Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 4:04 pmAll you really have to be concerned about is whether or not there's any chance I'm right, and the Bible does say what I've showed you it says, and it is the Word of God speaking to you. But you've already said that's not possible, haven't you? So again, what's the source of the consternation?
Bottom line: If you're certain, if you don't mind staking your own future on that, then no harm done. But if you're wrong, I've done you the biggest favour I could possibly do a human being, by alerting you to the danger and telling you there's a way to avoid it, before it comes.
If I may
interject . . .
There is a whole range of questions about the facticity of all aspects of Christian belief just as the same is true for the beliefs and belief-systems of all religions. We have, in this thread, examined them in some depth. For example I make the assertion that an asserted religious construct (in this case the Christian construct) is a 'picture', but the picture is not the reality. Our
pictures (and this is so in a range of areas) may provide us with a general allusion, but they do not seem to give us factual pictures but rather storifed pictures that we *believe in* in differing degrees.
One of the facts about the Christian belief system, and the threat of hellish outcomes if thus-and-such is not done (or thus-and-such is done) is that it is and it has been part of a moral and ethical compulsion-system. Somewhat comparable to scaring children by saying some sort of monster will get them if they do not behave. The function of accentuations of hellish visions -- in Christianity, in Vedic religion, also in Buddhism -- also has a didactic function. For example in one Buddhist story those who were gluttons in life are pictured as suffering a hellish existence in a future life where they have exaggerated and insatiable appetites, and all the mechanism for mastication, but a throat with the diameter of a needle. So for all their chewing they can never get enough food down to satisfy them. Is this a 'true picture' of a future life? No matter what it has a
didactic function.
Christianity is expressed through a Story. You could say it is a fable. Or a mythology. But it is presented as an absolutely true set of events, as if it is a history. And it is the Story that the Occident has engaged with for well over 1,000 years. Europe was conquered and pacified, and civilized, through the use of these pictures and stories. and people received ideas (moral ideas, the sense of what is right and wrong) through entertaining the Pictures conveyed in the stories.
These are things that we know beyond doubt. One can examine religion through a sociological lens and, doing so, one quickly understand this function.
Your function, the function of your apologetics, can be examined similarly. But the belief-system that you are fronting (Evangelical Christian belief of a recent form and with tenets recently defined) must be seen as being part of a socio-political structure. Your brand of Christianity is a derivative of Christian Zionism and this Christian Zionism is, as I say, a recent concoction. It involves seeing the world, seeing events in our world, through the lens of Bible prophecy. But, it also involves taking steps and making choices that push forward or 'hasten' the realization and manifestation of what is prophesied. So for example Christian Zionism anteceded Jewish Zionism, though the hope of 'next year in Jerusalem' had always been part of Jewish liturgy.
Your brand of Christian Zionism has been held, in varying degrees, by 5-6 American presidents, and indeed (as all should know) a set of recent wars have been championed by Christian political factions. The way these beliefs are used or set in motion, has dramatic and very real consequences.
So one aspect of my opposition to you (and by *you* I mean Evangelical Christian Zionism) comes about because I see your belief-system
holistically. That is, as socio-political. Even though I might (and I certainly do) consider elements of the Christian Story as having metaphysical validity and relevance (I talk about this all the time) I find it very hard to join with mass-Christianity, of the sort that you are directly involved in, and in fact I find that I must reject the mass current of irrational, thoughtless 'following' that, in fact, I see you as representing.
So when you refer to a source of consternation I am interested in it as a question. In fact as a philosophical and a sociological question. You say you are a philosopher and you want to discuss the tenets of your Evangelism cooly and rationally. But the fact is that your belief, your religious fanaticism, is not philosophical! You simply select and insert Bible quotes and those Bible quotes are your argument.
But no one with a sound philosophical grounding could find in 'religious assertion' enough ground for defense of the idea presented. Very simple, religious belief, and the faith of religious belief, are part of another category of action and activity. And as I say, and this is factual and not fanciful, modern Evangelical Christianity is a socio-political movement. It can be compared, if it is done fairly, to the
same sort of fanatical belief that Islamists are known for. And when the ramifications, let us say, of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is considered, the consequences of the
influence of Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism in bringing about these events, pales the actions of most Islamist actions that we can name. Even if 9/11 is seen as exclusively as act of radical Islam, the loss of 3,000 lives in minuscule when compared to the social consequences of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
So, just to cite one example, there are solid grounds for
consternation.
The fact of the matter is that right now, all of us, are (in the sense that you employ the phrase) staking our lives on how we live our lives, that much is certain, but also how our complicity in existing systems (the systems of which we are inexorably a part) has moral consequences for us. The question is, then, how we choose to deal with issues of complicity? And what value-structure we apply to, say, minor sins and transgressions and to those transgressions of more major consequence. Because I know Harry I know that the largest part of his concerns lie with the larger aspects of complicity.
Born Again Christianity, Evangelical Christianity, and Evangelical Zionist Christianity (not to mention some of the Catholic factions) are all socio-political. Anyone with an Internet connection can find the websites and listen to the pastors and watch the amazing religious performances, the conversions, the tele-mystical show as it were. And one can see, very easily, that these fit into political and social machinations
of consequence.
So I thought I'd speak a bit about
consternation. [Alarm, dismay: a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay.]
Factually, you cause in me
consternation. You (again in the plural, mass-Christian sense) require a very careful examination. In no sense is your ideology merely neutral. It fits into a far larger picture.
You have no means to argue philosophically, for all the faux-assertions that your orientation is philosophical! At each crucial juncture all you do is to copy and paste a Bible quote. These comprise your 'argument'.
Now, the issue of 'judgment' either in the present (as moral realization, as self-reckoning), these can indeed be conversed philosophically. And it is also possible to converse philosophically the issue, or the possibility, of a reckoning in the face of the Divine (a Divine court as it were). The picture is a very old one, indeed an ancient one. The soul has to make an account of itself.
I will assume, perhaps presumptuously, that Harry can quite easily entertain the notion of
the soul's reckoning. I will also assume that he could grasp 'punishment' for a soul (a consequence applied by a divine authority). But what he
opposes, and what is non-consistent with the very essence of Christianity itself, is a sort of punishment that is eternal and, it would seem, based in an all-too-human vindictive mood. To capture his view (and mine as well) is not hard and yet you fail to capture it!
What I oppose, mostly, is not the essence of the notion of an eventual retribution, but rather that of the
manipulative compulsion that is so evident in the structure of belief that you represent. There are other aspects, too, and I have written them out carefully. You've commented on none of it.
Glorious and divine. Our stories are such intoxicating charades on the stage. We're playing it all out. Feel love for the drunken dance! And know we are one with all.