Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

This raises the question if man and organic life is the cause of consciousness

Not possible.

Men are contingent beings. Consciousness is manifest in entities that lived before any particular man did, and will be manifest after every particular man or woman is long dead. So no particular person can be the source or creator of consciousness itself.

Quite true. Then do you agree that man is a receiver of consciousness rather then a creator of consciousness?

He has to be. There's no way that man himself can be the source of his own existence. That much is obvious, I would say. And in the same way, there's no way he can be the originator of mind as a phenomenon. He's a contingent, transient being.

[promethean75]

what we can only mean is that man does not exist by necessity. even tho he is an effect and necessarily determined by the order of things, he could have just as well not existed.

saying that if he exists, he must be caused is quite difderent that saying he must exist. so determined but contingent.

substance, on the other hand, which is what ever at the most fundamental level constitutes what occupies some space, does by necessity exist, because 'nothing' is incomprehensible lest you posit a transcendent creator that made everything out of nothing... and that is riddled with its own set of problems.

i think sumthing has to exist. 'why not nuthing?' does not occur to me. because there IS sumthing, i think it, or some form of that fundamental whateveritis that constitutes matter and energy, has always existed and isn't subject to the forces and behaviors of smaller local systems that are steady losing energy. not a subject of entropy and as such doesn't ever approach non-existence. i dunno man mebbe a photon is god. one billion billion years it takes one to decay. for all intents and purposes, i think that's quite long enough. hell even I'd wanna die after all that. tough life, the photon.

somebody asks a photon how his day was. lol, his 'day'. you got some nerve pal. 

(to be read with the pseudo-italian accent of a guy named Angelo mebbe from the Bronx)

[Belinda]

In the sense that 'two' cares that one plus one equals it

The universe does not care, but animals especially humans care.The universe does not create harmony/order. Animals and plants create harmony/order.

What does that have to do with my comment??

Sorry Veggie, nothing actually. I'm not good at arithmetic and stuff. I did not understand your comment , but your post was the latest that pertained to Immanuel's latest intransigence.

[BigMike]

what we can only mean is that man does not exist by necessity. even tho he is an effect and necessarily determined by the order of things, he could have just as well not existed.

saying that if he exists, he must be caused is quite difderent that saying he must exist. so determined but contingent.

substance, on the other hand, which is what ever at the most fundamental level constitutes what occupies some space, does by necessity exist, because 'nothing' is incomprehensible lest you posit a transcendent creator that made everything out of nothing... and that is riddled with its own set of problems.

i think sumthing has to exist. 'why not nuthing?' does not occur to me. because there IS sumthing, i think it, or some form of that fundamental whateveritis that constitutes matter and energy, has always existed and isn't subject to the forces and behaviors of smaller local systems that are steady losing energy. not a subject of entropy and as such doesn't ever approach non-existence. i dunno man mebbe a photon is god. one billion billion years it takes one to decay. for all intents and purposes, i think that's quite long enough. hell even I'd wanna die after all that. tough life, the photon.

somebody asks a photon how his day was. lol, his 'day'. you got some nerve pal. 

(to be read with the pseudo-italian accent of a guy named Angelo mebbe from the Bronx)

Have you been drinking?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

The universe does not care, but animals especially humans care.The universe does not create harmony/order. Animals and plants create harmony/order.

What does that have to do with my comment??

Sorry Veggie, nothing actually. I'm not good at arithmetic and stuff. I did not understand your comment , but your post was the latest that pertained to Immanuel's latest intransigence.

He has everything arse about face because he's a religious maniac.
I suppose it's like when someone dies, the universe ceases to exist for that person. IC seems to think that's the same as saying the universe is 'caring' about us

[Dontaskme]

What does that have to do with my comment??

Sorry Veggie, nothing actually. I'm not good at arithmetic and stuff. I did not understand your comment , but your post was the latest that pertained to Immanuel's latest intransigence.

He has everything arse about face because he's a religious maniac.
I suppose it's like when someone dies, the universe ceases to exist for that person. IC seems to think that's the same as saying the universe is 'caring' about us

It’s a bit like that, caring…as if the universe cares about the missing Aliens and Martians

FLIP side is… nothing is missing. Everything is presence…isn’t that correct MR Can

[Alexis Jacobi]

So tragic the way religious brainwashing stunts developing minds and moulds them into stupid, shallow shells of adults

I agree. I find it not only tragic but also terrifying. Christians increasingly resemble the Taliban in my eyes. They are completely insane, as though they never attended school. They are living in the dark ages.

To say "they are completely insane" is a misleading exaggeration so it seems that we would have to come up with a more judicious assessment. There is an interesting book by Harold Bloom called The American Religion:

In this fascinating work of religious criticism, Harold Bloom examines a number of American-born faiths: Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Southern Baptism and Fundamentalism, and African American spirituality. He traces the distinctive features of American religion while asking provocative questions about the role religion plays in American culture and in each American's concept of his or her relationship to God. Bloom finds that our spiritual beliefs provide an exact portrait of our national character.

Bloom is (was, he died recently) a Jewish literary critic who described himself as a "gnostic' but I never quite understood what he meant by that. In any case he desribes his approach to the study of these branches of American Christianity (which are completely American innovations just as so much in America is innovational) and employs an adaption of literary-criticism analysis to religious-criticism analysis. Not a condemnatory approach necessarily but one where they are examined on their own terms as if, say, they were *novels*. It is not a bad book.

He listed his own bibliography of the best studies of these American religions and a few of them I myself got hold of. One was particularly revealing: Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. If you are not aware Pentecostalism has been literally sweeping the world. All throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia the Pentecostal movements spreads like wild-fire. You might be interested in Peter Berger's assessment (he is a sociologist of religion and wrote The Social Construction of Reality. Here is speaks about the completely unexpected rise of Pentecostalism and other charismatic religions (like Islam).

These (allow me to call them) deviant and innovative American Christian religious forms cannot be understood except through seeing them as rising up out of American fabric. Meaning, they are just as strange, wonderfully innovative (in the sense of strange/wonderful) and as deeply expressive of American psychology. The origins of Pentecostalism, the roots, go back to before the American Civil War. But it must be understood that true Pentecostalism arose, as the title suggests, among 'dispossessed classes'. They deviated out of mainstream American Protestantism which was wealth and social-status oriented and took on aspects of social activism and anti-establishmentarianism. It was prior to the turn of the 20th century (late 1800s) that a sort of Pentecostal Social-Gospel movement with many links to political progressivism and social reform.

One thing I'd draw to your attention is that the various forms of radical American progressivism, though those that comprise it may no longer have a link to a religious movement or a church, nevertheless carry on in a manner that is quite like religious fanaticism. So when you say "Christians increasingly resemble the Taliban in my eyes" (and I agree, at least in part) I suggest that one needs to understand the rather scary and extremely bizarre events of our present day (political and social crisis in America with no clear sense where it is going or how much more explosive it will become) in the context of American post-Christianity. Post-Christianity and Post-Christians may have a limited or a tenuous relationship with a specific active Church. But what interests me is the 'social hysterical' aspect. There are currents, and undercurrents, that operate psychologically in people even in their post-Christian state and condition.

I feel that we need to take many steps back and actually prepare ourselves better in order to be able to understand what is going on in our present (the crazy, bizarre stuff) but at the same time see that we are not, not necessarily, outside of contamination (if you will permit the use of that word). Social hysteria is a thing unto itself.

Please let me know your thoughts.

[attofishpi]

Sorry Veggie, nothing actually. I'm not good at arithmetic and stuff. I did not understand your comment , but your post was the latest that pertained to Immanuel's latest intransigence.

He has everything arse about face because he's a religious maniac.
I suppose it's like when someone dies, the universe ceases to exist for that person. IC seems to think that's the same as saying the universe is 'caring' about us

Sorry to have to jump in with my outside of the norm box of fortitude of thought, but atheist thought that you are born once, you exist, and you die to never exist again, although at times I have wished for that last contemplation, it is extremely shallow and short of sight when considering the plausibile nature of physics (of which we are entwined) in comprehension of recursion of matter through time.

[Immanuel Can]

IC seems to think that's the same as saying the universe is 'caring' about us

I can see you don't get metaphors. I'll be more literal.

An accidental universe has no teleology in it. Accidents don't "mean" anything. They aren't oriented or disciplined toward particular goals or ends. They have no structural coherence, and no tendency toward particular outcomes. They're random, in terms of results.

That's what makes them "accidents." If they "meant" something, or were structured toward some particular outcome, then they'd be "on purposes."

But you've got a world that makes sense, or to use the terms stipulated by others, "is harmonized." And "harmonized" with that, you've got knowing agents who can decode and read that harmony.

That doesn't look one bit "accidental." It looks teleological.

That's the fact you have to explain.

[Nick_A]

AJ

One thing I'd draw to your attention is that the various forms of radical American progressivism, though those that comprise it may no longer have a link to a religious movement or a church, nevertheless carry on in a manner that is quite like religious fanaticism. So when you say "Christians increasingly resemble the Taliban in my eyes" (and I agree, at least in part) I suggest that one needs to understand the rather scary and extremely bizarre events of our present day (political and social crisis in America with no clear sense where it is going or how much more explosive it will become) in the context of American post-Christianity. Post-Christianity and Post-Christians may have a limited or a tenuous relationship with a specific active Church. But what interests me is the 'social hysterical' aspect. There are currents, and undercurrents, that operate psychologically in people even in their post-Christian state and condition.

I feel that we need to take many steps back and actually prepare ourselves better in order to be able to understand what is going on in our present (the crazy, bizarre stuff) but at the same time see that we are not, not necessarily, outside of contamination (if you will permit the use of that word). Social hysteria is a thing unto itself.

Please let me know your thoughts.

One thing this thread has vivified for me is the inability to distinguish between an individual and a collective. I thought it was surprising that so many cannot distinguish between women and a woman. Then I learned that it is the same with Christianity. Only a few can distinguish between Christianity and Christendom.

Are all women the same? Are all Christians the same? For many they are. We don't know what a woman is so call them all the same as women. We don't know what a Christian is so call them all the same as expressions of Christendom.

George Orwell discusses the individual and the collective in his book 1984

Through 1984, Winston tries to assert his individual nature against the collective identity the Party wishes him to adopt. He keeps a diary, engages in a sexual relationship, and insists that his version of reality is truth, as opposed to what the Party says. Instead of participating in social groups, he wanders the prole areas alone and seeks solitude in his apartment, engaging in behavior the Party calls ownlife and considers dangerous.

To distinguish in this way requires an awareness of objective quality. But how many in this day and age can distinguish between objective quality and subjective quality defined by the Great Beast or society itself? It has become an alien concept revealing a dying society ripe for tyranny.

[promethean75]

but there is no such problem as 'accidental or not' because a godless universe wouldn't be by accident, either.. there is no god intending or purposing nature to be a certain way in the first place, so there couldn't be any accidents, see. a non-teleological eternal and or infinitely spaced area called a somethingverse couldn't be thought of as on purpose or by accident. this pseudo-problem is produced through an anthropomorphism. we're talking about the somethingverse in a meaningless way.

causally structured and ordered but neither by accident or design.

[Immanuel Can]

...a godless universe wouldn't be by accident, either.

It would have to be. There's no alternative. If there is any "purposer" behind such a universe, it's not "accidental" at all. It's purposed. If there is any "hand" that guides it, we would no longer have an accidental universe. If there is any "law" that governs it, we would have to account for the spontaneous existence of a "law" (or "harmony") that had to be produced by sheer happening, sheer accident.

But accidents (or "mere happenings") if you prefer, do not produce order.

So let's try an experiment. Go and take a stack of papers...let's say a hundred or so. Take them up on your roof, and throw them off until the spell out the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

That's not, strictly speaking, an "accident," because you, a volitional agent, will be performing and observing the experiment. And it's not enough papers, because the number of molecules in the early universe has to have been astronomically higher -- but both of those facts just stack the odds against me, not against you. So I'm giving you every advantage.

Now, why won't you try that experiment?

That's a serious question. I'm looking for an answer, not making a rhetorical claim. Why would you be foolish to go on the roof and throw off that stack of paper until the expected result was achieved?

[promethean75]

Jesus Can think about what yer sayin.

There can't be any accidents unless there is a purpose set for the thing in the first place.

In the case that there is no god, the universe wouldn't then be by accident, precisely because there is no purpose for it.

A universe that was an accident would have to be a universe that some god messed up on or whatever. And a god would have to exist for that to happen. God does not exist. Ergo, the universe can't be an accident.

A universe existing while there being no god would not suffer this consequence.

[Immanuel Can]

There can't be any accidents unless there is a purpose set for the thing in the first place.

Semantics. Check your dictionary. "Accident" is also a synonym for "happening," as in the sentence, "It is an accident of nature that this chimp was born blind," or "This rock fell as a result of the accidents of techtonics and gravity." It just means that something happened by way of nothing but chance.

Clearer now?

Now, are you going to say that the universe did not come into existence through the mechanism of chance? Because if you're going to say that it was not that kind of "accident," you really are going to have to say what mechanism DID create it.

[promethean75]

Frankly dear I not sure the universe 'came into' existence at all. We already went through this months ago, mate, with the brief exchange about the big bang and other competing cosmological theories.

Plus if the big bang were true and there wuz a god that made it happen, we'd not know anything more about the nature of this God then that arbitrary fact. As it would stand, we'd have a theoretical cause to which we'd assign some agency and then, as Feuerbach explained, set out designing a profile for this God based on and possessing the same features as us. Intelligence, Compassion, Purpose. Etc.

So u kan't make the move that quickly into the monotheistic theological interpretation of the nature of a would-be God. We have absolutely no intel on that and wouldn't therefore advance a theory. We're professionals, IC. Now act like one.