June 30, 2002

(Click here for webring list).

Common question : "So, what, you've converted, and now you're Kemetic Orthodox?". Hah, hah. No. I'd think that this page would be a pretty good illustration as to why not. What this question, sometimes asked, displays is a lack of understanding that has become all too fashionable, so much so as to have a name - "presumptive logic". The validity of an argument is assessed by some in terms of the consistency of the conclusions found at each step, with the conclusions that the assessor wishes to assume. This is sometimes called "campus preacher logic", and is a very aggressive form of question begging, backed up with a faint undertone of hostility. One isn't trying to have a discussion with the other person so much as one is trying to steamroller him.

We all should know better than to resort to such tactics. The only proper approach to critiquing a philosophy, or a religion, is to explore it from the inside, seeing where its conclusions lead as one allows them to evolve of their own accord, without these rhetorical interruptions from the conceptual outside world. Having done so, the body of conclusions drawn may then rightly be tested against what we know, in one sense or another, drawing from our moral sense, or our experience of external reality - not against what we just happen to believe, for theological belief is not knowledge. So, in the course of writing this page I have begun, not from my own point of view, but from a point of view adopted, for the sake of discussion, in which we presume that the Egyptian netjeru, or "Names" as the House likes to call them, are real, as opposed to those I actually worship, concerning myself more with Ptah-Hotep than with Aristotle. In real life, my priorities would be the exact reverse ...