If you believe in God and think that God exists in everyone, you must also see that not everyone reflects the reality of what God is to the same degree. For all people may be manifestations of God but clearly none are perfect manifestations which means there are greater and lesser manifestations.
If you don't believe in God but think that we all have some kind of universal spiritual component within us then you must still accept that our awareness and understanding of it differs hugely. As does our ability to express it.
And if you are a materialist then you believe that nothing has real meaning or value anyway (unless artificially invented by us) so equality is a redundant concept. It's merely an ideological abstraction, an aspiration without real substance. If a materialist wants to say that we all have equal value then that value, according to his scheme of things, is precisely nothing. We are all equal, but equally worthless.
Equality as a real thing rather than a vague abstraction is only possible in something like an ant colony. It would demand the complete abolition of individuality.
It is a materialistic perversion of a spiritual truth, namely that God does exist in every human being who, by virtue of that fact, all have the potential to awaken spiritually and become godlike themselves. But we are all at very different stages of that journey and some will never reach the destination. Moreover, even when the destination is reached, we will not be equal because we all express our spiritual realisation in individual ways.
Equality is a one-dimensional view of the world which collapses reality to the horizontal, the material level, ignoring the vertical axis of soul. The very concept should be rejected and replaced with ideas of justice and fairness where these are appropriate. That is because to keep equality in any form whatsoever inevitably reinforces the notion of equality pure and simple as an absolute.
How did this absurd idea ever come about when it is so contrary to reason? One can only assume that it is a misconception of Christian teaching, basing itself on the idea that all human beings have the divine within them and, in that sense, all have value and the same divine potential. But to go from that to a belief in equality here and now in this mortal world is an utter non sequitur. As my teachers said, "men are by no means equal on the earth plane".
Proponents of the idea perhaps think that without it the door is open for exploitation of the weak by the strong, but that is akin to saying that the idea may be false but it can have good results or that the means justify the ends which is an axiom any schoolchild should know to be false since a cause and its effect cannot be separated. There are other ways of preventing the abuse of a truth than by propagating a lie. Besides, this exploitation would only occur when the belief in human inequality was interpreted materialistically, that is to say, without the corresponding belief in God. The problem is not inequality but inequality seen through the lens of atheism or false spiritual beliefs which are grounded in worldly interpretations of spirituality. In all cases, the solution is a correct spiritual understanding that sees the presence of God in all human beings, but that presence existing as a potential that needs to be developed.
Equality is actually destructive to the understanding of God because, by limiting everything to the same level, it destroys a proper sense of hierarchy and transcendence. That means that God is reduced in majesty and mystery. In fact, ultimately, if you believe in equality you will eventually believe yourself to be equal to God. And that means you won't believe in God. But without God, as we can see quite clearly now, there is only nihilism and despair, kept at bay by the need for constant entertainment whether that be of the popular variety or the intellectual. Equality, far from being a spiritual belief, as it is often conceived of nowadays, is actually the product of a pure anti-spiritual materialism.
Once again we see that when humanity abandons belief in a transcendent reality it loses itself in invented substitutions that lead it ever further into illusion. And the end result of living in illusion is always spiritual disaster. This all stems from the replacement of true religion with the worship by humanity of itself and the failure to understand that if humanity does not look beyond itself for its true fulfilment it will quickly sink into something less than itself. Egalitarianism is actually all about the promotion of quantity to a universal good and the concomitant destruction of quality.
There is more on this subject in a previous post here.
8 comments:
The PC brigade will be after you, telling you that you must recant and apologise - naughty old you.
However, there is a space on the way for those who wish to present controversial ideas to the world - a journal where those ideas can be presented under a pseudonym - a safe space for academics who fear job loss, vilification and reprisals from the establishment.
See the link to a news story about it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/11/12/controversial-ideas-journal-academics-can-publish-pseudonyms/
I'm not important enough for anyone to worry about me. And even if I were it wouldn't matter because the more truth is denied the more it needs to be said.
I can see why academics whose jobs are at risk might wish to publish certain unpopular ideas anonymously in this climate but in general I think hiding behind anonymity is a bad idea. If you believe what you say to be true then you should say it as yourself.
The word “equality” can be rather elastic . As I understand it , classical liberalism arose out of Protestantism . There were two main streams - one proceeding from the French enlightenment and the other from Scottish . The former was atheistic , but the latter was not .
I think a whole lot of modern leftists would be super surprised to find out that John Locke , who provided the conceptual basis for the American founding , stated that atheism should be illegal . So , I don’t think there is any fundamental connection between the rejection of God and political equality . In fact, many modern conservatives would argue the exact opposite - that the doctrine of political equality depends on natural law, which in turn depends on the existence of the Creator.
Classical liberalism regards liberty and equality as opposite sides of the same coin .
Ideas of political equality belong to the domain of theory. They are fine and sometimes even necessary as far as they go. But the reality is that equality is not something that actually exists in the world and to pretend it does is to distort the world to fit an ideology. That's what this post is about.
Atheism is a gross error but to make it illegal would be wrong too. The thing is to make a world in which it is revealed for the absurdity it is.
Hi William ,
It seems to me that equality in the political sense is pretty straightforward and concrete. Whereas the equality you speak of strikes me as rather theoretical . Unless I’m just being dense and not recognizing that your post is basically about the rejection of political correctness - which is about as theoretical as anything can get .
If the rejection of the Creator is as detrimental as you claim ( I agree , btw) why would making atheism illegal be objectionable ? After all, there are numerous behaviors and beliefs that are not permissible in the public square .
Perhaps you are more of a classical liberal than you realize ?
My post is just about equality and how it is a made up thing presumably deriving from the religious fact that we are all one in Christ (which doesn't mean we are all equal, by the way). I would say the same about such ideas as human rights which are also made up, not based in the natural or the spiritual. Justice and mercy are real things but equality and human rights are invented things. I'm all for the former, don't like the latter which create a false impression of what human beings are and what they should be. The one is rooted in the real, the other is a materialistic distortion of the real
Making atheism illegal would contravene free will and even God doesn't do that.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what a classical liberal is so I may well be one, as you say!
Hey William,
You don't believe that the theological doctrine of imago dei is translatable into the political sphere? - for example, that we are endowed with inalienable rights by our Creator?
"Making atheism illegal would contravene free will....."
In traditional Christian societies, things like abortion, divorce, and pornography are/were illegal. Those laws contravene "free will" , but I don't see those as being objectionable to the genuine traditionalist.
Unless, of course, one believes that the virtuous act is diminished of its virtue if it is compelled in any way?
I believe framing the discourse in terms of rights is the wrong way to go about things particularly when corresponding spiritual duties are not emphasised. It's prioritising the political over the spiritual. After all that's not how Jesus put things.
Atheism is a belief. The other things you mention are acts. The one is personal. The others impact on society.
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