Matter Über Alles and the Elimination of Man

Before we risk sticking our foot in the mouth of the sacred river,

"The rule of every serious esoterist should be to be silent -- often for a length of years -- concerning every new illumination or inspiration that he has, so as to give it the necessary time to mature, i.e., to acquire that certainty which results from its accordance with moral consciousness, moral logic, the totality of spiritual and ordinary experience -- that of friends and spiritual guides of the past and present -- as also with divine revelation, whose eternal dogmas are guiding constellations in the intellectual and moral heaven" (Meditations on the Tarot).

Consider the fact that even Jesus spoke scarcely a word of these matters to another human being until around age 30. Proof of this is found in Luke 2:41-50, in which the 12 year old Jesus runs away, and three anxious days later is found by his parents in the temple, hashing things out with the rabbis and amazing his parents with his spiritual knowledge. Who knew? Not Jesus! (This will become clear as we proceed.)

Interesting that on the threshold of manhood -- 13 in the Jewish world -- the boy Jesus disappears for -- what else? -- three days, only to reappear, now capable of matching wits with the best and brightest menschen. His parents are amazed at the transformation, and frankly confess to not understanding his oblique explanation.

Luke 2:47 notes that his interlocutors were "astonished" at his answers and his understanding, which obviously cuts both ways -- like a newborn baby who looks just... breathtaking!

Knowledge is one thing, understanding another. Sometimes there is an overlap, while often -- especially the higher up the epistemological food chain one proceeds -- the less this will be the case. For example, there is pretty much of a complete overlap between the form and content of radical Darwinism. To know it is to understand it.

Conversely, one may know virtually everything about religion, and yet, understand none of it. Not to get sidetracked, but this was one of Bonhoeffer's consistent themes, and it was indeed a... breathtaking thing to say in a Lutheran culture that tended toward bibliolatry. For this reason, Bonhoeffer uttered many Eckhart-worthy statements that... astonished his fellow theologians, for example, in his advocacy of what he called "religionless Christianity":

"What Bonhoeffer meant by 'religion' was not true Christianity, but the ersatz and abbreviated Christianity that he spent his life working against." He warned that "the time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, was over..." Rather, "God always required something deeper than religious legalism" (Metaxas).

Thus, in another Eckhartian orthoparadox, he commented that "every sermon must contain 'a shot of heresy,' meaning that to express the truth, we must sometimes overstate something or say something in a way that will sound heretical -- though it must certainly not be heretical" (ibid.).

Along these lines, Bonhoeffer said that in order to become "fully human," we must bring the Creator into our "whole life, not merely into some 'spiritual' realm" (ibid). But only a willful moron would take this to mean that, say, an embryo, or infant, or disabled person, isn't "fully human," as did the Nazis.

Another one: "Where God tears great gaps, we should not try to fill them with human words." The same applies to the psychological dimension, especially in more intelligent, literate, and articulate patients, who have a rapid-response ability to paper over such gaps.

The "intelligent atheist" operates in just this manner. It's all so glib, but apparently self-satisfying in a way that is difficult for the more open-minded person to comprehend.

One wants to say: "Okay, let's assume your analysis is correct up to the point you have carried it. But why are you arbitrarily stopping there? Why not take the next step, to that for which your manmade explanation does not and cannot account?" In short, why not dive into the deep end of 〇 instead of standing there in the wading pool?"

Just because one can read, it hardly means one understands. Rather, it merely gives the illusion of understanding. Plenty of liberals have gone to law school, and yet, do not understand the point of the Constitution.

Nor do atheists understand religion, to which they stand as living proof. Only a kind of cosmic narcissism or spiritual autism allows them to convert a disability into a virtue, to elevate a confession of ignorance to a vehicle of truth. It's transparently childlike, really, for children are also unable to stand back from their immediate perceptions, appreciate their limitations, and take a more objective and disinterested view. I mean, if human knowledge is the ultimate, then knowledge is nothing, right?

Once detached from the vertical, one is in what unKnown Friend calls the "zone of mirages."

Now, just because this zone isn't real, it doesn't mean it isn't "creative." It's just that it is a kind of lesser creativity (the world of the infertile eggheads) that bears on no eternal truth or beauty transcending itself. It is "art for art's sake," which is no better than "science for science's sake," for it is a chicken swallowing its own egg. But at least it answers that eternal question of which came first, the chicken or egg: neither!

Conventional leftists imagine that conservatives are "anti-science" because we understand that science has obvious limits, and that it must always converge upon something higher than itself, at risk of becoming demonic. One can never derive values from science -- the ought from the is. Or, one can, but at risk of instant dehumanization and rebarbarization.

This is indeed the monstrosity -- the monstrous element -- of reductionistic Darwinism: not that it is "true" in its own limited way, but that it replaces the Truth of which it can only be a tiny reflection.

For if vulgar Darwinism is the integral truth of man, dreadful consequences necessarily follow -- not the least of which being the impossibility of absolute truth and objective morality. I won't even bother to catalogue all of the consequences of a blind materialism, but Bonhoeffer himself was one of its victims -- a victim of matter über alles.