To Spread Your Faith, Your Philosophy, and Yourselves

This may seem like something my colleague, Alexios Fidei, would write, but in fact this is very controversial to Alexios, especially about my what he called 'over-simplification' of evangelism and faith. He thinks that faith should not be reduced to a mechanism or hierarchical levels, but anyway this is my views, Severinus de Psedosolipsist's views as a 'heterodox' Christian.

There are three things that people want to spread in this world, their faith i.e. their personal relation to God, their philosophy, which includes their metaphysical beliefs, ethics and political ideals, and they want to spread themselves, i.e. their seeds and genes or names to "live forever".
These three things reside in three levels, at the top faith, then philosophy, and at the bottom themselves. These three levels are connected in many ways and their order are non-switchable.

First, one who has attained the ability to will to spread the higher levels can attain the levels bellow it. One who has faith can spread faith and his philosophy and himself. One who has not attained faith can only spread his philosophy and  himself. One who do not think about anything and void of any personally serious-held beliefs, only can and only want to spread himself.

The relation described above is caused by this, the object of each levels have different distances to the man. The lowest level only has himself as the object, he need not reach for anything. The second level has ideas which he created/discovered which is within his grasp and this requires an effort in his part. The highest level can only be attained through a truly relational personal connection to God, he needs to focus on another person, God. This is why it is very easy to find those people who wants to spread their seeds to everyone. It is harder to see people who truly want others to adopt his beliefs. And harder still to find those who wants to spread the good news of God.

The next relation between the levels is that each level can be expressed by a perversion of the higher levels, this is wrong. This is usually the case when one has not attained the higher levels and yet try imitate them. When one has only reached the second level, he can "spread his faith" by spreading his own idea of God for the sake of the idea alone and not bringing people to God. This purely idea God without the person is the imitation of God, sometimes they use the word life force or the personified 'universe'. When one is at the lowest level, one can spread his bogus ideas just to be famous so his name stays forever or worse start a cult or a religious movement for his own glory or even worse so that he can spread his seeds. Or spread his interpretation of God for his own fame, a less dramatic scenario. This is the perversions and can be seen quite easily seen in this present age. This upward arrow, the bottom becomes the motivation for the imitations of the higher levels, is the corruption of the true relation, the higher should be the motivation for the bottom.

A person who has a personal relation to the Divine, will want to spread his understanding of God so that others can draw close to God. He will want to spread his ethics, which is in the second level, not only for the sake of the ethical idea alone but so that people will be right with God. And to fulfill God's commandment he would want to be fruitful and multiply, some would want to (i have nothing against voluntary celibacy). And some would want others to know them so that others can know God, the bottom level. This is the correct arrow, the downward arrow.

Lastly the levels illustrate how much caution should be given when spreading each levels. At the highest level, faith should be spread to anyone, without any exception. Everyone should hear the good news of God. The second level should be approached with more caution. One cannot spread his philosophical beliefs indiscriminately, as this can harm one's chances to know God as our philosophical views may not be correct and may be too harsh to some. The last part needs extra caution, one can only produce offspring within the institution of marriage and one should be wary of making his name known to the world.

To add-on the higher levels can be attained without the lower levels. An the highest level, by the grace of God, can be attained by anyone.

Pizza?

Pizza? What makes a pizza a pizza. What defines a pizza. What is the essence of a pizza. Do pizzas even exist spatio-temporally, or is it just an abstract construct of the human mind. Is there a floating great marvelous ideal pizza (perhaps a margherita) in Plato's realm of forms. What impact does the concept of pizza has on human consciousness? How does the idea of pizza and the idea of the self interact?

"Pizza is such a complicated concept!" exclaimed Gaius D'Anzio.

"All that is round is pizza." Gaius told his followers, and thus was born the Gaian School in the philosophy of pizza. 

From this simple claim that all is round is pizza, great diversity of thought emerged. New questions were asked. Why are some pizzas called pizzas by the crowd and some are not, the Gaian-Gnostics claimed their hidden knowledge of pizzaism (I would prefer the knowledge of a hidden pizza). The progressive pizza-linguists assert that the idea of pizza is embedded in the words describing pizzas but the word pizzas are slowly absorbed into the names now known as pseudo-non-pizzas such as coins (used to be pizzoins) or wheels (used to be pizzeels), and people do think of pizzas when they say coins. Linguists call this contrapizza syllable shift. Some of course are just skeptical about the ability of human reason to comprehend the pizzaism in these pseudo-non-pizzas. 

But what about round holes? asked Gettierius. The Gettierius problem suddenly shook the world of Gaian philosophy. A massive exodus of thinkers from the Gaian School to the social movement of the square pizza makers or the SPM. The SPM's mptto, All that is round is not Pizza. The SPM who are mostly anti-gaians started to mock the Gaians by baking square pizzas. The faithful Gaians remain. Some claimed that yes, a hole is a pizza and not the absence of pizza. Others say that a hole is an anti-pizza, or just mere absence of a pizza (the condition of my stomach now, how sad).

The Gaian natural philosophers of pizzaism bring forth the theory of pizza atomism. They claim that SPM would never truly create a non round pizza because pizza consists of pizquarks which is always round, thus pizza will still be round, at least at the atomic level.

Gettierius laughed at the mess he caused by uttering a simple question

"No, a round hole is pizza but it is not a pizza." Gettierius answered his own question in a paper.

Unfortunately before every Gaians and Gaian apostates were reconciled Gettierius died.

First of many of joke posts. After all The Colosseum is not only for philosophical short expositions, it is for any thoughts.