Christianity

[Belinda]

A concept with no referent is a nothing. It's what we call a "delusion." So you're on the same page as Dawkins et al.

The strange thing, even for those who allow the concept of god & soul, is that Dawkins with a reference to ‘delusion’ is not wrong. And he is strongly right.

It is likely that most men cannot go deeply inside their god-concept since doing that, analytically, tends to wreck the conceptualization. So believers return to an inner contemplation and subjective relationship to restore their ‘experience’ of divinity. It is acutely personal and subjective. And as such prone, certainly, to delusion.

But then so too is our subjective ‘interface’ with the reality we envision. Our ‘metaphysical dream of the world’. A man without a ‘dream’ is not a man really. He’d be an AI.

Existence, being — these have no explanation. You can only stand before the magnitude of what this is. Yet man explains and conceptualizes. I think this is Lacewing’s core assertion in a nutshell.

In a sense relationship to god is like the sentiment of being on love:

Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

Delusion, delirium and even the sort of thinking that results from extreme, protracted pain. You have to take these things into consideration when contemplating “man and his belief”. You cannot not think about them.

The in love phenomenon is ecstatic. It's a leaving of self to join with another self. That's why The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini is about her loving to her climax and also about her climactic devotion to God.
The corollary to that truth is that neither sexual passion nor love of the Good is accessible only through reason and intellect unless those are yoked to the entirety of nature, including man's nature as an animal that loves.

William Blake too often reverts to that theme when he points to man as an animal that loves ; for instance in his poem The Sick Rose , Blake mourns the death of innocent animal nature poisoned by a culture of commercial profit.

Wordsworth too was on to that vision: "shades of the prison house" that were bars against the innocence of the growing boy.
Here is the whole poem by Blake that expresses the scene most graphically

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

[Alexis Jacobi]

The in love phenomenon is ecstatic. It's a leaving of self to join with another self. That's why The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini is about her loving to her climax and also about her climactic devotion to God.

Curious then how there are two poles in the religious equation. One, the possibility to throw oneself or to lose oneself in religious ecstasy — or any lesser derivative of it. To throw oneself into something. To become deeply involved, deeply committed: to serve some purpose either transcendent or temporal.

But then there is the condensation of theological concepts into structured ethics: the right way to live; how to treat one’s neighbors; how to conduct oneself as a human citizen. And this is not ecstatic, not mystical, but simply the acceptance of a set of conclusions and ‘best practices’.

I was going to look up a quote by Ortega y Gassett on this topic. I searched knowing I’d posted it here before. And I found a post of mine under my former username — from 9 years ago.

My god is this my fate? To turn & turn & turn essentially within the same questions!?!

Harbal: perhaps your way is the right way! To empty the mind so completely that one just sits there, drooling. To have no past no future, no ideals. Even lumpy oatmeal without sweetener. Will you take me as an assassin-disciple? (I will in the end have to eliminate you. But meanwhile!)

It could be like in The Collector by John Fowles but with a different ending.

[Harbal]

Harbal: perhaps your way is the right way! To empty the mind so completely that one just sits there, drooling. To have no past no future, no ideals. Even lumpy oatmeal without sweetener. Will you take me as an assassin-disciple? (I will in the end have to eliminate you. But meanwhile!)

It could be like in The Collector by John Fowles but with a different ending.

"Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time."

That is remarkable, Alexis, it could almost be my story, except the love of my life, Mucky Susan, wasn't an art student, and it was she who abduced me.

[Alexis Jacobi]

"Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time."

That is remarkable, Alexis, it could almost be my story....

Did she ever call you "my freckled whelp"? Just curious. Odd connections tend to pile up . . .

[Harbal]

Did she ever call you "my freckled whelp"?

No, she didn't, Alexis. Mucky Susan had many shortcomings, but putting on a show of condescending superiority to mask her insecurity wasn't one of them. She was more into foul language and spitting, which, although unpleasant, had a sort of admirable honesty to it.

[Belinda]

The in love phenomenon is ecstatic. It's a leaving of self to join with another self. That's why The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini is about her loving to her climax and also about her climactic devotion to God.

Curious then how there are two poles in the religious equation. One, the possibility to throw oneself or to lose oneself in religious ecstasy — or any lesser derivative of it. To throw oneself into something. To become deeply involved, deeply committed: to serve some purpose either transcendent or temporal.

But then there is the condensation of theological concepts into structured ethics: the right way to live; how to treat one’s neighbors; how to conduct oneself as a human citizen. And this is not ecstatic, not mystical, but simply the acceptance of a set of conclusions and ‘best practices’.

I was going to look up a quote by Ortega y Gassett on this topic. I searched knowing I’d posted it here before. And I found a post of mine under my former username — from 9 years ago.

My god is this my fate? To turn & turn & turn essentially within the same questions!?!

Harbal: perhaps your way is the right way! To empty the mind so completely that one just sits there, drooling. To have no past no future, no ideals. Even lumpy oatmeal without sweetener. Will you take me as an assassin-disciple? (I will in the end have to eliminate you. But meanwhile!)

It could be like in The Collector by John Fowles but with a different ending.

Structured ethics may be and frequently are acquisitioned by a temporal authority which lies about its privileged access to God. When individuals lose touch with their animal status they, we, are robotic and unhappy.

Ecstasy of any sort is unwelcome to religions that have distanced themselves from both rebels and mystics. It's simply too difficult to control the animal part of us and so the more authoritarian the religion is the more it will control our sexual and our mystical natures. The most unfortunate thing about such control is that our rebellious sexual and mystical natures are also the source of loving and caring.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Did she ever call you "my freckled whelp"?

No, she didn't, Alexis. Mucky Susan had many shortcomings....

What, did you eat her?

. . . but putting on a show of condescending superiority to mask her insecurity wasn't one of them.

Like you it is hard for me to have much sympathy for insecure people. I do try though. No matter what, they always seem to fall into their own traps.

She was more into foul language and spitting, which, although unpleasant, had a sort of admirable honesty to it.

You found the female version then! Can you reveal a bit more?

[Alexis Jacobi]

...

Harbal, I'd appreciate it if you would read and -- if possible -- comment on any of these quotes.

Ortega y Gassett from The Revolt of the Masses.

Do you see him as being condescending in the descriptions he offers? Are these valid in your eyes? Such a critical frame of mind! What are your thoughts?

"If from the viewpoint of what what concerns public life, the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man be studied, what we find is as follows: (1) An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations; consequently, each average man finds within himself a sensation of power and triumph which, (2) invites him to stand up for himself as he is, to look upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete. This contentment within himself leads him to shut himself off from any external court of appeal; not to listen, not to submit his opinion to judgment, not to consider other's existence. His intimate feeling of power urges him always to exercise predominance. He will act then as if he and his like were the only beings existing in this world; and, consequently, (3) will intervene in all matters, imposing his own vulgar views without respect or regard for others, without limit or reserve, that is to say, in accordance with a system of 'direct action'."

"It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.… Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his 'opinions.' "

It occurred to me you might also have him on your shelf but had never read him . . .

[Harbal]

"If from the viewpoint of what what concerns public life, the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man be studied, what we find is as follows: (1) An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations; consequently, each average man finds within himself a sensation of power and triumph which, (2) invites him to stand up for himself as he is, to look upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete. This contentment within himself leads him to shut himself off from any external court of appeal; not to listen, not to submit his opinion to judgment, not to consider other's existence. His intimate feeling of power urges him always to exercise predominance. He will act then as if he and his like were the only beings existing in this world; and, consequently, (3) will intervene in all matters, imposing his own vulgar views without respect or regard for others, without limit or reserve, that is to say, in accordance with a system of 'direct action'."

"It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.… Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his 'opinions.' "

It occurred to me you might also have him on your shelf but had never read him . . .

No, I don't have him, but I can see he certainly deserves a place on that shelf.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, I don't have him, but I can see he certainly deserves a place on that shelf.

If I may I'd like to gift you a copy of the first English edition! Inscribed (on a sticky-note that can be removed) "To a Jolly Brute, well-loved by all, from black-hearted, pretentious & extremely insolent Alexis Jacobi, January 10th, 2023"

I'm getting choked-up!

[Immanuel Can]

I guess I'll have take your word for it and assume you're not making baseless assumptions about something you have no knowledge of.

Not at all. I'm simply telling you what the word literally means, and what it implies. That's all.

I'm sorry to be a sour puss, IC but I can't believe you know any more about transcendental matters than anyone else does,

Why would that be?

Because I assume you've never been dead or outside the universe.

That's what you think "transcendence" means? Honest question.

I've had some pretty bad experiences with religious delusions. I'd prefer not to have any more.

I can understand that. Delusions in any form are bad.

If I reach out my hand into the air I doubt I'd feel God's. At least I haven't so far.

Maybe so. But what has been is not necessarily what will come. Perhaps there are two problems: one is the looking for God to fulfill the wrong kind of role in one's life -- He's not a girlfriend -- and the other is the doubt that He would care enough to reach out to you, in the first place. That can keep you from ever having any contact with the transcendent at all. To come to know God, it may only take a mustard-seed sized faith, because He's very willing to come a distance in your favour; but God' s famously not a great fan of outright cynics.

[Immanuel Can]

I know for certain that doing so again will not help you find any passage in which Nagel asserts evolution does not happen.

Reread page 5-6.

It's funny how you think you "know for certain" something that plainly isn't true. Evolutionist faith is very much guilty of that.

[Immanuel Can]

His worth, such as it is, is just below a no name brand of corn flakes.

One day, I promise you, you'll be regretting you ever said that. That's all I can tell you now.

Maybe he will, maybe he won't. I have yet to seriously regret any of my rants concerning God.

It's not the Judgment yet, Gary.

God is very patient, as the 2 Peter, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." And in the same context, it reminds us, "but the Day of the Lord will come."

You can take both to the bank.

[Immanuel Can]

You Immanuel have attached...

Not I.

Read the Word of God. Argue with Him, not with me.

[Immanuel Can]

But there is a referent for God as a human concept.

That's a "delusion," just framed in other words.

As for human beings, and how wonderful they are, they killed well over 140 million of their kin in the most brutal of ways in the last century alone.

Ask yourself, if humans are so wonderful and are progressing morally all the time, how come our most recent century was by far, by orders of magnitude actually, our worst?

So much for "moral progress."