Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Note to Others:

Something or other; devastating things of consequence, in large type.

[iambiguous]

Note to Others:

Something or other; devastating things of consequence, in large type.

Note to Immanuel Can:

He's all yours!!

[seeds]

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 [attofishpi] actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

You're the one who used this phrase:

The slant-eyed Chinks, as some prefer?

Nobody else did.

You repeatedly use "yellow" to describe people.

iambiguous and I have had our fair share of disagreements and do not see eye-to-eye on certain metaphysical issues.

And even though I strongly disapprove of him (or anyone) casually using denigrating and hateful words such as "C_nks" in this conversation,...

(in the same way I disapprove of people using the "n" word in any conversation)

...I nevertheless feel compelled to point out that you have clearly misunderstood his stance on race, for it was obvious that he was simply trying to hold up a mirror to AJ's white nationalist views.

Indeed, you are guilty of doing to iambiguous precisely what attofishpi did to me and Harry Baird a while back where, even though I have been a champion of the fact that all human souls are absolutely equal to one another and that racism is the result of low consciousness,...

...he (atto) nevertheless completely misconstrued what was taking place in the conversation, and in one of his disgustingly vulgar (drunken) rants attacked me by stating the following...

"...you lefty racist kunt just accept THE fact that U R A FUCKING RACIST..."

I have suggested to him before that his Dr Jekyll persona should have a breathalyzer installed on his computer in order to prevent his drunken Mr. Hyde persona from being able to access the Internet, but, clearly, he failed to follow through on that.

Again (and iambiguous can correct me if I'm wrong), the point is that you are misconstruing his stance in the same way that attofishpi so ignorantly misconstrued my stance.

About a hundred and twenty pages ago I posted a little diatribe that began with the following paragraph...

Not only did the European colonists decimate the native Americans and steal their ancestral lands, but our thoughtless and exceedingly cruel forefathers jump-started the early American economy via the soul-crushing work, brutally forced on the backs of humans who were kidnapped from the African continent...

To which Alexis Jacobi responded with the following...

Hoo-boy. Things are gonna get hot around here . . .

Little did I realize at the time that he, with his white nationalist propaganda, was going to be the source of his predicted heat.
_______

[phyllo]

You really need to ask yourself why you won't go there.

Cause you're going to do one of your polemic rants and there won't be a discussion of any merit.

Ah, back to Stooge mode again.

Now, why don't you actually respond to the points I raised above regarding the other accusation you leveled at me.


Note to others:

Larry and I go way back. He just doesn't like me. Why? Because I suspect that, chip by chip, I am chiseling away at his own murky "rooted existentially in God" moral objectivism. The Christian God I suspect.

Just don't ask him to being his own God or his own moral philosophy down to Earth.

Or, sure, maybe he will do that for you.

He has said several times that he does not want to be attacked.

But you are going to attack him if he says anything remotely 'incorrect'.

I'm a stooge for pointing this out??

I don't think so.

You're an idiot because you can't recognize and admit to what you are doing.

[Alexis Jacobi]

. . . he was simply trying to hold up a mirror to AJ's white nationalist views.

Indeed, you are guilty of doing to iambiguous precisely what attofishpi did to me and Harry Baird a while back where, even though I have been a champion of the fact that all human souls are absolutely equal to one another and that racism is the result of low consciousness...

You have misrepresented my views. This is a standard and common tactic used (most often) by Progressive/Left types. I use that designation (Progressive/Left) for convenience sakes.

You are free to champion what you wish. I do not disagree about human souls being equal. But no part of any argument I’ve made has to do with souls.

Your views are closer to, and borne out of, aggressive Americanism and it civil imposition. Others do not share this zealousness. My advice: examine yourself. In conversation with me you’d have to.

To favor or prefer one demographic is not equal to ‘white nationalism’. You will need to correct your projecting biases.

Anti-racism of the common variety is in certain aspects a trap: it ends up as destructive to any race-category. For a given race to prosper as a race it must maintain itself. In this sense it (attention paid to one’s heritage and somatic self) is not immoral. In fact the opposite is true.

The ideas I have have been carefully thought-through.

Yours? Less so because they are emoted and also tightly bound to propaganda constructs.

Whether you like it or not, whether you accept it or not, many people are thinking these things through.

But it is a fraught and difficult topic.

Once again: a level-headed and fair statement. I’d prefer it if you’d not twist it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Little did I realize at the time that he, with his white nationalist propaganda, was going to be the source of his predicted heat.

But I do not emit heat. The heat is all yours. I emit intolerable coolness.

[Alexis Jacobi]

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father.

This villain of mine comes under the prediction: there's son against father. The King falls from bias of nature: there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

[Immanuel Can]

We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Alexis Jacobi]

So, and additionally, looks like Biden and Trump will be cell mates. Who’d have imagined?

[Belinda]

We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The end of the old authority must be the beginning of democracy.

[Dubious]

Any revelations at hand will have nothing to do with...

The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

No "center" holds forever, and nothing ever goes back to where it started from. There is no anti-Christ waiting to be born anywhere, least of all in Bethlehem. Yeats was still far too religious to be in any way insightful. He's an old-time relic.

[Immanuel Can]

We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The end of the old authority must be the beginning of democracy.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Unfortunately, we're witnessing the end of any democracy, and the start of Globalist totalitarianism.

[Harbal]

To become aware of some claim, give it some consideration, and conclude that it lacks enough plausibility to be taken seriously, therefore not including it among proposed accounts of states of affairs one regards as being true, or likely to be true.

Alright. Let's take that definition and work with it.

On what does one base the "conclusion" that it "lacks enough plausibility to be taken seriously," when it comes to the matter of God?

Well, in my case, I base that conclusion on my own experience of how the world that I know works. Certain causes always lead to certain effects, and certain things do happen, while other things never happen, so, based on these sorts of observations, I have arrived at a model with which I am able to compare any state of affairs that might be presented to me as fact. Now, the state of affairs that you, for example, present to me regarding God, most definitely does not comply with my model. There is, of course, the possibility of other models of reality existing outside of, or even parallel to, the model that I have experience of, but my lack of experience makes it impossible for me to assess the viability of any alleged occurrance that is reported to have taken place in one of them. Now that we have the internet, I cannot fail to be aware of the many accounts of weird and wonderful ocurrances that are supposed to have taken place in realities that are at odds with my model of reality, and I fear that if I were to accept all these accounts as genuine my mind would lose its way, and I would be unable to function properly in the world that I know.

That's an obvious question, because according to neutral statistical gathering (the CIA factbook, for example) 92% of the world's population believes it's plausible, and another 4% thinks it might be plausible...leaving only 4% that are convinced it's not. And that's without taking the historical count into tabulation, which would surely be far higher, since for long periods of time there was practically nobody who thought otherwise.

I don't know that those statistics are accurate, to what extent they have been skewed, or to what degree the beliefs are significant to those who hold them, but popularity is no measure of good judgement. Remember the Osmonds? Besides, I cannot comment on the world's population in general; I don't know what they believe, or what are their circumstances. Neither do I know who among my own acquantances are believers, agnostics or atheists, but I can say that none of them give an outward appearance of living their lives as if thoughts of God ever entered their heads. My impression is that many, if not most, people go about their lives without much reference to God.


I could make the point that grouping the entire world population together in terms of their religious attitudes and thinking it gives you any meaningful insight into any specific society's religious nature is foolish, but I can't be bothered.

So the numbers of people who think a thing "plausible" doesn't prove anything. But it surely implies that somebody who confidently asserts that it's "not plausible enough" even to "be taken seriously" would need to supply some sort of rationale or proof himself, if he were to expect anyone to take him seriously.

Well I suppose I would prefer to be taken seriously sometimes, but I don't know that I expect it. I have never had the impression that those who are aware of my lack of religious beliefs have difficulty in taking me seriously in that particular regard.

I certainly don't think that somebody who claims to be an Atheist wants to say, "Y'know, I've never actually thought about God at all," or "I have no opinion." If he's an Atheist, he has both. He's thought about it, and he has an opinion. I think that's fair, don't you?

I suppose so.

But is it a rational opinion, or just a wish? That will have to be established on the quality of the evidence he produces.

Well, again, in my case it is an opinion for which there is no rational reason for it to be otherwise, and I do not consider it reasonable to present me with what I consider to be ludicrous claims and then demand that I produce evidence to justify my rejection of them.

the vast majority of human beings have found the existence of some sort of transcendent deity to be totally plausible.

Perhaps a propensity to believe such things is just part of the human psyche. All I can say is that not everybody has that propensity.

But I also find that the average Atheist is only interested in thinking about the matter long enough to fix on some singular idea that satisfies him personally that he can dismiss the whole matter, and then stops thinking right there. That's why they never want to give evidence, but prefer to complain, "I don't owe any." It's because their disbelief is, even in their own awareness, not well-founded, and they're very keen not to have their reasoning examined, or their basis of disbelief questioned. It won't stand up well.

This account of what you "find" to be going on in the heads of average atheists has a strong flavour of something made up on the spur of the moment, and is not what you would expect from one who is ever mindful of the need for evidence.

Atheists are quite obsessed with dismissing God. They work very hard at it

Maybe so when they find themselves on discussion forums, but perhaps not so much in their day to day lives.

So, for example, when Dawkins or Harris writes a book claiming that God is a "delusion" or a "mass psychosis" or whatever, it's not at all because the matter has "very little significance" to them. It's because the one point on which they agree with the Theist is that it is perhaps the most important matter of all.

I don't know much at all about Harris, and only vaguely know about Dawkins' anti-religion campaigning. My impression is that Dawkins thinks the matter to be important because of the damaging effect he believes religion to have on society. I agree with him in that I do believe when religion is practiced with too much enthusiasm it can be detrimental, and even dangerous, but I think his message has much more relevance in the USA than it does in my country. All my experiences of being among the religious have been in a C of E environment, where the danger of being bored to death is the biggest threat you are likely to be faced with. Anyway, I'm not really interested in militant atheism, so I am not going to try to justify the activities of Dawking and his like.

But that's a very different question than whether or not it's a serious matter. Plausibly, it's a matter that has simply escaped your serious interest.

No, it hasn't escaped my interest; that would imply there may be circumstances under which I would pursue it. That fact is, I don't consider God and religion worthy of my interest. True, I am putting effort into this discussion, but it is not because I have an interest in religion, it is because this is a discussion forum and I find preposterous assertions hard to ignore, regardless of the subject of their content.

Is your conclusion that there needs to be no careful consideration of the possibility of God that you simply "feel" that? Or have you another, stronger reason for that conclusion?

The possibility of God and the possibility of unicorns have similar credibility in my estimation, and that is the basis for my feeling that careful consideration is not necessary.

Not at all. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and all their ilk have chosen their own hobbies...I had nothing to do with it.

Yet they all are obsessed with this issue. Either they're a bit lunatic (which I accept as possible), or they have actually realized it has an importance that perhaps some others have failed to grasp. (in which case, perhaps a personal rethinking is in order, no?)

I suppose you can pick your explanation of their behaviour. I don't mind which you take.

I am not a spokesperson for these people. All I have to say about them is that they are not typical examples of atheistic behaviour. For every Dawkins there are probably a dozen fanatically religious crackpots spewing out there poisonous filth on the internet or in some pseudo church or other. Would it be fair to ask you to answer for them?

[Lacewing]

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.

Dubious said... 'Upon death there is no accounting to be made anywhere or for anything. The universe has better things to do.'

The concept of there being 'no accounting' is not the same as being 'dead-and-done'. You are not allowing any other possibilities and that is how you manipulate and skew everything to fit your beliefs.

If there's a way of knowing/experiencing anything after we're dead, there's no conclusive unbiased reasoning for thinking that it will include the Christian God or any accounting of any kind. It could be something else entirely. Maybe we "wake up" from the human dream. We may all know everything... or we may all know nothing. It could be many things... varying for everyone.

Your little taunt about being 'right' or 'wrong' based on your particular belief is not 'simple logic', it's a simple ego-trip.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No "center" holds forever, and nothing ever goes back to where it started from. There is no anti-Christ waiting to be born anywhere, least of all in Bethlehem. Yeats was still far too religious to be in any way insightful. He's an old-time relic.

True: in the world of becoming. But a ‘center’ presented by Yeats is based on metaphysical realities and these, by nature, are eternal.

If there is no Christ in a specific sense there is no anti-Christ in that specific sense. But there is a falling away from the core metaphysics that Christ symbolizes. What is alluded to by “Christ” or what stands behind that — that needs better definition.

Except in Dubious’ world: a diagram of galactic becoming.

Can you define what must needs emerge from ‘religiousness’? The next step for New Man?

Prophet-wise what Yeats saw has emerged. Literally “loosed upon the world”.

If Dubious can define ‘relics’ — what then is Dubious?