"My way or the Highway?" - Christian "exclusivism"; in relation to Christian claims of the Necessity of Jesus Christ

A lot of modern people are(or claim to be) averse to the exclusivism of "Christianity".

By "exclusivism" they usually refer to some particular self-identified Christian church, or denomination, or a selection of such churches. 

And by exclusivism is meant a collection of various ideas that limit salvation: for examples that Christianity is the only true religion; that church instructions and/or sacraments provide the only valid path to salvation; that those who are not Christian are doomed to eternal torment, and so forth. 

Various alternatives may then be proposed for these and other various exclusivisms (for instance; that all religions are true, or equally-true; that Heaven is for everyone, eventually; that Heaven is for good people, and others). 

All of these miss the point. 

Christianity is indeed exclusive; and exclusive in the sense that for those who want salvation  - which is resurrected eternal life in Heaven - there is only one way of attaining this goal. 

And that one way is by following Jesus Christ. 

In other words: Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation - meaning that if Jesus had not existed, and was not still alive and active; then there would be no salvation for any of Mankind. 

Such a brief definition may be true and perhaps acknowledged by many or most Christians; yet it leaves some key terms undefined, in particular what it means to "follow" Jesus Christ. 

But the answer to that should, I believe, be regarded as secondary to the first step: which is: 

To want what Jesus offers; to desire salvation for oneself, and to want it as the priority of life. 

I would say that anyone who wants salvation as the priority Is A Christian: by that commitment is a Christian defined.

The secondary question of what "follow" means in this context; and how, exactly, I personally (here and now) should follow Jesus Christ; well, such matters are surely more the subject for a life quest, than a thing that can be pre-decided by any act of faith and resolution. 

(Even joining a church and obeying it does not decide what "follow" means in practice; since the Church opinion must be learned, acted on; and anyway there is always dispute on such matters within all churches.)

Anyone who sincerely desires to attain eternal resurrected life in Heaven will, presumably, do whatever is necessary for him to attain this goal (as and when this becomes evident); and will do so according to his own best attainable knowledge and understanding... 

"Following Jesus" is a matter about which it would seem foolish to expect unanimous agreement. 

The core of "what Christianity is may, nonetheless, be a matter of shared consensus among Christians of many types - but only among Christians!

Because, it seems that plenty of other people (apparently a large majority) do not want salvation but want... something else instead, and there are many such possibilities...

Therefore; it seems to me that almost all of the people who object to the real exclusivism of Christianity do not themselves want salvation...

But, for instance, they might deny the real possibility of post-mortal life; or prefer some other post-mortal outcome than everlasting life in Heaven Perhaps they want reincarnation? Or not to die at all? Or for death to be annihilation of the self? Or they prefer eternal life as a spirit rather than to be resurrected bodily. Or they want a post-mortal pleasure-paradise of themselves reborn, but not resurrected. 

Many possibilities exist - including the desire to become a ghost, or a demon - common enough wishes nowadays.  

So the exclusivism of Christianity is seldom a real problem! 

Those who themselves do not desire Christ's salvation, or who regard it as an unpleasant, bad or evil thing - can hardly object that such salvation is exclusive!

And, although theoretically a possibility and a genuine problem; whether people actually exist who sincerely desire salvation (i.e. desire for themselves resurrected eternal life in Heaven), and who also deny that Jesus is truly necessary to attain this salvation, is not clear to me. 

I guess that (if they indeed exist) such people would need to believe that:

1. They wanted salvation

2. There is a path to salvation

3. But a path that does not require Men to "follow" Jesus - in any sense of "follow" - i.e. that (contrary to what Christians assert) Jesus is not-really necessary to salvation.  

Only if such people exist, then I can see that such would indeed have a legitimate grievance against the exclusivism of Christianity! 

The Activist Assumption: Can we validly - by making wise lifestyle choices - fight The System, and work incrementally towards a Christian world?

Can we genuinely - by making wise and responsible lifestyle choices - fight The System, and thereby work incrementally towards a Good, a Christian, world? 

The true and ultimate answer, the answer from Jesus Christ, is: No, we cannot. 

(Also; even if we could truly make a better this-world by our choices; that would never be enough - that could never suffice.)

The situation of This-World (as of here-and-now) is much Much worse than the question implies - because the question implicitly assumes there is some way that somebody can "opt out" of the evil of this-world; that somebody can exist outwith The System. 

I mean the very common notion that we essentially affiliate with either good or evil by our material actions, by our lifestyle choices - choosing the best from those available (e.g. by actions such as voting, buying, selling, joining, resigning etc).  

This "Activist Assumption" is absolutely false, because based on false premises. The real question is qualitative - not quantitative - and All available and possible choices are evil-complicit*. 

It was, perhaps, (nearly-) always thus, but we need only consider the situation as of here-and-now.

The global totalitarian system is evil by intent and design, and it is inescapable, and we all (every person, everywhere) depend on it for survival. 

Our actual situation is analogous to that of a chattel slave who lives or dies at the whim of an evil master. The "qualitative" choice is to be compelled to do what the master commands, or die. 

Yet a slave can be a Christian, and plenty have been, because (no matter what he is compelled to do in order to stay alive) the slave can choose to want salvation. 

And That is what matters decisively. 

The slave is only damned if he wants that which his evil Master is telling him to want. 

The war of this world is a spiritual war. Therefore it is ultimately about attitudes, aims, desires, motives and suchlike; it is about what we inwardly affirm and what we inwardly reject. 

When we support an evil agenda, we have chosen to join with evil and its purposes.

Actions may be compelled on pain of death - or suffering too great for our powers of resistance. But whatever the actions; it is that inner act of "wanting" that damns us; not our actions.

In sum: the Activist Assumption is false, because it regards the core problem and task of of life as being some version of "How to make this-world a better place". This is, and perhaps always has been, the commonest understanding of "the purpose of life". But, for one who desires most to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal life; the core problem and task of life is different.     

*The question is actually a sub-set of the Jesus versus Pharisee debates: The Pharisee assumption that sin is quantitative and thus something that can be avoided or usefully diminished by focusing on, and avoiding, a list of special sins. 

But the assumption of Jesus Christ is that qualitatively all Men are "sinners" (ie. all Men fail ultimately and always to align our will with God and divine creation), and all Men sin innumerable times in innumerable ways. 

For Christians, therefore, the proper question is not how to avoid sinning, but how to attain salvation (how to join the side of God and divine creation); despite that no Man ever has, or ever will, avoid sinning frequently, and without any possibility of stopping.

Note: This post is edited from my response to a question from commenter "Jack Pixley". 

It is fact, not merely opinion, that supporters of "AI" are supporting global totalitarian materialism's Core Project

It is a simple fact that the supporters of "AI" are thereby supporting global totalitarianism's Core Project - and the project that the totalitarians have-been, and currently are, expending more resources and money upon, than any other of their strategies of evil.  

Supporting "AI" is therefore rational and consistent if you personally share in the goals of materialist totalitarianism - i.e. the goals and methods and understanding of Good represented by the architects and implementers of Agenda 2023 and the Great Reset. 

But otherwise (for example if you identify as Christian, or if you believe you oppose The Establishment or favour freedom) then you personally are engaged in an incoherent, and probably self-serving, delusion. 

You may rationally justify embracing and propagandizing "AI" on the basis that global totalitarianism is a lesser evil than the mainstream alternative of universal mutual destruction favoured by the Agents of Chaos. 

This is (I think) overall true: the selfish power-seeking materialist-bureaucratic evil aimed at omni-surveillance and micro-control of others; is not as bad as a mastering spiteful desire for death and the destruction of divine creation - even when at the cost of self-harm.  

However, if you are honest; then such reasoning requires a frank admission that you are engaged in the Boromir Strategy of trying to fight a greater evil by strengthening a lesser evil. 

In which case (if you regard honesty and coherence to be a necessity); you had better ensure that your own hands and conscience are As Clean As Whistles: ensure that you personally are neither likely, nor hoping, to benefit from the triumph of your preferred brand of evil. 

Or else you are your-self, objectively, One Of Them.  

The best, most powerful, TV Fantasy series I have ever seen: The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin - 2026

This is notice of a TV series called The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin that I am currently watching on Amazon Prime - I have seen three episodes. 

It is, by some margin, the best fantasy drama I have seen on TV; very powerful and intriguing, beautiful and moving; very well written and edited. 

And with superb background music that adds to the drama in an analogous way to Howard Shore's music of the Jackson movie Lord of the Rings. 

If it manages to sustain this quality to the end of the series, it will rank among my favourite TV dramas of all time; but even if it does not, it has already done enough to be lastingly memorable. 

Update note added: Episode Four was at a significantly lower level than the previous three. No memorable moments. 

Gogol now surpassed by DDG - a microcosm of the twenty-first century technological trajectory

Nikolai Gogol - an irrelevant portrait (apparently channelling his inner Benny Hill)

For those too young to remember; the search engine that also hosts this blog and which I will therefore call Gogol, was launched in the late 1990s; and developed over the next years into one of the great engineering achievements of the millennial period. 

It was so good by 2004, serving up vast numbers of well-ranked and relevant results (up to millions, maybe billions, of them, if you could be bothered to look); including in real time (showing results, additively, tens of seconds after pages were posted onto the web) that other search engines were irrelevant. 

The Gogol incrementally ceased to be optimized for searching, and (which, presumably, had always been the intention); became orientated first to making money, then to surveillance and ideological control. 

Features were stripped-out - such as real-time searching, relevance ranking; then results became filtered. And now it serves up very few pages at all (a few dozen - at most a couple of hundred). 

Nowadays the results are full of stuff like Facebook and Instagram pages - such that the search results do not even lead to the actual results: do not lead to the sampled passages. 

So good had been Gogol that it took a long time before any of the (supposed) rivals to equal or surpass it in the primary function of web searching and ranking. 

But for the past year-plus; the point has been reached when I am convinced that Gogol has so degraded itself that other algorithms (which used to be qualitatively inferior) are now actually much superior in terms of generating relevant results - for instance DDG.

This is a microcosm of the trajectory of Western civilization through the twentieth century. As real science became all-but extinct, technological progress slowed; then (overall) ceased; then went into reverse - as functionality was first sacrificed, then ignored, in pursuit of totalitarian socio-political mass manipulation. 

So-called AI has accelerated the process - is indeed a key element in the process; since its core net-intent was, from the beginning, civilizationally destructive. 

And the widespread welcoming of "AI" is evidence of the success of The Long-term Plan - which was always and ultimately spiritual, not material.  

For the spiritual agenda to succeed, people must want their own spiritual-enslavement, their own value-degradation - people must be induced willingly to blind-themselves to the motivation and consequences of post-millennial technology.  

Job Done. 

What we ought to do is simple, and within the capacity of literally everybody in all circumstances...

And that is to realize and acknowledge the evil intent behind all of the totalitarian-backed technologies (including not just "AI", but professional science and research, institutional "reforms", EVs, sustainable energies, the Birdemic Peck, establishment-backed medical campaigns... the whole caboodle). 

And inwardly, with heart-felt motivation: decisively-reject that intent. 

But, apparently, this little and simple action is just too much to ask. 

Knights Templar Woz Ere

The above are marks inscribed on the door jamb of the entrance to the beautiful and fascinating church of St Andrew's, Hartburn, Northumberland. 

The marks may have been left by members of that much-discussed organization The Knights Templar, who were certainly active locally. Three were tried in York on various charges including worshipping "a certain cat" - who would appear to Templars in particular circumstances.  

Another curiosity is a gravestone in the floor just in front of the chancel, where the death of Dorothy, wife of William Aynsley on March 18th of the year (apparently) seventeen-thirty and-a-half! 

What the "half" symbol 

means here, is actually that her year of death was 1732 by the European Gregorian calendar in which the New Year began on January the first; but 1731 according the Julian calendar that was still (happily!) used in Britain, which started the New Year on March 25th - Lady Day. 

Living a Lie: is Your bottom-line reality a social institution?

The way things have been shaping over the past years; I think that the biggest spiritual challenge is related to social institutions; specifically the question of whether or not people (including you and I, as individuals) are going to root our fundamental understanding and support of reality in a social institution?

It has in the past been normal, usual, spontaneous, unconscious - sometimes even mandatory - for people to root their sense of reality in a social institution, such as a church, or perhaps a tribe, or in recent generations a nation. 

The challenge of being an increasingly self-aware Being in an increasingly-obviously evil totalitarian society; is that we are now becoming aware of what this entails - it is no longer spontaneous and unconscious - instead people make a deliberate choice of the social- institution/s in which they will "invest" their sense of reality.   

This immediately introduces a paradox, a contradiction - we choose where we invest "objective reality" - and this choosing of external objectivity is only psychologically effective when this choice can subsequently be hidden from our-selves. 

Hence we find ourselves in a world where almost everybody is dishonest with themselves concerning their most fundamental choices: most people make ultimate choices about the nature of reality, and the authority for that nature... then they pretend to/ deny/ forget that have made these choices. 

People continue to invest their ultimate reality in social institutions, continue to insist that this is where ultimate reality is indeed located - yet this assertion is based on falsehood; and when challenged this falsehood is absolutely insisted-upon in a way that inevitably corrupts an inaccuracy to a lie. 

So "people", that is almost-everybody, is literally Living a Lie - a calculated untruthfulness; when it comes to what they regard as deepest and most important...

And this corruption in action comes through to consciousness more and more obviously, with more and more people, as the months roll by.  

Note added: What lies behind the above; is my continued dismay at the "falling-away" from spiritual commitment to divine creation (and then doubling-down on fallenness) of more and more of the online people whose work I peruse. 

This, because these people stubbornly adhere to the primacy of some social institution - whether that be their (chosen) church; or their (chosen) spirituality, ideology, political affiliation or whatever it might be. 

In particular; I am dismayed that (and this is my interpretation) they find-themselves (although this is denied) supporting the functionality of The System - which is (I believe) intrinsically evil - on the (correct) basis their chosen bottom-line social institution depends on the functional continuation of The System. 

And because these folk are (naturally) afraid of the waxing influence of the Agents of Chaos - which they seem to suppose they can do something personally to stop and reverse, whether locally or globally. 

In other words; they are becoming more and more active spiritual supporters and sustainers of the materialist strategy of Ahriman, because of their fear of - and (pragmatic) desire materially to oppose the ever more destructive Sorathic powers. 

This lapsing into the Boromir Strategy was something I predicted would happen several years ago - and I am sorry that I was so right about it.      

Personal Development - is it a Good Thing? Analogy with development in the arts and literature.

In the early 1970s, it was a standard aesthetic criterion that "development" was a good thing, a necessary thing - and that the developed was better.  

I first came across it in pop music. e.g. The idea that The Beatles were good because their music developed, from album to another the style (and subject matter) changed - and later Beatles was better than earlier. 

Anyone who thought the opposite, and preferred "their early stuff" was shallow, simple-minded, dumb... 

Same in classical music, as I later discovered. The "Great Composers" all (supposedly) developed, and all kept on getting better. 

Critics seemed unanimous that middle period Beethoven was better than early - with which most lay-people agreed; and best of all were his latest works (especially the last string quartets), with which the music-loving public certainly disagreed.  

The same applied across the board really - whether in other arts and literature, or in intellectual pursuits; and even in the spiritual realm. 

CG Jung's most influential concept was perhaps the desirability of "personal development" as the proper goal of human life - through the middle and late twentieth century this ideal became almost a new religion. 

So what was this development that was so good? 

The direction of desirable-development was (nearly-) always towards less-immediate appeal; more serious/ less fun (or funny); longer; more complex - more difficult.   

Those qualities that had initially attracted people to, say, The Beatles or Beethoven and which brought them to notice, popularity, high status; were thereby downgraded. 

In particular that rather indefinable quality of "freshness" that characterizes early work and accounts for its immediacy of appeal; that unselfconscious spontaneity and fluidity; the absence of that striving, effort, and contrivance which typically dominates later (more serious/ complex/ lengthy etc) work...

That naturalness of expression and clarity of achievement was looked-down-upon; together with the responses that went with it - such as laughter (instead of sophisticated "wit"). 

In an overall sense; it was hard for an honest observer to conclude that development meant "better" - because "the developed" was almost a different thing altogether! Indeed; literally so in the case of developments in Modern Art and Architecture, and modern Classical Music - where "the developed" was often unrecognizable in terms of the aims and virtues and appeal of the starting point.  

What about personal development? Well, the analogy seems close. 

The direction of PD was towards self-consciousness, seriousness, effort and control, a balancing and integration of multiple complexities, by means of complex theories and learned-practices.  

This can be linked-back to the development of personality in religion; where a similar trajectory was recommended and observed. 

There was little doubt that people could be (usually were) changed by prolonged religious training, increased knowledge, study, and practices; and these differences were of the same sort as seen in the arts. 

But whether that differentness from his starting condition actually made the person "better" in any kind of overall or basic sense was very debateable. Often enough it made them worse! 

This is where we now stand - at the end of an era in which development was the ideal, and its benefits were assumed; to one in which such claims are seen to be a false generalization, and often self-serving. 

But Men cannot live without purpose. And if development is discarded then it must be (indeed, it will be) replaced with some other ideal - even if that ideal is implicit, unconscious, denied. 

If we cannot truly develop in any genuinely religious or spiritual fashion - then what should we be doing, aiming-at, instead? 

(As usual, the necessary first step to finding an answer, is to acknowledge the question.) 

Do I know when somebody is reading my mind?

We are born with secure knowledge that "we are not alone" but inhabit a universe of other beings, some like ourselves, some different. 

This knowledge is built-in, not a product of experience (which might, after all, be misinterpreted or delusional). 

This built-in-ness is why the existence of other minds cannot be proved, and why solipsism cannot be refuted. 

(The same applies to the existence of god/s, spirits, life persisting beyond death etc... All built-in.) 

 

This innate knowledge of the existence of other Beings, other minds, suggests that there is a background and mutual knowledge that we are in-touch with others; on the basis that if we are aware of other minds, then other minds must be aware of us. 

So, it seems likely that we cannot know another Beings thoughts without that Being also "knowing that we know" - but we moderns are only seldom aware (perhaps for some moderns never aware) that we do know of the existence of other minds. 

Awareness of others forms a kind of unconscious background to our lives - something like an ocean of unconscious mutual which we inhabit and largely take-for-granted*. 

This picture would fit with the idea that the direct - i.e. not-mediated by perceptual awareness of other remote persons (i.e. persons beyond sensory contact) is real but unconscious. 

Which implies that  although few (modern) people seem ever to be aware of their minds being read - this is actually happening - but is either not conscious, or our consciousness of this is denied because it "makes no sense" on the basis of modern metaphysical materialist assumptions. 

Therefore the answer to "Do I know when somebody is reading my mind?" is: 

Yes, you do know; but you are (probably) seldom, or never, aware of this knowledge. 

A further implication is that - since our minds actually are being-read, just as we actually-are reading the minds of other human-beings (and other-beings); it is also plausible we might become aware of this innate, direct mutual-contact between our own mind and the minds of others. 

Become aware, that is: if we want to become aware; and if our basic (metaphysical) assumptions concerning ultimate reality allow for the reality of mind-reading. 

*In other words: telepathy is real. 

A lovely medieval window

 

From today's church-hunting at St Michael and All Angels, Felton, in Northumberland. 

What is very unusual is that the whole tracery design at the top, including an eight-pointed flower, was carved from a single piece of sandstone. 

A lovely and architecturally fascinating (surprisingly large, Tardis-like) church in a very quiet corner of the world. 

Too many Mainstream Orthodox Christians are "universalists" when it comes to "the resurrection of damnation"

There is a sentence in the Fourth Gospel that contradicts the argument and multiple statements of the rest of the Gospel, and which I assume was a later and alien addition...

But which (with, perhaps, a terrible and malignant inevitability) became standard orthodox compulsory dogma in many Christian churches (at least among theologians):

John 5: [28] Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, [29] And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

The alien-ness of this passage is that, through the rest of the Gospel, it is evident that resurrection is A Good Thing, Good News, the great gift that Jesus offers to all Men who "follow" Him.

This is the real Christianity: one that recognizes that Jesus offered a great gift...

A gift that any mortal man (whether he be good or bad, as evaluated by This World, and after all we are all "sinners". Sinners both in the primary sense that we all shall die, and the secondary sense that nobody lives in full harmony with divine creation). 

Thus, a great gift that all may choose to accept - by following Jesus through death into resurrection and Heaven. 

What I regard as True Christianity, takes-up Jesus's many statements in the IV Gospel and its overall argument; that has resurrection linked with Heaven: resurrection is the needful transformation by which we are "born again" in a form suitable for Heaven. 

So; salvation properly means saving us from death, and the default fate of becoming ghostly spirits, barely our-selves.

Saving us into an eternal life in Heaven. 

Yet here, in the above quoted sentence, there is raised the spectre that Jesus's work was to raise the barely-conscious gibbering ghosts of the underworld Sheol into an everlasting incarnated state in which they would suffer the eternal torment of Hell.

Add to this horror; the statements in some other Books of the New Testament that only few - probably the very few who have "done good" to a sufficient degree, can or shall ever attain the resurrection of life.

And we get that truly horrible depiction of Jesus Christ as cosmic sadist that is so vehemently insisted-up and enforced by so many churches...

I mean the common and horribly inverted picture of a "Jesus" whose "great work" as a "saviour" was to implement a system of alleged-salvation, by which the majority of Men (probably a very large majority) were resurrected from death in order that they could be tortured forever. 

By such means, a large number of self-identified Christians - past and present - chose to make themselves into "Universalists". 

But not the kind of Universalist who assert that Jesus's work was to compel everybody to resurrect into Heaven; whether they wanted it or not...

Instead the kind of Universalist who believes that Jesus made things so that everybody gets resurrected, everybody gets brought to consciousness forever; and afterwards, for most of them, their eternal life will be one of inescapable and ultimate misery. 

Both "universalisms" are wrong: Resurrection is a choice and Heaven too is a choice, therefore neither is for everyone. 

Why is that so hard to grasp? 

And why are self-identified Christians so stubborn in refusing to grasp the Good News, or (worse) insisting that they do not even want it? 

Does History unfold according to a plan?

Does History unfold according to a plan?

I think not. 

But History does have a direction, and this direction is a bottom-up kind of thing: I mean the shape of History is a consequence of the cumulative development of individual Beings. 

And that development of Beings is a matter of increasing consciousness. 

God does indeed want Beings to increase in intelligence, because it is one motivation of God that Beings should come up to God's creative level (to become "divine friends", and "colleagues" of God, in the work of creation) - and that entails increased consciousness. 

Beings begin as mostly spontaneous, relatively un-conscious, and with largely-automatic behaviours in response to stimuli (like those Beings we usually classify as "mineral", and that people usually claim are are non-alive). 

However, all Beings have embryonic free agency and consciousness; as the basis for what comes later. 

But as each being develops, matures - awareness and freedom and choice can only increase - in the spiritual realm this is obviously true.

This; despite that in this mortal incarnated sub-set of The Spiritual which we term the material - everything tends towards destruction - i.e. entropy.

 

The development of consciousness gives direction to history because it is ultimately irreversible: once there has been development, it cannot be undone - a Being cannot revert to an earlier stage of its development 

A baby can become a child, a child can (and in the long term does) tend to develop towards adolescence and maturity... This directionality may be slowed, but cannot be stopped and the process is cumulative, irreversible. 

Once a development of consciousness has happened in a Being; that has-been permanently added, and cannot be subtracted. 

Such directionality true even in the temporary conditions of mortal life - despite that the developments are lost to disease, degeneration and eventual death. An adult who has lost the developments of consciousness, intelligence, freedom may be a sick adult; but does Not thereby become a child. 

So History, the shape of History; is an accumulation of the effects and interactions of more and more Beings, getting more and more developed, with effects that are irrevocable. 

What History is Not; is a top-down shaping of the lives and experiences and learnings of Beings. 

We, as individuals, are Not being fitted-into History - on the contrary, History is emerging from the multitude of our lives.  

And that is a clue to how we can, and ought to, influence History. 

Censorship, Excuses, Value-Inversion: Why suppression of truth is Not defeated by true information - The example of "genocide"

There is a very strong tendency among anti-Establishment radicals (and indeed among Establishment-supporting radicals - the legions of deluded Leftists) - that true information can, and shall, defeat the distortions of censorship and untruthful propaganda. 

That is the theory, but you may have noticed that this does not actually happen!  

Some fact or facts are being suppressed by those with power, and it is claimed that "if only" these were made publicly and widely available - then the real (and evil) nature of those is power would be revealed, people would cease to believe and support them - and a stop would be put to this kind of wrongdoing. 

But mostly this does not happen. 

"Real facts" get revealed, or something more like facts than previously was the case - but the desired outcome goes not happen, as revealed by "genocide". 

"Genocide" could roughly be defined as the i.e. purposive annihilation - e.g. death or/and exclusion/ displacement (e.g. "ethnic cleansing") - of a culture and a people. 

And (whether or not this is correct) genocide is widely agreed to be The Worst evil of all; but in practice especially when "genocide" was done (or alleged to have been done) to left-approved groups and categories. 

It is the (supposed) prevention of genocidal cultural exclusion/ annihilation that is regarded as a bottom line justification for several of the major leftist strategies of recent decades - e.g. antiracism, feminism, and sexual-orientation radicalism. 

(Yet?) Genocide is - of course - a core activity of the dominating Atheist-Left-West Establishment leadership class; in the past, recently, and at present. 

The explicit and multiple examples of so-called "regime change" imposed all around the world, and attempted far more widely; are often the tip of an iceberg of longer-term - and often highly successful - strategy of cultural annihilation and absorption. 

This is culturally- and spiritually- "genocidal" - although this may not become physical annihilation unless the genocide-absorption is resisted.

(e.g. The threat of physical genocide coerces the imposition of cultural genocide.) 

So what are the lines of defence of evils such as "genocide"?

1. Censorship - there is no evil

2. Excuses - the evil is real but justified, expedient for some greater good

3. Value-inversion - evil becomes good 

1. Censorship

The first line of defence for genocidal activity is "censorship", cover-up, suppression of evidence, a denial that it has happened, and still is happening - and is deliberate, strategic, top-down, and mandatory.  

But in spiritual terms, a wholly successful denial is almost worthless. Because what people do not know, they do not excuse or support - and people may remain good-orientated, but merely ignorant. 

Therefore, the more spiritually-orientated forms of strategic evil will ensure that "the truth" gets-out, somehow, somewhere...

Such that some kind of "evidence" for genocide having-happened or ongoing, will "leak", or be discovered by some investigator - and this evidence will be (less- or more-widely) enabled to spread. 

2. Excuses

The second line of defence - when people discover, and are at least somewhat convinced by - evidence of "our side" committing some evil such as genocide, is to excuse it. 

To say "Yes, this is evil; but it is necessary".

For instance to acknowledge that "we" are doing evil - even genocidal evil - but that this is necessary for some larger, more vital, and positively moral purpose. 

Perhaps that "we" have been compelled to do it by circumstances (out of our control) - perhaps it needs to be done in retaliation for greater evils (perhaps of the same kind) done to us by them? 

The idea is tha tevil can - and should - but used against evil: the Boromir Strategy.

But - whatever the excuse and how it is done - this excusing of evil is a step on the road to spiritual corruption and distortion of values. 

3. Value-inversion

The "end-stage" of value-inversion - when that which was regarded as the greatest evil, is now instead understood to be "a good thing"; has been reached in at least two instances known to me recently.  

This has been evident from government officials and the mass media "bragging" about genocidal activities and intent, and positive reporting of strategies to continue and extend this. 

As another common example; filmed evidence of the doing of sadistic atrocities has been disseminated by the people who did them. 

And the loop of evil is closed by a positive public reaction to such communications. 

In other words, what was a negative value - indeed for many people The Most negative value - has been inverted into a positively approved and morally-admirable action.  

So, the idea that overcoming apparent suppression and censorship by revealing "evidence and "facts" - actually achieves the extremity of moral corruption in those (apparently many people, often a significant majority) for whom partisan loyalty to a cause, ideology, or religion - is more powerful than their understanding, discernment and basis for choosing between good and evil.   

This applies across the broad range of moral issues - from war and war crimes; to social categories of sex, race, religion; to particular behaviours of particular people in such areas of sex, violence, theft, fraud, bribery, nepotism - or whatever. 

Our society in The West is already so deeply corrupted, so completely un-moored from any strong basis in values; that revelations of evil and wrong-doing are usually, in practice, spiritually counter-productive. 

The decline of the ideal of worship and obedient service

It is striking (to me) how the ideal values of worship and obedient service have declined to feebleness - or else to a legalism of worship and obedient service that disguises a pleasure-seeking/ fear-motivated loyal conformity to societal power. 

Worship-of and obedience-to God are the Old Testament ideal that permeate much of the Bible; including much of the New Testament such as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. 

And this was (in most stable and effective Christian societies) transferred to a monarch (whether temporal and/or spiritual - or both) who would himself be motivated by the same ideal.  

If I think back about thirty and plus years; this broad framework of W and O was still, sometimes and somewhat but in a valued way, working for me - although on in rather specific times and places and occasions. 

What characterized such a situation was a sense of magical enchantment - a positive connection to past, place, instituion, and others present. 

But it was already clear that this ideal had not just lost its appeal to most people, most of the time; who were simply bored by such things. 

And there was indeed a reaction against it; such that an atmosphere of scornful mockery and embarrassment was becoming dominant whenever worship and obedient service was apparent or advocated - or against those who were more that way inclined. 

Also; those who most vehemently advocated that worship and obedience was a good, or essential, basis for the Good Life; were nearly-always being dishonest - they were just using this value-system for their own (and often sordid) self-gratification and benefit. 

 

Of course this decline and inversion is in some (important and valuable) ways a subtraction from life. This is why people like me fought against it. 

Yet it is also a fact of life that needs to be acknowledged; as is the requirement that something is needed to replace it as a source of motivation and enchantment -- if not of social cohesion...

Because it seems increasingly clear that appeals to (or enforcement of) social cohesion nowadays is rooted in negative and evil purposes - for instance when prepping nations and institutions for pursuit of an evil war, or an evil strategy 

In other words appeals to (de facto) worship and obedience, whether in religion or in secular life - the seeking of increased energy and motivation for societal groupings - is used for the purposes of Lawful Evil. 

This seem inevitable when the people involved have themselves and en masse rejected the reality of the Christian God and divine creation. 

How can people be corralled into pursuing a truly Good purpose, when they deny the very reality of Good purpose in the universe?     

And yet and yet... we must have something. 

If not worship and obedience then... something else: because the alternative is despair. 

And then either an obedience based on mere coping and survivalism (chosen slavery), or else here-and-now selfishness and indifference to consequences (psychopathy). 

Surely this is an unavoidable task for everyone? 

And a task where objective external assistance from a societal source cannot be expected - and where whatever "answer" we may find will inevitably be partial, temporary, and perhaps private and personal? 

For me, vital clues are the insight that God most desires of us is Not worship and obedience; but Instead a chosen, committed, and loving "friendship" type of relationship; analogous to that which forms the basis of a shared and harmonious, purposive living; and (sometimes, temporarily, and imaginably) characterizes the best of family life and marriage.    

However, the reassurance we have as Christians is that whatever we actually achieve is less important than knowing what we most need. 

Sincerely-attempting not successfully-accomplishing our ideals, is actually the basis of good-living now, and salvation to come.   

SSPX: Successful anti-Christian/ anti-Roman Catholic PSYOP

I have seldom seen more of a a blog blitz on synlogos.org, than the past few days of Roman Catholic bloggers debating the Pope's actions towards SSPX (The Society of St Pius X). 

It's all a bit sad; because although the SSPX deserve defending as a "lesser evil" in context of the global decline of Christian churches and the specific context of the RCC; SSPX are in fact, and in the medium-long term, a hopeless cause. 

But the whole framing of the debate seems to have had the effect of making the SSPX into either the cause of RC decline, or else the Great Hope of an RC revival - neither of which is the case. 

It is a pity that - yet again- the mainstream media and The System have spectacularly succeeded in creating a false dichotomy with a forced-choice, hijacking the agenda, misdirecting Christian energies, and obscuring what really needs to be thought about seriously and as deeply as possible. 

And a good deal of rigorous and honest thought in required, before any "debate" can do good rather than harm.

Seeking philosophical meaning in a universe without purpose - my mid-twenties ruminations re-analysed

In my mid-twenties I graduated from medical school and started work; at first as a doctor, then in research for a doctorate. These were years in which I experienced the power of that "alienation" so characteristic of modernity. 

And, as always in "this life", fundamental problems to do with ultimate purpose and how my own life ought to be orientated; was mixed-up with the daily fatigue and of long working hours doing externally-dictated tasks - and the apparent gloomy prospect of "more of the same" for some decades to come. 

I sought answers in philosophy; and engaged a lot of brooding on philosophical matters - a lot more brooding than reading. 

What I mean is that I thought a lot about relatively very few concepts, sayings and phrases. These few stimuli came from philosophers with an "existential" orientation - perhaps especially the Germanic thinkers Wittgenstein and Heidegger. 

Thus I never read these authors widely, nor studied them in a scholarly or rigorous way; but was struck by a few sayings and aspects of (what I regarded as) biographical aspects; and this was mixed up with similarly selective bits of some German fictional work such as some of Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann. 

In sum, I was working in the tradition of German Romanticism which I already knew (more thoroughly) from classical composers - especially Weber and Wagner. 

I was (and long remained) a mainstream scientistic atheist; however both Wittgenstein and Heidegger seemed to reach their deepest bedrock in the yearning or hope for "a God" as the necessary pre-requisite for a life of meaning: a life of engagement with the world and other people, rather than this miserable situation of being stuck in the "nutshell" of my own thinking, and looking-out (Hamlet was another big factor in this!).

And this began a long period of thinking "about" God - and essentially this was God, not Jesus Christ. At any rate, I developed a half-fascination for monasticism - which was, again, something I thought-about a good deal more than I researched.   

What is interesting and significant in retrospect was that I never thought seriously about God as creator because I never stopped regarding the universe as (obviously! - so it seemed) having arisen due to "phsyics". 

Instead I was thinking of "God" as a potential provider of meaning in a universe that was going nowhere in particular. 

I was seeking meaning in life, in a reality without purpose or direction: seeking a meaningful life and human society in a universe that was utterly "indifferent" to meaning. 

Unsurprisingly; this led to a kind of rooted pessimism: an ultimate bleakness to my outlook; and an suspicion that the best hope for life was not to be aware of the bottom line. 

I think this may have been the basis of my interest in "monasticism" which was combined with a similar fascination with Zen Buddhism - in both instances the idea I had was (something like) that the environment and discipline of a meditative and ascetic life might have been effective in providing a convincing-illusion (in effect a delusion) of meaning and engagement in a situation in which that meaning was encapsulated by the circumstance of meditation and monasticism.  

It seemed (and I may have been right) that this fitted with the extreme gloom and near-despair that permeated Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The idea that a rigorous philosophy would ultimately reach bottom in a kind of palliative psychotherapy - perhaps on a societal scale. 

Heidegger, in particular, seemed to be hoping that society would re-instate "a God" who would cure our modern malaise and alienation by reinstating a divine underpinning for life...

And having done so; would then "forget" that this had been manufactured; so that everybody would then live "as if" there was a God, and thereby become able to have a kind of purpose and contentment - even though the deepest philosophers or historians might know that the whole edifice of meaning had actually been constructed by Men and had no basis in ultimate-reality.  

In sum: the best hope for me, for other people, for society in general; was a convincing and universal delusion of God as the "underwriter" of the best-possible human and societal life: one that might energize, direct and coordinate its members*. 

I was more-or-less stuck in this picture of reality; and what kept me stuck was (I now believe, in retrospect) the elimination of metaphysics from philosophy - the elimination of awareness atht our ultimate and bottom line convictions are (and must be) assumptions; and were not (and cannot be) derived from experience or evidence. 

Once I had realized that my picture of a physics-rooted universe was an assumption and not a "fact" - this was the key that eventually led to a rational and rigorous way out from this trap of desiring a life based on benign delusion. 

Of course the miseries of life don't go away, and can still overwhelm; no matter what the metaphysical assumptions. But it is of immense value to know that the meaninglessness and ultimate (bottom line) sense of alienation and meaninglessness that pervade adult life in modernity, is a self-inflicted problem. 

Since we are, ourselves and personally (albeit by passive, mostly unconscious, absorption of prevalent social mores) the cause of the problem; we ourselves can be the solution. 

*This could be summarized as the belief that in a purposeless-meaningless physics-made universe, all purpose and meaning must be delusional. However our private and personal "subjective" delusions are too weak to convince and motivate us, since they are continually being contradicted by the people and circumstances around us. Therefore, the only sufficiently-effective delusion is a group-originated and group-reinforced delusion that can be experienced as external and "objective". Therefore our best "hope" is that such a dominating societal group-delusion may arise and persist, somehow. 

Entropy is Not a part of evil - these are two separate problems

The problem of entropy is one that presses upon us the average mortal life perhaps more strongly than evil. 

By "entropy" I mean the universal tendency for beings to experience cumulative adverse change with time: dysfunction, degeneration, disease - and the ultimate manifestation of entropy is death. 

All of these are unavoidable, are universal. 

Traditional Christian theology usually conflates entropy with evil; indeed entropy/ death is usually subsumed within the concept and causes of evil. 

For example, the traditional interpretation of the Adam and Eve story is that they began as good and immortal beings; free from both evil and death. 

With The Fall they chose evil, and at the same time necessarily became mortal - subject to entropy and death. 

(In traditional theology) with the salvation from Jesus Christ we are allowed to return to the primal situation of Adam and Eve - saved from our self-caused punishment of both entropy and evil. 

After their fall; A & E and their descendants also needed to toil in order to live - in effect toil was needed to overcome entropy. 

Because (in effect) entropy meant that, over time, our minds and bodies and the environment are all against us: we must make efforts every day, we need to toil simply to remain alive and functional, but all such efforts are temporary palliative: will inevitably be overcome and will fail.

(In this sense, entropy is a more pervasive problem than evil.) 

And ultimately all of this bad stuff supposedly happens because of The Fall! 

Everything bad is down to an evil choice of ancestors, and its ramifications. 

This is very difficult to comprehend or believe. There seems a gross disproportion between the events described in Genesis, and thousands of years of billions of people's suffering and toil, disease and dying in fighting - and failing to defeat - entropy.   

Well, be that as it may; traditional theology regards evil as primary, entropy as a part of evil: evil is the ultimate cause of entropy. 

Therefore trad-theol has it that we overcome entropy by overcoming sin, where "sin" is understood to mean the manifestations of evil. 

That is; the repentance of evil/sins, leads also to the escape from entropy: leads to eternally healthy and vigorous - and happy - life in Heaven.

I have described elsewhere my understanding that entropy and evil can and should be distinguished, and that they have different causes. 

Entropy is intrinsic to this creation, the one we inhabit now; to the original or primary Creation by God - this creation that we are born-into. 

Heaven can be conceptualized as the answer to entropy; by a second and opt-into creation (i.e. the creation made possible by Jesus Christ) - with resurrection conceptualized as a voluntary re-making without entropy, as leaving-behind entropy. 

So, while traditional Christian theology regards entropy-death as secondary to evil - and regards Heaven as the answer to entropy-death because, in repenting moral sins and having the effect of sins removed by Jesus, we also and simultaneously eliminate entropy. 

But instead; I regard entropy and evil as ultimately distinct concepts: (in this creation) entropy is unavoidable, while evil is a choice. 

However, the confusion and conflation of entropy and evil among Christians seems to be a consequence of the fact that the answer to both entropy and evil is the same: i.e. resurrection and our "escape"/ progression-into eternal, wholly-good life in Heaven; by following Jesus Christ.

In a nutshell: entropy and evil are different problems with different causes in this-world, but both problems are cured by the same treatment: following Jesus Christ to Heaven.

And otherwise they are not cured. One who does Not follow Jesus to Heaven; has thereby chosen to continue to live with entropy and evil. 

 

Note Added: The difference is that:

Entropy is intrinsic to the nature of God's creation - the First creation. 

Evil is about a specific-Being's attitude towards creation: positive, or negative, affiliative or hostile. 

Not a war to win, but a war to destroy

Long-term (six year plus) readers will know of my recurrent "obsession" with the subject of evil; and the nature and definition of evil. 

This is because I believe that the nigh-universal lack of understanding of evil has rendered almost-everybody helpless in the face of a very powerful class of persons who have successfully engaged the hearts and minds of a very high proportion of the population of The West, and many other places. 

Bluntly; lack of understanding of evil has led many hundreds of millions of people (at least) into supporting strategic evil - and with a clear conscience, because they regard that evil as actually "good".

In other words, the inability to understand the nature of evil has led to moral inversion: what is really and intentionally evil is regarded as good, and vice versa.  

And people are not (as they may once have been) merely victims of manipulation - because it is of the nature of evil that once embraced it increases (evil feeds-upon itself).   

Thus we find that the nicest people are, on average, the most deluded; the most likely to be most powerfully supportive of the strategies of evil. 

This is particularly stark when the strategy being supported is a deliberately maximally-destructive war. 

And a war intended to embrace in destruction its supporters - themselves, their families and friends, their homeland, their ideology and passionate convictions - all that they superficially suppose that that they hold most dear. 

A world war is openly being planned - with full public declaration, before our eyes, in the mass media - in the West: in the UK and Commonwealth, EU nations, the USA, and beyond. 

Indeed this war is becoming the only game in town: as a long term strategy war is displacing all the other evil-motivated plans/ "good causes" such as I term the Litmus Tests: socialism/ leftism, CO2 climate environmentalism, birdemic-healthism, antiracism and feminism, the sexual revolution etc. 

All are being wound-down, and preparations for war are building-up.  

What is worse - or rather worst - is that this war (which is, in part, intended to be an expansion of the war that has been going in Eastern Europe over the past four-plus years, and in the Middle East more recently, and incipiently in East Asia) is not a war to win; but a war intended to destroy.

What is already afoot and expanding in Europe, is war of a kind seldom or never seen before in human history. In this actual and coming war; although one side does indeed want to win, and wants an end to the war (or begins that way); those who control the the other side want this war to continue, to expand, to increase in intensity - without end-point.

This happens because those who control one side are not of that side, but are instead (successfully and without being detected) using that side primarily and ultimately to pursue all-round destructive purposes.

This is happening, the strategy is working; things are much worse than almost anyone - including the experts - realize; exactly because almost nobody in the West understands evil; and especially they do not understand the sheer negativity of evil.

War analysts (of all sides) consistently assume that war is about seeking benefit, a negative means towards positive goals; and will end when that benefit has been attained. 

But when a war has been created, and is being sustained and expanded, in order to destroy; and ultimately in order that the participants come to support that goal of destruction - then this is a very different matter. 

The developing war situation is one that cannot necessarily be stopped or reversed - even if there was a general and effective will to stop it - which there is not. 

Evil has such an easy time in the modern world because there are so very few people (and none with power) who are strongly on the side of God and Good.

The mass of people cannot and do not support Good because they do not believe Good exists, or has any objective meaning. Their vague notion of good is something that exists (temporarily) only psychologically; as culturally-contingent notions in the heads of themselves, and people like them. 

The idea that The Good is a part of Reality, or The Universe; is literally meaningless to mainstream modern people - it is not so much denied as something that simply does not make sense. 

But we need to recall that the war of this world is always and ultimately a spiritual war; so this is no exception. 

This is a ultimately war to induce people - as many as possible people, on all sides - to align with spiteful destruction as a spiritual goal.

And this happens by value-inversion; by inducing people to regard evil as good and vice versa; and this is easiest when evil is not understood. 

And this failure to understand evil becomes inevitable when people do not believe-in or understand Good. 

And this failure to understand goodness is inevitable because so many people have assimilated the official and culturally-mainstream fundamental assumptions - e.g. that there is no God, no spirit, no salvation: no possibility of external and objective purpose and meaning in the universe.  

The ongoing and accelerating war of destruction is a consequence of these deep and multi-generational cultural trends. 

This stuff is not some hypothetical future scenario; on the contrary this state of deep incomprehension and value-inversion describes where we are now, culturally. 

And where we are stuck; because it can be seen that the problems run very deep, and have many layers. 

Which is presumably why we are all marching blandly and blindly towards a vastly destructive and intentionally-endless war that nearly-everyone supports indirectly with sadistic vehemence. 

Note: those who publicly oppose the ongoing-upcoming war are also (very nearly always) part of the fundamental problem that has led to the war, and share the same war-generating fundamental assumptions. They do not oppose the war for Good reasons. 

Morality does not derive from Laws

Morality does not derive from Laws. 

Morality derives from God: from the nature, purposes, and methods of God; as manifested in divine creation. 

The morality of Men derives from their personal affiliation to God*. 

*The morality-enabling affiliation to God must be personal; it may or may not also be collective in different places and eras; but it must be personal. 

Note: This is intended as a summary statement of the argument behind today's earlier post. 

The intractable problem of moral legalism in Christian discourse

If there is one area of life in which discussion is futile, it is when trying to persuade a Moral Legalist in a situation where somebody has transgressed a law, rule or principle, that he regards as both absolute and primary. 

Such people cannot be made to recognize that the crucial move in their argument has been their own personal choice to regard values as existing ultimately in the form of laws. 

As well as, secondly, the choice to place This Law, here-and-now, as above all other laws that could (in principle) be applied to the situation under discussion. 

In other words; any possible argument has already-been pre-decided by the prior choice of These-Laws as necessarily valid and supreme, and the prior choice to apply This-Law here-and-now. 

Moral legalists have taken a vastly complex situation unfolding in real-time; and applied-to-it a grossly simplified model, that begs all the most fundamental questions. 

On the one hand we have Life; but on the other hand a set of Laws and relations between Laws. These Laws are then claimed to be descriptive of The Ultimate Truth about Life. The claim is that Life derives from Laws.  

In other words, the Man-assumed model of reality which is The Laws; is given primacy over all the multitude of details of that existence in which we find ourselves. 

There can be no relevant "evidence" for this assumption of the primacy of Law. It is an act of faith, a personal decision.  

Such moral legalists (and they are legion, and occur in all Christian denominations) cannot be persuaded; because they regard every attempt to point-out the fact of their assumptions, and that all such assumptions depend upon a personal choice of what-to-believe; as a challenge to their core moral values - hence as necessarily emanating from an evil tempter. 

One who debates a moral legalist, is subjectively assigned a (literally) demonic role. 

The reaction to any challenge to the assumption of the validity and applicability of Law is therefore typically extreme, and always negative. 

And also projective - in the sense that it attributes motivation in absence of knowledge. Any pointing-out of "my" assumptions as assumptions is experienced as an evil-motivated attack on what I have assumed to be ultimate good. 

Naturally enough, albeit mistakenly and sinfully; this may subjectively be regarded as "justifying", or even requiring (moralistic zeal!) - justifying an extreme response against this threat. 

Thus moral legalism is, I believe, a major cause of the extraordinary extremity of hostile rhetoric from some Christians online, and sometime IRL; and a cause of the inability of so many Christians to learn from experience, from Life. Because when These-Laws have-been accorded metaphysical primacy, primacy by-assumption; then anything that happens in Life can have nothing to teach us about the validity and applicability of These-Laws.  

Note added: If not, then what? If not Moral Legalism, then what instead? 

The answer lies in distinguishing the limitations of this actual mortal life from the ideal situation of Heaven - and in remembering the ultimate primacy of Heaven. Here-and-now in this vast and impersonal world as-is; we are stuck with legalism and bureaucracy as inevitable evils. Laws can be improved and reduced, implementation should be supervised and shaped by wise human judgment - but all Laws are ultimately wrong. 

And yet we are stuck with them, especially when it comes to public and societal morality (we can, and should, try to exclude laws and law-like rules as much as possible from a loving marriage, family, and strong friendships. 

(For the same reason, we should resist the temptation to conceptualize loving marriages and families in terms of societal-derived models - destructive errors such as regarding the family as essentially structured like a "social institution", as analogous to a mini-nation; as properly "ruled" by monarch, or "democracy", or whatever...) 

However; Heavenly morality and values are wholly relational, i.e. rooted in love between persons - and there is no place for Laws in Heaven. 

This is what we need to hold in mind, in order to avoid the self-blinded and destructive zealotry of the self-defined-Christian - but often net-evil, and in-practice demon-aligned - Moral Legalists. 

Question Time... again

BBC Radio Brains Trust, 1941 - this responded to questions sent-in by listeners. I think I recognize CEM Joad second from the left, and (?) Jacob Bronowski on the right (although it may be Julian Huxley). 

I am mentally working-through some stuff that isn't currently ready for posting (and may never be); so if commenters have a particular question they want to ask, now is a good time - as a comment to this post. 

I will take a look at "all"* questions and respond if possible (and appropriate!)

*Note: If you want an answer, don't comment anonymously - because (as stated in the sidebar and on the commenting form) such comments typically get deleted without being read. This happens since, from past experience; nearly-all anonymous comments emanate from bots, shills, psychopaths, or the entitled.