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Subject: The 3 major obstacles to the Logos Kingdom come on earth

(Tues, May 31, 2011)

(approx. 4895 words, 9 pp.)

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Preface:

Before we begin, it dawns on me after having spent several weeks on this series of essays that you, my dear reader, may have never heard of "the Kingdom of God" come on earth or as the Lord’s Prayer says, "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" To be perfectly blunt we will be speaking here of the fulfillment of this Prayer request made by countless millions, countless millions of times, known only to GOD.

Basic theology here: What is the "Kingdom of God"?  As I heard Vernon McGee define it years ago, and I think correctly and succinctly, it is wherever "the will of God reigns" or is done, etc. Not complicated, truly. And Scripture teaches for man on earth that, in religion, this is all men and women should be saved with new spiritual Life in the Spirit, and that there should be good government and law where peace, justice, and righteousness should be the order of the nations and where Jesus reigns, as it were, with "a rod of iron," as Scripture says, and not with a wet noodle, so to speak.

The point? The "Kingdom come" is not some utopian, unworkable, ultimately immoral humanist dream that inevitably turns into a nightmare as we have seen time and time again in modern humanist history over the last 250 years and now in recent years, many feel, even in America. Although upon close inspection it is the same phenomenon of the Kingdom Era or Age of true religion in spirit and truth and of good and righteous government over planet earth in Isaiah and Revelation (that is, the Reign of the Davidic King, who is Christ or Second Person of the Trinity and not some mythological figure), it is probably best described in Isaiah and not Revelation. Why?

As a general rule Isaiah is more down to earth with his imagery and prophecies of a Kingdom Era except when he talks of things like lions eating straw, or whatever, and those prophecies, at this time, would certainly appear to be of a later "new heavens and new earth," which Isaiah also speaks of (as does John in Revelation), that is, after the much prophesied "1000 year" reign of "God’s will" on earth in true religion and good government, our subject here in these essays. Not complicated, shall we begin?

I want to outline in this series of essays how we can succeed in moving to set up the Kingdom of God come, literally in our lifetimes, and even specifically perhaps in 2012 or 2016 or 2020 or whenever. I mean this specifically, literally, and not so-called "metaphorically" as the Liberals love to make everything in the Bible. Again, "the Kingdom come" is salvation-based Christianity as the only true religion for mankind on earth and Logos-based law and government, which in America will presumably be reviewing the entire structure and purpose of actual current laws, agencies and polices in terms of a Rational, practical or workable, moral analysis. This was, of course, the subject of the recent Revolution essay series of Wednesday Updates.

Simple enough objective, I would say, but we clearly at this time face significant resistance in the realm of the spirit for achieving these noble ends. And we face philosophically, even spiritually, obstacles in 3 major areas of American society, namely, "legal positivism" in law, closed-minded Epicureanism in education, and "higher criticism" in the Christian and Jewish religions. So, how should we understand and overcome these final three seemingly demonic strongholds in our lifetimes or the next generation or two, and hence achieve a final victory for "the Kingdom come on earth," quite literally?

As Adrian Rogers used to say, man’s enemy is not the Republicans, it is not the Democrats, it is not the Liberals, it is the Devil." We "war" not against flesh and blood, Paul says. And there is even a passage in the New Testament where Paul says of Satan, "We are not ignorant of his devices" and this keeps him from getting an "advantage" over us. And this is especially true as well when we get a little help from the Holy Spirit in our understanding of things!

So, I am going to walk you thru step-by-step on how to set up the "Kingdom come" now on earth, which as we have seen previously will require something of a "Revolution," a "Kingdom Revolution" (you might say) because we have gotten so far off track in religion, government, law, and education.

You have to stick with this analysis, step-by-step, though it may not seem like it is going anywhere at first, and I am going to make this slightly autobiographical (as a literary device) because that makes it quicker and easier to do. This starts for me in my first philosophy class, and I certainly took a lot of them over a 12 year period. It was a great class, taught by a guy named Errol Harris. In the course of that introductory class (he actually wrote the textbook we used) we touched on a lot of the major questions of Western philosophy, and at the time some of the points did not sink in for me but some did deeply. One which did not at the time sink in or at least its larger significance, I must say, is known as "the mind-body problem." Please, stick with me here.

The professor in my first philosophy class explained the so-called "mind-body problem" to us, and I did not think much of it one way or another, and then he went to the next topic. But what is "the mind-body problem"? Actually in the Great Books video series on this website we encountered it with Socrates. (It is not unusual to encounter great questions of philosophy first raised in Socrates and Plato!)

Socrates’ friends ask him why he is still sitting in his jail cell when he had had a chance to leave before his execution. And he makes something of a social contract argument against leaving about all Athens had done for him,, and then he says that is why he has decided not to escape. Then he says some people would say that he was still in the jail because his legs had not carried him out. And Socrates says (more or less) that it is true his legs have not carried him out, but that is not why he is still in the jail cell.

Rather, he says he is still in the cell because he has decided (in his mind) not to leave. Please stick with this because it probably seems to you like this is not going anywhere, or that it is trivial or whatever, just as it did to me the first time I heard it. Here’s the deal: this question or problem actually tends to open up a massive unresolvable mysterious can of worms for mankind’s knowledge on earth, but some people just simply cannot "see" this.

The fact is the enormity of "the mind-body problem" is more easily seen if you call it "the mind-brain problem." Why? Your brain is a physical chemical organ in your head. Your mind is not a physical object, and it does not even exist in time and space in the same way physical objects do (your brain or otherwise), and the same can be said of the content of your thought. The fact is mental thoughts clearly appear to be qualitatively and even substantially different from the physical brain on which they fairly obviously depend.

The Pythagoreans were, of course, really big on this, famously, and this is, I have surmised, where Plato gets his famous realm of abstract truth and "forms" etc. but the important point here your mind is not the same thing as your brain. The significance of this is enormous.

Two plus two equals four exists in the realm of the abstract mental, similarly if you design a rocket ship to take you to the moon, it first exists in the realm of the abstract mental, and then you create it successfully or unsuccessfully in the realm of 3 dimensional time and space and of physical objects. This is just another version of Socrates’ deciding (in his mind obviously) not to leave the jail cell with his body when the opportunity presented itself, and hence this decision in his mind is the cause of his body’s still being in the jail cell in the realm of time and space and physical objects.

The comeback to all of this is that something is going on in his brain when he is making his decision or when the scientist designs the rocket ship, and that is true, but the truth and meaning of the decision that is causing the physical reality (and design of the rocket ship, etc.) is itself not "in" the brain, it is "in" the mind, and similarly when I say "two plus two equals four" I do not mean I have had some given chemical brain state, I mean a certain mathematical truth, and even an ontologically real mathematical truth.

But where do such truths, mathematical or otherwise, exist? In the ontological real realm of the mental, obviously. But "where" does the realm or reality of the mental exist? Nobody knows. Some people say it exists in the mind of GOD, and we are somehow participating in the mind of GOD with our correct abstract thought. That might well be true in my opinion, but it still does not tell us "where" the mind or its truths exist or "how" mind or its truths exist, if not in normal time and space as physical objects. But, regardless, answering (the apparently unanswerable question) of where and how abstract thoughts exist is not the mind-body problem, as such, rather the problem is the mystery of the mind-body problem, which clearly exists if you can "see" it.

Further, we also do not understand how consciousness works, which animals also tend to have generally, but theirs is not a rational, meaningful (to the nature of things) consciousness, which obviously only humans have. There is clearly a problem and a mystery here with rational meaningful, abstract thought of mind and consciousness. Both really exist and cause things to happen in the normal physical world whether it is a rocket ship or Socrates leaving or not leaving his jail cell, but we know not how.

The brain seems clearly to be made by God as a mysterious link between the realm of the physical and the realm of the mental. I think you could argue "the heart" philosophically speaking is clearly not a physical organ, as such, but exists in the realm of the (good or bad) spiritual just as your mind exists in the realm of the mental, but the specific point here is your brain is the actual, seemingly miraculous physical organ that connects your mind to your body, and we do not understand how this works, and we probably never will, and that is why it is called the "mind-body problem."

We really, ontologically speaking, have minds (that is to say, minds actually exist)

We really, ontologically speaking (that is to say, they actually exist), have minds, and we really have brains, and they are two different things, and they exist in two different ways. One exists in the realm of the abstract mental, whatever that is, and the other in the normal everyday 3 dimensional physical world of physical objects. Is this complicated? No, it is not. But how the mental exists, and how the realm of abstract truth exists, and how it connects with the brain is mystery, as is consciousness more generally, but we have consciousness, and we have abstract thought, and they do not exist in the same way that physical objects do, but they cause things to happen in the physical universe.

So, non-physical reasons in your mind cause physical occurrences in the physical world. But how? Nobody knows. Clearly something is going on in your brain in the whole process, but that does not tell you "how" or "where" the unseen realm of the mental exists in order to cause things to happen in the physical world by means of your physical brain and physical body. And that is why it is called the "mind-body problem" or perhaps better the "mind-brain problem" because the mind and the brain are two radically different things, but if you are still not following this get out your dictionary and look up the two words "mind" and "brain" and of course they will have two completely different definitions in just meaningful ordinary language.

I have written about 1220 words (that is a lot) on this fact that your mind and brain are not the same thing, and that there is a realm of abstract truth in your mind, and it causes things to happen in the physical world based on the rational meaningful truth of the mental (such as the design of the rocket ship or Socrates’ decision on leaving or not leaving the jail cell).

As one famous professor of mine in the late 20th century used to say "reasons are causes," or can be, that is to say, reasons in your mind can cause physical realities in the world, and this was his claim to fame, and he was considered one of the top 2 or 3 philosophers in the world, no less, at the time. Of course, Socrates had beat him to the punch by over 2400 years, but be that as it may, the problem, mystery, and the topic of the mind and body was still alive and well in the late 20th century, as a practical fact This is where things get interesting and wide-ranging. (In fact, a denial of the reality of the mind-body problem was one of the main causes of the theories of Marx and Engels, as we will see later.)

This is where things get interesting..."seeing" the so-called "mind body problem"

We are going step-by-step to "the Kingdom come on earth." Trust me on this; I know where it is going. The mind-body problem has nothing to do with morality itself, at least initially, though ultimately it does. The mind-body problem is just one topic among many that is discussed in the history of Western philosophy. The key point here is nobody can really nail down the relationship between the mind and the brain, but most people can "see" the mind and brain are clearly two different "things". I put "thing" in quotes, because the mind is not a physical "thing" like the brain is. That is the whole point of the mind-brain problem.

But the point of this writing is that some people simply cannot "see" that reasons can be causes and that the mind and brain are two different things. I want to be clear that I am not calling anybody "stupid" here nor "morally depraved," at least not yet because this is really not a matter of "intelligence," as such, nor of "morality," as such.

However, the fact that your mind and brain are two different "things" and the corresponding point that real abstract reasons in your mind can cause your physically real body to do things simply cannot be "seen" by some people. It is self-evidently true or obvious to most people by common sense (I think) that we as human beings have minds, and rational minds at that but not to everybody.

If you can’t "see" it, you can’t "see" it...

Indeed, most philosophers I am aware of today, who have expressed an opinion on this subject in our time, believe we do not really have minds. (I kid you not.) It is called "reductionism". It is actually a very popular theory among philosophers today, that is, your "mind" is actually, supposedly, reducible to your "brain," and, hence, the word "mind" means the same thing as "brain." And the real corollary here, of course, is that there is no real realm of the Rational abstract for the reductionist. So, you do not really have a mind (usually they will say) because it is not a physical object, and you are not having real thoughts about the real nature of things (because such thoughts are not physical objects either, usually they will say).

Again, the key point here is that being able to "see" that your mind and brain are two different "things" is not a matter of intelligence or IQ or moral depravity. It is a matter of "seeing" it, and if you cannot "see" it, you cannot "see" it. This is not "see" in the physical sense of the word but in the sense of "understand" or "makes sense" to you.

The key point is if someone says to you they cannot "see" the mind and brain are two different "things," then one must accept the fact they cannot "see" it. And generally speaking you cannot talk somebody into "seeing" something which they cannot see, and one must assume such people are not lying to you, they are serious, they just cannot "see" it, but, still, it seems self-evident to most people by common sense and ordinary use of language that your mind and your brain are just two different things.

If you really want to see how crazy this gets, the reductionist, who wants to reduce the mind simply to the brain, thinks he has had a higher "non-vision," as it were. The reductionist has come to "see" that you do not have a mind, really, you just think you do, and you have not reached his higher level, as it were, to realize that you are supposedly "seeing" things! It is all a matter, for the reductionist not of his failure to "see" that he has a mind with potentially real abstract truths, but it is supposedly your failure of thinking you are "seeing" something (a mind) that is not really there, because the reductionist has "looked," and he simply cannot "see" the mind and brain are two different "things." So, for the reductionist there is really no problem of the mind and brain. You might say it, the problem, is something of an illusion.

Look, this gets a little bit crazy; people write books on this and teach courses on it and make a career out of it. Namely, there is no "mind-brain problem." It simply does not exist, usually in terms of the supposed idea that we do not have minds, and of course there is no real abstract truth in the mind you don’t have etc. Indeed, a central tenet of the original Humanist Manifesto is there is no mind-body problem, and it is a central tenet of materialist humanism more generally, probably best outlined by Marx and Engels as the foundational truth of their entire theory of dialectical (no-mind) materialism; for example, the American founders only thought they were fighting for Justice (in their minds) as the cause of their revolution, but in reality it was supposedly all a matter of (unconscious) class interest, etc.

It was Cicero who said, "There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it." In my personal opinion, that is the case with the person who holds we do not have minds. Not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in my personal opinion it is overtly ridiculous if not absurd to argue or assert that human beings do not have (real) minds, but not a whole lot rides on it. And as far as I am concerned, it is a free country, and if you want to write books on the no-mind position, or if you can get someone to pay you to teach courses on it, go for it.

What in the world does this have to do with going step-by-step to setting up the Kingdom of God on earth? The answer is probably nothing and everything! The fact is I would speculate that 99 people out of 100 would hold by self-evident common sense that you really have a mind, and it is not the same "thing" as your brain, but the reality is some people just cannot "see" it, they say themselves, and one must accept the fact they cannot "see" it. Where is this going?

There are some things that some people simply cannot "see" but which probably 99 people out of a 100 (who have not been negatively influenced by the blind) can "see" with no problem at all, and in this case we are talking about something as simple and self-evident as having a mind, of all things! As far, so good, not a whole lot rides on this question of the mind-body problem so far, BUT is about to get nasty, very nasty. WHY?

Let’s say it is 1% (I would guess if that, but even 10%) of people who hold that human beings do not really have minds, and presumably they think this because they cannot "see" it they say, and, hence, for them they have had a brilliant insight of "not seeing," which the other (90% to) 99% of ordinary people have not had. It is easy to see why the reductionist thinks he is "smarter" than everyone else because he has "looked," and it is clear to him that 99 people out of 100 are seeing something that is not there.

You should be able to see where this is going, and where it will actually go in all history. The simplistic reductionist is going to become an evangelist for this overtly nutty no-mind idea to the other (90 to) 99 people out of 100, and he is going to want it taught in the schools, and with time he is not going to want the opposing view taught or allow it to be taught, namely, that we do have minds! Why? Because it is self-evident to him that we do not have minds, and because of this he tends to develop a crusading obligation to "enlighten" everyone else to his supposedly brilliant insight that your "mind" is supposedly the same thing as your "brain."

Again, Humanist Manifesto I only had 15 or so major points, and one of them was there is not a mind-body problem; it simply does not exist, and those humanists decided they were going to have to take over the American educational system and not allow even the possible reality of a clear mind-body problem to be taught, a problem which is probably self-evident as a real problem to 99 people out of 100 (not negatively influenced by those blind to the differences of mind and brain).

Again, this is silly and absurd, but not morally depraved, but the exact same process of being and not being able to "see" or "not see" clear self-evident truth by common sense exists in the realm of natural moral law and moral depravity. This is Jefferson’s point in the Declaration, but in the case of moral "not seeing" it is the blind insisting on their blindness to real moral truth being taught in the schools in a morally depravity fashion, and eventually it is to be taught exclusively without even a consideration of the possibility of the truth of the common sense view, in this case of real moral good truly existing. Enter one Jean Paul Sartre and one Richard Rorty, America’s very own Sartre.

The central tenet of both Sartre and Rorty they say themselves is that no one is really, objectively, Rationally better than literally Adolf Hitler, even Mother Teresa we could add. Sartre and Rorty both said they just could not "see" any real objective, Rational moral superiority of anyone over Hitler, specifically, no less, and as the central point of their (postmodern) theories!

And, further Dewey and Rorty say outright they wish to take over the education system of America and teach or actually indoctrinate or "enculturate" only this "cannot see" real moral truth position (that is, it does not exist) to the children along with there is no God, and further for Sartre and Rorty as well as Dewey there will be an absolute Marxist state, which essentially or de facto for almost all humanists, becomes "God," though none of them say that explicitly as Sartre and Rorty do the Hitler thing, specifically.

Again I do not mean to be unkind or to hurt anyone’s feeling but 99 people out of 100 who have not been negatively influenced would say it is self-evident by common sense to say Rationally, objectively speaking that Mother Teresa is a better person than Adolf Hitler, and that it is overtly absurd to say otherwise, and in this case overtly morally depraved.

For the rebellious Camus the hell with this Sartre and Rorty totalitarian stuff...

For both Sartre and Rorty their (so-called "postmodern") ultimately absurd, morally-depraved positions are the result or logical conclusion of modern humanism that cannot "see" (moral) values are real, abstract, Rational, meaningful facts, but supposedly only mere preferences and opinions. And they ask who is to say whose preferences are really better, if there are no real or Rational values or moral goods as real abstract truths, etc. However, the modern humanist never proved that "values" are not "facts" but only irrationally assumed it, because he could not "see" them as real, meaningful, and Rational. Again, "values" are not physical objects as "minds" are not, but so what?

But what is the larger point here, which Sartre and Rorty say themselves? It is the whole point of their position, namely, they cannot "see" that Mother Teresa is Rationally, objectively better than Hitler, and they want that not only taught in the schools, but only that taught in the schools. This is, more or less, what caused Camus to break with Sartre. Camus believed life was ultimately absurd (as Sartre did), but he was not ready to take that to its logical conclusion concerning Hitler and Mother Teresa, and he did not want a totalitarian state where only that morally depraved position was taught and the state as God was taught, and that is why Camus wrote The Rebel, its central message being the hell with this totalitarian Communist state business, which both Sartre and Rorty advocated, as the central point of their philosophies.

Look, so far so good, I have not really stepped on anyone’s toes yet, except those of the silly, simplistic reductionists, and Sartre’s and Rorty’s toes, of course, the only two people I am aware of besides Nietzsche who have a hard time morally distinguishing Hitler and Mother Teresa, and as the central point of their similar philosophical systems, no less, as it was of Nietzsche’s!

And, in reality, I think even most self-professed life-is-absurd, postmodernists get cold feet as Camus did and are not willing to go to the mat over this stuff with Sartre and Rorty (and I would add Nietzsche). However, we are not going to get from where we are today to where we want to go (the Kingdom come on earth) without stepping on some toes, that is the sad truth of the matter. Maybe a few hundred thousands toes of the currently highly corrupted so-called 1% ruling elite in law, education, government, and religion, that is, those who tend to have different but very similar not-being-able to "see" issues about things which are self-evident to I would think 99 people out of 100.

What we want to do is make the transition out of where we are now, a big mess, to the "Kingdom come" as smoothly as possible. In my personal opinion 99% of people can conceivably get on board for the "Kingdom come on earth," but there is realistically speaking (at least in this generation) maybe 1% that will never accept a Kingdom come on earth nor can they "see" the desirability of it, try as they might.

Some people put the figure as high as 3 or 4%, but I do not know the exact figure, but one must assume I think once the overwhelming majority of people "see" what is involved with a "Kingdom come," they will want it, and it does not matter if there are even 3 or 4% hold outs (or even 10 or 20%), they will quickly become irrelevant in the bigger picture of things.  Still, I personally am shooting for 99% of folks to get on board for the "Kingdom come"...

If you have followed this paper so far you are now ready to take another small but basic step toward the "Kingdom come" on earth. However, most of our colleges and universities as well as law schools and seminaries have fallen victim to the so-called "politically correct," that is, in effect, a close-minded humanism or one sort or another. What does this mean? And how did it happen? And how do we fix it?

I am going to explain to you what this means, how this happened, and how to fix it in very small steps, so we can walk and then run the race to the finish line, and then, presumably, the Kingdom will be here. I have the gift to be able to read the stitches on the devices of Satan’s fastball of darkness as well as his curve ball of deception. We all have our gifts and talents, and this is mine, I suppose. Simple enough.  So, join us next time Tuesday, June 7, 2011 for Part II of this Kingdom come series...