bro: So they represent “conventional wisdom” on this subject.
Spirited: They represent ‘conventional wisdom” only so far as they speak to what sophistical naturalists— rebels against our Lord—want to believe and require others to believe as well.
Though BroJoeK has been doing his best to disguise his real stance behind a mask, rather than opaque his mask is both transparent and porous, meaning that telling statements keep slipping through:
“The issue here is whether any such “special revelation” qualifies as “natural science”?
No, the real issue, the truth of the matter implied by BroJoeK’s clumsy sophistry is that, like a long line of evolutionary materialists (naturalists)before him, he is in rebellion against the God of Revelation.
As one who prefers the word of fallen man over the Revelation of God, BroJoeK is the intellectual heir of a way of thinking that from the beginning,
“... has been characterized by a desire to be free from the burden of Christianity...As a rebellion against Christianity, its negative goal defined its positive form: the desire to remove the church and replace it with the state gave liberalism its structure, beliefs, and goals.” (Worshipping the State: How Liberalism became Our State Worship, Benjamin Wiker)
Wiker writes that as far back as the Renaissance the strong impulse to throw off the restraints of the personal God and Christianity was already at work in certain Churchmen and intellectuals, hence their eventual embrace of materialism
(naturalism, Darwinism, empiricism, methodological naturalism, reductionism):
“The desire to be liberated from the constraints of Christianity was the original reason for modern liberalism’s embrace of a world defined entirely by materialism—the view that there are no immaterial entities like God of the soul, but only physical entities. This embrace of materialism began as far back as the Renaissance. And the same impulse was behind the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for scientific materialism, and it remains a staple of liberalism today.” (ibid, Benjamin Wiker)
Rebels against the personal God are in league with antitheists such as Karl Marx, who though not the devil, did his work for him.
Our war is against God and the world created by Him,
declared Karl Marx, father of the Communist Manifesto. In his poem, “The Pale Maiden” he admits that he has willfully opted for Hell:
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited; I know it full well; My soul, once true to God; Is chosen for hell.” (Marx & Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 22)
“The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority....Socialists recognize each other by the words, “In the name of the one to whom a great wrong has been done....Satan (is) the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds.” (Mikhail Bakunin, comrade of Marx, ibid, p. 27)
“We do not fight against believers (or) even clergymen....We fight against God to snatch believers from Him.” (Vetchernaia Moskva, a Communist newspaper, ibid, p.77)
The Satanic revolt, like supernatural Christian faith is a movement of spirit having its taproot and energy in Satan, the father of naturalism, heresy, lies, sophistry and envy, the author of rebellion, and the revelator of secrets contrived to damn unto hell.
Satanic revolt is war against the supernatural Trinity...the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which in Bakunin’s words are the “cursed and fatal principle of authority.”
Thus it proclaims the reign of negation (of God’s Revelation, His Truth, His Moral Law, soul/spirit, Heaven, and hell), though a negation nevertheless pregnant with the expectation of fulfillment in the revelation, and finally the actual presence, of evil personified....the dark Lord of this world.
The sentiment of the revolt is Satanic pride:
” which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine or human origin.” (Bakunin, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 63)
The nature of the Satanic revolt is the antithesis of the supernatural Christian faith. Whereas Christian faith is joy, patience, love, truth, humbleness, perseverance, submission in all things to the Will of God, and blessed eternal life, the Satanic counterfeit is negation, skepticism, lies, sophistry, revulsion, burning envy, impatience, seething hatred, jealousy, rebelliousness, blasphemy, and eternal life in Hell.
BroJoeK: I conclude that somewhat like yourself Ms boop, Ms irish has an agenda, namely to use this “news/activism” forum as a vehicle for expressing her religious beliefs.
Spirited: An “agenda?” Yes. My “agenda” consists in opposing lies and sophistry, be it clumsy or otherwise, with truth to the best of my ability in the hope that readers of this thread will not be led astray by sophistical liberal naturalists in their unholy quest “to snatch believers from Him.” (Vetchernaia Moskva, a Communist newspaper, ibid, p.77)
By your own admission BroJoeK, you prefer the damning errors and sophistry of naturalism to the Revelation of God. This is why you insist on God’s “so-called” Revelation being subordinate to natural science:
“(does) ‘special revelation” (qualify) as “natural science”?
The answer is: obviously not, and that is pretty much the only major point I’ve been hoping to make.”
Beware your choice, your abuse of free will, ‘FRiend,’ for at some unknown, unperceived moment it will become eternal. Heaven is real. So is hell.
For now, I'll just summarize that: you are seeing no “sophistry”, no “rebellion”, no Marxism or atheism defended by me, and your determined efforts to project those views onto me are not even honest mistakes.
In a recent post above, I nailed your modus operandi, Ms irish, and this post from you fully confirms that hypothesis.
Indeed, dear sister in Christ. And yet the "constraints of Christianity" are designed to help man, to protect his liberty, and to preserve his immortal soul as he traverses the "valley of the shadow of Death" in his mortal life....
Dear spirited, I think the "rejection" you so wonderfully describe in this essay/post may have an even deeper root: It is rejection of the human condition, even of human nature itself. Deep down, these rejectors resent God for making them as they are — i.e., as not-gods. That is to say, they resent being subject to limits.
BroJoeK uses the term "special revelation" in a manner differently than I do. I think he means the transmission of a doctrine. But when I use this term, I am pointing to the "immediate experiences" sphere of apperceptive reality.
The immediate experiences presupposed in Aristotelian metaphysics are not difficult to find in the classic sources, if one looks for them; but ... I am afraid, they will come as an anticlimax because of their apparent simplicity. For we find ourselves referred back to nothing more formidable than the experiences of finiteness and creatureliness in our existence, of being creatures of a day as the poets call man, of being born and bound to die, of dissatisfaction with a state experienced as imperfect, of apprehension of a perfection that is not of this world but is the privilege of the gods, of possible fulfillment in a state beyond this world.... — Eric Voegelin, "On Debate and Existence," 1967.I do believe there are some people who resent the fact that they are not, and cannot be, the "maker" of themselves. Nobody asks to be born. Nobody asks to die. And in-between,
At the level of common sense, it is evident that human beings have experiences other than sensory perceptions, and it is equally evident that philosophers like Plato and Aristotle explored reality on the basis of experiences far removed from perception. The Socratic "Look and see if this is not the case" does not invite one to survey public opinion but asks one to descend into the psyche, that is, to search reflective consciousness. Moreover, it is evident that the primarily nonsensory modes of experience address dimensions of human existence superior in rank and worth to those sensory perception does: experiences of the good, beautiful, and just, of love, friendship, and truth, of all human virtue and vice, and of divine reality. Apperceptive experience is distinguishable from sensory perception and a philosophical science of substance from a natural science of phenomena. Experience of "things" is modeled on the subject–object dichotomy of perception in which the consciousness intends the object of cognition. But such a model of experience and knowing is ultimately insufficient to explain the operations of consciousness with respect to the nonphenomenal reality men approach in moral, aesthetic, and religious experiences. Inasmuch as such nonsensory experiences are constitutive of what is distinctive about human existence itself — and of what is most precious to mankind — a purported science of man unable to take account of them is egregiously defective. — Ellis Sandoz, 1990I gather that when BroJoeK defines science as "natural explanations for natural phenomena," all non-sensory experiences are banned. But a consistent application of this principle would mean that all products of non-sensory experience — such as the very idea of physical or natural law, or the various scientific theories — must also be banned.
(What does that do to Darwin's theory?)
For it seems that "the human mind" is not detectible by means of sense perception: It "naturally" belongs to the "non-sensory realm" — which BroJoeK seems to suggest is none of science's business.
No wonder we have such difficulty trying to understand one another!
...[W]e all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debates with ideologists — whether communists of intellectuals of a persuasion closer to home. And we have all discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence — with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his relation to God. Rational argument could not prevail because the partner to the discussion [that would be you, dear BroJoeK and dear tacticalogic] did not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence that Robert Musil has called the Second Reality. The argument could not achieve results, it had to falter and peter out, as it became increasingly clear that not argument was pitched against argument, but that behind the appearance of a rational debate there lurked the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses ... when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared....Sounds like the Devil's work to me!!![This situation reflects] well-propagated errors which threaten to disintegrate the order of society by disintegrating the order of existence in everyman personally. [Voegelin, op cit.; Emphasis added.]
Thank you so very much, dear spirited, for your deep, ongoing investigation into the phenomenon of the Second Reality. I think you are entirely right to find at the basis of any Second Reality some form of gnostic thinking.
It seems to me that gnostic thinking is the perfection of solipsism.... FWIW
Thank you so very much for your splendid essay/post, dear spirited irish!
Certainly "conventional wisdom" is not always correct, nor is it always wrong.
But, having achieved a certain status as "conventional wisdom", it begins to require some rather strong evidence to disprove it.
In this particular case -- as is your usual M.O. -- you've blasted "conventional wisdom" with strong accusations, but provided us with no supporting evidence.
Therefore, I find your words unconvincing.
spirited irish: "Though BroJoeK has been doing his best to disguise his real stance behind a mask, rather than opaque his mask is both transparent and porous, meaning that telling statements keep slipping through:..."
Your accusations here are false.
spirited irish: "...the real issue, the truth of the matter implied by BroJoeK’s clumsy sophistry is that, like a long line of evolutionary materialists (naturalists)before him, he is in rebellion against the God of Revelation."
This accusation is false.
spirited irish: "As one who prefers the word of fallen man over the Revelation of God, BroJoeK is the intellectual heir of a way of thinking that from the beginning..."
This accusation is false.
spirited irish: "Wiker writes that as far back as the Renaissance the strong impulse to throw off the restraints of the personal God and Christianity was already at work in certain Churchmen and intellectuals, hence their eventual embrace of materialism (naturalism, Darwinism, empiricism, methodological naturalism, reductionism):"
As I pointed out from the beginning the distinction was first drawn by St. Thomas Aquinas between super-natural revelation based on scripture, and natural revelations beginning with input from our senses.
Aquinas did not consider them to be in conflict, but in historical fact, from the Renaissance on, they were sometimes in violent opposition.
But it remains a fact that until fairly recent times, nearly all scientists considered natural-science to be within the context first provided by Aquinas -- as just one element of God's higher Truth.
***note to tacticalogic and betty boop: when I post "truth" I mean philosophical-truth, when I post "Truth" I mean higher theological-Truth.***
Various Renaissance conflicts arose (i.e., Galileo Galilei) when the Church found discoveries of natural-science to be in conflict with scriptures, and attempted to suppress the discoveries.
Then, over the centuries the Church made its peace with Galileo, but now along come other scientists, with new theories which seem to contradict scriptures.
One such was Charles Darwin.
This time the Church did not immediately condemn Darwin, indeed, the Church kept officially silent for a hundred years, before finally agreeing that:
In short: according to the Catholic Church and most Protestant churches, natural-science is not in "rebellion against God", and research into evolution does not constitute some kind of pact with the Devil.
spirited irish: "Rebels against the personal God are in league with antitheists such as Karl Marx, who though not the devil, did his work for him."
I don't dispute your description of Marx, but no posters on this thread, as near as I can tell, match it.
However, Ms irish, I do understand your deep-felt need to relieve your personal anxieties by throwing around such accusations at somebody -- anybody willing to serve as a compliant punching bag for you.
And since yours truly, BroJoeK, is only here to serve, I accept your false accusations with good humor and take no personal offense.
I just hope it truly makes you feel better to describe me with false accusations, FRiend.
spirited irish: "The Satanic revolt, like supernatural Christian faith is a movement of spirit having its taproot and energy in Satan, the father of naturalism, heresy, lies, sophistry and envy, the author of rebellion, and the revelator of secrets contrived to damn unto hell."
Thankfully, most churches do not agree with your description of natural-science.
spirited irish: "Thus it proclaims the reign of negation (of God’s Revelation, His Truth, His Moral Law, soul/spirit, Heaven, and hell), though a negation nevertheless pregnant with the expectation of fulfillment in the revelation, and finally the actual presence, of evil personified....the dark Lord of this world."
Thankfully, most churches do not agree that natural-science itself is in a Satanic rebellion against God.
That some scientists may be so is obvious and understood, but science itself is not a matter of theological dispute in most churches.
spirited irish: "An “agenda?” Yes.
My “agenda” consists in opposing lies and sophistry, be it clumsy or otherwise, with truth to the best of my ability in the hope that readers of this thread will not be led astray by sophistical liberal naturalists in their unholy quest 'to snatch believers from Him.'
Sadly, most of the "lies and sophistry" (clumsy or otherwise) on this thread are coming from you, Ms irish.
Your problem is, as I've described here before, that you take a high-powered intellectual vacuum cleaner to every conceivable "ism" you find distasteful, sweep them all into the same dirt-bag, label them all with some dramatic name -- in this case now "Satanic" -- and condemn them all to h*ll, regardless of their individual merits or demerits.
Thus, your practice may fairly describe some people & ideas, while on others, not so much.
spirited irish: "By your own admission BroJoeK, you prefer the damning errors and sophistry of naturalism to the Revelation of God.
This is why you insist on God’s “so-called” Revelation being subordinate to natural science..."
Sorry, but in fact my post said nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- about "subordinate to natural science".
I merely pointed out the obvious fact (recognized since at least Aquinas) that super-natural revelations do not qualify as "natural-science".
Of course, we all here believe the super-natural to be primary, essential and ultimately superior to the natural realm, because that is what our Faith teaches, and indeed is the basis for Faith.
But, like Aquinas, we never confuse one with the other.
spirited irish: "Beware your choice, your abuse of free will, ‘FRiend,’ for at some unknown, unperceived moment it will become eternal. Heaven is real. So is hell."
FRiend, I don't think that people who knowingly lie and make reckless false accusations are going to Heaven.
You need to start repenting of your own sins here, Ms irish.