail forever.

So…with that being said, how now can we proceed to understand birth and death from a rationally consistent point of view? Do they even exist at all. Well, subjectively, perhaps. But objectively, no. More in part two.

END PART ONE

The Lie of the Smallest Particle: Greater implications for existence and consciousness (Part One)

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The broader point I am trying to make with the last two articles on the lie of the “smallest particle”—a particle with no dimensions and no sub parts, which physics acknowledges as existing—is that at some point, no matter how hard we ignore it, or do not acknowledge it, or lack the wisdom or critical thinking skills to see it, empiricism runs out. At some point the ability of the observer (man) to sense reality (that is, using the sensory transmitters of taste, touch, vision, hearing, smelling) breaks down and can only be accessed consciously. Now, by “consciously” please understand that I am not talking sollipsism or mysticism or faith, I am talking reason…the rational (non-contradictory) integration of concepts, which is a process that is wholly cognitive. That is, is a product of man’s mind, and not a product of his senses. Indeed, I submit that the ability to conceptualize precedes the senses in the rational metaphysical chain…or perhaps better said, the senses are a function of man’s ability to conceptualize his existential context (‘enviroment’) and not the other way around. But an expansion on that topic is best left to another article.

At any rate, speaking of mysticism, I submit that the objectivists, empiricists, scientific determinists, scientific rationalists are the real mystics, for they are the ones who ignore where reason takes them, insisting that only that which can be sensed is objective; and when the senses break down, as in quantum physics, conflate the part of physical reality which can literally only exist as mathematical equations, which are catagorical functions of man’s (the obeserver’s) ability to conceptualize, which is the foundation of consciousness…yes, they conflate the mathematical equations with empirical proof; that is, the wholly conceptual (math) is the empirical nature of the quanta.

Impossible.

No, my friends, the objectivists, rationalists, and determinists are the true hypocrites…are the true peddlers of determinist, mystic forces which act as the tyrannical overlords of creation and reality, with the minds of men—those very minds which create the formulas which describe the quantum universe in the first place—relegated to rank illusion, with only those “enlightened” souls able to know the truth. Men, you see, do not create the mathematics which describe the unobservable-yet-still-empirical reality of the quantum universe, they merely “discover” them. And only those given the “grace to perceive”—the particular intellectual proclivities necessary to grasp their hyper-complex design—can really understand. The rest of us are to simply accept their scientific wisdom on faith, as though a divine command, and to punt the explicit-yet-conveniently-ignored rational contradictions (e.g. waves of spacetime) into the abyss of “unknowable mystery”.

But here’s the truth: Objectivists, determinists, empricists openly (though they may not know it themselves, for they are much blinded by hubris and religious zeal) deny the right of anyone else to hold mystic ideas. Everyone else is a fool. Everyone else is deceived and a deceiver. Oh, they can demand fealty to their gods and goddesses—the quanta revealed through quantum theory and the cosmic noise generated by the Church of Billion-Dollar-Atom-Smashers—but the rest of humanity…well, god forbid that they should ever give any mind or deference to other divine ideas. Only the pernicious, mendacious, indolent, and simple would deny the supremacy of the gods of science. Only the irredeemably immoral, the unwashed barbarian, would reject the enlightened sight of  the Preisthood of the White Lab Coats.

Yet what is the difference between “Empirical Church” and other churches? We are told that the difference is that there is no actual faith involved in believing the “scientific evidence”, and this is because it is observable; tangible; physical; actual; sense-able; that science believes is observably distinct from this or that, or him or her. That what they believe can be seen and measured. It requires no more faith to believe in the truth of the quanta than it does a bowl of oatmeal.

But does it?

Can you observe that which is dimensionless, possessing no sub parts, and thus existing at no place, and in no time? In other words, can you empirically observe that which isn’t actually there?

I think you know the answer to that one.

And the answer is—faith.

END part one

The God, Math: The religious dogma of science revealed through the “expanding universe” (Part TWO)

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The Wikipedia article on the expanding universe, cited in part one of this article series, does not acknowledge the necessity of the observer to Reality, particularly with respect to movement, and ignores the distinction between movement qua movement and relative movement. Instead it appeals to the artifice of the metric tensor to explain how the universe does not actually expand, and that space and objects in space do not actually move, and yet it kinda does and they kinda do. I submit that science has become, in some fundamental way, the pseudo-philosophical, and albeit implied, art of rejecting the observer as entirely superfluous to Reality, Existence, and thus by extension, Truth and Ethics. But instead of simply admitting that science has no frame of reference for describing (the fundamental nature of) the observer, and thus conceding that he should be left to other schools of thought and other methodologies for his description, science functionally declares his “objective” non-existence as observer-qua-observer (or, better stated, his “ultimately non-efficacious existence”) an empirical fact, and this  because the observer is scientifically revealed to be so.

I am not entirely certain why science promotes this folderol…a focused and overt dissertation on the subject has never been submitted. Nevertheless, what is overt, and painfully obvious, is that science has no rationally consistent methodology for describing and explaining the observer. The observer lies completely beyond the scope of science, and for some reason this is unacceptable to the scientific community. Is it arrogance? Bullish pride? Who knows…but by rejecting the observer as purely ephemeral at best, it attempts to rectify the inrinsic contradictions this rejection of the observer necessitates…for example, that the universe is not expanding, and space and objects in space do not actually move, except that it kinda is and they kinda do. And the metric tensor is a perfect example of an artifice used to reconcile the contradiction.

“Technically, neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale.”  [Bold print added for emphasis]

A few problems with this…I will attempt to plot the inconsistencies as clearly and succinctly as possible.

Earlier, I stated that the claims that “neither space nor objects in space move”, and “the universe does not expand into anything, and does not require space to exist outside of it” are correct. However, it is important that I qualify my agreement as being in some way quite superficial; that is, my agreement terminates once a deeper examination of these claims in the context of the full Wikipedia quote commences (see the beginning of part one for the full quote). And unfortunately, the examination needs only be cursory.

While it is true that objects “in space” do not move, the article, as I have mentioned, fails to qualify the meaning of the word “move”. That is, it does not make the important distinction between movement qua movement, which certainly does not exist, because this is impossible in a vacuum, and relative movement, which certainly does. In a vacuum, object A, alone, does not move, because there is and can be no relevant, measurable, definable distinction between, say, A at position X and A at position Y. A is simply “in” the vacuum…there is no “where” then to its existence except itself, as it were. It just exists. It is A qua A. But if we add object B to the vacuum, then there is no longer the existence of A qua A, but also the relative existence of A to B. And now there can be a relevant, measurable, and definable distinction between A’s position at X and its position at Y—as relative to B. In this context then, A does in fact move, it’s simply that the movement is relative, not absolute. And the converse of this is also true—that B may move relative to A. Of course, it is the necessary role of the observer to determine which object, A or B, is to be the reference for the relative movement between the two. Is A revolving around B, for example, or is B revolving around A? That question can only be answered by the observer, because only the Self is constant.

Moving on.

While it is rightly stated that the universe does not expand into anything, it should, for clarity and veracity’s sake, be stated that, this being the case, the universe does not actually expand at all. Space, and its corollary, time, being non-existent outside of the universe, along with anything else, means that the universe simply exists relative to itself, so to speak…or in other words, non-relatively. Meaning that the universe simply “is what it is”. In actuality, “the universe” is simply a label we give to the sum and substance of Reality. The universe, thus,  is not a thing, so to speak, but an abstraction, and as such it holds no deeper meaning nor significance than as an abstract context for Reality. The expansion of the universe then is simply a way of describing a particular form of relative movement between certain objects man observes in his environment.

*

“It is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that actually changes in scale.”

Spacetime is an interesting concept, or phenomenon, you could say, I suppose, as it is presented to us by science. It is referred to in physics as being a “coordinate system”. But here in the Wikipedia article we see an implied distinction between the coordinate system, or the metric tensor, and spacetime.

So which is it? Is spacetime a coordinate system, or is the coordinate system distinct? Well, due to the intrinsic rational inconsistencies with the scientific conceptual perspective of spacetime, and being familiar with science’s penchant for excusing these inconsistencies by appealing to contradiction and then pretending that the contradiction is understood and appreciated by the “enlightened” few—that is, the mathematically and scientifically gifted, who today, ironically, comprise our postmodern priest class—I would say that  science most likely considers it both and neither.

Not that it matters to us really, for it is clear to the rational observer, who resists the scientific community’s determination to exceed the scope of its mathematical boundaries, that spacetime is purely a conceptual placeholder. That is, neither space nor time actually exist. The abstractions of “space” and “time” may be rendered as a mathematical coordinate system, but these are not object or empirical themselves—spacetime is not a thing to either be a coordinate system or revealed as or translated into a coordinate system. It is instead a product of man’s conceptualizing powers—a means by which man cognitively organizes certain objects in his environment.

Space is not a thing itself, it is by definition and by rational necessity the absence of things; you cannot have holes in space (e.g “worm holes”), for space is the hole. And objects do not exist in space…they simply exist. The whole point of space, the vacuum, is that it is not. And objects cannot exist in that which does not exist. And time, being a continuum, is likewise a conceptual abstraction—a product of man’s mind; a product of the conscious observer. Time is and must necessarily be a continuum, for time can have no beginning or end, it is the beginning and the end. Time can have no future or past or present, it is the future, past, and present. Time, in other words, is an infinitely linear conceptual construct which is divided into mutually exclusive units of past, present, and future, which are qualified and quantified for practical application. Spacetime, then, at its fundamental root is the abstract conceptual environment in which all empirical/material objects are said to exist at the irreducible physical level. Nothing more. The metric tensor, or the coordinate system, which physics declares the corollary existential, even ontic I would argue, manifestation of spacetime, is simply another abstract quantification of it.

Naturally science disagrees with this…the metric is no mere abstraction, you see, but a god of sorts. It has causality, and its causality is authoritative; and being mathematical and thus predictable, is determinative; and being determinative is absolute—omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Do not take the assertion that the metric “governs” the size and geometry of spacetime as some unimportant thing, its deeper implications to be glossed over as unimportant or pat. The metric governs—it commands, it controls. It acts and the universe inexorably follows suit. It declares what is to be done and the universe obeys. The universe does not itself expand, and objects and spacetime do not move, and yet the metric changes in scale, and so it does and so they do. They do not, and yet through the mysterious omnipotence of the math, they do. The contradiction, though a contradiction, is nevertheless true, and is a testament to the power of god. He who has ears, let him hear. The power of god is wiser than man…man cannot comprehend it. For man’s reason has no frame of reference, no means of apprehending or processing an IS which is simultaneously and IS NOT. Man, the priests of science declare, must accept such truths on faith alone. Math is god; and he doesn’t need your acceding or your concession to validate his truth.

The universe is merely an extension of god, who created all things ex nihilo…from nothing. And god is the metric tensor; the math. The math is infinite…changing into itself; expanding into its own infinity. So the numbers change, but they don’t, because the numbers go on forever. There is no beginning nor end; the difference in the scale of the metric is the difference in degrees of infinity, which of course is no difference at all. The universe expands, but it doesn’t; objects in space move, but they don’t. The universe, objects, spacetime…they all exist, but they don’t. But how is this possible? Because the god of science declares it so.

The intellectual disagreements between religion science, it seems, boil down to little more than debates about whose god can beat up the other.

END

The God, Math: The religious dogma of science revealed through the “expanding universe” (Part ONE)

Determinism, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, scientific determinism, Space, Time and Space, , , , ,

Accepting that the idea of the expansion of the universe is a phenomenon considered relatively well-understood and axiomatic by the scientific community, and perhaps in general, let’s assume Wikipedia to be a credible citation for summarizing expansion:

“The expansion of the universe is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not expand “into” anything and does not require space to exist “outside” it. Technically neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale.”

Focus for a moment on this section: “…it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself…”

How does Wikipedia define “metric”?

”In general relativity, the metric tensor…may be thought of as a generalization of the gravitational potential of Newtonian gravitation.”

“And if we look up the word “tensor” we are told that this is a:

”…mathematical object anologous to but more general than a vector, represented by an array of components that are functions of the coordinates of space.” 

In other words, what science, particularly physics, is telling us is that the only thing which is active, and thus existing (where existence to be efficacious must be active, not passive…for existence which does not “do” is not actually existing) is the mathematical coordinate system. All else then, is passive. All else except the metric tensor does not do; does not move; does not act. Thus, existentially speaking, it is purely illusory. Reality is, in true essence, a set of infinite abstract placeholders which somehow the mathematically-inclined observer may apprehend and define, even though he, himself, is not actually there.

This may seem like quite a large leap of logic. How does one arrive at such a philosophical conclusion from a purely academic monograph on tensors, vectors, geometry, and spacetime?

I’ll explain.

*

I was somewhat surprised to see the Wikipedia article on the expansion of the universe admit that the universe cannot and does not actually expand into anything. I was further surprised to see it admitted that neither space nor objects in space actually move. Accepting the logic of the relativity of movement in a vacuum, the conclusion that there is no movement qua movement (non-relative movement) would seem quite self-evident, yet I’ve never seen it admitted by science. Perhaps I’ve just not been hanging around the right circles and source material.

At any rate, both the claim that the universe does not actually expand (expansion qua expansion) and that space and objects in space do not actually move (movement qua movement) are of course completely true. Perhaps the reason for my surprise at seeing them admitted in a science article is that such claims are more a metaphysical acknowledgment than a physical one. They require a certain meta analysis of the universe qua the universe, rather than the universe as experienced relative to the observer. The former is falls more within the scope of philosophy, the latter, physics. This of course is fine, there is nothing wrong with anyone citing a fact, it’s just that I’ve grown more accustomed to science hijacking philosophy and then promptly mangling it like a toddler on a jelly sandwich instead of actually accepting its distinct truth.

Unfortunately, no sooner does the article make the (albeit implied) important and complex distinction between physics and metaphysics, when this distinction is almost immediately obliterated, with science once again hijacking philosophy and handling it like a monkey handles a clarinet.

What this article implies is that all of reality is boiled down to a mathematical artifice…a McGuffin, you could call it. You see, to bridge the gap between metaphysics and physics, a bridge which is recognized by the declaration that the universe doesn’t actually expand (that is, it doesn’t expand into anything…and by this we can extrapolate the logical assertion thus that the universe doesn’t actually expand at all) and that space nor objects in space actually move, science submits a purely abstract, purely cognitively manifested contrivance of an infinite set of specifically structured numerical and symbolic placeholders. It replaces the whole of efficacious (active, and thus, existent) reality with this set, which of course has the effect, intended or unintended (it doesn’t matter), of punting the entire real field of metaphysics and all of philosophy with it into the endless abyss of mysticism.

And even more egregious is the fact that the irony is completely lost on those atheists who appeal to science as proof of the rationality of dismissing God and the notion of God altogether. Because only fools believe in the fairy tale of the “magic man in the sky”, whilst the rational objectivists and sane empiricists can see that clearly all things are created and controlled instead by an invisible, yet omnipotent, omniscient, and ominipresent mathematical coordinate system summing all things to infinity on infinity.

If that’s not psychological projection then I don’t know what is.

*

Movement, you see, doesn’t exist…that is, the article tells us that the universe does not expand, and that space and objects in space do not move, but instead it is the “metric” which changes in scale”.

Except of course, that there is movement. The concept of movement is not irrational; actual movement does happen…the idea is efficacious; action occurs. It only needs to be qualified that movement is relative. An observer needs to be part of the equation in order to provide a reference for the relationship between two or more objects in a vacuum…because the observer—the Awareness of Self (the “I” of Self)—provides the (only rational) constant for object relationship in a vacuum. Once the observer is present to declare that, for example, “X shall revolve around Y” or “Y shall revolve around X”, then movement can be objectively defined, said to exist, and this efficaciously and actually so, and then mathematically measured. Mathematics are a conclusion, or an effect, not a cause, you see.

But science doesn’t accept the rationality and actuality of the observer. Because it has long ago confused and conflated mathematical truth with philosophical truth, it has relegated the observer to at best an undefinable and ultimately irrelvant epiphenomenon, inconsistent and incompatible with reality, because reality is to be wholly defined scientifically, which is to say mathematically.

Movement, even relative movement, is jettisoned and replaced with a metric which “changes in scale”, which is not movement at all, really , but merely the predetermined “evolution” of an infinite numerical and symbolic mathematical data set. And thus, since nothing actually moves, up to and including the universe, the existence of such is entirely passive, which means that its “existence” doesn’t actually exist. Because if existence doesn’t mean existing, then there is no such thing as existence in the first place. The universe, and all in it, and thus you and me of course, aren’t actually there. There is no observer. And thus there is no constant for movement. All is just an infinite data set which reveals a particular sum at a particular predetermined rate at a particular predetermined time…and all of these particulars are merely illusory, too, for the data set is, again, infinite. Thus, all units of data are merely units of infinity, which renders them ultimately impossible to define. So the grand answer to the cosmic question of life and existence and reality and truth and everything can be summed up by science as merely the  conclusion that “infinity equals infinity”. And, I mean, I don’t even know what you’d call this. It’s some kind of grand atrocity of nihilistic intellectual error, to be sure, but if there is a name for it which illustrates appropriately its level of debasement of all morality and meaning, I don’t know what it is. I couldn’t begin to conjure one up, it’s that bad.

END part ONE

Why Checks and Balances Won’t Stop Government Tyranny

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Determinism, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, law, Metaphysics, Violence, , , ,

Government is tyrannical by nature. It doesn’t evolve to tyranny, it is tyranny from its very foundation; and this tyranny follows it to the inevitable societal collapse which is tyranny’s conclusion. Government is authority, authority is force, force means forced compliance, forced compliance nullifies choice as a fundamental means of social interaction, nullified choice means a cancellation of man’s will, a cancellation of will makes thought irrelevant, irrelevant thought nullifies human agency, nullified human agency implies metaphysical determinism, determinism nullifies morality, nullified morality as a function of metaphysical determinism implies the politics of “survival of the fittest” (where politics is taken in the philosophical sense to mean how humanity interacts with itself as a function of accepted ethics), survival of the fittest implies the perpetuation of those with superior power by which to command, control, and/or adapt to their environment, superior power always belongs to the State—that’s the whole idea. Otherwise, the government doesn’t govern…it suggests. It negotiates. But ”suggestion” isn’t “law”.

This is basically the sum and substance of it, in a nutshell.

*

Government isn’t people, government is a metaphysical principle. It is a premise of Determinism—man navigates reality not fundamentally by volition (by thought and action), but by determinative forces compelling him outside of his own conscious existence. Man’s sense of individualism is a false front; a liar. Man from birth lies to himself, according to his nature, which has corrupted him by giving him a sense of “Self”. This sense of Self compels man to always act contrary to the truth, which is that the Self is a lie, and that reality is something outside of this Self, which utterly determines all he is and does…which of course doesn’t include “him” at all. So, because man is born with the “original sin” of Self-Awareness and a natural inclination to defer to his own individual thoughts, ideas, and choices, which always and necessarily act contrary to the truth of determinist reality, he must be controlled. He must be forced. He must be governed. The idea that man could ever live a categorically voluntary existence away from and irrespective of some manifestation of supreme coercive Authority is anathema, by definition, to government, then. Freedom, which can only ever really mean freedom from a fundamentally compelled existence, is inexorably exclusive of government. It simply must be. Even at mere face value this has to be apparent to us. The exercise of individual will according soley and utterly to the volition of the individual is a complete contradiction of the very essence of the State. This is arrant; it is obvious. Any attempt to fuse freedom and force is a rejection of reason and an appeal to madness. And this is itself nothing but tyranny.

*

Again, government isn’t people. Again, government is a metaphysical principle. And again, it is determinist, which means it is collectivist (the inexorable link between collectivism and determinism is pretty obvious; and I have addressed it several times before, so I won’t do it now). Government transcends individuals at the metaphysical root, like all manifestations of collectivism (churches, tribes, gangs, appeals to “objective” class/racial/sexual distinctions, science-as-philosophy, cultural movements, fads and trends, and on and on). And this is why “checks and balances”, while ostensibly an infusion of sanity and sobriety into governmental polity, cannot serve as any kind of truly effective hinderance to the tyranny of the state. You see, whether you gather coercive power into the hands of only one man, or you spread it across a vanguard, and separate that vanguard by distinct institutions and offices, and regulate the terms by which this power may be consolidated with a complicated paradigm of rules and benchmarks, the very fact that it is coercive power we are dealing with makes all of it a mere ceremonial spectacle. Coercive power, being the fundamental and only really meaningful and efficacious aspect of government, cannot be converted into liberty by sticking it in a blender with constitutional hoops and hurdles and pressing “purée”. Freedom is freedom from coercion. Nothing more. Nothing less. Period. Yet the governmental deals exclusively in force…that is its only real currency. Anything else is window dressing; pretend play; an attempt to excuse the inevitable violence and perfidy of the ruler, and to sooth or mask the misery of the ruled. But the truth is that the square peg of  humanity will never be forced into the round hole of government without crushing them both.

*

The operative and ultimate moral issue with government is a priori coercive (violent) ruling power. It’s not about who happens to wield that power, or how many hurdles—“checks” and “balances”—are ostensibly erected in his path before he can exercise ruling power absolutely. Those hurdles are a function of the very same appeal to authority which gives him his ruling power in the first place. Ruling authority cannot be checked because it is fundamental…it is not merely a facet of government, it is government. The foundational principle of Authority establishes the government, the government doesn’t just happen to wield authority as though its power to compel behavior by violence and threats of violence is merely tangential to some greater munificent purpose. The ability to use superior violent power to compel “right” thinking and behavior isn’t a “last resort”, as though the primary purpose of governing Authority is negotiation and compromise and/or the encouragement thereof! See how foolish this is, and yet we all believe that it is indeed somehow the case, even though it defies simple, remedial logic. The necessity of power to point a government gun in someone’s face to get him to do the “right” thing specifically because he is born a rebel and a sinner to reality, itself, and is utterly insufficient to existence if left to his own mind and will, has about as much to do with compromise and negotiation as a ham sandwich has to do with Shakespeare. Getting the “right” ruler or establishing the “right” checks and balances simply cannot change the fundamental purpose and essence of government:

to govern.

And governing is forcing, and forcing is controlling, and controlling, fully and properly realized, is tyranny.

The problem is not getting the right checks and balances in place. And it’s not who rules, but it is simply the fact that they rule at all. Once it is accepted by metaphysical principle that man must be ruled, he will be sacrificed to the State. There is no way to avoid the inevitable conclusion of the premise which demands the governing of individuals in order to integrate them into the “Truth”, which is always merely some insipid and tangential collectivist Ideal (the Nation, the Tribe, the Race, the Chosen Ones, the People, the Workers, the Good, the Just…almost anything can pass for an Ideal).

*

Finally, I’d like to address the bromide—the political trope—which is the notion that the ruling class (politicians and other government officials) should somehow be expected to follow the same laws as everyone else. This…is utter and complete nonsense. It hasn’t happened and it will never, ever happen, because it has about the same practical existence as the tooth fairy and the same practical efficacy as a black highlighter. It is foolishness. It’s a contradiction. It’s a fantasy. It is a rank contradiction to government’s essence at its very heart to obligate the ruling class to the laws by which they govern everyone else. By definition if the ruling class is also ruled (and this, impossibly, of themselves) then the ruling class is not the ruling class! And if the ruling class isn’t the ruling class then who is? In other words, if the ruling authority isn’t the ruling authority then by what means can law be established as actually binding upon the men it is supposed to govern? And if it’s not binding then how is it law? Law depends on someone to force men to obey it, regardless of whether men want to obey or not, or choose to obey or not. But if law is to be chosen by men, not forced upon them, then it’s not law. It’s suggestion…negotiation, voluntarism. And this is not governing, it’s merely cooperating.

People think that somehow choosing rulers via “free elections” is the same thing as choosing to be obligated to law.

It isn’t.

The law demands that rulers rule, and that’s what they will do, regardless of who they are, how they were elected, or who voted for them and why. The law is not a function of those “freely elected”, but the “freely elected” are a function of the law, and the law is force, not choice.

Authority—the ruling class—cannot be obligated to itself . And it is foolishness to assert that the ruling class should also be ruled like the rest of us. The ruling class cannot be both and simultaneously the ruled and the ruling. Men are part of one or the other, they are never one and the same. This is merely a contradiction which obscures the truth.

END

How Christians and Secularists Both Define You as Nothing (Part TWO)

Christian fallacy, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Determinism, General Philosophy, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, scientific determinism, , , ,

The question of “you” (or me or anyone) is an all or nothing proposition. The question of “what are you?” can only be answered in terms of Absoluteness or Absolute Nothingness. That is, you are, at the most fundamental root, either you, absolutely (Absolute You), or you are utterly NOT you (Absolute Absence of You). You either are or you are not. Period. No matter how science, religion, or philosophy, of all and any kind, attempt to equivocate, or make allowances for “mystery”, or the “unknowable” (a conceptual contradiction if there ever was one), or “epiphenomenon”, or even “magic”, there is no way to get around this simple bifurcation of the root existential question: To be or not to be.

Are you, or are you not?

So which is it? Only one answer is correct. And that correct answer is the only possible answer. Thus, we must choose wisely. The answer may seem obvious, or at least intuitive, of course…at least it should. But after thousands of years of the mass acceptance and integration of reasonless and impossible ideologies on the matter, underwriting and permeating every human endeavor and institution from here to the Great Wall of China on both sides, from the State to Society, Religion, Science, Arts and Entertainment and on and on, it seems that rational blindness is solidly ensconced as the undisputed conveyance of human philosophical wisdom to the point where ascertaining the existentially obvious, at least as the foundation for epistemology and ethics, is as improbable for the average man as winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

From part one in this article series we already know how Christians fundamentally define you—as null. A zero. A cegorical non-entity. A non-agent…despite their unwillingness to plainly admit as much. “You” are merely a placeholder…or rather, a character in a play, having no substance until God fleshes out your role with his all-determining will. In other words, you are an arrant projection of God’s infinite foreknowledge; an agency-less character in his cosmic production. His “gospel narrative” drops you in, with lines, actions, consequences, and destiny all decided for you, outside of you, and thus (and ironically) having nothing actually to do with you at all. Because there is no “you” in Christain metaphysics. No self. No cognition nor agency nor conceptualization of any fundamental substance. You are made from “nothing”…spoken into existence; materializing into reality from a place that not even God can define (if you follow the logic) because it is nowhere and at no time…like the Big Bang. You are not of God, himself, because that would make you a part of God, and yet you are not from a substance which co-existed eternally with God because only God is eternal. You were birthed somehow from an infinite vacuum. You are something which is beget from nothing (ex nihilo). You are thus a contradiction—a lie. An unsolvable, indecipherable enigma…a lock with no key nor combination. You are, but what you are is absolute nothingness. Indeed, “you are nothing” is the rank metaphysical contradiction which forms the fulcrum upon which your liar’s existence pivots, points, and from which it proceeds, only to utterly return to itself inexorably and infinitely.

And that, my friend, is not hyperbole…it is theology. It is the sum and substance of your meaning and worth to God. it is the metaphysics of Christian canon. Your value as an individual is null because your individual self is the illusion in which only the unsaved reprobate indulges. To be saved is to recognize that there IS NOTHING of you worth saving in the first place, and this is because you don’t actually exist at all.

So what do you do with this cold slap of Christian doctrine? Well, you might do what many others have done when they realize that all hope must be abandoned once they cross the threshold of the institutional church. They flee to the ostensible “safe haven” of the stoic, cold, unflinchingly certain, emotionless arena of “objective” and “empirical” science, and embrace the metaphysics of scientific determinism (which is the practice of science as a philosophy). Its arms are not warm or loving; its embrace is not meant to comfort or sooth; its wings are not going to transport you to the safety of the eternal afterlife and lay you gently down in a diamond city with gilded streets. But what it does offer is the hard, rigid truth, so at least you always know where you stand. It doesn’t get your hopes up, but then there are no hopes to be dashed when the empiricism of reality inevitably comes crashing down upon you, grinding your life back into dust.

Scientific determinism is closed to bribery. It has no use for dreams or wishes, nor does it offer any. There is no Grand Consciousness to which one may nor must make supplication; it pretends no miracles…no defiance of reality does it promise. And despite the fact that its determinist metaphysics are indeed philosophical, it implies that philosophy is for fools—the opium of the masses because it’s really nothing more than religion, anyway. Metaphysics is psuedo-science and psuedo-rational, like alchemy or phrenology as far as science is concerned. Science explains “what is” in terms that can be measured, and thus in the only terms that can be trusted to be truly meaningful.

So…what of all of this?

Is it true?

No. All of this is a lie, of course, and thus what actually happens to erstwhile Christains when they flee the rational madness of Christian metaphysics for the nuthouse of the metaphysics of science—by becoming atheists or some other iteration of secular determinism—is that they become even more preachy and insufferable than before. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say. The labels change…the vocab, the ribbons and bows. But the metaphysics—and the pretension—remain the same. If you want to know how the scientific determinist defines the nature of existence, and specifically man’s existence, you need look no further than the mysticism from which they ostensibly fled.

The reason, you see, why so many Christians turn to the scientific determinism of secular ideologies after their disillusionment with the church is because they are lazy. Atheism provides them with all the trappings of Christain metaphysics in new clothes…they FEEL better without actually having to do the work to GET better. Scientific determinism provides them with remedial and superficial change, and relieves them of the time and trouble and loss and hurt which accompanies real, substantive change.

Real change, you see, is humbling, not empowering. It proceeds along years and years of uncertainty, it does not gift wrap instant truth in the form of formulas and equations. It is not simply tearing off a red jersey and donning a blue one. It is not simply switching to another team that is still playing the same game. It puts you OUTSIDE of “cause and effect” and makes you an observer of it. Which is what you truly are.

The scientific determinist rejects “God” in favor of physics. They forsake an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Diety for an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Natural Law. But of course both mean the exact same thing. Both determine all things; both know what was, is, and shall be, forever and ever; both are everywhere and in everything to the point where it is impossible to know just where they begin and that which they govern ends, and vice versa. And both interpret man, his existence and his consciousness, in the same way: you are a function of that which is absolutely outside yourself, and so there is no “you” in the deep, foundational, and primary sense. “You”, in other words, are a direct function of “NOT you”…and thus You qua You is a lie. “You” do not, in fact, exist at all.

Christianity, and scientific determinism—which is the philosophy of secularism—are metaphysically identical; and this means that they interpret the PHYSICAL universe in indentical ways as well; only the terminology is different. Whether theology (God) or mathematics (Natural Law), both are notions of some kind of Infinite Causal Absolute, which is of course a contradiction in terms. The infinite cannot create anything outside of itself, by definition. At any rate, God or Natural Law are merely broken up into abstract units, organized into various categories of “reality”, and presumed (somehow…the logic is very loose at this point) to be creative…causal. But then beyond that, “God” and “mathematics” as Christianity and Science define them respectively in their spurious philosophical terms, by absolutely causing everything, must necessarily BE everything. In other words, outside of God and Natural Law there is no thing which they did not create ABSOLUTELY. In this sense then, there can be no distinction between what is created and that which creates it. In truth, then, “God” and “Natural Law” do not really explain reality so much as they eradicate the distinction between it and them.

Now, certainly theology and mathematics provide humanity some practical efficacy and utility, which lends them their veneer of philosophical sensibility. Christianity is good at listing rules for man to follow in order to promote some desired, and even perhaps remedially ethical, outcome…an ostensible moral existence: do not kill, do not covet, do not steal, and so on. Mathematics is a fine blueprint for the organization of what is observed in order to provide an a reliable abstract foundation for society’s infrastructure: here’s how you build X to do Y; here is how A can be measured and formulated in order to produce B, and so on. But when we take this rote practical utility and attempt to construct from it a full-on existential paradigm which INCLUDES man, the Observer, we go way astray. The practical utility of “God” and “math” is NOT philosophy…it’s not even a premise…of any kind. It is a tool of cognition…as hammer is a tool of the hand. You cannot reverse engineer “God” or “math” to a metaphysical primary (e.g. man is X, or man is Y) anymore than you can reverse engineer a screwdriver to determine what the user IS. Perhaps you can determine what he does, but not what he is. You do not derive existential meaning from mere practical application. But this axiom is lost on the world, it seems.

*

When it comes to our existence, the old idiom tells us that we have no control over the cards we are dealt. Some of us, we are told, win the “genetic lottery”. Others don’t beat the odds. They are unattractive, ignorant, awkward, disabled, in poor health…any, all, or some combination thereof. You’re either a “winner” or a “loser” as Nature has dictated. That we are born to rich parents or poor, nurturing or abusive; we are servant or ruling class; tall and handsome; short, fat, and ugly…all is determined for us upon our birth. True we may escape some of these circumstances, but the intrinsic characteristics which allow us to do so—our intelligence, toughness, resilience, diligence—these are all dictated to us by nature.

All of this is merely an appeal to the same fundamental metaphysical premise as that of the Christian who describes your “talents” and “time” and all other characteristics as “God’s gifts”. All of that which makes you you is nature’s gamble, nothing more—the cause and effect of the all-determining Law of Nature. And of course this premise carries with it the same rational failure of imagining that a distinction can be made between you and all of the characteristics endemic to your birth; that your eye color, for example, hair and skin color, height,  intelligence, parents, the socioeconomic class into which you are born…all of these exist in a cosmic closet outside of your Self, and Nature costumes you with them upon your birth.

Well, except it is a little more complicated…or perhaps, more manipulative. If you examine the metaphysics which inform this idea, to say that you may somehow be defined as distinct from your inherent and endemic characteristics is at root to remove you from yourself, and THIS ultimately and necessarily renders You qua You an existential contradiction. All the things which make you, you, are not actually OF you, but outside of you, which makes “you” a false premise. Science and Christianity are truly the bedfellows of determinist metaphysics (which, by the by—because I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet—are simply a remedial version of Collectivist metaphysics). Ironic perhaps, but on the other hand, not really ironic at all. All variations of determinism are GOING to be based on mysticism—appeals to the Unseen, the Unknowable, the Infinite Cause, which create all things ex nihilo. Whether we call the the Creator “God” or “Natural Law”; whether the beginning is the Bible’s “In the beginning God created…” or the Big Bang, the definition of reality is the same. Reality is a place where “you”, at best, is entirely imaginary.

Think about it…science decreees that there is no “you” until the moment of your birth, or your conception, or of any given number of gestational weeks…it really doesn’t matter with respect to the metaphysics. Yet it simultaneously asserts that the child born to rich parents, and/or with abundant intellectual or athletic ability, for example, has simply won the genetic lottery. And this means that he has been birthed as a function of random cosmic occurrence. He is a child as much of probability as he is of his parents. Of course the question that is either unknown, ignored, or forgotten is: how can one win the genetic/cosmic lottery if one does not exist until AFTER the lucky number has been drawn? Or perhaps better said: how can one win the lottery if he is a FUNCTION of that lottery? The lottery—meaning the determined cause and effect of all object interaction as a function of Natural Law—is what CREATES the one who is said to have won it. The “lottery” generates the winner out of itself. The one who is said to have won (or lost) the “lottery’ is created DIRECTLY out of it…it doesn’t select a winner it produces him. The “winner” is nothing but a direct function of the very probabilistic mechanisms which are also said to have given him his winnings. This is a contradiction. What I’m trying to say is that there is NO ONE to “win” the “genetic lottery”…the “winner” doesn’t submit the lucky numbers, the winner IS the lucky numbers.

The “lottery” isn’t actually a lottery at all, then. The “lottery” is only random manifestations of the Infinite Determining Cause. There is no “you” who upon his birth wins or loses some cosmic game of chance. “You” is an illusion. You can make no claim to Self because the Self is a lie.

The question which follows then is: If there is no Self then how can be conscious of yourself?

The answer is that you aren’t, according to the deterministic metaphysics of science. The spurious assertion that there is a “you” somewhere behind all that genetic code and foreordained cause and effect is a bromide given to the masses to placate any possible protest. Behind that bromide however is the truth…and the facade is very thin indeed. Behind it is the truth that scientific determinism is an ideology which is fundamentally anti-human and pro-Authoritarian.

The insidious nature and consequence of both the Christian and Scientific determinist metaphysical premise of the fundamental non-existence of the Individual Self is that man shall therefore not be ALLOWED to exist AS an individual. Since all men are a function of the exact same determinist force (“God” or “Natural Law”) there is no possible individual distinctions to be made among them. Mankind is thus collectivized under the auspices of some fatuous, subjective, abstract ideal and then ruled by an Authority, usually the State, which acts as a surrogate—the physical incarnation of that ideal which exists to eradicate all expressions of individuality, as these are considered an imposter to reality.

Which it is…IF we concede the false metaphysical premise that the Self (You qua You) cannot exist. And by the authority of THIS foundational belief comes every and all manner of moral violation…everything from petty crime to the Holocaust. The idea that man is not in fact himself is the ideological root back to which all violence and violations of humanity can be traced.

Think about it. Man does not actually exist as himself. Thus he does not earn himself. His existence stems from a birth that provides him with ALL of his attributes—all that he IS—by mere accident; infinitely determined outcomes by the Infinite Determining Force, which is the infinite essence of all of reality and everything in it. Your existence has nothing to do with you…it’s not work; it’s not an action of you, and thus you cannot rightfully claim ownership of yourself and thus you cannot claim ownership of anything that proceeds from your existence. Your life is not your own because YOU are a lie. Your time, talent, property, family, business, labor…these are things over which you can claim no just ownership because you don’t even own yourself. You didn’t earn YOU, so you cannot claim to own anything that is a consequence of you.

We can sum all of that up with this simple maxim: You’re existence is a function of forces outside of you; you do not earn yourself and therefore you do not own yourself, and therefore you do not own anything you produce.

Of course it is hard to avoid the glaring contradiction in this determinist argument. In order to assert that you do not earn and thus do not own yourself, YOU must be assumed as de facto. In other words, the essence of the claim that “you do not earn yourself because you are a product of forces outside of you” is this: YOU do NOT (de facto) exist. However, the claim “you do not exist” is self-nullifying—a contradiction in terms, like “false truth” or “unknowable knowledge” or “infinite time”. In order to make any claim about “you” you must have an existential reference for “you”, and to have that reference “you” must by definition exist. In other words, you must exist in order to claim that “you do not exist”. The very notion itself is utterly dependent upon the presumed existence of “you”.

To be clear, the claim that “you do not exist” is not the same thing as saying something like “unicorns do not exist”. This is because the “you do not exist” is a metaphysical argument based upon “you”, which is a metaphysical premise, not merely a distinction between what is physically present verses what is only imaginary, cognitive or abstract. In other words, “you do not exist” more precisely means “you CANNOT exist”. That is, “you” are impossible to reality itself  in all its forms…physical, cognitive, object, abstract, etc.. “Unicorns do not exist” can never mean “unicorns cannot exist” simply because unicorns qua unicorns are NOT contrary to reality itself because they are not a metaphysical premise. Unicorns may exist in reality, though they may be limited to the imagination; the Self, or You qua You CANNOT exist in reality AT ALL, even in the imagination, because it is a metaphysical concept which is categorically contrary to determinist metaphysics.

*

”You” is an all or nothing proposition. You either absolutely are or you absolutely are NOT. But only one of these propositions is correct; only one does not self-nullify due to rational inconsistency. I submit that you ARE, period. “You” as a metaphysical premise cannot be parsed, divided, or distilled. “You” is irreducible. Your essence…your Self is a root metaphysical premise, and the proof is that you speak forth the pronoun “I” via an apprehension of its greater meaning in language in general and in communication. The very fact that this is a concept that can be meanginfully and efficaciously formed and communicated is proof that you ARE. “I” would be infinitely impossible as a concept were it a metaphysical fallacy and thus anathema to existence and reality. “I” is either devoid of all context within reality or it IS the context for reality, itself, and irreducibly so. And as you have no other reference, and will NEVER and can NEVER have any other reference for reality, this statement MUST be true: You are you; You qua You is, in fact, a thing.

And by your ability to be you, you EARN you and all of the characteristics which make you YOU in the practical sense; and therefore you own you and thus own all which exists as a willful consequence of you.

END

How Christians and Secularists Both Define You as Nothing (Part ONE)

Calvinism/Philosophy, Christian fallacy, Determinism, Identity, Metaphysics, scientific determinism, , , , , , , , , ,

The other day my daughters received a thank-you note from a sweet little old lady to whom they had given a small homemade gift on Easter Sunday. The valediction read “May you continue to use the gifts that God has given you.”

And within those sweet little words we find the devil. And thus began quite a long lecture—given to my girls on the spot—on the dangers of ideologies which reduce existence to an idea which enslaves them to authoritarianism for the rest of their lives. That idea is that life and existence are UNEARNED. And though Christians are more ostensibly to be blamed for this evil, the idea is in fact a foundational component of secular metaphysics as well.

Wow. Hmm. Where to even begin. This is tough. There is so, so much wrong with this that it’s like trying to determine which of a thousand maurading orcs I should decaptiate first.

Let’s start with the obvious and aforementioned presumption that one’s talents are gifts. Which implies that they are unearned. So, let’s work backwards to the premise, and from this we shall then have our conclusion as to what this really means…and we will see how sinister it is.

You want to build a cabin, but you have no tools. So someone gives you them. You don’t work for them, they are gifts. Now, you might have “earned” them in the sense that the giver must like you or at least value you as a human. So that’s something. I mean, you didn’t work for them, but you can argue that there’s some inherent value to yourself that serves as the reason why one would give you something out of the profits of their own time and labor.

So, can you call the cabin you build from gifted tools your own? Yeah. Probably. I mean, you’d have to thrown in the obligatory “I could never have done it without you” platitude pretty much every time you had the person over, but they’d be hard pressed to take any real credit for your work, or even more, to claim some kind of shared ownership of it.

What about if the materials for the cabin were gifted, too? Hmm…getting a bit harder to claim that you’re the sole owner of it. At this point, you could still call it yours, and appeal to the meaning of the word “gift” as grounds for sole property rights, but you’d probably have to give the gift-giver carte blanche when it came to using the cabin. They probably could convince you to allow them to come and go at will and to stay for as long as they felt comfortable.

What if they also gifted you the land on which to build the cabin? Now its harder still to claim it as soley yours. But still, it’s a gift, right? And a gift means that you now own the thing gifted and thus can do as you please with it.

True, perhaps in object principle. But let’s be honest, here. When that much is gifted, propriety, etiquette, social convention, and basic consideration at this point imply and, I submit, necessitate a level of gratitude that begins to bleed over into obligation. It’s “your” cabin, but only in abstract principle at this point. Still…you could make a claim based on the strict meaning of the word “gift”.

What if the food and water were also given to you so that you had the energy to build the cabin? And the clothes and the work gloves and the work boots?  And the medical insurance in case you got injured, and the pick-up truck for trips to the hardware store and lumberyard; and the gas for the truck and the insurance for it?  And the fees for the permits, and the water which will be piped into the cabin, and the electricity which will power the appliances and provide heat and air conditioning? What if all the training on how to build the cabin was also a gift? No fees. Just a free ride at the vocational school of your choice?

Well, you might still appeal to the very definition of “gift” to make the case that the cabin belongs solely to you. After all, you might argue, this is pretty much what it means to be a parent. You provide all of these things to your children so that they can go out and build their lives and you don’t necessarily claim to own the things they acquire after they leave home and start their independent lives. And true this may be, but lets’s be honest. There is still some expectation placed upon the children. All things normal, it wouldn’t be considered anything less than rank insult if the children left home, with all the knowledge and resources the parents have provided, and then declined to have anything to do with them. So, there is some quid pro quo expected, even in the parent-child context.

At this point we must begin to face the obvious. “Gift” doesn’t really imply no strings attached. In fact I would say it’s quite the opposite. Which is why when there are no strings attached to a gift, the giver usually has to make that specifically clear:

“Hey, Bill. Got you this new putter. And don’t think you have to pay me back…this is my treat, and I’m not looking for you to return the favor. No sir, not one iota. No strings attached, bro.” 

Still, you could argue a technical right to categorical ownership. One is never obliged to give a gift, and thus the recipient can’t technically be obligated to provide return value. I mean, yes, you can make an ethical argument, which is compelling and is the norm in real life, but “legally” the receiver of the gift is not on the hook to return the favor at all.

So, while it’s unlikely, we could at least at this point technically say that God has given us, as gifts, the talents we have and use. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily owe him anything or that we didn’t necessarily earn the gifts. I mean, we could say that we “earned” them in the way that children earn the gifts of their parents. Certainly there is value endemic to the children in their very person that compels parents to provide nice things for them, right? And similarly God could be said to give us gifts because there is inherent value to us, in and of ourselves, that drives God’s desire to give us skills and talents and potential, right?

Sure…this is all possible, if we don’t wade any further into the quicksand of untenable Christian metaphysics. And frankly, the idea that we aren’t obligated to God in EVERYTHING and in EVERY WAY is complete anathema to the church.

Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I stopped here. To explore Christian metaphysis no further than this is why the Church is the rational disaster that it is. Thus far, though we are speaking technically, it still sounds relatively hunky dory. God gives us our talents as gifts because he loves us. Of course in our gratitude we’d use them “for his glory”, as they say. But we still own them, and this is because we are valuable to him.

Of course, in order for us to be valuable to God there must be an actual “we” somewhere in the equation. Meaning we must have an existence of our own, independent of God, for us to be loved and thus the recipients of his affectionate gifts.

And here is where Christain metaphysics take their inexorable sinister turn. This is where all the talk of love and value and affection and gifts goes right down the toilet. Because the truth is that there IS NO WE.  There is no “me” to me. And no “you’ to you. And you’ll see what I mean as we move further along with our cabin example.

So, we’ve already hypothesized that our resources, including clothes and food and education and tools and raw materials, are all gifts to us. Let’s take it a step further. What if your vision is also a gift. What if your very ability to see the nail in order to hit it with the hammer was given to you…you didn’t work for it, didn’t earn it. It’s a true gift. And what if your ears and hands and feet are gifts, too? And your very brain, and all therein, and thus your very capacity for learning; and the roots of that capacity, as well—your innate potential to be good at this or that…your natural, genetic proclivities, like your IQ, your talent for abstract thinking and organization, and your creativity.

Not seeing a whole lot of “you” in the mix are you now? Starting to feel a little squeezed, huh? Starting to wonder just who it is that is receiving these gifts. You’re starting to see that there is a very fine line between “you” and “that which you have been gifted”.

Well, that make senses. Because the root premise is that there is no line. Because there is no distinction. Because there is no you at all.

Your DNA is a gift. Your genes are gifts; and the interaction of the genes by which you are formed in the womb, and the atoms and molecules, and the inherent ability of these things to interact in meaningful and efficacious cause-and-effect ways…these are all gifts, too. The very ability of any of these things which make up you at your most fundamental physical root are God’s gifts. And beyond the physical then we must go, deeper and further until “gifts” comprise all of your reality, and your existence, itself. The very ESSENCE of you—the ABILITY of you to BE you—is not of you, it’s a gift. Indeed it’s no strain on credulity at this point to admit that YOU, YOURSELF, are a gift.

In other words, YOU are given by God…as a gift to YOURSELF.

But wait. That doesn’t work. YOU cannot be something God gives TO YOU. If your “you-ness” isn’t of you then there is no you in the first place in which TO GIVE YOU.

And now we have arrived. This is the whole point.

When a sweet little old lady tells you to “use the talents God has given you” she is actually implying many, many Satanic things, which is disappointing and terrifying.

She is implying that your talents, and thus ALL of the fruits of those talents is unearned. This is meant to stem the sin of “pride”, but “pride” is only sinful when it is irrational. To say I am a better man than you simply because I am rich and you are poor (I promise you I’m not, by the way) is an example of pride as a sin. To claim that a cabin I built is a wonderful cabin and to take responsibility for its beauty and functionality is NOT sinful pride. It’s merely a statement of fact: my hard work has EARNED me a beautiful cabin of which I certainly can, and I would argue MUST, be proud. But Christain metaphysics make no such distinction at all. You see, because your very talents are gifts from God, you can fundamentally take no pride of ANY kind in anything. You cannot claim to have done anything, in and of yourself; you can claim no ownership nor credit for any thing of value you create. Without your talents, you can do nothing productive…because “talents” is a broad, broad category. Everything from your intelligence and creativity to your physical deftness and dexterity, attention to detail, your wit, your ability to organize, your innate understanding of color, your conscientiousness, your photographic memory, your compassion, empathy…and on and on and on. And this evil, false, thoroughly anti-Biblical idea of “talents as gifts” or “talents on loan from God”  has been used by the church to guilt, terrify, manipulate, and exploit the masses of believers for thousands of years.

Next, the sweet old lady’s words imply that one can draw some kind of objective and verifiable distinction between “you” and “your talents”. As though there is any frame of reference for yourself ABSENT the very things that make you YOU, like your creativity and intelligence, contentiousness and organizational skills, your physical dexterity…etcetera, etcetera. These are all things that distinguish you from others. Without these things, who exactly are you to me or anyone else? Take away my wife’s tremendous organizational skills, her intelligence, her extraordinary work ethic, her compassion, her careful and caring nature, and yes, even her occasional rush to judgment, her critical disposition, and her relentless drive to finish her list of chores which never ends, and I don’t know her at all. Take away her talents, and even her foibles, and you take her away from me.

The claim that man has no innate and inherent talents that really belong to him, and BECAUSE of him, and from and to none other BUT him, represents—when followed back to its premise, and then pursued to its logical conclusion—the very death of man, and God by proxy. This is the premise: that God made YOU, entirely, completely out of nothing, or out of something completely NOT you. And thus there is nothing constant…no you QUA you, and thus you can claim NO aspect of yourself that you fundamentally own from beginning to end, and thus you can claim to have earned NOTHING that you acquire and possess in life. It doesn’t belong to you because there is no you.

This premise is the bane of man, and has been an excuse to terrify, torment, and murder human beings for thousands and thousands of years. It is evil. It is not true. It should be rejected for the rank lie that it is.

The dirty little secret behind “the gifts God has given you” is that there is NO YOU at all.  You are nothing. A placeholder for “God’s will”, or “nothing”; at best you are merely a character in the cosmic play of God’s divine determinist plan. You are an illusion…a name on a page, an actor without will. You have no Self, and therefore you have no right to anything. Not even your very existence.

In the next article I will explain why this idea, or a semantically different form of it, is loved and adored by many strains of secularists and scientific determinists the world over, who only THINK they are different from the Christains they ridicule as blind and/or stupid.

END PART ONE

Why Jesus Has No Free Will and Niether Do You: Christianity’s moral determinism fallacy

Christian fallacy, Determinism, Ethics, Metaphysics, morality, Soteriology, , , ,

“Jesus lived a perfect life so you don’t have to.”

Sometikes you hear it put like that. Or sometimes…

”Jesus kept the law perfectly because we couldn’t.”

Or…

”Jesus’s perfect life is imputed to us.”

If you are a fan of Christian whimsy you might like…

”Christ obeyed so we could be saved!”

However it’s put, the point is the same. And for the sake of argument let’s accept it as true. We’ll concede the point for now: Jesus obeyed the Law perfectly; we do not, and so our ability to be accepted by an absolutely holy God in the face our own absolute unholiness (our “fallen state”) depends entirely upon Jesus’s perfect obedience. That perfect obedience means perfect innocence before the Judgment Throne, which is then applied to the guilty—or at least those whom God has given the grace to receive it (the doctrine of “election”)—and this is how we can be saved.

Now, a dizzying amount of intellectual gymnastics must be performed to make this case, complete with a landing that doesn’t quite stick. Christian soteriology is one long smorgasbord of rational error, with contradictions tripping over themselves as they fight for space, and it begs a lot of questions. Questions which of course are never really covered in the church, let alone answered…not at least since John Calvin “answered” them by burning Michael Servitus at the stake. But, like I said, we willl accept the aforementioned explication of the salvation process for now.

Also, I ask the reader to please note that in accepting the terms of Christian soteriology in this article I must ignore the fact “choose to obey” is a contradiction in terms, as obedience is simply forced compliance which has nothing actually to do with choice (“you will obey or die” is NOT a choice, but is, in reality, quite the opposite). So, I will assume for now that Christ, in keeping the Old Testament commandments, used his will and chose to do so, as opposed to God using threats and force to compel him. In other words, I will assume that Christ’s relationship to the Law is one of voluntary acceptance and not authoritarian coercion, even though by definition law demands that you obey it, it doesn’t accept that you may choose not to. Of course the law would accept it if the law had anything really to do with choice. But then it wouldn’t be the law.

*

In looking at the claim that Christ fulfills the Law for us, we naturally ask how? To which the orthodox reply is that he ACTED in a way which satisfied the commandments, perpetually, for those who accept the imputation of the righteousness that this implies. In other words, Christ’s behavior reflected the commandments of the Law. The Law commanded, and Jesus acted accordingly.

We could thus say that it was Jesus’s obeyance of the Law which allayed the wrath of God towards us (through him) and not because he WAS God (accepting, only for now, the veracity of the Trinity doctrine). In other words, we must assume that Christ was not given an automatic dispensation simply for being God. His willful obedience of the Law thus is the only possible explanation for his fulfillment of it. In fact, being God doesn’t imply fulfillment the Law as as much as it implies a circumvention of it.

Ah. That’s very interesting.

Let’s pose this as a question.

Is Christ’s fulfillment of the Law a function of his willful obedience or a function of him simply BEING Christ (which equals being God)?

Here  is where we find the problem which undermines the entirety of Christian theology, I submit. As usual, greed gets in the way of truth. Like all authoritarian ideologies, they want their metaphysical cake and to eat it, too. For Christians answer this question predictably. They will say both. And why is this predictable? Because contradiction is ALWAYS their response to questions concerning doctrinal premises.

But reason, and therefore objective truth, doesn’t contain a rational frame of reference for contradiction…which in this case is the claim that Christ merits what can’t be merited. Either Christ CHOSE to obey the Law or he fulfills the Law by metaphysical fiat. To say it’s both is to say it’s neither. And that’s nonsense, of course. Fake words.

As one method of getting around this clear violation of reason Christian soteriology attempts to merge two DISTINCT metaphysical components: man’s thought (man as a conceptualizing agent) and man’s choice (man as a willful agent). Of course doing this always goes wrong in hugely embarrassing and destructive ways, as church history reflects. Christian metaphysics FUSE the ability to think with the ability to choose, making them one and the same. But choice is in truth a mere CONTEXTUAL function of man’s metaphysical identity as a thinking agent, stemming from the fact that thought implies will. It’s the equivalent of saying that a pencil IS whatever it happens to write; there’s no root difference between what IS written and what IS the pencil. So one’s choices are not actually chosen, and yet in Christianity, with the right metaphysical subterfuge, it can still be “technically” called choice. That subterfuge is…

…it gets worse, because Christianity further fuses the false “thought/choice” singularity with an ABSOLUTE ETHICAL value. It makes ALL of Christ’s choices ethically GOOD by applying to Christ a “metaphysically ethical” (or we could say moral) value of Absolute Goodness; and it conversely makes ALL of man’s choices EVIL by applying to man a “metaphysically ethical” value of Absolute Evilness. This is why man cannot CHOOSE to keep the Law, and Christ always CHOOSES to do so.

Let me explain further.

Man, we are told, cannot keep the Law because he is fallen. By dint of his birth, or the fundamental existential depravity he acquires at birth (same difference), he CANNOT consistently (“perfectly” is the religious euphemism) follow God’s commandments. He has free will—this the Christian will concede—and CAN thus freely choose to do so, but because of his depraved nature WILL NEVER ACTUALLY choose to do so. In other words, his disobedience is a free choice that is utterly determined by his nature. His free will will only ever lead to a confirmation of his root metaphysical wickedness. His “choice” is always simply a reflection of his root moral-metaphysical Identity: Evil. Man is free to sin…and to ONLY to sin. Man is choosing his own condemnation, which is HIMSELF. Because he acts from his root moral-metaphysical Identity, and his root moral-metaphysical Identity is Evil, it is only possible for him to choose to disobey the Law.

Now, the reason I say it is a “moral-metaphysical Identity”, and not simply a metaphysical Identity, is because Christianity, as I mentioned earlier, merges metaphysics with ethics. In other words, it fuses two completely distinct philosophical categories. And in this way they believe they can claim that man is responsible for his own condemnation, via choice, and yet ALSO claim man’s CATEGORICAL moral degeneracy as a function of simply existing at all.

Of course Christ then represents the obverse side of this determinist coin—and yes, it IS utter determinism, having nothing to do with choice and will despite some relatively clever philosophical obfuscation. Christ we are told CAN keep the Law consistently because he is God. By dint of his birth he is able to CHOOSE to follow God’s commandments. But more than that, he MUST follow the Law. His perfect moral-metaphysical Identity which enables him to keep the Law likewise makes him UNABLE to break it. Because as with man, Christianity concedes that Christ has free will, and thus chooses to obey; but also like man, Christ’s choices must ALWAYS affirm his root moral/metaphysical Identity: GOODNESS. Because Christ is Good, all his choices must be Good. Likewise man, being Evil, must always make Evil choices. (For even if man were to choose to obey the Law on one day (Christianity concedes that man can sometimes do good, but only “in part”, or contextually) he will inevitably break it the next…which means that the Law, in general and in essence, remains COMPLETELY unfulfilled by man.)

Christ’s choices are determined by a singular source—his moral-metaphysical Identity of GOODNESS—that represents the inevitable conclusion of every choice. All of Christ’s choices will be in obedience to the Law; he cannot choose any other way, and yet still he is choosing. He is PRE-DETERMINED to always chose to keep the Law, just as man is PRE-DETERMINED to always choose to break it.

Remember, I am not making the argument that ANY of this makes sense. On the contrary, it is entirely EMPTY of sense. It is gnostic determinism in Enlightenmnet garb. This eradication of the lines between meaning and meaninglessness, between metaphysics, epistemology and ethics; the ascribing of blame to man and credit to Christ whilst also claiming that all choice is a pre-determined function of one’s declared root moral-metaphysical Identity; the clumsy integration of reason and mysticism…this is only what passes for truth in the Christian faith, not was truth actually is.

Behind it all is a fulcrum of intransigent nonsense upon which the entire theology pivots and directs itself. Thousands of years of equivocation, propaganda, and fear mongering have made the faith enigmatic and arcane enough, and the masses uncertain and anxious enough, to allow it to permeate the souls of billions of people, and to settle there with almost no resistance, and concommittantly without love. There is no love without truth. And there is no truth in the church.

*

Let’s summarize.

How does Christ fulfill the Law for us? Is it because he is God, or because he chose to obey?

If we say it is because of his choice, then morality is a function of making the right decisions in the face of moral options. And thus man can likewise choose to make the right decisions and likewise fulfill the Law. But if we say that man cannot choose to make the right decisions because he is man, whereas Christ is God and thus can, morality and the fulfillment of the Law have nothing to do with choice at all, but are simply a pre-determined function of what one IS (his moral-metaphysical Identity) and not what one BELIEVES.

You see, belief drives the distinction between right and wrong and thus informs all of choice…which doesn’t actually exist because it is absolutely pre-determined, which makes it a contradiction in terms. Of course this nullifies “belief in Christ” as having any rational meaning and thus any moral value. One’s belief in Christ is irrelevant given the fact that he doesn’t actually choose or not choose to follow Christ; his nature DICTATES and DETERMINES his choice.

Choice, being determined by one’s moral-metaphysical Identity (e.g. Christ = Good and Man = Evil) is not actually choice. Which means that Christ did not in fact make any right choices in fulfilling the Law and man did not make any wrong choices in disobeying it. Christ was ALWAYS going to do good because he IS Good, and man was always going to do evil because he IS Evil.

So in conclusion, here is the truth that we all really need to accept; we need to stop holding on to childish, fantastical interpretations of reality. For fantasy, when we attempt to make it reality, is just hell.

If what we believe matters, and from that belief we act, and those actions matter, and thus both belief and action have real moral value, then man is capable, in and of himself, of fulfilling the Law because he is capable of making REAL and EFFICACIOUS choices. His nature is to apprehend right and wrong and to make REAL DECISIONS  accordingly. For man THINKS, and to think is to believe, and belief matters because it drives actions and consequences, and those consequences are what the Law morally values. To say that man cannot fulfill the Law in and of himself BECAUSE HE IS MAN is to render thought and belief and action and consequence irrelevant, which makes the moral valuing of consequence irrelevant, which makes the LAW irrelevant, which makes CHRIST irrelevant.

Truth which cannot be acted upon and confirmed by REAL CHOICE by man and Christ precludes ANY Law based upon its moral implications. There is no moral value to the Law then if one cannot CHOOSE to follow it. And if the Law has no moral value then it can serve as no measure of Christ’s perfect life which is thus imputed to man so he can be saved.

The entirety of Christian theology is top-heavy with intellectual error: determinism, the suffocation of morality, the death of meaning, and the rejection of the will. It totters and collapses accordingly.

END