Nihilism 101

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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[size=95]“If virtue is unrewarded, then what?”[/size]

-Stuart Samuels

Please take a moment to look over the news photograph below.

[b]The newsphoto tests the truth of the Bible’s claim that God: “protects the righteous” and “upholds the cause of the poor and needy”. Does God truly protect the “good”? Is God himself “good”? What does it mean to be ‘morally good’?

One can argue that moral goodness is disambiguated, once and for all, in a statement famously called the Golden Rule:[/b]

“As ye would that men should do to you,
do ye also to them likewise.”
(Luke 6:31 NIV)

[b]A morally good being is a being that follows the Golden Rule. It does not impose experiences upon others that it would not wish to experience if the shoe were on the other foot.

If God is good, then God not only preaches or commands others to follow the Golden Rule, he practices it.

But there is the newsphoto above.

Is the grieving woman in the photo religious? Does she believe in God? How does this tragedy affect her faith?[/b]

[size=150]The Death Of The Innocent: Nihilism Inferred[/size]

[b]The woman in the photo, perhaps, has been rudely introduced to the existence of Nihilism—in which death happens for no reason at all to anyone, even children. In a nihilistic world, moral gravity and seriousness are besides the point, meaningless in the face of the senseless death of the innocent. Nihilism suggests that a good God does not exist, or that God is malevolent or indifferent, allowing even the innocent and the good to suffer and die without recourse. Nothing matters. One’s sacrifice and effort in the conception and rearing of children is unrewarded, as the very children one worked so hard for have burned to death in a tenement building.

Consider the implications behind the photograph: there is no further communication and interaction with the children in the future; they no longer factor in any future plans for school, college, marriage or parenthood; they have no further input or influence over the lives of those who knew them. Whatever they might or could have been as adults; any insight, beauty, and growth they might have learned, experienced, and inspired in others is forever unrealized.[/b]

A belief in the person’s permanent or irreversible loss means that we will no longer think of the person interacting with us in the future, or having further experiences. We will no longer include them in our plans. This shift in attitudes will be reflected in our customs and in the law. The rights and status of the deceased person will change: They can no longer be rewarded or punished, cannot make contracts, and will not be considered in our plans for the future.

(More, Max: The Terminus Of The Self, alcor.org/Library/html/Termi … eSelf.html)

[b]Death, it seems, is more real, more certain than love and morality. It seems to falsify the existence of a God that cares for and protects the innocent.

Perhaps the woman in the photograph, if she is or was religious, has now come face to face with the unspeakable truth of Nihilism and what it means for the first time. She has discovered that her subconscious fears and suspicions were true: she lives, and has lived all the time, in a senseless and random universe. The indifferent Forces governing this universe cares nothing for five little hearts once filled with childish wonder, curiosity, and natural good-will. Such things, perhaps, have never possessed any real power in the first place, useless against the callous sword of Thanatos.

As Stuart Samuels put it in his critical analysis of George A. Romero’s ground-breaking zombie film:[/b] Night Of The Living Dead (1968):

I have the sense that Romero…dared to show us a world without reason or values or morality, one based on the sole need to survive. He dared raise a nagging question: If virtue is not rewarded, then what? What is the use of virtue if there is no relationship between actions and consequences? Why be humane when the world is cruel? Why be helpful when death is random and unrelated to anything at all? Why make an effort if nothing matters?

Romero is asking some basic philosophical questions in NOLD, not apparent by only looking at the surface, but rather by having to look at the implications of what he is showing us. He lures us in with his grisly horror to deliver a much deeper terror—the terror of nihilism, that nothing matters, death is random, we are all victims of a universe we can’t understand. Romero gives us the experience, in philosophical terms, of nothingness.

So few of us ever ask ourselves what our belief system is. If I asked you right now to write down five beliefs you have about the nature of reality, what would you put on the lines? Man is good, virtue is rewarded, everything happens by chance, there is a God, there is no God. You have to suffer to be happy, and so on. Try it.

(Stuart Samuels: Midnight Movies:A Revealing Look At America’s Most Popular Cult Movies, Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc. 1983)

[size=150]Of Nihilism And Religion[/size]

[b]As a Judeo-Christian theist, I realized the true enemy of Judeo-Christian belief isn’t necessarily Biblical skepticism: contradictions in English translations of the Bible can be countered (poorly) through blind faith or (adaptively) through appeal to the Matrix Hypothesis. The enemy of Christian belief is not necessarily Atheism: the sword of atheism is effectively parried through epistemological criticism and philosophical skepticism.

The true enemy of Judeo-Christian belief is Nihilism, and it’s a REAL problem—particularly given prima facie justification of belief in nihilism through the observation of senseless suffering, misery, and death—particularly the suffering and death of the conscientious and the kind. These real-world tragedies strain the logic that there is a God that adheres to the Golden Rule and protects those we love and cherish.

But hope is not lost. If the Matrix Hypothesis can save the Genesis Creation Account from the Big Bang and biological evolution, the Matrix and Zombie Hypothesis can deflate Nihilism. In the next ILP thread:[/b] Are We Ruled By An Evil God?[b], I will reveal how this works, proposing a logical and metaphysically possible world in which God ingeniously upholds the Golden Rule (to a fault) while creating evil for the purpose of evolving it out of existence.

Granted, this is Superchristian speculation outstripping the bounds of Fundamentalist Christian logic, but one can argue that it cannot be ruled out. A reasonable defeat of Nihilism exists in the use of the philosopher’s zombie (a functioning brain and body bereft of consciousness) within a Matrix Hypothesis. This is borne out in future writings on the problem of the reconciliation of the existence of God with natural and deliberate evil.[/b]

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

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You don’t need to resort to any Matrix or Zombie hypothesis. The type of nihilism you describe arises when somebody imposes their own moral opinions on God. How do we know the woman was innocent? We don’t know what right and wrong are. How do we measure her faith? We can’t even come to a common definition of the word. And why is God subject to the golden rule? Are parents subject to the rules they lay down for their children? Should they get on a bus and go to kindegarden every day? The golden rule is valid because people are equals in God’s eyes. That doesn’t mean God and people are equals.

The only certain, unshakeable virtue is to love God, as nothing happens outside of God’s design. Therefore, no event, including one’s own death, can betray that love. Disillusionment is impossible. It is all seen as the unfolding of the will of God. If you hate God in order to maintain the consistancy of your own moral opinions, then you feel the confusion that arises logically from hating the almighty.

The only test of God’s morality, then, is “does he make me happy to the same degree I love Him?”

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Reply to Knox:

With all due respect, it seems that you are missing the point—and are proposing that we should accept the capriciousness and arbitrariness of God (if such capriciousness in the relevant sense exists. Of course, if God is capricious and controls human destiny, then we are forced to physically accept the consequences of such capriciousness, but are not necessarily forced (unless God controls our will) to morally accept it).

(1) Nihilism, on deeper rational reflection, is a BIG DEAL for the theist, particularly the Judeo-Christian theist. As Stuart Samuels stated in his critical analysis of George Romero’s: Night Of The Living Dead in his book: Midnight Movies (quoted from my introductory post):

                                                                       [i]"If virtue is unrewarded, then what?"[/i]

Given the fact that the Bible states that human goodness, when compared to God’s goodness, “is as filthy rags”, one must wonder what sort of “goodness” God possesses that allows him to be able to possess the right to forgo the Golden Rule. We are not equal to God, but does that mean that God possesses an inscrutable “goodness” that is totally alien to the Golden Rule or a requirement to adhere to it?

When comparing God to man I speak in logical universals—yielding logical principles that (it is hoped!) applies to God as well as man (if the concept of God is ever to be rational). Moral goodness (to cut to the quick and avoid an unfortunate digression into semantics that would only confound this thread)–seems to possess and require two distinct characteristics:

b Disinterest in and hatred (if not total innocence or ignorance) of unjustified predatory hostility and aggression[/b]

b An adherence to the Golden Rule[/b]

The above is moral goodness in a nutshell. Are you willing to tell me that God is only “good” in the sense of (1) and is not required to be “good” in the sense of (2)?

If so, then how are we to rationally relate to and expect any meaningful discourse with God? What good does it do to trust God to protect oneself and one’s loved ones if all that we have to depend upon is an arbitrary “luck” that God might, perhaps, decide to indulgently respond with a “yes” to one’s prayer for safety on the highway or for one’s children on their way to school? Wouldn’t it be better to be as the atheists, trusting only random chance—if one is forced to rely upon a capricious God?

Does God, then, impose moral laws of conduct and behavior that he himself is free to disregard? Or…(stay with me on this, now)… are the Laws of God that are “imposed” upon humans actually a relative microcosm of God’s own moral standard for himself that he wishes for man to adopt? If the later, then God naturally adheres (and “prides himself” on his emotional, cognitive, and intentional adherence to) the Golden Rule.

I am not haphazardly presenting a disparaging “moral opinion” of God, as it seems you are implying. If God is not so totally alien that his demand for “goodness” in humans becomes irrational (due to the fact that God adheres to an alien form of “goodness” from that which he attempts to impose upon man), then there exists a rational connection between God’s demands for goodness in humanity and God’s goodness itself. The Law of God demands what it does because it is an intrinsic quality of the Person making the demand, and it is believed by the Person to yield the best quality of existence, should others follow the psychological and moral example of the Lawgiver.

It’s comes down to a matter of setting a good example. You used a parent/child analogy in your “defense” of God. Should parents impose moral laws upon children that they themselves violate every day? Or should they “lead by example”? As Paul stated within Romans: “You who preach that others should not steal…do you steal?”

The question of nihilism and it’s empirical demonstration in the suffering and death of the innocent and non-sociopathic is a serious matter for theists—and it calls for one to boldly question the nature of God. Is not God at the least as reasonable as a non-sociopathic human being concerned about the moral nature of the world? Is God an intolerant tyrant who will instantly, like Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame, secretly reach over to push a button that sends the inquisitive human through a cosmic trapdoor leading to the lake of fire and eternal damnation----as punishment for rationally raising questions concerning God’s true nature and motives (so one knows where one stands within the universe)?

Remember, God himself said within the Bible:

                                  [i]"Come now, let us reason together...."[/i] (Isaiah 1:18)

Taken out of context with the remainder of the verse, one can argue that God has allowed honest and emphatic discourse concerning his true nature and motives without fear of reprisal. At least, one hopes so. If not, then we’re dealing with a God that operates according to an unknown and unknowable type of “goodness” and “reason” that is not rationally related to the type it is claimed that he demands humans to possess.

Nuff said,

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

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So either things which we call “evil” are things which god has designed or nothing evil ever occurs in the world.

Is this a fair evaluation of your position?

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Hi Jay ,

The true enemy of Judeo-Christian belief is an indifferent and unconscious existence as against living an alert and sentient life. This can result in total a rejection of established laws and institutions because of disappointment and disillusion and give rise to an extreme form of scepticism, but the delusion of the dissected view and the deception of life conditioned by insecurity is the starting point.

Human beings are able to adapt to circumstances and proceed through a process of meeting needs until they reach the phase of “self-actualisation” as Maslow called it. A natural progression would lead to sentience, but there seems to be needs which are predestined to hold us back from such progression, such as esteem and sometimes even physiological needs like eating and drinking. Of course this is individual depending upon the varying influences upon us, but society is becoming monolithic and consequently the number of people who resemble “zombies” is growing.

As I have said elsewhere, spirituality overcomes suffering and even uses it for natural progression. The Jewish-Christian Shepherd is one who makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters; He restores my soul; He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil; for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table for me before my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of Jhvh for as long as my days.”

The realisation that every minute of our lives is a bestowment, given freely and which will some day be taken back, is something that we often try to ignore. We talk of unhappiness and forget where happiness comes from; we talk about injustice without asking where justice comes from. Each day we are given the chance to overcome difficulties, whether together in community or individually, depending on our degree of dependence and the size of those difficulties.

The innocents who die at birth or within a short lifespan are more than just “our” children and the pain of their suffering and death is something that makes their memory burn itself into our mind, crying out for us to prevent such agony in the future. It seems to me that we have a “calling” but one which we ignore and instead we cry our agony to the God we don’t want to believe in.

These words my be salt in the wound of people who have suffered – perhaps it is a small consolation to say that my wife and I have also suffered in this way – but it doesn’t help either, if we put our head in the sand.

Shalom

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Reply to Bob:

Fair enough. You have stated the necessity for human responsibility in mitigating evil and pain individually or as a community rather than simply decrying it and “blaming it on God”, and this makes sense according to the demands of theistic belief in free will and existential psychology.

But what I am putting forth is the proposition that nihilism is a very real worldview, and it is so powerful that it lurks in the background to stand as the most reductive explanation for why certain individuals live and think the way that they do. Drug dealers, prostitutes, prison inmates, black market connoisseurs, and individuals engaged within the porn industry are all arguably nihilists, and to ask them, their life-choices are rational responses to the existence of the truth of nihilism. They are what they are due to the fact that they have seen the “good die young” for little or no apparent reason—without a God miraculously intervening to save the life of those who least deserve to die. A prison guard in Attica once remarked: “Our beliefs are shaped by our experiences”. The meaningless death of the innocent teaches these individuals early that “Nothing matters, life is short, dead is dead—so knock yourselves out doing whatever it is you wish to do—regardless of the moral, emotional, or spiritual consequence to self and others.”

The sort of spiritual personal responsibility and vision you are suggesting on a global scale would be nice, yet many human beings are not terribly convinced that it is worthwhile, as they are trapped in their existential foxholes beneath the machine gun fire of an inexorable “God-defying” Force (In atheistic terms, the laws of physics operating in such a way as to neurally bring about the existence of evil, and physically operating to bring about the existence of suffering and death through natural evils such as unintentional accident, handicap, and disease) that kills indiscriminately, against which morality and moral seriousness seem useless.

Personal responsibility and morally “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is all well and good, yet the philosophy (and empirical examples that justify belief in) nihilism is, one can argue, what is behind the listlessness and “zombification” that is growing more monolithic within 21st century society. “Feel good” religious homilies and strategies for “making the world a better place” don’t pack much of a punch when the homicide detective finds the infant stuffed in the back of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Your argument convinces the non-sociopathic. But what about our psychological and moral cousin—the sociopath? How is the world to become a better place with these walking about?

And then there is the age-old problem of the co-existence between a good God and human evil. Did God create evil? If not, then why allow it to exist? For the sake of free will? For freely given love and worship? Is God omniscient? Then if such omniscience is infallible, then why create those who will inevitably deny God and end up in hell anyway? One can argue that a truly omnibenevolent God would not tolerate the existence of evil, even for the sake of free will (such that free will is not so important as to allow evil to exist as a possible side-effect) Is evil simply a self-existent phenomenon that imposed itself upon the universe independent of God’s omniscience and power? These, and the problem of nihilism, are serious questions that cannot be blithely thrown aside for calls for the sudden acquisition of “self-actualization”.

I sympathize with your argument: It would be great if we could all wake up one morning, every human being upon the planet, and step out of bed to simultaneously begin to “live an alert and sentient life”… (although one might wonder what constitutes "an alert and sentient life for the sociopath)…but for many people, it’s difficult if not impossible to ignore the grunting of the 800-pound gorilla standing in the corner of the bedroom that hideously grins and gives it’s name as “Nihilism”.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

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Hi Jay,

I wouldn’t want to doubt that you are right about nihilism, as an extreme form of scepticism and the denial of all real possibilities of an objective basis for truth, being the worldview of those who have found themselves marginalised or completely outside of society. However, as I have already stated, there is a beginning in the potential progression to sentience, but there are many more things necessary. I also find that nihilism isn’t the only thing around, but also resentment. Resentment would however suggest that people feel themselves shut out from something that is rightly theirs – and I think that here is room for hope.

What is greatly lacking in our churches is the kind of solidarity that is cogged into the areas of society where the need is greatest. People who are to do this kind of work have to be stable, spiritual personalities, who have a spiritual base from where to operate, but who identify themselves with people who are below the poverty level. The only really authentic way to do that is to be poor yourself and use what resources you have for others. People who go home to comfortable housing and beds, with big cars and smiling children are not authentic. That is why there were so many monasteries in the past, where people gave themselves into the service for the poor. This is where Christian ethics are critical of modern society and the ideals that people try to live up to – including those people outside of society. It is also the area where the church has done the greatest disservice to its message.

I agree that these spiritual people would resemble the medic in the battlefield, but I think that the forces that bring about evil are not of supernatural origin, nor are they just “flaws” of nature. They are systematic influences or continual human causes, like a general disregard for physical and mental health, the prevention of morality and wisdom, oppression and violence as a means to gain power, and a disregard for human life. These things don’t just happen, they are done either actively or passively by people and of course they accentuate and promote nihilism. We are talking here about vicious circles or “doom loops” and they have something mysterious about them, but they are very natural occurrences.

This means that to change it, we have to interrupt these circles. We have to “cog in” and try to divert processes at the risk of ourselves becoming casualties. And yet, in the interest of such change, a sacrifice of this nature has a different character to the suffering of victims, who are simply collateral damage of a system that is the smaller brother of the larger system out of which the less fortunate people have fallen. Therefore, the intervention is necessarily of a completely different nature – spiritual, alert and sentient. These are the people who have reached the prime of life and turn back to assist others. Christians believe that the first of this “new creation” was Jesus the Christ. And “He brought us forth by word of truth, for us to be a certain firstfruit of His creatures.” (James 1:18)

There are certain aspects of life which do not fall into perspective until certain other goals have been achieved. If you start out wanting to solve everything immediately, then you are bound to fail. I believe that the Bible asks us to look at life organically, not like a machine (even though I used the “cog-in” metaphor), and it is about sowing and planting, rather than the replacement of faulty parts. The most important thing is that this process is cultivated, that seedlings are protected, and that the ripening process is allowed its time.

This is also the spiritual message behind the words to Adam, who is told that he will life by the sweat of his brow – not only to feed his family, but to protect them too (Cain was an enemy from within, which is also a spiritual warning). The Aramaic word for “good” is the same as for “ripe”, consequently the word for “evil” is also the word for “unripe”. I believe that the ancients were in touch with reality in a way we have lost and they knew that what grows needs time and has its time: “To all an appointed time, even a time for every purpose under the heavens”.

The psychopathic personality, whose behaviour is antisocial, lacking any sense of moral responsibility or social conscience, has his story. What influences led him down the road he has travelled? Who saw how he was developing? Who gave him the power to do what he does? There are so many questions to be asked and it is the responsibility of society to find ways of making sure these questions are asked. Although antisocial personality disorder cannot be formally diagnosed before age 18, the three recognised markers for the disorder are a longer-than-usual period of bed-wetting, cruelty to animals and pyromania – themselves markers of family troubles such as upheaval, domestic strife and alcoholism. Circular movements of immaturity.

If evil = immature or unripe, then yes, this possibility is there from the outset. Occurrences which come “out of time”, at the wrong time, are unwelcome or which are unsuited for the situation at hand are “evil”. Life has a rhythm and that which is out of step, offbeat or quirky tends to cause things to stumble and go wrong. The opposite of ripe is not just unripe as in immature, but also overripe as in rotten. This could be how we regard those things we call “evil” - all of the other associations with the term evil are dramatic escalations but do not help the issue.

The numerous questions you go on to ask seem to be more speculative overstatements rather than a real search for answers. There is nothing blithe about the things I have said, albeit that there is more to it than just the words. If you want to remain at that level – OK, but it doesn’t help at all. I am looking for real answers and I am contradicting a lot of what the modern church is and discovering a lot of wisdom in what people have done out of devotion in the past. The speedy condemnation of such devotional service in the present day is a bland ignorance of what it takes to restore the society which we once had for a very short period of time, and it shows that such service is a rare and precious jewel, not to be wasted.

It is a shame that you were not awake when you wrote these words. You seem to be hypnotised by the devil you are painting on the wall, drawn in by its power and scared to death – which is why you join in with the bawling against a Christian answer out of principle. Spiritual Christians will look at the problem and address it calmly, because it isn’t new and although it may leave us with a number of injuries, there is only one way to combat it.

Shalom

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Jay, maybe I’m prone to oversimplification, but aren’t you just adding a lot of complexity to the “Problem of Evil/suffering,” extending it to that which could follow from it in an extreme case–Nihilism–and implying it’s a new and powerful philosophical danger to faith in a Judeo-Christian God?

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Reply to Bob (and Alun Aedicita by proxy):

Good post (Bob). I stand corrected (to an extent). I have, regrettably, downplayed the role of the spiritual person devoted to making the world a better place—or the power of time in terms of the onset of maturity and insight that may come when an individual “ripens” with spiritual help (I also agree with the need for people who help those in need to be in a position to relate through past experience with those they are trying to help).

However, I am not, I hope, attempting to negate or belittle the efforts of those that have achieved a spiritual “prime of life” and who turn back to help others achieve “sentience”. The purpose of the first post of this thread is to focus attention to the fact that this sentience, despite it’s necessity in order to give rise to a better world, is offset by a common philosophical fatalism that finds such a spiritual solution to be nonsense. The skepticism of the solution offered by Spiritual Christians seems to pervade 21st Century philosophy, finding it’s justification from observation of the senseless death of the innocent.

“If virtue is not rewarded, then what?” (Stuart Samuels, Midnight Movies)

Regardless of human responsibility for behavior and the importance of strong, stable, spiritual humans operating as a battlefield medic to apply salve to human souls, there seems to exist a sentiment in the world that the only proof of God that it will unanimously accept is not the kindness and effort of spiritual human beings,but a form of non-human intervention in human affairs, the empirical observation of a force that turns aside the blade of a murderer at work to demonstrate that God physically interferes with evil. This is observed to be “missing” within the world, with the senseless suffering of the good a continuous empirical example of the seeming (to the point of view of the unbelieving) impotence or non-existence of God (which in turn justifies an adoption of the philosophy of nihilism).

Rather than being hypnotized by the devil that is “painted on the wall”, I hoped to illustrate the power of this devil existing in the form of a common and growing psychological stance, created by the observation of the hell that humans create for other human beings (alongside natural evils such as disease and deformity), causing the very people that Spiritual Christians wish to help to refuse that help due to the fact that Spiritual Christians and their principles are perceived by those they wish to help as useless and nonsensical.

An example of this skeptical view of Christian effectiveness within a seemingly nihilistic world is seemingly apparent within Larry King’s question toward the parents of one of the victims of the December 9, 2007 New Life Church shootings (before the disarming and mortal wounding of the shooter by church security guard Jeanne Assam) during the Larry King Live December 10, 2007 show:

KING: [b]Joining us now on the phone is Tom Johnson. His daughter Tiffany one of the two people killed early Sunday at the Youth With A Mission Center in Arvada, Colorado.

Tom, our sincere condolences on the loss of Tiffany.

How did you learn of this?[/b]

TOM JOHNSON, DAUGHTER TIFFANY KILLED SUNDAY AT MISSION CENTER: …I heard of it at about 2:00 – 2:30 in the morning Minnesota time from my wife. And she was being transported to the hospital, talking to the ambulance driver and telling – apparently telling the description of the assailant. And at the hospital, she passed away.

KING: Did she talk to you while in the ambulance?

JOHNSON: She did not.

KING: How is everybody dealing this? How is your wife dealing with it? How are friends, how is the family?

JOHNSON: Well, initially, of course, Larry, the shock is pretty tough. And it still is, of course. And if it wasn’t for our faith and our friends, we wouldn’t – or I couldn’t make it through this. It has been a very, very difficult, difficult time for myself. My daughter was a – just a strong, vibrant, outgoing, loving and caring person. And all she ever wanted to do was help other people. And she, of course, was a missionary and went to different countries – Egypt and South Africa, etc. And all she wanted to do was spread the word of God. And she – that was in her heart, you know? And I guess the only thing that comforts me now is I know she’s there with God right now.

KING: This doesn’t shake your faith?

JOHNSON: It did initially and I was angry, Larry, to be very honest with you. Now, after thinking of it, I believe it’s more worldly things that happened in this situation. God, of course, doesn’t – didn’t create this. And I believe that something has to be done – I mean to be very honest with you, in my opinion, in the sense of the whole – I don’t know how to stop this. I’m not saying I have answers. I would like to know and talk to somebody who has answers to something so senseless as this.

There is a sentiment (perhaps not ubiquitous) that Christian solutions to the world are nonsensical, such that despite Christian “sentience” and spirituality and it’s power to heal the world, this power is not generally accepted due to experience that seems to imply that such a solution begs sanity, given the state of the “real” world. This isn’t a fearful “giving in” to the power of the Devil, rather, it is an observation of the skeptical sentiment that Spiritual Christians are up against—a description of the nature of the obstacle to “the problem and the only way to combat it.” It seems that the one way around this fatalism, if the solutions offered by Spiritual Christians are seen as nonsense, is to present a counterpropaganda to the nihilism through the presentation of alternate hypotheses about the world that conceptually falsify the conclusions drawn from worldly experience.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

10

Hi Jay,

I understand that, but my position is that I can’t help but think that sentience or spirituality has become nonsense to many people in our day because what they are seeing often isn’t sentience or spirituality, but rather a cardboard cut-out which is made to stand in churches. Spirituality has become as selfish as every other motivation we find in the “free-world” and if there is no reward, then there is no virtue. This obviously then backfires and Christians start blurting out that they are being oppressed, calling associations with past persecution into mind and feeling sorry for themselves.

I find a lot of criticism of Christianity completely OK, despite being a Christian myself. Christianity today is too bland, too bright, too loud, too corny, too ignorant, too naïve, too … much! The loudest of them are in America and Rome and I don’t care for either. One of the most important questions we need to ask is the authenticity question and ask ourselves why we really do things. I’m sure that a psychological motivation check in Christian parishes would reveal a lot of unwitting intentions rather the love of God. Jesus said that people who were after this kind of reward had all they were going to get.

Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it. Or would it? I feel that this expectation is the very product of the naïve demagogues who have been trying to persuade people to believe. I don’t think any spiritual person in the pre-scientific past would have had such expectancies, since it seems to be more a sign of superstition rather than faith in God. It fits into the category of God as an old man sitting on a cloud and angels with wings and harps. It doesn’t have much to do with the blood, sweat and tears of the Bible, and the struggle to build a spiritual society.

The awe installed into people who have shuddered into a form of awareness that splits your mind is very humble and quiet. It doesn’t talk without a real chance of being understood, rather it puts its insight faithfully into action, following the directions given, and the results grow – which is why there is a lot of talk about “fruits” in the Bible. There is a difference between the praise of Christians who have seen the fruit of the Spirit in their lives and of Christians who have heard a lot about it. It is this humble but authentic Spirituality which makes people sit up and listen – and faith grows out of that. That is the only way.

You must excuse my rhetoric, but I have seen evangelistic Christians very much hypnotized by the devil that they themselves had painted on the wall, whilst the quiet and patient Grandmother who has faithfully attended church and kept a frugal life in the service of others knew what to do. I have also seen these people die in a frenzied attempt to defy death, whilst the humble Grandmother patiently “went home” when her time had come. I think we are diverted by the loud vessels and fail to see those quiet ones who “overcome” in faith and patience, which is why the attention of the public is just as deviated.

The mentality of wanting a God that “works” is typical for our day and age. It is the kind of idolatry that the Bible works against from the beginning. It doesn’t know the God of the Bible, imagines something like a divine vending machine where you put your prayer in the top and the answer comes out at the bottom. To suppose that this is the vision of spiritual Christianity is just ignorance.

The question is whether anyone else has a solution? Isn’t it a bit macabre to ask the relatives of the victim what could be done about this? This problem isn’t merely a Christian or a spiritual problem, it is the universal problem of humanity. It is like saying that someone who tried to protect his family by gathering or killing poisonous snakes which had been released in the housing estate, but who is bitten and dies, was naïve. The fact is, he did something. Spiritual answers may not be always effective, but the opposition to what is considered the norm is an effect in itself. The fact is that many people just sit back and poor contempt on those trying to do a job. (“Blessed is the man who … has not sat in the seat of scorners”)

Faith is when you see the odds and carry on anyway. I dont believe that this is about propaganda of any kind at all, but about seeing through the hullabaloo (or tohubohu) and understanding that there is no single “Christian solution”.

Shalom

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Reply to Bob:

Thank you, Bob. Your last post has restored my perspective. So bogged down was I in worry over the seemingly impenetrable steel wall of the unbeliever’s philosophy (nihilism among others) that I forgot a certain adage that enables the Christian to forge ahead despite the “propaganda” of the unbelieving:

                                                       [i]"The objective trumps the subjective."[/i]

That is, the objective truth stands regardless of the naysayings of subjective convictions concerning the nature of reality such as atheism and paganism, even if one cannot “prove” the existence of the objective truth of the sovereignty of God, such “proof” existing through the light of faith. The humble Grandmother who stands to the end is the best example of Christian faith that survives the cynicism of the world:

The truth of God, even in the face of the senseless death of the innocent (in light of what I call the Compensation Hypothesis–or the view that God compensates victims of tragedy in the afterlife) will be just what it is, and it will trump or supercede the conviction of those hypnotized by the philosophy of the Devil. Thanks for restoring this perspective.

However…

I’m a big fan of, “when in Rome, speak as the Romans do.” By lifting the sheet covering the corpse of the senseless destruction of the innocent, I wish to challenge nihilism on it’s own terms (while simultaneously remembering that the Christian objective truth trumps the unbelieving subjective). I can best do this through the offering of metaphysical and logical hypotheses that challenge the logic of the unbeliever and stops (hopefully) nihilism in it’s tracks, beating it at it’s own game. This, I think, is a good response to those who refuse to subscribe to the magazine of “faith”. I will do this in subsequent posts in this forum.

Thanks again,

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

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Hi Jay,

You’re welcome!

Shalom