Disagreeing with Massimo, but seeing where he comes from on Stoicism

 Near the end of a long discussion via Substack notes, about the nature of Stoicism, after I mentioned "ontological dualism," then re a response from him, made sure I was being understood correctly, he said:

I simply don't see that as true.

My response, which I didn't originally send? This:

We’ll agree to disagree on that, too, but I think the Logos is just as much a non-materialist entity, if you will, as karma is in Buddhism and Hinduism. I know they were determinists, just like Enlightenment Deists (even if they didn’t recognize it). I see it as similar to Aristotle’s “prime mover”; the Logos has to sit outside the material world, just like the Deist “wind up the clock” divinity.

It's how I've always understood Stoicism.

And that's true even if the Stoics didn't understand themselves that way. 

The conversation did fully open my mind, though.

I realize that part of why I have seen it this way is that, I see it as "not working" due to self-referentiality problems, the exact ones that Hofstadter, Gödel and Tarski have like liked to write about, only universe-wide. 

The way I see it is, we have a dilemma, and a real one, not a false one.

Accepting at face value Zeno's claim that Stoicism was monistic?

We either say he got that claim wrong, which allows the general Stoic edifice to remain, albeit with making Zeno look like a clueless metaphysician, or ...

We say that he was right on that Stoicism was monistic, and he had created a self-rotting edifice.

I don't know which is more "charitable."

I do know that either angle makes me realize far more than before how overrated Stoicism is in some ways. 

Of course, the central platform of Stoicism, the reason so many people are ga-ga over it via neo-Stoicism, is ethics. So, Stoicism's ethics are either part of that rotten edifice, and ditto for neo-Stoics, or they're dualistically based even as neo-Stoics don't realize this. If, per Hume's dictum (with preceding sentence) that:

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Is at least more true than false, then a principle of living ethically according to reason and nature is more false than true. That's what got me started with Massimo; it's been a long, long time — before I became a secularist, to put it bluntly — that I've read seriously in Stoicism. I didn't realize that its use of "passion" has nothing to do with Hume's passions.

And, while I think Hume is not totally true here, just as he is not on "is ≠ ought," I do think on that, and this, both issues, he's more right than wrong. In the run-up to that dictum, he noted that most people of his day felt that passions needed to be the slave to reason, and so explained his inverse. See here. And, of that, he said:

I think, again, that this may not be 100 percent true, but it's more right than wrong. 

In order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will.

The crux of what Hume is getting at comes a few paragraphs later, with this definition:

A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high. 'Tis impossible, therefore, that this passion can be oppos'd by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider'd as copies, with those objects, which they represent.

Followed by this observation:

According to this principle, which is so obvious and natural, 'tis only in two senses, that any affection can be call'd unreasonable. First, When a passion, such as hope or fear, grief or joy, despair or security, is founded on the supposition of the existence of objects, which really do not exist. Secondly, When in exerting any passion in action, we chuse means insufficient for the design'd end, and deceive ourselves in our judgment of causes and effects. Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it.

In other words, if a passion is justly formed, it's impossible to reason it away. 

I would go further, and state that claims that one can do so are itself a passion, though an ill-formed one. Of course, I like petard-hoisting.

I think devotees of all Hellenistic philosophies could learn from Hume. Even Cynicism made strong claims for human reasoning. At least it, unlike Stoicism and Epicureanism, rejects determinism.

Now, per Hume's other dictum, yes, his dictum on the passions and reason may not be totally true. After all, if "is ≠ ought," theoretically, we can reason our way beyond passions. But, can we? Beyond me going with petard-hoisting snark, per Hume's third bon mot about how we can never truly apprehend ourselves, we may never be able to so totally detach from ourselves as to truly abstractly reason with a bracketing — a phenomenological bracketing or epoche — of passions.

I see this to be more true the older I get, even as I wish it were not the case. 

That then said, related to that? Hume has a big problem here, and it's a personal one as a professional one, because he was a big practitioner of it.

It's called "motivated reasoning."

That then said, this doesn't let Stoicism off the hook, or the petard. It's easy to engage in — and to fling accusations of others engaging in — motivated reasoning. That in turn suggests again that actual reasoning is harder than St. David presents and much more so than Zeno claims. 

We very much aren't letting Stoicism off the hook. Per a later comment to Massimo:

So, whether Zeno was wrong in assuming that you can have a monist Logos, and ignoring all the self-referential issues that causes, which being literally universal in size, certainly satisfies Gödel et al on being a sufficiently large issue, or whether, if I’m charitable on accepting Zeno’s monistic stance, we then say per what I just said, and that theoretically means the edifice is rotten (yes, that’s a bit harsh, but I’m OK with it), there we are. 

I don’t see that as a false dilemma but a real one, and I know that, per the Cretan liars paradox and other things, self-referentiality problems were known to Zeno. 

As for the eternal recurrence? That of course means the Logos gets nuked along with everything else. 

Behind this, Zeno makes assumptions about the rationality of the universe, as well as of H. sapiens, that probably aren’t warranted. Can I hop in a Tardis and introduce him to non-local subatomic particles? 

Per Hume on Kant, I’ve been awakened from some sort of slumber.

And, that last sentence is as true as anything. 

This sets aside the issue of Stoicism being a hard determinist philosophy, and who exactly is trying to achieve ataxaria admidst such determinism. And yes, that last part was snark.

Fuck around with Pope Leo XIV and find out

 After the Society of St. Pius X, who had had bishops previously excommunicated by Pope John Paul II restored by Ratzi the Nazi, aka Benedict XVI, decided to ordain four new bishops, one wondered just how hard Leo would come down.

Wonder no more.

He not only excommunicated the four, but the entire order. 

Last Wednesday's ordination came 38 years to the day after JPII excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the anti-Vatican II group.

Beyond that, the Swiss event was itself not wholly authentic, as the sermon was not in Latin. Yes, that was the norm pre-Vatican II, but that's the whole point. Vatican II made the liturgy as well as the sermon accessible.

Beyond that? Neither the Tanakh nor He Kaine Diatheke was written in Latin. 

As to why?

After Benedict reversed the excommunications, Francis continued dialogue. Leo might have done that, but, even if SSPX's two remaining bishops were aging out, he wasn't prepared to go further at this time, and so surely felt he had to draw a hard line.

FAFO will now be seen, in English, throughout the Vatican world. 

Top blogging of April-June 2026

 This is, per Blogger stats (which may or may not include bot hits) the most-read posts of the last three months. That does not necessarily mean they were written in the past three months, and "evergreen" posts will be noted.

The usual counting backward, per Tom Lehrer and Wernher von Braun:

 

No. 10 is about the ahistoricity of the last one-quarter of Acts, even when judged by the historicity of the rest of the book and is from 2022.

No. 9 is about what John Drinkwater got wrong on Nero, Tacitus and early Christianity, in his bio of Nero and is from 2021. 

No. 8 is new, from within the last couple of months, about what Texas Observer got wrong vis-a-vis Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico's liberal Presbyterianism within larger Presbyterian, and mainline Protestant, denominationalism.

No. 7 ties broadly to No. 10, but is new; it's about Berenice, sister of Agrippa II, and it is more specifically about reality vs legend in her life. 

Four straight posts about wrongness of others' interpretations, eh? 

No. 6, also new, continues the trend, as I excoriate an article about "Catholic" "womenpriests." That's scare quotes for both because per the excoriated article, both are earned. It's also raised my skeptical antennae about the site that posted the original link.

No. 5, is also new, and my take on a great article by Bruce Chilton talking about "godfearers" in Acts. In this case, it's him pointing out what others have gotten wrong. 

No. 4 relates to No. 10, and also to the theme here. I call out Adam Gopnik for a semi-fail on his understanding of the historical Paul.

No. 3? Even more so. I refudiate philosopher friend Massimo Pigliucci over his defense of determinism. (More refudiation is upcoming, related to the Stoicism and neo-Stoicism that is a prime driver of his determinism.) 

No. 2? An oldie but a goodie: "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha." Indirectly, it's also a refutation of Robert Wright. It's from way back in 2007.

No. 1 is about fascism, or "lutefash," in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and of added importance with appeaser LCMS incumbent president Matthew Harrison just being elected to another term, with a whole 50.1 percent per this Substack. It's from 2023.

And, of course, besides the countdown idea in general, Lehrer's piece ties well with No. 1 on the list. 

A roundup of biblical criticism stuff in re Amateur Exegete

 Uhh, no, librul evangelical on Patheos, Paul's family didn't become Roman citizens when made freedmen of the Sergius Paulus family. First, being freed did not have to guarantee Roman citizenship. Second, Paul himself was not a Roman citizen.

Uhh, no, independent scholar of Christianity (I am one, too) Acts is not highly accurate. Instead, especially in the last one-quarter, it's HUGELY INaccurate. 

Both of those (and more) came from one of the worst recent posts by Amateur Exegete, who also there has a video clip of Robyn Walsh telling you "Paul was not a Christian." No shit, sherlock. (I'm not that high on her in general.)

An otherwise very good article on Mark and the Messianic Secret undercut itself by claiming Herod was not Jewish. I agree with the locale and the likely dating (though I would date it much more narrowly around 71 CE and not have such an open-ended terminus ad quem).

Speaking of, I found his Goodreads page. Per books we have in common (don't know if this will show for third-party readers) I'm more underwhelmed, especially on his love for Ehrman. Worse yet, he's touted one of the books in which he's way wrong on one of his posts. (We're only two stars apart, not three, that said.)

A seeming deliberate wrongness on James Talarico's belief system within larger America

Fresh off throwing secularists at least halfway under the bus and not looking very deeply at the roots of Hanukkah in a piece at the Observer last December, which I eviscerated, Texas Christian University professor David Brockman now writes that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is firmly within Presbyterian tradition.

And, let's get to the headline now in this expanded and sharpened version of my piece from my main site.

I can only, in terms of personal honesty, assume that Brockman's misframings, in making that above statement, are deliberate and willful, given his professional background. If not, and he's actually uninformed on the information I'm about to present, he has no business teaching at TCU. 

The first big fail is pretending that the Presbyterian Church USA is the only Presbyterian denomination in the United States, or such is how he leaves himself open to being seen as. Wrong. The PCUSA is the biggest, but even with setting aside splinter groups, it's far from the only one. Wiki has the details. It list the PCUSA at 1,045,000 members. The conservative Presbyterian Church in America, which split off from the southern half of the predecessor to the PCUSA, is at 400,000, or 40 percent of its size. Yet another split off the PCUSA, the ECO, has 125,000 members. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church split off the Northern Presbyterian predecessor to the PCUSA back in the 1980s and also is at 125K.

OK, adding up the three main conservative groups and you're at 650,000, or 65 percent of the PCUSA. So, we've got a fail by Brockman right there. Or a lie by hand-waving. That's right, Prof. Brockman.

Now, the big differences, per this site which does not list the ECO, but does have a 1930s splitoff from the northern Presbyterians, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

PCA is men-only pastors; ECO and EPC, that's an adiaphoron. All three non-PCUSA at the link believe in an inerrant bible. Homosexual acts are a sin. I'll presume the ECO has the same stances. Again, this is held by assorted Presbyterian groups 65 percent the size of Talarico's PCUSA.

Brockman claims Talarico is also within the mainline Protestant tradition. Wrong. While conservative Lutherans may not add up to 65 percent of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, they break 50 percent. Actually, they break 75 percent; I didn't realize, per Wiki, that ELCA membership has cratered in the last decade or so. (It's 55 percent, per Pew, if you talk about people who "affiliate with" the different wings.) The United Methodist Church, now entering the schism world, lost 25 percent of its US churches after its 2024 general conference.

It remains an open question as to whether the fundagelical or the librul branches of traditional mainline Protestant denominations are losing members faster, but neither one is making new adherents, whether formal members or even "affiliated with." That would be a modern version of "God-fearers" or something.

Brockman also is lying by omission in another way.

He nowhere discusses Talarico's claim that the Annunciation in Luke is about being pro-choice, which I have noted elsewhere is bullshit. Beyond political pandering, since abortion is not really discussed in either the Tanakh or the He Kaine Diatheke, it's theological pandering to boot.

Speaking of? 

The three non-PCUSA churches in my link, and I will venture the ECO as well, all consider abortion wrong.

Finally, near the top, Brockman talks about "MAGA Christians." Not all conservative Christians, Protestant or Catholic (strangely missing from Brockman's piece) are enamored of Donald Trump. Within Christianity, both political liberals and conservatives at times politicize their beliefs. 

Indeed, Brockman himself wrote a piece in 2018 about two North Texas evangelical pastors who are part of a movement breaking with MAGAts on immigration. 

Interestingly, per the "mush god" stereotype of librul Protestantism, he's a very easy grader and prof in general, per Rate MyProfessors. 

Look, Prof. Brockman, if you want to just say you're "chill" with Talarico from your personal religious perspective (he was at SMU before TCU, and says in one piece that he's "high church Episcopalian"), say so. Because Episcopal church property rules are largely similar to Catholic ones, Episcopalian splinter denominations don't really exist; you have splinter movements within, or people leaving the denomination.

But, don't think you can bamboozle all readers out in the wild like freshman college students in a 100-level class. 

In 2018, for the Observer, he wrote about Southern Baptists facing up to a denominational history of sexual abuse. Actually, the denouement on that was sweeping it under rug and forcing dissenters out of the denomination, as much as possible. The reality is that at this year's SBC convention, both of the candidates for president say the SBC does not have an abuse crisis.

We can't have an honest discussion of the role of religion in American life, and certainly not of the role of Christianity in American life, political and larger sociological life, if both duopoly parties are going to have intellectuals going tribalist. 

Otherwise, in all the non-Episcopal mainline Protestant denominations with both conservative and liberal wings, both wings are losing membership at about the same rate. So far, I think that the "nones" who are "spiritual but not religious" are mainly upset about conservative tribalism, but that could change. Among the agnostic and non-metaphysical, I will bet that, even outside of Gnu Atheism, there are others who, like me, call a pox on both tribalist houses already. 

No "book of Leviticus" eh?

Here's an interesting post from "The Amateur Exegete". about the The SBL (Society for Biblical Literature) Study Bible's Leviticus volume, noting that the Torah was put into five scrolls as is because of scroll length and that Leviticus, at least, doesn't stand out as a separate book.

I pull quote what Ben the Amateur has: 

Despite having its own title, there is really no “book” of Leviticus in any meaningful sense. Leviticus never existed as an independent literary or textual unit at any stage of its development or incorporation into biblical canon. The Pentateuch is not five independent books cobbled together but rather a single literary work presented in five volumes, the division having been based on the material limits of scroll technology. The essential continuity of Leviticus with what comes before and after is apparent from both a broad perspective and from a close reading. The very first words of the book, literally “He called to Moses,” lack an explicit subject in Hebrew; the English addition of “the LORD” is assumed from preceding verses at the end of Exodus. Who Moses is, where and when the events of Leviticus take place, what the nature and historical background of the relationship between Israel and its deity is – none of these are explained in Leviticus itself but are dependent on the story that has been told from the beginning of the Pentateuch to this point.

Interesting, per the author, no translation of Leviticus puts "The LORD" in square brackets at the start of Leviticus 1:1, not even the new RSV.

That said? Here's the end of Exodus 40:

34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 36 Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey, 37 but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud[a] by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.

And, the start of Leviticus 1:

1 The Lord summoned Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When any of you bring an offering of livestock to the Lord, you shall bring your offering from the herd or from the flock.

There you are. It is a "flow" of sorts. 

I do think Baden overstates his case, though.

Genesis as seen today was presumably a separate unit. It stands separately, being pre-Egypt times except for the tail end. Only the Tesserateuch, to riff on Tatian, is really a single unit. (On biblical criticism, I still believe in some version of the old documentary hypothesis. I believe that there is a separate E source, and that it and J were written, revised, edited and updated in response to each other in a sort of scriptio continua, to riff on the Catholic, Orthodox and mainline Protestant lectionary term. There is of course no D material until Deuteronomy, and there, there's multiple D layers, with perhaps the earliest being what Moses Wilhelm Shapira found, per Idan Dershowitz. Or, Genesis, a "Triteuch" then Deuteronomy. See also Dershowitz and my take on the documentary hypothesis in general. And, per a 2009 book by him that's a revision of his PhD thesis, he appears to broadly agree with me.

On the matter at hand, I don't know if Baden addresses this, but the issue is WHY the Exodus-Leviticus division is where it is on modern scrolls. Exodus 35, after the second giving of the tablets of the Ten Divarim, gets to Yahweh's instructions for the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant and such. Breaking Exodus after chapter 34 and attaching the rest to Leviticus makes much more sense.  

Of nonexistent "womenpriests" and Christian Scientists

 Re the Amateur Exegete's May 24 piece, and as I commented at YouTube on the actual video, there IS no such thing as a "Roman Catholic womanpriest." There's women who want to be priests in the Roman Catholic church, but having wanting in one hand is like having shit in the other.

Yes, there is an organization that ordains such women, but such women are automatically excommunicated, like a dead man's switch, upon ordination. So, they're no longer Catholic.

And, of course, the interviewer, Shirley Paulson, asks the woman-not-priest about gnosis. AND? Beyond New Agey, which was my first guess? Shirley Paulson is a Christian Scientist.

And, this is yet another reason why, although I keep Ben on my blogroll to be reminded of, and cash in on, free ebooks, he's otherwise not very useful and not very critically minded.