Fridays with the Answer Man

Let's begin with some aphorisms that go to this idea of Christianity disclosing the universal metaphysic, i.e., What's Really Going On Underneath It All.

This is good: Genuine atheism is to man’s reason what the ten-thousand-sided polygon is to his imagination (Dávila).

In other words, a genuine and self-consistent atheism literally cannot be imagined. I was tempted to say that it can only be imagined, but that's giving it too much credit. Bear in mind that this doesn't imply that theism is the case, although it certainly points in that direction.

I suppose all rationalists believe they are being reasonable, but the moment you stop to think about it, you realize that reason cannot even function in the absence of something -- or, more to the point, someone -- transcending it. Restricted to pure reason, the mind would be enclosed in tautology. See Gödel for details.

In truth there is only one way out, and that is up. What is remarkable is that all people with adequate intelligence don't nod their heads in agreement instead of lifting their legs and leaving inane drive-by comments.

You know the old meme, "It is what it is." Well, yes and no. Remove human beings from the picture, and it is indeed what it is, nothing more and nothing less.

But humans introduce several new perspectives to existence, including the I (subjective depth and personhood), Am (being), and Ought (virtue), not to mention past and future. While we're at it let's toss in Beauty as well.

For example, right now I'm looking out my window and it is... beautiful. How did that get in and contaminate the tidy world of pure reason? For that matter, I am looking out. But from where? From inside, i.e., from the perspective of a subject. Now how did that get here? Some people say that life is just a parasite on matter, and mind a queer side effect of life. We have a better idea.

Better how? Again, who sees the most wins, and materialists do not see, precisely. In a remarkable case of auto-castration, they render their minds infertile, using spirit to deny spirit, or in other words, painting themselves into a coroner and spinning into obit.

Militant irreligion gradually transforms the one possessed into a simple imbecile convulsed by hatred. Simple imbeciles convulsed by hatred. Truly, what is the left?

He who speaks of the farthest regions of the soul soon needs a theological vocabulary. True, but so too does he speaks of the soul, full stop. Or maybe you've never met a soulless person. I get it, but if you ever do decide to purchase a television or attend college, you'll see what I mean.

Each one sees in the world only what he deserves to see. And The simplistic ideas in which the unbeliever ends up believing are his punishment.

So if someone tells me he is an atheist, I say "good. You deserve nothing less!" The world has no depth except insofar as it is perceived from the perspective of depth. Is this not obvious, even self-evident? This is the approach I take to my son's home schooling, in which we are instituting a new class called Fridays with the Answer Man. That would be me.

For example, the other day I was telling him about my primary education. I went to school like anyone else -- even in an "elite" school district -- and learned all that stuff.

Now, as it so happens, we have a hoarder living across the street. I told the boy that upon graduation my head was very much like her backyard: just a pile of indiscriminate junk that I had accumulated along the way. There was no organizing principle, nor did I have any idea what to keep or throw away. I didn't know why it was in my head, but there it was.

I want my son to avoid that fate, which will be one of the primary purposes of F's with the A. M.: to discriminate between the essential and the inessential, to discern the inner unity and coherence, and to see beyond appearances to the transcendent reality. That is indeed what the mind is for: ultimately for apprehending the One Cosmos.

Nor can it be accomplished without religion, although religion too must be subject to the same discrimination, discernment, unity, and coherence. You can't just superimpose religious dogma on the pile of junk and call it a collection of treasures.

Returning to my miseducation, you could say that my head was like a dictionary, which is to say, a collection of words. But what is a word without a sentence, a sentence without a paragraph, and paragraph without a Total Narrative and Universal Metaphysic? Indeed, The universe is a useless dictionary for someone who does not provide its proper syntax.

In short, things must be placed in order. But -- and this is critical -- there is a horizontal order and a vertical order. A materialist "orders" things by collapsing the upper into the lower.

You might compare this approach to the manner in which the terrorists on 9-11-01 brought order to the Twin Towers. Pure simplicity! And the tenured do to the humanities what Islamists do to tall buildings.

I am a clinical psychologist -- in California no less -- so I have first hand knowledge of the destruction of the mind to rubble. Psychologists are to the soul what the the Criminal Lawyers Association is to the law. Psychology is just one more malignant tentacle of the totalitarian left.

Just for fun and nausea, let's look up the California Psychological Association website. I don't know whether to vomit or projectile vomit:

In 2003, APA [American Psychological Association] put forth guidelines that reframed the role of psychologists as leaders and advocates of social justice and multiculturalism in all realms of their professional identity.

Specifically, APA Multicultural Guidelines identified foundational principles that “articulate respect and inclusiveness for the national heritage of all groups, recognition of cultural contexts as defining forces for individuals’ and groups’ lived experiences, and the role of external forces such as historical, economic, and socio-political events.”

In 2017, APA updated these guidelines, reconsidering diversity and multiculturalism by adopting intersectionality as it main purview and using a layered ecological model. An external force laden with oppression is immigration documentation status, and how it intersects with individuals’ many identities and aspects of diversity.

Liberation psychology suggests that these providers are overwhelmed with the tasks of actively working to decolonize their own political consciousness given their awareness of the limitations of western individualistic ideologies that favor the privileged, and concomitantly seeking new ways of working with marginalized communities and immigrant families.

Projectile vomit it is! In any event, if you want to be a psychologist in California, your brain will be washed. I'm only permitted because I've been licensed since 1991, so I'm grandfascisted in.