There are no primary sources for Alexander and the most trustworthy of the five secondary sources was written by Arrian approximately 470 years after Alexander’s death.
(Despite wanting to quit this nonsense, I stumbled over an old YouTuber I followed prior to trying to hang myself. I need to write this down so that his nonsense does not go unwithspoken.)
He called himself animus on a Genius Forum; though the geniuses were nothing more than three lazy narcissists who did not read much. Granted, he rejected the shysters, too.
I did not expect him to still cling to his rather ridiculous views of there being no free will, even saying that determinism does not lead to purposelessness! Of course it does, as only God, Christ, can give real purpose. All other purposes are limited, temporary. It is eternity our soul yearns for, not self improvement, a greater understanding or some other nonsense he seems to think is relevant.
Otherwise we’ll die and be forgotten.
In one of his videos he used the term member of the universe, which is queasy, corny, cheesy.
He cannot even answer why we ought to live. By saying stories of the Bible, he somehow thinks he is the objective law giver who decides what’s good and evil. Not understanding that the Bible is history, and rejection of it implies rejecting the existence of Caesar Julius or Alexander the Great, too.
To quote Vox Day from The Irrational Atheist:
There are no primary sources for Alexander and the most trustworthy of the five secondary sources was written by Arrian approximately 470 years after Alexander’s death.
Of course he can’t answer, he just spouts the same stuff he did prior to 2010, the year I hanged myself. Which is what he cannot explain and answer: if I don’t care about his views, if I would want to eradicate all of humanity, who would care? His abstract God certainly would not, while Jesus, who, as the Gospel obviously teaches, existed and is seen—by Christians like myself—as Christ, i.e. God in the flesh, the law made flesh, would.
He seems to have very little historical knowledge, thinking that people began to picture God – which he calls idolatry, despite his worship of his own worldview – because of Michelangelo’s Sixtine Chapel or so … this is insanely wrong.
I remember him writing that he reads mostly content like science wikis, boldly daring them—the “genius” members—to read as long as they can until they need to stop because of it being so exhausting.
Obviously, Metzinger and so on are writing horrible prose, I hardly touch such trash; he may have read very little in terms of high literature, novels and so on. He could at least have read more history, and let go of the half-baked nonsense so-called “neuroscientists” write about philosophical topics like free will, of which they hardly have any knowledge of.
In his Jordan Peterson video, he seems to buy the propaganda regarding the scandals around the Catholic Church. He doesn’t see how the Catholic Church is the only moral authority world-wide, which is why it is now being bombarded with such cases. Which may exist, I don’t deny it, though child abuse is a lot more common among those in education, or Hollywood.
It is absolute hogwash to say priests have a “repressed sexuality,” given that celibacy is nothing new. What is new is that God, Christ, taught both: marriage as well as celibacy. Further, no amount of celibacy would lead me to rape children. The thought alone is disgusting and, despite the awful topic, ridiculous. It shows where sex obsession leads to. Soon I am forty, and never had any experiences in this regard. It did not turn me into a rapist.
This claim is even sillier given that he quotes a lot of Indian and Buddhist scriptures, which also knew celibacy and practiced it (or tried to) as monks and nuns.
His voice is not suited for this either, kind of annoying, slow, almost as if he is drunk. But less annoying than that horrible Deep Left Jokl (Kenneth Brown).
There existed no sexuality in Garden Eden for a reason.
He also does not understand that the Bible does not teach that Christians are without sin, Christ even says it to Peter directly (Matthew 18-21:35). Therefore, the Christian differs in that he knows he is a sinner in need of repentance, which he will be until death. As Bruce Charlton writes in Addicted to Distration:
[…]
This capacity to perceive and acknowledge one’s own faults and failures, to take responsibility and repent, is surely near the core of the Christian life, and far, far more important than the strength of armour or will-power.
[…]
Further, if we are all one, I could end my life which I don’t like. It remains as simple as that: God forces me to live, just like Job.
He also seems awfully interested in treating criminals well, not thinking of their victims.
Saying that being motivated by praise and shame is irrational is wrong. After all, who decides that we ought to act rationally anyway? Man seldomly does; worse, we enter the world through an irrational drive, and falling in love is as irrational as it gets. Yet, humanity would ebb away. Why not act like the Vietnamese monk who burned himself alive, overcoming the irrational drive and desire to stay alive?
Of course, he’d say I’m deluded, I identify with a “self” that does not exist, it is an illusion (the usual Buddhist claptrap.)
It is a contradiction anyway to claim that Christians have an “erroneous” view because of believing in individuality, to then say his view is correct (because he is God …?)
Though such a view ultimately results in a psychopathic character, and given that Ryan Shirk had a horrible accident during his childhood—he collided with a truck as a child, had to hospitalized, with a broken jaw; he was fed with the use of a straw or so—it certainly influences his worldview.
He would still have to explain why I ought to continue to exist, given that great minds like Kierkgaard, Schopenhauer, Montaigne, Pascal or Nietzsche were deeply melancholic; Kierkegaard, who wrote philosophical works on such a level that is unthinkable nowadays, regularly prayed he may die at the end of his short life of forty-two years. As Theodor Haecker wrote, God granted him his wish. It almost seems like it, I guess (which I say as a Christian.)
It is also rather inane that he thinks there ever existed a person who achieved what he wants to achieve (being stoic a hundred percent or so.) Yet he rejects the Gospels as history, but sees in them stories, while tales about “sages” in East Asia are taken at face value. And why ought I to care, again? Since if I killed myself, my life would have ended and no one would care – except if God and eternal damnation exists.
Why speak of eternity in regards to us mortal beings bound by time? Because it exists, which is how God forces me to live.
Ryan Shirk is not thinking, his unbelief is due to his pride. That is all. He also used vulgar language, and I hardly listened to all of it.
He also welcomes the gender nonsense crazy persons torture you with nowadays, meaning he is politically inept. It is arrogant and simply risible to think that now we are so much smarter than our ancestors that we question even our gender, yet culturally, we cannot hold a candle to Old Europe; there don’t exist any thinkers that rival a Leibniz today. So tone it down, please. We are not that special.
“Aarvoll”, to use another YouTube guy, is more interesting and reflective.
Chris Langan believes in free will, obviously, and is politically more capable than Rybot9000, too.
Still, his views did not change since I last read the genius forum. It may even be more acceptable to simply be a vulgar hedonist like this Aron Ra character than to act as if you have some deep knowledge while working a regular job as a regular guy with money and so on. Whereas I am socially isolated, live on a disablity income and suffer quite a lot. Nils M. Holm wrote about this topic some time ago.
He also places a lot of importance on soft sciences like psychology and sociology; psychology being one of the softest. That he takes this dung seriously is laughable; his view on priests, his inabilty to understand what repentance is, and his abhorrent view on sexuality (he is obsessed with it) are enough. Just more “stoic” hogwash not worth engaging with.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila was a mature thinker:
I would not live for even a fraction of second if I stopped feeling the protection of God’s existence.
Stoicism is definitively the cradle of all modern errors. (Divinization of man — determinism — natural law — egalitarianism — cosmopolitanism etc.)
If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, error does not exist.
Error supposes that something happened that should not have.Man is important only if it is true that a God has died for him.
Sex does not solve even sexual problems.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
It is not worth talking about even one erotic topic with someone who does not feel the unalterable baseness of erotism.
It is above all against what the crowd proclaims to be “natural” that the noble soul rebels.
Even for Buddhist compassion, the individual is only a shadow that vanishes.
The dignity of the individual is a Christian cast made out of Greek clay.In the social sciences one generally weighs, counts, and measures, to avoid having to think.
The determinist swears that there was no gunpowder, when the gunpowder does not explode; he never suspects that somebody put out the fuse.
By saying that death is “natural” the last stupidity has been said.
The believer knows how to doubt; the unbeliever does not know how to believe.
By believing that the wax figures fabricated by psychology are alive, man has been gradually losing his knowledge of man.
Modern “Eastern spirituality,” like the Eastern art of the last centuries, is merchandise from a bazaar.
What is thought against the Church, unless it is thought from within the Church, lacks interest.
Sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, are experts in generalities.
When confrontedy by the bull’s horns of a concrete case, they all look like Anglo-Saxon bullfighters.If one does not believe in God, the only honest alternative is vulgar utilitarianism.
The rest is rhetoric.The notion of determinism has exercised a corrupting and terrorizing influence on the task of philosophy.
We are in the habit of calling moral improvement our failure to realize that we have switched vices.
A Christian society is not a society where no one is sinning, but where many are repenting.