It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. — Thomas Nagel

I would not want there to be a judgmental God, to be sure. Nor would I want there to be an overarching cosmic agenda.

But such Gods are exclusively the Gods of "established religions and religious institutions", whose "objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence" are all results of what is held by those institutions to be the Will of God, so Nagel's distinction here seems to be incoherent; effectively a non-distinction.

I don't think so. The Christian message is, after all, 'god so loved the world...' It is true that some forms of 'spirituality' can become sheer indifference, but I don't think that the authentic or worthwhile forms are like that.

In any case, as you know, Hegel had this magnificent scheme wherein the various nations and cultures were the expression of geist (from whence that marvellous word, 'zeitgeist'). — Wayfarer

That is certainly one and perhaps the dominant version of the Christian message. But I don't find it plausible or desirable.

Here is an example of Hegel losing the I in the We and the individual in the state. He was of course an employee of the state. It's easy to imagine his optimism. But this is why Popper attacked him. His deification of the state sets the stage for disaster. But I don't reject this on political terms. That would defeat my purpose. I reject the deification of the state as bad religion. This is of course only a value judgment on my part.

It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses – all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State. For his spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence – Reason – is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for him.

Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality – of a just and moral social and political life. For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. — Hegel

But this is why Popper attacked him. His deification of the state sets the stage for disaster. But I don't reject this on political terms. That would defeat my purpose. I reject the deification of the state as bad religion. This is of course only a value judgment on my part. — fQ9

I think Popper got it wrong when he thought Hegel would valorize a "closed society". I think Hegel saw politics (manifested as the state) as the expression of the human spirit, the "zeitgeist" which he saw as the equivalent of the absolute spirit. Hegel certainly wanted to free humanity; via speculative reason, from the "aegis of tutelage". So, in short, I don't believe he deified the state at all in the way you seem to be suggesting. To think that would be to read him superficially.

That's what I mean by the 'one-dimensional' - nothing higher than individual judgement - nihil ultra ego' - as befits out individualist age.

When you go to a martial arts dojo, one thing you learn to do, is bow. It's something I learned from Buddhists, and it's an implicit recognition of something or someone worthy of reverence, venerable - that's what I mean by 'higher'. And I know that it grates - I think it's a valuable exercise to ask why it grates, why it is such a blatantly non-PC thing to say. — Wayfarer

When I speak of "human judgement" being the only judgement, I am not advocating egoism or individualism. Human judgement is greater than mere individual judgement because if the latter has not assimilated the former then it is ignorant, untutored and irrelevant.

You should know that I do consider many things to be worthy of reverence. Nature is worthy of reverence, and so are the living beings, including humans, that are part of nature. The arts are worthy of reverence. Science is worthy of reverence. Love and good will are worthy of reverence. Discipline and learning are worthy of reverence. Creativity and ingenuity are worthy of reverence, What is not worthy of reverence is what is petty, insecure, small-minded, fearful, selfish, grasping, envious, self-piteous, resentful, and so on.

Regarding your martial arts reference: I attend Tai Chi classes, and I bow to the teacher with reverence in my heart; I revere his mastery.

I don't side with Popper against Hegel. But I'm stressing that Hegel may not have the same relevance or plausibility with respect to the entirety of his system after Hitler, etc. But most importantly I reject (as a personal choice) what I'd call the descent of theology into politics. Politics is just the endless collision of preferences in terms of principles. We cannot escape politics as a fact. We will exert ourselves in the world for money, status, recognition, etc. But a theology that descends into politics is small. The individual becomes a mouthpiece for his momentary vision of the Right. He almost necessarily loses himself in a group that shares his preferences, prejudices, visions of the Right. He loses his grand solitude and a recurrent "transcendence of the world."

I've sketched out my likely unlikeable ideas about politics and religion.

The infinite is the negation of the finit. It is nothing positive or hidden, nothing more than the finite gathered into a unity and annihilated as the source of or the authority upon the self's value and dignity. Oversimplifying to get the point across, the self is structured by or is the "incarnation" of a Cause. This cause is its avatar on the world stage, its public self, or what it separates from its one thousand idiosyncrasies as its righteous essence. This cause is the self's worth or substantial being in its own eyes. Religion is still just politics to the degree that this cause is a finite or particular protagonist on the world stage, opposed to other finite and particular causes. It is implicitly or explicitly the imposition of duty toward and reverence for the particularity of its avatar, which is to say its own idiosyncratic specifications of the good and the authoritative. It crudely expresses itself as violence and more gently expresses itself as persuasive speech, which can arguably be described as rhetoric since the authority of a particular notion of the rational is itself a matter of debate. A non-political or infinite religion (which happily negates its attachment to these very terms) self-consciously relinquishes its identification with a determinate or particular avatar in opposition to an also determinate and particular avatar. It identifies instead with the negation of identity itself. It comprehends the clash of finite avatars or identifications as a unity, which is to say that it recognizes a general structure therein and thereby makes what was apparently necessary (the choice between finite oppositions and its attendant embrace of a principle/god absurdly within and yet above the the world-encompassing I ) merely optional. Negation is only possible once these chaotic particulars are grasped as a unity. To negate one particular in isolation is merely to affirm its opposite.

The work is achieved both conceptually and emotionally. The "I" to be clarified is necessarily developed within a particular community. It must identify with the local "gods" or principles of its parents and its community to successfully become an adult. This is how it is tamed so that higher notions of autonomy become realistic. But achieving a higher notion of autonomy is one and the same with the negation or destruction of these investments that constitute its "spiritual" self. The idea is that we die into freedom, or that the slave within us dies screaming within a consuming fire also known as God. In this context, God is the implicit idea of freedom, a restless negativity that destabilizes and corrodes fixed or finite notions of the authoritative and the good. The negativity is desire for that obscure object, self-realization in terms of direct access to the authoritative and the good, which can be described as the desire to become the "God-man" or Christ (the end therefore of the law). This desire is "sin" to the self in its more alienated stages, so that the object is experienced in terms of a proximity to a God that remains other. But God is death to everything finite. The laughter of God annihilates "finite" solemnities, the endless chatter about sin and righteousness, dreams of providence and a final judgment. The god of the nation or of the particular faith is a false or finite god, or politics by another name --the immersion of the ego in a group ego. The living God is a bonfire of vanities, including the vanity of the word "God" and the contingent tradition that teaches us to use a particular word and system of images. The medium is burnt up in the consummation. The ladder is thrown away as a merely idiosyncratic or non-essential path to that which is the sustained negation of particular content. The realized "I" stands beyond all tradition and opposition of the finite to the finite. In less grandiose terms we have a living individual and his thousand idiosyncracies, eating shitting working a job, finding his cause in the maintenance of his ideal freedom from finite or positive or particular causes. His ideal identity is infinite. Like anyone, he works within the finite, engages in finite projects, votes perhaps for the lesser evil. But he does not sacrifice his ideal identity to anything particular. It stands (the I stands) without foundation, dialectically or progressively self-generated, self-realized, self-justified.

What is his vocation?—what belongs to him as Man, that does not belong to those known existences which are not men?—in what respects does he differ from all we do not call man amongst the beings with which we are acquainted?
I must lay down... a principle which exists indestructibly in the feelings of all men, which is the result of all philosophy... the principle, that as surely as man is a rational being, he is the end of his own existence; i.e. he does not exist to the end that something else may be, but he exists absolutely because he himself is to be—his being is its own ultimate object;—or, what is the same thing, man cannot, without contradiction to himself, demand an object of his existence. He is, because he is. This character of absolute being—of existence for his own sake alone,—is his characteristic or vocation... — Fichte

I've been neglecting my work for philosophy, so this is my final transmission for awhile. It's a been a pleasure to discuss the higher things with all of you. Perhaps we'll speak again.