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

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

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

All of these are unavoidable, are universal. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Note Added: The difference is that:

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

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

The progression of Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil; related to our loving-creator-personal-God, and to Jesus Christ

Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ; it is built upon several other realities:

1. We inhabit a creation - the world is created.

2. The creator is a God, i.e. a personal God (not an abstraction)

3. The creator God is loving towards all the Beings of creation (God might be otherwise, but is not)

In sum: Jesus operates in the context of reality being the creation of a loving (hence necessarily personal) God. 

Jesus is necessary because of the nature of creation: Creation takes place in the midst of primordial chaos. 

Primordial chaos is primal Beings existing without love - without coordination, without harmony; each Being a world unto Himself. 

This is why our mortal reality (termed Primary Creation) is subject to Entropy. Entropy is the spontaneous tendency of creation to revert to primordial chaos. (We experience Entropy in terms of disease, degenerative change, and the inevitability of death for all Beings)

Jesus offers the possibility of permanent and complete escape from entropy and the threat of chaos. 

Evil is the rejection of creation. 

Evil therefore came after creation. 

Evil entails the rejection of love, since love between Beings is what makes creation - creation is the harmony of Beings. 

The first evil is called Luciferic.

Luciferic evil is the assertion of a Being's selfishness ("my" self is all that matters) and the rejection of Love between oneself and other Beings. 

Luciferic evil therefore aspires to use (therefore not destroy) creation; to use creation in order to serve its own selfish will and personal gratification. 

Luciferic evil does not aspire to the damnation of other Beings (i.e. to make them reject resurrection into Heaven); it tends to be indifferent to the spiritual fate of other Beings. 

A Luciferically-evil Being, exploits ruthlessly and without love: desires that any and all other Beings will serve his personal satisfaction. 

In a sense; a Luciferic Being desires that creation will serve his will. This is why he is not against-creation as such. 

It could be said that Luciferic evil hates God (is anti-God; because God is loving), and is indifferent to Jesus.  

The second evil is Ahrimanic. 

Luciferic evil tends to develop into Ahrimanic evil; because Luciferically evil Beings band-together in mutually beneficial alliances, in order more effectively to exploit other-Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil is an alliance of the selfish. 

Ahrimanic evil is anti-God, which it inherits from Luciferic evil; and Ahrimanic evil is in addition anti-Jesus. 

Thus Luciferic = anti-God; whereas Ahrimanic = anti-God plus anti-Jesus. 

Therefore the alliance of the selfish will organize, manipulate and coerce other Beings, aiming that these other Beings will reject salvation: will reject the offer of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven.

In sum; while Luciferic evil desires the exploitation of Beings; Ahrimanic evil desires the damnation of Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil desires damnation because it is more spitefully evil than Luciferic evil. It's desires are not just for selfish gratification; but also for the immiseration of others. 

It could reasonably be said, therefore, that Ahrimanic evil is a greater evil that Luciferic; wanting not just its own satisfaction, but the stripping of satisfaction from others. 

This is why Ahrimanic evil has tended towards depersonalization via bureaucracy. 

The Ahrimanic aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control is not just a positive aspiration for domination; it is also actively directed-against the freedom and agency of other Beings. 

Yet Ahrimanic evil of-itself does not aim at the destruction of other Beings: it aims at domination, not destruction. 

It wants a universe of miserable slaves.

(Indeed; including the "enslavement" of animals, plants, earth and heavenly bodies, and indeed the "mineral" world; permanent utter domination of every-thing, rather than to kill every-thing.) 

And the Ahrimanic desire for damnation of other-Beings is a consequence of being against Freedom and Agency. Salvation is, after all, an eternal choice for resurrected Men to participate in divine creation; which absolutely entails their agency and freedom.   

The third evil is Sorathic. 

Sorathic evil is anti-creation; it aspires ultimately to reduce creation to chaos.

Sorathic evil is directed against all kinds of creation; it is against not only positive Good, but also against Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils - insofar as these seek to exploit or enslave creation. 

Sorathic evil can be considered a completion of the motivational shift from Luciferic to Ahrimanic evil, which is a shift from seeking personal gratification by using other Beings, to a type of personal gratification that enjoys the utter domination of other Beings. 

A qualitative shift from hedonism, to spitefulness. 

Sorathic evil moves on from the desire to dominate the whole of creation, to the desire to destroy all of creation - including oneself, insofar as we all are products of divine creation. 

The Sorathic can be seen as a purely negative form of evil, found in Beings that have lost all capacity for positive personal satisfaction, and can only enjoy destruction.

To summarize: Luciferic evil is pro-creation and anti-God because anti-Love. 

Ahrimanic evil is pro-creation and anti God (anti-Love) and also Jesus (anti-salvation). 

While Sorathic evil is "anti-" all manifestations of creation - including anti- all Beings (including anti-God and anti-Jesus Christ); also anti-Love, and anti-salvation. 

Sorathic evil tends to chaos; but it is not pro-chaos. 

Ultimately, Sorathic chaos is the negation of creation; the end-result of being anti-every-thing...

***

Note on Sin = Entropy and Evil; Salvation being from both Entropy and Evil 

Entropy (termed "Death") and Evil are, together, what is called Sin in the Fourth Gospel. 

Jesus came to save us from Sin - that is, to offer us the chance to reject Sin eternally; live without-sin eternally. 

Thus resurrection into eternal Heavenly Life saves us both from entropy including death (as well as disease and degenerative change); and simultaneously saves us from evil of all kinds. 

Resurrected Eternal Life in Heaven in therefore the Second Creation; which is derived from Primary Creation but operating entirely and eternally on the basis of Love, and without entropy or evil - because Sin is left-behind at resurrection. 

God and entropy

*
Did God make entropy a law of the known universe, or is entropy prior to God and God constrained by entropy?

Could God have made a world without entropy, could He have made this world without entropy - a world that was not tending to corruption and chaos - and if so why didn't he?

*

For the medieval 'scholastic' theologians, the mortal sub-lunar world was the place of entropy - of decay, death and sin - and the Heavenly world was a place of eternal and perfect harmony. Entropy was therefore pretty much a product of Satan and his demons (all entropy is evil, but not all evil is entropy).

But it is hard to make such a world picture coherent, and hard to understand how two such different worlds can have any meaningful relationship (i.e. an always-corrupting and death-filled world of entropy, versus an eternal and changeless world of perfection).

*

Although entropy is destructive of life, we moderns find it hard to imagine life without entropy; in the sense that any active process would seem liable to accumulate damage.

Or, to put it the other way around, if something is static, eternal and perfect - and therefore invulnerable to entropy - we find it hard to suppose that it is actually alive.

So the medieval view of divinity and Heaven seems to secure invulnerability to entropy only at the cost of something that sounds very much like death!

*

I think that a Christian requires that a life, a specific life, must have a distinctive and personal essence which is eternal and indestructible - despite entropy.

Rather than zero-entropy stasis; what I think this implies is an eternal, active, energy using-and energy-generating process acting to purge entropy from each eternally-living entity.

In a nutshell, this is the process of making form, structure, organization - as a fundamental principle.

*

So, anything alive is alive because of the form-generating principle; and also tends to lose form and die due to entropy - the end-result depends on the relative strength of these processes of form versus entropy.

On this earth, it seems entropy is stronger than form (death is stronger than life) - so all living forms will sooner or later be overwhelmed by entropy, and will die.

Eternal life requires the opposite predominance - of form over entropy, life over death - so that although (presumably) entropy continues to occur, it is continually purged and structure continues... forever.

The possible implication is that we inhabit this high entropy world for a reason to do with the domination of the process and tendency of change - corruption, ageing and sin. But also that this mortal life is temporary and will necessarily end in death. The domination of entropy will end.

And that our habitation of this entropically-dominant kind of world is not an accident, but in some way a part of God's plan for us.

*

Death is a type of evil, and the only path to pure Good

Entropy (the tendency to decay, the inevitability of death) is dominant in this mortal world and the known universe. 

Entropy is a type of evil: because so long as entropy is, then whatever is Good will decay, will die. 

Thus decay and death are an evil. 

And yet, since Jesus Christ; death is also potentially a path to everlasting life in Heaven... In other words, to a mode of existence without entropy, without decay or death.

(Because all evil - including entropy - has been left-behind.) 

Indeed, death is the only path to eternal, sinless life. 

Therefore; while death is an evil, for a Christian death of the mortal body it is also the death of evil: the one and only path to Good. 

Exactly such is the Christian's experience of the fact of death: 

For us; death is a terrible and unavoidable evil. 

And death is our necessary path to an otherwise unattainable everlasting, wholly-Good, way of being. 

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. 

 

The divine "purpose" for individual persons: God gives us what we need (but Not Only what we need)

Each person's life has "meaning" - and that meaning is related to divine purpose. 

I think this is quite clear, if you know what to look for - in your own life, and the lives of those you know and love. 

I mean that people always (sooner or later) get the experience/s they most need for spiritual development. 

However, that does not mean that every individual "automatically" learns from each such experience -- Indeed, very often, it seems that people do not learn from personal experiences that could be of great personal benefit. 

Or else people learn something wrong and contrary to divine purpose, from experiences; they choose to lean a lesson contrary to God's hope and intentions. 

For instance; when some adverse experience that could be corrective if properly understood; is instead used as an excuse or rationale for doubling-down on some sin; such as fear, resentment, or despair. 

But what makes all this less obvious is that not all of life is related to divine purpose. 

It is the nature of this life and world we are currently experiencing that there is entropy/ death and there is evil. 

What this means is that things happen that are Not part of the divine purpose. 

What God the Creator can do and does; is make the best of these things. 

So that if some-thing happens to a person that is simply the result of entropy (some degenerative phenomenon or disease for example*); or a consequence of evil motivation or service to evil; then consequently God will create - such as later to enable something to be gained (or salvaged) from this adverse occurrence.   

All of this points at the need for discernment, because understanding and learning are inevitably confused and clouded by the nature of ourselves and this world; the process of discerning and learning is one requiring active participation and culminating in freedom to choose how to be, and where to go next. 

We must be able to discern which experiences are God given, and which are not. We must and inevitably do also work from our state of freedom. 

Creation is not something done-to-us. Divine purpose is that we participate in creation. 

And when an experience was not a part of divine purpose, we may need to be able to discern at what point God has (later) been able to present us with the possibility of deriving Good from evil. 

We make such discernments partly from that which is divine within-us; and partly (since the time of Jesus Christ) by guidance from the Holy Ghost... 

In other words, the capacity for true discernment is innate, and does not need to be derived from external sources - although, of course, external sources of guidance may be helpful in true discernment - just as external guidance is (here and now) more usually harmful. 

So much for this world we live-in, this mixed-world, this world that mixes divine creation and purpose with entropy and evil...

A further thing that God purposes that we learn is that this mixed world (the Primary Creation) may be escaped after death and the separation of our spirit from our incarnate form; because after death (and only after death) we may follow Jesus Christ through resurrection with eternal life; and into a Second Creation that is Heaven. 

Therefore, there will be divinely purposed experiences in this mortal life of ours (assuming we live long enough) that may be understood (if we are prepared to learn) as pointing towards the possibility of Resurrection and Heaven beyond death. 

i.e. Experiences that may (if we discern aright) be understood as pointing towards Salvation. 

Yet if, for whatever reason, we do not get such experiences during this mortal life (perhaps we die in the womb, or as infants) then such experiences as we need to be enabled to choose Heaven; will surely be provided after death. But again we are free to learn from them or not, and to choose Heaven or not. 

In sum: there is a divine purpose (or more than one purpose) for each person incarnated into this world; and this purpose is related to learning a lesson, or several lessons, during our life. 

Each person's purpose will be unique, because each person is unique - because each person had a pre-mortal spirit life before human incarnation  - which is why people are unique individuals from before birth. 

Because our purpose is unique, and because this world is a mixture of divinely created purpose with entropy and evil; discernment is required. We must recognize when we are being divinely taught; and when not...

But even when our life's happenings are due to evil Beings, or due to the innately entropic nature of this world - we should be alert to the ways in which divine creation can shape subsequent events, sooner-or-later to present us with possibilities for learning important life lessons.

Meaning and purpose are not "given": they need to be discerned...

We need to learn from them, and that is our job: we also need to learn the right (i.e. divinely intended) lessons from them.  

*Or death. The Fourth Gospel strongly suggests that death was regarded as The Number One Main Problem of life as-is-on-earth. Death is the problem that Jesus for which usually claims to be offering a solution. 

Is evil stronger than Good?

Duh, yeah! Evil is stronger than Good if you are talking about the trends evident in this mortal life, here on earth; and if you are discerning from a Christian point of view. 

This is what it is like to live in a world where evil rules at the highest level and in all nations; and where every week brings new evil plans and policies, every day brings new evil news and evil interpretations. 

So, at least in the human world; evil is already strongest and evil is winning; especially because this is unrecognized. 

Quantitatively evil is triumphant; and few people seem even to want what Jesus Christ offers. 

Yet this material world is evanescent, subject to 'entropy', degeneration and death; thus each human life is temporary, our human civilization and society is temporary; the existence of the planet and even the sun is temporary. 

Evil, therefore, is triumphant - but in the material, earthly world; which is temporary. 

But the true earthly war is spiritual, not material; and spiritually; evil is damnation - which is at most only a delaying of death.  

Therefore, ultimately Good is still winning; for at least so long as there are any Men still being resurrected and going to enlarge Heaven. 

Only Good is everlasting. So, no matter how much evil may triumph in the short term, no matter how much evil destroys and how many souls choose evil - there already is eternal Good that cannot be destroyed and will endure forever. 

And this eternal good is being added to, and is growing; and itself has the property of creation so will continue to grow - eternally. 

In this sense Good has already won, and its victory can only get larger. 

Of course, evil is real, and its ill effects are real. Self-damned souls are committed to evil and are lost from what might have been a larger Heaven; what those unique souls would have brought to Heavenly life has been destroyed. This is why we fight evil in general - and the fact that these damned souls may include those we love, who also are lost to Heaven, is what makes the fight personal and urgent. 

But the basic shape of reality is that evil is (here, now) strongest on this earth, and this is a Bad Ting and needs to be resisted and fought-back against; but since Jesus Christ Good has irrevocably won in an eternal and ultimate sense.  

This earth is a world of entropy. We will all die, and death is a necessary preliminary to resurrection: hence death is (for a Christian) ultimately Good. 

The Big Question is whether you and I (and those we love) want to join-with and partake-of this everlasting Good - or reject it and choose spiritual death. 

Why is Heaven necessary? Because: evil accumulates. Because *this* world is based on vampirism (life feeds on life)

This is how I see it...

Some people perceive no need for Heaven. They either this this life in this world suffices; or else they want to give back to God their entrance ticket to mortal life - they desire to cease to exist as separate souls, and to become reabsorbed-into the the divine - into the totality. 

But there are ineradicable problems with this life in this world - not matter how ideally things might be arranged; because this is a world where entropy - death - has the upper hand, and wins in the long run with respect to every Being. 

Beings are eternal, and have agency - but in this mortal world, bodies and all physical manifestations are temporary.  

Therefore, over time, there are more and more once-embodied, now dis-embodied, but eternal spirits - and some of these will have made the choice of evil. 

Yes, dead (discarnate) Beings can be replaced by more (incarnate) Beings. Yes, additional creation can keep pace with disease, decline, ageing, death... 

But the problem is that evil accumulates - and that is why the world keeps getting worse. 

(By evil, I mean that which opposes God, and divine creation - which has made that choice.) 

The trouble is that in order to live - life feeds on life. 

And this applies to the spiritual as well as the physical. "Vampirism" is the rule of this world - for all those who are unwilling to accept oblivion - and there are always some of these (and, apparently, more and more). 

What happens is that there are spirits who maintain conscious and agentic (motivated) life by feeding off the "life energies" of other Beings; and some of these are Men. They spiritually vampirize other Men in life, and - unless there is repentance - this continues after death - when they become spirits. So, these evil-spirits of once-incarnate Men accumulate in this world; at least for so long as there are living Men for them to feed-upon. 

Some others are Men who never incarnated - what we term demons. These also maintain their consciousness, energy, power - by consuming others.

What this means is that while God can keep creating, and adding new beings to this world; this also has the side effect of increasing the 'food supply' of demons and evil-men (alive and post-mortal) of the Vampiric type. 

Thus evil accumulates in this-world. 

I think this was understood by the ancient Christian (and other) prophets who foretold "end-time" when evil would have the upper hand (the world was "net-evil"), and where the longer things continued - the worse (more evil, overall) they would get. 

They foresaw that the only way-out was that there must be a "second creation" - one that excluded death and "entropy" - a second creation of pure creation.  

And this is what Jesus Christ made for us with Heaven - that Heaven which we enter via death and resurrection. 

Because at resurrection we (choose to) leave-behind all this is evil, all that opposes divine creation - and we become Beings of pure creation - which is pure love. 

Thus Heaven is "necessary" in the sense that otherwise the world will just keep getting worse and worse; the longer it continues.  

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.

 

Recognizing "Entropy" (change, death) as The Problem - there have been three suggested Answers

Even if we (somehow) lived in an utterly perfect society under an utterly ideal political system - there would still be the problem of evil. 

Even if the problem of evil was (somehow) cured; then there would still be the problem of entropy - of change, degeneration, disease, death. 

Entropy is the ultimate enemy.

(Although modern Westerners have lost sight of it; the ultimacy of the problem of entropy has been recognized at least since the earliest known Greek philosophers, and is the focus of the Fourth Gospel's account of the purpose and work of Jesus Christ - i.e. at the very heart of Christianity.)  

There have been (I think) three suggested ways that purport to solve the ultimate problem of entropy:

1. By Stasis

2. By Spirit

3. By Resurrection  

The cure by stasis is that entropy is caused by (indeed actually is) change; and is solved by a reality in which there is no change. Eternity is therefore static. 

The cure by spirit is that entropy is caused by matter, by "the material"; and therefore is solved by the replacement of matter by immaterial spirit. (Including that our death is, ultimately, due to being incarnated.) Eternity is therefore spiritual. 

The cure by resurrection is that there must first be death, and after death (for those Beings that "follow" Jesus Christ) there can be a transformation, a re-making; such that we again become incarnated (i.e. made of solid "matter") that is everlasting, inhabiting a Heaven where we remain our-selves, and in which there is change.  

The idea of resurrection as a cure for entropy is therefore something new and different from the more ancient ideas of stasis and/or spiritualization.  

I find the answers of stasis and spirit to be incoherent from a Christian perspective; because they raise the problem of why a loving personal God would compel His children to pass-through the entropic phase of mortal incarnation. If stasis, or spirit, are the answer - why bother with all this tedious mucking-about in this state of change and as matter? If entropy is to be solved by stasis or spiritualization, why create the problem at all - why create change, why create matter?  

But resurrection has not been understood as a third and qualitatively different solution from stasis and spirit - so that most supposed-explanations of resurrection, instead revert to variations and combinations of stasis and spirit. 

A satisfactory and coherent explanation of resurrection needs to include:

1. Why death is necessary? Why does God not go directly to the non-entropic state of things? 

2. Why our continued mortal life is necessary? If death is necessary to the abolition of entropy, then why don't we die ASAP and get on with the real business of post-mortal resurrected living? 

It is because I could not find any such explanations, that I was compelled to devise coherent answers for myself; and why I ended-up with a new kind of metaphysical Christian theology. 

Only Christianity offers a cure to entropy and evil - all other religions and ideologies are palliative

Palliative medicine is the name for a speciality when, at the end of life ( a terminal illness) the focus moves from curing to helping the patient feel better. But ultimately all of medicine is palliative, because all "cures" are partial and temporary; and everybody degenerates and dies eventually...

 

Analogously; all secular ideologies (all politics, all social reform and radicalism) are palliative - even when imagined to be wholly effective - palliative, because they do not address the core problems of this life on earth; which are entropy and evil. 

(Entropy being the tendency of creation to fall back into chaos leading to degeneration and death; evil being the purposive opposition to God's plans of divine creation.)

But, assuming that all religions do indeed offer what they claim; only Christianity claims to cure the core problems of mortal life: only Heaven claims to be a complete and permanent cure for entropy and evil. 

All other religions are variously palliative - in their aspiration, in their promises. 

The difference between Christianity and all other options is firstly Resurrection of our-selves, so that we remain ourselves - but everlasting and without evil, but wholly and forever living by love of God and Fellow Men. 

And secondly; the Christian aim is Heaven - when is understood as a Second Creation, inhabited only by those Beings who have eternally committed to live by love only; and thereby left-behind "sin". That is they have left-behind both evil and entropy. 

Such that Heaven is wholly creative. 

Heavenly resurrected life does not solve all problems of existence, and is not intended to do so; because there is endless scope for love and creation. But Christian Heaven does claim to solve the problems of evil and entropy: solve them once and for all. Nobody else even claims that - every other option is palliative: at best. 

Was there ever a Golden Age? Camelot and the Vision of Albion, by Geoffrey Ashe (1971)

Geoffrey Ashe is one of my favourite authors, and Camelot and the Vision of Albion (1971) is (for me) his best book. Strongly recommended. 

I have been re-reading it - slowly and with much provoked thought - for the past couple of weeks; and pondering its core ideas, concerning the powerful conviction of a "golden age", specifically for Britain ("Albion") - how this is exemplified by the Arthurian "matter of Britain" through its many developments. 

William Blake's writings, especially his long prophetic poem "Jerusalem", are given especially close attention. 

More broadly, the book is about the idea of a golden era that is lost ("Camelot"), remains as a visionary memory, yet may be recovered; including an heroic leader (such as Arthur) who has died, yet may return... 

Ashe considers how such visionary ideals have been recurrent through many places and times; how they have shaped, and continue to shape, the human imagination - and have inspired human action: individual and societal. 

The book is typical of the best of late 1960s, early 1970s psychological and social reflection (which is, at a higher general level than anything since) - which means that the treatment of Christianity is largely "comparative" and in terms of its effects - rather than assuming (some form of) Christianity to be Truth about Reality, and exploring the consequences of that assumption.

(...This despite that Ashe was himself an active and devout Roman Catholic - he never states this in his major works, and I did not know about it until after his death.)

   

When it comes to the basic idea that there once was a Golden Age, and we that we ought to be working restore its essence in the future - I assent only partly: only about fifty percent!

Clearly an idea as frequent and near-universal as the past Golden Age must be based in something real; and my assumption is that this is some combination of our memories of early childhood, with some kind of yearning for the simple hunter-gatherer life that used to be universal for Men. 

But how "golden" are such lives? I think the point is that the human consciousness of the golden age is best understood as being much more natural and spontaneous and present-minded; and much less self-aware than adults and modern Men.   

Therefore, the golden age cannot be restored when Men have modern adult consciousness; and it cannot be restored in the context of any settled, civilized, organized society or civilization - because such lives require planning, specialization, organization... and many other things that alienate us and subjugate us. 

More deeply, there are the twin realities of evil and entropy. 

Firstly: what about evil, and entropy (i.e. disease, degeneration and death) in the Golden Age? 

My understanding is that awareness of these was diminished by the lesser development of consciousness among children and early tribal people. Therefore, evil and entropy were always present - but not conceptualized, mostly ignored, easily forgotten.  

So (by my understanding) the Golden Age did not solve the perennial problems of mortal life on earth - it just found these problems much easier than we do Not to think about. 

This is why there can be no future Golden Age, because we now are aware of these problems - to the extent that many people's lives are made fearful and miserable by thinking about them - even when they are not actually being experienced. 

Those who believe in the possibility of a future golden age must therefore posit some qualitative change in Men - the future golden Men must (if that age is to be golden) not be motivated by evil, they must not be susceptible to disease and degeneration, they must not be troubled by death and loss. 

...Which means that such Men will not be like us, they will no be us; and it's no solution to the problems of entropy and evil in the human condition to posit a golden age for "other people" and "somewhere else" in which there is neither entropy nor evil - it's a non-sequitur. 

If everything needs to be changed, then that is a replacement, not a solution. 

More deeply still; the ideal of a future golden age does not, and cannot say how - even in theory - evil could be eliminated, when it is found in all beings including ourselves; and how entropy could be eliminated when it seems universal.

My conclusion is that the golden age for us, for our-selves, can lie only in another state and place of being, not in this world. 

For me; that would be Heaven, and it lies outwith this mortal world.

In sum; the yearning for a restored Golden Age is understandable, significantly reality-based, and we can learn much from it; but ultimately it is impossible. 

What makes Good good?

All Christians believe that God is Good and loves us. 

But what does this actually mean? 

What does it mean to be Good? 

In particular; is Good a matter of preference merely, as modern materialistic ideology would have it. Are Good and evil "relative" and interchangeable? 

What this "relativism" of values seems to mean in current Western/ Globalist culture, in an underlying and implicit way, is that what matters are peoples' feelings (or more exactly, some peoples' feelings) - especially their "hedonic status", i.e. whether they are happy or suffering. 

What counts as Good is what is believed to lead to happiness, while evil is whatever causes suffering (or is asserted to cause suffering) - and Good and evil can therefore change places according to the cause of gratification/misery in the current situation. 

It should be noted that this modern Western hedonic morality as the basis of values, is rooted in the assumption that we can objectively know, and indeed measure, the hedonic outcome of choices... 

The assumptions that we know and can quantify other-people's state of happiness; and that we understand the relationship between present action and future emotions - including in large numbers of people; and that that we can predict the major psychological consequences of material actions.

These assumptions seem to me nothing but wishful-thinking at best; and most often sheerly-obvious nonsense...

Nonetheless; these are among the assumptions upon-which modern mainstream morality and values are based.  

  

Or is there instead some objective basis to Good and evil? By "objective" I mean here to ask: is there something about the nature of reality that distinguishes Good from evil? And if there is something objective about Good - what is it? 

Traditional orthodox mainstream Christian theology has it that God is Good because God created everything from nothing, because God is "omni" in nature. 

This is the argument of monotheism, something that this type of Christian shares with Jews and Moslems, and which is rooted in an assertion that God is Good because there is nothing else. 

In other words, by this argument, God is Good because God is everything, so that it is irrational, meaningless, to believe otherwise. Because there is nothing else but God - to be evil is meaningless, futile, insane... evil (by this account) has nowhere to go, and nothing to believe-in. 

The obvious objection to the monotheistic omni-God argument; is that if God made everything, is everything, controls and knows everything - then this abolishes the difference between Good and evil. 

The trad-orthodox definition of evil is more a matter of "Good is God" than "God is Good"; because (by this account) there is ultimately nothing except God and that which is wholly made by God - and God has been defined as Good. 

Apparent differences between Good and evil can therefore only be illusory, or temporary... But, even then, it is unclear why God should make or allow such illusions. 

(Indeed, it is unclear why the omni-God should do anything at all - since everything that has happened, is happening, or could happen - is all God Himself and his own 100% God-made creation. Creation seems to change nothing essential, to have no purpose or direction; because everything always was/is/shall-be.) 

Therefore, if we regard Good as relativistic, we just get a kind of this-worldly hedonic therapy, in which anything and everything is "justified" by assertions that it will make "people" happier, or less miserable. 

Or else, by trying to make Goodness identical with an omni-God, by asserting that all-is-God and God-is-Good; we end up actually abolishing the distinction between Good and evil. 

Anyone evil is then insane by his opposition to the only actual reality... Yet even this statement does not stand, because God must have made that person the way he is - i.e. insane.

The omni-mono-God philosophy explains nothing because it explains everything!

And such a conception of God seems especially antagonistic to Christianity; which must surely have an essential place for the divine Man Jesus Christ, and his doings at some point in history; and for the necessity of (in some meaning) "following" Jesus.

For a Christian; Jesus must make a difference, and that difference must be deep, cosmic, temporally-located, crucial. 

My own views on this subject have been expounded scores of times on this blog; but I will focus on the major objection to it. 

My understanding of Good: If God is a Being (or indeed two Beings - Loving Heavenly Parents) who found-themselves among a multitude of other Beings; and if this God began creating at some point in time; and if this creation is founded upon Love...

So that creation is something like "the purposive and mutually loving relationships between Beings that were previously and otherwise mutually unloving, lacking in shared-purpose"...

Reality is therefore a growing creation in an environment of chaos...

By this "model", Good is defined as God's project of creation; and evil is some kind of opposition to this project (anything other than joining with the project of creation - is may be any kind of opposition, from trying to exploit creation for selfish reasons, or trying to destroy creation). 

In theory, there is also the alternative of opting-out from creation. 

By my understanding of Good; Beings such as ourselves find-ourselves in an ongoing divine creation; and we need to decide whether we are on the side of creation or not.  

Good is the decision to join with God's creation. 

Opting-out is the decision Not to join with creation. 

Evil is the decision to oppose creation. 

Main objections to my understanding: Some things that some people find wrong with this scheme, are that I regard God as "just" a Being (actually two Beings) among a multitude of other Beings; that God's creation had a beginning and has therefore not been eternal; that God is finite in knowledge and power...

And that Good is only one among other rational possibilities. 

By my understanding; to be evil is to oppose the project of divine creation; but that opposition need not be irrational. Evil may be short-termist, evil will be un-loving, and may be manipulative, sadistic, spiteful... 

But evil need not be irrational (evil is only irrational when it denies the reality of divine creation). 

By my understanding: There really is no compulsion to be Good, because Good is one side in the spiritual war arranged around the actually-existing reality of divine creation. 

There is indeed One God, in the sense that there happens-to-be one divine creation, and this was an is the creation of God. 

There is one creation which is that we know, and which includes all other Beings that we can know. One creation within-which we and other Beings find-themselves when they become self-aware, when we/they become "conscious" of reality and their places in it among other Beings, and having relationships with these other Beings.  

Such matters could have been otherwise, but were not otherwise: this is reality - this is the situation within-which we exist.   

To loop back to the original incoherent ideas that Good is relativist because choice is rational and real; or else that Good is objective and necessary because there is mono-omni-God creating everything; I would say instead that Good is objective because God is The Creator; but the choice of Good versus evil is also real, has consequences that may be permanent, and it is a coherent choice to choose evil - even when the reality of one divine creation is acknowledged. 

By my understanding: To choose Good is to choose to affiliate with God's objectively real project of creation, and this project is built from love, because creation is the product of love.

Any Being capable of love is capable for choosing to affiliate with creation.

But evil may be a coherent choice, because creation takes place amidst continuing chaos - and continuing chaos is termed "death" (by the Fourth Gospel" and is spiritually-analogous to the scientific-material concept of "entropy". 

Evil is not entropy, but coherent evil entails an ultimate commitment to entropy and chaos in preference to divine creation, because entropy/ chaos is all that would remain when evil has done its work...

After evil has worked through to its conclusion; there would be a world without creation, which is a world without love; and that would be the return to a pre-creation world of mutually un-conscious and unloving Beings; i.e. the end state of evil would be Beings uncomprehendingly existing in a situation that has no coherence and no direction.

Thus evil is a possible and coherent thing to desire.   

In other words, by my understanding, divine creation is incomplete and (in principle) vulnerable to evil, and to entropy; or, this would be the case without the Second Creation of Jesus Christ. 

Primary creation of God is of-itself therefore incomplete and contingent; and Jesus Christ is therefore essential to the triumph of Good. 

But the triumph of Good is not the imposition of Good across all that exists - it is a Second Creation that consists of Beings that are only and wholly Good. That situation called "Heaven". 

This is why Christianity is the only coherent religion; and why Jesus Christ is and was essential. Jesus was Not essential to the primary divine creation; but Jesus is essential to the indomitable and eternal triumph of creation - in Heaven. 

   

Note added: What makes Good good is loving-creation - but only if you agree that love is, indeed good. Otherwise not. That which is good is therefore objectively real; but what makes the real objective, is personal. 

What does it mean to Defeat evil? (Why evil is insatiable, and why success destroys itself.)

In this mortal world, 'evil' as a phenomenon, and evil-affiliated persons (human and angelic-demonic) cannot be finally-defeated - in the general sense that they are immortal beings that cannot be destroyed; and also that some of these evil immortal beings are committed (permanently) to evil.

But specifically, at the level of individual persons - evil is permanently defeated every time someone chooses to follow Jesus Christ through mortal death, to resurrection into eternal Heavenly life. 

And evil can be weakened, precisely because it inhabits these mortal realms that are dominated by 'entropy' - which means that evil being must 'consume' energies merely to remain as they are; and if starved of these energies they would weaken and weaken, down towards an irreducible state of mere passive existence. 

To rephrase the matter: An evil being (or evil considered en masse) must consume energies in order to maintain itself as it is - thus evil is by nature vampiric, or parasitic. 

The larger and stronger - more powerful - and evil being; the more it must consume; and all growth of power increases its 'appetite'. So long as evil is growing - its strength to feed itself with also increase. But without sufficient consumption; evil will weaken. As the strength of evil diminishes; so its ability to feed itself diminishes - leading to further shrinkage. 

In other words; evil works by positive feedback whereby change leads to further change of the same kind. growth leads to faster growth, weakening leads to faster shrinkage. 

Therefore; successful evil operates to pre-empt its own weakness - and will do so at any cost. An evil being cannot bear even short-term diminution of itself - because it will become self-perpetuating. Each evil being must avoid any diminution of its energy consumption, and will do anything to ensure this continued consumption here-and-now - even when short-term consumption will increase long-term shortage of energies. 

In sum: this is a metaphorical explanation of why Ahrimanic (bureaucratic, long-termist 'lawful') evil will always eventually devolve into Sorathic (spiteful, short-termist, 'chaotic') evil; insofar as it is successful into its goals.  

This is a picture of why evil is insatiable. 

Evil beings must (in some spiritual sense) each continue to consume the energies of damned souls - that is, souls who choose to reject salvation and embrace damnation. 

Evil waxes in strength and scope when (as now, and in recent generations) the supply of damned souls increases - but the greater the powers of evil, the more 'energies' that it needs to maintain itself; which is why there has been a kind of frenzy of evil building-up, on a perceptible timescale. 

(You might imagine the triumph of evil as akin to a 'bubble' phenomenon in economics, a Pyramid or a Ponzi scheme, or some other situation where continued success depends upon an ever increasing supply of victims. The more damned souls that are induced, the greater the energies to sustain growth in damned souls. The demand for damned souls is an exponential growth of demand for energies, but with a much slower growth (and eventually shrinking) in supply of victims - until the supply of victims is insufficient to keep the bubble growing - and the bubble bursts.) 

Thus evil has, overall, become rather like a malignant cancer whose growth consumes its host with increasing rapidity - and will reach a point when the host begins to die, the available energies are less and less adequate to maintain the size and strength of evil.

Then the evil beings (necessarily) begin to contest, and to consume each other - as if one part of a cancer was feeding upon another cancer. 

Of course this lethal trend cannot be described as any kind of 'victory for good'! 

But it does mean that individual souls of Men who look beyond survival in this mortal realm, become relatively stronger as the dominant evil of this world enters this frenzied terminal phase.  

And it means that saved souls do not only save them-selves, but also tend to diminish the strength and scope of evil generally. 

What would be better than what Jesus Christ has to offer?

God is an answer to the problem of our existence in reality. 

The Christian God is a personal creator; and as such provides the possibility of purpose and meaning, if we choose to align with the divine. 

This God loves us each as a parent loves his or her child; and therefore we may have a personal role in creation - as a member of God's loving family. 

Jesus Christ is an answer to the problem of our life in this world. 

This actual experienced world is a mixture: life and death, creation and destruction, good and evil, joy and despair, love and fear...

Jesus offers the possibility of a life of creation, good, joy and love - forever and unmixed. 

It seems to me that Jesus's offer is the best I know of, that I can believe.  

It has one disadvantage, which is that Heaven lies on the other side of death: we must first die and be resurrected if Heaven is to become possible: if we are to be fitted for Heaven, and if Heaven and our-self is to become eternal. 

The only offer that I can imagine which would be better than that of Jesus is if it was possible to provide Heaven on earth now and without dying. 

I don't believe that this is possible*. I believe that the nature of this mortal life and world is such that entropy, death and evil are always going to be present.  

But I imagine that someone who could believe that real, unmixed, everlasting Heaven on earth and on this side of death was a genuinely possibility; would probably prefer it to what Jesus offers.    

 +++

* In case anybody is interested why I (personally) do not believe Heaven on earth is possible (others will reason differently, of course); the main reason is that I regard the free agency of Beings as primary. 

Unless each and all of the Beings on earth and in this universe (i.e. every single Being, including the mass of non-human Beings - animals, plants, "minerals" etc.) were to choose to live wholly by love; and allow the elimination of everything about themselves that was incompatible with Heaven -- then there would still be evil present in this world, and Heaven could not be made on earth.   

So much for evil: what of entropy and death? 

I regard "chaos" (of autonomous, uncoordinated, unaware of each other Beings) as primal; and God's creation as being imposed upon that. While there is no end to God's create-ing, there is a constant tendency to revert to the primal state, which is termed "entropy". So the harmonious cooperation that is creation, is always tending to degenerate; and "death" is the end of all earthly "things", forms, structures, Beings. 

In other words this is a mortal universe, everything changes, decays, "dies"; and everlasting life cannot be imposed upon it (cannot - because otherwise, with the creator as good and personally loving, eternal living would already have happened and be normal). 

I regard it as a fact of life that we all must therefore die, before we can be re-made eternally; from scratch, on the basis only of love (i.e. resurrected).  

I state my reasons, not to defend or debate them; but because I find them compelling. The point is not to argue about it, but to discover what You find compelling. 

Why is there evil and death in God's creation? Another re-explanation

We live in God's creation, and God is good, and our Heavenly Father loves us each and all. 

However, in God's creation there is decay, disease, suffering and death (i.e. "entropy"); and there is evil - both in ourselves and every other incarnated person and Being, and also there is the purposive spiritual evil of Satan and demons. 

In other words; God's creation is permeated with entropy and evil, to the point that these anti-creation tendencies dominate in some persons, times, and places. 

This situation is because God is creating in a "universe" that is intrinsically "Chaotic", leading to entropy and death. 

And God's creation includes Beings of many sorts and kinds, some of which Beings are "anti-creation", i.e. opposed to God's purposes and methods. 

So; God's power to create is unimaginably vast, but the "materials of creation" are only partly in agreement with God's purposes and methods. 

Such is the nature of the reality we inhabit. 

And such is the reason why it was desirable that Jesus Christ enabled the Second Creation (Heaven) - from which entropy, death and evil are all excluded. 

It was to fix the inadequacy of this mortal life, that Jesus offered resurrection

Jesus's job was to fix the inadequate nature, the insufficiency, of this mortal life on earth. 

This was achieved such that the purpose of resurrected eternal life in Heaven is for there to be a real and accessible state and place, where the intractable and incurable problems (that currently wreck any possibility of a good life) are permanently eliminated.  

If this mortal life was sufficient, or even if mortal life was perfectible; then there would be little benefit in offering the chance of Resurrection after death - because it would obviously be better to have all the good stuff and fix the problems of this world without first needing to die. 

"Christianity" is therefore for those who realize that the core problems of this world and mortal life - i.e. entropy/ death and evil - cannot be solved inside this life and world - because they are of the nature of this creation. 

Because the core problems are insoluble within this creation; our only possible and real hope is for a second creation; for our-selves to look forward to a "second" life, in a world without death and without evil.

And such a world, as a matter of reality, can only exist on the other side of mortal death. 

So; Resurrection is not about "jam tomorrow" or "pie in the sky" - it is not a wish-fulfilment daydream...

Because the truly wishful daydreams are radical politics and utopian schemes - like socialism and "transhumanism" - ideologies that pretend to offer a future that solves the core problems of life... 

Ideologies that pretend to make possible a situation where Mankind (here and now, or soon) will have fulfilment and satisfaction, and escape from fear and suffering - where mortal life will suffice. 

Those who believe such claims are real and possible, are never interested by Jesus's offer of Resurrection into Heaven that is located on the other side of death.  

Also wishful are those religions (including Christianity, in many times and places) that promise a "millennium"... 

That promise their adherents Heaven on Earth, perfected Man, a world purged of evil and death; a second coming, an earthly-saviour - such promises are also in this wishful category. 

Yet, if such things really were possible; there would have been no need for Jesus, and what he offered would be redundant. 

After all; a chance of post-mortal Resurrection to post-mortal Heaven would be a shabby second best to Heaven on Earth accessible without dying.  

The commonly-expressed idea of Resurrection and Heaven as a reward for a Good Life is grossly to under-sell what is on offer. 

This is to downgrade Resurrection and Heaven to a delayed "earthly paradise"... a world and life that is quantitatively better than, but not qualitatively different from, what we already now have.

If quantitative improvement of this mortal life ASAP is that which is most strongly desired; then Resurrection and Heaven are of merely subordinate interest.    

Even worse is to explain Resurrection in terms of the double-negative theology of Resurrection and Heaven as an escape from the default of eternal torment in Hell! 

This bizarrely posits a God who purposively creates a mortal life so-often dominated by evil and entropy, and always terminated by death; after which everlasting pain and misery is the default destination of all...

And then the same God devises Resurrection and Heaven which constitute a delayed and selective escape route from horrors of His own devising. 

If such a creator-God existed, He is not the same Good God as known and described by Jesus. 

So, even before we decide whether we personally desire Resurrection and Heaven; and even before we decide whether Resurrection and Heaven are believable...

We first need to know our present situation, what R&H mean in context of our present situation, what R&H are for: and what they do. 

Unfortunately, the clarity and simplicity of what Jesus did and made possible; is by-now grossly obfuscated by millennia of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, disinformation - and deliberate lies. 

The only viable answer would seem to be for each creatively and actively to work it out for himself - from intuitive-experiential knowing; as it were from "first principles'. With the assurance that God and Jesus Christ will with certainty have made this possible for all Men... Possible if not now, or during mortal life, then for-sure post-mortally.  

Christianity is Not, never truly was, about morality - except secondarily

Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after. 

In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

This means that the primary concern of Jesus was to save mankind from entropy and death - therefore Jesus's primary concern was not to save us from evil. 

To repeat: For Jesus salvation means from death, not from evil. 

However, most of religion before, during and since the time of Jesus is about morality - about the behaviour (and attitudes) of people. 

Such religion is therefore therapeutic - it is "about" minimizing suffering and/or maximizing human happiness in this world and mortal life. 

That is what all those Laws and rules are about, the propitiations offered to divinity, the abasements and obedience - they are trying to make this world a better place, and ourselves to have a better place in it. 

And this is why all religions have considerable overlap in the approved behaviours. 

But this was Not what Jesus was about. 

Jesus came essentially to save us from death, not from moral sin.

Jesus was primarily against death, not evil - but his cure for death was also a cure for evil. 

For Jesus the problem of death (of entropy) was more profound than that of evil; because in this mortal life and world, death is absolutely universal and completely unavoidable; destructive change may be slowed, but is always at work...

Jesus was necessary and unique because he offered a solution to death; not because of his moral teaching, not because of his moral laws and principles, not because people could make a church from the moral laws and principles. 

This was and is very difficult to grasp; because most people (including most early Christians, including those who formed the Christian churches, apparently) - want morality.

Or else they want immortality Now in this world, and without dying first. 

People do not, therefore, usually want what Jesus actually offered... Or, at least, they think they don't want it; or they do not want it as strongly and urgently as they want other things - such as relief from suffering, or happiness now-or-soon.

But relief from suffering and positive happiness in this mortal life are not the core of Jesus's message - because these are promised for post-mortal resurrected life, not for this life. 

The error of making "Christianity" primarily moral distorted it from very early and has led to its current near-destruction. 

Those who made Christianity continuous with Judaism (including the authors of the Matthew and Luke Gospels, and Paul); tried to conflate the primacy of resurrection with their continued primacy of morality...

Leading eventually to the bizarre concoction of Original Sin - in order to pseudo-explain why Jesus was both unique and necessary. 

In other words, they made Jesus primarily "about" morality; and resurrection was made conditional upon the approved morality...

And morality was made to be why Jesus came, and curing morality was made to be what Jesus fundamentally did...

This-world morality was made of core importance to the Christian churches; and morality was made to come first - such that resurrection was relegated to a secondary status as reward for good-morality.  

But morality is about this-world, here-and-now and before death...

Whereas the advent of resurrection was of cosmic and eternal significance - it is a change in the nature of reality. 

Everybody everywhere has their ideas of proper morals; and this is continually contested. And morality does not require resurrection. 

So morality is both regarded as primary by almost-everybody; yet morality is detachable from the reality of Christianity...

And morality has, in fact, already-been detached-from Christianity! - even (or rather, especially) in those lands historically (or nominally still) Christian. 

As of here-and-now; Christianity is just one of many competing this-worldly moral systems; and gets evaluated in terms of its material "success" in producing good behaviour.  

But if we are talking about Jesus Christ, rather than social institutions and traditions; then this is wrong, a mistake, an ancient error. 

Jesus brought the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that fact should come first and foremost, and be kept at the core, of our Christian discussion and teaching. 

Are the demon-serving (or demon-hosting) Establishment afraid of dying? Not necessarily, but increasingly

It is often said on Christian blogs that the demon-serving high-level globalist Establishment (Them) live in fear of death; because They know They are going to Hell. 

But I do not believe that They necessarily live in fear of death. Some do, no doubt - but not all, by any means; and that has been an important fact in the nature of global evil.

But this may be changing; and more and more of the most evil Men of this world may be becoming terrified of the own deaths; and behaving accordingly with their most evil natures...

What follows are my intuitively-guided speculations on this subject.  

Some of Them do not fear death, I think, because in some instances Hell (accurately understood as a personal fate, rather than a uniform destination) is exactly what They desire, and what They prefer to Heaven.

In other words; They have understood and rejected Christ's offer of salvation. They do not wish to affiliate to God's creative intentions, which entail making an eternal and unbreakable commitment to live in Love. They prefer, and choose, Hell (at least, as They understand Hell will be for Themselves). 

Their choice is, instead of Love; to live (after mortal life, as well as in it) especially in-accordance-with that sin to which each is personally most devoted: pride, resentment, fear, lust, sloth, or whatever. (This is well described in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce.)

The question then is: to what extent this choice is fulfilled in actuality? Can They actually get what They most want? 

In other instances, They do not fear death because They do not believe that they personally are going to die. Not fully: not in their essential nature.   

How They believe this continuation of consciousness is to be achieved is necessarily speculative, but I have written on this subject before.  

In a nutshell; I think They believe that They may continue to 'live' because what we might term Dark Magicians purport to conjure animate thought-forms by group activities that entail mental concentration and ritual. 

This is regarded - not as a spiritual activity; but instead as a quasi-science; a manipulation of the material world by means of channeled will. 

(This belief intersects with the most ideological forms of Transhumanism; when people hope for continued life in a 'downloaded', or perhaps transplanted, form of consciousness. This shows how a wholly materialistic/ atheistic perspective can lead to quasi-spiritual hopes and intentions.)

It is the group nature of such Dark Magical activities that lies behind the Ahrimanic, materialist quality of evil that has dominated the world in recent decades. 

In other words; Ahrimanic evil operates by organized, hierarchical, bureaucratic mechanisms - to create a unified global System that is a mechanism for damnation.  

I think it likely that Their oft-observed concern with symbolism, signaling, ritual, pain, sacrifice etc.; is part of a genuinely black-magic orientated group-concern. This is not just about somewhat extending mortal life (although that is part of it); but also, ultimately, (for perhaps the 'chosen few') with attaining a kind of immortality after mortal death in a material but ghostly, or spirit form, 

The personal goal is then to continue (self-gratifying) activities in this world, as an 'honorary demon'; that has been created (and, probably is sustained - because this state is subject to entropy, and therefore needs constant infusion of energy to remain viable) by Black Magical means.

But, having said all this; I also believe that there has been a change in human consciousness over recent generations, but particularly since the millennium; and that part of this change has been a sharp decline in the ability of group-activity to conjure thought-forms. 

This change in Men's consciousness has affected the 'good magic' of Christianity, as well as the black magic of the demonic Establishment. This development has been a part of the decline of church-based Christianity: the fact that it can no longer do for people as much as it used to do. 

Those Christian group practices that used to 'work' reliably and powerfully to sustain and enhance spirituality, are now diminished in effect, and still diminishing. Indeed, for many people in the West; these practices have altogether lost spiritual power; and church activities have declined to a wholly psycho-social and political role.  

However, this development of consciousness must - I think - also have affected the power of Ahrimanic evil - and this will probably be one of the major causes that the cooperation of evil consciousnesses, which sustains The System, is now breaking-down.

I am (again!) talking about the transition between Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil, about which I have written many times before. 

I mean the breakdown of long-termist and coordinated evil by the defection of individual evil Beings; into the chaotic state of many simultaneous personal agendas each characterized by short-termist and destructive spite.

This is something that can be observed in the world today. The globalist alliance that launched a successful (covert) coup in early 2020 has, this year, fractured geo-politically into Anglosphere/ Western European 'West' and its vassal states; versus the others. 

Furthermore, The West has fractured such that the dominant elements are beginning to destroy the vassal states by acts of sabotage - financial, economic, demographic - and recently actual physical sabotage. 

This must have a confidence-shattering effect on many Establishment members who, until recently, 'trusted' that They would be exempted from the planned mass destruction; and would be rewarded for Their cooperation by eternal 'life' - among other and more immediate gratifications. 

Whether the evil-Establishment were correct to trust in the integrity of the principalities of evil is, for Christians, a question that answers itself! Yet, such Faustian stupidity is a fact of human life. Many Men have believed that Their cooperation with The Plan would win personal rewards; believed that They had a contract with evil, an agreement that evil would "honour"... 

(Despite that the powers of evil cannot be trusted; and will lie and cheat as is expedient - or as provides Them with some kind of sadistic enjoyment.)

Anyway, the hope was that They could achieve a kind of eternal existence of self-gratifying worldly activity.

There must, I think, have been some such 'trust' between lower and higher evil-souls - however misguided - in order to enlist the cooperation of so many individuals in so many nations. 

Many of These are now realizing that They have-been, or soon will-be, betrayed.

They face a dawning awareness of the terror of bodily annihilation and eternal spiritual torment. 

Of course; this betrayal and disillusionment opens a window to repentance; to affiliate with God and accept the salvation of Jesus Christ. 

In this mortal life it is never too late to repent - although it gets harder and more painful, the further advanced in evil a soul has gone. 

But, when repentance is rejected, realization may lead instead to a kind of destructive frenzy of vengeance - the desire to inflict as much suffering on others as possible, before falling into the pit oneself. 

This very purely negative form of evil, a 'lashing-out' which takes 'pleasure' only in the doing of evil and not in rewards from so doing; is what I call Sorathic - and it seems to be gathering strength, perhaps especially in the Establishment of the dominant Western power: the USA. 

I would guess that the 'promised' reward of an eternal life of personal satisfaction was, at best - only ever, in practice, short-term. 

Sooner rather than later; the promised rewards are revoked, and the self-gratifications of eternal living are inverted into a state of eternal slavery; a continued existence only as objects of torment for the pleasure of other evil beings - who are Themselves destined for the same fate.  

As the cabal of organized evil breaks down; such betrayals will be happening, and be observed; more and more often; and no doubt some terrible conclusions will be drawn. 

If this interpretation is correct, and the Dark Magician cabal is increasingly breaking-down into mutual warring factions; factions that then themselves splinter break-down into each against all - then these times are both very dangerous and somewhat hopeful. 

Christians are no longer up-against a coordinated conspiracy - which is good. But those evil Beings (human, as well as demonic) that remain powerful in this world, will feel that - now that their chance at 'eternal life' is gone' - They have nothing to gain from long-termism or cooperation;: nothing to lose' by sheer spitefulness. 

They seem highly likely to behave in an increasingly reckless and frenziedly destructive manner - whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. 

Be Prepared (spiritually, I mean).

Explaining demonic spirits and the damned souls; as the consequence of choices related to love, mortal incarnate life/ entropy/ death, and resurrection

We must die in order to be remade - to be resurrected. 

This is salvation. 

Damnation is the other choice: to reject salvation. 

We must be resurrected to enter that state called Heaven*; because for Heaven to be 'heavenly' - all within it must have-been remade, wholly-good - without disposition to evil. 

Or, to enter Heaven, we must make a permanent commitment to repent and repudiate all sin - all evil, all that opposes divine harmony - and the way that this permanent commitment is made is by resurrection -- in which all that is Good (God-harmonious) in us is retained; while all that is not is left-behind and discarded.

Such a permanent commitment is made from love; and therefore must freely be chosen - cannot be compelled; and can only be made by those capable of love who choose to make love their eternal foundational principle. 

(Only thus can Heaven be a place that is wholly Good (a place without any evil-motivation) and also wholly-free - inhabited by beings with divine powers of creation; who will always and spontaneously use their godly-powers harmoniously with God and other Heavenly beings.)  

The need for death is true for men and women - and for all other beings. 

Which is why this incarnated mortal life on earth is dominated by entropy: because every-"thing" must die, if there is to be a possibility of resurrection. 

In other words: If every being on earth is to have a chance of attaining and choosing Heaven - they all must die, sooner or later. 

Pre-mortal spirit life, although wholly-good, is very imperfect - especially in terms of freedom, of agency. 

The harmony and goodness of pre-mortal life is dependent on the passivity and obedience of spirits; because pre-mortal beings are not innately wholly good (in the way that God is wholly-good, or resurrected beings are wholly good). 

Because pre-mortal spirits are not-wholly-good, the harmony of goodness in pre-mortal life is attained top-down, by the direction and control of God. 

In effect, so far as pre-mortal spirit life goes; God is the wholly-good parents of a mixed bunch of children - some mostly-good, some mostly-evil - none wholly good. It is only by the obedience of these children that goodness prevails. 

But pre-mortal spirits mature, they grow-up, they change... Sooner or later, they get to a point where they must throw-off the passive goodness of obedience to parental authority and control. 

Then these pre-mortal spirits have a choice...

Either the spirits can incarnate on earth - some time afterwards to die, and make the choice of resurrection, or not. 

(This is God's plan - because God wishes to make and inhabit Heaven with resurrected (incarnated everlasting) beings, who have have by their choice of resurrection made an eternal commitment to live in harmony with divine creation.)

Or else those pre-mortal spirits who do not want to die and be resurrected; or who simply do not want to die - and those who reject the divine plan for an harmonious Heaven of free-beings who have chosen to be remade without evil... 

These spirits can escape their previous state of obedience to divine goodness, and enter the sphere of earth while still spirits - and therefore immortal. 

These are the demons. 

(This explains why demons are spirits - not embodied; and why they are immortal. They are spirits because they have refused temporary mortal incarnation, and are immortal because they are spirits, and unaffected by 'entropy'.)

If the pre-mortal spirits choose mortal life on earth, they must choose temporary incarnation and death (as necessary pre-requisites for resurrection); but if they reject this package, then such spirits have rejected even the possibility of Heaven.

This is why all demons are evil, and why demons are worse than incarnated Men - because demons, by their rejection of mortal incarnation, have all chosen to reject the possibility of that death which makes salvation possible. 

(If demons changed their minds and repented, and wished to prepare for the choice of Heaven; they would need first to incarnate and die. Whether this this is possible or ever actually happens I do not know.) 

So - demons have rejected the passive ('secondhand') good of pre-mortal spirit life under the parental influence of God; and they have also rejected that mortal life on earth which is a necessary stage to prepare for remaking-by-resurrection, and Heaven.   

The ruling principle of creation (that which makes creation cohere) is love; and love is the reason why the dead choose resurrection and heaven.  

The essential reason why demons have rejected mortal incarnation, and why some dead mortal Men reject the offer of resurrection into Heaven and instead choose damnation; is that demons and the damned are either incapable of love, or have rejected love as the basis of life and chosen... something else.    

Differently phrased: Demons are those never-incarnated beings who have rejected living under the domination of entropy (i.e. mortal earthly life); and by doing so rejected God's plan of salvation. 

The damned are those who chose to live and die as mortal incarnate Men on earth, and have become dis-carnated beings (i.e. souls severed from their bodies); and who die and then reject resurrection and Heaven; instead choosing some other fate.

*Note: Why our final God-destined state-of-being is embodied, incarnate - rather than spirits - is a topic I have considered elsewhere.