Beauregard's Updates

Beauregard started reading 'A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles'

Wed, 14 May 2025 19:34:27 -0700

Beauregard started reading A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles by Stanley K. Stowers

Beauregard is on page 469 of 628 of Finnegans Wake

Wed, 14 May 2025 18:37:07 -0700

Beauregard Bottomley is on page 469 of 628 of Finnegans Wake.
Beauregard wrote: “Shaun replied as he blessed himself devotionally like a crawsbomb, making act of oblivion, what the thickuns else? Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibau gimandodrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar! Thor’s for you!”

“The hundredlettered name again, lost word of perfect language. But you could come near it, we do suppose, strong Shaun O’, we foresupposed. How?”

Beauregard added 'Latin Christianity: Tertullian'

Wed, 14 May 2025 12:19:28 -0700

Beauregard gave 5 stars to Latin Christianity: Tertullian (Ante-Nicene Fathers 3) by Tertullian
Everyone else is wrong while only Tertullian is the true Scotsman, excuse me true Christian. Tertullian knows the canon before it became Canon and takes it as gospel before they became the Gospel.

This is the best of the three volumes in the series, because all the desperate special pleading is univocal. The Jews were fools for not realizing that when Moses had a snake jump out that foreshadowed Jesus dying on the cross, at least according to Tertullian’s faulty logic. [Jordan Peterson in his awful book, ‘We Who Wrestle with God,’ made that point too, even though he is an atheist who cherishes myths.]

Tertullian takes Old Testament assertions that Jesus must have been the foretold messiah and claims that should have been obvious to the Jews and he’ll take stray quotes to prove his point. Christian apologists do the same today, but they ignore the parts of the prophecy that remain undone and evoke ‘spiritual’ kingdoms to come. There’s a reason why Jews reject Jesus as the Christ and unfulfilled prophecies are not prophetic until accomplished.

There’s an obvious problem that Tertullian makes while adapting his proto-New Testament canon: the NT has a sense of urgency of end times at hand, and that ‘this generation shall not past’ until Jesus’ second coming. It had not happened and Tertullian is writing well past the predicted end times ignoring the unfulfilled prophecies of imminent arrival of the end times.

Tertullian makes a mocking statement against philosophers when he says ‘what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem,’ little realizing his own well thought out philosophical reasoning is not that bad in themselves. I’d even say at times he is as good as Thomas Aquanis when it comes to Bible reconciliation and Christ’s incarnation, trinity, substantiation, and other superstitious beliefs.

The pagans and their Gods are wrong or at least not as great as the Jewish God and His son, according to Tertullian since their Gods eat their own children and marry their own siblings. His argument against the pagans don’t make his weird beliefs correct since it’s easy for both to be just as silly. I want to note the OT BibleGod destroyed the world with a flood, created a babel of languages, killed a man for trying to save the ark of the covenant, put a demonic snake in a garden, killed a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, promised the desert wanderers quail but poisoned 30000 of them, encouraged raping captives (Tertullian defended that), enslaving others and other atrocities. Also, one more thing Jesus promised darkness for all who don’t believe in Him. That was a cruel and unnecessary thing to say.

The two most common apologists’ arguments I hear now days are ‘objective morality’ is necessary, and that the world needs a creator. Tertullian assumes God must have been the creator and the Bible documents that, but he doesn’t appeal to objective morality as being necessary. The early apologists such as Tertullian are as shabby as today’s apologists and offer nothing in support of their special flavor for BibleGod.

Tertullian sometimes reminded me of Henrich Graetz with his special admonition against idolatry and adultery. Graetz wrote in 1860s the five-volume work ‘The History of the Jews’ and he made that a central tenet of his certainty for Jehovah too. Graetz’ work is a more enjoyable read than this volume was.

Tertullian was more interested in telling us why others were wrong than why he was right. Marcion makes good points on how the Old Testament God is evil while Tertullian accepts that He is the same God as the NT God. Tertullian relies on the OT as he processes it with his post-hoc rationalizations defending his new Christ interpretative lens with special holy spirit issued eye glasses. Tertullian relies on the Book of Daniel for giving credence for his performed fictional creation. Daniel is a pesher explaining unfulfilled prophecies by changing years into weeks and fabricating historical events thus making prophecy relevant for its time of about 160 BC. Gullible nonsense wrapped up in sophistry.

There’s very little that’s new under the sun when it comes to religious defenses when nothing is said except for “it’s possible” that it could be true and Tertullian does have a mostly for him inerrant scripture he reads from. Tertullian makes fun of the other Gods, but I would argue my preferred God, the one I have a personal relationship with, Thor, could pound the nails into Jesus and Jesus would only be able to run away on water as Thor threw his hammer. Demons, devils, Adam and Eve, Angels, Noah and the Ark, Moses, Abraham, and so on aren’t real and Tertullian claims they are in defense of his absurdities. I well embrace Thor until I see evidence to the contrary.

The paradox with Tertullian’s demon haunted world is that demons are in control. If one doesn’t accept demons, one doesn’t have to be afraid of things that go bump in the night. May Thor be with you.

Beauregard added 'The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness'

Tue, 13 May 2025 13:13:11 -0700

Beauregard gave 1 star to The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness (Hardcover) by William Von Hippel
Trump collapses the myths that Republicans and evangelical Christians prioritize liberty over equality, or using the author’s framing, autonomy over cooperation. The author forces his thesis into a mold that tries to explain the world with just-so-stories post-hoc rationalizations for human development over time. It gets silly fast and he stays within Stephen Pinker’s fantasy explanations for explaining human psychology through pseudo psychological evolution nonsense.

It’s a real danger to look at how we are as a society and then extrapolate an imaginary scenario that explains how that justifies the hate. Betty Friedan in “The Feminine Mystique” screams at her world when they told her in the 1960s that just look around the women’s place is in the kitchen and the home serving her husband never quite realizing that the is does not make the ought.

“Jesus would never put such a barrier in his path” that’s how Jennings knew he could rely on his imaginary friend, at least that’s one of the stories told in this book. There was a lot of Christian preaching in this book and he talked about the Samaritans, and just one more thing, didn’t Jesus call the Samaritan woman a dog, and is it nice to call the one Samaritan in a parable ‘the good Samaritan’ thus implying they were an outlander. Imagine I said ‘he was the good Mexican’ and implied the rest were rapists and thieves as Trump has said, at least Trump had the decency not to offer them scraps from the family table as you would give to a dog.

Do white evangelical Christians prioritize liberty over equality as the author claims? Or is it just that they hate the same people Trump hates, and their tribe of fellow white evangelical Christians matter most to them. Are Conservatives really concerned about fiscal responsibility as this author claims? Trump gives them the hate they want and makes them feel good about themselves rather than the phony framing of autonomy over cooperation.

The author made fun of Libertarians as one should. Though, he did say that they think it would be okay to have someone accept their criminal punishment if they voluntarily agreed to for compensation. The author thought that was absurd as I would. I would even say that the whole Christ thing dying on the cross and vicariously paying my sins is just as absurd as the Libertarians’ belief.

This book was a missed opportunity. There is a way to deconvolve the statistics such that variances and covariances could be separated. There’s between, within and overall variances that can be squeezed out of good datasets. Trump followers need to be told who to hate and their truths change daily. Last week they expressed disdain at the new Pope because he believed in kindness towards others including immigrants. The conservatives and white evangelical Christians follow the hate that Trump gives them. There’s no big complex story to get at. Trump’s minions hate the same people that he hates.

Beauregard wants to read 'Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism'

Tue, 13 May 2025 04:31:04 -0700

Beauregard wants to read Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Beauregard is currently reading 'The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness'

Sun, 11 May 2025 17:09:19 -0700

Beauregard is currently reading The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness by William Von Hippel

Beauregard added 'Mr. Blue'

Sun, 11 May 2025 05:15:24 -0700

Beauregard gave 1 star to Mr. Blue (Paperback) by Myles Connolly
No matter how you dress up superstitious nonsense as a motivator for doing good towards others the beliefs are still drivel even when enacted in a guise of a charitable individual and perversely that individual wanted to befriend others mostly to convince them that bread magically turns into body and wine into blood when hocus pocus is involved. Friendships based on magical thinking end when the magic is revealed as sophistry.

The author means well, but the blinders myth-believers wear makes their fantasies seem real and reasonable to the degree they can make statements such as: "No one,” he said to me once [Mr. Blue],
“is more generous and more loyal than a loyal and generous Jew.” It reminds me when Christians talk about the “Good Samaritan,” as if that wasn’t as demeaning as when a MAGA says ‘be like the Good Mexican,’ implying that all other Mexicans are rapists or thieves. Terms such as ‘good Jew,” or ‘good Samaritan,’ or ‘good Mexican’ act as if they are compliments but are the necessary first step in making the self-appointed privileged class superior in feelings to others such that they can compare a Samaritan woman to a dog and say ‘even the family dog deserves scraps from the table,’ reformatting an insult into when a favor is granted.

There’s an inverted world described in this book and the dystopian end-of-world envisioned sounds as if it would be a Christian nationalistic dream state, and is what is slowly being unfolded during Trumps second term. The author pretends that the world was anti-religious but the real nightmare is its inverse and Mr. Blue wants that as his preferred reality.

I do enjoy Christian whining books from the 1920s and the tone-deafness of the reality of a world that is dominated by Christians and there is a surprisingly amount of exclusiveness while trying to be diverse.

Beauregard Bottomley liked a review

Sat, 10 May 2025 13:08:52 -0700

Beauregard Bottomley liked Autumn's review of Mr. Blue:

"Christ, what sanctimonious twaddle."

Beauregard started reading 'Broken Promises: Jesus & The Second Coming'

Fri, 09 May 2025 13:50:58 -0700

Beauregard started reading Broken Promises: Jesus & The Second Coming by Mark Smith

Beauregard added 'Wittgenstein’s Mistress'

Thu, 08 May 2025 06:29:15 -0700

Beauregard gave 5 stars to Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Paperback) by David Markson
This book at times is laugh-out-funny. It’s a book of accidents not substance and realistically demonstrates that the world’s structure is made-up as we bind it as we see fit. There is no story about the story of human experience and the narrator knows that as she processes her trauma of living life while realizing that there is no grand plan except the meaning we assign arbitrarily.

Wittgenstein said philosophy could be written as a series of jokes. The narrator embraces Wittgenstein. I don’t really like Wittgenstein. He’s a simplistic philosopher and people read him and think they cracked a mystery of thinking about thinking while in the end the ‘world is not made up of a series of facts’ and philosophy can point you beyond itself. The other philosophers the narrator mentions while mostly mocking are more fun to read.

The story is not the thing for this book. It’s the kind of book my wife lost interest in after 30 minutes while I was loving the unfolding of reality as I perceived reality itself. There is no grand story about the story and the narrator makes up their fiction as they go along and they tie the world together as if intelligence is real. Memories are real, experiences are real, the story we tell ourselves are made-up by our own creator within us. William Gaddis the author of “Recognitions” is mentioned in this book since he does the same kind of thing in his book as this author is doing. I’m currently re-reading “Finnegans Wake” and it has that same post-modernist take going on as this book does. Gravity’s Rainbow does too. The “Third Policeman” does too.

The narrator tells a story and repeats it backwards at times with a circular redundancy as we do as we live. I don’t think Adam or Stephen were necessary for the telling in this book. I didn’t need the reason for the narrator’s alienation from the world. I can just accept that fact that we all are within Hegel’s phenomenology and the world needs the thesis with the anti-thesis and the dialectical resolution and the cogito at best creates Avicenna’s floating man not aware of themselves. We the need the world to write our own story and Sartre’s ‘hell is other people’ has it backwards.

A superior book, that hooked me from the first non-sequitur until the last.