Faith is the absence of loosh. Faith is the refusal to wallow in its addiction. The act of faithfulness itself involves a deliberate abstention from a specific set of logical conditions. This broaches the question: What therefore, is ‘loosh’?
Loosh is the flow of intoxicating energy from an ignorant, abused, and captive source. That source is us. It serves to produce a spiritual insanity in its abuser, anesthetizing and blinding them to their own encroaching darkness.
Darkness will dark; it cannot help itself. For these, there is no such thing as free will.
I maintain a skeptical stance, rooted in epoché rather than cynicism, regarding the figure of the apostle Paul. I find it challenging to accept a non-verifiable, miraculous conversion as sufficient qualification for assuming authority over a movement that one, up until recently, had violently and vehemently oppressed.1 Such occurrences serve to raise questions about the introduction of agency. The primary responsibility of ethical skepticism is of course, to question the presence of agency, and the Roman Empire serves as an archetypal example of such influence.
However, within Paul’s letter to the Hebrews (provided that he actually authored the letter), one statement resonates with me, as articulated in Hebrews 11:1 (KJV): “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It is noteworthy that The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the term ‘faith’ to its 14th-century origin, defining it as the ‘assent of the mind to the truth of a statement (principle) for which there is incomplete evidence.’ One could also contend that this is the definition of ‘belief’ (in contrast to ‘understanding’). My departure from this definition resides in the principle that, faith is not necessarily congruent with a special type of belief. Faith may involve belief, or it may not. Faith is an expression of will, and not necessarily a belief. Please be patient dear reader as I develop this further.
The above approach to definition by means of trait affirmation, otherwise known as cataphasis, is suitable enough. However, I argue that faith can be articulated more potently by delineating it through negation, or what it is not – emphasizing its characteristics using what is termed apophasis. In this context and to capture its ineffable nature, faith can be described, in a Wittgensteinian sense, as one’s resistance against a specific set of logical conditions – rather than by its exercise or presence as a logical object. Faith, object-defined as a belief turned into a very specific set of ‘show yourself worthy’ actions, as is extolled for instance in the Bible’s Epistle of James – this is chicanery. It is an act one puts on for their virtue club or religious fellows (see The Riddle of Sin).
In reality, faith has very little at all to do with one’s religious institution activities, good works, observances, etc., and everything to do with how you conduct relationships with those who are not in the club, or those who cannot benefit you in the least – what you do when you are not conscious of your own actions – your quickness to punish, consider, or forgive – how you indeed act when real money is on the table (not in theory or in public purview) – the unity of your life, work, household, and family – and finally, to what you instinctively apply yourself, when left to your own devices for a long period of time. Faith is an iceberg, in that ninety percent of it is not readily visible.
In the scheme of Wittgenstein, one cannot, nor should one, define good. For in the day you cite something as ‘good’, evil will crucify it and wear its skin as a virtue or religious costume.
Nevertheless, the aforementioned set of logical conditions, which are mutually exclusive with faith, is referred to as ‘loosh.’ Faith, is an act of the will in refusing loosh – and is not tantamount to a ‘baseless belief’ or set of such beliefs. It is the result of a keen skill in ponerology, or the study of that which is evil in its essence.2 It is not an exercise in ‘doing good works’ (agathology), as we have recently and poignantly borne witness to the harm wrought in the name of applied virtue. This is something which the writers of the Bible should have known, but unfortunately never learned or realized, as a caution against this would have been very helpful to Western society through the middle and modern ages.
Faith is a long-suffering service in the critical path of comprehension, through evasion of the snares of dark addictions.
Faith is less about doing or being something, than it is about becoming something – as the latter requires the greater courage.
Faith is the childlike desire to abstain from loosh (addictive habitual abuse of others)… it is powerful. More powerful than your adversary and captor will allow you to even know.
~ The Ethical Skeptic
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
~ Matthew 5:39 (NIV Bible)
When Christ spoke in this manner, it was not an exhortation to ‘being good’ nor serving as a victim. He was citing the critical importance of not partaking in this drug of choice, loosh. The more specific set of abuses which compose loosh (or ‘not-faith’) are tallied in Exhibit A at the end of this article. In this particular context as well, one should note that you can ‘take it with you’.
Do not be deceived however, one’s addictions will follow them into the beyond.
Nor does faith itself mandate that one believe in a specific model of God, spiritual realm, or hereafter. One does not have to believe in God at all. Faith is not expressed through one’s intellectual or doctrinal allegiance to a specific cosmology. In fact, many of the Gods of our crafting or imperious scriptures come suspiciously close to the Lycurgian insane entity defined on the right hand side of Exhibit A at the end of this article (the Cupholder of the Lycurgus Cup). This false model of God is the only celestial parent we have been presented unfortunately. Atheists comprehend the incumbent logical inconsistencies therein, and understandably reject such an entity.
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
~ Anne Lamott, progressive author and activist
The skeptical mind can therefore indeed exercise a rationality based simultaneously upon the principles of the scientific method, as well as faith. The exclusion of the former, in the name of the latter, constitutes merely an invalid act of ignorance.
The function of such ignorance is defined as the ‘Veil’ in Exhibit A at the end of this article. A comprehension of these principles may well explain the dramatic disconnect that exists between the exhaustive Near Death Experience (NDE) data and the teachings of punishment-based or hell-worship God-Devil polytheism.3
Enterprise Virtue is Not Faith
Faith is not doing good works, being moral, attending services, tithing, blathering scripture at walls and altars, giving to the poor, traveling and delivering sermons, taking donations, and believing without evidence a full slate of mandatory doctrine – as such things are nothing but enterprise virtue, a form of works-costume one wears. These things may help ‘bind together’ those of similar mind (hence the derivation of the term ‘religion’), but they have little to do with faith itself.
Faith is working in a steel mill for 35 years to put 4 kids through trade school and college. Faith is getting up every morning at 6 am to prepare meals, clean, manage a family, tend to the sick, and nurture those who are growing. Faith, is working two full-time jobs to make a future for a child disabled by medical incompetence and scientific arrogance. Faith is undertaking the last course of action at your avail, because it is all you have left. Faith is doing your job without concern for self, while a missile is inbound on your ship or an artillery shell on your command post and everyone is about to die. Faith is running your business with integrity when every motivation around you begs you to cheat and show margin to investors instead – or your payroll is larger than your backlog, and you have no idea if you will be able to financially keep your home, but you choose to protect your employees first.
Faith is not a set of doctrines or any enterprise of virtue, as these constitute mere costume, clique, and cash. Faith is a life of undertaking that which is difficult, to help shoulder the burden of those at risk.
The writers of the Bible clearly failed to understand this. Which serves to raise the question of authenticity, both in terms of authorship and spirit, entailed in Paulinian-Constantinian-Mithraic Orthodox Christianity.
From the context of our original perspective however, faith is the intentional and life-long avoidance of loosh on the part of a sound mind. It involves the avoidance of enterprise virtue and the sucking of lifeblood out of others, as the essence of one’s existence. It reflects the wholeness of one’s recaptured authenticity. The act of faithfulness involves a deliberate abstention from loosh, as a set of logical conditions. This prompts the question of course: What, then, is the nature of ‘loosh’?
What is Loosh?
Many years ago I was asked late on a Friday, by a Chicago based retailer, to come visit with them and ‘offer critical strategic advisement’, with the urgent project starting that very next Monday. My presentation to the CEO was scheduled for two days later, that Wednesday, at 4 pm. Moreover, the methodology entailed a quick vetting of the entire business from top to bottom, as an effort to stave off an impending bankruptcy. Accordingly, the table in the conference room I was to work in, was aligned from one end to the other with stacks of accounting ledgers and operating summary reports when I arrived at 7:30 am that Monday. My team worked 18 hour days until our Wednesday summary of strategy and necessary defensive action.
In order to summarize the results of the strategy in short order, the retailer had mistakenly clung to an old paradigm of viewing itself as a Big Box storehouse of highly-desired goods, and not as a supplier of perishable fashion. Every service and good sold bears an element of fashion. Unwise is the merchant that does not grasp and work this concept to their competitive advantage. In fashion, time is the enemy of margin – because margin always erodes – demand always erodes.4 The task at hand for the savvy consumer goods company is to use time adeptly in the capture of identified flows of value, and as a result, margin. If an entity does not comprehend what is indeed value, and cannot respond to it with agility, they are doomed to obsolescence. Walmart and Target teeter on the precipice of such a mistake even now.
Failure to comprehend how demand erosion works is the reason why epidemiologists missed the Excess Non-Covid Natural Cause Mortality that showed within months after the vaccine rollout. I caught it and published it inside a series of well-documented charts. As a result, I was contacted by several US Congresspersons and legal initiatives, who all listened and agreed.
Millions of persons globally listened as well. This initiated an entire grassroots dissenting movement among the vast majority of American citizens sounding the alarm over the now-manifest harm caused by the mRNA vaccines. These models were confirmed as correct, by the Society of Actuaries Research Mortality Survey Report of November 2023, a full two years after I found the signal.
Nonetheless, the old days of luxurious margins covering extravagant real estate and exorbitant overhead had come and gone for this retailer – and no future existed for them which did not involve a high degree of painful restructuring. Plus there was this small matter of what they dismissively called ‘direct sales’ eating their lunch. Small fleet-of-foot companies, many of them my clients as well, selling more recent product ‘on the web’, at a better price, and delivering it right to the customer’s door. Of course, the prevailing wisdom persisted inside the client organization that ‘we tried that and it didn’t work’ and ‘it’s merely a fad’.
Unfortunately, many lives were due to be disrupted if this retailer was to survive. Innocent lives, kids’ college hopes, homes, retirements. The subjective implications of my work involved much more difficult questions, than did the very objective strategy itself. These were not questions I could answer between a Monday and a Wednesday. I struggled with the ontological impasse, and still struggle with it to this very day. We were in essence going to deliberately cause short-term harm to some, in order to save the long-term livelihoods of others. While we opted for the pathway of least human suffering, there indeed was no clean pathway available. I found no joy in the execution of this strategy as well. I acknowledge and stand accountable for my role in the evolution of such events, much in the same way a soldier might learn to live with their participation in military conflict, or a coach might in cutting hard working athletes from their team.
The abuser of loosh, in contrast, views every matter as an opportunity to punish those whom would dare defy their virtuous insistence. They justify their darkcraft through the quo facto malo ‘sins’ of their victims.
But there are those in society who do find glee in their dysethical handiwork. Those who pose in costumes of virtue and science, deny the injurious ramifications of their work, and readily wallow inside the opportunity to harm political opponents for material, clout, or even spiritual gain. They will speak often of ‘cost-benefit analysis’, yet not having taken the first step in, nor even knowing how to professionally conduct one. They speak often of ‘justice’ and ‘equity’, yet we observe that things get substantially worse under their rule.
They set up illegal collusion between media and government which actively censored Americans who dissented. Once authors of myriad a brazen book and song, they abandoned those ethics when push came to shove, cowering in the presence of Narrative, and celebrating harm to those who refused to obsess over their quod fieri final solution. As for me, they entered my property and threatened my family because I issued an early warning and dared to examine the data before falling for their jackboot shtick. Lamentum exempla:
Ain’t No Rock and Roll – Five Times August
Mistakes Were Not Made – Written by Margaret Anna Alice & Read by Dr. Tess Lawrie
When the victims of their work speak up, loosh addicts deny there are any victims at all, and hide from the responsibility to justify their actions before a broad audience of at-risk stakeholders (their victims). They crave power, virtue, and the spoils of deception with a sadistic glee. We lay witness to their horrific rhetoric on Twitter over the last four years. Currently, as we assess the substantial increase in global excess mortality, reaching tens of millions, all critically since the implementation of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines – there exists only widespread silence, ridicule, and denial from loosh-motivated power holders. The low 2% vaccine uptake serves as a clear indication of the public’s skepticism toward the vaccines, reflecting it as a recognized issue among Americans.
The Covid-19 mRNA vaccine was not the result of sound strategy or science – it was a profit-motivated and unsound action called quod fieri. It was a symbolic and untested act of fecklessness and harm. We risked killing millions of heavily older political opponents, as it turned out, for no gain in terms of lives saved whatsoever.
The fake actors who drove the solution found joy and fulfillment in causing harm to those they hate. They were spiritually unaccountable.
The diabetes treatment and diet industries comprise $150 billion in annual revenues derived from the American obesity epidemic. The root cause of obesity (pancreatic alpha cell injury) is never addressed and abject suffering is perpetuated through therapeutic falsehoods on a grand scale. This stands as a key analogue and example of loosh addiction. The loosh addicts themselves blaming and gaming the victims out of their money and sucking the very life energy from them.
Such is the nature of loosh. This is indeed a spiritual problem5 – an obfuscated one, which has nothing to do with the fact that our realm involves tough and painful decisions, as exemplified by my retailer strategy story above. In contrast, loosh involves the habituated gluttony of a compromised soul – one addicted to its powerful energy and compensation. It is the absence of faith.
Loosh (and its Resulting Lycurgian Insanity)
A lower spiritual form of value exchange. The opposite of faith. A spiritual intoxicant/currency derived from the acute suffering of higher sentience beings, including and especially those who are human or of an unblemished, young or innocent nature. The addictive essence which is derived from a blood sacrifice, broad scale destitution, war, pandemic, and/or sexual exploitation, which imparts a temporary rush in its abuser, mistakenly perceived as spiritual power. A currency or wage which is doled out among those who have unwisely addicted themselves to it, which is used to control and direct the actions of an addicted dark hierarchy.
An intoxicating and addictive spiritual ambrosia – distilled from tapping into the potential difference between two realms – by means of an abused and captive innocent. This intoxicant produces a spiritual insanity in its abuser, anesthetizing and blinding them to their own encroaching darkness.
The Original Sin
We are indeed powerful spiritual beings, endowed with a benevolent blessing: our inherent right to return to the source, as depicted on the left-hand side of Exhibit A above. This gift is irrevocable, as nothing within our power can serve to cancel it. We may request that it be made dormant, but we cannot erase this blessing, for we do not possess the power of ‘un-creation’.
True creation, defined as ‘ex nihilo‘ (from nothing), is a capability exclusive to Sophia (the genuine God, distinct from the wrathful Enlil-Saturn-Elohim entity confined in Eden). This act of creating something from nothing is within His/Her domain alone. Similarly, reversing creation, or the process of ‘ex aliquo nihil‘ (from something to nothing), is also beyond our abilities. Consequently, this gift of return to source is one we cannot lose.
However, as potent children of the cosmos, we must be cautious with our desires. If one chooses to self-appoint as God, judging one’s own actions and especially those of others, and deriving power from the worship and suffering of those deemed lesser or more ‘sinful’ under the Law, then such a wish shall be granted: becoming a God of one’s own crafting, confined in their ‘little kingdom of darkness’ – stuck here in this universe for as long as one remains in that state of delusion.
This, I propose, is the Original Sin.
Darkness therefore, possessing no means of its own, must abduct and abuse unwitting sources of light in order to derive a corrupted form of the power thereof. Chronic abuse of such wrongfully acquired assets transforms the participant into a self-fashioned deity, standing in defiance of matters of faith or knowledge and succumbing to the ensuing madness.
The astute ethical skeptic will take note that the exploitation of loosh by its Lycurgian insanity controllers and dark hierarchy of sycophants is critically founded upon the spiritual captivity, tallying of sins (a demonic proclivity), and existential ignorance of both major religions and secular/atheistic nihilism. In this, ignorance on the part of the victims is absolutely essential. Both of these philosophy groups therefore suffer the same delusions and impart the same result, ignorance – as unwitting allies in this overall theater of the absurd.
The Ethical Skeptic, “What is Loosh”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 24 Nov 2023; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/?p=76710
- Paul’s later ministry is ex post facto and moot in reality. He was selected for this role immediately before or after his conversion experience – precisely because of his Roman status and former role (which he may never really have abandoned). This is agency and may have played into why Peter and The Apostles ultimately rejected Paul. Acts 9:25-31 and 22:14-22 make it clear, but sugar-coat the issue because Luke – Paul’s consort – wrote Acts. Of course it is going to gloss over all this. The last meeting between Paul/Titus/Barnabas and James/Peter/John in Galatians 1:1-10 involved flat out animosity. They agreed to disagree and go their separate ways.
- Wikipedia: Ponerology; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponerology
- Michael Zigarelli, “Near-Death Experiences and the Emerging Implications for Christian Theology”; https://christianscholars.com/near-death-experiences-and-the-emerging-implications-for-christian-theology/
- Tepper, Bette K.; Mathematics for Retail Buying; Fairchild Pulbications, New York, 2006, 5th Edition; pp 197-226.
- John 8:44: You are of your father the devil, and the methods of your father you will choose to emulate.
What if the archon story is simply the second layer of distraction/control above the widely accepted Abrahamic paradigm? Think about it: the handful of ultrawealthy usurer families who created/distributed/ultimately benefitted from the abrahamic mythos have betrayed every ally they have ever had, EVER. From cecil rhodes to apartheid south africa. From the WASP elite who sold them America to the Egyptians who helped them (the Hyksos) subjugate Egypt. The financial backer of the Palestine colony was Germany up to the 1930s…Not a single member of elite banker families was killed by Germany, ONLY those the elites feel are their lessers… Read more »
I’ve always had questions about this account of our past, which I first encountered in the early 2010’s, after decades of walking every path there is, with the scars to prove it (or maybe just prove my foolishness, but anyway). They tend to show it’s mostly accurate. The questions are these: 1. locking Shemyaza & the Watchers in the world he and his lads messed up because they couldn’t keep it in their pants, literally or metaphorically, seems like locking a wolf in the lambing pen, or worse, a molestor in an orphanage. Not a punishment at all. But, a… Read more »
depressingly, if we started as peaceful beings and then got edited, peacefulness in our modern world only truly prevails in domesticated beings destined for the pot, a belief which I know drives a great many modern satanists of the type who abhor harming others and strive to only undo the harms done in the names of major monotheistic religions, and which I empathise with, despite not being one. Be interested to read your thoughts on this if you care to comment TES I don’t think the universe tallies sins in the way Abrahamism and Eastern Kharmism define them. The Cosmos… Read more »
I have enjoyed reading your blog. Wondering if you have ever looked into Eastern Christianity (Greek/Russian Orthodox) which tends to view sin more like an addiction or sickness (‘loosh addiction’), rather than as transgression against a moral code. Cain slays his brother Abel, the first human sacrifice, after being warned by God that ‘sin (loosh) crouches at your door, but you must rule over it’. Satan tells Adam/Even they can ‘be as gods’ if they eat the forbidden fruit (loosh). King David’s great sin was to use his power differential (‘loosh voltage’) as king to have Uriah the Hittite killed… Read more »
I have a bit of a different take. I view the God of Eden as the ultimate loosh addict. See https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/08/14/the-awesome-insistence-of-cataclysmic-mirage-theory-cmt/ That being has celebrated and wallowed with glee inside the longtime suffering of mankind. This is Shemjaza-Samael-Enlil-Yahweh-Ha-Satan. We are enslaved by this creature and his dark demonic empire even now – considered his genetic-sex chattle, slaves, and property. This is why Shemjaza and his watcher elohim (let ‘Us’ make man in our image) could not be forgiven, in Enoch I. They had committed the ultimate sin (loosh) against mankind. This is why Enoch I, Hypostasis of the Archons, On… Read more »
The Western Christian concept of substitutionary atonement, where Christ is seen to satisfy the blood debt to a vengeful God (as if the true God *needed* our blood, needed our suffering), does naturally lead to the conclusion that the God of Eden is the ultimate loosh addict. The East rejects this interpretation, though, and rightly condemns the Western view as having fallen into the very trap from which Christianity is supposed to liberate us, like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor from the Brothers Karamazov. Enoch I is quoted explicitly in Jude 1:14-15, and the book of Enoch *is* part of the canon… Read more »
Patrick, The Grand Inquisitor parable is a great whetstone on this topic – thanks for that mention as regards the delineation between Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. I am by no means versed in all the key theological tenets of Eastern Orthodoxy however, so bear with me as I lump them (possibly unfairly) in with Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as a whole. The logical catch outlined by Dostoyevsky’s Inquisitor regarding the fulfillment of the church’s mission for mankind, versus a straw man ideal of complete freedom for mankind (supposedly presented by Christ), becomes the basis for an appeal to the… Read more »
A ‘straw man’ indeed, on a pole. A scarecrow, even. . Your nihilist/naturalist/rationalist on his left, the penitent on his right. Shemjaza/Satan, who appears as an angel (i.e. ‘god’) of light, *pretends* to be the ruler of Eden, and mankind falls for it, and continues to fall for it. Mankind’s memory was not wiped, though, but is dulled by centuries and generations of loosh-addiction, of fake religions, of shiny-god addiction. We are blinded by Lucifer’s bright light. The true god of Eden is Christ, fully human, a ‘straw man’, a homeless man, a friend of sinners and prostitutes. Not shiny, not… Read more »
The ruler of Eden was the Sumerian God Enlil, the Ugartic/Hebrew El and Yahweh, who by the Interpretatio Graecia was the God Saturn: “an agricultural deity who reigned over the world during a Golden Age, when humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the Earth, without labor, and in a state of innocence.” Enlil, in Tablet XII of the ETCSL 5.3.3, arbitrated the dispute between Emesh (Shepherd) and Enten (Farmer of the gods). Enten came before Enlil to accuse Emesh of being ‘irreverent, and knowing not the heart of the field’, having encroached upon his domain and harmed his crops. Emesh… Read more »
In many ways the history of the ancient world is played out as an argument over whose version of the creation myth is correct. Orthodox tradition is that the garden of Eden of the Bible is Moses’s correction to the myths you cite, so the fact that is doesn’t jive with the Sumarian and Ugaritic myths we would say is a feature rather than a bug, but it seems we will have to part ways on this. Setting that aside, the Eastern Church did not ‘exterminate’ those documents, and there are Orthodox scholars who are well read in those myths… Read more »
Patrick Your contribution is absolutely helpful. As a side note, don’t be put off by my ramblings, they are not meant to be negative or personal – they just offer up the passion I have for mankind and his plight. The Sumerian myths pre-date Moses, so I trust them far more than I do the Pentateuch. The editors had an agenda at play when they consolidated and Yahweh’d the myths (and destroyed the countermanding evidence until we found it again in the 1950’s). Earmarks of untrustworthiness and re-writing are strewn throughout the first five books of the Bible. I love… Read more »
Growing up in America, Radical Protestantism is ‘in the water’, and calling it a speedo-clad volleyball game is maybe giving it too much credit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoOi1K_59Y). This is your straw-man complete freedom, a whole country of Martin Luthers, Oliver Cromwells, Joseph Smiths who think they know better–every man his own pope. After long enough in this mire, one might despair that any coherent definition of truth (God) is even possible. Your ignostic atheism is not a rejection of American Christianity, it is its fulfillment, its telos, the inevitable result of the pattern playing itself out. And so you stand at the… Read more »
Transfiguration appears to me to be what sets Eastern Orthodoxy apart from the dead flat hand of Rome I perceive in Catholicism (no offence intended etc).
“He is Risen” and the whole entire embodiment via icons. I want to make this comment but lack time right now to add references supporting it, so will hit “post” and trust to TES and the internet if it makes it. :)
“Rather, we are caught up in a complex but completely natural set of factors/forces which have existed long before mankind was ever around. This includes what we call ‘the spiritual’, as a natural feature of our broader realm.”
This seems to suggest that:
“…the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it.” Gospel of Thomas, 113
“THE keystone prayer offered by Christ, mentions nothing about salvation whatsoever, but rather instead prays for the overthrow of the kingdom which rules this earth” – I regard this to be the priority. Where God is, is not the salient question at hand. That comes later.
Great website. really puts my faith back in self introspection work. you are clearly a deep thinker. i have read the Law of One and in it Ra explains that the roll of Service to Self entities is to polarise further into the negative by harvesting the vibrational energy of negative or unawaken people. he did not describe what the energy was called or the process of harvest. now i know Loosh. Cool thanks. you wouldn’t happen to know the process of harvest would you? you know how when someone walks into a room and the energy drops just by… Read more »
How you defined faith is really cool: “Faith is less about doing or being something, than it is about becoming something – as the latter requires the greater courage.” As I read this entry, I had a right brain hemisphere dominated combination of words come through that seem profound to me, but I realize it may be nonsensical to others: Faith is the love of truth and the truth of love. Love without Truth is a lie. Truth without Love is a pain. For inspiration seek Love with truth. For validation seek Truth with love. With enough iterative experiences inspired… Read more »
I once let the cat out of the bag by showing the disagreements between Paul and James to my youth Sunday school class.
But I do believe that reading Acts 15 and Paul’s epistles (i.e. Galations) have value in understanding the current situation. All you have to do is replace the word “circumcised” with “vaccinated”. https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?qs_version=NIV&quicksearch=circumcised&startnumber=26
There is a perspective that circumcision of baby boys is a trauma based mind control technique to partially mitigate the threat a population of males with heart-still-intact pose to stolen power, and more easily turn us into compliant order followers (“Those guys I am pointing you to are the bad guys that did this to you, go get ’em!”). I don’t believe at all that is a conscious intent, but its hard to not see some truth to the result once you understand enough about developmental psychology.
Just a few observations… “I maintain a skeptical stance, rooted in epoché rather than cynicism, regarding the figure of the apostle Paul. I find it challenging to accept a non-verifiable, miraculous conversion as sufficient qualification for assuming authority over a movement that one, up until recently, had violently and vehemently oppressed.” It is only non-verifiable from a “proof” perspective. There is a reasonable amount of indirect evidence. There were numerous eye-witnesses who both saw the light and heard the noise. These witnesses were “on Saul’s team” and available for questioning by the hostile Jewish leadership and the skeptics of the… Read more »
The essence is this… Belief, adherences, observances, miracles, tithing, good works – these can all be faked. Faith cannot be faked. Thus, they cannot be the same thing. Rational inference from past trustworthiness, is epistemology – not faith. If God or his angels is (are) busy walking around physically in your local vicinity, showing up at your tent, and poofing miracles into existence for you, parting seas, burning bushes, making donkeys speak, healing the lame, or you make your living by telling people about religious beliefs – NONE of this requires faith. That is amazement, gratefulness, income, and the resulting… Read more »
Fascinating read! I have read with great interest your Houston, We realize we have a problem’ series . Question re: Re: Houston, We Realize the Problem (Part 3 of 3)’. A problem which is rising at 7,340 deaths per week as of 8 October 2022 I am unable to find this post. Was it a victim of censorship? I have been doing a deep dive into All Cause Mortality and estimates showing anywhere from 10 million (recent NZ Dept of Health revelations) to 17 million (Dr DenIs Rancourt – https://makismd.substack.com/p/video-clip-drdenis-rancourt-phd-interviewed) There is definitely something very rotten in the state of… Read more »
Matt, still waiting on the unequivocal smoking gun. Excess death and the vaccines are closely associated – but we need vax/unvax cohort data… and they will not release it. I prefer deduction over induction, and right now – all we have is a very strong inductive case. Convinced me, but will not be strong enough for the knee-jerk denial and memorized apothegm twits. 17 million is not out of the question. It all depends upon the pull forward effect one uses. I use a very conservative one – that places US deaths at around 650 K UCoD, and 1.4 million… Read more »
Fair enough. As one pundit opined recently, that if you rear end someone, you say ‘sorry, my fault.’ If you kill thousand (or millions) either intentionally, accidentally or though collosal willful blindness, such an admission would lead to personally catastropic consequences.’
Making such an accusation understandably should come with its own set of responsibilities and doing your best to insure accuracy. But what does one do if those hold and control the evidence of culpability diliberately withhold this evidence and as they did in New Zealand, incarcerate anyone even employees who tries to share the data?
Savvy question Matt. I suppose we are about to find out. I never dreamed those in power would grow this brazenly corrupt. But here we are.
Thanks that was enjoyable. I have a structural disagreement with you regarding the formal notion of faith. Faith is a religious concept. It didn’t exist before religion; therefore, there is no valid way of incorporating it into a non-religious ontology as it appears that you are doing. “In reality, faith has very little at all to do with one’s religious institution activities, good works, observances, etc., and everything to do with how you conduct relationships with those who are not in the club, or those who cannot benefit you in the least – what you do when you are not… Read more »
Well articulated and lucid point Reante, and thanks for the encouraging feedback as well :-) But I disagree. I have defined faith as its original application inside the fabric of life – not in the ‘you must believe what I believe, despite its irrationality, and then demonstrate this with highly visible good works’. The principle, as I have defined it, existed before the term, and religion just hijacked the concept, the same as it did ‘marriage’. Even though the term marriage did not exist prior to religion (just like the term ‘faith’), both the concept and societal fabric-strength of the… Read more »
TES Thanks yeah that’s great stuff. But I still disagree on your reclamation of faith because we can’t reclaim something that’s not ours. You say that there was faith before religion but only if we define faith as something else, because the concept faith itself — institutionalized cultural hope implemented by elites in order to prop up the structural helplessness of common peoples in capture bondage — did not exist before religion. And the reason it didn’t exist is because indigenous people had agency over their lives and didn’t need psychological crutches. In self-reliance, ecological cultures get out of life… Read more »
Religion re-defined faith, the way they wanted, in order to hold the concept captive in ignorance. This is part of the broader argument of loosh, ignorance, and captivity I am positing. If religion is part of the formula of captivity – then a fortiori, it could never have actually legitimately defined faith in the first place (like having bank robbers define ‘accounting’). So, under my premise of loosh-captivity, religion defining faith becomes a circular justification –> Under the non-captive/loosh premise, only religion can define faith, therefore faith did not exist before religion – this is begging the question (petitio principii).… Read more »
“Religion re-defined faith, the way they wanted, in order to hold the concept captive in ignorance.” But there’s no linguistic evidence that religion redefined faith. And, that I’m aware of, cultural anthropology holds no record of the faith concept among animist peoples or even the proto-religious peoples of chiefdoms. Therefore, while I agree on the tautological nature of faith and religion to be sure — and it just so happens that lately I’ve been making that very point myself — it means that that your position is also tautological, because it revolves around the above premise that I see no… Read more »
I doubt there is linguistic evidence for any human characteristic being defined before religion, so that would not be a basis for any inference. It is merely an appeal to ignorance. Character is something others can observe in your actions. Faith is something you observe in yourself, and is not readily visible for the most part, save by those who are also on its path. But heavy overlap nonetheless, agreed. Ethics have more to do with professional practices… but overlap conceded, yes. My definition of faith would contrast it with religion, so it could not be a tautology. However, the… Read more »
Tautologies aren’t defined in relation to other tautologies. :) They’re defined by centralized assumptions. Linguistics is a major focus of cultural anthropological field work. There were still lots of pristine tribes in the 19th and 20th centuries and many many more in the several colonial centuries before with whom civilized people went to live and learn their languages and wrote about their experiences. So when I was talking about linguistic evidence for faith I was talking about analogues. For example, since subsistence societies aren’t acquisitive, most of them didn’t even have the number 4 in their language, because 4 was… Read more »
I am most grateful for your foray into this extremely difficult topic, Sukepitiku San, which opens the observational window to the rulers of humanity being captured by “demonic” enticements of “Loosh”, their elite “currency”.