humanism - apologetics

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139 Apologetics for humanism [12 Dec 2022]

Individuation is shaking off the mold that does not fit. Integrity is clear responsible thinking. Is organized religion an imposed mold? Is there freedom from religion? Is fear ever productive? Do scriptures create the very problem they claim to solve?

In my most recent blog article I have finally declared my worship for socialist Switzerland despite the wrath of people very close to me over the use of that word.

I enjoy propounding my philosophical evaluations. While doing so, I depend on piano tuning where my sense of adequacy is producing the best tunings of my lifetime. I proceed as one who is not senile.

I have always refused to fear a god of wrath. Finally, I emerge from an existential crisis. When I was very young, perhaps even preschool, we had a neighbor whose control phrase was "you better watch out, the Bogeyman's gonna gitcha." I feared no direct physical harm from her but suffered deeply from the fear of the unknown that she declared with such fervor.

In my senior years I recognize that she was voicing the philosophy of organized religion. Today my mental survival depends on freedom from that religion.

This blog, Ernstraud philosophy, articulates the identity for which I exist in the world. It is the ethical humanist answer to the above problem. It teaches the godhood we become, the antithesis of the man made god that one fears. Although fear sometimes produces extreme effort, it is a weak foundation for performance and is unsustainable. On the other hand, self-confidence is the power that sustains realistic performance, identity, and meaning. It is the integrity that endures.

I have described previously that my escape from serious nightmares was a journey on foot to the outskirts of hell and back. Although those overt symptoms ended over two decades ago, I remained captive to the mental tyranny of the god of fear as promoted by the religion of the people around me.

It challenges those people to accept that my unselfish beneficence is based on a cosmology so differently worded from theirs. It challenges me to express my eternal moral principles in words understandable to them. Let us come together in mutual appreciation of service performed with kindness. It does not negate my goodness to recognize that it is achieved through faith in science and reason.

Corollary - belief

My children need not believe in my Ernstraudian philosophy. Without external validation, they unconditionally claim my respect and high regard for their individuated integrity. By analogy, a being claiming Godhood must be at least as comprehending of me as I am of my children.

Corollary - labels

My parents were Goldwater Republicans of the kind that might have children who suffer nightmares. As a socialist I am a survivor of such nightmares. Possibly some of my children are Republicans. Their children? One characteristic common among our current generations is tolerance.

Corollary - deeds

I have commented elsewhere that my church membership does not depend on believing the Bible. It does depend on good deeds without requiring an orthodox theoretical basis for them. Organized religion, once engulfing me with firm support, is also Plato's cave from which I must escape mentally to obtain individual identity and worth.

Corollary - scriptures

The element driving up my blood pressure at this point is scriptures that address an audience of recalcitrant, backsliding sinners who comprise a fallen mankind. That environment is toxic to my mental and physical health. I cannot continue to lower myself to that level.

Corollary - salvation

The salvation offered by comfort scriptures is required only in the mental arena of self-deficiency created by those scriptures.

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