Comments on: Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves

By: steve battista

steve battista — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:57:48 +0000

i think his answer to me made me laugh.

By: steve battista

steve battista — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:56:34 +0000

another problem I have with “the believers” is that though they may not believe in the same things,they all seem to have one thing in common- really poor senses of humor. i mean when these guys try to make a joke, i want to cry, run, or insult them for their bad joke.

there was this priest I was taught by who did comical renditions of the Noah story. I was 6 or 7 at the time. After class I told him that it was nice that he tried to make me laugh but that all I could think about was all the people that lived on the other side of the world who god didn’t speak to or didn’t get to hear noah’s warning or about it and just drowned. he told me that all the other people were evil and left it at that.

By: steve battista

steve battista — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:45:15 +0000

thanks for the response. i think my agnosticism attitude may be due to a personal problem with a person I know who claims to be an agnostic. my concern with that particular website is how seemingly intelligent people can be so convinced to believe in any one philosophical/theological system so strongly. my guess is their intelligence is working against them. in other words some people’s sophistry is so good is they end up believing in a lie.

another problem with being an “agnostic” is defining yourself as being unable to know. humility can be very egotistical in nature. and as I was saying, it seems people can be “too” wise.

another thing about the “wiseasserpents.com” people- the guy actually gave me references to sources and re-readings of stuff that pointed me in the opposite end of what his sophistry was intended to achieve. in other words it seems like this guy (the voice in the video is male) ends up unknowingly being the serpent in the “garden of eden ” he was warning me not to trust.

again, thank you for your quick reply. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately and have been in intellectual/spiritual free fall. I think a reason a lot of very intelligent people end up believing in a literal “risen from the dead” christ or certain types of what I call deist-buddhism or literal grey aliens spiriting them away every night is because they end up the in thefree fall position where you have to take true responsibility for yourself and you need to stop that sensation of losing control, of falling, and thus end up putting on an imaginary parchute given to you by the risen christ or the grey alien.

By: Carl McColman

Carl McColman — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:26:24 +0000

You think agnosticism is a cop out? Well, there’s your problem. I was always taught that admitting you aren’t sure about something isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather of humility and wisdom. Meanwhile, I suggest you become familiar with the tradition of apophatic mysticism: read Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing and John of the Cross, for starters. As for the website you’ve mentioned, I haven’t perused it, but based on a quick glance it looks paranoid and oppositional/dualistic in its thinking. In other words, it says nothing new but what it does say is not particularly in the service of love or wisdom. I’d stay away from it.

By: steve battista

steve battista — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:07:56 +0000

I don’t understand what exactly is your “Christianity.” I am a “fallen” catholic, sometime militant atheist (who thinks agnosticism is a huge cop out.) I am a seeker but I don’t consider myself to have a “faith.” And find the whole concept of “faith” troubling and at times completely ludicrous and ridiculous. I’ve been checking out the polemics of the “wiseasserpents.com” website and am intrigued by the fact that the maker or makers of this website are obviously rather intelligent and well read in alternative viewpoints of reality and/or faith and are at the sametime seemingly king james bible literalists. what is it called when you can have two opposing beliefs working at the same time? I would love to hear other ideas about these wiseasserpents.com people.

By: Aslan may not be tame, but what are we to be? « The Website of Unknowing

Aslan may not be tame, but what are we to be? « The Website of Unknowing — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:44:08 +0000

[...] December 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment A blogger named Benjamin David Steele has written a very nice review of my blog. Here are a few tidbits: Let me recommend a rather lovely blog. It’s well written and the author seems well informed. The blog in question is The Website of Unknowing and the author of it is Carl McColman …[who] began as a Christian who became a Neopagan and who then later returned to Christianity via mysticism…. Beyond these interests, McColman demonstrates a fairly wide and intelligent selection of ideas and writers. In particular, I was happy to see Ken Wilber mentioned rather prominently. But he also blogs about a spectrum of Judeo-Christian writers and ideas from the traditional to the liberal … In some ways, his religious interests, although wide, are a bit more tame than my own. He apparently avoids political issues (at least in this blog) and I didn’t see him write about the fiction genres of horror and sf … But I did find quite interesting his post about the movie Where the Wild Things Are. All in all, his blog has a Boomer sensibility about it. It turns out he is a young Boomer at the age of 48 … To me there is something simultaneously appealing and tame (in an inclusively politically correct way) about Boomer spirituality…. However, McColman’s thinking has some meat to it. He isn’t intellectually lazy and he is aware of the dangers of “boomeritis.” [...]

By: Intelligent Christian Blog: The Website of Unknowing « Marmalade

Intelligent Christian Blog: The Website of Unknowing « Marmalade — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:51:09 +0000

[...] To me there is something simultaneously appealing and tame (in an inclusively politically correct way) about Boomer spirituality. I grew up in a politically correct New Agey Christian church that attracted many lost Boomer souls seeking some form of religion they could tolerate. However, McColman’s thinking has some meat to it. He isn’t intellectually lazy and he is aware of the dangers of “boomeritis.” [...]

By: Infinite Warrior

Infinite Warrior — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:56:02 +0000

I am.

By: Carl McColman

Carl McColman — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:24:49 +0000

I’m curious if you are familiar with Integral Theory and the four quadrant model of the kosmos. Within it, objectivity and subjectivity are understood as interrelated and interdependent, but hardly indistinguishable.

By: Infinite Warrior

Infinite Warrior — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:20:23 +0000

how do you understand the distinction between “objective” and “subjective”

There isn’t one. Aristotle dreamed it up. Push one far enough and it becomes the other. Even what we call “objective” and “subjective” represent a whole. There are no dualities we do not create.

If the kingdom of heaven is within and among us (and Jesus said it was), then so is everything else. Truth, love, justice, etc. all arise from within. Within all our traditions (religious and “secular”), then, lies a single Truth. Where we’re lacking is in the perception that when we relate these eternal, “subjective/objective” truths to one another, they constitute Universal Truth.