Smart Christianity / Dumb Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

"Pallid reflections of great Personhood" is classic Platonism.

If you think so, you haven't understood either Plato or the statement above. It's not Platonism.

"Vanity vanity all is vanity" is also from the Greeks

Sorry. It predates the Greeks. It was said by King Solomon, after he had gotten to the point where, as he says, he could see nothing but the things "under the sun," since he rejected God in his later years and became a sad man.

Communism works okay when the the group is small enough

Where? Say where it has worked. And when? And for how long?

I think it's extremely perilous to keep trying a proposed idea that's proved universally bad...and homicidal in the extreme...as if one day we'll make it work. Being wrong is expensive in human rights and human life. And so far, every single attempt has gone wrong.

[Nick_A]

Meaning consists of what is retained by the mind as an experience compared to what simply flows through it. It can relate to anything whether sacred, secular or a combination of the two and therefore relative to the fine-tuning capability of one's mental matrix which, like a giant chessboard, may contain an endless number of variations. What is preached at any one time is nothing more than single instance of it...although some of those "instances" are more valuable than others and not likely to appear on philosophy forums.

The higher can understand the lower but the lower cannot understand the higher.

Not a problem! Easiest thing in the world. ALL you have to do is consider yourself one of the "higher" and bingo! you got it made, instant enlightenment that now knows the difference between high & low!

However, if the so-called lower have to look up causing the higher to strain and look down as their superiority compels them to do, I'm certain there exists a distinct formality or conformity of agreement between the two since a communication channel is thereby established as between a dog and his master.

Not everyone aspires to be Prince Tamino! Some of us are happy to be Papageno to whom a good glass of cider tastes better than empty cups of enlightenment which please neither one's spirit or one's taste.

What is meaning for a dog. It is the physical needs like food, water, and sex for example which keep it and its species alive. It is not taught, it is apriori knowledge.

Man to different degrees are aware of higher values not born of animal man. Are they learned or are they remembered? A real philosophical question best avoided in these times when the government will explain all you need to know.


who knows the difference between higher and lower? That is the problem and why it is so easily taken advantage of. In chess we can know the difference by the wins. A 2600 player is higher than a 1400 rated player. Chess is one thing but the meaning and purpose of human life is another Society refuses to accept the foundation of the Socratic axiom that we know nothing.

Such questions concerning human intelligence are disruptive and must be shouted down. We've lost the ability to even discuss objective value so the world is ripe to be taken advantage of.

[Lacewing]

You're too full of stories, Nick. You just make up all kinds of shit that you can't see past. It's pointless to have any aware dialog with you because you're too busy crying about being hated as you claim to be part of a persecuted and sacred minority. Get over yourself. You're as much tangled up with a great beast as anyone I've ever seen. Your mangled stories are full of lies, and therefore, so are you. You are one of those people who sees everything beyond themselves as dark and evil. It's stupid. Wake up and see how sacred EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is. That includes you... it's not ONLY YOU! Your divisive ways are evil.

You have it backwards.I am not emotionally involved with ideas as you are.

That is why I don't hate them.

That's all you do! You talk about it constantly.

You may cry about them but for me there is nothing gained by crying.

I think life is beautiful and I love it.

The fact that I've seen the results of the persecution of ideas since virtually the beginning of time

Ah, because you were here at the beginning of time! This couldn't possibly be because you're rabid and blind with select stories that you can't operate without!

invites me to understand why it takes place in me and in the world.

You're not being invited, you're inventing.

Of course ideas of a certain quality are divisive and disruptive.

Apparently they are to you.

There is no sense crying about it; why not make the necessary efforts to understand why it happens.

That's a question you should ask yourself in regard to why you don't see the sacred in everything and everyone, and why you make up and latch onto sad stories of division and beasts so that you can lament your imagined persecution. Of ALL THE POTENTIAL in this amazing Universe, THAT'S what you choose to do/experience.

As disruptive as they are, ideas that objectively reveal the human condition must be kept alive in the world. Without them animal Man loses the ability to become human.

Has it ever dawned on you that a whole lot of people don't fit into your stupid stories? Or are you so narrow as to see no other possibility?

I just quoted Jesus.

Who cares? You aren't Jesus. You didn't know Jesus. You don't speak for Jesus. You just latch onto quotes of others and then apply them indiscriminately with whatever distorted context serves your twisted agenda. If there were an evil beast, this seems like the thing it would do while pretending to be a divine victim, itself.

Is it disruptive and divisive? Yes. That is its value. You can demand "give us Barabbas" and keep the peace. Others know the value of getting beyond the Barabbas mindset in order to experience objective human meaning and purpose

You are stuck in a cave, Nick. A cave of archaic, limited thinking that doesn't allow for any expansion or evolution or anything else. It is as if time has stopped and the Universe's potential is in a small box that you can claim to know. All the hating and intolerance you speak of is your own. You project it outward and claim to be a victim. It's ridiculous. There is so much light all around, and you cannot see it perhaps because you choose to live in a dark world with beasts you want to war against, as you lash out at your own shadows. You justify that by clinging to certain writings or beliefs -- while ignoring ALL of the writings and beliefs TO THE CONTRARY. This is your CHOICE for a reality. That's ALL it is.

[Belinda]

"Pallid reflections of great Personhood" is classic Platonism.

If you think so, you haven't understood either Plato or the statement above. It's not Platonism.

"Vanity vanity all is vanity" is also from the Greeks

Sorry. It predates the Greeks. It was said by King Solomon, after he had gotten to the point where, as he says, he could see nothing but the things "under the sun," since he rejected God in his later years and became a sad man.

Communism works okay when the the group is small enough

Where? Say where it has worked. And when? And for how long?

I think it's extremely perilous to keep trying a proposed idea that's proved universally bad...and homicidal in the extreme...as if one day we'll make it work. Being wrong is expensive in human rights and human life. And so far, every single attempt has gone wrong.

Relative, all is relative. Whoever the Preacher was, and whoever influenced him, it was possibly upsetting for him to change his cosmology from theocentric to relativistic. I think it would upset you , Immanuel, to abandon your theocentric cosmology.

One illustration of a small communist group may be some business enterprise where the employees, managers, and owners agree to all take the same minimal wages in order to plough back profits into the business for mutual benefits.

[Nick_A]

Lacewing

That's a question you should ask yourself in regard to why you don't see the sacred in everything and everyone, and why you make up and latch onto sad stories of division and beasts so that you can lament your imagined persecution. Of ALL THE POTENTIAL in this amazing Universe, THAT'S what you choose to do/experience.

But God is not in the World. As Plotinus described we feel the effects of dunamis

How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect
Maistre

There are no causes in nature. The world is a living machine governed by universal laws. There is nothing sacred about a living machine. Animal Man is in the World. Conscious Man having descended from above has the potential to return to its origin. The attractions of the esoteric practicis is to awaken Man to consciousness. The attractions of the world struggle against it. Welcome to the human condition. The world is a nice place to visit but evolved Man was not made to live there.

You are stuck in a cave, Nick. A cave of archaic, limited thinking that doesn't allow for any expansion or evolution or anything else. It is as if time has stopped and the Universe's potential is in a small box that you can claim to know. All the hating and intolerance you speak of is your own. You project it outward and claim to be a victim. It's ridiculous. There is so much light all around, and you cannot see it perhaps because you choose to live in a dark world with beasts you want to war against, as you lash out at your own shadows. You justify that by clinging to certain writings or beliefs -- while ignoring ALL of the writings and beliefs TO THE CONTRARY. This is your CHOICE for a reality. That's ALL it is.

If Plato was right and we are as if attached to the shadows on the wall unable to inwardly turn towards the light then you've missed the point. If you are right and it is just a story and we pick our own stories decided by what feels good, then you are right. I'll stick with Plato regardless of how divisive it is assuming I can avoid the hemlock

[Immanuel Can]

...it was possibly upsetting for [Solomon] to change his cosmology from theocentric to relativistic...

He didn't. You clearly haven't read how that book ends, I'm guessing.

It's Ecclesiastes 12.

I think it would upset you , Immanuel, to abandon your theocentric cosmology..

That's not a telling thought. It always "upsets" any person to rethink their worldview. The question is not whether or not it's "upsetting," but whether it's an "upsetting" change for the better or not.

One illustration of a small communist group may be...

No, no...not a hypothetical. Not a "may be".

We need an actual case where Communism actually worked well. Because if it only works suppositionally, in hypothetical cases but never in the real world, then it's clearly not a belief that we should ever advocate or attempt to apply. It fails to connect applicably with reality.

[Lacewing]

If you are right and it is just a story and we pick our own stories decided by what feels good, then you are right.

Regardless of how our stories feel, we pick 'em and perpetuate them consciously or not.

I'll stick with Plato regardless of how divisive it is assuming I can avoid the hemlock

That's truthful: your views are very divisive, and somehow that choice is serving you. You prefer that over all other potential. Nobody/nothing is messing with you but you.

[Nick_A]

If you are right and it is just a story and we pick our own stories decided by what feels good, then you are right.

Regardless of how our stories feel, we pick 'em and perpetuate them consciously or not.

I'll stick with Plato regardless of how divisive it is assuming I can avoid the hemlock

That's truthful: your views are very divisive, and somehow that choice is serving you. You prefer that over all other potential. Nobody/nothing is messing with you but you.

Excerpted from a letter Simone Weil wrote on May 15, 1942 in Marseilles, France to her close friend Father Perrin:

At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth.

Matthew 13

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

You don't understand these people. For you it is all the same and yes their ideas are divisive for the majority. There is no pearl of great price or ideas worth dying for. Then sometimes a person experiences them and that changes everything.

[Lacewing]

Matthew 13

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

You don't understand these people. For you it is all the same and yes their ideas are divisive for the majority. There is no pearl of great price or ideas worth dying for. Then sometimes a person experiences them and that changes everything.

Not believing in such things changes everything.

[Dubious]

We've lost the ability to even discuss objective value so the world is ripe to be taken advantage of.

That's because there never were any objective values to discuss. Values have always been, always will be, our own valuations on what seems right or wrong, desirable or not, or purposely formatted to serve temporary expediencies. For an objective value to exist it must come as a mandate from an external higher authority of whom we have no knowledge and not something humans have to figure out for themselves. Anything your vaunted gurus, Simone and Einstein, have to say are their own subjective views invariably carried forward based on the prior thoughts of others however subjectively amended. To be objective, values must be equally applicable to every higher order being in the cosmos. To know what those are, if they are, is beyond every living being on planet earth.

The reason there is so much arguing about it and so much cliched nonsense written about it creating a virtual catalog of cliches - especially by types like you who merely repeat by rote - is because values are composed by humans as they have ever been and always will be as a blend of opportunism and idealism.

Not least, if Socratic wisdom is forged in the premise that we know nothing then that would be true for all values as well negating any objectivity you so seriously proclaim. There's a big contradiction here. If the philosophy of knowing nothing is centered in wisdom then ALL one can say to Socrates is thanks for nothing!

Also note, you're also so very wrong about dogs! They're far too complicated to be described in simplistic apriori terms...not to mention what is apriori for dogs is the same for humans. How do you think we got to be over 8 billion. If you don't know, consult Einstein. He had a girlfriend in every port!

[Nick_A]

We've lost the ability to even discuss objective value so the world is ripe to be taken advantage of.

That's because there never were any objective values to discuss. Values have always been, always will be, our own valuations on what seems right or wrong, desirable or not, or purposely formatted to serve temporary expediencies. For an objective value to exist it must come as a mandate from an external higher authority of whom we have no knowledge and not something humans have to figure out for themselves. Anything your vaunted gurus, Simone and Einstein, have to say are their own subjective views invariably carried forward based on the prior thoughts of others however subjectively amended. To be objective, values must be equally applicable to every higher order being in the cosmos. To know what those are, if they are, is beyond every living being on planet earth.

The reason there is so much arguing about it and so much cliched nonsense written about it creating a virtual catalog of cliches - especially by types like you who merely repeat by rote - is because values are composed by humans as they have ever been and always will be as a blend of opportunism and idealism.

Not least, if Socratic wisdom is forged in the premise that we know nothing then that would be true for all values as well negating any objectivity you so seriously proclaim. There's a big contradiction here. If the philosophy of knowing nothing is centered in wisdom then ALL one can say to Socrates is thanks for nothing!

Also note, you're also so very wrong about dogs! They're far too complicated to be described in simplistic apriori terms...not to mention what is apriori for dogs is the same for humans. How do you think we got to be over 8 billion. If you don't know, consult Einstein. He had a girlfriend in every port!

You argue that Man is the center of our universe. As such Man creates its own values. Anything else is violently rejected. As a result it is impossible to discuss the essential question which either supports or rejects objective values.

This question which has become intolerable is if The universe has a purpose for its existence. If it does then objective values exist as the means to support its purpose. If the universe has no purpose then there can only be subjective values. The only alternative is some being in a white beard in a meaningless universe telling people what to do which doesn't make sense

Denying the question with all the negative energy a person can muster assures the essential question on which everything else depends will be denied on a philosophy forum dominated by secularism.

Common sense should tell you that objective values requires a universal purpose to reflect which has become an intolerable premise. It is divisive and disturbs the peace so better left alone in favor of cursing out Trump.

[Dubious]

You argue that Man is the center of our universe. As such Man creates its own values. Anything else is violently rejected.

Your logic here is so flawed and distorted it's positively hideous! It's precisely because man defaults to himself in creating values which suit him that he cannot possibly be the center of the universe.

Common sense should tell you that objective values requires a universal purpose to reflect which has become an intolerable premise

Name the universal purpose which cause or force objective values to exist...I mean an objective universal purpose, not the ones we create to make ourselves happy.

It's really the other way around. By denoting a universal purpose forever unnamed with not a clue as to what it could be, those like you, pathetically attempt to insert themselves into some hypothetical cosmic web far beyond simply living in it as is true for everything that lives here and elsewhere.

Why all this egotistical self-importance which makes humans look really, really stupid.

[Belinda]

...it was possibly upsetting for [Solomon] to change his cosmology from theocentric to relativistic...

He didn't. You clearly haven't read how that book ends, I'm guessing.

It's Ecclesiastes 12.

I think it would upset you , Immanuel, to abandon your theocentric cosmology..

That's not a telling thought. It always "upsets" any person to rethink their worldview. The question is not whether or not it's "upsetting," but whether it's an "upsetting" change for the better or not.

One illustration of a small communist group may be...

No, no...not a hypothetical. Not a "may be".

We need an actual case where Communism actually worked well. Because if it only works suppositionally, in hypothetical cases but never in the real world, then it's clearly not a belief that we should ever advocate or attempt to apply. It fails to connect applicably with reality.

It's true I haven't read let all of the Preacher's book. I meant only as a matter of principle it's more or less upsetting to confront oneself with a new cosmology. For instance people who after Copernicus and Galileo thought terra was not as firma as the Sun. Do you understand Einstein's
theories of relativity at least as descriptions of the most recent cosmology known to man?
You would rationalise why Ecclesiastes is in included in The Bible.

I raised the question about how upsetting it is to face up to a novel cosmology because your cosmology( i.e. the pre- relativity cosmology that allows absolutes to be true) is not the most recent one. Fixed values of time and place still work in everyday terrestrial life. However this group is not everyday terrestrial life it's philosophy. As philosopher we analyse the uses of any fixed value attached to the notion of ultimate reality especially ultimate goodness and ultimate truth.

If theology is to be helpful in these uncertain times theology must come to terms with relativity. Cultural relativity: religious relativity: moral relativity. I believe the ethics of Jesus can survive the new cosmology of relativity but only if we can stop thinking cosmology and ethics were all deliberately revealed by God. Nobody knows nor can know whether or not a world view is a better one. Naturally you and I and most thinking people including Muslims and Buddhists will agree the ethics of Jesus as in the Sermon on the Mount are good ethics. So really it is not that much of a big deal to abandon supernaturalism.

I can' t think of any extreme left or for that matter extreme right regime that has "worked well". There have been remarkably few actual extreme left regimes as far as I know. We well know of particularly nasty extreme right theocracies in the past and in the present day. Capitalism which is based upon the rights of individuals at all costs is a bad one and I can imagine what sort of devilish goddess presides over capitalism forever spawning until she has no space left for her poisonous brood.

[Nick_A]

Matthew 13

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

You don't understand these people. For you it is all the same and yes their ideas are divisive for the majority. There is no pearl of great price or ideas worth dying for. Then sometimes a person experiences them and that changes everything.

Not believing in such things changes everything.

Your trouble is that you do not recognize the difference between a superficial intellectual or emotional belief and a "calling" from the depths of ones being. Consider Meno's Paradox from Plato:

The argument known as “Meno’s Paradox” can be reformulated as follows:

If you know what you’re looking for, inquiry is unnecessary.
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, inquiry is impossible.
Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

If you know what you believe in then belief is unnecessary. If you don't know what to believe in then belief is impossible. So what is gained by belief yet everything can be gained through the "calling" or what we know of as conscious contemplation or prayer in Christianity.

[Immanuel Can]

Do you understand Einstein's theories of relativity at least as descriptions of the most recent cosmology known to man?

Very few people have the technical expertise to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity adequately. One sure sign somebody doesn't is when they confuse the term "relativity" with "Relativism," and think Einstein was speaking of morality. That tells you right away they haven't even read the thing, let alone understood it.

You would rationalise why Ecclesiastes is in included in The Bible.

Not at all. I don't need to. I just explain what the book itself says about the circumstances. The story of Solomon is laid out there, and in Ecclesiastes 12 is all the information you need about Solomon's conclusions.

He wasn't a relativist. You can see it for yourself. Read Ecclesiastes 12, and you'll know without taking my word for it.

...your cosmology( i.e. the pre- relativity cosmology that allows absolutes to be true) is not the most recent one.

Well, you don't know my "cosmology," but even if it were true that it's "not the most recent," that argument would be question-begging. Something doesn't become "true" merely by being "recent." There are often such things as "recent errors."

If theology is to be helpful in these uncertain times theology must come to terms with relativity.

Well, I'm sorry to have to say this, but here's proof you don't understand relativity at all. You're confusing it with "Relativism."

Relativity is Einstein's theory in physics. Relativism is a metaphysical theory of morals. The two are not even operating in the same spheres of knowledge.

I can' t think of any extreme left or for that matter extreme right regime that has "worked well". There have been remarkably few actual extreme left regimes as far as I know.

Wait, wait...you're saying that Stalinist Russia or Maoist China were not "extreme left regimes"?

Of course they were. Likewise Cuba, Venezuela, Bulgaria, Albania, North Korea... There have been plenty of far Leftist, Communist regimes, and every one has been hideously awful.

And what would you say if you criticized Capitalism, and every time you pointed to a real case, some defender of it offered the feeble excuse, "Well, that wasn't real Capitalism...." You'd never fall for that. You'd say, "Well, if it's never real Capitalism, then how can you say Capitalism works or is good?"

Why would you fall for such a lame excuse in relation to Communism?