"If it's provable we can kill it."
Or, you're an ignorant idiot. Just like me.
Published on January 25, 2008 By EmperorofIceCream In Misc
We don't know. We don't even know what we think we know.

That wasn't always the case. There was an era in human history when we knew what we knew, and we knew that we knew it. But that knowing was anchored in the unquestioned certainty that the gods were real, and like us. In contrast, our own era has the motto 'God is Dead'. Each statement is perfectly true at the same instant that it's perfectly false: what counts is not the 'truth' or 'falsity' of each statement but the consequences of the existence of each as a psychological reality shared by millions. That's a thought for another essay at another time. I'm not interested in it right now.

What interests me is the fact that we don't know.

Why we don't know is easily stated. And utterly obvious, once understood. In order to say that we know something the thing we know has to be objectively real. If it isn't objectively real then even its existence becomes a matter of opinion. For philosophers of all ages, nothing in our experienced reality has ever been objectively real. For the philosophers of the ancient world, reality existed in the world of the Spirit, and its reality was anchored in and guaranteed by the existence of God. Though God is conceived in a variety of different ways, depending on which school of ancient philosophy you examine, God is always there in some form as the Foundation.

This is just as true of the philosophers of the Enlightenment - only their God was reason and its Incarnation was Science, revealed to man through its Divine Child, the Scientific Method. They still had a God, and they still worshipped it - through reason, and scientific method. What was revealed was true - and false. Just as every other description of reality is true, and false. Because of the degree to which science and its method are true, they have shaped our world and our understanding of it at fundamental levels. We are, our society is, the creature of our technologies. We discovered them. They shaped us. And we can't escape them. To precisely the same degree they liberate us from the past, they bind us to themselves and to the future they will enable.

And we love them for it. Scientific reality is a myth that has had profound consequences in the world. But it's still a myth, a description of what we don't know, meant to assuage the grief of not knowing.

Every totaltarian explanation of reality is fundamentally beautiful precisely because it assuages and feeds the deepest hunger of our nature for reality, for order, for truth. If you can convince people you know the truth they'll follow you into the mouth of Hell, and they'll go there gladly. The truth redeems us all, no matter what we've done. Redeems us, and justifies us. And if you look closely enough, you can always identify the god a man believes in by whatever it is he thinks justifies him.

The only thing I know is that I don't know anything. I know this is true because God told me so - in 1984 at the largest gathering of Charismatic Christians in Europe, as a matter of fact. And the fact that, at the time, I identified what spoke to me as the god of the Christians is neither here nor there. Despite any Name I might care to give It, or that you might care to give It, It spoke to me. And It said "you don't know anything."

And as a response I felt a sense of complete and absolute liberation. I laughed till I cried - because I saw how funny was the idea that I might actually know something. God knows. The rest of us have opinions.

I can hear the people who think they know something crying 'But what about Revelation?' To which my reply is "Yah. What about that?' I have in my time seen visions. I have spoken prophecy, and seen it realised in the real world. I have performed, in the real world, acts that might be described as 'magical', or 'spiritual', or 'prophetic'. So I account myself someone who knows the reality of his God in ways that most do not. In other words, I know more than you do, motherfucker, so shut the fuck up.

And I still can't account for Revelation: neither the Book, nor the experience. I wish that I could say that I could, but I can't, and I freely admit that God exceeds me when it comes to the confabulation of truth with delusion. Always supposing there's something beside delusion, of course.

Whatever God is, It is more than I am. And that's the basis of my reality. My reality is as provisional and circumscribed by circumstance as is anyone else's reality. And nonetheless, it remains mine. Just because it isn't true doesn't make it false. Neither for me, nor for you.

And notwithstanding any of that, not withstanding my perfect certainty that there is no true truth, I am equally convinced in the same instant that my God is. In my own case, this is one of the fundamental structures of how I am in the world that is immune to passion, discourse, reason, argument or any kind of debate. I believe it to be true in the same way that I prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate. I just do. And you can't tell me otherwise.

But because this particular example of double-think is fundamental to my nature doesn't make it true. It isn't true. It's simply fundamental to my nature. We all believe what we want to believe - or we wouldn't believe it. We all have our proofs, our reasons, our certainties. We all have our witnesses and testimonies. And none of us knows anything. Because there is no third place; no place between what we know, and what those who disagree with us know, wherein we can stand and say "OK. You know that and you know that, but this is what's actually true".

We are all of us, equally, ignorant idiots, and it's only pride and vanity that keeps us from admitting that this is true.Any reality that can be opposed by another reality which, taken on its own terms, is just as true as the reality which opposes it is a partial reality.
What's partial is less than the whole. But those dogmas and doctrines which claim to be the truth, despite their partiality, make a claim on the whole soul of those they hope to win as believers. It's in this sense that all religion is a fraud, and all priests are thieves. The part cannot comprehend or speak for the whole, and those that claim it can are liars.

If they make the claim at all it can only be because they are seekers after power who understand the appeal of a claim to possess the truth that can be made to appear justified. Truth doesn't just redeem us; its monopolization grants us power. Power, first and foremost, over the bodies of others - power to compel those bodies to do what we wish them to do - and then power over the minds of others, to compel them to think what we wish them to think.

That's what ideology is. And ideology is only possible because we don't know anything and believe that we know everything. Ideology is the structure of the idea that we understand what's going on - whether what's going on is the October Revolution or the Boston Tea Party - it's the imposition of an idea on top of a series of events. It's utterly false, and its deepest proponents know it's utterly false, but that doesn't stop it being utterly seductive.

We know only what we want to know, and truth is only ever what we want it to be. And once again, I'm confronted by the phenomenon of Revelation. Revelation is the unveiling of something apart from, different from, our habitual self-delusion. No Revelation is ever whole (or it wouldn't be mysterious) but every Revelation is complete - in the sense that the mind that articulates it does so to the fullest limits of its apperception, filtered through the most extreme form of its comprehension.

Revelation is always demanding. To the point where it will kill you, sometimes.

But it's never true, which is what the Believers of every Revelation fail to grasp. Revelation is a demonstration of the limitations of the mind that receives it, not an illustration of the degree to which the understanding of that mind accords with the truth.

There is no truth.

There is opinion, and conviction, and belief. But there is no truth. And at the same time there is certainty, faith, comprehension. And all of them are true and all of them are lies and the mind that holds to any of them is deceived. We fabricate our lives from day to day and the lies we tell ourselves are necessary - or we wouldn't bother. But that doesn't stop them being lies. The art in living is found in the degree of integrity with which we maintain our own preferred deception.
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Comments
on Jan 25, 2008
The only thing I know is that I don't know anything

Arn't you over dramatizing the whole thing here?

You, and we all, may not know a lot. Nevertheless, we know some things. and they are Real.

we, and you, know for sure that we exist, and alive ..... and we were born ... and we will die.

All of us, including you, know wehether we believe in a Creator OR not believe in a Creator OR that we are not commited to either position.

We all know that we are capable of doing certain things and that these actions have consequences. we may not know what those consequences are .... but we know that there must be a reaction to what we do and in many cases we know, or at least have a very good idea about, what these reactions look like.

the idea of fusing Truth and Falsehood in an unidentifiable concept is just a way of convincing oneself that there are no clear lines to guide our path forward in this life. and accordingly, we just do what we think is "right" or what makes us "happy"

The idea of "God Is Alive, God Is Dead" is a contradiction in terms .....

I know that the "God" you mean in that statement is not the God that some people believe in His existence ..... but the word "God" should only be used for that. It is more appropriate to use another term for whatever concept you mean in that statement.

Absoulte Truth exists only with God, the one some believe in His existence. and both are unknowable to any of God's creations. That we also know.

So in fact we are not total idiots or totally ignorant...... we know many things .... one of them is that we dont know many more things and some of them are totally beyond our ability to know or concieve.
on Jan 26, 2008
we, and you, know for sure that we exist, and alive ..... and we were born ... and we will die.


Nah, I don't know that.

Maybe I'm a character in a novel and some woman is writing that I think I exist so I "think" I exist.

Maybe I'm an artificial intelligence program.

Maybe God sneezed really hard and I'm a momentary brain fart -- a couple of misfired neurons in the cosmic brain, a temporary delusion that will evaporate momentarily without the Big Guy even noticing it happened.

Nah, I don't know I exist at all.

on Jan 26, 2008
That is why I quit debating spiritual things. Sure, as you know, I'll tell anyone what I believe about anything, I'll listen intently to what others believe. The difference is, I won't try to "prove" my beliefs or even defend them. On the same token, I won't try to "disprove" anyone else's beliefs either. It's amazing how much more you can learn about someone else's beliefs when you are listening to (or reading) them instead of telling them what they believe... or at least what you think they believe.

What is real? If there is no God then nothing is "real", all things are subject to the filters of the observer. If there is, then God's reality is reality, whether anyone else believes it or not.
on Jan 26, 2008

 

we, and you, know for sure that we exist, and alive ..... and we were born ... and we will die.

You have obviously not seen The Matrix

one of them is that we dont know many more things and some of them are totally beyond our ability to know or concieve.

Admitting that you don't know something doesn't mean that you do know something.

If there is no God then nothing is "real"

hmm..maybe the reality becomes that we are all just senseless sacks of meat with no purpose at all.  It could be that we just exist in a physical form with no higher purpose than pond scum has.  Maybe we just exist- nothing more.

 

on Jan 26, 2008
Arn't you over dramatizing the whole thing here?


Possibly. But the universe is a dramatic place, and the obstinate stupidity of people is both obstinate and stupid to a tremendously dramatic degree, so even over-dramatization is no real fault, but merely something in tune with the phenomena with which it deals.

You, and we all, may not know a lot. Nevertheless, we know some things. and they are Real.


Some things are real in our collective experience. Birth is real, death is real, experience in between those two points is real. What's not real is any given explanation of them - except for those who believe in those explanations. And then they are real simply because they have attracted believers, not because any of them are true.

the idea of fusing Truth and Falsehood in an unidentifiable concept is just a way of convincing oneself that there are no clear lines to guide our path forward in this life. and accordingly, we just do what we think is "right" or what makes us "happy"


I've never denied that there are any number of 'clear lines' which can be used to guide conduct. The world is full of such clear lines, and every crackpot prophet or philosopher or poet who cares to can dream up as many more as they wish to. The existence of so many 'clear lines' is one more testimony to our complete inability to determine the truth. And since none of these 'clear lines' can be demonstrated to be true, just as none of them can be demonstrated to be false, the only consistently intelligible positions open to anyone of intelligence are these: 1) they are all in some sense true. 2) They are all in some sense false. 3) They are all true, in the sense that they have garnered believers - but they are true only because they have believers, and only in relation to those believers.

I choose to believe this third option. Your 'truth' guides you. My 'truth' guides me. And neither 'truth' is true in any absolute sense that would make it true for all. However, the absence of this absolute value does not mean that I advocate the foolish hedonism of, say, those who call themselves 'satanists'. Satanism as conceived by Anton le Vey is nothing more than the elevation of pleasure as the expression of rebellion to the status of a god - whom they choose to call 'satan' since Satan is supposedly God's rival and chief rebel.

Utter, self-indulgent, nonsense.

So I disagree with you fundamentally when you suggest that a non-standard answer to the question "Why?" leads to a situation in which there can be no clarity in relation to questions of how we are to live. There's as much clarity available as any one might ever want or need. All you have to do is abandon the idea that any of this clarity amounts to truth.

The idea of "God Is Alive, God Is Dead" is a contradiction in terms .....


It's a contradiction of your terms, yes. But as I've already made clear, I see no reason to accept your terms as anything other than one more set of delusions. I'm certain you find truth in them. But your truth is a lie, just as mine is.

on Jan 26, 2008
Karma:
hmm..maybe the reality becomes that we are all just senseless sacks of meat with no purpose at all. It could be that we just exist in a physical form with no higher purpose than pond scum has. Maybe we just exist- nothing more.


That's what I mean. If there is no higher power, supreme being, God or whatever you want to call it, then we do just exist in a physical form with no higher purpose. The only difference between the murderer, hermit and philanthropist is the choices they made. They leave existance no better or worse than they they entered into it.
on Jan 26, 2008
The only difference between the murderer, hermit and philanthropist is the choices they made. They leave existance no better or worse than they they entered into it.


And what difference does the prefix 'Christian' make to your point? There have been Christian murderers, philosophers, hermits and philanthropists. Just as there have been Muslim murderers, hermits, philanthropists, and philosophers. To the degree that any murderer, philosopher, hermit or philanthropist has an impact on the world it matters not at all what prefix you dignify them by.

You don't need a religious dogma in order to live a humanly productive, civil life that contributes to the well-being of your society. You don't need a religious revelation in order to be a good man or woman. You only need any of that if you think there's a judgment to face that you can't face on your own. And as far as I'm concerned there is no such judgment, neither is there condemnation or justification, simply because none of us are important enough to warrant such attention.

How many ants are going to heaven, do you think? How many viruses are going to hell?

You are not the center of the universe and your god does not love you. Neither does It hate you. If it gives you any attention at all, it's to laugh at your utter pretension.
on Jan 26, 2008
And what difference does the prefix 'Christian' make to your point?
It doesn't, which is why I didn't include it in my point. In fact, the point of the quote you cited was, if there was no God or Christ.