Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Conclusion?

There's no "conclusion."

I was merely quoting the actual words of Scripture. You are free to make your own "conclusion" from what it says....but there are no consequence-free decisions, in that regard.

I'm just allowing you yet again to bring that Scripture down to Earth.

Au contraire: I'm just telling you what it says.

It's up to you what you do with it. I have no further comment.

[Immanuel Can]

...the important Christian belief that the myth of Christ involves God's intervention in history

You're trying to smuggle in the word "myth" there.

No go.

[iambiguous]

I was merely quoting the actual words of Scripture. You are free to make your own "conclusion" from what it says....but there are no consequence-free decisions, in that regard.

I'm just allowing you yet again to bring that Scripture down to Earth....to explore it given the points I note above.

And to ask you to ask yourself why you studiously avoid going there.

My own speculation here revolves around the admittedly subjective "rooted-in-dasein" assumption that Christianity is merely the "transcending font" of choice for you. Rooted in dasein as well. An anchor for your Self allowing you to sustain the comfort and consolation that it brings you all the way to the grave. An anchor I wish I was able have again myself.

It's just that this being a philosophy forum, the manner in which we explore such things ought to reflect that.

And you and I have a different understanding of that.

Au contraire: I'm just telling you what it says.

It's up to you what you do with it. I have no further comment.

I'll bet you don't. Only, in my opinion, it's up to you to garner the intellectual honesty and integrity necessary to ask yourself why you have nothing further to add.

You'll either find it or you won't.

[Nick_A]

Jesus is a historical and historic man whereas Jesus Christ is an important myth.

False dichotomy. "Christ" is a title: it means "Anointed One," and in Hebrew, "Messiah." You've begged the important question: to whom is that title rightly assigned?

The answer is, "Jesus." So you're talking about one Person, not two.

But I needn't argue the point with you, because you will find out. Be ready, when you do.

You avoid the important Christian belief that the myth of Christ involves God's intervention in history

You've got it backwards. Actually, the secular belief in the Great Beast corrupts Christianity and devolves it into the many expressions of man made Christendom.

[Immanuel Can]

And to ask you to ask yourself why you studiously avoid going there.

Because it's silly.

Like King Arthur, I don't go to silly places.

[iambiguous]

And to ask you to ask yourself why you studiously avoid going there.

Because it's silly.

Like King Arthur, I don't go to silly places.

Back to this:

...in my opinion, it's up to you to garner the intellectual honesty and integrity necessary to ask yourself why you have nothing further to add.

You'll either find it or you won't.

Silly as that sounds to you, I'm sure.

And again a reminder: this is a philosophy forum. Not Sunday School.

[Immanuel Can]

And to ask you to ask yourself why you studiously avoid going there.

Because it's silly.

Like King Arthur, I don't go to silly places.

Back to this:
...in my opinion,

I'm not concerned about your opinion. The fact that all you offer is "opinions" is the problem. "Opinions" are just "opinions."

Let's have some facts, and maybe I'll address them. But not if you start spouting nonsense about "dasein."

[iambiguous]

Because it's silly.

Like King Arthur, I don't go to silly places.

Back to this:
...in my opinion,

I'm not concerned about your opinion. The fact that all you offer is "opinions" is the problem. "Opinions" are just "opinions."

Let's have some facts, and maybe I'll address them. But not if you start spouting nonsense about "dasein."

Let's start with these facts.

1] that you have no substantial empirical evidence able to demonstrate that the Christian God exist
2] that your God is but one of many, many other Gods claimed to be the one true path to immortality and salvation
3] that your belief in the Christian God is rooted in part in the particular life that you lived...from your indoctrination as a child [if that is the case] to the accumulation of personal experiences you had as an adult
4] that if your God does exist he is the source of all natural disasters, medical afflictions, viral pandemics and extinction events that have devastated the lives of millions upon millions of men, women and children over the centuries

Also, explain to us how someone like me bringing these points up is an example of going to a "silly place".

In a reputable philosophy venue of all places!

[Immanuel Can]

Let's start with these facts.

1] that you have no substantial empirical evidence able to demonstrate that the Christian God exist

False. There are abundant evidences.

2] that your God is but one of many, many other Gods claimed to be the one true path to immortality and salvation

True, but unimportant. Many beliefs may be wrong.

3] that your belief in the Christian God is rooted in part in the particular life that you lived...from your indoctrination as a child [if that is the case] to the accumulation of personal experiences you had as an adult

Genetic fallacy: it doesn't contribute any information to the question of whether the belief in question is true or not. One could be "Indoctrinated" thus into a true belief.

4] that if your God does exist he is the source of all natural disasters, medical afflictions, viral pandemics and extinction events that have devastated the lives of millions upon millions of men, women and children over the centuries

Non-sequitur. That would only be plausible if you assumed God was the only functioning will in the universe, which is Determinism. And neither you nor I believes it.

Got anything else?

[Dontaskme]

Got anything else?

The solipsism problem?

Leo Tolstoy — 'All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.'

To imagine is not to know.

[Dubious]

This is precisely why the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: they have left such a falsified humanity in their wake that even today Christians can think of themselves as anti-Jewish without understanding that they are the ultimate conclusion of Judaism.

If you pick apart this set of assertions I think that you will discover in it what I described earlier: the desire, the will, the project, of getting out from under that *disastrous history*. If one recognizes something that one labels 'falsified humanity' the hard statement itself indicates that one must oppose such falsifying.

When a quote starts with "this is precisely why...", the precisely why needs to be stated. If it were, you'd notice that your interpretation doesn't blend with Nietzsche's intent or meaning in terms of fateful or disastrous in describing the effect of Jewish history upon the Western World.

I asserted previously that the anti-Jewish spirit in the pan-Germanic world has a relationship to a Germanic resistance to the 'otherworldly' imposition that was forced on the Northern tribes by Mediterranean Roman Catholicism, and that the will to throw off this yoke rose up decisively in the Germanic psyche and psychology.

I don't agree. There may have been a small vestige of the Wotan spirit remaining in the Germanic psyche but their total surrender to the Christian faith is what caused them and the Europeans generally to become so dangerous to the Jews.

I do recognize that the man Nietzsche had no specific antipathy to any specific Jew, and also that he wrote admiringly of Jewish survival tactics among many other Jewish traits, but the 'elephant in the room' is that he wrote essays that outline, in startling detail, why this 'disastrous' influence needed to be resisted. The force and power of his writing is undeniable.

It wasn't Judaism which had to be resisted but its degenerate offspring. Judaism belonged wholly to the Jews who never offered it as a catholicon of universal salvation.

What I notice is that there is not much of a way around the task of ridding oneself of this influence once the influence, and the origin of it, has been located. It then would become a question of degree or intensity of commitment. So in this sense Nietzsche was just one among many with a tie to this larger social and national endeavor.

If there is one thing Nietzsche, as the ultimate iconoclast, was never tied to and criticized in the extreme, especially as regarding Germans, it would have been larger social and national endeavors.

The more that I study, for example, the Nazi era and its many different attempts to either dismiss Christianity or to rework it, this element of *resisting a yoke* only becomes more plain. Christianity became a distinct problem for Germany (and the germanic world) because it was too Judaic. It became absurd that a Germanic people literally worshipped a Jewish representative of God incarnate. So there was an intense effort to try to find a way to make Jesus a Gentile.

I'm sorry, but this is a little too simplified. If true that Christianity became too Judaic to the Germans it may have been due to a William Wilson complex, re an Edgar Allen Poe story, once mentioned in a history of the Germans. When the religious prejudice against Jews as Christ killers unaccepting of Christianity started to wane during the Enlightenment - causing belief itself to decline - the historical prejudice against Jews mutated into a form even more virulent as racially motivated, reaching a crescendo in the first half of the 20th century which still hasn't wholly disappeared!
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It was the great sin of the Jews to have survived and even thrived through all the Diaspora years and by surviving being a reminder to Christians and Muslims, but mostly the former, of the falsity of Christianity that knew very well where it derived from. Combine that to how Nietzsche describes the Jews as a group, tantamount to almost being Übermenschen in their acceptance and surmounting of whatever fate threw at them and any surrender to oblivion, wherever or whenever it threatened, was never an option. The admiration Nietzsche expresses for Jews comes across as a working example of the Übermensch concept in the ability to withstand fate, no matter how corrosive it may be.

Nietzsche's expression what doesn't kill you makes you stronger doesn't leave much to the imagination as to who best exemplifies that idea.

[Immanuel Can]

Got anything else?

The solipsism problem?

Solipsism is only a "problem" for people who imagine they are the only person who counts (or exists) in the universe.

[iambiguous]

Let's start with these facts.

1] that you have no substantial empirical evidence able to demonstrate that the Christian God exist

False. There are abundant evidences.

Okay, let's have it. Evidence for the existence of the Christian God. Along the lines of, say, evidence for the existence of the Pope in the Vatican.

2] that your God is but one of many, many other Gods claimed to be the one true path to immortality and salvation

True, but unimportant. Many beliefs may be wrong.

Unimportant to whom? Unimportant to those who worship and adore a God other than yours? Unimportant to those who insist that it is your beliefs that are wrong?

Really, how can a truly intelligent man or woman note this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups

...and not admit that they have no "substantial empirical evidence" for the existence of their God. They have only what all the others have: a more or less blind leap of faith. An existential leap of faith. A more or less astutely calculated wager.

And the list above is just the major religions.

There are many, many more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

3] that your belief in the Christian God is rooted in part in the particular life that you lived...from your indoctrination as a child [if that is the case] to the accumulation of personal experiences you had as an adult

Genetic fallacy: it doesn't contribute any information to the question of whether the belief in question is true or not. One could be "Indoctrinated" thus into a true belief.

No, it's not the genes I focus in on here. It's the memes. The historical memes. The cultural memes. The social, political and economic memes. The memes you encountered in the course of being indoctrinated as a child. The memes you encountered in the course of accumulating uniquely personal experiences that predisposed you to Christianity rather than to another denomination. Or to No God.

4] that if your God does exist he is the source of all natural disasters, medical afflictions, viral pandemics and extinction events that have devastated the lives of millions upon millions of men, women and children over the centuries

Non-sequitur. That would only be plausible if you assumed God was the only functioning will in the universe, which is Determinism. And neither you nor I believes it.

Note to others:

If you will, please try to explain what his point here has to do with mine.

I'm assuming that he is assuming that the Christian God is the "transcending" will in the universe. The will behind all the "natural disasters, medical afflictions, viral pandemics and extinction events that have devastated the lives of millions upon millions of men, women and children over the centuries".

Just as I am assuming that he is assuming that his "philosophical assessment" of God's omniscience is reconcilable with free will for mere mortals.

[henry quirk]

bubba: you have no substantial empirical evidence able to demonstrate that the Christian God exists

Mannie: False. There are abundant evidences.

bubba: Okay, let's have it. Evidence for the existence of the Christian God. Along the lines of, say, evidence for the existence of the Pope in the Vatican.

That might not be possible. If I asked you to foist up evidence of who the first person to build and use the axle/wheel was, I doubt you could. We both know, however, the axle/wheel exists and therefore both know someone was the first. We can point to the reality of the axle/wheel and understand someone is responsible, even if we can't name him, see him, touch him, or visit his entombed remains.

Askin' for evidence of God is no different. Mannie can point to what He's done but can't, I think, give you His street address so that you could go bangin' on His door at 3am demandin' to know why He off'd your puppy when you were 6.

Try again, bubba, and play nice.

[Immanuel Can]

Let's start with these facts.

1] that you have no substantial empirical evidence able to demonstrate that the Christian God exist

False. There are abundant evidences.

Okay, let's have it. Evidence for the existence of the Christian God.

Before we do, there's something you need to settle.

You claim to know "I have no evidence." Please justify that claim: how do you know what I know?

2] that your God is but one of many, many other Gods claimed to be the one true path to immortality and salvation

True, but unimportant. Many beliefs may be wrong.

Unimportant to whom?

Anyone. As in "irrelevant to the question."

3] that your belief in the Christian God is rooted in part in the particular life that you lived...from your indoctrination as a child [if that is the case] to the accumulation of personal experiences you had as an adult

Genetic fallacy: it doesn't contribute any information to the question of whether the belief in question is true or not. One could be "Indoctrinated" thus into a true belief.

No, it's not the genes...

Sorry: I see you don't know what the "genetic fallacy" is. I assumed you did.

Here you go: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

I'm assuming that he is assuming that the Christian God is the "transcending" will in the universe.

That's not the question. The question is whether or not He is the ONLY actual will in the universe.

If you have free will, small though you may be, what you do it not God's fault. It's yours. And as for the environmental issues you mention, they follow naturally from the fact that man has free will. It's actually the case that without them, there would be none.

We can walk through it, if you want. But I'm pretty sure you're not interested anyway.