Footnote On The Morning Post

Part 1

Earlier today I noted the difference in the levels of integrity between today's orthodox scientistic-atheisic- materialism and the levels of integrity of the earliest followers of Jesus as a means of evaluating whether or not they really believed what they claimed to.   The quality of the integrity of believing in the risen Jesus and the quality of believing in such necessities of scientistic-atheistic-materialism (for convenience maybe I should just call it SAM) is can be determined and one of the most obvious distinctions should concern the desire for them to convince other people of their beliefs.  

A believer in the risen Jesus should be expected to devote themselves to trying to convince others of their belief even at great risk to their lives.  As it is documented that James and Peter and Paul, Stephen, etc.  did.  The old tradition is that all of the named Apostles except Judas Iscariot, died a martyr.  The universalism of the Gospel of Jesus and, especially, as articulated in the rest of the New Testament holds that God desires all to be saved - the radical meaning of which extends to the entirety of creation in some of the theological articulations of it.  I will come clean and say that I am of that belief, that the salvation that Jesus taught extends to all of Creation.  I am a radical universalist.  

People, peoples' minds, hearts, souls, are considered to be of the highest possible significance and importance to the original Jesus movement and Christianity so the continued attempt to convince people of that makes complete sense. 

The desire to save peoples' entire being is entirely consonant with a belief in Christianity, a Christian who does that clearly is acting with complete integrity.  

The opposite view of people, of human minds is held by contemporary scientistic-atheistic-materialism.  There has been a constant project of demotion of, first some people then gradually expanding to the entirety of humanity under that intellectual regime.  As I have noted, under such atheist ideology as academic study permeates the social sciences and  materialist philosophy.  In their desire to make everything conform to their rigid monism there is the ultimate discounting of human minds as either being a delusional by-product of material causation without any semiotic significance or actual meaning - hold that and you can get a full professorship in a philosophy department or one in the social or even real sciences.  

You would not think that a motivation to propagate such a belief would be strong in such believers.  According to the belief, itself, it must be delusional as all consciousness is held to be delusional - among other insignificant organisms as human beings are held to be, such a desire  would not often be exhibited by people who really believe in that stuff.  Yet such an urge to evangelize for SAM is ubiquitous among those who claim to really believe that.  

If they really believed it, they would not care what their fellow insignificant beings thought because all of their thoughts mean nothing.  Their minds are nothing, their lives mean nothing, they have no significance and no value.  The nihilism that is forced by a rigorous adoption of materialism, atheism, scientism, really does have that end, it is an eschaton of emptiness, any attempt to promote itself would have to be sound and (as is so often on display among atheists) fury that, if they had any integrity, IF THEY REALLY BELIEVED IT, they would have to hold that their very claims signify nothing.