Christianity

[Dontaskme]

I don't know what I see when I look in the mirror anymore. I guess I mostly see a person who needs meaningful employment doing something that, at the very least, won't harm others. Ideally, it would be doing something that would help others to have happiness.

But there's just what's happening, and nothing is making what's happening happen, or is making what's happening unhappen.

Can a single wave within the entire ocean rise up and stop the whole ocean from waving?

So even being at peace with your mind, or being at war with your mind, that too is what's happening, and could never be any other way.

[Gary Childress]

I don't know what I see when I look in the mirror anymore. I guess I mostly see a person who needs meaningful employment doing something that, at the very least, won't harm others. Ideally, it would be doing something that would help others to have happiness.

But there's just what's happening, and nothing is making what's happening happen, or is making what's happening unhappen.

Can a single wave within the entire ocean rise up and stop the whole ocean from waving?

So even being at peace with your mind, or being at war with your mind, that too is what's happening, and could never be any other way.

OK. I need to get off the Internet. That's all there is to it.

[attofishpi]

Here’s a possible route that may open up for all of us: ask ChatGTP.

Atto, please, you have some background here. ChatGPT knows you. Set up the interrogation and report back ASAP.

...nah.

[Belinda]

Don't mind me Age. I'm mostly "insane" and a poor fit for the world we live in. Only a callous monster can truly thrive and flourish in this world. I don't know how old you are but I'm sorry to be a bearer of hopelessness. If you are young, then you deserve to know what is ahead. Don't have children of your own. That's the only advice I can give to anyone who has already been born. If that's "bad" advice for future generations, then it is only because children need to born for little other reason than to be soldiers and then breed future soldiers.

You have a hidden agenda,Gary. You want someone to show you there is something worth fighting for.

No. I don't want anyone to show me there is something worth "fighting" for. I don't want to "fight".

You are cognitively dissonant. If you did not want to fight the horror of war you would accept the horror of war.

[Gary Childress]

You have a hidden agenda,Gary. You want someone to show you there is something worth fighting for.

No. I don't want anyone to show me there is something worth "fighting" for. I don't want to "fight".

You are cognitively dissonant. If you did not want to fight the horror of war you would accept the horror of war.

How does one "fight" horror without creating horror?

[Belinda]

No. I don't want anyone to show me there is something worth "fighting" for. I don't want to "fight".

You are cognitively dissonant. If you did not want to fight the horror of war you would accept the horror of war.

How does one "fight" horror without creating horror?

Whether you fight or not you can't avoid evil and horror, as these are an inevitable accompaniment of being alive. Sometimes fighting is a means of averting evil and horror, and fighting does not always involve violence.

[Gary Childress]

You are cognitively dissonant. If you did not want to fight the horror of war you would accept the horror of war.

How does one "fight" horror without creating horror?

Whether you fight or not you can't avoid evil and horror, as these are an inevitable accompaniment of being alive. Sometimes fighting is a means of averting evil and horror, and fighting does not always involve violence.

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

[Dontaskme]

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

'Evil' 'Horror' are concepts you have made up. Who are you, is another made up concept. In reality, no thing is making up concepts, they arise and fall in empty space.


No one lives or dies, except in this conception, in the artificial dream of separation, and nothing happened in a dream.


Nothing knows death, and nothing knows life. The illusion of ''self'' is so convincing, that it cannot imagine it's own absence. And yet is able to imagine it's own presence quite easily, this is because there is only presence known, even though it is not known how presence is known.

[Gary Childress]

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

'Evil' 'Horror' are concepts you have made up. Who are you, is another made up concept. In reality, no thing is making up concepts, they arise and fall in empty space.


No one lives or dies, except in this conception, in the artificial dream of separation, and nothing happened in a dream.


Nothing knows death, and nothing knows life.

I'll go with that. How's the weather up there? Are you and Harbal doing OK? I know you're both adept at flying but I wouldn't want both the pilot and copilot to fall asleep at the same time. Do you need to land yet? So far the weather is pretty good down here.

[Belinda]

How does one "fight" horror without creating horror?

Whether you fight or not you can't avoid evil and horror, as these are an inevitable accompaniment of being alive. Sometimes fighting is a means of averting evil and horror, and fighting does not always involve violence.

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

Democracy allows you the opportunity to fight such evils as genocide, infanticide, cannibalism, and human extinction.

[Gary Childress]

Whether you fight or not you can't avoid evil and horror, as these are an inevitable accompaniment of being alive. Sometimes fighting is a means of averting evil and horror, and fighting does not always involve violence.

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

Democracy allows you the opportunity to fight such evils as genocide, infanticide, cannibalism, and human extinction.

I guess it all comes down to having a democracy, then. Democracy probably works best when the citizens are informed of what is going on so that they can make appropriate decisions. Otherwise, democracy is pretty much a joke.

[Belinda]

It depends upon what is meant by "evil" and "horror". If you think death alone is "evil" or "horrible", then you might "fight" death until you're the last one standing. However, if you project that there is something worse than death, say "genocide" or "infanticide", "cannibalism" or even "human extinction" then it's better to avoid those things, even if it means a person must accept the inevitability of their own personal death as neither "evil" nor "horrible".

Democracy allows you the opportunity to fight such evils as genocide, infanticide, cannibalism, and human extinction.

I guess it all comes down to having a democracy, then. Democracy probably works best when the citizens are informed of what is going on so that they can make appropriate decisions. Otherwise, democracy is pretty much a joke.

Yes. That is why states that are not democratic don't allow journalists to report freely.

[iambiguous]

"Radio astronomers have captured a wide-angle image of one of the most violent locales in the cosmos.

A patch of pure nothing in a faraway galaxy has lately become the gravitational center of attention for radio astronomers. That would be a giant black hole, with the gravity of 6.5 billion suns, that spits high-energy particles from the center of the galaxy Messier 87, which lies some 50 million light-years from Earth." nyt

Yo, God! What's up with that?

[Harry Baird]

And as the wind again breathes, I return to this thread, perhaps to breathe some life back through it.

It may interest you to know that this is the first intrusion of ChatGPT into my world

I am honoured (!?) to have facilitated this intrusion - or, shall we say, this imposition?

[Reordering quotes a little]

You seem to want to make a distinction between (1) the elements of the Story and (2) metaphysics (in the form of metaphysical principles that can be abstracted from the Story). I do not make this distinction: the Story *is* a metaphysical one already.

Not only do I 'make a distinction' I say that it is imperative to make the distinction because it is logically as well as intuitively necessary. The Story about some principle or other is designed as and functions as the vehicle through which the meaning-message is conveyed. The meaning and the message could just as well have come from another Story (i.e. another cultural or historical context).

If you do not make distinctions I do not have a problem with that.

There might have been some misunderstanding here. I do make the distinction between a story and any principles that might be abstracted from it, but I also contend that both stories and principles can qualify as metaphysical - insofar as they satisfy the criterion of "pertaining to that which transcends physical reality".

In the case of Christianity, the Story does meet this criterion and thus is metaphysical, even before any (also metaphysical) principle(s) that can be abstracted from it. Do you agree?

But I have no problem if, as a result of this or anything I say, you recognize that I am not Christian -- not truly so. I make no claims in that regard.

I am not saying that you claim to be Christian: I am saying that you claim to value Christian metaphysics, and that you have claimed as much for a long time, but that despite this claim of yours, you reject every essential element of the Christian Story-with-a-capital-S.

I am, then, prompting you to reflect on whether or not you continue to claim to value Christian metaphysics. I don't see how you can, because the only "Christian" metaphysics that you endorse are those principles which you have abstracted from the Story, but (in my opinion), they are so much abstracted that they no longer genuinely qualify as "Christian".

Does that make sense now? If so, does it prompt any reflections?

You might wonder why any of this matters to me: it is because I also claim to value aspects of Christian metaphysics, but by this I mean aspects which are specific enough to continue to be considered "Christian", and it is perplexing to me that you make the same claim without (the same) justification.

Just as there is intra-species cooperation you forget that a mother bird with two chicks when she notices one who gets stronger, whose will and basic power is greater, cuts off the weaker from nourishment.

It's not true that I forget that: I have never denied that there are aspects of the natural world that are cruel and even brutal. I have simply pointed out that there are also kindness, love, and pleasure in the natural world. You acknowledge that these exist, but go on to claim that "the essential underpinning [of the natural world --HB] is about power, force, assertion, violence and will". I have made no such similarly declarative statement; I have not even attempted to roughly estimate the ratio of kindness/satisfaction to cruelty/suffering in the natural world. How ironic then that you accuse me of "seeing things through [a lens]"!

OK, so, no, you can't point to anything specific about the world's nature that entails its immutability

You are going off on a track that I do not understand, possibly because there is some *predicate* you are working with that I do not see, understand or agree with.

I just value logic, and, as I pointed out, you misused it, engaging in fallacious reasoning (albeit that you did qualify your reasoning with "in a way"). That's all. It was a sidetrack.

In a way, our whole conversation has been sidetracked from the broad questions underlying it: Who or What is behind the design of this reality in which we find ourselves, and where is God in all of this - inside us, outside us, or somewhere (if anywhere) else - and can we coherently align our answers to those questions?

The world of nature -- our world, the world as a planet-system -- has been going on as it has for billions of years. I assume it will go on in the same way, generally speaking, for billions more. Is that a fallacious assumption?

There are reasonable grounds for making it, so I don't think it's fallacious as an assumption per se. There are also, though, reasonable grounds for doubting it.

[Harry Baird]

A gentle breeze blows through...

The burden of explanation always seems to be put on science, but no one ever seems to feel it necessary to explain exactly how God does what he does.

In some cases (including the one you brought up), the burden [ETA: of explaining how God does what he does] might equally be on science there too...

In others, we simply wouldn't expect to be able to explain, 'cos - well, we're not gods ourselves, and for better or worse simply lack access (while down here, at least) to divinity's understanding of divine power.

Anyone is at liberty to attribute whatever fantastic ability or quality to God that he likes, and he doesn't have to explain how it could even be possible, let alone provide proof that it is the case. It's hardly any wonder, then, that God turns out to be omnipotent.

You might have missed my point, which was perhaps not phrased very clearly - or maybe you got it but didn't see fit to respond directly. In any case, my point - or framing - is that in one meaningful sense "science" simply is "explaining how stuff is done", and thus science inevitably bears all explanatory burdens in that domain, including explaining how God does what God does, at least to the extent that such an explanation is possible to systematically determine, which might be very limited while we're "down here".

Maybe, at some point in some disciplines, science "down here" reaches a limit, at which point all scientists can say is, "The explanation involves God, but we can't investigate and explain beyond that". Maybe, before reaching that limit, science can rule in or out (even if only probabilistically) certain properties of God such as omnipotence. Maybe, though - more optimistically - there is no such limit.