If not, then what? as a metaphysical tool

It is common and perhaps normal for modern people to find Christianity, or indeed any kind of religion or serious spirituality, unbelievable. Although sympathetic, they just cannot make themselves believe it.

This is understandable but a basic error - understandable because from the perspective of nomral modern thought then all religions is unbelievable, and error because this perspective a simply assumes the validity of the metaphysics of modernity.

In practice, nearly all serious reflection, or philosophy, is comparative rather than absolute - or, at least, that is how most people understand and express it. Indeed, to be comparative - genuinely - is a level of intellectual sophistication far beyond that of most experts.

When it comes to the basic assumptions about reality (i.e. metaphysics) this is even stronger; there are very few people who even try to do a from-within comparison of two different sets of metaphysical assumptions. Indeed, the tendency is nearly always to deny that these are assumptions and to assert that the assumptions are an inevitable consequence of observation and experience.

For example, the assumption of 'materialism' or positivism: this assumes that the only real things are perceptible by the five senses (vision, hearing, sight, touch, taste) and amplifications of these senses by scientific instruments (either directly detected or else indirectly inferred - sometimes very tenuously, in practice).

The materialist assumption is that something which is undetectable, unmeasurable, by the sense or scientific instruments does not exist. This is the assumption of all public discourse - in politics, the mass media, education, within institutional and corporate communications etc,

Consequently, all assertions of the reality of non-material entities are known for certain in advance to be un-true - therefore merely need to be 'explained-away' as errors of human psychology. Thus, modern metaphysics divides the world into the real versus the psychological - the psychological is a rag-bag of wishful-thinking, stupidity, deliberate deception, inbuilt biases etc. In practice, psychological causes are imprecisely allocated, because of their unreality - why bother being exact when we already know they are false?

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The materialist assumptions of public discourse are only half the story, however; because there is another metaphysical system which operates simultaneously - and that is the primacy of psychology. This is the idea that although materialism is really-real, it is also trivial or irrelevant and psychology is the most important reality. This is the metaphysics of communism, of political correctness, indeed of mainstream modern politics of all types including supposedly 'right wing' and libertarian.

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Therefore most people operate tow sets of metaphysical assumptions, and switch back and forth between them in an unprincipled fashion - if challenged on one basis, they switch to the other, and deny that they have switched.

If pushed, they will assert that the one arises from, and is linked to, the other - that psychology is rooted-in the material: that such and such material conditions will produce such and such psychological consequences. This is indeed the basis of the mainstream modern morality of utilitarianism - that the goal f politics is to minimise suffering and optimise happiness of the population. But this further assumption is not examined nor defended - it is simply a pseudo-answer to a potentially-devastating question.    

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My point here is that the mainstream modern metaphysics, the basic assumptions from which nearly all modern people judge the world - is hardly compelling, even when regarded in isolation. But when evaluated in a comparative fashion, with the assumptions of religion, the relative weakness is immediately apparent.  

Such an evaluation can only be done by recognising that the basis lies in assumptions, by changing one's assumptions, and then by looking-at-life from that new perspective.

That is a necessary first step, but very seldom done. Only after that step has been done - and the world has been experienced from a different metaphysical base - is one in a position to make a choice between metaphysical assumptions.

On what basis is that choice? Well, there is a level of human evaluation which is non-metaphysical - and it is from that pre-metaphysical level that a choice can be made. This pre-metaphysical, non-theorised level of evaluation could be termed intuition, or gut-feeling, or 'the heart' - or natural and spontaneous common sense... but whatever it is called, it is the bottom-line and basis from-which we can choose our assumptions.

It is on this sense that Socrates was speaking when he asserted that the 'un-examined' life was not worth leading. The ancient Greek philosophers were metaphysicians; consequently they were engaged in exactly the activity I have described above - that is, they were examining, or evaluating, their basic assumptions by exploring from inside, and comparing, their consequences.

Once one has done this, then it is clear that very, very few people have done this; and the opinions of someone who has not done this are not compelling - because they don't know any better but have merely passively-absorbed their assumptions: they are in no position either to critique or to defend their assumptions.
 

Atheist materialism versus Church religion - only one winner, unless...

Atheist materialism - the mainstream ideology of the West, that monopolizes the entirety of public discourse - is a system of reasoning that claims to be wholly based on "evidence"; it claims to make no metaphysical assumptions regarding the ultimate or basic nature of reality. 

Atheist materialism therefore operates wholly at the superficial level of evidence and logic - as defined by its won denied assumptions of what constitutes valid evidence and logic. 

This is achieved by taking its own metaphysics for granted (and denying it exists) and keeping all discourse confined within its own assumptions; and declaring everything else to be meaningless, or merely arbitrary personal opinion (which amounts to the same thing). 

Church religions are deeper than atheistic materialism, because churches declare specifically their own fundamental metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality - and that these assumptions are shared by the religion's adherents.

Church religion is superior to atheistic materialism because it knows and admits that it has metaphysical assumptions, which it then sets-out explicitly - whereas atheistic materialism falsely denies that it makes any metaphysical assumptions.  

However, these fundamental religious assumptions differ between religions.  

Each religion defends its own assumptions by trying to prove them: either prove them from evidence: such as the claimed observable consequences of belief and unbelief in terms of individual psychology, or perhaps societal functioning. 

Or else religions try to prove their fundamental assumptions using rational logic - religions try to prove that their assumptions Must Be as they are, or else things would be incoherent or incomplete. 

However; to the atheist materialist, the variety of Church religions metaphysical assumptions is regarded as conclusive evidence that their assumptions are arbitrary - just made-up.

And the atheist materialist regards attempts by religions to prove that their own particular metaphysical assumptions must be true, whether the attempted proof is by observations or by logic, as being dependent on already accepting the religious assumptions. i.e. Church proofs are seen merely as circular reasoning. 

Atheist materialism has alternative and non-religious explanations for all church attempts to prove all possible systems of religious metaphysics. 

To atheist materialism there is thus "zero evidence" for anything religious; and the assumptions of all religions are seen as arbitrary and just "made-up". 

Atheist materialism (nearly-)always wins disputes with church religions, because atheist materialism is much more powerful... very-nearly all-powerful, at the Western civilizational level.  

The metaphysical assumptions of atheist materialism are immune to social refutation because they never discussed as being "beliefs" - and are denied to be assumptions at all. 

This rhetoric is effective and "works" because the metaphysics has been built-into every type and level of the functioning of modern society; and inculcated such as to become habitual during socialization. 

Atheist materialism is the default for modern Men. 

Church religion continues to lose this debate with atheist materialism, because the dominant public metaphysics depends on power, and church religion gets weaker and weaker. 

Also because church religion has assimilated more and ever-more of the assumptions of atheistic materialism such that it has conceded all the most fundamental ground in advance of discussion. 

Therefore, attempts to prove any religious metaphysics in publicly acceptable or socially effective ways in our society as it actually is; merely lead-back into atheistic materialism. 

Church religion is consequently stuck and doomed; because insofar as a religion has power, cohesion, effective-influence, wealth, organization etc; that religion is itself a part of the atheist materialist civilization, and its already-existing assumptions.  

From such a society, with such basic and habitual assumptions as we actually have; there can only arise various kinds of atheist materialist conclusions.

 

The way forward is therefore down - down to considering the metaphysical assumptions of religion as what they are - which is as assumptions, not evidence-derived...

And therefore religions need to stop pretending to derive our metaphysical assumptions from consensus definitions evidence and logic - because the modern consensus of what constitutes valid evidence and logic necessarily sustains atheistic materialism. 

If we (you and I) continue to rely-upon societal and consensus (including church society and consensus) definitions and understandings of valid metaphysics; we will be trapped by atheistic materialism.

Only by using our own personal discernment to discover what it is that we really belive about the ultimate and basic nature of reality can we escape atheist materialism. 

Only by coming to know our own personal and deepest metaphysical convictions can we move forward to a positive, sustaining, and motivating, and fundamentally different system of understanding. 

And, only if reality is objectively real - and if that ultimate reality is set-up such that we each, as individuals, can attain to sufficient true understanding of reality - could this be possible. 

That is the necessary faith: the faith that it is indeed possible and achievable for each one of us who desires it and consciously chooses to do it; to gain a sufficient understanding of the fundamental nature of reality for ourselves.

Why I rant on about "metaphysics"

The answer is that I regard our primary assumptions about the nature of reality (i.e. metaphysics) to be of primary importance (ultimately, in the end, in the long term).

Your metaphysics will bite you - sooner or later, one way or the other.


I don't think this was necessarily always and everywhere the case. Through most of human history, it was apparently possible for someone to have some primary beliefs; and to lead their life in a 'pragmatic' fashion, without taking much notice of those beliefs...

Or maybe it wasn't, maybe this dissociation was only temporary, and only reflected superficial 'opinions' rather than genuine deep convictions... At any rate, if it ever was true that metaphysics was ignorable, that does not apply now.


Whether they know it or not, whether they admit the fact or not, people nowadays live in accordance with their metaphysical assumptions.

And this means that the large majority of people live life 'as if' there is no real life, but asif the universe of reality is partly-determined, partly-random, with  no motivation and going nowhere in particular.

Their own life is lived on the basis that their deepest beliefs and convictions are actually superficial, temporary and of such little importance that they can and should be changed according to convenience, and on the basis of no good reason - or no reason at all - except what seems expedient, what currently makes them feel better about themselves.


The great moral education of modern life is this: that it strips our beliefs down to our basic assumptions. Modern life shows that 'If you believe this; then your world will be like that'.

When there is no real and solid reason for personal motivations, attitudes, behaviours - then we cannot defend them, cannot continue to live by them in face of opposition. Thus modern people are lacking in courage (i.e. are cowardly) to a degree which would have been astonishing to anyone in the past.

Modern people take the easy way because - why not? There is no fundamental reason for a modern person to do anything other than take the easiest way/ the way which causes least trouble or makes them feel better - here-and-now, or (for the more moral/ longtermist among us) is expected or hoped to make them feel better in the foreseeable future.

But modern life is becoming ever more short-termist and ever more self-centred for the logical reason that the happiness of me/ here/ now is much surer and more certain than other-people/ somewhere-else/ in the future. 


Even the fickleness, short attention span, shallow evanescent emotionality that is encouraged (and socially enforced) be the mass-social media is mostly an excuse for the cowardly conformism - it is that there is no reason Not to be cowardly and conformist; that modern metaphysics has it that  there is no real reality that lies behind the fake reality - and even if there was there is no deep reason why we ought to prefer real to fake... Thus people cannot even become sufficiently motivated to resist the addictiveness and brainwashing of mass-social media; because it would be unpleasant in the short term, and there is no believeable long term reason to do so.


I am saying that this is our great challenge from modern society. Modern society has taken-up the anti-Christian materialism that began to dominate the West from the early 1800s, and has made it foundational and worked-through its implications, incrementally, one generation upon another, in one area of Life after another.

Recent history in The West has, in other words, taken our characteristic modern anti-spiritual assumptions (e.g. that there is no creation, no creator, no objective morality, no life of any kind beyond biological death, no soul etc) and has worked these though all all the implications in all of our major social institutions (including most of the churches); to get the kind of society, and the kind of life, that we now have.

These assumptions include no reason for being honest and truthful, so modern society denies its own assumptions: claims it makes no assumptions but instead bases everything upon 'evidence' (despite that what counts as evidence, and what does not, is wholly determined by assumptions).

These materialist assumptions include that morality is arbitrary and changeable, and that is what we find.

The assumptions include that ultimately everything is 'dead' - is mathematics, physics, chemistry (even biology is these) - and that is how people behave... It is now quite normal for human beings to deny their own free will; to assert that their own consciousness is an irrelevant epiphenomenon; to reduce their own deepest feelings such as joy and love to the outcome of a directionless evolutionary process; to advocate their own replacement with robots and Artificial Intelligence - and so on.


Look around! The world that is spread-out for your consideration is a world in which your metaphysics is expressed, implemented, instantiated for evaluation... Yet, because of his metaphysics, modern Man has also decided that his own evaluation is worthless! 


This is why things are 'coming to a point' - because the choices are becoming clearer, starker, and with ever-greater stakes. Nowadays, you don't need to be a philosopher to be concerned by metaphysics (indeed, the philosophers, including theologians, have led the way in ridiculing and rejecting metaphysics!).  

Anybody and everybody can see for themselves (if they let themselves), from their own personal and direct experience (if they can acknowledge its validity), the consequences of their basic beliefs: our fundamental convictions are now Our World.

And that's why I rant on about metaphysics!

What provokes someone to start thinking about metaphysics?

Our disagreement with the World comes down to metaphysics. How does one choose a metaphysics? Rather, how does one choose between rival metaphysical assumptions? One cannot derive metaphysical beliefs from something more fundamental, because there is nothing more fundamental. One’s metaphysics must not conflict with experience, but that is a low bar; many systems provide some way of reading the observed facts. There are also internal checks. Whitehead says that a metaphysical system should be coherent, meaning not only that its parts don’t conflict, but that they all interrelate and co-depend.

From "Bonald" at the Orthosphere

Metaphysics could be defined as the public expression (i.e. in language or other symbols) of an understanding of the most fundamental nature of reality. 

This means that metaphysics is the most fundamental, basic, deepest of all discourses - but also that there may, in principle, be a deeper level below metaphysics, i.e. the assumptions of pure consciousness and the pure thought; that of which 'consciousness is conscious'! 

Such might be expressed by analogy in a (metaphysical!) model; that we are living beings that have a kind of ultimate 'life' (with motivations) which Just Is; and this being also necessarily includes a (very variable) degree of consciousness of itself. 

But the evaluation of our own metaphysics by (as Bonald says) 'not conflicting with experience', doesn't happen often; because metaphysics shapes what counts as experience and how we interpret it; such that apparent 'conflicts of metaphysics with experience' tend to be dealt with by denying or distorting the reality of experience - not vice versa. 

(This is why and how people can believe metaphysical assertions that appear to be conflicting with experienced reality; such as the mandatory current assumptions that there is 'no such thing' as race, and men can really be turned into women.)  

 

And the criterion of 'internal checks' to ensure that a metaphysics must be coherent with itself, while true, depends upon another set of metaphysical assumptions as to 'what counts as coherent'; plus both the ability and the motivation to carry out these checks with sustained concentration and rigour.  Yet it seems that neither the ability nor the rigour for such checking are very common. 

For such reasons; I would emphasize that in practice the motivation to embark on metaphysical analysis probably has different roots than the detection of incoherence. 

Insofar as we can purely (without translation into words) be conscious of our own being, then we can become aware of a discrepancy between this inner awareness, and the public expression and discourse which is metaphysics. 

This is a conflict between our innermost understanding of reality, and the way we talk or think about ultimate reality. 

However, I think this is primarily 'negatively' experienced as a kind of 'existential uneasiness', a nagging dissatisfaction, rather than anything as exact as a comparison between two conflicting descriptions. That is we are negatively aware of what is Not working - hence not-true, rather than of what is true. 

Perhaps a personal example will help. Up until the middle 2000s I had a metaphysical description of reality that ruled-out any possibility of a person's soul or spirit surviving after biological death. The furthest this would take me towards 'life after death' was a quasi-biological notion that the essence of a person's nature might be transmitted genetically to descendants...

So that it might be observed that a grandmother was 'reborn' in her grand-daughter - in that the grand-daughter was essentially the same nature as her grandmother. But that this genetic inheritance was Not Mendelian - so that such sameness of nature could skip several or many generations and appear in rather remote relatives.  

Another (fictional) example would be Tolkien's idea that the Numenorean nature - with its special wisdom and elvish/ magical aspects - 'ran true ' in Aragorn (and, to a somewhat lesser degree; in Denethor and Faramir) despite many intervening generations in which this was not the case. 

I still regard the above as broadly true; but I still experienced a sense of dishonesty whenever I asserted (mostly to myself) that there was no survival of a particular Man's soul or spirit after death. I became aware that - at this deepest and wordless level - I actually believed that personal survival actually happened, in some way.

In other words; I became aware that (at this deepest level) I apparently assumed that at least some people who had died biologically, were still alive in some way.

I also became aware that I - again deep down and without being put into words - apparently regarded the universe as purposive, not 'random'; and that the universe had preferences about me and what I thought, said and did. 

Why, then, did I become negatively aware of such (seemingly) life-long assumptions at this particular point in my life? 

I think it was related to the public/ social collapse of my previous metaphysics which was rooted in science and scholarship, and in particular the way that science and scholarship had all-but abandoned a belief in real truth. 

Of course, this abandonment of truth became apparent in the 1960s and was gaining ground rapidly through the 1980s; but for a while I assumed that this was just a societal 'blip'; and that it would soon become normal again for scientists and academics to believe that there was a real truth, and that it was their duty to seek and speak this truth. 

In trying to justify such assumptions to my 'colleagues', and to myself; I became aware of this serious mismatch between my innermost assumptions and awareness of them; and the public discourse into which I had formulated what was supposedly my ultimate metaphysics. 

This eventually led to my conversion to Christianity, and later to a similarly-motivated rejection of the standard/ classical/ traditional public discourse of metaphysics that was used to explain Christianity.  

The point I wish to make here is that events in the public and social world can bring-metaphysics-to-the-surface; where some kind of existential and chronic dissatisfaction and unease may become evident. 

Such unease may provide a strong motivation to embark on the difficult task of metaphysical self-examination - in search of a way of alleviating this unpleasant insecurity at the heart of one's sense of being.

And, in principle, I think this kind of motivation is sufficient for anybody to escape a metaphysics that is causing such feelings.   

To take a step further back; I would suggest that God (as creator) is behind the situations that tend to lead to awareness of dissatisfaction and unease; and the Holy Ghost is behind such feelings of existential unease - and this is a very fundamental way in which God and the Holy Ghost guide us through this mortal life.  

And, although metaphysics may seem terribly difficult (because so abstract) I think that anybody can - if motivated to address this feeling, reach a basis of positive deep metaphysical assumptions that is sufficient for his salvation and theosis. 

All systems of metaphysics will ultimately be wrong; to the extent that we cannot capture in explicit language the innate reality of our true selves; but several possible metaphysical 'systems' (some of them simple enough for a child to hold) will work well-enough for the divine and creative, yet temporary, purposes of this mortal life.

Therefore, we may at any time become negatively aware that our explicit metaphysical system is 'not working' well-enough. But we can (by personal effort and with divine help) always find something positively better-enough sufficiently to resolve the unease that we are motivated and guided enough to reach salvation (resurrection to eternal Heavenly life) and to learn from our experiences of mortal life (i.e. theosis).  

In sum; once identified, negative dissatisfaction will be helped to positive motivations. 

And this, everyone can know - in accordance with his nature and capacities - by means of the guidance provided (directly and to each individual): by God and the Holy Ghost. 

NOTE ADDED: It strikes me that the 'ultimate' pure consciousness of life in the above scheme is able to account for the fact that atheists (of which I was one for most of my life) are able honestly and indignantly to claim that they believe in truth and objective morality and beauty:

Metaphysics is the most fundamental, basic, deepest of all discourses - but also that there may, in principle, be a deeper level below metaphysics, i.e. the assumptions of pure consciousness and the pure thought; that of which 'consciousness is conscious'! Such might be expressed by analogy in a (metaphysical!) model; that we are living beings that have a kind of ultimate 'life' (with motivations) which Just Is; and this being also necessarily includes a (very variable) degree of consciousness of itself. 

What is happening is that the atheist is introspectively aware of his own belief in a purposeful and meaningful universe, and the reality of truth/ beauty/ virtue, at the most fundamental level of pure consciousness; but is not aware that such deeper-than-metaphysical assumptions are in stark contradiction to his explicit, expressed-in-language metaphysical discourse.  

To be aware of pure consciousness, and then to be aware of one's own metaphysical model of reality, are two different experiences; and the analytic comparison of the coherence of these two experiences is a third thing. 

Not many people have (apparently) done this third thing, and actually made this analytic comparison between metaphysical discourse and wordless intuition - and so they are not aware that their inmost intuition are actually in stark and ineradicable conflict with their expressed metaphysics. 

Once the comparison has been made; then something will 'have to give'. 

Either the metaphysics must be brought into harmony with intuition; or else some additional metaphysical assumption (or obfuscation) will need to be inserted between metaphysics and intuition - to bridge the gap. 

(Such obfuscations include 'it's a mystery', 'the human mind cannot comprehend this' and the introduction of reason-stunning abstractions and paradoxes such as infinitudes and assumptions of timelessness.) 

Epistemology is a snare - we need Metaphysics

The modern idea of modern philosophy assumes that epistemology is the most fundamental subject - questions about 'knowledge' such as how we know we know, or how we can be certain.

But the first and most important philosophy is metaphysics - the study of the primary, basic nature of reality - which is also the study of the key assumptions we make about reality. 

Epistemology is therefore a waste of time, a damaging waste of time, without metaphysics. Epistemology is even more dangerous when it is based on the assumption that metaphysics is obsolete, childish and/or has been superseded by epistemology, or science, or something...

Examples of what I mean abound from high status to lowbrow bar-room conversation, the usual modern philosophical discourse fails to notice that it is only playing with a set of assumptions that create the outcome - meanwhile the assumptions are unnoticed or denied.

As when people assume a fundamental reality in which there is no order, consciousness or morality - and after vast arguments finally conclude that in reality there is not order, consciousness or morality... unaware that they themselves have assumed that which they believe they have 'proven'.

Most modern people simply refuse to admit they have any primary assumptions about the nature of reality - and they assert that their basic beliefs are forced-upon them by experience, logic, 'science' or whatever.

Philosophers generally get terribly unsure about the possibility of certain, reliable, communicable knowledge - without acknowledging that their metaphysical assumptions have already ruled-out anything of the kind.   

Most modern people have a metaphysics which assumes that reality has no meaning or purpose - but they do not even realise that this is what they are assuming - and may become miserable and despairing about their failure to find meaning and purpose in experience, logic or 'science'.

The ridiculous tragedy of the situation is capped-off by the fact that those who call for metaphysics, who imagine that they are actually doing metaphysics; in practice themselves regard their assumptions as necessary and based on compelling evidence and logic (which would mean, if true, that they were not primary assumptions).

It would be absurd and amusing if the situations wasn't so tragic and lethal. The modern world has - in effect - laboriously constructed a perfect random number generator and is minutely examining the output to discover patterns.

In such a world of to ingrained, habitual and wilful self-blinding, to acknowledge the existence of our own metaphysical assumptions and those of others; to acknowledge that all knowledge must be based-upon metaphysics; to acknowledge that we cannot do epistemology without metaphysics - comes as a liberation: like waking from a nightmare delirium into the clear like of day.

The deadly fallacy: "Because people in the past were wrong about science, *therefore* they were also wrong about metaphysics..."

Over the past several centuries there has been a rapid Christian apostasy, rejection of the reality of the spiritual, and in general secularization - starting in Western Europe but now spread over the world. 

Behind this lies a perceived conflict between "science" and religion - which conflict presents itself in a manner that is simple and fallacious - simple because it affects so many people, of so many types, in so many places and cultures. 

Yet fallacious; because secularization has by-now also destroyed the basis of truth which was the basis of science; such that what now calls-itself science is merely a careerist bureaucracy serving the interests of its paymasters.  

Perhaps the key fallacy is the misinterpretation and overgeneralization of an overwhelmingly convincing observation: the observation that 'modern' science is able to do far more than was possible in the past. 

From this is correctly inferred that people in the past were often wrong about specific matters of science; but from this comes the general and false inference that therefore people 'nowadays' know-better than people in the past. 

(This overturned the centuries-old opposite assumption that the past was wiser than the present, and that the world was getting worse.) 

The observation of an objective improvement in scientific (and therefore technical) ability was correct - but the inference of modern superiority was false; because it was generalized from science to metaphysics - and metaphysics includes the assumptions that underpin science.

In other words; the present came to assume that the past was wrong - not only in the specifics of science, but in the generalities of metaphysics.  

For example, because many past scientific beliefs were wrong (or, at least inferior to the present), 'therefore' past basic assumptions were also regarded incorrect: assumptions such as the reality of a personal God who was creator; that (therefore) we live in a created reality; that there is a spiritual beyond the material; that Men have a soul - as well as a body; that the soul survives death.

All these, and many other, basic metaphysical assumptions from the past were rejected as a package - along with the scientific specifics of the past.  

This has been a disaster first for Western civilization, then the world; because in reality, science emerged-from Christian metaphysics - and (it turns-out) cannot survive without it.

Indeed, it turns out that nothing Good can survive without that rejected metaphysics - including the concept of Good itself; which has now been subverted into a relativistic relabeling of evil; while 'Christian truth' has been (and is increasingly) inverted into mandatory demonic lies. 

Even worse; one who yields to the deadly fallacy, enters into error by what is almost a one-way door leading towards more and greater error.  

In other words; one a personal and individually-loving God has been erroneously rejected (as 'unscientific') then there is neither basis nor reason for 'truth' - and so this error is no self-correcting. 

This deadly fallacy was not inevitable - Men could have chosen otherwise; although clearly it has been a temptation too strong for most people to resist.

But now we - as a civilization, as a mass majority - are deep into this error; and working from their own existing assumptions, people are helpless to correct it.  

To correct this deadly fallacy requires going back to discover and re-examine basic metaphysical assumptions; and that is something anybody can do - but extremely few people are willing to do. 

Most Men have been sleeping-through the 20th century human development - mainstream radicals and traditionalists alike - and what it really means to 'awaken'

Probably the single most important thing that modern people needed to do in the 20th century, was to wake-up to their own fundamental metaphysical assumptions: for each person to become consciously aware of their primary beliefs concerning the nature of reality - and then to discern and make a commitment about whether these ought to change. 

Man transformed through the twentieth century (although the change began earlier, and continues). But the transformation was at an unconscious level - a matter of instincts, motivations and gratifications. 

This transformation was un-conscious, it affected Men whether they acknowledged it or not; because the transformation was deep, it made changes in many superficial ways to do with attitudes, motivations, gratifications and behaviours.

Most Men did not awake to this transformation - that is, they did not become consciously aware of it in relation to their own metaphysical assumptions. 

Most Men either denied the transformation - asserting that Man was the same as ever, and Men who had changed ought-to revert to how they had-been. These were 'traditionalists' broadly-conceived. 

Or else Men simply accepted the change at the level of surface changes in attitudes, motivations, gratifications and behaviours. These changes were justified (regarded as 'a good thing') post-hoc and without personal evaluation; explained and rationalized by means of concepts drawn from the surrounding culture. 

These concepts were (overwhelmingly) materialist, atheist, leftist in nature.

Because individuals remained 'asleep' and unaware; they could not (would not, did not) discern and choose the expression of underlying (instinctual) transformations; because they had no deep basis for comparison - because they were not aware of their own deepest and most important assumptions*.

Traditionalists found themselves in a situation where Men had changed, they themselves had-changed, at an instinctual level that altered the basis set-up of human behaviour; yet they tried to re-impose traditional behaviors upon deeply transformed human beings. 

In other words, by failing to become awake and aware of their own deepest assumptions, they necessarily regarded traditionalism as a surface-level phenomenon - consisting of prescribed principles, rules, actions etc; which they intended to re-impose on the altered instinct-level changes of modern Men. 

Unsurprisingly, this pseudo-traditionalism (of the surface, but not the instincts) utterly failed - it never happened anywhere. It was just a theory. 

No person and no society genuinely reverted to a traditional way of being. Because the most that could be achieved was surface conformity to prescribed principles, rules, actions etc. Yet old-type ways applied-to new-type people; was a very different matter from old-type ways arising-from old-type people. 

The feeble superficiality of traditionalism was evident when the power of global totalitarianism waxed in 2020; and the traditionalists almost wholly embraced the agendas of materialism/ atheism/ leftism. And, because they remained asleep and unaware of their own metaphysical assumptions; they could not even perceive their assimilation to evil purposes. 

What was, and is, needed is a spiritual awakening in terms of individuals becoming aware of their own actual and basic metaphysical assumptions; the assumptions they make about the fundamental nature of reality. 

When these are brought to awareness, they can be evaluated - the individual can make an active choice of whether to embrace or reject each (and the totality of) their current assumptions.  

If this deepest of levels is reached, then the more superficial changes at the level of human instinct (i.e. our set-up in terms of motivations, attitudes, gratifications etc) can be observed, and also evaluated - and we can see that the true implications of such changes are Not Necessarily those of mainstream/ materialist/ atheist/ Leftism. 

For example, Men have indeed instinctually changed in terms of sexuality - but when one has chosen to commit to a Christian metaphysics; such changes are no longer the deepest level. Behaviour is experienced as arising-from deep assumptions, and secondary to them. Thus we can evaluate our lives, and the choices of living. 

The surface level of observable behaviours and socially-imposed rules is no longer regarded as primary - our actions are no longer definitive - but seen in context of large and over-arching aims such as salvation and theosis. 

No specific action (considered in isolation) has innate meaning and value; actions are instead known as part of the larger purpose of life. We no longer accept an action merely because we instinctually desire it; nor do we reject it merely because it breaks a set of external rules. Ideally; we know its value as an unique phenomenon in an unique situation. 

We cease to regard Christianity in terms of lists to be obeyed or else rejected; and instead understand it as an harmonious path through mortal life, and aimed at resurrected eternal life. 

 

*Note: Mainstream modern materialist leftists typically deny that they have any metaphysical assumptions; indeed they may deny the validity of metaphysics. They say their basic assumptions come from science/ evidence - but what they really mean is that they have absorbed them passively, unconsciously, from external sources. Much the same, but for different reasons, applies to traditionalists. They may know their own metaphysics, but do not accept that these are personal assumptions. Instead they absorb them from external sources, as part of a religious 'package. What they fail to do is distinguish the metaphysical assumptions from the religion itself; and they do not isolate the assumptions and examine each by discernment before endorsing and committing-to them. The traditionalist need to dig deeper until he finds himself explicitly conscious of the primary personal acts of discernment that underpin any religious 'package'; and must acknowledge that here he is confronted by a pure act of intuition - for which he is required to acknowledge absolute personal responsibility. 

How Not to conduct a metaphysical enquiry! (Further responses added 3 May 2024)

Kristor, of The Orthosphere, is very good at expounding his own metaphysical assumptions (which are essentially those of Thomistic Roman Catholicism); but when it comes to making a comparative evaluation of different metaphysical "systems"... well, he just doesn't ever do it!

Kristor is an old internet pal, going back to the time before I was a Christian, and we interact affectionately offline. Indeed I would regard him as a pen-friend, a good person, honest and trustworthy and (so far, at least) On the Right Side in the spiritual war of this world!

But for more than a decade this matter of what it is to conduct a metaphysical enquiry is one concerning which I have been apparently (across multiple online interactions) utterly unable to get across my argument.

In a recent post; Kristor discusses the matter of whether reality is ultimately one (monism) or many (pluralism). By his argument, Kristor apparently supposes that he has logically rejected pluralism as in essence incoherent, therefore necessarily wrong. 

Yet what he has done in his discourse is merely to demonstrate that when someone has accepted the assumptions of monism - then swapped-out the assumptions that everything is one and replaced it with an assumptions of pluralism, the result does not make sense. 

I say again: Kristor believes he is conducting a metaphysical enquiry and comparing different metaphysical systems - but he is not. 

In actuality he is just expounding his pre-existing metaphysics, rooted in pre-existing assumptions (and I assert they are assumptions) concerning the fundamental nature of reality. And then Kristor is correctly demonstrating that his Thomism becomes incoherent if one was to introduce pluralism into it... 

Which is - of course - true! Pluralism does not (and cannot) cohere with an otherwise monist metaphysical system! 

Kristor's argument does not at all mean that pluralism is necessarily incoherent; for example when pluralism is one part of a different set of fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality.

I think the fundamental reason why I "cannot get-through" to Kristor on this matter, why we keep having the same non-argument over and again, is that he regards his own metaphysical assumptions as necessarily true; and this blocks his ability (and interest) in making any other assumptions - even for the purposes of philosophical debate. 

And perhaps Kristor regards his own assumptions as necessarily true because he does not acknowledge that they lead to any fundamental problems. 

For example, I think he does not acknowledge the ineradicable depth of the problem of explaining genuine free agency for Men in a reality conceptualized as created from nothing by an "omni-God". Nor do I think Kristor appreciates the ineradicable depth of the problem of accounting for the existence of evil in a reality wholly-created by a wholly-Good (and omnipotent) God.  

And, to speculate further! - I think Kristor does not acknowledge the depth of these problems, because he is satisfied by those abstract and complex "answers" provided by Thomism. 

And (to complete the circle) these are answers that themselves assume the metaphysical primacy of abstractions. 

(As examples; Kristor - following traditional RC teaching - assumes the fundamental and necessary truth of God's omniscience/ omnipotence/ omnipresence (etc) - and these are abstractions. Similarly; creation-from-nothing (ex nihilo) is assumed to be necessary, and that is an abstraction. More fundamentally; Kristor's understanding of God as God, is an abstract one: his understanding of God is in terms of the definitional necessity of God having certain abstract attributes - such as those above.) 

Although we can note that such a focus seems to date from early in the history of Christianity (albeit there is no evidence of it in the contemporary eye-witness account of the Fourth Gospel) we can still ask why is it that abstraction occupies such a fundamental position in Christian metaphysics? 

And our answer will depends on further assumptions regarding the nature of Christianity. For Kristor (and apparently for most Christians since some time after the ascension of Jesus) there can be no such thing as Christianity except from within the perspective of The Church (however that "The" is defined). 

For Kristor; "The" Church just-is Christianity; and this is not a matter for legitimately Christian metaphysical enquiry. To challenge or doubt what has been assumed for maybe 1900 years; makes no Christian sense: to do so is simply Not to be a Christian. 

To assume (as I do) that "being a Christian" is a primary reality that has no necessary link to any particular metaphysical assumptions; and no necessary relationship to any church in general or particular; does not for Kristor imply the legitimate possibility of further enquiry - but invites explanation in terms of ignorance, insanity or sin. 

This is related to other matters concerning what Christians ought to be doing, here-and-now. 

For Kristor; Thomism is just true, the nature of Christianity derives from the truth and necessity of the RCC; and therefore all legitimately Christian futures must build upon these. 

But for me; this version (as I regard it) of Christianity has deep metaphysical problems, that require better metaphysical solutions (or else, Christianity will continue to disappear). For me; "modernity" has been - in part - an increased conscious awareness of the unsatisfactory nature of traditional Christian (e.g. monist, omni-God, abstract) understandings of human freedom and the origins of evil. 

I regard metaphysical awareness and enquiry as non-optional, as absolutely necessary if Christianity is to avoid (what I see as) the long-term, relentless, and accelerating trend of either explicit or de facto apostasy; which (for me) was made evident in 2020 - when all the Christian churches (including RCC) willingly (and without later repentance) subordinated themselves to the globalist agenda of totalitarian evil. 

So! These apparently trivial interpersonal debates between myself and Kristor - or, failures to debate, as I regard them - are like the tip of an iceberg of differences; that I regard as ultimately sustained by a deep and long-term problem of wrong metaphysical assumptions about Christianity being instead regarded as necessary and true metaphysical assumptions. 

Note added: 

Kristor responded to this post here. 

@Kristor - I - like you - reject "radical ontological pluralism" - as being incoherent - so everything you say about that subject is (I'm afraid) irrelevant.

Instead, you can and should assume that I regard every single theologian of the past as significantly in error; and that there really is nobody else who has the same metaphysical assumptions as I do.

You are candid enough to acknowledge your assumption that since I am in a minority of one, therefore I must necessarily be wrong - so (from your perspective) there is no point in wasting time on finding out what I do believe!

I don't blame anyone for ignoring anything - we are each responsible for our own salvation, primarily. But I personally believe that this attitude of seeking truth in (some kind of) consensus of past and status, is both anti-Christian (in the sense of being opposed to what Jesus said and wanted), and (here and now) a guarantee of choosing the wrong side in the spiritual war of this world.

(We are not so alone nor so ignorant as you assume! Much true knowledge is born into us as children, and God has ensured that each of us has sufficient wit to discern his own salvation - with the personal guidance of the Holy Ghost. God would surely not have been so foolish as to depend upon each and every person getting good guidance from his external social environment!)

But, there again we are up against utterly different basic assumptions! Yours is that anything true and important on the subject of Christian theology has already been said - and therefore truth should be sought among external authorities.

My assumption is that the prime reality of our life of salvation and theosis is rooted in a personal relationship between ourselves and Jesus Christ, and that we not only can but must (post-mortally if not before) take personal responsibility for our ultimate choices.

You complain that I do not explain myself in the comments sections of blog posts. True enough! I have given up on that mug's game!

Instead; I have written hundreds of blog posts (as well as the Lazarus Writes mini-book) over the past decade, explaining and re-explaining my metaphysical assumptions and arguments from as many different angles as seemed helpful - and as simply and clearly as I am able.

I have also addressed the specific critiques you make. But I expect you would not find my points acceptable - exactly because your basic assumptions are so completely different.

(For example, your discourse takes place outside of Time/ Time-less/ in simultaneity of Time (sub specie aeternitatis); whereas I assume that Time is (as it were) intrinsic to reality (because the pluralism of primal reality is made of Beings, and Beings are living and "dynamic" conscious entities). Therefore, for me, all fundamental explanations require allowance for Time. This has many consequences. For instance, I believe we began with pluralism, with many uncoordinated entities; and God's creation - which is happening in Time - has-been and is progressively imposing "unity" or cohesion upon that primal "chaos". For me, this explains why both oneness and pluralism, creation and chaos, are part of our mortal experience.)

It's all there, on my blog, for anyone who is interested - of which only a handful of people have been, but those few seem to understand me accurately enough. And if someone is Not interested - well, that's his business, but not mine. After all, my main motive in writing so many hundreds of posts per years, is to clarify and critique my ideas for my benefit. The readers are mostly just looking over my shoulder.

In sum, you have clearly set-out some of the Many reasons why you do not want to engage with what I actually believe. You feel no Need for it, and already assume I Must Be wrong.

While, on my side, my unique theology has happened only because I have already (to my own satisfaction) known and rejected that which you regard as true.

What I am saying is that our decisions rule-out any genuine metaphysical discourse - which explains why this has never actually happened!

While it only takes one side to make a war - it takes at least two people to have a metaphysical discussion!

Loving God, child of God

A loving God?

 

While many people find it easy to acknowledge some kind of deity; there is an idea prevalent that to assume God loves us, each as individuals, is a belief that smacks too much of wishful thinking; or else is just a plain denial of the nature of the world.

 

But if a loving God is understood to be a metaphysical assumption, then matters become much clearer.

 

A metaphysical assumption is not based on ‘evidence’ – so the personal or global balance of good and evil, pleasure and pain, nice and nasty is irrelevant to the question of whether God loves us: completely irrelevant. Until this is understood, there will be hopeless confusion on this question.

 

The way I think about it is that a child’s experience of the world – the extent to which the child is wicked, or in pain or experiences nasty conditions; cannot be used to infer how much that child’s parents love him.

 

Of course, some people conflate that question of God’s love with an assumption about God being omnipotent – and then they recognise the problem that if God is both loving and omnipotent, then the world God made seems to be significantly sub-optimal.

 

But in reality, there is no reason to assume that God’s power and God’s love are both necessarily true. Or that what these concepts mean is clear. In sum, lovingness and omnipotence are two separate questions, and they must be considered separately.

 

The idea that God loves each of us is indeed unusual in world religions – probably most religions have had an unloving God or gods; so why do I believe it is true? What grounds for such belief could there be?

 

The most convincing grounds are a personal conviction that it is true.

 

However, this leads on to the question of how we might know such a thing, even if it was true; and I understand the answer to be that God is within me, as well as outside of me. Because God is within me, I can have direct personal experience of God and of his nature. I can know God, and know what he is like.

 

 

A Child of God

 

It is metaphysically important that we are children of God, because this is the reason why we have been made such that we can understand reality.

 

Because I am a son of God, I am partly divine; and this is why I can understand the truth about things.

 

If I had been a creature that was purely and only the product of natural selection, there would be no reason at all why I should be able to discern the truth about things – since I would be optimised only with respect to reproductive success, not truth.

 

However, since I am partly divine, and since God created this reality; I am potentially able to know the truth about reality.

 

 

Destiny and purpose

 

Furthermore; my being a child of God is the reason for my destiny; in the sense that my understanding is that God ‘had children’ in order that they may be able (potentially) to grow-up to be fully divine, like God.

 

So, another metaphysical assumption is that we begin as partly divine, and by choice and experience may become more and more fully divine – and indeed reality is set-up with the primary purpose that this be possible and encouraged.

The world is as-it-is not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end; the world is intended to be an educational process, not a final result.

 

How is this known by me? I think it is a further insight built upon those previously mentioned. Given a conviction of the reality and lovingness of God, and the fact of being able to understand God from within – knowledge of my personal destiny – my purpose in this world - is also available, directly.

 

Is this reasoning merely circular? Not merely – because it is based on assumptions that such-and-such Just Is. These assumptions necessarily include that such and such Just Is sufficient ‘evidence’ to confirm the earlier assumptions.

 

So metaphysics is an incremental matter of discovering, making explicit, what we actually are assuming – which may then lead to us changing these original basic assumptions to make new basic assumption that we can endorse fully.

 

Having established these basic assumptions about the nature of things (to our own satisfaction) they may be built upon, and extrapolated – such inferences themselves being retested (at various stages and phases) by the same basic mechanisms that established the basic assumptions.

 

There is a testing and feedback mechanism, as well as a process of extrapolative reasoning. If, for whatever reason, we begin to feel uncertain, to doubt; then we can go back and start again, as often as seems necessary.  


metaphysicsofeverydaylife.blogspot.co.uk

The weakening effect of metaphysical mismatch (when you *know* something, but cannot explain it)

There are many situations in the modern world where people are in a situation that they know something, but cannot explain it; they cannot justify this "knowing" in terms of their underlying assumptions - their "metaphysics". 

In such situations, their knowing is weakened to the point that it is usually overcome easily, and the person is unable to resist the corrupting effect of immediate and chronic societal and personal pressures. 

Such a mismatch between metaphysical assumptions and intuition is one of the most significantly malign factors in the world today. It therefore ought to lead to an examination of the assumptions, but it almost never does - for a variety of reasons. 

To clarify; I mean the situation when a thing is asserted or proposed, and initially we experience a clear and deep (and true!) intuition that X is wrong. 

But then we find that our scheme of explanation fails to provide us with sufficient understanding of why or how X is wrong. 

And the consequence is that we assume that X must be okay after all... we go along with X; and maybe end by supporting X - if that is expedient. 

It works the other way around too, and with just as bad results. 

Someone or some-thing that our hearts - at first - tell us is of great and profound positive value* is challenged, is threatened... We would tend to defend this vehemently. 

But then we discover that our basic assumptions do not allow us to explain or grasp why this has such extreme importance. We realize that cannot justify its importance on the basis of fundamental metaphysics! 

*(A clear example is music, visual art and architecture. People may love some piece of music, greatly value a picture, building, landscape - or they may viscerally be morally-revolted or aesthetically-repelled - but they cannot find any fundamental reason why even such strong positive or negative feelings should be regarded as important.)

Lacking fundamental understanding; therefore our defence is enfeebled, at best; and often we are are crippled from defending that we value - even to ourselves! 

The threatened Good Thing is allowed to disappear without dissent, without resistant, without a fight...

 

Modern Man was thoroughly set-up for this situation by mainstream modern atheistic materialism; which inculcated the idea that metaphysics (the examination of fundamental assumptions) was meaningless nonsense. 

Instead our beliefs ought to be based on "evidence" and pragmatism - what is "helpful" and what "works"... 

This is a thoughtless, stupid or dishonest philosophical assertion; because what counts as valid or compelling evidence - what is regarded as helpful or working-well - are concepts embedded in fundamental assumptions. 

And this should be evident when people with different metaphysical convictions argue; the same "fact" means something different to each, because interpreted differently. 

But such is the ignorance-of, prejudice-against, or incompetence-at metaphysical reasoning; that such fundamental differences in assumptions are instead interpreted as moral differences (as in "anyone who disagrees with me must do so because he is a fool, insane, or a bad person"). 

Sometimes, especially in the past, such a mismatch did not matter too much; in the sense that people could recognize and defend goodness (and vice versa) despite the lack of metaphysical foundations. 

But, as CS Lewis said, what characterizes this current era is that "things are coming to a point", or, more exactly, this has already-happened. 

And one consequence is that metaphysical mismatches are now being exposed and probed as never before. And (by no coincidence) at just the time when we are less capable of metaphysical reasoning than ever before. 

This has fundamental Christian implications - implications which are generally denied, precisely because of our modern tendency to be ignorant of, or denigrate, or be unable to examine and analyse our fundamental assumptions. 

The most important of these is in relation to Jesus Christ, and why he is essential. 

In the past, justifying and explaining this did not seem so pressing; and the fact that classical theology cannot provide a clear and direct answer did not seem to matter - Christians were simply absorbed in the demanding and complex business of obeying their church and being-a-Christian (as defined by their particular church) to "bother" about metaphysics. Leave that to the experts! 

Consequently, yet astonishingly; the failure to explain metaphysically why Jesus is essential persisted through the Great Schism, the Reformation and the Mormon Restoration and up to now!   

But to the modern mind, a failure to explain simply and clearly why Jesus is necessary means that Jesus is not necessary, is inessential; hence Jesus is seen as ultimately disposable. 

This is one deep reason why so many modern people see nothing distinctive or definitive about Christianity, and no essential difference between the major religions. 

Another, for Catholics, is related to Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

In many times and places of the past, and especially Medieval England, Mary was venerated at the core of Christian practice - but not of Christian theology. 

Yet, in the past the inessential nature of Mary to theology, demonstrably comfortably coexisted with her centrality to devotional practice.  

But nowadays this just will not work. Nowadays it seems clear that if Mary is fundamentally inessential to theology, then this means she is optional: which boils down to Mary being no-more-than a personal lifestyle preference. 

Quite a change and come-down from the last days of Constantinople! When Mary united Eastern and Western Christians; and was the motivation for thousands of men courageously to fight to the death in defence of the city. 

With Mary; I mention a Catholic example, because intellectual Catholics are so devoted to logic. But there are innumerable other examples. 

The point is that there are many and vital instances where our intuitive knowledge is contradicted by our fundamental metaphysical assumptions: when we know but cannot explain. 

I regard it as imperative that we, each of us as individuals, are able to support our fundamental heartfelt convictions with deep metaphysical reasoning. 

This is a must because without the underpinning of a fundamental understanding and ability to explain-to-ourselves; all our convictions are built upon sand, and shall be swept away by the next flood of Establishment propaganda and public pressure or immediate expediency - as became all-too-obvious in 2020.  

And unless these mismatches are sorted-out - by discovering and analysing the validity of our assumptions, and bringing intuition into harmony with metaphysics - then we shall continue fatally to be enfeebled, and controlled by malign powers.  

We (including Christians) need to fix our (implicit) metaphysics

A big problem, perhaps The problem, is that we have an incoherent metaphysics - that is, our basic assumptions are incoherent; or, at least, if all metaphysics is incoherent to some extent, ours is incoherent where metaphysics are most needed, where incoherence does the most damage.

Of course nobody wants to talk about, let alone think about, metaphysics - and especially their own metaphysical assumptions. I know that for a fact, and I don't know what can be done about it - but I need to sort out these matters for myself, and writing helps...


Fundamentally, we think of Things in terms of static categories (like A Being, Love and Creation) - but we ought to think of Things in terms of dynamic 'processes' (like Be-ing, Love-ing and Create-ing). We need a metaphysics that some have called 'polarity' - but this has proved almost impossible to explain, at least I have thus far failed to make it clear - probably due to the tendency to begin the explanation by stating categories...

I agree with Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner (as I interpret them) that a vital aspect of the work of Jesus Christ was, in some poorly understood and ill-defined sense, to divide History between a passive, unconscious mode of being BC, and the advent of (what was intended to be) an active and conscious mode of being AD.

For example, BC the idea of a Good life was strict obedience to external laws, rules, rituals (static categories) - whereas Christ brought the ideal of conscious agency, personal discernment, and and loving - all of which are active, dynamic (or polarities, if you prefer).


But mainstream Christianity made an unfortunate error in trying to assimilate the Christian message - which was one of radical metaphysical change - to the pre-existing systems of Greek and Roman Philosophy; leading to intractable contradictions and confusions, lack of understanding and clarity.

For example, if you understand agency/ free will as a category or Thing done by A Being - they you can't make any sense of it. But if you understanding it as a process done by an entity whose essence is Be-ing... then its importance and nature become clearer (or, would do, if this whole way of thinking was more less alien, familiar).

The problem is that no matter what mainstream 'static' Christianity asserts - in matters such as the reality of agency, or the primacy of Love - its deep structure contradicts. Mainstream Christian metaphysics cannot help but see Love as a static thing, maybe like a force or like a feeling; but working by a sort of attraction between categorical persons - because it envisages a reality that is, in essence and reality, eternal, unchanging, perfectly perfect.

It can be expressed in terms of Time. Mainstream Christianity and the near universal metaphysics of modernity regards Time in a static way as identical with a moment. In the Hindu/ Buddhist version, this means that any moment is exactly like any other moment and a microcosm of eternity.


Ralph Waldo Emerson was one who brought this into the Western mainstream explicitly, with this idea of a moment as an epiphany of all; Life being (ideally) known to be a series of such epiphanic moments - each moment equivalent. Strictly, such a moment takes zero time, it 'out-of Time' - so there is an equivalence between eternity and the instant. The ultimate goal is a Nirvana in which all change ceases, bliss reigns, and the only awareness is of this fixed state of bliss.

Well, that is one way of looking at it - but the other, is that we continue living and the epiphanic total-moment gets swept into our past, and the best we can hope for is another such moment, and another... Life then has no direction or goal, it is merely a sequence of instants...

This has been combined with an atheistic utilitarianism (Life conceptualised as being hedonic; about maximising pleasure and minimising suffering) - and descended into the modern West as an implicit (unconscious, unexamined, unacknowledged) metaphysics of Life as a series of atomistic, disconnected moments.

Each Life moment 'ought to be' as gratifying as possible - and each moment is on the one hand infinitely important (like the international firestorm that follows the use of a politically-incorrect taboo word or hate-fact) - yet also each moment is utterly insignificant because it is superseded by other moments, and there is zero continuity between the moments.


This is the modern metaphysic: on the one hand; our life is going nowhere and has no meaning because it is merely a sequence of isolated moments; therefore nothing matters, things don't add up, death is merely a cessation to this arbitrary sequence. On the other hand; nothing can be or is more important than each moment, than This moment - and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of alleviating momentary suffering or enabling and maximising momentary pleasure.

Most 'mainstream' Christians (in the main denominations) would acknowledge that the modern metaphysics is bad; but would not acknowledge that their own metaphysics shares exactly the same problems and is at-war-with Jesus's teaching and indeed cosmic effect on Man and Reality.

But I see this all the time, in contradictions, complexities and 'mysteries' that Christianity is obliged to introduce to distract from this deep problem. Of course the deep problem - the fundamental contradiction - is not solved; but people are typically sufficiently confused and distracted to assume that it has been solved.

When the problem is simple, yet the supposed answer is complex - people generally assume that the answer is true but they haven't really understood it. Or they may assume that their understanding of the problem was 'simplistic. However such a situation is basically-unsatisfactory and - over time - has been a weak point probed and exploited by those hostile to Christianity.

In sum, the Christian responses to the problems such Free Will the Problem of Pain/ existence of evil, the 'virtuous Pagan' problem - caused by the universality of Christ's message contrasted with the extreme geographical and temporal restriction of the scripture, the church and its personnel, or any specific denomination; the need for developmental-evolutionary change of Men (theosis) - the weakness of the answers strikes the outsider as evasive failures.


Mainstream Christianity has failed metaphysically to reconcile many key aspects of the implicit nature of Jesus's life and teaching with the explicit explanations of it. The resulting dissatisfaction has - overall - led to an incremental 'liberalism' that merely masks apostasy and has gradually subordinated Christianity to prevalent secular norms - which are themselves metaphysically even-less coherent than the flawed understanding of Christianity they presume to replace!

I see all this in terms of the working-out of error through time, in which early errors become every larger and more obvious in their incoherent and false consequences. Looking around the modern Western world at the mainstream secular hedonism and its religious including Christian alternative, I see nothing that gets-right what really needs to be got right at an explicit metaphysical level.

But knowing that there is something seriously wrong does not tell us what is wrong nor how to set it right...


My contention is that the surface wrongness lies very deep in the metaphysical assumptions, and that there is an alternative tradition of Christian metaphysics based in a developmental-evolutionary and dynamic state of assumptions - still lacking a lucid account - which, once habitual, either solves or dissolves these hitherto intractable problems.

This sounds awfully complex itself - but in fact the real Christian metaphysics can be expressed so simply that a child can comprehend it; because is the metaphysics of God's created Reality as composed entirely of living Beings.

(Including parts or components of beings - which is how many mineral entities can be understood; not whole Beings of themselves, but all parts of some living Being. e.g. A mountain may be a Being, a grain of soil probably is not.)

In brief, metaphysically we need to return to something very like the simple transforming animism of early childhood and early Man. Everything that is, is 'alive' and 'conscious' in the sense of being intrinsically dynamic, purposive, growing-destined - and related (by love-ing) to everything else created and to the creator.

On such a basis a Christian life may be led, and understood consciously, and pursued with agency.

Of course, even when metaphysics is coherent where it needs to be, the great challenges of mortal life remain - right metaphysics only gives us the correct starting-point and the understanding necessary to know that we have a purpose and it s nature. It is up to each of us to pursue that purpose, as it affects us each specifically and uniquely.

Metaphysical materialism trumps the perception deception

Media analysts have described how people are primarily influenced by their perceptions, how perceptions come to us via the mass media (now amplified by social media); and that this de facto monopoly on our input of information substantially 'controls' the population of modern societies.

We could call is the theory of Perception Deception. The implicit antidote is to make perceptions more truthful... At the mass level, this entails aiming for a truthful mass media; and paying close attention to the biases and censorships of the mass media and propaganda more generally. 

However, the birdemic has demonstrated that this explanation is grossly inadequate - to the point of being mostly-wrong. Inputs are near-irrelevant; and far more important are the basic assumptions about Life by which perceptions are interpreted.


The basic assumptions about Life is what I mean by metaphysics; and for most - nearly all, it turns-out - modern people, these assumptions are materialist.

Therefore, a person's response to the birdemic is a much better guide to someone's metaphysical assumptions than is whether that person professes left- or right-wing views, or whether they profess atheism, New Age or religious beliefs.

To put it bluntly, the only people who see-through the deception of the birdemic are those who have (not just profess) a metaphysical assumption of the primacy of the spiritual in Life.

So far as I can tell, spiritual people recognise the birdemic fake - whereas those who are actually materialist cannot recognise what is really going-on; and they fail utterly to recognise what is going-on even when exposed to vast and powerful evidence of it (such as they get from their own daily personal experience).


What is really going-on is as obvious as anything can be - from the fact of (pretty much) the whole world being under house arrest (including you and me) without end-point - suspension of elections - working only as directed labour in approved activities - control of what you can buy - indefinite forbidding of all real-life church activities - prohibition of all real-life social and extended family life - prohibition of all performing arts - prohibition of travel - multiplication of coercive rules and laws - pervasive police impositions etc., etc., etc...

Do I really need to describe what is visible to everyone and happened over a timescale of days?... Well, yes it seems I do - but description does no good at all when all and any such perceptual inputs are automatically and unconsciously explained-away as being 'therapy'.

Because it turns-out that a global totalitarian, anti-religious, anti-human, anti-individual regime can be imposed - but nobody will notice when it is explained as being necessary for health.

Billions of people have been rendered blind to the obvious. That is a stunning thing - more remarkable a fact than anything I have ever encounted. 

The communist, fascist, national socialist totalitarian societies of the twentieth century have simply been redescribed in terms of medical and therapeutic necessity in relation to a single disease. And nearly-everybody is not merely accepting of this, but clamouring for more of the same - in order to keep people 'safe'.


(The fact that lockdownsocialdistancing cannot keep people safe from a airborne virus, but will instead perpetuate the epidemic and expose more vulnerable people and cause far more deaths by delaying herd immunity is completely irrelevant to the argument - because all facts are irrelevant when one's metaphysics are materialist.) 


Interestingly, most of the 'Alternative media' - or what the Establishment call 'conspiracy theorists' also fail to see through the birdemic fake - fail to see that the birdemic is itself merely an excuse - but have instead been distracted into focusing on health-related red herrings about bioweaps and fie vegee - which (whether true or not, and they may be significantly true) miss the central and obvious point - or even lead to bizarre inversions relating to plans for mass killing (with the virus).

(This is wrong for the plain reason that totalitarian takeover has been based-on the rationale of health, medicine, life-saving and death-counting - which makes little sense if mass killing were intended. But even if it were right; it misses the stunning magnitude and speed of what has actually happened.) 


What we see is that perceptual inputs, information, 'facts' and 'data' - are secondary factors when what is happening is based in the spiritual. Even when people expose themselves to a different set of inputs (eg those who participate mostly in the Alternative media), they fail to see the obvious reality - because they are materialists.

It is significant that David Icke, although perhaps the grandfather of the Alternative media and conspiracy theorists is - unlike most of his followers - one of the rare people who immediately recognised what was really going-on. This because Icke is primarily a spiritual person (not a Christian, more of a deist, but genuinely spiritual),


We can observe that those who are in practice (whatever they may suppose about themselves, whatever their personal self-identification as a 'spiritual' or 'religious' person) are materialists; fail to see the obvious.

This is often evident in having de facto socio-political alignments as a prime priority in their lives, into-which spirituality and religion must be fitted) - but we also see that those who live what look-like spiritual or religious lives are also mostly living on the basis of materialist fundamental assumptions - so that their spirituality or religion is, it turns-out, merely a matter of lifestyle.

To recognise today's obvious entails a spiritual perspective, but only to those with a spiritual persepctive is it obvious. To everyone else, the obvious cannot be true; because excluded by (unconscious) assumptions. 


So - the birdemic reveals the difference between, on the one hand, the superficiality of life-style - such that even very dominant life-styles amounting to a full-time occupation (e.g. religious professionals, obsessive New Agers) make no difference to their blindness. They are just as blind to the obvious reality as any professed skeptic, atheist activist, card-carrying humanist, or philosophical materialist.

On the other hand, the reality of a person's experienced 'inner' life is revealed by their capacity to 'notice' the biggest-fastest qualitative change in world history.


It is the inner life (ie. a person's metaphysical assumptions, by which he understands life) that turns-out to matter most; to the point that it is almost as if it is the only thing that matters, in a spiritual sense.

Differences of religion, denomination, theology, ritual, scripture etc are all washed-away as superficial and ineffectual...

Spiritual sensibility is more important at present than ever before; since those who lack it are being stampeded into embracing a world based on the principle of materialistic self-damnation, at a shocking rate.


In conclusion, metaphysics is primary; and especially in a world where the reality and importance of metaphysical awareness is denied.

A world where 'everyone' believes that 'evidence' is the only thing that matters, and believes that perceptions control behaviour is - it turns-out - a world where evidence is irrelevant and behaviour is dictated by prior assumptions of which (almost) everybody is insensible.

The single most important thing that people can do (here, now) is to become aware of their primary assumptions about life.

And that is something every individual person must do for himself, or it will not be done.

Barfield misunderstanding Barfield...

One of the difficulties about understanding Owen Barfield, is that he did not really understand himself! 

I mean that Barfield did not really understand the nature of his own philosophical work; and thereby said some misleading things about it. 

Barfield's major work was Saving the Appearances; and in his introduction to the 1988 edition of this book (which are Barfield's first published, and framing, words in the reprinted editions since then), Barfield tries to provide a helpful framework to avoid what he terms a misunderstanding, and a difficulty. 

What Barfield regards as the 'misunderstanding' is that "some readers have treating the work as claiming to provide a complete metaphysical theory of the nature of reality. Not so". 

(Leaving aside the weasel word "complete" - because nothing finite ever is complete...) 

But Of Course Barfield is exactly providing a metaphysical 'theory' of reality! Metaphysics is that philosophy which deals in the fundamental nature of reality; and Barfield is claiming in StA that reality is inextricably consequential of both 'chaos' and consciousness; because chaos is meaningless and unknowable without consciousness. 

Also, Barfield asserts that consciousness has changed through time; and therefore (says Barfield) reality itself (and not just perception of reality) has changed through time: "Nature itself [has] changed in the course of time in a mode not covered by the doctrines of biological evolution".

Furthermore; without consciousness (says Barfield) - there is no knowable reality - only chaos. 

So that from Barfield's assumptions: it is incoherent to theorize about a world without consciousness. 

Thus, a cosmology which - like both Big Bang and Steady State theories - speculates on the formation of a non-alive universe in the absence of consciousness is not so much mistaken as simply incoherent; as are similar speculations on the formation and evolution of an inorganic earth before the advent of Life.  

Barfield's (drawing heavily upon Rudolf Steiner's - albeit not identical-with Steiner) is indeed a fundamentally different understanding of reality than anything in the Western or Eastern mainstream of philosophy or theology. 

Therefore, whether Barfield acknowledges it or not: in StA he is indeed "doing metaphysics", and proposing a particular metaphysical description. 

Barfield claims he "tried to preserve neutrality towards all such [metaphysical] speculations, by referring to objective reality (that is to say, reality insofar as it is independent of our awareness of it)... sometimes as 'the particles' and sometimes as 'the unrepresented'. 

But this is not neutrality - because neutrality in metaphysics is impossible. 

Barfield's conceptualization of 'objective' as 'unrepresented'/ 'particles' is itself a metaphysical division and definition.  

Barfield then says: "The subject of this book is not the nature of reality; it is the evolution of consciousness". 

This translates as Barfield saying he is not doing metaphysics, but is (implicitly) doing a kind-of 'science' that he claims to be independent of ('neutral' about) metaphysical assumptions. 

So, Barfield's detailed account of the way that word-meanings have changed through human history; is claimed to be (in effect) 'empirical' and independent of metaphysical assumptions. 

But this is false, because Barfield's understanding of the implications of meaning change being located in consciousness; and consciousness being inextricably a part of reality; are excluded by the implicit and unconscious metaphysics of mainstream linguistic history. 

The changes of word meaning through history are interpreted using a very different and incommensurable significance than that which Barfield proposes - and the mainstream linguists would regard Barfield's interpretation as bizarre and obvious nonsense. 

Likewise, astro- and geo-physicists would regard Barfield's assertion that their theories of the formation of the universe and of earth were incoherent - because excluding any "observing consciousness" from such theories - to be absurd nonsense. 

Such physicists would almost certainly assert that their theories 'work' empirically, have been cross-checked by multiple mathematical analyses and physical observations - and that there is just No Problem.  

The difference between Barfield and the physicists is precisely metaphysics: each is arguing from different basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

 

My understanding of Barfield is that he was Just plain wrong about what he was doing; just as Rudolf Steiner was wrong in The Philosophy of Freedom. 

Barfield claimed to be doing 'science' and Steiner claimed to be doing epistemology; but in fact both were doing metaphysics: both were (in these works) putting forward a different way of describing ultimate reality from that which was mainstream. 

This wrongness had an unfortunate effect in terms of obscuring the reader's understanding; because a convinced reader is given the false impression that Barfield and Steiner have 'proved' their arguments in a neutral fashion (which ought to be universally acceptable); rather than having provided a radically different framework for the structuring of arguments. 

Furthermore, by failing to notice that they themselves are 'doing metaphysics'; Barfield and Steiner both leave out God as a primary explanation for their understandings of reality. 

I have said before that it would be Much easier for the reader to understand Saving the Experiences if Barfield had set-out at the beginning that the 'evolution of consciousness' which Barfield describes is a divine plan, which aims at the incremental divinization of Man towards the level of God as creator.

Lacking this structuring and explanatory reference to God; Barfield's attempted-neutral description of the evolution of consciousness sounds like he is proposing a kind of 'law of nature' - a biological principle that sounds like a rival theory of the same kind as mainstream biological evolution by natural selection.   

I believe the consequences of this confusion can be seen in most of mainstream Barfield scholarship since the 1960s; and this has been exacerbated by a failure to engage with the work of Rudolf Steiner. Yet, if we begin by stating Barfield's metaphysical assumptions as such, including the presence and role of God; it really is not difficult to understand - because then its validity does not hinge on understanding and following complex, multi-step arguments or evidence.