Saturday, December 19, 2009
Kingdom of Man
The Church is run by men. It's preposterous to claim any connection with God, let alone a privileged connection or an exclusive connection — without that connection being backed by the god in question.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Grace
God used Jesus to expose the Temple as outside God's grace.
God used Ivan Illich to expose the Church as outside God's grace.
The above is "theology": a step or two removed: theology by association.
It doesn't matter how high in a church the priests elevate themselves: so long as Jesus is still nailed on the cross (like a carcass in the ghouls' and vampires' meat locker, and all around him hang the innumerable leasts of these his brethren).
God is still using pk to expose the human world's dominant kleptocracy as wholly of a kind with the Temple and the Church: outside God's grace.
In God's kingdom good will be rewarded. Meantime, we're in the kingdom of man: and evil reigns: not unchallenged, but unsuccessfully challenged.
God used Ivan Illich to expose the Church as outside God's grace.
The above is "theology": a step or two removed: theology by association.
It doesn't matter how high in a church the priests elevate themselves: so long as Jesus is still nailed on the cross (like a carcass in the ghouls' and vampires' meat locker, and all around him hang the innumerable leasts of these his brethren).
God is still using pk to expose the human world's dominant kleptocracy as wholly of a kind with the Temple and the Church: outside God's grace.
In God's kingdom good will be rewarded. Meantime, we're in the kingdom of man: and evil reigns: not unchallenged, but unsuccessfully challenged.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Religion
Religion reflects human imagination concerning the cosmos. Organized religion restricts human imagination concerning the cosmos.
I posted that statement under this same title at my IonaArc blog on 2009 09 30. My ex-wife posted a comment — "interesting thoughts." Subsequently I've been moving religion-related posts from IonaArc to here, my new blog, dedicated to such considerations, but in this case I also leave the original statement there plus Hilary's comment. What else I added there I continue here:
My post on CommunicationN will say more on the same theme.
My current thinking emphasizes the difference between individual and group. The proposition that there is a God who speaks to a Moses (or a Jesus) (or a pk) does not necessitate any proposition that that God therefore speaks to the Jews (or to the Christians) (or to Americans).
Every Christian faction believes that they've got God right (says Bart Ehrman). I say that those factions are wrong: so they put me in Siberia, ignore-while-censoring my theo-cosmologies. I am sustained by imagining a Judgment in which God merely shows people their actual behavior – as distinct from their wishful image. Not in eternity! Time itself is infinite. Merely after we're extinct will suffice.
And I iterate my point from my one article actually published, long ago in 1971, that universities (and all socially-compelled Western schools) derive from Christian monasteries: not thought fettered only by truth; no: thought control.
The orthodox don't listen to the heterodox, will break all their own rules to avoid hearing. Universities have as much academic freedom as monasteries have philosophical tolerance: the same amount of "free speech" that Americans have in a media-ruled market: where the media depend on advertising revenue, and advertising revenue depends entirely upon Pollyanna.
I posted that statement under this same title at my IonaArc blog on 2009 09 30. My ex-wife posted a comment — "interesting thoughts." Subsequently I've been moving religion-related posts from IonaArc to here, my new blog, dedicated to such considerations, but in this case I also leave the original statement there plus Hilary's comment. What else I added there I continue here:
My post on CommunicationN will say more on the same theme.
2009 10 26
My current thinking emphasizes the difference between individual and group. The proposition that there is a God who speaks to a Moses (or a Jesus) (or a pk) does not necessitate any proposition that that God therefore speaks to the Jews (or to the Christians) (or to Americans).
Every Christian faction believes that they've got God right (says Bart Ehrman). I say that those factions are wrong: so they put me in Siberia, ignore-while-censoring my theo-cosmologies. I am sustained by imagining a Judgment in which God merely shows people their actual behavior – as distinct from their wishful image. Not in eternity! Time itself is infinite. Merely after we're extinct will suffice.
And I iterate my point from my one article actually published, long ago in 1971, that universities (and all socially-compelled Western schools) derive from Christian monasteries: not thought fettered only by truth; no: thought control.
The orthodox don't listen to the heterodox, will break all their own rules to avoid hearing. Universities have as much academic freedom as monasteries have philosophical tolerance: the same amount of "free speech" that Americans have in a media-ruled market: where the media depend on advertising revenue, and advertising revenue depends entirely upon Pollyanna.
Theology / Cosmology
Theology: the kind of cosmology, older than science, where the imagination plays with unnatural causes.
Cosmology: what happens to theology after science buds and orthodoxy slips a bit.
In the mid-1980s, in the midst of writing my third novel, I found myself compiling a notebook of definitions, comments, insights, sarcasms, ironies ... which I (ironically) titled my Semantic Dictionary. Dictionaries have evolved as alphabetical listings of word definitions; Semantics studies meanings. (In my mind and in the minds of many another semioticist the symbol must be distinguished from the "thing" symbolized: the truck exists in space and may weight several tons; the word "truck" exists only in mental space: it weighs nothing (and the truck that the boy imagines in his head also weighs nothing and has no extension in space)). Never mind whether it's a good title, that's how I titled it, intending to develop it further and to offer it for publication. (I never learn, do I?)
I still have that notebook somewhere (unless the FBI took it when they arrested me and riffled through all my stuff). In 1995 my first homepage appeared online (several years after my first business website) and I found myself jotting new Semantic Dictionary entries, eventually collecting them into their own folder in my Teaching section of Knatz.com.
This morning I jotted the above statements about theology and cosmology. They have a Semantic Dictionary flavor to them. I post them here but now also begin to translate K.'s Semantic Dictionary to my PaulKnatz blog (here at BlogSpot.com).
Cosmology: what happens to theology after science buds and orthodoxy slips a bit.
In the mid-1980s, in the midst of writing my third novel, I found myself compiling a notebook of definitions, comments, insights, sarcasms, ironies ... which I (ironically) titled my Semantic Dictionary. Dictionaries have evolved as alphabetical listings of word definitions; Semantics studies meanings. (In my mind and in the minds of many another semioticist the symbol must be distinguished from the "thing" symbolized: the truck exists in space and may weight several tons; the word "truck" exists only in mental space: it weighs nothing (and the truck that the boy imagines in his head also weighs nothing and has no extension in space)). Never mind whether it's a good title, that's how I titled it, intending to develop it further and to offer it for publication. (I never learn, do I?)
I still have that notebook somewhere (unless the FBI took it when they arrested me and riffled through all my stuff). In 1995 my first homepage appeared online (several years after my first business website) and I found myself jotting new Semantic Dictionary entries, eventually collecting them into their own folder in my Teaching section of Knatz.com.
This morning I jotted the above statements about theology and cosmology. They have a Semantic Dictionary flavor to them. I post them here but now also begin to translate K.'s Semantic Dictionary to my PaulKnatz blog (here at BlogSpot.com).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
God as "Map"
God for nearly all kleptocrats is an abstraction of that kleptocrat's cosmology, assumptions, default settings ...
"God" is a map of our maps; "god" is my map of THE territory.
Until Knatz.com is recreated see IonaArc for pk on Maps / territories. See my Macroinformation blog ('till Macroinformation.org can be remounted) for pk on existential categories: Pleroma vs. Creatura, Creatura vs Sentiens ...
The universe is the universe, the cosmos is the cosmos ... neither seems to be words. All words, everything we think as "thought," is semiotics: symbols and signs.
"God" is a map of our maps; "god" is my map of THE territory.
Until Knatz.com is recreated see IonaArc for pk on Maps / territories. See my Macroinformation blog ('till Macroinformation.org can be remounted) for pk on existential categories: Pleroma vs. Creatura, Creatura vs Sentiens ...
The universe is the universe, the cosmos is the cosmos ... neither seems to be words. All words, everything we think as "thought," is semiotics: symbols and signs.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Open / Closed
Religion reflects human imagination concerning the cosmos. Organized religion restricts human imagination concerning the cosmos.
Science, in the ideal I embrace, treats questions as open, never permanently closed, no answer infallible, beyond review. Religion is the opposite: at least it is in kleptocracy: unfortunately the only social condition known to literate man. Religion treats profound problems with the human-flattering hubris of totalitarian police investigations:case closed.
That statement was first posted at IonaArc.
Science, in the ideal I embrace, treats questions as open, never permanently closed, no answer infallible, beyond review. Religion is the opposite: at least it is in kleptocracy: unfortunately the only social condition known to literate man. Religion treats profound problems with the human-flattering hubris of totalitarian police investigations:
Science / Religion
| Science | / | Religion |
Yesterday I'd thought I'd capture both essence and scope of what I meant in one post; now I see a complex of posts, their potential much richer than the already profound point I was aiming for.
Science and religion are both human epistemologies. Both try to explain complex patterns, both try to predict future patterns. Both employ "reason." Both demand faith beyond reason: though science downplays that aspect, while religion sometimes makes the faith part a keystone.
I'd started with this wise-ass statement:
Science may be wrong as a matter of fact but
religion is typically wrong as a matter of principle!
religion is typically wrong as a matter of principle!
First I wanted the rhetoric to startle, then I wanted to illustrate: and explain. A religion like Christianity starts off with the idea that God knows our future, but winds up with a result that because God wants to forgive us, and because he instructs us, and confides in us, therefore, we know our future. And notice: God May Not Change His Mind! (Or we'll offer his sacrifices toward feeding some other God who will comply with our wishes for a future! particularly the part where God makes our enemies hold still while we shit down their throat.)
Yesterday science, as a quasi-religion, said "it will probably rain on Friday": with an approximately random chance that it would be so. Today science predicts a 40% probability that it will rain on Friday, with an approximate of 39-41% probability that it will be so. Whereas religion has long guaranteed punishment, forgiveness, reward, triumph over your enemies ... that the seas will turn to blood, the water to wine, and that your precious Garden of Eden will run like a sewer.
I'd wanted to point out that religion typically starts off with a modest claim to authority, but winds up insisting on it with the whole panoply of fascist behavior: the Nazis had little to teach the Spanish Inquisition. The Protestants have only begun to discover their evil. (And the professors at MIT have yet to discover theirs.)
Human Epistemologies
But better, today I want to argue, before getting to any of those other arguments, that religion and science are both stages in the development of human epistemology. They're siblings, with a common origin: and they will always remain siblings. Religion was never 100% without reason; science will never attain reason 100%. Could there be a stage ahead of us beyond science? where reason could attain 100%? No, no: I'm not in the prediction business (except as a joke): but I doubt it. In fact I see human science as already having slipped back into the religion section of human epistemology: it's funded by government, some portion of the moderately talented are compelled to study it (on pain of no Christmas presents), progress is planned by a bureaucracy ... Individual reason, independent argument has no chance. SRI would never discover a Faraday today. Novelty is invisible: the species is back to normal after a temporary aberration of reasonableness. And, prediction again, I don't believe we'll endure as a species long enough to go through another cycle of honest discovery. Just see how we've treated theories of "global warming," for example, over the years and decades since I taught it in college in 1968.
Notice this difference too between science and religion. In science there's an idea, not always respected, that new information should update old information; whereas in religion (and most social endeavors such as politics) it's typically the old information that updates the new information. The Temple interrupted Jesus' new interpretations of scripture as well as Jesus' new messages from God. The Church interrupted Galileo's new information about the universe: trumped new knowledge with old ignorance. Imagine if the phone company replaced all current phone numbers and names and addresses with phone numbers, names and addresses from fifty years ago!
I now hope this will develop into a series of modules, and that I'll edit them better and better, into still another pk masterpiece.
This post first appeared at IonaArc.
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