Journal of April 14, 2005

Sunday, April 17, 2005 2:08 PM My, my. The key for me is the third antinomy. Once that is explained then it is pretty much open road, except for the unification of the rational personality in the Highest Good.

Science rightly assumes a motive for all rational action, and since some people act, or try to act, in accordance with a principle, it is assume that there is a motive behind that principle, and that, I supposed, is generally assumed to be happiness, i.e., the complete fulfillment of all of my wishes. And so when people say: I refuse to steal because it is wrong to steal, they will be assumed to be in pursuit of some happiness where this principle is the judge, e.g., a heaven, and so ultimately in personal happiness. This is so self evident even to the common thought and it is usually simply understood and not stated.

Now the rational libertarian thinks in a different way, but with terms that overlap with the talk of the scientist. He thinks of an action which is undertaken solely out of respect for the principle commanding that action, and which he understands that he is to disregard all thought of happiness and rather undertake to implement that action. And this person is conscious of the derivation of an action from his principle of action and of the fact that it is a spontaneous action of himself, i.e., in accordance with a principle and not an impulse, and so for which he is also then responsible (and even for its consequences).

And so the rational libertarian will find himself in a cross roads of moral choice and makes his choice and is conscious of having done so and for his responsibility for the choice and all the while realizing, from a different perspective, that it is assumed that this action will lead to happiness.

Now the unification of these two comes in the Highest Good, we see that the only way the moral act can be justified as an intelligent act is by simply assuming that this establishment of one’s worth to happiness will result in an actual happiness. And so this is the unification of the third antinomy.

A man simply presupposes that his actions are directed toward his happiness, and nevertheless derives an action from a principle which is contrary to his thought of happiness, and does that action (or not = with a bad conscience). The presupposition of science is that the man is operating in accordance with a motive which is ultimately happiness. And this can be ignored by the man in the immediacy of the moral choice, for he knows that he is bound to act in a certain way regardless of the impact on his happiness.

2:46 PM Now Kant teaches that the moral principle is a motive unto itself and shows this in the production of a feeling which can only be called a practical feeling, namely of respect, namely that one is humiliated by this principle and knows in this way that it is painful. Already in advance we can tell that this principle causes pain. In this way this principle is efficacious on its own, and is a production of pure reason in its practical application.

And so man is rightly considered to be in pursuit of happiness and that this is his primary motive. And everything he does can be explained in terms of this motive and everything he ever will do will be explained in terms of his motive and his understanding at any given time. And so there is no need of freedom to explain anything a person does. They are attracted by happiness which has to do with pleasure, and that is all that the humans are after. And when he says that such and such is wrong, he means only that if it is done then it will lead to unhappiness. For example: a god will punish him for telling a lie.

At the same time the person is conscious of the moral laws of right conduct which command imperiously and without regard to happiness, and each person faces a choice and thus knows that he is free, for each person is conscious of being really at a choice, namely where he could go A or B, either one, and therefore at that very instant is utterly free of the impulses of nature and happiness and so therefore is rightly held as responsible for his action. For all it says that at the time the choice was made, the man was free, even if his actual behavior also follows from his motive to happiness.

And again (I think) the reconciliation is really found in the Highest Good, where the person heeds the moral law and where the consequence of just respect there is a conveyed happiness, i.e., as a result of the moral disposition, and not its condition.

In the Highest Good virtue is supreme, but it is not complete; what completes it in the Highest Good is when happiness is the crown for virtue, indeed when it is the crown for virtue alone.

2:59 PM People Of The Glove [right glove = Jewish law, no gloves = gentiles, left glove = law imposed upon gentiles.]

There once was a king to came to a people who always ate together by wearing a right glove.* The king was honored by a group of these people with a table where although he was a guest, nevertheless he was also the host and ruled that table of the right glove. He also wore a right glove and never took it off unless it was necessary in order for him to perform his duty, but other wise not. After this king left his people the right glove table was maintained and used in anticipation of his expected return. The right glove table wanted to get more people to sup there and found some people who wanted to eat there who were not used to wearing any gloves, and so the right glove table people said it was ok to start a second table for people without gloves and that the king would feel equally at home there as with the people of the right glove that he served and led as king. These right glove people knew the king very well and knew that he would be happy with a table of people who loved him as did the right glove people, but who weren’t used to wearing gloves.

[* During supper times, the supper crowd at the table might slap each other on the back, but always only with a gloved hand, i.e., the right gloved hand.]

Now it so happens that the right glove table was destroyed and vanished entirely, leaving only the table of the gloveless people. And so while one table of the king had vanished, there continued always a table of the king, and so a table for him was always set and used and ready for his return.

Then something happened. The gloveless people wanted to bring in the right glove people to join them but realized these right glove people couldn’t be comfortable without a glove, and so the gloveless people decided to start wearing a glove, only a left hand glove (instead of a right glove), and invited the right glove people to join them and to feel comfortable with people with at least one glove on, and so who could slowly be enticed to exchange the right glove for a left glove. Well, it stuck and the former gloveless people had become a people of the glove, only they wore a glove of their own making, a left glove. And so today at the table of the king people wear a left glove.

Now some of the left glove people realized that at one time the left glove table had been a gloveless table, and wanted to go back in time and bring that up to the present and so started a table of the king which was a replica of the original gloveless table, and so once again the king has two tables waiting for him, a table of the left glove and a table of no glove. And he will feel welcomed at either table. But those at the left glove table need to remember that when he was at the right glove table, he occasionally took off his glove to do some good to a right glove person, and so he might just as well be expected, if he saw fit, to be at the left glove table and again take off his left glove in order to do some good to a left glove person.

Now to pursue this even further, the left table group split up and made additional tables, for now it was not just the left glove that counted, but the particular pattern and cut and decoration of the glove. There was a big split between people of a cut out left glove and people of a solid left glove. And then the solid left glove split into a pattern and a solid hue, and then the pattern changed and multiplied and the tables grew beyond count, each claiming to be a table of the king.

But this has not happened to the gloveless table (newly appeared in this narrative) for since there are no gloves at all, there is no reason to start a new table. Now all left glove people (or even any right glove people who might happen to pop up) are welcome to dine at the gloveless table, even though the gloveless people will not be welcome at a table where gloves are the dress, unless they were willing to don a glove for the evening.

In general: two tables have been authorized by the spokesmen and confidants of the king, a gloved table and a gloveless table. Both are acceptable to Christ. One (the gloveless table) is not acceptable to the other (the left glove table), while both are acceptable to one (the gloveless).

4:32 PM Creating idols. This is the basest part of man. It leads him to the dregs in a continuing search for perfection, certainly down strange paths. This is idolatry in its coarsest sense where we seek to embody an ideal which becomes increasingly more wanton and exciting, actually make it into flesh, our heaven produced in the person of another, as being molded by our expansive imagination into something that we would give all we have to possess and experience, the ultimate ecstasy.

And so we find someone we desire and can afford and develop those desirable tendencies in a certain way, best applied to the youth who do not yet know better. We mold a youth, let us say, according to a certain plan in order that some desired sexual response is achieved, where cost is not a factor. And thus in this way we have prostituted ourselves to our own desires and have worshiped at the house of a harlot and not at the temple. Not even to speak of what we are doing to the youth!

5:04 PM Now that would be an interesting take on the same-sex sex angle of Paul for then we have people converting and molding other people to be their angel or idol, and the extreme, against a straight nature, would be to have men even doing it with other men, molding them into their own likeness in order that they might be pleasured by that. Having other men doing as they are told and liking it. And so all of nature becomes your material for your play.

8:01 PM O God, O God, O God. How excellent is they name that all the heavens bow unto thee most willingly!

How can I praise my savior? He gave Barabbas a second chance, absolutely gratis, and he has done the same for me, and the reason that he can get away with it is because he is the Lord of the Worlds, the veritable Son of God, in his human appearance, in his human incarnation as a fact of history.

He, the Lord of the World, was entitled to live, and yet, in order that his disciples might live eternally and we also through them, it was necessary that he go all the way to death in the name of righteousness, which is the only lesson the humans can accept (in their skepticism), and so he did this for our sakes, that through that death the disciples be made receptive to the Holy Spirit and by them then also for us.

Why is this so hard to say? we don’t want to forget justice. And we understand that the new man takes the cross just as did innocent man Jesus and we go with him even to death, and we do not complain, for it is an honor to be able to suffer with Jesus, and the ills that accrue to us by virtue of sharing the same body, the old man and the new man, the old spirit and the new spirit, we look at as what would rightly be due the old man, and do not complain, just as Jesus look at those same sins and took them upon himself without complaint.

We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and this results, at least for those with more time than the thief on the cross, in a growing desire on our part to implement the three loves in all conditions of our lives.

What is the logic here? Jesus gives us the holy man, proven necessarily (given the human race and its skepticism), in holiness into death itself. And we recognize this life as the only life worth living, where a man is totally honest and sincere in all that he does. Absolutely. And we then take heed from the report of the resurrection. For although we recognize the validity of the example, still it is by means of the resurrection that we have proof that Jesus was efficacious on the cross, and that by means of that cross the world was saved.*

I think perhaps the validation of Jesus and the necessity of his death arises in the conception of an objectively moral court, say of many species if nothing else, and in which the human species was on trial, and where it would be by virtue of Jesus having proven, demonstrated perfect righteousness by remaining so even unto death itself (and not a Scheintod (look-like death) as the Muslims are wont to crow about--they miss the point here entirely) that the human race proves its claim to moral worth.*

[* It is interesting that the same episode also disproves our moral worth, for there we see that the human race, the moral and the immoral together (Jew and gentile), and they slay this perfect example of righteousness. Nevertheless in honor of Jesus and especially of his claim that his spirit will be spread abroad like yeast, the human species may be permitted to continue with expectation and even hope.]

Perhaps this Christians will interpret this so: God now has good reason not to destroy the world again, for this time there is a real hope, for he has actually appeared and talked with them as one man to another. And so it is possible, one by one, like yeast, for one to touch the other, each in his or her own condition.

8:18 PM I sort of like that for some reason, and also the parable of the king’s tables.

8:20 PM I acknowledge tonight an overall sense of peace, even though I know a horror of some sort is brewing and which is now largely out of my control, and not that I would know how to steer it anyway.

The Muslims will tell me how to steer it, and all I have to do is as I am told, and I can be assured of happiness in the end.

And so Jesus gives us a hope before a moral court, and the essential element of this hope is the proof that we can all, if we want to, become as righteous and just and decent and loving as this man of principle. He is living proof of a normal man that a person can simply be perfect. He offers that perfection to all who will trust him to deliver it to them, and thus who will seek it with all that they have. They shall become perfect even as the Holy One is perfect, only they will have come there through sin while the Holy One never sinned.

The Holy One is now in heaven, having been resurrected to life by God himself, due to the proclamation of the Holy One is his promise to his disciples, and all those who would be with him must be willing to take up their cross and follow him day by day and not to complain about the burden but always to remember that the bore the burden of the sin of another man (Barabbas) for he served no burden at all.

We are united to the Holy One by virtue of that new spirit. This new spirit, at least with those like Zachaeus and opportunity and unlike the thief on the cross with no opportunity, will be experienced in a growing interest in living right and doing the right and loving thing, just as the Holy One always did.

8:28 PM Oh, getting to the Muslims, I think we should debunk the entire disorder about the Koran being scientific. Now it may be that some day we will see some sequencing which states: “the earth moves, but ye know it not.” And I guess that would be impressive. Sort of latter day revelations. But I can’t help but come back to the fact that it is the clear indication of the Koran that the mountains keep the earth from shaking, but they don’t, and the only way to make any sense out of it is to assume that at one time there was an appendage, to wit: any more than it would otherwise. And so I think I would tend to dismiss the scientific claims as sheer bunk and not deserving of further consideration.

If we had a clear sign like this: Lo, the surface moves faster than wind, but ye know it not. Allah is all knowing. Hearer. Well, even though there was talk of this among the Greeks and so I guess it was possible that he could have realized this fact. Ptolemy had discussed it and then discarded it.

As far as the numerology* goes I don’t really know what to say except that statisticians don’t seem much impressed. It seems that when sequencing the Hebrew scriptures you occasionally come up with things like this: Hitler will die. And of course only God could have know that. Lots of gibberish and then suddenly: Hitler will die.

[* There is evidence that the numerology is based upon an alteration of the Koran and thus is phony. See here.]

The currently magical number of 19 is interesting to me for it exactly expresses the likely percentage of the population which is considered as unacceptable in their condition, and that is the left handed person and the homosexual person. Ten percent each and one percent overlap out.

8:59 PM Generally I am thinking like this: let’s open up the Muslim by the shocking tale of Joseph Smith and how it has at least the same and really more plausibility that the Mohammed story, for at least it preserves the earlier books and builds on them as stated (and rightly understood!). And so if we had reason to believe Mohammed, we have even more reason to believe Joseph Smith.

And then examine the flaw in the story, that God would not simply have put his “book” directly into the hearts of men (by virtue of their own rationality), for this is what Paul’s revelation proclaims. And then we give the story of Paul and how it becomes a person and thus verifiable experience. With Islam and Mormonism you have to wait until after death to know for sure, but with Paul’s revelation you can verify it in your own experience, namely that by trusting in the Lord Jesus you can become perfect in your spirit and worthy of divine pleasing. This was replicated in the life of Saint Francis of more recent and accurate times and further even in the life of John Wesley, not to mention the countless millions over the ages and even now today.

All three report fantastic stories, and with Smith and Mohammed in head on contradiction, and all could be plausible, but only one is verifiable both with human reason and with experience with regard to the promises of the story, the story of Paul.

Paul gives us the story of the planned Messiah who finally actually came to the Jews because of the promises made to the patriarchs, and might just as well have come to the Greeks or the Arabians. Thus the Messiah is not wedded to the Jews but comes to them first. But the Messiah comes for all the world and not just the Jews and so therefore comes to them in whatever their condition, e.g., as he came as a Jew to the Jews, so he would have came as an Arab to the Arabians. And for that reason all people are called in their condition to now take up their cross and follow the risen lord and pledge their allegiance to his kingdom, in the world but not of the world.

For this reason the left glove people and the right glove people and the gloveless (naked hand) people are all the same to the Messiah, for he saves them in their condition and brings them peace.

Admonition of Romans 14. When you are at a feast where both gloveless and right glove people happen to be, and if some right glover notices you have no glove, then for his conscience, and certainly not for yours, put on a right glove and seek to enjoy the evening with him and with the others.