[Newspoetry] Re: Adult Christianity

[Donald L Emerick]

Personal comments for Mike Lehman:

Thanks for the link to the site, but
I have several observations pertinent
to its observations.

1.0.  Yes, it is true that Christians are no
more likely to be decent moral persons
than any other people in the world.

1.1.  However, that truth does not justify
the reverse inference that people seem
all too willing to make, based on some
mentally reactive "Either/Or" dichotomization
that I call the vortextual abuse of logic.
Namely, it is not true that Christians are
less likely to be decent moral persons
than any other people in the world.

1.2. What is true of Christianity is,
perforce (of my ceteris paribus clause,
"any other people" being a relativizing
term of difference/sameness as definition),
also true of any other group of people
designated by any other religious label.
Muslims, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, or
any other group of any other people
who particularize their "normalcy"
by a some unique-brand designation
are following ordinary religious impulses
and, statistically speaking, as the whole
process (of religious consciousness)
is driven by the laws of chance (accident),
we have to expect every body of believers
to be generally indistinguishable from
any other body of believers except for
the label that the (parts of the) body chooses
as its name, in its purely nominative mode.

1.3.  Does it follow, though, that those
who prefer generic religion (no name
will have become a branding mark)
are also a "group" like these groups
that have institutionalized themselves?
Well, I could prove to you that
this large residual may be reduced
even further into different brands
of generic (no name) religions.

1.3.1. And the groups so taken out of
the chaos of this first residual
will also all be morally indistinguishable
from the first groups that make up
the obvious cases of religious identity.

1.4. The truly tough question would be:
can such reductions reduce
the second (to Nth) residual(s)
to an essentially empty population?
How far may we go to deplete,
by recursive reduction procedures,
the inevitable residual?

1.5.  I conjecture that the least sized
group in any residual will end up
looking like an integer, a unity.

2.0.  Obviously, this first conclusion
is simply false, because the same
reductive procedure may be used,
fractionally, to reduce the alleged
unit itself, into its own components,
by what is called psychologic, rather
than sociologic, reductionism.
(There is no essential difference
between psychology and sociology,
except for the unit of analysis --
just as there was once no difference,
I would charitably say,
between chemistry and physics,
except for once dominant and
apparent units of analysis.)

2.1  Fractal reductionism rests,
methodologically, upon a principle
that is driven by a simple truth
about the nature of compositions.
Every composition can be split
repeatedly along multiple lines
of its construction.

2.2  This principle is identical
to the analytic of the most popular
Anglo-American schools for
philosophy and is not at all
distinguishable from the same
principle that the Continentals
(sic!) practice in deconstruction.

2.2.1.  Of course, methodology
(which is also known as ritual
(in religion) or practice (in trade))
differs, but the results from
these different methodologies
lack any difference.

2.2.2.  That is, beliefs
-- as we saw first invoked
in the peculiar case of religion --
make no difference, statistically,
in what humans actually "do",
when viewed as collectives
that differentiate themselves
from one another,
in a process of "actualization" that
we loosely term self-awareness.

2.2.2.1.  But, it is enormously
difficult to put meaning in "do",
which is why, psychologically,
it is easier to get stuck in
identity campaigns
as a lazy way
to avoid facing the problem
than it is to get down to doing
something, as a collective,
that actually is different.

2.2.2.2.  The mechanism of this
trap is that it comes from
those membership problems
of organizational identity.
A member has some property,
by definition.

2.2.2.3.  But, it is quite easy
for people to pretend to have
this property.  Moreover,
when it is valuable to be seen
as one who has this property,
then almost everyone pretends
to have this self-same property.

2.2.2.3.1  We could call this
problem of the nominative label
as a property trait by its old name
of reification.  However, some
call it the "follow the (invisible) leader"
rule of mob psychology, as if
it were a band-wagon effect.

2.2.2.3.2.  It is easy to prove
the principle that every leader
is, essentially, invisible or spectral --
but not everyone who wants
to be a leader understands this
or how to use it fully and effectively
to his her) advantage.

2.2.2.3.3.  Most, "modern" religions
follow the axiom of invisibility by
adopting the Second Law of God
(similar to that of Asimov's law of
(ae)robotics, or thermodynamics):
do not cause the religion to fail
by investing emotions in tangible
and physical objects like idols.

*------------------------------
End of this section of the Tractate.
I do not pretend that
I have all of the fragments
collected and ordered, serially,
properly.  I also declare
that my sincere transliterality
does not guarantee fidelity
to any origin of originality.
You might, for instance,
consult the original, if I could
find where Wittgenstein found it
when he copied out his sections
of this vast Tractate.  And,
you will notice that I have
stopped before 3.x mots,
because language about doing
is easier to declare (in the
magical sensations of that
"performative" anxiety release,
which J. Searle never sees
but always yaks about)
than it is to do anything
usefully about or with or to.
*-------------------------------
Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick