The following is excerpted from a debate I had with a commenter who calls himself “LT”.  You can see his responses at Wartburgwatch.com, under the topic of “On YEC Interpretation of Scripture and Their Use of Technology”.  I only posted mine because disseminating my perspectives and beliefs on these issues is the point of this blog (notwithstanding comments by people who may disagree, and they are always welcome…with the exception of one, who is blustery, bullish and confuses rational debate with denigration, name-calling, and demanding we use his subjective opinions as the “truth” from which we are arguing.  A typical stiff-necked Calvinist in good standing with his local church, I’m sure.  Ew.).    Anyway, if you want to know why I haven’t posted in a while…well, here’s why.  🙂

I have corrected some grammatical mistakes (but likely not all…I suck at editing; or I’m lazy, or both…yeah, probably that), and have changed “abstract” to what should be (and now is) “theoretical”.  Also, I have added to or deleted portions of my comments, or edited them, in order to better reflect my point; which sometimes gets obscured when in the heat of argument and when at the distinct disadvantage of using the crappy Apple I-phone virtual key pad to type responses to your opponent in a heady philosophical debate (note:  don’t do this; it is a rank pain in the ass).

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Your logic is based on an assumption which I do not concede. I believe time is merely a HUMAN way to quantify movement. Time is purely theoretical, then. There is no such thing as 24 hours prior to man determining a quantification known as time. Thus, there could be no 24 hours for God to create in, because man was not there and time is purely a function mans ability to measure.

My primary problem is with the term “day”; another human definition. None of the concepts used to explain Genesis existed before man did. Thus, Genesis must be metaphorical, or allegorical (or whatever the hell the difference is…I always get confused), or illustrative (which might be the same as metaphor and allegory; really who the hell knows?), or figurative, or theoretical, etc. etc.

With respect, we need to stop confusing assumptions with reason.

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Human reason is the only way real truth can be acknowledged, and objective logic is a merely a component of that reason. Any idea beyond that is moral relativism. Human ABILITY to reason is not the same thing as reason. LT you are confused about the two.

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Death knell to my reason? Hmm…that is outstanding hyperbole. The “bind” is merely the same “bind” I have been in since I removed myself from false reformation teaching. It is the bind which declares that if I do not accept your interpretive assumptions on anything, I must be wrong. And this is precisely why your argument is tautological. I don’t agree with you so I’m wrong; I’m wrong because I don’t agree with you. “Since I once thought I had reason, but didn’t, I can never have reason” is precisely the argument you made. How can you deny this? Your very argument says that because I was once wrong in what I thought was reasonable (e.g. Calvinism), objective reason cannot exist. That is irrational. Again, purely tautological: Because I was wrong, I can never be right…why can’t I be right, because I was once wrong. And THAT, LT, is moral relativism. By this argument of yours, there is NO such thing as right or wrong in your “philosophy”. Right and wrong are meaningless…subjective, irrelevant. I can’t be right, because I was once wrong means that the only real truth that I can grasp will ALWAYS be wrong because the whole of my ability to reason is merely the ability to be wrong.

Try as you might your entire argument is rooted in the idea that reason is ultimately subjective because it is rooted in MAN’S ability to reason (which is NOT the same thing as reason itself (is the ability to drive the same thing as driving? Of course not…you may be able to drive, but if it manifests itself into willfully driving into a ditch, then the outcome of that ABILITY is irrational; the ability to drive CAN lead to actual rational driving, but it doesn’t always, but that doesn’t change that their is a separation between the ABILITY to drive and actually driving). This is the functional idea of saying man can never know anything at all; a root premise of Calvinism. It is why Calvinism is destructive and irrational and gnostic; all truth is God’s truth. Since man is not God, then man can, by definition never have truth.

You want to see a bind: there it is.

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Yes. Subjective truth is an oxymoron. You got me there. Er…I guess?

You know what I meant. I use that term to illustrate the absurdity of Clavinism. They claim truth when by their own theology there can be no truth that man can know.

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Human ABILITY to reason is not the same thing as reason. LT you are confused about the two.

Yes, I said that, and I fully stand by it. You are confused about the two. You are attempting to declare there is such thing as human reason (what seems reasonable to humans) and reason in general. That is false. there is only human ability to know what he knows and believes, and there is reason; that is, what can be shown and verified as objectively true according to the existential realities of man. As a function of man’s ability to reason (to believe what he believes, or know what he knows), he may assume something is true when it is not.

There is NO such thing as human reason. There is man’s ability to think, chose, will, and decide, and this is rooted in his ability to process and organize his reality via the senses; and there is what is objectively true. The same ability to reason by which man can believe that which is false is the same ability by which he can believe and apprehend that which is TRUTH.

That is what I mean by all truth is a function of MAN’S frame of reference. If truth falls outside of man’s ability to apprehend it (his frame of reference; his ability to reason; or, to know and understand), as you seem to suggest, then it cannot BE truth to him at all, because it is irrelevant to his frame of reference and thus to him, and God is a hypocrite.

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According to Calvinism, man is at his root depraved; totally. Any vacillations in man’s behavior that any Calvinist would call a function of “truth” or “free will”, is a logical fallacy. There is no such thing as irrelevant truth. There is no such thing as irrelevant free will. If the objective outcome of YOU is always a function of NOT you (your “sin nature” or “God’s will/control/sovereign grace”), then there is no such thing as free will, there is no such thing as real understanding, no such thing as truth because there is no such thing as man. Man is always a function of something ELSE.

That is the contradiction which I once accepted, which I know understand, by the same ability, is false. It is NOT reasonable.

LT, you said “my reason is untrustworthy”. The logical extension of that, the implicit idea is that, because of this fact, I can never rely on my ability to reason (my human reason) to declare that I can know anything true. This IS the logical extension of your argument; whether you “said” it or not is irrelevant. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant. IF I cannot trust my reason because I concede I was wrong in the past, it is impossible to ever have truth. If ALL human ability to reason is suspect because humans can be wrong, the extension of your argument is that the categorical sum of man’s ability to reason is simply to perpetually assume that he is WRONG. In this case, man can never have truth since all of man’s knowledge is defined by being wrong. He can never trust anything he knows, because the root of his understanding purely his ability to be WRONG.

You need to go back and read what you wrote. This is precisely your point.

This is a root premise of Calvinism; I know it; I’ve lived it; and Calvinism is extremely relevant to this discussion because Calvinism is the most cohesive form of reformation philosophy, and at its root it is destructive and the greatest perpetrator of the abuse discussed on this blog.

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I will concede that  when I declared “human reason is the only reason”, that could have been confusing, given my argument. I apologize. When I say “human reason” in that sentence, I mean this: There is NO objective truth outside of man’s context, and thus there is no relevant objective truth (pertaining to his relationship with God, specifically here) that man cannot apprehend by the “ability to reason” God has given him to know and organize his world NOW. That is, there is no “reason”, or “truth”, or “rational doctrine” that can exist outside of man’s context; his universe, his environment. This is because EVERYTHING occurs, by definition, where man is (his universe). There is functionally NO frame of reference beyond that of man which can be anything but wholly irrelevant to him. It may very well be that there is “truth” (beyond which man can understand) “somewhere” else…but that truth is of no use to man, and never will be, since man is inexorably and wholly a function of his contextual reality; his universe. There may be something “before” the big bang, but as physicists rightly point out, it is irrelevant to OUR universe here. There is little use in “looking” for it because by definition it cannot be observed. It cannot be observed because it is not a part of THIS universe. If it cannot be observed because it is not a part of our universe then it cannot now, nor ever,be relevant. The same holds true for things we might “later” understand. If they are not a product of our frame of reference in THIS life, so that they can be apprehended NOW, then they will never become relevant or meaningful, even if and ESPECIALLY if they are a function of some OTHER frame of reference. This is my point.

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I think “observable” then, is merely stating what I think is pretty obvious: nothing (relevantly or rationally) exists except that which is a function of the universe. The implicit extension of this then would be: anything which has not yet been discovered but might be in the future is part of the observable universe, whether we actually observe it now or not.

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A general word of caution (from what I think you were saying at the end of your post…I apologize if I misinterpreted); I would not eschew the pursuit of truth because of a belief in a “transcendent” God. Logically, for man, the universe can be all there is. There can be no relevant reality outside of our universe. Declaring God transcendent and thus a mystery is fine; but we must understand that those transcendent properties and mysteries are for Him ALONE. They are for God, not for man. Thus, as far as man is concerned they are irrelevant “truths”. Practically speaking, they are not real…because they can never conform, by definition, to man’s frame of reference; man’s context, which is man’s universe. Anything at all falling outside of man’s universe can never apply to him…you cannot qualify that which cannot, by definition, actually be qualified because it does not functionally or efficaciously exist.

I would declare “existence” as a thing which cannot be qualified. Existence later in heaven, if you will, can only be an extension of existence NOW. Existence cannot both be existence and NON-existence at the same time. Meaning, there can be no gaps in existence. Strictly speaking, existence itself is a theoretical concept (as are spacetime, inerrancy, determinism, and so on) which, once qualified in ANY way (other than, in the case of spacetime, a mathematical grid/coordinate system so that a value other than infinity (which is 0) can be applied to objects in it), becomes a contradiction.

All that is to say that what is part of the observable, tangible universe is really the only reality there IS; anything else is theoretical. That being said, we must, I feel concede that there is real, actual TRUTH to be known, because all real truth must stem from what actually IS in the universe. Put simply, there are things that are true, and things that are false. They are knowable because they actually exist. It is only a matter of looking for them, not giving up, and not conceding that contradiction is actually the root of “truth”; which is, of course, impossible, both metaphysically and physically; scientifically and philosophically. Contradiction is nothing more than a fancy word for nonsense.

Incidentally, this is why I LIKE science as the ROOT of TRUE philosophy AND my faith in Christ; because science will tell you what cannot POSSIBLY be true in the real, knowable, observable universe (apart from metaphysical truth, rooted in logic, and based on the assumption that God is omnipotent). We are then obligated to extend that understanding to whatever THEORETICAL truths we have. I’m not saying we cannot hold that theories are in fact TRUE, but they can only be rooted in what actually IS; and what is, is the physical universe. Period.

Argo’s functional premise #1: 

God will not Create an object in order to do a thing He can better do Himself.  By definition of perfect power, then, this includes anything and everything, because the divine definition of “better” is always and only GOD.  Thus, God will NEVER use Creation as a means to Himself, because this makes Creation an extension of God, which makes IT GOD, and this constitutes a redundant and metaphysically impossible divine contradiction.   Therefore, if “God is in control” of Creation, Creation IS possessed by God, and thus IS God.  And God has violated His own perfection.  This is impossible; therefore, it can only logically follow that if God has indeed created Creation, then He CANNOT be in control of it in any direct measure except as a function of, not possession or control of it, but via his ability to create, in order that He may not be a hypocrite; and in addition, this can only be done in a way that does not constitute divine contradiction if and only if a free consciousness is given to observe it, in order to make a free willed and rational application of it within its own context. 

Argo’s functional premise #2 (proceeding from #1): 

Therefore, Creation exists as a function of its own ability to do whatever it does and whatever it can do. 

Argo’s functional premise #3: 

God cannot create or ACT (excluding God’s “being”, which is of course an act…but by act, I mean anything BESIDES being God) in a free-consciousness vacuum.  There is no rational point for God to act outside of Himself (create a thing NOT Him) unless a free-willed mind can observe it and apprehend it RATIONALLY according to ITS own ability.  Any act of creation without an observer other than God, is redundant, because it is unnecessary, and contradictory to God’s perfection which is utterly within Himself. 

Argo’s functional premise #4: 

All of Creation is FOR man.  Thus, all belief systems, including (and especially) Christianity must conform to his ability to reason; to objectively quantify and know his environment. 

Argo’s functional premise #5: 

Any belief system that operates outside of functional premise #4–that is, does not exist wholly within a non-contradictory, reasonable, and rational human INDIVIDUAL understanding (that is, conforming to INDIVIDUAL human contexts)–will be tyrannical; and will have, as its singular root assumption, that individual man’s reality operates primarily OUTSIDE of himself.  In other words, man is not really man, but is ultimately governed by a compelling force which is perpetually beyond him, and further, perpetually beyond his will.  This can only lead to destruction.

The argument that God owns man is a metaphysical point; a theological idea meant to convince man that the sum of LOVE is a refusal to violate the life and property of other human beings, and this also–as a fully recognized creation of God, encapsulating physical and moral perfection of such a designation, through Christ–must include himself.  This is why we as Christians are not permitted to use our pure righteousness in Christ as a license to “sin against our own bodies” by sleeping with prostitutes, for example, or consorting with demons. In other words, it is contradictory to the law of LOVE–which says that the greatest (and only objective moral good) is to esteem the whole person, be it another OR yourself–to whore yourself out to destruction and depravity in the name of freedom in Christ.

Okay.  Good.  So where do we take this idea from here?  Where does the doctrine inexorably lead us from this point:  freedom in Christ does not permit you to hate yourself by acting contrary to the ways of love in the name of “it’s MY body”?  What does this mean beyond this point?

We are led absolutely nowhere and it means absolutely nothing besides.

God owns man in the spiritual sense, in the Creator/Redeemer hierarchy, which is meant to serve as a hedge against the false and irrational claim that sin against oneself is not actually sin.  This of course, is false logic.  But in the practical sense, man certainly DOES own himself…because culpability and judgment/blessing is impossible apart from man’s whole access to his own volition.  And if man is the operator of his own will, which he is and must be in order for God to be just and to judge rightly, and for a moral dichotomy to exist, and man bears all responsibility accordingly, then it is impossible to declare that man is not the sole and complete owner of his LIFE.  Thus, God may own the man, but man owns the sum and total of his own life.  For man lives according to his own ability to BE which IS DOING, and this is of himself, not of God, because if it IS of God, God is a redundant hypocrite.  For God’s ability can never be man’s ability to ACT as a human.  And all of life, for all of Creation, is action.

It is also impossible to declare man merely a steward .  Man is not FOR GOD, because this is an impossible metaphysical idea–God is perfect, man can offer Him nothing, and man can never conform himself to that which is his impeccable Creator.  On the contrary, man must be for man.  And this being the case, man must be not the steward of his life, but the owner of it.  God has no use for man’s life…that is, He cannot BE man for man.  Man must BE himself.  And thus, stewardship is out of the question. God cannot own man’s life because God has no functional use for man’s life.  Either man’s life is his own, or life does not exist.  Man’s life can only be for man, never for God, is the point, and thus stewardship is a false metaphor.

Because man is not the product of himself, he cannot claim absolute ownership of himself.  But this idea does not lead to the conclusion that man has no right to dictate the terms of his own will, which effectively grants him the responsibility and moral obligation to engage the world as HE sees fit, so long as this does not violate the very distinct and very specific terms of divine “ownership”.  And that ownership can be summed up in this statement:  You MUST love yourself.  And in order to love yourself you have to have full and complete control of your own will and person.  THIS is the functional distinction between “God’s ownership”, which is merely the breadth of the law of love, and man’s ownership of himself, which is the functional, practical, and metaphysically logical truth of man’s life.

This is literally as far as you can take that idea, practically and empirically speaking.  There is no further argument one can make that isn’t immediately impossibly contradictory and mutually exclusive to the existential realities of both man and God.  It is little wonder then that reformed Christians have used this idea for centuries to garner tremendous amounts of influence and power over the masses they pretend to shepherd.  If we have learned nothing else from the Heidelberg Catechism, we’ve learned that you not owning your life is license for state sanctioned oppression in service to an ecclesiastical autocracy.  They love to take a simple metaphysical point and use it as a hammer with which to bludgeon the totally depraved into “right moral action” (e.g. commit the sum of their life and property to the leadership).   But make no mistake.  Any attempt to take this idea of God’s ownership any further into the metaphysical hinterland will only and ever lead towards a path of human disaffection, denigration, and destruction.

The fact that God owns you by virtue of creating you and by virtue of your regained status of moral and physical perfection apart from the Law has absolutely nothing to do with the philosophy of actually being human.  In other words, this does NOT mean that you are God’s slave…and as far as being “slaves to Christ”, the same premise is true:  you cannot take this any further that to acknowledge that each human being is obligated to commit themselves to a life of refusing to violate other human beings, their life, mind and property, and this includes ONES SELF; for this is the ONLY objective definition of love.  Any further “objectification” of Christian morality is ultimately subjective, and thus, should some tyrant decide that it should become the purview of the ecclesiastical brown shirts to enforce such, the compassionate truth of slavery to Christ in the metaphysical sense quickly becomes capricious judgment, and sinister injustice.

The idea that somehow man is responsible for the utterly intentional subversion of his will (which is a total contradiction in terms…you cannot willingly forfeit your will; that which is a function of the will cannot be, by definition, also a function of denying one’s will; the one controlling the will simply becomes the functional extension of he who “relinquished” his will).  This constitutes a divine redundancy—for God needs nothing, by definition—and thus, such a notion is impossibly contradictory to the reality of God, Himself.  To suggest that you can become the functional slave of God, by somehow relinquishing your will in service to a position of divine servitude is impossibly irrational.  As I have already said, it is impossible to both have a will and not have a will.  You cannot willfully forfeit your will.  If you were, for example, able to choose to forfeit your own volition to God, God’s acting on your behalf through you would STILL perpetually be a FUNCTION of YOUR will by allowing Him to subvert your will in the first place.  For example, if you gave your car to a friend, every action your friend took in the car would be directly the result of you giving your car to him or her.  Thus, though you would bear no legal culpability for his actions according to his own choices, the fact still remains that every action by your friend through the car you gave him is perpetually and directly related to YOU; to you giving the car to your friend.  You, and YOUR choice, is perpetually related to the car, no matter who has it.  Thus, though you may not directly possess the car, you are constantly and perpetually an integral component of that car.  In a sense, as long as you and the car exist, you “have” that car.  It is impossible for you to divorce yourself entirely from the reality of that car.  You bought it, and you gave it away.  Your choice to give it away is always a function of what happens to the car from then on out.

This is what I mean, in this example, of “you cannot have a will and not have one”.  If everything God does on your behalf is done through a will you gave him, then YOU are always and perpetually a function of whatever God does.  His doing is always a function of your will to give up your will.  Thus, it is impossible to divorce yourself from your will entirely for as long as you live.  But, alas…this is not even a great example, because, as we shall see, the very idea of you gifting your will for God’s utter use is fraught with impossible, insane, inane, and laughable contradictions.

You see, God doesn’t need your car.  God has a bad ass car all his own.  And really,  if God used your car, it would be at the expense of His own perfect ability to do and act apart from Creation, and thus, He would not be God; for He cannot contradict Himself.  And anyway, why street race with an ’87 Civic when you can street race with, er…God?  Giving your will to God, from any perspective but especially God’s, is just silly and naive.

In other words, it isn’t like if you give your will to God, God could actually USE your will.  This is clearly unnecessary and redundant, of course, because God has His own perfect Will, and does not need yours.  God would have to destroy your will and then exercise His will through your person…which, again, constitutes an impossibly contradictory and redundant existential position for God because, God, being God, doesn’t NEED you at all to do anything, by definition.  Thus, if God becomes YOUR will, then YOUR will is still in effect, and you are still culpable.  Of course, it is impossible for you to have a will and yet not have a will, because volition is control.  You cannot, by definition, have a will and yet not control it.  You cannot set aside your will, so that God may be your will, because again, we have the logical contradiction to contend with, namely, God cannot be YOUR will, and you cannot set aside your will, because, again, there is no such thing as a will that is beyond control.  You can OBEY God…but this is decidedly a direct function of your will, not a denial of it, but a purposeful embracing of it.

Thus, the only solution to truly denying your will, by neo-Reformed standards—that is, denying your will and perpetually letting “God’s will be done”—is to suggest that God steals your will and then replaces it with his own.  This is, of course, larceny of the divine sort, and metaphysically impossible for One who is divine Perfection, and thus, is a laughably ridiculous doctrine to hold.  Nevertheless…there it is, right there in black and white, in my copy of the  Heidelberg Catechism.

You either have a will or you do not. There IS no middle ground.  Any argument that runs some kind of middle-of-the-road plumb line between your will and God’s will as a functional aspect of your existential reality is merely an abstraction; an idea based on a presupposition; that is, an opinion by some dark ages European about what the Bible says.  And that interpretive assumption simply does not compute with the nature of not only man’s reality, but G0d’s as well.

In this day and age, we’ve had time to learn things…to know things.  We operate at a distinct advantage over the 16^th century Dutch and German oligarchs.  We have an educated populace that they never could have dreamed of (and would have declared “the cauldron of Satan” anyway…oh wait, some fundamentalists still do); we have access to countless resources literally at our fingertips…via our phones for crying out loud.  Most if not all of the peeps in “my circle” have a college degree…and many of them hold advanced degrees.  And it isn’t like a degree is even a prerequisite to having an educated idea.  We ALL have access to public libraries, within which are practically all the resources one needs to acquire a functional grasp of almost any subject.

My point in saying this is:  it’s GOOD to have ideas that aren’t “orthodox”.  We SHOULD have learned a few things about a few things since Luther, Calvin, Edwards and Knox.  The fact that most if not all neo-Reformed “leaders” have not learned anything beyond that of those who had no access to indoor plumbing, antibiotics, or regular bathing should be a poignant cause for concern among those who are supposed to have the monopoly on TRUE love.

We as a human race have had a common history since the dark ages of Calvin’s reign of terror which has included, among other things, two world wars, the rise communism, socialism, fascism and all of their fallout, as well as literally hundreds of examples of mass murders…all in the name of the “will of the “people”, the “will of God”, or the “will of (fill in the blank)”; all in service to this idea that mass consciousness is and can be ONE singular literal object.  We have had the horrors of black chattel slavery, child slave labor, child sex slave harems, over and over and over again in the world since the time of Calvin.  ALL of these abominations can be traced, if not directly, at the very least tangentially, back to the false mystic idea that man’s will can be possessed and abdicated by and to another consciousness; either willingly or by force.

It never, ever works.

At some point, we as Christians are simply going to HAVE to see the line between what is functionally REAL, and what is merely subjective abstraction.  And we either learn to conform our doctrines to the reality of the universe we live in and the flesh and blood that we both occupy and spend our lives touching, seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, and BEING, or we consign ourselves to the idea that humans cannot be both Christian and engaged mercifully.  We either learn to conform our theology to the logic that is the only thing that can be called objective truth, or we resign ourselves to the fact that, as I have agonizingly declared, degrees of “truth” can only be directly measured by degrees of pain and misery.

And if this is the case, then we as Christians will have resolved to accept the greatest contradiction of all as the root of our faith:

That the good news of Christ is anything but.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I posted.  I broke my laptop’s LCD and it took exactly one million years for me to get it back from the shop.

So, after that unfortunate hiatus, and now that we all are a little older and closer to death….

After over a year’s worth of thinking and writing (not just on this blog…you should see the piles of notebooks; I write almost everything freehand first because, well, I actually LIKE writing, as in the act of it) I have finally concluded what the root of my philosophy is.  In one sentence, all of my views can be boiled down to a singular idea, so simple that I’m kicking myself for not realizing it sooner.  I could have saved myself a lot of literal headaches by just proceeding from what I realize is the ONLY rational truth to ALL of existence, and I mean universally.  Grasp this, and you have the foundation to explain just about anything…if not actually everything.

Hubris?  Well…you can judge for yourself, fellow thinkers.  We all have brains after all, and they can lead us to amazing places if we let them.  Assuming, of course, we refuse to put them on the head of the horse before which dangles the carrot of mystic despotism.  Otherwise known here as Reformed Theology, and its chummy wicked stepsister, Calvinism.

So, here is the cornerstone of rational TRUTH (which is the only kind that matters):  The tangible, visceral, and actual is always and only the source of the abstract. 

Or, put another way:  Objects are the source for all law, natural, metaphysical, or otherwise, which are used to qualitatively and quantitatively define them. 

The egg always comes before the chicken, I suppose you I might say, meaning there must be a real SEED before the product of the seed can be observed.  And I also say, grasp this truth and you are perpetually pointed north.  But as soon as you concede the opposite, which is precisely what every false idea and despotic religion and political school of thought does, that abstract laws are the SOURCE for the objects which exist according to them (which is actually a total lie; an impossible logical fallacy, for law can only be descriptive and predictive, never proactive…that is, without first the object, there can be no law or other abstraction by which to describe its existence.  There must be something before you can say something about it).

This is obvious logic that always seems to elude the smartest and brightest of our theologians, philosophers, and scientists.  It is why the lie of determinism in any form rules the metaphysical and physical day and night, and why even rank atheist scientists are some of the worst mystic shamans around.

Their determinism, interestingly enough and as an aside, is always based on the idea that “if you were God, you could utterly know just how everything would act by the very laws we, the eggheads, have so astutely discovered and quantified by the utterly abstract concept of mathematics; and these mathematics prove that YOU are merely a function of  this LAW…you see the law IS you; YOU are the abstraction, and as such there is nothing that is not utterly knowable, if you have the capacity to know it”.

Funny how the very obviously reply, “But we are not God, and so there will always be a lot of stuff going on that we cannot possibly predict” is never given anything other than a wave of the hand and practical lip service.  The functional outcome of this fact IS GOING to be a random existence of some sort ALL the time.  To try to live in a world where nothing is random and yet it always WILL be is a psychological mind-f**k that I just don’t care to live with every day.  It is almost as bad as Calvinism.  I choose to deny determinism.  And it’s the better choice, trust me.

The other problem is that “If you were God, you could know what WILL be”, is a metaphysical ditch, because by definition the way God knows is NOT by predicting, but by being everywhere at every time (or, God is in all space time, for our physicists), thus He “knows” because He DOES it, not because He made a law.

Thus, if natural law truly determined all of reality, then it could have nothing to do with God, for any mind able to grasp the concept of law so utterly and universally from now unto eternity has absolutely no use for it.  It would be redundant for God to create law in order to determine the path of all Creation.  He wouldn’t need to determine it by law.  He would simply circumvent determinism and just make it that way at every instant.  He would be, as R.C. Sproul declares, in perfect control of each and every molecule.  That’s NOT determinism.  That’s BEING Creation.  And thus, by definition, natural law isn’t law at all.  It’s an illusion.  A lie.  But even more salient, it is impossible that Creation is created by God so that God can BE Creation.  God is utterly complete, of course, in Himself, and so, if God needs Creation in order to possess it, He’s not God.  And if He is God, He would never create a separate thing for the sole purpose of BEING that thing.  He would never bother to create that thing the first place.  Thus, if He created anything, it can only be so that it can exist to be ITSELF, apart from God.  And this means that that which is Created, namely objects–real THINGS–must act for themselves.  And THIS is where any mathematical “laws” are born:  from things doing for themselves, whether conscious or unconscious things.  And if that is the case, then determinism must be false, for nothing existing by doing what it does of itself can be determined by anything other that IT, and that is not determinism.  That is free will; the freedom of Creation to exist and to be its own thing, or things.  Like, you can’t have a rock if a rock isn’t a rock.  Meaning, if a rock is functionally some LAW, then we’d have no rocks because the abstraction of the “law of rock” (I like the way that sounds) is absolute by definition (all abstractions are absolute, by the way).  Logically, you cannot add a rock to the law of rock because, of the two, the law of rock is the absolute perfect essence.  The rock itself is a dualistic thing:  rock/not rock.  The law of rock is only this:  rock.  Rock is the beginning and end of itself, to add anything else voids the truth of the law, and reduces it to a mere figment of man’s consciousness.  But of course this is precisely what it is, and so, logically, you have to have a rock before you can have the “law which begets rocks”.  You can’t have a law which begets rocks without first a rock.  This is a fact.  So…all you scientists believe what you want.  But stop bringing God into it.  I know you love looking smart…so, with that in mind, you may want to fear a little more treading into the metaphysics side of the pool.  You aren’t wired for this kind of thinking.  Sorry.

Anyhow, the point is that even those who claim to be “objective” must at some point concede that contradiction forms the core of their assumptions, no matter how much math they throw at the blackboard.  And that contradiction is that IF all is determined because LAW guides and creates the reality that IS objects, then no one can truly “know” anything, discover anything, predict anything, or declare any kind of truth.  All reality is an illusion.  And so, how can you really argue anything?

You can’t.  So to say that you can KNOW that all life and creation is determined for any reason is a categorical contradiction in terms. The fact that you can know anything must be proof that determinism is false.  Knowing is based on reality, and if all is determined, then all is an abstraction.  Your very “knowing” of this or that  is an idea of about as much density and substance as evaporating dew, because your very mind is merely the abstract product of an abstract “law”.

But again…rational metaphysics is of no more use to the sciences, it seems, as it is to Calvinism.  And this?  Is rather depressing.  Even our smartest aren’t smart enough to realize that according to their own philosophy, their “smarts” have nothing to do with them, or you, or me…because there is no them or you or me.  It is nihilism, plain and simple.  Does that help you sleep?  Our brightest scientists in the world have a functional world-view of “everything is meaningless and existence is merely evading the point”.

Yeah.  Me neither.  These are the men who design atomic bombs.  Gross me out.

My philosophical ideas are in stark contrast to this.  For the determinists, all reality…that is, all that is observable by the senses is really the illusion.  The “laws” or the “doctrines” are the objective force behind the illusion of life.  I deny this.  All truth, meaning, law, and doctrine, can only be a function of what is observable to the human senses.  What can be seen, touched, felt…etc (why Jesus spent so much time convincing people that He had the authority to forgive sins by doing SIGNS that people could touch and observe).  That is how we know what and all we know.  Nothing is determined because abstractions are NOT REAL.  They are merely ways of qualifying or quantifying those REAL things that we observe exist; and, specifically, how they move.  To say that some law determined an outcome of an object is to declare the object to be an extension of the abstract.  The arm of the invisible “force” which owns it.  It is like saying “I’ve always dreamed of owning a Porsche, and now I have one; thus, my actual dream is precisely how this car got into my garage.”

That seems crazy, but it is no different than saying:  the law of thermodynamics, or the mathematics of angular particle spin are precisely how the objects do this or that.  No.  The object acts; the law is how the action is measured.  It produces an effect in another object by THAT object reacting, and its reaction is thus likewise measured.  And from this, we can now reasonably predict, and thus organize our days, weeks, theories, reality, plans, dreams, wants, wishes, environments, Bon Jovi tour dates, movie times, school closings, trips to the doctor, to the parole hearing, to AA, to Bombay…by understanding how OBJECTS act.  But once we put the cart before the horse…that is, once we reverse the roles of what is real and what is  abstract then all manner of destructive philosophy boils over.  Once we concede that real objects are merely the disposable tools of unseen forces, we have opened the floodgates for human destruction.  This may seem hyperbolic, but I assure you, the carnage from this kind of determinist thinking is only beginning.

Human beings exist in service to the political collective.  Human beings exist in service to the economic bottom line (e.g. chattel slavery).  Human beings are a product of evolutionary forces (I actually believe in evolution, by the way), thus, survival of the fittest is the only objective morality.  Human beings are merely the products of genetic laws, and so sterilizing criminals is the best way to control crime.  Euthanizing the cognitively impaired is morally justified because their brains aren’t functioning properly, as our “laws” of biology prove, and thus, they aren’t really human.  Gassing a generation of Jews is morally sanctioned because they are the product of their own determined existence, their own inevitable fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being who they are, and thus murdering them isn’t murder, it’s a “solution” to a “natural” problem.  Sacrificing the lives and psychological health of children sexually abused in SGM churches is okay because the “greater good” must be served; the doctrine must be protected.  Murdering the individual for the cause of abstract laws of economics, social protocol, or the group cohesiveness must be done.  For, as Spock said to Kirk, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one”.  But isn’t it strange how Spock doesn’t explain what he means by “needs” and who exactly gets to define these “needs”.  “Needs” in itself is often ambiguous, and abstractly used as  just another excuse to pillage life and/or property from another human being.

An object is never the product of a law.  The object is what it is.  If there is any “law” by which to describe it, the only hint of that law’s actual reality is found in this admission:  the the object IS the law.  Separating the law from the object is rank ideological larceny.  All objects own themselves.  In other words, to get to my by-now obvious allusion:  all human beings own themselves.  And thus we must only deal with other people as they exist completely in and of themselves by the real flesh and blood and thoughts and feeling which comprise them, as well as their property and their dues (e.g. wages, legal entitlements like retirement accounts/inheritance; and you can read the Old Testament if you don’t believe me; all I can say is I thank GOD for the Jews…they saved us from a horrifying existence of spiritual insanity, and gave the philosophical mind a rudder in the storm of mankind’s madness…unless you’re Calvinist, then your pastor ate your rudder).  To treat them as a stepping stone to the pursuit or realization of the abstract “truth” of some external “law” is to rape them; to deprive them of their inherent, divine right to BE.  The only true moral law is that which says “love others as you love YOURSELF”, and yourself, incidentally, is SINGULAR.  And the reason why this law is true is because it specifically links moral worth TO the human being.  Jesus does not separate the two greatest commandments from the OBJECTS which create them.  God and man ARE the two greatest TRUTHS.  THEY are the truth from which all morality and objective thought grow.

We must stop putting abstractions in place of objects as the plumb line for moral and existential truth.  No matter how altruistic these abstract ideas may seem, they can only lead to death.

“Biblical inerrancy/infallibility” is such an abstraction.

And in the next post I will once again attempt to dismantle this destructive idea.

“The same God who brings the storm to your life is also the One who will rebuke it.”

-Christian Pastor, speaking in pagan western European mystical terms to describe Jewish metaphysical TRUTH.  This of course is appalling; and made more so by the fact that Greek-inspired gnostic contradictory philosophy comprises a significant portion of Protestant “Statements of Faith”.  These statements should be regarded as merely the interpretive assumptions of men; for the most part, they have little or nothing to do with God’s rational work in relating to man, and vice versa.

Now, when the Calvinist pastor (who, ironically, may not THINK they are Calvinist; they will laud “free-will” when you confront them about it, and then proceed to wring man and his relevancy to God and Christ clear out of the scriptures like so much dirty dishwater…and this is what is scary:  so many “pastors” just simply don’t know the difference between what is “true” and what is “suspension of disbelief”…to them, if an opinion is based on the Bible, then it’s just true, no matter how rationally impossible)…anyway, when the Calvinist pastor refers to God bringing the “storms” to your life, it is important to understand that the word ‘storm’ is, of course, a metaphor for whatever pain or struggles or suffering you may be enduring. You see, before, in the world of rational metaphysics, suffering and pain was a consequence of willfully opposing God (either by man or the devil and his demons)…it was seen as something which, was justly reaped by free opposition to the existential reality of man’s moral obligations to pursuing love and purity and reverence, especially to his fellow man.  And this, incidentally, is how man shows his love to God and his willingness to pursue true personal freedom; his sole purpose for existing…and so, yes, though pain was justly reaped it is decidedly NOT and never WAS God’s desire to inflict pain.  Indeed, the entirety of scripture seems to reveal a God who promises not to bring pain, but to act as a divine hedge against it, assuming man uses his free mind and will to pursue those moral truths that allow God to grant such protection and blessing, as opposed to forsaking God’s omnipotent protection and fend for one’s self in the sea of capricious worldliness; which may be fine or, given the historic trends of men and women left to themselves, may be not.

I submit that we need to understand that human beings are really at the sole mercy of their own ability to WILL and to DO, and never at the mercy of God’s “control”; which simply makes man an extension of God; and this of course is impossible for God because to be the “ability” of man and Creation makes God a total hypocrite and pretty much invalidates the entirety of the testimony of Moses, the Prophets and Jesus.  Therefore, IF we decide we must rationally be the authors of our own moral dichotomies, then we accept the existential truth that we will rise and fall with our choices.  And, really, this is precisely HOW we can exist at all…that WE create OUR OWN reality, physically and morally; meaning that our actions are OURS, of OUR WILL, and thus we justly reap the consequences, be they blessings from God, blessings in the form of worldly reward, or pain and destruction (mind you, I’m not speaking of salvation right now, I’m speaking of man’s practical living here in the world, in THIS reality).

And again, this may be fine, or it may not be.  The point of God is not to frustrate or torture those who refuse Him, but to leave them to their own devices.  For that is their prerogative, and metaphysically, He cannot and will not stop them (though there may be consequences…but this is NOT control; and divine consequences, frankly, are really rare and MUST be specifically revealed as such to more than just one person…and even then they are likely going to be subjective; for really, practically ALL of faith and morality is subjective empirically speaking…you cannot “prove” necessarily GOOD; and Christians are just going to have to accept this, and stop demanding hypocritically that the government tell two law-abiding citizens that they will go to jail if they marry and are the same sex; and on the other hand declare that the solution to the issue is to send these people to clinics to “make homosexuals straight”.  The tyranny and irony (the truth shall make you “free”) and lack of empathy implicit in this kind of thinking is a byproduct of attempting to make moral GOOD, objective, without the ability to objectively define it.  I’m not saying that Christians must accept that homosexuality is right, and I’m not saying that I support it.  What I am saying is that Christians should be, having TRUTH, the the epitome of rational thought because our God is decidedly rational, decidedly TRUE, and decidedly NON-arbitrary.  Thus, we must seek to restrict our use of FORCE in opposition to people’s personal moral choices unless we can show rationally beyond a reasonable doubt to ALL, believers and non-believers alike, that any moral truths we wish to enforce by threat of criminal prosecution are going to result in measurable, observable societal outcomes with regards to PERSONAL freedom of body, mind, and property.  In other words, let’s go to the government to help us keep people from murdering others, or stealing from them, or raping them, or beating them, or bullying them, and resort to winning over other moral objections with superior IDEAS, not threats of stake-burning, banishment, or prison.  Let’s leave that behavior to rank heretics like John Calvin and Martin Luther, who perfected either the propaganda or implementation (or both) of such action.

Yes, sooner or later Christians should recognize the importance of thinking.  And unless we want to give all our “pastors in the stead” machine guns and licenses to kill on our behalf, we will need to start using our brains and defend our ideas at some point in a way that doesn’t make our faith seem about as deep and wide as a post-it note or “Vote for Jesus” bumper sticker. 

So, getting back to our topic:  the “storm” is a metaphor for all suffering. Which now, instead of being contrary to God’s divine Will–s a reflection of his love and affection for man, and His desire to reach out to him in order to protect and care for him–God’s attitude toward the pinnacle of His Creation, man, is wholly opposite.  And now, God doesn’t simply WANT man to suffer, He purposefully ordains it, controls it, and intentionally brings it to bear.

Think about what that says about man’s chances of being relevant?  I would say exactly zero…and even less if there was a logical lower-value abstraction.  For IF God is the One who is sending out His “storms” to torment you, then your chances of resisting are, again, zero.  And if this is the case, then God MUST be the One who rebukes the storm, of His own utterly arbitrary/pointless will, timing, and pleasure.

“The same God who brings the storm to your life is also the One who will rebuke it.” 

Er…duh.

He would HAVE to be the One to rebuke it, if rebuking factors somewhere into the equation…which, given the insanity and the nonsensical nature of this statement, is certainly possible.  Hell, why not?  Let’s have God come down and do show tunes with Liberace in his “Back from the Dead” tour.  With Calvin’s philosophy, just about anything is possible…because nothing really means anything.  And by that I mean: nothing is based on reason.  If it is ALL contradiction (and reformed theology is), then ANYTHING can mean just about ANYTHING the gnostics (and God, apparently) say it means.  God doing show tunes with a diamond draped cape and eye-shadow has as much relevance to your spiritual walk in light of TULIP as God giving Moses the stone tablets or Jesus’s dying on a Roman cross.  It’s all nonsense.  Hell…really, as God-in-the-stead, Calvinist overlords are literally permitted, according to their doctrine, to keep writing books of the Bible (which really is kind of what their hermeneutics are, in essence…they call it “Systematic Theology”).  We can have Batman and Bugs Bunny sharing a scene in the Wilderness or at Goshen with Elisha, the Virgin Mary, and Captain Ahab.

So, yes…duh. If God brings the storm, then by definition man cannot resist it, so God must rebuke it, because…who the hell else is going to?  The only way for this scenario to work with “rebuking” coming in stage left is for God to rebuke Himself.  To declare that what He did was done for the sole purpose of arbitrarily undoing it.  That’s the only way this makes any sense at all and….

Wait.  Did we just declare that for this nonsense to make sense God has to rebuke His own work?

Does that really square?  I really…er…I just don’t think it does.  God’s work IS God; and so, if He rebukes His work, He rebukes Himself.  And that, my friends, is what we call here, outside of Calvinist Fantasy Land, a metaphysical contradiction in terms.

Unfortunately, I actually have friends who still insist “Nah…it’s just a paradox.”  And I say, “My Aunt gave birth to a bicycle.  Ten Speed.  I know, I know…it’s a paradox, man.  [shrug]  But with God, all things are possible.”

Stay tuned for part four…