Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

I really wish I could see your logic IC... I really do, but I cannot..can't you see that?

Well, since I didn't ask you to use "my logic," but rather just logic itself, I can see a serious problem if, as you say, you find yourself incapable.

But it does explain a lot.

But I only know my own logic...

There's no such thing. That's like saying, "I only know my own mathematics."

If it's only "your own," it's no logic at all.

[Dontaskme]

Well, since I didn't ask you to use "my logic," but rather just logic itself, I can see a serious problem if, as you say, you find yourself incapable.

But it does explain a lot.

But I only know my own logic...

There's no such thing. That's like saying, "I only know my own mathematics."

If it's only "your own," it's no logic at all.

I only know myself..I cannot know others. Myself means all that I know, including the logic of what I know.

[Dontaskme]

There's no such thing. That's like saying, "I only know my own mathematics."

If it's only "your own," it's no logic at all.

It's ok IC...your just pissed off and frustrated that you do not know how to close the gap between the thinker and the thought.

I'll keep showing you how to close it ...that's all I can do for you.

It's too difficult to come face to face with your real and true face....I know! I understand how that must feel for you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It's too difficult to come face to face with your real and true face....I know! I understand how that must feel for you.

(Said in the tone of little Oliver)

Please, Sir, when you finish with IC would you kindly go to work on me? I am convinced that the face I see everyday in the mirror is an imposter!

[Dontaskme]

It's too difficult to come face to face with your real and true face....I know! I understand how that must feel for you.

(Said in the tone of little Oliver)

Please, Sir, when you finish with IC would you kindly go to work on me? I am convinced that the face I see everyday in the mirror is an imposter!

This is me waiting for IC to close the gap.

[Immanuel Can]

...what I want to make plain is that some part of what I am doing here is examining some of the finer points within the structure of the belief system.

Then you should make sure to get the finer points right, no?

But right now, your definition of "Christian" is, "anybody who says he is."

So just how good is your understanding of doctrine, then?

And, obviously, one of those who coalesced a discourse on Cracking was F. Nietzsche.

Wow. Probably the last guy on earth who knew anything substantive about Christianity...or, for that matter, about Judaism.

Maybe the place to look would be the actual Christians, no? But you can't even find them, it seems.

...the real context of Christianity: a 1,000-plus year period.

I don't know how to tell you how confused this is. By no Biblical definition, nor any Christian definition, is "Christian" a "period."

I ask "What is the alternative to defining Christianity by criteria?" And there really is no alternative. If there are no criteria, there's no substantive definition either.

Right, but what you are doing is defined as extra-intense Fundamentalism.

Wait...you say "right"?

Then you go on to say, "You're right, but..."

If I'm right, then you need criteria for your definition of "Christian," which is exactly what I've been saying to you all along.

Or was your "right" merely insincere?

Well, sell that story to modern Jews, if you can.

...Christian Zionists...

No, not Christians of any kind, not even Messianic Jews. I just mean "modern Jews."

I don't "reflexively" tell you anything, actually. I tell you what the Word of God tells you.

What you do with it...well, that's up to you. My job is to tell you what it says.

I take the Christian message at another level.

No, I'm sorry...you don't. You simply try to identify it with culture and with myth. That's a dead modernist approach, not at all surprising and not really interesting, actually, since even secular scholars have pretty much abandoned trying to do the "universal myth" dodge, and are now settled on the "incommensurable traditions" idea instead.

You're just way behind the times on that scholarship, subscribing to a theory that's actually long gone. It died with guys like Paden, Eliade and Frazer, et al.

Sorry, but it's true. It's just not taken seriously anymore. And it's the details, the particulars of all the "traditions" that have compelled that.

The Lion will lie with the lamb, that sort of thing.

You're referring to Isaiah 11 or Isaiah 65, it seems.

It doesn't seem obvious why that idea is even remotely problematic, if one assumes God exists. it only becomes hard to believe if one is some sort of Uniformitarian who wants to think that whatever has been in the past must inevitably remain the case forever.

Or, as it occurs Biblically, Peter writes:

"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.”

For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed by being flooded with water. 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.
A New Heaven and Earth

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be discovered.

Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!

But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells."

My own inclination, as I have said, is to refer to the culminations of old-school Catholic theological thought on the social issues.

So for you, or for the convenience of your analysis, "Christian" means "Catholic"?

If you know Catholics, you know they seem to come primarily in two types: those who believe everything and those who believe nothing. What I mean is that there are the "superstitious" Catholics, who attend Mass, go to confession, and take the words of the Popes as infallible, and so on, and there are mere "cultural" Catholics, who live in a nominally "Catholic" country and go to the cathedral on Christmas and Easter, but otherwise please themselves.

If you can't even find a difference between those two, and just regard them all as being the same in your sociological calculations, how are you even going to get a broad statement about "Catholics" correct, let alone one that would account for Protestants and Evangelicals and so on?

Again, you've "gone froggin' without a stick," as they say in the South. You need a proper definition, one based on criteria. Otherwise, you're taking into your data pool things that have no place being in it, and that will ruin any generalizations you try to draw.

And I would say that's exactly what's gone wrong with your sociological analysis so far. You have no plausible data pool, because you've cast your net too wide.

I do indeed define a conservative social program.

Well, we have some agreement on that, at least.

Though my confidence in the salvific potential of a conservative political program is certainly far less than yours. I would suggest that political solutions are not realistic, because the human beings making up the "polis" are fallible and corrupt. And I think we can both see that that's an empirical claim, not merely a theological one.

That fact needs to be addressed first. For to whom would you look to save the political landscape, so long as the people to whom we look are all fallible and the people who vote for them and choose them are also fallible?

Something needs to be done about that fallibility. Without it, we'll just recycle our old follies, trusting human solve the same problems that humans themselves are generating.

[Immanuel Can]

There's no such thing. That's like saying, "I only know my own mathematics."

If it's only "your own," it's no logic at all.

It's ok IC...your just pissed off and frustrated…

Wow.

No, not even in the slightest. I don’t find “Non-dualism” the least bit threatening in any way. It’s just incoherent.

I’d sooner be afraid of a daisy.

[Dontaskme]

...an object is the seen inseparable from the seeing...

Nope.

If that were true, there'd be nothing to see....an no "seeing" at all, then.

Of course it's true...the seer is contingent upon the seen in the exact same instantaneous moment the seen is contingent upon the seer...both seer and seen have to exist simultaneously together, in the exact same moment of knowing.

Can you not understand that? It's about KNOWING ...knowing concepts. Humans are the only instrument through which concepts are known because concepts originate in the human mind/brain mechanism, which is just another concept...concepts are KNOWN...never SEEN ..no one has ever seen their brain/mind mechanism except through a mirror, which would only make sense as the mirror image is conceptualised... to become known.

Reality is not a concept, nor can reality have a concept about itself...the conceptual reality is put there by the WORD which is no thing other than just sound, or vibrating energy which appears as an auditory illusion to the instrument known as the brain...sound heard as words, can never be SEEN, only KNOWN as and through the senses.

For the seer to be able to see what the seer looks like... would be like a totally blind person seeing an image of itself, which is impossible...in reality, the seer can only appear as an object within the seer...otherwise there is no seer nor object there as in deep dreamless sleep.


Now who or what KNOWS.. cannot be known without naming the knower. But a name, or label.. knows nothing. Why's that, is because that would be like a signpost being able to point to itself....the signpost can only point outwards to the place it already knows, it doesn't need to point to itself, it's already being itself...but can only know it's own knowledge by knowing it as a concept...not seeing it, but just self knowing it.

.

[Dontaskme]

It’s just incoherent.

Well if it's incoherent, then it's no different than naming the nameless.

What is Non-Duality..I do not know...oh I know an idea, lets call it duality.

What is duality...it's the knowledge of opposites...cannot have one without the other. Both have to exist simultaneously instantaneously as the knowing, the only knowing there is...one, not two...you are that one.

You are the knowing that cannot be known...because knowing is one, not two.



God is both the good and the bad. Can't be all good, else everything will be out of balance.

Now, is bad worth the price of admission into life, just to feel the worth and value of good...maybe, but not always.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It doesn't seem obvious why that idea is even remotely problematic, if one assumes God exists. it only becomes hard to believe if one is some sort of Uniformitarian who wants to think that whatever has been in the past must inevitably remain the case forever.

The thing that you say is not 'remotely problematic' is the description of world-ending that you refer to through this scripture: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be discovered" and a New Earth will be created wherein the righteous will dwell.

But if what you say is true then the logic works like this: If God exists, and God is omnipotent as you assert, then God can literally do anything. It is possible that God might destroy the Earth, punish those who did not obey, and then re-perfect the Earth to be a heavenly dwelling place.

It is also possible that he could make a person think that such a thing had happened when in fact it only happened in the realm of thought. By this logic it is conceivable that we here, all of us, are simply imagining our *world* to exist and that we are as in it, and bound up in it, as we imagine we are (and can't change). Why not? If as you say anything is possible? Once you have defined a God of this sort, and seen reality through the lens of all-possibility, it all opens up.

That is, if you believe that there is no end to the possible outcomes and alternatives. This brings me to mention, simply because it fits into this sort of speculation, that the Vaishnavas (a sect of Vishnu worshippers of the Indian subcontinent) 'believe in' the existence of thousands or even millions of different *planets* both heavenly and hellish that are described with the term loka.

A loka is a plane of existence, or a realm of existence, operating according to certain defined laws. So in this way of seeing, the Earth, our Earth is a middle realm -- neither very heavenly nor very hellish, yet one where mortality and chaos rule and have dominion over flesh-bodies.

But other worlds are conceived that would correspond to the Christian heaven-realm where the good & the just & the meritorious go on to pass the time. There are also worlds, lokas, that are slightly more hellish than ours, and others that are intensely more hellish.



But all throughout these worlds, these manifest realms, there runs a logic: that no matter what each of these worlds is perishable. Just as here in our world nothing we build, and certainly not ourselves, ever remains. All is mutable and shifting constantly and death is ever-present.

Similarly, in all other manifest worlds, even the heavenly ones, there is a time-limit that is built in. You might be transferred to one of the heavenly worlds and you might enjoy there hundreds of years, or thousands of years, of wondrous existence, but eventually your time runs out, and according to this speculative way of seeing you'll have to incarnate again in a lower world.

So "it doesn't seem obvious why that idea is even remotely problematic, if one assumes God exists". Why not?

But the essence of the Vaishnava worldview is interesting. It proposes that the Supreme Lord, the author of All, indeed has a 'realm' or an ultimate heavenly loka that is outside and beyond any sort of material or material-tinged reality or manifestation (planet or loka). The object is to get there. And though merit does have something to do with it, getting there is seen to hinge strictly and uniquely and solely on grace. That world is a world beyond imagining. Every moment in it is wondrous. One level of wonder opens up into ever more splendrous vistas of wondrousness.

These are the elements in belief-systems -- far more imaginative really, far more spectacular -- that correspond to the more simple Imago of, say, a Garden of Eden (a deathless place of wonder and innocence) or the Heaven-realm that I suppose you conceive of.

So what I find interesting is that you present a Christian scriptural story that you believe, and want me to believe, is absolutely real. Absolutely and beyond doubt the way things are. And you support your assertion saying that proposing such a world outcome, and a New World to come to be thereafter, is non-problematic if one conceives of an all-powerful God who can do anything and whatever he wants to.

All that I do here is present you scenarios that extend from the same logical base.



This does not illustrate a loka but is rather just an interesting, somewhat antique, Hindu-esque diagram picturing deities that, in their system, correspond to the Greek pantheon.

[Nick_A]

Apparently there are no Christians on this thread. I began a post asking if any here believe in the Resurrection of Christ? No responses so no Christians. St Paul gave a good description in which he said if not true, believers are to be the most pitied. A person can believe by blind faith but are there those Christians who can verify at least theoretically how it fits in with the workings of our universe as a necessity?

If there is no Resurrection of the Christ, there is no Christianity since the Resurrection is an imaginary creation

[Alexis Jacobi]

Apparently there are no Christians on this thread. I began a post asking if any here believe in the Resurrection of Christ? No responses so no Christians. St Paul gave a good description in which he said if not true, believers are to be the most pitied. A person can believe by blind faith but are there those Christians who can verify at least theoretically how it fits in with the workings of our universe as a necessity?

If there is no Resurrection of the Christ, there is no Christianity since the Resurrection is an imaginary creation.

What I find interesting -- this is a philosophy forum mind you and not a forum where one's faith need be declared so all topics have to be examined thoroughly and relentlessly -- is that you often speak of Plato's Cave as an illustration or parable explaining, I gathered, a spiritual process.

There are many ways to examine that allegorical story and many different ways to interpret it. But let us suppose, just for a moment, for the sake of the conversation, that the story and the Imago of the Resurrection of Christ is something akin to flickering images cast on the inner wall of the cave but not (again let us suppose) the really important thing? The thing that is there to be discerned. That is, the thing that is offered to be understood -- heard and seen in the Gospel stories.

So those who are (so the allegory goes) chained in the cave will necessarily answer your question in the affirmative. But they will do so (again, following the internal logic of the cave allegory) by compulsion. If you follow what I am trying to illustrate that it is Immanuel who is like someone dwelling in the depth of the cave who must insist that each element in the Story is 'reality'.

And then let us turn the gaze of our consideration to the multitudes who chime forth their *faith* and really & truly believe that through what they declare, through their chiming, through their claims and self-affirmation, and also through their externalized condemnations, that they have completed the Great Work.

There are different ways to *take* the Story, to receive the images about it, that enter our imaginary space (our mind, our heart and vision, our imagination essentially and I do not mean this as a synonym for something false or invented).

What therefore does it mean if a person understands that Christ is Risen?

There are many different things that can be pointed out about Christians, Christian history, and Christian belief. And one of them, as I understand it, is that so much has accreted to the Story -- I mean by so many of the supposed Christians, the supposed followers of Christ -- that it renders the Story repulsing.

So what occurs to me is that the meaning of the Story requires resurrection. But this means lifting it out of political and other sorts of mud.

So by this I mean that I personally think this work (as I often say) is internal and in that sense esoteric.

[iambiguous]

You seem to be labouring under the delusion you have an audience other than me. If anybody's paying attention to us, I suspect it's few, and often none.

What's the "audience" have to do with it? He's the one who keeps pointing out that just because those who are not Christians claim the One True Path to immortality and salvation that doesn't make it true. We are still ever and always confronted with "which one" it really is. I'm just noting that would include Aristotle's God as well. Right? His or ICs? Which one?

There it is. Why are you referring to me as "he," instead of "you"? Are you thinking that somebody else is your audience here?

Why? Because, in my view, he is so much the hardcore Christian objectivist here, it seems futile for me to pose my points to him. Though perhaps others here may offer insights into his thinking that might prove interesting. Or more illuminating.

Here, allow me to note again why "I" have basically lost all respect for his intelligence in this exchange. Back again to this:

In any case, Aristotle was wrong about God. He was right about the rules of logic, though. And the rules of logic -- which are as indifferent to agendas as the laws of mathematics are -- say that not more than one view of God can be correct.

And then somehow he connects the dots between "logic" and "Christianity". Not more than one view of God can be correct but "shortly" he will provide us with the evidence that it is his Christian God.

Yep.

Just as soon as you tell me what you will even accept. Have you decided, yet?

How many here actually believe that I have not made this clear to him above?

Over and over and over again: evidence that the Christian God does in fact exist on par with evidence that Popes do in fact occupy the Vatican.

Finally, below, he responds:

You mean "historical evidence"?

There are various kinds of historical evidence. What kind will you accept? For example, it's not hard to show that a person named "Jesus" existed, and that He lived in first-century Israel. If that's all you require, the job is half done already.

But is that all you were requiring? I find that surprisingly simple.

What?! As though establishing historical evidence that someone calling himself Jesus Christ existed back then is "half way" toward establishing that he is both the Son of God and God Himself. And, uh, whatever the hell the Holy Ghost is?

Today of all days?

And few doubt the historical existence of Muhammad.

Oh, I see.

Your assumption is that God would want to make everybody believe in Him, if He exists. Well, that would certainly finish off your free will, and any choice you might make with regard to God.

Is that a price you'd be willing to pay?

On the contrary, I'm willing to accept his "intellectual assumptions" about an omniscient God and human autonomy, but given human autonomy here how exactly is he addressing the point I raise about what is at stake given that the Christian God is not even being able to provide mere mortals with a Scripture able to bring those who worship and adore the God of Abraham together? Historically, rather the opposite, right?

Why would you assume that God would want to force everybody to believe in Him, whether they wanted to or not? That seems, at least on the surface, a questionable assumption. How would you defend it?

He keeps harping on the Christian God "forcing" others to believe, while I keep pointing out what is at stake for mere mortals on both sides of the grave if they choose the wrong God. Are those who read the Torah or The Vedas and The Upanishads, or the Quran or the Talmud and the Torah or The Kojiki not able to grasp that the Christian Bible is indisputably the most persuasive path to immortality and salvation?

What's wrong with them? Doesn't the Christian God make it clear enough for anyone with half a brain? On the other hand, that's what many of them are saying about Christians given what God makes abundantly clear to them in their own Scriptures.

No. They're "rooted" in who God is. One's mere "dasein" or existential imaginings about God can be wrong. And you know that's true, precisely because there are so many contradictory views on tap.

Sigh...

Back again to admitting the historical parameters of this...

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/wor ... -starters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...but insisting that his own Christian God is The One. And, in fact, "shortly" he'll provide us with the proof of this.[/quote]

You're not getting it. However many answers are "out there," even answers in which people fervently believe, that doesn't make a thing true. And when their beliefs are also mutually contradicting, you can be 100% certain, based on the rules of logic, that most of them are actually false.

That's logic 101.

What I'm getting of course is that he notes there are many answers "out there" but that somehow using "logic 101" you really should come around to believing, what, that his own answer is the least illogical? After all what he fervently believes is true here [short of demonstrable proof] is just like all the rest of them.

Right? That he believes in the Christian God doesn't necessarily make that true.

And it's not that most of them are false but that one of them is claimed not to be. And if they all insist it's their path? And even all of them insisting this doesn't make it such that one of them has to be. Where's the logic in that? None of them existing is still an option for many.

Now back to his own idea of "proof" here:

If the Scripture went straight to the point with respect to Judgment Day and Heaven and Hell, it would be abundantly clear that the Christian Path is the One True Path.

It does. In fact, it's hard to imagine how it could be clearer.

"Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20:11-15)

Can you believe it? In order to "prove" that the Christian God provides the One True Path to immortality and salvation he quotes from the Christian Bible!!!

Like all the other denominations don't have their own rendition of "God exists because it says so in the Scriptures and the Scriptures must be true because they are the word of God".

To me, this sort of "logic" might be something that a child can be persuaded to believe...but a grown man or woman? And in a philosophy venue no less!

Again, as though all of those who embrace a God other than the Christian God don't have their own "Scripture" here to convey to me.

Indeed, any number of people will tell you a different story. The only question is, will you believe what they say, or what God says?

Right, as though what he tells me the Christian God says is the same story that the Christian God Himself will tell me once "shortly" he demonstrates His existence. Basically all he is doing here is telling us that we should believe what he tells us about the Christian God.

Well, if Cultural / Environmental Determinism, which is what you're invoking here, were true, then it would be utterly impossible for anybody to believe anything not programmed into them. But since people quite routinely depart the traditions and cultures in which they were raised, that's clearly not the case.

He's the one calling all this "determinism" of course. I'm merely noting how our personal experiences go a long way toward shaping our value judgments. The common sense part.

I'm not "calling it" anything: it's definitionally true, actually. If you believe that one's social background inevitably makes one what one is, then one is, by pure definition, a Social Determinist. It's not a pejorative, it's a description.

What I believe is that the historical and cultural and social and political and economic and religious contexts into which 1] we are thrown at birth and in which 2] we are raised to adulthood are important factors in deciding which moral and political and spiritual prejudices we come to champion. Depending in turn on the existential trajectory or own personal experiences. Again, common sense.

And not that given some measure of free will we don't have some capacity to put our own subjective/intersubjective spin on it. But that too is profoundly rooted in dasein. Otherwise all those who were born and bred in the same general community would end up thinking and feeling exactly the same about everything.

And that's what I focus in on. Why we often do not agree about many, many things in the is/ought world. The role that dasein examined here...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

...plays when we are confronted with conflicting goods. And conflicting Gods.

The point is what can I really know about IC's experiences and what can he really know about mine?

Well, right: you don't know me at all. It's amazing to me that you feel qualified to decide I'm "indoctrinated," based on no evidence at all.

That's my point, of course. IC has lived his life. And his experiences led him to Christianity. My experiences once led me to Christianity as well. But then another entirely different set of circumstances led me to atheism. The same with everyone else here. Their experiences are going to be more or less likely to lead them to Christianity. That's the existential nature of identity here.

On the other hand, if IC were able to provide us with demonstrable proof that the Christian God is the One True Path, all of those different experiences would become moot. Here is evidence that a God, the God is the Christian God. Show me that evidence and I'll become a Christian again ASAP.

Then you've been sadly deceived. Atheism cannot be rendered in any logical form, so you must be responding to something more visceral and experiential. It's certainly not to the compulsion of reason, logic or even coherence, since Atheism cannot give reasons and contradicts itself even on its one basic claim.

More [to me] intellectual gibberish from him that has nothing to do with the point I make. One is "deceived" here to the extent that he or she does not take his own a leap of faith to wager placed on IC's Christian God. And the circular logic of his arguments above based on how he defines and deduces this God of his into existence speaks volumes regarding his wriggling around any demonstrable proof of HIs existence.

Here let's examine it again...

I gave you the historical evidence in the form you asked for it above. Just as the Pope lived in Rome, so too Jesus is recognized by every significant historian as having lived in ancient Judea. That's a simple, historical fact.

Again, this sort of "proof" in a Bible Study class at Church or around the dinner table of a devoutly Christian family would certainly suffice. But what must he think if us if he imagines it is proof enough here in a philosophy forum? It's embarrassing actually.

Mount Tambora, Indonesia? You know that one?

Okay, let's go. What's your question about the Tambora tragedy? What do you want to ask, with regard to it, or what challenge would you like to put to me because of it?

71,000 to 250,000 men, women and children perished in it. What was the Christians God's point in triggering the eruption? That less than 10% of Indonesia's population is Christian? Or is it just tucked away in the Christian God's "mysterious ways" folder?

Well, let's figure out what the alternative is. And in doing so, I'll answer your question directly.

The alternative? A loving, just and merciful God -- an omniscient and omnipotent God -- not creating a planet where such "natural disasters" commonly maim and mutilate and massacre countless men, women and children year in and year out. How is a God that does so not to be understood as a sadistic monster? Other than by falling back on his "mysterious ways" that mere mortals can't begin to grasp.

Sure, what can I say to that? No moral man or woman as most construe the meaning of moral would be permitted to do it without being deeply shamed. But they're not "mere mortals" for nothing right?

Do you assume, then, that it was God's responsibility to prevent the explosion? Just that one? Or all explosions similar to Mt. Tambora

Answer, then I'll continue. I'm not done yet, of course.

Well, let the Christians explain to me what they think it means for God to be "loving, just and merciful" and explain to me why any loving just and merciful entity would allow such terrible disasters to unfold over and over and over and over again. Not to mention the next "extinction event".

And, in the next one, human beings themselves may be on the list.

On the other hand, though the Holocaust was the work of those like Hitler, an omnipotent God could have prevented it from happening....but did not.

Indeed so. Ask yourself this, though: could God even possibly have sufficient reason for NOT overriding such an event?

Let him tell me. I don't even believe that He exists to have reasons. Sufficient or otherwise. All I know is that millions of Jews still believe in their own rendition of his God. And I suspect that is because with atheism the horror is just that much more unendurable. The Holocaust? Well, in a No God universe, shits happens.

And, just out of curiosity, it's Judgment Day. The God of Abraham passes judgment on Christians, Muslims and Jews. Who goes up and who goes down given that only Christians recognize Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Even though Jesus Christ was Himself a Jew. As for the Muslims? That's always mystified me.

The Bible answers that one, too. Jesus said, "The Father loves the Son and has entrusted all things to His hand. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 5:33-36)

And that's certainly true because he believes it is, right? Jesus Christ is a Jew. But Jews don't believe that Jesus Christ even existed...let alone existed as Christians insist.

So, what's Hitler's Holocaust next to the fate of Jews on Judgment Day? They'll burn in Hell for all of eternity unless they renounce their own faith and agree to believe in the Son. Although, of course, God isn't "forcing" them to.

For our purposes, what's most useful in her analysis is the intelligent division between human-caused and what she calls "natural evils," which includes things like Tambora.

Okay, but nature's existence is of itself an act of God. So doesn't that make God evil?

Well, God made you: does having made you make Him evil? He gave you a will, a choice and an identity, and freedom to exercise them; does that make Him evil? And if you decided to use that freedom and power He gave you to do evil, would that make God -- or you -- responsible?

Let's just say that doesn't exactly answer my question.

[Dubious]

And, obviously, one of those who coalesced a discourse on Cracking was F. Nietzsche.

Wow. Probably the last guy on earth who knew anything substantive about Christianity...or, for that matter, about Judaism.

From: Nietzsche and the Old Testament
Israel Eldad

It is obvious that Nietzsche possessed a profound knowledge of the New Testament and profited greatly from the deep Protestant tradition of his family.

Nietzsche understood the bible better than you ever possibly could! What theism has taught you is less about Jesus and the bible than perfecting the art of lying and deception.

[Immanuel Can]

If God exists, and God is omnipotent as you assert, then God can literally do anything.

That's what people say, but it's not quite right, Biblically speaking.

It depends on what "do anything" is taken to mean. The Bible says there are things God cannot do...lie, break His word, be tempted, fail, and so on.

But all these things aren't actually powers or abilities, but rather things human beings do when they lack some ability. We lie because we run afoul of the truth. We break our word because we are not faithful. We are tempted because we are corruptible, or steal because we are greedy... We do many things that are not in keeping with what we would call "our best selves."

God does none of those. He's the only being in the universe that can always act consistently with His own character. That's what having real "omnipotence" means.

It is possible that God might destroy the Earth, punish those who did not obey, and then re-perfect the Earth to be a heavenly dwelling place.

Yes.

...it is conceivable that we here, all of us, are simply imagining our *world* to exist and that we are as in it, and bound up in it, as we imagine we are (and can't change).

Is that how it seems to you? Would that be your natural supposition? Do you believe you have no choices? Is that how you live?

So what assures you that that "imagining" is more than just that -- a wild "imaginging"? For surely the default assumption and practice of us all is that nothing like that is the case. So it would take some evidence to warrant that, wouldn't it?

Why not? If as you say anything is possible?

I actually didn't say that. You did.

That is, if you believe that there is no end to the possible outcomes and alternatives.

No, I don't believe that, either.

But all throughout these worlds, these manifest realms, there runs a logic: that no matter what each of these worlds is perishable. Just as here in our world nothing we build, and certainly not ourselves, ever remains. All is mutable and shifting constantly and death is ever-present.

Well, that begs far too many questions, I would say.

These are the elements in belief-systems -- far more imaginative really, far more spectacular -- that correspond to the more simple Imago of, say, a Garden of Eden (a deathless place of wonder and innocence) or the Heaven-realm that I suppose you conceive of.

I honestly don't think you've got a Biblical description there of either, frankly. But I can agree that the sorts of "heavens" and "gardens" human beings choose to fabricate are various. They're certainly incommensurable, as well.

So what I find interesting is that you present a Christian scriptural story that you believe, and want me to believe, is absolutely real. Absolutely and beyond doubt the way things are.

I didn't say doubt was impossible. Doubt's always possible, because it's the counterpart of faith.

But doubt isn't always warranted, even when it's possible. I would say that of your Deterministic realm, as described at the beginning of this message.

...an all-powerful God who can do anything and whatever he wants to. All that I do here is present you scenarios that extend from the same logical base.

No, not really.

Your definition of "omnipotence" is different from mine. As near as I can tell, yours is roughly equivalent to, "Can do absolutely anything at all -- even evil, inconsistent, dishonest and logically impossible things."

But the Bible is definite that there are things God cannot do, by nature of who He is. And God always acts according to His own nature...precisely because he is intrinsically holy, and because He is the only being powerful enough to be able to be utterly consistent with His own nature.

It's a luxury you and I never have.