' Or do you think the definition is "faulty?" "
Your first definition says the same thing, in so many words.
My instructions on this whole subject come largely from Dr. Eugenie Scott:
Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
betty boop to metmom: "if our BroJoeK needed proof of what I claim, he could start by reading his own posts."
OK, Ms boop, you're on: go find and quote examples where I, in YHAOS' words, "attack and disparage Christianity".
Otherwise confess the fact that you, like Ms irish, are utterly, uncontrolably addicted to making false accusations.
In fact, as we have already discussed, most of our Founders were Christians and more-or-less deistic.
Many were Free-masons and did not subscribe to traditional Christian creeds.
They were also very friendly to Jews.
Indeed, we might even argue that the Great Religious Awakenings of the early 1800s, by "raising the bar" on ethical standards, especially including abolitionism, were so far from being a "glue" that they lead directly to secession and Civil War in 1861.
So: our more deistic-Christian Founders achieved unity through moral compromises, while their more evangelistic-Christian successors eventually forced disunity and civil war in order to end moral compromise with slavery.
Obviously, but only from your perspective, Ms Alamo.
From the perspective of science itself, Ms boop is not just anti-evolution, but also anti-science.
And the reason is simple: she wishes to reject the first principle of science, natural explanations for natural processes, and replace that with some formulation which more appeals to her own religious faith.
I say, there's nothing wrong with that, just so long as she does not call or pretend her new formulations are "natural-science".
So, please tell us, Ms boop, why do you pretend ignorance.
You surely understand that the term "natural-science", shortened to "science" means: natural explanations for natural processes, right?
And really, if you gave it even a moment's serious thought, you'd realize that's exactly what you want natural science to be.
You don't want natural-science out searching for, or trying to prove the existence of God, do you?
You certainly would not want to accept any scientific findings relating to God, especially if those findings somehow disagreed with your own religious faith, would you?
So, isn't it infinitely better if natural-science is utterly divorced from strictly religious beliefs.
Isn't it better that religious ministers & theologians tell us how to find God, within science, in our lives, and indeed anywhere we look?
Today that would require major, even wrenching, changes. In a sense, then, that makes a true conservative something of a "radical."
Only if you allow the fraudulent expansion of federal power through revisionist interpretation of the Constitution as a "living document" to supplant the original intent of the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution as our "tradition".
At this point, I think it's more accurate to say original intent constitutionalism is more "reactionary" than "radical".
There’s more than one way to stack a deck.
Where is it written that natural explanations for natural processes is the "first principle of science?" Can I have a cite???
There's nothing in the definition of science that suggests natural explanations for natural processes is "the first principle" of science:
Science: noun [mass noun]:That's from the Oxford English Dictionary.
(1) the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment; (2) a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject; (3) knowledge of any kind [archaic]
Again, how do we get to your "first principle" from that definition? Or do you think the definition is "faulty?"
Science can't "prove the existence of God" in principle. Plus the "basic mode" of God (if I can call it that) is not existence at all: It is perfect Being. That is what is indicated by God's self-revealed Name: I AM THAT AM.
Philosophically speaking, Being and Existence are not the same thing.
Plato gives us another way to think about it. God is utterly transcendent, utterly "Beyond" the immanent world (i.e., the universe). As such, He can never be an "object" of direct or indirect observation, and thus cannot in principle be accessed by the methods of science.
So naturally, I don't expect "science" to prove anything about God at all. Certainly, I don't need it to.
You certainly would not want to accept any scientific findings relating to God, especially if those findings somehow disagreed with your own religious faith, would you?
See the statement above.
But it's clear to me that your animus is directed to the Christian Church — even though you profess to be a member of it.
At least that is the result I come up with, based on observation, experience, and analysis of your statements.
Your first definition says the same thing, in so many words.
My instructions on this whole subject come largely from Dr. Eugenie Scott:
Then what exactly is your problem with it?
In fact, I never attack or disparage Christians personally, only certain mistaken ideas.
Nor are my "attacks" ever as vigorous & personal as theirs on me.
Nor do I ever "attack" Christianity itself.
And if you doubt me on this, then simply quote examples to prove me wrong.
Just be sure to also quote the original "attack" I responded to.
Actually, I think spirited irish has been "hammering away" at Paine because she recognizes him for what he fundamentally is: a gnostic thinker.
You may have noticed that spirited has conducted voluminous research into gnostic systems and gnostic thinking, and she is IMHO exactly right to be concerned about the corrosive effects of gnostic precepts on individuals and societies, especially our own. Furthermore, she recognizes gnostic systems as inversions of Christian truth.
If you're not up to speed on gnosticism yet, here's a little historical backgrounder:
[There was] the explosion of interest that began at the close of the fifteenth century in the Corpus Hermeticum as well as other esoteric traditions emanating from the ancient world. The hermetic writings were collections of Gnostic texts that found their way to Italy after the fall of Constantinople and were immediately seized upon by the Neoplatonic Academy sponsored by the Medici in Florence. Together with the Cabala, alchemy, and other ancient esoteric lore, they were venerated as the original divine revelation to mankind, antedating both philosophy and the Old Testament. Their conflict with Christianity was overlooked when they were widely and publicly embraced as the means of spiritual rejuvenation through a return to the source. By the time the incompatibility became apparent and the texts were accurately dated, their withdrawal from prominence left behind a rich legacy of Gnostic symbols, including the transformation of man into a magus, the project of bringing about utopian perfection, and the quest for scientific mastery for "the relief of man's estate".... [G]enerally speaking, the movement went underground as the battle lines of orthodoxy were drawn in the Thirty Years War.Hegel is a prime example of this sort of thing. [Check out the Phaenomonologie....]
The undercurrents of esoteric gnosis, however, do not simply disappear. They emerge in the early part of the eighteenth century with the founding of Freemasonry and other spiritualist associations. Masonry in particular stands out as the equivalent of an alternative church for intellectual and social elites, especially when measured in the proliferation of lodges that stretched from Europe to America and Russia. The irony of a secret society at this stage was that virtually everyone of social prominence was a member. Following the French Revolution the stream becomes more evidently public again in the Romantic fascination with all forms of mystical experiences unconstrained by theological traditions. The gnostic character of the Romantic revolt against the evil of existence is well recognized.... No movement as diffuse or complex as Romanticism can be reduced to just one set of sources, but it is precisely because of this multivalency that Romanticism became the vehicle for their widest cultural dispersal. Man as the seeing master of his fate who restores the whole cosmos to its pristine splendor is the potent aspiration from which the more political evocations of the superman and superrace could readily be derived....
[Eric Voegelin] sought an insight into the motivation behind the Gnostic impatience with the tension of human existence. It was an unwillingness to accept the stature of merely being a man existing between the poles of perfection and imperfection. Instead the Gnostic response was characterized by the will to draw transcendent Being into immanent existence, so that the waiting in faith, hope, and love would be abolished through the eschatological fulfillment realized. — David Walsh, ed., "Editor's Introduction," in Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, Volume VIII: Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man, 1999; p 20. [Emphasis added.]
Eric Voegelin reflects on the import of this in his New Science of Politics [in Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, Manfred Henningsen, ed., 2000; p. 222]:
Modern Gnosticism has by far not spent its drive. On the contrary, in the variant of Marxism it is expanding its area of influence prodigiously in Asia, while other variants of Gnosticism, such as progressivism, positivism, and scientism, are penetrating into other areas under the title of "Westernization" and development of backward countries.... In the face of the worldwide expansion it is necessary to state the obvious: that human nature does not change. The closure of the soul in modern Gnosticism can repress the truth of the soul, as well as the experiences that manifest themselves in philosophy and Christianity, but it cannot remove the soul and its transcendence from the structure of reality. Hence the question imposes itself: How long can such a repression last? And what will happen when prolonged and severe repression will lead to an explosion? It is legitimate to ask such questions concerning the dynamics of the future because they spring from a methodically correct application of theory to an empirically observed component of contemporary civilization. It would not be legitimate, however, to indulge in speculations about the form that the explosion will assume, beyond the reasonable assumption that the reaction against Gnosticism will be as worldwide as its expansion....Must close for now, dear BroJoeK. I hope you found the above helpful in shedding light on why some of your correspondents say the things they do.
Gnosticism contains a self-defeating factor.... This self-defeating factor is the second danger of Gnosticism as a civil theology.
The first danger was the destruction of the truth of the soul. The second danger is intimately connected with the first one. The truth of Gnosticism is vitiated ... by the fallacious immanentization of the Christian eschaton.... On the basis of this fallacy, gnostic thinkers, leaders, and their followers interpret a concrete society and its order as an eschaton; and, in so far as they apply their fallacious construction to concrete social problems, they misrepresent the structure of immanent reality; and errors with regard to the structure of reality have practical consequences when the false conception is made the basis of political action. Specifically, the gnostic fallacy destroys the oldest wisdom of mankind concerning the rhythm of growth and decay that is the fate of all things under the sun. The Kohelet [Ecclesiates] says:
To every thing there is a seasonAnd then, reflecting on the finiteness of human knowledge, the Kohelet continues to say that the mind of man cannot fathom "the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." What comes into being will have an end, and the mystery of this stream of being is impenetrable. These are the two great principles governing existence. The gnostic speculation on the eidos [form] of history, however, not only ignores these principles but perverts them into their opposite. The idea of the final realm assumes a society that will come into being but have no end, and the mystery of the stream is solved through a speculative knowledge of its goal. Gnosticism, thus, has produced something like the counterprinciples to the principles of existence; and, in so far as these principles determine an image of reality for the masses of the faithful, it has created a dream world that itself is a social force of the first importance in motivating attitudes and actions of gnostic masses and their representatives.
And a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die.
...Gnosticism as a counterexample dream world can perhaps be made intelligible as the extreme expression of an experience that is universally human, that is, of a horror of existence and a desire to escape from it.... [Emphasis added.]
I am not going to play that game, BroJoeK. If you don't already realize how disrespectful your behavior towards spirited irish has been on this thread, I'm not going to waste my time pointing it out to you: You're "too hard a case" for me.
You should know better.
No it doesn't, dear BroJoeK. Read it again — closely.
Thank you so very much for your telling insights!
HUGS!!!
You say the first principle of science is "natural explanations for natural processes" but if that were the case then science would have no currency for things not strictly natural. That would exclude much of information theory and other areas of mathematics in relation to science, e.g. geometric structure and encoding of DNA/RNA, cellular automata, self-organizing complexity, geometric physics.
I suspect a more accurate rendering of your first principle - relying on Popper etc. - would be "falsifiable theories to explain measurable/observable phenomena."
betty: Actually, I think spirited irish has been “hammering away” at Paine because she recognizes him for what he fundamentally is: a gnostic thinker.
Spirited: Yes, and thank-you for your perception. Gnostic-thinking emerged out of the Renaissance as a rebellion against the Triune God but Jesus Christ God Incarnate in particular, Original Sin, and the idea of an eternal material or fleshy existence.
The Renaissance reawakened a magic view of the world closely connected with pagan Gnostic sectarianism, Eastern pantheism as well as Hermetic and alchemical-scientism.
Along with Eastern pantheism came spiritual evolution, reincarnation, karma and occultism (spiritual or magic science/ Western Magic Way) while for its’ materialist counterpart there eventually came Darwinism and determinism rather than karma (natural science, ‘secular’ Western Magic Way).
betty: “The undercurrents of esoteric gnosis, however, do not simply disappear. They emerge in the early part of the eighteenth century with the founding of Freemasonry and other spiritualist associations. Masonry in particular stands out as the equivalent of an alternative church for intellectual and social elites....”
Freemasonry and it’s derivatives (i.e., Secular Humanism, materialist atheism) is the philosophically materialist counterpart to spiritually pantheist Roisicrucianism (Cosmic Humanism) and it’s derivatives such as the pantheist religion of natural science proposed by Paine, Blavatsky’s Theosophy and today’s New Age spirituality.
“Alternative churches for intellectual and social elites” are modern equivalents of Mystery Religions (i.e., Scientology, B’hai, Theosophy). The mother of all Mystery Religions and their modern counterparts is Mystery Religion Babylon.
Transhumanism is a representative example of a modern Gnostic pagan Mystery Religion. It is a powerfully influential planetary ‘elite’ movement that believes man can begin a radical transfiguration of himself by merging his brain with technology with the long term goal of eventually transferring his ‘essence’ (Gnostic thinkers reject Imago Dei) out of his decaying body and into a highly advanced robo-machine. A Daily Mail article reported that,
‘...inserting technology into human brains is not the only thing going on. Some scientists also want to insert human brains into technology” (”Hitler would have loved The Singularity: Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers,” Ian Morris, 6 February 2012, dailymail.co.uk)
Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of Gnostic pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.
During Lewis’s lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.
Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:
1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ God incarnate in favor of “only this world” naturalism; no God, a distant God or pantheist conceptions of God, and Jesus Christ as a mortal teacher such as Buddha, the angelic brother of Lucifer, or perhaps a highly evolved Transcended Master or spirit guide.
2. Rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo in favor of ‘this-worldly’ mechanical evolutionary processes
3. Rejection of physical eternal life in either Paradise (renewed earth) or hell in favor of no afterlife whatsoever or wholly spiritual conceptions.
4. Humanity as deity.
5. Subjectivism: No right way, no wrong way, all directions lead to the same place.
The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, “The Great Divorce,” Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound (i.e. Gnostic elites) versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.
As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In “Adversus nationes” (2.37) Arnobius complains,
“If souls were of the Lord’s race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine.” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in-one, the androgynous being called ‘gay’ in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,
“...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of ‘initiation’ in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains” (C.K. Barrett cited in “The Interruption of Eternity,” Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)
In his “Journey to the Celestial City,” Wayne Martindale describes the hell-bound (Gnostic elites) as haters of good people. Self-centeredness, hate, and envy twist their hearts, thus they prefer evil thoughts, evil words, evil companions and evil acts, though it makes them wretched and miserable. Thus when they encounter good people they,
“...condemn them, perverting their reason by rationalizing evil and finding ways to blame the good or God or religion for their problems and the problems of the world. They already hate goodness because it implicitly condemns the evil they have chosen. They wouldn’t like heaven if they could have it. They are, in a sense, already in hell, preferring darkness to light.” (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p 76)
Read More: Bus Ride from Hell http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904
What if Lewis was wrong?
Thank you for your excellent, informative essay/post, dear spirited!
RE: the italics at the top: I find it inexplicable that Thomas Molnar would regard Plato as a gnostic thinker. I don't think he is any such thing. Plato in his works describes a Great Hierarchy of Being, which consists of four "partners": God–Man–World–Society. God is the principal partner; the preeminent relation is between God and Man; relations to World and Society flow from the critical relation between God and Man. Plus Plato evidently believed in the necessity of divine Judgment of each and every human soul. He presents this idea in the Pamphyllian Myth, a/k/a/ the Myth of Er (i.e., a sort of "Everyman"), found in the Republic.
Er is a mortal man who descends alive to the underworld and witnesses the judgment of souls, according to divine justice — and then is somehow able to "come back" alive to the world to tell mankind what he had seen. Plato exhorts all men to prepare their souls for such Judgment, for the worst thing that can happen to a man is to face Ananke, the mediator of the judgment, with a soul full of punishable injustice....
That does not at all sound like the "gnostic attitude" to me.
As to what the "gnostic attitude" may be, Eric Voegelin describes it this way ["Science, Politics, and Gnosticism," in Modernity Without Restraint, Manfred Henningsen, ed., 2000; p. 297f]:
[1] It must first be pointed out that the Gnostic is dissatisfied with his situation. This, in itself, is not especially surprising. We all have cause to be not completely satisfied with one aspect or another of the situation in which we find ourselves.Generally, it will be found that magical operations are involved in [6] — as for instance, Nietzsche's "Death of God," or Hegel's self-divinization in the Phänomonologie.
[2] Not quite so understandable is the second aspect of the gnostic attitude: the belief that the drawbacks of the situation can be attributed to the fact that the world is intrinsically poorly organized. For it is likewise possible to assume that the order of being as it is given to men [wherever its origin is to be sought] is good and that it is we human beings who are inadequate. If in a given situation something is not as it should be, then the fault is to be found in the wickedness of the world.
[3] The third characteristic is the belief that salvation from the evil of the world is possible.
[4] From this follows the belief that the order of being will have to be changed in a historical process. From a wretched world a good one must evolve historically. This assumption is not altogether self-evident, because the Christian solution might also be considered, namely, that the world throughout history will remain as it is and that man's salvational fulfillment is brought about through grace in death.
[5] With this fifth point we come to the gnostic trait in the narrower sense — the belief that a change in the order of being lies in the realm of human action, that this salvational act is possible through man's own effort.
[6] If it is possible, however, so to work a structural change in the given order of being that we can be satisfied with it as a perfect one, then it becomes the task of the Gnostic to seek out the prescription for such a change. Knowledge — Gnosis — of the method of altering being is the central concern of the Gnostic. As the sixth feature of the Gnostic attitude, therefore, we recognize the construction of a formula for self and world salvation, as well as the Gnostic's readiness to come forward as a prophet who will proclaim his knowledge about the salvation of mankind.
Anyhoot, I am convinced that Plato had no truck with such thinking and general attitude toward the world and man's place in it.
The great symbol Dike — "Justice, order, law, right" — is divine, not man-made; it cannot be repealed by man; every man is eternally subject to it; no man can ever escape it.
Just some thoughts for your consideration, dear sister in Christ!
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