Things instead of Beings... The worst metaphysical mistake of all?

The whole of Western Philosophy (and, more importantly, everything else) is rooted in a metaphysical error - a choice of assumption concerning reality that has accumulated in its damaging effect until now - when we are inhabiting a world in which humans, animals, plants and everything else is being enslaved to serve... Things. 

[Well, not really... Because the Things are merely tools of demons - but the assumed-Things are the excuse by which the demons do the enslaving. And people don't merely go-along with this, but regard it as Good, as moral - and anyone who opposes or even quibbles with this agenda is regarded as evil and need to be eliminated from public discourse (one way or another)! Such is the nature and effect of metaphysical error.]

 

Even worse (or, in fact, what makes it possible) is that the Things are abstractions - such as... well the Litmus Test issues (to mention only a few of the most influential); but also Things like the modern virtues of altruism and compassion for suffering.

The mass addiction-to, and participation-in, media; has made matters more blurred and therefore worse: the media sustains the virtual reality, and in this virtuality (which is reality for most people most of the time) Things are beings - and yet they are still Things...

So, what about this metaphysical error? We all started-out assuming and experiencing that our life, the world, the universe consisted of living entities. That it was alive because made of Beings; and that Beings had attributes such as being-alive, conscious, having purposes, and so on...

And then... We all started to assume, instead, that the universe had Things in it: Things that were not alive (unalive), dead, inert, without life, purpose and certainly without consciousness... Until it eventually seemed just silly, absurd, ridiculous! that such Things were alive. 

And then... Well, we began to think that maybe plants, animals, people were also not really alive in the way we used to think. 

(I mean, nobody can define life after all - not even biologists? We started to believe that all which was 'alive' was evolved or developed from unalive Things, and so was not qualitatively different from Things.) 

We started to believe that Things were caused by other Things, or happened randomly for no reason, and that Therefore plants, animal, people were also Things that were nothing more than the results of of things happening to Things. 

And so on. 

And then this world of Things got priority over what had once been Beings. 

We now serve Things: we serve abstract Things such as the government, the media, the economy. 

(People are Human resources and then just resources; animals and plants are part of "the environment" - and the environment is not "nature" but most importantly consists of CO2, Nitrogen and the like; agriculture just one "industry" among many.) 

Computers and "AI" have now taken over the world, and people serve their convenience; or rather, currently we serve, but only until we are replaced by them - eventually eliminated. 

The future we are promised is that Things will look-after The Earth - and Earth is itself be regarded as a Thing. People, animals and plants will be manipulated or eliminated according to the needs of Things. 

It seems that when we allowed Things into the world, we could not stop them taking over the world. We do this to ourselves. Precisely because we believe-in the reality of Thingness; we now cannot believe in the reality of people, nature, life, consciousness...

We need to revisit this very early metaphysical error. 

We need to make a choice: Either this is a world of Beings, or else it is a world of Things. 

So long as both exist; both cannot rule, one must serve, both cannot survive. 

Things or Beings - not both.

Either this life is a Fantastic Voyage of living Beings travelling through a living world; or else it is a strictly meaning-less and purpose-less world of Things; in which we are Things interacting blindly with Things; for no reason - but just because that is how it is.

We each need to revisit the young child that is still within each of us: revisit that early and deadly choice to allow Things into our 'animistic' alive and purpose world. 

Without some such revision, all of philosophy, science and - yes! - religion (including Christianity), will merely re-deliver us to the world of Things; with Things displacing God and Christ, as well as Things displacing you and me. 

Because in a world with Things; sooner or later God and Jesus will also become Things - hence subjected to the authority of world ruling Things.  

(And, standing outside this delusory system, rubbing their hands and laughing as they egg us on to ever-more Thing-ness: Satan and the demons.)

Beings and Selves in Time

Reality is made up of Beings. And these Beings exist 'in' Time.

In physics terminology, Beings are analogous to processes. If you try to think of a process outside of Time, it becomes frozen and not really a process anymore - and the same kind of thing happens with Beings.

If you try to think of a universe of Beings that are not 'inside time' then you will get something very unlike Beings - maybe a reality made of indestructible inert spheres, or something like that.  But beings are intrinsically active, doing - to some degree.

Because Beings are in-Time, then they must be 'doing' something - and what Beings are doing is having Relationships with other Beings.

So, this is the irreducible basis of Reality - Beings have-ing Relationships... Time cannot be subtracted from ultimate reality.


Because Beings are active (like processes) and eternal (because fundamental aspects of reality) - Beings are self-generating, self-creating.

If beings were like physics things, Beings would be perpetual motion machines, with infinite inner resources for self-creation.

But as Beings are the most fundamental units, we infer that self-creation is simply a 'property' of ultimate reality.


What about the Self? Well, Self is what a Being calls it own Being - so a Being and it's Self are the same 'thing' - but the Being is externally and abstractly regarded, whereas the Self is a Being's conceptualisation of itself.

I assume that this is an intrinsic property of Beings - that Beings know they are Selves, to some degree distinct from other Beings.

There is no 'inside' to the Self. It is a primary unit of reality, indivisible, unanalysable - and this (I think) means that the Self is 'immaterial' - it is not solid, not localised, does not have a surface, cannot be perceived or detected...

This sounds like lots of negatives, but this is simply to state that when it comes to the primary units of reality, there can be no further analysis. We can describe what a Being is and what it does (much like describing the character of a person in terms of his attributes, or inferred dominant motivations), but we cannot discuss its 'inner workings'. 


What is Consciousness? Consciousness is something outside-of and different-from the Self. The Consciousness observes - and one of the things Consciousness observes is the Self.

All Beings have some degree of Consciousness; although some entities (of what we call the mineral world, especially; but also the plant world) have a Consciousness that is relatively slow and weak, compared with men and some animals.

So all Beings are in relationships with other Beings, and all are somewhat Conscious of themselves and of this relationship with other Beings. All Beings therefore know themselves located within ongoing Time and reality.

What this means is that Self and and Consciousness are both attributes of Being. We can distinguish Self and Consciousness, but they are not divisible - you cannot have a Self without Consciousness or vice versa; S & C are characteristics of Being (which it may be helpful to distinguish), but S & C are not 'components' of Being.


This is a strange way of reasoning! ('Coleridge apparently called it Polar Logic; and you can read about it in Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought.)

But it essential to think in this way if we are to avoid the unresolvable paradoxes and problems that have plagued and paralysed Western Philosophy (and Christian Theology) since the Ancient Greeks invented it.

The key is to include Time in our fundamental metaphysical assumptions about ultimate reality - and this fits with (or naturally flows-from) the Christian scheme; since the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus happens in history, in time.

Christianity is linear, sequential and purposive.

Can "the planet earth" choose to be damned (or saved)?

I have developed the metaphysical assumption that reality consists of Beings in relationships; this is a version of the spontaneous ('animistic') assumptions of 'all' young children and (so far as is known) hunter-gatherers - including our ancestors. 

I assume that this is an essentially true way of understanding reality which is why it was and is innate, 'built-into' Men - by God. 

Beings are therefore regarded as the ultimate, fundamental, metaphysically primary units of reality; Beings that are alive, with attributes such as consciousness, and purpose.  

In other words: there are ultimately no 'things' (or, more exactly, no knowable things - because chaos is not knowable - it can only be a label for uncreated stuff, including the primordial background state). Ultimately; there is no 'it' - but only 'him' or 'her' (or some other linguistic term that refers to Beings). 

This seems to mean that the spiritual war of this world includes all Beings, not just us human Beings; but animals, plants, and features of what we refer to as the 'mineral' world - sea, sky, and aspects of the earth - and the earth herself. 

And as usual, as with humans, there are Beings within Beings - just as we contain innumerable cells that are beings - for instance the white blood cells which roam our blood and lymph, consuming germs and debris, that are very similar to amoebae. 

And we Men, as individual Beings, are also biologically (and spiritually) 'social animals', with a 'Beingness' of some kinds of human groups, that is difficult to conceptualize yet also traditionally regarded as true; and which seems to exist above the individual level.    

One among many aspects of this situation is that all Beings have an analogous choice to that of Men, of whether to accepts the salvation made possible by Jesus Christ. Whether, that is, to choose resurrection into Heaven.

(Or not - and thus by default [whether actively or passively] to choose... something else.) 

I assume all Beings are - in their very different ways, due to their different qualities and degrees of consciousness - able to choose resurrection - or not. 

And this would apply to that Being which is 'the planet earth'. 

That there is indeed some such Being as 'planet earth', I am assuming on the basis that it seems to be spontaneous knowledge, and a feature of many cultures of many kinds through history. 

This earth will therefore - like you and me - at some point need to make an eternal commitment to Heaven - if the earth is to become immortal, everlasting... resurrected. 

And resurrection entails death; death is the only portal to eternal life of individual Beings. 

So, in order to become part of heavenly Life Eternal; the earth (as a Being) would first need to die; and must then choose - by an eternal commitment - to be resurrected. 

The death of the earth seems 'inevitable', given entropy; which seems to apply to all material stuff in this reality. And then, after death; will the earth choose to be resurrected? 

It seems to me that the earth will not have made this eternally-binding choice to 'discard' all sin and corruption and become everlasting; until after she actually has made this final commitment; because in this mortal and entropic material world, nothing is or can be eternal - including not our choices.

Our choices are open to change, to revision, until they are final choices; which happens only after death: when the spirit has separated from the (dead) body.  

In conclusion; we cannot know in advance whether the planet earth as a Being will, or will not, be part of Heaven; because that final choice has not yet been made by the Being that is Earth. 

This means that the question is still open; and we can be sure that Satan will be trying to influence the choice of Earth; such that she will reject Heaven; and by using broadly the same kind of methods that Satan uses against Men, to induce Men to reject Heaven.

How might this be working? Well, since the modern era (developing from circa 1500 in The West), and even more since the industrial revolution; Men have been set against Earth. Men's assumptions include that the Earth is Not a Being, that 'it' is dead, and can therefore be manipulated and explained as desired. 

The Earth is not even despised; but is regarded as outside of the drama of creation, because unalive. 

Atheists do this, Christians do this, modern environmentalists do this... 

Environmentalists - in particular - have reduced the living earth to an abstract concept called 'the environment'; which is broken down into a multitude of dead sub-concepts derived from science. 

Indeed - at present - the environment is in practice being reduced to mathematical models concerned with Carbon Dioxide; and everything else is ignored or subjugated to these models and their implications. 

In sum; there are many, many reasons why the planet earth might have developed the same kind of sinful, negative, sins that beset modern Man: I mean such sins as fear, resentment and despair. 

We might suppose that such negative attitudes could lead the modern (here-and-now) earth towards the same kind of attitudes to God, divine creation and Heaven as beset modern Men; and might lead to the same salvation-rejecting attitudes as are characteristic of so many modern Men. 

Indeed, it may be that when Christians (or anybody else - but I am addressing Christians in particular) make assumptions about what Will Happen to the planet earth; by acting as-if the earth had no say in the matter, they may be making matters worse! 

When Christians assume that the planet earth Will Be resurrected into the New Jerusalem - that Heaven Will Be on some version of this earth - are they actually taking-for-grated that the living-conscious earth will do exactly what human beings want earth to do, and thereby treating the earth as unalive, just 'a thing' which exists for the convenience of Men?

Just as if we were to assume that we knew for sure whether some particular human being would necessarily ultimately choose or reject salvation and resurrection; because that outcome is part of our own plans. 

To speak 'anthropomorphically' (which may not be far from the literal truth); when we think, speak and behave concerning the earth as an 'it' consisting of 'things' - the earth knows about this! and presumably does not like it, and may develop negative attitudes in consequence - and yet we continue and increase this way of not-relating to the earth. 

(How many of the troubles of Men with 'natural disasters' that we put down to 'bad luck' are actually a direct consequence of the way we regard the earth as a dead it and an unalive thing - and the same for Beings composing, and dwelling on, the earth? Some of the troubles, for sure.)

If we really dwell in this reality as Beings among Beings; then such matters are of fundamental importance: I mean recognizing the agency of other Beings, and recognizing that each Just Is responsible for his or her own salvation. 

It is so easy for us modern Men to fall-into the evil practice of regarding 'the universe' as a 'machine' - and this is wrong even when what is being-assumed is 'a machine for salvation'. 

We are not components in a mechanism, or elements in a determined-plan - and neither is the planet earth! 

We are all Beings, engaged in a free quest, located in a world which is engaged in spiritual war; a vital aspect of which is relationships. 

And one primary principle of such relationships is that we recognize each other as Beings - not as things. 

Conversely; it is a plank of the devil's program of damnation, that Men cease to do this; and instead habitually (and by conviction) regard 'the environment', animals, plants and other Men - as things instead of Beings.

Making Men into things, and he/ she into 'it'; is the malign intent behind such core evil-strategies as bureaucracy, totalitarianism, transhumanism, 'Artificial Intelligence', the transagenda, and the incremental and coercive computerization and digitalization of Life. 

Beings are not necessarily-determined, nor are they random. Instead; Beings have natures (dispositions), and purposes, can learn, make choices - and until they have made eternal choices, their fate cannot be known in advance.

To think and talk otherwise, is choosing to become a component part of the agenda of evil. 

Note added: On re-reading the above, I find it rather unsatisfactorily expressed; and I think this is because I am preaching something I cannot practice - although I want to! For instance, I found several examples (which I needed to edit out) in which I had used 'it/ its' about the planet earth! Nonetheless; this merely emphasizes how deep and pervasive is this 'objectivizing' and dead-ly way of thinking. It has even permeated what most adults (and indeed older children) regard as 'common sense' - so that it strikes most people as dumb or insane to acknowledge the livingness and consciousness of the universe and its true-components. I myself had to be driven to this conclusion (metaphorically 'kicking and screaming') via theoretical biology, and the attempt to define 'life', discuss the 'origins' of 'life', understand the nature of creativity - and indeed to map the proper boundaries of biology... All of which attempts I found to be impossible without the artificial drawing of boundaries that seemed too-obviously arbitrary. When confronted by the dilemma that - therefore - everything must either be alive, or else unalive. (In reductionist scientific terms; all of reality is either 'biology' or physics.) I felt intuitively compelled to assume the truth of the former - given that the idea that all of reality is ultimately physics (or maybe abstract mathematics), has underpinned the assumptions that have led Western Civilization to where we are now. That life consists in irreducible and primary Beings, arose from noticing the abstract - and again artificial - nature of any other conceptualization of biology/ life/ creation.  

We do not think the work of God; but of Satan

Reality consists of Beings - in relationships. Beings are alive, conscious, self-sustaining, eternal. 

If something knowable is not a Being, then it is part of a Being or a consequence of relationships - but everything needs to be related to Beings.

(Outwith Beings and their relationships, nothing in knowable - there is by inference chaos.)

We know Beings by inferring their character, motivations etc - and causality is (something like) the kind of things that a Being wants and does...

The point of all this is that we modern people think we know stuff without reference to Beings - indeed that is the only stuff that is taken seriously as knowledge in the modern West. 

I mean so-called science, evidence, data, programmes and the like... What is studied is ripped clear of any reference to the Beings that generated this stuff - the stuff has a line drawn around it, and is treated as pure abstraction...

Except that it isn't really - everything knowable comes from beings -- but the input and sustaining activities of Beings (including the fact that it is Beings who are discussing these things) are just ignored and excluded. 

Real science is (or was) of course done by Beings (human beings) and interpreted by other Beings - but that is now forgotten or denied. Science is now supposedly (by implication) done by anybody or anything that is following some method, formula, algorithm - it is regarded and treated as a process ("science tells us"... "scientists say"... "follow the science"). 

And other attributes of Beings are supposedly processes - treated in abstraction, regardless of any Beings - like intelligence: so any-thing can be "intelligent" if it follows some process, yields some kinds of result. 

We can't stop doing this! We are thinking the work of Satan!

Love is (surely?) something to do with Beings, but it is talked about and dealt-with either as a temporary emotion, a kind of pulse of neurotransmitters and hormones. 

Or maybe Love is treated abstractly - as if it was a branch of occult physics, some kind of force-field, or vibrational state; which has impersonal properties such as being "unconditional" or "universal" - so that mere people, mere Beings don't affect Love. 

Such ways of conceptualizing Love mean that it can't be genuinely important, not really, to "society" - not when it comes to serious decision-making about serious matters... 

People yammer incessantly about Love in their gossip, in the news, and in songs, stories, and soaps; but what impact did this emotional-Love have upon the management of the birdemic in 2020 - the lockdowns, social-distancing, masking, pecking-campaigns? 

How did Love affect the closure of Christian churches in 2020; the fleeing of priests, the shut-down of Lourdes; the churches refusal to administer the Eucharist, wed people, conduct funerals? 

Despite everybody asserting its immense importance all-the-time; despite the constant whittering of pseudo-Christians and materialist-hedonists alike over "God is love", and that Love is "the most important thing of all": Love made not the slightest perceptible difference to anything at all when something that the Establishment regarded as serious was at stake. Neither did Love lead to rebellion or even dissent in thought or in deed; among the docile, obedient masses. 

We have created and we sustain a world in which (more and more) everything important is abstracted from actual people. 

Actual individuals are, indeed, regarded mainly as a threat, as potential errors and selfishness. 

Goodness comes from pure abstractions and rigorous processes. The most important decisions are made either by algorithm, or by pooling and averaging individual judgment - as with voting, committees, "democracy". 

What is needed is such a fundamental change in our current and recent attitudes and understanding as to be mind-exploding; a living world, a conscious world, a world primarily of Beings, a world primarily of spirit, a world that is God's creation and directed towards Christ's salvation... 

Yet anything less leaves us exactly where we are. 

For far too long, Christians have been pouring the new-wine of a life of Love following Jesus, into the old-bottle of abstract, materialist thinking that posits the irrelevance of Love and regards following Jesus as just-another-set-of-processes - firmly located within the usual kinds of social process. 

Christians do some different things; but they think in the same way as everybody else - so that when times are tough, their ingrained and habitual materialistic-abstract-externally-driven mode of thinking limits and controls everything they do. 

Christians shall persist in getting absolutely nowhere - except to remain a "lifestyle option" within a hell-bound totalitarianism; unless and until we begin and continue to think the work of God. 

Is Artificial Intelligence alive and conscious; and, if so, how?

I regard the notion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as manipulative or delusional, built upon many layers of incompetence and dishonesty.

But there is a fair question that could be put to someone like myself who believes that Everything is alive and conscious: reality is made-up of Beings.

Since Everything (humans, mice, trees, mountains, planets) is - in some sense - alive and conscious; then why not computers?

My answer is that computers Must be alive and conscious in some sense; but it all hinges on how.

Some things are Beings, and other things are parts of Beings. Humans are Beings. But most of the things we commonly regard as not-alive and not-conscious are parts-of Beings - things like the cells of a coral, the atoms of a grain of sand... These are probably not Beings in their own right, but participate in larger, more inclusive Beings that do have some degree of bounded, agent consciousness.

So, it is in this sense that computers are alive and conscious - they are part-of Beings; not Beings in their own right. Computers can participate in systems of intelligence, but cannot themselves be intelligent.

And these intelligent systems are Beings (at least, they are Beings by a minimalist definition).

The danger of AI is therefore Not that computers will become Beings, agents, conscious and alive; but that we will begin to treat them as such. This would be intrinsically evil, and lead to greater evil.

The Turing Test is an example of evil propaganda. It argues and implies, rhetorically, that anything that superficially appears to be a Being by reductionist and simplified criteria; really is a Being, and ought to be treated as a Being.

This treating of a part-of-Being asif it were a Being would actually be a human choice - and would be a chosen-lie, a falsehood, Not-Really Real - thus it would clear a path to the condition of virtuality; in which the not-real it lived as if it were real; and the real is ignored or denied.

Which is precisely where we are now.

Magic, and the missing causes of the way the world works

Something that I become more aware of with the passing years, is that there are very significant causal factors which are left-out of the usual explanations for things such as the economy, civil society, even the survival of nations. Such that I am aware that "we", including myself, do not really understand things half so well as we suppose. There must be a lot more going-on than is realized. 

I really have no idea how the economy continues to provide so much stuff for so many people. I can see pretty exactly where my own income has come from and goes, but I cannot remotely do the same for others. The numbers don't add up. 

I can only assume that there are hidden subsidies all over the place - but how this is kept going I don't see. 

(The high level of escalating subsidy - which goes to the lowest classes, as well as to the richest - can't all be derived from resource extractions from people like myself - there aren't enough of us. And we don't generate many real and useful resources anyway.)

So, while I am sure that the British economy will collapse at some point, it has continued far longer than seemed possible during the birdemic stoppages. Hardly anybody seems to be doing anything true, or beautiful, or even useful - most people are actively engaged in destruction - and yet...

While the EU is destined to collapse, this has been the case for at least 15 years - and it is still there, and still causing mischief and mayhem on a massive scale (and still unconditionally supported by the UK ruling class).  

The situations, as I currently see it, is that human beings are very actively engaged in their strategic own annihilation by almost every means conceivable - including the most fundamental one of almost ceasing to reproduce; but also, recently, by trying to start pointless wars with stronger opponents.

Eventually this must and shall have the massively destructive effect that humans desire.

But meanwhile things continue; which I infer means that some-thing, or rather some-beings, some-where must be working against this - or else the destruction would have long since happened. 

(I do not believe that this is only a matter of buffering destructive change. That would not suffice. There must be actual opposition to the destruction - there must, in other words, be some positively creative activity. 

But it really does not seem that positive creative activity is coming from human beings. 

In other words, something "magical" - which means something unconsidered by our explanatory models, something outwith our materialist explanations, something working by spiritual not physical means, is at work... 

And that magical spiritual "something" is not coming from the human beings - more exactly only very few human beings seem to be involved - and these not-human powers for good are slipping under the radar.   

So things continue much longer that our knowledge and understanding suggest that they could or should. 

Yet, instead of noticing this, being grateful, and acknowledging and supporting these non-human beings for protecting us from our own malign motivations - the lesson most people draw is that we can and should continue our strategic destructiveness, on the basis that it is not really destructive. 

For so long as the society does not actually collapse into rampant/ endemic violence, disease, famine, chaos - for so long the mass of people (especially, but not only, the rulers) can and will continue to claim that this means their nihilism and spitefulness are "good for" the economy, peace, security, decency...

And even when chaos supervenes, it seems that the collapse will be blamed upon those scattered and weak human beings who still try to do good; who recognize and endorse truth, beauty and virtue. 

Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that we share our nations with a multitude of other - not human - beings; animals, plants; and spirits of many kinds including (but not only) the dead, angels, and the "elemental" beings that modern Man regards as non-living.

Some of these "magical" spirits are apparently doing their best to sustain that which human beings are doing their worst to destroy. 

The God-aligned and Good among these non-physical, magical, spirit beings are, I presume, the missing cause that explains (could we but understand their activities) why things are not already much worse than they actually are. 

The impulse and motive for divine creation

Kristor at the Orthosphere has written a post in response to mine of yesterday and others by Francis Berger - that asks several questions. These seem to require and deserve a more extensive elucidation than can be done in comments, including an expansion of underlying metaphysical assumptions; so here it is. 

This procedure distorts my metaphysical views, because they are being expressed in response to Kristor's framework of ultimate assumptions - so that, even when I try to elucidate - means that my account is fragmentary and seen from an alien angle. But maybe this is the best that can be managed in the circumstances. 

(Obviously, I usually and by preference express my metaphysical ideas in their own terms, trying to make a model or paint a picture of how reality is structured and proceeds.)

 

From Kristor is in italics - edited by me; my responses follow BC: 

The situation prior to creation that Bruce describes is already a world: a disharmonious congeries of eternal conscious selves, purposive beings who suffer affects, who feel, want, act, and so on, 

BC: That is a correct description of my views

who relate to and influence each other (so that they can love, or not), all more or less ordered to a good, which apparently they can all more or less recognize, and to which they are more or less attracted. 

BC: No. Before creation there is no such interaction or harmonization. 

They are from eternity past together in a temporal – and so, presumably also spatial – milieu, in which they have and prosecute lives, but only messily. 

BC: Sort of... but before creation there is no comparison by which their autonomous lives can be called messy. 

Thus they can apprehend each other, and God, and his creative plan; they can find it attractive, can want to participate in it, and can then actually do so. 

BC: No. I regard the above description as happening after creation has been initiated. 

The question then arises, what is the reason of this world that was running along from eternity past, all on its own, before one of its constituents got started on his creative project – or after, for that matter? If we answer that there is no prior reason it is what it is, that its eternal existence is a brute fact, we have admitted that it is fundamentally unintelligible; for, what has no sufficient reason to be what it is cannot be reasonable, either in whole or in part: for, brute facts are utterly inscrutable, in principle, thus even to themselves. 

BC: Correct. Before creation there can be no reasons, except internally - "privately", within beings. Things Just Are.  

What is not reasonable cannot be a world, or for that matter any such thing as the items we find all around us, and in us. It can be rather only just stuff happening for no reason: the chaos of Democritean atomism, but with the atoms all sentient, solipsistically. 

BC: Yes, pretty much a correct summary- except that having sentient beings/ "atoms" makes all the difference. Divine creation is (pretty much) the transformation from solipsistic to ongoing-creation - insofar as creation has happened (which changes through time, because creation is linear and sequential).  

If we say that this world prior to creation has no cause because it is necessarily what it is, then every detail of it must be necessary; in which case there is in it no freedom, for it is a spatiotemporally extended block, in which nothing really moves or acts, or therefore is. 

BC: No, this is wrong. "Necessity" does not come into it when things Just Are. Things really "move" but only within beings, not between beings. 

What we end up with then is either the pure chaos of brute unintelligible fact, and no world, or else the wholly determined motionlessness of universal necessity. 

BC: No, neither of these alternatives; because they are regarding the primordial beings as if unalive. Starting with beings rather than "things" makes all the difference. 

There is of course a third option: the classical metaphysics of Nicene Christianity, in which God as uniquely eternal and necessary is the sufficient reason for all being, including his own: not a brute fact, but on the contrary the perfectly intelligent and thus intelligible fact, in whose light all other things are intelligible, at least in principle, so that knowledge is possible; and in which creatures are not eternal, but rather contingent upon God, so that as contingent they can change, act, suffer, move, love, learn, grow, understand and be understood, and so forth. 

BC from now onwards: 

This leads on to consider God's motivation for creation.

If God is a unity, there can be no motive for anything. Such a God Just Is. 

But my understanding is that God is a dyad of Heavenly Parents - Heavenly Father and Mother. My understanding is that it is the love between our Heavenly Parents that is the motivation for creation - in a way closely analogous to the spiritually-understood way that love between two (ideal) loving human beings may lead to the choice of initiating pro-creation - that is having children who are loved; and beginning what may be an extended family.

(Of course, mortal human parents are born as already part of an extended and (ideally) loving family. But I am here talking about how this all began.) 

Creation is therefore a concept that arises from love, and includes procreation as well as all the other many ways in which loving relationships between beings of all kinds may become.  

To put matters very simply: there is a Timeline for creation. The primordial situation of autonomous and not-relating beings becomes creation as a consequence of our Heavenly Parents meeting, becoming mutually aware, and committing themselves to eternal love. 

Our Heavenly Parents thus became God, and creation began by God's "interventions" on primordial reality; and to the extent that primordial beings opt-in to live by love. 

This was not the original situation of reality, there was a time when it happened, and it might not have happened. 

Furthermore, beings are usually only partly capable of love; and presumably some beings are incapable of love (and therefore do not participate in creation). 

Thus God's primary creation is a mixed state of love, and not-love. 

And it is this deficit in primary creation that led to the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation, "needed" because Jesus completes the work of creation by enabling Heaven which is the eternal situation of beings living by love; leaving-behind other and evil motivations at resurrection.

**

By Contrast: Orthodox-traditional "Nicene" Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation - a motive for God creating rather than not; and therefore (sometimes) posits an analogous impetus for creation in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - each for the other. 

It is the differences-between the Trinity that enable the love that leads to creation...

However this explanation is made confusing/ incoherent by also insisting that the Trinity are not only different from each other, but also simultaneously the same as each other (because there is only one God). 

(This is required by the insistence on a monotheistic Omni-God creating ex nihilo - such a God cannot be internally subdivided.) 

And furthermore; ortho-trad theology has it that that the "process" of creation (and of love among the Trinity) happens outside of time - so creation always-was-and-is; so there is no "Timeline" of creation. All that is now, ever was and shall be. 

And this is the point at which orthodox Christianity reaches its particular It Just Is assumption - explanations stop at this point.

All metaphysics must reach this point, sooner or later - the point at which we must make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. 

The goal (as I see it) is to become aware of where this point is reached, to acknowledge this; and to know that here we are indeed making assumptions... 

Which activity is (I suggest) properly called "metaphysics" 

"They" can rationally subvert all concepts: except individual Beings - the "AI"/ transhumanist agenda is about the illegitimate subversion of Beings

It has become a standard trope of the last couple of centuries plus; for radicals and The Establishment (i.e. the affiliates of evil, as we may now recognize them) to subvert all those concepts that were at one time responsible for societal cohesion, purpose and meaning.

All kinds of law, for example, have been subverted: whether legal system laws, scientific laws or the laws of religion. Most people have long since been persuaded that - at the very bottom line and ultimately - these and other "laws" are Man-made, contingent, labile, and expedient. 

They cannot be a fundamental basis for life - because they are not fundamental.   

Such subversion has been possible because it is true - so that even when the motives for subversion are evil, and the motives for retaining the "reality" of laws are good - this does not matter over time and in the end; because the laws just aren't really real. 

What then, is really-real? 

The answer is what I call Beings*. Those entities of which we are an example, and so is God, Jesus Christ, every person, animal, plant and mineral... All are either A Being in their own right, or else a component part of a Being. (As a strand of molecules may be a component of a plant or animal Being.) 

By my understanding, Beings are the irreducible entities of reality. 

As irreducible and fundamental, Beings cannot be defined; although we can list some of their attributes - such as aliveness, consciousness, the capacity for growth/ development/ self-reproduction, purposiveness. 

So although "They" might legitimately (logically, rationally, truly) be able to subvert most things and reveal them to be contingent - They cannot legitimately subvert Beings. 

Beings are the primary reality, hence indestructible. 

But of course They are trying illegitimately to subvert Beings! i.e. By falsehoods to persuade people that Beings are not the irreducible components of reality - but that Beings are really just "things" that can be manufactured, programmed, replaced or destroyed. 

That's what the long-term and strategic AI/Transhumanism strategy is ultimately about - all those fictions and philosophical "thought experiments" and bureaucratic assumptions - that robots can be like people - including empathic and loving; those movies that show computers can be intelligent, make judgments, have purposes; that minds can be downloaded; that Men are optional elements of a society (which might be a simulation) - and so on. 

But because Beings really are the bottom line reality - all of this agenda is false. It is based on exclusionary definitions, on calculated reductionism - and on sheer lies! 

It is designed to persuade, to brainwash actually, people into regarding themselves as not-Beings; into behaving as not-Beings; into treating each-other as not-Beings - ultimately, into thinking and experiencing as not-Beings. 

This is a huge business in the world here-and-now: not merely the process of dehumanizing, but actually to convince people that all Beings are contingent and replaceable. 

Furthermore; a fair bit of religion and spirituality is part of this projects! 

Of course we all know otherwise. We have innate knowledge otherwise. God can reveal to us otherwise The Holy Ghost will guide us otherwise. 

Yet many/ most people ignore all this. 

Such people have decided that they actively want their own not-Being. 

Their strategy of subverting Beingness can only succeed if we actively invite it into our hearts. 

Unless we do Their work for them - they cannot convince us we are not-Beings. 

But They will keep on trying, 24/7, attacking from all sides simultaneously! 

Because for Them:- to induce people really to believe we are contingent abstractions and so are those whom we love, is the ultimate triumph of evil. 

**

*Note Added: It may be worth clarifying (for newcomers?) that all Beings are primarily spiritual; only secondarily (and only sometimes) material. The material is always spiritual; but the spiritual is not always material. 

God cannot make us Good - The State as an analogy for Heaven

In a universe consisting of eternal Beings, the question arises: When God made divine creation, what could he do with these already-existing Beings, and what could he not do. 

 

God could do many things - such as giving attributes to the Beings, and enforcing upon Beings a passive cooperation with divine creation; but God could not make Beings Good. 

Because, Goodness is living from Love, and in harmony with divine creation. Therefore; for a Being to be Good, it must want to live in-harmony-with divine creation, it must be living from Love. 

(i.e.  Love of God and other fellow-Beings)

And, Love cannot be imposed - it must come from within each being. Ultimately, a Being cannot be made to want anything (induced, encouraged... Yes. But not forced). 

The motivation of "wanting" comes from the nature of a Being and its freedom (with "freedom" being conceptualized as the existential fact of Beings as the prime components of reality: Beings Just Are).

God can, in various ways, compel cooperation on Beings (God can structure reality such that "things work" harmoniously, overall). 

Analogously; a State may force its citizens to cooperate sufficiently that the State is sustained. 

But God cannot make Beings want to cooperate, cannot make us to love God and creation. 

Analogously a State cannot compel its citizens positively to embrace that State's nature and policies (no matter how Good the State's nature and policies may be)... A State cannot compel its citizens to love the State.  

People often call-upon God - in effect - to make everybody Good. But this is not possible. 

God can make some people behave well (overall) by establishing a powerful System of incentives (rewards for Good behaviour, punishments for bad) - but of course Good behaviour isn't the same thing as being Good.  

And a System of powerful incentives isn't what is meant by Heaven!

 

Furthermore; whatever system of incentives is deployed; there will surely be individual Beings (and groups of such individuals) that resist or reject some or many of these incentives (for a variety of reasons); and these Beings will therefore be less-well-behaved in the case of divine creation -- less compliant in the case of citizens of a State. 

The more force that is applied by the System, the more resistance the System is likely to evoke. The System will not be able to enforce complete passive cooperation.  

And some Beings may become rebels against the whole System. 

This can be interpreted, by analogy, as an explanation for the presence of evil in divine creation, the resistance to Good; and the motivation of demons. 

It is because God cannot compel us to be Good, that Jesus Christ was needed. 

What Jesus did was make it possible for those who wanted it, to become fully-Good; via death and resurrection. 

Jesus thereby made Heaven possible: heaven understood as analogous to a "State" of fully-Good citizens. A State without compulsion (or propaganda) because it is comprised of citizens who completely and permanently embrace the goals and methods of the State. 

A State of citizens who from-themselves, and freely: love The State.   

Substitute God for the State; and Beings for citizens; and that is an analogy with Heaven.  

What is spirituality?

We may agree that materialism is false, evil and self-destroying. But it is hard to say - positively - what is meant by 'spiritual'. Indeed, I once participated in a research project where the literature was reviewed and people were interviewed about what they understood 'spiritual to mean' - and no conclusion emerged about any shared meaning.

The usual definitions (such as they are) tend towards excessive abstraction (in terms of the properties or classes of spiritual entities), or gestures towards a world beyond the material (reality is 'more than' just that which is perceived or measured) - which are true, in their way, but hardly adequate.

Clearly, too, spirituality does not equate with religion. Some religions, including some practices of Christianity, are barely spiritual - for instance religious life that is almost wholly ethical, rule-following, or focused on ritual participation. Indeed, many people claim to be 'spiritual but not religious' - however, strictly there is no such thing. To be coherent, to make sense; spirituality depends on metaphysical assumptions of a religious kind.


When someone tries to be spiritual but not religious - for example by merely believing-in and communicating-with spirits, or the dead - then this simply reduces to a type of materialism - spirits are, in effect, being brought into the definition of material and treated as mundane.

People who say they are Not spiritual seem to be those who regard life as being wholly on the 'level' of the everyday - so that the entirety of life (including personal and leisure time) is of the same quality as the normal, shared, public world of work, officialdom, the media. 

By contrast, when a spiritual dimension of life is desired - this is a wish for a larger life, beyond the mundane - with a different and 'higher' quality. In practice, nowadays, with the current pressures; this seems to entail according 'the spiritual' the highest priority; above (in particular) the political - and this is where so many would-be spiritual people and organisations fall-down.    


It is probably best to think of materialism as the assumption that the world is made of Things, and spiritual as the contrary assumption it is 'made of' Beings. 'Beings' meaning living-entities, conscious and motivated. Thus, to be spiritual means to assume that this universe and reality consists of Beings. 

We could further say that the materialistic perspective says that the universe arose by means of 'physics' processes - it just-happened for deterministic reasons and/ or perhaps randomly. In other words, in materialism there are Things interacting by physical processes.

By contrast, a spiritual perspective assumes that we live in A Creation - that is, a universe made by a Being. Furthermore, the Beings interact by 'relationships'. For the spiritual person; the ultimate reality of interaction is not the forces, particles, processes of physics, but the attributes of relationships - such as motivations, emotions, beliefs...


What prevents a spiritual world view (among those who want it) is many things. Habit, of course, plus that The World requires us to operate on materialist assumptions - to treat everything (including people) as Things.

It can be seen that this is a source of confusion. in that plenty of people assert a living universe, a purposive creation - but then explain it in abstract, geometric, mathematical, and physics terms. This is, indeed, difficult to avoid - for it is seen in Rudolf Steiner, Rupert Sheldrake and a staple of 'New Age' spirituality. I am saying that this is an error, and leads to an unstable hybrid that default-reverts from failed-spirituality back to materialism-in-practice.

This drive to abstraction based on the idea that abstractions are the primary reality - for example the view that ultimate reality is mathematical, or that physics provides the deepest explanation of the origin of the universe.


All this is a version of the ancient Greek metaphysical practice of explain reality in terms of abstractions; which was taken up by Christian theologians who (to varying degrees, but always to some extent) made Christianity fit-into this pre-existing materialistic framework (whereas most of scripture is describes a world of beings and relationships).

In a strange paradox; much Christian theology over the past many centuries represents a continued attempt at maintaining materialist assumptions as foundational for Christianity. Any whiff of anthropomorphism, animism, a world of beings - all such are regarded as childish errors.

In terms of the evolutionary-development of human consciousness, this was an early and necessary step in the direction of increasing human agency, freedom, choice; until the point (reached within the past 200 years in the West) that belief in God became active and voluntary rather than unconscious and passive.


Men began living in a world of Beings - but passively and unconsciously. This was Man's childhood.  The abstraction was part of detaching us from that immersive world and allowing us to think independently - Man's adolescence. The future is to return consciously and by active choice to the deepest truth of the spiritual world view - and again acknowledge reality as created by a Being, and consisting of Beings.

(From which perspective the abstractions - mathematics, sciences, Classical metaphysics, traditional Christian theology - are seen as ultimately tools: pragmatic approximations for particular purposes.)

But it is this vast inherited inertial legacy of abstract materialistic theology - mistakenly regarded as definitive of being-a-Christian - that has made mainstream institutional Christianity fall-into materialism (including bureaucracy); and which makes it so surprisingly difficult to be a Christian and to be spiritual.


Spirituality entails creation having a purpose, and materialism - with its physics universe - has none.

So, I would say that the spiritual world-view - which I want, and which is sought by many - is one in which we inhabit a universe of Beings that was itself created by a Being.

'Spirituality' is therefore thinking and living in such a way that we interact with 'the world' on the assumption that it is a purposeful creation and consists of Beings.

How does creation work? Hierarchies of agents

All things which aren't chaos are Beings or Parts Of Beings. 

We Men are each Beings, and each cell of our body is also a Being - but some categories of bodies are 'parts of Beings' such as 'bits-of-my-body-coloured-a-particular-shade-of-light-brown... That category is not A Being - but instead various parts of various Beings.  

So, with some Beings inside - and making components of, Beings; we seem to arrive at hierarchies of Beings as the way Creation (as a whole) is organized, and created. 

The level above - e.g. my whole organism - organizing ('creating') the level below - e.g. my cells. So, each cell is a Being, with its own life, consciousness - and agency (a degree of free will). 

But each cell is also (maybe unknown to itself?) a part of my body; which is continually monitoring and controlling it, by means of rewarding incentives and aversive punishments.  

And sometimes cells escape this organizing influence - and this can lead to cancer, uncontrolled growth; when the cell (in effect) acts independently of the needs of the body. 

Presumably - something like this is analogous to what God does in creating all of the other Beings, as well as with Men. 

The analogy would be that God is to Men, somewhat like each Man is to the cells of his organism - with one big difference of God being eternal while mortal Men are temporary. 

God's creation can be pictured as a continuously organizing and purpose-directing of a multitude of hierarchically-organized Beings - each with agency. 

God is the apex of the hierarchy of Beings; and origin of the purpose of creation-as-a-whole. 

In other words, it is God that organizes pre-existent Beings into coherence, and with direction. 

...Or; God provides a purpose for Beings, and is continually working to enable cooperation of Beings towards that purpose. 

Such a way of thinking about creation solves some of the traditional deep problems that beset Christian theology - such as how free will is possible, and the origins of evil. 

I think this way of conceptualizing also points towards a way of understanding genuine creativity of Beings, and how individual Beings (including, but not restricted to, Men) can potentially contribute to the work of creation. 

Note: Relevant to this are recent posts by WmJas Tychonievich and Francis Berger.

Causation versus Free Agency

It is an implicit assumption of modern culture and life that everything is caused - except what is random. 

Because everything is caused, it is assumed that these causes (if known) are like the 'laws of science' and entail exactly what happens. 

But there is also 'randomness', chance, the undetermined... Which is (somehow, in an unprincipled way) also incorporated into the 'everything is caused' determinism by means of statistical properties. 

If reality really is caused, then this fundamental incorporation of of randomness doesn't make any coherent sense (as Einstein clearly saw) - nonetheless, it has happened, randomness is incorporated into a deterministic world-view; and is justified on the basis that 'it works' to predict things... 

...Or rather, attributed randomness sometimes seems to work; because whether something 'works' depends on (essentially arbitrary) prior decisions about what counts as having worked, or alternatively failed to work.

(And this becomes even less precise when what counts as having worked gets defined retrospectively to include - or indeed be entirely - what has already happened; as with climate change 'predictions...) 

Yet, there is no such thing as randomness 'in real life' and therefore no 'probability'- these are actually just mathematical tools, that may be useful in particular situations; although the nature of scope of the situations in which it is valid cannot be known. In practice the validity of particular instances of statistical reasoning is a matter of 'common sense' - or more likely the exercise of power to control discourse.   

But what of free agency, free will - or what-you-call-it? I mean the thinking of Beings (especially Men); at those times when they are thinking with their real and divine 'selves'? 

(Accepting that Men may - often do - behave 'automatically; and are not 'free' at all times, but only potentially and some-times.)

Free agency cannot be either caused/determined, or random/statistical. Free agency must be something other, which is expressive of a Being itself, arises wholly from that Being - and not, therefore, a product of causes acting-upon that Being.  

To cut the argument short: I believe that genuine Free Agency is either an incomprehensible Mystery and gift from God (which is the mainstream/ classical Christian view); or else (as I believe) Free Agency is a property of Beingness, to be found to a greater or lesser extent in all Beings. 

Which means that all Beings have a divine aspect.

Which means that while there is one God who is creator of this creation we inhabit; creation itself consists of Beings who are all 'gods' in this vital sense of having some potential degree of Free Agency.   

In other words, reality is alive and conscious and consists of Beings/ gods that are in relationships with one another  (in some real way, but varied between Beings). 

If so, then what is the role of causation?  

My understanding is that causation is a series of hypotheses that are useful in inverse proportion to the exercise of free agency. 

In a world where free agency is seldom exercised; then causation is highly predictive. 

Here in mortal life upon earth; things are different according to different times and places, and among different individuals. But the more that agency is active, the less causality is operative. 

Bu, in a world where free agency is ignored or denied, and its effects are suppressed: causal thinking (and its bastard offspring 'randomness') appears to operate as a complete explanation of reality.

(Hence the common idea that - in principle - science can explain everything that is real.) 

In other words; Western Man has (for some generations) been living at, or near-to, an extreme where free agency is hardly a factor in life; and where, because of this exclusion, causal and determinative thinking seems to work very well as an explanation, for prediction, and to manipulate the world (including people). 

Conversely, in a world where free agency is highly frequent and determines thought; there is very little for causal thinking to explain. 

At the extreme - in Heaven - I assume that almost-everything is a consequence of free agency in the context of relationships between Beings; things happen because they are willed to happen. 

Therefore: in Heaven there is essentially no causation; but only free agency and relationships. 

There is a further aspect governing the operations of free agency; which is the extent to which it is groupish or individual. 

If we focus on Men, then in the past free agency seems to have been much more active than now. Hence prediction was 'anthropomorphic'; in terms of personal factors such as motivations, desires and relationships. 

But this ancient agency was not individualistic - it operated at a groupish level such as the clan, tribe, village, guild, or even (later) the nation. Thus, understanding and prediction treated groups as we might regard individuals, and focused on their attitudes to each other, strengths and weaknesses etc. 

Modern agency has, however, become very individualistic; and insofar as free agency genuinely exists and is deployed (which is apparently not much, very seldom), it operates at the personal level rather than in groups. 

What appears superficially to be group agency, is actually a product of causal and determinative thinking; manipulating individuals (eg. via laws, rules and propaganda) to conform behaviour to external will. 

Part of this manipulation is to encourage individuals to believe they are already living by free agency; when in fact they have 'switched-off' their own agency; and are thinking almost-entirely in terms of automatic, mundane, externally-inculcated and -imposed concepts and information.  

To conclude; the destiny which God wishes from Men is to live by free agency, individually exercised; and voluntarily to choose to align this free agency with God's desires for His creation. 

But this is a choice. Some choose not to use free agency, and even to deny its reality; while others use this agency to reject the divine hopes and plans - and instead to serve the adversaries of God. 

In other words such Men choose Not to be free. And probably this applies to most Men, at least in The West. 

At the most basic level, service to the Adversary entails opening one's own soul to thinking hostile to God; and this often takes the form of dishonestly pretending to an individual agency which is, in fact, being denied and suppressed. 

Thinking therefore (i.e. here-and-now, in this world that has rejected God) becomes a thing very much causally determined. 

Men's behaviours become understandable by reduction to to causal reasoning and statistics. 

Men become predictable and controllable.

Evil is a subtype of Entropy, in this Pluralistic-Animistic divine creation

I have often written about the twin ultimate-problems (ineradicable insufficiencies) of this, our mortal life; under the headings of Entropy and Evil. 

My understanding of reality is that its fundamental divisions or units are eternal Beings, i.e living-Beings; such that (to modify the title of William James's book) this is an Pluralistic Animistic universe; i.e. there are many fundamental entities (not one); and these fundamental entities are alive, purposive, with agency and other attributes of Beings.  

Because things began with many Beings; God's divine creation (that we inhabit) is the primary source of cohesion: in a crude sense, by creation God imposed harmony on pre-existing and originally autonomous Beings. 

For creation to be sustained (insofar as it is sustained) there must me harmony/ cooperation/ cohesion etc between the Purposes and motives of the many Beings which constitute creation. 

Otherwise, divine creation will tend to fall apart - with different Beings pursuing different goals, or living by different values.  

It is this tendency for divine creation to fall-apart into a chaos of competing directions and behaviours that is the essential cause of the tendency named Entropy: i.e. the tendency of all life, order, organization, forms, functionality etc to decline towards chaos, with time. 

The primary source of Entropy is therefore the disharmony of Beings.

Therefore we need to stop thinking of Entropy abstractly, as if it was a branch of physics, as if it was some kind of force (or anti-force) that broke-up stuff... 

Instead, we should think of entropy as a consequence of the fact that the Beings of divine creation are imperfectly aligned in their nature and purposes. 

Our situation is that we may find ourselves loving God and experiencing profound desiring to live in harmony with divine creation; but we simply cannot do this in reality as we experience it, in this mortal life - because of our innate nature, because of the way we are (and have been) eternally.  

We may want to live in harmony with divine creation, but we cannot. 

But not all Beings want to live in harmony with divine creation, and some Beings hate God; and these are Beings that have chosen (or, at least, are currently choosing) Evil.

So, Evil can be defined as a kind of chosen Entropy; when the inevitable disharmony between our-selves and divine creation is made into the positive choice our-selves to oppose divine creation.  

From this perspective we can see that Evil is a type of Entropy - in a sense a worse type of Entropy: a positive decision to pursue negative outcomes. And worse than non-evil-Entropy; because Entropy is universal and unavoidable, whereas Evil makes the personal choice to oppose divine harmony....

Motives for Evil are various, but perhaps some kind of resentment or grudge against God and the imposed aspect of divine creation, might be the most basic motivation.  

Aims of Evil, too, are various. 

Perhaps the aim is to exploit divine harmony in pursuit of personal gratification or other selfish benefit; perhaps (more extremely) to oppose divine harmony simply from a desire to see it destroyed, taking spiteful pleasure in the destruction. 

This was the unavoidable human condition, blighted by ineradicable Entropy, and worsened by chosen Evil; and the situation for all Beings, until the advent of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus was a mortal Being, incarnated into this world of imperfect harmony between Beings - but Jesus himself loved God wholly; and was himself (at least, at the time of his ministry, after his Baptism by John) wholly-aligned with divine creation. 

Jesus was himself mortal: which is to say he was subject to Entropy. And Jesus was subject also to Evil. However; because Jesus was perfectly aligned with God and creation he knew that after death he could (and would) be remade as himself but "perfectly" - in other words, resurrected into eternal life, freed from Entropy. 

Resurrection takes our aspiration to live wholly in harmony with divine creation, and rebuilds us from that basis.

Furthermore, Jesus knew that if or when others had followed him into this eternal (because wholly-aligned, Entropy-purged) state of resurrection - which remaking process would be guided by Jesus himself - then a world of such persons would be a world without Evil.

In eliminating Entropy, resurrection also eliminates Evil, as a subsidiary effect. 

And this wholly-harmonious and wholly-God-aligned post-mortal world would be Heaven: in which the deepest and ineradicable problems of this mortal life are eliminated; and free and creative Beings live spontaneously in harmony (loving God and each-other), and from common aims and motives. 

 

Heart thinking or entropic thinking: How and why we are (literally) destroying reality

The great lesson I got from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, is that reality is co-created by consciousness - that is, by thinking. We make the world by our thinking - and the kind of world we make - or unmake, depends on the kind of thinking. 

The only thing out-there and independent of us is formless chaos - all that can be known has been created; and creation formed by consciousness, and all consciousness has this property of creative formation. 

The primary creation that we inhabit was formed by God's consciousness (God is the prime creator); but our own consciousness affects divine creation - either positively or negatively. 

As our consciousness has become detached from God - we must now choose whether again to affiliate with the living reality of primary creation through love and heart thinking; or to remain alienated, to regard reality as consisting of dead things affected by material processes - and thereby to affiliate with the entropic, parasitic, destructive cognitive processing of mainstream modern life. 

It has become very obvious that humanity is splitting into Christians and anti-Christians; into those who affiliate with God, The Good and Divine Creation - and those who oppose these. 

This split can also be seen as between heart thinking and entropic thinking. We are being compelled to choose between these. 

It is the choice between loving creation; or the subversion, deconstruction and destruction of creation. 

Entropic thinking is normal, abstract, mainstream, 'materialist' thinking - it is 'brain thinking', which is increasingly conformed to machine or computer thinking. 

Entropic describes how you are (almost certainly) thinking now; and how nearly everybody (or everybody) around you is thinking - it is how everybody in societal authority and institutional leadership are thinking. It is the processing embodied in public discourse, bureaucracy, computers, management, media, laws, regulations, procedures...  

This entropic thinking assumes the world is made of dead things, and these dead things are subject to life-less processes, energies and forces. Built-into this is the assumption that entropy rules the world - rules reality - entropy in one place can only be reversed or delayed by increasing entropy elsewhere - thus 'creation' is actually the predatory consumption of one source of order by another - and (because entropy is relentless) this predation (or parasitism) must continue until all order is consumed and formless chaos remains.

Thus, entropic thinking is the world view of the self-damned, the demonic; those who believe in Satan's conceptualization of reality: the sin-motivated war of each against all (only expediently delayed by transient mutually-exploitative demonic alliances directed against God and creation).

Heart thinking is in complete contrast and opposition to the entropic in its nature, origin and motivation. 

Heart thinking is based in love and life; it assumes a living universe of beings - and God's creation gets its origin, form, order and coherence from love. 

Thus, love and creation are polarities of the same essence - loving-creation and creative-love.  

This love - which made creation, and holds-together creation - and which is self-sustaining - is between beings. Beings are living and conscious entities - all beings are alive and conscious, but there are different degrees of aliveness and forms of consciousness.  

Heart thinking is of those beings who have first become modern and alienated; who have first assimilated into entropic thinking - where the reality of God is not entailed. Those who from that position of detached freedom have consciously chosen to recognize, embrace and align-with the reality of God and of a 'universe' consisting of beings living in a divine creation. 

Those who choose heart thinking will find that they need to recognize the greater authority, depth and truth of a thinking based in love, and operating with love - in order to reject the otherwise overwhelming powers and persuasion of entropic thinking. 

It is the terrible choice of modern Man to choose - and his choice lies between the divine work of co-creating the world, or else the demonic project of destroying creation. 

Those who think entropically will do entropy. 

By the way they conceptualize the world, they project deadness onto the living world, they project abstract forces and energies onto a creation that is actually sustained by love; and by these projections these remake their world in the image they have chosen. 

Despite the opposition (implicit and explicit) of The World; heart thinking will need to be accorded primacy again and again, as it conflicts in method and motivation with the dominant, prevalent this-worldly entropic thinking - which asserts its monopoly of objectivity and that heart thinking is childish, foolish or insane.

Entropic thinking labels heart thinking as wishful thinking; yet the truth is both heart and entropic are wishful - and the wishes become reality.  

The entropic thinker wishes entropy onto divine creation - converting that which is alive and conscious through love into a meaningless, purposeless dead universe. 

It is entropic thinking that is destroying our civilization, our humanity - and beyond that it destroys the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Because the entropic thinker (and he is apparently most people in the world, including most self-identified Christians) is co-engaged in the progressive killing of beings, the elimination of love, the reduction of life and consciousness into 'people' who self-identify as Dead Things. 

The heart thinker instead works from the love in his heart, from actual interpersonal and inter-being love (not abstract love); he recognizes and affirms that love, and makes it the motivation for knowing reality. He regards reality as that which known by this loving thinking. 

The heart thinker regards the world from his heart - it is his love of particular beings which connects him with reality; it is his love that motivates the connection-with and knowledge-of reality. 

That which is outwith his love is not truly known - but merely hypothesized, modelled from simplified and incomplete variables, and therefore certainly false. 

Thus the primacy of the two great commandments: love of God and neighbour. In heart thinking; modern Man chooses to participate in co-creating his own reality (and potentially the reality of other heart thinkers) by rooting his knowledge in love of God. And the scope of this knowledge is defined by the scope of those other beings ('neighbours') whom he also loves. And if he wishes this active joining-with loving creation to be an eternal state - this is attained by loving and following Jesus Christ to resurrected life in Heaven. 

Note: The above analysis is indebted to a section of a lecture on Crop Circles from Stanley Messenger to the Wessex Research Group, delivered in the middle 1990s. Stanley Messenger was an expert on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, having been a Waldorf teacher. He was also involved in, and approving of (in what I regard as an uncritical and credulous way) pretty much all of the New Age crazes of his era; and was also a proponent of the sexual revolution. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and a gifted improvisatory lecturer (having been a professional actor). My eveluation is that Stanley Messenger was (much like his Master, Steiner) someone who sporadically generated some superb and vitally-important insights, which are scattered among a great deal else that I must set aside as mistaken and wrongly-motivated. Anyway; my above post was inspired by re-listening to a genuinely-intuitive, superbly truth-full section of the linked lecture which runs from about 23 minutes to 42 minutes. This section strikes me as more vivid, comprehensible, exciting and motivating than anything Steiner ever expressed (that I have come across) - while being deeply and explicitly indebted to Steiner. 

Chaos, Creation, Entropy, Evil

Things began with chaos, among-which were Beings. Beings are self-sustaining - from Beings come the energies that shape chaos into creation. 

As soon as creation had begun, there was entropy - which is the tendency for the created to revert back to chaos. 

In this current stage of creation (which we also inhabit) creation must always be-overcoming entropy; by the self-sustaining energies of Beings. 

The reversion of creation to entropy releases 'energy'.

Therefore evil Beings, those who hate God and creation, encourage the reversion of creation to chaos. They do this partly in order to destroy creation, and partly to use the released 'energy' for their own purposes. 

Luciferic-evil Beings reduce creation intending to feed-upon the released energies. 

Luciferic evil is thus parasitic in nature - a Luciferically evil Being will feed-upon the energies of creation, as he destroys it.

 

Ahrimanic-evil Beings destroy creation by opposing chaos with 'order'. 

Creation becomes confined within The Global Bureaucracy, The System, The Matrix: the Black Iron Prison (BIP). 

Dynamic self-sustaining creation is held in stasis - thus the energies of creative life are squeezed out from the imprisoned Beings. 

After taking a tithe for vampiric (Luciferic) self-reward; these energies are used to maintain, extend and reinforce the prison: to extend the BIP globally, to include all Men; and to eliminate all perception and awareness of any-thing at all beyond the prison.

(Actually not all Men; because Ahrimanic evil entails a sharp distinction between prison inmates and warders; between the Beings who are-processed and the Beings who-do-the-processing - between Us and Them.) 

The death-factory is constructed and fueled by the energies released from its destruction of life. Ahrimanic evil is thus an entropy-factory, a processing plant; it takes living creation and reduces it to dead matter: creation to chaos. 

Ultimately, Ahrimanic evil turns creation against itself; uses life to crush life. 

Sorathic Beings are saboteurs - they were supposed to be warders sustaining the BIP, but they have begun smashing the buildings, wrecking the machines, and torturing the inmates. 

Sorathaic Beings are defectors from the Ahrimanic plan - because they have come to regard the Ahriminic factory as too slow, too dull, too unrewarding, too conjectural in effect. They want to destroy creation Now, directly, indiscriminately. 

Sorathic Beings perceive the contradiction of creating a Black Iron Prison as a means to destroy creation - when the base motivation of evil is to destroy all of creation (including BIPs). Pure evil cannot postpone universal destruction when it can be started already. 

Thus, Sorathic Beings will burn the death factory, along with its inmates and the warders; will return every-thing to chaos without attempting to harness or use the energies for any purpose. 

The motivation is not pleasure (like the Luciferics), nor mass effectiveness (like the Ahrimanic) - but a spite-driven, burning-zeal for pure destruction of all - here and now. 

Sorathic evil is born of a distrust of complex, long-term plans and schemes, a revulsion against the hypocrisy and pretense of the Ahrimanic strategy; which poses as 'good' and continues to create, albeit justified in order to destroy.

Sorathic evil emerges and waxes when the Ahrimanic scheme is nearing completion - when it comes to be believed that There is Only the BIP - there is only a whole world of evil, inescapable, with no alternative. 

Then evil has only evil as a target - so the greater evil turns-against and consumes the lesser.

 

Analysis by cause and effect acting on categories of things is Not Ultimately True; because relationships between Beings are primary

The analysis by causes and effects, using abstract categories of entities, developed in the classical and medieval periods when there was still a great deal of spontaneous, unconscious "participation" of human consciousness. 

In other words, when these abstractions cause/ effect/ category were devised; even "things" were regarded - quite naturally, and by experience - as personifications, with the kind of innate nature and desires of a living being. 

But for the modern (especially adult) consciousness participation has dwindled almost to nothing; and even living beings, even human beings, are regarded as if non-living "things". 

Therefore, to seek understanding of people, the abstractions of category, cause and effects are deployed as if these are the primary and bottom line realities - more real and important than the relationships between people...

Indeed; relationships between people are themselves subordinated to categorical, cause & effect analysis. 

The mainstream Christian churches have largely apostatized into modern consciousness, but even the  most traditionalist of church Christians have continued to use the classical and medieval versions of abstract analyses - but nowadays, because modern consciousness is so different, these abstractions are not-participated, they are alienated and alienating. 

This is why, for instance, Scholastic or Calvinist theologies are so cold and material-mechanical to the modern mind: because we cannot help but take them literally, while when they originated the rigorous philosophy was experienced (quite spontaneously) in what we might regard as a poetic, mystical, animistic way.  

And would-be spiritual explanations for group prayer, ritual, sacredness are often explained (or, at least, asserted) in a kind of pseudo-scientific fashion: as if constituting a laboratory procedure, or a computer program: If you do this, then this, in such a fashion - then these will be the objective outcomes...

But if, as I believe, the ultimate (metaphysical) reality is that of beings in relationships; then we ought to be trying to understand in these personal and interpersonal terms.

After all, within a good and loving family; the members are Not understood in terms of categories, and their relationships are not conducted as if cause and effect recipes for producing desired results. 

Instead; we realize that we cannot, and should not, treat each other in this mechanistic way; and that our influences on each other are not of a cause and effect nature. 

To read many "Trad" Christians; one would think that getting married, raising a family and living in a family ought to be a matter of slotting members into the proper categories, then following the correct (and God-approved) procedures for implementing the desired changes and outcomes! 

But this is to reduce the family to a bureaucracy; and bureaucracy is intrinsically evil. 

And it matters not whether the particular bureaucracy is secular- or church-derived; or if purports to be conducted according to laws and regulations from some interpretation of the Bible, Church authority, tradition, theology, or whatnot.

The de-humanization, the reduction of Beings to things, is just the same. 

We have all been ingrained with bad habits, actively-evil habits, of depersonalization; of mechanizing humans and other beings - and regarding such mechanizing as not just valid but superior - as (supposedly) validated by our understanding of ancient law and practice.  

Yet such behaviour leads us away from salvation - and by a very direct route; by making salvation impersonal, actually non-personal; reduced to a business of the abstract operations of cause and effect on things. 

Fortunately, it is quick and easy to repent such habits - once we have noticed them, and understood their nature and tendency. 

We all have built-into us - innately, from childhood - the instinct and tendency to understand other people and the world by means of relationships between living, purposive, conscious beings. 

All we require is to know, to be clear about, to decide; is that this is indeed the right and good way of understanding and acting. 

Our inevitably many lapses can then be repented - which is (mercifully!) all that is absolutely required of us. 

**

The Example of Prayer:

An an instance of the above, we may consider the influence of prayer on other people, as explained by Christians. 

In the medieval past, the individual conscious was less differentiated-from, more immersed-in, group consciousness. 

Therefore a prayer did not come entirely from any individual, and did not express the personal wants of any individual; but all valid prayer was significantly from the group-consciousness, it actually arose from the group. 

Its effect was because of this - from the group, to the group. 

The medievals may have interpreted prayer in a cause and effect way if asked to explain it: e.g. I pray for this to happen to him and it happens. But in reality, when prayer was effectual, it was because prayer operated in an unconscious and implicit group context. 

The modern person has become detached (almost wholly) from the group-consciousness. This is our freedom and agency, it is part of our development (and growing-up in consciousness towards the divine) - but it also means that our prayers have a different origin. 

Our prayers may come from our selves alone - and without connection with other consciousnesses. There is no obvious reason why a prayer from our self will affect other selves - especially when those other selves are understood as (like our selves) free agents. 

If our prayers "caused" effects in others, then the others would not be truly free - and vice versa.  

Or our prayers (especially group prayers) may derive from second-hand and external sources, from perceived stimuli interpreted by learned-concepts. 

(Such as prayers aimed at changing phenomena, knowledge of which has been derived-from political propaganda and the mass media, or from social media. This accounts for many prayers in church concerning official-media accounts of wars, famines, diseases - as well as those prayers directed at enhancing the agendas of evil such as antiracism, anthropogenic climate emergency, supposed or actual atrocities.)  

In sum: Modern people lack a plausible or real basis to explain (to themselves, as well as others) the effect of prayers. Mainstream people probably regard prayers as operating on the consciousness of the pray-er, with a secondary "group-psychological" effect, derived from the (psychological) experience of praying as a group. 

Modern traditionalists regard prayer (and indeed the church) rather as if it were an engineering project: a matter of assembling appropriate personnel, performing particular words in a particular ritual and symbolic context - leading leading to particular effects...

Albeit and importantly by the Grace of God, and not effectual from purely human and material causes. 

Yet despite the necessity of God; there is a very considerable quasi-objective "positivism" (materialism, reductionism, scientism) about the way that prayer, ritual, sacraments - even miracles - are understood by modern traditionalists (who have, innately and like-it-or-not, the modern alienated consciousness). 

For Trads; our business as mortal men is to regard Christian realities as objectively-real categories with necessary cause and effect interactions -- yet this is, in practice and intrinsically, to reduce humans to things, whatever protestations otherwise.  

What I am suggesting is that we ought not to think of prayer in a cause and effect fashion, operating between our-selves and other people or other things. 

We should instead regard prayer in the context of those entities with whom we ourselves are bound by relationships of love - as we and they were of a family. 

Where there is not this inter-personal (inter-being) love, then there will be no real prayer - but with love, all prayer will be significant, will make-a-difference. 

Where there is love, then prayer does not work by cause and effect, but works on "the relationships". 

And by this, I means prayer works on the real and ultimate spiritual relationships, relationships that transcend and encompass physical relationships, and potentially extend to post mortal life, and potentially eternally. 

In everyday life, our beneficial relationships are those which are loving, and which regard the other persona as an unique person, our relationship as unique. 

Actual benefits in relationships are seldom planned, and seldom contrived; but are consequent on living our loving relationships. 

We live in accordance with Christian love - and what actually happens always benefits from that, in some way - but not in a cause and effect way, and not leading to predictable outcomes -- because we are relating to real people who are free agents. 

And that is how our prayers work also. 

Why do pre-mortal spirits - such as you and me - choose to incarnate mortally? Why don't we stay as spirit-Beings?

From the metaphysical assumptions of many religious conceptualizations, it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to incarnate as a mortal (for example, an embodied human being) - given all the intrinsic problems, as well as the possible risks? 

Why wouldn't spirits want to stay as spirits? 

Stay safe and sound?...

But if entropy is an inescapable reality in God's First Creation - then the alternative to incarnation is inevitable decay; the inexorable loss of whatever we gain in terms of memories, of learning from experiences.  

It seems that spirit Beings change more slowly than incarnated mortals; but presumably they do change - and in Primary Creation there is no escape.

So spirits are not really "safe and sound" - at least not in terms of staying "who they are".  

Spirit Beings are immortal, and divine creation will continually give life, vitality, healing, growth and so forth. But this cannot be cumulative, all created spirit Beings will continually be "losing themselves", even as they are being remade.

(Just as things are for us now, here on earth.)  

I understand incarnation to be a concentration. 

The spiritual is primary, and all the material/ physical world is spiritual - yet an embodied Being is like a concentrated-spirit, one in which things are more focused, change more rapid; and most importantly where the self is more bounded, hence more free. 

Incarnated Beings are more themselves (for better and worse) than the same Beings as a spirit - we are more differentiated from other Beings than are spirits; hence we can (in principle) understand more clearly, make personal choices, and see the basis for personal responsibility. 

So, if you are a pre-mortal spirit, you are faced with a prospect of inevitable change and loss of self; or else you can choose to take the risk and incarnate in hope that you will choose to move on to the Second Creation - to resurrected eternal life, or heaven; as described by Jesus Christ; a place and state where entropy is permanently escaped. 

(This happens, I have argued, because entropy arises from incomplete love between Beings; in the Second creation we permanently commit to live by love.) 

Tis mortal incarnated life is intrinsically an adventure, where we can succeed or fail, but where success or failure is a matter of free choice.

It seems that some people who have incarnated as mortal Men, most people perhaps; take a look at the Second Creation, think about it, and then reject it - preferring something else.

But whatever "something else" is preferred to Heaven, and whatever its advantages in the short term; it will entail continual loss-of-self. 

The Being that inhabits somewhere-other-than-Heaven will, over the long term, lose memory, lose the effects of experiences, lose its distinctive identity - will fade. 

Outwith Heaven; Beings do not die, because Beings are eternal; but they will always be tending to revert to that primal chaos of indifference - of simply "existing". 

Yet to escape this fate; to have everlasting, cumulative personal life as our-selves, entails living wholly by love; and it seems that only some people want to live forever on those terms.