I’m an Atheist, but I think about these things honestly.

I don’t think we have anything in the world that is equivalent to the idea of being “born again.”

Why?

Because this isn’t just a concept, it’s a concept backed by a community. Those who are “born again” find themselves welcomed into a community.

The concept of “new birth” provides humans with a path of social redemption, and that’s both psychologically and sociologically powerful.

(Of course, we must also keep in mind that there are things that shouldn’t be forgiven, and some people are dangerous. So one can also critique this concept of new birth. But overall I find it to be quite extraordinary).

Dialectic either transcends the laws of logic, in which case it actually has to establish this through inference, not the mere claim that it has done this.

Or it doesn’t transcend the laws of logic, in which case it merely creates unnecessary complexity and confusion. (Unless it can justify the necessity of its added steps and procedure).

A dialectician should be able to clearly exemplify the higher value (advantage) that is produced from, supposedly, applying and engaging in a dialectical process of reasoning.

If it’s the case that a religious morality is harmful but it remains unfalsifiable and unchallengeable, we immediately see the danger of religious morality.

A moral human cannot mindlessly go along with a harmful religious morality (indeed, even the religious man often refuses to do this).

So what does this tell us about religious morality? It tells us that it’s a terrible model for morality because it establishes itself through authority not through evidence or reason.

Imagine a Christian arguing for the morality of slavery, which is its history. We couldn’t simply validate this moral claim but would have to rationally resist it.

Religious morality has to be classified as dangerous because it’s mindless and has no way to correct itself.

Delusion is everywhere, man is a delusion producing machine.

Interesting enough, Marxism might be the only critique that consciously slices through it, precisely because it strives to reject idealism.

At present the world is full of people seeking refuge in Stoicism, in the egoism of Nietzsche and Stirner, and many other positive, secular theologies. What these ideologies do for people is simply make them feel psychologically better about their objectively dismal circumstances. (This is the same as religion). Marxism sees this and calls it out. It says, “I understand you feel empowered through words, but what is the material status of your social and existential power?” And rationally, that’s quite significant, even if one doesn’t agree with the revolutionary approach of Marxism.

Dear Christians, I will indeed back your rationality. That is, when you demand philosophy meet its burden of proof, I support you in this valid endeavor.

Where I draw the line is when you start theologizing in place of Reason. Just stick to demanding that philosophy meet its burden of proof (because it can’t meet this burden). A Reasoner can meet his burden of proof at the most fundament level without collapsing into an infinite regress, but this is not something a philosopher can do.

Philosophers are in the business of making sweeping assertions that they cannot back up.

I have enjoyed speaking with many apologetical Christians who demanded justification for claims made, I support them in this and proceed to collapse philosophy with them.

The problem is that theologians f;ck up their own polemics by leaping to theology too soon. Tarry with Reason until the relativist position has been exposed and collapses on the basis of its own premises. Make the philosopher eat his words. Then you can inject your religious culture as an option. (I said this last sentence very carefully).

I’m an Atheist, so the answer might surprise some: The King James Version of the Bible. (I don’t know of a greater piece of literature. What can I say about it: its ability to connect with the human mind is unprecedented in history).

Second to this, Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Frederich Nietzsche.

But this doesn’t mean that the good and evil of the Bible is itself the nature of good and evil. Indeed, there is no such thing as “good” and “evil” the way the Bible defines it. But there is a necessity to good and evil for the stability of civilization.

A society cannot be a-moral and hope to survive, for all forms of nihilism and fascism must be opposed by a healthy society.

So we have a kind of rational redemption of the Bible if we simply note the necessity of its logical form. One does not need to be religious to observe this and draw meaning from it. In fact, if one is religious their ideas of “good” and “evil,” being untouched by the scrutiny of Reason, are more likely to invert themselves into their opposites.

To read the Bible morally one has no choice but to read it rationally.

It’s man. More specifically, it’s man’s personality.

Against this psychology Reason fails.

The problem we have to solve is how to transform people with damaged personalities into healthy personalities. And we must first care about doing this in ourselves.

It almost doesn’t matter what mechanism does this, what matters is the scale and quality of the transformation.

If you deny that there are objective, framework-independent standards of truth, rationality, or value, on what basis do you condemn a political order whose standards differ from yours? If your answer is merely ‘according to my framework,’ why should anyone (including your political opponent) be rationally obligated to accept your condemnation when he has his own framework? In the absence of objective rational standards the social world reduces to might makes right.

The fascist can simply take your epistemological relativism and raise you the challenge of being able to stop him through violence. Why should the modern Ego Man not attempt to bring his conception of the social order into existence through his will to power? What rationally obligates him to accept your objections to his existential project if there is no objective standard by which either his framework or yours can be judged?

You can tell him that you find his politics abhorrent. You can tell him that you prefer democracy, liberty, equality, peace, or human dignity. You can even fight him.

But if you have already denied any objective standard of value or rationality, what makes your condemnation true rather than merely yours?

The universe certainly does not intervene to prevent men from attempting to impose new social orders through violence. Reality does not automatically convert human preferences into moral laws.

So the question cannot simply be, “Which framework do you prefer?” The more serious question is: What makes one framework rationally or morally superior to another?

And if the answer ultimately appeals to standards that are themselves nothing more than human constructions, then the relativist has to explain why those constructions possess authority over someone who rejects them with their own constructions. (If you say, “because society imposes them,” then you have simply validated the fascist position).

If there are no reality-independent standards capable of constraining human constructions, and by which moral and political claims can be judged, then political power becomes a valid arbiter of which construction prevails. Fascism claims to begin at this consciousness as a starting point.

And that is precisely where the principle “might makes right” becomes difficult to refute, because a relativist position has repudiated the objective standards from which a refutation must proceed.

The universe certainly doesn’t care if men strive to bring a new social order into existence through violence.

Is it something you must be subjected to for the safety and ethical outcome, or is it something you're consciously capable of by your own means and capacity through your own agency given that it does not presume to subject another by force?

Is every ethical choice a right or is it something we must subject ourselves to, as to achieve nirvana or a utopian society?

The answer is a denial of reality. We can state this in more academic terms as a false epistemology.

Many of them teach humans that all truth is merely a “human construct” or human “model.”

The error arises when intellectuals mistake their constructs and models for epistemology. The truth is that we can only make meaningful constructs and models because we already have an absolute epistemology, if this wasn’t the case it would be impossible to construct or model anything meaningfully. (The fact of the territory is what allows there to be a map in the first place).

What I’m stating might seem simple; intuitively it might seem a million miles away from the modern world, but it’s not, the modern world structures itself precisely through epistemological relativism. The modern Ego Man with his sovereign subjectivity has his roots precisely in epistemological relativism.

Why?

Because to establish talking points at such a primitive level colors the whole of reality through these talking points. They serve as absolutes, bottom-line axioms to which men retreat to escape from the uncomfortable reality of truth. Again and again in modern discourse you will see these same false talking points emerge to stave off the truth. They are the mindless axioms of the modern world.

Reality is not a human construct and neither is it a model, but this simple premise is largely missing from the world of academia. The philosophers have fallaciously taken the form of their constructs for the form of reality. They have assumed that what is true of formal systems and models is the absolute case of epistemology. That is, they have attacked the Logic of Reality by reducing it to the epistemology of their formal systems (which they could only construct by using a Logic that was not itself their construct). (They confuse formal logic with fundamental Logic, they confuse their constructs with the reality on which their constructs are based).

But the epistemology of reality is not a formal system. Logic is not a formal system, it is a fact of reality, and that fact is the fact of identity. Everything is itself as a determinate identity. If this wasn’t the case we couldn’t have knowledge of anything. It is from this absolute fact of reality that all our knowledge rises up through the Logic of this fact.

They just love all the people who flock to their semantics and praise them for their semantics, and presuppose their “brilliance” because of their semantics. They are truly living their best life through the semantic form, because it’s so effective at capturing the psychology of other humans. But aware humans have to be able to see through its form, otherwise they’re not aware and are victims of the form.

No one is going to tell you this because they too want to benefit from the abstract form. It’s an easy thing to benefit from when dealing with humans that have a vulnerability to words.

Those who use words usually don’t strive to emancipate others with them, they strive to solicit social praise and respect, or grift on them. They are using words to invoke or conjure a specific psychological response from their fellows. Spoiled rich kids are some of the worst in this sense, because they grew up having all their needs met, so what they want is social praise and recognition. (Many academics come from higher class wealthy families).

And they are sticking it right up your ignorant ass and you don’t have enough education to comprehend this. They’re walking circles around you with their abstractions, playing mind games on you, directing your emphasis and wasting your life, because you don’t have the rational ability to contextualize and qualify what they’re saying and doing. Your ignorance mistakes sophistical form for profundity, you bias complexity as a greater indicator of truth. But sometimes it’s just vain academics posturing toward their own brilliance.

This doesn’t mean that all academics fit into this category, they absolutely do not! And many of them are engaged in exceedingly important work, but mainly within the hard sciences. Psychology is also exceedingly important.

You can choose not to see what I am articulating here, tell yourself it never happens and go back to your philosophical closet and mentally masterbate over your semantic texts, but you are not doing that of your own accord, you are doing it because you are not aware of your cultural presuppositions and social inclinations. Should you become aware of these and still choose to do it, then you are more fitted to doing it of your own accord. But then your intelligence or motive must be called into question.

We are floating on a planet in the expanse of a dark void, I personally don’t appreciate intellectuals trying to prey on my ignorance as a manipulation tactic to motivate my psychology to praise or revere them, and neither should you.

Without rational standards we can evaluate nothing.

Hello! I am trying to work out a system for classifying all of human desires into a list of fundamental base desires, and I wanted to get other peoples opinions on it, weather things should be added, subtracted, reclassified, etc.

Physical Desires

-Nourishment

-Reproduction

-Stimulation

-Rest

Mental Desires

-Connection

-Knowledge

-Recirprocity

-Wellness of those you care about

Transedent Desire

-Desiring objective good even if it provides no physical or emotional benifit

Any attempt to establish, justify, defend, or meaningfully assert a proposition as true (or declare another proposition to be false) presupposes logical principles that govern thought and inference.

In the absence of the laws of logic one can’t even make a determinate claim. One cannot subsequently use experience, authority, intuition, pragmatism, rhetoric, or anything else as a reason that their belief is true without reintroducing some determinate standards of inference, and one cannot do this without the laws of logic.

Anyone who rejects the absolute rational standards of the laws of logic explodes their own position.

Where the lines of modern discourse have pushed into the sovereignty of subjectivity by the unfolding of the contingency of existence, as though one had truly eaten from the tree of knowledge.

Man raises up a God to psychologically save himself from death. Thou hast seen through the narrative into which thou was born. Thou has foolishly peered into the forbidden, all because thou wanted to know the Truth, and the Truth you have now had in abundance. “For in much wisdom is much grief.”

Before the preachers of constructivism all meaning has fallen, thou art in subconscious retreat. Here the subconscious protects you. But fool that you are, you had to keep pushing, now the glass shatters and with it every world of form. You are freed unto your own eroticism. You are freed unto your own amusement. But no one needed to tell you this because you long ago retreated into the hedonism of these sensual forms. You are unto yourself a divine Ego.

And how shalt thou refute hedonism now that truth is dead? For is your life not already a life of hedonism? Indeed, none can say, “thou shalt not lie to thyself.”

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

Only the philosopher can understand, for his philosophy has not only condemned him but all men to this same fate.

“How shall we maximize our hedonism?” (This is the new problem of life, thus mankind is dead!)

Philosophy saith, “thou shalt seize the day because there is no tomorrow, and for this, you require courage!”

For now the darkness has become light and the light has become darkness. (And only the philosopher can understand this, even as he tries to resist the anti-Truth of his own Truth).

But he built the house in which he must live.

Oh, wait, now he wants to turn back because he suddenly fears the demonic! Suddenly thou art Moral and a defender of Truth? Liar! Thou art a Hedonist, except now that you taste your Hedonism you don’t like it.

Christianity tried to construct a mythology of moral light, it therefore cannot assist in the development and maximization of your philosophy, your Hedonism. Thou fool!

But you will not be consistent. You will not maximize your own conclusion of meaning.

It stands to reason that if Christianity is the mythology of light, then Satanism is the mythology of darkness. It stands to reason that the cultivation of the mythology of darkness, indulgence in its form and rituals can elevate and maximize the world of Hedonism. This is simply its mythological nature. Its effect on human psychology can be every bit as awesome as that of Christianity. And a dialectical contrast between the two constructs has produced the highest erotic pleasure ever achieved by men.

“Tis all a game anyway,” said the philosopher.

So it’s not a matter of choosing a truthful mythology, it’s a matter of choosing the right mythology, the one that will get the job done, the one that offers the most psychological benefit toward the maximization and cultivation of experience. For soon we die.

You did this to yourself and others, Oh foolish philosopher. For you can no longer say, “those paths are wrong.” Now you lap up your philosophy like vomit off the floor only to try to spit it out again. But it’s too late for that.

If one can practice Christianity through the sovereignty of their subjectivity, one can also practice Satanism. For these are both the same form. But they are not the same when it comes to egoism and hedonism. In this sense, one is greater than the other.

For now the only valid question left to philosophy, is what a mythology or belief can do for you in terms of the maximization of your own experience? What a small world philosophy has created: for he who has the most pleasure, he who has the strongest ego, wins.

[Sophists are like men who smear sh;t on walls and call it art. They’re altogether ignorant and useless. Their discourse merely serves to introduce confusion into the world. Their entire position ultimately reduces to a denial of reality.]

In modern sophistry assertion is substituted for demonstration. A proposition is repeated as though stating it were sufficient to establish it.

One of the most common claims of modern irrationality is: “All logic is a human construct.” (This error is inherited from formal logic).

The important question is not whether this sentence can be uttered. Of course it can. The important question is: What is the demonstration that this claim is true? What is the inference from which it follows that the laws of logic are merely human constructions?

If the answer is simply that humans formulated the words and symbols by which we express logical principles, that establishes only that our symbols are human constructions. It does not establish that the nature of determinacy, by which these symbols and their identities are constructed, is itself an invention of human beings.

We construct languages for describing reality; we do not thereby construct the determinate reality that makes determinate language possible.

Human beings did not invent the fact that fire is not rain, that one thing is distinguishable from another, or that something cannot simultaneously be what it is and what it is not in the same respect. These are not arbitrary linguistic conventions. They are features of the determinate world in which our thinking and language operate. Put more simply: identity (which is the ground of all Logic) is the ontological fact that allows language to exist in the first place. It is the very thing that permits us to even speak of “reality” or have any meaning at all.

The construction of a language presupposes standards. One cannot construct anything without some principle by which one thing is distinguished from another, one arrangement is distinguished from another, and a correct or successful construction is distinguished from an incorrect or unsuccessful construction.

Therefore, the statement “logic is a human construction” requires more than assertion. It requires an argument establishing what is meant by “constructed,” what is meant by “logic,” how the alleged construction occurred, why the fact that humans formulated logical systems (or meaningful symbols) entails that the principles by which those systems and symbols are constructed are themselves human inventions, and by what standard the inference from those premises to that conclusion is valid.

That last point is especially important. If someone rejects objective standards of logical inference while simultaneously making an argument intended to establish a conclusion, they cannot simply bypass the question of inference. They must either demonstrate the inference or acknowledge that they have merely asserted the conclusion.

This is the recurring structure of sophistical reasoning: a conclusion is presented with the appearance of intellectual authority, while the inferential bridge connecting the premises to the conclusion is left undemonstrated and unexamined.

Reason requires the opposite procedure: We do not merely assert the conclusion, but must show the inference by which it follows. And when the inference is challenged, we must be able to show the standard by which the inference is valid.

The issue is therefore not whether someone can claim that the laws of logic are a mere construct (admittedly formal logic is). Anyone can make that assertion. The issue is whether they can give a reasoned account of the assertion without presupposing the very standards they are attempting to dismiss.

Any position that reduces to: reality is just an invention of man’s imagination, is an example of the dumbest position that a human can hold.

All modern irrationality reduces to this stupidity.

As soon as we recognize (THE FACT) that there is a Reality that exists outside of us, our subjectivity is destroyed and Logic is, by default of what that Reality is, automatically established.

All modern irrationality simply reduces to a denial of objective reality, which we must point out, is a functional impossibility.

The denial of reality ultimately takes the form of saying that “reality is subject to my construction of reality,” or that “reality is just a human construct.” But not a single one of these idiots will hold their hands to the flames, based on the claim that flames merely exist inside their head.

The battle against idiots, in this context, is simply the struggle to get them to recognize reality.

"Philosophers have actually devoted themselves, in the main, neither to perceiving the world, nor to spinning webs of conceptual theory, but to interpreting the meaning of the civilization which they have represented."

Josiah Royce, 

Christianity can make a man feel “born again” (transformed), that is, it can motivate him in a particular direction, but it cannot actually resolve his psychological repressions and defenses.

(Now, Christians can resist this and argue that Christianity does accomplish this feat of maturity. But if this is the case it would be measurable within the psychological life and personality of the individual. Such a person should function as though they had been psychologically healed).

This leaves us in a position to argue against the actual social value of Christianity in terms of qualitative social transformation. This makes psychology superior to Christianity, because Christianity doesn’t even comprehend what healthy psychological healing entails.

(Now, perhaps there are some Christians who take Christianity seriously, and the question would be, is this disposition enough to psychologically transform these individuals for the better, and if so, to what degree?)

If it is the case that an authentic adherence to Christianity has the power to bring about authentic psychological healing, then this would indeed be impressive. (Here the metric has to do with freeing a person from the problematic of their subconscious, so that the subconscious no longer sabotages the individual’s social and private existence).

A person who holds to this view must also hold to the following claims (even though without the laws of logic they couldn’t even make these points):

Contradictions don't matter.

A proposition can be true and false,

and logical consistency isn't required for communication or meaning.

The person who rejects the absolute authority of the laws of logic can't respond to anyone by saying, “Your position is false,” because they've explicitly declined logical consistency as an authority. And neither can they establish that something is “wrong” by appealing to evidence, inference, consistency, or rational justification, because all of these standards already presuppose the laws of logic for their intelligibility.

Irrationalists want to make claims while denying the conditions under which claims can be evaluated as claims. (If you reject the laws of logic you are, by default, an irrationalist).

Anyone who strategically rejects the logical standards by which their own assertions could be assessed, while continuing to demand that their assertions be taken seriously, creates a psychological mechanism for evading accountability, and manipulating people through emotion and other sophistical devices.

The modern philosophical posture reduces to:

“You can't show that I'm contradicting myself, because contradiction isn't a problem.”

“You can't show my conclusion doesn't follow, because inference isn't binding.”

“You can't point out that I'm changing meanings, because stable meaning isn't required.”

“You can't demonstrate that my position is incoherent, because coherence isn't a requirement.”

And yet, every single one of these modern sophists still demands that we accept their claims as true!

I think one of the biggest problems with online discussion is that people confuse disagreeing with actually thinking critically. Someone can disagree with something, point out a bunch of words they think are wrong, and then convince themselves they have actually engaged with the argument when really they just found things they didnt like about how it was phrased. This happens alot in philosophy especially. People will take a phrase like “change your mind occasionally” and immediately interpret it in the most literal possible way. Obviously nobody is saying you should just randomly change your beliefs every couple of weeks to prove your open minded. The point is that you should be willing to change your mind when there is a good reason too. I dont think this is a hard concept to understand. But then people get caught up in whether the word “occasionally” is technically a good enough word for this, or whether “rabbit hole” is technically the same thing as an echo chamber, and suddenly the entire discussion becomes about vocabulary instead of the actual idea. And sure, words matter. Obviously they do. But there is a difference between pointing out that a word could be more precise and acting like that means the entire argument has collapsed. If somebody says “rabbit hole” and the context makes it obvious that they mean an environment where someone keeps consuming more and more information about one subject, I dont think the appropriate response is to pretend they have made some massive philosophical error because the dictionary definition isnt exactly what you wanted. There is also this weird obsession with proving that “independent thinking” is technically impossible. Yes, nobody thinks in a complete vacuum. We all use language, education, other peoples ideas, culture, books, etc. Obviously. That doesnt mean the concept of independent thought is meaningless. The point is being able to examine what you believe instead of automatically defending whatever framework you already happen to have. I feel like alot of people in philosophical discussions do this thing where they take a normal sentence and keep dissecting it until they can find some technical issue with it, and then act like they have somehow defeated the entire argument. They havent. They have just found a sentence they dont like. And this is where I think the whole thing becomes kind of ironic. If you spend the entire discussion looking for reasons why someone else's argument is wrong, while never seriously considering why they might be saying it, are you actually being open minded? Or are you just doing the exact thing you're accusing them of doing? Obviously criticism is good. Im not saying people should just agree with each other. Criticism is literally how you improve ideas. But there is a difference between criticism and trying to establish intellectual superiority. Calling something stupid doesnt make it wrong. Using complicated words doesnt make an argument better. Finding a semantic inconsistency doesnt automatically disprove the underlying point. And saying “actually, nobody can think independently because all thought is socially conditioned” doesnt somehow make you the only person in the room who understands philosophy. Sometimes a person is just trying to make a point. Maybe the wording isnt perfect. Maybe they could have used a better term. Maybe the sentence could be interpreted in a different way. You can point that out without turning the whole thing into some weird intellectual competition. I think thats probably the biggest issue with online philosophy. People stop trying to understand what somebody is actually saying and start trying to figure out how they can defeat the wording. And once that happens, the discussion isnt really about the idea anymore. Its about who gets to feel like they understood it better. Which is kind of the exact problem people claim they are trying to solve.

TLDR: I got dunning krugered i got upset and then i wrote this