https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UckufDnZa9Y
So we talked about the narrative and the objective touching and so I wanted to touch on that again is that like I I understand CS Lewis’s argument and you know, I’m even inclined from time to time to think well I’ve got the choice between believing two impossible things. I can either believe that in The world is constituted so that God took on flesh and was crucified and and and died and rose three days later or I can believe that human beings invented this unbelievably preposterous story that stretched into every atom of of culture and It isn’t obvious to me that the second Hypothesis is any easier to believe than the first because the more you investigate That the manifestations of the story of Christ the more insanely complicated and far-reaching it becomes So I read Ion for example and for all of those who are listening if you want to read a book that will completely Make you insane Then you could read Jung’s Ion and it’s a study of Christian symbolism in astrology which doesn’t sound particularly dangerous, but or or or even particularly necessary to read I suppose but Jung describes the the juxtaposition of astrological and Christian symbolism and it’s a brilliant book and it’s terrifying because he Outlines the concordance between the levels of symbolism over several thousand years and it’s obvious when you read the book That no one plotted this. It’s not a conspiracy Whatever is going on To make that concordance occur isn’t something that’s not And it seems to be best understood as one of these situations where the narrative and the objective touch the saturation of Christianity with fish symbolism Jung associates with astrological movement of Into the house of Pisces And and so he he describes how a Drama so ancient people saw a drama played out in the sky And that projection contained symbols that were associated with the emergence of Christianity And so you you can see in that the the alternative explanation is that there’s this There’s this unfolding of a symbolic landscape over centuries or millennia That’s part of human biological and cultural evolution But that that’s not the case That’s part of human biological and cultural evolution But that that starts to touch on the religious anyways when you when you describe it in those terms Like it’s it’s it’s the operation of a of a cognitive of a natural cognitive process Let’s say natural slash cognitive process that supersedes any one individual or any one culture And so i’ve never seen a critique of ion, you know I think people read that book and they think oh well, one of the things that for example, you know, you talked about just before the idea that um, you know The idea of christ being a dying and resurrecting god and you know That’s really actually not the case if you actually just look at the story of christ and not just the story in scripture But let’s say the whole story as it kind of developed in tradition and kind of melded together In the ancient world you had this idea of gods that went down into the underworld You know either that went down for some reason to visit or went down to save somebody even or You know or or or died and then and then rose again but that’s actually not the story of christ because If you if you understand the full tradition of the christian story, we think that christ died Went into hades And then destroyed death And he pulls everybody out of death and then that’s it like what other story are you going to tell after that story? you have a story of someone who dies goes into death and then Take and then destroys death and then that’s it like that That’s the thing with christ story that every story every aspect of his story reaches the limit of storytelling And it’s it’s impossible to go beyond it. Right? That’s right. That’s right. Well, even from a psychological perspective, that’s correct And that in itself is a kind of miracle and so you’re stuck in some sense constantly having to choose between miracles. It’s like, okay It’s a it’s a figment of the human imagination fine, but it’s the limit figment in multiple ways. How did that happen? And also but as soon as you start to start to think that the world is made of attention the idea of just a figment of somebody’s imagination especially A just a figment of someone’s imagination, which is happens Like you said over thousands of years within communities of thousands of people. It just becomes a ridiculous statement It doesn’t it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like yeah, it only means something if you assume that and you pointed this out It only means something it only To say it’s a figment of imagination And have that brush it aside means that you think that imagination is nothing And you pointed out constantly that you should not attribute nothing to the psyche It’s what you depend upon it’s the ground of your existence. It’s it’s it’s It’s not nothing. It’s the thing you that you take for granted more than anything else So any anything that you can recognize as a story will definitely be manifesting patterns that you can recognize And so they can’t just be brushed aside from this from the most insane conspiracy theory to the the most you know like childish fairy tale anything that manifests itself as a As a pattern of story that you can recognize It has a certain level of value Has a enough level that if you pay attention to it, you actually can Gather some some some nuggets of uh of how the world works and how the world lays itself out Uh, you know and that’s why like if I do symbolic interpretations I can do it for scripture But I can also do it for some marvel movie or some video game or whatever it is because That’s just the for you to even recognize something as having being It’s already part of that world. It’s already manifesting these patterns