Why I am a Materialist Christian - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15048604
Recalling Dante and his spiritual understanding, @Potemkin , you stated that;

I think the rot had set in even by the early 19th century. Goethe, for example, didn't know what to make of Dante. On the one hand, you have the transcendent beauty of the final cantos of the Paradiso, which TS Eliot regarded as the greatest poetry any human being has ever written, but on the other hand you have the carnal, flatulent devils of the Inferno and sinners thrown head-first into rivers of human excrement.


Goethe and his influence on German Philosophy of the Romantic/Idealist sort, and it's influence on him, is well known. I seem to recall that he and his peers were really put out by Shakespeare too, yes?


The point is that, where Goethe saw nonsensical contradiction, Dante saw a single harmonious vision in which flesh and spirit are inseparable. The flatulent devils and the shining angels are both points on the same continuum.


Absolutely. Recall that in the Last Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante see Satan, so very Material that Satan is entirely fixed in position, endlessly gnawing with his three headed maw the great Traitors of History.

It may not be atheism in theory, but it is atheism in practice.


I'm no fan of Jacques Maritain, but he was correct when he once said that there are different sorts of Atheists; ones who do not believe in God but live as if He still exists and is good , ones who do believe in God but deny Him out of hate, ones who say that they believe in God but do not yet live as if He exists and is good, and the ones who say they believe in God but live as if He does not exist and do not care if He does or not.

Indeed, and Goethe of all people should have known it, being the scientist that he was. But no, even he separated matter from spirit, in a kind of unconscious Gnosticism.


Could be an influence of Decartes. Cartesian thought replaces Spirit with Mind, and posits a Mind/Body dichotomy.

There is a fundamental earthiness to Christianity. It started as the religion of fishermen and labourers, men who worked at practical trades and got their hands dirty. They would have been nonplussed at the idea that you could have an afterlife without a physical body. And the Gospels do not hesitate to describe Jesus spitting on some dirt in order to perform a spiritual miracle....


Yes, even what they understood, and what I understand today as ''Spirit'', was thought of as a kind of subtle body-a thing existing taking up space in three dimensions.

Most of what passes for 'Christianity' nowadays, especially in Protestant nations, seems to be either Phariseeism or some form of crypto-Gnosticism. It's a parody of Christianity. Two thousand years of theological debate and historical development, and we end up with this.... :roll:


Hence the Atheism on one hand, and another ''earthy'' religion such as Islam (a Christian Heresy) on the other, (albeit a religion that is also ''Phariseeism'' and a very remote Unitarian God that would not deign to Incarnate among us.) are both gaining ground in the Western World.
#15048625
@Tainari88 ;

Tainari88 wrote:Quite a good thread to read. Thank you so much Annatar14.


I'm glad that something I have put together in such a rambling and tentative manner still yet resonated with you. I'm glad to hear from ''Earthy'' people perhaps somewhat like myself, who love Creation, and Creatures, flawed as they are by the Fall, and the Creator of course. :)
#15048771
annatar1914 wrote:@Tainari88 ;



I'm glad that something I have put together in such a rambling and tentative manner still yet resonated with you. I'm glad to hear from ''Earthy'' people perhaps somewhat like myself, who love Creation, and Creatures, flawed as they are by the Fall, and the Creator of course. :)



I have read you without commenting for a very long time Annatar14, I found you not only thoughtful, intelligent, spiritual and insightful, but incredibly engaging. When you announced you were leaving for a while to concentrate on your family? I was sad. I sent you a PM but I think it never got to you...?

Anyway, you are a pleasure to read. Have you ever studied different religious texts? To compare them? Comparative religion is quite interesting.

I am not knowledgeable about the Bible as much as my father was. He graduated long ago from El Instituto Biblico Mitzpah in Bayamon, Puerto Rico his hometown and became a preacher for a few years in his youth. He was a protestant. He was sent to Texas in his early adulthood and ran into problems with unethical church members making money off of fleecing their flock. He got into conflicts with it. They thought him too devout praying five hours on his knees a day and saying how the pastor had to stop buying new cars and fancy furniture and that he should live modestly and invest in helping the poorest ones of the church. He defended women and their right to shape church policy. And to be equal and so on....in terms of say so.

He was basically told to leave the church. He was considered not respectful of authority is what they said. Some months later the leaders were charged with fraud.

He said he thought religious people without truly spiritual principles will never be successful convincing others to lead holy lives. Your actions are far more important in leading a Christian life.

He was incredibly well versed in the Bible and when he was inspired would tell me his interpretation of some verses and so on.

He was charismatic and fiery and a very good orator and he loved singing Protestant hymns in Spanish like,

En la cruz, en la cruz,
es donde primero vi la luz,
y ahi con fe, yo le di a Jesus
y le entregue mi alma,
con mi fe.....

Faith is a very emotional and personal thing Annatar. And should be treated with the utmost care by those who profess to have it. If it is not? It becomes a terrible oppression and disillusionment and a horrible disappointment in humanity's capacity to fight what is wrong in the world. It becomes a place to deceive.

And that is the opposite of what a true Christian community should be doing.

My mother was baptized a Roman Catholic.

In the end? Her community? The Latin Americans petitioned the RC church to give her a covenant and for the faithful to pray to her and ask for her intercession for education concerns or problems. The church gave her that post humously. It is a great honor rarely do they do so. My mother I told the priest was a bit of an agnostic and scientific. But she loved the Roman Catholic mission of helping the poor and the downtrodden, I asked the priest about his idea of why give my mother that honor...such a great answer he gave me...."So many people claim to follow Christ and love the church. But their actions are not reflective of Jesus' gospel. Your mother doubted like Thomas about religious doctrines and rules, but her actions were all about our Lord Jesus Christ. In their fruits you shall know them. She was a child of Jesus. In her words, actions and behavior. All the rest is forgiven. Here is the covenant for your mother."

I will never forget that ever.
#15048791
@Tainari88

I have read you without commenting for a very long time Annatar14, I found you not only thoughtful, intelligent, spiritual and insightful, but incredibly engaging. When you announced you were leaving for a while to concentrate on your family? I was sad. I sent you a PM but I think it never got to you...?


No, I did not get a PM from you, but I'm sorry that I made you sad, for sure. I am moved, and somewhat humbled, that you find any good in what I've had to say. I'll try to do better in the future, or at the very least, be truer to being closer to the Face of God. I'm a bit ''Crazy for God'', as some people call it.

Anyway, you are a pleasure to read. Have you ever studied different religious texts? To compare them? Comparative religion is quite interesting.


Yes, my spiritual journey has exposed me to a great number of the world's religious texts, and I do find it both interesting and important to not only know what people believe, but why they believe as they do. As an Orthodox Christian, and that of a rather traditional sort, I can still see that people are searching, most as best they can with the lights that they have.

I am not knowledgeable about the Bible as much as my father was. He graduated long ago from El Instituto Biblico Mitzpah in Bayamon, Puerto Rico his hometown and became a preacher for a few years in his youth. He was a protestant. He was sent to Texas in his early adulthood and ran into problems with unethical church members making money off of fleecing their flock. He got into conflicts with it. They thought him too devout praying five hours on his knees a day and saying how the pastor had to stop buying new cars and fancy furniture and that he should live modestly and invest in helping the poorest ones of the church. He defended women and their right to shape church policy. And to be equal and so on....in terms of say so.


My father's side of my family is Protestant, generally Southern Baptist, and generally of a type with our friend Hindsite.... But arguing with them contributed to who I am, so I must thank them in all honesty, with a smile of course. The Word of God is important to me, Wisdom which I am only now groping towards late in life. But I think suffering and experiencing life actually helps with that spiritual understanding.

He was basically told to leave the church. He was considered not respectful of authority is what they said. Some months later the leaders were charged with fraud.


''Authorities'' being rebels against God and Man, nothing new unfortunately.

He said he thought religious people without truly spiritual principles will never be successful convincing others to lead holy lives. Your actions are far more important in leading a Christian life.


''And the Greatest of these is Love...''

He was and is, quite right.

He was incredibly well versed in the Bible and when he was inspired would tell me his interpretation of some verses and so on.

He was charismatic and fiery and a very good orator and he loved singing Protestant hymns in Spanish like,

En la cruz, en la cruz,
es donde primero vi la luz,
y ahi con fe, yo le di a Jesus
y le entregue mi alma,
con mi fe.....


''On the Cross, I first saw the Light...''

Very true. Christianity is an encounter with God in Three Persons, it's personal, and social, but Love is that way, is it not?

People get angry with me when I suggest that ''God is a Communist'' (because it's true, I do like to shock people sometimes, knock them out of their comfort zones) but He absolutely Is; Total Love, shared ineffably equally in and with Three Persons, and that Love is their Essence of their shared Oneness of Being. It's a great Mystery one must be careful in even speaking of, but here's the kicker; He wants to share His Joy and Love that He has within Himself, with us.

Faith is a very emotional and personal thing Annatar. And should be treated with the utmost care by those who profess to have it. If it is not? It becomes a terrible oppression and disillusionment and a horrible disappointment in humanity's capacity to fight what is wrong in the world. It becomes a place to deceive.


Yes, and I do talk a lot about Evil, because Evil is something I know. But God is merciful and loves mankind, and so I've come to know some of His Love too.
And that is the opposite of what a true Christian community should be doing.


That's true.

My mother was baptized a Roman Catholic.

In the end? Her community? The Latin Americans petitioned the RC church to give her a covenant and for the faithful to pray to her and ask for her intercession for education concerns or problems. The church gave her that post humously. It is a great honor rarely do they do so. My mother I told the priest was a bit of an agnostic and scientific. But she loved the Roman Catholic mission of helping the poor and the downtrodden, I asked the priest about his idea of why give my mother that honor...such a great answer he gave me...."So many people claim to follow Christ and love the church. But their actions are not reflective of Jesus' gospel. Your mother doubted like Thomas about religious doctrines and rules, but her actions were all about our Lord Jesus Christ. In their fruits you shall know them. She was a child of Jesus. In her words, actions and behavior. All the rest is forgiven. Here is the covenant for your mother."

I will never forget that ever.



As well you shouldn't forget. Some of the things I say are ''acid washed'' to use an analogy; I breathe fire and hurl thunderbolts and say things sometimes in my own violent and passionate Love for God and upholding His Goodness and Justice and Holiness, that I have to be reminded about His Love and Mercy and Compassion. I will judge many evils, I will even call people evil, as you know, but of the heart of who they are, the fruits of the Spirit which blows where He wills... I will not judge their destination, that's between them and God.

But their fruits? That I have a duty to say something if I feel called to do that. It's no sin to want to fight for a better world, a better social system that is just and more reflective of the spirit of God which dwells in us, each of one time uniquely made, and made in the Image and the Likeness of Almighty God, as persons.

Thank you for your contributions, now and in the future should you choose to write them. God bless.
#15048851
annatar1914 wrote:Goethe and his influence on German Philosophy of the Romantic/Idealist sort, and it's influence on him, is well known. I seem to recall that he and his peers were really put out by Shakespeare too, yes?

Indeed they were. They hated his 'crude' earthiness, and they disapproved of his contempt for the Aristotelian unities of time and place. Even his poetic style and diction seemed wild and undisciplined (at least when translated into German or French). In other words, they were crypto-Gnostics who hated matter and valorised the 'spirit', or 'Geist', above all else.

Absolutely. Recall that in the Last Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante see Satan, so very Material that Satan is entirely fixed in position, endlessly gnawing with his three headed maw the great Traitors of History.

Precisely. Hell, to Dante, was and is a real place with real torments, real fires and real ice.... The geography of Hell is the geography of a real place.

I'm no fan of Jacques Maritain, but he was correct when he once said that there are different sorts of Atheists; ones who do not believe in God but live as if He still exists and is good , ones who do believe in God but deny Him out of hate, ones who say that they believe in God but do not yet live as if He exists and is good, and the ones who say they believe in God but live as if He does not exist and do not care if He does or not.

I would say that most so-called 'Christians', at least the ones of my acquaintance, fall into the last category - they say that they believe in God, and may even believe that they believe in Him, but for all practical purposes they are dyed-in-the-wool atheists. They just don't know it yet.

Could be an influence of Decartes. Cartesian thought replaces Spirit with Mind, and posits a Mind/Body dichotomy.

Indeed. And this was a logical step to take, given the separation of matter and spirit which had already occurred in Western culture. Spirit is demoted to 'mind', which means the purely rational and logical aspect of our thinking, and matter is posited as some sort of independently-existing substrate out of which everything is made. Even within the context of purely scientific thinking, this is complete nonsense of course.

Yes, even what they understood, and what I understand today as ''Spirit'', was thought of as a kind of subtle body-a thing existing taking up space in three dimensions.

Indeed. And any other way of thinking of the 'Spirit' is incoherent. Abstracted away from matter, it ceases to have any substantial existence except as mere memories in the minds of the living, for example. To have spirit without matter is like having digestion without a stomach, to use Schopenhauer's apt analogy.

Hence the Atheism on one hand, and another ''earthy'' religion such as Islam (a Christian Heresy) on the other, (albeit a religion that is also ''Phariseeism'' and a very remote Unitarian God that would not deign to Incarnate among us.) are both gaining ground in the Western World.

Absolutely. And this is a grave threat to the continued existence of what used to be called 'Christian civilisation'. But the main threat is from within. The barbarians are not at the gates of the city; they are inside the walls and are already governing us....
#15048860
annatar1914 wrote:


No, I did not get a PM from you, but I'm sorry that I made you sad, for sure. I am moved, and somewhat humbled, that you find any good in what I've had to say. I'll try to do better in the future, or at the very least, be truer to being closer to the Face of God. I'm a bit ''Crazy for God'', as some people call it.


I sent the PM but I think it got disappeared in some moment where there was a site update. So you never got it and I could not retrieve it. It basically said that your contributions were and are valuable and you bring a fresh and good perspective on politics. You do. There is no doubt about that.



Yes, my spiritual journey has exposed me to a great number of the world's religious texts, and I do find it both interesting and important to not only know what people believe, but why they believe as they do. As an Orthodox Christian, and that of a rather traditional sort, I can still see that people are searching, most as best they can with the lights that they have.



I like reading up on Buddhism, and Muslim religious traditions, and all kinds of sects of Christianity. Roman Catholic traditions are vast. Methodists, Episcopalian, Unitarians, Baptists, Pentecostals, and many more sects of the Christian column of religious thought is very interesting to study. Matrin Luther, J. Calvin, and so many more who influenced not only religion but thought, philosophy and culture in their own nations and future ones. Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox religious traditions, Sufism, and so many others are extremely interesting. There are commonalities to human religions. I like studying it because religion is part of human life and human history. As an anthropologist Annatar14 every aspect of what makes us human? Is interesting to me. Religion is about a discipline and a practice that humans create to reach a goal. That usually has to do with cultivating a sense of spiritual commitment and advancement. How to get to know God well. That is the goal.

My father's side of my family is Protestant, generally Southern Baptist, and generally of a type with our friend Hindsite.... But arguing with them contributed to who I am, so I must thank them in all honesty, with a smile of course. The Word of God is important to me, Wisdom which I am only now groping towards late in life. But I think suffering and experiencing life actually helps with that spiritual understanding.


I had a problem with Hindsite because he is a racist and really doesn't acknowledge flaws in human beings he sees as God's people. Nothing spiritual about Trump. But? People who don't think about behavior and thought and correlate it with the teachings? Are kind of just lost and totally unable to make deep connections to anything anyway. He did not understand my refusal to be labeled American. It is because I am not. The whole idea of being an American in Puerto Rico was never entered into asking the Puerto Ricans if they wanted to be Americans. It was imposed. And forced. And also the entire first 50 years of the American occupation was about dictatorship, decrees in a language no one spoke well on the island, and no rights and terrible conditions imposed. It got to extremes were no one legally could fly a Puerto Rican flag publicly, speak Spanish in a Puerto Rican school even though no one understood English at all. No one could discuss political thoughts publicly or privately. No one could do much at all. You can't force love for country from people who you are treating with the heavy boot heel of conquest and disrespecting them profoundly. They sterilized Puerto Rican women, and did mass abortions on Puerto Rican women without their consent, they did cancer experiments on many patients, were seen as not human and many other things. How can you think a true Puerto Rican who loves their family and their nation would identify with that oppressive regime? Only ignorant ones, or scared ones or the ones who sell out for a dollar. But Hindsite did not get it. He doesn't understand war conditions or anything about what colonial rule is like from these far away nations who don't do much for little islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean that they only want to use and abuse. Lack of conscience is a very costly thing to have in this world Annatar14, and many people who run these nasty Empires have it.


''Authorities'' being rebels against God and Man, nothing new unfortunately.


Too many fake Christians out there Annatar.


''And the Greatest of these is Love...''

He was and is, quite right.


Yes it is. Love is the most powerful force in the world. It transforms everything in its path and it is why we love each other and love as strongly as we do. People who love God above anything always have to tow a very hard and heavy line, because the world of humans is filled with people who have no real love in their hearts....for God or for each other. And they cause tremendous damage.



''On the Cross, I first saw the Light...''

Very true. Christianity is an encounter with God in Three Persons, it's personal, and social, but Love is that way, is it not?


Love has always been social. Without it? We can't make peace with ourselves. Our greatest enemy is usually ourselves Annatar14, we sabotage our own capacity to love and to be giving by not making peace with our own defective natures. First. Before going out there and loving others.

People get angry with me when I suggest that ''God is a Communist'' (because it's true, I do like to shock people sometimes, knock them out of their comfort zones) but He absolutely Is; Total Love, shared ineffably equally in and with Three Persons, and that Love is their Essence of their shared Oneness of Being. It's a great Mystery one must be careful in even speaking of, but here's the kicker; He wants to share His Joy and Love that He has within Himself, with us.


Lol. I laugh because my mother said that exact same line, to people who would say, "Communists are atheists. They hate God." Öpiate of the people" Marx was a Jew who hated Christians. They fail to get the essence of what communal life should be like. Searching for a classless society? Where all share and no one has a need to dominate and impose? Control and coerce? That is the goal of true love. But you keep on shocking people Annatar14. It is part of your role in this world. Always my dear one.

Yes, and I do talk a lot about Evil, because Evil is something I know. But God is merciful and loves mankind, and so I've come to know some of His Love too.


That's true.


I had a very spiritual experience. But it is best to not talk about that in such an attacking place as this. But, I will say there is a fire that the soul recognizes and it is an integral part of why one has to transform oneself when one loves deeply. It comes from a very very profound place in each individual. It is unique yet shared. Very much a dialectic. Materialism. Asi es.



As well you shouldn't forget. Some of the things I say are ''acid washed'' to use an analogy; I breathe fire and hurl thunderbolts and say things sometimes in my own violent and passionate Love for God and upholding His Goodness and Justice and Holiness, that I have to be reminded about His Love and Mercy and Compassion. I will judge many evils, I will even call people evil, as you know, but of the heart of who they are, the fruits of the Spirit which blows where He wills... I will not judge their destination, that's between them and God.

But their fruits? That I have a duty to say something if I feel called to do that. It's no sin to want to fight for a better world, a better social system that is just and more reflective of the spirit of God which dwells in us, each of one time uniquely made, and made in the Image and the Likeness of Almighty God, as persons.

Thank you for your contributions, now and in the future should you choose to write them. God bless.


You are right in all this that you wrote. At the same time, it is good to share one's point-of-view with others. For great learning is also a social thing. Just like love. You need it within a social context for growth to occur. Can't do it in isolation.

I will endeavor to talk to you about philosophical concepts in the future. It is good to take a break far away from the heat of politics. And go to church with you...Senor Annatar. ;)
#15048870
Hello @Potemkin my friend, as this thread is larger than I anticipated, I feel that I can answer both you and our @Tainari88's replies in one post. You said concerning Shakespeare;

Indeed they were. They hated his 'crude' earthiness, and they disapproved of his contempt for the Aristotelian unities of time and place. Even his poetic style and diction seemed wild and undisciplined (at least when translated into German or French). In other words, they were crypto-Gnostics who hated matter and valorised the 'spirit', or 'Geist', above all else.


I suspected as much. I think German Idealism has more to do with the subject of my thread here than I realized fully at first. Now it seems too that you confirm the horror of Hell's materiality for myself and for Dante, all too real;


Precisely. Hell, to Dante, was and is a real place with real torments, real fires and real ice.... The geography of Hell is the geography of a real place.


Yes, quite literal even if he had to describe it in a poetic fashion, place there people he didn't like, etc... I was pretty mad when I had an Instructor once who placed Dante's work in the realm of Allegory. Dante isn't that sort, I read his ''De Monarchia'' also and he's a hard-eyed realist, if anything.

As for the poor Atheists;

I would say that most so-called 'Christians', at least the ones of my acquaintance, fall into the last category - they say that they believe in God, and may even believe that they believe in Him, but for all practical purposes they are dyed-in-the-wool atheists. They just don't know it yet.


Unfortunately pretty much on the mark. We create an Idol out of the kind of God we want (regardless of what or Who He might actually be) and we live as if He exists as a reflection of-surprise!-our own wills and desires. Well, that's not real belief in God at all although some Atheists of another sort might disagree. But on that we can set that conversation aside for now.

On the related issue of the Cartesian ''split'' of Mind and Matter;


Indeed. And this was a logical step to take, given the separation of matter and spirit which had already occurred in Western culture. Spirit is demoted to 'mind', which means the purely rational and logical aspect of our thinking, and matter is posited as some sort of independently-existing substrate out of which everything is made. Even within the context of purely scientific thinking, this is complete nonsense of course.


Absolutely correct in my consideration. Two ideas come to mind as I read your reply; one, is that the issue of Berkeley and his antipathy to matter as being a ''independently-existing substrate out of which everything is made'' which animated my earlier discussions on this thread with @Victoribus Spolia . And the second is an observation of the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville that Americans in the 1830's were the one people entirely infused with Cartesian thought about reality but the least likely people to have actually ever read Rene Decartes... Thoughts on these ideas?

On Spirit as a Subtle Body in conception


Indeed. And any other way of thinking of the 'Spirit' is incoherent. Abstracted away from matter, it ceases to have any substantial existence except as mere memories in the minds of the living, for example. To have spirit without matter is like having digestion without a stomach, to use Schopenhauer's apt analogy.


Yes, Spirit still has to be some form of matter, it isn't the point to figure out it's composition, only that it has some form of extension in the regular three dimensions which grounds It in the created Cosmos of reality along with plants, animals, and exercise DVD's...

And you said regarding what I'll admit is an external threat from another ''earthy'' Religion to the West, not an internal one, that;


... And this is a grave threat to the continued existence of what used to be called 'Christian civilisation'. But the main threat is from within. The barbarians are not at the gates of the city; they are inside the walls and are already governing us....


The difficult thing is that Western Civilization will still have to go, in my conception. The Light comes from the East; ''Lux Oriens''...

Looking forwards to further thoughts from you!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@Tainari88 ; you replied to me that;

I sent the PM but I think it got disappeared in some moment where there was a site update. So you never got it and I could not retrieve it. It basically said that your contributions were and are valuable and you bring a fresh and good perspective on politics. You do. There is no doubt about that.


Thank you :)

Regarding out mutual reading of the world's religious texts;

I like reading up on Buddhism, and Muslim religious traditions, and all kinds of sects of Christianity. Roman Catholic traditions are vast. Methodists, Episcopalian, Unitarians, Baptists, Pentecostals, and many more sects of the Christian column of religious thought is very interesting to study. Matrin Luther, J. Calvin, and so many more who influenced not only religion but thought, philosophy and culture in their own nations and future ones. Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox religious traditions, Sufism, and so many others are extremely interesting. There are commonalities to human religions. I like studying it because religion is part of human life and human history. As an anthropologist Annatar14 every aspect of what makes us human? Is interesting to me. Religion is about a discipline and a practice that humans create to reach a goal. That usually has to do with cultivating a sense of spiritual commitment and advancement. How to get to know God well. That is the goal.


Religion appears to literally be in our DNA. I personally define Religion as a system of belief that attempts to provide ultimate answers to universal issues of human concern.

Upon my mention of my family and social circle growing up full of ''Hindsites'', you said;

I had a problem with Hindsite because he is a racist and really doesn't acknowledge flaws in human beings he sees as God's people. Nothing spiritual about Trump. But? People who don't think about behavior and thought and correlate it with the teachings? Are kind of just lost and totally unable to make deep connections to anything anyway. He did not understand my refusal to be labeled American. It is because I am not. The whole idea of being an American in Puerto Rico was never entered into asking the Puerto Ricans if they wanted to be Americans. It was imposed. And forced. And also the entire first 50 years of the American occupation was about dictatorship, decrees in a language no one spoke well on the island, and no rights and terrible conditions imposed. It got to extremes were no one legally could fly a Puerto Rican flag publicly, speak Spanish in a Puerto Rican school even though no one understood English at all. No one could discuss political thoughts publicly or privately. No one could do much at all. You can't force love for country from people who you are treating with the heavy boot heel of conquest and disrespecting them profoundly. They sterilized Puerto Rican women, and did mass abortions on Puerto Rican women without their consent, they did cancer experiments on many patients, were seen as not human and many other things. How can you think a true Puerto Rican who loves their family and their nation would identify with that oppressive regime? Only ignorant ones, or scared ones or the ones who sell out for a dollar. But Hindsite did not get it. He doesn't understand war conditions or anything about what colonial rule is like from these far away nations who don't do much for little islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean that they only want to use and abuse. Lack of conscience is a very costly thing to have in this world Annatar14, and many people who run these nasty Empires have it.


Seeing the World empathetically through the eyes of the Other, even the profoundly Other, can be a difficult thing. Especially when one isn't even going to try. There is a certain mindset in the world that I call ''Fascistic'' that goes well beyond the political personalities and followers of that political system in the early to mid-20th century, and that Anti-Life, Antichrist personality structure has it's own well defined ideas on what their ''Other'' must do...

Too many fake Christians out there Annatar.


As st. John says; ''they came out of us but they were not of us..''


On lessons from your father, on Love;


Yes it is. Love is the most powerful force in the world. It transforms everything in its path and it is why we love each other and love as strongly as we do. People who love God above anything always have to tow a very hard and heavy line, because the world of humans is filled with people who have no real love in their hearts....for God or for each other. And they cause tremendous damage.


Love is stronger than Death. We have that understanding imprinted on what we Orthodox Christians call the ''Nous'', which is the ''Mind'' of the Human Heart, although the ''Nous'' is dormant or semi-dormant in all Humanity. God can awaken It though, that awakening of the Nous is central to Orthodox Christianity and all we do or are really about. Saint Athanasius said that ''God became Man to make men, gods''.



On the Social Love of God within Himself, and among Mankind;


Love has always been social. Without it? We can't make peace with ourselves. Our greatest enemy is usually ourselves Annatar14, we sabotage our own capacity to love and to be giving by not making peace with our own defective natures. First. Before going out there and loving others.


Because flawed human nature, tarnished but not destroyed by the Fall, in some persons has an inability to love beyond themselves, everything and everyone else is perceived if at all as nothing more than a object or means to an end.

As to my possibly irreverent comment on God ''Being a Communist'';


Lol. I laugh because my mother said that exact same line, to people who would say, "Communists are atheists. They hate God." Öpiate of the people" Marx was a Jew who hated Christians. They fail to get the essence of what communal life should be like. Searching for a classless society? Where all share and no one has a need to dominate and impose? Control and coerce? That is the goal of true love. But you keep on shocking people Annatar14. It is part of your role in this world. Always my dear one.


Yes, much of my threads here in recent years have been about the attempt to square my Orthodox Christian devotion to God with my heartfelt Communism in this world, especially when I look at God's own directives in the matter. Of course, you and I and everyone else now lives in a Capitalist world... But that world is frankly falling apart because there's no other possibility for it to do otherwise.

Thank you :)

On the spiritual experience;



I had a very spiritual experience. But it is best to not talk about that in such an attacking place as this. But, I will say there is a fire that the soul recognizes and it is an integral part of why one has to transform oneself when one loves deeply. It comes from a very very profound place in each individual. It is unique yet shared. Very much a dialectic. Materialism. Asi es.


Yes, we live in this world but it doesn't seem as if all of us are ''of'' the World.




You are right in all this that you wrote. At the same time, it is good to share one's point-of-view with others. For great learning is also a social thing. Just like love. You need it within a social context for growth to occur. Can't do it in isolation.

I will endeavor to talk to you about philosophical concepts in the future. It is good to take a break far away from the heat of politics. And go to church with you...Senor Annatar.


:D

Yes, never in total permanent isolation. Even the Desert Fathers had God, and the Saints and Angels to commune with, and their brother Monks.
#15048899
annatar1914 wrote:I suspected as much. I think German Idealism has more to do with the subject of my thread here than I realized fully at first. Now it seems too that you confirm the horror of Hell's materiality for myself and for Dante, all too real;

[...]

Yes, quite literal even if he had to describe it in a poetic fashion, place there people he didn't like, etc... I was pretty mad when I had an Instructor once who placed Dante's work in the realm of Allegory. Dante isn't that sort, I read his ''De Monarchia'' also and he's a hard-eyed realist, if anything.

I absolutely agree that Dante was a realist rather than a fabulist. TS Eliot believed that Dante, in his Divine Comedy, was telling the literal truth - that he was merely describing what he had personally witnessed of Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, in the flesh.... TS Eliot understood Dante far better than your Instructor did. In fact, a case could be made that Dante was really the first (and greatest) of the realist writers of the European tradition, in the sense that we can draw a line connecting Dante's huge cast of realistically portrayed characters who are allowed to speak for themselves with the realist novels of, say, Balzac or Dickens. They were simply drawing new maps of Hell....

Unfortunately pretty much on the mark. We create an Idol out of the kind of God we want (regardless of what or Who He might actually be) and we live as if He exists as a reflection of-surprise!-our own wills and desires. Well, that's not real belief in God at all although some Atheists of another sort might disagree. But on that we can set that conversation aside for now.

Indeed; most people seem to want God to be on their side, instead of joining God's side. Implicitly, they seem to believe that they are more important than God. In my opinion, to utter the words, "God is with us!" is an act of blasphemy. But it means that Christianity, as a religion, is actually weaker than it appears, since so many of its adherents are atheists in their hearts. One day, they will simply wake up and admit the truth to themselves. And then what?

On the related issue of the Cartesian ''split'' of Mind and Matter;

[...]

Absolutely correct in my consideration. Two ideas come to mind as I read your reply; one, is that the issue of Berkeley and his antipathy to matter as being a ''independently-existing substrate out of which everything is made'' which animated my earlier discussions on this thread with @Victoribus Spolia . And the second is an observation of the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville that Americans in the 1830's were the one people entirely infused with Cartesian thought about reality but the least likely people to have actually ever read Rene Decartes... Thoughts on these ideas?

The mind-body dichotomy seems intellectually incoherent to me, since what they call 'matter' is itself merely a thought in their own minds, a mental abstraction which cannot exist outside the 'mind' which they posit to be a completely separate thing.... :eh:

Yes, Spirit still has to be some form of matter, it isn't the point to figure out it's composition, only that it has some form of extension in the regular three dimensions which grounds It in the created Cosmos of reality along with plants, animals, and exercise DVD's...

Precisely. Properly understood, spirits are not more 'supernatural' than grass or rabbits or oak trees....

The difficult thing is that Western Civilization will still have to go, in my conception. The Light comes from the East; ''Lux Oriens''...

You may be right about that. It's difficult to see how Western civilisation can save itself, given the track it is currently on and has been on for at least three or four centuries now.....
#15048911
@Potemkin ,

I absolutely agree that Dante was a realist rather than a fabulist. TS Eliot believed that Dante, in his Divine Comedy, was telling the literal truth - that he was merely describing what he had personally witnessed of Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, in the flesh.... TS Eliot understood Dante far better than your Instructor did. In fact, a case could be made that Dante was really the first (and greatest) of the realist writers of the European tradition, in the sense that we can draw a line connecting Dante's huge cast of realistically portrayed characters who are allowed to speak for themselves with the realist novels of, say, Balzac or Dickens. They were simply drawing new maps of Hell....


I would have to say yes, as far as picturing Dante (for all his subject matter) as one of the first realists of literature.


Indeed; most people seem to want God to be on their side, instead of joining God's side. Implicitly, they seem to believe that they are more important than God. In my opinion, to utter the words, "God is with us!" is an act of blasphemy. But it means that Christianity, as a religion, is actually weaker than it appears, since so many of its adherents are atheists in their hearts. One day, they will simply wake up and admit the truth to themselves. And then what?


''Then What?'', indeed. However, this was actually predicted, and we were told to prepare for it when the time came. As strange as it may seem, I think most of those false adherents will transfer their allegiances internally to 'human gods' who will rule them when the time comes, rule them under the organized pretense of an organized ''Christianity'' that is mechanized salvation, legalistic and Pharisaical. Spengler's ''Second Religiosity" and Dosyoevsky's ''Legend of the Grand Inquisitor'' in his ''Brothers Karamazov'' comes to mind. Western History is replete with previous examples in my opinion.

The mind-body dichotomy seems intellectually incoherent to me, since what they call 'matter' is itself merely a thought in their own minds, a mental abstraction which cannot exist outside the 'mind' which they posit to be a completely separate thing.... :eh:


When such people resort to the kind of pretzel logic that they do, it's time for them to re-check their original premises.

Precisely. Properly understood, spirits are not more 'supernatural' than grass or rabbits or oak trees....


Nor are grass and rabbits and oak trees less ''supernatural'', they are all endowed and charged with the Energies of God; ''In Him we live, and move, and have our being'', says the Apostle. This hails back to earlier on the thread, when I discussed Hylozoism with @Victoribus Spolia , with everything being alive.

You may be right about that. It's difficult to see how Western civilisation can save itself, given the track it is currently on and has been on for at least three or four centuries now.....


Like I hinted, I strongly believe that in most cases in Western civilization for the future, the individual mind will more or less abdicate and proclaim it's incompetence, reaching back into earlier centuries and institutions such as the Latin Church to govern them in all things.
#15048919
annatar1914 wrote:I would have to say yes, as far as picturing Dante (for all his subject matter) as one of the first realists of literature.

I would say that Dante was a realist not despite his subject matter, but because of it. After all, what is the ground of reality? Before any kind of artistic 'realism' can exist, what we call 'reality' must be given an ontological grounding. Christianity gave Dante that ontological grounding, the context within which the characters, their deeds in life and their sufferings in the afterlife would have a coherent meaning.

''Then What?'', indeed. However, this was actually predicted, and we were told to prepare for it when the time came. As strange as it may seem, I think most of those false adherents will transfer their allegiances internally to 'human gods' who will rule them when the time comes, rule them under the organized pretense of an organized ''Christianity'' that is mechanized salvation, legalistic and Pharisaical. Spengler's ''Second Religiosity" and Dosyoevsky's ''Legend of the Grand Inquisitor'' in his ''Brothers Karamazov'' comes to mind. Western History is replete with previous examples in my opinion.

In my opinion, this has already happened in most cases. For example, who does Hindsite truly worship? :eh:

When such people resort to the kind of pretzel logic that they do, it's time for them to re-check their original premises.

The truly puzzling thing is that they don't seem to realise the incoherence of their own thinking. They seem to act as though it all makes perfect sense to them and everything has been neatly 'explained'.... :eh:

Nor are grass and rabbits and oak trees less ''supernatural'', they are all endowed and charged with the Energies of God; ''In Him we live, and move, and have our being'', says the Apostle. This hails back to earlier on the thread, when I discussed Hylozoism with @Victoribus Spolia , with everything being alive.

Yes! And this is not a million miles away from the views of an artist/poet such as William Blake or Samuel Palmer - all things are alive with the energies of God, all things by their very existence sing a hymn to the glory of God. Veni, Veni Creator Spiritus....



"Imagine that the Universe bursts into song. We hear no longer human voices, but those of planets and suns which revolve." (Mahler, in a letter to Mengelberg.)

Like I hinted, I strongly believe that in most cases in Western civilization for the future, the individual mind will more or less abdicate and proclaim it's incompetence, reaching back into earlier centuries and institutions such as the Latin Church to govern them in all things.

The word "revolution" implies a return - literally a "re-turn" - to an earlier state of affairs, just as the French revolutionaries were self-consciously returning to the Roman Republic as their model for governance.
#15048920
Very good, my friend!

I would say that Dante was a realist not despite his subject matter, but because of it. After all, what is the ground of reality? Before any kind of artistic 'realism' can exist, what we call 'reality' must be given an ontological grounding. Christianity gave Dante that ontological grounding, the context within which the characters, their deeds in life and their sufferings in the afterlife would have a coherent meaning.


And so it is, that in the midst of today's Western Civilization I insist on providing such a ''naive'' backdrop to a sincere and real lived Christianity.


In my opinion, this has already happened in most cases. For example, who does Hindsite truly worship? :eh:


Well, I'm being generous for the sake of argument, but I'm pretty sure that not only has it already happened, but that it's happening provides the very basis for Western Culture, upending Spengler on his ear and even giving the date and year it happened; July 16th, 1054 AD. Everything good and decent since then in the context of Western Civilization has been in spite of that wounding of it's nature.

''Faustian'' as Spengler said, kind of like Tolkien's ''Nazgul'' or ''Ringwraiths'', unliving, undead... An Anti-Civilization, an Anti-Culture, in which it is the Fascists that are true to this form and are secreted by the System they help perpetuate.


The truly puzzling thing is that they don't seem to realise the incoherence of their own thinking. They seem to act as though it all makes perfect sense to them and everything has been neatly 'explained'.... :eh:


It's almost as if there is a worldly interest in having and propagating these sorts of thoughts ;)


Yes! And this is not a million miles away from the views of an artist/poet such as William Blake or Samuel Palmer - all things are alive with the energies of God, all things by their very existence sing a hymn to the glory of God. Veni, Veni Creator Spiritus....



"Imagine that the Universe bursts into song. We hear no longer human voices, but those of planets and suns which revolve." (Mahler, in a letter to Mengelberg.)


Yes, a few Poets and Rebels buck the general trend in the West :)


The word "revolution" implies a return - literally a "re-turn" - to an earlier state of affairs, just as the French revolutionaries were self-consciously returning to the Roman Republic as their model for governance.


For things to really work again in our Western necks of the woods, we have to address first principles, so this is absolutely necessary.
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