Just thinking about

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Still reading ‘‘Radical Enlightenment’’ by Israel…
and I’m at the point where we have the ‘‘wars’’ between
the establishment, Church and state, who promote values
such as belief in god… and the Enlightenment figures
who argue against the bible and god…

And as always, I think of this conflict in terms of what
is happening today… Church after Church, still proclaims
the notion that god is and that Jesus is our ‘‘savior’’… and yet,
I find it interesting that the evidence supporting such beliefs,
are lacking… for example, who today argues for the idea
of miracles happening today? And the religious argue for
the notion of being saved and going to heaven, and yet,
no one seriously argues for their being a heaven or hell,
or that the devil exists… or that angels work their ‘‘magic’’
today, as they did in the biblical times… Even in the
age of the Enlightenment, people still argued for their
being angels and heaven and the devil and witches,
who used ‘‘black spells’’ to curse people…
Who actually argues for that today?

Most churches today, most, are social churches… they exists
to be social places for those who still believe… the
churches that believe in the hard core beliefs of angels
and god and the actual existence of the devil, they, mostly
exists in rural area’s… which by definition, are not very
populated areas… you don’t find many hell and brimstone
churches in say, downtown NY or downtown Boston…
urban cities, for the most part don’t have these fire and
brimstone churches…(there are exceptions, but there are
always exceptions to every single rule/law ever written)

the way to look at this is this way… the idea of god is the roof,
and most evidence supporting this, is the walls and floors…
but today, we don’t have the walls and floors of evidence
supporting the existence of god… the walls being talk
of heaven or angels or following revelations…
the idea of following god exists pretty much without any
support system supporting it…

And what does this all mean? That the support system that
allows us to hold belief in god, no longer exists…
who actually believes in the word of Jesus, follows Jesus,
revolves their life around the word of Jesus?

Very, very few… and so, we might hold to the existence of god,
but don’t hold to the factors that help us believe in god,
angels, demons, the devil, heaven and hell, the prophesies
of the bible… the walls and floor of our basic belief in god…

What does this actually say? That the secularization of religions,
has reduced the support system of religions…to where
people believe in god/Jesus and that is about it…
and my feeling is that this is the right direction we should be
taking… until belief in superstitions and prejudice is removed,
we shall be forever being distracted from the goals of existence…
Which is what Kropotkin? and therein lies the next step…
what is the actual goal of human existence? remove the
nonsense of religions, and we can get to what the goals of
existence ought to be… what we should be doing with our
lives? the Kantian questions… ''What am I/we to do?"
''What are I/we to believe in?" ''What can I/we know?"
and what should ''I/we be spending our energy on?"

Deep questions that deserve answers…
but we can’t get there if we are held hostage by
failed answers, failed superstitions and prejudice
like god/religions/Jesus/Angels/Hell…

Kropotkin

2

So, who here would like to defend witches and black magic
and spirits and evil incantations that put spells on people?
Very few and why? So, what is the evidence or facts supporting
spells and black magic and spirits? Who would like to provide
that evidence? I am willing to bet no one…

Much like the idea of miracles, we have no evidence for them…
feel free to name a true blue ‘‘Miracle’’ that has happened
in the last say, 65 years… or in my lifetime… I’ll wait…the
truth is that ‘‘Miracles’’ don’t happen… just like witches and
spirits and black magic… and this supports the idea that
these things do not and never have happened…

So, one of the primary drivers of Christianity is the
belief that Jesus rose from the grave… three days after
his death… in over 2000 years since then, has it
happened again? Not too long ago, a guy was declared
brain dead and was taken to have his organs harvested…
at the beginning of the procedure, he revived… he was
declared dead… does that mean he was the second
coming? one has to wonder, right? or not…

are there such as thing as Miracles? given not one
has happened in the last 60 years, I am kinda doubting it…
and if Miracles had happened, one would have hope it
would have stopped the many wars that have happened over
the last 124 years… the evidence for Miracles are so slim
as to defy their reality… and one cannot defend Miracles,
how can one defend the existence of god or of Jesus?

Kropotkin

3

one of the Kantian questions is, “What can we know?”
and can we know something that has no evidence, no facts
backing it up? I could say, all MAGA types are Necrophiliacs…
and would that statement have any bases in truth or evidence?
No, of course not… so, it is just a statement without any
basis… exactly like the statement, ''There is a god"
getting evidence or facts is the basis, or should be the
basis of all our beliefs and statements… whereas
by the use of superstitions and prejudice, we avoid using
facts or evidence as the basis of our values/beliefs…

but most people note, correctly, that the use of facts and
evidence limits are value, belief system… the number of
beliefs we have, becomes limited because of the facts
and evidence we need to prove the existence of those
beliefs/values… today, I can, without facts, admit to all kinds of
wild beliefs… that the Jews run the world, that there is a massive conspiracy
to poison people via Covid Vaccines… again, where are
the facts, evidence? not wild made up shit, but actual facts?
You can’t find that because of the nature of the conspiracy,
everyone is in this conspiracy… a conspiracy like
the Covid vaccine theory would require, literarily
thousands of people…maybe even 10’s of thousands of people…
all over the entire world… to make a conspiracy like this work…
and there is always, always facts or evidence… no matter how
hard one tries to cover it up, there are always facts…
where are the facts?.. that is the problem today, we don’t
search for facts or evidence, we seek out conspiracies without
any need or desire for proof…and where is the evidence?
and the same goes true for the idea of heaven, hell, the devil,
god or the divinity of Jesus…or we can go even further,
where is the evidence for witches, miracles, the supposed
inferiority of blacks, we have all kinds of superstitions, prejudice
that don’t require any sort of fact or evidence…

I say we reject them, the superstitions and prejudice
that litter our lives… superstitions like American
exceptionalism, that by virtue of being America,
we are, in some fashion, favored by god… with no
evidence or facts to back this up…
to hold a belief, we must have some fact or evidence to back this
belief or fact up… beliefs must have facts or evidence before
we can believe in them… and this road is a very hard road
because it forces us to examine all our beliefs and values…
but as I have said before, we should have done that already…

"it is not enough to have the courage of our values,
but the courage for an attack on our values’’

some guy named Fred said that…
a value that hasn’t been examined, isn’t a value worth having…
or as some guy once said, "The unexamined life isn’t worth living’’

let us, with courage, examine our values, our beliefs and see if they
are actually worth holding, worth our effort to believe in?
do we know things, epistemology know things, or do we
just make shit up and pretend its the truth? I know that
most people just hold to beliefs and values that were given
to them by childhood indoctrinations and education…
never having examined or even wondered about the values/beliefs
they hold onto, with a stubbornness that is surprising, or
have you ever wondered about the nature of your belief in religion
or in god? and why not? or why do you not believe in god?
what drives you to non-belief in god?
have you wondered?

what knowledge is really important to you?

Kropotkin

4

Part of the story of superstitions is the story how
we come from superstitions being a major factor in
our lives… from comets being a sign from god and
reading chicken entrails, to the loss of what I call
the ‘‘Infrastructure’’ of belief… that of angels, and demons
and witches and the devil and evil omens, and comets…
as a society, we have become less superstitious…
and that is the right path… we have removed much of
the infrastructure of superstitions, but we still have the
major part of superstitions being there… that of god…
and even there, we have 20% or more of the population
declaring themselves Atheist…much of the ‘‘Infrastructure’’
that holds religious beliefs in place, is gone…

So, we are partway there… but we have switched belief in
superstitions into beliefs in conspiracies theories…
and that can’t bode well for us going into the future…
as with anything, we must look to making progress with
regards to who we are and what we believe in and
''What am I/we to do?"

The questions of existence require an answer, what are your answers?

Kropotkin

5

Epistemological, how do we know there is a god,
a devil, angels, that comets are evil omens, that
witches are who we think they are, that black cats
should be associated with the devil and witchcraft?

where is the evidence, facts that show us that
there is a god, there is a devil, there are witches,
that comets are evil omens, that angels do exists?

and therein lies the fact of the matter… that these
beliefs can only exist because they are not challenged…
they are simply accepted as fact, and not investigated
as all, ALL beliefs should be examined…

superstitions can only exist in the dark of the night, in
the light, exposed, they lose their power and ability to
affect us… examine a belief, a superstition and it
loses its ability to have power over us… and that is
the real nature of the examination of values/beliefs…
that they lose their power over us if, if we were to
examine them with some determination to discover
the truth about them…

and the same goes true for the superstitions of
our age… that the isms of our age are actually
beneficial for us… that the belief in the superiority
of whites over blacks, in some fashion benefits us,
(spoiler alert, it doesn’t) that America is the greatest country
on Earth, at one time that was true, but we have for decades
lived off of our reputation, we haven’t done the real work
to be great in a long time… that one solution to our problems
is this rising Christian Nationalism… two words that are
superstitions, Christian and Nationalism… for a countries
greatness doesn’t come from a belief in a superstition like
god, but in actually doing things that make a country great…

like for example, instead of making profits the goal of existence
or fame or titles or power, we turn to values like justice or
even freedom (although I have attacked freedom in the past,
as being only, at best, partial freedom… at no point,
do we or can we ever be absolutely free… the only
possible freedom we can have as human beings, is limited
and I suppose that limited freedom is better than none, I would
argue that justice is a far better goal to aim for than freedom)

or we take people and have them an end, not a means to
an end, as capitalism and communism and other isms do…
this making profits more important than people is nihilism…
and we must escape the nihilism of our age… which is
making people serve the cause, whatever that cause
happens to be… the cause, whatever that cause maybe,
must serve the people, it must, in some fashion,
help and aid people, instead of turning them into
workers for the cause, even to the point of working
to the death for the cause, as communism and
capitalism holds true…

people before profits, people before historical necessity,
people before fate and people before god… otherwise
it is nihilism… as Nietzsche correctly pointed out…

The last hundred and 24 years has been the age of Nihilism…
and we have the massive numbers of death to prove that…
and what is the opposite of the age of Nihilism?
we don’t even have a word that is opposite of Nihilism…
that is how deep into Nihilism we are…
in the thesaurus… and look at the words that are
antonyms to nihilism… and you get allowance,
approval, ratification,… and those are the strong
opposites to Nihilism… the weak opposites
are belief, faith, obedience, optimism…

how can we turn away from Nihilism if we don’t even
have a word for the opposite of Nihilism?

Most of our beliefs, values are some variation of Nihilism… but
we are so locked into our Nihilism, we can’t even see that…

so, the real battle is the battle against our nihilistic society, state and
even our Nihilistic beliefs and values…so, are your beliefs and
values Nihilistic or optimistic?

and honest evaluation will reveal that we are mired in
nihilistic values and beliefs… and the question becomes,
how do we escape? the first step, as always, is to become
aware of our values and beliefs and what do those values
and beliefs lead us to? Nihilism or whatever the hell is
the opposite of Nihilism… do you know?

So, is this an epistemological question or a moral/ethical
question? Yes…

Kropotkin

6

I am not sure how we can, epistemologically, say that there
are no witches or evil omens of comets, and still be able
to say, that there is a god and he is a personal god…
the evidence for both is so weak, as to make belief in
witches and evil omens to be non-existent, but still,
somehow, to allow the belief in god to remain…

so, does the idea of one, which is basically disproven, still
allow the existence of another, with the same evidence,
allowed to stand? an honest appraisal of the evidence for
god, a personal god, shows the basic impossibility of there
being a personal god… and yet, that belief still exists?

One has to wonder why? Why that superstition and not
the equally implausible superstition of comets being
evil omens or the existence of witches or demons or
the existence of the devil?

One has to wonder why one belief stands, and the other belief falls?

Kropotkin