logic of an agnostic pantheist

"This is what God said: 'I promise that never again will all people and animals be destroyed by a flood. I am putting my rainbow in the clouds. And when the rainbow appears, I will see it and remember this promise of mine.'"

for despite all claims to an omniscient God, God in fact has something of a bad, or at least imperfect, memory. it is a memory that needs reminders of promises, the promise alone unable to substantiate itself. God needs aids as we need them. this imperfect memory defeats, first of all, assumptions of omniscience, knowledge being only sustained memories, and complete knowledge entailing a working memory of anything and everything, alpha and omega, first and final cause. the act of forgetting -- Forgetting being actually inherent to everything -- could not be a possibility were it a true case of omniscience. so, God does not know all (and indeed CANNOT know all anyway, as a thorough study of prophecy would show).

secondly, God's imperfect memory begets an altogether different reading of the scriptures, if they are indeed supposed to be God's Word. the bible is no less a historical telling by way of selective memory than the histories of humankind produced by its own imperfect collective memories. were we even to propose that God would be at least less inclined to error in his telling than humans, it would no more depreciate the weight, the heavy burdenous weight, of the condition of a possibility (and therefore SOME probability) for error; nor can it stave off the more immense problem that with limited memory (of any sort!) there is inherently, indispensibly, a perspective, a point-of-view, and necessarily, simultaneously, a bias in what is Told. alternate histories must therefore have alternate Gods, differentiated and distributed by people (or, the more likely case, pre-differentiated and pre-distributed by something human but unconscious or subconscious), people who themselves have points of view and biases. God(s) must be pluralistic. monotheism in its strong form then can only exist emically, in those cases of violent (abridging, omitting) isolationism, in self-limiting; in its weak form, monotheism must equate itself with pluralism of a sort, a closet monolatrism, whereby, just like "Love", only the name and the act of signification itself of SOMETHING (always something different) can serve a base for union.

it is important that we not view fundamentalism in an improper light; for by 'fundamentalist' in its colloquial usage, we often mean to simply imply an 'extremist,' and by 'extremist,' to take an extreme stance. in this layout, however, things are unfortunately distorted from the inside out. for we still view an extremem as a bilateral product, a position that is necessarily accompanied by a remote and more often than not dialectic converse, an opposite extreme. we view the extreme this way instead of as the nuance of an extremity, a line of growth projected outward from an indeterminable center of an asymmetrical body (indeed, indeterminable precisely due to this asymmetry). that is, not as a choice between the left and right hand, as (more or less mistakenly) posited on nearly all forms of modern globalizing governmental structures, but as the protrusive skeletal framework to one of multiple fingers, or manner of excess, like the penis or the nose, that shows no resemblance even to branching. while we have split the brain in two to further attempt to explain away our everyday behavioral functions and peculiarities via centralizing them in either one or the other half, we have maintained the heart’s basic holism, even allowing its oddly nonbisymmetrical shape and location on the left side of the chest. the circulatory system’s excessive faculty, serving the function of that name. the timelessly depicted rendezvous point for excessive emotion and stir for mobility. it is in fact the heart, not the head, that better portrays the nature of the extreme, to which the negative connotation in ‘extremism’ may be attributed where the results appear violent or undesirable. make no mistake, though, that we are all necessarily extremist at some frequent points in our lives, climatic stages to an unraveling storytelling and process of reasoning.

this more realistic portrayal of extremism is the only way through which to properly view fundamentalism. for in deriving the concept from the term’s ethnological roots, we understand it as an extremist adherence (which may or may not be conservative) to the most base literary fundamentals of a schooling. the Universal Darwinists are cemented to the principles of natural selection, with signs of their extremism appearing in the disregard (if not complete denial of) the other essential functions to evolution – ‘survival of the fittest’ is the world’s Absolute creed. the Sunnies and the Shi’ites now continue to dispel their rage of their political differences through violence and war sponsored by their each absolutely infallible version of Islam – despite that the Islamic doctrinal differences at the base of the politics is so trivial that such hatred and killing could hardly be proclaimed to have religious purposes in mind. and there are of course those Christians, most renownedly labeled fundamentalist Christians, who have perhaps spanned the course of history longer than any other form of fundamentalism (albeit in a wider variety of manifestations). it is also perhaps the most formidable fundamentalism, second to only one other in the world (which i will get to in a minute) but at the same time invariably linked to it. for Christianity, in its fundamentalist form, unlike the structure of Islamic fundamentalism which is foundationally religious and stems into a disparate but inseverable political arena, is political throughout; that is to say that the religion and its contextual political environments have since its propagation been so interwoven that the differences between them have by this day and age become inscrutable. thus why the insistence of a separation between church and state has nevertheless mostly resulted in its failure. thereby, the number one fundamentalist operation, so covert and widespread now that few would not hesitate to call it that, is the adherence to an American-based ultracapitalist model around which all developing conformist countries and globalizing societies revolve, beset from the start with past colonialist influences and reformations to thus be so conducive to this way of (the more subtle and thus perhaps more dangerous) neocolonialism.

if we approach these real world schemas with the left-hand-right-hand gestalt of extremism, we can, however painfully, justify these courses of theory and action as a very far right wing affiliation (the Son sits at the right hand of the Father), just another sort of manifestation within the diverse spectrum of beliefs. as such, it deserves the respect and toleration that all sorts are due, especially amid the ever growing awareness and necessity for international, intercultural cooperation. but that is precisely what throws fundamentalism outside of the categories for belief systems at the pragmatic stage – for Christianity rises among Christians, but fundamentalism is itself blind to the veracity of its host beliefs except as to whether or not the conditions of the host are sustainable – for it is at its rudimentary praxes uncooperative, unnegotiable. fundamentalism is not any kind of belief; it is a function by which a system of beliefs can assume a tyrannical or at least dominant position against other systems. and what is partly so dangerous about this is that it does not retain itself within the order from which it originated but breaches all manner of diplomacy, protruding further and further into eventually raping the substances of other intermingling orders – überChristians are captured by the fabricated rhetoric of politicians raving world progress in the name of the Father and are at once moved to challenge, and respond to being challenged by, the sciences, in converting by forgery the observations of their religious reality into those of a scientific one (i.e. Creationism); Universal Darwinism not only confounds the sciences (for it is not itself a science but an approach to science) by castrating of them their necessary degrees of complexity and permanently vague teleological conclusions (wherever they have any), but also destroys God. it is thus not anything so innocuous as a choice of the right versus the left (which is itself too limiting a model by which fundamentalism can operate), but an uncompromising literalism with solely proselytizing intentions, a forceful insemination by a distorted and relentless intercultural phenomenon.

miss truth

One of Science’s main contentions with religion is in its handling of the truth. For in this day and age, only religion can hold a person’s appreciation for lies, for this is most often how it reveals to us the truth. Indeed, some truths can only be understood through lies, which are not really lies so much as mistruths, imaginary elements that provide the contrast that is sometimes our only means to perceiving an important aspect of the real. As such, both conservative sciences and fundamentalist Religion (what we can call the ‘pseudoreligious’ in the same way that we call methods and institutions sub par of the natural sciences pseudosciences) make the same mistake in assuming that all knowable truths are explicit – with conservative science belaboring the attempt to make what is knowable explicit, and fundamentalist Religion what is explicit knowable. Both miss entire dimensions of reality, dimensions that are real as that they are manifest in the physical and mental and spiritual aspects of human being, and that are missed due to this myopic, monist and even violent assumption concerning the nature of truth. Only the spiritually healthy perhaps can develop an experienced appreciation for mistruths.

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

-- Thomas Paine

a supposition for spirituality

involutionary niche 1: conservative ritualism

this is the most stagnant of the niches in spiritual development and is primarily a top-down determined expression of a religion's or culture's (mostly past) intention to incarnate the spiritual into symbolically meaningful praxis. the ritual performed from this niche in its relationship to one's spirituality greatly resembles the crossword puzzle or riddle to one's mentality, or even masturbation to one's physicality, in that at most it sustains or merely stimulates the faculties of the respective aspect of human being. change in respect to the ritual is mostly passive, derived from custom or ruling (thus the top-down scheme), and in fact the conservatism of its application requires a minimal of internal reflection or external informative influences.


involutionary niche 2: symbolistic institution

this requires knowledge of the ritual, if not the ritual itself, but expands it into the symbolic order of the religion or culture, as the responding procedure to the event of inquiry regarding the ritual -- the consensus to the inquiry 'why do we do this?' as it might possibly be answered with regard to the nature of what is spiritual. manifest ritual is explained through its relationship to the world.

(here is born the misconception of disparate worlds of being, that is, not that different modes of being [that accompany the diversity of perspectives and responses a person or a people may have to the world] occupy one existence ["we're all in this together!"] but that separate dimensions of existence [e.g. the divine and the natural] mysteriously occupy different times within one's singular mode of [potentially eternal] being. thus, we can also see from this the drive to submit oneself to [supposedly] unending occupation by forms of a separate existence as a goal to one's spiritual development [i.e. the invitation for the presence of christ to never leave me throughout my temporal Earth-based life].)

thereby, ritual is signified, made significant, by the education of its indoctrinated meaning. this niche is occupied by the greatest number of those whose vocation or inclination is to share doctrinal information ('spread the "Good News"') as it is by those who relate a tradition's signifiers to life as the final significance (or aspect of the final significance) to living.


involutionary niche 3: spiritual roundedness

the conditions of this niche have undoubtedly been most affectively experienced (though perhaps not yet sufficiently explained) by the world's most sincere mystics. however, most of these have likely failed to fulfill the niche, as i believe it requires as much a growing religiopolitical awareness as (if not more in the beginning than) the full-fledge impression of the real upon the sensible. for we must understand here that the real does not contain distinctions between the aspects of human being, and so the mental is as essential to pronounce in the symbolic order as the physical if the demands of the niche are to be met. human history and cosmology are quickly becoming active ingredients to this awareness and seem to promise to resolve the ritual to the most necessary praxes per individual or people, to suffice and sustain the remaining priorities of the spiritual that institutionalized religion and culture (qua State) cannot. (it may even require a further breach in consciousness that characterizes the stereotypical enlightenment of mystics, and scientists or artists.) among the terms of its range of perspectives is a dissolution of the human/divine dichotomy, and may include the same of the staticity to the self/other, Self/Other binaries. in any case, i believe it entails a consecration of the All, with oneself as fundamentally divine and Natural, as opposed to a consecration of merely one or the other. in a sense, it is dialectic, but to posit it in its explanation as merely a dialectical process is to miss by far the elements of its verity.

globalized song

Dr.

Martin Luther

King Jr. said

,

“Don’t let anyone make you

think that

God has chosen America

as [God's] divine messi

anic force to be reckoned with.”

There are compelling voices who

claim that God

has chosen America (not

the church)

as a special embodiment of hope for

the world, and then

there are times

(perhaps

in more recent history) where it

seems America em

bodies an anti

thesis of what God hopes

for.

U.S. flags

colonize the altars and the money is brand

ed “In God We Trust,” but

the economy is an eerie reflection of the seven deadly sins

listed in scripture, with a culture

dangerously close to the sins of Sodom, a culture the prophet Ezekiel describes as

“arrogant,

overfed, and

unconcerned.”

Given the fact that America and God’s kingdom are

not the same - and

are often at odds - how do

we resist the temptation

of thinking

that America, rather

than God or God’s

church, is the hope of the world?

-- "Questions for an Empire's Candidates"

by Shane Claiborne
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Indeed,
there is the case in which disbelief is only support for the construction of the object or substance, the ontology, disbelieved --

atheism is the validation of something divine to disbelieve.

The game of God is still played by those who deny God;

the Universal Conspiracy is potentialized (and thus given possibility and room for actuality) --

for this is the very nature of construction,

constructivism,

of nominalist becoming.

It's therefore also the very nature of disbelief, of denial.
In this scheme, of course we only continue to affirm the domain of choices

even by the choice not to choose.

But the problem with games is that we are capable, and often do, forget the rules. I have no contention with God if I have no memory of what God is,

or at least what God's about.
What you have proposed counter to this, my friend,

is the issue,

the superordinate problematic,

of power:

"But what if I kill you
[if you don't play the game]
?"

We are playing life-or-death --

literally, another game with overlaying rules to the above.
Religions,
at least those parts that contend with power --

the dominant and the oppressed,
death and fear of it --

hold the card for challenging this game,

for they are their strongest in spiritual quality

(the origin of purpose for religions)

under the weakest conditions,
at the very brink of their supposed

losing.

(Thus, it is true that you really do sometimes win when you lose.)

Of course the idea is that power belongs to the winner, and that is how the domain of what we call the spiritual

transforms the game of power:

it wins by its loss,

by its surrender to death,

by its crucifixion,

by its Forgetting of death

and thereby of the rules

of the game of power.

As such, the superordination of power over the games of choice and belief and the like, is only so by its affiliation and not by some
intrinsic significance.

But isn't belief the very source
(or at least the vehicle)
to even Religion?

Let's say this:

you must be engaged in
something,
even if in nothing

(which validates there
being something)

We call this belief, passion, whatever you like.
But let's not forget the difference between religion and Religion,

the spirit and the institution.
One only exists by the game of power;

the other can't be contained.