The End of Progressive Philosophy

The End of Progressive Philosophy

Warning: Up front I will tell you this is a much more serious article and much longer than some of the others. If you don't feel like thinking, or just know I write funny stuff and came for a laugh, please save this for another time. But if you came feeling up to a mental challenge and have an open mind to hear, then by all means; no one ever writes publicly to be ignored.

We talk so much in our world about figuring it all out. How do we create utopia on earth or what is the meaning of life. Western civilization has spun circles for centuries trying to find the answers as philosophers and thinkers ponder these subjects. We reflect on new science and we keep wishing for the magic answer. But I will show that we are so far from the great leaps in understanding our universe its practically out of reach and that we are no where near acheiving the understanding we feel we need as the human race within a thousand years.

Often in western culture it is assumed that the ideas of the past build to the ideas of the future. That we begin with one building block and we put two together to put a third on top and work our way up. This process inevitably will then reach forever into eternity until our understanding and status achieves what is imagined as godhood.

But I shall make the argument that Western civilization has it all wrong, that acheiving our greatest understanding will not come from discovering new buliding blocks upon old ones, but rather, synthesizing reality in light of illuminating knowledge and understanding.

Meaning, without a revealing flashlight, this man would never know

he was about to be punched senseless.

What I mean is we keep pushing our understanding along the ground in the dark upon our own limited effort when it is far better to simply have the end revealed and work toward it because we now can see where we are and also where we are going. The two concepts are Evolution versus Revelation. Evolution assumes that upon the limited building blocks of knowledge we have we can eventually evolve our understanding infinitely. Revelation assumes that a higher being of infinite knowledge and wisdom knows our understanding and reveals knowledge that carefully weans us towards greater understanding.

It is my proposition to you that Evolution will never reach the heights of Revelation. Don't agree? Well then don't you know that a bundle of broken parts cannon make a working whole. Or perhaps you know that 1+1+1 will never equal infinity. Because 1 is a limited concept and infinity is unlimited and it doesn't matter how many 1s you have they will never equal infinity. The only way to have infinity out of 1s is to multiply them by infinity (Thus Revelation). If you don't get it yet, that's okay. This one pounded me over the head for decades and I missed it, largely because the answer was so simple I was better suited to get it at age 8 than age 18.

There, its done! It's a dishwasher, whadya think?

In the Faith Argument I showed that man's question as to what exists and what he can believe in inevitably leads to God. I cannot revisit that argument here, it is far too long. On this blogspot is the condensed and grossly inadequate summary entiled "A Brain Exercise from College". Feel free to read it now.
Back yet?

Okay. We have to trust in that Infinite Being's existence to function and we all do it every moment of our existence. It is denial to say we don't. Thus, we come to an impass. Knowing we take this Being for granted, do we choose to trust his revelation of the universe for us or trust our own knowledge of the universe.

Dad said don't touch this, but it looks like something cool.

Meh, what does he know?

Here's a good exercise. Imagine an ant jumps on to a rock and in that one moment sees the hard grainy and yellow texture of that rock and declares "eureka, the world is hard, yellow, and one solid unmovable, inedible, and permanant mass!" Then you see the camera pan out to a man holding that rock, then it pans out again to see that man standing on the edge of a bridge possibly about to drop it. Then it pans out again to see that bridge over a high valley far up in the mountains. Then it pans out to the view of an island, then out to the view of an archepelago, then out to a world covered in water and storms of large gas and electricity in the skies. Then again out into a solar system, a galaxy, and on into space as each cluster of stars and galaxies and nebulai get smaller and smaller.

Now put into perspective what that ant is saying. Now put that into perspective with a scientist saying that we are one step closer to finding the point at which matter and energy merge, we will find the "god" particle and thus prove that god does not exist anywhere outside of us as a separate conscious father figure like the old world view believes. Now how much sense does that make?

It doesn't. And here's where the argument often gets dropped. No scientist or person who denies an interactive God continues the argument here. What happens is in that moment you realized that all of what you know and can possibly understand is so limited that to make any judgement whatsoever on the nature of that Unlimited Being, is pointless. In that moment a decision must be made. Do you accept that and respect the only valid source of wisdom left (Revelation) or do you deny and marginalize the idea, laugh at it, belittle it, scoff at it and hold fast to Evolution?

So many have spent their time disregarding the truth that is given to us in God's Revelation because it is "old" and as humans we "progress" beyond things. But the idea that the revelations of old are somehow past building blocks on our way to our new understanding makes as much sense as the ant's declaration.

Above: Progress.

 If we recieve revelation, doesn't it make sense it would linger in our past? Wouldn't it make sense that we would also spend hundreds or thousands of years trying to understand it and sythesize it? This model of gaining knowledge is not cosmological, its teleological, in that God is pulling us along and we take time to arrive at our destination. In that regard, our answers are not in the future, but in the past.

As a culture we are struggling now philosophically with the disspointment of existentialism. The philosophy that taught us not to believe what we see and to accept multiple forms of truth. But as a culture we are not trusting of the previous modernism and its brash judgements. But what IS happening is the embracing of a whole new model of objectivism, the likes of Ayn Rand or Saul Alinski. The idea that the world operates by certain perameters and you can't change that. You're designated objective is to survive, thus your purpose is to survive. And that the laws of survival of the fittest are automatically in play, so be the fittest. Only the fittest exists.

You see, we have learned from history that the winner writes history. The survivor gets the power, the eternity, the chance to live on in some way. It is fully embracing evolution as a worldview and not just as a mere theory or thought. When 'Western civilization sees the folly in this is probably not for a long time. It literally took around 400 years for the ideas of Descartes to actually make their way into practice and acceptance in society.

I imagine and only hope it will be something about realizing objectivism lacks any adequate answer for purpose of the universe,  abandonds any concept of morality, which we have already started seeing. Without morality, the entire system will collapse as we turn on each other ruthlessly or the "fittest" see fit to exterminate the rest. And as usual that lesson will have to be learned the hard way.

The Hard Way...with or without zombies.

But one thing that the new objectivism is still ignoring is revelation. The Revelation of God that teaches a simple truth that dissolves the whole objective, existential, and modern worldview together with anything that could come after it for a thousand years. And that truth is that the purpose or end of human existence is not material. That is because according to Revelation (literally the Book of Revelation) all material things will be destroyed. Why? Because they are infected with corruption. Rememeber that whole 'or don't you know that a bundle of broken parts cannot create a proper whole' bit from before? Does it make better sense now?

Revelation teaches us that in order to fix it, it has to be destroyed and restarted. But God's revelation also tells us about his plan to "restore" us, the people, and that has nothing to do with our material wealth, power, or survival (all of which will be destroyed to fix it). It has everything to do with God restoring and rescuing it by cleansing it.

Now, anyone thinking materially, still believing that the end is a material one (utopia, survival, godhood or all powerfulness) cannot possibly make sense of that and immediately dismisses it as opinion or old thinking. But remember, it is material thinking when the ant declares the universe is solid and yellow. Revelation is from a source that knows better.

Give the ant some time to sythesize it and he will eventually start to get it. But only if he is made aware there is a universe outside the rock. If he never knows there is something to look at other than the rock, he will never move past that point and his evolution of understanding will be sadly limited to that rock. But revelation can introduce the next grand concept to sythesize and understand one step at a time. That is why God reveals his truth in ages. He gave the judgement of the flood in ancient times to teach a very basic point, faith to Abraham to teach a more developed one, the Law to Moses to teach an even more developed one, and the life of the Spirit from Jesus to teach an even more devleoped one.

What will come next? You'll have to wait and see, but I do know this, if it weren't for the truths of these revelations, mankind never would have achieved very basic realizations they have. Abstract concepts, morality, a world beyond this one, right up to individual human value, women are people too, and things like the abolition of slavery. And make sure you didn't miss the lesson (or one of) around the 11th century AD; instutions and the system itself are corrupt and no instituion or structure in this world can resolve the issues of humanity.

In case you missed it; this will not save humanity

Seems like we have learned that one a little, but it's a thousand years later and people are still trying to build the perfect system to govern it all or create utopia for us. Don't they know that a perfect society is only made up of perfect people? Or do I really have to rehash that broken parts analogy again?

But it did teach even those who don't believe in the Bible a valuable thing, Kings can be corrupt, and so can governments. That realization has lead to a whole lot of good and a standard of living, equality, and freedom that could have never been imagined otherwise.

So you may not accept the revelation that there is something more than the rock the ant is on today, but at least be thankful that someone is taking notes. We could all still be surfs incapable of reverence for anything not concrete or just plain shiny, killing each other at impulse, or because it's not familiar or ugly to us, basing our entire lives and truth off of preconcieved notions. Sounds jolly, yes? I dain to say Revelation has pulled us a long way far before we could have hoped to figure it out by banging rocks together for shiny spark.