dethroning Anti-Gods

the biographies and anti-theisms of Diderot, La Mettrie, Holbach, et al...necessary contrasts for "Neo-Platonists" et al to know

State of the Disunion Address?

what can a "Harry Haller" think and feel of the speech-writer-written, telepromptered, populus-crafted, inspirational sermonic address of the first black President of the USA in the guiding "People's House" about the "State of the Union" (which has for decades revealed its deep and ardent disunion in the two opposing political party-churches' anathematizings as to the true and right worldly way to serve and guide the political-religion America)?

out-of-(worldly)touch
as pursuing impractical, otherworldly solutions of not how to make a better and prosperous life, but whence, wherefore, whereto...
an outsider
a "Harry Haller" (perhaps somewhat regretting his lonely "unrealistic" concerns)

The Global "Grand Tour"

the aristocratic "Grand Tour" has by and large been replaced by democratic Globetrotting

mythed

loss of collective meaning replaced by a collection of personalized myths?

"Hell, I don't know!"

in an era and world of an uncertain God, fear of hell has been replaced in life by that of dying

the passions of politics in America are so high because they are in fact religious

Hemlock in the "21st century"?

how many might drink hemlock calmly in this time?

Socrates in the mall

if Socrates challenged the gods of goods today...would anyone try him?

the Death of God?

has not for many modern mentalities Death replaced "God" as the ultimate and final source of Meaning in life?

citizen or pilgrim

"Please, make yourself at home."
"Thanks, but I'm just passing through."

a higher standard of (higher) living?

coined around 1902, the expression "standard of living" was used by social scientists and the public to describe the rising conditions, and rising expectations for more and more rising conditions, of a materially-defined middle-class living standard.

it was not conceived in regards to "higher cultural" or intellectual standards of living.

it is kin to the getig world of ancient Iranian cosmology, to the "kingdom ("middle-classdom") of this world" (John 18:36), to the earthly of Augustine's cities, to "civilization" as a verb and noun, to Versailles and its copies, to "lives of quiet desperation" (Thoreau), Gilded Ages, consumerism, affluenza,...

Dante Now?!

those outsiders...preferring a cosmos like "Dante's"
even post-Copernicus, post-"Newton", post-Kant, post-Darwin, post-Nietzsche, post-mortem dei, post-Hubble...

daily historical travel

journeying daily in history...returning to the present with deepened insights and understanding

Two Originations

"In the beginning God..."

Before the beginning nothing...

post-cataclysm catechism

"Man's chief end was to glorify God and to enjoy him forever"

Man's chief end is to seek "God" and to seek him forever
 

Sinai's invisible lightning, silent thunder

"theology" has for centuries been the "Golden Calf" beside Mount Sinai

anesthetic lit

all fiction that does not consider, worry, include...the deepest human questions is just passing distraction...a temporary intellectual anesthesia (even if self-administered, and that for life)

that's a hell of a good book!

certainly not many even can imagine that once upon a time reading entertaining literature was viewed as dangerously near to a path to "hell"

lost in chapter 21?

most are simply lost somehow/when/where/why/etc in the 21st chapter

history of killing with a clear conscience

needed:
a long-term history of the psychologies/beliefs of those certain they can and should kill infidels...
and that they can do so with a clear conscience

Kant aslumber

perhaps if Kant had remained aslumber, or had been awakened by someone other than Hume...

saving God?

how much in the history of theology is essentially a human attempt to save "God"

sub specie Biblia

sub specie Biblia

for those who live and move and (still) have their being in the "Biblical world-view"

from Calvin to Maslow

from different core beliefs, beliefs of the core...

self-denigration <  > self-actualization

The Unexpected Returnee?

if many early "Christians" in fact expected Christ to return soon, now most would be totally shocked if he actually reappeared, be that in flesh or clouds
(aside from those who don't much care either way about Him now or then)

Nietzsche lives?

can it be they have not heard that Nietzsche and his "madman" lived?

yes

Barth < > Steiner

the anthropologies of Karl Barth and Rudolf Steiner are in interesting and clarifying essential contrast
eg in the former "God" is "Wholly Other" from man; in the later, man is a living possible reflection of God.

three mutual anathematizing "Christians"

Billy Graham, Evangelist

Karl Barth, Theologian

Rudolf Steiner, Seer

Don Quixote encounters the Giza Sphinx

theological tomes or Jacob's stones?

to seek to rest one's head on theologies' tomes?

or better (and much more perilously) on one of Jacob's stones?

human limitations -- Kant: noumena :: theology: God

while Kant may have clarified (or for many not) the limits of human knowledge of things-in-themselves, the noumena, much of "theology" makes finding one's way through to God almost impossible
 

theologians sub specie Dei?

much written of "God" in the history of theology, philosophy (and even sometimes science), seems like a self-therapy projected into the universe: man creating and designing with words, ideas, art,...a suitable God, also for consoling ultimate meaning

but how little seems to have been written with any real sense that it was written (and was Being written) sub specie Dei 

erudite quiet desperation

professional intellectual lives of quiet desperation

curricula vitae lived sub specie academiae

a-mazed academics

most less or more contentedly "lost" for life -- and to life -- in their sections of a growing maze of divergent (and often competing or contradicting) ideas, terminologies, theories, methodologies,...

fathers of modern philosophy

were modern "philosophy fathers" any less naive and confident in the assumptions of the veracities of their "systems" than the Church Fathers with their theological speculations and reasonings?
 

the ruined maze of academia

trying to find one's way to "Truth" in academia
 

Feuerbach's theology?

Feuerbach's antitheology

posthumous indifference

'what was it all about' for a theologian or philosopher who devoted their selves and lives to their ideas, insights and writings...
and whose work is posthumously completely ignored ...

evangelistic atheism

the canonical evangels of atheism Marx, Strauss, Feuerbach, Freud, et al

the gospels according to Marx, Strauss, Feuerbach, Freud, et al
 

Bildungskosmos

Frashokereti (Yasna 30.9)

Romans 8:20

Scola animarum (Origen)

Theatrum Mundi (Epictetus, et al)

Life is a school (William Rounesville Alger, et al)

Vale of Soul-Making (Keats)

Bildungsleben

Bildungsgeschichte

Heilsgeschichte

Bildungskosmos?
  

individuals' religions

seems almost in the divine plan, for individuals to fashion their own personal religions
(for those individualized enough out of traditional group religions)

killed or hell?

"do or you die"
which is stronger:
the fear of death, of being killed for an evil act, or of going to hell for the terrible deed?

but who worries about "hell" these days?

the anthropography of man

whereas universal-, intellectual-, world-, big-, deep-, meta-, macro-, micro-, transnational-, trans-cultural-, history

or the history of culture, -ideas, -philosophy, -religion, -science, -history, -biography, etc

Geistesgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, histoire des mentalite, Heilsgeschichte, Bildungskosmos, et al

are part of the "human story", "human history", they are all parts, portions, aspects or divides of the greater human story which whether it can or not in fact be understood in toto, is surely a "unity" in the sense of it all being related to the human being -- as if gnothi seauton as a whole story reflectively considered -- both individually and collectively considered.

thus: the biography of mankind, the anthropography of man

without an otherworldly hell, a Nazi this-worldly hell?

has any serious, independent, scholarly "philosophical" thinker -- a philodicer, as it were -- considered the actual social and "intellectual" history of a loss of the idea, imaginative belief, and earthly fear of Hell, as well as a real living sense of embodied conscience (Gewissen), and the influence of this in the rise (and brutal realization) of "Nazis(m)" and their fellow travelers, whether willing or not?

(and this is, terribly, just one of many such (in)human histories to trace in the 20th century.)
    

J e e sus, "Steppenwolf"!

a full-grown child has no more knowledge, complexity and insight to all of history, the world and life than to answer "J e e sus"?

Jesus, that is simplistic!

(cf. eg Contra Celsum, IV.9)

a divine mirror

God -- a mirror in the sky?

Bing's and Berlin in Moscow

amid the globalized cheer
again observing people in Moscow amid Bing's version of Berlin's "White Christmas shows how casually people here and most everywhere just passively dream in their milieus

God savers

theologians, eg Barth, in all their writings seem to be trying to save God
or themselves
 

ahumanists?

atheists seem often rather to actually reject man
 

viewed Subjectively?

if theology has a real subject to consider,
then one can wonder how it is considered by the Subject

Jefferson contra Constantine

seeking serious study of histories and ideas of relations of state and church vis-a-vis Constantine and Jefferson

the ultimate "Schadenfreude"!

"...part of the happiness of the blessed consists in contemplating the torments of the damned [in hell]. This sight gives them joy because it is a manifestation of God's justice and hatred of sin, but chiefly because it provides a contrast which heightens their awareness of their own bliss."

-- The Decline of Hell -- Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, D. P. Walker, p. 29

the ultimate "positive reinforcement"

aka "heaven"

the ultimate "negative reinforcement"

aka, "hell"
 

"Hell yea!" or "Hell no!"

definitive positions

theology is anthropology?

seems rather more the reasoning and projections of the personal psychologies of theologians

the Tower of (theological) Babel

after about 40 years periodic study and consideration...

the problem is much less any theological or historical truth(s) of the Tower of Babel, than it is the reality of the aftermath of the Tower of Babel which is "a confusion of theologies"
 
                   

all-too-mundane theology

done with the seldom-reflective assumption that "God" is neither here, nor near, nor now

theodicy sub specie academiae?

is not someone who studies the ideas and history -- and realities -- related to "theodicy" as a purely intellectual, scholarly or academy task, in a rather deep, incognizant, earthly, "spiritual sleep"?

the results of theodical failure

failing human theodicy tests, "God" is often punished by being denied existence

Fundamentally, they am saying...

Let me sleep!

theology as mirror of anthropography?

theology must be considered less in regards to anthropology than anthropography (the total biography, in part autoanthropography, of mankind)

My Kingdom is of this world ?

the centuries' Christians -- Right now or long ago -- who would make His Kingdom of this world