NP: Fw: Re: [Ga] What's religion without spirit?

[Glenn Scheper]

FWIW.
You're about all the friends I have, so I offer my brain dump.
Gee. You want to eat it with a spoon, Anthony Hopkins style?

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Glenn Scheper <glenn_scheper at earthlink.net>
>Sent: May 12, 2008 7:11 AM
>To: ga at lists.ucla.edu
>Subject: Re: [Ga] What's religion without spirit?
>
>Bill Carpenter's cordial reply is an invitation to post
>further, and his questions enough rope to hang myself:
>
>1.
>> Glenn, Don't you think GA shows how religion can coexist
>> with science by delimiting the distinct spheres of each?
>
>2.
>> And doesn't that remove the necessity for science to be
>> atheistic, which results from its effort to answer
>> questions properly put to religion?
>
>3.
>> And doesn't that provide an opportunity for persons who
>> have imbibed scientific atheism to lay aside their
>> resentment of religion?
>
>4.
>> And don't you think that can be the work of the Spirit,
>> which thus gives itself the opportunity to work in
>> persons thus freed?
>
>5.
>> Won't science also profit from this liberation from an
>> improper purpose?
>
>> Thank you for your remarks. Bill Carpenter
>
>
>1.
>> Glenn, Don't you think GA shows how religion can coexist
>> with science by delimiting the distinct spheres of each?
>
>GA is not needed to delimit science from religion. They are
>naturally delimited (save when schoolmen were churchmen):
>
>We who are of science put our faith in Cartesian doubt;
>We tread a sparse path of the peer-repeatable and avoid
>wasting precious time on what seems unprofitable. Worse,
>falsehood is not merely random, but con artists purvey
>falsehood to our own detriment. I understand, a bullshit
>filter is essential equipment to whomsoever would be wise.
>
>Religion on the other hand, demands a quixotic faith in
>exactly that which cannot be demonstrated. And careful,
>lest your diligent enquiry prove your lack of faith.
>
>Voegelin (I just encountered a gloss on the web in time
>for this) describes the liberal, positivist position as
>gnostic: It asserts, I have superior knowledge, and so
>it cannot be rebutted nor disabused. The current pistic
>(faith) church has thoroughly rooted out gnostics since
>the fourth century CE (to its detriment, I declare).
>
>I imagine that Isaiah prophesied of logical positivism,
>and it appears to me disparagingly, in this selection:
>
> 28:10 For precept must be upon precept,
> precept upon precept;
> line upon line,
> line upon line;
> here a little,
> and there a little:
> 28:11 For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.
> 28:12 To whom he said,
> This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest;
> and this is the refreshing:
> yet they would not hear.
> 28:13 But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept,
> precept upon precept;
> line upon line,
> line upon line;
> here a little,
> and there a little;
> that they might go,
> and fall backward,
> and be broken,
> and snared,
> and taken.
>
>
>2.
>> And doesn't that remove the necessity for science to be
>> atheistic, which results from its effort to answer
>> questions properly put to religion?
>
>It is hard for me to see the causality expressed in your
>question; and yet, maybe I can and do... just tenuously.
>
>In my opinion, modern science SHOULD BE agnostic; Because
>modern religion can no longer demonstrate the referents of
>the words they ply: It has become a carnevalesque sham, an
>opiate of the people; suitable only to the herd mentality.
>
>Science cannot answer such questions as how/what/who/where
>is God, because religion puts forth nothing to be analyzed.
>Science/GA is left to treat the question: Why is religion?
>
>Science becomes atheistic only as an overreaction to faith:
>If Jesus' two commandments were to love God and neighbor,
>then Kant's two commandments were to do good and teach it:
>You must save the religious from his unjustifiable faith.
>
>
>3.
>> And doesn't that provide an opportunity for persons who
>> have imbibed scientific atheism to lay aside their
>> resentment of religion?
>
>I know you use resentment cunningly, in the GA extension
>of the center to all that is made "holy" by the abortive
>gesture of appropriation. But if I answer from my gut, I
>don't feel resentment towards religion. Just ignore them!
>
>Somehow, I had a very sheltered upbringing, focused only
>on math and science, and only the hard sciences at that.
>Religion was only weightless, like all mythology: fable.
>I never looked past my individual life to the macro world
>of economics and politics; and the power brokerages, of
>which religion is a large one, and very un-progressive.
>Looking there, desiring change, I could feel resentment.
>
>But "that" (GA? or something it entails? or all similar
>things?) is not a laying aside; Rather it is taking up
>arms; It is an attempt to subsume religion to the power
>of logical positivism. (Reminding me of how hedgemonies
>label what is the "Other", presenting the Other with a
>double bind of accepting the label and all it entails;
>or rejecting the label and then having no voice at all.)
>
>But that niggling presence of religion must be explained.
>
>
>4.
>> And don't you think that can be the work of the Spirit,
>> which thus gives itself the opportunity to work in
>> persons thus freed?
>
>I do foresee a golden age, an utopia that has not come
>upon us yet (and I won't see it in my lifetime either)
>that resembles what you describe: As Jeremiah foretold:
>
> 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;
> After those days,
> saith the LORD,
> I will put my law in their inward parts,
> and write it in their hearts;
> and will be their God,
> and they shall be my people.
> 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour,
> and every man his brother,
> saying,
> Know the LORD:
> for they shall all know me,
> from the least of them unto the greatest of them,
> saith the LORD:
> for I will forgive their iniquity,
> and I will remember their sin no more.
>
>What I read into your use of the word spirit (not Spirit)
>is the Hegelian definition of spirit: (excuse me if I tell
>it mangled)--a communal set of common beliefs and mores,
>a zeitgeist, a socius, culture itself. This is not Spirit.
>This is like calling coffee a spirit--It is the spirit of
>non-intoxication and the wine of the wrath of hard work.
>
>What I know of the Holy (set aside from the common) Spirit
>is that He is intrusive (like alien body snatchers), and
>imperious, demanding my attention to the point of psychosis
>and dysfunction, and presents a self-consistent truth that
>is at variance with the everyday facticity I had learned.
>
>By contrast, the Spirit is so rarefied in today's Church,
>that it is like the dry cocktail recipe that specifies to
>merely wave the open bottle of vermouth over your glass.
>
>
>5.
>> Won't science also profit from this liberation from an
>> improper purpose?
>
>I cannot concur QED on your noble-sounding summation after
>resisting many of your prior points. Science profits whom
>it will profit, especially those that are profits-driven.
>
>I would there were a summum bonnum, that we could identify
>an improper purpose, but I only find my goals, your goals,
>and everybody else's goals, and sometimes they do conflict.
>
>
>6. My posits.
>
>I would like to contribute to science. I don't know why;
>I'm a layman out of school, too old to turn it into riches
>or glory or personal power; For Kantian rule #2 I suppose.
>
>I have lingered here because I see a little niche (perhaps
>a big niche) of scholars interested in the sparagmos. And
>all you're being fed is a speculative schema approximating
>the situation of the sparagmos. I know the true referents,
>and I would hand them over to you on a silver platter, to
>de-brief myself. But some will surely laugh and disparge.
>
>Since I can find them nowhere else exposited at all, save
>in metaphor and parable, I think I must be that 2nd Jesus.
>
>Someone please post an encouraging appeal to hear further,
>and I will take you on a bizarre side trip you have never
>heard from any God-damned totalizing Christian evangelist.
>(It gets bawdy a moment while I disclose the taboo totem.)
>
>Pretty please?
>
>
>Yours truly,
>Glenn Scheper
>http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
>glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
>Copyleft(!) Forward freely.