Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ wrote: 2) Every culture, and every sophisticated culture, offers definitions of *wisdom*. Every culture outlines a path, as it were, toward moral and ethical and spiritual good. These all coincide.

That's just flatly and verifiably false. Sorry. Not a single credible sociologist, anthropologist or philosopher will agree with you. They're all convinced of cultural "incommensurability." (their word, not mine)

You do not have to feel nor to express regrets.

I say this:

Every culture offers definitions of *wisdom*.

Each culture that I have studied offers an outline of *path* or *paths* for seekers and neophytes.

Each of these paths involve *work on the self* in different ways. For example to achieve modesty or humility (very strong in Vaishnavism and in Buddhism) and of course a whole range of other character traits that are admired and valued.

I did not say that all cultures or cultural systems are commensurate, I said that they coincide in the sense of "to be identical in nature, character". So for example the Vaishnava sense of what modesty or humility is, or what its benefit is spiritually, coincides with the same behavior value in, for example, Christianity.

Other parallels can be drawn.

(You are haggling over the definition of terms and your efforts are in bad faith -- as per normal!)

The statements I made were fair statements.

However, I would be interested to read some quotes by any of those you refer to where incommensurability is spoken about. Please include some.

[iambiguous]

Mr. Snippet aka Mr. Wiggle? He's back for more!!!

Here we are at the crux of the matter. Once you have either been indoctrinated as a child, or, on your own as an adult, you have come to embrace one or another religious denomination, you have found a Scripture that comforts and consoles you. A frame of mind that allows you to anchor your but "one in billions of others" Self in something that brings everything together onto the One True Path. You believe this. As do those on all of these -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions -- paths as well.

The simplest of logic defeats you.

According to this reasoning, there must be no single answer to "What is 2+2." And why? Because there are is a literally infinite number of other possible answers...3, 4, 5, 99, 1000...

Are you actually starting to crack up?!!!

No, according to my reasoning, people believe in countless religious and spiritual paths because psychologically it comforts and consoles them to believe that they and only they are on the One True Path to objective morality on this side of the grave and to immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave.

And that equating arithmetic with Judgment Day is nothing short of preposterous unless you are willing to insist that the Christian God and only the Christian God = 4 when the question is "what does 2 on this side of the grave + 2 on the other side of the grave equal"? Christianity = objective morality, immortality and salvation.

And if all those on the other One True Paths are insisting that, on the contrary, their God is the One True Path, it's like them saying here that 2 + 2 = 3, 5, 99, 1,000.

So you are saying, "The fact that other people have so many wrong and partially wrong answers means that you can't ever have the right one." And you call that a powerful argument?

No, I am saying that you insist that all of the others have the wrong answers because they don't embrace your answer. And that the way for them to embrace your answer is to admit that the Christian God is the one true God because it says so in the Christian Bible.

Or, okay, to watch your videos sincerely.

As though the others can't do exactly the same thing in regard to their own Gods!!

To wit...

Now, there surely must be a part of you that recognizes those on the other paths are all insisting that you are the one on the wrong path. But the psychological need to believe that they are all wrong and only you are right prevails. Why? Because of what is at stakes on both sides of the grave if you are wrong.

The only difference between [you] and many others on their own paths is that [you] insist that [you] can demonstrate that [your] path is in fact the One True Path. Most other believers embrace a more or less blind leap of faith to their God. They can't actually demonstrate His existence but are still able to sustain their belief in Him all the way to the grave.

With [you], however, there are those videos. If others watch them sincerely they cannot not believe in the Christian God.

And if they accept that the Christian God must exist because it says so in the Christian Bible that then nails it..

Yes...mathematicians are all like that. They always want to be right. And engineers. And brain surgeons, and scientists, and anybody with anything important to communicate... rotten blighters!

Seriously, Biggie...do you honestly think those rejoinders are more than chaff?

Cracking up, right?

You can't possibly be but a triple bogie short of a hole in one "up there" if you are unable to grasp the distinction between mathematicians, engineers, brain surgeons, and scientists doing their thing out in the either/or world and theologians and Christian apologists doing their thing out in the is/ought world in regard to Judgment Day.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ wrote: But it is always something deeply personal, and in a sense non-communicable.

...says the guy who is trying to "communicate" it.

Another example of bad-faith.

What is personal to me is something that I alone experience. I may feel a whole range of different emotions, sentiments or perceptions which the person standing next to me, even someone close, does not experience. In this sense I meant *deeply personal*.

Communication of such states, or realizations, is always a fraught endeavor. How can I make another person understand? Or more difficult feel what I am feeling or understand what I understand?

No, I was not communicating *it*. And this is an important point. Were I to communicate with you, a dull-minded ideologue with a closed mind and limited experience, you not only would not understand but you would likely take a position of adamant refusal to understand.

So in this sense, through personal defects (this is my interpretation of you), you provide an example of a man locked in his own subjectivity.

[Immanuel Can]

Part of your personality is arrogant certainty you are right. This is not pride in the truth, it's vanity.

Well, you can think that, if it helps you in some way. One thing it won't help you with is whether or not what I'm saying on this occasion is the truth or not.

Even were I the most arrogant person on Earth, that would not tell you that. My character, good or bad, and your irritation don't make the truth the truth...and your disliking or mistrusting of me won't stop the truth from being the truth.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can quoted and replied:

2) Every culture, and every sophisticated culture, offers definitions of *wisdom*. Every culture outlines a path, as it were, toward moral and ethical and spiritual good. These all coincide.

That's just flatly and verifiably false. Sorry. Not a single credible sociologist, anthropologist or philosopher will agree with you. They're all convinced of cultural "incommensurability." (their word, not mine)

Yes that's so. But Axial Age culture overarches all mainstream moral codes. Axial Age culture is monolithic.

[Immanuel Can]

Is there something there you'd like me to clarify?

Your syntax. The sentence is grammatically wrong, in such a way that it's impossible to obtain a coherent thought from the above.

And the idea.

What I mean is that I believe this potential exists in all people. So the important thing is *engaging with oneself* or with *the self*.

Yeah. That makes a world of sense...an obviously contingent being, a middle-aged, more-evolved-ape, stares into his own navel, and there discovers the universe.

We're supposed to believe that?

[Belinda]

Part of your personality is arrogant certainty you are right. This is not pride in the truth, it's vanity.

Well, you can think that, if it helps you in some way. One thing it won't help you with is whether or not what I'm saying on this occasion is the truth or not.

Even were I the most arrogant person on Earth, that would not tell you that. My character, good or bad, and your irritation don't make the truth the truth...and your disliking or mistrusting of me won't stop the truth from being the truth.

If you were to claim "I know the truth of what I experience and what I am experiencing is God" then I or anyone else cannot dispute your claim .

But you claim that God according to you is not subjective only but is an objective fact.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is thus a militant movement which operates through rather aggressive techniques.

Again, pretty hilariously wrong.

I do not think so. More often than not, Christians have a rigid mind-set and a set of assertions and assumptions they operate with and under. When I have encountered them (people like this) I find that that rigidity is not fluid or adaptable or perhaps I could say *gentle* but rather is aggressive -- exactly in the sense that I have been describing the god-concept Yahweh.

My way or the highway . . .

I realize that the self-presentation mimics gentleness or a 'friendly effort to influence' but I actually think this is a sham (I here speak in broad generalities). There are certainly admirable exceptions however.

I see the Benny Hinn type mass-conversion events as being uniquely *aggressive* though I would qualify the term aggression with other necessary terms. The object is the breakdown and conversion of the individual.

But this does not mean that I consider the effort (to convert) as uniquely bad. I am trying to describe things as they are.

[Immanuel Can]

AJ wrote: 2) Every culture, and every sophisticated culture, offers definitions of *wisdom*. Every culture outlines a path, as it were, toward moral and ethical and spiritual good. These all coincide.

That's just flatly and verifiably false. Sorry. Not a single credible sociologist, anthropologist or philosopher will agree with you. They're all convinced of cultural "incommensurability." (their word, not mine)

You do not have to feel nor to express regrets.

That's good. But the "sorry" was for you, not for me.

I say this:

Every culture offers definitions of *wisdom*.

And?

However, I would be interested to read some quotes by any of those you refer to where incommensurability is spoken about. Please include some.

Your Google is broken again?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27760279
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/valu ... ensurable/
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/ ... ethics/v-1

You can find as many as you like...there are tons out there. I can recommend whole books on it. Start with Joseph Margolis's Life Without Principles, for example, or here's a free one: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/ ... 526981.pdf

[Alexis Jacobi]

Master AJ wrote: What I mean is that I believe this potential exists in all people. So the important thing is *engaging with oneself* or with *the self*.

Yeah. That makes a world of sense...an obviously contingent being, a middle-aged, more-evolved-ape, stares into his own navel, and there discovers the universe.

We're supposed to believe that?

Ah, here is the crux of the difference between your closed-minded views and, say, mine (when I am in fully wonderful mode). I am aware that in other systems there exists a notion that *divinity is within us* in a latent sense. One has to stop doing certain things which inhibit the perception of that "inner person" or that potential.

So sensuality, *sin*, violence, hurtfulness, lack of concern for others, perhaps insensitivity, all these things are obstacles that must be worked on (through work on the self) in order to realize what is there.

There is a corrspnding sense, a coincident sense, expressed in Luke:

The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst (or, within you).

[Alexis Jacobi]

You can find as many as you like...there are tons out there.

More bad-faith on your part. I did not define commensurability (I already said this). I carefully explained what I meant. And as such it stands.

You are really insufferable!

[Immanuel Can]

If you were to claim "I know the truth of what I experience and what I am experiencing is God" then I or anyone else cannot dispute your claim .

But you claim that God according to you is not subjective only but is an objective fact.

Of course I do. Anybody who (even thinks) they actually know God would have to think exactly the same: that God is what He is, not what IC or Belinda imagines or wants Him to be.

If he's a product of somebody's preferences and imagination, He's not God, by definition...THEY are. They are the ones who are saying what the Supreme Being is "allowed" to be. That makes them more "supreme" than the Supreme Being.

The only way to know God is to take Him as He reveals Himself to be. He alone has the right to say what His nature and character actually are. Our preferences, both yours and mine, are utterly ineffective in changing that.

And the same is true of any ordinary person, really. What would you think if I said, "To me, Belinda is a six-foot-four American with a plaited beard and one leg?" I think you could justly say, "IC, you don't know Belinda...or if you know some kind of 'Belinda,' it's not the same one I'm talking about."

[Immanuel Can]

You can find as many as you like...there are tons out there.

I did not define commensurability (I already said this).

Nobody said you did. You don't even apparently know what "incommensurability" is, so how could you define it?

But I've given you enough sources that you can inform yourself, at least.

[Immanuel Can]

Ah, here is the crux of the difference between your closed-minded views and, say, mine

So funny! Do you even LISTEN to yourself?

Essentially, what the above says, is "IC, you're wrong, and I'm right. I'm open-minded, and that's good; and you're closed-minded, and that's bad." How closed-minded of you!

You see, AJ, a person can't be totally "open-minded" and reject other beliefs. If you do, you're just narrow in a different way. But you're every bit as resistant to my view as I am to yours. So where is your vaunted 'openness" evident in the above?

[Alexis Jacobi]

You see, AJ, a person can't be totally "open-minded" and reject other beliefs. If you do, you're just narrow in a different way. But you're every bit as resistant to my view as I am to yours. So where is your vaunted 'openness" evident in the above?

I do not recommend 'total open-mindedness', I recommend greater open-mindedness. I definitely do not recommend rejecting the belief-systems of other peoples, and as you know I reject the core in your belief-system that I label Hebrew idea imperialism. But I would never deny that the belief system which you operate in, of which you are, say, a peculiar exponent, should be dismissed or rejected. All that I am doing is talking about it.

Doing so, I believe its strengths and limitations can clearly be seen.

My view is that religiosity has arrived at a juncture that requires a whole series of reviews and redefinitions. In this I tend to agree with Seeds.

You are well aware that I define you as a fanatic. Fanaticism has its positive points but, simultaneously, it has its negative points. At this point the negatives outweigh the positives (IMO). You are really a *case* and as such you demonstrate, for all to see, the negatives more than the positives.

I am certainly not *every bit as narrow as you* though you might think so (or pretend so) because I am here taking issue with your rigidity, your intolerance, and the fanaticism that has you firmly in its grip. The position I have (or take) also has its negative points. I am aware of them.

As I have painstakingly said time and again all religious concepts, all imagined structures, are just that: imagined constructs. What is real in them transcends their specificity. The religious system that you operate in and through is not *real* but it is your means of entertaining the relationship you have with your ishvara, your notion of a personal god and the way god interacts with you. Thus, my position is one of a certain remove.