Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Do you accept - for the purposes of my argument - the definition that, with inspiration from hq, I have constructed and shared?

It's far too vague to be functional in any way.

Though you say you consider it to be too vague, do you otherwise consider it to be wrong?

Not so far as it goes...it just doesn't "go" very far.

It has no definition of "proportionality."

What is, for example, "proportionality"?

The simple idea that any harmful effects involved in the righting of a wrong should be commensurate

"Commensurate" is just a synonym for "proportional." What we need is a sense of what is being "proportioned" to what, so we can see if they are "commensurate" or not.

If I say, "I have two quanitities in mind, and they are proportional," then what has to be your next question to me, if you want to know whether or not I'm right?

You can't read my mind, of course. And I can't expect you to already know what quantities I have in mind. You have to ask, "What are the quantities?"

So what are we comparing to what? How much of X is required in order to "be commensurate" with Y?"

But let me guess: next you're going to ask me to define "commensurate", "significantly", and "harm"

Absolutely.

And you know I will, because it's exactly what any sensible person would have to ask. So it's not hard to anticipate.

[*] 2. God condemns to eternal (infinite), unimaginable torment any person who, in living his/her finite life, has sinned and/or whose disposition has been one of constitutional alienation from and hatred of God, and refused to accept Jesus Christ as his/her saviour [Christian premise].

Also no good.

By which I understand you to mean "False".

No, I mean "confused." The rest of my response said why.

It attempts to paint man's eternal destiny merely as a product of some kind of arbitrary divine fiat

"Merely" or not, "arbitrary" or not, it is, on your Christian view, the consequence of a divine fiat.

Let's be precise.

The natural consequences of any action are established by the principle of justice, which is grounded in the character of God Himself. That's not arbitrary; God could not "make it otherwise." He is who He is. Always.

For that reason, you have to be careful with the word "omnipotence," if you want to make a true statement. There are most certainly things God cannot do, and the Bible gives us some of them. It says He cannot lie, cannot tempt, cannot fail his promises, cannot be untrue to Himself, cannot break His word...not through something like "incapacity," but through the fact that He alone, being the Supreme Being, never has to violate his own character.

Alone of all beings, He always has the power to be who He is. Mankind does not. Men lie because they cannot afford to be honest. Men break their word because they are treacherous or afraid. Men tempt each other because they are corrupt. God does none of these things, because nothing is capable of inducing Him to violate the integrity of His character.

And God is just, too. Men are not able to be, because they lack information, wisdom and a sense of genuine proportionality. They don't know what's "commensurate," even when they think they do, because they don't see everything for what it actually is.

So if being the only Being in the universe with sufficient power and wisdom to always act in accordance with His own character is what we mean by "omnipotence," then God is ominpotent. But if we mean "able to do irrational or wicked things," then we cannot use that predication of God. The Bible says He does not do any such thing.

it being the natural product of a particular person having freely chosen to hate God, to love evil, and to choose the option of having no relationship with God.

There's nothing "natural" about being thrown into a Lake of Fire

It's a choice. What's natural is that mankind is granted free choice. And free choice entails the freedom to choose the right or the wrong, or to choose the wise or the foolish, or to choose the vitalizing or the corrupting, to choose the healthy or the self-destructive.

It also confuses action with nature, and both with the terms of salvation, as if it were an "and/or" case...which theologically, it's obviously not. There's no "or," and it's not "and." These are different aspects of a single situation called being "dead in sin."

This seems quibbling, and nothing like a fatal criticism, but feel free to suggest an amended wording which satisfies you.

I don't think I can fix for you what you've constructed. You've confused terms that simply don't belong together. For example, one is not condemned for transgressions or for failing to have a relationship with God, anymore than one dies from having a tumor or cancer. The two are part of the same larger condition, not options.

But I've said in my longer earlier message what is the right way, I believe, to think about it. You can certainly refer to that for what I believe is a somewhat more well-rounded account of what "sin" is. And I won't even tell you that I know the whole of it: for the Bible calls sin a "mystery," meaning a thing hard-to-understand, that can only be fully and properly understood from the spiritual perspective. And if that's right, it means that any account -- including my own -- is bound to fall somewhat short of the whole horror of the thing...at least until all is eventually revealed; for in Scripture, that is what "mystery" means; not a permanent unknowable, but a difficult temporarily-unknown.

But that's a basic of "justice" too: the Judge (or jury) must have all the information, first. Otherwise, any determination is potentially errant and unjust. And who has that sort of knowledge? Not me; and, I suspect, not you.

If you don't want God, the Source of everything good, what do you think there is left to get? That's what "hell" is.

It is not that your antagonists "don't want God..."

Actually, it is. (See also Romans 1: 18-28)

However, in practice, you won't have to go very far back in these threads to find somebody saying to me, "I want nothing to do with God." Some you will even find expressing things harshly and deliberately blasphemously here, usually in the hopes of inducing some visceral reaction, as if enthusiastically provoking God, challenging Him to do anything about their insolence, and defying Him to perform sufficient parlour tricks before their eyes, in order to justify His existence to them. Such things are not rare.

So yes, men all the time "don't want God," by their own account.

But where are you, on that? You, yourself, want to accuse God of injustice, it seems to me; I don't think the implication is that you are yearning to know Him, and so are asking Him in faith to give you some wisdom about how His justice works...is it? Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem your tone inflects that way. It seems like what you are saying is, "I want a reason I can hold onto not to believe in God; and accusing Him of injustice will work for me." But you can say otherwise, if otherwise it is.

There is a different attitude possible, of course, and some people take it. So while some people challenge God out of anger or spite, others raise the same sorts of hard questions in order to understand, and perhaps to know God.

Those are not the same; and God does not treat them the same. Biblically speaking, the former gets nothing from Him, and the latter gets answers.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That is where the error is, in my understanding. It is not that some or many of the ideas alluded to are not relevant -- indeed they are extremely important and valuable. Yet the same is true in many different religious and philosophical systems. This is what men who have broadened their perspectives through better *seeing* have come to understand.

Amusing.

On a threat about "Christianity," AJ doesn't want to know about Christianity.

All along I have said that I am here for my own purposes. Everyone else certainly defines their own. It is really the best course on fora like this. What I feel necessary to say to you is that I do not think you really know *what Christianity is*. You are so deeply enmeshed with your own belief- and assertion-system that you are incapable of seeing yourself. You lose, in fact you are slaughtered, in every debate in which you engage. You, Immanuel Can, cannot reason. You cannot dialog. You cannot converse. All that you do (I have said this many times) is insist that your Christian view, based as it is on a decision you made at some point in time, is to accept religious fanaticism and to make it the very foundation of your self. I suggest that when you are seen in this way that a light goes on. The light illuminates a great deal more than the (ridiculous) rehearsal of your inane self within these conversations. People converse with you, or try to, and you can only participate in pseudo-conversation. You represent to me *the shadows on the wall of the cave*. But there is an illuminating Sun.

Therefore and because this is true your effect (on me) has been to cause me to recoil back into areas of thought, assessment, consideration and exploration that I'd not have begun if I'd not had this encounter with you.

We use the term *Christianity* as if we are describing one thing. The word itself is terribly misleading. It is myriad different things. There are modern Christian thinkers who no longer seem to depend on the rigid picture that, in former times, comprised the cosmological base of the worldpicture that is that of Christian belief (the great chain of being). They seem to work with immediate ethical issues -- and their work is relevant and very worthwhile. On the other end of a spectrum there are those who are Biblical literalists -- like you -- and who fight like junkyard dogs to preserve a specific, rigid picture, and to imply that they (you and people like you) possess Christianity and can define it to all others. This is where you are located Immanuel.

But to cut to the chase, and I am not sure this is apparent, my real area of concern is not with Christianity but rather with Judaism. My studies are on-going as this conversation proceeds. And you don't need to guess that, having grown up on the fringes of Reform Judaism, that when I confront the rigidity (Hebrew idea-imperialism) that is so much a part of you I am forced to examine that elements that operates at the very core of Judaism. This all dovetails into entire realms of consideration that pertain to our present -- which is to say the last 150 years or so. My interest is really contemporary society and contemporary events.

As always I just make an effort, at each juncture, to clarify why I am here and what I am up to.

You (you as a sort of prototypical extremely rigid Evangelical) interest me not in any personal sense but because you provide a way to see those who think, see and interpret like you do. Recently, you referenced a selection from Revelations (a most unreliable and late Christian text) as if it described real things! Doing that, you showed me that you are invested in believing mad things. You do not have to stop doing that, but I certainly must refuse to *believe* mad things. Therefore, the entire structure of your lunatic belief-system is brought itno question.

But not, as I say, the higher realm of incorporeal metaphysical *idea*. As I clearly state it is only in that *area* that we should focus our attention. The ridiculous child-pictures that you have invested your entire being in (!) need to be jettisoned. That is by 'mature people'. But saying this I do know that many many people literally anchor their very selves in this world through their *pictures*. And when they are taken away they suffer. This is a problem. We (mature, responsible people) are duty-bound to push through and deflate what must be deflated. But we must understand that many other people cannot do this.

It seems the only kind AJ can accept is some benign and gelded "Christendom," one that essentially means nothing in particular, but rather stands for vague metaphors "true in many different religious and philosophical sytems." That's the only thing that makes them "relevant," he says.

Here what you are saying is that the Christian platform you define is based on strict rules and regulations. This I certainly understand. And all that I can say to you is that the same is true within other religious-cultural systems. For example Vaishnavism and Vedanta generally. In my view a study of the Bhagavad-Gita and its structured notion of right action and wrong action within the field of life can illuminate and open to better understanding the cosmological picture on which Christian (and Hebrew) belief is based. And in truth the Vedic system makes even more demands on the individual practitioner, at least in certain areas. Yet I have always said, and I do believe, that the Greco-Christian (Greco-Hebraic) system of ethics has in many ways a different and a sharper focus (notably on the issue of social justice).

And nor would I deny that when you say that I seem to advocate for "some benign and gelded "Christendom," (this is a misrepresentation of things I have said which you latched onto a while back) that there is not an element of truthfulness in what happens when people abandon a rigid and defining religious structure. But this leads to the real issue: that I must, and you must, and all of us must come to the point where we assume responsibility for all that we do, think, and believe. And if I (or anyone) will no longer live in accord with former institutional values (let's refer to sexual morality, a big one today) it is the individual person that must accept that he is defining what values to live by. This is where Nietzsche's view of a mature person defining their values, selecting among the possibilities, becomes acutely relevant.

One then becomes a responsible actor, one's own agent, and no longer the slave of an external power. And that is where most who populate this forum find themselves: making their own decisions in a more genuine moral sense. And in the larger field of politics and economy and so much else this is what is going on. It is a terribly confused field but it is where we are at right now.

In other words, the one thing he can't stand is anything Christianity has to say, that is unique and challenging -- in other words, anything he doesn't already believe...anything genuinely Christian.

This is entirely false. Recently, we have all been focused on one tenet of original Christian belief: the idea of an eternal, unending Hell as punishment for those who do wrong (without repentance) or who refuse to *believe*. It is a picture that cannot stand up to fair, ethical, and indeed moral interrogation. No one doubts that many Christians have believed in such a fate and end. And many understand that such systems of belief have a range of functions. What we have shown, successfully, is that that solitary idea is incommensurate with Christian logics. So the critical analysis made here (by your opponents) is actually a sounder application of Christian values.

Simply put, God could not be that merciless.

(But as I say my issues and interests extend well beyond a debate on that specific issue).

[FlashDangerpants]

What we have shown, successfully, is that that solitary idea is incommensurate with Christian logics.

Well there's always the heretical logics of Origen, who taught that the naughty get briefly toasted in Heck until their sinful tarnish is burned away.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The natural consequences of any action are established by the principle of justice, which is grounded in the character of God Himself. That's not arbitrary; God could not "make it otherwise." He is who He is. Always.

The key here is that many people, and nearly everyone participating in this thread (even Walker and Nick who seem to support your view at least in some sense) no longer can believe in the picture of god that you declare is *real*. You constantly refer to the picture you you insist is real. This is your primary tenet.

But in a larger and wider sense, within the Occident generally, the picture of god, and indeed of a god who is a concerned actor in the world, quite simply is a 'shadow-belief'. A fading shadow of what was once a genuine view and a shared belief.

In my own view I cannot examine the world (the real world, the world of nature, the earth-system) and discover or see the god that you say is there. And this is true, I suggest, for many (and for many of us here). So it is not because of malicious perfidy that we see the god you define as a parody or as a false-image (a demiurge with more links to human psychology and unconscious projection), but rather that the old picture you work with no longer serves the purpose for which it was intended.

The *contraption* is outdated, to again borrow Iambiguous' term.

What is intoerable to you as a person, and as one in this debate, is just in that: it is intoelrable to you that your view is questionsed, challenged, and seen through.

And your anathemas arise from within you when you face that opposition borne out of a genuine moral sense about what is true and what is not true. No one recommends immoral activity. The object being to reason morally.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What we have shown, successfully, is that that solitary idea is incommensurate with Christian logics.

Well there's always the heretical logics of Origen, who taught that the naughty get briefly toasted in Heck until their sinful tarnish is burned away.

Yes, purgatorial cleaning became a necessary evolution of a rigid either/or.

[Immanuel Can]

What I feel necessary to say to you is that I do not think you really know *what Christianity is*.

Hilarious.

The man with no definition of "Christian" says I don't know what a Christian is, even while I'm being one. Please, do continue...

We use the term *Christianity* as if we are describing one thing. The word itself is terribly misleading. It is myriad different things.

You have no definition, just as I said. That's your admission, right there.

If I had to guess, I think you're relying on the old "self-definition" idea, which is actually the very first one that scholars of religious studies (secular and religious) have rejected and used as a foil to show the necessity of other definitions. But if you'd taken even Religious Studies 101, you'd know that.

It seems the only kind AJ can accept is some benign and gelded "Christendom," one that essentially means nothing in particular, but rather stands for vague metaphors "true in many different religious and philosophical sytems." That's the only thing that makes them "relevant," he says.

Here what you are saying is that the Christian platform you define is based on strict rules and regulations.

Not at all. I merely point out that my definition is criterial and Biblical, and yours is... what is yours, by the way?

Vaishnavism and Vedanta generally. In my view a study of the Bhagavad-Gita and its structured notion of right action and wrong action within the field of life can illuminate and open to better understanding the cosmological picture on which Christian (and Hebrew) belief is based.

Another really funny thing to say.

So now, according to you, not only is Christianity a belief with nothing unique to offer, so is Hinduism. But it's Judaism you really hate. I wonder if you at least have a definition for that...

This is where Nietzsche's view of a mature person defining their values, selecting among the possibilities, becomes acutely relevant.

Well, I guess that isn't you: you you don't "define" anything.

In other words, the one thing he can't stand is anything Christianity has to say, that is unique and challenging -- in other words, anything he doesn't already believe...anything genuinely Christian.

This is entirely false.

Oh, good. We have you finally taking a real position. Let's work with that.

What do you recognize as genuinely Christian, that you do not personally believe. Let's start there.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Everything you do, everything you say, involves poisonous twisting. What you are saying that I say, is not what I say. Simply put you are yourself poisonous.

So now, according to you, not only is Christianity a belief with nothing unique to offer, so is Hinduism. But it's Judaism you really hate. I wonder if you at least have a definition for that...

I clearly state that Christianity (Greo-Christianity, Greco-Hebraism) definitely has specific things of value. And that a comparative analysis between one and the other leads to a better understanding.

I think Judaism is highly problematic given that its conception of god is a concoction (a contraption) and that it shows itself as highly capable of psychological manipulation. I do refer to the machinations of a priest-class, that is true (and so did Jesus of Nazareth I should add). But hatred is not a word I use.

I am beginning to form the idea that such concepts as form the very core of Hebrew belief are confining traps for the people who are forced to *believe* them (or suffer excommunication). Thus the real issue is becoming 'liberated' from such idea-constructs.

All of these issues and problems can of course be discussed carefully and fairly. Though I think that you will work to *poison* any such conversation as you inevitably move into your typical conversational mode of anathema (cursing).

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh, good. We have you finally taking a real position. Let's work with that.

You are not the guide or the director here, you are the subject of the larger conversation. Why is this so hard for you to accept?

[Alexis Jacobi]

So now, according to you, not only is Christianity a belief with nothing unique to offer, so is Hinduism.

Another underhanded attempt to discredit and undermine careful and fair statements.

But I will clarify that I think the religious and cosmological picture offered by Vedanta (Hinduism is not a useful term) is a view that can be studied to see it and appreciate it. For one who lives in it, it too can be both a container and also a trap.

We seem to be on the threshold of a type of intellectual and moral maturity where the *old structures* still may hold us and provide parameters, but when we deal with the issues of the day and of our own lives, and when we share our experiences, we have the option of seeing ourselves and the other as *doing the best we can do* within larger conceptual systems that -- it certainly appears so! -- are in flux.

Why are these things so very difficult for you to understand Immanuel?

[Immanuel Can]

Oh, good. We have you finally taking a real position. Let's work with that.

You are not the guide or the director here, you are the subject of the larger conversation.

Ah...avoidance!

I've got it.

You can't answer the question, because any answer would make you specify your criteria for "Christianity" -- and you're fearfully, desperately trying to have none, so whatever statements you make about "Christendom" cannot be evaluated or challenged.

[Belinda]

It's far too vague to be functional in any way.

Though you say you consider it to be too vague, do you otherwise consider it to be wrong?

Not so far as it goes...it just doesn't "go" very far.

It has no definition of "proportionality."

What is, for example, "proportionality"?

The simple idea that any harmful effects involved in the righting of a wrong should be commensurate

"Commensurate" is just a synonym for "proportional." What we need is a sense of what is being "proportioned" to what, so we can see if they are "commensurate" or not.

If I say, "I have two quanitities in mind, and they are proportional," then what has to be your next question to me, if you want to know whether or not I'm right?

You can't read my mind, of course. And I can't expect you to already know what quantities I have in mind. You have to ask, "What are the quantities?"

So what are we comparing to what? How much of X is required in order to "be commensurate" with Y?"

But let me guess: next you're going to ask me to define "commensurate", "significantly", and "harm"

Absolutely.

And you know I will, because it's exactly what any sensible person would have to ask. So it's not hard to anticipate.

Also no good.

By which I understand you to mean "False".

No, I mean "confused." The rest of my response said why.

It attempts to paint man's eternal destiny merely as a product of some kind of arbitrary divine fiat

"Merely" or not, "arbitrary" or not, it is, on your Christian view, the consequence of a divine fiat.

Let's be precise.

The natural consequences of any action are established by the principle of justice, which is grounded in the character of God Himself. That's not arbitrary; God could not "make it otherwise." He is who He is. Always.

For that reason, you have to be careful with the word "omnipotence," if you want to make a true statement. There are most certainly things God cannot do, and the Bible gives us some of them. It says He cannot lie, cannot tempt, cannot fail his promises, cannot be untrue to Himself, cannot break His word...not through something like "incapacity," but through the fact that He alone, being the Supreme Being, never has to violate his own character.

Alone of all beings, He always has the power to be who He is. Mankind does not. Men lie because they cannot afford to be honest. Men break their word because they are treacherous or afraid. Men tempt each other because they are corrupt. God does none of these things, because nothing is capable of inducing Him to violate the integrity of His character.

And God is just, too. Men are not able to be, because they lack information, wisdom and a sense of genuine proportionality. They don't know what's "commensurate," even when they think they do, because they don't see everything for what it actually is.

So if being the only Being in the universe with sufficient power and wisdom to always act in accordance with His own character is what we mean by "omnipotence," then God is ominpotent. But if we mean "able to do irrational or wicked things," then we cannot use that predication of God. The Bible says He does not do any such thing.

it being the natural product of a particular person having freely chosen to hate God, to love evil, and to choose the option of having no relationship with God.

There's nothing "natural" about being thrown into a Lake of Fire

It's a choice. What's natural is that mankind is granted free choice. And free choice entails the freedom to choose the right or the wrong, or to choose the wise or the foolish, or to choose the vitalizing or the corrupting, to choose the healthy or the self-destructive.

It also confuses action with nature, and both with the terms of salvation, as if it were an "and/or" case...which theologically, it's obviously not. There's no "or," and it's not "and." These are different aspects of a single situation called being "dead in sin."

This seems quibbling, and nothing like a fatal criticism, but feel free to suggest an amended wording which satisfies you.

I don't think I can fix for you what you've constructed. You've confused terms that simply don't belong together. For example, one is not condemned for transgressions or for failing to have a relationship with God, anymore than one dies from having a tumor or cancer. The two are part of the same larger condition, not options.

But I've said in my longer earlier message what is the right way, I believe, to think about it. You can certainly refer to that for what I believe is a somewhat more well-rounded account of what "sin" is. And I won't even tell you that I know the whole of it: for the Bible calls sin a "mystery," meaning a thing hard-to-understand, that can only be fully and properly understood from the spiritual perspective. And if that's right, it means that any account -- including my own -- is bound to fall somewhat short of the whole horror of the thing...at least until all is eventually revealed; for in Scripture, that is what "mystery" means; not a permanent unknowable, but a difficult temporarily-unknown.

But that's a basic of "justice" too: the Judge (or jury) must have all the information, first. Otherwise, any determination is potentially errant and unjust. And who has that sort of knowledge? Not me; and, I suspect, not you.

If you don't want God, the Source of everything good, what do you think there is left to get? That's what "hell" is.

It is not that your antagonists "don't want God..."

Actually, it is. (See also Romans 1: 18-28)

However, in practice, you won't have to go very far back in these threads to find somebody saying to me, "I want nothing to do with God." Some you will even find expressing things harshly and deliberately blasphemously here, usually in the hopes of inducing some visceral reaction, as if enthusiastically provoking God, challenging Him to do anything about their insolence, and defying Him to perform sufficient parlour tricks before their eyes, in order to justify His existence to them. Such things are not rare.

So yes, men all the time "don't want God," by their own account.

But where are you, on that? You, yourself, want to accuse God of injustice, it seems to me; I don't think the implication is that you are yearning to know Him, and so are asking Him in faith to give you some wisdom about how His justice works...is it? Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem your tone inflects that way. It seems like what you are saying is, "I want a reason I can hold onto not to believe in God; and accusing Him of injustice will work for me." But you can say otherwise, if otherwise it is.

There is a different attitude possible, of course, and some people take it. So while some people challenge God out of anger or spite, others raise the same sorts of hard questions in order to understand, and perhaps to know God.

Those are not the same; and God does not treat them the same. Biblically speaking, the former gets nothing from Him, and the latter gets answers.

Regarding your paragraph beginning "Let's be precise." I liked what you wrote about the nature of God, and I don't think anyone would disagree that is a worthy God. A pity such a concise summary is not more often provided instead of supernatural stories we get from preachers.

Do you think it matters if the deity as you describe Him is ontic, or aspirational?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh, good. We have you finally taking a real position. Let's work with that.

You are not the guide or the director here, you are the subject of the larger conversation.

Ah...avoidance!

I've got it.

You can't answer the question, because any answer would make you specify your criteria for "Christianity" -- and you're fearfully, desperately trying to have none, so whatever statements you make about "Christendom" cannot be evaluated or challenged.

In this environment one can say anything one wishes to. But it does not make it true.

It would be so much better if you would deal with the full context of the critique I offer in my posts. Can you step back enough to do that Immanuel? Look at the whole picture and respond to the larger statement made?

[Immanuel Can]

I will clarify that I think the religious and cosmological picture offered by Vedanta (Hinduism is not a useful term) is a view that can be studied to see it and appreciate it. For one who lives in it, it too can be both a container and also a trap.

You "clarify" nothing by that claim. Again, your complete refusal to deal in specifics renders every statement you make into some vague, untestable platitude...and clearly, that's how you like it, for some reason.

Why are these things so very difficult for you to understand Immanuel?

Because you're not saying anything.

That's why.

You throw these "off the cuff" theories out there, never saying what they really refer to, and expect us all to simply bow, and say, "Yes, how wise; AJ has truly seen into the larger patterns of our universe, and brought us back a trove of precious insight." But, having no definition of any of the key terms you use, you are actually saying nothing. There's "feel," but no depth to your messages, because they avoid all specifics.

To put this bluntly, you're all style, and no substance. You're all rhetoric, and no specifics. You're all theories, and no proof. You simply use language to obfuscate, not to illuminate. But I think you're capable of better, and just don't want to do any better, for some reason you have.

I just can't imagine what it is, unless your theories somehow give you a warm-blanket of interior consolation that you're just too afraid to risk losing. I can think of no other explanation for why you so eschew definitions.

[Immanuel Can]

It would be so much better if you would deal with the full context of the critique I offer in my posts.

You make your posts impossible for anyone to "deal with" because they lack any specific definitions. The only option you leave your interlocutors is to agree with everything, or be baffled by the rhetoric and say nothing.

Unfortunately for that strategy, some of us can read. We know you're saying nothing. We see the lack of specifics, of definitions, of any depth of insight...and rhetoric, we have seen before.

You love "the larger picture" because it keeps you from actually having to commit to a position, a theory or a truth. And you don't commit, because you don't want to be examined. You don't want to be examined, because you sense there is actually not enough behind the theory. You fear for its future, if you pinned anything down. So you do not.

I get it. I just think you don't nearly have to be so fearful as you are. A theory worth having (and this is an axiom of science, as well as of philosophy) survives tests; and if it fails at test, that offers an opportunity for theory-reform and improvement, not merely wholesale rejection of the theory (though sometimes that can be the result, too). So if there's a future for any of your theories, it will be in making them explicit enough to be tested, challenged, evaluated, inspected...and reformed, as may be necessary.

Or, you can just keep your theory. But you'll have it to yourself, of course. Nobody has reason to believe an untestable empirical claim.

[iambiguous]

Okay, we are on the same page here in regard to your bff henry. He will spend all of eternity -- billions and billions and billions of years I'm guessing -- writhing in agony in Hell if he insist on "having" the Deist God on Judgment day. Hell is not just for atheists and polytheists.

I don't think we are. For whereas I am content to let the Judge rule when the time comes, since He alone knows Henry's heart, you seem to want to jump to some prophetic insight that frankly, I don't think you have. And you don't think your prognostication will equally apply to you, I must note.

Please. At Judgment Day, henry will either have the Deist God in his heart or the Christian God. The First Commandment couldn't possibly be plainer in regard to how much that matters.

Indeed, I suspect that in a parallel universe somewhere, henry is a flaming liberal in regard to abortion and guns and government. And there IC is truly adamant about his soul rotting in Hell.

Speaking of which, note from the Bible how a soul burning in Hell actually works. We die and our physical bodies [with all the nerve endings and the brain] completely decompose. Or are reconfigured into ashes. It's the soul that goes up or down. Yet in most paintings and such the folks in Hell have bodies again. Any insights into that for us?

Note to others:

Believe in a completely different God? How does that work re your own Scripture?

I can wait for the Judgment. Can you?

Sure. As long as the Christian God respects those who delved into His existence introspectively...with honesty, sincerity and with intellectual/spiritual courage and integrity.

On the other hand, if He demands of His flocks that they be "bleating sheep", well, that worries me then.

"He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

So, even Muslims and Jews will burn in Hell. Even though Jesus Christ Himself was a Jew. Got it.

Are you having trouble reading again?

Right. Like with great introspection and with a ton of sincerity, honesty and intellectual/spiritual integrity, that is what you really do think is an adequate rejoinder to my point.



Again, what are you even doing here on a forum derived from Philosophy Now magazine? I challenge you [or anyone] to note articles published there that speak of things like Christianity as you do here.

Ever and always going back to the Word.
Ever and always defending it by going around and around in circles:

1] Jesus Christ and the Christian God exists because it says so in the New Testament
2] the New Testament is true because it is the Word of Jesus Christ and the Christian God

For some, you can't even come up with an intelligible explanation of how Jesus Christ and God are the same entity. Not to mention the Holy Ghost.

Then the part where Jesus Christ was a Jew. And Jews don't even believe in Jesus Christ!!!

That and Judgment Day.