Are Atheists Bad People?

I know, a judgmental question but one that needs to be asked in the light of the challenges facing individual souls today. In our secular, materialistic age we have no proper idea of good and bad anymore and we need to reestablish certain important truths, important from the standpoint of spiritual salvation, that is.

So, are atheists, those who deny the spiritual, bad people? From a certain point of view one would have to say, yes. It is not that atheists cannot be moral or even compassionate people. God is in them whether they acknowledge him or not and so they will have a moral sense by virtue of their humanity. But their morals will, when pushed, tend to become expedient or utilitarian or may be zealously maintained but from pride rather than love of their source which is the only thing that really makes morality integral to the personality. And what is the source of modern atheistic morality anyway? Setting aside the fact that it usually derives from religion in some way, its source is generally considered to be reason. But this means it is intellectually based so is always at one or several removes from the actual person. A genuine morality, one that doesn't change and is not dependent on time or tide, has to be spiritual, based on something that exists eternally and independently of human beings. 

So atheists can be moral but it is not morals that make a good or bad person. Obviously, a person with bad morals is a bad person but a good person has to have more than good morals. What determines whether you are a good person or not is if your heart inclines to the source of true good. And the source of true good must be God. There can be none other if good is to be a living reality and not a mere abstraction. This means that if you reject God it is because you do not respond to the reality of the true good and if you do not do that you cannot be considered a good person, however virtuous your outer behaviour. The heart knows. A sinner who believes in God is a better person than a virtuous atheist. Of course, the sinner must genuinely repent his sin which he will do if he really does believe in God but even so he may fall many times. No matter. God forgives those who sincerely turn to him whatever their transgressions. He cannot forgive or save those who do not turn to him because the one thing God cannot do is transgress free will, not without destroying his creation.

But is a non-believer in God really a bad person simply by virtue of rejecting God? Spiritually speaking, because God is the ground of the real good which derives from and is located in him then yes, he is. The atheist has rejected the real good and you can only do that if you do not love the real good and it is love of the good that makes a person good. Nothing else. If there is that in you that will love the good, you will see the good. If you don't see the good then you lack that love. The well-meaning but spiritually rejecting atheist may want to make the material world as comfortable as possible for man in his material state. Some religious people even follow this path though they may give it a religious or spiritual overlay, and they are the ones of whom Jesus said "I never knew you." They are followers of worldly ways before spiritual. But what the real spiritual person seeks or wants is to go beyond the material state altogether which he recognises as a false state of being, and transform the inner man to spiritual glory, a new being. This is the true rebirth rather than simple conversion. It is the recognition that man must not change but transform.

This is the only path for a human being to follow if he would discover the meaning of his humanity. To deny it, as the atheist does through his atheism, is the definition of bad because it rejects the true good.

Are atheists bad? If it is bad to deny the source of life and love and truth and thereby effectively deny these things as real themselves, then yes, they are bad. If it is bad to deny the human being growth into a higher state then yes, they are bad. If it is bad to reject one's Creator then yes, they are bad. If it is bad not to honour your Father and Mother, well, I won't go on.

But all this is sincere, you might say. Belief in God is not a moral matter. It's an intellectual one. It is an honest opinion, based on the facts as a particular person sees them. No, to claim that is to ignore the fact that God is within each one of his creatures as he is within his entire creation. To refuse to see this is an act of a rebellious will and so it is a moral matter. Listen to St Paul in Romans 1.

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools."

These are words which may be too strong for us moderns because they are spiritually condemnatory, judgmental not inclusive, but they are no less true for all that.

I admit to being provocative with this talk of good and bad in order to make a point but these are times of choice and decision. Black and white are being more clearly delineated and the gap between them is widening. There is a winnowing taking place, a separation of wheat and husk and that is happening both in humanity as a whole and within each person. Moreover, the nature of this world is such that everything that does not actively turn to the good becomes bad. That process is accelerating.

All this having been said, we have to remember that all souls are on a journey and all are at different stages of that journey. In saying atheists are bad I am not referring to each and every individual who happens at this stage of his life not to have arrived at a belief in God but only to those in whom the condition of God denial has settled down and become fixed. It may well be that atheism is a temporary state for many in the modern world as people grow out of affiliation to an organised religion and seek a more personal understanding that fits with humanity's development in fields of knowledge other than the religious. That is normal at the present time but atheism is not a place to stop, and it is to those who stop there, rather than those passing through on their spiritual journey, that I refer.

So, are atheists bad people? That depends on how you define good. If you mean personally kind and decent then one would have to say no, not necessarily. There will be good and bad atheists as there are good and bad in almost any grouping of human beings. But if you define the bad as a rejection of the true good and the true good as spiritual (and the good to be true has to be spiritual because the spiritual is the only thing that can give meaning and fundamental reality to life) then yes, they are bad. At the very least, they are spiritual failures. However, the good news is that they can turn to the spiritual good at any time and when they do, who knows?, some of them may be better servants of God than those who were religious all along.

No Middle Ground

 Democracy only makes sense if all members of a nation or community or whatever it may be have the same idea of where they should be heading and differ only on what the best route is to this destination. This obvious but often ignored fact is allied to the equally obvious point that all members of a community must trust each other. Without that simple connection the case for democracy makes little sense and it becomes just a battle to come out on top with each side or sides despising the other. In other words, for democracy to have any meaning all members of the democracy must be on the same side in terms of what really matters to them.

I saw an interview the other day in which someone, very reasonably, said that current society risks falling into extremes in which there is no middle ground and this is a dangerous situation in which to be. She advocated what she called nuanced conversation in which each side tries to understand the concerns of the other without demonising them. You might think this a sensible and considered approach, one which avoids outright confrontation and seeks harmony between opposing forces.

In many circumstances this approach might be the right one. People have different opinions based on different perceptions and experiences. Fair enough. We can all learn from others to our mutual benefit. The trouble is adopting this approach when it comes to truth and lies. Advocating a middle ground approach is an excellent tactic for the liar. But for the person aligned to truth it is a disaster.

If you and I are arguing about the merits of Bach and Beethoven there is no point in coming to blows. I prefer Bach but I respect your position. However, if we are arguing about whether God exists or not there can be no middle ground. This is an absolute truth and not to abide by it will lead to bad things. I don't respect your position and will have none of it. That doesn't mean I don't respect you or your right to hold that position though it may well mean the former. It depends what in you is causing you to have that belief, whether it is an honest search for truth or whether you are someone who denies God because he doesn't like the idea of God.

If you come to a fork in the road and one path leads to heaven and the other goes to hell do you respect the people who want to take the left hand path in the same way you do the ones who want to take the right? Only if you are naive. Again, it is very important to look for motivation. Why do those who want to go left want to do so? Is it a genuine quality in them which has just made a mistake such as a desire to find truth for oneself rather than do what an institution tells them to do? Or is it down to what I will call  a spiritual perversion of the will? What you do, though important, is always less important than why you do it.

In today's world there are forces, psychological forces, spiritual forces, that are sifting human souls, sorting out those who will go on to higher states of being and those who will be left behind in the material realm or equivalent. In such circumstances to advocate the middle ground is to be sucked into making the wrong choice. If you are not actively for God you will be absorbed by the side that is against him and you will find yourself on the outside with the naysayers. It is true that in normal times and situations you should not demonise your opponents but what if your opponents are demons? Or, to put it less provocatively, what if the line your opponents are taking is one that demons have put forward? It is said that demons are subtle. I don't think that is true. Human souls, all of them, yours and mine included, can be too easily led astray by lies that appeal to desires or fears or vanity or pride. If we make wrong choices it is not because the demons are so clever. It is because we have been led astray by our own shortcomings.

In spiritual terms there is no middle ground though this does not mean that those on one side are all personally good and those on the other side are all necessarily bad. But it does mean that whoever is for God is for the good and whatever is against him is for evil. At the same time, human beings are all sinners and it is not our place to condemn individuals. We can judge them with righteous judgment but the righteousness is God's not ours. Any soul can repent and it is our job to lead those who are wrong to repentance not to condemn them. But we can and should condemn their position if it is wrong. This is the only middle ground we must strike, the one that condemns the sin but prays for the soul of the sinner.

Secular Gain Means Spiritual Loss

It's often said today that we are much more enlightened than our forefathers because we are less violent, more egalitarian, more concerned for the weak and poor and so on. The psychologist Stephen Pinker has written books about this from the point of view of Enlightenment rationalism and these are regarded as authoritative by secular materialists.

It can't be denied that we have improved on the past in many respects. However, it's not quite as simple as it might appear and the improvement is not necessarily an improvement in overall terms. We now see ourselves in a purely materialistic light so naturally we pay more attention to that sphere of life. But the spiritual loss we have undergone at the same time, along with the contraction into the hard nut of the ego-self, far outweighs any gain in worldly terms. What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul? That saying has become almost a cliché. Yet it is precisely what we have done.

Obviously we will put our energy into areas we think are important. By the same token, we will neglect those areas we think unimportant or even non-existent. Modern man has shrunk his awareness of reality right down to the material world. Of course, he focuses on that as the sphere of his concern. Therefore he works to make material improvements, changes that will benefit the material man, increase his worldly happiness, reduce his suffering. But these changes might actually be spiritually harmful, especially if they encourage identification with the earthly man. Then they will cut the human being off from his true self. It's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Another cliché. But all we are doing now is making ourselves rich in the worldly sense. Do you think Jesus was referring only to money? He was referring to any and every aspect of material life and particularly when it is severed from spiritual life.

I am not condoning violence but could it be we are less violent because we are more cowardly, more self-indulgent, less tough than our ancestors? Nor do I condone exploitation of the weak by the strong but have certain improvements in the social sphere been driven only by compassion or is there also a greater amount of envy and resentment in our make-up these days? JM Smith has written an excellent piece on The Orthosphere about how democracy fosters envy*. Present developments in almost any area of life you care to look at seem to bear that out. If we're all equal why should you or anyone else have more than me? Even if you're more intelligent and work harder, it's still not fair. I resent it in a way I might not have done in a world where society was based on more traditional lines. The fact that these could degenerate is not an argument against them because everything degenerates if not maintained properly.

Does this mean that any gains in the social and material spheres are inevitably a bad thing spiritually? By no means. There will certainly be a tendency to spiritual loss for, as we have been told, you cannot serve two masters. (Cliché number 3). But if the material world is seen fully in the context of the spiritual there is no reason why the part of life that rightly belongs to it cannot be honoured any more than focus on the soul means you neglect the body. But the chief area of one's attention should always be the spiritual soul and if that essential fact is ignored then any improvements you make in the secular sphere are not just immaterial but positively harmful for they take you further and further away from your true purpose as a human being in this world.

* By pure coincidence, and I assure you it is, I see Professor Smith has just linked to an article of mine from The Orthosphere. It's strange how these things work out.

Bodies Without Souls

In one of the recent interviews I did I was asked if I thought there existed in our world bodies without souls. As I recall my reply was somewhat non-committal and I said something along the lines that everyone has a soul but some people by their choices, their actions and their thoughts may have cut themselves off from their souls to such a degree that they could be regarded as soulless entities.

I didn't want to get into anything too esoteric in these interviews because they were about the Earth is a School idea and I wanted to keep the discussion simple. However, the world is currently under an occult attack of such proportions that it is incumbent on all religious people to deepen their understanding of the supernatural realm, the better to withstand this attack. What is taking place is part of a longstanding scheme to enable demonic forces to get a greater grip on the material world and human beings. Their plane of existence is largely cut off from the source of spiritual energy and so they want, perhaps even need as a matter of survival, to interact in some way with the physical world where they can have access to life energy. This they have previously done through attacking the energy fields of human beings, chiefly emotional but mental and vital too, but the growth of technology has given them other means of achieving their ends, and I would suggest that one of the methods they are developing is incarnation in the physical world through computers. Artificial intelligence can never in itself be anything more than mechanical but it is possible that demons could use it to interact with the physical world and, in that sense, it might become real. Computers are surely one of the greatest sources of evil ever to have afflicted the human race. Yes, I know I am using one now to write this but that really isn't the point. What computers do is reduce human beings and a large part of human consciousness and many aspects of human relationships to the quantifiable and the mechanical and the easily controllable. Basically, to the inhuman. I'm sorry if this offends some readers but, be honest, look at the world and how it has changed over the last 50 years and is changing increasingly. Can you deny what I say? And this is just the beginning unless something derails the process. To use the terminology of Rudolf Steiner, computers are the manifestation of Ahrimanic evil.

What is man? Essentially, a human being is various intermingling fields of energy, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, to keep it to its basics. The lower levels are the ones we normally function in on the material plane but these only have life in them because of the higher levels. It is the soul that animates the mind and body. Now, through wrong thinking, wrong imagination, which is both the creative and destructive force within us, wrong exercise of the will and wrong action we can separate ourselves from the source of our life to such a degree that we isolate ourselves on the physical plane. We can actually sever our contact with the soul, our spiritual core, so that it may continue to give life to the material side but that is all it does do for the consciousness has descended so far that it is locked in the material. It has erected a wall of darkness between itself and the spiritual. This is effectively a body without a soul. The soul is still there on its own level but contact with it (influence by, perception of) has been completely lost. This can be perceived by someone spiritually attuned in this world. You can perceive it in many people currently in positions of power. The eyes are indeed the windows to the soul. There is an emptiness in some people's eyes, a blankness.

Demons are beings in whom this process has been taken to its conclusion. They are non-physical but non-spiritual in the higher sense too. This means they have severed the connection to the spiritual and therefore to the life force. That is why they must steal energy through various means from incarnate humans. Because they are non-corporeal they are not bodies without souls but they could be seen as minds without souls.

Soulless entities are not necessarily evil in the conventional sense though those who are evil in that sense could potentially fall into this bracket, beings absorbed by their own shadow and open to domination by the aforementioned demonic forces. But you can be intellectually evil too and those cold, calculating, highly intelligent individuals who have, according to their own estimation, used logic and reason to dispel the notion of God also risk turning themselves into soulless entities. These would perhaps be defined as Ahrimanic evil as opposed to Luciferian evil, again using Rudolf Steiner's helpful terminology. They will be more defined by pride and lack of love than one of the 'hotter' sins such as lust, greed or selfishness. They can be capable of living almost like monks in terms of poverty, chastity and obedience (obedience not to God but to the laws as they see them of reason), but the motivation for this is purely intellectual and utilitarian. Cold and dead. There is nothing spiritual behind it at all. Study such types and you will see that there is never anything spontaneous about them. Everything is done from calculation. They will be drawn to computer technology because the mindset behind that represents their worldly ideal. Everything can be quantified, controlled, reduced to data. As I say, these people will not seem evil by the traditional standards but they are anti-God, anti-creation, anti-love, anti-beauty and if that is not evil I don't know what it is.

Before concluding there is one other aspects of the question I'd like to address. According to some esoteric teachings not all human beings have the same origins or come from the same source. Some have come down from higher worlds and so they are souls that have incarnated in matter to further their spiritual development. But others have risen up through the material side of existence. These people, usually fairly simple and primitive in consciousness, have not yet developed a soul. They are in the process of doing so and their life trajectories will lead them to that end if faithfully followed. Of course, this won't be a popular thought today but why should all human beings be the same in terms of their origins? Once you accept a spiritual world you can see how improbable that actually is.

But these souls are not evil in any sense, certainly not in the way the soulless entities who have cut themselves off from their spiritual side have made themselves to be. They are simple, more attached to the material world than most and more obviously belonging to that world. They will be less intellectual in outlook but quite capable of creativity and accomplishment in terms of their consciousness. You might think I am referring to one particular class of people but I don't think these types can be defined in terms of human groups. They could be in all groups though most probably in some more than others.

Everybody in this world must have some spiritual contact or else they would die. But there are some who have, to a greater or lesser degree, cut themselves off from their souls because of wrong thinking and perverted will. For this is not just a matter of ignorance. To lose touch with your soul is chiefly the result of a will that has turned against God and creation. The root of all sin is in the will.

2022

We have been through a bad pandemic over the last two years, not a physical but a psychological one in which fear has been weaponised - see my previous post. The purpose of these two years has been to accustom people, the whole world, to the idea of control. The lockdowns, masks and pecks all have this idea behind them. None of them were really necessary but they have all been put forward as the only solution. If not for you then for the community as a whole, and this bit of emotional manipulation is the most cynical of all.

What will the next year or years bring? The pieces have now all been put in place. We are accustomed to behaving in a certain way. The programming is near complete. What will be brought forward to justify its use next is hard to predict but something will. Climate change is always a good bet but any threat can be conjured up or produced by modelling to bring us into line. Alien invasion? Far-fetched but possible. Those who have seen through the agenda this time will be somewhat protected next time around but the majority will react as before, refusing to accept they are being played. Evidence won't convince them. Most people don't want to confront the possibility that the whole system is rotten. Politicians may be corrupt, the media may have an agenda  of some sort but really that's not important. Scientists can be trusted. Most people are honest. The world will carry on more or less rationally and reasonably or so they think. 

Or is it that they cannot face not thinking that? When I have tried speaking to friends and family about what has taken place over the last couple of years they will not listen. Some tolerate me for a short space but then close down the conversation. Some get angry straightaway. It can get very emotional so I withdraw. There is certainly cognitive dissonance going on and pointing that out makes you the enemy. More and more we are told, and the majority either believe because they have no strong intellectual or spiritual roots or because they just go along with what everyone else thinks, that black is white, lies are truth, the unnatural is natural etc. Everything from the past is destroyed so that human beings can be remade into a form that suits the globalist, materialist agenda. 2022 will see a continuation of this process and even though obvious cracks in the structure will appear they will be glossed over and ignored by the mainstream. Most people, it seems, will believe whatever they are told to believe for the sake of an easy life or to fit in with the crowd. We always knew this but we thought we were better than those in the past who had done a similar thing. It seems not.

Today all institutions and organisations are corrupt and all movements that oppose these institutions and organisations are also corrupt. Even the so-called grass roots level of organisation is corrupt. Where does that leave us? It leaves us where we always are which is at the level of the individual. Only at this individual level can any real change take place. But if it does don't make the mistake of thinking you have to promote, organise, codify or spread it to others in some way so that it breaks through into society. Speak it when appropriate. Share it if the opportunity arises but if you seek to push or promote it in any organised way it will inevitably be absorbed by the world and so will you in some way or other. Now we need to be absolutely free and the only way to do this is to be fully individual but not in an individualistic way. We need to be fully individual in God.

This is the apparent paradox. We must be true to ourselves and true to God at one and the same time. In fact, we find that only if we are true to God can we really be true to ourselves and vice versa. In this sense, God and the individual self are two sides of the same coin and you cannot have one without the other. I suggest that fully exploring this idea could be a task for 2022. God himself is pushing us in this direction because he is clearly showing us that everything in the world is now false. We have to find him within ourselves. That is not to say that we are God, an insidious and common modern error. God is God and we are created beings. But there is God in us and it is our religious duty to find him there and bring him out.

My New Year's Resolution

My New Year's resolution is to encourage everyone to get inoculated and if you are already inoculated then get the top-up and when the time comes for a 4th and 5th dose get those too. We live in dangerous times in which our health is at risk. We need all the protection we can have to help our natural immune system so please don't be foolish. Get inoculated.

Carl Jung is not normally the first person I would go to for spiritual counsel but, if you take him selectively and with your spiritual armour on, there is wisdom to be found in his writings. I read a quote of his recently which is very apposite for our time. He says,"The greatest danger threatening man is not famine or earthquakes or microbes or cancer but man's well-being. The cause of this is quite straightforward: there still does not exist any effective protection against psychic epidemics - and these epidemics are infinitely more devastating than the worst catastrophes of Nature. The supreme danger which menaces both the individual and the populace as a whole is psychic danger."

Most of this is very true. We are living in the midst of a psychic epidemic now, one which appears to have infected the great bulk of the population. It has certainly affected all branches of the established system from politics to the media to science, and from there it has been transmitted to the general populace. We need protection against infection by this epidemic.

The part of Jung's statement that isn't true is that there does not exist any effective protection against epidemics of this nature. In fact, there does. It has been around for a long time but is usually ignored these days and when not ignored often distorted. It is faith in God. Get inoculated with the Word of God and you will be protected against all epidemics of this nature. Keep your faith topped up through prayer and contemplation and you will remain healthy.

Modern Technology Equals Materialism

I don't comment in many places online but I recently did so on a good article on William Briggs's site as it addressed one of my concerns, that being the nefarious influence of modern technology on the soul or, better put, on awareness of the soul. The article was basically saying that none of events of the last two years could have taken the form they did without technology which has aided, abetted and made possible the agenda from lockdowns to pecks to incessant testing to the possibility of home-working etc. This could not have happened until the last few years which makes one wonder if the reason the thing broke out when it did was precisely that it could now happen. Be that as it may, the fact is that even ten years ago we would just have had to tough it out and get on with life as we have had to do on previous occasions. And it is quite possible that it would all be over by now instead of being dragged out seemingly endlessly.

My comment was not to with the way modern technology facilitated what Mr Briggs correctly calls "the madness of rulers, Experts and ourselves" but the whole notion of technology itself. I said as follows. "Technology equals materialism, it’s as simple as that. Yes, I know stone age man had tools but that’s not what I mean. A line is crossed when the technology we use is no longer made by hand and the average person cannot understand how it is made. Then we find we have separated ourselves from the world of spirit and embedded ourselves in matter. That is why it is a mistake to say that technology is neutral, it’s how we use it that matters. The sort of technology we have and use inevitably bends our minds into its shape. The more sophisticated the technology, the more it separates us from God. The only way to protect against this is to be very aware of it."

My point was that technology as we practice it now is not a neutral tool that can be used for good or ill. That theory is often put forward but I regard it as a grave error. The sort of technology we use determines the sort of people we are or the sort we become. A materialistic technology, one based on machines, makes a materialistic people. It cannot fail to do this because it makes assumptions about life that we tacitly absorb when we use it. It even moulds our minds into the form it takes so to say that it is neutral is absurd. 

Another commenter disagreed with me maintaining that it is not technology but what we do with it that matters. In other words, the technologies are neutral argument I have mentioned. He said we are made in God's image and our technologies reflect God's creativity. This may seem superficially plausible but ignores the effect that using a materialistic technology has on the soul however you use it, as well as the mindset that creates and sustains such a technology. What is that mindset? Human beings probably could have done this kind of thing long ago but did not think it worthwhile because we were more spiritual focussed. Only when we lost that focus did we pursue the path of dominating matter by artificial means.

 In order to clarify my original post I replied that I was talking about modern technology which I regard as an aberration which is not to say that it shouldn't have happened at all but it may have been a phase to go through and grow out of relatively quickly rather than get stuck in as has happened. Was it just a coincidence that modern technology arose at the same time as atheism, materialism and the decline of Christian understanding and it directly supported these things? The technology we develop and use does affect our relationship with the world and our approach to God so it really isn’t what we do with it that matters. It does things with us, with us and to us, and a materialistic technology will materialise our minds. It dehumanises us and desanctifies the world. It separates us from both God and Nature. That is what it has clearly done and is doing more than ever now. 

God certainly did make us in his image but we constantly distort that image. I do believe that a spiritual technology can be developed (it may even have existed in previous civilisations), but it will not be mechanistic as our current technology is. A materialistic technology produces materialistic people.

My commenting correspondent said that "Materialism implies that living in matter or desiring things made of matter is bad. But if the Creation is good, then how can that possibly be? It can’t." To which I replied that the Creation is certainly good but we live in a fallen world. Matter is good but only when seen as the expression of spirit not when seen as its own reality.

I know that an argument of this sort can go on forever. I can be accused of hypocrisy because I use technology when I criticise the basis of it, but I live in the modern world and have to adjust to it up to a point. That doesn't mean that I can't envisage a situation better than the one we have. Do you not know that if our consciousness changed the world would also change? A spiritualised consciousness would produce a more spiritualised world. The physical environment would actually adapt to our minds. We cannot use the tools of materialism without the strong likelihood of becoming materialised ourselves.