The Witch Hunters

 

I continue to appreciate The Nathan Jacobs Podcast (also on YouTube here).  In a recent episode, The Ideology of Hell – Nominalism & the Liberation of the Individual, he ended with a very insightful point, which I will review here (and timestamped here).

The overall message of this episode is a continuation of his primary theme – the most important question: realism or nominalism?  And, as you can see from his title, in his view nominalism is a road that both liberates the individual and leads to hell.  And, over the course of my writing at this blog, it is a point I came long ago to embrace.

Again, what I identify as quotes are not always word-for-word transcriptions.  Take that for what it’s worth.

In the ending section, the last few minutes of this two-hour episode, he summarizes the woke ideology that is merely one more step in this nominalist path:

We are gods.  We can remake reality how we see fit.  Whether through cultural change, surgical means, virtual reality, whatever.  Reality is subject to us, not the other way around.

We certainly live in this world today.

So, what comes next?  When people abandon religion, they initially move to the occult.  When they grow disillusioned with the occult, they move into political activism.  They are search of something to give their lives meaning.

Yes, we live in this world.

So it isn’t about trans, or homosexuality, or abortion, the real thing driving them is this pursuit of meaning, for purpose.  It is the ability to advocate for justice.

They are in search for meaning, a cause, a way to change the world.

And this gets to why there will not be a national divorce.

This is why I am very cynical when people talk about a national divorce.  On the one hand, I really do think it is a good idea. 

I think beyond a good idea – it is the only peaceful possibility.  The thing is, what I just wrote is an impossibility, like a square circle.  It isn’t peacefully possible, so it cannot be a peaceful possibility.

Despair

 

A follow-up to my post on a new podcast by Nathan Jacobs.  I have written a short post based on a 15-minute section from one of his recent videos, on the topic of despair.  This post can be found at my other blog, as it seemed more appropriate for that blog.  For those of you interested and not following the other blog, you can find it here.

Better yet, just watch the clip.  He tells it much better than I can write about it.

Nominalism vs. Realism

I have come across a new podcast, The Nathan Jacobs Podcast (also on YouTube here).  For those of you who have followed (and remain interested in) the discussion here regarding objective truth, natural law, the Enlightenment, the limits of man’s reason without some higher, controlling metaphysic, I think this podcast might be right down your alley.

Some backstory: while I had heard of, and listened to, Jacobs in the past, it was this recent discussion between him and Jonathan Pageau that caught my attention: Embrace Realism: It's All Mystical!  From the video description:

Dr. Nathan Jacobs is an academic, artist, and filmmaker. In this conversation we discuss where reason, rationality, and discernment fit into the mystical experience and how the modern world has mistakenly divorced reason and mysticism.

Take a look at Jacobs’ personal website: the description of him as an academic, artist, and filmmaker, is no exaggeration or overstatement.

Although beginning in Protestant (I think Reformed) Christianity, he found aspects of this lacking in terms of explaining / understanding God, God’s actions, etc.  He has since converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.  What is interesting about this, at least to me: he embraces the role that Plato and Aristotle have played in the development of the understanding of God.  He also speaks positively of the idea of a natural law ethic.

Why do I find this interesting?  I see both embrace of this and pushback on this from Orthodox Christians.  Especially pushback on the idea of natural law (with one glaring and wonderful exception, which I have written about here).

I am about four podcasts in (out of fourteen at the time of this writing).  They appear to come out about once a week, and almost all are between 1-2 hours long.

Why the title to my post?  In his first podcast, Jacobs describes the question of nominalism vs. realism as the single most important question in our time!