Christianity

[iambiguous]

The Christian God and Buffalo:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/us/b ... -snow.html

In Buffalo, it was ‘a very, very bad night in our community.’
A barreling storm thrust piles of snow against the fronts of homes and businesses, pinning vehicles parked in roads and driveways. The few people who ventured out faced bitterly cold temperatures.

Many people in Buffalo and across Western New York awoke on Saturday morning unable to leave their homes.

High winds and a barreling storm that had continued overnight drove mounds of snow more than 6 feet high against the fronts of homes and businesses, encasing front doors and porches and pinning vehicles parked in roads and driveways. Few people ventured outside, and those who did faced bitterly cold temperatures that numbed faces, froze fingers and left clothing and exposed extremities saturated and frozen.

“This was a very, very bad night in our community,” Mark Poloncarz, the Erie County executive, said on Saturday morning. “This may turn out to be the worst storm in our community’s history, surpassing the famed Blizzard of ’77 for its ferocity.”

Mr. Poloncarz said two people had died in Cheektowaga because emergency workers could not reach them in time.

He said the wind and snow were hampering emergency response efforts and suggested that hundreds of residents could still be trapped in cars, including people who tried to drive out of the region late at night.

“Our No. 1 priority is coordinating efforts to get to these people,” he said.

In the hardest-hit areas — including Buffalo, Cheektowaga, Lancaster and Williamsville — two thirds of emergency responders were stuck, Mr. Poloncarz said, and were unable to reach people.

“It’s not something we’re proud of,” Mr. Poloncarz said, urging people to stay put, even if they remain at a restaurant where they had dined on Friday night. “Attempts are being made, but there is no guarantee that in a life-threatening emergency situation they’re going to be able to respond immediately.”

Mr. Poloncarz said that in one case, a doctor had to talk a woman through her labor on the phone, giving instructions to her sister on how to deliver the baby.

Elsewhere in Erie County, the mother of a sick baby whom emergency services could not reach pleaded on Facebook for help, saying that her 1-year-old was on a ventilator.

“No power or heat & I got a baby on a ventilator,” she wrote.

Tommy Bellonte, 37, a federal employee, ventured outside his north Buffalo home for less than 10 minutes Saturday morning to let his hulking German shepherd out and check on the condition of his neighbor’s driveway. But the “bone-chilling” cold set in instantly.

“Everyone is like, ‘Oh you’re from Buffalo, you’re used to this.’ But you can’t get used to this,” he said, as he shoveled the walkway next door. “I’m not staying out for long, that’s for sure.”

Like many people in Western New York, Mr. Bellonte’s holiday arrangements were disrupted by the storm. Instead of heading to his family’s house in the northern suburb of Lewiston, he plans to stay put Saturday, “just hunkering down” and watching the Buffalo Bills game on television.

“I have some friends that live a block away,” he said. “Luckily, we all still have power.”

Mr. Poloncarz, meantime, urged residents not to call 911 for nonemergency situations so that the service could help those who need it most urgently.

“It may stink that your internet is down,” he said, “but that is not a reason to call 911.”

County officials have requested that Governor Kathy Hochul send National Guard troops to help with rescue operations.

Conditions were not expected to improve throughout the day. The National Weather Service predicted winds gusting as high as 65 miles per hour and wind chills as cold as 15 to 25 below zero. Mr. Poloncarz urged residents to stay indoors and not to go out for Christmas Eve.

“If you’re not in the storm area you have no idea how bad it is,” he said.

On the day before Christmas no less!!

[promethean75]

Imagine being these parents: https://fox8.com/news/dance-company-dev ... sed-crash/

U and the fam go to a Christmas parade so God can have your daughter run over.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Now, given a particular set of circumstances where moral and political conflagrations run rampant, let's compare and contrast our respective moral philosophies.

I do not conceal that I enjoy learning about other people's perspectives, and as I often say I am interested in examining them, to try to parse out of them their *operative tenets and assumptions*.

So when you say:

I believe...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that I am hopelessly drawn and quartered -- fractured and fragmented -- in regard to moral and political conflicts
3] that I am inching closer and closer to oblivion...death

So, of course I am eager to cement that frame of mind into place.

I realize that it will be impossible to build any sort of bridge between our operating and determining Weltanschauungen.

However, I can say -- I am obligated to say -- that the view that you have, seen from my angle and from my values and valuation, is the philosophy of a sick man. Oddly, I doubt that you could say "No! I assure you! It is healthy!"

Because you cannot make any statement that contradicts the operation of the perspective you have. You've made your choice but you could have chosen any other one. So you say...

I will certainly describe to you why I view you as a 'sick man' but I am not sure you'll like it. OTOH I cannot see on what basis you'd object. For a man in oblivion what could it matter?

I presented a view that encapsulated some of my musings as to *proper ways to act* in this nihilistic present:

AJ wrote: [In response to St Paul in 1 Corinthians]: I see this as mind-fuck. It is I think a very good example of Hebrew Idea-Imperialism. If you try to reduce it to what it really says, what it says is really disturbing and destructive. You are told that you must give yourself over to this 'god' and thus give over your own power to see, think, decide, choose. This statement invalidates at the most basic level. It is tantamount to neutering or castrating oneself. I absolutely do not believe this is the way to go.

So in my own view I think that culturally, intellectually, and also politically, it is crucial to see and to throw off this basic idea that everyone must submit to this god-figure defined as Jesus and, as a result, give up oneself and subscribe to a mass-current. Recovery of oneself, at a most fundamental level, must then mean turning against a whole array of false-constructs and false-admonitions that have been thrust on people generally. But not in a merely rebellious mode. But creative rebellion. Therefore the object is not spiritual disempowerment, neutering and castration, but rejecting a god-image of uniformity and sameness through which people are controlled. And beginning to reconstruct the self and the actions of the self in contrary ways. Recovering genuine but ordered will. Recovering self-determining power. And as part of that also turning against egalitarianism and also progressivism which are the modern expression of those Pauline ideologies.

So I can only continue in the projects and processes that I have defined for myself and declared to be my own. I see Immanuel as carrying forward a distorted and distorting Christian doctrine which I have come necessarily to oppose. His ultimate threat (I mean that of Christianity) is spiritual annihilation! But the opposite is true. Recovery is 'life'. Yet I do not think that everything that was channeled into Catholicism is philosophically wrong -- Platonic doctrines seem sound in most ways still -- but because Christianity is a movement of establishing uniformity through undermining freedom of thought and existential freedom. It disempowers at the most essential and crucial level as that excerpt from 1Corinthians demonstrates.

This is why I am more interested in paths of recovery of power; of concept-pathways that rediscover or redefine *god*; which bring out metaphysical truths that apply in the concrete and *real* world and which empower people to act in their world in an integral way. I am much more aligned with a dissident and Right-tending intellectual movement and more and more opposed to those currents of thought that seem communistic, egalitarian and 'progressive' for these reasons.

To that you said "Thanks but no thanks". And:

Iambiguous wrote: If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Now, given a particular set of circumstances where moral and political conflagrations run rampant, let's compare and contrast our respective moral philosophies.

Thus there is nothing more to be revealed or discussed. Surely you see that as well, right?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Imagine being these parents: https://fox8.com/news/dance-company-dev ... sed-crash/

U and the fam go to a Christmas parade so God can have your daughter run over.

I did some background research: the daughter had been messing around with the Ouija board. It all makes sense now.

[promethean75]

Woah are you serious or just bullshitting? You read that somewhere? I had a crazy experience with a Ouija board in San Jose CA in the summer of 1990. Three of us skipped school and messed around with the thing while hanging out at the apartment. Contacted a deceased 18 year old girl... wanna say her name was Elizabeth but can't remember... and she told us to meet her at the bus stop so off we went to the stop at the corner looking for anything weird... a girl, a ghost, a sign, anything. Most of the memory is a blur tho. I just remember a cigarette being lit that was sitting in the ashtray. It was the last of a pack of camels and wasn't lit... just laid in the ashtray. Well I went to my room for some reason while Scott and Adam were outside fuckin with the mountain bikes.when I walked back in the living room the cigarette wuz lit and had a good ash. The filter wasn't darkened either... not the slightest bit... Like how it would be if someone lit it in their mouth and pulled on it. It was freaky man.

[Belinda]

Alexis Jacobi wrote:

This is why I am more interested in paths of recovery of power; of concept-pathways that rediscover or redefine *god*; which bring out metaphysical truths that apply in the concrete and *real* world and which empower people to act in their world in an integral way. I am much more aligned with a dissident and Right-tending intellectual movement and more and more opposed to those currents of thought that seem communistic, egalitarian and 'progressive' for these reasons.

Paul's notion of the other is like that rather local god of the Messiah who is a practising and faithful Jew; so Paul respects those traditional rules of conduct. As always, interpretation is paramount.

What matters is not how ancient Jews interpreted the other
, but that there exists the other . In these days of climate change danger, respect for what is other than self is crucial.

Your Right-tending conclusion is wrong.

[attofishpi]

38 C tomorrow - (100 F)

Merry Christmas everyone.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort atheists put into it!

[Harbal]

Merry Christmas everyone.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort atheists put into it!

It's almost as if you think Christmas is still a religious holyday, fishy.

[attofishpi]

Merry Christmas everyone.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort atheists put into it!

It's almost as if you think Christmas is still a religious holyday, fishy.

I know, and what an amazing coincidence that Jesus was born on Christmas day!

[Gary Childress]

Merry Christmas everyone.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort atheists put into it!

It's almost as if you think Christmas is still a religious holyday, fishy.

I know, and what an amazing coincidence that Jesus was born on Christmas day!

Actually, Mithra was allegedly born on "Christmas" day. When was Christ born?

[Gary Childress]

Merry Mithramas!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Your Right-tending conclusion is wrong.

Left-Right divisions (nomenclature) in fact no longer serve us. One has to locate at a root-level what one opposes and what one supports. Egalitarianism, progressivism, Marxian-influenced social and political activism, these are flowering today in bizarre social trends. I need not mention sexual deviancy which is thoroughly out of control. But there is another line of critique directed at unfettered capitalistic enterprise disconnected from social welfare. That whole interest-sector lies through its teeth of course. And traditionally the Right could hardly critique it. But now it can — and does.

The fact seems to be that no clear and well-platformed program or concept exists. Everything seems in confusion. In the US there is a cold-war against any sectors holding to any ideas that oppose egalitarianism, progressivism, and the general Liberal order. They have turned that dial up to about nine.

There is an ideological war going on.

But in my own opinion it is the Dissident Right that seems better capable of seeing issues clearly. They see the Left clearly and accurately but also are capable of seeing themselves. Yet it is true that they are none too supportive of the general projects of Liberalism. The effort now is to crush them.

I assume no one here even reads the newspapers though …

[Harbal]

I assume no one here even reads the newspapers though …

You are certainly correct to assume that I don't.

[Gary Childress]

There is an ideological war going on.

Yeah. I'm just going to embrace agnosticism with regard to metaphysical and transcendental matters and sit this one out.

[Harbal]

Yeah. I'm just going to embrace agnosticism with regard to metaphysical and transcendental matters and sit this one out.

Try embracing not caring one way or the other, Gary. I recommend it.