Christianity has a bad reputation. People associate the Christian religion with belief in ridiculous fantasies, rejection of scientific knowledge, adherence to dubious moral and political views, and intolerant narrow views about society. But what if these problems are not in fact part of the original message that gave rise to Christianity in the first place? What if they just reflect the mutated political evolution of the church? Could Christianity reform to make sense?

John Lennon of the Beatles had a great insight into Christian origins, that Christianity started out with the view that ‘reaching the Christ within’ is the starting point for reform of society. However, this teaching of inner wisdom of the heart, as Lennon put it, that ‘love is all you need’, became associated with the movement known as Gnosticism. The church condemned and suppressed such ideas as heresy.

The church had departed from its original message, fearing that a true focus on love would only bring crucifixion and chaos, rather than stability and order. But what price political stability? Lennon said “It seems to me that the only true Christians were the Gnostics, who believed in self-knowledge, i.e. becoming Christ themselves, reaching the Christ within. The light is the truth. Turn on the light.”

Instead of the Christ within, the ancient church opted for the safer political message, despite its magical craziness, that belief in the saving blood of Christ shed on the cross was the only way to go to heaven. This church view conveniently avoided any confrontation with military rulers, putting the bishops in the box seat to bless the emperors, with throne and altar in lockstep.

The church rejected the Gnostic message of love, that you can become like Christ, and instead put their alliance with the Roman Empire ahead of the ethical ideals of Christ. In gaining the world, the Christian church lost its soul. Setting worldly stability and gain as more important than the deeper problem of building a world of love meant the church turned Jesus from messiah into eunuch.

A return to Gnostic principles of love and truth is now the only way to redeem Christianity. That does not mean political stability is secondary, but it does ask us to imagine a path to transform the world.

A return to Gnostic principles of honest self-awareness can enable Christianity to reconcile with science and reason. That means we should recognise that all the unscientific beliefs of conventional faith are just comforting symbols and parables rather than literal history, despite the fervent beliefs to the contrary.

The immense social and material resources of Christianity can only engage constructively in social conversation as a force for good through a shaking of the foundations of faith. Such a change would need a humble confession of how the church has strayed from its original principles of love and truth.

Take a leaf from John the Baptist in the Gospels, where he tells Jesus that forgiveness is conditional on understanding exactly why your actions were wrong and being genuinely sorry about it. The Christian church is a long way from such awareness of its mistakes.

The problem is that many central beliefs, including gospel stories about Jesus, are fictional, not historical, but believers can’t cope with a conversation about that. Just considering the historical evidence, it appears that Jesus of Nazareth was completely fictional. If so, the Jesus story must have started in a secret Gnostic mystery wisdom society. They developed the Gospel ideas by imagining what the messiah would do if he existed, without seeing that their imaginary creation would come to be believed in as a real person.

The core message of the Gospels is that the story of Jesus connects our fallen world to an eternal truth, a vision of a state of grace. But if Jesus was invented by Gnostics, the orthodox faith was only a corrupted shadow of the original high philosophy. The task now in reconstructing Christian origins is to find the fugitive traces of the coherent ethical message that gave the story of Jesus such potency, by taking a scientific view towards the historical evidence.

If that evidence shows that human depravity extended to inventing Jesus, perhaps that will tell us something about the real depths of sin in the world. We should primarily ask what the stories of the Bible can mean for us today, and should never assert that claims made in the Bible show that God has intervened in the world in ways that conflict with modern scientific knowledge.

Robert Tulip wrote:Christianity has a bad reputation. People associate the Christian religion with belief in ridiculous fantasies, rejection of scientific knowledge, adherence to dubious moral and political views, and intolerant narrow views about society. But what if these problems are not in fact part of the original message that gave rise to Christianity in the first place? What if they just reflect the mutated political evolution of the church? Could Christianity reform to make sense?

Yes, people, even Christians, do associate Christianity with some of the problems you listed, although I would argue that "ridiculous fantasies" are actually fewer in modern Christianity than in many other religions, and probably fewer than in early Christianity. But not to be overlooked is that a great many Christians do not participate in the reactionary side. It's the fundamentalists that raise the profile of the faith because they make the most noise. And if "non-offending" Christians do assent to a few supernatural explanations, I can see no harm in that and view it as intolerance to strongly object to their doing so.

John Lennon of the Beatles had a great insight into Christian origins, that Christianity started out with the view that ‘reaching the Christ within’ is the starting point for reform of society. However, this teaching of inner wisdom of the heart, as Lennon put it, that ‘love is all you need’, became associated with the movement known as Gnosticism. The church condemned and suppressed such ideas as heresy.

Lennon doesn't make a claim for gnosticism as the original Christianity, though.

The church had departed from its original message, fearing that a true focus on love would only bring crucifixion and chaos, rather than stability and order. But what price political stability? Lennon said “It seems to me that the only true Christians were the Gnostics, who believed in self-knowledge, i.e. becoming Christ themselves, reaching the Christ within. The light is the truth. Turn on the light.”

I haven't heard of any documentation that the diverse groups which, in relatively modern times, were labeled "gnostic" had an overarching focus on love. That doesn't appear as a Church heresy in the record, either. It seems just as feasible that love descended from the main church. You can see the strong emphasis on love of Christians for each other, perhaps even for people in general, in Paul's letters.

You seem to be claiming, Robert, that the beliefs that are now dominant were heretical, so to speak, vs the original gnostic understandings. Then the tradition that emphaiszed individual seeking of esoteric knowledge (gnosticism) became the heresy once the Church got the upper hand. That scenario seems mixed up, and co-evolution for a long while the more likely one.

Instead of the Christ within, the ancient church opted for the safer political message, despite its magical craziness, that belief in the saving blood of Christ shed on the cross was the only way to go to heaven. This church view conveniently avoided any confrontation with military rulers, putting the bishops in the box seat to bless the emperors, with throne and altar in lockstep.

Well, are you sure that "magical craziness" was foreign to gnosticism? Spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues were prized by gnostics. Ritual magic was not uncommon either, not surprising with the influence of neoplatonism. It doesn't appear to me that gnostics were heading in a more rational direction, in fact just the opposite.

The church rejected the Gnostic message of love, that you can become like Christ, and instead put their alliance with the Roman Empire ahead of the ethical ideals of Christ. In gaining the world, the Christian church lost its soul. Setting worldly stability and gain as more important than the deeper problem of building a world of love meant the church turned Jesus from messiah into eunuch.

I'd never claim to be knowledgeable on the topic, but will just say that as far as I've heard, gnosticism was about the method of seeking and was not known to be strong on ethics. It also had its own quite supernatural and science-fictiony theology and cosmology.

A return to Gnostic principles of love and truth is now the only way to redeem Christianity. That does not mean political stability is secondary, but it does ask us to imagine a path to transform the world.

Not to belabor the point, but the ethical core of gnosticism isn't clear to me. As I see it, what you call for is already within a Christian ethical tradition.

A return to Gnostic principles of honest self-awareness can enable Christianity to reconcile with science and reason. That means we should recognise that all the unscientific beliefs of conventional faith are just comforting symbols and parables rather than literal history, despite the fervent beliefs to the contrary.

I just think you're talking about something different but seem to want the support of originalism. Maybe you're really talking about an updated gnosticism, as Gnostic Bishop does. Why it should be important that gnosticism is the original Christianity is interesting in itself. I can't see why it would make any difference, frankly. Things often start off tentatively and grow stronger. Is it a kind of Gold Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age thing you have in mind, where the earliest is the best?

teachwithoutlimits wrote:Without faith, it's impossible to please God. And faith comes with humility. The existence of God cannot be explained by human reason. It's unfathomable.

So a man who lives well all his life is not doing what Jesus would like when all Jesus said was needed for him to know his people was by their works and deeds.

By your twisted standards, people like Ghandi would be rejected by God and Jesus.

Your poor moral sense, which you put into your view of God is what is unfathomable.

Consider that Gnostic Christianity would happily have Ghandi with us in the heaven we envisage.

Do you have any other candidates of good men that your God would reject unjustly?

Regards
DL

Robert Tulip wrote:

Christianity has a bad reputation.

A well deserved bad reputation.

A return to Gnostic principles of honest self-awareness can enable Christianity to reconcile with science and reason.

This is for sure.

They developed the Gospel ideas by imagining what the messiah would do if he existed, without seeing that their imaginary creation would come to be believed in as a real person.

Perhaps. I see it more as early Christians, who were Jews, just changing their messianic myth to suite. That would have been split Jews into two more factions but they already had quite the number of those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrDGgKunPsY

But if Jesus was invented by Gnostics, the orthodox faith was only a corrupted shadow of the original high philosophy. The task now in reconstructing Christian origins is to find the fugitive traces of the coherent ethical message that gave the story of Jesus such potency, by taking a scientific view towards the historical evidence.

I think that to get that early history, Christianity would need to be shown as usurping the Gnostic Christian scriptures when they were known as Chrestians.

I believe that Chestianity was the original Gnostic Christian and Jewish sect. I have not been able to prove it so far but the information I have seems to fit. For instance, Chrestians called their Jesus and God, Jesus the Good and God the Good, and so did Gnostic Christiens before we started using the designation for God as I am and meaning ourselves.

The ideologies match but proof of the Christian usurping has yet to be proven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... At-PAkgqls

Regards
DL

DWill wrote:[
Not to belabor the point, but the ethical core of gnosticism isn't clear to me. As I see it, what you call for is already within a Christian ethical tradition.

No way.

Gnostic Christianity is a Universalist religion while Christianity is a divisive religion. We have all ending in heaven as we have tied God's righteousness to equality.

We, unlike Christians, cannot be homophobic and misogynous which is why we were a better moral religion than what Christianity ever was. That is why we call Yahweh a vile demiurge who could only create an immoral creed.

You insult this Gnostic Christian by saying our morals are as poor as what Christianity has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJCCARjyNM

Regards
DL

Harry Marks wrote:The persistence of fundamentalisms tells us more about a chasm of values, between the highly educated skeptics and the workaday practitioners of religion, than it does about people's determination to choose ignorance.

Coming back again to the rest of these very astute observations, I find by some weird synchronicity that this first statement from Harry is exactly what I have been thinking about, linking to the whole political scene ranging from statue iconoclasm to gay rights to climate change to the place of science and religion in society. This morning I listened to a radio interview about Merkel’s expected success in the coming German election, based on an article http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 61054.html which boiled down argued that the central religious figure in Germany is Karl Popper. “They rejected all grand ideas, their state religion became Karl Popper's "piecemeal social engineering." But the author accepted in the interview that this mentality made Germany rather passive, by comparison to the dynamism celebrated in the USA.
How does that relate to the chasm of values? The highly educated skeptics focus on what is true and rational, while the workaday practitioners of religion focus on what is practical and resonant and meaningful. For a local community, not funded mainly by the state, if your language does not touch the heart it will not even be heard. All the high sceptical reason will be filtered by the heuristic of what it means for our life. Creationism touches the heart and builds community, while evolution is an arid demeaning of human exceptionalism, or at least that is how it seems to appear. That valuing of community is certainly not a determination to choose irrational ignorance, but rather a construction of an ideology, preserving the authority of tradition, aiming to protect conservative social values of faith and belonging. This fundamentalist mentality can be respected within that echo bubble framework. Such religious construction does however have the effect of causing irrational ignorance, which is why the elites view ordinary people with such disdain and contempt and exasperation. I like conservatism, because the elite reformers remind me of Dr Frankenstein, meddling with issues they do not well understand. And I have always disliked Karl Popper, despite his brilliance, because his Poverty of Historicism attacked Platonic idealism in a way that destroys social dynamism, which is exactly why the cautious Germans worship him so fervently. I am in favour of social dynamism, which rests upon conservative values of faith.

Harry Marks wrote: In the world of Red State traditionalists in the U.S., for example, preoccupation with sexual fidelity and family stability lead people to demonize "the abortion industry" and a homosexual "agenda" perceived as justifying libertine sexuality. In the world of academia, where tenure means economic security most Red-Staters can only dream of, divorce is no big thing and sexual fidelity is only a little bit more important than keeping one's musical tastes up to date. Much more critical is the matter of employment opportunities for one's daughters or LGBTQ children.

Yes, this social chasm is wide. Always the elites are asking for rational explanations of morality, and can never accept the conservative blessing of tradition. I am in a debate about causality https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread ... ost2419655 that has discussed Hume’s scepticism about necessary connection. Forgive me if that seems a jump from US social tensions, but there is a link. The whole agenda of the empirical philosophers such as Hume was to reject the old religious claim that some ideas, notably God, freedom and immortality of the soul, are innate to human existence. As with Descartes’ cogito, Hume’s logical empiricism stood in mythological service to the rise of capitalist individualism, with its rational rejection of all claims that could not be demonstrated by evidence. By contrast, the Red State mentality arises from an earlier psychology of faith and community, and the two paradigms face off in mutual incomprehension.

Harry Marks wrote: Fix the privilege gap and the evidence gap will fade into the background.

But fixing the privilege gap between red and blue economies involves fundamental questions about the role of the state. The military is the secret red welfare state in America. The Afghanistan war is needed to justify the 3.3% GDP military spend. My view is that the long term solutions rest in sound economics, but here we find the clash on market theory, for example between Keynes and Smith, produces conflict on sustainable growth. It is not possible to fix the privilege gap by redistribution of wealth, since that action undermines the incentives for wealth creation, which is the only sustainable source of prosperity. But wealth creation requires markets, which are intrinsically heartless, rewarding the talented and punishing failure, as Jesus commended at Matt 25.

Harry Marks wrote: Henrik Ibsen's great play, "An Enemy of the People," looked at a community determined not to know the truth because the truth threatened its pocketbook. And they were equally determined not to let outsiders investigate, because they knew (without admitting to themselves) that this would be disastrous.

Denial of truth is a universal syndrome, linked to the idea that democracy works only until the majority realise that power gives the key to print money. On my holiday I picked up a box of books, cruising the second hand shops in country towns. One is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, in a nice falling apart fifty cent edition. The True Believer hates the Enemy of the People. And this is the central problem that Bulgakov addresses in The Master and Margarita, especially in his chapter about Bolshevik attacks on currency hoarders. In the Soviet world, the True Believer, in terms of the sociology of the political clash between communism and fascism, stood on the side of reason, seen as the political bloc of the left, while the Enemy of the People stood on the side of faith, seen as the political bloc of the right.

Harry Marks wrote:It's worth thinking about what kinds of economic structures, and what kinds of government structures, foster such denialist maladaptation.

You seem to be saying Harry that ‘denialist maladaptation’ occurs on both sides of this debate, among Christian fundamentalists and also among rationalist elites. The implication is that people’s views ignore the element of truth in the ideas of their opponents but instead fasten on aspects they don’t like. That is a recipe for a trajectory of worsening conflict and polarisation. This is where I think a rational faith can be a lightning rod, a basis for reconciliation and dialogue. Unfortunately with all the screaming there is little interest in dialogue. Denial of reality occurs when our ideology separates us from reality. But given the fact that concepts of reality are constructed rather than observed, who is to say my beliefs are real and yours are not? This is where science is central, with logic and evidence the bedrock for reliable belief.

Regarding your very pertinent point about maladaptive economic and government structures, my view is that thinking about what is adaptive should start by looking at what proves to be adaptive in nature, seen in the evolutionary concepts of natural selection and cumulative adaptation. Society is different from nature, since we have capacity for compassion for the weak. But intellectually, we should recognise that compassion is funded by markets, and that an ideology that pits them against each other is deluded, dangerous and likely to produce needless suffering. That is why I agree with Hayek that a core goal of economics should be to reduce the size of the state, since creeping intrusion of tax funded activity destroys incentive for market activity.

DWill wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:Christianity has a bad reputation. People associate the Christian religion with belief in ridiculous fantasies, rejection of scientific knowledge, adherence to dubious moral and political views, and intolerant narrow views about society. But what if these problems are not in fact part of the original message that gave rise to Christianity in the first place? What if they just reflect the mutated political evolution of the church? Could Christianity reform to make sense?

Yes, people, even Christians, do associate Christianity with some of the problems you listed, although I would argue that "ridiculous fantasies" are actually fewer in modern Christianity than in many other religions, and probably fewer than in early Christianity.

The 40% of Americans believing in young earth creationism are just the tip of the iceberg of fantasy, which extends to all the miracles of the Bible, whose real meaning is as parable, not history.

DWill wrote:It's the fundamentalists that raise the profile of the faith because they make the most noise. And if "non-offending" Christians do assent to a few supernatural explanations, I can see no harm in that and view it as intolerance to strongly object to their doing so.

Sure, the fantasy element in faith is a great social comfort, and that is largely a good thing for the individuals concerned. It is even a good thing for their communities, since faith is a social glue that creates an intellectual structure for the transmission of moral values.

I was talking on Sunday to the head of the Tongan breakaway Methodist Church in Australia and his wife, and they explained the pastoral function of Sunday School, with a detailed curriculum covering all the books of the Bible going up to the end of high school, aiming to ensure all children have strong relationships in the community. I find that admirable, except that such devotional fervour brings with it a strong acceptance of the fantasy in the Bible, which conflicts with modern scientific secular rationality. I hope that it is possible for such practices to evolve to include recognition of the symbolic content in their beliefs.

DWill wrote:

John Lennon of the Beatles had a great insight into Christian origins, that Christianity started out with the view that ‘reaching the Christ within’ is the starting point for reform of society. However, this teaching of inner wisdom of the heart, as Lennon put it, that ‘love is all you need’, became associated with the movement known as Gnosticism. The church condemned and suppressed such ideas as heresy.

Lennon doesn't make a claim for Gnosticism as the original Christianity, though.

I’m not sure about that. See his statement quoted below.

DWill wrote:

The church had departed from its original message, fearing that a true focus on love would only bring crucifixion and chaos, rather than stability and order. But what price political stability? Lennon said “It seems to me that the only true Christians were the Gnostics, who believed in self-knowledge, i.e. becoming Christ themselves, reaching the Christ within. The light is the truth. Turn on the light.”

I haven't heard of any documentation that the diverse groups which, in relatively modern times, were labeled "gnostic" had an overarching focus on love.

If John Lennon thought “the only true Christians were the Gnostics”, that supports the argument that he also thought the original Christians were Gnostic, and that orthodoxy was a degraded depraved heresy. That interpretation is of course completely contrary to the prevailing opinion in the history written by the victors.

But this also raises a further point, pertinent to your question about Gnostic diversity. It is clear that by the second century AD, Gnosticism was very diverse, as illustrated in the Nag Hammadi texts. However, my view is that there was a largely united secret mystery Platonic Gnostic society who were responsible for writing the original texts which became the orthodox Christian gospels, and that their cosmic theology was far more coherent and enlightened than the diverse texts which have come down to us as representing Gnosticism. It seems the diversity of the four (or more) Gospels, far less than the later Gnostic diversity, would map to the teachings of these earlier Gnostic schools.

The exact nature of this original Gnosticism in the Gospels has been hidden by the violent history of suppressing, forgetting, ignoring and denying anything not coming from orthodoxy for more than a thousand years of Christendom. So that is why the philosophical process of deconstructing and reconstructing what most probably really happened is so central to a reformed Christian faith compatible with reason.

The Gospels do have an overarching focus on love, which Plato, a great progenitor of Gnosticism, held as a core idea, for example in the Symposium. So my view is that the greatest commandment in Christianity, love of God and love of neighbour as self, is intrinsically Gnostic in meaning and intent, indicating how we can find Christ and the Kingdom of God within and among us.

DWill wrote: That doesn't appear as a Church heresy in the record, either. It seems just as feasible that love descended from the main church. You can see the strong emphasis on love of Christians for each other, perhaps even for people in general, in Paul's letters.

I think the church records are only a secondary source, since they had a main blatant polemical agenda to distort and demean the entire Gnostic idea that salvation could come from within rather than from the intercession of the church. So they had to reinterpret Gnostic content within the Gospels and epistles, and probably successfully edited much original Gnostic content out, leaving only the fugitive traces of the original story, which were so central that they could not be left out.

DWill wrote: You seem to be claiming, Robert, that the beliefs that are now dominant were heretical, so to speak, vs the original gnostic understandings.

Yes, exactly, that is precisely a main argument I am presenting, as a way to invert the paradigm of Christianity to recognise the messianic transformative intent within the original Christian Gnostic vision.

This vision was impossible as a basis of political stability in the context of the power of Rome, and was far weaker in military and economic power than orthodoxy, so the alliance of throne and altar was able to suppress it.

DWill wrote:Then the tradition that emphasized individual seeking of esoteric knowledge (gnosticism) became the heresy once the Church got the upper hand. That scenario seems mixed up, and co-evolution for a long while the more likely one.

But the problem with your ‘co-evolution’ hypothesis is how we explain its origins. If the origin of the Noble Lie of Gnostic Christianity emerged from a high Platonic wisdom melded with Jewish prophecy and Egyptian and Babylonian cosmology, as I suggest is most plausible, then the opportunity for a literal reading of the Gospels only came late in the piece, in the second century, as the beauty and comfort of the phantom story of Jesus of Nazareth, the ghost who walks, man who never dies, gained mass appeal.

The politician bishops who supported this mass fantasy then were easily able to suppress Gnosticism and force it into hiding, leading to the subsequent distorted picture of what Gnosticism actually was.

For Christ’s sake, we do not even know what Docetism, the supposed heresy that Christ only seemed to incarnate, actually meant, as we have only the polemical word of its suppressors to inform our thinking. I see Docetism as central to Gnostic theology, against the cosmic vision of precession, whereby Jesus Christ as the Avatar of the Age of Pisces came in imagination in order to prepare the way for the Avatar of the Age of Aquarius understood as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, a New Age implementing the teachings of the Kingdom of God in the world as a basis for redemption and recovery after the long fall from grace into corruption.

DWill wrote:

Instead of the Christ within, the ancient church opted for the safer political message, despite its magical craziness, that belief in the saving blood of Christ shed on the cross was the only way to go to heaven. This church view conveniently avoided any confrontation with military rulers, putting the bishops in the box seat to bless the emperors, with throne and altar in lockstep.

Well, are you sure that "magical craziness" was foreign to gnosticism?

Such a movement would inevitably have fringe hangers-on who would be crazy. The comparison with modern movements like Theosophy and the Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor well illustrates that. I like Samael and Blavatsky, but their belief in Lemuria seems to me to conflict with science.

I suspect that as Gnostic approaches came under assault from the church, there may have well been a range of forces promoting craziness, including the trauma of the Jewish diaspora after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, the breaking of the oral link to the original high Gnostic wisdom, and the general confusion caused by the Roman Empire with its rule of sword over word.

DWill wrote:Spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues were prized by gnostics. Ritual magic was not uncommon either, not surprising with the influence of neoplatonism. It doesn't appear to me that gnostics were heading in a more rational direction, in fact just the opposite.

That is all fair enough as a description of the degraded state of Gnosticism under the oppressive weight of later imperial church persecution of it, and helps to illustrate the challenge of reconstruction a plausible account of how the Gospels were actually written by rational Gnostics and how their theology relates to Gnostic ideas.

DWill wrote:

The church rejected the Gnostic message of love, that you can become like Christ, and instead put their alliance with the Roman Empire ahead of the ethical ideals of Christ. In gaining the world, the Christian church lost its soul. Setting worldly stability and gain as more important than the deeper problem of building a world of love meant the church turned Jesus from messiah into eunuch.

I'd never claim to be knowledgeable on the topic, but will just say that as far as I've heard, gnosticism was about the method of seeking and was not known to be strong on ethics. It also had its own quite supernatural and science-fictiony theology and cosmology.

Yes, there is quite an issue about whether later Gnostics held the world to be evil, and to what extent Gnostic movements promoted libertine amorality. My view is that their view of evil was in line with John 1, the light shines in the darkness.

As to the science fiction, my view is that there was an original coherent story, in a secret line from Plato, but this was suppressed, and only fragmentary distorted recollections survived into the later Gnostic schools such as the Valentinians.

DWill wrote:

A return to Gnostic principles of love and truth is now the only way to redeem Christianity. That does not mean political stability is secondary, but it does ask us to imagine a path to transform the world.

Not to belabor the point, but the ethical core of gnosticism isn't clear to me. As I see it, what you call for is already within a Christian ethical tradition.

My view is that the ethical core of Gnostic Gospel teachings is intrinsically linked to its cosmology, which defined Jesus Christ in terms of the slow movement of the sun through the ages, seeing the observed movement into Pisces from Aries in 21 AD as a low point, the presence of the Golden Age in the midst of the Iron Age, and presaging a future age when the ethical meaning would finally be understood and implemented, overturning the cavilling hypocrisy of church theology and ethics that has prevailed through the Age of Pisces.

It is noteworthy that the Noble Lie in Plato’s Republic is exactly about this theme of the Golden Age and the Iron Age, suggesting there was far more extensive discussion of this topic in the ancient world than has survived the mill of monkish sieving.

DWill wrote:

A return to Gnostic principles of honest self-awareness can enable Christianity to reconcile with science and reason. That means we should recognise that all the unscientific beliefs of conventional faith are just comforting symbols and parables rather than literal history, despite the fervent beliefs to the contrary.

I just think you're talking about something different but seem to want the support of originalism.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘originalism’. What I am trying to do is imagine a realistic scenario of cultural evolution that gave us the texts we actually have. When I read the Bible, I see a Gnostic cosmology of precession artfully and carefully concealed behind the entire story of Jesus Christ. So I want to develop a hypothesis about how that could have actually happened, and how and why it was so comprehensively forgotten.

DWill wrote: Maybe you're really talking about an updated gnosticism, as Gnostic Bishop does.

Again, the theme of evolution means that we build on precedent, finding the wheat in what has gone before and preparing the weeds to be burnt at harvest time, as Jesus Christ helpfully explained in his parable at Matthew 13:24-30. The wheat is the rational Gnostic essence of faith while the weeds are the deluded political corruption of faith that has dominated the Age of Pisces.

DWill wrote: Why it should be important that gnosticism is the original Christianity is interesting in itself. I can't see why it would make any difference, frankly.

It makes an enormous difference, because it sets Christian faith within a rational scientific framework that prepares the way for a future transformation of human existence on our planet, avoiding the real looming risks of collapse and extinction, leaving what Jesus called the wide easy path to destruction and finding the hard narrow path of survival, peace and abundance.

DWill wrote:Things often start off tentatively and grow stronger. Is it a kind of Gold Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age thing you have in mind, where the earliest is the best?

Yes, almost exactly. That is the theme I will address in my paper at the Kepler Conference at Cape Canaveral in January.

Beginning with the astronomy of precession, my paper will discuss how that drives long term climate cycles on a 20,000 year pattern, and how that stable natural cycle provides a scientific evolutionary framework to explain the Vedic Yuga myth of the descending and ascending cycle of the Gold and Iron Ages, and how this structure of time resonates with the real big structure of the solar system driven by the orbital patterns of the gas giant planets.

We are used to viewing this myth of the Golden Age solely in terms of descent, as you indicate, but it actually includes an equal ascending cycle, seen in the orbital data from ice and benthic cores.

The physical marker of this orbital climate cycle of precession is the date of perihelion, when earth is closest to the sun. The perihelion now occurs around 5 January and advances by one day every 59 years. This is a purely objective astronomical framework. My observation is that the climate cycle aligns directly to the old Yuga mythological intuition of the ages as cosmic seasons of summer, fall, winter and spring each lasting 5000 years.

My conclusion, integrating science and myth, is that our planet passed the depth of the iron age when the perihelion crossed the December solstice in 1246 AD and is now entering the ascending bronze age, leading over the next ten thousand years to the new golden age when the sun will be closest to earth in June.

Robert Tulip wrote:I find by some weird synchronicity that this first statement from Harry is exactly what I have been thinking about, linking to the whole political scene ranging from statue iconoclasm to gay rights to climate change to the place of science and religion in society.

It's hard to get away from this complex of ideas these days. I am a confirmed liberal in politics, and I can hardly imagine circumstances that would cause me to even say I was "independent." But since I am in the center on religion, and a rather unusual take on that center as well (mainline Protestants in general come out like I do on social issues, but most would not recognize my take on faith: Kierkegaard is a distant rumor to most of them, and Tillich they have never heard of) I find myself more able to listen sympathetically to both sides than most people are.

Robert Tulip wrote:This morning I listened to a radio interview about Merkel’s expected success in the coming German election, based on an article... which boiled down argued that the central religious figure in Germany is Karl Popper. “They rejected all grand ideas, their state religion became Karl Popper's "piecemeal social engineering." But the author accepted in the interview that this mentality made Germany rather passive, by comparison to the dynamism celebrated in the USA.

Yes, perhaps "piecemeal social engineering" describes it well. The Economist recently had a cover story on the German economy and how much it damages other economies in Europe with its Balance of Payments surplus. I was both intrigued and dismayed by the details, because the Germans seem to be overturning standard economic doctrine to the effect that such a surplus will drive up the price of "local factors of production" (land and labor, essentially) either through the exchange rate (which is rendered impossible by the Euro) or directly (which is how successful regions in the U.S. absorb success, as seen in Boston and the SF Bay Area of California). The failure of this prediction is an anomaly, but some of it seems to be due to managed prices for real estate, an unimaginable phenomenon in the U.S. but somewhat familiar to me from living in Switzerland.

I would have said "careful" rather than "passive." Germans and Swiss look a long way down the road and they usually have a good grasp of what key factors have to be looked after to avoid disasters. They are completely correct in observing that if the Southern Europeans would follow these cultural patterns, there would have been no Euro crisis. Not that this is any help.

There is no denying the dynamism of the U.S. economy, but sometimes that is a problem rather than a benefit. It can mean catching a wave and surfing it even though you have a pretty good idea there is a reef at the end. It can mean a callousness toward the social effects of economic decisions that the Europeans would consider barbaric. The kind of practicality one associates with Adenauer was in fact a rejection of radical solutions combined with an embrace of practical socialistic goals. "Piecemeal social engineering"? Sounds right.

Robert Tulip wrote:How does that relate to the chasm of values? The highly educated skeptics focus on what is true and rational, while the workaday practitioners of religion focus on what is practical and resonant and meaningful. For a local community, not funded mainly by the state, if your language does not touch the heart it will not even be heard. All the high sceptical reason will be filtered by the heuristic of what it means for our life.

I guess I think both sides use heuristic filters based mainly on meaning, but the university system has learned a thoroughgoing trust in the process of building an interlinked understanding, a model of the world, so that "meaning" looks more abstract. In that model, "funded by the state" is neither good nor bad, but a reasonable practice with a strong track record. What the localized viewpoint holds in its heart has often faded into the background for the academic and big city culture.

Robert Tulip wrote:Creationism touches the heart and builds community, while evolution is an arid demeaning of human exceptionalism, or at least that is how it seems to appear. That valuing of community is certainly not a determination to choose irrational ignorance, but rather a construction of an ideology, preserving the authority of tradition, aiming to protect conservative social values of faith and belonging.

All true, all important.

Robert Tulip wrote:Such religious construction does however have the effect of causing irrational ignorance, which is why the elites view ordinary people with such disdain and contempt and exasperation.

Well, not only because of irrational and ignorant policy views, but that's generally true. Attachment to signals of social status is often invisible to the one attached: they are not choosing what is liked by people whom they want the respect of, they are just appreciating what is good in life. For example, since they are going to be moving around regularly in their life, ability to break off romantic relationships with no one being hurt is more valued than loyalty to the friendships of youth.

Robert Tulip wrote:I like conservatism, because the elite reformers remind me of Dr Frankenstein, meddling with issues they do not well understand.

The basis for Burkean conservatism, a respectable position.

Robert Tulip wrote:And I have always disliked Karl Popper, despite his brilliance, because his Poverty of Historicism attacked Platonic idealism in a way that destroys social dynamism, which is exactly why the cautious Germans worship him so fervently. I am in favour of social dynamism, which rests upon conservative values of faith.

I am not familiar with this complex of influences, but I am intrigued by the idea that conservative faith leads to social dynamism. I would not even want to guess what that means, much less how it might work.

Robert Tulip wrote:Always the elites are asking for rational explanations of morality, and can never accept the conservative blessing of tradition.

Well, tradition turned out to be not only wrong but evil, about so many things, that Burke has a hard time getting a handhold these days.

Robert Tulip wrote:The whole agenda of the empirical philosophers such as Hume was to reject the old religious claim that some ideas, notably God, freedom and immortality of the soul, are innate to human existence.

Well, on the supernatural, they have pretty much carried the day. Ideas about the supernatural may have strong attraction, for which Jung and the Structuralists were able to spell out good reasons, but as "falsifiable hypotheses" they might as well be cargo cults. One of the problems with finding conservative intellectuals is that the conservative temperament is uncomfortable with looking carefully at where ideas come from and why they catch on. The desire for these ideas to be "given" by some authority, even if it be the Jungian inner structure of the soul, is very strong.

If I may say so, I think the leftist temperament creates its own problems for intellectual inquiry. If it is more open to asking awkward questions, it is also more open to embracing easy answers. And in particular, we on the left tend to disregard the dark irrational in human affairs with a cavalier optimism that can contribute to the "no omelets without breaking eggs" disasters of totalitarian society. My relative who is a history professor enamored of left-wing politics honestly beleives that Chavez was great for Venezuala, but Maduro is a whole different phenomenon. I am left shaking my head at what appears to me to be his naïveté.

Robert Tulip wrote: As with Descartes’ cogito, Hume’s logical empiricism stood in mythological service to the rise of capitalist individualism, with its rational rejection of all claims that could not be demonstrated by evidence. By contrast, the Red State mentality arises from an earlier psychology of faith and community, and the two paradigms face off in mutual incomprehension.

Well, I think it is possible that you are giving too much emphasis to ideology and neglecting, for example, the sociology of the processes. But let me grant you the point for now. Mutual incomprehension sounds right on target to me.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: Fix the privilege gap and the evidence gap will fade into the background.

But fixing the privilege gap between red and blue economies involves fundamental questions about the role of the state. The military is the secret red welfare state in America. The Afghanistan war is needed to justify the 3.3% GDP military spend.

Yeah, that's a big obvious issue, pointing partly to sociology which has reinforced the ideology gap. For decades the Southern congressional delegation pursued the location of military facilities and production in the South, in part because it was the pork that was available and in part because the temperament of the conservative society was more agreeable than that in the North. It's ironic that the South has gone from hatred of Federal military institutions to being the mainstay of these same institutions. The most successful step Truman took to overturning Jim Crow was his integration of the armed forces. When Tea Partiers are against "gummint" the exceptions are the war machine and the entitlements they themselves expect.

Robert Tulip wrote: My view is that the long term solutions rest in sound economics, but here we find the clash on market theory, for example between Keynes and Smith, produces conflict on sustainable growth. It is not possible to fix the privilege gap by redistribution of wealth, since that action undermines the incentives for wealth creation, which is the only sustainable source of prosperity.

We have been redistributing wealth in Western society for centuries now, with a nearly unbroken record of success. The "undermining of incentives" argument is mainly a smokescreen, not backed by evidence, to cover the relentless drive by the wealthy to bribe the government into giving them a larger share of what they, in their positional advantage at confiscation, think of as the pie. We know that it is possible to redistribute too heavily, but the U.S. has never approached that point and it is difficult to make the case that any democratic country has passed the point by much.

Robert Tulip wrote: But wealth creation requires markets, which are intrinsically heartless, rewarding the talented and punishing failure, as Jesus commended at Matt 25.

The heartlessness of markets is not the main problem, though problem it is. It is the myopia of markets that needs to be addressed. Markets would not educate society, even though education is the clear basis for modern productivity. Sociopathic corporations would not neglect an opportunity to make more money by suborning government, even though the same individuals howl in protest when someone else undermines government with the same behavior. Markets have no consciousness of what makes for a good society, despite clear evidence that their pursuit of short-term gains undermines the good.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: Henrik Ibsen's great play, "An Enemy of the People," looked at a community determined not to know the truth because the truth threatened its pocketbook.

Denial of truth is a universal syndrome, linked to the idea that democracy works only until the majority realise that power gives the key to print money.

Howard Zinn aside, most of us committed to democracy and liberalism don't care about the power to print money. That has never offered more than a short-term fix. And it is a constant source of irrational fear on the right, most recently seen with hysterical fears over Quantitative Easing which turned out to be so wrong that anyone dedicated to reason should have renounced the fear-mongers on the issue forever. But no, zombie-like, the fear of printing money stumbles on, searching for brains to consume.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote:It's worth thinking about what kinds of economic structures, and what kinds of government structures, foster such denialist maladaptation.

You seem to be saying Harry that ‘denialist maladaptation’ occurs on both sides of this debate, among Christian fundamentalists and also among rationalist elites. The implication is that people’s views ignore the element of truth in the ideas of their opponents but instead fasten on aspects they don’t like. That is a recipe for a trajectory of worsening conflict and polarisation. This is where I think a rational faith can be a lightning rod, a basis for reconciliation and dialogue.

I don't remember my original argument, and had trouble locating it by scrolling back, but I would agree that both sides ignore the truth in their opponents' ideas and that we are in a soup because of it. Hurricane Harvey is a nicely dramatic example of that, but I doubt it will change anything substantial even if it drains a bit of the poison.
What I would underline instead is the industry that has grown up around the practice of winning without persuasion. Both sides seem to have given up on persuading the other side, or even the independents in the middle who are perceived as responding to particular issues and symbolisms (e.g. guns, abortion, trade) without having any interest in overall perspectives which might make sense of matters. Instead the game in the U.S. has shifted to firing up the "base" of true believers on one's own side, and nothing succeeds at this like demonization of opponents and fostering fears. However pragmatic such political behavior may appear, its toxicity is slow and cumulative like CO2. I don't have a good sense of who "started it" but the question of the age is who will stop it.

Robert Tulip wrote:Unfortunately with all the screaming there is little interest in dialogue.

You can say that again.

Robert Tulip wrote:Unfortunately with all the screaming there is little interest in dialogue.

Thank you.

Robert Tulip wrote:Denial of reality occurs when our ideology separates us from reality. But given the fact that concepts of reality are constructed rather than observed, who is to say my beliefs are real and yours are not? This is where science is central, with logic and evidence the bedrock for reliable belief.

I have no quarrel with putting science in a central position, especially regarding scientific issues such as externalities and material capabilities. But with regard to whose beliefs are "real" I think the more educated have the responsibility to learn to translate from the language of the heart of the "left behinds" and bring them in.

Robert Tulip wrote:Regarding your very pertinent point about maladaptive economic and government structures, my view is that thinking about what is adaptive should start by looking at what proves to be adaptive in nature, seen in the evolutionary concepts of natural selection and cumulative adaptation. Society is different from nature, since we have capacity for compassion for the weak.

Again, the issue of compassion only begins to scratch the surface. Who knew that prosperity was the road to population stability? But so it proved. When I was around 15 "scientists" were sure that population growth doomed humanity to resource exhaustion and mass poverty. They turned out to be so spectacularly wrong that it should have informed a humility about human behavior which would be discernable today. Let's just say it is not in evidence. For similar reasons, I am profoundly skeptical about using natural selection to guide any policy.

Robert Tulip wrote:But intellectually, we should recognise that compassion is funded by markets, and that an ideology that pits them against each other is deluded, dangerous and likely to produce needless suffering. That is why I agree with Hayek that a core goal of economics should be to reduce the size of the state, since creeping intrusion of tax funded activity destroys incentive for market activity.

Well, again, if you allow for the huge impact of cooperative and socially enlightened behavior, such as education, market productivity is an important consideration. But look at Wikipedia for a moment, as the most spectacular success ever for production without incentives. It is not an aberration.

Participation in the great project of understanding the world has been a huge motivator from the beginning, with most scientists in Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries operating with limited financial reward and with Ph.D.'s in most disciplines offering negative return on investment for as long as they have been around. Incentives are great for focusing attention on productive minutiae, and thus producing gradual but enormous gains in productivity, but they are hardly the unique (or even sine qua non) source of productivity.

Gnostic Bishop wrote:

DWill wrote:[
Not to belabor the point, but the ethical core of gnosticism isn't clear to me. As I see it, what you call for is already within a Christian ethical tradition.

No way.

Gnostic Christianity is a Universalist religion while Christianity is a divisive religion. We have all ending in heaven as we have tied God's righteousness to equality.

We, unlike Christians, cannot be homophobic and misogynous which is why we were a better moral religion than what Christianity ever was. That is why we call Yahweh a vile demiurge who could only create an immoral creed.

You insult this Gnostic Christian by saying our morals are as poor as what Christianity has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJCCARjyNM

Regards
DL

I don't think there was insult in what I said; certainly I didn't intend any and wasn't referring to the overall performance of Christianity over the centuries. I only meant that you can locate a strong ethical core in Christianity through many of the scriptures (not all) and through the lives of both prominent and unknown Christians.

DWill wrote:

Gnostic Bishop wrote:

DWill wrote:[
Not to belabor the point, but the ethical core of gnosticism isn't clear to me. As I see it, what you call for is already within a Christian ethical tradition.

No way.

Gnostic Christianity is a Universalist religion while Christianity is a divisive religion. We have all ending in heaven as we have tied God's righteousness to equality.

We, unlike Christians, cannot be homophobic and misogynous which is why we were a better moral religion than what Christianity ever was. That is why we call Yahweh a vile demiurge who could only create an immoral creed.

You insult this Gnostic Christian by saying our morals are as poor as what Christianity has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJCCARjyNM

Regards
DL

I don't think there was insult in what I said; certainly I didn't intend any and wasn't referring to the overall performance of Christianity over the centuries. I only meant that you can locate a strong ethical core in Christianity through many of the scriptures (not all) and through the lives of both prominent and unknown Christians.

Collectively, the mainstream religions have gifted us with 2,000 years of war, Inquisitions and Jihads.

Not to mention that, today, both religions scream for the freedom of religion that Christianity first denied the world and that Islam took over now that we have brought Christianity to heel.

Sure, some scriptures have an ethical core but that has been corrupted as they are based on adoring a genocidal son murdering God.

You must be a more forgiving person than I as I am focused on the women and gays that are still discriminated against without a just cause by both Christianity and Islam.

I support the oppressed, not the oppressors.

That is why Gnostic Christianity is the superior religion in terms of morals.

Regards
DL

P.S. No offence taken on your post above.