A weedy florilegium

Why atheism today? — “The father” in God is thoroughly refuted; likewise “the judge”, “the rewarder”. Likewise his “free will”: he does not hear — and if he heard he would still not know how to help. The worst thing is: he seems incapable of making himself clearly understood: is he himself vague about what he means? — These are what, in the course of many conversations, asking and listening, I found to be the causes of the decline of European theism; it seems to me that the religious instinct is indeed in vigorous growth — but that it rejects the theistic answer with profound mistrust.
—Beyond Good and Evil; The Religious Nature; Nietzsche [my emphasis]

[...] the supreme right of deciding about religion, belongs to the sovereign power, whatever judgment he may make, since it falls to him alone to preserve the rights of the state and to protect them both by divine and by natural law.
[Theologico-Political Treatise, 199]

Where it is shown that authority in sacred matters belongs wholly to the sovereign powers and that the external cult of religion must be consistent with the stability of the state if we wish to obey God rightly.
[Theologico-Political Treatise, Ch. 19]

The third very fertile source of doubt is the fact that Hebrew verbs in the indicative mood lack the present, the past imperfect, the pluperfect, the future perfect, and other tenses most frequently employed in other languages; in the imperative and infinitive moods they are wanting in all except the present, and a subjunctive mood does not exist. Now, although all these defects in moods and tenses may be supplied by certain fundamental rules of language with ease and even elegance, the ancient writers evidently neglected such rules altogether, and employed indifferently future for present and past, and vice versâ past for future, and also indicative for imperative and subjunctive, with the result of considerable confusion.
—p. 109; c. VII, Of the Interpretation of Scripture; Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [Elwes]; Spinoza

The (f)ool says in his heart, “There is no (G)od.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does (g)ood.
—Psalms 14.1; RSV

1 The (f)ool says in his heart, “There is no (G)od.”
1.1 That is, “No (f)ool believes in God.”
1.11 ∀x(Fx⊃-Gx)
1.2 Clearly, this is an empirical claim: (a) Historically, why did it arise? Who said “There is no God.”? (b) Contemporarily, why does it persist? Do people say “There is no God.” in the manner in which the theist interprets the saying? How does the conflation of God and “good” factor in?
1.3 If a theist never personally met an atheist who claimed “There is no God”, would he be self-constrained (This is laughable; I mean “religiously constrained”—whoops, free will!) to believe ∃x(Fx&-Gx) dogmatically?
2 They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does (g)ood.
2.1 That is, “Fools are not good”, or “No fools are good”.
2.11 ∀x(Fx⊃-Gx)
2.2 How did this claim come about? What is the prerequisite or qualifier for a “good” action? Is it that which conforms to an established moral system? Is the presumption that the given moral system transcends all moral systems, and thus should any action run counter to it, that action is necessarily “bad”? Presumed transcendence must have an empirical consequence or some “leading to” which justifies the conclusions of “transcendence.” Back to Euthyphro!
3 Notwithstanding the external difficulty with such claims, we are left with no internally coherent argument. Yes, we have two statements, but, given that the Christian defines her God as “good,” both statements say exactly the same thing internally, within the Christian sphere of morality.
3.1 This brews a great potential for prejudicing, moral projection, should it be accepted that “reasoning” found in what has been cited is valid. It is not reasoning or rational; we are given two assertions which are the exact same proposition. No internal check as to validity can be made (We must not let the proper rules of reasoning get imprisoned within the domain of a moral system.); if we extract the terms to give them sense outside of the Christian nomenclature, we have meaningless babble.
3.2 Why is that? Well, let us define “fool”—Is it mere name-calling? What is the denotation? Arbitrary social division (There’s us! And then there’s them!)? When can I be certain that I have met a “fool”? By their actions or by my presumption, my prejudice?; let us understand what it means to have a proposition “in one’s heart” (—at birth or acquired?); “There is no God” has a term yet to be defined to the atheist’s satisfaction; the social and linguistic implications of “corruption” and “abominable” require sure meaning within the climate of the author and within the climate of contemporary adherents of such a belief beyond mere presumption; and finally, what is “good”?
3.3 I’m afraid reasoning such as this is all too ubiquitous. But my true question wonders at the infinite procedure which takes as backwards to the first moralizing event in the history of humanity. Who was the first moralizer? The first to see things as “x is Good; therefore, what you claim to be x is in fact not x. It is y. Anything not-x is Evil.” I suppose it’s an elementary question, but nonetheless, it is here.

In PDF form: assembling-and-authority.pdf

Are you a Hebrew? Are you one of the first Roman Christians? A Christian lawful to Jewish customs and tradition? Is this your century or theirs? Are these your politics or theirs? Your ethics or theirs? Where does the materialism and piety of your faith end and the true worship of your faith begin?

As for the Christian rites, such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, festivals, public prayers, and any other observances which are, and always have been, common to all Christendom, if they were instituted by Christ or His Apostles (which is open to doubt), they were instituted as external signs of the universal church, and not as having anything to do with blessedness, or possessing any sanctity in themselves. Therefore, though such ceremonies were not ordained for the sake of upholding a government, they were ordained for the preservation of a society, and accordingly he who lives alone is not bound by them: nay, those who live in a country where the Christian religion is forbidden, are bound to abstain from such rites, and can none the less live in a state of blessedness.
—Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Benedictus de Spinoza; pg. 76

The Judaeo-Christian Scripture says nothing of going to the blocky brick and mortar, putting on a tie, and worshipping this or that many times a week. However, we can take from Scripture that the first Christians met at least once a week. What was their reasoning for meeting at least once a week? Let’s take a stab at it.

2:37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
2:39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call.
2:40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.
2:41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.
2:42 And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship¹, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
2:43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
2:44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common²;
2:45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
2:46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house³, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
2:47 Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
—The Acts 2:38-47

The Jews went to synagogue routinely. We’ll concede any argument that Christians were just playing it up like Jews. So all religions do some routine (and traditional) activities? Not our issue right now, aside from it being implicit arguments for universal materialism which all the (superstitiously) religious wish to deny—but like I said, not our issue. So the Christians picked up some habits.

1 If you were given a chance to speak to God directly and ask as many questions as you like, as if to a wise master, would it be morally wrong of God to allow you to run out of questions?

1.1 The assumption is that no one, not even the authors of the Scripture, understands the teaching of God with absolute accuracy.

1.2 The interesting question is this: From where does the attrition to accuracy in a message originate? Is it with the speaker or is it with the listener? Can we even ask if God would be morally right or wrong to let one cease inquiry because of the flaw in human nature? Is it morally wrong for us to not learn how to generate newer and better questions after we’ve attained the knowledge to previous ones, given that God only answers the questions we directly ask? Elementum: There is a relationship between Morality and present Knowledge. What is it? Which precedes, if they are not temporally parallel? That is, can (negative) moral judgments be made against one bearing insufficient knowledge? Must morally right actions follow from sufficient knowledge? Can we even play deductive waltz with concepts such as these? (Are they invalid questions?)

1.21 Back to the original question:

Whence it follows, that if anyone wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole nation (not to speak of the whole human race), and to be understood by all men in every particular, he will seek to support his teaching with experience, and will endeavour to suit his reasonings and the definitions of his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding of the common people, who form the majority of mankind, and he will not set them forth in logical sequence nor adduce the definitions which serve to establish them. Otherwise he writes only for the learned—that is, he will be understood by only a small proportion of the human race.
—Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Benedictus de Spinoza; pg. 77

2 “And all that believed were together, and had all things common”

2.1 When you stand in Church, spinning circles and twirling about, are you absolutely certain those who stand next to you believe in exactly the same idea or conception of God that you believe in?

2.11 Aside from the epistemological can of worms I just opened up, we can take an easy path. No, it’s not exactly the same idea or conception, but it only varies in degree, not kind. Is someone standing next to me, as they sing praise and vomit the rhetoric of the Council of Nicaea, actually believing in the same God I believe in, just in a different flavor?

2.12 However, attend to that thought: Is it possible for someone to be standing next to you who does actually not believe in the same idea or conception of God as you? Can we translate the verb “believe” into a distinguishable action? Is spitting rhetoric what one does when he or she “believes?” How about drinking from a divine cup? Is that “believing” in action?

2.13 The biggest question here is: How do you know? If you do not know, then we have a dilemma. Are you assembling with possible serial killers and soccer moms as an expression of faith in your fellows or in God? Is assembling an expression of faith in man or faith in God? Can it be both?

2.14 I suppose the religious person would answer, “By expressing faith in God, I am therefore safe to do whatever it is I want amongst men without worry.” That’s an easy answer. Anything follows from a contradiction; anything follows from the infinite. This will be discussed later.

2.2 Do you have anything in common with those worshipping with you?

2.21 Can a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian worship together? What does it mean to have commonality amongst beliefs? Can you argue for “general spirituality” while still maintaining arbitrary worship practises and pagan rituals?

3 There’s no justification for traveling to a “building of worship” from the Scripture. Any location can be a place of assembly. Acts 19:9-10 shows up that synagogues or schools could function as places of worship as well. Anyone demanding that one must “attend church” must justify why church and not one’s own house.

3.1 If the justification is “more people gather there” or anything similar, then one must reconcile “collective faith” with “personal faith.” Does it concern God whether or not you worship in an arbitrary body of common beliefs or amongst your immediate family? Or by yourself in your own kitchen? It seems like the whole slew of potential answers are but mere preferences.

10:24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works¹:
10:25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
—Hebrews 10:24-25

1 If you find that assembling with your family or fellows is stressful (contrasted with promoting you to love and do good works) for you, does the Scripture provide you with a sufficient means to endure that stress beyond merely asserting that you succumb to hierarchical obedience? This would be nonsense, if one answers that it does not while maintaining that one must still submit to Strength. Must children presuppose their parents will follow Scripture accordingly?

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
—Ephesians 6:4

Or must parents presume their children will follow the Decalogue?

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth
—Exodus 20:12

Children typically do not have much say in the matter of how they will be instructed. So clearly the weight of the struggle for a proper, moral upbringing rests primarily on the parent. What’s concerning is the ambiguity in obeying an authority whose power has been legitimized without the child’s consent. How exactly is that authority established; how is it made sovereign? This reminds me of a criticism of question begging made against social contract theory. What is the relationship between material upbringing, sovereignty, honor of one’s parents, and true worship? If you accept the theory of the social contract, as opposed to a Spinozistic theory of capacity to desire as the only foundation of one’s rights, then would be required of individuals involved need be fully conscious and understanding of their relationship under their contract? Can a child be fully conscious and understanding of its binding relationship with a presupposedly legitimized sovereign power? It seems like the social contract is disturbed when it meets the door to the household. Is it disturbed at the state as well? Is the social contract (growing toward sovereignty) compatible with Divine Fiat Systems (automatic/arbitrary sovereignty)?

Scripture tells us that the father derives his status from God itself.

3:14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
—Ephesians 3:14-15

Therefore, the father’s authority is either divine or it is not. This can be said without granting that the father himself is divine, but only the binding contract between, say, a father and his son. The divine quality of authority comes from the causal connection between a God’s decree to the father’s decree and down to the offspring. If you take the father’s decrees to not be divine, then you tacitly argue that God’s fiats are thus not divine. This is a less interesting stance for our case here. So the father’s edicts are divine and sovereign through a non-consensual binding contract. Thus, the child under the father must exercise faith in God through the proxy of the father. This is the understanding implicit in the Decalogue’s commandment to “Honor thy [parents]“.

However, this is clearly absurd. If we, as children of parents, blindly apply this ambiguous and overly simplistic fiat, we preclude the possibility of children refusing abhorrent derivative Christian philosophies such as that of the KKK and other Christian terrorist groups. No, the argument here is not to blame Christianity for the ills of the world. The argument is that it is absurd, being born into this precarious and chaotic situation, some like to describe as “the best possible”, to follow Scripture, written by fallible men, that could not have foreseen the explosion of derivative philosophies which stem from it. The issue is not “Christianity is bad because the KKK is bad.” The issue is: How do I make intelligible the notion of honoring a fallible person? If the answer is: Have faith in the divine chain, then you’ve submitted your defeat to the volatile world which seemingly can easily destroy you.

Concluding Thoughts

Beyond all of what has just been said, we must look at the tone and basis for these recommendations on how to worship. These high priests are not asserting that “in order to worship God [and thus, if you're a Christian, to be moral], you must assemble.” The idea that piety and morality have some sort of relationship is false. Piety does not produce a moral person, and piety is necessarily constrained to superfluous religious practices.

What was Saint Peter’s justification for these practices?—Don’t act superstitious. Peter needed the same sort of reasoning we need today for any sort of act we make. The high priest was merely recommending what he perceived to be the best means of expressing faith amongst the pagan Romans, given what limited intellects they possessed. Furthermore, they needed to appeal to the lesser intellects of their followers. So they submitted simple and general practices to their followers which would be difficult to argue against. In any case, however, these were recommendations to ancient Christians, not authoritative guidelines binding for the rest of eternity. If you are a Christian and you read them as such, you are a Jew. The arbitrary claims of putting on expensive slacks, driving to a building even once a week, and eating kosher foods are but one person’s opinion on how to worship.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
—Matthew 18:15

Verses such as this suggest that the only requirement of a proper assembly is that a multitude of persons be gathered in God’s name. Perhaps some trivial questions could be asked of this. What is “God’s name?” Like with my previous epistemological issue, the question is not “Can we all believe in the same idea exactly?” but “As we stand together, can you know if I believe in the same idea in just the same way you believe in it?” In what important ways do ideas differ? Does the configuration, or unique identity, of a mind establish exclusivity between itself and other minds to all concepts, all potentially apprehended ideas? Can we become fully conscious of a mutual acquisition of presupposed common notions?

If we cannot know, then we are expressing a certain faith in man, not God. Why? The intentions of man surreptitiously immoral are of a more immediate concern to your well-being. You do not rally and worship amongst men in strip clubs and at the shopping mall. You need to know if someone is going to harm you. If you deny this (which already has evidence in support of the claim that you do not deny it; you built your own “safe house” of worship), then we have defeatism in the face of man for asinine and blind faith in God, taking the blunt of every ill and hateful action that man can toss your way. You do not live this way: Face it. You are clannish and bigoted; worship at home—worship in yourselves.

So some kid from my mum’s church decided to lend her a copy of Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. I admit that I tried reading once before this powerhouse of intellectually rigorous and intimidating argumentation of Protestant Christian theology flavor, but I simply had not the talent to fully comprehend the subtle wit of the literature.

Oh wait. Metaphors preferred over definitions, equivocations, unsupported premises, logical fallacies, oversimplifications… And this is only in chapter one.

Here’s a fantastic example:

As an organism, he [man] is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he choose (my emphasis).

What a terribly shaky assumption. He has merely assumed that the definition of human nature does not entail that it can be itself modified. And further, what is human nature? He has yet again assumed that we have attained the objective definition of human nature.

He goes on to tackle discrepancies in moralities and how they do not amount to true differences. How does he tackle this crucial topic, handled by thousands of academics in anthropology and social philosophy? Well, with a metaphor, of course!

Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.

Now some reviewers on Amazon.com try to give Lewis a nod to his literary ability, but this is just not justified. It may be that his logic is so profoundly absurd that his rhetorical power is completely lost to me.

To do justice to this quasi-refutation, I will attempt to explain briefly what Apophatic Theology is, as a theological tradition within Christian and particularly Catholic circles. I will do so generally because at present my thoughts are quite general on the matter, and I do not wish to begin too ambitious a goal for myself as I write this.

Apophatic Theology, known as the “Negative Way” or Negative Theology, is a theological foundation for pursuing a better understanding of the nature of God. This basis for apprehending “knowledge” of his nature consists of no positive attribution to his essence that we would think in so far as positively describing it. To make a positive assertion to his essence can be demonstrated as uttering, “God is all-powerful”. In this example, the speaker is claiming a positive attribute is within the definition of God. Another example would be to claim, “God is good”.

Negative Theology approaches God in a quite different manner. In fact, the two traditions are diametrically opposed to one another. This reason stems from the psychological implication of believing one bears confidence as opposed to one bearing modesty in so far as perceiving one’s self juxtaposed to that of God’s imagined being. The imagination of mind attempts, as best as possible when making a positive assertion, to give God material presence. Positive Theology, as it were, finds itself smeared across populations and the masses, for it is far easier to comprehend as a social norm. Every day we engage the world through positive qualification of things only in so far to give them a place in our minds for understanding. Now a thing may be positively asserted as being good or bad, but nonetheless the description of that thing maintains a positive existence in our minds.

The opposing theological school, as said, approaches God in a contrary manner. Psychological and social implications aside, I believe it will be sufficient to sooth my interest on this discussion for now to focus on the theological weight of this tradition. As I have explained, Positive Theology asserts positive claims which fall under the essence or are within the definition of God. On the face of it, you may find yourself easily perceiving that Negative Theologians do the opposite of this. However, I do not feel that essentially this is so, but I get ahead of myself; I have not given you a proper example of how these thinkers work.

“God is not ignorant”; “God is not weak”. These and similar phrases lay the groundwork for how, in principle, this theological system endeavors to understand the true nature of God. Now we must understand that at the root of any theological system there exists the tenet for understanding. If this is not so, then we may dismiss any theology as advocating only blind obedience and myopic tradition. This is not in the best interest of human nature, and further it simply is not how human nature operates.

Now, what is the trick up the sleeve of this theology? It generally feels awkward and counterintuitive to suggest that one must approach God by a negative. What do positives and negatives mean to God, anyway? The question may be rubbed out with an answer that explains the infinite nature of God. The negative theologian must meditate on all those positive attributes we normally ascribe to God and erase them from the list of his or her mind. At this point, when no further attribute can be wiped away, we are left with what God, in essence, truly must be. Now this list may be long or brief, for human ingenuity can tackle the crucial attributes of God in possibly one single jump. “God is not evil”; well, certainly we have left ourselves to put God only within the domain of all things which are not evil. However, in order to make this non-assertion intelligible, we must make a false assumption somewhere along this line of argument. God has to be something positive at some point. All things not evil does not say much of anything about anything. Further, and more importantly, one must define what evil is before it can be said that something is not evil. So essentially, a positive assertion is being made, regardless of how superficially one attempts to twist the layout of the situation.

What this tradition of theology leads to is nothing more than a test of human wit and memory, grasping wildly for positive descriptors only to toss them out the window of our mind. Yet it must make the fundamental assumption that these descriptors even bear meaning and that this cannot be ascribed to God’s essence. This does not lead to understanding, but only imaginative gymnastics. Further, we find ourselves uttering unintelligible nonsense if we are to ascribe attributes to God through a negative method because at the base of it, God’s infinite essence cannot be described with our feeble language in principle. Therefore, the negative theologian has done only a disservice to the whole of theological tradition by making God a concept which requires feats of human wit to even discuss casually. In principle, this form of theology must assume that words bear concrete meaning. Since this is the case, they positively assert something of God only except through a confounded and absurd manner.