A long time ago when I was in undergraduate school, I had a professor who idealized Kant. He would uphold the value of the "habit of virtue" and "human flourishing". His ideal was acting according to a "standard" of habit, as "human flourishing " was the goal.
Another professor that I had also wanted to do a "study on Kant", just as another liked the idea of an Eastern Christology. These liked the idea of virtue in a world that is filled with dishonestly (The Noble Lie) and personal gain. So, what these aspired to was a behavioral experiment of sorts.
"God was in Christ reconciling the world," The language is theological, but the experiment was a human one. This is a belief in a divinized human being, a saint, if you will. But, can one "create" a saint from the outside, that is, "form" a person by manipulation, and control?
Yes, I think this can and does happen, but not to those who are attuned to such manipulation and controls. These are those who have "understood that language all their lives. And the greater offense is the betrayal of everything that was good, noble and kind in the world. What they thought was to be trusted has left a gaping hole in the heart and life.
What God wants is Personal Sacrifice, as this is True Faith. One is to die for a cause, alto one might not know what the cause is really for. And yet, one is to believe that "God loves them, personally"! No, it is not God loving the Sacrificed; it is God loving others through the sacrifice. This is the life to be embraced, as this is maturity.
But, isn't this an object lesson to those that want to do such social engineering? and manipulation of the "facts" and the life or another human being? Faith has to be a peronsl choice of value, not an engineered social experiment.
Evil is not understood as an objective, but a personal experience. This justifies what science does to prove the validity of faith. It doesn't seem short of Facist.
Humans might not be equal in all their abilities, but that doesn't negate their individual value. This is why I've been blogging about individualism. Without intellectual humility, "social" or "collectivity" leads to genocide. This is proven by social psychologist. It is group behavior at its worst!
Our nation has gotten to the point of dividing over "the good" or "the right". And it is collective thinking. And caught in the midst of these fights are those that have lost hope altogether, because of the life left to them.
My brother's suicide taught me that one cannot tell another what is "right", because the personal weight of what seems "the right" might be the "last straw". Was my brother's suicide a lack of faith? Would one judge his life as a life that lacked "character"? I just wonder how his life really matters to those that make such judgments!
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