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#1
09-23-2014, 05:03 PM
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The bible is scientifically accurate. The bible is prophetically accurate. Three lines of proof. | |||
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#2
09-23-2014, 05:03 PM
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Try again | |||
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#3
09-23-2014, 05:08 PM
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#4
09-23-2014, 05:02 PM
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The desire to worship the creation instead of the Creator is certainly nothing new. The adherents of many orthodox religions, particularly the traditional Abrahamic faiths, assign this desire a very specific and pejorative designation: idolatry. The Bible is replete with case studies in idolatry, even within the very nation through which the Lord would bring His salvation. Of course, the invocation of such a designation typically invites mockery and contempt from the anti-theist. Yet, in their religious veneration of the universe, anti-theists level a similar charge against traditional theism. A commonly reiterated mantra among anti-theists is that belief in a transcendent Creator devalues the creation, which is regarded with reverential awe in spite of its axiomatic contingent nature. This denunciation is exemplified by the words of Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go! In other words, belief in God constitutes a corrupting “otherworldly hope” that robs the world of its supposed divinity. The infidels (i.e., traditional theists and adherents to orthodox religions) must be allowed to expire by the “poison” of their own beliefs. Once they have been expunged, the earth can be redivinized. Nietzsche tacitly promotes an inverted interpretation of idolatry. Through Nietzsche’s interpretative lens, devotion to the allegedly untenable belief in a transcendent Creator qualifies as idolatry. In this sense, Nietzsche is advancing some form of immanentism as the one true religion. Therefore, the legitimacy of the charge of idolatry is not what is in question. Instead, the question is, “What qualifies as idolatry?” If St. Paul’s criteria for defining idolatry holds sway, then it is the naturalistic outlook and its closely aligned anti-metaphysical beliefs (e.g., scientific materialism, pantheism, immanentism, etc.) that satisfies all of the prerequisites. Man’s idolatrous impulse did not recede with antiquity, as is evidenced by the deified portrayal of the natural order promoted by the Enlightenment and several modern men of “science.” The sciences did not banish this anthropomorphism to the realm of superstition. Instead, under the guidance of certain theoreticians, the sciences have actually enshrined the worship of nature. At this juncture, it is most elucidating to revisit Guenon’s observations concerning “anti-metaphysical errors.” Guenon contends that the adoption of such errors “shuts out all ‘transcendence’ and so also shuts out all effective spirituality” (The Reign of Quantity 288). The anti-metaphysical interpretation of transcendence is one case in point. Within the framework of such anti-metaphysical outlooks, there is no longer any ontological transcendence. Instead, transcendence is redefined as moving beyond the constraints of finitude (e.g., time, space, death, etc.) while still indwelling the confines of immanent experience. Such a false transcendence has been advanced through the new immortality narratives of scientific materialism, which reduces the soul to an information pattern that is contained and fragmentarily transmitted through genes. Simultaneously, all organisms are portrayed as mere survival mechanisms for genes. The perpetuation of a species means the perpetuation of genes. In turn, the perpetuation of genes means the perpetuation of the information pattern that constitutes the soul. Herein is the newly defined immortality for the anti-metaphysical age of modernity. In The Selfish Gene, ardent anti-theist Richard Dawkins distills this new immortality narrative: Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever. (The Selfish Gene 35) Interestingly enough, the chapter of the book where Dawkins exposits this reductionist conception of zoe (i.e., eternal life) is entitled “Immortal Coils.” Since genes transcend death, humanity enjoys genetic immortality without God. Once again, there is no ontological transcendence. Instead, there is just some vague circumvention of finitude through the impersonal agency of genes. Interestingly enough, Dawkins, who is a stalwart evolutionist, characterizes pantheism as “sexed up atheism” (The God Delusion 40). The New Atheists, who have swept the bestsellers lists with their literary works and championed a rallying call for the waning paradigm of Darwinism, appear to be the missionaries of evolutionary pantheism. Fleshing out the definition of pantheism, Dawkins writes: “Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings” (40). It is ironic that Dawkins, who fiercely advances a dysteleological outlook, would acknowledge the “lawfulness” intrinsic to the natural order. Such an acknowledgement bespeaks a distinctly teleological outlook. Dawkins is not the only New Atheist who has invoked distinctly teleological language in regards to the material cosmos. Examining Spinoza’s pantheistic outlook, Daniel Dennett uses terms like “Design” and “creation” to describe the natural world (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea 520). Obviously, such terms are inherently teleological. Yet, simultaneously, Dennett makes appeals to dysteleological “mindless purposeless forces,” citing them as the ultimate causative agencies behind the universe (520). In short, Dennett presents a grand narrative of human origins that attempts to blend the mutually exclusive philosophical views of teleology and dysteleology. Dennett argues that this cosmological myth is rendered coherent by Darwinism and that the alleged divinity of the universe, which he dubs “The Tree of Life,” is worthy of religious veneration: Spinoza called his highest being God or Nature (Deus sive Natura), expressing a sort of pantheism. There have been many varieties of pantheism, but they usually lack a convincing explanation about just how God is distributed in the whole of nature… Darwin offers us one: it is in the distribution of Design throughout nature, creating, in the Tree of Life, an utterly unique and irreplaceable creation, an actual pattern in the immeasurable reaches of Design Space that could never be exactly duplicated in its many details. What is design work? It is that wonderful wedding of chance and necessity, happening in a trillion places at once, at a trillion different levels. And what miracle caused it? None. It just happened to happen, in the fullness of time. You could even say, in a way, that the Tree of Life created itself. Not in a miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, over billions of years. Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells the truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm’s “Being greater than which nothing can be conceived,” it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred. (520) Dennett’s veneration of Darwin as the theoretician responsible for scientifically dignifying pantheism’s distribution of divinity “in the whole of nature” is well-founded. While several atheists and neo-Darwinians might raise objections, there is a body of evidence that suggests Darwin was exposed to occult ideas, particularly pantheistic concepts that circulated in Freemasonic circles at the time. In turn, exposure to these ideas tainted the interpretative lens through which Darwin would view his “evidence.” Once Darwin had systematized his data, the resultant theory would be appropriated as affirmation for the new secular gospel of an intra-mundane god. Erasmus Darwin is responsible for developing “every important idea that has since appeared in evolutionary theory” (Darlington 62). No doubt, orthodox evolutionists contend that these ideas originated with dispassionate, objective scientific observations. Yet, Erasmus’ organizational affiliations suggest that he was exposed to certain occult and pantheistic ideas, which, in turn, shaped his thinking. William Denslow’s 10,000 Famous Freemasons from A to J, Part One states that Erasmus was “made a Mason in the famous Canongate Kilwinning Lodge No. 2 of Edinburgh, Scotland” (285). Having established Erasmus’ Masonic pedigree, it becomes necessary to contextualize the early evolutionist’s ideas within the corpus of the occult beliefs pervading some strains of Masonry. In Morals and Dogma, 33rd degree Freemason Albert Pike claims that the brotherhood is a retainer of the occult beliefs espoused by the pagan Mystery cults of antiquity, albeit in a fragmentary and imperfect form. He boldly proclaims: “Though Masonry is identical with the ancient Mysteries, it is so only in this qualified sense: that it presents but an imperfect image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur . . .” (23). Therefore, it must be understood that Masonry advances a flawed and possibly embellished facsimile of the Mysteries. While some elements of the original Mystery religion might remain intact, they are probably buried beneath layers of errant interpretation and extraneous doctrines. Yet, Masonry, which is permeated by a form of spiritual elitism akin to Gnosticism, has never encouraged modesty among its members. It is not uncommon for Masons to arbitrarily lay claim to either authorship or stewardship of ancient traditions and supposed repositories of mystical wisdom. Not surprisingly, Pike characterizes Masonry as the “successor of the Mysteries” (22). However, whether or not Masonry’s philosophical and spiritual lineage can be directly or indirectly traced back to the ancient Mysteries is inconsequential. Instead, it is important to determine the extent to which Masonry’s reformulated version of the Mysteries might have informed the evolutionary ideas of Erasmus and, in turn, Charles. According to Encyclopedia Britannica contributor William L. Reese, the Mystery religions “stressed types of mystical union that are typical of pantheistic systems” (“Pantheism and panetheism in ancient and medieval philosophy”). This pantheism seems to have remained intact within Masonry’s reformulated version of the Mystery religions. In The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Thirty-third Degree Mason Manly P. Hall likens the Lodge to the cosmos and characterizes the various natural kingdoms as the constituents of some sort of pantheistic homogeneity. Hall contends that the apprehension of this pantheistic analogue is a prerequisite for becoming a “mystic Mason”: Every true Mason has come into the realization that there is but one Lodge–that is, the Universe–and but one Brotherhood, composed of everything that moves or exists in any of the planes of Nature… He realizes that his vow of brotherhood and fraternity is universal, and that mineral, plant, animal, and man are all the included in the true Masonic Craft… The mystic Mason, in building the eyes that see behind the apparent ritual, recognizes the one-ness of life manifesting through the diversity of form. (63) Masonic scholar Albert Mackey states that the advanced Degrees concern themselves with the “doctrines of Philo, the Gnostics, and the Cabalists” (324). All of these doctrines, according to Mackey, included the theory of emanations (324). Mackey relates this theory to the idea of anima mundi or “spirit of the world” (324). Various Renaissance philosophers viewed this pantheistic world-soul as the “unifying principle” at work throughout the “hierarchical order in the cosmos” (“Agrippa Von Nettesheim: Philosophical Magic, Empiricism, and Skepticism” 126). At this juncture, it is interesting to recall the fact that Rennaissance-era humanists co-opted the operative Mason guilds, thereby birthing speculative Freemasonry. Given the Renaissance’s preoccupation with the concept of anima mundi, it is possible that the aforementioned humanists introduced some form of pantheism to the corpus of Masonry. Such an outlook certainly seems to be espoused by several pieces of Masonic literature. One case in point is Masonic historian John Sebastian Marlowe Ward, who writes: The unknown Pantheistic deity hinted at in masonry is a matter of vital importance, both to those who desire to know what F.M. [Freemasonry] teaches, and also to those who hope by means of hints in our present ritual to rediscover something of our past history. (44) While the British Grand Lodge contends that Ward’s work represents his own private interpretations and not the Brotherhood as a whole, his statements concerning Masonic pantheism appear to be supported by the preceding observations of other Freemasons. After examining a variety of other Masonic authors, Martin L. Wagner also concluded that pantheism comprises a large portion of Masonic teachings. Wagner states: The Masonic view of the revelation of God, in the lower degrees, is deistic, but in the higher degrees it becomes pantheistic. The writings of Garrison, Buck, Pike, and other eminent Masons show this unmistakably. It is this peculiar pantheistic conception of deity which has passed from India through the secret doctrines of the Kabbalah into modern speculative Freemasonry, as Buck intimates, that constitutes the secret doctrine of the institution. In Masonry, a God distinct from the life of nature, has no existence. (309-310) Given this thread of pantheism running throughout the secret doctrine of the Brotherhood, it is possible that Erasmus Darwin, as a Freemason, was exposed to the belief that “a God distinct from the life of nature, has no existence.” Such a pantheistic conception of the Divine is insinuated through the title of Erasmus’ popular poem, The Temple of Nature. Implicit in the title is the contention that nature is due religious veneration because it possesses causative powers reserved for divinity. In the poem, Erasmus delineates the alleged progression of life from the infusoria that populated primordial oceans to the upright man who presently occupies the highest tier of evolution (Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition 121). In the preface, Erasmus candidly discloses the ancient inspiration for the outlook that he is about to poetically distill: In the Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have been taught by allegorical scenery explained by the Hierophant to the uninitiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following poem. (The Temple of Nature ii) According to Ron Leadbetter, the Eleusinian mysteries were a series of initiatory rites and festivities held by an Athenian Mystery cult in veneration of Demeter, a Greek goddess of fertility and grain (Eleusianian mysteries). The very nature of this deity suggests the cult’s implicit adherence to pantheism, as is evidenced by Demeter’s inextricable relationship with grain. Grain is, of course, a product of nature and it plays a central role in the fertility-laden symbolism of the harvest. Through the interpretative lens of pantheism, fertility can be viewed as nature’s ability to create and perpetuate itself. Thus, nature becomes a self-originating deity. The pantheism implicit in the veneration of Demeter provides some context for Eramus’ characterization of the Eleusinian mysteries as “the philosophy of the works of Nature.” Erasmus makes it clear that this pantheistic outlook, which was allegorically conveyed to neophytes by the Eleusinian priesthood (i.e., Hierophants), supplies the source material for “the machinery of the following poem.” Thus, one could argue that The Temple of Nature presents the pantheistic outlook, albeit re-envisioned through the purely physiological optic of biology. Erasmus’ biologicized formulation of pantheism pervades several of the verses of this lengthy poem. A deistic disjunction between God and creation, an immanent cosmos peopled by causative forces symbolized by ancient deities, the supposed mutability of species, and the religious primacy of nature are among the themes communicated throughout the text. All of these themes emerge in some of the early stanzas of the poem, where Erasmus writes: GOD THE FIRST CAUSE!–in this terrene abode Young Nature lisps, she is a child of God. From embyron births her changeful forms improve Grow as they live, and strengthen as they move… Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl’d Rose the Bright sphere, which form the circling world Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issues from the first. Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth, Surge over surge, involv’d in shoreless earth, Nurs’d by warm sun-beams in primeval caves Organic life began beneath the waves. (26-27) While Erasmus correctly identifies God as the First Cause, he immediately situates the Creator at an unbridgeable ontic distance from His creation. With God arbitrarily deemed an absentee landlord, nature becomes the sole causative force from which “changeful forms” are birthed. Erasmus’ characterization of all organisms as “changeful forms” bespeaks his belief in the mutability of species. In a statement that foreshadows the evolutionary hypothesis of his grandson, Erasmus claims that the developmental journey of all species “began beneath the waves” of the ocean. During this early stage of its evolutionary ascent, organic life was nurtured by “warm sun-beams in primeval caves.” The ontic exile of God and the enthronement of nature lays the groundwork for the reorientation of man’s epistemic compass towards what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “immanent frame.” Taylor describes the view from this immanent frame and the corresponding form of social order it implies: And so we come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient immanent order; or better, a constellation of orders, cosmic, social and moral… At first. the social order is seen as offering us a blueprint for how things, in the human realm, can hang together to our mutual benefit, and this is identified with the plan of Providence, what God asks us to realize. But it is in the nature of a self-sufficient immanent order that it can be envisaged without reference to God; and very soon the proper blueprint is attributed to Nature. This change can, of course, involve nothing of importance, if we go on seeing God as the Author of Nature, just a notational variant on the first view. But following a path opened by Spinoza, we can also see Nature as identical with God, and then as independent from God. The Plan is without a planner. (543) Thus, the immanent frame either marginalizes or rejects God, thereby hypostatizing the immanent order and elevating nature to the status of a deity. Meaning and purpose, which were initially derived from the transcendent beyond, are transplanted within the immanent present. The corresponding societal model implied by this outlook is inherently technocratic. The ontological confines of the physical universe have been deemed the totality of reality itself. In aggregate, material agencies and natural processes are viewed as the sole principle of creation. The physical, visible cosmos is viewed as the product of spontaneous generation. Erasmus expresses the concept of spontaneous generation and its corollary metaphysical doctrine, pantheism, in the following verses: Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth, From Nature’s womb the plant or insect swims, And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs. (30) In a later philosophical footnote to his poem, Erasmus posits an impersonal “central chaos” as the chief causative force out of which worlds such as this one emerge: Thus all the suns, and the planets, which circle round them, may again sink into one central chaos; and may again by explosions produce a new world, which in the process of time may resemble the present one, and at length again undergo the same catastrophe! These great events may be the result of the immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great cause of Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium! (The Temple of Nature 196) Astute readers will automatically identify a logically unsustainable narrative that attempts to invoke the mutually exclusive philosophical views of teleology and dysteleology. Erasmus is positing meaningless, purposeless forces as the progenitors of meaning and purpose. Such a narrative is echoed by some of today’s New Atheists, such as Dennett and Dawkins. The only point of departure is Erasmus’ invocation of an ontically exiled Creator, who set the immutable laws responsible for the generation of life into motion. The origin of being is no longer transcendent, but strictly immanent. Erasmus advanced the same narrative in his famous book, Zoonomia, which was “a massive medical treatise arguing a straightforward evolutionary hypothesis” (Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition 121). Arguably, both Zoonomia and Temple attempt to systematize a purely biological process by which divinity is distributed “in the whole of nature.” That process is evolutionary. At this juncture, it is important to define the term “evolution” as it is invoked by both Erasmus and Charles Darwin. Clarity of definitions is especially important in the evolution debate. Some proponents of Darwinism have deliberately promoted terminological confusion concerning evolution so as to allow themselves an expedient degree of interpretative elasticity with the term. If the term is invoked to denote a process by which ontologically immutable species adapt to their respective environments, then that definition seems reasonable enough. However, such is not the case with Darwinism. Darwinism is a variety of transformism that challenges the ontological fixity of species by advancing a process in which simple life-forms metamorphose into complex life-forms through random mutations. In addition to the fact that no mutation has ever given rise to advantageous adaptations, this grand narrative descends further into incoherence by proposing that such an irreducibly teleological system is driven by dysteleological forces. Supposedly, the telos (i.e., end) of this system is a perfected species. Yet, despite its ostensibly high hopes for man, evolutionism expresses a profound anthropological pessimism not unlike that of Gnosticism. The transfiguration to which the evolutionist aspires stems from a tacit dissatisfaction with humanity in particular and the created order in general. Hence, the appeal of some variety of transformism to the evolutionist. Transformism’s portrayal of an inherently mutable man affirms the evolutionist’s aspiration to see the eventual transcendence of biology and the Nietzschean abolition of humanity. Upholding this anthropological pessimism, Darwinism presents a bloody and pragmatic struggle for survival through which man will eventually be transfigured. Because that transfiguration is strictly biological and divorced from a transcendent, personal Creator, the end of this secular theodicy is the apotheosis of the organism. Not surprisingly, evolutionary theory became the centerpiece of a comprehensive religious outlook for Erasmus Darwin. James A. Herrick reiterates: Erasmus Darwin believed that life evolves toward higher levels of complexity and happiness, a commitment that became for him a virtual religion. As one biographer notes, Darwin “weaves his evolutionary ideas into a wider philosophy of organic happiness.” Thus, “evolution was no casual speculation’ for Erasmus Darwin, “but a belief he lived with for thirty years and one which moulded his whole philosophy of life.” (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition 121) A perusal of certain excerpts from Zoonomia will help to define the contours of Erasmus’ “philosophy of organic happiness.” While it is a separate literary piece from The Temple of Nature, Zoonomia arguably qualifies as a companion to that work. Thematically, both works intimate a pantheistic outlook, which attains the semblance of scientific legitimacy through the concepts of spontaneous generation and progressive biological development. That which Temple expresses poetically, Zoonomia distills theoretically. According to James A. Herrick, both books promote the concept of fluid materialism, which holds that all animate nature, including plants, possess complex emotions and sensibility (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition 121). Erasmus believed that this sensibility originated from a purely material source, namely an obscure ether or fluid within the body and nerves (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition 121). One case in point is the following excerpt: From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all the warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation of its posterity, world without end? (397) Again, Erasmus correctly cites God as the First Cause, but immediately places Him at an ontic distance from His creation. This deistic disjunction provides the premises for the apotheosis of matter. Endowed with a transformative faculty, the first cell possesses the ability to procure new components and “improve by its own inherent activity.” These improvements are transmitted through heredity, the chief mechanism of transcendence within the new immortality narrative of scientific materialism. While this new definition of transcendence is invoked within a philosophical framework that is inimical to any formulation of substance dualism, it nonetheless echoes the Gnostic frustration with the limitations of time and space. Moreover, it bespeaks an aspiration to overcome finitude without any divine assistance, thereby upholding the Promethean hubris that man can eventually facilitate his own transfiguration into superman and affirming the profoundly juvenile desire to enjoy eternity on one’s own terms. Erasmus’ invocation of heredity as an imperishable agent of immortality presages Dawkins’ bold proclamation that “genes are forever.” In fact, Erasmus concludes his synopsis of this new immortality narrative with a conspicuous allusion to Ephesians 3:21. Within the context of Erasmus’ narrative, the Biblical phrase “world without end” no longer refers to a divinely redeemed world that is no longer susceptible to Entropy. Instead, Erasmus reinterprets the phrase as a reference to a self-sufficient immanent order. Once more, the material world is hypostatized and contingent agencies are imbued with causative powers reserved for the Divine. Reiterating this portrait of a self-sufficient immanent order, Erasmus writes: The late Mr. Hume, in his posthumous works, places the power of generation much above those of our boasted reason; and adds, that reason can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of generation makes the maker of a machine; and probably from having observed, that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of organic recrements; as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble, from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone, ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all which have been first produced by generation, rather than created; that it, it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by Almighty fiat–What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of THE GREAT ARCHITECT! THE CAUSE OF CAUSES! PARENT OF PARENTS! ENS ENTIUM! (400-401) Erasmus’ citation of Hume is quite appropriate, especially in light of the late Enlightenment theoretician’s pantheistic conclusions. In hopes of avoiding any overtly teleological terminology, Erasmus eschews the verb “create” in favor of “generation.” Yet, the evolutionary process posited by Erasmus is irreducibly teleological. Its telos is the collective apotheosis of all organisms, whose respective evolutionary ascents are comparable to the sort of transfiguration posited by Gnosticism. Where the ancient Gnostics contended that man rediscovers his own intrinsic divinity through gnosis, the evolutionists contend that the cosmos rediscovers its intrinsic divinity through the perfection of all species. The point of departure is evolutionary pantheism’s elevation of the immanent to the detriment of the transcendent. Such an ontological disparity would be inimical to Classic Gnosticism, which promoted a docetistic attitude towards the material world. This disparity notwithstanding, evolutionary pantheism and Classic Gnosticism share a common telos: apotheosis. By assigning virtually omnipotent causative powers to the immanent order, Erasmus merely reiterates Hume’s pantheistic contention that the material world encompasses the “principle of its order within itself” and, therefore, qualifies as God. His cheap semantic gymnastics notwithstanding, Erasmus actually advances an immanent creatology. Within the framework of Erasmus’ incoherent cosmology, evolution is the process by which a strictly immanent divinity channels and expresses itself throughout the ontological confines of the physical universe. As the receptacles of that immanent divinity, each individual species ascends an evolutionary hierarchy towards perfection. Thus, the eschaton of history arrives when the totality of living organisms populating the immanent cosmos reach the final tier of their evolution. | ||
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#5
09-23-2014, 05:07 PM
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this thread is so fucked up i dont even know who i dont hate and hate anymore.
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#6
09-23-2014, 05:49 PM
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#7
09-23-2014, 05:58 PM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysi-nccXCa4 | |||
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#8
09-23-2014, 06:00 PM
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Hilariously you tried to claim to have a personal connection the Sandy Hook victims What a lying fucking fraud you are | |||
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