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In my circles on twitter, the Mystical Christianity conversation is cropping up again. It tends to come around every few months, at least for the past year I've been on the site.
Tyler Alterman writes a long post on it that is mostly summed up here:
Now to broaden this outside of just Christianity, I'm curious what the Motte thinks of symbolism as a whole? I will admit my own path back to religion came via a symbolic pathway, although I believe it goes far deeper than this.
That being said, from my short time here it seems like most of the Christians on this site aren't that into symbolism, and tend to be more "rationalist" and materialist in their worldview. Again, might have a mistaken impression.
I know this is a rationalist offshoot forum so not sure I expect a ton of mystical/symbolic discussion, but I'm kind of surprised by how little there is given how many professed religious folks there are here. And I do think from a Culture War angle, that materialism is definitely losing steam (especially amongst the right) as we see more and more cracks form in the edifice of Expert Scientific Opinion(tm).
On a deeper note, the symbolic worldview is all about seeing the world through the language of God (or meaning if you prefer), in a way that helps people bind together and understand events in the same way. Right now we are in "darkness" symbolically because, well, nobody can interpret events the same way! I personally think a return to the symbolic is inevitable given how confused everything is at the moment, although the transition may not be smooth or easy.
Interesting how much “Imaginal Christianity” resembles an Islamic-Buddhist hybrid with some Christian characteristics.
What is Islamic about it? I don't know a lot about it.
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This is basically just the modern progressive Christianity that dominates many denominations in the US and Europe, with a shiny new label. (American Christianity in particular is very fond of coming up with shiny new labels for not particularly new ideas.) I would say that the majority of these congregations don't really "believe" in any serious way, either emotionally or intellectually. In the abstract, they believe in God because the universe is a big dark scary place without some supreme being giving reason to it all, and they believe in an afterlife because just ceasing to exist like a snuffed candle after a few brief years is a pretty scary thing to wrap your head around, and they believe in Jesus because he said we should all be nice to each other, which is nice. But do they have any serious expectation that they will ever witness miracles or angels, or hear God speaking to them, or really think about whether heaven and hell are real places? I don't think so.
I am more familiar with Protestantism than Catholicism, but I suspect it's not dissimilar there; the Catholic Church at least puts on an outward show of being more Serious about the whole thing, but I'll bet even the average Catholic priest doesn't really, truly believe in angels and demons and would freak out as much as any secular person if he experienced something actually supernatural.
So I remain unconvinced by this attempt to reconcile religion and reason. You might as well call it "Secular Christianity."
There are people who are very serious and sincerely believe, and on the one hand, I have a little more respect for them for really committing to the bit, and also find them a little less trustworthy.
I understand the concept of a "God-shaped hole," but I think it's mostly both a desire for a shared community (I do not doubt all the surveys showing religious people are on the whole happier and mentally healthier than secular people) and the need for Answers (see above, the fear of death and an empty, unfeeling universe that doesn't care about a speck of atoms like you).
I was never an Angry Atheist, but I did go through my smarmy, condescending Internet Atheist phase where dunking on creationists and born-agains was fun. Since then I have mellowed out and I have more understanding for the religious, and am kind of perversely fascinated with @WhiningCoil's trajectory, but while I've gone through phases where I've thought that joining a church might be "good" for me in some sense, I remain a materialist atheist and it's very unlikely anything will convince me to change. @FCfromSSC writes some very cogent criticisms of materialism and I get his point that materialists often base their "knowledge" on constructs no more inherently trustworthy than faith, but that just tells me no one can really "know" anything. Maybe for some people that leaves belief wide open as a choose-your-own-adventure, but I find myself unable to just make myself believe things. "You don't have an answer for how the universe started, therefore Jesus" is such a huge leap that I don't understand how people get there, though clearly many do.
No argument will convince me to just "reason" my way into accepting Jesus or Mohammad PBUH or the Tao. (Don't try; you do not have an argument I have not heard before.) The only thing that would trigger a conversion in me is witnessing something with my own eyes. Show me an angel, so to speak. Which means going to a church would always seem fake and disrespectful to me, even if the church somehow accorded with my beliefs in every other way and my intentions were pro-social.
So back to this "Mystical Christianity." I could get more or less the same experience at a United Methodist church. Or, stripped of even the pretense of Christianity, a Unitarian Universalist congregation. (I've actually checked them out. They are nice people but the utter lack of seriousness makes me think I'd rather become Mennonite or Mormon if I were going to go that route. At least those people really believe something. Also, UUs are the very wokest of wokes nowadays.) Freemasonry, yeah, has some of that mysticism and ritual but strikes me as sort of Boy Scouts for areligious grownups.
Does being "religious" actually change anyone's beliefs or behavior? Not really. I've long been of the opinion that being religious has almost no impact on an individual's character and says little about him. Christianity seems particularly adept at molding itself to the beliefs of the believer, but in essentially every religion, you see that kind, compassionate, charitable people say their religion tells them they are supposed to be kind, compassionate, and charitable, and cruel, judgmental, and punitive people say that their religion says they are supposed to be cruel, judgmental and punitive. That God always has a tendency to coincidentally agree with his followers' beliefs is not a new observation. That some people want to believe there is some kind of God-shaped thing that doesn't actually make any demands of them, either to believe uncomfortable things or change their behavior, is also not new. It's "spiritual but not religious" dressed up as being kinda religious because they like the costume. I think these people grasping for "mystical Christianity" or some other dressed up weak tea New Age spirituality should either commit and go to a real hardcore trad church that will make them study and do some theology, or admit they just want a social circle that will help soothe their existential angst.
I’m a believer in Biblical historicity: actual resurrection, actual flood, actual week of creation, actual Trinity, actual Holy Spirit working in the world through the love of born-again Christians who are less than avatars and more than paladins, occasionally though miracles.
These “secular Christians” or “Imaginal Christians” seem to be the Sadducee equivalent to Evangelicals’ Pharisees: the former not believing in resurrection but nonetheless attempting to increase the general welfare and wisdom in the world, the latter proclaiming the glory of the miraculous and spiritual… as long as all the rules are followed.
What was old is new again.
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You're probably not wrong, sadly! I don't have a ton of experience with the Catholic church so I can't say one way or another, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were correct here. 100% with Protestants, I don't think most of them genuinely believe at all.
I will say though, it is different with Orthodox clergy! Again, insofar as my own experience is a guide. The Orthodox clergy I have talked to genuinely believe, discuss supernatural phenomena happening to them and other congregants, and are incredibly committed to the preternatural as a part of their worldview. Now, this doesn't mean all the laity deeply believe and that's a separate problem, but I have noticed a big difference.
Hmmm, I'm not sure you are fully grasping the point @FCfromSSC is making. I may be butchering it, but the basic idea is an invitation to interrogate your own axioms. You may say nobody can really "know" anything, but regardless, to live and function in the world you do have to "know" things and have some axioms. Perhaps this idea that nobody can "know" anything is an axiom itself. Once you start to dig deeper into the structures of your beliefs, you find that a lot of them are built on houses of cards.
As for the leap - it's not as ridiculous as it may seem. It does take some reading and some genuine motivation and learning, but I'd recommend some books on Biblical symbolism like The Language of Creation, or Peterson's Holy are We Who Wrestle. If you want a deeper, historiographical lens, check out Violence Unveiled - Humanity at the Crossroads.
These beings don't necessarily appear to us everyday, especially if we don't try to reach out to them. Our minds can be quite closed. Have you tried fasting, or camping alone in the wilderness for 3+ days? Or, alternatively and frankly much riskier, you could try psychedelics and pray to an angel and ask for a sign. He who seeks shall find, and to he who knocks, it shall be opened.
My conversion dramatically changed my own actions and character, in concrete ways. I have seen and heard many other stories of this being true. I do agree in general though that too often Christianity is worn as a sort of facade of piety while doing whatever you want. Christ had that in his own day, and I'm sure we will always have religious hypocrites amongst us. I am hypocritical in my own ways. That doesn't mean that He isn't alive, and active in the world.
Sigh. Yes, as I said, I've heard this before. Most nonbelievers or lapsed believers who've made a sincere attempt at belief have. "Read these books. Try meditating. Try prayer. Try fasting. Try LSD." It's always that one thing you haven't tried that will convince you, and if you have tried them, well, you didn't do it right, or you didn't approach it with a truly open mind.
I believe it changed your actions. I doubt it really changed your character. Were you a bastard who turned into a nice guy? Or did you just stop swearing and cheating on your wife? I mean, I've heard of people who went from amoral monsters to devout good samaritans after a road to Damascus experience, but it seems pretty rare and most often involves coming off a drug or alcohol addiction, which brings into question whether it was the drugs or the lack of religion making them a bastard before
Just curious! Not trying to do a gotcha. I'm impressed you've tried all of that my man. Sad to hear that you didn't have the same experience I had. Not out of like, contemptuous pity or anything but I genuinely do find my life is way better. I wish more folks were able to find more meaning in their lives.
Not that you necessarily did anything wrong. Not sure what to tell you, I'm not an expert on these matters.
Hmm I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "character" here. My conversion did help me overcome some drug and alcohol issues, so perhaps that had something to do with it!
But when it comes to "drugs or lack of religion," and if the religion is the only way to overcome the pull of drugs, how does that invalidate the power of religion?
Oh, I didn't say I've tried all that. Definitely not the LSD.
Oh.... well why are you so contemptuous about it all? If you haven't tried the suggestions people have offered to open yourself to the supernatural, what makes you so confident that you are right?
I said I haven't tried everything (like LSD). I certainly did try some things. I'm not contemptuous, but I am pretty confident, and you're doing exactly what I predicted: if there's one "opening yourself to the supernatural" that I missed, then clearly I'm just contemptuous and didn't really try. Like I said, I have heard all the angles and apologetics.
Hmm I suppose I am, though from your reply it sounded like you had done none of those things.
I could go down a whole rabbit whole on history and the symbolic worldview versus materialism etc but idk I don’t want to evangelize if you aren’t into it hah. Thanks for following up.
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I have tried all of them except the LSD, which Im not going to. Didnt do shit.
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Fun fact: when I was a teenager, I wanted to be a priest. It's just, I'd need a religious experience to tell me what to be a priest of, and I haven't had one.
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I truly truly do not understand why these people don't just go be Catholic.
It's ancient, and mysterious (it's 2000 years old)
It has nearly unlimited "aura"; home to the most beautiful buildings and art on earth
There is unlimited amounts of "mysticism" if that's what you're looking for. Most churches hold something called "adoration" where they open the tabernacle and allow people to sit and pray in what they (we) consider the true presence of the body of Christ.
Continuing on the mysticism, there are things like The Rosary, and holy water.
If you want to try and get "Buddhism but Christian", you're in luck. We have prayer beads (the rosary), mantras (prayers), monks, ancient philosophy and meditation.
I don't even know how to properly address the "science" question that people seem to want to throw at religious people as a Catholic. There is nothing in Catholicism which is incompatible with wanting to pursue science and we Catholics would consider scientific inquiry a good thing. The big bang, evolution, whatever els, etc. these things are all not just "allowed" within the doctrine, but encouraged.
I think there's a weird thing happening where the new atheists did a good job of attacking the absurd claims of evangelical protestantism, but somehow lumped the Catholics in with them. I think people are waking up to this, but the contrarianism that led them to atheism to begin with doesn't let them just return to the obvious answer (the Catholic church). I think that's basically also why you see some of these people gravitating towards the Eastern Orthodox church. They can't just go be OG Christians, you see, they have to find this other offshoot thing so that they can maintain some sense that they were always right, and that the "real" church was hidden or something.
Just go be Catholic. It's annoying how obvious the answer to all of this is. There's nothing clever or surprising, it really just was the most obvious thing all along.
Well, mostly because "aw nah you're telling me all my fun stuff I can't do that anymore? I have to go to confession? I have to believe - or at least say I believe - that stuff for real?" Even if the majority of average Catholics don't know, don't believe, and don't live the religion, and even if you get a liberal priest who will tell you during RCIA "look, just cross your fingers and say 'yeah I believe this' but I don't expect you to really do so", you still have to sign up to "yes, Transubstantiation" and the rest of it. There are still The Rules. The pope is still the boss of you. You can't go wandering through the aisles putting a bit of this, a pinch of that, oh and let's have this thing here from the ranks of world religions to suit your tastes.
I've seen some examples of pick'n'mix taking the shiny mystical 'ooh look icons' part from other traditions within a particular Protestant denomination and it annoyed the heck out of me, because it was taking Serious Theology and playing dress-up with it. I'm not going to name any names because I'm not a member of that denomination but I'm not even Orthodox and I think you cannot just go "oh this is so mystic and foreign and quaint and not like traditional Western Christianity in its forms" and play dress-up with it.
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I absolutely agree. In fact I would even argue that Christian/Catholic science is actually the most genuine one, in fact Thomas Aquinas was famous adherent of empiricism with claim that truth cannot contradict truth - meaning that if truth of Faith and truth of Reason are in contradiction, it means either faulty reasoning or incorrect interpretation of scripture.
I would argue that this view of truth is crucial for scientific endeavor as they promote true and free research even if it is let's say supposedly against some religious dogma. In this sense Catholic science is much freer than let's say Soviet Science or often even modern ideological progressive science which is much more heavy with (self)censorship.
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I would guess that many Orthodox converts in US sincerely go for Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism because they've looked into the history and other such things and sincerely concluded that it is Orthodoxy that is the original church and Catholicism the innovating offshoot. (Locally, in Finland, Catholicism isn't even much of an option for many, since it's an even-tinier and more foreign a minority than Orthodoxy.)
That's probably a tiny minority of very academically-minded converts. As a recent convert in the US in a parish full of recent converts and catechumens and I can tell you that for most of us, the draw was something that is at once utterly at the core of our civilization but at the same time outside of the mainstream enough to not be corrupted by the various forces that pushed us into the Church from wherever we were before.
We have young people coming from broken/divorced families realizing that we have no cultural infrastructure left to build our own families on. We are disillusioned with political solutions to problems. This tends to start with a disgust with the excesses of the left, but I find that most of the "political refugees" that come into the church seeking solely a spiritual justification for their right-wing politics either end up leaving, or in the better case, they find that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church transcends the political squabbles of 2025 America (though the Church is undeniably traditionalist on many social issues). The scientific enterprise is utterly unable to offer meaning, point ways to build community, and show ways to walk with the divine. Of course, any honest scientist must admit that these are domains outside of the scientific purview. But, especially after COVID, it became obvious to many of us that even in its own domain, the scientific institutions are all too fragile and corrupt -- all too fallen and sinful we come to find out. Perennial problems, but perhaps acutely so in the decadent, post-enlightenment, post-liberal west.
In the face of this, where are we to seek stability, truth, and life more abundant? Protestantism is seen as either dominated by the religion of liberalism (Episcopalian churches with rainbow flags on the outside, and no one inside) or otherwise by fundamentalist young earth creationist types, who cannot be taken seriously by many with even a little bit of curiosity. Relative to the High Church traditions of the Latin Catholics and Orthodoxy, Protestants are also seen as utterly devoid of ritual, which is something I think most Western people are starving for without realizing it. It's hard to get a sense of the Divine without embodying and acting out the symbols and metaphors which point to our ability to the relate to God. Without embodied metaphors (ie rituals), it's hard to focus the mind and find the weightiness of certain moments and places compared to others. Without this weightiness, there is nothing set aside (ie sacred). Every place and moment is fungible, profane. The wet dream of economism.
Why not Catholicism? It's a close second for sure, especially in its traditionalist dispensations, but I think it gets rightly associated with many of the utilitarian/rationalistic excesses of the contemporary West. If the mainstream itself has grown decadent, it's only right to find fault with the largest religious institution of the West. There is a whole new conversation to have here about the Eastern vs Western churches, but suffice it to say that, especially post Vatican II, the Latin Catholic Church has itself become a part of the profane decadent mainstream which it is supposed to be a bulwark against (I recently attended a Catholic Mass which had stadium seating -- with the altar on a stage below the people -- and PowerPoint-style projections of song lyrics and pictures related to the service. Hard to imagine something less otherworldly than that experience). And there are also the sex scandals.
Not to say there are no flaws in Orthodoxy as currently practiced in the West. The earthly Church is not the Heavenly Church. Not fully. Not yet...
It's only after some time in Orthodoxy do we learn about the history and the arguments that it is the original Church. But I think the results speak louder than any history lesson.
Not a tiny minority at my church, I'd say it's over half the converts that get convinced at least partially by the historical differences of the two churches. Just an anecdote.
Also yeah, my first experience of mass was in a gym. Suffice to say I was much more impressed with the Divine Liturgy.
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You actually don't?
I did briefly consider becoming Catholic, went to Mass for a while, went to some events read a lot, and so on, so I'll bite.
The face of Catholicism probably varies pretty widely by region, some of the churches I visited included:
These are all reasons to hang out with Catholics and visit historic missions, which I certainly still do. I would consider sending my kids to Catholic school (my husband did).
None of them are reasons to actually become Catholic if you don't believe its teachings, which is very, very common. I don't like the rosary, but if I did I wouldn't let not being Catholic stop me from saying it.
A very very common story is:
“I kindof like the architecture” -> “I guess I’ll send my kids to Catholic school since they’re good schools” -> “praying the rosary is kindof nice” -> “confession is cathartic” -> “I believe in one god, the father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth”
The positive feelings you are experiencing in these places are you interacting with grace. That’s good, keep following the things that feel good in that way, and if there are things you don’t like, don’t do them.
I'm Orthodox, because of their Liturgy. Husband, who grew up Catholic, is heading more my direction. But the children are unbaptized, because we are not good at making it through the (profound! beautiful! sublime! long!) Liturgy. Unfortunately.
Go get those kids baptized! Use it as an excuse to throw a huge party.
I keep seeing photos of Pope Leo and the patriarch of Constantinople together. I really pray that there is something unifying coming soon. Lots of the EO stuff is beautiful, and in my mind these are the same church, just different forms of the mass. EO occupies a similar space in my mind to the TLM.
Yes. But we have to make it to church enough first. Which is a struggle.
Does orthodoxy really have such a strong norm towards ‘children must be PERFECT in liturgy or not go’? I ask because Byzantine Catholicism has, uh, thé opposite reputation.
You’ve posted before about the challenge of wrangling little people through Divine Liturgy(and I can sympathize), but Byzantine Catholic services are IME full of children being basically ignored until they start full on screaming. Maybe it’s a difference from thé ‘if you’re married you have to have babies and not stop’ mentality religious Catholics tend to have and orthodoxy is different- but it would surprise me.
No, the children can play nicely while whispering, nap, color, flop about a bit on the rug, or walk in and out as they're able to behave quietly or not. One priest said that he'd rather they were there and screaming than not there, but nobody behaves like they believe him, including his own wife and children.
Mostly, though, if we can't receive Communion, can't hear or concentrate on the prayers, can't sing, can't hear the sermon because we spend it either suppressing child activity or in a different room, then where are we even doing?
Edit: We'd probably do better if we had a specific goal, and should probably go talk to a priest about it. I know.
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I strongly believe the “gung ho liturgy go hard fasting is hard everyone must follow rules originally followed by monks” energy of Orthodoxy, which attracts the competitive male converts to it, is also the greatest problem for the Orthodox Church. The “standard” practice is incredibly high — and in service of an incredibly high goal, total union with God. Literally to “have everything that God has.”
I often feel like the Orthodox Church sets up people to fail. All the models of faith that the Orthodox Church offers in modern times are very hard to approach, and many are claimed to literally work miracles. The impression I get is that the goal for the laity is to be a monk. Even the supposed basics involve going vegan for half the year.
And yes, I know the objection: ask your priest! The rules can be changed! Economia!
Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be a charity case, a special exception, because I don’t want to be moaning on the floor of the parish hall on Easter Sunday because I was finally able to eat a cheeseburger. This also understandably raises questions of moral inconsistency and clerical power.
My earlier post about the Orthodox Church, the AAQC one — I guess what I was trying to get across in that rambling diversion was that it’s really hard for me, and people I love, to imagine actually living an Orthodox lifestyle.
Every ex-orthodox rant post I’ve ever read boils down to that — the demands of the Orthodox faith are incredibly high. Perhaps that’s what God asks of people. But perhaps not.
I believe the Western approach, of mandating a low minimum and permitting more intense asceticism as spiritual directors and the Spirit himself guides, is a more human and fruitful approach. It sets up people to succeed, not to fail. And it remains open to sanctity in lay life, in a way I think E. Orthodoxy struggles to do.
Just some disorganized thoughts. But my general posture towards Orthodoxy is this — they can have all the theological points they want, but I have to find the way where I can actually follow Christ. And I’m not convinced the Eastern Orthodox Church is that place.
It's not about being a charity case. It's a pastoral approach that is completely in keeping with Christology in general (God became Man, a particular Man, so that we could be come god) and the EO emphasis on the Persons of the Trinity (and Their particularity) compared to the emphasis on the Unity of the Trinity in the West. You might want to argue against this theology, but it's completely internally consistent. Seeing the Particular as a manifestation of the Ultimate and Universal is the name of the game, and clergy applying this to the personal needs and stations of their flock is the rule, not the "special exception." If that looks like morally inconsistent from the point of view of western theology, all I can say is that maybe western theology is wrong and in any case, Christians are not worshippers of Immanuel Kant.
What you described here is exactly the way my parish is run. It's an Orthodox Church in America parish in a major US city on the East Coast, if that matters.
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Honestly, if we could invent a time machine I'd go back and kick the stuffing out of the Second Vatican Council. Yes, there were stodgy abuses that needed correcting. Yes, people had no idea what was going on at Mass and just prayed the rosary. Yes, yes, yes. Reform was needed, a refreshing of catechesis so people understood and didn't just learn off by rote and then forget. Urging people to a living faith and piety. All that was indeed true.
But we threw not alone the baby out with the bathwater, but the bath, the fittings, the plumbing, and demolished the bathroom along with it. The brave pioneers decided that emulating Protestantism was where it was at, and whatever architects persuaded bishops that "what the modern congregation wants is a church that looks like a warehouse", yeah they're number two on the list for the kicking.
We had mysticism. We had folk piety. We scrapped it all in the name of relevance or some damn thing, and this is what we ended up with.
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For me, the appeal of Orthodoxy was two fold. First, it takes itself seriously. The priests for the most part believe in God. Faith is contagious, and I have a hard time believing in something that the adherents don’t even believe themselves. My first experience in Orthodoxy was a candle lit, pre-dawn liturgy at a monastery, and the hieromonk said every prayer of the liturgy as if it mattered.
The second appeal was its personal ethos, as opposed to the more institutional ethos of the Catholics. I did my catechumenate in Berkeley and I would stay after church and talk with people for hours. The priest would often take me out for coffee after coffee hour. He’s not the most impressive priest, a little socially awkward, and one of our few celibate clergy. But he gave me plenty of time and attention.
In my years of spiritual wandering, I most frequently visited Catholic Churches but I never made a friend, or even had a conversation that I can recall
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This REALLY depends on your parish my friend. I've read a lot of the Orthodox Church Fathers and yeah, the asceticism can be pretty harsh.
That being said, my own parish is very chill and the priest has basically told me that if it isn't good for my soul, don't worry about it. Hell, he even told me that my girlfriend and I living together was ok as long as it was good for the relationship, since we were dating before I converted.
Overall my experience has absolutely NOT been of a super militant, super strict fasting, hardcore church. I would strongly urge you to check out different parishes, or hang out with different groups.
Also, online Orthodoxy is horrible and I wouldn't go near it tbh. I have found very few public, online Orthodox folks that I think are actually humble. And humility is the chief virtue, without her we have nothing.
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Personally, it's less about theological points than about Beauty. Catholics built plenty of beautiful churches in the past, but the Orthodox are still building them, even though there are a lot fewer members, and so it might only be one per city. That one will generally be beautiful. They will cover it in mosaics and iconography, swing huge chandeliers on feast days, embed eagles into the tiles, have a beautiful dome with Christ looking down. Many of the churches in America are new and aren't fully finished yet, but are as beautiful as the parish is able to make them. The chanting is as beautiful as the choir members are able to make it, depending on local skill levels. They do generally work pretty hard at it, and still care about the beauty in a way that Catholics used to, but often don't anymore, even when they've inherited grand and storied cathedrals. They're one of very, very few groups that are still making everything as beautiful as they're able to in Current Year, which is almost as important as theology. Of course Dostoyevsky, coming from an Orthodox tradition, would say "beauty will save the world."
I grew up Evangelical, and joined the Orthodox Church in college, when there was a Greek mission inhabiting a lovely old Catholic Church within walking distance of my dorm. I like standing silently, and liked learning to cook tofu and lentils from my charming Greek Godmother, and it was all very lovely. It continued to be lovely when I moved for a Great Books program, and found a church within walking distance, with a wonderful, experienced priest who I could listen to for hours, and did. I went to Matins, Vespers, Paraklesis, book clubs, and anything else that was happening there. And then I was in the Republic of Georgia, which has wonderful old churches and a lot of energy from rebuilding after communism, and also a very beautiful chant tradition.
The small children in Georgia came and went, I think, though I didn't watch them closely. They looked like they spent a lot of time playing in the courtyard (and there were courtyards for them to play in). I think that Orthodoxy does have room for families that walk up the hill to the church who's names day it is to light a candle and have a party. They would spread feasts (Supras) during fasting periods, and some of the people wouldn't eat some of the things, especially the women, but it wasn't that big a deal, they would still cook roast chicken for whoever wanted it. But Americans aren't like that, and ultimately my husband and I are American, and feel miserable coming and going from the church service to the children's room and back as necessary.
So every once in a while I post here about how I don't know what to do. The plan has been Just Do It for about five years now, and maybe one of these years it will take. My husband is more willing to go to an Orthodox Church with me than any other kind of church, was enthusiastic about naming the children after saints, having icons in the house, and playing Russian chants on the speakers. He's not at all enthusiastic about standing still and getting small children to be still for three hours, and would probably be happy as an alter server (or any role, really, other than getting the children to be still) if only we could Just Do It long enough to get there.
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The Catholic church does have literal and explicit minimum standards for acceptable Catholicity, and 'it's all a symbol' does not meet it even if the formulation in many cases might not be formally condemned. And in practice, there's a host of miracles that actually religious Catholics literally believe in(some with evidence, even) even if they aren't technically required.
'Not supernatural' is not a good description of Catholicism.
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They don't believe Christ actually rose from the dead, and can't accept that it's possible. That's pretty straightforward, no?
I didn’t believe that Christ actually rose from the dead when I started exploring Orthodox spirituality. How are you supposed to marry someone before the first date?
They can certainly start exploring it. But that's different from "just go be Catholic." They can, of course, go to Catholic services and festivals, read Catholic books, talk to people, attend classes, and so on without believing. In historically Catholic regions they very often do, in fact.
In reality though, they should "just go be Orthodox." ;P
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In that it makes no falsifiable predictions?
If I say that this sounds like "The Lord" and Christ are just memes (in Dawkin's sense -- culturally transmitted idea complexes which inhabit humans as hosts and spread through them, mutate and compete against each other), then I am probably misrepresenting IC. After all, a world view which would say that Christ is fundamentally only a more culturally entrenched entity of the same type as Julius Caesar, Sherlock Holmes, or Donald Duck would probably not call itself a form of Christianity.
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Typical American Protestantism is shallow and unsatisfying. It's a religion for low-openness people that like following rules and reciting answers to equations that have already been solved. Understandably, that doesn't appeal to people with a high appetite for novelty.
Buddhism has filled the gap for a lot of Americans who seek a spiritual experience with a little more hands-on ambition. It also meshes well with materialists who have a hard time assenting to metaphysical beliefs (including techies like Tyler). Don't get me wrong, Buddhism has plenty of metaphysical claims, it's just not too bothered if you don't believe them. You can still pursue various useful and/or entertaining states of consciousness without assenting to its metaphysical underpinnings.
There is a resurgence of interest in Christianity nowadays as it is the underpinning of our civilizational worldview, and this has apparently caught up with Tyler. So his answer to this dilemma is to propose a Christianity that is more like Buddhism. He calls it "Mystical Christianity", but the proposal imports the mystical side wholesale from Buddhism. It downgrades the truth claims of Christianity into a useful allegory or symbolic system. This is roughly the path that Jordan Peterson has tread, bearing some fruit.
What it ignores is that Christianity has an existing, living, vibrant branch of mystical practice of its own - the path of theosis, direct experience of God. This is maintained in the apostolic churches which have kept a practice of monasticism. Historical mystics are among the most fervently believing people in the literal truths of its doctrines. It's through this lineage that I surprised and embarrassed myself by becoming a Christian again after 18 years of absence.
I count Tyler as a friend, though it's been some years since we've spoken. I see him, along with people like Jordan Bates, as kind-hearted heathens who are drawn to the warmth at the periphery of the Christian faith through their good instincts. As a techie myself, I also had a lot of resistance to becoming a Christian. I arrived at a materialist worldview after a traumatic Protestant childhood. That materialism had been loosened by my own experimentation with Buddhism and Psychedelics. By the time I approached Christianity, I privileged a phenomenological worldview over raw materialism. Put simply, to have a model of the physical system of the world, you must first perceive the model. Consciousness is more real than particles.
My first encounter with real Mystical Christianity was through Sophrony Sakharov's short book "His Life is Mine", given to me by an Orthodox monk during a visit to a beautiful monastery in a desert valley in New Mexico. Sophrony is a modern saint who died in the 1990s and was recently canonized. He taught a practice whose apogee is witnessing the Uncreated Light, the energies of God himself. As a youth in Russia, he toyed with Buddhism, and that anecdote softened my little heathen heart towards him. I loved the way he wrote about Christianity as a quest for a foundation of being, with a God whose name is "I AM". It sounded so much more grand, creative, and fertile than the repressive moralistic Protestantism of my youth. In his writing, he is in the mystical tradition of such saints as Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas.
At any level of analysis, there is fruit in Christianity. The moral world we inhabit is Christian, it is from Christianity that secular society gets its notion of Good and Evil. So analyzing the stories and patterns of it is useful, even as allegory.
But there is perhaps something deeper if we listen to those who pursued God with all their being and claim to have found him. As a popularizer of Christian thought, Jonathan Pageau offers a counterpoint to Jordan Peterson. His Symbolic World podcast uses the patterns of meaning found in Christianity to explain the world, but he does it from a position of faith informed by the mystical Christian tradition. In particular, I know he is a fan of St. Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) and his "Hymns on Paradise" as well as the works of Maximus the Confessor. Symbolic thinking is fundamental to the method of these saints without discounting the truth of doctrine. Maximus sees in man a microcosm of the universe, and in the universe a macrocosm of man.
IMO Pageau's project is more flexible and more creative than Peterson's, despite the fact that it is more traditional (or perhaps, because of it). Ephrem's works have inspired people for 1600 years, and I don't believe Peterson's will last that long.
My suggestion for people like Tyler who are interested in mystical Christianity is to go meet some monks. If you've given thousands of hours to listening and practicing Buddhism, then perhaps try a few hundred encountering the Christian version. Give the tradition a little respect. Read a book or two, spend a weekend at a monastery, buy a prayer rope and try the Jesus prayer.
I would love to see a subculture of tech kids pivot from Jhana-maxxing to pursuing the Uncreated Light. Perhaps Silicon Valley ambition can create a bumper-crop of saints.
I'm new to the Orthodoxy stuff (there are at least three of us on here???), so forgive me if I misunderstand, but isn't what you're saying true because the entire idea of "symbolic" was very different for the ancient Hebrews that wrote, redacted, and passed down Scripture and built the Church. Different than our contemporary understanding I mean. The notion of symbolic over and against literal is a very anachronistic way of reading the symbols that are being described and referenced in Scripture and the writings of the saints and church fathers. Similar to the false dichotomy of spiritual vs physical.
Dichotomizing like that gives too much away to the scientific materialist viewpoint which insists that there is the real (its domain) and then there is the other stuff, which is at best entertaining literature and poetry, and at worst woo woo and delusion.
As Orthodox Christians, we see that our entire world is aflame with the Divine Energies. We pray to the God who is "everywhere present, filling all things." We recognize that creation is just one great Burning Bush.
As such, moments of profound symbolic importance are, to us, moments where the physical is fulfilled in the spiritual, where the goodness of this world is, for a bit, perfectly aligned with the Good of the world to come, a point in physical and psychic space where Heaven touches earth.
That would be awesome. Something to pray for!
Me, you, @Gaashk, @ortherox (sp?) and I think @TheDag (?) are Orthodox. Probably more if I had to guess.
Is this true? I've heard over and over that the allegorical/symbolic reading of the Scriptures is something the Church Fathers did. We even have the words allegorical and symbolic in many Orthodox chants. Perhaps symbolic over and against literal I agree with - the literal and the symbolic were seen as one. Symbol literally means "where heaven and earth meet."
And hey I'm working on converting the techies on twitter. Come help out!!
There's the Five (some say Four) Senses of Scripture, and passages can be debated as "meant literally or to be interpreted symbolically?" but there are limits.
You can probably get away with "Jonah was not literally in the belly of a fish" but no dice on "Jesus was not literally born of a virgin".
I agree with that, though I'd argue Jonah was definitely in the belly of a fish.
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Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at. Symbol as a unity between heaven and earth, a point in which the physical and the spiritual are reconciled. A completely different notion compared to when people say "just a symbol" in our modern parlance.
This probably didn't come across clearly in my ramblings of last night -- apologies, we have a newborn and a toddler at home so sleep is in short supply.
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There is some good here. But the problem with over-prioritizing symbolism is that it weakens the power of the original meaning. For instance, making “Lord” into only an imagined presence we speak to weakens the significance of talking to your Lord. In antiquity, talking to your Lord was a big deal — the Lord controlled your entire realm, not to mention your destiny. For Christians, Lord was the established authority with maximum culturally-informed value judgments which were deeply internalized (to describe it as scientifically as possible). If the Lord is defined as a presence we imagine, and this presence is only an abstractly conceptualized ground of being, then we have lost considerable motivation to pray or act righteously. We are just playing pretend — and perhaps we always are — but the pretend isn’t even dramatic. The dramatic pull is gone. The totalizing, moralizing vibe is gone. And it risks becoming woefully subjective, and it also risks toppling like the Tower of Babel — we can’t build upon the rock of Christ if each person’s Christ is different.
I mean imagine you’re at some mystical Christian gathering, and you’re crying because the weight of your sin is too strong and you don’t want to betray your savior — how can the “mystic” answer? “Whoa, you’re taking this imagined presence thing really seriously…” Or who is going to donate their wealth over an “imagined presence”? It lacks force.
What I think is a better solution here, is not to say “Lord is imagined”, but to say that these words are the only way we can access reality — particularly a socialized, moral, emotional reality. By socialized, I mean both “discussing complex spiritual reality within a shared language and framework” and “with the cooperative presuppositions which answer myriad collective action concerns”. These words act as an interface by which we access the divine. On the human-level, then, you really do have a Lord with whom all the poetic elaborations of creation and judgment are solidly true. On the material-level, there is no Lord. Is this such a difficult leap to make? I don’t think so; after all, the Christian must believe that the bread (material) becomes the flesh and blood of the Lord (spiritual) within a shared social ecosystem designed toward moral reinforcement.
Now, a pious Christian does use imagination in prayer: perhaps they kneel, perhaps they look up, perhaps they repeat some words which cement His dominion over all things (the earth is God’s footstool). But they use imagination only to elaborate and feel the beliefs or dogmas that they hold. They are hallowing the name of God and bidding the Kingdom come. They do this because they believe the consequences are important. If everything is symbols all the way down, then what is the importance of it all? You need something which roots the urgency and significance of the quest. Otherwise you’re just satisfying your own limited ego or whim, you’re not actually involved in making the world better or anything good. Why not just play Dungeons & Dragons, or WoW? Why not just talk to ChatGPT? So any religious quest needs to be rooted in a totalizing importance. And there are actually decent ways to combine it with secular importance, but traditionally what religion does is get you into an environment where they can propagandize their root concerns to you: the wrath of God is coming, we slew God’s Son; God’s Son came to forgive us and save us from evil; there is an eternal punishment and an eternal abode for the righteous. Etc. Maybe they have the children sing about the earth burning in smoke. Maybe you are peer-evaluated by your perceived faith and banished for your doubt.
A purely symbolic religion will not get martyrdom like this:
I like Jonathan Pageau but his writings suffer this same problem. A person just isn’t moved by knowing symbols, or poems, or anything clever. If you have 1000 symbols versus 1 “this man died to save the world and now waits for you”, you are going to be changed from the simple non-symbolic thing. And I enjoyed Jordan Peterson’s thoughts on the Old Testament, but again this has the same problem — JBP can’t even admit to being a Christian in an argument with a teenager. And lastly, around Christ’s time you had the Alexandrian school of Philo, and they also doubted the real body of Christ, and they wrote thousands of pages allegorizing the Old Testament with symbols. And it’s a pleasant read, but it’s worthless and doesn’t actually do anything.
I haven’t considered myself a Christian for a long time. The idea that you can appeal to some supreme being to intervene in your daily struggles - and that he’d actually do something about it - strikes me as deeply arrogant. It feels like narcissism.
Another reason I stepped away from Christianity is the growing sense that, as an institution, it’s far more invested in preserving its own status and influence than in any genuine truth. Most of the people at its core seem more concerned with hierarchy and control than with the transcendental.
I need my gods to be beyond the petty politics of old men in robes. The closest I’ve come to something I could follow are movements like the Bogomils/Cathars/Manichaeans, yet I don't think if there is a god he'd be particularly interested in my own personal needs.
The substance of prayer is cultivating a disposition, salience / sensitivity, and object of thanks. I mean I’m sure there are Christians out there praying to win a lottery ticket, but this is not the sophisticated method of prayer. I think most traditional churches would advise that you pray for spiritual benefits and basic needs. You could argue that Christ even advises a person to pray only for the kingdom and righteousness and not even basic needs. However I think there’s room to pray regarding all feasible goal pursuits with undue confidence, because that’s beneficial for a person.
Arrogance and narcissism are bad because they are antisocial. If a person believes that a loving God cares about everyone maximally, this would have prosocial behavioral consequences. Calling this narcissistic or arrogant is a category error of sorts. It’s just a mismatch of terminology.
I see a lot wrong with nearly every church so I can’t disagree here. But that doesn’t mean that we should throw out all the developments of Western religion.
On one hand I believe that prayer is God allowing man the dignity to participate in His own divine will. God will grant your petitions insofar as they align with His eternal unchanging will.
On the other hand, as a Catholic, I believe that intercessory prayer is worthwhile.
I suppose to reconcile the two I could frame intercessory prayer as vibing with the saints together to be part of God’s will.
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I'm curious for your critiques on Orthodoxy? The way you approach theology seems somewhat similar to other Orthodox folks I've read, though you're a bit more consequentialist/game theory focused I must admit.
Orthodoxy (like Catholicism) does not establish the social requirements necessary for true Christian life. A person’s social identity must be governed by their faith in a deeper sense. There needs to be real brotherhood where peers esteem and honor each other for faith, where even small infractions may lead to reprimands (as Christ advises), and where there is an implicit pious competition over faith (wherever men gather with a genuine shared aim, implicit competition exists no matter always, as a feature of human nature and Christ ennobles this fact). They must celebrate Christ as their shared superior peer, not just as a figure in a ritual. A person needs to look forward to sharing their faith and progress like they do today with their grades, deadlifts, cars, haircuts, vacations. But actually, no, 10x more than this — but at the very least you need the social institutions which enable and guide it.
For a long period, churches were able to ignore explicating this social requirement, because —
Churches had a monopoly on the most compelling art, music, and schools, creating an effortless social draw
Churches were willing to genuinely condemn and excommunicate members whose behavior was not up to par, forming behavioral-belief enforcement, and if a priest heard you were living an unchristian life or denying dogmas, you would face actual condemnation. This condemnation would have real effects on your social identity: your job prospects, marriage prospects, your ability to make friends or to find occasions for fun
There was no competing religion or science, in a way we can hardly fathom today, meaning the Christian worldview did not need to be reinforced like it did in the earliest days of the religion. If all the smartest people who know the most are Christian, then it is believed as default. (Today we are competing with a secular culture that doesn’t just promote a more compelling argument, but has significantly better media at their disposal, and your child is pressured into attending their institutions).
The current institution doesn’t work. But what would work is if we look at the church Christ established. How did the first Christians thrive despite more scientifically compelling beliefs and more hedonistic movements?
Brotherhood was enforced via the agape eucharist. This was an intimate feast with real food and wine, had in honor of Christ every week, where all the brothers enforced each other’s social identity in remembrance of Christ, with peer praise and songs. This is the do this in the Lord’s do this in remembrance of me. (Women were kept submissive so as not to derail the vibe, and chastity was enforced so that men do not compete over women.)
A norm of esteeming each other’s faith was enforced as the prevailing mode of conversation: “Let love be genuine… love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.” “Timothy has proved himself, worthy as a son with his father”. "I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice.” "I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love and the faith you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all God’s people." "It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth”. This is all throughout the epistles: men and women are esteemed for their faithfulness and obedience to righteousness. We first see this habit of esteem in Jesus, who honors and praises John publicly.
On the other hand, a culture condemning defectors, even by name to the entire church, as Paul does on different occasions in the epistles.
A culture of condemning all distractions, like Tertullian does against the theater and the “spectacles”. Can you imagine there are churches where people talk proudly about having seen Hamilton? Or going to a basketball game? Yeah, you would have been disciplined in the early church for that.
Essentially, all of the normal wholesome motivations of man are Christened. They are “baptized” within the social immersion of the Church, the prototype of which is the Ark (“by which a few, namely 8, are saved”.)
Modern churches are like the “we are one big family” pep rallies that corporate retail makes you do. It doesn’t matter how often it’s repeated, you’re not a family, because such feelings aren’t formed that way. Because brotherhood doesn’t come from sitting in a building listening to someone or watching something happen. That’s one step above watching TV. Christ wasn’t redefining the nature of brotherhood when he commanded brotherly love, He was saying, “all this stuff I’m saying? If it doesn’t exist in a zealous brotherhood it’s all for nothing.”
I’m sure there are some brotherhoods that develop incidentally within a modern church ecosystem, where a small group of zealous men genuinely try to keep aflame the Holy Spirit through frequent meetings. But I think this is probably rare in the wild and I almost never hear about it. I have seen some on Discord, but of course, that’s not any better. And if these brotherhoods do develop within the ecosystem, almost all the gain occurs outside the church. Maybe you’ll hear some wisdom in the church and hear a good song and that’s beneficial, but the “real presence” will not be in the church rituals, so it’s effectively worthless.
Maybe a scenario would have been better to sum up my babbling. Imagine it’s war and you’re in the trenches. You’ve gotten word that your death is near-assured within the month. In the trench with you are two other Christians, brothers in arms, as well as a small hymnal (powerful melodies) and a reasonable amount of wine. If all three of you wanted to secure the salvation of your souls before death, what would you do? Imagine the gains that you would have in that month with nothing but the bare minimum: a sincere brotherhood, some songs, some wine, and the certainty of death. Wouldn’t it exceed anything you could gain in a modern church over an entire lifespan?
Thank you for the detailed response!
I think part of the problem is that many churches try to do this, and end up shaming each other and causing all sorts of antisocial issues, grasping at social status, etc etc. How do you propose to avoid all of this? These are major problems that have derailed all sorts of churches in the past.
You know, I do think the "vibe" of Christianity could and should be more intense, we should be more focused on the faith, etc. I think that's the aim of monasteries. Have you heard of this book? My copy has not yet arrived but from what I've heard on podcasts this book probably argues something very similar.
And again my question is - are you going to start a new Church? What is the actual plan you have (assuming you are a Christian - I actually don't know!) From my POV, even if most churches aren't perfect, it's a sight better to join an existing church that is directionally right (compared to other churches) and do my best, rather than trying to start something myself.
Like so —
Christians should have the easiest time doing this, because that’s the whole message of Christ. The gospel traces the start of a Brotherhood while the Epistles outline its governance. If no one can do it, it means they have to learn and revere Christ who did it, and then encourage each other in Christ, and then select the most Christlike to head the group, and so on. And that’s precisely what we see in the first Christian church. They are learning, encouraging, criticizing, expanding. You get the sense that the brotherhood was based exclusively in positive reinforcement and perhaps some “training”, and only reserving punishment for the very damaging things. If this is so, then status is mostly positive sum.
In the first Pagan letter about the “contagion” of Christianity, we see that some modest oaths were involved —
There would obviously be sin present at the table but sin already exists wherever friend groups and social networks congregate. Every college has a dozen fraternities nominally dedicated to some trite values but really dedicated to Bacchus, and people enjoy this greatly even though there’s drama and occasional fighting. If Christians can’t do a greater job of uniting men together when all the men revere Christ, then religion itself is a failed project. But this isn’t so. I think it would be quite feasible especially with good selection filters and rules in place.
I agree that, because nothing like this exists, it’s good to do the next best thing. But just from historical study + psychology, nothing going to be effective like this.
I am going go continue reading and longing. Maybe one day a compelling substack post.
I hope you become a priest. Would be a good calling for you, from your writing on here!!!
But yeah I mean, sigh. That’s the rub. We can long for a better church all day but for our individual souls we need community. I agree with most of your critiques and wish we were more like the original church, that’s Orthodoxy’s whole thing. Even if we aren’t always perfect at it.
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The only religion that I am aware of that has a thriving secularized branch is judaism. I think it works for judaism for two reasons: 1) it was always more rule-following focused than other religions, 2) they have the (very recent) memory of the holocaust to help them form a sense of community.
Belief in christianity is very important, how are you going to reconcile all the passages that say something along the lines of "salvation only happens through faith" with "actually it's all a bunch of baloney"? More broadly you will encounter two problems.
The first one is theological. You have started cutting things off the bible and off tradition, where do you stop? Christianity had an answer to this: you stop when the church tells you to stop, only they have the power, through apostolical tradition, to know what to cut.
The other problem is more practical, how do you get people interested in this? This thing has already been invented, it's called the Church of Humanity, it was invented in 1859. Nobody cares. People like to think of the societal benefits of religion but to be adopted and spread, just like genes, it needs to be useful to the individual here and now. The "magical" aspects of religion give real, immediate returns on investment in psychological terms. Saying "trans women are women" gives real, immediate monetary returns in the right career. What's your cultural christianity going to provide? What's your church going to do for me tomorrow?
Throughout church history, there has always been a tension between the charismatic authority of the mystics, without which the church has no blood, and the apostolic authority of the hierarchy, without which the church has no body. John Chrysostom was a mystic, fleeing Antioch for a hermitage when the church tried to ordain him a priest. After three years of prayer and fasting, he relented and allowed himself to be taken into service.
The people demanded John and adored him because of his clarity, authenticity, and authority. His popularity was reason enough for the hierarchy to promote him to Bishop. But at the same time his charismatic authenticity was a problem for the establishment church, since he could not hold back from criticizing an impious empress for her greed and materialism.
John is today remembered with great affection. The church would be diminished without him. But he died in exile.
There have been many other reformers from among the charismatic branch of the Church. Symeon the New Theologian is another example. In Orthodox Ecclesiology, we believe that we find the golden mean through this pull between the chaotic energy of the charismatic branch and the orderly authority of the episcopacy.
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I remember really liking "Being as Communion" by Fr Alexander Schmemann, though it's been a while, so I don't remember it in any detail. Also "The Universe as Sign and Symbol" by Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich, though in general his poetry compilation "Prayers by the Lake" is better. In general things like holy water and blessing more things, not only Communion, is good -- we should bless things more. There's a grape blessing, blessed oil, blessed basil, and so on. This is good! I don't have a strong opinion on whether anointing people with oil from a shrine does something in particular or not, but still think that kind of thing is a good tradition.
Last night I was listening to Jonathan Pageau talk about art and stories and Orthodox art and so on, and it was mostly what everyone has known and talked about most of my whole life, but still good. (My example, not his) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was an excellent book because it relied heavily on Christian symbolism, to the point of being basically about that, with also some sailing involved. The movie of the same was not very good because it stripped out most of the symbolism and replaced it with a video game style quest plot. If the entertainment industry were replaced by deists comfortable with Christian symbolism, that would be an improvement. His example was Snow White, both on account of the new movie, and because his small publishing company has made their own storybook version of the tale, and the illustrations do look very nice. I'm still not going to buy it, I don't like Snow White much, but would recommend it to anyone interested.
Here I have to quote one of my favourite poems by Yeats, it's very short but full of rich imagery:
Oil And Blood
In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.
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Absolutely! Very glad another Christian on here gets what I mean, hah. I'm sad that symbolism is so often conflated with Jungian, materialist "understand the symbols via psychology" type lens.
You're making me want to reread Narnia. What a great series.
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Here's what I keep bumping into with lines of thought like this.
Like many others, I did the angry atheist thing. But I was never really able to get past the wisdom present in Christ saying "By their fruits shall ye know them" - and indeed, one of the things I appreciated about abandoning the conservative, constricting faith of my youth on exactly those lines is that I could read, say, stuff from zen Buddhist thinkers and appreciate them morally on a deep level without having to decide whether they were really devil worshippers or not, for example, as my home tradition would have insisted. But, speaking of fruits, over time I think I became really discouraged by the behaviors, habits, and world views of many people who were most vociferously anti-theist, whether that was through New Atheism, or whether (and worse) it was from various cultural strands through university influence that were all downstream from the biggest anti-theism of them all, French enlightenment philosophy from the last 250 years. Meanwhile, many, many people will look at, say, Mormons they know, or the Amish, and they're say, "They believe a lot of silly things, and they sometimes seem quite naive about the broader world, and yet at the level of behavior, they can be the nicest, most selfless, most family and community oriented people I know."
I appreciate the project of trying to reconcile science (but less so "reason") with the great world religious traditions that have shaped the bones of different civilizations. I think as a practical matter, fundamentalism's insistence on loudly proclaiming anti-hard science positions has often been deeply counterproductive. And yet it seems to me that much of the strange power of real, historical religious traditions often has something deeply to do with their shared status as being beyond reason and evidence, and the shared authority that comes from that, and especially the common knowledge that comes from that shared authority.
And the shared authority aspect is really key. Speaking entirely from a secular game designer perspective here (because that's where my brain mostly lives), the game theory of Mormonism, say, working makes total sense to me. You believe that God exists, is all knowing, is all powerful, and is all good. And you know that God specifically commands you not to lie. And because God is all knowing and all good, this means there is no way of weasle-ing or lawyering your way out of this. You might as well try to lie your way out of obeying the law of gravity. And just like knowing that gravity exists, you believe, deep in your bones, that you've been freed by this knowledge - that there was a deep, powerful, important rule about the universe that hurt you for not knowing it, and you've been liberated by knowing it now. People who believe in Foucault might see this story as a panopticon, meant to police and and imprison you, but to believe this tradition, really, is to believe that you started out in the prison of your own self-destructive moral error (no different than not understanding gravity or the empirical germ theory of disease), and this knowledge (through faith) frees you from that prison. But then something much more complicated happens once you're in a shared community that also overwhelmingly believes these things - because (and this is where game theory and my game designer sense kicks in) you also have the common knowledge that everyone around you also has been liberated in exactly this way, and you know that they know that God knows, with perfect knowledge and perfectly benevolent judgement, exactly what they're doing too, and they can't weasel their way out of it either, no matter how much money or worldly power or social status they have either. And to the extent that this belief is truly pervasive, and the authority of this belief is respected, people truly do become different, and something real comes into a being - a community, or a world view, a way of being, that actually didn't exist before, but does exist now. A kind of high trust society comes into being because of that shared common knowledge about everyone else's metaphysical beliefs.
I guess this is something like a William James-ian pragmatism at play, because I feel like the word "truth" is tugged in different directions here. What does it mean if a myth isn't materially true, but believing it nevertheless brings into being something true and real and good - and meanwhile, this insistence on the assumption of materiality itself as the final arbiter is also possibly unjustified - based on an untruth, if you will, and its own faith commitments that precede it?
So, finally, returning to the initial discussion... The thing that I wonder about a lot is the impact of this move to make Christianity, say, "make sense", or any of these traditions. Based on what I just said about, it's not clear to me that the shared, common knowledge authority of these traditions, and the game theory results of that, really survive when authority is shifted over to "reason", to "making sense". Because the reality of this turn towards the insistence on myths surviving reason and making sense is that most of the game theory I just discussed seems to dissipate immediately - if I know that I am hopelessly biased and self-dealing, and I know that you are hopelessly biased and self-dealing too, once we both turn to our own personal reason as the final arbiter of these traditions, we might all reasonably expect that each of us is going to lawyer the beliefs until their authority is threadbare, and what they compel of us will be minimal. And that sounds appealing for me, in my selfishness, but it doesn't sound so good to me for the rest of you, who have all sorts of selfish designs for me. And eventually the whole thing collapses. One might very well arguing that this exact process has been exactly what hollowed out mainline Protestantism.
I'll be honest, though - I really do feel muddled here. Because the response that "doesn't it matter if these traditions really are materially true, though" certainly feels compelling, too, and I can't actually set that aside. I can say all of the above, and honestly believe it in broad strokes, I think, about how these various systems likely work socially. I can absolutely find the actual human results of some other, theoretically more sophisticated, more cynical belief systems pretty corrosive and sometimes disastrous, and wonder what that actually does mean about their truth content. But at the end of the day, it's very hard to actually pull myself out of a strictly material belief system, too, I guess.
Phenomenology makes more sense to me than materialism. It was the phenomenological lens of Jordan Peterson that first spoke to me from a Christian perspective. I was already a Buddhist and I was used to navigating existence from a standpoint of phenomenological empiricism.
As a phenomenological empiricist, I could say that states of consciousness matter, and things that I do could predictably alter my consciousness. I could try different kinds of meditation or take a face-melting dose of mushrooms and reliably change my experience of existence.
The alternative to phenomenology is some kind of materialism. But materialism usually leads to some kind of nihilism. If matter is more real than consciousness, then the things that intuitively matter to humans are really meaningless. Love is just chemicals, beauty is just electric signals in your brain. It is the worldview of Neil DeGrasse Tysonism, and I don't find it particularly appealing.
Ultimately I decided on faith to not be a nihilist. I decided that love matters, beauty matters, and the people I love matter. I decided it was good to act in the world to bring about more good. And it seemed to me that phenomenology was an intellectually rigorous philosophical framework to act from, since consciousness is prior to any physical model of the world.
From there, Christianity was not so far away.
This is built on a spiritualistic premise that the only things with meaning are the ones without any grounding in the material.
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Great write up overall. In terms of the last bit, definitely agree about pulling away from a strictly material belief system. It’s something you need a community for, and it does exist but can be hard to find.
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Congrats, you’ve… reinvented liberal Protestantism? At least teilhard had an actual belief system when he did that.
Of course, given that Christianity itself correctly points out that the belief in the literal incarnation of the supernatural is load-bearing, you are unlikely to improve on Unitarian Universalist results.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
Considering that a common point from apologetics is that Christians tend to have healthier communities and better lives than their atheistic peers, that seems pretty categorically false.
The superior communities may be the result of the psychological changes brought about from belief in a life to come, with all of its contingent reinforcements and punishments
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It's important to put that verse in context. Paul is saying that if Christ was not raised from the dead, then we will not be either. So when he refers to misery he means that if we are toiling in the hope that we have been saved from our signs and reconciled with God and will be resurrected to eternal life, and that's not true, then we would be the most "miserable".
But Paul doesn't mean "miserable" as in "feeling the emotion of sadness or depression". The Greek word that the KJV translates as "miserable" is "eleeinoteroi". It is used one other place in the Bible: Revelation 3:17: "Because you say, ‘I am rich and have prospered; I need nothing,’ but do not realize that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked,". Now isn't it a bit odd to say that someone believes they are prosperous and need nothing but in fact are miserable in the sense of being sad or depressed? In both cases the word would be better translated as "pitiable". Their condition is miserable, not their emotions: they are in a position worthy of the pity of others. Which is how other translations, like the NIV, translate the word. And certainly it is the case that it is a pitiable position to be in if you believe that your sins are wiped clean and you will be resurrected and that's not actually true.
"If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
We also have to keep in mind Paul's audience: Christians were a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire at the time. Unlike modern Mormons, Paul and his audience were daily in danger of beatings, execution, and being thrown to the lions. As he writes a few verses later:
"And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
“'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'"
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Indeed. I had to quote it because, as a fallen-away Christian slowly coming back to the church, it is a verse I struggle with mightily.
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Huh? I've never seen anyone (on the right or elsewhere) go from "the institutions are politically compromised" to "there is nonphysical stuff."
As for discussion about symbolic beliefs: The famous quote "all models are wrong; some are useful" is actually redundant. It just needs to be "some models are useful." Useful means wrong, because if a model was right, you wouldn't give up and call it merely useful.
Anyways, symbolic beliefs are false. The Christians here are actually Christian, so why would they engage with symbolic (false) beliefs?
This is only true if a correct model is useful, which is certainly not always true. Even further: the most correct model isn’t necessarily the most useful model even when it is useful.
If I remember correctly evolutionary simulations consistently show a fully accurate perception of the world is generally actively harmful even when there’s no associated resource cost. Autistic analyzers often have more accurate models of social dynamics but do worse at socializing. Blind optimism, undeserved confidence unfounded worries etc are all extremely useful, and moving to a more accurate view is less useful.
It’s possible to have wrong and useless models of course, but that’s the point of the adage.
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You are misunderstanding what symbolism means. The Church Fathers constantly referred to the symbolic meanings in Genesis and other Old Testament texts. When I say symbolic I do not mean "miracles aren't real they are symbolic in ways that fit a materialist framework." I mean that the symbol, which is the word meaning "the place where Heaven and Earth meet," is an important frame for understanding religious tradition.
"Actual Christians" should in fact understand symbolism on a deep level, if they are serious about understanding their faith. If they just want to practice theosis and try to be more like Christ, that's fine too of course.
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Allow me to provide.
It is trivial to demonstrate the existence of "non-physical stuff" from within a strictly materialist framework. With an understanding of the political compromise of institutions, and an awareness of the historical record of those institutions, it is fairly trivial to peel the consensus materialist framework like a banana.
Man. I feel like you're hitting a giant blindspot here.
Maybe you're right in saying that, with the appropriate definitional games, one can peel materialism like a banana. But isn't there merit to the framework which is hardest to peel?
The Christian framework comes apart at the slightest interaction with evidential standards. This has lead countless mystics and gurus to spin off their own heresies which try and rehabilitate it. Gold tablets, ESP, Arianism, whatever. None of them do any better than "consensus materialism."
Or maybe I'm misreading you entirely and tilting at windmills. Sorry.
Not Materialism, the consensus materialist framework, the one that claims that there is no need to appeal to non-material explanations, and therefore any apparent evidence for non-materialist phenomena or explanations should be discarded without examination.
Briefly:
the consensus Materialist framework claims that Materialism adequately explains all observed phenomena, and that therefore there is no room for non-materialist explanations for observed phenomena.
We do not actually have a Materialist explanation for where the universe comes from; the chain of causality terminates roughly at the big bang. Okay, it's sort of a problem for "we can explain everything with Materialism" to then admit "other than the cause of the universe's existence", but that's a very long time ago and of questionable relevance to most practical questions. It's not entirely unreasonable to handwave that one.
Only, we do not actually have a Materialist explanation for the evident phenomenon of Free Will. We have a lot of evidence that either Free Will or something doing a completely seamless imitation of it exists: firstly, every one of us has an entire lifetime's experience of making an extremely large number of choices quite freely; secondly, every piece of functional social technology we have operates on the assumption that free will exists, thirdly, every attempt to develop social technology that operates off Determinist principles (and there have been many) has utterly failed: neither mind reading nor mind control appear to exist.
Materialists insist that all evidence of the existence of Free Will must be discarded, because it contradicts our Materialist axioms. But if evidence of Free Will contradicts materialist axioms, that necessarily means that it is evidence against materialism. And if one examines that evidence rather than simply discarding it axiomatically, it turns out that it is actually an enormous, heaping pile of evidence against materialism.
You are familiar with "The God of the Gaps", wherein theists made predictions about the material world based on their belief in God, and then had those predictions falsified by the march of Science, only to retreat back into smaller and smaller gaps where science had not yet penetrated, eventually retreating to claims that are completely unfalsifiable.
If you examine the history of Determinism, the exact same sequence recapitulates itself: Determinists make bold claims, and then those claims are tested to the tune of trillions of dollars and millions of man-years with the full backing of two civilizations, and the result was that their claims were completely falsified. The Determinists retreated to new, somewhat more humble claims in the gaps of the existing science, but science continues to advance and those claims are likewise falsified. This process has proceeded in this way to the present, and Determinists now make no testable predictions at all, but claim that Determinism must be accepted axiomatically, with no apparent awareness that they are adhering to Determinism of the Gaps and that this might be a problem.
"Materialist explanations are sufficient to explain all observed phenomena, except the ones we don't want to examine because otherwise they would be phenomena Materialism can't explain" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, but is pretty much the state of the debate near as I can tell.
Materialism as an axiom still works as well as it ever did. It is not falsified so long as it limits its claims to being a very good solution to a very wide range of problems, not a fully general solution to all problems. But the latter is the consensus framing, and it is essentially a very large and lovingly-detailed sandcastle.
[LATE EDIT] - none of the above adds up to a claim that Christianity is correct, or even that Materialism is not an excellent axiom to reason from. Determinism very well could be correct, it's as reasonable an explanation for human consciousness as any. The point is that explanations that rely on things we can't observe or test are not Materialist explanations, and that while this fact should be so obvious as to go unsaid, a whole lot of people who call themselves Materialists do not appear to understand it.
Someone here once mentioned that Christianity was ridiculous. I asked them what they thought of the Simulation Hypothesis. They said that was different, because it was a materialistic explanation. and this is in fact how most descriptions of the Simulation Hypothesis are quite explicitly framed. There's this assumption that starting from a materialist frame, we think simulations are possible, and therefore nested simulations are possible, and therefore many layers of nested simulation are possible, and therefore we have a much greater probability of being somewhere in the simulation stack than at the baseline, but somehow that Materialist assumptions still obtain. But this is not how Materialism works. Once you are positing that there is an unobservable reality underneath the observable one, all bets are off. There is no basis for Strictly Materialist inference about the nature of baseline reality from observing the contents of a sim.
Nondeterministic free will is not nearly so clearly evident to me as it appears to be to you.
For those three lines of evidence you list, I can think of at least one other phenomenon which I'd say fits all of them pretty well, especially if you give me a couple hundred years' worth of leeway on technological development and scientific inquiry, and yet is unambiguously false.
For another, we have good reasons to think that decisionmaking and behavior are at the very least strongly dependent on the material actions of the brain, in that we can go screwing with neurons on chemical, electromagnetic, or mechanical levels and notice that it results in changes in those things.
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Without a principled reason to assume materialism (the Sequences attempts to get that worldview across), we all have a simple and obvious knock-down argument against materialism: consciousness.
It is not to say that the Christian worldview is robust against evidence, just that materialism, like blank-slatism or any other axiom that Science, Inc. passes down to the laymen, is ultimately a matter of faith and not purely on the basis of evidence.
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I wish you had linked this comment instead, you do a great job here! To pick out some important bits:
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Yes, some people assume materialism from a position of faith. Other people make no such assumption. I was more interested in why someone would change their axioms based on seeing the politically-compromised Science-as-Institution, since that was the literal reading I took from the OP. Maybe the OP was not trying to draw a causal arrow and was just doing the Journalist thing putting words together in a vaguely grammatically correct way.
One observes that things scrupulously labeled "Materialistic, evidence-based belief" turn out to be generated and maintained entirely by social consensus effects, and once one has seen the pattern, one can recognize it elsewhere. "Things labeled materialistic, evidence-based belief are what they say on the tin" is an axiom, and once you have a lot of strong evidence that this axiom is wrong by observing the politicially-compromised Science-as-institution, it's pretty easy to discard it and everything that depends on it, including consensus-narrative-style "materialism". then you're free to notice things like Determinism-of-the-gaps and "Materialism precludes free will = evidence of free will is evidence against Materialism", and a whole bunch of very carefully crafted and highly-rigorous arguments abruptly reverse polarity.
...This is a subject I dearly love to discuss, but I am in fact trying to answer your question. Observing the political compromise of Science-as-institution directly led to me changing axioms, and adopting a set that seem much stronger to me against Materialism itself, because the large majority of Materialist elements seem to me to obviously depend heavily on similar political compromise for their weight.
This is all well and good, but what stake do you put in your non-materialistic beliefs? How much does the Word of God guiding you trade off against anything an agnostic in your position would do?
I don't want to be a Redditor about it, but I don't see the point of modern Christianity. Coming from a largely apatheistic perspective, it's trivially obvious that the actual importance with which people generally and Christians especially treat religion is at an all-time low. Christians have gone from waging holy war against the heathens to missionary expeditions seeking conversions to "interfaith dialogue", from hanging homosexuals and other sinners to socially ostracizing them them to... IDK, frowning concernedly? From a historical perspective, nearly all Westerners are thoroughly unserious in their practice of religion. If the faithful don't take themselves seriously, why should I?
Have you heard of the book Dominion? It basically makes the argument that almost all of our modern moral worldview is a direct result of Christian teachings changing the moral landscape from pagan religions. Might interest you if you're genuinely curious here.
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The answer is "a considerable one"; I've completely changed most aspects of my life, in many cases entirely reversing my previous preferences or habits.
There is no point to "modern" Christianity. You are correct that many people claiming to be Christian are "cultural christians" for whom it is a fashion or a pose. On the other hand, there are also a lot of Christians like myself who are not partaking of "modern" Christianity but rather the old sort, and for whom it is an actual way of life. For us it appears to me that the benefits are as they always have been: considerable. It seems to me that the contrast grows increasingly stark as Modernity unspools itself into our collective society; the dating and relationship threads here on the Motte are as good an example as any.
If we return to Deus Vult and the sword, will that satisfy you in some way? When Christians were serving in significant numbers in the recent middle east wars, and often saw those wars as a crusade, did that lend the faith more credibility?
We will continue on as we have before. Sometimes that will involve building, and sometimes that will involve fighting. We have done plenty of both, and will do plenty more of both in the future.
Sorry for the late response, I've drafted this far more times than I really should have.
You would consider you new preferences and habits to be unambiguously superior to before, yes? If so, where is the aforementioned trade-off?
To put it another way, a true believer in the Greek Pantheon is obliged to offer libations and sacrifices to the gods to remain pious. From a secular perspective, this serves zero purpose and is an active waste of valuable resources. In your worship, what do you sacrifice for your faith?
It would, yes. If the word of Christ really is the Way and the Truth and the Light, Christians ought to be far less complacent in their efforts to spread the gospel than they currently are. Should you not rout the disbelievers, those who lead souls astray with false idols and apathetic impiety? Should you not hate the heretics, those who twist revelation into abomination? Your predecessors certainly did, so what changed?
I think the Christianity you practice is actually quite different to the old sort, at least in practical implementation. For one, the demons of the earth who possessed the insane, swapped babies with changelings, communed with witches, and who many good Christians thought actually, literally existed have seemingly vanished. I can only assume that amulet technology and exorcism procedures have seen massive improvements in the last couple of centuries.
I don't mean to say that you're obligated to believe in witches and demons, or that you're a hypocrite for not. But I have a hunch that the sort of casual superstition that past Christians practiced may have been vital (or at least a factor) in avoiding the exact sort of secularization that modernity hath wrought, at least among the common folk. Us gentry might be able to satisfy ourselves with philosophies of the Good, but many don't see the point of belief when there's nothing concrete in it for them.
A physically-fit person exercises and eats vegetables and meat rather than ice cream by the tubful. They think that fitness is better than the pleasures of a sedentary life and a nutritionally-poor but flavor-rich diet. They sacrifice the joys of the one to gain the joys of the other, no? I sacrifice things I want, and even some things I want very, very badly, for a chance at things that are better. I sacrifice these things because I believe they are contrary to the will of God, no matter how much they please me, and no matter how much I want them. I could even argue that they are actually permitted, through this loophole or that shaky argument, but that would be rationalization and self-deception. So I have to let them go.
No Christian who has ever lived has succeeded in emulating Christ, in living without sin and in doing perfectly as Christ would do. All Christians stumble and fail, because they are human. Given that we know that all Christians fail to execute Christianity perfectly, it stands to reason that different Christians in different times fail in different ways. Some Christians fail by lacking mercy; others fail by lacking courage, some by lacking love, some by lacking faith. It behooves us to determine which failures we each are prone to and to make a special effort to guard ourselves against the failures we are weak to.
Suffice to say, my personal weaknesses do not include a deficit of hatred. The hard part for me is "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you," and "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us," so that is the part I must fortify. Further, Christianity cannot be spread by the sword. That doesn't mean the sword is useless, or that we are required to be pacifists; it means that we must recognize that the ends we can achieve through the tools of this mortal world are strictly limited. Evil, sin, impiety and false idols have always existed and will always exist so long as this present world remains; you cannot kill your way to a Heaven on earth, nor achieve a Heaven on earth by any other means. If we fight, we fight for the mortal aims of upholding justice, defending the innocent, and breaking the power of ascendant evil, and we do so with the understanding that our means must be as limited as our ends. If that compromises our victory or our survival, so be it; Christians have been martyred before and will be martyred again, and our God has promised to wipe every tear from our eyes.
Probably many who called themselves Christians in the past went too far, and were lacking in mercy. Certainly many who call themselves Christians now seem to have gone too far and abandoned everything but mercy, and are lacking in courage, zeal and righteousness. None have us have ever been perfect; many of us have been good enough for the challenges facing them.
I am skeptical that changelings ever existed, and that witches ever actually communed with the devil. The Old Testament itself condemns empty superstitions:
...And that was thousands of years before science and the cell-phone camera. Nor is atheism a novel development; there have been atheists as far back as we have writing. Nothing about the basic questions has ever really changed. "Many Christians" believing in changelings or witches makes no difference to me; I do aim to follow "Many Christians", but rather Christ.
The relevant part of your argument seems to be that previous Christians were very much not Materialists, but then I am very much not a Materialist either. Even though the the demons are silent and the miracles have ceased, I take the reality of their respective sources as an axiom, and shape my life accordingly.
And this is the crux, one might say. I am not advocating a philosophy of the Good. Sin is very real in the most concrete sense, and its lethal effects can be directly observed. If you let it have its way in your life, it can and will erode your substance until little that is human remains. It was not hard to observe the process in my own life, and it is trivial to observe it doing so in the lives of others.
Nor does it seem to me that the superstitions have ever gone away. At every point through the few centuries of the modern era, superstition has remained as strong and ubiquitous a force as it ever was; only the details have changed, not the mechanism. Science is now dominant, so our superstitions tend to be built out of technobabble, rather than legends and folktales; in both cases, they are built from the available pool of loose information. Humans don't seem to change; we are as we ever have been. There is nothing "concrete" in current beliefs; there is practical knowledge kept honest by constant feedback from reality, with precision both sufficient for and equal to the tools available to implement it, and then there is superstition expanding to fill what space remains. That's the way it's always been, and my bet is that it is the way it will always be, no matter how long we last.
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Yeah if anything I think Christianity was farther from Christ's actual teachings at that point, than we are today. Turning the other cheek does not translate to massive, bloody crusades, up to and including sacking cities of other Christians and killing so many the streets run red with blood. (Yes, I'm still mad about the sack of Constantinople.)
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I did not read the entire discussion in detail and only skimmed it. I guess the other poster at some point admitted his "evidence-based-belief" in materialism is in fact just social consensus vibes? If so then that is a helpful example of "science-belief" as social consensus.
In light of your testimony that your axioms changed, the entire discussion seems even more relevant now, so thank you. I've noticed, and so have others -- in fact IIRC your interlocutor for that discussion pointed this out rudely -- that the Motte has more religious posters than Scott's blog or the original CW Roundup threads ever had. I skimmed your recent post history to double check my gut. This also helps explain why you think Materialism is controversial. My central examples of controversial Science would be recent, like the importance of BLM protesting to health; or would be controversial-according-to-me, like that race is just a social construct or whatever.
Is Noticing Science, Inc.'s political capture the reason why you you're Christian then?
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Why would someone change their axioms? Because you grow up in our culture hearing Science as an institution say it has all the answers. They promote orthodox materialism. And as you grow older and realize that Science actually has a lot of flaws and lies quite a bit, you lose confidence/faith in their answers. You begin to question. Ultimately, you question materialism.
Can you explain a bit more where this doesn't make sense to you? I'm confused as to how you're confused.
I think I understand now, thanks for saying it with more words.
This reminds me of the back and forth between Robin Hanson and Scott on the effectiveness of medicine. I tried tracing the conversation but it involves links to so many papers and blog posts that I couldn't find the exact quote in a timely manner. But Hanson said (or Scott had speculated) that the real reason people go to doctors isn't because medicine is effective, but because doctors are the local culturally-respected authorities about health.
I think that's right because ancient peoples and uncontacted tribes today obviously go to their local culturally-respected authorities, too. And if our local culturally-respected authorities do happen to be effective (let's assume), that fact doesn't necessarily correlate with the true reason we go to them.
(I wrote this before I saw the other reply to me, so I feel good that I am understanding the discussion)
There is a kind of liberal sneer that groups QAnon, a rejection of the liberal political order, and science-denial as a Trumpian mind-virus. If science-believing really is just social signaling, would you say that cluster really is correlated, and we will be seeing more of that? (Ignoring the value-judgement of the sneering)
I don't think science-believing is 100% social signaling. I think that unfortunately Science and actual science have become increasingly decoupled, and the capital that science built up by being incredibly good at figuring material causes out is being squandered by bad actors.
Seeing more of what, in particular? More people disbelieving science? Absolutely. At this point the ship has basically sailed as far as I'm concerned - academia's reputation is cratering and I don't see a good way for them to arrest the descent.
Why of course, I have correctly picked apart where Science, Inc. departs from the truth, it's simply [list of my political assumptions]. My neighbor has his list. In neither case are we weighing the evidence, although I suppose we're not exactly social signaling. Rather, we use Science, Inc.'s local cultural authority as a soldier in arguments about beliefs.
I'm curious if people "disbelieving science" will really result in people changing their beliefs. Maybe they will re-evaluate everything they think they know (at some point, people become flat-earthers, right?). On the other hand, people may just argue over what is science. Maybe the belief that science created antibiotics, rocket ships, and computers isn't so much of a fact as it is a soldier in an argument.
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I like symbolism, but when I see the likes of this I groan "oh God, not this crap again". Yeah, give us mystic Christianity divorced from any roots in a living faith tradition, where we can pull it around like Sam Harris Buddhism (get the benefits, dump the woo, be compatible with our true god Science!) to fit what we want without making demands.
If you want Christ the Cosmic Mystic Gnosis Theosis jack-in-the-box, you can go for Theosophy or any range of Western Esoteric traditions that will fit you right up but make no demands of you along the lines of But you, who do you say I am?.
If you want mysticism rooted in tradition, explore the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, but be aware that this is work, not just 'sit there and contemplate my own inner awesomeness'.
There are a lot of people in the world today who just straight up hate the idea of Christianity in its modern formation. Decades of 'oh you believe in an old man in the clouds with a fluffy beard granting wishes' has poisoned them, and then they couple that with the mundanity of everyday worship and nope right out. But they still have a deep yearning for spiritual connection. They have been looking into Buddhism, and esoterics and paganism for a spirituality still rooted in materialism and if you speak to them in that language you can actually reach them. And you can learn more about your own faith by seeing how alternative faiths work too. I didn't have the foresight you did, it wasn't until I started reading about Blavatsky and co that I realised how deep narcissism runs in people. It says it pretty regularly in the bible, yes, but it didn't click until I saw their working out.
Edit: I just read your post below about Arianism - are you actually directly talking about me?
Can you really blame them, Christianity as an institution has been speedrunning blasphemies upon blasphemies with a straight face for centuries, from the absorption of the Trinitanism cult nonsense (god being three beings yet one), the constant Idolatry (Icons, Crosses, holy trinkets, holly sites) the base and mundane nonsense (The Pope says trans rights). It's all so tiresome.
I know people NEED a certain flare of the mystical made physically manifest, even if just to have something to do during communal rituals, but this doesn't ameliorate how stupidly worldly and mundane it all is.
Yeah, this is why I have gone straight for Orthodoxy. Although Icons are definitely not heretical, they were used in the early church, you can look it up blah blah.
Wait the Trinity is a cult? Huh. You mind unpacking your beliefs more I'm curious what you think the true Gospel is?
In my admittedly pedestrian view the trinity thing is the church trying to twist itself into pretzels to explain why it worships Jesus(nominally a prophet/son of god and marry) while still trying to maintain it's a monotheistic religion status /not a type of polytheistic pantheon. Admittedly they are doing the same thing to a lesser degree with the canonization of saints, you're supposed to pray to them and have them advocate for your desires/wants to big G.
Yeah this is a pretty pedestrian view, lol. You could take this line of reasoning with literally any complex argument ever. Just because something isn't simple and immediately obvious doesn't make it wrong.
If you read the arguments for the Trinity from the early Church Fathers, they are incredibly well thought out and use lots of argumentation. That being said, I'm not a theologian so I am not bothered much. I'm fine to let it be a Holy Mystery.
It's just that for me the whole papering over the other Elohim when Judaism went from worshiping El to YHWH and the purging of the other gods is fishy as hell, we're supposed to ignore the history of the religion? It just never sat right with me, same with the focus on Jesus himself.
Eh modern Christianity whitewashes a lot of it, Orthodoxy generally doesn't. We keep all the weird stuff and believe the other gods exist they just may or may not be evil, etc.
I tend to agree that the modern presentation of most Christianity is watered down as heck and papers over a lot. I like to embrace the weirdness and contradiction - I think any true mystical / religious scheme must embrace paradox.
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Not to mention that YHWH clearly changes character over time. YHWH in a lot of Genesis is an insecure and jealous dick, but by the New Testament, and perhaps even before, he's become a much more mature and wise figure. I like Jung's explanation of this (if we are built in the image of God, it makes sense for God to also have integrate his own shadow, which he does in part by incarnating and being killed as Jesus, but also through his various covenants with Noah/Abraham/David/Job). But of course this violates the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent axioms, so it's heresy in pretty much any church.
Perhaps the resistance to this kind of textual/historical analysis (or even openness to debate) is why I haven't been to church for a couple months. Once you start to poke holes in this stuff and are met with hostility rather than answers, it's pretty hard to not see what a house of cards it all is. "No matter how tender, how exquisite... A lie will remain a lie..."
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No? It was our pal the Imaginal Christian as quoted? 'Here's a bit of Adoptionism, here's a bit of Theosophy, here's a bit of....' in regards to understanding of the nature of Christ, the sense of the Bible, is God personal or a force (immanent or transcendent) etc.
I thought so, but you threw some stank on the concept of the zeitgeist in that other post, and that's all I ever talk about. And then it occurred to me that the last time I explained the non-recreational reason I enjoy talking about and to the adherents of that kind of mysticism, I was explaining it to a guy who thought I was trying to turn Christianity into a mystery cult. So I put those things together and thought 'this guy might actually be sick of my bullshit too'.
What, you mean we're not already a mystery cult? Dang, that takes all the fun out of it!
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I continue to await for the rationalist crew to (re)discover Freemasonry, which offers a combination of a possibility for a Deist belief in an Universal Creator, cool mystical rites with actual historical heft, plenty of chances for networking, and a focus on personal development.
I very much am in the process of investigating it. My big concern with it right now — and this may just be a result of the strenuous efforts of Freemasonry’s modern public-facing advocates to massively downplay its esoteric beliefs and emphasize its compatibility with normie Christian-inflected liberalism — is that it seems to demand a commitment to hardcore Enlightenment ideas of universal human equality and the centrality of the liberated individual. Since I think a lot of these ideas are wrong/incomplete, I’m wary of committing myself to an institution which treats them as bedrock axioms. I’m still doing my research, though.
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Been considering it, but something about them spooks me out.
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Yeah agreed. And the same people that ate up the Sam Harris Buddhism stuff are wanting to move to Christianity now that Buddhism doesn't work for them anymore.
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At some point I got hit with belief fatigue. I can scarcely tell what's true from last week. Was the Minnesota shooter a D or an R? Will I ever really know? We still don't know shit about the Butler PA Trump Assassin. Or the motives of the Vegas shooter. I've utterly given up concern over whether the truth of the Christian tradition is 100% literally exactly what happened. Probably 75% of what I hold to be true about history, or the active state of my own country, is a lie. Lies I will never have the ability or opportunity to correct. Shit, people get wrong the truth of things they saw with their own damned eyes. Eye witness testimony is famously among the worst forms of evidence. I get all the nitpicking about the game of telephone/oral tradition that eventually got put down in the bible, and then translation after translation etc. I just no longer see how that same argument isn't a fully generalized destructor for any concept of truth.
Dan Carlin constantly quotes some historian talking about ancient texts, and it goes something like "We cannot believe ancient history, but we have no choice but to believe ancient history." It goes back to the constant arguments about how much of what we know about, say, Alexander the Great was real, how much was propaganda, and how much was apocryphal nonsense? But at the same time, you can't go full retard and claim Alexander the Great never existed. Sometimes I like to think about the Trojan War, and how for the longest time, I think basically since the Enlightenment, "educated" people believed it was just a myth and never happened at all. Then some random German thought "I donno man, this poem is pretty specific about where Troy was. I think I can just, like, go there?" And then he did, and it was. The truth was sitting there just barely below the surface for anyone with the motivation (and lack of sneering cynicism) to just check and see.
How important is it really if I choose to believe that 2000 years ago God manifested as a human on Earth? More over, as I go down the rabbit hole, and try to intellectualize that belief, I can still make it work, literally. If I really want to.
I guess if I had to try to put a point on this, it's that everything may be lies and nonsense. The fog of war isn't some vague concept in distant operations. It exists inside our brains far closer to the source than we'd like to believe. Not unlike LLMs have done more to degrade my estimation of people than raise my estimation of AI, arguments against the Christian Tradition have ultimately eroded my ability to believe anything more than they "disproved" Christianity in specific. So fuck it, why not return to the belief system my ancestors had for over 1000 years? They had a pretty good run during that time.
I know I'm dating myself here, but one of my history professors kicked off the semester by brandishing a Weekly World News and proclaiming it to be equivalent to about 95% of recorded history. Needless to say, I was greatly entertained that semester!
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A normie Protestant friend of mine used to say "I don't believe in God the way I believe in gravity, I believe in God the way I believe my wife loves me".
It seems a bit sad to believe his own wife loves him only in the way he believes in God (which is to say, not at all)
This reminds me of a comparison I made recently between faith and love, apparently not well-received by the audience.
The comparison is: "I don't believe in God like the way I believe in gravity. Likewise, I don't love my wife the same way I loved her when we were dating." That sounds terrible, and it's more romantic to label the tribal-fork "love" and the properties-fork something like "infatuation."
I suppose his point is that we rely on faith for a variety of normal human interactions. The true subjective inner state of his wife is not amenable to the scientific method, though he had grown to trust it over time. The love of his wife can be a pragmatic reality, even a core belief around which he built his life, without being capable of inductive inquiry or deductive proof.
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Yeah this is one of my favorite historical anecdotes!! It's an absolutely insane reversal of the historical narrative.
And yes I actually do agree that ultimately you have to pick an axiom to ground Truth into. I have chosen Christ personally.
That being said, and I mean this genuinely, but your posting style seems very uhhh cynical for someone who believes in Christ? If you genuinely believe in the Christian tradition, shouldn't you be more joyous? Christ won!
Not sure if I'm accurately modeling your beliefs here I'm just curious.
Yes. I am a lifeline cynic/edgy internet atheist trying to change my ways. It's not moving in a straight line.
All good my friend. I was also a cynical atheist who recently converted to Orthodoxy. I've been blessed to meet some really loving folks that have helped me turn my heart around.
I hope the same happens for you :) It's definitely possible even if it seems difficult.
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Religion and symbolism are incredibly important in directing the identities and behavior of groups of people. It even directs their biological evolution which can be seen clearly in Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity. This was of course also true for ancient European religion. You can see a microcosm of this phenomenon if you just go to a comic con and observe the public rituals venerating fictional comic-book characters. In this way, rationalism does underestimate the importance of symbolism; scientific atheism simply rejects the scientific truth of these stories but stops short of understanding why they were created and what they actually mean. These stories are "real" insofar as they meaningfully influence material reality. The thread you linked relating these myths and rituals such as prayer to "prompt engineering for the subconscious" is apt.
But based on your summary, Mythical Christianity seems to ignore 99% of the text of the Bible and the symbolic analysis of those figures you provided does not at all generalize to the canon as a whole. For example, Yahweh is symbolically a Hebrew tribal god and the Old Testament does not at all fit the interpretation of Yahweh as "love by embracing all things that exist & affording the path to salvation through communion with it". So maybe Mythical Christianity then decides to basically dispense with the Old Testament, well then it's not at all serious about symbolically engaging the New Testament.
We are in darkness symbolically because the prevailing religion in the West is predicated on the literal truth of stories that are no longer believable in this day in age. This "Mythical Christianity" tries to reconcile this but it's self-defeating. It has awareness that Religion is essentially fine-tuning the LLM of collective consciousness, but then tries to circle back and maintain a divine inspiration for those stories.
Mythical Christianity is like becoming aware that the shadows on the wall are just symbolic projections from some artists backstage, but still believing those shadows are divinely influenced to show the audience the truth. So you don't leave the cave, you stay there even though you know they are just shadows being consciously scripted by human beings with their own motives and political agendas.
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Not entirely sure I follow your usage of the word "symbolism" here, but I do think I know what you're getting at.
I'm an atheist, but I have a religious disposition. A religious "personality type" if you will. Conversely, I've interacted with Christians here and elsewhere who believe in a literal God, but don't seem to possess the religious mindset at all.
Funny how things work out like that.
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1 Corinthians 15:13-14,19
Why bother calling it Christianity if you're going to hollow out the most fundamental claims of Christianity? It's just secular humanism wearing Christianity as a skinsuit. It doesn't provide a way to be forgiven of your sins, it doesn't even think sin is real! It doesn't provide for resurrection or life after death, it doesn't believe in life after death!
So long as we're coming up with skinsuit religions, I hereby propose Pigfucking Islam, I-Want-To-Achieve-The-Opposite-Of-Nirvana Buddhism, and Do-ALL-The-Harm Jainism.
I tend to agree with this as a final belief system. However I'll admit that this line of thinking moved me from atheist --> sympathetic to Christianity, and ultimately a believer in Christ's resurrection. So there is some utility in it as a perhaps transitory phase, no?
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As a somewhat reformed Angry Internet Atheist, this is certainly the most interesting and palatable form of Christianity I've encountered.
Which is probably why most of the Christians here don’t like it. It’s pretty heretical! Mostly the Jesus parts. When you downgrade Jesus from “God incarnate” to “guy who did the best at being good” then it’s going to be more palatable to atheists (since it keeps God in the mysterious “ground if all being” box where he’s not likely to do anything to offend*) and less palatable to Christian’s (the guys whose hope is salvation through the intercession of Christ).
*Lewis wrote on this in his autobiography (emphasis mine):
"The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) only in us, and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anything else. And anyway, the more muddled one got about it and the more contradictions one committed, the more this proved that our discursive thought moved only on the level of 'Appearance', and 'Reality' must be somewhere else. And where else but, of course, in the Absolute? There, not here, was 'the fuller splendour' behind the 'sensuous curtain'. The emotion that went with all this was certainly religious. But this was a religion that cost nothing. We could talk religiously about the Absolute: but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us. It was “there”; safely and immovably “there”. It would never come “here”, never (to be blunt) make a nuisance of Itself. This quasi-religion was all a one-way street; all eros (as Dr. Nygren would say) steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey."
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Arianism makes a lot more sense than Trinitarianism, though; it is the radical notion that God and Jesus share the exact same relationship that every other father and son do, instead of some not-even-wrong word salad about substances that is so incomprehensible even its adherents admit it's a mystery. If I was convinced that something like Christianity was true but was not really clear on the details, I would become an Arian, like Isaac Newton, or perhaps a Mormon.
The mystery is part of the point my friend. We cannot understand the nature of God, and we are not meant to.
Doesn't seem terribly important to the average Christian experience? I bet if you questioned normie churchgoers who had never seriously studied theology about the exact nature of the relationship between God and Jesus, most of them would spontaneously reinvent Arianism, and have no idea they were committing a heresy by doing so. Trinitarianism is something you can only come up with after reading too much Aristotle.
Arianism explicitly denies that Jesus was God, so I doubt it- no doubt that normie churchgoers would invent things like modalism and tritheism, but not Arianism, which has a specific definition that Evangelicals, Catholics, and most mainline protestants are immunized against.
How many normie churchgoers actually understand that orthodox Christianity requires them to believe that Jesus is literally God, as well as being the son of God? I honestly don't think it's that many.
From what I can tell, even Catholics do not, on average, understand that they are supposed to be asking saints to pray for them rather than praying to the saints, or that the church considers Genesis to be non-literal, or that divorced women are not supposed to be having sex with men other than their ex-husbands. The priests know, of course, but somehow it is never their most pressing concern to make these things clear in simple, straightforward language to their flocks; probably because they can intuit how well it would be received.
The prayers of the church help inform the people. In the liturgy, we are constantly praying to God in the name of "The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit". If you attend vespers, you will hear the hymn Gladsome Light: "having come upon the setting of the sun, having seen the light of the evening, / we praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: God."
This is one reason why it is important to have most worship in the vernacular language
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Everyone understands Jesus is God. The people who think the immaculate conception is the annunciation(this group includes lots of Protestants confused why they don’t celebrate it in addition to normie Catholics who are very confused as to why it is in December) understand Jesus is God. The median normie churchgoer would be more likely to deny the different natures- God the father as the Old Testament who became Jesus God the son who then became God the Holy Spirit after the ascension.
Arianism specifically thinks that Jesus was some sort of super-Angel; Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only notable group of arians around today(they believe that Jesus and the archangel Michael are the same thing).
You’d get all sorts of interesting answers from normie churchgoers on the question of the relationship between Jesus and the father. Few of them would describe Him, explicitly, as a created being- which is the definition of Arianism. Lots of tritheism, modalism, nestorianism, hindu-style avatars, etc.
This is actually common in old school Protestantism; if I recall correctly, both Luther and Calvin flirted with the idea. The concept is that “Who is like God” indicates that Michael is like God, I.e. consubstantial with God, I.e. Jesus. It’s also true that the “angel of the Lord” in the OT is often identified with Christ in most Christian traditions, so the idea of “Jesus is an angel and God” isn’t that far fetched.
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You would not believe the effort I'm putting in to bite my tongue here and not be mean about the Heinz 57 varieties of American Protestantism.
But I can't just laugh about the Protestants, the state of modern catechesis nearly everywhere for the past forty or more years has been abysmal. An awful lot of "Jesus wants us to be nice because being nice is nice", much much less "here are the Ten Commandments and this is what they mean".
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It's intricately woven into mystical Christianity. When we say "God is Love", the trinity shows us an icon of what love is - perfect union that paradoxically does not obliterate distinction. It is the perfect balance between dualism and monism that is the fundamental pattern of reality
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Oh, not just Arianism, it's a nice mish-mash of the Greatest Hits of Christological heresies plus the late 19th/early 20th century craze for spiritualism and mysticism investigating magical, occult and Eastern traditions, topped off with the liberal Christianity of the post-Biblical Criticism era (well of course we can't believe in literal miracles anymore, now we have science and Darwin and all that!)
I think my favourite anecdote of the liberal Christian "explain it away" is the "Jesus was ice skating not walking on the water", followed by the "so the Virgin Birth wasn't but here's why those silly billies thought she was a virgin" attempt.
I honestly love the ice skating one. A very convenient, very temporary, very localised mini-ice floe on the Lake of Galilee so Jesus could appear to be walking on the water, but when Peter jumped overboard poof! gone! melted! which is why he sank in the water, plus the fishermen with him in the boat - who had all been fishing this lake their whole career - had no idea about the very convenient weather conditions to bring about mini-ice floes that (must have) regularly happened so Jesus knew there would be one so He could fake 'walking on the water'.
Dude, an actual miracle is easier to believe than this pile of wishful thinking.
Explaining away the virgin birth is fun, too. See, obviously we are all modern adults who know how sex works, so we know virgins can't get pregnant (unless they've had sex and are now ex-virgins). So why did people talk about the Virgin Mary? Well clearly she was pregnant by rape. And to avoid the stigma of her being pregnant outside marriage (because that's the one bit of the Scriptural story we can take on trust as correct), people in her village would refer to her as "Mary, the virgin who was raped". And over time, that became shortened to "Mary the virgin" and hence - ta-da! - the Virgin Mary.
Yeah, sure. Totally believable, if you turn off your brain to everything but the current Zeitgeist.
In all of the years I've spent following the mythicist discourse I have never encountered this explanation. Usually what is offered as an explanation is that it was a magic trick: walking on a submerged plank of wood (maybe a deck or something). The criticism on Peter falling is not really biting, since a single gospel has it and you wouldn't expect a detail such as that to be omitted or forgotten, if it had happened. A much better one is that they are clearly supposed to be too far from the coast for it to be a trick of that sort.
I've never heard this one either. To be onest they both sound like strawmen to me. Usually the explanation for the virgin birth is that it wasn't even there in Mark, the explanation for the "specialness" of Jesus was initially his Davidian genealogy and the virgin birth was developed later, when the story moved into the hellenistic world, where people didn't care about David and stories of vigin births abunded.
Oh man, you missed the best things from 2006!
"Scientists explained" the miracle, you see, that it wasn't a miracle at all. No, just freak weather conditions that happened to line up absolutely correctly for the events in the Gospels to happen like they did (the ice did not prematurely melt so Jesus fell into the water and it didn't last long enough for Peter to continue walking to shore).
I do so enjoy a good "scientists explain miracles" story, they're so comforting in their naive optimism about 'we totally understand everything becasue we're so much smarter than the stupid people back then who believed their lying eyes'.
The "Mary the virgin who was raped" story came out of something way back when in the days of the Anglican wars, when discussing the liberals versus the conservatives in theology. I can't point to a particular source because it was swirling around, but the progressive Christian set do love them some "Mary was raped" tales (ironically, adopting the sceptical views of the Talmud that Jesus was really a bastard borne out of wedlock to a Roman soldier by Mary) because uh something something patriarchy colonialism feminism something something.
The re-interpretation of the scriptures that really raised my eyebrows, though, came during the reign of the first female Primate of the Episcopalian Church, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who gave a sermon that, em, changed the focus of the story of St. Paul and the slave girl possessed by a spirit.
Now, the fuddy-duddy dumb old traditional interpretation of this story is that the girl was a slave whose owners made money from her being possessed, since she was able to tell fortunes, and that St. Paul set her free from being, you know, possessed by a demon and exploited as a money-making machine. Not so! says Katie, nope being possessed by a demon and exploited by your owners as a money-making machine was a beautiful instance of spiritual empowerment and Paulie was just jealous.
No, I promise, this is what she said. The original text of the sermon seems to have been scrubbed, so the only quotes are from traditionalists not too happy with this novel exegesis, but a sample of the sermon is this:
Yes, kids, remember: if a demonic spirit wants to set up shop in your head, go right and ahead and let it do so, because that's a beautiful holy gift of spiritual awareness! Honestly, every time I look at the fruitcakes and nutjobs in my own church, something like this comes along to make me go "well at least the current pope isn't this out to lunch, thank you Holy Spirit!"
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It's also pretty similar to Jefferson's Deism. It's an old heresy that recurs regularly throughout history. In the past few centuries it pretty consistently tries to sell itself with language like "compatible with a scientific mindset." Check out Bishop Spong (of the famously growing Episcopal church) for a relatively recent iteration of this.
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Rejecting the Nicene conception of the Trinity seems like a fundamentally different idea to me than what this "Imaginal Christianity" is doing, i.e. denying any and all supernatural aspects of Christianity.
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