Francis Berger
  • Blog
  • Work

Criticism Evasion as a Means of Defending “Christianity as a Package”

10/29/2025

2 Comments

 
The responses to my recent posts criticizing logos-centered Christians tend to have one thing in common—they avoid the criticism within those posts altogether.

What were the criticisms in those posts of mine?

My chief criticism in Essentially Leftist Logos-Lovers Railing Against Leftism focused on the observed tendency of trad-minded Christians to overemphasize externals at the expense of internal personal discernment, making such externally-oriented Christians prone to getting embroiled in leftist political and social narratives in the predetermined manner those leftist narratives dictated. I suggested that trad-minded Christians would do well to temper their external orientation with a little more internal focus, particularly in this time and place, where the left controls virtually all that comprises the external.

In On the Matter of Discerning Babies and Bathwater, I made specific reference to a trad-Christian blogger who had posted a positive account of engaging with AI on the subject of God. I bluntly opined that asking AI about God amounted to spiritual perversion—as in, the spirit being turned in the wrong direction—and implored those who had interacted with AI on the subject of God to reflect upon their motivations and actions. I cited the lauding of AI as another example of the trad-minded becoming enmeshed in leftist paradigms. Oddly enough, the same Christian blogger agreed with my criticism but then simultaneously and unceremoniously dismissed my observation—which he had wholeheartedly agreed with— as lacking authority.

The Facts and Logic to Which Logos-Lovers Submit concentrated on the recent assassination of a so-called right-wing political and social commentator and the subsequent and, sadly, predictable reaction logos-centered Christians displayed following the event. Behaving precisely like the push-button automatons the left knows them to be, logos-centered Christians dutifully reacted in the exact way the leftist narrative wanted them to—by fomenting fear and declaring war.

The criticisms in the three posts above could best be summarized as follows:  

Many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus; however, their thinking and behavior suggest that they are far more prone to submitting to the authority of leftist “facts” and manipulative leftist narratives than they are to anything remotely related to the Logos they promote and hold so dear.

None of the responses to my posts about the blind spot inherent in most logos-centered Christians dealt with that criticism directly.

On the contrary, they avoided that criticism altogether and focused instead on misrepresenting Romantic Christian “concepts” in the following way:

  • Romantic Christians reject all external authority and fact, including things like math and the coffee shop down the street.
  • Romantic Christians live entirely in their heads.
  • Romantic Christians are innately anti-social and anti-society.
  • The Romantic Christian position of tempering authority through personal discernment leads to solipsism.
  • The Romantic Christian position of examining and questioning tradition lacks intellectual and spiritual humility and is just plain nuts.
  • Personal discernment ultimately leads to isolation and atomization.
  • Because they question and/or reject most Christian externals, Romantic Christians cannot “really” be Christians. In fact, they are worse than Gnostics and are essentially atheists.
  • Romantic Christians don't believe in the classical theist definition of God; hence, they don't believe in God at all.

The above are all criticisms in their own right, I suppose; however, none of them address the core criticism of my “logos-lovers” posts.

Now there has to be a reason for this, and there is, as Dr. Charlton succinctly explains below:


Most Christians are first-and-foremost institutionally-led; and they assume and assert that Christianity is A Package.

Therefore, it is regarded as a stark choice between either affiliating to a Christian church and supporting totalitarian evil, or else rejecting totalitarian evil and therefore rejecting "Christianity".

Note: This is the last I will say about this matter for a while. The thing the trad-minded don't seem to understand is that I am not out to mock them "for the hell of it." I criticize because I hope to inspire self-reflection -- but it seems that such self-reflection will likely never occur. Such is the nature of freedom. 
2 Comments

Berdyaev Leaned Heavily in Favor of Romantic Christianity

10/28/2025

4 Comments

 
“I have come to Christ through liberty and through an intimate experience of the paths of freedom.

My Christian faith is not a faith based on habit or tradition. It was won through an experience of the inner life of a most painful character.

I knew no compulsion in my religious life, and I had no experience of authoritarianism either in faith or in the sphere of religious devotion.

Can one oppose to this fact dogmatic formulas or abstract theologies?

I answer No, for in my case, they will never be really convincing.”
​                                                                                                             
~ Freedom and the Spirit
4 Comments

The Facts and Logic to Which Logos-Lovers Submit

10/19/2025

0 Comments

 
Many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus.

They claim that this submission to the authority of facts and logic guides all of their acts and behavior and proves their allegiance to Christ. Furthermore, they vehemently deny any suggestion that this sacred stance of theirs may “in fact” be leftist in inclination or, at the very least, easily manipulable by the left. 

Case in point—the assassination of the so-called right-wing political activist that occurred over a month ago. 

Within minutes of the event, the media lit up in its usual manipulative manner, encouraging the public to take a side on the “issue.” 

Within hours, the media had succeeded in convincing those on the so-called right that the left was out to kill every single one of them. 

Many logos-loving Christians and other self-professed “rightists” fell for the blatant manipulation and behaved like the push-button automatons the left know them to be. 

They enthusiastically assumed the role the left had predetermined for them by heartily contributing to the psychotic and spiritual contagion the left had generated -- to the point that many trad Christians exuberantly encouraged their supposed rightist brothers-in-arms to “gird their loins” because the left was indeed out to kill them all. 

In light of the recent event described above, logos-loving Christians would do well to ask themselves a few germane questions concerning their supposed submission to facts, logic, and Jesus Christ.  

Those on the right are supposedly aware of the leftist control of the media. Why then do they insist on submitting to the “facts” in leftist narratives in precisely the way the leftist narrative instructs them to do?

In connection with that, how does such willful submission to leftist narratives and "facts" prevent one from being a leftist? 

Experience informs us that fomenting hatred and fear is an essential component of any leftist narrative. The recent assassination was no exception. Knowing this, why did the logos-lovers actively and energetically submit and contribute to the fomenting of hatred and fear? Where, exactly, did they find the logic in that? 

Logos-lovers insist that everyone tests his private notions against his apprehensions of fact, trusting that they are more or less veridical. How did the logos-lovers test their private notions against the supposed facts of the recent assassination narrative? Moreover, where, precisely, did they locate the veridicality in such tests? 

As stated above, many trad-minded Christians pride themselves on submitting to the authority of fact and logic, which they often refer to as the Logos and then equate with Jesus; however, their thinking and behavior suggest that they are far more prone to submitting to the authority of leftist “facts” and manipulative leftist narratives than they are to anything remotely related to the Logos they promote and hold so dear. 
0 Comments

The Authority of Facts is Secondary to the Authority One Grants Assumptions

10/11/2025

4 Comments

 
In a recent post, I suggested that a big problem with contemporary traditional Christians is their assumption that

. . . Christianity is not and cannot be a predominantly private, personal, and spiritual matter; it must be rooted in submission to the external authority—to facts, to churches, to doctrines, to the Bible, to society, to tradition, to authority, to “reality”. Christianity has to be mostly "out there."

Some traditional Christians interpreted this to mean that I reject things like facts and logic outright and embrace a purely solipsistic approach to life and Christianity (as if such a thing were possible).

Nevertheless, the same Christians then went on to basically affirm that my assessment of their assumptions was accurate by proudly declaring that they do indeed submit to the authority of facts and logic and could not do otherwise even if they wanted to.

A quick note about facts and logic.

We shape reality through our metaphysical assumptions, not facts or logic.
Metaphysical assumptions are the core beliefs and postulations that people use to form their explanations about the fundamental nature of reality.

Put another way, it is our metaphysical assumptions that allow us to search for facts and, subsequently, determine what we accept as facts or logic.

Thus, our assumptions shape reality, and no knowable reality exists without such assumptions.

Facts, therefore, are downstream from our metaphysical assumptions. They are secondary—not primary.

Moreover, facts and logic are symbolizations of reality, not reality itself. They offer potential symbolic knowledge about reality but are not a substitute for reality.

Thus, any declaration about submission to the authority of facts or logic is just a disguised expression of the authority granted to metaphysical assumptions.

Traditional Christians tend to regard reality as objectively given. Unfortunately, their core assumptions leave them with few other options. For them, reality basically boils down to the thrown-back knowledge of objects or beings “out there.”
​

I assume reality to be a co-creative, spiritual endeavor and achievement. Reality is creative transfiguration, not mere submission to objectively imposed facts. 
4 Comments

The False Assumption in the Either/Or Dichotomy

10/7/2025

7 Comments

 
The following is an excerpt from an incisive comment Dr. Charlton added to a recent post of mine:

People are absolutely stuck in their assumptions that either reality is objective and out-there and to which we ought (both expediently and rationally to conform): or else (the only other option allowed) reality is subjective, something somebody feels and claims at this moment.

But BOTH of these alternatives are *incoherent* nonsense.

Instead of looking hard to find something that is (at least!) not-incoherent; people choose between the two species of nonsense - but in practice flip back and forth between them, whenever things get inconvenient.

Insofar as Christianity chooses to yoke itself to "reality is objective, out there, I do not contribute substantively to it, I must conform to it - then Christianity renders itself unfixably incoherent and irrelevant.

When this attitude is dogmatically (in the literal sense) combined with an ignorant insistence that this irrelevant incoherent metaphysics is the Only possibility - we get (inter alia) the lifestyle-level affectations and macho-posturings of trad/ orthodox Christianity.

What is so frustrating is that the false metaphysics has really nothing substantive to do with what Jesus said and did according to the IV Gospel and most of the others!

Two points.

First, assumptions asserting that reality is purely external (objective) or purely internal (subjective) are indeed incoherent. Christianity is not an either/or dichotomy. When I criticize traditional Christians for their externality, I do not assume that they or Christianity exist purely as externalities.

Christians of all stripes agree that there is more to reality than the external. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Christians tend to heavily favor externals over internals, often at a heavy cost to internal/subjective aspects of what it means to be a Christian. I suspect much of this arises from overemphasizing the sociopolitical aspects of Christianity (and faulty, incoherent metaphysics and theology, but I won’t go there in this post). That is where the bulk of my criticism originates, particularly as it pertains to obedience to questionable external “authorities,” be they religious or secular.

Second, my critical stance on externals in this time and place does not imply that I reject all externals since the dawn of Creation and live purely within my mind, in some sort of mental/spiritual pod or bubble, completely detached from everything and everyone, relying on nothing but my own feelings for guidance as to what is real and what is not.

I mention this only because this is the most common and most ridiculous criticism others tend to lob at me.
“Hey, look at Francis. He rejects math! Hardy-har-har.” 


So, reality is neither purely external nor purely internal for the simple reason that both alternatives, on their own, lead to incoherence, implying that coherence requires another way to “realize” something that, as Bruce puts it, “is at least not-incoherent.” The above should rank among a Christian’s primary motivations in this time and place.

If God wanted us to exist in solipsistic bubbles, he would have created us to exist in solipsistic bubbles, utterly unaware of anything external to us. Since we do not exist in such bubbles during mortal life, there must be something significant about "the world out there." However, this does not imply that only the world out there is significant but that you, essentially, do not count for much.


Simply stating that one must have intellectual humility and let tradition or some other external force judge what is best because one does not possess the internal resources required to discover “the (at least) not incoherent” is to state that God provides us with no reliable internal guidance whatsoever and instead forces us to be entirely dependent on the “authority” of the external, via elders, institutions, and so forth. 
7 Comments

On the Matter of Discerning Babies and Bathwater

10/6/2025

1 Comment

 
​The traditional Christian insistence—fully endorsed and promulgated by their respective churches and supposed metaphysical assumptions—that they fully comprehend the significance of personal discernment to distinguish the baby from the bathwater leaves much to be desired.

Case in point—AI. Over the past few months, I have encountered several pieces written by traditional Christians in which they asked AI about the fundamental nature of reality and God and then extolled AI for displaying the logical acumen to wholeheartedly agree with the theist position the bloggers had fed it.

I responded by stating that any motivation to ask AI about God was severely perverted, as in, turned in completely the wrong direction, spiritually speaking, and that if the trad bloggers in question really wanted to contemplate the nature of reality and God, then AI was probably the last place they should look. 

To my surprise, I received resounding agreement from one of the trad bloggers; however, he quickly hedged his acknowledgement of my observation by pointing out that my insight lacked authority. 

Put another way, my observation was valid but carried no weight because it was not supported by any authority (apparently) other than my own, rendering it a self-consuming form of authority or, more precisely, no authority at all.

My observation then was denigrated to the level of, “You’re right, but who are you?”

Well, I’m a Christian, which means I must follow my discernment and conscience above all else and, if necessary, even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. 

Because I am a Christian, I do not believe that my discernment is a solo effort, alienated and isolated from the Holy Ghost. I believe that the Holy Ghost guides my discernment and helps form my conscience. I do not believe that my discernment and conscience are infallible; however, I do my best to learn from my errors and repent whenever my discernment falters or fails.

And when it comes to discernment, it is precisely this kind of authority that most trad Christians conspire to deny.  

Anyway, I will resist wading into the enormous flip-flop said blogger displayed by lauding the logical acumen of AI one moment (he still refers to it as his personal research assistant), to contradicting that praise by agreeing with my criticism of AI the next, but I will touch upon one point. 

The blogger in question had granted the power of authority to AI when it agreed with his views of God, yet denied me the same consideration when he (mysteriously and rather inexplicably) agreed with my dismissal of AI as a spiritually viable means to seek answers about God. 

I believe the above reveals much about the insincere posturing some trad-Christians exhibit when confronted with the significance of personal discernment in Christianity. 

On the one hand, they are quick to emphasize that personal discernment is vital to the faith, even when it justifiably conflicts with church doctrine or dogma. Mention personal discernment, and they agree that it forms the very foundation upon which Christianity is built. 

On the other hand, any expressed personal discernment that conflicts with church doctrine, dogma, or traditional Christian metaphysics is callously dismissed as insane solipsism, unanchored in anything save for personal, individualist feelings and selfish,  questionable intuitions. 

The bottom line is simple—if your personal discernment does not line up with the doctrine, dogma, and traditional metaphysics, it is all rainbows and soap bubbles, and you are basically mad because you dare to pit yourself against the Magisterium, or whatever. 

In connection with the above, I am not sure how the personal discernment of the trad bloggers who asked AI about God lines up with traditional doctrine, dogma, traditional metaphysics, or following Jesus (aka, the Logos), but it obviously does, in ways I obviously cannot comprehend.
 
And that is but a sample of how trad Christians who pride themselves on being anti-modern and anti-left end up engaging in, being used by, and are ultimately consumed by leftism and leftist discourse.

By interacting with and granting the status of authority to AI—on the subject of God, of all things(!)—the trad bloggers willfully endorsed the System’s newest and latest top-down-endorsed and implemented (re: enforced) anti-spiritual, anti-God, and anti-human technological innovation.

​How sublimely logical of them!

Of course, said trad bloggers do not see it that way. To them, AI is both bathwater and baby, and their only task is to discern one from the other, implying that AI has something intrinsically valuable to offer Creation, even on the subject of God. 

To discern otherwise is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or, more plainly, to declare that this particular aspect of officially endorsed and enforced modernism or leftism (or whatever you wish to call the totalitarianism we find ourselves in) has nothing inherently good to offer.
​
What an unbearable thought.  
1 Comment

​Knowing When to Stop

10/4/2025

3 Comments

 
Knowing when to start something is a vital part of life. The same applies to knowing when to stop. 

Regular readers of this blog know I have spent the better part of nine years renovating, updating, and remodeling the house I purchased in northwestern Hungary shortly after moving here. 

It’s been quite a journey. I would even call it a labor of love. Yet today, as I was installing polystyrene insulation on the last uninsulated wall on the back of the house, I experienced a mild epiphany of sorts. 

I was thinking about the steps to finish the house by the end of next summer, mentally compiling a list of those final tasks, when I became aware of the pressing need to hire those tasks out to others, not because I could not complete the work myself, but because I no longer want to.

I had accomplished what I had set out to do. It was time to stop. 

Granted, no homeowner ever really stops working on a house because there is always something to repair, maintain, replace, or upkeep; however, my days as the primary contractor and renovator ended today. 

Come spring, I will hire others to render the exterior, lay the paving stones, and tie up the odds and ends. 

Me? I plan to begin really living in the house, for a change -- and be in the yard, planting the most magnificent vegetable garden my little village has ever seen. 

And more reading, thinking, praying, family time, and blogging. 
​
Definitely more blogging.   
3 Comments

​Essentially Leftist Logos-Lovers Railing Against Leftism

10/1/2025

6 Comments

 
It took me a long time to realize that all contemporary politics and virtually everything that connects to politics—economics, finance, culture, society in general, business, institutions, art, and organized religion—is of the left. And when I mean “of the left,” I mean exactly that. It’s leftism—all of it.  

Yes, even the most conservative of conservative political parties, the most foaming at the mouth alt-rightist nationalist, and the most pious trad Christian clergyman are basically of the left for the simple reason that they continue to operate within an exclusively leftist framework under the delusion that some semblance of “the right” still exists there.

Newsflash. There is no “right” in contemporary politics. It’s all the left. All of it. 

Rightists, conservatives, and so-called traditional Christians can’t seem to wrap their heads around this simple fact and continue to doggedly participate in a perceived left-right paradigm that simply does not exist. 

Among the worst offenders are logos-centered Christians—you know, the ones who enjoy reminding everyone that Christ is Logos, the universal principle of law, order, and reason that underpins the reality of Creation and through which all things were created.  

The metaphysics of most logos-centered Christians are easy enough to discern and grasp. For them, Christianity and reality are fundamentally objective. Reality does not submit to individuals; individuals submit to reality. Reality, then, is logos as law, or, more precisely, logos as supreme authority.

Within such metaphysical assumptions, the authority of the objective always takes precedence over the authority of the subjective for the simple fact that the subjective contains no real authority but is instead detached from “real” authority and, thus, self-consuming. If it were otherwise, there could be no objective facts; hence, no order, no beauty, truth, or goodness. No reality “out there.” 

Along the same lines, Christianity is not and cannot be a predominantly private, personal, and spiritual matter; it must be rooted in submission to the external authority—to facts, to churches, to doctrines, to the Bible, to society, to tradition, to authority, to “reality”. Christianity has to be mostly "out there."

Anyway, the biggest beef logos-loving Christians have against leftists is the latter’s outright refusal to submit to the unavoidable authority of the Logos as an external authority.

The crux of the ongoing conflict resides in opposing the left’s relentless campaign to impose external unreality upon external reality and call it “reality”.

The war most logos-loving Christians wage against the left is an exclusively external affair, and it is through this externality, through this “out there” focus, through this purposeful choice of battlefields, that the left has already won and will continue to win.

Put another way, logos-loving Christians will never win the war against leftism if they continue to focus almost entirely on the authority of the Logos as an externality because any exclusively external focus is inherently leftist by default. 

Thus, actively engaging and participating in leftist narratives by loyally showing up and filling the external role of “the right” does little more than positively fortify the left’s external unrealities. 

Claiming rightist victories and progress in certain political, social, or economic matters that are wholly externally organized, promulgated, and dictated by the left is itself a form of leftist delusion. 

Everything in the external is of the left today. Politics, economics, art, religion, culture, society, and everything else that comprises the System.

Of the left. All of it.
 
Thus, any spiritual submission to external “reality” today is submission to the left, not the Logos. 

This should induce a pause for thought. Perhaps the Logos is not entirely about the external. Perhaps it’s more of an internal matter in this time and place.

Moreover, reality may require much more from us than mere submission to external authority.

​Much, much more.   
6 Comments
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Blog and Comments

    Blog posts tend to be spontaneous, unpolished, first draft entries ranging from the insightful and periodically profound to the poorly-argued and occasionally disparaging.
     


    Comments are welcome but moderated.  Please use your name or a pseudonym in comments.

    Emails welcome:
    f er en c ber g er (at) h otm   ail (dot) co m
    Blogs/Sites I Read
    Bruce Charlton's Notions
    Meeting the Masters
    ​
    Trees and Triads
    From The Narrow Desert
    New World Island  
    New World Island YouTube
    ​
    Synlogos 
    ✞ Aggregator
    ​Adam Piggott
    The Orthosphere
    nicholasberdyaev

    Archives

    June 2026
    May 2026
    February 2026
    January 2026
    December 2025
    November 2025
    October 2025
    September 2025
    August 2025
    July 2025
    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.