Take care

O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—From a deep dream I woke and swear:
—The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—Wants deep, wants deep eternity."

Nietzsche, Zarathustra

Marion on silence before God

"Moreover, not keeping silent concerning God can be taken in several ways: (a) First, obviously, it can be taken in the sense of pious chattering, or supposedly such, since it often joins rampant heresy with invalidity; we simply mention this for the record."

Ha ha!  I'm still laughing...

Derrida on Negative Theology

"Negative theology-> to record the referential transcendence of language: to say God, such as he is, beyond his images, beyond this idol that being still can be, beyond what is said, seen, or known of him; to respond to the true name of God, to the name to which God corresponds beyond the name that we know him by or hear.  It is to this end that the negative procedure refuses, denies, rejects all the inadequate attributes.  It does so in the name of truth and in order to hear the name of a just voice."

Sauf le nom

A little colour please

Re-collection

“People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, then found each other a few feet away.”

—	F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Sam Harris contra Theism

(He doesn't demolish it.. but he puts a dent in it with the help of some older critiques)
Update: We're down to 6.6 million under the age of 5 deaths per year now, or 18,000 deaths a day UNICEF/WHO.

The question

"The question whether we believe, and as believers truly know God, and know God truly, is far too radical and shattering for us to be able to direct it seriously to ourselves." 

Karl Barth, CD 2.1

For tomorrow we die

“Everyone praises the endurance of the ascetic, but no one appreciates the stamina of the hedonist. To laugh until the throat burns and smoke a cigar to soothe it, to black out but not pass out, to love without climax, to be immortal in the moment – what stoic has such fortitude?”

Bauvard

Hypocrite

hypo- under
krinein- decide/sift

Hypocrite: one who is under-decided.

Samuel Johnson once pointed out that a hypocrite isn't one who has a firm conviction and yet fails to follow through with it.  There may be good reasons why someone is not able to live up to their own principles.  A hypocrite, rather (following the more original construction), is someone who cannot decide between convictions, someone who has a difficult time "sifting" the arguments and coming to a decision.  There is a sense of indeterminacy in the word that doesn't yet have the negative moral quality attached to it by later usage.  In fact the hypocrite was one who often provoked this indecision in others.  The ancient Greek hypocrite was an actor.  What experience did the hypocrite provoke in the audience?: a hypocrisis (modern: hypocrisy).  Every act of deciding is preceded by a crisis.  Avoiding the crisis by deferring the act of decision altogether was not a legitimate option.  The intention to decide was signalled not only by entering into the theatre environment, but by remaining in one's place within the theatre, by accepting the coming crisis.  We all take our exits eventually.. but while we choose to remain, the possibility -the inevitability- of a crisis also remains.

Aude Vivere!

I came into the world full of blue-eyed wonder.  At least that's the way an infant seems to me now.. The world is full of wonder, and suffering, and joy, and multitudinous things.  Each step I take is a wonder.  It is also a step closer to the end.  But I don't hold this against the stepping, or against the end.  We all know this is just the way it is.. the way all nature manifests itself, grows, reproduces, and declines.  These are just general categories of experience.. they have no power to determine anything.  The categories are passive observers.  We alone, we flesh and blood, are able to truly live and imbue categories with meaning, these ones anyway.  Carpe Diem is not the phrase to use here.  It is the sign of a male impotency, a taking by force what one does not have the ability to embody.  Rather, be seized by the day.. Dare to live!

When I was a boy I would visit my grandfather near the Lake of Bays.  Behind his house a path wound its way up a hill, through a broad-leafed forest, and into an open field.  In this field grew an apple tree.  It has been 30 years since I was last there.  The memory is faded around the edges, like an old treasure map.  I can remember the tree still, and my father, and the feeling of summer warmth.  I remember too my grandfather, though he has since passed away, following the swirling path of the leaves that once surrounded his home.  Life is incredibly brief.  It is a stroke of luck if you are able to fill it with joy and love.  It is a wonder.  Sometimes I can barely stand all the wonder. 

Kant on Freedom

Hence in a practical context (whenever duty is at issue), we understand perfectly well what freedom is; for theoretical purposes, however, as regards the causality of freedom (and equally its nature) we cannot even formulate without contradiction the wish to understand it.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

On God

The starting point of our theological investigation is not whether there is a definitive proof for the existence of God (there can be no such empirical proof), but allowing that God exists, what can be definitively said about such a being.  We find, apart from the formal and thoroughly socialized subjective fantasies and wishful thinking of a great many people, that there isn't a hell of a lot.  We find the god of the churches almost undeniably does not exist.  This has been realized in the West for almost 300 years, and this by theologians themselves!  Where it hasn't been realized one continues to find the most powerful illusion at work, propagated by laypeople and theological upstarts, pastors and other parasitical people of "good intention" (at least initially), not to mention a programme of systemic indoctrination in the form of emotive collective music, sermons, and what amounts to religious self-help literature.

The strongest "proof" this God doesn't exist: He hasn't saved the Christians from Christianity.

Father God

The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes of the heart; – the essence of Christianity is the essence of human feeling.  Feuerbach

 

I recently read something a friend wrote in which his experience of father was connected to his Christian understanding of God as Father.  This is a recurrent theme in Christian circles.  After a little reflection, however, it should be apparent how mistaken this is, or at least, how much wishful thinking goes into such comparisons.  God is perhaps the worst father that has ever lived.  It does more credit to my friend personally than to any neglectful, absentee father in heaven.  My friend may hold his son's hand when he is scared, but God is nowhere to be found when tragedy strikes.  The sense of God's "presence" that some Christians say they feel during troubling times is of course no more than wishful thinking or a heightened self-consciousness.. They attribute a divine quality to their own human feeling.  This kind of blasphemy from those who call themselves lovers of the truth never ceases to amaze and should have been stamped out with the paradigm shift inaugurated by Kant. 

 

On universal salvation

Note: the idea of universal salvation follows from a misunderstanding of God's love and grace. It is consistent in that it relates to a notion of God's infinite qualities, but it is not consistent with the teachings of Scripture.  The idea of universal salvation can only be found in obscure passages, and by following an interpretation already favourable to the assumption of infinite, unconditional, grace and love.  While one may argue humans do not merit this grace, this one nevertheless overlooks the fact that love and grace are conditional on God himself.  One's inability to earn grace does not equate to its being unconditioned.  It is still conditional on Divine will, and Scripture is clear that "who He wants to harden he hardens" and those he bears now with patience, so that later he may make his power and mercy known to the elect, he "prepares for destruction." 

How distasteful and horrifying some find this!  How shaped they are by a modern church culture that is itself shaped by a certain theory of parenting and school discipline, products of a liberalism now under attack.  To what lengths these Christians go to erase all hint of scandal from their faith in order to pay obeisance to their meek cultural god and season it with what they feel is more suitable to the delicate suburban palate. 

 

They don't see this for what it is:  a betrayal.

Aix-en-Provence

Près de La Ciotat, je suis tombé en amour ...