Cobb

How charming. A Negro with so-called Jesuit roots--I gather he also beleives in "God". I find this problematic. As the Negro is a metaphor for subordination, it is troubling to profess belief in a master up high? Have you not gotten over you previous master down low? Black man, why do you need a master at all. Do you find negotiating existence too difficulat to go it alone? Does the possiblity that the universe is pointless undermine you?

As a Negro, I wish to be free, no Masters...high or low...can you dig that? Alas, this is why I cannot drink the conservative Koolaid--they believe in God.

----DS

I'm glad you checked in. I was getting bored and I really need something to talk about.

My relationship with God is like a relationship with the history of learning. I see religion firstly as the primary pedagogy of humanity. We had churches before we had schools, so religion is a fundamental expression of man's reckoning with the unknown. As man's knowledge advances, God recedes. And yet God remains.

My personal preference for the Catholic and Apostolic Church is in some ways determined by the structure and organization of their rituals. Like mixing HCl with H20, you always get salt water (if you get your moles right). And so it is with the Sacraments. The universe of spirituality is not addressed by Catholicism, but Holy Matrimony is always Holy Matrimony. The discipline of Church doctrine is like replication of chemical procedures. I'm not saying that the expansion of the body of knowledge of the Church is like the scientific process, the acquisition methods of these two practices are very different. However, the body of knowledge which generally accepted as fact, is managed similarly. And yet you can say that the whole thing is just theory.

As I mentioned, if I have a gripe, which I don't really seek to express at this time, it would be over the prior pope's non-support of liberation theology. Any amateur scholar would have his James Cone working and understand how African Americans transformed the liturgy of Protestantism into a substrate for liberation struggles. One need only say 'promised land' to recognize how deep in the bones of American religion this black struggle goes.

And yet the Negro, as you aptly point out, is still subject to be subordinated. Indeed the Negro is in a box of his own creation. Good thing my family went black before it was popular, or I might still be dealing with that existential dilemma.

I suspect your question is the philosophical one, "So why does a free man need God?" I believe that the answer is that faith in God gives man a transcendant quality. Scientists, dismal or otherwise are stuck in deterministic struggles, and transcendance is not a part of their reperatoire. And yet a man can be motivated by a consistency in faith that appears stochastic by other observers. Until you understand the faith under which a man operates, you cannot understand the man. And any observer of human nature can surely see what a rich legacy is faith. So why a scientist would seek to dismiss the gravity of faith and its predictable effects on the souls of men is nothing more or less than willful ignorance.

I will continue this up top with a post about Servitude & Mastery.

Cobb:

You are shrewd, my Negro brother, and I cannot disagree with you, but I can reject the tenor of your arguments. If freedom is the ultimate value, then God must be rejected. The Greeks understood this---Gods merely get in the way of man's endeavor to "transcend" his own feeble humanity. The Greeks concluded therefore that the Gods simply weren't worth the trouble--and killed them off, one by one.

Does the Negro value freedom? Or does he merely wish to be "God's child"? Yes, this is a philosophical question, and existential question, and goes the the very heart of what it means to be a Negro man. Am I free or am I in bondage? Whether or not God really exists--and I see this as a pointless pursuit, the issue is what about Freedom--is it not the greatest good, worth the risk of hellfire? Or is the price of freedom far too great for the Negro, and servitude is a relative bargain?

Rule in Hell or Serve in Heaven? Freedom or Servitude? Is Freedom worth it?

None of this should be taken literally, I have no idea whether God exists--what would such a proof look like? But, if one is to beleive the Hebrew folk tales in that rag called the Bible (I don't), then it seems that this God dude has a tendency to ignore or mistreat Negroes like most white dudes---I want no parts of this---reserve my spot in Hell.

--DS