Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

That you don't see it, as obvious as the contradiction is, tells everybody everything we need to know about how you are forming your ideas.

The contradiction is a necessity of knowledge.

It's a proof of incoherence, is what it is.

[Dontaskme]

It's a proof of incoherence, is what it is.

As this concept ''incoherence'' is known...there is no need for any proof of it.


Ideas are formed and known and are fixed, but they are never seen in a literal fixed sense.

For example: a tree is a fixed concept known, the tree is not flower.

But a seen tree is never seen as a fixed thing, because a tree is also a branch and a leaf, and a root..etc etc

A self is a concept known..but a self is never seen. But exists as a concept known.

You are this knowing. There is no need for proof.

You are the knowing...you are not the known, as in a concept known, because objects do not have any reality separate from the knowing of them.

[Belinda]

The phrase "I know that I know nothing" is not even capable of making sense, actually.

"I know I know nothing" means knowing what you may believe to be true may not be true because you are not omniscient.

Then what it means is "I personally believe I may know nothing." That's quite a different claim. And unlike your claim, doesn't obviously contradict itself.

It's remarkable you choose to quibble about phraseology when there are more interesting aspects of Xianity to discuss.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ wrote: There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires.

And yet, the Bible is exceedingly clear on that question.

As per usual I refer to something outside of your area of concern and also possibly your general comprehension. I will try to explain.

The Christian Bible presents a Story through which a specific picture is drawn, as it were. That picture (a system of metaphysical understanding, which is essentially what Christianity is, deals on, reveals) was transmitted from one *world* to another *world* -- the Judaic world to the Greek world; and from the Greek world into the larger world of Europe and Europe's history. And every bit of the core elements and admonitions, necessarily, had to be interpreted; and through interpretation, translated into notions and ethics that were then lived (applied concretely to social life and social systems).

The creation of European culture, the creation of Christian/Catholic Europe, if we focus on this, is the scene and the field where Christianity was applied, which involves the notion of construction. And if this is so, the area where we must look to see and understand what Christianity is and Christian metaphysics meant, is achieved through a close examination of the *world* that was constructed, on one hand, and what ideas existed and reigned and how these translated into ethics, culture, politics, and many other realms of concern.

Within that *world* -- the world of Europe -- the concept of salvation had a specific sense, a specific meaning. That is, it fit into a system of description known as The Great Chain of Being. The idea of salvation is a metaphysical idea, or to put it another way the notion of salvation depends on metaphysical descriptions. But so too, and very definitely, and very concretely, are Christian metaphysical notions expressed through the concept of Heaven and also of Hell. Heaven & Hell are 'metaphysical states'. The notion of salvation, in European Christianity, was built on the necessary interpretations of Apostolic admonitions by the Early Church Fathers.

But when the 'metaphysical world', which is to say the worldpicture of early and Medieval Christianity was superseded, and indeed it has been superseded, the worldpicture could no longer be believed in in the same way. That is to say (to put it simply) that in those former times Heaven was visualized, and Hell was visualized, as concrete realms of eventuality. There was no alternative to this perception.

But when the former metaphysic, and its wordpicture, collapsed, the former visualization -- a perceptual model really -- became inapplicable in a certain sense, or unvisualizable, or it became something seen in a shadowy light, but a shadowy view that has increasingly diminished.

So quite literally the former Christian believed that at death he would be translated either to Hell or to Heaven -- specific localities that were powerful enough as concepts, as pictures, as tangible reality-based visuals in which he, the Christian, more than simply believed in, but were the only possibilities that perception could conceive as possible.

And this is the difference, and it is not an insignificant one, between then and now. Heaven and Hell have both gone :::poof!::: They have become shadowed references or metaphors, but not realities.

So when I said "There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires" I was and I am referring to something you are hardly able to think about and, I gather, have little interest in. What is that? Well I am always trying to talk about that but you are always unable to understand.

You are a representative of a 'shadow system' of metaphysics. You are a really strange creature but this does not mean that I am uniquely focusing on you -- because I am not. When I say *strange creature* I mean someone sort of metaphysically amphibious. You live in, or you appear to live in, a world that arose out of ancient metaphysics. But these metaphysics have been superseded by the metaphysics of the present day and time. And yet you fiercely cling to the metaphysical story upon which the Christian Story is based -- a world in which Man fell down into a hell-realm from a God-protected heaven-realm through the influence of Satan, God's antithesis. The core of the story is here.

As I have said a few times you are an odd bird because you grant yourself the *luxury* of hopping over all that Christianity actually was, and became, and is still (to some degrees, but these vary widely) to be a Christian apologist preaching the terms of a veiled metaphysics on a philosophy forum largely composed of people incapable of seeing Reality through these lenses!

But this brings us to Modernity. And that is why I say There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires.

[Belinda]

AJ wrote: There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires.

And yet, the Bible is exceedingly clear on that question.

As per usual I refer to something outside of your area of concern and also possibly your general comprehension. I will try to explain.

The Christian Bible presents a Story through which a specific picture is drawn, as it were. That picture (a system of metaphysical understanding, which is essentially what Christianity is, deals on, reveals) was transmitted from one *world* to another *world* -- the Judaic world to the Greek world; and from the Greek world into the larger world of Europe and Europe's history. And every bit of the core elements and admonitions, necessarily, had to be interpreted; and through interpretation, translated into notions and ethics that were then lived (applied concretely to social life and social systems).

The creation of European culture, the creation of Christian/Catholic Europe, if we focus on this, is the scene and the field where Christianity was applied, which involves the notion of construction. And if this is so, the area where we must look to see and understand what Christianity is and Christian metaphysics meant, is achieved through a close examination of the *world* that was constructed, on one hand, and what ideas existed and reigned and how these translated into ethics, culture, politics, and many other realms of concern.

Within that *world* -- the world of Europe -- the concept of salvation had a specific sense, a specific meaning. That is, it fit into a system of description known as The Great Chain of Being. The idea of salvation is a metaphysical idea, or to put it another way the notion of salvation depends on metaphysical descriptions. But so too, and very definitely, and very concretely, are Christian metaphysical notions expressed through the concept of Heaven and also of Hell. Heaven & Hell are 'metaphysical states'. The notion of salvation, in European Christianity, was built on the necessary interpretations of Apostolic admonitions by the Early Church Fathers.

But when the 'metaphysical world', which is to say the worldpicture of early and Medieval Christianity was superseded, and indeed it has been superseded, the worldpicture could no longer be believed in in the same way. That is to say (to put it simply) that in those former times Heaven was visualized, and Hell was visualized, as concrete realms of eventuality. There was no alternative to this perception.

But when the former metaphysic, and its wordpicture, collapsed, the former visualization -- a perceptual model really -- became inapplicable in a certain sense, or unvisualizable, or it became something seen in a shadowy light, but a shadowy view that has increasingly diminished.

So quite literally the former Christian believed that at death he would be translated either to Hell or to Heaven -- specific localities that were powerful enough as concepts, as pictures, as tangible reality-based visuals in which he, the Christian, more than simply believed in, but were the only possibilities that perception could conceive as possible.

And this is the difference, and it is not an insignificant one, between then and now. Heaven and Hell have both gone :::poof!::: They have become shadowed references or metaphors, but not realities.

So when I said "There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires" I was and I am referring to something you are hardly able to think about and, I gather, have little interest in. What is that? Well I am always trying to talk about that but you are always unable to understand.

You are a representative of a 'shadow system' of metaphysics. You are a really strange creature but this does not mean that I am uniquely focusing on you -- because I am not. When I say *strange creature* I mean someone sort of metaphysically amphibious. You live in, or you appear to live in, a world that arose out of ancient metaphysics. But these metaphysics have been superseded by the metaphysics of the present day and time. And yet you fiercely cling to the metaphysical story upon which the Christian Story is based -- a world in which Man fell down into a hell-realm from a God-protected heaven-realm through the influence of Satan, God's antithesis. The core of the story is here.

As I have said a few times you are an odd bird because you grant yourself the *luxury* of hopping over all that Christianity actually was, and became, and is still (to some degrees, but these vary widely) to be a Christian apologist preaching the terms of a veiled metaphysics on a philosophy forum largely composed of people incapable of seeing Reality through these lenses!

But this brings us to Modernity. And that is why I say There is nothing at all clear, today, about what salvation is. What it means, what it requires.

And yet Xianity , and The Bible, transpose well for modern people. Sure, interpreters are still needed mostly because educationists neglect the Humanities.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And yet Xianity, and The Bible, transpose well for modern people. Sure, interpreters are still needed mostly because educationists neglect the Humanities.

You are right, of course. I wonder though if many who live in it fully understand what it’s real metaphysics are?

[promethean75]

Well of course its formal metaphysics is going to be a aquinastotle-augustinian modification of the pythagorean, platonic and neo-platonic epistemological foundations upon which it stands.

But here's the problem with that. By the late pre-elightenement age, philosophers of an official capacity we're already workin for aristocratic property owners that were responsible for the social contract in general and the various public laws in particular... so it's not for nuthin that the social contract not only resembled the formal hierarchical structuralism of the 'cosmic order', but was purposely described as such so that social authority would have a basis it could be justified by.

It's a long Wittgensteinian story about a language-game lasting thousands of years... but the important part, the part you thought was incidental and is actually by design, is that the feuerbachian 'projection of human nature onto a 'god' thesis is demonstrably true here and describes precisely how a ruling elite that both generates and controls the ideas of the times, formalizes an idea of 'god' that best serves it's purposes in maintaining it's power. Wittingly or not. More often than not, wittingly.

Comrade Rosa, chief theorist-correspondent responsible for (and greatest contributor to) the creation of the school of 'anti-dialectics', explains in brief how the institution of 'philosophy' has always been a bloody racket, mate....

"For over two thousand years Traditional Philosophers have been playing on themselves and their readers what can only be described as a series of complex verbal tricks. Since Ancient Greek times, metaphysicians have occupied themselves with deriving a priori theses solely from the meaning of a narrow range of specially-selected and suitably doctored words. These 'philosophical gems' were skilfully polished and then peddled to the rest of humanity dressed-up as profound-looking truths about fundamental aspects of reality, peremptorily imposed on nature, almost invariably without the benefit of a single supporting experiment.

In fact, Traditional Theorists went even further; their acts of linguistic legerdemain 'enabled' them to uncover Super-Truths in the comfort of their own heads -- concocting doctrines they claimed revealed the underlying and essential nature of existence, valid for all of space and time. Unsurprisingly, discursive magic of this order of magnitude harmonised rather too well with contemporaneous ruling-class forms-of-thought, chief among which was -- and still is -- the dogma that reality is rational.

Clearly, the idea that reality is rational has to be imposed onto nature; it can't be read from it since nature isn't Mind. Plainly, it is much easier to rationalise the imposition of a hierarchical, oppressive and grossly unequal class system on 'disorderly' workers if its ideologues can persuade one and all that the 'law-like' order of the natural world perfectly reflects, and is reflected in turn by, the social order from which their patrons just so happen to benefit, the fundamental aspects of which none may legitimately question.

Material reality may not be rational, but it is certainly rational for ruling-class hacks to claim it is."

[Immanuel Can]

"I know I know nothing" means knowing what you may believe to be true may not be true because you are not omniscient.

Then what it means is "I personally believe I may know nothing." That's quite a different claim. And unlike your claim, doesn't obviously contradict itself.

It's remarkable you choose to quibble about phraseology when there are more interesting aspects of Xianity to discuss.

Not "phraseology." Logic.

What you said doesn't even make sense...on any terms at all.

[Immanuel Can]

The Christian Bible presents a Story

That begs the question, "Is the story true?"

... it fit into a system of description known as The Great Chain of Being.

Medieval and Catholic. It has zero to do with the Bible or Christianity.

Funny that you don't know that.

I know you think you've discovered something called "cultural Christianity." However, you're just falling for the very trite and tired fallacy of not paying attention to what Jesus Christ or the Bible itself say.

So your term "Christian" is an entirely fictive construct. It bears no resemblance to anything genuinely Christian. It's detached entirely from both Christ and Christianity.

But I see you're so in love with conventional historicism you can't see past it. So I don't know what I can tell you, except that what you're saying bears no resemblance to Christ or His word.

Check it out for yourself, and you'll find I'm right. That's why I can quote Scripture copiously to support the claims I've advanced, and you cannot support your position at all by the same means.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ asks: The Christian Bible presents a Story.

That begs the question, "Is the story true?"

My answer is what I have been trying to get at: the Story, as I understand it, and as I understand stories as a container and vehicle for truths, or ideas relevant to man's projects, and even at times for man's projects involving lies & manipulations; the Story (the Bible story and the Story of Christ's descent as an Avatar of God) has all sorts of truths embedded in it.

But then those *truths* need to be examined. Or to put it differently it is these truths which as I say cannot be taken seriously by many people raised up in a new metaphysics.

So let me ask, for example, do you accept as truth that man fell, through some sort of error, from a heavenly realm of Divine protection down into a world whose ruler is said to be Satan, the chief fallen Angel?

Is that story true through & through? Is it literally true? Is it allegorically true?

The moment of truth has come Immanuel Can! Answer!

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ wrote: ... it fit into a system of description known as The Great Chain of Being.

Medieval and Catholic. It has zero to do with the Bible or Christianity.

Oh no, not 'zero' and by no means zero. All primitive people conceived of a cosmology and the very early Hebrews certainly had elaborate conceptions about the 'structure of the world'. And the Hebrews definitely had their own.

Obviously, a god in a heavenly realm that sends his son down into the lower realms to effect changes or to 'redeem' reflects a cosmological/cosmogonic picture. "Funny that you don't know that" as someone recently said.

The Medieval Christian/Catholic worldpicture is one that developed from it, or from a similar base, but they are not unconnected.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But I see you're so in love with conventional historicism you can't see past it. So I don't know what I can tell you, except that what you're saying bears no resemblance to Christ or His word.

I do not think you have enough clarity to understand what my concerns and interests are. It does seem plain however that there are whole areas outside of your purview.

Again, I try to describe what I understand your position to be (and the problem of ancient Christian metaphysics applied in Modernity) because we are all faced with the problem and the consequences of the problem. You have not responded to that problem and, as usual, you avoid it altogether.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Check it out for yourself, and you'll find I'm right. That's why I can quote Scripture copiously to support the claims I've advanced, and you cannot support your position at all by the same means.

On one level you guide this conversation insofar as I have to both see where you are situated, and am forced to conceptualize it as the picture it is, and then I respond to the fact that I see it as a picture, not as the truth the picture (may) contain.

You place me in a way in the position of having to *argue against the core stories of Christianity* but I do not regard the core messages as irrelevant! And that is why I say that logos supplants in this sense picture and the storified representation. None of this do you nor can you register.

Because you are, perceptually, locked into the Picture. There are advantages and there are disadvantages to moving beyond pictures.

[Alexis Jacobi]

double post

[Immanuel Can]

...the Story, as I understand it, and as I understand stories as a container and vehicle for truths, or ideas relevant to man's projects, and even at times for man's projects involving lies & manipulations; the Story (the Bible story and the Story of Christ's descent as an Avatar of God) has all sorts of truths embedded in it.

That's a poor answer.

Any "story" has "truths" within it. That's what makes a story coherent or believable. The problem is that some stories are mostly also false or misleading, and contain errors or untruths.

In fact, the most successful lie is bound to be the one with most evident truths in it, but only a nasty twist of falsehood in one crucial way.

So let me ask, for example, do you accept as truth that man fell, through some sort of error, from a heavenly realm of Divine protection down into a world whose ruler is said to be Satan, the chief fallen Angel?

Where, on Earth, do you get this narrative?

It's nothing I've ever heard of. "Man fell from heaven?" The Bible doesn't say that. Do you know what "Adam" means?

And what is a "realm of Divine Protection"?

Moreover, mankind fell through sin, not through a mere "error."

And man was already in the world, so couldn't "fall down into" any world.

??????