Jay Dyer, What’s the Endgame for Atheists? |352|

I didn't expect much from this interview, and when Jay started with a discussion about the ecconomics of his book, I nearly gave up, but now I am about 1/4 of the way into the podcast, and I think this is a really thoughtful interview - definitely worth listening to.
I also feel it goes to the core of what Skeptiko is about. I'll comment further after I get to the end - I still think a 2-hour show should be split into two or maybe three parts.

I do hope Alex, that you can persuade this guy to come on the forum.

David
 
I didn't expect much from this interview, and when Jay started with a discussion about the ecconomics of his book, I nearly gave up, but now I am about 1/4 of the way into the podcast, and I think this is a really thoughtful interview - definitely worth listening to.
I also feel it goes to the core of what Skeptiko is about. I'll comment further after I get to the end - I still think a 2-hour show should be split into two or maybe three parts.

I do hope Alex, that you can persuade this guy to come on the forum.

David
Glad you're plowing thru it. I think the payoff comes near the end when Jay tries to harmonize his Orthodox Christian beliefs with the rest of the interview. He also pushes back really hard on the Joe Atwill stuff since he believes the Bible is historical (as mentioned previously, I did a follow-up with Joe re Jay's points).

Maybe this is inside baseball in that it requires some familiarity with Jay's work regarding the Esoteric/Occult nature of Hollywood and how that shows up time and again in film.

So, the jumping off point for me was, "yes, all that's true... so how else is culture being shaped... and who's doing it... and how do you harmonize that with your Orthodox Christian beliefs."
 
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My overall impression of Jay was that he is very bright, but is also very arrogant and closed minded, not things I necessarily link to someone spiritually mature. He quickly shut down Alex over and over again when challenged about his dogmatic statements. I do respect his knowledge of philosophy, but I just don't buy his absolute faith in the church fathers.
 
My overall impression of Jay was that he is very bright, but is also very arrogant and closed minded, not things I necessarily link to someone spiritually mature. He quickly shut down Alex over and over again when challenged about his dogmatic statements. I do respect his knowledge of philosophy, but I just don't buy his absolute faith in the church fathers.

Heh, would depend on which Church fathers. As I recall Origen said only a fool would take the Bible literally rather than metaphorically.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

Are some atheists secretly peddling an occulted, watered-down satanic/luciferian theology -- is that their end game?

Some atheist probably are, but some people that call themselves theists probably are too, in other words I would guess it's not a very significant number.

I know that atheists are viewed with some disdain here by a significant number of forum members, or if not quite disdain, I might describe it as the same distrust that townfolk greet strangers with in cowboy movies. I have a Facebook friend and ex-colleague that's firmly in the atheist category. He likes to think of himself as a humanist , he's probably a fan of Dawkins and Cox etc.

The thing is, do I think that he's probably betting on the wrong horse? Yes I do. But knowing this chap as I do, he'd be well able to live a 'spiritual' life, a very meaningful life. Knowing what I know about him, he'd be someone I could count on when I needed him, a genuine man. I'd sooner have someone like him, than someone who is robotic about god. Maybe God just isn't that important to us at this stage of our development?

I don't know if this has the slightest relevance to the podcast, but it's what entered my head when I read the question above. I did enjoy bits of the discussion, but others I had little interest in.
 
Another question we might ask is what exactly is "Luciferian"?

If there is an entity that insists all must worship it to be saved from whatever incoherence "original sin" is, and sends them to an unending concentration camp for refusing even though evidence of its existence is sparse at best....isn't that demonic?
 
I've actually been thinking about this very question lately -- we know the manufacturing process for making the new atheists, but what in that belief system is so desirous for them to believe?

I think you can sum it up with this:

Which is maybe why they're so ok with Transhumanism?

Someone on the 'Glitch in the Matrix' subreddit (some of the stories are really interesting! -- actually here's an awesome glitch I just read in Whitley Strieber/Jeffrey Kripal's Super Natural) just complained about supposed 'agents' downvoting and questioning everything in the paranormal threads. Unfortunately, you don't need to hire agents when you can condition the normals to do it for you.

This was my response:
I wouldn't be surprised if there were planted agents, but you don't need them these days. The school system and economic/social structure are generating these "new atheist" fanboys like they're going out of style. Reddit is a downvoting beehive storm of them.

Firstly it's a well deserved counter to the dominance of religious dogma over the past. They're pissed off and rejecting religious programming, as they well should! The problem is they're throwing the baby out with the bath water and rejecting all spiritualism (a belief that everything is one, which even in the physical model is true even if you're only including gravity. In the social model it should also be true: to hurt someone else is to hurt yourself.)

It's hip to be cynical these days and to worship science as if scientists are rock stars and not just fallible human beings who misrepresent their results in favor of personal biases as readily as any other field. (Even though anyone who looks below the surface would know that the material realist model is COMPLETELY busted and not just by quantum physics' 'observer' premise {is it really the observer affecting the experiment or is it the detector?})

It's like these guys are still cheering about the Newtonian model and don't even realize 'new' science is tearing it all down. And how does the 'physical model' (consciousness arose as an epiphenomenon of matter rather than consciousness came first and created the matter that we now know to be mostly empty space and probability patterns) allow them to throw out telepathy, UFOs, paranormal stuff, higher consciousness, intelligent design? I mean, just because you have faith that the universe is matter you can throw out not only the gods, but any evidence that makes you uncomfortable just because it's experiential knowledge or not easily reproducible in a lab? (and if you're honest with yourself, you'd realize ALL knowledge is subjectively interpreted and we can't prove an objective universe outside of ourselves at all.)

How do we know that pain medicine is working? We give some to someone and ask, does this hurt? How else could we know what love is? But if we ask alien abductees what happened to them we can throw that evidence out because we've already decided how the universe works. Really, son? You know how many times we've been proven to be idiots in the history of science? We used to think crossing the sound barrier would kill us. You see how big that universe is in comparison to us? You really think we're the pinnacle of conscious intelligence?

Capitalism loves the new atheism. It makes us all victims of causality instead of co-creators. It means we can shut down our imaginations because thoughts are just these extra fluffy things that don't really matter. It means we don't have to 'clean house' inside of our heads because our thoughts are a private room where we can do as we please and make a mess and it won't affect the world. Or will it?

If you believe everything is material then you believe our thoughts are material as well, stored in our brains in chemical and electrical configurations. Here I can make a thought move a million atoms *waves my arm* not impressed? I can give a thought to you and it might replicate and seek out other similar thoughts like a virus. I might have done so already. They love to pick on invisible pink unicorns, but if my belief in invisible unicorns has a behavioral effect (I step over every door threshold so as not to step on them) then my THOUGHT IS AFFECTING REALITY and if I started a unicorn worshiping cult you can bet your ass those thoughts would be real and would affect the real world.

So what delusion would you prefer? One where you pretend that there's nothing that goes bump in the night? One where there's demons and angels around every corner? One where we're all meaningless randomly generated robots in a selfish meaningless universe dominated by survival-of-the-fittest?

We're all just making choices. Why they act like sheepdogs for their beliefs is another issue entirely. Here's a clue as to why: fear of uncertainty.

I even made a plug for Skeptiko somewhere in that thread.

As for the interview, I enjoyed it and was ready to hit share on facebook, but then it got into all the Christian laundry and I continued listening, but passed on taunting my materialist friends with it.
 
Another question we might ask is what exactly is "Luciferian"?

If there is an entity that insists all must worship it to be saved from whatever incoherence "original sin" is, and sends them to an unending concentration camp for refusing even though evidence of its existence is sparse at best....isn't that demonic?
Ah yes, Gnosticism in a nutshell.. My take is that Jehovah was always the asshole, but you can't pin that on JC, unless you like the more fire & brimstone sections in the canonized gospels.
 
This is a drum Christopher Knowles beat in a series of blog posts over at The Secret Sun, and while I never simply agree with him I always find him an interesting read. He'd be a great Skeptiko guest, btw. Here is what he said at the end of one post, and it makes sense to me:

Whether they choose to admit it these safe-space Satanists are playing on the supernatural's turf now and the supernatural gets a vote on whether or not it's real, whatever the neo-not-Satanists want to think. And if you insist on being all rational and smarty-pants about it, just the simple power of suggestion is a lot more potent and insidious than people generally give it credit for being. You take on the trappings of Satan, you call on his name, you don't get to choose what tags along for the ride. The same can be said for any number of entities but all the more so for the Prince of Lies. Spiritual forces don't work on human timetables and they don't follow human rules. If they want to reach down and [%$*!] you sideways but good, they'll do it on their own time. Probably when you least expect it.

Safe-Space Satanism
 
Another question we might ask is what exactly is "Luciferian"?

If there is an entity that insists all must worship it to be saved from whatever incoherence "original sin" is, and sends them to an unending concentration camp for refusing even though evidence of its existence is sparse at best....isn't that demonic?

Since the guest for this episode of Skeptiko is Orthodox, it seems important to point out that Eastern Christianity never jumped on board Augustine's Original Sin Train, tends to think of salvation in a more therapeutic metaphorical register than a juridical one, and has a deep and ancient tradition of universalism and interpreting hell as a dimension of divine love. And even that distinction is rather overplayed, with non-retributive dimensions present in Western eschatology as well.

Nevertheless, for one prominent EO example, there is St. Isaac of Nineveh (7th century):

I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret.


And:

I am of the opinion that He is going to manifest some wonderful outcome, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion on the part of the glorious Creator, with respect to the ordering of this difficult matter of Gehenna’s torment: out of it the wealth of His love and power and wisdom will become known all the more—and so will the insistent might of the waves of His goodness.
 
Since the guest for this episode of Skeptiko is Orthodox, it seems important to point out that Eastern Christianity never jumped on board Augustine's Original Sin Train, tends to think of salvation in a more therapeutic metaphorical register than a juridical one, and has a deep and ancient tradition of universalism and interpreting hell as a dimension of divine love. And even that distinction is rather overplayed, with non-retributive dimensions present in Western eschatology as well.

Not sure I fully grasp this - are unbelievers who picked wrong ticket in the "Belief Lottery" are still tortured, even if not permanently?
 
Ah yes, Gnosticism in a nutshell.. My take is that Jehovah was always the asshole, but you can't pin that on JC, unless you like the more fire & brimstone sections in the canonized gospels.

Do you think the Serpent and Jesus are the same entity? IIRC that's an idea among some Gnostics called the Ophidians?
 
Glad you're plowing thru it. I think the payoff comes near the end when Jay tries to harmonize his Orthodox Christian beliefs with the rest of the interview. He also pushes back really hard on the Joe Atwill stuff since he believes the Bible is historical (as mentioned previously, I did a follow-up with Joe re Jay's points).

Maybe this is inside baseball in that it requires some familiarity with Jay's work regarding the Esoteric/Occult nature of Hollywood and how that shows up time and again in film.
I have to say, that for me the interview tailed off as it went on. There was far too much technical discussion about the Bible, that absolutely didn't interest me. He expressed the traditional Christian dislike of any exploration of ψ phenomena, which is just the opposite end of the same stick as those materialists that find ways to dismiss these phenomena - both tell people to avert their eyes and ignore the actual evidence!

David
 
I have to say, that for me the interview tailed off as it went on. There was far too much technical discussion about the Bible, that absolutely didn't interest me. He expressed the traditional Christian dislike of any exploration of ψ phenomena, which is just the opposite end of the same stick as those materialists that find ways to dismiss these phenomena - both tell people to avert their eyes and ignore the actual evidence!

David
Alex exposed his fundamental contradiction. He began the interview with an openness to explore experiences as a way to expand science, and ended the interview by insisting we can't trust our experiences. The knots we tie ourselves in, ay?
 
Not sure I fully grasp this - are unbelievers who picked wrong ticket in the "Belief Lottery" are still tortured, even if not permanently?

Well, first of all, Isaac is describing the torture as something like a self-inflicted wound - the bringing to fruition of one's inherent character. This parallels the thought of Emanuel Swedenborg whom I brought up in the Gilmour thread, and actually with plenty of mainstream Christian theologians as well. God does not condemn anyone, Isaac writes:

For it would be most odious and utterly blasphemous to think that hate or resentment exists with God, even against demonic beings; or to imagine any other weakness, or passibility, or whatever else might be involved in the course of retribution of good or bad as applying, in a retributive way, to that glorious divine Nature. Rather, He acts towards us in ways He knows will be advantageous to us, whether by way of things that cause suffering, or by way of things that cause relief, whether they cause joy or grief, whether they are insignificant or glorious: all are directed towards the single eternal good, whether each receives judgement or something of glory from Him—not by way of retribution, far from it!—but with a view to the advantage that is going to come from all these things.


And yes, Isaac does think that hell is impermanent. As for the "belief lottery" notion, the idea here is that one experiences the state of hell because one has rejected the good, not because one has chosen the wrong dogmatic system. So the Orthodox are frequently more open to what is called inclusivism, or the Christian theological idea that one doesn't have to "believe in" Christ to be actually saved by him. Rather, one responds to the "light" one is given and "judged" accordingly by the result.

C.S. Lewis allegorizes inclusivism in a section of The Last Battle where Emeth, a soldier who served a god named Tash, meets Aslan the lion. Emeth remarks that he has served Tash all his days. Instead of condemning Emeth, Aslan welcomes him into Narnia. Why? Aslan declares,

I take to me the services which that hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.
 
At 6:45 ish


"The fundamental motivation for the most malevolent actions is actually revenge against God."

Are some atheists secretly peddling an occulted, watered-down satanic/luciferian theology -- is that their end game?

If belief in God gives God (or the benevolent metaphysical hierarchy) permission or authority to act, then the malevolent hierarchy would necessarily attack the notion that god exists as well as promote everything the benevolent hierarchy stands against: malevolence, selfishness, deception, etc.

So yes... but exactly how many or if any prominent ones are doing this wittingly or unwittingly, I have no idea.

It seems very easy to imagine that some embittered former Christians would seek revenge against God by promoting disbelief in God as well as everything that is the opposite of what God is supposed to stand for.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

Are some atheists secretly peddling an occulted, watered-down satanic/luciferian theology -- is that their end game?

That seems like one hell of a reach... I really don't think so, most of the atheists I know from my own time as one are anal about order and *really* hate the idea of the unknown, so a pinball/pool ball universe is very comforting to them. I know that there is also a branch that is ideologically motivated and aligned with leftist ideology, increasing in quantity the more you move towards Marxist ideas. But Satanism? That reminds me of a troll that we had here a few weeks ago that insisted that NDEs were "satanic deception".

A quick glance at Jay's site has articles about the Satanic Roots of Feminism....
I have been forced to spend a few weekends with a third wave feminist that has a blood connection to my wife... And this actually seems plausible.
 
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