Leftism: A Radical Faith

"... Guenon must not have realized what James was actually doing in this work, which was to try to scientifically classify and analyze the religious experiences of mankind — to make an attempt at a "science" of religious experience."

Spirited: No, Guenon was fully aware of what James was doing, which is why he described him as a modernist, Guenon's term for evolutionary naturalist.

James was a radical empiricist, a Darwinist who held that since life evolved from matter (nature) then the human mind had evolved as well.

James was among a group of scholars (Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Dewey)who founded an entire school of philosophy (pragmatism) on Darwinian materialism. Their goal was to expand Darwinian naturalism into a complete worldview to rival the supernatural Biblical worldview.(Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, Nancy Pearce, pp. 228-229)

With respect to the mind (spirit) pragmatists held that Darwinian naturalism means that mind is nothing more than an emergent property of nature. They utterly rejected the "non-scientific" view of man created in the spiritual image of God, thereby rejecting the view that mind transcends matter in favor of the Darwinian view that mind is produced by matter.

In one fell stroke they reversed the natural order.

Naturalism is a modern form of monism and refers to the view that nature (or matter) is the Ultimate Substance of which the universe and all life consist, thus "all is one." C. S. Lewis describes naturalism as a box with its top sealed tightly closed in order to keep out God and the supernatural realm.

There are two basic kinds of modern Naturalism: materialism (i.e., Atomism) and occult pantheism (i.e., New Age spirituality).

The two kinds differ chiefly about whether the First Cause or Absolute Substance is physical matter or psychic matter---an unknowing, unknowable, amoral mind (i.e., Brahman, Void).

However, both kinds are united by their rejection of the transcendent, personal God and the supernatural realm and by their acceptance of some form of evolution, which serves as an impersonal, mechanical process of development.

Modern naturalism of the materialist kind originated in the metaphysics of the ancient Ionians and Stoics during the sixth century BC. However, it was the Atomists (Leucippus/Democritus, 460-357 BC; Epicurus, 342-270 BC; and Lucretius, 96-55 BC) who methodically developed philosophical materialism.

Atomism set all things in ceaseless, purposeless motion by reducing everything---including man, his soul, and even his thoughts---to mindless atoms perpetually colliding with each other in a void. Man was reduced to a soulless, mindless machine that could only ‘see' a tree because the tree emitted atoms which entered machine-man's eyes and implanted themselves onto his brain. This view has changed very little:

"We are descended from robots, and composed of robots..." --Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds

Plato and Aristotle were the most forceful and compelling critics of Atomism. In Book X of Laws, Plato indicts the Atomists for reversing the natural order by placing brute matter before Nous (mind/soul), and for the reductionism that sets everything in motion and reduces man to a machine. Plato foresees only misery, social disintegration and ultimately, "the ruin of both states and families" should Atomism become the accepted view.

Though Christianity reared a mighty barrier against Atomism, it would be resurrected--- along with its occult pantheist counterpart--during the Renaissance, thence by stages to rationalists, empiricists, etc., and finally to America's pragmatists who in one fell stroke, not only reversed the natural order but because Darwinism posits an inverted exegesis, inverted it as well.

What this means is that since there was no fall from God's good creation, then Lucifer is not the Devil but like man, an upward evolving conscious product of nature. This is why modernists laughed at the idea of Lucifer as the devil and why Guenon described James, et al as unconscious Satanists.

Guenon describes James as an unconscious Satanist not only because his way of thinking reverses and inverts the order of nature (the classic definition of Satanism), but for his dangerous view regarding Satan and because of his equally dangerous spiritist related activities.

Luc Sante, reviewing The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult by Clement Cheroux, wrote that James was "sympathetically inclined, if not actually enlisted in the ranks" of the spiritualist movement.

James was as well a founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research and a member of its Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena. As part of his research, James attended séances and sessions with mediums for more than two decades, and died hopeful that future investigators might discover the "dramatic possibilities of nature" by verifying the existence of spirit phenomena as a product of nature.

source: http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=William_James

In conclusion, not only does James way of thinking reverse and invert the order of nature (classic Satanism) but reduces man to a conscious product of evolution and shuts God the Father out of His own creation in favor of other spirits.

We find in Paul's letters to Timothy that Paul assumed the existence of body, soul, and spirit. One of the problems encountered in discussions like this one is the interchanging use of soul and spirit.

In an interesting yet somewhat obscure book (I think by James Kennedy) titled Teaching Through The Tabernacle, the author relates the construction of the tent tabernacle to the way God made Adam and his descendants, with an outer court (the body), and inner court (the behavior mechanism, or soul), and the innermost sanctum (the spirit).

I wonder how much confusion would melt away if we had a standard of terms, so that soul would not be referring to the spirit within the soul(?) ... and when using spirit, we would be referring to the innermost nature of humankind to which God sends an earnest of our inheritance in His Spirit life when salvation happens?

Thank-you for your cogent reminder with which I fully agree. I confess to taking short-cuts at times which in our age of darkness are not the least bit helpful.

source: http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=William_James

I'd be skeptical of the objectivity of the source given the background and agenda of Mr. Warren Allen Smith, but that's just me.

How is Warren Allen Smith — a gay rights activist (?) — connected to William James?

He runs an authors the site that’s quoted as the source.

"Guenon defines ‘unconscious Satanism’ as every “modern” conception that notably disfigures the living God, and in this sense, all theories of a limited God and of a God who evolves must be placed in the front rank." [Emphasis mine... TXnMA]

Thank you, spirited irish, for this post!

In his little book, "Your God is Too Small", J.B. Phillips describes a number of belief constructs that entail a "diminished God". However, Phillips (IIRC) did not refer to them as "Satanic". Nor did he, IMO, discuss some of the most prevalent vociferous, unenlightened and abrasive God-limiting religious postures (not necessarily "modern" ones).

I find my thinking to be more aligned with that of Guernon.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Recently, I encountered a small, innocuous, factual video that tests and stresses one's belief system and subtly reveals any personal tendency toward diminishing God (or vainly aggrandizing Mankind or Earth):

"The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D"

I strongly recommend viewing it for its sheer inspirational value (or, even, as a "self-test").

No matter how many times I view the video, I find myself overwhelmed by the incomprehensibly awesome mightiness of our Creator God. Viewing it (in the proper spiritual attitude) can result in a profound, joyous exerience of worshiping, glorifying and praising our Creator. In fact, I'm considering making my own, private "meditation piece" version -- with the soundtrack replaced with Verdi's "Magnificat" and Handel's "Halleluia!".

But, I must admit, it also unequivocally "puts me in my proper place" -- and that is not an ego-building experience, at all.. '-)

~~~~~~~~~

Be advised: if your belief system relies in any way on placing God in a "Man-sized box", you may find the revealed facts mildly to strongly disturbing. I have observed viewers who are visiby "shaken" by it. And I have observed a few who literally tremble and sweat while viewing it; and others who turn it off -- or, even fear and refuse to view it at all. YMMV...

~~~~~~~~~

As one of my all-time favorite FReepers has said,

"Man is not the measure of God"

Or, as Scripture says:

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."
Psalm 19:1 -- King James Version (KJV)

Thanks for pointing that out, dear tacticalogic.

I googled "Warren Allen Smith" and came up with a gay activist. Evidently not the same person. Anyhoot, I didn't think much of the site Philosopedia. Seemed a tad polemical to me. [I was particularly disgusted by the report that William James in his personal practice conflated "meditation" with "masturbation." Who could possibly know that, for a fact? Why make such a claim?]

Best just go straight to the source: William James: Writings 1902–1910, New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1987. These are the late writings of a mature philosopher (James passed away in 1910).

On "evolutionism," James wrote:

The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related. We have now whole congregations whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. They ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. They look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned Christian with the salvation of his soul as something sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and 'muscular' attitude, which to our forefathers would have seemed purely heathen, has become in their eyes an ideal element of Christian character. I am not asking whether or not they are right, I am only pointing out the change.

The persons to whom I refer have still retained for the most part their nominal connection with Christianity, in spite of their discarding of its more pessimistic elements. But in that 'theory of evolution' which, gathering momentum for a century, has within the past twenty-five years swept so rapidly over Europe and America, we see the ground laid for a new sort of religion of Nature, which has entirely displaced Christianity from the thought of a large part of our generation. The idea of universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of general meliorism and progress which fits the religious needs of the healthy-minded so well that it seems almost as if it might have been created for their use. Accordingly we find 'evolutionism' interpreted thus optimistically and embraced as a substitute for the religion they were born in, by a multitude of our contemporaries who have either been trained scientifically, or been fond of reading popular science, and who had already begun to be inwardly dissatisfied with what had seemed to them the harshness and irrationality of the orthodox Christian scheme. As examples are better than descriptions, I will quote a document received in answer to Professor Starbuck's circular of questions. The writer's state of mind may by courtesy be called a religion, for it is his reaction on the whole nature of things, it is systematic and reflective, and it loyally binds him to certain inner ideals. I think you will recognize in him, coarse-meated and incapable of wounded spirit as he is, a sufficiently familiar contemporary type.

Q. What does Religion mean to you?

A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe, useless to others.... I find that the most religious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. The men who do not go to church or have any religious convictions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and sermonizing are pernicious — they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we ought to rely on ourselves. I teetotally disbelieve in God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature....
Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God, Heaven, Angels, etc.?
A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words mean so much mythic bosh.
Q. Have you had any experiences which appeared providential?
A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind. A little judicious observation as well as knowledge of scientific law will convince any one of this fact.
Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions?
A. Lively songs and music.... I greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather.... I never go to church, but attend lectures where there are any good ones. All of my thoughts and cognitions have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears I see things as they are, for I endeavor to adjust myself to my environment. This I regard as the deepest law. Mankind is a progressive animal. I am satisfied he will have made a great advance over his present status a thousand years hence.
Q. What is your notion of sin?
A. It seems to me sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man's development not being yet advanced enough. Morbidness over it only increases the disease. We should think that a million years hence equity, justice, and mental and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no one will have any idea of evil or sin....

If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not look to this brother. His contentment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell and shields him from all morbid repining at his distance from the Infinite. We have in him an excellent example of the optimism which may be encouraged by popular science. [Op. cit., p. 89ff; emphasis added.]

Sounds pretty familiar to me by now. Plus, I have a sneaky feeling that practically anyone nowadays reading the above passages would find something to be "offended by."

But not me! I love this guy. As an empiricist/pragmatist, he is bound by his method, which is experientially and evidentially based. He doesn't "take sides" on an issue, nor is he a "system builder." What he is, is a splendid, penetrating, astute and acute observer/analyst of the human materials that fall under his purview as a great American thinker and world-class psychologist (jeepers, neither Freud nor Jung could make that list, IMHO).

That for which I am most personally grateful and indebted to William James was his insight that (in so many words), "unseen things" may become visible in their effects. Indeed, that may be the only way the "unseen things" can be seen by "science." But if you see the effects, which are phenomenologically, experimentally determined, one might be able to infer something about their causes.

James was a philosopher of psyche who embraced as much as possible the methodology of the natural sciences in his work. I have no problem with that: Philosophy and the Natural Sciences have been "cross-pollinating" for at least five millennia of human history by now.

The scientific method is a particular way of viewing the world which is perfectly legitimate within its proper sphere of operation. But any particular view can be only a partial view of All that there Is.

William James consciously operates "bestride" the two complementary domains of philosophy and science....

Or so it seems to me. I have the greatest respect for the man. I don't know how anyone could conclude that he is somehow an unconscious Luciferian or gnostic thinker. Indeed, I'd say such a statement says more about the person who states it than the person it supposedly describes.

FWIW. I hate all this "conflict."

Thanks so very much for writing, dear tacticalogic — and your alert about a probably unreliable on-line "encyclopedia."

Evidently not the same person.

From the About page at the Philosopedia site:

Philosopedia commenced in October 2005. Its logo was trademarked by Warren Allen Smith in January 2006. It started with the posting of his Who's Who in Hell, A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists, and Non-Theists (NY: Barricade Books, 2000, $125.00), in which over 10,000 terms and names are listed.Its mission includes the goal of providing a site for the philosophy-minded as well as professional philosophers to post up-to-date academic information.

Sure looks like the same guy to me. The Wikipedia page Warran Allen Smith, the gay rights activist, credits him with authoring the same book.

Sure looks like the same guy to me. The Wikipedia page Warran Allen Smith, the gay rights activist, credits him with authoring the same book.

Thank you for your valuable research on this issue, dear tacticalogic!

If people want to consult an on-line encyclopedia, why would they go to Philosopedia, when they could consult with such academically-rigorous sites as the Stanford Encyclopedia, or the Catholic Encyclopedia, both of which have on-line presence?

Thanks, dear 'bro!!! — evidently you have a "nose" for "rats." :^)

Cult of Tyrants

Cult of Tyrants

Am I expected to "reply" to that statement? If so, dear GeronL, would you kindly supply the context in which I am supposed to understand it?

These days, I am just so clueless, when I am not adequately guided by my correspondent, along the lines of his thought.

Leftism: Cult of Tyrants

>> Marxist Communists, Luciferian Theosophists, New Age spiritual pantheists and the New Physics

So what happens to the losers that can’t hack New Physics? Do they become Atheists?

FYI, Guenon was a brilliant metaphysician of the perennial philosophy tradition who sincerely worshipped his God and obviously held to the existence of the satanic. Guenon had respect for other religious traditions and was not inclined to attempt subversion of them, which is why he sought to warn Christians of a stealthy anti-Christian movement aimed at subverting and destroying Christianity.

Guenon called this movement ‘modernism’ and connected it with naturalism, Buddhism, Theosophy, evolution, and spiritism (contact with spirits).

Though very few individuals and cults have actually worshipped Satan said Guenon, many more perform his cult while remaining oblivious to infernal influence. This is especially true of modern naturalists.

Though it’s not well known today, Christians who began falling away from the faith and thence into modernism beginning around the time of the Renaissance not only developed an unhealthy interest in spiritism in its’ myriad forms but practiced it.

Guenon knew that these people would fall under the influence of infernal spirits and not realize it. This was the case with James.

It was the case with Carl Jung as well. Jung believed that his spirit familiar Philemon was actually an archetype of his own subconscious. But when it was too late he realized with horror that Philemon was an intelligent being outside of and separate from Jung’s consciousness.

In his book, “True Spirituality,” Francis Schaeffer laments the widespread loss of spiritual discernment and belief in an unseen or spiritual realm due to the stifling, blinding effects of naturalism-—which makes it impossible to take seriously, let alone understand the meaning of unconscious Satanism.

Leftism: Cult of Tyrants

Ultimately, the Cult of Nut Cases. [Here leaving out a whole lot of detail as to why that is the case. :^) ]

Thanx for 'splaining the context, dear GeronL!

So what happens to the losers that can’t hack New Physics? Do they become Atheists?

Jeepers, I hope not. Why should they become so?

On the other hand, it has been alleged and might plausibly be argued that promulgators of the New Physics are already atheists.

But if we can't define our basic terms better than this evident "state of affairs" has managed to reflect, how can anyone expect to have a "rational argument" about anything?

Just wondering....

I suspect many/most so-called Satanists don’t actually believe in God -OR- Satan..
They are acting out for some kind of advantage.. drugs, sex, money, politics or some other thing.. i.e. No God, No Satan..

Just wondering: what did you think of the video?

Ideas are of the unseen realm--the thought/form dimension. They are not physical things that can be touched, weighed, measured. They have consequences, some good, others bad--really, really bad. James "Neutral Monism" falls into the latter category. It reverses the natural order by advancing the notion that mind and ideas consist of physical stuff.

Plato strongly contended against this madness in his own time, foreseeing untold misery, suffering, disorder and breakdown---all of which characterizes modern America and the West.

James propounded this madness in his essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" in 1904 (reprinted in Essays in Radical Empiricism in 1912):

"Some subset of these elements form individual minds: the subset of just the experiences that you have for the day, which are accordingly just so many neutral elements that follow upon one another, is your mind as it exists for that day. If instead you described the elements that would constitute the sensory experience of rock by the path, then those elements constitute that rock. They do so even if no one observes the rock. The neutral elements exist, and our minds are constituted by some subset of them, and that subset can also be seen to constitute a set of empirical observations of the objects in the world. All of this, however, is just a matter of grouping the neutral elements in one way or another, according to a physical or a psychological (mental) perspective." (William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912)

Bertrand Russell 1921 later adopted a similar position to that of James. Russell quotes from James's essay "Does 'consciousness' exist?" as follows:

"My thesis is," [James] says, "that if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the other becomes the object known." (Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, 1921.p.4)

Russell observes that the same view of "consciousness" is set forth in James's succeeding essay, "A World of Pure Experience" (ib., pp. 39-91).[6] In addition to the role of James, Russell observes the role of two American Realists:

"....the American realists . . . Professor R. B. Perry of Harvard and Mr. Edwin B. Holt . . . have derived a strong impulsion from James, but have more interest than he had in logic and mathematics and the abstract part of philosophy. They speak of "neutral" entities as the stuff out of which both mind and matter are constructed. Thus Holt says: "... perhaps the least dangerous name is neutral-stuff."

Russell goes on to agree with James and in part with the "American realists":

"My own belief – is that James is right in rejecting consciousness as an entity, and that the American realists are partly right...in considering that both mind and matter are composed of a neutral-stuff which, in isolation is neither mental nor material.

Russell summarizes this notion as follows:

"James's view is that the raw material out of which the world is built up is not of two sorts, one matter and the other mind, but that it is arranged in different patterns by its inter-relations, and that some arrangements may be called mental, while others may be called physical.

Building off of James 'Neutral Monism," David Chalmers considers the consciousness of rocks as well as thermostats, although he eschews the notion that rocks are conscious:

"I do not think it is strictly accurate to say that rocks (for example) have experiences . . . although rocks may have experiences associated with them. ... Personally, I am much more confident of naturalistic dualism than I am of panpsychism. The latter issue seems to be very much open. But I hope to have said enough to show that we ought to take the possibility of some sort of panpsychism seriously: there seem to be no knockdown arguments against the view, and there are various positive reasons why one might embrace it. (Chalmers 1996:299)

Over one hundred years before James, materialists such as Julien de la Mettrie (1709-51), Paul Henri Thiery, and Baron D'Holbach (1723-89) were in agreement that the human mind is the property of brute matter and man nothing but a machine. La Mettrie speculated that machine-man's rational life is entirely determined by physical causes running the gamut from raw meat, to climate, blood circulation, and gender. Genetic inheritance, posits la Mettrie, causes machine-man to commit crime. This view casts parents, and especially all traditionalists such as faithful Christians and Jews (super-naturalists) into the role of "first cause" and would later manifest itself in the belief that State ‘experts,' or Hillary's "village" experts should have control of children.(Darwin Day in America, John G. West, pp. 16-18)

Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) viewed scientific materialism (monism)as not only the pursuit of God-like omniscience but of the Holy Grail itself---power to create a New Man. If an intelligence could grasp "at a given instant...all the forces by which nature is animated" proclaimed Laplace, it could devise a mathematical formula that would predict everything that would ever happen, and "nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes."

Scientists should reduce everything in the universe to mechanical laws that could be expressed in terms of mathematics, advised Laplace, for the promise of such knowledge was incredible power...even over life and mind itself. (ibid, p. 20)

Herbert Spencer, Fechner, Lotze, Wundt, and the pantheist monist Ernst Haeckel, inventor of the scientism dictum---ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny---all agreed that life and mind are properties of brute matter.

Haeckel moreover imagined ether to be the primitive life-making substance which, as was the case with the primitive fire of the Stoics, changed one part of itself into inert mass while the other part became the active principle, spirit.

Not only are James and Russell's monist postulates revamped versions of the primitive fire of the Stoics but many scientists today routinely resort to Haeckel's postulate without ever inquiring into its pantheist implications.

Haeckel would later write,

"Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one...pantheism is...an advanced conception of nature (and) a polite form of atheism." The truth of pantheism, confessed Haeckel, "lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God..." The godless neo-pagan world system being constructed, said Haeckel, "substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist." (Monism, Ernst Haeckel, www.pantheist.net/)

During the century to follow, Charles Darwin (1809-82) helped spread materialism (monism) to the masses. As Stephen Jay Gould argues,

"Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature, "and "the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God (are reduced to) neural complexity." (Darwin Day, p. 41)

The majority of people today do not know that the way of thinking briefly discussed here actually goes back many millennia in history, pre-dating the first Pre-Socratic philosophers and Gnostic cults, and is grounded ultimately in ancient anti-human materialistic evolutionary cosmogonies (matter is either eternal or spontaneously generated) and dogmas dating from six centuries before Jesus Christ.

All are forms of pagan animism and occult mystical pantheist monism (naturalism) that deny man's soul/spirit (the seat of personality), the two sexes, lack an ultimate source for conscious life and deny reality itself.

The idea that matter is eternal or spontaneously generated is a pattern of thought stretching back to the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks in the West and in the East to Buddha and the Upanishads.

With Greek nature sages such as the Atomists, matter (atoms) is a more or less physical substance that bumps around in a void. With Upanishads, Prakriti substance (matter) is energy called Universal Mind, Brahman, Void.

Either way, matter is not personal. It cannot produce life and more importantly, conscious life, nor can it think, speak, or move. It is not human. Nor is it either male or female.

Whether matter is held to be eternally existing or spontaneously generated (Cosmic Egg/Big Bang) matters not since the common denominator of all materialist cosmogonies is metaphysical nihilism,

"... This position has been held by philosophers such as Parmenides, Buddha, Advaita Vedantins, and perhaps Kant (according to some interpretations of his transcendental idealism). Blob theory can also be considered very closely aligned with mereological nihilism (there are no parts and wholes). Obviously if metaphysical nihilism is correct, empirical reality is an illusion." (What is Metaphysical Nihilism? OpenTopia.com)

For fifteen hundred years, Christendom and then later Protestant America had followed St. Augustine (AD 354-430) in affirming that as all men are the spiritual image-bearers of the transcendent Triune God then it logically follows that each person is a trinity of being — of soul, spirit, and body.

But for over two hundred years, ancient anti-human evolutionary cosmogonies, philosophies and dogmas have been working their way through our culture, embedding themselves, often unconsciously, within our psyches, causing us to believe that we are less than nothing: chimp-pig hybrids, robots, apes, etc.

Ideas have consequences, meaning that the triumph of antihuman metaphysical nihilism means spiritual, moral, and intellectual suicide---the fate foreseen by Plato so long ago.