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A “Karl Jaspers Applied” to the phenomenology of Alexander Campbell’s sermon on “The Riches of Christ”––the periechontological argument for God, and “cypher” thoughts about the biblical ordinance of baptism for putting existential guilt in remission (8-4-2008)

A “KARL JASPERS APPLIED” COMPARISON OF JASPERS AND CAMPBELL 

CONTENT OF ITEMS (corrections and clarifications possible and if significant will be dated)

0. INTRODUCTORY ORIENTATIONS
01. Observing Two of Three personages to get our bearings
02. Three, a secondary source-review of Richard Dawkins, a book-author being promoted on Herbert Müller’s blog
03. Jaspers as coiner of speech re: delusion and illusion––
04. Making the pass-over from psychopathology’s delusion-proper to psychotherapeutic language––
04.1. Beyond ontic and cosmic logic––
05. “Delusion proper” (GP @ 196) and “history proper” (Origin 235)
05.1. Delusion proper is a psychopathological category of immanent essence
06. Illogicality v. Jaspers’ philosophically logical faith; toward Campbell’s philosophically reasonable use revelation––
06.1 Reducing humankind’s origin to space-time objectification––
06.2. Campbell’s biblical revelation is comparable to Jaspers’ philosophical revelation
06.3. Campbell’s cosmological leadership entia naturæ (see Discourse item 3.) and perennial ontological entia rationis
06.4. Campbell’s dogmatic facade––
06.5. The k.i.s.s. of the façade––
06.5. Keeping UFO angels etc. in order and braking for Galactic abysses––
06.6. Braking for abysses––
06.7. Abyss: Marian misguiding search-engine misuse (see also item 1. below)––
07. Byway excursion: A poor Campbellite and debater model; Internet collusion-illusion and disillusionment––
08. Herbert’s characteristic and loyal book review––
08.1. Richard’s objectivism
08.2. Herbert’s subjectivism
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1. Campbell’s sermon “The Riches of Christ”; phenomenological method and constellations––
1.1. Cyphering baptism (The Cypher Science): We are not talking about paper-tiger certifications but maybe constellation tigers.
1.2. The periechontological argument; Campbell’s biblical history is like Jaspers’ boundaries of history with it abysses––
1.3. Restoring the “either/or”––

2.  Parsimony requires a simplification in cyphering immersion  
2.1. The ambient meaningfulness of John’s immersion––
2.2. John and Jesus’ ambient baptism––
2.3. Herod: plotting the killing of one’s wife was a life-style immersed in immanental thinking
2.4. “Adapt or perish” i.e., taking the oath to use the word “EVOLVE”––
3. Immersion into an old-new Objectivity, Campbell as exception––An“Unimpeachable objectivity”, a deluge (Origin 231)
3.1. Campbell, immersed in the Western frontier of the New World, and fresh out of European academia (Glasgow University)––
3.2. Macro-micro immersion, primitive and recent; Jaspers on delusion and illusion categories continued––
3.3. The phenomenology of delusion and the phenomenology of philosophy (philosophical logic or delimited logicality)––
4. Intimacy with most near morphologically similar––
4.1. Psychological and psychopathological delusion––
5. Delusion Proper distinguished by one-way pass over––
6. Appendage: 3 legged Chickens or When normal cows are seen as having 5 legs––
6.1. Digital appendages: When 3x3=10––
7. All of what Campbell said is truer today
8. To be continued: Existential guilt, groaning from mere existence…
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0. INTRODUCTORY ORIENTATIONS

01. Observing Two of Three personages to get our bearings––A “karl Jaspers Applied” approach to Campbell’s sermon includes comparisons with the performances of three evolutionary atheists: One, Herbert Müller (see item 07. below). Two, an Alma-Maters fellow turned atheist (we graduated from Great Lakes Christian College and Lincoln Christian Seminary). The first is a peddler of others’ books and ideas. The Alma-Maters fellow has a Website where he is aggressively attempting to sell his book arguing for his conversion to atheism. My first impression is that he speaks of a conversion from drug and loose conduct through church influence and then blames the church and credits “science” for his “de-conversion”. It seems, to keep it simple, after reaping the benefits of the theistic community augmented by biblical thinking a reversed pass-over  (Jaspers GP “pass over” 197) occurs, i.e., disillusionment inverts to delusion’s exclusivity (see below item 05.). That is the outstanding surface inconsistency. I’ll not mention for now the fellow’s name or the title of the book; it might promote the book on the cosmopolitan information highway. In fairness, it should be said that his Website does not indicate an exploitation of Karl Jaspers’ name and works, and I explain my own seeming inconsistency and relevancy-spin by pointing at his performance; the performance is worth mentioning in objective ways because of our apparent polemic stances relative to our schools (see item 06. below)––both schools of the Alexander Campbell tradition. Clarification (8-5-2008): It should be made clear that I have not purchased, received, or reviewed the Alma-Maters' book and my comments are in effect a pre-view similar to the pre-review followed by an actual review of Susan Kirkbright's Navigations book on Karl Jaspers after the book was given to me (not given by Susan)––see: http://www.karljaspersapplied.net/Kirkbright.htm Another pre-view was done to Ken Miller's "Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul" and that is found at http://www.karljaspersapplied.net/ExistenzKjsnaPart6.htm I have not received that book either. Another pre-review was a short note on Gregory Walter's Conversion book (see Site Map) which I did receive but not given to me by Gregory.

02. Three, a secondary source-review of Richard Dawkins, a book-author being promoted on Herbert Müller’s blog. Herbert has reviewed and quintessentially approved of Dawkins’ performance, i.e., that belief in God is a delusion. Herbert agrees with the conclusive judgment with this exception: Richard does not use Herbert’s formulae; a peculiar sort of subjectivism viewing Richard is too objective though reaching the same atheistic conclusion as Herbert. Again, Herbert agrees with Richard that biologically and through a logically consistently spirit (Gestalt) the idea of God is conjured and God has no being outside the most recent ontologically determined product of humankind’s mind. The three in effect and with an attitude of exclusivity, classify belief in God (the biblical invisible God) as a mistake no greater than which is conceivable. So, it matters little whether this proclamation about an incorrigible mistake or a remedial mistake is used instead of “delusion”. But because the Oxford Scholar, the Charles Simonyi financed Dawkins, has popularized “delusion”, one need not compete with such a well-financed promotion, but simply state that these personages do not rise to the level of Jaspers’ science of psychopathology––though a well financed school of ontology can corrupt absolutely if there is no intervention, such as my http://www.karljaspersapplied.net/JaspersDawkins.htm, and Jaspers as intervener below:

03. Jaspers as coiner of speech re: delusion and illusion–– In other words, it is Jaspers’ that sets the standard use of terms within the boundaries of a cultural tradition that “form the basis of psychotherapeutic studies” relative to the history of humankind and that “the human image should only be defined by the greatest of human beings and only they should coin the modes of speech to be used in talking of the psyche” (GP 821). A decision must be made whether an Oxford disciple of Darwin (Darwinism), a McGill associate, or a philosopher-psychopathologist should coin a word that has less slavish subjective results and more objective potential. So, more about delusion and illusion:

04. Making the pass-over from psychopathology’s delusion-proper to psychotherapeutic language––A perspective from which to judge the performance of Campbell’s biblical and contemporarily informed sermon has to be determined. The tentative approach must be made this side of heaven and as such the immediate encompassing is…existential…but yet within…essential…encompassing phenomena. Campbell’s Discourse can be referred to as words having philosophical psychotherapeutic impact. The effect is commensurate with the phenomenality of Jaspers’ “axial” period of history referred to in his Origin and Goal of History. That history begins encompassed by a premise similar to Campbell’s. That axial age, that manifestation of humankind’s unity of sublime basic traits regardless of the universally similar occurrences at geographical and cultural distances, and without apparent intentional symmetrical replicating, and without mutual contractual agreement or detectible reciprocity laws, did not prevent the crucifixions and torchings. Only a post-axial “delusion proper”, an “anlage” can enslave the personality of a culture so devoid of conscience––as though for an excuse primal inheritable and genetic deficiencies had been loosed in the immune reaction to a spiritual ethos.

04.1. Beyond ontic and cosmic logic––One could theorize that the Lord did not speak often directly to groups and individuals in that epoch (I Samuel 3:1) but then, lastly, and now we have received the latest rational biblical communiqués (Hebrews 1:2), including hermeneutically enhancing information from what Campbell refers objectively to as natural entities (entia naturæ). Campbell isn’t making a cosmological argument but what we might see as a periechontological invitation from Encompassing proper. Central to “The Riches of Christ” sermon is the concern for and appeal to every individual to meet the initial and continued eligibility requirements for embracing the full-life comforts of inheritable entitlements. It’s an invitation is to be immersed into encompassing ontic-Being and phenomenal being as such. The invitation from on high is pertinent today for it is not enough to radically dogmatize that one must be baptized into the ontological argument that God’s existence depends on a biological tenet of exclusivity. I’m referring to that rationalization and exclusivity from which there is no escape after the pass-over from illusion to delusion appears (like the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit––that only God can judge and while reflecting one remains creatively anxious about one’s own status), that potentially irreversible process, that rapturous feeling of “the” biological educators’ union’s strength, that chant about eventual extinction and what it takes to survive as a body. I mean the rapture of the arrogant expectation of almost having the whole knowledge of absolute truth, e.g., that it is so near to being realize that one might as well loose the elation restraints and celebrate “the invigorating science” at the expense of those sober “postmodernists” who could, if not intimated, exercise the ancient caution and engage the restraining reality of learned ignorance.

05. “Delusion proper” (GP @ 196) and “history proper” (Origin 235) refers to the questionable voids of the “tertiary formation” of humankind’s history “a minute part of the history of life on earth” (Origin 235). The “tertiary formation” is the era of specialists’ recordings about humankind’s urge to react to tooth and nail enforcement of the will to power. The tertiary period refers to the available historical documentation regarding life’s prognostic feelings and analytical diagnostics. It is comparable to the clinical milieu and staffing conferences that Jaspers found so frustrating, such as how a nominal classification became the catchall (like “evolve” is used as a specialist’s catch-all diagnosis) for undifferentiated phenomena. That environment led Jaspers to say that psychopathologists must learn how to think. Undifferentiated history is a diagnosis lacking evaluation about a non-benign immeasurable growth, i.e., it is talk, it is speaking about “the history of nature and history of…[humankind]” that both “together constitute an irreversible process in time. But the two of them are disparate in nature and meaning [emphasis mine].” But though encompassed within and without by disparate phenomena learning how to think is being more objective than hubris-subjective; it means distinguishing variation-extinction from what is invariable about a principle of humankind’s history: “everything great is a phenomenon in transition” (Origin 243). One must decide which pole of encompassing phenomena secretes the extinction of specialization and which nourishes immortality. “Everything great is a phenomenon of extinction” is a tenet of fundamental evolutionism expressed in the creed that says in biology new species emerge because of genetic changes to organisms that over time favor their survival though primarily extinguishable in time. Delusion proper relates to the irreversible and inextinguishable and to be considered as institutional thinking.

05.1. Delusion proper is a psychopathological category of immanent essence, and so natural history is delusion-proper if taken for the essence of humankind, for, taking a fundament of natural history as essence is to carry analogous thinking of primitive humankind too far to the left and too far below humankind’s transcendental source (Jaspers’ existenz): It’s a tendency of primitive peoples to conclude by analogy; an analogous fundamental natural process “is not the essence” of human history (GP 197 and Origin 283, ft nt 15). Tertiary thinking looses its specialization wings, its essence, when delusion proper is too easily categorized as undifferentiated or as having a non-benign bracketed status, for, meanwhile a development might become untreatably cancerous. In other words, Jaspers, speaking from what makes humankind special and distinct from and incomparable to the animal category, sees the so-called paleogene and Neogene subperiods from a medical diagnostician’s perspective. History proper is always receding on the Encompassing horizons but affects humankind; it is not like deluding nature that is irreversibly heading for continued extinction, and seemingly without conscious purpose. (For more on history proper, i.e., both the source of inhibiting ontologies or the source of freedom to soar periechontologically as an encompassing contributing to the specialty of humankind’s reasoning, see Philosophie, Berlin 1932, pp. 118 ff, and the 1948 Second Edition pp. 397 ff.)

06. Illogicality v. Jaspers’ philosophically logical faith; toward Campbell’s philosophically reasonable revelation––The nearest concept to the Darwinian doctrine that Jaspers uses is “this happening” in reference to the history of nature, and it is used to avoid the abyss of ultimate causal thinking––a central purpose in The Origin and Goal of History. Again, when natural history is differentiated from the history of humankind the two are “disparate” in meaning (Origin 235). According to humankind’s history it is illogical to think life over time changes to where it can reflect on itself and conjure up God or humankind’s origin. Jaspers uses philosophical faith to avoid the continuation of the illogicality of needing abysmal immanental authoritative revelations to ontologically explain God to peons. Philosophical faith is used to avoid assenting to a presumption that revelation has been delegated to a Kingdom of God in Rome or any other institutional space-time locale, which erupts locally, and then pandemically, attracting attention by way of crucifixions and exterminations. That humankind’s origin is known biologically is smugly authoritarian, and doubly authoritarian and enslaving if another conventional type authority says that “we know where, when, how, and why (survival as such but no purpose other than selfish concern over a group’s nearest convenient acquaintances) humankind developed, and that peons need a space-time-continuum-revelation applied to that morphed sort of life to avoid honestly facing up to the illogicality of the enigma of origin thinking. The collusion of a vatic authority’s tenets with the biological authority’s tenets is in affect “the pompous comportment” (Origin 233) that can last only so long as the capital will-to-power holds out––until reasonable entities come to adequate descriptive and communicative “cyphers” and transact to the collusion. (In short: “Cyphers” are words connoting the individual’s participating in Transcendence from which inspiration might come.)

06.1 Reducing humankind’s origin to space-time objectification, translated as “evolve” (Origin 237), is a pretentious predication on the “enigma” of humankind’s essence and is iterated as “another abyss” amongst others (238). This translation of Jaspers’ meaning is as potentially deceptive as is making too much out of any word in Nietzsche’s “The GayScience” (Nietzsche 451), for; Jaspers is not uttering a creedal commitment to a doctrine of evolutionstheorie or die entwidlungslehre. We are not to get immersed in the delusion of the bottomless infinitely of the finite, i.e., immanence, but rather into the constellation of being at large and small, but always transcendent. There is no category of science or word-predicated on all those categories that will accommodate the full immersion of collective or individual humankind.

06.2. Campbell’s biblical revelation is comparable to Jaspers’ philosophical revelation or inspirational faith and serves as an example of the truth in Jaspers’ tolerance toward the practical and reasonable use of revelation. Campbell’s faith in revelation includes the gospel message as lastly and most sacrificially delivered by Jesus, (and through personal instructions to the disciples and instructions then enforced by two entities in white apparel, followed by the wait for the baptism of the holy spirit upon the remission of inhibiting guilt––see the physician Luke’s accounts in Acts 1 and 2). It’s a biblical faith in revelation and Campbell’s sermon qualifies for being considered as “the protestant pastor today” who “keeps us in sight of eternal things” spoken in a way that is “believable” (PFR 353). Jaspers was not quite right when he said (PFR 357) “One must be ordained to have the right to preach in church”. Campbell “preached in church” after leaving the Church of his ordination––during the ratification process of the separation of Church and State in the American experience.

06.3. Campbell’s cosmological leadership entia naturæ (see Discourse item 3.) and perennial ontological entia rationis substantially comes close, then, to making a “cypher” out of immersion and comes close to meeting Jaspers’ expressed need for speaking new life into the biblical message and still remain in contact with the variety of tradition-bound religious communities. One can wonder whether this pious preacher and his pious father presented the immersion cypher in a believable way not only to the choir so-to-speak but to out-side critical thinkers, the so-called postmodernists outside the congregation.

06.4. Campbell’s dogmatic facade––What forces Campbell out of the medium of inspired reason and prevents his dissertation from coming across as “a wholly transformed” faith “from biblical soil” (PFR @ f 355 f) is the necessity for being exclusively differentiable from the apostatized substitutions for the biblical and historical ordinances.  The illogicality of transubstantiation, its administration to special “Church” membership, and changing the biblical form of baptism from immersion to sprinkling were tests of authority not biblical tenets––though historically a test in Qumran. The situation was like this: If sprinkling can become the paradigm via Church convention, the authority of the bible is precluded and circumvented, the constitution of the church pattern (NT) is compromised and uncompetitive with the Roman Church’s exclusive tenet of adaptation for survival. For Campbell it was clear that the bible had to compete with Church authority or there would be no reformation of performance.

06.5. The k.i.s.s. of the façade––To keep it simple to the point of stupidity, it was bible v. Catholicism and objective science’s oblivion to the subtle political tactics of the Church (PFR 37 regarding Augustine; and 44f regarding Church methods, and Campbell’s Discourse item 3. relative to Churchmen and scientism). Actual belief in the biblical testimony (Campbell’s father a pious preacher too) contributes to the passion for the gospel message including what one must do to initiate the inheritance through good works and loving others, as did Jesus. The unintentional side effects of the criterion revolution were similar to the NT church meeting on the first day of the week rather than the last day to make public the distinction between the old religion and the new including the fourth of the Decalogue. Whatever usufructuary (a Roman law word) had taken on the air of divine ordinance, or had become politicized, was cautiously placed at a distance by sublimation, i.e., like putting first things first as well as the last supper needing distance too from Judaic rituals of circumscribed exclusivity. There was a distancing from certain life styles or anything that would distract from the effects of the son of man’s suffering. We know existentially that humans can be made to suffer, but we do not know about entities’ anguish in other dimensions (other than that Jesus is said to be crucified afresh depending on our behavior). And we know more than we admit that each participate in others suffering by merely existing (existential guilt: see German Guilt, 32). It gets harder and harder for the sober to hold on to tenets and Hummers while others burn because of them.

06.5. Keeping UFO angels etc. in order and braking for Galactic systemic abysses––Now there are two ways of handling the illogicality of the compromising paradigm of the unification of Catholic Church and catholic science. One is by a phenomenology primarily including mediators that are merely epiphenomenal but existentially powerful in the form of positivism and naturalism––what Jaspers refers to as the “evolving Church” (PFR 39) and its exclusive tenet, i.e., that momentum tendency to capitalize on anything that moves. If there is a popular UFO phenomenology unfolding…get an exclusive on it, e.g. holy leap by Vatican leak. The other is periechontological mediation mentioned in Campbell’s discourse, such as references to entities, some of the Solar System (see Discourse item 2, 8) and some of other dimensions such as “angelic hierarchies of upper worlds” (item 17f). We are referring to dimensions Jaspers refers to as the matrix of history or history proper. He is not embarrassed to speak to the cons and pros of “rational beings besides himself [humankind]: demons, angels, star-gods” (Origin 239). And there are positive answers to the question “about rational beings elsewhere in the universe (238)” and beams of communication, hierglyphics, and about the “distance of light years” affecting and effecting possible exchanges…and, I might dare mention a second coming (Discourse item 28) not limited to the math of light years, i.e., eternity recurring though unknown byways.

06.6. Braking for abysses––Both Jaspers and Campbell put the brakes to wonderings and wandering spin-offs to avoid the infinite spectrum of abysses that appear as white gushers and/or black holes. They reasonably, existentially (empirically), confine such speculation to biblical revelation primarily and then secondarily to nature. Jaspers, as a secular cosmopolitan, calls it philosophical faith thereby maintaining existential contact to avoid the abysses of uncritical vacillations (Origin 240), but, that faith is the biblical faith historically, “all men are related in Adam, originate from the hand of God and are created after His image” (Origin xv). For Campbell the biblical faith dares to be exclusively critical in all dimensions, and includes the biblical Paul’s exhortation to existentially discern to the point of ignoring angels from heaven that put limits on the biblical immersion into God’s being, conversion paid for by no greater sacrifice. Today more and more we are thinking––if not talking––about unidentified flying objective phenomena requiring a willingness for going anywhere to debate on one’s feet or winging it. Jaspers addresses in detail the abysses to be avoided “amongst the thousands of millions of suns in the Galactic System” (Origin 239 ff) wherein the dangers are galactically systemic when immanence is shaved from the encompassing Transcendent.

06.7. Abyss: Marian misguiding search-engine misuse (see also item 1. below)––One such abyss is found by Internet search engines’ byway-excursions. If a surfer wanting information about Jaspers and searches under “Karl Jaspers”, one optimized Website when accessed slips off into a Webpage about UFO Marian encounters. Marian Websites are sprinkled throughout the world interstate WWW––hardly miraculous apparitions but postings with a Catholic missionary purpose. I’m not ignoring or making light of the phenomena that go by the name of “apparitions” but it is existentially and intellectually presumptuous to the point of dishonesty to use it in support of universal Catholic truth––especially through the misuse of the psychopathologist of apparitions and the phenomenological method, Karl Jaspers, Jesus or his mother. Even the second coming, unless one is thrown prostrate, is within the spiritual and political wrestling arena if it comes to a matter of electing one. The apparition of an existential millennium in the New World must have been as tempting to Campbell as it was once to Hegel, but the living oracles, the biblical and natural comprehensiveness, that which limited millennial harbingering’s rationalizations, kept Campbell on course though attracted to the rational apparition of millenarianism. On Interstate WWW millenerianism appears as Marian meliorism.  In short, long or short time specious apparitions can be abysses distracting from history proper.

07. Byway excursion: A poor Campbellite and debater model; Internet collusion-illusion and disillusionment––The Alma-Maters (item 01. above) fellow will not communicate unless one purchases his book, i.e., under that condition. It seems fair though suspicious. To circumvent any criticism that the book-sale is motivated by economics, he states there’s only a four/eighth-dollar realized on each sale. If such a Campbellite-associate and author can get a million disgruntled theists to purchase the conversion-deconversion book he is well on the way to millionaire status, and an actual millionaire when another half-million purchase the book to defend their own faith from his arguments––an easy goal due to propagating through evolutionary language and coat-tail scientific wakes that he attributes to his deconversion. There is a book market––though diminishing due to the ethicality of the freedom of information act on the cosmological highway and byways. However, those, who are honest enough to admit that they need the money for basic needs, deserve some credit for confessing their failures. But the Alma-Maters fellow is seeking financial support in the form of donations because his personal business is suffering due, according to the Website, to those who disapprove of his atheism and therefore not supporting his business––I don’t know what that business is. There may indeed be some illusion-collusion and some public reactionary disillusionment. I mean one might not be supporting a business because of what is interpreted as intellectual dishonesty, or suspicions about an easy slip into the abyss of illogicality. “Unlike the Catholic priest…” (PFR 352 to be read in context), the un-collared protestant preacher must appeal forthrightly “as an equal among equals…of unshakable honesty” but informed from a historical biblical and moral reformation perspective.

08. Herbert’s characteristic and loyal book review–– It should be emphasized that Herbert has studied Dawkins’ view of the ultimate delusion, i.e., the Dawkins’ god delusion. Herbert’s review and analysis could not have materialized better if one such as myself had assigned him the task.  I have not, need not, and will try to avoid any record showing that I have utilized a tax-supported public library that might be used in figuring some justification for promoting an industry of power on a roll to be maintained regardless of what it takes or promotes. Well, no, I would check one out or buy one if it relieved someone being crucified. One would not have to read the book to make an educated guess that Herbert can adequately grasp and approve the work; for the major premise follows––way back out of Herbert’s sight––that from the organism of the brain the mind learns to be subtly presumptive about bootstrap doctrines of its origin––ala the nemesis to Existenz [PFR 242], i.e., origin sin.  But Herbert must be critical enough to promote his own formulae—like Karl Jaspers is criticized and misused. Herbert pointedly reveals Dawkins’ epistemic presumptuousness stating that Dawkins is merely facing the wrong way during the monastic chant amidst the evolutionary congregation of priests touching absolute truth. The danger of Herbert’s subjectivism is that there is no openness to objectively measurable truth except that of the few authors he promotes by the force of associations with their popularity, his McGill association, and his…use…of Jaspers’ name. I mean it is obvious that his criticism is but lionizing in hopes Richard might blog.

08.1. Richard’s objectivism is at least in position to sense the vibrations of the greater cosmic trumpets if they should sound and be heard, heeded or unheeded, i.e., there’s a methodical openness to incoming encompassing data that could affect the incorrigibility of a Dawkins’ Darwinism delusion (a well grounded disillusionment about the descent rather than the origin and goal of the ascent-proper of humankind) if not quite delusion proper. The trumpet of objectivity might announce that there is no Big-Bang doctrine and no conclusive big-bang originality or singularity conceivable, i.e., it might denounce that sort of conclusiveness and exclusivity peculiar to Darwin in that he “reduced this vision [this Baer magnificent vision of the organic world in its fundamental characters] to a system of causalities, which implies the destruction of any sense of authentic life” (Wisdom, 189)––a wise quote comparable in objectivity to that of Campbell’s comprehensive Discourse.

08.1. Herbert’s subjectivism––Not so objectively determinable is Herbert’s truth-formulae; which began with a big-echo reaction to positivism, that there was no big bang for there were no “evolved” minds and substratum to forebear and hear it. That metaphysical logic and spirit of consistency concludes that there is no God if earthly humankind is not there to believe it. To Herbert God has “evolved” in our minds for social stability and individual contentment. Richard and Herbert’s viewpoints would conclude that Campbell’s sermon manifests a full-fledged delusion or a wrong judgment, the latter used by Herbert only to make a self-serving distinction between his doctrine and Richard’s. Both would agree that Campbell’s sermon must promote ill performance––or else there is no point other than a struggle for power in the winning of an argument over how to use delusion and illusion. Both are a true representation of evolutionism, an attitude void of the spirit that moved over the void in the beginning of humankind’s history, a Westerly history historically held as valid resulting in “perhaps...one of the reasons Asians despise the Christian West” (PFR 344 and see NOTATION above). Herbert and Richard are not authorities in the science of psychopathology. Jaspers is.
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1. Campbell’s sermon the Riches of Christ and phenomenological method and constellation tigers––Transcending the immanence of the infinity of the finite, Alexander Campbell continues with purposeful biblical talk about entities such as angels, other creatures, including those nearest and dearest to our upbringing.  But no intermediate force or entity is to replace the news of God’s final communiqué with humankind made at the intersection of the world trade route in the Middle East where crucifixions were posted like Burma Shave signs “don’t mess” “with the state” “of Rome’s economy.” The Internet now resounds with news about apparitions used to enforce and reinforce religious forces. “Evolution” is the panacea nominalism, the panache of natural scientism, i.e., an aggressive immanental order of principality. For instance (also see item 06.7 above), if you type in Karl Jaspers and search the Internet, one Website directs the surfer to a Webpage that interprets UFO phenomena with slant toward Marian apparitions. In other words, by association with the father of theistic existential thinking, the Website owner uses Jaspers to propound the value of one extraterritorial force making exclusive contact with Catholics in the apparition war. There is a UFO phenomena psychology and phenomenology, as seen in the recent vatican leak suggesting that entities are going to continue needing a centralized authority to trickle-down communicate with the mass, and/or the “Vatican” is graveling for favor by condescendingly assuring those extraterrestrial entities that they might not have to be “baptized” into the “Church” to be of use.

1.1. Cyphering baptism (The Cypher Science): We are not talking about paper-certifications but maybe constellation tigers. Reason’s tendency toward universalization of even quantum-probability thinking in the post modernistic delimitations of earthbound thinking, entertains the reality of principalities out there and now here. Reason’s postmodern voids (uncertainty principle) are attractive to forces comparable to the forces attracted to the voids following the phenomenon of the separation of Church and State. It’s an attraction vigilance must react to without hard science––poetically if nothing else. Reason has never waited for hard science while in the defensive mode of survival. (There may be no hard science that proves humankind’s products are contributing to global warming, but reasonable individuals don’t need the hard science that funded comfortable positivists are willing to wait for.) As with Jaspers and Campbell it is unreasonable to think there are not galactic intellectual forces. What the gospel does is circumvent the possibility of any of the forces becoming gods through immanent judgment. The gospel prevents yielding to apparitions of various degrees, for; Western protestant thinking is or ought to be, that, regardless of the vivacity of the apparition (the prolific illusions, the catholicity of entire peoples GP 195) the judgment and creativity of exceptional people not only defer to the invisible God, but even wrestle with angels, and reason with God as such and in spite of the intervention of a central authority taking dispositions for inquisitions. And this is the attitude of the gospel once and for all delivered to the high performing prophets and philosophers (GP 196 “(b)” and “(c)”). Campbell’s comments show the psychological significance of the invitation to be immersed and work out survival by way of just enough creative fear and trembling. There are enough phenomena to be immersed in that are never reducible to precipitation in the form of sprinkling or pouring. Immersion has a historical cypher meaningfulness, open to incoming grace and portals of new life. Hence: more about the cypher (periechontological) science:

1.2. The periechontological argument; Campbell’s biblical history is like Jaspers’ boundaries of history with it abysses––Jaspers begins with the biblical God (Origin xv) as does Campbell. They do not have a cosmos-logic exclusively outside of the context of the bibliological and periechontological. In Campbell’s footnote (Discourse item 3.) the limits and delimits of phenomena are set forth. He confronts rational and natural phenomena and risks falling into the black and white holes of the constellations within and without. The risk is diminished by the grasp of the periechontological pack string immersed in historical reality. The abysses are confronted by the biblical standard of truth. There too resides the individuals’ greatest defense against nature’s abysses but still including “Natures ephemerality” (Origin 234) and the opening of heaven where “Deity sits in judgment” (Origin 234), while inspiring the psychopathologist through philosophy (GP 196), and  it is that “higher origin that causes man to become directly out of the hand of the Deity” (Origin 250).

1.3. Restoring the “either/or”––As we now know, the Catholic Church is handling the illogicality of evolutionism by yielding to it as absolute existential truth thereby attempting to gain power by way of the abyss of the evolutionary cosmological argument for atheism, reasoning from big bang to big God––delusion or illusion it’s indulged if the “scientist commune” genuflects. The RC is there to moderate the illusion and provide its full forces to facilitate its exclusivity. Jaspers: “compared to all this, Protestantism seems poor” (PFR 352). The illogicality is bifurcated by the ontological argument made by and for vatic authority, i.e., in the face of insurmountable proof of humankind’s alleged “false god” RC is fanciful enough to become the standard, the authority to tell humankind to make an “ontological leap of faith”. Faith in the vatic judgment intensifies as incrementally the logic of Godlessness exponentially increases with the broadening grin of the reassuring natural scientist that “not all is known quite yet”. In other words, we are back at square one in the reformation movement, back at the point of having to continue the need for deciding on and enforcing a moral standard upon humankind. Its the Bible or “Catholicism”, immersion into the complexity of being requiring the most from autonomous individuals while critiquing all encompassing tenets, or distraction by regalia designed to satisfy searching eyes constantly gratified by natural phenomena but blinded to the phenomena of the periechontological.

2. Parsimony requires a simplification in cyphering immersion  

2.1. The ambient meaningfulness of John’s immersion––It is easy to limit the meaning of John’s baptism just as it is easy to limit the type of exclusivity of baptism in Campbell’s sermon. Immersion means more than going to the waterless sparsely populated desert to hear the early morning wind whistling through a bird of paradise plant.  Such a limitation needs delimiting to avoid a lack of appreciation for the holistic historic milieu. It would be limiting to say that the commitment in John’s immersion or the commitment of Campbell’s immersion-invitation was preparing the way for the truth of biological and sequential evolutionism. It would be revealingly foolish to wish “If only Campbell several decades later could have revised his sermon with Darwinism.” It would be popular if especially its a revision subtly showing how to crucify ad hominem those who refused submit to a limited immersion, a ritual Occam’ed (Occam’s razor) off the periechontological. John’s immersion plea had an essential “more-than” phenomenology; it reflected the international milieu:

2.2. John and Jesus’ ambient baptism––Josephus illuminates and sophisticates the whole atmosphere of the era. Josephus tells us much, though the Dead Sea Scrolls can contribute to the superficial significance of the rite of baptism relative to the Qumran community’s organization. The community-initiation regulations and health minded purification involved not washing “in water that is filthy or not enough for covering a man” (Burrows’ DSS, 359). Josephus provides more encompassing data about which John would have immersed himself before sermonizing. Herod’s conduct was not only incriminating from a Decalogue perspective; it was bringing about disastrous consequences regarding the national security. It was creating a breach in the eastern front. Herod’s wife was the daughter of the “Aretas, (the King of Arabia Petrea). She had to flee for her life after hearing of Herod’s plot to kill her––a scheme to offset the affair with his brother’s wife, the ultimate rationalization one could say. The marriage of political expediency had an expiration date in subtle print footnote style. John was immersed in this more-than provincial situation though not as cosmopolitical as needed in this economic hub, for the crucifixion phenomenon had not yet exploded on the scene.

2.3. Plotting the killing of one’s wife was a life-style immersed in immanental thinking that needed cleansing, but it was a need brought to Zion’s summit when the fulfiller of the moral law and messianic ethos was to be tortured by the state and church using state-of-art technology, a prolonging of suffering that would bring a delimiting horizon to the meaning of encompassing guilt from which none should escape and all should be guilty enough to be creatively sublimating. The suffering was tolerated due to economic interests. Sounds familiar. All the guilt categories listed by Jaspers in German Guilt come into play. The epiphany of this crucifixion was and is not merely epiphenomenological except to the guiltless, those without conscience. This is phenomenology (philosophical phenomenology) from beyond our predicament of causes and ends, ideas of beginnings and extinctions; it defies comprehension and normal priestly cleansings and rebels against the immolations of apostasy. This immersion is the beyondness in the “periechontological”––to use Jaspers coinage.  Coming to contrite terms through honest immersion makes room for the comforter; it makes room for this spirit of objective holiness, this more-than a mere opportunistic concern toward the suffering of others. This immersion is not the provincial baptism of John, but the universal baptism in Acts 18 and 19 that leaves the guilt ridden and groaning relieved to the point of ineffable feelings for some, verbigeration for another, and glossolalia for a few then too.

2.4. “Adapt or perish” i.e., taking the oath to use the word “EVOLVE”–– Campbell immerses the listener into nature but preconditioned by the biblical message which includes the crucifixion of Jesus. A few days ago the History Channel featured the history of the phenomenon of crucifixions. Man’s inhumanity to mankind was being effectively manifested. During this same program, watchers were bombarded with flashing of a coming program entitled “EVOLVE”, “adapt or perish”.  Colluding minds have ventured to now use the history of that technologically enhanced apparatus of suffering, that heartrending science, to establish naturalism, i.e., that doctrine of descent v. ascent. Instead of respecting the crucifixion phenomenon as the depth of character to which humankind can sink in the quest for power, it was being used to establish power through the education industry via the doctrine of biological fundamentalism. It is economic proof that promoting biological fundamentalism sells, in this case it sells Geico insurance through that primitive notion of analogous exploitation.

3. Immersion into an old-new Objectivity, Campbell as exception––An“Unimpeachable objectivity”, a deluge (Origin 231) is needed to resolve the difficulty that delusion-verbigerations and illusion-creeds inflict. Although radical subjectivity avoids a special reality (incomparable morphic specialization), objectivity applies in a testable way to the “judgments of exceptional people who creatively open new ways of thought” (GP195).

3.1. Campbell, immersed in the Western frontier of the New World, and fresh out of European academia (Glasgow University)––My argument here is that Campbell’s comprehensive immersion into natural reality is such an exception to “delusion” and “illusion”, and that the exceptional messenger is affronted by stylistic ad hominems of the religiously establishmentarian atheistic bent. He could speak to the “unimpeachable” phenomena of natural research and objectivity and address how knowledge relates to individual conversion and point toward the non-denomination church without fearing the “the use of this knowledge for purposes of propaganda in the interests of a power [for that] amounts to a lie about history” (Origin 231). His perceptivity and speech were in order; so one could refer to these judgments (GP 194) as exceptional. His orientation, memory, movement and speech were also in order, though as having a source beyond general objectivity, and that general objectivity appears as new objectivity from beyond. While in historical fact it is the old that sometimes appears as new because transported by new wine skins. Campbell’s sermon can be seen as the old in new forms; it includes unlimited empirically real estate, the hands-on conditions for inheritance, phenomenal entities, and a biblically spanned phenomenology. The expanse of the frontier was appreciated then and more recently by Jaspers: “even if rockets should attain the speed of light––a scientific impossibility––the human life span would be too short for traversing the tiniest fraction of space” (PFR 183) and “what matters is the demand for presentness as eternity in time” (Origin 276). These quotes are but an update in content of Campbell’s Discourse (items 7. through 10.). His sermon declares something. It propounds a certain moral and ethical performance, the nemesis to inhumanity. It involves the requirement to be immersed in knowledge and what delimits knowledge. He is not distracted by the proneness of a corrupting absolute causal and teleological thinking where a 90% rate of extinction is emphasized to demonstrate what the (genuflect here) “scientists’ consensus” demands of us. The consensus is that we must rely on and fund special hard-science and in its absence conclude that the ambiance is not near to being irreversibly polluted if retooling costs involved in alternative energy means reducing funds earmarked for “evolutionary” education. We can avoid reality by deferring to “evolutionary scientists” who nearly have but don’t have all the answers…almost but not “yet”––that immortal “yet”. The “scientist” has but to open the hand for all to see.

3.2. Macro and micro immersion, primitive and recent; Jaspers on delusion and illusion categories continued––There’s not much argument against the delimiting effects of Campbell’s immersion into the territory of the universes’ universality, and the extent to which such humbling awareness and learned ignorance affects the behavior of those taking notice and not embracing the fatalism of extinction-probabilities pertaining to evolutionism. There’s not much objectively new outside of scientism’s doctrinaire (the delusion that humankind’s mind is a relative, localized, and specialized cosmic-timely recent determinable product). Oh sure, Campbell was not current in language regarding “animalculæ invisible to the unaided eye” (Discourse 14.) and not iconic-logically as touching the propaganda of a Collin’s mapping of the human genome and the presumptive fulfillment of the holy wholly other pomposity of  “not quite yet the God of life” (3.). Yet, Campbell predated, and still does philosophically, the Origin of Species and Descent of Man. But we do not judge according to morphology (negative in the sense of 99% simian undifferentiated similarity or positive in the sense of 1000% [plus enough epistemologically to be incomparable] differentiation) but judge with a righteous judgment involving delimiting thinking and breaking through illusions about absolutes as prevalent today as during what Jaspers calls the Axial Age of phenomena. That one cannot think of humankind being other than humankind does not affect the validity of the axle of history––which does not exclude the primitive, and though including the primitive,  “When a great man lived is then of no consequence. Everything then lies, as it were, on a single, timeless plane of the valid. The historical heritage is then unhistorically present to us, so to speak” (Origin 231). This unhistorical present is neither delusion or illusion, neither paranoid performance nor paralytic:

Delusion is a word that is commonly used for a number of quite different phenomena. It is, however, a mistaken judgment, and a judgment by externals only, that allows the same term ‘delusion’ to be applied to such completely different phenomena as the so-called ‘delusions’ of primitive peoples and the ‘delusions’ of demented persons (paralytics) and of paranoics. Primitive peoples have a psychic life that is differentiated to only a slight degree. We characterize this in relation to their beliefs, and we say that they have not yet learnt to distinguish perception and fantasy as arising from different sources. A number of diverse logical processes all possess for them the same evidential quality; for instance, they will conclude by analogy, on the basis of purely external criteria. With the demented, paralytic patient, psychic life has disintegrated in ways characteristic for the organic, cerebral disorders and these cannot be compared with the undifferentiated state of primitive man. GP 197

3.3. The phenomenology of delusion and the phenomenology of philosophy (philosophical logic or logicality)––Phenomenology is not a doctrine in Jaspers’ methods of research, but a doctrine he critiques. Though he has a category of phenomenology its methodology is distinguished from doctrine. For instance (GP 77) he refers to phenomenology as including phenomena of differing characteristics, including pathological lying, reinterpretation of the past, and confabulations. There is the phenomenology of delusion (GP 196), and the phenomenology of illusion (GP 65). There’s the phenomenology of abnormal imagery and false memory (GP 75). The method of phenomenology is used when referring to phenomena that are more radical and cannot be explained using the category of psychology which gives normal explanations for performances that can be productively thereby explained. He does equate phenomenology with philosophy on p. 196 following the paragraph on the phenomenology of incorrigibility:

“Philosophy is always trying to reach that state of mind where all mistakes can stand corrected, and to exercise that unprejudiced, large and perceptive affection for the world, that openness of reason, which can tolerate what is real and true and, when no decisive answer is possible, can endure doubt, and which always remains ready to communicate and prevent the rigidity of fixed opinion” and philosophy brings us to the threshold of “delusion proper” (GP 196).

4. Intimacy with most near morphologically similar––With regard to Campbell’s performance, there is no doubt about the macrocosmic constellation encompassing in the immersion process. The microcosmic does not stand out to us due to recent quantum phenomenology. It’s not in the immersion requirement with the same emphasis and scientism-determinism as in the doctrines about quantum mechanics, and chemical mechanics such as the conclusiveness of the abysses made slippery by a sprinkling of little DNA phenomena. If Campbell could have spoken to HIV and AIDS in DNA terms relative to moral performance, such knowledge might have affected the relevancy of the conversion process. If the cleansing from incorrigible conduct were part of the encompassing of the immersion process, the liberalization from the tradition of kissing cousins might not have extended to the intimacy being promoted regarding the in-kind simian reunions with most recent common ancestor or most morphologically similar entities (gender to gender).

4.1. Psychological and psychopathological delusion––This much seems certain, that atheists in whatever form must somehow force Campbell’s convictions into a category of disordered performance. Richard would call it “delusional” and Herbert would call it disorders of intelligence proceeding from talk about presumptive realities independent of mind. Herbert’s greater objection to Richard’s mind-independent objectivity is that it does not address what Herbert considered too objectively real but not real enough to psychologically understand what he consider the last geographic stronghold of theistic fundamentalism in the US bible belt. Both are making real accusations of “delusion” in ad hominem dress. Herbert’s attire includes introducing Richard with verbal salutations of “best regards” as though a doctor being academically kind assures an academic perpetuity of highbred purity, agreeing that special terms of endearment can cover the nakedness of the insults. Neither makes a clear objective distinction between illusions and delusions. From a perspective of the greater controversial scheme of things, I refer to both as delusional in so far as it is possible that absolute entities are manifested in Richard’s objectivism and leads to behavior affecting the whole being of those believers. Especially to those easily led because not privy to the riches of academia’s entertaining phenomena and perks but who aspire to such security.  Herbert’s subjectivism is delusional in the biblical sense that though an angel from a zero derived conjured paradise says differently, there is an immersion into reality that must be assented to. This objectivity needs reemphasizing via the standard for the use of the word “delusion”. That standard is the psychopathologist Jaspers who speaks to “delusion” as a psychopathological concept:

We have to distinguish disorders of intelligence and thought-disorders from delusion….Delusion presents us with one of those riddles which can be solved only if we define our facts clearly. If incorrigible wrong judgments are termed ‘delusion’, who will there be without delusion, since we are all capable of having convictions and it is a universal human characteristic to hold on to our own mistaken judgments? Nor can the prolific illusions of entire peoples and persons be given the title of ‘delusion’, since this would mean treating a basic human characteristic as if it were an illness. We should rather address ourselves to the problem of what it is that occasions the incorrigibility and causes us to recognize certain modes of wrong judgment as delusion. GP 195

While perception, orientation, memory, movement and speech are in normal working order, and a disturbance is manifested and it is not merely a false judgment, then we are dealing with delusion. Delusion carries the character of a riddle that is beyond psychological, phenomenological resolution (GP 194). For my purpose here: Riddles come from three dimensions, one from thinking riddled by infinite finite phenomena and result in radical talk about the riddle on the verge of being solved with funding. Riddles come too and are radically confined to the epiphenomena of the subjective mind, no less a riddled complex. Then there are riddles from an always newly-old source that can inspire creativity––that is farther from the psychopathological perplexing category but nearer the understanding of the psychological category. 

5. Delusion Proper distinguished by one-way pass over––Delusion proper, in Jaspers use, has a slavish content, and cannot pass over into what can be classified as mistakes. In other words, conversion is impossible, and if conversion occurs we have not been dealing with Delusion proper, but delusion in a loose and unpathological sense. If it is delusion proper it is institutional, otherwise it is clinical. When and if the “pass over” occurs the distinction between illusion and delusion can be made. One can be disillusioned but one cannot be dis-delusioned. “If now we want to characterize the field of delusion, we shall have to make some distinctions. There is first diminished awareness of Being and of one’s own existence…” GP 95 Immersion into being intensifies awareness and one’s own existential sense of responsibility.

6. Appendage: When normal cows are seen as having 5 legs––Leading into delusion proper, Jaspers shows how the therapist must distinguish between motor disturbances and delusion while observing individual performances. A distinction must be made between paralogia in aphasic patients. When sense can be made out of these it is understood as “verbigeration”  (verbiage) that displays intellectual competence though the answers to questions might be normally improper. Jaspers cites as examples the patient that will always add one digit such as 3x3=10, or answer how many legs does a cow have, and the answer given is 5. Jaspers says there seems to be no “single psychological interpretation for this phenomenon” (GP194). I think there is a psychological explanation that borders the psychotic, and that Herbert’s academic enhanced verbiage can serve as an example. The patient that cannot communicate normally due to motor or psychic disturbances of a personal historical sort resorts to a subjectivism where the “I” must always be added and radically affirmed. The cow is seen to have five legs only because the autonomous “I” assigned the problem must get credit for the leg count and receive at least as much notice as what is being counted. That way the subject is never excluded from the problem. Jaspers uses the word permutation to describe this affixation or suffixation of syllables.

6.1. Digital appendages: When 3x3=10––For instance Müller displays some psychologically understandable dis-content while agreeing essentially with Dawkins about the God delusion, and verbiage takes the semantic form of disapproving of Richard’s epistemological method. Further, semantically content is predicated by the expression that the humankind-patient is more wrong than institutionally sick. The difference between Herbert and Richard is pure semantics, and that is the discomfort Herbert is feeling.  However the distinction is transformed into something academically favorable to Herbert. The distinction is that if his formulae (zero derivation) can be understood by the patient productively then it is “illusion” and the patient can be saved from the illusion of a reality independent of mind, i.e., independent of Herbert’s formulae. Dawkins, dis-eased by the lack of a feeling of certitude to the point of coming across with a superiority complex, looks at empirical data objectively and conclusively. It is conclusive that the source of the mind is known and in such a categorically restricted sense and by such positivistic measurements, anyone who does not agree that 3x3=9 is delusional––Richard thinks, he judges and as long as his mind registers the infinity of the finite, delusion-proper can be held at bay. (In the case of Nietzsche he succumbed to delusion-proper as an immanentalist, though there is no hard science to support the reason for the pass-over, for his sister would not permit an autopsy. And there is no psychology for relating theology or anti-theology or misconduct to his illness.) Herbert however looks at the same phenomena as Richard but does not take refuge in a surface naturalism or positivism but always adds 1, and 3x3=10 but the appendage is silent. He always adds 1 because the mind is not independent and must be counted and those who do not are prone to illusion and if they are too sick and cannot include the subject in the count then they are hopelessly deluded. It appears that Herbert’s count adds subjective objectivity, i.e., the very limited mind-category that adds the element that makes delusion describable. He talks past the point of Dawkin’s delusion category, but, like Dawkins, gets hung up just past the empirical point, but this side the new-old objective Transcendental Encompassing incomings that help one avoid feeling “arrogantly absolute” (PFR 249).

7. All of what Campbell said is truer today. The most awe-inspiring information available now comes from the minute that engages the imagination. That reasoning area of history which is closer to the élan vatal––though more from transcendence than Bergson’s immanence––contributes cooperatively to conversion, where “thou art not far from the Kingdom of God” makes fundamental sense enhanced by the subjectivity given to the new objectivity that “the kingdom of God is within” the first person. The inner-seat of individual responsibility, the seat of judgment where I, we, individually decide what is illusion and what is and ought to be reality. In other words in quantum neuron mechanics awareness and in historical responsibility (Jaspers historicity) I am standing on the decisive edges of psychopathic abysses—to use Karl Jaspers’ term (Origin 234).

He who takes this way in philosophizing risks losing his balance in the world. For the sobering awareness of Transcendence ‘beyond good and evil’ may turn to levity that will take nothing seriously anymore, degenerating from Existenz into nonsense. In the delusion of having found the way out of the world, men may lose themselves in eccentricity. In the world they become buffoons or maniacs or criminals––all in the belief of having reached ultimate truth (PFR 249)

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