Monday, October 30, 2006

The Flat Cosmos Society and their Junk Metaphysics

I think you may have just compromised your hippocratic oath - you have done harm. You have fostered malignant stereotypes on a group of people as wide & diversified as any Western nation. WAAAAAAAA!

At last we reach what has always been the gist of the leftist atheist’s apologia, that he is a victim of mean believers. The appeal to victimhood is ironic, since, as I have mentioned before, it represents such a twisted inversion of a Christianized psychology: since Christ is victimized, all victims must be sacred, even if their victimhood is self-inflicted. Thus, atheists are sacred martyrs to their God, who is conspicuously present in his absence. But if truth and morality are relative, to what else can atheists appeal except to the Christian sympathy for victims?

(Yet again the disclaimer: my opinions regarding the militant atheist commenters on this site have nothing to do with indifferent or “negative” atheists who simply have no interest in spiritual growth. Rather, I address myself to the angry and juvenile activists who are actually anti-theists, such as the ACLU and radical secular fundamentalists in general.)

Now, all of the castes also exist within each caste, and I make no apologies for being a “warrior priest,” as it were, even if atheists end up with hurt feelings because they’re not used to someone above Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell’s pay grade pushing back. I am gravely concerned about the culture war in which we are engaged, for I have no doubt whatsoever that the future of the world will hinge on its outcome. And at the moment, the activist intellectual laborers of the left (i.e., brains with hammers) are waging jihad against the Judeo-Christian metaphysical foundation of our culture, a foundation that has produced the most decent and prosperous nation that has ever existed.

It is no coincidence that the United States is also the most religious country in the world. Some might object that the Islamic world is more religious, but in reality, that’s the problem. They aren’t religious at all, because any true vertical religiosity is rooted in liberty oriented toward a spiritual telos. God cannot be imposed, only freely discovered. Thus, both Islam and leftism--our two spiritual competitors--are excluded, since the one expounds mindless tyranny, the other a meaningless horizontal freedom that ends in tyranny as well. In short, both atheism, and Islamism are “junk metaphysics.” God is specifically a God of liberty--the God upon which the authority of America’s founding document rests. As a conservative (i.e., classical liberal), the Declaration of Independence is one of those little things I would most like to conserve. That and the constitution.

As I mentioned, one of our atheist visitors has been reduced to playing the victim card, which is always the last refuge of the left, for it is their holiest of holies. It is designed not to advance thought but to stop it in its tracks. You will also note that he makes an appeal to that related icon of contemporary left-liberalism, diversity, meaning that he has hit the leftist trifecta: 1) relative truth is absolute, 2) I am a victim, and 3) diversity is sacrosanct. This is an exact reversal of the American creed, which is liberty, e pluribus unum, and In God We Trust.

I think you may have just compromised your hippocratic oath - you have done harm. You have fostered malignant stereotypes on a group of people as wide & diversified as any Western nation.

We come in all shapes & sizes. Black, white, Asian, Arab, Jew. We run the entire spectrum from conservative to moderate to left to right. We come from varied backgrounds.

My question is this: does the APA approve of mass diagnoses? How do you, as a psychiatrist, justify a collective diagnosis?


“Diagnosis of what?,” one might ask, since all is truly relative for a leftist atheist. I might add that I am not a psychiatrist, so I am not bound by the Hippocratic Oath, nor am I a member of my own APA because it has been taken over by agenda-driven leftist activists. As for “mass diagnoses,” I do indeed do this, but not in my role of psychologist but as a clinical anthropologist and theo-pathologist. And I certainly have no quarrel with conservative, classical liberal, or libertarian atheists who fight for my spiritual values, any more than I have problems with Muslims who share my values.

Ultimately this is not about labels but about spiritual value systems that are entirely opposed and incompatible. If you want to see the future of America should the left be successful in undermining our Judeo-Christian heritage, you need look no further than old Europe, which “progresses” further every day toward its own oblivion--and into the jaws of its Islamist executioners, who will perform the coup de grace.

Science tells us about the world of quantities, but spirituality is here to tell us about the specifically human world. Needless to say, when it comes to comprehending revelation, atheists tend to be the most literal-minded of individuals. Reduced to mere horizontality, religion makes no sense at all, any more than science can account for verticality, i.e., our free will, our love of truth, and our ability to know objective beauty. Just as biology can explain everything about life except for what it is, science can explain everything except for the radical incommensurability between the consciousness of the scientist and everything else in the cosmos.

The atheist is blocked on his journey to divinity. As such, it is a sort of attachment disorder, a failure to leave the orbit of one reality for another, a metaphysical “failure to launch.” But the spiritual reality from which they are excluded is anterior to the material world, not just chronologically but ontologically. In other words, there is a vertical cosmogonic order, and it is precisely this order that all forms of leftism resent and rebel against.

The lower world is a “mirror” of the higher, except it is somewhat like a tree reflected in a lake. Standing across the lake and looking at the water, we will see an inverse image of the tree, which is what we see here below, and which explains most of the mysteries and anomalies that a strictly scientistic and reductionistic world view will inevitably generate. For, like the tree reflected in the water, atheistic reductionism sees the lowest for the highest and the highest as nonexistent, a metaphysical absurdity squared. Leaves and branches are not roots, but in order to see this, you can’t be a sap.

There are quintessential miracles of which all miracles are a reflection: the miracles of existence, life, and human intelligence. Human creativity--assuming it is grounded in truth--is a mirrorcle that follows the “fiat lux” of the first day, which, in the cosmogonic order, is every day. No, every moment--if you choose to participate (some restrictions apply; offer void in Manhattan, San Francisco, and Hollywood). To be “born again” vertically “from above” is none other than consciousness caterpultering out its cocoognitve limitations and learning to buddhafly, no more or less mysterious than a dead universe coming to life or an ape not just quoting Shakespeare, but being Shakespeare.

This expansive view of reality is in contrast to the closed circle of atheism, which is, after all--now please, don’t get me wrong here--the “devil’s perspective” of reality. Let us stipulate that we are speaking, er, metaphorically. The devil’s perspective is to turn the cosmogonic order inside out and upside down, so that what is distant appears close, and what is close, distant. As a result, it drowns in “particulars” and is lost in endless induction.

This induction will never end in wholeness, for the wholeness is prior to the particulars: it is the Creator’s perspective, the One who sees the whole of reality in an instant. This view synthesizes a mass of of particulars in order to perceive both their depth and their meaning, which amount to the same thing. Meaning, depth, consciousness, life, love, beauty, truth, humor, the sacred... To quote brother John Hiatt, “Don't come from you and me, come from up above.” Furthermore,

Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans
And glide off down the lake
Whether your sunglasses are off or on
You only see the world you make.

Yes, that’s the point. The atheist is proud of the fact that he only believes what he sees. But in so doing, he only sees what he believes.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good morning folks.
Bob:
When will the blog be permanently moved? I like the new site better.

JWM

Gagdad Bob said...

Good question. I guess when I have time to transfer everything over. But I'll probably keep this one here as a backup anyway.

Anonymous said...

Great Post

Anonymous said...

Hmm, the whole of my comment didn't seem to take on the new site, so I'll post it here . . .

>>the closed circle of atheism, which is, after all–now please, don’t get me wrong here–the “devil’s perspective” of reality<<

Oh, I dunno, maybe not all that metaphorical at the end of the day.

"You *#%*@ primitive with your *&$^&# imaginary devil!"

Ah, what do you groundlings care? God, devil, all the same to you. Of course, the modality of consciousness which would allow one to perceive the reality of both is lost on you. With exceptions. I know. I think one form of spiritual Enlightenment is that which, paradoxically, knows that it is not Enlightened to any great degree and simply desires to know more, to find out if there's any substance to this reportage of spiritual experience. That would be the "rational" response, I think.

Mother Effingby said...

You know what it is, Bob? It's the whole validation thing, the whole feelings are vastly more important than the thing itself. We have become a nation of whiny pouters.
When my daughter went to kindergarten, she would cry about this thing and the next, and she would cry if her feelings got hurt. So the teacher would take her to her older sister's classroom for comfort and reassurance, and yada yada blah blah.
When the teacher told me why she did this, I instructed her to say the following to my tyke:
"Why are you crying, Rachel?"
And if she says why, you must tell her that isn't an important enough reason to cry.
And if she says her feelings got hurt, you say this:
"Our feelings aren't that important, Rachel. They will change in ten minutes anyway. So please stop crying, or you will have to go and cry in the bathroom by yourself"
Well, the teacher was appalled that I suggested this, it ran against everything she must have been taught, but I did this in my home, and I expected a certain amount of discipline for her in the school as well.
I think atheists are just spoiled kindergartners whose feelings are always hurt.

Anonymous said...

Bob:

Perhaps the new service ain’t so hot after all, now I’m getting a “Service Unavailable” message.
I blame it all on the vast left wing conspiracy. ;)

Van Harvey said...

Will said...
"I think one form of spiritual Enlightenment is that which, paradoxically, knows that it is not Enlightened to any great degree and simply desires to know more, to find out if there's any substance to this reportage of spiritual experience. That would be the "rational" response, I think."

You got me.

Juahara, you got them.

Van Harvey said...

Bob, you got IT.
(metaphorically speaking)

Bro. Bartleby said...

In an attempt to define reality in less syllables than a Haiku, I came up with this:

Reality is all of which a story could be told.

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