A religion rooted in external reality does not prevent death of the soul - indeed, nowadays, it encourages this

Have you ever noticed that when a lot of people convert to Christianity, or convert to a different denomination or church within Christianity, they cease to become interesting or "real".

That person may have been interesting while he was seeking and exploring, because he was engaged in working to gratify the deep yearnings of his real-self. But after conversion and worsening with time; after he has sworn fealty to his church... then he incrementally becomes an obedient mouthpiece for... whatever he understands as the church's world-view. 

His inner self is now harnessed-to, self-subordinated-to, an outer church agenda. 

In converting to church-Christianity (of almost any church) such people voluntarily become human-parrots. They become utterly predictable in what they say and (apparently) think; because (like a corporate spokesman or Party commissar) they are saying and thinking whatever an institution has put-into them. 

You ask a question, ask for an eveluation, press a button - and if you know what their church says, you know exactly what will come-out. 

Such is, indeed, characteristic of "converts" in general. But those who are devout in their birth religion/ ideology may have always been like this - so we probably don't notice the difference in the "before and after" way that we do with converts. After all, maybe the cradle-communists or -religionists are not capable of anything else? 

I think that this chosen obedient parroting, is why so many devout or convert church-Christians have so spectacularly failed to see the existential threat of "AI" - they fail this easy spiritual "test" because they have out-sourced their fundamental religious thinking. 

And this failure is unfixable; there is no effective negative feedback, no tendency to a pendulum swing. 

One who has handed ultimate authority to anything outside cannot learn; he can only respond to what his chosen external authority instructs him. If the external source does not learn; then neither will he learn. 

This happens because such a person has made the choice and decision that ultimately external is better than internal. 

Such a person has made it a baseline assumption that his understanding and knowledge of goodness, of value - of truth, beauty, and virtue - ought to come from outside of himself.

He has chosen to place himself in a position of ultimate and existential inferiority to some-thing which is external to himself.  

**

My belief is that this fundamental choice is a matter of soul - and the choice is between a soul voluntarily tethered to the external world, and therefore lost...

And, on the other hand; a world experienced, known, understood... from the soul. 

Either we hand over our-selves to be assimilated into out-there; or else we root our ultimate understanding of out-there in our inner-souls. 

This situation is real and active for some decades; the task is a matter of escaping from what has happened, and is still happening and worsening. 

If Christians are to escape their current actuality of passively being swept-along in the stream of whatever current social mores and trends; clinging to a church which is also being swept-along by the same stream (and indeed the church is usually ahead of the individual, and leading the way, in terms of this-worldly corruption); then Christians must begin operating from some-thing that is outwith the stream.

For Christians, this escape ought to be straightforward (albeit not "easy") - if only they will allow it to be. Because Christians know that God is personal and loving of each individual person. We will therefore never be abandoned without divine help - whatever the surrounding level of societal and institutional evil.

To me this implies quite simply that there is (there "must be" - I see no effective alternative) a direct and unmediated - soul to soul - link between God and each individual person. 

In other words; Christians can escape the fate of soul-loss, if they choose - but they must choose. 

If individual persons do not so choose, then they will not escape. 

(There is no incentive, and many disincentives, for institutions to save individuals from institutional-doom, from corruption and evil; when the consequence would be that the individual becomes ultimately autonomous of that institution. It is foolish and irresponsible to wait for externally-led/ -instructed salvation.)  

So we individually must choose the inner over the outer, the sould over society; or else it will not happen. 

And what we discover will get its value from the fact that it is personally experienced and validated, for that person, and because that person has taken responsibility for endorsing it. 

Note: This inner guidance cannot then be handed-on to become secondhand guidance for other people or persons; because that would not then be an "inner", but merely a different kind of "outer". 

It depends on what we want from our existence, and how much we want it. 

Do we want what Jesus offered enough to experience and know, with- and from- our souls? 

Or shall we place our ultimate faith somewhere outside? 

Exactly where outside (church or corporation, religion or ideology) we place our ultimate arbitor will not, in the end, make much difference. 

Only that which lies within can save us.    

The omni-surveillance agenda rolls-on towards its own annihilation

Whenever I interact with the mainstream of institutional life, I am aware that the totalitarian omni-surveillance agenda continues, and continues... And seems even to have stepped-up in the past few years with the phenomenon self-described as "AI". 

Whenever "systems" or procedures are revised, whenever I purchase (or have forced upon me) some new equipment or software the surveillance agenda is ever more obvious. Everything from driving a car to using a computer is getting slower, more complicated, less effective. 

And yet - where is it all going? 

The original and explicit intention was a global totalitarian society of omni-surveillance, which would lead to micro-control of the masses. But nobody now believes believes that this is a goal worth pursuing; and nobody (except half-baked dystopian fantasists and those they terrorize) now believes that this will happen, or even could happen. 

Instead; the System and all its components collapse under accelerating levels of (substantially self-inflicted) personnell incompetence, disaffection, resource-consuming change - plus more and ever-more deliberately-induced chaos.  

The omni-surveillance agenda is not going anywhere but towards collapse; everything done to further the agenda actually contributes to its own destruction; because the omni-surveillance society is functionally incapable of sustaining omni-surveillance. 

And yet the agenda will not stop! It rolls-on and on; nobody is stepping back, abandoning, nor trying to reverse it!  

I see in this a near-total disconnection of cognition; between ideology and reason. 

It is literal insanity: psychosis, madness, delirium, dementia - disguised and denied only because its prevalence is near-universal . 

On one side there is a utterly vague and goalless gestural morality of official purposes - and on the other there is an absolute (and terrified) a refusal ever to step-back and seriously evaluate what has happened, is happening - and where it is going.

The refusal to think is absolute because people are subconsciously aware that there can be no purpose or point to their lives; because their fundamental assumptions is that there is no purpose or point to reality - and nothing to look-forward-to. 

Understanding all this explicitly would only make matters worse.  

As of now: the ideological agenda is never within-system but comes from... elsewhere and above; the agenda is always incoherent; and all dominating and powerful institutional agendas are constructed on false assumptions. 

Almost nobody has the slightest idea where things are going, they don't want to know, and will not try to find-out; ultoimately because they have no idea where they ought to be going. 

Ideologies such as omni-surveillance persist indefinately because: what else is there? 

What strong motivation is there to discard one lying incoherent strategy for some other that is no better?

And, after all; if people gave-up on omni-surveillance it would only be to pursue CO2 pseudo-environmenatlaism, or the latest iteration of the sexual revolution, or another of the evil-motivated strategies of totalitarianism; or else to joing the Agents of Chaos in engineering an endlessly escalating forever-war of each-againts-all. 

In an assumed not-alive universe and world that lacks all purpose, meaning, direction, or essential personal relevance: what else is there any better than what we now have? So: Roll-On Omni-Surveillance!

What is the purpose of this mortal life? Three things for a Christian

1. To know and desire resurrected eternal life in Heaven, after death. 

This, with pre-mortal spirit life, is the frame for purpose in mortal life.  

2. The quest or destined-task for our life - this typically varies with age and situation.  

This is the positive purpose of mortal life; what we are trying to do. 

3. What we need to learn from experience; what life is trying to teach us. 

Learning is the negative purpose of mortal life, our response to our situation. 

**

How do we discover the nature of Heaven, our quest, and life-lessons?

This has changed through human history:

1. We are told exactly what to do, by a missionary or church. Our job is to obey. 

2. We learn, read, reason what to do; selecting with discernment from church-approved sources (e.g. tradition, scripture, theology, church creed/ doctrines/ rules etc...). 

3. We do all of the above - using any or all of the above sources, and more; and our own imagination and creative endeavor; to infer what to believe and do: based ultimately on our deepest attainable intuition. 

 

The Goddess aspect of the dyad of God the Creator

I have often discussed God as a dyad - conceptualized as Father and Mother, or God and Goddess - which, for me, goes with my understanding of divine creation as the manifestation of love. In a nutshell, I regard creation as inextricably an aspect of love, and love as a dynamic relationship of beings. 

For me, this is reality, it is a fact; but I cannot claim to have properly taken account of it in my thinking and living. Like most Christians I tend, habitually, to think of God as a Father and as unitary - despite that this does not make coherent sense to me! Such is the nature of mortal life! 

But I currently feel impelled to try and "sort-out" my conceptual assumptions regarding The Goddess, triggered by the stimulus (if not example) of the role of Mary, Mother of Jesus, "Theotokos" - in the history of Christianity; and of her "veneration", the attention paid her - which has been (at times, in some places) the focus of actual Christian practice.  

I do not find any of the conceptualizations of The Goddess to be correct; mainly because I begin as a pluralist and animist - regarding many living "beings" as the ultimate units of reality. 

While almost-all philosophers have-been and are monists, believing reality is ultimately one; and usually believing that reality (including God, if believed-in) is ultimately impersonal, conceptual, abstract (often regarded as "static" and beyond "time"; conceptualized in terms of "properties" (or even negations) rather than an eternal, purposive, conscious, dynamic, living being.  

There has been much talk of The Goddess or Goddesses in recent decades, but I find almost all of this discussion to be retrograde, ineffectual, in error. 

1. Goddess talk is often linked to new forms and subjects of worship; whereas I don't believe that our God desires worship. 

2. Goddess talk is often - and very obviously - derivative-of and serving a left-materialist socio-political agenda (which agenda is primary and the bottom-line belief - and is ultimately evil, because a tool of totalitarianism). 

3. Because of the prevalent (nearly universal) monism; Goddess talk too often leads to an agenda of division - because people cannot even imagine how there came to be two, except by a division of some primal unity...

So, the idea of Goddess gets led-into a false activity of defining and distinguishing Divine Mother from Father, Goddess from God  - which soon becomes prescriptive and this-worldly; rather than descriptive of primal reality.  

Instead I am trying to understand the Goddess thus:

1. As reality, a fact, a fundamental assumption. 

2. God as creator is the consequence of love between two beings, whom we call God and Goddess.

3. Unless there were both, there would not have been creation, unless the relation was love there would have been no creation - so love is the nature, origin, and "driving force" of creation.   

What does this imply about our proper attitude to The Goddess? 

Put simply; I think it includes this: 

The Goddess is real, loves us each, is dyadic co-creator; and if we desire to affiliate with creation, then we do so by loving the Goddess and the God as divine parents of ourselves and of creation.

The Creator Goddess is a different being from the Creator God; as all beings are unique and distinct in their existence, and as all love is between unique beings. We get to know such differences by getting to know the "person". 

As with mortal life, knowing-about is qualitatively different-from and inferior-to actually knowing a person. 

That is one task: getting to know the Goddess - know directly, and for ourselves. 

Another reason why the mass media Always Lies about those people it witch-hunts

I have often been puzzled why it is that the mass media Always lies about the people it is witch-hunting. 

If you know anything of the reality of what lies behind these witch hunts, you will know that extra and lying accusations are Always smuggled into the charge-sheet, or even made central. 

This addition of false "crimes" is Always done, even when there are are sufficient reasons (from the evil totalitarian POV!) to "convict" the victim of wrong-doing. 

Such happened to me when subjected to an international mass media firestorm back in 2008. An article I published in the Times Higher Education Supplement was directed against the UK government's false assumption of identical average IQ in all social classes, and illustrated that the real differences had a much bigger than expected effect on the most IQ-selective universities. 

But some of the most impactful of global media added IQ "racism" - to the charge sheet; about which there was literally nothing mentioned in the article.  

Of course I knew, and had written elsewhere, about racial differences in average IQ - but the mass media did not know that I knew! Presumably because the journalists were too idle or busy to use a search engine. Apparently; making-up (what They believed were) lies it was quicker, easier - and just as effective for their purposes. 

I found this very interesting at the time, and since; and wondered why this happened. 

There are several reasons I came up with - all of which seem true. 

One is that that habitual liars habitually lie. Simple as that. 

But another is that it seems normal human nature to assume that somebody who is bad in one way is also bad in every other way - including the worst way.

This is, after all, what happens in novels, on TV, and in movies - any baddie is all-round bad - but especially in the way that the writer regards as most-bad. 

And therefore, when anyone is accused of badness, then you might as well accuse them of the worst possible badness - which, for the modern mainstream totalitarian-affiliate, is of course "racism". 

This is why all genuine baddies in nowadays-fiction are shown to be "racist". Whereas the antiheroes (which is the only kind of hero in the mainstream) is always "antiracist" even when a violent, thieving, arsonist, murderer.  

So, "racism" is semi-automatically added to the charge-sheet of all accused bad persons nowadays - and such is the definitional-usage of the term, that the accused can never prove himself innocent (even if he is foolish enough to try!).   

The problem of lying on the charge sheet goes even beyond that, however. There are also Always what might be termed gratuitous lies - random seeming made-up stuff. 

This, again, may be rooted in a natural human propensity to fantasize about enemies when in a position of power over them - because enemies don't matter, and we can say anything we like about them. So why not indulge - from sheer spitefulness.  

And the more false things we say about our enemies, the more time and energy they are tempted (or compelled) to waste in refuting random-nonsense. 

In other words; one aspect of the industrial-scale lying that goes on is our old adversary: top-down Project Chaos. 

Lying at every opportunity serves permanently to confuse (and thereby weaken) everybody on whom it is practiced, or who is drawn into the pointless and endless business of claim and counter-claim, evidence versus refutation. 

Carlisle Cathedral - East Window etc.

We had a very enjoyable visit to Carlisle Cathedral recently, not my first, or second - but I still feel there is a great deal more to discover about this marvellous building. 

There were only three cathedrals in the whole North of England in Medieval Times, after the Normans had wiped-out or impoverished most of the population - and of these Durham and York are by far the most famous architecturally, and indeed internationally. Nonetheless; Carlisle has all kinds of wonderful stuff, and a fascinating history - and should not be missed! 

Above is the East Window which is an enormous creation in the Decorated (middle-gothic, about 1350) style. It is perhaps the largest, most complex ancient stained glass window; and a great favourite among those who especially admire such things.  

More than any other similar window, this seems living and growing. 

Standing outside, we were fascinated by the extraordinarily organic - branching, curving, stone tracery - enclosing the stained glass; much of which is also medieval in its upper parts, having survived the iconoclastic eras of Edward VI and Cromwell - and misguided Victoria Restorers (albeit without the Victorian piety and energy, many of our oldest churches would have been lost altogether).  

There are many other delights such as (unrestored) Medieval wall paintings:

This is St Augustine and the devil, with some Middle English dialect doggerel verse:

One of the loveliest effects is produced by the Victorian barrel-vaulted Choir, with its starry painted ceiling. 

And in the choir stalls are many Chaucerian era, and Canterbury Tales-like themed, carved-oak misericord seats; such as a wife (of Bath?) beating her husband with a butter paddle:

And a mermaid with mirror, symbolic of Vanity:

 

The West end of the cathedral (which used to be the nave) is Norman, but got partially demolished by the Scots Presbytarians during the Civil war of the mid 1600s - but a fair bit survives. 

Many of the originally-semi-circular Romanesque arches are tremendously distorted by differential subsidence of adjacent pillars:

Here is a view through such a distorted Norman Arch of the 11th century; into the Early English, pointed-arches of the current aisles - from the 12th century:

Note: The photos aren't mine, but were pillaged from the interwebs. 

 

How much do you trust your church?

In the past it was natural and spontaneous for people to trust institutions more than themselves - including churches, and especially churches. 

People trusted their church more than any other authority - to the point of leaving home, moving house, losing livelihood - and even unto death. 

Nowadays this does not happen. People do not trust their churches any more than they structure other specific social institutions; and indeed people trust their churches less than they trust the consensus of high status secular institutions (when, which happens rarely, their church opposes the dominant ideology in some particular respect). 

Nowadays, traditionalist Christians (leaders and laity) are put into the position of arguing that people ought to trust their church more than themselves -- but in the past this did not seriously need to be argued. 

And nowadays? - well, it is easy for someone (whether a church leader, or devout lay member) to say that they trust their church above all other authority...

Yet in practice churches are never clear and unanimous when it comes to any serious matter; so the individual must (at least) discern within his trusted church...

Which means, in effect, choos-ing to trust... that-which he has chos-en to trust. 

At the same time most people are afraid to trust themselves when it comes to serious matters; or, at least, they are afraid to acknowledge that they are relying on their own best judgment. 

The disadvantage is that this means nearly everybody including devout Christians) is spiritually adrift and impotent...

But on the "positive" side, they never need to take responsibility for difficult decisions!

Since they can always (dishonestly) claim (even to themselves) that they are operating on the basis of trusting in the wisdom of a higher authority. 

The Bible is ultimately (just) a means to the end of understanding Jesus (and Christianity)

How should we read The Bible? 

All possible answers to that question are necessarily based upon non-Biblical (extra-Scriptural) assumptions - and yet how* we read the Bible tends to determine, or at least substantially shape, the nature of a person's Christianity. 

(*And there are many ways of reading The Bible - see the beginning of my Lazarus Writes - even currently among Christians; as well as among the much greater numbers of pseudo-Christians and not-Christians.) 

My conviction is that we ought to read The Bible as a means to an end; and that "end" ought primarily to be: to know and understand Jesus Christ, what he did for us - and what this implies for me. 

I say this in context of an overall belief that some of The Bible was written with the help of divine inspiration; and that this (by my judgment, and for people such as me) especially applies to the King James or Authorized Version (which is therefore significantly autonomous in relation to the versions from which the KJV was "translated"). Divine inspiration makes the source potentially more likely to be valuable to my personal quest - but is not an absolute; and cannot be.   

In other words; we should (and I do) read The Bible as a source of ideas, rather than a set of instructions; nor is The Bible an objective and imperative historical account that of itself is supposed to tell us who Jesus was and what he did - and what we ought to do about it.

The Bible does Not of-itself answer such fundamental questions - and clearly cannot, because communication entails interpretation. 

What reading it may (or may not!) do is provide us with some ideas, some accounts, possible descriptions, concepts etc; any of which we may personally use (or reject) as leading us towards a state of understanding and personal affiliation. 

The bottom-line is Not The Book, nor any particular translation of The Book, nor any particular set of theological expositions of how to read The Bible, and descriptions what it means... 

Instead the bottom-line is what we feel convinced about, what our deepest and most considered intuition tells us actually is the case, here-and-now, and what we personally want and need to do about it.    

Otherwise stated; we are personally responsible for whatever truth we get from reading The Bible; we therefore use The Bible as a means to the end of getting an understanding that we personally can take responsibility for. 

The obvious objection to this is that surely this is compatible with reading-into The Bible whatever we most want to find in it. 

Lots of people have done, and continue to do, this - indeed to anyone who disagrees with a Biblical interpretation, this seems very obviously to be whatever the other person is asserting. 

For instance: Conservative Evangelicals see Liberal Christians as reading-into The Bible modern left-wing political ideology; while the Liberals see the Evangelicals as using The Bible to justify conservative social attitudes. 

How can we avoid mere self-gratifying wishful thinking? 

The fact is that if we want to fool ourselves, if we want to discover that The Bible (in the way that we choose to read and understand it) merely confirms what we believe for other reasons and from other sources - then fool ourselves is what we will do. 

If we want The Bible to justify our primary allegiance to a social institution (such as a church or denomination), or a political ideology, or an academic specialism - then that is what we will do. The Bible will be read such as to accomplish this over-arching goal. 

Yet, anyone who fools himself thus, will have to contend with the fact that he is fooling himself. If that is all that is wanted, then he will get what he wants. 

And he will not be guided by The Bible, but instead by the primary allegiance that shapes his reading of The Bible. 

But if you are instead someone who wants to know the truth about reality and to live in accordance with it - then there would be no point in fooling oneself. 

Indeed, the reason for taking personal responsibility is precisely to escape the knowledge that other people are trying to foist their own (often self-interested) Biblical understandings upon us, for their own reasons. 

Perhaps for reasons of what they regard as a better society; or maybe they want to fool us, manipulate us - for their personal benefit. 

There are some matters upon which we do not want to trust anybody else - and this, for me, is one of them. 

This is my life, and I shall be the one to take the consequences of my decisions. Therefore, I will take responsibility for my understanding of Jesus, and for deciding how to read The Bible. 

Why on earth should I want to hand-over such matters to... somebody else, anybody else? 

To a church, or other institutions; to historians and linguists, to past "authorities" (whom I only vaguely know, and at second-hand or worse). 

No: I must myself be satisfied, ultimately. All else is a help, or a hindrance, to that goal.  

**

In particular, I regard it as unacceptable for my faith to be built upon the shifting (and mostly secular) sands of historical/ palaeographic/ linguistic/ cultural scholarship; theology and philosophy or the like. It is vital that I can reach behind such distortions and contingencies, to discover, devise, experience what I need to know - and that I do this ultimately for myself.  

It is my job to seek my salvation, and I read The Bible in that spirit; evaluating and selecting on that basis. 

In practice I have found great help from reading the (King James translation) Fourth Gospel, called "The Book of John" - but it has been a help, a source of ideas, a basis for further consideration - it has not been regarded as something that told me what to believe and do. 

It is not so much a matter of being selective about the IV Gospel; as that there are parts of it that I evaluate as untrue (for whatever reason, and there might be many reasons). 

Furthermore, there are many vital truths (as I regard them) unsaid in this Gospel, or anywhere in The Bible (or, indeed, anywhere in any of the Christian churches that I know of). 

On the other side; as for the rest of The Bible. I have found very little positive in the Old Testament; aside from phrases of wonderfully evocative poetry (in some of The Psalms, for example) and copious accounts of wrong-headed and mistaken things that I ought to avoid.  

In sum; The Bible is not essential to understanding or knowing Jesus - nor to salvation  - nor to living well in this mortal life. 

The Bible is "just" a potential source of information and ideas; that in principle might be found elsewhere or discovered for oneself.  

And the same applies to all other external sources: to the churches, traditions, theories and whatever. These are all sources to be used - not authorities to which it may be expected that I hand over responsibility for my life, my soul, and my eternal future. 

  

The question of how your mind is connected to a group mind

Is this the fundamental nature of inter-personal communication?

It seems evident that people in the past knew, or at least all assumed, that an individual person's mind was, or could be, connected with some larger group mind. 

The exact group mind to which an individual was connected seems to have varied between families, tribes, and clans; to larger groupings such as co-religionists, nations, or all of humanity. 

This assumption seems to lie behind, and justify, many Christian practices of the past and present; such as the phenomena of monasticism and hermits. These few were meant to be working on behalf of many others, in a way that seems to entail interconnectedness. 

Nowadays, there are group prayer meetings (to pray for some persons, outcomes, or general purpose). All of these assume a link between the individual and a larger human group. 

Furthermore, such a connection is a spontaneous assumption built-into young children; related to the belief that their thoughts are known to others, and may influence others - albeit this may mostly be related to fear of the discovery or harm, from guilty and "naughty" ideas or imaginations. 

Of course, nowadays and among adults; this kind of thing may be more of a social than spiritual activity; or it may be more like a "superstitious" observance than a genuinely spiritual activity. 

This practice is merely an enfeebled residue of earlier historical and childhood assumptions. Also, there is more conviction of the power of negative thoughts than of positive ones (which may be rooted in the intrinsic entropy of this mortal life where destruction is so much easier than creation). 

Nonetheless, I think there must also be positive potential in the connection between individual and group minds - in the right circumstances. 

One problem, as usual, is we tend to want other people to serve our interests, and not their own. Such that people are often praying (in effect) to control other people's attitudes, desires, decisions, actions... Such is the nature of many political intercessionary praying. 

Also we tend to become falsely focused in the supposed situation (as reported in mass media and by the leadership class) of people we know essentially nothing about, except what we are told by known liars and malign manipulators. 

So much so; that perhaps the most usual cause for group prayer nowadays is political: e.g. foreign wars, famines, natural disasters etc. - where the whole exercise is wholly framed by the information and moral-imperative of global media. 

In such situations; the group mind is highly politicized, with all the problems of insincerity and superficiality. 

And, in sum, such an exercise serves mainly to discredit the idea of an real and valuable connection between our mind and other minds; and to increase the already strong (and naturally despair-inducing) feelings of alienation and atomization that plague us.

Because if there really is no direct connection between our thinking minds and the minds of others, but instead it was true that we can only know people via perceptions and their interpretations; then we really would be isolated - ultimately "each on our own".

This is why I think we need to consider how, and in what situations, we are, and directly connected with a group mind. 

Because the alternatives are either the reality of your mind connected to a group mind; or else inescapable existential alienation.