How does the conscious realization of our assumptive embrace of a Christian ethic alongside skepticism about the underlying metaphysical and historical truth claims impact the ability to embrace the ethic moving forward? This seems the moment many are in.
.@jordanbpeterson called it "living as if God exists" but that sort of LARPING might begin to feel a bit nerdy "less than" like dressing up to go to a movie. This is what happens when you can't get a real date because you're living in your mother's basement.
Is all that remains a sort of aesthetic resistance then to Nietzsche? Will we quietly resort to a Nazi naturalism without the swastikas when nobody is looking or caring? I think this is part of the fear.
This piece sort of nicely pokes at the progressives who mindlessly embraced implicit Christian egalitarianism without realizing that Christianity had within it the moral fiction to balance its excesses. (Ideology as crippled religion as JBP stays. eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/were-more-ch…
It's not hard to see how the rise of AI exacerbates @vervaeke_john 's "Meaning Crisis" and we find ourselves harvesting ourselves as disposable thin clients who can't expect more than meaning as experience. Coleridge's falls are pretty. Image
.@JonHaidt 's answer is of course "train the elephant" which in a case like this points to the abandoned church. Elephants believe in herds. Elephants are trained by the path. Church then too can feel like too thin a client.
It all must be dealt with and none of us are smart enough or well-read enough to do it alone. You can't avoid metaphysics larping your way to an ethic. It is in fact the project of Civilization. There is no Civilization without Religion.
You can read the whole thread at my Substack. paulvanderklay.substack.com/p/there-is-no-…

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More from @PaulVanderKlay

9 Jun
In today's video I comment on a video posted recently by @WisdomRebel which had a commentary between @fullydavid and @Jonathan_Rowson on the @jordanbpeterson phenomenon
@Jonathan_Rowson coined the term "Jordan Petersonitis" to label both the obsessive fascination with him that @fullydavid, myself, and many others had with him 4 years ago while others were repulsed by him out of hand. Now with some distance it's good to do some assessment.
In January 2018 @nytdavidbrooks reported a friend calling him the most influential public intellectual right then. nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opi… A quote attributed a bit ironically to "The New York Times" on the cover of his new book.
Read 32 tweets
7 Jun
I live in all those California tensions @TheRestHistory was talking about. Glorious weather this morning. The wooded hills that ring the valley have not yet started to burn for the summer. There is a drought but we have water for today... Image
Heading into the office I need to run the familiar gauntlet of homelessness. The pandemic adds the strange iconography of medical masks as part of the normal shopping carts, feces and beer cans... Image
Because I'm a pastor, and have Jesus' story of Lazarus and the rich man haunting me I can't push it aside as nuisance or social problem. There are people living in and bringing the filth. Image
Read 53 tweets
26 May
Watch the politicized, media frenzy around any tough issue. The assumption is that political pressure plus money will produce "a solution". It might be poverty, racism, anything that can be categorized as "oppression"
The narrative itself demands "a solution" be found so once someone stakes political capital on it the narrative drives the stagecraft. War on drugs, war on poverty, war on racism... Wars, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.
Now at the anniversary of George Floyd we see the same thing. We're just setting up more rage down the line. It's like trying to use a fire hose to battle erosion. "Look how clean the hillside looks". You've just seeded the next round of rage.
Read 8 tweets
26 May
The whole "social workers instead of cops" idea is hilarious to me. I've lived and worked in inner city communities all my life and I think a lot of people who write these things have near zero experience with households that call the police regularly.
A bit ago I had a homeless guy who was dehydrated, wanted to get into a psych ward, couldn't keep food down. Asked me to call 911 for him. I did. They were going to send the paramedics/fire dept. They ask me "is he violent?"... "sometimes".
"Does he carry a knife or a gun". "He's a homeless guy. He always has a knife." OK, we'll have to have the police come too..." (Safety). So 4 burly fire fighters sit by the curb waiting to treat this homeless guy for two cops to show up so they can watch them treat him.
Read 19 tweets
25 May
In today's video I wrestle with how the current super-nova of story publication is a gasping for air of a religio-starved culture after Modernity tried to convince it that oxygen was for dupes.
As the high tide of Modernity continues to recede the fantasy genre has never been hotter. Why is so much fantasy lit located in the Middle Ages? @richardrohlin re-asked this question in the Universal history convo with @PageauJonathan
The best answer seems to be that The Discarded Image amazon.com/Discarded-Imag… was the last time Western Civ had a fully integrated picture of a union of heaven and earth. That image has been discarded for something more resembling the Tower of Babel.
Read 19 tweets
4 May
.@jordanbpeterson is returning and did his first Q/A video. He clumped up the questions and the first one he dealt with was the religion question. It was one of his better answers to it. I needed to do a commentary video on it.
His address of religion was based on three questions. 1. How to believe in the divine even though it is a loose end 2. How has your conception of God changed in the last year or two. Has your wife's burgeoning conception changed you?
You said "the grace and mercy of God" in your return video... 3. Why do so many people follow an ideology blindly today as sort of replacements for religion, family or a meaningful life... 4. Why does your personal theology seem to align to Eastern Orthodoxy?
Read 24 tweets

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