All these posts now link from a PKnatz blog cosmology menu. Next I'll move the posts there and correct the links.
Happy Thanksgiving. 2011 11 24
What am I thankful for? Maybe I'll get to move some of these today.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Judgment
Judgment was a perennial topic at Knatz.com. I'm working at recreating those and others of my censored classics at my bogs.
The word judgment covers a series of logical types, not visible to the untrained or the careless.
The word judgment covers a series of logical types, not visible to the untrained or the careless.
- Divine judgment
That's the kind so many of us heard about as children: and since.
The problem is, though we may be surrounded by divine judgments, there's no reliable way to tell: we have no objectively verifiable examples. - Religious judgment
Careful now: don't confuse this one with the first: make sure it's a god you hear, not some trickster shaman, or priest.
History gives us a slew of examples of religious judgments: women getting their tits cut off for witchcraft, babies thrown into the furnace, men broken, stoned, flayed, crucified ... - Secular judgment
In modern times a state (a nation, a government, a secular coalition) takes over for the priests who had taken over for the gods. Egregious examples abound: Jews in German concentration camps, Japanese ethnics in American concentration camps ... - Individual judgment
If individual judgments weren't so egregious maybe the religious and secular judgments would not have built such a head of steam.
Still: note: Individual judgments come with sentience. But even the mouse to which we attribute no sentience judges whether the cat can get it before it grabs the cheese. Institutional judgments are recent: and degenerating. Go to any bureaucracy, and watch the bureaucrats make judgments: the law says you're entitled to this and that? not unless the bureaucrat behaves.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
pk Online
I had five domains, several blogs, thousands of essays and other text files, thousands of images on line. The fed destroyed all that, all but destroyed me.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
pkTheo is less affected than the other blogs. Still, I share the announcement.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
pkTheo is less affected than the other blogs. Still, I share the announcement.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
People's Bible
People think the Bible is about God, about Creation, about Christ: Jesus, the Messiah.
Well, sure; or at least maybe. But what I see the Bible being most clearly about is people: stories they tell, stories they edit, without even knowing they're doing it: stories they change over the centuries: stories that start off saying we don't know what because we don't have any original MSS, but which wind up censoring, sometimes reversing old messages: about women's status in the early Christian Church, for example. Older scribes indicated high status for women, later redactors reverse the position back to low status: victims of systematic misogyny.
People show off their (revised) Bibles: intend them, take them, as proof (ha,ha) that they, the people, are receptive to God.
I say it shows the opposite: in many, if not all, things.
On editing the Bible to alter messages about women's status in the early Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, 178 ff, 183 ff. For example, Romans 16.7 tells of a woman powerful in a Pauline church, in Paul's lifetime, named Junia. Some copies of Romans alter the name to Junias, suggesting that she was a he!
(And these Christians think God is going to put them into heaven?!?!?)
Well, sure; or at least maybe. But what I see the Bible being most clearly about is people: stories they tell, stories they edit, without even knowing they're doing it: stories they change over the centuries: stories that start off saying we don't know what because we don't have any original MSS, but which wind up censoring, sometimes reversing old messages: about women's status in the early Christian Church, for example. Older scribes indicated high status for women, later redactors reverse the position back to low status: victims of systematic misogyny.
People show off their (revised) Bibles: intend them, take them, as proof (ha,ha) that they, the people, are receptive to God.
I say it shows the opposite: in many, if not all, things.
On editing the Bible to alter messages about women's status in the early Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, 178 ff, 183 ff. For example, Romans 16.7 tells of a woman powerful in a Pauline church, in Paul's lifetime, named Junia. Some copies of Romans alter the name to Junias, suggesting that she was a he!
(And these Christians think God is going to put them into heaven?!?!?)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Episodic Gospels
The gospels included in Christians' New Testament give two conflicting accounts of Judas' death. In one he hanged himself from a tree, and another he fell down and his bowels burst. So, the literalists want to know: which is it?
One story has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a pony, another on an ass, and one on both a pony and as ass. Really? At the same time? Why such a stunt?
To fullfil mystic forecasts in the Old Testament some said. Except when we look for a prophecy in the OT book indicated by the NT gospel, it isn't found there; but is found in another OT book with a similar name!
The Bible writers, like humans in all times and places, are making it up as they go along: and showing their carelessness, their illiteracy, their indifference to fact, to truth, as they do so.
Or: How about this explanation?
Every gospel variant is literally true, but they happened in different Jesus manifestations in different cultures in different times or on different planets. Maybe Jesus entered earth's Jerusalem on a pony, but entered some Jerusalem-like city on the second rocky planet of Albermarle epsilon on an ass.
Maybe on earth Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; but on a Calvary of the fifth satellite of the third rocky planet of Andromeda's theta zone, star XYN~ he said, "Burn every !~%*#@^%ing one of these &*^%$!@#~$ers in hell!"
While we're at it, how's this?
On earth, on Albermarle ... all over Andromeda, Jesus gets crucified, but on the artificial human web around Gingadonk in the Coalsack, Caiaphas screams at Pilate and Pilate screams at Herod, and Jesus stands there bleeding, and the people crucify Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and give Jesus a generous stipend to keep the money tables out of the temple!
Next time I dip into Bart Ehrman I may upgrade my examples. I "know" them, but as an amateur, not as a Biblical scholar with variants and paths memorized. Meantime, don't bother to correct my references: understand the point!
One story has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a pony, another on an ass, and one on both a pony and as ass. Really? At the same time? Why such a stunt?
To fullfil mystic forecasts in the Old Testament some said. Except when we look for a prophecy in the OT book indicated by the NT gospel, it isn't found there; but is found in another OT book with a similar name!
The Bible writers, like humans in all times and places, are making it up as they go along: and showing their carelessness, their illiteracy, their indifference to fact, to truth, as they do so.
Or: How about this explanation?
Every gospel variant is literally true, but they happened in different Jesus manifestations in different cultures in different times or on different planets. Maybe Jesus entered earth's Jerusalem on a pony, but entered some Jerusalem-like city on the second rocky planet of Albermarle epsilon on an ass.
Maybe on earth Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; but on a Calvary of the fifth satellite of the third rocky planet of Andromeda's theta zone, star XYN~ he said, "Burn every !~%*#@^%ing one of these &*^%$!@#~$ers in hell!"
While we're at it, how's this?
On earth, on Albermarle ... all over Andromeda, Jesus gets crucified, but on the artificial human web around Gingadonk in the Coalsack, Caiaphas screams at Pilate and Pilate screams at Herod, and Jesus stands there bleeding, and the people crucify Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and give Jesus a generous stipend to keep the money tables out of the temple!
Next time I dip into Bart Ehrman I may upgrade my examples. I "know" them, but as an amateur, not as a Biblical scholar with variants and paths memorized. Meantime, don't bother to correct my references: understand the point!
Friday, January 28, 2011
Gnostic
Christians don't discuss theology;
they impose it.
Look up gnosticism. Check Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities. I'll say what I mean as I go. But it's hard, a hornets nest. I've tried for decades to bring this up, and failed thus far. This time I'm going to at least bring it up. Keep returning here till you see it say something.
Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted gives me a handle to probe one chink in the hornets nest: Christians acknowledge testimony from the Bible about Adam, about Noah, about Abraham, about Moses: Christians acknowledge testimony from the New Testament from Jesus, Mark, John ... Paul ... Indeed, the use the churches' imposed selections to interrupt all other testimonies. God speaks, churches transmit only what they like. The Jews interfered with God's messenger in Jesus: Christians interfere with Jesus' disciples since then. No records are kept of the ignored testimonies.
Never mind whether the testimonies I've offered of what God has told me over the past half centry are true: just notice that not one of them has been investigated. No record has been kept (except by me, that I know of) of not keeping any records.
Note, to be rewoved:
Christians, orthodox "Christians," confronted by alternate Christianities, older Christianities, alternate, older, epistemologies, such as Gnosticism (of any stamp), go deaf, and don't hear.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Headless Horsemen
In The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe portrayed the US wanting to probe space with men, not monkeys. Congress put the technocrats in control, but assigned them test pilots: for the technocrats to use not as test pilots, courageous adventurers, discoverers, but as lab animals. The astronauts saw that, resented it, resisted it. So the technocrats gave them little tasks to do, so they'd look less like chimps.
There in a nutshell is the history of human theology. We suspect, without the capacity to know for sure, that we're on a space ship hurtling toward destruction (debited resources) with no pilot steering. So we invent a pilot: God. Then we punish those who complain that they can't see this invisible cowboy.
Kings were visible cowboys. But kings raced through the resources even faster than the headless herds of humans had been racing.
Then the US invented the marvelous fiction that the resource-wasters could be controlled by an intelligently self-interested electorate. But then every detail of the mechanism is sham: media, not truth, sets the stage. People see where their bread is buttered – by Big Brother – and behave with the same courage and independence shown by the medieval peasants:
Oh, people will turn on the deceivers: when it's way too little, way too late.
Note: Above I referred to "God" as an "invisible cowboy." You can't understand this pk point properly without already understanding a different, core, pk point: whether or not we see an entity, or believe in an entity, has little to do with whether or not the entity "exists." The Church and Universities' disbelief in Galileo's telescope did not control whether or not Jupiter had moons. The moons were there whether or not we saw them. The moons had been there.
Human maps of the universe must not be palmed as the universe.
But Korzybskian semantics cannot be understood by humans. pk is only sometimes, only partly, an exception. And most people can never be an exception on this point, no matter what you spend to "teach" them.
Our epitaph could read, as Nigel Calder joked, "They talked a lot." It could also read, "They thought they were smart."
There in a nutshell is the history of human theology. We suspect, without the capacity to know for sure, that we're on a space ship hurtling toward destruction (debited resources) with no pilot steering. So we invent a pilot: God. Then we punish those who complain that they can't see this invisible cowboy.
Kings were visible cowboys. But kings raced through the resources even faster than the headless herds of humans had been racing.
Then the US invented the marvelous fiction that the resource-wasters could be controlled by an intelligently self-interested electorate. But then every detail of the mechanism is sham: media, not truth, sets the stage. People see where their bread is buttered – by Big Brother – and behave with the same courage and independence shown by the medieval peasants:
who tolerated any travesty
rather than admit how they'd been deceived.
Oh, people will turn on the deceivers: when it's way too little, way too late.
Note: Above I referred to "God" as an "invisible cowboy." You can't understand this pk point properly without already understanding a different, core, pk point: whether or not we see an entity, or believe in an entity, has little to do with whether or not the entity "exists." The Church and Universities' disbelief in Galileo's telescope did not control whether or not Jupiter had moons. The moons were there whether or not we saw them. The moons had been there.
Human maps of the universe must not be palmed as the universe.
But Korzybskian semantics cannot be understood by humans. pk is only sometimes, only partly, an exception. And most people can never be an exception on this point, no matter what you spend to "teach" them.
Our epitaph could read, as Nigel Calder joked, "They talked a lot." It could also read, "They thought they were smart."
Sunday, January 9, 2011
God Moves in Mysterious Ways
God moves in mysterious ways. You hear it again and again. It's a cliche´. Any twelve year old understands what it means. Still, let me emphasize that the phrase recognizes the possibility of complex as well as simple causality: god is an explanatory principle, and explanations can be simple – cue ball hits eight ball, eight ball drops in corner pocket – or complex - cue ball is mis-hit, cue ball rockets off table, smashes the beer mug, gives Beverly a concussion, gets picked up by a frustrated Bill who throws it at Amos who's distracted the mis-stroking Babs, Amos ducks, the cue balls ricochets from the jukebox, lands on the table, hits the eight ball, the eight ball drops in the corner pocket.
Readers of pk, if there still are any since my arrest and censoring, should know that pk's regular example of complex causality concerns schools prescribing a certain stimulant to hyper-active children: why, the naive might wonder, would they stimulate someone already judged over-stimulated? Because the stimulant it is hoped will stimulate the child's natural repressor. The kid's behavioral governor is stuck, give it a kick and it may kick in: calming the child.
Why bring it up again here? Because I just read a science report arguing that while psychologists say that forgiveness is good for the forgiver, holding a grudge may stimulate improved behavior from the person the grudge is held against. Say the husband, strays, his wife is pissed at him, she stays pissed, he may modify the behavior that pissed her off in the first place. So: there may be a trade-off. Forgiveness may help one thing: the psyche of the trespassed against, that same forgiveness may fail to habilitate the trespasser.
Of course things can be impenetrably complex. Schools and wisdom are mutually alien in pk's book, spouses are not infallible in that same book, scientists too can be simpleminded, but lets leave our model simple and only slightly less simple for simplicity's sake: for communication's sake. God can hit an eight iron straight into the cup; god can choose driver, bounce the golf ball off the oak, have a squirrel carry it to where a sea gull picks it up ... and drops it so it bounces off a turtle, and lands in the hole. God moves in mysterious ways. God moves anyway he wants to.
Now: back to forgiveness: The gospel says that on the cross Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." In that story Jesus seems to be offering ignorance as an excuse. The stupid are innocent no matter what harm they wright. The ignorant are innocent. Only the clever are wicked and deserve punishment. That sounded good to me as a child. In recent decades I've hated the idea. I believe that the pain of a stubbed toe is essential for learning. I reject the junkie's solution to life: feel nothing.
But with the idea that God moves in mysterious ways the possibilities for complexity become infinite. God send Jesus so that we'd recognize that he was good, recognize that he was God, so that we'd stand there like morons while our rulers arrested him, convicted him, scourge him, tortured him to death, for some sort of magic without which an infinitely powerful god is helpless to do what he wants: to forgive us. Why couldn't he just forgive us in the first place and same himself, his son, the pain? the inconvenience? Or did God forgive us the way the woman forgives her husband, the woman who didn't want her husband's behavior to improve. She was so pissed at him that she wanted God to damn her husband: so she forgave her husbands, so her husband would continue as a philanderer, and God would curse him as an unrepentant sinner?
Maybe God wants to forgive man for crucifying Jesus so that man won't learn from his ancient behavior, so modern man will be just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as passive before their misbehaving rulers, just as criminally negligent. Not only did our ancestors stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified, but their descendants stood with their thumb in their ass while the Church declared geniuses to be heretics, while the Church threatened Galileo, while the Pope put out a contract on Luther, Christians behaving very much the Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem whenever reformers appear. God forgave man so man would still be so stupid in the twentieth century as to stand with its thumb in its ass while Ivan Illich was defrocked, stripped of his resources: and, in the twenty-first century, while Jesus' disciple pk, while Illich's disciple pk, was stripped, silenced, arrested, tortured, censored ... broken.
Boy, that's some potent forgiveness. God moves in mysterious ways.
Readers of pk, if there still are any since my arrest and censoring, should know that pk's regular example of complex causality concerns schools prescribing a certain stimulant to hyper-active children: why, the naive might wonder, would they stimulate someone already judged over-stimulated? Because the stimulant it is hoped will stimulate the child's natural repressor. The kid's behavioral governor is stuck, give it a kick and it may kick in: calming the child.
Why bring it up again here? Because I just read a science report arguing that while psychologists say that forgiveness is good for the forgiver, holding a grudge may stimulate improved behavior from the person the grudge is held against. Say the husband, strays, his wife is pissed at him, she stays pissed, he may modify the behavior that pissed her off in the first place. So: there may be a trade-off. Forgiveness may help one thing: the psyche of the trespassed against, that same forgiveness may fail to habilitate the trespasser.
Of course things can be impenetrably complex. Schools and wisdom are mutually alien in pk's book, spouses are not infallible in that same book, scientists too can be simpleminded, but lets leave our model simple and only slightly less simple for simplicity's sake: for communication's sake. God can hit an eight iron straight into the cup; god can choose driver, bounce the golf ball off the oak, have a squirrel carry it to where a sea gull picks it up ... and drops it so it bounces off a turtle, and lands in the hole. God moves in mysterious ways. God moves anyway he wants to.
Now: back to forgiveness: The gospel says that on the cross Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." In that story Jesus seems to be offering ignorance as an excuse. The stupid are innocent no matter what harm they wright. The ignorant are innocent. Only the clever are wicked and deserve punishment. That sounded good to me as a child. In recent decades I've hated the idea. I believe that the pain of a stubbed toe is essential for learning. I reject the junkie's solution to life: feel nothing.
But with the idea that God moves in mysterious ways the possibilities for complexity become infinite. God send Jesus so that we'd recognize that he was good, recognize that he was God, so that we'd stand there like morons while our rulers arrested him, convicted him, scourge him, tortured him to death, for some sort of magic without which an infinitely powerful god is helpless to do what he wants: to forgive us. Why couldn't he just forgive us in the first place and same himself, his son, the pain? the inconvenience? Or did God forgive us the way the woman forgives her husband, the woman who didn't want her husband's behavior to improve. She was so pissed at him that she wanted God to damn her husband: so she forgave her husbands, so her husband would continue as a philanderer, and God would curse him as an unrepentant sinner?
Maybe God wants to forgive man for crucifying Jesus so that man won't learn from his ancient behavior, so modern man will be just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as passive before their misbehaving rulers, just as criminally negligent. Not only did our ancestors stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified, but their descendants stood with their thumb in their ass while the Church declared geniuses to be heretics, while the Church threatened Galileo, while the Pope put out a contract on Luther, Christians behaving very much the Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem whenever reformers appear. God forgave man so man would still be so stupid in the twentieth century as to stand with its thumb in its ass while Ivan Illich was defrocked, stripped of his resources: and, in the twenty-first century, while Jesus' disciple pk, while Illich's disciple pk, was stripped, silenced, arrested, tortured, censored ... broken.
Boy, that's some potent forgiveness. God moves in mysterious ways.
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