(1) are rebellions against the transcendent Creator God and the world of His making.
(2) are rejections of the human condition/human nature as such.
(3) in response to (2), seek the divinization of man, or (in many cases), the divinization of a man (e.g., Joachin de Fiore, Nietzsche, Hegel, Obama).
Spirited: Agreed.
According to Thomas Molnar, there was a very close relationship between neo-paganism (scientific animism, monism) and the occult that emerged out of the Renaissance.
They were united by a joint effort: a search for a different 'human' race, both super-intelligent and empowered with the powers of a new kind of magic, "scientific" or mythical:
"(the) new supermagic, despite being called scientific, is no less aimed at a fantastic reorientation of our condition, in the spirit of a Gnostic dissociation from the created world." (The Pagan Temptation, p. 146)
At the root of the rejection of the living God is the defiant narcissistic assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image.
Calling themselves "liberated" spirits, free-spirits, free-thinkers, antitheists (i.e., Marx) and revolutionaries, they saw themselves as not dependent upon the living God because they were man-gods, the creators of God, the masters of time, being, and the world who through their own powers would save themselves.
Believing they were superior to Him, they said, "you are not my father:"
"I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself." (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in "Idols for Destruction," p. 43)
But in rejecting the living Creator who spoke creation into existence they had to fall back upon the only option available: anti-human, anti-creation Nature---void, matter, and energy working on and through matter.
Matter is amoral, it cannot think, speak, or create life, let alone human consciousness. In the words of the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell:
"Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction,omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way." (Russell, "Why I am not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects," 1957, p. 115)
Pagan animism and its primary doctrine evolution is a magical religious worldview devoid of God:
"Evolution is a religion," declared evolutionary religionist Michael Ruse. "This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true still today…One of the most popular books of the era was 'Religion Without Revelation,' by Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley…As always evolution was doing everything expected of religion and more." (National Post, Canadian Edition)
All worldviews begin with a religious declaration. The Biblical or Revealed Word perspective begins with, "In the beginning God…" Super-magic begins with divinized man declaring, "In the beginning void, matter, and energy."
Void, matter, and energy is all there is, and despite that none of it lives or thinks, magical matter nevertheless thinks, chooses, is miraculously self-perfecting and Divine:
"…matter itself continually attains to higher perfection under its own power, thanks to indwelling dialectic…the dialectical materialists attribution of 'dialectic' to matter confers on it, not mental attributes only, but even divine ones." (Dialectical Materialism, Gustav A. Wetter, 1977, p. 58)
In explicitly religious language, the following neo-pagan magicians offer all praise, honor, and glory to their non-life bearing, anti-human, anti-creator:
"We may regard the material and cosmic world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth." (Vladimir Lenin quoted in Communism versus Creation, Francis Nigel Lee, 1969, p. 28)
"The Cosmos is all that is or ever will be." (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980, p. 4)
Evolutionary atheism (scientific super-magic) has amply demonstrated itself to be a virulently anti-human, pathologically destructive, demonically murderous worldview. In just the first eighty-seven years of the twentieth century, the project of radically transforming the world and the consciousness of mankind has led to the brutal extermination of between 100-170 million un-evolved 'subhuman' men, women, and children.
In the Soviet Union, the God-and-human hating Magus Vladimir Lenin exulted that,
"Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another (and) that they were created by God, and hence immutable." (Fatal Fruit, Tom DeRosa, p. 9)
Lenin exercised godlike power over life and death. He saw himself as, "the master of the knowledge of the evolution of social species." It was Lenin who "decided who should disappear by virtue of having been condemned to the dustbin of history." From the moment Lenin made the "scientific" decision that the bourgeoisie represented a stage of humanity that evolution had surpassed, "its liquidation as a class and the liquidation of the individuals who actually or supposedly belonged to it could be justified." (The Black Book of Communism, p. 752)
In Nazi Germany pagan super-magic resulted in gas chambers, ovens, and the liquidation of eleven million "useless eaters" and other undesirables.
Alain Brossat draws the following conclusions about the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the ties that bind them:
"The 'liquidation' of the Muscovite executioners, a close relative of the 'treatment' carried out by Nazi assassins, is a linguistic microcosm of an irreparable mental and cultural catastrophe that was in full view on the Soviet Stage. The value of human life collapsed, and thinking in categories replaced ethical thought…In the discourse and practice of the Nazi exterminators, the animalization of Other…was closely linked to the ideology of race. It was conceived in the implacably hierarchical racial terms of "subhumans" and "supermen"…but in Moscow in 1937, what mattered…was the total animalization of the Other, so that a policy under which absolutely anything was possible could come into practice." (Black Book of Communism, p. 751)
Kultursmog: Evolutionary occult neo-paganism is the most dangerous religion thus far in history. It begins with the 'animalization of Other,' in tandem with the elevation of the 'superior elite pagan class' for whom this serves as a license to make up their own rules, abuse power, and force their will onto the citizens. This is accompanied by a process that pathologizes faith in God, creation ex nihilo, immutable truth, "He made them man and woman," enduring principles, moral ethics, virtue, and social taboos while simultaneously elevating narcissism, tyranny, cruelty, nihilism, confusion, perversion, sadism, theft, and lying to positions of politically correct "new morality."
Satanically twisted "new morality" (political correctness) is then enforced through sensitivity training, speech codes, hate crime laws, and other intimidation tactics. If not stopped, as history warns us, this rapidly escalating downward process leads inevitably to enslavement, mass murder and totalitarianism:
"A scientific analysis of behavior dispossesses autonomous man and turns the control he has been said to exert over to the environment. The individual…is henceforth to be controlled…in large part by other men." (Evolutionary Behaviorist B.F. Skinner, Understanding the Times, David Noebel, p. 232)
"They were united by a joint effort: a search for a different 'human' race, both super-intelligent and empowered with the powers of a new kind of magic, 'scientific' or mythical:
"...(the) new supermagic, despite being called scientific, is no less aimed at a fantastic reorientation of our condition, in the spirit of a Gnostic dissociation from the created world. (The Pagan Temptation [Molnar], p. 146)Yep. Powerfully said, dear spirited, my sister in Christ!
"At the root of the rejection of the living God is the defiant narcissistic assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image.
"Calling themselves 'liberated' spirits, free-spirits, free-thinkers, antitheists (i.e., Marx) and revolutionaries, they saw themselves as not dependent upon the living God because they were man-gods, the creators of God, the masters of time, being, and the world who through their own powers would save themselves.
"Believing they were superior to Him, they said, 'you are not my father'...."
I'll just open by saying that, according to my understanding at this point, gnostic systems of thinking, ancient in origin (so well documented by you) are at the very root of the disorder of our own present age. They start out by being inversions of Reality. IOW, their constructors are some species of nut-case right out of the gate. To me, the constructors of such "second realities" are suffering from some sort of pneumopathological or psychopathological disorder. And I wouldn't be the first person in history to notice this: Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, et al., all described this symptomology over 2,000 years ago.
I suspect that there is only the tiniest number of FReepers who regard this subject matter as relevant to what is directly happening in their own lives, though perhaps some are beginning to suspect that the profound disturbances we are currently experiencing in our society might have something to do with attacks on the culture that sustains the society to which they belong and so to which they have become accustomed as individuals over long history, not to mention their families and local communities.
I'd say the very culture itself is under attack, and few people seem to notice this, or care about it. But you do, dear spirited. So we'll just start out as a "group of two" and see what happens. LOL!
I would like to introduce "evidence" that might help us understand the issues involved. That would be Baruch Spinoza and the system he constructed whole cloth out of the contents of his own mind.
My source is Spinoza's The Ethics. In this work, the "Christlike, saintly" Spinoza (as characterized by some people) starts out by "killing God" — in his case, the God of Abraham, Moses, the Patriarchs and the Prophets.
So far, from what I gather from historical sources, for Spinoza [an excommunicated Jew, to whatever extent that may matter in our present concerns], the preeminent value, the sine qua non of human life, was total intellectual freedom. This led him to reject any source of "authority" beyond his own mind whatsoever. [To me, already this is the definition of "insanity."]
But if you're going to build an abstract "god" whole cloth out of the contents of your own abstract imagination, the first thing you need to do is "clear the field" of its current Owner.... Which Spinoza does, seemingly with great relish and aplomb.
I gather Spinoza desired to conceive of "god" on purely abstract, rationalistic principles (which rather begs the question to me; but that is beyond the scope of the present discussion).
Anyhoot, first off, if you "kill" God, this entails you are killing off the Creation He made. So you really are starting off from scratch, on a razed ground.
But how can you erase the very ground you stand on, as an ineluctable part and participant in it?
But not to worry — Spinoza's concepts will enable you to feel like "an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Spinoza's entire concept of the God he "rationally" constructs consists of two parts: (1) Spinoza's God is logically necessary (Descartes said the same thing.) (2) There is nothing to prevent His existence. Thus, He exists "by default" — on Spinoza's abstract reductionist terms — which therefore necessarily precludes any consideration having to do with love, grace, or justice.
Seemingly Spinoza's method does not distinguish between existence and being. Both are reduced to Spinoza's method, and thus are found not to be "different" thereby, i.e., not mutually indistinguishable, let alone mutually interdependent — as the great historical, cross-cultural model of the Great Hierarchy of Being so very strongly suggest the partners of "Being" need to be.
I could provide details from The Ethics in support of my argument, and probably bore most readers to tears. If they would even bother to read "my stuff."
Instead, I'll just conclude with this:
At the behest of my great teacher, last Spring I took a little "mini-tutorial" in the twentieth-century German novel, focusing on three authors: Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities), Heimito von Doderer (The Demons), and Elias Canetti (Auto-da-Fé — this last winner of the Prix International book award).
All three novels deal with the constructions of "second realities"; all deal with how these second realities actually played out in the horrific experiences of twentieth-century European history. Musil will chill you down to your bones. Von Doderer will enchant you, and make you cry. Canetti will scare you out of your wits.
Anyhoot, when I was reading Canetti, I started to get this unshakeable, chilling feeling that his protagonist, Peter Wien, was modeled on Baruch Spinoza. The two share some telling biographical details: Both Spinoza and "Peter Wien" rejected highly prestigious academic chairs when offered to them, because they thought to accept such a position would instantly compromise their intellectual liberty, their "academic freedom."
Peter Wien insisted on being an "authority unto himself," period. End of discussion.
I suspect that was Baruch Spinoza's main project, too.
Auto-da-Fé details the horrifying, inexorable consequences of such a presupposition. In this work, we watch a first-rate mind decompose under our very eyes, hardly because he was stupid or ignorant — he was regarded as a first-rate scholar in his field. Rather because he was thoroughly self-blinded to any idea of existent reality outside of his own mind.
Must leave it for there for now, dear sister spirited. Thank you for your splendid essay/post!!!