You don’t know what Christianity is, and you don’t know what idol worship is like.
I haven’t checked Pageau out yet. I must do so. Yes I got that sense about taking nothing literally first from Tillich and then Kierkegaard. When you do that a lot it changes how you perceive the contents of your own mind. I read Peterson’s tome “Maps of Meaning”. I was already watching his college lectures before he hit the big time. Harris’s cookbook analogy misses the pragmatism of Peterson’s hermeneutic. To the degree that one’s map makes one’s life meaningful and full of color-- voila! success!
Yeah yeah. I used to preach the gospel in the streets. I know. One could say Paul invented Christianity. But, it isn’t quite right to say that one who is possessed by a spirit is inventing the things that come out of that passion. Paul said that Christ was a lifegiving spirit. In his letters he pretty much ignored the teachings of Jesus. If one supposes that he subverted the import of Jesus’ message one can’t be proved wrong. Neither can it be proved wrong that he captured the spirit of Jesus’ message. There aren’t enough facts. Just enough for academics to debate the issue forever. But the myth is there. And it’s rich enough to generate infinite interpretations. The problem isn’t a lack of meaning. It’s too much to limit it to a single dogma. There’s genius in that. I’ll check out Holland too.
Paul’s vision of Jesus came to him unbidden from the collective unconscious. He was a Merkabah mystic who ascended to the third heaven.
Christian magic has a long tradition youtu.be/APQn6M3gJcY
It was suppressed by the proto-orthodox, book-burning types. There’s a lot of gnosticism in Paul himself. But, the authoritarians dogmatized it into a formula and discouraged people from the first-hand experience and the creative expression of it. “Same as it ever was” as David Burn would say.
I do. I don’t know how the experience is distributed. Religiously you get into the doctrines of grace and election which ultimately explain nothing. Or you can go with the personality types. The trait of openness seems to have something to do with it. Anyway I’m very close with people who have little in common with me spiritually. They let me do my thing and I let them do theirs. We enjoy the diversity of each other. I get along every day with people much like Madman P. From what I see of Scandinavia I think I would like it there. If this pandemic ever ends maybe I’ll visit.
youtu.be/-qGfkFlZKgA I watched this. Two propositions particularly resonated with me. One was the impossibility of viewing the world as the people of the classical era did due to our own historical point of view as described by Holland. The other is the phenomenological approach to symbols espoused by Pageau. That’s what I’ve been doing. It’s a matter of experience not belief per se.
Yeah, I’m not sure you’re qualified to interpret what other people are saying given your track record with me…
Harris and Peterson disagree on this topic and the people in this thread are leaning more toward team Peterson than Harris.
That is either unresponsive to my post or assuming your conclusion…
How is religious imagery or symbolism any more profound than what we find in Harris’ cookbook?
Or are you suggesting that the religious stories take hold because people don’t have anything profound and therefore seek it out in bronze age fairy tales?
Every time I see your name, I think “Madame P.”
should i take this to mean that i have misunderstood you?
honestly i think the difference between the two is more of a nuance than it is one of paradigm
peterson’s position is also secular and also heavily based on modern day neuroscience and psychology
Repeatedly
It’s a fairly critical divide, if you were to ask me… or Sam.
You may not be willing to discuss that difference or think it trivial, that’s your prerogative…
But I would very much like to hear the answer to my query…
kinda surprising that you have to ask this
like
what’s the difference between the monalisa
and some ink splat my pen made on my shirt when it exploded?
the artist, the sculptor, the musician, the poet
are deliberately looking into themselves to find something meaningful to express
their works are inspired
and as such
they strike us immediately when we see/hear them
and we’re moved by them
they ring true
if you can’t tell the difference between a piece of art and an ink stain
or between a poem and a fish recipe
what does that make you?
if i’m misunderstanding you, please clarify
i have a coarse personality but it is mostly for humor
am talking in good faith
Assume for a moment we’re having a philosophical discussion
You know where it’s not insane to ask why murder is bad… or why the mona lisa is art and your ink splat isn’t.
Are you arguing religious stories are works of fiction, like any other such artistic expression?
Because, that I could agree with… If we’re critiquing it as such, I wouldn’t call it inspired.
But hey, some people LOVE the transformers movies… there’s no accounting for taste, right?
I’m fairly certain the authors of the bible were writing fiction and trying to pawn it off as fact…
It took a lot of people being whipped, tortured and even burned alive for heresy to make it “ring true” and become “moving”
Not sure these stories or the imagery qualify by the standards you’re putting down… as art they are fairly meh
Or maybe their value is similar to a Jackson Pollock painting… it’s a bunch of ink splats that allow you to interpret their significance.
A mirror for you to admire yourself in, but credit the painting, so as to seem modest when you dote on yourself.
Where is the pit of nihilism you were warning me about?
Where does that enter into the picture?
I agree that art is enriching, music, architecture, painting, poetry etc
But we don’t have to fawn over every painting as though all of art is in peril, nay our very ability to value, if we but dismiss one painting as sub-par or Odin forbid, ugly.
I can relate… 
On the other hand, what’s the difference between a urinal that you piss in and a urinal you display in an art museum?
Okay, but what of philosophers reading this and attempting to conclude whether it is either the optimal or the only rational assessment of the world of artists.
And artists are themselves no less the embodiment of particular historical and cultural and circumstantial contexts. They too are no less influenced by the actual experiences and relationships and access to ideas that came to become the life that they lived.
Only, in most instances, disagreements about art only rarely result in the sort of consequences that can come about as a result of disagreements over religious or moral or political prejudices.
Still, dasein is everywhere in the art world
More to the point [mine] are those who reconfigure this into: if you don’t agree with my own take on a piece of art or a poem what does that make you?
On the other hand, how on earth do we go about clarifying something that revolves so profoundly and problematically around conflicting artistic tastes and visions?
youtu.be/YpOkMmWZnOY Background to Lecture VIII Abrahamic Stories, with Matthieu & Jonathan Pageau
The Pageau brothers are looking at things from the spiritual perspective of the traditional cosmology. This perspective answers different questions than the materialistic modern one which asks how does it work? What is it made of? The spiritual perspective asks what does it mean? What higher truth does it embody?
Materialistic cosmologies describe phenomena in terms of energy, matter, space and time. The biblical cosmology describes reality in terms of heaven earth space and time.
In the context of the spiritual worldview a symbol is a fact that embodies higher meaning. Symbols have a metacognitive function in this cosmology because they’re miniature representations of the entire cosmos.
The traditional cosmology doesn’t describe the natural world. It’s a model in which consciousness mediates between spiritual and corporeal realities as symbolized by heaven and earth.
I think it was you who pointed me to Peterson, for which I thank you. I listened to Maps of Meaning rather than read it. I had the diagrams etc. in a PDF file. He covered so much in that; it is no wonder he needed so long to write it. Pageau is different to Peterson but is eloquent enough to point out the connections of modern symbolism with archetypal symbolism. He has several videos touching various subjects.
I think Paul went off on his own to begin with, and his teaching was very much different to what the Jewish Christians were teaching. It was more a cosmic view. He thought that those Christians were missing the universality of Christ and were still preaching a Jewish Messiah – different to what orthodox Jews were used to, struggling with the curse of the one “hung on a tree” but here and there still accepted as pious Jews.
The thing that Holland discovered was that western thought is riddled with Christianity, which surprised him, because he was brought up on the classics. He thought that the Greek influence was larger. Of course, Christianity adopted a lot from the Greeks, so in a way he was right, but it was the Christian slant that surprised him.
I think we forget the influences in the middle ages that had substance, although there were enough people around who were selling something different under that name.
I think that the “book-burners” came later. To begin with a vast diversity spread, especially after 70 AD when the dispersion took place. It became difficult to say what Christianity was, and the Gnostics were diverse in themselves. I think that we can see from Dag Hammadi that there was also a quality difference too. It may be me looking at those books with 21st Century eyes, but there is much that, today, we wouldn’t recognise as Christianity. That is what I took away from Elaine Pagel’s books.
Yes, Scandinavia has a lot of attraction. I went to Norway once and found it refreshingly different to Germany and much better than the UK. Of course, one trip doesn’t tell you anything really. It is always a diversity of things that makes up an impression of a country.
Right. I am immersing myself in the Pageaus. I subscribed to his YouTube channel and I’m reading his brother Matthieu’s book “The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis” on Kindle. My previous post reflected that.
I agree with what you say about Paul. He was laboring under a grand narrative. It had more to do with who he understood Jesus to be than what Jesus taught. The problem is all we have is a few letters from the guy written to churches with immediate problems. It’s not a systematic theology, and we’re reading it [if we’re reading it at all] through a historical lens that’s 2000 years thick. We have both not enough information and too much.
I’ve been aware of the Christian influence for a long time through reading Tillich, and many others. Of course the Evangelicals took that to far with their claim that the USA is a Christian nation. Yes and No. The liberals here said “no the founders were mainly deists etc.” which has a lot of truth. But, Deism came out of Christianity. Thomas Paine’s critique of Christendom is shot through with Christian values. Hell, atheists define themselves in terms of theism. Richard Tarnas’ “The Passion of the Western Mind” is a good one on the origins and influences of the Western mindset. The church Christianized classicism. Of course that turned it on it’s head. And that was what Nietzsche saw so clearly and what Pageau and Holland elucidate in their discussion.
My impression is that during the medieval period, Europe came about as close as in ever was to being united under a single cohesive world view, what Tillich calls a theonomy.
According to the book of Acts, chapter 19 some of Paul’s converts burned books:
How widespread the practice was at that time I don’t know. I entertain the propositions of Gnosticism along with other forms of Christianity which I like to abbreviate as Xianity. They give it more breadth, diversity and depth.
I’ll soon turn 71 and I’ve never been to Europe, the birth place of my world view. My family came from Alsace-Lorraine. The rampant pandemic has made Americans unwelcome there at the moment, I understand. I would like to visit if and when that becomes possible.
What interested me about the Pageau brothers was the way they described the cosmology of the Bible, like you say, portraying Heaven and Earth, and the realisation of the heavenly plan on Earth. This cosmology goes through the whole OT and has been redacted to become a narrative leading up to the one, the left-over from Israel, where finally heaven has a worthy representative and reveals the heavenly plan. I think this is what Paul grasped and tried to impart, frustrated as he must have been with all the problems the churches were having.
I recently saw a video from an Australian Pastor, Paul Wallis, who discovered that the OT stories originated in with the Sumerians and by taking out the name Jahweh and replacing it with Elohim, a plural for the Gods, you had stories that have a very big similarity with the epics of pre-biblical times. This way, he said, you don’t get the struggle that seems to take place in Jahweh, instead it is a council of the Elohim that has an argument over what to do with human beings. The Elohim are, what a surprise, an alien race – “sky gods”.
I’m not sure how that holds up. The explanations of the Pageau brothers seem to make more sense and using this cosmology you have something that isn’t instantly at odds with science, but on a completely different plane. I think we have to acknowledge that the ancients saw the struggles of mankind under the roof of the seemingly eternal cosmos, with multitudes of stars and galaxies, and thought that we have to become humbler. Humility is something that is also lacking today. The instalment of heaven on earth is delayed until we get wise.
What interests me about them generally is their command of traditional symbolism and their ability to apply them to the contemporary cultural moment. This symbolic world view is not something that begs for acceptance on the basis of fitting into the objective modern scientific paradigm. It’s an alternative way of looking at the world which is self-validating for those who choose to look at things this way.
I remember back in the '90s when I was working for the state one of my co-workers a guy who was a militant Catholic Evangelical asked me if I believed in God. I replied that “I can” and answer that he didn’t like at all. It was a conversation stopper. What I meant was that I could look at things that way through that symbolic worldview or I could look at things through the lens of secular a modern worldview. It’s a choice.
The Pageaus are well aware of this. In one of the videos Mattieu flips back and forth between a scientific paradigm and the traditional symbolic one adroitly. Jonathan’s forte is interpreting modern culture through the symbolic paradigm as he does in the Pepe the frog dialogue with Jordan Peterson.
Interesting that you mentioned the theory that religion originated as the results of visitation from space aliens. I’ve listened to a variety of presentations of that theory online and I have a friend who holds it. It’s a theory that asks to be accepted on the basis of the scientific paradigm. However, it seems to work like a conspiracy theory. That is there are unexplained architectural artistic and mythological phenomena. The alien visitation theme is mapped over the phenomena to explain them. The scientific experts in the fields reject the theory has pseudoscience on the basis of the preponderance of evidence. This then is viewed as a kind of scientific community tyranny by people who like the alien story. Watching the battle unfold is a bit like watching the alt-right battle with the social justice warriors and not feeling like one belongs in either group.
The thing I can’t do is get into a mindset that only looks at the world through one lens. I have internalized too many philosophies religions and worldviews over the course of my life for me to do that. It’s rather like having many pairs of glasses to wear and to look through. Which pair will serve me best in the situation I face today? It’s a question we each have to answer. If the worldviews are meta cognitive structures, then my ego is a metameta cognitive structure. Then I can ask whether my choice is free or determined by unconscious factors. At that point I am in a state of aporia, the land of uncertainty. The circle of what is known to me is encompassed by the infinite unknown.
I agree, but it also doesn’t clash because it is a different way of looking at the world. It is a different perspective, which anyone can adopt to get a kind of 3D look at existence.
It very much is. I think that is the part that my previous evangelic contacts have a problem with when they meet me. I chose to go a different path, for good reasons that I’m not going to lay out for them. One aspect was, however, the change of vocation at 35 and looking at life through the eyes of the weak, sick, and dying. I went into it with a haughty evangelical assuredness and came out the other side realising that humility was lacking.
The problem with such theories, as far as I’m concerned, is that they have no real answers, and they are professing more a hope than anything else. They hope that someone will come and sort out this mess, rather like the Star Trek story of first contact after a world war. Of course, the Sumerian stories do pose questions and there is a vast time period before the younger Dryas that could contain such a story, but Paul Wallis is also sure that the worlds Governments have been in contact for some time with aliens.
I think that this is our situation today. We have access to so many traditions and there are people doing work on them, so we are confronted with differing perspectives on a regular basis. The symbolic approach helps contain the multitude of traditions and assists us to choose what is helpful at any time. I have long ago appreciated the Buddhist wisdom and it may have influenced my Christian understanding (The Christ in you), but I also looked at the various areas in which Thomas Merton was engrossed, including Taoism. We also had a German theologian who wrote books full of Christian Mystic quotes, but also American Indians, Sufi mystics, Jewish mystics and various Far East wisdom. His idea was that the reality that we call God is too big (and too small) to be restricted by our concepts.
3D–that’s a good way to put it.
Yes. My time with the Evangelicals informs me that secularists stereotype them as do they stereotype secularists. In a way I stand on the boundary between the two. The stereotypes themselves are not without an element of truth. But there is so much more to the persons themselves. And the task of understanding the Other isn’t easy. At the very least it involves opening to the cognitive dissonance in oneself and empathy.
The Alien Conspiracy Theories [ACT] reflect the alienation people today have from the modern state. Government officials have lied to people and broken the trust it takes to maintain social cohesion. The ACT gives symbolic representation to this. Of course, every government is encompassed by a higher level of order that it unknown. ACT imagizes that fact.
Who is the German theologian you’re referring to? That description could apply to Tillich. These days I’m thinking in terms of perennial wisdom I have found at the core of many cultures.
I do have issues with Pageau’s acceptance of Trump’s attitudes towards the LGBTQ community and his equivocation regarding Alex Jones. Trump is a liar without integrity who fluidly talks on both sides of any issue that serves his political or financial interests. Pageau praised Alex Jones’s symbolic insight and stated that he is not delusional. I think Jones is delusional and a preacher of hate as well. As evidence of this I submit his delusional attacks on the parents of the children who were murdered in the Sandy Hook daycare massacre.
So Pageau’s assessments make me question his judgment as a political observer. Is he naive or does he have a political agenda? He claims to be possess wisdom. So naivete would mean that he’s mistaken at least on this point. Jordan Peterson is looked at as a hero by the so-called alt-right. But I find some of the criticisms of him by the Left to be unjustified. He claims to be seeking ground in the political center. Pageau also identifies with the political center. But so far I’ve seen them both to be more critical of the Far Left than the Far Right. I’ll continue to look into it.
The theologian was named Jörg Zink. Probably unknown outside of Germany.
Yes, I think there are issues where he doesn’t care enough. He is only interested in the symbolic side, which is too little.
Yes, Pageau isn’t perfect and I think he should be asked these questions. Peterson, I think, is trying to focus on science, common sense and the wisdom of traditions. I haven’t seen him take sides, except expressing his thoughts on Brexit, which came at a difficult time and weren’t thought through.
Okay let’s try an example. How would Pageau treat this issue in terms of the symbolic cosmology?
I have a friend who likes to tell this story to illustrate the problem. He says his cousin was so thrilled when his 11-year-old daughter accepted Jesus. A few years later she came home and asked where is heaven? He answered her “out beyond the universe”. She replied, “How did Jesus ascend to heaven? if you traveled at the speed of light he wouldn’t be out of the Milky Way galaxy yet.”
Now obviously his cousin and his daughter are thinking of the story of the Ascension in terms of the modern scientific cosmology whereas the story was written in the context of the traditional biblical cosmology. But how would Pageau address the Ascension in terms of the symbolic world to make it meaningful to people today? I have some thoughts on this based on my understanding of Pageau’s symbolic world so far. But you may have a clearer picture. So I’ll let you go first.
Okay let’s try an example. How would Pageau treat this issue in terms of the symbolic cosmology?
I have a friend who likes to tell this story to illustrate the problem. He says his cousin was so thrilled when his 11-year-old daughter accepted Jesus. A few years later she came home and asked where is heaven? He answered her “out beyond the universe”. She replied, “How did Jesus ascend to heaven? if you traveled at the speed of light he wouldn’t be out of the Milky Way galaxy yet.”
Now obviously his cousin and his daughter are thinking of the story of the Ascension in terms of the modern scientific cosmology whereas the story was written in the context of the traditional biblical cosmology. But how would Pageau address the Ascension in terms of the symbolic world to make it meaningful to people today? I have some thoughts on this based on my understanding of Pageau’s symbolic world so far. But you may have a clearer picture. So I’ll let you go first.