"AI" and the propaganda of abstracting-isolation: how to explain away evil purposes

A post by Francis Berger brought into focus a common propaganda tactic to which I must invent a term "abstracting isolation". 

The basic idea is that some-Thing harmful being introduced, some new and bad policy, or some strategic plan of evil... is explained-away...

Is talked into neutrality or insignificance - and this is achieved by the tactic of drawing a line around it: thereby abstracting it from the actual situation and process in which it is encountered.

I have repeatedly seen this at every level of life. 

In the University workplace, management (on instruction from government) would introduce some bureaucratic change that Always took power from academics and transferred it to management. yet another in the unending stream of schemes for monitoring and control of academics and students...

The latest step in a successful strategy pursued over many years, a strategy of of incremental managerial bureaucratic takeover. 

But; this latest change was always abstracted from the strategy and from the big picture. In effect, a line was drawn around the new task or policy. We were made to consider the change as if it was an isolated entity - coming from nowhere except the earnest desire for functional improvement that we all know characterizes management; and going nowhere in particular - and especially not any kind of power-grab! 

(Only a delusional nut-job could imagine such a ludicrous notion as a planned government-management take-over.)

As such the New Thing always seemed neutral, trivial - nothing to get "upset" about, nothing to make a fuss about (unless you are neurotic, or paranoid?)... 

And yet at the same time this neutral, trivial, nothing was also - somehow - essential, important, and (bottom line) mandatory: we had to do it... or else. 

And because we had to do it or else; then we "might as well" make the best of it: indeed, we might as well pretend that this is A Good Thing...

Or, at least, a Thing with great potential for Good, if only people would stop wasting their time complaining about the inevitable; and instead take a positive and constructive attitude about using The Thing (whatever it happened to be) in the best possible way. 

At the end of this line of rhetoric; the trivial, isolated, neutral policy or technology, has become a boon - with the help of well-motivated staff who (instead of moaning and dragging their feet) will rise to the challenge of this new opportunity...

Who will, by their optimistic attitudes and hard work, ensure that the best possible outcomes will happen, and any problems will be solved. 

If only people would give This Thing the benefit of the doubt; then it could become a great gift, a tool with vast potential for those with goodwill to use in generating all kinds of positive possibilities.

Whew! 

All this from an abstractly-isolated neutral technological tool! All this "merely" from its being implemented by people of goodwill and positive intent to do good - as we can, of course, assume it will be implemented - the leadership positions of the world being almost exclusively inhabited by such Saints. 

Luckily, we almost never see technologies actually, in the real world, mega-exploited almost exclusively for their worst capabilities - so we needn't concern ourselves with that sort of difficulty! 

This with "AI"; what is actually emanating as an incremental change from a top-down, tera-dollar-funded, decades-long globalist totalitarian strategy; aiming at bureaucratic omni-surveillance and micro-control of mass thought and behaviour; aiming at the imposition of a materialist perspective and assuming the irrelevance and insignificance of God, Jesus Christ and the spiritual...

By a simple act of abstracting-isolation "AI" has been transformed into a vital tool that shall be used (mostly) for the betterment of humankind and this world - to stand in the path of which outcome, is both futile and misguided (if not worse). 

The spiritual harm of "AI" is this pretending, and convincing oneself, that purposive evil is good, and indeed ought-to-be regarded as good simply because we cannot (or will not) resist it... 

If you really Think About It: Evil can be Good!... If only we regard it with a calm, reasonable, properly-informed, and nuanced attitude. 

Such is one of the greatest and most effective Big Lies of our era. And, like all effective lies, it contains an element of truth...

Which is that within a vast strategy for generic-evil, there is indeed potential to go against the current (to some extent, and for a while but not permanently) - and do some particular-Good.  

True. But that truth does not affect the purposively evil nature of the general strategy. 

Discernment is vital for Christians; to know evil in order that we may affiliate to Good. 

It is all quite simple to know, difficult/impossible to do in the material world, but always possible to hold-fast-onto as our spiritual intention:

Our possibilities for doing Good despite evil, should never lead us to choosing allegiance with the strategies of evil. 

The fact of demons refutes that God can be both "Omni" and Good

What seems to me a very powerful argument against the mainstream orthodox Christian notion that God-the-creator is both Good and an Omni-God; is the theologically-assumed reality of demons - that is, of never-incarnated spirits who are irredeemably committed to evil, and who operate in this world.

In an ultimate sense, this is a just a subset of "the problem of evil" - and its existence At All; but most of the attempted explanations of the presence of evil in this world are focused upon human beings. Apparently; many mainstream Christians (although not me) are sufficiently satisfied by the traditional explanation that human evil is a consequence of 1. human free will (granted by God) and 2. The Fall; plus 3. that there is always a possibility that mortal humans may repent and accept salvation. 

It is this possibility that any human who is currently committed to evil may, nonetheless, repent and accept salvation that serves to explain why such humans are not annihilated or incarcerated somewhere where they can do no harm. 

So; most orthodox Christians believe that evil demons are real, and that they have a harmful effect on this world; but that they cannot ever repent. 

This creates a contradiction. 

It seems obvious (?) that any Good God who had the power to do so (as an Omni-god does, be definition); would decisively sequester such evil beings somewhere where they could not corrupt or damn human beings. 

That God does not do; and allows demons access to humans, implies either that God is not Good, or that God is not "Omni". 

[Note added: To clarify, here I am not trying to refute the orthodox explanation of the existence of demons in the first place. This, in traditional orthodoxy is usually a matter of angels being conceived as a separate creation from Men. Upon having been created, these angels then use their free will to choose evil - they become fallen-angels. This fall is then regarded a - according to the attributed nature of angelic beings - a permanent condition. What I am instead saying here is focused on the question of what God does about fallen-angels/ demons, after they have arisen.] 

Maybe this is why so many modern Christians who cleave to the definition of God as wholly Good and "Omni" tend to deny the reality of traditionally-understood demons. Instead they (seem to) regard demons ("if they really exist") as merely confused, misguided and "disturbed" spirits who might attain salvation; or in some other way as only-partly-evil, or reversibly-evil.   

Or else such Christians fall back on the "God's Goodness is total but un-understandable by Men" argument; which leaves the Christian "God-is-Good" deity indistinguishable from the Islamic concept of "Good is God".  

Such are the ways in which the stark contradiction of traditional Christian theology when it comes to demons is obscured; and concealed behind imprecision, and complexity of (only vaguely-understood) abstractions. 

NOTE: I intend to present an alternative metaphysics to explain permanently-evil demon-spirits and their continued operations in this world; in a soon-to-be-published post - which will be referenced back to the above argument.

Metaphysics and the Marriage of Jesus - or, how fundamental assumptions shape and determine Christianity

Our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality (i.e. our "metaphysical" assumptions) have a decisive effect upon our perceptions and interpretations - such that when our metaphysics rules-out something, then that thing is often unperceived - or, if perceived, then regarded as impossible. 

This is, I presume, why the marriage of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene (who is the same person as Mary of Bethany) is either unnoticed by readers of the IV Gospel (called "John"), and/or why each mention of it is interpreted-away - despite that there is ample and coherent reference to the marriage and its profound spiritual significance in that Gospel.  

The reason is not far to seek; because most Christians have the fundamental assumption that Jesus cannot be married, because Jesus is mystically conceptualized (in an Athanasian-Trinitarian fashion) as one of the three persons of the One Godhead. And, as such, a cosmically-significant marriage of Jesus to a human being is so impossible as to be absurd. 

Consequently, each and every mention of the marriage of Jesus and Mary must mean something else; and the only task is to suggest what these references might mean. Since humans are natural experts at explaining-away whatever they regard as impossible, this is an almost automatic process.  

The same applies to reading the IV Gospel itself. As I described at the beginning of Lazarus Writes; when mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christians read this Gospel; they do so by implicitly-but-decisively subordinating it to the numerical majority "consensus" of the rest of the New Testament. First to the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Gospels I, II, III; but especially Matthew and Luke), and/or the Epistles (especially Pauline), and to some parts of the Revelation/ Apocalypse.

(Almost as if spiritual authority was determined by majority vote!)  

My understanding - that the IV Gospel is the only eye-witness, earliest, and qualitatively most authoritative source concerning Jesus - is regarded as idiosyncratic, and indeed arbitrary. 

Therefore; the New Testament, and whole Bible, are being read in terms of fundamental assumptions concerning the weight and validity of its components, and how this question ought to be determined; that washes-away anything stated in the IV Gospel, or omitted from it, that is regarded as significant but contradictory to the majority of Books (or to other sources such as Matthew, Luke and Paul; that are treated as de facto more authoritative). 

By assumption, therefore, the IV Gospel must be explained in terms that harmonize it with other parts of the Bible; those parts that have, through history and as maintained by the churches, been accorded an assumed primacy. 

Another assumption relates to how we personally (each of us) ought to read The Bible - including the IV Gospel. 

It is assumed that we ought to defer to and obey some external authority in allowed ways of reading or understanding the Bible. 

Which particular authority we ought to defer to is a matter of contention between Christian denominations and churches (e.g. church tradition, or current authoritative church teaching as a whole or of specific persons, or some version of theology, or current linguistic and historical scholarship...). 

Among among those Christians who state that the Bible is primary, and its own authority, and ought to be understood as inerrant and literally true; there are always prior assumptions as to whether this means the Bible as a whole is true, or else the New Testament primarily, or particular parts of the New Testament. 

And the "correct" way of understanding the Bible is likewise a prior assumption. Should its ultimate meaning be understood in an overall sense of mutual cohesion - including all Boks in both Old and New Testaments? Or understood one Book at a time? 

Or does truth reside in the Bible verse by verse - or even word by word? 

And/or do those words ascribed to Jesus (spoken by him, as recorded), have the highest authority?

Even those denominations that assert we ought to read the Bible for ourselves by personal revelation, invariably insist upon some particular interpretations; at least for key doctrines, and for church members we aspire to have good standing in the institution. 

My point here is that our understanding of what is significant and what it means, is structured by assumptions that we all have before we embark on Christian exegesis; and before we read The Bible - or indeed seek guidance from any external source.

This is just a fact of things: our fundamental metaphysical assumptions have structured our Christian faith, determine what counts as evidence, and shape what that evidence means.  

We cannot choose not to have fundamental assumptions. 

Therefore your choice and my choice as Christians; lies in whether we acknowledge and become aware of the fact of prior assumptions; or - as is more usual - to deny and refuse to discuss the fact.  

 

NOTE ADDED: A further example of a prior-to-Christianity and fundamental structuring assumption is the nature of God-the-creator. Most theologically-minded Christians insist that God is and must be an Omni-God that created ex nihilo. Such a person's entire Christianity is built within such assumptions; such that (for example) "God is Love" is conceptualized within the metaphysical assumption that the loving God must be the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God; such that whatever Love means to them (their conceptualization of the nature of Love) is subordinated to the imperatives of the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God. Yet, such persons usually refuse to admit that their metaphysical assumptions regarding God Just Are prior-to, and therefore not derived-from, Christianity. 

The vital importance of personal Creativity: God, Heaven, Resurrection

Virtue in traditional Christianity, indeed in traditional religion, is about obedience to external deity - service to the will of a deity.

Creativity is in fact the product of deity; and it may be regarded as the monopoly of deity.  

Traditional religion does not have a central place for creativity by Men...

Especially not by individual Men...

Especially not by all individual Men. 

Indeed, within ancient religions; creativity may regarded as be an impossibility, and the belief in the possibility of creativity as a delusion...

Given that everything has already been done (or conceived of) by the deity. There is simply no space for individual creativity to exist when God is regarded as omni-everything. 

Even when regarded as a genuine possibility; creativity is seen as, at best, an "optional extra". 

But more often it is at least a significant temptation to sin; and the impulse for creativity may even be itself regarded as a sin (e.g. by pretending to, usurping, displacing the divine prerogative). 

Yet, if is is acknowledged that creativity is an innate and inevitable fact of agency or "freedom" (properly understood as a positive phenomenon); then trivialization, denial, or demonization of creativity has a dreadful and distorting effect on religion.

At best this leads to a self-contradicting double-think; in which creativity is so framed as to deny its reality.

At worst it leads to a tyrannical attempt to thwart innate humanness and crush all individual people into becoming functional-parts of a social machine - a machine that is asserted to be dedicated to divine service.  

Then this crushing, and all which it entails, is labelled as Good! And insofar as the soul cries against it and yearns for more and better... Well, that is just more sin!

My interpretation is that there always was human creativity; because, for me, creativity is what each individual Being brings to divine creation, simply by virtue of his uniqueness participating in the ongoing work of creating. 

So, there always-was creativity; but it used to be unconscious, implicit - unidentified as such - hence deniable, hence relabelled as obedient service. 

What happened increasingly through the "modern" era, and by now is almost universal; is that individual creativity has become conscious, and therefore often deliberate and purposive. 

So that when creativity is trivialized, denigrated, thwarted, excluded, or suppressed nowadays by any religion - modern individuals are much more likely to realize, and be aware why, they feel crushed; why they feel fundamentally dissatisfied. 

Tis is one deep reason why any such religion feels... wrong. 

Traditional and Orthodox Christian theology does not take human creativity seriously enough to account for it; nor to recognize that creativity is absolutely central to the nature of Christian salvation. 

For example: an after-life without creation is not Heaven but something else. 

In a sense creativity is what resurrection is for: resurrection retains our individuality (hence agency) of self; whereas "the self" is explicitly discarded (and indeed vilified) by many other religious or spiritual afterlives. 

A self-styled Christianity that lacks a proper place for individual creativity, will likewise end up discarding - and demonizing - "the self". 

Resurrected eternal life in Heaven is for creation - when creation is understood as an intrinsic aspect of "Love".

Love is of and between individuals - and creativity is part of what we do about this! 

Put differently: creativity is each individual Being participating in the purposes and processes of divine creation, harmonized by a spirit of love.

    

Because traditional Christian theology was devised in a world where creativity was unconscious; the fact it has no place for personal creativity went unnoticed for many centuries.

But now it is evident that traditional Christian theology is wrong; exactly because it does not allow for the central necessity (and goodness) of individual creativity. 

We therefore need a new metaphysical understanding of Christianity; one in which creativity is explicitly recognized as occupying a central and vital place. 

2020 - The year of the double global revolution; the year of two successful international coups

2020 was the year when there was a completely successful coup in which global-totalitarianism took-over all the nations of the world; conclusive evidence for which was that the various previous governance procedures of nations were displaced by diktat - and under such a system the peoples of the whole world were "locked down". 

Early 2020 was an extraordinary moment in history! 

Not least because (it seemed at the time) hardly anybody noticed or recognized that it had happened - a perfect, silent takeover had been accomplished; under cover of fake-necessity concealed by the stalking horse that was the Birdemic. 

So... A silent coup, an unopposed takeover, and therefore almost entirely un-noticed at the time - and indeed hardly acknowledged since. 

By the early summer of 2020; the world was (almost literally) under-the-thumb of the totalitarian leadership class: confined to quarters, mentally terrorized into compliance, physically separated, masked and anonymized - utterly pacified! 

And the expectation was that this was only the start of such-things, and the situation would surely be made complete and permanent... 

Allowable public debate was confined to discussing whether all this was enough to make people "safe", or else whether conditions should be made more restrictive. 

The expectation was for "more of the same" - a world under a single authority; a world of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

Then, quite rapidly in the high summer of 2020, and even less recognized then and since: a second coup! 

Into this situation of triumphant totalitarian control, of top-down pacification, was injected the phenomenon of race war. 

Suddenly, the world's unity and obedience was severed by mandatory antiracism...

Hostile groups were created, encouraged, subsidised, given legal immunity - and very swiftly, what had been a distinctively American species of mutual destruction; was spread across most of the world, and bureaucratically-incorporated into all the major social institutions (officialdom, mass media, law, religions, education, science etc. - and even sports, even cricket!...)

The divisive chaos of a manufactured US race war was deliberately imposed on the world; by that same new-formed, centrally-controlled, bureaucratic-media system that had been created and enforced by the Birdemic.  

Evidently - as so often happens in revolutions - the first and successful coup had been co-opted by a second revolution - with different aims. 

Whereas the first Birdemic coup of early 2020 was aiming at a totalitarian controlled world of order; the second antiracism revolution was aimed at dis-order. 

Whereas the first revolution had used centralized power to make all the nations and the peoples of the world one for the first and only time in human history! One in their obedient docility...

The second revolution seized the new-forged instruments of surveillance and coercion and encouraged division, mutual hostility, break-up, violence...

And the same centre of globalist totalitarianism (but now "under new management") began to kindle resentments and fears that had been almost wholly suppressed by the Birdemic-coup.

They have since fanned into flames the embers of those many and highly lethal post-2020 inter-national, inter-ethnic, inter-religious conflicts, gratuitous wars - with multiple provocations, escalations, fake pennant events - and so forth. 

Because the second revolution was silent, unnoticed, unacknowledged - it has not only been able to present its own plans for destructive chaos as if they were part of the first revolutions program; but also to subvert and invert the established plans for totalitarian surveillance and control. 

The biggest and best example is the phenomenon of "AI" - which is regarded by the advocates of the first, Birdemic, revolution as a tool for surveillance and control; but which is actually an agent of socially-destructive chaos. 

2020 was indeed a watershed year in which "everything changed": the year of two silent and invisible and imperceptible international coups; the year of successful double global revolution: first the making of a system for world control; and then the seizing and usage of this system to induce global chaos... which continues and increases, on a daily basis.

 

Note: The ultimate, and causal, reality behind these proximate political phenomena was spiritual. It was an evolutionary change from the ascendancy of one form of evil to another. Evil is "progressive" - unless repented, it feeds upon itself and gets more-evil. As the "Ahrimanic" evil seeking power reached its apex of success; it began to be displaced by the more advanced and purer "Sorathic" evil that spitefully sought the suffering and eventual destruction of all that is of-God, Good - of divine creation and its aspects of Men and other Beings, of Nature... eventually everything. 

Just because someone opposes sadistic destructiveness, does not mean they are actually good!

In a geopolitical world where treachery and gratuitous murder are openly and officially celebrated; it's become pretty easy to appear "good" - merely by defending The System, and its continued functionality.

When contrasted with a mainstream moral system increasingly based-upon paranoid resentment and Schadenfreude - those whose vision of the future is 2020-on-steroids may begin to look "good by comparison". 

When routine usage of mass-scale and indiscriminate assassination, and the parasitic scavenger-of -corpses presented as a moral ideal; with its implicit Hobbesian future of eternal war of each against all...

It is easy to fall into supporting the only publicly available and organized alternative: a totalitarian world of omni-surveillance and micro-control (ostensibly) supervised by "AI" and implemented by "robots".  

In other words; the greedy lying tyrants of the lockdown-era start to seem "not so bad" after all... 

(By reasoning that "at least" they don't actively support industrial-scale torture and slaughter, sabotage of production and trade, and environmental annihilation.)

The stage has been set for the masses eagerly to invite their own mental slavery to a materialist-computerized society, built upon absolute denial and exclusion of the divine and human - hoping thereby to avoid the alternative.  

Unless we are alert to this spiritual danger; we will fall willingly into this long-prepared trap of not just choosing between two evils; but inwardly-endorsing that which we regard as the lesser evil - and thereby coming to regard in our hearts that which is fundamentally opposed to God, divine creation and salvation - as if it was good.

All this is presented as a forced-choice - either embrace the global totalitarianism and the systematic destruction of spirit; or else embrace a world of deliberate and spiteful destruction. 

The System is presented as the only bulwark against forever-everywhere war; and chaos is presented as the only escape from eternal mental slavery. 

These are not, of course, the only options; but nobody with power/ influence/ high status is going to tell you about the good alternatives.

Note added: We also need to ask how it became normal and acceptable among the ruling classes to celebrate treachery and assassination; even when these harm the ruling classes own long-term self-interest. This leads to a consideration of the trajectory of evil, of how unrepented evil is dynamic and feeds upon itself - how evil becomes "purer" with time: meaning that it becomes more wholly-negative.    

Was Jesus mainly providing information and teaching; or was Jesus a new creator?

One of the major difficulties that Christians now have* is in trying to explain clearly, simply, concisely: who Jesus was, what Jesus did - and, in particular, why Jesus was indispensable. 

(i.e. "Indispensable" to those who want what Jesus offers.) 

Jesus might be conceptualized in two main ways: either as someone who was a Teacher and Preacher of The Truth; or as a Creator who changed the universe - and thereby the possibilities for Men. 

Information

Historically, Jesus has been regarded mainly as a T&P who provided Information. 

This information was also backed-up by divine power - but the main thing (people assumed) was "the information". 

In order that this information be learned, understood, and acted-upon in future generations; it was assumed that Jesus constituted a Church (naturally, several/ many have claimed to be "the" Church that Jesus intended). 

In sum: To varying degrees and in various ways, the true information derived from Jesus and provided by this Church, would be backed-up by divine power. 

The Church's "essential" job was to discover, preserve, develop the information from Jesus; then to disseminate it, persuade people of its validity, make and enforce rules of conduct derived from this information. Ultimately, the Church would supervise construction of a human society that embodied, was built-upon, the information provided by Jesus.  

(The "essential" nature of Jesus was therefore bound to the "essential" nature of "the" Church that was the true repository of "the information" that Jesus provided. That is; Jesus was essential because of his information; therefore Jesus was essential insofar as "the" Church was essential to the knowledge, understanding, implementation etc. of this information.)

  

Creation

I suggest an  alternative understanding of "What Jesus did" is that he was a New Divine Creator ...

"New" because Jesus did not exist as a divine Man before his incarnation on earth; and "divine" because he was creating additional possibilities; he was creating an extension to pre-existing creation. 

"Primary " divine creation already existed before Jesus; and Jesus was born-into this creation and became divine in the context of that first creation. 

What Jesus did (the primary thing); was to make possible new a different future, a new option, than was possible before Jesus. 

This, I believe, is the truth about Jesus - it is the proper primary conceptualization of who he was and what he did, and its consequences. 

But. 

This (I would say true) way of understanding Jesus as a new creator of new possibilities is blocked by theological-philosophical assumptions, which were actually pre-conceptions (i.e. they were pre-Jesus ways of understanding); which have been (I believe) retroactively imposed-upon who Jesus was and what Jesus did. 

For instance:

Jesus's nature as a divine Man, incarnated into mortal life on earth, who creatively-transformed the possibilities of existence from his life onwards...

Was obscured and rendered incoherent by also insisting that Jesus The One God, who was eternal omniscient, omnipotent and unchangeable, impassible.

Nobody can explain (clearly, simply, concisely) how Jesus can be a mortal incarnate Man and also The One God - therefore this is made A Mystery. 

So the person trying to understand why and how This Man Jesus who lived and dies 2000 years ago is necessary to salvation now; is immediately told: It's a mystery.  

(Not a good start, I suggest.) 

The fact that therefore Jesus made-a-necessary difference, did something new, brought something to the world that did not exist before the time of Jesus...

Was terminally-confused by insisting that Jesus was always the One God, from eternity from forever-before his birth/ life/ death/ ascension; and (because of his "omni"-attributes) Jesus operated outside of time. 

Such that Jesus somehow always was, as well as always-is, and always shall be... 

Such that the explanatory sequence of creation before Jesus and then creation after Jesus; was said to be ultimately a kind-of mortal and earthly illusion...

Because in real-reality, outside of Time/ where Time-is-not, where the One God (including Jesus) existed... creation Just Was: Eternally and Perfect...

So the understanding of Jesus as a new creator that I regard to be true; was-and-is theologically regarded as false by prior philosophical assumption; because it was assumed that could be no ultimate change in creation; neither before nor after, no addition to creation. 

(After all, how could Jesus add-to or improve something that was already and forever perfect?)   

The consequences include that Jesus is nowadays, almost universally (among self-identified Christians as well as not), regarded as primarily a teacher, preacher, prophet... Jesus is seen as a provider of information. 

Christian debate therefore focuses mainly on "the information" - on the validity of its sources, whether the sources are being understood accurately, whether or what difference is made by societal changes; and the various claims by Churches or secular experts over the authority to decide these matters of information.   

Among self-identified Christians; debate also concerns the nature and scope of that divine power which (it is envisaged) backs-up and pushes "the information". 

Questions such as: What does God really want to happen to us - will reform be imposed, or perhaps our destruction? Is the divine power restricted to a particular Church, or particular parts of the earthly-institutional instantiation of "the" Church? 

Does divine power to impose information apply to all humans in the same way? Is divine power irresistible by humans, or does it depend on voluntary human cooperation?

Questions regarding Church authority; how it arose and how it was preserved and transmitted across many generations.   

Such are the kinds of question that concern many self-identified Christians: questions of information.    

Alternatively: It seems to me that when Jesus is understood as a divine Man whose work was essentially that of Creator operating in sequential Time; the story and sequence become clearer and easier to understand (and explain). 

It is realized that for Jesus the teaching and preaching and prophecy were an "optional extra" - information was secondary to his main work and achievement. 

In an ultimate sense, when understood as a Creator; if Jesus had lived and died in utter obscurity, and left no records or memories in earthly society - then his essential work of creation could still have been accomplished.

The new-created possibilities Jesus made, would still exist; and would still be available to all who desired them.  

+++

*Aside from the fact that modern Men have been trained, multi-generationally, to find the claims of religion incredible and ridiculous; while uncritically gulping-down endless drafts of incoherent/ self-contradicting nonsense from the Establishment media-conduit.

Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.  

High- and Low-level functionality; Totalitarian control versus Chaos

If I am correct that the ruling class are divided between - on the one side - totalitarian bureaucrats with the aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control - mostly based on the motivation of power. Such people enjoy manipulating people into doing Their will...

And - on the other side - Agents of Chaos; whose agenda is destructive; and whose main motivation is resentment, hatred, and spite. 

They most enjoy immiserating, tormenting and killing people - and any affected purpose is a sufficient excuse for this activity. 

But these two kinds of evil are always mixed, in practice; and I think the way evil works at the geopolitical and national scale is that the two categories are defined by overall and strategic motivation at the high-level. 

And perhaps necessarily, each kind of evil at the strategic level tends to be "balanced" (and made short-term more effective) by the other kind of evil at the lower level. 

So, the totalitarian bureaucrat agenda is essentially ideological at the highest level - and that ideology is Leftist - with its various justificatory sub-strands such as socialism, feminism, antiracism, climate, healthism etc.  t strikes me that there is a kind of division between these groups. 

Consequently, bureaucratic totalitarianism at a high-level almost sabotages itself by destroying functionality at the lower level. 

This is the well known phenomenon whereby top-down imposed Leftist ideology destroys its own functionality in all kinds of institutions, corporations, organizations; because the low-level people are increasingly "doing ideology" instead of running the organization. 

This is why strongly totalitarian leftist organizations so often descend into chaos, and fail to yield their ideological intentions: and we get schools and colleges that do not teach; police indifferent to the law; media "entertainment" that does not entertain; scientists that hide truth and never discover anything useful etc. etc. 

Normal modern Western life...  

In other words there is a conflict between high-level totalitarianism, and always increasing low level-dysfunctionality - and indeed chaos.

The Agents of Chaos have almost the opposite problem; because in order to pursue the high-level chaos, they need to support functionality at the lower levels. 

So, in pursuit of global and national chaos; the AoCs tend to restore some degree of functionality at a low level - thereby creating a non-chaotic, indeed somewhat anti-chaotic, counter-current. 

In order to disrupt agriculture or international trade, or to induce wars; the AoCs may need to build-up manufacturing functionality, or improved military and intel capability; and they may need to deploy genuinely effective propaganda - these, at least in the short-medium term.

Thus, there is a conflict between high-level chaos, and the immediate low-level need for functional power to cause this chaos.

My analysis is not meant to be reassuring. Evil is not defeating itself by these conflicts. 

Instead, the internal contradictions and counter-currents just lead to more evil, of more kinds, in different aspects and places - and make this evil so multiple in nature as to be impossible to defeat by opposition!

As always, we are brought around to the truth that opposing evil is futile or counter-productive; and evil can be overcome only by Good...

(Remembering that there is, and can-be, no real and effective Good; without a personal and loving creator-God. While noting knowledge of such a God is necessary but not sufficient, for truly Good intentions.) 

Mercy versus Justice, and Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)  

This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s. 

Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners." 

The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands. 

Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...

The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...

The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her... 

She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.    

[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent. 

The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....

It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent. 

But the moral is not always conspicuous... 

The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance. 

For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.

Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches). 

I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind. 

When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels. 

Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird double-negative explanation of Jesus's work; as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded by Divine Justice to compensate for sin. 

Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresentation of the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of  re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love.

With the difference that the necessary love is displaced from Jesus, to his mother (but his mother having been re-conceptualized to possess the salvific attributes of Jesus). 

But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective in attaining salvation for Marian adherents ; so long as the motives were true. 

The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of "license to sin" misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above. 

This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like... yet Mary will save me if I love her... 

Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...

Popular with those who do not really believe that All Men are sinners including themselves; and that no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection*.

(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)

 

The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first. 

Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first. 

But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.

Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book. 

*I suppose I should state that I regard it as theologically incoherent from a Christian perspective to claim that Mary was conceived and existed without sin, and was assumed into Heaven without going through death and resurrection. The necessity and work of Jesus - and the requirement that we are all  incarnated into mortal life - only makes sense when it is understood that death and resurrection was and is the only way to "fit us for Heaven". Nonetheless (fortunately for all of us!) theological coherence is not a requisite for salvation! 

Just how important is Free Will (Agency)?

William James Tychonievich has written a blog post about a fictional book that (as part of its story) attempts (albeit from a Jewish rather than Christian perspective - it was written by a Rabbi) to provide an intellectual model that combines the attributed omniscience and omnipotence of God, with human Agency, or Free Will.  

But, as William argues (endorsed by comments from myself and Francis Berger) the model actually, by its assumptions and implications, sacrifices human agency in order to sustain the Omni-God assumption. 

In this respect, and in common with nearly-all Christian theology (including mainstream Roman and Eastern Catholic and Protestant theology); it is evident that the omni-nature of God is primary - and an understanding of human agency and freedom is something that is, in practice, sacrificed to the need to ascribe omni attributes to God. 

This is confirmed when the Rabbi author (Shaul Behr) responds to the post with a couple of comments; finishing with:

Like those who came before me, I am content, as you say, to leave it as an unresolved "mystery of God".

The Rabbi's response is therefore essentially identical with that of most Christian theologians over the past couple of millennia; and I translate it as follows:

We are sure and certain that God is omnipotent and omniscient. We also recognize that Men must be free agents in order that each Man's choices have meaning. But, although we can provide confusing, complex abstract pseudo-explanations of how this might be possible - none of these explanations really make sense. And we cannot provide a clear, simple, coherent account of how free agency is possible with an Omni-God. So we call the situation of Man's freedom in the context of Omni-God "a mystery".

The question I ask is: is this good enough? 

And I answer: No it is not good enough. 

It is, in practice, treating the matter of coherently understanding human agency as trivial - and not something that needs to be understood. 

It is commonly asserted that all Christians (and, apparently, all Jews) must believe in the Omni-God, or else they are not Christians (or Jews) - because Omni-God Just Is God - because supposedly nothing else makes any sense... 

Man's freedom, in stark contrast, becomes something that must be taken on faith, as a form of words; by the asserted necessity for each of us to trust in the validity of theological authority. 

Apparently; Omni-God is mandatory; while by contrast free agency is something that needs to be asserted but does not need to be understood - and, because of Omni-God, freedom cannot be understood. 

Unsurprisingly, in practice, traditional Christian theology has always tended to assert God's omni-nature as interpreted by "the church" (whichever church prevailed); while human agency was considered to be a problem.  

Indeed, human agency is blamed for the evils of this world. 

It seems that the only proper role of human freedom - in traditional theology - is to make the right choices from among those presented by God.

Unsurprisingly, since there is only one right answer among choices, and all possible answers are God-given; it has seemed to many Christians that it might be better if humans had simply been pre-programmed to make these right choices. 

It has thus seemed that the only significant role of human agency is negative: freedom is seen as the freedom to do wrong. 

Which fits with the pointlessness of human life when God is Omni... Since such a God is everything, then human beings can add nothing to creation; which implies that creation of humans was futile - because (from this perspective, at the bottom line) the best a human can do in life, is to follow a pre-determined path of correct choices. 

Apparently; freedom has no positive role. 

Thus, by such accounts; the problem of Omni-God and human freedom has been "solved" by reducing human freedom to an expression of negative resistance to God's reality.

Freedom becomes regarded like a disease; something wrong with Men... Hence the centrality of "original sin". 

However, if the logic is followed - we get the bizarre assertion that this supposedly Omni God, for some "mysterious" reason, created flawed human beings who can only mess-up.       

The things is: our freedom, our agency as human beings, is experiential; something we know innately and directly. 

Whereas the Omni-nature of God is something inferred as a consequence of non-intuitive abstract assumptions; and via logical procedures that many or most people cannot follow, or regard as flawed. 

And that is a problem! 

It is a problem that will not go away: Christians know we are free, and yet we are told that this knowledge of agency is subordinate to the assertion of Omni-God.

Officially - we are told that the ultimate answer is that common sense cannot comprehend this situation - tha tthe situation is necessary and unavoidable - therefore "it is a Mystery".  

And yet this mystery is made to be foundational to being-a-Christian (and also perhaps a Jew)!

Well, in the end, the only responsible way to address this situation is for each of us to plumb the depths of our primary assumptions concerning the ultimate nature of reality - to establish what we really suppose to be known, and sure, and foundational. 

Is it what we have been told, or what we experience?  

Upon this hinges a great deal. 

Are traditionalist-orthodox Christians contented Not To Know how salvation works for the massive majority of (outside of the church) foetuses, children, non-Christians?

I am much more confident of the goodness of God the Creator; than I am of any theology; such that it seems obvious that Christians ought to fit theology around the goodness of God, and not vice versa. 

I am also much more confident that Jesus was the Son of God, God was his Father, spoke with God person to person; and taught that we can and do know God by knowing Jesus - than I am confident about metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature and operations of "the Trinity". 

Put together: I am much more confident that God the Creator's goodness is fundamentally like Jesus's goodness, and like the goodness of Men (when we are good) - much more confident of this recognition and knowledge of God's goodness; than I am confident of the theological explanations that posit a God whose "goodness" is alien and incomprehensible to me, and therefore a God whose "goodness" has the human appearances of evil. 

(Thus I solidly believe that God is good; not that good is God.) 

From this perspective I perceive that most Christian theologians have always seen things the other way around to myself. 

They insist on trying (and failing) to explain the goodness of God in terms of (what seem to be prior and extra-Christian concepts of) monotheistic oneness, and dogmas concerning the "omni" attributes of the Creator.  

And consequently, they insist upon their inference of the utter unbridgeable difference between God and Men, and the unknowable nature of so infinitely-different a being as their God is from ourselves. 

This, I believe, lies behind the problem of the possibility of salvation "outside of the church" - which has apparently plagued thoughtful orthodox Christians as far back as there are records, and still does. 

On the one hand; strict orthodox-mainstream Christian church theology typically excludes the possibility of salvation from those outside of the church, and/or those who die unrepentant (e.g. the Protestant idea of "as the tree falls, there it shall lie" - meaning it is the state of mind at the moment of death that determines our eternal future).  

Both of these ideas seem to imply that the mass majority of humankind through history and still today are doomed to damnation. 

Yet those who assert salvation-for-all ("universalists") deny the reality of freedom, of agency, of choice* - and/or make this mortal life a needless hazard to salvation. 

Caught between the monstrous idea that most of humankind are doomed to damnation by an inscrutable God (He must be inscrutable, because he is Not  understandably good and loving) - and the robotic- determinism of universal salvation - most Christians will affect ignorance.  

They will say some version of "we do not know, because we have not been told" (meaning told dogmatically by their church, or the Bible as interpreted by their church) what happens to that (I say it again!) massive majority of Men throughout history who died in the womb, or as young children, or in places and times when there was no Christian church. 

This affectation of ignorance concerning such a colossal question strikes me a grotesque if sincere, and wicked if insincere. 

How could so many self-identified Christians be contented Not to know what happens to most people alive or who ever have lived?

Are they really only concerned about the magic circle of people within their own chosen church or denomination? 

My point is that this is an extremely important matter, and Christians ought not to allow themselves to profess ignorance on such a vital matter. 

They need (are duty-bound) to find a coherent answer that accords with their fundamental understanding God, Jesus and what it is to be saved. 

And this further means, that they ought carefully to examine whatever answer they come-up-with and commit-to; to ensure that their answer is essentially coherent with what needs to be affirmed for Christians.

Because... most of what most churches/ denominations say on this extremely important subject is very obviously incoherent. 

* Salvation must freely be chosen, it is opt-in. This means that the Mormon idea that all children before eight years old, the year from which they regard baptism as valid, will be saved - is also incoherent. 

Discussing free will: A problem with arguing about Christianity, is that most people most of the time don't understand what they are arguing-for

I'm a bit obsessed with this business of "understanding" as a pre-requisite!

As a spontaneous "philosopher"; I am naturally an argumentative person, who has striven for the past couple of decades to suppress this trait because it was (mostly) a pointless waste of my life... More exactly, it was pointless in terms of trying to change other-people and the-world (which is what I was trying to do)... 

Actually, the arguing was sometimes useful to me, in clarifying my own understanding; especially when I became aware that I did not really understand what I was arguing-for. 

This was also something that sometimes happened when I was teaching... I'd be standing writing something on the board and expounding it; when I realized that it didn't make sense or I was just putting-out a black box assertion. 

These were significant moments of learning. 

It has happened on this blog too. Early on in its history; I was trying to explain to William James Tychonievich what was "free will" and how it worked - because he did not seem to be able to grasp what I was saying and kept on questioning me...

When I realized I myself did not understand what I was saying about free will. 

Ultimately, I was parroting forms of words that I had heard or read elsewhere, and they really didn't make sense. I was repeating the classical theological arguments about free will, that I had come across in Boethius, CS Lewis, and scholarly accounts of Aquinas - and I recognized that I could not understand them, not really.

Further thought led to a recognition that my personal inability to understand was not (in this case) from inadequate intelligence or insufficient thought; but that the arguments were intrinsically un-understandable because they contained abstractions that served the role of a black box; a logical package the role of whose content was asserted but could never be grasped. 

The classic theological argument I was defending was that God was assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent (an "Omni-God" and created everything from nothing including me; and that free will was then gifted to me by God. 

The particular incomprehensible abstraction was that God could and did give free will - which is the agency of an individual to act from-himself and independently of God. 

This is incomprehensible because if literally everything - including everything about me and my environment is made by God; then it makes no sense that God could "give" something that was independent-of and autonomous-from God. 

In other words: The assumptions excluded the answer; the assumption was that absolutely every-thing came from God, was contradicted by the assertion that God could make something independent-of-God, and then give it to me.   

 

 

How is it that such a stark contradiction became Christian dogma - how is it that so many very intelligent and thoughtful people have ignored (or not seen) it? 

One answer is that such people were not really interested either in understanding or in explaining free will, but were instead absolutely committed to the assumption that the Christian God was an Omni-God. 

So the fact that they personally did not really grasp what is is free will or how free will worked; did not really matter to them.

Another reason that the contradiction is ignored; is that the contradiction was re-named a "mystery"; and thereby safeguarded from critique.  

What they were (evidently) most focused-on was winning any possible argument directed against the idea of the Christian God being an Omni-God - and the statement that an Omni-God could and did create autonomous beings by an act of gift did not really need to be understood. 

How such a gift actually made sense was of secondary importance to them. 

Also, having made this assertion of gifting free will; the incomprehension was sustained by the fact that their definition, their understanding, of free will was negative - free will was being defined in terms of independence-from God. 

Significantly, the scientific assertions about free will have a closely analogous negativity - being defined in terms of something that is not caused. 

Something I have learned is that when something is negatively-defined, it becomes ungraspable in itself, of itself. 

So, the mainstream orthodox statements about free will have the effect of making it mysterious at best and ineradicably incomprehensible at worst... 

...As anyone knows who has tried to discuss free will in the public forum. Argument devolves to assertions that some-thing was done by free will, versus assertions that it was instead the inevitable outcome of preceding causes - whether scientific causes, or caused by God. 

Free will is a particularly stark example of the problems of un-comprehended "abstraction", and definition by negation. It results in making mysterious, and indeed unreal, something that is one of the primary spontaneous experiences of every human being! 

Something, moreover, that is essential to being a Christian (at least by my IV Gospel rooted understanding.) If people cannot freely decide to follow Jesus Christ or not, then this excludes values from Christianity. 

Arguments against those whose assumptions make free will incomprehensible (whether orthodox traditional Christians, or mainstream secular people) is futile - since these people do not really themselves understand what they are asserting - and do not see any need why they should understand it!

To repeat: such people often have a fixed and committed belief that personally genuinely-understanding what they affirm is not necessary. 

(As indeed, it would not be necessary if free will had indeed the negative, abstract, subordinate role they assert for it.) 

The general lesson I draw from this is related to the importance of really understanding for oneself - and of not being satisfied by black box abstractions, or parroting stuff taken from other people... 

This is true, no matter how prestigious is the source of the black box argument. 

And further; if we are to avoid intractable error, our personal understanding needs to be in positive terms. 

It might be objected that this cannot possibly happen in practice; given the sheer number of things that must be taken on trust in any complex civilization. 

This is true in a quantitative sense, about most matters of assertion; but is false when it comes to those matters which are of core significance to our-selves. 

And there we come to the crux, for a Christian at any rate. What really is most important for us to understand - what, indeed is it vital for us personally to grasp? 

In the past, Christians regarded belief in the Omni-God as vital and necessary; but understanding free will was merely optional; to the point that it was not understood - and indeed not understandable within the assumptions. 

Yet; here and now, for myself and probably for most people; it is vital to understand - that is really to grasp in positive terms - free will, agency, the basis of individuality. To say it is "real but a mystery" is an evasion, when something looms so large at the heart of our existence. 

The needful understanding is something made impossible both to those who accept mainstream orthodox Christian theology (and indeed theologies of most other religions); as well as the much larger numbers of people who regard "science" as the basic assumption behind all explanations. 

As so often; the individual cannot look to any of the most powerful influential, prestigious, ancient or modern external sources for an understanding of some-thing that he may regard as a matter of prime importance. 

As so often; the individual must either do it for himself - i.e. discover by his own efforts a genuine understanding of the reality of free will...

Or else must take the consequences of assimilating, living-by, and thinking in-accordance-with, the socio-cultural insignificance of his own agency.  

 

*

Note added: It is pretty obvious why it has suited, and still suits, the powers that be; to create and maintain a situation in which free will is kept mysterious, contradictory, un-understandable -- while top-down and collective imperatives are by contrast clear, simple, easily comprehensible. This endemic doubt and uncertainty keeps people obedient to external authority. When people cannot satisfactorily conceptualize them-selves; then they are controllable at the deepest spiritual level. 

Q: Do you believe in God? A: What do you mean by "God"?

If somebody asks: Do you believe in God? 

Then the true answer depends on what is meant by "God" - and there are very wide divergences indeed between understandings what is meant by "God" - even among Christians. 

The only valid answer would be some version of: First; what do you mean by God? 

So, you cannot, and indeed should not, answer the question without getting clarification of what the enquirer is assuming about (what he is calling) God.

Otherwise, by saying "yes", you are assenting to buy a Pig in a Poke. 

For example, my understanding of God, the God in whom I believe;  is one that many/most Christians, Jews, Muslims would not consider to be actual God at all - or, at best, only a selective sliver of what they believe God to be. 

To such people, because I regard the Omni-God as false (and indeed incoherent), I am a kind of pagan - whatever my attitudes to Jesus Christ, whatever my desire for salvation.  

While to me; the Omni-God believers (insofar as they are real Omni-God believers, rather than those who are merely parroting forms of words, in obedience to the authority and doctrines of their church); are all de facto monotheists...

Monotheists whatever their Trinitarian protestations; and as such they do not really regard Jesus Christ as essential to anything (not even salvation) - nor do they believe in evil or freedom.   

And I regard all Omni-God monotheists as metaphysically indistinguishable from proponents of Oneness spirituality - and therefore their many practical differences are varieties of incoherent with their metaphysics.

I mean that the Omni-God is reducible-to/ metaphysically-indistinguishable-from the "deity" of "Deists" - which is not a person, but Just Is. Such a God-Deity is The Way Things Are.  

Answering "yes" to "do you believe in God?" therefore means very little or nothing - and a "yes" is more like to mislead than enlighten. 

Of course, in the West hardly anybody believes in God of any kind - so a negative reply to "do you believe in God?" is usual, and informative.   

But before assenting to belief in God we ought to be clear what we really mean by this - what we regard as vital to our understanding of God. 

Once someone has honestly (and without veiling-abstractions that serve to disguise incoherence or incomprehension) explained what he means by "God" - he has gone a long way towards explaining how he regards ultimate reality. 

He has also, potentially, done himself a big favour - because it may be that, once he has explained what he means by God, in terms that he himself can clearly grasp - then he will discover that this God is not really what he does believe or desire: in his heart of hearts. 

"The problem of evil" just won't go away for Christians

It's remarkable that mainstream orthodox traditional Christian theology has been wrestling with the "problem" of explaining evil for the entirety of its recorded history*. 

Officially the origin and presence of evil has long-since been explained, to the complete satisfaction of theologians; who cannot understand why people continue to harp-on about it. 

Yet - somehow - it just won't go away! 

It seems that everybody who accepts the definition of the Christian God as omnipotent and omniscient, and creator of everything from nothing - rapidly and unavoidably crashes-up against the problem of explaining how this-God is also supposed to be wholly Good and loving of each and every one of his children - all the time.  

Again and again, later if not sooner, people find that - in this collision of principles included in the definition of "Omnipotent plus Good" something has-to give-way. 

Again and again, people insist that to be "God" - God must be omnipotent and creator from nothing; and this primary and prior assumption inevitably makes people realize that therefore God cannot be "Good" in the same way that human beings understand Good...

For Omni-God to be Good either pushes us towards a redefinition of Good as it applies to God - so that our human evaluations become irrelevant, and we must just submit (preferably uncritically) to God's incomprehensible Goodness...

(Christianity tends towards Islam...) 

Or else we are pushed towards a version of Oneness spirituality in which everything that has ever happened or could happen is actually Good - if only we could understand it; and again our own personal evaluations are declared worthless.

(Christianity tends towards Hinduism/ Buddhism...)    

Again and again; thoughtful people are pushed away from Christianity, because they recognize that their own profoundest understanding of Good and evil is being declared irrelevant. 

Of course there is the alternative of challenging the definition of God as omnipotent - but that has been declared not-Christian by nearly all the major Christian churches. 

And since most people believe that Christianity is derived from (one or another) Church - and the individual person's understanding must be subordinated to (one or another) external authority; then redefinition of the nature of God is disallowed.

Something must give-way - and something does give-way - and what gives-way is (nearly always) the possible validity and human desirability of Christianity itself.   

   **

*It is not a problem to explain evil if one regards the Fourth Gospel (John) as the prime and unique overall-valid source of Jesus's life and teachings. Jesus's depicted relationship both with his Father and his disciples are personal and loving - human-like; but raised to an ideal and eternal degree. God is stated and assumed to be wholly Good; but in the IV Gospel's substance, there is nothing to insist upon God's omnipotence and omniscience. Consequently; Jesus and his followers do not seem troubled in the slightest about how to explain evil. The problem of evil apparently comes from post-Jesus theological and philosophical definitions of God, and is apparently related to the development of Christian churches - including the notion that to-be-a-Christian (to follow Jesus, to attain salvation) one must be a member of the true Church.

NOTE: Mormon theology does not posit the Omni-God, nor creation from nothing; and evil is easily explained by Mormonism's pluralist metaphysics. It should be noted, however, that the extremely radical and distinctive qualities of Mormon theology and metaphysics do not much impinge upon the CJCLDS - where the emphasis is very much on doctrines and practices.

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

If God is already and necessarily triumphant, and everything is alright already - then what are we waiting for?

There is a strong thread in religion of several kinds that asserts everything is alright already - e.g. because God is good and God is omnipotent therefore good is triumphant: here, now, already.

To which the obvious rejoinder is: In that case, what are we waiting for? 

If we are already living in a world of good-triumphant, why isn't this made obvious and explicit? Why doesn't everybody realize it? 

(And as we don't experience things as always good - then surely that of itself means that God is not really triumphant?)

Among some Christians, this triumph is asserted as having been the work of Jesus Christ. Asserted that what Jesus did made the triumph of God complete, or at least inevitable: that by Jesus God has "already" won. And the devil has already lost - but will not admit it. 

There are similar assertions (or so I see them) from oneness spiritualties - assertions that everything is beautiful, virtuous and true - the only problem is that we fail to recognize it. 

For instance, New Age type people often favourably cite the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: 117 [113]. 

His disciples said to him: "On what day will the kingdom come?" "It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: 'See, it is here!' or: 'Look, it is there!' but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it."   

That is; we already live in God's Kingdom - but don't recognize the fact. 

But such assertions leave us exactly where they find us - or, rather, someplace worse.

Because, if this-world-now (including entropy, death, evil) really is the triumph of Good/ Paradise/ Heaven and already "the best of all possible worlds"; then we are surely utterly depraved creatures. We Must Be - as evidenced by yours and mine and humanity's universal and chronic inability always and under all circumstances to recognize and live-by this fact. 

Yet it is hard to see how this-world-now can really be good, if Men are not. 

It is pretty extraordinary to imagine the Christian God creating a good world to be inhabited by evil Men... (Especially when these Men are made such as to fail to recognize the goodness of the world.)

Of course, such contradictions and incoherences may be explained-away by stunning and confusing people with soaring abstractions, especially about Time... 

Stuff about things being imperfect for creatures like us living in Time, while past-present-future are perfect for the creator God who is outside of Time (when past, present, future are simultaneous)... 

But surely, as "explanations", these just kick the can regarding why a God asserted to be good and also capable of creating perfection chose Not to, and instead chose to design gross imperfection and evil-proneness - and consign creatures to illusion, decay, death, and evil*.

Either such a God would be not-truly-Omni- or not-truly-Good; yet for such Christians, God is defined as both Omni- and Good. Hence the need for so much ultra-complex and abstract hand-waving... 

I can see the short-term and immediate psychological appeal of these kinds of "all actually is well" assertion. 

They provide a kind of confidence, of being on The Inevitably Winning Side - even though we will personally lose - i.e. we are actually sin-full, and shall suffer evil, get sick, die. 

And I can see that some of this is a kind of garbled understanding of the reality of Heaven 

But really, it's nonsense! Heaven is real, and anyone who wants it can have it, by following Jesus - but Heaven is on the other side of death. 

As for this world; God is the creator, but God is not triumphant here and now, in mortal life, on this earth... 

Obviously God is Not triumphant! If He was triumphant, there would be nothing to discuss. 

That's why Jesus Christ was needed, and why his message was of resurrection.

And Jesus was a Man, who lived (like all that lives) In Time and in a place - so Time is real.

And it is because God is not triumphant in this mortal world and never can be; that we needed Jesus, and why Jesus's message and gift was one of eternal resurrected life. 

To recap: The defects of this mortal life are not illusory, nor can they be removed by adopting a different attitude or making contradictory assertions. 

In sum; the defects of this mortal life are ineradicable.

...Which is why Jesus Christ was needed, why Heaven lies in our future, and why Heaven is on the other side of death and resurrection. 

*I feel that this kind of argument applies to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus's Mother. If God could make a Mary without sin, and if she could attain eternal Heavenly life without dying and resurrecting; surely such a God would the same for all Men? - thereby eliminating the need for Jesus Christ's life and work. The Immaculate Conception refutes the necessity of Jesus. yet I think I can see "what it is getting at" - which is that there really is a divine feminine creator; God really does include woman.

NOTE: The above arguments are what I personally find compelling, or even decisive - but I recognize that they will not work that way for others - especially when fundamental assumptions are not shared. So I am stating how I see things, not really trying to persuade others to agree.