July 21-28, 2004

If you're looking for a proof of the divinity of the Olympians starting from first principles, you're looking on the wrong site. This is not because I am troubled by some New Age aversion to "judging another's path", or because I don't feel that logic is worth my time, but because studying Mathematics at the graduate level has left me with a certain sense of what logic can and can not do. One thing that logic can not do is generate knowledge ex nihilo; all deductive arguments must ultimately go back to a set of starting assumptions, ie. axioms.

Some have seized onto this simple observation in a note of triumph, offering it as a rationale for the extreme form of relativism that is postmodernism, forgetting that "direct apprehension" is also a concept from basic logic. The fact that deductive arguments need axioms in which to begin does not reduce reason to being a series of arbitrary cultural choices, because one can observe the world around one, and in those observations one makes, find something other than a completely arbitrary set of assumptions in which one's arguments may begin.

This is why we speak of "gnosis" in some of these arguments. We're not interested in converting you to some sort of world denying sect out of Late Antiquity; we ourselves are anything but ascetic, and have never seen much sense in asceticism. Nor are we advocating a "roll your own" sort of spirituality that one makes up as one goes along. What we are suggesting is that a reasoned choice be made as one chooses one's spiritual path, the assumptions (the axioms) that one builds the conceptual edifice that is one's view of what one's faith ought to be (and how it ought to be practiced) finding their rationale in the usual place: in observation of the world around one. We will speak of our reluctance to try to convert you to anything, citing a belief (which we will argue in favor of) that evangelism is a form of rebellion against Divine will, but there's a more basic reason why we won't do that: because any argument which we might use to that purpose would have to be a fallacy, if it is to convince you at all. If you have not had those experiences that would lead you to belief, then you have not had them, and any legitimate argument in favor of your belief would have nowhere to begin with you. This leaves us with a choice between respecting your convictions, or trying to manipulate you by giving you a fallacious argument, and hoping that you won't find the holes in it.

The latter choice would take us into the arrogant realm of a B.F.Skinner, who in one of our least favorite books (titled Beyond Freedom and Dignity) ends up arguing in favor of a scheme by which a select few would engineer the human character in order to creat some imagined utopia - one apparently untroubled by such questions as what qualified those 'engineers' to plans everybody else's thought processes out for them, and on what basis those select few were to be chosen, especially in a world apparently so perfect as to no longer require the kind of open discussion needed for consensus choices to be even vaguely rational ones. (*) Such an approach would meet with near universal (and well deserved) scorn, when applied to secular matters; how very remarkable that so many religious organizations, to whom people will turn to for inspiration, will adopt the same methodology and then wonder why there is so much disillusionment among the faithful, and why the best and brightest are getting harder and harder to find on Sunday, in so many cases.

Much to my surprise, a few years ago I read a claim that this site mentions Hellenic and Roman Paganism "only in passing". I was much surprised by this, because I made a conscious effort to make this site as straightforward and easy to understand as possibly, and would have thought my objectives at each point clear, especially given the presence of an introduction. Perhaps I was mistaken in this belief.

Very well, then. Let us make the nonlinear linear by explaing the dependence of the different sections upon each other, and thus laying out the course of argument. One of the more important articles in the one titled "Constructing God". Aside from being an explanation of where our view of the nature of the Divine and the purpose of prayer come from, it serves a purpose more apropo to the Hellenistic side of the Shrine's spirituality which I was most surprised to see none of those who commented pick up on: it includes a defense of the ethic of the sacrificial cult ("du et des"), often dismissed as an expression of cynicism, but there seen to be an acceptance of Divine will, as it should be reasonably interpreted. It becomes a defense of Hellenic and Roman piety against Pauline Christian criticisms.

At the root of all arguments on this page lies the article "Interview with a Brave Man", which might give you some idea of where the pen name "Antistoicus" came from; I adopted it as an act of protest against the cavalier indifference to the value of life that I saw becoming trendy in some circles. In this article, we construct the start of a defense of the value of "Enlightened Benevolence" from the "Universal Base Code of Morality", with the observation that each of us affirms his belief in the value of life, merely by living, and thus in this matter of taste, one can discover what our common choice, dictated by our inner natures, in one particular area are. Also, we explore what civility must be in an uncivil world, bringing us to another of our core values.

Upon this discussion rests the discussion of the Universal Base Code of Mortality, which is used to begin a defense of the Hellenic Dicta ("Know thyself" and "All things in moderation"), which are common to many religions other than Hellenism and its offspring, but are essential to Hellenism. What we do is argue in favor of the equivalence of these values mentioned, so if we affirm one (as we start to do in "Interview with a Brave Man"), we end up affirming them all and the dicta. The Universal Base code, we should add, is argued to mark the baseline of ethical consensus, below which civilized interaction becomes an impossibility. It defines the boundary between those we feel are worth having a dialogue with and those who are not; those who we disagree with and those we condemn.

I hesitated to accept this to be the truth until life itself vouched for the validity of these arguments. With some sorrow, I must note that the wisdom of the first dictum has been affirmed whenever I've seen it violated (eg. the review of the House of Netjer found in "Meeting the Pharoah"). After a period of irrational exhuberance about the possibilities of that group on my part, reality came back from vacation and made me wake up. The argument is a sound one, as my observations of the uncivilized nature of life at the House helped illustrate. We engage in no undue dogmatism by refusing contact with groups who claim to have "Divine Kings"; we merely exercise good sense. In a sense, then, the code is thus confirmed, after the time of its publishing, in that it seems to accurately predict which groups shall be trouble and which shall not. The reader is reminded that the Universal Base Code is not presented as an exhaustive categorization of valid moral imperatives; we argue that no such code could exist at several points within this site (thus the need for trial and error in the development of morality, and the crucial nature of the maintenance of tradition for a moral community life to be possible). The Univeral Base Code is a codified basis for rejecting moral arguments, not for making them.

Having thus developed some sense, not necessarily of what clearly must be morally right, but certainly of what must clearly be morally wrong, we have a place to begin with as we discuss the nature of the Divine in Constructing God (defending "du et des" in the process) and refute Pascal's wager. We also have the beginnings of a theological basis for rejecting the notion of establishing clerical orders in a Wiccan or Pauline Christian sense, as seen in "Breaking Away", and some sense of the purpose that myth migfht serve and how myth might be approached, as seen in "the Meaning of a Single Myth". These articles, along with the introduction, form the core of this site.

Does this all seem sketchy, in context? Perhaps so, but remember that this site is unfinished, and always intended to be so - it is meant to give you a place to begin with as you formulate ideas of your own, not to tell you what those ideas ought to be. The very defense of the use of gnosis to see one's faith seen in "Constructing God" should offer the reader a good notion of why such might be my preference.

Continuing on to the site I just got done blathering about ...

(*) This really is a remarkably bad philosophical work that we see out of Skinner, and if the reader should come across some Skinnerian terms ("reinforcement") in the course of looking through this site, he should not take this to be a sign of support for Skinner's philosophy, such as it is. Skinner, we would argue (with some support from his own text), is guilty of a failing popular in some academic circles: "argumentation from wishful thinking". In the text we've cited, he brushes aside concerns raised by his totalitarian view of the ideal future, such as the undermining of the individual's free will, by dismissing such things as the individual consciousness as being alleged "arcane forces" that one must disbelieve in, if an objective science of Psychology is ever to be possible. But how does he know that such a "science" can even be legitimately created?

Reality is under no obligation to rearrange itself in order to accomodate our research proposals; the only truth to be gleaned from an observation such as Skinner's is the one that his methodology speaks more of the egotism of somebody who wishes to see his ambitions realized at any cost, than of the relative humility of the true scientist who knows that he must accept the truth on its own terms, whether they are ones that he finds convenient or not, and that perhaps some subjects are best not approached from a scientific point of view. While this may mean that the psychologist can not speak about his own subject with anything resembling the solid authority a physicist can speak of his own with, the only conclusion warranted by that observation is that the psychologist may find the thoughts that he is left with disappointing or even distressing.

So much the worse for the psychologist, but where is the theoretical relevance? As one can see merely by visiting a hospice, wishes do not appreciably bend reality.