GENIUS FORUMS

Subject Deleted:

The hell with Mullah Obama.
This thread is now the property of Rabbi Jacob.



You deserve a break today, at McDonalds :-)

brokenhead wrote:There is no way it could have been recorded accurately.

An omnipotent, omniscient being can't even record its own message accurately, or at least see to it that its message is recorded accurately via human proxy? That's really stretching it, broke.

Alex Jacob wrote:For example, what do you mean when you say God?

It's a little ironic that you ask me that, when I'm a critic of Bible, and you're one who holds it in high esteem - isn't your understanding of God far more relevant than mine? Anyway, I'm not one to shy away from a question, so I'll explain what I mean when I say God in this context: I simply mean God as the Bible presents Him - the personal creator of all that exists, all-powerful and all-knowing.

It's almost incomprehensible to me that you "don't really have too much interest in defining or redefining 'God' and to providing a sort of operative conceptual model." I mean, God is the basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and you don't even define Him! You haven't even established the foundation of your belief system! Here I have to side with those of your critics who accuse you of a lack of rigour to your thinking.

Alex Jacob wrote:The way I see things there are certain cultural groups and certain periods of history where, who knows what the 'reasons' really are? who can say? certain idea-structures are born, certain broad and deep patterns which come into consciousness. How such things pop into our existence is at least a little bit of a mystery, isn't it? Where do these things come from? As I tried to express before, they are connected with human consciousness, human intelligence, but they are also intimately tied up with words, signs and meanings. A stone has no perception of this sort. And in a way an undeveloped human being is sort of like a 'stone'. Nothing is happening there and nothing may ever happen. What is the quickening agent? What sets consciousness in motion?

In this specific sense, I think, 'God spoke to the Hebrews'. Do you see what I mean?

In that specific sense, God speaks always and everywhere, to everyone and anyone. Why single out the Hebrews?

Alex Jacob wrote:I do feel very strongly that the Hebrews recognized very clearly that in this process something very mysterious and meaningful was taking place. They gave to it 'transcendent value'. By doing so, they showed themselves to be, or they became, the appropriate vehicles and vessels for such a 'revelation'. And it is precisely that role that defines the Hebrew Project. There is both 'election' and 'self-selection' there [with the Hebrews], and as always 'God' is something pretty damned elusive, pretty hard to put your finger on.

Your contention seems to be that because the Hebrews recognised the transcendence of the process by which ideas emerge, their ideas are more significant than those of other groups who - although undergoing the same process - don't actually recognise it as a transcendent one. That simply doesn't follow.

Alex Jacob wrote:I do attach to it [the Bible] transcendent value because I believe it has had, has now and continues to have an almost unreal impact on our lives, consciousness, etc.

The gross and detestable can have as much of an unreal impact on us as the transcendent. Impact alone is no proof of transcendence. You'll have to come up with a better reason if you wish to convince me, which you might actually not care to do.

Alex Jacob wrote:To achieve a certain seriousness in life, the sort of seriousness and focus that allows for the achievement of great things, I think one has to 'tame' oneself and place oneself, of you will forgive me the term, under the yoke of 'higher consciousness'.

Well and good, but the Judeo-Christian tradition is not the only one that offers such an outcome. There abound religious traditions that fundamentally structure one's behaviour to focus on 'higher consciousness' - the Eastern traditions such as Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism achieve this.

In summary, I see no logical reason why you are so enamoured with the Judeo-Christian tradition and why you find its values to be "supreme and transcendent", other than a strong familiarity with it and perhaps a sense that it is "your" tradition i.e. the one that you were born into and within which you live.

Alex Jacob wrote:As we have left, in so many ways, the value-structures of the Judeo-Christian traditions what we see, generally, is not intelligent persons who sincerely are interested in forging some new, modern values, but willful youngsters who have gotten out from under cultural authorities and who want to have fuck-parties, screw sheep, stick all sort of odd vibrating plastic devices up their orifices.

There's something of the paternalist in you, isn't there? You seem to have an automatic assumption that "cultural authorities" are necessarily of benefit to us; you don't seem to question whether they sometimes hold us back.

Guest writes:

"There's something of the paternalist in you, isn't there? You seem to have an automatic assumption that "cultural authorities" are necessarily of benefit to us; you don't seem to question whether they sometimes hold us back."

That is pretty much exactly where I am coming from and what I am trying to define, but not quite as you would characterize it. My contention would be that it is crucial that men 'really be men', and certainly don't become women. There seems to be a direct assault being waged directly on the paternal authority, and as with so many assaults within culture it has many different fronts, is both conscious and unconscious. My basic contention---which in some sense has taken form as a result of contact with some of the challenging ideas of the GF crew---is that we men need to completely redefine what it is we feel our role is, our strength. But whereas 'culture' and 'society' seems to ask that men stop being men, that they vacate the paternal role and, in essence, become women, I feel that men should in no sense whatever do such a thing, and must actually strengthen their paternal orientation, and rediscover the platform of 'rulership', which is what patriarchy actually means.

But I would never say that the traditional authorities are always of benefit to us, and I most certainly have questioned quite extensively why they sometimes 'hold us back' Yet, I do certainly believe that men, men's culture, men's ideas, men's strength, men's rulership and men's contributions in so many different areas needs to be carefully sorted through, and what is valuable and relevant needs to be located and strengthened.

"You'll have to come up with a better reason if you wish to convince me, which you might actually not care to do."

I am not in any sense trying to sway you to my position. If I were really interested in making some sort of convincing case, some perfectly sound case, there likely wouldn't be so much ironic humor. No one can make any mistake, though, in what I write: Men are allowing themselves to turn into girls, into girls who in fact long to insert vibrating plastic devices into their own assholes. Obviously, that is an exaggeration, a 'symbol' and it is delivered with a slap. Yet, it does really paint a sort of picture of what is happening in men's culture. Men are no longer strong, tempered beings who hone and polish their personal power, but effete, voluptuous creatures who begin to become indistinguishable from their women. But actually it is worse even! Their women begin to take on more masculine characteristics and carry the masculine role.

"It's almost incomprehensible to me that you "don't really have too much interest in defining or redefining 'God' and to providing a sort of operative conceptual model." I mean, God is the basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and you don't even define Him! You haven't even established the foundation of your belief system! Here I have to side with those of your critics who accuse you of a lack of rigour to your thinking."

When I say that what I mean is that I don't place a great deal of stock in a mental idea about 'God'. To my way of seeing things, 'God' is something that you try to experience, that you 'make yourself available to' in the Castanedian sense of the word. You 'beckon' to God and, somehow, in extraordinary ways, God responds. I could make an effort to offer you little essays, little stories, little anecdotes, that could reveal some of what I understand God to be, and I could I suppose dress it up in such a way that it would appear as a scholarly 'definition' of God, and maybe that would satisfy you, but it wouldn't satisfy me, it would appear ridiculous. So, in a sense, what we are talking about is the best approach. A 'story', an essay, a psycho-spiritual travelogue if you will, is only useful as an allusion. And in quite the same way the Hebrew stories are useful as 'allusions'. And that is pretty much exactly my point. I can't feel bad if that is dissatisfying to you or anyone else. Religion, a relationship with 'God', which is pretty unified with Relationship with Life, is not a cerebral process exclusively, it is something very, very far beyond that. In the sense that I define it therefor, religion stands above philosophy and theology. If you or anyone else cannot grasp this, what fucking good is it for me to mollycoddle you?

At the same time, if you were to reread what I wrote previously, I make allusions to at least where this 'God' might be 'located', and the process through which we might 'know' 'its' presence. But you seem to have glossed over that as you have begun to get frustrated...

"You haven't even established the foundation of your belief system!"

I am under no obligation to 'establish the foundation' of my or anyone's belief-system. Words, signs, meaning are all constructs in a way for an approach to God, Life, Being. They are not and they can never be God, Life or Meaning. I am sorry that this is frustrating to you and to the forum generally. From a 'paternal' point of view I would say: Rise to the occasion! Stop acting like such a hard-headed wimp! Be a man! Read and try to understand the things that MEN have written on this subject! You don't get this from WOMEN, you get mollycoddled by women. What often happens on this forum, even among the 'spiritual giants' of the QRS is that they react to these sorts of chidings with an underhanded, feminine ressentiment that won't let up. And so there you have it, Weisenheimer, a true man among men, leading a pack of Girl Scouts to the Promised Land! (*Sigh*)

"In that specific sense, God speaks always and everywhere, to everyone and anyone. Why single out the Hebrews?"

I have already been answering this, in numerous ways. If it is really of interest to you, there are about a hundred thousand people out there who have written quite extensively on the subject---one of the main underpinnings of Western culture. The whole question, as I have been saying, hinges on RESPONSIBILITY! And also MANLINESS. I'm not just making this shit up...

"Your contention seems to be that because the Hebrews recognised the transcendence of the process by which ideas emerge, their ideas are more significant than those of other groups who - although undergoing the same process - don't actually recognise it as a transcendent one. That simply doesn't follow."

Because the Hebrews recognized that 'something was happening', they preferences the whole process, and also the 'word', the language (old books are not thrown away in the Jewish tradition, they are buried in solemn rites), and they clinged to the core experiences, and they would not let them dissipate. They held themselves, often against incredible odds and against incredible assaults, to their appointed task. Find me another group who has done such a thing. And I did not say that other groups underwent a same process.

"Well and good, but the Judeo-Christian tradition is not the only one that offers such an outcome [seriousness, 'yoking' to a relevant project, etc.]. There abound religious traditions that fundamentally structure one's behaviour to focus on 'higher consciousness' - the Eastern traditions such as Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism achieve this."

No doubt about that. Even a very traditional and 'rigid' Judaism, for example, acknowledges this. Judaism does not assume it owns or controls God. What it does is preference its experience and demand an astonishing seriousness in regard to it, that it often proves itself more powerful, more relevant, more abiding and more influential than other traditions. Also, it places (comparatively) extraordinary stress on the individual which creates different outcomes. My object, despite where you seem to want to push this, is not in battering or dissing other traditions, but in highlighting what I find relevant in my own, and in 'our own'.

I will say that the 'child's voice' as it pertains to criticism of our own traditions will often bring up all the points you do, and it all becomes just more ammunition to knock down the cultural authorities (the Father Figures) who represent rules and regulations that the child wants to rebel against. Whole generations have involved themselves in this game of ressentiment. Not all of it is 'bad', some of it is necessary and 'good', but I think it behooves us to understand and come to terms with underlying, unconscious, psychological resistance.

Well, there you have it. Whew! I'm beat! Think I'll spend the rest of my day riding my bicycle! A most manly activity!

Ta ta girls!

Alex, one of my long-standing problems with your writing is the intense vagueness of it all. You write so much but ultimately say so little. I feel like I could sum up so much of what you've written simply with "I strongly support the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I absolutely believe in God, but I have no clear idea of what they are exactly or why they should be supported." Your writing certainly doesn't promote the impression of you having a lucid and coherent mind.

Having said that, I still manage to find some interest in trying to tease out exactly what you believe and why you believe it. Your stance regarding tradition deeply contrasts against mine, and perhaps there is something for me to learn from it:

Alex Jacob wrote:Regarding the question of 'values', there is no doubt that, at least at this point, I highly favor the values that are part and parcel of our Western traditions, and those of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I regard them as having supreme and transcendent value, of having a genuine virtue and a depth and reach that is unparalleled. My personal trajectory in ideas has been a very wide loop through many other foreign traditions, and a return to the core of my own tradition.

Can you try to gather up all your strength and succinctness and just sum up the core values of the tradition? Somewhere you mentioned "monogamy" as one, and also you've spoken of a general restraint of sex. What else?

Alex Jacob wrote:But I would only use that word---tradition---in the widest and most flexible sense possible: something that is alive, growing, assimilating, changing, and never as something that is forced to come to rest in any one place, or that can be finally defined or contained.

Here is the vagueness. Despite the fact that you say it can change and can never be finally defined, you vigorously oppose very specific changes to the tradition. Particular changes in sexual mores for example. There must be some limitations to what this tradition entails, there must be some definition of what it is and also what it isn't and can't be. So what are they?

Alex Jacob wrote:The fact that our tradition is infinitely more open, and can function quite well without an Absolute lording over everything, is to me precisely the advantage, the strength and the value.

But the belief that there is an Absolute has been a central and defining part of the tradition for almost all of its history hasn't it? It has started to fall apart exactly when the Absolute began to be seriously challenged with the rise of relativism, humanism, secularism, atheism, science and other movements following the Enlightenment.

Alex Jacob wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote:"Why, Alex, oh why, should we occupy ourselves so assiduously with the search for the values of the dominant religio-social tradition of the age, rather than to use our reason and experience to forge our own values, which more than likely will be more relevant to the modern age?"

I cannot present to you any concrete reasons necessarily. I don't see the question quite a sharply as that, like one or the other.

Guest poses one of the central issues for me. Your response is to outright state that you have no good reason. This is simply not good enough. This furthers my suspicion that you have mainly picked the Judeo-Christian tradition because you were most comfortable and familiar with it, probably because you were born into it.

Alex Jacob wrote:I think though that most likely what you mean when you say 'forge our own values' could be something more akin to holding onto the will to live a naughty little existence. In a sort of Baudelairian sense, to seek to shake off the weight of a whole tradition (what we mean when we refer to our minds and consciousness), to feel justified in becoming petits satanistes, in love with personal voyages into rebellion, sexual libertinism, in short the freedom to declare the right to remain a child. Still, that existence is intimately tied to what it tries to get out from under. Many people when they 'liberate' themselves from the religious overlords, seem not to escape into greater freedom but into new levels of bondage.

My goal, when considering possible alternative values, mores etc, is to try to find better ways to live. Ways that would be more suited to human nature and fulfillment and potential. Anyone can see that different eras and different cultures have had radically different ways of living. I think anyone can also see that a lot of those ways of living have been damaging and limiting to human nature, fulfillment and potential. It is also obvious that the vast majority of practices, customs, mores, morals, rituals etc, the stuff of culture and society and upbringing and conditioning, are the products of unconscious momentum and unexamined tradition.

What I propose, in considering alternative values, is an intelligent and conscious examination and reengineering of society and culture instead of the blind recycling of tradition. To look at humans and try to change society and culture so that it fits us in a more healthy and fulfilling way. To write it off as merely wanting to live a "naughty little existence" is to entirely mischaracterize my vision of it.

.

III Chronicles (The book of Rabbi Jacob)


The Book of Daniel uttereth:
I just want to state En passant

-tomas-
Merci! Now the French are involved..




The Book of Daniel uttereth:
that I regard any talk of a communication between the divine and human

-tomas-
Whoa .. now the Witch of Endor flew in..




The Book of Daniel uttereth:
in the terms being considered here to be unspeakably fatuous, an insult even to children.

-tomas-
Who (and/or in what context are you implying this is an insult .. even to children?




The Book of Daniel uttereth:
Carry on.

-tomas-
My wayward Sons (and Daughters) of Belial.


PS - Lot's wife is the blessed virgin Mary..



You deserve a break today :-)

.


Tomas Note:


III Chronicles - The chronicles of Rabbi Alex in the land of down-under/over-and-above Australia

So far, Alex is winning on all counts.

Evidence? Queen Leyla (the goddess of heaven) is locked "on top" of both forums.. (ride em' cowgirl)
The feminization of Australia.. God save the Queen!

Further Tomas Note:
Just wait til Prince Charles takes over, then you'll have a bloody tampon (in Camilla) on the throne.

PS - Hahahah


Next update: Sunday the 30th, November 2008.

Alex Jacob wrote:My contention would be that it is crucial that men 'really be men', and certainly don't become women. My basic contention---which in some sense has taken form as a result of contact with some of the challenging ideas of the GF crew---is that we men need to completely redefine what it is we feel our role is, our strength. But whereas 'culture' and 'society' seems to ask that men stop being men, that they vacate the paternal role and, in essence, become women, I feel that men should in no sense whatever do such a thing, and must actually strengthen their paternal orientation, and rediscover the platform of 'rulership', which is what patriarchy actually means.

I agree that men should 'really be men'. The core questions are - as they always have been - what makes a man a man, and what makes a woman a woman, and how much of this is innate and how much is cultural, and to what extent are we free as individuals and as a society to change the answers to these questions? In search of other people's perspectives on these questions, I recently picked up a book titled "The Retrosexual Manual: How to Be a Real Man". It is one man's detailed response to the revolution which resulted in "metrosexual" men: men who use "product" and who care more for their appearance than for their character. The "retrosexual" man, in contrast, is a man of action and character, the type of guy who calls a spade a spade, who wouldn't think about consulting a doctor unless his intestines were hanging out, and who loves his football, beer and cars. For 127 pages, this book spells out every detail of what it takes to be a retrosexual man, from cooking, shopping and transport, to dating, sex and marriage, along the way covering such minutia as which urinal to choose in public toilets when there are other users of said urinals. A lot of it was great stuff - a call to reclaim the independent, indomitable, unpredictable, unaffected, raw strength of masculinity - but some of it seemed to be pretty arbitrary to me: for example, is a man really less of a man for not enjoying football, or for being a teetotaller?

So we have metrosexual men (whom I think we'd both agree are overly feminised), and retrosexual men (who are masculine in many ways but who might be accused of femininity in such things as their irrational attachment to their favourite football team, and in their propensity for drinking alcohol): what other models of masculinity are there? How about the gunslinger? The hard and emotionless man who operates according to a sense of justice and personal responsibility; who takes women without romance or ceremony as and when he wants them. Is the gunslinger a "real" man? Is he more or less masculine than a retrosexual?

So what's my point? My point is that if you ask a hundred different men what it means specifically to be a "real" man, you'd probably get a hundred different answers. Let's have that conversation though, then, you and I, and whoever else wants to join in. Let's cut the superfluous crap like whether men should be capable car mechanics or should be highly proficient at reading maps, and focus on more general characteristics. Here are some of the things that I think make a man a "real" man:
* decisive: takes difficult decisions courageously; takes minor decisions without stressing over them
* direct: says what he means and means what he says; doesn't mince words; speaks plainly and simply
* rational: values logic and consistency; considers the motivations and implications of his actions
* detached: ignores attempts to malign him or to cause him to respond emotionally; this doesn't mean that he has no feelings, simply that he doesn't allow those feelings to impede his better judgement
* assertive: believes in his will enough to push until he gets what he wants; this doesn't mean that he's aggressive, except as a last - deliberately and carefully chosen - resort
* composed: remains steadfast in demeanour and mood even in extreme circumstances
* responsible: recognises and properly exercises his role both as a member of society and as a custodian of the planet
* just: knows right from wrong and actively intervenes to prevent wrongs from occurring
* independent: doesn't become attached to any particular set of circumstances; develops his own opinions.

I also want to discuss masculinity in the context of relationships between men and women. In his relationship to women, here are some of the traits that I see a "real" man as having:
* is fundamentally respected by women: women in general observe him as having strength of character, strong values, integrity and a high level of personal responsibility
* is a rock to her: she can depend upon him always for support; she is forgiven her mistakes; he will not bear her a grudge for them, although he will find a gentle and appropriate way - perhaps after the fact - to let her know where she could have done better
* is not manipulable through sex; is never needy: women find him deeply attractive and want to have sex with him - he never begs for it - but in any case he's perfectly willing to live without it when it's not forthcoming.

No doubt I've left a lot out, but that's a start.

What's interesting to me, looking through what I've just outlined, is that I would value all of those attributes as much in a woman as in a man. In that sense, I'm not particularly concerned about the masculinisation of women. I'll tell you what would be fascinating for me, though, Alex, and that is if - as well as critiquing my lists - you were to develop the same two lists for real women. What exactly is a "real" woman to you?

I ask in part because you so readily accepted the paternalistic tag, and I get the impression that you view men as the leaders and protectors of society and women as the... what...?... devotees and supporters of men?

Alex Jacob wrote:When I say that what I mean is that I don't place a great deal of stock in a mental idea about 'God'. To my way of seeing things, 'God' is something that you try to experience, that you 'make yourself available to' in the Castanedian sense of the word. You 'beckon' to God and, somehow, in extraordinary ways, God responds. I could make an effort to offer you little essays, little stories, little anecdotes, that could reveal some of what I understand God to be, and I could I suppose dress it up in such a way that it would appear as a scholarly 'definition' of God, and maybe that would satisfy you, but it wouldn't satisfy me, it would appear ridiculous. So, in a sense, what we are talking about is the best approach. A 'story', an essay, a psycho-spiritual travelogue if you will, is only useful as an allusion. And in quite the same way the Hebrew stories are useful as 'allusions'. And that is pretty much exactly my point. I can't feel bad if that is dissatisfying to you or anyone else. Religion, a relationship with 'God', which is pretty unified with Relationship with Life, is not a cerebral process exclusively, it is something very, very far beyond that. In the sense that I define it therefor, religion stands above philosophy and theology. If you or anyone else cannot grasp this, what fucking good is it for me to mollycoddle you?

I'd like you to answer some specific questions about what you believe about God:
1. Is God personal and conscious?
2. Does God have a gender, and if so, what is it?
3. Is God the creator of the rest of reality?
4. Is God capable of communicating directly in language with human beings?

Alex Jacob wrote:I am under no obligation to 'establish the foundation' of my or anyone's belief-system. Words, signs, meaning are all constructs in a way for an approach to God, Life, Being. They are not and they can never be God, Life or Meaning. I am sorry that this is frustrating to you and to the forum generally. From a 'paternal' point of view I would say: Rise to the occasion! Stop acting like such a hard-headed wimp! Be a man!

Challenging you to justify your beliefs makes me a wimp? On the contrary, accepting your beliefs without question would make me a wimp.

Alex Jacob wrote:Read and try to understand the things that MEN have written on this subject!

Right now I'm more interested in trying to understand the things that you have to write on this subject. If other men's writings have informed your thinking, then please distill and interpret those writings for me in your words.

Alex Jacob wrote:"In that specific sense, God speaks always and everywhere, to everyone and anyone. Why single out the Hebrews?" --guest_of_logic

I have already been answering this, in numerous ways. If it is really of interest to you, there are about a hundred thousand people out there who have written quite extensively on the subject---one of the main underpinnings of Western culture. The whole question, as I have been saying, hinges on RESPONSIBILITY! And also MANLINESS. I'm not just making this shit up...

That's a cop-out: "Refer back to stuff that I've already written, or go and read a book about it", rather than something specific, like "In my past posts I already answered this question by writing [x], [y] and [z]. Also, [so-and-so] wrote about this in his book [such-and-such], in which he argues [some argument]." For all that you presented in that paragraph, you may as well have been "making this shit up". I don't want vague blow-offs, man, I want the specifics!

The way that you have answered this question so far seems to have been to do no more than to point to the tradition itself, and to say, "See, it's a tradition with supreme and transcendent values", and to point to the behaviour of those involved in the "project" and to say, "See, look how obsessed they are with their project", and to posit that the Jews were/are especially aware of the transcendent nature of their "project". The thing is though that the Judeo-Christian tradition is not unique in possessing higher values that any individual person might interpret for themself as "supreme and transcendent", nor are Judeo-Christians the only ones who place a high degree of value upon their own tradition to the point of obsession, nor is it particularly relevant whether the Jews "knew" that their project was transcendent or not - the transcendence either is or is not, regardless of anyone's awareness of it. Your arguments simply aren't compelling.

Alex Jacob wrote:Because the Hebrews recognized that 'something was happening', they preferences the whole process, and also the 'word', the language (old books are not thrown away in the Jewish tradition, they are buried in solemn rites), and they clinged to the core experiences, and they would not let them dissipate.

"Something was happening", huh? So when the Bible condones slavery, "something is happening"? When the Bible prescribes death by stoning for such crimes as adultery, homosexual acts, bestiality (the innocent beast is to be killed too, mind you), possessing a medium spirit, abusing God's name, and murder, and when the Bible prescribes burning to death the daughter of a priest who indulges in prostitution, "something is happening"? When the Bible describes the God-aided victories of the Jews in the bloody conquests of other tribes, "something is happening"? When the Bible describes God destroying whole towns and villages with fire and brimstone, or when He destroys almost all life on Earth through a merciless flood, "something is happening"?

Yeah, something was happening alright. Blatant and unjustified barbarity is what was happening. The mess of primitive savagery of the Old Testament is what you hold up as the precursor to something "supreme and transcendent"? The Old Testament: inspired? Inspired by elitist arrogance and brute will to control and manipulate, perhaps. The Old Testament God demands, requires and expects worship and animal sacrifice. Is this in any way "transcendent" behaviour, or is it more like the behaviour of a vainglorious warlord? I mean, seriously, Alex, how can you in good conscience read the Old Testament and then tell me that it is leading man on to a higher purpose?

And I couldn't care less whether the Hebrews "clung" to their "core experiences": for one thing, those core "experiences" were highly likely fictional stories, not actual experiences, and for another, some deluded fools cling to their delusional experiences even more than some sane men cling to their real experiences. Clinging is not proof of intrinsic value, merely that the clinger is attached.

Alex Jacob wrote:They held themselves, often against incredible odds and against incredible assaults, to their appointed task. Find me another group who has done such a thing.

I don't consider myself sufficiently knowledgeable to undertake that challenge, but as I wrote above, it's not a compelling argument anyway - dastardly deeds have also been committed by criminals who "[hold] themselves, often against incredible odds and against incredible assaults, to their appointed task". Commitment to a tradition or a task is no proof of the value of that tradition or task. It's possible to be horribly wrong and yet still committed to your horrible wrong, particularly when you have a lot of momentum behind that wrong.

Alex Jacob wrote:I will say that the 'child's voice' as it pertains to criticism of our own traditions will often bring up all the points you do, and it all becomes just more ammunition to knock down the cultural authorities (the Father Figures) who represent rules and regulations that the child wants to rebel against. Whole generations have involved themselves in this game of ressentiment. Not all of it is 'bad', some of it is necessary and 'good', but I think it behooves us to understand and come to terms with underlying, unconscious, psychological resistance.

Certainly there are those who seek to rebel for rebellion's sake; then there are those of us who genuinely ask "Why are things the way that they are, and aren't there better possibilities?"

Dan Rowden wrote:I just want to state En passant that I regard any talk of a communication between the divine and human in the terms being considered here to be unspeakably fatuous, an insult even to children.

Carry on.

Dan, if you were to have personal experiences in which you seemed to communicate with "the divine", what do you think/hope you would make of these experiences?

I'm not sure I can properly answer that question. It depends what a person intends by "divine" and how fatuous their concept of it. The vast majority of people have a thoroughly fatuous concept of such and therefore when they speak of communing with the divine they are always speaking bucket loads of drivel.

In my case, my every experience could be said to be such communication, but it doesn't really mean anything; it's just what experience is. I can't think of any reason to speak of "communicating with the divine" in those specific terms. People who do that do so because that's simply what they want to be happening (a communication with something personal or special or powerful etc), rather than some mundane experience or altered state event or something.

One thing's for certain: If I had a wife and she got fatuous, I'd definitely divorce her. I won't put up with a fatuous woman and that's that.
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"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".
---The White Queen

Synchronicity

Providence

Jason, it is true that I write a considerable amount, but it is not 'vague', it is just in terms and ways that you don't relate to, that's all. I am not selling you points of view, I am not even writing for you even if I respond to you. I don't have to play by your rules or anyone's rules. What I find interesting is that you and I might have 'discussed' the particular issue of porn-culture, and that could have been a way to explore more the idea of values, but you declined. So, if I write too much, and don't ever say it to your liking, you play differently: you don't say anything, really. I like to take risks, it's fun to take risks, and it is a way to explore ideas, to work things out, which is all I am doing here anyway. And so now you're going to 'tease-out' some information that maybe could be useful to you? I dunno man, go back and read my posts and 'tease-out' of your own brain more connections. I've been trying to 'tease-out' of y'all anything that even on a good day might look like an passable conversation and haven't been having too much luck.

But anyway, I think that the greatest contribution of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition to our present, I mean that has become refined and defined and has an impact in our present, is through a certain brand of 'personalism'. It seems to have originated in a very late spiritual and religious tradition---the ultimate evolution of Catholic/Christian thinking---in people like Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Ammon Hennecy, A.J. Muste, Barbara Deming and others. 'Personalism' is a way of looking at and relating to persons, as persons, and is an expression of the prophetic ideals toward persons. From what I have seen to date, and as far as I know, other traditions (Buddhism, the various branches of Hinduism, and perhaps even Mohammedanism) simply do not define the person as the thing of supreme importance and relevance, the being that 'God' is ultimately concerned with. In any case, these traditions do not seem to have given birth to a 'personalism' as has our own religious and ethic traditions.

You are focusing, I think, on the wrong thing when you can only see a religious tradition as having issues with libertine sexual expression, or for preferencing 'monogamy'. You seem to just want to focus on some creepy restrictions that you feel are too uptight for you, and you don't seem to even be able to see the underlying issue, which is much greater, has much more relevance and impact. But that consideration, it seems, can't even appear on your radar, it is something you can't even see. This 'personalism', which derives from later Catholic and Christian thinking and intimate concern for the individual will take issue with things that 'dehumanize' and debase the person, and of course it defines the person as a soul, and a soul as a part-and-parcel 'God' or the Divine. But likely, at that point, the mere mention of these terms, your mind will have wandered away, because (it would seem) the whole vocabulary, with its assumptions, with its metaphysic, is one that you cast off long ago. Like for example the Christian notion of the 'Body of Christ' symbolized by a 'vine' upon which we all draw sustenance, the life blood of vitality, the very energy of our souls, something that sustains, nourishes, elevates. Here, on this forum, these terms have no currency, no validity, they are merely ridiculous, or 'fatuous' as one Fearless Leader likes to say. In your own 'absolutism' yo have defined some terms right out of existence, but more than the terms, you simply cannot appreciate existence in that way, it must not exist for you in that way.

So, you want me to write out a list of values for you, some units that you can compare with other units, and run them through the mill of reason and see if anything is left standing. The problem with that is that---at its best (and I will readily admit there is a great deal that is bad and low) the Judeo-Christian ethic derives from a spiritual view of reality and existence, and it is of course impossible to 'explain' to someone who does not see things or feel things that way anything about the spiritual connection between human beings (all living things) and their Creator. So, all you'd have left I guess is some list of values that some Jews or Christians are trying to hold on to while so much wages an assault against it. And what is that? A mercantile culture that sees persons not as souls and not as part-and-parcel of God but as objects from which they can extract value. Or in the example we were supposedly talking about, the difference, the very real difference, between a genuine care and love of another person that is expressed sexually or erotically, and a whole, vast industry that feeds off of sexual excess, an acute objectification of bodies, and markets this 'product', which is generally perceived as a debasement of all parties involved, for hard, cold cash. The really interesting thing, for me, is that you who---according to what you say---is this advanced modern creature, this humanistic thinking person who will coolly and calmly consider and reanalyse our ethics and keep what is useful and throw out what is not, if you are an example of that, you sure ain't much of one, since the scope of this issue is beyond you.

Obviously, and most likely distinct from you (and others here), I do have a sense of a creator, and this creator has a personal aspect, and all that we do and have been doing is to try to come closer to a correct definition, a correct understanding (speaking historically). The whole platform of existence, in my understanding (and in different ways the understanding of many religious traditions), is essentially 'divine'. Clearly, all that has ramification in what I think and what I do. You guys don't seem to share this understanding, so it is predictable and it makes sense that we will never have agreement. Nevertheless, I find it worthwhile to at least clearly point up those differences.

Guest asks:

"I'd like you to answer some specific questions about what you believe about God:
1. Is God personal and conscious?
2. Does God have a gender, and if so, what is it?
3. Is God the creator of the rest of reality?
4. Is God capable of communicating directly in language with human beings?"

Tricky questions! I know a trap when I see one, so here goes...

1) God certainly is personal and conscious, and it is only in conscious persons that God is perceived. A stone isn't aware of any God as far as I know. Only conscious beings seem to have even a preoccupation with God. It is as if this God is 'part-and-parcel' of them, or they discover they are part-and-parcel of God. I think God must also be conscious, because in all experiences related to 'God'---in all stories, all allegories, all metaphors---God is always portrayed as something that speaks back to the person, and always in a personal way. One of the 'characteristics' of conscious being is personality. We always recognize the personality of animals and other humans. I think that this indicates that personality is a part of the construct, the creation, and the cosmos. It seems inevitable that, for humans, whatever they mean by 'God' will always be something with personality.

2) It is like asking if being or creation has a gender. Could we even be certain that 'gender' is a universal feature? I mean in other parts of the universe? Maybe God is 'third-gender' I don't know. But, God does have a wang-dang if that is what you are asking.

3) According to the Jewish concept of 'God', yes. It is God that created heaven and earth and all things. I think it is generally assumed that any 'God' that might communicate, eventually, with humans---even through intermediaries---is the same God that has also originated 'all this'. Most of the mysteries connected with defining a God rest in this. The Krishna theology has a strange feature: It sees Krishna, the Supreme Personality, as being the origin of all things and all possible worlds, and yet this 'creation' operates independently of Himself. It is one 'frequency' of energetic vibration, and within so many different 'frequencies' there are various levels of being and consciousness. Weisenheimer is usually on level 7 (of 10) but has to 'fly' down through 4 whole levels to even form words to speak with you!

4) Are you capable of communicating directly with me in language? What is language but without the words? If you answer that question you'll be well on the road to answering your own. Who and what is communicating when we communicate? And even when it is not in words, what in fact is motioning to us in all the phenomena of this existence? When 'meaning' reaches us (and does it reach us?) who or what is behind that? What happened? How did the 'meaning' get communicated? You clearly have not spent enough time with the Yanomami peoples in the deep deep forests of equatorial Venezuela! I mean this stuff is just elemental. What sorts of psychedelic vines grow in your Green Gardens up there is Tasmania anyway? Do you guys even have a Great Spirit that communicates with you? And if not, where did 'he' go? Do you possess stories that explain why this Great One has left? Did you offend him? Did you fail to observe Taboo? Is there any indication that 'he' will be back? Is there any remedial activity to mend this breach? Or, have you been left utterly to fend for yourselves for ever and ever, amen? What is it like to be left utterly alone by your creator, in a cold, harsh world of dead atoms, with no meaning anywhere? What do you tell your children when they ask you, From whence did we come? Why are we here?

Alex,

I appreciate your direct responses to my questions. It seems to be quite pot luck as to which questions and challenges our dear Weisenheimer will address - clearly he is a bird with a sense of independence and a certain degree of bully-for-you-old-boy-but-I-couldn't-care-less-what-you-want-from-me. All well and good, but I must admit to some significant sense of disappointment that this self-described man among men deigned not to offer even a few crumbs of understanding to we mere mortals as to the differing natures and roles of men and women. I was looking forward to that discussion. I humbly request that he reconsider this course of action.

I got the implication from the questions in your final answer that you are under the impression that I am of the atheist-materialist world-view. I am not. My actual position on these matters can be discovered in the post that I just contributed to the Jed thread. I hope that it gives you a sense of how I might have answered your questions.

Guest-of-Logic writes:

"Something was happening", huh? So when the Bible condones slavery, "something is happening"? When the Bible prescribes death by stoning for such crimes as adultery, homosexual acts, bestiality (the innocent beast is to be killed too, mind you), possessing a medium spirit, abusing God's name, and murder, and when the Bible prescribes burning to death the daughter of a priest who indulges in prostitution, "something is happening"? When the Bible describes the God-aided victories of the Jews in the bloody conquests of other tribes, "something is happening"? When the Bible describes God destroying whole towns and villages with fire and brimstone, or when He destroys almost all life on Earth through a merciless flood, "something is happening"?"

This is so very simple I'm surprised you focus on it. A long time ago the world was a pretty different place and people, generally speaking, were far more barbaric in their practices. Nietzsche writes about it in Genealogy of Morals. Punishment was a very important affair, and it served a function, and people used to really enjoy their punishing very much. But---and you should know this---as the moral code evolved and as people evolved the whole practice of exacting punishment was evolved where damages were paid, like in currency. When you read the Bible you see all these outdated laws, but no part of this is now practiced by Jews, and within the Phariseean culture, even toward the time of Jesus, the codes were beginning to change.

"Yeah, something was happening alright. Blatant and unjustified barbarity is what was happening. The mess of primitive savagery of the Old Testament is what you hold up as the precursor to something "supreme and transcendent"? The Old Testament: inspired? Inspired by elitist arrogance and brute will to control and manipulate, perhaps. The Old Testament God demands, requires and expects worship and animal sacrifice. Is this in any way "transcendent" behaviour, or is it more like the behaviour of a vainglorious warlord? I mean, seriously, Alex, how can you in good conscience read the Old Testament and then tell me that it is leading man on to a higher purpose?"

We come from barbaric roots, all of us. And there is a trajectory in our own history and traditions where people come to new realizations and work out whole ethical structures. (So for example, now, if the priest's daughter gets caught in fornication she gets a new car. See? It's all different now, much more civilized). Stand Up For Your Rights

Yet, when you read the Old Testament---and by appearances you haven't---you see glowings and glimmerings of a whole new moral order. Again, read Amos and Hosea who wrote 700 years BC. If you were to read these cats you'd see that there is the beginnings of the awakening of a whole other consciousness, and that is the thing that should be focused on.

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Anna, I have devised this post as a pill, that when you eat it, and when it shall assimilate through the fibres of your body, it shall cure you of your numerous misunderstandings. As you may have guessed, I have unto me a multicolored Macaw, whose name is Weisenheimer, and who sitteth upon his perch of judgment, judgment given by the Father. Just as I thought of writing to you today, Weisenheimer uttered out loud, 'Grapes are not harvested from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles'. Lo, when I came close to inquire of him what he did mean, the asshole reached out and biteth my nose! So, I have no idea what he means by 'grapes' or 'thorn trees' or any of it.

You referred unto a segment of the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, Chapter 8:44 to make a point---a very nasty little point---about Jews. I only want to point out a few things that come from critical New Testament scholarship about John, the most important that there is no part of John, except one short phrase ("A prophet gets no respect on his own turf") that can be responsibly attributed to Jesus, and this Gospel is a much later document which more than anything else is a reformulation of Jesus in 'Christological terms'. All of the reasonings that support this assertion can be gotten by referring to the work of the Jesus Seminar which may be the most advanced group of researches working to uncover the 'historical Jesus'.

There are reasons why 'the Jews' were set up as the culprits within the Jesus narratives. The deep animosity arises within a Jewish-Jewish context and this can be noted in Paul's often caustic words for Jewish Christians who, according to him, did not conform to his sense of what was right. Also, the tradition of the Pharisees, for a group of different very good reasons was forced to reject almost all of the half-baked ideas of the early Christians and to hold to their own traditions as against early (and later) Christianity. There are sound reasons for this which can be investigated. Modern critical scholarship does this, and what it reveals is a schism, something on the par of a 'civil war' of ideas between closely related factions. This animosity, it seems spun far out of control, and as it congealed, the Jews were more or less 'framed' in a very devilish way, in a very destructive way. Back in the time of Jesus, virtually no one had even heard of him. There are very few references in Jewish literature and, at that time, he seems to have had next to zero impact. No group of Jews, and certainly not all the Jewish people, ever decided for or against Jesus as it is portrayed in the Gospels, where 'the Jews' themselves call down their fate upon themselves in the act of choosing Barabbas over Jesus. This is all theatrics, and it all was concocted and assembled well after the fact, as part of a story-line, where a hero is identified and a villain too.

The Jesus Seminar reveals that whoever Jesus really was, is no one that we in fact really can say that we know. But he is definitely not the Jesus of the Gospel narratives, or he is only insofar as a small percentage (18%) of the sayings in the Gosepls (Mark, Mathew, Luke, and the recent Gospel of Thomas from which Weisenheimer quoted) can be attributed to the historical person Jesus. They are short, pithy aphorisms or longer parables that, when meditated on, seem to reveal a whole other order of thinking than what, later, was transformed into the 'Christological Jesus'. It is little wonder then that Jews have traditionally rejected Christian doctrine and have opted to stay with their own grasp of the Jewish mission, though it has proven quite costly for them. This Jesus, to them, was little more than a demon who came hunting them do do them continual harm on down through the centuries. It is wise for Christians---in our liberal age, opening up into a new era---to understand this point. And additionally, to make a concerted effort to break the bonds that link them to that demonic, destructive spirit.

To say to a Jew 'your Father is the Devil' is literally the grossest insult you could bring forward, not only because it is not at all true, and because it represents a destructive Christian story that demonizes Jews, but because it opens the door to all sorts of terrible retributions that are then acted out. If you can locate the Devil you are duty-bound to do something about his presence among you. The grand narrative that runs through a significant portion of the narratives that you present as 'truths', as 'real histories', that describe a Jewish involvement in building a demonic prison of the world tie into these very old conceptual models that can be traced directly to the Gospels. You demonstrated this definitively and more or less unmistakably.

If you take this pill I offer you now, it will work and it will cure you. But it must be swallowed without hesitation. Although I really do know my pharmacopeia, and I have used in this treatment rare and precious substances that have taken me decades to assemble, still the cure will take about 4 years...

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Alex Jacob wrote:Tricky questions! I know a trap when I see one, so here goes...

Actually this is the real trap, the one that I need you to enter before I answer your most recent post to me:
5. Is God:
5a. omnipotent
5b. omniscient
5c. omnibenevolent (i.e. infinitely/perfectly good and infinitely/perfectly loving/compassionate)?

Oh, and a correction. In an earlier post, I wrote "I appreciate your direct responses to my questions." On reconsideration, your response to question (4) was anything but direct. The question was part of a trap, and the only way that you escaped it was to avoid answering the question directly. Let me put it to you in these terms:

You answer that God is personal and conscious. This implies that He has a "separate" existence as an entity in the same way that people have "separate" existences as entities (I quote "separate" because of course - as QRS are fond of drumming into us - nothing is ever completely separate or it could never interact with anything else). All that question 4 was asking is whether it is possible for this separate God entity to communicate verbally with we separate people entities in the same way that we separate people entities communicate verbally amongst ourselves. In other words, is it possible to literally hear God's voice in your ear (or just in your mind)? I'd appreciate a non-evasive response, preferably as simple as "yes" or "no", but of course you no doubt recognise the trap and will be keen to avoid it through more evasiveness.

.


-Alex Jacob-
In just a few days Barack Obama will be president.

-tomas-
There's no change coming from this windbag.


Proverbs 6:6-8

Guest, thank you so much for your half-remarkable questions. Weisenheimer teaches us that all the things we can think about God take place within a thought-system, which is in itself a limited system, a system with its own rules peculiar to itself. Weisenheimer also states that this mind, this mentation, is very useful for us, but that sometimes we have to outsmart our own minds and to apply certain manoeuvres, and to see that no matter what we might think, it is never going to really accurately represent any of the things you are asking about.

Now, you ask if God is omnipotent, and the best way to answer you is to ask: Can you, on the basis of your relationship with God, get sushi in Ntusi, Uganda if you just showed up in town on a random Tuesday in the month of March? If you can do that, God is omnipotent, if not, he isn't.

To have originated 'all this' which is all it possibly is and all other possibilities, or to be the 'all that' of which, in some way, we are located within and have our being, would seem to imply unlimitedness, and within 'all that', some sort of omnipotence and all the rest. But, and this is something various traditions point at is that something within our system, this place where we are located and are taking place, is constrained by rules and regulations more or less impossible to break. Even though we cruise, with willful flint-like faces, into our modernity, there still seems to reside somewhere in us the notion that, somehow, there is some secret knowledge about the nature of things, that if we knew it, would give us some special conceptual framework to understand why it is we are taking place in 'all this', and why this 'all this' is the way it is, which is to say (in so many senses) a world of woe, trouble, striving, violent competition, decay, death and primarily suffering. It's that fucking suffering that no one seems to be able to surmount, except some very few, who then seem not even to care a fig about anything at all, and if they live or die, it just doesn't matter, they are on to something Greater.

So, the answer to your questions if effectively 'no', unless you see a way around it. Effectively, no. But that might not mean ultimately 'no'. The point seems to be that we exist in relation to the Totality as conditioned beings, subject to laws, birth and death and all the rest. But there always seems to be some inkling---is it 'truth' beckoning to us or merely Illusion offering a false-breast that we might suck on---that there may be more beyond all this, or some level of continuation, which we simply cannot conceive, but of which, in whispers, is always being 'spoken' to us. And what then, if this is true, is 'speaking'?

But, no matter what, we are here in flesh and blood, and flesh and blood is a difficult state to be in, and it is hard to drag around these damned bodies when, on other levels, say of imagination or on those 'wings of the spirit', we seem to have intimations of a far greater freedom, something that is ours and always has been. But here in the flesh and the blood, we just have to go through it all, and just as we were born into flesh and blood, so we are all going to (show me a way around this) die more or less miserably, or die in any case. It's a tough, tough script, but the stage-scenery, you have to admit, is sometimes quite impressive. Youth seems to fare well, just for sheer gusto and joie de vivre, and a sort of blind drive to push on, and all the paths of adventure open up before youth. There are other positions on the continuum, other strategies if you will, that reflect other understandings. One of those is the Jewish perspective which, if one really looks into it, seems to recognize so very clearly the 'horrible constraints' of this existence, the tragedy we all have to face, and yet in the face of all that, and for the sake of the role that we have been assigned, who really quite grasps why? we have our conduct, and some level of will, and the ethical commands.

It always seems to be couched in a narrative that involves a journey...

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Well, Alex, I was going along reading your post with my usual annoyance that you aren't quite talking about what I'm talking about, but staying fixated on the idea that this is all about blaming Jews, but then I came across this:

You referred unto a segment of the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, Chapter 8:44 to make a point---a very nasty little point---about Jews.

which I don't remember referring to, but it is important and will have to be lifted out first, and then dealt with as it is very important, and you as usual take it the wrong way. Much of what you say is agreeable enough, obvious even.

As to only 18% of the gospels being genuine words of Jesus, this I doubt, not having read your book which is indeed the very sort of book I generally do read and would consider reading. Nonetheless the whole Jesus things is more mysterious than this or that scholarly work. And as to the gospel of John, indeed it is a strange one, and somewhat gnostic.

Now. I will try to coherently unravel some of what you have said.

There are reasons why 'the Jews' were set up as the culprits within the Jesus narratives. The deep animosity arises within a Jewish-Jewish context and this can be noted in Paul's often caustic words for Jewish Christians who, according to him, did not conform to his sense of what was right.

All true enough.

Also, the tradition of the Pharisees, for a group of different very good reasons was forced to reject almost all of the half-baked ideas of the early Christians and to hold to their own traditions as against early (and later) Christianity.

Perhaps so but consider that Jesus was talking to them before the advent of "Christianity". His argument with them was about religion, the priesthood, and how it gets fossilized and so forth.
It is you who are looking at these things as attacks against the Jews as a whole - Jesus certainly didn't do that!

There are sound reasons for this which can be investigated. Modern critical scholarship does this, and what it reveals is a schism, something on the par of a 'civil war' of ideas between closely related factions. This animosity, it seems spun far out of control, and as it congealed, the Jews were more or less 'framed' in a very devilish way, in a very destructive way.

Pehaps again, but I am interested in what Jesus thought, and the meaning of what he said, which by the grace of the Holy Spirit I am able to do, and it is beyond tragic how hard he tried - he died trying - to uplift his people, about whom he compared himself to a mother hen, and how to this day his words are blowing in the wind, unheard, misunderstood, twisted beyond recognition, instead of releasing the prisoners, bringing new hordes in.

Back in the time of Jesus, virtually no one had even heard of him. There are very few references in Jewish literature and, at that time, he seems to have had next to zero impact. No group of Jews, and certainly not all the Jewish people, ever decided for or against Jesus as it is portrayed in the Gospels, where 'the Jews' themselves call down their fate upon themselves in the act of choosing Barabbas over Jesus. This is all theatrics, and it all was concocted and assembled well after the fact, as part of a story-line, where a hero is identified and a villain too.

Yes, I agree. Who knows whether there really was such a group who made such a reply, but if they did it was a small group of provacateurs. A very damaging passage, I agree.

To say to a Jew 'your Father is the Devil' is literally the grossest insult you could bring forward, not only because it is not at all true, and because it represents a destructive Christian story that demonizes Jews, but because it opens the door to all sorts of terrible retributions that are then acted out.

But you see, Jesus was speaking to the priesthood, whom he saw rightly as not only having no genuine spiritual life themselves, but as leaders and authorities, preventing the people from spiritual growth as well. And this is the problem in general with religion, and why so many people dislike organized religion, and refer to spirituality instead. But you have made some recent comments about religion being higher than philosophy or theology because it is a life in God. But you should be aware that nowadays people are using the term spirituality for that. There is a life, an "I and Thou" a wondrous journey of spirit but it needs not religion, nor this or that dogma, and as it progresses it needs less and less of dogma. Through religion many people have the spiritual life, but often the religion is as much of an impediment as an encouragement.

Fer instance, if you hold to a concept of God that is frightening and punitive and holds great threat over the heads of humanity, no matter what you profess intellectually, in your inward heart you will not be inspired to love or admiration of such a God, thus stagnating your spiritual growth.

Jesus was a reformer, and he tried to go about it in a clever way. It didn't work, but nonetheless I don't see a better way. He thought if he could uplift people spiritually, they would see through the stupidities of the religion, and drop them painlessly. Whereas if you attack the whole idiotic complex then all you will get is lethal resistance. But once a person gets the gift Jesus wanted to give - the quickening of their spiritual faculty known as being born in the spirit or born again, you get the wisdom to see what is negative and false, and keep the gems.

Jesus was not saying that Jews are bad, he was saying that these particular pharisees were, in their spiritual opinions, of the devil, and there is nothing particularly Jewish about this, it is just that this is who he was talking to at that time. There are whole categories of error that people fall into. There are power structures, and the desire for power, and the machinations of same. In that passage from the gospel of John, Jesus names the twin pillars of evil - deception and force.

The devil is a liar and a murderer.

Humans are vulnerable to influences, both good and bad. When you stay on a negative path, and when your spiritual faculty is not opened, you easily fall prey to decpetive lies, often known as dogma, religion or theology. Those who gravitate to the top of power structures have to be addresssed, but the people are also responsible for being so credulous. The problem of the people, as I have told you already, is named in Isaiah - we can't tell what is good and what is bad, what is bitter and what sweet, what is light and what is darkness.

As far as Jesus was concerned, the Pharisees were teachers of darkness. To say their father was the devil is, if there is a devil, quite literally true in the mental sense. The father of all the false teachings and negative fear-based lies and threats is certainly not God.

Newton is called the father of modern physics, and one might say to a physicist, "Oh, you are of your father, Newton."

You cannot be released from prison if you WILL NOT SEE the bars.

You think that I primarily use these New Testament passages to show that Jews are building a demonic prison, but I point to the Old Testament, in which there is a good voice, but primarily an evil voice, that took the Jews, and while I have no idea to what extent any of these stories are valid, traumatized them mercilessly. Trauma is a major decreaser of spiritual growth because of the fear it engenders, which is of course why it is done. Jesus tried to free them.
Now the whole Christian world and the Muslims too are held captive. Truly the world is the devil's playground.

Anna writes from a post a page or two back:

"There is actually an interesting Biblical passage, perhaps I could find it, which makes it appear that Jehovah is none other than Satan."

I think that it is pretty much John 8:44, I mean very directly stated.

"Well, Alex, I was going along reading your post with my usual annoyance that you aren't quite talking about what I'm talking about..."

Yes, yes, I know, all I do is misread. ;-)

We're not going to be able to go any further with this, Anna. You keep saying that I am not understanding what you want me to understand, and I say that when I read what you want me to understand I see a wall of unconscious content. That is why I said it is going to take '4 years'. You could only begin to deconstruct it if you really had the desire to. That is why the pill had to be swallowed 'without hesitation'. But, you hesitated.

So add a year. Were coming up on 2000 years of misunderstanding as it is.

;-)

What a copout on what I wrote!

I deal with what you say and you ignore what I say!

I am like Jesus, begging and begging you to please see your own oppression, and you are like the dwarfs at the end of the Narnia series, after they have all gone to heaven, and they huddle in their make believe smelly barn and won't admit that they are in a field of flowers.

What has anything I wrote today got to do with unconscious intent to hate Jews?

There is nothing that Jesus said to the priests of his day that I wouldn't say to a Baptist preacher of today! These are human issues.

You are no warrior.

There was no pill in your post, but I have offered you good medicine.

The place where Jehovah identifies himself as Satan is in the Old Testament. But I can't find it.

Jesus never used the word Jehovah.

"The place where Jehovah identifies himself as Satan is in the Old Testament. But I can't find it."

Keep looking, it'll show up one of these days. The reason I ignore a good portion of what you wrote is that, in my understanding, it is pretty obviously deluded. I suggest that you demonstrate more or less exactly why a style of 'thinking', which is intimately tied to certain mythical symbols and, apparently, potencies, directs your understanding. Again, from my perspective only, it is pretty much the same order of stuff that we were talking about even back in the last quarter of 2007.

I suggest that you look into, say, some of the ideas in Jung's psychology, but do not neglect to read The Devil and the Jews, by Joshua Trachtenberg.

"I am like Jesus, begging and begging you to please see your own oppression, and you are like the dwarfs at the end of the Narnia series, after they have all gone to heaven, and they huddle in their make believe smelly barn and won't admit that they are in a field of flowers."

Now do you understand what I'm up against? This is a cry for help!

Alex Jacob wrote:Jason, it is true that I write a considerable amount, but it is not 'vague', it is just in terms and ways that you don't relate to, that's all.

No, you are vague, and also prone to self-contradiction.

I am not selling you points of view, I am not even writing for you even if I respond to you. I don't have to play by your rules or anyone's rules.

Yet you do play by tradition and religion's rules. Interesting that you've now told several people that you don't play by their rules. Is this your way of trying to be/appear masculine, or convince yourself that you are? You want men to be real men (whatever that is), but, to me, your passive conforming to tradition, your seeming inability to stand on your own facing existence, your lack of clarity, your at times rather dandy posts and demeanor, it looks to fit the more stereotypical "feminine" cultural role and expectations to me. I find the contrast slightly intriguing.

Maybe Conan could teach you something about how to be a "masculine" theist.

What I find interesting is that you and I might have 'discussed' the particular issue of porn-culture, and that could have been a way to explore more the idea of values, but you declined. So, if I write too much, and don't ever say it to your liking, you play differently: you don't say anything, really.

I ended some of our previous discussions because I didn't think they were generating anything of value - due to your vagueness and continuing inability to pare things down and focus, amongst other things.

I like to take risks, it's fun to take risks, and it is a way to explore ideas, to work things out, which is all I am doing here anyway.

You reckon being the bitch of 2000+ years of tradition and religion is taking risks?

But anyway, I think that the greatest contribution of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition to our present, I mean that has become refined and defined and has an impact in our present, is through a certain brand of 'personalism'. It seems to have originated in a very late spiritual and religious tradition---the ultimate evolution of Catholic/Christian thinking---in people like Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Ammon Hennecy, A.J. Muste, Barbara Deming and others. 'Personalism' is a way of looking at and relating to persons, as persons, and is an expression of the prophetic ideals toward persons. From what I have seen to date, and as far as I know, other traditions (Buddhism, the various branches of Hinduism, and perhaps even Mohammedanism) simply do not define the person as the thing of supreme importance and relevance, the being that 'God' is ultimately concerned with. In any case, these traditions do not seem to have given birth to a 'personalism' as has our own religious and ethic traditions.

That sounds potentially interesting, but is it necessary to chain it to a belief in a magical sky daddy? I'm not closed off to the possibility that religions have managed to develop valuable ways of living that are best of breed and healthy and helpful to the human animal.

You are focusing, I think, on the wrong thing when you can only see a religious tradition as having issues with libertine sexual expression, or for preferencing 'monogamy'. You seem to just want to focus on some creepy restrictions that you feel are too uptight for you, and you don't seem to even be able to see the underlying issue, which is much greater, has much more relevance and impact. But that consideration, it seems, can't even appear on your radar, it is something you can't even see.

If you think I'm only concerned about the impact that religion has had on human sexuality you're wrong. You're also wrong if you think that I only see it purely in terms of basic physical sexual restrictions. I am fully aware that there are wide-ranging justifications(well-founded or otherwise), ramifications, potential side-effects, unforeseen consequences etc etc that come with restricting sex in the way that the Judeo-Christian tradition has done. One of the main reasons I am even bothering to engage with you, you the religious/spiritual man, is because I want to try to understand all facets and possibilities relating to traditional sexual customs. Unfortunately you haven't given me much so far - what I've seen at this point is some rather emotive reactions which seem based in prudery and unexamined conditioning. A deluge of unimpressive anti-porn sites featuring the same old sex-phobic feminist and religious rhetoric, and simplistic references to reining-in out of control pagans ain't doing much for me Alex. I live in hope though ;p

This 'personalism', which derives from later Catholic and Christian thinking and intimate concern for the individual will take issue with things that 'dehumanize' and debase the person, and of course it defines the person as a soul, and a soul as a part-and-parcel 'God' or the Divine.

I don't believe that God is necessary to prevent humans from debasing and dehumanizing each other. I can see that humans are conscious beings who suffer and feel joy, and I can empathetically share in that suffering and joy - this, amongst other reasons, makes me deeply opposed to debasement and dehumanization. If magical sky daddy is what is keeping you and your kin from debasing each other then that's a serious problem.

But likely, at that point, the mere mention of these terms, your mind will have wandered away, because (it would seem) the whole vocabulary, with its assumptions, with its metaphysic, is one that you cast off long ago.

I'm trying my best to listen, for my own sake, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't some tendency towards this. Also, I didn't have to "cast it off", there was no point in my life where I ever believed in God or a soul etc.

Like for example the Christian notion of the 'Body of Christ' symbolized by a 'vine' upon which we all draw sustenance, the life blood of vitality, the very energy of our souls, something that sustains, nourishes, elevates. Here, on this forum, these terms have no currency, no validity, they are merely ridiculous, or 'fatuous' as one Fearless Leader likes to say. In your own 'absolutism' yo have defined some terms right out of existence, but more than the terms, you simply cannot appreciate existence in that way, it must not exist for you in that way.

That's all very fancy smancy, and appeals to your aesthete dandy side I'm sure, but it's food and water that sustains me. Religions have invented all sorts of pretty ideas about gods, angels, ghosts, ancestors and spirits providing sustenance and elevation and what have you. And they often seem to contradict. Funny that. The atheist still goes on thriving with his simple food and water.

So, you want me to write out a list of values for you, some units that you can compare with other units, and run them through the mill of reason and see if anything is left standing. The problem with that is that---at its best (and I will readily admit there is a great deal that is bad and low) the Judeo-Christian ethic derives from a spiritual view of reality and existence, and it is of course impossible to 'explain' to someone who does not see things or feel things that way anything about the spiritual connection between human beings (all living things) and their Creator. So, all you'd have left I guess is some list of values that some Jews or Christians are trying to hold on to while so much wages an assault against it.

If you think these values are intrinsically and indefinitely tied to magical sky daddy, and that they have no meaningful or valuable existence beyond that, then yeah, maybe any attempt at sharing them outside this context is a non-starter. But does this mean, for instance, that at some fundamental level you can only justify being caring and loving towards your fellows because a stand-over man god is always waiting in the wings? Call me insanely naive and idealistic - but I'd like to think that treating our fellow conscious beings with respect and care is its own reward, and thus hopefully a god isn't fundamentally necessary for this.

And what is that? A mercantile culture that sees persons not as souls and not as part-and-parcel of God but as objects from which they can extract value.

That's not the dichotomy I'm especially considering here. I've got no special love for modern capitalist markets, media and culture. I'm just as interested in examining and critiquing these as I am religion and tradition.

Or in the example we were supposedly talking about, the difference, the very real difference, between a genuine care and love of another person that is expressed sexually or erotically, and a whole, vast industry that feeds off of sexual excess, an acute objectification of bodies, and markets this 'product', which is generally perceived as a debasement of all parties involved, for hard, cold cash. The really interesting thing, for me, is that you who---according to what you say---is this advanced modern creature, this humanistic thinking person who will coolly and calmly consider and reanalyse our ethics and keep what is useful and throw out what is not, if you are an example of that, you sure ain't much of one, since the scope of this issue is beyond you.

You'd do well not to too quickly assume what my scope, or lack thereof, is. You'd also do well to delve into your memory and recall that I have said very explicitly that I don't believe mainstream porn or mainstream secular sexuality is anywhere near ideal. I don't necessarily believe that what has developed and been left, where religion once was, is any better. Everything is open for examination to me, including the already strongly secular areas of society.

Obviously, and most likely distinct from you (and others here), I do have a sense of a creator, and this creator has a personal aspect, and all that we do and have been doing is to try to come closer to a correct definition, a correct understanding (speaking historically). The whole platform of existence, in my understanding (and in different ways the understanding of many religious traditions), is essentially 'divine'. Clearly, all that has ramification in what I think and what I do. You guys don't seem to share this understanding, so it is predictable and it makes sense that we will never have agreement. Nevertheless, I find it worthwhile to at least clearly point up those differences.

This "divine" of yours seems to be vagueness constructed from vagueness sitting on a foundation of vagueness.

Jason wrote:

"This "divine" of yours seems to be vagueness constructed from vagueness sitting on a foundation of vagueness."

You are of course completely correct. Long ago I realized that there is no way, try as one might, to offer an explanation for 'God', or any kind of force of Providence. I basically realize that any explanation that is offered and accepted, even partially, is always with someone who already has some shade of similar understanding. These days, to have 'spiritual beliefs' is pretty much part of a regressive belief system, and in quite a few ways could be understood as unhelpful and destructive even. All these beliefs systems, all these paths of explanation (as I am fond of saying) are like murky paths through a Graveyard of Meanings, a world of spooks, shades, big-eyed owls that glare at you menacingly, but then there is also all this stage-equipment, like stone altars with obsidian knives, possessed, wild-eyed senoras who read your future with a deck of playing cards, Gothic cathedrals, organ music, deformed priests with personal dungeons.

Any description of this 'God' and of 'spirit' is always just a group of exhausted metaphors that really have no place in 'modern discourse'. There is certainly no way to explain 'God, so God doesn't exist. May he rest in peace...

"You want men to be real men (whatever that is), but, to me, your passive conforming to tradition, your seeming inability to stand on your own facing existence..."

With all that said---and so much more can be said---it is unfair to say this. I am still a Man Among Men and one day I shall leave my mark on humanity! In all seriousness, if I really believed some of the things I wrote your scathing, brutal critique of me might be true, but I only believe in a 'sort-of' way, or I rather think that ever and always a description of God is more and more remote for us, and though it is true that so many seem to prefer an existence in a world of shades and shady meanings, there are still many 'fine upstanding citizens' and also very decent intellects (who cannot so easily be dismissed) who 'defend' the belief in some sort of Higher Being (and blah blah blah---all the terms of discourse for this, I think you'd agree, become more and more boring the more they are stated and repeated).

What you say about 'facing existence' is a very good point, and as I see things, even if one still is interested or moved by the idea of a creative spirit or a guiding spirit, as in something that, somehow, 'directs' human consciousness, one still is going to have to face all the very good arguments that so successfully wreck havoc on the old conceptual pathways, the now desert highway of exhausted meaning, that comprise our completely outdated ideas on the subject. You take me far too seriously if you take literally that I 'don't play by anyone's rules', it is only that, as I say, there is really no way to present the way that one employs certain ideas to another person. As you know (and this forum seems to affirm), it can all function like a trap, a going backward, a falling back into old habits, an obscurantism with a smile that can turn wicked at any moment. Each person here has a unique stance on the subject, and each one says something quite different from the other. Isn't that peculiar? If there really is nothing beyond matter and this material existence, shouldn't we all have a sort of uniform conceptual model? And the fact that there is no such model, to me, indicates that still it is not really decided, and maybe huge swaths of it will remain as eternal unknowns---or unknowables?

"I ended some of our previous discussions because I didn't think they were generating anything of value - due to your vagueness and continuing inability to pare things down and focus, amongst other things."

Could be, but I also think you are sort of lazy too in your own way. Like now is the first time I have ever heard you explain yourself so thoroughly, and it is just one relatively meagre post.

"You reckon being the bitch of 2000+ years of tradition and religion is taking risks?"

(It is more like 40,000+ years of post-glacial development of human consciousness and understanding, ain't it?)

I think it could be taking risks to still allow that certain 'conceptual pathways' be kept open, yes. And perhaps more than that, the risk I am talking about is existential, to have a certain fearlessness to experiment, to test, and I mean this in respect to some of the 'old techniques' such as pursuing omens, or the willingness to psychically (not intellectually) jump into other 'epistemes' of relationship to Life. You see, one of the issues is that 'you' (I say you but I have no idea who you are so I really mean 'some' or 'many') use their modern perspective as a wall against a confrontation with the meaning of this existence, or perhaps what comes from an intuitive penetration of existence, the fact of it. At the end of the day, from what I have seen, even if one accepts the basic model of material existence and does away with the Big Daddy God. one often still seems to live in accord with a subtle metaphysic, something that one can't quite put into words.

"That sounds potentially interesting, but is it necessary to chain it to a belief in a magical sky daddy?"

It would seem so, as I understand it. That is my theory anyway but I am not sure how to present it or defend it. In some way---do you consider it an illusion?---the whole idea of God has been subsumed in the Jungian notion of a 'collective unconscious', but it seems doubtful that a material understanding of things would support such an outlandish and unsubstantiable idea. The further we proceed (sort of like your Conan) in pursuit of 'God', the more that 'he' recedes, becomes something different, something radically different from what we thought.

"I'm not closed off to the possibility that religions have managed to develop valuable ways of living that are best of breed and healthy and helpful to the human animal."

No, of course you're not. The whole atheistic humanist school always asserts the same thing. But you still negate the core principal: some sort of essential, core, ingrained 'divinity' that is part-and-parcel of the whole shebang.

"Unfortunately you haven't given me much so far - what I've seen at this point is some rather emotive reactions which seem based in prudery and unexamined conditioning."

That is because---distinctly from what you might think---I am very certainly in a reactive phase in respect to the issue, but not at all because of upbringing, mine being liberal and even libertine. Like it or not, and 'for good or for evil', the whole issue or problem (or delight if you wish) of sexuality is going to jump out of the bottle, not just for you and me but for the whole world. It is now moving in the direction of a kind of meat-market where the ragamuffins of the world, their very bodies, are going to be up for sale, and the claws of sex-hungry men will reach even to children, and these mores and attitudes will shape culture in radically new ways. Even if you chose not to see it, possibly because of your direct complicity? nevertheless something like this is now happening, and there is nothing you or I could do to stop it. What the result of that is going to be, who can say? Like in a yogis sense, if you really are going to be a practitioner, you have to understand all the ins and outs of sexual force, and you have to assume responsibility for it. If I speak of a religious restraint (e.g. an ethic that comes from the Jewish tradition which, in history, began with establishing rules and regulations about sexual expression when other groups didn't), it is with a certain desperation, because I see what this libertinism is doing, both in the first world and in the third. You think I am preaching repression and that is not the case at all. I am talking more about a sort of yogic self-control with ethical underpinnings. Many people, who were not religious teetotallers or prudes, have written about the destructive effect of orgiastic desires run amok. I am sure you are unaware of this writing and, from the look of it, have not considered it. The rest of it, vis-a-vis you is just shtick, Jason. Just messin' with you man.

"A deluge of unimpressive anti-porn sites featuring the same old sex-phobic feminist and religious rhetoric, and simplistic references to reining-in out of control pagans ain't doing much for me Alex. I live in hope though ;p"

The 'deluge'; was, like 3 links...

And if it were really just that simple: sex-phobics, religious nuts on the one hand, and a sane, noble group of genuinely concerned, thoughtful adults on the other. You are really representing all over again the basic idea of Sirens.

"I don't believe that God is necessary to prevent humans from debasing and dehumanizing each other. I can see that humans are conscious beings who suffer and feel joy, and I can empathetically share in that suffering and joy - this, amongst other reasons, makes me deeply opposed to debasement and dehumanization. If magical sky daddy is what is keeping you and your kin from debasing each other then that's a serious problem."

That's a very shallow view, and is par for the course when it comes to you. You only see things in stark black and white terms, but there are millions of shades of color here. One of the main tangible results of the standard material vision of things, as it is practiced, is a result far different than you'd have supposed. It is the reduction of persons to interchangeable units, and since this view of things can hardly define 'meaning', which always seems to come from an indefinable, even mysterious, intangible 'realm' within us, and so never seems to amount to an ethic with any recognizable human core. The people who really seem to carry and protect the 'genuine human values' always seem to be people with religious background. It is this matrix that (seems) to produce the best that we can be, and within that there are some who take an agnostic, or atheist position. (I may be wrong, but this has always been my impression, as a reader).

"I'm trying my best to listen, for my own sake, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't some tendency towards this. Also, I didn't have to "cast it off", there was no point in my life where I ever believed in God or a soul etc."

When I say 'you', I mean the Jason who is a cultural product, and not wholly a voluntary outcome, if you understand what I mean. You are intimately connected to the whole religious culture and it goes back dozens and hundreds of generations, and at least from a Jungian perspective, all the same content still lives, moves and breathes in you.

"That's all very fancy schmancy, and appeals to your aesthete dandy side I'm sure, but it's food and water that sustains me. Religions have invented all sorts of pretty ideas about gods, angels, ghosts, ancestors and spirits providing sustenance and elevation and what have you. And they often seem to contradict. Funny that. The atheist still goes on thriving with his simple food and water."

Again, you mind seems to operate in a stark territory. It is true that we are sustained by physical nourishment, that this is the base, but it is obviously erroneous that we as human beings---in the best sense---do not also depend on other sources. Indeed, what makes us ultimately rich and varied, and in a special sense 'alive' has been and perhaps still is our connection with the whole, mystical land of exalted ideas. 'Man does not live by bread along but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God' can be taken in a number of different ways.

As a 'modern outcome'---this Jason---is a rather mono-dimensional creature, and that is a point of mine: we seem to become diminished when we cut ourselves off from the 'vine', which has a dual existence, both in the soil of the earth and in the ether of something far less tangible.

Now, bow down and worship Weisenheimer or suffer the consequences, heretic!

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