Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Obviously you don't otherwise you could have made a far better argument! Doubtless, if you could have made an argument which amounts to one more substantial than less than nothing, you certainly would have been happy to.

Here's the link...for those who are interested...

The quote is on page 48. Let others decide who is deluded.

The chapter as a whole is exceptionally stimulating, re the history and interfaces of the OT, NT, Greek culture, Judaism and Christianity, especially as written by a Jew who doesn't have an axe to grind.

There are days, usually Mondays I have noted, that I wake up and find it hard to concentrate (I tend to read a lot on weekends so I am sometimes 'hungover' so to speak as the week begins). However, I read that article with great interest. More than that really. It deals with some many topics that have come to occupy my attention and concern.

[Dubious]

Obviously you don't otherwise you could have made a far better argument! Doubtless, if you could have made an argument which amounts to one more substantial than less than nothing, you certainly would have been happy to.

Here's the link...for those who are interested...

The quote is on page 48. Let others decide who is deluded.

The chapter as a whole is exceptionally stimulating, re the history and interfaces of the OT, NT, Greek culture, Judaism and Christianity, especially as written by a Jew who doesn't have an axe to grind.

There are days, usually Mondays I have noted, that I wake up and find it hard to concentrate (I tend to read a lot on weekends so I am sometimes 'hungover' so to speak as the week begins). However, I read that article with great interest. More than that really. It deals with some many topics that have come to occupy my attention and concern.

Gratifying to know that at least one person has given it a try!

I found it interesting not only from a Nietzschean perspective, but the way Eldad describes the interrelationships between all the various cultures of the period. Christianity, clearly, was never comprised of just ONE ingredient! It was a synthesis which unjustly claimed originality.

[iambiguous]

Let's review what's gone on here.

I wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:29 am
Tell me what you'll accept, and I'll see what I can give you.

You answered:

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.

I said that I found this very odd evidence to ask for. In the first place, it seemed to me to prove nothing...and in the second, it was the sort of thing that's so easy to prove you don't even need me to do it for you.

Nevertheless, I honoured your demand. You said you'd accept "evidence that the Christian God exists on par with the Popes being in the Vatican."

So I wrote:

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.

And your reply?

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? ...And few doubt the historical existence of Muhammad.

So you asked for evidence. I asked you what evidence you would accept. You said you'd except the kind of evidence above.

But now, you say that's not good enough. You say "What"? You say it establishes nothing you will believe. Which, ironically, was exactly what I said...that doesn't seem good enough evidence.

So now we're back to my original question: What evidence WILL you accept?

So far, apparently, you've only told me what you WON'T accept.

What would be good enough evidence for you?

See how objectivist minds like his work?

I'm after empirical proof the Christian God does in fact in exist in Heaven. The sort of proof Christians can easily provide that Popes do in fact exist in the Vatican.

IC can't provide that of course. All he has [to the best of my knowledge] is his own particular existential leap of faith to his own particular set of assumptions about the Christian God. It's all about what he believes "in his head" about Him. This Christian God sustains the comfort and the consolation that religion provides for millions and millions around the globe. It's all perfectly routine.

Only he has chosen [in a free will world] to defend it here in a philosophy forum. A philosophy forum derived from the existence of the Philosophy Now magazine.

But even here he is no less stuck. He can't actually provide substantive proof that the Christian God does exist so when someone like me asks him for it he's got no other recourse [as an objectivist] but to play these tortuous "word games" instead:

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.

So you asked for evidence. I asked you what evidence you would accept. You said you'd except the kind of evidence above.

But now, you say that's not good enough. You say "What"? You say it establishes nothing you will believe. Which, ironically, was exactly what I said...that doesn't seem good enough evidence.

He has done nothing less than meet my every demand here. And if I don't/won't/can't accept that he and others believe that someone calling himself Jesus Christ back then proves that someone calling himself Jesus Christ did in fact exist back then...and that this constitutes proof that the Chirstian God does in fact exist in Heaven?

I mean, come on, how much respect can he expect me to have for his intelligence when he is actually able to convince himself that this need be as far as proving it goes?!!!

Let alone how he wriggles around or wiggles out of responding to the points I raise regarding all of the many, many other Gods that are similarly defended, the role that dasein plays in establishing religious faith and the "for all practical purposes" implications of Christianity and theodicy.

[Alexis Jacobi]

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 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.

But Immanuel what I said is here and what I said flows out of what you were attempting to assert.

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.

The omnipotent God you define could (as I suggested with my Vedic references) create any number of different worlds of a higher order and of a lower order than the present one. Anything is conceivable that was my point.

I have come to see you as a sort of Bible-Bot. You seem to have no other points of reference. No matter what is said that contradicts the *structure* of your system, you succeed in defeating it through something like the 'laminations' that Dubious refers to. It is strange but also amazing to watch you rehearse all this.

Now, you seem to have responded to what I wrote as a retort of sorts but you indicate that you did not really hear, because listening is a problem for you. Or you can't listen because hearing is an issue for you.

My speculations were not assertions that *this is the way things are* but merely to suggest that any number of different possibilities exist for the God that you define.

Now I am definitely a *believer* in God so let there be no mistake about that. That is, I follow the argument that *all of this* has come out of conception and that something (God) must necessarily be behind it all.

But if this is so the God that is presaged or suggested or which is 'necessary' if the Creation is taken as *His work* is 1) beyond my capacity to define, and 2) very different from any notion of God that is traditionally presented. We have, in a way, seen into *the mind of God* by examination of His worlks and have become rather baffled. If our world, and indeed the Kosmos, is taken as the stuff from which we must extrapolate God -- I just don't know then what sort of God this is.

So I give some favor to the argument that Iambiguous has been presenting.

My own personal idea has been that the Christian God is a God that comes *completely from without*. It would be like a visitor to this entire realm from somewhere far far away. I see the Christian God (and I have said this) as an 'imposition' that forces his will on man. And a man who accepts this God agrees, to the degree he can, to 'play by a very different set of rules'. That much is obvious, isn't it?

The Christian can't win in this world because, as it stands, this world is ruled by satanic power. But satanic power is a term that has to be defined. What it seems to mean, for Christians, is everything about the way the world really works. The world is *ruled* by the dark prince.

So you see no one will (at least I do not think) succeed in uprooting me from my connection to the God I define and which I also define as something I can only encounter on an inner plane. The world outside of myself, in this sense, is not the world of the God that I am asked to see and commune with. But it is also true that what I am (my body, my biological being, my incarnated being) is also a product of *the lower world*. So in this sense I am enmeshed and ensconced in the 'dark kingdom' (to use dramatic terms).

There is a problematical aspect to what I have been saying. And it is that God is *visible* in our world if God is seen as the intlligence behind it all. So examining the world and marveling at it is also a spiritual act. But mostly I am speaking of ethics when I propose a God who comes from outside.

What sort of a *Christian* am I then? if I can see the truth, indeed the extreme-truths, that Nietzsche saw with such determined clarity? but yet I choose to hold to the order and beauty and sensible logic of what I call the *imposed* vision or possibility?

The other part of this is that whatever God is -- and it is in some ways silly to attempt a definition though I suppose we must -- I am not the cause of the immense confusion that reigns in this our world. It goes on in its direction inevitably. And what can I do? Factually next to nothing.

But I can *hold to* and try to remain in the inner world of beauty and order and let's say *decency* that the Christian vision offers me, and I can definitely make all efforts to be decent and concerned about the lives and experience of those around me. But not a great deal else.

[Immanuel Can]

The only thing you know about the bible is how to quote it, which any idiot who forced his brain into a straight-jacket can do.

Got anything relevant to say, or are we done here?

[Immanuel Can]

I'm after empirical proof the Christian God does in fact in exist in Heaven. The sort of proof Christians can easily provide that Popes do in fact exist in the Vatican.

And you got it.

But now you say it's not good enough.

So what will you accept?

If the answer is "nothing," then "nothing" is what you'll get...but to nobody's great surprise.

[Dubious]

The only thing you know about the bible is how to quote it, which any idiot who forced his brain into a straight-jacket can do.

Got anything relevant to say, or are we done here?

The truth is always relevant!

[Immanuel Can]

But Immanuel what I said is here and what I said flows out of what you were attempting to assert.

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.

Yes. I answered all that.

Did you miss it?

I said it's founded on an error about what "ominpotence" might be taken to imply. The preconditions of your imaginary scenario are thus not met: God cannot "do anything" in an unrestricted sense.

I have come to see you as a sort of Bible-Bot. You seem to have no other points of reference.

Well, the topic is "Christianity," is it not? And if it is, just where do you think we should go for an answer as to what it is?

I'd be very interested in what you think is more telling than either the Bible or Christ's own words in it. Maybe you have another source you prefer?

My speculations were not assertions that *this is the way things are* but merely to suggest that any number of different possibilities exist for the God that you define.

But you mis-defined Him. You defined God as a being that can simply "do anything," without understanding what being God implies -- at least, Biblically speaking.

And as I say, if you have another authoritative source, let's hear where you get your knowledge of these things. I'm all ears.

Now I am definitely a *believer* in God so let there be no mistake about that.

Let me "Bible-bot" this one for you: "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder." (James 2:19)

The point is simply this: there's a difference between believing that there's one God and having an approving relationship with Him. This is what Christ is speaking about in Matthew 7 when he says, "Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.’" (22-23) In that context, the Greek is interesting: the word "know" in "I never knew you" does not mean that God failed to know the mere fact that somebody existed; clearly He knows that. But literally, it really means, "I never stood in an approving relationship to you."

It's the relationship, not the knowing-about that makes a man a child of God.

So I give some favor to the argument that Iambiguous has been presenting.

What part?

My own personal idea has been that the Christian God is a God that comes *completely from without*. It would be like a visitor to this entire realm from somewhere far far away. I see the Christian God (and I have said this) as an 'imposition' that forces his will on man. [/quote]
No, He's decidedly not that, for sure.

We have free will. We are not "imposed upon" in that sense.

The Christian can't win in this world because, as it stands, this world is ruled by satanic power.

Whether or not you "win" depends on when the "game" in question really ends.

It also depends on which side you're on.

I am enmeshed and ensconced in the 'dark kingdom' (to use dramatic terms).

That's quite an admission.

Are you determined to stay with that?

I can *hold to* and try to remain in the inner world of beauty and order and let's say *decency* that the Christian vision offers me, and I can definitely make all efforts to be decent and concerned about the lives and experience of those around me. But not a great deal else.

What about that relationship with God?

Is that not what's clearly missing from your present experience? You may know something about God; but do you know HIm?

[Immanuel Can]

The only thing you know about the bible is how to quote it, which any idiot who forced his brain into a straight-jacket can do.

Got anything relevant to say, or are we done here?

The truth is always relevant!

Then for you, the answer is "No."

[iambiguous]

ME:

See how objectivist minds like his work?

I'm after empirical proof the Christian God does in fact in exist in Heaven. The sort of proof Christians can easily provide that Popes do in fact exist in the Vatican.

IC can't provide that of course. All he has [to the best of my knowledge] is his own particular existential leap of faith to his own particular set of assumptions about the Christian God. It's all about what he believes "in his head" about Him. This Christian God sustains the comfort and the consolation that religion provides for millions and millions around the globe. It's all perfectly routine.

Only he has chosen [in a free will world] to defend it here in a philosophy forum. A philosophy forum derived from the existence of the Philosophy Now magazine.

But even here he is no less stuck. He can't actually provide substantive proof that the Christian God does exist so when someone like me asks him for it he's got no other recourse [as an objectivist] but to play these tortuous "word games" instead:

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.

So you asked for evidence. I asked you what evidence you would accept. You said you'd except the kind of evidence above.

But now, you say that's not good enough. You say "What"? You say it establishes nothing you will believe. Which, ironically, was exactly what I said...that doesn't seem good enough evidence.

He has done nothing less than meet my every demand here. And if I don't/won't/can't accept that he and others believe that someone calling himself Jesus Christ back then proves that someone calling himself Jesus Christ did in fact exist back then...and that this constitutes proof that the Chirstian God does in fact exist in Heaven?

I mean, come on, how much respect can he expect me to have for his intelligence when he is actually able to convince himself that this need be as far as proving it goes?!!!

Let alone how he wriggles around or wiggles out of responding to the points I raise regarding all of the many, many other Gods that are similarly defended, the role that dasein plays in establishing religious faith and the "for all practical purposes" implications of Christianity and theodicy.

HIM:

I'm after empirical proof the Christian God does in fact in exist in Heaven. The sort of proof Christians can easily provide that Popes do in fact exist in the Vatican.

And you got it.

But now you say it's not good enough.

So what will you accept?

If the answer is "nothing," then "nothing" is what you'll get...but to nobody's great surprise.

Note to the Christian God:

It's Judgment Day. IC and I arrive at the Pearly Gates. Now, which of us would You prefer to have around grappling over Your existence for all the rest of eternity?

[Nick_A]

There are no Christians on this thread whose logical minds are open to Jesus' Resurrection. It is to be expected on a largely secular site.

1 Corinthians 15

The Resurrection Body

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”[f]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we[g] bear the image of the heavenly man.

Notice how Plato distinguishes between soul and body

Plato said that even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as bodies die, the soul is continually reborn (metempsychosis) in subsequent bodies.

Christianity suggests that a person with the seed of a soul can become a higher quality of being we know of as the New Man. Secularism being caught up in the body cannot consider the conscious evolution and maturity of the seed of the soul. Naturally this potential is nonsense for secularism

It is peculiar that so many accept mechanical evolution as a given but have become closed to its transition into conscious evolution or the dualistic animal mind becoming the triune human mind

[Immanuel Can]

I'm after empirical proof the Christian God does in fact in exist in Heaven. The sort of proof Christians can easily provide that Popes do in fact exist in the Vatican.

And you got it.

But now you say it's not good enough.

So what will you accept?

If the answer is "nothing," then "nothing" is what you'll get...but to nobody's great surprise.

Note to the Christian God...

Ah. So changing the subject and not answering? Red herring?

I don't actually blame you. Chances are, you've never even thought of it. You've been so busy declaring "God doesn't exist" that you've never even given a moment's thought of what you would expect Him to do if He did. You have no evidence you're looking for, and none you will accept.

Consequently, you shall not have your evidence until you meet God, since you will accept none...unless you do some serious thinking and change that situation now.

You could think about it. You could decide what evidence you would accept. But if you did, then you might find it or be provided it...and then what?

But it will be up to you. If there's nothing you can accept, then nothing you shall have.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I said it's founded on an error about what "omnipotence" might be taken to imply. The preconditions of your imaginary scenario are thus not met: God cannot "do anything" in an unrestricted sense.

What you said some pages back is:

It doesn't seem obvious why that idea [that God could end the world and begin it again in another form] is even remotely problematic, if one assumes God exists.

What I made an effort to communicate to you is that if you define God in this way, God by definition can do infinite numbers of things and certainly is not limited by any limitations that you set. You continually miss the sense of what I communicate. You 'cannot hear for all that you have
ears".

I do understand, fully and completely, that you limit your conceptions strictly and exclusively to what is written in the Bible and mostly, for your Christian perspective, in the NT.

[Immanuel Can]

I said it's founded on an error about what "omnipotence" might be taken to imply. The preconditions of your imaginary scenario are thus not met: God cannot "do anything" in an unrestricted sense.

What you said some pages back is:

It doesn't seem obvious why that idea [that God could end the world and begin it again in another form] is even remotely problematic, if one assumes God exists.

What I made an effort to communicate to you is that if you define God in this way,

I didn't "define God" in any particular way. You asked if theoretically, such a thing would be possible to Him. The rest, you made up out of whole cloth.

You also didn't ask if He actually DOES that sort of thing, which is quite a different question.

God by definition can do infinite numbers of things

This is not correct, as I have pointed out to you at least three times now. You may prefer a different definition, with ominipotence meaning simply "can do everything." That's not my definition, and you can't make it my definition, even if, in a rhetorical, tricky way, you want me to forget that and pretend I did.

No go, Joe.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I didn't "define God" in any particular way.

I think that this is what you cannot see, and this is because your will is attached so strongly to your definitions whether you are aware of them fully or not. I have come to see that I do not think you do have that awareness (a comparative awareness).

The tenets of Christian belief depend on a whole range of definitions. And those definitions are also exclusions. And as I have said my view about this is that in this sense, in this particular sense, it is not hard to notice in the System what I termed Judaic imperialism. This operates through *idea domination*.

You asked if theoretically, such a thing would be possible to Him. The rest, you made up out of whole cloth.

No, you propose to me that God can do the specific thing that you believe he will do eventually. Destroy one world and replace it with another one.

I do not believe that this will happen. And I also believe that I am *in integrity* for believing/understanding that this will not happen and also for resisting anyone who insists that because it is written in Scripture that therefore it is true (and will happen).

I believe it is part of Christian myth. And I believe that Christian myth, though in this instance it images a false thing, nevertheless has functions. I define those functions as having *positive elements* and that means also not exclusively negative. I believe that those 'functions' can be discerned and therefore talked about.

In this context you tell me that If one believes that God exists, that one can or should believe that God can do or will do the specific predicted thing: end our world, destroy the wicked, and begin another world on a different order.

You very much do define God in very specific ways. And one of those ways is by asserting omnipotence.

What I say back to you, as a retort of sorts, is that people have always imagined the things that God can do and does in his omnipotence. And the point is that there is a wide array of those *imagined things*.

And though I do *believe in God* my belief in God, or my relationship with God (which I have defined as internal and not an external declaration), is unalike that of a Christian that must believe thus-and-such or in this case a specific apocalyptic dogma. But we can leave that to the side for now.

I state once again, because it is logical and coherent, that if I accept the definition of God as omnipotent in the sense that you describe God, and therefore as you define God, that that God can logically do any number of different things according to his will. And his will is not contingent or dependent on any assertion that you make.

And I mentioned a few of those *conceivable things* simply as illustrations.

You also didn't ask if He actually DOES that sort of thing, which is quite a different question.

Well, I do not believe that God actually ended 'the world' with the mythical event described in Genesis (the Flood). Humanity was not ended and reduced to a few families and did not then repopulate the Earth. So because this Christian story is non-true, and does seem to be a myth, it certainly stands to sound reason that a future 'world-destruction' and repopulation brought about as a conscious, orchestrated Event, is dismissible as 'highly unlikely'.

I am not sure we are going to get much farther along here the way things are going. . .