the strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed

[Jumala]

Hello. I'm looking for somewhere to chat. Let's see; a few details about myself.
I went to a Calvinist-leaning Christian school from K-12; and I was raised a Mormon. I got into Biblical criticism, the 'no historical Jesus' hypothesis and the textual criticism of pseudopeipgraphical content in the Bible and the book of Mormon. Around the same time (high school) I also started reading occult stuff, revisionist history and egoistic/amoral philosophy.

I don't believe in any kind of anthropomorphic supernatural entity; though I do believe there is a kind of Zen-like breakdown of organized consciousness or rationalizing dissimulation with physical and psychological experiences. My view on God is somewhere between Lovecraft, Nietzsche and Job; God is just the blind power and impurposive energy of the world. All this sort of literary tradition piled on top of it is interesting and possibly important for understanding history, but dogma is really an attempt to package various philosophic and existential approaches in some proverbial form that will then be vulgarized by the masses. Such is culture.

My librarything: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/NoGodsNoLaws

[Jumala]

A more nihilistic tradition
I don't ascribe to any kind of crazy epistemic nihilism or anything, but I do think there is something to the idea that the Universe is basically a purposeless but relentless machine of which we are just parts. We do certainly exist, but we exist as its gears and cogs and our choices are nothing but a working out of the geist. Biblical authors, Reformed theologians, physicists and philosophers from Nietzsche and Stirner to Hegel and Schopenhauer addressed the idea from different angles.

I find the humanist typically clings to rather flaccid interpretations of Judeo-Christian values, and tend to slanderously attack anyone who dissents (Russell's hack-job on Nietzsche, for example) or more typically pretend away the more critical, post-Enlightenment realists and atheists who seriously question the assumptions, both practical and theoretical (is there any difference?) of the modern secular, democratic left. Yet to place Nietzschean Illegalists like Renzo Novatore or elitist individualists like Ernst Junger into the category of theocrats and National Socialists is absurd to anyone with a basic understanding of the ideas involved.

Yes, "if men were what they should be, could be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a paradisiacal life.** -- All right, men are as they should be, can be. What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they be? Not more, again, than they -- can, than they have the competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because what they are not they are incapable of being; for to be capable means -- really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataracts see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataracts successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see. Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot.
     The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one reflects that the words "it is possible that." almost never contain another meaning than "I can imagine that. . .," e. g., It is possible for all men to live rationally; e. g., I can imagine that all, etc. Now -- since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves -- general reason is for me only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a reality that is called a possibility only in reference to what I can not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.
     As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they -- cannot be so.
     If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may be assured that something stands in the way of the thing, and that it is -- impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved to have a better, and "could" have it if we only would? We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of today is the only art possible, and therefore real, at the time.

- Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard:
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.
Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what he had chanced to mould in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.

- Nyralothotep, H.P. Lovecraft

Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 3:19

What does determinism profess?
It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb; the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.
“With earth’s first clay they did the last man knead,
And there of the last harvest sowed the seed.
And the first morning of creation wrote
What the last dawn of reckoning shall read.”

- The Dilemma of Determinism by William James

No gods, no life after death, no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, are all deeply connected to an evolutionary prospective. You're here today and you're gone tomorrow; and that's all there is to it.

- Will Provine

Most freewill defenders are such undisciplined, pre-philosophical thinkers, who demonstrate their incomprehension of the position they are supposedly against. They thrive on a straw man argument, upholding their own feeling-based, unrefined, pre-critical position by refuting a version of determinism that no one has ever held.

- Kogen Mizuno, specialist in Buddhist philosophy

Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.

- Ray Brassier

[Recusant]

Hello and welcome to HAF, Jumala.

Nyarlathotep, eh?  Well I look forward to you joining various conversations when you make it out of the "Getting to Know You" section.

I hope you enjoy your time reading and posting here.

[Tank]

Hi Jumala

Welcome to Happy Atheist.

Regards
Chris

[The Magic Pudding]

Hello Jumala I see you're in the desert, prophets often get their inspiration there, that or a bit too much sun.  

[Jumala]

I sometimes wonder why people in prophecy so often predict doomsday scenarios. Is the Universe really that short lived? Do we really know of anything powerful enough to cause that result? Do you actually imagine Jesus in blood armor on a horse fighting a multi-headed Chaos dragon? This stuff is really foreign to any kind of world view that accepts microwave ovens and German cars. It's just absolutely bizarre imagery from the old religions; the elements are found in every major religion from India to Ireland.

[Tank]

I sometimes wonder why people in prophecy so often predict doomsday scenarios. Is the Universe really that short lived? Do we really know of anything powerful enough to cause that result? Do you actually imagine Jesus in blood armor on a horse fighting a multi-headed Chaos dragon? This stuff is really foreign to any kind of world view that accepts microwave ovens and German cars. It's just absolutely bizarre imagery from the old religions; the elements are found in every major religion from India to Ireland.

It's the same reason you will never see a news paper with a headline like 'World fine, have a nice day!'. I think humans who are threat aware are more likely to have survive than those that don't. It's a fine balance though as paranoia wastes a lot of effort. But a blasé attitude to threat is worse as one could get eaten! People have become attuned to looking for danger. So if one is a charlatan looking for a quick buck it's better to prophesy bad things, particularly if you are offering a solution as well!

Welcome aboard.

Regards
Chris

[Jumala]

The Bible does have two post-Apocalyptic futures, one after the great flood and as the Jews wander the desert. The Mormons sort of take the natural implication of early Near Eastern religions, that the first man eventually achieves Godhood. As weird as they are to modern Christians, Joseph Smith was a very clever reading of certain leanings and half-way disguised polytheistic and apotheosis myths; especially with some of the stuff that the Catholic church ignores, such as the Marcianites and the Enoch books. I mean, it's implied that descendents of Adam sit at the right hand of God, and some other Godly entity sits next to him.

And all that weird stuff about the 'mercy seat'? It was two sphinx like angels cribbed from Babylonian myths that Adonis (the Lord) floated above, the 'spirit of the lord' hovers over it.
Babylonian Sphinx:
The Mercy Seat:
The use of such ancient imagery from Gilgamesh-era mythology is one of the things that makes early Christian and Baptist sects fascinating to me. Ancient Near Eastern mythology is so different from Greek and Asian mythology, even when you can see they are drawing on similar archetypes. Jaweh is quite a different god from Zeus or Thor; even though Jaweh is a composite of Zu/Du and the Tir/Tor deities; with the same Chaos Dragon fighting history as these Gods, as well as Uhura Mazda.

Check this out: Ancient Near Eastern Combat Myths http://www.archive.org/details/Podcast6.2OriginsPart1-AncientNearEasternCombatMyths

[Guest]

It's nice to see Finnish on a foreign forum. Or does your username have another meaning in a different language than Finnish?

[Jumala]

It's nice to see Finnish on a foreign forum. Or does your username have another meaning in a different language than Finnish?

I thought it was really interesting what an early monotheistic deity Jumala represents in Finland; especially considering Finland's rather obscure geographic and linguistic origins.

[Guest]

It's nice to see Finnish on a foreign forum. Or does your username have another meaning in a different language than Finnish?

I thought it was really interesting what an early monotheistic deity Jumala represents in Finland; especially considering Finland's rather obscure geographic and linguistic origins.

Yeah, the area that is now Finland was never monotheistic before the crusades. During those then the indigenous Pantheon was replaced with Chatolicism, with limited success. I've actually met some Finnish Pagans that claimed to have a continual lineage of Pagan ancestors, who never saw fit to convert. When old Martti came along it was chatolicism out the window quite easily. Now people are slowly getting rid of Lutheranism, too.

The aboriginals are the Sami people, who were driven way up north as "Finnish" tribes progressed some thousand years ago. Now it is true that the origins of Finns are quite obscure, but I'd like to know more about what you think "Jumala" represents in Finland? I take it you don't mean contemporary Finnish representations though?

[Jumala]

Well, he starts as one of two Sky Gods, then they are essentially merged and later transitioned in to Christianity.

It seems sky gods and, to a lesser extent, sun gods always get top billing. Really shows and agricultural and weather bias in these Near Eastern religions.

[Feanor Thunder]

Welcome! I'm a newer fella myself.

--FT

[xSilverPhinx]

Welcome!