Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think that morality should be practiced for its own sake, and that it is its own reward. You seem to have the view that pleasing God is the reason for practicing it. You also seem to think it matters which one of those reasons we choose for behaving morally, whereas I don’t. I think my reason is more credit worthy, but as long as we do behave morally, I don’t think our reason for doing it is too important.

This seems to be the position that most of us take. Since as it happens (again most of us) cannot, even if we wished to, fit ourselves back into a genuine and a fully operative religious position (i.e. the way of seeing and understanding reality as the Scholastics saw it.

Let us be clear and honest here: Immanuel Can, the primary protagonist in this thread, is working like the Devil to re-establish a view that mirrors the internal content of Scholasticism. But he cannot come out and just say it perhaps because he cannot actually see it. Strangely, he must veil his core propaganda assertions in false-intellectualism.

Be that as it may we have another issue to confront: the origin of our own 'moral systems'. What I have often said about Monsieur Harbal is that he seems to be unaware of his own *formation*. What made him him. He is cut off from all of this except insofar as he is an *outcome* of long and complex processes. Now, someone like Uwot is far more *prepared* in this sense because he has studied the evolution of ideas in depth. But Harbal is interesting because he is an outcome without, necessarily, having become a participant or co-creator in his outcomedom. That is why the avatar of Alfred Newman is so illustrative.

But the thing is that we do all of us exist within a 'system of morals' that has been worked out over, literally, centuries. I am embarrassed to resort to Spark Notes of the second chapter of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals to encapsulate what I mean:

Nietzsche opens the second essay by examining the significance of our ability to make promises. To hold to a promise requires both a powerful memory--the will that a certain event should not be forgotten--and a confidence about the future and one's ability to hold to the promise in the future. This confidence demands that, on some level, we must make ourselves calculable or predictable, and for a people to be predictable, they must share a common set of laws or customs that govern their behavior.

Society and morality thus serve the purpose of making us predictable, which in turn serves the purpose of allowing us to make promises. This complicated process has as its end the "sovereign individual" who is able to make promises, not because he is bound by social mores but because he is master of his own free will. The sovereign individual is then faced with the tremendous responsibility of being free to make claims regarding his own future: we call this sense of responsibility a "conscience.

"Guilt," in its present incarnation, is associated with accountability and responsibility: you are guilty because you could have and should have done otherwise. Accountability and responsibility, which are connected with the concept of free will, are in no way connected with "guilt" as it was originally conceived. "Guilt," according to Nietzsche, originally meant simply that a debt needed to be paid. As Nietzsche remarks in section 13 of the first essay, "free will" is a recent invention that accompanies slave morality.

Punishment, according to slave morality, is then meted out because, and only because the offender could have acted otherwise. If someone is for whatever reason deemed not to have acted freely (insanity, duress, accident, etc.) they are not punished.

Nietzsche's conception of the ancient world is far crueler, but, he suggests, far more "cheerful." People were punished simply because it was fun to punish people. If you fail to keep your promise to me, at least I get the pleasure of beating you up. Here we see the original association of "guilt" with "debt." Guilt was seen as a debt to be paid: if you make a promise, you are in debt to me. If you fail to keep your promise, you must pay off the debt in some other way. If that "other way" is my gouging your eye out, there are no hard feelings afterward, and there is no sense of a corrective measure being taken. There is simply an agreement that now our debts are settled and we can go our different ways.

We have been so 'punished' over such long periods of time that finally the way we behave -- and our morals -- is installed in us at a level below actual thought.

For this reason what Harbal says:

but as long as we do behave morally, I don’t think our reason for doing it is too important.

Is interesting because in order for someone to behave morally there had to have occurred a long long process of instilling that sense of rightness, or of simple compliance, with a standard. In the Occident that occurred over centuries.

It is fair to say that when the former education systems break down (as indeed they are) and we are no longer educated in the classic Great Books tradition, that we fall away from all the material that instructs us in morals.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Let's try to recapitulate what has gone on here and what goes on in order to achieve some clarity. My assertion is that the core issue, the real issue here, has to do with the 'capacity to think freely' and the fact that here, on this forum, and certainly on this thread, those who opine here show themselves, time and again, constrained under imposed systems that render them incapable of free thought.

Do you claim to be thinking freely?

Aren't you constrained by a different set of assumptions, experiences and reasoning?

I'd certainly like to believe so.

If I am 'constrained' by a different set of assumptions through what means did I come to them?

Isn't the 'core question' also an assertion: that we all do live under constraints; that we may or may not be able to break out of them?

If so how? And to what end?

[phyllo]

Let's try to recapitulate what has gone on here and what goes on in order to achieve some clarity. My assertion is that the core issue, the real issue here, has to do with the 'capacity to think freely' and the fact that here, on this forum, and certainly on this thread, those who opine here show themselves, time and again, constrained under imposed systems that render them incapable of free thought.

Do you claim to be thinking freely?

Aren't you constrained by a different set of assumptions, experiences and reasoning?

I'd certainly like to believe so.

If I am 'constrained' by a different set of assumptions through what means did I come to them?

Isn't the 'core question' also an assertion: that we all do live under constraints; that we may or may not be able to break out of them?

If so how? And to what end?

You were born in a time and place.

You were raised and schooled in a certain way.

You lived within a society and culture.

These all color how you see the world. They limit your ability to think and act freely.

You may believe that you have freed yourself (cue Peter Kropotkin).

But was that freeing or the adoption of some other set of shackles?

I don't think one can hope for free thought. One can hope for more openness to alternate ideas. A mouse hole to the mind.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Immanuel said: But from an Atheist perspective, you're not objectively a better or worse person, whatever you do.

Flatly false. False through and through.

Oops. You forgot the argument to support that claim.

It is as if you are saying that an atheist would not or could not consider himself a better or worse person as a result of the things he does.

To say that is flatly and obviously false. It does not require an *argument*.

How might you prove this? Find an atheist. Pin him to the wall. Ask hm point blank: "When you behave badly do you feel you have become a worse person?"

Here is a test: An atheist father is reading the evening paper. His 8 years old girl comes bounding up with her A+ report card. The atheist growls and smashes her in the mouth.

And you propose that said atheist would not see himself 'objectively' as a worse person?

"What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open your skull and ate up your brain and imagination?"

This is pretty simple stuff Immanuel old chum.

[Harbal]

But Harbal is interesting because he is an outcome without, necessarily, having become a participant or co-creator in his outcomedom. That is why the avatar of Alfred Newman is so illustrative.

As it happens, I've been considering a change. I'm getting bored with Alfred.

[Walker]

New face, same hat.

[Harbal]

New face, same hat.

I've retained it as a symbol of my authority.

[Immanuel Can]

The thing you cannot admit is that if there were no creationism, there would be no "Evolutionism"

Oh, I can admit that, alright. If there were no God, there'd be no Atheism, too.

Could you explain the logic by which you arrive at this conclusion?

If we knew for certain what the origins of life and species were, then there would only be one such explanation. It would not even need a name, except "origins."

However, the reason we have theories and countertheories is that we DO NOT know for certain. What we have, instead, is a bunch of theories to which different persons attribute different levels of plausibility. And we'll see who's right, if I'm right. Unless you're right, in which case, we'll never know it.

[Immanuel Can]

Wouldn't it be better not to be fooled at all? In which case, whatever you believe and practice would have to rationalize correctly with what you believe is true. If there's a God, then it's wise to consider morality. No God, no morality required. But it's how your worldview informs you that makes the one or the other choice rational.

No, I don’t believe our impulses to behave morally should be checked for rationality before we act on them.

Wow, that's a dangerous thought...impulses we think or feel are moral, not checked for rationality? And not checkable against any objective moral standard? Yikes. That's a recipe for irrational impulsiveness, or even for mob action.

But I'm suggesting something much more simple and obvious. That whatever a persons beliefs are, they will only possibly be true if they rationalize between one's worldview and one's subsequent moral assumptions. If the two are not coherent with each other, there is not even a chance of both being right.

Of course, having a false worldview will inevitably lead to false moral conclusions, even when rationalized. That's why worldview, not moral conclusions, are the primary area where things need to get sorted out -- and why human origins are such a crucial issue for all of this.

In a God-less world, there's no reason to either to think one has "moral responsibility," nor any explanation for the cries of that thing called "conscience." Neither, one can only conclude, refers to anything objectively real.

But the disagreeable sensation I experience when I go against my conscience is real.

I believe you. No doubt it's a real sensation. But the question is, does that sensation actually signal a real problem, or is it merely like a fire alarm that has misfunctioned and gone off when there's no fire?

We call the latter "moral squeamishness," "provincialism," "nit-picking," or "oversensitivity," if the real causes of the feelings of alarm do not exist, and we tell people, "Get over it," or "Grow up," or "Just get past it." Nietzsche was all about that: get past the false-alarm of Judeo-Christian morality, he told us...be an "overman," and run your own show.

But what if the alarm is not false? What if your conscience is a functional alarm, divinely installed, supposed to alert you at an instinctive level that a real-world injustice or moral fault has occurred? That's what Christians tend to think it is.

Of course, any alarm can malfunction. The question is whether this is such a case, or not.

Well, one can "impose" any delusion on oneself one wishes, of course. But there's a better explanation: maybe your moral sense is telling you there actually is something real you should be concerned about.

Like the delusion that there is a God, for example? Your view of morality seems to be centred around pleasing God, rather than concern for other human beings. Even if God did exist, I would still say you had your priorities wrong.

Jesus said there were two great commandments, neither optional: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour. And anytime we get those priorities reversed, we're morally off track. But we still need both: and for the Christian, they're coordinated; because the highest human good, and the greatest promoter of happiness, health and well-being is relationship with God.

It's not that Christians are less caring about the neighbour -- in fact, the opposite is obviously true: Atheist societies don't do much charity, and Christian ones do the vast majority of it worldwide -- it's that they understand "caring" to be comprehensive of both the spiritual and the physical, not merely the satiation of physical necessities or the placating of mere temporal satisfactions.

I've never met a single person who told me, "I was a drunk, a druggie, a wife-beater, a criminal, in despair and suicidal, down-and-out on the street, dying in poverty (etc.), but then, praise the empty universe, I discovered Atheism, and was miraculously restored!" But I can point you to countless people for whom the discovery of faith in God freed them from addictions, depression, anti-social behaviour patterns, family destruction, and so on.

So who has the priority wrong? Have the Atheists really made such a moral breakthrough in creating human happiness and well-being? Let the outcomes speak.

An Evolutionist would have to believe that's just a fault of your own character...you're not as realistic as you should be, and are perhaps plagued by qualms you've inherited from your socialization or from the Christian past.

But he couldn't think your moral concerns are acutally moral concerns...they'd only be residual delusions of some kind.

Well, I don’t live my life in accordance with what Evolutionists believe or think.

That's just as well.

I think that morality should be practiced for its own sake, and that it is its own reward.

That sounds reassuring: but people never do things for no reason, or without any deeper belief sponsoring it. And certainly, morality, since it often involves putting one's own interests behind those of others, and requiring the durability of long-term and even painful commitment, needs a better incentive than a mere theoretical belief in morality "for its own sake."

You seem to have the view that pleasing God is the reason for practicing it.

That's part of it, for sure...and the leading part. But a funny thing about loving God...it always extends to the neighbour, and not just because one has been commanded to do it. It overflows organically, instinctively and naturally, it seems. When one is freed and blessed by God, one cannot help but long for the sharing of that with others. It just happens.

You also seem to think it matters which one of those reasons we choose for behaving morally, whereas I don’t.

Yes, I think it does. Because one's commitment is always delimited by what one thinks is really true. If it's true that we live only between womb and tomb, and there is the end of all prospects, it argues for a very constrained kind of compassion to others. After all, there's no real reason to forego one's own interests in favour of the interests of another, since there will never be anything that can repay you for the missed chance to achieve one's own goals, if there's no eternity ahead of us.

Interestingly, even Karl Marx saw the truth of that. He hated Christianity for relativizing the importance of violent, revolutionary struggle, because it rendered this lifespan less important than the next, and made people too kind, patient, enduring, charitable, and hopeful-in-eternity, whereas he needed to awaken them (he thought) to the paramount urgency of material achievement in the here-and-now. Christianity, he realized, would put off the desperate, vicious struggle for self-interest so essential to ginning up class war. So he called the critique of religion "the first critique." It was the one that needed to be done first, if Marxist fanaticism and violence were going to be possible.

...it seems to me that if everyone behaves morally, ethically and with respect towards each other, life will be a better experience for everyone, including me...

That's certain.

The only residual problem is that "morality" means different things to different people with different worldviews. Marx's mission, no doubt, of liberating the proletariat seemed "moral" to him, even if it entailed violence. Hitler's entailed the "purification" of the human race by genocide. And in Somalia, moral purity requires the forcible teenage circumcision of all girls. In Pakistan, it entails revenge rapes to restore family honour...

[Immanuel Can]

Eliminating God from the universe maximizes what they want: moral freedom for humanity, and open license for human manipulation to do anything it wants to do...including through the methods of science, but not at all limited to them. The human race in general wants to believe it has no moral responsibility and will never give account to God, and so that's great incentive for embracing Atheism, and Atheism needs an alternate narrative of how things came about -- absent God, of course. Evolutionism is the flavour of the day.

So we can practice abortion, euthanasia or eugenics, or call men "women," or sexually exploit or even murder our children, or manipulate other people as much as we want, or declare ourselves "masters of our own fate" without fear, or expect the future to bend to our will and none other, if we can only find a way we can bring ourselves to believe there's no God. That's Evolutionism's huge gift -- and curse.

Have you thought this through?

Have you?

[Immanuel Can]

People who can tolerate uncertainty are more likely to know reality.

"People who can tolerate uncertainty are more certain." Lovely.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If we knew for certain what the origins of life and species were, then there would only be one such explanation. It would not even need a name, except "origins."

However, the reason we have theories and countertheories is that we DO NOT know for certain. What we have, instead, is a bunch of theories to which different persons attribute different levels of plausibility. And we'll see who's right, if I'm right. Unless you're right, in which case, we'll never know it.

Here is the pretense of intellectualism. As if the expositor has a 'reasonable position' and is employing a sound method of reasoning.

But this expositor believes that god shazzamed the World into existence and there appeared all the species with all their complex relationships. That is, the Genesis narrative tarted up through a pseudo-intellectual presentation.

And the core assertion (such as it is) of a World shazzamed into existence is necessary to maintain because of all else that hinges on it: god as ruler and owner of the World, and of Man, and the Christian man as the Earth's proper arbiter, as against all other systems (which are described as demonic).

To become committed beyond the idea itself (that there is a rhyme & reason to Existence and we are obligated to tune in to that to realize what is needed and even what is demanded) is my central objection to Immanuel Can's stance. It is one pole of power then which will demand that *all knees bow* and, perversely, it is Immanuel and his ilk that demands recognition & respect because the authority granted by god the father to Jesus the son is also extended to the Christian.

So, as always, there is the threat whether veiled or open: "And we'll see who's right, if I'm right. Unless you're right, in which case, we'll never know it."

This reveals the core power-dynamic operating. And, I'd further submit, most who reject this specific manifestation of power, expressed as a metaphysics before which your knee must bend, understand that to bow through such coercion operates, at an essential level, against their sovereignty. The implication is less 'spiritual control' by invisible angelical entities to which one surrenders in meditation, but rather to all manner of different levels of political and social control.

Though one might genuinely and even responsibly wish for *unrestrained man* to submit to self-imposed restraints (if one accepts that people tend to careen out of control without established ethical bumpers), one is uncomfortable with the connotation of groups of Evangelicals given power to enforce their idea-imperialism.

But note that it then becomes necessary to puncture the entire construct that Immanuel operates through. It is far more serious than deciding on a tolerant attitude (toward him). He cannot think. He represents unreason. He sells a product that is akin, in certain senses, to mental slavery.

As to *the origins of the world* and *the origin and evolution of biological life* it is true: we do not know (or at least I have never been presented with a sound case) how complex coding structures and the ultra-complex cell out arose out of random combinations of chemicals. Mathematically, it can be described as 'impossible'.

But to revive and empower the Genesis narrative does not seem to me to be the way to solve the knowledge problem. Yet that is -- exactly -- what certain factions of Evangelicals are doing. And they do far more: they actually have an utterly bizarre belief in End of World mythologies which, through their efforts and actions, they work to bring about.

To become captive to these extraordinarily powerful narratives can thus be seen in a critical light.

Is there a way out? Frankly I am unsure.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel said: But from an Atheist perspective, you're not objectively a better or worse person, whatever you do.

Flatly false. False through and through.

Oops. You forgot the argument to support that claim.

It is as if you are saying that an atheist would not or could not consider himself a better or worse person as a result of the things he does.

I didn't say he wouldn't. He could be illogical, so maybe he would. I'm immensely thankful that most Atheists do not live according to what their creed rationalizes, in this regard.

But if he's logical, if he's clear-thinking and courageous as an Atheist, he won't. He'll quicky realize that there's no morally "better" or "worse" to be. There's only what you can get away with, or what you want to do, or what you think will get you where you want to go -- and anything beyond that is craven twaddle. There's no feature of reality to back those conceptions, so if you have them, you just lack the courage not to.

Just as Nietzsche said.

[Harbal]

In a God-less world, there's no reason to either to think one has "moral responsibility," nor any explanation for the cries of that thing called "conscience."

So then, presumably, you do not have any moral feelings or opinions of your own, you leave it entirely in the hands of God. What you have said on the matter suggests that you would consider such feelings groundless and meaningless. Is that correct?

Take the commandment, You shall not steal. Is it true to say that, for you, the moral goodness of this edict lies not in its content, but solely in that it is a wish of God?

[Alexis Jacobi]

But if he's logical, if he's clear-thinking and courageous as an Atheist, he won't. He'll quicky realize that there's no morally "better" or "worse" to be. There's only what you can get away with, or what you want to do, or what you think will get you where you want to go -- and anything beyond that is craven twaddle. There's no feature of reality to back those conceptions, so if you have them, you just lack the courage not to.

Just as Nietzsche said.

I do not accept your counter-narrative or counter-proposal to the rejection of nearly all of the Christian Story. I have said numerous times, and it is true, that most people cannot fit themselves back into a collapsed Picture that is rife with endless contradictions.

The god pictured, and the Picture itself, is rife with too many problems. It has been put aside as *inoperable*. Yet, yet, you stake everything on reviving it. You want people, indeed you demand, under veiled threat, that people "believe' even though belief is insincere and as I say intellectually impossible.

You present yourself as an arbiter here -- as if you have any genuine base to ground your own self-assertion. You are not reasonable. You are unreason up and walking around.

Your reference-point -- Nietzsche -- is really just a moment in intellectual time. Many many people have received Nietzsche and have not concluded that it is good or inevitable to follow the power-dynamic to its ultimate conclusions. There are alternatives. But you would have to deny any alternative since, truly, you are selling a product with a whole range of stated and unstated propositions.

If anything the Nietzschen perspective would push a man back into his own self -- as a person and as a moral being. He'd have to ask: "Am I really comfortable with the consequences of a choice to become utterly lawless and completely self-serving?" And I am certain that most people would resolve, on their own, absent a god and a punishment (the core of your shtick) to act decently.

But an atheist who acts decently is anathema to you. The idea is intolerable. And to it you assign the term 'craven twaddle'.

Your methods are transparent Immanuel. Get down on your knees before my more sound reasoning.