My Ideas Regarding Religion

[Grey]

This may be similar to Loki's thread but is open to proponents of any religion. I'm giving my understanding of the universe and I'd like feedback on it and evidence for any religion or way of thought.

It's my understanding that one of our universal laws is that of cause and effect. My distant ancestors gave life to my recent ones who in turn gave life to me. Everything in the present is dependent upon the past and everything in the past is dependent upon what happened before it. Everything is both an effect and a cause. Since the past cannot extend forever, at one point there must have been an uncaused causer. To me this indicates that something operating outside the laws of our universe comes into play here, and thus I believe in something.

Personally, it doesn't sit well with me to believe in something just because it's what I want to believe, and that's where my association with heathendom becomes a bit awkward. I'm definitely interested in the subject, but to change your faith to suit your wants implies that you don't truly have faith.

Christianity's Semitic roots are obviously at odds with many of my beliefs. However, the idea that Jesus is an aspect or child of God essentially negates arguments based on his race since he would be of divine essence, and therefore above all humans regardless of his superficial ethnic origin. His teachings could therefore be universal in nature and rife with Jewish culture merely because that's what his audience would have been familiar with, although the meaning would not be inherently Jewish.

So I've thrown together a theoretical framework with which Christianity could be acceptable for a racialist (unless someone wants to point out flaws, which I'd be glad to hear). Still, why follow Christianity, or Heathenism, or anything else for that matter? This may be an impossible request, but what material evidence exists that indicates one should take up any path. Why is your way the right way to you?

There are many here who seem to know a lot about their respective religions on either side of the argument (Psychonaut and Lutiferre, for example). I'm personally confused and am just looking for honest feedback about what your view of this uncaused causer (or causers) is, and why.

[anonymaus]

I'm giving my understanding of the universe and I'd like feedback on it and evidence for any religion or way of thought.

There is no evidence for the truthfulness of any religion nor the existence of its deity; were there to be evidence of, for example, the Abrahamic deity its discovery would necessitate some creative revisions to the scriptural necessity of faith.

As to your own understanding, it is a philosophical dog's dinner: curious and honest and sloppy. You are quite young and it is normal and healthy to be in such a state--do not make the mistake of wishing to be older to correct it: intellectual coherence comes from honesty, education and experience and cannot be forced.

We mature when it is time.

[Nodens]

Belief leads to action. Action leads to consequence.

Accepting one's fundamental limitations requires one to accept that one can never truly know. We can only operate by what appears likely and what appears useful. This goes beyond religion, as religion is really nothing more than applied philosophy.

Edit: Your grounds for this statement?


Since the past cannot extend forever, at one point there must have been an uncaused causer.

[Lutiferre]

There is no evidence for the truthfulness of any religion nor the existence of its deity; were there to be evidence of, for example, the Abrahamic deity its discovery would necessitate some creative revisions to the scriptural necessity of faith.
Faith has several aspects. There are both experiental aspects, which is how we relate to God, and then the intellectual aspect, which is how we think about God.

To have faith then, itself encompasses thinking correctly about God. And to have reasonable grounds for some of the ways you think about God is then, completely in consonance with the intellectual aspect of faith. There is no contradiction in it. It is necessary, for instance, to distinguish between some things in an intellectual sense for a Christian; like humanity and divinity, in Jesus Christ.

It doesn't exhaust the experiental aspect, and it certainly doesn't exhaust what there is to know about God; he is an inexhaustible source of truth, so why not think about him? It's almost our duty, as long as we don't assume that our thinking is the arbiter of reality. Our thinking is primarily a tool to interpret our experience, and act correctly in our experience.

And there are things in Christian, as in all experience, which simply have nothing to do with evidence in demonstration, but evidence themselves - as in all peoples lives. This is the experiental side. We do not need to demonstrate how we experience a friendship or a relation with another person or reality, even if it is totally beyond what seems immediately obvious in an empirical sense.



Edit: Your grounds for this statement?
To speak of an "infinite past" is misusing the word "past", because infinity does not pass. If it passes, there is a boundary, which means it is finite, not infinite.

But I don't actually believe the question of the contingency of the universe rests solely on the mere extension of time, but also on the very nature of the world, which is mutable, exhaustible, finite, temporal, etc.

[Lutiferre]

Christianity's Semitic roots are obviously at odds with many of my beliefs. However, the idea that Jesus is an aspect or child of God essentially negates arguments based on his race since he would be of divine essence, and therefore above all humans regardless of his superficial ethnic origin. His teachings could therefore be universal in nature and rife with Jewish culture merely because that's what his audience would have been familiar with, although the meaning would not be inherently Jewish.
He is both seen as divine and human, one person/hypostasis (existence) with two natures. From eternity, the Word is only divine; but in history, he enters into creation and assumes humanity.

What people should God have elected for the incarnation, if not the Judeans? Every people could be ethnocentric and ask, why didn't God become Chinese, or African, or Danish? But that is missing the point. Israel was a nation in the center of the earth, when it comes to the intersection of civilisations; it was ideal for this purpose. And remember that the Judeans were not the same as the modern "Jews", a word that didn't even exist back then. They were mostly a nation of poor peasants, some of whose bastard offspring was scattered over the Roman Empire, not the powerful and corrupt Jewish organisations, bankers and world economic dictators of today, who are not true Judeans to begin with, but (bastard) and assimilant offspring from European nations and kingdoms like Germany and Britain, empowering and empowered by other peoples and power structures through history, like the British Empire. Certainly not the true spiritual or even corporeal successor to the "Judea" or "Israel" of 2000 years ago, even though Israel is what they like to call their zionist regime. Not to mention that they are proud to claim themselves unrepentant descendants of Christkillers and prideful blasphemers, and in their modern bastard perversion, have been nothing but secularists and virulent supporters of decadence and degeneracy (yes, even in Israel, their own state).

Besides, you must realize even Germanic culture and beliefs comes from the south east in peoples that were not Nordish Germanics. Both in the Indo-Europeans, that may be closer to Middle-Eastern or even Asian, from the Steppes, and the peoples from the (definite) Middle East who caused the agricultural revolution, which was a fundamental culturally defining influence, again from the Middle East. It even made it's genetic however small in proportion to the cultural impact.

This goes for other cultural items as well. Runes, so characteristic for Germanics, are themselves a derivative of other alphabets, most likely an Old Latin alphabet (or perhaps Etruscan), itself derivative ultimately from Phoenician alphabets from the Middle East.

What matters is not the origin of these cultural items but the quality and significance of them for our own ancestors and cultural synthesis. It's origin does not lessen it's substance and significance. Culture changes as long as it lives, unless it is dead, in which case it remains the same. If you want to reject anything that originates in a non-Germanic place or culture, then you should reject every cultural development and importation for the last 10,000 years, which is the synthesis that has created Germanic culture as we've seen it through the ages and see it today. That includes Christianity. And not just our culture, but also our very ancestry as humans, originates somewhere in the Middle East (most likely) where the first ancestors of Europeans came from, and all the subsequent migrations of all major haplogroups ever since the Ice Age and the origin of those very peoples and into the recolonization of the post-glacial refugia.


So I've thrown together a theoretical framework with which Christianity could be acceptable for a racialist (unless someone wants to point out flaws, which I'd be glad to hear). Still, why follow Christianity, or Heathenism, or anything else for that matter? This may be an impossible request, but what material evidence exists that indicates one should take up any path. Why is your way the right way to you?
Why follow Christianity? There are many reasons. I'd recommend to you to read Heretics (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/heretics.pdf) and Orthodoxy (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.pdf) by G.K. Chesterton (though I recommend you to get it in book form), the greatest Christian writer for our day and age, if you want some existential meditations on why to be a Christian.

The primary reason for being a Christian is that Christianity is the right path to communion with the Divine, the Other. And it's truth is both experiental and intellectual, or rather, an inseparate whole. It is itself a part of it's instrumental truth that Christianity truly connects you to the divine; it makes for a meaningful existence, and meaningfulness makes you deeply fulfilled in your existence, in a way that cannot be achieved without it. So there is nothing to lose, in becoming a Christian, the way I see it. There are corporeal pleasures you cannot indulge in, of course; but what are those, except superficial things that pass quickly, anyway? Moving beyond concupscence and freeing yourself from animal instincts and passions is a part of communing with God, of becoming godly, which is theosis, that we reach through spiritual discipline, ascesis. We cannot both act like animals and call ourselves divine, our be in communion with God, who calls us to spiritual elevation and holiness.

I'm personally confused and am just looking for honest feedback about what your view of this uncaused causer (or causers) is, and why.
If you want some philosophical input on the Uncreated Creator, or Uncaused Causer, from a Christian viewpoint, I can recommend you the work of Thomas Aquinas, the link that JP posted to Summa Contra Gentiles: Book One: God (http://www.op-stjoseph.org/Students/study/thomas/ContraGentiles.htm), especially the first few chapters. For more elaborate views on God, the Trinity and Creation, you can read the first part of his Summa Theologica, Prima Pars (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm).

As for my views, I've written on them elsewhere. You could read this post (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101484&postcount=22) of mine, with many links to different Christian philosophers and traditions and ways of looking at things. And also this one (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=107048&postcount=44).

[Psychonaut]

Personally, it doesn't sit well with me to believe in something just because it's what I want to believe, and that's where my association with heathendom becomes a bit awkward. I'm definitely interested in the subject, but to change your faith to suit your wants implies that you don't truly have faith.

I would suggest that you do two things:

1. Listen to the wise words of Anon and keep learning. Don't let yourself stagnate. Don't try and force coherence. The big picture may never present itself, and many false big pictures will be presented to you along the way. Don't let that bother you; keep pushing upwards.

2. Behave as if Heathenry were true. It's my opinion that religion without religious experience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_experience) is a waste of time. Although the critical attitude is to be valued, if you wish to have an intimate encounter with the core of any religion, you'll have to consciously suspend this faculty and try to believe in the beginning. These experiences may not be a "proof" of anything other than that mankind is capable of having them, but those who have seen have seen, which is more than any armchair theologian can say.

[Lutiferre]

Another book by G.K. Chesterton I should mention is The Everlasting Man (one of the greatest books I've ever read). First, though, I would also recommend anything written by C.S. Lewis; especially Mere Christianity and Miracles. Mere Christianity is about the fundamentals of Christianity; it's really the most fundamental and concise single book you can read about Christianity. Miracles is about the philosophical understanding of how Divine and Human realities interlock. These books by G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis are sort of the "minimum" that I think any confused modern who wants to know what Christianity is about, should read.

Another post I might mention as a follow-up on my post (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=107048&postcount=44) in Loki's thread, that also mentions the historical role of God in human history (and Israel) is this one (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=107297&postcount=52), and to a less extent this one (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=107077&postcount=46).

[Grey]

I'm just getting around to reading Mere Christianity this morning. All I can say so far is that it seems like he gives humanity too much credit in the section on moral law.

[SuuT]

There are critical first thing differences to consider. One you might have already picked up on, Grey, is that the Christian will provide a background preface, then direct you either to literature; or, draw you a map to their church. the Heathen, on the other hand, will direct you to a walk with your Self: a good, long, and hard introspection. But, with that said, it must be emphasized that Heathenry wants nothing of 'the poor of spirit', we do not want those yearning to be free or saved - we want already free men who yearn to chisel themselves out of the amorphous block of granite that is an already hard and hard-seeking nature. We have no answers for you that are not already in your heart, and in your mind and blood. What we can do is guide you, nudge you this way or that depending on which or what dillemma you currently face with respect to your introspective process and progress. Not one of us who is real will attempt in any way to give you the 'Truth'; what we will do is assist you in uncovering truth to the extent that your spirit allows.

For we, too, are fishers of men - but that of a different kind.

[Murphy]

I'm just getting around to reading Mere Christianity this morning. All I can say so far is that it seems like he gives humanity too much credit in the section on moral law.

I haven't had a chance to reread Mere Christianity for a few months now, but are you referring to his belief that all men have an innate moral compass as it were?

Regards,
Eóin.

[Lutiferre]

There are critical first thing differences to consider. One you might have already picked up on, Grey, is that the Christian will provide a background preface, then direct you either to literature; or, draw you a map to their church. the Heathen, on the other hand, will direct you to a walk with your Self: a good, long, and hard introspection.
Literature is only a tool, just like discussion is, for reaching enlightenment. It comes down, for me, to the persons that have written it and the wisdom they have passed on in literary form.

If I could have a talk with them in person, I would have preferred that.

And I think knowing others views and getting new perspectives is sometimes the biggest revelation of self you could get. Because it enables you to come closer to your own views, and to the truth.


But, with that said, it must be emphasized that Heathenry wants nothing of 'the poor of spirit', we do not want those yearning to be free or saved - we want already free men who yearn to chisel themselves out of the amorphous block of granite that is an already hard and hard-seeking nature. We have no answers for you that are not already in your heart, and in your mind and blood.
The same is the case for Christianity. We believe everything Christianity tries to do is simply a redirection to the true logoi in each individual, back to the Logos who contains and is the root of all individual logoi, who find their arch and unifying principle in Christ. This an old patristic notion from St. Maximus, by the way. Christianity is simply a guide, which is why Christ is called the Way.


What we can do is guide you, nudge you this way or that depending on which or what dillemma you currently face with respect to your introspective process and progress.
The same is the case for (true) Christianity.

But the spiritual life, I should say, is not purely introspective. That would be limiting it too much. There is both the inner and the outer to deal with, and both are necessary to be put into some kind of harmony the way we possibly can, in how we relate to the outer world and our life in the inner world as well.

Not one of us who is real will attempt in any way to give you the 'Truth'; what we will do is assist you in uncovering truth to the extent that your spirit allows.
No Christian knows the Truth with capital T either; that is a transcendental wholly beyond us. We only know that of the truth which is necessary to uncovering truth to the extent that the spirit allows it. Only God is and has the full Truth; it is not a meaningful human aspiration to gain it.

[SuuT]

While every thread that deals with the subject matter provides an opportunity to state your case and/or defend Christianity on some or another level, Lutiferre, you have no evolved sense of when to pick your battles.

If Grey has questions, he'll ask. :) Please don't piss all over him just yet.

[Lutiferre]

While every thread that deals with the subject matter provides an opportunity to state your case and/or defend Christianity on some or another level, Lutiferre, you have no evolved sense of when to pick your battles.
I didn't see it as a defense or a battle, but an opportunity to say something I thought relevant to Greys debate initative.


If Grey has questions, he'll ask. :) Please don't piss all over him just yet.
I did not intend to piss over him or anyone else. If I did so, then I apologize. But the way I see it, you were the one pissing over your misrepresentation of Christianity.

I don't piss on heathens, muslims, buddhist or hindus when I talked about my Christian views.

[Lutiferre]

I'm just getting around to reading Mere Christianity this morning. All I can say so far is that it seems like he gives humanity too much credit in the section on moral law.
Maybe at first it seems like he does. But what is central to his point is only really the moral compass and sense in the individual human person, which is a reflection and appreciation of the core fact of the general natural law, the ethical realities attached to human consciousness, even if that appreciation is not always all-encompassing. The seed and potential for a fuller appreciation still lies dormant; how much it is actualized depends on how stimulative a culture and environment the individual is exposed to. But the core fact remains unchanged.

[Anthropos]

A few remarks jotted down in a haste:

Of course one can be nationalist/preservationist/whatever and a Christian. Sure, I realise that many 'arguments' can be constructed against it, but they are straw men and badly informed about traditional Christianity.

Christianity is what I call a true tradition and a great tradition, meaning that it has within itself everything you might want to ask for. When Christianity was introduced to Europe, the pre-Christian traditions were already degenerated and in a poor state, and Christianity made a civilisational upheaval possible at that point, one that other traditions did not manage to bring about. Some people buy that account with the exception that they think Christianity was only used as a tool by various political interests of that time. Well, let's look at what other, still existing traditions say. Islam, not admitting that Jesus is the Son of God, nor admitting the Holy Trinity, does nevertheless tell us about the same Jesus with divine or godlike qualities. Many hindus do recognise Jesus as an avatar, and some gurus even claim to be his disciples from a straight line. Modern rationalistic inquiry disregards all such connections based quite often on nothing but a general scepticism against the religious.

One last point: Christianity has brought to us the knowledge we have of the pre-Christian traditions of Europe. Their wisdom is incorporated in Christianity, and as traditions, those pre-Christian traditions ceased to have a positive existence of their own. To say that if Christianity had not taken over, we would have more knowledge of pre-Christian traditions is to say something utterly nonsensical, in my opinion. We don't know at all what would have happened, in that case: any knowledge of European traditions could have been lost as a result of Mongol invasions or whatever, and also, what's with the "if" of that argument anyway, when we know how things turned out.