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Is Unitarianism the true religion of the coming civilization?

gotzendammerung said in #3110 3w ago:

>>3094
>I rejoice that in this blessed country of free enquiry & belief, which has surrendered it’s creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian. -Jefferson
Jefferson didn't quite get the dates right, but I offer the provocation that he was right in spirit about Unitarianism. Unitarianism takes the best of the Christian tradition and broader European philosophical tradition, and unifies and purifies it of superstition.

The problematic points of trinitarian christianity at this point are the dogmatic literalism, the nonsensical idea that Jesus was literally God, the broader superstitious assertion of miracles against nature, and the metaphysical dualism and apocalypticism that divides a unified world arbitrarily between eg body and soul, fallen and saved. I know many of you hold these things dear, but I don't believe they are supported by the evidence.

(I could count the almost deliberately dysgenic character of much of Christian charitable activity today against it, but I think these would not be such an issue if Christianity hadn't gone down the path of asserting itself against nature and reason. That's a whole other issue that we can discuss another time.)

On the other hand, to throw out christianity entirely, to go to atheism, islam, judaism, paganism, or buddhism isn't supported either. Atheism runs into major difficulties accounting for any teleological order to the universe or the value of life ("good atheists" being modeled better as unthinking conformists than true philosophers). Islam has the same or worse dogmatism etc than Christianity besides being totally foreign, among other issues. Paganism is irrationalist, and while occasionally fun, not to be taken seriously. And what exactly is it that the Buddhists believe? I could go on.

For better or worse, the philosophical wealth of Europe and much of mankind is accumulated in Christian philosophy. That's not a reason to *believe* the faith claims of Christianity as historically understood, but it is a reason to study it and be fond of it, and to operate in its tradition. But what then do we believe as a foundational faith?

The 19th and 20th centuries have seen a great deal of upheaval over this question, as a result of Christianity becoming increasingly untenable for the above reasons. We haven't answered it as a civilization. The nascent tradition I find the most interesting is the one that progressed through Emerson, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc and now Land. This tradition draws on the western theological and philosophical canons, but revolutionizes it towards coherence with the future of scientific civilization. If there's something I believe, and which I believe could work as philosophical basis of life, it's that. What do we call it?

I offer the strange thesis that what we are doing here and more broadly in our sphere is actually a revival of Unitarianism "from the right". Are we god-believers? Yes as far as I can tell we place ourselves under the teleological order of Gnon, the authority and creative will of reality. Are we operating in the Christian tradition? Yes. Jesus was clearly a great man and we should study his life and teachings. The western tradition? Yes. The Anglo-Germanic-Protestant tradition? Yes. Do we believe in the natural unity and metaphysical non-distinction of man and animal, soul and body, life and physical phenomena, miracle and natural law, etc? Yes as far as I can tell that is what we believe. Do we accept the particulars of the trinitarian creed? Some of you claim to, but I don't, and neither do many of the other sharp young men I regard as being bearers of the true flame. This (trinitarian dogma) is the issue that has prevented a convergence on Christianity in our nascent philosophical sphere. What do you call the form of Christianity that purifies it in a naturalist, nontrinitarian, nondualist philosophical direction?

referenced by: >>3115

Jefferson didn't qui

anon_bizy said in #3115 3w ago:

>>3110
For present purposes, I'll pass over theological debates about Christian revelation, and simply note the sociological fact that actually existing Unitarianism is pure shitlibery. In fact it's among the most shitlib of all Christian-adjacent configurations.

I don't blame Jefferson for this. It perhaps wasn't obvious in the 18th century. But it had become plenty evident by the middle of the 19th.

Nor does this trend seem to have been entirely accidental. Yarvin makes a big deal of the role of Unitarianism as the child of Puritanism and the parent of American Leftism.

If one steps back and asks why this is, I think one has to look at the historical context. It's a mistake to think of Unitarianism in an abstract, first-principles way, as if it equally could have developed in, say, China. Unitarianism as it exists in the West is very much a product of rejecting aspects of Christianity. It is, as it were, a not-Christianity, which is a very different thing from, say, some flavor of Buddhism. And perhaps there's something about being a not-Christianity that harmonizes with the left more than with the right.

I'm not suggesting, btw, that a rightist need be a Christian. Not at all. I'm suggesting that whatever the thing we're converging on might be, there are contingent reasons why it shouldn't and can't be "Unitarianism," even if it has abstract features in common with it.

referenced by: >>3134 >>3156

For present purposes

anon_resw said in #3134 2w ago:

> But what then do we believe as a foundational faith?

This is the million dollar question.

And as >>3115 eloquently explains, it's not Unitarianism.

Perhaps you can read the Jefferson Bible and try to come to a different synthesis of scientific post-Christianity. I wonder, though, whether that is worthwhile. Is this a hair worth splitting? Is it not overly literal (and fedora-atheist coded) to get caught up on the "particulars of the trinitarian creed"?

We agree that there is mystery and magic in the world. Whether you frame this in nerd living-in-a-simulation terms, hippie "spiritual" terms, or Christian terms is a choice.

The open secret of all religions is that they operate on more than one level to accommodate the whole range of human capability: for the left curve, simple literal stories and useful life rules. For the capable: an opportunity for grace, community stewardship, and deeper reflection. For everyone: a community rooted in shared creed. If you prefer to take certain details of dogma as metaphorical, that is between you and God. The one non-negotiable belief is accepting Christ as your lord and savior.

If you can do that, you are a Christian. If not, be something else entirely.

referenced by: >>3146 >>3157

This is the million

anon_vuji said in #3137 2w ago:

Unitarianism doesn't restore what brought Man in harmony with The Sacred, and it being a cesspool of the American Civic Religion is proof of this. They have no discernible priesthood, hierarchy, prophets, or claim to revelation. It only channels the religious urge in one direction: The Political, and therefore it is not a legitimate religion. I'm not even saying this because I am a Christian, for Pagans and Muslims have also found these harmonization of Man with The Sacred in Sufism and Neopaganism alike. Unitarianism does not seek to run away from Modernity (Guenonian Traditionalism) or embrace it (Some Rightist Neopagan sects), but rather it, like most "traditional" religions today has been stunlocked with no stirring in sight.

Unitarianism doesn't

anon_resw said in #3146 2w ago:

>>3134

> a community rooted in shared creed

How do we get there?

Fundamentally, we have to reconcile the need for magical and literal truth. Magical truth: a powerful shared creed that can serve as a lighthouse for our society. This can't be merely rational... it must be strong magic, strong enough that people are willing to live and die by it.

Second, literal truth. intellectual honesty and clean epistemics. And here's the hard part: we must thread the needle through both. We need a great motivating story, but we shouldn't debase ourselves by telling a "noble lie" that's outright falsifiable or ridiculous.

Let's briefly tour, then, what Western religions ask us to believe.

Mormonism requires you to believe everything in the Bible, PLUS accept as divine and infallible the writings of a guy who lived in 19th-century Illinois. Pass.

Catholicism requires a range of theological commitments, including wacky ones like transubstantiation: the belief that during the Eucharist, the communion wafer and wine turn in the physical body and blood of christ as you swallow them. In practice, however, Catholicism is a polyglot religion with lots of practicing members who ignore those claims or take them metaphorically. It even includes and tolerates a range of syncretic tendencies. See, for example, the Mayan/Catholic creole-churches in southern Mexico.

Eastern Christianity is similar to Catholicism in that regard. Protestant churches vary widely & are more explicitly decentralized, prioritizing personal interpretation of God's word. In short, Christianity is more flexible than many would assume.

But in all forms of Christianity, there is a bright line. It's in the name. We can therefore condense our key question to just seven words: do you accept that Christ is king?

If yes, then maybe our engine can be some kind of accelerationist Christian revival. Inventing new ways to be Christian is a core American tradition dating back to Founding.

If not, then we need a different engine. Is that Deism/Unitarianism/whatever new name? I'm skeptical.

The reason I'm skeptical that it fails the magical-truth test. There is nothing in Deism that fires people up to live or die for it. Deism originated from something similar to OP's logic:

> For better or worse, the philosophical wealth of Europe and much of mankind is accumulated in Christian philosophy. [yes]
> That's not a reason to *believe* the faith claims of Christianity as historically understood, but it is a reason to study it and be fond of it, [sure]
> and to operate in its tradition. [...why?]

What does it mean to "operate in its tradition"? Going to a church every Sunday while not actually believing in Christ is low-energy. It's a compromise, which is why current Unitarians have devolved into kumbayah redditarianism for an aging and shrinking membership. A church for everyone regardless of belief is a church for no one.

Now, I *could* imagine a new creed working that is more ambitious and explicitly not Christian. Maybe even one that is complementary to, rather than competitive with traditional religions. A new kind of strong magic.

But let's start with the key question. Is this a Christian movement, or something different? 50/50/"little of both" won't cut it.

referenced by: >>3158

How do we get there?

anon_vuji said in #3149 2w ago:

>Mormonism requires you to believe everything in the Bible, PLUS accept as divine and infallible the writings of a guy who lived in 19th-century Illinois. Pass.

Flagrantly untrue. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is more of a universal religion than any religion on the planet. It was born during the advent of Modernity: Comprising of a priesthood, temples, a prophet, apostles, and modern-day revelation. It's not a tenant in The Church to believe everything in the Bible and one of the Articles of Faith actually says to the contrary:

>“We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."

Joseph Smith was not just "some guy" but had a claim from the time he was twelve, upon acting on James 1:5, that he was going to talk to God and receive an answer on which of the churches he should join and where to search for a remission of sins. He received such an answer when The Father and The Son appeared before him in a grove of trees. Not all of his words are infallible, but what he had claimed to be of God was. Here is a funny story of Joseph Smith with some sectarians:

>Not only did Joseph Smith have that temperament, but he found it difficult to abide opposite attitudes, especially when they arose from false traditions. On one occasion ministers came to him intent on tying him up in scriptural analysis, as they had bragged they would do. They kept trying to push him into a corner, but each time he not only had answers but also questions for them that they couldn’t handle. Finally they became convinced it would be better if they left. As they went to the door, the Prophet preceded them. He went out, made a mark on the ground, and jumped. “Now gentlemen,” he said, “you haven’t bested me at the scriptures. See if you can best me at that.” They went away much incensed.

Flagrantly untrue. T

gotzendammerung said in #3156 2w ago:

>>3115
To respond to a good criticism: yes unitarianism today is the most obnoxiously liberal of the vaguely Christian religions. The historical reason for this though I think starts to undermine your point: when a society starts to break, one of the things the people engaged in that breaking start to do is violate the taboos of that society to say things that are obviously true and sensible, but had been considered heresy. So when old Christian Europe started to die, the radicals like Jefferson and co fairly quickly settled on what I believe was a fairly reasonable position that had social power because it escaped from the old taboos. Run that forward a bit, and those ideas become a fond tradition among those radicals as they continue to do their thing. Now their society is dying, and we violate their liberal taboos with ideas like eugenics. But the fact that they separately adopted a bunch of retarded liberal taboos doesn't make their unitarianism false any more than stupidity on our part could make eugenics false.

>And perhaps there's something about being a not-Christianity that harmonizes with the left more than with the right.

As for proper trinitarian Christianity being less liberal and retarded, that's because trinitarian christianity is a reactionary conservatism against the obvious truth of unitarianism (and by association, the idiocy of moral progressivism). They aren't liberal and retarded because they are just refusing to engage in moral and philosophical modernity at all (ideally. most of them actually are both trinitarian and liberal which makes them doubly useless).

>I'm suggesting that whatever the thing we're converging on might be, there are contingent reasons why it shouldn't and can't be "Unitarianism," even if it has abstract features in common with it.
Sure it's not and can't be "unitarianism" in the limited historical sense of the cat ladies of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Relatedly, it's 2025 and not 1825. But the abstract theology matters, the arguments matter, and the truth matters. The truth is not a political tendency, a historical phenomenon, or a group of people. The truth can change its political associations while remaining the same. In 2025, actual honest to god believing unitarianism is a "right wing" phenomenon, and not (unlike trinitarianism) an irrationalist reactionary one. It's pulling in a different direction now. You can reject the label for its unfortunate associations, but I maintain that insofar as we have theology, "our sphere is actually a revival of Unitarianism from the right", including cladistcially.

To be clear, I'm not proposing that anyone go to UU church. That's a nonsequitor. Unitarianism arguably doesn't support that form of pseudo-christian "worship". Christian church "worship" as we know it is arguably a holdover from medieval proto-bureaucratic population control methods more than an authentic expression of christian faith in the 21st century. An implicitly or explicitly unitarian society would probably leave "religion" be and focus official community building and moral instruction energy on propaganda, political rallies, scientific and intellectual development, and reverence for nature.

However I do think it would be interesting for us to study the hypothetical "right unitarian" canon (including the German stuff) as a canon, to re-read unitarian philosophy "from the right", and to apply the idea of "unitarianism from the right" to make sense of our own philosophical position.

To respond to a good

gotzendammerung said in #3157 2w ago:

>>3134
>Is this a hair worth splitting? Is it not overly literal (and fedora-atheist coded) to get caught up on the "particulars of the trinitarian creed"?
You sound like Jordon Peterson. I gladly tip my fedora to you, sir, and take on the burden of being "fedora coded" if it means having precise beliefs. Yes it's worth getting caught up in the particulars of metaphysics. If you're going to build social and intellectual order on anything other than bare irrational assertion, repression, and obscurantism, you need to make your beliefs clear, precise, and robust to philosophical inquiry. You can either have philosophy (that is, high culture), or ask people to cool it with the metaphysical literalism. You can't do both.

The Catholic church, to their credit, took this stuff seriously. They actually believed it, and because they actually believed it, the difference between Jesus being actually God and being a great man who was merely inspired by God mattered. They also believed in not just being chill about it and having real philosophy. Kudos to them. I happen to disagree with their conclusions on one or two "technical" points (eg whether Jesus is God) where I believe they were being irrational and obscurantist, but I get why they did it too.

>We agree that there is mystery and magic in the world.
We actually don't. "Mystery and magic" are thought stopping magical invocations designed to sabotage rational thought, usually about some stupid taboo. My faith is in reason, science, reality, and God. This is perhaps itself an irrational faith, and I accept some such limits to reason, but not those ones (mystery and magic) in particular.

>If you prefer to take certain details of dogma as metaphorical, that is between you and God.
No. That's called a lie and it destroys your relationship to the truth. A true Christian would reject this as nonsense and so do I. Real Christians believe whole-heartedly that Jesus was actually God who actually incarnated, actually died for your sins, and actually rose from the dead. Not metaphorically, but in the same way that they believe the sky is blue or Julius Caesar was actually emperor of Rome at the time. I am therefore not a Christian.

>If not, be something else entirely.
What does this mean in practice? Don't read the bible? Don't believe in God? Don't work within or appreciate the tradition of Western philosophy that I inherited? What gives trinitarians a monopoly on not just their interpretation of these things but the things themselves? That Western philosophy was done within a trinitarian framework is a historical accident, and not a serious barrier to working outside that framework. I will read the bible the same way I read the Illiad or the rig veda: as a semi-mythic semi-historical repository of great wisdom from which much insight can be gained.

You sound like Jordo

gotzendammerung said in #3158 2w ago:

>>3146
>The reason I'm skeptical that it fails the magical-truth test. There is nothing in Deism that fires people up to live or die for it.
This is another interesting criticism. You are saying we need a grand irrational missionary faith of some kind to coordinate society around, and unitarianism doesn't do it (at least directly). I actually agree with both of these things. But we presumably agree that the sky is blue, and also that no one is about to get fired up and die for this. I think of unitarianism likewise: unitarianism solved theology. It's just boring old truth, nothing to get worked up over. Almost.

Actually people can and do get fired up and die, including fighting major holy wars that redefined our entire political order and moral cosmology, over certain implications of what I am characterizing as "unitarianism": eugenics for one. When you really sincerely believe that man is natural, that mans character, "soul", and "rights" are not abstract magical, otherworldly moral abstractions but concrete physicalities to the extent that they exist at all, you have to treat society and life very differently. The Darwinian-Deist "unitarian" worldview has implications that have motivated millions to martyrdom for and against it, for better or worse. In other words, I'm more worried about unitarianism-taken-seriously being too dangerous than not dangerous enough.

So yeah, not unitarianism *directly*, but the explosive implications of working consistently within that cosmology given modern scientific anthropology have only barely begun to be explored. And what a thing to explore! Finally a root metaphysics that isn't irrational magical thinking but just boring old easy-to-believe common sense and yet also scientifically and metaphysically rigorous. We would be fools, cowards, and liars not to follow this to its logical conclusions in all areas of life, and fight over them.

>Magical truth: a powerful shared creed that can serve as a lighthouse for our society.
In any case, it's not for us to decide what weird magical taboos future political orders will be saddled with. That is a matter for the architects of the peace following whatever chaotic revolution we doomed for, and for "the gods" who establish these things by processes beyond rational control. Society is always based on some irrational element, but by definition it doesn't come from our own reasoned opinions, but from historical revelation of some kind. Our job, as old taboos break down and we are on the cusp of a new conflagration over these issues, is to figure out the truth, and pursue it consistently, and go into that with as much of a commitment to truth as we can muster so we get the most truth-preserving possible result.

referenced by: >>3170

This is another inte

anon_resw said in #3170 2w ago:

>>3158

> > The reason I'm skeptical that it fails the magical-truth test. There is nothing in Deism that fires people up to live or die for it.

> This is another interesting criticism. You are saying we need a grand irrational missionary faith of some kind to coordinate society around, and unitarianism doesn't do it (at least directly). I actually agree with both of these things.

Well, the title of this thread is "Is Unitarianism the true religion of the coming civilization?," so a missionary faith to coordinate society around sounds like what you asked for.

I actually agree with most of what you wrote. But we need better terms:

- Unitarian is a confusing word. You clearly don't mean the UU church, but that is what everyone thinks of.

- Deist is more descriptive. It refers specifically to people who read the Christian tradition and believe in God, but reject the personal divinity of Christ and other elements of Christian theology they consider unscientific.

- The "Darwinian-Deist unitarian worldview" ... what does this mean? Neither the original Deists like Jefferson and Franklin, nor obviously present-day Unitarians, were darwinists.

> Actually people can and do get fired up [...] over certain implications of what I am characterizing as "unitarianism": eugenics for one

Say more. How is eugenics an implication here?

Goes without saying but almost all self-identified unitaritians/deists past and present disagree. What you're talking about is a new and separate thing, & you should find a new word for it.

referenced by: >>3171 >>3172

Well, the title of t

anon_bizy said in #3171 2w ago:

>>3170
> Deist is more descriptive. It refers specifically to people who read the Christian tradition and believe in God, but reject the personal divinity of Christ and other elements of Christian theology they consider unscientific.

Deist isn't the right word either. Deism is more specifically a thesis about God's interaction with the world, or more precisely his lack thereof. The short-hand characterization of deism is that it posits a "watchmaker" God who "winds up" the world and then steps back and lets it tick on its own.

I don't think the thing we're groping towards requires that thesis. It could be that God exercises a stronger formal and teleological role than deism suggests. This role could be aligned with evolution and reach up to something like de Chardin's Noosphere. It need not involve miracles, so that part of the deistic intuition could be correct, but not the rest of it.

Deist isn't the righ

gotzendammerung said in #3172 2w ago:

>>3170
With respect to darwinism, obviously the early unitarians weren't darwinist. What I mean to imply is that there is actually a larger thread of coherent metaphysical development of post-christianity with fairly dense interconnection, running through things like unitarianism and/or deism and then darwinism and beyond. It is in reality occasionally atheistic but in practice it seems to usually maintain belief in God and often conscious roots in christianity. There is a left and right branch of it. The right branch, which integrated german philosophy better (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc) I believe is much more coherent. The left branch is more politically dominant because of the events of the 20th century. But I believe there's a coherent, if under-systematized, actual theology here. It's not just the general soup of incoherent post-enlightenment slop. It looks that way sometimes mostly because the left branch actually has devolved into unrigorous slop, and the more coherent right branch is suppressed.

I call this broad theological tendency "unitarianism" because it appears to me the whole thing does in fact descend from that tendency within the english church, and the most coherent actually organized position consistent with the whole thing is unitarianism. I have met and know a number of actual believing self-described unitarians, some even joining me in the right branch, Jefferson described himself as "unitarian" not "deist", Harvard divinity school, a noted epicenter of this whole situation is conventionally described as "unitarian". Emerson, an important influence node from the english to the german branch, was unitarian. I think a great many people in the American sphere on the right who describe themselves as able to believe in a creator, and having a fondness for Christianity, but insistently not believing in the divinity of christ are in that theological position not by accident but precisely because Unitarian theology is probably the closest thing to America's official elite theology.

I further think appropriating the name would be funny to troll the left-unitarians, outflanking them by taking their own theology much more seriously than they do to reach opposite and more coherent ideological conclusions. But sure let's try out many names for this thing. I will be sticking with this one until actual historical timelines and theological details makes it untenable, because it's funny and as good a hypothesis as I have.

What I would really like to see is Nick Land's opinion on the matter. He's explicitly anglo protestant and obviously nonconforming, and he's really the cutting edge of the right branch in theological matters (eg Gnon-revival, which let's not forget comes directly from Jefferson, a Unitarian).

>How is eugenics an implication here?
It's an implication of darwinism and a naturalistic view of man without the metaphysical detachment of the moral-social qualities from the biological qualities, or at least something in that area is. I don't want to tie this whole thing to any too-specific position there. In any case it depends on the inclusion of darwinism in the cosmology of this generalized unitarianism, which I believe should be uncontroversial in the 21st century, the opinions of liberal cat ladies claiming to be unitarians aside.

referenced by: >>3176

With respect to darw

anon_bizy said in #3176 2w ago:

>>3172
> ... Unitarian theology is probably the closest thing to America's official elite theology.

So you really do mean the actually existing tradition of specifically American Unitarianism, not just first-principle theism without revelation. So much the worse, since it really is a maximally shitlib tradition.

> I further think appropriating the name would be funny to troll the left-unitarians, outflanking them ...

This is a small motive of little benefit that addresses none of the social and historical difficulties amply pointed out above.

referenced by: >>3184 >>3189

So you really do mea

anon_vugy said in #3177 2w ago:

>the nonsensical idea that Jesus was literally God

This idea makes perfect sense. God took human form to teach humanity, his children, how to behave. Lead by example. A loving God could do no other, and God is love. Jesus Christ is literally God. Seems pretty simple and logical to me.

>the broader superstitious assertion of miracles against nature

God is above nature. God can break the laws of nature if He wants. This is because, by definition, God created nature. I don't think God literally breaks the rules, though He could, I think He made Nature so infinitely complex and thick with mechanism that He causes apparent miracles when He so wishes. On some level miracles are just sufficiently unlikely yet still technically possible events that did happen, of which there are many.

>and the metaphysical dualism and apocalypticism that divides a unified world arbitrarily between eg body and soul, fallen and saved.

Yes, good and bad are real. I don't know how you are on "the right" if you need evidence of this. Yes, the soul is real and supernatural. This is confirmed by constant conscious experience and by definition couldn't be objectively measured or proved. Yet we experience it ourselves directly at all times.

The evidence seems pretty cut and dry to me!

In my view "unitarians" just hate the mystery and illegibility of life, nature, humanity, and God and worship God's mechanisms and their mathematical cleanness rather than the Creator Himself, who is not an equation but a living loving person and soul. Nothing in the material universe really matters because we are all going to die. The nihilists are right about that. And yet! What is that "yet"? Why do we yet exist? That yet is the supernatural immaterial soul endowed with free will and knowledge of good and evil which seems to belong to most homo sapiens and which is the image of God, which is really to say it is evidence of what kind of thing God himself is.

Nothing about the fundamentals of Christian theology or Christ's teachings are incompatible with empirical natural philosophy or require believing in retarded nonsense. That may not be the case for literal dogmatism that has been piled on like cruft since then, by fallible human hands and minds of a thousand varieties and inclinations, but the core logic of Christianity is a beautiful truth from God. "Unitarianism" would be a great religion if we were robotic automatons without souls, which we are not. And even if you insisted on bure materialism (for which there is no good reason to do so and is fundamentally based on a misunderstanding and misapplication of scientific epistemology) you would eventually re-derive Christian theology and Christ's teachings if you smashed your head against the wall long enough because you would have to re-invent something like the soul, like free will, like good and evil, like God the Man, and so on. Go ahead, I guess. I think it's a much shorter and easier path to go from Christianity to modern default cosmology and morality than the other way around. In fact, that's exactly what the Gospel was always supposed to be!

referenced by: >>3184

This idea makes perf

anon_vugy said in #3178 2w ago:

bUt wHy diD gOd cHoOsE tO bE a PaLesTiNiaN cArpEnTer tWo ThOusaNd yEaRs aGo

Uh so he could appear at exactly the right time and place to bring the Gospel to his most noble and beautiful children—the White Race? Duh.

bUt wHy diD gOd cHoO

gotzendammerung said in #3184 2w ago:

>>3177
>Seems pretty simple and logical to me.
Christianity makes narrative sense if you are operating in the prescientific hebrew frame of reference where the universe is dualistically divided into ontologically sacred and profane parts, the world is full of djinn, history is punctuated by unique metaphysical transformations of reality, and God is highly interventionist.

As far as I'm concerned Newton dealt that view a fatal blow, and Darwin annihilated it. Every other part of the universe other than these supposed interventions that no one has been able to substantiate works on unified uniform natural law with no ontological breaks between narrative parts, no magic, etc. In this "english" frame of reference, when you propose this huge class of ontological phenomena entirely apart from everyday reality on what is in reality very thin evidence, another Englishman named Occam starts asking difficult questions.

God is the eternal creator beyond space and time who creates reality and gives it both law and purpose. He doesn't seem to be a role-playing micromanager type, and is quite capable of writing his teachings non-symbolically in the workings of nature itself, to be decoded by the wonderful minds he gave us.

>God can break the laws of nature if He wants.

Of course He *can*. But that's not the question. The question is whether He *does*. The question is whether that extra thick additional machinery that apparently only activates sometimes is a necessary or unnecessary addition to our hypothesis.

>>3176
>specifically American Unitarianism, not just first-principle theism without revelation.
They are much the same (though i would amend to specifically "unnatural revelation"). Sure you can reject Unitarianism and then accept all its teachings "from first principles" if you like. Historically those "first" principles are Unitarian principles, everyone finds them intuitive because of previous total Unitarian victory, etc.

>it really is a maximally shitlib tradition.
refer again to my argument above that the liberal ideological insanity is separable from the foundations of the worldview and is in fact inconsistent with it if taken seriously. And don't confuse the liberal cat ladies who took over the nominal Unitarian church for the whole culture that operates on unitarian ontology. My point is there are a great many people operating on unsystematized but effectively unitarian theology, many of whom are quite open to rejecting the liberal nonsense. But you will first demand they accept some other theology because you don't like the cat ladies who pretend to own their theology, instead of just formalizing the actually consistent arguments for your object level positions within their dominant and rich frame of reference?

I'll ask you guys some questions: on what basis do you reject liberal morality? Not just surface level arguments, but the deep metaphysical scaffolding by which you get to the point where you can even make arguments like that. Where, precisely, does that worldview differ from what I have presented as unitarianism? If it does not, where do you disagree with my thesis of implicit unitarianism in Anglo-American conceptual substructure?

referenced by: >>3199

Christianity makes n

anon_resw said in #3189 2w ago:

Moving beyond the semantic argument over whether we should call ourselves Unitarian (we should not, >>3176 is pretty conclusive, the horse is dead)

...there is a deeper question.

What does it mean to follow Christ's teachings (irrespective of whether you consider him divine or human)?

What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? To turn the other cheek? What does it mean for the poor in spirit to be blessed, or for the last to be first? Vibes? Essay?

This is the crux question that makes Christian traditions so different in practice across space and time. Today, the default is to take it in a max lib direction, and Unitardians along with many other present Christian denominations do exactly that. They focus on the people who are easiest to pity, culminating in trans flags and refugee charities.

It's also possible to take it in a normie conservative direction. Reject identitarianism, embrace chungus-ism, culminating in that guy who sits on the back of the pickup truck.

It is much harder to reconcile Christ's teachings with the radical right. With Darwin, Nietzsche, Land, with "eugenics" (another burnt word you'll want to replace) or any concept of innate human hierarchy. I don't want to belabor it because this has been explored extensively, but obviously Christians have historically opposed these things and vice versa.

So what is the synthesis? We know that the Blank Slate is a lie. We also know that nobody (aside from the occasional romanian masochist) wants to live in a world of pure hierarchy and domination. Somewhere between these poles is the truth.

This is much more interesting than the name question & gets at the heart of the issue.

referenced by: >>3190 >>3196

Moving beyond the se

gotzendammerung said in #3190 2w ago:

>>3189
ok let's put the name aside. My "unitarianism" provocation is about content and history more than a branding proposal. Let's turn to the matter of Christian love and social-political interpretation of the sermon on the mount.

Without the divinity of christ, the whole thing carries a lot less weight. It comes to us as tradition and by charismatic argument, not absolute divine command. I believe this is where we want to be, because over-constraint on that charitable tendency has as you say become the crux of our historical problem, and we probably won't survive the christian charity utility-monster apocalypse without the ability to be flexibility responsive to conditions there.

My (unitarian) frame of reference would suggest reflecting on the best philosophical traditions and examining nature for insight. I'll briefly give the natural argument for social love. In another comment or another time I may discuss how the tradition has evolved around this argument, including how the radical right is historically grounded in the anglo-american naturalist theological tradition I am calling "unitarian" and doesn't need to be pure romanian locker room domination all the way down.

Love is the binding force of collective life. It is selfless love that makes our cells work together in a greater organism. Love is when something that could attempt to act selfishly instead defers self interest even fatally to help others with which it is bonded. Love is a leap of faith and requires courage because it may not be reciprocated. If it is not reciprocated, the higher life that it supports fails and dies.

Our society is dying by overdose of unreciprocated love for the foreign and even hostile other. What has induced this is complex, but it has become taboo to withdraw love for the foreign other regardless of merit or viability of that love, and it has even become sacred to many to love the other especially when they are an evil murderer bent on your destruction.

We don't have to go very far to abandon this as insanity. We just have to reject the absolute obligation to the wretched and the hostile other that has been imposed on us by foolishness, subversion, and irrational tradition. Love and charity is first and foremost within the viable community for the purposes of the elevation of its higher life. It is not some otherwordly demonic idol to which beautiful societies and people in this world must be sacrificed.

I think it's trivial to justify a sane balance of socialistic love with nationalistic self interest within a naturalistic life-affirming theology. It's harder within trinitarian christianity, or within atheistic nietzscheanism. The hardest part in any case is that a sane balance takes strong leadership with moral authority and great love for its own people, which must be fought for against the arrayed forces of corruption.

ok let's put the nam

anon_bizy said in #3196 2w ago:

>>3189
> It is much harder to reconcile Christ's teachings with the radical right. With Darwin, Nietzsche, Land, with "eugenics" (another burnt word you'll want to replace) or any concept of innate human hierarchy. ... obviously Christians have historically opposed these things and vice versa. So what is the synthesis?

This is the heart of the issue. I think an adequate answer will look more like a based variant of Teilhard de Chardin than like historical Unitarianism.

This is the heart of

anon_vugy said in #3199 2w ago:

>>3184
>Christianity makes narrative sense if you are operating in the prescientific hebrew frame of reference where the universe is dualistically divided into ontologically sacred and profane parts, the world is full of djinn, history is punctuated by unique metaphysical transformations of reality, and God is highly interventionist.

Jesus Christ explicitly supersedes this view—while thoroughly and completely co-opting it to great success. (That's why it's called the New Testament and the new covenant.) Let me blow your mind: I claim Jesus Christ is the first "right-unitarian."

>God is the eternal creator beyond space and time who creates reality and gives it both law and purpose. He doesn't seem to be a role-playing micromanager type ... The question is whether He *does*. The question is whether that extra thick additional machinery that apparently only activates sometimes is a necessary or unnecessary addition to our hypothesis.

A role-playing micromanager is not what is proposed by Christianity. What Christianity proposes is a universal God of love who is the Father of Mankind and who created a universe to allow human souls to deify themselves by choosing good over evil, and who sent His son/Himself to Mankind to lead by example, which would be a logical and necessary choice. Occasional miracles and the divinity of Christ among other things are necessary additions to complete the logic of this system. In the final twist, God demands you make the unreciprocated leap of faith to believe in Him and love him—the ultimate act of unreciprocated love towards the greatest possible being, God Himself. It wouldn't be a leap of faith if miracles and God's power could be routinely proven with scientific instruments. There would be no love in having faith in God then, the purpose of the universe destroyed.

>In this "english" frame of reference, when you propose this huge class of ontological phenomena entirely apart from everyday reality on what is in reality very thin evidence, another Englishman named Occam starts asking difficult questions.

God can. Agreed. So why wouldn't he? We need to posit some purpose if this is going to restrict God's actions. When we start positing what purpose God could possibly have, we start getting Christianity. Ultimately it doesn't make more sense to posit a totally non-interventionist God. It makes more sense to posit a God of limited intervention. God made a clockwork world, yes, so it wouldn't make sense to intervene in that. But we are not positing that God intervenes to randomly turn the dials on nature, we are positing that God intervenes to shepherd his children, Mankind, towards Him, out of love. Therefore God would undertake the bare minimum intervention necessary to shepherd his children towards Him to, in the Christian frame, utterly defeat and disprove Satan's contention that it is better not to follow God. Again the whole Christian worldview is underlied by the idea that God created us as an expression of infinite perfect love, and the universe exists to allow us to also participate in and express that love back. What your "right-unitarianism" proposes is exactly this, but without God and his love. You are literally just trying to cut God himself out of the picture, to cut the All-Father out of his own family, because he does not abide by the rules He himself created—which of course he doesn't.

What all of this really comes down to is that you cannot accept the idea of supernatural or non-clockwork things that really do exist, like human souls with free will. But this is just autism and moral cowardice, fear of being proven wrong by a bigger nerd with mathematical tables. Science wasn't invented to disprove the idea of souls, it was invented to control nature. Again you ignored my point that the very nature of conscious experience seems like cut and dry evidence of having a soul with free will. No amount of science can disprove this, nor should it.

referenced by: >>3203

Jesus Christ explici

gotzendammerung said in #3203 2w ago:

>>3199
your view is overall fairly coherent but I don't see the miracles, including your magical claims about consciousness. They aren't particularly necessary and as you admit the evidence is uncompelling by definition. You claim God wants to intervene here and there to have a particular kind of relationship. I claim it's more interesting to just want to see us grow into what we're supposed to be by our own logic, and this is how Satan is more thoroughly refuted. These are paradigms that will not be resolved by argument.

But I'm curious how you see the matter of charity and how Christian moral teaching should respond to the modern situation, because you've got a more coherent Christianity than most.

Your last paragraph of half-baked psychologizing is undermining the rest of your argument, though. You accuse me of being afraid of being proven wrong, which is why I won't accept a view that seems wrong. What's fear got to do with it? Why not just avoid being wrong? You're not going to shame me into believing something when your argument is literally "you're just afraid of being wrong". Do you mean that I would be wrong to believe it?

referenced by: >>3209

your view is overall

anon_vugy said in #3209 2w ago:

>>3203

> including your magical claims about consciousness

They aren't magical, they are just a description of the strange and constant experience of being conscious and acting with free will and agency. They are necessary because such an obvious and hugely strange fact of existence needs to be explained and contextualized.

> as you admit the evidence is uncompelling by definition

The material evidence is uncompelling by definition. But the logical, metaphysical, and philosophical evidence is extremely compelling.

>But I'm curious how you see the matter of charity and how Christian moral teaching should respond to the modern situation, because you've got a more coherent Christianity than most.

This and the miracles thing are all a big dumb red herring to me. When I examine Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ on their own terms, from first principles, from scratch, without worrying about the following two thousand years of fallible human cruft and experience, I do not see teachings or a metaphysical system that is hanging by a thread of retarded nonsensical miracles or that is liable to persuading good people to self-destruct in favor of hostile invaders. The Christian religion and worldview is fundamentally about the infinite love of God for Mankind and what it means for Mankind to return that love back. In simplified terms the answer is that God calls us to reject temporary material rewards and pleasures to instead maximize loving and loved human souls. God asks us to maximize that intangible pro-sociality in every which way, which is love. I can only have the vaguest fever dreams of a universe filled with quadrillions of human beings of perfect moral character living in harmony, like heaven made manifest. That will probably never happen, but it's what God asks us to aim for.

The literalness, materialness, precise mechanisms of, and scientific credibility of miracles or even Christ's divinity are in my view completely missing the point and not something fundamentally relevant to Christianity so much as relevant to as you call the Christian reactionaries who have been trying and failing to fight these arguments against God-haters for centuries. And they are failing because they too miss the point. It was not something that concerned anyone alive at the time, nor did it concern God.

The literal materialness of miracles and Christ's divinity could range from God literally breaking the laws of physics for a specific amount of time, literally using magical supernatural forces to mold the Jesus fetus out of Mary's innards and creating matter from nothing, to a stray highly-mutated sperm of Joseph's ending up impregnating Mary in the most unlikely fashion and producing a materially normal human being who happens to be simply so perfect materially that he is the Son of God, and another dozen extremely unlikely but technically possible events. But who cares? Why does this even matter? To think this matters at all completely misses the point of the underlying moral, metaphysical, theological, philosophical, and anthropological system. If the system makes sense and is compelling, then it is not a big deal to accept some divine mysteries that will perhaps be understood "scientifically" in the future when we have giga-super-mega-retroactive-historical-AI.

Genuine reinvigorated Christian moral teaching in the modern era should and would condemn the rampant idolatry and injustice that is destroying Western civilization and I suspect it would look a lot more like the Taliban, but smarter, than the Episcopal Church. I am basically okay with assuming almost any amount of

>Do you mean that I would be wrong to believe it?

No I claim that it is illogical to disbelieve or ignore relevant moral and metaphysical claims and systems because they cannot be proven scientifically, since it implies you would believe them if they could be, which implies you do not believe them because you mistakenly think they could be proven wrong scientifically.

referenced by: >>3210 >>3212

They aren't magical,

anon_vugy said in #3210 2w ago:

>>3209

To be clear I am not taking the position that "even if it's false, it's metaphorically true." I am taking the position that as a Christian you take on faith which is an act of love for God that it is literally materially true, while remaining legitimately and rightfully agnostic to the precise mechanism, since the precise mechanism was nobody's concern and scientific empiricism cannot prove or disprove it anyway. Maybe it could with insane giga-mega-super-retroactive-historical-AI of the future, that can somehow compute history backwards to determine what happened. Conversely perhaps God just programmed reality with the correct sequences and positions of atoms and electromagnetic waves to coincidentally result in all the exact miracles necessary like some kind of crazy Rube Goldberg machine. Atheists and agnostics always scoff at this and say BUT IT'S SO UNLIKELY which is NOT AN ARGUMENT when we are discussing the all-powerful Supreme Being who created the universe.

And furthermore that the socially, morally, philosophically, and theologically load-bearing portion of the religion is not the scientific literalness and credibility of divine interventions, but the logic and claims of the system itself. In a world where God regularly appeared to every person in dreams and told them what to do and regularly sent burning angels to literally materially manifest IRL, the God-haters would just openly declare themselves to be pleasure-loving servants of Satan and drop the other tactical bullshit. We basically do live in that world, since God came to Earth as Jesus Christ, it's just a more tasteful and adult version of it as is befitting the Supreme Being.

To be clear I am not

anon_vugy said in #3211 2w ago:

Furthermore as a matter of metaphysical argument about love: God ought to be to Mankind as a father is to his child. To imagine God as the impersonal Gnon/Nick Land/right-unitarian quasi-Islamic unitary non-interventionist force of existence who simply lets his children develop as they may, is equivalent to saying that the ideal father simply impregnates the right female and then fucks off literally never to be seen again. While this has a certain appeal to some people, it makes more sense that just as a father wishes to express love for his child through interventions and a direct personal relationship, even if these interventions literally do not matter for the child's future potential at all, God Himself wishes to express love for Mankind through interventions and a direct personal relationship, even if these also do not matter for Mankind's future potential at all, which actually remains entirely in our own hands thanks to the gift of free will. This is the magical and self-referential quality of pro-social love, that "yet" which doesn't matter under any material logic and yet does matter and we feel a longing for.

Furthermore as a mat

anon_vugy said in #3212 2w ago:

>>3209

Got cut off:

I am basically okay with assuming almost any amount of necessary reform of Christian institutions and dogma, almost any amount of critique levelled at these fallible human institutions, but fundamentally the logic and claims of Jesus Christ must be understood on their own merits, and I think these reveal both the despairingly sorry state of disrepair of the human institutions tasked with explaining and promulgating them, as well as the wrongness of trying to solve the problem by ignoring a personal loving God.

Got cut off:...

anon_vozu said in #3274 4d ago:

I was very moved by this post and so I went to my local Unitarian church and explained to them all that we have discussed here. They called the police on me.

referenced by: >>3276 >>3278

I was very moved by

anon_bizy said in #3276 4d ago:

>>3274
Snarky but on point. Actually existing Unitarianism has none of the virtues of OP's merely theoretical Unitarianism, and many of the vices of the worst parts of America.

referenced by: >>3278

Snarky but on point.

gotzendammerung said in #3278 4d ago:

>>3274
>>3276
I'll have to do another thread with the same content but different words. "Unitarianism" is a joke, but there's something here in the content that I think is very powerful. The anon who mentioned teilhard is on the right track.

referenced by: >>3286

I'll have to do anot

anon_bizy said in #3286 3d ago:

>>3278
> I'll have to do another thread with the same content but different words. "Unitarianism" is a joke ...

I would welcome such a thread. (I'm the one who mentioned Teilhard.)

Here's something to reflect on when formulating it. Distinguish between what is necessary to affirm and what is necessary to deny. I claim that what we need lies in what we affirm, and what we deny can in many cases be left unstated. We need a philosophy that is strong and thick and extends upwards to a natural theology. It needs to have the attributes discussed in this and other threads: fully compatible with modern science, to include evolution, etc. How this philosophy might relate to existing religious traditions can be left to theologians of those traditions to figure out. We simply don't need to speak to that (just as it wasn't Aristotle's job to figure out how Aquinas might make use of his philosophy).

Teilhard himself provides an example. Although a Catholic priest, his writings are pretty ambiguous as to how they relate to traditional Catholic doctrines. A Catholic reader might take them to be compatible, although innovative and future-looking. Another reader might take them to be incompatible and superseding. But Teilhard himself doesn't get into that or make it a point of controversy.

I don't think it serves a good purpose to accompany a philosophy with statements of "You're wrong" addressed to traditional Christians or anyone else. There's work enough in stating and promoting the philosophy.

referenced by: >>3288

I would welcome such

gotzendammerung said in #3288 2d ago:

>>3286
>focus on what to affirm
>what existing religions make of it is up to them
>no purpose telling christians etc "you're wrong"
You are right about these things. I will attempt what you have specified. But i'm still lacking two things: a good hook, and "what's the point". We can be as right as we like about philosophy and so on but if there isn't some actual operational program that is demanded by and requires that philosophy, it's not very useful. The classic is to attempt a political philosophy through such a lens (eg Republic), but part of the point of this worldview is that there and many different things that can work, and particulars require particular leaps of faith. There is something particular implied by this worldview taken as a more complete whole, and leaps of faith we should take, but I haven't yet figured out the key concepts on which to hang it.

You are right about

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