Showing posts sorted by relevance for query entropy death evil intractable. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query entropy death evil intractable. Sort by date Show all posts

Thursday, 16 April 2026

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.  

Thursday, 9 December 2021

This earthly, mortal life Cannot be everything - and this is a matter of reality, not opinion

As soon as Man emerged from his original state of immersive participation; as soon as he became became capable of conscious independent thinking - which happened (so far as we know) in the time of the ancient Greeks; it was recognized that this earthly, mortal life cannot be everything


Cannot be everything - not that it 'should not' be everything; nor that we wish that there would be more - but that It Makes No Sense to assume that there is nothing other than this earthly, mortal life. 

Why? 

Well, in a sense this was so obvious to anyone capable of thinking and understanding that 'why' did not apply. 

But the reason was - in a nutshell - that this world is one of change; of degeneration, decay, disease and eventual death. This is a world dominated by entropy, as we might call it. And such a world as this could not bring itself about

To the ancient mind, and to the mind of pretty much all Men up to the past few hundred years - this was an insight of simple truth; and the only reason for someone Not to reach this understanding, was either mental incapacity or idleness: a brutish refusal to consider the nature of Man's life. 


But Modern Man has - for various reasons, not-unconnected-with brutish incapacity and idleness - developed a tremendous capacity for doubting the obvious, including obvious truth

There are explanations that explain 'why' it makes no sense to posit entropy without previous creation, to assume a tendency for destruction and death without a prior and more powerful tendency for making and life - but no such explanation can penetrate the idle, delirious, dishonest superficiality that characterizes modern discourse. 

Such is the ludicrous pride of almost all Men, now, that the grossest incapacity of insight, observation and reason are paraded as marks of superiority; just as the inability spontaneously to be appalled or disgusted by gross, calculated lying, pride, greed, even vice and sadism - are all regarded as evidence of a 'higher' more progressive morality!  


'Ancient' Man realized that this ephemeral and always-changing reality makes no sense unless there is another reality

All were agreed on that - but disagreed about the specific nature of that 'other and greater reality' - the reality which makes possible the illusions and changes of this reality.   

They disagreed about the nature of the other and Real reality for the simple reason that it was non-obvious; and impossible to articulate clearly, concisely and comprehensibly to all Men. Each attempted answer, each description of ultimate reality, was therefore partial and contextual - and there were many such answers. 

In other words, it was cognitively easy to know that this mortal earthly reality was only a part of a greater reality; but it was difficult to say exactly what was this greater and eternal reality. 


Modern Man is, however, incapable (has rendered-himself incapable) of recognizing that the difficulty of describing the wholeness of reality in a way that everybody can understand and agree-upon does Not invalidate the primary insight that there Must be such a reality. 

Instead, Modern Man has made the baseline assumption that this mortal earthly life dominated by entropy and inevitably terminated by death is every-thing there is; and that (somehow!) We Know this to be a solid fact! 

Based on this assumption of this-life being everything, nothing makes sense; all is incoherence. 

Because all is incoherence, Men have lost the capacity to reason. 

Because Men cannot reason, they cannot make sense of the world - it is just one thing after another - and Men cannot even discern motivated actions, nor discern evil in motivations. 

Because Modern Man can make no sense of life; life has neither meaning nor purpose, but only a cloudy and uncertain present that arises-from nothing-much, and soon disappears into nothing-much. 

Thus Modern Man is always afraid, and cannot be encouraged; his only antidote to spontaneous overwhelming despair is to not-think even harder than already. 


The condition of Man is now very, Very bad - far worse than is recognized even by vehement critics. 

A refusal to know that which is both obvious and deeply true, makes an extreme incapacity to think consecutively on any one subject - meaning that recognition of even the most blatant lying (and all other evils) is become impossible.  

Modern Man is therefore deep in trouble, and a measure of this depth is that his 'solution' is not to eliminate the problem; but instead to eliminate all trace of his own awareness of the problem. 

His answer is to keep digging at his own deficits until he has become completely unable to recognize anything beyond whatever is being fed-into his consciousness at this moment. 

Having written-himself-off as nothing more than an ephemeral accident of blind chance; Man has rendered himself incapable of motivated thought and action; and now (un-consciously, because he will not allow consciousness) seeks to become altogether passive and receptive; to eliminate awareness of even the fact of his own, self-defined-as-futile existence. 


The modern malaise goes very deep; consequently its ramifications are extremely wide. 

We can see that its roots lie in sin, in unacknowledged hence un-repented sin; and this is why it keeps getting worse and worse - because evil feeds-upon evil. 

In theory, the remedy is at-hand: (thanks to Jesus Christ) simply one turn of the mind distant. Graspable in a moment. 

But evil has its layers of defence; its clever-silly rationalizations that reject the obvious and therefore can impose belief in the false; its ingrained and socially-supported habits of distraction and fear-driven resentment. 

Only each Man himself can escape these toils; but he must first desire to escape... 

And therein lies the most intractable problem of all. 


Friday, 7 June 2024

Is this mortal life basically OK?

"Is this mortal life basically OK?"

I sometimes think that this question (or something like it) is the root of philosophy. 

"Is this mortal life basically OK?" seems to be something that - although in theory it need not be asked (and maybe there are animals, and perhaps some humans, that never ask it); in practice it seems to be something that demands and gets an answer (even if we aren't aware of this answer).  

Because, even to ask whether mortal life is OK, is already to have acknowledged that it is not OK - or, at least not sufficiently so.  


Although there seem always to have been plenty of those who argue that life is perfect just-as-it-is; these have always needed to add "if only people would realize it!" - which modification then (in practice) leads to all kinds of attempts at psychological-spiritual training, discipline, meditation etc. in order that people can be made to realize this-life (as-is) is OK, or even utterly wonderful. 

That need to be made to realize that life really-is OK, even the need to explain that it is OK (properly regarded); is in itself, evidence of something being wrong with this mortal life - and to invite the question of why it is wrong.  

In other words; while anybody can answer "Yes!" to the question; for this Yes! to be more than empty words, more than optimistic day-dreaming (or, indeed, cynical attempts at manipulation or careerism) - immediately entails an acknowledgement that the very fact the question has-been-asked, means that life as-is, is actually not OK. 


Therefore; if we are rigorous about it; we already know that this mortal life is basically not OK. 

And that something is therefore demanded of us - even if that something is "merely" an acknowledgement of the intractable insufficiency of life.  

Since life is not OK - what then? 


Probably the most prevalent and deeply believed answer in the world - at least in the Western world - is the Leftist Answer: the implicit answer that motivates attitudes and behaviours in vast numbers of people. 

To the question "Is this mortal life basically OK?"; the Leftist Answer is (approximately): "No, not at present - but it could be made so."

The Leftist answer implies that, unless life is accepted to be insufficient when it could be OK; the world needs to embark upon a purposive transformation of this mortal life


Leftism embarks upon this transformation of life; makes some change, makes indeed several changes; but it turns-out that life is still Not-OK. 

It turns-out that (apparently) if life is to be transformed such that becomes OK, this needs many changes - many radical (deep) changes. 

Thus the Leftist strategy turns-out to be open-endedly expansile.

Leftism entails, indeed demands, ever more and more changes - yet life still is not OK... 

The conclusion is that nothing less than a Total transformation of life is required - change must be universal - it must therefore be imposed and enforced. 


Hence Leftism is totalitarian - if the assumption is that this-world can be make OK by transforming it - and when it is assumed that there is nothing-but this-world; and when anything less that total transformation always fails... 

Then totalitarian power to impose total change, is not just an unfortunate necessity but a moral imperative. 

No matter how often and how badly the Leftist project to transform this world and make it OK has failed in the past; since it is (by assumption) Mankind's only hope, then There Is No Alternative but to aim at an ever more-totalitarian, more-universal, and more-coercively-mandatory transformation: a New World Order. 


The Christian answer is that this mortal life is indeed not OK when considered as a separate entity; and what makes mortal-life Not-OK are ineradicable by human action. Because these include evil, degenerative change ("entropy"), and death; all of which constitute part-of everybody, and of all beings. 

Evil, entropy and (especially) death are built-into this mortal world: therefore this world is Not-OK.   

But (fortunately) mortal life is not necessarily the whole story; and mortal life is OK when regarded as an "educational" phase that leads to Heaven. 

For Christians; mortal life in isolation is not OK; but with Heaven to follow it and lived with that expectation, mortal life is OK.