Christianity

[attofishpi]

There is no excuse for racism (even on the internet iambigous)

What colour am I?

Note to AJ:

You explain it to him.

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Ok you pompous GIT (of which is a "derangement")

Provide your stats on IQ based on race. *and of course, how that was acquired

[Belinda]

Don't ask me.

Ask Jesus:

"The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 3:36)

It's not mere Theism that saves one. It's Jesus Christ.

John was not quoting verbatim.

No, he was not quoting. But he was still telling the truth.

And Jesus said, "Unless you believe that I AM (i.e. the Hebrew name of God), you shall die in your sins." (John 8:24) He also said, "
"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. The one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. (John 3)

So there's no shortage of direct quotations making exactly the same point.

What makes you think Jesus said those ? What are your criteria for the historicity of sayings attributed to Jesus?

[iambiguous]

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

(V) God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness.

Intentional states of consciousness?

Well, let's start here: how can any of us intentionally think, feel, say or do anything at all and still reconcile that with a God that is said to be omniscient?

Philosophers are puzzled by states of intentionality. Intentionality is the property of being about something or of something. It signifies the object-directedness of our thoughts.

And then the philosophers compelled or not compelled to grapple with connecting the dots between intentionality and determinism. Here the invention of God itself is but one more inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world.

And then how simply surreal and mind-boggling thinking about that can be.

For example, I can think about my summer vacation, or I can think of my wife. No physical object has intentionality in this sense. A chair or a stone or a glob of tissue like the brain is not about or of something else. Only mental states or states of consciousness are about other things.

Again, only by presuming that this...

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

...is just something that mere mortals may never comprehend. Freely?

In The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (2011), the materialist Alex Rosenberg recognizes this fact, and concludes that for atheists, there really are no intentional states. Rosenberg boldly claims that we never really think about anything. But this seems incredible.

Incredible indeed. But then atheists are no less inclined at times to "think up" abstract points of view like this that bear almost no actual resemblance whatsoever to the lives that we live with and around others socially, politically and economically from day to day to day.

We never really think about anything?!!! No, we think about things all the time. And we often act on what we think. So, the question then is this: is there or is there not a God around judging what we think and what we do such that He can grant us either immortality and salvation or eternal damnation?

Or, instead, given a No God world, is anything that we think and do other than a manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world?

Then the part where we take what we conclude "in our head" here and actually demonstrate that it is in fact true...empirically, materially, phenomenally.

In other words, experimentally, experientially, existentially...given a particular context.

Obviously, I am thinking about Rosenberg’s argument – and so are you! This seems to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of his atheism. By contrast, for theists, because God is a mind, it’s hardly surprising that there should be other, finite minds, with intentional states. Thus intentional states fit comfortably into a theistic worldview.

Talk about going around and around in circles! No wonder Immanuel Can recommends him:

1] This must be true because God is mind
2] And our minds have intentional states because this mindful God made them that way

So we may argue:

1. If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist.

2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Argue, sure. Actually producing this God? Actually demonstrating that a God, the God, his God is the One?

Right.

[Dubious]

John was not quoting verbatim.

No, he was not quoting. But he was still telling the truth.

And Jesus said, "Unless you believe that I AM (i.e. the Hebrew name of God), you shall die in your sins." (John 8:24) He also said, "
"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. The one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. (John 3)

So there's no shortage of direct quotations making exactly the same point.

What makes you think Jesus said those ? What are your criteria for the historicity of sayings attributed to Jesus?

I sometimes thought about that myself. How do we know what Jesus really said since Paul hardly ever quotes him or gave any details of his life. The earliest of the gospels, that of Mark, and those that followed were more biographical, written at minimum 40 years later, close to, overlapping and after the siege of Jerusalem. None of these personages knew Jesus and couldn't have known what he actually said. In any event, he appears as a purely Jewish phenomena whose concern were Jews only without any Gentile inclusion. That part was left up to Paul.

[tillingborn]

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.

It plainly is true. If you reread pages 5-6, in the first full sentence you will learn that Nagel does not deny evolution:
"What I would like to do is explore the possibilities that are compatible with what we know - in particular what we know about how mind and everything connected with it depends on the appearance and development of living organisms, as a result of the universe's physical, chemical and then biological evolution."
So you are quite wrong but, as you have said, everyone has a right to be wrong. In the same spirit of generosity, you clearly believe that even Christians have a right to be childish:

Evolutionist faith is very much guilty of that.

Again, there is no such thing as an "Evolutionist"; it is a straw man made up by people who in their desperation to be right will resort to lying and cheating. You are only fooling yourself. Grow up or more fool you.

[Harbal]

Again, there is no such thing as an "Evolutionist"

There is. It says so in chapter six of One Hundred Dirty Tricks To Use On Atheists.

[tillingborn]

Again, there is no such thing as an "Evolutionist"

There is. It says so in chapter six of One Hundred Dirty Tricks To Use On Atheists.

According to my rough, back of the envelope calculations, at 11.38 this morning, Immanuel Can will read your post. By 11.38 and 14 seconds he will have forgotten these words:

It says so in chapter six of One Hundred Dirty Tricks To Use On Atheists.

Here the maths gets messy, but some time next Tuesday afternoon, you can expect to be cited as an authority.

[phyllo]

Again, there is no such thing as an "Evolutionist"

There is. It says so in chapter six of One Hundred Dirty Tricks To Use On Atheists.

Evolution isn't only for atheists.

[Immanuel Can]

Upon death there is no accounting to be made anywhere or for anything. Last Judgements don't exist. Why should it? The universe has better things to do.

If you're right, you'll never know. If you're wrong, you will.

That's a manipulated conclusion that fits your beliefs.

No, it's very simple logic, and utterly devoid of manipulation.

If you're dead-and-done, you can never know anything. If you're not, you can.

That's indisputable.

[Immanuel Can]

How come you can say with certainty that you can know right now, that someone else will never know they are right to not believe God upon their death?

Very easily. Human empirical knowledge -- knowledge of facts of reality -- is always probabilistic. So if the word "know" means anything at all, in regards to empirical reality, it means, "You can have a very high level of certainty about..."

If you believe God, then you will know what He has told you. And it will turn out to be right. That's as good as "knowledge" gets.

Do you have some kind of special predetermined knowledge of other peoples fates regarding their belief or non belief in God.. IC?

Are you mistaking me for the Judge? Hardly. But I can believe what He says about that, or I can refuse to.

And what about those people who just say to themselves honestly and openly ... I cannot know if there is a God or not?

Romans 1 tells us that they cannot honestly say that. Everybody knows there's a God...even those who (paradoxically) choose to express their hatred for Him by trying to deny He exists.

Romans 1:21-22 -- "For even though they (i.e. unbelievers) knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools..."

The Word of God says all men know, on some level...and yet some make a different choice. I believe that.

[iambiguous]

ME:

AJ: But actually, and as it plays out, your approach [Iambiguous'] is ultimately more didactic. What I do (theorize) is what I am inclined to do by nature and by my situation. You can label it didactic pedantry if you wish. Your terms will not, I do not think, have any effect on the sensible choices I have made.

Iambiguous: What sensible choices? In regard to your own interactions with men and women who are not of Northern European stock, what would you construe to be sensible behaviors? Can you cite examples of behaviors that you deemed not to be sensible? Behaviors more common to those of races other than your own?

In other words, back to this:

No, seriously, you are the one who keeps making reference to Northern Europeans. How are they different from Southern Europeans?

And, in your view, do these differences revolve around things that some Northern Europeans might construe to be more reasonable or more virtuous behaviors? Does superior/inferior enter into it at all?

Would you be okay with Northern Europeans producing children with Southern Europeans? Would both be construed as entirely equal in regard to educational and employment opportunities? Would you treat Southern Europeans exactly the same as you would Northern Europeans? Would you be just as comfortable living in a Southern European community as in a Northern one?

To which Mr. Wiggle responds by going straight back up into his intellectual contraption clouds...

In an incipiently hysterical frame of mind he cannot understand that the sensible choice is to remain within a type of non-commitment (to political programs and action for example). I did not ever speak of any interactions with anyone. But let's examine what I did do: I did say that I will regard it as a 'negative' if the European-derived stock of America is no longer a super-majority. That is, the larger slice of the population. The determining one therefore. This assertion is immediately associated with *evil*. Yet it is not. It has been made to seem evil though. And this through a causal chain that involves social engineering, propaganda, education, and different mechanisms and tools. I.e. a causal chain of actions.

So I conclude what is obvious: Even to think of these things, to merely contemplate them, has been associated with evil. Why is it important to point this out? Because this type of 'argument' is used all the time, everywhere. Literally we are subsumed in it. So much so that to all appearances we cannot distinguish it from real argument, and therefore free thought.

The questions Iambuguous asks are not to be answered. He asks *questions* that already contain the answers he seeks. And these he can rail against.

No, I ask questions that allow him to take his "scholarly" intellectual contraptions out into the world of actual human interactions between the Northern European stock, the Southern European stock and the black, brown, red and yellow stocks.

Those who think like him are in power and they are intending to stop the "demographic crisis" in nations like America.

They scoff at his "world of words" and demand action!

"What is to be done?", as they say, to bring that about?

He'll either address that given particular contexts that might precipitate legislation relating to reproduction, education, employment, social interaction and the like -- apartheid? death camps? -- or he'll continue to hide beyond his "theoretical"/"philosophical"...assessments, analyses.

So for at least 10 years now, possibly longer, I have been experiencing this sort of reaction in many different areas (mostly on forums I participate in but also in some personal and non-personal relations) and thinking about it. Through long processes of introspection and consideration I have concluded that the statements I make (for example here) are reasonable, careful, and also moral. I do not say that they are not difficult areas though.

The classic AJ abstraction!! It tells us nothing at all about what Southern European, black, brown, red or yellow folks can expect if they are members of a community where those in power think like him call the shots. His thinking, his introspection, his philosophical assessments are "reasonable, careful and moral" though.

I have always said "I am here for my own purposes". I do not mind at all encountering this reaction. True it always results in stifling and conversations that go nowhere. But I am committed to getting all that I can out of it and so I *study* it.

Again, no problem. If pursuing racial stocks didactically and pedantically is his thing fine. As I said there are plenty of others here who will stay up in the clouds with him...endlessly exchanging words that define and defend other words "technically".

But my thing is to take the tools of philosophy out into the world of day-to-day human interactions; and, in particular, pertaining to interactions that come into conflict in regard to moral and political value judgments.

One has to say all of this and get it all out there before the meat of the actual terms of conversation are even possible to address.

This I hear all the time from the "serious philosophers": "Only after we can all agree 'technically' about the definition and the meaning of the words we use to encompass our 'ethical theories' can the 'real world' of human social, political and economic relationships ever be properly discussed."

And, for some, of course, that comes to mean "never".

AJ will either "walk his Northern European white folks talk" here with respect to things like race and gender and sexual orientation and Jews or he won't.

HIM:

What happens is ‘you-plural’ get overwhelmed by hysteria. Personally, I think you’ve been trained (brainwashed) so that certain topics push you over an internal edge. It is really amazing to me. And I have nothing more to say on the topic at this time.

Why don’t you pass the time playing a little solitaire?

Once again, I have managed to reduce an objectivist down to a truly pathetic post like this. His own equivalent of putting me in henry's "penalty box". Takes the points I raise out of his head altogether.

He'll now stay up in the theoretical clouds of course...though a part of him must grasp just how irrelevant that is to actual flesh and blood men and women grappling with race in their day to day lives. He's safe up there however because only definitions and deductions are at stake.

Even those who do in fact walk his talk must feel rather contemptuous of him for not being anything other than "philosophical" about it. The true pedant in other words.



Note to others:

In regard to your own exchanges with him, if he does actually "illustrate his text" by bringing his "intellectual platform" down to earth, please, by all means, apprise me of it. I'm curious regarding what he does believe should be done to stem the "demographic crisis" here in America. That and how far he himself is willing to go to accomplish it.

[Immanuel Can]

Atheism can't be rational. It cannot even hope to acquire the evidence it needs for its fundamental claim.

Isn't the fundamental claim of an atheist merely a claim to disbelieve there is a God?

What does "disbelieve" mean, in that sentence, is the question.

Does "disbelieve" mean, "not have any information to go on, either way"?

Or does it mean "claim to have reason to think there is no God?"

Atheists never want to say. Because either answer is a serious problem for them. (I'm not calling you out on this, please understand; I'm just talking about the logic of what Atheism itself holds.)

If they just have no information about something, and so "fail to know grounds for belief or unbelief," in the proposition either way, they're agnostic.

If they say they have any reason to be convinced there actually is no God, they're obviously in error or deceptive -- because one cannot adduce sufficient evidence to prove God does not exist, and there are at least inductive evidences that lead most people to think there well might be. So he's claiming a level of certainty that basic reason tells us he never can possibly have.

There clearly are people who do not believe there is a God, and their existence is the evidence for it.

I'm interested.

How would "their existence" be some kind of evidence warranting them to conclude, "There is no God"? Or am I misunderstanding your sentence there?

[iambiguous]

There is no excuse for racism (even on the internet iambigous)

What colour am I?

Note to AJ:

You explain it to him.

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Come on, AJ, this guy actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

[Immanuel Can]

What makes you think Jesus said those ? What are your criteria for the historicity of sayings attributed to Jesus?

That gets into the historicity question, of course.

Well, there are a couple of things, at the very least. One is that the Bible is the best-attested, most-critiqued-and-evaluated ancient book in the entire world...in addition to being far and away the most influential, and the basic text of all of Western society. That makes it a document to take very seriously.

But much more than mere historical scholarship is the Person revealed therein, Jesus Christ. He's far too great, far too complex, far too profound and far too moral to be the product of human fiction. Not the very greatest minds in history are able to formulate a voice like that, and be so dead right, so often, and so utterly profound. Shakespeare himself couldn't do it -- which is why he quotes the Bible over 1350 times in his various writings. But that Person -- Jesus Christ -- if you face Him, you'll know. Most people who remain skeptics do so because they simply do not dare face Him.

So go and see. That's my advice.

[iambiguous]

What makes you think Jesus said those ? What are your criteria for the historicity of sayings attributed to Jesus?

That gets into the historicity question, of course.

Well, there are a couple of things, at the very least. One is that the Bible is the best-attested, most-critiqued-and-evaluated ancient book in the entire world...in addition to being far and away the most influential, and the basic text of all of Western society. That makes it a document to take very seriously.

But much more than mere historical scholarship is the Person revealed therein, Jesus Christ. He's far too great, far too complex, far too profound and far too moral to be the product of human fiction. Not the very greatest minds in history are able to formulate a voice like that, and be so dead right, so often, and so utterly profound. Shakespeare himself couldn't do it -- which is why he quotes the Bible over 1350 times in his various writings. But that Person -- Jesus Christ -- if you face Him, you'll know. Most people who remain skeptics do so because they simply do not dare face Him.

So go and see. That's my advice.

Note to Belinda:

Okay, above he is arguing that Jesus Christ must have existed because it says so in the Christian Bible. And by quoting the Bible 1,350 times [if that's true] even Shakespeare thus proves that the Bible is true.

Please do me a favor. IC has posted videos he claims demonstrate that, beyond a leap of faith, the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven. I have asked him to note the video -- just one video -- that backs him up on this the best. But he refuses to link me to it. Perhaps, if you ask, he might do so. He might be more inclined to save your soul.