Two characters from my reading in 2010 include, "The Judge" from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and "The Grand Inquisitor" from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Zaramazov.

Together they pose a challenge: what good is reason or love?

These two powerful forces, each conquering and enslaving their respective domain, terrorizing and tormenting weaker unfortunates, grossly oblivious to arguments or reasons, morals, evidence, justice, compassion, mercy or love....they take what they want, when they want, and they don't bother with law or order: they are their own law. And they enforce it: whether you like it or not. And they will kill you and anything they please. And they are brilliant at what they do: basically, they are genius. Mad, deadly, beautiful, immense genius.

What good is reason or love at solving those raging tsunamis?

Hello DH, very nice to hear from you again, hope you are keeping well.

Thank you for raising these great questions about reason and love. I look at ethics in an evolutionary framework. The problem with characters such as the Grand Inquisitor is that they imagine their tyrannical attitude can be sustained. But they establish a society that is headed for destruction.

Only reason and love provide a sustainable ethic, grounded in the Beatitudes and the Last Judgment, to move the world towards a community of trust and belonging.

Robert: Hello DH, very nice to hear from you again, hope you are keeping well.

Thank you Robert. Busy, no doubt- but interested in exploring some ideas that have been generated by some recent reading.

Robert: I look at ethics in an evolutionary framework.

Where do characters such as The Judge and Grand Inquisitor line up within an evolutionary framework? I tend to think they are unfortunately dominant paradigms of how much of the world works: irrational, violent and oppressive…case examples of how humans tend to organize systems of power and social mobilization: where words like democracy, human rights, and justice are (at usual) cynically appropriated to cover ruthless behavior…and (at best) dismissed out of hand as idealistic, escapist, impractical, unattainable…and (at worst) violently combated and explicitly denigrated as weak, sickly and decadent.

Robert: The problem with characters such as the Grand Inquisitor is that they imagine their tyrannical attitude can be sustained. But they establish a society that is headed for destruction.

My question is: when is the tyrannical attitude not prevalent, or dominant? Pockets of democratic dissenters, dissidents and rationalists occasionally speak and organize against the tyranny- but, realistically, reality is tyrannical…one Inquisitor will follow another, their destructiveness built upon the last, lending fuel to future fires of tyrants to come. Not only are they sustained, they are the norm.

Robert: Only reason and love provide a sustainable ethic, grounded in the Beatitudes and the Last Judgment, to move the world towards a community of trust and belonging.

And, The Judge and Inquistor smile…crushing a few more lovers and thinkers beneath their omnipotent heels.

The Grand Inquisitor

The trial of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate poses the archetypal question, “What is truth?”, that is central to the actual problem of human salvation. The tyrant sees truth as a matter of expediency, accepting Gibbon’s observation that for the magistrate all religions are equally useful. The messiah sees truth as one, with human recognition of a single common reality the beginning of cultural transformation. The Bible explains that the message of Jesus is the basis of salvation, but that people are too stupid to hear it. Jesus tells Pilate that he has come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Jesus is indifferent to his personal fate, because he knows he presents a bigger message that people will eventually have to hear if humanity is to have any long term prospect.

Of course, we all know that the tyrants co-opted the message of Christ and turned it into something they could find useful in the short term, as the basis of social unity and stability in Christendom. However, Christendom theology is false, and ignores the real message of the Bible, corruptly distorting it to fit within the Procrustean bed of a limited political vision. Going back now to read the Bible, to understand the true message of atonement and redemption in Christ, requires that we set the text against the framework of the question Pilate asked Jesus. Science tells us there is one truth, that all true statements are mutually compatible. The church has suggested Jesus was talking about an invented fantasy as truth, with lies such as the virgin birth and other miracles seen as evidence that the church should be obeyed. If instead we read Jesus as talking about reality, we find a moral basis for challenge to tyranny.

Charles Darwin proved in the theory of evolution that human salvation requires cumulative adaptation to precedent. Reading the Bible as an evolutionary tract, in touch with the actual scientific reality of salvation on earth rather than the fantasy of escape to heaven, provides a new powerful lens for intuition of truth. The problem, in the eyes of Christ, is that humanity has accepted false teachings and is hurtling towards extinction as a species. Pilate’s model of imperial control with no ultimate basis may be grounded in immediate interests and instincts but is not sustainable. Unsustainable things stop.

Jesus says if we want to keep going as a species, that is in his terms if we want to achieve salvation and redemption, the template is laid out in the sermon on the mount and the last judgment. The idea that the meek shall inherit the earth seems entirely stupid and naïve from the view of the tyrant and his minions, but actually holds a deep evolutionary vision about a shift from the paradigm of control to a paradigm of belonging.

In our contemporary world, tyranny seems to hold most of the trump cards, but the highest trump, ecological sustainability, requires a new vision of a transformed world. We can build on things that work within the current system, including market incentives, to chart a path towards universal abundance.

A selection from Cormac McCarthy's, "Blood Meridian"...a quotation by The Judge.

This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

Dissident Heart wrote:A selection from Cormac McCarthy's, "Blood Meridian"...a quotation by The Judge.

This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQynsWpBpQ

What point are you trying to make? Surely you do not agree with Herakleitos that war is our father and our king? Are you using this quote to illustrate a dominant way of thought that you disagree with?

Sam Harris makes the point that collaboration generally produces better outcomes than conflict. As such, avoidance of war is a higher form of divination than war. The glorification of war in the comment you provide from McCarthy is wrong and dangerous and stupid. War does not force the unity of existence but produces separation.

RT: What point are you trying to make? Surely you do not agree with Herakleitos that war is our father and our king? Are you using this quote to illustrate a dominant way of thought that you disagree with?

I don’t share The Judge’s (or Herakleitos) allegiance to such a King- but there is little doubt that War is King, or that the High God of our Earthly estate is a Warrior Deity…You, me or Harris might highlight the peaceful elements, speak highly of cooperation and collaboration: but we are less than whispers compared to the war trumpets that bombard existence. And my point (a weak point, no doubt) is that all of our passion for reason or morality –insofar as it rejects the reign of such a bloody monarch- is an irrational hope and outrageous faith…a desire for an impossibility: an impossible desire.

Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" has Christ in prison, chained underground, while above the fires are burning: the war against heresy and disloyalty is well underway…as violent and terrible and brutal as any- or, in other words, the norm rolls on.

And the norm is not rational, moral or just: and to pursue otherwise is abnormal.

Dissident Heart wrote:You, me or Harris might highlight the peaceful elements, speak highly of cooperation and collaboration: but we are less than whispers compared to the war trumpets that bombard existence. And my point (a weak point, no doubt) is that all of our passion for reason or morality –insofar as it rejects the reign of such a bloody monarch- is an irrational hope and outrageous faith…a desire for an impossibility: an impossible desire.

Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" has Christ in prison, chained underground, while above the fires are burning: the war against heresy and disloyalty is well underway…as violent and terrible and brutal as any- or, in other words, the norm rolls on.

And the norm is not rational, moral or just: and to pursue otherwise is abnormal.

Hi DH, I think your comment here addresses the major weakness in the common atheist argument that faith is a vice. The scale of delusion in the war mentality is so vast that people simply cannot comprehend how it is sending us to planetary destruction, and why as a species we are collectively so stupid. This is the jarring message of the gospels, that when a man explained the truth he was rejected and despised. The despisers took over the church and changed the message into a lie, but that does not mean the real message no longer exists. The meek shall inherit the earth. This is the statement of faith for which Christ was crucified. Its truth is the basis of the resurrection.