"It still seems to me that if your words and formulations are not linked to reality and your intentions, then you are merely a liar."

So many people never really stop to examine their "formulations" or their primary assumptions of how the world operates. They ecclectically take a little of this and a little of that (philosophy) without examining if it makes sense, if their worldview is consistent. Or they say they believe one thing, but their actions say something very different, demonstrating the fact of a very different worldview than the one they profess.

Maybe that was Nietzsche’s problem. He declared God dead, but how does a diety die? Like one of my children said when five years of age, "Wouldn't it be great if there was no God. Then we could do anything we wanted." Maybe he wanted God to be dead so he could do anything he wanted, but in his heart he knew it was not so, and he couldn't completely live out his chosen worldview. Just a thought.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.08.06 - 8:22 pm | #

He declared God dead, but how does a diety die?

Only by giving up their deity, it would seem. How do you suppose that Christ died? Some in the early years after his Spirit began to change the world tried to maintain that he did not die on the cross, I think it was one of the Gnostic heresies. They and others could not accept the brutal reality and the literalized metaphor of the Blood of the Lamb.

Nietzsche seemed to realize something while finally losing his mind, that is that animals are sacrificed and treated brutally daily. At least the ancient Jews and others understood that as their symbolic rituals reveal it, perhaps because like so many things they could see such patterns literally. Most of us do not literally experience such things anymore, and now we seem to be becoming metaphorically blind to sacrifice and so perhaps losing our vision of what is sacred.

Interesting, Nietzsche would not be the first to drive himself crazy over good and evil, never getting beyond it.

Well, I don't plan to follow his lead. No, I'm happy being the simple fellow that I am.
mynym | Homepage | 05.08.06 - 10:41 pm | #

By the way, I read your blog. What is it that I'm supposed to disagree with?

Let me know and I'll get right on it. One of these days we'll have to draw out your visceral reactions to have a look at them.
mynym | Homepage | 05.08.06 - 10:43 pm | #

Ha! Nothing bothered you, even in the least? I will have to work harder I suppose.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 6:34 am | #

I think the point of the sacrifices was threefold:

1. to cover over sin (without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin)

2. to demonstrate, again and again, the seriousness of sin--that no one just gets away with it--someone has to pay, like an innocent animal.

2. to point to the true Lamb, God Himself, in the flesh, who would ultimatedly pay the price for sin that man himself could not. (As only a human could substitute for humanity's crime of treason, but none were without the stain of sin, it could only be a God-man who could step in)

Number 2 I think is what we need more of...not sacrificing of animals, but the knowledge that someone has to pay, someone innocent had to suffer, for our crimes against God. When I get a little too flippant about my personal sin, I try to bring myself back to that realization that it cost Jesus His life.

Yes, that was one of the Gnostic heresies that Christ did not really die on the cross. It was a substitute, or his Spirit was not there...there are different variations.

Interestingly, this is where Muslims also part with Christ. First, they don't see how God could have a "Son", but what is truly offensive to them is the cross. They see Jesus as a sinless prophet and do not believe God would allow Him to die on a cross so there must have been some last minute substitution. What does that mean for them in terms of forgiveness?
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 6:55 am | #

My main beef is with the catholic rituals of idolitry and the confessional....this manly intervention and absolution of sins corrupts the faithful.

I know catholics who sin freely "knowing" that a penance here on earth, a few bead-rubbing moments of their time will absolve them of what crimes agaisnt the soul they may wish to commit.

Foul.
Nancy Willing | 05.09.06 - 11:59 am | #

Being a Protestant, I can't really comment fairly on Catholicism. There are several aspects which I just can't quite relate to.

Nonetheless, I have many Catholic friends who are very devout and excellent examples of the Christian faith. I doubt that they would sin willfully, believing that "a few bead-rubbing moments of their time will absolve them of what crimes agaisnt the soul they may wish to commit." Are there some people who act like this? Undoubtedly there are from any branch of Christianity or any other faith for that matter. But I don't worry myself about it too much. I'm pretty sure God knows true repentance from fire- insurance.

Besides, I have enough to keep me busy just trying to keep myself from straying off the straight and narrow to judge the faith walk of others.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 2:58 pm | #

My main beef is with the catholic rituals of idolitry and the confessional....this manly intervention and absolution of sins corrupts the faithful.

I'm not Catholic, yet I probably know more about Catholicism than most self-defined Catholics. I think that serious Catholics of knowledge and faith tend to do a decent job of reaching towards the point that is beyond the patterns typical to the Right and the Left. For instance, in Christianity the main metaphor in which the physical represents the metaphysical/spiritual is that of gardening. Perhaps Catholics have tended to go into other cultures and merge into their traditions too much, resulting in a paganized Christianity grown over with weeds/idols more than Christianized pagans. That's the Leftist way, to merge and blur just a little too much. I would think you would like that tolerant aspect of Catholicism, its immanence and the way it begins to fit into the unreasonable nonsense of the notion that conceptual order will emerge out of perceptual chaos. Notice how they've worked the feminine in, sometimes by almost deifiying Mary. The interesting thing about such things is that you can read texts that are thousands of years old, when it comes to the Sumerian that is as old as writing itself as far as we know, yet the same basic patterns hold. Whatever happened to their evolution? Do you think it just needs more time, why? What supposedly holds back change?

Yet before I meander off and my readers sigh about "evolution" being written of again, note in contrast the pattern of many Protestants, those who tend to go in and uproot the garden, sowing the seeds of conception everywhere, perhaps then leaving to uproot another. Catholic failures probably have been more serious over history and are probably more serious to this day, I would agree. Yet in all the Christian sects there is wheat and chaff, there is even wheat and chaff among people throughout history who have not know Christianity as it is now biblically formulated. And that notion opens the door to the fact that there are probably still some "noble pagans" even now.

Ironically, my generation will probably tend to recognize Christian patterns with an absence of a focus on sect/denomination because it plays video games. But back to you, my elders:Besides, I have enough to keep me busy just trying to keep myself from straying off the straight and narrow to judge the faith walk of others.

It would seem that Anna's following the Rightist way here, no surprise there. Yet she is also following the advice of Christ in applying it to herself first and to others second. She'll be tricky, but I may draw her mind into something yet!
mynym | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 9:01 pm | #

hmmm. what does that mean, "I may draw her mind into something yet!" ? should i be on my guard? sounds like you'll be the one to be "tricky" or worse, perhaps "tricksy".
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 10:04 pm | #

fine commentary, mynym.
hitting that nail square on.
I prefer to stay off of the left and right inferences!!! but the tendency of the blurring as they missioned far a field did produce that resulting compromise.
I knew a Cuban who kept an alter of full glasses of water and a picture of Jesus.
Asked what the water represented, he said those loved ones who passed away (his mother etc.) fascinating!
Earler forms of Christian worship were more pagan I suppose.
There has definately been some "evolution" but not perhaps always on the best track, what weeds out cultural changes, or movements, good or bad?
Nancy Willing | Homepage | 05.10.06 - 10:11 am | #

byw I do nt have a homepage but a pesky "thingy" has attached itself to my info as "my url" sorry.
Nancy Willing | Homepage | 05.10.06 - 10:13 am | #

Nancy,

themayorofnewarkdelaware.blogspot.com....moving up in the world, I see. too cute
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.10.06 - 12:23 pm | #

Nancy,

Try locating the icon for Internet Explorer and right clicking on it. Click on properties, then click on "Delete cookies". That might help. Other than that I have no suggestions. Hope that helps.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.11.06 - 7:49 am | #

should i be on my guard?

It wouldn't be any fun if you weren't.
mynym | Homepage | 05.11.06 - 8:55 pm | #

I prefer to stay off of the left and right...but the tendency of the blurring as they missioned far a field did produce that resulting compromise.

I like to try to look for a hidden unity to things, yet sometimes things are just wrong as defined by what is right. That's what the case you brought up seems to be, just wrong.

There has definately been some "evolution" but not perhaps always on the best track, what weeds out cultural changes, or movements, good or bad?

I guess ultimately it is some form of an unmoved Mover, otherwise we'll be tracing cause and effect back to the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in a rain forest setting off a chain of cause and effect that changes the world. The interesting thing about the proverbial butterfly of chaos theory is that it didn't actually cause anything either. In fact, according to some it would seem that butterflies don't actually exist because the term "butterfly" is not a real form as defined by design and instead is just a name that humans assign to some bits of matter in motion. If there is no design, then all that matters is what forms human minds decide to assign based on the motion of their own matter.

As for me, I'd say that many things are designed like unmoved Movers using their minds and learning to cause ripples in the medium of Nature. Are we still bound by the medium and caught up in it to the point that one could even think that the medium we write in is all there is to us, of course we usually are. So what weeds out the weeds in the "cult"ure by cultivating and tilling it up, leading to civilization? Why Nancy, you may, althoug whatever acts of creativity you engage in and cause to be may seem like just another pebble dropping in the pool...well, we all add up sometimes.

Other times, I guess there aren't enough pebbles to change a whole pool. Yet even there it seems to me that all change (however small it is in the end) that is created and brought about by those designed to be capable of choosing for a change would matter deeply to God. It would seem that only God could know what ultimately causes things, after all, as every chain of cause and effect that can be read in the medium of a finite Nature keeps receding back from the reader to that point at which cause and effect are infinite.
mynym | Homepage | 05.11.06 - 9:08 pm | #

I've wondered if Nietzsche could be seen as a proto-Nazi. I was reading this book, "Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism", and it gives very good arguments supporting the claim, yet I still have some doubts.
Henry | 07.11.06 - 12:21 pm | #

It probably depends on how big a component you make anti-Semitism in defining Nazism.
mynym | Homepage | 07.12.06 - 11:33 pm | #

Interesting angle regarding Nietzsche and music.

A friend pointed me over here to check this post out because he's familiar with my music video treatment of Nietzsche's parable The Madman, which I perform live with my band as part of our music video societal critique "Thus Spoke The Spectacle."

Check out our Nietzsche video if you have a chance, and I'd be interested in your feedback.

Eric

http://www.thespectacle.net/vide...videos/ mad.html

(BTW, I know the comments discussion here is a few years old, but for what it's worth I think the Walter Kaufmann biography on Nietzsche offers some good evidence against the charge that Nietzsche was an anti-semite.)
Eric Goodman | Homepage | 07.14.09 - 1:11 pm | #