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Ralph Haulk
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Predestination And Randomness Posted on July 6, 2012 by Ralph Haulk As seen last essay, by focusing on predestination, Calvin logically eliminated the power of knowledge and decision-making by which we may ever get from “here’ to “God”. Where people in medieval times were more secure in their social status, the increasing generation of wealth created upheavals in the power structure. From positions of security, to positions of change and upheaval, in which the masses no longer had a “place” nor any understanding of their new place, Luther and Calvin emerged, each with a different vision that would represent the displaced masses. While Luther focused on grace and faith, Calvin emphasized the doctrine of predestination, which was the idea that salvation or damnation was not the result of anything good or bad that man did, but are predetermined by God. If God choose one man and condemns another, it is a secret into which man must not try to delve. As Erich Fromm writes in Escape From Freedom: “The psychological significance of the doctrine of predestination is a twofold one. It expresses and enhances the feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. No doctrine could express more strongly than this the worthlessness of human will and effort. The decision over man’s fate is taken completely out of his own hands and there is nothing man can do to change this decision….The other meaning of this doctrine…consists in its function to silence the irrational doubt….Although Calvin did not teach that there was any concrete proof of such certainty, he and his followers actually had the conviction that they belonged to the chosen ones. They got this conviction by the same mechanism of self humiliation which we have analyzed with regards to Luther’s doctrine. Having such convictions, the doctrine of predestination provided utmost certainty…” The drawback to this, as Fromm explains: “…though the doctrine of predestination gave such certainty, the doubt remained in the background and had to be silenced a gain and again by an ever-growing fanatic belief that the religious community to which one belonged represented that part of mankind which had been chosen by God.” Calvinism, wrote Fromm, found its most vigorous revival in Nazi ideology because it strengthened the idea of the basic inequality of men. Since their fate is determined before their birth, and there is nothing they can do to change it, “the equality of mankind is denied in principle”. While Calvin did not believe men could change their fate by any action, he emphasized complete devotion to moral effort and virtuous life. This was a “sign” that the individual was one of the “elect”. This focus on a certain way of life as emphasized by a leader, focusing on morality and virtue, was an excellent breeding ground for the superorganism. No person could be certain that his/her efforts would “save’ them, but every effort went toward the social “glue” of approved righteousness was solid breeding grounds for the superorganism. Luther presents an interesting paradox in regard to Calvin. In Fromm’s words: “Luther assumed the existence of an innate evilness in man’s nature, which directs his will for evil and makes it impossible for any man to perform any good deed on the basis of his nature. …The depravity of man’s nature and its complete lack of freedom to choose the right is one of the fundamental concepts of Luther’s whole thinking….Only if man humiliates himself and demolishes his individual will and pride will God’s grace descend upon him”. The paradox as presented by Fromm lies between Luther and Calvin in this regard: While Luther stressed the new freedom of man to submit to God by freewill, man cannot actually choose the “good”, but is dependent on grace. While Calvin stressed that man can do nothing whatever to change that which has been predetermined, the active pursuit of morality and service to God would be a “sign” that the person is one of the “elect”. Luther, who stressed freedom and grace, eliminated the possibility of “works”, whereas Calvin, who stressed the impossibility of “works” for salvation, stressed that by our works, we would show the “sign” our “election”. Fromm points out that the faith stressed by Luther was the need to conquer the uncertainty already created by the upheaval of economic conditions in Italy and surrounding nations. “The compulsive quest for certainty, as we find with Luther, is not the expression of genuine faith, but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt. Luther’s solution is one in which we find many individuals today…to find certainty by the elimination of the isolated individual self by becoming an instrument in the hands of an overwhelmingly strong power outside of the individual”. What better strategy for the superorganism and the needs of the genetic replicative algorithm? The reason, largely, that Luther succeeded in his efforts, is that he fulfilled the same need created by the economic upheaval in thousands of others. Dawkins was correct, Darwin was actually talking about “survival of the stable”. More directly, it was equilibrium that was sought, or homeostasis, the individual had to have “meaning”, or as Fromm states it: “By losing his fixed place in a closed world, man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life.” The “aim of life” in this case being the reproductive capacity of the superorganism. The two contributing factors emerging from both Luther’s a Calvin’s theology were actually quite cooperative: 1.The need to belong to something greater than one’s self. 2.The desire to prove, by near fanatical action, that one’s efforts would lead to salvation. These two factors combined powerfully in the Protestant Work ethic, to produce “willing” collective effort toward collectivist goals, by unrelenting activity. Necessary hallmarks for the better function of the superorganism. The ideas of both Calvin and Luther achieved success in spite of their inability to give “answers” because, as Fromm writes: “Only if the idea answers powerful psychological needs of certain social groups will it become a potent force in history“. The ideas of Calvin and Luther combined basically as an explanation, from a religious perspective, for what was already occurring in the wealth upheavals worldwide. The collective “brain” of mankind operates much the same as an individual. It is a “make aware’ agent, a realization that something is wrong, and decisions must be made to correct it, to find equilibrium. The wealth creation in Italy and neighboring nations had disrupted whole masses of people, and they were seeking a “meaning’ to understand this disruption. In time, the societies acted much as an organism: they maintained stability by keeping much that the Catholics had given, but they replaced it with a new kind of ‘freedom” that allowed them to organize interchangeably, by struggle and effort, and be blessed in God’s eyes. Fromm adds another point of interest: “It is particularly important to understand the significance of doubt and the attempts to silence it, because this is not only a problem concerning Luther’s and…Calvin’s theology, but it has remained one of the basic problems of modern man. Doubt is the starting point of modern philosophy: the need to silence it had a most powerful stimulus on the development of modern philosophy and science….The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs.” That, in fact, boils down to equilibrium and the genetic replicative algorithm. This will continue next essay. Predestination And Randomness–Continued Posted on July 6, 2012 by Ralph Haulk Neither Luther nor Calvin dropped the idea of necessary repentance and sin as conditions of God’s love, and in that sense, they had maintained much of what the Catholics had perpetuated, including the ” meme” I wrote of in another essay: the idea that we go to hell if we are evil. Actually, the Catholics had absorbed this from Etruscan mythology via the writings of Dante, but it proved to be a powerful tool for control of those who did not see eye to eye with the church. Luther and Calvin maintained this meme, and as a result, Calvin found it necessary to assume that those who aren’t ‘elect” must therefore be predestined to go to hell. It was one or the other, and no middle ground, a very “digital” process of choice. On this part, Calvin had maintained Aristotle’s excluded middle. This provided three main forces to control society: 1.hell is the reward for “unrepentant” 2.We must accept God’s grace, because we cannot earn God’s forgiveness 3.We must work always harder to attain the blessing of “election” as a sign to others. These three worked as much for the justification of wealth creation that had already developed in Italy and elsewhere. In an earlier essay, however, we see that both Paul and Jesus’ reaction was not to establish any form of authority, but in response to the Pharisee rabbis, who had declared the idea that they were inheritors of an “oral law” that only they could properly interpret. Hillel had declared that the human mind can be subject to God, and Paul, along with Jesus(John 6:44) had declared that it could not. It is importa nt to note that in Jewish theology, there was no such thing as hell , in the terms professing Christians recognize it today. Neither paul nor jesus were emphasizing the idea of “damnation” for those who are not ‘elect”, but were mainly concerned with the idea that any human agency can represent God for others. In an effort to challenge the Pharisees, of whom he had been a member, Paul directly challenged such ideas that en could organize knowledge in God’s name, and his teachings were backed by such scripture as Isaiah 55:8, “My thoughts are not your thoughts….” The doctrine of predestination, taught by Paul in Romans 8:29-30, therefore, did not represent “damnation” for those not elect, but freedom from all human authority. He went to great pains to emphasize this in Romans 9:16-22. Since all human authorities do God’s will( Romans 9:17-20), all humankind are subject to God, not man. There is no remaining priesthood, but all partake in the law equally. What Calvin did, as pointed out by Fromm, was to take the idea of predestination and re-establish a new priesthood, with himself and his followers as the true elect. Paul had eliminated all such possibility with Romans 8:29-30, and even Calvin could not, by even his own admission, demonstrate any special relation with God, he emphasized that such “revelation’ to him made him elect before God. This had an interesting effect on all subsequent Christian religions that would follow. The “truth’ of any religious leader’s statements were not measured by actual logical processes of reason, but by the success he gained with converts. “God’s approval”, by human reasoning, must be on a religious leader, because his teachings were ‘saving’ so many. Doubt was eliminated because God showered his “spiritual blessings” on that man by the souls he saved. No doctrine could more effectively serve to profit the superorganism and the genetic replicative algorithm. That we had no power to “judge’ them by any standard, since only God could know his elect, freed the superorganism to spread with fanatical efficiency, and in many cases, fatal efficiency. Hoffer had pointed out, in The True Believer, that while the content of any movement or holy cause might be vastly different, each person in the holy causes or movements appeared to be dying for the same thing. That ‘thing” which Hoffer could not identify was the genetic replicative algorithm seeking to extend equilibrium. Proselytizing, as Hoffer further wrote, was merely an attempt to prove to others that our truth was indeed the one absolute truth. That truth, of course, was demonstrated by our success in adding more and more to the group, standardizing behavior and reproductive rituals, and contributing to stability of the genes. However, as Toffler has shown in Future Shock , and Bloom shows in Global Brain, the tendency of all growth is toward diversity and adaptation at many different levels. This means, as Slater points out in EarthWalk, that cultures begin following their own “internal circuitry” to the exclusion of cultural differences. They can either “convert” or they can kill, which both Christian and Muslim religions did in their early stages, and are doing again. Our deepest hatreds and needs for justification have nothing to do with “God”, and everything to do with “us”. Paul himself, in Romans 7, preceding the “predestination” chapter, had explored the inability of reason, of logic, of any human mechanism, to lead him to “righteousness” , but Western religion, in its various incarnations, has rejected this and followed purely the dictates of what Paul referred to as ‘flesh” of that “other law, warring in my body”. “For I know that in me(that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me: but how to perform that which is good I find not“.(Romans 7:18) In fact, the “flesh” does neither good nor evil, but simply operates according to its necessary algorithms. As the RSV puts it, “I cannot understand my actions“. Religion, as we know it today, with its collective justification by proselytizing, is purely operating fro algorithms that Paul called “flesh”. Why do I know this is so? Because we cannot define, as I have shown from history and the examination of Luther and Calvin’s doctrines, by their own admission, there is no decision process by which we can demonstrate any closer relation to God than any other person. “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”.(Romans 7:23) It follows logically that if the brain/mind has no system of algorithms by which it can behave consistently with God’s expectations, it will tend to follow those organizing principles and algorithms that dictate survival, which is the genetic replicative algorithm. All survival strategies will follow in alignment, or equilibrium, with that strategy. The brain, being the “hardware” by which the body operates, functions at a level of complexity which the mind cannot fathom. The mind, a parallel to “software’, cannot reach down and alter the “hardware’ since the software is dependent on the operation of the hardware for its functions. Therefore, it follows logically that all collective decisions will follow needs directed by hardware rather than software. This corresponds to Bloom’s statement in The Lucifer Principle, that Lucifer is an organizer, who employs “good” and ‘evil” to serve an integrative purpose. This, however, would seem to serve the purpose of God , who in Isaiah 45:7, says: “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things”. From the Jewish rabbinical perspective, this is not unusual, as Talmudist scholar Hyam Maccoby writes in The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity: “The Pharisees…regarded Satan as merely one of God’s angels, who did not rebel against Him, but obeys his orders, whether as the Angel of Death, or as prosecutor of human beings in the divine court”. Satan, from the biblical perspective, holds the job as prosecutor and angel of death, as we see reference in Hebrews 2:14. This job, obviously, would be done away if we follow the Calvinist doctrine that God has already decided who goes to hell. There would be no reason whatever for Satan to prosecute anyone, or waste his time tempting anyone, since he would merely be biding his time. Paul’s perspective, therefore, was to teach a doctrine that actually set men free from other men, to keep any human power from organizing to control other men. Since no person can demonstrate any special relation to God, and since even world rulers are only doing God’s will, they do so only by His patience until we see a better way. This has profound effects on the concept of law, as it evolved from common law to the present day, as I will show later.
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