To My Atheist Friends and Christian Brothers: Think about it.
A Passing by Nehushtan Mission Statement
We need to think about one key subject and three derived subjects that my schoolhouse analogy brings up.
See https://passingbynehushtan.com/2010/04/14/sacred-symbology-a-few-things/
1. One, the premise that nothing works. That something is wrong. That we might be complacent and smug in thinking that we and the world and our way of thinking is right, but we are deceived and are headed for a conclusive fall, along with the world itself.
Are you happy in what you know and the certainty with which you know it? Do you really think you are complete and in need of nothing? Are you comfortable? If so, do you think that this condition is realistic given your circumstances of being a limited, contingent creature, that is without exhaustive knowledge and capable of being deeply deceived and not knowing it? Yes, OK. Let me go on another route.
On the other hand, do you think it is somehow normal that you have these almost supernatural abilities to store, retrieve and handle knowledge, but that you are in a position where you never seem to have full access to the depth of knowledge, in both its empirical quantity and transformative power, that your abilities would seem made for? Are you perfectly fine with what you know and how you know it? There there is no need for doubt at any point? That you are not deceived because the power you invest in your belief or apathy around the subject is enough to show it unworthy of much time to back up and say “maybe I’m wrong, and since the implications of being wrong may have eternal consequences, it may be worth my time to honestly question it.”
If you think that there is nothing wrong with you, with what and why you believe or don’t about existential things beyond this world, then there is nothing more I or anyone else can say to you, and you can’t be taught. If you do sense a degree of dissatisfaction with your human condition, go on to step two. Yes, Christian, that means you too and primarily. At least you believe that this box we were born into is not all that exists.
2. I don’t care which Christian theological tradition you are a part of. Given that there is something wrong with ourselves and the world that we don’t want to be a part of forever, does this not especially apply to our beliefs? Most importantly beliefs about how we would go about avoiding the inheritance of such corruption when we no longer have bodies?
Of course, a lot of this dissatisfaction has to come from our natural limits, but still, it’s only a problem if you believe that there is nothing beyond those limits that could possibly save us. Given that there is this deep dissatisfaction if, hopefully, you have it, isn’t it reasonable to say that this uncomfortable emotional background to consciousness is given motion with a further limit we place on our love of things which would cause us to escape death? Limiting a connection with anyone or anything that holds such knowledge that is not subject to death? Is not transcending through the limitations of the world in respect to knowledge the cure for such corruption, for both the interests of the person who receives and labors under it and this person or thing who would give us its release? Would not such an exchange not mean that our selfish desire to merely remain alive in the face of an absurd existence not turned to love for such a person or thing that gives it meaning, and his or its effect on us returned to Him by us or it’s praise?
I am of course extending my point out to its logical conclusion for theology, but all I am immediately saying in respect to epistemology is that the cure for all this is transcendence, particularly no transcendent knowledge or bad transcendent knowledge, simply means moving away from the bad, away from the way of the world, and into the good and another world. For that to happen you need the good, and for you to spend time honestly looking at it and considering it as good is an effect of the degree to which you really want it. I speak like there is some force or transcendent object to consider for this “good,” but seriously, only a Person could fit that bill, and if a Person then a kind of knowledge of that Person which is as real and sure and individual as this person is sure, real and individual.
If we want to escape corruption, its escape is by means of incorruption for both persons and information. It’s something that we can’t’ have unless it is supplied from the outside of our corrupt world paradigm. If it is supplied, it must be supplied by someone outside of that paradigm. If it is someone outside, that person must be immune and above and non-contingent of any such paradigms. What is supplied can’t be more of the same corruption, but must be that which is quintessentially incorrupt, and not subject to death and decay. The only thing the mind is capable of thinking of which would fit that category is something completely immaterial, perfect, but is capable of attaching itself inside us to that part of us which is immaterial and immortal yet lacking the genetic inheritance to the incorrupt paradigm necessary for our eternal compatibility with it. This is, of course, transcendent knowledge of that Person. The point of contact for us for things above the world.
Since I’m talking squarely to Christians now, ill I won’t mince words anymore. Yes, that “good” is the Holy Spirit’s objective internal presence within the believer. But if He is not thought of as a supplier of a specific kind of knowledge first He will then be easily thought of as either a force who does not personally communicate anything transformative or one who communicates without any particular content that identifies Him as Holy and transcendently “good.”
What we want to do is redefine the popular view of transcendence, with epistemology at its center.
The crumbling schoolhouse image is a model for this redefinition. It has:
a. interior space. The space where we live and must deal with.
b. An exterior space where we, still living, want to go, but also a
c. wall separating us from it, which is a part of the building.
Of course, we are speaking the paradigm of handling knowledge when we speak of the building. We are not speaking of a physical building, or physical exterior or a concrete separating barrier between them, but the building is an epistemological structure that sets limits on knowledge or presents it in a way either advantageous to or bad. Transcendence is outside the building. Why? Because we are confined but are also free inside. Because of our amazing mental abilities and free will and consciousness suggest that perhaps there is more a reason for it than how to build a flush toilet.
Don’t’ worry, I am not going to be both a theological proctologist and become the very important yet dirty thing that I examine, and spend a lot of time on the technical and historical details about epistemology. Epistemology is simply the study of the nature and scope of knowledge, in practical matters concerning itself with how people learn and believe. There is just too much road there, and I’m a big picture person, not a research specialist.
As for the building analogy, the structure sets the parameters of our knowledge of the outside, first in as much as that structure demands that the knowledge we claim to have of the outside comes by inference, not sight since the exterior is a place we can only see mentally, and that it rises to the quality demanded not by that structure, but specific bits of knowledge we find inside. By the clues, signs, evidence, and traces of that outside world found within the structure, which is also the abstract environs of our spirits, and primarily near to the foundation wall. That wall represents that part of the epistemological structure, the parameters of our knowledge of God, nearest to the outside and most important of the structure of the epistemological building, that has the greatest power to deceive us and keep us happy inside or let us, by faith, see and communicate with the outside.
We have certain parameters on the type and degree of knowledge about the exterior within the building determined by the limitations of the world and ourselves. The exterior is knowledge of that world not of the type and degree of the knowledge of the interior space but is the original article of which the interior only can contain analogous objects. The things we find in the interior are analogous or instructive of what lies on the outside and are not the things themselves. We will not find rest until, somehow we, through knowledge transcendence, are able to connect in our minds, to become conscious, of the outside through the limitations placed before us.
We must look for knowledge inside the building, preferably not further into the interior of partitioned rooms, where deeper and deeper there are only the imaginations of occupants that are comfortable with it and have made a home there. We look primarily to the wall separating us from the outside, perhaps putting our ear to it and listening for sounds emanating from the world beyond, or we look for things around the perimeter of that wall that are foreign of the interior and suggest something personal left behind by the creator of the building. This maker of the building is the purpose of everything in this transcendence: to connect with another intelligence out of the building paradigm that is responsible for it, get the attention of that intelligence, and find a way so that we can pass notes to each other through the wall, form a relationship, and get that persons help for our passage out.
More specifically, we want to find, if it exists, the real founding premises and conclusions for religious knowledge, more specifically Christian religious knowledge, religious faith and religious feeling around a God of truth. This is effected through the use of what may be called “symbolic transpondence”. We want to clearly sketch out this method, contrast it to the historical approach to these matters, find a single quintessential biblical artifact that that best exemplifies this approach as ordained by God for communicating with Him and spend the rest of the website in biblical exegesis establishing it as dominant.
If you are already a believer, I think it is important not to have a misunderstanding about the implications of a successful argument on these matters, what is at stake in a fight over what defines the founding principles of Christian theology, and your responsibility for them. I don’t want you to surf to another theology site and feel at ease with throwing that responsibility away or putting it on a shelf with all the other stuff that got you nowhere and left you dead center as you were. My intention, perhaps in a way that has never been done before, and certainly with presuppositions that have never before been successfully yoked into service for such matters, is to completely overthrow your whole notion of what Christianity is all about.
