Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

YPeople choose their beliefs. Some make bad choices, and some make good ones. That's exactly what the Bible says is the case.

Only someone whose brain has been deformed by the bible could think that it should be the main or sole source of information.

Your rudeness doesn't matter. In this case, the Bible is obviously correct.

You'll find it is in other important ways, too.

If I were you, I'd be very concerned about climate change!

And if I were you, I'd be much more concerned about the Judgment.

But I'm not you, and you're not me: and one of us will eventually turn out to be right about which was the real danger.

So we shall see.

[Dubious]

YPeople choose their beliefs. Some make bad choices, and some make good ones. That's exactly what the Bible says is the case.

Only someone whose brain has been deformed by the bible could think that it should be the main or sole source of information.

Your rudeness doesn't matter. In this case, the Bible is obviously correct.

You'll find it is in other important ways, too.

If I were you, I'd be very concerned about climate change!

And if I were you, I'd be much more concerned about the Judgment.

But I'm not you, and you're not me: and one of us will eventually turn out to be right about which was the real danger.

So we shall see.

The danger of climate change is already very much upon us. As for judgement, that was already expected to happen during Jesus' lifetime or shortly after. No one then expected there would still be no judgement after 2000 years. What's the saying? Better late than never!

It now appears certain that the hazards of climate change will be upon us long before any supposed judgement takes place. But then, climate change can be regarded as a judgement we've imposed upon ourselves.

The bible, but mostly the NT, is such a patched up document, if it had a face, it would look like Frankenstein's.

[Immanuel Can]

The danger of climate change is already very much upon us.

You would think that would give you pause. If true, it means you already teeter on the brink of disaster. It doesn't take very much to imagine how things can get worse. And COVID has certainly incited the public imagination in that regard.

As for judgement, that was already expected to happen during Jesus' lifetime or shortly after.

Apparently not.

"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue just as they were from the beginning of creation.” ...But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance." (3 Peter 3:3-9)

But then, climate change can be regarded as a judgement we've imposed upon ourselves.

Some judgments are like that. In fact, all that God has to do in order for some of the prophesied judgments to take place is let mankind keep doing what they're doing. Wars would be a good example. Or global plagues. Will some of them be gain-of-function viruses we've created? Maybe. Man doesn't seem to need a great deal of help in preparing his own demise.

[Dontaskme]

One can't depend on anyone as radicalized as yourself to know or tell others what the truth is.

As long as you believe that others know more about these matters than you....................they will.

[Dubious]

The danger of climate change is already very much upon us.

You would think that would give you pause. If true, it means you already teeter on the brink of disaster. It doesn't take very much to imagine how things can get worse. And COVID has certainly incited the public imagination in that regard.

As for judgement, that was already expected to happen during Jesus' lifetime or shortly after.

Apparently not.

"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue just as they were from the beginning of creation.” ...But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance." (3 Peter 3:3-9)

It sounds like a desperate attempt to explain the discrepancy (not very successfully) as compared to Jesus' own words in Mark 9...

And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

...but that's nothing new. Discrepancies are part & parcel of the bible starting with Genesis.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Some judgments are like that. In fact, all that God has to do in order for some of the prophesied judgments to take place is let mankind keep doing what they're doing. Wars would be a good example. Or global plagues. Will some of them be gain-of-function viruses we've created? Maybe. Man doesn't seem to need a great deal of help in preparing his own demise.

Biblical language is not the best sort of talk for people to understand how to avoid plagues, wars, pollution, greed, callousness, stupidity, etc.

The best sort of language for most people to understand evils is popular language as in serious film theatre or television soaps. By "serious" I mean dramas with serious themes.

[Immanuel Can]

The danger of climate change is already very much upon us.

You would think that would give you pause. If true, it means you already teeter on the brink of disaster. It doesn't take very much to imagine how things can get worse. And COVID has certainly incited the public imagination in that regard.

As for judgement, that was already expected to happen during Jesus' lifetime or shortly after.

Apparently not.

"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue just as they were from the beginning of creation.” ...But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance." (3 Peter 3:3-9)

It sounds like a desperate attempt to explain the discrepancy (not very successfully) as compared to Jesus' own words in Mark 9...

And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

I love it when people trot this old saw out.

What's so funny about it is that they stopped reading too soon. Go back, and read the very next verse in the Bible, and then come and tell me that the disciples never got to see what it would be like when the Kingdom of God would come.

What's the next passage? The Transfiguration. Get it now?

But you should have suspected that. Look at your own quotation: "some who are standing here." Not "all." "Some." This time, the revelation would only be to some of the disciples, not all, and not the whole Earth.

And then,"see," not "be at." Whereas John's vision of the Return of Christ is that "...every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him." (Rev. 1:7)

[Alexis Jacobi]

As long as you believe that others know more about these matters than you....................they will.

But ‘knowing’ does not ever depend on merely believing one knows, or feigning knowledge, or asserting one’s idea or opinion is as valid as anyone else’s.

Dubious (this is my opinion) is in a sort of mortal combat with the very strictest Christian definitions. He cannot relent because that would mean he’d have to renovate his negation and remodel his position. His stated intention is to undermine the logic of Christian metaphysics and, it seems, all argument directed to that end are brought out.

But what is ‘knowledge’ in this particular category?

[Alexis Jacobi]

There is more to be gained from trying to understand why people need to undermine and erase the metaphysical logic that underpins Christianity.

[henry quirk]

There is more to be gained from trying to understand why people need to undermine and erase the metaphysical logic that underpins Christianity.

we're a 170 pages in: mebbe someone could, in a plain way, actually lay out that metaphysical logic...up to now it's like you guys have been fiddlin' with the silverware...somebody, please, cut the steak (so we can get to the eatin')

[Alexis Jacobi]

We're a 170 pages in: mebbe someone could, in a plain way, actually lay out that metaphysical logic...up to now it's like you guys have been fiddlin' with the silverware...somebody, please, cut the steak (so we can get to the eatin')

Well here are a few thoughts. They may help.

First, everything today is in a muddle. It has to do (I will use my terminology) with the breakdown in agreements. What are those agreements? The very terms by which, through which, reality is defined. Now it sure looks to me like these differences, these disagreements, will not and cannot be bridged. Effectively this is what you yourself said some pages back.

So it is in a way more interesting, more revealing, to examine the reasons why agreements cannot be arrived at, or why they do not exist in the first place.

What I notice is that each on who writes here now on this thread expresses what we might describe as 'tendentious view'. It is obvious that IC's view is the most strictly Christian in, well, the strict sense. What does that essentially mean? You must *work out your salvation* through the mediator-ship of Jesus Christ. Salvation is not a number of things, or any number of things, but a specific thing. If one had, say, the Kierkegaardian certainty and commitment to the Christian path one would, as a concomitant, be personally and morally compelled to really live it -- as if one's life and the state of one's soul depended on it.

My position on one had more wishy-washy and somewhat vague, and I cannot but see the needed (and radical) spiritual commitment as being expressed in other religious traditions. So for example it is not hard for me to *see* things through the descriptive lens, which indeed is a solid metaphysical lens, as the outline expressed in the 16th book of the Bhagavad-Gita. It is a question of choices: you either choose to align yourself with 'angelic' entity or, by default if you wish, one aligns oneself with nothing-in-particular, or with the demonic appetite of man (which I believe must be considered very real by all persons with two eyes in their head), which will, according to metaphysical logic, result on becoming more and more bound into these very possessive forces.

Where my position gets, let's say, *dangerous* is that I am not closed to a separation between the Judaic Christian tendency or school and that which I define as Greek and also as Indo-European. That is to say that I seek a sort of bedrock in other levels of being that antecede and perhaps supersede the Judaic revelation. In a sense I feel a need to detach *Jesus* from the historical context. So while the trinitarian concept is comprehensible to me, a Jewish Jesus (I do not know how else to express this) seems absurd. If Jesus is God (and I refer here to doctrinal positions) then Jesus is not Jewish particularly. That is why I tried to float the idea of what form revelation would take in some other *world* of beings like us, in the same condition and with the same basic (metaphysical) problems. But IC would have no part of it.

In keeping with my own (I think) broad research I am just now reading Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. She is the daughter of Abraham Joshua Heschel. It is my destiny to go right into the heart of the most difficult topics. And in these conversations, as is obvious, since Nietzsche is brought up continually, there is no way around this aspect of the conversation.

(And these are topics that are very difficult to think about, and far more difficult to discuss carefully and fairly, in our present. They are too hot to handle.)

But turning back to the metaphysical dynamic:

The object therefore is ascent. And we have an infinite array of sources and examples through which we can define ascent. In spiritual literature, in monastic literature, in the best of our common literature, in religious and ethical philosophy, in art, and simply what any one of us recognizes as 'the higher portion'.

But let's be truthful and also realistic: if you (if one) wants to do down there are an unlimited array of escalators one can jump on. They are closer than your own breath!

So -- and here I just want to try to clarify things -- I am *ultimately* let's say aligned with the set of strict and solid principles that IC outlines. Put another way there is a greater and higher percentage of truth in what he expresses (which has nothing to do with him and he is only the vehicle that expresses it) than in all of those who with such adamancy oppose him.

And in respect to them I say -- more can be got by examining, looking into, and interrogating the reasons why they hold to these positions. Dubious, Uwot are two of the most adamantine. But of course if I looked up names there'd be others. These two, in my view, need to be examined closely and to trace out how they have *arrived on the scene*. That is the social and intellectual processes that formed them. Ultimately, they are *destroyers* (in my lexicon of definitions). And destroyers have to be carefully watched. Let me say that *they* have a great deal of power in our time, but to use this *they* means I associate them with a particular ideological movement. And I guess I do. (So my *battle* as it were is against this 'class').

Now Nick has a perspective that I can relate to strongly, but all that he is really talking about, and recommending, is a stance that a given person can arrive at. I guess I interpret him as defining an Eastern Orthodox spiritual relationship which is, in my view, somewhat gnostic (but in the general sense of the word). Who can receive this *message*? Perhaps only the one that has already arrived there and *sees*. (I also feel alignment with Nick's position but I am not a very good contemplative Christian).

Belinda has a really bizarre relationship to all of this. I cannot say I very well understand it. Her progressive socialist-Marxist commitments seem to subordinate here Christianesque sense so that her Christianity is non-metaphysical and requires no particular inner commitment, process, or transformation. Hers is a political Christianity and dovetails I suppose with standard social-democratic commitment of our day (which means it veers toward strange forms of political activism inflected with communistic trends or ideation).

And you have a position which I must say I do not understand very well at all. It does not seem to be one of 'definition' and 'exactitude'.

How could I miss saying something about Lacewing? At times she comes on full-steam. But then when challenged she grows weary and frustrated and seems, like Mélisande in Debussy’s opera, to say “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici!".

[Dubious]

Hey Henry! I trust AJ's short explanation of unmuddlement should now unmuddle you!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Hey Henry! I trust AJ's short explanation of unmuddlement should now unmuddle you!

But this is my point: we are all in this muddle, and you certainly are. Better to examine the muddle.

[Dubious]

Hey Henry! I trust AJ's short explanation of unmuddlement should now unmuddle you!

But this is my point: we are all in this muddle, and you certainly are. Better to examine the muddle.

Muddlement must be individually defined. What muddles you may not muddle me...the opposite also being true. It can also be said that in order to keep unmuddlement to a minuscule, never seek to muddle yourself up by scrutinizing the subject. Retain the certainty even if it's all a muddle.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Muddlement must be individually defined. What muddles you may not muddle me...the opposite also being true. It can also be said that in order to keep unmuddlement to a minuscule, never seek to muddle yourself up by scrutinizing the subject.

For reasons I cannot understand you seem not to see the larger picture. Clearly, you see yourself as clarity incarnate. But the larger picture is the breakdown in agreements.

It can also be said that in order to keep unmuddlement to a minuscule, never seek to muddle yourself up by scrutinizing the subject.

Can you explain more?