Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Felasco]

Harry, if you're still here, a few more thoughts that might clarify this issue of division/separation etc.

We might argue over whether the appropriate place to draw the boundary between ourselves and the air is our nose, lungs, or cell membranes, but we would *not* argue that it is the moon.

Consider how we define ourselves.

We typically don't list all the component parts of the human body and say "I am the liver, and the kidney, and the toe nail, and the elbow etc". Instead we look at the sum of all the parts, and say, "I am this human body".

It is literally true that we are all the various body parts, but we choose a broader perspective in defining ourselves. We don't identify with all the different body parts, but with the whole body, a single unified structure.

Our human body is a part within larger contexts such as family, culture, civilization, life etc.

Perhaps spirituality can be described as a shift of perspective in which we define ourselves within larger contexts than just a single human body. Different religious paths define the larger context in different ways.

A Christian intent on love might define themselves as "love my neighbor as myself" shifting the context for their identity to their human community.

An Indian guru might shift the context of their identity to something larger yet, to "all that is" or some similar conceptualization.

Each of these definitions is arbitrary, yet each has it's own validity, it's just a matter of what kind of mind one has, and how one chooses to look at it.

It's true we are body parts, it's true we are a body, it's true we are individuals, it's true the individuals can not survive without the community, and so on, all the way up the chain.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• 'The cat sat on the mat' is not a story. 'The cat sat on the dog's mat' is a story.

See, this is where those of us with a "logical/mathematical mind" have an advantage: we know that there's nothing wrong with the maths[*]. It's just a matter of whether the maths accurately models the situation. The only possible rejoinder that I can see is: Adam and Eve, having free will, can "beat the odds" by *willing* it to be so.

[*] Consider the case of two successive time periods. Denoting "succumbs to temptation" as T and "does not succumb to temptation" as D, the four possibilities (the result of the first time period followed by the result of the second) are: TT, TD, DT and DD. The only one in which Adam and Eve do *not* succumb to temptation is DD. We calculate this probability as "probability of not disobeying" multiplied by "probability of not disobeying" (the same), in other words, as (1-p)x(1-p), in other words, as (1-p)^2. You can expand the symbols for three time periods (TTT, TTD, TDT, TDD, DTT, DTD, DDT, DDD), and for four, and five, and six, etc, and you will find the same thing: that, in general, the only scenario in which Adam and Eve do not disobey is DDDD...D (where there are n Ds), which translates into a probability of obedience (not disobeying) of (1-p)^n. And, of course, any fraction (more to the point, any number between 0 and 1, exclusive of 1) to a power approaching infinity itself approaches zero...

We know [is there really an ontological alternative?] that a god of production and distribution exists when the shelves are filled with 'energy drinks'! Hallelujah! Have you ever considered methamphetamine? True, your posts would soar to 40, 50 even to 100 board inches but you'd lose any excess weight and even have time left over to cut your neighbor's lawn! Advantage all around!

A greater advantage, and possible greater service to logic and mathematics as part of mental processes, could be to cease to apply said logics and mathematics to a story, to an allegorical representation, to symbolic representations that are better understood by understanding story-telling, mythology, and the worldview of those who came up with the story. In the story it is inevitable and necessary that those two succumb to the temptation. In fact it is pre-established as an internal need within the story set-up. In a static and harmonious situation it is necessary to introduce both the agent of conflict and the conflict itself otherwise there would be no movement, no action, no result, and of course no (further) story. There is essentially no story in the Garden of Eden until the Talking Snake comes on the scene and the Talking Snake is necessary to move the story from point 'A' to point 'B', from harmony to chaos, and then a moral is applied (which is variously interpreted). It seems to me (dimwitted as I may be) that one cannot apply mathematical and engineering logic to a story problem that is better understood and solved by an ten year-old child!

However, if one wanted to approach something like 'maturity', one could indeed put some energy into investigating the mythological and symbolical 'sense' within and behind the notion of a 'fall'. If the mathematical and rational mind went to work on that [wait, let me crank-up that little cerebral engine, hold on a sec…], this daring mind would then be able to look into all the stories where similar 'tragic falls' are told, and then if one went even further into it [quick, open another bottle of Red Bull! I'm lagging…] one would begin to understood that we live with a sense of having fallen away from potentials, that we understand ourselves as existing, as it were, within failings, as victims of our shortcomings, our passions, our shortsightedness, or perhaps even our 'mathematical stupidity'. Then, by moving into that problem (as an adult mind you) one might begin to define a way of life that helps one to 'plug the holes' and move in the direction of correction of the problem.

Now, let us assume that there are 4 men: M1, M2 M3, M4 and let us assume that each man has 3 different action possibilities available to him: A1, A2 and A3. There is a variable and we will call this Talking Snake (TS) and talking snake can appear in 6 different variables: TS1, TS2 (etc.) Given a time line of, say, a million terrestrial years, and a whole story sequence comprising 145,924.84 years, [hold on, let me get this open, fucking plastic wrapping takes a St. Christopher to get off! *Glug glug*. Haaaarrrhhh!! I'm baaaaaaccckkk!], how long will it take for the average 10 year old to understand what the story is really about?

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Felasco! Your back! I thought you had turned into a plant! Or merged with your lady-love! (As you see it is a lonely battle I am fighting here…)

[Felasco]

Your back! I thought you had turned into a plant!

Workin on it!

[Harry Baird]

Felasco,

See, I have no problem when you put it like that. It's only when you talk about "arbitrary boundaries" that my hackles rise.

Gustav,

I think you miss the context of the discussion. IC, as best I can make out, sees the story in Genesis as *representative* of reality. I analysed it in that spirit. There may not have been an "actual" Adam and Eve, nor an "actual" talking snake, and it may not have been a "literal" garden; nevertheless, as far as I understand it, IC would hold that without ongoing temptation (in a potentially infinite original Paradise should its inhabitants have not succumbed to temptation) there is no "genuine" choice. The point of my analysis is simply to show that with ongoing temptation in an infinity - a supposedly "genuine" choice - the chances are effectively 100% that somebody's gonna succumb to temptation at some point, such that the choice doesn't seem so "genuine" after all. So yes, I would agree with you that it is "inevitable" that "those two" succumb to temptation, but I do not think that IC would (have said) say the same thing, and he's the man with whom I've been corresponding - my aim is to convince him otherwise. I'll be interested to see his response.

Sure, you can view the Genesis story as an allegory for "falling away from our potentials", but I'm not sure that that's exactly how IC sees it. I think he sees it more as an allegory for our failing to commit to perpetual obedience to our Creator. And, again, he's my correspondent, so he's whom I'm targeting my responses towards.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Alright, alright, I can dig where you're coming from.

Let us assume that IC is God and that God is One and second to none. Let us assume that you are Eve---but Eve in 5 possible modes or likenesses (that will move 'scalely' between E1 and E5, E1 being 'most clothed' and E5 being 'most naked'). And I will naturally be elected to play what really is the best role of all: Talking Snake. However, let us establish that as Talking Snake I have 21 different Tricksterizing shapes and let us call these 'Trickster Paths'. Now, you are down by the pool brushing out your gorgeous locks in your manifestation as E3, and IC is off somewhere in his Pure Goodness intoning The Word and seemingly absent. And then I come along in my 3rd Trickster shape as the cutest little bunny rabbit ever doted over by womankind.

How long will it take me to get your panties off?

Now, let's complicate things by assuming that Felasco is a coconut tree and has an unlimited number of coconuts he can drop at will. If he can drop a maximum of 9.3 coconuts per minute, but I have a known capacity of avoiding being hit by coconuts in a 24 hour period of 97.542%, how long will it take Fealsco to conk me on my rabbit noggin and put a tragic end to my dastardly seduction?

I love theology! I am really getting into this!

[Felasco]

I think you miss the context of the discussion. IC, as best I can make out, sees the story in Genesis as *representative* of reality.

Imho, Genesis is representative of the human condition.

It describes humanity's emergence from the animal kingdom, a shift from a primarily direct experience of reality to a primarily symbolic experience.

The symbolic experience is clearly powerful, but it's a step removed, a second hand experience, like trading a friend for a photo of that friend, thus the sense of loss in the story.

I agree with Harry that as far as the history of humanity goes there is no choice, but there is a choice in the personal here and now of everyday life.

The Garden Of Eden still exists, and we can still choose to be there. The price tag is an act of surrender which some might call "obedience to their Creator", and others might call "dying to be reborn". When we put down the photo, the friend returns.

Yes, it's true, I am a coconut tree!

[Harry Baird]

I'd say, Gustav, that the chances would be 100% that I'd be having rabbit curry in coconut milk. (Spoken (not quite) like the true vegan that I am...)

See, Felasco, and in this very thread we have three different interpretations of Genesis. Our good friend Gustav says it's about falling away from our potential, you say it's about the shift from direct to symbolic experience of reality, and IC would (I think) say that it's about mankind's choice to disobey our Creator, and suffer the consequences. What do you guys make of that?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Really, what I am trying to say is that if we are to consider the Old Stories that I think we have to try to go to the very heart of them and extract out of them the *meaning* that we will chose to live by in the here and now, right now. I personally think the *idea* of a Fall is very useful and necessary as part of a conceptual model. For example, though you and I think of it differently, I am not at all opposed to a definition of a possibility within this reality (our life, here) that could be conceptualized as tending toward the 'demoniacal'. (But this has to be very carefully explained and defined). So, instead of the rather childish really Christian allegory of the Garden of Eden, I would make reference to the dualistic poles described in the Bhagavad-Gita. It is through our actions and activities, which also includes our thoughts and our sentiments, that we either ascend upward or descend downward. If we descend downward (or so the story goes…) we lose our sense of discrimination and we become 'mired in materialism'. Not only is this a metaphor for a man 'losing his way' as in the Hansel and Gretel story, it is also a very real possibility of losing the human form, squandering the human attainment of civilization, and losing a very special connection and relationship to Language, which would correspond to memory, to intelligence, and to domination of our (earthly and materialistic) platform. Once one couches the issue correctly, the whole conversation takes on a far more real and also realistic meaning.

In this *project*, which is much more than a mental game to be played by some folks with too much time on their hands, the life that one lives is the stage. One's activities and thoughts are the tools, and the goal is to discipline oneself in relation to one's goal and to channel motion into 'forward movement' as it were.

If you can show me the way or a way that this descriptive model I have offered here is false; if you can establish the fallacy in it, please be so kind as to do so.

A notion of a Fall is to indicate that there exists an Ideal---true, very true, that one will have to define it and clarify it---toward which man must strive. I say 'must' if such a man either has had such a road chosen for him, has had it pointed out to him, or has himself chosen it. I fully accept that there are some who will not conceive of life (in this sense) as en 'emergency' and who are free to define it as they will and not as I do.

In one way or another, toward one group of goals and aspirations or another, this is what we are forced by the very fact of existing, to do. Yes, it can all be squandered but that too is a choice.

But I think we do have to establish our choices by defining a dualism---that is to say a dualism of ideals. Everything hinges on what are the elements that comprise each aspect of the set.

In my view, the Adam and Eve story is conceptually limited but not at all unworkable. But I think it needs to be compared to a group of other stories and then to have the essence extracted from it.

Unfortunately, a great deal hinges on who is making the interpretation. If their sole understanding is that 'man should really be a plant', or that 'man is better off to become a woman', or any group of various and sundry 'interpretations' as may be possible---tendentious interpretations---then we will rapidly find ourselves, like Hansel & Gretel, lost in the deep dark woods.

There is no way out of that Wood, in truth. This is because we function in democracies of thought where 'your opinion must have the same worth and weight as mine'. Someone will come along an interpret The Fall from the Garden according to whatever images happen to be floating around in their imagination.

In the end we are left with our knowledge and our intuition and we do the best we can in a pluralistic environment.

I do not think this means that we have to stop there though. My view is that we need to research the available material and to refine out of it a program. But whatever 'program' one comes up with will be uniquely for oneself alone and those who 'accord' with one. We live in a fractious time and we simply cannot and perhaps will not agree.

[Harry Baird]

If you can show me the way or a way that this descriptive model I have offered here is false; if you can establish the fallacy in it, please be so kind as to do so. --Gustav

I'm not so sure I'd ask the question so much in terms of "fallaciousness" as "workability", and it seems workable enough to me. I think though that as well as having different ideas as to what constitutes the demoniacal, we have slightly different views as to what constitutes "being mired in materialism", and as to whether our civilisation is all worth it (given the catastrophic effects it is having on the natural world), but other than that I wouldn't really want to quibble.

[Felasco]

(Spoken (not quite) like the true vegan that I am...)

Another thing we have in common, although I am a mere vegetarian.

See, Felasco, and in this very thread we have three different interpretations of Genesis. Our good friend Gustav says it's about falling away from our potential, you say it's about the shift from direct to symbolic experience of reality, and IC would (I think) say that it's about mankind's choice to disobey our Creator, and suffer the consequences. What do you guys make of that?

Three different ways to say the same thing.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Three different ways to say the same thing.

In a 'democratic present' it would be oh-so-nice if we were indeed saying the same thing but I am not sure that we are. One element of the present, as in some giant Coke commercial, is the 'hope' that we will all take hands, smile lovingly at each other, and 'sing in perfect harmony'. The longer I consider things (the things happening around me and 'the world' of people surrounding me) the more I become convinced that, to progress, I need to distinguish differences, not to minimize them or fail to pay attention to them.

While it is true that every person will come up with their list of Ideals and Values, and there is nothing that some other person can do to try to convince them otherwise (and really, the debate-process serves the one arguing far more than it does the one who listens!), the road I am taking is to research the 'truly traditional systems' and try to grasp what their defined values were, and why. There are a number of reasons why one would do this. One is that the present is not *trustworthy* as a source for bedrock values or eternal values. The present, it has seemed to me at times, is a 'lying present' and someone/somewhere will make a case for the goodness or the correctness of any particular mode or behavior simply because it is the one they have chosen. Perhaps for 'emotional' reasons or sentimental reasons. But it may indeed not be the case (that they are good choices).

There is another interesting point: As I see things, having spent numerous years conversing on these fora, no one really seems to understand just what we are really up against. Everyone is guessing. Everyone is trying to recover their balance and simply arrive at some place of clarity where they might make one, small truthful declaration. The fact seems to be: that we swim in the fluids of a present that is utterly confused and tumultuous. And there are reasons for this: it is because we have fallen away from a world where verities were understood as both possible and real; forces have acted on us and act on us now that keep us from gaining a solid base from which to make decisions; and all this in an environment where toleration and compromise are social requirements.

For example, I am quite certain that we would come immediately to a point of radical disagreement over the issue of 1) animal slaughter and 2) femininity or femaleness. (Among a whole group of differences). The differences arise not from superficialities but from profound underlying differences in our understanding of Reality.

Further, if I were to say that all known and existent values stem from and also go back to the values of warrior, and that the core definer of values and upholder of values will one day again be the warrior, I am pretty sure we would have stark disagreement. I am actually pretty sure at this point that the first 'spiritual' and visionary persons were indeed warriors, and of the warrior class (and this is not new news of course), and that the skills of warriors are quintessentially masculine skills, and so the issue is now and will (likely) always be: In what way are you a man? What does it mean to be a man? What are the values of men? And how do these differ from those of women? (And there are stark and, I think so, obvious differences that cannot and should never be bridged). Basically, just with these predicates, I am pretty sure our understanding would substantially veer away from the possibility of agreement.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

God created the Universe, the Earth, and all life, and evolution is how God did it. And that God could start everything in the beginning and have everything work out just as God intended, seems like an elegant solution to me.

I think that to (perhaps) better understand how things evolve and the mechanisms of that evolution, we could resort to some Easternish ideas. For example, in Chinese philosophy (Taoism I suppose, or Confucianism), the Yang (spirit) is seen as the originating force but it is the Yin ('earth' or matter) that brings forth all things into manifestation. I did once think that instead understanding a pre-designed as if pre-engineered universe (or cell), one could imagine that things 'flow into their forms' or toward their forms, not so much being *pushed* as being *pulled*.

The Creationists, locked into strict Biblical narratives, see their understanding undermined by the facts of science, which is in its way more 'Taoist' and more realistic. Science cannot conceive of a pre-established 'blueprint' for the complexities surrounding us, nor for a cell. And yet these things come into being. The inconceivable miracle is that they come into being!

See The Receptive.

[Felasco]

Unfortunately, a great deal hinges on who is making the interpretation. If their sole understanding is that 'man should really be a plant', or that 'man is better off to become a woman'....

Given that it's become part of your act to summarize my views with these colorful characterizations....

1) Plant Theory: Please provide the evidence that the analytical process you are engaged in is leading to anything more than yet another theology, a process which has been repeated for centuries in every corner of the world, and yet we are still killing each other on industrial scales, and all the big questions raised by religions remain unanswered. Analyze that.

2) Men: Which gender is committing 95%+ of the violence in the world? Which society in human history has succeeded in controlling violent men? What is the logical outcome of giving violent men ever more powerful weapons, and continuing to roll the dice?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I am not really summarizing your views as poking fun at a caricature of them. However, at the base of the characterization there are elements of truth, too. To talk about this is possible. I could share my views with you if you want. But I don't think you would accept them. I have already to a small degree, but then you seemed to have disappeared for the deep woods of North Florida.

1) Plant Theory: Please provide the evidence that the analytical process you are engaged in is leading to anything more than yet another theology, a process which has been repeated for centuries in every corner of the world, and yet we are still killing each other on industrial scales, and all the big questions raised by religions remain unanswered. Analyze that.

Note that you have couched a single 'horror' at the center and that if I take a stand in pro of 'thinking' or 'theology' I will be forced to support genocide and murder. If you were a plant you would be a Venus Fly Trap! Theology=bad=murder on industrial scale.

2) Men: Which gender is committing 95%+ of the violence in the world? Which society in human history has succeeded in controlling violent men? What is the logical outcome of giving violent men ever more powerful weapons, and continuing to roll the dice?

I became curious: Of the remaining 5% can you point to those situations where the women are carrying out the killings? Why not just say 100% of the killing on the planet now is carried out by men? There is another predicate established in your statement. It is a common one. That 'killing' is the agreed and established great evil that must stop. Again, you take a 'horror' and tie it to a gender (fairly in my view) but with this you imply that the gender, and masculinity, need to be 'modified' or perhaps reengineered. So, you have couched your argument within strange parameters.

I fully agree with you that there exist war mechanisms that are very destructive. I also agree with you that men are violent by nature. But I do not agree with you that men should not, therefor, be men or should change their nature. But to launch into this conversation with you---my sense of how a man and men *should* define themselves and act---will take a little time.

Which society in human history has succeeded in controlling violent men?

I have a sense that you could begin to form that answer through examining this man's materials. Consider this and then get back to me. If what is rather blatantly pointed to by these figures is true, I suggest that it points not to 'theology' as the origin of [industrial scale] murder, but quite possibly to its absence! And if this is true it would seem that you have to reorient your basic predicates, the ones that operate rather obviously in you, before you and I could converse.

But really, little of this is what interests me, personally. This thread began as a defense of Christianity by one who is not a Christian. What I have discovered is that I am a sort of 'parallel Christian'. Much and even possibly all that could be defined as 'Christian' exists in me but in a parallel form. But instead of holding strictly to a precise and dogmatic stance---a sort of orthodoxy---I have the luxury of far more expansive views. At the same time (this is obvious, too) I can define views and ideas that are heretical in a classic sense.

I am right now far more interested in the only domain I am free to operate in since, as I have written, I see the 'outside' as being dominated by uncontrollable forces and powers. This leaves only the 'inside' as an area where I can focus. There is a mass psychology and a mass motion that operates 'out there' but also has direct lines to the 'in there' in each of us. I believe it is something we *should* do to examine and 'interrogate' those lines and their connection to us, in us. You for example seem a classic example (of PC thinking) and you couch your arguments in rather standard PC formulations. Your sense of masculinity vs femininity is one. Also your notions of the destructiveness of 'theology' is another. Your ideas about 'thinking' another.

Recently, the whole world has gushed forth in a classic example of group-think and group-worship of Nelson Mandela. The 'horror' here, and this casts a light on our 'lying present', is that it is very very hard to cut through the fog and the deceptions that are thrown up in our world and to get to an inner core where there is an absence of lie and then, even remotely, the possibility of 'truth'. Consider this article that reveals a 'hidden' aspect of this great man. In your style of argumentation I would assume that you will interpret my offering a potential critique of Mandela as another indicator of my backwardness. What I find is that when we begin to disassemble PC Truths, or Propaganda Truths, that we are thrown into an arena where we actually have to work intellectually! And this work is a 'turning against the present' which is charging forward, emotionally, toward whatever ends have been chosen for it (since the mass does not really 'choose' anything).

It is in this spirit that I began this thread and in this spirit that I continue putting various ideas on the table for consideration. It is obvious that this is just an Internet discussion on an irrelevant forum. I think that we write here simply to clarify our own positions, whatever they are. This is not a political or a religious platform! These are just notes….

[Felasco]

I am not really summarizing your views as poking fun at a caricature of them.

Yes, I understand. I chose the word summarize to show I'm not taking offense.

Note that you have couched a single 'horror' at the center and that if I take a stand in pro of 'thinking' or 'theology' I will be forced to support genocide and murder.

I'm only pointing to the obvious, that thousands of years of theology in every corner of the world has not accomplished some key goals of religion, like uniting humanity and bringing peace etc. Admitting this obvious fact does not make us supporters of carnage etc. All I'm asking you to do is philosophy, follow the evidence trail.

Why not just say 100% of the killing on the planet now is carried out by men?

I don't know the exact number and was just trying to be reasonable, and not make an unsupportable sweeping claim. My point is not that women are good and men are evil, but rather that nobody in history has learned how to control violent men, and we might face up to that.

There is another predicate established in your statement. It is a common one. That 'killing' is the agreed and established great evil that must stop.

Yes, I confess to this predicate.

Again, you take a 'horror' and tie it to a gender (fairly in my view) but with this you imply that the gender, and masculinity, need to be 'modified' or perhaps reengineered.

Not reengineered. Retired from the scene. But I suppose that's another thread. My purpose for now is only to show that if we were to proceed, your simplistic characterizations would be shown to be lazy.

This thread began as a defense of Christianity by one who is not a Christian. What I have discovered is that I am a sort of 'parallel Christian'. Much and even possibly all that could be defined as 'Christian' exists in me but in a parallel form.

I can relate to this, and am in a similar position. My challenge is to point out that you appear to be creating yet more ideology, which seems to me to be the part of Christianity that is the least useful.

I don't have faith in this "new and improved" ideology building process for the reasons I've been trying to share, it's been done over and over and over for centuries, and doesn't seem to be leading anywhere. To me, the problem is not with this or that ideology, but arises from the nature of what all ideologies are made of.

But instead of holding strictly to a precise and dogmatic stance---a sort of orthodoxy---I have the luxury of far more expansive views.

Yes, a "new and improved" ideology. Everybody thinks their ideology is the new and improved model which will finally solve everything, but that never happens, right?

I am right now far more interested in the only domain I am free to operate in since, as I have written, I see the 'outside' as being dominated by uncontrollable forces and powers. This leaves only the 'inside' as an area where I can focus.

Ok, I'm interested in the inside, please continue.

You for example seem a classic example (of PC thinking) and you couch your arguments in rather standard PC formulations. Your sense of masculinity vs femininity is one. Also your notions of the destructiveness of 'theology' is another. Your ideas about 'thinking' another.

Ok, I don't care whether we call it PC or not, so you can have this one. Whether my views are PC or not, how about meeting the arguments instead of merely characterizing them? You have more talent than that.

What I find is that when we begin to disassemble PC Truths, or Propaganda Truths, that we are thrown into an arena where we actually have to work intellectually!

Which is more important to you, the religious inquiry, or the process of philosophy? Is philosophy a means to an end for you, or an end in itself? If we were to develop compelling evidence that say, bowling, is more effective at pursuing the religious inquiry than philosophy, would you move on to bowling, or stick with ideas and writing etc?

I'm not arguing there is a right or wrong answer, as each of us is clearly entitled to answer that as we wish. I am arguing only for a clear and honest answer.

My point is this. If the religious inquiry is not our real goal, we are unlikely to make much progress in that inquiry. We should at least know if that is the situation we are in. If we should willingly chose such a situation with a clear mind, ok, no problem, and no complaints.