I doubt one’s beliefs at death have to do with one’s salvation. That said, I do believe the integration of information from our experiences is an ongoing project – both for us and for God. One might suppose it should be a relatively simple thing for a mind of the quality of Hitchens, were he so disposed, to postulate a reconciliation of the New Testament with Beingness within a Field of Consciousness. Indeed, his life seems meaningful as a sympathetic part (devil’s advocate?) for that play.
Instead of God, he could simply substitute Field of Consciousness. Instead of Satan, substitute irreconcilability of existentiality. Instead of material Jesus, substitute concept of spiritual, Ideal Jesus Person. Instead of Heaven or eternal harmony, substitute purposefulness in pursuing happiness and state of Reasoned Empathy. Instead of Demons, substitute dissonance in physicality and cognition. Instead of Original Sin, substitute cracked symmetry. Instead of routine Sin, substitute giving up on efforts to reconcile experience and information beyond cognitive dissonance. That is, substitute the falling into disintegration of concepts, beliefs, principles, purposes, and conduct. Substitute Sin as the giving up of integration of one’s purposefulness.
Instead of Alms, substitute efforts to restore others to integration of principles and purposes. Instead of commandment-based Morality, substitute Reasoned Empathy. Instead of Universe, substitute shared Field for particular communications of consciousness of existentiality. Instead of Matter and inanimate things, substitute byproducts of feedback of communication among perspectives of consciousness within a shared frame of reference. Instead of a Beginning, substitute a phase shift within the eternal present. Instead of an Apocalypse, substitute a quickening reconciliation of the Field of Consciousness with its particular expressions. Instead of an End of time, substitute an integration, collapse, and re-design of information in order to phase to the next cycle of existential adventure. Instead of Teleology of final fulfillment of purpose, substitute continuing cycles of adventure for reconciling the Field of Consciousness with its particularly expressed purposes.
Instead of America, substitute tip of sword for an ongoing, integrating reconciliation of experience and information. Here’s to the re-integration of Hitchens!
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Collectivists and Libertarians have confused many Christians, to lead them to follow practices as if Jesus intended that we should populate ourselves with unsustainable legions of family hating bums. Misconceived aspects of Christianity, Collectivism, and Libertarianism are coalescing to cannibalize America. This is not an idle concern. To restore America, if Christianity is being misinterpreted, it must be corrected.
In Jesus’ time, there were few safety nets and much grinding poverty. There were few church institutions to provide charity for the general population. Churches were beginning to provide charity, and tithes were encouraged. Churches were only just learning how to rehabilitate derelicts, to restore them to more self and family based sufficiency. So alms were sorely needed. But alms were not asked to be spread to persons who were already on government dole.
Nowadays, there are charitable institutions. Until the welfare state intruded, private institutions were becoming more adept at rehabilitating derelicts and deciding how best to distribute contributions. Taxpayers who “contribute” to the welfare state get no such consideration. Now, food stamp money may as well be dispersed to be fully fungible, for all purposes. Until the welfare state began to reward people for voting and for being bums, charities were learning how better to rehabilitate people and turn them into productive citizens. Can collectivizing lovers of big government make such a claim? Insofar as Libertarians tend not even to have or raise children, can Libertarians make such a claim? Insofar as Libertarians are not even producing the next generation, are they not taking a bum’s ride on the back of the next generation?
If Christianity as practiced in ancient Rome has morphed to become counterproductive to decency in modern society, then it must be revitalized. If many Christians have fallen for collectivism, having prompted Ayn Rand to have interpreted the code of Christians as prelude to mind surrender leading to collectivism, then decent-minded thinkers need to correct that interpretation. I see no good reason why deformed practices of misled Christians should continue to thwart a more reasoned empathy among particular perspectives of consciousness and the Field of consciousness of which they are derived in common.
It is obvious how atheistic collectivists deceitfully abuse Christianity. Even as Collectivists deny God, they assert that followers of Jesus, by their own code, should spread alms to the needy, for no other reason than that they are needy. Collectivists take that part of the message, while ignoring its counterweight: that all are charged to develop their talents, to pursue purposes to the greater glory of higher consciousness. Notwithstanding Ayn Rand, Collectivists ignore that Jesus did not espouse a moral duty to deliberately create and cater to an ever increasing class of bums. Even as atheistic collectivists deny God, they contort to assert that followers of the code of Jesus should bless efforts to focus collectivist force through government in order to “force the voluntary” spreading of alms. But Jesus clearly distinguished between that which is the function of Caesar’s government and that which is the function of moral individuals.
Many atheists, like libertarians, tend to assume (since they cannot prove) that there is a higher ground by which "rational" values can be "reasoned out," in common. However, this pagan-like "higher common ground" for objectively deriving values is as mythological as any concept of God. Even so, I do agree that such ground has considerable conceptual validity. But such higher ground is no more provable than a common Field of consciousness (aka God).
There is, however, a practical difference: To try to reason out common values in respect of a myth-based (unprovable, myth-axiomatic) ground of higher values tends to leave people cold. It's about as inspiring as the French Revolution's Cult of the Supreme Being, in that it has no churches, sacraments, traditions, or capacity to inspire or value emotional committment. Further, Rand's notions don't provide much guidance about how society should provide for the care and upbringing of its innocents, infants, and unlucky children.
The idea of a higher Field of Consciousness, on the other hand, incurs no such infirmity. In figurative sense, it can fit comfortably with many existing sacraments and traditions. It can reasonably fit to preserve traditional parables of inspiration, while helping to nudge some Christian literalists away from counterproductive notions (notions that bleed producers and breed bums). Further, it saps the realm of science not in the least. See Klingman's "The God Particle."
If rampant crime, corruption, and idiocy are not necessarily inherent to the human condition, then what is so out of balance that is allowing those things? Is it lack of availability to blow the mind of every mind that wants to be blown? Is it the frustration of desire to engage in every kind of sex imaginable? Is it anger that anyone should dare suggest that there are higher purposes to beingness? No, I don’t think those are the founts from which our problems are overflowing.
Something else is out of balance. Something that allows an unholy alliance of adolescents, i.e., faux liberals, faux libertarians, and faux scientists to believe they are the vanguard of liberty and reason – even as in the name of “liberty” they combine with collectivizing despots who seek power to issue and enforce countless reams of new and intrusive regulations; even as in the name of “reason” they seek perpetual opportunity to live in doped-up la la land; even as in the name of science they invent global warming and metaphysical parallel universes, even as in the name of “patriotism” they seek tolerance for every kind of culture that is anti-reason, anti-liberty, anti-science, and anti-tolerant.
Whatever it is that is out of balance, it has swamped us with collectivists who call themselves liberals, libertines who call themselves libertarians, and imposters who pretend reason and science have a moral reach for which, in the absence of intuition and empathy, they have no expertise.
As I consider what has fed these dupes and imposters, I look to what they most deplore. What do I see? The Bible. They feed and multiply on the notion that life would be so much freer, better, more enlightened, and more secure– if only we would expunge the Bible. Expunge it from schools, ridicule it in churches, and force Christian taxpayers to fund the process. There is a rage against moral and purposeful life that is rampant in the land. The alliance of adolescents cannot fix what is wrong, but they can push it where repair will take a long, long time.
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