Christianity

[phyllo]

Immanuel, indoctrinated up to his gills and a 'pimp' for a belief-system clearly deeply committed to untruths that no longer can really function for us, cannot and will not be moved from his position. But here is the curious thing: through his adamancy, through his ever-renewed and stengthened commitment to fronting a lie (a deception-set) he gets ever more mired in the strict act of psychological manipulation, not of revealing a 'liberating truth'.

It is quite absurd to say that when or once such a false-imago of god is punctured and man is left significantly alone that that man has no ethical or moral questions! That itself is a terrible lie. I will go further: it is wrong and even evil to assert that a man who cannot believe in the Jewish-Christian conception, so bound up in manipulative techniques, who retreats away from the entire concern about god and divinity, is rendered incapable of living out moral and ethical values.

But you see it is right there that Immanuel shows himself deeply invested in LYING. This is not a minor issue. And I could also parrot his phrasing: "The stakes could not be higher".

It's not a lie if he believes it to be true.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It's not a lie if he believes it to be true.

Let’s examine that assertion.

I think we will quickly prove it to be insufficient.

[phyllo]

It's not a lie if he believes it to be true.

Let’s examine that assertion.

I think we will quickly prove it to be insufficient.

Sure. Check the dictionary.

[attofishpi]

I bought some cognac since I was planning to make some pate from chicken livers that I bought the other day..

Perhaps it was an excuse to have a tiddle.

I think I only need to save a tablespoon. So if anyone feels like getting reeeaaaly deeeeep man, with a booze hound talking about filooosooopheee, let sum 1 with a nose know...that he knows.

I was just playing pool with a lovely chap from YORKSHIRE - his batteries ran out unfortunately.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It's not a lie if he believes it to be true.

Let’s examine that assertion.

I think we will quickly prove it to be insufficient.

Sure. Check the dictionary.

I do not think it is a question of a dictionary definition. And since Immanuel has set himself up here as the *true godly believer* and the one who knows, has and dispenses the *real truth* that touches on the true and real consequences and the ultimate and true meaning of life -- again merely resorting to opening the dictionary will not help us.

However, I will agree that if one believes, erroneously but innocently, some particular assertion (let's take something like "Julius Caesar discovered America") your assertion is true. One simply had 'incorrect information'. And, hearing the new 'truth' one immediately corrects oneself. There is really no issue to this, is there?

But the issue with Immanuel Can's belief (and Evangelism generally, a subdivision of classic Christian belief) is that one believes without real evidence. So Immanuel says that all those who do not 'bend a knee' to Jesus Christ will know their mistake at or right after they die, right? He says "If I am right we'll both know; If you are right neither will know" (the last part is not necessarily true if there is life-after-death of another sort than he asserts, but we can leave that aside).

Since there is no evidence and no evidentiary method to get 'solid evidence' he is fronting an enormous supposition, or hallucination, or as I often say a Story which has many different levels of function. He does not really know, and he cannot tell any one of us or anyone what comes after. This is pretty much the essence of it.

There are more dimensions though. We have been discussing Genesis and the narrative presented through Genesis. Immanuel has said that he 'believes in' the Adam & Eve story. But *we* quite literally cannot believe it with him. And there is absolutely no real evidence that the entire Story has any merit at all. In fact we must say that "the Story is untrue".

Now I could say and I suppose actually believe it as being true that "Abraham Lincoln lives in a rustic shack on Mars". But if I said this to anyone, anywhere, it could not be taken seriously. How would we address the one who asserted it? You tell me . . .

Similarly, to believe in a Garden of Eden and in fact any part of the Genesis narrative, is in fact to believe something as outrageous and impossible as Abraham Lincoln living on Mars".

It is that simple.

Now the question does arise, necessarily, "Why does Immanuel Can (and Christian Evangelicals) believe such untrue things?" That is a valid question. Why?

Well, there is a whole range of reasons why. Ultimately, the question though open-ended and general is Why do we believe the things we believe?

Also note that Immanuel Can has stated that in a no-god world someone like Stalin could well choose to believe whatever he wished to with no regard to anything at all. Neither *truth* nor *morals*. But according to Immanuel Can's own formulae this figure Stalin would be 'believing a lie'.

So Immanuel present *us* (I mean Evangelicals and believing Christians) present us with two alternatives to be 'in integrity': 1) to take an agnostic position (I do not know), and 2) to believe; to somehow get down on one's knees and surrender to Jesus Christ in a type of repentance-rehearsal. Then -- shazzam! -- all is resolved.

Now is that the truth?

But let's say that I grant you your assertion -- which is also an ethical escape-valve for Immanuel and those who front such manipulative and coercive belief-systems. He believes innocently.

There are any number of different things I might believe innocently which are not true nonetheless.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I bought some cognac since I was planning to make some pate from chicken livers that I bought the other day..

I was waiting for things to turn to food concerns.

[attofishpi]

I bought some cognac since I was planning to make some pate from chicken livers that I bought the other day..

I was waiting for things to turn to food concerns.

That's the recipe!! I printed earlier..-comes up top of the search but 5 stars on > 1K votes - sounds good to me.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Is there anything stated in the NT that would justify the claim that Jesus was the incarnation of God, if not then it is relevant.

In Luke 4:41 (and Mark 3:11), when Jesus casts out demons, they fall down before him, and declare: "You are the Son of God." In John 1:34, John the Baptist bears witness that Jesus is the Son of God and in John 11:27 Martha calls him the Messiah and the Son of God.

At all points in the Gospel narratives it is so heavily implied that it is impossible to think it not the case.

If you believe that Jesus had no earthly father then it does indeed follow he is 'the son of god'.

Acts 1:3: Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

I find it odd that you seem to wish to believe something different. However, I do not think I could say of you that you are a typical Christian. You are thoroughly atypical.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I bought some cognac since I was planning to make some pate from chicken livers that I bought the other day..

I was waiting for things to turn to food concerns.

That's the recipe!! I printed earlier..-comes up top of the search but 5 stars on > 1K votes - sounds good to me.

We make it all the time. We generally scale back on the butter quantity.

[Immanuel Can]

If God exists, what's at stake is one's eternal soul...its destiny, and its ultimate value. The stakes literally could not be higher. One is deciding on the disposition of one's soul forever...and one is receiving the outcome of one's own determination.

Can we come back to this?

Absolutely.

Your above comment about the soul doesn’t provide much detail. I know you haven’t just made it up, so what is the source of your knowledge about what happens to the soul, and how specific is it in detail? From what you do say, I get the sense that you don’t just mean the soul misses out on something good, but, rather, faces something very bad.

My knowledge comes from Jesus Christ. And what He says is specific in some ways, but more general in others. He speaks of two things: how totally great it is to know and love God, and how lousy it is to miss out on that. But He describes both through the use of things that cannot be but metaphorical language -- the using of something you and I have some experience with, in order to illustrate two realities greater than anything with which you or I have any experience. So in that sense, the particulars he gives are not fully detailed, though they make use of the best metaphors available to try to give us some idea of the astronomical stakes involved.

For example, Jesus says, "The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The one who has ears, let him hear." (Matthew 13:41-43)

So on the one hand, we have metaphors of "fire" (some kind of real pain or unpleasantness, obviously), "weeping" (regret, I would think) and "gnashing of teeth" (unrepentant hatred of God? I'm not sure, but elsewhere, the metaphor seems to convey that, when "gnashing" is involved). And on the other side, a "shining forth like the sun," meaning obviously some kind of glory, life, light and well-being).

But the metaphors about Heaven are even less picturesque than those about what people commonly call "Hell," and the Bible terms, "the lake of fire." It's as if it's harder to describe the good that's coming than it is the bad that's coming, because the good is too far beyond human imagining, whereas the bad is within striking distance of normal imagination, at least. And this suppostion is further supported by the whole Bible. For Paul summarizes the situation this way: "just as it is written: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the human heart, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9) The upshot, then, is that in this present world, no analogy will suffice for the reality of what's coming. There isn't a person who's seen it, and not a person who presently can fully grasp it...whether we're talking about eternal reception, or eternal lostness -- two more metaphors that the Bible applies.

Two final metaphors: eternal life, and eternal death. The former seems to mean not some floating on pillowy clouds (the Bible never suggests any such nonsense) but rather a new life on a renewed Earth, with Jesus Christ, with an opening up of the vast vista of the possibilities inherent in God Himself that is to last for all of eternity. It's a wide space for exploration, with no limits ever, and all the creativity and beauty that is in God available to us...a pretty good offer, by any account. Eternal death is something different, though:it's apparent that souls (for whatever reason, I do not know) cannot actually die. They are eternal entities, one way or the other. And that gestures at a perpetual bad of some kind. Paradoxically, all the good things about life are gone, but the residual consciousness remains in some form. Not a happy prospect.

What we can derive is precisely this: it's very good to know and love God, and really empty and unpleasant to have chosen to have no relationship with Him. And that makes sense, really: because if God is, as the Bible says, the source of all life, light, health, happiness, goodness, joy, peace, well-being, delight, possibility, and so on, then to absent oneself from God is to choose to absent oneself from everything good...all the good gifts of God that come with right relationship to Him.

I apologize that I can't be more precise here. I could multiply the metaphors that the Bible uses, but I think they'd only give you the external facets of the diamond of truth, there. That's because you and I are in a world that, it seems, is very inadequate to fully illustrate the realities of the realms soon to come. And I can't say it's God's fault if my imagination is not sufficient to fill out all the details. That's on me. I have to take God's word for it that what's coming is beyond my powers of imagination, for good or bad.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the guy who made the Closer To Truth video I posted, has said he wants to believe in God but can’t quite manage it -or something to that effect- and I’ve heard others say something similar.

Yes, I've heard people say that. I think what they mean is, "I'm want to be absolutely certain before I believe, and I'm not absolutely certain yet." What it seems to me they fail to notice is that they actually aren't certain about anything at all, at least not to the 100% certainty they think they have a right to expect God to deliver them. They're contingent, belief-dependent beings; and yet they don't want to exercise any belief on the road to God. They want to have eliminated that necessity. They want to remain unilaterially in control of the relationship, really.

Is that a realistic demand, if that's what they're aiming at? I think not. And the Bible says God doesn't respond to that sort of control obsession and demandingness. He responds to simple faith, though, since it offers Him at least some space in the agenda of the relationship -- absent which, no real relationship is possible anyway.

It’s not like that with me. I’m not attracted to the notion of God, but neither am I repelled by it, so I don’t think there is something deep down in me that just wants to be contrary. No account of God that I have heard sounds plausible, so I am left without belief. That may be due to a deficiency in my rationality, as you might suggest, but the fact remains, I just do not believe that God exists. I could pretend to believe, just in case, as Pascal advises, but God would surely see through that. What I’m saying is, genuine belief in something is not a matter of choice.

Well, choice is the second step. The first is experience. One has to have some experience with God in order to have something in which to invest faith, something about which to make a choice. Fortunately for us, experience is something you and I create, not just a thing that happens to us. We create experience (or perhaps better, we co-create it) by seeking it out -- investigating, getting into things, going places, finding our more, pushing our own boundaries in various directions. To know God, one has to seek God. And you're quite right that this doesn't happen automatically. But neither is it, for that reason, at all impossible to us. And God promises to meet us half way on that, if we will try. As He says, "you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jer. 29:13)

So let me tell you what I'd tell a skeptic who said, "I want to check this out." I'd say, "Okay. Do this: take five minutes at the start of every day, and open a conversation with God." What I mean is, before you do anything else in your day, pray for five minutes, AS IF God were listening, even if you have not much belief in Him. Use nothing but your own words, and your own sincere thoughts. Talk about what's going on with you, ask His input, and talk through the challenges of the day to come. And as part of that, tell Him that you are willing to believe in Him, if He will show His realness to you, but that you have sincere doubts and concerns, but you're ready to be convinced if He so chooses.

It costs you nothing but five minutes a day...probably less than it takes for your morning coffee. You do it for two months, and then you conclude the experiment. If nothing's changed, you know that at least you opened up a space in your life for God to speak into it, if He chose. And if He didn't, you've had a nice, thoughtful chat with yourself, and you get all your full skepticism or cynicism returned to you without a scratch or dent, no charge.

That's the most minimally-invasive strategy I know for inviting yourself to an experience of God. There are ways to do more -- much more -- but I try to keep the burden small and private, so people can run this experiment easily, and with minimal strain. But I don't find God is reluctant to reveal Himself to people, provided they can muster even enough faith for it to be the size of a mustard seed. It doesn't take much faith; but it does take a little -- at least the investment of a few moments.

Given this, is it really just, or proportionate, that I suffer for eternity because I couldn’t do something required of me during my blink of an eye lifespan as a mortal human being?

"Can't?"

"Can't" under present circumstances, perhaps. But could. Is the idea I've suggested actually hard to do?

You are going to tell me that is not for you to say, and whatever God decides, or does, is the right thing, aren’t you?

No, actually.

That's true, but I'm not going to tell you to just to believe it because I say so. That wouldn't be fair.

What God decides to be fair, is fair, let that not be in dispute.

Okay.

Even so, despite your total faith in God’s judgement, you are human, with a human’s sense of right and wrong, and what is fair or unfair, so, human to human, tell me if you think it fair that I suffer for eternity for failing to believe that God exists?

It's not just the "Does God exist," question, Harbal. It's much more than that.

The Bible says that even the various enemies of God believe He exists. So we get no special status for admitting that. What's important about belief is not believing in mere facts; it's how that faith introduces us to God Himself. When we show even a little willingness to enter into a relationship with Him, God is willing in return. But God is also committed to our individuality, our freedom, our identity, our value...and part of that is that we are choosing beings.

You don't force a person with whom you have an ambition for a love relationship into something he or she doesn't want. You don't break his or her will, and compel him or her to love you, turning him or her into some kind of automaton or being whose will and identity don't matter. You don't dehumanize him or her. Instead, you appeal to them, and leave them to make the decision about whether or not they want to reciprocate. Real relationships are always two-sided, and voluntary on both sides. God's willingness is not even in doubt. But ours is.

We have a choice. We don't have to do much to signal our willingness to have some relationship with God. But we do have to do something -- not just as a signal of our will, but because unless we agree, it's not a real relationship anyway.

The Bible says, "...without faith it is impossible to please [God], for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him." (Heb. 11:6) Believe that God will reward you, if you seek Him. You will find Him. That's the promise. But it has to come from your choice in the matter.

That's my attempt to explain complicated issues, and respond to very good questions, as clearly as I can. I hope it's as forthcoming as you would like.

[Immanuel Can]

There's no longer anything to deny. So Atheism's one central precept, "no God" becomes an incoherent statement.

might be applied to fairies, the same cannot be said of evolution.

No, that analogy doesn't work, either. We're only speaking of how language works, here.

I am simply pointing out that there's no anti- that does not refer to a pro-. It's the "pro-" that makes semantic sense of the allegation of "anti-". That's the limit of my claim. And it's really not arguable.

What you're wrongly thinking I'm saying is that the existence of Atheism is an argument for God. It's not. I have better arguments, so I don't need that one. It's only evidence of resistors of the concept of God. But Atheism is entirely, 100%, a derivative concept, and would not exist if the concept "God" were not current.

[attofishpi]

Is there anything stated in the NT that would justify the claim that Jesus was the incarnation of God, if not then it is relevant.

In Luke 4:41 (and Mark 3:11), when Jesus casts out demons, they fall down before him, and declare: "You are the Son of God." In John 1:34, John the Baptist bears witness that Jesus is the Son of God and in John 11:27 Martha calls him the Messiah and the Son of God.

At all points in the Gospel narratives it is so heavily implied that it is impossible to think it not the case.

If you believe that Jesus had no earthly father then it does indeed follow he is 'the son of god'.

Acts 1:3: Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

I find it odd that you seem to wish to believe something different. However, I do not think I could say of you that you are a typical Christian. You are thoroughly atypical.

I still don't under_stand. Being a son of God does not render one AS God.

Are you suggesting that (in the least) God was never considered the father of all men in Judaism - that any 'annointed one' could not be, would not be referred to as the 'son of God'?

[attofishpi]

Now the question does arise, necessarily, "Why does Immanuel Can (and Christian Evangelicals) believe such untrue things?" That is a valid question. Why?

Well, there is a whole range of reasons why. Ultimately, the question though open-ended and general is Why do we believe the things we believe?

The reason why these people stick to such nonsense no matter how intelligent they are (and let's face it IC is an intelligent chap) IS because:-

1. They fear God, and questioning Him.

2. They seek reward from God, if they remain not questioning scripture and accepting, they will be accepted by He into Heaven.


THEY DONT DARE QUESTION GOD.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I still don't under_stand. Being a son of God does not render one AS God.

It is not an issue that I adjudicate. It is generally and widely believed and is one of the core tenets of Christianity.

Are you suggesting that (in the least) God was never considered the father of all men in Judaism - that any 'annointed one' could not be, would not be referred to as the 'son of God'?

Again, it is not my role to 'suggest' anything. In Judaism god was certainly seen as the creator of man. Could that be different from being 'father'?

The language, the term, "son of god" is not one that Judaism could make, due to its tenets. The Moshiach would be an agent but not an aspect of god. The Prophets are not god-aspects but inspired persons. There is an aspect of god that inspires: Shechinah. As with most -- all -- Jewish metaphysics it is rather complex.

[attofishpi]

So on the one hand, we have metaphors of "fire" (some kind of real pain or unpleasantness, obviously), "weeping" (regret, I would think) and "gnashing of teeth" (unrepentant hatred of God? I'm not sure, but elsewhere, the metaphor seems to convey that, when "gnashing" is involved). And on the other side, a "shining forth like the sun," meaning obviously some kind of glory, life, light and well-being).

Don't tell me you have never dropped an ecstasy tablet?