Christianity

[Dontaskme]

Christianity hasn't been around for so long for nuthin, man. it's a mastermind system of thought will all kinds of fail-safes.

What do you think God was up to during the billions of years Dinosaurs and other weird creatures roamed the planet?

Do you think God was masterminding a plot to make human puppets who were capable of torturing themselves with their own thoughts and ideas?

[Harbal]

not saying Christianity is true; very, very most likely it isn't. alls I'm sayin is all the sufferin' is eventually rendered moot by eternal life in heaven, etc., so u can't be like 'hey my life sucks so fuck god'. Life is supposed to suck... it's a condition, a built in feature, of Christianity.

I've heard that Christianity originated as the religion of slaves and the down troden. People without hope in their earthly existence, but found it in the promise of Heaven. Tailor made for those whose life sucks.

[promethean75]

your boy N called Christianity 'platonism for the people'. one could argue that the pathos of Plato's idealism originates from an erotic love of life. belief in the other-worldly here is not for the redemptive purposes given to it by the rabble who suffer life; that idea came out of Plotinus and Augustine.

but in general belief in the other-worldly, immortality, the soul-superstition, comes out of one of two pathologies. either it originates from a disgust and contempt for oneself and life (Christianity) or it originates from an excessive pride, a kind of healthy arrogant vanity, an overwhelming joy at the experience of one's own power, health and fortune.... so much so that one reasons 'there is something to which i ought to be thankful'. one wants to give credit to something, one can't believe life could be so good by chance alone, etc. Think mauraders or vikings or something. These guys ramsack a village and the spoils are so good they gotta thank god, etc.

so u see the difference. there is an aristocratic idealistic tendency and there's a plebian idealistic tendency at work here. two kinds of soul arrive at the concept of the other-worldly for different reasons.

[promethean75]

Lil' Dicky will address your questions about the dinosaurs @ 5:07, DAM.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm sorry, IC but after what I've been through with mental illness, sleep apnea, childhood emotional trauma, and other maladies, I don't feel particularly thankful. I don't feel like those challenges have done me any good. Maybe you need to find someone who hasn't suffered as much in life so that you can sit around with them and think happy thoughts about God together. I'm angry and I'm bitter. I feel like I got ripped off compared to many of my peers around me. I'm sorry to be a downer for you. I just wish for relief. Maybe if relief comes I'll be able to agree with you.

Gary, I get it...not first hand, of course, but because I have lived close to somebody who suffered in exactly that sort of way. She was hugely bipolar, and on all kinds of meds, and was the victim of a sexual abuser in her childhood...and also one of the kindest, best people I ever knew. But she suffered. And I'm not going to tell you that it's just a matter of "changing your perspective," or anything pat and silly like that.

But let's look at it from the other side...from your side. From the perspective of your own interests and experiences, that is. And let me ask you this, if I may: what does being angry and bitter, and living accordingly, get you?

It's a sincere question. I'm not being rhetorical or flippant. It's an important question. Where does this bitterness, anger and self-focus get a person? What's the end of this kind of lifestyle? Where are you going, Gary? And how is this present disposition "serving you well," so to speak?

We might also ask, why is it attractive to you? What do you suppose is its pull on you? If it gets you nothing, what is making you want to remain with that strategy, that response?

Those are searching questions, if you take them to heart. Heck, even I could ask myself the same kinds of questions: why am I being the kind of being I am being right now? Is it getting me anywhere? Is it taking me someplace I really think I want to go? Why am I holding onto this? These are all questions for human beings, not just for mentally-afflicted ones.

I'm not going to tell you what the answers are -- I don't know, because I'm not you. But if your current disposition is, as you assess it now, taking you in a bad direction, do you want "out," or are you deciding to stick with it?

You say you got "ripped off" when "compared to many of my peers." Maybe. But then, we often don't know what others have suffered. We just see the success-front they put up for the world, the superficial appearance of happiness and well-being. We don't know their secret trials and sorrows, unless they tell us, do we?

No doubt there must be people around more fortunate than we. But what is that to us? If there were no God, what would even potentially promise us that it should be otherwise? And if it could not be otherwise, are we wise to gripe about what others have, when nothing in the universe even promised us anything but exactly what we got? That makes no sense. And from a Christian perspective, we have a name for that attitude: it's called "covetousness," or "envy," and it's forbidden in the tenth of the big Ten Commandments -- with good reason, since it's not merely evil in itself, but bad for us, as well. Envy gets us nowhere.

Still, it's attractive, I know...because we're not the people we should be...that's for sure. But what's our incentive for staying the bitter, angry, envious people we are choosing to be? Do we actually imagine there's a road to a win in that for us? Does it get us something? Or would we be better to try to find a way out of that attitude, if such can be found?

I turn the question back to you, Gary.

[Immanuel Can]

Put this way, you can see that Evolutionism is not a scientific certainty at all, even though many people would like us to think it was (a remarkable fact, in itself). It is, instead, a protected, pet ideology, which skeptics are taking on for reasons that it is supportive of other ideological positions they wish to take. There are surreptitious motives involved...people want to believe Evolutionism BECAUSE it rationalizes things like Atheism, Progressivism, Marxism, and Egoism, among others, not because the theory itself is some sort of scientific certainty. Like Papist authority, Evolutionism must not be questioned because a network of other beliefs require it to be true, not because its authority is anywere near being beyond legitimate question or scientific necessity.

But since you know that Evolutionism still has "unanswered questions," you can see that phenomenon for yourself. And you rightly say that science is "driven forward" by the raising of skeptical questions and the seeking out of additional evidence. One would have to think, therefore, that the proponents of Evolutionism either a) do not know what you know, that there are holes to be filled still, or b) are keen to gloss over the holes in order to preserve the theory, even if that means that Evolutionary biology will be inhibited from being "driven forward" thereby. But why are they so?

This reminds me of the Black Knight,..

"It's a flesh wound." Yes, that's a choice bit.

If God, the creator, does exist, then, in the light of modern science, any rational mind that is unable to break its emotional attachment to the Bible is forced to conclude that it is an allegorical version of events.

Not at all. Certainly, such a mind is wise to see that there is metaphorical and allegorical material in the Bible...parables, for example. One is wise also to see that there is metaphorical significance in events therein presented as real...the Red Sea crossing, the Crucifixion or the trials of the early Church, for example. But one would be silly not to make meaningful distinctions between, say, that which is presented as poetry (Song of Songs) and that which is presented as historical narrative, or to pretend that there is simply NO historical data to verify, say, the existence of the travels of Paul or Christ as an actual person. So we cannot say that the Bible is ALL allegorical or ALL literal: we have to say something much more intelligent -- that it is both literal and allegorical.

God put in place all the conditions and laws of physics necessary for the existence of the Universe, and then let it run. That seems like a win, win situation to me. You can keep God without having to resort to sophistry to defend your position.

That's Deism. It "wins" small, but "loses" big. What it would mean is that God is no longer interested in us, has no present plans nor future intentions for us, and really has left us orphans in a mechanistic universe that has no ultimate purpose. That's a creed one can adopt, but it has not been a popular one since the 18th Century, perhaps, because of its many and obvious shortcomings. It's not really a "win" for anybody.

...the necessary dishonestly of your arguments does take the shine of one's admiration.

Well, let me see if I can deliver myself, even a little, of that charge.

Is it possible that what looks "indiffensible," and thus "necessarily dishonest" from one worldview perspective looks nothing of the kind from another? In other words, is the problem in the claims themselves, or in the presuppositions that the speakers in question are prepared to allow?

If one has already decided there CAN BE no God, then what can any statement about God look like to him but superstitious babbling? And what can any attempt to defend such language look like, but delusory or disingenuous? And if, perchance, the speaker should make even a little inroad on the presuppositional premises of the listener, what can that look like but suspicious...surreptitious...cunning? After all, what could be more obviously cunning than somebody who makes sound plausible that which one already assumes and "knows in one's heart" already is "indefensible"? Such a one must surely be a blackguard wretch, no?

But does the cause of that impression really lie so much in the person speaking, or more in the person receiving? That is the question.

You and I have different suppositional bases. We both know that, I think. So long as you judge me on your suppositional basis, I'm sure I will continue to look to you exactly as you have described me -- as one who is willfully "defending the indefensible," through cunning means, and not authentically or legitimately. And if anything I say rubs against your presuppositional premises, will this not only seem to confirm that impression?

So I'm not surprised. I'm also not offended. It's exactly what I should expect. I only ask that you should hold out some little suspicion, even just hovering on the edge of consciousness, that maybe, just maybe...I'm sincere.

I can't predict what your response to this will be, except to say that it is bound to be unbearably frustrating.

No doubt.

I'm not trying to be that, though.

I'm amazed that the Devil hasn't tried to head hunt you, IC.

It seems his ranks are already swollen. But since headhunting is his preoccupation, I'm not at all immune. However, I'm not speaking for him.

[iambiguous]

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig says there are good reasons for thinking that He does.

So could this fine-tuning be due to chance? The problem with this explanation is that the odds of all the constants and quantities’ randomly falling into the incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range are just so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably accepted.

Again, back to how each of us reacts to this. To what extent do we have the education and the actual on-the-job training as an astrophysicist [among others in the scientific community] to respond to that in a truly sophisticated manner? And then the gap still between what the scientific community thinks it knows about these things and all that there is still to be learned. What does "randomly falling into place" mean given the staggering gaps here? Are the odds really "infinitesimally" small?

Also, if that is the case, how small in turn are the odds that an existing God is your God...given just how many of them are claimed to exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

And that's just on this planet.

That's basically IC's quandary here. He was the one who recommended I read this article. But arguing for the existence of a God, the God is a far cry from demonstrable proof that it is, in fact, your God that set into motion the Goldilocks Factor.

Therefore the proponents of the chance explanation have been forced to postulate the existence of a ‘World Ensemble’ of other universes, preferably infinite in number and randomly ordered, so that life-permitting universes like ours would appear by chance somewhere in the Ensemble.

Right. That and only that among the atheists is postulated. The irony here being that just as he needs to imagine the most "out there" set of circumstances to explain the Goldilocks effect, the faithful need to imagine that only their own God set it all into motion. And that one way or another theodicy also fits into it all Divinely.

Not only is this hypothesis, to borrow Richard Dawkins’ phrase, “an unparsimonious extravagance,” it faces an insuperable objection. By far, the most probable observable universes in a World Ensemble would be worlds in which a single brain fluctuated into existence out of the vacuum and observed its otherwise empty world. So, if our world were just a random member of the World Ensemble, by all probability we ought to be having observations like that. Since we don’t, that strongly disconfirms the World Ensemble hypothesis. So chance is also not a good explanation.

Look, once we go this far out onto the metaphysical limb, sure, we are allowed to imagine all kinds of fantastic explanations for the existence of existence itself. God and No God. But to suggest that the "insuperable objection" is more applicable to the atheists than the theists?

Well, that's ridiculous in my view. And more to the point, the scientists employ the "scientific method" in the attempt to grapple with it. And the theists among us? One or another Scripture? A more or less blind leap of faith?

A wager?

Thus...

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, the fine-tuning of the universe is due to design.

Thus, the fine-tuning of the universe constitutes evidence for a cosmic Designer.

Admittedly, more power to those here who are actually able to convince themselves that this set of assumptions is all but...axiomatic?

Bottom line [mine]: with God, you have your "transcending font" to judge your morality on this side of the grave. You have your immortality and salvation on the other side of it.

So, if the author here is able to tie it altogether into a "philosophical" argument for you as well then, okay, why not, it is your God and only your God that does in fact exist.

[Immanuel Can]

not saying Christianity is true; very, very most likely it isn't. alls I'm sayin is all the sufferin' is eventually rendered moot by eternal life in heaven, etc., so u can't be like 'hey my life sucks so fuck god'. Life is supposed to suck... it's a condition, a built in feature, of Christianity.

I've heard that Christianity originated as the religion of slaves and the down troden. People without hope in their earthly existence, but found it in the promise of Heaven. Tailor made for those whose life sucks.

Prom's not actually dead wrong here. Marx complained loud and long about the same feature of Christianity: that it proposes a consolation in the afterlife for suffering here, on earth. Marx thought that it counselled quietism, passivity and capitulation to oppression, which is why he declared the critique of religion "the first critique" that had to be done. (He meant Christianity especially, of course.)

Nietzsche hated it for a somewhat different reason, which Prom also touches: namely, that he thought it "feminized" what he regarded as "masculine" and "heroic" virtues, such as aggression, violence, selfishness, and so on, which he identified with the "life force," and "the will to power." But he saw the same issue: if heaven is the future, it relativizes life on earth, reconstitutes our view of what oppression, suffering and pain indicate, and change the whole way we are prepared to address the world.

Ironically, it is Jesus Christ Himself who said exactly the same. Think of the Beatitudes from the famous Sermon on the Mount. There, He shows how that believing in the Kingdom of God is bound to tranform one's values, perceptions and actions. Nothing on earth will seem the same, once heaven is taken into account, He says. But unlike Marx and Nietzsche, He did not see this as issuing in any kind of quietism, femininity and weakness, but rather in lofty moral courage and fortitude, and in the endurance of things the ordinary man simply shies away from, for the sake of higher principles than mere mortals can properly grasp.

Who was telling the truth: Marx, Nietzsche, or Jesus Christ? I invite you to judge them on this basis: in the last hundred years or so, since Marx and Nietzsche first wrote, what fruit has fallen from each of the trees they planted?

The case makes itself.

[Belinda]

not saying Christianity is true; very, very most likely it isn't. alls I'm sayin is all the sufferin' is eventually rendered moot by eternal life in heaven, etc., so u can't be like 'hey my life sucks so fuck god'. Life is supposed to suck... it's a condition, a built in feature, of Christianity.

I've heard that Christianity originated as the religion of slaves and the down troden. People without hope in their earthly existence, but found it in the promise of Heaven. Tailor made for those whose life sucks.

Prom's not actually dead wrong here. Marx complained loud and long about the same feature of Christianity: that it proposes a consolation in the afterlife for suffering here, on earth. Marx thought that it counselled quietism, passivity and capitulation to oppression, which is why he declared the critique of religion "the first critique" that had to be done. (He meant Christianity especially, of course.)

Nietzsche hated it for a somewhat different reason, which Prom also touches: namely, that he thought it "feminized" what he regarded as "masculine" and "heroic" virtues, such as aggression, violence, selfishness, and so on, which he identified with the "life force," and "the will to power." But he saw the same issue: if heaven is the future, it relativizes life on earth, reconstitutes our view of what oppression, suffering and pain indicate, and change the whole way we are prepared to address the world.

Ironically, it is Jesus Christ Himself who said exactly the same. Think of the Beatitudes from the famous Sermon on the Mount. There, He shows how that believing in the Kingdom of God is bound to tranform one's values, perceptions and actions. Nothing on earth will seem the same, once heaven is taken into account, He says. But unlike Marx and Nietzsche, He did not see this as issuing in any kind of quietism, femininity and weakness, but rather in lofty moral courage and fortitude, and in the endurance of things the ordinary man simply shies away from, for the sake of higher principles than mere mortals can properly grasp.

Who was telling the truth: Marx, Nietzsche, or Jesus Christ? I invite you to judge them on this basis: in the last hundred years or so, since Marx and Nietzsche first wrote, what fruit has fallen from each of the trees they planted?

The case makes itself.

There's no need to buy Xianity an entire package.No individual survives death there is no so-called 'life after death'. We can keep the good bits but not the supernatural bits. God is a human concept and we ought not to accept other men's diktat. It's our duty to truth, goodness, and beauty to make our best efforts to find and incarnate those virtues.

It's true that it is a tradition of feminine gender stereotyping that acceptance of what she is told to do, say, think, and believe is proper to a woman. Fortunately we can now see that gender stereotyping is a means of social control: the male sex is as free as the female sex, and the female sex is as free as the male sex. In 2022-3 Nietzsche has been vindicated and endorsed

[Belinda]

I've heard that Christianity originated as the religion of slaves and the down troden. People without hope in their earthly existence, but found it in the promise of Heaven. Tailor made for those whose life sucks.

Prom's not actually dead wrong here. Marx complained loud and long about the same feature of Christianity: that it proposes a consolation in the afterlife for suffering here, on earth. Marx thought that it counselled quietism, passivity and capitulation to oppression, which is why he declared the critique of religion "the first critique" that had to be done. (He meant Christianity especially, of course.)

Nietzsche hated it for a somewhat different reason, which Prom also touches: namely, that he thought it "feminized" what he regarded as "masculine" and "heroic" virtues, such as aggression, violence, selfishness, and so on, which he identified with the "life force," and "the will to power." But he saw the same issue: if heaven is the future, it relativizes life on earth, reconstitutes our view of what oppression, suffering and pain indicate, and change the whole way we are prepared to address the world.

Ironically, it is Jesus Christ Himself who said exactly the same. Think of the Beatitudes from the famous Sermon on the Mount. There, He shows how that believing in the Kingdom of God is bound to tranform one's values, perceptions and actions. Nothing on earth will seem the same, once heaven is taken into account, He says. But unlike Marx and Nietzsche, He did not see this as issuing in any kind of quietism, femininity and weakness, but rather in lofty moral courage and fortitude, and in the endurance of things the ordinary man simply shies away from, for the sake of higher principles than mere mortals can properly grasp.

Who was telling the truth: Marx, Nietzsche, or Jesus Christ? I invite you to judge them on this basis: in the last hundred years or so, since Marx and Nietzsche first wrote, what fruit has fallen from each of the trees they planted?

The case makes itself.

There's no need to buy Xianity an entire package.No individual survives death there is no so-called 'life after death'. We can keep the good bits but not the supernatural bits. God is a human concept and we ought not to accept other men's diktat. It's our duty to truth, goodness, and beauty to make our best efforts to find and incarnate those virtues.

It's true that it is a tradition of feminine gender stereotyping that acceptance of what she is told to do, say, think, and believe is proper to a woman. Fortunately we can now see that gender stereotyping is a means of social control: the male sex is as free as the female sex, and the female sex is as free as the male sex. During and leading up to 2022-3 Nietzsche has been vindicated and endorsed

[Immanuel Can]

There's no need to buy Xianity an entire package.No individual survives death there is no so-called 'life after death'. We can keep the good bits but not the supernatural bits.

That "sounds good," but only until one thinks about it.

When one does, one realizes that if there's nothing after life, then there's absolutely no reason at all to deny oneself anything one might be inclined to do or have. The "good bits" start to look like what Nietzsche said they were -- phony, moralistic stratagems used by weak others to keep us Ubermenschen from smashing all the pathetic, feminized weaklings into submission to our iron wills and taking whatever it is we want...the lions share of goods, women, fame and power. And it's clearly only the weaklings and fools who fail to rise to the heroic heights of facing this "transvaluation of values," and insist on still "being good."

God is a human concept

Then He would be nothing. No power is rightly given to an entity merely fabricated in the minds of men. Neitzsche would be with you on that.

It's our duty to truth, goodness, and beauty to make out best effort to find those virtues.

Au contraire, says Nietzsche: can you not see we have no such "duties"? "Duty" is another of those craven concepts produced by the frail, feminized world of Christian morality. Bah! The Ubermenschen have no such illusions! Take your paltry "duty" and begone!

Or so he would say. Of course, he was quite a blowhard sometimes.

[Belinda]

There is no afterlife. The reason men try to be good is not so they will be rewarded in Heaven, or after Judgement Day. The reason we try to be good and true is that we love goodness and truth. Love is its own reward.

The Ubermensch is a man who has decided what he loves and cares about on its own merits, not because some Authority told him what's what. However we are all immersed in history and the Axial Age produced a shift in world view such that the sages we know and revere, and their core morality, remain viable. Nietzsche said God is dead by which he meant the Old Authority is dead, and by implication we are all free to shoulder the responsibilities that were formerly attributed to God.

[Immanuel Can]

There is no afterlife. The reason men try to be good is not so they will be rewarded in Heaven, or after Judgement Day. The reason we try to be good and true is that we love goodness and truth. Love is its own reward.

What a sweet land you live in! Goodness, truth and love are always rewarded...

No, B., they are not. C.S. Lewis perceptively writes,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

Love and pain are companions. Let the person who has ever "loved and lost" tell you that.

[iambiguous]

There's no need to buy Xianity an entire package.No individual survives death there is no so-called 'life after death'. We can keep the good bits but not the supernatural bits.

That "sounds good," but only until one thinks about it.

When one does, one realizes that if there's nothing after life, then there's absolutely no reason at all to deny oneself anything one might be inclined to do or have.

Exactly!

No God? Then, in the absence of God, all things are permitted. Which is why down through the ages countless God have been invented. In order that, within any particular community, all things are not permitted.

But even among the No God folks all things are not permitted. Why? Because out in the real world there are always going to be consequences given the behaviors that you choose. Others might react angerly to what you do. There might even be laws against it. Punishments. So, for all practical purposes, all things are permitted...but only if you can get away with them.

Now, for the God folks though, the hard part: actually demonstrating that it is your God and only your God that does in fact exist. And this is of vital importance because of what is at stake on both sides of the grave.

First up: IC demonstrates conclusively that it is his own Christian God. By quoting the Christian Bible and posting videos.

[Belinda]

Immanuel, love, truth, and beauty are their own reward. If you fear to trust your welfare to the quest for love, truth, and beauty you are prudent but no more than prudent. If you are willing to take a leap of faith, then you will be on the quest.

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim.
Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

The "life" the pilgrim inherits is eternal, not relative to time and space.