Francis Berger's Blog

Traditional Christian “proofs” of God’s existence—be they ontological, cosmological, or teleological—do nothing for me. At best, I find them unnecessary; at worst, I think they are misguided, perhaps even harmful.

I will grant that such proofs may have served some positive purpose in the past when men chose a different mode of consciousness, but these positive purposes have since become insolvent.

My biggest issue with traditional proofs for God’s existence boils down to the assertion of divine sovereignty they contain—that God has absolute authority and total control over all of Creation because, after all is said and done, he is the ultimate source of all Creation.

Within the framework of such assumptions, the freedom God grants human beings (and other beings in Creation) is ontologically unfree. Suppose God is the source of freedom and controls all of Creation. In that case, the freedom he grants human beings and others is deterministic.

Now, philosophers and theologians have bent and continue to bend over backwards formulating a wide array of abstract word spells to explain how the freedom a divine sovereign God grants us is genuinely free rather than deterministic, but such philosophical wranglings and assertions have never led to any satisfying breakthroughs concerning the true nature of freedom. On the contrary, they tend to come off as obscurant rather than revelatory.

With that in mind, I must note that instigating prolonged and entirely useless theological/philosophical comment debates is not the chief aim of this post. If you assume God is the ultimate, absolute divine sovereign of everything and can somehow square this with authentic freedom, then knock yourself out.

As for me, I firmly believe that freedom is only authentically free if it is, always has been, and always will be something that God cannot ontologically violate .

And by cannot I mean precisely that.

God cannot infringe upon freedom because he is not its source .

​Freedom lies beyond the power of God’s “divine sovereignty,” and it is in this that the true purposes of Creation can be contemplated and approached. 

Note: Freedom here does not refer to the conventional Christian doctrine/concept of free will (God could not have made free creatures unless they were able to choose evil). Likewise for arguments that claim God cannot violate freedom or free will because he cannot violate his own omnipotence. Such assumptions still assert God to be the ultimate source of freedom, which is something I reject. 

The link to Adam Piggott's blog has not worked for well over a month, and I have lost track of him, which is shame because I enjoyed reading his posts. 

I have tried to contact him personally, but I cannot find an email address anywhere. If anyone out there knows anything about what Adam is up to these days or whether he is still blogging, please drop me a comment. 

Adam, if you happen to see this post, please get in touch. 

Tertiary education has been nosediving for at least a century. By the looks of things, AI will be the ground into which that century-long tailspin in quality and everything else will finally crash and explode into a fiery ball, leaving nothing but a smudge of charred earth behind. 

My personal experience in attempting to teach anything in this Age of AI tells me that most students have sunk far below "not even trying" and are now descending into the murky depths of "not even trying to try." 

And what are our hallowed Citadels of Darkness doing to counter this egregious yet strangely self-entitled lack of effort and thinking in university education?

Well, they are forcing professors and instructors to attend workshops and conferences on how educators must harness the power and potential of AI in the lecture hall and classroom -- thereby validating and implementing "not even trying to try" as the new standard of academic excellence. 

As with most things in the past hundred years or so, this is sure to end well (assuming it has not already ended).  

Note added: For the sake of clarity, I should add that most profs and instructors do not oppose harnessing the power and potential of AI in the lecture hall or classroom. 

​In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche poignantly noted that, “The stomach is the reason man does not easily take himself for a God.”

The aphorism requires little interpretation. It surgically and succinctly reveals man’s obvious natural and biological limitations in mortal life. 

The aphorism is often cited as an appeal to humility. Unlike the perfect, transcendent, unfeeling, eternal omnigod of Christian philosophers, man is deeply anchored in nature and at the mercy of basic biological functions and needs. 

Taken as a synecdoche, the belly represents all of man’s glaring vulnerabilities and barriers—all those things that make us mortal, dependent, and limited.

​At the very least, it serves as a sobering reminder of the gaping void that separates man from God. The things that ground us in mortality, many of which are needed simply to survive in mortal life, are the same things that prevent us from becoming gods. 

Yet this contrast between the human and the divine can only go so far. After all, Jesus’s offer of everlasting life offers a man a way out of mortal limitations. It essentially closes the gaping void separating man from God. 

Jesus’s offer is meant to remind man that he possesses a true self—an innate part is divine; a part is a god in embryo. It is this part that moves on to everlasting life and Heaven. 

During mortal life, the true self lies buried under layers of false selves. Some of these, exemplified by the stomach, are needed for basic survival in the mortal world. Others stem from genes and heredity. Others emerge from the process of socialization, psychological development, learning, and experience. Some false selves are indispensable to mortal life; others are actively taken on and endanger or corrupt mortal life. 

Beneath all of that lies the true self—an uncaused cause that is by itself an eternal center of freedom, agency, creativity, and being.

It is the true self that ultimately accepts or rejects Jesus’s offer of everlasting life with the understanding that Jesus’s Second Creation offers the true self—as a center of freedom, agency, creativity, love, and being—the opportunity to fully and creatively participate in Creation sans any physical, natural, and mortal limitations. 

The true self is the reason why man should not easily mistake himself for being nothing more than a stomach.  

Expanded and edited from a comment I left at Bruce Charlton's Notions: 
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The motivation to align with God the Creator because of his power or his totality is the expression and acceptance of a sort of ontological totalitarianism. 

Christians regard this ontological totalitarianism as part and parcel of the Christian revelation, namely, that all humans (and every other being and "thing" in Creation) are subject to God.

Christians regard this subjection as subjection to reality, as reality "really" is, despite any personal insights, assumptions, or discernment that may point to something different.

Part of the subjection to this ontological totalitarianism is the understanding that there is no way out of it. Even the demons who rebelled against God the Creator remain subjected to the ontological totalitarianism of the Christian revelation.

The willing acceptance of ontological totalitarianism entails the acceptance of viewing God as an all-powerful dictator who rules over an intrinsically and necessarily totalitarian system. Of course, God allows people the "free will" to reject his power and rule within such a system, but will ultimately and eternally punish any free-will choice that does not align with ontological totalitarianism.  

Within such a framework, obedience and submission to power and totality are the only viable and rational choices Christians can make. Seen from this perspective, the choice to align with God is hardly heroic or loving. 

On the contrary, the choice may stem from fear more than it does from anything else.

​I have a difficult time accepting that God the Creator would set Creation up in such a way.

Anyway, on the matter of Christian revelation, I would assume the revelation somehow involves Christ, that is, Jesus.

Jesus's primary mission or revelation was the creation of Heaven and making Heaven accessible to those who chose to follow him. Oddly enough, the creation and offer of Heaven does not seem to support the ontological totalitarianism of the Christian revelation.

On the contrary, the creation of Heaven draws such assumptions into question. The dispelling of assumptions about God the Creator as dictator was very much among Jesus's secondary aims during his mission in this world. 


Put another way, Jesus's mission was a direct challenge to assumptions of ontological totalitarianism. I sense that a big part of Jesus's mission involved changing the way people thought about and understood God the Creator.

Part of his mission involved shifting consciousness away from ontologically totalitarian assumptions and toward something else entirely. 

Most Christians appear to have missed this, at least as far as I can tell.   

Dr. Charlton has written an insightful post that emphasizes a self-evident truth that civilizations and societies (and to a great extent, organized Christianity) have all conspired to deny—Every person is unique - a plain fact of experience, contradicted by nearly-all theories (including religions).

Rather than excerpting excellent points from the post, I will focus on a comment Bruce left in response to Laeth:

The fact that "civilization" (i.e. all large scale human societies) can only operate on the basis of denial of uniqueness is an intrinsic evil - something we therefore need to recognize and repent -- even though we cannot - this side of salvation - eliminate it.

Such depersonalized thinking is something that - no doubt - we must be ready to set-aside permanently in ourselves and agree to eliminate forever; in order to want to choose salvation.

Bruce’s mention of depersonalized thinking reminded me of Berdyaev’s insistence on the ultimate significance of what he termed personality, which I equate with the True Self or Primal Self.

In Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev went to great lengths to explain what personality is and why it is crucial:

The entire world is nothing in comparison with human personality, with the unique person of a man, with his unique fate.

The secret of the existence of personality lies in its absolute irreplaceability, its happening but once, its uniqueness, its incomparability.

As Bruce points out in his post, the uniqueness of each being in Creation is an undeniable reality, yet the operation of civilization/society precludes recognizing this reality, at least in practice.

That civilization/society can only (apparently) function when the uniqueness of personality is denied leads to a pressing and unavoidable choice.

Should the supremacy of society over personality be considered something inherently good or evil?

Bruce lands on the side of considering it an intrinsic evil—a state of affairs that cannot be resolved this side of salvation; however, the fact that it is apparently unresolvable on this side of salvation is not reason enough to declare it good on this side of salvation.

Quite the contrary. As Bruce notes, the supremacy of society over personality is an intrinsic evil that must be recognized as such and repented if we ever hope to set aside and eliminate permanently on the other side of salvation.

Berdyaev also regards the supremacy of society over personality as, at best, a “necessary evil” that poses the risk of being an enslaving force that can, and often does, lead to spiritual death. Unlike most traditional Christian philosophers and theologians, Berdyaev does not consider civilization, society, or even religion itself to be superior to personality.

Personality is a subject, and not an object among other objects, and it has its roots in the inward scheme of existence, that is, in the spiritual world, the world of freedom. Society, on the other hand, is an object.

From the existential point of view, society is a part of personality; it is its social side, just as the cosmos is a part of personality, its cosmic side. Personality is not an object among other objects and not a thing among other things.

It is a subject among subjects, and the turning of it into an object or a thing means death.

A bit later in Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev states:

Personality is the absolute existential center. Personality determines itself from within, outside the whole object world, and only determination from within and arising out of freedom is personality.

Personality as an existential center presupposes the capacity to feel suffering and joy. Nothing in the object world, nation, state, or society, or social institution, or church, possesses this capacity.

Berdyaev then outlines how and why personality is not defined by its relation to society:

... personality is defined above all not by its relation to society and the cosmos, not by its relation to the world which is enslaved by objectivization, but by its relation to God, and from this hidden and cherished inward relation it draws strength for its free relation to the world and to man.

Nor by external society/civilization obligations:

Personality is bound up with the consciousness of vocation. Every man ought to be conscious of that vocation, which is independent of the extent of his gifts. It is a vocation in an individually unrepeatable form to give an answer to the call of God and to put one's gifts to creative use.

Personality that is conscious of itself listens to the inward voice and obeys that only. It is not submissive to outside voices.

The greatest among men have always listened exclusively to the inward voice and have refused to conform so far as the world is concerned.

For Berdyaev, personality transcends all this-worldly considerations:

Personality in man is not determined by heredity, biology, and society; it is freedom in man, it is the possibility of victory over the world of determination.

Many traditionally/conventionally minded Christians might interpret the above to mean that Berdyaev (and Bruce and I) advocate for solipsism, but Berdyaev dismisses these concerns by stressing the communal aspect of personality:

Personality is communal; it presupposes communion with others and community with others. The profound contradiction and difficulty of human life are due to this communality.

In a nutshell, Berdyaev regards society/civilization in their past and current forms as objectifying forces:

In objectivization, we may find only symbols, but not basic realities. The objective spirit is only a symbol of spirit. The spirit is real. Culture and social life are symbolic. There is never reality in an object: in an object, there is only a symbol of reality. Reality itself is always in the subject....

The idea that reality is social, through and through, top to bottom, is only really “real” through the supremacy of personality over society—through the spiritual communion and relationships established and nurtured by persons through love, not through relations dictating by an objectifying, depersonalizing force that denies the uniqueness of personality as a spiritual and existential center in its own right..

The supremacy of society over personality remains, sadly, at the core of much Christian thinking and provides the basis for reactionary thought. The bulk of such thinking stems from an earlier mode of religious consciousness with assumptions that regarded this-worldly society as part and parcel of the celestial hierarchy and the heavens.

Valuing society over personality is the hallmark of reactionary thinkers like de Maistre and de Bonald, who regarded society organically, as an organism of which a person was merely a part. For de Maistre and de Bonald, a society/civilization that denied personality was inherently good, and they regarded persons hierarchically rather than personally.

Within such assumptions, the body as a whole is worth more than any of its individual parts. Thus, part of the body’s function involved ensuring that all the individual parts were working properly, even when or especially when the uniqueness or personality of the individual parts threatened the whole.

Reaction may have served some positive purpose in the past, but its assertion of the supremacy of society over personality is no longer simply unviable—it may prove to be spiritually lethal. After all, Auguste Comte was a reactionary in his own right. Like de Maistre and de Bonald, Comte also believed in the supremacy of society over personality. The only real difference between the three reactionary thinkers is that Comte favored the establishment of a secular, scientific elite rather than a religious elite to rule over personality.

Believing in the supremacy of society over personality from a Christian perspective entails believing in the rule of an authoritarian God presiding over a hierarchical Creation that denies the uniqueness of its beings and values the hierarchy over such personal uniqueness. It entails believing that heaven is run the way Christendom was run in the Middle Ages.

I do not believe heaven is run that way, even though the world once was. I also do not believe that returning to some Christendom mode of governance would do much to improve things because it would merely be another version of supremacy of society. 

​Moreover, I believe that any Christian who assumes heaven is run the way Christendom once was may have a difficult time recognizing and repenting the evil inherent in believing in the supremacy of society over personality, to the point that it may act as a formidable obstacle to salvation.  

The responses to my recent posts criticizing logos-centered Christians tend to have one thing in common—they avoid the criticism within those posts altogether.

What were the criticisms in those posts of mine?

My chief criticism in Essentially Leftist Logos-Lovers Railing Against Leftism focused on the observed tendency of trad-minded Christians to overemphasize externals at the expense of internal personal discernment, making such externally-oriented Christians prone to getting embroiled in leftist political and social narratives in the predetermined manner those leftist narratives dictated. I suggested that trad-minded Christians would do well to temper their external orientation with a little more internal focus, particularly in this time and place, where the left controls virtually all that comprises the external.

In On the Matter of Discerning Babies and Bathwater , I made specific reference to a trad-Christian blogger who had posted a positive account of engaging with AI on the subject of God. I bluntly opined that asking AI about God amounted to spiritual perversion—as in, the spirit being turned in the wrong direction—and implored those who had interacted with AI on the subject of God to reflect upon their motivations and actions. I cited the lauding of AI as another example of the trad-minded becoming enmeshed in leftist paradigms. Oddly enough, the same Christian blogger agreed with my criticism but then simultaneously and unceremoniously dismissed my observation—which he had wholeheartedly agreed with— as lacking authority.

The Facts and Logic to Which Logos-Lovers Submit concentrated on the recent assassination of a so-called right-wing political and social commentator and the subsequent and, sadly, predictable reaction logos-centered Christians displayed following the event. Behaving precisely like the push-button automatons the left knows them to be, logos-centered Christians dutifully reacted in the exact way the leftist narrative wanted them to—by fomenting fear and declaring war.

The criticisms in the three posts above could best be summarized as follows:  

Many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus; however, their thinking and behavior suggest that they are far more prone to submitting to the authority of leftist “facts” and manipulative leftist narratives than they are to anything remotely related to the Logos they promote and hold so dear.

None of the responses to my posts about the blind spot inherent in most logos-centered Christians dealt with that criticism directly.

On the contrary, they avoided that criticism altogether and focused instead on misrepresenting Romantic Christian “concepts” in the following way:

Romantic Christians reject all external authority and fact, including things like math and the coffee shop down the street.Romantic Christians live entirely in their heads.Romantic Christians are innately anti-social and anti-society.The Romantic Christian position of tempering authority through personal discernment leads to solipsism.The Romantic Christian position of examining and questioning tradition lacks intellectual and spiritual humility and is just plain nuts. Personal discernment ultimately leads to isolation and atomization.Because they question and/or reject most Christian externals, Romantic Christians cannot “really” be Christians. In fact, they are worse than Gnostics and are essentially atheists.Romantic Christians don't believe in the classical theist definition of God; hence, they don't believe in God at all.
The above are all criticisms in their own right, I suppose; however, none of them address the core criticism of my “logos-lovers” posts.

Now there has to be a reason for this, and there is, as Dr. Charlton succinctly explains below:

Most Christians are first-and-foremost institutionally-led; and they assume and assert that Christianity is A Package.

Therefore, it is regarded as a stark choice between either affiliating to a Christian church and supporting totalitarian evil, or else rejecting totalitarian evil and therefore rejecting "Christianity".

Note: This is the last I will say about this matter for a while. The thing the trad-minded don't seem to understand is that I am not out to mock them "for the hell of it." I criticize because I hope to inspire self-reflection -- but it seems that such self-reflection will likely never occur. Such is the nature of freedom. 

“I have come to Christ through liberty and through an intimate experience of the paths of freedom.

My Christian faith is not a faith based on habit or tradition. It was won through an experience of the inner life of a most painful character.

I knew no compulsion in my religious life, and I had no experience of authoritarianism either in faith or in the sphere of religious devotion.

Can one oppose to this fact dogmatic formulas or abstract theologies?

I answer No, for in my case, they will never be really convincing.”
​                                                                                                             ~ Freedom and the Spirit

Many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus.

They claim that this submission to the authority of facts and logic guides all of their acts and behavior and proves their allegiance to Christ. Furthermore, they vehemently deny any suggestion that this sacred stance of theirs may “in fact” be leftist in inclination or, at the very least, easily manipulable by the left. 

Case in point—the assassination of the so-called right-wing political activist that occurred over a month ago. 

Within minutes of the event, the media lit up in its usual manipulative manner, encouraging the public to take a side on the “issue.” 

Within hours, the media had succeeded in convincing those on the so-called right that the left was out to kill every single one of them. 

Many logos-loving Christians and other self-professed “rightists” fell for the blatant manipulation and behaved like the push-button automatons the left know them to be. 

They enthusiastically assumed the role the left had predetermined for them by heartily contributing to the psychotic and spiritual contagion the left had generated -- to the point that many trad Christians exuberantly encouraged their supposed rightist brothers-in-arms to “gird their loins” because the left was indeed out to kill them all. 

In light of the recent event described above, logos-loving Christians would do well to ask themselves a few germane questions concerning their supposed submission to facts, logic, and Jesus Christ.  

Those on the right are supposedly aware of the leftist control of the media. Why then do they insist on submitting to the “facts” in leftist narratives in precisely the way the leftist narrative instructs them to do?

In connection with that, how does such willful submission to leftist narratives and "facts" prevent one from being a leftist? 

Experience informs us that fomenting hatred and fear is an essential component of any leftist narrative. The recent assassination was no exception. Knowing this, why did the logos-lovers actively and energetically submit and contribute to the fomenting of hatred and fear? Where, exactly, did they find the logic in that? 

Logos-lovers insist that everyone tests his private notions against his apprehensions of fact, trusting that they are more or less veridical. How did the logos-lovers test their private notions against the supposed facts of the recent assassination narrative? Moreover, where, precisely, did they locate the veridicality in such tests? 

As stated above, many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus; however, their thinking and behavior suggest that they are far more prone to submitting to the authority of leftist “facts” and manipulative leftist narratives than they are to anything remotely related to the Logos they promote and hold so dear. 

In a recent post, I suggested that a big problem with contemporary traditional Christians is their assumption that

. . . Christianity is not and cannot be a predominantly private, personal, and spiritual matter; it must be rooted in submission to the external authority—to facts, to churches, to doctrines, to the Bible, to society, to tradition, to authority, to “reality”. Christianity has to be mostly "out there."

Some traditional Christians interpreted this to mean that I reject things like facts and logic outright and embrace a purely solipsistic approach to life and Christianity (as if such a thing were possible).

Nevertheless, the same Christians then went on to basically affirm that my assessment of their assumptions was accurate by proudly declaring that they do indeed submit to the authority of facts and logic and could not do otherwise even if they wanted to.

A quick note about facts and logic.

We shape reality through our metaphysical assumptions, not facts or logic.
Metaphysical assumptions are the core beliefs and postulations that people use to form their explanations about the fundamental nature of reality.

Put another way, it is our metaphysical assumptions that allow us to search for facts and, subsequently, determine what we accept as facts or logic.

Thus, our assumptions shape reality, and no knowable reality exists without such assumptions.

Facts, therefore, are downstream from our metaphysical assumptions. They are secondary—not primary.

Moreover, facts and logic are symbolizations of reality, not reality itself. They offer potential symbolic knowledge about reality but are not a substitute for reality.

Thus, any declaration about submission to the authority of facts or logic is just a disguised expression of the authority granted to metaphysical assumptions.

Traditional Christians tend to regard reality as objectively given. Unfortunately, their core assumptions leave them with few other options. For them, reality basically boils down to the thrown-back knowledge of objects or beings “out there.”
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I assume reality to be a co-creative, spiritual endeavor and achievement. Reality is creative transfiguration, not mere submission to objectively imposed facts.