Christianity

[Lacewing]

Be careful in your conversation here, if you wish it to continue. I recommend you don't advance as fact that which is merely a hypothesis or question on your part, or you cross the line between inquiry and blasphemy. And if you do choose to blaspheme, then I will, for your own safety and the future of your soul, have to withdraw from speaking with you. I have to take thought for your welfare here, and do the moral thing, even if you choose not to.

What I am doing here is demonstrating how it is possible, carefully and rationally, to dismantle 'constructed views'.

The demiurge must be dismantled, that much is certain, but then how could or how will a truer divine image (and authority) be assembled?

Yes, this is a philosophy forum where we question all views, Immanuel. It is the honest and revealing thing to do! We're not here to praise your imagination. You continually present your claims about your beliefs which are full of flawed thinking and which are begging to be examined critically. If you want to be in a church full of those who support your ideas, go do that. Don't impose your threats here about blasphemy and damnation.

AJ has done a good job of unveiling your extremist shrieking nature behind your self-important robes.

[Dontaskme]

what is a Christian

Something for to muse over IC


Is a christian a person who tells itself it is a christian the same way the person tells itself a tree is a tree and an apple is an apple. But who actually knows these concepts known? all that appears to be known here are concepts right? It's never the knower of concepts that is known is it? ...this is obviously the truth..right IC ?

This conceptualising of things cannot be known by the thing known, because that too is a concept, and notice that concepts are fixed, a tree can never not be a tree can it. And an apple can never not be an apple can it?

So do you think that the fixed concept known as ''human'' could also be another concept known as 'christian'' ? or is the concept ''human'' fixed like the concept ''tree'' making the 'human' not capable or possible to be any other concept?

Do you see the dilemma here? how language and words have created every thing known, and that the knower is taking on all the roles of these known concepts....and that which is knowing these concepts can never be a word.
The knower can never experience itself as a word...can it?

In the same context a tree cannot experience itself as a tree, can it, there's just tree, or no tree, same thing. A concept can never tell itself it is the concept known.


The mind and the conceptually known contents must be the same one reality in the intantaneous now where there is no other than this one now.

The conceptual contents of mind cannot seek their source no more than a fish can seek the water in which it swims.

God therefore, is no concept and yet every concept.

[Lacewing]

That's because foreknowledge is not predestination.

What is the point of anything if there's absolute foreknowledge of how everything will unfold and absolute foreknowledge of what anyone will ever think and do from their birth through their death? It makes no sense that a supreme being would go through all the motions of creation knowing how it was all going to play out.

...unless He were creating free will beings.

Free will entails that they make their own choices -- particularly in relation to God and His will. So God would, of course, be fully aware of what they were going to do...but not making them do it, because they make those choices themselves.

Rather like Prom's situation with the casino, actually. (See earlier) He makes the choices; my foreknowledge of his lost money doesn't mean I've done anything to make him lose it.

I'm not disputing free will. I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance?

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, this is a philosophy forum where we question all views, Immanuel.

Questions are fine. Propositions are fine. Hypotheticals and conjectures, no matter how wild, are in court. Logic, reasons, evidence...all wonderful. Invective is optional. I also don't flinch or back off if I get abuse, as you know.

But my long-term goal, as a Christian, is the honouring of God and the benefit of souls.

You may not believe you have one. You may not believe I am interested in yours, if you do. You may have no concern for your own soul, or for a Judgment, or for eternity, or for God Himself. All that is possible.

However, as a Christian, I have care for all these things. So if you decide to sin against yourself by increasing the judgment against you and wounding your soul, then it's my duty as a Christian to step back. What you do, after that, is up to you. But I'm not to give you an occasion for it.

You may call that what you wish. It will make no difference to me. I will do what is my responsibility to do...that which is in your best interests, whether you know those interests or not.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm not disputing free will. I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance?

Well, I'll tell you what I've decided, based on many years of thinking through the purposes of free will.

According to Scripture, it's the establishing of a relationship between the eternal God and creatures He has made and endowed with free will. As surprising as this is, it's the making of friends-of-God, to whom He can show His love and open up the knowledge of everything He is.

Who would not want that? Who could fail to see that as an incalculable good? But there's a price: free will creatures, by definition, have to be free enough to choose both God and not-God. If they are going to be able to say a "Yes," with free will, then they also have to have the freedom to say "No."

"Friendship" is free. If it's not freely given, then it's not friendship at all. It's robotics.

And if there was no point in time at which they could say either "Yes" or "No," then by definition, they never had free will at all. They were programmed. They were zombies. And their relationship with God is a fraud, a performance, a forced set of actions which might be made to look good or sincere or free, but can never be.

Is all that worth it? The Bible says, "Yes." And it says if we were capable of understanding all that entails, we would be bound to agree.

[Lacewing]

You may call that what you wish. It will make no difference to me. I will do what is my responsibility to do...that which is in your best interests, whether you know those interests or not.

And this is what men are doing everywhere for one reason or another, yes? Imposing their beliefs on another by claiming that they know what's best for others.

[Immanuel Can]

what is a Christian

Something for to muse over IC
Is a christian a person who tells itself it is a christian

You're late to the conversation. AJ says "Yes," and I say, "No: there is much more to any fair definition than that."

[Dontaskme]

.

Free will entails that they make their own choices -- particularly in relation to God and His will. So God would, of course, be fully aware of what they were going to do...but not making them do it, because they make those choices themselves.

But how can one who did not choose to be alive then choose a choice while it lives?

Who do you think is making that choice, if this chooser never made the choice to be born into a reality where it could then choose?

Choice must be a concept known, and the knowing of that concept, seems to take on that known concept as being the author of it's life, without ever realising that this author is just a concept, and cannot be the knower/knowing.

That which is known can never not be known as in unknown...therefore death and life must be the same one not-knowing reality, and that neither states are our direct experience because no thing is choosing it or making it happen. Alive is the known state of being and death is the not-known state of being, known only as concepts while these concepts are known. But these states of being can never be our direct experience can they? A baby in the womb for example can never tell itself it is alive, nor can a dead person ever tell itself it is dead.

Can't you see that any thing known conceptually is an illusion and does not exist in reality.

So who is this knower, it cannot be known by the concept known, it can only be the KNOWING one without a second, one without a concept.

How can one without a second be born or die except conceptually that knows no thing?





.

[Immanuel Can]

Free will entails that they make their own choices -- particularly in relation to God and His will. So God would, of course, be fully aware of what they were going to do...but not making them do it, because they make those choices themselves.

But how can one who did not choose to be alive then choose a choice while it lives?

Oh, gosh...that's so easy to answer.

Let's say you made a baby. It had no choice about what you did. But as soon as it's out, you know it has its own mind, will and choices. It won't cry or fuss or excrete or eat when you want it to; it will do it when IT wants to. And as it grows, it will only do more and more extravagant things when IT chooses to...and you won't like all its choices.

Anybody who has a kid knows what free will is.

[Lacewing]

I'm not disputing free will. I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance?

Well, I'll tell you what I've decided, based on many years of thinking through the purposes of free will.

I'm not questioning free will. I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance? Let's use a bit of logic to question the belief that has been built-up about a god who 'knows everything that's going to occur'. Why would a supreme being produce such a creation? Because they're lonely and want friendship? This sounds like the limited reasoning of men.

Doesn't it make more sense that 'god' is actively manifested through all and creating through all, all the time? It's not a limited, known story with a beginning and an end, as limited men might imagine (based on the limited nature of their own lives). Divine creation is ongoing and unfolding, new in every moment.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What I am doing here is demonstrating how it is possible, carefully and rationally, to dismantle 'constructed views'.

No. All you're actually showing me is how easy it is to construct your own elaborate evasions by "co-opting the narrative." There's no "demonstration" going on...not even a basic definition going on.

So you'll have to forgive me if I remain utterly unimpressed. I would be at least mildly impressed if you could show me you knew, at the very least, what a Christian is. But even that seems too much for you.

Therefore, I cannot be impressed by this. If I were, my standards would be far, far too low.

I make no demand that you be impressed.

Try to understand: since I came back here (what, 5 months ago now?) and since I have, say, confronted you, I have come from my unique position as 'a friend of Christianity'. I respect a great deal that is metaphysically sound in it. But what is not, I must reject. Admittedly, given my own ethnic link and my background *on the fringes of Reform Judaism*, and not having been raised in Christianity, my relationship to those questions is to say the least odd and complex. But I am not dishonest. I have put my cards on the table. I have explained what I am doing here and why.

I am not 'constructing evasions'. What I am doing though is deconstructing the narrative concoction that 1) upholds Judaism and 2) was carried over into Christianity. I am neither co-opting the narrative but rather, in reference to Deuteronomy and crucial aspects of pseudo-Jewish history, presenting the possibility that these narratives were concocted. Thus the creation of a 'we are god's chosen people' is presented as a false-narrative. An 'arrogation' as I have called it and part of Hebrew idea-imperialism.

It is a fair assertion to make.

Call this effort at seeing straight what you will. I am not seeking anything fancy though. You have tried to say, for the longest time, that I do not understand what Christianity is. I leave you to make any characterization as you wish.

I am, nonetheless, making an effort to counter and also contradict your absolute assertions (about ultimate metaphysical reality). I do this not to undermine or close myself, or anyone else, off from the possibility of conceiving of, appreciating, or living in accord with such metaphysical truths (and thus 'god') and what interests me is a sounder foundation for Moderns who, like all of us here (with one or two partial exceptions) simply cannot believe the narratives that you live in.

So my work, such as it is, is not destructive (as you imply) and it does not, either, endanger my soul.

The question What endangers the soul (the psyche, the part of us that is divine or borne from a divine source and lives in us) is nevertheless a very good question.

Indirectly, I have been taking up that question. But if you wish to put more emphasis on it that would be very good.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance? Let's use a bit of logic to question the belief that has been built-up about a god who 'knows everything that's going to occur'. Why would a supreme being produce such a creation? Because they're lonely and want friendship? This sounds like the limited reasoning of men.

Look at it in reverse.

Maybe the fact that we human beings regard friendship so highly is that in its own pallid way, it's a reflection of a very great good...something supremely good, in fact.

We might say the same thing about love: maybe humans think it's so important because it really is...and maybe love as we know it is only a pale replica of something much, much better.

And remember that human beings are "in the image of God," according to Genesis. God is not "in the image of man."

[Dontaskme]

You're late to the conversation. AJ says "Yes," and I say, "No: there is much more to any fair definition than that."

Sorry for being late teacher. My cat decided to piss all up my leg just as I was leaving home to join the classroom, so I had to quickly get changed out of my soiled jeans which took longer than I thought because I accidently fell over while running quickly up the stairs to my bedroom to get some clean pants, but ended up in hospital with a broken leg..but eventually made it here in the end.

So all you have admitted to here is that a person cannot tell itself it is a christian ..is that right?

And it seems you've done it again, you have completely ignored everything else that I have pains takenly took to write to you about what a christian is in my opinion. But alas, none of what I have said matters to you one iota, it's just simply of no use I guess, as it seems you are only interested in what you yourself have to say about all matters relating to god and free will and what is a christian, that is obvious to every reader. Ok nothing unusual about this usual habit.

I'll keep popping back in the hope that one day you will actually take note of what other people have to say on the matter of what is a christian. One can only but try after all. Although no one can make an IC's attention span last any more than half a second when it comes to alternative ideas brought to the table. BYeeeee for now.

[Dontaskme]

And remember that human beings are "in the image of God," according to Genesis. God is not "in the image of man."

Once I asked you to show me what the image of God looks like. To which you promptly showed me a picture of Jesus, which to my immediate knowledge does appear to be an image of a man.

What gives?

[Lacewing]

I'm asking: What is the point of creation if every aspect and detail is known in advance? Let's use a bit of logic to question the belief that has been built-up about a god who 'knows everything that's going to occur'. Why would a supreme being produce such a creation? Because they're lonely and want friendship? This sounds like the limited reasoning of men.

Look at it in reverse.

Your continual redirection only demonstrates the pointlessness of using logic for reasonable examination or questioning. You will come up with any justification necessary -- no matter how non-sensical or inapplicable -- to preserve beliefs that you have committed to hold. This is why it can be noticed that you are not honest or courageous with enquiry, and you are not really interested in truth over what you believe.