Spent some hours with this expansive exposition this morning. I will be sitting with much of it and likely more to follow up in dialogue but I'd like to offer here notes on highlights that stood out for me:
First I'm sitting with the sense of Christian Atheism as a void space. The proposition that the proper ground for interfaith and intercultural dialogue is not in fact a general sense that we all vibe with spirit. But actually, a meeting in the void, an empty space. In the first Christianity Beyond Itself dialogue w/ Matthew I articulated how I'd come to see SENSESPACE (or what it points to) as a 'Vibrant and empty' space. One which is not aperspectival and modern, somehow full and empty. I wonder how this aligns and doesn't.
Second, I commend the articulation around the mystic experience vs metaphysical map. That overly imposing the map may actually make it so that children have to destroy the map to reach the direct experience. Or they mistake the map for the experience and destination. In both cases, inviting a parenting that shares mythos while holding ambiguity, that invites Christianity as a question and a mystery more than an answer.
Third, modern science and ethics without religion is 'Sons without Fathers' whilst a rejection of modernism and return to religion is 'Fathers without Sons'. Brilliant.
Fourth, Marx was working 'for the struggle of crucified workers to ressurrect in the holy spirit body of a workers commune'. Never read a clearer insight into the christian basis of marxism. I was curious that you described this articulation as being in 'christian atheist language'. Is 'Christian atheist language' that which affords reading christianity in things beyond itself, eg. Marx, psychoanalysis etc...?
Fifth, the holy spirit as a community is insufficient to the necessary creative destruction of communities. Zarathustra points to a way through that, an affirmation and a capacity to journey in and out of communities. A pilgrimage that occurs through communities that doesn't end in them. This is essential to our current predicament.
Sixth, Freud and the God-father. Fascinating to read this account of the murder of the father by the band. When he speaks of the 'spoils' of aggression and sexual enjoyment, is that to say these spoils were stored up in the father and are now unleashed for the son? Or that the son already held them but with the death of God he's now unbound and unleashed unto these pre-existing drives with nothing to contain them? Fascinating to sense into how the death of God can unleash jouissance and a society premised on continual positive fulfilment of desire. That this can never be ended until we see a turning towards the negative. To find the fulfilment in the nothing, void and emptiness.
Seven, the living christ vs the ideal. That a christ of the past is more subject to idealisation, purity that could lead to some avoidance of psychological stagnation. That the living, erotic, shadow-integrating christ is fully in the present, in the world, in the profane. This feels very Christianity Beyond Itself. Also points to the other key premise, that the living embodied Christ is also intrinsically a unique one, occupying and expressing through a vast variety of contexts.
Eight, Church of contradiction: the idea of a theatricaly staging of the death of God and a communion in the abyss afterwards feels potent and novel while also connecting with the Greek tragedy tradition. Love to explore this further.
--
Commend the relative madness and devotion required to think all of this. To think Christianity through all of these thinkers from socio-economic, to psycho-sexual and so on. To think the contradiction.
This was a profound, expansive, and critical work that should be read and shared widely. I recorded some thoughts here in honor of the course, though no pressure at all to give them a listen. Your talk with Ebert was also outstanding. Well done, Cadell! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedDvzwLCr0)
I thought this was really interesting! I disagree with CS Lewis on almost everything, but his writing on the idea of the “evolutionary mindset” has stayed with me— I think it means something like an expectation or faith in progress, and maybe a faith that science has solved the difficult questions of philosophy.
He said that the mindset had nothing to do with the actual theory of evolution, and I think he was very right about that— getting away from the evolutionary mindset was one of the reasons I wanted to study evolution in the first place. I thought if I looked at the real thing, then the folk beliefs around it would fall away a bit. I think that was largely true, although the degree itself was miserable to learn.
It struck me reading the bit about our own fate being on a cross, and whether that was the fate for ourselves we repressed— there is an element of that in evolution, too. This idea that our species is not very well adapted to the world and not very likely to survive; that any sense of striving for higher complexity is absent from evolution as a whole. The concept of our own deaths and inferiority still exists there, in a way it doesn’t in a lot of Christian discourse— including in CS Lewis, shockingly so at times. He said something like “thinking ourselves to be special because we need to be rescued by Christ is like a pig thinking itself important because a doctor had to give it its medicine,” which feels like it comes from a very different worldview to a lot of other Christianities.
I wonder if that’s a break in it, really, this concept of ourselves filling up a space where god might have been, and this need to affirm the superiority of mankind? But I don’t think it maps neatly across religion and irreligion; it’s a different kind of discourse under both
May this note find us all ever closer to God and His Peace.
Having not followed your earlier pieces of this work, and able to only vaguely be able to follow the patterns you have drawn in this piece that I managed to struggle through - I hope you will not mind me pointing out a weak stop that is present throughout and suggest a possible different model of reality that may simplify the questions and-or answers in this and perhaps all your related work.
First and most trivial is the reliance of Modern Evolution in and through-out this piece of your totality perspective.
As a once Believer in the Scientificism sub-religion of Evolution I found many PhDs in biological sciences that consider it a theory not well grounded, to my surprise. That the examples often given such as moths changing color or bird beaks changing shape in response to different stresses or benefits introduced into their environments, they are all examples of built-in genetic available ranges.
That no fossils - I'm told - show transition stages between different species.
And few or no scientist wanting funding will state an unbelief in the Religion of Evolution, that like 'man-made Climate Change' and other popularized beliefs, that public and often scientists from different fields incorrect but deeply spread belief causes a retardation towards truth, like the belief that IQ has no effect on poverty, that although people with average and above often are overwhelmed by the increasing needless complexities that ever-expanding gov creates to justify it's budget and something to do for it's otherwise make-work employees, that such environments and work-environments make average and above intelligent often educated people stagger - that somehow racism and lack of opportunity and any number of things instead of intelligential aspects are the cause, and after so much delusional social measuring and money wasted on trying solutions that are not root cause while publicizing other unbased theory of causes, and demonizing as racist and-or ignorant and-or uncaring all who suggest differently .. it prolongs the generations of suffering by preventing open rational fact-based discussions.
As all such 'religious' beliefs do - to cripple progress in that field. As the religion of Evolution has done - drawn a huge red warning notice across it 'there be dragons and destruction for those who go there!' So the reasoned and well-argued Intelligent Design theories (see Stephen Meyer's conferences on YouTube) are never look at seriously - the encoding in genetics which argues through Information Theory that such programming cannot be from random mutations - for example.
--
My suggestion that a model of reality along the lines of Simulation Theory suggests, that like René Descartes thought experiment our Focus or consciousness is disconnected from our senses and fed alternate senses from a computer - or like a vivid dream version of self, Hosted by a Fuller version of self, along with other versions of self as different people.
If such concepts are within your grasp (as I think very likely so) than half of Catholicism's science-based Apologetics are within your grasp. The Trinity becomes a Process where The Father generates nto being our soul, transfers to a Forked copy of self that then the difference between The Son Hosting our soul and the Father is the Holy Ghost - the path through the Simulation that will flow if no grave sins Collapse the Quantum path(s) created that is defined in the Holy Ghost, and so given proper procedures - error correction - a re-Differation Holy Ghost version (of the Father) is generated and the soul continues.
And the Son Hosts not only our soul but the souls of those near us through sharing His Body & Soul as a computer shares it's hardware to each application running on that system - multiplexing between them perhaps with different levels of Attention or times - Grace levels perhaps.
That such Hosting is done reclusively, that we in turn as the Dream sleep and Dream of other versions of self and others, and that such feels like a humming pleasantness except when Hosting a version of self and realities that resulted from Sin, or erroneous actions, that require perhaps great numbers of version of self & simulated realities, all Hosted painfully within self - that hum now a burning - with an awareness of self-fault and eventual contriteness and perhaps a forgiveness in the form of Upper Hosts taking some of that Cross to carry themselves.
Etc. A lifetime of engaging perhaps profitable work, and a possible alternative to insane mind-rending Modernist 'philosophy' torment and torture - replaced with what has Theological Natural Law and scriptural [Programmer's Manual] roots.
That - sir or madam - is what a high-fidelity Christian Atheist would do.
Spent some hours with this expansive exposition this morning. I will be sitting with much of it and likely more to follow up in dialogue but I'd like to offer here notes on highlights that stood out for me:
First I'm sitting with the sense of Christian Atheism as a void space. The proposition that the proper ground for interfaith and intercultural dialogue is not in fact a general sense that we all vibe with spirit. But actually, a meeting in the void, an empty space. In the first Christianity Beyond Itself dialogue w/ Matthew I articulated how I'd come to see SENSESPACE (or what it points to) as a 'Vibrant and empty' space. One which is not aperspectival and modern, somehow full and empty. I wonder how this aligns and doesn't.
Second, I commend the articulation around the mystic experience vs metaphysical map. That overly imposing the map may actually make it so that children have to destroy the map to reach the direct experience. Or they mistake the map for the experience and destination. In both cases, inviting a parenting that shares mythos while holding ambiguity, that invites Christianity as a question and a mystery more than an answer.
Third, modern science and ethics without religion is 'Sons without Fathers' whilst a rejection of modernism and return to religion is 'Fathers without Sons'. Brilliant.
Fourth, Marx was working 'for the struggle of crucified workers to ressurrect in the holy spirit body of a workers commune'. Never read a clearer insight into the christian basis of marxism. I was curious that you described this articulation as being in 'christian atheist language'. Is 'Christian atheist language' that which affords reading christianity in things beyond itself, eg. Marx, psychoanalysis etc...?
Fifth, the holy spirit as a community is insufficient to the necessary creative destruction of communities. Zarathustra points to a way through that, an affirmation and a capacity to journey in and out of communities. A pilgrimage that occurs through communities that doesn't end in them. This is essential to our current predicament.
Sixth, Freud and the God-father. Fascinating to read this account of the murder of the father by the band. When he speaks of the 'spoils' of aggression and sexual enjoyment, is that to say these spoils were stored up in the father and are now unleashed for the son? Or that the son already held them but with the death of God he's now unbound and unleashed unto these pre-existing drives with nothing to contain them? Fascinating to sense into how the death of God can unleash jouissance and a society premised on continual positive fulfilment of desire. That this can never be ended until we see a turning towards the negative. To find the fulfilment in the nothing, void and emptiness.
Seven, the living christ vs the ideal. That a christ of the past is more subject to idealisation, purity that could lead to some avoidance of psychological stagnation. That the living, erotic, shadow-integrating christ is fully in the present, in the world, in the profane. This feels very Christianity Beyond Itself. Also points to the other key premise, that the living embodied Christ is also intrinsically a unique one, occupying and expressing through a vast variety of contexts.
Eight, Church of contradiction: the idea of a theatricaly staging of the death of God and a communion in the abyss afterwards feels potent and novel while also connecting with the Greek tragedy tradition. Love to explore this further.
--
Commend the relative madness and devotion required to think all of this. To think Christianity through all of these thinkers from socio-economic, to psycho-sexual and so on. To think the contradiction.
This was a profound, expansive, and critical work that should be read and shared widely. I recorded some thoughts here in honor of the course, though no pressure at all to give them a listen. Your talk with Ebert was also outstanding. Well done, Cadell! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedDvzwLCr0)
I thought this was really interesting! I disagree with CS Lewis on almost everything, but his writing on the idea of the “evolutionary mindset” has stayed with me— I think it means something like an expectation or faith in progress, and maybe a faith that science has solved the difficult questions of philosophy.
He said that the mindset had nothing to do with the actual theory of evolution, and I think he was very right about that— getting away from the evolutionary mindset was one of the reasons I wanted to study evolution in the first place. I thought if I looked at the real thing, then the folk beliefs around it would fall away a bit. I think that was largely true, although the degree itself was miserable to learn.
It struck me reading the bit about our own fate being on a cross, and whether that was the fate for ourselves we repressed— there is an element of that in evolution, too. This idea that our species is not very well adapted to the world and not very likely to survive; that any sense of striving for higher complexity is absent from evolution as a whole. The concept of our own deaths and inferiority still exists there, in a way it doesn’t in a lot of Christian discourse— including in CS Lewis, shockingly so at times. He said something like “thinking ourselves to be special because we need to be rescued by Christ is like a pig thinking itself important because a doctor had to give it its medicine,” which feels like it comes from a very different worldview to a lot of other Christianities.
I wonder if that’s a break in it, really, this concept of ourselves filling up a space where god might have been, and this need to affirm the superiority of mankind? But I don’t think it maps neatly across religion and irreligion; it’s a different kind of discourse under both
May this note find us all ever closer to God and His Peace.
Having not followed your earlier pieces of this work, and able to only vaguely be able to follow the patterns you have drawn in this piece that I managed to struggle through - I hope you will not mind me pointing out a weak stop that is present throughout and suggest a possible different model of reality that may simplify the questions and-or answers in this and perhaps all your related work.
First and most trivial is the reliance of Modern Evolution in and through-out this piece of your totality perspective.
As a once Believer in the Scientificism sub-religion of Evolution I found many PhDs in biological sciences that consider it a theory not well grounded, to my surprise. That the examples often given such as moths changing color or bird beaks changing shape in response to different stresses or benefits introduced into their environments, they are all examples of built-in genetic available ranges.
That no fossils - I'm told - show transition stages between different species.
And few or no scientist wanting funding will state an unbelief in the Religion of Evolution, that like 'man-made Climate Change' and other popularized beliefs, that public and often scientists from different fields incorrect but deeply spread belief causes a retardation towards truth, like the belief that IQ has no effect on poverty, that although people with average and above often are overwhelmed by the increasing needless complexities that ever-expanding gov creates to justify it's budget and something to do for it's otherwise make-work employees, that such environments and work-environments make average and above intelligent often educated people stagger - that somehow racism and lack of opportunity and any number of things instead of intelligential aspects are the cause, and after so much delusional social measuring and money wasted on trying solutions that are not root cause while publicizing other unbased theory of causes, and demonizing as racist and-or ignorant and-or uncaring all who suggest differently .. it prolongs the generations of suffering by preventing open rational fact-based discussions.
As all such 'religious' beliefs do - to cripple progress in that field. As the religion of Evolution has done - drawn a huge red warning notice across it 'there be dragons and destruction for those who go there!' So the reasoned and well-argued Intelligent Design theories (see Stephen Meyer's conferences on YouTube) are never look at seriously - the encoding in genetics which argues through Information Theory that such programming cannot be from random mutations - for example.
--
My suggestion that a model of reality along the lines of Simulation Theory suggests, that like René Descartes thought experiment our Focus or consciousness is disconnected from our senses and fed alternate senses from a computer - or like a vivid dream version of self, Hosted by a Fuller version of self, along with other versions of self as different people.
If such concepts are within your grasp (as I think very likely so) than half of Catholicism's science-based Apologetics are within your grasp. The Trinity becomes a Process where The Father generates nto being our soul, transfers to a Forked copy of self that then the difference between The Son Hosting our soul and the Father is the Holy Ghost - the path through the Simulation that will flow if no grave sins Collapse the Quantum path(s) created that is defined in the Holy Ghost, and so given proper procedures - error correction - a re-Differation Holy Ghost version (of the Father) is generated and the soul continues.
And the Son Hosts not only our soul but the souls of those near us through sharing His Body & Soul as a computer shares it's hardware to each application running on that system - multiplexing between them perhaps with different levels of Attention or times - Grace levels perhaps.
That such Hosting is done reclusively, that we in turn as the Dream sleep and Dream of other versions of self and others, and that such feels like a humming pleasantness except when Hosting a version of self and realities that resulted from Sin, or erroneous actions, that require perhaps great numbers of version of self & simulated realities, all Hosted painfully within self - that hum now a burning - with an awareness of self-fault and eventual contriteness and perhaps a forgiveness in the form of Upper Hosts taking some of that Cross to carry themselves.
Etc. A lifetime of engaging perhaps profitable work, and a possible alternative to insane mind-rending Modernist 'philosophy' torment and torture - replaced with what has Theological Natural Law and scriptural [Programmer's Manual] roots.
That - sir or madam - is what a high-fidelity Christian Atheist would do.
God Bless., Steve