American election.

[Sculptor]

Yes, but unreason's prerequisite is reason. Unreason is absence of reason. Mannie has done good work in the name of God so he is not entirely lacking reason.

I do not think doing good work in the name of god has anything to do with reason.
People do good, to do good, not for some false promise of a future reward.

I give Mannie the credit of doing good disinterestedly.

What good?
And what why do you give him that credit?

[Immanuel Can]

But why would any sane rational intelligent person choose to want that imposed upon the self?

Nobody would choose it for himself.

"For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:7-8)

[Immanuel Can]

You quoted WHO?

Jesus Christ, of course.

[Belinda]

Mannie worked in Africa , I presume in a Christian outreach capacity. Xian and Muslim missionaries have done a lot of good work in Africa.
Mannie is intelligent enough not to play quid pro quo with his god.

[Dontaskme]

Who is speaking?

Trick question? Go ahead.

No it is not a trick question.
You quoted WHO?

The question WHO can only arise to the idea that there is a sense of a separate self named ''you''. But the answer to the WHO question can never be answered by the 'named one', simply because the 'named one' in and of itself, albeit just a ''thought'' has no awareness of itself, as it only exists as a conceptual idea known only by that which can never be known aka awareness. All questions and answers are simply thoughts about thoughts, which in and of themselves are as empty concepts.

The Religious Christians believe in the literal thing, aka the empty concept to be real, when in fact, it's just an idea known by no thing, it's a fictional character, it has no reality in and of itself, no more than a subroutine in a computer has.

The Relgious Christians live deluded false lives based purely on what has been imputed there by the believing brain via language programming and indoctrination.

That knowledge is dangerous because it is seen as a threat to the false ego, and is why there are religious wars. The confusion is all over a character that has no more reality in and of itself than our good old friend Father Christmas.

Most intelligent people today are coming round to the idea of the Nondual reality of their being, which is the ultimate irrefutable truth, although the religious ego hates the idea, even though it is ultimately the peace that passes all understanding.

Also, as awareness is very aware of pain and suffering, in it's intelligence and capacity to understand that pain is BAD, it can end imposing the suffering upon itself by simply choosing not to play the game of illusions anymore.

There is no reason to suffer when we do not have to, but it seems we like suffering, and the Christians convince themselves that pain and suffering is for their own good. But if that were really true, then it's ok to be evil. The Christians must accept that it's ok to torture people because it's all part of their Gods plan anyway.

Notice IC never answers my difficult question regarding the WHY would god choose to be tortured and suffer horrific pain misery and despair....he doesn't answer because he knows the answer would totally NOT MAKE ANY RATIONAL AND INTELLIGENT SENSE WHATSOEVER.

[Dontaskme]

But why would any sane rational intelligent person choose to want that imposed upon the self?

Nobody would choose it for himself.

"For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:7-8)

Sorry Immanuel, I didn't see this post prior to replying to Sculptor - so ignore that post accusing you of not answering the why would a person choose to impose torture upon itself.

I'll take this conversation to another new thread in the religious section, so as not to keep derailing what this thread topic is really about which has nothing to do with God. Hope you will continue the disscussion on my new thread in the religious forum.

.

[Sculptor]

You quoted WHO?

Jesus Christ, of course.

So, not "god" as you claimed.

[tillingborn]

So I want environmental management to succeed...but Environmentalism is something quite different: it's a kind of irrational ideology. And you can see it's irrational, because it embraces "solutions" that are actually harmful to the environment, and declares them "green."

In other words, I don't believe in letting Environmentalism lead us into folly and destructive practices.

Attempted solutions sometimes have unforeseen consequences, and in such cases environmentalists will turn out to be wrong. It would be fair to describe "Environmentalism" as irrational if you could demonstrate that environmentalists promote strategies or technologies they know to be harmful to the environment. Do you mean to imply that 'Environmentalists' act in bad faith?

[Gary Childress]

But if you really care about the environment, you don't settle for symbolic gestures, and certainly not for counterproductive ones: you only advocate things that work.

Windmills don't.

Oh and Trump going back to coal? Why aren't you outraged at that? How does that meet your approval oh great environmentalist, Mannie?

[Gary Childress]

Mannie worked in Africa , I presume in a Christian outreach capacity. Xian and Muslim missionaries have done a lot of good work in Africa.
Mannie is intelligent enough not to play quid pro quo with his god.

That's wonderful. I'm sure when all this is over, Mannie will be sitting beside God and Donald Trump in heaven denouncing "unbelievers," "liberals" and "commies" while the rest of us misguided schmucks of the public education system rot in Hell.

[Immanuel Can]

I'll take this conversation to another new thread in the religious section, so as not to keep derailing what this thread topic is really about which has nothing to do with God. Hope you will continue the disscussion on my new thread in the religious forum.

No problem. You're probably right about us needing to switch. You could just shift us over to the "spotlight" one, if you wanted.

[Immanuel Can]

You quoted WHO?

Jesus Christ, of course.

So, not "god" as you claimed.

The incarnate God.

You're not familiar with Christian theology at all, I take it?

[henry quirk]

If god knew before hand what his life was like, would he want it, would he be ok with being tortured and humiliated?

He did.

“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep...I lay down My life so that I may take it back. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it back." (John 10:11, 18)

So he did know he would be horribly tortured and suffer pain both mentally and physically...

But why would any sane rational intelligent person choose to want that imposed upon the self?

Intelligence would not want to play that game surely? A creator wouldn’t say yes let’s play this game of torturous life, yeah that’ll be great fun....and we will keep on doing it over and over again until we get so sick of it that we’ll nuke each other to kingdom come.


No intelligence would want that would they....now be honest Immanuel

any parent worth bearin' the title would take a bullet meant for his or her kid...this is the full measure of love

[Immanuel Can]

It would be fair to describe "Environmentalism" as irrational if you could demonstrate that environmentalists promote strategies or technologies they know to be harmful to the environment. Do you mean to imply that 'Environmentalists' act in bad faith?

Well, there are two possibilities: either the do know that they are damaging the environment, or they don't know it. So they could be acting in bad faith, or just in ignorance. Not being in their brains, I couldn't say which it is. But I'd be very surprised if they all are ignorant of the facts. They certainly claim to spend enough time looking at them.

I can give you quite a few examples. I've mentioned windmills, of course, but we could do another: plastics recycling. Or we could do electric cars. Or wildlife management. And, of course there are more.

But let's just do "the paperless office." You've probably forgotten that one, because it worked out so thoroughly badly that nobody talks about it anymore. But back in the early days of computers, it was asserted that one the reasons we ought to be find with introducing all the heavy metals, plastics, and electricity use of computers into the environment was that it would eliminate the using of paper. We'd have "paperless" offices, business and schools, because all documents would be onscreen. Nothing would ever need printing out anymore. And the trees would cheer.

Here is the result: 40% more paper use in "paperless" offices. That's 40% more dead trees, 40% more pollution from pulp mills, 40% more recycling paper to collect, sort and process...and more in the landfills as well. That's before we even get into the question of the heavy metals, the plastics and the electricity use, the toxins from printers, the radiation from additional photocopying, and so on. There are knock-on effects as well.

Did environmentalists believe their own error? Probably. Were they acting in bad faith? Probably not. But that only shows they have no idea what they are really doing. Too often, their thinking is at a Greta Thunberg level -- all emotion, no wisdom.

[Immanuel Can]

Oh and Trump going back to coal? Why aren't you outraged at that?

Why do you keep going back to him? I'm not an American, remember? I don't owe anybody to belong to either party -- in fact, I can't...they won't have me.

As for DT, you got rid of him, remember? You now have the Bidens. JB's promised to eliminate fracking, and to implement elements of the Green New Deal at least.

Why aren't you happy?