Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

...please do attempt to tack without cowardice.

Wow. So flattering. You really know how to get your discussion partner on your side.

I just know what a despicable coward U actually R

And you think that if you question my courage, then you'll force me to defend myself and capitulate to whatever you'd like?

Charming. Well, I've seen you. You posted your pic, remember? And I can tell you for sure, that you are nothing I would ever, ever have reason to be afraid of. And if you saw me, you'd know why.

But carry on.

U actually think this life you have...indeed everyones life...is their 1st incarnation of life within which to be judged..

Well, whether I "think" it or not, here's what God says:

"...it is destined for people to die once, and after this comes judgment..." (Heb. 9:27)

[Nick_A]

...please do attempt to tack without cowardice.

Wow. So flattering. You really know how to get your discussion partner on your side.

I have faith in Christ.

Ok, so I just made up a quote for you...

Yes. You did.

Why did you feel you wanted to do that? Have I not been clear enough on what I believe? Or did you feel you needed me to say something your way, so you could make a point?

Would you kill a man if this man was about to attack and possibly kill your wife or child?

Well, let me just answer that with Scripture:

“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and oppressed.” (Ps. 82:3)

Is it necessary to kill somebody to defend the weak? Maybe sometimes it is. Maybe at others, you can just disable him, or maybe even just prevent him from what he has in mind. Having not been in that situation, it's not for me to say what would be necessary. But the right thing to do is to defend those who cannot defend themselves. That's Biblical.

They give you this softball question in which you can say something truly thought provoking. Christendom asserts thou shalt not kill while Christianity asserts thou shalt not murder in the heart. Who recognizes the distinction and the importance of the difference between these two concepts? A person could write a book on this.

[attofishpi]

Wow. So flattering. You really know how to get your discussion partner on your side.

I just know what a despicable coward U actually R

And you think that if you question my courage, then...

If you had courage then I would have something to question. U R A COWARD in debating, a reflection of who U R. (true Christians through time are actual MEN)

Charming. Well, I've seen you. You posted your pic, remember? And I can tell you for sure, that you are nothing I would ever, ever have reason to be afraid of. And if you saw me, you'd know why.

Ooooh. I guess U have horns.

U actually think this life you have...indeed everyones life...is their 1st incarnation of life within which to be judged..

Well, whether I "think" it or not, here's what God says:

"...I suck attos cock, and after this comes judgment..." (Heb. 9:27)

I had no idea God wanted to suck my cock prior to judgment, thanks for that I am really looking forward to it.

However. Y do you think you can be judged based on YOUR incarnation on this life where others are born within much more dire circumstances...where their life decisions can be far worse than yours?...and U expect them to be judged equally.

[Immanuel Can]

They give you this softball question in which you can say something truly thought provoking. Christendom asserts thou shalt not kill while Christianity asserts thou shalt not murder in the heart. Who recognizes the distinction and the importance of the difference between these two concepts? A person could write a book on this.

Well, I think he thought he was winding up for some kind of beanball. My guess is that he imagined that I'd have to say, "Kill him," and then he'd try to say, "That's murder! You're not having faith in Christ," or something equally absurd.

But yes, it was soft. And that just shows you how little some folks know about the Scriptures they set out to insult. They think the Bible must think with the simplicity with which they, themselves, think. And they don't even consider that in attacking it, they're attacking the very book that has given them the whole basis of Western civilization, jurisprudence, ethics, culture and literature, as if it were a light and easy thing to debunk. And when they do, they're insulting their own ancestors, too. For it was their forefathers who used that great resource to structure whole sets of institutions, ideas, projects, values and so on, of which these light thinkers were the easy inheritors.

Take Harry. He's oblivious to the fact that any conception of "justice," or any potential that he's entitled to expect "justice" is totally derived from his upbringing in a Christian-shaped culture. There's no promise of "justice" from Evolutionism, or from Humanism, or from Social Darwinism, or Materialism, or Physicalism, or Quantum Physics...these things have no view of what "justice" is, and absolutely no interest in legitimizing any such thing as "justice." So Harry's unconscously borrowing from the Bible in order to try to criticize the God of the Bible. And he doesn't even know he is.

But Harry believes in "justice." For him, it's such a deeply buried concept in his psyche that he thinks it's just obvious. But nothing from the natural or material world makes it so. He's sitting on the shoulders of the theologians and Biblical writers, priding himself on his individual wisdom, and imaginging that "justice" as an idea just came to him floating on the wind, rather than handed to him from a tradition that is totally Biblical.

That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

[Immanuel Can]

If you had courage ...

Ah, hit a sore spot, did we?

[attofishpi]

If you had courage ...

Ah, hit a sore spot, did we?

Yeah, me and Christ despise faithless cowards.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What god do you believe in, then?

Why are you interested?

Because if you believe in "a god," but not the God, the God of the Bible, I'd be interested in knowing who that is.

The question is really a very good one. But the asker of the question is a very bad asker. Yet since the question is a worthy one I'll share some of my thoughts on the matter.

I cannot describe to you *which god* or *what god* I recognize because, in my view, one can only have experiences in the living of life that provide something like hints or something like senses of what it is that speaks back to one, communicates with one. It is all about communication. You or I could read descriptions, or see the myriad images and symbol-complexes that are used as tools to describe (to someone) what *god* is, and we could refer to the god of Christianity, of Islam, of the Vedic religions -- but none of this would be of much use to a person who is inclined to "know god' (or have some sort of relationship with whatever we mean when we employ that term.)

Frankly, I think that many people do rely on, and likely must rely on, the *picture* that is provided (the symbol-complex) for them to be able to conceive of what they are referring to. Their *relationship* remains a sort of social observance with a theological element. But the essential thing is that any given person, in various different contexts (Europe, the USA, India, China, etc) can only approach *god* through the set of concepts and images that are part of their social context. So as I often say: We approach life, the world, god, our conception of *where we are located* (i.e. within a cosmos) through our imagined world: the picture that we hold in our imagination. But it should be obvious that that is only a picture, a sort of interface.

There is another dimension and it is one that we contact, or sense, not through our conscious conception or a rational description, but on other, inner levels. So for example a person who is engaged with god, and with spiritual life, will have dreams that contain messaging, content, indications, or perhaps 'omens' is a proper word. And with that term (which I have to borrow from an existing language-pool) a very interesting idea presents itself. One is said to *step onto a spiritual path* or enter into it. This is certainly true for any practitioner including a Christian one. The tales, the anecdotes, are legion. One prays, things happen. One acts prayerfully (again I have to use the terms that are available in our language-pool) and 'something responds'. It might come through people (something someone says) or events (something happens) or in myriad different ways. But one knows when *it* happens.

These are mere allusions, traces or outlines of how people experience that which you refer to when you use the word *god* (which of course you capitalize for convention's sake). My view is that all people who are involved in these paths, when they share what their experiences are, will speak in similar terms. But the core issue here is that by entering onto what we call *a path* (language conventions) that what is experienced is not experienced through discursive, rational processes, but through experience. And what they experience is is very hard to strictly categorize. It is also difficult, even potentially impossible, to share one's experience with someone else. The reason should be obvious.

To ask "What god do you believe in?" is, to my mind, the question of an ignoramus. You will reject, and you can only reject (no other option exists for you!) everything that I have said here. Because what I am describing (you will say and you must say) is not Jesus of Nazareth nor the Holy Spirit but something else, something which you (as Christian and as one deeply embedded in Hebrew Idea Imperialism) must designate as pagan and also as 'satanic'. This is your problem really but it is not an incomprehensible one to me. I understand what your operative conception is and why you have it.

Now, with that said I must clarify: to be involved with Christianity and to some extent Judaism (though it very much depends on what branch of Judaism and also how Christianized the Jew has become) will involve one in an idea-pool that has to do a great deal more with the ethics of day-to-day behavior because this focus is a strong tendency in the Occidental traditions. I only have experience with the Vedic religions (and one in particular: Vaishnavism) so I cannot speak for Islam or Taoism or any other. To be involved with our Occidental traditions, and religiously, is to involve oneself in the entire Occidental pool or ideas and concerns. So the 'manifestations of god' will manifest in terms of the quality of one's relationships in the family or between friends. The notion of 'love' (the marriage sacrament but also social 'love' and justice) are accentuated in the Occident. But again these differences have to do with 'locality' and also 'context'.

And what I am speaking about here is intuitively obvious.

As Occidentals we cannot, in my view (nor should we wish to) escape or remove ourselves from our *cultural trajectory*. To have been born into it is like being born, if you will, into a family. We will not ever be able to *escape* or side-step a great deal of what has come through to us through the Christian (or Judaic) traditions. But at the same time we cannot escape from or side-step the mythic dimension that is Greek (the reality of the Greek gods as pictures of internal and external processes) and which 'came alive' again through modern psychology (Jung).

So people have ventured forth on new paths. The paths bring forward new views, new conceptions, new experiences, new language-forms to express it.

I do not present my own conceptions here as a path for anyone to follow necessarily. It is just a description of what my experience has been.

Do I not believe in "the god of the Bible'? I definitely do not believe in Yahweh of the OT. Because the conception is ugly and brutal. I would go with what the Gnostics have said: this is a demiurge. But the god that Jesus of the NT refers to is, in fact, a very different entity! A very different set of possibilities. The concept of god that it could be said that Jesus spoke of, I would submit, is more in line with what I have spoken of here! So it is not possible to say *I do not believe in that god*.

There is of course more that could be said on this topic. It is indeed germane to this present conversation.

[Nick_A]

They give you this softball question in which you can say something truly thought provoking. Christendom asserts thou shalt not kill while Christianity asserts thou shalt not murder in the heart. Who recognizes the distinction and the importance of the difference between these two concepts? A person could write a book on this.

Well, I think he thought he was winding up for some kind of beanball. My guess is that he imagined that I'd have to say, "Kill him," and then he'd try to say, "That's murder! You're not having faith in Christ," or something equally absurd.

But yes, it was soft. And that just shows you how little some folks know about the Scriptures they set out to insult. They think the Bible must think with the simplicity with which they, themselves, think. And they don't even consider that in attacking it, they're attacking the very book that has given them the whole basis of Western civilization, jurisprudence, ethics, culture and literature, as if it were a light and easy thing to debunk. And when they do, they're insulting their own ancestors, too. For it was their forefathers who used that great resource to structure whole sets of institutions, ideas, projects, values and so on, of which these light thinkers were the easy inheritors.

Take Harry. He's oblivious to the fact that any conception of "justice," or any potential that he's entitled to expect "justice" is totally derived from his upbringing in a Christian-shaped culture. There's no promise of "justice" from Evolutionism, or from Humanism, or from Social Darwinism, or Materialism, or Physicalism, or Quantum Physics...these things have no view of what "justice" is, and absolutely no interest in legitimizing any such thing as "justice." So Harry's unconscously borrowing from the Bible in order to try to criticize the God of the Bible. And he doesn't even know he is.

But Harry believes in "justice." For him, it's such a deeply buried concept in his psyche that he thinks it's just obvious. But nothing from the natural or material world makes it so. He's sitting on the shoulders of the theologians and Biblical writers, priding himself on his individual wisdom, and imaginging that "justice" as an idea just came to him floating on the wind, rather than handed to him from a tradition that is totally Biblical.

That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

There is something in the truths of religious princIples that compels many to attack them with negative emotions.

Matthew 16: 23

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

People try to judge Christianity by human standards which can't be done so devolve it into Christendom. What I find disturbing is most cannot contemplate it but just drift into secular condemnation. Why? Is it just stupidity or something else even more dangerous?

[Nick_A]

They give you this softball question in which you can say something truly thought provoking. Christendom asserts thou shalt not kill while Christianity asserts thou shalt not murder in the heart. Who recognizes the distinction and the importance of the difference between these two concepts? A person could write a book on this.

Well, I think he thought he was winding up for some kind of beanball. My guess is that he imagined that I'd have to say, "Kill him," and then he'd try to say, "That's murder! You're not having faith in Christ," or something equally absurd.

But yes, it was soft. And that just shows you how little some folks know about the Scriptures they set out to insult. They think the Bible must think with the simplicity with which they, themselves, think. And they don't even consider that in attacking it, they're attacking the very book that has given them the whole basis of Western civilization, jurisprudence, ethics, culture and literature, as if it were a light and easy thing to debunk. And when they do, they're insulting their own ancestors, too. For it was their forefathers who used that great resource to structure whole sets of institutions, ideas, projects, values and so on, of which these light thinkers were the easy inheritors.

Take Harry. He's oblivious to the fact that any conception of "justice," or any potential that he's entitled to expect "justice" is totally derived from his upbringing in a Christian-shaped culture. There's no promise of "justice" from Evolutionism, or from Humanism, or from Social Darwinism, or Materialism, or Physicalism, or Quantum Physics...these things have no view of what "justice" is, and absolutely no interest in legitimizing any such thing as "justice." So Harry's unconscously borrowing from the Bible in order to try to criticize the God of the Bible. And he doesn't even know he is.

But Harry believes in "justice." For him, it's such a deeply buried concept in his psyche that he thinks it's just obvious. But nothing from the natural or material world makes it so. He's sitting on the shoulders of the theologians and Biblical writers, priding himself on his individual wisdom, and imaginging that "justice" as an idea just came to him floating on the wind, rather than handed to him from a tradition that is totally Biblical.

That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

There is something in the truths of religious princIples that compels many to attack them with negative emotions.

Matthew 16: 23

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

People try to judge Christianity by human standards which can't be done so devolve it into Christendom. What I find disturbing is most cannot contemplate it but just drift into secular condemnation. Why? Is it just stupidity or something else even more dangerous?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Immanuel wrote: That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

Well, if you want my opinion, you have just committed a hack-job on Harry. Very unfair and very inaccurate.

[Immanuel Can]

Why are you interested?

Because if you believe in "a god," but not the God, the God of the Bible, I'd be interested in knowing who that is.

The question is really a very good one. But the asker of the question is a very bad asker. Yet since the question is a worthy one I'll share some of my thoughts on the matter.

Yes, thank you for condescending to do so.

I cannot describe to you *which god* or *what god* I recognize...

Oh. Well, that was a short answer. The rest was irrelevant.

Still, not surprising.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel wrote: That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

Well, if you want my opinion...

Thank you, no...I've found it to be very windy, and not at all worth the read.

[Nick_A]

Immanuel wrote: That is the situation of many who were raised in Western civilization. Theyr'e oblivious to where they've come from, and to the inherited values that have made their own concerns even cogent to them. They think they invented themselves.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

Well, if you want my opinion, you have just committed a hack-job on Harry. Very unfair and very inaccurate.

No. There is something in the truths of religious princIples that compels many to attack them with negative emotions.

Matthew 16: 23
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

People try to judge Christianity by human standards which can't be done so devolve it into Christendom. What I find disturbing is most cannot contemplate it but just drift into secular condemnation. Why? Is it just stupidity or something else even more dangerous?

I see this exists in the world and the reason the Christ had to die as he did. Is it wrong of me to ponder why this has to happen rather then join the parade of negative condemnation? There are some questions more important in pursuit of wisdom than being concerned over insulting someone.

[Harbal]

People try to judge Christianity by human standards

That's probably because most people are human, Nick.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh. Well, that was a short answer. The rest was irrelevant.

Naturally and obviously I knew that no part of what I'd say would be intelligible to you! Your value to me is that I have been able to clarify my ideas in relation to your extremely limited conceptions.

I do condescend to you when I say *thank you*. You did not mean to yet you've been of extraordinary help.

Thank you, no...I've found it to be very windy, and not at all worth the read.

I was not addressing you. I was addressing Nick.

Immanuel: no conversation is possible with you. You are a total religious fanatic. All avenues are blocked off. You are the subject of a larger conversation here, not a participant in it.