Session 18 May 2019

In this post I continue the comment on:
A: How do you propose that they could make it possible to destroy Christianity?
because as I was writing the previous post, there were some articles and one Tweet that present perspectives on the speech by William Barr and the threats to Christianity: The Washington Times writes for example: 'Organized destruction': William Barr blasts 'militant secularists' over assault on religion
The Washington Post, is much less interested, they reduce the complexity of the issue to be about Trump, and write: Is this Barr’s cry for help? and interprets the speech as a signal that Barr is possibly, maybe, perhaps, opposing Trump. They effectively bury and silence any chance of a meaningful discussion of the political and ethical issues.

In Europe the English liberal-left paper the Guardian is up in arms and has an article 'A threat to democracy': William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics that focuses on the aspects of power and connections, but again completely ignores the many political, philosophical and ethical questions that the speech also presents. They only present the case of some liberal Catholics and not voices like the Catholic magazine, Our Sunday Visitor that write: Barr sees ‘growing refusal’ to accommodate free exercise of religion One could argue that the position of the Guardian probably is shared by quite a number of liberal left politicians in Europe, a continent that used to be almost exclusively Christian.
'A threat to democracy': William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics

Attorney general’s recent address at Notre Dame is a ‘dog whistle’ to conservatives who have aligned themselves with Trump
Prominent liberal Catholics have warned the US attorney general’s devout Catholic faith poses a threat to the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a fiery speech on religious freedom in which he warned that “militant secularists” were behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order”.

The speech last Friday at the University of Notre Dame law school, in which Barr discussed his conservative faith and revealed how it affects his decision-making as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, has set off a fierce debate among Catholic intellectuals from across the political spectrum, as well as among Catholics inside the justice department.

C Colt Anderson, a Roman Catholic theologian and professor of religion at Jesuit-run Fordham University, said in an interview that he was unaware until this week that Barr was a fellow Catholic. Now, after reading the speech, Anderson believes the attorney general, in revealing his devotion to an especially conservative branch of Catholicism, is a “threat to American democracy”.

He described the speech as a “dog whistle” to ultra-conservative Catholics who, he says, have aligned themselves to Donald Trump in a campaign to limit the rights of LGBTQ Americans, immigrants and non-Christians, especially Muslims, and to criminalize almost all abortions. “The attorney general is taking positions that are essentially un-Democratic” because they demolish the wall between church and state, Anderson said.

In the hallways of the justice department in Washington, there has been a similar furor among some Catholics employees who answer to Barr. “I was shocked by the speech and all this fire and brimstone,” said a senior department career official who considers himself a devout Catholic, speaking on condition that he not be identified for fear of losing his job.

“At least it helps me understand why Barr has been so willing to put his own reputation on the line to defend Trump so fiercely in every battle,” beginning with the congressional investigation that is likely to end in the president’s impeachment, he said. “Trump is Barr’s imperfect vessel in serving a much higher cause: the gospel.”

In the speech, delivered to an invitation-only crowd at Notre Dame, one of the nation’s largest and best known Catholic universities, the attorney general described threats to religious freedom.

He warned that Catholicism and other mainstream religions were the target of “organized destruction” by “secularists and their allies among progressives who have marshalled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry and academia”.

He insisted that “the traditional Judeo-Christian moral system” of the United States was under siege by “modern secularists” who were responsible for every sort of “social pathology”, including drug abuse, rising suicide rates and illegitimacy.

Barr did not address the fact that many of the policies of the Trump administration are strongly opposed by the Vatican. Pope Francis has repeatedly pleaded for the United States to open its doors to more refugees, even as Barr has defended policies that turn away or imprison immigrants seeking refugee status at the US-Mexico border, even separating parents from their children.

The reaction to Barr’s address came as another Trump cabinet member, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, was drawing fire from civil liberties groups over the state department’s decision this week to promote his recent speech titled Being a Christian Leader on the department’s online homepage.

The speech by Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, was delivered on Friday, the same day as Barr’s speech, to a meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville.

“It’s perfectly fine for secretary Pompeo to be a leader who is a Christian,” the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State said in a statement. But the decision to promote Pompeo’s speech on the department’s official website sends “the clear message that US public policy will be guided by his personal religious beliefs”.

Barr’s speech at Notre Dame was a reminder of a fact often overlooked in analysis of Trump’s political base – that while the president enjoys the support of many high-profile right-wing Christian evangelical leaders, he has also surrounded himself with conservative Roman Catholics associated with organizations that some others in the faith consider extreme.

One example: Barr and Patrick Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel, have both served on the board of directors of a Washington-based organization staffed by priests from the secretive, ultra-orthodox Catholic sect Opus Dei.

Another voice was the Catholic Herald from the UK:
The Attorney General is right about secularism – but he missed a crucial point | Catholic Herald that ends:
Yet if the pendulum does not swing back, as Barr fears it may not, it will not simply be because Christians were not sufficiently moral and religious in their little platoons, but also because they did not regard their faith as fundamentally public when the secularists absolutely did.
The following may be an example of how any display of religious sentiment is shamed:

View attachment 32097
While I can't say for sure if the above Tweet is really the expression of a "militant secularist" there is also a description on a Youtube of what activities Potash is involved with, which shows he would certainly like to force his ideas on everyone else:
The Global Climate March is finally here. Millions of people around the world are striking to call attention to global climate change. We'll bring you up to date on the climate strikers. We'll also speak with labor reporter Mike Elk, who's on the road covering the GM workers strike. And Joshua Potash is a young activist who's advocating for massive general strikes in the US, a la Hong Kong and Puerto Rico, to effect massive change in this country.
Also the following is an indication that Potash is pro at what he is doing:
Despite the fears of some observers who were skeptical of the involvement of IfNotNow members like Rubin, or those who have overheard chants at progressive rallies comparing walls on the Mexican and Palestinian borders, participants say Israeli-Palestinian issues have not been a factor at Never Again Action’s events. Potash said that the issue did not come up at a recent planning meeting at the offices of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, which has close ties to activist groups like Blacks Live Matter which deemed Israel an “apartheid state.”

“I was with about a hundred people at a planning meeting this past week, and it just didn’t really come up,” Potash said.
It is safe to conclude that Christianity is a target of attempts to destroy and silence it. At the moment it is hard to see how that is going to change. One can always hope the spirit of Christianity will survive in some form.
 
It is safe to conclude that Christianity is a target of attempts to destroy and silence it. At the moment it is hard to see how that is going to change. One can always hope the spirit of Christianity will survive in some form.
I hope so too. What we are doing here might be one of the ways that helps the spirit of Christianity to survive.

What I realized since this last session is that the attempt to destroy Christianity: the burial of Julius Caesar legacy, the distortion of Paul teaching, the positive spinning of the Templars story, the birth of Protestantism, the rise of the secular religion, etc. are only part of larger drama/opposition.

This opposition was there before Christianity, it is mentioned by the Cs, Paul, Marcion: it is law vs. love. It was already at the core of Zoroaster reforms 6,000 years ago, it was very probably at the core of the Son of the Law vs. the Sons of Belial (alluded by Cayce) in Atlantean times.

This law vs. love duality is so lasting because it is a close reflection of the STO vs. STS dual nature of the Universe, OSIT.
 
This opposition was there before Christianity, it is mentioned by the Cs, Paul, Marcion: it is law vs. love. It was already at the core of Zoroaster reforms 6,000 years ago, it was very probably at the core of the Son of the Law vs. the Sons of Belial (alluded by Cayce) in Atlantean times.

This law vs. love duality is so lasting because it is a close reflection of the STO vs. STS dual nature of the Universe, OSIT.

That is tremendously interesting. Would you mind fleshing out your thoughts on the law vs. love duality?
 
That is tremendously interesting. Would you mind fleshing out your thoughts on the law vs. love duality?
Seconded! I think it's a fascinating topic. I think Jordan Peterson touches upon that by stressing responsibility and meaning as virtues to strive for. You take responsibility for your life, for your actions, and towards society at large. Meaning is developed through being of service and developing towards something higher than you are at present, because all of that effort is meaningful and important. And why? Because of love. Without love what would be the point of anything? With love you feel there is something worth serving within yourself and others, and something to strive for together.

The converse would be nihilism, postmodernism, Darwinism, etc. It takes love, meaning, responsibility, and any real striving away. Then you just have pure mechanical "rules and regulations" for their own sake. We become aimless machines with no higher purpose or direction except one arbitrarily chosen for us and inscribed into law like a computer program. What good is order or chaos without a meaningful direction? A group of ants sometimes gets confused and goes around in a circle til they all die. There is a lot of order, but no meaning. Order and chaos both exist to serve something higher - order allows an intelligent/efficient approach to be figured out, chaos shuffles things around if the order accidentally becomes too stifling or loses its ultimate direction.

So in that sense, I'd say without love there is no meaning to anything, order/chaos, law/lawlessness, none of that matters without a destiny to strive for. Conversely, when there is love and STO, order can be spontaneously created by collinearity and law can even be unnecessary in those cases. But at best, it should be in service to the direction chosen by love, and prevent its hindrance by nefarious forces or just simple mechanicalness.
 
That is tremendously interesting. Would you mind fleshing out your thoughts on the law vs. love duality?
This duality is partly explained in some of Paul's letters in the New Testament. Laura would explain it way better than me because she has more knowledge of the NT in general and Paul's writings in particular. But I can give it an unperfected shot. Maybe the best explanation of this idea is to be found in Romans 13:8-10, where one can read:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Romans 13:8-10

In the excerpt above, Paul presents love as superseding/supplanting the law. The law is not intrinsically bad but when one knows love he doesn't need the law any more because he has embraced a reality of a higher order.

For Paul, the law is fulfilled because it has become unnecessary for the one who acts according to love. In this sense, love is an alternative and more effective anchor than the law.

This change in alignment from the law to love implies that one's behavior ceases to be guided by outside factors but becomes part of the responsible individual who can now act in freedom without the external obligations of the law.

It is like growing from externally assisted childhood to free response-able adulthood.

Now, the context of Paul letters is very specific, he was addressing believers who were following the "Judaizers" whose religion was based on the law, hence the strong dichotomy between love and the law. However, I think that Paul's message has a truly universal relevance. It was true at the birth of Christianity like it is today.
 
Now, the context of Paul letters is very specific, he was addressing believers who were following the "Judaizers" whose religion was based on the law, hence the strong dichotomy between love and the law. However, I think that Paul's message has a truly universal relevance. It was true at the birth of Christianity like it is today.

Yep, when Paul was writing, he was talking about the law as Torah. But like you say, it's universal. One of the main points of his criticism of the Jewish law was that it was like a schoolmaster enforcing "good behavior". But schoolchildren just follow rules; they haven't internalized the principles or values that inspire those rules. Like we learned from the endo and exo-skeleton concept, OPs, etc, there are some who probably cannot internalize those values - they will always need rules. But for anyone with the seed of a soul, that should be the goal: to make our convictions active with love. In TPD terms, it's the difference between second factor (socialization) and third factor (self-directed). And in Covey's 7-habits terms, it's the development from dependence to independence - rejecting socialization in order to be your own person with your own self-developed values. After which comes interdependence, which is Paul's idea of the church or assembly: the place in which to actually practice love.

So the principles apply everywhere there are rules or laws governing behavior. They may serve their purpose, but anyone "in Christ" is above the law, because they have it written on their hearts, not imposed from outside.
 
So the principles apply everywhere there are rules or laws governing behavior. They may serve their purpose, but anyone "in Christ" is above the law, because they have it written on their hearts, not imposed from outside.
In some places, Paul is even more antagonistic towards the law, presenting the law not only as a lower principle relative to love but as an impediment on the way towards love:

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

Romans 7:7-25

In Paul's cosmogony, "life" also equates "faith" (in love in Christ). With that in mind, it seems that, for Paul, it is the law that creates sin and kills the faith.

Although it appears counter-intuitive (law is supposed to encourage virtue and prevent sin). Upon further inspection, it might makes sense. A believer who applies moral laws might conclude about is own goodness, although, he merely applies arbitrary laws that restrict his morality to the material sphere (hygiene, cleanliness).

Furthermore, he applies those arbitrary moral laws not for the sake of goodness but for his own interest, i.e. to prevent the punishments from the angry god.

This self-satisfaction in the application of arbitrary laws focusing on materiality might indeed be an impediment on the way to faith (in love).

After all, why the one who is righteous in the application of materialistic laws would even consider remote spiritual things like faith (in love)? Why would the one convinced that he is chosen and protected by the righteous god even consider love?
 
So in that sense, I'd say without love there is no meaning to anything, order/chaos, law/lawlessness, none of that matters without a destiny to strive for. Conversely, when there is love and STO, order can be spontaneously created by collinearity and law can even be unnecessary in those cases.


I agree And it occurs to me that by virtue of STO following a tendency to be organized in a natural and organic way, in balance and harmony you follow the laws of creation and therefore you are living law.
 
The converse would be nihilism, postmodernism, Darwinism, etc. It takes love, meaning, responsibility, and any real striving away. Then you just have pure mechanical "rules and regulations" for their own sake. We become aimless machines with no higher purpose or direction except one arbitrarily chosen for us and inscribed into law like a computer program.

Very well put.

I think people are designed to strive for a higher purpose, and this is exploited, like you say, with substituting spiritual goals or life, with the strictly material. It is like creating a vacuum, and then filling that vacuum with false ideas, and beliefs. So those seeing all the injustices of the world, can be lead by false prophets, and false institutions. Like the LGBT agenda, climate change, racism, etc.
 
Although it appears counter-intuitive (law is supposed to encourage virtue and prevent sin). Upon further inspection, it might makes sense. A believer who applies moral laws might conclude about his own goodness, although, he merely applies arbitrary laws that restrict his morality to the material sphere (hygiene, cleanliness).

Furthermore, he applies those arbitrary moral laws not for the sake of goodness but for his own interest, i.e. to prevent the punishments from the angry god.

This self-satisfaction in the application of arbitrary laws focusing on materiality might indeed be an impediment on the way to faith (in love).

After all, why the one who is righteous in the application of materialistic laws would even consider remote spiritual things like faith (in love)? Why would the one convinced that he is chosen and protected by the righteous god even consider love?

I love this discussion because I think it really gets to the crux of the matter in regards to the higher development potential in man.

I think people are designed to strive for a higher purpose, and this is exploited, like you say, with substituting spiritual goals or life, with the strictly material.

And so here is a quote from 'Fear and Trembling'

Resignation does not require faith, for what I win in resignation is my eternal consciousness, and that is a purely philosophical movement, which I venture upon when necessary, and which I can discipline myself into doing, for every time something finite out-distances me I starve myself until I make the movement; for my eternal consciousness is my love of God, and for me that is higher than anything. Resignation does not require faith, but it requires faith to get the slightest more than my eternal consciousness, for that [more] is the paradox. The movements are often confused. It is said that faith is needed in order to renounce everything; yes, even more strangely one hears people complain that they have lost faith and on consulting the scale to see where they are, we find curiously enough that they have come no further than the point where they should be making the infinite movement of resignation. Through resignation I renounce everything, this movement is one I do by myself, and when I do not do it that is because I am cowardly and weak and lack the enthusiasm and have no sense of the importance of the high dignity afforded to every human being, to be his own censor, a dignity greater by far than to be Censor General for the whole Roman Republic. This movement is one that I make by myself, so what I win is myself in my eternal consciousness, in a blessed compliance with my love for the eternal being. Through faith I don’t renounce anything, on the contrary in faith I receive everything, exactly in the way it is said that one whose faith is like a mustard seed can move mountains.49 It takes a purely human courage to renounce the whole of temporality in order to win eternity, but I do indeed win it and cannot in all eternity renounce that, for that would be a self-contradiction; but it takes a paradoxical and humble courage then to grasp the whole of temporality on the strength of the absurd, and that courage is the courage of faith.

Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling (Classics) . Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
 
Thank you for replying, Pierre. Your first point, together with Approaching Infinity's comment, was pretty clear and makes sense to me. I'm still puzzling over the second one though.

I can see how self-satisfaction is an impediment but it seems that it could also arise from factors other than the external law. I can envision someone acting in love and even then having to struggle with the issue of self-satisfaction as in "feeling good for doing good". But then love is a difficult concept, for me at least.

After all, why the one who is righteous in the application of materialistic laws would even consider remote spiritual things like faith (in love)? Why would the one convinced that he is chosen and protected by the righteous god even consider love?

I've been scratching my head over these lines. Trying to make sense of it I read it as: why would the exo-skeleton user have any interest in developing an endo-skeleton? Thinking in these terms I'd concur that there would be no interest until one is no longer satisfied with the attributes of the exo-skeleton.
 
I've been scratching my head over these lines. Trying to make sense of it I read it as: why would the exo-skeleton user have any interest in developing an endo-skeleton? Thinking in these terms I'd concur that there would be no interest until one is no longer satisfied with the attributes of the exo-skeleton.

Why would the kid who's been riding a bike with training wheels decide to get rid of those training wheels? Because of the increased mobility and freedom of movement despite the inherent risk involved. OSIT
 
Why would the kid who's been riding a bike with training wheels decide to get rid of those training wheels? Because of the increased mobility and freedom of movement despite the inherent risk involved. OSIT

I was thinking more in the lines of negating or substituting the law/social norms in favor of inner/higher principles because one sees the faults in these external structures and can no longer abide by them. But I like your view as it seems more positive instead of exclusionary. In any case, I have difficulty seeing the law/training wheels as an impediment unless one is convinced there is no better option.
 
In a sense I think maybe these discussions on Christianity are very important. If we consider that "life is religion" and most of the religions (even current Christianity) have been corrupted/distorted maybe our aim needs to be higher.

Session 30 May 2009:
Q: (L) What's next?

A: How about "Paleochristianity"?

Q: (laughter) (L) Well since you brought it up... (J) You should respond with, "Now that's an interesting question!" (laughter) (L) What do you mean by Paleochristianity? (laughter) (L) Would you define Paleochristianity for us?

A: The knowledge of realms that all men comprehended before the "fall".


Q: (L) Why is it called Christianity? Isn't Christianity strictly related to Christianity as we know it?

A: Oh no!
The word was co-opted and everything you know of as Christianity is distorted. For example, the earliest "Christ" was a woman.

Q: (L) Okay. Were the Bogomils and the Cathars - as I have surmised - close to understanding this original reality?

A: They had some very close approximations, but they were still influenced by many of the distorted religious ideas of the time.

Q: (L) Okay, what is the importance of Paleochristianity?

A: The only hope for the survival of your realm and species.

Q: (L) In what sense do you mean that?

A: Unification of aim: survival and avoidance of the destruction hanging over your heads as a consequence of the machinations of psychopathy.

Q: (L) So in other words, some of the thoughts and discussions that we've had over the past week or two {about the global situation} are pretty much on the money?

A: Yes. More or less. There has also been some nudging from this side. Time is getting "short" even though there really is no time. Remember what we said about being wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
 
It occurs to me that if it were not for such laws, the organic portals would have created a completely excessive disaster. It is obvious that any law has them without care, but being in society and characterized by their ability to mimic, laws as programs keep them in certain margins, and allows individuals with a soul to have a tool with which to defend themselves.
 
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