Bruce Charlton's Notions

William Wildblood (at Albion Awakening) has written a good piece on the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism; and how its good to be patriotic, but not (usually) a nationalist.

It is patriotism that is the opposite of being a globalist (ie. necessarily a bureaucratic totalitarian).

I can remember George Orwell saying something similar, somewhere - he regarded himself as a patriot, not a nationalist.

For me, nationalism is a first-generation post-religious ideology that is an attempt to provide some basis for social cohesion; but it never lasts beyond that first generation after apostasy. In The West, everywhere, we are now several generations removed from a sufficiently strong national belief in a single religion, which is why nationalism is everywhere small, weak and ineffectual.

Of course, religion is also small, weak and ineffectual - but at least religion has a record of multigenerational success as the basis for national life. However, religion cannot be used as a means to an end (or, not for long) - so if not just collapse, but purposive national suicide is to be avoided, then religion must come first.

The first question is which religion; and the second is whether the nature of that religion needs to be of a new form or the restoration of an old one... 

The context of recent events is discussed at Albion Awakening; and reason for spiritual hope is located...

Some years ago I wrote a fair bit about the nature of delusions; especially the kind of 'rational delusions' seen in an unusual condition called Delusional Disorder.

I realised that these delusions were just part of the spectrum of normal thinking; and I also realised that when we are engaged in trying to understand social phenomena ('other people') the most important and first step is to decide upon their 'motivations' (more exactly their 'Dispositions, Motivations and Intentions' - DMI; but I shall shorten this to motivations).

Specific, individual human actions have no meaning unless they can be understood as expressions of motivation. If we deny that a person, or organisation, has any motivation; then we cannot make sense of what they do. If we get the motivation wrong, we will misunderstand what they do. And there is no 'objective' way of knowing motivation, because it is in the 'mind' of another.


So, here we have an absolutely vital matter; yet one about which a decision can, in practice, be impossible to agree-upon; because any differences in imputed motivation change the meaning of any particular behaviour - to make a self-validating circularity.

(e.g. Once we have decided a person is hostile, their actions will be interpreted as hostile; and vice versa. Exactly the same action can be seen as hostile or benign, according to imputed motivation. In particular, nothing a person can ever do is a decisive refutation of our already-existing imputed motivation.)

One would have to be insensible not to notice the current massive increase in accusations that somebody or some-organisation is a 'conspiracy theorist' - and this is because a 'conspiracy theorist' is someone who claims that there is an evil motivation behind the behaviour of the powerful global elites. It seems that the assumption of a real and evil global elite is becoming sufficiently common that it needs to be dealt-with.

By contrast, there is (in the mass media, government, and legal system) the inbuilt assumption that either there is no global elite, hence no motivation at all (and world affairs are not directed). Or else it is regarded as evidentially-true that insist that the motivations of the global elite are benign. So, anyone who assumes both that the global elite is 1. a real thing and 2. of evil intent; is regarded as 'a conspiracy theorist', because they are 'factually wrong'; hence either incompetent, insane or evil (or more than one of these).

Conspiracy theorists used to be tolerated but systematically mocked; however in the last year or so, they are also being deplatformed and defunded - on the excuse that they propagate 'false' information. However, as described above, the truth or falsity of information is always secondary to motivation. Facts, as such, cannot be either true or false - there cannot even be 'a fact' nor could one be recognised without a prior conceptual scheme explaining what is and how to recognise a fact. And therefore, it is precisely motivation, and not facts, that is at issue.

My primary point is that this matter cannot be decided by 'evidence' because evidence is precisely dictated by assumptions. the notion that conspiracy theorists are punished for propagating false facts is not true. What is really going-on?  In a nutshell; conspiracy theorists are being deplatormed and defunded on the justification that they are evil; and the specific evil of which conspiracy theorists are accused is that they assert the reality of a global elite, and that they further assert this global elite is of evil motivation, overall.


The reality, the existence, of a global elite can neither be proved nor disproved by evidence; the intention of such a group can neither be proved nor disproved by evidence - and either state of affairs is possible.

Yet, for a Christian, our entire understanding of what is happening in public affairs depends upon the basic decision of whether to believe or disbelieve in a global elite of rulers; and - if we do believe in their reality, whether to regard their motivations as essentially aligned with God's wishes, or else against God's motivations.

(For a Christian there are no other possibilities - one is either pro- or contra-God, although there are degrees of both.)   

And it is absolutely arbitrary (hence illegitimate) to prejudge this issue by claiming that we ought-to (for example) always assume 'cock-up rather than conspiracy' (always assume that apparent coherence is a delusional misinterpretation of randomness) - since both deliberate conspiracy and unorganised chaos are possible and common in human affairs; there is no good reason to pre-assume one state rather than the other; especially when that assumption will dictate the interpretation and understanding of all  subsequent evidence.

As so often, the first and most important move is to clarify the issue, and acknowledge that here is an unavoidable judgement and choice to be made.

Is there a global elite? If not then there can be no understanding of global affairs. If so, is teh conspiracy net-Good or net-evil?

Because the understanding of evidence concerning a global elite is utterly shaped by this prior decision regarding motivation - and yet no understanding at all is possible until after the assumption has been made.


Note: The identity and motivation of a global elite conspiracy is also disputed. Materialist atheist conspiracy theorists regard the global elite as human, and working towards human goals such as wealth, power, sex and the sadistic infliction of suffering. But Christian conspiracy theorists may regard the ultimate and strategic evil elite as supernatural, that is demonic; and their goals as being mainly about causing human damnation. 

We live in an age when the over-promoted, mediocre middle manager rules most of the West: four quick examples are the Prime Minister of the UK, The Chancellor of Germany, The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the phenomenon is general in all major institutions, organisations and corporations in all the major social systems: politics, government, the mass media, business, science, education, health, religion, law, the police, the military, the arts... you name it.

That such passive, petty, incompetent, unprincipled, ludicrous grey men and women rise to the top of a bureaucratic society ruled by committees and voting is no surprise; but their viciousness and tyranny is perhaps unexpected from individuals who lack the most basic personal qualities of a natural leader.

For instance, they are passive, reactive and have no long-term inner motivation - being slaves of expediency; they utterly lack personal courage and the capacity to dominate Men - being personally submissive, unimpressive, unadmirable, and unable to hold firm in the face of opposition; they have negative charisma; and they lack judgement - being unable to make a significant decision for themselves, but always sheltering behind 'implementing' the outcome of 'process'.


The answer lies in the simple fact of who is pulling the strings of the managerial puppet, whose is the hidden-hand thrust up inside and working the managerial puppet; who is the real power, who is giving the orders: in sum, the answer lies in the identity of those who promoted these mediocre, passive, instruction-implementing individuals to their present sham status.


What is a middle manager good at? A good middle manager is good at following instructions from his superiors... and that's it.

When we observe everywhere middle managers in leadership positions, and when - despite their submissiveness, passivity and mediocrity - they act with rigidity, aggression and spite in pursuit of the agenda of political correctness - what this tells us is that they are simply following the orders of their real Masters.

What it tells us is that the organisations, institutions and corporations that are headed-up by mediocre middle managers are actually being run by persons outside the organisation. This is why all modern groups are converging onto Leftist socio-political activity. They are all the tools of hidden puppet-masters. 

A middle manager fears his or her boss, more than anything; indeed it's the only thing he fears. Because it is the boss who put him where he is; and it is the boss who will take him out if disobeyed.  Thus the peculiar, indeed ridiculous, combination of feebleness and aggression, of submissiveness and inflexibility, of ingratiating niceness and venomous spitefulness.


We live in a world where the real power is hidden and where the official wielders of power are fakes; and the middle managerial takeover ought to be regarded as solid evidence of this fact. 

From the comments, by William James Tychonievich

The definition of superstition:

Acting according to beliefs which you do not admit to yourself that you believe. 

Edited from a post at Albion Awakening...

...It is a strange thing to contemplate the fact that not only will I, personally, witness the end of all my cherished institutions (indeed, I have already seen the all-but end of them over the past forty years), but also I will witness the end of England, of Western Civilisation, of the planet earth - even the death of our sun.

This is simply because I am immortal and they are not - nor are they intended to immortal; they are temporary expedients, created and sustained for purposes; and when these purposes are fulfilled or failed, every-thing will wind-down and end...

...We ought not to become frenzied about the probable collapse - because fear and urgency are counter-productive; we understand very little of what is going on and almost nothing of the scope and depth of divine interventions behind the scenes.

What will happen I don't know, and nor does anybody else. But I am ever more sure that what we must do is on the positive side.

Anything - any-thing at all - we can do to epitomise and sustain a life of love and creativity; is of unboundedly-greater value than anything we might, potentially, perhaps achieve by our interventions in the mass world of power, economics, politics and generalised socio-political expedience.

Read the whole thing...

Firstly - the thing about the 'leap of faith' is that everyone in the world, past and present; religious and atheist; has already made this: the difference between individuals is mostly is whether or not they are aware of the fact of having done so, whether they have done so freely or passively.

Most people are unconscious of ever having made the leap of faith, because most people simply absorb their assumptions from others, without recognising that they are assumptions. Most people regard their basic assumptions as simple facts derived from evidence - but basic assumptions, unlike facts, cannot be contradicted by evidence - because the basic assumptions themselves dictate what counts as evidence; what counts as 'a fact'.

(Evidence is not self-evident; facts do not float around the universe - universally accessible, immediately identifiable as fact, and understood identically and perfectly by everybody... Both depend on prior and basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality.)


What is the leap of faith? Well, it refers to the basic assumptions that make a frame for life and living, for understanding, meaning, purpose and everything else.

Why is it a 'leap' and why is 'faith' required? It is a leap because basic assumptions cannot be derived-from anything more solid than themselves - we need to jump over, or past, or through 'the facts' to reach these assumptions. And it is faith because it rests on something that could be called intuition when it is based on inner sureness, and revelation when it is felt to be given by something external and greater. Perhaps the ideal is that the basic assumptions are mutually reinforced by revelation and intuition.

The word 'leap' also suggests the way that this must be an instant and whole mental move - which also means that that which is known by faith must be simple enough to be grasped and comprehended entire.

Often this requires a preliminary period of critical reflection and clarification to sort-out just what-it-is that we are trying to know as true or false. We must ask the right question before we can get a coherent and correct answer. 


What this, in turn, tells us is that a single leap of faith is usually inadequate; especially for a typical mainstream, materialist atheist - who has unconsciously absorbed such a collection of dis-beliefs as to make any single belief incoherent. This is the faith of Modern Man - and typically he cannot tell when, where, how or why he adopted it. 

For example, it is quite normal for modern people to disbelieve in the world as having been created, in a creator or any other kind of God, in the soul, in any kind of persistent existence before or after biological life - to disbelieve that reality has any purpose or meaning, and to assert believe that human relationships have no continued reality beyond the lifespan of their participants. Most would regard all human choices and decisions as either random (hence meaningless) or else merely the determined consequences of previous events (hence meaningless) - hence Modern Man does not believe that he has the free agency even to choose his own basic assumptions!.

In other words, typical Modern Men have, unconsciously and uncritically - and indeed generally while denying that any leap or faith has been involved - begin in a situation of so many negations that, if they were to take their own beliefs seriously and consistently, they would be reduced to a state of paralysed and silent despair at the utter futility of everything.

Silent because there could be no meaning in communication, since other beings don't exist, or if even they do exist then communication cannot be possible, and even if communication were possible it could not (in a random/ determined universe) have any meaning.


An essential first step for a leap of faith into meaning and purpose would seem to be to acknowledge that one's assumptions are indeed the consequence of faith, and not of 'evidence'; and to determine to make this leap for oneself, in consciousness and freedom - rather than unwittingly and passively.

Excerpted from a new post at the The Notion Club Papers blog...

...There is no direct transcript of an actual Inklings evening, featuring the actual people who attended. The nearest to this are a few, paragraph length, summary entries in Warnie Lewis's diary - a selection from which is published in Brothers and Friends: the diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis edited by Marjorie Lamp Mead (1988).

The best known word-by-word depiction of an Inklings meeting is a chapter in Humphrey Carpenter's group biography The Inklings (1978); which is not an actual meeting, but one that he creatively reconstructed by sampling and synthesizing from multiple writings of the Inklings, together with hints from Warnie's diary. This features the Lewis brothers, JRR Tolkien, Havard and Charles Williams – and these seem to have been the core Inklings of the 1939-45 war years. The only survivor - Havard - endorsed Carpenter’s account as providing the genuine flavour, although probably more intellectually concentrated than a typical real meeting.

JRR Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers (an unfinished and posthumously published novel to be found in Christopher Tolkien's edited The History of Middle Earth, Volume 9, Sauron Defeated, 1992) comprises a highly Inklings-style meeting of a club that was based explicitly upon The Inklings and written to be read at Inklings meeting during 1945-6; but with different, fictionalized and composite participants. This probably captures the spirit of an Inklings meeting more closely than any other source.

CS Lewis also left a short depiction of an Inkling's-esque meeting which can be found in an unfinished fragment of a story named The Dark Tower, and which was posthumously edited and published by Walter Hooper in 1977. The tone of discussion – its mixture of humour and seriousness - is similar to that of the Notion Club.

Owen Barfield was an infrequent, but very keen, Inklings participant - and arguably the Inklings evolutionarily-arose from the Barfield-Jack Lewis conversations and written debates of the 1920s. Barfield published a novel entitled Worlds Apart (1963) which describes a weekend length conversation of a very Inklings-like character - including characters based on Barfield and Jack Lewis...

Read the whole thing here.

One of the most disgusting spectacles on the internet is the self-styled right-wing manosphere writers (whose macho-posturing is nearly-always contradicted by their chickenhawk pseudonymity), who purport to write from a Christian perspective; but who argue using only secular, materialist utilitarian reasoning and evidence - and then thinly-coat their conclusions with a supposedly-Christian veneer. 

(The intent is apparently to retain the male extra-marital sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility of the sexual revolution; but in a situation where women are held subordinate - hedonistic materialism for the men and patriarchal religion for the women.)

Given the pseudo-scientific, pseudo-Christian, posturing, prideful and self-serving midden that is the manosphere, on the one hand; and on the other the dishonest, incoherent, demonic evil that is mainstream socio-politics... how should Christians then proceed in understanding women from a genuinely Christian perspective?

The answer is obviously to begin with the Christian understanding of sex and sexuality; to begin with 'what God wants and intends' from the fact of there being men and women. Only later may the materialist and pragmatic socio-political conclusions be derived.


Here, there are differences among Christians. Traditionally, the official theology of most Christian churches has been that sexuality, sex, marriage and procreation are merely a temporary feature of our mortal lives; all of which either cease, or else cease to be important, after death (for instance marriage until 'death do us part').

This has not always been the view of actual Christians, for instance among the 'laity'; who have often regarded sexuality, sex, and marriage to be at least potentially continued in Heaven.

This has been given a metaphysical basis in Mormon theology, which regards men and women as distinct from the beginning, a complementary dyad - the ultimate 'unit' of a Man. Only the dyad is capable of the highest exaltation to fully divine creativity, which is the chosen, irreversible, eternal marriage of a man and woman, as separate beings bound by love to make a complete god.


My point is that a real Christian needs to - indeed ought to - first reach a personal understanding, as best he can; by faith (that is by personal revelation, through prayer and meditation, by the fullest intuitive knowledge) - of why from the divine perspective there are men and women both; why there is marriage and what is its ultimate nature and importance; and what sex is ultimately for.
 

From this solid ground, we may then be able decide the secondary issues of what are the mortal, this-worldly, my-personal-life (and perhaps cultural) implications of this Gods-eye-view understanding.

Given the way in which the sexual revolution has been the major, most powerful, most successful instrument of demonic strategy over the past fifty-plus years; this is something we all absolutely need to do. 

How Providence shaped, and failed to shape, the membership of the Fellowship of the Ring - and the consequences; at The Notion Club Papers blog.

For the sake of balance, I address the matter of England, specifically; as the heartland of Albion.

When CS Lewis was a young adult he had been far more eager to escape pain than to achieve happiness, and he even resented the fact that he had been created without his own permission. 

One advantage of the anti-Christian materialism that he clung to was its limited danger of pain. No disaster can be infinite if death ends all. And if this life becomes too painful, one can always commit suicide for an early escape. 

In contrast, the horrible thing about Christianity is that it offers no such escape. It assures each many that he is going to live forever. 

The Christian universe has no door marked exit. 

Perhaps a man's temper or his jealousy are getting worse so slowly that in seventy years they are not very noticeable. But in a million years they would be hell itself; "in fact if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be'."

Edited from CS Lewis: Mere Christian by Kathryn Ann Linskoog, 1773. Page 101.


This passage reveals how important it is to modern materialist ethics that death is regarded as annihilation, exit, escape.

The bland assurance that 'I have a right to do what I like' is only possible when death annihilates the individual. 

To guard this inversion - mainstream culture has manufactured and sustained an habitual, unthinking trope that anyone who (like nearly all humans through history and still today) believes that there is something (the soul or spirit) which survives death, is engaged in 'wishful thinking'.

So powerful is that 'wishful thinking' reflex that modern Man has ceased to examine the potentially 'horrible' consequences of survival beyond death as such (and without salvation); consequences that used to be almost universally recognised.

So, it may be seen that the death-as-annihilation assumption underpins the mainstream relativistic morality of hedonism; especially in the realm of sex and sexuality.  

Of course, regarding death as annihilation also renders futile all attempts to make meaning, purpose of relationships - this leads to despair (typically unconscious, and observable by the mass personal self-hatred illustrated by chosen childlessness, and the mass national self-hatred of the planned incremental self-destruction of the West.

In sum, the assumption that death is annihilation underpins both the hedonism and the despair of modern culture. Yet the assumption is far more effective at escaping pain than enabling happiness; in the sense that genuinely to contemplate all life as utterly ended by annihilation is a numbing, demotivating thing.

Distraction by surface pleasure remains possible, but not underlying happiness; short-termist self-interest remains possible, but not altruistic, long-term motivation. The modern condition in a nutshell...

Small wonder that this assumption is so aggressively defended.

The Pope and senior bishops of the Roman Catholic Church have announced that the death penalty is now illegitimate and this is going to be enshrined in the Catechism.

This is a truly huge decision, a vast change, the implications are incalculable... So why? Read the linked announcement above. That tells us why.

Because... well... in a nutshell because they don't understand justice, they don't mention the basic Christian theory of legitimate punishment which is simply that the person should deserve the punishment. They just don't have a clue.

Except it is not really having no clue, as not caring enough to inform themselves, because to them Christian Justice is irrelevant.

The decision to abolish Capital Punishment is not made for any reason of justice, let alone theology; and indeed there is not even a pretence that it is. It is made simply because the Pope and Magisterium are neither Roman Catholics not Christians.

The decision was made because... well... the leaders of the RCC just want to align themselves with the leadership of current mainstream secular elite opinion; the power brokers of the mass media, the heads of the global bureaucracies, the Western politicians and international lawyers... That's it; end of story; nothing further needs to be said on the point. Closer alignment with the global cabal of evil is both necessary, and a sufficient reason.


Anyway, all this will be very helpful to serious Roman Catholic Christians, because it will clarify the situation they are already-in; and that must be better than living in a delusional state, a fool's paradise.


As CS Lewis said in That Hideous Strength, and as I keep repeating: things are coming to a point in these End Times; and the discernment of good and evil is becoming easier.

The two sides in the spiritual war are segregating, becoming more distinct. 

As evil establishes its dominance more fully; so it reveals itself for what it is - because Good is now so relatively-small and weak, that evil perceives no need for secrecy or subtlety.

The sides have formed, the middle ground has gone, the default position is to drift into passive evil, pretending not to notice or saying that evil is inevitable. But everybody really has noticed, and everybody really knows that evil is not inevitable.


You, me, everybody has therefore, implicitly or explicitly, already picked their side; because those to whom we are loyal and obedient, those whose work we do, have already picked their side.

Un-consciousness is now evil, passive evil (because God will ensure that all are sufficiently conscious - if not now, then before it is too late). . 

Not to make this decision your own is also to pick your side.

By my evaluation The Screwtape Letters (1942) is one of CS Lewis's very best books; and the follow up 'essay' Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959) isn't as good in a literary sense; however, it is very important and ought not to be missed.

In particular, Toast is very astute in understanding the modern (post World War II) demonic strategy - or, to put it differently, Toast tells us what the Global Conspiracy is conspiring to achieve.

I have often said that 'the conspiracy theorists' are broadly correct in diagnosing that an evil cabal lies behind the strategic direction of the modern world. Where they are wrong is that the cabal is ultimately demonic, not human; and consequently its aims are spiritual not material.

In particular, most conspiracy theorists focus on the idea that human suffering and death are being engineered by a cabal of selfish, greedy and perverted humans. But the reality is that behind these humans (who do indeed exist) and controlling them, and dictating the long term direction of evil, there are supernatural evil beings whose purpose is human damnation - not human suffering and death.

The most obvious way that this shows itself is that it is very easy for powerful people to cause suffering and death; and if that was their ultimate goal, then there would be a great deal more human suffering and death everywhere there has been over the past several decades. In fact, the human population has grown by about four billion since WWII, infant mortality has reduced, everywhere, life expectancy has increased everywhere, and there are large areas of the planet that have not suffered war for many decades, or longer.

 Clearly, the powers of evil either aren't aiming ultimately at suffering and death... or else they aren't really evil, or aren't really powerful; which I reject on these grounds. What they are aiming at, and what they have done very, very effectively; is clearly laid out in Screwtape Proposes a Toast.

The powers of evil are corrupting, not killing humanity; they are perverting not causing here and now suffering; they are working by pleasure, confusion and distraction rather than pain and focused fear.

The forces of evil have learned from the Second World War, which - in spiritual terms - significantly backfired against evil in the West and triggered a powerful spiritual and Christian revival - of which The Screwtape Letters was itself a product and a trigger.

To get clearer about this - read Toast...

No spoilers!

I haven't read the book, but a couple of weeks ago I watched the Da Vinvi Code movie and found it surprisingly enjoyable.

It is - of course - 100% hokum, but sometimes that is what I want; and it kept my attention and interest throughout (not easy to do). So I went on to watch the follow-up Angels and Demons (2009), and enjoyed it just as much.

I had heard all sorts of bad things, indeed nothing-but bad things, about the Da Vinci Code; but the basic plot idea is a solid one (and it is reused in the follow-up): an academic chap who is an expert in decoding symbols follows a 'treasure hunt' trail of clues against the clock - because only by solving the clues in sequence can the trail be followed - each clue leads onto the next.

There is a lot about religion, and specifically Christianity; and initially both films seem to be very anti-Catholic. But in the end it turns out that the RCC has goodies as well as baddies, and that a lot of the damning perspectives come from unreliable witnesses - evil characters. So the anti-Christian, debunking perspectives of the first part of the movie are, to a considerable extent, contradicted and undone by its later parts.

Something similar applies to Angels and Demons - many of the plot twists favour the Vatican perspective.


The DVC reminded me of some thirty years ago, when I was 'targeted' for conversion by Opus Dei. I had a colleague/ friend who was a member lived in one of their houses - and one (Sunday?) evening I got a phonecall, inviting me around; on arrival, to my surprise, I was shown to a little cinema and left alone to watch a movie about the founder and purposes of OD. It seemed a rather clumsy and inept gesture - although the propaganda film was fairly interesting. [Erroneous passage deleted.]

The appeal of OD seemed to be due to a combination of philosophical coherence with evangelical energy backed-up by a military organisation and attitude; a modern medievalism, technocratic monasticism...

My impression of British OD (as I recall) was very un-sinister and indeed un-glamorous - their HQ was dark and cramped, and with a school-dinners/ cooked-cabbage kind of atmosphere. All very different from the glamorous-opulent-powerful depiction of the Da Vinci Code.


Anyway, having heard nothing but Bad Things about the DVC - including its movie; I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining and stimulating it turned-out to be. I shall continue on to watch the third movie of the series, which was released recently.

Is at The Notion Club Papers blog...

This question (why some-thing, why every-thing; rather than no-thing) is - or ought to be - uniquely easy for Christians to answer; compared with any other religion that posits a creator-god.

The question arises from trying to understand why a god that is powerful enough to create everything should have any reason for doing so; since presumably such a god would be utterly self-sufficient.

The Christian answer relates to such facts that all men are Sons of God-the-creator; that God-the-creator loves all Men; and that Jesus was divine, was the ('only begotten') Son of God, and he told his disciples that in knowing Jesus they also knew his Father.

Thus: we are like God; God is like me and you and anyone else. In vital ways, God's primary motives are therefore understandable by you and me and anyone else. From this, we can infer that God created everything, including men and women, for the same basic reason that you or I or anyone else would create such a universe.

So if we imagine ourselves as God before creation (whether you regard God as a single being of no sex, or - as I do - regard God as a dyad of man and woman, bound eternally by love) the purpose of creation is 'for' making other gods, beings qualitatively like oneself - drawn and held together by eternal loving relationships, and working together - mutually aligned by this love - on the endless business of creation.

(God's creation just-is this state of loving creativity. Thus, creation is Not about 'making stuff' - it is instead establishing this 'process' of beings creat-ing.)

God wants a family, wants friends, wants others of his kind: the same kind as the Father and the Son, and more such people would be better: Sons of God bound by love, and doing the work of creation.

Why this - rather than eternal solitude and no creation? Do you really need to ask? To answer, all you need to do is imagine, to empathically-identify-with, to understand how-God-felt in that primordial divine situation.

 

I have brooded on the matter of baptism ever since I was a Christian. These are my conclusions - which have been stable for about five years, so far.

Baptism is not necessary to salvation. When considering that God is the creator, and loves us all as his children; it is to me inconceivable that he would have made it necessary to undergo baptism as a condition of salvation.

When it happens, it seems to me that baptism ought to be done as it is described in the New Testament - by total immersion, and as soon as a person has decided to become a Christian.

That is, baptism should ideally (but not necessarily) be the first thing in a person's Christian life; baptism without delay; baptism as soon as a person wants to pledge that Jesus is the Son of God and his Saviour.

Other forms of baptism I regard as having been co-opted into the specific, and contingent, needs of a specific church or denomination (as can be seen from the changing history of baptism, both between- and within-denominations).

Such extended and elaborated forms of baptism may (in a particular time and place and situation) be a good thing, may indeed be a very good thing - may strongly promote theosis (i.e. the spiritual development of the individual towards divinity as a Son of God); but, in my understanding, there is no direct link with either salvation or theosis.


Note: Most importantly to me, I have sought confirmation of the above by meditation, prayer and revelation. I am confident that this is valid for me - but that fact does not imply universal validity for  all persons in all times and circumstances: some specific people may need to be baptised. My own baptismal status is having been Christened as an infant in the Church of England, by application of water to the forehead... this strikes me as, overall, one of the least valid of all forms of baptism. 

Edited, with emphasis added, from a comment in response to a recent post; comes this valuable analysis by Michael Dyer:


...Intuition paradoxically strikes people as "woo woo" or mystical or dodgy in spite of the fact that it is a sense you use all the time.

It's how you drive your car, walk, pick up on social cues make 90% of your daily practical judgements.

I weep when I think of the years of education I received that focused on getting me to doubt my intuition.

You need some intuition because, like every other sense. it is touched by infirmity and has to be trained. But the focus of my education honestly pushed it to the point where it gave me, basically, spiritual OCD.

There's an interesting talk I heard from a catholic priest who said that devils have the most influence over your imagination and the least over your intuition.

Intuition isn't feeling or emotion - that's another misconception - it's basically your minds eye. It can be deceived like everything else, but throwing it away is about comparable to blinding yourself because eyewitnesses in court cases can be confused about what they saw.


Note added: I would say that modern devils focus less on the imagination than they used to, and more on perception and reasoning; by means of the pan-global linked bureaucratic system which has extended deep into human living. This excludes the spiritual and intuitive; and defines what is 'valid' in public discourse.

Above is somebody's idea of an imaginative Albion... my personal answer is at Albion Awakening...

Many people have said that there is not enough 'evidence' for them to believe in the reality of God; but people need to recognise that evidence is always ambiguous, and never decisive.

People say things like: 'Seeing is believing... If only God would speak to me in words, or send an angel to tell me, or show me a major public miracle... then I would believe.'

But they are being dishonest; seeing is not believing; and they would not believe.

And they are mistaken by the assumption that sensory data is the most solid and compelling source of knowledge.


People ought to be clear that evidence can never convince - and this is especially the case in the mainstream modern world.

We are a world in which evidence of all kinds - real science, logic, personal experience, the word of people we trust - is routinely ignored; and instead people believe vague, incoherent and continually changing nonsense, sprayed at them by the mass media and institutional propaganda.

This is possible because all evidence, without exception, is ambiguous; and because modern people feel no obligation to be consistent - nor even to aim-at consistency. This, because their bottom-line validation is how they feel, and feelings are neither consistent not coherent across time.


Consider. Any evidence which comes to us by the senses is ambiguous because it must be interpreted - it must be put into context.

And there is always the possibility of more evidence emerging...

And words must be understood, and picture must be recognised; the 'logical' implications of any-thing that happens must be reasoned-out. A new theory changes what counts as evidence; a new theory recognises new sources of evidence. And new theories, new interpretations, can be generated without end...

Small-scale, individual, private perceptions might be an error, or an hallucination, or we may be deluded and falsely interpreting, or we may be demented or drain damaged, or we may be mastered by wishful thinking...

So private knowledge may be mistaken to to our limiations. Yet big public events are differently registered, differently reported, differently explained; and some of this noticing, reporting and explanation is deliberately misleading, or manipulative - so that public evidence turns out to be even less compelling than private.

And if we try to communicate the evidence, or our conclusions about it, to other people; then all these uncertainties are multiplied. 

So anything based on sensory data, any evidence, has problems due to its not being self-explanatory.


What is more certain, what is the most certain knowledge; is knowledge we know directly, that is without sensory mediation, without any chains of perceptions and interpretations: knowledge that appears in our deepest and truest self, without perceptual cause, and bearing the provenance of truth. Knowledge that 'appears' in the mind whole and understood, graspable by a single and complete mental act of apprehension.

This is intuition - and we can't do better than intuition.

Of course, our later self may still decide that earlier intuitions were incorrect; in a world of change, corruption and mortality there is no way of avoiding that.

But we can recognise the principle that - contrary to what most people think and say - evidence of the senses, evidence of 'logic' are inferior to directly apprehended knowledge.


We can recognise that the best possible evidence for the reality of God, or the relevance to us personally of Jesus Christ, is not 'evidence - nor is it 'logic', but is exactly that sudden, complete, total grasping of simple reality.

The implication is that the most important investigation we could do, would be to look 'within'; rather than to seek external evidence. More exactly, the role of external evidence should be to clarify for our-selves, exactly what it is that we are looking-for within.

But evidence can never take us to where we want to go, and need to go; and never can compel us to belief in God or faith in Jesus. That is a matter of direct knowledge - of intuition.