vol VII: Notes
1999
Notes
[Notebook DB 52A Mathesis]
[Sunday 14 November 1999 - Saturday 20 November 1999]
Sunday 14 November 1999
1) Church could claim religious immunity, if it kept to itself, but since it has a large input to human affairs, it must be answerable for its actions.
2) Pope and Church claim sovereign immunity. Such doctrine can no longer be held, GOD = UNIVERSE is sovereign and Church must answer to God [DIVINE RIGHT OF POPES]
3) Principle problem is lack of manoeuvrability of the Church caused by very low information processing to mass and power to mass ratios, like a dinosaur or a supertanker. Equivalent to teacher /
[page 85]
student ration of 1 : 1 Gig [billion]
4) Xianity (and its peers, Buddhism, Hindu, Moslem etc etc) have been responsible for massive extinctions of local religious culture just as the capitalist culture associated with Xianity has been responsible for the extinction of many local cultures and economic systems. SPIRITUAL EXTINCTION
5) The Church has always done its best to exterminate opposition. The political course from monarchy t0 democracy requires that one embraces the opposition, converting it into a loyal opposition that then integrates into the dialectic and dialogic process of deriving effective action from the superposition of possibilites represented by the inputs of all individuals into government.
6) Content of Xian promise of Kingdom of Heaven looks shonkier and shonkier as the evidence rolls in, to point where it is now clearly in violation of the trade practices legislation Q? How many seat are available in heaven for the public ballot as a percentage of the number of people who have lived. 1/n > ε > 0 probably.
[page 86]
7) Church feeds on fear of death, bringing resources to itself, so increasing power and fitness, by a purely bullshit promise that it cannot deliver, The two legs that the Church stands on are in effect . . . that God is other, and [that] we are destined for that other world of eternal life. The only evidence for this is miracles, by definition statistically improbable and unrepeatable events that cannot come within the purview of science or evidence based religion.
The pope is in the position of trying to steer a large ship by looking through a tiny peephole (the gospels) at reality.
8) Parmenides is a rationalist, giving arguments to bolster a position already taken. The Church acts in the same way, since it must rationalize its constitutional fictions or collapse from lack of foundation. Or we can refound it on some new foundations based on observation. Mathematics contains all rationalizations, but they are all hypothetical until grounded in observed reality.
[page 87]
9) The Church, following Parmenides, declares the world imperfect because it does not measure up to a false idealism.
10) If the Church is to make progress, it must listen to the people it has murdered, physically and spiritually and those it has deprived of a livelihood, authenticity and the full beatitude of life.
Monday 15 November 1999
Tuesday 16 November 1999
Rate of evolution is determined by 'error' rate in genome. Same goes for cultural evolution. Church acts as a brake on cultural evolution by attempting to detect and correct errors in human culture. To do this it takes a large part in education and the preservation of cultural texts, memes, etc etc.
[page 88]
'Cuneiform laws' Enyclopedia Britannica: Written as though inspired by gods. Editors, Encyclopedia Britannica
Demythologization Demythologization - Wikipedia
Europe Since Napoleon David Thompson, Penguin Thompson
Thompson page 46: 'But in revolution legends are powerful and ghosts can walk.'
page 51: 'It was only when populations found French masters n less exacting that their old regimes that they were fired with ideas of self government.'
Sovereignty of the people.
'The French revolutionaries spread liberalism by intention but created nationalism by inadvertence.'
page 54: 1798: Pitt introduced income tax.
page 58: '[Napoleon] had a lively sense of the
[page 89]
political importane of religion.'
Concordat with Pius VII Concordat of 1801 - Wikipedia
Thompson page 60: '[Napoleon] claimed to derive authority from the present; fro popular will.
Local theory suggests that power comes from the locality.
The roots of global unity are to be scientific spirituality.
page 97: 'In 1919 it was assumed that all European nations would in future be democratic in structure, and therefore sufficiently like minded and eace loving to make the machinery of the League of Nations work effectively.'
pAGE 98: 'the nineteenth century was destined from the start to beone of unusual restlessness , mobility and revolution.'
REACTION - CONTINUITY - CHANGE - REVOLUTION
Rates of change must not induce such great forces as to disrupt the fabric of the changing system,
[page 90]
Thompson page 90: monarchy = dynastic absolutism
page 1032" 'The administration of the Papal States . . . was one of the worst in Italy. By 1812 the powers were even obliged to issue a complaint against the abuses which included at one extreme an uncontrollable brigandage and at the other an oppressive political police.
page 104: 1817 Pius VII triumphal return to Rome.
page 105: 'In France, Joseph le Laistre and the Vicomte de Bonald linked insistence on the supreme need for order with support for the legitimist monarchy and the power of the Papacy.
page 110: 1817 Britain suspended habeas corpus.
page 111: 1815-1854 peace with revolution and civil war.
1854-1878 war.
page 112: 1815-1914 40 mllion emigrants.
page 116: 'Industrial revolution : economic life tok on a ruthlessness, a spirit of inumanity and fatalism that it had not known before.'
[page 91]
Thompson page 118: {ruler, subjects} → {state, citizens}
p> page 120: GWF Hegel new philosophy of authority and state pwer.page 122: Spain: popular resistance to Napoleon led by lower clergy and monks.
page 194: Chartism.
One has seen governments develop social welfare over the ast 150 years and make a deep attack on material poverty. All the time, spiritual poverty has been, in general increasing. Now we need concerted community attack on spiritual poverty, which might begin by breaking the ancient Church hegemony on spirituality which mimics the ancient ruling class control of wealth = a reversal of Marxist materialism.
page 198: Socialism : Russeau
need competition ⨁ cooperation.
[page 92]
cooperate in competing; compete in cooperating.
Communist manifesto 1948. Spiritual manifesto 1/Jan/2000 [?]
Thompson page 204: Pius IX liberal.
Fundamental fact of spirituality is death
Wednesday 17 November 1999
The Roman Catholic Church claims ownership of a human spirituality on earth. So how big must it be to contain all these spirits?
ℵ0
Paul Avis: The methods of Modern Theology Avis
Avis page xi: 'The purpose of this book is to give an in depth critical introduction to the methods of modern theology.
[page 93]
'I am not aware of any other comprehensive, critical and comparative study of the methods of modern thelogy.'
Avis page 1: Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768-1834
. . . generally recognised as the founder of modern Protestant theology. Friedrich Schleiermacher - Wikipedia
. . .
page 1: '. . . he [S] undertook a complete resscontruction of Christian theology. He did this by reorientating theology toward religious experience and the highest achievements of human culture.'
[page 94]
Avis page 2: 'The Enlightenment had revealed the possibility, for the first time, of an autonomous secular culture and early Romanticism was opening up horizons of human experience to which the Christian faith appeared to have nothing to say.
a) full weight to the subjective element;
b scientific footing
c) stick to empirical
d) immanent presence of God.
page 3: 'dogmatics: 'the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time'.
church history: 'exegetics'
social dimensions 'statistics'
doctrine: 'the Christian religious affections set forth in speech.'
page 4: Christian doctrines 'have their ultimate ground . . . exclusively in the motions of the religious self-consciousness.
Reference point of theology: Scripture / religious experience
[page 95]
Avis page 5: critical correlation of traditional doctrines with what he [S] regarded as essential Christian feeling.
page 6: 'On his deathbed. S testified, "I am compelled to think the profoundest speculative thoughts and to me they are identical with the deepest religious feelings.".'
page 7: 'One of the fundamental methodological claims of his dogmatics is that the contents of Christian doctrine must remain wholly uncontaminated by the intrusion of philosophical considerations.'
Kant: reason cannot attain to the knowledge of ultimate reality
page 8: 'S also came to reject Kant's ethics of duty, replacing it with his own concept of self-fulfilment.'
[Ie maximize personal survival technology.]
page 10: Trinity not part of Christianity 'This is because the doctrine of the trinity is both inferential and speculative.
page 11: 'Christian doctrine must be presented independently of any philosophical system.
Yes, via mathematical models.
[page 96]
Avis page 11: 'There is therefore no scope in Schleiermacher's method for the deliverances of Christian consciousness to be tested against independent rational criteria — these simply have no competence in this sphere.'
page 12: essence of Christian faith 'that everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.'
page 12: valid doctrine = 'what is "officially maintained and accepted without provoking official opposition".'
'Thus S argues . . . that statements about the attributes of God refer only to human states of consciousness.'
What is intellectual brilliance and spiritual depth? What is ultimate reality? A virtual feeling?
page 13: 'He clearly approaches his task with presuppositions about the limits of our knowledge of ultimate reality.'
Barth: must accept the possibility of knowledge in the light of the reality of divine revelation.
[page 97]
Avis page 13: God 'the unconditional and absolutely simple.'
page 14: 'central principle of religious experience - absolute dependence is inconsistent with personally activated action.
' "there is no sensation that is not pious" '
Schleiermacher wants theology to be 'closed' but no hope : it is one with all other knowledge and culture.
page 16: Insight: Plato's seventh letter. Seventh Letter (Plato) - Wikipedia
page 18: Barth : The God of S cannot show mercy.
page 20: 'We are conscious of sin whenever our God-consciousness determines our self-consciousness as pain. {???]
'(b) It is a sound principle where questions of theodicy are concerned that failure to accept the fundamental irrationality of evil, to look it in the face and see what it is, leads to a less rather than a more rational and adequate answer to the problem of evil.
Evil is perfectly rational. Evil is relative.
[page 98]
Avis page 21" 'S's idealist presuppositions do not allow him to ascribe reality to the fact of evil; this is a fundamentally irrational position shot through with illusion.
page 22: ' "miracle is simply the religious name for event" .' S
S: 'Every original and new communication of the universe to man is a revelation. . . . Every intuition and every original feeling proceeds from revelation.'
page 24: Albrecht Ritschl, 1822 - 89.
Luther had taught that what God was in himself is no concern of ours.
integrtating principle = membership of church.
Karl Barth 1886 - 1968
'His aim in the beginning was to deliver a prophetic message in the name of the Apostles, the Fathers and the Reformers.
[page 99]
of natural theology in all its forms, focussing the attention solely on the revelation of God in his word, Jesus Christ.
Avis page 36: 'The free and masterful virtuosity that Barth here attribute to S is, however, certainly meant to imply arrogance, dilettantism and even treachery to the Christian faith.'
page 37: Aquinas nature : grace :: reason : revelation
page 38: Barth; 'infinite qualitative distinction between nature and grace.'
page 40: 'The development of Barths thought on theological methods can be seen, genetically, as a continuous dialogue with S.
Barth lumps Aquinas and Schleiermacher together as a two headed theological monstrosity
page 42: 'errors' of S caused B to question the
[page 100]
'providential mission of protestantism.'
Barth set out to construct a 'corresponding counter-achievement to Schleiermacher.'
Avis page 43: 'It is true to say that "Karl Barth's formidable attack on all forms of natural theology is one of the major events in twentieth-century religious thought" (Brown page 533).'
page 44: 'However any future natural theology will have to pass through the refining fire of Barth's protest. It will have to show that the objectivity, rationality and transcendent reference of divine revelation are in no way compromised but rather affirmed.'
There is no objectivity, rationality or transcendence in so called 'divine revelation.'
All of this is an example of creativity of the universe, legends in their own minds, bootstrapping.
Avis page 45: 'In fact, justification is not correlative to good works; it is correlative to merit. It is sanctification that correlates to good works.
[page 101]
'Apologetics is the enterprise of building bridges between the Christian message and those it is intended to reach.'
Ie public relations, advertising, bullshit, etc.
Avis page 48: Barth's system 'a gigantic celestial tautology'.
page 49: 'For modern theology, the road leads from religious experience - rather than from history or philosophy to God, is the most favoured route.
Barth is fundamentally sceptical of experience.
page 52: 'He would not allow that theology could be determined by social, cultural and idealogical factors, for this would compromise the sole determination by the Word of God.' (Church Dogmatics II i, page 172 ff) Barth
page 56: 'The great paradox that generates the momentum of Barth's theological method is that the revelation of God comes to us clothed in the garments of creatvity, reality and the truth of God is offered for the apprehension of sinful fallen minds. The form that the Word of God is constrained to take is therefore the forms of the cosmos that stands in contradiction to God.' [This is pure crap - who constrains God?]
[page 102]Avis page 61: 'Without prior knowledge of God, revelation will always remain in an unintelligible language.'
Method in this book simply means 'assumptions', ie things taken for granted to get on with the job. The method of plumbing takes the properties of lead as given.
page 66: 'It is the recognition of what analogy implies about the openness and interrelatedness of the world that we experience through sense impressions that leads Aquinas to assert that the ascent of natural theology to God through the creatures and the descent of revelation embodied in sensory images travel the same staircase.
ie SYMMETRY
page 67: 1956 Barth lecture 'The humanity of God.
[page 103]
Barth: 'God does not exist without man". "God is human" (Humanity, p 38 ff, 47 ff, London 1967 Barth
Avis page 68: Barth on Schleiermacher: 'As if pneumatology was anthropology!'
page 70: Wolfhart Pannenberg 1928 - [2014] Wolfhart Pannenberg - Wikipedia
page 71: Theogy: 'to understand all reality in relation to God, and vice versa.
page 72: Revelation open to rational discussion and investigation = historical research + philosophical criticism.
modern thought: 'open rationality of the enlightenment'.
Pannenberg means to exclude all authoritarian methods and al l appeals to self-authenticating facts.
Pannenberg contra Barth
history
religion
scientific method.
FORM → evolution: = explanation
→ structure : = current state
[page 104]
The notion of studying method separate from subject is an artificial and useless distinction. One learns method by doing the job.
Avis page 75: 'Pannenberg brands Barth's attempt to obtain immunity from rational criticism by accepted standards of truth and error as an 'immense arrogance' leaving his claim an 'empty assertion'.
sed contra . . . B's stress on the actuality, the givenness of revelation [which is pure delusion].
Peer review, while the best method available, leaves the way open for whole communities (eg Christian theologians) to share in a common delusion.
The radical problem with theology is that there is no empirical feedback.
page 76: Feuerbach interpreted the idea of God as merely a projection of human feelings.
Ie anthropomorphisation of the whole.
Pannenberg: 'theological anthropology nowadays has the
[page 105]
status of a form of fundamental theology
'Theoretical discourse tends to assume (erroneously) [?] that it can speak of its object in a detached way without personal engagement.'
Avis page 77: Pannenberg: 'The reality of God or of divine power can only be proven by its happening (Widerfahrnis), namely that it proves itself powerful within the horizon of current experience of existence (BQT II, 104) Pannenberg
page 78: man's innate power of transcendence, his openness to and beyond the world and the future, which demands the reality of God . . . [this is Lonergan type twaddle which merely says that we are and act as part of something bigger].
page 79: Hegel - totality; 'The question of truth of Christianity can only be answered by reference to the whole of reality.' — Protestant iberalism very narrow = individual ethics.
God: Pannenberg: 'the reality that determines al created reality.'
'To restrict our theological inquiries to some supposed
[page 106]
sacred precinct, whether of religious experience (Schleiermacher) or a revelation regarded as a positive datum (Barth) is to diminish God (TPS, pp 302, 264f). Pannenberg
avis page 80: 'fallen' world. 'models or hypotheses'
All escapism: we are special children of God who will not die.
'The God who reveals himself is none other than the reality that creates all reality.'
page 82: 'But the meaning of particular events is only disclosed in the light of the whole there is therefore a need for a universal historical horizon in order to establish the events of revelation and all other events.'
page 83: 'But while it is imperative for us to think of reality as a whole . . . both Cristian theology ad he negative dialectic of neo-Marxist theory remind us that reality is still fragmented and incomplete: its wholeness does not yet exist. (BQT III, 133) [What arrogant crap] Pannenberg[page 107]
Avis page 84: 'It is a common assumption of the old methodological dualism that explanation is the am of natural sciences and understanding that f the human sciences.' [????]
Christianity is the monumental self delusion of people who are afraid of death and want to destroy the lives of others so that they may live - Malthusian roots. Malthusianism - Wikipedia
Christianity = conscious [non?]-Malthusianism.
Essay: defined doctrine = shared delusion.
page 86: Pannenberg: 'Theology can do justice to Christianity only if it is not a science of Christianity but a science of God.'
Empire: seeking personal immortality [Augustus] by the extinction of others [conquest]. Augustus - Wikipedia
FORM = sequence of actions / events [algorithm]
'Thus the religious experience of individuals is always found in connection with the historical religions and owes its intersubjective relevance entirely to this connection.'
